Kosovo: A New Versailles?Tomaz Editor: | |||
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March 07, 2008
Kosovo: A New Versailles?
March 04, 2008
Kosovo and the Press
Counterpunch - http://www.counterpunch.org -
http://www.counterpunch.org/averko03042008.html
March 4, 2008
Punishing the Serbs
Kosovo and the Press
By MIKE AVERKO
As a whole, 70 per cent of Albanians are of Muslim background. Another 20 per cent are of Orthodox Christian heritage. The Orthodox Christian Albanians tend to reside in the southern part of Albania, away from Kosovo. The remaining 10 per cent of Albanians are Roman Catholic. Mother Teresa was an Albanian Catholic from Skopje. In Kosovo, at least 90 per cent of Albanians are said to be of Muslim origin. Most Kosovo Albanians appear secular. It does not take many religious extremists to cause mayhem. With Adolph Hitler as an extreme example, some of the most passionately violent of nationalists are secular. Kosovo's Albanian community has traces of religious extremism and secular nationalism.
Tariq Ali's CounterPunch interview and the non-recognition of Kosovo's independence by several Organization of the Islamic Conference nations show how exaggerated are claims of an anti-Serb position in the Muslim world. The other examples relate to Russia's support for Serbia and its wars in predominately Muslim Chechnya. Despite these two instances, Russia is on relatively good terms with the Muslim world. For some, the rights to defend territorial sovereignty and combat terrorism are greater than a pan-religious sympathy. To further underscore this point, note how Turkey is the only country to recognize the mostly Muslim inhabited "Turkish Cypriot Republic".
Kosovo's demography is often mentioned as a basis for supporting the province's independence. Overlooked in this advocacy is how the Albanians replaced the Serbs as the majority in Kosovo within the last hundred years--ethnic cleansing campaigns against non-Albanians (overwhelmingly Serbs), migration from Albania into Kosovo (much of it illegal) and the comparatively high Albanian birthrate.
The G word (genocide) continues to be used against the Serbs. Compiled research data indicates that within the year to year and a half of Kosovo fighting before the NATO bombing, there were about 2,000 fatalities out of the province's 2 million population. About 500 of the 2,000 casualties were Serbs, who at the time were said to make up 10% of the population. Per capita wise, Serbs suffered considerably more. A good number of the Albanian casualties included those who showed a willingness to work within the existing government framework. I was forwarded statistical data confirming that Washington DC has had greater annual murder rates than what has been referenced to Kosovo. Regarding the stated pre-NATO bombing Kosovo conflict death toll, feel free to forward any well established documentation to the contrary.
There have been rhetorical exchanges on what act constitutes the greater violation of sovereignty: the disrespecting of Serb territory, or the follow-up vandalizing of Belgrade-situated foreign embassies--whose countries support Kosovo's independence. There is an overwhelming Serb consensus of non-support for both acts. When comparing acts which violate sovereignty, recall the stated reason for why Russia did not beef up its somewhat clumsily implemented military presence in Kosovo, following the 1999 NATO bombing campaign. Russia was denied clearance from NATO member countries whose air space it would have utilized. In other words, the air space of a country (Yugoslavia) could be violated with bombs, unlike the instance of Russia flying in peacekeepers.
A commonly repeated thought claims that Serbia lost the right to govern Kosovo because of past wrongs. Repeating an opinion over and over again, in an effort to have it become legitimate is common. This process can succeed when there is no opposition to it. United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1244 says NOTHING about Serbia losing sovereignty over Kosovo because of past actions. Turkey and Iraq are not expected to lose territory in retribution for their brutal actions against the Kurds. UNSCR 1244 recognizes Kosovo as a continued part of Serbia and calls for a return of Serb military and non-military government personnel to that land. The way some interpret UNSCR 1244 is along the lines of: the rules are there are no rules. In conjunction with UNSCR 1244: as long as Serbia, two UNSC permanent members (Russia and China) and others oppose Kosovo's independence, the recognition of that independence is indicative of how some go against basic principles of international law.
This of course sits well with the pro-Kosovo independence "humanitarian intervention" types--the same people who were not gung ho to bomb
Turkey for the way that NATO country was going after the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from 1975-2000. A matter that has not completely dissipated. Not to be outdone are some of the Russia friendly folks who give credence to the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro) in 1999. Would they support bombing Russia at anytime during the last decade's two wars against Chechen separatists? Heck, why not advocate a coalition of nations to bomb the US for some faulty American policies which have contributed to the deaths of so many?
In explaining why his government supports Kosovo's independence, a Polish official said that two peoples clearly not liking each other should be kept separate. Note how pro-Kosovo independence enthusiasts tend to advocate a multi-ethnic state in Bosnia, where there has been fierce ethnic division. It is fair to say that Albanian-Serb differences are probably greater than those among the Slavic Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs. It is also reasonable to state that Serbia minus Kosovo is more multi-ethnically tolerant and democratic than Albanian-dominated Kosovo. The Serbs are being punished despite having the better democratic and multi-ethnic outlook.
An acquaintance inquired about the alleged organized crime activity of Kosovo Albanian leader Hashim Thaci. The American Council for Kosovo web site has a page with plenty of information about the Kosovo Albanian leadership. A Google search of: German BND Hashim Thaci--provides many results suggesting that the organized crime claims on Thaci are true (the BND or Bundesnachrichtendienst, is
Germany's government intelligence service). In comparison, one is hard pressed to find firm denials to the contrary. Mark Almond's July 26, 1999 National Review article "Our Gang--Kosovo Liberation Army" writes that the Thaci led Kosovo Liberation Army (repackaged as a non-army political bloc after the 1999 NATO bombing campaign) and Kurdish PKK have elements which "have been fighting to control the drug and prostitution rackets of many big West European cities". The pro-Thaci spin says that such activity is exaggerated and that as a now "accepted" leader (at least by some powerful forces) Thaci is changing for the better.
Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. He can be reached at mikeaverko@msn.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/averko03042008.html
March 4, 2008
Punishing the Serbs
Kosovo and the Press
By MIKE AVERKO
As a whole, 70 per cent of Albanians are of Muslim background. Another 20 per cent are of Orthodox Christian heritage. The Orthodox Christian Albanians tend to reside in the southern part of Albania, away from Kosovo. The remaining 10 per cent of Albanians are Roman Catholic. Mother Teresa was an Albanian Catholic from Skopje. In Kosovo, at least 90 per cent of Albanians are said to be of Muslim origin. Most Kosovo Albanians appear secular. It does not take many religious extremists to cause mayhem. With Adolph Hitler as an extreme example, some of the most passionately violent of nationalists are secular. Kosovo's Albanian community has traces of religious extremism and secular nationalism.
Tariq Ali's CounterPunch interview and the non-recognition of Kosovo's independence by several Organization of the Islamic Conference nations show how exaggerated are claims of an anti-Serb position in the Muslim world. The other examples relate to Russia's support for Serbia and its wars in predominately Muslim Chechnya. Despite these two instances, Russia is on relatively good terms with the Muslim world. For some, the rights to defend territorial sovereignty and combat terrorism are greater than a pan-religious sympathy. To further underscore this point, note how Turkey is the only country to recognize the mostly Muslim inhabited "Turkish Cypriot Republic".
Kosovo's demography is often mentioned as a basis for supporting the province's independence. Overlooked in this advocacy is how the Albanians replaced the Serbs as the majority in Kosovo within the last hundred years--ethnic cleansing campaigns against non-Albanians (overwhelmingly Serbs), migration from Albania into Kosovo (much of it illegal) and the comparatively high Albanian birthrate.
The G word (genocide) continues to be used against the Serbs. Compiled research data indicates that within the year to year and a half of Kosovo fighting before the NATO bombing, there were about 2,000 fatalities out of the province's 2 million population. About 500 of the 2,000 casualties were Serbs, who at the time were said to make up 10% of the population. Per capita wise, Serbs suffered considerably more. A good number of the Albanian casualties included those who showed a willingness to work within the existing government framework. I was forwarded statistical data confirming that Washington DC has had greater annual murder rates than what has been referenced to Kosovo. Regarding the stated pre-NATO bombing Kosovo conflict death toll, feel free to forward any well established documentation to the contrary.
There have been rhetorical exchanges on what act constitutes the greater violation of sovereignty: the disrespecting of Serb territory, or the follow-up vandalizing of Belgrade-situated foreign embassies--whose countries support Kosovo's independence. There is an overwhelming Serb consensus of non-support for both acts. When comparing acts which violate sovereignty, recall the stated reason for why Russia did not beef up its somewhat clumsily implemented military presence in Kosovo, following the 1999 NATO bombing campaign. Russia was denied clearance from NATO member countries whose air space it would have utilized. In other words, the air space of a country (Yugoslavia) could be violated with bombs, unlike the instance of Russia flying in peacekeepers.
A commonly repeated thought claims that Serbia lost the right to govern Kosovo because of past wrongs. Repeating an opinion over and over again, in an effort to have it become legitimate is common. This process can succeed when there is no opposition to it. United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1244 says NOTHING about Serbia losing sovereignty over Kosovo because of past actions. Turkey and Iraq are not expected to lose territory in retribution for their brutal actions against the Kurds. UNSCR 1244 recognizes Kosovo as a continued part of Serbia and calls for a return of Serb military and non-military government personnel to that land. The way some interpret UNSCR 1244 is along the lines of: the rules are there are no rules. In conjunction with UNSCR 1244: as long as Serbia, two UNSC permanent members (Russia and China) and others oppose Kosovo's independence, the recognition of that independence is indicative of how some go against basic principles of international law.
This of course sits well with the pro-Kosovo independence "humanitarian intervention" types--the same people who were not gung ho to bomb
Turkey for the way that NATO country was going after the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from 1975-2000. A matter that has not completely dissipated. Not to be outdone are some of the Russia friendly folks who give credence to the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro) in 1999. Would they support bombing Russia at anytime during the last decade's two wars against Chechen separatists? Heck, why not advocate a coalition of nations to bomb the US for some faulty American policies which have contributed to the deaths of so many?
In explaining why his government supports Kosovo's independence, a Polish official said that two peoples clearly not liking each other should be kept separate. Note how pro-Kosovo independence enthusiasts tend to advocate a multi-ethnic state in Bosnia, where there has been fierce ethnic division. It is fair to say that Albanian-Serb differences are probably greater than those among the Slavic Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs. It is also reasonable to state that Serbia minus Kosovo is more multi-ethnically tolerant and democratic than Albanian-dominated Kosovo. The Serbs are being punished despite having the better democratic and multi-ethnic outlook.
An acquaintance inquired about the alleged organized crime activity of Kosovo Albanian leader Hashim Thaci. The American Council for Kosovo web site has a page with plenty of information about the Kosovo Albanian leadership. A Google search of: German BND Hashim Thaci--provides many results suggesting that the organized crime claims on Thaci are true (the BND or Bundesnachrichtendienst, is
Germany's government intelligence service). In comparison, one is hard pressed to find firm denials to the contrary. Mark Almond's July 26, 1999 National Review article "Our Gang--Kosovo Liberation Army" writes that the Thaci led Kosovo Liberation Army (repackaged as a non-army political bloc after the 1999 NATO bombing campaign) and Kurdish PKK have elements which "have been fighting to control the drug and prostitution rackets of many big West European cities". The pro-Thaci spin says that such activity is exaggerated and that as a now "accepted" leader (at least by some powerful forces) Thaci is changing for the better.
Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic. He can be reached at mikeaverko@msn.com
The global game that is Kosovo & Metohija
http://www.analyst-network.com/article.php?art_id=1800
INTERNATIONAL ANALYST NETWORK
The global game that is Kosovo & Metohija
Ioannis Michaletos
03 Mar 2008
The latest developments on the 17th of February proved once more that the
world political environment passes yet another milestone, albeit going
backwards towards the era of Empires and feudalism, rather than progressing
into an era of peace and security.
Europe in particular fought tens of bitter wars and conflicts in order to
become the harbor of stability in Eurasia. Starting from the Treaty of
Augsburg in 1555 (cuius regio cius religio) and the Treaty of Westphalia in
1648, Europe managed finally in 1945 through the signing of the UN Chapter
and the Helsinki Final Act in 1975; to confirm the sovereignty of the nation
state and the absolute denial for border changes. As it can well be
understood this no longer holds, and the International Law becomes a peace
of paper on which anyone can interpret what he wishes for, leading the world
closer to another war that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the
human life as we know it.
The reasons for such a dramatic decision of historical proportions, is not
really known, even though the most logical assumption seems to be around the
USA-Russian rivalry. Moreover the sentimental approach of many aspects of
the international relations by certain members of the State Dept. elite
might have played its role. It would not be improbable to predict that the
humankind's historical path correlates with the pessimistic approach by the
great German philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler. In his famous work
"The decline of the West", published in 1918 he outlines his version of the
future that has an outstanding value judging by the present situation. The
prediction towards a feudal conflict-driven world community of the 21st
century is a revealing one, along with the end of the West as a moral and
cultural authority. By year 2100 the planet will resemble more of the Mad
Max film, rather than a highly advanced technological global village. In
that sense 2008 might well be a standing point on which we might look back
in time to know when everything "Officially" started.
The current government of the still-illegally declared independent Kosovo is
heavily influenced by the organized crime groups, maintained links with the
global Jihadi movement and strives to administer a small land which is
actually controlled by the UN, NATO, EU and the individual interests lead by
the strongest countries. On top of that, a high level of poverty coupled
with unemployment and a high birth rate, provides a wider angle of what will
probably happen in Pristina in a few years from now.
The secessionist movements all over the planet are not going to accept the
suis generic approach that has been hasty declared by the Washington
officials. International politics are not a fixed term bank bond, but a
fluid contradictory reality that interprets each event according to the
interests of its own members. Since International Law and its basis the
sovereignty of the nation state no longer exists, everything is possible in
the short & long-term.
For instance Turkey, a government that rushed to recognize the illegal
government in Pristina, is also staging a wide range anti-guerilla attack in
its South-Eastern borders against the Kurdish PKK fighters. Apart from the
already well-known phrase "Double Standards", the antitheses of supporting a
notion that can ultimately destroy ones country seems to have escaped from
the mindset of Ankara's military-diplomatic apparatus. In order to gain
short-term negligible political gains, they have mined their own nation
state; since none knows quite exactly what the future holds and how might
global interests in the energy field behave in just a few years from know.
The Kurdish movement strikes a similarity with the Albanian one. Mountaineer
nations both, having minorities in neighboring states, supporting their
actions through a series of contraband activities and becoming often a
strategic tool of grand powers, when meddling in two of the most important
hubs of Eurasia: Balkans & the Middle East.
Cyprus on the other hand, the small sun-soaked island in the midst of the
Eastern Mediterranean, forms its strategy based in principles and norms,
thus saving its face and interests. The division of the island is not quite
the same problem with Kosovo, since it was actually invaded by Turkey; even
though Nicosia behaves in an ideal European way, shaming European capitals
that have become the former only in name.
The issue of "Greater-great Albania" has been thoroughly discussed in
Serbianna, and the predictions made in the past seem to become more of a
mundane reality. Albania as a nation state is weak due to economic & social
problems along with the existence of stronger neighbors all around it. What
is worrying for the future security of the region is the temptation by
inexperienced diplomats residing almost exclusively in the USA, to use the
Albanian minorities as a Trojan horse so as to confront either Russian
influence or interrupt any European (German-French) plans to acquire
stronger economic and political clout in the region. For the time being the
present Bush Administration seems to lack such strategy, assuming rightly
that the main interests of the country are based in the Middle East and the
South East Asia. The next American President whoever (s)he may be, he is
going to be more influenced by the existence of a well-formed Washington
lobby that will push for further American involvement in the Balkans through
the use of Albanian minorities. In such an unfortunate case, the coming
bloodshed in the Balkans will make the Bosnia war look like a skirmish
between street rioters.
The Russian advance in Europe through the Balkans is a probable indicator of
the anxiety that gripped Washington. In a summary the most important points
of Moscow's interest in the region (Or rather the wider Southeastern
European one) is as follows:
In Bulgaria the Russians (AtomstroyExport Company) managed to sign the deals
with the South Stream and the B-A pipelines. Moreover they agreed to
construct a new thermonuclear station in Belene and the country is heavily
depended on Russian energy in general.
