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Pre-1989 Albanian Rule in Kosovo
Dr. Stephen K. Stoan, Ph.D. History, Duke University, 1970

From: "Dragan Rakic" <dragan@cybercable.fr>
(forwarded on wounded earth e-group by Djordje Indjic)
Subject: Pre-1989 Albanian Rule in Kosovo

Pre-1989 Albanian Rule in Kosovo
Discriminated Against ALL non-Albanian Minorities
Why is there Civil War in Kosovo,
Why Did Clinton Get Involved and What has Been Accomplished?
By: Dr. Stephen K. Stoan, Ph.D. History, Duke University, 1970
Director of Library and Information Services, Drury College
Springfield MO 65802

Why is there a civil war in Kosovo, why did the Clinton administration get
involved in it, and what has been accomplished with more than two and a half
months of warfare?
Let's review pertinent facts.

The Nato massacre near Prizren
The Background
Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia when the area was conquered by the
Turks in the fifteenth century. In Serbian history books it is often called
Old Serbia. Albanians began arriving in the seventeenth century during the
Turkish occupation. It has been recognized as an integral part of Serbia by
the international community since 1912.
When the Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia in 1941, they
attached Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and
Greece to Albania to form a greater Albania under the rule of a fascist
dictator. The Kosovo Albanians formed military units to fight for the Nazis,
killed more than 10,000 Kosovo Serbs, and drove more than 100,000 out of the
province into the rest of Serbia. They brought immigrants in from Albania to
fortify the Albanian presence in the province.
When the Croatian Communist dictator Tito came to power in Yugoslavia in
1945, he forbade the Serbian refugees to return to their homes in Kosovo. He
then signed a deal with the new Communist dictator of Albania to bring in
another 100,000 Albanian settlers. The Albanian majority in Kosovo appears
to date from the years around World War II.
An upsurge of Albanian Kosovo violence in 1969-1974 caused another 200,000
Serbs and Montenegrins to leave Kosovo and gave Tito an excuse to separate
Kosovo from Serbia. He made it an autonomous province under the total
control of the now Albanian majority.
Autonomy under Kosovo Albanian control did not result in ethnic peace. Once
in control of the province, the Kosovo Albanians continued harassing
non-Albanians through legal and extralegal means. They required Gypsies to
use Albanian first names. They enacted zoning legislation designed to break
up non-Albanian residential communities. They outlawed use of the Cyrillic
alphabet even among the Serbs, who had always used it. They refused to
permit federal authorities to participate in census-taking, claiming they
didn't know how to count Albanians.
The Kosovar Albanians required mandatory instruction in Albanian for all
inhabitants of Kosovo, and they imported history and social science texts
books from Albania for use in the schools. These taught Albanian nationalism
rather than Yugoslav citizenship and praised the era of Turkish control over
the Balkans. There were continuing incidents of violence against Serbs and
frequent attacks on Orthodox churches, shrines, and monasteries. More Serbs
and Montenegrins left. Ignoring Yugoslav immigration laws, the Albanian
Kosovars permitted more illegal aliens to immigrate from Albania. By the
early 80s, the province was three-fourths Albanian, large numbers of them
born in Albania.
After Tito's death, there was another upsurge of Albanian violence beginning
in 1981. Throughout the 80s, Western news media, including the New York
Times, reported on the ongoing murders and rapes of Serbs and Montenegrins
perpetrated by Albanians, the constant attacks on Orthodox churches and
monasteries, and the inability of the local Albanian authorities ever to
punish anyone.
Yugoslavia finally reversed the autonomy decision in 1989 because of
obstructionist constitutional tactics by the Kosovo provincial government.
This decision was not a unilateral act of Slobodan Milosevich, the newly
elected president of Serbia, though he pushed for it. It was made jointly by
all the republics of Yugoslavia, including Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia,
Montenegro, and Macedonia.
As Republican Senate aide Jim Jatras wrote: "One of the ironies of the
present Kosovo crisis is that Milosevic began his rise to power in Serbia in
large part because of the oppressive character of pre-1989 Albanian rule in
Kosovo, symbolized by the famous 1987 rally where he promised the local
Serbs: "Nobody will beat you again." In short, rather than Milosevic being
the cause of the Kosovo crisis, it would be as correct to say that
intolerant Albanian nationalism in Kosovo is largely the cause of
Milosevic's attainment of power."
