In defense of the Serbs

In defense of the Serbs

Posted By Michael Dobbs Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - 12:25 PM Share

 

The off-and-on war crimes trial of Ratko Mladic got underway again this week in The Hague after a month-long summer break. As the prosecution outlines its case, I am planning a series of posts that will attempt to explain the mindset of the former Bosnian Serb military commander. By way of introduction, I want to look at the terrible war in the former Yugoslavia from the viewpoint of the Serbs, widely viewed in the West as the aggressors.

My focus in this blog has been the crimes of a single individual, and in particular Mladic's decision to kill or deport the Muslim population of Srebrenica in July 1995, which has become the centerpiece of the genocide charge against him. While I have inevitably talked a lot about Mladic's crimes against Bosnian Muslims, I do not mean to imply that Serbs were the only people committing war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, or that Serbian leaders were exclusively responsible for the war. 

In fact, Serbs had some perfectly legitimate concerns both prior to and during the war that are often overlooked by western commentators who have painted an excessively black-and-white picture of the conflict. Foremost among these concerns was the security and rights of some two million Serbs living in the breakaway republics of Croatia and Bosnia. The terrible atrocities committed against Serbs in both Croatia and Bosnia during World War II by Croatian Ustashe remained fresh in the minds of many Serbs, stirred up by the poisonous propaganda of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Looking back at the start of the Yugoslav wars two decades later, I am struck by a contradiction in western policy to the former Yugoslavia. Europe, supported by the U.S., recognized the independence of the breakaway republics. In other words, the borders of the multi-ethnic state that resulted from the Versailles conference decisions of 1919 (see photograph above) were not inviolate. On the other hand, the international community (in the form of the Badinter commission set up by the European Union) also decreed that the borders of Croatia, Bosnia, and the other republics could not be changed simply because a minority wished to secede. 

The practical effect of these decisions was that Croats and Muslims were given the right to secede from Yugoslavia, but Serbs did not have the right to secede from Croatia or Bosnia. The delicate ethnic balance sanctioned by the Great Powers after World War I and enforced by Marshal Tito (a Croat) in the four decades after World War II was upset. 

For what it is worth, my own personal view is that the breakup of Yugoslavia was inevitable, just as the breakup of the Soviet Union was inevitable. On the other hand, the United States and Europe (the nations that created Yugoslavia in the first place) should have been much more vigorous about establishing and enforcing rules for the breakup that guaranteed minority rights.  

To use a phrase attributed to the French statesman Talleyrand, leaving two million well-armed Serbs in other people's republics was "worse than a crime." It was a gross error of political judgment.

Up next: Serbs were also victims

http://dobbs.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/22/in_defense_of_the_serbs

My response to Mr. Sanders who wrote, "Kosovo: Our forgotten conflict. (Stella)

To all,

 

This is my response to Mr. Sander's Kosovo: Our forgotten conflict.

http://www.elpasoinc.com/southwestsenior/columns/ac_sanders/article_ce0595ac-da86-11e1-b58f-0019bb30f31a.html

 

"Slobodan Milosovic and his Christian Serbian cohorts instigated most of this ethnic cleansing – hardly what Jesus had in mind while hanging on a cross."

I do not expect to hear anything from The El Paso Southwest Senior nor from Mr. Sanders.

Stella

 

(Message to the editor(s).  I copied the email address for Mr. Sanders that was at the end of his commentary, acsanders@acsandersiii.com. but I received it back as not being a valid address.  Please advise.  I would like a copy of my letter/opinion to go to Mr. Sanders.

 

Thank you.

 

Stella Jatras

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The El Paso Southwest Senior

 

Letter/Opinion to the Editor(s)

 

12 August 2012

 

The following Letter/Opinion is addressed to Mr. Sanders and your readers,

 

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Dear Mr.. Sanders,

 

I just read your "Kosovo: Our forgotten conflict," of 30 July. As the wife of a career military officer, I can appreciate your attempt to tell of the complex problems faced my our military in carrying out our nation's policies. No, Mr. Sanders, Kosovo is not a foregotten conflict for those of us who agonize every day at the injustice perpetrated against the Serbian people.  Although I am not Serbian, I have followed and written about the tragic events in Kosovo in one of the most disgraceful periods in American history brought on by a president, William Jefferson Clinton, who embarrassed our country with his immoral peccadilloes.  Clinton needed to take America's mind off his affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter. What better way than to foment a nasty civil war and at the same time appease the Muslim world by siding with the Bosnian/Kosovo Muslims against the Christian Serbs?