In Hungary has acquired many stocks in gas companies and invests substantial
amounts in the real estate.
Montenegro is awash with Russian capital in the estate and tourist sector
Serbia sold its national energy company and participates in the South Stream
project (Northern Axis). The country is also leaning to Moscow due to the
developments in Kosovo as well.
In Slovakia the gas distribution network company SPP (One of the largest in
Europe), belongs to Gazprom (49%)
In Austria Gazprom recently 50% share of a similar distribution network,
thus creating a natural gas web across Central Europe. Note that 35% of the
largest German one belongs to Russian company and the 10% of the EADS
Corporation.
Greece participates in the B-A & South Stream pipelines and made substantial
procurements of Russian weaponry over the past few years. Cyprus is also one
of the prime destinations of Russian investments.
Turkey imports 75% of its natural gas from Gazprom and receives 10% of its
tourists from CIS countries. Large Turkish construction companies invest
heavily in Russia also.
The above is just a small outline of the recent Russian initiatives or
footholds in the market. Probably that is one of the main reasons of the
American response for supporting a hasty Kosovo recognition, even though in
a globalized world it is difficult to pursue political aims without taking
into consideration the economic aspect of it. In a few words, Russia can
easily retaliate in other fronts using its method of linking events, as it
was reported in a recent Stratfor report. Moreover the ability of Moscow to
influence the oil & gas production might have significant negativities
towards Europe and USA apart from other lesser obvious culminations in the
murky world of secret operations and provocations.
In short this is a conflict that no reasonable and good willing individual
or country would like to happen. Kosovo becomes a focal symbolic emblem of a
new age, even though it could well become a bargaining point on which the
major powers would agree on principles and format strategies towards the
issues that inflict the world, starting from the environment to terrorism,
poverty, and the quest for a better future of the humans in and out of this
planet.
The future will certainly tell which direction the Balkans will follow, and
the present day culminations are pessimist enough to leave any space for a
carefree analysis of the events. A trend to watch is for certain the
decadence of the moral respect towards international bodies and the rise of
extremist groups of all kinds in the Balkans. The latest is surely an issue
regularly pointed out and for certain it will remain so, unless a political
miracle equivalent to the Biblical manna solves these problems in the future
and provides progress, peace and security for the traumatized Balkan
Peninsula.
INTERNATIONAL ANALYST NETWORK
The global game that is Kosovo & Metohija
Ioannis Michaletos
03 Mar 2008
The latest developments on the 17th of February proved once more that the
world political environment passes yet another milestone, albeit going
backwards towards the era of Empires and feudalism, rather than progressing
into an era of peace and security.
Europe in particular fought tens of bitter wars and conflicts in order to
become the harbor of stability in Eurasia. Starting from the Treaty of
Augsburg in 1555 (cuius regio cius religio) and the Treaty of Westphalia in
1648, Europe managed finally in 1945 through the signing of the UN Chapter
and the Helsinki Final Act in 1975; to confirm the sovereignty of the nation
state and the absolute denial for border changes. As it can well be
understood this no longer holds, and the International Law becomes a peace
of paper on which anyone can interpret what he wishes for, leading the world
closer to another war that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the
human life as we know it.
The reasons for such a dramatic decision of historical proportions, is not
really known, even though the most logical assumption seems to be around the
USA-Russian rivalry. Moreover the sentimental approach of many aspects of
the international relations by certain members of the State Dept. elite
might have played its role. It would not be improbable to predict that the
humankind's historical path correlates with the pessimistic approach by the
great German philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler. In his famous work
"The decline of the West", published in 1918 he outlines his version of the
future that has an outstanding value judging by the present situation. The
prediction towards a feudal conflict-driven world community of the 21st
century is a revealing one, along with the end of the West as a moral and
cultural authority. By year 2100 the planet will resemble more of the Mad
Max film, rather than a highly advanced technological global village. In
that sense 2008 might well be a standing point on which we might look back
in time to know when everything "Officially" started.
The current government of the still-illegally declared independent Kosovo is
heavily influenced by the organized crime groups, maintained links with the
global Jihadi movement and strives to administer a small land which is
actually controlled by the UN, NATO, EU and the individual interests lead by
the strongest countries. On top of that, a high level of poverty coupled
with unemployment and a high birth rate, provides a wider angle of what will
probably happen in Pristina in a few years from now.
The secessionist movements all over the planet are not going to accept the
suis generic approach that has been hasty declared by the Washington
officials. International politics are not a fixed term bank bond, but a
fluid contradictory reality that interprets each event according to the
interests of its own members. Since International Law and its basis the
sovereignty of the nation state no longer exists, everything is possible in
the short & long-term.
For instance Turkey, a government that rushed to recognize the illegal
government in Pristina, is also staging a wide range anti-guerilla attack in
its South-Eastern borders against the Kurdish PKK fighters. Apart from the
already well-known phrase "Double Standards", the antitheses of supporting a
notion that can ultimately destroy ones country seems to have escaped from
the mindset of Ankara's military-diplomatic apparatus. In order to gain
short-term negligible political gains, they have mined their own nation
state; since none knows quite exactly what the future holds and how might
global interests in the energy field behave in just a few years from know.
The Kurdish movement strikes a similarity with the Albanian one. Mountaineer
nations both, having minorities in neighboring states, supporting their
actions through a series of contraband activities and becoming often a
strategic tool of grand powers, when meddling in two of the most important
hubs of Eurasia: Balkans & the Middle East.
Cyprus on the other hand, the small sun-soaked island in the midst of the
Eastern Mediterranean, forms its strategy based in principles and norms,
thus saving its face and interests. The division of the island is not quite
the same problem with Kosovo, since it was actually invaded by Turkey; even
though Nicosia behaves in an ideal European way, shaming European capitals
that have become the former only in name.
The issue of "Greater-great Albania" has been thoroughly discussed in
Serbianna, and the predictions made in the past seem to become more of a
mundane reality. Albania as a nation state is weak due to economic & social
problems along with the existence of stronger neighbors all around it. What
is worrying for the future security of the region is the temptation by
inexperienced diplomats residing almost exclusively in the USA, to use the
Albanian minorities as a Trojan horse so as to confront either Russian
influence or interrupt any European (German-French) plans to acquire
stronger economic and political clout in the region. For the time being the
present Bush Administration seems to lack such strategy, assuming rightly
that the main interests of the country are based in the Middle East and the
South East Asia. The next American President whoever (s)he may be, he is
going to be more influenced by the existence of a well-formed Washington
lobby that will push for further American involvement in the Balkans through
the use of Albanian minorities. In such an unfortunate case, the coming
bloodshed in the Balkans will make the Bosnia war look like a skirmish
between street rioters.
The Russian advance in Europe through the Balkans is a probable indicator of
the anxiety that gripped Washington. In a summary the most important points
of Moscow's interest in the region (Or rather the wider Southeastern
European one) is as follows:
In Bulgaria the Russians (AtomstroyExport Company) managed to sign the deals
with the South Stream and the B-A pipelines. Moreover they agreed to
construct a new thermonuclear station in Belene and the country is heavily
depended on Russian energy in general.
In Hungary has acquired many stocks in gas companies and invests substantial
amounts in the real estate.
Montenegro is awash with Russian capital in the estate and tourist sector
Serbia sold its national energy company and participates in the South Stream
project (Northern Axis). The country is also leaning to Moscow due to the
developments in Kosovo as well.
In Slovakia the gas distribution network company SPP (One of the largest in
Europe), belongs to Gazprom (49%)
In Austria Gazprom recently 50% share of a similar distribution network,
thus creating a natural gas web across Central Europe. Note that 35% of the
largest German one belongs to Russian company and the 10% of the EADS
Corporation.
Greece participates in the B-A & South Stream pipelines and made substantial
procurements of Russian weaponry over the past few years. Cyprus is also one
of the prime destinations of Russian investments.
Turkey imports 75% of its natural gas from Gazprom and receives 10% of its
tourists from CIS countries. Large Turkish construction companies invest
heavily in Russia also.
The above is just a small outline of the recent Russian initiatives or
footholds in the market. Probably that is one of the main reasons of the
American response for supporting a hasty Kosovo recognition, even though in
a globalized world it is difficult to pursue political aims without taking
into consideration the economic aspect of it. In a few words, Russia can
easily retaliate in other fronts using its method of linking events, as it
was reported in a recent Stratfor report. Moreover the ability of Moscow to
influence the oil & gas production might have significant negativities
towards Europe and USA apart from other lesser obvious culminations in the
murky world of secret operations and provocations.
In short this is a conflict that no reasonable and good willing individual
or country would like to happen. Kosovo becomes a focal symbolic emblem of a
new age, even though it could well become a bargaining point on which the
major powers would agree on principles and format strategies towards the
issues that inflict the world, starting from the environment to terrorism,
poverty, and the quest for a better future of the humans in and out of this
planet.
The future will certainly tell which direction the Balkans will follow, and
the present day culminations are pessimist enough to leave any space for a
carefree analysis of the events. A trend to watch is for certain the
decadence of the moral respect towards international bodies and the rise of
extremist groups of all kinds in the Balkans. The latest is surely an issue
regularly pointed out and for certain it will remain so, unless a political
miracle equivalent to the Biblical manna solves these problems in the future
and provides progress, peace and security for the traumatized Balkan
Peninsula.
March 03, 2008
Power Strategies Emerge Amidst Kosovo Turbulence
Power Strategies Emerge Amidst Kosovo Turbulence
2/29/2008 (Balkanalysis.com)
New information from regional intelligence sources, as well as open-source channels, indicates that cross-border militant activities on at least four fronts are among the new developments to watch in the aftermath of Kosovo’s independence declaration on February 17.
While world attention has focused mainly on the political and legalistic dimensions of the Kosovo Albanian government’s declared independence on February 17, other concurrent developments indicate that the main actors are taking steps to change the facts on the ground in the short term, or produce a long-term deterrent by hastily securing a presence across a widening geographical terrain.
In south Serbia’s Presevo Valley, home of a substantial Albanian population, the Serbian government has been boosting the presence of its security forces. According to Skopje daily Vecer, the Serbian army is completing Tsepotine Base, also known as the ‘Serbian Bondsteel’ (a reference to the US Camp Bondsteel not far across the border in Kosovo). Its strategic high position allows commanding views of Kosovo to the east and Macedonia, 5km to the south. Although planned for five years, various issues and disagreements between the ministries of defense and internal affairs slowed it down, reports Vecer. However, with the independence of Kosovo, completing the 35-hectare base has become a priority. The construction of such a large base in this strategic triangle indicates Serbia’s concern to keep the presently quiet Presevo Valley from blowing up as it did in 2000. Also, for Russia, reportedly interested in some sort of a military presence with the help of the Serbs, the location is again ideal. Vecer reports that Serbia currently has 16 smaller bases along the 92km-long administrative border with Kosovo.
New information from Kosovo itself also suggests present Russian cooperation, with the presence of small numbers of alleged Russian military trainers, in civilian garb, in the northern Kosovo towns of Leposavic and Mitrovica. Balkanalysis.com reported in late 2006 about the arrival here of Serbian special forces in civilian clothes, as a precaution in case of Albanian attacks. In 2006, it should be remembered, KFOR repopulated a disused base in the north of Kosovo, primarily to prevent Serbian troops from coming to the aid of their ethnic kin in case of any large-scale violence.
Two days after the Albanian’s independence declaration, Serb reservists and other agitators stormed and destroyed the nearby border post, gaining brief but important access into Kosovo before it was recovered by NATO troops. On February 27, Reuters reported that the Serb National Council in North Mitrovica had called for Russia “to return its KFOR contingent [in order to] to stabilize the situation in areas where Serbs are in the majority,” in the words of Council leader Milan Ivanovic. Although Russia had a small troop detachment in Kosovo from 1999-2003, it was deliberately not given its own sector equal to those of the other Great Powers, nor positioning in northern Kosovo. Now, it appears, Moscow will have in one way or another positioning in both northern Kosovo and the Presevo Valley.
Along with the attack on the UN border post in northern Kosovo on February 19, Serbian reservists have also made their presence felt on an eastern Kosovo border checkpoint. On February 25, rioting ensued at the Mutivode checkpoint, where 250 ex-serviceman from Medveda, Kuršumlija and Lebane clashed with Albanian KPS officers at the administrative boundary with Kosovo. The two sides hurled stones at one another, until the KPS used tear gas to dispel the Serbs. Strong winds, however, soon cleared the air for more conflict. ”Tires were also set on fire, and the wind spread the blaze to both sides of the line,” reported B-92. “During the entire showdown between the demonstrators and the KPS, cordons of KFOR, on one, and Serbian MUP on the other side of the line, looked on without intervening.”
Serbs have begun other forms of symbolic protest within Kosovo. Serbian police employed within the KPS are threatening to trade in their uniforms for those of Serbia as soon as possible; on February 28, in line with Belgrade’s wide-ranging policies designed to reduce the ability of the self-declared state to function, Serbian KPS officers announced a general strike. The strike will create an interim period in which the officers can make a coordinated action. Even if the struggling UN mission, essentially ineffective north of the River Ibar, dismisses their rejection or tries to take stronger action, the departure of the token Serb presence would signal the end of any hopes for multi-ethnic law enforcement in Kosovo.
On February 27, KFOR sources indicated that British and Austro-German reserve battalions were being put on a heightened state of readiness and that the military mission was increasing its presence in the north. Some Albanians apparently intended to make preparations of their own. On February 21, the leader of the Albanian minority population of North Mitrovica, Adem Mripa, was arrested by KPS police. According to B-92, three Tromblon RPGs and several pieces of ammunition for sniper guns weapons were discovered in his house, in the ethnically mixed quarter of Bosniak Mahala. At the same time, “a bomb was found near a house owned by [Serbian resident] Jovan Ilic, which KFOR subsequently destroyed.” Serbs in the isolated enclaves of central and southern Kosovo are far more vulnerable. An eight-year-old girl was stoned in Ljiplan on February 23, Tanjug reported, while playing in her yard. Such attacks were a regular occurrence, the girl’s father told reporters.
The announced independence of Kosovo has taken on wider dimensions, however. Approximately 12 days ago, Balkanalysis.com has learned, Macedonia’s intelligence services became aware of the re-opening of training camps/rear bases in the Kukes area of northern Albania. These bases, located near the clan stronghold of Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, were where American and British military instructors trained Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers in safety for the 1998-99 campaign across the border in Kosovo. Reporters from Germany’s Spiegel in Kosovo, citing an Albanian paramilitary volunteer in the shadowy Albanian National Army, claim that the organization “takes orders from its head office in Tirana, Albania.” The ANA has recently stated its priority of monitoring the north of Kosovo and, if necessary, using force to prevent it from rejoining Serbia.
An expected complement to any Albanian irregular activity within Kosovo itself was likely to have been the paramilitary group destroyed in Macedonia’s ‘Operation Storm’ in November 2007. In the remote village of Brodec in the Sar Planina mountains above Tetovo, special police arrested or killed escaped criminals from Kosovo’s Dubrava Prison, and captured a sophisticated arsenal, sufficient for 650 men- for the moment at least neutralizing a major security threat before the anticipated secession decree in Kosovo to the north.
However, despite that coup, the Macedonian intelligence source stated that “very recently, we have received information that some small Albanian armed bands, 10-20 individuals or so in each, have re-entered Macedonian territory from Kosovo, in the Tetovo and Lipkovo regions- we are working on locating these groups before they can [become a threat]… however, the border is very easy to be crossed in those places, and they can easily escape from one side to the other when necessary.”
http://www.balkanalysis.com/2008/02/29/power-strategies-emerge-amidst-kosovo-turbulence/
2/29/2008 (Balkanalysis.com)
New information from regional intelligence sources, as well as open-source channels, indicates that cross-border militant activities on at least four fronts are among the new developments to watch in the aftermath of Kosovo’s independence declaration on February 17.
While world attention has focused mainly on the political and legalistic dimensions of the Kosovo Albanian government’s declared independence on February 17, other concurrent developments indicate that the main actors are taking steps to change the facts on the ground in the short term, or produce a long-term deterrent by hastily securing a presence across a widening geographical terrain.
