Michael Totten continues on the Road to Kosovo. What makes a trip in those parts singular is that the borders along the way are apparently mostly human in nature — demarcated by communities rather than lines on the map. Moreover they were shifting. So unlike most travel stories in which the landscape is fixed, Totten’s trip through Albania, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo is full of unexpected encounters and he finds he has crossed the invisible line from place into the other. So in this world of GPS navigation, the only way to find out what was ahead was often to resort to the time-tested method of asking around. Is it safe to continue into North Mitrovica? No map will help you here. Try asking someone you meet on the road.
Two days later, Sean and I met two American police officers in the charming Ottoman-era city of Prizren. He and I still hadn’t figured out the real story in North Mitrovica, and figured these men might know. One was from Texas and spoke in a very slow drawl. The other was from Southern California.
“Was it dangerous for us in North Mitrovica?” Sean said.
“Yes,” the American police officer from California said. “There are some real extremists up there, and it only takes one to ruin your night.”
“The road is open now, though,” Sean said. “So the situation has been resolved?”
“No,” the officer said. “This is by no means resolved. Nothing in Kosovo has been resolved. We’re at the very beginning of a new stage here.”
Shifting and variable borders without clear demarcation (except on a map in Washington Or Brussels).
If the political order is supposed to reflect the social order, drawing arbitrary lines that don’t ackowledge the social reality (a la Great Britain in the Middle East seventy-five years ago) generally backfires.
When thinking about strategy involving an opponent that shares your assumptions, Chess seems like a good planning analogy. Aim to win. Deliver stunning strikes. Capture pieces. Play again.
Maybe Americans also need to start thinking in terms of the game Go, wherein you win by accumulating safe spaces (eyes) within a perimeter. This strategy seems to be a good way to think about the counterinsurgency program in Iraq, for example. Check wikipedia to see an overview of Go rules.
Europe, the US, and other free countries allow eyes of ideology/territory to develop within them. Saudi Arabia and Islamic countries do not. ‘Movement of populations’ (Greece-Turkey, Cyprus, perhaps Lebanon soon, see Tony Badran) is one way to enclose safe space, at the risk of a closed society.
I have always wondered why the US doesn’t invest massively in South and Central America in the same way that Saudi Arabia invests massively in Islamic countries. South America chould be a safe area for the US, but not in a sense of an old manifest destiny. Paraguay reveres U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes for his support regarding the War of the Triple Alliance, and that didn’t cost the President very much. At least someone remembers him.
Spain and Germany, which used to seem quite different politically and culturally, are increasingly similar (except that Spain has the better soccer side this time around). So too, The US and Latin American could be seen to be increasingly similar, at least when the alternative is the capturing of strategic geographical and ideological area by Islamic players.
In general, any friends of the Lady of Guadalupe are friends of mine. Those t-shirts incline me favorably to increased, legal Hispanic immigration.
Off Topic: IMHO, if McCain selects Mitt Romney as his VP then the presidency will have been forfeited to B. Hussein. However if McCain selects Bobby Jindal as his VP then McCain will have a good chance of beating the messiah at his own game.
Where national pride and ethnicity come together, complications will soon arise. The Serbian occupants of northern ‘Kosova’ are not quite ready to acquiesce to Kosovar independence. The Balkanization of any country seems a messy affair and counters the currents of a European super state or a North American free trade zone. Sometimes I wonder if the natural state of a region isn’t a loose confederation that respects the local character of the land and its inhabitants. And, if so, what happened to Yugoslavia and why does the United States still have a role there so many years after Bosnia?
Anyhow, perhaps the emerging European super state is a mere economic spoiler against the might if the United States. Will the European Union, brought on by the might of the bureaucrats in Brussels, be able to weather the strains of European national pride or will it violently dissolve like Yugoslavia did?
I read as far as “it’s the closest thing Europe has to Iraq”, and then I just had to stop.
I have become disillusioned with Michael Totten in recent months. It began when he wrote an article asserting that the newly minted Jihad State of Kosovo was “The Israel of the Balkans”. What a hideuos distortion on so many levels. He seems so eager lately to find a “moderate Islam”, that he’s bought hook line and sinker the lie that Islam is somehow intrinsically different in the region. He seems completely unaware, for example, that the region now known as “Kosovo” has been the killing fields of Islam since the fall of Byzatium to Jihad. The region was formerly a predominantly non-Muslim enclave, which today is nearly 100% Muslim. How did that come to pass? The West saw “ethnic cleansing” which reminded them of the Nazis, and automatically assumed the Serbs were latter day genocidal neo-Nazis. Under the misrule of Clinton, and the lousy military leadership of Wesley Clark, the Serbs were decimated by the overwhelming might of our high-tech military. Lost was the other side of the story – hundreds of years of simmering Jihad aimed at destroying another patch of infidel terrain to claim for Islam. Totten has accepted the narratives of the Albanian Muslims, and lunatics like Stephen Sulieman Schwartz, that bizarro formerly communist, formerly Jewish convert to Islam who maintains that it’s all the Wahhabis, and that there’s nothing intrinsically genocidal, triumphalist, or supremacist about Islam. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’m forced to conclude that we backed the wrong side in that war.
