Just wondering: Why are we still in the Balkans?

With everything that is going on in the Middle East; recruiting problems, etc., why do we still have troops in Bosnia? That was another place we had no business going. It was not even a potential threat to us. I believe that right now, there should not be so much as a US Government ballpoint pen in the Balkans.

...revert back to the foe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x127563

(edit to fix link)

The pipeline that will change the world



It is 42 inches wide, 1,090 miles long and is intended to save the West from relying on Middle Eastern oil. Nothing has been allowed to stand in its way - and it finally opens today. The first drops of crude will snake their way along a pipeline that traverses some of the most unstable and war-ravaged countries on earth. This is the oil flow that was meant to save the West, and this morning the taps were turned on. Only 42 inches wide, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan was supposed to alter global oil markets forever. The 1,000-mile project has transformed the geopolitics of the Caucasus and its impact is now being felt in the vastness of central Asia.

tib

really doesn't apply to Bosnia.

I can't really see what makes the Bosnia/Kosovo situation any more legit than Iraq. We just helped them trade one set of bad guys for another. If you are talking about the wishes of our "allies", the Europeans should have handled it themselves. It is their backyard, after all. I think we are entirely too nosy.

Not a Unilateral U.S. invasion.

The Europeans are the majority in NATO. So in essence, they did handle it, and continue to this day.

I believe that there approx 16,500 U.N. Peacekeeping troups in Bosnia/Kosovo and some Russian Non-Nato troups as well. How many are U.S.? Do you know?

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

How many people have to get slaughtered for it to be a legitimate cause?

You're so correct. We all know, or at least one hopes so, that a lie doesn't become the truth just because it's told by a Democrat instead of a Republican, nor does an illegal war for economics become justifiable just because it's started by an intelligent charismatic instead of an inarticulate baboon.

===

House of Commons-Canada
Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Tuesday February 22, 2000

Testimony of Professor Michael Mandel

Personal Note

Allow me to tell you a little bit about myself and how I became involved in this. I am a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School where I have taught for 25 years. I specialize in criminal law and comparative constitutional law with an emphasis on domestic and foreign tribunals, including United Nations tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. I have no personal interest in the conflict in Yugoslavia - I have no Serbs or Albanians in my family and I am not being paid by anyone. I became involved in this as a Canadian lawyer who witnessed a flagrant violation of the law by my government with unspeakably tragic results for innocent people of all the Yugoslav ethnicities. I became involved as a Jew appalled by the grotesque and deliberate misuse of the Holocaust to justify the killing and maiming of innocent people for what I am convinced were purely self-interested motives, the farthest thing from humanitarianism, in a cynical attempt to manipulate the desire of Canadians to help their fellows on the other side of the world.

Illegality of the War

The first thing to note about NATO's war against Yugoslavia is that it was flatly illegal both in the fact that it was ever undertaken and in the way it was carried out. It was a gross and deliberate violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations. The Charter authorizes the use of force in only two situations: self-defence or when authorized by the Security Council.

(snip)

Humanitarian Justification

We all know that the leaders of the NATO countries sought to justify this war as a humanitarian intervention in defence of a vulnerable population, the Kosovar Albanians, threatened with mass atrocities.

A lot turns on this claim, but not the illegality of the war. In fact, the reason why there is such unanimity among scholars on the illegality of this war is that there is no "humanitarian exception" under international law or the United Nations Charter. That does not mean that there are no means for the international community to intervene to prevent or stop humanitarian disasters, even to use force where necessary. It just means that the use of force for humanitarian purposes has been totally absorbed in the UN Charter. A state must be able to demonstrate the humanity of its proposed intervention to the Security
Council, including, of course, the five permanent members possessing a veto.

(snip)

But NATO did not even move a Resolution before the Security Council over Kosovo. Nor did it use the alternative means of demonstrating to the international community the necessity for its use of force in the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace Resolution

(snip)

In the case of NATO, what had to be justified as a humanitarian intervention was a bombing campaign that, in dropping 25,000 bombs on Yugoslavia, directly killed between 500 and 1800 civilian children, women and men of all ethnicities and permanently injured as many others; a bombing campaign that caused 60 to 100 billion dollars worth of damage to an already impoverished country; a bombing campaign that directly and indirectly caused a refugee crisis of enormous proportions, with about 1 million fleeing Kosovo during the bombing; a bombing campaign that indirectly caused the death of thousands more, by provoking the brutal retaliatory and defensive measures that are inevitable when a war of this kind and intensity is undertaken, and by giving a free hand to extremists on both sides to vent their hatred. What also has to be justified is the ethnic cleansing that has occurred in Kosovo since the entry of the triumphant KLA, fully backed by NATO's might, which has seen hundreds of thousands of Serb (and Roma and Jewish) Kosovars driven out and hundreds murdered, a murder rate that is about 10 times the Canadian rate per capita.

These results were to be expected and they were predicted by NATO's military and political advisers in their very careful planning of the war which went back more than a year before the bombing commenced.

(snip)

Nor did the facts indicate a humanitarian disaster would have occurred but for NATO's bombing. A total of 2,000 people had been killed on both sides in the prior two years of fighting between the KLA and the Serbs, and violence was declining with the presence of UN observers. The alleged massacre of 45 ethnic Albanians at Racak must be regarded with the greatest suspicion, not only because of the circumstances, but also because of involvement of the American emissary Mr. William Walker, with his history of covert and illegal activities on behalf of the Americans in Latin America.

(snip)

Finally and very importantly, we must ask some serious questions about the way in which this supposed humanitarian intervention was handled. With the Kosovars supposedly in the hands of genocidal maniacs, NATO gave 5 days warning between the withdrawal of the observers and the launch of the attack. This was followed by seven days of bombing that mostly ignored Kosovo itself. In other words, an invitation to genocide that was not accepted, but one that was guaranteed to produce a refugee flow to legitimate a massive bombing campaign.


As Ambassador Bissett told this committee last week, that NATO leaders have no respect for the truth should startle no one. What of the claim by Jamie Shea that it was the Serbs who bombed the Albanian refugee convoy (until the independent journalists found bomb fragments "made in U.S.A.")? What of the claim by a NATO general, with video up on the screen, that the passenger train on the Grdelica bridge was going too fast to avoid being hit (until somebody pointed out that the video had been speeded up to three times its real speed)? What of the claim that the Chinese Embassy was bombed because NATO's maps were out of date? Let alone the claims by Mr. Clinton (and Mrs. Clinton) and Mr. Cohen that a "Holocaust" was occurring in which perhaps 100,000 Kosovar men had been murdered (until the bombing was over and the numbers dwindled to 2,108 -and we have yet to be told who they were or how they died).


In fact most people in the world simply did not believe NATO's claim of humanitarianism. A poll taken in mid-April and published by The Economist shows that this was a very unpopular war, opposed by perhaps most of the world's population both outside and inside the NATO alliance.( "Oh what a lovely war!", The Economist, April 24, 1999 showing more than a third opposed in Canada, Poland, Germany, France and Finland, almost an even split in Hungary, an even split in Italy and a majority opposed in the Czech Republic, Russia and Taiwan) A poll taken in Greece between April 29th and May 5th showed 99.5% against the war, 85% believing NATO's motives to be strategic and not humanitarian, and, most importantly, 69% in favour of charging Bill Clinton with war crimes, 35.2% for charging Tony Blair and only 14% for charging Slobodan Milosevic, not far from the 13% in favour of charging NATO General Wesley Clark and the 9.6% for charging NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.( "Majority in Greece wants Clinton tried for war crimes", The Irish Times, May 27, 1999).

Much more plausible than the humanitarian thesis is the one that the United States deliberately provoked this war, that it deliberately exploited and exacerbated another country's tragedy - a tragedy partly of its own creation (we should not forget that the West's aggressive and purely selfish economic policies that have beggared Yugoslavia over the last ten years). NATO exists to make war, not peace. The arms industry exists to make profits from dropping bombs. And the United States, by virtue of its military might dominates NATO the way it does not dominate the United Nations. The most plausible explanation then is that this attack was not about the Balkans at all. It was an attempt to overthrow the authority of the United Nations and make NATO, and therefore the United States, the world's supreme authority, to establish the "precedent" that NATO politicians have been talking about since the bombing stopped. To give the United States the free hand that the United Nations does not, in its conflicts with the Third World and its rivalries with Russia, China and even Europe.

In other words, this was not a case of the United Nations being an obstacle to humanitarianism. It was a case of using a flimsy pretext of humanitarianism to overthrow the United Nations.

Not only was this an illegal war that had no humanitarian justification. It was a war pursued by illegal means. According to admissions made in public throughout the war (for instance during NATO briefings), according to eye-witness reports and according to powerful circumstantial evidence displayed on the world's television screens throughout the bombing campaign -- evidence good enough to convict in any criminal court in the world - these NATO leaders deliberately and illegally made targets of places and things with only tenuous or slight military value or no military value at all. Places such as city bridges, factories, hospitals, marketplaces, downtown and residential neighbourhoods, and television studios. The same evidence shows that, in doing this, the NATO leaders aimed to demoralize and break the will of the people, not to defeat its army.

The American group Human Rights Watch has just issued a lengthy report documenting a systematic and massive violation of international humanitarian law by NATO in Yugoslavia. They estimate the civilian victims to be about 500. This figure should be taken as a minimum because it is a number Human Rights watch says it can independently confirm and that can be attributed directly to the bombing. It excludes persons known to be killed as an indirect result of the bombing. Every benefit of the doubt is given to NATO, a fact exemplified by the Report's puzzling and actually undefended distinction between these grave "violations of humanitarian law" and "war crimes". Human rights Watch has also documented the use of anti-personnel cluster bombs in attacks on civilian targets.

The reason these civilian targets are illegal is that civilians are very likely to be killed or injured when such targets are hit. And all of the NATO leaders knew that. They were carefully told that by their military planners. And they still went ahead and did it.

And they did it without any risk to themselves or to their soldiers and pilots. That's why this war was called a "coward's war". The cowardice lay in fighting the civilian population and not the military, in bombing from altitudes so high that the civilians, Serbians, Albanians, Roma, and anybody else on the ground, bore all the risks of the "inevitable collateral damage".

(snip)

http://web.tiscali.it/Controcorrente/mmandel.html

====


Clinton did, however, engineer NATO's war in Kosovo five years after the Rwandan genocide. He called it a "humanitarian intervention," to prevent ethnic cleansing of the Albanians by the Serbs.

