Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=227&page=16

ORGANISER (INDIA)

March 09, 2008

Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
By Sandhya Jain

The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich industrial resources
were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals.
Halliburton, favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took over the
strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the
security of Camp Bondsteel, the largest American military base in Europe.

The faux independence of resource-rich Muslim Kosovo symbolises the
resurgence of old nineteenth century Western imperialism. The strategy is
reminiscent of the 'coloured' revolutions in former Soviet Republics, and
some actors are the same. There are salutary lessons for all non-Western
nations from this latest assault on international law.

Kosovo has become a Euro-American protectorate (read colony). As
Australia exploits the oilfields of East Timor, carved out of Indonesia in
1999, so the wealth of Kosovo shall be enjoyed by Euro-American
multinationals. The trouble began in the early 1990s when the fall of the
Soviet Union triggered a Euro-American drive to dismember Yugoslavia. In
1991, while the bombing of Iraq grabbed world attention, America sponsored
separatist movements in the Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Slovenia and
Bosnia; imposed crippling economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, and pushed NATO
forces into the region.

US also started arming the right-wing UCK movement in Kosovo, though
the latter was not a Yugoslav republic, but part of the Serbian Republic and
civilisational fountainhead of Serbia. It has a large Albanian Muslim
population, a relic of Ottoman rule. Washington's 'free press' played ball
with the Clinton Administration, carrying grisly tales of Serbian genocide
against Albanians in Kosovo. American officials claimed 100,000 to 500,000
Albanians were butchered by Serbia. There were reports of mass graves,
reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

As angry Serbia resisted Western pressures, American aggression began.
After 78 days of intensive bombings, including the use of thousands of
radioactive depleted-uranium bombs, and immeasurable damage to civilian and
industrial targets, a besieged Yugoslavia crumbled. On June 3, 1999, NATO
occupied Kosovo. President Slobodan Milosevic was captured and tried for
crimes against humanity at The Hague, where he died in March 2006,
supposedly of a heart attack.

Serbians question the verdict, with some justice. As the forensic
teams of 17 NATO countries set up by the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes
arrived, American lies were soon exposed. The officials could unearth only
2,108 bodies in Kosovo-these belonged to all nationalities, and most were
victims of NATO bombing; some fell to the war between UCK and Serbian
authorities. Much like Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons of mass destruction,
the teams could not find even one mass grave, much less evidence of
"genocide." The report of the chief prosecutor for the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, was played
down by a complicit American media.

I may mention as an aside that it was precisely the absence of dead
bodies, especially butchered bodies, that discredited the colonial doctrine
of the Aryan Invasion of India and massacre of ethnic 'dasyus', who were
metamorphosed into south Indian Dravidians.

Anyway, Kosovo's Western invaders were unabashed and placed her under
a UN Mission in 1999, under Security Council Resolution 1244. In reality,
power vested with the Mission of the European Union (EU). NATO was security
guarantor, and under its watch, there was a hideous ethnic cleansing of
Serbs and Romas (gypsies); over 250,000 Serbs, Romas and other groups fled.
Even Albanian Muslims had to flee, as nine years of NATO rule led to 60 per
cent unemployment and degraded the region into a cesspool of the
international drug and prostitution trade.

The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich industrial resources
were forcibly privatised and sold to giant Western multinationals.
Halliburton, favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took over the
strategic oil and transportation lines of the entire region along with the
security of Camp Bondsteel, the largest American military base in Europe.

So how did this twenty-first century colonial enterprise succeed? The
UN helped. In June 2005, the then Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed
former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to negotiate
Kosovo's final status. Like many Euro-American politicians, he too had
multiple identities and loyalties.

Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of the
International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body promoted by
multi-billionaire George Soros, who via Karl Popper's Open Society Institute
played a stellar role in the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet
Baltic Republics. The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for the
US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign wealth of weak nations
for Western corporates. The ICG connection with American politics is evident
from the presence on its Board of two key officials complicit in bombing
Kosovo-Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Coming from this background, Ahtisaari gave a predictably slanted
Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo Status Settlement to the new UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon in March 2007. It proposed an International Civilian
Representative (read viceroy) to be appointed by the US-EU to oversee
Kosovo, with the power to overrule any actions or annul any laws by local
authorities. The ICR would control Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.
Then, the EU would set up a European Security and Defence Policy Mission
(ESDP) and NATO an International Military Presence. These will control
foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. If this
is independence, what is slavery?

Russia has rightly pointed out that UN Security Council Resolution
1244 kept Kosovo firmly in Serbia. Kosovo's guided independence reinforces
the humiliation of the Islamic world by Western Christian nations and takes
Europe back (this time aided by US muscle) to treacherous terrain in the
Balkans. The stage is being set for a fresh international denouement.

“Independent” Kosovo: Anatomy of a Western protectorate

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/koso-m01.shtml

WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE (USA)

“Independent” Kosovo: Anatomy of a Western protectorate
By Paul Mitchell

1 March 2008

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.”

With these words, the Second Continental Congress issued the United States
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It declared the cause impelling
the American people towards separation to be the attempt by the King of
Great Britain to seek “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”

On February 17, 2008, in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, the province’s
Assembly also declared independence. Their document could not be more
different from the world-changing rallying cry of the US declaration with
its proclamation “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In a document servile to the Western powers, their institutions and
representatives—and written in language meant as an appeal to faceless
bureaucrats in the US State Department and European Commission—Kosovo’s
leaders accept without question its status as a protectorate governed by a
foreign overlord. In much the same way as neighbouring Bosnia has been ruled
for the last 10 years, all the major decisions about the country’s economy,
public spending, social programmes, security and trade will remain in the
hands of a NATO/United Nations/European Union occupation administration.

In one sentence, we are told that Kosovo is now an “independent and
sovereign state” that “reflects the will of our people”; in the next, that
this is in “full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy
Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status
Settlement.” Former Finnish president Ahtisaari submitted his plan for
“supervised” independence in March 2007 but met opposition from Serbia and
Russia, which rightly saw it as a contravention of international law.
Although Ahtisaari’s proposal was withdrawn, it still drove the timetable
for independence and now forms the backbone of the declaration.

In the declaration, which runs to just 27 paragraphs, his name appears eight
times, including:

* We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari
Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years
ahead.

* The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the
Ahtisaari Plan.

* We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our
implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law
mission.

* We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to
retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo
and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council
resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo
institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities

* Kosovo shall have its international borders as set forth in Annex VIII of
the Ahtisaari Plan,

And just in case, the last paragraph repeats, “We hereby affirm, clearly,
specifically, and irrevocably, that Kosovo shall be legally bound to comply
with the provisions contained in this Declaration, including, especially,
the obligations for it under the Ahtisaari Plan.”

From the start, Ahtisaari’s plan insists its 15 articles and 12 annexes
“will take precedence over all other legal provisions in Kosovo” and details
how a “future international presence” will enforce them. Many of its
provisions have already been brought in under the UNMIK regime, and the
document merely sets them down formally.

The plans tells the Kosovan people that their newly “independent” country
will have “an open market economy with free competition” and will “establish
with the European Commission, and in close cooperation with the
International Monetary Fund, a fiscal surveillance mechanism.”

Recent reports show how the Kosovan economy is already dominated by
international capital. By the end of 2006, there were six banks, two of
which were under full foreign ownership and which controlled more than 70
percent of total bank assets. It was a similar story in the insurance
sector, where six out of nine companies are mainly in foreign ownership and
manage 70 percent of insurance assets.

Ahtisaari’s plan also demanded further privatisation of publicly owned
enterprises (POEs) and socially owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Kosovo Trust
Agency (KTA). The international members of the Board of Directors have the
power to suspend decisions of the KTA, and the two largest international
donors to the KTA have the right to attend meetings as observers.

Already, the KTA has sold off hundreds of POEs and SOEs whose origins lie in
the Tito regime.

By June 2007, the KTA had transferred 510 SOEs to new companies (NewCos) and
sold them off to investors in a competitive bidding process. Many workers
have been sacked or forced to accept minimal compensation, and the whole
process has been mired in accusations of corruption.

The Ahtisaari plan also prescribed the structure of Kosovo institutions,
most of which will have to have members of the “international community”
sitting in them. The government will consist of 12 ministers and the
Assembly of 120 members apportioned by ethnicity in a situation where many
in the minority population have been driven out or live behind barricades
and razor wire. There will be a 21-member Commission to draft a constitution
and a Constitutional Court composed of nine judges, three of whom will be
appointed by the president of the European Court of Human Rights. The Kosovo
Judicial Council will have 13 members, 2 of whom will be from the
“international community” and oversee the appointment of judges. A new
Kosovo Security Force (KSF) will be established consisting of no more than
2,500 lightly armed active members and 800 reserve members whose main job
will be restricted to crisis response, explosive ordnance disposal, and
civil protection. Kosovo will also establish a Civil Aviation Authority
(CAA) to regulate civil aviation activities.

