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NATO’s Kosovo ColonyDiana JOHNSTONEAcross this last weekend, the Western propaganda machine was working
overtime, celebrating the latest NATO miracle: the transformation of
Serbian Kosovo into Albanian Kosova. A shameless land grab by the United States, which used the Kosovo problem
to install an enormous military base (Camp Bondsteel) on other people’s
strategically located land, is transformed by the power of the media
into an edifying legend of “national liberation”. Concerning Kosovo, truth is like letters written in the sand as the
tsunami of propaganda comes thundering in. Fragments of the truth sometimes
even show up in the mainstream media, mostly in letters from readers.
But hopeless as it is to try to turn back the tide of officially endorsed
legend, let me examine just one drop in this unstoppable sea of propaganda:
a column by Roger Cohen entitled “Europe’s new state”,
published in the Valentine’s Day edition of the International Herald
Tribune. Cohen’s op ed piece is fairly typical in the dismissive way it
deals with Milosevic, Russia and the Serbs. Cohen writes: “Slobodan
Milosevic, the late dictator, set Serbia’s murderous nationalist
tide in motion on April 24, 1987, when he went to Kosovo to declare
that Serbian ‘ancestors would be defiled’ if ethnic Albanians
had their way.” I don’t know where Roger Cohen got that quotation,
but it is not to be found in the speech Milosevic made that day in Kosovo.
And certainly, Milosevic did not go to Kosovo to declare any such thing,
but to consult with local Communist League officials in the town of
Kosovo Polje about the province’s serious economic and social problems.
Unemployment Aside from the province’s chronic poverty, unemployment, and mismanagement
of development funds contributed from the rest of Yugoslavia, the main
social problem was the constant exodus of Serb and Montenegrin inhabitants
under pressure from ethnic Albanians. For instance, as early as July 12, 1982, Marvine Howe reported to the
New York Times that Serbs were leaving Kosovo by the tens of thousands
because of discrimination and intimidation on the part of the ethnic
Albanian majority: “The [Albanian] nationalists have a two-point
platform,” according to Beci Hoti, an executive secretary of the
Communist Party of Kosovo, “first to establish what they call an
ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania
to form a greater Albania. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn
down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been
knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders
to rape Serbian girls. Interview The goal of the radical nationals among them, one said in an interview,
is an “ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern
Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.”
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially
strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in
1981—an “ethnically pure” Albanian region. This was in
fact the first instance of “ethnic cleansing” in post-World
War II Yugoslavia, as reported in The New York Times and other Western
media, and the victims were the Serbs. Back to Milosevic in Kosovo Polje on April 24, 1987. An incident occurred
when local police (under an Albanian-dominated Communist League government)
attacked Serbs who had gathered to protest lack of legal protection.
Milosevic famously told them, spontaneously: “No one should beat
you any more!” If this is “extreme nationalism”, perhaps
there should be more of it. He went on to stress that “we should not allow the misfortunes
of people to be exploited by nationalists, whom every honest person
must combat. We must not divide people between Serbs and Albanians,
but rather we should separate, on the one hand, decent people who struggle
for brotherhood, unity and ethnic equality, and, on the other hand,
counter-revolutionaries and nationalists.” In Geneva, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tried to convey to
journalists his grave concern about the way the United States was handling
the Kosovo problem. “We are speaking here about the subversion of all the foundations
and principles of international law, which have been won and established
as a basis of Europe’s existence at huge effort, and at the cost
of pain, sacrifice and bloodletting,” he said. Cohen dismisses such considerations in five words: “the Russian
bear will growl”. Russia, he adds, “will scream. But it’s
backed the wrong horse.” “Milosevic rolled the dice of genocidal nationalism and lost”,
says Cohen. This is not only a false statement, it is a grotesquely meaningless
metaphor. Milosevic tried to suppress an armed secessionist movement,
secretly but effectively supported by neighbouring Albania, the United
States and Germany, which deliberately provoked repression by murdering
both Serbs and Albanians loyal to the government. Like the Americans in similar circumstances, Milosevic relied too heavily
on military superiority rather than on political skill. But even the
NATO-sponsored International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia
in The Hague had to abandon any charges of “genocide” against
Milosevic in Kosovo. For the simple reason that there was never a shred
of evidence for such a charge. Minorities Russia has warned that Kosovo independence will set a dangerous precedent,
encouraging other ethnic minorities to follow the example of the Albanians
and demand secession and an independent State. The United States has dismissed such concerns by flatly asserting that
Kosovo is “unique”. Well yes, Kosovo is a unique case, and
is the only one recognized by the United States until the next “unique
case” comes along. When legal criteria have been thrown out, we
just have one “unique case” after another. The “uniqueness” claimed is a propaganda construction. It
is based on the supposed “uniqueness” of Milosevic’s
repression of the armed secessionist movement, which was not unique
at all. It was standard operating procedure throughout history and the world
over, in such circumstances. Deplorable, no doubt, but not unique. It
was minor indeed compared to the similar but endless and far bloodier
anti-insurgency operations in Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Chechnya, not
to mention Northern Ireland, Thailand, the Philippines And unlike the
counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which kill incomparably
more civilians, it was carried out by the legal, democratically elected
government of the country, rather than by a foreign power. I have not visited Kosovo since before the 1999 NATO war. On one occasion,
in August 1997, I drove around the province in a failing Skoda, at my
own expense, just looking. Driving in Kosovo was a bit risky, partly
because of the number of dead dogs in the road, and mostly because of
local drivers’ habit of passing slower vehicles on hills and curves.
Collision In northern Kosovo, just outside the town of Zubin Potok, this habit
produced one of its inevitable consequences: a head-on collision with
serious casualties, which shut down the two-lane highway for hours.
