Thursday, August 18, 2005
Thaçi: We will meet Serbia in Brussels
Epoka e Re carries an interview with PDK leader Hashim Thaçi who says that it is impossible for Serbia to lose Kosovo as it never owned it in the first place and suggests that the best solution for Kosovo status resolution would be a referendum similar to the one held in East Timor. He says that Kosovo status will be defined within the Pristina – Washington – Brussels triangle and the will of Kosovo people will be the basis for these discussions. ‘Our aim, and it seems Serbia’s too, is membership of the EU and there is no need for federal duplications; I believe we will meet in Brussels in the future,’ said Thaçi.
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82 comments:
well said and this is reality.
only a stupid albo can say this about a country which borders have been internationally recognised for over 50 years, in which guess what KOSOVO was part of SERBIA, show me (besides when ur best frined hitler gave it to u) when was kosovo EVER albanian???? show me?
To the moron that posted above:
A country belongs to the people who live there. Kosova's population was, is and will be majority Albanian.
Have you ever heard of Reality Check?
You gremlin!
to the idiot who responded, then by that logic the serb republic belongs to the serbs, the krajina as well, yet albos supported fully (even went to fight) everything that was against serbs in these areas? why? how is it that your logic works for kosovo and not for other areas where serbs live in?? should i mention then that the greeks in albania "own" the land they live on as well?? nonsense. i mean how stupid did rigova look in front of the entire world at the milosevic trial when milosevic asked him if "according to the 1974 yugo constitution, what republic was kosovo part of" and he refused to answer, i mean how pathetic can u be? have u no shame?
we can post and waste all the time in the world discussing these issues.........but we are all losers if we fail to accept reality...........
reality is reality, and if i have to write it to inform you all, then you are all imbeciles..........
reality is that kosova is an international protectorate run by the united nations...........and that status talks will determine the future status....anyone who really believes that kosova will be going serbia's way is only 1. fooling themselves, or 2. been brainwashed....
hello hello helloooo......milosevic comes to power in the late 80's with the full 'democratic' support of his serbian kin......and then wait a minute, 10 years later serbia has been reduced to a nutshell and the subjects are still talking!!!....
what a pathetic excuse for a nomadic people...the bedoiuns have more to be proud of!
typical answer that doesnt even address what we were talking about, all of a sudden "we could spend all day talking about this, etc." typical double standard albo excuse, typical. fact is kosovo is STILL part of Serbia (i mean on a side note, don't u feel at all idiotic that u even have to call KOSOVO kosova??? i mean change one letter of a SERBIAN word??? haha i mean how pathetic r u?) milosevics subjects??? dude how much of a moron r u??? serbia a nutshell?? kosovo wont be able to do anything without serbias consent, yes nato drove the serbs out for u and the land is STILL part of SERBIA (look at any map) if anything the albos r the subjects of barbaric Muslim teachings which teach u to multipy like animals like ANIMALS and steal what was NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD ALBANIAN, NEVER. and for that reason the land is yours??? are you kidding me? all of europe knows what albos are known for: pimping out their women to make more money next to the heroin they sell. and yes how come "the land belongs to teh people who live there" works for the albos and not for the serbs in bosnia/croatia?? how? be honest and tell me thats not a double standard from your point of view?
I think there is no need to play the same gutter game as this chetnik by usuing similar racist terms to what he does, for example calling serbs 'bedouins'. You got something against bedouins?
His simple point is wroing and stupid and can be shown to be. "The Serbs" in Bosnia and Croatia were not a region, but an ethnic group spread all over. The reason 'Republika Srpska' can't have independence - actually its already got independence thanks for Dayton which gave nothing to Kosova - is that it is not a region where only or even majority Serbs lived, it is a region that has no meaning at all except for being the half of Bosnia where the Serbian army and Chetniks successfully drove out all the non-Serb population. The whole of east Bosnia was vast majority Muslim, the Posavina in the north was Muslim and Croat, even Banja Luka was only 54% Serb. It is not a matter of fucking serb self-dtermination in this little fascist state carved out of Bosnia at the cost of 150,000 lives, it is the self-dtermination of the million or so people who were forced out of it.
If ALL the serbs return to Kosova they will still onl;y be 10% of the population of Kosova, so they don't have any right to dictate to the Kosovar Albanian majority. If all the Muslims and Croats return to the bullshit construction called 'Republika Srpska' then by definition it will be nbo Serb republic because at elast half the populaiton wil be non-Serb. Belioeve in democracy don't you? So how do you ahve "Serb republic" if half the npopulation aren't serb and don't vote for Chetniks to run the place?
Krajina? Figure that Milsoeivc and Chetniks drove more Croats out of the one third of Croatia theys eized in 1991 than Tudjman did serbs when he retook it in 1995. Facts are facts, so work with them
If we start applying Serb "logic", Albanians would have to take Bronx, Southern Italy, Northern Greece, and much more. But we don't have too.
Because Serbia in the last century has constantly been known to elect genocidial regimes and wreak havoc among its neighbors, it's imperative that it is left alone to think over what it did.
Meet you in the united Europe!
Dear Serbs,
As for when was Kosova Albanian, hmmm how about it's 90% Albanian? Hitler was a good friend of the Serbs, we know how Juden Free Belgrade was, is that right my little Fritz from Sumadija?
Meet you in Brussels, and that's the end of it ;) I mean if you really want to get busy and accept that Europe is sick and tired of wars, hatered and wants to move on, so ...you jumping into the boat or you staying on that sinking ship?
ur admin guy keeps deleting my posts
hiteler a friend of serbs??? what? what was the bombing of belgrad in ww2? 12k dead, what about the 7k executed in kragujevac? hitler gave u kosovo in retunr for your alliance. LIES typical albo lies, dont hide the fact that you were pro nazi in ww2. as for the other post: a. bedouins? albo ur boy wrote that not me b. serb republic was never a region? unlike kosovo where u guys have multiplied like insects since the 30's bosnia was majority SERBIAN for the last 600 years. it was ur ustase/muslim alliance that killed off hundreds of thousands of serbs in ww2, serbs were the majority in bosnia up to 1961 but ur animal like
multiplying speaks for itself. c. 150,000 lives in bosnia? if u belive that then u also belove that there are WMD in iraq, fact is only 30k are confirmed dead in bosnia and half of those serbs (5k serb from srajevo killed in 146 camps). d. i mean what albo logic is this: u say that even if 10% of serbs came back to kosovo tehy would not have the right to rule 2M albos, i agree, just as u would then have to agree that 12% of the population of serbia (kosovo albos) do not have the right
to break the country apart. 300,000 serbs were kicked out of croatia while 20k croats were kicked out of serb held lands after the croats started kicking out serb military families in zagreb. should the serbs have waited around to have ww2 repeat itself for them? i think not. i would have NO problem for kosovo to get independence if the serbs in bosnia we granted that smae rite, unitll they are there will be war in our cursed part of the world. see you on the battlefield.
All i have to say is well said my friend, couldn't have put it better myself.
You are an asset to Serbia's future
Gremlin,
Stop the racist rant about the multiplying. Large natality is a sign of societies rebuilding themselves from wars and those going through hardships that risk their existence. (Americans call their post-WWII natality boom The Greatest Generation.)
It's also prevalent among rural societies. I love Slovenes. They advised the Serb government a long time ago how to solve the problem: build industry. Once you have the towns and schools and universities that come with it, you will get the negative population growth that has saddenly embraced Serbia today. I'm sorry, mine exploitation just doesn't do it. But Serbs were too afraid of an urbane, educated Albanian population so they ended up being outnumbered even after commiting wave after wave of ethnic cleansing like 1913, 1919, Rankovic era, massive migration of Milosevic era, etc.
My point is, you're losing either way. Hasta la vista in Brussels.
"multiplied like insects" my my i hear the ghosts of Goebbels, Himmler and Adolf...this is a typical fascist comment.
Btw, Nazis and Serbs, the result of this love was a Juden Free City called Belgrade, and 50.000 Jews fleeing to Kosova (then Albania). Now of course we were "allies" with the Germans but not with the Nazis, unlike Serbs who fought the Germans ;) and dealt with the Nazis.
They did bomb Belgrade, and then they realized, you guys have the same ideas...
Simly, Nazis are out of fashion, so move forward or become something that nations will take as an example in years to come (they already do but clean up your act, in other words).
hey you dumb asses,how bout stopping all this BS,and think about the future and stop blaming who did what..........grow up
nobody wants to admit that they guilty of anything ,wish that TITO was alive
serbs need a ass whipping,albanians need ENVER HOXHA back
Tito is the evil killer, whose hatred for the Serbs caused most of todays problems.
Albanians would be better served by Skenderbeg who was half Serbian (as his mother was Serbian)than by Enver Dictator or Rugova, Thaci etc....
One day Serbia, Albania, Macedonia etc.. will be part of the same country, the European Community. You will all become slaves together
serving as cannon fodder for the European Elite (in wars, cheap workers etc..).
No thank you very much, Albanians will never become slavs, since we're not.
But you seem eager to please the European elite as cannon fodder. Be my guest by all means.
I guess that's why they call you Slavs, which comes from the word Slave. And serbia was called servia not long ago, meaning you are both slaves (slavs) and servants (servians).
Tosi
Sweden
Now now Tosi, don't pass such statements, leave it to them.
"Tito is the evil killer, whose hatred for the Serbs caused most of todays problems."
Not the last time I checked ;)
Aye let's all meet in Brussels and have a jolly good European Union :)
"they bombed Belgrade and then they saw that you have the same ideals"??????? this goes down as one of the most idiotic things i have heard from albos. really. look at any source prior to the 90's, look at any book written by western, eastern, any source and see what was written about the albos being extrememly PRO NAZI. Belgrade was juden free true but it was run and occupied by Nazis as was the entire country, Hitler hated the serbs and bombed Belgrade for the Serbs refusal to side with the nazis like the croats/albos/hungarians/bulgarians did. read the interview with the head of the jewish community in kosovo (from 1999) that u kicked out and see what he says about the serbs, albos nato bombing etc.. as for the "insects" comments, you ALL know very VERY well that the only reason you did multiply like this is to outnumber the Serbs, that is a fact, that is something your fathers thought you, thats why 75% of u are yonger thatn 30 in kosovo, is it because as you say "Large natality is a sign of societies rebuilding themsleves from war", what wars?? you were given things in kosovo that your cousins in albania could only dream about, u had ur own schools in ur own language, doctors, roads and streets were paved for you while u did nothing and contributed NOTHING and on top of that u wanted to break the land away?? u are the ILIRI all of a sudden, please can someone please show me a source a text one sentance from prior to the 19th century (when the croats and serbs started to as well to claim this) where there is even a mention amongst albos that u are illiri, please show me. u built a society on lies and u look just as stupid doing so as Rigova did at the Milosevic trial, ALBOS you cant debate this topic when u are speaking with someone who actually knows the region. again i wish u the best and again i would have no problem for kosovo to gets independence if the same was given to the serbs in bosnia and croatia, right for self determination for all, what is wrong with that?
Ylber said:
At 11:58 AM, Anonymous, you said the following: fact is kosovo is STILL part of Serbia.
FACT: Kosovo has it's own Judiciary, Police, Parilament, President, Primeminister, Postal Code, Customs, Banking Code, Passports, Licence Plates... huh, gotta catch a breath, Airline, Phone Access Code, etc.
If Kosovo is still part of Serbia why do I have such a hard time finding a Serb flag, or a Serb police officer, or a Serb soldier, or a Serb Dinar? Why?
Also, why is there a border crossing at Merdare where when you come and go from Kosovo to Serbia, you have to present identification?
I mean hell, you could go from Kosovo to Albania and back without so much as an id card. Judging by that Kosovo is more part of Albania than Serbia. Oops, did I say ALBANIA?
Sorry,
Thaci: "We will meet Serbia in Brussels"
Ylber: "No we won't, because Serbia will never be excepted in the EU"
"you ALL know very VERY well that the only reason you did multiply like this is to outnumber the Serbs"
Damn you're racist. So we all got together and decided to shag like rabbits so we overthrow Serbia with children? This is nuts...
"see what was written about the albos being extrememly PRO NAZI"
Yeh and 50,000 extra people added to the Albanian Jewish population says what? Buddy, there are still Jews in Prishtina today. Of course they consider themselves Albanian Jewish, but they're there. How many are there in Serbia? Nazis had it easy to kill off Jewish people in Belgrade because Serbs helped a lot, in fact they organized quite a bit of logistics.
Albanian and Nazi don't go together, we're too close to the Jewish nation to be Nazis:
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/11118/edition_id/213/format/html/displaystory.html
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/2964_52.asp
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/albania/
http://www.sefarad.org/publication/lm/050/html/page16.html
http://www.jdc.org/p_ee_alb_ps_vulnerable_1.html
A citation from the Anti-Defamation League:
"During the Holocaust, Albanian Jews were shielded from the Nazis by their Muslim countrymen and one hundred percent survived. Speaking on behalf of the Albanian people was Albanian Ambassador to the United Nations, Pellumb Kulla."
"In 1938, there were 15 Jewish families in Valona. During the Nazi occupation the Albanians hid and saved not only all the Albanian Jews but also several hundreds of Jewish refugees who found haven in Albania.
In 1991 almost all Albanian Jews settled in Israel."
Here Serbs learn something, take an example from some of your priests who have not dipped their hangs in blood:
http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=1452
And please avoid anti-Semitism like:
http://compuserb.com/ <- Serb site very anti Jewish
And some mention of Chetniks and Ustashe in connection with Hitler:
http://www.holocaust-history.org/fuehrer-myth/chapter-59.shtml
Description of Jewish life in Belgrade (now gone):
http://www.rex.b92.net/rexold/jewsdet.htm
Neo-Nazi in Serbia:
http://www1.ca.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/adl/skinhead-international/skins-yugoslavia.html
Anti Semitism in Serbia today:
http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/anti-semitism_global_incidents_2005.asp#serbia
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr3/bcr3_200503_544_6_eng.txt
1998 - http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/updates/i99001.html
Anti Semitism in Serbia then:
http://www.edwardvictor.com/antisemitism_serbia_main.htm
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Visualizing_Otherness_Set_1/Visualizing_Otherness_II__The_/visualizing_otherness_ii__the_.html
And now for some ridicilous Serb propaganda on the issue:
http://www.kosovo.com/news/archive/ticker/2005/February_10/46.html
The head of the Jewish Leader left cause he was too connected with the Serbian system:
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/ceda.htm
This is unfortunate, yet futile to use as an argument that Albanians are Nazi.
Serbs, I strongly suggest you get some ice cream and enjoy life, and try typing Albanian and anti semitism in google and see how many results you find that are NOT Serb or pro-Serb and that actualy make sense. I wish you a very pleasant long weekend ;)
Saying Muslim Albanian or Catholic Albanian or Jewish Albanian makes no sense. We're simply Albanian. What you personaly feel as a path to divinity/enlightenment is your choice, and this wisdom has been always passed from generation to generation among the Albanian families.
Remember Srebrenica — a.k.a. ‘So what if we globalized al Qaeda!’
By Julia Gorin
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | Recently, "Hannity & Colmes", of the usually less-easily-fooled-than-other-networks Fox News Channel, treated us masses to a "genocide" video that's been handed over to the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Pouring even more fuel onto the carefully cultivated and long accepted caricature of the evil Serb, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes were of one mind when Hannity called the actions of the Bosnian Serb soldiers in the video "pure evil" and "evil incarnate."
Without being wrong about evil on display in the video, the network had been had. The circulation of, and the outrage surrounding, this tape — especially high right now in guilt-ridden Serbia itself — is a sign that things have gone from bad to worse in the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic. Especially in anticipation of today's 10-year commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre, the Hague desperately required a new wave of shocking images to win in the court of public emotion the case that's being lost in the court of foregone conclusion.
Tsk, tsk, Fox. Somebody hasn't been following the Milosevic trial. But since that somebody will look silly only to the six or so Americans who have been following it, there's no risk in spouting the tribunal's PR. PR because this trial is supposed to justify the new International Criminal Court's (ICC) existence and convince the Bush administration of its utility, not its futility.
There's a reason for the conspicuous three-year near silence by all major media on this oh-so-momentous Second Nuremberg, as it was billed — a silence broken only one or two days a year, when they're finally able to offer up a damning piece of evidence that will perpetuate the version of events we've been sold from the beginning.
What even the most sporadic trial observer would know is that the Court has spent the last three years discovering what many of us knew in 1999: Milosevic was "a thug whose brutality played into the terrorists' hands," as former Boston Herald and JWR columnist Don Feder has repeatedly explained, but he was no exterminator. Working backwards to make the crime fit the punishment, however, the ICTY has had to redefine "genocide." Thus, Milosevic faces charges of genocide even while the extermination of more than 100,000 black Muslim and Christian men, women and children by Arabic Muslims in Sudan still hasn't been granted the label. But then, the exterminators there aren't white Christian Serbs.
The 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 7,000 Muslim males was inexcusable, but it wasn't genocide. If you would, imagine a scenario in which a single event is manipulated to lend credence to an ocean of lies. Imagine Srebrenica. Here it is in April 1993, from someone who was there. Haris Nezirovic was a Bosnian journalist writing for the weekly "Slobodna Bosna" ("Free Bosnia"), and this for the UK Independent:
"The UN hopes to evacuate 15,000 people over the next few days. The Muslim command defending Srebrenica claims the UN operations amount to complicity in Serbian 'ethnic cleansing'. Privately, the commanders add, they believe that the Serbs will not launch an all-out attack as long as refugees are there. More importantly, they say that without the civilians the defense of the town would crumble. They believe that Muslim fighters are better motivated when their families are there behind them. …
"What this means in practice is thousands of civilians will have to remain in full range of Serbian guns: children with scabies who cannot be treated because of a lack of medicine; the elderly who are so weak from hunger that they cannot fight for air-dropped scraps of food; and mothers who feed their babies with warm water because nothing else is available. …
"When the first UN trucks came last month, they were supposed to evacuate only a few wounded, but hundreds rushed on board. When the next convoy came on 28 March, thousands stampeded towards the vehicles.
"'We'll screw up those convoys,' said Naser Oric, the local Muslim commander....When another convoy came on 30 March, masses of civilians surrounded the trucks but were kept back by the commanders' personal guard — a group of 30 foul-mouthed soldiers suspected of robberies and other crimes. During the night, the guards accepted bribes in German marks to let people on board. Many refugees on the UN list for evacuation were beaten up. Witnesses said the deputy commander slapped and kicked women and pushed children from the trucks.
"On 4 April the local [Muslim] police used fire hoses to keep people away from the UN vehicles. Jets of water knocked down anyone who approached. Soldiers climbed on trucks and fired into the air. …
"Ever more frequently, you hear civilians say, 'Our soldiers are worse than Chetniks, the Serbs.'"
Sarajevo, meanwhile, "never seemed very interested in the fate of…Srebrenica," says Radio Netherlands editor James Kliphuis, "except to list it as [a] supreme example of the outside world's lack of interest in what happened to the Bosnian Muslims." A statement entered into testimony at the ICTY in Feb. 2004, by UN Commander in Bosnia from 1992 to 1993 Philippe Morillon, read: "The aim of the [Bosnian] presidency from the very outset was to ensure the intervention of the international forces for their own benefit, and this is one of the reasons why they never were inclined to engage in talks."
That presidency refers to Alijah Izetbegovic, who was being investigated by the ICTY for war crimes (which the Court revealed only upon his death in 2003), and who was part of the Nazi SS Handzar division during WWII, which butchered Serbs and the ethnic minorities of Yugoslavia. He also authored "The Islamic Declaration", in which he stated: "The shortest definition of the Islamic order defines it as unity of faith and law, upbringing and force, ideals and interests, spiritual community and State…a Muslim generally does not exist as an individual… […] There can be no peace or coexistence between 'the Islamic faith' and non-Islamic social and political institutions."
Pursuant to Izetbegovic's end game, writes Michigan-based Balkans writer and historian Carl Savich, "the Bosnian Muslim faction engaged in propaganda, staged massacres, killed Bosnian Muslim civilians to garner sympathy and used civilian hostages or shields to further its propaganda of victimization." For example, the 1992 Breadline Massacre and the Markale Marketplace bombings of 1994 and 95 resulted in U.S. economic sanctions and a bombing campaign, respectively, of the Serbs — despite European headlines like the Sunday Times of London's "Serbs 'not guilty' of massacre, Experts warned US that mortar was Bosnian" (Oct. 1, 1995).
The widely cited 2002 official Dutch report on Srebrenica seems to confirm the use of such tactics. As BBC.com reported that year, the Dutch Government "pins part of the blame on the Bosnian Muslims themselves, saying the Bosnian army had provoked attacks."
Srebrenica Muslims "ravaged and ransacked neighbouring ethnic Serb villages," continues Kliphuis, "killing and maiming the residents, who were often too old to offer any resistance….The Serb villages were then set on fire." After his role in killing up to 2,000 Serbs, Oric himself fled Srebrenica just before it was stormed by the Bosnian Serb army.
The Serbs evacuated women, children and elderly before the males were killed without being distinguished as civilians or POWs, making Srebrenica a massacre, something the Serbs admit.
By deeming Srebrenica a genocide, however, the court at the Hague has expanded the term's legal definition, so that now, not only do 7,000 bodies qualify (regardless of how many belong to armed fighters), not only does there not have to be genocidal intent, but it doesn't even have to involve eliminating the child-bearing sex or the offspring of the ethnic group in question. As a BBC.com report concluded, "the definition may now be applied to conflict in a small community, where local atrocities can be labeled as genocide."
The 2002 Dutch report, meanwhile, goes on to state that no evidence "suggests the involvement of the Serbian authorities in Belgrade," with principal responsibility attributed to fugitive Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic.
Which brings us back to the Milosevic trial. Like a Moliere farce, within months of 19 Muslim hijackers (some of whom fought in Bosnia) attacking the United States, the trial of Slobodan Milosevic began at the Hague in the Netherlands, today a country where artists and members of parliament are hunted down for practicing freedom of speech (e.g. Theo van Gogh, Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali) — by the co-religionists of those on whose behalf Milosevic is being prosecuted.
If one wonders why, 364 days out of 365, our media organs send us no word from this "Nuremberg II" — incidentally a laughing stock among legal experts (deputy prosecutor Geoffrey Nice had to reprimand reporters for knocking the prosecution's performance and flimsy evidence) — the following trial developments, easily gleaned from a casual perusal of wire copy or European press, may help explain:
The first week of the trial in particular was marked by one embarrassment after another for the prosecution, starting with the testimony of Ratomir Tanic, who was supposedly present when the genocide order was given but who under cross-examination couldn't even say where in the presidential palace Milosevic's office was located — and eventually turned out to have been paid by British intelligence to testify. Then there was a witness named Halit Barani, whom Milosevic asked if he knew that KLA commanders were to assassinate all Albanians loyal to Serbia. Barani revealed that he was sympathetic to the KLA, had met with numerous commanders, then indicted the entire Albanian population of Kosovo: "The KLA was born from within the people, to protect parents, brothers and sisters."
A 2002 BBC wire report related Albanian "farmer" Agim Zeqiri's testimonythat Serb forces burned down his village and killed members of his family. Upon cross-examination, when the proceedings brought to light that his village of Celina was harboring and supporting Albanian rebels, Zeqiri claimed to feel too ill to continue, but "did acknowledge that the KLA had used the village as a source of provisions and that at least 300 members of the KLA were based there."
Another witness, Fehim Elshani, was actually rebuked by the now deceased presiding judge Richard May, when he refused to answer Milosevic's questions at all. In the end, he testified that he did not know of any KLA crimes, while admitting that his son was KLA. Elshani, Zeqiri and another "farmer", Halil Morina — who claimed to have no knowledge of any KLA presence in his village of Landovica (where after the war a monument was erected to the town's fallen KLA soldiers) — frequently avoided eye contact with Milosevic as he cross-examined them.
The three-judge panel actually ruled in favor of Milosevic's objections to admitting testimony from chief Kosovo war crimes investigator Kevin Curtis because of the irrelevance of "evidence" composed entirely of "repeating stories he had heard from others," the AP reported. When the prosecution's intelligence analyst Stephen Spargo detailed through maps the routes taken by 800,000 or so deported or fleeing Albanians in 1999, Milosevic asked whether he knew that 100,000 Serbs left Kosovo along with everyone else once NATO started bombing. Spargo answered that he "hadn't been assigned to document Serb displacements." Naturally. In Kosovo, Milosevic continued, since there were 10 Albanians to every Serb, proportionally speaking, more Serbs than Albanians fled Kosovo — casting doubt on the forced-deportation argument that the Clinton government helped craft for our consumption.
