THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Aug 18 (Hina) - US diplomat William Walker, former head of the OSCE Verification Mission in Kosovo, has dismissed as insane a testimony given by Muharem Ibraj, a defence witness in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
The testimony of that witness is insane, Walker said in an email message addressed to the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, which was read in the courtroom on Thursday.
Ibraj, who was in charge of security in his village, Osik Hilje, near the western town of Djakovica, in 1998/99, said during his testimony at the ICTY on Wednesday that Walker had told him during his visit to the village in 1999 that "Kosovo is not a part of Serbia anymore" and that Ibraj's unit "can put patches with the American flag on their uniforms".
Ibraj, 51, who fled Kosovo in 1999 because of his collaboration with the Serbian police, also accused Walker of paying regular visits to the headquarters of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) at Glodjani.
The most bizarre accusation Ibraj levelled against Walker was that the former OSCE Verification Mission chief had suspected the witness's 80-year-old father of raping two teenage girls.
Walker said in his message that he had never met the witness during his stay in Kosovo in 1998/99, suggesting that it was either a case of mistaken identity or that Ibraj made up the whole story.
I did not take part in any of the things the witness mentioned, Walker wrote.
Commenting on Walker's message after it was read by the prosecutor, Ibraj stood by his statement, saying that what he had stated in his testimony "are not lies but the truth".
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41 comments:
Why isn't Ibraj himself being prosecuted by Hague for terrorizing the local population. I'm sure once Kosova is a state this guy will get extradited back to face his crimes.
Try reading the entire testimony before you comment moron!
First of please dont use words like moron, due to the fact that this man (Ibraj) is making insane testimonies, and the fact that he has collaborated with Serb troops, he ought to be invesetigated. I mean, you play cards with murderers who just returned from their daily "duties", you must know something or at least participate.
So anybody who says the KLA disappeared 6 members of their family is ipso facto a war criminal & insane ?
Perhaps the Nazis who support the KLA can say what they did to his family?
As to Walker - either Ibraj or he is lying. Walker was chosen as America's top government human rights expert to doan impartial investigation/fake a causus belli (according to your position) & represents the integrity of the US government.
He stated that he had seen people shot in the face (execution style) at Racak but then said, when confronted at the Milosevic trial with forensic proof that this was a lie retracted it & claimed to have forgotten phoning numerous US officers to say that he had produced an excuse for war but again could not deny it since the evidence was clear.
In a previous incarnation, as US ambassador to El Salvador he publically defended a death squad's murder of 6 Jesuit priests, their landlady & her 15 year old daughter. Walker is a corrupt lying, perjuring, genocidal Nazi war criminal. If the ICTY were a judicial rather than propaganda instrument it is him, Clinton, Albright & other Nazi war criminals who would be on trial not Milosevic who has totally discredited every element of the case Nato has made.
The problem with pro-Serbs is that even if shown plenty of Serb art-work where babies and pregnant women are mutilated, they assume its some western conspiracy (these people are those like at Waco I guess).
Walker whatever he is he is, but the fact remains that Racak happened. We all saw Racak, we all remember those corpses.
"Perhaps the Nazis who support the KLA can say what they did to his family?"
What Nazis? There are no Nazis among NATO, the only Nazis remain today in Serbia. The last Nazi bastion in Europe.
"He stated that he had seen people shot in the face (execution style) at Racak "
Hmmm, dude we all saw people shot in the face or their heads hacked off with an ax. And frankly, we're sick of seeing it, but a person who supports the Serb idea of Kosovars "given" back, obviously hasn't seen enough or their appetite for such things has not been satisfied.
Neil Craig, what part of the States do you come from?
Hey anonymous...who killed 40 people last year in kossovo? burned monasteries and many homes in time of peace with Kfor doing about nothing(not "Kossova" which is a distorded improper way of spelling it).Nazis?who was with the nazis 50 years ago? Racak was a fight between legal police and illegal insurgents (terrorists)...probably set up as a massacre of civilians,some French Journalist have explained all the weird things about this otherwise fortified military position of racak,just go on and read about it in the Milosevic transcripts of his trial + lately the testimony of the officer who was in charge at Racak...
Hey vlad, you tell me who killed 40 people, because nobody else knows about 40 deaths. Last spring 19 people, I repeat, nineteen people died in riots and 11 of them, I repeat, eleven of them were Kosovar Albanians. Now, you do the maths!
Could you also please tell me who burned down and destroyed mosques in central Belgrade and Nish? And also tell me what the Serbian police did to stop these people.
Finally, please tell me (because I really want to know) who killed and later reburied bodies of dead Kosovar Albanian women and children in Batajnica (Belgrade) and river and lakes around Serbia. Say again, who were the Nazis?
Kosovar
To Neil Craig:
First, go and learn to speak proper English. This comes and no surprise as you seem to be Scottish, and you prefer to speak the language of your occupiers! Most of your statements make no sense. What is this: "the KLA disappeared 6 members of their family". Again, no surprise as you come from Glasgow. Go toast to the Queen and the Kingdom that burned and raped your country.
How on Earth can someone who has been occupied for centuries speak about Nazis or freedom fighters. You and your fellow countrymen no longer know what freedom is, no longer know what it means to be free, or to be occupied, or to fight the Nazis. Go wear you skirts and f-u-ck each other in the a$s.
Finally, has it ever gone through your tiny brain why would the Kosova Liberation Army attack people like Ibraj? I doubt it has because you have been too busy thinking about life under the occupation of the Queen and the Kingdom.
This Ibraj guy and his family was turning Albanians over to the paramilitary forces like sheep to the butcher. I don't have to read the testimony, I was there and saw it all.
And you don't have to read communist propaganda cooked in the comfortable bedrooms of your peaceful corner of the world, just come down to Kosova and talk to his victims. But you can't handle the ticket because you are so cheap.
Kosova already has two or more ideologies of hate. Don't bring your communist one into this, too.
I only spoke of prosecution and extradition, two legal tools of an independent state. If he can get himself clean, then so be it.
I accept that Anonymous' claim to have seen people shot in the face at Racak represents the very highest standard of honesty of which he is capable. Nonetheless the autopsies carried out by Finnish scientists proves it is a deliberate lie (autopsies may occasionally miss some things but hardly that).
I accept that when Anonymous accuses all Scots of wearing skirts he is in no way less accurate than things said by most of the rest of the Nazi supporters of Clinton's obscene genocidal, child raping KLA friends on here.
I accept that when Anonymous says that he doesn't have to read testimony to discover his opinions he is correct - any interference of fact would clearly not help him.
Anonymous says Iraj was turning over people to be killed (a statement which represents the very his personal highest standard of honesty & is a deliberate lie) - in fact the KLA killed far more people & vastly more innocent Albanian civilians than Yugoslavs ever did.
