Power Strategies Emerge Amidst Kosovo Turbulence

Power Strategies Emerge Amidst Kosovo Turbulence
2/29/2008 (Balkanalysis.com)
New information from regional intelligence sources, as well as open-source channels, indicates that cross-border militant activities on at least four fronts are among the new developments to watch in the aftermath of Kosovo’s independence declaration on February 17.
While world attention has focused mainly on the political and legalistic dimensions of the Kosovo Albanian government’s declared independence on February 17, other concurrent developments indicate that the main actors are taking steps to change the facts on the ground in the short term, or produce a long-term deterrent by hastily securing a presence across a widening geographical terrain.
In south Serbia’s Presevo Valley, home of a substantial Albanian population, the Serbian government has been boosting the presence of its security forces. According to Skopje daily Vecer, the Serbian army is completing Tsepotine Base, also known as the ‘Serbian Bondsteel’ (a reference to the US Camp Bondsteel not far across the border in Kosovo). Its strategic high position allows commanding views of Kosovo to the east and Macedonia, 5km to the south. Although planned for five years, various issues and disagreements between the ministries of defense and internal affairs slowed it down, reports Vecer. However, with the independence of Kosovo, completing the 35-hectare base has become a priority. The construction of such a large base in this strategic triangle indicates Serbia’s concern to keep the presently quiet Presevo Valley from blowing up as it did in 2000. Also, for Russia, reportedly interested in some sort of a military presence with the help of the Serbs, the location is again ideal. Vecer reports that Serbia currently has 16 smaller bases along the 92km-long administrative border with Kosovo.
New information from Kosovo itself also suggests present Russian cooperation, with the presence of small numbers of alleged Russian military trainers, in civilian garb, in the northern Kosovo towns of Leposavic and Mitrovica. Balkanalysis.com reported in late 2006 about the arrival here of Serbian special forces in civilian clothes, as a precaution in case of Albanian attacks. In 2006, it should be remembered, KFOR repopulated a disused base in the north of Kosovo, primarily to prevent Serbian troops from coming to the aid of their ethnic kin in case of any large-scale violence.
Two days after the Albanian’s independence declaration, Serb reservists and other agitators stormed and destroyed the nearby border post, gaining brief but important access into Kosovo before it was recovered by NATO troops. On February 27, Reuters reported that the Serb National Council in North Mitrovica had called for Russia “to return its KFOR contingent [in order to] to stabilize the situation in areas where Serbs are in the majority,” in the words of Council leader Milan Ivanovic. Although Russia had a small troop detachment in Kosovo from 1999-2003, it was deliberately not given its own sector equal to those of the other Great Powers, nor positioning in northern Kosovo. Now, it appears, Moscow will have in one way or another positioning in both northern Kosovo and the Presevo Valley.
Along with the attack on the UN border post in northern Kosovo on February 19, Serbian reservists have also made their presence felt on an eastern Kosovo border checkpoint. On February 25, rioting ensued at the Mutivode checkpoint, where 250 ex-serviceman from Medveda, Kuršumlija and Lebane clashed with Albanian KPS officers at the administrative boundary with Kosovo. The two sides hurled stones at one another, until the KPS used tear gas to dispel the Serbs. Strong winds, however, soon cleared the air for more conflict. ”Tires were also set on fire, and the wind spread the blaze to both sides of the line,” reported B-92. “During the entire showdown between the demonstrators and the KPS, cordons of KFOR, on one, and Serbian MUP on the other side of the line, looked on without intervening.”
Serbs have begun other forms of symbolic protest within Kosovo. Serbian police employed within the KPS are threatening to trade in their uniforms for those of Serbia as soon as possible; on February 28, in line with Belgrade’s wide-ranging policies designed to reduce the ability of the self-declared state to function, Serbian KPS officers announced a general strike. The strike will create an interim period in which the officers can make a coordinated action. Even if the struggling UN mission, essentially ineffective north of the River Ibar, dismisses their rejection or tries to take stronger action, the departure of the token Serb presence would signal the end of any hopes for multi-ethnic law enforcement in Kosovo.
On February 27, KFOR sources indicated that British and Austro-German reserve battalions were being put on a heightened state of readiness and that the military mission was increasing its presence in the north. Some Albanians apparently intended to make preparations of their own. On February 21, the leader of the Albanian minority population of North Mitrovica, Adem Mripa, was arrested by KPS police. According to B-92, three Tromblon RPGs and several pieces of ammunition for sniper guns weapons were discovered in his house, in the ethnically mixed quarter of Bosniak Mahala. At the same time, “a bomb was found near a house owned by [Serbian resident] Jovan Ilic, which KFOR subsequently destroyed.” Serbs in the isolated enclaves of central and southern Kosovo are far more vulnerable. An eight-year-old girl was stoned in Ljiplan on February 23, Tanjug reported, while playing in her yard. Such attacks were a regular occurrence, the girl’s father told reporters.
The announced independence of Kosovo has taken on wider dimensions, however. Approximately 12 days ago, Balkanalysis.com has learned, Macedonia’s intelligence services became aware of the re-opening of training camps/rear bases in the Kukes area of northern Albania. These bases, located near the clan stronghold of Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, were where American and British military instructors trained Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers in safety for the 1998-99 campaign across the border in Kosovo. Reporters from Germany’s Spiegel in Kosovo, citing an Albanian paramilitary volunteer in the shadowy Albanian National Army, claim that the organization “takes orders from its head office in Tirana, Albania.” The ANA has recently stated its priority of monitoring the north of Kosovo and, if necessary, using force to prevent it from rejoining Serbia.
An expected complement to any Albanian irregular activity within Kosovo itself was likely to have been the paramilitary group destroyed in Macedonia’s ‘Operation Storm’ in November 2007. In the remote village of Brodec in the Sar Planina mountains above Tetovo, special police arrested or killed escaped criminals from Kosovo’s Dubrava Prison, and captured a sophisticated arsenal, sufficient for 650 men- for the moment at least neutralizing a major security threat before the anticipated secession decree in Kosovo to the north.
However, despite that coup, the Macedonian intelligence source stated that “very recently, we have received information that some small Albanian armed bands, 10-20 individuals or so in each, have re-entered Macedonian territory from Kosovo, in the Tetovo and Lipkovo regions- we are working on locating these groups before they can [become a threat]… however, the border is very easy to be crossed in those places, and they can easily escape from one side to the other when necessary.”
http://www.balkanalysis.com/2008/02/29/power-strategies-emerge-amidst-kosovo-turbulence/