The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) was formed shortly thereafter from a Maoist
organization dedicating itself to free Kosovo. As recently as a year ago,
the United States government condemned the KLA as a terrorist group, linked
closely to Iran, the Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin-Laden, and the heroin
traffic in Europe. Europeans have likened it to a Mafia because of its
lawless involvement in organized crime, including prostitution.
The stated goal of the KLA is to create a greater Albania by attaching
Yugoslav Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and
Greece to Albania. Using Albania as a base and conduit for weapons, the KLA
began carrying on a terror campaign against the Yugoslav government in
Kosovo, assassinating and kidnapping not only Serbs but also Albanians and
other ethnic groups who opposed their desires for independence.
Kosovo continues to be home not only to Albanian-speaking Muslims, but also
to nearly half a million other people. The goal of the KLA is to create an
ethnically pure Kosovo by driving out or culturally assimilating the rest of
the population. Their claims of 1.8 million Albanians in Kosovo are
demographically impossible, even with immigration, for there were only
645,000 Albanians in the last full federal census carried out in 1961. There
have also been many emigrants from Kosovo to other parts of Yugoslavia and
Europe.
With the collapse of the Communist regime in neighboring Albania in the
1990s and the nearly anarchic conditions in that country, more Albanians
crossed the porous borders with Yugoslavia into Kosovo.
Within Kosovo, Yugoslav forces were attempting to deal militarily with KLA
terrorism. Using as an excuse an alleged massacre of Albanian Kosovars at
Racak by Yugoslav security forces in mid-January, 1999, Mrs. Albright and
Mr. Clinton demanded to "mediate" at Rambouillet. The massacre was quickly
identified as a KLA set up. This did not deter Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Albright
from pursuing their designs. It is now known that Mr. Clinton had made a
decision months earlier to seek to destroy Milosevich. Racak was the
pretext.
The Yugoslav delegation that came to Rambouillet included Muslim Albanians,
Muslim Serbs, Christian Serbs, and Turks. They were prepared to talk
directly with the KLA, but Mrs. Albright never permitted this to happen.
Instead, her team went back and forth between the two groups laying down
terms.
The Yugoslav government accepted the basic principle that there should be
autonomy in Kosovo (guaranteeing the rights of all Kosovars, not just
Albanians) and consented to an international peace keeping force provided it
be brought in under the auspices of the UN. Mrs. Albright insisted on
bringing NATO troops in. She finally issued an ultimatum to the Yugoslav
government to accept her terms or be bombed. This ultimatum is referred to
as the Rambouillet Accord.
The ultimatum laid down detailed guidelines on how the province was to be
governed. It demanded that Kosovo have the right to override any laws or
judicial decisions made by the Yugoslav government, be permitted to conduct
its own foreign policy, and be organized economically along lines dictated
by NATO. It said nothing about protection of the rights of the non-Albanian
Kosovars. It demanded that Yugoslavia permit NATO troops to be brought into
Kosovo and to have free passage anywhere else in Yugoslavia without
subjection to Yugoslav laws (a venerable imperialist practice called
"extraterritoriality"). NATO troops were also to have the right to
commandeer media facilities as they saw fit. The NATO forces would
themselves conduct a plebiscite in Kosovo in three years on the status of
the province.
There was no way Yugoslavia could accept the Rambouillet "Accord" without
surrendering her sovereignty, possibly losing part of her national
territory, and becoming a satellite state of NATO. Both President
Milosevich, as elected president sworn to defend Yugoslav sovereignty, and
the Yugoslav parliament rejected the ultimatum. An ultimatum, after all, is
not an act of diplomacy. It is an act of war.
Mrs. Albright's and Mr. Clinton's have manipulated the ethnic diversity
issue to suit their immediate purposes. In the case of Slovenia and Croatia,
they accepted and actively promoted societies whose sole reason for seeking
independence from an already multiethnic Yugoslavia was ethnic exclusivism.
They are now doing the same thing in Kosovo on behalf of one ethnic group
the Albanians. As one Canadian journalist put it in writing of Kosovo, "to
first say that countries shouldn't be organized along ethnic lines, and then
demand self-government for one group within a nation on the sole basis of
ethnicity, is an exercise in self-contradiction." He adds: "This is
endorsing one ethnic group at the expense of another. It's saying the
Albanians may use their ethnic majority in Kosovo to assert their political
identity, but the Serbs in Yugoslavia may not."
