Update on “Non-Islamic” Kosovo

Update on “Non-Islamic” Kosovo

Update on "Non-Islamic" Kosovo by Julia Gorin [pundit/comedian] 10/26/06
	GORIN

A conspicuous Reuters headline in Tuesday's Washington Post: "Kosovo Islamic leaders join call for independence." This wouldn't have anything to do with helping form the eventual caliphate, would it?

Noooooooooo, according to the article, which desperately fishes out distinctions between Muslims and Kosovo Muslims. Note the language used: "In a rare foray into politics, Islamic leaders in Kosovo on Monday added their voice to the Albanian majority's call for independence from Serbia."

Contributor Julia Gorin Pundit, comedian and opinionist Julia Gorin is proprietor of www.JuliaGorin.com and is a contributing editor to www.JewishWorldReview.com..[go to Gorin index]

Nor is the following strident tone opposing any partition of the land or compromise with the Serbian infidel characteristic of Muslims either: "Marking the Eid al-Fitr feast in the capital, Pristina, the head of the Kosovo Islamic community, Mufti Naim Ternava, said independence for the breakaway Serbian province was the only acceptable outcome to talks expected to end within months."

Just in case we're wearing our thinking caps, the writer reemphasizes that "Islamic leaders have little influence in Kosovo and rarely venture into politics, contrary to Serbia's warnings that an independent Kosovo would become a hotbed of extremism in Europe."

Uh - huh.

Lest we start putting two and two together, the writer wants us to fear Christianity instead: "The Kosovo Albanians' secularism contrasts with the increasingly vocal role played by the Orthodox Church in Serbia's politics and society since the country emerged from 50 years of Socialist rule in the 1990s."

Then: "Most of Kosovo's two million ethnic Albanians are nominally Muslim, but they are proud of the territory's secular tradition. This year's Ramadan passed with little trace of piety."

As I noted Monday, it was a very busy Ramadan in Kosovo. Even if it's not up to snuff compared to the rest of the Islamic world, it was a more pious Ramadan than ever before. And next year it will be more so. And the year after that, more so. Just as this year it was more so than the previous year.

Don't believe me? Here's a weekend article from the online Turkish paper Zaman: "Turkish Troops, Kosovans Hand in Hand":

The Turkish battalion in Kosovo, operating under command of the NATO- led international Kosovo peace force, continues to help Kosovans in many ways. Turkish troops are admired by Kosovans for their help in areas such as health, food distribution and education and they also built and restored many facilities.

They restored the Kirik Mosque, built by the Ottomans when they conquered Kosovo, and built a park around it. Turkish troops also fixed cemeteries and built village roads. …They have built three mosques and three parks across Kosovo so far and organized annual circumcision feasts for needy and homeless children. During Ramadan, Turkish troops delivered dinner to Kosovans and provide stationery goods to students every year through liaison offices.

One wonders what the Turkish NATO troops are doing for the Auschwitz that the handful of Serb-populated enclaves of Kosovo have become.

Now, can you spot a tacit admission contained in the language of this sentence: "Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces accused of ethnic cleansing and atrocities against Albanians in a two-year war with guerrillas."

Drum roll, please. The shift in language to the disclaimer accused of marks the first time in seven years that a mainstream report from the region is backtracking on what had previously been represented to us as a given — that NATO bombs put a halt to actual ethnic cleansing and genocide by Serbs, period — no "accused of." Then again, Reuters is a British news service, and they know better about what did and didn't happen in the Balkans.

As well, Balkan-update dispatches used to start, more or less, like this: "Lifting themselves up from under the the ash heap of communism, the very secular and very peaceful, not-very-Muslim Albanians are rediscovering their roots and religion and have built a mosque to honor their peaceful religion…" Now, as we can see, these articles are starting with: "In a rare foray into politics, Islamic leaders in Kosovo…" Next they'll read, "In a rare foray into suicide bombings, the Islamists of Kosovo…" CRO

copyright 2006 Julia Gorin

Update on "Non-Islamic" Kosovo
http://www.theonerepublic.com/archives/Columns/Gorin/20061026GorinKosovo.html

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SCHRÖDER ON KOSOVO "The Goal Was Exclusively Humanitarian"

 SCHRÖDER ON KOSOVO "The Goal Was Exclusively Humanitarian"

SCHRÖDER ON KOSOVO

"The Goal Was Exclusively Humanitarian"

Schröder was only in government a few short months when the conflict in Kosovo hit the headlines. And it almost tore his government apart. The result was Germany's first post-war military engagement.

