More articles on Kosovo-Metohija
[ Sono in tutto 2788 i corpi, di persone di ogni "etnia", recuperati in
Kosovo dopo i bombardamenti del 1999. Sono 3272, invece, quelli che
risultano tuttora scomparsi. La Croce Rossa Internazionale, con il suo
"Book of Missing Persons", di fatto smentisce per l'ennesima volta la
propaganda NATO sulle decine o centinaia di migliaia di morti ammazzati
nell'ambito di una presunta pulizia etnica contro la popolazione di
lingua albanese; ma le sue cifre, invece di tranquillizzare, gettano
luce sul genocidio vero, quello in atto oggi contro tutte le altre
nazionalita' nella provincia serba... ]
1. Kosovo: Third edition of the Book of Missing Persons (ICRC / R.
Rozoff)
2. S. Gasparovski: Speech at the London University, May 8, 2004
3. UN, NATO POLICIES FAIL (George Bogdanich, Chicago Tribune)
4. Clearing up after NATO. A reminder of the havoc left behind by the
North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (T. Bancroft-Hinchey - Pravda.Ru)
5. Kosovo shows folly of force to resolve conflicts (Asahi Shimbun -
Japan)
=== 1 ===
http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5Y4DM4?OpenDocument
[Note: The International Committee of the Red Cross
has updated its estimate of total missing persons in
Kosovo, which in line with its previous reports would
begin in the autumn of 1998, that is to say a full six
months before the March 24 war against Yugoslavia, and
now presumably is inclusive of early this year, almost
five years after the war commenced, and the number is
3,272. According to then-NATO spokesman Mark Laity in
a piece in the Manchester Guardian of August 18, 2000
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,355760,00.html),
a total of 2,788 bodies had been exhumed in Kosovo -
with the ethnicity of the dead, cause of death and
time of death in most cases unknown - with no more
expected to be found.
Some 700, as I recall, had not been identified. Some
600 plus of the missing in earlier Red Cross reports
were identified as ethnic Serbs and Roma. 1,700 were
ethnic Kosovo Albanians in custody in other parts of
Serbia, but unidentified. This in addition to the
reports of the New York Times' Chris Hedges among
others that numerous KLA members were slain by their
own cohorts in internecine power struggles in the
Spring of 1999.
The latest report mentions that 500 of the current
3,272 missing persons were recently reported missing,
which without doubt means they are Serbian, Roma and
other non-Albanian Kosovo citizens along with
Albanians themselves abducted and killed by Albanian
extremists. (The German Der Spiegel two autumns ago
estimated thousands of Kosovo Albanians killed by
Albanian extremists since Yugoslav forces evacuated
Kosovo in June of 1999.)
Do the (simple) arithmetic and the still
widely-bandied about number of 10,000 Kosovo Albanians
killed in the Spring of 1999 - forget the
100,000-200,000 figures and the ghoulish 10,000
'dematerialized' in the Trepca mining complex as has
been dutifully parroted in the Western press for
almost five years now - appears for what it is: An
unprecedented and unmitigated lie. Arguably the most
farfetched - but most widely believed - lie of our
lifetime. - RR]
International Committee of the Red Cross
April 16, 2004
Kosovo: Third edition of the Book of Missing Persons
The ICRC is launching the third edition of the Book of
Missing Persons in Kosovo today.
After more than a decade of armed conflict in the
Balkans, thousands of people are still reported
missing in connection with the hostilities – over
24,000, according to lists drawn up by the ICRC.
The third edition of the Book of Missing Persons in
Kosovo contains 3,272 names of people who were
reported missing to the ICRC directly by their close
relatives and whose fate has still not been
ascertained. Their families have the right to know
what happened to them. This right is recognized under
international humanitarian law, as is the obligation
of the authorities to provide the families with the
information they need.
The book is primarily meant to help families find
answers to their questions. However, it also serves as
a reminder that thousands of people still carry the
emotional burden of not knowing what happened to their
loved ones. In addition, these people are continuously
faced with legal and administrative difficulties
arising from the unsettled status of their missing
relatives. Many of those who went missing were also
breadwinners and their families have to cope with the
basic problems of daily existence.
So far, in most of the cases of missing persons that
have been solved, the necessary information has been
obtained through the identification of human remains
found in mass and individual graves in Kosovo and
Serbia proper. However, a number of bodies will
probably never be located. This makes it all the more
important for the authorities to fulfil their
obligation to provide answers.
The information contained in the Book of Missing
Persons in Kosovo is available on the following
website: http://www.familylinks.icrc.org
For further information, please contact:
Florian Westphal, ICRC Geneva, tel. ++4122 730 29 30
=== 2 ===
http://www.artel.co.yu/en/glas_dijaspore/2004-05-11.html
KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
By STANISLAV GAŠPAROVSKI,
MEMBER OF BELGRADE FORUM
LONDON, MAY 8, 2004.
SPEECH AT LONDON UNIVERSITY
EVERY TIME THAT TONY BLAIR AND HIS GOVERNMENT HAVE REFEREED TO THE
PRESENT SITUATION IN KOSOVO, WAS TO TELL US ABOUT IMPROVEMENTS MADE,
PROGRESS ACHIEVED AND HOW THE UNMIC AND KFOR ARE DOING A REMARKABLE JOB
IN MAKING KOSOVO SAFER, AND MULTI-ETHNIC. THAT IS UP TO THE 17th OF
MARCH OF THIS YEAR. ON THAT DAY A MOB OF SOME 50,000 ALBANIANS, IN 33
FLASH POINTS ACROSS THE KOSOVO & METOHIA WENT ON AN ORCHESTRATED POGROM
OF UNPROTECTED SERBS AND OTHER NON-ALBANIANS. THEY KILLED 19, INJURED
900, BITTEN AND TERRORIZED THOUSANDS, DROVE 4,500 FROM THEIR HOMES,
THAN DESTROYED AND BURNED OVER 300. IN 3 DAYS OF THIS KRISTALLNACHT
THEY DESTROYED 35 ADDITIONAL CHURCHES AND CHRISTIAN SHRINES, INCLUDING
THOSE WHICH DATE BACK TO THE 12th AND 14th CENTURIES. SOME OF THEM
BELONGING TO THE WORLD HERITAGE. THEY DESECRATED TOMBS, AND OBLITERATED
ANYTHING BEARING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS.
ALL THIS HAPPENED UNDER THE VERY EYES OF 18,000 UNMIK AND KFOR
CONTINGENT. THEY WILL EVACUATE A HOUSE, OR A CHURCH, AND THAN STAND AND
WATCH WHILE THE MOB BURN IT. KFOR AND UNMIK HAVE ADOPTED A POLICY OF:
"EVACUATE AND LET THEM BURN"!
MEDIA REPORTED THE REASON FOR SUCH OUT BURST OF VIOLENCE TO BE THAT 4
ALBANIAN BOYS HAD BEEN CHASED INTO THE RIVER IBAR BY AT LEAST 2 SERBS
AND A DOG. THREE OF THE BOYS DROWNED AND ONE ESCAPED TO THE OTHER SIDE.