(snip)

All three wars - Clinton/NATO's war in Yugoslavia, and Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Canadian law professor Michael Mandel - were unlawful. None were undertaken in self-defense, or approved by the Security Council, the only two instances in which the United Nations Charter permits the use of armed force.

In his new book, How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes against Humanity, Mandel argues that NATO's Kosovo war set the precedent for the United States' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "It broke a fundamental legal and psychological barrier. When Pentagon guru Richard Perle 'thanked God' for the death of the UN," writes Mandel, "the first precedent he could cite in justification of overthrowing the Security Council's legal supremacy in matters of war and peace was Kosovo."

(snip)

The 1999 war in Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia was not a "humanitarian intervention," but rather a crime against humanity, in the judgment of Mandel. He notes that "of the 385 murders in the original ICTY indictment of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, 340 were alleged to have occurred after the bombing started."

In support of his claim that NATO's bombing constituted a crime against humanity, Mandel cites its use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and the targeting of civilians. Between 500 and 1800 civilians of all nationalities were killed during the 78-day bombing campaign, which used "about 25,000 of the world's most devastating non-nuclear bombs and missiles," according to Mandel.

(snip)

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032105B.shtml

About Michael Mandel

a very clear exposition of the case against intervening. Thank you Tinoire.

to get a clearer picture of what is really going on with our country.

From the Canadian House of Commons to the British Parliament they discuss these interventions honestly. Us? We just roll over and play ball in a sterling display of bi-partisanship and let whichever other side get away with the charade of it being a "humanitarian intervention" passing the ball back and forth as we continue the game.

Anytime and thank you for everything I've learned from you.

==

The public relations gurus of our government (Departments of State, Defense, Congress, and the White House) are making wide use of the term "humanitarian intervention" when they speak of our military activity in Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia. When we wish to disguise a distasteful medicine we sugar coat it. When we wish to disguise the factual aspects of war we now call it humanitarian intervention, an oxymoron of the highest order.

How do we intervene in a conflict in which we were the principle instigator? How can one call it humanitarian when we fire high explosive weaponry such as cruise missiles, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium shells on a populated target. Those whose lives were affected adversely even those whom we professed to be helping, could not call our assistance humanitarian. We never will know how high the civilian casualties in the target areas were, But, we profess great pride in that, for us, it was a bloodless war.

Our intervention in the Balkans began in the late 1980’s at the instigation of our financial and industrial interests. Quietly our government set about destabilizing the relatively good economy of Yugoslavia. On November 5, 1990, Congress passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropreations Act which became law when President Bush signed it. One section of that law stopped all financial assistance from the US to Yugoslavia within six months. Its provisions were so stringent that it has been referred to by the CIA as a signed death warrant and was also cited in their analysis stating that a bloody civil war would ensue in Yugoslavia.

Other provisions of that law required a cessation of financial activity favorable to Yugoslavia on the part of the Word Bank and International Monetary Fund. We also promoted secession of the various Yugoslav Republics by requiring separate elections within each of those republics and demanding US State Department approval of election procedures and returns before any further aid could be resumed to individual republics.

As time passed, and it did not take long, the Yugoslavian economy deteriorated, industries failed, unemployment vastly increased, and old ethnic tensions which had lain dormant for fifty years began to emerge once more. Hastening the demise of the Yugoslav Federation, sanctions and embargoes were instituted by the US, the European Community (EC) and the UN. In January, 1992, Slovenian and Croatian independence was recognized by the EC and US, stirring up further secessionist hopes by groups within Bosnia-Herzegovinia and Macedonia.

Despite the sanctions which barred the furnishing of military assistance and weaponry to Yugoslavia, in 1993 arms and military intelligence were furnished to Croatia by the US. That same year, Croatia was given military advisors from the corporation titled Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MRPI), a group of US retired high ranking military personnel with close ties to the Pentagon. With their assistance, the Croatian Army, in July, 1995, was judged combat ready. That month the US Secretary of State and the German Foreign Minister at a meeting in London approved a plan for Croatian military action against Serbs living in Bosnia and Croatia. On August 4, 1995, with air cover provided by NATO aircraft, the Croatian forces attacked the Serbs who were long time residents in the Krajina area of Croatia, displacing somewhat in excess of 350,000 Serbs and murdering about 14,000. The US ambassador to Croatia hastened to state that this action was not ethnic cleansing since that was done only by Serbs. In the meantime, our government was actively courting the Albanians to grant us bases within their territory for which we would, and did, provide arms and assistance to their offspring, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

We and our principal allies in the EC avoided bringing the UN into the negotiations with Yugoslavia prior to our military campaign because we knew that humanitarian means would be invoked to solve the conflict. We and our allies were intent on imposing our military prowess over Yugoslavia to the extent that we were willing to profane the defensive mission of NATO by using its aircraft to destroy the cultural, economic, and industrial infrastructure of a nation with whom we were not at war.

Webster defines the adjective humanitarian as helping humanity, and the noun intervention as interference of one state in the affairs of another. War with all of its violence and destruction can never qualify as humanitarian and it is a very obtrusive interference in someone else’s affairs. The actions of the US and its allies culmination in the seventy eight days of bombing Kosovo and Serbia could, and should, instead be recognized as war crimes against humanity, as has been alleged from many sources.

Humanitarian Intervention?
By Jim Burkholder, Past-President, Veterans for Peace

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/interstatement.htm

((Mods, reprinted in full with permission and encouragement of Veterans for Peace of which I am a member))


And gee, just think of all the fun we're going to have now with Wolfowitz in charge of the World Bank. ((The Bank's president is, by tradition, a national of the largest shareholder, the United States))

Guess what they're eying now... Africa...



JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The World Bank's newly-appointed president, Paul Wolfowitz, will visit South Africa next month during a tour of the continent shortly after he takes office on June 1, officials for the bank said.

(snip)

"He has made clear that Africa is a priority and he wants to underscore that with this trip."

(snip)

www.reuters.co.za/locales/c_newsArticle.jsp?type=topNews&localeKey=en_ZA&storyID=8600699

Sit back and watch the manipulation once again as we prepare for another lucrative expedition.

....to get a clearer picture of what is really going on with our country."

More twists in propaganda........ Most Europeans supported intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Decrying the deployment in the Balkans was part of BushCo's 2000 platform. We were "overextended" and it wasn't "necessary" because it was "nation-building." With how many troops? Doing what? With what casualties? For how long? And what was the stance in Europe?

No comparison with Iraq. (How many troops? Doing what? With what casualties? For how long? And what was the stance in Europe?)

Hint: The list will be very short.

Don

lol. You're right. It is a short list. At least we are pulling some of our troops out of Western Europe and Korea. It's a start, at least.

Name all the countries that has their troops in the U.S.

Who died and left us in charge? This Manifest Destiny shit has got to stop. And how people can continue to ignore the creeping, no holds barred, fascism is just beyond me. If the American people allow this to continue, we will eventually see another Final Solution. They've been implementing into our prison systems for years.

That's how the U.S. obtained so many bases overseas, or did you ever learn your history?

back 150 years. Welcome indeed to manifest Destiny.

I guess that's about it.

Monaco of course.

nt

Western point of our military encirclement of the ME and Central Asia.

Also to cram neoliberal economics down their throats at gunpoint.

Except the intervention in Bosnia had nothing to do with economics.

Until then they had categorically REFUSED so saber-rattling Albright sent troops over there to force it at gun-point. Chapter 4 of this Nazi-like ultimatum dealt exclusively with what is to be done with the economic assets of Kosovo. Article 1 (page 45) called for the privatization of the entire Yugoslav economy followed by total occupation. Rambouillet was the organized theft of Yugoslavia's resources by Western corporations- oil routes, oil & gas pipelines with the 2nd largest coal reserves on that entire continent and 20 trillion dollars in mineral assets in Serbia.


The Rambouillet Accords

Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo
February 23, 1999

Chapter 4a
Economic Issues

Article I

1. The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles.


http://www.commondreams.org/kosovo/rambouillet.htm#Article%20I


The Treaty of Rambouillet, which was delberately kept from the American public until European FREE PRESS got a hold of it, "demanded that NATO troops be allowed to occupy all of Yugoslavia including Serbia and was an unconditional surrender ultimatum the whole rotten gang Free-Trade gang, with Clinton and Blair at the lead, knew Milosevich couldn't accept- they deliberately wrote it to be unnaceptable so that they would have their pretext to invade.

NO leader in his right mind would have signed an treaty allowing 28,000 NATO troops to occupy his country, to give NATO total access to its rivers, ports and air space, and, adding insult to injury, pay the bill for NATO's "peacekeeping" operation.




You obviously have NO idea what you're talking about yet the zeal with which you do so is astounding.

for all his crimes, even Milosevic cannot be blamed for failing to sign a treaty accepting occupation. Although it ought to be noted privatization was well on its way in Yugoslavia before Raambouillet, albeit in a piecemeal fashion where the assets were sold off one by one whenever the economy needed a cash injection or the pensioners got restless that they hadn't received any money for 12 months. The struggle was at least partly due to how fat the domestic business interests had got off their cosyness with the Milosevic government, which meant that they had a vested interest in trying to keep certain assets in state hands where they could be more readily exploited. Either way, the people were getting shafted, and the ones who really got shafted were the poor souls silly enough to think that post-Milosevic, the government wouldn't sell them out. I will never forget listening to a DOS minister boasting how he crushed this strike and that. And now of course, Serbia has shifted far further to the right than it ever was under Milosevic. The far-right is only kept out of power by a coalition of all the other parties (including the SPS - oh the irony!), anti-semitism is on the rise again, the monarchy which collaborated with the Nazis during WWII is being rehabilitated, the communism which brought the only 40-odd peaceful years to the region in recent history is being slandered by halfwits whose parents died fighting the Nazis so that their graves could be danced on by these latter-day Chetniks. Like Bosnia, and like Kosovo, Serbia is quickly becoming a state where the only thing keeping the lid down is a the threat of overwhelming force. That is the legacy of NATO's "humanitarian intervention": Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia are either protectorates or directly occupied, Croatia has been ethnically cleansed and Serbia is stuck in some weird monarchic alternate universe. All of which means that foreign troops will have to remain there for a long time to come in order to "keep the peace"... what a convinient outcome, dontcha think?