Milosevic scored points early on when he showed the court an Albanian map depicting Greater Albania, which included southeast Montenegro, southern Serbia, western Macedonia and parts of northern Greece in addition to Kosovo — a long-harbored dream of many in Albania and Kosovo. It goes without saying that the American people were not shown this map of Greater Albania as they were being sold a story of Milosevic's push for a "Greater Serbia."
Meanwhile, the forensic evidence at the Racak "massacre", our final-straw pretext for bombing our historical ally whose people saved 500 downed U.S. pilots in WWII, disproved that a massacre had taken place. And virtually every Albanian-rumored "mass grave" in Kosovo turned up empty, as Wall St. Journal's Daniel Pearl was finding a few years before Muslims decapitated him in Pakistan.
The first Western leader to appear at the trial was Lord Paddy Ashdown, former head of England's Liberal Democrat Party and current UN High Representative in Bosnia. Ashdown was also the first witness to admit that the KLA fighters were a terrorist organization which Yugoslavia was fighting.
Eastern European and Balkan affairs writer Neil Clark summed up the trial in a UK Guardian article of Feb. 2004 (the month the prosecution wrapped up its two-year case): "Not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove Milosevic's personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, the nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into question."
Without a smoking gun linking Milosevic to crimes in Kosovo (widely anticipated to be an easier indictment to make stick than Croatia and Bosnia, where local Serbian leaders were in command), the Tribunal gave prosecutors the green light to tack on charges related to Croatia and Bosnia. It was a move that chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte initially said the prosecution wouldn't pursue, given that that conflict was closed with the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which the Clinton administration hosted and for which the administration hailed Milosevic as a force for peace and stability in the Balkans.
Going ahead with the Bosnia charges, then, the prosecution brought in the UN Commander Philipe Morillon in February of last year, his testimony meant to tie Milosevic to Srebrenica. Giving instead unwelcome testimony that Milosevic had headed off an initial attack on Srebrenica's Muslims, Morillon said he had asked Milosevic in 1993 to intervene with the Bosnian Serb government to prevent a potential massacre in Srebrenica, which Milosevic did, convincing the Serbs to halt their offensive so the UN could set up a safe haven. Morillon, whose residence was shelled by Bosnian Muslims during the war, was the one to set up the safe haven — but he failed to demilitarize it, enabling the Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric to turn the enclave into his military base of operations, from which he launched attacks on Serbs.
Morillon saw the exhumed remains of tortured, mutilated, and executed Bosnian Serb civilians and soldiers, and testified that Oric's forces engaged in "attacks during Orthodox holidays [including Christmas Eve] and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary…."
If there was a clear guilty party, and a clear victim on behalf of whom support, and later war, by the United States was warranted, logic demands an explanation as to how it can be that more than a year into the proceedings, the Court haltingly, quietly decided it had to issue warrants for, and try, Croats and Albanian and Bosnian Muslims for war crimes as well, making the "victims" guilty too. Nasir Oric, who didn't take prisoners, was ultimately indicted — though his indictment was not made public. There are videotapes of Oric's atrocities; as well, images of Albanians and mujahedeen in Bosnia victoriously holding up or stepping on disembodied Serb heads are viewable.
And yet even in those once- or twice-a-year "updates" on the Hague Tribunal by our major newspapers and networks, the only graphic details we're permitted to know of and judge are of Serbian crimes. Tapes showing the slaughter of Serbs by Bosnians and Albanians have been conspicuously absent from our airwaves, leaving the American public with only Serb crimes to speak of. It's a silence that should be deafening to any American patriot.
When, for the sake of context, mentioning Bosnian Muslim acts becomes unavoidable, such acts are referred to as "attacks", but not "slaughters", "massacres", "atrocities", "crimes against humanity" or, perish the thought, "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing", even if in this case intent was present. Such inflammatory language, after all, is reserved for Serbs. "Revenge killings", the term that continues to be used to describe Albanian murders of Serbs in Kosovo (including octogenarians) and that could easily describe what the Serbs did in Srebrenica, remains the exclusive privilege of the Balkans' Muslims.
Americans don't hear about the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Srebrenica, just as they didn't hear much about the ethnic cleansing by Croatia of up to half a million Serbs. Anyone looking for the truth about the Balkans is labeled "pro-Serb", "anti-Muslim", or a victim of "Serbian propaganda" (try and find that in this country). Meanwhile, even the truest Bosnian Muslim victims, genuinely "believing themselves the virtuous victims of 'aggression' and 'genocide'," writes Washington-based blogger and Balkans observer Nebojsa Malic, are "blinded to Izetbegovic's hateful ideology of domination that tore Bosnia apart."
Serbia has been experiencing a uniquely weird national phenomenon of late. Tired of being a pariah nation, whether that status is deserved or not, the Serbs are putting themselves through a sort of self-punishment. Wanting to be allowed back into the international fold of "decent" nations, they desperately want their government to just fall in line with any Western demands, and they want Milosevic convicted, so they can finally put the 90s behind them. To that end, many Serbs alternate between practicing self-censorship (it's politically incorrect in Serbia today to defend or explain Serb actions of the 90s), and self-deception, wherein Serbs manage to convince themselves that the world is right and they were the bad guy of the 1990s, themselves chiefly to blame for the civil wars that destroyed their country. In other words, the Serbs are betraying their own history. Perhaps the first intimation that this would come was a NY Times op-ed in 1999, written by a Serbian woman who said that although the numbers in Kosovo aren't panning out, even if a single Albanian was killed excessively, her country deserved what it got.
It's gotten so that in January 2004, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) had to issue a statement disputing a self-blaming Belgrade report on mass graves in Kosovo: "Some media reports have quoted a senior Belgrade official as stating that there are 198 mass graves in Kosovo. The Office on Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) would like to categorically state that no evidence has been provided to OMPF regarding existence of any mass graves in Kosovo. Such unfounded statements reflect a lack of sensitivity to an issue that is extremely emotive and causes considerable anguish for all affected families."
In the meantime, the authentic mass graves that are being found contain Serb bodies — presumed to be those of civilians missing since 1998 and thought to be kidnapped by the KLA, as BBC.com reported in March. "If confirmed, this would be the second such find in a month after 24 bodies were found in a cave" in February, with wrecked cars thrown on top of them, according to local media.
The "Hannity & Colmes" hosts said that it seemed whoever the Serb was that offered up the Srebrenica tape to the Court apparently had a "bout of conscience." But if one knows anything about the way things work in the Balkans today, the more likely story is that someone was just looking to get paid (or to get amnesty and a new life), and the easiest way to do that today is to help push the old story.
Last December, when some wayward media in Serbia published graphic photos of crimes committed by Ramush Haradinaj — who recently stepped down as Kosovo's prime minister to face war crimes charges — the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other members of the international community were critical, saying that "by publishing such vivid reminders of crimes committed against the Serbs, the media was guilty for perpetrating hate and intolerance, whereas its task is to look ahead towards peace and reconciliation," reports Serge Trifkovic, author of "The Sword of the Prophet" and director of the Institute for International Affairs in Rockford, IL.
Offering a glimpse into the Serbian state of mind, along with a hope for reconciliation with America, is a letter from Aleksandar Kis, of Vrsac, Serbia:
"In my country today it is almost illegal to say that we are right. Sometimes when I wake up, I believe that I live in Albania or Croatia. Even our own media are anti-Serbic! Only few media are free to comment anything, others are under democratic censorship. ...
"You see, there are less than 2-3% Serbs in Kosovo comparing to pre-war numbers, but there are 100,000 Albanians in Belgrade. In my hometown, I go to Albanian-held bakery. ...
"In Serbia, we have few free media, of which one is 'Srpski Nacional' newspaper that was supporting Bush campaign last year, calling for Serbs to influence their relatives in USA to vote for Bush. This paper is trying to tell Serbs that USA is no longer foe and aggressor. [I hope] to achieve that Star Spangled Banner isn't a symbol of oppression for us anymore…We never considered USA as evil. Strangely for Europeans, we more liked Nixon and Reagan than Kennedy. I want to say, we considered USA a country 'across the lake'. We don't understand what happened with our relationship."
Trying to improve that relationship, Serbia has offered a battalion to assist U.S. troops in Kabul. But who will assist Serbia with the terror haven that is Kosovo? Certainly not those pushing for the province's independence, something that would be a key nail in the free world's coffin once peacekeepers, now acting as our eyes and ears there, have to leave.
As the world adeptly looks the other way, not only is cultural genocide and defamation taking place and history being perverted, but the international meddlers are capitalizing precisely on the public's disinterest in the Balkans, officially establishing an Islamic gangster state in Europe as our exit strategy.
The meddlers include the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Crisis Group, a number of Congressmen, most of the Clinton-era State Department — now working for quasi-governmental institutes — and Wesley Clark. Clark warned in a February Wall St. Journal op-ed that "a violent collision may occur by year-end" if we don't give the Albanians what they want — and this four-star general advocated doing just that. After all, a violent collision would shine an unwelcome spotlight on his "successful war", as he spent all of election year billing it in contrast to Iraq. So Clark wants to close the book as soon as possible on Kosovo, where there were four more explosions over the July 4th weekend — ongoing attempts to persuade the international community that only one final status is acceptable: complete independence, without border compromises. Besides, he already promised his erstwhile campaign donors, the National Albanian American Council, that "Kosova" would be independent, using the purposeful Albanian mispronunciation of the Serbian word as his old boss had. In the Journal piece, Clark even suggested pummeling the Serbs again if Belgrade got in the way (since it's easier than fighting Albanian terrorists).
So that Americans don't start connecting any obvious dots, two things must remain obscured as the Milosevic verdict nears and as the push for Kosovo independence goes full throttle this year: the al Qaeda connection to Bosnia and Kosovo, and the ever-present atrocities against Serbs.
The broadcasting of the Srebrenica video was actually an opening salvo in this campaign, whether the Fox News Channel is aware of it or not (the hosts certainly are not, but if the network is, it's an ominous sign). The channel that's supposed to function as a deprogrammer for the public's media-produced minds has itself become part of the machine. A couple weeks ago, Fox News announced Wesley Clark, whose Albanian friends are promising war against NATO and UN forces if there is no independence for Kosovo, as its newest military and foreign affairs analyst. (On July 19th, PBS will be broadcasting a Dutch documentary about one Albanian-America making precisely this promise: Brooklyn roofer Florin Krasniqi, who has been smuggling arms into Kosovo for years and helping resettle KLA fighters here.)
Understandably, for Sean Hannity the broadcast offered a rare chance to throw a bone to the Muslim world — precisely the purpose the Serbs have been serving for the rest of the globe all along. (Because somehow, even while atrocities across the planet are indeed brought to us by Muslims, in a bizarre twist from the trend, we found a singular, exceptional case not of Muslims waging a jihad, but of secular Europe's religious misfits doing so, the Orthodox Christian Serbs.)
Serbs are the universal punching bag; there are no repercussions for anything one might say about them. Initial reports in 1993 even attributed the World Trade Center bombing to "Serbian terrorists." Serb concerns are routinely trivialized, their perspectives dismissed as whining or self-serving. When, in the midst of our 1999 offensive on Yugoslavia, a friend calling in to a talk radio show dared imply that Serbs weren't responsible for the Markale Marketplace bombings, she was instantly reprimanded by the incredulous hostess: "Are you defending the SERBS?!"
"Serbs perfectly meet all the PC-villain criteria," explains political satirist Oleg Atabashian, who runs PeoplesCube.com (the site will be operational again tomorrow). "They're another white, Christian, European minority supposedly guilty of oppressing the most popular 'minority', the Muslims. A whole new nation of Serbs is getting sacrificed right before our eyes on the altar of the self-hating cult that western society has become."
The Serbs have been "targeted by propaganda of unprecedented proportions accusing them of Nazi-like evil," writes Malic (recall former CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour showing us a funeral she said was for two Muslim babies killed by a Serb sniper but who turned out to be Serbian babies killed by a Muslim sniper). If there has been hesitation from Serbian authorities, whether in handing over war criminals or officially admitting that Srebrenica was a massacre, it's because they are "rightly afraid it would be considered an admission of the fabrications as well," Malic explains. He is echoed by Trifkovic: "Serbia needs to come to terms with all that came to pass under Milosevic, but not at the cost of losing its soul."
With the current media blitz surrounding the Srebrenica video, which was seized on by every major news organization and news site, there is a renewed rehashing of Serb wickedness, its pitch highest in Serbia itself where, Mr. Kis reports, all media are pointing an accusing finger at Milosevic, the country and the Serbian people in general. One law professor on national TV said the execution showed the "collective guilt" of the Serbian people. No connections are made about the disparity that while Muslims returning to the now Serb-dominated Srebrenica do so without incident or danger, Serbs daring to return to Kosovo face pogroms (which reached a crescendo in March of last year).
As the July 11th mark has neared, we've seen a sensational flurry of Serb vilification — again. On July 4th, the New York Times ran a Srebrenica article that devoted a single paragraph to the trial of Muslim forces at Srebrenica. To corral any potentially wayward readers, the writer paraphrased the prosecution's take that "while war crimes were committed by Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the wars, evidence is overwhelming that most were committed by Serbs." Indeed, that was the only evidence being sought.
In contrast to the current anti-Serb orgy, we haven't heard much about all the Bosnian charities being monitored or raided for funding terrorism, or about the Bosnian who was one of the masterminds behind the Madrid bombing, or about the six Algerian-born Bosnian citizens held at Guantanamo for planning to blow up the American and British embassies in Sarajevo (NY Times, 10/21/04), or about Bosnia issuing passports to Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has operated camps and WMD factories throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. Nor will we hear that the terrorists who carried out a spate of suicide attacks in Iraq last August, including one at the UN headquarters that killed 22, were trained in Bosnia, or that al Qaeda's top Balkans operative, al-Zawahiri's brother Mohammed, had a high position in the KLA. We'll never know that Bosnia today is the "one-stop shop close to Europe" for all the terrorism needs — weapons, money, documents — of Chechen and Afghani fighters passing through Europe before heading to Iraq. Little wonder, then, that when SFOR (the UN Stabilization Force in Bosnia) intercepts weapons shipments to Iraq, we don't hear about that either.
Three weeks into our 78-day bombing of Belgrade, an Indian UN commander in Bosnia, General Satish Nambiar, gave a speech in New Delhi saying, "Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only counter-productive but also dishonest. According to my experience, all sides were guilty but only the Serbs would admit that they were no angels, while the others would insist that they were. With 28,000 forces under me and with constant contacts with UNHCR and the International Red Cross officials, we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres on all sides."
Yet when former Kosovo Verification Mission observer Roland Keith testified earlier this year that he had seen no evidence of genocide in Kosovo, Canada's New Democratic Party forced him to withdraw his candidacy in British Columbia's provincial elections.
Starting with the elder President Bush and escalating under Clinton, we consistently abetted nationalism and xenophobia in the Balkans, and today our media and government continue trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. With the decision on Kosovo's status looming, the administration of George W. Bush has an opportunity to right a historic wrong and chart a straight course in the Balkans, one that will finally be in line with his defining vision, the War on Terror.
Great nations admit their mistakes. They don't reinforce them. But in the past weeks, as this country has fallen way short of its potential for greatness and Americans have been treated to a rare, genuine propaganda campaign reinforcing our Balkans mischief, it is up to the American people to demand that the record be set straight.
If a commission was set up to determine whether a presidential administration did or didn't do all it could to prevent kamikaze attacks on 9/11, good G-d, what of an administration that committed the might of the U.S. Air Force to bomb Europe for a legacy beyond sexual harassment — lying about genocide to achieve it?
Anyone looking for evidence of a "treasonous war", of being "misled into war", "rushed to war" or being "lied to", look no farther than 1999. Recovered at an Afghanistan al Qaeda training camp was an Albanian Kosovar's application reading, "I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb and American forces. ...I recommend (suicide) operations against (amusement) parks like Disney." If the protests reserved for a Republican war had also been mounted against the Democrats' war in Kosovo, had we known our friends from our enemies and not allowed the Balkans to become a terror gateway into the Western world, it's just possible we may never have had 9/11.
It was Lee Hamilton, the man who would become co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, whom President-elect Bill Clinton patted on the shoulder in 1992 and assured, "I've been traveling around our country for a year and no one cares about foreign policy other than about six journalists."
Hamilton responded by reminding Clinton that the last two presidents had built their legacies on foreign policy. It would appear that ultimately, President Clinton fell back on Hamilton's suggestion.
Testifying at the Milosevic trial at the Hague last September, former policy analyst James Jatras, who worked for the Senate Republican Policy Committee from 1985 to 2000, quoted the 9/11 Commission's finding that it was in 1990s Bosnia that the "groundwork for a true terrorist network was being laid." That network is today known as al Qaeda.
The Balkans were the early, key prize that Iran and Osama bin Laden sought as a terror corridor to the West. We delivered it to them. Why?
Senator Hamilton, your commission's work is unfinished.
Washington Times 5/4/99
KLA rebels train in terrorist camps
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden -- who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.
The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO's 41-day bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports.
The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists -- members of the Mujahideen --as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight.
Known to its countrymen as the Ushtria Clirimatare e Kosoves, the KLA has as many as 30,000 members, a number reportedly on the rise as a result of NATO's continuing bombing campaign. The group's leadership, including Agim Ceku, a former Croatian army brigadier general, has rapidly become a political and military force in the Balkans.
The intelligence reports document what is described as a "link" between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi millionaire, and the KLA --including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA.
Many border crossings into Kosovo by "foreign fighters" also have been documented and include veterans of the militant group Islamic Jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Many of the crossings originated in neighboring Albania and, according to the reports, included parties of up to 50 men.
Jane's International Defense Review, a highly respected British Journal, reported in February that documents found last year on the body of a KLA member showed that he had escorted several volunteers into Kosovo, including more than a dozen Saudi Arabians. Each volunteer carried a passport identifying him as a Macedonian Albanian.
Bin Laden and his military commander, Mohammed Atef, were named in a federal indictment handed up in November in New York for the simultaneous explosions Aug. 7 at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The indictment accused the two men of directing the attacks, which injured more than 5,000 people.
The indictment said bin Laden, working through al-Qaeda, forged alliances with government officials in Iran, the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and an Iranian terrorist organization known as Hezbollah. He was indicted earlier this year by a federal grand jury in New York for his suspected terrorist activities.
The al-Qaeda is believed to have targeted U.S. embassies and American soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia and Somalia. The organization also is accused of housing and training terrorists, and of raising money to support their causes.
The State Department, along with other federal agencies, offered a $5 million reward last year for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the two men. Mr. Clinton ordered a retaliatory attack on training bases controlled by bin Laden in Afghanistan and a chemical factory near Khartoum, Sudan, after the bombings.
Last year, while State Department officials labeled the KLA a terrorist organization, saying it bankrolled its operations with proceeds from the heroin trade and from loans from known terrorists like bin Laden, the department listed the group as an "insurgency" organization in its official reports. The officials charged that the KLA used terrorist tactics to assault Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians in a campaign to achieve independence.
The KLA's involvement in drug smuggling as a means of raising funds for weapons is long-standing. Intelligence documents show it has aligned itself with an extensive organized crime network in Albania that smuggles heroin to buyers throughout Western Europe and the United States. Drug agents in five countries believe the cartel is one of the most powerful heroin smuggling organizations in the world.
The documents show heroin and some cocaine is moved over land and sea from Turkey through Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere. The circuit has become known as the "Balkan Route."
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a recent report that drug smuggling organizations composed of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were considered "second only to Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan Route."
Greek Interpol representatives have called Kosovo's ethnic Albanians "the primary sources of supply for cocaine and heroin in that country."
France's Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs said the KLA was a key player in the rapidly expanding drugs-for-arms business and helped transport $2 billion in drugs a year into Western Europe.
German drug agents said $1.5 billion in drug profits is laundered annually by Kosovo smugglers, through as many as 200 private banks or currency-exchange offices.
Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that drug sales could have netted the KLA profits in the "high tens of millions of dollars." It said the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with the aid of drug money, along with donations from Albanians in Western Europe and the United States.
Why were the albanians so quiet now. Did they not know this ??
They are like the Serbians were 15 years ago, behind the curtain with a lot of bullshit from their media and politicians that they will be independent etc. My God, they have a lot to learn.....
Gus, London
All I can say Gus is that their profit margin is ridiculously low. I wouldn't work for that kind of money, and neither would you.
As for the other crap, Washington Times is a right wing paper who had nothing against Albanians but a lot against Clinton. That's how they came with all the ideas about Al Qaeda, drugs, etc. right at the time of the war.
By the way Guss, Albanian mafia also brings prostitutes into London and other European capitals. They call that human trafficking but I didn't see the author complain about that.
Dear Gus, we've learned, we avoided the mistakes and didn't cause the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. Serbs are in the middle ages...they have proven it with actions, actions that have been repeated in the same patterns and means for the past 15 years.
I love articles written by Julia Groin, they are so Saturnain sometimes, out of this place. Anyway you can keep denying all the crimes as if you did them yourself (??)
Either way, we will see you in Brussels too Gus.
P.S. mafia is mafia lads, be it Albanian or Russian or Chinese, but a fact remains, 2 milion Albanians have never agreed to fall under Serb terror.
This is not about crime as that is taken care of by police and justice, which I can say we are doing a great job at building, and Europe should at least be honest enough and accepting enough and fair enough to allow us for the first time ever to remain outside of the reach of Serb terrorism and build a country that you too, as a Londoner, will enjoy one day.
Do you want peace and a prosperous future or would you rather see desctruction and suffering? Kosova will become independent and it will be good for both Albanians and Serbs.
Do note however that every Serb here speaks of hate and war and how Serbs will "wipe out" the Albanians who "multiply". It is clear where the seed of racism lies.
I would like also let you know into a little secret. All this talk about drug money...hehe, lads weapns came from Central European countries, German speaking one, and certainly not financed by drug money ;) they know very well who they bombed...
Shallom haver..
Ylber Burija said:
Read this you idiot:
The Jews, the Serbs, and the Truth
By Stephen Schwartz
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 21, 2005
On March 16, 2005, FrontPageMagazine.com published an article titled “A Jewish Albatross: The Serbs,” by Julia Gorin. The text included a number of factual inaccuracies and allegations, and has been interpreted by some American Jewish leaders as a serious impeachment of their moral judgment regarding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.
As a journalist and author engaged with Balkan Jewish history and social issues for almost 30 years, I do not think anybody could be more aware than myself of the sensitivities involved in assessing the relations between Jews, Serbs, and the other Balkan and South Slavic peoples. My own book, Sarajevo Rose, on Jewish-Muslim relations in the Western Balkans, has just been published. While it is a daunting task, it is nonetheless worthwhile, in my view, to address the factual errors in Ms. Gorin’s contribution.
Ms. Gorin begins by inferring that violence by Kosovar Albanians may be described as “terrorism by Muslim militants.” There are not now and never have been, in recent times, “Muslim militants” in Kosovo, aside from a handful of individuals and some Saudi and other Gulf Arab-state cells operating through relief agencies. Kosovar Albanians include a large Catholic minority, who are no less nationalist in their sentiments than Muslims. The three armed groups involved in the war against Serbia – the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA-UCK), the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo (FARK) and the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo (LKCK) all included Catholics as well as Muslims in positions of command and other authority. None was organized on an Islamist basis. The most famous Albanian of modern times was Mother Teresa. Her biographer, a personal friend of mine, is an Albanian Catholic priest, Don Lush Gjergji, who lives in a mixed Albanian-Serb town in Kosovo, called Vitia. There are Catholic parishes all over Kosovo.
The above-noted statement by Ms. Gorin is further elaborated with the claim that Serbs “will lose Kosovo to Albanian Muslims, whose fates are now entirely in the hands of the international Islamist factions with whom they, and we, cast their lot.” While Serbia may lose Kosovo, it will not be to Muslims alone, but to an overwhelming Albanian majority of Muslims and Catholics. No “international Islamist factions” are present in Kosovo or presently involved with Kosovo. No “international Islamist factions” were involved in the Kosovo war. Even the previously-mentioned Saudis and other Gulf Arab subjects, operating through relief agencies, were only active outside Kosovo, in Albania and Macedonia, until fighting in Kosovo ended. Their representatives in Kosovo have been investigated, arrested, and expelled, or their activities otherwise seriously limited. Kosovar Muslims are extremely anti-Islamist and pro-American. Albania arrested and deported the Islamist group of “Albanian Returnees” to Egypt, where they were tried and executed, and has seized the property of an al-Qaida financier, Yasin Kadi, who resides in Saudi Arabia. Responsibility for antiterrorist legal action against Saudi and other foreign Islamist agents in Macedonia, who continue to represent a problem, belongs with the Slav central authorities in Macedonia, not the Albanians.