HOWEVER, ACCORDING TO STATEMENT MADE ON THE 16th OF MARCH BY NATO
POLICE SPOKESMAN DEREK CHAPPELL, I QUOTE: "THAT WAS DEFINITELY NOT
TRUE". ADMIRAL GREGORY JOHNSON, THE OVERALL NATO COMMANDER, FURTHER
STATED THAT THE UNSUING CLASHES WERE, I QUOTE: "ORCHESTRATED AND
WELL-PLANNED ETHNIC CLEANSING" BY THE KOSOVO-ALBANIANS.
THESE EVENTS MAY HAVE COME AS A SHOCK TO THE AVERAGE GOVERNMENT
TRUSTING, TAX PAYING BRITISH CITIZEN, BUT NOT TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE
CLOSELY FOLLOWED KOSOVO EVENTS FROM THE BEGINNING.
AS YOU ARE WELL AWARE, FIVE YEARS A GO NATO HAS INTERVENED INTO KOSOVO
& METOHIA ON THE HUMANITARIAN PRETEXTS, TO PREVENT SO CALLED ETHNIC
CLEANSING OF ALBANIANS BUY THE SERBS. NAMELY BY, AT THAT TIME YUGOSLAV
ARMY AND SECURITY FORCES . IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY THEY BOMBED FOR 78
DAYS SERBIA, MONTENEGRO AND KOSOVO. KILLING THOUSANDS, DESTROYING
SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, BRIDGES. NATO SEVERELY DAMAGED
INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE ALREADY IMPOVERISHED COUNTRY. THEY DEED NOT
HESITATE TO DESTROY RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTING STATION, WHERE
THEY KILLED 16 INNOCENT JOURNALIST.
NATO RELEASED TOXIC SUBSTANCES, BY DELIBERATELY DESTROYING
PETRO-CHEMICAL COMPLEXES. LEGACY OF THIS IS STILL PRESENT.
BY USING 50,000 MISSILES WITH DEPLETED URANIUM HEADS, THEY EVEN LEFT A
LEGACY OF POLLUTION FOR HUNDREDS OF GENERATIONS TO COME. WE ALREADY
HAVE CHILDREN BORN WITHOUT SOME OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS, WITH NO EYES,
AND WITH MANY OTHER CHARACTERISTIC DEFORMITIES.
AND ALL THAT: IN THE NAME OF THE SO CALLED HUMANITY !?
BUT, HAVE THEY MADE KOSOVO BETTER AND SAFER PLACE FOR NON-ALBANIANS?
AFTER ALL THE BASE FOR NATO INTERVENTION WAS MULTI-ETHNICITY.
IS TONY BLAIR TELLING THE TRUTH WHEN HE BRINGS KOSOVO AS AN EXAMPLE OF
SUCCESS ?
AS RESPONSE LET ME GIVE YOU SOME BASIC, REAL INFORMATION ON THE
SITUATION IN KOSOVO THAT PRE-DATES THE LATEST POGROM:
- KOSOVO IS NOW ALMOST SINGLE ETHNIC.
- SOME 300,000 NON- ALBANIANS FROM KOSOVO & METOHIA ARE ETHNICALLY
CLEANSED. THEY LIVE IN SERBIA & MONTENEGRO AS REFUGES SINCE 1999. NO
EFFORT IS MADE TO BRING THEM BACK TO NATIVE LAND. THEIR PROPERTY IS
FALSELY SOLD AND CONFISCATED.
- SERBS IN KOSOVO ARE REDUCED TO LIVING IN WHAT AMOUNTS TO SERBIAN
ENCLAVES.
- ONLY KOSOVO "ECONOMY", APART WESTERN DONATIONS, IS SMUGGLING, WHITE
SLAVERY, PROSTITUTION, DRUGS TRAFFICKING AND OTHER MAFIA TYPE OF
BUSINESS. THAT, EUROPE HAS RECOGNIZED TO BE A BIG PROBLEM, AND DANGER.
- 1,000 PEOPLE ARE KIDNAPPED,
- 1,200 MURDERED,
- 115 CHURCHES DESTROYED ( SO FAR A TOTAL OF 150),
- NUMEROUS SERB GRAVE YARDS HAVE BEEN BULLDOZED, AND CONVERTED INTO
PARKING LOTS, OR OTHERWISE OBLITERATED.
- EPISCOPAL HOUSE IN PRIZREN IS TURNED INTO PUBLIC LAVATORY!
ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE THE STATISTIC OF THE TIME OF PEACE, AND NOT OF THE
TIME OF WAR. THIS IS THE TIME OF GOVERNMENT CLAIM OF PROGRESS AND
IMPROVEMENTS. IF THAT IS THE SUCCESS, HOW THE FAILURE SHOULD LOOK LIKE?
BUT, MOST CONCERNING ASPECT OF ALL OF THE ABOVE IS THE EMERGENCE OF A
PATTERN OF DELIBERATE ALBANIAN POLICY TO DESTABILIZE KOSOVO & METOHIA
IN ORDER TO CREATE A CLIMATE FOR INDEPENDENCE, AND ANNEXATION TO A
GREATER ALBANIA. POLICY IS SIMPLE, BUT EFFECTIVE: ERADICATE EVERYTHING
THAT IS NOT ALBANIAN.
DURING THE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE ON KOSOVO, ON THE 4TH OF MAY THE
MINISTER FOR EUROPE MR. DENIS MacSHANE, BACK FROM KOSOVO AND BELGRADE,
HAS ANNOUNCED SOME CHANGES IN POLICY THAT ARE OF VERY BIG CONCERN:
COMPARING KOSOVO SERBS TO THE GERMAN REFUGES FROM SILESIA, HE IS
SAYING: "THAT THE TIME HAS COME IN WHICH THERE CAN BE NO QUESTION OF A
RETURN TO 1999, 1989 OR 1979 IN TERMS OF SERB CONTROL OVER KOSOVO."
TALKING ABOUT THE POGROM HE HAD FOLLOWING TO SAY: "THE RIOTS WERE
TERRIBLE; I SAW THE VIDEO AND DIGITAL CAMERA FOOTAGE OF THE IRISH
SOLDIERS THEY SHOWED CHILDREN OF ABOUT 17 OR 18 WHO LOOKED AS THOUGH
THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN CARRYING SCHOOL SATCHELS; THEY WERE NOT
KLA-TRAINED PEOPLE FROM THE 1990s. IT IS A PLAIN FACT THAT 75 PER CENT
OF KOSOVANS UNDER 25 ARE UNEMPLOYED. THERE IS NO ECONOMIC HOPE, AND
BELGRADE DOES NOT SEEM ABLE TO FIND A WAY OF LETTING KOSOVO BE KOSOVO."
AFTER READING REPORT, MY CONCLUSIONS CAN NOT BE BUT PESSIMISTIC.
EUROPE, AND NATO HAVE NO STOMACH, OR DESIRE TO FACE RESPONSIBILITY FOR
FIVE YEARS OF FAILURE AND DISASTROUS HANDLING OF THE KOSOVO AND
METOHIA. THEY TOOK THAT RESPONSIBILITY WHEN THEY FORCED YUGOSLAV ARMY
AND SECURITY FORCES OUT OF THE REGION. THEY DEED NOT REACT TO ETHNIC
CLEANSING, TO MAFIA AND LAWLESSNESS, TO POGROMS, AND TO DETERIORATION
AND DESTRUCTION OF ALL FORMS OF CIVIL SOCIETY.
