August 1998

LUND, SWEDEN—If you want to win a lot of money in a three way political bet, then gamble that by the end of the autumn that Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Goran Persson will all be still firmly in office. No one should underestimate how fine grind the wheels of the American legal system. But, in the end, whether Clinton goes or stays is a political matter. No Congress of the United States would want to go down in history as the one that stripped a president of office for breaking his marital vows and lying to cover this up. Even if the stock market should plummet and Clinton’s poll ratings drop precipitously, nothing can change this very basic political fact. In Germany Helmut Kohl, after 16 non-stop years in the Chancellor’s chair, looks set for defeat in next month’s general election. But don’t believe it until you see it....

“To understand a conflict – and, thus, help solve it –we need to know something about at least three things:Attitudes, Behaviour and the root Causes of the conflict.That’s the ABC. Most media simply report on behaviour andignore the two other dimensions. This is why people ingeneral feel that they don’t understand much of it all, inspite of watching and listening carefully to news reports.And when media cover conflict behaviour, many seem to usethe KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid. What youhave heard about human rights in Kosovo/a is a good exampleof KISS journalism,” says Jan Oberg, head of TFF’sConflict-Mitigation team upon returning from yet anothermission to Belgrade, Prishtina and Skopje. “I want to make it clear that I consider the Serbgovernment guilty of extremely serious and systematic humanrights violations in the Kosovo province. Over the years,the Serb leadership has pursued an absolutely immoral andself-defeating policy of repression. Having listened tohundreds...

Lund, August 25, 1998 – “The standard media backgroundto the conflict tells us that it all started in 1989 whenSlobodan Milosevic, then President of Serbia, repealed theautonomous status granted the Kosovo province in the 1974constitution. This is wrong and propagated by journalistswho have not bothered to study root causes, attitudes orother complexities. It’s a typical example of KISS reporting– ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid.’ But the deliberate choice ofthis particular political action as ‘the cause of all of thetrouble’ conveys the image that the Serb side alone is toblame,” says Jan Oberg who has been engaged in this conflictsince 1992. “This is an age-old conflict between two peoples who aremuch more different and segregated than any other twopeoples or nations in ex-Yugoslavia. The basic causes of conflict were and remain: 1)historically based inter-ethnic mistrust, b) economicunderdevelopment and inequality, and 3) how to – if at all –integrate the Kosovo province meaningfully...

Lund, August 23, 1998 – “There are dangerously manyhalf truths and biases in the reporting from Kosovo/a. Thegeneralised media image of the conflict shapes publicopinion which in turn threatens to push politicians intoaction that will have counterproductive effects on theground,” says Jan Oberg, head of TFF’s Conflict-Mitigationteam, upon returning from yet another mission to Belgrade,Prishtina and Skopje. “The standard media story about Kosovo the last sixmonths goes like this: ‘Kosovo is a province in Serbiainhabited by about 2 million people, 90 per cent of whom areAlbanians and 10 per cent Serbs. The dissolution of Tito’sYugoslavia started in 1989 when Serbian president SlobodanMilosevic repealed the autonomy which the province hadenjoyed since 1974. The region is characterised by extremepoverty and systematic human rights violations by Serbianauthorities against the Albanians, to the extent that one isjustified in calling it a police state or an ‘apartheid’system. The Serb ‘offensive’ is an attempt by Belgrade...

STOCKHOLM–In spite of America’s surprise attacks on terrorist refuges many American foreign policy commentators are perturbed by Bill Clinton’s way of dealing with the world, even as American public opinion welcomes a presidency with a low body count and an absence of bloody overseas engagements. Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post calls it “soft” power and one need look no further than the White House effort to tell the UN arms inspectors in Iraq to cool it, the most recent example, to see that it is the way Clinton foreign policy appears to be heading. Whether it be Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, North Korea, the Congo, Clintonesque foreign policy is becoming increasingly of the live and let live variety. Whether this is driven by the distractions of the Monica Lewinsky business or by some carefully thought out brainstorming is unclear. Certainly the media is no more interested in reporting an...

“Look at what happens in Kosovo and you would like tobelieve that all good powers worked for PREVENTION of thistragedy but that, unfortunately, tragedies happen.Governments, inter-governmental and non-governmentalorganisations are already overloaded with ongoing conflictsand catastrophes; budgets are tight etc. Admittedly theseare very complex problems; and just as all diseases cannotbe prevented, we can’t expect all wars to be prevented. According to this theory, if things go wrong it is theparties’ fault and if they go well it is thanks to theinternational community and a few shuttling envoys ordiplomats. World media naively corroborate this theory: Wewatch how diplomats, envoys, and delegations fly around,hold press conferences, meet their kin in palaces or makesolemn declarations if they don’t issue threats. In short,do all they can to stop wars and force people to negotiationtables, don’t they? Well, no outbreak of violence on earth was morepredictable than the one in Kosovo. There have been moreearly...

LONDON–India and Pakistan have had a jolly month playing with matches. Just to show the world how responsible they are with their new-found nuclear arsenals they ve traded fire almost daily over and around the border that separates the two halves of the disputed state of Kashmir, killing over 90 soldiers and civilians. Not a bad month s work for two nations that in their pre-nuclear state twice have been to war over this idyllic piece of Himalayan real estate. Both Indian and Pakistani policy makers seem blithely unaware of the immense self-discipline that kept the U.S. and the Soviet Union from letting off their missiles in the days of their nuclear stand-off, aptly named the Cold War. Fighting of any kind, much less nuclear war, was frozen. There was never a single Russian or American soldier killed by the other side. Just as important was the military self-discipline of...

I år är det tjugofyra år sedan den turkiska interventionen på Cypern som ledde till att ön delades. Grek- och turkcyprioter har sedan dess levt åtskilda på var sin sida om den buffertzon som skär tvärs igenom ön. För grekcyprioterna var interventionen och den efterföljande ockupationen av norra Cypern en nationell katastrof. Hundratusentals grekcyprioter tvingades lämna sina hem i norr och lever som flyktingar på den södra delen av ön. För den turkcypriotiska minoriteten däremot sågs interventionen, eller “fredsoperationen” som den kallas av turkcyprioterna, som en räddning undan Cyperns hotande anslutning till Grekland. Målet om enosis delades vid denna tid av den dåvarande militärjuntan i Aten och de kuppmakare som några dagar tidigare störtat den cypriotiske presidenten Makarios. Den 20 juli varje år firar turkcyprioterna därför denna dag, “Fred och frihetsdagen”, likt en nationaldag. Till skillnad från grekcyprioterna har turkcyprioterna accepterat öns delning och funnit sig tillrätta på den norra...

STOCKHOLM–How it looks, it is often said, depends on where you sit. The Financial Times reported General Alexander Lebed’s public letter as a serious front page story. The International Herald Tribune relegated it to an inside page with a headline that suggested it must be a Lebed joke. The new governor of Siberia was reported as threatening to take over a local missile base and its portion of Russia’s nuclear arsenal with it. Meanwhile the Russian parliament, the Duma, has started once again impeachment proceedings against Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Always the number one accusation is that Yeltsin initiated the breakup of the Soviet Union whose denouement, if Lebed is not joking, is still to come. No one inside Russia says it, but the truth becomes more apparent every day if Mikhail Gorbachev had stayed in power and engineered a gentler transition, not only would the Soviet Union be whole,...