.........................
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/mb/048.shtml
Serbianna
Views & Analysis Monday, April 24, 2006
Kosovo: The emerging terror state
By M. Bozinovich
Back in February, we spoke with Julia Gorin, a contributing commentator for the Jewish World Report and Front Page Magazine, about Kosovo and its links with the Islamic terror. The conversation eventually lended a front page cover for the Belgrade independent Weekly Telegraph, abut here we are transmitting it in its original, long format.
Why does the US have an ambiguous position on the Kosovo status: it publicly supports a negotiated solution, while privately numerous individuals involved in those negotiations support independence? What does that mean?
Bush does want a negotiated solution, but he also has to choose his battles carefully these days. In Congress, there are Democrats and Republicans who have been supporting an independent Kosovo, for whatever reasons, since 1999 and they aren't about to admit that they were/are wrong. The rest, including the old Clinton cronies pushing for independence, as well as the State Dept., would like to take the path of least resistance--namely, sweep Clinton's screw-up (Kosovo) under the rug and get it out of our hair. After all, it's a lot safer to screw over the Serbs than to anger the Muslims. So our policy is two-faced.
How much is the question of Kosovo's status the reflection of relations between the US and EU and the American desire to dominate the Balkans?
Despite how it may appear, the United States is not seeking to dominate the Balkans. The corrupt Clinton administration involved us in Kosovo mostly because they didn't want Monica Lewinsky to be the last thing people remembered about his presidency. If anyone lied to get us into a war, it was Clinton who claimed that the Serbs had killed 100,000 Albanians and expelled another million. (The American public is of course culpable for going along with it.) The Bush administration's interests in the Balkans have mostly to do with the war on terror. As for Europe-which usually creates its own problems-Clinton's America defecated in the middle of it and made it Europe's problem to clean up. Now, of course, the situation is so far gone that it's very difficult to straighten out or turn back. On top of that, the Balkans are a mystery to almost every American, including the intelligentsia, who stay away from the subject like a plague. Even conservatives, who support the war on terror and the war in Iraq, have a blind spot and an apathy when it comes to the Balkans, as well as to the fact that a lot of the terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere are connected to the Balkans. The lack of commentary, due to the culpable media's blackout on this topic, is largely responsible for the ambivalence you're observing.
Do you think US is supporting the policy of Greater Albania in the Balkans?
Before you can "support" a policy of a Greater Albania, you'd have to first understand that the Albanians' goal is a Greater Albania. But most in the United States don't understand it and they don't care enough to try. The Bush administration's acts of omission--coupled with the Clinton administration's aggressive acts of commission--tacitly support it. Members of the Clinton administration act with intent, knowing they are creating a Greater, Islamic Albania but hoping that voters here don't notice. And they won't.
Since 1999, we saw the departure of the last remaining Jewish family out of Kosovo. Why is Washington shy at actually doing something to protect the minorities in Kosovo?
Washington knows that setting standards for Albanians before independence is unrealistic for this bunch, so if you say to them-as we did to the Palestinians-"You have to first stop the terror, and then we can talk independence," it's the same as saying, "No independence for you." While I believe that's exactly what we should do, the administration can't suddenly reverse course and say, "We are not supporting an independent Kosovo." There would be an uproar in Europe, since they're the ones who would have to deal with angry Albanians in addition to the problem Muslims they already have, and this could also mess up the coalition in Iraq. The administration is being badgered even over obviously legitimate actions it's undertaking-from Iraq to Afghanistan to Lebanon to Iran--so Bush isn't going to overtly say Bosnia and Kosovo are Islamic terror states. We're just going to quietly put the Balkan Islamists on our watchlist. Bush is doing what he can, under the circumstances.
We've woven such a tangled web in the Balkans, the conflict is so misunderstood by most, there is so much inaccurate "common knowledge," that it would take too much political capital to explain and say we got it wrong from the start. It's the media's job to raise awareness, and the media failed--purposely. There are only a few in the media who understand, and they're not powerful or mainstream journalists. Don Feder and I are the closest to the "mainstream", and neither of us has been able to push this issue to the fore. It's just very hard to talk about when it's not on people's radars, and all they've heard from every media source is opposite of what you're telling them.
Even when people hear that there are Kosovo/Bosnia connections to the London and Madrid bombings, no one connects the dots and thinks that maybe what the Serbs were doing in their own backyard was the same thing that we've gone halfway around the globe to do. To be fair, the average thinking American has been suspecting this since 9/11, but his suspicions are not reinforced anywhere in the media or by politicians, because no one dares look back.