I AM AFRAID THAT AGAIN, THE BLAIR'S SPIN EXPERTS ARE ABOUT TO BLAME
SERB'S FOR IT ALL!?
MESSAGE IS SENT AND IS CLEAR: TERRORISM AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR PAYS, IF
YOU ARE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE MIGHTY.
BUT AS A REMINDER TO US ALL ALLOW ME TO QUOTE SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL:
"AN APPEASER IS ONE WHO FEEDS A CROCODILE HOPING IT WILL EAT HIM LAST."
=== 3 ===
Chicago Tribune, Sunday, July 11, 2004
UN, NATO POLICIES FAIL
By George Bogdanich.
George Bogdanich is a New York-based writer and documentary filmmaker
After the recent brutal violence in Kosovo and the abrupt resignation
of UN administrator Harri Holkeri, official deception and denial can no
longer mask the extent of the policy failure in the Serbian province,
the last of the violent eruptions in the former Yugoslavia, but one
that has proved the most intractable.
Five years after having bombed their way into the region, NATO and the
postwar UN mission have utterly failed to protect the most vulnerable
inhabitants, the non-ethnic Albanian minority. Two-thirds of that
population has been driven out, with more than 4,000 recorded attacks
by extremists allied with the Kosovo Liberation Army and its successors.
Some 250,000 Serbs and 100,000 Serbo-Croat-speaking Muslims, Gypsies,
Turks and Jews have fled since NATO arrived and installed the KLA as
the real power in what is now a thoroughly ravaged province.
The nightmarish conditions for minorities have been well documented by
the UN's special rapporteur for human rights, Jiri Dienstbier, who
makes it clear that Kosovo is an infinitely more dangerous place than
it was before March 24, 1999, when NATO attacked Serbia after Serbia
cracked down ruthlessly on the KLA and other non-Serbs.
Even the pro-intervention International Crisis Group acknowledges the
policy failure in a recent report, noting that "mobs of Albanian
youths, extremists and criminals exposed the UN Mission in Kosovo and
the NATO-led peacekeeping force as very weak."
More than 40,000 Serbs lived in Pristina when NATO began its
occupation. Today only a few dozen remain, sheltered in military
barracks. The entire small Jewish community of Pristina fled KLA
attacks in September 1999.
At a time when New Yorkers are flocking to see Byzantine artifacts of
Christian orthodoxy, 800-year-old churches are being systematically
destroyed. During the first year of NATO occupation, more Serbian
churches and monasteries were destroyed than in the 500-year occupation
of the Turkish Ottomans.
`Kristallnacht in Kosovo'
In March, during two days of attacks against Serbs, which Dienstbier
called "Kristallnacht in Kosovo," 30 more churches were destroyed or
damaged, bringing the total to 150 that have been firebombed or
vandalized since 40,000 NATO troops arrived. Withdrawals by the U.S.
and other countries have reduced the number of troops to 18,000, a
force that is not in a position to challenge Kosovo's extremists.
Two recent photographs capture the reality of Kosovo.
The first is a March news photo of an ethnic Albanian rioter gleefully
recording a digital snapshot of a burning Orthodox church on a high-end
cell phone.
In an area where 90 percent of Serbs and 50 percent of ethnic Albanians
are unemployed, profits from the heroin trade have enriched the KLA and
its supporters, according to law-enforcement organizations from the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to Interpol.
Demonstrations erupt
Belated attempts by the UN to crack down on the de facto leaders of
what has been called the "republic of heroin" led to large
demonstrations in March. These demonstrations turned into a violent
attack against Serbs and their churches in the next two days after
Albanian-language newspapers and the public television station RTK
carried false and inflammatory stories that two ethnic Albanian
children were chased into a river by Serbs and drowned.
All of this is well-documented in a strongly worded report by the
Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The second photo that illustrates how humanitarian intervention in
Kosovo became a humanitarian nightmare was taken immediately after
NATO's intervention. It shows the NATO commander, Gen. Wesley Clark,
British Gen. Michael Jackson and UN administrator Bernard Kouchner
joining hands with Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku, leaders of the KLA, whom
Robert Gelbard, U.S. envoy to the Balkans, had correctly described as
terrorists the previous year.
The photo appeared on NATO's Web site when Ceku was appointed leader of
a UN security force known as the Kosovo Protection Corps. Canadian
diplomat James Bissett observed that the "U.S. war on terrorism skipped
the KLA," which was incorporated into the UN's KPC. But a UN paycheck
and uniform did not change the behavior or goals of a terrorist
organization committed to an ethnically pure Albanian state.
The U.S. was aware that Ceku, an ethnic Albanian, was linked to war
crimes previously as a commander in the Croatian army. Jane's
Intelligence Review describes him as a planner of massacres against
Serb civilians living in the UN protected areas in 1993 and 1995. In
the latter atrocity, Ceku worked closely with a group of retired U.S.
generals who advised the
Croatian army in Operation Storm, which turned into a widespread
ethnic-purging campaign that even the NATO-friendly Hague tribunal on
Yugoslavia declared a war crime.
When the tribunal announced that it was investigating Ceku, however,
there was strong U.S. pressure to prevent an indictment of the new head
of the UN's new KPC.
"If we lose him it will be a disaster," a Western diplomat close to the
UN mission told the London Sunday Times. "When you get down to the
second level of the KPC, you are down to a bunch of thugs."
Hashim "the Snake" Thaci, as he calls himself, has an even more
unsavory background. New York Times reporter Chris Hedges examined his
bloody consolidation of power through the assassination of rivals, and
he has been linked to the murder of moderate ethnic Albanian
politicians who failed to support the KLA's goal of an ethnically pure
Kosovo.
Thaci's reputation did not prevent him from receiving weapons and
logistical support from the U.S. intelligence services or the public
embrace of senior Clinton administration figures, including UN
Representative Richard Holbrooke and Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright. Hawkish foreign policy maven Morton Abramowitz served as
adviser to the KLA during negotiations at Rambouillet near Paris before
the NATO bombing in 1999.
Thaci and members of the KLA were escorted from Kosovo to France by
operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency, according to veteran
British journalist Tim Marshall in his book "Shadowplay." This book
noted that U.S. agents, while giving the KLA military and logistical
support, couldn't help but see that the KLA was smuggling drugs,
running prostitution rings and murdering civilians--and then blaming it
all on the Serbs.
Link to Al Qaeda
During this period, the KLA's director of elite services was Al Qaeda's
top operative in the Balkans, Mohammed al-Zawahiri, brother of Osama
bin Laden's military chief of staff Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to
Interpol and bin Laden's biographer Yossef Bodansky, director of the
Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.
U.S. support for the KLA is a classic example of the "entangling
alliances" that our first president, George Washington, warned against
in his farewell address. Arming these extremists in 1998 guaranteed
that war would follow.
KLA terrorist attacks on civilians and government workers were
guaranteed to generate a harsh response from Serbia's government and
thus provide a rationale for NATO intervention. Equally important, U.S.
political support for the KLA fatally undermined ethnic Albanian
moderate leaders who have been rendered powerless figureheads who risk
assassination if they fall out of step with the extremists.
"If NATO and the UN can't defeat terrorism in an area the size of
one-eighth of the Czech Republic," Dienstbier asks, "how do they expect
to confront global terrorism?"
