Patriarch PAVLE Obituary (S. Trifkovic in Orthodoxy Today)

 

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles-2009/Trifkovic-Obituary-Serbian-Patriarch-PAVLE-May-His-Memory-Be-Eternal.php

Obituary: Serbian Patriarch PAVLE

 – May His Memory Be Eternal

Srdja Trifkovic

Let us guard against inhumans, but let us guard even more against becoming inhuman ourselves. – Patriarch Pavle

When the man destined to become the 44th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church was conceived in the the winter 1913-1914, horses and steam moved the world. That world appeared ordered and stable. The calamities of the 20th century – two world wars, revolutions and civil wars, genocides and expulsions, and the suffering of tens of millions of Christian New Martyrs – could not be foreseen. In the Old World the Serbian nation, although divided into two small kingdoms and two mighty alien empires, the Habsburg and the Ottoman, appeared vigorous and full of hope for the future.

Shortly after "the lights went out over Europe," on September 11, 1914 (n.s.) – the Feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist – a boy was born to the Stojčević family in the village of Kućanci, in today's eastern Croatia. The family's ancestors came to the Turk-devastated borderlands of the Habsburg Monarchy with the Great Serb Migration of 1690 from Kosovo, the martyred Serbian province with which the future Patriarch's life was destined to be closely intertwined.

The weeks that followed the outbreak of World War I were a trying time for the Serbs in the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy: they were collectively blamed for the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo and subjected to mob violence and police persecution. For newborn Gojko's mother Ana, however, the main worry was the fact that the war was raging, the prices were soaring, and her husband Stevan was far away: he had left for America only months earlier in search of work.

In early 1917, just before the United States joined the fray and made the war truly global, Stevan Stojčević came back home – without a penny to his name – to die of tuberculosis contracted in the workshops and rented rooms of western Pennsylvania. A year later Ana remarried but died in childbirth soon thereafter. Gojko and his elder brother Dušan were left in the care of their paternal aunt who raised them as her own children. He was a sickly child unfit for farm work, but the aunt recognized his aptitude for learning and – although poor herself – endeavored to give him a good education.

After graduating from the Fourth Gymnasium (high school) in Belgrade young Gojko enrolled at the Orthodox Seminary in Sarajevo. During World War II, suffering from tuberculosis, he took refuge in the Holy Trinity monastery in Ovčar, in central Serbia. In 1944 he was given only three months to live. His recovery, miraculous in those pre-penicillin times, prompted him to take monastic vows in 1946 and assume the name of his favorite saint, Pavle (Paul)..

The Serbian Orthodox Church, which had a quarter of its shrines destroyed and a fifth of its clergy killed during World War II, was left in 1945 at the mercy of Tito's militantly atheist clique. Most of its property was confiscated immediately after the war, religious education was effectively banned, and the political cost of liturgical attendance was high, often prohibitive. Yet monk Pavle visibly thrived in those years, spiritually and intellectually. In 1954 he was ordained hieromonk. After completing postgraduate studies in Athens (1955-1957) he became archimandrite, and only months later elected the Bishop of Ras and Prizren. Bishop Pavle remained at the helm of that ancient diocese, which includes Kosovo and Metohija, for 33 years – until he was elected Patriarch in 1990.

The long decades of Tito's autocracy were a trying time for the Serbian Orthodox Church. Patriarch German, elected in 1958, had to strike a sensitive balance between the imperative of keeping his Church alive in an inherently hostile political environment and the necessity of establishing a workable modus vivendi with the communist regime. The dilemma, well known to the Russians, had a similar consequence in the misnamed "American Schism" (raskol) of 1963. The split soon spread from the United States to all other communities in the Diaspora. It caused deep divisions that left a lasting scar on the Serbian community as a whole. It is now known that the split was surreptitiously encouraged by the regime in Belgrade, and fanned by the divisive work of its agents infiltrated into the émigré ranks.

As the Bishop of Kosovo, Pavle faced tribulations that were of different nature but similar magnitude. In seeking to win over the Albanians of Kosovo during his wartime struggle to seize power, Tito promised them autonomy and duly proceeded to change the character of the province in their favor after the war. Over 100,000 Serbs were forced out of Kosovo by Albanian Quislings during World War II; incredibly, they were not permitted to return after 1945. An additional 200,000 Serbs left the province, often under duress, between the late 1950s and early 1980s. On the other hand, 200,000 Albanians from Albania settled on deserted Serbian farms after 1945. Their "cadres" took control of the local Communist apparatus. In 1948 the Albanians made a half of the population of Kosovo; by 1981 78 percent; and over 90 percent today.

By the 1970s Orthodox priests in Kosovo were routinely harrassed. Bishop Pavle himself was assailed by an Albanian while walking to the post office in Prizren, and slapped in the face by another at the city's main bus station. The authorities were invariably "unable" to identify the culprits, however, let alone to bring them to justice. Monastic properties were damaged or confiscated, well before the wave of KLA destruction unleashed by NATO in 1999. The biggest church in Metohia, in Djakovica, was demolished by the authorities to make room for a massive "Partisan" monument. The secessionist movement of the Albanians in Kosovo, derived from the logic of the Titoist order, eventually produced Slobodan Milosevic – the neo-communist quasi-nationalist. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991-1999 was the belated revenge of Tito and his ideological heirs.

Bishop Pavle was elected to the Throne of St. Sava in December 1990, on the eve of that disintegration. He did not seek the post but was chosen as a compromise candidate because neither of the two front-runners could secure the necessary majority in the Assembly. In the dark years that followed he would repeat many times that "there can be no interest, individual or national, which could be used as an excuse for becoming inhuman." As the former Yugoslavia descended into violence, he appealed on the faithful to pray not only for those of good will but for those of ill will, too, as "they are in an even greater need of salvation." When meeting the late U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann in 1991, he was asked what could America do to help him and the bChurch. He replied, without batting an eyelid, "Your Excellency, the most you can do to help us is not to do anything to harm us!"

This was not to be. Yugoslavia was a deeply flawed polity, and there could have been no serious objection to the striving of Croats and Bosnian Muslims to create their own nation-states. But equally there could have been no justification for forcing over two million Serbs west of the Drina River to be incorporated into those states against their will, and without any guarantees of their rights. Yugoslavia came together in 1918 as a union of South Slav peoples, and not of states. Its divorce should have been effected on the same basis. This is, and has been, the real foundation of the Yugoslav conflict ever since the first shots were fired in the summer of 1991. This political essence of the war has been systematically hidden, all over the Western world but especially in the United States, behind the portrayal of the Serbs as primitive ultranationalists who sought to conquer other peoples' lands. The most vehement such accusations, coming from Muslim and Croat sources, went wholesale into the media machine, Congressional resolutions, the pseudolegal fatuities of The Hague "tribunal," and finally into NATO's marching orders.

Sadly, there are many Serbs who have not followed Patriarch Pavle's instruction: "If we live as people of God, there will be room for all nations in the Balkans and in the world. If we liken ourselves to Cain, then the entire earth will be too small even for two people." But the systematic portrayal of the Serbs as demons, and the Muslims of Bosnia or Kosovo as innocent martyrs in the cause of multi-ethnic-cultural tolerance, was a crude exercise in the construction of postmodern quasi-reality. Patriarch Pavle was painfully aware of this fact, but decided to refrain from statements that could be construed as political. He remained silent even when the Croatian authorities demolished the Orthodox church in his native village, in which he was baptized in 1914. He was often criticized in the Western press for making appearances at official functions attended by Milosevic, even though the protocol and tradition demanded his presence, but in 1997 he also appeared, silently, at a rally demanding Milosevic's resignation.