Acting as Kosovo overlord will be an International Civilian Representative
(ICR), “double-hatted” as the EU Special Representative (EUSR), who will be
appointed by an International Steering Group (ISG) comprising France,
Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union,
European Commission, NATO and Russia. The ISG will have sole power to decide
when the ICR’s work is done. Two days before Kosovo declared independence,
Pieter Feith, a former political advisor to NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was
appointed ICR/EUSR and Fletcher Burton, former US consul general in Leipzig,
Germany, was appointed his deputy.

The ICR has powers to enforce the Ahtisaari plan, including the authority to
overturn laws adopted by Kosovo authorities and ratify the appointment of
public officials and remove them. In addition, the ICR will appoint directly
certain state officials including the auditor-general, the director-general
of the Customs Service, the director of tax administration, the director of
the Treasury, and the managing director of the Central Banking Authority of
Kosovo. The Assembly may not formally approve the Constitution until the ICR
has certified it.

The Ahtisaari plan also called for a European Security and Defence Policy
Mission now created as the Eulex mission to “monitor, mentor and advise on
all areas related to the rule of law” and a NATO-led International Military
Presence (IMP), which will absorb the 16,000 NATO troops currently in
Kosovo. The IMP has the power to “use all necessary force where required and
without further sanction, interference or permission.” The IMP will provide
protection to the Serb minority and religious monuments, oversee the
formation of the KSF and dissolution of the Kosovo Protection Corps, largely
a fire-fighting force composed of former members of the Kosovo Liberation
Army. The IMP will be able to take over CAA functions and re-establish
military control over the airspace if necessary.

The plan also dictates the structure and powers of municipalities,
educational institutes and the police force. It also demands Kosovo pay its
share of the external debt, and if an agreement cannot be reached, the ISG
will nominate an international arbitrator whose “debt allocation shall be
irrevocable.”

Politicians and officials from Kosovo and the West have declared that all
this is necessary to ensure a peaceful transition to independence and
provide a stable environment for investment and membership of the European
Union. However, the new ICR/EUSR Feith told the Dutch newspaper NRC
Handelsblad, “Expectations are high.... People expect that their quality of
life and economic circumstances will improve rapidly” and warned, “Neither
the EU nor the Americans will be able to fulfil their high expectations.”

Kosovan economist Ibrahim Rexhepi adds, “We must get rid of the illusion
that independence will bring tonnes of dollars into our streets.... The
economic crisis is likely to continue. To restart the metallurgy, food
industry and energy (sectors) takes time and a lot of investment.”

Even to dignify Kosovo with the term country, let alone one that is
independent, makes a mockery of the term. Kosovo has a population of about 2
million people and covers an area of 10,887 square kilometres, or 4,203
square miles. It has one of the most underdeveloped economies in Europe,
with a per capita income estimated at US$2,328 in 2004.

The US state of Connecticut would make a more viable country. It is bigger,
is not landlocked and has a population of 3.4 million. Its per capita income
was US$47,819 in 2005, more than 20 times that of Kosovo.

Kosovo is almost entirely dependent on production outside its borders. It
exports less per capita than any other country in Europe—just €77 million.
Although analysts have made much of an increase in private sector activity,
non-housing private investment stood at just €284 million in 2006, and it is
dependent on scrap-metal recovery and geared to satisfying the consumer
needs of the international officials and Kosovan elite.

After nine years of UNMIK occupation, little has improved for the vast
majority of Kosovo’s population, and in many respects it has worsened.
Nearly 80 percent of the population have experienced a decline in living
standards since 2003. More than half of Kosovo’s inhabitants are unemployed,
and real wages are stagnant. Those that have work receive an average €220
(about US$320) per month. More than a third of the population live on less
than €1.50 per day. Attempts to raise pensions and wages have been blocked.
Those that are better off rely on remittances from relatives working abroad.
Poverty is so widespread and all-encompassing that, somewhat ironically, the
province has the lowest levels of inequality in Europe. But the gap between
the richest and poorest is growing.

Little wonder that there was a record low turnout in last year’s
elections—43 percent, down from 80 percent in elections soon after the
Kosovo war—indicating a staggering decrease in support for the political
parties installed after 1999.

Back in 1999, after the Western powers backed by various liberals and
radicals had thrown their support behind demands for self-determination for
Kosovo and the NATO bombing of Serbia, the World Socialist Web Site warned
in “After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War,” “The bombing
of Yugoslavia has exposed the real relations that exist between imperialism
and small nations.”

The statement continued, “The great indictments of imperialism written in
the first years of the twentieth century—those of Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg
and Hilferding—read like contemporary documents. Economically, small nations
are at the mercy of the lending agencies and financial institutions of the
major imperialist powers. In the realm of politics, any attempt to assert
their independent interests brings with it the threat of devastating
military retaliation. With increasing frequency small states are being
stripped of their national sovereignty, compelled to accept foreign military
occupation, and submit to forms of rule that are, when all is said and done,
of an essentially colonialist character.”

Nearly a decade later, this prognosis has proven correct. Not only has
Kosovo’s creation been carried out in violation of any concept of national
sovereignty for Serbia, but in no sense can what has been created be
considered a sovereign entity in its own right. Rather, Kosovo is being used
as a pawn in the Great Power rivalries between the US, Europe and Russia,
with terrible consequences for all the peoples of the Balkans, irrespective
of their ethnicity.

Kosovo A country without an economy?

http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1431

INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT (UK)

February 2008

Kosovo A country without an economy?

Adam Novak

Media coverage of Kosovo's recent Unilateral Declaration of Independence has
focused on the risk of conflict with Serbia, and the broader geopolitical
risks for unresolved separatist struggles in Bosnia and the former Soviet
Union.

Many in the international peace movement blame the western powers for the
violent break-up of former Yugoslavia. But Kosovo's independence reveals
another dimension of the west's criminal responsibility in the destruction
and re-colonisation of Eastern Europe since 1989. The newly independent
state of Kosovo has no economy to speak of, and its poor and undereducated
population are dependent on remittances from family abroad, smuggling, and
foreign aid.

Newly-independent Kosovo is Europe's poorest country. Its per capita GDP is
$1,300), which is about the same as Ghana or Burkina Faso, and only one
tenth of the level in the poorest countries in the European Union, Bulgaria
and Romania. Kosovo's subsistence economy remained virtually unchanged
throughout the eight years of UN rule, and the standard of living of its two
million people is still lower than before the Serbian government imposed
central control of the province in 1989.

How is such crushing poverty possible in the heart of Europe?

Kosovo was always the poorest part of former Yugoslavia, with a GDP of about
10% of that of Slovenia, the richest part of the federation. But Tito's
Yugoslav system ensured investments in infrastructure and industry, mass
education, and the creation of autonomous institutions, all for the first
time in Kosovo's modern history. In the late 1980s, Serbian nationalist
leader Slobodan Milosevic allowed Kosovo's small Serbian minority to seize
these resources and political power, provoking a massive movement of
non-violent resistance among the Albanian-speaking majority. Albanians were
expelled from industrial and civil service jobs, and most families survived
on a mixture of small-scale agriculture and remittances from family members
working abroad - mostly in Germany, Switzerland and the USA.

The NATO war against Serbia in 1999 destroyed most of the industry and
infrastructure, either through bombing, or by looting as the Albanian
population took their revenge on the Yugoslav regime which had humiliated
them. A United Nations administration was rapidly put in place, and ran
Kosovo as a protectorate of the western powers until the declaration of
independence in mid-February this year.

This UN administration completely failed to develop economic activities that
would lift the population out of poverty. So much western food "aid" was
dumped into Kosovo that most of the local farmers went bankrupt, and were
forced to kill their livestock or abandon their fields. A free trade regime
was imposed, and the Yugoslav Dinar replaced as legal currency by the German
Mark, (Kosovo therefore became a de facto part of the Eurozone on 1 January
2002). As a result, Kosovo joined the other EU protectorate, Bosnia, as a
marginal but easy-to-penetrate market for west European companies, while
local companies found themselves unable to compete, and separated from their
former markets in the rest of former Yugoslavia.

One of the paradoxes of Kosovo's de facto separation from Serbia in 1999 is
that - since free trade always benefits the strongest at the expense of the
weakest - Serbian companies have been able to capture a large part of the
Kosovo market, even providing the basic foodstuffs which Kosovo used to
export to Serbia. Serbia is now Kosovo's largest trading partner, while
Kosovo has failed to penetrate either Serbia or any of the other ex-Yugoslav
markets. Kosovo has a disastrous balance of payments; in 2007, Kosovo
imported 1.5 billion euros worth of goods, but exported only about 150
million euros worth.

While it did little to help the small farmers and workshops that dominate
the Kosovo economy, the UN administration expended considerable effort on
the introduction of a textbook-style neoliberal legal system, ensuring that
Kosovo's natural resources (coal, lead, zinc, nickel, farmland) and the
handful of remaining industrial and food-processing companies can be easily
acquired by western investors, that civil infrastructure can only be built
by public-private partnerships, and that private investors will be able to
take over the most profitable part of public services like health and
education.

