Serbian News Network - SNN

Organized crime concerns in the Balkans

2009-07-03T13:23:00.000-04:00

We also knew from the beginning of the war that there is a huge Albania mafia even here in the states! Stella

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Kosovo remains the undisputed center of every major crime related network in the region."

"Turkey remains the undisputable geoeconomic bridge between the Asian criminal networks, and the Balkans which mainly operate as a physical traverse route towards the large markets of the core countries of the EU, Germany, Italy, France and the UK."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=17685&topicID=32

Organized crime concerns in the Balkans

written by: Ioannis Michaletos, 22-Jun-09.

The current global financial crisis couples with the perennial instability of the Balkans, and raises suspicions around the creation of much stronger organized crime groups that will be able to dictate their rules of the game to both local governments and international institutions.

Already a trend emerges which has not be fully measured nor examined by the media that illustrates a significant rise in illegal activities and a sure rise in the criminal rates.

According to many reliable local sources, criminal gangs tend to merge and form much stronger teams that are often involved in more than one illegal sector and in parallel orchestrate multidimensional operations such as bank robberies in one country and narcotics contraband in another with a timely fashion and a well-coordinated structure.

The latest report by the State Department which was issued on the 27th of February 2009, points out that all Balkan states have serious organized crime problems and the local authorities have a great challenge to overcome.

Albania is considered as a transit country for the heroin trafficking from Afghanistan o Western Europe, as well as a production country of large quantities of Cannabis that are exported mainly through Greece and Italy to other EU states.

Bosnia-Herzegovina has a serious problem concerning the political clout crime kingpins exercise in its domestic political life, an issue directly related to drug trade, the modern white slave trade and the illegal immigration networks.

Bulgaria has been hit by a recent crime wave, and the domestic crime groups are more involved into synthetic drugs distribution and cocaine as well.

Greece is also hit by a crime wave involving armed robberies and weapons trafficking, and the general trend reveals an at least 20% rise in criminal rates on an annual basis. Illegal immigration networks also operate which gain millions of Euros per month by exploiting mostly Asian and African groups of people.

Montenegro is influenced by cocaine trade from Latin America, a similar pattern with Croatia. Both countries are also exit points for heroin distribution from Kosovo to Western Europe, as well as arms trafficking.

In Serbian drug use has increased and the role of private security firms operating as mafia front companies is being in question.

Romania is the least influenced by organized crime activities, but its Constanja port is being influenced by Albanian organized crime networks relating to narcotics trade, whilst Kosovo remains the undisputed center of every major crime related network in the region. The current fall in remittances from the Albanian Diaspora will most certainly give a rise in street crime in the Kosovo province in the near future.

FYR-Macedonia is experiencing issues concerning its role as a transit country for illegal immigration from Kosovo to Europe and from Asia as well. Moreover criminal gangs are well into the contraband trade of light arms, mainly Kalashnikovs. A most recent State Department anti-trafficking report issued on May cites an increasing problem relating to children and women trafficking.

Turkey remains the undisputable geoeconomic bridge between the Asian criminal networks, and the Balkans which mainly operate as a physical traverse route towards the large markets of the core countries of the EU, Germany, Italy, France and the UK.

Moreover there is a general upward tendency for contract killings in the Balkans, with the Albanian and the Bulgarian mafias, thought as the main culprits.

The impact of a Balkan organized crime powerful web cannot be more illustrative that in the Kosovo region. Populated by approximately 1,5 million permanent citizens, it has probably the highest number per thousand people of new constructions and gas stations, although unemployment reaches over 40% and official exports do not account more than 5-7% of the GDP.

The extent by which the local networks are able to formulate their international strategies is truly impressive. Most of the heads of the mafia reside in Kosovo, but there are considerable outposts of importance in a wide global geographical terrain stretching from Milano, Zurich to Vienna and Copenhagen, London to New York and Brussels.

In Kosovo alone the unresolved court cases reach up to 300,000 (One for every five citizens) and the respect for the rule of law according to numerous reports from media such as the -BBC, Guardian, Der Spiegel, Washington Post or security services from various countries, like Italy, Germany and UK- is completely out of touch with the accustomed norms in Europe.

Mari Foucci of the Kosovo Trust Agency in 2004 has complained that most of the developmental aid did not reach the local economy but instead was directed towards the local mafia groups. It is important to highlight that more than a third of Kosovo's GDP derives from external aid.

The issue grows bigger if one adds the gross misconducts done by UN employees since 1999, and a lot of relevant documents can be found in open intelligence sources such as the wikileaks. Already former UN employees have made joint companies in Kosovo in collaboration with figures related to organized crime and an emerging global corrupted nomenclature is taking control of Kosovo's economy in full extent.

Moreover, a much worrying trend is the formation of ethnically mixed gangs in the Balkans that tend to recruit people from various states and conduct their operations by adapting fully to the local environment. For the moment there seems to be a combination of Bulgarian and Romanian gangs and of Croatian& Montenegrins ones. The Albanians often join Greek gangs in Greece and the Turks are well-placed within gangs in Fyrom, Kosovo and Bulgaria.

Further, "Yugoslavian" gangs encompassing citizens from most ex-federation countries are active as well as networks including Middle Eastern and Western Europeans. Thus the work of the security services becomes more complicated; whilst the criminals can use the outreaches of their individual members so as to penetrate easier each country, acquire much needed information and local resources.

Lastly the current criminal groups in the Balkans, have already amassed a significant amount of capital that cannot be numerated precisely but it can be safely assumed that is reaches quite a few billions of Euros, along with thousands of properties and merchant companies.

Thus, sooner or later this criminal capital will have to be laundered through the legal system so as for the older generation -at least- to disengage itself from outlaw activities and ripe the fruits of law abiding business activity. That requires the collaboration of financial institutions which more likely will be concentrated in the Balkans, since the rest of the European banking system would not simply allow such a massive breach of regulations and most importantly a change of balance in the already established equilibrium of capital power in Europe as it exists since the end of WW2.

The Balkans already known for their corrupted public sector and their proximity with the Middle East will most likely become an important world hub for money laundering and the creation of business elite with a direct criminal background.

In a nutshell, organized crime is still a main threat for the stability of the region and an important aspect when dealing with Pan-European security affairs and the role of the underworld in the modern globalized world.

The signs of the era call for some definite and well-structured action by the agencies involved before the situation become unconstrained and create a situation non-containable with the present day conventional methods.

Ioannis Michaletos is WSN editor South East Europe.

Kosovo in limbo

2009-06-22T15:20:00.000-04:00

Kosovo in limbo

SCOTT TAYLOR | ON TARGET
Mon. Jun 22 - 4:46 AM

THIS WEEK marks the 10th anniversary of NATO's entry into the war-torn Balkan province of Kosovo.

I can still vividly recall those violent and terror-filled days as I packed up my gear and fled north amidst the Serbian refugees and the withdrawing Yugoslav security forces.

For 78 days the allied NATO air force — including Canadian aircraft — had pounded infrastructure targets throughout Kosovo and Serbia in a failed attempt to force the Serbs to capitulate and accept the terms U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had proposed at the 1999 Rambouillet peace talks.

What the nearly $13 billion worth of explosive ordnance dropped in that campaign failed to achieve was any substantial downgrading of the Serbian military forces; more importantly, it did not diminish the will of the Serbian people to resist.

Knowing the futility of their air defences, the Serbs I interviewed had been anxiously awaiting the start of a ground invasion so they could engage NATO soldiers on more even terms in the narrow mountain passes of Kosovo. That contested entry scenario was something NATO leaders were definitely anxious to avoid and they were forced to the bargaining table in Kumanovo, Macedonia.

After days of protracted negotiations, UN Resolution 1244 was ratified by both parties on June 10, 1999. Two days later the ceasefire went into effect.

Despite NATO's proclamations of a decisive victory, the terms of 1244 conceded to all the demands which had been put forward by the Serbs at Rambouillet. During the interim, Serbia would still control the checkpoints of Kosovo and a small number of Serb security forces would remain to protect the centuries-old orthodox churches and monasteries.

The most important element of 1244 was the formal recognition that Kosovo was the sovereign territory of Serbia. When drafted and signed, Resolution 1244 rendered all the death and destruction inflicted during the 78-day bombardment absolutely unnecessary. The Serbian will to resist had forced the mightiest military alliance in history to concede to their demands.

But NATO had no intention of abiding by the terms of Resolution 1244. The signing was just a ruse to get Serbian air defences out of Kosovo and NATO ground troops in without a fight.

NATO planners had no intention of letting any Serbian troops remain in Kosovo, no intention to ever let them return and no intention of disarming the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Incumbent in the ceasefire agreement, NATO was to provide a secure environment for both ethnic Serbs and ethnic Kosovar Albanians in the province when they assumed responsibility for security.

Instead, as expected, NATO troops did little to curtail the wave of violence inflicted on Serbs by the emboldened Kosovar Albanians. Unable to protect themselves, some 200,000 Serbs fled Kosovo. Crammed aboard a Belgrade-bound bus, I witnessed first-hand the Albanian mobs assaulting our convoy with rocks and bats.

Not surprisingly, over the past decade the continued presence of NATO troops in Kosovo has not prevented inter-ethnic violence. Rather than clarifying its future, the February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence by the Albanian Kosovars only complicated things further.

Following America's lead, Canada and 50 other countries recognized that independence. Serbia refused to acknowledge that declaration and is supported by Russia, China and another 138 nations.

For now, Kosovo remains in a diplomatic limbo, unable to join the United Nations, economically dependant on foreign aid and occupied by foreign troops for the foreseeable future.

The irony is that the U.S. State Department considers the Kosovo intervention a "success" when compared to their subsequent fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.

( staylor@herald.ca)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1128592.html

UN Papers and the Gross Reality

2009-06-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

Pyotr ISKENDEROV

UN Papers and the Gross Reality

(On the Tenth Anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution on Kosovo)

June 10 is a sad date in the history of the UN, the institution originally meant to play the key role in ensuring peace, security, and the primacy of law in the world. The decade since the passing of the June 10, 1999 UN Security Council Resolution 1244 addressing the Kosovo problem – the document totally ignored throughout the period - has shown that the UN is no longer playing the role prescribed to it by the post-World War II system of the international law.

The Resolution the tenth anniversary of which nobody seems willing to celebrate in the UN headquarters, Belgrade, or Pristina is usually attributed to an intricate compromise. Ten years ago the Russian leadership managed to incorporate into it several fundamental principles concerning the Kosovo settlement. Most importantly, it was stressed in the document's preamble that the Kosovo problem had to be solved on the basis "of the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region". Correspondingly, the Resolution called for "substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo". Besides, the UN Security Council reached consensus that international discussions of specific parameters of Kosovo's future status would begin only after the implementation in the province of the democratic standards guaranteeing the political, economic, cultural, and national rights of the province's non-Albanian population.

Nothing of the above materialized. From the outset, the West pushed for Kosovo independence, and only the requirements of Resolution 1244 which could be interpreted so as to broaden the rights and authority of Albanian separatists were actually met. As for Russia, its only accomplishments throughout the period since the passing of the resolution till the opening of the negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina on the status of Kosovo in February, 2006 were the snap offensive which led to the seizure of the Slatina airport by Russian peacekeepers and their quiet withdrawal in 2003 under the pretext that "it was impossible to change anything".

The subsequent talks under the auspices of the UN in which Russia took a somewhat bigger role ended with a predictable failure which made it possible for the Albanian separatists to declare the independence of Kosovo unilaterally in February, 2008. The independence was momentarily recognized by the Albanians' Western donors and ideological patrons.

The available information makes it possible to claim that both the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and the diplomatic maneuvers around Kosovo that ensued – those in which the Russian Foreign and Defense Ministries took part in particular – were nothing but a show originally planned by the West. In the process Moscow's role to which the Russian leadership somehow agreed was that of a "good policeman".

Obviously, Resolution 1244 was stillborn. The key problems were not the poor compliance with its requirements and Russia's inability to make its partners view the UN document with proper respect but the fact that the West had made all the decisions on the status of Kosovo already in the late 1998. The subsequent negotiation between Serbs and Albanians in Rambouillet, NATO airstrikes, discussions in the UN Security Council, and the deployment of the UN mission and NATO peacekeepers in the province were just steps in the realization of the already existing plan.

The build-up of the NATO presence in Kosovo also commenced in the late 1998. In the US the point of no return was reached when Michael Polt who coordinated the military policy in the Clinton Administration and later became the US Ambassador to Serbia convinced Secretary of State C. Powell to consent to the intervention in the region. Polt argued that by intervening in Kosovo NATO would send a clear message to all Eurasian countries, of course including Russia.

Yugoslavian Vice President Momir Bulatovic said: "It already became clear in October, 1998 that the decision on our future had been made. They started talking about the "humanitarian disaster" in Kosovo and the so-called NATO credibility. The latter meant that if NATO was unable to put an end to the "humanitarian disaster", then it simply had no right to exist. To avoid a military strike we were ready to make concessions to the extent of retaining only the minimal amount of state dignity and territorial integrity. They were interested in Kosovo's natural resources - we offered US and British companies to develop them at the token price of $1. They responded that the offer was attractive but unacceptable. Then NATO wanted a base in Kosovo. We offered them to have it for the same $1 token price. They were surprised but turned down the offer nevertheless. Trying to avoid conflict we eventually suggested that Yugoslavia should join NATO and thus automatically generate a solution to the Kosovo problem. Again the answer was No. Admitting us to NATO could resolve the dispute over Kosovo but could not solve any of the problems due to which NATO decided to attack our small country. NATO decided to move into Kosovo by forceavoiding any cooperation with us. The point is that if NATO does not reckon with us it would also be free of any obligations to other countries. They branded this the New World Order".

The US still had to secure Europe's consent to launching the offensive. Washington proposed "to give Serbs another chance" and to hold an international conference on Kosovo in Rambouillet in February, 1999. Belgrade faced totally unprecedented requirements deliberately formulated to make the aggression against Yugoslavia inevitable. Momir Bulatovic recalled: "In Rambouillet we were asked to agree to the deployment of NATO forces in Kosovo and to allow them access to all of the Yugoslavian territory. According to a document which looked like an ultimatum, all our expressways, railroads, air space, and installations were to be used by NATO free of charge and without any limitations. All NATO servicemen were to be exempt from our laws and or any criminal responsibilities. All the decision-making was to be left to the commander of the NATO contingent. The document was formulated so that no sane individual could ever sign it". As expected, Yugoslavia' representatives did not agree to the de facto occupation of their country.