Patriarch Pavle was deply pained by the Mammonic spirit that became dominant in Serbia in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: "I wish I could stand and beg outside the banqueting halls and other gathering venues of the rich, beg for our poor brothers and sisters and their children. We should actively shame those who sink into arrogant greed so openly, instead of expressing our anguish behind closed doors." His proverbial modesty was reflected in his use of public transport and dislike of chauffeur-driven cars. During the Assembly of Bishops in 2006 he walked our of the Patriarchate and saw a long line of shiny black Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW cars parked outside the building. "Who do these belong to?" Pavle asked his secretary. "Em, to the Bishops who came to the Assembly, Your Grace." "I only wonder," the Patriarch commented, "what would they have driven if they had not taken the vow of poverty…"

Serbia was blessed with several politically astute Patriarchs in some critical moments of its history, notably Arsenije III (Charnojevich) at the time of the Turkish wars and Great Migration of 1690, and Gavrilo (Dozhich) during World War II.

Patriarch Pavle belonged to a different tradition. He was a mystically prayerful monk, rather than a sanguine Prince of the Church. He was a Patriarch who blended, harmoniously, three key functions of his throne: that of the father, of the priest, and of the prophet. He understood, and lived, the legacy of Prince Lazar, martyred at Kosovo in 1389: "The Kingdom on Earth is but paltry and small; yet the Kingdom of Heaven is forever and knows no bounds.

 

Letter to LA Times written by Bill Dorich

 

Letter to the Editor

The Los Angeles Times

Re: Serbia's Orthodox Leader

Published on numerous Serbian websites

Dear Editor:

The Los Angeles Times demonized Serbian Patriarch Pavle, spiritual leader of the Balkans admired by more than 10 million Serbian Orthodox Christians. I never dreamed the Times would stoop to such appalling bad taste. Reducing the Patriarch to a political opportunist is beyond the pale. Did Carol Williams pen this disgusting obituary; it reeks of her brand of Serbophobia?

The Patriarch was the Bishop of Kosovo for two decades.  In 1989, a gang of Albanian teenagers led animals into the bishop's church to defecated on the alter.  They scribbled filthy Albanian words over the 13^th century frescoes then proceeded to nearly beat the bishop to death.  He was 75 years-old and remained in intensive care for 3 months nearly dying of his wounds.  Shockingly you omitted this Albanian violence from this obituary but utilized the space to call this holy man a Serbian "nationalist." Have you no shame?

When Communist dictator Tito granted Albanian "autonomy" in 1978, three Serbian churches and a monastery went up in smoke. Over 140,000 Serbs were forced to leave Kosovo.  Albanian authorities removed all Serbian books from schools and libraries and burned over 2 million volumes including numerous priceless 12^th and 13^th century manuscripts.

In 2004 during 4 days of Albanian violence, 32 Serbian Christian churches were razed along with the burning of 500 Serbian homes, right under the noses of 17,000 NATO troops, yet you place the blame for "ethnic wars" at the feet of this Patriarch.  More than 90% of the Serbs in Kosovo have been ethnically cleansed.  Your newspaper continues to omit the fact that 40% of the Albanians in Kosovo are illegal aliens who cross the border from Albania into Kosovo as easily as Mexicans who cross our border each night in San Diego.

Claiming that the Patriarch "struggled to rally international support for protection of ancient Serbian churches and monasteries that came under attacks" and then failing to inform your readers that Albanians destroy 151 ancient Serbian Christian churches reveals your immoral racism. Carol Williams has been a one-woman hate fest. Her disgusting duplicity is now crowned by this appalling obituary of the highest spiritual leader of the Serbian people… Is your editorial department proud of such unbridled bigotry?

Your obituary ignores more than one million Orthodox Christians in Los Angeles including 150,000 Serbs in Southern California. What a repugnant misuse of freedom of the press. The freedom you denied the Serbian people for the entire decade of the 1990s when the Los Angeles Times, like the New York Times, refused to publish one single article written by a Serbian journalist, author, scholar or political leader during these dismemberment Civil Wars in the Balkans. You were expert at muzzling tactics. Now blasphemy is part of your hate crimes.

When Patriarch Pavle visited Los Angeles in 1992, the first visit of a Serbian Orthodox Patriarch to this country and this city you gave him 62 words on page 11. Your staff ignored every invitation to interview this spiritual leader and to attend our Sunday High Liturgy at St. Steven Serbian Cathedral in Alhambra. You preferred to punish the Serbs in this community with collective guilt. This obituary is a disgraceful display of your continued demonization.  When will your editorial hatred be enough?

William Dorich

Los Angeles, CA 

The writer is the author of 5 books on Balkan history and music including his 1992 book, Kosovo. He received the Order of St. Sava, the highest recognition given to a layperson by the Holy Synod of Serbian Orthodox Bishops.

Balkan Shadow of Berlin Celebration

Pyotr ISKENDEROV

Balkan Shadow of Berlin Celebration

The celebration of the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is over. Tens of high-ranking foreign visitors, many of whom had nothing to do with the historical development at the time it took place, spoke about the enormous importance of the German unification and the symbolic significance of the event which put the final dot in the history of the Cold War. The truth, however, is that there are parts of Europe where the fall of the Berlin Wall is not regarded as a totally positive change since immediately upon the alleged completion of the bloodless Cold War Europe had to face a proliferation of real armed conflicts.

The widely held view is that the 1989 German unification opened the era of the demise of totalitarian regimes across the continent and ultimately made the creation of the united Europe possible. Numerous private conversations with the residents of the Balkans actually led me to a different conclusion. The disintegration of Yugoslavia — a process that cost thousands of lives - commenced only a year after the demolition of the Berlin Wall, notably, the unified and extremely powerful Germany was one of its drivers. Germany was behind the urgent declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia, as well as behind their snap recognition by the international community regardless of the fact that the latter clearly lacked a viable model of coexistence of its Serbian and Croatian populations. Besides, the origin of the ethnic conflict that erupted in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the spring of 1992 can only be grasped if the activity of outside forces is taken into account.

Why did Germany, a country just rebuilt after the traumatic partition imposed on it after World War II, take the active role in the Balkan geopolitical overhaul? Napoleon used to say that every nation's politics stems from its geography. The concept applies perfectly to the late 1980ies — early 1990ies situation in Europe on the whole and at the Balkans in particular.

It should be realized that following the collapse of the eastern bloc and the unification of the two Germanies Berlin saw itself as the strongest player in Europe and actively sought European leadership over which it traditionally competed with France. US military bases that Germany continued to host in the framework of its international obligations after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces presented the main obstacle in the way of the country's aspirations. There were indications that Germany hoped to have the problem resolved by shifting the bases to the Balkans, where their existence could be based not on Soviet-era international agreements but on a NATO mandate, and where Germany could be guaranteed a place among the key players. What it needed to make the plan materialize was a serious pretext for the Balkan expansion, and the process including the break-up of Yugoslavia and the emergence of several protracted ethnic conflicts spread over its former territory conveniently provided one. The implementation of the scenario began in Slovenia and Croatia, where, due to historic reasons, the German influence was deeply rooted. Already in the 1980ies the German intelligence service had strong positions in Slovenia and especially in Croatia as various émigré nationalist and extremist groups it sponsored gradually made inroads into the administrations. German advisers and NGO envoys flocked to Croatia in numbers in 1989-1990. It was due to their activity that eventually the republic became the scene of the first armed clashes in the former Yugoslavia, which scared even the no less active US representatives.

In May, 1990 Croatia's First President Fanjo Tudman introduced a new constitution (put together largely under German advisers' supervision) via the parliament dominated by pro-independence forces. It proclaimed that Croatia was a national state of the Croats and other peoples inhabiting it rather than, as formulated previously, the state of the Croatian and Serbian peoples as well as of others inhabiting it. The legal subtlety automatically left Serbs who used to be a state-forming nation in the position of a minority. Discontent with the downgrade, Serbs launched a referendum of their own in August 1990, during which, however, their response was limited to asserting their right to sovereignty and autonomy within Croatia. Secession was not on the agenda, but the Croatian government nevertheless resorted to force to prevent the referendum from taking place, and the moment marked the onset of the armed conflict in the republic.