In south Serbia’s Presevo Valley, home of a substantial Albanian population, the Serbian government has been boosting the presence of its security forces. According to Skopje daily Vecer, the Serbian army is completing Tsepotine Base, also known as the ‘Serbian Bondsteel’ (a reference to the US Camp Bondsteel not far across the border in Kosovo). Its strategic high position allows commanding views of Kosovo to the east and Macedonia, 5km to the south. Although planned for five years, various issues and disagreements between the ministries of defense and internal affairs slowed it down, reports Vecer. However, with the independence of Kosovo, completing the 35-hectare base has become a priority. The construction of such a large base in this strategic triangle indicates Serbia’s concern to keep the presently quiet Presevo Valley from blowing up as it did in 2000. Also, for Russia, reportedly interested in some sort of a military presence with the help of the Serbs, the location is again ideal. Vecer reports that Serbia currently has 16 smaller bases along the 92km-long administrative border with Kosovo.
New information from Kosovo itself also suggests present Russian cooperation, with the presence of small numbers of alleged Russian military trainers, in civilian garb, in the northern Kosovo towns of Leposavic and Mitrovica. Balkanalysis.com reported in late 2006 about the arrival here of Serbian special forces in civilian clothes, as a precaution in case of Albanian attacks. In 2006, it should be remembered, KFOR repopulated a disused base in the north of Kosovo, primarily to prevent Serbian troops from coming to the aid of their ethnic kin in case of any large-scale violence.
Two days after the Albanian’s independence declaration, Serb reservists and other agitators stormed and destroyed the nearby border post, gaining brief but important access into Kosovo before it was recovered by NATO troops. On February 27, Reuters reported that the Serb National Council in North Mitrovica had called for Russia “to return its KFOR contingent [in order to] to stabilize the situation in areas where Serbs are in the majority,” in the words of Council leader Milan Ivanovic. Although Russia had a small troop detachment in Kosovo from 1999-2003, it was deliberately not given its own sector equal to those of the other Great Powers, nor positioning in northern Kosovo. Now, it appears, Moscow will have in one way or another positioning in both northern Kosovo and the Presevo Valley.
Along with the attack on the UN border post in northern Kosovo on February 19, Serbian reservists have also made their presence felt on an eastern Kosovo border checkpoint. On February 25, rioting ensued at the Mutivode checkpoint, where 250 ex-serviceman from Medveda, Kuršumlija and Lebane clashed with Albanian KPS officers at the administrative boundary with Kosovo. The two sides hurled stones at one another, until the KPS used tear gas to dispel the Serbs. Strong winds, however, soon cleared the air for more conflict. ”Tires were also set on fire, and the wind spread the blaze to both sides of the line,” reported B-92. “During the entire showdown between the demonstrators and the KPS, cordons of KFOR, on one, and Serbian MUP on the other side of the line, looked on without intervening.”
Serbs have begun other forms of symbolic protest within Kosovo. Serbian police employed within the KPS are threatening to trade in their uniforms for those of Serbia as soon as possible; on February 28, in line with Belgrade’s wide-ranging policies designed to reduce the ability of the self-declared state to function, Serbian KPS officers announced a general strike. The strike will create an interim period in which the officers can make a coordinated action. Even if the struggling UN mission, essentially ineffective north of the River Ibar, dismisses their rejection or tries to take stronger action, the departure of the token Serb presence would signal the end of any hopes for multi-ethnic law enforcement in Kosovo.
On February 27, KFOR sources indicated that British and Austro-German reserve battalions were being put on a heightened state of readiness and that the military mission was increasing its presence in the north. Some Albanians apparently intended to make preparations of their own. On February 21, the leader of the Albanian minority population of North Mitrovica, Adem Mripa, was arrested by KPS police. According to B-92, three Tromblon RPGs and several pieces of ammunition for sniper guns weapons were discovered in his house, in the ethnically mixed quarter of Bosniak Mahala. At the same time, “a bomb was found near a house owned by [Serbian resident] Jovan Ilic, which KFOR subsequently destroyed.” Serbs in the isolated enclaves of central and southern Kosovo are far more vulnerable. An eight-year-old girl was stoned in Ljiplan on February 23, Tanjug reported, while playing in her yard. Such attacks were a regular occurrence, the girl’s father told reporters.
The announced independence of Kosovo has taken on wider dimensions, however. Approximately 12 days ago, Balkanalysis.com has learned, Macedonia’s intelligence services became aware of the re-opening of training camps/rear bases in the Kukes area of northern Albania. These bases, located near the clan stronghold of Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, were where American and British military instructors trained Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers in safety for the 1998-99 campaign across the border in Kosovo. Reporters from Germany’s Spiegel in Kosovo, citing an Albanian paramilitary volunteer in the shadowy Albanian National Army, claim that the organization “takes orders from its head office in Tirana, Albania.” The ANA has recently stated its priority of monitoring the north of Kosovo and, if necessary, using force to prevent it from rejoining Serbia.
An expected complement to any Albanian irregular activity within Kosovo itself was likely to have been the paramilitary group destroyed in Macedonia’s ‘Operation Storm’ in November 2007. In the remote village of Brodec in the Sar Planina mountains above Tetovo, special police arrested or killed escaped criminals from Kosovo’s Dubrava Prison, and captured a sophisticated arsenal, sufficient for 650 men- for the moment at least neutralizing a major security threat before the anticipated secession decree in Kosovo to the north.
However, despite that coup, the Macedonian intelligence source stated that “very recently, we have received information that some small Albanian armed bands, 10-20 individuals or so in each, have re-entered Macedonian territory from Kosovo, in the Tetovo and Lipkovo regions- we are working on locating these groups before they can [become a threat]… however, the border is very easy to be crossed in those places, and they can easily escape from one side to the other when necessary.”
http://www.balkanalysis.com/2008/02/29/power-strategies-emerge-amidst-kosovo-turbulence/
U.S. takes wrong tack with Kosovo
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_8427117
SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS (USA)
OPINION
U.S. takes wrong tack with Kosovo
By Mark Kramer
Article Launched: 03/02/2008 01:38:59 AM PST
Kosovo's decision to declare independence was a bad idea. The U.S. decision
to recognize it was worse - and not because it prompted a crowd of angry
Serbs to torch the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.
Even if the pint-size chunk of the Balkans does not degenerate into failed
statehood like Sudan or Somalia, it almost certainly will remain in its
current perilous condition and become a European bastion of criminality and
human trafficking. Recognizing Kosovo also sends a bizarre message to
separatist movements around the world: If you resort to violence, the West
might support you; if you're peaceful, you haven't got a prayer.
That was certainly the message to Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League
of Kosovo.
Rugova, a former professor of literature who used to hand out stones from
his rock collection to visiting dignitaries (the more he liked you, the
better the rock), formed his movement in late 1989 to offer peaceful
resistance to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic had rescinded
Kosovo's autonomy and clamped down on its majority Albanian population as
part of his murderous plan to carve a "Greater Serbia" from the ashes of the
former Yugoslavia. But for nearly a decade, Rugova received no support from
Western countries, which largely ignored the region. The Dayton Agreement of
1995, ending the bloody war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, made no mention of
Kosovo.
Not until the Albanian-run Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) came on the
scene in 1997 with a guerrilla campaign and terrorist attacks against
Serbian troops and civilians did the Clinton administration begin to pay
attention to Kosovo, inadvertently rewarding the KLA and its terrorist
violence. The KLA deliberately sought to provoke Serbian reprisals, and
Milosevic, with his usual obtuse brutality, readily obliged.
As the fighting escalated, the United States and other NATO countries agreed
to take military action to halt Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing.
But instead of dispatching ground troops, President Clinton decided to rely
solely on air power. The KLA in effect became NATO's boots on the ground. So
when Milosevic agreed in June 1999 to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo,
the KLA, empowered by NATO's pixie dust, filled the vacuum. For the next 15
months, the KLA-led government alienated most of the 2.5 million people in
Kosovo - Albanians and Serbs alike - by engaging in violence, extortion and
other abuses, including widespread drug- and gun-running.
In October 2000, the situation finally seemed to improve when protesters
across Serbia overthrew Milosevic, and Rugova's party won overwhelmingly in
Kosovo's parliamentary elections, far eclipsing the KLA and paving the way
for Rugova's emergence as president. Rugova sought close ties with the
United States, and for a while U.S. officials provided him with valuable
economic and diplomatic support.
But the KLA refused to disappear and sought to weaken Rugova's position by
provoking violence against the region's Serb minority, roughly 10 percent of
the population. The United States, preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan,
mostly stood by and allowed the KLA to re-emerge through intimidation and
force.
Then in January 2006, Rugova died of lung cancer. And in elections last
November, the KLA regained power, seeming just as intolerant as ever. The
new prime minister, Hashim Thaci, who hid out in the woods with Albanian
guerrillas in the late 1990s, not only was involved in terrorist acts as a
KLA leader but is also known for his ruthlessness.
So why, out of all the groups in the world that are seeking independence
(the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Tamils and others), do the Albanian Kosovars
deserve to be singled out and accorded this prize?
Apparently, in the wake of last year's elections, many Western leaders
feared that violence might erupt in Kosovo unless independence was granted
soon. As such, Washington's recognition of the newly named Kosova once again
gives the impression that the Kosovars are being rewarded solely because
they might otherwise turn violent. Other independence-minded minorities will
realize that if they rely on peaceful tactics, they will risk being ignored.
The poisonous impact of this whole episode on Serbian politics was
underscored by the embassy attack in Belgrade. Although moderate Serb
politicians, including President Boris Tadic, swiftly condemned the
violence, even they now feel compelled to emphasize nationalist themes.
Those who spearheaded the peaceful overthrow of Milosevic's murderous regime
are now in danger of being accused of facilitating the country's
dismemberment. And resentment over the forced relinquishment of Kosovo is
bound to simmer for many years and stoke regional tension.
Another risk is that Kosova, the poorest region in Europe, will become a
failed state and possibly a terrorist haven. Its economy would have stopped
functioning long ago without life support from the United Nations, the
European Union and the United States. Even if Kosovar officials were
economic wizards, they would have a hard time meeting popular expectations,
which have soared with independence. Moreover, the ethnic divide will likely
intensify. The prospect of further violent clashes between Serbs and
Albanians seems all too real, and Thaci's government may respond with ethnic
cleansing.
Having recognized Kosova's independence with almost no public debate,
Washington and its friends in Western Europe should be on their guard. Be
careful what you wish for.
MARK KRAMER is director of Harvard University's Cold War Studies Program and
a senior fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
He wrote this article for the Washington Post.
SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS (USA)
OPINION
U.S. takes wrong tack with Kosovo
By Mark Kramer
Article Launched: 03/02/2008 01:38:59 AM PST
Kosovo's decision to declare independence was a bad idea. The U.S. decision
to recognize it was worse - and not because it prompted a crowd of angry
Serbs to torch the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.
Even if the pint-size chunk of the Balkans does not degenerate into failed
statehood like Sudan or Somalia, it almost certainly will remain in its
current perilous condition and become a European bastion of criminality and
human trafficking. Recognizing Kosovo also sends a bizarre message to
separatist movements around the world: If you resort to violence, the West
might support you; if you're peaceful, you haven't got a prayer.
That was certainly the message to Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League
of Kosovo.
Rugova, a former professor of literature who used to hand out stones from
his rock collection to visiting dignitaries (the more he liked you, the
better the rock), formed his movement in late 1989 to offer peaceful
resistance to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic had rescinded
Kosovo's autonomy and clamped down on its majority Albanian population as
part of his murderous plan to carve a "Greater Serbia" from the ashes of the
former Yugoslavia. But for nearly a decade, Rugova received no support from
Western countries, which largely ignored the region. The Dayton Agreement of
1995, ending the bloody war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, made no mention of
Kosovo.
Not until the Albanian-run Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) came on the
scene in 1997 with a guerrilla campaign and terrorist attacks against
Serbian troops and civilians did the Clinton administration begin to pay
attention to Kosovo, inadvertently rewarding the KLA and its terrorist
violence. The KLA deliberately sought to provoke Serbian reprisals, and
Milosevic, with his usual obtuse brutality, readily obliged.
As the fighting escalated, the United States and other NATO countries agreed
to take military action to halt Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing.
But instead of dispatching ground troops, President Clinton decided to rely
solely on air power. The KLA in effect became NATO's boots on the ground. So
when Milosevic agreed in June 1999 to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo,
the KLA, empowered by NATO's pixie dust, filled the vacuum. For the next 15
months, the KLA-led government alienated most of the 2.5 million people in
Kosovo - Albanians and Serbs alike - by engaging in violence, extortion and
other abuses, including widespread drug- and gun-running.
In October 2000, the situation finally seemed to improve when protesters
across Serbia overthrew Milosevic, and Rugova's party won overwhelmingly in
Kosovo's parliamentary elections, far eclipsing the KLA and paving the way
for Rugova's emergence as president. Rugova sought close ties with the
United States, and for a while U.S. officials provided him with valuable
economic and diplomatic support.
But the KLA refused to disappear and sought to weaken Rugova's position by
provoking violence against the region's Serb minority, roughly 10 percent of
the population. The United States, preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan,
mostly stood by and allowed the KLA to re-emerge through intimidation and
force.
Then in January 2006, Rugova died of lung cancer. And in elections last
November, the KLA regained power, seeming just as intolerant as ever. The
new prime minister, Hashim Thaci, who hid out in the woods with Albanian
guerrillas in the late 1990s, not only was involved in terrorist acts as a
KLA leader but is also known for his ruthlessness.
So why, out of all the groups in the world that are seeking independence
(the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Tamils and others), do the Albanian Kosovars
deserve to be singled out and accorded this prize?
Apparently, in the wake of last year's elections, many Western leaders
feared that violence might erupt in Kosovo unless independence was granted
soon. As such, Washington's recognition of the newly named Kosova once again
gives the impression that the Kosovars are being rewarded solely because
they might otherwise turn violent. Other independence-minded minorities will
realize that if they rely on peaceful tactics, they will risk being ignored.
The poisonous impact of this whole episode on Serbian politics was
underscored by the embassy attack in Belgrade. Although moderate Serb
politicians, including President Boris Tadic, swiftly condemned the
violence, even they now feel compelled to emphasize nationalist themes.
Those who spearheaded the peaceful overthrow of Milosevic's murderous regime
are now in danger of being accused of facilitating the country's
dismemberment. And resentment over the forced relinquishment of Kosovo is
bound to simmer for many years and stoke regional tension.
Another risk is that Kosova, the poorest region in Europe, will become a
failed state and possibly a terrorist haven. Its economy would have stopped
functioning long ago without life support from the United Nations, the
European Union and the United States. Even if Kosovar officials were
economic wizards, they would have a hard time meeting popular expectations,
which have soared with independence. Moreover, the ethnic divide will likely
intensify. The prospect of further violent clashes between Serbs and
Albanians seems all too real, and Thaci's government may respond with ethnic
cleansing.
Having recognized Kosova's independence with almost no public debate,
Washington and its friends in Western Europe should be on their guard. Be
careful what you wish for.
MARK KRAMER is director of Harvard University's Cold War Studies Program and
a senior fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
He wrote this article for the Washington Post.
Independent Kosovo a minefield, not a triumph
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/opinion/opinion/independent-kosovo-a-minefield-not-a-triumph/1194429.html
CANBERRA TIMES (AUSTRALIA)
Monday, 3 March 2008
Independent Kosovo a minefield, not a triumph
Seumas Milne
It might have been expected that the catastrophe of Iraq and the bloody
failure of Afghanistan would have at least damped the enthusiasm among
Western politicians for invading other people's countries in the name of
democracy and human rights.
But the signs are instead of a determined drive to rehabilitate the idea of
liberal interventionism so comprehensively discredited in the killing fields
of Fallujah and Samarra. First there was the appointment of the committed
interventionist, Bernard Kouchner, as French Foreign Minister. Then, late
last year, that supposedly reluctant warrior, British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, reasserted the West's right to intervene across state borders.
This month, his Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued "mistakes" in Iraq
and Afghanistan should not weaken the moral impulse to intervene in support
of democracy, "economic freedoms" and humanitarianism, whether peacefully or
by force. In the United States, both contenders for the Democratic party
nomination have signed up long-standing liberal interventionists as foreign
policy advisers academic Samantha Power in the case of Barack Obama and
1990s veterans Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright in Hillary
Clinton's.