Russia actively took part in the Rambouillet "negotiations" though the Russian leadership had to be aware that the West had already laid the finishing touches on the scenario for Kosovo. Russia's involvement only helped to make the enforced separation of Kosovo – the cradle of the Serbian national statehood – from Serbia appear more peaceful and take somewhat longer to complete...

Viewing the situation now in 2009 one can only hope that Russia has learned the lessons. Russian diplomats admit in private conversations that Moscow should start cooperating more actively with the Balkan political forces which can be regarded as its potential allies in future conflicts over Eurasian political arrangements and energy security. Kosovo has been torn out of Serbia - this is the gross reality, not a passage from some UN papers. Bringing it back would take something other than voting in the UN Security Council, an institution which has become nothing else than a decoration used by the global forces acting behind the curtain.

http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2214

Treaties and Dreams

2009-06-13T20:11:00.000-04:00

http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2009/06/09/treaties-and-dreams/

Treaties and Dreams

by Nebojsa Malic, June 10, 2009

Kosovo Armistice, a Decade Later

On June 10, 1999, the military-technical agreement (MTA) between NATO and the Yugoslav Army went into effect, along with UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Between them, they provided a somewhat graceful ending to NATO's first war. Conceived as a three-day demonstration of force, predicated on a disgraceful ultimatum, justified by an onslaught of vicious propaganda, the assault on then-Yugoslavia nearly tore the alliance apart on its 50th birthday. Just four years later, the invasion of Iraq saw it tossed aside in favor of a "coalition of the willing."

NATO never honored its obligations from the MTA or UNSCR 1244. Kosovo was turned over to the KLA, whose campaign of murder, pillage, and arson drove out hundreds of thousands of non-Albanians from the province. Over the next 10 years, Serb religious and cultural heritage has been systematically destroyed, and most of the surviving Serbs have been driven out or killed. Meanwhile, the UN and NATO authorities gradually created institutions of statehood and eventually sponsored a declaration of "independence" by the KLA regime.

Armistice, Not Surrender

In the face of such overwhelming evidence, one would be tempted to conclude that the treaty signed by NATO and Yugoslav officers in a tent near Kumanovo on June 9 was an unconditional surrender. Or, as Alliance spokesman Jamie Shea put it at a June 7 press conference, a "complete acceptance of our non-negotiable conditions." Yet it was nothing of the kind.

The MTA was an armistice, painstakingly negotiated over five days. The government in Belgrade accepted the proposal put forth by NATO emissary Martti Ahtisaari (accompanied by Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin) on June 3. Yet Yugoslav and NATO officers negotiated till June 9 before settling on a text. During that week, NATO continued to bomb – as evidenced by the briefing given by Luftwaffe Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz at the aforementioned press conference.

On the anniversary of the armistice, the Belgrade daily Politika published an interview with one of the participants in the talks, Maj. Gen. Obrad Stevanovic of the Serbian police. Stevanovic said that the final text of the agreement only mentioned NATO in the context of its obligation to halt the bombing, and that KFOR was supposed to be a UN force. Likewise, there was no mention of the Rambouillet ultimatum.

In the end, none of that mattered much. Once NATO and the KLA came into possession of Kosovo, the MTA and 1244 were dead letters. Stevanovic maintains that none of the officers involved could have known NATO would not honor the deal, or that KFOR would fail to protect the civilians from the KLA. Yet that is precisely what happened.

A Strange Coincidence

With the benefit of hindsight, NATO turning over Kosovo to the KLA may seem like an obvious and foregone conclusion. After all, did the Alliance not just launch an illegal war of aggression on behalf of this terrorist organization hastily re-branded as "freedom fighters"? At the time, however, things seemed less clear-cut.

The war had not gone well for the Alliance. There were too many "mistakes," too much "collateral damage," and too little proof for tall tales of massacred Albanian civilians. That didn't stop the media from repeating them ad nauseam, but every day that Belgrade held out, the Alliance got weaker. On the other hand, the Yeltsin regime sold Belgrade down the river in early June, most likely at Washington's insistence. The proposal offered to Milosevic on June 3 was sufficiently watered down that he could accept it and claim a diplomatic victory.

Granted, that meant nothing once NATO got actual possession of the territory and the KLA could do as it pleased. Neither Milosevic nor the Russians were in any position to challenge that, however. Milosevic was ousted in a black-op "popular revolution" in 2000 and replaced with a client regime. Yeltsin was pressured to resign at the end of 1999, with his betrayal of Belgrade probably playing at least a partial role.

In the tragedy of Kosovo that ensued, few noticed that the war officially ended on a very symbolic date. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but there aren't many of those when it comes to the Balkans. Namely, June 10 was the date on which the first Albanian national movement was established in distant 1878, a crucial year in Balkans history.

1878 and the Congress of Berlin

By the mid-15th century, all of the Balkans had been conquered by the Ottoman Turks. The tide of Ottoman conquest, once seemingly unstoppable, began to recede after the failed siege of Vienna in 1683. The 18th century was marked by fierce wars with Austria and Russia, pushing the Turks back. Starting in 1804, uprisings by the Serbs and the Greeks further weakened the Ottoman hold over the Balkans.

As part of an administrative reform in 1864, the Ottoman Empire broke up its old provinces into smaller units called vilayets. In one of those provinces, Herzegovina, the excesses of Ottoman taxation provoked a rebellion in 1875. Using the distraction, Bulgarians rose up in the spring of 1876 but were cruelly suppressed. At this point, Serbia and Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Despite Russian military aid, they were soon forced on the defensive. In April 1877, Russia entered the war; by March 1878, the Ottomans were defeated, and Russian forces were within reach of Istanbul.

With Austria-Hungary and Britain alarmed at the extent of Russian gains in the proposed Treaty of San Stefano, Germany's chancellor Bismarck called the Congress of Berlin. Intended to be a reprise of the 1815 Congress of Vienna, which had created four decades of peace in post-Napoleonic Europe, the Berlin affair merely sowed the seeds of future Balkans conflicts and ultimately the Great War.

For example, the San Stefano treaty outlined a sizable, independent Bulgarian state. At the Congress of Berlin, only a third of the outlined territory was recognized as Bulgaria; another third was set apart as "East Rumelia," and the rest (Macedonia) was restored to Ottoman rule. Though East Rumelia was peacefully integrated into Bulgaria in 1885, the issue of Macedonia proved a major bone of contention between Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece, marring the victory over the Ottomans in 1912 and resulting in Bulgaria joining the Central Powers in 1915 (and the Axis in World War II).

The Congress of Berlin is also where Austria-Hungary received a mandate to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, which put Vienna on a collision course with Belgrade and resulted in the Sarajevo assassination of 1914.

The League of Prizren

On June 10, 1878, Albanian religious and tribal leaders founded the League of Prizren, demanding greater recognition of Albanians within the Ottoman Empire and the consolidation of four vilayets – Shkoder, Kosovo, Ioannina, and Monastir (see a rough map here) – into an Albanian province. Though ultimately unsuccessful and disbanded after just three years, the League marked the beginning of an Albanian national movement. Just as Bulgarians saw the borders set out in Berlin as a grave injustice and considered the San Stefano borders their birthright, the Albanians claimed the four provinces as "ethnic Albanian lands" and have fought to acquire them ever since.

The independent Albania that was established in 1912 included the province of Shkoder and a part of Ioannina. Kosovo became a part of Serbia, and the vilayet of Monastir – i.e., Macedonia – was divided between Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. The part that went to Serbia is today the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Following the Nazi-led invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, parts of Kosovo and today's Macedonia were given to Italian-occupied Albania. Upon Italy's surrender in 1943, Albanian leaders formed the "Second League of Prizren" and sought Nazi patronage in establishing an "ethnic Albania."

Living the Dream

It is unclear whether Imperial leaders and generals knew the symbolism of June 10 when they chose that date for the Kumanovo agreement to go into force. It is, however, clear that NATO's occupation resulted in the establishment of the "independent state of Kosovo" in February 2008, as well as the 2001 insurrections in Macedonia and southern Serbia. Thus the "Albanian lands" claimed by the League of Prizren have been put under de facto Albanian control – thanks to the American Empire.

The latest example came just two weeks ago, on May 31, when the prime ministers of Albania and Kosovo ceremoniously opened a tunnel on the Pristina-Durres highway (built with Turkish funding). The Albanian prime minister, Sali Berisha, was quoted as saying:

"Today, one of the Albanians' most beautiful dreams has become reality. This is a tunnel of the unification of the nation. Today we decided that there are no obstacles, that there is nothing that can divide us, not only spiritually, but also physically." (Emphasis added.)

However, the one constant in this "beautiful dream" since 1878 has been that it could only be realized with the help of outside powers, and by force. From the Ottoman Empire to the Axis, all the sponsors of Albanian aspirations ultimately failed, and their victory proved ephemeral.

In 1999, the American Empire was the "indispensable nation," and it looked as if its power would last forever. That is by no means a certainty any longer. The question now is whether history repeats itself or merely rhymes.

WILLIAM MONTGOMERY | The Balkan Mess Redux

2009-06-06T14:16:00.000-04:00

The Balkan Mess Redux

By WILLIAM MONTGOMERY

Published: June 4, 2009

President Obama recently said of Iraq, "What we will not do is permit the pursuit of the perfect stand in the way of achievable goals." It would be a major step forward if this same approach was applied to Bosnia and Kosovo.

In both those countries, we have become trapped in policy "boxes" that make it impossible to achieve stability or long-term solutions, despite enormous investments of personnel and resources for almost two decades.

This is because we continue to insist that it is possible, with enough pressure and encouragement, to establish fully functioning multiethnic societies in Bosnia and Kosovo with no change in borders. And we have consistently ignored all evidence to the contrary and branded as obstructionist anyone who speaks openly about alternative approaches.

The reality is that no amount of threats or inducements, including fast membership in the European Union or NATO, will persuade the Bosnian Serbs to cede a significant portion of the rights and privileges given them under the Dayton Agreement to the central government, as the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and the international community are determined to bring about. The Bosnian Serbs are determined to have full control over their own destiny, and fear that if they continue to transfer authority to a central government, the more numerous Bosniaks will end up in control.

The end result is continued tension between the two Bosnian entities, a dysfunctional country, and the prospect of many more years of efforts by Western politicians — like Vice President Joe Biden on his recent visit — to pound a square peg into a round hole.

I know of what I speak: For more than 15 years, I was one of these pounders. I finally came to understand that the historical experiences in this region have implanted a mind-set very different from our own. We keep expecting the people in the Balkans to think and react as we do: It is not going to happen.

In Kosovo, the reality is that most of the Serbs have already left and will not be coming back. Many of those still remaining do so only because they hope or believe that they can ignore the central government of independent Kosovo and continue to look to Serbia for political and financial support.

Those Serbs living north of the Ibar River in particular act as if they are in fact living in Serbia. President Boris Tadic and his moderate government are trapped into supporting the Kosovo Serbs to prevent a nationalist backlash while trying to move toward the E.U.

These contradictions are becoming ever more obvious. But that is not the major danger.

Up to now, Kosovo Albanians have been patient with the refusal of Kosovo Serbs to recognize the independence of the former Serbian province, deferring to the international community to sort this problem out. But already opposition Kosovo Albanian politicians are starting to criticize the Kosovo government for its passivity on the matter.

This frustration will grow, leading to further deterioration of relations among Kosovo, Serbia and the international community, and an increase in violence against Kosovo Serbs.

In both Kosovo and Bosnia, we need to consider different solutions — ones which we may not like and which will have complications of their own, but which will be really...achievable. This is the only way the international community can bring its involvement in the Balkans to an end.

In Kosovo, this probably means some form of partition between the Albanians and the Serbs combined with joint recognition, pledges of full rights for minorities and a variety of sweeteners from the EU.

Bosnia is more complicated. There, a solution probably involves shaping a different relationship within Bosnia and permitting the Republika Srpska, the Serbian portion of the divided country, to hold a referendum on independence. This would have to include a lot of guarantees about future relationships, and be done as a complete package led and implemented by the international community.

In both cases, there would need to be a demonstrated will and readiness to use military force to prevent violence along the way.

There is another reason to broaden our thinking. We in the West act as if we control what happens in the region. This is not the case, as the outbreak of violence in 1990-91 in the former Yugoslavia and the growth of the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1997-99 demonstrated.

The fact is that both in Bosnia and in Kosovo, independent local forces can take matters into their own hands and in a very short time bring about renewed violence that we will be hard-pressed to contain. And we simply cannot afford to become even more entangled in the Balkans.

Like an alcoholic whose first step is to recognize he has a problem, we need to accept that the current policies are not tenable. Only then can we start thinking constructively about solutions which can bring lasting stability to the region.

William Montgomery is a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia/Montenegro and a former special adviser to the president on Bosnia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/opinion/05iht-edmontgomery.html?scp=2&sq=kosovo&st=cse

Kosovo's Minorities flee - The Guardian

2009-06-06T10:43:00.001-04:00

Date: Friday, June 5, 2009, 6:09 AM

The flight of Kosovo's minorities (The Guardian)

The EU insists that Kosovo is a tolerant and multi-ethnic society. So why are its minorities leaving?

Ian Bancroft

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 3 June 2009 20.30

A highly critical report by Minority Rights Group International (MRG) maintains that members of minority communities are beginning to leave Kosovo over a year after its unilateral declaration of independence, due to persistent exclusion and discrimination. In contradicting the conclusions of the EU's general affairs and external relations council, the report once again demonstrates the emptiness and evasiveness of statements by members of the international community asserting Kosovo's supposedly multi-ethnic character. Without urgent measures to improve the position of minorities in Kosovo, such a discourse will increasingly serve only to parody, not portray, the reality on the ground.

The report, Filling the Vacuum: Ensuring Protection and Legal Remedies for Minorities in Kosovo, concludes that Kosovo "lacks effective international protection for minorities, which is worsening the situation for smaller minorities and forcing some to leave the country for good". These minorities include not only Kosovo's Serbs, but also Ashkali, Bosniaks, Croats, Egyptians, Gorani, Roma and Turks, who together make up around 5% of the population of Kosovo according to local estimates.

MRG's conclusions clearly contradict those of the recent meeting of the EU's general affairs and external relations council, which "noted with satisfaction the initial results achieved by EULEX in assisting the Kosovo authorities in consolidating the rule of law and in contributing to a safe and secure environment for all inhabitants, regardless of their ethnic origins". The divergence between such statements and the reports of human rights organisations such as MRG has become a distinctive feature of the international community's efforts to provide positive assessments of Kosovo's institutions. The result is policies that are insufficient to contend with the substantive problems faced by local communities.