Mrs. Albright's tactics at Rambouillet are considered by some experts to be
a violation of recognized international law. It is a basic principle of
international law embodied in the Vienna Convention on Treaties adopted on
May 26, 1963, which entered into force on January 27, 1980, that agreements
negotiated under threat of force are null and void. Section 2, Articles 51
and 52 make clear that coercion is impermissible as a negotiating
instrument.
There was no "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo before the NATO attacks, only an
ongoing conflict between Yugoslav security forces and KLA separatists. In
January of this year, an intelligence report from the German Foreign Office
stated: "Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian
ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still not involved in
armed conflict. Public life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc.
has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a relatively normal basis."
The "actions of the security forces (were) not directed against the
Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military
opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."
Once the NATO air attacks began, Yugoslavia took the essential defensive
step of moving an army into Kosovo to wipe out KLA terrorist bases and
secure the borders against a possible ground attack by NATO. The war between
the government and the KLA along with the NATO bombing created an unstable
environment in many areas that caused large numbers to flee. About 200,000
Kosovo refugees of all ethnic backgrounds have moved further into
Yugoslavia, into either Montenegro or other Serbian provinces.
In some areas, Albanians saw the initiation of NATO bombing as a signal to
begin killing their Serb neighbors. Yugoslav security forces and the army
responded by forcing them out or incarcerating many for common crimes. In
some parts of Kosovo, Serb paramilitary forces took advantage of the
anarchic situation to settle old scores and intimidate Albanians into
leaving.
Yugoslav troops were involved in expulsions where they perceived a security
threat in the event of invasion or saw an area as heavily compromised with
the KLA. The United States had similar motivation in 1941 with the
internment of Japanese Americans because of our fears of invasion. It isn't
nice, but it happens when war breaks out.
Yugoslav troops may also have targeted Albanians who are "illegal aliens" in
the country, who may number around 300,000. These people, born in Albania
with no sense of Yugoslav citizenship, have been a major contributor to
dissidence in the province. Many of them fled as soon as the bombing
started, deciding to return to their homes in Albania. They make up a goodly
portion of the "refugees."
The KLA itself played a major role in the flow of refugees, using its armed
men to force Albanian Kosovars out of the province and commandeer young men
to be trained and used as soldiers. They intimidated Albanian Kosovars into
not returing to Kosovo. Like the Bosnian Muslims with whom they have had
close ties for years, the KLA has been getting direct assistance from Iran
and other Muslim nations, some of which have sent Mujehadeen to the Balkans
to fight with them against the Christians.
An estimated half million Albanians never left Kosovo. Many told Western
journalists even in recent weeks that they were under no pressure to leave
because the KLA has never been active in their areas.
It is worth noting that there were 100,000 Albanians living in Belgrade who
were not touched. Nor has Yugoslavia made any effort to "cleanse" the
country of more than 350,000 Hungarians and many Ruthenians, Slovaks,
Croats, Rumanians, Turks, Gypsies, Macedonians, or other minorities.
Yugoslavia has given refuge to 15,000 Croats and Muslims who fled the
fighting in Bosnia. These minorities were harmed only by the NATO attacks.
Before the NATO bombing began, Yugoslavia was only 63 percent Serb, the most
ethnically diverse state in the former Yugoslavia. All major linguistic
groups, including the Albanians, were and are guaranteed instruction in
their own language. During World War II, when Serbia was occupied by the
Germans, the Serbs refused to cooperate in killing Jews and Gypsies.
Orthodox clergymen and ordinary Serb citizens risked their lives to save
these people from extermination. Indeed, in the midst of the bombing of
their country, many Serbs took to wearing Stars of David.
In attacking Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO ignored the United Nations
charter and the NATO treaty itself, which justifies war only to defend a
NATO member from attack. Only one NATO nation even borders Yugoslavia, the
recently admitted Hungary. Since international treaties signed by the United
States are considered U.S. laws under our Constitution, some legal experts
say that Albright and Clinton have violated the American Constitution as
well.
Mr. Clinton also ignored the War Powers Act, which requires that he seek
congressional authorization to continue a military conflict more than 60
days. He suggested at one point imposing a naval blockade on Yugoslavia
until his own European allies pointed out to him that it is considered an
act of war to detain ships of other nations on the high seas.
The petty refusal by Mrs. Albright and Mr. Clinton to suspend the bombings
even for the Eastern Orthodox Easter, when we have been sensitive not to
bomb the Muslim Iraqis during all of Ramadan, sent a powerful message to
Eastern Orthodox Christian nations that we disdain them. Public opinion
polls in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Rumania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece
show overwhelming popular opposition to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia.