The interventionists, it seems, are back in business. And now Kosovo's
declaration of independence has given them a banner to rally the
disillusioned to a cause that gripped the imagination of many Western
liberals in the '90s. The British Foreign Office spin doctor who drafted the
infamous Iraq war dossier in 2002, John Williams, wrote last week that the
Kosovo war had convinced him to follow Tony Blair on Iraq and it would be a
"tragedy" if Iraq made future Kosovos impossible. The Independent went
further, calling Kosovo's new status a "triumph of liberal interventionism".
But it's hard to see much triumph in the grim saga of Kosovo. NATO's 1999
bombing campaign, unleashed without United Nations support and widely
regarded as a violation of international law, was supposed to halt
repression and ethnic cleansing, but triggered a massive increase in both;
secured a Serbian withdrawal only through Russian pressure; and led to mass
reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, including almost the entire Serb
population of Pristina. After nine years of NATO occupation under a nominal
UN administration, crime-ridden Kosovo is more ethnically divided than ever,
boasts 50 per cent unemployment and hosts a US military base described by
the EU's human rights envoy as a "smaller version of Guantanamo".
Its independence declared in defiance of the United Nations Security Council
and damned by Russia, China and European Union states such as Spain as
illegal is a fraud and will remain so as an EU protectorate controlled by
NATO troops. By encouraging a unilateral breakaway from Serbia, without
negotiation and outside the UN framework, the US, Britain and France have
given the green light to secessionist movements from Abkhazia to Kurdistan.
The claim that Kosovo sets no precedent because it suffered under Serbian
rule is absurd. Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils
down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice. Of course the
Kosovans have the right to self-determination, but they certainly won't get
it as a NATO colony, nor at the expense of other nationalities in the
Balkans, where the impact of Kosovo's declaration on Bosnia and Macedonia
could be conflagrationary.
The significance of the breakaway has not been lost on the Muslim world,
which has long been urged to see US support for Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia as
proof of US good intentions, but has been notably slow to recognise the
breakaway province. As Yasser az-Za'atra wrote in the Jordanian daily
al-Dustour, "Besieging Russia is the main reason that led [George W.] Bush
to support Kosovo's independence. The rise of Russia and China provides a
balance to the US and is undoubtedly in the Muslims' interest. It is not in
the Muslims' interest to secede not in Kosovo, nor in Chechnya, nor even in
China."
Far from helping to rehabilitate liberal interventionism, Kosovo highlights
the fatal flaws at its heart. By supporting one side in a civil war,
bypassing the UN and acting as judge and jury in their own case, the Western
powers exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, bequeathed a legacy of
impoverished occupation and failed to resolve the underlying conflict. They
also laid the ground for the lawless devastation of Iraq the bitter fruit of
the Kosovo war. At the height of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, Blair set
out five tests for intervention as part of his "doctrine of international
community", a catechism for liberal interventionists admired by US
neo-conservatives who followed them. Arguably, only one of the five was met
in Iraq.
What's more, both the US and Britain not only committed military aggression
on the basis of falsehoods, they have been responsible for hundreds of
thousands of deaths and millions of refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan a
humanitarian crisis that dwarfs anything that happened in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Between them, they have also been responsible for
torture, kidnapping and mass detentions without trial. The latest
allegations of beatings, killings and mutilations of Iraqi prisoners by
British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji near Amara in 2004 are the most extreme of
a series that include the unpunished beating to death of Baha Mousa in
custody in Basra.
But there is, of course, not the slightest prospect of any humanitarian
intervention against the occupiers of Iraq for the obvious reason that they
are the most powerful states, who act in the certain knowledge that they
will never be subject to any such violent sanction for their own violations
of humanitarian and international law. But it is exactly that widely
understood reality that undermines the chances of a genuine multilateral
basis for humanitarian intervention.
As the ability of the US to dictate to the UN weakens, it's not surprising
that pressure to revive unilateral liberal interventionism has grown. But
any rules-based system of international relations has to apply to the
powerful as well as the weak, allies as well as enemies, or it isn't a
system of rules at all it's a system of imperial power enforcement which
will never be accepted. Guardian
CANBERRA TIMES (AUSTRALIA)
Monday, 3 March 2008
Independent Kosovo a minefield, not a triumph
Seumas Milne
It might have been expected that the catastrophe of Iraq and the bloody
failure of Afghanistan would have at least damped the enthusiasm among
Western politicians for invading other people's countries in the name of
democracy and human rights.
But the signs are instead of a determined drive to rehabilitate the idea of
liberal interventionism so comprehensively discredited in the killing fields
of Fallujah and Samarra. First there was the appointment of the committed
interventionist, Bernard Kouchner, as French Foreign Minister. Then, late
last year, that supposedly reluctant warrior, British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, reasserted the West's right to intervene across state borders.
This month, his Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued "mistakes" in Iraq
and Afghanistan should not weaken the moral impulse to intervene in support
of democracy, "economic freedoms" and humanitarianism, whether peacefully or
by force. In the United States, both contenders for the Democratic party
nomination have signed up long-standing liberal interventionists as foreign
policy advisers academic Samantha Power in the case of Barack Obama and
1990s veterans Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright in Hillary
Clinton's.
The interventionists, it seems, are back in business. And now Kosovo's
declaration of independence has given them a banner to rally the
disillusioned to a cause that gripped the imagination of many Western
liberals in the '90s. The British Foreign Office spin doctor who drafted the
infamous Iraq war dossier in 2002, John Williams, wrote last week that the
Kosovo war had convinced him to follow Tony Blair on Iraq and it would be a
"tragedy" if Iraq made future Kosovos impossible. The Independent went
further, calling Kosovo's new status a "triumph of liberal interventionism".
But it's hard to see much triumph in the grim saga of Kosovo. NATO's 1999
bombing campaign, unleashed without United Nations support and widely
regarded as a violation of international law, was supposed to halt
repression and ethnic cleansing, but triggered a massive increase in both;
secured a Serbian withdrawal only through Russian pressure; and led to mass
reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, including almost the entire Serb
population of Pristina. After nine years of NATO occupation under a nominal
UN administration, crime-ridden Kosovo is more ethnically divided than ever,
boasts 50 per cent unemployment and hosts a US military base described by
the EU's human rights envoy as a "smaller version of Guantanamo".
Its independence declared in defiance of the United Nations Security Council
and damned by Russia, China and European Union states such as Spain as
illegal is a fraud and will remain so as an EU protectorate controlled by
NATO troops. By encouraging a unilateral breakaway from Serbia, without
negotiation and outside the UN framework, the US, Britain and France have
given the green light to secessionist movements from Abkhazia to Kurdistan.
The claim that Kosovo sets no precedent because it suffered under Serbian
rule is absurd. Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils
down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice. Of course the
Kosovans have the right to self-determination, but they certainly won't get
it as a NATO colony, nor at the expense of other nationalities in the
Balkans, where the impact of Kosovo's declaration on Bosnia and Macedonia
could be conflagrationary.
The significance of the breakaway has not been lost on the Muslim world,
which has long been urged to see US support for Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia as
proof of US good intentions, but has been notably slow to recognise the
breakaway province. As Yasser az-Za'atra wrote in the Jordanian daily
al-Dustour, "Besieging Russia is the main reason that led [George W.] Bush
to support Kosovo's independence. The rise of Russia and China provides a
balance to the US and is undoubtedly in the Muslims' interest. It is not in
the Muslims' interest to secede not in Kosovo, nor in Chechnya, nor even in
China."
Far from helping to rehabilitate liberal interventionism, Kosovo highlights
the fatal flaws at its heart. By supporting one side in a civil war,
bypassing the UN and acting as judge and jury in their own case, the Western
powers exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, bequeathed a legacy of
impoverished occupation and failed to resolve the underlying conflict. They
also laid the ground for the lawless devastation of Iraq the bitter fruit of
the Kosovo war. At the height of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, Blair set
out five tests for intervention as part of his "doctrine of international
community", a catechism for liberal interventionists admired by US
neo-conservatives who followed them. Arguably, only one of the five was met
in Iraq.
What's more, both the US and Britain not only committed military aggression
on the basis of falsehoods, they have been responsible for hundreds of
thousands of deaths and millions of refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan a
humanitarian crisis that dwarfs anything that happened in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Between them, they have also been responsible for
torture, kidnapping and mass detentions without trial. The latest
allegations of beatings, killings and mutilations of Iraqi prisoners by
British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji near Amara in 2004 are the most extreme of
a series that include the unpunished beating to death of Baha Mousa in
custody in Basra.
But there is, of course, not the slightest prospect of any humanitarian
intervention against the occupiers of Iraq for the obvious reason that they
are the most powerful states, who act in the certain knowledge that they
will never be subject to any such violent sanction for their own violations
of humanitarian and international law. But it is exactly that widely
understood reality that undermines the chances of a genuine multilateral
basis for humanitarian intervention.
As the ability of the US to dictate to the UN weakens, it's not surprising
that pressure to revive unilateral liberal interventionism has grown. But
any rules-based system of international relations has to apply to the
powerful as well as the weak, allies as well as enemies, or it isn't a
system of rules at all it's a system of imperial power enforcement which
will never be accepted. Guardian
High price for recognizing Kosovo's independence
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/orl-myword03a08mar03,0,5383490.story
ORLANDO SENTINEL (USA)
COMMENT
High price for recognizing Kosovo's independence
Christopher A. Roach
March 3, 2008
America's hasty recognition of an independent Kosovo has upset powerful
interests, most notably Russia. Serbia, though far from Moscow, has long
been Russia's "Israel": an embattled sister nation on the frontier of the
Islamic world.
The Iraq war eclipsed Kosovo in the public's consciousness. The United
States fought a 78-day air war over Serbia in 1999 and maintains 7,000
troops today as part of a U.N. occupation force. Though American casualties
have been mercifully low, the rationale for the campaign has proven even
less durable over time than the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Specifically, claims of Serbian genocide in Kosovo have been proven false,
and Kosovo's declaration of independence directly violates the peace
agreement that ended hostilities.
The Kosovo war began unusually. The United Nations did not authorize
American intervention in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group that
until 1998 the United States considered a terrorist organization. Yet the
Kosovo Liberation Army's public-relations campaign proved decisive. For
months, CNN displayed heart-breaking pictures of Albanian refugees. Rumors
abounded of "genocide" and "mass graves." Shamed by its cautious response to
earlier events in the former Yugoslavia, the West would "get it right" this
time. After failing to secure U.N. support, President Bill Clinton went
shopping for diplomatic cover and found it among America's NATO allies.
As in Iraq, faulty intelligence played a key role, complete with satellite
photos of "mass graves." When the war ended, the FBI went home empty-handed
after an extensive search for evidence of genocide. In fact, the death toll
from NATO bombings -- estimated at more than 6,000 -- exceeded 2,108
confirmed killed in the fighting, a total that includes Serbian combatants.
This was a far cry from the 100,000 dead Albanians Clinton warned of in the
run-up to war.
NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army ended the war against Serbia through a
negotiated peace. The parties agreed to U.N. Security Council Resolution
1244, which mandated that the remains of the Yugoslavian nation -- by then
reduced to Serbia and Montenegro -- be preserved intact.
Though the genocide did not exist, and the Kosovo Liberation Army leadership
has since flouted its treaty obligations, American leaders are applauding.
After embracing the broader principles of democracy and self-determination
that led to the Kosovo war, how could the U.S. now condemn the Kosovar
declaration of independence?
No one believes that the Kosovar Albanians will act as tolerant stewards of
a multicultural society. Since 1999, Kosovar extremists have destroyed
Christian churches and monasteries and expelled thousands of Serbs in a
campaign that one NATO commander described as "ethnic cleansing."
History has not been kind to the Serbs. After World War II, the communist
regime murdered Serbians en masse who fought against the Nazi invaders. In
the 1990s, though all sides committed atrocities in the Balkans, Americans
and Europeans singled out the Bosnian Serbs for condemnation. The hypocrisy
reached its peak in 1995 when the West remained silent as well-armed
Croatian forces expelled 200,000 Serbs from Bosnia's Krajina region. Today
in Kosovo, the holy land of the Serbs, the West has explicitly approved the
nationalist aims of the Albanians by recognizing an independent Kosovo.
This is a bigger issue than Serbia. Once again, the United States has
needlessly provoked Russia. In recent years, we've meddled in its Ukrainian
neighbor's elections and pushed NATO'S boundaries farther eastward. In 1999,
a weak Russia could do little to support its Serbian ally. But today
Vladimir Putin's Russia is strong, and its patience with the West has worn
thin.
We may soon find that we have insulted Russia one time too many.
Christopher A. Roach is an attorney in private practice in Orlando.
ORLANDO SENTINEL (USA)
COMMENT
High price for recognizing Kosovo's independence
Christopher A. Roach
March 3, 2008
America's hasty recognition of an independent Kosovo has upset powerful
interests, most notably Russia. Serbia, though far from Moscow, has long
been Russia's "Israel": an embattled sister nation on the frontier of the
Islamic world.
The Iraq war eclipsed Kosovo in the public's consciousness. The United
States fought a 78-day air war over Serbia in 1999 and maintains 7,000
troops today as part of a U.N. occupation force. Though American casualties
have been mercifully low, the rationale for the campaign has proven even
less durable over time than the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Specifically, claims of Serbian genocide in Kosovo have been proven false,
and Kosovo's declaration of independence directly violates the peace
agreement that ended hostilities.
The Kosovo war began unusually. The United Nations did not authorize
American intervention in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group that
until 1998 the United States considered a terrorist organization. Yet the
Kosovo Liberation Army's public-relations campaign proved decisive. For
months, CNN displayed heart-breaking pictures of Albanian refugees. Rumors
abounded of "genocide" and "mass graves." Shamed by its cautious response to
earlier events in the former Yugoslavia, the West would "get it right" this
time. After failing to secure U.N. support, President Bill Clinton went
shopping for diplomatic cover and found it among America's NATO allies.
As in Iraq, faulty intelligence played a key role, complete with satellite
photos of "mass graves." When the war ended, the FBI went home empty-handed
after an extensive search for evidence of genocide. In fact, the death toll
from NATO bombings -- estimated at more than 6,000 -- exceeded 2,108
confirmed killed in the fighting, a total that includes Serbian combatants.
This was a far cry from the 100,000 dead Albanians Clinton warned of in the
run-up to war.
NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army ended the war against Serbia through a
negotiated peace. The parties agreed to U.N. Security Council Resolution
1244, which mandated that the remains of the Yugoslavian nation -- by then
reduced to Serbia and Montenegro -- be preserved intact.
Though the genocide did not exist, and the Kosovo Liberation Army leadership
has since flouted its treaty obligations, American leaders are applauding.
After embracing the broader principles of democracy and self-determination
that led to the Kosovo war, how could the U.S. now condemn the Kosovar
declaration of independence?
No one believes that the Kosovar Albanians will act as tolerant stewards of
a multicultural society. Since 1999, Kosovar extremists have destroyed
Christian churches and monasteries and expelled thousands of Serbs in a
campaign that one NATO commander described as "ethnic cleansing."
History has not been kind to the Serbs. After World War II, the communist
regime murdered Serbians en masse who fought against the Nazi invaders. In
the 1990s, though all sides committed atrocities in the Balkans, Americans
and Europeans singled out the Bosnian Serbs for condemnation. The hypocrisy
reached its peak in 1995 when the West remained silent as well-armed
Croatian forces expelled 200,000 Serbs from Bosnia's Krajina region. Today
in Kosovo, the holy land of the Serbs, the West has explicitly approved the
nationalist aims of the Albanians by recognizing an independent Kosovo.
This is a bigger issue than Serbia. Once again, the United States has
needlessly provoked Russia. In recent years, we've meddled in its Ukrainian
neighbor's elections and pushed NATO'S boundaries farther eastward. In 1999,
a weak Russia could do little to support its Serbian ally. But today
Vladimir Putin's Russia is strong, and its patience with the West has worn
thin.
We may soon find that we have insulted Russia one time too many.
Christopher A. Roach is an attorney in private practice in Orlando.