Serbs of Croatia offered a political solution even after the incident. On September 30, 1990 the Serbian National Council proclaimed the autonomy of the Serbian people on the ethnic and historical territories they inhabited within Croatia as a member of Yugoslavia, but Zagreb's course agreed with German advisers remained unchanged. The new Croatian constitution entered into force on December 22, and the very next day the neighboring Slovenia called an independence referendum during which 94% of the ballots were cast in favor of separation from Yugoslavia. Interestingly, over the weeks preceding the enactment of Tudman's constitution Washington kept calling the Croatian leaders to exercise restraint and to avoid steps prone with an armed escalation. Still, Berlin's influence prevailed, and German advisers managed to convince their Croatian protégées to act resolutely. On May 19, 1991 the Croatian administration held a referendum with over 94% of those who went to the polling booths opting for immediate secession. The Serbs of Croatia did not attend, and Germany assisted by Vatican promptly ensured the European recognition of the two new independent countries. Soon Sarajevo followed the suit, massive fighting swept across the Balkans, NATO got the desired pretext for intervention, and Germany emerged as the key force in the new European geopolitical architecture.

Praising the German unification, we should not forget how the fall of the Berlin Wall cast a shadow over other countries and their peoples.

 

 

http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2584

 

Christian Subversives in California and Serbia

 

CHRONICLES: A MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN CULTURE, December 2009, pp. 20-22

 

A Tale of Two Subversives

Battling Christophobia in California and Serbia

 

by Srdja Trifkovic

 

The intention of postmoderns to destroy real people, with their natural loyalties, traditional morality, and inherited cultural preferences, is the same everywhere. Its specific manifestations may be different in the United States and Serbia—the homes of our two interlocutors and my good friends—but the underlying motivation is identical. It is Christophobia, the incubator of countless secondary pathologies that are imposed and celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic under the label of diversity. Having suffered countless disasters and progressive disintegration during the modern era, how may Christian civilization be effectively revived? "For true-blooded Western conservatives, this is the overarching question of their political life," says Greg Davis, as we savor boutique vodkas in downtown Santa Monica. "Conservatives are forever trying to get back to something better, sounder, nobler, truer. But how far back? A decade, a century—a millennium?"

 

I met Greg five years ago, while he was producing and directing the must-see documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know. He is a soft-spoken convert to Orthodoxy, in his mid-30's, with a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford and an abiding sense that our civilization is collapsing. Western conservatives, he says, are hoping to save the key institution of the West—namely, Christianity—but Christianity did not originate in the West, and therein lies the crux of the matter: "The development of the West since 1054, in opposition to the Orthodox East, was a revolutionary act. The West, at its core, is revolutionary; hence the shouting of our conservatives for history to stop, while intermittently effective in slowing the slide, has proven vain. The West's defining act was the fundamental innovation of the filioque. The fruit of the schism was apparent in successive heresies and rebellions, which led to the wars of religion that would kill millions and tear Europe apart. Later subversives would translate the revolutionary logic into decidedly unchristian contexts such as the French and Bolshevik revolutions, with monstrous results."

 

While the unraveling of Western Christianity has been under way for a thousand years, it gained a new head of steam in our time. With Vatican II, Greg says, Roman traditionalists were dealt a tremendous blow, and they are still suffering its consequences. Meanwhile, "The more traditionally minded Protestant denominations are now sprinting toward Sodom, while the newer 'Bible churches,' holding the line somewhat more effectively on the moral front, show themselves very much of this world in their Dionysian revels featuring 'Christian' rock music and self-help philosophies about how to succeed in the world of mammon without really trying. The job of shoring up what remains of traditional Western Christianity is, needless to say, not getting any easier."

 

Orthodoxy, on the other hand, does not lend itself to the political realm, precisely because its kingdom is not of this world. It is impossible to turn Orthodoxy into a "movement" in the modern political sense, yet the Orthodox view on most political issues today largely tracks the views of traditional Roman Catholics and Protestants, in spite of their theological and ecclesiological differences: "Even in a decidedly Protestant and "revolutionary" country such as the United States, the Orthodox easily recognize the practical wisdom embodied in a document such as the Constitution and its principle of limited government. They are more than anyone averse to the deification of political figures and of the state that has been the bane of the modern era. But they are by nature ill-adapted to navigating the turbulent waters of modern politics, which grow ever more frenzied and anti-Christian."

 

The Orthodox countries still outside the Western orbit have shown themselves routinely outclassed in the geopolitical great game to extend U.S.-style materialism and "democracy" to the far reaches of the galaxy. Davis points out how the Serbs have consistently underestimated the malevolence of U.S.-led designs on their country and culture, and how Russia naively undertook a series of Western-inspired "reforms" in the 1990's that devastated the country: "Now, however, Russia is pulling herself together. Vladimir Putin, regularly portrayed in Western media as a cross between Nicholas I and Darth Vader, refuses to let his people commit suicide along the lines of Western Europe, which continues to renew its vote of no confidence in itself. With the ancient enemy of both Western and Eastern Christianity, Islam, once again making inroads into both, Western conservatives should see Russia and Orthodox civilization generally as a natural ally. Yet prominent conservatives continue to support the U.S.-led prosecution of Russia. Their support for an ever-expanding NATO, for the missile shield, and for Western-sponsored color-coded revolutions is the support for a revolutionary power that recognizes no limit to its hegemony."

 

During the Cold War, it was still possible to regard the West, the adversary of revolutionary communism, as a netconservative force in the world, but no longer. Western, and especially American, conservatives are now in the illogical position of defending the actions of the world's leading revolutionary power. For Western conservatives to remain "conservative," Davis concludes, they must be willing to support the cause of the few genuinely conservative forces left in the world—namely, those Orthodox nations still willing and able to resist indefinite Western cultural and geopolitical expansion.

 

Bosko Obradovic is a Serb of Greg Davis's age who is resisting both prongs of that expansion. He is one of the founders and leaders of Dveri (The Doors, www.dverisrpske.com), a Belgrade-based NGO distinguished from most others by two key facts: It does not get a penny from George Soros, and in its many social and cultural endeavors it seeks the blessing of the Serbian Orthodox Church and spiritual guidance from its hierarchs. Bosko is a philosophy and literature graduate in his mid-30's, a teacher, librarian, and father of three. He was in the news recently for making a key contribution to the cancelation of the planned "gay-pride" parade in downtown Belgrade: "The organizers had everything lined up. The government of Serbia was supporting them because the ruling Democratic Party thought this was one way to show to Brussels that we are progressive enough for E.U. membership. All of the major media, all of the Western-funded NGOs, and countless fashionably enlightened public figures were on their side. This was supposed to be yet another proof of Serbia's terminal fall, its readiness to sell its soul for the elusive 'European integration.'"

 

In the end the parade was called off because of security concerns. Its organizers were offered another location, but they rejected it. This, Bosko says, indicates their real agenda: They did not merely want to march; they wanted to provoke. "Their goal had never been to protect anyone's 'human rights' or to protest 'discrimination.' Their goal was to promote a clearly defined ideology, lifestyle, and value system, and symbolically to impose it on Belgrade and on Serbia by taking over, however briefly, the old city center. Their objective was also to assert their political power as a privileged and protected group that promotes modernity. Their goal was to inflict a devastating blow on the traditional spiritual, moral, and cultural code, to present it as marginal, obsolete, and doomed to die out. Last but not least, calling the event off amidst a blaze of publicity was a call to their sponsors to continue and even increase their largesse, because the job is not done: Serbia is still its ugly, reactionary old self."