....would be forcing anything on Yugoslavia if Milsosevic had not started the first 3 wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. The West gave Milosevic many chances, before and after Dayton to get his act together, yet at every opportunity for peace he turned to slaughter. You talk to the amount of Croatian, Bosnian and Albanian refugees that I did that had family members slaughtered and then blame someone for their "zeal". There would never have been one single Nato peacekeeping troop in the former Yugoslavia had it not been for the mass murder that was going on. Your the one who is so bent on proving some U.S. imperialistic design that you ignore everything that preceded Rambouillet. If you had truly followed the situation when it was going on you would have realized that the U.S. was very, very reluctant to get involved. The number one complaint of many humanitarian organizations at the time was that the intervention was too late (not a question of intervening at all.) The people of Sarajevo were begging Europe and the U.S. to get involved and it took more than 3 years for them to get help. Any peaceful attempt at negotiation prior to the U.S. bombing in Bosnia was laughed at by the Serbs. They used every chance to stall for more time and grab (ethnically cleanse) more territory. When the U.N. set up safe havens for refugees they over ran them and committed the largest slaughters in Europe since World War II. Don't lecture me about zeal, by the time it got to Rambouillet (Kosovo being a repeat in many ways of what happened in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.) it was a question of why negotiate with a war criminal at all.

does it call for the privatization of the entire Yugoslav economy? I dont see it mentioning anything but Kosovo.

the Western Powers demanded the wholesale occupation of all of Yugoslavia, in the last minute "Secret Annex" (Appendix B) that Albright tucked in hours before the negotiation, but were going to limit Free-Trade to only Kosovo.

:rofl:

"There shall be no impediments to the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital to and from Kosovo" lays that to quick rest.


On edit: Here's a lovely quote from the NAFTA man himself-

"If we're going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world Europe has got to be the key; that's what this Kosovo thing is all about... It's globalism versus tribalism."

Bill Clinton

it's you reading into it what you want too. Your skipping over what happened in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and hanging on to one little detail in a treaty that was presented to a man (Milosevic) who very skillfully evaded all prior attempts at peace to wage more war. Your forgetting about all the death and turning this into an argument about free trade and economics when none of this would have happened if Milosevic was remotely reasonable. He used nationalism to gain power and took Serbia backwards when the rest of Eastern Europe was freeing itself and moving towards democracy. Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia wanted to join the rest of the free world and Milosevic was doing everything he could to prevent them. Your the one who is completely missing the point. The tough stance NATO and the US took at Rambouillet was because of all the other bloody events that preceded Kosovo.

by cleansing itself, with the aid of retired US generals. Funny thing is, no-one gave much of a shit about that - good PR does that for you. And Bosnia is certainly free now, run by Brussels, oh what a model for ethnic harmony we have made Bosnia into! And Kosovo too is a monolith of freedom for all the world to behold, and who cares about all the non-Albanians there (or indeed not there, but as Timothy Garton Ash would put it, there is politically necessary ethnic cleansing...) or a bit of retaliatory bloodletting. They deserved what they got, the complicit genocidal scum, and if anything they got it easy.

Freedom, as they say, is on the march everywhere. Where will it take us next? I can't wait to find out.

as tool to achieve a Greater Serbia, maybe they would still be there. Bosnia has a rough road ahead but where would it would be now if the massacres weren't stopped 500,000 or 1,000,000 dead instead of 200,000? Would you have preferred the fighting to have go on until one side was completely wiped out?

there is indeed an acceptable ethnic cleansing, being defined as an ethnic cleansing of Serbs. My my, humanitarianism sure is a funny beast these days.

Ok, you win. Long live NATO. If it makes you happy to go to sleep at night thinking we did a glorious thing, why destroy your fantasy? That would be as cruel as destroying the fantasy many Republicans nurse about the spread of freedom their Fuhrer is bringing to the world. Why destroy an illusion when it allows us to stomp around the world in heavy combat boots, proud to be lucky enough to live in a rich nation with no conscience?

Clinton, Brezinski spell it out but I have a feeling you'll go to your grave clinging to the American media myth that there were mass graves all over the place until the shiny US war machine was forced to step in once again and be the glorious saviors of humanity. Just as for Iraq where we put a stop to, what was it again? Oh yeah, mass graves, torture chambers, horrific rapes by the sons of Saddaam, and babies being tossed out of incubators.

None of this would have happened if Milosevic was remotely reasonable. This is the same thing the warrior countries say about any leader they need to knock out of the way. God knows we've heard it over and over again in this country. And as long as people cling to media myths without peering behind the curtain, we'll keep hearing it over and over again as the populace blindly sieg heils to will of corrupt politicians who don't give a rat's ass about truth or justice.

..... that the war was fought over trade and you ultimate drive seems to be to pin a great imperialistic design on the U.S. I don't need to cut and paste articles from the internet to find out what happened in the former Balkans. I live in New York where there are many Croatian, Slovenian, Bosnian and Albanian communities and organizations (Bosnians and Croatians in Astoria Queens, Albanians in the Bronx). I have friends in each community from work, high school and college. During the wars I visited a few organizations and had many discussions with many people on a continuing basis. I can easily pick up the phone and call 10 people with intimate experience of the war and they can easily put me in touch with 50, or 100 or 150 refugees from the Balkans living here. I heard the experiences first hand and don't need this academic little debate here with the uninformed (I can easily email the link to this debate to them and have them reply, I just don't want to open up old wounds because they came here to forget the war. I also don't want to lower their opinions of Americans when they see other people think the intervention was over a pipeline. They think Americans are smart people.) When I hear their stories I know pretty much who was right and who was wrong (all sides committed some atrocities but it is pretty much agreed that the Serbs forced the situation on everyone else and by far committed the bulk of the atrocities). All of them wish America had acted sooner. I also know a few Serbs and how they are split over the whole situation. I do not wish them any harm and hope what is left of Yugoslavia can become a responsible member of the world community. Many admit to me privately that what Milsoevic and the Serbs that supported him did was wrong. I don't need the American mainstream media (or some of the unreputable sources you quote) to form my opinion, I get it from the people who were there.

When you meet someone from the Balkans don't be surprised if you get a "zealous" opinion. It was their homes being burned down and their families being slaughtered wholesale. When you accuse someone who understands their situation as "zealous" you may come across as a flake.

I see you have a link to A.N.S.W.E.R which is a front group for the International Action Center (Iacenter.org) run by that flake Ramsey Clark. They have a lot of deluded views about the Balkans, want to see Milosevic freed and have insane positions on a number of other issues (they supported the Tiananmen Square
massacre and believe North Korea is a socialist dream). One of your other articles is from World Socialist Web Site, what a great objective source of information - *sarcasm*. You really don't seem to be speaking from your own knowledge of the issue, you're just cutting and pasting bits and pieces from other websites, some of them not very reputable and reinforcing your own fantasies.

In the thread below you bring up the PNAC. If you had followed the events in the Balkans as they happened you would have known that Republicans were vehemently opposed to intervening. When Bush came to office he ridiculed Clinton for nation - building. If any Republican had any imperial design it came far far after the intervention and probably after 9/11. It had nothing to do with the original reasons for intervention.

Gotta go. Gotta go remind all those people in Afghanistan and Iraq about how we humanitarily bombed them ; Let me know when you've gotten over the shock and awe of the facts from respected authors who were published on the World Socialist Web Site and progressed to the testimony of Michael Mandel to the Canadian House of Commons, the British Ambassador, the UK Guardian, Truthout, etc... because I wouldn't want to spring any Chomsky or Zinn too soon.

PNAC = Republicans? Oh boy... That's a bit too simplistic for any serious conversation.

Is this it?
Clinton's wars = good but George Bush's wars = bad?


We'll just pretend information about Balkan Action Committee/Council and it's membership of neo-cons wasn't presented in post 23. We'll pretend the majority of the people on that committee weren't the most vile neocons who later formed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

And we'll pretend the 3rd http://www.newamericancentury.org/balkans_pdf_04.pdf">PNAC letter, about Yugoslavia, wasn't written by the following known neo-cons in Spetember 1998:

Morton I. Abramowitz - Century Foundation, neo-Dem, Brezinski man, huge proponent of the Iraq WMD lies
Elliott Abrams - Heritage Foundation, Reagan man, covered up war crimes committed by the U.S. backed Contras.
Richard L. Armitage - board member of CACI, Reagan man, supplied weapons in the Iran Contra Affair
Nina Bang-Jensen - Hudson institute, Commission on National Security 21st Century, weapons lobbyist, Reagan thug
Jeffrey Bergner - Hudson Institute, corporate lobbyist for globalization Giants
George Biddle
John R. Bolton - AEI, Reagan Bush man. Hope I don't need to refresh your memory on how hard decent people are fighting to keep him from being confirmed as UN Ambassador and the reasons why
Frank Carlucci - Carlyle, neocon trash extraordinaire
Eliot Cohen - Rumsfeld thug
Seth Cropsey - Heritage Foundation, AEI, Reagan man
Dennis DeConcini - Member of the Balkan Action Committee
Paula Dobriansky - Reagan creature
Morton H. Halperin - Open Society Institute
John Heffernan -
James R. Hooper - Balkan Action Council
Bruce P. Jackson - Project on Transitional Democracies; Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Dick Cheney man, President of the US Committee on NATO
Robert Kagan - co-founder of the PNAC, Reagan man
Zalmay Khalilzad - Wolfowitz man, Advisor to Unocal for their gas pipeline project through Afghanistan, Special Presidential Envoy to the Free Iraqis
Lane Kirkland
Jeane Kirkpatrick - Freedom House, JINSA, Reagan creature, Committee on the Present Danger
Peter Kovler - Nixon Center Advisory Council. Balkans Action Committee
William Kristol - co-founder of the PNAC, Reagan man
Mark P. Lagon - AEI, Reagan man
Wayne Owens - Utah Democrat
Richard Perle - still a registered Democrat, Balkan Action Committee, JINSA
Peter Rodman - Reagan man
Gary Schmitt - Executive Director of the PNAC, Brookings Institute, Reagan thug, BOD of the U.S. Committee on NATO
Stephen Solarz - vice chairman of the International Crisis Group
Helmut Sonnenfeldt - Brookings Institution, Nixon thug
William Howard Taft IV - Nixon thug
Ed Turner -
Paul Wolfowitz - Reagan thug, Brezinski protege, registered Democrat
Dov S. Zakheim - Heritage Foundation

Spend a little time on the PNAC site. It doesn't take a rocket genius to connect the dots and notice the recurring theme.