Anonymous made a remark about firebombing of a Belgrade mosque - if he is not a racist he will have spent equal time attacking the US for public attacks on Moslems (or Sikhs who are of the same colour) & he will have spent thousands of times as much time criticising the ethnic cleansing of 350,000 Serbs, Gypsies & Jews & genocide of 6,000 from Kosovo & destruction of Churches. I await proof of this or at least that he has spent 10s of times as much on this which would merely make him equivalent to a low level Nazi.
In fact the 200,000 Molsems & 70,000 Albanians in Belgrade live in peace & harmony with their neighbours - I would challenge any American to claim that if Al Qaeda rendered California unihabitable they think average Americans would treat Moslems with afraction as much decency as the Serbs have.
When there are once again 50,000 Serbs living safely in Pristina it will be possible for the Anonymii here who support KLA genocide to claim no longer to be Nazis.
Neil, take a trip some place other than Disneyland.
P.S. I would love to konw what you do for a living. Don't tell me you live on a state pension and read Chomsky and friends all day long.
Very well said Neil Craig !!
The Albanians think that Kosovo will gain independence. I tell you, Im not from eastern europe, but I am highly educated and can analyze pretty good. There is nothing for the moment that points in the independence direction at all.
US is every week dealing with Serbia to have access to Kosovo in case of emergency, to build a huge base in Serbia. (Why if they think everything will proceed smoothly?), Europe and US are equipping Serbias military and police forces the last months, Eide is not satisfied at all.
It seems that the Kosovo media have promised the Albanians of Kosovo that they will have independence soon in vain. I can
promise you all, There might be independence one day, but not to be seen by anyone alive today !
Everytime someone has a different opinion of how things where in Kosovo (Ibraj), Albanians deny it. Very strange. Many people in Europe and US today hesitate if the "Racak-incident" ever took place. Why was the corps moved, why were there no bloodstains on the bodies. The Finnish report arestill unfortunately classfied in the Hague tribunal.
I think that when Serbia has hunted down Mladic and Karadzic, they will go directly to partnership for peace and then to the EU. After that Kosovo will have Serbian soldiers again in their enclave Kosovo. To all Albanians; Wake up from your dream, otherwise you will have a hard time to realize the facts later. I understand you really. If you want something really bad, you think there is only one way. But we who are not from the Balkans but have worked a lot there see things from another angle and maybe a little bit more from above.
Mire mrama.
From Vlad to Anonymous, maybe you shall try not to show how nasty you can become when challenged,that does not help your obvious cause here and it would mean that you belong somewhere else but on a forum!as for the mosque,you are talking about one mosque compare to how many monasteries again?You seem to know you numbers...40?more?100?and what about houses?also note that the mosque has burned very lately not even during the war,and has since then been rehabilitated which surely it is not the case of most monasteries...Can you have a fair police,judicial system and garanty security in a state of law,or do you have clans,vendettas for ever, war criminal as ministers,gang smuggling weapons, drugs from the east and prostitutes..And what is that snippers statement we have heard of lately if you are not granted independence?
Ylber Burgija said:
Hey Neil, just wanted to correct you a little bit. Since you are so strung up about people not using facts when making statements you should practice what you preach.
“The KLA killed far more people & vastly more innocent Albanian civilians than Yugoslavs ever did”
First of all there were no “Yugoslavs” involved in this conflict. It was a struggle of Albanians to throw off Serbian rule. “Yugoslav” is not a nationality. Never was and never will be. Also the KLA did not kill “far more people & vastly more innocent Albanian civilians”. That’s an absurd statement that has nothing to do with reality. If you have unequivical proof that can prove this beyond a reasonble doubt I would love to hear it. Otherwise, please stick to facts.
“the ethnic cleansing of 350,000 Serbs, Gypsies & Jews & genocide of 6,000 from Kosovo & destruction of Churches”
First of all there were never 350,000 Serbs living in Kosovo. This is based on cencuses of the Republic of Serbia. The highest number of Serbs recorded in Kosovo is 250,000 of which 60,000 were Military and Police personel. Civilians circled around 180,000 to 190,000. About 80,000 of them fled with the 60,000 Serb military units expelled by NATO while around 100,000 remain in Kosovo today.
There were no Jews living in Kosovo before the NATO bombing. Most of the Kosovar Jews were either killed in Nazi death camps, or escaped to Albania where along with Jews from Serbia, Greece, Macedonia and elswhere, they were assisted by the Albanian population. Read “Rescue in Albania”, the story of how the Albanians saved 100% of their Jews and countless Jews from the surrounding countries. Albania coincidentally, was the only country in the whole of Europe to have more Jews after WWII than before.
“When there are once again 50,000 Serbs living safely in Pristina”
Again you are not using any real facts but throwing out a ficticious number. Prishtina had 18,000 Serbs living in it before the NATO bombing. The reason they couldn’t live “safely” in Prishtina after the NATO bombing is because of the things they did before NATO, when Albanians were denied that “safety” by the very Serbs now seeking it. I know because I was there. I grew up in Kosovo and the Serbian occupation was brutal and rutheless and manifested not only through the police and military but through the Serbian civilian popullation who harrased, beat and threatened Albanians on a daily basis. When the bombing started Serb civilians took to the streets armed to their teeth and robbed stores and businesses owned by Albanians. Then they set fire to them. In Peja Serbian civilians took up weapons and surrownded Albanian villages where they killed innocent Albanian civilians. In the town of Peja Serbs told their Albanian neighbors to leave or be killed. Is that the “safety” you were speaking of?
Neil, you obviously have a very biased and skewed opinion of the situation in Kosovo. Please, I implore you, look into the history of the region from confirmed sources. Look at the big picture, find out what really happened, and then form an opinion.
This Ibraj guy is one witness, out of houndreds of Albanians that went to the Hague and told harrowing stories of such suffering from Serbian forces that it reminded me if the darkest days of the Holocaust. I am yet to hear you invoke one of theirtestimonies concerning Kosovo.
Sincerely, Ylber, USA.
This:
http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Racak-FET-summary.htm
and
http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Racak-FET-summary2.htm
There is no proof that Racak or any other massacers were staged. There is no indication that Albanians somehow "faked" a massacre. I mean, how can you "fake" it?
What _is_ known is that Serbs controlled the area, and when the bodies had to be moved to the morgue in Prishtina, they suddenly had uniforms. I remember this vividly, footage of Walker among the bodies, then a few days later, a Serb military truck is moving bodies into the morgue but this time, they had KLA uniforms. How did these dead people get dressed along the way? This is tampering with evidence.