 

Bosko and his friends have been called some nasty names since the parade was canceled in mid-September. There have been calls for a ban on Dveri, supposedly for violating recently enacted "antidiscrimination" legislation, which was drafted completely in accordance with E.U. guidelines. He says attacks are "a compliment to all of us who are determined not to give up on the value system that has kept our people alive through the centuries." He is nevertheless concerned about the future: "We appear to be well on the way to 2084, when totalitarian NGO types will impose their blueprint for the eradication of our traditional spiritual, moral, and national identity. The NGO elite claims to act for and on behalf of 'the West' and enjoys the status of protected species, but no such protection will be extended to anyone if they have their way. Our "democracy" is heading for the abolition of the freedom to think differently from the high priests of Western postmodernity. Just look at the media treatment of Metropolitan Amfilohije, our acting Patriarch, for daring to quote the Scripture on sodomy! Is it not paradoxical? The Orthodox Church and all other mainstream religious communities in Serbia are asked to refrain from stating their position on this issue because doing so makes them liable to prosecution for advocating 'intolerance.'"

 

Bosko Obradovic sees the problem in clear-cut terms. Either the Church will speak Her mind clearly and without euphemistic evasiveness, or else She will lose the purpose of Her existence as the saving community based on faith and the teaching of two millennia: "The Church as a whole and individual Christians are expected to refrain from taking a position if it does not conform to the standards of acceptable discourse as proclaimed by those who are not Christians, or—to be more precise—who are determined anti-Christians. Of course, Metropolitan Amfilohije and other bishops did not have any choice: Rather than ignore the intended moral and cultural onslaught, they spoke out clearly and authoritatively. Their authority comes from the Scripture and the Fathers, not from our 'pro-E.U.' government, or the 'progressive' NGOs, or their foreign mentors. They also condemned all forms of hate and violence, in accordance with the Christian principles, but they, and we, cannot accept a self-isolation that can only end in criminalizing any open profession of our faith."

 

Bosko believes that the exclusion of the Orthodox Church from Serbia's social and cultural life remains the final goal of the parade's organizers and sponsors. He points out that the chorus of condemnation and indignant disgust against Metropolitan Amfilohije came simultaneously from the usual standard-bearers of "all progressive humanity"—Helsinki human-rights groups, sociology professors, foreign-sponsored "independent analysts," Soros-financed media outlets—and all had a common accusation: By daring to mention Sodom and Gomorrah, Metropolitan Amfilohije is "objectively" condoning violence and promoting discrimination. Ergo he is guilty of practicing violence and discrimination, of inspiring "far-right groups and all other extremists": "Their goal is to force the Church into internal exile, just like under communism. This goal is the raison d'etre of many NGOs in Serbia. They always react swiftly and indignantly when the Church adopts a position, treating it as something inherently illegitimate. The Metropolitan's scriptural reference threw them into rage, as witnessed by the media conglomerate B92, which has assumed the role of ideological prosecutors and star chamber. His reminder that 'the tree that bears no fruit is cut down' was twisted in the best tradition of the French Revolution and Bolshevism."

 

So what should be a believer's position on homosexuality—or, for that matter, on any number of postmodernity's sacred cows? Bosko Obradovic concludes that on this and every other social and political issue of our time, a distinct Christian position can and should be developed: "My faith does not allow it, and I do not want to mistreat, threaten, or discriminate against anyone. At the same time I am obliged to confess my faith, to bring up my children and to contribute to my society in accordance with what has been passed on to me—even if this means suffering legal punishment at the hands of the state."

 

That punishment is coming soon to America and Europe alike, and Christians like Greg Davis and Bosko Obradovic are ready for it. They know that the earthly and temporal powers of the state can and should be recognized as imperative only to the degree that they are used to support good and limit evil. In America and Serbia alike, they both agree, a Christian may obey state laws only if such obedience does not demand apostasy or sin. We do not know which of my two friends will be the first to endure martyrdom, but I fear that both will. ¤

 

Srdja Trifkovic is the author of Defeating Jihad and The Sword of the Prophet

1989-2009: Moving The Berlin Wall To Russia’s Borders

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/1989-2009-berlin-wall-moves-to-russian-border

Stop NATO
November 7, 2009

1989-2009: Moving The Berlin Wall To Russia's Borders
Rick Rozoff

November 9 will mark the twentieth anniversary of the government of the German Democratic Republic opening crossing points at the wall separating the eastern and western sections of Berlin.

From 1961 to 1989 the wall had been a dividing line in, a symbol of and a metonym for the Cold War.

A generation later events are to be held in Berlin to commemorate the "fall of the Berlin Wall," the last victory the West can claim over the past two decades. Bogged down in a war in Afghanistan, occupation in Iraq and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States, Germany and the West as a whole are eager to cast a fond glance back at what is viewed as their greatest triumph: The collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe closely followed by the breakup of the Soviet Union.

All the players in that drama and events leading up to it – Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, George H. W. Bush, Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa – will be reverently eulogized and lionized.

Gorbachev will attend the anniversary bash at the Brandenburg Gate and the editorial pages of newspapers around the world will dutifully repeat the litany of bromides, pieties, self-congratulatory praises and grandiose claims one can expect on the occasion.

What will not be cited are comments like those from Mikhail Margelov, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, on November 6. To wit, that "The Berlin Wall has been replaced with a sanitary cordon of ex-Soviet nations, from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea." [1]

With the unification of first Berlin and then Germany as a whole, the Soviet Union and its president Mikhail Gorbachev were assured that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not expand eastward toward their border. Gorbachev insists that in 1990 U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told him "Look, if you remove your troops and allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east." [3]

Not only was the former East Germany absorbed into NATO but over the past ten years every other Soviet ally in the Warsaw Pact has become a full member of the bloc – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

Russia has twice before been attacked from the West, by the largest invasion forces ever assembled on the European continent and indeed in the world at one time (Herodotus' hyperbolical estimates of Xerxes' army notwithstanding), that of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812 and of Adolf Hitler in 1941. The first consisted of 700,000 troops and the second of 5 million.

Moscow's concerns about military encroachments on its western borders and its desire to insure at least neutral buffers zones on them are invariably portrayed in the U.S. and allied Western capitals as some combination of Russian paranoia and a plot to revive the "Soviet Empire." What the self-anointed luminaries of Western geopolitics feel about neutrality will be seen later.

With the expansion of the U.S-dominated military bloc into Eastern Europe in 1999 and 2004, in the latter case not only the remaining non-Soviet former Warsaw Pact states but three ex-Soviet republics became full members, there are now five NATO nations bordering Russia. Three directly abutting its mainland – Estonia, Latvia and Norway – and two more neighboring the Kaliningrad territory, Lithuania and Poland. Finland, Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan are being prepared to follow suit and upon doing so will complete a belt from the Barents to the Baltic, from the Black to the Caspian Seas.

The total length of the Berlin Wall separating all of West Berlin from the German Democratic Republic was 96 miles. A NATO military cordon from northeastern Norway to northern Azerbaijan would stretch over 3,000 miles (over 4,800 kilometers).

As a Russian news commentary recently noted in relation to the U.S. spending $110 million to upgrade two of the seven new military bases the Pentagon has acquired across the Black Sea from Russia, "The installations in Romania and Bulgaria go in line with the program of relocation of American troops in Europe announced on 2004 by then president George Bush. Its main goal is the maximum proximity to Russian borders." [3]

The wall being erected (and connected) around all of European Russia is not a defensive redoubt, a protective barrier. It is a steadily advancing phalanx of bases and military hardware.

Last month NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in Lithuania to inspect the Siauliai Air Base from where NATO warplanes have conducted uninterrupted patrols over the Baltic Sea for over five years, skirting the Russian coast a three-minute flight from St. Petersburg.

New Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said at the time "We have been assured that NATO is still interested in investing in defence of the Baltic region….I am happy to see the NATO Secretary General here, in Lithuania, in the only and most important NATO air force base in the Baltic states. This is one of the main NATO defence points in the Baltic region." [4]

In neighboring Poland a newspaper report of last April provided details on the degree of the Alliance's buildup in the nation:

"NATO's investments in defense infrastructure in Poland may amount to over 1 euros (4.3 zlotys) billion over the next five years….

"Poland is already the site of the largest volume of NATO investment in the world.

"Currently, construction or modernization work on seven military airports, two seaports, five fuel bases as well as six strategic long-range radar bases is nearing completion. Air defense command post projects in Poznan, Warsaw and Bydgoszcz have already been given the go-ahead, as has a radio communication project in Wladyslawowo.

"New investments will include, among other things, the equipping of military airports in Powidz, Lask and Minsk Mazowiecki with new logistics and defense installations." [5]

The nation will soon host as many as 196 American Patriot interceptor missiles and 100 troops to man them as well as being a likely site for the deployment of American SM-3 anti-ballistic missile batteries.

As mentioned earlier, Washington and NATO have secured the indefinite use of seven military bases in Bulgaria and Romania, Russia's Black Sea neighbors, including the Bezmer and Graf Ignatievo airbases in Bulgaria and the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase in Romania. [6]

Gen. Roger Brady, U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander, was in Romania on October 28 to oversee joint military trainings where "the U.S. Air Force flew about 100 sorties; half of those sorties were flown with the Romanian air force." [7]

The Pentagon leads annual NATO Sea Breeze exercises in Ukraine in the Crimea where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based.

It also conducts regular Immediate Response military drills in Georgia, the largest to date ending days before Georgia's attack on South Ossetia and the resultant war with Russia in August of 2008 and one currently just being completed. This May the U.S. led the annual Cooperative Longbow 09/Cooperative Lancer NATO Partnership for Peace war games in Georgia with 1,300 servicemen from 19 countries. [8]

The Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe, General Carter F. Ham, was in Georgia a few days ago and "got acquainted with the carrying out of the Georgian-US military training Immediate Response 2009″ which included "visit[ing] the Vaziani Military Base and attend[ing] military training." [9]

A Russian official, Dmitry Rogozin, spoke of the joint military exercises, warning that "We all remember that similar activities carried out last year were followed by the August events." [10]

A Georgian commentary on the drills confirmed Russian apprehensions by reiterating this link:

"Georgia is fighting for peace and stability in Afghanistan in order to eventually ensure peace and stability in Georgia, as one good turn will undoubtedly deserve another in the fullness of time." [11]. Which is to say, as Georgia assists the U.S. militarily in Afghanistan, so the U.S. will back Georgia in any future conflicts with its neighbors in the Caucasus.

The world press has recently reported on Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski's three-day visit to the U.S. to among other things "meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…to discuss Afghanistan and a new US proposal for a missile shield" [12] and attend a conference at the Brookings Institution where he said of the Polish-Swedish-European Union Eastern Partnership program to recruit Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine into the "Euro-Atlantic" orbit and of Moscow's concerns that the West was moving to take over former Soviet space, "The EU does not need Russia's consent." [13]

What created the most controversy, though, was his address at a conference sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) called The United States and Central Europe: Converging or Diverging Strategic Interests?

The main motif of the conference was, of course, the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Cold War as symbolized by the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski gave a presentation replete with references to Russia's alleged "imperial aspirations," its threats to Georgia and Ukraine and its intent to become an "imperial world power." [14]

Sikorski, no stranger to Washington, having been resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative there from 2002-2005 before returning home to become Poland's Defense Minister, suggested that recent joint Belarusian-Russian military exercises necessitated stronger NATO commitments in Northeastern Europe. Saying that the Alliance's Article 5 military assistance obligation – which is why, by the way, there will soon be almost 3,000 Polish troops in Afghanistan – was too "vague" and offered as a more concrete alternative something on the order of the 300,000 U.S. troops stationed in West Germany during the Cold War. [15]

The Polish government has subsequently denied that its foreign minister explicitly called for American troop deployments, and in fact he did not, but his comments are in line with several other recent events and statements.

For example, Poland revealed in late October that it planned a massive $60 billion upgrading of its armed forces. "Minister of Defense Bogdan Klich announced a plan…to modernize the army within 14 programs: air defense systems, combat and cargo helicopters, naval modernization, espionage and unmanned aircraft, training simulators and equipment for soldiers....

"Klich announced plans to buy new LIFT combat training aircraft, Langust missile launchers, Krab self-propelled howitzers, Homar rocket launchers, as well as several more Rosomak tanks and 30 billion zloty will be spent on army modernization alone." [16]

The arrival at the same time of the American destroyer USS Ramage and its 250 marines, fresh from NATO war games off the coast of Scotland, "to participate in a military exercise with Polish navy officers," proves Sikorski's wishes are not being ignored. [17] Before leaving, the USS Ramage "which was participating in joint US-Polish maneuvers…shelled the coast of Poland, local TV-channel TVN24″ reported. [18] Commander Tom Williamson at the U.S. embassy in Warsaw said "The USS Ramage crew is being interrogated in relation to the case." [19]

Another American warship that had participated in the NATO naval maneuvers off Scotland, Joint Warrior 09-2, docked in Estonia afterward. The Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer USS Cole.

The guided-missile frigate USS John L. Hall which included "embarked sailors of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 48 Detachment 9″ [20] arrived in Lithuania early this month. A U.S. navy officer said of the visit: "We are here as part of the United States Navy's continuing presence in the Baltic Sea….We are also here to work with the Lithuanian Navy, who has been a valuable partner and our visit here is part of the ongoing relationship between our two countries and our two navies." [21]

As American warships were demonstrating their "continuing presence in the Baltic Sea," Estonia's defense minister affirmed that "NATO has defence plans in the Baltics and they're being developed" [22], and his Latvian counterpart said, "It is important for Latvia that the new Alliance Strategic Concept will include points about the collective unity for the enforcement of the strategic security in the Baltic Sea region and the common responsibility for the future of Alliance military operations." [23]

Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo told The Associated Press "that his country sees new threats since Russia's invasion of Georgia last year and a cyber attack that targeted his country in 2007.

"Aaviksoo plans to meet with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates" on November 10. [24]

Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, an American expatriate and former Radio Free Europe operative, offered to hold NATO drills in the Baltic states.

Defense Minister Imants Liegis recently confirmed that "Latvia is to hold large-scale military exercises in summer, in response to the Russian-Belarusian strategic exercises." [25] Not alone, no doubt.

The above catalogue of military activities and bellicose statements should put to rest sanguine expectations resulting from the end of the Cold War, which never in fact ended but shifted its operations – substantially – eastwards.

Those whose names will be evoked and invoked on November 9 on the occasion of the anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall didn't fare well in the immediate aftermath.

Three years afterward Georgia H. W. Bush, even a year after Operation Desert Storm, became only the third American president since the 1800s to lose a reelection bid.

Four year after that Mikhail Gorbachev ran for the Russian presidency and received 0.5% of the vote.

In his last race for the Polish presidency in 2000 Lech Walesa, when his nation' electorate had finally seen through him, got 1% of the vote.

But he and fellow Cold War heroes of the West march ever onward in confronting Russia during the current phase of the new conflict.

In July, in what they titled An Open Letter to the Obama Administration from Central and Eastern Europe, old/new Cold War champions like Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Valdas Adamkus, Alexander Kwasniewski and Vaira Vike-Freiberga – Adamkus lived for several decades in the U.S. and Vike-Freiberga in Canada – ratcheted up anti-Russian rhetoric to a pitch not heard since the Reagan administration.