The electricity sector illustrates the economic dilemma facing Kosovo. The
territory has persistent power cuts and 'brown-outs.' The electric company
produces 800 megawatts of electricity each day, about 80 percent of what is
needed. It can't afford to buy more from neighbouring countries, because,
during the years of conflict and UN administration, almost everybody stopped
paying, and many homes and business are connected to the power grid
illegally. Western advisors have proposed privatising the electricity
supplier, so that private companies will be responsible for enforcing
payment - and for cutting off poor people's heat and light. Foreign
companies are expected to build a modern coal-fired power station in
exchange to unlimited access to the estimated 15 billion tons of brown coal
lying in the earth beneath Kosovo. The EU will help create a regional energy
market to swap surpluses (Kosovo could import from Balkan countries with
hydroelectric power at high season, and export back to them when water
levels are lower).

It would be better for Kosovo to build up a state utility, ensuring that
non-renewable resources are used in the national interest, (The ground is
also though to contain 20 billion tons of lead and zinc and 15 billion tons
of nickel). Only a public utility could ensure that the painful move towards
enforcement of energy bill collection is socially responsible. In private
hands, the energy company may provoke a massive non-payment campaign, as
followed utility privatisations in South Africa and Bolivia. Investors are
therefore trying to get the government to guarantee payment for minimum
supply to local households, and to allow the privatised utility to double
production, but sell all of the extra capacity abroad, effectively ignoring
the needs of the people who the coal belongs to.

Having destroyed all forms of Yugoslav state or social ownership, the UN has
created a Kosovo state administration that lives from import duties, a sales
tax, and subsidies from the European Union. Independence will allow a merger
between the UN and national administrations, but with former UN employees
(ie most educated Kosovars who can speak English) used to much higher wages
than in the national administration, their integration is likely to increase
the corruption of the civil service, as they try desperately to maintain
their western lifestyle.

Regional warlords, bosses of the UCK militia which confronted the Serbs
during the NATO war, are responsible for the implementation of state
functions in most of the territory outside the capital, Prishtina. They also
control the most lucrative export industries, which are all illegal. Kosovo
is part of the main transit route for drugs entering the European Union, and
is a major element in the trafficking of women into the European sex
industry - some studies suggest that 30% of trafficked women worldwide are
controlled by Balkan gangs. Kosovo (and the neighbouring post-Yugoslav state
of Montenegro) are also the main centres of smuggling of tax-free cigarettes
into the EU. As many Kosovars observe cynically, all these areas of activity
depend on cooperation between Kosovar and Serbian gangs, and show that, at
the top, there is a willingness to forget the war and work together.

The central government will try to weaken the warlords by incorporating some
militias into a Kosovo army, which has already been promised to the US and
NATO for any missions abroad. This mercenary role (which harks back to the
Albanian role within the Ottoman empire) offers the west, particularly the
USA, a motivated and dependable force of pro-western Moslems, for potential
use in Afghanistan, Iraq, or in a future move against Iran.

Meanwhile, the population continues to get by as best it can, in an economy
dominated by small-scale trading, subsistence agriculture, smuggling and
crime. The largest employer is the public sector, the private sector
consists mainly of shops and most businesses employ only two or three people
at minimum wage. Remittances from emigrant workers make up about 40% of GDP.
One third of Kosovo's two million residents are under the age of 14, and the
birth rate is the highest in Europe. This means that landholdings are
getting smaller and smaller, and since the terrain is too hilly for
mechanisation, productivity is too low to compete with imported - Serbian
and EU food products.

The Serbian minority in Kosovo (about 10% of the total population) is the
worst off, because it has lost its former privileges, and lacks contacts to
Kosovo's new bosses. Many young Serbs have already emigrated to Serbia
proper, and the remaining population would probably do the same, if they
could find a buyer for their farmland.

In economic terms, the NATO-Serbia war and UN protectorate over Kosovo has
meant a decade of stagnation. In 1989, the GDP per capita in richest part of
Yugoslavia, Slovenia, was 10 time higher than in Kosovo. Today Slovenia is
part of the EU, with a GDP per capita 16 times higher than Kosovo, and five
times higher than Serbia.

Few voices have been raised against this outrageous failure of the west. And
yet, Kosovo has a small, but well educated and westernised middle class,
based in the civil administration set up by the UN mission, and the army of
private contractors and "Non-Governmental Organisations" which the west used
to reorganize the society and provide a social base for its continued
presence. Profoundly opportunistic, these middle class layers would prefer
to work for the foreign donors, who pay better and are less violent, but, as
independence approached, many have attached themselves to one or the other
of the warlord factions. Unlike the rest of former Yugoslavia, very few of
these NGO activists have tried to organize or represent the disadvantaged
majority in society, let alone resist the twin predators of neoliberalism
and mafia.

This westernized middle class has had a central role in articulating and
transmitting the dominant ideology in today's Kosovo, a mixture of
neo-liberal obsession with private enterprise, coupled with a xenophobic and
clannish ultra-nationalism that justifies aggression against Kosovo's
national minorities, and legitimizes the various illegal traffics. By
expelling Albanians from the civil service and socially-owned enterprises,
Serbia's "communist" regime definitively severed Albanian attachment to the
social benefits of the Yugoslav system, and accelerated a return to pre-WWII
self-reliance and clan-based solidarity.

Kosovo nationalism also includes a massive sense of entitlement, with most
people believing that the European Union should provide massive and
indefinite financial support to Kosovo, to make up for its failure to
protect Kosovars in the past.

While the EU can be expected to bankroll the Kosovo state in the foreseeable
future, this will be conditional on the economy remaining open to western
investment in land, industry and services, and on a partial reduction in
smuggling and criminal activities. The EU will also subsidise infrastructure
projects (there is still no decent road link between landlocked Kosovo and
the Albanian port of Durres), but it will be difficult for Kosovo firms to
win more than a minor share of these contracts. Outside mining and
electricity production, the only other potential investments are likely to
be in the footware and textile sectors - Turkish and Greek companies are
already investing in neighbouring Albania, and the Kosovo government can be
expected to set its minimum wage so low as to attract some of this business.
East European governments are already engaged in a 'race to the bottom,'
with successive rounds of cuts to tax and business regulations to attract
investors. Though it is hard to see how Kosovo can compete with neighbouring
Macedonia, which offers a 10% flat tax and VAT rate, with generous tax
holidays, excellent road and rail links to Europe, and lower levels of
corruption and extortion.

While the EU will insist that Kosovo opens its economy to western
investment, it will continue to prevent legal migration of Kosovars into the
EU labour market, creating an explosive social situation for the government
of the newly-independent country.

In any case, the economic benefits of integration into the European space
will be less than those provided to Kosovo during the Yugoslav period,
before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) took charge of Belgrade's
economic policy in the mid 80s.

Adam Novak is the former representative of the Canadian NGO Alternatives in
Eastern Europe.

Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=227&page=16


The Organiser (India)
March 1, 2008


News Analysis
Kosovo: Latest Euro-American colony
By Sandhya Jain


[Edited]


-Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of
the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body
promoted by multi-billionaire George Soros, who via
Karl Popper’s Open Society Institute played a stellar
role in the coloured revolutions in the former Soviet
Baltic Republics.
The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for
the US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign
wealth of weak nations for Western corporates. The ICG
connection with American politics is evident from the
presence on its Board of two key officials complicit
in bombing Kosovo — Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew
Brzezinski.


The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich
industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold
to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton,
favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took
over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the
entire region along with the security of Camp
Bondsteel, the largest American military base in
Europe.

The faux independence of resource-rich...Kosovo
symbolises the resurgence of old nineteenth century
Western imperialism.

The strategy is reminiscent of the ‘coloured’
revolutions in former Soviet Republics, and some
actors are the same. There are salutary lessons for
all non-Western nations from this latest assault on
international law.

Kosovo has become a Euro-American protectorate (read
colony).

As Australia exploits the oilfields of East Timor...so
the wealth of Kosovo shall be enjoyed by Euro-American
multinationals.

The trouble began in the early 1990s when the fall of
the Soviet Union triggered a Euro-American drive to
dismember Yugoslavia. In 1991, while the bombing of
Iraq grabbed world attention, America sponsored
separatist movements in the Yugoslav republics of
Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia; imposed crippling
economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, and pushed NATO
forces into the region.

US also started arming the right-wing UCK [KLA]
movement in Kosovo, though the latter was not a
Yugoslav republic, but part of the Serbian Republic
and civilisational fountainhead of Serbia.

It has a large Albanian...population, a relic of
Ottoman rule. Washington’s ‘free press’ played ball
with the Clinton Administration, carrying grisly tales
of Serbian genocide against Albanians in Kosovo.
American officials claimed 100,000 to 500,000
Albanians were butchered by Serbia. There were reports
of mass graves, reminiscent of Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction.

As angry Serbia resisted Western pressures, American
aggression began.

After 78 days of intensive bombings, including the use
of thousands of radioactive depleted-uranium bombs,
and immeasurable damage to civilian and industrial
targets, a besieged Yugoslavia crumbled.

On June 3, 1999, NATO occupied Kosovo. President
Slobodan Milosevic was captured and tried for crimes
against humanity at The Hague, where he died in March
2006, supposedly of a heart attack.

Serbians question the verdict, with some justice.

As the forensic teams of 17 NATO countries set up by
the Hague Tribunal on War Crimes arrived, American
lies were soon exposed.

