Julian Cole

BOMBS can make strange bedfellows of us. So it is that the traditional Tory and the dithering pacifist can find themselves sharing a soapbox.

The Nato bombing of Serbia brings old arguments to the surface. At such times it has been traditional for Tories to argue that we shouldn't interfere with the affairs of foreigners, who live miles away, don't speak a word of English and are best left to sort out their own problems.

Curiously, the dithering pacifist comes to a parallel conclusion, though their reluctance has more to do with the fact that bombs tend to damage people.

So it is that the trad Tory and the hang-wringing peacemaker can view with gloomy misgivings the Kosovo conflict - no, let's call it a war, which it is.

As should surprise no one, this column huddles with the anxious peace-lovers, which tends to be the way round here. Perhaps I am slow on the uptake, but it's a mystery to me how blowing people up, or at best turning them into starving, wretched refugees, is any help at all. Against such doubts it can be admitted that doing nothing was probably not an option, considering the inhumane treatment of Kosovo Albanians by the Milosevic regime. Yet did we really know what we were doing when Britain joined in with the American-led Nato offensive?

Nato strategists apparently believe that bombing Serbia will lead to severe shortages of fuel, food and drinking water, thus disenchanting the people who will turn against Milosevic and force him to negotiate a withdrawal from Kosovo.

And yet what has happened so far? The previously-hated Milosevic has been transformed into a folk hero in the eyes of his battered people. True, he has now offered a ceasefire, though this has been dismissed as a cynical ploy by Nato nations.

The plight of the refugees caused us to dispatch the bombs in the first place. Yet did no one calculate that dropping bombs might lead to so many more people fleeing into Macedonia? Like everything else in this war, little thought seems to have been given to what might occur.

This has been heralded as a humanitarian war, if that's not a gruesome contradiction. Yet the attack on Serbia seems to have taken little account of the humans on the ground. The desperate sight of so many refugees has turned into a catastrophe for Nato, even though Nato had only been trying to help these very same people. The refugee crisis, shown so vividly on our television screens, is dangerously close to a propaganda plus for Milosevic, who can sit back and watch the Western governments try to sort that one out.

It is probably idiotically nave to say that you don't like war, but I don't; and nothing happening now can swing me round to a martial way of thinking, even if true horrors precipitated this new horror in which we are now playing such an enthusiastic part.

AS THE Kosovar refugee crisis has mounted, Prime Minister Tony Blair has displayed muddled thinking. On Sunday morning Mr Blair said the dispersal of refugees would be a "policy of despair". By the evening, his Government made the mealy-mouthed announcement that "some thousands" of refugees would be admitted into Britain after all. By Monday, Mr Blair was back in doubting mood, saying that providing sanctuary would be to finish the job of ethnic cleansing.

Hearing Tony Blair make such statements leads you to suspect he might have a hidden motive, and that, beneath his caring Christianity, what he is actually saying is that we don't want any asylum-seekers landing here - however acute their needs. This might seem unfair to Mr Blair, until you look at the extremely illiberal Asylum Bill which could become law next year. This would force asylum-seekers to live without benefits.

I bet the Tories wish they'd thought of that one.

8/4/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.