Here is an excerpt from the statement:
"The forensic materials and evidence during scene investigations were recovered and documented by the members of the Team with the effective logistic assistance of the Finnish KFOR Battalion in Lipljan, Kosovo. In November 1999, metal detectors, which were adjusted to reach a depth of 30 cm, were employed and the total area of 170 m x 30-60 m was searched for metal objects. Several bullets and bullet fragments were found at a depth of 0 – 15 cm. The location of the victims, as verified by the OSCE on 16 January 1999, and the sites of recovery of bullets and bullet fragments coincide. Bullets were not found elsewhere in the gully or its vicinity. Moreover, cartridge cases were recovered on the surface of the ground, occasionally under leaves and silt. The majority of cartridge cases, recovered by the Team, were found under the bushes lining the gully. In some cases, other material of human origin was found in association with bullets. These remains were subjected to DNA extraction. Results did not contradict the assumption that the specific sample originated from one of the victims recovered on 16 January 1999."
Those people were most probably murdered by Serb troops. At least you can do is respect that some criminal somewhere was allowed by the government of Serbia to live out his worse fantasy, instead you run around yelling how Racak si fake, when it is a known fact that Serbia was bombed by 19 NATO members because things like Racak (which kept happening on weekly basis almost) HAD TO STOP!
On the other hand, the whole idea that Racak is fake originated in an article by Politika (a Serb newspaper):
http://www.bannerofliberty.com/OS1-01MQC/1-24-2001.1.html
"According to that what "Politika" learns from reliable sources, in the report of the Finish specialists of medical jurisprudence there are even more details which indict the Albanian side than there were in already reported findings of our and Belarusian pathologists."
Politika's "reliable sources" are clearly flawed as the Finns (thank god for their honesty, I know the country VERY VERY well and stayed there long) have never even blamed any of the sides. In forensics it is very hard to figure out "who" did something when both sides use same weapons, and given how cunning Serbs are anything is possible (perhaps Swahilis did it?).
The Finnish team leader Helena Ranta, simply denied that the report contained proof of an ‘organized massacre’. This means that first, you have to stop saying the KLA did it, since you don't know really and it is highly unlikely, and second, since Serbs have a large portfolio of such murders, we can safely assume there is a connection between the barbarities commited by Serbs and Racak.
I would also like to note that the full report was never published, we do not know all the details but they are quite irrelevant since they cannot prove ever the question Who, but more How and Where.
------
EU is arming Serbia? I would never arm a country that chants "Serbia all the way to Tokyo", Germans arn't stupid you know, they know you very well, and so do the Brits. Keep dreaming Serbia, until you accept to become civilized there is no will among even your neighbors to deal with you.
Last poster:
"Can you have a fair police,judicial system and garanty security in a state of law,or do you have clans,vendettas for ever, war criminal as ministers,gang smuggling weapons, drugs from the east and prostitutes"
This sounds like Serbia:
Fair police (run by criminals)
Judical system (run by war criminals)
Garanty security (not even for your Prime Minster)
Clans (Zemun Clan, mafia Clan, not the family kind)
Vendettas (hehe, should I comment?)
War Criminals (Serbs make up 98.4% of War Criminals in the Hague)
Smuggling Weapons (you even export them to London Bombers so they can cause terror in Britain)
Drugs from the East (i love this one, "from the East"....where East? China? What drugs, weed? synthetic drugs? Last time I checked, Serbs mafia purchaes, Albanian mafia deals, its a love relationship among the mafias dude...its CRIME)
Prostitutes (this is a sad one...let people be, having prostitutes, which there are all over the world, doesnt mean one can't have a state...)
Kiitos Serbs, this is not about Kosova anymore or the Albanians, this is about you now. Time has come for the Serbs to clean up their act, get busy and learn to be happy, don't export your unhappines on your neighbors. We never wanted blood, and you wanted supremacy, sorry it wont do.
Kosovars have chosen their path, it is the path of peace and one that leads towards Europe. Serbia can choose to follow or remain with the same ideology that Milosevic used to become strong and eventualy murder whole nations.
Peace to all, and especialy to the victims of Racak...
Please read the page on below link and comment it:
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/Kosovo/hoax/Racak/Articles/Liberation990121_Eng.html
To anonymous,
You seem to conveniently answer what you want to and skip the rest,what ever you are saying,you are very biased..understandably so,as for the judicial system of kossovo let's forget about it,you are not there yet and you know it,a recent UN report specified about the "difficulties" to say the list to have any witness testify against the kla which lets face it is not a bunch of clean,and innocent group of "freedom fighters" neither...Before the war they have often been refered as terrorist in the press before all the media started to all use the same lines...Certainly not all serbs are chanting what you say they are chanting,(this stereotype cannot be taken seriously) to you they are one and the same,you are overwelmed by hate, hate that blinds you,as for the drugs...maybe opium from afghanistan? and prostitutes as a criminal human trade for export...
As for the HAGUE tribunal,and the high percentage of Serbs in it,that does not prove anything since it is financed mostly by the US and some generous friends like Saoudi Arabia (check for yourself)at most it goes to show the bias and that justice is not rendered fairly.maybe even out of fear...
"by the US and some generous friends like Saoudi Arabia"
LOL, so which one is it? Is it Islamic terrorism that is trying to destroy Serbia or American Democracy? With Serbs nothing makes sense, first Albanians, Bosniacs and Croats are being used by the Americans to destroy Serbia then Americans are not in support of the Kosovars cause "we are linked to islamic terrorists". You guys are really living on some other planet, this is great :)
To accuse me of lying for saying Yugoslavia was involved in the war is to get off to a silly start. The fighting in Kosovo was between Yugoslav forces & the KLA terrorists (even the US admitted that) trained, organised & armed by Germany, the US, al Qaeda & Caritas (the latter may surprise) & publicaly committed to genocide - to say anything else is a lie.
There were 350,000 Serbs, Gypsies & Jews (combined) in Kosovo who aren't there now. To say otherwise is to lie to help Nazis.
There was (accent on was) a Jewish community in Kosovo indeed the words of the (nonexistent ?) leader of the (nonexistent ?) Jewish community are available on www.emperors-clothes.com . Nazis have a history of lying about the existence of Jews.
Racak was a Yugoslav army unit, with western reporters present, catching a KLA military unit which had just broken their own ceasefire to commit murder. The Finns have proven that Walker lied when he said he had seen them shot in the face & the Finnish forensic experts have proven that many of them had powder burns proving they had fired weapons. When Hitler started WW2 he manufactured a similar causus belli by staging an equally faked attack in Poland (anybody who saw Schindlers list may have noticed a mention of obtaining the fake uniforms for this). Nazis claimed to believe that too.
2 months before Nato's attack the UK Foreign Secretary told Parliament that the KLA had killed more people in Kosovo than the Yugoslavs. Since that Nazi war criminal subsequently deliberately supported a war to help the genocidal child raping KLA he was clearly not overstating their guilt.
Every Nato leader knew that they were criminals going to war deliberately to support Nazi genocide - and that is a FACT
"The fighting in Kosovo was between Yugoslav forces & the KLA terrorists (even the US admitted that) trained, organised & armed by Germany, the US, al Qaeda & Caritas (the latter may surprise) & publicaly committed to genocide - to say anything else is a lie."