Their comments included:

"We have worked to reciprocate and make this relationship a two-way street. We are Atlanticist voices within NATO and the EU. Our nations have been engaged alongside the United States in the Balkans, Iraq, and today in Afghanistan….[S]torm clouds are starting to gather on the foreign policy horizon."

"Our hopes that relations with Russia would improve and that Moscow would finally fully accept our complete sovereignty and independence after joining NATO and the EU have not been fulfilled. Instead, Russia is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods."

"The danger is that Russia's creeping intimidation and influence-peddling in the region could over time lead to a de facto neutralization of the region."

"Our region suffered when the United States succumbed to 'realism' at Yalta. And it benefited when the United States used its power to fight for principle. That was critical during the Cold War and in opening the doors of NATO. Had a 'realist' view prevailed in the early 1990s, we would not be in NATO today…."

"[W]e need a renaissance of NATO as the most important security link between the United States and Europe. It is the only credible hard power security guarantee we have. NATO must reconfirm its core function of collective defense even while we adapt to the new threats of the 21st century. A key factor in our ability to participate in NATO's expeditionary missions overseas is the belief that we are secure at home." [26]

The collective missive also resoundingly endorsed U.S. interceptor missile plans for Eastern Europe and held up the Georgia of Mikheil Saakashvili (another former U.S. resident) as the cause celebre for a new confrontation with Russia.

On September 22 Britain's Guardian published a similar group Open Letter, this one from Vaclav Havel, Valdas Adamkus, Mart Laar, Vytautas Landsbergis, Otto de Habsbourg, Daniel Cohn Bendit, Timothy Garton Ash, André Glucksmann, Mark Leonard, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adam Michnik and Josep Ramoneda, called Europe must stand up for Georgia, which featured these topical allusions ahead of the seventieth anniversary of the beginning of World War II and the twentieth of the demise of the Berlin Wall:

"As Europe remembers the shame of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939 and the Munich agreement of 1938, and as it prepares to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall and the iron curtain in 1989, one question arises in our minds: Have we learned the lessons of history?"

"Twenty years after the emancipation of half of the continent, a new wall is being built in Europe – this time across the sovereign territory of Georgia."

"[W]e urge the EU's 27 democratic leaders to define a proactive strategy to help Georgia peacefully regain its territorial integrity and obtain the withdrawal of Russian forces illegally stationed on Georgian soil….[I]t is essential that the EU and its member states send a clear and unequivocal message to the current leadership in Russia." [27]

Georgia has become a new Czechoslovakia twice, that of 1938 and of 1968, a new Berlin, a new Poland and so forth. Eastern and Western European figures like the signatories of the above appeal, contrary to what they state, are nostalgic for the Cold War and anxious to launch a new crusade against a truncated and weakened Russia.

Along with 1990s-style "humanitarian intervention," such campaigns are their stock in trade.

But the demand for more American military "hard power" in Europe as well as the Caucasus and the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders may provoke a catastrophe that the continent and the world were fortunate enough to be spared the first time around.

1) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 6, 2009
2) Quoted by Bill Bradley, Foreign Policy, November 7, 2009
3) Voice of Russia, October 22, 2009
4) President of the Republic of Lithuania, October 9, 2009
5) Warsaw Business Journal, April 20, 2009
6) Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East
Stop NATO, October 24, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/bulgaria-romania-u-s-nato-bases-for-war-in-the-east
7) U.S. Air Forces in Europe, October 29, 2009
8) NATO War Games In Georgia: Threat Of New Caucasus War
Stop NATO, May 8, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/nato-war-games-in-georgia-threat-of-new-caucasus-war
9) Trend News Agency, October 28, 2009
10) Rustavi2, October 31, 2009
11) The Messenger, November 3, 2009
12) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 28, 2009
13) Polish Radio, November 3, 2009
14) Video
http://csis.org/multimedia/video-strategic-overview-us-and-central-europe-strategic-interests
15) Audio
http://csis.org/multimedia/corrected-us-and-central-europe-radoslaw-sikorski
16) Polish Radio October 27, 2009
17) Polish Radio. October 28, 2009
18) Russia Today, October 28, 2009
19) Polish Radio, October 28, 2009
20) United States European Command November 2, 2009
21) Ibid
22) Baltic Business News, October 27, 2009
23) Defense Professionals, October 26, 2009
24) Associated Press, November 2, 2009
25) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 2, 2009
26) Gazeta Wyborcza, July 15, 2009
27) The Guardian, September 22, 2009
===========================

Kosovo No Success-story-- Scott Taylor

Not much positive news from Afghanistan

 

Note: This article should have been entitled 'Kosovo is no success story", and when you read it, you will understand

By SCOTT TAYLOR On Target
Mon. Nov 2 - 4:46 AM

AS EVERYONE scrambles to predict a possible future outlook for war-ravaged Afghanistan, the negative variables continue to mount.

The Taliban have boldly stepped up their attacks in the power vacuum created by the failed August elections and the countrywide apathy in anticipation of the upcoming Nov. 7 presidential run-off vote.

October was by far the deadliest month of the war with 50 Allied soldiers killed, including yet another Canadian. The daring assault against the United States guest house in the fortified centre of Kabul last Tuesday — coincidental with an equally brash attack against the posh foreigners-only Serena Hotel — indicates that even in areas previously considered secure, the Taliban can now instigate violence and terror.

The steady stream of negative news has caused one international observer to warn us that "Afghanistan could become Somalia." Simon Chesterman uttered this dire warning while he was in Ottawa to deliver a speech to the International Development Research Centre.

Cited by the media as an Oxford-educated lawyer who is a specialist in state building, it was Chesterman's quotes about the Balkans that disturbed me the most.

"The successes we've had in state building, such as they are, are places like Kosovo," he said.

While Chesterman is certainly not alone in his attempt to paint the Kosovo fiasco as a "success," I think that if we are going to use it as a yardstick to measure progress in Afghanistan, a little dose of objective reality needs to be injected into the equation.

Kosovo was recognized as the sovereign territory and religious heartland of Serbia prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The ethnic Albanian majority of Kosovo, behind the armed instigation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, began a serious quest for independence in 1998 through a campaign of terror attacks on Serb police and civilians.

For years, the Central Intelligence Agency listed the army as a terrorist organization, but then had a change of heart in January 1999 when they were declared "freedom fighters."

In March 1999, the U.S. pressured the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into intervening in Kosovo on behalf of the ethnic Albanians.

The NATO bombing campaign, which lasted 78 days, triggered a massive exodus of Albanian refugees fleeing the war zone. This horde of humanity fled into neighbouring countries like Macedonia and created a humanitarian crisis the world could not ignore.

As NATO air strikes against targets in both Kosovo and Serbia failed to wear down the will of Serbs to resist, the NATO propaganda machine began spinning tales of widespread slaughter and genocide being perpetrated against the ethnic Albanians. While this may have kept morale up on the NATO home front, the body count and mass graves failed to materialize when the Serbs forced a negotiated peace settlement with the alliance.

As part of the terms of agreement for NATO soldiers to enter Kosovo unopposed, the West agreed to continued recognition of the sovereignty of the territory as that of Serbia. It was also stated in the UN Resolution 1244 ceasefire agreement that NATO would disarm and disband the Kosovo Liberation Army and protect the ethnic Serb minority and their Orthodox Christian religious sites.

As events unfolded, the army was never disbanded — it was simply renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps — and the Albanians launched an immediate wave of slaughter and destruction against Serbs and their property.

NATO troops initially dismissed these attacks against the Serbs as reprisals, but in March 2004 — five years into the international occupation — the Albanians staged a massive three-day pogrom of violence against the remaining Serbian enclaves.