March 02, 2008
Kosovo: A system enforcing imperial power will be resisted
Kosovo: A system enforcing imperial power will be resisted
By Seumas Milne
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Sunday, Mar 02, 2008, Page 9
`Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice.'
It might have been expected that the catastrophe of Iraq and the bloody failure of Afghanistan would have at least dampened the enthusiasm among Western politicians for invading other people's countries in the name of democracy and human rights. But the signs are instead of a determined drive to rehabilitate the idea of liberal interventionism so comprehensively discredited in the killing fields of Fallujah and Samarra.
First there was the appointment of the committed interventionist Bernard Kouchner as French foreign minister. Then, late last year, the supposedly reluctant warrior British Prime Minister Gordon Brown used his speech at the lord mayor of London's banquet to reassert the West's right to intervene across state borders.
This month the UK foreign secretary David Miliband argued that "mistakes" in Iraq and Afghanistan should not weaken the moral impulse to intervene around the world in support of democracy, "economic freedoms" and humanitarianism, whether peacefully or by force. Meanwhile in the US, both contenders for the Democratic party nomination have signed up longstanding liberal interventionists as foreign policy advisers: the academic Samantha Power in the case of Barack Obama; and the 1990s administration veterans Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright in Hillary Clinton's.
The interventionists, it seems, are back in business. And now Kosovo's declaration of independence has given them a banner to rally the disillusioned to a cause that gripped the imagination of many Western liberals in the 1990s.
John Williams, the UK foreign office spin doctor who drafted the infamous Iraq War dossier in 2002, wrote last week that the Kosovo War had convinced him to follow Tony Blair over Iraq -- and it would be a "tragedy" if Iraq made future Kosovos impossible. The Independent on Sunday newspaper in London, went further, calling Kosovo's new status a "triumph of liberal interventionism."
But it's hard to see much triumph in the grim saga of Kosovo. NATO's 1999 bombing campaign, unleashed without UN support and widely regarded as a violation of international law, was supposed to halt repression and ethnic cleansing, but triggered a massive increase in both; secured a Serbian withdrawal only through Russian pressure; and led to mass reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, including nearly the entire Serb population of Pristina. After nine years of NATO occupation under a nominal UN administration, crime-ridden Kosovo is more ethnically divided than ever, boasts 50 percent unemployment and hosts a US military base described by the EU's human rights envoy as a "smaller version of Guantanamo."
Its independence -- declared in defiance of the UN security council and damned by Russia, China and EU states such as Spain as illegal -- is a fraud and will remain so as an EU protectorate controlled by NATO troops. By encouraging a unilateral breakaway from Serbia, without negotiation and outside the UN framework, the US, Britain and France have given the green light to secessionist movements from Abkhazia to Kurdistan.
The claim that Kosovo sets no precedent because it suffered under Serbian rule is absurd. Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice. Of course the Kosovans have the right to self-determination, but they certainly won't get it as a NATO colony, nor at the expense of other nationalities in the Balkans, where the impact of Kosovo's declaration on Bosnia and Macedonia could be conflagrationary.
The significance of the breakaway has meanwhile not been lost on the Muslim world, which has long been urged to see US support for Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia as proof of US good intentions, but has been notably slow to recognize the breakaway province. As Yasser az-Za'atra wrote in the Jordanian daily al-Dustour this week: "Besieging Russia is the main reason that led Bush to support Kosovo's independence. The rise of Russia and China provides a balance to the US and is undoubtedly in the Muslims' interest. It is not in the Muslims' interest to secede -- not in Kosovo, nor in Chechnya, nor even in China."
Far from helping to rehabilitate liberal interventionism, the Kosovo experience highlights the fatal flaws at its heart. By supporting one side in a civil war, bypassing the UN and acting as judge and jury in their own case, the Western powers have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, bequeathed a legacy of impoverished occupation and failed to resolve the underlying conflict. They also laid the ground for the lawless devastation of Iraq: the bitter fruit of the Kosovo War. At the height of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, Blair set out five tests for intervention as part of his "doctrine of international community," a catechism for liberal interventionists and much admired by the Washington neoconservatives who followed them. Arguably, only one of the five was met in Iraq.
What's more, both the US and Britain not only committed military aggression on the basis of falsehoods, they have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan -- a humanitarian crisis that dwarfs anything that happened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Between them, they have also been responsible for torture, kidnapping and mass detentions without trial. The latest allegations of beatings, killings and mutilations of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji near Amara in 2004 are only the most extreme of a series that include the unpunished beating to death of Baha Mousa in custody in Basra.
But there is of course not the slightest prospect of any humanitarian intervention against the occupiers of Iraq for the obvious reason that they are the most powerful states in the world who act in the certain knowledge that they will never be subject to any such violent sanction for their own violations of humanitarian and international law.
But it is exactly that widely understood reality that undermines the chances of a genuine multilateral basis for humanitarian intervention.
As the ability of the US to dictate to the UN weakens, it's not surprising that pressure to revive unilateral liberal interventionism has grown. But any rules-based system of international relations has to apply to the powerful as well as the weak, allies as well as enemies, or it isn't a system of rules at all -- it's a system of imperial power enforcement which will never be accepted.
By Seumas Milne
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Sunday, Mar 02, 2008, Page 9
`Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice.'
It might have been expected that the catastrophe of Iraq and the bloody failure of Afghanistan would have at least dampened the enthusiasm among Western politicians for invading other people's countries in the name of democracy and human rights. But the signs are instead of a determined drive to rehabilitate the idea of liberal interventionism so comprehensively discredited in the killing fields of Fallujah and Samarra.
First there was the appointment of the committed interventionist Bernard Kouchner as French foreign minister. Then, late last year, the supposedly reluctant warrior British Prime Minister Gordon Brown used his speech at the lord mayor of London's banquet to reassert the West's right to intervene across state borders.
This month the UK foreign secretary David Miliband argued that "mistakes" in Iraq and Afghanistan should not weaken the moral impulse to intervene around the world in support of democracy, "economic freedoms" and humanitarianism, whether peacefully or by force. Meanwhile in the US, both contenders for the Democratic party nomination have signed up longstanding liberal interventionists as foreign policy advisers: the academic Samantha Power in the case of Barack Obama; and the 1990s administration veterans Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright in Hillary Clinton's.
The interventionists, it seems, are back in business. And now Kosovo's declaration of independence has given them a banner to rally the disillusioned to a cause that gripped the imagination of many Western liberals in the 1990s.
John Williams, the UK foreign office spin doctor who drafted the infamous Iraq War dossier in 2002, wrote last week that the Kosovo War had convinced him to follow Tony Blair over Iraq -- and it would be a "tragedy" if Iraq made future Kosovos impossible. The Independent on Sunday newspaper in London, went further, calling Kosovo's new status a "triumph of liberal interventionism."
But it's hard to see much triumph in the grim saga of Kosovo. NATO's 1999 bombing campaign, unleashed without UN support and widely regarded as a violation of international law, was supposed to halt repression and ethnic cleansing, but triggered a massive increase in both; secured a Serbian withdrawal only through Russian pressure; and led to mass reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, including nearly the entire Serb population of Pristina. After nine years of NATO occupation under a nominal UN administration, crime-ridden Kosovo is more ethnically divided than ever, boasts 50 percent unemployment and hosts a US military base described by the EU's human rights envoy as a "smaller version of Guantanamo."
Its independence -- declared in defiance of the UN security council and damned by Russia, China and EU states such as Spain as illegal -- is a fraud and will remain so as an EU protectorate controlled by NATO troops. By encouraging a unilateral breakaway from Serbia, without negotiation and outside the UN framework, the US, Britain and France have given the green light to secessionist movements from Abkhazia to Kurdistan.
The claim that Kosovo sets no precedent because it suffered under Serbian rule is absurd. Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice. Of course the Kosovans have the right to self-determination, but they certainly won't get it as a NATO colony, nor at the expense of other nationalities in the Balkans, where the impact of Kosovo's declaration on Bosnia and Macedonia could be conflagrationary.
The significance of the breakaway has meanwhile not been lost on the Muslim world, which has long been urged to see US support for Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia as proof of US good intentions, but has been notably slow to recognize the breakaway province. As Yasser az-Za'atra wrote in the Jordanian daily al-Dustour this week: "Besieging Russia is the main reason that led Bush to support Kosovo's independence. The rise of Russia and China provides a balance to the US and is undoubtedly in the Muslims' interest. It is not in the Muslims' interest to secede -- not in Kosovo, nor in Chechnya, nor even in China."
Far from helping to rehabilitate liberal interventionism, the Kosovo experience highlights the fatal flaws at its heart. By supporting one side in a civil war, bypassing the UN and acting as judge and jury in their own case, the Western powers have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, bequeathed a legacy of impoverished occupation and failed to resolve the underlying conflict. They also laid the ground for the lawless devastation of Iraq: the bitter fruit of the Kosovo War. At the height of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, Blair set out five tests for intervention as part of his "doctrine of international community," a catechism for liberal interventionists and much admired by the Washington neoconservatives who followed them. Arguably, only one of the five was met in Iraq.
What's more, both the US and Britain not only committed military aggression on the basis of falsehoods, they have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan -- a humanitarian crisis that dwarfs anything that happened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Between them, they have also been responsible for torture, kidnapping and mass detentions without trial. The latest allegations of beatings, killings and mutilations of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji near Amara in 2004 are only the most extreme of a series that include the unpunished beating to death of Baha Mousa in custody in Basra.
But there is of course not the slightest prospect of any humanitarian intervention against the occupiers of Iraq for the obvious reason that they are the most powerful states in the world who act in the certain knowledge that they will never be subject to any such violent sanction for their own violations of humanitarian and international law.
But it is exactly that widely understood reality that undermines the chances of a genuine multilateral basis for humanitarian intervention.
As the ability of the US to dictate to the UN weakens, it's not surprising that pressure to revive unilateral liberal interventionism has grown. But any rules-based system of international relations has to apply to the powerful as well as the weak, allies as well as enemies, or it isn't a system of rules at all -- it's a system of imperial power enforcement which will never be accepted.
Kosovo: A Crying Shame
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979305/posts
Kosovo: A Crying Shame
The Jewish Defense League ^ | 26 February 2008 | Shelley Rubin
Posted on 03/02/2008 2:18:35 PM
Once again the United States has sold out the good people and rewarded the bad. I am speaking of the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state by our government.
As a bit of background information, the Jewish Defense League was the only activist Jewish organization to support the Serbian people and their right to their ancestral homeland during the war that dissolved Yugoslavia during the 1990s. While we did not approve of alleged war crimes by some Serbians, we understood they felt they were entitled to settle the score with their Nazi-loving Croatian and Bosnian neighbors. . . . During World War II, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers, an act that resulted in a coup d’etat. A new government was installed and promptly withdrew the country’s support for the Axis. This enraged Hitler so much that he sent his soldiers into Yugoslavia and took over the country in a matter of days. The Nazis dissolved the government and replaced it with a puppet state led by Milan Nedic. Under his leadership, several Nazi concentration camps were established, such as Banjica and Sajmiste.
Next door in Croatia, the Nazi-lovers there were massacring Serbs, Jews and Roma (formerly called Gypsies). In the 1970s, the Jewish Defense League discovered a Croatian Nazi war criminal, Andrija Artukovic, living the good life in the Surfside Colony near Long Beach, California, and was in large part responsible for the revocation of his American naturalization status. JDL Chairman Irv Rubin personally escorted the father of L.A. radio personality Bill Handel to the federal courthouse so that he could testify against Artukovic. Before intervention by my late husband, witnesses were being harassed by Artukovic supporters and family members. The case took several years to complete because of pressure by Croatians living in the United States and members of the Catholic Church. In his role as minister of the interior in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, Artukovic supervised the genocide hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma. After he was stripped of his American citizenship, Artukovic was returned to Yugoslavia where he was sentenced to death for his war crimes. Because Artukovic was in ill-health, the court there said he was too infirm to be executed, and the Nazi murderer died in a prison hospital. Croatians were infamous for their worship of the Nazis and their brutality to their fellow man, like hang their neighbors on meathooks in kosher butcher shops.
And as far as Bosnians are concerned, they are mostly Muslims. During World War II, a proud fighting unit was the 20,000 member Bosnian Muslim 13th Waffen-SS Division Hanzar. Hanzar means “to slit the throat” in Arabic, and that’s what these animals did to 300,000 Serbs and 60,000 Bosnian Jews. They also killed thousands of Americans in Italy, where they fought against the 5th U.S. Army division for six months. None of those animals faced war crimes tribunals for their actions. By the way, their spiritual leader was Hitler’s bootlicker, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, better known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Back to Kosovo. Kosovo is made up of 92% ethnic Albanians, whose religion is predominantly Islam. There are over two million people living in Kosovo, but no Jews live there. They used to. Sixty or so years ago, their neighbors made sure they wouldn’t return. And what happened to all the Serbians who used to live there? According to history professor Carl Savich, ethnic cleansing has been perpetrated on the Serbian people throughout the history of the region, first by the Ottoman Turks, then the Albanians, the Nazis, the Communists, and now by the Western nations that have accepted the Kosovans claim that the land is theirs. In reality, taking Kosovo away from the Serbs is the Albanian dream of linking Albania with Kosovo (are Bosnia and Herzegovina next?) in order to create a Greater Albania.
And what about the Serbs? The Serbs share a tragic past with the Jewish people. They have lived in peace and friendship with the Jews. They have died alongside us. What is wrong with the world? Despite historical proof, the world puts the screws to the Serbs just as it does to us. It’s a crying shame.
2008 John Robinson
Kosovo: A Crying Shame
The Jewish Defense League ^ | 26 February 2008 | Shelley Rubin
Posted on 03/02/2008 2:18:35 PM
Once again the United States has sold out the good people and rewarded the bad. I am speaking of the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state by our government.
As a bit of background information, the Jewish Defense League was the only activist Jewish organization to support the Serbian people and their right to their ancestral homeland during the war that dissolved Yugoslavia during the 1990s. While we did not approve of alleged war crimes by some Serbians, we understood they felt they were entitled to settle the score with their Nazi-loving Croatian and Bosnian neighbors. . . . During World War II, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers, an act that resulted in a coup d’etat. A new government was installed and promptly withdrew the country’s support for the Axis. This enraged Hitler so much that he sent his soldiers into Yugoslavia and took over the country in a matter of days. The Nazis dissolved the government and replaced it with a puppet state led by Milan Nedic. Under his leadership, several Nazi concentration camps were established, such as Banjica and Sajmiste.
Next door in Croatia, the Nazi-lovers there were massacring Serbs, Jews and Roma (formerly called Gypsies). In the 1970s, the Jewish Defense League discovered a Croatian Nazi war criminal, Andrija Artukovic, living the good life in the Surfside Colony near Long Beach, California, and was in large part responsible for the revocation of his American naturalization status. JDL Chairman Irv Rubin personally escorted the father of L.A. radio personality Bill Handel to the federal courthouse so that he could testify against Artukovic. Before intervention by my late husband, witnesses were being harassed by Artukovic supporters and family members. The case took several years to complete because of pressure by Croatians living in the United States and members of the Catholic Church. In his role as minister of the interior in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, Artukovic supervised the genocide hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma. After he was stripped of his American citizenship, Artukovic was returned to Yugoslavia where he was sentenced to death for his war crimes. Because Artukovic was in ill-health, the court there said he was too infirm to be executed, and the Nazi murderer died in a prison hospital. Croatians were infamous for their worship of the Nazis and their brutality to their fellow man, like hang their neighbors on meathooks in kosher butcher shops.
And as far as Bosnians are concerned, they are mostly Muslims. During World War II, a proud fighting unit was the 20,000 member Bosnian Muslim 13th Waffen-SS Division Hanzar. Hanzar means “to slit the throat” in Arabic, and that’s what these animals did to 300,000 Serbs and 60,000 Bosnian Jews. They also killed thousands of Americans in Italy, where they fought against the 5th U.S. Army division for six months. None of those animals faced war crimes tribunals for their actions. By the way, their spiritual leader was Hitler’s bootlicker, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, better known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Back to Kosovo. Kosovo is made up of 92% ethnic Albanians, whose religion is predominantly Islam. There are over two million people living in Kosovo, but no Jews live there. They used to. Sixty or so years ago, their neighbors made sure they wouldn’t return. And what happened to all the Serbians who used to live there? According to history professor Carl Savich, ethnic cleansing has been perpetrated on the Serbian people throughout the history of the region, first by the Ottoman Turks, then the Albanians, the Nazis, the Communists, and now by the Western nations that have accepted the Kosovans claim that the land is theirs. In reality, taking Kosovo away from the Serbs is the Albanian dream of linking Albania with Kosovo (are Bosnia and Herzegovina next?) in order to create a Greater Albania.