Ms. Gorin implies that Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is a Muslim extremist. Ramush Haradinaj is not a religious person. He has never been involved or associated with any Islamic cause. He has no association with Islamist ideology whatever. He is not even a “cultural Muslim.”
Ms. Gorin states that NATO bombed Serbia “to prevent a genocide that forensics turned up empty.” Yes, the genocide was prevented. It did not take place. Nobody claimed it had taken place, only that it was attempted. Genocide means the murder of a whole people; obviously, the Albanians were not wholly murdered. Ms. Gorin further refers to “every explosive report coming from the Balkans – Islamic charities getting busted as terror-funding fronts, terrorist cells being uncovered in Bosnia and Kosovo,” as if this undermines the reputation for moderation of Balkan Muslims. The facts, as partly described above, show the exact opposite. Albania has treated Islamist agents very harshly. The Islamic charities were shut down in Bosnia-Hercegovina by the Bosnian authorities, who seized irreplaceable evidence of al-Qaida activity in Europe and turned it over to U.S. investigators. Remaining members of terrorist cells were also identified and neutralized with the support of the Bosnian authorities. No Islamist cells were ever detected in Kosovo aside from the aforementioned Saudi and Gulf Arab charity representatives, who have, as noted, been investigated, arrested, and expelled, or their activities otherwise radically curtailed.
In the same paragraph, Ms. Gorin refers to the March riots in Kosovo last year as “coordinated.” No serious journalistic or international administrative body has made such a claim. The turmoil in Kosovo in March 2004 was spontaneous, caused in the greater part by disaffection with rule by the United Nations, a high rate of unemployment, the failure to consistently restore public services such as water and electricity, the collapse of the pension system, refusal to privatize the economy, and related grievances.
Ms. Gorin states, “We were told of mass graves… 800,000 displaced, Bill Clinton said.” Mass graves indeed have been uncovered in Kosovo, and that fact is challenged by nobody. They are numerous and the work of excavating them is long and taxing. Almost a million Kosovar Albanians were displaced, expelled, and fled to Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and even to Serbia, as was seen on news reports broadcast throughout the world. The large refugee camps in Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro were not fabrications.
Ms. Gorin has attempted to downgrade the number of Albanian victims of Serbian aggression in Kosovo from “100,000” to “closer to 2,000.” The figure of 100,000 dead or missing was put forward during the Kosovo intervention when there were no international journalists or NGOs inside Kosovo. It was an estimate. The accepted figure today, issued by Catholic authorities, is approximately 12,500 Albanians killed or missing, many of them children. I do not wish to play numbers games on this, as I consider it as degrading as responding to challenges over the numbers of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Ms. Gorin states that “the Racak massacre… turned out to have been staged.” This is a false claim that cannot be seriously sustained. Those who make the assertion join it to the charge that the U.S. diplomat William Walker, who visited Racak after the massacre occurred, was also a supporter of “death squads” in Central America. Both charges originate in the Marxist left and are scurrilous and disreputable.
Ms. Gorin states that “journalists fanned the early flames of Serb demonization in Bosnia, starting with a widely circulated 1992 photo of a Serb-run ‘death camp’ for Bosnian Muslims that turned out to have been taken from the inside of a fenced storage area, and showed refugees who had escaped the fighting and were free to go at any time.” The charge that the photograph was false was a hoax perpetrated by British Communists and has been thoroughly debunked. The magazine that published the claim, with the illustrative title Living Marxism, lost a libel suit brought by the ITN television network, to the total of 375,000 British pounds. The British court found against Living Marxism for its spurious accusation that ITN and other British journalists were fabricators of anti-Serb propaganda.
Ms. Gorin restates the well-known and controversial claim that “Jews and Serbs, both… were persecuted by the Nazis’ Croatian, Bosnian and Albanian brigades during WWII.” While this oft-repeated charge contains a grain of truth, it is only a grain. The lowest rate of Jewish survival in ex-Yugoslavia in World War II was in Macedonia, which was under Bulgarian control, and where 90 percent of Jews were deported and killed. The highest rate was in Kosovo, where 62 percent of Jews survived. Serbia and Croatia (the latter including Bosnia-Hercegovina) both had high levels of Jewish martyrdom during the Holocaust. The Serbian capital, Beograd, was declared by the Germans the first Judenrein, or “Jew-free” city in Europe. In Bosnia, the infamous Bosnian Waffen SS units played no role in the removal of Jews on their territory, which was carried out by Germans and Croats. The Bosnian Waffen SS units were assigned to combat Muslim and Serb Partisans, including residents of villages from where many of the recruits themselves originated. They were reluctant to participate in such actions, having enlisted in the Waffen SS on the mistaken belief that such service would resemble that of the Bosnian gendarmerie under the Habsburg empire. They were sent by the Germans to France for retraining. There they mutinied against their Nazi officers and attempted to join the French Partisans, the only known example of a Waffen SS rebellion. By 1944, most of them had joined the Yugoslav Partisans. In addition, the Bosnian Muslim clerics issued three declarations publicly denouncing Croat-Nazi collaborationist measures against Jews and Serbs: that of Sarajevo in October 1941, of Mostar in 1941, and of Banja Luka on November 12, 1941. These fascinating documents have never been translated and published in English, but I am completing work on them for publication now. As to the Albanians, while it is true that the Albanian Waffen SS Skanderbeg division turned some 210 Jews in Kosovo over to the Nazis, not one Jew was handed over in Albania itself, which was the only country to come out of the second world war with a larger Jewish population than it had at the beginning of the war. This fact has been noted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and by Yad Vashem in Israel, where Albanian Muslims have been honored as “righteous Gentiles.”
Ms. Gorin states “In 1999, under pressure from the U.S. and amid protest from Israelis who knew better, Israel joined NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, leaving Serbs stunned and angry in an era when most of Europe was already being engulfed by a new wave anti-Semitism [sic]. Today, whatever Jews remained in Kosovo before our intervention have been cleansed right along with the Serbs.” These two statements are entirely incorrect. Israel played no role in the NATO action against Yugoslavia except to provide medical aid and shelter to Albanian refugees, and I do not understand why such an accusation of involvement in military action would be made against Israel. A Jewish Community now exists in Kosovo, headquartered in Prizren and recognized by the Joint Distribution Committee, the main global Jewish relief organization.
Ms. Gorin refers to U.S. bombings “of the Orthodox Christian Serbs, which didn’t break even for Easter (the way our other bombardments have for Ramadan).” U.S. bombardments and other combat actions have not ceased during Ramadan, and there is no Islamic requirement barring military action during Ramadan. Muslims have fought during Ramadan on many occasions.
In the same paragraph, Ms. Gorin states, “an Italian ambassador… asked American Jewish leaders to call for an end to the bombardment against Yugoslavia, citing that the KLA was backed by Iran-backed terror outfits and that an independent Kosovo would be a gateway for the spread of terror throughout Europe.” The “Italian ambassador” and the “Iran-backed terror outfits” are left unnamed. I do not doubt that an Italian diplomat, probably concerned about the influx of Albanian refugees into his country, might have made such an irresponsible statement and could be named; I would be interested to know his identity. “Iran-backed terror outfits” involved in Kosovo cannot be named because they did not exist. Iranians were not and are not involved in Kosovo at all, even though the Kosovar Albanian Muslim population is at least 30 percent Shia. Either way, Kosovo has not become a gateway for the spread of terror throughout Europe; the charge would better be applied to Britain, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy itself.
Ms. Gorin states “Today, Serbia is the only remaining pocket of multi-ethnicity in the Balkans – where Serbs, gypsies, Jews, Albanian and other Muslims, along with 22 other nationalities still coexist.” This is incorrect. All the stated nationalities reside, some in quite large groups, in Slovenia and Croatia, which do not like being considered Balkan, but also in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro (without many Jews historically or now), and Macedonia, as well as Serbia. Macedonia has a Gypsy television network, which is unique in the world. There are no ethnically-pure territories in former Yugoslavia.
Ms. Gorin expresses displeasure that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague has taken four years. She might better express appreciation at the high standards and patient work of the tribunal. She neglected to mention that Milosevic was turned over to the tribunal by the Serbian authorities.
In a statement of questionable taste, Ms. Gorin asks, “If, as we were told, there was systematic rape by Serbs, where are the resulting children? Or evidence of mass abortions?” Anybody who has visited the former Yugoslavia knows of the lives of these children, and also knows that “mass” abortions did not take place. What, in any case, is a “mass abortion”? An abortion carried out collectively, all at once, in a group? “Mass abortions” do not exist anywhere.
Ms. Gorin suggests that Kosovar Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova is an Islamist who, like Yasir Arafat, “Accept[s] the infidel’s (the West’s) help for as long as it moves you closer to your goal.” In reality, as anybody knowledgeable about the topic knows, Arafat was not a Muslim in the religious sense. He did not attend Muslim prayers except on official occasions and is said not to have known the text of the prayers. Ibrahim Rugova, like Ramush Haradinaj, is not a religious person. He also has never been involved or associated with any Islamic cause. He also has no association with Islamist ideology whatever. He also is not even a “cultural Muslim.”
Ms. Gorin quotes “Balkan-based journalist Chris Deliso [who] wrote last year for BalkanAnalysis.com, ‘Kosovo – with its porous borders, fundamentalist minority, criminal underbelly and proximity to the rest of Europe – is a perfect hiding place.’ ” Christopher Deliso is not a serious journalist, but a columnist at Dennis Raimondo’s antiwar.com website. Kosovo is the most heavily-policed, militarily-occupied region in Europe. It does not now and has never had a “fundamentalist minority” in the sense the term is now understood, and no serious evidence to the contrary can be produced. “Hiding place” for whom? Even before September 11, 2001, Saudi and other Gulf Arab agents had been, to repeat, investigated, arrested, and expelled, or their activities otherwise seriously limited.
It is rather surprising to read in Ms. Gorin’s column, “Americans don’t see how Kosovo relates to them. Until 1999, who had ever even heard of a Serb?” Serbian-Americans are a well-known community in numerous states, such as California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, and include such prominent politicians as Rod Blagojevich, the current Democrat governor of Illinois. The Serbian-American poet Charles Simic won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990, and his translations of the Serbian poet Vasko Popa are taught in many university departments. The Yugoslav author Danilo Kis, who was of Serbian and Hungarian-Jewish origin, and wrote in Serbian dialect, is widely known among literate Americans. Much more Serbian literature has been published in English in the U.S., over many years, than Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, or Albanian literature. The Yugoslav political writer Milovan Djilas always defined himself as a Montenegrin and Serb, and was universally known in political and journalistic circles. Hundreds of doctoral dissertations and other academic studies on Serbian topics have been produced at American universities.
Ms. Gorin is welcome to her opinions, but they are only opinions, and are not based on verifiable fact. To challenge the American Jewish leadership for its position on the Balkans 10 years ago is, at best, unproductive. The entire world witnessed the actions of the Milosevic regime in ex-Yugoslavia. They cannot be expunged from the historical record by creating false parallels. Serbia is not now, and will never be, Israel. It is, in reality, a place where crude Jew-baiting is on the rise, as demonstrated in a recent reportage, which may be read here.
Ms. Gorin states that NATO bombed Serbia “to prevent a genocide that forensics turned up empty.” Yes, the genocide was prevented. It did not take place. Nobody claimed it had taken place, only that it was attempted. Genocide means the murder of a whole people; obviously, the Albanians were not wholly murdered???????
WHAT????? genocide prevented???? WHAT GENOCIED WHAT LIES, with this logic you then justify the IRAQ invasion its like saying "they might have not really had WMD but if they did they would have used hem so lets just bomb them", lets bomb everyone tehn to revent genocide?????!!?!? WHAT STUPID IDIOTIC LOGIC IS THIS, with that logic u can justify any act of war, you can justify anything. just like when Bill Cohen came out on Meet the Press and stated that 500,000 albo men were missing in March of 99', you cant just say such a lie, then the # wen tdoen to 100,000 then 10,000 and now we see the real number of albo dead (civillian and kla) to be around 2k. GENOCIDE????? by using the word so losly you are killing the memeory of teh real victims of real genocide through out history. FACT IS EVERYTHING GORIN WROTE IN THE ARTICLE IS 100% TRUE AND CAN BE PROVEN WORD BY WORD and not have to be backed up by stupid logic such as "thank God we bombed an entire nation, destroyed their land, killed thousand of their people so we could prevent a genocide that we were saying was taking place but turned out it never did" HAVE U NO SHAME???
n the same paragraph, Ms. Gorin refers to the March riots in Kosovo last year as “coordinated.” No serious journalistic or international administrative body has made such a claim. The turmoil in Kosovo in March 2004 was spontaneous, caused in the greater part by disaffection with rule by the United Nations, a high rate of unemployment, the failure to consistently restore public services such as water and electricity, the collapse of the pension system, refusal to privatize the economy, and related grievances.
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what is wrong with this guy i mean ok if he is writing to an audince that knows nothing of teh area but i mean even teh albo leaders r warning that this will happen again, OH GOD PLEASE LETS APPEASE THE ALBOS EVEN MORE they are not happy give them more money more theings they want please, are u kidding me??? of course it was planned, thousands of albanicas burning down churches killing people because your electricity wsnt working??hhah what a joke of an excuse for a newsreport. why must you alwasy depend on other nations to give you everything from food, to schools to fight for you etc??? since youclaim that KOSOVO is virtually independent why did these attacks occur then??
Ms. Gorin states that “the Racak massacre… turned out to have been staged.” This is a false claim that cannot be seriously sustained. Those who make the assertion join it to the charge that the U.S. diplomat William Walker, who visited Racak after the massacre occurred, was also a supporter of “death squads” in Central America. Both charges originate in the Marxist left and are scurrilous and disreputable.
ahahhahahaha
ahh reality check for this: at th milosevic trial he was able to get the court to admit and accept teh overwheming evidence that 35 out tot eh 45 people killed in racak had police records and were INDEED KLA fighters.
In Bosnia, the infamous Bosnian Waffen SS units played no role in the removal of Jews on their territory, which was carried out by Germans and Croats.
I mean the level of ANTI SERIAN propaganda teh last 15 years has been soooooo strong taht they even have journoulists showing how the Nazi led albos and muslims in bosnia were goog to jews just so they can draw paralles to the "demonic" image serbs have in the media today. holy shit!!!! i mean this is just insane, again even this fool write belgrade was juden free again for the tenth time belgrade was occupied by the nazis and they were in charge, fact is kosovo was hitlers gift to the albos for their role inww2. look at any any military histrorical book written prior to 1992 before teh serbs became "evil" and show me anything that states antyihg besides the fact taht the serbs were fighting the nazis while the albos embraceed them.
Israel played no role in the NATO action against Yugoslavia except to provide medical aid and shelter to Albanian refugees, and I do not understand why such an accusation of involvement in military action would be made against Israel
hhaha exactl, read teh interview with ariel sharon from teh NY TIMES from march 30th 99, when asked why isreal is not voicing its support for the nato attack he said "we jews rememebr waht the serbs did for us in ww2, we share a common bond such as death in jasenovac".
In a statement of questionable taste, Ms. Gorin asks, “If, as we were told, there was systematic rape by Serbs, where are the resulting children? Or evidence of mass abortions?”
exactly this means the 80,000 raped muslim woman was a lie and the world knows that, again if they were wehre wer eth children and the abortions?? lies
Albanian extremists target the Jews of Kosovo
At the beginning of the second world war, Kosovo had a population of 550 Jews. Altogether, 210 perished in German concentration camps - the only Jews to be killed in the war in Kosovo - representing 38.18% of the Jewish population. This compares with Belgrade, were only 1,115 survived the war out of almost 12,000 (9%), and Croatia, where an estimated 25% of the Jewish population survived. Thus, you were more likely to survive the war if you were Jewish and lived in Albania or Kosovo rather than Belgrade or Croatia. However, this is not to say that it was any easier for Jews, Roma or Slavs - the three national groups designated by the Nazi's as "subhuman races", and top of their list for extermination or deportation by the Nazis or their quislings in Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo.
In fact, one of the first acts of the SS Skanderbeg division in April 1944 was the arresting of 281 Jews in Pristina, and "510 Jews, Communists, Partisans and individual suspects". According to Bernard J. Fischer, writing in Albania at War, 1939-1945 (Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indians, USA, 1999, p. 187). All 281 Jews were deported to Germany - probably to Bergen-Belsen death camp. However, the German occupation authorities allowed Albania an unusual degree of autonomy and, for the most part, refrained from deporting and/or murdering the majority of Albanian Jews. Most of the tiny Jewish population of "old Albania" (about 200) survived the Holocaust. The Germans, however, confiscated most Jewish-owned property in 1943-1944.
Indeed, Albania is the only country occupied by Germany in which the Jewish population actually grew during the war and was larger than when the war started in 1939. There were some 1,800 Jews in Albania by war's end, mostly escapees from the Holocaust in Greece and Yugoslavia. Albanians sheltered them and were later honored by the Israel for their efforts.
As the war drew to a close, Yugoslav Partisans launched a large-scale military campaign in Kosovo to consolidate their rule and the Albanians reacted with a general insurrection, that forced the new authorities to declare martial law in the region in 1945. Because of their co-operation with the Germans, the Kosovo Albanians were seen as politically unreliable and thus a possible threat to the stability and territorial integrity of the new Communist Yugoslavia. Thus, Kosovo emerged from the war in a state of siege, with its population seen as a threat rather than as an asset.
Following the war, the post war population of Jews in Kosovo dwindled considerably after the war to only 35 who were registered as living in Pristina in 1989 and 41 in 1995. Most reports now suggest that Albanian extremists have driven them out since NATO drove out the Yugoslav army in 1999. The Jewish population of Yugoslavia today is estimated to be 2500 with most of them living in Belgrade. The recent conflict in Kosovo has ironically led to the exodus of the last of the remaining Jews of Kosovo - something that didn't even happen in the last war in 1941.
Sean Mac Mathuna and John Heathcote
http://www.jbuff.com/c120700.htm
prove anything here wrong
Kosovo and the Holocaust: Falsifying History
By Carl Savich
History is in many ways a myth we create for ourselves. History is constantly falsified to justify wars and territorial claims. Albanian apologists have falsified the role Albania played in the Holocaust to justify an illegal US/NATO war against Serbia and to allow for the creation of a Greater Albania that would include the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija. The Albanian role in the Holocaust was falsified and manipulated to advance the creation of an “independent” Kosova, an ethnically pure Albania statelet, a second Albanian state in eastern Europe.
The Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Albania are estimated at 591 from 1941 to 1944, when a Greater Albania was sponsored by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. There were 33 known families of Albanian Jews living in pre-war Albania. The largest Jewish community consisted of 15 Jewish families living in Vlora. According to the 1930 census, there were 204 Jews living in Albania. At the Wannsee Conference in 1942, when the Final Solution was organized, the total Jewish population of Albania was listed as 200 Jews. By 1939 there were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria.
On right, Kosovar Albanian Muslim Nazir Hodic, a member of the Nazi SS Division Handzar in Bosnia. On left is Rudi Sommemer, the commander of the Nazi SS Albanian Battalion, 6/28 in Handzar. Hodic is shown wearing the Albanian skull cap issued by the SS with a Nazi swastika on his collar.
The two factors that explain why more Jews in Albania were not killed are that Albania was under Italian control and Albania had a very small Jewish population. Italian forces in Albania rejected the Final Solution as “the German disease” and did not enforce anti-Jewish measures. This is why Albanian Jews were “rescued” in Albania, not because of anything the Albanians did themselves. There was no history of ideological anti-Semitism in Albania. But this was true of every country in the Balkans. A history of anti-Semitism did not exist in Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Hungary, or Romania. So Albania was not unique in this regard in any way. The small number of Jews in Albania also played a key role in why they were not killed. During the Italian occupation, they were able to disperse and blend in the general population. When Germany occupied Albania in 1943, the Jewish population was already beyond reach.
What role did Albania play in the Holocaust? Albanian apologists maintain that no Jews were killed in Albania during the Holocaust. Is this accurate? What is the context of this statement? Albanian apologists have consciously and methodically falsified the Albanian role in the Holocaust. The way this was done was to totally suppress the fact that Kosovo-Metohija was a part of Albania from 1941 to 1944. Also left out is the fact that a Greater Albania was in fact created that included not only Kosovo-Metohija, Kosova in the Greater Albania ideology, but southern Serbian territory, territory in southern Montenegro, and western Macedonia, or Illirida. Albanian apologists distort history by implying that it was Albanians that rescued Jews. But in fact it was the Italian occupation forces that opposed the Final Solution and who rescued Jews. Another falsification is the omission of the role played by Xhafer Deva, a Kosovar Albanian Muslim, in the Greater Albanian state and in the Holocaust.
Albanian apologists falsify the history of the Holocaust by suppressing the fact that it was Adolf Hitler who first created a Greater Albania that included the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija. They assiduously cover-up the fact that it was Adolf Hitler who set the precedent for an “independent” Kosova, an ethnically pure Albanian Kosova. Albanian apologists have carefully suppressed and deleted this fact.
Rescue in Albania by Harvey Sarner was published in book form in 1997 just in time for the Kosovo conflict and the start of the KLA terrorism campaign sponsored by the US/EU/NATO. It began being used as a propaganda tract immediately. The book was to pave the way for US military intervention in Serbia. It was first published as a booklet in 1992 as “The Jews of Albania”. It was released following the aliyah or emigration of the entire Jewish population out of Albania. They settled in Tel Aviv and other towns and cities in Israel. Little is revealed about the author. This throws up red flags. But Sarner did play a major role in the emigration of Albanian Jews to Israel. So the publication initially was payback or a goodwill gesture from Sarner for the emigration out of Albania to Israel. Israel got 300 new citizens and Albania got the pamphlet “The Jews of Albania”, a thank you note.
Rudi Sommerer, the commander of the Nazi SS Albanian Kosovar Muslim Battalion 6/28, wearing a gray Albanian skull cap specially made by the SS Main Office, 1944.
Who is Harvey Sarner? He is a third generation American of Jewish-Polish descent. Sarner is a retired American attorney. He is not a historian. The book is essentially a hack job. Sarner has paid or “subsidized” visits to Israel of “Righteous Gentiles”. He has written another book, General Anders and the Soldiers of the Second Polish Corps in 1997. Yad Vashem has listed 118 Serbs as “Righteous Gentiles” who rescued Jews during the Holocaust while only 61 Albanians have been so honored. But Sarner conveniently doesn’t mention this. He is the chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers. He has worked with Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Albania. His primary focus is on Jewish emigration to Israel and in documenting those non-Jews who have “rescued” Jews during the Holocaust.
Rescue in Albania is nothing more than a thinly-veiled propaganda tract. His subtitle is: “One Hundred Percent of Jews in Albania Rescued from Holocaust.” The book features an Albanian and Israeli flag on the cover. Van Christo, the Albanian president of the Frosina Foundation, has used the book for “fund raising purposes” to obtain money for the separatist campaign in Kosovo. Lobby money can buy you a lot of lies. That is the American way. And Sarner knows that.
In this propaganda tract, Sarner says nothing about the 21st SS Division “Skanderbeg”, made up primarily of Kosovar Muslim recruits, nothing about the genocide committed by Albanians against the Serbian and Jewish populations of Kosovo, and the genocide in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Croatia. He says nothing about the destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches and cathedrals in Kosovo. He says nothing about the murder of Serbian Orthodox priests. Is it ignorance? It is willful ignorance. He suppresses and deletes anything negative about Albania and Albanians. A fundamental aspect of propaganda is that it is one-sided, subjective, and tells only half the story. Under this definition, Rescue in Albania is pure propaganda.
In October, 1997, the Albanian American Civic League (AACL, Lobbi Shqiptar), headed by Joe DioGuardi, began a systematic campaign to use the book by Sarner as a propaganda tool in the upcoming Kosovo separatist/terrorist war. DioGuardi lost his re-nomination bid in 1988 for Congress. Rejected by US voters, DioGuardi turned his efforts to the Muslim Kosovars, representing the citizens of another country, Yugoslavia. The AACL had been founded in 1989 by DioGuardi to revive the Greater Albania ideology established by the 1878 First League of Prizren. In 1943, Nazi Germany re-established the dormant Greater Albania ideology or program by establishing the Second League of Prizren under Xhafer Deva.