Though the government of Kosovo have often been commended for its stated commitment to upholding minority rights, MRG's report goes on to describe how "a lack of political will among majority Albanians and poor investment in protection mechanisms have resulted in minority rights being eroded or compromised in the post-independence period". According to MRG, Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence has left "a vacuum in effective international protection for minorities"; a vacuum that the Kosovo government seems both unwilling and unable to fill. Without tackling deficiencies in the area of the rule of law - reconfirmed by a newly released report by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), which describes Kosovo's courts as being "inefficient, opaque, and hampered by persistent institutional obstacles" - the plight of minorities will continue to be of secondary importance to the apparent need to proclaim Kosovo an example of a tolerant and multi-ethnic society.

Indeed, Mark Lattimer, the executive director of MRG, also emphasised how "restrictions of movement and political, social and economic exclusion are particularly experienced by smaller minorities". Such conditions are only likely to be further aggravated by the worsening economic situation in Kosovo, especially for the Ashkali, Egyptian and Roma communities that suffer from deeply ingrained poverty and marginalisation.

MRG has long drawn attention to the many failures to uphold the rights of minority communities in Kosovo, with a 2006 report, Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule, describing the situation of minorities as the worst in Europe and "little short of disastrous"; the international community having allowed "a segregated society to develop and become entrenched". Despite these and other warnings from human rights organisations, the international community has continued to not only ignore the difficulties faced by minority communities in Kosovo, but to regularly proclaim success with respect to minority rights protection.

While both the international community and the Kosovo government insist that minority rights are guaranteed and conform to the highest international standards, MRG's report instead highlights how the segregation of Kosovo continues unabated. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that the litany of failures with respect to minority rights has been further exacerbated and entrenched by Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence. In sidelining the imperatives of re-integration, the international community's approach towards Kosovo is likely to have ramifications elsewhere in the Western Balkans. Without immediate and substantial steps to tackle minority rights issues, especially the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, Kosovo will remain the most segregated territory in Europe and a constant source of tension and instability for the entire region.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/03/kosovo-minorities-eu-government

Round table held on 29 May 2009 on Kosovo

2009-06-03T17:32:00.000-04:00

Round table held on 29 May 2009 on Kosovo

Publication day: 3/6/2009

On 29 May 2009, IDC Paris organised a debate on the right of Kosovo to
secede from Serbia. The main speaker was Slobodan Samardzic, the former
Serbian minister for Kosovo, who argued that the secession was illegal and a
violation of international law. His paper is published under the section
"Research" on this web site. Two neutral experts kindly agreed to come and
reply to his arguments, Dr Eric de Brabandere of the Grotius Centre for
International Legal Studies at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands
and Professor and Dr Cedric Ryngaert of the Universityof Leuven in Belgium.

Slobodan Samardzic served as adviser to and then minister under Vojislav
Kostunica, the man who overthrew Slobodan Milosevic after contested
electrions on 5 October 2000. He therefore embodies a new spirit of
pro-Western orientation in Serbia. Yet Mr Samardzic, who is Vice-President
of Kostunica's party and a professor of political science at the University
of Belgrade, bitterly contests the way in which Serbia has been let down by
her European and American allies.

His main argument focussed on United Nations Security Council Resolution
1244 of 10 June 1999, which fixed the status of Kosovo following the NATO
bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. That resolution, he insisted, thrice
reaffirmed Kosovo's status as an integral part of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia of which today's Serbia is the successor state. (Kosovo, indeed,
was always part of Serbia within the Yugoslav federation.) The resolution
provided for negotiations about the future status of Kosovo and these
negotiations did indeed take place, from 2005 onwards. However, they were
broken off when the Albanian authorities in the province declared
independence in February 2008, with the support of the European Union and
the United States. He added that the period of UN administration of the
province (1999 – 2008) had been a period of systematic persecution against
the Serbs and other national minorities in Kosovo.

His two respondents were in considerable agreement with the former
minister. Eric de Brabandere said that secession was a political issue on
which international law did not necessarily have the right to adjudicate.
Not everything can be governed by international law, he argued. Cedric
Ryngaert took a different view, saying that there was a body of
jurisprudence on the right of secession and that the essential point was
that it was illegal except in cases of massive violations of human rights.

Natalia Narochnitskaya, the president of the Institute, asked what
confidence one could have in the new European Union administration of the
province when it was releasing from prison or refusing to prosecute people
convicted or suspected of war crimes. She also emphasised the long list of
desecrations perpetrated against Serb Orthodox churches in the province.

There was a strong debate after the main speakers had finished. A former
French ambassador to Croatia clearly disagreed with Mr Samardzic and Mrs
Narochnitskaya. He claimed that the status of the new EU administration in
Kosovo, EULEX, was legal because confirmed by a report of the UN Secretary
General, and he countered the allegation about the desecration of churches
saying that hundreds of mosques had been destroyed in Kosovo prior to June
1999. Mr Samardzic in turn countered both points, first by denying that the
Secretary General has the right to rescind a Security Council Resolution
(which created a UN administration) and second by claiming that the
destruction of mosques was due to NATO bombing not attacks by Serb forces.

Others who intervened included a former commander of French special forces
in Kosovo in 1999, who said that the NATO war had been based on a massive
campaign of disinformation. The audience included senior army officers,
government officials, academics and students

http://www.idc-europe.org/actualites.asp

Risky business in the Balkans

2009-06-01T16:09:00.000-04:00

http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/peter_worthington/2009/06/01/9634846-sun.html

Risky business in the Balkans

By PETER WORTHINGTON

Last Updated: 1st June 2009, 3:26am

Since Barack Obama became U.S. president, both Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have separately visited Europe and made disquieting observations about the Balkans.

In March, Clinton commented in Brussels that the Obama administration was "determined to listen, advise (European Union countries) and through agreement arrive at wise solution to common challenges."

Among the "common challenges" was that the "Balkans is in danger of becoming part of the forgotten past." She added the ominous view that "it will not be allowed for unfinished business to remain there."

What "unfinished business" is that, one wonders?

Well, it certainly isn't rapprochement with Serbia, where VP Joe Biden was last week. Many recall Biden's 1999 sponsoring of the bombing of Serbia and his remark on Larry King Live that Serbs were "a bunch of illiterate degenerates, baby killers, butchers and rapists."

The "unfinished business" mentioned by Clinton is formal recognition, of Kosovo as an independent state -- which violates the original terms of the U.S.-sponsored war against Serbia on behalf of Kosovo.

Since that 78-day air war (which the U.S. had predicted would bring Belgrade to its knees within 48 hours), Kosovo has unilaterally declared independence which many countries have accepted and Slavic countries (such as Russia) have rejected. (Canada is nervously "assessing" the situation, aware that Quebec has the potential of someday being a Canadian Kosovo).

A recent panel discussion on the Balkans presented by the Lord Byron Foundation at Toronto's Royal Canadian Military Institute (RCMI), brought together experts on the subject, including James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia.

The panelists agreed that recent moves indicate "reinvigoration" of the former Clinton policies, whereby then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright worked assiduously to go to war on behalf of Kosovo.

That was arguably, one of the greatest errors and miscalculations of the Clinton regime. The justification was that Serbs were intent on genocide of Albanian Kosovars when, in fact, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) provoked Serbian reaction, and fabricated massacres.

Embarrassing as it should be to those who supported the Kosovo war, no evidence of mass graves has ever been found. Atrocities on both sides, yes, but no massacres. The "war" was utterly unnecessary.

In fact, since the war al-Qaida and Muslim extremists have flooded into the Balkans: Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia. The dreaded spectre of militant Islam in the heart of Europe has become a reality, enhanced by U.S. policy and now apparently revived by Obama.

According to the RCMI panelists, European countries are uneasy about what seems a renewed American push in the Balkans. Increasingly, Europeans realize they were hoodwinked into recognizing Kosovo's independence on the pretense it would resolve problems and bring peace.

The opposite has occurred. Russia and China are stronger and more aggressive and influential now; Europe is less inclined to accede to Washington's wishes; the U.S. is weaker, sapped by two costly wars and an untested new president beset by a recession at home.

Islamic world

Possibly, Obama is persuaded that activism in the Balkans on behalf of Bosnia and Kosovo will enhance America's reputation in the Islamic world. If so, it's another error. The Balkans are a graveyard for foreign ambitions.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already adopted a resolution advocating a centralized, unitary Bosnian state, and the RCMI panel was in agreement that previous U.S. interference has contributed to Balkan violence and unrest. Bosnia and Kosovo are potential problems that European countries will inevitably inherit.

For starters, Obama should put a leash on Clinton -- and a muzzle on Biden.

Opel Sale May Deepen Russian Ties to Germany, Trump East Europe

2009-05-31T09:45:00.001-04:00

Opel Sale May Deepen Russian Ties to Germany, Trump East Europe

Share | Email | Print | A A A

By Leon Mangasarian

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel's blessing of a Russian-backed bid for General Motors Corp.'s Opel unit augurs deeper ties between Moscow and Berlin that may trump concerns of ex-Soviet nations squeezed between the two capitals.

Merkel's government earlier today picked a partnership led by Magna International Inc., a Canadian auto-parts supplier, with Russia's biggest bank, OAO Sberbank, and Russian carmaker OAO GAZ as the buyer for Opel, the European division of GM, which will file for bankruptcy next week.

"This will fuel suspicion in east Europe over Germany and Russia and why the biggest economy in Europe has tied up with strange Russian tycoons to please the Kremlin," said Fredrik Erixon, director of the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy. "Germany is playing off the Poles and the Baltic states against Russia."

Germany is Russia's biggest trade partner, a relationship underpinned by rising German gas and oil imports. Annual German trade with Russia increased five-fold to 68.2 billion euros ($96.2 billion) last year since 2000. With 6,000 German companies operating in Russia, business leaders in Berlin view the global recession as a speed-bump, with manufacturers set to win contracts as Russia diversifies from energy and rebuilds transport and health care.

"Economic ties between Germany and Russia are very important," Merkel said at a joint news conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin on March 31. "There's a lot of potential here."

Under Magna's initial proposal, the Canadian company would get a 20 percent stake in GM's Opel and Vauxhall divisions in Europe. Sberbank would own 35 percent, matching the remaining holding of Detroit-based GM. Magna Co-Chief Executive Officer Siegfried Wolf has described GAZ, based in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, as its industrial partner.

Merkel-Putin Talks

Underscoring the political and commercial mix, Merkel spoke by phone to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on May 26 about "trade and economic cooperation." That followed a May 23 conversation dedicated to Opel, said her spokesman, Ulrich Wilhelm.

Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, was hired by Russian state gas export monopoly Gazprom OAO months after leaving office in 2005 to head the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline that will provide Russian gas to Germany.

The Polish government fears that Nord Stream -- which will run from Russia directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea -- might allow Russia to cut gas supplies to east Europe while still supplying Germany and western Europe.

"Nothing's ever purely economic with the Russians, there's always political interest involved," Karol Karski, of Poland's opposition Law & Justice party and a member of parliament's foreign affairs committee, said in an interview.

Weight of History

German relations with eastern Europe are still burdened by the memory of Nazi crimes from World War II, while Russia's relations with the region are blighted by the post-1945 communist takeover by the Soviet Union.

"These countries are allergic to many things coming from Russia or Germany," Jan Techau, a European and security expert at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview. "Balancing Germany's ties with Russia and eastern Europe is one of the most difficult German foreign policy questions."

Techau said Opel is part of a bigger picture given that Russia views Germany as a key to its global economic policy.

"Russia wants to move massively into Western markets," he said. "Opel would be a real catch because they'd get a big technological advantage for their auto industry and a foot into one of the world's biggest economies."

Russian Market

The move makes sense for Opel because Russia is set to become Europe's largest car market, said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

Russia is almost as crucial for German exports as China, and Merkel -- who grew up in communist East Germany -- has sometimes adopted policies linked to Russia that are opposed by eastern Europeans. These range from Nord Stream to her rejection of fast-tracking former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia for NATO membership.

For Germany, closer ties to Russia may also mark a bid to ensure a pivotal diplomatic role as the world's center of gravity shifts away from Europe and President Barack Obama focuses on the Middle East and Asia, says Techau.

"U.S.-Russian relations play out at a different level including security, the soft underbelly of Russia in Central Asia and North Korea," he said. "These are areas where Europe is a small player and it's the Europeans who should be concerned that the new Obama policy will squeeze them out of their old mediator role between Moscow and Washington."

To contact the reporter on this story: Leon Mangasarian in Berlin atlmangasarian@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 30, 2009 03:15 EDT

Serbia: The Hoax Goes On

2009-05-18T11:36:00.001-04:00

The Hoax that Continues a War

Posted by Julia Gorin
May 17th 2009 05:35:32 PM

We are still in the midst of the 10-year anniversary of our NATO attack on Serbia on behalf of bin Laden-trained/financed KLA terrorists, to help steal Serbian land because Albanians reached a majority in part of that country. The 1999 bombing lasted from March 24 to June 10, a symbolic and historic day for Albanian supremacism.

If Americans deign to recall, the "trigger" event that was used to touch off the NATO assault (which was already being planned for a year at that point), was something called "the Racak Massacre." Following is my account — written for a compilation of essays titled "Kosovo: The Score" — of the American-staged atrocity that led the free world to join the jihad:

Perhaps nothing is more Albanian than commemorating a massacre by Serbs even after the Albanians commemorating it admitted to having staged the massacre. Sometimes there is even a double punch line, as in January when Kosovo Albanians honored the American who avenged the massacre that didn't happen.

On January 15th, the tenth anniversary of "the Racak massacre" — disproved as such even in mainstream media such as the Toronto Sun — Kosovo "prime minister" Hashim Thaci and "president" Fatmir Sejdiu awarded the "Gold Medal of Humanity" to William Walker, head of the Kosovo Verifying Mission that ensured a NATO intervention on behalf of Walker's KLA friends and masters in 1999. (The ceremony, "dedicated to the martyrs of the Racak massacre," was reported by the KosovaLive news agency: "Kosovo leaders vow at Racak massacre memorial never to forget Serbian crimes.") There couldn't have been a better comedy roast for the year 2009, the tenth anniversary of NATO's war against Yugoslavia — launched by a staged atrocity in the town of Racak.

This comes nine years after Thaci himself admitted the Racak ploy the very year following its success. Canadian Major General Lewis MacKenzie, former UN Protection Force commander in Bosnia, cited the admission in an April 2008 statement to the Lord Byron Foundation:

The current Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was the leader of the KLA. He has admitted that the KLA orchestrated the infamous Racak "massacre" dressing their KLA dead in civilian clothes, machine gunning them and dumping them in a ditch and claiming it was a Serbian slaughter of civilians. NATO bought into the ruse and on its 50th birthday looking for a role in the post cold war world the alliance became the KLA's air force and bombed a sovereign nation from the safety of 10,000 ft.