And what about the Serbs? The Serbs share a tragic past with the Jewish people. They have lived in peace and friendship with the Jews. They have died alongside us. What is wrong with the world? Despite historical proof, the world puts the screws to the Serbs just as it does to us. It’s a crying shame.
2008 John Robinson
Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=227&page=16
ORGANISER (INDIA)
March 09, 2008
Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
By Sandhya Jain
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich industrial resources
were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals.
Halliburton, favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took over the
strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the
security of Camp Bondsteel, the largest American military base in Europe.
The faux independence of resource-rich Muslim Kosovo symbolises the
resurgence of old nineteenth century Western imperialism. The strategy is
reminiscent of the 'coloured' revolutions in former Soviet Republics, and
some actors are the same. There are salutary lessons for all non-Western
nations from this latest assault on international law.
Kosovo has become a Euro-American protectorate (read colony). As
Australia exploits the oilfields of East Timor, carved out of Indonesia in
1999, so the wealth of Kosovo shall be enjoyed by Euro-American
multinationals. The trouble began in the early 1990s when the fall of the
Soviet Union triggered a Euro-American drive to dismember Yugoslavia. In
1991, while the bombing of Iraq grabbed world attention, America sponsored
separatist movements in the Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Slovenia and
Bosnia; imposed crippling economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, and pushed NATO
forces into the region.
US also started arming the right-wing UCK movement in Kosovo, though
the latter was not a Yugoslav republic, but part of the Serbian Republic and
civilisational fountainhead of Serbia. It has a large Albanian Muslim
population, a relic of Ottoman rule. Washington's 'free press' played ball
with the Clinton Administration, carrying grisly tales of Serbian genocide
against Albanians in Kosovo. American officials claimed 100,000 to 500,000
Albanians were butchered by Serbia. There were reports of mass graves,
reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
As angry Serbia resisted Western pressures, American aggression began.
After 78 days of intensive bombings, including the use of thousands of
radioactive depleted-uranium bombs, and immeasurable damage to civilian and
industrial targets, a besieged Yugoslavia crumbled. On June 3, 1999, NATO
occupied Kosovo. President Slobodan Milosevic was captured and tried for
crimes against humanity at The Hague, where he died in March 2006,
supposedly of a heart attack.
Serbians question the verdict, with some justice. As the forensic
teams of 17 NATO countries set up by the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes
arrived, American lies were soon exposed. The officials could unearth only
2,108 bodies in Kosovo-these belonged to all nationalities, and most were
victims of NATO bombing; some fell to the war between UCK and Serbian
authorities. Much like Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons of mass destruction,
the teams could not find even one mass grave, much less evidence of
"genocide." The report of the chief prosecutor for the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, was played
down by a complicit American media.
I may mention as an aside that it was precisely the absence of dead
bodies, especially butchered bodies, that discredited the colonial doctrine
of the Aryan Invasion of India and massacre of ethnic 'dasyus', who were
metamorphosed into south Indian Dravidians.
Anyway, Kosovo's Western invaders were unabashed and placed her under
a UN Mission in 1999, under Security Council Resolution 1244. In reality,
power vested with the Mission of the European Union (EU). NATO was security
guarantor, and under its watch, there was a hideous ethnic cleansing of
Serbs and Romas (gypsies); over 250,000 Serbs, Romas and other groups fled.
Even Albanian Muslims had to flee, as nine years of NATO rule led to 60 per
cent unemployment and degraded the region into a cesspool of the
international drug and prostitution trade.
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich industrial resources
were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals.
Halliburton, favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took over the
strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the
security of Camp Bondsteel, the largest American military base in Europe.
So how did this twenty-first century colonial enterprise succeed? The
UN helped. In June 2005, the then Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed
former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to negotiate
Kosovo's final status. Like many Euro-American politicians, he too had
multiple identities and loyalties.
Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of the
International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body promoted by
multi-billionaire George Soros, who via Karl Popper's Open Society Institute
played a stellar role in the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet
Baltic Republics. The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for the
US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign wealth of weak nations
for Western corporates. The ICG connection with American politics is evident
from the presence on its Board of two key officials complicit in bombing
Kosovo-Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Coming from this background, Ahtisaari gave a predictably slanted
Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo Status Settlement to the new UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon in March 2007. It proposed an International Civilian
Representative (read viceroy) to be appointed by the US-EU to oversee
Kosovo, with the power to overrule any actions or annul any laws by local
authorities. The ICR would control Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.
Then, the EU would set up a European Security and Defence Policy Mission
(ESDP) and NATO an International Military Presence. These will control
foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. If this
is independence, what is slavery?
Russia has rightly pointed out that UN Security Council Resolution
1244 kept Kosovo firmly in Serbia. Kosovo's guided independence reinforces
the humiliation of the Islamic world by Western Christian nations and takes
Europe back (this time aided by US muscle) to treacherous terrain in the
Balkans. The stage is being set for a fresh international denouement.
ORGANISER (INDIA)
March 09, 2008
Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
By Sandhya Jain
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich industrial resources
were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals.
Halliburton, favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took over the
strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the
security of Camp Bondsteel, the largest American military base in Europe.
The faux independence of resource-rich Muslim Kosovo symbolises the
resurgence of old nineteenth century Western imperialism. The strategy is
reminiscent of the 'coloured' revolutions in former Soviet Republics, and
some actors are the same. There are salutary lessons for all non-Western
nations from this latest assault on international law.
Kosovo has become a Euro-American protectorate (read colony). As
Australia exploits the oilfields of East Timor, carved out of Indonesia in
1999, so the wealth of Kosovo shall be enjoyed by Euro-American
multinationals. The trouble began in the early 1990s when the fall of the
Soviet Union triggered a Euro-American drive to dismember Yugoslavia. In
1991, while the bombing of Iraq grabbed world attention, America sponsored
separatist movements in the Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Slovenia and
Bosnia; imposed crippling economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, and pushed NATO
forces into the region.
US also started arming the right-wing UCK movement in Kosovo, though
the latter was not a Yugoslav republic, but part of the Serbian Republic and
civilisational fountainhead of Serbia. It has a large Albanian Muslim
population, a relic of Ottoman rule. Washington's 'free press' played ball
with the Clinton Administration, carrying grisly tales of Serbian genocide
against Albanians in Kosovo. American officials claimed 100,000 to 500,000
Albanians were butchered by Serbia. There were reports of mass graves,
reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
As angry Serbia resisted Western pressures, American aggression began.
After 78 days of intensive bombings, including the use of thousands of
radioactive depleted-uranium bombs, and immeasurable damage to civilian and
industrial targets, a besieged Yugoslavia crumbled. On June 3, 1999, NATO
occupied Kosovo. President Slobodan Milosevic was captured and tried for
crimes against humanity at The Hague, where he died in March 2006,
supposedly of a heart attack.
Serbians question the verdict, with some justice. As the forensic
teams of 17 NATO countries set up by the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes
arrived, American lies were soon exposed. The officials could unearth only
2,108 bodies in Kosovo-these belonged to all nationalities, and most were
victims of NATO bombing; some fell to the war between UCK and Serbian
authorities. Much like Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons of mass destruction,
the teams could not find even one mass grave, much less evidence of
"genocide." The report of the chief prosecutor for the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, was played
down by a complicit American media.
I may mention as an aside that it was precisely the absence of dead
bodies, especially butchered bodies, that discredited the colonial doctrine
of the Aryan Invasion of India and massacre of ethnic 'dasyus', who were
metamorphosed into south Indian Dravidians.
Anyway, Kosovo's Western invaders were unabashed and placed her under
a UN Mission in 1999, under Security Council Resolution 1244. In reality,
power vested with the Mission of the European Union (EU). NATO was security
guarantor, and under its watch, there was a hideous ethnic cleansing of
Serbs and Romas (gypsies); over 250,000 Serbs, Romas and other groups fled.
Even Albanian Muslims had to flee, as nine years of NATO rule led to 60 per
cent unemployment and degraded the region into a cesspool of the
international drug and prostitution trade.
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich industrial resources
were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals.
Halliburton, favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took over the
strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the
security of Camp Bondsteel, the largest American military base in Europe.
So how did this twenty-first century colonial enterprise succeed? The
UN helped. In June 2005, the then Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed
former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to negotiate
Kosovo's final status. Like many Euro-American politicians, he too had
multiple identities and loyalties.
Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of the
International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body promoted by
multi-billionaire George Soros, who via Karl Popper's Open Society Institute
played a stellar role in the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet
Baltic Republics. The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for the
US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign wealth of weak nations
for Western corporates. The ICG connection with American politics is evident
from the presence on its Board of two key officials complicit in bombing
Kosovo-Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Coming from this background, Ahtisaari gave a predictably slanted
Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo Status Settlement to the new UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon in March 2007. It proposed an International Civilian
Representative (read viceroy) to be appointed by the US-EU to oversee
Kosovo, with the power to overrule any actions or annul any laws by local
authorities. The ICR would control Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.
Then, the EU would set up a European Security and Defence Policy Mission
(ESDP) and NATO an International Military Presence. These will control
foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. If this
is independence, what is slavery?
Russia has rightly pointed out that UN Security Council Resolution
1244 kept Kosovo firmly in Serbia. Kosovo's guided independence reinforces
the humiliation of the Islamic world by Western Christian nations and takes
Europe back (this time aided by US muscle) to treacherous terrain in the
Balkans. The stage is being set for a fresh international denouement.
“Independent” Kosovo: Anatomy of a Western protectorate
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/koso-m01.shtml
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE (USA)
“Independent” Kosovo: Anatomy of a Western protectorate
By Paul Mitchell
1 March 2008
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.”
With these words, the Second Continental Congress issued the United States
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It declared the cause impelling
the American people towards separation to be the attempt by the King of
Great Britain to seek “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”
On February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, the province’s
Assembly also declared independence. Their document could not be more
different from the world-changing rallying cry of the US declaration with
its proclamation “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In a document servile to the Western powers, their institutions and
representatives—and written in language meant as an appeal to faceless
bureaucrats in the US State Department and European Commission—Kosovo’s
leaders accept without question its status as a protectorate governed by a
foreign overlord. In much the same way as neighbouring Bosnia has been ruled
for the last 10 years, all the major decisions about the country’s economy,
public spending, social programmes, security and trade will remain in the
hands of a NATO/United Nations/European Union occupation administration.
In one sentence, we are told that Kosovo is now an “independent and
sovereign state” that “reflects the will of our people”; in the next, that
this is in “full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy
Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status
Settlement.” Former Finnish president Ahtisaari submitted his plan for
“supervised” independence in March 2007 but met opposition from Serbia and
Russia, which rightly saw it as a contravention of international law.
Although Ahtisaari’s proposal was withdrawn, it still drove the timetable
for independence and now forms the backbone of the declaration.
In the declaration, which runs to just 27 paragraphs, his name appears eight
times, including:
* We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari
Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years
ahead.
* The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the
Ahtisaari Plan.
* We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our
implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law
mission.
* We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to
retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo
and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council
resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo
institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities
* Kosovo shall have its international borders as set forth in Annex VIII of
the Ahtisaari Plan,
And just in case, the last paragraph repeats, “We hereby affirm, clearly,
specifically, and irrevocably, that Kosovo shall be legally bound to comply
with the provisions contained in this Declaration, including, especially,
the obligations for it under the Ahtisaari Plan.”
From the start, Ahtisaari’s plan insists its 15 articles and 12 annexes
“will take precedence over all other legal provisions in Kosovo” and details
how a “future international presence” will enforce them. Many of its
provisions have already been brought in under the UNMIK regime, and the
document merely sets them down formally.
The plans tells the Kosovan people that their newly “independent” country
will have “an open market economy with free competition” and will “establish
with the European Commission, and in close cooperation with the
International Monetary Fund, a fiscal surveillance mechanism.”
Recent reports show how the Kosovan economy is already dominated by
international capital. By the end of 2006, there were six banks, two of
which were under full foreign ownership and which controlled more than 70
percent of total bank assets. It was a similar story in the insurance
sector, where six out of nine companies are mainly in foreign ownership and
manage 70 percent of insurance assets.
Ahtisaari’s plan also demanded further privatisation of publicly owned
enterprises (POEs) and socially owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Kosovo Trust
Agency (KTA). The international members of the Board of Directors have the
power to suspend decisions of the KTA, and the two largest international
donors to the KTA have the right to attend meetings as observers.
Already, the KTA has sold off hundreds of POEs and SOEs whose origins lie in
the Tito regime.
By June 2007, the KTA had transferred 510 SOEs to new companies (NewCos) and
sold them off to investors in a competitive bidding process. Many workers
have been sacked or forced to accept minimal compensation, and the whole
process has been mired in accusations of corruption.
The Ahtisaari plan also prescribed the structure of Kosovo institutions,
most of which will have to have members of the “international community”
sitting in them. The government will consist of 12 ministers and the
Assembly of 120 members apportioned by ethnicity in a situation where many
in the minority population have been driven out or live behind barricades
and razor wire. There will be a 21-member Commission to draft a constitution
and a Constitutional Court composed of nine judges, three of whom will be
appointed by the president of the European Court of Human Rights. The Kosovo
Judicial Council will have 13 members, 2 of whom will be from the
“international community” and oversee the appointment of judges. A new
Kosovo Security Force (KSF) will be established consisting of no more than
2,500 lightly armed active members and 800 reserve members whose main job
will be restricted to crisis response, explosive ordnance disposal, and
civil protection. Kosovo will also establish a Civil Aviation Authority
(CAA) to regulate civil aviation activities.
Acting as Kosovo overlord will be an International Civilian Representative
(ICR), “double-hatted” as the EU Special Representative (EUSR), who will be
appointed by an International Steering Group (ISG) comprising France,
Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union,
European Commission, NATO and Russia. The ISG will have sole power to decide
when the ICR’s work is done. Two days before Kosovo declared independence,
Pieter Feith, a former political advisor to NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was
appointed ICR/EUSR and Fletcher Burton, former US consul general in Leipzig,
Germany, was appointed his deputy.
The ICR has powers to enforce the Ahtisaari plan, including the authority to
overturn laws adopted by Kosovo authorities and ratify the appointment of
public officials and remove them. In addition, the ICR will appoint directly
certain state officials including the auditor-general, the director-general
of the Customs Service, the director of tax administration, the director of
the Treasury, and the managing director of the Central Banking Authority of
Kosovo. The Assembly may not formally approve the Constitution until the ICR
has certified it.
The Ahtisaari plan also called for a European Security and Defence Policy
Mission now created as the Eulex mission to “monitor, mentor and advise on
all areas related to the rule of law” and a NATO-led International Military
Presence (IMP), which will absorb the 16,000 NATO troops currently in
Kosovo. The IMP has the power to “use all necessary force where required and
without further sanction, interference or permission.” The IMP will provide
protection to the Serb minority and religious monuments, oversee the
formation of the KSF and dissolution of the Kosovo Protection Corps, largely
a fire-fighting force composed of former members of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. The IMP will be able to take over CAA functions and re-establish
military control over the airspace if necessary.
The plan also dictates the structure and powers of municipalities,
educational institutes and the police force. It also demands Kosovo pay its
share of the external debt, and if an agreement cannot be reached, the ISG
will nominate an international arbitrator whose “debt allocation shall be
irrevocable.”
Politicians and officials from Kosovo and the West have declared that all
this is necessary to ensure a peaceful transition to independence and
provide a stable environment for investment and membership of the European
Union. However, the new ICR/EUSR Feith told the Dutch newspaper NRC
Handelsblad, “Expectations are high.... People expect that their quality of
life and economic circumstances will improve rapidly” and warned, “Neither
the EU nor the Americans will be able to fulfil their high expectations.”
