The high-altitude bombing by Nato air forces during the Kosovo conflict was far less successful than claimed at the time, with only a fraction of the strikes hitting their targets. An internal United States air force report obtained by Newsweek magazine logs only 58 accurate strikes, compared with the 744 “confirmed” by Nato at the end of the war, raising new questions about the high-precision low-casualty techniques that were so lavishly praised after the Serb defeat.
The new figures were compiled by a special investigation team from the US and other Nato air forces which spent weeks combing Kosovo on foot and by helicopter looking for evidence of damage. They found that while the US top brass boasted that Nato forces had disabled “around 120 tanks”, “about 220 armoured personnel carriers(APCs)” and “up to 450 artillery and mortar pieces” in 78 days of bombing, the true figures were probably less than one tenth of that.According to the investigators, Nato hit just 14 tanks, 18 APCs and 20 artillery and mortar pieces. These figures are much closer to the losses admitted by Serb forces at the end of the war and dismissed by Nato then as “disinformation”.The investigation did find that high-altitude air power was effective in Kosovo, but chiefly against civilian targets. It was the bombing of cities and power stations that most damaged Serbia, it found, because it undermined the ability of the leadership to govern. The relatively small losses of military hardware played a far lesser role.Another unwelcome discovery was how easily the high-altitude surveillance systems could be tricked from the ground. The Serbs protected one strategic bridge from attack by constructing another bridge 300m away out of polyethylene sheeting The fake bridge was “destroyed” many times over.

The Serbs also successfully built fake tanks out of black logs hoisted on to old lorry wheels: from the air the false tanks looked indistinguishable from the real ones – and took many more hits.The report was commissioned by General Wesley Clark, Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who oversaw the Kosovo operation and was concerned by the discrepancy between pilots’ claims and evidence from the ground. Completed last summer, the report’s existence was never made public, and it was superseded by a second report, more to the liking of Nato and the Pentagon, which quoted strike figures closer to those originally claimed.. In a small wood, near a small road, on the edge of a small town in the Auvergne, a large, beautiful sculpture by a young British artist will be inaugurated today amid speeches, music and applause from several thousand people. In a small wood, near a small road, on the edge of a small town in the Auvergne, a large, beautiful sculpture by a young British artist will be inaugurated today amid speeches, music and applause from several thousand people.
The sculpture, a soaring, winged figure, 24ft high, is an affirmation of the triumph of liberty over oppression; and of life over death. Who could object to that? Plenty of people, it seems.Victoire, sculpted by Hal Wilson, 33, is a tribute to the men and women of the French Resistance, the biggest figurative monument to the Resistance to be erected in France. It has been the object of a vicious campaign of rumours, calumnies, threats and political dirty tricks, reopening 60-year-old wounds that have never truly healed.In France politics is history and history is politics.

And here, only 30 miles from Vichy, the capital of collaborationist France, to build such a monument is still a political statement, more than half a century after the war ended.Small Resistance memorials, marking the spot where members were executed or killed in action are routinely defaced hereabouts by posters of the far-right National Front. Three previous attempts to create a large memorial to the members of the Resistance, or “Maquis”, of Les Combrailles (the northern Auvergne) have failed.A month ago, it seemed that Victoire would also be vanquished. The monument was due to be built a little further south, near the town of Bromont-Lamothe. The local conseil général – the equivalent of the county council of the Puy de Dÿme département – had enthusiastically approved the site. Mr Wilson, a British sculptor who moved to the area six years ago, submitted three designs, one of which was selected by popular vote.At the last moment, the mayor of Bromont-Lamothe found a technical reason to refuse permission for the monument to be installed.

Victoire – which took Mr Wilson 600 hours to complete over three months – appeared to behomeless.The mayor, Dr Frederic Bales, a right-winger but not affiliated with the extreme right, told his town council that the monument was “Communist-inspired and built from rubbish”. It would, he implied, be an artistic and political stain on his town.Why? Jean Sanitas, 72, a former Resistance member, journalist, novelist and president of the association that commissioned the monument, said: “There are in this part of the world many people who keep secretly in their bedside table a picture of Marshall Pétain [the leader of the Vichy regime] and kiss it before they go to bed at night.”I think the mayor of Bromont-Lamothe is one of those people He believes that Pétain was right. He regards the Resistance as having been nothing but Communists and our association as left wing and Communist-inspired.”Is Mr Sanitas’s association left wing? “Yes,” he acknowledged. “But broad left and not just Communist.”I telephoned Dr Bales.