Diana, you got it right. Concerning Kosovo, truth is like letters written in the sand as the tsunami of propaganda comes thundering in.
A way back in 80′s when that place of the world was not ‘hot’ spot Serbs were a minority in Kosovo, and the Kosovo government discriminated against them, and many began to leave. A member of the Serbian parliament described what the Kosovo government was doing as “ethnic cleansing” (thus adding a new term to our language), and accused the Kosovo government of trying to drive all the Serbs out of Kosovo. Aside from the province’s chronic poverty, unemployment, and mismanagement of development funds contributed from the rest of Yugoslavia, the main social problem was the constant exodus of Serb and Montenegrin inhabitants under pressure from ethnic Albanians. At the time, this problem was reported in leading Western media.
For instance, as early as July 12, 1982, Marvine Howe reported to the New York Times that Serbs were leaving Kosovo by the tens of thousands because of discrimination and intimidation on the part of the ethnic Albanian majority:
“The [Albanian] nationalists have a two-point platform,” according to Beci Hoti, an executive secretary of the Communist Party of Kosovo, “first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania.
Mr Hoti, an Albanian, expressed concern voer political pressures that were forcing Serbs to leave Kosovo. “What is important now,” he said, “is to establish a climate of security and create confidence.”
And seven months after Milosevic’s visit to Kosovo, David Binder reported in the New York Times (November 1, 1987):
Ethnic Albanians in the Government [of Kosovo] have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.
The goal of the radical nationals among them, one said in an interview, is an “ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.”
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981–an “ethnically pure” Albanian region
This was in fact the first instance of “ethnic cleansing” in post-World War II Yugoslavia, as reported in The New York Times and other Western media, and the victims were the Serbs. The cult of “memory” has become a contemporary religion, but some memories are more equal than others. In the 1990s, the New York Times evidently forgot completely what it had said about Kosovo in the 1980s. Why? Perhaps because meanwhile, the Soviet bloc had collapsed and the unity of independent, non-aligned Yugoslavia was no longer in the strategic interest of the United States.
the Kosovo problem could have been easily managed, and eventually solved, had the Great Powers so desired. But as in the past, the Great Powers exploited and aggravated the ethnic conflicts for their own purposes. In total ignorance of the complex history of the region, sheeplike politicians and media echoed and amplified the most extreme nationalist Albanian propaganda. This provided NATO with its pretext to demonstrate “credibility”. The Great Powers have in effect told the Albanians that all their worst accusations against the Serbs were true. Even Albanians know who know better (such as Veton Surroi) are intimidated and silenced by the racist nationalists backed by the United States.
The result is disastrous. Empowered by their official status as unique victims of Serb iniquity, the Albanians of Kosovo — and especially the youth, raised on a decade of nationalist myth — can give free rein to their cultivated hatred of the Serbs. In 2004, Pogrom happened in the Occupied Serbian Province.Armed Albanian nationalists proceeded to drive the Serbian and gypsy populations out of the province. Those remaining do not dare venture out of their ghettos. Albanians willing to live with the Serbs risk being murdered. Ever since the NATO-led force (KFOR) marched into Kosovo in June 1999, violent persecution of Serbs and Roma has been regularly described as “revenge” — which in the Albanian tradition is considered the summit of virtuous conduct. Describing the murder of elderly women in their homes or children at play as acts of “revenge” is a way of excusing or even approving the violence.
In 2004 March 17, following the false accusation that Serbs were responsible for the accidental drowning of three Albanian children, organized mobs of Albanians, including many teenagers, rampaged through Kosovo destroying 35 Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries, some of them artistic gems dating from the fourteenth century. Well over a hundred churches had already been attacked with fire and explosives in the past five years. The objective is quite clearly to erase all historic trace of centuries of Serb presence, the better to assert their claim to an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo.
The self-satisfaction of the “international community” was severely shaken by the March violence. The occasional KFOR units that tried to protect Serb sites found themselves in armed clashes with Albanian mobs. In the wake of the rampages, Finnish politician Harri Holkeri resigned two months before expiration of his one-year renewable mandate as head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) supposed to administer the province. He was the fourth to get out of the job as fast as he could. Apparently on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Holkeri lamented to a press conference that UNMIK has no intelligence service of its own, and had received no prior hint of the March pogroms. In short, the mass of in international administrators, military occupation forces and non-governmental agencies have no idea what is going on in the province they are theoretically running. Indicating his awareness that the only role left for UNMIK was that of scapegoat, Holkeri warned of “difficult days ahead”. That is a safe prediction.
Since the NATO occupation, Kosovo lives off other sources of income, mainly the flourishing drugs and sex trades. The “international community” has contributed a patchwork of social services (from UNMIK police to NGO counselos) that provide a temporary substitute for the expulsion of the local branches of the Serbian government. Camp Bondsteel provides the largest number of legitimate jobs to Albanians, and may continue to do so even after the demand for chauffeurs and interpreters dries up as the NGOs go home. Saudi Arabia can be counted on to finance mosque construction. But with a per capita income of about $30 per month, it is hard to see where an “independent Kosovo” could scrape up the tax base to pay for a government, especially since so much of the real income is illicit, outside the reach of tax collectors.
Kosovo is only an extreme case of the “transition” from socialism to the free market, as imposed on Eastern Europe by the “international community”. The State and its services were removed by NATO military force, whereas elsewhere the demolition process has been more gradual and less dramatic, the result of pressures from the IMF, the World Bank and the European Union. The mass of unemployed young men have little prospect of earning a living other than by getting in on the crime business. It is hard to see what can prevent “independent Kosovo” from being an uncontrollable crime center.
The protection of “human rights” was the pretext for the 1999 war. In terms of everyday human relations, the situation is far worse than before. This is not widely recognized for two reasons. One, since the “international community” rather than Milosevic is in charge, media interest in Kosovo has virtually evaporated. Second, the victims of persecution and harassment, the children whose school buses are stoned, the old people who are beaten and whose houses are set on fire, the farmers who do not dare go out to cultivate their fields, the hundreds of thousands of refugees from “ethnic cleansing” … are Serbs. Or sometimes gypsies. Western media early on identified “the Serbs” as the enemies of “multi-ethnic society” and the perpetrators of “ethnic cleansing”. The curious result seems to be that the absence of Serbs is understood as the best guarantee of a multi-ethnic society. This, at any rate, is the logic of the attitude taken by the international community in regard to the Ibar valley region of Kosovo north of Mitrovica.
That area, which forms a sort of point reaching into central Serbia, is the largest remaining part of Kosovo where Serbs retain a traditional majority sufficient to defend themselves from Albanian intimidation. When, as happens from time to time, Albanian militants from the ethnically purified region south of the Ibar attempt to cross the river, they are stopped by Serb guards. In this situation, “international community” spokesmen almost invariably take the line that Serb extremists are standing in the way of “multi-ethnic” Kosovo. The fact is deliberately overlooked that, while a certain number of Albanians are still living in Serb-controlled northern Mitrovica, all Serbs and Rom have been driven out of southern Mitrovica, and that if the Albanian activists were granted free access to the north, the probable result would be further ethnic cleansing of what remains of the Serb population.
For some in the “international community”, that would be an ideal solution. Once all non-Albanians have been driven out, the professional humanitarians can declare that Kosovo is “multi-ethnic”, and there will be nobody left there to dispute this triumphant assertion.
The overriding concern of the West now is to get out of the Kosovo mess in a way that will allow it to continue to celebrate the Kosovo war as a great humanitarian success. Having left the Balkans in a shambles, the human rights warriors can go on to other victories. The only thing to stop them might be a belated recognition of the truth.