Mark,
Excellent comments.
GO eyes are not that different from the cold war Containment Policy. The difficulty for the US was to determine how aggressively, if at all, to apply pressure to the perimeter, expanding the eye or shrinking the containment.
Our left leaning friends have taken the position that any pressure exerted by the US is wrong, that Western Society, particularly Anglo-American variety is evil. Those of us who disagree are forced to the precurser position…Circle the Wagons.
“When in the course of human events…” it becomes necessary to reestablish the ties of common culture and language needed to protect ourselves we must consider the Reunification of the Anglo-Sphere.
In my opinion reunification is easier than it looks; all the mechanisims are already in place, if the will is there. Questions include: Does it include India ? (I think yes) and where is the second ring ? (Europe, Mexico, Latin America ?)
Monica Lewinsky sucked us into it.
OK. Wrichard was the first to invoke Johann Huizinga, in a prior post, so it’s fair game.
In addition to “Autumn/Waning of the Middle Ages,” Huizinga also wrote “Homo Ludens (man the game player): A Study of the Play Element of Culture.” Play precedes culture, and culture entails a fundamental sense of play, winners and losers governed by rules, traditions, etc. Even law courts, or especially law courts, reflect the origins of contest to which all players adhere. Play can be very serious. But earnestness, the opposite of play, cannot be playful.
Here’s a thought experiment: What can you say to a person who is getting too serious about a subject at a meeting? Lighten up! Don’t take it too seriously. This usually suffices to defuse a civil but increasingly tense situation.
What is most disturbing about the Balkans, or Northern Ireland, or similar places is that they are in earnest, the opposite of play. They can’t play soccer together or pray together. Their children can’t play together.
The most disturbing thing about Wahhabists and Taliban is their exclusion of play, and at the very least their refusing to play with other faiths. We ask them to play, but they will not play. The soccer stadium turns into a killing field. New York the playful must perish.
The US did the morally right thing in Kosovo. But ultimately we can play with Serbs.
Reminds me of my attempted journey from Salalah Oman to the Yemeni border.
I asked my dinner hosts about it and they wondered why I wanted to do that, and said it wasn’t all that dangerous, but one never knows nor was it completely safe either.
We went, we descended into this large mountain valley at sunset, it was bathed in a beautiful honey golden light and we caught an Omani soldier standing on a rock taking it/in (perhaps he was also getting ready or done praying). We would our way down and back up and by the time we got back up it was full on night with thick fog. My companions were “matakod” so I turned around. Eventually, we made it to other side of the valley were it wasn’t so foggy.
The man that drove Totten and LaFreniere through Montenegro has fetched out the finest wisecrack of the week – and it’s only Monday. Asked in sign language whether Montenegro (population 678,000) should be a part of the European Union, Ratko answered “No! Big Yugoslavia!”
As an expression of the aspirations of a small country (like Ireland, hey?) facing the overwhelming mass of unelected busybodies of a supranational club of insider-bureaucrats, he nailed it.
Oh, Yugoslavia sort of worked after the Tito regime had “repressed” a few hundred thousand folks who held different opinions of governance, particularly after the US bathed them in money following their parting with Stalin. But the money ran out, and so did Tito’s life, and Yugoslavia self-destructed soon after.
Is Ratko far-seeing enough to predict the EU following that path of self-destruction?
Yes.
Morton Doodslag: I have become disillusioned with Michael Totten in recent months. It began when he wrote an article asserting that the newly minted Jihad State of Kosovo was “The Israel of the Balkans”. What a hideuos distortion on so many levels.
Well, Kosovars certainly see themselves that way. They overwhelming side with the Israelis and against the Palestinians for the reasons I outlined. I met many Israelis who actually live in Kosovo, and they’re thriving there. Arabs who move to Kosovo are feared and loathed.
Kosovo is the least Islamicized Muslim-majority country I have ever seen, and I’ve personally been to more than a dozen of them. If only Iraq were like Kosovo, it would be the biggest foreign policy victory for the US since WWII. If the whole Middle East were like Kosovo, Arabs would be better allies than even the British.