Reckless mistake
It was bad enough to use the KLA in a war it helped provoke, but
deputizing its leaders to carry out UN responsibilities was reckless.
The only hope of gaining stability is if NATO is willing to arrest the
leaders of this violent organization. Instead, the same U.S. diplomatic
players--Holbrooke, Albright, Abramowitz--who placed the prestige of
the U.S. and the UN on the side of the KLA--are now advocating an
independent Kosovo. Recognizing independence, however, would legitimize
what is being called a "monoethnic mafia state" by Member of Parliament
Alice Mahon of Britain's Labor Party. It would encourage Kosovo-based
extremists determined to use similar methods to acquire
Albanian-inhabited regions in Macedonia, Montenegro, southern Serbia
and northern Greece.
As we watch with trepidation the Bush administration's misadventure in
Iraq, a troubling reckoning with our previous intervention awaits us
back in the Balkans.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
=== 4 ===
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=13421
Clearing up after NATO - 07/16/2004 19:51
A reminder of the havoc left behind by the North Atlantic Terrorist
Organization
NATO, when it is not prying into the affairs of sovereign nations and
practising a policy of divide and rule, when it is not dropping cluster
bombs on busloads of screaming civilians, when it is not aiding
terrorists to wreak havoc, keeps a low profile, leaving to others the
job of clearing up the mess it made.
NATO and its member states became involved in the Balkans, arming,
training and financing the Croatian Armed Forces, using Tudjman and his
clique of nationalists, forged during Tudjman's visits to the USA in
1987, in which he promoted the idea of a Croat reconciliation and the
formation of a Greater Croatia.
The stage was set. Bosnia and Herzegovina were next, with the Moslem
population duly armed and prepared by Al Qaeda, working in unison with
the United States of Reagan and Bush Senior and the Albanian terrorists
(KLA) equipped and instructed, their leaders shuttling back and forth
to Washington to receive money and instructions.
Before this however, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a
prosperous country with a motivated, happy workforce which enjoyed a
relatively high standard of living.
Along came NATO, its strings pulled by Washington, to create havoc
and chaos in the region by means of its criminal intrusion, against
which Serbia had to fight to protect its citizens, thousands of which
were slaughtered by the Croats and Muslims and Kosovar terrorists. Yet
Milosevic was the one dubbed the Butcher of the Balkans, a label easy
to stick since he had been systematically isolated by the arms of the
octopus whose head resides on Capitol Hill.
The result ten years after the conflict started is that there
continue to be tens of thousands of Serbian refugees unable to return
to the homes they were born in. The United Nations strives to help
these people with its housing and social integration programme.
Social integration? This would never have been necessary had NATO not
interfered and provided the steam for the pressure cooker to explode,
after sealing the lid and buying the ingredients.
Kosovar Albanians and Serbs lived together like brothers, side by
side, for centuries, before the west decided to stick its imperialist
nose into an area which did not belong to it and which it wholly failed
to understand.
This act of criminal intrusion destroyed the social fabric of large
areas of the Balkans, sowing hatred where none existed and reaping the
benefits of the ensuing chaos.
Washington could then rule Europe by creating flashpoints and seeing
how the Old Continent splits itself up into pressure groups, easy to
manage when they are so divided. The Balkans was the beginning, Iraq
was the continuation. Where next?
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
=== 5 ===
POINT OF VIEW: Kosovo shows folly of force to resolve conflicts
Now that an Iraqi interim government is in place, can the Iraqi people,
who have put up with more than 20 years of war and sanctions, finally
put their fears to rest and live in peace? I hardly think so.
As Iraq is now, the former Yugoslavia was once the target of violent
airstrikes carried out without the approval of the U.N. Security
Council. An international force attempted to enforce peace in the
troubled Kosovo region. When I look at the current Kosovo situation, I
cannot help but worry that Iraq, too, may one day be forgotten by the
rest of the world as it wrestles with many serious problems.
Once again, I'm compelled to point out the folly of using force to try
to bring a crisis under control or achieve an end, be it the settlement
of humanitarian problems or democratization.
The International Citizens' Network, of which I am president, has been
supporting refugees in the former Yugoslavia since 1993. In late May, I
visited Mitrovica in the Kosovo autonomous province, which is monitored
by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
Serb refugees, who had fled from across Kosovo, were living in shelters
set up in school gymnasiums and classrooms, inside which thin
mattresses were placed side by side. The bombings by the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization in 1999 did nothing to bring Albanian residents,
who make up the majority within the autonomous province, and Serbs
closer together. On the contrary, the ethnic confrontation has
intensified since then.
According to UNMIK, the bodies of two ethnic Albanian brothers who
lived in the village of Cabra, near Mitrovica, were recovered from a
river on March 16. The Albanian media in Kosovo incited the public with
reports that the brothers had drowned after they had been chased into
the river by Serb youths.
Enraged Albanian residents attacked and destroyed Serbian Orthodox
churches and Serbian homes and cemeteries, causing 5,000 Serbs to flee.
The next day, Albanians rushed to Mitrovica, where many people were
killed or injured in bloody interethnic clashes between Albanians and
the Serb minority.
Although UNMIK repudiated the allegation that the boys had drowned
because they were chased by Serbs, it failed to ease tensions. As a
result, I had no choice but to rely on UNMIK police vehicles to visit
the scenes of destruction.
According to local reports, a 16-year-old Serb boy was shot to death by
two Albanian youths on the night of June 4. Although the NATO-led
Kosovo Force (KFOR) is stationed there, the rule of law has yet to take
root in Kosovo as a whole. While 95 percent of Albanian refugees have
been repatriated, only 2 percent of their Serb counterparts, who are
estimated to number between 200,000 and 300,000, have been able to
return home.
What followed the NATO bombings was the persecution of Serbs and other
minorities, including Roma, by Albanians. At least 135 churches were
destroyed and 3,000 people were killed, abducted or went missing. But
the international community, which once made such a fuss over ``the
oppression of human rights of Albanian residents by Serbs,'' is
virtually indifferent to the plight of Kosovo minorities and the
violation of their human rights, which continues even now.
The amount of aid from the international community has also dropped to
one-fifth what it was four years ago. Historically significant churches
and monasteries that date back to the 11th to 13th centuries have also
been destroyed. The unemployment rate in Kosovo jumped to 57 percent
from between 30 and 40 percent before the civil war in the former
Yugoslavia. Drugs, smuggling, human trafficking and prostitution are
also rampant.
Iraq is not the only country that has come under fire from tens of
thousands of cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells in airstrikes
undertaken without the approval of the international community. The
same thing happened in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
UNMIK advocates the advancement of ``ethnic harmony'' and
``democratization'' in Kosovo. Like the slogans advocated in Iraq, they
are pleasing to the ear. But once force is used as a means to resolve a
conflict, reconciliation becomes extremely hard to achieve.
The only way to create hope is for the international community, by once
again reflecting on the outcome of military action, to avoid triggering
another chain of violence.
