Russia sticks to its opposition on Kosovo

Russia sticks to its opposition on Kosovo
13.07.2007 - 09:27 CET | By Lucia Kubosova
Russia has rejected the latest attempt by EU and US diplomats to outline a compromise UN resolution on the future status of Kosovo. Its move follows similar sentiments expressed in Serbia.

"The problem of a decision on the independence of Kosovo has not been taken off the agenda," Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister told journalists on Thursday (12 July), according to Reuters.


He was referring to the latest draft UN resolution unveiled this week by European and American diplomats which suggests 120 days of extra talks between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, without an explicit call for the independence of Kosovo in case they fail to agree.

"Behind diplomatic rhetoric, there is the conclusion that after the talks... the Ahtisaari plan comes into effect," Mr Lavrov commented.

He added that he considers the time limit for further negotiations as "too little".

Moscow is concerned that the proposed shift from the UN mission to the EU-led structures would weaken its control over the dossier and could result in the de facto independence of the south Serbian province through the back door.

But EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn on Wednesday (11 July) called on Russia to accept that the EU has a key role to play in the region.

"Kosovo is a deeply European issue and Serbia must become an EU part. Neither Russia nor the USA is so directly touched with events in the Balkans like Europeans. Only Europe will have to pay for failure of the process," Mr Rehn told MEPs in Strasbourg.

"Dragging out the process of determining the status of Kosovo leads us to nowhere. It only increases the risk of instability in Kosovo, continues Serbia's agony and slows down region's movement towards the European Union, he added.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner echoed his message while visiting Belgrade on Thursday, warning Serbia that its EU ambitions depend on the peaceful resolution of the contentious Kosovo issue.

"It is not possible to enter the EU with an ethnic conflict," said Mr Kouchner.
http://euobserver.com/9/24476



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Unfinished Business in Kosovo

Unfinished Business
The status quo in Kosovo won't work. Nor will the plan being pushed by the U.N. and Washington.

By Michael Levitin

Newsweek International

July 16, 2007 issue - Just when politicians in Europe and America thought they'd finally cleaned up the mess in the Balkans, the whole package is on the verge of unraveling. Serbia's leaders, backed by Moscow, have categorically rejected a U.N. plan to grant independence to Kosovo, insisting that to forcibly redraw Serbia's borders would violate its sovereignty. The West claims Serbia forfeited that sovereignty when it crushed the Kosovar insurgency in 1998-99. This argument may appeal to human-rights advocates, but it overlooks a dangerous truth. Pushing too hard on Kosovo would nourish Serbia's legitimate sense of grievance, undermine moderates there and possibly spark a return to political extremism, even war.

Outsiders should remember just how important Kosovo—first settled by Slavs some 1,400 years ago and the home to the Serbian Orthodox Church—remains to Serbs today. As Ivan Stanojevic, a 22-year-old student at Belgrade University, puts it, to lose Kosovo now would be "like losing Serbia itself." Stripping away the province would also strike many as collective punishment. Most Serbs feel they've paid a high price for the crimes of Slobodan Milosevic, including a NATO bombardment and debilitating sanctions. The country has recently made progress arresting and extraditing major war criminals. To chastise Serbia again would strike most Serbs as profoundly unjust. "We're aware of what happened," says Stanojevic. "[But] we changed that regime. We had a revolution [in 2000] and gave a new direction to our government."

If the EU and the United States nonetheless press for "supervised" independence for Kosovo, as U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari recommended in April, it could lead to three unintended consequences. First would be political instability. Serbian politics have been fragile ever since the pro-Western Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in 2003. The current coalition government, which includes conservatives and moderates, has pledged never to part with Kosovo and could crumble if it loses the province, says Radmila Nakarada, a researcher at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade. Factor in the sorry state of Serbia's economy (it has 20 percent unemployment) and you get an explosive situation. The most likely outcome would be a surge in power for the ultranationalist Radical Party, undermining seven years of democratic progress.

A second unintended consequence of independence would be that Serbs, feeling humiliated and betrayed by Brussels, could turn away from the process of European integration—the region's best guarantee for future peace and prosperity. And the third consequence could be war—never a remote possibility in this part of the world. "The sense of injustice tied with social and economic problems could plant the seed for an emergence of paramilitary forces" in Serbia proper, warns Nakarada.

Then there's Russia, which is understandably nervous about separatist conflicts on its own borders and thus would never allow the division of Serbia. All this makes the United Nations' plan a nonstarter. That said, the status quo is also unsustainable. Kosovo's 1.8 million Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the province, suffered 10,000 deaths during the war; a million more were forced to flee. Kosovo's economy is in worse shape than the rest of Serbia's, with powerful mafias and nonexistent institutions. "[The Serbs] say they want to keep Kosovo part of Serbia," says Agron Murati, 31, a Kosovar civil engineer. "But in the last 10 years what did they help build here? Roads? Schools? Hospitals? Nothing."

What does all this mean for Brussels and Washington? That they must figure out some other solution, a third way between U.N. trusteeship and outright independence. Western leaders should consider models that would satisfy both sides, by giving Kosovars full autonomy but allowing Serbia to formally maintain its territorial integrity. Puerto Rico, with its unique status as a semi-independent protectorate of the United States, could prove a good example.

Any solution will take time, however. In the short term, the West must encourage Serb and Kosovar Albanian leaders to return to the table—and it must act as an objective arbiter when they do. "It is an illusion to think you can enforce independence and control the consequences," says Nakarada. The last time the West humiliated a postwar loser through draconian punishment, it ended up with Adolf Hitler and WWII. Given the Balkans' proximity to the EU and the blood already shed there, the West can't afford to let history repeat once more.

Levitin is a freelance journalist based in Berlin.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19650858/site/newsweek/page/0/


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Kosovo and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

Kosovo and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

by Joseph E. Fallon

The struggle for Kosovo between Christian Serbs and Muslim Albanians dates
back to 1389, when the Serbs were defeated by, and their lands annexed to, the
Ottoman Empire. Muslim rule lasted over four centuries and resulted in several
waves of forced migrations of Serbs from Kosovo. The current Albanian majority
there was achieved more recently—the result of the policies of the Axis
occupation (1941-45), which included the killing of an estimated 10,000 Serbs,
the expulsion of another 100,000, and the introduction of Albanian settlers.
The de-Serbianization of Kosovo continued under Tito’s rule (1945-80), during
which the country acquired many attributes of a separate Albanian
state—borders, a flag, a capital, a supreme court, an education system that
promoted the Albanian language, a university with teachers and textbooks from
Albania, as well as cultural and sporting exchanges with Albania. In 1981,
after Tito’s death, Albanians in Kosovo demanded that the province be elevated
to a republic with the right of secession. This provoked a Serbian reaction
that facilitated the rise of Slobodan Milosevic, which, in turn, was cited by
Albanians as a justification for the activities of the Albanian Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA). A downward spiral of ethnic suspicion and strife ensued,
culminating in the Yugoslav wars.

From 1996 to 1999, the war in Kosovo was an internal conflict between the
secessionist KLA—which, at one time, was designated a terrorist organization by
the U.S. State Department—and the armed forces of the rump Yugoslavia of Serbia
and Montenegro.

Citing an alleged massacre of Albanian civilians by Serbian forces in the
village of Racak in January 1999, the U.S. government and NATO allies officially
intervened. Meeting in Rambouillet, France, that February and March, they
drafted a “peace accord,” which offered the KLA de facto independence for
Kosovo immediately, and de jure independence in three years. During that
interval, Kosovo would be administered as a NATO protectorate. The U.S.
government introduced a military annex to the accord under which NATO personnel
would be immune from all legal actions—civil, criminal, or administrative—and
NATO forces would have unfettered access to any and all parts of Yugoslavia.
And all the costs would be borne by Belgrade. Yugoslavia would have been a
virtual colony of NATO.

When Belgrade refused to sign the accord, NATO attacked. The war lasted from
March 24 to June 10, 1999. Kosovo became a U.N. protectorate (UNMIK), whose
final status—some form of independence from Serbia—would be determined in the
future. That future is now, and it is posing political and strategic problems
for the Bush administration.

U.S. foreign policy toward Kosovo, which culminated in military intervention
in 1999, was a continuation of the policy Washington had pursued in Bosnia and
Croatia in 1995. Each of the three wars contributed to a profound
transformation in U.S. foreign policy. In Washington’s eyes, the end of the
Cold War meant a transition from a bipolar world, which functioned within a set
of political, military, and legal restraints, to a unipolar one. The U.S.
government was now the world’s hyperpower, without rival or limitation. For
Washington, the Yugoslav wars provided an opportunity to demonstrate this to
the rest of the world, thereby accomplishing several key objectives.

First, Washington set out to demonize the Serbs in order to discredit and
suppress not just Serbian ethnicity but any manifestation of ethnic nationalism,
since such nationalism undermines the legitimacy of the dominant ideology of
the virtues of multiethnic states and transnational corporations.