Look. US military intelligence analysts I’ve spoken to on the ground there say there is NO threat of jihad. You obviously have different sources than I do, but I’d like to ask you if you honestly think they are better than mine. Different, yes, but better? Do you really think so?
You know me. Or at least you did. If Kosovo were a jihad state, I would scream about it from the rooftops. I’ve been to jihad states, and this isn’t one of them. If I were wrong, American soldiers there would be shot at, the Israelis I met would be kicked out or dead, and the low-profile Arabs would be thriving instead of keeping their heads down.
I seem to recall that General Wesley Clark was given a command by President “I-Can’t-Master-My-Own-Genitalia” in the Yugoslavia NATO adventure. He was deeply involved in the planning of a military campaign in Montenegro, but the war came to an end. The CIA has admitted responsibility for the outdated and incorrect data leading to the bombing of the Chinese Embassy on his watch.
I would like to know what other general officers think of Clark. He seems to have had a genuine military career, not just a “ticket-punching” bunch of rear-echelon junkets.
Sadly, his intelligence may be his own biggest problem. What makes me say this is the conspicuous frequency of tragi-comic downfalls history has shown us of men who were supremely intelligent, and mistook their intelligence for infallibility. Clark seems to be another one of those whose cleverness arguably is insufficient preparation for navigating the treacherous shoals and snags of politics. Somehow, possibly because of a naive idealism untempered by study of U.S. domestic realities, he threw in with the Liberal Left. Maybe this is because his career became inextricably indebted to the sponsorship of Mr. Clinton. But having aligned himself with the Left, he is obliged to mouth their approved “Party Line.” For a military guy like Clark, it might take a passel of courage to choose apostasy from the Left.
Does anyone remember why, exactly, we sided with the Muslims in Yugoslavia? I remember hearing throughout the conflict that BOTH sides were using terrorist genocidal tactics.
They were. And contrary to Totten’s assertions, HRW and other NGOs (yes I know) along with Serbs and Christians have detailed atrocity after atrocity AFTERWARDS by Kosovars against Christians and Serbs. To wit:
1. Killing elderly Serbs in “Muslim areas.”
2. Burning down and desecrating monasteries and churches and cathedrals.
3. Killing practicing Christians.
4. All mosques funded by the Wahabbis.
5. The usual hate-filled spewing on the mosques by Jihadis (Totten IIRC does not speak either Arabic or the various stew of slavic languages in Kosovo, nor has he attended many Mosques so would have no idea of what goes on other than his naive and idealistic fantasies).
6. The KLA who are both gangsters and Jihadis dominate the Kosovar government and are linked extensively to Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Hezbollah, Iran, with ties going back to the early 1990′s.
In short, Michael J. Totten reminds me of the people who toured Stalin’s Potemkin villages in the 1930′s and proclaimed the “future is here.” EVERY OTHER REPORTER including those from the NYTIMES and WAPO found the hard core gunmen who really run things scary and jihadi. Various Congressional hearings and people like Lawrence J. Wright “The Looming Tower” have documented KLA-Jihad links, as has Andrew McCarthy (“Willful Blindness”).
[I don't doubt that Totten's hosts were nice people not screaming about Jihad. They don't hold power -- it's the KLA who have the guns and do the killing. I'm sure you could have found "nice" Germans and Soviets in the 1930's as well.]
Whiskey: Burning down and desecrating monasteries and churches and cathedrals.
This is true. Orthodox churches have been desecrated and vandalized, not because they are Christian but because they are Serbian. No Albanian has touched a Catholic church in Kosovo. All the violence against Catholics was perpetrated by Serbs. The conflict is ethnic, not religious. The majority of Albanians are non-religious, and the same goes for the majority of Serbs.
All mosques funded by the Wahabbis.
This not true. The reconstruction of some, but not all, mosques destroyed by the Serbs were funded by Wahhabis. The others are not. Most Albanians detest Wahhabis, and the reason is instantly obvious for everyone who has ever been to Kosovo. Kosovo is culturally European and largely atheist, as France and England are. It is culturally opposite the Middle East, shockingly so to my eyes.
The usual hate-filled spewing on the mosques by Jihadis (Totten IIRC does not speak either Arabic or the various stew of slavic languages in Kosovo, nor has he attended many Mosques so would have no idea of what goes on other than his naive and idealistic fantasies).
I spoke to US military officers about this. The mosques are monitored, and they DO have native speakers inside. It isn’t a fantasy.
The KLA who are both gangsters and Jihadis dominate the Kosovar government and are linked extensively to Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Hezbollah, Iran, with ties going back to the early 1990’s.