The suspicion among many in the world is that Mrs. Albright's real reason
for the war was to establish total U.S. hegemony over the Balkans and its
land routes to the oilfields of the Middle East and Central Asia. Active
Western collusion, initially led by Germany, in the breakup of Yugoslavia
has converted Slovenia, Croatia, and the Muslim-Croat Confederation in
Bosnia into client states of the U.S., established a NATO military presence
with bases in Bosnia, enabled NATO to land troops in Macedonia, and is now
enabling NATO to put troops and military bases in Albania. Only Yugoslavia
stands in the way of total U.S. domination of the region, which Rambouillet
would have achieved. This was part of Mr. Clinton's New World Order.
It has also been pointed out that Kosovo proper is extremely rich in
minerals, has some of the largest coal reserves in Europe, and has petroleum
reserves potentially as vast as those in the Caspian Sea area. Its minerals
may be worth $3 trillion. These facts may explain the very explicit
statements in the Rambouillet Accord that the economy of Kosovo had to be
organized along economic lines dictated by the U.S., which would open the
province up to American investors.
In our propaganda to get rid of Milosevich, we fail to note that he was
elected President in an open election in which his own party controls only
35 percent of the seats in the Yugoslav parliament. In the last election,
the U. S. preferred him because his principal opponent was considered an
ultranationalist. The Yugoslav parliament itself rejected the Rambouillet
Accord. The unrest in Kosovo that he has been trying to deal with has
existed in various manifestations since at least the 1920s. Milosevich has
attacked no neighbors nor engaged in any terrorist activities around the
world. He is not manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.
The assistance that Milosevich provided the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia when
Yugoslavia was breaking up must be understood in the context of what was in
effect a civil war within Yugoslavia, where Serbs had justifiable reasons to
fear a recrudescence of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the 1940s by
Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who massacred more than 600,000 Serbian
non-combatants during World War II.
Franjo Tudjman, the current president of Croatia, has resurrected the flag,
other national symbols, and even the uniforms and arm bands of the Croatian
fascists of World War II. He declared a few years ago that the Jewish
Holocaust was a fabrication, and he destroyed all records of the notorious
Croatian concentration camp at Jasenovac in Bosnia, where tens of thousand
of Jews, Gypsies, and Serbs perished in the 1940s. In 1995, with the
assistance of the CIA and American military advisers, he drove several
hundred thousand Serbs from their ancestral homes in Croatia where they had
lived since the fifteenth century. The U.S. cooperated in this act of ethnic
cleansing.
Alija Izetbegovich, the Muslim fundamentalist leader in Bosnia, helped
organize the notorious Muslim Waffen SS "Handzar Division" during World War
II. Officered by Germans, the division slaughtered thousands of Bosnian Serb
civilians before going off to Russia to fight for the Nazis. When declaring
Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia, he obtained military assistance from
Iran and brought in Muslim mujehadeen from the Middle East to fight on his
behalf. Tudjman and Izetbegovich have been the U.S.'s friends in the
Balkans.
In fact, there are currently more than 700,000 Serb refugees from Croatia
and Bosnia living in what is left of Yugoslavia after being driven from
homes they had lived in since the fifteenth century or earlier. No Western
TV crews filmed their plight or interviewed them about the atrocities they
had suffered. No international relief agencies have come to their
assistance. Yugoslavia has had to absorb them while under an economic
embargo since 1992.
The War
The war initiated on March 24 did not go well for NATO. A ground invasion
was never a serious military or political option, and Mr. Clinton had been
advised to that effect beforehand. There are few logical routes through
which Yugoslavia could be invaded. Hungary, the only NATO country bordering
Yugoslavia, was admitted to NATO only a few weeks before being pushed into
war with its neighbor, and would be unlikely to consent to being used as a
staging area. The neighboring Serbian province of Vojvodina that would come
under immediate attack is home to more than 350,000 ethnic Hungarians.
Neither would Rumania, Bulgaria, or Madedonia likely consent to being a
staging area for an invasion. They are not NATO members, and public opinion
in all three is strongly anti-NATO after the bombing started. An attack from
Bosnia, also not a NATO nation, would have to go through the Republika
Srpska and ignite the conflagration in Bosnia all over again. An invasion
from Albania into Kosovo would be a costly military operation, given the
extremely poor infrastructure in Albania and the few passes through
mountainous terrain that an invader would have to use.