Second, U.S. policymakers sought to dismember an inconvenient state—in this
case, one supported by Russia, thereby establishing a precedent. Later, that
precedent would be applied to the union of Serbia and Montenegro, then Serbia,
and, perhaps, even to Iran. In so doing, Washington hoped to weaken and isolate
Russia, both internationally and in Europe.

It also established another precedent, in promoting ethnic cleansing by
proxy. The Clinton administration covertly armed, trained, supported, and
advised the government of Croatia for the August 1995 military offensive known
as Operation Storm. Though it was aimed at the secessionist Republic of Serbian
Krajina, it resulted in the expulsion of an estimated 300,000 Serbs from
Croatia. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), after
ten years, the Serbs still have not been permitted to return to Croatia. The
precedent was repeated in 1999 when the Red Cross reported that the KLA had
expelled between 200,000 and 250,000 Serbs from Kosovo. It was repeated yet
again in 2001 in Afghanistan, in the wake of the U.S. invasion, when our
“ally,” the Northern Alliance, consisting mostly of ethnic Tajiks, sought to
expel a million ethnic Pash-tuns from northern Afghanistan. According to the
UNHCR, nearly 100,000 Pashtuns fled, becoming refugees either elsewhere in
Afghanistan or in Pakistan. In Iraq, both Kurdish and Shiite militias, whose
political parties are members of the national government—another ally of the
Bush administration—currently engage in ethnic cleansing. In Kirkuk, Kurds are
reversing the process of “Arabization,” while in Baghdad, Shiites are cleansing
Sunni neighborhoods.

By supporting Muslim demands for a united Bosnia and an independent Kosovo,
Washington hoped to persuade Muslims, especially in Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi
Arabia, and Turkey—all key U.S. allies—that they are wrong to regard U.S.
foreign policy toward Palestinians, Kashmiris, Moros, and Uighurs as evidence
of any hostility toward Islam on our part.

Washington also sought to encourage Muslims in Albania, Bosnia, and Kosovo
to promote a secularized, individualistic Islam, in which mosque and state are
separate, which would undermine the appeal of traditional Islam, especially in
the West.

With the Cold War ended, Washington sought to justify NATO’s continued
existence by waging war on Bosnia and Kosovo. These wars required a radical
redefinition of NATO’s mission and area of responsibility. These ad hoc
military interventions became official policy after September 11. NATO’s 2002
Prague Summit Declaration stated,

We, the Heads of State and Government of the member countries of the North
Atlantic Alliance, met today to enlarge our Alliance and further strengthen
NATO to meet the grave new threats and profound security challenges of the 21st
century . . . so that NATO can better carry out the full range of its missions
and respond collectively to those challenges, including the threat posed by
terrorism and by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their
means of delivery . . . NATO must be able to field forces that can move quickly
to wherever they are needed . . . to sustain operations over distance and time
. . . to achieve their objectives.

Thus, NATO is no longer a defensive alliance, and its sphere is no longer
restricted to Europe. This enables the U.S. government to maintain, even
increase, its Cold War level of influence in Europe and provides Washington
with a reservoir of bases and troops from NATO countries to help implement its
policy objectives as far away as Afghanistan and Iraq.

In attacking Yugoslavia, Washington also sought to test the ability of the
U.S. government to impose political settlements that advance its interests. The
more contradictory and arbitrary those settlements are—rejecting national
self-determination in Bosnia but championing it in Kosovo—the more our power is
projected.

The final status of Kosovo is to be decided by the U.N. Security Council.
Its special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, is
reportedly recommending independence in all but name. (See www.unosek.org/unosek/index.html.)
The Serbs have rejected this plan, and, while Moscow has stated that it will
veto this recommendation unless both the Serbs and the Albanians agree to it,
Washington favors it. Such a plan, if implemented, would fail to bring peace or
justice to that region of the Balkans.

Any U.N. Security Council decision is expected to reflect “The Guiding
Principles for a Settlement of Kosovo’s Status” set out in 2005 by the United
States, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia—collectively known as the
Contact Group. Principle Six declares that “There will be no changes in the
current territory of Kosovo, i.e. no partition of Kosovo and no union of Kosovo
with any country or part of any country.”

The current proposal for Kosovo independence violates international law
while claiming to uphold it; it institutionalizes ethnic and religious
discrimination and seeks to sanction both in law, denying the Christian Serbs
of Kosovo the legal right to national self-determination, while granting and denying
that right to the Muslim Albanians of Kosovo.

If national self-determination under international law forbids the partition
of a territory, then U.N. member-states Bangladesh, Ireland, Israel, Moldova,
Pakistan, and all the successor states of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are
illegitimate. So, too, are the western borders of U.N. member-states Lithuania,
Poland, and Russia, which were shaped by the post-World War II partition of
Germany.

The plan both allows Albanians in Kosovo the right to secede from Serbia and
denies them the right to unite with Albania. If the U.N. Security Council
insists this restriction is in accordance with international law on the right
to national self-determination, then it should also insist that the
unifications of Germany, Vietnam, and Yemen were illegal, and future
unifications of Ireland or Korea would have to be prohibited as well.
Conversely, it would have to consider the Republic of Somaliland, which seceded
from Somalia, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which seceded from
Cyprus—states the United Nations refuses to recognize—to be, in fact,
legitimate.

The plan advocates multiethnic statehood while dismembering a multiethnic
state. The push for Kosovo independence is predicated upon it being a
multiethnic state. As part of Serbia, however, it is already in one. By
championing the concept of multiethnicity, the proposal undermines not only its
own justification for Kosovo’s independence but the legitimacy of all the
successor states to the former Yugoslavia: Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, and Slovenia—none of which are as multiethnic or as multireligious
as was the former Yugoslavia.

Both Bosnia and Serbia constitute federal republics. Bosnia consists of two
entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Republika Srpska.
Serbia has two autonomous provinces: Kosovo-Metohija and Vojvodina. Both Bosnia
and Kosovo are U.N. protectorates. Yet, Muslim Kosovo is to gain independence,
while Christian Republika Srpska faces abolition and consolidation in a unitary
Bosnian state. Such a policy is nothing short of institutionalized ethnic and
religious discrimination.

The Security Council claims that Kosovo is an exception in international
law. The legal principles announced for it are deemed to have no applicability
to other disputes. This maneuver is an attempt to deny the protection of
international law to parties in three specific conflicts—Transnistria in
Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Such an arbitrary claim of
exceptionality undermines the moral authority of international law, making it
nothing more than a law of the jungle defined and enforced for the benefit of
the more powerful states.

A just and enduring political settlement for Kosovo requires that Bosnia be
treated in an identical manner. If Kosovo has the right to secede from Serbia,
then the Republika Srpska must have the right to secede from Bosnia.

An independent Kosovo must have the right to unite with Albania. Similarly,
an independent Republika Srpska must have the right to unite with Serbia.

To resolve the Serbian refugee crisis, there should be a population exchange
between Serbia and Montenegro, on the one hand, and Kosovo and Albania, on the
other. Serbian refugees would agree not to return to Kosovo, while the Serbs
still there would agree to relocate to Serbia. In exchange, Albanians in Serbia
and Montenegro would relocate to Kosovo and Albania. There is a legal precedent
for this in the “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish
Populations” (1923). With the approval of the international community, it
successfully transferred over a million Greeks from Turkey to Greece and
400,000 Turks from Greece to Turkey. Other examples of successful population
transfers include those between Bulgaria and Turkey in 1913 and 1950-89;
Bulgaria and Greece in 1919; Poland and the Soviet Union in 1945; and
Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1946.

The Bush administration favors the current proposal for Kosovo’s independence
without appreciating the problems, political and strategic, it presents to U.S.
foreign policy. Indeed, the White House is behaving as if the United States, as
the world’s hyperpower, can overcome any problems that may arise—a notion that
Afghanistan and Iraq should have dispelled.

The immediate problem is that Kosovo, perhaps more than Bosnia, has become a
haven for Islamic militants and for organized crime. Both pose direct threats
to Europe, and independence will only make it worse—for Europe and for the “War
on Terror.”

If the Security Council proposal is implemented, the secessionist regimes of
Transnistria in Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, will demand
international recognition of their independence. Such official recognition
would likely begin with Russia and then snowball. Since the Bush administration
opposed independence for these regions, this would be viewed by many, including
many Americans, as a political victory for Moscow and a political defeat for
Washington.

Next would be Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians there will also insist on
international recognition of their independence from Azerbaijan—something that
both Turkey and Azerbaijan oppose. Armenian-Americans, however, support it, and
they constitute an influential ethnic lobbying group. The Bush administration
would be caught in the middle, and any decision would displease an important
ally.