The officials could unearth only 2,108 bodies in
Kosovo—these belonged to all nationalities, and most
were victims of NATO bombing; some fell to the war
between UCK and Serbian authorities.

Much like Saddam Hussein’s phantom weapons of mass
destruction, the teams could not find even one mass
grave, much less evidence of “genocide.” The report of
the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte,
was played down by a complicit American media.
....
Anyway, Kosovo’s Western invaders were unabashed and
placed her under a UN Mission in 1999, under Security
Council Resolution 1244. In reality, power vested with
the Mission of the European Union (EU).

NATO was security guarantor, and under its watch,
there was a hideous ethnic cleansing of Serbs and
Romas (gypsies); over 250,000 Serbs, Romas and other
groups fled.

Even Albanian Muslims had to flee, as nine years of
NATO rule led to 60 per cent unemployment and degraded
the region into a cesspool of the international drug
and prostitution trade.

The poverty was confined to Kosovars. Its rich
industrial resources were forcibly privatised and sold
to giant Western multinationals. Halliburton,
favourite corporate of the Bush Administration, took
over the strategic oil and transportation lines of the
entire region along with the security of Camp
Bondsteel, the largest American military base in
Europe.

So how did this twenty-first century colonial
enterprise succeed? The UN helped. In June 2005, the
then Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed former
Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari as special envoy to
negotiate Kosovo’s final status. Like many
Euro-American politicians, he too had multiple
identities and loyalties.

Ahtisaari was simultaneously the Chairman Emeritus of
the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private body
promoted by multi-billionaire George Soros, who via
Karl Popper’s Open Society Institute played a stellar
role in the coloured revolutions in...former
Soviet...Republics.

The ICG peddles NATO intervention and open markets for
the US and EU; in other words, it steals the sovereign
wealth of weak nations for Western corporates. The ICG
connection with American politics is evident from the
presence on its Board of two key officials complicit
in bombing Kosovo — Gen. Wesley Clark and Zbigniew
Brzezinski.

Coming from this background, Ahtisaari gave a
predictably slanted Comprehensive Proposal for Kosovo
Status Settlement to the new UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon in March 2007.

It proposed an International Civilian Representative
(read viceroy) to be appointed by the US-EU to oversee
Kosovo, with the power to overrule any actions or
annul any laws by local authorities.

The ICR would control Customs, Taxation, Treasury and
Banking. Then, the EU would set up a European Security
and Defence Policy Mission (ESDP) and NATO an
International Military Presence. These will control
foreign policy, security, police, judiciary, all
courts and prisons. If this is independence, what is
slavery?

Russia has rightly pointed out that UN Security
Council Resolution 1244 kept Kosovo firmly in Serbia.

Kosovo’s guided independence reinforces...takes Europe
back (this time aided by US muscle) to treacherous
terrain in the Balkans. The stage is being set for a
fresh international denouement.

Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8182

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALIZATION (CANADA)

Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State
by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, February 29, 2008
Antifascist-calling.blogspot.com - 2008-02-23

The unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim
Thaci, former warlord/commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), heralds
the birth of a new European narco state.

The illegal dismemberment of Serbia, completing the U.S./EU/NATO destruction
of Yugoslavia, is proclaimed by ruling elites and their sycophants as an
exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region. This
provocative move, outside the framework of international law, threatens any
sovereign state with similar treatment should they deviate from the
"Washington consensus."

Far from bringing "peace" let alone "stability," an "independent" Kosovo
will serve as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on
spreading their tentacles East, further encircling Russia by penetrating the
former spheres of influence of the Soviet Union.

Led by dodgy characters and war criminals such as Hashim Thaci and Agim
Ceku, "independent" Kosovo is a gangster state governed by thugs with ties
to Albanian drug trafficking syndicates and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda, the KLA and Western Intelligence

Al-Qaeda's service to the CIA and other Western intelligence services is
well-documented. Beginning in 1998 and perhaps earlier, the London-based
cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the "emir" of the al-Qaeda-linked
Islamist group al-Muhajiroun began a recruitment drive for aspiring
mujahideen for the "holy war" in Kosovo at London's notorious Finsbury Park
Mosque.

On Friday, March 13, 1998 a London rally for the jihad was backed by some 50
local Islamist organizations. According to Christopher Deliso,

...the Albanian Islamic Society of London, headed by Kosovar Sheik
Muhammed Stubla, was lobbying and raising money for the KLA's campaign. ...
In contradiction to the KLA leadership's claims about secularism, the
Kosovar sheik specifically defined the militant group as "an Albanian
Islamic organisation which is determined to defend itself, its people, its
homeland, and its religion with all its capabilities and by all means." ...
The chief bank account for fundraising was in the London branch of
terrorist-linked Habibsons Bank of Pakistan. (The Coming Balkan Caliphate,
Westport: Praeger Security International, 2007, p. 43)

In 2005, in the wake of the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London, it was
revealed that Bakri, a probable asset of Britain's MI6, was the "spiritual"
force behind the deadly attacks.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reports that,

The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the
extremist network in the UK has a long history. According to John Loftus, a
former Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as
the suspected mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all
recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims to fight in
Kosovo. American and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The
MI6 connection raises questions about Bakri's relationship with British
authorities today. Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is
effectively immune to prosecution. ("Sources: August terror plot is a
'fiction' underscoring police failures," The Raw Story, Monday, September
18, 2006)

Before fleeing, Bakri defended the actions of his young dupes by
proclaiming, "We don't make a distinction between civilians and
non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and
unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no
sanctity."

The current "secular" Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, when he served as KLA
warlord was identified in media reports as having operational links to the
al-Qaeda network. Such reports are not surprising when one considers that
for earlier U.S./NATO "service" in Bosnia, bin Laden himself was rewarded a
Bosnian passport by the "democratic" government of former Nazi and Islamist
ideologue, Alija Izetbegovic.

As the Afghan-Arab database of disposable intelligence assets streamed into
Kosovo, often from Albania with the active assistance of narcotrafficking
gangsters under NATO supervision, they replenished the ranks of Thaci's
terrorist army.

Michel Chossudovsky writes,

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in
Bosnia. And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen
mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting
alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were
reported to be training the KLA in guerrilla and diversion tactics. ...
According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic
countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief
of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede. "Gazidede,
reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is
presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist
organizations." ("Kosovo 'freedom fighters' financed by organised crime,"
World Socialist Web Site, 10 April 1999)

These links are hardly casual. On the contrary, as Peter Dale Scott avers,

The closeness of the KLA to al-Qaeda was acknowledged again in the Western
press, after Afghan-connected KLA guerrillas proceeded in 2001 to conduct
guerrilla warfare in Macedonia. Press accounts included an Interpol report
containing the allegation that one of bin Laden's senior lieutenants was the
commander of an elite KLA unit operating in Kosovo in 1999. This was
probably Mohammed al-Zawahiri. (The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, p. 169)

Agim Ceku another "Prime Minister," committed massive war crimes in the
Croatian region of Krajina when employed by the Croatian army as a brigadier
general. As a key planner of Operation Storm, Ceku's forces massacred Serbs
and presided over the largest ethnic cleansing during NATO's Yugoslavian
destabilization campaign. Some 250,000 Serbs fled for their lives as Ceku's
black-uniformed shock troops, many adorned with symbols of the Nazi Ustasha
puppet regime during World War II were driven from Croatia.

According to Gregory Elich,

The invasion of Krajina was preceded by a thorough CIA and DIA analysis of
the region. According to Balkan specialist Ivo Banac, this "tactical and
intelligence support" was furnished to the Croatian Army at the beginning of
its offensive. ... Two months earlier, the Pentagon contracted Military
Professional Resources, Inc (MPRI) to train the Croatian military. According
to a Croatian officer, MPRI advisors "lecture us on tactics and big war
operations on the level of brigades, which is why we needed them for
Operation Storm when we took the Krajina." Croatian sources claim that U.S.
satellite intelligence was furnished to the Croatian military. Following the
invasion of Krajina, the U.S. rewarded Croatia with an agreement "broadening
existing cooperation" between MPRI and the Croatian military. U.S. advisors
assisted in the reorganization of the Croatian Army. Referring to this
reorganization in an interview with the newspaper Vecernji List, Croatian
General Tihomir Blaskic said, "We are building the foundations of our
organization on the traditions of the Croatian home guard" -- pro-Nazi
troops in World War II. ("The Invasion of Serbian Krajina," Emperors
Clothes, no date)

Following on the heels of this sterling "victory," Ceku became KLA commander
in 1999 and "Prime Minister" in 2006. There is an outstanding Interpol
warrant for his arrest according to Michel Chossudovsky.

The KLA: "Trained-up fierce" by Germany's KSK

As in Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia, the Kosovo Liberation Army was
secretly armed by America and Germany and remains what it has always been, a
creature of Western intelligence services.

Christopher Deliso observes,

In 1996, Germany's BND established a major station in Tirana...and another
in Rome to select and train future KLA fighters. According to Le Monde
Diplomatique, "special forces in Berlin provided the operational training
and supplied arms and transmission equipment from ex-East German Stasi
stocks as well as Black uniforms." The Italian headquarters recruited
Albanian immigrants passing through ports such as Brindisi and Trieste,
while German military intelligence, the Militaramschirmdienst, and the
Kommando Spezialkräfte Special Forces (KSK), offered military training and
provisions to the KLA in the remote Mirdita Mountains of northern Albania
controlled by the deposed president, Sali Berisha.