Kosovan economist Ibrahim Rexhepi adds, “We must get rid of the illusion
that independence will bring tonnes of dollars into our streets.... The
economic crisis is likely to continue. To restart the metallurgy, food
industry and energy (sectors) takes time and a lot of investment.”
Even to dignify Kosovo with the term country, let alone one that is
independent, makes a mockery of the term. Kosovo has a population of about 2
million people and covers an area of 10,887 square kilometres, or 4,203
square miles. It has one of the most underdeveloped economies in Europe,
with a per capita income estimated at US$2,328 in 2004.
The US state of Connecticut would make a more viable country. It is bigger,
is not landlocked and has a population of 3.4 million. Its per capita income
was US$47,819 in 2005, more than 20 times that of Kosovo.
Kosovo is almost entirely dependent on production outside its borders. It
exports less per capita than any other country in Europe—just €77 million.
Although analysts have made much of an increase in private sector activity,
non-housing private investment stood at just €284 million in 2006, and it is
dependent on scrap-metal recovery and geared to satisfying the consumer
needs of the international officials and Kosovan elite.
After nine years of UNMIK occupation, little has improved for the vast
majority of Kosovo’s population, and in many respects it has worsened.
Nearly 80 percent of the population have experienced a decline in living
standards since 2003. More than half of Kosovo’s inhabitants are unemployed,
and real wages are stagnant. Those that have work receive an average €220
(about US$320) per month. More than a third of the population live on less
than €1.50 per day. Attempts to raise pensions and wages have been blocked.
Those that are better off rely on remittances from relatives working abroad.
Poverty is so widespread and all-encompassing that, somewhat ironically, the
province has the lowest levels of inequality in Europe. But the gap between
the richest and poorest is growing.
Little wonder that there was a record low turnout in last year’s
elections—43 percent, down from 80 percent in elections soon after the
Kosovo war—indicating a staggering decrease in support for the political
parties installed after 1999.
Back in 1999, after the Western powers backed by various liberals and
radicals had thrown their support behind demands for self-determination for
Kosovo and the NATO bombing of Serbia, the World Socialist Web Site warned
in “After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War,” “The bombing
of Yugoslavia has exposed the real relations that exist between imperialism
and small nations.”
The statement continued, “The great indictments of imperialism written in
the first years of the twentieth century—those of Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg
and Hilferding—read like contemporary documents. Economically, small nations
are at the mercy of the lending agencies and financial institutions of the
major imperialist powers. In the realm of politics, any attempt to assert
their independent interests brings with it the threat of devastating
military retaliation. With increasing frequency small states are being
stripped of their national sovereignty, compelled to accept foreign military
occupation, and submit to forms of rule that are, when all is said and done,
of an essentially colonialist character.”
Nearly a decade later, this prognosis has proven correct. Not only has
Kosovo’s creation been carried out in violation of any concept of national
sovereignty for Serbia, but in no sense can what has been created be
considered a sovereign entity in its own right. Rather, Kosovo is being used
as a pawn in the Great Power rivalries between the US, Europe and Russia,
with terrible consequences for all the peoples of the Balkans, irrespective
of their ethnicity.
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE (USA)
“Independent” Kosovo: Anatomy of a Western protectorate
By Paul Mitchell
1 March 2008
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.”
With these words, the Second Continental Congress issued the United States
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It declared the cause impelling
the American people towards separation to be the attempt by the King of
Great Britain to seek “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”
On February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, the province’s
Assembly also declared independence. Their document could not be more
different from the world-changing rallying cry of the US declaration with
its proclamation “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In a document servile to the Western powers, their institutions and
representatives—and written in language meant as an appeal to faceless
bureaucrats in the US State Department and European Commission—Kosovo’s
leaders accept without question its status as a protectorate governed by a
foreign overlord. In much the same way as neighbouring Bosnia has been ruled
for the last 10 years, all the major decisions about the country’s economy,
public spending, social programmes, security and trade will remain in the
hands of a NATO/United Nations/European Union occupation administration.
In one sentence, we are told that Kosovo is now an “independent and
sovereign state” that “reflects the will of our people”; in the next, that
this is in “full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy
Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status
Settlement.” Former Finnish president Ahtisaari submitted his plan for
“supervised” independence in March 2007 but met opposition from Serbia and
Russia, which rightly saw it as a contravention of international law.
Although Ahtisaari’s proposal was withdrawn, it still drove the timetable
for independence and now forms the backbone of the declaration.
In the declaration, which runs to just 27 paragraphs, his name appears eight
times, including:
* We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari
Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years
ahead.
* The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the
Ahtisaari Plan.
* We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our
implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law
mission.
* We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to
retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo
and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council
resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo
institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities
* Kosovo shall have its international borders as set forth in Annex VIII of
the Ahtisaari Plan,
And just in case, the last paragraph repeats, “We hereby affirm, clearly,
specifically, and irrevocably, that Kosovo shall be legally bound to comply
with the provisions contained in this Declaration, including, especially,
the obligations for it under the Ahtisaari Plan.”
From the start, Ahtisaari’s plan insists its 15 articles and 12 annexes
“will take precedence over all other legal provisions in Kosovo” and details
how a “future international presence” will enforce them. Many of its
provisions have already been brought in under the UNMIK regime, and the
document merely sets them down formally.
The plans tells the Kosovan people that their newly “independent” country
will have “an open market economy with free competition” and will “establish
with the European Commission, and in close cooperation with the
International Monetary Fund, a fiscal surveillance mechanism.”
Recent reports show how the Kosovan economy is already dominated by
international capital. By the end of 2006, there were six banks, two of
which were under full foreign ownership and which controlled more than 70
percent of total bank assets. It was a similar story in the insurance
sector, where six out of nine companies are mainly in foreign ownership and
manage 70 percent of insurance assets.
Ahtisaari’s plan also demanded further privatisation of publicly owned
enterprises (POEs) and socially owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Kosovo Trust
Agency (KTA). The international members of the Board of Directors have the
power to suspend decisions of the KTA, and the two largest international
donors to the KTA have the right to attend meetings as observers.
Already, the KTA has sold off hundreds of POEs and SOEs whose origins lie in
the Tito regime.
By June 2007, the KTA had transferred 510 SOEs to new companies (NewCos) and
sold them off to investors in a competitive bidding process. Many workers
have been sacked or forced to accept minimal compensation, and the whole
process has been mired in accusations of corruption.
The Ahtisaari plan also prescribed the structure of Kosovo institutions,
most of which will have to have members of the “international community”
sitting in them. The government will consist of 12 ministers and the
Assembly of 120 members apportioned by ethnicity in a situation where many
in the minority population have been driven out or live behind barricades
and razor wire. There will be a 21-member Commission to draft a constitution
and a Constitutional Court composed of nine judges, three of whom will be
appointed by the president of the European Court of Human Rights. The Kosovo
Judicial Council will have 13 members, 2 of whom will be from the
“international community” and oversee the appointment of judges. A new
Kosovo Security Force (KSF) will be established consisting of no more than
2,500 lightly armed active members and 800 reserve members whose main job
will be restricted to crisis response, explosive ordnance disposal, and
civil protection. Kosovo will also establish a Civil Aviation Authority
(CAA) to regulate civil aviation activities.
Acting as Kosovo overlord will be an International Civilian Representative
(ICR), “double-hatted” as the EU Special Representative (EUSR), who will be
appointed by an International Steering Group (ISG) comprising France,
Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union,
European Commission, NATO and Russia. The ISG will have sole power to decide
when the ICR’s work is done. Two days before Kosovo declared independence,
Pieter Feith, a former political advisor to NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was
appointed ICR/EUSR and Fletcher Burton, former US consul general in Leipzig,
Germany, was appointed his deputy.
The ICR has powers to enforce the Ahtisaari plan, including the authority to
overturn laws adopted by Kosovo authorities and ratify the appointment of
public officials and remove them. In addition, the ICR will appoint directly
certain state officials including the auditor-general, the director-general
of the Customs Service, the director of tax administration, the director of
the Treasury, and the managing director of the Central Banking Authority of
Kosovo. The Assembly may not formally approve the Constitution until the ICR
has certified it.
The Ahtisaari plan also called for a European Security and Defence Policy
Mission now created as the Eulex mission to “monitor, mentor and advise on
all areas related to the rule of law” and a NATO-led International Military
Presence (IMP), which will absorb the 16,000 NATO troops currently in
Kosovo. The IMP has the power to “use all necessary force where required and
without further sanction, interference or permission.” The IMP will provide
protection to the Serb minority and religious monuments, oversee the
formation of the KSF and dissolution of the Kosovo Protection Corps, largely
a fire-fighting force composed of former members of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. The IMP will be able to take over CAA functions and re-establish
military control over the airspace if necessary.
The plan also dictates the structure and powers of municipalities,
educational institutes and the police force. It also demands Kosovo pay its
share of the external debt, and if an agreement cannot be reached, the ISG
will nominate an international arbitrator whose “debt allocation shall be
irrevocable.”
Politicians and officials from Kosovo and the West have declared that all
this is necessary to ensure a peaceful transition to independence and
provide a stable environment for investment and membership of the European
Union. However, the new ICR/EUSR Feith told the Dutch newspaper NRC
Handelsblad, “Expectations are high.... People expect that their quality of
life and economic circumstances will improve rapidly” and warned, “Neither
the EU nor the Americans will be able to fulfil their high expectations.”
Kosovan economist Ibrahim Rexhepi adds, “We must get rid of the illusion
that independence will bring tonnes of dollars into our streets.... The
economic crisis is likely to continue. To restart the metallurgy, food
industry and energy (sectors) takes time and a lot of investment.”
Even to dignify Kosovo with the term country, let alone one that is
independent, makes a mockery of the term. Kosovo has a population of about 2
million people and covers an area of 10,887 square kilometres, or 4,203
square miles. It has one of the most underdeveloped economies in Europe,
with a per capita income estimated at US$2,328 in 2004.
The US state of Connecticut would make a more viable country. It is bigger,
is not landlocked and has a population of 3.4 million. Its per capita income
was US$47,819 in 2005, more than 20 times that of Kosovo.
Kosovo is almost entirely dependent on production outside its borders. It
exports less per capita than any other country in Europe—just €77 million.
Although analysts have made much of an increase in private sector activity,
non-housing private investment stood at just €284 million in 2006, and it is
dependent on scrap-metal recovery and geared to satisfying the consumer
needs of the international officials and Kosovan elite.
After nine years of UNMIK occupation, little has improved for the vast
majority of Kosovo’s population, and in many respects it has worsened.
Nearly 80 percent of the population have experienced a decline in living
standards since 2003. More than half of Kosovo’s inhabitants are unemployed,
and real wages are stagnant. Those that have work receive an average €220
(about US$320) per month. More than a third of the population live on less
than €1.50 per day. Attempts to raise pensions and wages have been blocked.
Those that are better off rely on remittances from relatives working abroad.
Poverty is so widespread and all-encompassing that, somewhat ironically, the
province has the lowest levels of inequality in Europe. But the gap between
the richest and poorest is growing.
Little wonder that there was a record low turnout in last year’s
elections—43 percent, down from 80 percent in elections soon after the
Kosovo war—indicating a staggering decrease in support for the political
parties installed after 1999.
Back in 1999, after the Western powers backed by various liberals and
radicals had thrown their support behind demands for self-determination for
Kosovo and the NATO bombing of Serbia, the World Socialist Web Site warned
in “After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War,” “The bombing
of Yugoslavia has exposed the real relations that exist between imperialism
and small nations.”
The statement continued, “The great indictments of imperialism written in
the first years of the twentieth century—those of Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg
and Hilferding—read like contemporary documents. Economically, small nations
are at the mercy of the lending agencies and financial institutions of the
major imperialist powers. In the realm of politics, any attempt to assert
their independent interests brings with it the threat of devastating
military retaliation. With increasing frequency small states are being
stripped of their national sovereignty, compelled to accept foreign military
occupation, and submit to forms of rule that are, when all is said and done,
of an essentially colonialist character.”
Nearly a decade later, this prognosis has proven correct. Not only has
Kosovo’s creation been carried out in violation of any concept of national
sovereignty for Serbia, but in no sense can what has been created be
considered a sovereign entity in its own right. Rather, Kosovo is being used
as a pawn in the Great Power rivalries between the US, Europe and Russia,
with terrible consequences for all the peoples of the Balkans, irrespective
of their ethnicity.
Kosovo A country without an economy?
http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1431
INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT (UK)
February 2008
Kosovo A country without an economy?
Adam Novak
Media coverage of Kosovo's recent Unilateral Declaration of Independence has
focused on the risk of conflict with Serbia, and the broader geopolitical
risks for unresolved separatist struggles in Bosnia and the former Soviet
Union.
Many in the international peace movement blame the western powers for the
violent break-up of former Yugoslavia. But Kosovo's independence reveals
another dimension of the west's criminal responsibility in the destruction
and re-colonisation of Eastern Europe since 1989. The newly independent
state of Kosovo has no economy to speak of, and its poor and undereducated
population are dependent on remittances from family abroad, smuggling, and
foreign aid.
Newly-independent Kosovo is Europe's poorest country. Its per capita GDP is
$1,300), which is about the same as Ghana or Burkina Faso, and only one
tenth of the level in the poorest countries in the European Union, Bulgaria
and Romania. Kosovo's subsistence economy remained virtually unchanged
throughout the eight years of UN rule, and the standard of living of its two
million people is still lower than before the Serbian government imposed
central control of the province in 1989.
How is such crushing poverty possible in the heart of Europe?
Kosovo was always the poorest part of former Yugoslavia, with a GDP of about
10% of that of Slovenia, the richest part of the federation. But Tito's
Yugoslav system ensured investments in infrastructure and industry, mass
education, and the creation of autonomous institutions, all for the first
time in Kosovo's modern history. In the late 1980s, Serbian nationalist
leader Slobodan Milosevic allowed Kosovo's small Serbian minority to seize
these resources and political power, provoking a massive movement of
non-violent resistance among the Albanian-speaking majority. Albanians were
expelled from industrial and civil service jobs, and most families survived
on a mixture of small-scale agriculture and remittances from family members
working abroad - mostly in Germany, Switzerland and the USA.
The NATO war against Serbia in 1999 destroyed most of the industry and
infrastructure, either through bombing, or by looting as the Albanian
population took their revenge on the Yugoslav regime which had humiliated
them. A United Nations administration was rapidly put in place, and ran
Kosovo as a protectorate of the western powers until the declaration of
independence in mid-February this year.
This UN administration completely failed to develop economic activities that
would lift the population out of poverty. So much western food "aid" was
dumped into Kosovo that most of the local farmers went bankrupt, and were
forced to kill their livestock or abandon their fields. A free trade regime
was imposed, and the Yugoslav Dinar replaced as legal currency by the German
Mark, (Kosovo therefore became a de facto part of the Eurozone on 1 January
2002). As a result, Kosovo joined the other EU protectorate, Bosnia, as a
marginal but easy-to-penetrate market for west European companies, while
local companies found themselves unable to compete, and separated from their
former markets in the rest of former Yugoslavia.
One of the paradoxes of Kosovo's de facto separation from Serbia in 1999 is
that - since free trade always benefits the strongest at the expense of the
weakest - Serbian companies have been able to capture a large part of the
Kosovo market, even providing the basic foodstuffs which Kosovo used to
export to Serbia. Serbia is now Kosovo's largest trading partner, while
Kosovo has failed to penetrate either Serbia or any of the other ex-Yugoslav
markets. Kosovo has a disastrous balance of payments; in 2007, Kosovo
imported 1.5 billion euros worth of goods, but exported only about 150
million euros worth.
While it did little to help the small farmers and workshops that dominate
the Kosovo economy, the UN administration expended considerable effort on
the introduction of a textbook-style neoliberal legal system, ensuring that
Kosovo's natural resources (coal, lead, zinc, nickel, farmland) and the
handful of remaining industrial and food-processing companies can be easily
acquired by western investors, that civil infrastructure can only be built
by public-private partnerships, and that private investors will be able to
take over the most profitable part of public services like health and
education.