Is there a misperception in the Jewish-American community about the true state of affairs in Kosovo and Bosnia? How can this misperception be cleared up?
Yes, unlike our Israeli counterparts, American Jews are as confused as everyone else. What's interesting, and what gives me some hope, is that there are independent documentary filmmakers popping up, doing movies like "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," and "Islam: What the West Needs to Know." The first one is a product of "Honest Reporting," which counters the international propaganda campaign against Israel, and the second one also has Jews involved. Both of these films touch on the fact that Bosnian Muslims fought for Hitler; the first shows Serbian churches being destroyed by Bosnian Muslims during the war in Bosnia, and the second (which you can read about at www.WhatTheWestNeedsToKnow.com) demonstrates with a map all the regions that have been falling to Islam-including how Greater Albania fits in (it mentions the bridging of Kosovo, Macedonia, Greece and Albania). Also, there is something called "Holocaust Museum Watch", which in at least one press release mentioned the Albanian SS Skanderbeg division and Bosnian Muslim SS Handzar division-and it faults the Holocaust Museum for not documenting or addressing the history of Islamic anti-Semitism.
With my article last year "A Jewish Albatross: The Serbs," I was trying to guilt my fellow American Jews into making some noise about this, before it's too late for Kosovo. I hope to write at least one follow-up article on this theme. I'm afraid that the only way to "clear up" the misperceptions is through a high-profile book. Because the pattern now is that even when it's widely reported that terrorist attacks originated in the Balkans, or that "we were suckers for the KLA", as one Washington Post article was titled (and there have been similar ones more recently), the press makes sure the subject has "no legs", as we say in journalism-meaning, that it won't go anywhere. So it's dropped like a hot potato to ensure that there will be no discussion and the subject never reaches a critical mass. In this way, the subject remains under the radar, and when we do hear anything at all about it, it's only when there is a good opportunity to support the view of Serbs as evil and everyone else in the Balkans as their victims.
Judea and Samaria, also called West Bank, are officially a non-sovereign Israeli territory. Kosovo is Serbian sovereignty. What impact will a decision to grant independence to Kosovo have on Israel?
What's interesting is that when Clinton attacked Belgrade on behalf of Albanians in Kosovo, the Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Sultan, commander of the allied Saudi troops during the first Gulf War, called on the US to do the same against Israel on behalf of Palestinians. Israel had a clear understanding of the situation in the Balkans. In fact, Axis Information and Analysis ( <http://www.axisglove.com/>; www.AxisGlove.com) mentioned in a December 2005 report that Israel secretly supported the Serbs during the Balkan wars (despite outwardly offering humanitarian aid to the Albanians, as they were pressured to do). In April 1999, Ariel Sharon visited the US and "called for an end to the fighting in Kosovo", stating that the KLA was being "supported by Iranian-backed terrorist organizations, and that an independent Kosovo would enable Islamic terrorism to spread throughout Europe." He also saw it as a dangerous precedent for the future possibility of Israel's Arab minority calling for autonomy. Aware of the parallels, Sharon asked American Jews to stop supporting the bombing of Yugoslavia.
As far as what impact a decision to sever Kosovo from Serbia will have on Israel, even though it does set a precedent, the Israeli conflict is old, with its own history, so not much can affect it. But many Islamic separatists who want to cut up other places into chunks are definitely emboldened by what they see in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How come Washington is not hawkish on eliminating al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Kosovo?
Everyone-the EU, U.S., NATO, the UN-is aware of the problem, and the terrorists are being hunted quietly, under the radar, so that the perception of Bosnians as victims remains. Publicly, politically and PR-wise, it's not going to help the current situation to suddenly accuse a country of fabricating a genocide. Especially with all the noise about Srebrenica, it would be almost impossible. How many people know that Srebrenica was not just a UN "Safe Haven"? The media won't tell you that Bosnian Muslims were using it as a base from which to launch attacks against Serbs. And when every Muslim is yelling about Srebrenica, it's hard to declare the "victims" a terrorist state and go all out on Bosnia. In general, with this war on terror, some battles are lower-key than others. But I don't have any inside information on the Bush administration; from what I can tell, however, it seems they are aware, things are being done, but a lot of it seems to be low key or covert.