The author is president of the International Citizens' Network and a
professor emeritus at Saitama University. She contributed this comment
to The Asahi Shimbun.(IHT/Asahi: August 14,2004) (08/14)
http://www.asahi.com/english/opinion/TKY200408140127.html
Asahi.com Aug 14 2004 1:31AM GMT
[ Sono in tutto 2788 i corpi, di persone di ogni "etnia", recuperati in
Kosovo dopo i bombardamenti del 1999. Sono 3272, invece, quelli che
risultano tuttora scomparsi. La Croce Rossa Internazionale, con il suo
"Book of Missing Persons", di fatto smentisce per l'ennesima volta la
propaganda NATO sulle decine o centinaia di migliaia di morti ammazzati
nell'ambito di una presunta pulizia etnica contro la popolazione di
lingua albanese; ma le sue cifre, invece di tranquillizzare, gettano
luce sul genocidio vero, quello in atto oggi contro tutte le altre
nazionalita' nella provincia serba... ]
1. Kosovo: Third edition of the Book of Missing Persons (ICRC / R.
Rozoff)
2. S. Gasparovski: Speech at the London University, May 8, 2004
3. UN, NATO POLICIES FAIL (George Bogdanich, Chicago Tribune)
4. Clearing up after NATO. A reminder of the havoc left behind by the
North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (T. Bancroft-Hinchey - Pravda.Ru)
5. Kosovo shows folly of force to resolve conflicts (Asahi Shimbun -
Japan)
=== 1 ===
http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5Y4DM4?OpenDocument
[Note: The International Committee of the Red Cross
has updated its estimate of total missing persons in
Kosovo, which in line with its previous reports would
begin in the autumn of 1998, that is to say a full six
months before the March 24 war against Yugoslavia, and
now presumably is inclusive of early this year, almost
five years after the war commenced, and the number is
3,272. According to then-NATO spokesman Mark Laity in
a piece in the Manchester Guardian of August 18, 2000
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,355760,00.html),
a total of 2,788 bodies had been exhumed in Kosovo -
with the ethnicity of the dead, cause of death and
time of death in most cases unknown - with no more
expected to be found.
Some 700, as I recall, had not been identified. Some
600 plus of the missing in earlier Red Cross reports
were identified as ethnic Serbs and Roma. 1,700 were
ethnic Kosovo Albanians in custody in other parts of
Serbia, but unidentified. This in addition to the
reports of the New York Times' Chris Hedges among
others that numerous KLA members were slain by their
own cohorts in internecine power struggles in the
Spring of 1999.
The latest report mentions that 500 of the current
3,272 missing persons were recently reported missing,
which without doubt means they are Serbian, Roma and
other non-Albanian Kosovo citizens along with
Albanians themselves abducted and killed by Albanian
extremists. (The German Der Spiegel two autumns ago
estimated thousands of Kosovo Albanians killed by
Albanian extremists since Yugoslav forces evacuated
Kosovo in June of 1999.)
Do the (simple) arithmetic and the still
widely-bandied about number of 10,000 Kosovo Albanians
killed in the Spring of 1999 - forget the
100,000-200,000 figures and the ghoulish 10,000
'dematerialized' in the Trepca mining complex as has
been dutifully parroted in the Western press for
almost five years now - appears for what it is: An
unprecedented and unmitigated lie. Arguably the most
farfetched - but most widely believed - lie of our
lifetime. - RR]
International Committee of the Red Cross
April 16, 2004
Kosovo: Third edition of the Book of Missing Persons
The ICRC is launching the third edition of the Book of
Missing Persons in Kosovo today.
After more than a decade of armed conflict in the
Balkans, thousands of people are still reported
missing in connection with the hostilities – over
24,000, according to lists drawn up by the ICRC.
The third edition of the Book of Missing Persons in
Kosovo contains 3,272 names of people who were
reported missing to the ICRC directly by their close
relatives and whose fate has still not been
ascertained. Their families have the right to know
what happened to them. This right is recognized under
international humanitarian law, as is the obligation
of the authorities to provide the families with the
information they need.
The book is primarily meant to help families find
answers to their questions. However, it also serves as
a reminder that thousands of people still carry the
emotional burden of not knowing what happened to their
loved ones. In addition, these people are continuously
faced with legal and administrative difficulties
arising from the unsettled status of their missing
relatives. Many of those who went missing were also
breadwinners and their families have to cope with the
basic problems of daily existence.
So far, in most of the cases of missing persons that
have been solved, the necessary information has been
obtained through the identification of human remains
found in mass and individual graves in Kosovo and
Serbia proper. However, a number of bodies will
probably never be located. This makes it all the more
important for the authorities to fulfil their
obligation to provide answers.
The information contained in the Book of Missing
Persons in Kosovo is available on the following
website: http://www.familylinks.icrc.org
For further information, please contact:
Florian Westphal, ICRC Geneva, tel. ++4122 730 29 30
=== 2 ===
http://www.artel.co.yu/en/glas_dijaspore/2004-05-11.html
KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
By STANISLAV GAŠPAROVSKI,
MEMBER OF BELGRADE FORUM
LONDON, MAY 8, 2004.
SPEECH AT LONDON UNIVERSITY
EVERY TIME THAT TONY BLAIR AND HIS GOVERNMENT HAVE REFEREED TO THE
PRESENT SITUATION IN KOSOVO, WAS TO TELL US ABOUT IMPROVEMENTS MADE,
PROGRESS ACHIEVED AND HOW THE UNMIC AND KFOR ARE DOING A REMARKABLE JOB
IN MAKING KOSOVO SAFER, AND MULTI-ETHNIC. THAT IS UP TO THE 17th OF
MARCH OF THIS YEAR. ON THAT DAY A MOB OF SOME 50,000 ALBANIANS, IN 33
FLASH POINTS ACROSS THE KOSOVO & METOHIA WENT ON AN ORCHESTRATED POGROM
OF UNPROTECTED SERBS AND OTHER NON-ALBANIANS. THEY KILLED 19, INJURED
900, BITTEN AND TERRORIZED THOUSANDS, DROVE 4,500 FROM THEIR HOMES,
THAN DESTROYED AND BURNED OVER 300. IN 3 DAYS OF THIS KRISTALLNACHT
THEY DESTROYED 35 ADDITIONAL CHURCHES AND CHRISTIAN SHRINES, INCLUDING
THOSE WHICH DATE BACK TO THE 12th AND 14th CENTURIES. SOME OF THEM
BELONGING TO THE WORLD HERITAGE. THEY DESECRATED TOMBS, AND OBLITERATED
ANYTHING BEARING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS.
ALL THIS HAPPENED UNDER THE VERY EYES OF 18,000 UNMIK AND KFOR
CONTINGENT. THEY WILL EVACUATE A HOUSE, OR A CHURCH, AND THAN STAND AND
WATCH WHILE THE MOB BURN IT. KFOR AND UNMIK HAVE ADOPTED A POLICY OF:
"EVACUATE AND LET THEM BURN"!
MEDIA REPORTED THE REASON FOR SUCH OUT BURST OF VIOLENCE TO BE THAT 4
ALBANIAN BOYS HAD BEEN CHASED INTO THE RIVER IBAR BY AT LEAST 2 SERBS
AND A DOG. THREE OF THE BOYS DROWNED AND ONE ESCAPED TO THE OTHER SIDE.