This is a lie. KLA not terrorist, supported by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and later melted into the Kosova Protection Corps, trained and maintained by NATO. NATO last time I checked was fighting terrorists. How can the SAME fighting force be trained by US/Germany and Al Qaeda? You make no sense.
"There were 350,000 Serbs, Gypsies & Jews (combined) in Kosovo who aren't there now. To say otherwise is to lie to help Nazis."
Lie. Jews are still there haver. 100,000 Serbs remain, circa 100,000 left. As for gypsies I am not informed of the exact numbers. But I know many gypsies who fought as KLA for Kosova.
"There was (accent on was) a Jewish community in Kosovo indeed the words of the (nonexistent ?) leader of the (nonexistent ?) Jewish community are available on www.emperors-clothes.com . Nazis have a history of lying about the existence of Jews."
Hello, there are still Jews in Prishtina, Prizren, Gjakova, are you living on another parallel dimension? Nazis had 0% success in committing their crimes in Albanian populated lands, and 100% success rate in Serbian popullated lands. Visit Tel Aviv and the Holocaust museum, you will see it all there.
"The Finns have proven that Walker lied when he said he had seen them shot in the face & the Finnish forensic experts have proven that many of them had powder burns proving they had fired weapons."
Among the bodies in Racak I saw a few child corpses. These were KLA fighters I assume. Another number of the corpses were elderly men. Fins have never (as you can see from the sources I kindly provided above) claimed that someone lied. In forensics you can't prove a lie like "saw them shot in the face". This is because this could mean, the person is stating he saw corpses shot in the face, or witnessed the actual crime taking place.
Fact is known that Walker was NOT THERE when Racak was commited. But he and many others, did see people who were SHOT in the face.
"When Hitler started WW2 he manufactured a similar causus belli by staging an equally faked attack in Poland (anybody who saw Schindlers list may have noticed a mention of obtaining the fake uniforms for this). Nazis claimed to believe that too."
So this is where Serbs learned it :) sweet...
"2 months before Nato's attack the UK Foreign Secretary told Parliament that the KLA had killed more people in Kosovo than the Yugoslavs. Since that Nazi war criminal subsequently deliberately supported a war to help the genocidal child raping KLA he was clearly not overstating their guilt."
And then the bombed Serbia and gave a stop to Serb-Art-of-Genocide-Part II - The Saga of Kosova ever taking full form it took in Serb-Art-of-Genocide-Part I - The Bosniac War. They bombed the Gonocide makers, the child rapers, the same ones that tought and reminded Europe what Fascism is, the Serbs.
"Every Nato leader knew that they were criminals going to war deliberately to support Nazi genocide - and that is a FACT"
This statement is EXCELLENT, you know why Neil, cause you keep calling the West Nazis, and then keep on praising the real Nazis, the Serbs.
Neil, if you're British, or Scottish, please for Mary's sake, stop supporting criminals sitting in Belgrade and at least respect the Racak victims, the same way we respect, honor, support and pray for the British soldiers serving in Iraq and the people of Britain who have been hit by terrorism (bombs apparently supplied by Belgrade).
Best of luck in finding some peace in life mate...
" As for the HAGUE tribunal,and the high percentage of Serbs in it,that does not prove anything"
It proves Serbs were a bit too trigger happy. They are 98% of War Criminals cause they caused 99% of crimes!
Another things Serbs excell in, besides being war criminals, is digging mass graves.
Shame on all who support mass murderers, you are no different than Milosevic, are we supposed to live under you? Sorry, Kosova is out of this "relationship", you're dismissed ;)
Ylber Burgija said:
The US, Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania support Kosovar Independence. Who the hell is asking Neil and the Serbs what they think.
Although it's very sad to read some of the stuff written above, what really baffles me is these peoples complete detachment with relity.
The fact that there are still people that think that somehow Kosovo will be returned to Serbia, is beyond me.
Talk about living in LA-LA Land!
Go get treatment people.
Ylber, USA.
Neil, you seem too much emotionally invested in issues that don't relate in any way whatsover to your area of expertise.
The best thing for you is to visit Kosova for yourself - you won't find haven but you will find something 2 mil. Albanians call home and for which they have sacrificed a lot and won't stop until they have the same rights as you do chilling up there in Glasgow.
Empereor's Clothes, Antiwar and Serbianna don't count for sources. If nothing else, they have a terrible ideological bent to them.
So, please visit the damn place and open your eyes. I know RAF offers trips to people with any humanitarian excuse. If you can find one, you're more than welcome into our homes - just mention that you're British.
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.
This bi*ch made me cry. Why would she do that?
Yeah. This is what the world are learning now and thats why there will not be any independence ! The world have waked up "five to twelwe" and it spins very quickly now. The whole international community is angered that they had their wrong opinion about Kosovo. It will for sure be an interresting autumn.
The coffee sure smell good !!
Barcelona.
Why are the Albanians so quiet now ??
Ted
Hehe, the whole international community? Say, what do you take to remain in such delusional state?
Seriuosly guys, you should be cleaning up your own house instead of finding flaws in our society. Don't you have better things to do?
You are rotten to the bones !!!!
The Kosovo Connection
The shooting has stopped, but the Kosovo Liberation Army isn't resting. It is still a major player in the international heroin trade.
Five months after the shooting stopped in Kosovo, the first war in the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is slowly turning into a debacle.
NATO-led peacekeepers have proven virtually powerless to stop the violence, which in a complete turnaround is now being waged by Albanians against Serbs, Roma gypsies and political dissidents. They've had just as little success arresting a wave of organized crime that has swamped Kosovo's cities.
More questions are emerging about how many Albanians died at the hands of repressive Serb forces before and during NATO's 11-week air assault, the heaviest bombing campaign since World War II. At the height of the war, United States officials said up to 100,000 were killed and called the Serb violence a "genocide." Now, UN investigators have found the actual death toll is likely less than 5 per cent of that.
And then there is the Kosovo Liberation Army, the mysterious band of ethnic Albanian rebels who have emerged from their mountain hideouts and, under NATO's auspices, proclaimed themselves the "provisional government" of Kosovo.
The KLA has taken control of all city administrations, and the UN has integrated the bulk of the 10,000 rebels into the Kosovo Provisional Corps, a militia with official policing powers and a mandate to ensure inter-ethnic stability. But far from promoting ethnic harmony, the KLA itself stands accused of instigating much of the anti-minority violence. Its popularity among Kosovars has dropped sharply.
There is another question that continues to dog the KLA, and raises still more doubts about the legacy of the war - the question of drugs.
A mass of evidence over the years has suggested the KLA got much of its funding from sales of heroin, and enjoyed intimate links with the Italian Mafia and Albanian heroin barons.
The involvement was so great that the KLA played a part in feeding the heroin craze that has raged across Western Europe and North America during the 1990s.
Now, months after the armed conflict ended, narcotics experts say members of the former KLA haven't severed their ties to the drug world. Instead of buying arms with the profits, they're financing the province's rebuilding efforts.