U.S. takes wrong tack with Kosovo

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_8427117

SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS (USA)

OPINION

U.S. takes wrong tack with Kosovo
By Mark Kramer

Article Launched: 03/02/2008 01:38:59 AM PST

Kosovo's decision to declare independence was a bad idea. The U.S. decision
to recognize it was worse - and not because it prompted a crowd of angry
Serbs to torch the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.

Even if the pint-size chunk of the Balkans does not degenerate into failed
statehood like Sudan or Somalia, it almost certainly will remain in its
current perilous condition and become a European bastion of criminality and
human trafficking. Recognizing Kosovo also sends a bizarre message to
separatist movements around the world: If you resort to violence, the West
might support you; if you're peaceful, you haven't got a prayer.

That was certainly the message to Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League
of Kosovo.

Rugova, a former professor of literature who used to hand out stones from
his rock collection to visiting dignitaries (the more he liked you, the
better the rock), formed his movement in late 1989 to offer peaceful
resistance to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic had rescinded
Kosovo's autonomy and clamped down on its majority Albanian population as
part of his murderous plan to carve a "Greater Serbia" from the ashes of the
former Yugoslavia. But for nearly a decade, Rugova received no support from
Western countries, which largely ignored the region. The Dayton Agreement of
1995, ending the bloody war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, made no mention of
Kosovo.

Not until the Albanian-run Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) came on the
scene in 1997 with a guerrilla campaign and terrorist attacks against
Serbian troops and civilians did the Clinton administration begin to pay
attention to Kosovo, inadvertently rewarding the KLA and its terrorist
violence. The KLA deliberately sought to provoke Serbian reprisals, and
Milosevic, with his usual obtuse brutality, readily obliged.
As the fighting escalated, the United States and other NATO countries agreed
to take military action to halt Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing.
But instead of dispatching ground troops, President Clinton decided to rely
solely on air power. The KLA in effect became NATO's boots on the ground. So
when Milosevic agreed in June 1999 to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo,
the KLA, empowered by NATO's pixie dust, filled the vacuum. For the next 15
months, the KLA-led government alienated most of the 2.5 million people in
Kosovo - Albanians and Serbs alike - by engaging in violence, extortion and
other abuses, including widespread drug- and gun-running.