The strategic prize, however, is the Crimea, which has been part of Russia
since 1783. With the Bolshevik Revolution, it became an autonomous republic,
then an oblast of the Russian SFSR. In 1954, jurisdiction was transferred to
the Ukrainian SSR as a symbolic gesture honoring the historic unity of the two
Slavic peoples. When the Soviet Union fell, the Crimea reluctantly agreed to
remain part of the Ukraine, but as an autonomous republic. Ethnically,
linguistically, and culturally, the Crimea is Russian. It is home to the
Russian Black Sea Fleet. If the U.N. Security Council votes on independence for
Kosovo, the government of the Crimea would likely call for a vote on Crimean
independence, which would easily pass, then demand international recognition.
This would be followed by a vote on union with Russia. And Moscow would
certainly accept the return of the Crimea to Russia.

This would be a major defeat for U.S. foreign policy. Since the Yugoslav
wars of the 90’s, Washington has assumed that Russia, because of her size,
natural resources, and nuclear weapons, has the potential to reemerge as a
rival. To prevent this, the U.S. government has pursued a policy of
containment. It supported the expansion of NATO eastward to include former
Soviet republics, in violation of promises made to Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev. The anticipated impact of NATO enlargement, however, was trumped by
Russia’s emergence as a principal supplier of oil and natural gas to Europe.
Washington used the war in Afghanistan to displace Russia from the former
Soviet Central Asian republics. After its initial success, which culminated in
Kyrgyzstan’s “Tulip Revolution,” the U.S. government has seen its influence
decline, while Russia’s has grown. In the Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution,”
Washington supported the overthrow of a pro-Russian government and its
replacement with a pro-American one. The new government soon announced its
intention to join NATO and to expel Russia’s Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea—to
humiliate Moscow and disrupt its naval operations. Then, a general election
replaced that government with another pro-Russian one. If independence for
Kosovo results in the return of the Crimea to Russia, U.S. foreign policy will
have come full circle since the Yugoslav wars. The world would no longer be
unipolar, and the U.S. government would no longer be the world’s hyperpower.

Joseph
E. Fallon writes from Rye, New York.

This article first appeared in the July 2007 issue of
Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=168

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Resurrecting Yugoslavia

Resurrecting Yugoslavia

By Julia Gorin

FrontPageMagazine.com | June 6, 2007

Western
powers led by the United States went to great lengths to abolish a
pluralistic society called Yugoslavia, encouraging its component
ethnicities to assert their identities and vie for their own little
slice of land based on those separate identities.



Yet as soon as one of those separate identities that we’ve buttressed misbehaves, suddenly we bring Yugoslavia
back from the dead. Witness the strategic and ubiquitous use of the
word “Yugoslav” in virtually every media report describing the four
Albanian suspects in the recently foiled Fort Dix plot.



When that aggressively dismantled country is needed again, say for blame-laying, then we suddenly want to keep Yugoslavia together rather than splintered into small parts. Albanians are trying to kill Americans? Dig up Yugoslavia. A Bosnian shoots 11 people in Utah? No no — we don’t want separate Balkan identities anymore; now we want the amorphous whole back.



After
diligently slicing multinational Yugoslavia up into separate ethnic
identities, now we’re embarrassed of those identities and don’t want to
identify them; now we’re suddenly interested in Serbian unity, and
envision a Greater Serbia in which we can call all the culprits Serbs,
or at least trace any and all misdeeds back to some sinister Serbian
entity.



We quite deliberately sponsored the creation of a
country for Croats; then we tried to make one for Bosnian Muslims (so
far it’s an entity composed of a Bosnian-Croat Federation, and a
Serbian Republic — but the dissolution of the non-Muslim parts is
underway); next we decided to give Kosovo Muslims their own country,
with their own flags, symbols, army and so on. But should our protégés
do something unbecoming, we want to spread the guilt around. So that
you think for at least a minute that maybe it’s the Serbs whodunit, and
by the time you figure out it wasn’t, you’ve been put through the
exercise of tracing the precipitation of the crime back to something
the Serbs may or may not have done during the perpetrators’
pre-embryonic lives.



The association with Serbia is actually more direct and intentional if you consider that, as Serbianna.com’s Mickey Bozinovich points out, Serbia is the successor state to Yugoslavia. More shameless, however, was this display from a Juan Cole,
who is president of something called the Global Americana Institute,
and who threw even the media’s sleight-of-pen subtlety to the wind,
blatantly titling his piece on the foiled plot “Dix Plot is Milosevic’s
Fault.”



That’s right: A dead guy is trying to kill Americans!



The Washington Times picked up on what was happening in an editorial titled “‘Albanian’ vs. ‘Yugoslav’”:

“Yugoslav”
is a sanitizer…Early in this story, the Albanian connection emerged in
some outlets, but “Yugoslav,” a term we associate with Slobodan
Milosevic or Josip Tito more than Islamist violence, persisted. The
connotations of “Albanian” begin with the fact that 70 percent of
Albanians are Muslim. Now, combine “Albanian” with the allegation of a
thwarted assault-rifle attack on Fort Dix…The
hypothesis: An attack by Islamist terrorists may just have been
thwarted. It has nothing to do with anti-fascist partisans or Communist
apparatchiks. Our news organizations seem now to be acting upon the
desire to avoid fueling that speculation as long as possible. We’re not
clear why, except for their biases, or perhaps their worry of offending
people…They should not engage in “perception management.”

Here
the paper takes for granted the fact that “biases” govern reporting on
Islamic terrorism, in this case Islamic terrorism from the Balkans. The
paper effectively admits to there being slanted Balkans coverage, based
on pro-Muslim biases — which actually calls into question two decades
of Balkans reporting. And yet the editors don’t intimate anything of
the sort, much less call for the begged-for reexamination of the
Balkans narrative.

 

Isn’t
it possible that the pro-Muslim bias they bemoan from today’s media was
also at work in Balkans reporting throughout the 1990s, when the story
being shoved down our collective throat was that the Serbs were
randomly pummeling Muslims?



The “perception management” that is
now so apparent is meant to keep the public confused and still
shrugging at words like “Balkans”, “Bosnia” and “Kosovo” — and thinking
that despite the terrorism which Muslims, acting alone or in concert,
are inflicting upon every corner of the world, somehow a place called
“the former Yugoslavia” exists in a vacuum and isn’t affected by global
trends. Jihad didn’t find Yugoslavia, we’re supposed to think; Yugoslavia summoned jihad-like symptoms — so it’s not exactly jihad.



Even
now, editors, reporters and politicians struggle to keep the Balkans
suspended in its own context, as if it’s some “unique” case (as our
leaders call Kosovo), immune to the trend of nationalism followed by
separatism — which we buy and then Americans die as that separatism
morphs into Islamism.



When the Fort Dix
news hit, the names Mladic and Karadzic speedily found their way into
news reports, and there was almost simultaneous coverage of, and an
unusual amount of attention paid to, the gains made by a nationalist
party in Serbia. As one Belgrade reader saw it:

You see how the media are portraying the recent election of the Parliament speaker in Serbia?
First, mention the politician, Tomislav Nikolic; then suggest that his
talk is like that of Milosevic; then remind the reader of Srebrenica
and Kosovo and the wars. By now the reader is thinking this politician
is the devil. I find it amusing that the idea of America fighting in Iraq
is nobler than the Serbs wanting to fight against secessionists for
land that’s been in their history for a thousand years. Incredible as
it would be, I have a fear that the sequel to all the Balkan wars has
started.

The
media seem to be reminding the world of the past and linking it to the
present. I fear that when the situation in Kosovo gets out of hand and
war comes, the Serbs will be painted as the bad guys again. It worked
before, and it made for great [pro-Muslim] drama. So why change the
role of the bad guy when that would only confuse audiences?

There is also the trick of using the words “terror” and “Serbia” in the same headline. Some played this game when Serbian police raided a Wahhabi terror camp in southern Serbia in March. (“Discovery of Serbia Training Camp Draws Attention to Radical Islamists” — NY Times.) Before that, initial reports about investigations into the London bombings linked the Tube terror to “eastern Europe” and “Serbia.”
The UK’s Sky News reported that the explosives used in the attacks came
from inside Bosnia, supplied by mujahedeen there (subsequently it was
discovered they came from Kosovo, and that Bosnia served as a
coordinating point). But one British police officer interviewed in that
broadcast — which was shown on Fox News and others — said the
explosives came from “Serbia.” He was talking about Kosovo which, when convenient, is remembered to be part of Serbia.



These
tactics have been effective in stunting the initial wave of public
outrage, giving it no clear direction, then allowing the facts to come
out as the outrage subsides. How long will “isolated,” “pattern-free”
cases of Balkan Muslim terror continue to be swept under the rug?



An AP headline quietly appeared this week, reading “Michigan men detained in Montenegro since September.” According to the article,

Three Michigan men have been
sitting in a prison in Montenegro for months, awaiting trial on charges
of inciting rebellion against the government there…[specifically]
planning terrorist attacks and an armed insurgency in the former
Yugoslav republic…Montenegro declared independence from Serbia, after
its citizens voted for the split by a slim margin, marking the final
breakup of what once was Yugoslavia.