 

If Slobo and his "Christian" Serbian cohorts (written as though "Christian" is a dirty word,)  were responsible for instigating most of the ethnic cleansing, then please answer the question:  "If the Serbs ethnically cleansed Kosovo Albanians, as has been claimed, then why are the Kosovo Albanians over 90 percent of the population and the Serbs, who were once the majority in Kosovo, their Jerusalem, fewer than 10 percent?"  

 

Furthermore, you left a little bit of history out of your Kosovo commentary.

 

You wrote:  "Muslims in Kosovo are not radical Islamists, though radical terrorist do make sojourns into the area to recruit and rev up support for the movement. "  Nowhere in your article do you identify the "radical terrorist" as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an army that was described by Special Envoy Robert Gelbard as "I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists," an army that was trained in bin Laden's terrorist camps, but then perhaps you don't consider the KLA as an army that is dealing in sex slavery, prostitution, murder, kidnapping and drugs as not being terrorists..

 

You also wrote: "The mission seems to be threefold. The peacekeeping forces try to prevent "Christian" Serbs crossing south of the Ibar River and harassing the Muslims in Kosovo.  Harassing the Muslims? Were they to do nothing when Serbian priests were beaten and murdered and Serbian nuns raped, when little old Serbian ladies were especially targeted by being drowned (in bathtubs) by Albanian mobs or when Albanian mobs broke down a gate before shooting the elderly Serbian grandmother twice through the chest?  "They then threw her body on to a dung heap and covered it with hay." 

 

At one time there were 80,000 Serbs who lived in Pristina.  Today, according to NATO Major General William Nash,  there are fewer than 200 Serbs living in Pristina, mostly elderly living in two building complexes too terrified to go out to look for food without being escorted by NATO troops for fear of being beaten or killed by the "Muslim" Albanian mob. 

 

You mention Kosovo as meaning "black birds."  Are you even familiar with the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 when 72,000 "Christian" Serbs donned their finest, after being blessed, to face their traditional Islamic enemy, the Turks,  to protect their "Christian" Kosovo?  Should this not tell you that the Serbs were in Kosovo long before the Albanians crossed over illegally into Kosovo and that American foreign policy ceded Serbia's Kosovo to a bunch of Albanians thieves who had stolen their land?

 

Oddly enough, nowhere do you mention the fact that the PM of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci has been implicated (by former Chief Prosecutor of ICTY Carla del Ponte - hardly a friend of the Serbs) of harvesting the body parts of young Serbian soldiers.  As del Ponte writes in her book, "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals,"  that "The victims, deprived of a kidney, were then locked up again, inside the barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source, pleaded, terrified, to be killed immediately,"  Is this not horrific enough for you or did  the horror just slip your mind because it wasn't important enough. 

 

If "troops are also responsible for protecting Christian holy sites in the Muslim territory," they haven't done such a good job considering over 200 churches, some going back to the14th century  have been destroyed, and as journalist Robert Fisk wrote in 1999, 'Nato turns a blind eye as scores of ancient Christian churches are reduced to rubble." Many of those churches had survived a 500 years of Ottoman Turkish occupation

 

I could give you example after example regarding the lies that have been told by the pro-Bosnia/Kosovo media to make sure that the Serbs were the bad guys and the Kosovo Albanians mobs were the good guys, such as the Trepca mine massacre, accusing the Serbs of killing 700 Kosovo Albanians in 1999, cutting their bodies up and grinding them into little pieces and then throwing them down the mine shaft - and guess what!  Daniel Pearl (who gave his life for the truth) exposed the report in The Wall Street Journal as being a hoax!  Imagine that!  But frankly, I doubt it would make any difference because you, as so many others lifke you, have made up your minds that it was Slobo who was the instigator of the whole bloody mess in Kosovo -   This charge reminds me of when columnist Don Feder wrote in his "West Haunted by Balkan Blunder," that "Slobodan Milosevic has been charged with complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.  Before the travesty is over, he will doubtless be convicted of running the rail line to Auschwitz." 