Another very significant factor in a land invasion was the Yugoslav Army
itself. In preparing since the 1940s for a possible invasion by the Soviet
bloc, it built up an enormous network of underground ammo dumps, hangars,
petroleum storage facilities, bunkers, barracks, and perhaps even petroleum
refineries in the mountainous terrain of the nation. Most of this
infrastructure remained untouched by NATO bombing after two and a half
months, since it was designed to withstand nuclear blasts. The Yugoslavs
have also developed a flexible command structure for concentrating and
dispersing troops as needed in fighting a defensive war.
In these circumstances, there was little likelihood that a ground invasion
would ever take place. The costs of victory would have been very high
against a well trained professional army. During World War II, Serbian
forces tied down 700,000 Axis troops with only the Greeks as their allies in
the Balkans. Albanians, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Hungarians, Rumanians, and
Bulgarians all fought for the Axis, and Germany herself had 23 divisions in
Yugoslavia. Assuming we did occupy the country, what would we then do to
govern a hostile population of 11,000,000? How long would we have to stay to
control our new protectorate? A land invasion, moreover, would have provoked
even stronger reactions around the world and within NATO countries.
Militarily, the air war was a debacle for NATO. The Yugoslavs had great
success in preserving their anti-aircraft capabilities throughout. Many of
their fixed sites were destroyed early, but they retained mobile sites and
were strong in their ability to target lower flying aircraft. They set up
dummy tanks, trucks, and SAM sites for NATO planes to attack, regularly
moved and carefully concealed AAA and SAM sites, confused NATO aircraft with
fake radar signals, and were highly successful in targeting the UAVs that
NATO had to rely on to get real time surveillance over moving targets.
Though they lost about half of their few MIG 29's, their most advanced
aircraft, their pilots also shot down a number of NATO aircraft, including a
Stealth fighter. The great bulk of their air force remained intact in
underground hangars. Already, other nations in the world who assume they too
might one day face a bomb-happy NATO are studying Yugoslav defensive
tactics.
Though the official NATO line thus far is that only a few aircraft and no
lives were lost, it is unreasonable to assume that such could be the case.
The International Strategic Studies Association of Alexandria, Virginia, in
its April issue of Defense & Foreign Affairs, reported that in the first
month of the fighting NATO lost at least 38 fixed winged aircraft, including
three Stealth fighters, six helicopters, seven UAVs (unmanned reconnaissance
drones), and large numbers of cruise missiles. Remains of one Stealth
aircraft and intact cruise missiles are already in Russia. These
calculations were based on intelligence coming from a variety of sources.
The most careful ongoing effort to post to the Web information on NATO
losses gathered from newspaper, radio, TV, and e-mail reports all over
Europe, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, and
Yugoslavia itself now lists more than 300 NATO aircraft of all kinds as
having been downed or disabled by early June. Several F-117 stealth fighters
were lost. Recently, two B-2 stealth bombers appear to have gone down over
Yugoslavia. Several B-52s were shot down. A minimum of four Apache
helicopters (two were said to have been lost in "training exercises") were
downed before the U.S. announced it would not use them. At least 25 UAVs
were downed, and more than 200 cruise missiles were hit in the air.
Macedonian and Greek sources have verified the passage of dozens of coffins
through their countries.
Whatever the exact figures, which NATO will not publicize, it is true that
General Wesley Clark asked twice to increase the numbers of aircraft
committed to the war. On May 8 it was announced that 176 additional aircraft
would be brought into action. At the end of May it was announced that an
additional 68 aircraft would join the war. These were only American
aircraft. Additional helicopter rescue crews were also brought in, since
efforts to rescue downed NATO pilots often resulted in the loss of
helicopers, their crews, and some commando units. Some military experts
feared that if another serious military front were to open up elsewhere in
the world, the U.S. would be hard pressed to respond adequately.
Indeed, the war against Yugoslavia may have the effect of undermining the
mystique of Western air power that had developed in the bombing of Iraq, a
poorly defended desert state. Intelligence communities will not be fooled.
In Yugoslavia, Stealth fighters and bombers have proven not to be
invincible, and their remains are now in the hands of other countries for
scientific and engineering analysis. Older Russian-built AAA and SAM sites,
handled by well trained Yugoslav crews, proved to be effective against
aircraft. Shoulder-held missiles have been very destructive. The
Russian-built MIG-29s, flown by competent pilots, acquitted themselves well
in air-to-air combat with NATO aircraft. The MIGs that were lost were almost
all destroyed on the ground in air raids.