The final breakup? If the media’s co-architects of
Yugoslavia’s demise believe that Montenegro is the final chapter in the
balkanization of the Balkans, which the Kosovo and Bosnia precedents
inspired, they’re in for a surprise — and we’re in for more perception
management. After Montenegro and Kosovo, we’ll be looking at Vojvodina separatism (a Hungarian-majority area of Serbia whose nationalism U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a Hungarian-American, is stirring up). Then there’s southern Serbia,
which is a Wahhabi/terror nest that seeks to join with Kosovo. Next,
there are the Albanians who are looking, with unofficial material
support from the U.S., to get a piece of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Then it’s back to Montenegro, which has separatists within its borders.



No,
the final breakup of Yugoslavia will take place in Greece, Romania,
Azerbaijan, Quebec, Southern California, Texas, Arizona, Galilee,
Basque, the Thai south, Michigan, and every other place on the globe that has a significant ethnic minority concentrated in a province or state.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=28630

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The Real Solution For Kosovo

The Real Solution For
Kosovo

by Aleksandar Jokic

Current Discourse on Kosovo

(Swans - June 4, 2007)  
Suddenly, the urgency to settle Kosovo's political status in the form of
"supervised independence" is on the US imperial agenda. If one is to
believe US officials who have been closely associated for a long time with US
policy regarding Kosovo (the real name of this Serbian province is Kosovo and
Metohija), such as Nicholas Burns, the US is taking a "regional
approach" to this problem. Says Burns: "The
Balkans region will not be stable, however, as long as Kosovo remains in a
state of political suspended animation." Alas, words are cheap, and
actions by the sole superpower clearly demonstrate that it is its interest and
not "regional stability" that is the sole guiding principle. In fact,
all principles, including the letter and spirit of international law, will be
sacrificed in the name of those interests. Kosovo is still the best example of
this, which by now should be an uncontroversial statement.

After years of neglect following the US-led NATO aggression
against Yugoslavia in 1999 (the operation was called "Merciful
Angel") and merely a year of "negotiations" between
representatives of the Serbian government and an Albanian delegation from
Kosovo, it was announced that the time had come for an imposed
"solution" and that "no
more negotiations" on the status of Kosovo could take place between
those directly involved. One may wonder why such a sudden rush to grant
independence to Kosovo, despite Serbia's opposition to giving up 15% of its
territory and Russia's consistent position that any solution must be acceptable
to both sides, thus virtually guaranteeing a Russian veto of any UN resolution
granting Kosovo independence? And why continue to insist, in this context, as
US officials do that "supervised independence" (whatever that might
be) "is now the only
way forward"? It is hard to see how this stubborn insistence on Kosovo
independence could be reconciled with any concern for "regional
stability."

No wonder then that we have witnessed an intense campaign to
"explain" why independence for Kosovo is good, indeed the "only
way forward," or attempts to induce Serbia to agree to this "solution"
preferred in the West. These efforts range from tedious to grotesque.

Thus, disturbed by the prospect of Russia exercising its veto
right at the UN against any imposed "resolution" between Serbia and
its province of Kosovo and Metohia, Olli Rehn, EU Enlargement Commissioner,
asks "While
Russia generally condemns unilateralism, why does it yet threaten to use the
veto in the UN Security Council -- the ultimate unilateral act?" Contrary
to this gratuitous definition, the exercise of veto power is not the
ultimate unilateral act, but it might more accurately be defined as the
unilateral threat or use of force (also known as aggression) in international
relations. It is hardly a contradiction (worth mentioning, much less a valid
"argument") that Russia would condemn unilateralism whilst exercising
its veto rights. Just as an individual can condemn unilateralism while
exercising voting rights without fear of specious and misguided suggestions
that one is ipso facto hypocritical.

Others, in the best tradition of car salesmen, are intent to
opening the eyes of Serbian officials to a good deal they are being offered.
For example, Carl Bilt, Swedish Foreign Minister, while on state visit to
Japan, stated that "the EU would take a more positive attitude to
accepting Serbia as a prospective [EU] member state if the country warmed
toward an independent Kosovo." But who would buy this? No other state had
to give up territory for dubious membership in EU that is, unlike Serbia,
incapable of even agreeing on its own constitution. Furthermore, a Euro-skeptic
could try to clarify things for Bilt in this way:

As the smart French General Charles de Gaulle clearly
recognized, EU remains an incoherent idea as long as the UK is part of it, as a
Trojan horse for US imperialism, hence Sweden should abolish all its European
ties and join the energy rich regional Eurasian alliance of Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO). However, Sweden can do this -- "and simply
as a prospect" -- if the country warmed toward an independent
Vasternorrlands to be administered by SCO right away as of now. Do you get the
picture?

Similarly, in his op-ed on the status of Kosovo Joschka Fischer
tries to sell the Serbs the idea that essentially Serbia should swap
Kosovo for potential membership in EU because "Serbia
has a bright future with the EU, but getting there requires that it break with
its own past -- on [...] Kosovo [...]." Certainly, the invitation to
"break with a past" (coming from Germany) could appear to have merit,
but again the Bilt point could be made in its German variation: "Germany
should abolish all its European ties and join the energy rich regional Eurasian
alliance of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). However, Germany can do
this -- in prospect only -- if the country warmed toward an independent Bavaria
which is to be administered by SCO right away as of now. Additionally, this
might help Deutschland break further with its own past and obtain a bright
SCO-future, full of affordable energy."

To show that pronouncements by academics can be more dismal than
those by politicians we can look at an example of a Fulbright Scholar's wisdom
on Kosovo acquired by merely spending a few months there. Timothy Kenny offers
the ultimate argument in favor of Kosovo independence by crying: "If
anyone deserves independence, it's long-suffering Kosovo." The merit
of a call such as this one can easily be demonstrated by juxtaposing it to for
example this one: "If anyone deserves reparations, it's long suffering
African Americans." Yet, Kenny continues his appeal: "after being
victimized in the past of four Balkan wars...action on the issue appears at
hand." And again, one may wonder isn't the following a more noble concern
for him: After being victimized for centuries and actual genocide
being committed against them the surviving Native Americans require action to
secure independent and sovereign states for the First Nations in North America?
Then comes the knockout argument that "Serbia has started one regional war
too many to be rewarded with keeping Kosovo." How sound this thinking is
can be realized by considering whether it isn't the case that the US had
started one major war too many in Iraq so that it cannot be rewarded by keeping
the federation intact? Should not the 50 states go their merry way away from
this shameful, aggressive federation?

Armed with dismal reasoning of this sort in support of the
independence "solution" it is small wonder that its proponents resort
to statements of inevitability, repeating them ad nauseam. Kenny is no
exception: "An independent Kosovo working with the European Union and NATO
is inevitable." But, we are back to mere words, and perhaps something much
more serious: If it were true that independence of Kosovo is inevitable --
"the only way forward" -- why the need to say this so often? Is it in
the hope that saying it makes it so? If so, that is a sign of serious
personality disorder or worse: the DSM V contains several references to
disorders and diseases which have as a characteristic the patient's delusional
belief that mere words create reality à la biblical: "in the beginning
there was logos."

The Solution

Instead of dwelling on the "inevitable" let us consider
what would be the result of an approach honestly concerned with regional
stability. The obvious and inexpensive solution is to partition Kosovo between
Serbs and Albanians by the process in which Serbia would exercise expulsive
secession. The Serbian part of Kosovo would then become a part of Serbia proper
while the Albanian part would become independent. Albanians have made it
abundantly clear that they want nothing short of full independence. If
possible, this genuine desire ought to be satisfied at least to a degree. Some
give and take would be necessary, however, but partition is the only natural
way to go. What would it take to accomplish this?

First, the myth that Serbs would not find this option palatable
must be rejected. In fact many Serbs, including members of the Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts (SANU), and in particular the former President of
Yugoslavia, the novelist Dobrica Cosic, have long advocated this sort of
solution. Back in 1996 SANU President Despic in a newspaper interview
recommended partition. What exactly it should amount to is another matter, but
it is a feasible step for both Serbs and Albanians.

In fact, convincing Serbs that a specific partition is good will
seem less of a problem than divorcing the Kosovo issue from the Republika
Srpska issue. And this is where the key policy may lead to a happy return of
foreign servicemen and women (including Americans) from both Kosovo and Bosnia.
A carefully crafted package of financial incentives and policy of compensating
the Serbs' loss of territory in Kosovo with empowering Republika Srpska to join
Serbia would provide a long term security and stability solution for the puzzle
that the Balkans have presented until recently. If it were objected that the
borders of a new country would be meandering unreasonably given the size of
Republika Srpska the obvious answer is: Croatia is already that way! (In order
to get to Molunat from Ilok a full circle must be traveled.) This proposal
would have to be further fine tuned, such as offering a provision that the UN
guarantees that the Orthodox sites that remain in Albanian dominated Kosovo
would enjoy protection from destruction and access secured to all Serbian
pilgrims, etc.