In 1996, BND Chief Geiger's deputy, Rainer Kesselring, the son of the Nazi
Luftwaffe general responsible for the bombing of Belgrade in 1941 that left
17,000 dead, oversaw KSK training of Albanian recruits at a Turkish military
base near Izmir. (The Coming Balkan Caliphate, Westport: Praeger Security
International, 2007, pp. 37-38)

Hypocritically, while Washington had officially designated the KLA a
"terrorist organization" funded by the heroin trade, the Clinton
administration was complicit with their German allies in the division of the
Serb province along ethnic and religious lines.

By 1998, the KLA took control of between 25 to 40 percent of the province
before Serb forces wrested the KLA-held areas back. Facing imminent defeat,
the Kosovo Liberation Army and allied mujahideen fighters appealed to
Washington, citing the imminent danger of "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs.
Laughable on the face of it, Albanians constitute fully 90 percent of
Kosovo's population, and in fact, it was the Serbs, Roma and Jews who were
being brutalized by KLA hit squads, their homes torched, their churches and
synagogues sacked. It was the dismantling of the KLA's terrorist
infrastructure by the Yugoslav People's Army that was the trigger that
prompted direct military intervention by NATO in 1999.

As in Iraq, the 78 day U.S. bombing campaign targeted critical civilian
infrastructure in Serbia: bridges, factories, power plants, electrical
transmission hubs, communications centers. Throughout Serbia and Kosovo
itself, the U.S. scattered tons of radioactive depleted uranium munitions
and tens of thousands of cluster bombs. The U.S. attack, ostensibly to
"protect" Kosovo's population from Serb depredations caused some 800,000
civilians to flee NATO's devastating raids.

For Washington, drunk on the illusion that its policies had hastened the
collapse of a bureaucratized and rotten Soviet system, the dismemberment of
Yugoslavia would again represent the triumph of the so-called "free market"
and "democracy" under the umbrella of a new international order administered
by World Bank/IMF "reforms": Francis Fukuyama's short-lived "end of
history." While on the opposite pole of the same ideological dead end,
political Islam's tactical alliance with the West was a means to establish a
bridgehead for penetration into Europe via dodgy Saudi, Kuwaiti and Gulf
"charities" in pursuit of their quixotic quest of establishing a "divine"
(Islamicized) capitalist order rising from the ashes of a decadent West.

Two heads, same poisonous snake.

The KLA's Links to the International Heroin Trade

In Kosovo, Hashim Thaci's KLA served as the militarized vanguard for the
Albanian mafia whose "15 Families" control virtually every facet of the
Balkan heroin trade. Kosovar traffickers ship heroin originating exclusively
from Asia's Golden Crescent. At one end lies Afghanistan where poppy is
harvested for transshipment through Iran and Turkey; as morphine base it is
then refined into "product" for worldwide consumption. From there it passes
into the hands of the Albanian syndicates who control the Balkan Route.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported,

Until the war intervened, Kosovars were the acknowledged masters of the
trade, credited with shoving aside the Turkish gangs that had long dominated
narcotics trafficking along the Balkan Route, and effectively directing the
ethnic Albanian network.

Kosovar bosses "orchestrated the traffic, regulated the rate and set the
prices," according to journalist Leonardo Coen, who covers racketeering and
organized crime in the Balkans for the Italian daily La Repubblica.

"The Kosovars had a 10-year head start on their cousins across the border,
simply because their Yugoslav passports allowed them to travel earlier and
much more widely than someone from communist Albania," said Michel
Koutouzis, a senior researcher at Geopolitical Drug Watch who is regarded as
Europe's leading expert on the Balkan Route.

"That allowed them to establish very efficient overseas networks through
the worldwide Albanian diaspora -- and in the process, to forge ties with
other underworld groups involved in the heroin trade, such as Chinese triads
in Vancouver and Vietnamese in Australia," Koutouzis told The Chronicle.
(Frank Viviano, "KLA Linked to Enormous Heroin Trade," Wednesday, May 5,
1999, Page A-1)

It is hardly an accident that the meteoric rise of the Kosovar families to
the top of the narcotrafficking hierarchy coincided with the KLA's sudden
appearance in the area in 1997.

As Peter Klebnikov observed,

As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the
KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups in
exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies to fight
alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with modern
weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of the KLA. In
all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not surprising, say
European law enforcement officials, that the faction that ultimately seized
power in Kosovo -- the KLA under Hashim Thaci -- was the group that
maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the biggest contributors,
the drug traffickers may have gotten the most influence in running the
country," says Koutouzis. ("Heroin Heroes," Mother Jones, January/February
2000)

As is well-known, U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely
on far-right provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to
facilitate the dirty work. Throughout its Balkan operations the CIA made
liberal use of these preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and
provide them with targets.

The rest is history, as they say.

Kosovo Today

Has anything changed in the intervening years? Hardly. In fact, the
vise-like grip of the Albanian mafia over narcotics, human trafficking and
arms smuggling has cemented the "15 Families" place atop Europe's hierarchy
of crime, an essential arm of the capitalist deep state.

Considering NATO and the UN's lofty mandate to bring "peace and stability"
to the region through "democracy promotion" and "institution building," what
does the balance sheet reveal?

According to regional experts the outlook for Kosovo is grim. The economy is
in shambles, unemployment hovers near 50 percent, a population of young
people with "criminality as the sole career choice" populate a society
tottering on the brink of collapse where the state is dominated by organized
crime.

According to former New York Times reporter David Binder, citing a 124-page
investigation by the Institute for European Policy commissioned by the
German Bundeswehr,

"It is a Mafia society" based on "capture of the state" by criminal
elements. ("State capture" is a term coined in 2000 by a group of World Bank
analysts to describe countries where government structures have been seized
by corrupt financial oligarchies. This study applied the term to
Montenegro's Milo Djukanovic, by way of his cigarette smuggling and to
Slovenia, with the arms smuggling conducted by Janez Jansa). In Kosovo, it
says, "There is a need for thorough change of the elite."

Fat chance that happening anytime soon! Binder reports:

In the authors' definition, Kosovan organized crime "consists of
multimillion-Euro organizations with guerrilla experience and espionage
expertise." They quote a German intelligence service report of "closest ties
between leading political decision makers and the dominant criminal class"
and name Ramush Haradinaj, Hashim Thaci and Xhavit Haliti as compromised
leaders who are "internally protected by parliamentary immunity and abroad
by international law." They scornfully quote the UNMIK chief from 2004-2006,
Soeren Jessen Petersen, calling Haradinaj "a close and personal friend."
UNMIK, they add "is in many respects an element of the local problem scene."

The study sharply criticizes the United States for "abetting the escape of
criminals" in Kosovo as well as "preventing European investigators from
working." This has made Americans "vulnerable to blackmail." It notes
"secret CIA detention centers" at Camp Bondsteel and assails American
military training for Kosovo (Albanian) police by Dyncorp, authorized by the
Pentagon. ("Kosovo Auf Deutsch," Balkan Analysis, November 18, 2007)
As we can readily observe in other climes, the interpenetration of the state
by criminal elites serve as the preferred mechanism to cement a
"public-private partnership" founded on corruption, maintained by brute
force solely for purposes of resource extraction, pipeline politics,
military bases and the geopolitical advantage gained over "market" rivals.

As the U.S. Embassy burns in Belgrade, all in all, its another "Mission
Accomplished" moment for the United States.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Mass resistance to U.S. NATO role

http://www.workers.org/2008/world/serbia_0306/

WORKERS WORLD (USA)

In Serbia
Mass resistance to U.S. NATO role

By Sara Flounders

Published Feb 28, 2008 10:25 PM

In the final analysis, history is never decided by resolutions, laws or
proclamations.

It is decided by explosive mass movements that churn up from below in
response to intolerable conditions and outrageous events.

On Feb. 24 hundreds gathered in front of the White house to
oppose the latest U.S. attack on Serbia, organized by the STOP (Stop
Terrorizing Orthodox Peoples) Coalition. Major protest demonstrations were
held in Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland; Vienna, Austria; Athens, Greece;
Vicenza, Italy; Montreal and Toronto; Cleveland and Chicago. This week
demonstrations will continue, including a major demonstration in front of
the U.N. on March 2 from 2 to 4 p.m.
WW photo: Sara Flounders

An angry and enormous demonstration-estimates range from a half million to
well over a million people-in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, on Feb. 21
has changed the terms of the debate about Kosovo.

Following this colossal outpouring in opposition to Washington's theft of
the Serbian province of Kosovo, thousands of people in Belgrade stormed the
U.S. Embassy and set fires in it. The British, German, Croatian, Belgian and
Turkish embassies were also attacked. Western franchises, including 10
McDonalds plus Nike stores and 50 other outlets, along with bank windows,
were targeted by angry youths. There were nights of running street battles
with riot police.