Gerhard Schröder was elected as German chancellor on October 27, 1998 -- and almost immediately he was faced with a foreign policy conundrum that threatened to tear apart his fledgling coalition.

Kosovo was burning. Serbs had entered the largely ethnic-Albanian province and were pursuing a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Having failed bitterly to stop the fighting during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the international community was eager to avoid a repeat. NATO was prepared to stop Serbia by force if necessary.

Germany, though, was only just making its first tentative steps onto the world stage. A hospital here, a humanitarian mission there -- that was when it came to German military presence abroad.

"It was fully clear to me," Schröder writes in his newly published memoirs, "that for many in the (Social Democratic) party -- and in society in general -- the idea that German soldiers, in this case fighter pilots, would intervene once again in a region that had suffered so much under German occupation during World War II was unbearable."

Nevertheless, Schröder writes, "I was convinced of the need for an active German contribution."

 

His foreign minister, Green Party head Joschka Fischer, didn't need much convincing. Even as his party had prided itself as being devoted to pacifism and peace, Fischer felt that German involvement was necessary, even if it was going to be a difficult pill for his party to swallow. Still, the two agreed it was a necessary step to take.

"Now, on the cusp of the 21st century," Schröder writes, "the real challenge seemed to me not just to douse the most recent fire in the Balkans, but to bring peace to the region.... The goal was exclusively humanitarian."

But the German public wasn't the only hurdle on the road to an involvement in Kosovo. Russia too, which traditionally throws its weight behind Serbia, had to be convinced to refrain from getting involved. Schröder is clear about who was responsible for this foreign policy coup:

"Moscow had for some time given the impression that it stood on the side of Belgrade out of a kind of pan-Slavic sentiment -- an alliance that the Serbian President Milosevic could use as a trump card. It was to the great credit of the German foreign ministry that it finally persuaded a hesitant Russia that it was in its own interest to withdraw its support for Belgrade."

The bombing campaign against the Serbs lasted from March until June of 1999, a relentless operation that took a special interest in the Serbian capital Belgrade. But not all went as planned. On May 7, a NATO bomb struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three journalists. The United States insisted the bombing had been a mistake -- the result of using outdated maps to plan the sortie. The Chinese, for their part, were outraged and convinced the bombing had been deliberate. Schröder had already been scheduled to make his first official visit to Beijing that month. He decided to go ahead with the trip.

"The visit was important to me; for me it was about apologizing to the Chinese government for the incident, openly, publicly, and as a representative of the alliance. Only in this way could China save face. And my impression of the meeting with the Chinese leadership was: My apology did not fail. There was a lot of coverage in the country's media about it. China maintained its neutral position in the Balkan conflict."

Finally, with the US and Britain publicly considering sending in ground troops, Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic finally realized that the game was up and agreed to a UN peace-keeping force in Kosovo. But even as world attention quickly turned elsewhere, the repercussions were large for Europe and for Germany.

The Kosovo engagement, "taught Europe the lesson that without the help of the United States, it was not in a position to solve these kinds of conflicts," Schröder writes.

It was a conclusion that the US came to as well. Schröder writes that the US made certain that its European allies were left with little doubt as to who was left as the world's only superpower after the end of the Cold War. "It sometimes didn't come across as very diplomatic," he demurs.

For Germany, though, the Kosovo War marked the acceptance of Germany's full participation in world affairs. In the early 1990s there had been some international concern about a newly reunited Germany and discomfort about the idea of German soldiers being deployed even on peace-keeping missions.

"Only a few thoughtful observers were able to rightly appreciate the transformation of German's self-perception following two world wars. Regarding the participation of German soldiers in military operations abroad, there was the internal view and the external view, which didn't match."

Paradoxically, though, it was a governing coalition of Schröder's center-left Social Democrats -- also known as "the reds" -- and the environmental, pacifist Greens which led Germany into its new era of international military engagement.