HOWEVER, ACCORDING TO STATEMENT MADE ON THE 16th OF MARCH BY NATO
POLICE SPOKESMAN DEREK CHAPPELL, I QUOTE: "THAT WAS DEFINITELY NOT
TRUE". ADMIRAL GREGORY JOHNSON, THE OVERALL NATO COMMANDER, FURTHER
STATED THAT THE UNSUING CLASHES WERE, I QUOTE: "ORCHESTRATED AND
WELL-PLANNED ETHNIC CLEANSING" BY THE KOSOVO-ALBANIANS.
THESE EVENTS MAY HAVE COME AS A SHOCK TO THE AVERAGE GOVERNMENT
TRUSTING, TAX PAYING BRITISH CITIZEN, BUT NOT TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE
CLOSELY FOLLOWED KOSOVO EVENTS FROM THE BEGINNING.
AS YOU ARE WELL AWARE, FIVE YEARS A GO NATO HAS INTERVENED INTO KOSOVO
& METOHIA ON THE HUMANITARIAN PRETEXTS, TO PREVENT SO CALLED ETHNIC
CLEANSING OF ALBANIANS BUY THE SERBS. NAMELY BY, AT THAT TIME YUGOSLAV
ARMY AND SECURITY FORCES . IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY THEY BOMBED FOR 78
DAYS SERBIA, MONTENEGRO AND KOSOVO. KILLING THOUSANDS, DESTROYING
SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, BRIDGES. NATO SEVERELY DAMAGED
INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE ALREADY IMPOVERISHED COUNTRY. THEY DEED NOT
HESITATE TO DESTROY RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTING STATION, WHERE
THEY KILLED 16 INNOCENT JOURNALIST.
NATO RELEASED TOXIC SUBSTANCES, BY DELIBERATELY DESTROYING
PETRO-CHEMICAL COMPLEXES. LEGACY OF THIS IS STILL PRESENT.
BY USING 50,000 MISSILES WITH DEPLETED URANIUM HEADS, THEY EVEN LEFT A
LEGACY OF POLLUTION FOR HUNDREDS OF GENERATIONS TO COME. WE ALREADY
HAVE CHILDREN BORN WITHOUT SOME OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS, WITH NO EYES,
AND WITH MANY OTHER CHARACTERISTIC DEFORMITIES.
AND ALL THAT: IN THE NAME OF THE SO CALLED HUMANITY !?
BUT, HAVE THEY MADE KOSOVO BETTER AND SAFER PLACE FOR NON-ALBANIANS?
AFTER ALL THE BASE FOR NATO INTERVENTION WAS MULTI-ETHNICITY.
IS TONY BLAIR TELLING THE TRUTH WHEN HE BRINGS KOSOVO AS AN EXAMPLE OF
SUCCESS ?
AS RESPONSE LET ME GIVE YOU SOME BASIC, REAL INFORMATION ON THE
SITUATION IN KOSOVO THAT PRE-DATES THE LATEST POGROM:
- KOSOVO IS NOW ALMOST SINGLE ETHNIC.
- SOME 300,000 NON- ALBANIANS FROM KOSOVO & METOHIA ARE ETHNICALLY
CLEANSED. THEY LIVE IN SERBIA & MONTENEGRO AS REFUGES SINCE 1999. NO
EFFORT IS MADE TO BRING THEM BACK TO NATIVE LAND. THEIR PROPERTY IS
FALSELY SOLD AND CONFISCATED.
- SERBS IN KOSOVO ARE REDUCED TO LIVING IN WHAT AMOUNTS TO SERBIAN
ENCLAVES.
- ONLY KOSOVO "ECONOMY", APART WESTERN DONATIONS, IS SMUGGLING, WHITE
SLAVERY, PROSTITUTION, DRUGS TRAFFICKING AND OTHER MAFIA TYPE OF
BUSINESS. THAT, EUROPE HAS RECOGNIZED TO BE A BIG PROBLEM, AND DANGER.
- 1,000 PEOPLE ARE KIDNAPPED,
- 1,200 MURDERED,
- 115 CHURCHES DESTROYED ( SO FAR A TOTAL OF 150),
- NUMEROUS SERB GRAVE YARDS HAVE BEEN BULLDOZED, AND CONVERTED INTO
PARKING LOTS, OR OTHERWISE OBLITERATED.
- EPISCOPAL HOUSE IN PRIZREN IS TURNED INTO PUBLIC LAVATORY!
ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE THE STATISTIC OF THE TIME OF PEACE, AND NOT OF THE
TIME OF WAR. THIS IS THE TIME OF GOVERNMENT CLAIM OF PROGRESS AND
IMPROVEMENTS. IF THAT IS THE SUCCESS, HOW THE FAILURE SHOULD LOOK LIKE?
BUT, MOST CONCERNING ASPECT OF ALL OF THE ABOVE IS THE EMERGENCE OF A
PATTERN OF DELIBERATE ALBANIAN POLICY TO DESTABILIZE KOSOVO & METOHIA
IN ORDER TO CREATE A CLIMATE FOR INDEPENDENCE, AND ANNEXATION TO A
GREATER ALBANIA. POLICY IS SIMPLE, BUT EFFECTIVE: ERADICATE EVERYTHING
THAT IS NOT ALBANIAN.
DURING THE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE ON KOSOVO, ON THE 4TH OF MAY THE
MINISTER FOR EUROPE MR. DENIS MacSHANE, BACK FROM KOSOVO AND BELGRADE,
HAS ANNOUNCED SOME CHANGES IN POLICY THAT ARE OF VERY BIG CONCERN:
COMPARING KOSOVO SERBS TO THE GERMAN REFUGES FROM SILESIA, HE IS
SAYING: "THAT THE TIME HAS COME IN WHICH THERE CAN BE NO QUESTION OF A
RETURN TO 1999, 1989 OR 1979 IN TERMS OF SERB CONTROL OVER KOSOVO."
TALKING ABOUT THE POGROM HE HAD FOLLOWING TO SAY: "THE RIOTS WERE
TERRIBLE; I SAW THE VIDEO AND DIGITAL CAMERA FOOTAGE OF THE IRISH
SOLDIERS THEY SHOWED CHILDREN OF ABOUT 17 OR 18 WHO LOOKED AS THOUGH
THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN CARRYING SCHOOL SATCHELS; THEY WERE NOT
KLA-TRAINED PEOPLE FROM THE 1990s. IT IS A PLAIN FACT THAT 75 PER CENT
OF KOSOVANS UNDER 25 ARE UNEMPLOYED. THERE IS NO ECONOMIC HOPE, AND
BELGRADE DOES NOT SEEM ABLE TO FIND A WAY OF LETTING KOSOVO BE KOSOVO."
AFTER READING REPORT, MY CONCLUSIONS CAN NOT BE BUT PESSIMISTIC.
EUROPE, AND NATO HAVE NO STOMACH, OR DESIRE TO FACE RESPONSIBILITY FOR
FIVE YEARS OF FAILURE AND DISASTROUS HANDLING OF THE KOSOVO AND
METOHIA. THEY TOOK THAT RESPONSIBILITY WHEN THEY FORCED YUGOSLAV ARMY
AND SECURITY FORCES OUT OF THE REGION. THEY DEED NOT REACT TO ETHNIC
CLEANSING, TO MAFIA AND LAWLESSNESS, TO POGROMS, AND TO DETERIORATION
AND DESTRUCTION OF ALL FORMS OF CIVIL SOCIETY.