In October 2000, the situation finally seemed to improve when protesters
across Serbia overthrew Milosevic, and Rugova's party won overwhelmingly in
Kosovo's parliamentary elections, far eclipsing the KLA and paving the way
for Rugova's emergence as president. Rugova sought close ties with the
United States, and for a while U.S. officials provided him with valuable
economic and diplomatic support.

But the KLA refused to disappear and sought to weaken Rugova's position by
provoking violence against the region's Serb minority, roughly 10 percent of
the population. The United States, preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan,
mostly stood by and allowed the KLA to re-emerge through intimidation and
force.

Then in January 2006, Rugova died of lung cancer. And in elections last
November, the KLA regained power, seeming just as intolerant as ever. The
new prime minister, Hashim Thaci, who hid out in the woods with Albanian
guerrillas in the late 1990s, not only was involved in terrorist acts as a
KLA leader but is also known for his ruthlessness.

So why, out of all the groups in the world that are seeking independence
(the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Tamils and others), do the Albanian Kosovars
deserve to be singled out and accorded this prize?

Apparently, in the wake of last year's elections, many Western leaders
feared that violence might erupt in Kosovo unless independence was granted
soon. As such, Washington's recognition of the newly named Kosova once again
gives the impression that the Kosovars are being rewarded solely because
they might otherwise turn violent. Other independence-minded minorities will
realize that if they rely on peaceful tactics, they will risk being ignored.

The poisonous impact of this whole episode on Serbian politics was
underscored by the embassy attack in Belgrade. Although moderate Serb
politicians, including President Boris Tadic, swiftly condemned the
violence, even they now feel compelled to emphasize nationalist themes.
Those who spearheaded the peaceful overthrow of Milosevic's murderous regime
are now in danger of being accused of facilitating the country's
dismemberment. And resentment over the forced relinquishment of Kosovo is
bound to simmer for many years and stoke regional tension.

Another risk is that Kosova, the poorest region in Europe, will become a
failed state and possibly a terrorist haven. Its economy would have stopped
functioning long ago without life support from the United Nations, the
European Union and the United States. Even if Kosovar officials were
economic wizards, they would have a hard time meeting popular expectations,
which have soared with independence. Moreover, the ethnic divide will likely
intensify. The prospect of further violent clashes between Serbs and
Albanians seems all too real, and Thaci's government may respond with ethnic
cleansing.

Having recognized Kosova's independence with almost no public debate,
Washington and its friends in Western Europe should be on their guard. Be
careful what you wish for.

MARK KRAMER is director of Harvard University's Cold War Studies Program and
a senior fellow of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
He wrote this article for the Washington Post.

Independent Kosovo a minefield, not a triumph

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/opinion/opinion/independent-kosovo-a-minefield-not-a-triumph/1194429.html

CANBERRA TIMES (AUSTRALIA)

Monday, 3 March 2008

Independent Kosovo a minefield, not a triumph
Seumas Milne

It might have been expected that the catastrophe of Iraq and the bloody
failure of Afghanistan would have at least damped the enthusiasm among
Western politicians for invading other people's countries in the name of
democracy and human rights.

But the signs are instead of a determined drive to rehabilitate the idea of
liberal interventionism so comprehensively discredited in the killing fields
of Fallujah and Samarra. First there was the appointment of the committed
interventionist, Bernard Kouchner, as French Foreign Minister. Then, late
last year, that supposedly reluctant warrior, British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, reasserted the West's right to intervene across state borders.

This month, his Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued "mistakes" in Iraq
and Afghanistan should not weaken the moral impulse to intervene in support
of democracy, "economic freedoms" and humanitarianism, whether peacefully or
by force. In the United States, both contenders for the Democratic party
nomination have signed up long-standing liberal interventionists as foreign
policy advisers academic Samantha Power in the case of Barack Obama and
1990s veterans Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright in Hillary
Clinton's.