Kosovar Albanian rebels were linked to drugs by narcotics experts in Europe as early as 1994, while U.S. authorities warned in 1996 that Kosovars were smuggling large amounts of weapons and drugs. Police in various Western nations also noted the rising proportion of heroin being shipped to their countries through the Balkans, and the rise in crime and overdose deaths that accompanied the drug.
Yet, when it came time to back a faction in Kosovo, Western governments went with the KLA.
The war on drugs, experts say, takes a back seat to political wars. In fact, they say the war in Kosovo actually left drug traffickers with a stronger hand.
"The KLA was a participant in heroin trafficking going way back," said Alfred McCoy, a historian at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Politics of Heroin, a 1972 classic study of the world heroin trade. "It's part of a long pattern. The drug war loses out to the demands of the post-Cold War era."
"It's an old story. It's been documented a million times," McGill University economist Tom Naylor said of the KLA ties to drug trafficking.
"Drugs were startup money for some KLA cadres. You can't say the KLA itself runs drugs. It's sort of a tactical alliance," said Naylor, who studies drug and arms smuggling, and consults with the United Nations.
A U.S. Defense Department consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity agreed.
"There is a synergy between guns and drugs. Are the Albanians involved in this? You betcha. You can't work in a restaurant and earn enough tips to buy an anti-aircraft missile. Name a place where there's conflict and you'll see a linkage between drugs and guns," he said.
The official, who is involved in Balkans policy-making, said former KLA members haven't cut their ties to the drug trade, even though Kosovo is free of Serb repression and many of the rebels are now supposed to be upholding the law as members of the Kosovo Provisional Corps.
"Once you make a lot of money from drugs, it's hard to get off it. I doubt very much if we're going to be able to turn this back. It's going to be much more like Colombia," he said.
Heroin Chic
Heroin was the drug of the '90s. It defined the decade like crack and junk bonds defined the '80s. It inspired the undead "heroin chic" look on fashion catwalks and claimed the lives of a long list of celebrities, including actor River Phoenix and Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvion.
Heroin was brought into the mainstream by a dramatic improvement in the drug's purity from 6 per cent in 1987 to 60 per cent today. Instead of having to inject it, a turn-off for many potential users, junk could now be smoked. At the same time, a glut sent wholesale prices crashing - by 70 per cent in North America since the beginning of the decade - which again increased the drug's attraction.
In 1997, Canadian and American police seized four times more heroin than in 1984, according to the UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention.
British Columbia reported 371 drug-overdose deaths in 1998, most of them heroin-related. It was the highest number in six years. Toronto saw close to 300 last year, said Det. Sgt. Dave Brownell, head of the Metro Toronto police drug squad. "(It's) a number which was unheard of five years ago," he said.
Canada now has a record 25,000 to 50,000 heroin addicts, while the U.S. addict population has shot up from 360,000 in 1991 to nearly 1 million today.
Society is paying a heavy toll for heroin, which is more addictive and harmful than marijuana or cocaine, said Brownell. He said junkies are responsible for 70 per cent of bank robberies in Toronto. Vancouver police estimate the average heroin addict commits $500 to $1,000 in theft each day to support his or her habit.
Where did all the heroin come from? Part of the answer lies thousands of kilometres away, at ground zero of the heroin explosion - the Balkans.
The fall of the Iron Curtain and a decade of wars in the Balkans reactivated the region's ancient smuggling routes for guns, oil, refugees, contraband cigarettes, Lebanese hash, Colombian cocaine and every other commodity under the sun.
Heroin - worth 12 times its weight in gold - was by far the most profitable commodity of them all.
Through the Balkans pass most of the opium and derived products - morphine base and heroin - of the infamous Golden Crescent. This is the area made up of Afghanistan and Pakistan's North West Frontier Province that accounts for 57 per cent of the world's opium production. The opium is smuggled into Turkey, where it is refined into heroin.
From there, the drugs are moved up the Balkan route into Western Europe and off to North America. Albania, just a short speedboat trip away from Italy across the Adriatic Sea, is one of the most convenient transit points to the West.
In the decade since the Iron Curtain fell, the Balkan route has become one of the world's greatest heroin highways, the conduit for 80 per cent of Europe's heroin supply, according to police figures cited in a report last June from the UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention.
In the U.S., nearly 20 per cent of heroin seized in 1996 came from the Golden Crescent, Drug Enforcement Agency chief Donnie Marshall told Congress last year. The portion had doubled in four years.
And in Canada, 20 to 30 per cent of heroin comes from the Golden Crescent, estimated Det. Sgt. Brownell. That number climbs to 50 per cent in Montreal and Toronto, according to Cpl. Joe Tomeo, of the RCMP drug squad in Montreal.
"The end of the Cold War had a fundamental impact on heroin trafficking," said historian McCoy. "It used to skirt around the Iron Curtain and go through the Mediterranean. Now, it's opened up with a vengeance in the Balkans. It's essentially drugs moving westward and guns moving eastward."
The hub of the smuggling frenzy lay in Albania and the troubled corner of Serbia called Kosovo, 90-per-cent populated by Albanians. Drug trafficking came to dominate this area so much that, in 1995, Jane's Intelligence Review dubbed Albania and Kosovo the Medellin of the Balkans.
By 1995, tensions in Kosovo were at a boiling point between Albanians and Yugoslav forces. The autonomy Kosovo had enjoyed in Yugloslavia for decades had been revoked in 1989, and after years of brutal repression by the Serb regime - including mass arrests, torture and killings - some Albanians were ready to turn to armed rebellion.
On Feb. 11, 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army came out of hiding by setting off bombs at five Serb refugee camps in Kosovo. The KLA needed arms and ammunition to fight for its goal of an independent Kosovo, and it turned to the same Albanian smuggling networks that already ran heroin and other underground goods.
But war is expensive business, and the KLA also needed money - lots of it.
Western governments, as much as they may have wanted to help, couldn't officially support armed separatists in a European country who assassinated police officers and civilians deemed to be traitors. So the KLA also turned to heroin itself, according to narcotics experts in North America and Europe.
After all, the trade already passed through the rebel group's own backyard. And there wasn't a better money-maker around. A kilogram of heroin that costs $1,000 in Thailand wholesales for $110,000 in Montreal, and has a street value of $800,000. By contrast, a kilo of cocaine purchased for $1,000 in Latin America fetches a wholesale price of only $36,000 to $38,000 in Montreal and a street value of $80,000.
Some of the KLA's funding did come from legitimate sources. Donations poured in from the large and far-flung ethnic Albanian diaspora in Italy, Germany and Switzerland, each home to some 200,000 emigres from Albania and Kosovo, not to mention the 500,000 in the United States and 10,000 in Canada.
Kosovar emigres were politely solicited for donations and, if that didn't work, KLA men "maybe used a little encouragement," as the U.S. Defense Department source put it.