In addition to telling BBC in January 1999, "We had a key unit in the region. It was a fierce battle. We regrettably had many victims. But so did the Serbs," Thaci boasted more recklessly in February of 2000 to a roomful of foreign correspondents. But most of them dutifully kept a lid on the most sensational story of the decade, leaving only Russian National Radio to report it. From a translated summary:

Pristina, March 7th - Leader of the Albanian terrorists in Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohija], Hashim Tachi, told recently foreign reporters, quoted by the Voice of Russia, about the methods of demonizing Serbs, i.e. how his terrorist KLA committed crimes in order to urgently provoke western military intervention in Yugoslavia…According to the foreign media reports, quoted by the Russian radio, obviously "carried away", Tachi mentioned the well known incident in the village of Racak….Tachi revealed a public secret and confessed that the KLA members committed the murder of four Serbian policemen in Racak.

…Indeed, a police action followed, but it was no punitive expedition of Serb special forces against Albanian farmers, but a legitimate operation against the Albanian extremists, who made their stronghold in Racak….[A]n independent international expertise followed, and the OSCE experts from Byelorussia and Finland, established that the bodies belonged to the KLA extremists. In spite of this, NATO and the leading western countries blamed Belgrade for the killing of the so-called Albanian farmers from Racak. That was the first in a series of accusations in an already worked out scenario for deceiving the international public, i.e. preparing the field for the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia, stressed the radio.

More recently, a biography came out last October about the Finnish forensic dentist Helena Ranta, revealing that her report on the massacre was coerced. Finland's Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, whose managing editor authored the book, reports:

Ranta says that officials of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs had tried to influence the content of her reports in 2000, when Ranta was commissioned by the European Union to investigate the events of Racak in Kosovo…"Three civil servants of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs expressed wishes by e-mail for more far-reaching conclusions", Ranta said. "I still have the e-mails."

More than 40 Albanians were killed in the village of Racak in January 1999. The investigation by Ranta's working group was very charged from the beginning. It was commonly assumed that Serb forces had perpetrated a massacre….According to Ranta, in the winter of 1999 William Walker, the head of the OSCE Kosovo monitoring mission, broke a pencil in two and threw the pieces at her when she was not willing to use sufficiently strong language about the Serbs.

Serbia's B92 news also carried the story:

"We all know what William Walker said," [Ranta states]. "He says to this day that it was a massacre and that the Serbs were to blame. But I never said that. I never made any reference to the perpetrators," says the pathologist. "I never said a single word about who stood behind what went on in Racak. That's for the judges to decide, while we forensic scientists just carry out the investigation," she tells daily Večernje Novosti in an exclusive interview.

Ranta claims that Walker is "putting words into my mouth," which was not allowed. "I didn't agree with him. He was angry with me," she says. "What angered him most was that I refused to use the word massacre and say who stood behind what happened in Račak."

A follow-up B92 article included a further detail:

…Ranta appeared in 2003 as one of the witnesses in the Hague trial of Slobodan Milošević. She told Berliner Zeitung newspaper in 2004 that [it] was "negative" that a part of the indictment against Milošević was related to the Račak events, based mostly on the version given by Walker.

Berliner Zeitung was the paper that Toronto Sun's Peter Worthington reported in 2001 had gotten access to the Finnish findings and concluded, "In all probability, there was no Racak massacre at all." Worthington wrote that the whole reason the EU called Ranta in is that the Serbian and Belorussian forensic people were suspicious about the massacre tale. Her report was not made public, but she "gave a press conference at which she was vague, admitting there was no evidence of mutilation or torture, and that Yugoslav authorities had cooperated. But she also called the killings 'a crime against humanity,' widely interpreted to mean Racak was indeed a cold-blooded massacre."

In 1999 independent journalist Richard Poe wrote:

When 45 bodies were found near the town of Racak, a U.S. media blitz accused the Serbs of slaughtering innocent civilians. NATO commander Wesley Clark personally confronted Milosevic with photos of the victims. "This was not a massacre," Milosevic cried. "This was staged."

The New York Times reported this exchange on April 18, 1999, three months after it occurred, but unfortunately failed to explain to readers that Milosevic was probably telling the truth. By the time that article was written, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Die Welt, the BBC, and others had already raised doubts about the alleged massacre. Forensic investigators had concluded that the bodies were probably those of KLA guerrillas killed in action. The bodies appear to have been dressed in civilian clothes, then shot additional times and cut with knives several hours after death, in order to simulate a brutal massacre. [Indeed, Madeleine Albright told CBS's "Face the Nation" that there were "dozens of people with their throats slit" and that the only solution was "humanitarian air strikes."]

Below is an interview excerpt by the Serbian newspaper Glas Javnosti from October, with the investigating judge of the Pristina District Court and chief investigator of the Racak site, Danica Marinkovic, as translated by the website De-Consruct.net:

Reacting to the recent confession of the Finnish forensic dentist Helena Ranta…Judge Marinkovic said it was good Ranta had started telling the truth. Judge Marinkovic believes it was time for the state of Serbia to initiate certain legal procedures and the criminal lawsuit against Ranta, Walker, [the] OSCE mission and the others responsible for the criminal involvement in the Racak hoax.

Q: Please remind us, what took place in Racak on January 15, 1999?

DM: A classic battle between the Serbian police and the terrorist KLA [UCK] took place in Racak. In this region — just like in all of Kosovo and Metohija, after all, terrorists were constantly attacking and killing civilians and policemen from the ambush and the police went to find the culprits. By the way, Racak was a large and one of the staunchest KLA strongholds in Kosovo and Metohija. Police announced its action in a timely and professional manner to the OSCE, and OSCE observer[s] joined the police squad. Police clashed with the terrorists in the morning hours and there were casualties on both sides. After the battle, around 11 a.m., the police informed Pristina District Court about the clash.

Q: When did you arrive to Racak?

DM: We arrived to Racak around 14.00 hours [2 p.m.], with the other team members and the police, with intention to carry out the investigative activities. During the clearing of the terrain, among [other things], we found the Browning calibre 12.7mm [heavy machine gun], two Brownings with the pistol calibre 7.9mm with the enhanced charger, 36 automatic guns calibre 7.62mm, two sniper guns, five shoulder-held missile launchers of the Chinese make, 12 mines charged with the hand grenade charger, 22 hand grenades, around 8,000 pieces of ammunition of different calibre, three hand-held radio stations, medical equipment and military uniforms with KLA tags. Everything we found was photographed. So, we have found the entire weapons arsenal among the "peace-loving villagers"!

When we tried to move further to find any of the victims, the barrage fire was opened at us from all the sides — we barely managed to pull out alive. That was the day Walker had published a photo that circled the world, about the alleged massacre committed by the Serbian police. Then-head prosecutor of the Hague tribunal, Louise Arbour was also brought to Racak.

Q: Did you manage to inspect the scene?

DM: No, not even during the next two days. We tried to enter the village again on January 16, but we were again showered with bullets and we had to return. The next day, Walker's deputy John [Drewienkiewicz] arrived to Stimlje near Racak. He tried to coerce me to go in only with him, without the other members of the team. He was telling me that the "innocent villagers" from Racak will be distressed when they see me with the police, and that they will shoot. I asked him: "What are the innocent villagers doing with weapons?" He fell silent, turned around and left. But we didn't manage to visit the scene of the alleged crime on that day, January 17, either.

Only on the fourth day after the battle, on January 18, we were able to get over there. But there were no bodies in the village at all, not a trace. We did not see a single body Walker had shown to the world public, and was being horrified over. We went through the entire village, but all we could see were the trenches, shovels, empty bullet shells, numerous machine gun nests, a deserted KLA headquarters, uniforms… There wasn't a living soul in the village, we could not see a single woman or a child anywhere. And the bodies of the killed KLA terrorists were moved to the village mosque…

Q: What did you find in the mosque?

DM: All of the bodies were dressed in the civilian clothing, but many wore military pants, belts and boots. Underneath they had several pairs of pants or the other clothing, which clearly pointed to the fact they were dressed to spend long time outdoors. Out of 40 bodies of the "peace-loving villagers", 37 had gunpowder residue found on their hands, which unequivocally shows they were discharging firearms prior to being shot. [A] criminal investigation was conducted in entirety and, after the autopsies, it was decisively determined there was no massacre or a "genocide", but that the wounds were exclusively resulting from the bullets. There wasn't even one "massacred" body!

Later on, during the course of investigation, it was determined that [the] majority of the Racak victims were active members of the KLA. Most interestingly, the Belorussian and Finnish forensic specialists who also took part in the autopsies have reached exactly the same conclusions as our own forensic experts. However, Ranta did not want to state that for the public.

Indeed, at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, Professor Slavisa Dobricanin — former director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Pristina, who was in charge of the forensics team that autopsied the Racak bodies — revealed that the British general in charge of planning the verification mission, John Drewienkiewicz, threatened "to ship Judge Marinkovic off to The Hague if she tried to conduct an onsite investigation in Racak," trial observer Andy Wilcoxson reported on April 13, 2005, adding:

It is worth noting that William Walker, the head of the OSCE-KVM, was given access to the village by the KLA while forensic investigators were kept out. Walker, instead of taking steps to secure the alleged crime scene, brought journalists to that gully and let them trample all over the place. One of the journalists was Franz Josef Hutsch, a German newspaper reporter.

According Mr. Hutsch, who testified at the trial on October 12, 2004, Walker just stood there while journalists moved the bodies around to take their pictures. He said that the bodies "were put upright, for example, at the edge of the slope so that they would have a bit of shade so that the excessive head wounds wouldn't be seen in a photo to be published. And they were taken from their original positions."

Interestingly, Helena Ranta started talking about the fraud as early as 2007:

German daily Berliner Zeitung…informed that the initial report by the Finnish forensics contained half-truths and contradictory claims, later admitted by Helena Ranta, but without any qualms regarding the dishonorable role she played…[Belgrade news agency Tanjug reports that] three teams of forensic experts — from Yugoslavia, Belarus and Finland — found only firearm wounds on the bodies of the victims…Helena Ranta backed Walker's statement prior to the bombings, saying that she was expressing her personal view. However, on Jan 23, 2007, Ranta admitted to Belgrade daily Blic that the final Finnish forensic report "did not contain proof about either a massacre or execution taking place in Racak."

The De-Construct.net website reported Professor Dobricanin's reaction to Ranta's recent soul-baring about the pressures she was under:

"I'm not surprised by the things Ranta is saying now, but she still hasn't admitted her own statements back then were false. I clearly remember she was constantly under surveillance by the German embassy and the Finnish ministry. The Finnish Minister for Human Rights…was at the Institute all the time, as well as the German embassy's Second Secretary. She was very nervous and constantly outside the autopsy room. She was always in the Institute hallways, talking to someone on her mobile phone", Professor Dobricanin [recalls].

…[Dobricanin] said that, after the autopsy reports were completed and jointly signed without any objections on behalf of the international forensic experts, the members of the international team decided to hold a press conference in Pristina. Members of the Serbian forensic team were not allowed to attend.

"William Walker was extremely nervous. He could barely stand still and he kept drumming his fingers on the chair. He did not speak. It was Helena Ranta that said all of it: that the killed were the unarmed civilians, that the massacre was committed, and that it was the crime against the civilians. The very three things a forensic specialist can not say," Dr. Dobricanin concluded his recollection.

…Danica Marinkovic and Slavisa Dobricanin both testified at the Hague, on behalf of the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's defense. As expert witnesses, they refuted prosecution charges, especially in respect to the names, gender and the age of the victims. Then-prosecutor Geoffrey Nice went as far as calling the Serbian judge and forensic pathologist "criminals". After a while, when the prosecution data on the Racak KLA victims was "reevaluated", he too quoted Marinkovic and Dobricanin, citing results of their investigation.

Following the evidence presented by the Judge Marinkovic and Professor Dobricanin, Hague prosecution removed Racak charges from all the indictments: from that of the late Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, from the process against the former Serbia's President Milan Milutinovic, and from the processes against another five former Yugoslav and Serbian functionaries.

Five days before beginning airstrikes, Bill Clinton thundered, "We should remember what happened in Racak…innocent men, women and children were taken from their homes to a gully, forced to kneel in the dirt and sprayed with gunfire." The London Times, Peter Worthington wrote in his Toronto Sun article, was even more imaginative, printing "that victims had their eyes gouged out, heads smashed in, faces blown away at close range, all 'farmers, workers, villagers, aged 12-74, men, women, children.'"

The New York Times, meanwhile, reports the website Srpska Mreza — which had been following the Kosovo war propaganda — caught something interesting:

On Friday, the day before American ambassador William Walker sensationally "discovered" the so-called massacre in the village of Racak in Kosmet, State Secretary Madeleine Albright held a meeting behind closed doors in Washington, at which she revealed to a few members of the team close to her that the agreement on normalization of relations in Kosmet was due to fall apart at any moment, The New York Times wrote on January 19.

The New York paper cites the statement of an anonymous official in the American administration who pointed out that Albright, obviously, had reliable information regarding events in Racak and practically announced them.

[The] text in The New York Times clearly shows that Washington knew in advance of the whole scenario….

As soon as Walker delivered his lines, Albright picked up her cue, calling Racak "the 'galvanizing incident' that meant peace talks at Rambouillet were pointless, 'humanitarian bombing' the only recourse," wrote Worthington, whose article was titled "The Hoax that Started a War."

Shedding light on what led up to the Racak hoax is Balkans analyst and writer Nebojsa Malic, who recalled that then U.S. Special representative Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had Milosevic sign an agreement in October, 1998 to withdraw Yugoslav army and police from Kosovo, in exchange for not getting bombed:

The KLA were not a party to the agreement and had no obligations under it. (Maybe Slobo, ever the sap, thought there was an implied obligation to restrain our clients. Fat chance!) The KLA responded to the withdrawal of the Yugoslav forces with an offensive that seized control of about half of Kosovo, forcing tens of thousands of Serbs to flee. Eventually, around December, Milosevic decided he had to send forces back in. The US responded with the usual threats and heavy breathing that he was going to be held accountable. Not sure when, but the OSCE observer mission with the orange vehicles was sent in to monitor Yugoslav behavior (not KLA behavior, of course) and watch out for any atrocities. (Wink wink, nudge nudge, let's have a trigger.) Racak duly occurred.

Indeed, between October 13, 1998 and January 14, 1999, continued the above-mentioned Srpska Mreza report from 1999:

Albanian separatists carried out a total of 599 terrorist attacks and provocations, of which 186 were against civilians, while 413 were against members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic of Serbia. In these attacks, a total of 53 persons were killed (37 civilians and 16 policemen) and 36 persons suffered serious bodily injury (13 civilians and 23 policemen). A total of 43 persons were kidnapped (39 civilians and 4 policemen); of those, three were killed (one civilian and two policemen), while the fate of the other 22 civilians and one policeman remains unknown.