The interventionists, it seems, are back in business. And now Kosovo's
declaration of independence has given them a banner to rally the
disillusioned to a cause that gripped the imagination of many Western
liberals in the '90s. The British Foreign Office spin doctor who drafted the
infamous Iraq war dossier in 2002, John Williams, wrote last week that the
Kosovo war had convinced him to follow Tony Blair on Iraq and it would be a
"tragedy" if Iraq made future Kosovos impossible. The Independent went
further, calling Kosovo's new status a "triumph of liberal interventionism".

But it's hard to see much triumph in the grim saga of Kosovo. NATO's 1999
bombing campaign, unleashed without United Nations support and widely
regarded as a violation of international law, was supposed to halt
repression and ethnic cleansing, but triggered a massive increase in both;
secured a Serbian withdrawal only through Russian pressure; and led to mass
reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, including almost the entire Serb
population of Pristina. After nine years of NATO occupation under a nominal
UN administration, crime-ridden Kosovo is more ethnically divided than ever,
boasts 50 per cent unemployment and hosts a US military base described by
the EU's human rights envoy as a "smaller version of Guantanamo".

Its independence declared in defiance of the United Nations Security Council
and damned by Russia, China and European Union states such as Spain as
illegal is a fraud and will remain so as an EU protectorate controlled by
NATO troops. By encouraging a unilateral breakaway from Serbia, without
negotiation and outside the UN framework, the US, Britain and France have
given the green light to secessionist movements from Abkhazia to Kurdistan.

The claim that Kosovo sets no precedent because it suffered under Serbian
rule is absurd. Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils
down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice. Of course the
Kosovans have the right to self-determination, but they certainly won't get
it as a NATO colony, nor at the expense of other nationalities in the
Balkans, where the impact of Kosovo's declaration on Bosnia and Macedonia
could be conflagrationary.

The significance of the breakaway has not been lost on the Muslim world,
which has long been urged to see US support for Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia as
proof of US good intentions, but has been notably slow to recognise the
breakaway province. As Yasser az-Za'atra wrote in the Jordanian daily
al-Dustour, "Besieging Russia is the main reason that led [George W.] Bush
to support Kosovo's independence. The rise of Russia and China provides a
balance to the US and is undoubtedly in the Muslims' interest. It is not in
the Muslims' interest to secede not in Kosovo, nor in Chechnya, nor even in
China."

Far from helping to rehabilitate liberal interventionism, Kosovo highlights
the fatal flaws at its heart. By supporting one side in a civil war,
bypassing the UN and acting as judge and jury in their own case, the Western
powers exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, bequeathed a legacy of
impoverished occupation and failed to resolve the underlying conflict. They
also laid the ground for the lawless devastation of Iraq the bitter fruit of
the Kosovo war. At the height of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, Blair set
out five tests for intervention as part of his "doctrine of international
community", a catechism for liberal interventionists admired by US
neo-conservatives who followed them. Arguably, only one of the five was met
in Iraq.

What's more, both the US and Britain not only committed military aggression
on the basis of falsehoods, they have been responsible for hundreds of
thousands of deaths and millions of refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan a
humanitarian crisis that dwarfs anything that happened in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Between them, they have also been responsible for
torture, kidnapping and mass detentions without trial. The latest
allegations of beatings, killings and mutilations of Iraqi prisoners by
British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji near Amara in 2004 are the most extreme of
a series that include the unpunished beating to death of Baha Mousa in
custody in Basra.

But there is, of course, not the slightest prospect of any humanitarian
intervention against the occupiers of Iraq for the obvious reason that they
are the most powerful states, who act in the certain knowledge that they
will never be subject to any such violent sanction for their own violations
of humanitarian and international law. But it is exactly that widely
understood reality that undermines the chances of a genuine multilateral
basis for humanitarian intervention.