DioGuardi’s agenda for the AACL is stated as follows: “to liberate the seven million Albanian people in the Balkans from hostile Slavic domination.” This is an echo of Hitler’s statements regarding the Sudeten Germans in 1938. It is nothing less than a racist, neo-fascist and neo-Nazi ideology and campaign of expansion, to create a Greater Albania. The AACL requested that Thomas Lantos and Benjamin Gilman write a Forward to Rescue in Albania. The League distributed 10,000 copies, mostly to influential Jews in the US as propaganda for the coming separatist conflict in Kosovo-Metohija. Congressman Gilman and James Traficant then sent copies of the book with personal letters to each Jewish member of Congress with a “Dear Colleague” letter to other House members.
Kosovar Albanian Muslim Skanderbeg Nazi SS Division/Kampfgruppe in Kosovo, 1944. This Nazi SS Division, made up of Kosovar Muslims, rounded up Kosovo Jews that were murdered in the Nazi death camps.
U.S. Representative James Traficant, D-Ohio, was later found guilty on bribery and corruption charges. A House panel voted to expel Traficant in 2002 from the US Congress. This shows that the Albanian apologists will say and do anything to support Greater Albania, even break the law. It shows that you can buy anything with a bribe. Money can buy a lot of lies. And this is the real danger of all propaganda. Anyone with any money can falsify the facts and manipulate others to kill. Bribes can buy a lot of propaganda, or PR or spin. And the goal is to get people to kill other people and to take their land. Wars come and go, but propaganda methods do not change.
Sarner begins his book on the Holocaust with a discussion of Greater Albania, "The Four Vilayets” under Ottoman Turkey: Janina, Shkodra, Kosovo, and Manastir. This is merely a parroting of the Greater Albania ideology. Sam Vaknin, in “The Myth of Greater Albania”, October 18, 1999, in the Central Europe Review, argued the opposite view: “Historically, there was never a ‘Greater Albania’ to hark back to.” But this is absolutely and patently incorrect and false. Vaknin conveniently and inexplicably suppresses and deleted any mention of the 1878 Albanian League of Prizren, whose sole raison d’etre was to create a Greater Albania. In 1943, the Nazis sponsored the creation of a Second League of Prizren, whose goal again, was to create a Greater Albania. The Kosovar Albanian Muslim Skanderbeg Nazi SS Division was created to establish a Greater Albania. In fact, from 1941 to 1944, there was a Greater Albania which Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini created. Vaknin seems to have amnesia on this point. He apparently has deleted the period 1941 to 1944 from his memory. This is convenient for his argument. Four years in the history of Kosovo and Albania are erased from the history books. It is as if the period 1941 to 1944 never even existed. The supporters of Greater Albania and the creation of an independent Kosova are in serious denial and self-repression. Why? They don’t want to admit to themselves, or anyone else, that Adolf Hitler devised and developed the Greater Albania and independent Kosova policies long before they did. Adolf Hitler was there first. Hitler was prescient and way ahead of the curve on Kosovo. And this is why there is denial, amnesia, and psychological self-repression. The result is a falsification of history.
Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig, commander of the Nazi SS Division Handzar in Bosnia. He is shown wearing the Albanerfez, or national Albanian skull cap made by the SS for the Nazi Albanian Kosovar Muslims in the division.
There was a Greater Albania to hark back to, and Sarner does an excellent job in re-creating the Greater Albania ideology. Greater Albania may be a “myth” to Vaknin, but it is not a myth to Albanians but the primary focus of their national being and identity. Greater Albania is a hard factual reality for Albanians. Vaknin makes a semantic distinction that is irrelevant and meaningless. When Kosovo is 100% ethnically pure Albanian and all the Kosovo Serbs and Roma and Jews have been killed or driven out and Serbian Orthodox churches destroyed, the border between Old Albania and New Albania, i.e., Kosovo will be meaningless. Kosova will just be a second Albanian state and the distinction between Albania proper and Kosovo will be moot. Kosova will, for all intents and purposes, and in a practical sense, be part of a Greater Albania. Vaknin’s argument is specious and totally wrong.
This discussion of a Greater Albania is just recycled by Sarner from handouts his Albanian minders provided to him. There is no question that Sarner has been provided Albanian handlers to help him with his facts. What Sarner was not told is that these so-called Albanian Vilayets have non-Albanian majorities and were never part of Albania. This is the myth of Greater Albania. Janina is in northern Greece and has never been part of Albania. The population is majority Greek. There is a small Albanian minority in that former Ottoman Turkish “vilayet”. Manastir, or Bitola today, is in southern Macedonia which is majority Macedonian with a minuscule Albanian population. It was never part of Albania. Shkodra is the territory around southern Montenegro. Montenegro has a minority Albanian population and has never been part of Albania. Kosovo-Metohija is the cradle of the Serbian Orthodox church and of Serbian culture. The towns, cities, and villages all have Serbian names from the medieval period when it was part of Serbia. The oldest Serbian Orthodox churches are located in Kosovo. Albanian settlement and colonization during the Ottoman Turkish period could not erase its Serbian heritage. Moreover, Kosovo-Metohija was never a part of Albania. In fact, there had never been an Albanian state until 1912. But Sarner is silent about all of this.
There are many factual errors and mistakes showing Sarner’s total and complete ignorance of the actual Holocaust history of Albania. He referred to “General Futzstun, the Gestapo chief…” There was no such person named Futzstun. In fact, this was SS Brigadefuehrer Jozef Fitzhum (1896-1945), who was the Higher SS and Police Leader (Hoherer SS und Polizeifuehrer, HSSPF) in Albania. Fitzhum was responsible for internal security, the war against the resistance or guerrillas, and the implementation of the Final Solution. He assumed control in Albania after German forces occupied Albania following the surrender of Italy in September, 1943. He had been the police chief in Vienna from 1938 to 1940. Fitzhum created the 21st SS Division Skanderbeg with Xhafer Deva, made up mostly of Kosovar Muslim Albanians. As noted by Raul Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), Skanderbeg played a major role in the Holocaust, rounding up the Jews in Greater Albania who were subsequently sent to Bergen-Belsen where they were killed.
Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig, commander of the Nazi SS Division Handzar in Bosnia. He is shown wearing the Albanerfez, or national Albanian skull cap made by the SS for the Nazi Albanian Kosovar Muslims in the division.
Sarner sought to make a distinction between Albania proper and Kosovo. He defined Kosovo as part of “the annexed territories”. But this is a bit of a ruse and a phony scam. Kosovo was made a part of Albania in 1941. Kosovo was called the “New Albania”. The Interior Minister of Albania was a Kosovan or Kosovar Albanian Muslim, Xhafer Deva. Deva was one of the most influential Albanians in the Albanian Government. And he was from Kosovo. Sarner seeks to obfuscate this obvious fact by creating a spurious and meaningless distinction.
Sarner admitted that Jews in Kosovo were being sent to the concentration camps where they were killed: “All around them…in the annexed territories, Jews were being transported to the death camps.” He admits that Kosovo Jews were being killed. He doesn’t admit that it was the Albanians who rounded up the Jews so that they could be killed. Why the omission? He is writing propaganda. He seeks to falsify the Albanian role in the Holocaust.
He grossly exaggerated the uniqueness of the “rescue” of Jews in Albania: “In Athens, the Jews refused to supply a list and there was a 50% survival rate.” He is factually wrong. In fact, the survival rate was 66% in Athens for Jews. Athens, like Albania, was in the Italian occupation zone. This explains why the Jews were “rescued”, not because of Albanian actions. It would be analogous to a cheerleader claiming credit for a win of the football team. In short, the Albanians had nothing to do with the so-called rescue. This is giving the Albanians credit for something that they were not responsible for. It is a falsification of history. It is out and out propaganda.
By contrast, in Bulgaria, an estimated 50,000 Bulgarian Jews were “rescued”. But Bulgarians did allow the Jews of Macedonia and Thrace, then a part of a Greater Bulgaria, to be deported and killed by German forces. Sarner harped on the propaganda statement that there were more Jews in Albania after World War II than before it. But this is misleading. There were only 200 Jews in all of Albania proper during the war. These Albanian Jews were “rescued” because the Italian occupation forces did not support the German Final Solution. Because of this fact, Jews in Eastern Europe all fled to Italian zones of occupation to escape German incarceration and deportation. The Italians also “rescued” Serbs from genocidal attacks by Croatian Ustasha forces, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovar Albanian Muslims. Albania was part of the route to then Palestine, containing several ports. Jewish refugees passed through Albania because it was on the way to Palestine, not because of an Albanian desire to “rescue” Jews. This is an absurd propaganda construction concocted by Sarner and his Albanian handlers .
Xhafer Deva, Kosovo Albanian Muslim interior minister of the Nazi-created Greater Albania. Deva helped form the Kosovar Muslim Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg which rounded up the Jews of Kosovo for extermination.
Why this obsession and constant harping on “the list”? Sarner wrote his book when the Holocaust movie Schindler’s List (1993) was released. He wants to make the connection very easy to follow for his readers. He doesn’t want to complicate things for them too much. Oskar Schindler did not divulge a “list” of Jews to the Nazis, and the Albanians did not divulge a list to the Nazis. It is very easy and simple to follow. Oskar Schindler was a “Righteous Gentile”, as were the Albanian “Christians and Muslims” who “rescued” Jews. This explains why there is an overemphasis on “the list”.
Sarner does not examine World War II at any length. Although his subject matter is purportedly on World War II and the Holocaust, there is very little on the Holocaust itself. He finally gets around to discussing the Holocaust period in “Chapter 7”, which he titled “The Germans”. Most of the book is on Jewish settlement in Albania and the 1930s period when Jewish-American Herman Bernstein was the US Ambassador to Albania. There is almost no account of the Holocaust and World War II. Why is this? This is because Sarner does not want to elucidate, but obfuscate. He wants to cover-up, not reveal.
He starts off with an incorrect assertion: “The fact” is “ that the Albanian Government and people did not cooperate with the Germans...” According to Sarner, Xhafer Deva, the Kosovar Muslim Interior Minister denied the list of Jews to the German forces on page 43. He offers no evidence for these statements. Factually, the Albanian Government and people did cooperate with the Germans. Indeed, Deva helped to organize the Nazi 21st Waffen SS Division “Skanderbeg”. Moreover, there was an Albanian Muslim Battalion of about 300 men in the Bosnian Muslim 13th Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS “Handschar/Handzar”. Rudi Sommerer was the commander of the Albanian Battalion in the Handzar Nazi SS Division. Kosovar Albanian Muslim Nazir Hodic was a prominent member of the Albanian Battalion in Handzar. This Albanian Battalion would later form the core of the Skanderbeg Nazi SS Division. The SS designed special gray skull caps for the Albanian Nazi SS troops. The Albanian Skanderbeg SS Division also had its own symbol created by the SS and worn as a collar patch, a goat’s head helmet supposedly modeled on the one worn by Skanderbeg himself. Sarner doesn’t even discuss the Balli Kombetar (BK), an ultra-nationalist group committed to creating a Greater Albania that would include Kosovo. Sarner says nothing about the known and widespread collaboration of the Balli Kombetar with the Italian and German occupation forces.
Jozef Fitzhum, SS leader in Albania, he implemented the Final Solution in Greater Albania and created the Kosovar Skanderbeg Nazi SS Division.
Sarner maintained that in 1943, the German occupation forces made a request for a list of Jews living in Greater Albania. The Germans established an Albanian national committee that created the Regency that governed Greater Albania. In the spring of 1944, the Nazis asked the Regency for the list of Jews according to Sarner. The real reason the Jews in Albania proper were not rounded up and deported was because under Italian occupation they had dispersed and were difficult to concentrate. German forces and Albanian collaborators made an effort to kill all the Jews of Greater Albania, but the German forces had to withdraw from Albania and the war ended before this could be accomplished. But in Kosovo-Metohija, then part of a Greater Albania, and Xhafer Deva’s birthplace, Albanians did round up all the known Jews, who were subsequently sent to the death camps and killed. The reference to “the list” is a smokescreen and Sarner is a pettifogger.
The reason there was a “rescue” in Albania was because the Italian government did not support the Final Solution and prevented its implementation. The German anti-Jewish policy was termed “the German disease” by the Italians.
Albanians, however, did play a major role in the Holocaust, the mass killings of Albanian Jews. Sarner plays dumb. All anyone has to do is to check Raul Hilberg’s seminal Holocaust book, The Destruction of the European Jews from 1961, to learn that Albanians played a key and fundamental role in the Holocaust. Sarner calls Kosovo a part of “The Annexed Territories”. He doesn’t reveal that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini created a Greater Albania. He doesn’t tell us that Kosovo-Metohija, parts of Montenegro, southern Serbia, and western Macedonia were all parts of a Greater Albania. Why? This is the exact same goal today of US foreign policy and of NATO. It is Adolf Hitler’s vision. But today, Hitler’s vision is taken up and revived by the US and NATO and Joe DioGuardi and Thomas Lantos. But Hitler did it first. But of course, Sarner is unaware of all this. His is a blissful ignorance. He does concede that Kosovo was made part of Albania: “In April, 1941” Kosovo “was annexed to Albania…”
Here is what Sarner says about Kosovo: “The Jews in the ‘annexed area’ were not as fortunate as the Jews in Albania proper. Life in the annexed territories was not as secure and there were unfortunate incidents of Jews being abused by the local people.” So he does grudgingly admit that Albanians did participate in the anti-Semitic outrages against the Jewish population, although he does not use the word “Kosovar Muslim” or “Albanian” but refers to “the local people”.
There was a Jewish family that was killed in Albania. The Jewish family Ardel was killed by the Nazis in Albania, but Sarner qualifies this as being a family of partisans. They were killed not because they were Jewish, but because they were partisans.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, met Albanian Muslim leaders and sponsored the creation of a Greater Islamic State, proposed by Kosovar Albanian Muslim Bedri Pejani, which would unite Greater Albania and Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandzak region of Serbia. Kosovo Albanians have named a secondary school in Pec and a street in Pristina after the Nazi Bedri Pejani.
What about the Balli Kombetar (BK, National Front in Shqip), which emerged after October, 1942 in Vlora, a BK stronghold, where it was founded by Midhat Frasheri? Why does Sarner omit any discussion of the BK? Was the BK an anti-Nazi resistance movement? Was the BK a Nazi/fascist collaborationist group? Sarner suppresses and covers up any information on the BK.
Bernd Jurgen Fischer, the foremost US historian on Albania during the Holocaust, a professor of history at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis---Fort Wayne, explained the role of the BK as follows: Much of the Balli Kombetar, which had remained aloof, was finally convinced to throw in its lot with the Germans.” Fischer noted that three members of the BK joined the Rexhep Mitrovica cabinet in January, 1944. Mitrovica was a “Kosovar” or “Kosovan” Albanian. Mitrovica was the Prime Minister in the Nazi-created Greater Albania regime, later replaced by the Zogist Fikri Dine. Xhafer Deva, a Kosovar Muslim, was the interior minister under the Nazi regime. Thus, the two highest positions, the prime minister and interior minister of Greater Albania, were held by Kosovars from Kosovo. Kosovo Albanian Muslims ran Greater Albania.
The collaboration of the Balli Kombetar with the Nazi and fascist forces is well-documented and well established. According to Fischer, “elements of the Balli Kombetar supported the Germans.” Fischer offered conclusive historical evidence and documentation that the Balli Kombetar, although opportunistic, concerned with gaining power, and forcefully annexing “Kosova” to a Greater Albania, was a Nazi/fascist collaborationist group. In February, 1944, British liaison officers reported that it was difficult for the partisans and resistance groups to attack the German forces because “they were being screened by elements of the Balli Kombetar and that these forces had become a normal part of any German force.” Bill Stone, in a review of Bernd Fischer’s book Albania at War, 1939-1945, wrote: “The National Front, however, fragmented completely and for the most part its local leaders chose to cease their already limited resistance activities and collaborate with the occupiers.” This is conclusive proof that the BK was a Nazi/fascist grouping. Fischer leaves no doubt about the role of the BK during the Holocaust. This is why Sarner deletes and covers up any mention of the BK.
Kosovar Albanian troops in the Nazi/fascist Balli Kombetar (BK, National Front), known as balists.
Another prominent Kosovar Albanian Muslim, Bedri Pejani, was appointed to committee the Nazi occupation authorities established to rule the Nazi-created Greater Albania. Pejani announced a plan to create a Greater Islamic State consisting of Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the Sandzak/Rashka region of Serbia. The plan was presented to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, who approved of the Pejani plan because it was seen as being in the interests of Islam. The German government, however, opposed the plan. The German occupation regime sought to gain the support of the Albanians by creating a Greater Albania which would include Kosovo. The German occupation officials emphasized that their policy in Kosovo, the “new Albania”, was to annex the province permanently to Albania proper, the “Old Albania”. The Germans sought to convince the Albanians that German foreign policy would achieve the annexation of “Kosova” to Old Albania. The German occupation forces, like the US and NATO and the EU would later do, sought to win over the Albanian population by bestowing on them land that did not belong to them, by giving away Serbian territory to gain the support of Albanian proxies. This resulted in Albanians flocking to the Nazi cause.
In “The Myth of Greater Albania”, Sam Vaknin argued that “in Albania proper, three anti-fascist resistance movements-… Balli Kombetar (the National Front)…fought against the occupiers.” This is patently and obviously incorrect and constitutes a falsification of the history of the BK. It also whitewashes the BK. Factually, the BK was a Nazi/fascist collaborationist movement, not an “anti-fascist resistance movement”. The Federal Research Division of the U.S. Library of Congress published Albania: A Country Study in which the Nazi/fascist collaborationist role of the BK was explained as follows:
Some Balli Kombetar units cooperated with the Germans against the communists, and several Balli Kombetar leaders held positions in the German-sponsored regime. Albanian collaborators, especially the Skanderbeg SS Division, also expelled and killed Serbs living in Kosovo. …The nationalistic Geg chieftains and the Tosk landowners often came to terms with the Italians, and later the Germans….
Why the ignorance? Why does Bernd Jurgen Fischer and the Federal Research Division of the U.S. Library of Congress know the role of the BK but other “experts” do not? Clearly, the goal here is to create PR and propaganda for the creation of a Greater Albania including Kosovo, or the practical equivalent, an “independent Kosova”. To reveal the factual history of the BK would not help in the creation of an “independent Kosova”. The whole game here is to conceal the fact that Adolf Hitler was the original sponsor of an independent Kosova, part of a Greater Albania. Logically speaking, it would not help in the creation of an independent Kosova if it was revealed that the BK was a Nazi/fascist group that also sought the same thing, but with Adolf Hitler’s help, instead of Bill Clinton’s. The syllogism would not work.
Sarner incorrectly implied that Albania escaped all the horrors of the Final Solution and Holocaust. But this is not true. Albania too experienced the Holocaust. The German occupation forces imposed anti-Jewish laws in Kosovo. Kosovo Jews wore “J” for “Juden” or “Jew”. Kosovo Jews wore white armbands with the word “Jude” in black letters. ID cards were stamped with a red “J”. Josef Fitzhum was determined to carry out the Final Solution in Albania. Fitzhum ordered the Jews of Vlora deported. And at least one Jewish family was killed.
Collar patches of the Kosovar Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg. Rge SS created a helmet with a goat's head for the Albanian Nazis in the division, supposedly worn by George Kastrioti, Skanderbeg.
Sarner finally got around to admitting that Albanians played an active and major role in the Holocaust: “In Prishtina, capital city of the annexed territories, the local authorities complied with German demands and jailed 60 Jewish men.”
The Albanian Government played an active role in the Holocaust. On April 1, 1942, the Albanian Minister of the Interior gave instructions to the Albanian Prefect of Police that Jews who came after the war started should be “gathered on a field of concentration.” On March 20, 1942, he had ordered that the Jews be imprisoned and a list of Jews provided. In Note C, The Fields of Concentration, Sarner conceded that this euphemistic language meant a concentration camp: “This was the name given to what were otherwise known as concentration camps. These were camps for civilians and…their populations were mainly Jews….The camps were surrounded by barbed wire….It was an ugly place.” This is a very roundabout and disingenuous and dishonest way to admit that the Albanian Government set up concentration camps for Jews in Albania. It is artful spin and propaganda. But it is also a malicious attempt at falsifying history. Sarner is rewriting history, creating a phony and bogus history.
Sarner even finally conceded that the Albanian Government and Albanian authorities took an active part in the extermination of European Jews: “In June, 1943…the Albanian police chief suggested the jailing of certain Jews:
‘According to our investigation the Jews listed below are dangerous because they are propaganderizing [sic] against the Axis (Rome-Berlin) and they want to organize and hold meetings. We think these people should be taken away from here as soon as possible to one of the concentration fields, because their staying here could be dangerous to the regime.’”
To complete the circle, Sarner finally grudgingly admits that the Albanian Government and people played a major role in the Holocaust and Final Solution: “In April, 1944, the Germans shipped 400 Jews from the annexed territories to Bergen-Belsen; 100 survived the war.” Sarner then grudgingly admitted that the Albanians participated in the murder of at least 300 Albanian Jews, Jews who lived in Greater Albania.
Then Sarner creates a propaganda smokescreen by arguing absurdly that the Albanians only helped to kill only 40% of the Jewish population of Kosovo, then a part of Greater Albania: “According to our report the survival rate in Kosove [sic] was sixty percent, which made it, relatively, one of the areas with the highest percentage of survival in occupied Europe.” This is a patently absurd and nonsensical argument. It displays a bizarre moral calculus.
Gjon Marka Gjoni, the fascist leader of the Albanian Roman Catholics, whose followers were in the Skanderbeg SS Division.
Finally, in Footnote 2, Sarner explained why he wrote the book and its ultimate purpose. The book was written essentially as a propaganda tract, a falsified history of the Holocaust, in order to garner support for the creation of a Greater Albania or “independent” Kosova. This is the method to Sarner’s madness. There almost always is some secret purpose, isn’t there? These “experts” always have a hidden agenda that they peddle. Propaganda is, rarely, if ever random. Propaganda is meticulously coordinated and planned out. In propaganda, there is no such thing as an accident or something happening by chance. The book had a clear-cut goal and purpose all along. Propaganda is written for a specific purpose and goal. As Adolf Hitler himself noted, propaganda is not written for “blasé young gentlemen”, but to convince the masses, to persuade key groups, key target audiences. In this case, the target audience was powerful and influential establishment Jews in the US.
Sarner parrots the Albanian and US State Department policy on the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija as follows: “The status of Kosova[sic], currently a part of Yugoslavia, is in contention today. Albanians favor either independence for Kosova or its being a part of Albania. The people of the area are ethnic Albanians.” Of course, this statement too is incorrect and is patently absurd. The borders of Yugoslavia are recognized by the United Nations and by international law. Yugoslavia, as a sovereign nation, has a right and duty to safeguard and protect its own internationally recognized and legal borders. But Sarner knows all that. Propaganda is not written to be rational. As Hitler noted, propaganda appeals to the emotions and subjective and irrational nature of man. This is what Sarner is appealing to.
What is the Kosovo conflict all about? Edith Durham in The Burden of the Balkans, published in 1905, explained the Albanian goal in Kosovo succinctly and clearly:
The Christian the Albanian persecutes is the Slav Christian, and this is the old, old race hatred. Of all the passions that sway human fortunes, race hatred is, perhaps, the strongest and the most lasting.
The Kosovo conflict is all about “race hatred”, what we call “racism” today. It is all about finishing the job Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini started. It is called genocide and ethnic cleansing. This is the real goal. This is why Sarner is falsifying the history.
Durham also argued that the Shqip or Albanian language is an “Aryan tongue”. The Nazi/fascist sponsors of Greater Albania in 1941 would also argue that the Albanians were part of the Aryan, or master race, a superior race.
In 1991, virtually the entire Jewish population of Albania left for Israel. The Jews were airlifted to Israel after the collapse of the Communist regime. Albania under the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha maintained no diplomatic relations with Israel. Hoxha abolished religion and created an atheistic state in Albania. Today, there are less than 40 Jews in all of Albania. They live in the capital Tirana. In Kosovo, the small Jewish population was ethnically cleansed out of Kosovo in 1999 along with Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians after NATO troops occupied the Serbian province. The Kosovo Jews fled to Belgrade. There are no more Jews living in Kosovo today, which is under NATO military occupation.