"It was not necessary to threaten violence," said Naylor, the McGill economist. "The threat of social or economic ostracization was enough.
"In the tightly knit Albanian communities, not contributing means a business gets economically ostracized. You'd lose all your business. Children would get ostracized at school."
Faced with a withering Serb spring offensive this year, the embattled KLA called on Albanians living in Switzerland each to donate 2,000 deutschmarks a month (about $1,600 Cdn), according to a Le Monde Diplomatique report. In France, Albanian immigrants were obliged to "donate" 50 per cent of their earnings.
But such contributions were only part of the KLA's funding. The German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, citing Western intelligence sources, reported last March that half of the $700 million raised by the KLA until that point had come from drug sales.
The Criminal Underworld
In the early 1990s, thousands of young Kosovars left their homes, fleeing the economic and political troubles of the Balkans by heading west. The vast majority of the immigrants were law-abiding. Many were young men who found unskilled jobs and struggled to send savings back to their families in Europe's poorest region. Virtually every family in the Kosovo capital Pristina came to depend on these so-called "Swiss funds."
But discrimination in the West and crackdowns on immigration prevented many from earning an honest living. A small minority of Albanian emigres went underground.
They hooked up with the Italian Mafia and Turkish crime bosses - known as "babas" - to run heroin and prostitution rackets. The emigre Albanians kept up warm relations with Albanian smuggling tycoons back in Kosovo and Albania, who were slowly taking over the Balkan route from Turks.
One of those who left Pristina in 1992 was Agim Gashi. He settled in the northern Italian city of Milan, best known as the country's financial capital and Europe's fashion mecca.
To police, Milan also has the dubious distinction of being the nerve centre for the world's $400-billion heroin trade and headquarters to the Italian Mafia's financial operations. From here, heroin shipments flow out to the rest of Europe and North America, and narco-dollars flow back in, to be laundered through the city's many financial institutions and construction companies.
Gashi quickly married an Italian woman and was soon living in high style. He bought a luxurious villa in Milan's suburbs and came to own a chain of beauty parlors and perfume shops in London. On the side, Gashi was described by police as the boss of the city's lucrative heroin and prostitution rackets.
When Italian police arrested him in the fall of 1998 - along with 124 other drug traffickers - they said Gashi, then 35, had used some of his crime proceeds to buy Kalashnikov rifles, bazookas and hand grenades for the KLA.
The KLA's alleged drug connection in Milan apparently hadn't escaped the notice of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. In a March 15 report about Gashi in The Philadelphia Inquirer, the DEA's Rome office was quoted saying, "Turkish (drug) trafficking groups are using Albanians, Yugoslavs and elements of criminal groups from Kosovo to sell and distribute their heroin. These groups are believed to be a part of the financial arm of the (KLA's) war against Serbia.
"These Kosovars are financing their war through drug-trafficking activities, weapons trafficking and the trafficking of other illegal goods as well as contributions of their countrymen working abroad," the DEA told the newspaper.
The DEA office in Rome refused a request for an interview for this article.
With one foot planted in Western Europe and the other in the Balkans, Albanian crime bosses shot up the ladder of Europe's criminal underworld.
Naylor, the McGill economist, shed light on the Albanian underworld in his recent book Patriots and Profiteers: On Economic Warfare, Embargo Busting and State-Sponsored Crime.
"With their close family trust, underground financial institutions and language beyond the comprehension of law-enforcement agencies, the Kosovars were ideally placed to run heroin," Naylor wrote.
Strengthened by their Mafia ties and the revival of the Balkan route, Albanian emigres emerged as the most powerful drug traffickers in Western Europe by the mid-1990s.
So far, European police haven't had much luck reining in the Albanian underworld.
Not long after the mass arrests in Milan last fall, the city was stunned by nine murders tied to Albanian organized crime in the first nine days of January this year. The Italian government deployed an extra 800 police and 90 patrol cars to crack down on Albanian crime networks, but that wasn't enough to prevent yet another rise in cross-Adriatic smuggling after hostilities ended in Kosovo this summer.
An Aug. 15 report by Agence France Presse said smugglers in Balkans contraband are becoming bold enough to move their goods in convoys of up to a dozen armoured 4x4 trucks with bullet-proof glass and puncture-proof tires. The trucks have been used to run Italian police vehicles off the road. The Italian Finance Ministry estimated it had lost $3 billion in taxes to the illegal cigarette trade alone.
Europeans paid for the flourishing smuggling of contraband into and out of the Balkans in other ways, too.
Greece was reeling from a rise in heroin consumption in the 1990s. A chief of the Athens drug squad told the London Guardian in November 1998 that "around 95 per cent of the hashish and 75 per cent of the heroin entering this country comes from Albania. The Albanians are now the biggest drug traffickers in Europe after the Turks."
At Hungary's borders, heroin seizures tripled in 1998 over the previous year. Hungarian police believe Kosovo Albanians control 80 per cent of the heroin market in Budapest, the capital, the Paris newspaper Liberation reported last May.
The same story played out across Europe - record heroin seizures coinciding with the ascent of Albanian crime gangs.
Europe was not along in feeling the impacts of the heroin-smuggling frenzy. Heroin addiction suddenly became a massive problem back in the Golden Crescent, too. According to UN figures, Pakistan, for years the main thoroughway for Afghanistan's heroin, went from having a negligible number of heroin addicts in the early 1980s to having 1.5 to 2 million by the end of the '90s.
In Canada and the U.S., according to the U.S. Defense Department official who requested anonymity, authorities quietly launched a surveillance campaign of Albanian emigres in the past year because they were afraid the war in Kosovo would have a "spillover effect" - more drug sales.
"There was considerable monitoring," he said. "The spillover effect was something people were concerned about, particularly because of our knowledge that the linkage between guns and drugs was becoming closer. There were some instances where the antenna went up regarding some Albanians who arrived here."
"Leery" Of Commenting
In Europe, narcotics experts warned explicitly of a Kosovar drugs-for-guns connection five years ago.
"Heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined not only for the current conflict in Bosnia but also for the brewing war in Kosovo," the Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues, a Paris-based institute that advises European police forces, said in a June 1994 bulletin.
The OGD also said U.S. priorities in the Balkans "dictate turning a blind eye to a drug trade that finances the arming of Kosovo Albanians," who were integral to the American strategy of putting "a brake on Serbian expansion."
U.S. government documents have also warned of a growing Kosovar connection to trafficking in heroin and arms for several years.
The DEA's 1996 National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee report, for one, named Albanian drug traffickers from Kosovo as "second only to Turkish groups as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan Route."
The report continued: "Kosovan traffickers were noted for their use of violence and for their involvement in international weapons trafficking. There is increasing evidence that ethnic criminals from the Balkans are engaged in criminal activities in the United States."
The U.S. State Department, for its part, noted the importance of the country of Albania in drug smuggling in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, issued last February. "Organized crime is making increased use of Albania as a transit point for drugs being smuggled to Western Europe, due to the strategic location of the country and the continued weakness of its police and judicial systems," said the report.