About the attacks on police that triggered the Serbian counteroffensive in Racak, the Greek daily Exusia fairly observed in a January 19 article titled "Serb killed by 'unarmed' Albanians":

Regardless of the fact that the Albanian side is responsible for the latest fighting, warnings continue to be directed only to Belgrade, along with the threat that NATO forces will be activated for military intervention.

Renaud Girard, reporter on the ground for French newspaper Le Figaro, described what he saw:

…At dawn intervention forces of the Serbian police encircled and then attacked the village of Racak, known as a bastion of [UCK/KLA] separatist guerrillas. The police didn't seem to have anything to hide, since at 8:30 a.m. they invited a television team (two journalists of AP TV) to film the operation. A warning was also given to the OSCE, which sent two cars with American diplomatic licenses to the scene. The observers spent the whole day posted on a hill where they could watch the village.

At 3 p.m., a police communique reached the international press center in Pristina announcing that 15 UCK "terrorists" had been killed in combat in Racak and that a large stock of weapons had been seized. At 3:30 p.m., the police forces, followed by the AP TV team, left the village….At 4:40 p.m., a French journalist drove through the village and met three orange OSCE vehicles. The international observers were chatting calmly with three middle-aged Albanians in civilian clothes. They were looking for [possible] civilian casualties. Returning to the village at 6 p.m., the journalist saw the observers taking away two very slightly injured old men and two women.

The scene of Albanian corpses in civilian clothes lined up in a ditch which would shock the whole world was not discovered until the next morning, around 9 a.m., by journalists soon followed by OSCE observers. At that time, the village was once again taken over by armed UCK soldiers who led the foreign visitors, as soon as they arrived, toward the supposed massacre site. Around noon, William Walker in person arrived and expressed his indignation.

All the Albanian witnesses gave the same version: at midday, the policemen forced their way into homes and separated the women from the men, whom they led to the hilltops to execute them without more ado.

The most disturbing fact is that the pictures filmed by the AP TV journalists — which Le Figaro was shown yesterday — radically contradict that version. It was in fact an empty village that the police entered in the morning, sticking close to the walls. The shooting was intense, as they were fired on from UCK trenches dug into the hillside.

The fighting intensified sharply on the hilltops above the village. Watching from below, next to the mosque, the AP journalists understood that the UCK guerrillas, encircled, were trying desperately to break out. A score of them in fact succeeded, as the police themselves admitted.

What really happened? During the night, could the UCK have gathered the bodies, in fact killed by Serb bullets, to set up a scene of cold-blooded massacre? A disturbing fact: Saturday morning the journalists found only very few cartridges around the ditch where the massacre supposedly took place…Intelligently, did the UCK seek to turn a military defeat into a political victory?

Le Monde reporter Christophe Chatelet corroborated Girard's account in his own dispatch that day, asking how the Serbian police could have managed "to gather a group of men and to peacefully lead them to the place of execution when they were under constant fire by the terrorists? How is it possible that the people living in the village, who returned before nightfall and the observers who spent over two hours in the village did not see the gully in which the bodies were found?"

It has also been widely noted that, like the ditch itself, the clothing of the dead "civilians" was curiously blood-free. Yet Walker unambiguously declared that the dead "obviously were executed where they lay," Worthington reported in his 2001 Toronto Sun article, adding, "His OSCE report spoke of 'arbitrary arrests, killings and mutilations of unarmed civilians' at Racak."

The very day that the Western monitors were helping stage and corroborate a "civilian massacre" for the KLA, the KLA couldn't resist shooting at them:

Peace Monitors 'Shot Deliberately' (BBC, January 16, 1999)

The head of the international monitoring mission in Kosovo says he believes that two monitors, shot and wounded on Friday, were deliberately targeted…The two men — a Briton and his locally-recruited interpreter — were in a convoy with Serbian police when they were hit. They were not seriously injured.

…The incident happened as the group were on their way to mediate in a confrontation between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serb forces in the western region of Pec. Mr Walker said: "What I've heard so far about the firing, it was not just one shot or two shots, it was sustained firing. That would lead me to believe that it was a deliberate shooting."

He pointed out that the monitors drove distinctive vehicles and that everyone in the area had been informed that they were going out on patrol…A spokesman for the international monitoring mission said the shots appeared to come from a sniper in territory held by the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army…UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said he was shocked and concerned about the shooting of two members of the KVM.

None of this, however, threw Western leaders off-program, as BBC reported the next day:

Nato is to hold an emergency session on Sunday to consider its response to the massacre of more than 40 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. An American state department spokesman said there should be no doubt of Nato's resolve.

The Nato Secretary-General, Javier Solana, said it would not tolerate a return to all-out fighting and repression in Kosovo.

President Clinton and the head of the international observer mission in Kosovo both blamed Serbian forces for the killings…Those killed in the village of Racak, south of Pristina, were mostly men who had been rounded up and shot at close range. Some had been mutilated.

International monitors say they have also seen the bodies of three women and a 12-year-old boy.

The massacre has prompted the International War Crimes Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia to open an urgent inquiry…Local villagers say the slaughter of the victims, mostly men aged between 18 and 65, was carried out by Serb forces who rounded the group up on Friday night…The Kosovar Albanian political leader, Ibrahim Rugova, has declared Sunday a day of mourning in Kosovo.

Germany, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said the international community would not accept such acts of persecution and murder.

In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry expressed disgust at the massacre and called for a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to investigate who was responsible.

UK Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said: "Those responsible for the crimes must be held to account before international justice."…The US special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, condemned the killings, saying they were the most serious offence since the outbreak of the violence which has plagued the province in recent months.

So notorious is the architect of the Racak incident, William Walker, that his name is known even to non-watchers of the Balkans, as a 1999 piece titled "Meet Mr. Massacre" by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi, currently of Rolling Stone magazine, shows:

…After a brief review of the town's 40-odd bullet-ridden corpses, Walker searched out the nearest television camera and essentially fired the starting gun for the war. "From what I saw, I do not hesitate to describe the crime as a massacre, a crime against humanity," he said. "Nor do I hesitate to accuse the government security forces of responsibility."

We all know how Washington responded to Walker's verdict; it quickly set its military machine in motion, and started sending out menacing invitations to its NATO friends to join the upcoming war party.

How Russia responded is less well-known…It probably sent a chill up the community's collective spine, and pushed its generals into rapid preparations for a new cold war with the United States. As connoisseurs in the art of propaganda and the use of provacateurs [sic], they recognized a good job when they saw one.

…Walker was in Latin America virtually throughout his entire career, until he arrived in Kosovo. He had no experience in the region which qualified him to head the verification team in Yugoslavia….There is a widespread belief not only in Russia, but in other countries, that Walker's role in Racak was to assist the KLA in fabricating a Serb massacre that could be used as an excuse for military action. Already, two major mainstream French newspapers — Le Monde and Le Figaro — as well as French national television have run exposes on the Racak incident. These stories cited a number of inconsistencies in Walker's version of events, including an absence of shell casings and blood in the trench where the bodies were found, and the absence of eyewitnesses despite the presence of journalists and observers in the town during the KLA-Serb fighting.

Eventually, even the Los Angeles Times joined in, running a story entitled "Racak Massacre Questions: Were Atrocities Faked?"

Not that any of this might give U.S. media any pause before bestowing prime print space upon the likes of Walker, as the Washington Times did recently, so he could "refute" articles debunking his war. Walker used the space to re-bunk all the disproved propaganda. Despite the American terrorist's sordid history, Washington Times editors allowed him a free hand in responding to a piece by Serbian President Boris Tadic.

As with all things Balkans-related — wherein media and politicians embellish upon old facts even as new ones discredit them — this goes on simultaneously while the woman at the heart of the Racak matter is spilling the beans, or at least some of them. And no one notices. Ten years of proof that Racak wasn't a slaughter went duly unnoticed by Reuters, which last September 30th printed a photo with a caption reading, "The graves of people that were killed by Serbian forces in January 1999 are visited by relatives during the religious holiday of Eid-al-Fitr in the village of Racak, south of the Kosovo capital Pristina."

It's all part of the pattern in which Balkan-Muslim myths from the 90s are perpetuated by media, politicians, military, NGOs, Holocaust museums, filmmakers and artists even while the Muslims themselves admit to the farce. (Upon Karadzic's capture last year, Richard Holbrooke cited "300,000 deaths" in the Bosnian war — three years after Sarajevo's Investigation and Documentation Centre reduced the original inflated 250,000 figure to less than 100,000.) This is without even questioning why the supposedly secular Balkan Muslims would be visiting the Racak graves on a religious holiday, particularly since the KLA's was a "national" struggle, not a religious one, as we're repeatedly told. U.S. leaders have yet to admit what the KLA themselves have admitted, thereby out-KLAing the KLA itself.

Thaci, meanwhile, has never apologized for the KLA's crimes, while one apology after another is demanded, and extracted, from the Serbian side for what it did and didn't do to counter the terrorist attacks. In fact, the year before the staged Racak massacre — that is, in 1998 alone –Thaci killed 40 Serbs and Albanians, including six of his own lieutenants. Why wasn't this a green light for the world to bomb Albanians?

And given that 1990s Serbian crimes against Albanians, real or imagined, are the basis of the consensus that states Serbia lost all right to Kosovo, why haven't the Albanians who have been terrorizing the province's non-Albanians for the past 10 years (not to mention in preceding decades) lost any right to Kosovo? Perhaps for the same reason that Slobodan Milosevic remains "guilty" despite not having ordered a single crime while Kosovo's leaders are "innocent" despite having committed crimes with their own hands, in addition to ordering them directly.

Meanwhile, the decaying Walker marches on. Shortly after meeting with Walker last June, "opposition leader" Ramush Haradinaj told the UN to get out of Kosovo to make way for the EULEX law and order mission. Walker of course seconded his dangerous clients' motion, telling UNMIK to end the mission once Kosovo's constitution comes into effect.

For his dutifulness William Walker has been rewarded with, among other things, honorary Albanian citizenship. And like Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Eliot Engel, George W. Bush, and Wesley Clark, Walker has a street named after him in Kosovo — like so many other KLA members to whom monuments have gone up all over Kosovo.

When he's not lying in newspapers about his last hoax, Walker is preparing the next one. He has been making frequent trips to Kosovo, where he has met with his old KLA contacts to make a plan for taking Kosovo's more ornery Serb parts by force. Walker's return to the region in March 2007 alarmed French intelligence, the newspaper Novosti reported at the time, in an item titled "William Walker Gives Tasks to Albanian Extremists for an Attack on Northern Kosovo":

The information of French intelligence officers is that [two weeks ago] Walker met with many former KLA members that he had personally trained for special operations against the Serbian forces. The goal of his arrival is the preparation of a scenario and ordering of guidelines to Albanian terrorists for taking measures to seize northern Kosovo…In Pec in the hotel "Metohija" he met with ex-members of [Ramush] Haradinaj's special unit which in 1999 conducted the [harshest] crimes against the Serbs and other non-Albanians…He also met with all of his old spies which he recruited during his Kosovo stay as leader of the UN Verification mission prior to the NATO bombardment.

…According to what the intelligence services of the big powers had informed their governments, Walker was on a mission of preparing terrorists and extremists for performing the final phase in the realization of the project on an independent Kosovo in case plans are not resolved "peacefully."

…The Americans are afraid that the French will give out such plans to the Serbs in northern Kosovo…Certain KFOR contingents that have forces in northern Kosovo received the task of systematically provoking the Serbs everywhere and causing their reactions…Certain KFOR contingents openly fear a sudden operation of Albanian terrorists towards the north, which is possible in the coming months…The plan is to provoke the Serbian security forces to react in the protection of Serb convoys and to then urgently request the intervention of international forces in the protection of the "jeopardized Albanian population in the Presevo Valley from Serbian security forces that are revenging over the loss of Kosovo."

No sooner did Walker have his meetings than Tanjug reported the following:

International representatives have observed, over the recent days, intensified regrouping of armed groups in black uniforms with insignia of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the territory of Drenica, Pec and Djakovica in Kosovo and Metohija province, the Belgrade daily Vecernje novosti [Evening News] said on Saturday…Forces of the local United Nations (UN) administration UNMIK and the peacekeeping force KFOR have been given strict orders "not to engage in conflict or discussion with the armed groups, and, upon sighting them, to abandon their mission and immediately return to base," Vecernje novosti ["Evening News"] said.

In March 2008, that plan was put into effect when UN and NATO arrested and paraded the mostly female Serbian squatters who wanted their jobs back at the Mitrovica courthouse — in front of cameras and through an Albanian neighborhood. More recently, Albanian houses in Northern Kosovo were set ablaze, with news reports promptly attributing the explosions to Serbs. Since the Albanians haven't yet secured Northern Mitrovica as part of breakaway Kosovo, the completion of the Walker-KLA directive is still ahead for the Kosovo war, now in its tenth year.

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2104

http://europenews.dk/en/node/23158

U.S. needs to stay out of Balkan feuds

2009-05-14T22:38:00.000-04:00

U.S. needs to stay out of Balkan feuds

By WILLIAM S. LIND

Published: May 14, 2009 at 2:28 PM

Order reprints | Feedback

WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- A story I read years ago culminated with the protagonist holed up in a cheap hotel in the Balkans, listening unwillingly through the paper-thin wall as the man in the room next door beat his wife. As he pummeled her, she cried again and again, "Balkan! Balkan!" "Balkan," it seems, may be a term of opprobrium even in the Balkans.

Few episodes in American history have been more Balkan than our late war there. In case the folly of the war in Iraq and the futility of the war in Afghanistan have caused Americans to forget, the Clinton administration bombed Serbia for almost three months, for reasons no one quite remembers. Somewhere around 5,000 Serbian civilians were killed, and much of an already poor country's economic infrastructure was wrecked. As usual, the bombing had virtually no effect on military targets.

The Serbs caved when the Russians pulled the rug out from under them and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization dropped its most extreme demands. NATO could have gotten the same deal with no bombing, had the initial ultimatum to Serbia not been written to make acceptance impossible.

The truce, which is the most one can get in Balkan wars, required Serbian forces to evacuate the Serbs' ancestral homeland, Kosovo. That turned Kosovo's remaining Serbian civilians over to the tender mercies of the Albanians, who promptly ethnically cleansed most of them while NATO forces stood by. Serbia did not renounce its claim to Kosovo; no Serbian government could do that and survive.