Thousands demonstrated at border crossings between Serbia proper and Kosovo.
Two border crossings were destroyed, one by fire, the other in an explosion.
All these actions sent a sharp message-that the U.S. decision to establish a
direct colony in Kosovo by recognizing its "independence" would be
challenged by an explosive movement that has gone much further than just the
official Serbian government statement of opposition.

An article in the New York Times of Feb. 25 worried that Washington may have
underestimated the Serbian response. It said that policy makers in
Washington and Brussels fear that the angry opposition may be "destabilizing
for the entire region." Entitled "Serbian Rage in Kosovo: Last Gasp or First
Breath?" the article reflected many other news commentaries: "The world is
waiting to see whether the riots on Thursday were the final spasm of anger
in Serbia or the first tremor in a new Balkan earthquake."

Of course, it is the danger of a new Balkan earthquake that U.S. corporate
power fears.

It certainly appears that the U.S. government has once again underestimated
opposition to its criminal policies. Washington had considered that its
long-announced decision to recognize a new mini-state in the Balkans could
not be opposed. It was considered a fait accompli.

Although Kosovo might for a time lack official U.N. endorsement, it was
thought that quick recognition by the U.S. and European Union, along with
funding and continued stationing of international forces, would overwhelm
Serbian opposition.

Washington is so used to having its arrogant way and violating international
agreements-even the terms that the U.S. itself dictated on NATO expansion,
borders and national sovereignty-that it is shocked to find serious
opposition.

Certainly many politicians in Serbia, anxious for Serbia to join the EU,
were not disposed to make more than a symbolic opposition. But the angry
response of the entire Serbian population has changed the very ground under
this latest imperialist land grab.

Struggle heating up

EU staff and other forces are now withdrawing from the northern part of
Kosovo, around the town of Mitrovica, which has been divided between areas
that are either majority ethnic Serbs or majority ethnic Albanians. Other
national groupings also live in Kosovo. All have been historically
oppressed, recently by Western European and U.S. imperialists, earlier by
feudal empires.

At the bridge over the Ibar River in Mitrovica, there has been a weeklong
standoff between the Kosovo Police Service, a multi-ethnic force, and U.N.
police. The KPS police have refused to serve under the new Kosovo-declared
state. Dozens of busloads of protesters have come to the border of the
province to support rallies against Kosovo's separation.

Meanwhile U.S./NATO forces, called KFOR, have moved to seal the border with
armored vehicles and tanks to halt an influx of potential protesters.

Once again the challenge in Europe to the crushing backward drag of U.S.
imperialism, whose threats and pressures have undone numerous socialist
states, including Yugoslavia, has come from the Serbian mass movement.

Solidarity demonstrations all across Europe, Canada and the U.S. were held
on Feb. 24, and were to continue through the week.

For many the very hypocrisy of the U.S. position alerted them to its having
a more sinister motive than wanting to grant independence to Kosovo. After
all, the U.S. has refused to allow the independence of Puerto Rico despite
more than 100 years of struggle, yet it was the first country to recognize
Kosovo's independence from Serbia-on the very day that the unilateral
declaration was made.

International opposition

Both Russia and China, which hold veto power on the U.N. Security Council,
made it clear that they would not allow the U.N. to endorse the forcible
theft of Kosovo from Serbia. They expressed grave concern about the
dangerous precedent it set in further fracturing nation states around the
world that are targeted by imperialist intervention.

The unilateral declaration was a direct violation of the U.N. Charter, other
international law and even the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution
1244, drafted by the U.S. after 78 days of bombing Serbia in 1999. Despite
the lack of U.N. approval, the U.S., Germany, France and Britain recklessly
went ahead with the recognition of Kosovo.

Opposed to the recognition are Serbia, Russia, China, Spain, Greece,
Venezuela, Bolivia, Portugal, Slovakia, Malta, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus,
Sri Lanka and Armenia. A number of other countries have not yet made a
decision, despite intense U.S. pressure.

President Hugo Chávez said Venezuela would join other countries in
condemning the declaration. "This cannot be accepted. It's a very dangerous
precedent for the entire world," he said.

Bolivia also refused to recognize Kosovo's independence. President Evo
Morales compared Kosovo separatists to the leaders of four eastern
resource-rich Bolivian states who have U.S. encouragement in demanding
greater autonomy, in an effort to fracture and halt progressive changes
coming from the federal government.

On Feb. 22, Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said on state-run Vesti-24
television that Kosovo's split from Serbia was the result of an
"imperialistic American effort to divide and rule."

Rogozin made an ominous warning that could hardly be ignored. He said that
the Russian military might get involved if all the EU nations recognize
Kosovo as independent with U.N. agreement. If that happens, Russia "will
proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute
military force."

On Feb. 24 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Belgrade with
current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, who is Vladimir Putin's
likely successor as president. They came to make Russia's position clear.

Medvedev said, "It is unacceptable that for the first time in the post-war
history, a country which is a member of the United Nations has been divided
in violation of all principles used in resolving territorial conflicts.

"We proceed from the understanding that Serbia is a single state with its
jurisdiction spanning its entire territory and we will stick to this
principled stance in the future.

"It is absolutely obvious that the crisis that has happened and is the
responsibility of those who have made the illegal decision will
unfortunately have long-term consequences for peace on the European
continent."

Medvedev signed an agreement to build a section of South Stream gas pipeline
through Serbia. The line will carry Russian gas through the Balkans to the
Mediterranean Sea. A business agreement between Serbia's national oil
company, NIS, and OAO Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, was also
consolidated.

Kosovo is not independent

It is essential to explain again and again when discussing this issue of
U.S. recognition of Kosovo's "independence" that Kosovo has not gained a
shred of self-determination or even minimal self-rule, even on paper.

Unless this is continually explained and repeated, many political activists
who defend self-determination for oppressed nations might naively support
"independence" for Kosovo.

The plan under which Kosovo becomes "independent" establishes an old-style
colonial structure in its rawest form. Kosovo will actually be run by an
appointed High Representative and by administrative bodies appointed by the
U.S., the EU and NATO-the U.S.-commanded military alliance.

Imperialist administrators will have direct control over all aspects of
foreign and domestic policy. They have control over the departments of
Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking. They control foreign policy,
security, police, judiciary, all courts and prisons. These appointed Western
officials can overrule any measure, annul any law, and remove anyone from
office in Kosovo.

Several possible schemes are at the root of this latest flagrant U.S.
violation of international law. Separating Kosovo from Serbia further
fractures the entire region. This has been U.S. policy toward the Balkans,
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics since the 1991 collapse of
the Soviet Union. As weak, divided, warring mini-states, their opposition to
U.S. corporate domination becomes more difficult.

The recognition of Kosovo also divides and frays relations in the EU
Washington is certainly not opposed to sowing dissension among forces that
are both allies and imperialist competitors. The U.S. has fractured the EU
over this, because one-third of its 27 members are against this move.

Setting up a government in Kosovo where the U.S. has full authority to write
the laws and treaties also consolidates the Pentagon's continued hold on a
major new military base in Kosovo-Camp Bondsteel. It also provides unlimited
access and, most important, a transfer of ownership of the rich resources of
the region, including oil and gas which has just been discovered.

Camp Bondsteel

A massive new U.S. military base-Halliburton-built Camp Bondsteel-is the
Pentagon anchor in the region. Near the Macedonian border, it covers more
than 1,000 acres and comprises more than 300 buildings. It overwhelms tiny
Kosovo, a province smaller than the state of Connecticut.

The location was chosen for its capacity to expand. There are suggestions
that it could replace the U.S. Air Force base at Aviano in Italy.

Thousands of U.S./NATO troops can be comfortably stationed there. The base
can easily house its 7,000 U.S. military forces, along with thousands of
private contractors. U.S. military personnel leave Bondsteel in helicopters
or large heavily armed convoys.

The camp is located close to vital oil pipelines and energy corridors that
are now under construction, such as the U.S.-sponsored Trans-Balkan oil
pipeline and what is known as energy Corridor 8.

The U.S. began planning the building of Camp Bondsteel long before its
bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, according to Col. Robert L. McClure, writing
in Engineer: The Professional Bulletin for Army Engineers. Another document,
"U.S. Army Engineers in the Balkans 1995-2002," is available online and
contains photos and descriptions of the base plans. (web.mst.edu)

At Camp Bondsteel there is the most advanced hospital in Europe, theaters,
restaurants, a water purification plant, laundries and shops along with a
mass of communication satellites, antennae and menacing attack helicopters.

The people who live in the area surrounding the camp suffer from 80 percent
unemployment. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root pays Kosovo
workers, when it hires them, a meager $1 to $3 per hour. More than 25
percent of the Albanian Kosovo population has been forced to emigrate abroad
in order to send home remittances to their families.

Under the U.S. occupation, more than 250,000 Serbs, Roma, Turks, Goranies
and other peoples of this rich, multi-ethnic province have been forced out
of Kosovo and are not permitted to return.