As the ability of the US to dictate to the UN weakens, it's not surprising
that pressure to revive unilateral liberal interventionism has grown. But
any rules-based system of international relations has to apply to the
powerful as well as the weak, allies as well as enemies, or it isn't a
system of rules at all it's a system of imperial power enforcement which
will never be accepted. Guardian

High price for recognizing Kosovo's independence

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/letters/orl-myword03a08mar03,0,5383490.story

ORLANDO SENTINEL (USA)

COMMENT

High price for recognizing Kosovo's independence
Christopher A. Roach

March 3, 2008

America's hasty recognition of an independent Kosovo has upset powerful
interests, most notably Russia. Serbia, though far from Moscow, has long
been Russia's "Israel": an embattled sister nation on the frontier of the
Islamic world.

The Iraq war eclipsed Kosovo in the public's consciousness. The United
States fought a 78-day air war over Serbia in 1999 and maintains 7,000
troops today as part of a U.N. occupation force. Though American casualties
have been mercifully low, the rationale for the campaign has proven even
less durable over time than the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Specifically, claims of Serbian genocide in Kosovo have been proven false,
and Kosovo's declaration of independence directly violates the peace
agreement that ended hostilities.

The Kosovo war began unusually. The United Nations did not authorize
American intervention in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group that
until 1998 the United States considered a terrorist organization. Yet the
Kosovo Liberation Army's public-relations campaign proved decisive. For
months, CNN displayed heart-breaking pictures of Albanian refugees. Rumors
abounded of "genocide" and "mass graves." Shamed by its cautious response to
earlier events in the former Yugoslavia, the West would "get it right" this
time. After failing to secure U.N. support, President Bill Clinton went
shopping for diplomatic cover and found it among America's NATO allies.

As in Iraq, faulty intelligence played a key role, complete with satellite
photos of "mass graves." When the war ended, the FBI went home empty-handed
after an extensive search for evidence of genocide. In fact, the death toll
from NATO bombings -- estimated at more than 6,000 -- exceeded 2,108
confirmed killed in the fighting, a total that includes Serbian combatants.
This was a far cry from the 100,000 dead Albanians Clinton warned of in the
run-up to war.

NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army ended the war against Serbia through a
negotiated peace. The parties agreed to U.N. Security Council Resolution
1244, which mandated that the remains of the Yugoslavian nation -- by then
reduced to Serbia and Montenegro -- be preserved intact.

Though the genocide did not exist, and the Kosovo Liberation Army leadership
has since flouted its treaty obligations, American leaders are applauding.
After embracing the broader principles of democracy and self-determination
that led to the Kosovo war, how could the U.S. now condemn the Kosovar
declaration of independence?

No one believes that the Kosovar Albanians will act as tolerant stewards of
a multicultural society. Since 1999, Kosovar extremists have destroyed
Christian churches and monasteries and expelled thousands of Serbs in a
campaign that one NATO commander described as "ethnic cleansing."

History has not been kind to the Serbs. After World War II, the communist
regime murdered Serbians en masse who fought against the Nazi invaders. In
the 1990s, though all sides committed atrocities in the Balkans, Americans
and Europeans singled out the Bosnian Serbs for condemnation. The hypocrisy
reached its peak in 1995 when the West remained silent as well-armed
Croatian forces expelled 200,000 Serbs from Bosnia's Krajina region. Today
in Kosovo, the holy land of the Serbs, the West has explicitly approved the
nationalist aims of the Albanians by recognizing an independent Kosovo.

This is a bigger issue than Serbia. Once again, the United States has
needlessly provoked Russia. In recent years, we've meddled in its Ukrainian
neighbor's elections and pushed NATO'S boundaries farther eastward. In 1999,
a weak Russia could do little to support its Serbian ally. But today
Vladimir Putin's Russia is strong, and its patience with the West has worn
thin.

We may soon find that we have insulted Russia one time too many.

Christopher A. Roach is an attorney in private practice in Orlando.

Kosovo: A system enforcing imperial power will be resisted

Kosovo: A system enforcing imperial power will be resisted
By Seumas Milne


THE GUARDIAN, LONDON


Sunday, Mar 02, 2008, Page 9

`Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice.'