Now, it seems, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wishes to revisit the scene of the crime. Perhaps looking about for something more promising than fighting Pashtuns, she is rumored to want another round with the Serbs. The demands, this time, are to be Serbian recognition of Kosovo's "independence." But Kosovo is not a country and never has been; there are no Kosovars, only Serbs and Albanians who live in Kosovo.

Clinton also wants the destruction of Republika Serbska, the Serbian portion of Bosnia. The effect would be to delegitimize the current moderate Serbian government and drive the remaining Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia out as refugees.

Only people as shallow and self-absorbed as the Clintons could want to mess around in the Balkans. Talk about smoking in the powder magazine. The potential for disaster is always high, and the effects can spread, as the catastrophe of World War I between 1914 and 1918 might remind us.

In fact, the two previous rounds of Balkan fighting and American and NATO meddling since 1995 have left unstable situations needing only a spark to erupt. Bosnia is a hothouse creation, a figment of the globalist elite's imagination. Like Oakland, Calif., there is no there there. It is a Croat-Muslim "federation" that neither party accepts. The Croats want out, and the Muslims hate the Croats. All that keeps the lid on is the money that pours from the foreign troops who occupy the place.

Kosovo remains a festering boil, home to jihadists, drug distribution networks and other fourth-generation war elements of every sort. Serbia won't give it up, and the Albanians will not rest until every Serb is gone or dead and every Serbian church or cultural monument obliterated.

Clinton wants to push the United States back into this beehive, or so the rumor mill in Washington has it. We must pray that adults somewhere in the Obama administration won't let the children again set fire to the house so they can roast marshmallows over the embers. A few folks who, unlike the Clintons, know something of Balkan history are sponsoring a conference on Capitol Hill on May 27 to urge that we let sleeping dragons lie. Let's hope that for once someone listens.

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)

http://www.upi.com/Security_Industry/2009/05/14/US-needs-to-stay-out-of-Balkan-feuds/UPI-98351242325736/2/

The Hague: a tool of ‘legal vengeance’

2009-05-14T20:31:00.000-04:00

This article is an absolute gem. Phil Hammond writes with such

devastating clarity. This abomination of a court has gone too far

this time!

Wednesday 13 May 2009

The Hague: a tool of 'legal vengeance'

ESSAY: The ICTY's Kafkaesque decision to bump up a prisoners' sentence by 12 years shows that it is nothing like a proper court of law.
Philip Hammond

Imagine that you are convicted of a crime and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. But, just as you are about to finish serving your time, the court decides that its original verdict wasn't harsh enough and sends you back to prison for a further 12 years.

It's the sort of nightmarish thing you might think could happen only in a totalitarian regime. Yet it happened last week at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, a court fêted by its supporters as a model of international justice.

The target of the ICTY's Kafkaesque brand of 'justice' was Veselin Šljivančanin, a former officer in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), who was originally convicted in September 2007 of 'aiding and abetting torture' during Croatia's war of secession from the federal Yugoslav state in 1991. At the time of his conviction, Šljivančanin had already been in the ICTY's custody for more than four years. He was released at the end of 2007, pending appeal. But last week the ICTY's Appeals Chamber overturned his original five-year sentence and imposed a 17-year term of imprisonment, while dismissing all counts of appeal entered by Šljivančanin and his co-defendant and former superior officer, Mile Mrkšić.

The Appeals Chamber's decision was not based on any new facts. No fresh evidence was brought to light to challenge the original verdict. The Appeals judges themselves noted that the 2007 judgement 'did not err in its factual findings'. Nevertheless, a majority of them (with two out of five judges dissenting) agreed with the prosecutor that 'a five years' imprisonment sentence does not adequately reflect the level of gravity of the crimes' (1).

The ICTY gave two key reasons for its new sentence. First, it argued that Šljivančanin had been wrongly acquitted at his original trial of aiding and abetting murder. On the basis of nothing more than the record of its own trial acquitting him of this charge, the ICTY now found him guilty. Second, it asserted that the five-year term imposed in 2007 – for aiding and abetting torture – had to be revised because it was not clear whether the judges had given sufficient weight to the suffering of the victims and their families. Both of these spurious arguments reveal more about the tribunal's flaws than about Šljivančanin's culpability.

The 'hospital massacre'

Šljivančanin's case concerns what is often – sensationally and misleadingly – referred to as the Vukovar 'hospital massacre'. You might imagine him marauding through wards attacking doctors and patients. Over the years, that is what many journalists and commentators have imagined. In the Observer, for example, Tim Judah described how 'Yugoslav army commanders went into the hospital and dragged out 200 of the wounded and hospital staff… beat them and shot them dead' (2). In the Telegraph, Julius Strauss wrote that Serbian forces 'took nearly 300 wounded from the hospital and executed them' (3). Such 'reports' bear little resemblance to what happened back in 1991.

After prolonged fighting, Croatian forces surrendered the city of Vukovar to the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), on 18 November 1991. The JNA took prisoners of war to the nearby village of Ovčara and kept them there overnight before transferring them to a POW facility at Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia, where they were to be held with a view to arranging a future prisoner-exchange with Croatia.

Some Croatian fighters, however, had taken refuge in the city's hospital, hoping to be evacuated along with its civilian occupants to Croatian-held territory. On 20 November the JNA apprehended those in the hospital whom they suspected of being enemy combatants – over 200 men and two women – and took them to the local barracks. Contrary to what was often claimed in media reports after the event, these were not civilians seized on a pretext. The ICTY itself accepts that 'the evidence reveals that at least the vast majority of them, if not all, had been involved in Croat military formations active in the fighting at Vukovar' (4).

The original intention was evidently to send them to Sremska Mitrovica like the earlier group of POWs. But Serbian paramilitaries and local Territorial Defence men were out for revenge. The local Serbian civil authorities – an ad hoc government formed in opposition to Croatia's nationalist regime – were also unhappy about prisoners being transported out of the area. The prisoners were instead sent to the site at Ovčara used the previous day.

There, the POWs were severely beaten by the local Territorial Defence and paramilitaries. The JNA military police who had been sent to guard the prisoners made what the ICTY called 'inconsistent and insufficient' efforts to protect them from abuse. That evening, Mrkšić ordered the withdrawal of JNA troops from Ovčara. This left the prisoners at the mercy of the local Territorial Defence and paramilitaries, who subsequently took the revenge they had been waiting for and massacred them.

Neither Šljivančanin nor Mrkšić ordered, participated in, or was even present at the killing of prisoners. The charge of aiding and abetting murder – for which Šljivančanin was acquitted in 2007, but of which both men are now thought guilty by the ICTY – hinges on Mrkšić ordering the withdrawal of JNA personnel from Ovčara and Šljivančanin failing to disobey that order. In extending Šljivančanin's sentence, the Appeals Chamber found that, 'even though [he] no longer had de jure authority over the military police deployed at Ovčara, he could have informed [them] that Mr Mrkšić's order was in breach of the overriding obligation under the laws and customs of war to protect the prisoners of war' (5).

It is worth emphasising that this crucial decision was based, not on any new information or evidence, but simply on re-reading the trial record from 2007 when Šljivančanin had been acquitted of aiding and abetting murder. As one of the dissenting Appeals judges, Fausto Pocar, observed, the Appeals Chamber has made 'a conviction based on the trial record without having observed the witness testimony or the presentation of evidence, factors which may be particularly important in assessing witness credibility'. Noting the past 'inconsistent' practice and 'oscillating jurisprudence' of the Appeals Chamber, Pocar also disputed whether it even had the authority under its own rules to enter new convictions or impose longer sentences.

The other dissenting judge, Andrésia Vaz, went even further, pointing out that the new judgement was based on 'speculative suggestions as to what Šljivančanin should or could have done to prevent the crimes'. In particular, the Appeals Chamber's verdict hangs on the assertion that Šljivančanin could and should have acted after he learned about the decision to withdraw the military police from Ovčara, but does not establish when he learned about it. Complaining of a 'lack of precision' and an absence of 'clear evidence', Vaz doubted whether Šljivančanin had either the opportunity or the means to prevent the murders, and concluded that the prosecution had therefore 'far from [succeeded] in eliminating "all reasonable doubt"' as to his guilt (6).

The Appeals Chamber has substantially increased Šljivančanin's sentence despite the protestations of one of its own judges that it lacks the power to do so. And one of its key justifications for this decision is that Šljivančanin committed a crime of omission, of which he was previously acquitted, by failing to prevent murders carried out in his absence by people not under his command. As Judge Vaz put it, this decision violates the 'fundamental principle of criminal law' that 'where there is doubt, there can be no conviction entered'.

A hierarchy of victimhood

The charge on which Šljivančanin was found guilty in 2007 was another crime of omission: aiding and abetting torture by failing to ensure that, when JNA personnel were still at Ovčara, they protected the prisoners from abuse at the hands of the Territorial Defence and paramilitaries.

Media reports of last week's verdict have often noted that public opinion in Croatia was very critical of Šljivančanin's original five-year sentence for this crime as too lenient (7). The Appeals Chamber seemed to acknowledge this in explaining why the sentence now needed to be more than tripled, emphasising that it was unclear whether the original judgement had 'weighed the consequences of the torture upon the victims and their families, or whether or to what extent it considered the particular vulnerability of the prisoners, in the determination of Mr Šljivančanin's sentence' (8).

This is such a specious argument it defies belief. First, it is obvious that that original judgment did take account of the suffering of victims – by noting, for example, that 'close family members have been left without their loved ones. In almost all cases the anguish and hurt of such tragedy has been aggravated by uncertainty about the fate which befell these victims.' (9) According to the Appeals Chamber, such statements at the 2007 trial did not constitute full enough consideration of victims' suffering. Apparently, the 'correct' level of consideration could only have led to a 17-year sentence.

Second, it is clear from the ICTY's track record that some victims do not count as much as others. In 2006, for example, the ICTY convicted Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Orić of failing to prevent the ill-treatment and murder of Serbian prisoners by men under his command. The sentence? Two years. Since he had already been detained for longer than that during the trial, he was immediately released. Last summer, Orić's case also went to the Appeals Chamber, which promptly overturned the conviction and acquitted him. Orić became notorious for murdering Serb civilians during the Bosnian war: he even made bizarre snuff videos as trophies and showed them to journalists as he boasted about his exploits (10). In his case, however, the victims seem to have weighed hardly at all in the deliberations of the court.

It is worth asking why, as the ICTY puts it, there were such 'intense feelings of animosity harboured by the Serb Territorial Defence and paramilitary forces against members of the Croat forces' in Vukovar. This question is seldom asked, probably because the evil of the Serbs is simply assumed. Yet it was not just the pent-up anger and tension generated by weeks of fighting that sealed the fate of the Croatian POWs at Ovčara, but the long-standing grievances of local Serbs. As one reporter noted in 1999, 'Before the war, Vukovar was one of the most ethnically integrated cities in Croatia… But the relative harmony that prevailed here since World War II was upset in the late 1980s by an outburst of Croatian nationalism.' (11) This article was a rare exception to the general trend, which is to ignore or deny the plight of Serbs under Croatian nationalist rule.

Long prior to the battle of Vukovar – certainly since the election of Croatia's nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman in spring 1990 – Serbs in Croatia had become an increasingly persecuted minority, sacked from their jobs, driven out of their homes, attacked and killed. Even before the outbreak of war, 20,000 Serbs had fled Croatia (12). Tudjman's government revived the symbols of Croatia's fascist Second World War regime, which had exterminated Serbs along with Jews, Gypsies and other 'undesirables'. To ethnic Serbs in Croatia, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that they were once again becoming 'unpersons'.

The ICTY has always claimed to act on behalf of victims. 'For us the victims are the most important', said chief prosecutor Richard Goldstone 1996: 'The victims of the Yugoslav war want legal vengeance.' (13) The tribunal emphasises its advocacy for victims because it stands outside the societies to which it applies its 'international law'. Lacking any real connection with the people over whom it sits in judgement, the claim to speak for victims is a way to assert its legitimacy. Yet it is difficult to see how a mission of 'legal vengeance' is compatible with dispensing impartial justice. In practice, it leads to double standards and politicised judgements.

A political tool

Michael Scharf, a lawyer who helped to write the original ICTY statute for the US State Department, has acknowledged that 'the tribunal was widely perceived within the [US] government as little more than a public relations device and as a potentially useful policy tool'. The tribunal's usefulness in this regard was demonstrated most vividly during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, when it indicted Serbian president Slobodan Milošević at the very moment when NATO was bombing his country. For the British and American governments, Scharf observed, the ICTY was 'a useful tool in their efforts to demonise the Serbian leader and maintain public support for NATO's bombing campaign' (14).

From the outset, the ICTY has been fundamentally shaped by a simplistic, good-vs-evil narrative of the Yugoslav wars, perpetuated by Western politicians and the media. The 'hospital massacre' was one of the key events in establishing that narrative, and was one of the main events highlighted by the US State Department in 1992 when it first suggested that Milošević should be indicted for war crimes (15).

In 1999 it was raised again by those seeking to promote the argument that Milošević should be indicted. Prominent British human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson claimed to know of 'compelling evidence that he personally approved the massacre of 200 patients at Vukovar hospital' (16). Once the indictment had been issued, Robertson was beside himself, urging that Milošević should also be 'charged with ordering the Vukovar hospital massacre in 1991, when his army machine-gunned 260 Croatian patients, doctors and nurses into a mass grave' (17). This scenario existed only in Robertson's imagination. The beating and execution of prisoners of war is surely bad enough. Yet advocates of 'international justice' often appear driven to ladle on the horror in order to sustain their own fantasies of righteousness.

One key rationale often given for the existence of the ICTY is that the states involved in the Yugoslav wars would be incapable of holding the guilty to account themselves. Yet more than a dozen of those who – unlike Šljivančanin and Mrkšić – were directly involved in the mistreatment and murder of POWs at Ovčara have been convicted and sent to prison by Serbian courts. The ICTY, meanwhile, pursues its peculiar, politicised 'legal vengeance', supposedly on behalf of selected, 'worthy' victims.

In reality, the ICTY serves no useful purpose except as a political tool of its Western sponsors. In common with other international tribunals, as it sits in judgement on other people's wars it allows Western leaders to set themselves up as morally superior to weaker states, including those they bomb.

Philip Hammond is reader in media and communications at London South Bank University, and is the author of Media, War and Postmodernity, published by Routledge in 2007 (Buy this book from Amazon(UK)).