I AM AFRAID THAT AGAIN, THE BLAIR'S SPIN EXPERTS ARE ABOUT TO BLAME
SERB'S FOR IT ALL!?
MESSAGE IS SENT AND IS CLEAR: TERRORISM AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR PAYS, IF
YOU ARE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE MIGHTY.
BUT AS A REMINDER TO US ALL ALLOW ME TO QUOTE SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL:
"AN APPEASER IS ONE WHO FEEDS A CROCODILE HOPING IT WILL EAT HIM LAST."
=== 3 ===
Chicago Tribune, Sunday, July 11, 2004
UN, NATO POLICIES FAIL
By George Bogdanich.
George Bogdanich is a New York-based writer and documentary filmmaker
After the recent brutal violence in Kosovo and the abrupt resignation
of UN administrator Harri Holkeri, official deception and denial can no
longer mask the extent of the policy failure in the Serbian province,
the last of the violent eruptions in the former Yugoslavia, but one
that has proved the most intractable.
Five years after having bombed their way into the region, NATO and the
postwar UN mission have utterly failed to protect the most vulnerable
inhabitants, the non-ethnic Albanian minority. Two-thirds of that
population has been driven out, with more than 4,000 recorded attacks
by extremists allied with the Kosovo Liberation Army and its successors.
Some 250,000 Serbs and 100,000 Serbo-Croat-speaking Muslims, Gypsies,
Turks and Jews have fled since NATO arrived and installed the KLA as
the real power in what is now a thoroughly ravaged province.
The nightmarish conditions for minorities have been well documented by
the UN's special rapporteur for human rights, Jiri Dienstbier, who
makes it clear that Kosovo is an infinitely more dangerous place than
it was before March 24, 1999, when NATO attacked Serbia after Serbia
cracked down ruthlessly on the KLA and other non-Serbs.
Even the pro-intervention International Crisis Group acknowledges the
policy failure in a recent report, noting that "mobs of Albanian
youths, extremists and criminals exposed the UN Mission in Kosovo and
the NATO-led peacekeeping force as very weak."
More than 40,000 Serbs lived in Pristina when NATO began its
occupation. Today only a few dozen remain, sheltered in military
barracks. The entire small Jewish community of Pristina fled KLA
attacks in September 1999.
At a time when New Yorkers are flocking to see Byzantine artifacts of
Christian orthodoxy, 800-year-old churches are being systematically
destroyed. During the first year of NATO occupation, more Serbian
churches and monasteries were destroyed than in the 500-year occupation
of the Turkish Ottomans.
`Kristallnacht in Kosovo'
In March, during two days of attacks against Serbs, which Dienstbier
called "Kristallnacht in Kosovo," 30 more churches were destroyed or
damaged, bringing the total to 150 that have been firebombed or
vandalized since 40,000 NATO troops arrived. Withdrawals by the U.S.
and other countries have reduced the number of troops to 18,000, a
force that is not in a position to challenge Kosovo's extremists.
Two recent photographs capture the reality of Kosovo.
The first is a March news photo of an ethnic Albanian rioter gleefully
recording a digital snapshot of a burning Orthodox church on a high-end
cell phone.
In an area where 90 percent of Serbs and 50 percent of ethnic Albanians
are unemployed, profits from the heroin trade have enriched the KLA and
its supporters, according to law-enforcement organizations from the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to Interpol.
Demonstrations erupt
Belated attempts by the UN to crack down on the de facto leaders of
what has been called the "republic of heroin" led to large
demonstrations in March. These demonstrations turned into a violent
attack against Serbs and their churches in the next two days after
Albanian-language newspapers and the public television station RTK
carried false and inflammatory stories that two ethnic Albanian
children were chased into a river by Serbs and drowned.
All of this is well-documented in a strongly worded report by the
Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The second photo that illustrates how humanitarian intervention in
Kosovo became a humanitarian nightmare was taken immediately after
NATO's intervention. It shows the NATO commander, Gen. Wesley Clark,
British Gen. Michael Jackson and UN administrator Bernard Kouchner
joining hands with Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku, leaders of the KLA, whom
Robert Gelbard, U.S. envoy to the Balkans, had correctly described as
terrorists the previous year.
The photo appeared on NATO's Web site when Ceku was appointed leader of
a UN security force known as the Kosovo Protection Corps. Canadian
diplomat James Bissett observed that the "U.S. war on terrorism skipped
the KLA," which was incorporated into the UN's KPC. But a UN paycheck
and uniform did not change the behavior or goals of a terrorist
organization committed to an ethnically pure Albanian state.
The U.S. was aware that Ceku, an ethnic Albanian, was linked to war
crimes previously as a commander in the Croatian army. Jane's
Intelligence Review describes him as a planner of massacres against
Serb civilians living in the UN protected areas in 1993 and 1995. In
the latter atrocity, Ceku worked closely with a group of retired U.S.
generals who advised the
Croatian army in Operation Storm, which turned into a widespread
ethnic-purging campaign that even the NATO-friendly Hague tribunal on
Yugoslavia declared a war crime.
When the tribunal announced that it was investigating Ceku, however,
there was strong U.S. pressure to prevent an indictment of the new head
of the UN's new KPC.
"If we lose him it will be a disaster," a Western diplomat close to the
UN mission told the London Sunday Times. "When you get down to the
second level of the KPC, you are down to a bunch of thugs."
Hashim "the Snake" Thaci, as he calls himself, has an even more
unsavory background. New York Times reporter Chris Hedges examined his
bloody consolidation of power through the assassination of rivals, and
he has been linked to the murder of moderate ethnic Albanian
politicians who failed to support the KLA's goal of an ethnically pure
Kosovo.
Thaci's reputation did not prevent him from receiving weapons and
logistical support from the U.S. intelligence services or the public
embrace of senior Clinton administration figures, including UN
Representative Richard Holbrooke and Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright. Hawkish foreign policy maven Morton Abramowitz served as
adviser to the KLA during negotiations at Rambouillet near Paris before
the NATO bombing in 1999.
Thaci and members of the KLA were escorted from Kosovo to France by
operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency, according to veteran
British journalist Tim Marshall in his book "Shadowplay." This book
noted that U.S. agents, while giving the KLA military and logistical
support, couldn't help but see that the KLA was smuggling drugs,
running prostitution rings and murdering civilians--and then blaming it
all on the Serbs.
Link to Al Qaeda
During this period, the KLA's director of elite services was Al Qaeda's
top operative in the Balkans, Mohammed al-Zawahiri, brother of Osama
bin Laden's military chief of staff Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to
Interpol and bin Laden's biographer Yossef Bodansky, director of the
Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.
U.S. support for the KLA is a classic example of the "entangling
alliances" that our first president, George Washington, warned against
in his farewell address. Arming these extremists in 1998 guaranteed
that war would follow.
KLA terrorist attacks on civilians and government workers were
guaranteed to generate a harsh response from Serbia's government and
thus provide a rationale for NATO intervention. Equally important, U.S.
political support for the KLA fatally undermined ethnic Albanian
moderate leaders who have been rendered powerless figureheads who risk
assassination if they fall out of step with the extremists.
"If NATO and the UN can't defeat terrorism in an area the size of
one-eighth of the Czech Republic," Dienstbier asks, "how do they expect
to confront global terrorism?"