The KLA certainly WERE a bunch of gangsters, but they were not associated with jihadists as the Bosnians were. The jihadists wanted to go to Kosovo to fight Serbs, and the KLA told them to get stuffed.
it’s the KLA who have the guns and do the killing.
The KLA no longer exists. NATO has the guns in Kosovo.
Mad Fiddler,
Clark’s career rise begins from Fort Hood: he signed the releases of the heavy equipment to the FBI. I think you remember what happened after that…Clark is one Clinton’s ‘made men’.
As to Clark’s ability as a commander [above division level], that’s debatable. Don’t hold your breath waiting for other flag-rank officers to comment significantly about him; that’s a closed order. The only way anyone of that fraternity will turn on him is if he totally steps outside the bounds.
MJT is a voice in the wilderness. I read him to learn more and on that point he delivers nicely. His observations are based upon personal experience and I think that the characterizations that suggest that he is somehow influenced by ideological considerations are unfounded and extremely inconsiderate. The man is putting himself in some of the less glamorous intersections of history and he is not getting rich monetarily in the process, only richer by experience. Please temper your own opinions until you yourself can match your own beliefs with your own actions or try to do so within reason.
The man deserves a modicum or more of respect.
Interesting, how safe is it for certain Sunni to wander in the Al Sadr neighborhoods of Baghdad? Eventually it will be safer for the Sunni to stumble about in Sadr City at night than for MJT to have driven through North Mitrovica. The difference is in the will and the ability to resolve differences in Iraq, Differences which run just as deep and just as recent, opposed to the will for the differences topped by instability which is the former Yugoslavia.
In Iraq even the Kurds recognize their near term well being is tied to a healthy and democratic Iraq. What incentive have the any of the former Yugoslavian states to unite, much less live in peace with each other? Tito was a strong man, but he could not bind the country together so to outlast his strength. The weakness of tribalism and the myth of a multicultural philosophy.
It will take quite a hot fire to alloy the various Yugo’s into a strong entity. A fire that hot tends to be unforgiving and massively difficult to control and contain. While I agreed with the decision to interfere in the blood bath of the 1990′s, I am not certain what was achieved by the interference. Perhaps we just delayed the inevitable, or maybe we helped bridge the distance between something very ugly and something pleasing to behold. Time and time alone will tell.
Dear Mr. Totten, I’d like to know more about “Israelis in Kosovo”, and what that signifies to you. In any event, I cannot comprehend your formulation that Kosovo is the “Israel of the Balkans”, unless you somehow equate the seething mass of 300-400 million genocidal Arabs which surround Israel and daily pray for her extermination with the recent US recognition of the Kosovar Muslims. They not only ran the Serbs out of their region by steady genocidal Julihad, (with the connivance of Clinton) but have now been rewarded for their terrorism with their own Jihadi mini-state. You seem quite taken in by the charm of it. You also seem magically convinced that they are somehow immune to the same strands of Islam which motivate genocide, terrorism, and supremacist totalitarianism everywhere else in the world.
The existential threat against Israel bears no resemblance whatsoever to the relatively secure situation the Muslim fascists find themselves in right now in Kosovo. Who, exactly, is threatening their genocide? We smashed the Serbs, who didn’t play nice, but gave the Muslims a dose of the medicine they’ve been handing out for centuries. There is no equivalent in Kosovo for the hundreds of millions of Arabs and non-Arab Muslims who hate Israel, and they are far from smashed like the Serbs.
your dreamy distorted comparison says much about your incomprehension of the Jihad threat, of Islam, and your gullibility viz. the peaches and cream propaganda those Muslims in Kosovo want you to perpetuate.
Its not do much that there are no ethnic lines but that NATO decided quite deliberately to destroy Yugoslavia along non-ethnic lines & then to exterminate or “cleanse” Serbs to make the borders fit.
It is always possible to workmout demarcation lines between areas where 1 or another community is numerically dominant. By definition such states, when the job is done honestly will contain very large majorities either way. The Curzon line in between Poland & ex-USSR or the german-Danish borders are examples of honesty. Northern Ireland & Lebanon are exalmples of dishonety.
Had NATO divided Yugoslavia on ethnic lines (Krajina, Republica Srpska & eastern Kosovo remaining Serbian) this would merely have been 19thC imperialism reborn. Instead they chose to help unrepentent former Nazis publicly committed to the genocide of Serbs take whatever they wanted. What we see is blatant Nazism reborn & all leading NATO politicians guilty of crimes comparable to Hitler, but without the excuse of a major war.