What else shall we pretend? That the same angelic lambs who brought us the war against Yugoslavia didn't become demons until Bush came along? That PNAC is good?

Lol. So much for your point that "Republicans were vehemently opposed to intervening", that it was humanitarian "nation - building" and that "if any Republican had any imperial design it came far far after the intervention and probably after 9/11. It had nothing to do with the original reasons for intervention."

I must say that if you sincerely believe what you are saying, I absolutely envy you for those illusions because you live in a far, far nicer world than I do. And maybe, when the situation is so bad, it's better for the mind not to know just how bad it is.

you are viewing everything through the lens of Iraq and Afghanistan (Afghanistan, by the way was another just intervention), You conveniently skipped over everything I said about Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia as if what happened in 99 had nothing to do with the events that preceded the action in Kosovo and was exclusively some NATO or U.S. plot at world domination. That implies you either did not follow the situation very closely at the time or have some other reason for continually plugging the propaganda about imperialism. Whether you believe it or not there is a HUGE difference between having Clinton versus Bush at the helm, even in war.

"And maybe, when the situation is so bad, it's better for the mind not to know just how bad it is."
That's a quote you can apply to yourself because you are the one ignoring the tragedy of cities like Sarajevo. Sarajevo was a cosmopolitan, ethnically harmonious city, that had a strong belief in many western democratic ideals until the Bosnian Serbs (with the support and consent of Belgrade) put a ring of artillery and snipers around and indiscriminately, INTENTIONALLY, shot the sh*t out of the civilian population. You should go find someone who survived the 3 year siege and ask them what it was like before you accuse others of living in some kind of unreality. Ask them how many dreams they had (during the siege) of NATO bombers coming to stop the slaughter. They were wondering what took so long (or if it was because there was no oil in the Balkans - the joke in Sarajevo was that NATO will not intervene until the first mortar shell strikes oil). I'll take their opinion any day, over your propaganda.

When it comes to the PNAC, I never defended the PNAC, your simply twisting what I said in my post. Whether you believe it or not Clinton was motivated for humanitarian reasons and one of the main people pushing him to intervene was Gore. Just because some other group has a position or policy on the situation doesn't mean they were the instrumental influence in Clinton's decision. They may have greater influence (or seek to exploit the Balkans) now with Bush in office but that doesn't change the reasons for the original intervention.

Take a look at your own intellectual crutches before you accuse others of living in their own little world. Bringing up the boogeyman of the PNAC as a blanket argument isn't going to convince everyone.
(I offer my humblest apology to the people of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Kosovo who may also be reading this because I know that the war for you was not just an intellectual debate. I also know that America was late and did not act on time so we still can't claim to be humanitarian heroes, as you can see from reading these posts, many Americans simply did not have an understanding what was going on.)

These aren't your precise words?

In the thread below you bring up the PNAC. If you had followed the events in the Balkans as they happened you would have known that Republicans were vehemently opposed to intervening. When Bush came to office he ridiculed Clinton for nation - building. If any Republican had any imperial design it came far far after the intervention and probably after 9/11. It had nothing to do with the original reasons for intervention.

Ok. Gotcha. Must have been my lying eyes. You didn't write that and if you did, you didn't mean that. Lol.
===

The former director of the National Security Agency, William Odom, has, in a November 1992 Hudson Briefing Paper, elaborated upon the argument that economic imperatives impel American military involvement in the former Yugoslavia: "Only a strong NATO with the U.S. centrally involved can prevent Western Europe from drifting into national parochialism and eventual regression from its present level of economic and political cooperation....That trend toward disorder will not only affect U.S. security interests but also U.S. economic interests."

AMERICAN HEGEMONY--WITHOUT AN ENEMY
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~volgy/LayneSchwarzAmericanHegemony.html

"If we're going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key.... That's what this Kosovo thing is all about."

Clinton, the great humanitarian free-trade man.



Carry on moddemny, the neocons and the neolibs are counting on such eager acquiescence so they can continue exploiting humanitarian concerns as a pretext to mobilize public support for illegal military interventions designed to achieve what the Pentagon in 1992 announced as a "prosperous, largely democratic, market-oriented zone of peace and prosperity that encompasses more than two-thirds of the world's economy".

Whereto next? Iran? Venezuela? Count me out. I've seen the lucrative but deadly results of these beloved humanitarian interventions all over the world so I won't be buying these charades.

You are again reading into what you want too. I clarified my point that the PNAC was not instrumental in Clinton's decision. You keep harping on the PNAC because you have ABSOLUTELY NO POINT on all the other events that preceded Kosovo. You know the PNAC is the boogeyman in other events around the world today so you keep bringing it up because once you invoke the PNAC you expect to win the argument by reflexively getting other people who did not follow the whole situation (in the balkans) on your side. You keep bringing back the point to economics when not one bomb would have fell or bullet fired had it not been for the slaughter going on and the fact that people were begging America to intervene. Economics was not the crucial issue. Clinton may have had to mention economics from time to time because he is trying to convince others (a minority) who have no desire to intervene for a purely noble interest. When he does talk about economics he is talking about it in the broadest possible sense in order to maintain a general sense of stability (You'll probably keep trying to make that out to be some monstrous evil). His intention was not to go into Bosnia or Kosovo in order to open up more Walmarts and McDonalds, for a pipeline, or to divy up reconstruction contracts for American companies. Bosnia or Kosovo was not Iraq and Clinton is not Bush. Your selectively putting up a little clip here and there and ignoring the volume of information out there by other organizations and authors including many liberals on the horrors that went on (I could find many, many clips, articles and books on the subject.... I have not posted them for 2 reasons. 1. The situation in Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Kosovo went on for the entire 90's, there was a massive amount of information on it from many different areas, where you were during that time I have no idea, I guess I would have to ask how old you are. If you had followed any of it you would have addressed some of the other points. 2. I know the situation very well off the top of my head, I assumed you would have some of the basic facts since it was covered so well from all angles in the media. Arkan who was a criminal Serb paramilitary leader in Bosnia that slaughtered many Bosnians got plenty of airtime on CNN. I don't like the mainstream media either but all sides of the conflict were represented very well.) Their are many authors out there who believe America is not capable of any good and are trying to rewrite the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo as just one more American wrong. If you believe them ignoring everything else that's your problem. I have heard all the arguments about empire, empire, empire and I can conclude that many of them simply do not much about the situation. I understand what the concerns are about free trade and you are really trying very hard to superimpose one issue over another in ways that don't apply. Neither Bosnia or Kosovo are going to become some great market anywhere in the near future for Americans or Europeans to unload their goods. If America wanted to open up markets around the world it could have used its resources elsewhere much more effectively. Your blindness about other aspects of the situation is making other free trade critics look very uninformed. This entire conversation sounds a lot like something I would have with a Nader voter and thanks to them look who we we have in the oval office.


"Whereto next? Iran? Venezuela? Count me out. I've seen the lucrative but deadly results of these beloved humanitarian interventions all over the world so I won't be buying these charades."

If Gore were elected there would be no talk about an invasion of Iran or Venezuela. Bosnia and Kosovo were not charades, you are again making the mistake of looking at what happened in the Balkans through the lens of the current administration's mistakes.

"Carry on moddemny, the neocons and the neolibs are counting on such eager acquiescence so they can continue exploiting humanitarian concerns as a pretext to mobilize public support for illegal military interventions designed to achieve what the Pentagon in 1992 announced as a "prosperous, largely democratic, market-oriented zone of peace and prosperity that encompasses more than two-thirds of the world's economy".

With Bosnia and Kosovo the was no "eager acquiescence". It was a long, very slow, to slow for the people of Sarajevo, process. Just like Darfur today, people are waiting, debating, while more people die. Do you see a great rush to intervene there? If America does lend some support there are you going to fit that into some imperialistic design?

had nothing to do with this great humanitarian charade and I tried to show you the incredible ignorance of that statement.

Please quit with tangents. Your post stands in black and white for everyone to see your original statement without being distracted.

I just saw you'd be willing to Iraq under a democratic adminstration "to help America get out of this mess successfully" ((http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3692462)).

These wars are all by the same people, in the same manner and for the same reasons. And every one of them WRONG and internationally illegal. If you can support anything about them in any way shape or form, under either administration/party, there's very little to waste time discussing.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

:boring:

and who's command are they under?

You mention that we still have troups there...but you give no details. It is important when bringing up this subject that you provide some facts....otherwise, it is hard to respond to your OP....considering.

My son spent a year there a while back. I recall reading an article somewhere a few weeks ago stating that we still had troops there. Don't recall the details, though, such as numbers remaining, etc. I guess I am making some assumptions, since there has been no mention in the media of our pulling out of the Balkans. What is or is not in the MSM seems to be of little use in determining the truth, anyway.

at your disposal.

Please note that they is plenty of information about the Balkans in very many places apart from the MSM...which, by the way should be called The Corporate Media...as that is what it truly is.

You can start in these places to inform yourself as to what is actually happening in the Balkans...if you are interested:
http://www.nato.int/docu/briefing/balkans-e.pdf
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3225&l=1#C1

I suggest greatly that you read the information found on those and other sites....and then come back with an informative OP as to what is truly going on in the Balkans currently.

Conspiracy theories and plain opinion statements are fine, but it really doesn't help those who are not informed about such matters in finding out truth....which, in the end, is what we all should be after. It's great to have gripes....but we need to know what exactly we are griping about.

And I do disagree with the notion that Kosovo/Bosnia were no more warranted than Iraq was.

If you need a good book to read, here's an excellent one on the subject. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003:

Pulitzer award winning Samantha Power for her book "A Problem from Hell" : America and the Age of Genocide
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060541644/qid=1114936910/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-7692952-2877630?v=glance&s=books
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060541644/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-3315357-3575944#reader-page

MONEY!

Wes even predicted that the intervention would make short-term atrocities escalate, and he was right. Yet, as General, he did what he does best: he took orders.

with facts.
Thank You.

This is off-point, but I have to brag. I own a small barbershop, and once had the honor of cutting General Clark's hair during his campaign for the presidency. He was very personable, although it was obvious that he was a little exasperated with the press following him around.

Did you ask him about the Balkans? Or did you all discuss some other topics?

When I met General Clark, he buried his nose in a magazine, I suppose in an attempt to avoid being bothered by the reporters that followed him in. He was preparing for a town meeting. We engaged in some light chat, but I didn't want to pester him with political questions and such. I figured that would be unprofessional on my part. I could certainly sympathize with him, though.