In fact, Albania's corruption proved ideal for the KLA's purposes. The lawless environment allowed the rebel group to set up training bases and smuggle whatever it wanted - guns in, drugs out.
But not everyone in the KLA was comfortable with what the group was doing in Albania, according to a June 25 story in the New York Times.
"The close relationship between (KLA leader Hashim) Thaçi and the Tirana government, which has a reputation for corruption and has been linked by Western diplomats to drug trafficking, is one of the factors that disillusioned many former (KLA) fighters who were interviewed in Germany, Switzerland and Austria," said the report.
The KLA's relations with the Albanian regime were overseen by a shadowy figure named Xhavit Haliti. One of the group's founders, he was the rebels' head fundraiser. Now he is a top lieutenant to Thaçi and a member of the advisory council that assists the UN administration in Kosovo.
He is also the provisional Kosovo government's ambassador to Albania, where he was said by ethnic Albanian and Western observers to have ties to the underworld, the London Guardian reported Sept. 3.
He has also collaborated with Albanian secret police agents to silence dissenters in Kosovo, according to current and former KLA commanders and Western diplomats cited in the New York Times report of June 25. The London Guardian also mentioned ties to Albania's secret police: it said the KLA's own spy service had been "aided" by Albanian and U.S. intelligence services.
Michael Levine, a 25-year veteran of the DEA who left in 1990, said he believes there is no question that U.S. intelligence knew about the KLA's drug ties.
"They (the CIA) protected them (the KLA) in every way they could. As long as the CIA is protecting the KLA, you've got major drug pipelines protected from any police investigation," said Levine, who teaches undercover tactics and informer handling to U.S. and Canadian police forces, including the RCMP.
"The evidence is irrefutable," he said, explaining that his information comes from "sources inside the DEA."
Canadian and U.S. government officials, however, either said they have no information on the issue or refused to comment.
Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Valerie Nofte said the Canadian government has no knowledge of a connection between the KLA and drugs. "No, we are not aware (of a connection)," she said.
Patrick Hardick, an RCMP spokesman in Ottawa, said he couldn't comment: "The RCMP is really leery politically on giving out information of that sort - on international drug trafficking or anything of that sort. Unfortunately, they don't like cooperating with such studies."
The head of the U.S. State Department's Albania desk, Andrew Hyde, also wouldn't comment on KLA drug ties. "I'd rather not say," he said. "People make a lot of allegations in this part of the world (the Balkans)."
A Freedom of Information request was filed with the DEA for documents discussing Albanian organized crime or the KLA's links to drugs. The agency responded in a letter it had no such records - despite the fact that the DEA's own web site offers its 1996 National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Committee report, a document that discusses Albanian organized crime.
Benny Mangor, the DEA's attache in Canada, said American police don't think Albanian or KLA involvement in the drug trade is a priority. "It hasn't raised a blip from a U.S. law-enforcement perspective. I'm not going to dispute it might be happening. Is this a great concern at this time? No, it is not."
Albanian community representatives, for their part, hotly denied that the KLA got money from drug sales.
Joseph DioGuardi, a former U.S. Congressman who heads the Albanian American Civic League, said the reports of a KLA drug connection are part of a smear campaign by the "Serb propaganda machine." Amilda Dymi, spokeswoman for the New York-based Kosova Office, which represents Kosovo's provisional government, said, "I'm aware of the fact that they have continuously accused the KLA of using dirty money, drug money. But I don't think that's the case. The KLA is open about its accounts."
War And Heroin Linked
The KLA's apparent heroin connection is part of an old pattern of Western governments furthering strategic interests by backing rebels connected to drugs, often in the world's poorest countries, narcotics experts say.
McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin, said the Afghan mujahideen rebels were one of the first U.S.-backed rebel groups to get into the heroin trade in a big way. The anti-communist mujahideen were backed by the U.S. in their opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. They started exporting massive amounts of opium to raise money, with the knowledge and protection of the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, according to McCoy.
"That produced a massive traffic in the '80s to Europe and the U.S.," he said.
Another U.S.-backed rebel army, the Nicaraguan contras, raised money for its war against the leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s by flooding U.S. cities with crack - all with the knowledge and assistance of the CIA and the DEA, according to the book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb's allegations were initially denied by the CIA, but a CIA inspector-general's report in October 1998 revealed that 58 contras were linked to drug allegations.
U.S. intelligence officers must operate in the same circles as criminals in order to do their jobs, said Harry E. Soyster, a retired lieutenant-general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "I think if they're not operating in those circles, we shouldn't pay them."
The DIA is the intelligence arm of the U.S. Defense Department, and has twice the employees of the FBI and DEA combined.
"If you deal with people who feed pigs, you're going to have to stand around where it smells. If you think you can have everybody in a nice office in Washington and find out what's going on in the world, that ain't the way the world is," said Soyster, who is now vice-president of a military consulting firm with contracts in the Balkans.
Sgt. Roy Bergerman, an RCMP intelligence officer in Vancouver who specializes in drugs and organized crime, said it can be awkward for a police officer to learn that officials in his or her own government have supported groups linked to drugs. "Here you've got a so-called colleague, and they're working at cross-purposes," he said.
Bergerman said the RCMP has no information on the KLA, but "any time you get a war you get heroin. That's the fastest way to finance your weapons," he said. "In Afghanistan, the Americans had their fingers caught in the cookie jar. The CIA was giving tacit approval to the drug trade. They were doing it in Asia when the Vietnam War was going on. That's in the public record. Also with the contras."
The U.S. Defense Department official who requested anonymity went one step further, saying that drugs - especially heroin - have joined guns as an indispensable ingredient of post-Cold War warfare.
"It's so pervasive it's global. The KLA is just one case afflicting Canada and the U.S. They are certainly not the only group engaged in this," he said. "When people need money, they tend to market things that pay off big. There's one market that pays off big more than any other, and that's drugs."
The official said the era of states slugging it out in conventional wars is coming to an end, and predicted that drug-financed guerrilla warfare will be the primary type of conflict in the 21st century.
"It's a story of the diminishing role of the state and the changing role of warfare," he said. "It isn't a story just about the Albanians. That's a micro-issue that pales in comparison with why drugs and guns have been linked around the world."
Nor does the drug connection always come to an end when the conflicts are over, said McCoy. In fact, the reliance of the former belligerents on drug profits can itself become an addiction, growing stronger at the war's end.
War zones have to be rebuilt, usually at enormous expense. Returning refugees have to be reintegrated, despite an often-comatose economy. Drugs, as one of the world's most lucrative commodities, are often one of the only sources of financing available to help war-torn societies get back on their feet, said McCoy. A lawless environment can encourage drug trafficking even more.
"Once the covert operations are over, paradoxically the involvement of our covert-action allies with the drug trade usually expands," said McCoy.