Bibliography
Durham, Edith. The Burden of the Balkans. London: Edward Arnold, 1905.
Fischer, Bernd Jurgen. Albania at War, 1939-1944. W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999.
---King Zog and the Struggle for Stability in Albania. Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984.
---“The Jews in Albania during the Zogist and Second World War Period.” Illyria. Albanische Studenten in Hamburg. Deutschland.
---“The Germans in Albania during the Second World War and After.” Lecture held on November 28th, 2003---Albanian Flag Day---in Hamburg. Illyria. Albanische Studenten in Hamburg. Deutschland.
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, Inc., 1961.
Kohen, Anna. “Remembering Albania’s Protection of the Jews during the Holocaust.” May 2, 1997. Frosina Information Network: An Albanian Immigrant & Cultural Resource. Boston, MA.
Kotani, Apostol. The Hebrews in Albania during Centuries. Tirana, Albania: n.p., n.d.
Sarner, Harvey. Rescue in Albania. Cathedral City, CA: Brunswick Press, 1997.
---The Jews of Albania. Cathedral City, CA: Brunswick Press, 1992.
Vaknin, Sam. “The Myth of Greater Albania.” Central Europe Review. October 18, 1999.
Hahahah, now even Sam Vaknin doesn't suit the ideology. The dude is of Macedonian/Jewish descent and disproves all the Serb myths. Make no mistake, he has not much sympathy for Albanians, but yet can't handle the b.s. put out there by his collegeaus of until yesterday, Serbo-American Carl Savic and friends.
As for Julia Gorin, Triump the Insult Comic Dog would fall all over her.
P.s. Use hyperlinks while they are still patent-free. Stop spamming this place.
To the Serbs:
You know there is a sort of "law" on the net that states: when someone brings Nazis in the argument they have lost.
Please for heavens sake, not only did you slaughter us all, sent us to the camps on trains or just did the horror in place, but you also tried it again 50 years later.
Serbs have absolutely no respect for anything, not even themselves.
I sincerely hope that the Serb posters here do not represent thier nation, cause if they do, we should add them to the same list Hamas is in.
"ollowing the war, the post war population of Jews in Kosovo dwindled considerably after the war to only 35 who were registered as living in Pristina in 1989 and 41 in 1995. Most reports now suggest that Albanian extremists have driven them out since NATO drove out the Yugoslav army in 1999."
False, we're still here
i figured you would have nothing to say, pathetic, again i hope u look at ALL of the unanswered questions i have been asking for DAYS (like can you show me a source prior to the 19th cen. an Albo source where you the Illiriyan decent is cliamed? etc etc etc) I mean are u kidding me?? if you contributed positive thyings to the world teh same way you lie about your past you would be the greatest nation in the world, since you are far from that just admit the truth (no matter how much it hurt) AGAIN FOR THE 100th time, look at any ANY military map political map geographic look at what every single historian western eastern martian ANY historian says (prior to teh 1992 serb demonising) where it says that kosovo was not given to the albo by the Nazis, show me one source that says the kosovo albos we not on the nazi side??/ please answer some of my questions instead of saying stupid idiotic things like "meet u in brussels" albos in brussels??? for what? to pimp ur women for a euro, sell heroin or to have your parents clean the offices downtown at night???
Ohh I see...its Martyr...he's back. Long time no see bro. I can see you're still frustrated. I realy doubt you can find help here...
sit in brussels as equals!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHA DUDE THIS IS THE FUNNIEST THING I HAVE EVER EVER heard in my life!!!! dude I never knew you guys were this funny, awsome really. hey listen i cant blame u for being under this illusion, its nice to dream even if you are being used as political stooges and viewed as an expendalbe nation by those same people u are having coffe with. heyyy man we are talking about the BALKANS dude, a chess game for these same people, all of our lives are like little figures on the board, u are here today gone tomorrow, frioend today enemy tomorrow dont u get it????
What's the alternative, Martyr? Be friend with you?
A new Europe is dawning my friend.
a new europe is dawning with the albos leading the way right? dude do u undersatdn that the balkans are not considered Europe by these people? dont u get it that they have alwys made us ifhgt each other, teh turks did it as well they got us to hate each other, divide and conquor, have u heard of the term? just caue u sold out and to took the muslim religion doenst mean that u arent still sacrificial lamb the same way serbs n bosnians r. i mean how happy can u be that they totally saturated kosovo with depleted uranium? r u happy they did that? its better for u all to die on cance thatn to have serbs there. what an insane bunch, just insane, fact is that the kosovo albos were the wlbos that had the highest standard of living amonst the albo world and u were not happy about that, u wanted to break up a soverign nation.
The servians here are cut and pasting the propaganda site of serbianna with their delusional history. Carl Savich from Srbianna and Nebojsa Malic from antiwar are in serious need of treatment.
Well what can you expect from people who produced such legendaries as Arkan, Millosevic, Legia, Karadzic, Mladic...
And Ylber, you beat me to it by posting Stefan Schwartzs article wich just kills off the delusions of Julia Gorin.
Tosi
Sweden
What a racist:
"fact is that the kosovo albos were the wlbos that had the highest standard of living amonst the albo world and u were not happy about that, u wanted to break up a soverign nation."
Just cause we're albos we don't deserve to have freedom? Is that what you suggesting?
Albanians have only one religion, that given by the God(s), be it Islam, Christianty, Buddhism, Judaism and Paganism. Stop trying to turn this into "Europe turned us against each other" when you never stop making racist statements. Racist!
facts hurt dont they, agian nothing to say no answer to any of the questions for weeks now.
What "facts" are those, servian?
Anyway, here I have an article especially for you:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,370952,00.html
"SERBIA GOES BACK TO THE PAST
"The Milosevic Era Has Returned."
In an interview with SPIEGEL, Vldan Batic, 56, the former Serbian Justice Minister, talks about how biased the justice system still is in his troubled nation and how the shadow of former President Slobodan Milosevic continues to hover.
Slobodan Milosevic, first became president of Yugoslavia in 1989, but many say his influence is still felt. Currently, he is in the Netherlands, facing charges of war crimes at The Hague. In his first six years in power, Milosevic ignited conflicts in Croatia (1991) and Bosnia (1992) during which thousands of civilians died. In 1997, he earned international disdain when he brutally repressed Kosovo's ethnic Albanian residents. In 2000, he relinquished the presidency to Vojislav Kostunia, but only under popular pressure.
SPIEGEL: In a surprising move, a Serbian court revoked international arrest warrants for former president Slobodan Milosevic's wife Mira Markovic and his son Marko. Already the Serbian people were irate that charges against Marko for allegedly harassing his father's political opponents were dropped and that financial corruption charges against Mira Markovic were dismissed. Some say the dropping of the charges was an inside deal. Is Milosovic once again ruling the nation, this time from his cell at The Hague war crimes court?
Batic: For everyone who lives in Serbia, one thing is clear: The Milosevic era has returned. Almost all of the most important posts in the nation are once again filled with Milosevic's cronies. In Milosevic's wife's case, the chief prosecutor issued "an obligatory order" to his deputy to drop the arrest warrants. Such an order is a first in our judicial history. Behind it all was a deal between Milosevic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Kostunica remains in power thanks to the votes of the Socialist parliamentarians, whose party Milosevic once led.
SPIEGEL: Marko allegedly controlled illicit cigarette smuggling. He was arrested after he allegedly threatened an opposition member with a chainsaw. Now, the defendant has taken back the charges.
Batic: What else can the man do? His mother wrote me a letter in which her terror was clear: Marko's friend threatened him and his family day and night.
SPIEGEL: How seriously can we take the promises to track down and arrest the two most searched-for war criminals, General Ratko Mladic and Radovan Kadadzic?
Batic: Mladic is often in Serbia, mostly in Belgrade. He -- just like other war criminals -- is still being protected by the army, the church and Kostunica. And I don't just mean morally. All of those who have given themselves up as war criminals to the Hague have received up to €500,000 compensation. It's being financed by four business magnates who then are compensated by the Serbian government with lucrative deals.
SPIEGEL: The government of the assassinated Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic which you belonged to, also knew about Mladic's trips to Belgrade. Why didn't you arrest him?
Batic: He had the support of the army, not the government. The police could not initiate a war against the army.
SPIEGEL: Djindjic was killed in 2003 and the case against his alleged assassin is threatening to become a farce. Not long ago, the state prosecutor was replaced.
Batic That's because he would not be influenced by the government's attempts to water down the evidence. A few people holding cabinet posts today were directly involved in the killing. That's why the government is waffling on the case.
SPIEGEL: The case has focused completely on one suspect and legitimate questions about his accomplices have been totally ignored. Why?
Batic: The reasons are well known. They were people who had no political perspective under Djindjic -- a group of criminals like the ones sitting in The Hague. The plot was organized by the state and military secret service. The patriarch blessed the plot using the logic that Djindjic was a traitor and it's no sin to murder a traitor."
This interview reveals what kind of "democratic" servia we are talking about these days. According to Vladan Batic, the former Serbian Justice Minister, the state, the church and the army are all involved in protecting and paying war criminals. This is the face of the new, "democratic" servia.
"Batic: Mladic is often in Serbia, mostly in Belgrade. He -- just like other war criminals -- is still being protected by the army, the church and Kostunica. And I don't just mean morally. All of those who have given themselves up as war criminals to the Hague have received up to €500,000 compensation. It's being financed by four business magnates who then are compensated by the Serbian government with lucrative deals."
And the church is involved in assasinations as well:
"The patriarch blessed the plot using the logic that Djindjic was a traitor and it's no sin to murder a traitor. "
Nothing has changed since that Serbian Orthodox priest blessed the Scorpions before they started killing.
servia is still a corrupted maffia state where the state, the army and the church are still united in spreading fear, lies and terror. Just like in the 90s.
Tosi
Sweden
my dear sheep hearder we can send articles back n forth till we die, i can send u thousaqnds of articles on ur women pimped ur brother seling herion etc yet my questions remain unanswer for weeks typical albo s typical
Ylber said:
"my dear sheep herder!” how racist is that?
We don't have to answer any of your questions son, because no matter what you say, no matter what you do you have lost Kosova, it is over. Not only that, you have lost Krajina, you have lost Republika Srpska, you have lost Montenegro and you have lost Macedonia. Soon Sanxhak and Vojvodina are to follow, and Serbia will be small as hell. It will be an economically unviable state, while the Albanians will be the next economic force in the neighborhood. We have access to the sea, the richest mines in Europe, the highest birthrate in Europe etc.
We are the light that shines at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the Balkans. The children of the Albanoi Illyrians and George Castriota are finally claiming their rightful place as the masters of Illyria or today’s Ethnic Albania.
You are jealous, that's understandable, because you are a Serb, a member of the looser nation. It has to be extremely humiliating to start four different wars and then loose all of them in utter humiliation, all the while exposing your own self for the bloodthirsty racists you are. When people think of Serb they think of child murderer, rapist, pillager, and executioner. It is not coincidental that the most famous Serbs in the world are the most wanted men by the Hague, Karadzic and Mladic.
So you call me sheep herder. Thank you. I take that as a compliment. I would rather be a sheep herder than a Serb any day of the week.
As far as seeing you in Brussels, that will never happen! I have better chances finding you at the Hague!
Sincerely yours, Ylber, USA.
PS: You bark a lot but you are afraid of showing your name, anonymous!
What's the question? Anybody knows? :|
Question answered: you as a Serb are making very bad publicity for your nation. As a racist for humanity. You can continue claiming our "brothers sell heroin" and "you pimp your women", things that are of criminal nature and are totaly irrelevant to creating a state. It is known we are doing a much better job at clearing up crime than Serbia is, but this again is irrelevant because we are not here to compare our police/justice system to Serbias. We are not a country yet, Serbia has been for a century. Thus hard to compare.
I have worked for the police, KPS, and can assure you these men/women are becoming a force to be proud of. This is not only thanks to the desire they carry, to serve as the Police of Kosova, but also thanks to how Serb police/military treated us, as sheep (this is a name you used). Racism among that country's police force made us stronger.
I hope you realize what this means dear Martyr, each time you post here, we are more determined to push away from that entity called Serbia and Serbs. You have shown where your heart lies, with the likes of KKK and Le Pen. Selfdetermination is a human right and we choose not to be in the same borders with racists.
racist? oh really now i am racist for calling u a sheep hearder while u calling an idiot, gremlin servian (a duragatory term in ur eyes) is ok? nice logic. i love to see albos that area all of a sudden so european , u worked with the police and they were professional, wow, how cosmipolitan are u. very nice very civilized of u. the fact that the same members of these police units were planting bombs killing police officers killing serb civillians and albo as well is ok for u? u say that the right for self determination is a right, i agree, so then (one of my unanswered questions) why then dont the albos support the serbs in bosnia and croatia for the right of self deternimation? why did so many go and fight for the croats/muslims? were the serbs from bosnia also "repressing" you and not giving u everything that any minority in any nation in the world has? as for the other comments being jealous of the albanians???? hahhhahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahDUDE U REALLY ARE SOOOOO FUNNY!!!!!!
dude ask anyone ANYONE from europe to the states what they think of albos, ask anyone who has had any type of interaction with u guys and all they will say is taht u are the MOST primitive people they have met, into selling drugs kidnaping girls from kosovo n albania to pimp them in london amsterdam etc etc etc. ask anyone who knows anothing about serbs and they will tell u WITH ENVY about a nation who ALWAYS FOUGHT THE BIGGEST POWERS (Hitler, dirty turks, NATO) and never got scared never had to depend on someone to fight for them like the albos did with the USA. WHAT R U GOING TO DO WHEN NATO LEAVES???? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHHAHAH
did u ever ask urselves that? ask anyone who knows the serbs and the names like Tesla, Pupin, Miodrag Stojkovic(first doctor in the world to clone a human embryo) are, mileva maric etc etc etc the list goes on while u boys steal land that is not urs and yes multiply like animals, listen i can understadn a family that wants to have 10 kids, tehre are exeptions where some families can afford taht,but when u have an entire society like the albaniacs in kosovo who live in dirt where each family has 10-11 kids then yes that is animalistic no doubt. u dont want to live next to racists??? dude tens of thosands of albos went to serbia sinc ethe 40's to escape the jail of albania, shit i eman just in 99 another 300,000 plus albos came bak with the peole who were fleeing the nato-serbia war, i mean come on without nato u guys had no chance even in ur wild albo lies and imagination. as for my unanswered questions here u go (from 2 weeks ago):
1.show me (besides when ur best frined hitler gave
it to u) when was kosovo EVER albanian????
2.how is it that your "self-determination" logic works for kosovo and not for other areas where serbs live in?
3please can someone please show me a source a text one sentance from prior to the 19th century (when the croats and serbs started to as well to claim this) where there is even a mention amongst albos that u are illiri?
4. can u show me one political map, one historians essay anything written prior to 1992 (the begining of the serb demonization) where it states taht the albos in kosovo were NOT pro nazi and did NOT side with hitler and mussolini and that kosovo was NOT given to them in return for their nazi alligence.
this should all keep you busy for a while like for the rest of ur lives cause u will NEVER find it! hahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahaahah
I'm glad I made you laugh Martyr. Just to clear up I never called you names, and find it very forunate that you've started experiencing laughing, you know its the first step to joy as the Buddha says.
"i love to see albos that area all of a sudden so european , u worked with the police and they were professional, wow, how cosmipolitan are u. very nice very civilized of u"
That is cause we are European. We are among the oldest European nations. Our language has influences of Celtic tribal languages, and the culture. The music, the dance, this is anthropology my friend, things taht cannot be denied. This is proof that Albanians lived in the area for millenia.
"dude ask anyone ANYONE from europe to the states what they think of albos, ask anyone who has had any type of interaction with u guys and all they will say is taht u are the MOST primitive people they have met, into selling drugs kidnaping girls from kosovo n albania to pimp them in london amsterdam etc etc etc"
Martyr I live in Europe, I have a relationship with a European, and I am totaly immersed into this culture, from London, to Milano, from Madrid to Helsinki. I have never experienced such racism and hatered from any European, besides a few Serbified ones. Things you speak of are simply, untrue.
"ask anyone who knows anothing about serbs and they will tell u WITH ENVY about a nation who ALWAYS FOUGHT THE BIGGEST POWERS (Hitler, dirty turks, NATO) and never got scared never had to depend on someone to fight for them like the albos did with the USA"
Serbs have always licked the behinds of the likes as Turks, French, Russians. Serbia would not exist if it weren't for the support of these countries. Serbia was a vasal state in the Ottoman Empire, Albania was totaly occupied. Reason? Simply, Serbia understood and was less stubborn, Albanians were dumb enough to fight the Turks in the name of the Vatican and the Pope. We fought for Europe and Christianity, then we were eventualy subdued, failed since to fight them there needed to be an alliance. Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians could not fight alone when a country smack in the middle was serving as a enforcement point for the Turks (i.e. Serbia).
"WHAT R U GOING TO DO WHEN NATO LEAVES????"
We will survive the Serb terror just like we have ever since you arrived to South East Europe, of course unless you choose to leave your racist ways.
"but when u have an entire society like the albaniacs in kosovo who live in dirt where each family has 10-11 kids then yes that is animalistic no doubt. u dont want to live next to racists???"
Well this proves you are a racist. On the other hand it also implies a very funny concept, that all Albanians somehow before the invention of the Internet gathered and declared "let us make 10 kids each to fight the Serbs". You cannot be serious.
"1.show me (besides when ur best frined hitler gave
it to u) when was kosovo EVER albanian????"
Hitler was no-ones best friend. Not even Serbs, he used your country, he could not use ours simply because we don't have the seed of nationalism as deelpy rooted as Serbs do. Othervise we would have wiped your bottoms easily. As an answer to your question, simply ask yourself, who was there before Serbs decended into S/E Europe. Answer: Illyrians. Now, look at the characteristics between the two people (Illyrians and Albanians) and clearly you will see the cultural similarities and lingustic similarities. The Albanians come from Albanoi, one of the tribes in northern Albania. On the other hand, the Kosovars are more of a Dardan tribal mix, which in itself was mixed with the Celtic tribes that settled the area circa 3000 BC. The physical characteristics prove this, i.e. pressence of blond and red hairs among people in the area.
"2.how is it that your "self-determination" logic works for kosovo and not for other areas where serbs live in? "
Because your criminals slaughtered 250,000 people, took away 49% of the land when there were less than 30% of you, all at the cost of Bosniac civilians and Croat ones.
"3please can someone please show me a source a text one sentance from prior to the 19th century (when the croats and serbs started to as well to claim this) where there is even a mention amongst albos that u are illiri?"
Your question was answered earlier by someone. You can find it urself.
"can u show me one political map, one historians essay anything written prior to 1992 (the begining of the serb demonization) where it states taht the albos in kosovo were NOT pro nazi and did NOT side with hitler and mussolini and that kosovo was NOT given to them in return for their nazi alligence."
The maps during World War 2 were drawn allong Ethnic lines which implies Serbs were not a majority in Kosova. I am glad you bring this up, since it proves that your claims to this land are baseless. Also prior to WW2, all maps showed one thing, the Ottoman Empire, and before that the Serb Empire and other Empires. But we were there all the time, saw them all fall.
"this should all keep you busy for a while like for the rest of ur lives cause u will NEVER find it! hahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahaahah"
Looks like its keeping you more busy than us, given that you have nothing to do with Kosova. Do you have a home to look after, like Serbia?
All the best Martyr, as your names shows I hope your people are not so sad as to turn racists like you into martyrs. Even though your nation caused so much desctruction and pain I still think your country deserves better, for all of us.
I'm glad to see the previous posters sane and friendly answer to a delusional serb.
Here I have some things to add.
First of all, it was you who started posting irrational articles by Julia Gorin. I on the other hand only provided responses to her outlandish claims.
Then I followed it with a very relevant article bout serbia today. I guess it was too much for your fragile mind.
Then to your simple questions which took me about 5 minutes to answer.
1) I'm not even going to mention the Dardani tribe which are our ancestors since the previous poster explained that very good to you. I'll give you a later connection.
The well known Albanian noble family of Dukagjini had it roots and lived on , logically enough, the Dukagjini plateu which is situated on western Kosova. There you have a simple link between Albanians and Kosova in the middle ages (13th, 14th and 15th century).
2) 2.how is it that your "self-determination" logic works for kosovo and not for other areas where serbs live in?
Which other parts where serbians live? There are no serbs in Krajina. They all fled like cowards when the Croatian army got equal arms. Operation Oluja showed what kind of capacity serbians have for war. Brave when fighting civilians but fleeing when facing equal enemies.
But I guess you mean Republika Srpska.
First of all, that entity was created by genocide and massmurder (se Srebrenica).
Second issue is that it was your lord, the arch criminal Milosevic himself, that signed the Dayton accord where the serbian part would remain in the Bosnian federation.
So there you have it, the serbians signed themselves the Dayton agreement. That excludes self-determination.
Whereas Kosova was taken by serbia by brutality in 1912. No Albanians have ever signed a treaty for being under serbia.
3) Your historical knowledge is very limited. Ptolemai, an Alexandrian scholar, wrote in the 2nd century about an Illirian tribe that was called Albanoi.
"The first known occurance of the word Albanoi as the name of an Illyrian tribe in what is now north-central Albania goes back to 130 AD, in a work of Ptolemy."
http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Albania
There goes another one of your silly little attempts to falsify history.
Which brings me to the last question when you ask about maps. Here is a link for you:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/perovicgenealogy/page18.html
showing a map from 1878, where all Albanian lands are united and where Kosova had even larger borders than today.
So what is next? Any more silly little questions you need to get answered?
I understand your ignorance though, as the serbian schools are not working properly and the propaganda they teach you at schools is not based on reality.
Now you tell me this, how can you claim to have your craddle in Kosova when you come from Caucasus? You serbs are, after all, slavs mixed with mongolian Avars that migrated in the Balkans during Middle Ages. How you can claim Kosova, who has been inhabited by it's indigenous population from ancient times, is beyond me...
Can you answer me that?
Tosi
Sweden
UN digs up Kosovo graves in search for missing Serbs
24 Aug 2005 11:08:51 GMT
By Matthew Robinson
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, Aug 24 (Reuters) - U.N. forensics experts have begun exhuming 41 graves in the Kosovo capital believed to contain the remains of Serbs who went missing after the arrival of NATO troops six years ago.
Marked with sticks or scrap metal, the graves were located within the grounds of a seemingly abandoned Serbian cemetery, overrun with weeds and next to a railway line.
The head of the U.N. missing persons and forensics office said he believed they were the victims of a spate of kidnappings and murders in the majority Albanian province at the time of the withdrawal of Serb forces and NATO's deployment in June 1999.
"A number of Serbs went missing upon the arrival of KFOR troops, about 50 in the Pristina area alone," Jose-Pablo Baraybar told Reuters at the grave site, referring to the NATO-led Kosovo Force that still patrols the province.
"It is highly likely that people ended up dead in the street. They were collected, taken to the hospital, went through the mortuary and were then simply disposed of in this place."
Behind him, forensics experts in white body suits looked on as a digger scraped awkwardly at the edges of a large pit.
Seventeen graves were marked with Serb names, including those once listed as residents of a local retirement home.
Some were found wrapped in body bags or hospital sheets. One grave was marked with a scrap of metal from a washing machine.
Around 500 Serbs and 2,400 ethnic Albanians are still missing from the 1998-99 war in the southern Serbian province, now governed by the United Nations.
NATO bombed for 78 days to drive out Serb forces accused of killing and expelling thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians as they fought to crush a rebel insurgency.
But the deployment of 60,000 NATO soldiers failed to prevent a wave of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians, who account for 90 percent of the province's 2 million people.
Kosovo's Albanians expect to win formal independence from Serbia in talks the West hopes to open this year. Serbia says the mountain-ringed province was the birthplace of the Serb nation and can never become independent.
UN digs up Kosovo graves in search for missing Serbs
24 Aug 2005 11:08:51 GMT
By Matthew Robinson
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, Aug 24 (Reuters) - U.N. forensics experts have begun exhuming 41 graves in the Kosovo capital believed to contain the remains of Serbs who went missing after the arrival of NATO troops six years ago.
Marked with sticks or scrap metal, the graves were located within the grounds of a seemingly abandoned Serbian cemetery, overrun with weeds and next to a railway line.
The head of the U.N. missing persons and forensics office said he believed they were the victims of a spate of kidnappings and murders in the majority Albanian province at the time of the withdrawal of Serb forces and NATO's deployment in June 1999.
