This is Albanian supporter, you cited and her Main Argument for Kosovo’s Secession is Bogus. I on the other hand cited MSM’s NY Times articles before destruction of Yugoslavia , surely no one alive can claim that NY Times today is pro-Serb.Back then they were just that-neutral.
NATO and you as well as this Vanja person claim that the government in Belgrade was oppressing the Kosovo Albanians. This was a lie. The Kosovo Albanians, in fact, were the best treated ethnic minority in the world — bar none. What was true was that the Kosovo Albanians, who were a minority in Serbia, but a majority in Kosovo, and in control of all Kosovo institutions, including the government, the police, the educational system, etc., were persecuting the Kosovo Serbs, who were a minority in Kosovo. This piece documents that this was the assessment of the US army, no less, though this was never shared with the public after the NATO demonization of the Serbs began.
On March 24th 1999, NATO began bombing civilian Serbia because, it claimed, this was the only way to stop widespread ethnic cleansing against Albanians by the Yugoslav government.
Ordinary Westerners accepted this.
One cannot blame them, exactly. For years, the Western media had been alleging that nationalist unrest by separatist Albanians in Kosovo stemmed from the fact that they were supposedly a besieged minority, persecuted by an ultranationalist Serbian state. Given this media barrage, by the time NATO bombed Serbia, the Western public easily believed NATO’s claims that this was necessary to prevent a genocide against Albanian civilians in Kosovo.
But suppose I told you that the following list summarizes the political facts in Kosovo in 1981, when the separatist activity by radical Albanians began in earnest:
(1) Kosovo Albanians controlled the provincial government;
(2) Kosovo Albanians controlled the cultural institutions;
(3) Albanian was the official language in the province (and in fact Serbs in Kosovo were forced to learn Albanian, not the other way around);
(4) Education was conducted in Albanian;
(5) Albanians were the overwhelming majority of students at Pristina University;
(6) Albanians were the overwhelming majority in the Kosovo police force;
(7) As The Economist reported in 1981, “Mr Fadil Hoxha [was] a member of Jugoslavia’s collective state presidency and a Kosovo Albanian.” What does this mean? The collective presidency of the Yugoslav federation was composed of representatives from its constituent republics, and also representatives from Kosovo and Vojvodina. However, Kosovo and Vojvodina were not republics of Yugoslavia but provinces of Serbia. Thus, Kosovo was treated as if it were a republic of Yugoslavia as far as the collective presidency of the federation was concerned.
(8) Since 1974, the Kosovo parliament in Pristina (Kosovo’s capital) could veto decisions taken in Belgrade that corresponded to the entire Republic of Serbia (of which Kosovo is a province), but Belgrade had no say on matters that were decided in Pristina (!).
(9) Albanians were discriminating against Serbs in industry and in the political administration.
(10) Kosovo Serbs, apparently starting in the 1970s, were subjected to low-level terrorism and harassment by either the Albanian KLA or its precursors. This caused a trickle, then a flood of Kosovo Serbs to flee the province out of fear for their lives.
Is this the picture of an oppressed Albanian minority in Serbia? Or is this the picture of an oppressed Serbian minority in Kosovo?
But should you believe me that the above list summarizes the political facts in Kosovo when Albanian separatists wrecked it? You don’t have to. In 1982, the US military — the same establishment that would later make the decision to bomb Serbia — published a country study of Yugoslavia:
Nyrop, R. F. 1982. Yugoslavia: A country study. Headquarters, Department of the Army, DA Pam 550-99: American University
Such country studies are published all the time to assist diplomats and others who may need a crash course on a particular country. This particular study was completed immediately after the 1981 riots that set in motion the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and it comments at length on the social and political situation in Kosovo, as well as on the riots themselves. As you will see below, this country study substantiates — and for most points explicitly and directly — the above assertions about the political facts in Kosovo, as I will document further below. Skeptics can get the book above from a library, and check whether I misquoted or distorted.
Now, as it bombed Serbia, NATO claimed that, underneath the shower of bombs, Milosevic was murdering 100,000 — or else 500,000 (who’s counting?) — Kosovo Albanians.
A large number. But what if I told you that all the people who died in the bombing, put together, add up to no more than 788 people?