The policy of partitioning Kosovo along with the unification of
Republika Srpska with Serbia offers long term security and stability for the
region. Also, it is no less natural an outcome than the unification of Germany,
for example. Once NATO and EU troops pull out of Bosnia, Serbs in Republika
Srpska will be safe from possible attack coming from the Muslim and Croatian
Federation as the strength of the Serbian Army will function as a decisive
deterrent. On the other hand the Muslim and Croatian side would have nothing to
fear from a democratic government in Belgrade. Similarly, after partition of
Kosovo, KFOR can pull out without worry of a renewed full-scale war between
Serbs and Albanians there. A small contingent of NATO troops (preferably
Americans, because of their credibility) would have to maintain a long-term
presence in Macedonia to prevent a conflict erupting in the western part of the
country where Albanians have a majority similar to the Kosovo situation.
Albanians there might be tempted to repeat a Kosovo style uprising. American
troops in Macedonia would guard against this, further contributing to the
long-term security of the Balkans. The cost would, however, be an insignificant
fraction of the current costs of maintaining both the Bosnia and Kosovo
missions (currently surpassing $3.5 billion annually).

This entire enterprise is likely to provoke fierce resistance only
from one side: the ethnic Muslims in Bosnia. However, American diplomats should
have no serious problem convincing them to go along, as Muslims have enjoyed
American protection and favors from the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis. While
Croats were supported by Germany and Serbs supposedly by Russia, Muslims in
Bosnia were the side the US chose to favor. Perhaps the honor of carrying out
the implementation of this comprehensive and long-term security solution could
fall on the son of the president who got the US involved in the Yugoslav mess
in the first place.

http://www.swans.com/library/art13/ajokic03.html

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Mark Mackinnon's New Cold War

Published in The Dominion (http://www.dominionpaper.ca)

May 31 2007 - 1:48pm

Mark Mackinnon's New Cold War

Canada, the US and democracy promotion in the former Soviet republics

by Dru Oja Jay

Mark
Mackinnon's new book opens with a tale of two large buildings blown up
by terrorists. The president, until then an unremarkable leader with
deep ties to the country's secretive intelligence agency, seizes on the
tragedy by launching a war against the terrorists. Suddenly popular for
his decisive strikes, the president sends troops to a small Muslim
country that had been occupied, then abandoned by previous
administrations. He uses the urgency of war as a pretext for
consolidating power, naming his lackeys to key positions. The
"oligarchs" of the country, Mackinnon writes, proceeded to set up a
system of "managed democracy," where the illusion of choice and a
popular longing for stability cover up the fact that fundamental
decisions are made in an undemocratic fashion and power remains
concentrated in the hands of the few.

Mackinnon, who is currently the Middle East bureau chief for the Globe and Mail,
is of course talking about Russia, and its president, ex-KGB agent
Vladimir Putin--though if Mackinnon notices parallels with another
country, he doesn't say so. The Muslim country is Chechnya and the
terrorist attacks were against two apartment buildings in the town of
Ryazan, 200km southeast of Moscow. Questions were raised about KGB
involvement.

Mackinnon's book is The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union.

Almost without exception, Canadian reporters find it a lot easier to
cut through PR spin and official lies when they're covering foreign
governments--especially when those governments are seen as rivals of
Canada or its close partner, the US. But when the subject is closer to
home, their critical acumen suddenly wilts.

Mackinnon suffers from this common affliction less than most
reporters. One gets the sense that it's a conscious choice, but still a
tentative one.

Over the last seven years, the US State Department, the Soros
Foundation and several partner organizations have orchestrated a series
of "democratic revolutions" in eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. And, during those years, each "revolution," whether attempted or
successful, has been portrayed by journalists as a spontaneous uprising
of freedom-loving citizens receiving inspiration and moral support from
their brothers and sisters in the West.

Evidence that this support also involved hundreds of millions of
dollars, meddling with choices of candidates and changes to foreign and
domestic policies has been widely available. And yet, for the last
seven years, this information has been almost entirely suppressed.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence of suppression came when the
Associated Press (AP) ran a story on December 11, 2004--at the height
of the "Orange Revolution"--noting that the Bush Administration had
given $65 million to political groups in Ukraine, though none of it
went "directly" to political parties. It was "funneled," the report
said, through other groups. Many media outlets in Canada--notably the Globe and Mail
and the CBC--rely on the AP, but none ran the story. On the same day,
CBC.ca published four other stories from the AP about Ukraine's
political upheaval, but did not see fit to include the one that tepidly
investigated US funding.

Similarly, books by William Robinson, Eva Golinger and others have
exposed US funding of political parties abroad, but have not been
discussed by the corporate press.

Canada's role went unreported until two and a half years later, when--coinciding with the release of The New Cold War--the Globe and Mail
finally saw fit to publish an account, written by Mackinnon. The
Canadian embassy, Mackinnon reported, "spent a half-million dollars
promoting 'fair elections' in a country that shares no border with
Canada and is a negligible trading partner." Canadian funding of
election observers had been reported before, but the fact that the
money had been only a part of an orchestrated attempt to influence
elections had not.

For reasons that remain obscure, the editors of the Globe
decided, after seven years of silence, to allow Mackinnon to tell the
public about what Western money has been up to in the former Soviet
Union. Perhaps they were influenced by Mackinnon's choice to write a
book about the topic; perhaps it was decided that it was time to let
the cat out of the bag.

Western-funded groups led the "Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine. cc 2.0 Photo: Sarita Ladios

It's
a fascinating account. Mackinnon starts in Serbia in 2000, where the
West, after funding opposition groups and "independent media" that
provided a constant stream of coverage critical of the government--as
well as dropping 20,000 tonnes of bombs on the country--finally
succeeded in toppling the last stubborn holdout against neoliberalism
in Europe.

Mackinnon describes in detail how Western funding--an effort
spearheaded by billionaire George Soros--flowed to four principle
areas: Otpor (Serbian for 'resistance'), a student-heavy youth movement
that used grafitti, street theatre and non-violent demonstrations to
channel negative political sentiments against the Milosevic government;
CeSID, a group of election monitors that existed to "catch Milosevic in
the act if he ever again tried to manipulate the results of an
election"; B92, a radio station that provided a steady supply of
anti-regime news and the edgy rock stylings of Nirvana and the Clash;
and assorted NGOs were given funding to raise "issues"--which Mackinnon
calls "the problems with the power-that-is, as defined by the groups'
Western sponsors." The Canadian embassy in Belgrade, he notes, was a
venue for many donor meetings.

Finally, disparate opposition parties had to be united. This was
facilitated by then-US Secretary of State Madeline Albright and German
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who told opposition leaders not to
run, but to join a "democratic coalition" with the relatively unknown
lawyer Vojislav Kostunica as the sole opposition candidate for the
presidency. The Western-funded opposition leaders, who didn't have a
lot of say in the matter, agreed.

It worked. Kostunica won the vote, the election monitors quickly
announced their version of the results, which were broadcast via B92
and other Western-sponsored media outlets, and tens of thousands poured
into the streets to protest Milosevic's attempted vote-rigging in a
demonstration led by the pseudo-anarchist group Otpor. Milosevic,
having lost his "pillars of support" in the courts, police and
bureaucracy, resigned soon after. "Seven months later," Mackinnon
writes, "Slobodan Milosevic would be in The Hague."

The Serbian "revolution" became the model: fund "independent media,"
NGOs and election observers; force the opposition to unite around one
selected candidate; and fund and train a spray-paint-wielding,
freedom-loving group of angry students united by no program other than
opposition to the regime. The model was used successfully in Georgia
("the Rose Revolution"), Ukraine ("the Orange Revolution") and
unsuccessfully in Belarus, where denim was the preferred symbol. The New Cold War
has chapters for each of these, and Mackinnon delves deep into the
details of the funding arrangements and political coalitions built with
Western support.

Mackinnon seems to harbour few illusions about the US exercise of
power. His overall thesis is that, in the former Soviet Union, the US
has used "democratic revolutions" to further its geopolitical
interests; control of oil supply and pipelines, and the isolation of
Russia, its main competitor in the region. He notes that in many
cases--Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, for example--repressive regimes
receive the hearty support of the US, while only Russian-allied
governments are singled out for the democracy promotion treatment.

And while Mackinnon may be too polite to mention it, his account
significantly contradicts the reporting regularly vetted by his editors
and written by his colleagues. Milosevic, for example, is not the
"Butcher of the Balkans" of Western media lore. Serbia was "not the
outright dictatorship it was often portrayed in the Western media to
be," Mackinnon writes. "In fact, it was more like an early version of
the 'managed democracy' [of Putin's Russia]." He is frank about the
effects of the bombing and sanctions on Serbia, which were devastating.

But in other ways, Mackinnon swallows the propaganda whole. He
repeats the official NATO line on Kosovo, for example, neglecting to
note that the US and others were funding drug-dealing autocratic
militias like the Kosovo Liberation Army, the subject of many
misleading, laudatory reports by Mackinnon's colleagues circa 2000.