Rich resources in Kosovo

U.S. corporations are well aware of the rich resources of Kosovo. There are
extensive mines for lead, zinc, cadmium, lignite, gold and silver at Stari
Trg, along with 17 billion tons of coal reserves. The once state-owned
Trepca mining complex was described by the New York Times of July 8, 1998,
as "the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans." It included
warehouses, smelting plants, refineries, metal treatment sites, freight
yards, railroad lines and power plants. Before the 1999 U.S./NATO bombing,
followed by the occupation of Kosovo, it was the largest uncontested piece
of wealth in Eastern Europe not yet in the hands of U.S. or European
capitalists.

And they are still fighting over who will get to exploit it. Since NATO
forces occupied Kosovo, almost this entire mining and refining center has
been closed down. It sits idle while the many nationalities who once worked
there have been dispersed.

Now an even greater source of newly discovered wealth is making Western
corporations anxious to have an uncontested grip on the province.

On Jan. 10 Reuters reported that Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corp. had
announced that Gustavson Associates LLC's Resource Evaluation had identified
large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. The
assigned estimates of the find are up to 2.987 billion barrels of oil and
3.014 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Clearly U.S. corporations feel they have a big stake in the region. They
have made many backroom deals and secret promises to Germany, France and
Britain to gain their acquiescence.

But this is a good time to remember how ripe for the picking Iraq looked to
Halliburton and Exxon in 2003. It seemed easy to get the compliance of many
countries, even if Washington couldn't secure a U.N. Security Council vote
despite its lies to that body.

The U.S. is hardly the first empire to underestimate the power of an aroused
mass movement to overturn its plans. Imperialist arrogance and overreach can
lead to serious miscalculations.

People in every struggle for full rights and national sovereignty have an
interest in defending and standing in solidarity with the heroic resistance
that the people of Serbia have shown in the past week. This struggle could
open a new day of resistance to U.S. corporate rule across Eastern Europe
and the Balkans.

Sara Flounders was in Yugoslavia during the 1999 U.S./NATO bombing to expose
these devastating attacks on the civilian population. She is a co-author and
editor of "NATO in the Balkans" and "Hidden Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of
Yugoslavia," available at Leftbooks.com.

Ghosts
of Kosovo

Friday,
Feb. 29, 2008 By SAMANTHA POWER

Kosovars hold flags as they
celebrate the independence of Kosovo in the capital Pristina on February 17,
2008

Dimitar Dilko / AFP / Getty

On Feb. 17,
after almost a decade of legal limbo and two years of unsuccessful
international mediation, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. The U.S.
moved swiftly to recognize the new country, and nearly 2 million ethnic
Albanians celebrated their long-awaited freedom, dancing in city streets,
releasing fireworks and waving flags. Having bristled under Serbian rule and
then U.N. administration, Kosovars were elated by the prospect of at last
controlling their own affairs.

The Serbs
weren't quite so thrilled. On Feb. 21, some 200,000 protested in Belgrade,
chanting "Kosovo is Serbia" and holding placards that read, RUSSIA,
HELP. Rioters set the U.S. embassy on fire; Russian President Vladimir Putin
vowed never to recognize Kosovo and threatened to support secessionist
movements in Georgia and Moldova.

Not so long
ago, the scenes of unrest would have inspired fears of the kind of ethnic
violence that devastated the Balkans in the '90s. But these are different
times. Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian leaders have belatedly tried to extend an olive
branch to the province's aggrieved 120,000 Serbs. In addition to allowing Serbs
in northern Kosovo to have their own police, schools and hospitals, Kosovo's
new Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, did the unthinkable: he delivered part of his
inauguration speech in the hated Serbian language. Even in Serbia, whose
citizens feel genuine humiliation over losing Kosovo (which Serb nationalists
call their "Jerusalem"), the protests should abate. Prime Minister
Vojislav Kostunica has threatened to retaliate against Kosovo's becoming
independent by suspending talks with the European Union, but Kostunica can't
afford to cut ties with the West. The E.U. supplies 49% of Serbia's imports and
buys 56% of its exports--a far more valuable trade relationship than Serbia's
with Russia.

But Kosovo
matters to our future because it underscores three alarming features of the
current international system. First, it exposes the chill in relations between
the U.S. and Russia, which is making it difficult for the U.N. Security Council
to meet 21st century collective-security challenges. Putin has used the Kosovo
standoff as yet another excuse to flaunt his petro-powered invincibility,
sending his likely successor, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, to
Belgrade to sign a gas agreement. If a firm international response is to be
mobilized toward Iran, Sudan or other trouble spots in the coming years, the
U.S. will have to find a way to persuade Russia to become a partner rather than
a rival in improving collective security.

Second, the
27-country E.U., which is bitterly divided over Kosovo, lacks an overarching
defense or security vision. After Kosovo declared independence, Britain, France
and other countries offered recognition, while Spain, Romania, Greece, Cyprus,
Bulgaria and Slovakia refused to do so. Keeping peace in Kosovo will require
European nations to put their citizens at risk. Unfortunately, the stated
desire of many European countries to reduce their commitments to the nato
effort in Afghanistan does little to bolster confidence in Europe's eagerness
to maintain international security.

Finally, the
disagreements over Kosovo expose the world's fickleness in determining which
secessionist movements deserve international recognition. If Kosovo's
supporters were more transparent about the factors that made Kosovo worthy of
recognition, they could help shape new guidelines. A claimant has a far
stronger claim if, like Kosovo, it is relatively homogeneous and not yet
self-governing, if it has been abused by the sovereign government and if its
quest for independence does not incite its kin in a neighboring country to make
comparable demands. Not all secessionists can clear that bar. Iraq's Kurds, for
instance, are clamoring for independence. But the Kurds are already exercising
self-government, and their independence could have the destabilizing effect of
causing the Kurdish population in Turkey to try to secede.

Western
countries will have to work hard in the coming months to ensure that Kosovo and
Serbia do not descend into violence. The larger problems highlighted by the
impasse aren't going away anytime soon. Unless they're resolved, a U.S. embassy
may not be all that goes up in flames during the next crisis.

TIME
columnist and Harvard professor Power also advises Senator Barack Obama on
foreign-policy issues

The Oil factor in Kosovo independence

http://uruknet.info/?p=m41436&s1=h1



URUKNET (ITALY)



The Oil factor in Kosovo independence

Abdus Sattar Ghazali



February 24, 2008



On February 17, Kosovo broke away from Serbia and declared its

independence. Not surprisingly it was instantly recognized as a state by the

U.S., Germany, Britain and France. With 4203 square miles area, Kosovo may

be a tiny territory but in the great game of oil politics it holds great

importance which is in inverse proportion to its size.



Kosovo does not have oil but its location is strategic as the

trans-Balkan pipeline - known as AMBO pipeline after its builder and

operator the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation -

will pass through it.



The pipeline will pump Caspian oil from the Bulgarian port of

Burgas via Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora, for transport to

European countries and the United States. Specifically, the 1.1 billion

dollar AMBO pipeline will permit oil companies operating in the Caspian Sea

to ship their oil to Rotterdam and the East Coast of the USA at

substantially less cost than they are experiencing today.



When operational by 2011, the pipeline will become a part of the

region's critical East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway,

railway, gas and fiber optic telecommunications lines. This pipeline will

bring oil directly to the European market by eliminating tanker traffic

through the ecologically sensitive waters of the Aegean and Mediterranean

Seas.



In 2000, the United States Government's Trade and Development

Agency financed a feasibility study of pipeline which updated and enlarged

the project's original feasibility study dating from early 1996. Brown &

Root Energy Services, a wholly-owned British subsidiary of Halliburton

completed the original feasibility study for this project.



The US Trade and Development Agency's paper published May 2000,

which assesses that the pipeline is a US strategic interest. According to

the paper, the pipeline will provide oil and gas to the US market worth

$600m a month, adding that the pipeline is necessary because the oil coming

from the Caspian sea will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the

Bosphorus.



The project is necessary, according to a paper, because the oil

coming from the Caspian sea "will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the

Bosphorus as a shipping lane". The scheme, the agency notes, will
"provide a

consistent source of crude oil to American refineries", "provide
American

companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor",

"advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the
region"

and "facilitate rapid integration" of the Balkans "with western
Europe".



The pipeline itself, the agency says, has also been formally

supported "since 1994". The first feasibility study, backed by the
US, was

conducted in 1996.



In November 1998, Bill Richardson, the then US energy secretary,

spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This

is about America's energy security," he explained. "It's also about

preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're

trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west.



"We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and

political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial

political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both

the pipeline map and the politics come out right."



Professor Michel Chossudovsky, author of America at War in

Macedonia, provides a deep insight into the

Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian-Oil Pipeline project:



"The US based AMBO pipeline consortium is directly linked to the

seat of political and military power in the United States and Vice President

Dick Cheney's firm Halliburton Energy. The feasibility study for AMBO's

Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline, conducted by the international engineering

company of Brown & Root Ltd. [Halliburton's British subsidiary] has

determined that this pipeline will become a part of the region's critical

East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway, railway, gas and

fibre optic telecommunications lines.



"Coincidentally, White and Case LLT, the New York law firm that

President William J. Clinton joined when he left the White House also has a

stake in the AMBO pipeline deal.