"Perhaps it was a trick of history that of all things a Red-Green coalition had to take over political power in order for Germany to live up to its responsibilities."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,444727,00.html

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Experts at Washington Forum Warn of Difficulties in Determining Kosovo's Future

Experts at Washington Forum Warn of Difficulties in Determining Kosovo's Future

VOA News

Experts at Washington Forum Warn of Difficulties in Determining Kosovo's Future

By Barry Wood

Washington
Tuesday, 24 October 2006

Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center Friday brought together a panel of experts to analyze the Kosovo status negotiations that may conclude in the next few weeks or months. There is no expectation that Kosovo's Albanians and Serbia will agree on Kosovo's future.

All of the six presenters suggested difficulties in the months ahead. After seven years of being a ward of the international community, moves are underway to determine the status of the still nominally Serbian province whose population is 90 percent ethnic Albanian.

Serbia rejects independence while the Albanians refuse any other option.
Kosovo is ruled by the United Nations and security is the responsibility of NATO led peacekeepers.

Veton Surroi, a member of Kosovo's negotiating team, warned of the danger of an ambiguous outcome-partial independence, in which Kosovo would remain a weak and ill-defined territory. Kosovo, he said, must become a fully independent sovereign nation. "It is for a practical reason. Only sovereign states assume responsibilities. And this needs to be a sovereign state that assumes responsibility for everything, for its security, etcetera, etcetera," he said.

Steven Meyer, a professor at the U.S. government's National Defense University, outlined the dangers that might result from independence.
"Kosovo is a small, crime-infested very poor (state) with high unemployment that has always been integrated into a much larger, broader regional market," he said.

There was concern about the plight of the minority Serbs who fear the Albanians and whose communities require protection from the NATO-led force.
Vladimir Matic of Clemson University said it would be a disaster if these 100,000 Serbs are forced out. Ross Johnson of the Hoover Institution said that is a real possibility as 70 percent of Kosovo Serbs say they won't live in an independent Kosovo.

"Because what is being said over and over again is that Serbs can not survive in an independent Kosovo. Well, if you believe that, and if it looks like Kosovo will become independent, then you draw the consequence and if you have the resources you leave," he said.

NATO in 1999 undertook a three-month long bombing campaign against the Serbs accused of ethnic cleansing in their fight against secessionist Kosovo Albanian rebels. This past February the United Nations launched status negotiations between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians. With those talks deadlocked, the UN chief negotiator has been authorized to present his own status proposal, which may be unveiled shortly.



                                   Serbian News Network - SNN

                                        news@antic.org

                                    http://www.antic.org/

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Constitution, Kosovo, and Media Misdirection