More fundamentally, Mackinnon ignores the West's central role in the
destabilization of Yugoslavia after its government balked at further
implementation of IMF reforms that were already causing misery.
Mackinnon experiences and discusses the phenomenon of
destabilization-by-privatization in most of the countries he covers,
but seems unable to trace it back to its common source, or see it as
principle of US and European foreign policy.

Former Russian Politburo operative Alexander Yakovlev tells
Mackinnon that Russia's politicians had "pushed the economic reforms
too far, too fast" creating "a criminalized economy and state where
residents came to equate terms like 'liberal' and 'democracy' with
corruption, poverty and helplessness."

In one of the more dramatic moments in the book, the 82-year-old
Yakovlev takes responsibility, saying: "We must confess that what is
now going on is not the fault of those who are doing it... It's us who
are guilty. We made some very serious errors."

In Mackinnon's world, the rapid dismantling and privatization of the
state-run economy--which left millions in poverty and despair--is an
explanation for the Russian and Belarussian peoples' love affair with
strongman presidents who curb liberties, marginalize opposition,
control the media and maintain stabilnost, stability. But
somehow, the ideology behind the IMF-driven devastation doesn't make it
into Mackinnon's analysis of the motivations behind "New Cold War."

Mackinnon notices the most literal US interests: oil and the
Americans' fight for regional influence with Russia. But what escapes
his account is the broader intolerance for governments that assert
their independence and maintain the ability to direct their own
economic development.

Energy and pipeline politics are a plausible explanation for the
US's interest in the southern former Soviet republics. He might have
added that the US used Georgia as a staging ground during the Iraq war.
When it comes to Serbia, Mackinnon is forced to rely on an implausible
account of NATO carrying out a moral mission to prevent genocide. The
claim no longer makes any sense, given available evidence, but remains
prevalent in the Western press.

Mackinnon mentions Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela in passing. In all of
these places, attempts have been made to overthrow the governments. In
Venezuela, a US-backed military coup was quickly overturned. In Haiti,
a Canadian- and US-led coup resulted in a human rights catastrophe that
is ongoing and recent elections confirmed that the party that was
deposed remained more popular than the alternative presented by the
economic elite. In Cuba, attempts to overthrow the government have been
thwarted for half a century.

To explain these additional, more violent attempts at "regime
change," it is not enough to cite the literal interests. Venezuela has
considerable oil, but Cuba's natural resources do not make it a major
strategic asset, and, by this standard, Haiti even less so. To explain
why the US government provided millions of dollars to political
parties, NGOs and opposition groups in these countries requires an
understanding of neoliberal ideology and its origins in the Cold War
and beyond.

This much would be evident if Mackinnon added some much-needed
historical context to his account of modern-day methods of regime
change. In his book Killing Hope, William Blum documents
over 50 US interventions in foreign governments since 1945. History has
shown these to be overwhelmingly anti-democratic, if not outright
catastrophic. Even mild social-democratic reforms of government in tiny
countries were overwhelmed by military attacks.

If true democracy involves self-determination--and at least the
theoretical ability to refuse the dictates of the "Washington
Consensus" or the IMF--then any evaluation of democracy promotion as
the tool of US foreign policy has to reckon with this history.
Mackinnon's account does not and remains almost resolutely ahistorical.

The last chapter of The New Cold War, entitled
"Afterglow," is dedicated to evaluating the ultimate effects of
democracy promotion in the former Soviet republics. It is Mackinnon's
weakest chapter. Mackinnon limits himself to asking whether things are
better now than before. The frame of the question lowers expectations
and severely stunts the democratic imagination.

If one sets aside these considerations, then it is still possible
for curiosity to get the better of the reader. Is it possible that good
things can come even from cynical motivations? Liberal writers like
Michael Ignatieff and Christopher Hitchens made similar arguments in
support of the Iraq war and Mackinnon flirts with the idea when he
wonders whether young activists in Serbia and Ukraine were using the
US, or whether the US was using them.

So, did things get better? The information Mackinnon presents in his answer is extremely vague.

In Serbia, he says, life is much better. The revolution hasn't
brought too many benefits to the daily lives of Serbs, a cab driver
tells Mackinnon. However, he writes, "The era of gasoline shortages and
of young men being sent off to fight for a 'Greater Serbia' was long
past and the late-night laughter and music that spilled out of
Belgrade's packed restaurants spoke to an optimism unheard of under the
old regime."

In this and many other cases, Mackinnon buys a well-diffused
propaganda line without looking at the facts. Straying from the
meticulous detail he brings to his reporting of the ins and outs of
democracy promotion, Mackinnon seems to believe that it was a
diabolical scheme by Milosevic--and not economic sanctions or bombing
and subsequent destruction of the bulk of Serbia's state-owned
industrial infrastructure--that led to gasoline shortages. Mackinnon
admonishes Serbs to face up to their role in the war, while letting
NATO's bombing campaign, which left tonnes of depleted uranium, flooded
the Danube with hundreds of tonnes of toxic chemicals, and incinerated
80,000 tonnes of crude oil (thus the gasoline shortages), off the hook.

In Georgia, Mackinnon again relies on nightlife in the capital city
as an indicator of the country's democratic well-being. "The city
bubbled with a sense that things were starting to move in the right
direction...swish Japanese restaurants, Irish pubs and French wine bars
were popping up on seemingly every corner." The leisure activities of
the economic elite are just that; there are many ways to judge the
well-being of a country, but to rely on the sights and sounds of
well-heeled city dwellers enjoying themselves to the exclusion of other
criteria is peculiar.

Mackinnon remarks in passing that the Western-backed regime of
Saakashvili has resulted in "declining freedom of the press," but has
"boosted the economy."

In Ukraine, "newspapers and television stations could and did
criticize or caricature whomever they wanted," but the Western-backed
free market ideologue Yuschenko made a series of blunders and unpopular
moves, resulting in major electoral setbacks for his party a few years
after the "revolution" that brought them to power.

Strangely, Mackinnon's sources--other than the odd cab driver--seem
to consist entirely of the people receiving funding from the West.
Independent critics, apart from aging and deposed former politicians,
are virtually nonexistent in his reporting.

Still, the question: did the West do good? In the final pages, Mackinnon is equivocal and even indecisive.

Some countries are "freer and thus better," but the Western funding
has made it more likely for repressive regimes to crack down on
would-be democratizing forces. In Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and
Azerbaijan, he is critical of the lack of funds for democratic
promotion, leaving local NGOs and opposition groups hanging. He
attributes this inconsistency to arrangements where American needs are
better served by repressive regimes. In other parts of the chapter, he
finds democracy promotion as a whole to be problematic.

At one point, he comments that "the help that [US agencies] gave to
political parties in countries like Ukraine would have been illegal had
a Ukrainian NGO been giving such aid to the Democrats or Republicans."
One also imagines that Canadians would not be impressed if Venezuela,
for example, gave millions of dollars to the NDP. Indeed, the prospect
seems as ridiculous as it is unlikely...and illegal.

Mackinnon's information suggests, though he does not say it
outright, that associating the idea of "democracy" and its attendant
freedoms with Western funding and US-led meddling in the governance of
countries is likely to undermine legitimate grassroots efforts at
democratization. For example, dissidents in Russia tell Mackinnon that
when they gather to demonstrate, people often look at them spitefully
and ask who is paying them to stand in the street. In one case,
Mackinnon points out that a report from an authoritarian government
claiming that dissidents are pawns of the West is dead-on.

Mackinnon's assessment does not follow this evidence to its
conclusion; he doesn't stray from the view that alignment with either
the US or Russia are the only options for countries in the region.

While alignment with one empire or another may seem to be
inevitable, Mackinnon's implicit Russia-or-US manicheanism obviates
other ways of promoting democracy. Mackinnon ignores, for example, a
decades-long tradition of grassroots solidarity with democratic forces
in countries--predominantly in Latin America--where dictators were
often financially backed and armed by the US government. Such movements
were usually limited to curbing excessive repression rather than
sponsoring democratic revolutions, but this lack of power can be
attributed, at least in part, to the lack of media coverage from
mainstream journalists like Mackinnon.

If one is concerned with democratic decision-making, then surely one
is also concerned with the ability of countries to make decisions
independently of the meddling of foreign powers. Mackinnon also does
not address how such independence might be brought about. One can
speculate that it would involve preventing the aforementioned meddling.

The New Cold War is notable for its thorough account of
the internal workings of democracy promotion and the point of view of
those receiving the funding. Those looking for an analysis that bring
such a thorough accounting to its actual aims and effects, however,
will have to look elsewhere.

---

Source URL:

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1202

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The "Pro-American" Terrorists

The "Pro-American" Terrorists

By Julia Gorin

FrontPageMagazine.com | May 22, 2007On cue, within minutes of news that four Albanians were involved in a plot to attack American soldiers in New Jersey,
we were treated to the familiar disclaimers of Albanian
pro-Americanism, meant to keep us on program — lest the American people
finally demand a reevaluation of our self-destructive 1990s alliances
which still dictate current policy.