It might have been expected that the catastrophe of Iraq and the bloody failure of Afghanistan would have at least dampened the enthusiasm among Western politicians for invading other people's countries in the name of democracy and human rights. But the signs are instead of a determined drive to rehabilitate the idea of liberal interventionism so comprehensively discredited in the killing fields of Fallujah and Samarra.
First there was the appointment of the committed interventionist Bernard Kouchner as French foreign minister. Then, late last year, the supposedly reluctant warrior British Prime Minister Gordon Brown used his speech at the lord mayor of London's banquet to reassert the West's right to intervene across state borders.
This month the UK foreign secretary David Miliband argued that "mistakes" in Iraq and Afghanistan should not weaken the moral impulse to intervene around the world in support of democracy, "economic freedoms" and humanitarianism, whether peacefully or by force. Meanwhile in the US, both contenders for the Democratic party nomination have signed up longstanding liberal interventionists as foreign policy advisers: the academic Samantha Power in the case of Barack Obama; and the 1990s administration veterans Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright in Hillary Clinton's.
The interventionists, it seems, are back in business. And now Kosovo's declaration of independence has given them a banner to rally the disillusioned to a cause that gripped the imagination of many Western liberals in the 1990s.
John Williams, the UK foreign office spin doctor who drafted the infamous Iraq War dossier in 2002, wrote last week that the Kosovo War had convinced him to follow Tony Blair over Iraq -- and it would be a "tragedy" if Iraq made future Kosovos impossible. The Independent on Sunday newspaper in London, went further, calling Kosovo's new status a "triumph of liberal interventionism."
But it's hard to see much triumph in the grim saga of Kosovo. NATO's 1999 bombing campaign, unleashed without UN support and widely regarded as a violation of international law, was supposed to halt repression and ethnic cleansing, but triggered a massive increase in both; secured a Serbian withdrawal only through Russian pressure; and led to mass reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma, including nearly the entire Serb population of Pristina. After nine years of NATO occupation under a nominal UN administration, crime-ridden Kosovo is more ethnically divided than ever, boasts 50 percent unemployment and hosts a US military base described by the EU's human rights envoy as a "smaller version of Guantanamo."
Its independence -- declared in defiance of the UN security council and damned by Russia, China and EU states such as Spain as illegal -- is a fraud and will remain so as an EU protectorate controlled by NATO troops. By encouraging a unilateral breakaway from Serbia, without negotiation and outside the UN framework, the US, Britain and France have given the green light to secessionist movements from Abkhazia to Kurdistan.
The claim that Kosovo sets no precedent because it suffered under Serbian rule is absurd. Haven't the Kurds or Chechens suffered? The difference boils down to power and who is supporting whom, not justice. Of course the Kosovans have the right to self-determination, but they certainly won't get it as a NATO colony, nor at the expense of other nationalities in the Balkans, where the impact of Kosovo's declaration on Bosnia and Macedonia could be conflagrationary.
The significance of the breakaway has meanwhile not been lost on the Muslim world, which has long been urged to see US support for Muslim Kosovo and Bosnia as proof of US good intentions, but has been notably slow to recognize the breakaway province. As Yasser az-Za'atra wrote in the Jordanian daily al-Dustour this week: "Besieging Russia is the main reason that led Bush to support Kosovo's independence. The rise of Russia and China provides a balance to the US and is undoubtedly in the Muslims' interest. It is not in the Muslims' interest to secede -- not in Kosovo, nor in Chechnya, nor even in China."
Far from helping to rehabilitate liberal interventionism, the Kosovo experience highlights the fatal flaws at its heart. By supporting one side in a civil war, bypassing the UN and acting as judge and jury in their own case, the Western powers have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis, bequeathed a legacy of impoverished occupation and failed to resolve the underlying conflict. They also laid the ground for the lawless devastation of Iraq: the bitter fruit of the Kosovo War. At the height of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, Blair set out five tests for intervention as part of his "doctrine of international community," a catechism for liberal interventionists and much admired by the Washington neoconservatives who followed them. Arguably, only one of the five was met in Iraq.
What's more, both the US and Britain not only committed military aggression on the basis of falsehoods, they have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees in Iraq and Afghanistan -- a humanitarian crisis that dwarfs anything that happened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Between them, they have also been responsible for torture, kidnapping and mass detentions without trial. The latest allegations of beatings, killings and mutilations of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers at Camp Abu Naji near Amara in 2004 are only the most extreme of a series that include the unpunished beating to death of Baha Mousa in custody in Basra.
But there is of course not the slightest prospect of any humanitarian intervention against the occupiers of Iraq for the obvious reason that they are the most powerful states in the world who act in the certain knowledge that they will never be subject to any such violent sanction for their own violations of humanitarian and international law.
But it is exactly that widely understood reality that undermines the chances of a genuine multilateral basis for humanitarian intervention.
As the ability of the US to dictate to the UN weakens, it's not surprising that pressure to revive unilateral liberal interventionism has grown. But any rules-based system of international relations has to apply to the powerful as well as the weak, allies as well as enemies, or it isn't a system of rules at all -- it's a system of imperial power enforcement which will never be accepted.