I will be awaiting your posting to back up the statement you made in reference to the General, and what you said he "predicted".

As you may or may not know, I am a stickler for facts, and don't suffer non documented opinions easily.

report for duty in Kosovo, gone AWOL like the Chickenshit in Chief did back in the 70s? When one joins the military, one goes where one is sent, or one's ass is in a world of hurt, unless one's daddy is a Royal Bush! Why didn't Bush show up for his drug test in the TANG? Why did Bush hate America in 72-73?

PS: I thought I was DU's hero!

Why? Because we have no intentions of leaving. We have 12 permanent US bases in Kosovo today to defend all those lovely pipelines.

The Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan were all about oil pipelines and Army Bases to control them.

Read Michel Collon's 2002 book :LIAR'S POKER:The Great Powers, Yugoslavia, and the Wars of the Future He laid it out very well.

Liar's Poker illuminates the fundamental interests of the Great Powers and their strategic interests in controlling oil routes and key areas of the world. It offers the reader an efficient guide for understanding international policy for next 20 years. And the true long-term goals of these powers: dominating Russia and China.

Collon demonstrates how and why NATO, since 1991, has programmed various "necessary" wars. Liar's Poker points out the countries that are under threat in the coming years. And how the methods employed in the Balkans will be put to use once again.

Collon also uncovers the clandestine rivalry, first and foremost in the Balkans, between Washington and Berlin. Why did the special European envoy to Bosnia, Lord Owen, accuse the United States in his memoirs of "having uselessly prolonged this war for several years"? Will a confrontation arising from a sharpening of the world economic crisis finally take place between the U.S. and the European Union?

Using a unique graphic technique on its large-size pages, Liar's Poker also offers a brilliant demonstration of media lies. How is organized disinformation used to manipulate public opinion and sell a war? The revelations are shocking. Liar's Poker is like a manual, showing step-by-step how to defend yourself from media manipulation in the future.

And then, if you have any doubts, check out the names of the jokers who made up the Balkan Action Committee

Today's NY Times has an ad sponsored by a group calling itself the Balkans
Action Committee calling for Nato ground forces in Yugoslavia. It is signed
by an odd mixture of neoconservatives and "leftists" including Bianca
Jagger and "Rabbi" Michael Lerner, the portly editor of Tikkun and
erstwhile 1960s radical. Lerner was "spiritual adviser" to the Clintons for
a brief time about 5 years ago, urging "communitarian" values upon the
thuggish Arkansas president and his wife.

They are window-dressing, however. The real forces behind Balkans Action
are the hardline anticommunists who emerged during the Reagan era. This is
the executive committee, as announced on their website (www.balkanaction.org).

Morton Abramowitz
Saul Bellow
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Richard Burt
Frank Carlucci
Dennis DeConcini
Paula Dobriansky
Geraldine Ferraro
Robert Hunter
Philip Kaiser
Max M. Kampelman
Lane Kirkland
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Peter Kovler
Ron Lehman
John O'Sullivan (the guy who coined the term "manifest destiny")
Richard Perle
Eugene Rostow
Donald Rumsfeld
Stephen Solarz
Helmut Sonnenfeldt
William Howard Taft
Elie Wiesel
Paul Wolfowitz
Elmo Zumwalt

Except for Geraldine Ferraro, this is basically the same group that made up
the Committee on the Present Danger, which was chaired by the atrocious
Jeane Kirkpatrick and flourished under Reagan. It promoted Star Wars,
intervention in Central America, Afghanistan and Angola and all sorts of
other militantly counterrevolutionary adventures. The point is that the war
in the Balkans is not a "progressive's" war. The most important sector of
reactionary opinion in the United States is represented by this executive
committee and should remind us that the war is a continuation of the
anticommunist crusade launched by Reagan 20 years ago.

http://balkan-action-committee.biography.ms/
http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/nato_kosovo/msg00120.html

PNAC's Statement of Principles:

The Statement of Principles of the Project of New American Century describes Neoconservative ideology:

- we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

- we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

- we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

I guess that Barbara Boxer was just full of shit during the Condi Rice SOS Hearings, when she said....
"My last point has to do with Milosevic. You said you can't compare the two dictators. You know, you're right; no two tyrants are alike. But the fact is Milosevic started wars that killed 200,000 in Bosnia, 10,000 in Kosovo and thousands in Croatia, and he was nabbed and he's out without an American dying for it. That's the facts. Now I suppose we could have gone in there and people could have killed to get him. The fact is not one person wants either of those two to see the light of day, again. And in one case we did it without Americans dying. In the other case, we did it with Americans dying. And I think if you ask the average American, you know, was Saddam worth one life, one American life, they'd say, "No, he's the bottom of the barrel." And the fact is we've lost so many lives over it. So if we do get a little testy on the point, and I admit to be so, it's because it continues day in and day out, and 25 percent of the dead are from California.
We cannot forget. We cannot forget that. Thank you. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/politics/19cnd-rtex.h ...
Link has expired to NYT story...but can be found here
http://robbedvoter.forclark.com/story/2005/1/23/16645/9414
Abstract archive here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0811F7385C0C738EDDA80894DD404482&incamp=archive:search

So, I ask you Tinoire.....

1). Please provide a link to the 12 Permanent U.S. bases in Kosovo.

2). How many U.S. troups do we have manning these 12 Permanent U.S. Bases in Kosovo? At last count, I read about 5,900, but I think it's down even from that figure. That's not a lot of troups for 12 U.S. permanent bases in Kosovo.

3). http://www.balkanaction.org/ This link takes one nowhere

4). Your source listing that Balkan Action Committee also says the following, in where Bill Clinton is called "Thuggish". Now Clinton may have been a lot of things, but I always get suspicious when reading a source calling him those kinds of names:

The Balkan Action Committee' reportedly placed an ad in the May 13, 1999, edition of The New York Times "calling for NATO ground forces in Yugoslavia."

Louis Proyect , commenting online about the ad from csf.coloradu.edu, wrote:

The ad was "signed by an odd mixture of neo-conservatives and 'leftists' including Bianca Jagger and 'Rabbi' Michael Lerner, the portly editor of Tikkun and erstwhile 1960s radical. Lerner was 'spiritual adviser' to the Clintons for a brief time about 5 years ago, urging 'communitarian' values upon the thuggish Arkansas president and his wife.
http://balkan-action-committee.biography.ms/

5). Republican Senators voted 38-16 AGAINST Kosovo action at the time that the vote took place for U.S. to participate with NATO.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3805/is_200107/ai_n8985421/pg_4

6). Yeah.....I trust you and Henry Kissinger in reference to Kosovo. SURE.
Kissinger exposes lies behind US-NATO war
By Barry Grey
28 May 1999
In the course of a newly published article criticizing the Clinton administration's war policy in Yugoslavia, Henry Kissinger is obliged to expose some of the basic claims underlying the pro-war propaganda of the US and NATO. Appearing first on the May 24 Internet edition of Newsweek magazine, the article, entitled “New World Disorder,” carries the following blunt summary:

“The ill-considered war in Kosovo has undermined relations with China and Russia and put NATO at risk.”

Kissinger portrays the Clinton administration's policy in the Balkans as a combination of political opportunism, incompetence and recklessness. He is particularly concerned with the long-term consequences for US relations with Russia and China, as well as the alliance between the US and the European powers.
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/Kosovo/Kosovo-controversies59.htm

....On February 22, 1999, Henry Kissinger published a column in the Washington Post that argued against deployment of U.S. troops to Kosovo. In the article, Kissinger asserts that America has no important strategic interest at stake; that the Balkan peoples are incapable of political moderation and, hence, self-rule; and that Kosovo's status as a part of a sovereign state precludes military intervention.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/jan-june99/kissinger_3-23.html

Where is that Republican commitment today? Until Mr. Clinton forced their hand, many Republicans wanted to let our allies do all the fighting and take all the risks. They seemed to want America to lead -- from behind. If the United States had actually followed this path, the damage to the NATO alliance would have been irreparable. If the United States won't take on a bully like Mr. Milosevic, why should anyone in Europe believe that Washington will be bolder in meeting even more dangerous threats to European security in the future?
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=271

Drôle, comment toute la soudain, une fois demandée quelques questions, votre intérêt est allé poof!

because she did not mention the ~3000 Serbian and Albanian civilians who died during from the bombardment, the fact that the US air force bombed civilian targets, the fact that following its 'liberation' Kosovo was cleansed in reverse, with the result that the non-Albanian population now lives in ghettoes. She didn't mention that Albanians are becoming increasingly resentful of the US presence and the sex/drug trafficking that is now routine throughout Kosovo. And much of the sex trafficking exists to fulfill the demand of US Army personnel there.

You can want Wesley Clarke for president all you like, but I was in Belgrade in 99. The TV station they hit, the maternity ward which went up in flames, the army-medical academy whose grounds they hit - a hospital that operates on civilians and veterans as much as on military personnel. And the fact that Boxer's only concern is US soldiers dying gives you the answer to why "they" "hate you". 25% of the dead are not from California mon ami: 99% of the dead are from IRAQ.

PS as for US bases, no one serious denies that the US is pursuing an agressive policy of base-building in other countries. For example:

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2003/1003lighter.asp

edited for politeness

but a large part of the Serbian population supported Milosevic. They weren't complaining when Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia were in flames.

but you are as right as ever...

the Albanians....that made the Serbs correct in what they did in the first place?

I see.... the Albanians deserved what they got....cause later on, they started doing the same thing?

I think both you and Tinoire are on the side of the Extremist Malosovic apologists.....and that Barbara Boxer was correct in her assessement and IS NOT full of shit.