And that’s not even the Albanian civilians — that figure represents all deaths, and therefore includes dead Serbian soldiers and civilians, as well as Albanian KLA terrorists.
You reasonably might suspect that I got my numbers wrong. But these are not my numbers, they are NATO’s! In fact NATO has not produced even one Albanian civilian murdered in Kosovo by the Yugoslav army or security services! [1]
Are you scandalized by that?
If not, then perhaps this will do it: NATO’s excuse to start the bombing was an allegation that there had been a massacre in the Kosovo town of Racak, but Racak was a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) hoax set up in collaboration with NATO!
In other words, the entire war against Serbia was a put up job by NATO and the mainstream Western media. Those who know a bit about the war on Viet Nam, which was justified with a faked attack on US troops that never happened (Gulf of Tonkin, and which was carried out by lying to the American people repeatedly, consistently, and massively, will see the similarities.
And which is the bigger scandal, here?
Is it that NATO lied to us repeatedly in order to start a war of aggression against innocent Serbs? Is it that NATO allied itself with the worst fascists, terrorists, and Islamic fundamentalists — people who took pride and joy in massacring thousands of Serbian civilians?
Or is the bigger scandal the fact that none of this ever became a front-page-headline scandal in the Western press (unlike Viet Nam, where the lies did, eventually, surface)? Is the bigger scandal the fact that ordinary Westerners, whose taxes paid for the slaughter of innocent Serbs, still don’t know what truly happened in Yugoslavia?
It’s a tough call…
The KLA, on whose behalf NATO bombed Serbia, claimed to be defending Kosovo Albanians from the oppression that the mainstream media said they were suffering at the hands of Serbs, generally, and at the hands of the government of Serbia in particular. It is this media portrayal that helped build plausibility in Americans’ minds for the idea that the Yugoslav army was about to commit genocide. Since Americans did not — and still do not — know much about Yugoslavia, the portrayal was believed, accepted on the faith and trust they place on what they perceive to be an ‘independent’ and ‘free’ press.
Had Americans known a bit about Yugoslavia, however, they would have laughed out of court the claim that the Serbs had been oppressing the Albanians, let alone the accusation that a genocide against Albanians was in the wings. Had Americans known what the social and political situation was in Kosovo in the early 1980s, when violent separatist activity in Kosovo began in earnest, the propaganda campaign that explained Albanian terrorist violence and secessionist sloganeering as produced by Serbian oppression of the Albanians could never have succeeded.
As for “humanitarian justification for intervention this “victim argument” has long been used as justification for NATO’s bombing, the subsequent expulsion and persecution of Serbs (“revenge attacks”) and others by Albanians, and indeed for claiming the “right” to independence. Supporters of independence have repeatedly claimed [link available in the original article] that Serbia has somehow “forfeited” its sovereignty through actions in Kosovo in 1999 and before.
As NATO bombs began raining on Serbia and Montenegro in March of 1999, media in NATO countries began manufacturing atrocity stories from the mold perfected just a few years earlier in Bosnia. Refugees, ethnic cleansing, genocide, massacres, rape camps — everything was there. In addition to propaganda injected into the mainstream media by U.S. and other NATO governments, there was also KLA propaganda directly fed to gullible reporters.
Even today, veteran propagandists dutifully repeat the claim that Serb “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians led to the NATO attack. Nothing can be further from the truth. NATO launched the attack in March 1999 after failing to coerce Serbia into accepting an occupation force, during the false negotiations in France. The official justification for the bombing was to force Belgrade to sign the “agreement” presented by the U.S. envoys in Rambouillet. Alleged atrocities are all said to have happened subsequent to the start of the bombing. Indeed, the ICTY indictment against Slobodan Milosevic included only one alleged crime dated prior to March 23, and that was the faux massacre at Racak.
By late 1999, it was obvious that the death toll in Kosovo was much less than the alleged 100,000 — or even the more commonly used 10,000, often falsely qualified as Albanian civilians (That number was actually a wild claim by UK Foreign Minister Geoff Hoon, who sought to justify the bombing.) The total number of bodies exhumed by ICTY’s investigators was 2,108, of all ethnicities and with varying causes of death. It is unclear whether that death toll included the numerous Albanians killed by the KLA, the KLA’s own substantial casualties, or those of the Yugoslav Army. In any case, horror stories presented as facts in a State Department “report” were later proven false. For example, the “Trepca mines” story was debunked by Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl. True, several other mass graves were discovered in the province since 1999. However, the victims buried there were Serbs, so the discoveries quickly faded from memory.