Kosovo: A Crying Shame

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979305/posts


Kosovo: A Crying Shame

The Jewish Defense League ^ | 26 February 2008 | Shelley Rubin

Posted on 03/02/2008 2:18:35 PM

Once again the United States has sold out the good people and rewarded the bad. I am speaking of the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state by our government.
As a bit of background information, the Jewish Defense League was the only activist Jewish organization to support the Serbian people and their right to their ancestral homeland during the war that dissolved Yugoslavia during the 1990s. While we did not approve of alleged war crimes by some Serbians, we understood they felt they were entitled to settle the score with their Nazi-loving Croatian and Bosnian neighbors. . . . During World War II, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and the other Axis Powers, an act that resulted in a coup d’etat. A new government was installed and promptly withdrew the country’s support for the Axis. This enraged Hitler so much that he sent his soldiers into Yugoslavia and took over the country in a matter of days. The Nazis dissolved the government and replaced it with a puppet state led by Milan Nedic. Under his leadership, several Nazi concentration camps were established, such as Banjica and Sajmiste.
Next door in Croatia, the Nazi-lovers there were massacring Serbs, Jews and Roma (formerly called Gypsies). In the 1970s, the Jewish Defense League discovered a Croatian Nazi war criminal, Andrija Artukovic, living the good life in the Surfside Colony near Long Beach, California, and was in large part responsible for the revocation of his American naturalization status. JDL Chairman Irv Rubin personally escorted the father of L.A. radio personality Bill Handel to the federal courthouse so that he could testify against Artukovic. Before intervention by my late husband, witnesses were being harassed by Artukovic supporters and family members. The case took several years to complete because of pressure by Croatians living in the United States and members of the Catholic Church. In his role as minister of the interior in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, Artukovic supervised the genocide hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma. After he was stripped of his American citizenship, Artukovic was returned to Yugoslavia where he was sentenced to death for his war crimes. Because Artukovic was in ill-health, the court there said he was too infirm to be executed, and the Nazi murderer died in a prison hospital. Croatians were infamous for their worship of the Nazis and their brutality to their fellow man, like hang their neighbors on meathooks in kosher butcher shops.
And as far as Bosnians are concerned, they are mostly Muslims. During World War II, a proud fighting unit was the 20,000 member Bosnian Muslim 13th Waffen-SS Division Hanzar. Hanzar means “to slit the throat” in Arabic, and that’s what these animals did to 300,000 Serbs and 60,000 Bosnian Jews. They also killed thousands of Americans in Italy, where they fought against the 5th U.S. Army division for six months. None of those animals faced war crimes tribunals for their actions. By the way, their spiritual leader was Hitler’s bootlicker, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, better known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Back to Kosovo. Kosovo is made up of 92% ethnic Albanians, whose religion is predominantly Islam. There are over two million people living in Kosovo, but no Jews live there. They used to. Sixty or so years ago, their neighbors made sure they wouldn’t return. And what happened to all the Serbians who used to live there? According to history professor Carl Savich, ethnic cleansing has been perpetrated on the Serbian people throughout the history of the region, first by the Ottoman Turks, then the Albanians, the Nazis, the Communists, and now by the Western nations that have accepted the Kosovans claim that the land is theirs. In reality, taking Kosovo away from the Serbs is the Albanian dream of linking Albania with Kosovo (are Bosnia and Herzegovina next?) in order to create a Greater Albania.
And what about the Serbs? The Serbs share a tragic past with the Jewish people. They have lived in peace and friendship with the Jews. They have died alongside us. What is wrong with the world? Despite historical proof, the world puts the screws to the Serbs just as it does to us. It’s a crying shame.

2008 John Robinson

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.