Reckless mistake
It was bad enough to use the KLA in a war it helped provoke, but
deputizing its leaders to carry out UN responsibilities was reckless.
The only hope of gaining stability is if NATO is willing to arrest the
leaders of this violent organization. Instead, the same U.S. diplomatic
players--Holbrooke, Albright, Abramowitz--who placed the prestige of
the U.S. and the UN on the side of the KLA--are now advocating an
independent Kosovo. Recognizing independence, however, would legitimize
what is being called a "monoethnic mafia state" by Member of Parliament
Alice Mahon of Britain's Labor Party. It would encourage Kosovo-based
extremists determined to use similar methods to acquire
Albanian-inhabited regions in Macedonia, Montenegro, southern Serbia
and northern Greece.
As we watch with trepidation the Bush administration's misadventure in
Iraq, a troubling reckoning with our previous intervention awaits us
back in the Balkans.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
=== 4 ===
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=13421
Clearing up after NATO - 07/16/2004 19:51
A reminder of the havoc left behind by the North Atlantic Terrorist
Organization
NATO, when it is not prying into the affairs of sovereign nations and
practising a policy of divide and rule, when it is not dropping cluster
bombs on busloads of screaming civilians, when it is not aiding
terrorists to wreak havoc, keeps a low profile, leaving to others the
job of clearing up the mess it made.
NATO and its member states became involved in the Balkans, arming,
training and financing the Croatian Armed Forces, using Tudjman and his
clique of nationalists, forged during Tudjman's visits to the USA in
1987, in which he promoted the idea of a Croat reconciliation and the
formation of a Greater Croatia.
The stage was set. Bosnia and Herzegovina were next, with the Moslem
population duly armed and prepared by Al Qaeda, working in unison with
the United States of Reagan and Bush Senior and the Albanian terrorists
(KLA) equipped and instructed, their leaders shuttling back and forth
to Washington to receive money and instructions.
Before this however, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a
prosperous country with a motivated, happy workforce which enjoyed a
relatively high standard of living.
Along came NATO, its strings pulled by Washington, to create havoc
and chaos in the region by means of its criminal intrusion, against
which Serbia had to fight to protect its citizens, thousands of which
were slaughtered by the Croats and Muslims and Kosovar terrorists. Yet
Milosevic was the one dubbed the Butcher of the Balkans, a label easy
to stick since he had been systematically isolated by the arms of the
octopus whose head resides on Capitol Hill.
The result ten years after the conflict started is that there
continue to be tens of thousands of Serbian refugees unable to return
to the homes they were born in. The United Nations strives to help
these people with its housing and social integration programme.
Social integration? This would never have been necessary had NATO not
interfered and provided the steam for the pressure cooker to explode,
after sealing the lid and buying the ingredients.
Kosovar Albanians and Serbs lived together like brothers, side by
side, for centuries, before the west decided to stick its imperialist
nose into an area which did not belong to it and which it wholly failed
to understand.
This act of criminal intrusion destroyed the social fabric of large
areas of the Balkans, sowing hatred where none existed and reaping the
benefits of the ensuing chaos.
Washington could then rule Europe by creating flashpoints and seeing
how the Old Continent splits itself up into pressure groups, easy to
manage when they are so divided. The Balkans was the beginning, Iraq
was the continuation. Where next?
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
=== 5 ===
POINT OF VIEW: Kosovo shows folly of force to resolve conflicts
Now that an Iraqi interim government is in place, can the Iraqi people,
who have put up with more than 20 years of war and sanctions, finally
put their fears to rest and live in peace? I hardly think so.
As Iraq is now, the former Yugoslavia was once the target of violent
airstrikes carried out without the approval of the U.N. Security
Council. An international force attempted to enforce peace in the
troubled Kosovo region. When I look at the current Kosovo situation, I
cannot help but worry that Iraq, too, may one day be forgotten by the
rest of the world as it wrestles with many serious problems.
Once again, I'm compelled to point out the folly of using force to try
to bring a crisis under control or achieve an end, be it the settlement
of humanitarian problems or democratization.
The International Citizens' Network, of which I am president, has been
supporting refugees in the former Yugoslavia since 1993. In late May, I
visited Mitrovica in the Kosovo autonomous province, which is monitored
by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
Serb refugees, who had fled from across Kosovo, were living in shelters
set up in school gymnasiums and classrooms, inside which thin
mattresses were placed side by side. The bombings by the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization in 1999 did nothing to bring Albanian residents,
who make up the majority within the autonomous province, and Serbs
closer together. On the contrary, the ethnic confrontation has
intensified since then.
According to UNMIK, the bodies of two ethnic Albanian brothers who
lived in the village of Cabra, near Mitrovica, were recovered from a
river on March 16. The Albanian media in Kosovo incited the public with
reports that the brothers had drowned after they had been chased into
the river by Serb youths.
Enraged Albanian residents attacked and destroyed Serbian Orthodox
churches and Serbian homes and cemeteries, causing 5,000 Serbs to flee.
The next day, Albanians rushed to Mitrovica, where many people were
killed or injured in bloody interethnic clashes between Albanians and
the Serb minority.
Although UNMIK repudiated the allegation that the boys had drowned
because they were chased by Serbs, it failed to ease tensions. As a
result, I had no choice but to rely on UNMIK police vehicles to visit
the scenes of destruction.
According to local reports, a 16-year-old Serb boy was shot to death by
two Albanian youths on the night of June 4. Although the NATO-led
Kosovo Force (KFOR) is stationed there, the rule of law has yet to take
root in Kosovo as a whole. While 95 percent of Albanian refugees have
been repatriated, only 2 percent of their Serb counterparts, who are
estimated to number between 200,000 and 300,000, have been able to
return home.
What followed the NATO bombings was the persecution of Serbs and other
minorities, including Roma, by Albanians. At least 135 churches were
destroyed and 3,000 people were killed, abducted or went missing. But
the international community, which once made such a fuss over ``the
oppression of human rights of Albanian residents by Serbs,'' is
virtually indifferent to the plight of Kosovo minorities and the
violation of their human rights, which continues even now.
The amount of aid from the international community has also dropped to
one-fifth what it was four years ago. Historically significant churches
and monasteries that date back to the 11th to 13th centuries have also
been destroyed. The unemployment rate in Kosovo jumped to 57 percent
from between 30 and 40 percent before the civil war in the former
Yugoslavia. Drugs, smuggling, human trafficking and prostitution are
also rampant.
Iraq is not the only country that has come under fire from tens of
thousands of cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells in airstrikes
undertaken without the approval of the international community. The
same thing happened in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
UNMIK advocates the advancement of ``ethnic harmony'' and
``democratization'' in Kosovo. Like the slogans advocated in Iraq, they
are pleasing to the ear. But once force is used as a means to resolve a
conflict, reconciliation becomes extremely hard to achieve.
The only way to create hope is for the international community, by once
again reflecting on the outcome of military action, to avoid triggering
another chain of violence.
The author is president of the International Citizens' Network and a
professor emeritus at Saitama University. She contributed this comment
to The Asahi Shimbun.(IHT/Asahi: August 14,2004) (08/14)
http://www.asahi.com/english/opinion/TKY200408140127.html
Asahi.com Aug 14 2004 1:31AM GMT