Gordon Bardos, a professor at Columbia University who specializes in the Balkans, said the same pattern is emerging in Kosovo. Much of Kosovo and neighbouring Albania remain "lawless country," despite the efforts of the UN administration, he said. Many relief agencies have pulled out because it's too dangerous.
"This is an ideal situation for smuggling groups to do business. All hell has broken loose in Kosovo now. Criminal gangs in Albania have been able to expand operations," said Bardos.
The result: The West's ongoing heroin craze may be providing the kind of financial relief for Kosovo that international agencies can't afford.
Michel Koutouzis, a Balkans expert at the Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues, said drug sales that once funded an armed rebellion against the Serbs are now financing sorely needed public-works projects in Kosovo.
"It's true that in Kosovo they used money from drugs to buy arms. But also for roads, electricity lines and so on," said Koutouzis. "When the objective is peace, (drugs are used to) finance peace. When the objective is war, they finance war."
This Michel Koutouzis is hilarious. He's just proven to the world that there are humanitarian drug dealers. America, Jesus is coming, this was the sign you've been waiting for.
On the other hand, Serb attempt to shift the discussion from crimes in Kosova and Bosnia to what happened to the Jews in WWII shows how they are losing the 3rd media war in 10 years.
Anonymous 8.21 wrote:
"The Kosovo Connection
"The shooting has stopped, but the Kosovo Liberation Army isn't resting. It is still a major player in the international heroin trade."
etc
Could you please provide the source?
Also, just a commnet. The articel mentions Geopolitical Drug Watch. If you actually go to their documents on drug-smuggling in the Balkans, it talks a lot about Albanians, quite true. But it also talks rather a lot about Serbs, including people close to the very top of the then Serbian regime, such as Arkan etc. In fact it appears to suggest they are considerably more involved than Albanians. As usual, these propaganda articles about "Albanians and drugs" don't mention any of that, the aim is to give a thoroughly false picture.
Regarding the delusional Julia Gorin and her bias, I will post an article that rebuffs her distorted views.
I'll be back soon...
And then we will see how our heroes, Ted and Barcelona will go very quiet indeed.
Tosi
Sweden
Like I promised
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17416
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.
Now, let's hear it from Ted...
Tosi
Sweden
Since we're at it
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."
How about that folks? And servians here say that servia is reformed...yeah right.
I liked this part:
"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."
There you have it, the army the church and the prime minister Kostunica all involved in protecting war criminals.
This one is even better:
"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."
The patriarch blessed the assasination!! That's what kind of place is servia.
The state, the army and the church are still united in sprading hate and war. Like theu did in the 90s...
Tosi
Sweden
I speak a lot of rubbish and know nothing about Serbia, Albania or Sweden.
Tosser
Sweden
Haha, I guess I'm getting under your skin servian...
Tosi
Sweden
According to an earlier KLA supporter here I am a liar for claiming there were any Jews in Kosovo prior to NATO's attack.I then produced proof that there had been.
According to a later KLA supporter I am a liar for saying that most of this (non-existent) group had been cleansed - there are all (still?) there.
Let me say that I think both represent the very highest standard of honesty of KLA supporters. Equally neither have any grip on the truth.
The latter also said that I was lying to call the KLA terrorists because "KLA not terrorist, supported by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and later melted into the Kosova Protection Corps, trained and maintained by NATO. NATO last time I checked was fighting terrorists. How can the SAME fighting force be trained by US/Germany and Al Qaeda?"
This is to misunderstand what a terrorist is. A terrorist is someone who uses terror for political power. It is not anybody NATO desn't like currently. Actually the KLA is inordinately proud of the fact that their first terrorist act was the deliberate murder of a group of unarmed Serb refugees - this is technically known as genocide.
When NATO hired a group of gangsters, drug lords, pimps & ex-secret police torturers to pose as a "liberation movement" it was obvious they were going to engage in terrorism. In fact the KLA are guilty not merely of terrorism but of genocide & child sex slavery - the English language has never developed a word for such creatures
so terrorist will have to do.
That they are NATO terrorists/policemen does not in any way enhance their status it merely proves that NATO leaders are guilty, at least as accessories, of the same crimes.
It is perhaps worth pointing out that Wesley Clark claimed, on oath, at the Milosevic "trial" that there was no link between the KLA & NATO. I doubt if anybody, including the judges, does not believe that NATO Chief/Presidential candidate deliberately perjured himself but I suppose that is the least of his crimes.
"According to an earlier KLA supporter here I am a liar for claiming there were any Jews in Kosovo prior to NATO's attack.I then produced proof that there had been."
Neil I am having problems understanding your english sometimes. You produced proof that there are Jews in Prishtina? We were telling you that all the time. I.e. there are Jews writin on this blog at this very moment dear sir.
"This is to misunderstand what a terrorist is. A terrorist is someone who uses terror for political power. It is not anybody NATO desn't like currently. Actually the KLA is inordinately proud of the fact that their first terrorist act was the deliberate murder of a group of unarmed Serb refugees - this is technically known as genocide."
First, genocide is what was attempted by Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia and what was prevented in Kosova. Now about terrorism. You still do not make sense. If KLA was a terrorist force, then NATO would not like it and it would be an enemy of NATO. Very simply, if KLA had connections with Al Qaeda, then NATO would have bombed us, instead they bombed Serbia (connections between Iraq/London bombs/Madrid bombers and Serbia are all there...maybe it was not a mistake?).
"
That they are NATO terrorists/policemen does not in any way enhance their status it merely proves that NATO leaders are guilty, at least as accessories, of the same crimes."
Now you're starting to sound like a Serb...that is better....
"It is perhaps worth pointing out that Wesley Clark claimed, on oath, at the Milosevic "trial" that there was no link between the KLA & NATO. I doubt if anybody, including the judges, does not believe that NATO Chief/Presidential candidate deliberately perjured himself but I suppose that is the least of his crimes."
If you knew even a tiny bit how things work out there, you would see why Clark would make such a statement. Simply, here you are, Neil, claiming that Western leaders are guilty of supporting "terrorism", so imagine if you heard it from Clark saying that KLA and NATO worked together, then you would be jumping up and down yelling it out of your lungs. A statement like that is intended for people like you and Serbs. Use your brain buddy.
Shalom
Neil Craig is correct, the person who responded to him just hates the truth when he hears it.
Kosovo needs big prisons to lock up all their KLA Terrorists.
When all Serbs and gypsies can return safety to their homes, then I'll listen to the views of sensible Albanians (do any exist?).
"Kosovo needs big prisons to lock up all their KLA Terrorists."
That is what Milosevic tried. To put it bluntly, KLA is the Albanians, we are all part of it, some fought with weapons, some gave money, some gave expertise and we all gave our hearts.
Btw, ideas that Milosevic lived on will not get you any respect among the sensible in the world. And Serbs can come back without a problem and those that have left (unless guilty) can too, the moment Belgrade stops using them.
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