Here are some facts about Kosovo and what was happening there before the war:
The Kosovo War started in April of 1999, and it was based on an active plan of Genocide by Milosovic that was being carried via displacement, starvation, destruction, and yes, murder as well.
http://www.refugees.org/news/crisis/kosovo_u0998.htm
September 1998
In mid September, the situation in Kosovo is getting worse and the lives of thousands of innocent people are at risk. Serb forces continue to pound villages in northern and western Kosovo, effecting over half of the province's population in the last seven months. International aid agencies estimate that between 270,000 and 350,000 people have fled the fighting, as many as 250,000 remaining "internally displaced" inside Although their plight has generated worldwide recognition, international attempts to foster a diplomatic resolution to the conflict have failed to yield tangible results.
According to the Associated press, there is talk of possible, eventual Nato-supported military action ranging from the deployment of troops along the Albania- Kosovo border, to air strikes, to the deployment of ground troops, but humanitarian organizations remain skeptical that decisive U.S., European, or Nato-supported action will come soon. In the mean time, daily reports of horrendous human rights violations, massive destruction, and increasing bloodshed document the dire prognosis for Kosavars "contained" in the crisis by recently erected border controls.
On September 16, the New York Times reported that Serbian forces were "rounding up men and boys from ethnic Albanian villages and refugee camps in Kosovo, an act that US officials fear could be the prelude to their execution, as happened during the war in Bosnia." One week earlier, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Julia Taft said at a press briefing, "Without a cease- fire, without a pull-back from this intrusive fighting, there will be 100,000 to 200,000 casualties looming in the months ahead."
Still, there are no decisive plans by the U.S., NATO, or European allies to avert the current and impending disasters with military action. The U.S. is "considering a variety of options" for getting emergency aid into Kosovo and continues to support diplomatic interventions and the preservation of Yugoslavian borders.
On September 16, Serbian and Albanian leaders reported heavy fighting in the area between the towns of Kosovska Mitrovica, Podujevo, and Vucitrn, north of the capital, Pristina. German Defense Minister, Volker Ruhe, stated that the West could resort to military action "within three to five weeks," if Milosevic fails to comply with an impending U.N. Security Council Resolution designed to put an end to the conflict. According to U.N. officials, the Resolution will not explicitly authorize military action.

On September 17, the government of Montenegro began implementing a plan to send refugees from Kosovo to Albania. Over 4,000 refugees being held in the village of Meteh, Montenegro, were transported in busses to the Albanian border point of Vermosh.

On September 18, Ethnic Albanian Leader, Ibrahim Rugova, gave his preliminary endorsement to a 3-year U.S.-backed "temporary" plan to restore local autonomy to Kosovo (stripped by Milosevic in 1989). According to the associated press, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic "supported" the plan aimed at "normalizing the difficult and risky situation and halting the attacks and the use of force."

On September 21, amidst renewed Serbian attacks in the Drenica region, Ethnic Albanian leaders released their version of the U.S. supported "interim" peace proposal. Under the arrangement, Kosovo would become an "independent entity equal" to Serbia and Montenegro, with its own courts, police, and central bank. Its status as a province in Yugoslavia would be retained temporarily and negotiated in the future. Serbian officials rejected parts of the proposal but, reportedly, agreed to release their own version in the upcoming week.

On September 22, the New York Times reported that the "worsening plight" of refugees and internally displaced people from Kosovo was "increasing the possibility of NATO intervention." Britain and France urged the U.N. Security Council to finish drafting the Resolution designed to make (Serbian) "compliance mandatory," and raise the "specter of military force." According to U.S. officials, the pending resolution reflects an emerging consensus in favor of military action, however, "NATO allies have not yet reached an agreement on the use of force."
---------------
I believe that the Kosovo War was to STOP and PREVENT genocide.....So the fact that ONLY few thousand bodies were found in the 20% thus far of the suspected gravesites should make all of y'all feel really superior.

First, I want to say that the Right Wing is happy that you have determined that no Genocide was occuring in Kosovo....cause that is what they have been saying for quite some time.

Genocide By Mass Starvation;
NATO Strategy Makes Sense On One Level. But, In Humanitarian Terms, It's A Fatal Miscalculation. Los Angeles Times
April 25, 1999, Sunday, Home Edition

http://www.refugees.org/news/op_eds/042599.htm
President Slobodan Milosevic's ability to stop and start massive refugee flows out of Kosovo is a chilling sign of his power and intent. From the Nazis to the Khmer Rouge, closed borders have been a serious sign that genocide is occurring. Genocide does not require gas chambers or even mass graves. A favored tactic is calculated mass starvation. That is what is happening in Kosovo.

Serb forces used food as a weapon during the war in Bosnia. They rarely engaged in battle, preferring to surround and besiege an area, subject it to shelling and cut it off from food.

Long before the bombing began, Milosevic began a systematic campaign to deplete Kosovo of its food resources. Beginning last summer, Serb forces:

restricted importation of basic items into Kosovo, including wheat, rice, cooking oil, sugar, salt, meat, milk, livestock, heating fuel and gasoline;

looted warehouses and burned fields, haystacks, winter food stocks and firewood.

killed livestock and often dropped their carcasses into wells to contaminate the water;

shot at ethnic Albanian farmers trying to harvest or plant;

Harassed, persecuted and sometimes killed local humanitarian aid workers;

created nearly 300,000 internally displaced people, most of whom stayed with private families, eating what private stores of food they had managed to save.

In the best of times, Kosovo is not a self-sufficient food producer. By early this year, with planting and harvesting brought to a halt and with food stocks consumed or destroyed, there were no food reserves outside Serbian government shops. Most of the population was dependent on humanitarian aid delivered through a network of U.N. agencies and local and international nongovernmental organizations. That network is gone. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program are out of Kosovo. International nongovernmental groups have been expelled and are now working with refugees outside Kosovo. Local nongovernment groups have been decimated, their staff members lucky to become refugees themselves.

Before NATO's military objectives can be achieved, Milosevic will already have accomplished his objective: Grinding down Kosovo's 1.8 million ethnic Albanians. One rule of war is this: Men with guns do not starve; civilians do. NATO is not going to beat the Yugoslav military by starving them out, and if it did, the civilians would perish long before them.

As hunger and disease loom, various interim steps have been suggested: internal safe havens, food air drops, humanitarian corridors. Each is flawed, largely because each requires cooperation from Milosevic that in all likelihood will never come to be. Milosevic could achieve his aims simply by dragging his feet.

Everyone is concerned about the lives of NATO servicemen, but the people on the executioner's block cannot wait for a risk-free, soldier-friendly environment for their rescue. They can't wait for the amassing of 200,000 troops, if that will take months of buildup and field support. They can't wait for a "permissive environment."

Mass Graves, Mass Denial (PDF)
http://www.bard.edu/bgia/journal/vol2/63-66.pdf

http://www.religioustolerance.org/war_koso.htm
Did the Serbs commit genocide?
Civilian populations are increasingly being targeted during recent civil wars. However, atrocities must match certain specific criteria before they are considered genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as "certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. The proscribed acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, forcibly transferring its children to another group, or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part."
Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia during the mid 1990s started as mass expulsions of civilians. It escalated to include internment in concentration camps, mass executions, rapes, etc. There was a clear policy by the Serbs "to exterminate Muslim Bosnians as a group..." Their actions were generally considered to be genocide. There is a general consensus that widespread atrocities were also committed by the Muslims and the Croats (largely Roman Catholic). But the level of their war crimes did not reach genocidal proportions.

There have been allegations that the Serbs were engaged in genocide in Kosovo before and during the NATO bombing. Media correspondents and human rights investigators conducted large-scale interviews of Kosovar refugees. The data collected show that the Geneva Conventions concerning civilians had been ignored and that extremely serious war crimes were perpetrated by the Yugoslavian army, police and militias. There appeared to be a consensus of human rights investigators that the quantity and type of documented atrocities proved that genocide was committed by the Yugoslavian government against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. This belief was confirmed as the NATO forces occupied Kosovo. Mass graves were located and are being systematically examined by forensic specialists. Ethnic Albainians came out of hiding with horrendous stories to tell. In excess of 11,000 murders were reported to authorities. According to a report by the U.N.'s chief prosecutor in Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, on 1999-NOV-10, 2,108 complete corpses and an unknown but large number of incompete corpses were found. By 1999-NOV, a total of 195 grave sites in Kosovo had been analyzed; another four hundred remained to be investigated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2147781.stm
Mass grave found near Srebrenica
Tuesday, 23 July, 2002, 22:35 GMT 23:35 UK
Forensic experts in Bosnia have discovered a mass grave in the north-east of the country, close to the site of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. It is thought the grave contains the bodies of Bosnian Muslims killed by Bosnian Serb forces after they captured Srebrenica.

Skeletons 'incomplete'
The grave site was discovered on Monday near the Serb-held village of Kamenica, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) north-east of Sarajevo.

The commission said it had "reliable proof" that the remains were transported to the grave from another location, in order to conceal the remains from war crime investigators.

He said some of the skeletons were incomplete, and that others were found with their hands bound by wire.

More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed after the fall of Srebrenica, in the worst massacre Europe has seen since World War II.

So far 6,000 bodies have been exhumed from numerous mass graves around the town, but only 300 have been identified.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic have been implicated in the Srebrenica massacres.

New mass grave found in Kosovo as Milosevic trial nears
Posted: 02/11/2002 11:10 amLast Updated: 2002-02-11 11:58:09-05
Kroni I Mbretit, Yugoslavia - Kosovo villagers have discovered a new mass grave, just two days before former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic goes on trial for engineering genocide in their province.

The remains were uncovered in western Kosovo on Sunday. The remains of up to 20 bodies were found in a shallow grave by children playing in the area.

Several villagers living near the grave will offer testimony in the upcoming trial of Milosevic, which starts tomorrow in the Hague, but their testimony will focus on other events, and not the grave uncovered Sunday.http://www.wndu.com/news/022002/news_12301.php

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/09/serb.grave/
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Serbian forensic experts have discovered another mass grave near a lake in southwestern Serbia.
The grave is believed to contain bodies of ethnic Albanians killed during the 1999 war in Kosovo

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/11/bosnia.pit/index.html
Bosnia mass grave found
June 11, 2001 Posted: 3:58 AM EDT (0758 GMT)
MOUNT MALUSA, Bosnia -- A mass grave containing bodies of victims of the notorious Foca prison camp has been discovered in Bosnia, Reuters has reported.
Bosnian Muslim officials found the grave hidden deep in a dense forest after receiving a letter signed by "a Serb from Foca," the agency said.

Just a plain and simple truth.

Why are we still in the Balkins? Ask the current administration. Clark left in 2000.

that " if the Serbs were later retaliated against by the Albanians....that made the Serbs correct in what they did in the first place?"... I trust it shouldn't be too hard to find, my post is pretty short.

Later on you talk about the Bosnian conflict and Srebrenica, which has precisely nothing to do with the Kosovo conflict. But no matter, we can see the link you are forming: Milosevic was responsible for Srebrenica (tenuous, and lifts far too much responsibility from the Bosnian Serb leadership for my liking) ergo he is a genocidalist ergo he was probably gonna committ genocide in Kosovo. It doesn't much wash as a line of argument, this hypotheticals business.