"A number of Serbs went missing upon the arrival of KFOR troops, about 50 in the Pristina area alone," Jose-Pablo Baraybar told Reuters at the grave site, referring to the NATO-led Kosovo Force that still patrols the province.
"It is highly likely that people ended up dead in the street. They were collected, taken to the hospital, went through the mortuary and were then simply disposed of in this place."
Behind him, forensics experts in white body suits looked on as a digger scraped awkwardly at the edges of a large pit.
Seventeen graves were marked with Serb names, including those once listed as residents of a local retirement home.
Some were found wrapped in body bags or hospital sheets. One grave was marked with a scrap of metal from a washing machine.
Around 500 Serbs and 2,400 ethnic Albanians are still missing from the 1998-99 war in the southern Serbian province, now governed by the United Nations.
NATO bombed for 78 days to drive out Serb forces accused of killing and expelling thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians as they fought to crush a rebel insurgency.
But the deployment of 60,000 NATO soldiers failed to prevent a wave of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians, who account for 90 percent of the province's 2 million people.
Kosovo's Albanians expect to win formal independence from Serbia in talks the West hopes to open this year. Serbia says the mountain-ringed province was the birthplace of the Serb nation and can never become independent.
:) the Serb posters here prove that 50% of their popullation never finishes elementary education. The good side is, there are 50% of others who do not speak in racist terms (I hope) and who actualy understand (again I hope) the issues.
Those other 50% are needed to help Serbia out. Ice cream to Serbia!!!!
sorry posted teh article twice. as for ur newset comments lets take them one slow stp at a time and again prove to u how nothing was answered with a direct response but just theory and nonsense.
1. u r the oldest nation in europe u say, ah question, when was the word ALBANIAN used first? 11 century ok, what we were all before, or descend from is a totally differnt issue, just like the greeks of today have nothing to do with the ancient ones. there are so many traces of ancient illirian/celtic/avar etc etc blood in the veins of croats, serbs, albos and everyone for that matter in the balkans. AGAIN SHOW ME A SOURCE FROM PRIOR TO THE 19th CENT that claims u were teh ILLIRI, u dont have one, all u can come up with is "we have been living there forever" ahhh NOT AS ALBANINAS U DID NOT just like the other peoples and nations lived there, died there and became what they want to be konw as (macedonians and bosnians most recentl invented nationallity) again show me a source that makes any of these cliams by ur ancestors in the 16 century when there was barley any any albos in kosovo (look at ur turksih ottamna census reports on wikipedia.or for more info on that ).
2. srebs licked teh butts of turks??? dude, read any serious book on the ottamans and u will see taht noone fought them like the serbs, the serbs organized the first real serious revolt in 1804, fought like crazy to maintain their RELIGION (which serbs n albos once shared) whiel the ALBOS CONVERTED TO ISLAM???!?!?!?!? HOW DO U EVEN HAVE THE NEVER TO SAY THAT?? albos were loyal sevants to teh turks, ur people fought for them, ahhh who was Muhamed Ali??? u are all so proud of him. as for the serbs that licked the turks butts (true we had them) today they are called bosnian muslims and serbs of muslim faith in sandzak.
3 . u say serbs killed 250,000 in bosnia snd stole 49% of the land. dude we can talk about facts (which is the only thing i present to u not lies like this) do some reasearch on teh real number of dead in bosnia, which is 30,000 (half serbs) 5k in sarajevo killed in 146 camps, 4k in around srebrenica between 93-95. facts. "serbs stole 49% of the land" WHAT???? 74% of Bosnia was owned by Serbs prior to the wars in the 90s, serbs mostly live i the rural areas caue the serbs/craots in the cities were the ones who convered during turkish times (not to pay taxes) sound familiar? that is what ur ancestors did. its soo funny ur hatred of anything serbian here u say "serbs stole 49%" of the land in bosnia, in ur previous post u say serbs "lost bosnia", can u make u your mind? which is it?
4 and last but not least i did not "start" this it was the stupid healine "meet u in brussels" and kosovo was never serbias to begin with that started it. last question , what republic was kosovo a part of after ww2 in yugoslavia? can u anser that? was it a republic? if not it must have been part of another republic, can u tell me which one?
To Martyr or what you call yourself. You can stop blogging here. I think you are a Serb. I can tell you that Kosovo wil not, and I repeat NOT be independent, even if that maybe would be the best solution. I have very good insight in the system and there is no possibility that it will be independent. The fact is that no-one for the moment knows how to move further. Its a little bit like Catch 22. Either way you do, it´s going to be problems. We will see what happens, but independence, sorry but no chance according to top officials.
DDUS
listen man dont u understdn taht I myslef think that kosovo should be independent, yes many Serb holy sites are there but still i think it would be best for both serbs and albos for it to get independence my problem is the fact that serbia will be forced to give kosovo away and to recognise it whiel teh serbs in bosnia and croata were bombed and driven out by the West and were not allowed to get the same thing the albos in kosovo are getting. simple as that, there is a HUGE HUGE double standard here. and yes kosovo being independent is much better for serbia, i mean the reaility of the situation is that in a few years the albos could have had the entire parliment in belgrade under control just in sheer numbers. it would be better for both sides, just stop ur lies and admit that u are getting something whcih was never yours, cities were built roads were pa ved for u and u hate the same people who NEVER IN ALBO HISTORY treted u better, u were allowed to come to a country that was civilised compared to albania.
from today, first as usual
http://www.energychallenge.org/
To the serb blogger
I'll have to repeat myself once again. You either don't want to or can't understand this. I suspect the former.
"The first known occurance of the word Albanoi as the name of an Illyrian tribe in what is now north-central Albania goes back to 130 AD, in a work of Ptolemy."
http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Albania
As you can see, there was an Illyrian tribe called Albanoi which lived in north-central Albania.
There you have it, one of the many links between Albanians and Illyrians.
There are more, like the Albanian language, folklore, and archeological continuation.
"there are so many traces of ancient illirian/celtic/avar etc etc blood in the veins of croats, serbs, albos and everyone for that matter in the balkans. "
This a typical serbian answer to try and divert attention from their mixed ancestry.
We Albanians come from the southern Illyrians that lived on the same territory as we live today. The northern Illyrian were assimilated by Slavs, Celts and Avars thus forming todays slavic nations in the Balkans.
However, the Avars occupied a territory in todays area of Belgrade even before the slavs arrived there. So the serbians are direct descendants of mixing of Slavo-Avar people. The same as todays Bulgarians who are a bland of Slavs and Bulgars (a turkish people)...
Almost every nation in the world is mixed with different elements and populations because of migrations, occupations etc...
However some nations have saved their language, customs and still live in the same geografical area as their ancestors (Albanians).
Others have migrated from Caucasus, mixed with a Mongol tribe, and claim a region far away from their origin as their craddle.
You see the difference?
Tosi
Sweden
Poor Serb Martyr, he has difficulties reading (probably insomnia). Weren't his questions answered like 4 - 5 times? And the stuf he comes up with! Lol, 70% of Bosnia Serb?! :/ I must addmit, Serb denial and delusion reaches levels I never knew it could reach.
Go to sleep Martyr, it will do you good.
again just nonsense show a source prior to the 19th cen where the ilirian claim is made, if it was so ur continuity would not have broken, ur ancestors would have preserved the ancient ilir culture wich they did not nor did they speak about it untill again u guys saw croats and serbs claiming the ilirian liniage to justify a formation of yugoslavia, land of many tribes and peoples like the original illirians were, illiria stretch from zagreb to greece, why not claim everything???? n yes 73% of bosnia was in serbian onwership just like 40 % of kosovo was under the ownership of the serb church/;
Djordje Jankovic
(Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade)
The Serbs in the Balkans in the light of Archaeological Findings
Source: The Serbian Questions in the Balkans, Faculty of Geography, Belgrade, 1995.
[Note: prepared for the web and names partially transcripted by "Project Rastko"]
A medley of historical circumstances was the reason that the Serbs started living together only after the formation of Yugoslavia in 1918. But even then, the union of the Serbs was not complete. History and archaeology did not realize the Serbian ethnic area as a whole, except for a few exceptions. This was due to a small number of experts and to the Yugoslav orientation, and that is why hardly any research work was done in connection with the early Serbian past.
In World War II Germany and Italy divided and separated the Serbs. The consequences of the state breaking apart could not be eradicated even after the victory of the Allies. The Serbian people, divided into new republics, could not take care of their tradition and culture, as well as of their archaeological monuments. There were various national archaeologies, but not the Serbian, in the former Yugoslavia.
Still, a portion of archaeological monuments visible on the earth's surface can be used for research. The archaeological findings below the surface of the earth are gradually coming to light. The available archaeological data in the Serbian ethnic area fully confirm and explain the insufficient written historical records. The maps of the archaeological monuments made in different periods of time show the continuity and gradual spreading of the Serbian ethnic area from the early Middle Ages.
De administrando Imperio, written by Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus VII, is the only written source in which the tradition of the settling of the Serbs is preserved.[1] It originated in the mid 10th century. The history of the Serbs and their territories were depicted in it. According to the story therein, the Serbs who lived in Boyka were divided between the two successors to the throne. The prince of one portion of the people and his people escaped and found shelter with Heraclius, the emperor of Byzantium (610-641). He gave them a town in the Salonica region which was later called Servia, after the Serbs. Then, they started moving towards the Danube river, but they changed their minds and through the Belgrade commander gained a permission from the emperor to settle in Dalmatia.
The archaeological science has established a link, which dates back to the 7th century, between the Danube river near Brza Palanka and the region of Pljevlja.[2] This may mean that the Serbs from today's Northeast Serbia moved to the Dalmatian province of the time. This also proves that the fact about the Serbs moving from the vicinity of Salonica towards the Danube river could be true. However, there are no other data on the Serbs in the vicinity of Salonica. So, the data on the Serbs, Salonica, and Servia could be interpreted differently. Namely, the name of Salonica is similar to the name of the classical town of Solin near Split (Salona). Servia, which is around 135 km away from Salonica, bears essentially the same name as the town of Srb near Knin, located some 150 km from Solin. So, one could think that the story was about Srb and Solin, that the Serbs came first to western Dalmatia, and not to Servia and Salonica. These notions show that the problem of the accuracy of the data on the settling of the Serbs could not be solved without archaeological findings.
The origin and meaning of the Serbian name have been sought for centuries, but no interpretation has been generally accepted so far. The prevailing view is that the Serbian name is of Iranian origin, even Indo-Iranian.[3] Accepting this or some other assumption about the origin of the Serbian name is hindered by the lack of knowledge of the oldest Serbian history, i.e. the knowledge of the exact time when the group of Slavs were thus named; or, of the time when the bearers of the Serbian name became Slavs. As a people who probably named themselves thus, the Serbs are among the oldest Slav peoples. In the Story of the Past, the first Russian chronicle, the Serbs are among the first five Slav peoples who were enumerated by their names.[4] In this Chronicle, they are mentioned in the light of the events referring to the first millennium before Christ. However, science does not take this source into account because it cannot be checked from the archaeological point of view. The age of the Serbian name is simply proven by its great diffusion in the early Middle Ages. There are not many examples of the sort in Europe. At that time, the Serbs lived on the Laba and in Roman Dalmatia, but they also lived in the above mentioned town of Servia in the region of Salonica. They lived in Gordoserba near Nikea in Asia Minor, too; this was the bishop's town mentioned many times since the beginning of the 7th century.[5] Since there are records of the Serbs living on such a vast area, it is evident that they had been numerous and powerful and borne their name before the resettling of the Slavs in the 6th and 7th centuries. It is also unique that today the Serbs live both in the Balkans and in Germany.
The state of Serbia was first mentioned by Emperor Constantine VII. The name Serbia has been mentioned regularly since then. From the 12th century, in western (Latin) written sources, the Serbian state in the river basins of the Drina and Morava was called Raska (Rassa, Rassia).[6] The last time when the name Raska was used for the Serbian region in the mesopotamia between the Sava and Drava rivers and in today's Vojvodina was in the 15th and 16th centuries.[7] The Serbian western states and lands were named mostly by the local names of Bosnia, Rama, Herzegovina, etc.
In the Byzantine written sources the Serbs are frequently mentioned by their classical names, after the regions they lived in (Dalmatians, Tribali, Dacians, etc.). They were most frequently called Dalmatians, after the Roman province of Dalmatia, the country they lived in. This was the land extending from Kosovo and the towns of Lipljan and Zvecan.[8] The Chronicle of the Frankish Kingdom (year 822) recorded that the Serbs "...had control over a large part of Dalmatia." This fact is related to the region of the Una river.[9] Latin sources of a later date state that the Serbs lived in Dalmatia or Slavonia (Sclavonia), depending on whether the classical or the then term Dalmatia was considered. Namely, the Roman province of Dalmatia extended from Istria to the basin of the Morava river and from the sea to the valley of the Sava river. This is the Dalmatia depicted in the Frankish and Byzantine chronicles. But, since the Byzantine theme of Dalmatia of the time occupied only the narrow littoral belt, the Latin sources sometimes called Serbia by the name of Slavonia, the land which extended between Dalmatia (with the towns of Trogir, Split, Dubrovnik, and Bar) and Hungary.[10]
In the last centuries, the Serbs in Dalmatia were called Vlachs, Morlachs (Morlaci), Morovlachs.[11] The Italian sources call even the Serbs from Belgrade by the names of Morlaci and Vlachs.[12] The Slavs called Romanic people and the Romanic people - cattle breeders by the name of Vlachs; later, the name was used for all cattle breeders. When the population of Croatia (Dalmatia) was seriously thinned by the Mongolian invasion in 1242, a new area for settling was open. Later, the "Vlachs" were mentioned in the area of the Cetina river, in Knin, and in Lika.[13]
The name "Vlach" was derived for the Serbs because of their cattle breeder's way of life. In the mountainous regions of Dalmatia, especially in the border areas, the Serbs raised cattle by tradition. This helped them to survive more easily in the wars that they had to fight constantly. From the earliest times, one of the characteristics that distinguished the Serbs from their neighbours was cattle breeding. The nature of the Serbian economy, which has in some modes persisted till the present day, is evident both in archaeological and written sources.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus VII was the first who recorded the Serbian cattle breeding trade. He wrote that the Serbs of Pagania lived on the islands of Mljet, Korcula, Brac and Hvar, and that "...they owned their herds and lived off them."[14] Jovan Kinam, in his description of the conquest of Galic near Kosovska Mitrovica in 1149, wrote that the Byzantines imprisoned many barbarians "...who were partly warriors and partly cattle breeders."[15] The western sources from the same period also recorded the Serbian cattle breeding. In the second half of the 12th century, Wilhelm of Tyr wrote that the Serbs lived in mountains and woods, that they did not know much about agriculture, and that they had many herds of cattle, much milk, cheese, butter, honey, and wax.[16]
This, still preserved, cattle breeding way of life of the Serbs was best described by Jovan Cvijic.[17] Their seasonal movements, singled out in his works, from the Dinaric region to the mesopotamia between the Sava and Drava rivers, and partly to the Littoral, gave an exact picture of the old Serbian ethnic area. The settlements were located in the mountainous regions, and in winter the pastures were looked for in the plains. The Serbs followed the same pattern in the Middle Ages as well, when they settled the Dinaric mountains, with many plateaus, and the neighbouring sunny valleys and plains suitable for winter homes. The arrangement of settlements and graveyards, the appearance of homesteads, the crafts, and the character of the population had to be in accordance with their way of life.
It is certain that other Slav groups also settled the today's Serbian territory in the early Middle Ages. In the written sources of the time, these groups of Slavs were not usually mentioned by names since they were not numerous. Various written sources from the 9th and 10th centuries state that the Serbs in the Balkan peninsula were surrounded by some tribes that also lived in the neighbourhood of the Serbs on the Laba river. These tribes merged into one and the same Serbian people. The process of amalgamation was completed in the 13th century although the assimilation of the new Slav groups continued.
Thus, Constantine VII records that Prince Mihailo of Zahumlje descended from the Litcik family. At the same time the Licikaviki lived between the lower Odra and Varta river basins.[18] It seems that the today's town of Vukovar (in the past called Vlcou, Wolkov, Volkow) got its name after the Vilci family (Wolves) that lived on the Laba river in the Meklenburg region.[19] It is necessary to take into account the other Slavs who were known to be living in the north - the Havolians on the Havela river, then the Ljutici, Glinjani, Glomaci, Moracani, etc. It can be assumed that even the members of the South Slav tribes reached Dalmatia.
***
It has been established that since the middle of the 5th century the Slavs kept settling the territories under the Roman control. That was the time when the Roman defence on the Danube was crushed by the Hun-German invasion. That was the time when the oldest Slav settlement in the Balkans dated. It was situated near Musici, on the Drina river.[20] The written and archaeological sources state that the South Slavs settled the Balkan and western Pannonian regions during the second half of the 6th century and at the beginning of the 7th.[21] At that early time one should distinguish the South Slavs from the Serbs.
The culture of the South Slavs is well known thanks to the researches carried out in Bulgaria, Romania, and in our country.[22] The settlements were located in river valleys, on gentle slopes, close to the water. Half-buried wooden houses had stone or earthen furnaces in one of the corners. In most cases only the quadrangular buried construction and the furnace remained intact. They burnt their dead, as all other Slavs did, and then buried them in the ground, with or without urns. Such settlements and graveyards on the territory of the former Yugoslavia are known to exist in the Danube and in the Sava Basins.[23]
The Serbs lived in hilly-mountainous regions. Their settlements with houses above the ground were situated on the slopes, close to wells and ponds. The fireplace was on the floor of the house, close to the wall or in the corner. Not much could be saved of these houses, so they are not easy to locate. The whereabouts of an early Serbian settlement have been established in the Pester field.[24] The only explored settlement is situated in Batkovici near the town of Bijeljina.[25] Shallow foundations of irregular shape - the remains of these houses above the ground - were found here. This settlement was populated throughout the Middle Ages, starting from the early 7th century.
The Serbs cremated their dead and displayed the remains above the ground. It was a special way of burial in the air. Only under certain conditions the archaeological findings of this custom could be called graves. This procedure with the dead is depicted in the Story of the Past.[26] These "graves" were archaeologically explored in the area of Luzicani.[27] Today, they are small mounds of about 3 m in diameter and 0.5 m by height. The construction of the burial mounds has not been sufficiently explored. Shattered pieces of the dishes which were used in the funeral and memorial feasts are sometimes found along the brim or inside the burial mound.
The Serbian graveyards from the 7th and 8th centuries were archaeologically explored in Ljutici near the town of Pljevlja, and on Mount Jezerska between the towns of Prizren and Strpce.[28] Since these burial mounds were easy to notice, they were also found on many other sites - on Mount Pester and by the towns of Savnik, Drvar, Grahovo, Srb, etc. A burial mound near the town of Konjic was partly explored.[29] With the abundance of earthenware findings, it is similar to the burial mounds on the Danube river found on Ostrovul Mare in Romania.[30] These graveyards can hardly be preserved on cultivable land with no rocks. In the Pannonian Plain, or on similar grounds, they could only be preserved and noticed by accident. The graveyard on Ostrovul Mare is not destroyed as there were meadows there, not cultivable land.
The graveyards with burial mounds are usually located near a water spring, which shows that there were settlements in the vicinity. As a rule, even today, modern settlements and sheepfolds are situated close to these graveyards although no traces of the previous settlements have been discovered so far. But, they existed and this is supported by indirect proofs of social life in the vicinity. Namely, in the Story of the Past were depicted pagan "igrista" (playgrounds) between the villages.[31] There, the pagan Slavs gathered, danced, and got married. In Emperor Dushan's Charter (1331-1355) to Chilandarion, in which the boundaries near the monastery of St. Peter Koriski were described, a toponym for one of the peaks of Mount Jezerska was "Igriste".[32] This means that both the Serbian graveyard and a pagan centre of social life were situated on Mount Jezerska, which certainly proves that people lived there in the surrounding villages. Such toponyms still exist. For example, in central Bosnia, east of the town of Kakanj, there is Igrisca peak (1303 m) and on Mount Javor, south of Vlasenica - Igriste (1406 m).
So, the Serbian settlements as well as their graveyards were situated in the hilly-mountainous region such as the Dinaric region. In these regions people mostly raised cattle. The line that connects the locations of the explored burial mounds denotes the area in which the Serbs lived in the 7th and 8th centuries: from the divide of the Sitnica and Lepenac rivers in the south-east to the basin of the Una river in the west. There are no data about the eastern boundaries so far.
Fig. 1.- Serbs in the 7th-8th centuries [click for the large image]
1. Known locations of Serbian tombs. 2. Studied Serbian tombs. 3. Slav urns of the 6th-7th centuries. 4. Croatian cemeteries or the 7th-9th centuries. 5. Tombs of the Komani-Kruje culture. 6. Studied Slav settlements. 7. Byzantine (Romanic) towns. 8. Borders of Roman provinces.
The area beyond these boundaries offers archaeological traces of the South Slavs and other peoples. The graveyards common in the South Slav culture, with the remains of the dead cremated and buried in the ground, have been discovered in the Danube basin (Celarevo, Slankamen)[33] and in the Sava basin (Laktasi, Bijeljina).[34] These findings determine the former northern boundaries of the Serbs. Such graves in the Littoral could possibly belong to the Croats (Kasic,[35] Bakar[36]). Within the boundaries of the medieval Croatia, in the Littoral, archaeologists found numerous skeleton graveyards which undoubtedly belonged to the Croats from the time when they adopted Christianity in the 8th and 9th centuries.[37] These graveyards determine the possible south-western boundaries of the Serbs.
Apart from the Slavs, the population that spoke the Romance languages also lived on this territory. The archaeological findings until the 7th century inclusive give information about the Romanic people or Byzantines living in the hinterland.[38] The Romanic people, known in the written sources, stayed longer in the Littoral - in the towns such as Durazzo, Dubrovnik or Zadar. The town of Svac, about 10 km far from the Coast and Ulcinj, is very significant.[39] The crypts in which the dead were buried in the Christian tradition were discovered in this town. Byzantine jewellery, dishes, and other objects known in the Byzantine regions extending from Crimea, across Sicily, to Istria were found lying by the skeletons. The objects of the Slav origin, such as pots made on a slow wheel and decorated with a comb, were also found. Similar graveyards were also discovered in Durazzo.[40]
These Byzantine graveyards are particularly important for establishing the origin of the Koman-Kruje culture. This culture appeared at the end of the 7th century and disappeared in the 9th. Albanian scientists are trying to use this culture in order to prove the continuity between the old Romanized population and the Albanians of today.[41] However, these skeleton graveyards conceal the remains of special costumes and presents. Unique buckles, shackles known with some nomads, axes as weapons, and imported Byzantine jewellery were found. These findings differentiate this population from the Romanic people of Svac and Durazzo, where there are no such objects. Since the graveyards in the Koman-Kruje culture are situated in the mountains, one should have in mind cattle breeders here. They lived in the area from Mount Rumija to Ohrid Lake. Everything points to the fact that the bearers of the Koman-Kruje culture arrived there at the end of the 7th century.[42] They were probably settled in the region in order to defend the Durazzo-Salonica road, and they were destroyed when the Bulgarians started spreading in the hinterland of Durazzo in the 9th century.
Archaeological findings of the South Slav, Romanic, and Croatian tribes as well as of the Koman-Kruje culture delineate the ethnic area of the Serbs. It is necessary to point out that all the archaeological data on the Serbs coincide with those of their neighbours.
The history of the Serbs in the 9th and 10th centuries is much better known thanks to the work of Emperor Constantine VII. He was rather precise in delineating the boundaries of the Serbian lands in the Littoral. According to him the Serbs lived in Duklja, Travunia and Konavle, Zahumlje, Pagania, and Serbia. The first to come across in the south-east was Duklja in the hinterland of Durazzo, Ljes, Bar, Kotor, and Ulcinj. In the north-west, Pagania was the last Serbian land in the Littoral which bordered on Croatia on the Cetina river. Zahumlje also bordered on Croatia "towards the north". Duklja, Travunia, and Zahumlje bordered on Serbia by the mountains in the hinterland. Serbia "...borders on Croatia in the north and on Bulgaria in the south...," i.e. it reaches to the Croats on the Sava river in the north-west and to Bulgaria on the Vardar river in the south-east. The boundaries of the coastal Croatia were clearly defined, from the Cetina river to the town of Labin in Istria, with the borders on Serbia "...towards the Cetina river and the town of Liven."