Unable to proceed toward Pristina, I drove back to Zubin Potok to pass
the time on the shaded terrace of a roadside restaurant. I was the only
customer, and the lone waiter, a tall, handsome young man named Milomir,
gladly accepted my invitation to sit down at my table and chat as I
sipped glass after glass of delicious strawberry juice. Milomir was happy to talk to someone familiar with the French city
of Metz, which he had visited as a student and remembered fondly. He loved to read and travel, but in 1991 he got married and now had
two small daughters to support. Job prospects were poor, even though
he had been to university, so he had no choice but to stay in Zubin
Potok. As for Europe, even if he could get a visa (impossible for Serbs anyway),
he spoke no language more Western than his mother tongue, Serbo-Croatian.
He had studied Russian (he loved the literature) and Albanian as his
foreign languages. He learned Albanian in order to be able to communicate
with the majority in Kosovo. But such communication was difficult. Milomir was very much in favour
of a bilingual society, and thought everyone in Kosovo should learn
both Serbian and Albanian, but unfortunately this was not the case.
The younger generation of Albanians refused to speak Serbian and learned
English instead. Questions Milomir was not complaining, but simply answering my questions. He
did not go too often to the nearest large city, Mitrovica, because he
was afraid of being beaten by Albanians. This was just a fact of life,
at a time when (according to Western media) Albanians in Kosovo were
being terrorized by Serbian repression. Today I have no idea what has become of Milomir, his wife, his two
daughters, or his friend. Zubin Potok is the western-most municipality
in the heavily Serb-populated north of Kosovo. I learn that the population
of Zubin Potok municipality (including surrounding villages) has nearly
doubled since I passed through. It now comes to approximately 14,900, including about 3,000 internally
displaced Serbs (from other areas of Kosovo where the Albanian majority
has driven them out), 220 Serbian refugees from Croatia and 800 Albanians.
The local assembly is overwhelmingly dominated by Kostunica’s Democratic
Party of Serbia, but includes two Kosovo Albanian representatives. Up until now, schools, hospitals, and other public services, as well
as the local economy, have continued to function thanks mainly to subsidies
from Belgrade. The Albanian declaration of Kosovo independence will
create a crisis by demanding an end to such vital subsidies—which,
however, an “independent Kosovo” is unable to replace. The European Union is moving in to provide law and order. But the “order”
they claim to be protecting is the one defined by the Albanian nationalists.
What does that mean to people like Milomir and his little family? For Roger Cohen, the answer is easy: “hit the road!” Serbia,
by the way, already has the largest number of refugees in Europe, victims
of “ethnic cleansing” in Croatia and Kosovo. And Serbs cannot
get visas or refugee status in Western Europe. They have been labelled
the “bad guys”. Only their enemies can be “victims”.
Before and After Kosovo before the NATO war and occupation was, nevertheless,
a multiethnic society. The accusation of “apartheid” was simply
Albanian propaganda, as the Albanian nationalist leaders chose to use
that heavily-charged term to describe their own boycott of Serbs and
Serb institutions. Every police action against an Albanian, for whatever reason, whether
for suspicion of armed rebellion or for ordinary crime, was described
as a “human rights violation” by the Albanian human rights
network. Separatist
It was an extraordinary situation that the Serbian and Yugoslav governments
allowed an illegal separatist “government of Kosovo”, headed
by Ibrahim Rugova, to hold shop in the center of Pristina, regularly
receiving foreign journalists and regaling them with tales of how oppressed
they were by the horrid Serbs. But the laws were the same for all citizens, there were Albanians in
local government and in the police, and if there were cases of police
brutality, the Albanians at least had nothing to fear from their Serb
neighbours. Even then, it was the Serbs who were afraid of the Albanians. Only
outside Kosovo could anyone seriously believe that it was the Albanians
who were under threat of “ethnic cleansing” (much less “genocide”).
Such a project was simply, obviously, out of the question. Experience It was the Serbs who were afraid, who spoke of sending their children to safety if they had the means, or who spoke bravely of remaining “no matter what”. Of course, there must have been Serbs who hated Albanians. But in my limited, chance experience, what struck me was the absence of hatred for Albanians among Serbs I met. Fear, yes, but not hatred. A great deal of perplexity. Sister Fotina at the Gracanica monastery had a very Christian explanation.
We tried to help the Albanians care for their many children, she said,
and yet they turn against us. This must be God’s way of punishing
us for turning away from Christianity during the time of Communism,
she concluded. She blamed her fellow Serbs more than the Albanians.
Investigation David Binder, who used to report on Yugoslavia for the New York Times,
before he was excluded for knowing too much, reported last November
on a long investigation of conditions in Kosovo commissioned by the
German Bundeswehr. The existence of this report is proof that the Western
governments, while publicly claiming that Kosovo is “ready for
independence”, know quite well that this is not true. Among other things, Binder reports: The institute authors, Mathias
Jopp and Sammi Sandawi, spent six months interviewing 70 experts and
mining current literature on Kosovo in preparing the study. So, after the Serbs, the Roma, the Gorani, will the Europeans have
to “hit the road”? Only the Americans seem sure of staying.
Ensconced in their gigantic “Camp Bondsteel”, they control
the strategic routes from Serbia to Greece, and incidentally offer the
mass of unemployed Kosovo Albanians their best-paying employment opportunities,
notably by taking menial and dangerous jobs serving U.S. forces in Iraq
or Afghanistan. The reality of this shameless land-grab is available
to all. But in the Brave New World Order, it does not exist. People
don’t know. Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade:
Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusion Counterpunch.org |
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