The status of Kosovo remained in disputed limbo until February 2008, when Albanian leadership followed the U.S. State Department's advice and unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. The U.S. knew that Russia and China would block such a secession at the UN Security Council, and they thought that by having the Kosovo Albanians deliver a fait accompli, they could bypass the procedural roadblock.

Given that Kosovo is occupied by some 17,000 foreign troops and is entirely dependent on foreign aid for survival, one could easily argue that there is nothing truly independent about it. When you add in the fact that it is an unstable administration headed by indicted war criminals and drug lords, one has to once again question what constitutes a success in the mind of Chesterman.

Kosovo's current prime minister is Hashim (The Snake) Thaci, who was the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army when Agim Ceku was its military commander. Keen-eyed Canadian readers may recall that Agim Ceku commanded the Croatian troops who committed the barbaric massacre of Serbs at the Medak Pocket in September 1993. It was the Canadian soldiers of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry who bore witness to those events and who still question how individuals like Ceku can avoid being brought to justice. But I digress.

Despite incredible pressure from the U.S., only 62 United Nations countries to date have recognized Kosovo's declared independence. On the flip side, some 92 nations have opposed that declaration. With Russian and Chinese vetoes at the Security Council, Kosovo cannot join the UN. As there are five European Union and four NATO members opposed to its independence, Kosovo cannot hope to join those organizations either.

On Oct. 8, 2008, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to support Serbia's request to have the legality of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence reviewed by the International Court of Justice. Those hearings are set to begin in December of this year. Should the Serbian government successfully make its case, Canada may have to revoke recognition of Kosovo in order to respect the international rule of law.

Awash in violence, a rampant drug trade, war criminal leadership, occupied by foreign troops, dependant on foreign aid and a future status in limbo sounds a lot more like Afghanistan than Chesterman would care to admit.

( staylor@herald.ca)

Scott Taylor is an author and editor of Esprit de Corps magazine.

 

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1150655.html

 

http://www.worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/

 

From The Sunday Times

November 1, 2009

Listen up, Muslims – the West fought for you

Dominic Lawson

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Radovan Karadzic's defence against 11 charges of genocide did not get off to the best possible start at the Hague last week. The chief prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia opened proceedings by releasing transcripts of tapped telephone conversations of the Bosnian Serb leader from 1991, which record Karadzic saying: "There are 20,000 armed Serbs around Sarajevo ... it will be a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth."

It's true that these recordings do not mention Srebrenica, where 7,000 captured Bosnian Muslim men and youths were massacred; but as a clear indicator of genocidal intent they leave no room for doubt.

The release of the wiretaps is just a small part of the efforts made by what we used to call the West to bring about justice for the families of those massacred Muslims. A friend of mine who was involved in the location and disinterment of the victims' hidden remains is just one of many Britons who have given years of their life to this grim cause: the International Commission on Missing Persons was established in 1996 specifically to piece together as many as possible of the victims of the Bosnian conflict.

The ICMP's director-general is an American, Kathryne Bomberger; she designed its "super-mortuary", the world's largest storage facility for human remains, where parts of no fewer than 4,000 bodies are kept. This is exhibit A in the trial of Karadzic, as it was in the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic, whose interminable trial at the Hague was abandoned after his death from a heart attack in 2006.

These trials cast an uncomfortable searchlight on the behaviour of European politicians during the earlier stages of the Bosnian conflict. The Conservative government of John Major was the most forceful advocate of an arms embargo that would almost certainly have doomed the Bosnian Muslims to suffer further acts of genocide, until in 1995 Bill Clinton browbeat the European Union into agreeing to airstrikes. These, backed by US-armed Bosnian and Croatian ground forces, forced the Serbs to abandon their plans to "ethnically cleanse" Bosnia and Croatia.

In 1999, when the Serbs began a similar ethnic cleansing policy against the Muslims of Kosovo, it was Tony Blair who supplied the political leadership for a military campaign against Milosevic. Britain and America — under the Nato umbrella — bombed Belgrade, most notoriously attacking the Serbian radio and television headquarters and killing 16 workers, including make-up artists and set designers. It is worth remembering that this bombardment, carried out in defiance of a United Nations veto by Russia and China, was most vehemently supported by Robin Cook and Clare Short, the two cabinet ministers who subsequently resigned over Blair's decision to back America's "shock and awe" assault on Baghdad without UN sanction.

There is little doubt that the success of the bombing campaigns against the professedly Christian Serbs on behalf of the terrorised Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo had emboldened Blair to think that similar action against Saddam Hussein would be equally vindicated. He had been greeted with tearful adulation in Kosovan refugee camps; he must have expected the same welcome from Shi'ite Iraqis after the overthrow of Saddam.

As we now know, it was a different story. Blair is hate figure No 1 for thousands of Muslims, even in his own country, many of whom subscribe to the view, propagated by Al-Qaeda and its Sunni acolytes, that the war in Iraq was anti-Islamic in its entire purpose. Little good would it do Blair to point out that Saddam was a profoundly secular figure hated by the clerics, or that the dictator's eventual hanging was punctuated by the calling-out of Shi'ite versions of Islamic prayers by his gleeful executioners.

Such observations would not fit in with what has become known as "the single narrative", the Islamist ideology which states that the entire history of the world since the time of the crusades has been that of continuous oppression of Muslims by a Zionist-Christian alliance, represented most recently and heinously by America. Above all, this single narrative becomes entirely aphasic on such matters as the American actions against the Orthodox Christian Serbs on behalf of the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo.

The Cambridge historian Brendan Simms, who has made a particular study of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, wrote some years ago that "many in the European establishment have never forgiven the Americans for being right about Bosnia. Most Muslims, in Britain and worldwide, have forgotten it, if they ever knew it in the first place. For a long time I saw the inability of the US to parlay its efforts on behalf of European Muslims into credit ... as a failure of American public diplomacy. But in the course of my own modest efforts at public meetings, and the odd appearance on Muslim channels, I quickly realised that I was hitting a brick wall".

I had a similar experience when I spoke at a public meeting near the east London mosque, organised by the Muslim group Dialogue with Islam. When I argued that the Nato attack on Serbia in defence of the Muslims of Kosovo hardly suggested a fundamentalist Christian hatred of Islam on the part of the British and American governments, I could see that I might as well have been speaking in Welsh for all the impact it had on that audience of Muslim men and women.

They responded warmly, however, to the argument of Sheikh Dawud Noibi, a leading figure in the Muslim Council of Britain, that the US-led invasion of Afghanistan was motivated by the need to ensure the construction of an American oil pipeline there, implying that the Americans had allowed the attack on the World Trade Center so as to provide a pretext for this colonialist investment. Noibi, by the way, was appointed an OBE on the recommendation of the Blair government: presumably this seal of the state's approval was just another dastardly trick by the Brits to fool the public into thinking they were not determined to destroy Islam.

Still, I didn't push the issue as far as Simms, who was bold enough to point out to his Muslim audiences that prominent American Jews such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz — two of the most controversial so-called neocons in Washington under the Republican White House — had been leading protagonists of military intervention on behalf of Bosnian Muslims: "At this point they had switched off. Bosnia and Kosovo were simply subsumed into their broader narrative of Muslim victimhood. My interlocutors were neither stupid nor insincere. It was just that they were wired in such a way that precluded them from seeing the US as anything other than the global foe of Muslims."

Today the conflict in Afghanistan is the focus of this ideology. Some like to mock the Americans for having supplied the Afghan mujaheddin in the 1980s; the arming of those Muslim warriors was the most expensive single covert operation in the history of the cold war. The Americans may regret it now, yet the real point is that the giving of billions of dollars to the mujaheddin proves the falsity of the single narrative: as recently as 20 years ago the notionally Christian West was sublimely indifferent to Islamism.

Perhaps that is what should really insult the militant Islamists: they think we have always been as obsessed with them as they are with us, when in fact we were scarcely aware of their existence until they started flying planes at skyscrapers in New York.