Of the eight towns in the principality of Serbia mentioned by Constantine VII the location of almost none of them has yet been clearly defined. If we presume that the towns were listed in some specific order, their locations could be more or less defined based on our knowledge of the locations of the ones already found. The reliable data show that the first of the listed towns Destinik was in Metohia.[43] The next two towns, Cernavusk and Medjurecje were probably situated somewhere to the west of Metohia. The following Dresneik could be Dreznik, the town near the Una river. Between Dresneik and the town of Salines (undoubtedly Tuzla of today, the former Soli) was Lesnik of unknown location. The last two towns, listed in Bosnia, but in the principality of Serbia, were Kotor and Desnik. One of them was near Sarajevo, in the area of Rogacici[44] or Ilidza[45] where some church remains of the period were discovered. The other could be by Desetnik near the town of Kakanj.
The boundaries of Croatia are important for the delineation of the western boundaries of the Serbs.[46] When Serbian Prince Czaslav died around 950, Croatia expanded to the banovina (administrative unit) of Krbava, Lika and Gacko.[47] The data explaining the concept of this administrative unit are found in the Annals of the Frankish Kingdom although the Croats are not mentioned. Prince Borna (around 818-821) is mentioned as the prince of the Guduscani, the people that undoubtedly lived in the region of present-day Lika, i.e. between the Croatia in the Littoral and the Croatia on the Sava river.[48] A little later, it is described how Prince Ljudevit's rebellion against the Prankish authorities was crushed. In 822, Ljudevit fled from Sisak and found shelter with one of the Serbian zhupans. He killed his host and tried to take over his state but had to flee towards the sea where he was murdered. As mentioned earlier, given the route which Prince Ljudevit had to take and the data on the state and the town of Srb in the 14th century, it seems that he must have found shelter in today's Srb near the headwaters of the Una river. Accordingly, in the 9th and 10th centuries, in the farthest west, Serbia bordered on the region of Guduscani in today's Lika, which was included in Croatia later on.
The area of the northern Croatia in the continental part has not been conclusively established. That is why it is more difficult to define the northern boundaries of the Serbs. The boundaries of Zagreb bishopric, constituted at the end of the 11th century, show where the northern boundary of Serbia might have been. It is common in Hungary that the territories of bishoprics coincide with the boundaries of administrative regions. This means that the boundaries of the new bishopric were set around the territory of the old principality with the seat in Zagreb. Thus, the southern boundary of Zagreb bishopric, i.e. of the older principality on the Sava river, extended in the direction Zrinska Gora - Bela Krajina.[49] So, in the 9th and 10th centuries, the Serbs could reach the mesopotamia between the Una and Krka rivers with today's Banija and Kordun (the regions favourable for cattle breeding). Given the structure of the soil, the Serbs could spread over the mountains in the direction of Ogulin.
In the 9th century, Prince Kocelj (861-876) ruled the Lower Pannonia - Vukovo, Srem, Macva. The name of the today's village of Koceljeva in Macva confirms that Serbia bordered on Pannonia. Pope John VIII (872-882) wrote to the Serbian Prince Mutimir (around 850-891/2) to subjugate his bishopric to the Pannonian archbishopric of Saint Methodius.[50] This is just an additional proof that in the north Serbia bordered directly on the regions ruled by Prince Kocelj. Scarce data on the Hungarian inroads into our lands at the beginning of the 10th century cited that Zagreb, Pozega, and Vukovo were looted while neither the Serbs nor Croats were mentioned.[51] This proves that these towns were probably the seats of several principalities of the Croats, Vilci (Wolves), and of the third tribe of an unknown name. At the time of Prince Czaslav (927/928-around 950), the boundary of Serbia could reach the Drava and Danube rivers.[52]
In the north-east and east, the border shifted due to the clashes with Bulgaria. In the mid 10th century, the Morava principality was situated somewhere in the region of Sumadija, the Morava river basin and Branicevo.[53] Based on the location of this principality, the north-east boundary of Serbia coincided approximately with the boundary of Roman Dalmatia - from Mount Cer to Mount Rudnik. Then the border ran southward, between the Zapadna /Western/ and Juzna /Southern/ Morava river basins. It is now difficult to define where exactly the southern boundary was, but it should be somewhere on the watershed of the Morava and Vardar rivers, and on the watershed of the Vardar and Drim rivers.
Fig. 2. Serbs in the middle of the 10th century [click for the large image]
The archaeological data on the Serbs in the 9th and 10th centuries are too scarce to be used for defining their ethnic area. If compared to the neighbouring countries, known for their numerous sometimes lavish findings, one could get a completely wrong idea about the Serbia of the period. Capital cities, towns, and the seats of bishoprics have not been explored in the Serbian region. Some examples, however, show that this could be a wrong conclusion. The Church of SS Peter and Paul in Ras is the only original bishopric church of the Slavs which is still more or less unchanged. This is a rare example of at least one thousand years long tradition and continuity.[54][55] Another clear proof is the preserved portion of the potter's inscription in Glagolitic about the volume of the jug from Cecan, Kosovo.[56] This not only speaks of the widespread literacy, but also of the stage of development of the state in which the units of measurement were used and the taxes were fixed. At present, we can only speculate about the significant role which Serbia played in the world of the Slavs.
Archaeology cannot shed more light on the period of the 11th and 12th centuries, either. Although the foreign relations changed, the Serbian state was still powerful and more or less of the same size. During the rule of King Mihailo (around 1055-1082) and Constantine Bodin (around 1082-1101), Serbia was a serious adversary of the neighbouring countries. It is worth mentioning the Crusaders' journey under Raymond of Toulouse in the winter of 1096/1097. They travelled for almost 40 days through "Slavonia" (Sclavonia), from the western border to Scutari where they were met by King Bodin.[57] Considering the length of the journey, they probably entered Serbia somewhere in Lika, the westernmost region of Serbia.
In the south-east, the Serbs lived in Kosovo and their southern boundary was somewhere on the Drim river near Mount Debar.[58] In the neighbourhood, somewhere in the region of Elbasan and Tirana, the "Arbani" (Albanians) were being mentioned from the middle of the 11th century.[59]
The schism of the Church and the appearance of Bogumilism had a rather negative impact on the Serbs. Under the pressure of the Hungarians and Rome, in the crusades, the north-west parts of Serbia were taken from it. Later, these parts united under the name of Bosnia. Throughout many centuries, there were constant attempts to convert the Serbian and other Slav population to Catholicism and to include them into a nameless Slav corpus in the Hungarian state. However, a continuous mentioning of the "schismatics" in the mesopotamia between the Sava and Drava rivers, and in Vojvodina show that the Slavonic, i.e. the Orthodox Christian Church service had remained uninterrupted until the Turks came.[60] In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Orthodox Slavs in Hungary could not be differentiated from the Serbs, either because the Serbs had lived there before or because they were assimilated.
The territorial ratio of the Orthodox Church to the Catholic Church is evident in the distribution of the epigraphs. Until the 13th century, Cyrillic monuments spread to the island of Brac and the Cetina river in the west, and in the hinterland they reached the original Bosnia.[61] Later on, in the 14th and 15th centuries, epigraphs became more numerous, and very common on tombstones. They were recorded west of the line: Mljet (island) - Peljesac (peninsula) - Gradacac - Pakrac (towns).[62] A considerable number of Latin epigraphic monuments were also discovered, especially in the Littoral. However, the Slav population could be differentiated by them only in some rare cases. After 1248, when Rome once again allowed the use of the Glagolitic alphabet, many Glagolitic inscriptions appeared.[63] The arrangement of these inscriptions coincided with the spreading of the Cyrillic alphabet in the west. Insignificant overlaps show that there were no significant shifting of the Serbs towards the west. Thus the western boundary of the Serbian ethnic area was determined in the late Middle Ages.
Fig. 3.- Distribution of the medieval epigraphic monuments [click for the large image]
The original ethnic area of the Serbs kept its cultural homogenity although they were divided in ten or so small states from the end of the 14th century. The best examples of the above are the tombstones. These tombstones are massive and usually in the form of different casks. Some of them are ornamented either with small figures, symbolic drawings or some other ornaments. The Serbian art is well known and has attracted much attention ever since. For long, propaganda has presented these tombstones as a form of the Bogumil art, which was wrong.[64] Inscriptions on the tombstones are all in Cyrillic.
Graveyards with tombstones were situated in the same area where the old pagan graveyards with burial mounds were. This means that the settlements probably were nearby, and that the old cattle breeders' way of life was preserved. With the spreading of the Serbian cattle breeders towards the west (the Vlachs) the use of the tombstones increased and there were many of them in Dalmatia and in the Krajina, from the Cetina river to Lika and Pakrac.
Graveyards with tombstones are located by the churches, both the destroyed ones and those still in existence where people are being buried.[65] As a rule, these churches face east, the Orthodox churches, as the tombstones themselves. Very rarely these churches and contemporary graveyards with tombstones are Catholic. When it is possible to determine the original appearance of the present-day Catholic church it becomes obvious that these churches are the remodelled ones. For example, St. George's Church in Cavtat, surrounded by broken tombstones, has a flat wall on the east side. But in the altar, a semicircular apse can be seen in the floor. In Mokro Polje, by Zavodje near Knin, in a preserved graveyard with tombstones, there are church ruins with semicircular apse. The apse passes into a flat wall towards east, as in Cavtat. This allows a supposition that all the churches located in the graveyards with tombstones used to be Orthodox churches.
At the locations of the tombstones, pottery from the same period was collected during archaeological excavations. This is the pottery characteristic of the Serbian Dinaric region, unpolished, made on a slow wheel. The pottery is represented mostly by cooking pots with long open brim, without ornaments or variegated with wavelike impressions, stripes and small pits. At the bottom they could have a seal print from the wheel. They were found in the fortified towns westward of the Drina river[66] and in the explored monasteries in the region of the Despotovina.[67] They date back to the time of the Turkish inroads - the late 14th and 15th centuries. Such pottery is the characteristic of the original Serbian ethnic area preserved until the present. The locations of the workshops with slow wheels in the 20th century coincide with the locations where the pots of the same make were found in the 14th and 15th centuries; even the appearance or the pots was the same.[68][69]
Fig. 4. - Tombstones in the 14th-16th centuries [click for the large image]
During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Serbian ethnic area in the east was formed. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, the Nemanyich shifted the borders of Serbia towards the east and south. Ac the time of Emperor Stephen Dushan, the eastern border ran from Djerdap to the Struma river valley, and it reached the Gulf of Corinth in the south. These events and the borders are well-known thanks to the written historical data. The cultural monuments of the Serbs and other Slavs in the liberated and annexed regions somewhat differed due to the Byzantine influence. Still, although many churches have been preserved, there are not very many archaeological data related to the Vardar and Struma river basins.
The region which pretty much coincided with the idea of today's central Serbia was formed at the time of Prince Lazar (1371-1389). Although constantly threatened by the Turks, the Serbs developed material and spiritual culture under the strong influence of theologians, artists, and craftsmen from Constantinople and Thessaloniki. Cultural and industrial peak was reached at the time of the Despotovina. In the sense of archaeology, apart from unique churches and towns, the Serbian Despotovina was known for its jewellery and especially for the pottery. Glazed bowls, dishes, plates, jugs, and flasks bear specific ornaments impressed in "zgraphito" technique. Cooking pots were mostly made on a fast wheel. They had long open brims and were ornamented alternately with ribs with small pits and an engraved ornament.
The pottery of the Serbian Despotovina is also known in the region of Kljuc and the Negotin Krajina.[70] After Turkey had annexed Vidin in 1396, these regions became a part of Serbia and remained within the Serbian boundaries until the fall of the Despotovina under the Turkish rule in 1459. Although there are no specific historical data,[71] this is confirmed by the existence of the pottery. The distribution of the findings of this special pottery makes it possible for archaeologists to follow the movements of the Serbs caused by the Muslim invasion. In southern Hungary (today's Vojvodina, the mesopotamia between the Sava and Drava rivers, Baranja), among the pieces of pottery of central European style, it is easy to discern the rougher Serbian pottery pieces dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as the pieces of the Byzantine style.[72]
Fig. 5. - Distribution of the late medieval Serbian pottery [click for the large image]
This survey based on the available archaeological data has pointed to the undoubted continuity on the Serbian ethnic area. This is the area that has not undergone any considerable changes since the 7th century. Certain spreading of the Serbian people is understandable since the Serbs have always been the most numerous Slav people in the Balkans.
Footnotes
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando Imperio, ed. Gy. Moravcsik, English translation by R. J. H. Jenkins (Budapest, 1949).
Milica and Djordje Jankovic, Sloveni u jugoslovenskom Podunavlju /The Slavs in the Yugoslav Danube Basin/ (Belgrade: Muzej grada Beograda, 1990), pp. 20,25.
Georgiy A. Haburgaev, Etnonimiya "Povesti vremennih let" (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1979). pp.210-212.
Povest vremennih let (Moscow, Leningrad: Akademiya nauk SSSR, 1990), pp.11, 207.
Heinrich Gelzer, Ungedruckte und ungenugend veroffentlichte Texte der Notitiae episcopatuum (Munich, 1901), pp. 538-545.
Jovanka Kalic, "Naziv Raska u starijoj srpskoj istoriji (IX-XII vek)," /Name Rashka in the Early Serbian History (9th-12th centuries)/ in Zbornik Filozofskog fakulteta, XIV-1 (Belgrade, 1979), pp. 79-91.
Sima Cirkovic, Istorija srpskog naroda /History of the Serbian People/ (Belgrade: SKZ, 1982) II, p.376
Anne Comnene, Alexiade (Regne de L'Empereur Alexis I Comnene 1081-1118) II, pp. l57:3-l6; 1.66: 25-169. Texte etabli er traduit par B. Leib t. I-III (Paris, 1937-1945).
Nada Klaic, Povijest Hrvata u ranom srednjem vijeku /History of the Croats in the early Middle Ages/ (Zagreb: Skolska knjiga, 1975), p. 211.
Raimundi de Aguilers canonici Podiensis Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, Recueil des historiens des croisades (Paris, 1866), p. 237.
Viaggio in Dalmazia dell'abate Alberto Fortis (Venezia, 1774), 1, 2.
Zeljko Skalamera and Marko Popovic, "Novi podaci sa plana Beograda iz 1683." /New Data from the Map of Belgrade of 1683/ in Godisnjak pada Beograda, XXIII (Belgrade, 1976), pp. 40-42.
Nada Klaic, Povijest Hrvata u razvijenom srednjem vijeku /History of the Croats.../ (Zagreb: Skolska knjiga, 1976), pp. 600, 607-610.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Cap. 30.
A. Meineke ed. Ioannis Cinnami epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Alexio Comnenis gestarum (Bonnae, 1836), pp. 102:18, 103:19.
Willermi Tyrensis archiepiscopi, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, Recueil des historiens des croisades, I (Paris, 1884), XX, 4:946, 947.
Jovan Cvijic, Balkansko poluostrvo i jugoslovenske zemlje /Balkan Peninsula and South Slav Countries/ (Belgrade: Drzavna stamparija Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, 1922), pp. 279-286.
Vidukind Korveyskiy, Deyanija Saksov, ed. G. E. Santchuk (Moscow: "Nauka", 1975), p. 257.
Herausgegeben von Joachim Herrmann: Die Slawen in Deutscliland (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1'985).
Irma Cremosnik, "Istrazivanja u Musicima i Zabljaku i prvi nalaz najstarijih slovenskih naselja kod nas," /Research in Musici and Zabljak and the first Findings of the earliest Slav Settlements/ in Glasnik zemaljskog muzeja, XXV (Sarajevo, 1970), pp. 45-111.
Georgije Ostrogorski, Istorija Vizantije /History of Byzantium/ (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1959), pp. 99-121.
Zhivka Vzharove: Slavyanski y slavyanoblgarski selishcha v Blgarskite zemi od kray na VI-XI vek (Sofia: Blgarska akademiya na naukite, arheologicheski institut i muzey, 1965); Slavyani i Prablgari po danni nekropolite ot VI-XI v (Sofia: Blgarska akademiya na naukite, arheologicheski institut i muzey, 1976).
Jankovic and Jankovic, Sloveni....
Jankovic and Jankovic, "Rekognosciranje...," /Reconnaissance.../ in Arheoloski pregled. 20 (Belgrade, 1978), p. 188.
Cremosnik, "Ranoslovensko naselje...," /Early Slav Settlement.../ in Godisnjak ANUBiH, 15 (Sarajevo, 1977), pp. 227-305.
Povest vremennih let, pp. 15. 211.
Die Slawen in Deutschland, pp.30-31, Fig. 10.
Jankovic and Jankovic, Sloveni..., pp.20, 25.
Pavao Andjelic, "Dva srednjevekovna nalaza iz Sultica kod Konjica," /"Two Medieval Findings at Sultic near Konjic"/ in Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja, XIV (Sarajevo, 1959), pp. 203-214.
Vasile Boroneant and Ion Stinga, "Cercetarile privind secolul al XII-lea de la Ostrovul Mare," in Drobeta (Turnu Severin: Muzeul regiunii Portilor de fer, 1978), pp. 87-107.
Povest vremennih let, pp. 15, 211.
Aleksandar V. Solovjev, "Dva priloga proucavanju Dusanove drzave," /Studies of Emperor Dushan's state.../ in Glasnik Skopskog naucnog drustva, II (Skoplje, 1927), pp. 26, 30.
Jankovic and Jankovic, Sloveni..., pp. 90, 104-105, 117.
Zdenko Zeravica, "Ranoslovenska nekropola Bagrusa u Petosevcima kod Laktasa," /An Early Slav Necropolis.../ in Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja, 40-41 (A) (Sarajevo, 1985-1986), pp. 153-154.
Janko Belosevic, Materijalna kultura Hrvata od VII do IX stoljeca /Material Culture of the Croats from the 7th to the 9th century/ (Zagreb: Liber, 1980), pp. 46-48.
Zdenko Vinski, "Gibt es fruhslawische Keramik aus der Zeit der sudslawischen Laudnahme?" in Archaeologia Jugoslavica, I (Belgrade, 1954), pp. 71-73.
Belosevic, op.ch., pp. 67-72.
Jankovic and Jankovic, Sloveni..., pp. 19-20.
Emina Zecevic, "Rezultati istrazivanja srednjevekovnog Svaca," /Research Results of the Medieval Svac/ in Glasnik Srpskog arheoloskog drustva, 5 (Belgrade, 1989), pp. 112-114.
Patos Tartari, "Nje varreze e mesjetes se hershme ne Durres," in Iliria, 1 (Tirana, 1984), pp. 227-244.
Vladislav Popovic, "Albanija u kasnoj antici," /Albania in the late Classical Period/ in Iliri i Albanci (Belgrade: SANU, 1988), pp.201 -250.
Joachim Werner, "Neue Aspekte zum Awarischen Shatzfund von Vrap," in Iliria, 1 (Tirana, 1983), pp. 191-201.
Relja Novakovic, Gde se nalazila Srbija od VII do X veka /Where Serbia was situated from the 7th to 10th centuries/ (Belgrade: Narodna knjiga, 1981), pp. 61-63.
Cremosnik, Izvestaj...," /Report.../ in Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja, VIII, 302-315.
Tihomir Glavas, "Iskopavanje preromanicke crkve u Vrutcima kod Vrela Bosne," /Excavations of a pre-Romanic Church in Vrutci near Vrelo Bosne/ in Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja, 37(A), 1982, pp. 93-122.
Klaic, Povijest Hrvata u ranom srednjem vijeku, Appendix IX.
Novakovic, op. cit., pp.41-48.
Einhardi Annales, Annales Regum Franconim, Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae I. See An. 822.
Klaic, Povijest Hrvata u ranom srednjem vijeku, pp. 497- 507.
Ljubomir Maksimovic, "O vremenu pohoda bugarskog kneza Borisa na Srbiju," /Prince Boris Campaign on Serbia/ in Zbornik filozofskog fakulteta, 14-1 (Belgrade, 1979), p.73.
Chronicon Anonymi regis notarii, Gesta Hungarorum, Scriptores rerum Hungaricum I (Budapestini, 1937), pp. 87- 88.
Ljetopis popa Dukljanina (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1950), pp. 64-66.
Constantini Porphyrogeniti, De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae, ed. I. Reiskins (Bonnae, 1829), pp. 691:8-13.
Radoslav Mihailovic, "Crkva Svetog Petra kod Novog Pazara," /St. Peter's Church near Novi Pazar/ in Novopazarski Zbornik, 10 (Novi Pazar, 1986), pp. 67-100.
J. Neskovic and R. Nikolic, Petrova crkva kod Novog Pazara. /St. Peter's Church near Novi Pazar/ (Belgrade: Republicki zavod za zastitu spomenika kulture, 1987).
Gordana Tomovic, "Glagoljski natpis sa Cecana" /Glagolitic Inscription from Cecan/, in Istorijski casopis, XXXVII (Belgrade, 1990/1991), pp. 5-18.
Raimundi de Aguilers..., p. 237.
Comnene, Alexiade, III, 84:11-23.
B. Ferjancic, "Albanci u vizantijskim izvorima" /The Albanians in Byzantine Sources/ in Iliri i Albanci (Belgrade: SANU, 1 988), pp. 285-302.
Dragoljub Dragojlovic, "Sizmaticki popovi franjevackih Dubia i pravoslavna tradicija u Srednjevekovnoj Bosni," /Schismatic Priests of Franciscan Dubia and Orthodox Tradition in Medieval Bosnia/ in Balcanica annuaire de l'institut des etudes Balkaniques, XVI-XVII (Belgrade, 1985-1986), pp. 43-54.
Rade Mihaljcic, "Nementragende Steinischriften in Jugoslawien vom Ende des 7. bis zug Mathe des 13. Jahrhunderts" in Glossar zur fruhmittelalterlichen Geschihte im Ostlichen Europa, 2 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, 1982).
Sefik Beslagic, Stecci, tipolosko-kataloski pregled /Tombstones.../ (Sarajevo: Veselin Maslesa, 1977), map 1.1.
B. Fucic, Glagoljski natpisi /Glagolitic Inscriptions/ (Zagreb: JAZU, 1982), Figs. 2-4.
Beslagic, Stecci - kultura i umetnost /Tombstones - Culture and Art/ (Sarajevo: Veselin Maslesa, 1982), pp. 485- 513.
Ljubo Sparavalo, "Srednjevjekovna groblja, crkvine i crkve na podrucju Sume trebinjske," /Medieval Cemeteries, Chapels and Churches.../ in Trubunia, 5 (Trebinje, 1979), pp. 53-136.
Andjelic, Bobovac i Kraljeva Sutijeska (Sarajevo, 1973), pp. 111-112, 181-182.
Emilija Pejovic, "Katalog arheoloskih nalaza" /The Catalogue of Archaeological Findings/ in Blago manastira Studenice (Beograd: SANU, 1988), p.73.
Cvetko Popovic, "Tehnika primitivnog loncarstva u Jugoslaviji," /Primitive Pottery Techniques in Yugoslavia/ in Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja, XIV (Sarajevo, 1959), pp. 25- 57.
Persida Tomic, Grncarstvo u Srbiji /Pottery in Serbia/ (Belgrade: Etnografski muzej, 1983), pp. 24-32.
Djordje Jankovic,"The Medieval Pottery of the Serbian Lower Danube Basin," in Balcanoslavica, 3 (Belgrade. 1974), pp. 108-119.
Dusanka Bojanic-Lukac, "Krajina u vreme turske vladavine," /Krajina during Turkish Rule/ in Glasnik Etnografskog muzeja, 31-32 (Belgrade, 1968-1969), pp. 65-68.
Marko Vuksan, "Kovin, lokalitet Grad - sondazno istrazivanje 1986. godine," in Glasnik Srpskog arheoloskog drustva, 5 (Belgrade, 1989), pp. 117-122.
Dr Djordje Jankovic
Assistant Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. He teaches Medieval Archaeology from the 4th to the 17th centuries. He has published about twenty scientific papers in medieval archaeology, in particular within the area of Slav Archaeology.
Books
Podunavski deo oblasti akvisa u VI i pocetkom VII veka /The Danube Basin Section of the Province of Akvis in the 6th and at the beginning of the 7th century/ (1981)
Sloveni u jugoslovenskom Podunavlju /The Slavs in the Yugoslav Section of the Danube Basin (1990, Co-author with M. Jankovic)
Srpske gromile /Serbian Tumuls/ (1998).