(1) Appeals Chamber Judgement, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(2) This war criminal must be brought to justice, Tim Judah, Observer, 4 October 1998

(3) Massacre that started long haul to justice, Julius Strauss, Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2001

(4) Trial Chamber Judgement, 27 September 2007 (pdf). The judgement also notes that 'the two Croat women included with the men were also thought by the JNA to have been involved in the Croatian forces'

(5) Appeals Chamber Judgement Summary, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(6) Appeals Chamber Judgement, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(7) See, for example Hague triples Vukovar jail term, BBC News, 5 May 2009

(8) Appeals Chamber Judgement Summary, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(9) Trial Chamber Judgement, 27 September 2007 (pdf)

(10) 'Weapons, cash and chaos lend clout to Srebrenica's tough guy', John Pomfret, Washington Post, 16 February 1994

(11) 'In the Misery of Vukovar Lies an Awful Model for Postwar Kosovo', Blaine Harden, International Herald Tribune, 3—4 April 1999

(12) 'A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing', by Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3, 1993, p118

(13) Quoted in Fools' Crusade, by Diana Johnstone, Pluto Press, 2002, p96

(14) Indicted for war crimes, then what?, Michael Scharf, Washington Post, 3 October 1999

(15) Michael Evans and Jamie Dettmer, US wants Serbia war crimes trials, The Times, 17 December 1992

(16) 'Should Milosevic be indicted as a war criminal?', Geoffrey Robertson, Guardian, 6 April 1999

(17) 'No right without wrong, no peace without justice', Geoffrey Robertson, Independent on Sunday, 30 May 1999

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6657/

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/

6657/

It's time to end the Cold War

2009-05-13T19:58:00.000-04:00

It's time to end the Cold War

JAMES BISSETT

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

May 12, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT

NATO supporters frequently claim the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was the greatest military alliance of all time since it won a major war without firing a shot and without suffering any casualties. The war referred to was the Cold War and, until the disintegration of the Soviet Union, that claim was valid. However, after the Warsaw Pact armies went home, NATO continued to act as if the Cold War were still being fought - and it still does.

In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, the issue of whether a united Germany should become a member of NATO became an immediate issue. The Russians, as might be expected, had serious misgivings, but these were overcome with the assurances given to Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev by George H. W. Bush that if the new Germany were allowed to join NATO, the alliance would not expand eastward.

The Russians also knew that Article 1 of the NATO treaty stipulated that NATO would refrain from using or threatening to use force in the resolution of international disputes and would always act in accordance with the UN Charter. Article 1 acted as a security blanket for the Russians since they could always use their veto power in the Security Council should NATO threaten to use military force.

All of this changed in March, 1999. In that fateful month, NATO decided to ignore its first article and, without consulting the United Nations, began the bombing of Serbia, allegedly to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population of Kosovo. This was a historic turning point. The alliance was suddenly converted from a purely defensive organization, acting in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter, into an aggressive military machine that could use force whenever and wherever it might choose to do so.

In the same month, despite the promises previously given, NATO was joined by three former Warsaw Pact members: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Since then the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia have been given membership. Russia has been surrounded by NATO countries - some of them for historical reasons - hostile to Russia. Adding to Russian anxieties is the determination of the United States to have Ukraine and Georgia admitted to the alliance.

The U.S.'s unilateral withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2002 and, more recently, its intention to place anti-missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic, have added to Russia's concerns about NATO's true intentions. The decision of most NATO countries to recognize the independence of Kosovo, in violation of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Accords, was also seen as a signal to the Russians that NATO had become a law unto itself.

The violation of Serbia's territorial integrity was simply ignored despite a UN resolution reaffirming Serbian sovereignty and then-Russian president Vladimir Putin's warning that a unilateral declaration of independence would set a dangerous precedent. He cautioned that Russia would follow by recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. NATO dismissed Mr. Putin's warning, apparently assuming Russian interests did not need to be taken into account.

This dangerous assumption was abruptly proven wrong in August of last year when, on the eve of the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Georgian armed forces suddenly attacked South Ossetia. Moscow reacted with speed and force. Within days, the Georgian armed forces were routed and Russian forces had complete control of South Ossetia.

NATO's reaction to this humiliating reversal was predictable. The United States and other NATO countries, supported almost unanimously by the Western media, condemned the Russian military action and expressed dismay and shock that Georgia's territorial integrity had been violated. The U.S. immediately promised $1-billion in aid to help Georgia rebuild.

In the months that have followed, there is little evidence NATO has learned anything. The U.S. is still pressing, despite German and French reservations, to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The decision by NATO this month to hold military exercises in Georgia is a deliberate provocation to antagonize Russia. And the silly Cold War diplomatic game of mutually expelling diplomats is also back in fashion.

In a world struggling with financial and economic recession, continued bloodshed in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, a Pakistan on the verge of civil war, ongoing strife in the Middle East, and a hostile and perhaps soon to be nuclear-armed Iran - it is time for NATO to end the Cold War and make peace with Russia, a Russia that could prove to be one of the West's most useful and powerful allies in the years ahead.

James Bissett is former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090511.wcorussia12/BNStory/specialComment/home

Serbia backs Russia against NATO drills

2009-05-03T12:17:00.000-04:00

Serbia backs Russia against NATO drills
30 April, 2009, 20:42
The Serbian Cabinet has confirmed that Serbia won’t take part in NATO-led drills in Georgia scheduled for May 6 through June 1.
Earlier in an interview with the B92 TV channel, Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said: “nobody in Serbia will take part in those NATO-led drills in Georgia. The reason is that Russia said those military exercises pose a threat to its security,” reports the Ria Novosti news agency.
On Thursday the Moldovan government withdrew from the maneuvers without explanation. Earlier, the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, as well as Kazakhstan in central Asia announced that they were pulling out of the exercises.
It’s reported that Riga and Tallinn withdrew due to financial reasons while Astana has not commented on its decision not to take part.
Russia has strongly criticized the upcoming NATO-led drills, officially known as Cooperative Longbow 09/Cooperative Lancer 09. Moscow says the military exercises will further destabilize the region, the scene of an armed conflict less than a year ago.
Meanwhile, NATO still regards Georgia as a close partner.
According to Russia’s envoy to the alliance, Dmitry Rogozin, the issue was addressed at the official meeting of the Russia–NATO Council (the first since the conflict in South Ossetia) held in Brussels on Wednesday 29.
“NATO's point of view on Georgia puzzles us, since a major organisation like NATO could definitely show more flexibility. Everybody realises perfectly that there can be no normal relations with an aggressor. Still, there is one message in the final documents of the NATO summit in Strasbourg and in public speeches of NATO executives: that Georgia is an advanced partner who will have their support against all odds,” he said after the meeting.
Official co-operation between Russia and NATO only resumed recently after being suspended following the war in South Ossetia.
Rogozin acknowledged that Russia and the alliance "still have serious disagreements over the assessment of events in Georgia" and called on the Council to make a "professional, thorough and unemotional assessment of the events in August of last year".

http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-04-30/Serbia_backs_Russia_against_NATO_drills.html

EXCLUSIVE: Kosovo Liberation Army Ran Torture Camps in Albania

2009-04-09T16:37:00.001-04:00

EXCLUSIVE: Kosovo Liberation Army Ran Torture Camps in Albania

Kukes, Bajram Curri, Tropoja, Kruma, Prizren, Pristina and Tirana 09 April 2009 By Altin Raxhimi, Michael Montgomery and Vladimir Karaj

The building that served as a KLA prison at the factory compound in Kukes

The Kosovo Liberation Army maintained a network of prisons in their bases in Albania and Kosovo during and after the conflict of 1999, eyewitnesses allege. Only now are the details of what occurred there emerging.
In a run-down industrial compound with shattered windows and peeling plaster in Kukes, Albania, chickens rummage for food and two trucks sit idle in a courtyard surrounded by rusted warehouses and a crumbling two-story supply building.

In the middle of the compound stands a cinderblock shack that was once the office of a mechanical plant that produced everything from manhole covers to elevator cages.

But, during the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, from March to June 1999, this facility took on another purpose. It was occupied by a guerrilla force, the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, as a support base for their operations across the border in Serbian-ruled Kosovo.

But the factory was not merely the headquarters for guerrillas fighting the regime of Slobodan Milosevic to secure the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.

It assumed more sinister purposes: dozens of civilians, mainly Kosovo Albanians suspected of collaboration, but also Serbs and Roma were held captive there, beaten and tortured. Some were killed, their remains never recovered. The men who allegedly directed the abuses were officers of the KLA.

At least 25 people were imprisoned in Kukes, witnesses say. Amongst them were three Kosovo Albanian women. In the camp at least 18 people were killed, while others were later rescued by NATO troops.

It appears that Kukes housed one of a number of secret detention centres in Albania and Kosovo, and that prisoners were transferred from one facility to another.

Even after the NATO interventions, a camp was maintained in Baballoq/Babaloc in Kosovo, holding around 30 Serb and Roma prisoners, whose current whereabouts are unknown. Other camps in Albania may have held Serbs kidnapped in Kosovo after the war, according to four sources.

The names of several alleged perpetrators have been known to UNMIK for some time. One of them is still holding a high position in the Kosovo judiciary, Balkan Insight understands.

Bislim Zyrapi, an official of the Kosovo Interior Ministry, who was responsible for KLA operations in Kukes, told Balkan Insight that there were no people killed, either at the base or outside of it.

Two of the KLA’s former top leaders rejected the allegations in separate interviews with the BBC.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, who was then the political director of the KLA, and Agim Ceku, former Prime Minister and former chief of the KLA headquarters, told the BBC they were not aware of any KLA prisons where captives were abused or where civilians were held.

Thaci said he was aware that individuals had “abused KLA uniforms” after the war, but said the KLA had distanced itself from such acts. He added that such abuse was “minimal”. Ceku said that the KLA fought a “clean war”.

However, Jose Pablo Baraybar, the chief of the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics within UNMIK for five years, says: “There were people that are certainly alive that were in Kukes, in that camp, as prisoners. Those people saw other people there, both Albanians and non-Albanians. There were members of the KLA leadership going through that camp. Many names were mentioned, and I would say that that is an established fact.”

Baraybar tracked missing citizens in Kosovo and across the border in Albania.

Karin Limdal, spokeswoman for the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, told Balkan Insight that the mission is aware of the allegations concerning the Kukes case, and that prosecutors are looking at the evidence to see if they can bring indictments.

YELLOW MERCEDES OF DEATH

These grave allegations about the Kukes camp, in the north west of Albania, are based on interviews with several sources: two eyewitnesses – one former inmate and one member of the KLA, records from a cemetery in Albania and UN documents that we have gained access to, which detail the testimonies of people ill-treated in Kukes.

Together, they paint a portrait of a brutal prison regime that is at odds with the claims of former KLA leaders, who say they adhered to international human rights conventions and never detained civilians.

The abuses in Kukes may not have been isolated events. According to former KLA fighters who talked to us, as well as independent testimony provided to UN investigators, the KLA maintained a loose network of at least six secret jails in the dozen or so bases they operated in Albania and the two they had in Kosovo during and after the 1999 war.

Those jails were used for interrogations that routinely included torture, according to sources interviewed for this story.

Most former KLA soldiers we interviewed are proud of their war with the Serbian forces, whose bloody actions forced the mass flight of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians from their homes in 1999.

But some said they felt shamed by what some KLA commanders and leaders had done under the cover of war.

“It didn’t seem strange at the time,” one former KLA soldier, who witnessed the events, said. “But now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to innocent civilians were wrong. But the people who did those things act as if nothing happened, and continue to hurt their own people, Albanians.”

Another eyewitness, a Kosovo Albanian, says he was held at the KLA base in Kukes on the pretext of being a Serbian spy, an allegation he vehemently denies.

This man, who did not wish to be named, described witnessing KLA soldiers abusing and torturing prisoners at the base for weeks, often under the supervision of KLA officers.

“I saw people being beaten, stabbed, hit with batons,” he said. “I saw people left without food for five or six days. I saw coffins being thrown in graves. I’ve seen people killed.”

This man claimed most of the captives held at Kukes were non-combatant civilians, mainly Albanians accused of working for the regime, and some Roma. There were also some KLA soldiers, imprisoned for disciplinary measures.

According to both sources, three prisoners were Kosovo Albanian women. Two were Roma from Prizren. The rest were young Kosovo Albanian males, aged between 20 and 27, all accused of collaborating with Serbian forces. The inmate said he also heard shouts in Serbian from prisoners who were being tortured a short distance away from the compound.

The inmate said that he heard “people crying and yelling at being tortured, and I could specifically distinguish native Serbian being spoken there.”

He said some Kosovo Albanian prisoners were shot or beaten to death on the base, while others were driven off in a yellow Mercedes. One Kosovo Albanian prisoner died in front of him and five other inmates, after being shot in the calf by his interrogators and then left untreated.

The records of the cemetery in Kukes shed light on the man who died after being shot in the calf.

According to cemetery records, he was buried on June 6th 1999, four days before Serbian forces pulled out of Kosovo, in a plot reserved for Kosovo Albanians who died in Albania during the conflict ,.

“Every time I saw the yellow Mercedes, someone was taken in that car and then I would never see that person again,” he said. “They were never found.”

The same former inmate said he believed the people had been taken captive for various reasons, which included revenge and greed, as well as allegations that they were Serbian spies.

One prisoner had worked as a policeman in the western town of Gjakova/Djakovica under the Milosevic regime. He was taken away in the yellow Mercedes and has not been seen since.

Another had been a teacher, whose apparent offence was to have a license to carry a gun issued by the Serbian authorities.

The inmate said he believed that more than 25 people were held there from March to June 1999, from the start of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia until NATO forces moved into Kosovo.

The inmates were mostly from the city of Prizren and surrounding villages. The KLA had apprehended them after waves of Kosovars entered Kukes during the NATO bombing. At least one was arrested as far away as Durres, or Lushnja, in central Albania, according to both sources.

Our source, who was an inmate, recalls another inmate, a Kosovo Albanian, yelling from the barred windows to the troops in the yard, telling them that if they killed him, he had six brothers who would avenge him. “What would you do about them?” he challenged them.

According to the same two sources, and UNMIK documents from their investigation into the case, some of the survivors were transferred in the aftermath of the war to detention cells at the police station in Prizren, in Kosovo.

On June 18th, they, and other people detained by the KLA in Prizren, were released by German KFOR troops, who stormed the building.

The same sources estimated that as many as 18 captives may have been killed in Kukes.
The source who was a member of the KLA said: “I understand that they had cooperated with the Serbs and had done a lot of harm. This would make people mad when one thinks of the massacres happening across the border. But their treatment was brutal. At times, I was sorry for them.”

The former inmate we spoke to was sceptical about whether any of the captives had actively collaborated with Serbian death squads.

“But even if they deserved punishment, no-one had the right to do that [torture] to someone [else],” he said. “No-one has the right to do such things to other human beings.”

A NETWORK OF CAMPS

Kukes was an important strategic location for the KLA. Weapons, uniforms, cash and fresh recruits all flowed through the warehouses and storage buildings at the site.