PS I often get criticised in Marxist circles for being anti-Milosevic, but you are the first person in a long long time to call me an apologist for him. I guess that means you win some sort of prize...

The Magistrate (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-28-05 12:19 AM
Response to Reply #150

153. If Anyone Is Desirous Of Facts In This Matter


The Unhappy History of Kossovo


One: Origin of the Quarrel

The clash in Kossovo of Arnaut and Vascian, as the peoples known to we moderns as Albanian and Serb were oft known in Ottoman days, differs from the usual run of Balkan bloodletting; it describes a real ethnic difference. Serb, Croat, Slovene, Montenegrin; all are Slavs, divided due to institutions only. Albanians remain in some proportion survivals of the old Dalmatian and Illyric peoples of Roman days, taken to craggy peaks for refuge from a tide of Slavic invasion commencing with the sixth century.

Medieval Albanian Catholicism offered further differentiation from Orthodox Serbs. The northeastern extension of the Albanian remnant, and the southern marches of the Serb, coincided roughly in modern Kossovo. Here the Serb Czar and Orthodox Patriarchite were able to exert authority the more atomized Albanian polity could not. After the death of the Albanian chieftain Skanderberg, and the Ottoman routing of Venice from the latter’s Adriatic lodgments, late in the fifteenth century, Albanians generally converted to Islam.

In Kossovo, this established local Albanians’ dominance over the Orthodox Serb peasantry, as the Ottoman gave landlord’s tenure only to Moslems. More enterprising or desperate Serbs migrated north; Albanians of similar motivation replaced them from the west. The locale remained poorly ordered, and a frequent theater for rebellion and consequent Ottoman suppression.

The catastrophe suffered by the Ottoman besieging Vienna in 1683 led to the swift seizure of Bosnia, Albania, and Serbia by Austrian and Bavarian Catholic armies. An Austrian force ventured into Kossovo in 1689, setting Albanian and Serb alike both to rebellion against the Ottoman and to battle against one another. The Austrians soon were routed at Nish. In Kossovo, the Ottoman killed every inhabitant they could lay hands on for days. Serbs fled north in great number, Albanians fled west.

With Ottoman authority reasserted, it was mostly Albanians who returned. These soon outnumbered the Serb survivors and progeny. Erection of an autonomous Serbia early in the nineteenth century enticed Kossovo Serbs to migrate north and acquire a freehold farm there. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877, which saw near collapse for the tottering Ottoman, was preceded and followed by Serb attacks.

These fell on Ottoman garrisons and Moslem inhabitants in the south of modern Serbia, culminating in the 1878 sack and firing of the Albanian quarter in Nish. Islamic refugees fled into Kossovo; Christians fled into Serbia for shelter from ensuing pogrom, and advancing Ottoman soldiery. The peace imposed by the Treaty of Berlin left Kossovo under unrestricted Ottoman rule.


Two: To the Yugoslav Monarchy

Albanian agitation for autonomy on modern terms within the declining Ottoman imperium began at Prizren in Kossovo, and at Istanbul. The Serb remnant in Kossovo were subjected to a wretched existence, without recourse from predation by landlord or hostile brigand. Early in 1912, declaration of an Albanian state ignited a successful rebellion in Kossovo against the Ottoman. In the Balkan War, pitting Slav and Greek against the Ottoman that autumn, Serbian armies struck south through Kossovo with great massacre against the Albanian populace. The Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 confirmed Serbia in possession of Kossovo.

During World War One, Austria-Hungary put Serbia’s army to flight in 1915. Albanians in Kossovo rose against the retreating Serbs with utmost savagery. The Serb soldiers replied in kind to fight their way through to the Adriatic, there embarking on French ships to tremendous Allied acclaim. Serb armies re-entered Kossovo from the south by the 1918 Armistice, and were bitterly resisted by Albanian rebels. The new Yugoslav monarchy with its Serb king did not succeed in breaking organized resistance till 1924 in Kossovo. Brigandage, and brutal reprisal, remained endemic to the locale.

The Serb monarchy of Yugoslavia superintended a determined effort to secure its rule in Kossovo. Land was stolen from Albanians as “undocumented,” and made available for Serbs who would venture south to settle on it. Schools teaching in Albanian, originally encouraged in the hope they would keep Albanians backward, proved hotbeds of secessionist agitation, and were suppressed. In 1937, the monarchy entertained proposals by a leading Serb intellectual, the assassin turned historian Vaso Cubrilovic of Belgrade University, that all Albanians be forcibly expelled from Kossovo.

Near the start of World War Two, Fascist Italy seized Albania. Nazi Germany seized Yugoslavia in 1941. The mines in northern Kossovo, and most Kossovo Serbs therefore, were retained under Nazi occupation; the remainder of Kossovo was awarded to Italian Albania. Serbs in Italian Kossovo, mostly recent settlers, were pitilessly persecuted by Albanians, even against occasional Italian opposition. The S. S. security division “Skanderberg” was largely recruited among Kossovo Albanians.


Three: The Tito Era

After Italy capitulated in 1943, Tito, the Communist partisan leader, declared Kossovo would be allowed self-determination if Communists won. In 1944, his partisans succeeded in fighting their way into the place, with some local Albanian support at last. Royalist Chetnik partisans violently opposed any idea of Kossovo secession, winning Tito even more support in that locale.

Tito, however, reneged on that promised self-determination, annexing Kossovo anew to Serbia as an “Autonomous district” within his new Yugoslavia. The Albanian Communist leader, Enver Hoxha, was in no position to contest the matter, amid talk under Stalin of a Balkan Federation to include Albania itself. Tito’s break in 1948 with Stalin ended any real hope for Hoxha he could fold Kossovo into his hoped for Greater Albania.

Kossovo’s populace was then about three-fifths Albanian and one-quarter Serb, with the remainder including Moslem Slavs, Catholic Montenegrins, Turks, and Gypsies. Tito saw that Communist party and police supervisors in Kossovo were Serbs. These energetically hunted up the least hint of Albanian secessionists, harvesting batches of them for show trials in 1956 (coincident with the Hungarian revolt), and again in 1964.

Tito purged his Serb Interior Minister in 1966, for opposition to economic decentralization. Albanian Communists replaced Serbs in Party and police supervisory posts in Kossovo. In the “Prague Spring” of ’68, Kossovo Albanian students demonstrated for national status in Yugoslavia, and an Albanian language university. After many arrests, Tito granted the university in 1970. Albanian language textbooks could only be got in Enver Hoxha’s Albania, which opened a connection to the new Kossovo school in Pristina for his enterprising “special service” agents.

A new Yugoslav constitution in 1974 gave autonomous Serbian Kossovo effective national status, with a representative on the Yugoslav collective presidency. Albanian Kossovo police and party personnel suppressed radical cliques, inspired to “Enverism” (as secession became called) by Hoxha’s agents. Some of these cliques, formed about 1978, included young men who would later become leading lights of the present-day Kossovo Liberation Army.

Tito died in 1980. In spring of 1981, Kossovo Albanian students at Pristina University began demonstrations demanding independence, even fusion with Hoxha’s Albania, to applause from spectators. Yugoslav Interior Ministry troops arrived, and broke the demonstrations, shooting and beating scores to death. Kossovo Albanian party and police officials sustained the crack-down, loyally denouncing “Enverist” radicals, and arresting and beating hundreds suspected of such leanings.

Radical secessionist leaders fled to sanctuaries in Western Europe. Several, meeting near Stuttgart in 1982 to form a popular front, were ambushed and shot dead by unknown assailants. Surviving radicals concluded the bullets came from Serbs in the Yugoslav Interior Ministry, and swore blood vengeance. Under the name of Popular Movement for the Kossovo Republic, a handful of such trained in Albania, and attempted a campaign of gun-battles and bombs against Kossovo and Yugoslav police.


Four: Rise of Milosevic

These largely would-be assassins had no material effect, but a profound moral one. Any crime against serbs in Kossovo was in serbia reported as secessionist terror, and crimes against Serbs in Kossovo, particularly against property of isolated farms and Orthodox sites, occurred with increasing frequency. The Serb Orthodox Patriarchite was ranged alongside the Serb Academy of Sciebces in protest of this, with the latter, in 1985, calling the current situation genocide against against Serbs in Kossovo.

At the start of 1986, the banker Slobodan Milosevic ascended to leadership of the Serb Communist Party. Belligerence in favor of Serbs dwelling outside Serbia’s boundaries, or in the autonomous districts of Vojvodina and Kossovo, offered a ready lever for political power. Kossovo Serbs were organizing militias with assistance from Serb Interior Ministry police; Hoxha’s death had not altered Albania’s support of “Enverism” in Kossovo.

Early in 1987, Milosevic arrived in Pristina’s suburbs for a meeting with Kossovo Serb leaders. A large crowd of Kossovo Serbs rioted before him against the largely Albanian Kossovo police. It was not chance; four days before, Milosevic had met with the riot’s instigators, and a schedule had been fixed for the outbreak.

Widely broadcast film of the incident established Milosevic as champion of distressed Serbs. Later that year, Milosevic used this popularity to force Serbia’s president from office. In the summer of 1988, Milosevic’s Serb Communist Party organized a campaign of Kossovo Remembrance rallies throughout Serbia proper, claiming an average attendance of half a million at each. In November, Milosevic as Party chief dismissed the Albanians in Communist Party leadership in Kossovo, and promulgated constitutional changes effectively stripping Kossovo of its autonomous status.

Albanian Communist leadership in Kossovo mobilized sizable demonstrations and hunger strikes in protest early in 1989. These were broken with loss of life by Yugoslav Interior Ministry troops, who seized the arms of both Kossovo’s national guard and police. Closely surrounded by tanks, the Kossovo Assembly voted itself out of effective existence on March 23.

Milosevic now accepted the Presidency of Serbia. Continuing Albanian demonstrations in Kossovo were broken by Serb and Yugoslav soldiers and police; hundreds of arrests were accompanied by torture. At the end of the year, Albanian intellectuals and some Communist leaders collected to form the Democratic League for Kossovo. The police terror stilled the demonstrations early in 1990.

Milosevic ratified Serb Parliament decrees forbidding Albanians to buy land from Serbs in Kossovo, and removing Albanians from civil service, including hospitals, schools, and the police. The latter quickly became overwhelmingly Serb. The Albanian membership of the Communist Party in Kossovo took up membership in the League for Democratic Kossovo.