// Project Rastko / Archaeology //
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hahahhaha
In the south-east, the Serbs lived in Kosovo and their southern boundary was somewhere on the Drim river near Mount Debar.[58] In the neighbourhood, somewhere in the region of Elbasan and Tirana, the "Arbani" (Albanians) were being mentioned from the middle of the 11th century.[59]
"illiria stretch from zagreb to greece, why not claim everything????"
Cause we're not Serb.
show me what land serbs cliam that is not theirs and has not been theirs for years?? hahahah read it and weep liars and crooks, u steal what is not nor has ever been yours!
Demographic history of Kosovo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Contents
15th century
1455: Turkish cadastral tax census (defter)[1] of the Brankovic dynasty lands (covering 80% of present-day Kosovo and Metohija) recorded 480 villages, 13,693 adult males, 12,985 dwellings, 14,087 household heads (480 widows and 13,607 adult males). By ethnicity:
* 12,985 Serbian dwellings present in all 480 villages and towns
* 75 Vlach dwellings in 34 villages
* 46 Albanian dwellings in 23 villages
* 17 Bulgarian dwellings in 10 villages
* 5 Greek dwellings in Lauša, Vučitrn
* 1 Jewish dwelling in Vučitrn
* 1 Croat dwelling
[edit]
17th-18th century
The Great Turkish War of 1683-1699 between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs led to the flight of a substantial part of Kosovo's Serbian population to Austrian held Vojvodina and the Military Frontier. Following this an influx of Muslim Albanian[2] from the highlands (Malesi) occurred, mostly into Metohija. The process continued in 18th century[3].
[edit]
19th century
19th century data about the population of Kosovo tend to be rather conflicting, giving sometimes numerical superiority to the Serbs and sometimes to the Albanians. Many historians regard Ottoman statistics as being unreliable, as the empire counted its citizens by religion rather than nationality, using birth records rather than surveys of individuals.
A study in 1838 by an Austrian physician, dr. Joseph Müller found Metohija to be mostly Slavic (Serbian) in character.[4] Müller gives data for the three counties (Bezirke) of Prizren, Pec and Djakovica which roughly covered Metohija, the portion adjacent to Albania and most affected by Albanian settlers. Out of 195,000 inhabitants in Metohija, Müller found:
* 73,572 Orthodox Serbs 38%
* 5,120 Catholic Albanians 3%
* 2,308 other non-Muslims (Vlachs etc.)
* 114,000 Muslims (58%), of which:
o c. 38,000 are Serbs (19%)
o c. 76,000 are Albanians (39%)
Müller's observations on towns:
* Peć: 11.050 Serbs, 500 Albanians
* Prizren: 16,800 Serbs, 6150 Albanians
* Đakovica: majority of Albanians, surrounding villages Serbian
Map published by French ethnographer G. Lejean[5] in 1861 shows that Albanians lived on around 57% of the territory of today's province while a similar map, published by British travellers G. M. Mackenzie and A. P. Irby[6] in 1867 shows slightly less; these maps don't show which population was larger overall.
A study done in 1871 by Austrian colonel Peter Kukulj[7] for the internal use of the Austro-Hungarian army showed that the mutesarifluk of Prizren (corresponding largely to present-day Kosovo and Metohija) had some 500,000 inhabitants, of which:
* 318.000 Serbs (64%),
* 161.000 Albanians (32%),
* 10.000 Roma (Gypsies) and Circassians,
* 2.000 Turks
Miloš S. Milojević travelled the region in 1871-1877 and left accounts which testify that Serbs were majority population, and were predominant in all cities, while Albanians were minority and lived mostly in villages[8]. According to his data, Albanians were majority population in southern Drenica (Muslim Albanians), and in region around Djakovica (Catholic Albanians), while the city was majorly Serbian. He also recorded several settlements of Turks, Roma and Circassians.
It is estimated that some 400,000[9] Serbs were cleansed out of the Vilayet of Kosovo between 1876 and 1912, especially during the Greek-Turkish war of 1897.
Maps published by German historian Kiepert[10] in 1876, J. Hahn[11] and Austrian consul K. Sax[12], show that Albanians live on most of the territory of today's province, however they don't show which population is larger. According to these, the regions of Kosovska Mitrovica and Kosovo Polje were settled mostly by Serbs, whereas most of the terrirory of western and eastern parts of today's province was settled by Muslim Albanians.
An Austrian statistics[13] published in 1899 estimated:
* 182,650 Albanians (47.88%)
* 166,700 Serbs (43.70%)
* Remaining 8.42% Tsintsars, Turks, Circassians, Roma and Jews
[edit]
20th century
British journalist H. Brailsford estimated[14] that two-thirds of the population of Kosovo was Albanian and one-third Serbian. The most populous western districts of Djakovica and Pec were said to have between 20,000 and 25,000 Albanian households, as against some 5,000 Serbian ones. Map of Alfred Stead[15], published in 1909, shows that similar numbers of Serbs and Albanians were living in the territory.
German scholar Gustav Weigand gave the following statistical data about the population of Kosovo in Ethnography of Macedonia (1924, written 1919), based on the pre-war situation in Kosovo in 1912:
* Pristina District: 67% Albanians, 30% Serbs
* Prizren District: 63% Albanians, 36% Serbs
* Vucitrn District: 90% Albanians, 10% Serbs
* Ferizovic (Urosevac) District: 70% Albanians, 30% Serbs
* Gilani (Gnjilane) District: 75% Albanians, 23% Serbs
* Mitrovica District: 40% Albanians, 60% Serbs
Metohija with the town of Djakovica is furthermore defined as almost exclusively Albanian by Weigand.
[edit]
Serbia and Yugoslavia
[edit]
Balkan Wars and World War I-World War II
Retaking of Kosovo by Serbia in 1912 resulting in suppression of the local Albanian population and ethnic cleansning of some regions[16].
* 1921 439,010 total inhabitants[17]
A map of the Serbian census of 1921[18] shows that most of the terrirory was settled by Albanians, with Serbian enclaves around Prizren, Sredska Zupa and Pristina. Religion on the largest part of the territory was Islam with Eastern Orthodox enclaves around Kosovska Mitrovica, Pristina and Gnjilane[19].
* 1931 552,064 total inhabitants[20]
[edit]
World War II-1968
Most of the teritorry of today's province is occupied by Italian-occupied Greater Albania, massacres of some 10,000[21] Serbs, ethnic cleansing of about 80[22]-100,000[23][24] and settling of 100,000[25] of Albanians from Albania.
* 1948: 727,820 total inhabitants[26]; 498,242 Albanians or 68.46%[27]
* 1953: 524,559 Albanians or 65%[28]
* 1961: 646,604 Albanians or 67.1%[29]
[edit]
1968-1989: Autonomy
After the province gained autonomy, local provincial Statistical office given authority over census whereas the rest of the country's census was under the tutelage of the Federal Statistical Commission. Allegations of census rigging (for the 1971 and 1981) by Turk, Muslim and Roma minorities who claim forceful Albanization. Serb claims Albanians drastically overincreased their own numbers. Nothing could be substantiated though because the Kosovo Statistical offices were under exclusive Albanian control which was against the national norm at the time which dicated that census takers had to be of different nationalities (i.e. one Albanian and one Serb not both Albanian as was the case in the two following censa).
1971: 1,243,693 total inhabitants[30]
* 916,168 Albanians or 73.7%[31]
* 259,816 Serbs/Montengrins or 20.9%[32]
* 26,000 Muslims or 2.1%
* 14,593 Roma or 1.2%
* 12,244 Turks or 1.0%
* 8,000 Croats or 0.7%
Albanians take ever-increasing control of Autonomous province with the introduction of the 1974 Constitution of SFRY.
* 1981:
1,584,440 total inhabitants
* 1,226,736 Albanians 77.42%
* 236,525 Serbs/Montenegrins 14.93%[33][34]
[edit]
1989-1999: Centralized Yugoslav Control
Yugoslav Central Government reasserts control over Kosovo in 1989.
Official Yugoslav statistical results, almost all Albanians and some Roma, Muslims boyott the census following a call by Ibrahim Rugova to boycott Serbian institutions. 1991 359,346 Total population
* 214,555 Orthodox Serbs (194,190 Serbians and 20,365 Montenegrins)
* 9,091 Albanians (most boycotted)
* 57,758 (Slavic) Muslims
* 44,307 Roma
* 10,445 Turks
* 8,062 Croats (Janjevci, Letnicani)
* 3,457 Yugoslavs
Official Yugoslav statistical corrections and projections, with the help of previous census results (1948-1981):
1,956,196 Total population[35] (corrected from 359,346)
* 214,555 Orthodox Serbs (194,190 Serbians and 20,365 Montenegrins)
* 1,596,072 or 81,6 % Albanians (corrected from 9,091)
* 66,189 (Slavic) Muslims (corrected from 57,758)
* 45,745 Roma (corrected from 44,307)
* 10,445 Turks
* 8,062 Croats (Janjevci, Letnicani)
* 3,457 Yugoslavs
The corrections should not taken to be fully accurate. The number of Albanians is sometimes regarded as being an underestimate. On the other hand, it is sometimes regarded as an overestimate, being derived from earlier censa which are believed to be overestimates. The Statistical Office of Kosovo states that the quality of the 1991 census is "questionable." [36].
[edit]
1999-present: UN administration
During the Kosovo War in 1999, over 700,000 ethnic Albanians[37] and around 100,000 ethnic Serbs were forced out of the province to neighbouring Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Serbia. After the United Nations took over administration of Kosovo following the war, the vast majority of the Albanian refugees returned.
Many non-Albanians - chiefly Serbs and Roma - fled or were expelled, mostly to the rest of Serbia at the end of the war, with further refugee outflows occurring as the result of sporadic ethnic violence. The number of registered refugees is around 250,000[38][39][40]. The non-Albanian population in Kosovo is now about half of its pre-war total. The largest concentration of Serbs in the province is in the north, but many remain in Kosovo Serb enclaves surrounded by Albanian-populated areas.
Various, mostly Serbian, sources claim that a large number of Albanians (usually stated as being around 200,000) have moved into Kosovo since 1999, due to the complete liberalization of the Kosovo-Albania border. The veracity of this claim is unclear; the Statistical Office of Kosovo states that "there are at present no reliable statistics on migration in Kosovo."
2000 Living Standard Measurement Survey by Statistical Office of Kosovo (rejected by Belgrade[41]). Total population estimated at 1 900 000 est.[42]
* 88% Albanians (1,733,600)
* 7% Serbs (137,900)
* 3% Muslim Slavs (59,100)
* 2% Roma (39,400)
* 1% Turks (19,700)
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates the population at 2.0 to 2.2 million people, extrapolating from voter registration data recorded by the UNMIK Department of Local Administration in 2000. [43]
Some estimates by Albanian demographers estimate a population of 2.4 million Albanians living in Kosovo today. This is regarded by most independent observers as an overestimate as it would imply a total population of some 2.5-2.6 million people in Kosovo, much higher than other estimates.
[edit]
References
1. ^ The original Turkish-language copy of the census is stored in Istanbul's archives. However, in 1972 the Sarajevo Institute of Middle Eastern Studies translated the census and published an analysis of it Kovačević Mr. Ešref, Handžić A., Hadžibegović H. Oblast Brankovića - Opširni katastarski popis iz 1455., Orijentalni institut, Sarajevo 1972. Subsequently others have covered the subject as well such as Vukanović Tatomir, Srbi na Kosovu, Vranje, 1986.
2. ^ Gustav Weigand, Ethnographie von Makedonien, Leipzig, 1924; Густав Вайганд, Етнография на Македония (Bulgarian translation)
3. ^ Ibid
4. ^ Dr. Joseph Müller, Albanien, Rumelien und die Österreichisch-montenegrinische Gränze, Prag, 1844
5. ^ H.R. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics; a review of the ethnographic cartography of Macedonia, Liverpool University Press, 1951
6. ^ Ibid
7. ^ Das Fürstenthum Serbien und Türkisch-Serbien, eine militärisch-geographische Skizze von Peter Kukolj, Major im k.k.Generalstabe, Wien 1871
8. ^ ISBN 86-80029-29-7: Mirčeta Vemić: Ethnic Map of a Part of Ancient Serbia: According to the travel-record of Miloš S. Milojević 1871-1877, Belgrade, 2005
9. ^ ISBN 86-17-09287-4: Коста Николић, Никола Жутић, Момчило Павловић, Зорица Шпадијер: Историја за трећи разред гимназије природно-математичког смера и четврти разред гимназије општег и друштвено-језичког смера, Belgrade, 2002, pg. 63
10. ^ Wilkinson, Op. cit.
11. ^ Ibid
12. ^ Ibid
13. ^ Detailbeschreibung des Sandzaks Plevlje und des Vilajets Kosovo (Mit 8 Beilagen und 10 Taffeln), Als Manuskript gedruckt, Vien 1899, 80-81.
14. ^ H. N. Brailsford, Macedonia, Its Races and Their Future, London, 1906
15. ^ Servia by the Servians, Compiled and Edited by Alfred Stead, With a Map, London (William Heinemann), 1909. (Etnographical Map of Servia, Scale 1:2.750.000).
16. ^ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (1914). Report of the International Commission To Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars. Washington: The Carnegie Endowment.
17. ^ Center for Contemporary Journalism
18. ^ Zec, Stevan, "Maps of our dividings political atlas of Yugoslav countries in XX century", Beograd : Beogradsko mašinsko-grafičko preduzeće, 1991.
19. ^ Center for Contemporary Journalism, Op. cit.
20. ^ Ibid
21. ^ Serge Krizman, Maps of Yugoslavia at War, Washington 1943.
22. ^ Ibid
23. ^ Ibid
24. ^ Annexe I, by the Serbian Information Centre-London to a report of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
25. ^ Krizman, Op. cit.
26. ^ Official Yugoslav censa results 1948-1981
27. ^ Ibid
28. ^ Serbian Information Centre-London, Op. cit.
29. ^ Center for Contemporary Journalism, Op. cit.
30. ^ Ibid
31. ^ Official Yugoslav censa results 1948-1981
32. ^ Serbian Information Centre-London, Op. cit.
33. ^ Center for Contemporary Journalism, Op. cit.
34. ^ Official Yugoslav censa results 1948-1981
35. ^ BBC: [44]
36. ^ OSCE: "Kosovo/Kosova As Seen As Told"
37. ^ Coordination Centre of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republic of Serbia for Kosovo and Metohija
38. ^ UNHCR: 2002 Annual Statistical Report: Serbia and Montenegro, pg. 9
39. ^ USCR: Country report: Yugoslavia
40. ^ People's Daily: Belgrade to Reject Results of U.N.-Conducted Census in Kosovo
41. ^ Living Standard Measurement Survey 2000, Statistical Office of Kosovo - see also Kosovo and its Population
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Kosovo"
Categories: History of Kosovo
the ONLY TIME Kosovo WAS ALBANIAN (I WAITED SO LONG FOR U TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION AND SINCE NONE OF U HAVE COURAGE TO ADDRESS IT I WILL DO IT FOR YOU) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA PATHETIC , HAHA WHAT WILL U DO WHEN NATO LEAVES????????
Greater Albania
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
During World War II, the dream of a Great Albania became a reality with the fall of Yugoslavia in 1941. Great Albania was established under Italian tutelage including Kosovo, Metohia and parts of Vardar Macedonia, Western part of Aegean Macedonia, and parts of Greek's Epirus. Also, some Albanian troops (battalions Dajti, Tomorri, Rozafa, Taraboshi) incorporated into the Italian army from the former royal Albanian army, with the slogans of building a "Greater Albania". Albanian gendarmerie took over the law enforcement tasks from the Italian carabinieri in the end od 1942. Albanian Fascist Party (Partia Fascist Shqipërisë - PFSh) which was founded in 1939 (as part of the Italian PNF) was granted some autonomy and with lid of Maliq bej Bushati (a former member of the PFSh leadership) renamed as the Guard of Great Albania in 1943.
After World War II communist leader Tito had plans for the unification of its client state, Albania, with Kosovo in Yugoslavia. The break between Tito and Stalin in 1948 allowed for independence from Yugoslavia, providing more space for maneuver for Albania, which in the 1960s became a Chinese ally.
"Demographic history of Kosovo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Contents"
Although I am pro-open source, Wiki when it comes to issues such as history is quite unreliable.
Did you write all this Mr. Martyr?
How come we don't see this information among proper academic encyclopedias such as Britanica?
"Following this an influx of Muslim Albanian[2] from the highlands (Malesi) occurred,"
The first flaw in your "proof". Albanians from the highlands are Catholic. This is where Catholicism was preserved and Ottomans never were able to tax/surpress them.
"Many historians regard Ottoman statistics as being unreliable, as the empire counted its citizens by religion rather than nationality, using birth records rather than surveys of individuals."
Given that most of eastern Albanian lands were Orthodox (and some still are) this would imply that the Albanians (who were hit hard by the Ottomans, just like the Greeks) would have been counted as Serbian. Do note that the Ottomans refused to acknowledge us as a nation, this of course going in favor to the Serbs.
"Various, mostly Serbian, sources claim that a large number of Albanians (usually stated as being around 200,000) have moved into Kosovo since 1999, due to the complete liberalization of the Kosovo-Albania border"
Serbian sources. What can I say, Serbs have always claimed this and here whoever wrote this decided to be a bit "politicaly correct". Well the truth is all my life in Kosova after 1999 I have not yet met any Albanians from Albania besides those working for the UN mission as translators for the court. These Albanians work as international staff, get paid international wages.
"incorporated into the Italian army from the former royal Albanian army, with the slogans of building a "Greater Albania"
Never in my life have I heard of this. The concept "greater" has been continously applied to Serbia. I.e. Greater Serbia. The good thing is we have proof that Greater Serbia was attempted. The wars in the 90s, the attempted genocide upon the Bosniac, Croat and Albanian nations. Serbs showed very clearly they want Greater Serbia.
Albanians had a dream 100 years ago. The dream was for Albania to survive with all its people inside the same borders. We failed. That is not an unjust dream as it makes sense for nations to built states based on ethinc/cultural/historic borders (when it does). Back then it did, it made sense. Today, it doesn't. An Albania as it was 100 years ago, will never exist.
"WHAT WILL U DO WHEN NATO LEAVES???????? "
We will live happilly ever after knowing that our country is a sane and healthy place and we will hope that your country too will become sane and that people like you will understand once and for all that hate has no place in this world.
You see Martyr, when NATO leaves, Kosova will be strong and when strong Serb nationalist/fascists will not dare to cause harm.
I sincerely hope you will see the light eventualy and stop threatning my people. Do note that we have survived Serb terror for centuries and will will outlive it each time. The difference next time of course (unless you become wise) is we will have 400 tanks, 20 bombers, and an army willing to truly fight for their families (not a dictator like Milosevic).
Peace to you Martyr,
an Albanian from Kosova
DUDE U SOUND LIKE A LITTLE BITCH WHO JUST GOT AWAY WITH STEALING SOME COOKIES FROM THE JAR. HARM UR PEOPLE???? R U KIDDING ME??????? SERBS HAVE OPPRESSED U FOR CENTURIES??? SO LET ME ASK U IF SERBS HAVE BEEN "HARMING" U FOR CENTURIES ARE YOU THEN FINALLY ADMITING THAT KOSOVO WAS ALWAYS UNDER SERBIAN CONTROL??? DUDE WIKIPEDIA IS THE #1 DICTIONARY ONLINE, MOST RELIABLE AND ACCURATE ACCORIND TO EVER SCHOLAR WHO USED IT, NOW THE FACT THAT THIS DICTIONARY IS NO GOOD CAUE IT DOES NOT SUPPORT ALBANIAN LIES IS UR ISSUE, LOOK AT ALL THE FOOTNOTE LOKK AT ALL TEH REFERENCES LOOK AT ANY DICTIONARY THAT WAS WRITTEN PRIOR TO 1992!!!!!!!! LOOK AT BRITTANICA EVEN TODAY, THE NUMBERS OF SERBS LIVING THERE IN KOSOVO FROM THE 11TH TO 20TH CEN. IS TOTOALLY ACCURATE (AND EVEN WHAT I POSTED DOENST SUPPORT THE "SERBIAN NATIONALIST" VIEW CAUE THAT IS BIASED AS WELL) THIS IS A VERY ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF THE KOSOVO DEMOGRAPHICS.
Martyr,
Britanica has that huh? Not in the book sitting infront of me ;)
Please go ahead, the rest of the thread is open to your BS...have fun.
Peace to you Martyr,
an Albanian from Kosova
"its not in the britannica in front of u"? hahah right sure, why dont u pat teh the online version says? albos and intellects really go well togehter hahaha im sure u sit next he dictionary all day long. please show me the "LIES" that they spew out about the serbs fighting the nazis, or about 1389 or about Tesla and al teh other great Serbian accoplishments, show me how they lie about that as well cause the Albanina way of thinking and logic ar ethe "REAL" truths in this world right? like again Alexander the Great was an Albo so was Aristotle right? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAH read and weep:
Belgrade engineering students win international competition Students of the Faculty of Electric and Technical Engineering from Belgrade first in Chicago
Team of ten students of the Faculty of Electric and Technical Engineering of the University in Belgrade, won the first prize and 10,000 Dollars at the biggest world competition of young electric engineers held in Chicago from August 15 to 17.
With a help of electronics they added to an engine that is being installed in household gadgets for the purpose of saving of electricity, they were proclaimed the best young electronic engineers in the final ahead of the two USA teams.
Apart from the main prize they also got two secondary prizes, for presentation and technical documentation. These prizes are especially valuable for them because they have to make presentation and speak about the technical documentation in English, the mother tongue of their chief competitors.
The 2005 International
Future Energy ChallengeTM
Sponsored by
the IEEE Power Electronics Society,
the IEEE Industry Applications Society,
the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society,
the IEEE Power Engineering Society,
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory,
the European Power Electronics Association, and others.
August 17, 2005 – 2005 Awards Announced
We concluded the 2005 final competition. Congratulations to the following winners.
Topic A:
· First Place (for $10,000) - University of Belgrade, Serbia
· Outstanding Design Innovation (for $6,500) - University of South Carolina, USA
· Outstanding Educational Impact (for $2,000) - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
· Outstanding Presentation (for $2,000) - University of Belgrade, Serbia
· Outstanding Technical Report (for $2,000) - University of Belgrade, Serbia
Miodrag Stojkovic
University of Newcastle | Britain
Miodrag Stojkovic's biggest fear is that "people think we're crazy scientists creating the latest Frankenstein." That's because the 40-year-old Serb, a researcher with the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, could become the first person to use cells from a cloned human embryo to treat disease—if a British regulator approves the experiment later this year. Stojkovic, who helped clone mammals at the University of Munich before coming to the U.K., fled the former Yugoslavia in 1991 just before the Balkan wars broke out. "I recognized something bad was going to happen," he says. The cloning wars can seem almost as fierce. Using a technique similar to that recently demonstrated in South Korea, Stojkovic plans to create embryos by injecting a patient's own DNA into an egg from which the genetic material has been removed. He then hopes to harvest stem cells—which can develop into almost any organ—and coax them to produce insulin in diabetics. Stem cells also hold promise for victims of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and heart disease.
Trouble is, Stojkovic will discard the embryos just days after making them, and for many people that's morally unacceptable. Many religions maintain that life begins at conception and that throwing away embryos amounts to murder; "I have a clear conscience," says Stojkovic, who holds that life begins after 14 days, when the nervous system starts to form. Nonreligious groups like the London-based Human Genetics Alert warn that the techniques could be used to clone babies, something that Stojkovic opposes. "I believe in embryonic stem cells," he says. If he can come up with a cure for diabetes, a lot more people will believe along with him.—By Mark Halper
You guys are both racist. Fact is (I am an American): Ethnic cleansing took place against Serbs in WWII; As did large-scale murders (20-40,000 people) initiated by the Nazi puppet state, which gave Kosovo to Albania in return for its allegiance. Serbs were not Nazis (some were, of course) but on the whole, WWII is a particularly bitter time in Serbian history. Largescale genocide took place in places where the Serbs were minorities (Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia). In Serbia, the people were rocked by brutal civil war. The only solution seems to be for Serbia to recognize Kosovo's independence; For Kosovo to recognize the North's independence. It is the only way to keep the peace. However, Serbs will never give up Kosovo (the government is making strides) and Thaci and Albanians will never partition it. Fine, go to war again, kill each other like maniacs then, and then get nowhere. There needs to be concessions on both sides though. I am happy with Dacic and Serbia's progress; These comments by Thaci are ridiculous and troublesome...
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