“3 Brothers implicated in Fort Dix plot had roots in fiercely pro-U.S. region,” rang out an International Herald Tribune headline of a widely printed AP story:

 

Three
Muslim brothers who allegedly helped plot to kill soldiers at a U.S.
Army base have roots in one of Europe’s most pro-American corners — a
region that remains grateful to the United States for ending the Kosovo
war.

…

Albania was among the first countries to answer Washington’s call for troops to help support U.S.-led military offensives in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Pristina, the capital of Kosovo…U.S. flags are commonplace…

 

A Washington Post article began: “They hail from one of the most pro-American and secular parts of the Muslim world — the ethnic Albanian regions of Macedonia, where gratitude for U.S.
assistance in Kosovo during the 1990s still runs high.” The same week,
an Albanian-Canadian broadcaster assured Canucks, “No one loves
Americans more than Albanians do” -- something that one Albanian
spokesman after another repeats.  

 

Albanians
are the most pro-American people in the world! everyone proclaims as
Albanians burn churches, kill nuns and behead monks in Kosovo, the
“most pro-American state-in-progress.” Ah yes, this is who loves America. A dubious endorsement indeed. Everywhere else, we are hated for trying to beat back jihad. In Kosovo, Albania
and the Albanian Diaspora, they love us for enabling it. Any time you
help Muslims kill Christians, just like any time you help one
nationality clean out its ethnic rival, it’ll thank you. For a little
while.

 

Don’t be fooled. Albanian love is conditional. And it’s waning fast.

 

This was the overnight bus ride from Pristina to Montenegro that Weekly Standard contributor and longtime champion of Balkan Muslims Stephen Schwartz described last year for a site called FamilySecurityMatters.com:

 

A
man behind me began speaking almost immediately and without stopping,
in Albanian — which I understand…insistently focused on the nature of
God…[and on] the evil intentions of Americans, Iraq,
and bloodshed. I was startled because it is rare to hear Albanians,
after the rescue of Kosovo, badmouth Americans…”God is one, who are
these people like this American who come and try to tell us how to be
Muslims? What about Iraq? Why is this American here with his friend?”

 

Schwartz then described a rest stop:

 

I
did not find out where I was until I asked a waiter in the restaurant,
because none of the Albanians crowded in the back with me and my Sufi
companion and the whisperer in darkness would speak civilly to me. When
I asked one man, in Albanian, the name of the town, he answered in
Serbian: “ne znam,” “I don’t know.” Another said it was the Montenegrin
capital, Podgorica (it wasn’t). And finally a thin punk who could not
have been over 20, and who, I soon realized, had been encouraging the
voice behind me, said in perfect English, “I don’t understand English.”
At the end of the rest period all three people filed back into the bus
and avoided looking at me.

 

Muhammad
woke up and asked me what was going on. I told him, “Someone back here
is making Wahhabi speeches.” He grinned as if in disbelief, but said,
“I’m not surprised.”

 

The
befuddled Mr. Schwartz continued: “But I am known in the Balkans as an
opponent of radical Islam…I had repeatedly been recognized during this
trip on the streets and in mosques in Albania and Kosovo, and was previously warmly greeted.”

 

When
good will is acquired by doing someone’s bidding, pro-Americanism is
won for the wrong reasons, and the gratitude will turn the moment we
stop furthering that party’s agenda. In Kosovo, it began happening as
early as 2000, when the Kosovars started calling for the UN and NATO
“occupiers” to get out. Nor do the American and British flags hanging upside-down
from Pristina’s Victory Hotel bode well for the future of
pro-Americanism in “Kosova”. Meanwhile, the Wahhabi Muslims who started
flooding Kosovo upon our intervention have been making sure that young
Albanians sour on us anyway. In an article titled “Behind Kosovo’s Façade,” Balkans observer Russell Gordon writes:

 

In
many areas young Kosovo Albanians are being converted to the Wahabist
faction, and are highly visible in their telltale short haircuts,
beards, and ankle-length pants. As well, many Arabs are present from
the Middle East
and France….Moreover, anti-Western jihadist sermons are now a regular
feature at many of the new mosques. Western military intelligence
officials have stated that the findings of their investigations into
the jihadist terror networks is routinely ignored or blocked by NATO,
UN and US officials.

 

And yet, just one year before his eye-opening bus ride, Mr. Schwartz wrote what many Albanians still claim:

 

There
are not now and never have been, in recent times, ‘Muslim militants’ in
Kosovo, aside from a handful of individuals and some Saudi and other
Gulf Arab-state cells operating through relief agencies…No
‘international Islamist factions’ are present in Kosovo or presently
involved with Kosovo. No ‘international Islamist factions’ were
involved in the Kosovo war…Kosovar Muslims are extremely anti-Islamist
and pro-American.

 

Kosovo is the most heavily-policed, militarily-occupied region in Europe.
It does not now and has never had a ‘fundamentalist minority’ in the
sense the term is now understood, and no serious evidence to the
contrary can be produced.

 

So
what happened? Did the Albanians whom Mr. Schwartz encountered on his
bus trip turn fundamentalist overnight? Not according to a 1992 report
by the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, as Insight
Magazine reported:

 

…Islam
experienced an unexpected renaissance in communist Yugoslavia in the
mid-1970s…According to a TFTUW report, the Yugoslav government in
Belgrade was concerned about what it saw as evidence that within its 40
percent Muslim population there were ‘’Muslim terrorists operating
against the West'’ and that ‘’Yugoslav Muslim youths were drawn into
cooperation with and emulation of Arab terrorists.'’

 

Our
NATO invasion only sped up a process that was already well underway.
Here was the scene in 1980s Kosovo, as reported by almost every major
paper at the time. From a 1987 New York Times article:

 

…Slavic
Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down.
Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been
knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders
to rape Serbian girls.

…

The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ‘’ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'’

…

As
Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially
strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in
1981 — an ‘’ethnically pure'’ Albanian region, a “Republic of Kosovo”
in all but name.

…

Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months…Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.

…

The
federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula… said
ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ‘’killing officers
and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons
arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing
flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.'’

…

Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo,
including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories.
Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence — and
suspicion — of the ethnic Albanian authorities.

…

The hope is that something will be done…to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia’s mainstream.

 

We certainly precluded that.

 

Between
the plan to kill American soldiers in New Jersey and the Bosnian
jihadist in Utah earlier this year — police still don’t have a motive,
which usually means it’s jihad — the reevaluation of our Balkan
policies almost began. (The Kosovo and Bosnia connections to the Madrid and London
bombings apparently weren’t enough). But the reevaluation and the
turning of the Kosovo independence tide that it could bring threaten to
once again recede into oblivion, as Americans are coaxed into accepting
the ubiquitous explanation that the Ft. Dix four were an exception, a
fluke, an aberration, and that the genesis of their act has nothing to
do with Albanianism, but with a scourge that Albanians, like everyone
else, suffer from and are averse to: militant Islam.

 

“Few ethnic Albanians embrace militant Islam,” assured the aforementioned AP report. “Most are moderate or secular.”

 

That
line, present in every news item about Albanian or Bosnian Muslims for
the past decade, has been repeated ad nauseum by the many Albanians
interviewed for various follow-up articles to the Ft. Dix
story, with many insisting that this kind of religiousness is “not
Albanian.” But when you cast your lot with the radicals who help your
land grab, when you accept help from them and align your early goals
with theirs, do you really think they won’t come to collect?

 

When Albanians object to depictions of them based on events in recent years, their sentences start with “Albanians have never been…”, or “Albanians historically
are not…” — without understanding that they should be speaking in the
past tense. However this “nominally” Muslim population started out,
there is only one direction for it to go  from here. (Besides, the
long-existent mosques serving the Albanian communities of Staten Island and New Jersey, not to mention the Albanian-American Islamic Cultural Centers that dot the American landscape, belie the “nominal” claim.)

 

Not
being religious, and not being even a “cultural Muslim”, didn’t keep
former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj (currently on trial for
war crimes) from meeting with bin Laden in Tirana in 1995, along with his fellow non-religious Christian-killer (and Albright darling) Hashim Thaci – at the Albanian president’s offices (Sali Berisha, who is now the Albanian prime minister).

 

And as we know by now, one doesn’t need to be a practicing Muslim to feel aggrieved when Muslims are arrested for plotting or committing terrorism:

 

“We all have been supporters of America. We were always thankful to America for its support during the wars in Kosovo and Macedonia,” a cousin, Elez Duka, 29, told The Associated Press.

 

“These
are simple, ordinary people and they’ve got nothing to do with
terrorism. I expect their release and I expect an apology,” he said,
waving his hands. “I see injustice. These are ridiculous charges.”

