February 17, 2008
Transnational.org

Kosovo: What is Conveniently Forgotten

by Jan Oberg

With "the father of the nation" in Kosovo, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova and his colleagues, we worked out the model - until KLA/UCK was formed in 1993 and began to undermine his unique non-violent leadership - for a Kosova with open borders, no army, non-aligned with any military system, promising never to unite with Albania or other Abanian-inhabited territoires and - not the least! - achieved through negotiation, dialogue and international mediation assistance by the UN and others. . . .

The historic nationalist leanings, the ethnic cleansing policies, and militarism of the murky UCK, the Kosovo Albanian Liberation Army, KLA, that became NATOs ally on the ground after having been supported by CIA and the German Intelligence Service - all conveniently forgotten in most media and European/US statements today.

The US and the Clinton Administration's documented lies about Milosevic' Hitleristic genocide plan (he was bad enough, but not that stupid and neither a Hitler), the left's, one-sided human rights and peace activists' and Green enthusiasm for NATO's "humanitarian intervention" will be neglected.

It will be forgotten that the international community overlooked the Kosovo conflict while a few of us predicted war there 7 years before it actually happened as a result of the fact that no mediation initiative was taken.

It is also forgotten on Sunday that the highest civilian leader responsible for the destruction of Yugoslavia was NATO S-G Javier Solana; he was rewarded by being kicked upwards to the post of EU foreign policy chief. This non-convicted war criminal has a personal interest in seeing Kosovo independent - otherwise his and Wesley Clark's destruction of Yugoslavia was a mistake! . . .

With Palestinians, Serbs and Muslims/Muhamad, grosso modo, racist attitudes, lack of empathy and collective punishment is politically very correct - indeed the only way to think.

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Enver Masud, "Kosovo Bombing: Good Intentions, Bad Strategy?," The Wisdom Fund, March 27, 1999

Enver Masud, "Kosovo Bombing: Bad Intentions, Good Strategy?," The Wisdom Fund, March 28, 1999

[President Clinton knew that "air strikes might provoke Serb soldiers into greater acts of butchery." . . .

Professor of International Law, Francis A. Boyle, says "the former Yugoslavia disintegrated as a state as the Badinter Commission found. As a result of this disintegration, the Kosovar People exercised their right of self-determination to establish the Kosova Republic in accordance with standard international law and practice.--Enver Masud, "Milosevic Indicted, Clinton Poised to Sellout Kosovars," The Wisdom Fund, May 28, 1999]

Enver Masud, "Winning and Losing in Yugoslavia," The Wisdom Fund, June 6, 1999

Eric Margolis, "The Real Victors in Kosovo," Toronto Sun, June 13, 1999

[The message could scarcely have been blunter: if you want Albanian consent for the Trans-Balkan pipeline, you had better wrest Kosovo out of the hands of the Serbs.--George Monbiot, "A discreet deal in the pipeline," Guardian, February 15, 2001]

Lutz Kleveman, "The New Great Game," Guardian, October 20, 2003

[Just as in the 1990s, and just as erroneously, a self-righteous West has seized on the Balkans as an opportunity to parade before the world in the unfamiliar guise of champion of democracy and national self-determination, and protector of Muslims. . . .

Kosovo's status is governed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which envisages only self-government for Kosovo, and acknowledges the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Kosovo's status can't be changed without a new resolution.

To be sure, the status quo is unsustainable. But this status quo is one entirely of NATO's making. Eager to demonstrate that it had relevance even though the Cold War had long ended, NATO pulverized Yugoslavia with cluster bombs, depleted uranium and cruise missiles for 11 weeks, in the name of its newly proclaimed mission of humanitarian intervention.--George Szamuely, "A Saga of Injustice and Hypocrisy: The Absurdity of 'Independent' Kosovo," counterpunch.org, February 15, 2008]

Nicholas Kulish and C. J. Chivers, "Kosovo Is Recognized but Rebuked by Others," New York Times, February 19, 2008

[First, Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal self-government. It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. . . .

Second, Washington's immediate recognition of Kosovo confirms once again that U.S. imperialism will break any and every treaty or international agreement it has ever signed, including agreements it drafted and imposed by force and violence on others.--Sara Flounders, "Kosovo's 'independence': Washington gets a new colony in the Balkans," workers.org, February 21, 2008]

VIDEO: "Samantha Power v. Jeremy Scahill: A Debate on U.S. Actions in the Balkans, the Independence of Kosovo, the Iraq Sanctions and Humanitarian Intervention," democracynow.org, February 22, 2008

Danica Kirka, "Putin's Likely Successor, Pledging Support for Serbia, Signs Pipeline Deal," Associated Press, February 26, 2008