Although many Kosovo Albanians suffered terribly during the KLA insurrection and the NATO bombing, their claim that “Serb atrocities” have earned them the right to independence holds very little water.
Goose and Gander
However, neither the Albanians nor their Western sponsors actually believe the “atrocity argument” on principle. For if they did, and it was universally applicable, they would have forfeited all right to Kosovo themselves!
We could start from the beginning: NATO’s war itself was illegal and illegitimate. In the course of the war, NATO pilots targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Alliance naturally claims those were “unfortunate mistakes” and that bombs were dropped “in good faith,” yet Gen. Michael Short publicly stated that the campaign was designed to force Belgrade to surrender by terrorizing civilians.
Korisa, Grdelica, Aleksinac, Surdulica — these were just some of the NATO atrocities during the “humanitarian” war of 1999.
Once the government in Belgrade agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and allow the UN to occupy the province (in practice, it was NATO occupation), Albanian separatists began terrorizing Kosovo. Violence against Serbs has been amply documented, in photographs, in print, and on film. It is important to note that Serbs were not the sole victims of Albanian attacks; Roma and other communities in Kosovo have also been exposed to violence, intimidation, extortion and murder.
Here are just some of the more gruesome incidents of anti-Serb violence:
* July 1999: fourteen Serb farmers massacred in the fields near Staro Gracko (graphic photos);
* October 1999: Valentin Krumov, UN official from Bulgaria, slain for “speaking Serbian”;
* February 2000: bus carrying Serbs to a cemetery service hit by a missile;
* February 2001: roadside bomb blows up another bus;
* June 2003: brutal slaying of a Serb family in Obilic;
* August 2003: Serb children swimming in the river near Gorazdevac machine-gunned down;
* March 2004: massive pogrom throughout the province targets Serbs; 8 dead, 4500 expelled, several villages razed.
All this was accompanied by systematic destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches, chapels, monasteries and cemeteries.
Albanian separatists and NATO leaders claim that Serbia’s violent suppression of the terrorist KLA in 1998-99 merited not only an illegal aggression in response, but also forfeited Serbia’s sovereignty over Kosovo. Yet the Albanians have not “forfeited” their right to Kosovo because of systematic terrorism under NATO occupation — they are being rewarded for it by independence!
The Croatian Precedent
Further proof that the “atrocity argument” was made up for the specific purpose of fabricating a reason to separate the occupied province from Serbia and make it into an Albanian state is the absolute absence of any such argument in the case of Croatia, which once had a considerable Serb population.
No “humanitarian” interventionist has ever claimed that atrocities of the Ustasha regime between 1941-1945, in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs perished (Croat and Nazi estimates were over half a million!), somehow disqualified Croatia from sovereignty over territories with majority Serb population that rebelled in 1991? Nor have any of them claimed that Croatia “forfeited” its sovereignty after the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in 1995, following a brutal Croat military incursion that ended the Serb rebellion and “reintegrated” the disputed territories. So how is Kosovo different?
When Croatia engaged in suppression of a Serb rebellion, it was an ally of the United States and NATO, enjoying their full support — military, political, intelligence and diplomatic. When Serbia tried to suppress the Albanian rebellion three years later, the U.S./NATO support was there again — on the side of the Albanians! This is why the same logic does not apply to Krajina and Kosovo, Croatia and Serbia, or even the Serbs and the Albanians. There is no logic here, no principle, no coherent concept of right or wrong — beyond the naked argument of force: whomsoever the Empire supports is a righteous victim, and its enemy an irredeemable villain.
The Final Leap
Empire’s pattern of aggression has by now torn the fragile tapestry of international law to shreds. The UN has already lost so much credibility and respect in the world, unable to stop the abuses by the Washington-run “international community,” the Ahtisaari Show is but a final nail in its coffin. Over the past fifteen years, many lines have been crossed. Appeasement of NATO and Albanian aggression in Kosovo might just be that last step over the edge, and into the abyss from which what remains of Western civilization may never return.