"And upon completion of the feasibility study by Halliburton, a

senior executive of Halliburton was appointed CEO of AMBO. Halliburton was

also granted a contract to service US troops in the Balkans and build

"Bondsteel" in Kosovo, which now constitutes "the largest
American foreign

military base constructed since Vietnam".



"The AMBO Trans-Balkans pipeline project would link up with the

pipeline corridors between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea basin, which

lies at the hub of the World's largest unexplored oil reserves. The

militarization of these various corridors is an integral part of

Washington's design.



"The US policy of "protecting the pipeline routes" out of the

Caspian Sea basin (and across the Balkans) was spelled out by Clinton's

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson barely a few months prior to the 1999

bombing of Yugoslavia: This is about America's energy security. It's also

about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values.

We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We

would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests

rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment

in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and

the politics come out right.



"In favour of the AMBO pipeline negotiations, the U.S.

Government has been directly supportive through its Trade and Development

Agency (TDA) and the South Balkan Development Initiative (SBDI). The TDI

suggested the need for Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria to "use regional

synergies to leverage new public and private capital [from U.S.
companies]"

while also asserting responsibility of the U.S. Government "for
implementing

the initiative."



And the U.S. Government has fulfilled its role in promoting the

AMBO project, granting several contracts to Halliburton for servicing U.S.

troops in the Balkans, including a five year contract authorized in June of

2005 by the U.S. Army at a value of $1.25 billion, despite criminal

allegations made against Halliburton that are currently being probed by the

F.B.I., according to Craig A. Brannagan author of On the Political

Executive: Public or Private?



This leaves little doubt that the war in the former Yugoslavia

was fought solely in order to secure access to oil from new and biddable

states in central Asia. It is obvious that the former Yugoslavia, especially

Serbia, was a serious problem for the realization of the plan. The

intervention in Kosovo and Metohija was carried out in order to please

Albania, whose port of Vlore is the ultimate destination of the pipeline.



In 1998, fighting breaks out between Serbian forces and ethnic

Albanians in Kosovo. President Milosevic sends in troops, and atrocities

were committed. This opens the door for NATO's Operation Allied Force,

occupying Kosovo in 1999 and then handing it over to the UN, with a huge

American presence in the area. UN resolution 1244 is drafted stipulating

that Kosovo is Serbian land, and at the same time gives Kosovars governance

autonomy.



June 1999, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of

Yugoslavia, US forces seized 1,000 acres of farmland in southeast Kosovo at

Uresevic, near the Macedonian border, and began the construction of Camp

Bondsteel which is the biggest construction project of a US military base

since the war in Vietnam. Now, why would the United States build such a

massive camp in Kosovo?



In evaluating Kosovo's independence, it is also important to

know that Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal

self-government.



It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies

appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial

viceroy and imperialist administrators will have control over foreign and

domestic policy. It is similar to the absolute power held by L. Paul Bremer

in the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. U.S. has merely

consolidated its direct control of a totally dependent colony in the heart

of the Balkans.



An International Civilian Representative (ICR) will be appointed

by U.S. and E.U. officials to oversee Kosovo. This appointed official can

overrule any measures, annul any laws and remove anyone from office in

Kosovo. The ICR will have full and final control over the departments of

Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.



The E.U. will establish a European Security and Defense Policy

Mission (ESDP) and NATO will establish an International Military Presence.

Both these appointed bodies will have control over foreign policy, security,

police, judiciary, all courts and prisons.



These bodies and the ICR will have final say over what crimes

can be prosecuted and against whom; they can reverse or annul any decision

made. The largest prison in Kosovo is at the U.S. base, Camp Bondsteel,

where prisoners are held without charges, judicial overview or

representation.



US has argued the case of Kosovo is unique and that separatists

in other states in Europe and the Balkans will not receive aid and welcome

from major powers. "It is incorrect to view this as a precedent and it

doesn't serve any purpose to view it as a precedent," said Alejandro
Wolff,

US deputy permanent representative to the UN. He may be right because other

separatists may not have any attraction for the oil giants.



However, the Kosovo independence bolsters hopes of militants in

the Indian-controlled Kashmir to achieve the same status for the disputed

territory. "The world community, the European Union in particular, should

play a Kosovo-like role in getting the dispute resolved in Kashmir," says

Yasin Malik, chairman of pro-independence group Jammu Kashmir Liberation

Front.



Although several countries have recognized Kosovo as a new state

but India said it was studying the legal ramifications. India is wary of

recognizing Kosovo as an independent state because of its potential

implications for Kashmir, racked by a nearly two-decade freedom struggle

against New Delhi's occupation that has left more than 43,000 people dead.



Article nr. 41436 sent on 25-feb-2008 12:21 ECT

Kosovo's independence could haunt us

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=916336



ST. CATHARINES STANDARD (CANADA)



EDITORIAL



Kosovo's independence could haunt us

Posted By Scott Taylor



Posted 44 mins ago



On the weekend of Feb. 16-17, the streets of Kosovo were flooded with

citizens celebrating a unilateral declaration of independence by ethnic

Albanian Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. This much-anticipated announcement

formally severed all official ties between the disputed province and the

rest of Serbia, thereby creating Europe's newest state.



The United States was the first to recognize Kosovo's independence, with

President George W. Bush sending his congratulations to Thaci from a stop in

Tanzania. The United Kingdom, Germany and France were quick to follow suit,

and with these big powers on board, the Albanian Kosovars popped the

champagne corks and throughout the capital city of Pristina throngs of

people waved a sea of red and black flags in celebration.



For people only paying casual attention to this long-simmering Balkan hot

spot, Thaci's declaration of independence may indeed be viewed as a joyous

occasion. In fact, most Canadians may be forgiven if they thought this whole

matter was resolved back in the summer of 1999.



After a 78-day bombing campaign, NATO had negotiated a ceasefire agreement

with the Serbian government. Under the terms of UN Resolution 1244, Serbian

security forces would withdraw from Kosovo, and under NATO military

supervision, the 800,000 Albanian Kosovar refugees who had fled the fighting

would be repatriated. The Albanian guerrillas - known as the Kosovo

Liberation Army (KLA) - were to be disarmed and demobilized by NATO troops,

who would also ensure the safety of Kosovo's 200,000 ethnic Serb civilians.



Resolution 1244 made it very clear that under the UN Charter, Kosovo would

remain the sovereign territory of Serbia. Over the past nine years, NATO has

failed to uphold its part of the bargain. The KLA was never disarmed; they

were simply formalized into the Kosovo Protection Corps. Serb civilians

suffered widespread violent reprisals from Albanian extremists resulting in

a mass exodus with fewer than 40,000 ethnic Serbs still residing in

protected enclaves. There was also no progress made towards a negotiated

settlement of Kosovo's status between Belgrade and Pristina authorities.



With Serbia unwilling to relinquish the sovereignty of this province - the

religious heartland of the Serbian people - there was no legal way to push

independence through the UN Security Council. That impasse is what led to

the Feb. 17 unilateral declaration, and the deep divide within the

international community over this clear violation of the rule of law and the

UN Charter. The Canadian Foreign Affairs Department understands that any

rapid recognition of a disputed province's declaration of independence from

another country could create a dangerous precedent, which might come back to

haunt us.



So while Canada looks at what diplomatic options are available, let's review

some of the background. Up until 1998, the U.S. State Department regarded

the KLA as a terrorist organization. The KLA's assassinations and bomb

attacks against government officials led to a heavy-handed Serbian military

crackdown. At this point the Americans changed horses and decried the Serb

reprisals rather than the terror provocations of the KLA. Under U.S.

pressure an ultimatum was issued by NATO to Serbia in February 1999, and the

KLA was suddenly legitimized as freedom fighters.



By March 24 of that year, when the deadline expired without Serbia's

compliance, NATO began bombing Kosovo and Serbia. Within days a trickle of

refugees became a flood as some 800,000 Albanians fled the renewed fighting

and the NATO bombing. Once this whole incident had ballooned into a

humanitarian crisis of epic proportion, NATO used the suffering of the

Albanians to further justify their intervention.



Putting recent history aside, the fact remains that Kosovo is simply not

viable as an independent country. It is a landlocked, mountainous province,

not quite twice the size of Prince Edward Island, with a population of two

million. The unemployment rate stands at 50 per cent; for those working the

average annual income ranges around $2,400 Cdn. a year. Prostitution and

illegal drugs form the major pillar of Kosovo's economy, with the other main

infusion coming from the annual foreign donations of approximately $600

million.



The red and black flag they wave is the Albanian flag, not Kosovar. And as a

result of the ongoing violent attacks against non-Albanians in the province,

this is now one of the most ethnically-cleansed territories in all of

Europe.



Prime Minister Thaci is a former ruthless KLA warlord who called himself

"Snake" and the commander of the Kosovo Protection Corps is Agim
Ceku, who

made a notorious name for himself as a war criminal in Croatia.



Given the rotten foundation upon which Kosovo intends to build its own

independent state, I think Canada would be well advised to uphold the UN

Charter in this instance, and to respect the rule of international law.



Scott Taylor reported from inside Serbia and Kosovo during the 1999 bombing

campaign and has made more than 20 subsequent visits to the region. He is a

member of the Osprey Writers Group.