 

His
indignation captured the mood among Muslims in Kosovo, Macedonia and
Albania — places that have repeatedly expressed gratitude to the United
States for intervening in the 1998-99 Kosovo war and a 2001 ethnic
conflict that pushed Macedonia to the brink of civil war.

…

“I don’t see that they committed any act or that (the authorities) have facts,” he said. “They live in America
and grew up in the American culture. How can you say they are
anti-American? These accusations are totally unfounded. They have
recordings of words, not deeds.”

 

As
this report illustrates, even nominally Muslim pro-Americanism is a
brittle thing. And as soon as you deviate from the agenda, the
honeymoon is over.

 

The
same report quotes Kosovo “Prime Minister” Agim Ceku, who wrote a
letter to the U.S. mission in Pristina, “expressing the ‘extraordinary
feeling that Kosovo’s people have for the U.S.’ Ceku also denounced
what he called ‘the disgusting idea’ that Albanians could be involved
in an attack ‘against a nation that has been very generous so far.’”

 

So far.

 

That means more is expected, and when those are the terms of “friendship”, the future for a pro-American Kosova doesn’t look bright.

 

When
the architects of our Kosovo war continually boast that not a single
American life was lost in their “successful” war, the appropriate
response is “Not yet.” The Albanian strategy in Kosovo in fact has been
a replay of the Oslo accords: Accept Western/infidel help for as long
as it furthers your territorial ambitions; then, once the great powers
are no longer willing to carry you to the next stage, revert to
“traditional” methods and take up arms against them. This has been the
modus operandi of Islamic conquest for the past several decades. So
either we’re looking at a striking confluence of methodology between
Islam and “Albanianism” -- which is strongly bound by nationalist and
clan loyalties --  or its’ no coincidence at all.

 

Those
Albanian weapons, meanwhile, have been turned against the area’s
Western benefactors for some time already. When shot at by Albanians in
trying to protect Serbs, KFOR troops are directed
to flee rather than return fire, which would draw attention to the
region and beg the question, “Why are the people we went to war for
shooting at us?”

 

In addition to the intermittent threats to go to war against NATO (which is in addition to actually shooting
at peacekeepers since 2001), it turns out that both KLA and its
mujahideen accomplices were fighting Americans at the same time that
Americans were fighting the Serbs for them. As one American peacekeeper
who was deployed to the area admitted last week in an article meant to defend
Albanians, “One of our central missions was to protect ancient
Christian churches that the Mujahideen were blowing up. Our area
experienced the occasional IED and drive by shooting almost never aimed
at US forces.”

 

This would help explain how an Albanian applicant to al Qaeda could claim, “I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb and American forces. I need no further training. I recommend (suicide) operations against (amusement) parks like Disney.” (Emphasis added.)

 

And, writes Serbianna.com’s Mickey Bozinovich:

 

[The]
recent beating of an American peacekeeper by local Albanian Muslims
illustrates the fragility of the American military position in that
province if Muslim Albanian drug interests are threatened: an unnamed
American soldier was found off duty at a gas station and beaten silly
by Muslim Albanians because his unit took part in foiling an
unidentified illegal plot.

 

During
a February mission to Brussels, after getting the usual empty
assurances of protections for Kosovo’s non-Albanian minority, American
Council for Kosovo Director Jim Jatras asked a Hungarian member of the
European Parliament, “Isn’t all this talk of protections for Serbs a
tacit admission that among the Kosovo Albanians are a lot of violent
and intolerant people? Why would you reward their violence with state
power?”

 

Looking Jatras in the eye, the parliamentarian replied, “Because we’re afraid of them.”

 

Afraid…of pro-American people?

 

If
pro-Americanism is what we so desperately seek, what about the
pro-American deed of rescuing 500 American pilots shot down in Yugoslavia
during WWII? The airmen were rescued by the Serb Draza Mihailovich and
his anti-Axis guerillas. The late U.S. Major Richard Felman wrote:

 

A
few days after the Germans had seen us bail out and counted ten
parachutes, they sent an ultimatum to the Chetnik [Serb] Commander in
the hills to either turn over my crew of ten to them or they would wipe
out an entire village of 200 women and children…But Gen. [Draza]
Mihailovich would hear none of it… He told us how life is just as
precious to the Serb as it is to the American.

 

Mihailovich’s
resistance to Nazi forces “would have far-reaching implications for the
outcome of the entire war,” explained Aleksandra Rebic, a military
daughter who lived down the street from one of the rescued men. Of the
500 Americans rescued, she wrote:

 

They
would be nursed back to health by the Serbs loyal to Mihailovich, who
at great risk to themselves, would shelter, feed, and protect these men
who were foreigners on their soil. 500 American young men would return
home to become fathers and husbands and later grandfathers who would
tell their children and grandchildren the story of how their lives had
been saved so many thousands of miles away by a man named Draza
Mihailovich.

 

Writes author William Dorich:

 

The
Serbs lost 52% of their adult male population fighting in the First
World War as American allies. Twenty-four years later the Serbs were
the only people in the Balkans to declare war on Nazi Germany. Hitler
bombed the “open city” of Belgrade
on Palm Sunday in 1942, killing 17,000 Serbs in one day. Surrender
followed ten days later as the Nazis invaded. The Serbs lost another
one-third of their population in the Holocaust again fighting as
American allies, especially against their own Croat, Bosnian Muslim and
Albanian Nazis.

 

Then there are always pro-American acts of omission. While we see more and more reports of terrorism being plotted against the U.S. from the “unlikely” Balkan quarters of Kosovo, Bosnia and Albania,
there seems to be a lack of anti-U.S. Serb terror in the works. Except,
of course, in the movies and TV shows we write about them.

 

But
no, we preferred, and prefer, to cast our lot with the Balkans’ most
primitive elements — sacrificing friends to make friends of our
enemies. Men who severed Christian heads, killed federal employees who
were Albanian for “collaborating”, and violently purged
their own ranks are the “statesmen” whom Condoleezza Rice and Nicholas
Burns meet with regularly, the men we’ve set up as the legitimate
rulers of an ethnically pure pro-American Kosovo, and who were honored
guests at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

 

Rather
than rule of law, religious freedom, ethnic diversity, equal justice
and civil rights, Kosovo is governed by lawless, tribalistic,
blood-code-following, clan-oriented mob justice. While reports out of
Serbia concern debates in public schools over Evolution versus
Intelligent Design theory — similar to our own — a typical report out
of Kosovo concerned a debate over whether to kill the KFOR (NATO) mascot because the dog was Serbian.

 

“We’re
defending our way of life,” our leaders told us in 1999. Perversely
enshrining those ‘common values,’ a crude replica of the Statue of
Liberty overlooks our mono-ethnic handiwork from atop the Victory Hotel
where the American flag hangs upside-down just a few yards below.
Nearby are Bill Clinton Boulevard and Wesley Clark Avenue
— tributes cited recently as examples of the area’s pro-Americanism.
(There are also streets named for Eliot Engel, Bob Dole and Madeleine
Albright.) Meanwhile, the former terrorists whom we installed as the
“Kosovo Protection Force” and as the legitimate government of the
province attend annual July 4th celebrations at the U.S. Consulate in
Pristina. One proposed banner for the competition to design “Kosova’s”
new flag mimics the American flag, with the two-headed black Albanian
eagle in the corner where the 50 stars would be, plus red and white
stripes.

 

Great.
The narco-terrorist gangster state we created is pro-American. Are we
so desperate for an endorsement that we must grasp it even if it comes
from a terror-friendly horde, our support of whom is already coming
home to roost?

 

Here is a description of the lifestyles of the families of the Ft. Dix suspects from The Washington Post:

 

…Living
among those varied families for the past seven years were the Dukas, a
three-generational clan of ethnic Albanians. Their Muslim religious
garb, repeated minor run-ins with the law, and a brood of up to 20
children, grandchildren and other relatives…

 

And from the AP:

 

…the
women in the ethnic Albanian family wore head scarves. They kept farm
animals in the backyard until others in the neighborhood of tidy
two-story houses complained…Neighbors there said four or five families
appeared to be living in the house...

 

Among
Albanians, Bosnians, Croats and Serbs — even with all the documented
and imagined crimes attributed to the Serbs — the Serbs were the
Balkans’ most civilized element. Add up Serb crimes, multiply them by
10, and they’re still not as scary as the people they were fighting.
(Or do we need to get into the skull-crushing, eye-gouging, bloody-knife-licking,  using the “Serb-cutter”, raping-and-burning, neck-sawing, beheading and disemboweling
that Bosnians, Croats and Albanians engaged in?) So now ask why Serbs
were so hated by those they were fighting. And ask why KLA targeted
Americans and Serbs together.

 

Before
you accept Albanian pro-Americanism, you must first ask what made
Albanians anti-Serb. Then you must look at photos of what the KLA did
to its enemies, so that when you’re exchanging niceties and recipes
with your Albanian neighbors, keep in mind that, by and large, the KLA
terrorists remain their national heroes.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=28414

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