Because NATO was largely unable to get at truly military targets, it soon
had to broaden its definition of "military" to go after the civilian
infrastructure. Some describe what resulted as a campaign of terror to
intimidate Yugoslavia into surrendering. One result is what the Defense &
Foreign Affairs article reported as morale problems among the NATO military.
They found themselves fighting a war in which "there are questions about the
wisdom of the orders they are receiving, and a total lack of clear strategic
(let alone military) objectives."
NATO took to bombing public buildings, bridges, rail lines, fertilizer
plants, automobile factories, plastics factories, shoe and clothing
factories, pharmaceutical plants, post offices, power plants, refugee
columns, trains, buses, and other essentially non-military targets. Numerous
bombs and missiles struck purely residential neighborhoods or small isolated
villages. NATO has destroyed much the infrastructure of the Yugoslav
economy, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and creating
widespread suffering for civilians, whose deaths have outnumbered military
casualties by 4 to 1. GDP has declined by an estimated 25 percent.
Since 300 schools were hit in "collateral damage," the country had to close
down its educational system. Collateral damage also affected hospitals,
libraries, museums, cemeteries, and numerous religious sites and shrines.
Recent attacks on electrical installations and water supplies have
endangered the lives and health of large numbers of civilians. Hospitals
could not run dialysis equipment or incubators, bakeries could not bake
bread, fresh water could not be pumped. Unable to defeat the Yugoslav
military through the air and unwilling to confront them on the ground, NATO
resorted to making hostages of Yugoslav civilians in a shameful campaign
aimed primarily at the helpless.
Italian fishermen in the Adriatic were killed pulling up cluster bombs in
their nets, and many ceased fishing out of fear. NATO first claimed they
were World War II bombs, then stated that it was routine practice for NATO
planes returning from raids over Yugoslavia to drop their remaining bombs
into the Adriatic.
A damaged aircraft would likely jettison its ordnance before landing.
However, the presence of bombs in the Adriatic would also corroborate
reports that some NATO pilots were dropping their bombs and missiles over
the Adriatic rather than on Yugoslavia. There are uncorroborated reports
that one NATO country pulled its pilots out of the war. NATO pilots, when
interviewed, admitted that the Yugoslav antiaircraft defenses were
resourceful and highly professional. Another said that this was a "credible"
enemy.
The NATO bombing of petroleum and chemical installations in the Belgrade
area is threatening a large scale ecological disaster as dangerous chemicals
such as phosgene, chlorine, hydrochloric acid, naphtha, ethylene dichloride
and transformer oil are released into the atmosphere or into the Danube and
seep into underground water supplies. In some areas, water has become
undrinkable. It was nearly miraculous that a NATO bomb did not explode a
liquid ammonia tank that would have poisoned many in Belgrade. The result of
such bombing is a kind of low intensity chemical warfare.
It was admitted that American aircraft were using munitions tipped with
depleted uranium (DU), whose use in Iraq has precipitated a seven-fold
increase in leukemia, caused thousands of children to be born with various
deformities, and is a suspect in Gulf War Syndrome. The U.S. was also using
cluster bombs in clearly civilian areas such as Nish. This is strictly an
antipersonnel weapon akin to a type of land mine whose use has been outlawed
because of its continuing destructiveness long after fighting has ceased.
In the attack on the village of Korisa, where many Albanians died in homes
they had just returned to, the U.S. planes were using a type of thermal bomb
that generates up to 2000 degrees Celsius and burns people beyond all
recognition. Besides the attack on Korisa, NATO aircraft on at least three
other occasions targeted refugees who were returning to their homes in
Kosovo. NATO aircraft targeted a Greek and a Rumanian humanitarian relief
convoy going into Yugoslavia whose movements had been announced in advance.
They attacked a convoy of Western journalists in Kosovo, which included the
French philosopher Daniel Schiffer. The three low yield missiles that struck
the Chinese Embassy each hit the apartment of a Chinese journalist who had
been writing against the war.
The extensive bombing of bridges and the pollution of portions of the Danube
River have had economic repercussions for Germany, Austria, the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, since all
traffic and trade on the waterway have been halted. Tourism has also been
affected.
The Aftermath
The adversaries finally agreed to a settlement each for their own reasons.
On the Yugoslav side, the NATO attacks on the power grid in Yugoslavia in
the last few weeks were threatening massive civilian suffering and death
that the Yugoslav government had to be sensitive to. Also, NATO had used
various indirect means to build up and arm a larger KLA military force to
use as a ground army in attacks on Kosovo, changing the military complexion
in the province.