If Karadzic does take to the stand at the Hague we can expect him to boast that he was fighting the Islamist threat to civilisation while Britain and America slept. Against the charge of genocide, any defence will do.

dominic.lawson@sunday-times.co.uk

 

From Dayton to Dysfunction

 

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From Dayton to Dysfunction

Five numbers that suggest Bosnia is becoming a failed state.

By Ginanne Brownell | Newsweek Web Exclusive 

Oct 15, 2009

Remember Bosnia? The country that fought a three-year civil war in the 1990s with 100,000 dead continues its downward slide. Since the Dayton peace accord, which ended the war in 1995, Bosnia has been divided into two entities—one called the Republika Srpska (RS) with a Serbian majority and the other a federation of Muslims and Croats. The leader of the RS, Milorad Diodik, has lately stepped up his calls for secession because he feels the Serbs have been marginalized by both the government and the international community. American and European officials are waging an intense diplomatic campaign to head off what could be serious political trouble.

But the real story is Bosnia's dysfunction as a state. While many Bosnians have long hoped to join the European Union, the national government has been unable to stand on its own feet since the end of the war. Analysts say the country is looking more and more like a failed state. Here are five numbers that suggest they're right.

 

·         $14 billion. That's the amount of money the international community spent on reconstruction of Bosnia between 1996 and 2007, according to the U.S. State Department—more per capita than the amount spent to rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II. Yet much of the country remains in ruins, including the beautiful Ottoman-era national library destroyed by Serb shelling.

·         Negative 3. That's Bosnia's GDP so far this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Just three years ago, the figure stood at 6.9 percent.

·         41.6. That's the percentage of working-age Bosnians who are jobless—at least according to estimates. Many of them are probably "employed" in the country's sprawling gray and black markets.

·         500,000. The number of illegal weapons scattered among a populace of 4 million, according to the United Nations Development Program. In January the country's top official for the fight against organized crime and terrorism was arrested in Croatia, suspected of illegal-arms trafficking.

·         Nearly 100 percent. The number of Bosnians who believe corruption in their country is endemic, according to the World Bank.

Apparently, they know what they're talking about.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/217875

© 2009 

Guardian: Bell hits a strange note...

Instead of his usual drivel Martin Bell actually says some semi-sensible things here amongst the cliches. But check out some of the comments especially the one from a certain "nabla" which I excerpt below the article. His/her point on Zepa is one I make a lot in discussion but have rarely seen it anywhere else. Anyone know who NABLA is?

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/26/radovan-karadzic-trial-war-crimes?showallcomments=true

 

Karadzic isn't the only one on trial

The former Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic must face justice, but the war crimes tribunal is itself in the dock

The trial of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, must go ahead with or without the participation of the accused. He has attempted to stall proceedings at The Hague's war crimes tribunal, boycotting its opening on the grounds that he needs more time to prepare his case, and the presiding judge has adjourned the court until tomorrow. But Karadzic has had more than a year in which to prepare his defence. Justice delayed is justice denied. It is time that he faced the evidence against him.

He can rightly claim that much of the pre-trial publicity has been prejudicial. The same was true in the Slobodan Milosevic case. That is why it is more important than ever that the processes of justice are seen to be fair and scrupulous, with maximum attention to the rights of the accused, even if the accused is trying to obstruct them.

The war crimes tribunal is a prosecutor's court. Sometimes in the past it has seemed to be more interested in securing convictions than in delivering justice. That must not happen in this case. Karadzic's appearance in court cannot escape having some of the elements of a show trial, because the eyes of the world will be on it. The TV coverage will be broadcast, and widely viewed, throughout the Balkans. That is an additional reason, in my view, why an acquittal for lack of sufficient evidence would be more to the tribunal's credit than a conviction unsafely arrived at.

As one of many who has been approached to give evidence, I shall do so, if required, but with some trepidation. Memories fade. All the witnesses will be drawing on their recollection of events that occurred between 14 and 17 years ago. Documentary evidence will be crucial – especially any paper trail leading from Karadzic's headquarters in Pale to the actions taken by the Bosnian Serb army after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. Front lines were crumbling. It was a time of tension between Karadzic and his army commander, Ratko Mladic, who is still at large. "Maybe we went too far with General Mladic," Karadzic has observed, "we made a legend of him."

The centrepiece of the charge sheet against Karadzic is his alleged complicity in the Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in cold blood after the fall of the UN "safe haven". But this is also a good time to reflect on the blame that was shared by the western democracies with troops in Unprofor, the UN protection force that did not protect. The British, French and Dutch were the main players at the time. The Dutch capitulated at Srebrenica. The French proposed its relief. The British demurred. The massacre occurred at a time when there were more than 30,000 UN troops in Bosnia. The ability to intervene was there. The political will was not.

To claims that no one could have known what the Serbs would do, I would argue that the massacre was predictable, if not inevitable. The Serbs held the Muslims of Srebrenica collectively responsible for a series of killings in the area, notably a massacre of 50 Serbs in a village near Bratunac on 7 January 1993. Revenge was always the most likely option.

The war crimes tribunal is not about revenge. It is, or should be, about justice. Courts try cases. Cases also try courts. I believe that the tribunal will be judged by the fairness of its proceedings in this case more than any other than has come before it.

NABLA comment:

nabla

26 Oct 09, 2:35pm

No justice will be done here. No justice will be seen to be done here.

How can anyone possibly defend himself against 1.2 million pages of documentation? If the prosecutorion's case is so strong, couldn't they collect a few thousand pages of documents, such as written orders or transcripts of conversations by Karadzic where a policy of atrocities or specific atrocities were sanctioned? Or bring forth insider witnesses?

Clearly, rather that using a clear and direct chain of command, they're going to fling every real and potential atrocity perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs and claim that he was responsible for it all.

This has all been rehashed in the past, the criminality of Western forces, the criminality of Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, and Croats. What is most disturbing is that this court is systematically attempting to whitewash the crimes of non-Serbs by either ignoring them or selecting a few non-political widely publicized events and keeping the profile of those trials low. For Serb victims of Muslim/Croat camps, there was the camp at Celebici in Konjic; this was tried at the Hague. However, there were dozens if not hundreds more camps where Serbs were held. For non-Serb victims, there were many, many trials regarding Omarska, Crkvina, Trnopolje, Keraterm, Susica, etc. So a false picture is generated: Serbs have "systematic" camps all over the place and Muslims/Croats have this one isolated little camp in Celebici. Another instance: Croatian generals have been tried for atrocities in Krajina, yet no politician has been tried for a policy of persecution, expulsion, and murder, that ended in the flight of over 400,000 Croatian Serbs (2/3 of the entire population) in several waves (1990, 1991, 1993, May 1995, and August 1995) and the killings of thousands. So Karadzic and Milosevic are criminal politicians , but Tudjman is a good guy who just happened to preside over a few rogue general that drove out/killed 2/3 of Croatia's Serbs.

What is most disturbing is the lack of clarity regarding Srebrenica. What never made sense was how different what is alleged to have taken place there is from what took place at Zepa. If there was a policy of genocide at Srebrenica, why none at the other safe haven to fall - Zepa? What was different about them? Seems a very strange and inconsistent policy of genocide where you are taking the trouble to exterminate all the men in one village (and deporting the women and children, and burying all the victims) and in the next you are just deporting them all. Or, more likely, the events around Srebrenica from 1992 until 1995 were markedly different from those at Zepa - something the media refuses to report because it puts Muslims in a bad light. Carl Bildt's book does suggest that at Srebrenica less than half of the victims were massacred POWs/civilians and the rest died in ambushes and battles as they fled to Tuzla. Putting this together with Oric's atrocities, it emerges that Srebrenica was quite different from what the media has presented it as being.