Constitution, Kosovo, and Media Misdirection

Inventing Irrelevance

by Nebojsa Malic

Constitution, Kosovo, and Media Misdirection On Saturday and Sunday, the citizens of Serbia are expected to vote in a plebiscite on the new constitution. In a rare display of political unity, the draft constitution was supported in the parliament by both the government and the opposition parties. However, remnants of the former DOS regime and the "non-governmental" organizations that support them have launched a campaign against the document; these Jacobins are assailing the constitution as "undemocratic," and particularly object to its preamble, which defines occupied Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia. This, rather than any other feature in the constitution, is the real point of contention between those who seek its passage, and those in Serbia – and elsewhere – who would like to see it fail. Inclusion of Kosovo in the new Serbian constitution complicates the efforts to force Belgrade into giving up the territory NATO occupied in 1999 on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists. What Bothers the New York Times The New York Times, a stalwart supporter of NATO's 1999 war and a pillar of Empire's Official Truth, launched a sloppy attack on the new Serbian constitution on Monday, calling the document "faulty." Despite mentioning "critics" of the constitution at least five times in the article, the Times' Nicholas Wood comes up with only two: Omer Hadzimerovic, a regional judge, and Goran Jesic, mayor of a small town near Belgrade. There is not a single mention of the constitution's loudest critics: DOS leftovers, such as Cedomir Jovanovic, Zarko Korac, Vladan Batic, Nenad Canak, and their micro-parties; or the Western-backed "human rights" groups and quasi-NGOs that endorse their political agendas. It's impossible to verify some of the claims the unnamed "critics" are making. The text of the proposed constitution is publicly available (found here, in Serbian, as a .pdf file), but the document itself has 206 articles (!) in nine sections. For the sake of comparison, the United States Constitution has seven articles and 27 amendments. Much of the language in the proposed Serbian constitution is vague, subject to external definition (what are "European values," anyway?), and rather than providing a cornerstone for future legislation actually depends on it to be functional. In short, it's a constitution of a decidedly modern, social-democratic welfare state, whose guiding spirit was not God, John Locke, or even Serbian tradition, but the bloated bureaucracy of the EU. None of these bother the New York Times much, though. This part does: "Whereas the province of Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbian territory, with essential autonomy within the sovereign state of Serbia, and that this position of the Province of Kosovo and Metohija obligates the government to protect and represent the national interests of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija, in all its internal and external political affairs…." Given that the adoption of the constitution would cause new elections in Serbia and make the surrender of Kosovo an act of treason, the Times' claim that the constitution "will not have any effect on Kosovo's future" is not a statement of fact, but rather wishful thinking posing as such. "My Albanian Friends" The tough talk about the constitution's irrelevance and independence's inevitability seems calculated to soothe the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, who are growing increasingly frustrated that their main political objective has not been achieved for over seven years, despite overwhelming Imperial support. In the past, they've taken that frustration out on the few Serbs who survived their ethnic cleansing in 1999. Now that most Serbs inconveniently live in barbed-wire enclosures guarded by NATO troops, they are targeting the UN and even NATO occupiers directly. AFP reported last Friday that "a U.S. soldier from the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) was assaulted and injured by three civilians" at a gas station in Urosevac. As befits every other act of violence in Kosovo over the course of NATO occupation, the perpetrators were not identified. But as the mainstream media so helpfully reminds us daily, "ethnic Albanians are the overwhelming majority in the province." Perhaps this is what motivated Frank Wisner, U.S. envoy to the Kosovo talks, to appeal to "my Kosovar Albanian friends" (AFP ) not to attack the Serbs during the referendum this weekend. Speaking during his visit to Pristina on Wednesday, Wisner assured the Albanians that "few of us have any doubts what final status means," and that: "What happens to you is a Kosovar matter and an international matter. It's not a matter of Serbian sovereignty, which changed when the UN agreed on [Security Council Resolution] 1244." And yet the Resolution that Wisner mentions says this: "Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2…." (emphasis added) The FRY was succeeded by the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, of which Serbia was the sole successor when Montenegro seceded this spring. So yes, Mr. Wisner, this rather is a matter of Serbian sovereignty. The Curious Incident of Mufti Naim Perhaps the most bizarre instance of misdirection, however, has to be a Reuters report by Fatos Bytyci from this Monday. Mr. Bytyci and his editors thought it newsworthy that Mufti Naim Ternava, top Muslim cleric in Kosovo, told the believers at the ceremony celebrating the end of Ramadan, that "independence … was the only acceptable outcome" of the status talks. According to Reuters, this represented a "rare foray into politics" by the Islamic clergy in Kosovo. Had Bytyci and Reuters stopped there, it would have been an interesting news item: even the Muslim religious leaders, normally politically inactive, endorse independence. Fair enough. But the story also included the following passages: "The Kosovo Albanians' secularism contrasts with the increasingly vocal role played by the Orthodox Church in Serbia's politics and society.… "Nationalists in the Church and political elite in Belgrade have tried to play up the Islamic angle to block Kosovo's bid for independence, warning of al-Qaeda infiltration and Muslim radicalization in Europe." Are Bytyci and Reuters trying to say that religious extremism was not a factor in the destruction and desecration of over 100 churches and monasteries during the occupation? Or that in the "secular" occupied Kosovo, hundreds of new mosques have not been built, and that fewer "secular" Albanians wear Wahhabi beards and headscarves, rather than more? Yet somehow, it's the Serbs who are to blame for somehow taking their besieged religious heritage seriously. Besides, if Islam matters so little in Kosovo Albanian society and politics… why is the statement of Mufti Naim so newsworthy, then? Just like the Empire, Reuters wants to have it both ways. Self-Deception After years of being used to groveling sycophants in Belgrade, the Empire is finding out that its planned imposition of Kosovo's separation is getting more difficult by the day. The pesky Serbs, who were supposed to follow orders and wallow in manufactured guilt over fabricated atrocities, have refused to play their part in the show. Unable to deal with Belgrade's newfound "intransigence," the Empire is putting out incoherent ramblings, from the New York Times' attack on the new constitution to Frank Wisner's misinterpretations of UNSCR 1244, in an effort to persuade both itself and the Albanians that the plan is on track, and "everything will be just fine." Except it isn't, and it won't.

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=9918

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