The base was also important for the KLA military police, which reportedly rounded up suspects from among the mass of civilians who fled to Albania, or were expelled by Serbian forces.

A unit of the Albanian army, stationed at the base in Kukes, assisted the KLA to set up its military police operations, according to several policemen we interviewed.

It appears that Kukes was one of many detention centres in Albania and Kosovo, and prisoners would be transferred from one to another.

Two captives were brought to Kukes from a similar KLA facility near the town of Burrel, where the KLA ran a barracks for training soldiers during the last two months of the war, said the former inmate.

“They told us about people being killed there, people put into lime pits there,” he said. “I could also see what was going on in Burrel from the state [in which] they were brought in... They’d been tortured badly.”

According to the UN documents, the interviews with KLA members and the inmate, other captives were transferred to Kukes from KLA facilities in at least two other places - Durres, and after the war, Prizren in Kosovo itself.

The KLA had intelligence units and military police in most bases they maintained in Albania.

Halil Katana, a military journalist from Tirana, in his authorised biography of Kudusi Lama, the commander of the Kukes division, ‘Kudusi Lama: War General’, writes: “Those units [of the KLA military police] played an important role in establishing the discipline in KLA groups trained in the Kukes area, and in seizing Serb agents who entered the country amongst refugees from Kosovo.”

These units maintained detainment cells in Babine, a logistics centre near the border region of Tropoja; in the training camp of Burrel and at a KLA base in Durres, according to our third source, another member of the KLA.

Bislim Zyrapi, currently an official at the Interior Ministry of Kosovo, was responsible for the KLA operations at the base in Kukes from early May to the end of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia on June 10th.

He says that the people detained at the jail in Kukes were soldiers with disciplinary problems, and that there were no people killed at the base, or outside of it. But he added that he found the KLA in disarray, with armed soldiers and individuals who wandered freely in town and elsewhere in Albania. “One of the first things I had to do was to discipline them,” he said.

PERPETRATORS AT LARGE

According to eyewitnesses, two Albanian citizens involved with the KLA took part in these interrogations.

One man, described as having long black hair, was especially brutal to the Roma from Prizren, according to one source.

One source said KLA fighters coming back from fighting in Kosovo sometimes took out their rage on the inmates.

The other said the prisoners were tortured into admitting they had cooperated with the Serbian state security forces, UDBA. The interrogators wanted to record the prisoners confessing collaboration with the Serbs.

The same sources that witnessed the base in Kukes, told us that the interrogators in Kukes were KLA officers who had been involved in the capture of suspected collaborators.
Both our sources concerning the base, identified several KLA officers involved in the abuses at Kukes.

One of them is currently in a top position in the judicial system in Kosovo.

We have withheld names of the alleged perpetrators, so as not to endanger our sources.

Some men involved in the abuses at Kukes were also involved in abducting Kosovo citizens after the war, according to former KLA soldiers we interviewed.

Their targets were not Albanian ‘traitors’, but Serbs or Roma who had remained in Kosovo after NATO troops entered the territory.

One Kosovo Albanian who returned to fight in Kosovo after spending many years abroad, told us he saw nearly 30 Serbs and Roma held in a KLA camp in Baballoq/Babaloc, near Decan in western Kosovo, after the war, in summer 1999.

He said he heard screams from the location and assumed the inmates were being tortured. When NATO patrols passed through the area, the prisoners were hidden in a workhouse, the same source added.

This former KLA fighter said he suspects the group was taken over the border to Albania and killed. “I never saw them again, never read anything about them in the newspaper,” he said. “So they probably disappeared into the mountains.”

Listen to Michael Montgormery on BBC

Read also:
Burrel: KLA Training Camp with Another Purpose?
The KLA: From Guerilla Wars to Party Plenums

Altin Raxhimi is a freelance journalist based in Tirana. Michael Montgomery is a special correspondent for the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, California. Vladimir Karaj is a reporter with ‘Korrieri’, a Tirana daily.

The research for this story was funded by the Alumni fund for the Balkan Fellowship for Journalism Excellence. Part of the funding was provided by SCOOP, a structure of the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism that helps fund investigative journalism in Eastern Europe.

© The full text of this article is the copyright of the Balkan Investigative Journalism Network, BIRN, and its authors. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the express permission of BIRN. Requests for syndication should be directed to ana@birn.eu.com

http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/18047/

Cancer: NATO’s time bomb in the Balkans

2009-03-25T16:09:00.002-04:00

Cancer: NATO’s time bomb in the Balkans
24 March, 2009, 22:23

Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the three-month NATO bombing campaign of the former Yugoslavia - and a decade later, the wounds of the war are still felt.
Throughout the areas which have been affected by NATO bombings, hundreds of people are dying of cancer. Experts say that this may be a result of uranium shells being used.
A little cemetery in Bratunac, Eastern Bosnia became the final resting place for a number of cancer victims. A local resident, who preferred to remain anonymous, gave RT the names of some who are buried there. He says they all died of cancer.
Read more
Djoko Zelenovic, who worked in the local military repair factory, died from the disease at the age of 65. The 35 year-old mother of two small children also rests here.
There used to be no more than one or two funerals a year in this small Serbian village in Eastern Bosnia. Since NATO dropped bombs on Sarajevo in the summer of 1995, the number has climbed to as many as one or two deaths a month.
Nikola Zelenovic’s parents are buried here. He says they were healthy until the NATO bombings and is now spearheading an investigation.Nikola says that "my family lived throughout the war years in the town of Hadjici. My father was working in one of the factories there when NATO bombed it. His health problems started soon afterwards. He died from lung cancer. My mother died a year and a half after him from Leukemia. My parents were never sick before."
Starting on March 24th, 1999, for three months NATO bombed Serb targets in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Four years earlier its forces had bombed Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Their aim was to end the fighting between Serbs and Albanians who lived in the areas.
But they left a time bomb behind them. In the years that followed, hundreds of people living in the areas that were hit have died of cancerIn Kosovo, the number of cancer patients has grown three times over the last ten years, while in Bosnia-Herzegovina, already more than a thousand people have died from cancer.
Doctor Slavko Zdrale has treated several cancer patients over the past years and boldly advances theories on the subject: He told RT that “a few years ago we started noticing that there was as many as five times the number of people dying of different kinds of cancer as compared to the number of people who had been sick before the war.”
“We worked out that 90% of them came from areas NATO had bombed and from areas where ammunition with uranium was used. Nobody in the international community took much notice until Italian soldiers who were stationed in those areas started dying from cancer-related illnesses.”
In Pale, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the war crimes court is recording evidence of an increased number of cancer patients. The court says that the pieces of ammunition found in the bombed areas had a much higher level of radiation than is internationally allowed. Investigators are convinced that this radiation is the underlying cause of cancer.
Simo Tusevljak, the coordinator of the Research and documentation of war crimes, stated that “we believe that this was a deliberate attempt by NATO forces to kill as many people as possible. It was also a chance for the West to test new weapons.” .
“But there is nothing we can do," he added. "We cannot file any complaint against NATO because all those involved have diplomatic immunity. A NATO soldier can kill and never be prosecuted. But perhaps one day some senior officials from NATO who ordered the bombings will be prosecuted. I believe the order came from high up."
NATO hasn't commented on the claims and has dismissed Serbian and Italian investigations.There has been no other independent research conducted on the subject.
The little cemetery in Bratunac is already full. But locals fear the number of cancer victims will continue to grow for at least the next fifty years, or for as long as it takes for the air to clean.
Ten years after the NATO bombings, the alliance still has a lot to answer for. But no matter when those answers come (or whether they will come at all) they will be too late for the cancer victims.
http://www.russiatoday.ru/Top_News/2009-03-24/Cancer__NATO_s_time_bomb_in_the_Balkans.html

`Hushing up disappearances in Kosovo is betrayal`

2009-02-28T11:50:00.001-05:00

`Hushing up disappearances in Kosovo is betrayal`

e-mail story to a friend print version

19 February, 2009, 08:55

Covering up the atrocities committed in Kosovo against the non-Albanian population is ultimately a betrayal of hopes of building a civilised society in Kosovo itself, believes independent filmmaker Ninoslav Randjelovic.

For the last decade Randjelovic has been producing films on the human rights of minorities living in Kosovo. His work has been shown all around the world.

RT: Where did the idea for your work come from?

NR: The essence of it has been an effort to document cases of severe human rights violation that was affecting and that has been affecting civilian population of Kosovo and Metohia particularly Serbian and the non-Albanian ethnic minority in Kosovo. To have it recorded as much as it can be recorded and brought to attention of whoever wants to see it.

RT: You say that you are drawn to this work because were hearing reports that people had gone missing, but how in fact did this information even come through?

NR: Here in Belgrade I would learn about that only occasionally even though 1,300 people in such a short period of time had been kidnapped. Sometimes there were no photos of these people of course in the newspapers, sometimes names and nothing much more, or maybe a location where they were seen last time. In 1998 I went down there and tried to collect some information from the family members and that's how it all started – with the hope that if we bring to the world's attention what really is happening in these remote villages of Kosovo maybe the suffering of people will cease

RT: From the data that you collected what do you understand happened to these people? How did they go missing?

NR: Well, you know, lots of them had been just kidnapped outside. They were stopped at the road and then just abducted like that. But at that time it was like devastating for me even though I did record these facts, it seemed like nobody really cared about it. The lack of media attention to what was really going on in Kosovo is something that I think we can say made space for such terrible things to happen at the first place.

RT: Who did you understand kidnapped these 1,300 non-Albanians and why?

NR: According to the people I talked to, most likely paramilitary troops, KLA troops were the ones who were involved in this kidnapping process. But you know, the thing is, not a single person came back alive that we know of, so we can’t know that for sure.

RT: What did people suspect happened to them?

NR: We see that they have been killed Now there is legitimate concern that some of them were used to take organs from the body and killed later on.

RT: How lucrative a business is the trafficking of human organs and who's involved in it?

NR: Well now people say that – you know I don't know. But that's what I read that ahuman body is worth a million euros on the black market. If you have one body so to say worth a million euros, imagine 1,300 bodies or anything like that! And that brings another issue like I mean I'm not saying that is something that we will know, but at least we must ask ourselves and we must look into the lack of media coverage of these crimes and atrocities suffered by the civilian population of Kosovo is part of the reason why these things could have happened.

RT: Why was there such a lack of media coverage then?

NR: Because somehow politics in a certain way obscured certain issues such as these atrocities suffered by the Serbian civil population, because simply it was considered maybe politically incorrect to talk about sufferings that the Serbian and not the Albanian civil population experienced.

RT: Politically incorrect by whom, the Serbian authorities?

NR: Well, I guess not by the Serbian authorities but by the world media. But the thing is I'm more concerned – much more – by the lack of interest shown by the Serbian media.

RT: How do you explain that there was so little Serbian media interest?

NR: There's no ready explanation. I cannot explain that. But I think it's because the Milosevic regime wanted to show itself as in control of the region, as being powerful enough to protect Serbian interests in Kosovo that was jeopardised by, let's say, Albanian terrorists. Then, showing how ineffective Belgrade is in protecting people in Kosovo will undermine the message that he wanted to send. On the other hand, after the Milosevic regime was gone, the lack of interest in the problem – the suffering of the Serbian and non-Albanian population – continued. The lack of interest from the Serbian media is something that really makes it hard for me to come up with any kind of explanation.

RT: It's now 10 years later and obviously Milosevic is no longer on the scene, but from what you seem to suggest, the issue of human rights and non-Albanians in Kosovo still remains an issue and the media is still not interested in covering this. So how do you explain it?

NR: Well, actually, explanation is kind of a hard word. But the fact is we do still have such a serious issue as the lack of freedom in human rights. Basically it was again politically incorrect for the Belgrade regime to address that issue from that angle. Only two weeks ago we heard that an elderly couple a few kilometres from the border in Kosovo had been killed, and people are guessing whether it is because they didn't sell their house.

What about this tragedy from a human angle? From a human point of view? And how much do we really know about the fate of these people now? It is more important than ever now especially that the EULEX is coming to Kosovo. It is more important than ever to raise this issue of safety and who's going to do it? So, for example, with the help of Greece and Russia I hope that three of my films will soon be translated into 10 languages, six of which will be official UN languages, and in that sense this will be used to show how serious the issue of safety has been in Kosovo.

RT: These people are not safe from whom? The new Kosovo government? Or random acts of violence?

NR: Random acts of violence. Such numerous things. I mean lots of objects that have been destroyed and have not been rebuilt yet. People have not returned to their houses or rebuilt their houses. Hundreds of thousands of them!

RT: It's all very well. You're talking about Greece and Russia, but why is the Serbian government today not doing enough to assure their safety?

NR: It is a hard question for me to explain. For example, right now I'm in the process of trying to convince them after all these years. If the Serbian government is not pressing these particular issues, what will happen with people who still live there in Kosovo, non-Albanians, then who will?

RT: Are you surprised with what happened regarding Kosovo? That the Serbian government did not put up more of a fight to prevent Kosovo from declaring independence?

NR: I'm kind of surprised that the Serbian government has not developed this argument more. What matters to Serbia down in Kosovo are people. Ultimately it's not about history. It is not about identity. It is not about religion. It's about loyalty to a fellow human being. By betraying them – and betrayal is if you don't talk about someone who's dying and who's been killed and who's yours – we are actually losing ground in becoming a civilised society here in Serbia. We must ask about them. They must be the number one thing in the minds of our politicians. Because if they are not, then what else is? And that's why I think we’ve failed so far as a country to convince the world what it is really that we are fighting for, because we have not stood together for these people.

RT: Is this issue only about Kosovo or is it an international issue?

NR: The international community arrived in Kosovo to stop killings and to help create a multi-ethnic society that is civilised. That's how we will measure the success of this international mission – the implementation of all this money, weapons and political will. Is it going to result in a better life for an ordinary citizen of Kosovo?

RT: Thank you for talking to us on RT.

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-02-19/_Hushing_up_disappearances_in_Kosovo_is_betrayal_.html

One year after independence, Kosovo needs 'a revolution'

2009-02-17T10:55:00.001-05:00

One year after independence, Kosovo needs 'a revolution'

Kosovo proclaimed independence on 17 February 2008 (Photo: Wikipedia)

ELITSA VUCHEVA

Today @ 06:59 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – One year after its declaration of independence, Kosovo has surprised observers by remaining stable but it has yet to tackle the profound reforms it needs to make it a viable state.

When it unilaterally seceded from Serbia on 17 February 2008, many voiced fears about the future of the young state and about possible outbursts of violence between Kosovo's Albanian majority and its minority Serb population, loyal to Belgrade.