The electricity sector illustrates the economic dilemma facing Kosovo. The
territory has persistent power cuts and 'brown-outs.' The electric company
produces 800 megawatts of electricity each day, about 80 percent of what is
needed. It can't afford to buy more from neighbouring countries, because,
during the years of conflict and UN administration, almost everybody stopped
paying, and many homes and business are connected to the power grid
illegally. Western advisors have proposed privatising the electricity
supplier, so that private companies will be responsible for enforcing
payment - and for cutting off poor people's heat and light. Foreign
companies are expected to build a modern coal-fired power station in
exchange to unlimited access to the estimated 15 billion tons of brown coal
lying in the earth beneath Kosovo. The EU will help create a regional energy
market to swap surpluses (Kosovo could import from Balkan countries with
hydroelectric power at high season, and export back to them when water
levels are lower).
It would be better for Kosovo to build up a state utility, ensuring that
non-renewable resources are used in the national interest, (The ground is
also though to contain 20 billion tons of lead and zinc and 15 billion tons
of nickel). Only a public utility could ensure that the painful move towards
enforcement of energy bill collection is socially responsible. In private
hands, the energy company may provoke a massive non-payment campaign, as
followed utility privatisations in South Africa and Bolivia. Investors are
therefore trying to get the government to guarantee payment for minimum
supply to local households, and to allow the privatised utility to double
production, but sell all of the extra capacity abroad, effectively ignoring
the needs of the people who the coal belongs to.
Having destroyed all forms of Yugoslav state or social ownership, the UN has
created a Kosovo state administration that lives from import duties, a sales
tax, and subsidies from the European Union. Independence will allow a merger
between the UN and national administrations, but with former UN employees
(ie most educated Kosovars who can speak English) used to much higher wages
than in the national administration, their integration is likely to increase
the corruption of the civil service, as they try desperately to maintain
their western lifestyle.
Regional warlords, bosses of the UCK militia which confronted the Serbs
during the NATO war, are responsible for the implementation of state
functions in most of the territory outside the capital, Prishtina. They also
control the most lucrative export industries, which are all illegal. Kosovo
is part of the main transit route for drugs entering the European Union, and
is a major element in the trafficking of women into the European sex
industry - some studies suggest that 30% of trafficked women worldwide are
controlled by Balkan gangs. Kosovo (and the neighbouring post-Yugoslav state
of Montenegro) are also the main centres of smuggling of tax-free cigarettes
into the EU. As many Kosovars observe cynically, all these areas of activity
depend on cooperation between Kosovar and Serbian gangs, and show that, at
the top, there is a willingness to forget the war and work together.
The central government will try to weaken the warlords by incorporating some
militias into a Kosovo army, which has already been promised to the US and
NATO for any missions abroad. This mercenary role (which harks back to the
Albanian role within the Ottoman empire) offers the west, particularly the
USA, a motivated and dependable force of pro-western Moslems, for potential
use in Afghanistan, Iraq, or in a future move against Iran.
Meanwhile, the population continues to get by as best it can, in an economy
dominated by small-scale trading, subsistence agriculture, smuggling and
crime. The largest employer is the public sector, the private sector
consists mainly of shops and most businesses employ only two or three people
at minimum wage. Remittances from emigrant workers make up about 40% of GDP.
One third of Kosovo's two million residents are under the age of 14, and the
birth rate is the highest in Europe. This means that landholdings are
getting smaller and smaller, and since the terrain is too hilly for
mechanisation, productivity is too low to compete with imported - Serbian
and EU food products.
The Serbian minority in Kosovo (about 10% of the total population) is the
worst off, because it has lost its former privileges, and lacks contacts to
Kosovo's new bosses. Many young Serbs have already emigrated to Serbia
proper, and the remaining population would probably do the same, if they
could find a buyer for their farmland.
In economic terms, the NATO-Serbia war and UN protectorate over Kosovo has
meant a decade of stagnation. In 1989, the GDP per capita in richest part of
Yugoslavia, Slovenia, was 10 time higher than in Kosovo. Today Slovenia is
part of the EU, with a GDP per capita 16 times higher than Kosovo, and five
times higher than Serbia.
Few voices have been raised against this outrageous failure of the west. And
yet, Kosovo has a small, but well educated and westernised middle class,
based in the civil administration set up by the UN mission, and the army of
private contractors and "Non-Governmental Organisations" which the west used
to reorganize the society and provide a social base for its continued
presence. Profoundly opportunistic, these middle class layers would prefer
to work for the foreign donors, who pay better and are less violent, but, as
independence approached, many have attached themselves to one or the other
of the warlord factions. Unlike the rest of former Yugoslavia, very few of
these NGO activists have tried to organize or represent the disadvantaged
majority in society, let alone resist the twin predators of neoliberalism
and mafia.
This westernized middle class has had a central role in articulating and
transmitting the dominant ideology in today's Kosovo, a mixture of
neo-liberal obsession with private enterprise, coupled with a xenophobic and
clannish ultra-nationalism that justifies aggression against Kosovo's
national minorities, and legitimizes the various illegal traffics. By
expelling Albanians from the civil service and socially-owned enterprises,
Serbia's "communist" regime definitively severed Albanian attachment to the
social benefits of the Yugoslav system, and accelerated a return to pre-WWII
self-reliance and clan-based solidarity.
Kosovo nationalism also includes a massive sense of entitlement, with most
people believing that the European Union should provide massive and
indefinite financial support to Kosovo, to make up for its failure to
protect Kosovars in the past.
While the EU can be expected to bankroll the Kosovo state in the foreseeable
future, this will be conditional on the economy remaining open to western
investment in land, industry and services, and on a partial reduction in
smuggling and criminal activities. The EU will also subsidise infrastructure
projects (there is still no decent road link between landlocked Kosovo and
the Albanian port of Durres), but it will be difficult for Kosovo firms to
win more than a minor share of these contracts. Outside mining and
electricity production, the only other potential investments are likely to
be in the footware and textile sectors - Turkish and Greek companies are
already investing in neighbouring Albania, and the Kosovo government can be
expected to set its minimum wage so low as to attract some of this business.
East European governments are already engaged in a 'race to the bottom,'
with successive rounds of cuts to tax and business regulations to attract
investors. Though it is hard to see how Kosovo can compete with neighbouring
Macedonia, which offers a 10% flat tax and VAT rate, with generous tax
holidays, excellent road and rail links to Europe, and lower levels of
corruption and extortion.
While the EU will insist that Kosovo opens its economy to western
investment, it will continue to prevent legal migration of Kosovars into the
EU labour market, creating an explosive social situation for the government
of the newly-independent country.
In any case, the economic benefits of integration into the European space
will be less than those provided to Kosovo during the Yugoslav period,
before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) took charge of Belgrade's
economic policy in the mid 80s.
Adam Novak is the former representative of the Canadian NGO Alternatives in
Eastern Europe.
March 01, 2008
Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=227&page=16
The Organiser (India)
March 1, 2008
News Analysis
Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
By Sandhya Jain
[Edited]
-Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of
the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body
promoted by multi-billionaire George Soros, who via
Karl Popper’s Open Society Institute played a stellar
role in the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet
Baltic Republics.
The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for
the US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign
wealth of weak nations for Western corporates. The ICG
connection with American politics is evident from the
presence on its Board of two key officials complicit
in bombing Kosovo — Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich
industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold
to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton,
favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took
over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the
entire region along with the security of Camp
Bondsteel, the largest American military base in
Europe.
The faux independence of resource-rich...Kosovo
symbolises the resurgence of old nineteenth century
Western imperialism.
The strategy is reminiscent of the ‘coloured’
revolutions in former Soviet Republics, and some
actors are the same. There are salutary lessons for
all non-Western nations from this latest assault on
international law.
Kosovo has become a Euro-American protectorate (read
colony).
As Australia exploits the oilfields of East Timor...so
the wealth of Kosovo shall be enjoyed by Euro-American
multinationals.
The trouble began in the early 1990s when the fall of
the Soviet Union triggered a Euro-American drive to
dismember Yugoslavia. In 1991, while the bombing of
Iraq grabbed world attention, America sponsored
separatist movements in the Yugoslav republics of
Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia; imposed crippling
economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, and pushed NATO
forces into the region.
US also started arming the right-wing UCK [KLA]
movement in Kosovo, though the latter was not a
Yugoslav republic, but part of the Serbian Republic
and civilisational fountainhead of Serbia.
It has a large Albanian...population, a relic of
Ottoman rule. Washington’s ‘free press’ played ball
with the Clinton Administration, carrying grisly tales
of Serbian genocide against Albanians in Kosovo.
American officials claimed 100,000 to 500,000
Albanians were butchered by Serbia. There were reports
of mass graves, reminiscent of Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction.
As angry Serbia resisted Western pressures, American
aggression began.
After 78 days of intensive bombings, including the use
of thousands of radioactive depleted-uranium bombs,
and immeasurable damage to civilian and industrial
targets, a besieged Yugoslavia crumbled.
On June 3, 1999, NATO occupied Kosovo. President
Slobodan Milosevic was captured and tried for crimes
against humanity at The Hague, where he died in March
2006, supposedly of a heart attack.
Serbians question the verdict, with some justice.
As the forensic teams of 17 NATO countries set up by
the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes arrived, American
lies were soon exposed.
The officials could unearth only 2,108 bodies in
Kosovo—these belonged to all nationalities, and most
were victims of NATO bombing; some fell to the war
between UCK and Serbian authorities.
Much like Saddam Hussein’s phantom weapons of mass
destruction, the teams could not find even one mass
grave, much less evidence of “genocide.” The report of
the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte,
was played down by a complicit American media.
....
Anyway, Kosovo’s Western invaders were unabashed and
placed her under a UN Mission in 1999, under Security
Council Resolution 1244. In reality, power vested with
the Mission of the European Union (EU).
NATO was security guarantor, and under its watch,
there was a hideous ethnic cleansing of Serbs and
Romas (gypsies); over 250,000 Serbs, Romas and other
groups fled.
Even Albanian Muslims had to flee, as nine years of
NATO rule led to 60 per cent unemployment and degraded
the region into a cesspool of the international drug
and prostitution trade.
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich
industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold
to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton,
favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took
over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the
entire region along with the security of Camp
Bondsteel, the largest American military base in
Europe.
So how did this twenty-first century colonial
enterprise succeed? The UN helped. In June 2005, the
then Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former
Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to
negotiate Kosovo’s final status. Like many
Euro-American politicians, he too had multiple
identities and loyalties.
Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of
the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body
promoted by multi-billionaire George Soros, who via
Karl Popper’s Open Society Institute played a stellar
role in the coloured revolutions in...former
Soviet...Republics.
The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for
the US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign
wealth of weak nations for Western corporates. The ICG
connection with American politics is evident from the
presence on its Board of two key officials complicit
in bombing Kosovo — Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
Coming from this background, Ahtisaari gave a
predictably slanted Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo
Status Settlement to the new UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon in March 2007.
It proposed an International Civilian Representative
(read viceroy) to be appointed by the US-EU to oversee
Kosovo, with the power to overrule any actions or
annul any laws by local authorities.
The ICR would control Customs, Taxation, Treasury and
Banking. Then, the EU would set up a European Security
and Defence Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO an
International Military Presence. These will control
foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all
courts and prisons. If this is independence, what is
slavery?
Russia has rightly pointed out that UN Security
Council Resolution 1244 kept Kosovo firmly in Serbia.
Kosovo’s guided independence reinforces...takes Europe
back (this time aided by US muscle) to treacherous
terrain in the Balkans. The stage is being set for a
fresh international denouement.
The Organiser (India)
March 1, 2008
News Analysis
Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
By Sandhya Jain
[Edited]
-Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of
the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body
promoted by multi-billionaire George Soros, who via
Karl Popper’s Open Society Institute played a stellar
role in the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet
Baltic Republics.
The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for
the US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign
wealth of weak nations for Western corporates. The ICG
connection with American politics is evident from the
presence on its Board of two key officials complicit
in bombing Kosovo — Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich
industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold
to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton,
favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took
over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the
entire region along with the security of Camp
Bondsteel, the largest American military base in
Europe.
The faux independence of resource-rich...Kosovo
symbolises the resurgence of old nineteenth century
Western imperialism.
The strategy is reminiscent of the ‘coloured’
revolutions in former Soviet Republics, and some
actors are the same. There are salutary lessons for
all non-Western nations from this latest assault on
international law.
Kosovo has become a Euro-American protectorate (read
colony).
As Australia exploits the oilfields of East Timor...so
the wealth of Kosovo shall be enjoyed by Euro-American
multinationals.
The trouble began in the early 1990s when the fall of
the Soviet Union triggered a Euro-American drive to
dismember Yugoslavia. In 1991, while the bombing of
Iraq grabbed world attention, America sponsored
separatist movements in the Yugoslav republics of
Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia; imposed crippling
economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, and pushed NATO
forces into the region.
US also started arming the right-wing UCK [KLA]
movement in Kosovo, though the latter was not a
Yugoslav republic, but part of the Serbian Republic
and civilisational fountainhead of Serbia.
It has a large Albanian...population, a relic of
Ottoman rule. Washington’s ‘free press’ played ball
with the Clinton Administration, carrying grisly tales
of Serbian genocide against Albanians in Kosovo.
American officials claimed 100,000 to 500,000
Albanians were butchered by Serbia. There were reports
of mass graves, reminiscent of Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction.
As angry Serbia resisted Western pressures, American
aggression began.
After 78 days of intensive bombings, including the use
of thousands of radioactive depleted-uranium bombs,
and immeasurable damage to civilian and industrial
targets, a besieged Yugoslavia crumbled.
On June 3, 1999, NATO occupied Kosovo. President
Slobodan Milosevic was captured and tried for crimes
against humanity at The Hague, where he died in March
2006, supposedly of a heart attack.
Serbians question the verdict, with some justice.
As the forensic teams of 17 NATO countries set up by
the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes arrived, American
lies were soon exposed.
The officials could unearth only 2,108 bodies in
Kosovo—these belonged to all nationalities, and most
were victims of NATO bombing; some fell to the war
between UCK and Serbian authorities.
Much like Saddam Hussein’s phantom weapons of mass
destruction, the teams could not find even one mass
grave, much less evidence of “genocide.” The report of
the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte,
was played down by a complicit American media.
....
Anyway, Kosovo’s Western invaders were unabashed and
placed her under a UN Mission in 1999, under Security
Council Resolution 1244. In reality, power vested with
the Mission of the European Union (EU).
NATO was security guarantor, and under its watch,
there was a hideous ethnic cleansing of Serbs and
Romas (gypsies); over 250,000 Serbs, Romas and other
groups fled.
Even Albanian Muslims had to flee, as nine years of
NATO rule led to 60 per cent unemployment and degraded
the region into a cesspool of the international drug
and prostitution trade.
The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich
industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold
to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton,
favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took
over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the
entire region along with the security of Camp
Bondsteel, the largest American military base in
Europe.
So how did this twenty-first century colonial
enterprise succeed? The UN helped. In June 2005, the
then Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former
Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to
negotiate Kosovo’s final status. Like many
Euro-American politicians, he too had multiple
identities and loyalties.
Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of
the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body
promoted by multi-billionaire George Soros, who via
Karl Popper’s Open Society Institute played a stellar
role in the coloured revolutions in...former
Soviet...Republics.
The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for
the US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign
wealth of weak nations for Western corporates. The ICG
connection with American politics is evident from the
presence on its Board of two key officials complicit
in bombing Kosovo — Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew
Brzezinski.
Coming from this background, Ahtisaari gave a
predictably slanted Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo
Status Settlement to the new UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon in March 2007.
It proposed an International Civilian Representative
(read viceroy) to be appointed by the US-EU to oversee
Kosovo, with the power to overrule any actions or
annul any laws by local authorities.
The ICR would control Customs, Taxation, Treasury and
Banking. Then, the EU would set up a European Security
and Defence Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO an
International Military Presence. These will control
foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all
courts and prisons. If this is independence, what is
slavery?
Russia has rightly pointed out that UN Security
Council Resolution 1244 kept Kosovo firmly in Serbia.
Kosovo’s guided independence reinforces...takes Europe
back (this time aided by US muscle) to treacherous
terrain in the Balkans. The stage is being set for a
fresh international denouement.
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