On the NATO side, the alliance was becoming hopelessly divided within.
Opposition in may parts of the world was strong, and criticism was arising
within the Western nations themselves as the horrors of a war against
civilians sank in. Greece opposed the war from the outset, and all three new
members, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, expressed powerful
reservations about the direction NATO was taking. Norway appears to have had
second thoughts very quickly about the nature of the air war. Belgium and
the Netherlands followed suit. Ultimately, Italy and Germany both began to
push for a compromise negotiated through the Russians, with the U.S. and
Britain continuing to hold out for Yugoslavia's unconditional surrender.
Clinton finally had to give in.
What have been the actual results of the war diplomatically? Though the
rhetoric is seeking to conceal the reality, Clinton and Albright have agreed
to a UN force rather than a NATO one, though NATO nations will be
represented as UN members. Russian forces may also be used. Moreover, since
the operation will be under UN supervision, China and Russia will have much
say in the decision-making.
Clinton and Albright have yielded on occupying Yugoslavia in general or even
Kosovo in particular. The exact form that home rule will take is not being
dictated and will be worked out under a UN-appointed administrator. There is
a commitment to recognize Kosovo as an integral part of Yugoslavia, and
there will be no referendum in three years.
Very important is that UN forces must now seek to "demilitarize" the KLA,
whom Clinton used when he thought he could get leverage to take over
Yugoslavia. It was always dangerous to dither with the KLA for any purposes,
since they are a terrorist organization that can also disrupt Macedonia and
Greece. News reports from everywhere are indicating that getting the KLA to
put down its arms or desist from military activity could be the most
difficult part of the entire process.
Just what will happen now in Kosovo in the near and far future is impossible
to discern. Just how much control the UN will be able to exercise over the
peacekeeping force, consisting at the moment exclusively of troops from NATO
countries, is impossible to say. How vindictive Clinton will be in
continuing to pursue Milosevich or seek to undo Yugoslavia in other ways is
an unknown. What anyone can do about the KLA is uncertain. Macedonia, which
is nearly 25 percent Albanian, has been disquieted throughout this war
because of seeming NATO support for the KLA. Greece also has an Albanian
population, as does Montenegro, a part of Yugoslavia.
It was disturbing to see the much publicized news footage of the meetings on
the Macedonian border between NATO and Yugoslav officers. With much macho
bluster, the NATO generals were trying to force their way into Kosovo before
the UN mandate had been approved as outlined in the plan that the Yugoslav
parliament had approved. The Yugoslavs were not resorting to delaying
tactics; they were standing on the text of the agreement. Were NATO actions
merely a propaganda show, seeking to put the best public face on what can
certainly be seen as a NATO loss? Or was NATO seeking to subvert the signed
agreement in an effort to snatch a victory out of the jaws of defeat and
manipulate the UN into also becoming an appendage of NATO? It is frightening
to contemplate the latter scenario.
In short, after two and a half months of bombing that devastated the
province we were supposed to be saving, created enormous suffering for all
Kosovars, Albanian and non-Albanian alike, and destroyed much of the economy
of the rest of Yugoslavia, we are right where we could have been in March
without ever dropping a bomb: a guarantee that Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia,
a negotiated local autonomy for the province with protections for all
Kosovars, a UN peacekeeping presence, and demilitarization of the KLA
terrorists.
In the meantime, Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Albright have squandered billions of
dollars in NATO resources, killed thousands of Yugoslavs, mostly innocent
civilians many of whom were children, and sacrificed the lives of many
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of NATO pilots, airmen, and commandos. They have
driven the Russians and Chinese closer together than they have been in
decades, exposed internal weaknesses in NATO, and caused many to question
the rationale for that organization. There is talk in Europe of creating a
separate European military organization with its own separate command
structure that will not include the United States, Great Britain, Canada, or
Turkey.
The war has caused much revulsion among thoughtful people the world over. A
Greek court ruled that Greece could not enter the war militarily because
NATO had committed war crimes in violatation of the Geneva Conventions,
whose articles are intended to protect civilians and make militaries wage
war on other militaries. A group of legal experts from the United Kingdom,
Canada, Greece, and Norway have presented a case to the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to indict NATO leaders for war
crimes. Nothing is likely to come of this, since that same tribunal has been
sitting on a request for some time to condemn Croatia for war crimes in
carrying out the brutal ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs
from that nation.