[Independent Kosovo is the result of a military-based conflict management or, rather, mismanagement. It militates against two of Nobel's criteria in that it has not lead to fraternity between peoples and it has not reduced armaments in the world. Kosovo declared itself independent in February this year (probably one reason why Ahtisaari received it this year) and is the result of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, on the one hand and NATO's 78 days of merciless bombings in 1999. That bombing - indisputably 100% on the side of the Albanian hardliners - is the main reason why Kosovo's independence is supported by the US and a few EU countries.--Jan Oberg, "Peace Laureate Ahtisaari endorsed terrorism," transnational.org, October 22, 2008]

[ . . . a profile of the Kosovo Liberation Army at HistoryCommons.org includes numerous mainstream citations from 1998-99 indicating that the KLA, working together with the Albanian Mafia, had taken control of Balkan heroin trafficking routes and was funneling the profits into its political activities. The United States continued supporting the KLA during this period and even removed it from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, despite statements from US officials that it was a terrorist group with strong evidence of links to al Qaeda.--Muriel Kane, "Whistleblower: Bin Laden was US proxy until 9/11," rawstory.com, July 31, 2009]

[The most disturbing aspect of the Kosovo case is that a purported humanitarian intervention served mainly to increase the scale of atrocities. . . . The advocates of humanitarian intervention give too little consideration to this danger.--David N. Gibbs, "WAS KOSOVO THE GOOD WAR?," tikkun.org, July/August 2009]

[Serbia, however, doesn’t recognise Kosovo’s independence, and hasn’t accepted the Ahtisaari Plan and never cooperated with the International Civilian Office, set up to implement it. . . .

So far, 91 out of 193 UN member states have recognised Kosovo’s independence.--Marie Dhumieres, "Thirteen years after the end of the war international supervision of Kosovo ends," independent.co.uk, September 10, 2012]

"Serbia, Kosovo strike historic deal," AFP, April 20, 2013

[Under the terms of the agreement, Belgrade acknowledged that the government in Pristina exercises administrative authority over the territory of Kosovo -- and that it is prepared to deal with Pristina as a legitimate governing authority. It did not, however, formally recognize Kosovo as a sovereign state, even as it promised to drop its objections to giving Kosovo a seat in international organizations . . .

The strength of agreement, however, is also its weakness. For it to work, all sides will have to accept certain fictions. Serbia must believe that the door has been left open for a settlement down the road that would return Kosovo to its jurisdiction. Kosovo, meanwhile, cannot crow that the deal represents a backdoor acceptance of its claim to sovereignty. The Serbs living in Kosovo must be prepared to embrace Pristina's governing institutions, at least superficially, and Kosovar Albanians must live with the fact that the Serbs' allegiance will not be more than skin deep.--Nikolas K. Gvosdev, "Kosovo and Serbia Make a Deal," foreignaffairs.com, April 25, 2013]

[After promoting the independence of a completely unviable state to get what it really wanted, that is, "the largest U.S. military base built outside of the U.S. since the Vietnam War," the U.S. has, in its inimitably egotistical, callous and heedless fashion, left Kosovo and the Kosovars to rot in hell.--Thomas Harrington, "Another US 'Success Story': The Creation and Abandonment of Kosovo," antiwar.com, April 20, 2013]

[Yugoslavia dismembered; its resources plundered at the expense of its desperate and impoverished people; and Kosovo turned into a provider of shock troops for regime change in Syria, and transit hub for heroin and organ trafficking.--Dan Glazebrook, "Kosovo: NATO's Success Story?," antiwar.com, January 6, 2015]

[The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Far from conspiring with the convicted Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Milosevic actually "condemned ethnic cleansing", opposed Karadzic and tried to stop the war that dismembered Yugoslavia. Buried near the end of a 2,590- page judgement on Karadzic last February, this truth further demolishes the propaganda that justified Nato's illegal onslaught on Serbia in 1999.--John Pilger, "Provoking Nuclear War by Media," counterpunch.org, August 24, 2016]

[Ultimately, the United States led a seventy-eight-day air war against Serbia, compelling Belgrade to relinquish control to a largely NATO occupation force operating under a fig-leaf resolution that the UN Security Council approved.--Ted Galen Carpenter, "How Kosovo Poisoned America's Relationship with Russia," nationalinterest.org, May 19, 2017]

Admir Muslimovic, "Karadzic Verdict Will Reinforce Ethnic Divisions, Analysts Predict," balkaninsight.com, March 19, 2019

James Bovard, "Bill Clinton's Serbian War Atrocities Exposed in New Indictment," counterpunch.org, June 30, 2020

[Power first rose to prominence with her 2002 book "'A Problem From Hell': America and the Age of Genocide." It won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, with the citation reading, "Samantha Power poses a question that haunts our nation's past: Why do American leaders who vow 'never again' repeatedly fail to marshal the will and the might to stop genocide?"--Jon Schwarz, "Samantha Power Calls on Samantha Power to Resign Over Gaza," theintercept.com, December 15, 2023]