 

You wrote:  "Slobodan Milosovic [sic] and his Christian Serbian cohorts instigated most of this ethnic cleansing – hardly what Jesus had in mind while hanging on a cross." A disgraceful and ugly reference to Jesus hanging on a cross and to the "Christian" Serbs.  

 

Furthermore, Mr. Sanders, for someone who thinks he knows so much about Slobodan, you could have at least spelled his name correctly.

 

Finally, Sir, you refer to "radical Islamists."  What is a "non-radical" Islamist?  I urge you to learn more about the Koran, Mohammed and the true nature of Islam.  Robert Spencer's book, "The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the Worlds Most Intolerant Religion." is a good place to start.

 

Stella L. Jatras

 

To the editors(s).  If you would like a brief bio of me, I would be happy to furnish it for you. 

NATO War Against Yugoslavia Based On Lies

 

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_10/NATO-war-against-Yugoslavia-based-on-lies/

Voice of Russia
August 10, 2012

NATO war against Yugoslavia based on lies
Timur Blokhin and Iovanna Vukotic

Germany joined the war against Yugoslavia under the pretense of fabricated facts. The sensational confession of German policeman Henning Hentz, who served in the OSCE in Kosovo in the 1990s, confirmed that.

The reason here is that photographs taken by Hentz in late January 1999 were used by then-German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping to justify the immediate interference of NATO in the Kosovo conflict. He presented the photographs of militants killed in Rugovo as photos of innocent Albanian victims.

What did really happen in Kosovo in late January of 1999, several months before NATO launched its operation against Yugoslavia?

According to Serbian sources, more than two dozen Kosovo Liberation Army terrorists were killed in Rugovo, while the Western mass media insisted that at least nine of them were civilians. Particularly, the daily New York Times wrote with the reference to a local field commander that there were only four KLA militants in the village and he knew nothing about other people. On January 29 OSCE mission representative Henning Hentz was in Rugovo. He shared his impression of the visit with Voice of Russia correspondent Iovanna Vukotic, which gives a real picture of what happened. He said that this had nothing to do with the killing of Albanian civilians.

"We discovered 25 bodies, including 11 in a bus and some others near the vehicle. Several other bodies were laying in a barn which was used as a garage. The territory around the barn was covered with snow but there were no tracks. I thought that the bodies were brought there from another location and, most likely, a day before the clash between Serb police and KLA militants," Henning Hentz said.

At the time, German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping showed only some of the photos taken by Henning Hentz and for some reason said those were taken by a German officer. He deliberately ignored the photos that clearly showed the dead bodies of KLA militants. So, Scharping managed to convince the public that "bad guys" or Serbs were again killing innocent Albanians and provoked a wave of refugees, says Hentz.

"For Germans, this meant that they would be involved in a military operation for the first time after the Second World War. My impression is that the situation in Kosovo at the time was exaggerated. When I visited Kosovo, there was no necessity for Albanians to leave their homes en masse. A real exodus started with the beginning of the bombing. A major part of the report on the Kosovo situation was exaggerated and was always against Serbs," Henning Hentz added.

Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was used as a pretext for bombing Yugoslavia. And the incident in the village of Rugovo shows once again that the PR campaign against Belgrade was organized using obvious forgeries.

Reportedly, NATO started thinking about an invasion after the killing of 40 civilian Albanians in Racak. However, experts who studied the forensic reports concluded that there was no evidence proving that the killed were civilians, and that they were killed by Serbian servicemen.

This technology is being used even now. For example, photos taken in Iraq in 2003 are used in news broadcasts to show the deaths of Syrian civilians. The dramatic effect is achieved by using photo editing programmes. For example, a Syrian family walking in the streets of an ordinary city is shown in a photo against a background of ruined buildings. Ultimately, they achieve the necessary effect. In the 19th century, the prominent Russian gnomic (pseudonymous) poet Kozma Prutkov said: If you read the world buffalo on a cell of an elephant, please, do not believe it.

Truly, in the 19th century, there was no high-tech to make a fly from an elephant as well as genocide from contract killing.