There is real danger of a reversion to global polarization. After the
bombing started, the Ukrainian parliament voted unanimously to revert the
country to its former nuclear status. The Ukraine supplied petroleum to
Yugoslavia during the fighting. On April 30, a meeting of the Russian
National Security Council approved the modernization of all strategic and
tactical nuclear warheads. It decided to develop strategic low-yield nuclear
missiles capable of pin-point strikes anywhere in the world.
Indian nationalists have now found new reason to continue their march toward
nuclear armaments. China, needless to say, is demonstrating unaccustomed
hostility to the U.S. and NATO. All over Latin America, previously subdued
regimes have been decrying Yanqui imperialism once again. Even Muslim
regimes, whom we might have expected to be vociferously pro-NATO in this
war, have been subdued, understanding as they do the consequences of a world
in which a rogue NATO seeks to replace the UN and a whole web of treaties
and international understandings as the arbiter of international "peace" and
international boundaries.
Albright and Clinton have done great harm to U.S. and NATO standing in the
international community. They have alienated many other nations who fear
NATO's efforts to define an entirely new role for itself in the
international arena. They have destroyed the military mystique of NATO by
suffering heavy losses in a failed attempt to defeat the Yugoslav military
from the air. They have destroyed the mystique of Stealth technology. They
ultimately resorted to a cowardly war against civilians in an effort to get
their way, and still failed to achieve their "non-negotiable" terms at
Rambouillet. And yet, they are now crowing about a great NATO victory.
Some experts have stated their belief that the Clinton-Albright team is the
most incompetent foreign policy team in the U.S. in the last half century.
This may be. Mrs. Albright seems dominated by a Central European Catholic
prejudice against the Serbs that has so warped her judgment as to make her
ineffective as a negotiator or mediator, which requires some element of
neutrality and willingness to understand the legitimate security concerns of
all parties. Mr. Clinton's whole political career has been characterized by
media manipulation, lying, bullying, vindictiveness, and buying people off.
Applying these qualities in domestic politics has been bad enough. Applying
them on the international scene can have huge consequences for the entire
planet. Much of the world has now become frightened of Mr. Clinton's New
World Order, including many of our own European allies. For a man
preoccupied with his legacy, he has much to be preoccupied about.
A Historical Postscript
This is the third time in the twentieth century that Serbia has been issued
an ultimatum to surrender its sovereignty or be attacked. In 1914, the
Austrian Empire issued a 14-point ultimatum to Serbia designed to force the
nation to surrender her sovereignty under threat of attack. The Serbs
refused and World War I started. It ultimately took an Austrian Army, a
German Army, and a Bulgarian Army to occupy the nation. The Serbian Army
escaped intact and came back to fight in 1916-1918. Germany and Austria lost
the war, Austria lost an empire, and the map of Europe was redrawn.
In 1941, the Serbs rejected a German ultimatum to let German troops move
through their country to help Mussolini's beleaguered forces in Greece. The
subsequent German invasion delayed the planned invasion of the Soviet Union
by six weeks and prevented a knockout blow before the Russian winter came.
It also resulted in a prolonged war of attrition against Serbian guerrillas
that tied down large numbers of Axis troops, preventing them from being used
on either the Eastern or Western fronts. These were crucial factors in
turning the tide against Germany, which lost the war. The map of Central and
Eastern Europe was redrawn.
The larger consequences of this latest failed ultimatum are yet to be played
out. They could also be enormous.
  _____

Find more about Kosovo's history
<http://opinionleaders.htmlplanet.com/kosohist.html>  and history of Kosovo
conflicts <http://opinionleaders.htmlplanet.com/histkoskon.html>
<http://opinionleaders.htmlplanet.com/histkoskon.html>
  _____

.
Web Sites to Check Out:
http://www.strategicstudies.org/crisis/newrome.htm
http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/pf57.html
http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/pf58.html
http://www.suc.org/
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/ggromozeka/aviation/
http://home1.gte.net/pribich/cccc/wtimes01.htm
http://cypress.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~eesrdan/ndh/ndh-INDEX.html
Website: http://www.originalsources.com <http://www.originalsources.com/>
To E-Mail Mary Mostert, Analyst - mmostert@originalsources.com
<mailto:mmostert@originalsources.com>
Fax # (530) 642-8710
  _____

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Posaljite vase misljenje <http://opinionleaders.htmlplanet.com/test.html>
Albanian narco mafia <http://opinionleaders.htmlplanet.com/chussuds.html>
Albanian terrorism from 1996
<http://opinionleaders.htmlplanet.com/teror96-97.html>
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Dragan Rakic