But the truth of the matter is that the Muslim world has the West by the testicles. No one dares question what happened in Bosnia, for fear of worldwide rioting by Muslims. For the same reason, the Hague has to convict Milosevic regardless of the court's findings.
Nebojsa Malic put it very well in an August article: "Every time the Western powers clash with Muslims, whether at home or in Iraq, Afghanistan or another Muslim country, they crack the whip over Serbia. To show the world that their military interventions and intolerance are not driven by hatred of Islam and Muslims in general, they decide to help the Muslims of the Balkans."
Do you think Kosovo negotiations will precipitate tensions in the region and Albanian terrorism?
If the negotiations do not look to be heading toward the Albanian goal of an independent Kosovo, the Albanians will let the world know of their displeasure. They are committed to an all-out war to achieve their goal of an independent, Islamic Kosovo and they will be assisted by Islamic fighters from all over the globe, as they have been since the 1990's. What the Albanians did to Serbs, NATO and UNMIK in March of 2004 will pale in comparison.
This is why those who know that we screwed up--the State Dept., CIA, the old Clinton cronies still working behind the scenes through NGOs, and all the Congressmen who got Albanian money--are sweating to make sure that the terrorists just get what they want in the Balkans. This way, everything can get swept under the rug, and the American public won't find out the deadliness of that mistake and can continue to act like 1999 never happened. When the fighting does break out, the West will never be able to control it, but it will be interesting to watch how the press scrambles to keep a lid on it or twist the truth of the situation into even more of a pretzel.
Is there a hidden agenda behind the Islamic demand to mischaracterize Srebrenica as an Islamic genocide?
Absolutely. The Bosnians' mischaracterization (with journalists' help) of Srebrenica serves to deflect from the fact that the president of Bosnia during the wars, Alijah Izetbegovic, was a fundamentalist Muslim who had stated that "there can be no peace or coexistence between 'the Islamic Faith' and non-Islamic social and political institutions."
Izetbegovic was also a recruiter for the Nazi SS Handzar division which butchered Serbs and ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia during WWII. After he died in 2003, the ICTY revealed that he was being investigated for war crimes committed during the 1990s. Mischaracterizing Srebrenica also deflects from the Bosnian Muslims' actions during the 1990s wars which, as Balkans historian Carl Savich describes, included propaganda, staged massacres, and killing their own civilians to garner sympathy (e.g. the Markale Marketplace bombings in 1994 and '95).
On a more philosophical and humorous note, Muslims have always been jealous of the attention that Jews have gotten for their suffering (though, contrary to popular mythology, Jews are not thrilled that the Holocaust should be their defining historical event). The Muslims can't stand it that no one ever killed six million of them, when they have so many to spare--an event that would lend credence to their constant crusade promoting themselves as "victims". That's why they get so angry, for example, when Israelis kill only two or three Palestinians in the course of responding to suicide bombings. It's the agonizingly slow pace of this "genocide" that's killing them (which is why they're always padding the numbers of their dead, both in the Middle East and the Balkans). This also accounts for why they engineered the Bosnian "genocide" and the Albanian "genocide". They've since exported this successful strategy to the rest of the world, wherein they go about killing anything that moves, while claiming that Islam is under attack, which then "justifies" more killing.
If you were to change the American policy in the Balkans, what would you do?
The situation in the Balkans is currently so very in favor of the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims that only some major event could even begin to change world opinion on the region, and create an environment in which it is possible to change course. For example, the Palestinians have just blown their disguise completely by electing Hamas. The headlines read, "Hamas Election Victory Shocks World." Well, it didn't shock anyone who had a clear understanding of the region, and that the only Palestinian goal is the elimination of Israel. Hopefully, this major event "shocks" the world into a better understanding of the Palestinians. The Balkan Muslims would have to do something just as, or even more, "shocking" to get the world to start reevaluating the situation. Ultimately, the American policy in the Balkans should be the policy we established in our War on Terror after 9/11: You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. And the Bosnian and Albanian Islamists are not our allies in the War on Terror.
How do you see the outcome of Kosovo's status talks?
The Albanians will go to war if they do not receive an independent Kosovo. Understandably, the Serbs don't want to carve a chunk, especially the birth place of their national identity, out of their country and hand it over to Islamic terrorists. But the overwhelming international pressure is going to force them to do just that. Hopefully, between now and then, someone or something will prevent the official creation of another Islamic terrorist state in Europe.