Five: The Kossovo Resistance

This L. D. K. was led by the writer Ibrahim Rugova. He inspired Kossovo Albanians to a program of passive resistance to Serb authority. A “shadow state” emerged, quartered in private dwellings, and with a government in exile operating in Germany. Rugova’s “shadow state” held elections, administered Albanian language schooling, even collected taxes. These applied equally to Kossovo Albanians dwelling abroad; most were guest-worker laborers in Europe, but some were prosperous businessmen, or smugglers of stolen cars and narcotics and prostitutes.

The handful of violent radicals constituting the Popular Movement for the Kossovo Republic (P. M. K. R.) were denounced by Rugova as stooges of the Serb police, and he was widely believed by Kossovo Albanians when he did. The radicals’ sporadic gunshots and arsons each served to signal a fresh campaign of interrogations and beatings by Serb police, directed against the nonviolent “shadow state” organizers.

With Yugoslav and Serb armed forces devoted to war in Croatia and Bosnia, Milosevic was content to leave Kossovo at this status quo. On Serb victory in Croatia, one of the leading Serb killers, an Interior Ministry employee known as Arkan, moved to Pristina with scores of armed followers. “Enverist” radicals of the P. M. K. R. secretly convened in Drenica (where resistance to the old Yugoslav monarchy had persisted into 1924), and there voted themselves the armed force of the Kossovo Republic. Albania’s newly elected government maintained cordial relations both with these radicals, and Rugova’s pacific Kossovo government in exile, now established near Bonn.

Kossovo Albanian boycott of official Serb elections in December 1993 gave Milosevic a resounding victory over his rival for the presidency, the Serb-American businessman Panic, and allowed the killer Arkan to win election to a parliament seat. The “Enverist” radicals were split into a Marxist faction, the National Movement for the Liberation of Kossovo, and a Nationalist faction, the Kossovo Liberation Army. The latter had a better footing abroad, where the pacific Rugova’s government in exile at Bonn was beginning to explore establishing its own armed force. Albania continued to assist by giving military training to dozens of radicals, and allowing transit through its borders.

The bloody summer of 1995 saw Serb massacre of Bosnian Moslems, Croat expulsion of Serbs, and NATO bombing of Serb forces in Bosnia. The Dayton Accords confirmed Serb gains in Bosnia, and recognized the rump Yugoslav Federation Milosevic dominated, from his seat for Serbia in its collective presidency. The pacific Rugova used his control of Albanian language media in Kossovo to maintain popular commitment to passive resistance, while the fledgling KLA demanded Serb departure from Kossovo, and launched a new campaign of sporadic shootings and bombings.

Serbia was greatly unsettled by the influx of refugees from Krajina and Slavonia. In Yugoslav elections on May 31, 1996, the Montenegrin presidency went to an opponent of Milosevic, and in Serbia, opposition parties won local posts in many cities. Milosevic refused to allow victorious opponents to take office in Serbia. He allowed three months of demonstrations, then bought off his principal Serb opponent by offering him a cabinet post. The demonstrations were mopped up by brutal police attack, and opposition figures allowed to take local office found their function superseded by various national agencies. The Vatican brokered an agreement Milosevic signed to allow Albanian language schools official existence in Kossovo, but he took no steps to implement it.


Six: Taking Up the Gun

In Bonn, the leading functionary of Rugova’s government in exile, Bujar Bukoshi, rejected passive resistance, and turned the radio transmitter he controlled to broadcasts supporting the KLA. Early in 1997, Albania’s banks were revealed as Ponzi swindles. Mobs looted government facilities, including military arsenals, and swiftly reduced the land to anarchic chaos, in which a Kalshnikov rifle could be had for a five dollar bill.

Bukoshi’s embryonic forces, consisting of a few hundred exiled policemen and soldiers, established themselves in Albania as the Armed Forces of the Kossovo Republic (F. A. R. K.), in competition with the KLA. Albanian students organized demonstrations against Milosevic’s refusal to implement the Vatican agreement on schooling, ignoring orders to desist from Rugova. Serb police crushed the demonstrations with extraordinary brutality.

KLA attacks, which by the Serb government’s claims had been occurring roughly once a week, and claimed ten Serb lives since 1995, began to take place almost daily at the start of 1998. In the old rebel district of Drenica, near the village of Likosane just before noon on February 28, a gunfight broke out between KLA men and a Serb police patrol. Once it was over, Serb police massacred the men of a wealthy Albanian clan considered leaders of the hamlet. Five days later, Serb police surrounded the family compound of a KLA leader and shelled it for hours, then went into the ruins and murdered women, children, and wounded, to a total of 58, including the KLA man, Adem Jashari.

These murders turned Albanian village elders throughout Kossovo against Rugova’s passive resistance. They put hundreds of their young men at the disposal of the KLA. In Drenica, and near the Albanian border, armed partisan bands appeared in such strength the Serb police retired to establish encircling roadblocks. Western diplomats threatened Milosevic with dire consequences if the murders by his police were repeated. Milosevic agreed to begin implementing the Vatican schools agreement, and to meet with Ibrahim Rugova. Simultaneously, Milosevic admitted the ultra-nationalist Chetnik party into a coalition government with his Serbian Socialist Party, and loosed his Serb police once again into Drenica.

This campaign was conducted with the same degree of atrocity that characterized previous operations by Serb police. In one typical incident near Gorjne Obrinje, after fourteen Serb police were shot in a fire-fight, a group of fourteen Albanian women, children, and old men found hiding nearby were shot point-blank by Serb police. Some 200,000 Albanians fled their homes to avoid the fighting, some to southern Kossovo and some to Albania. President Clinton ordered a show of force by U. S. warplanes over Yugoslavia, and in October, his pressure secured an agreement by which Serb Interior Ministry troops were to vacate Kossovo, negotiations with Kossovo Albanian leaders were to begin in earnest, and a body of diplomatic observers would enter Kossovo to monitor events. During the course of negotiating this agreement, Milosevic told a U. S. general that the way to bring peace to Drenica was to “kill them all.”

The monitored cease-fire brought many Kossovo Albanian refugees back to their homes. In Albania, the Kossovo government in exile’s small armed force was violently absorbed by the KLA; in Kossovo, KLA men began arresting and executing functionaries of Rugova’s “shadow state” as collaborators with Serbia. They also murdered about a dozen Serb civilians, and a Serb village mayor. By the start of 1999, fire-fights of company and even battalion scale between KLA guerrillas and Serb police were once more occurring.

Near dawn on January 15, battle broke out between KLA guerrillas and Serb police near the town of Racak. After nine KLA men were killed the rest fled. During the afternoon Serb police entered the town, raped and murdered two women, and murdered forty-three unarmed men and boys. Serb Information Ministry spokesmen in Pristina next morning invited Western journalists to visit the scene of a “successful” fight against the KLA; when they reported what they saw, Milosevic declared the KLA had fabricated the incident, and demanded the diplomatic observers quit Kossovo. The chief judge of the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia was denied entry to the country.

Seven: The NATO Intervention

NATO demanded the talks agreed to the previous October begin in February, and threatened military action to force compliance. The meeting at Rambouillet Chateau featured a severely fractured Albanian delegation; its principal factions (all of which hated one another) were Rugova’s adherents in the old LDK, old line Communist functionaries from that same umbrella group, and the KLA led by Hashim Thaci. After days of negotiation, Milosevic struck out about half the already settled agreement, substituting his initial demands, which the Albanians and NATO had already rejected, and forced collapse of the talks on March 18. Two days later, 40,000 Serb police and soldiers with 300 armored vehicles launched a fresh offensive into Drenica.

NATO air strikes commenced against Serbia on March 24. While these aimed at destroying Serb anti-aircraft defenses, Serb police and soldiers in Kossovo commenced a wholesale assault on the Albanians of Kossovo, aimed at driving them from the country by exemplary massacre. During the course of this campaign, roughly 10,000 persons, mostly young men, were murdered by Serb police and soldiers. Almost a million Albanians took to flight, either west to Albania, south into Macedonia, or into the mountains of Kossovo itself. Lightly armed KLA guerrillas could accomplish nothing against the Serb forces.

When Serb air defenses were disabled, NATO warplanes began attacks demolishing bridges, power stations, and the like in Serbia proper. With Serb police and soldiers forced to retire their heavy equipment to shelter in bunkers by NATO air bombardment in Kossovo, their murder squads became vulnerable to attack by Albanian partisans, many of whom were not, properly speaking, KLA, but village militia deployed by their clan elders. When Serb police and soldiers attempted to group together to overpower these guerrilla bands, the Serbs were savaged by NATO warplanes.

On June 3, Milosevic capitulated. Serb police and soldiers retired northward; NATO troops moved in. Kossovo Albanian refugees streamed back to their homes. Many set upon Serbs still remaining in Kossovo. NATO troops intervened to protect lives, but not property; even so, several dozen Serbs, many elderly, were killed. The overwhelming majority of Serbs resident in Kossovo fled north into Serbia, or into that small portion of northern Kossovo around the mines where they had long constituted the principal element of the populace.

A government for Kossovo, formed under NATO auspices, blended elements of the LDK and KLA, with the KLA’s Hashim Thaci emerging as Prime Minister, while Ibrahim Rugova, the nonviolent leader, found himself without power, or much prestige. The KLA has kept its word to disarm only poorly, and remains a police problem for NATO occupation troops. It has attempted to provoke guerrilla war in the adjoining areas of Macedonia which are largely populated by Albanians, but has had scant success there, either in baiting the Macedonian government into atrocious reaction to their activities, or in gaining wide support among Albanian people in those districts.

Postcript

This piece was written several years ago, which does not, of course, alter the body of facts it presents. In the interim, there does not seem to have been too much change. The remnant Serbian population of the district has been squeezed north and out, and the doing, while unwholesome, is about all that could be expected under the circumstances. There has been some friction between the K.L.A. and the NATO forces, but nothing approaching the scale of even the first stages of revolt against Milosevic.

The situation is, by and large, about as good as could be epected, given the history and recent trauma of the place.

"because she did not mention the ~3000 Serbian and Albanian civilians who died during from the bombardment, the fact that the US air force bombed civilian targets, the fact that following its 'liberation' Kosovo was cleansed in reverse, with the result that the non-Albanian population now lives in ghettoes."

Now, to me....when you say the fact that following its 'liberation' Kosovo was cleansed in reverse--sounds like you are justifying the original genocide. If not, then why mention it during your justification that somehow the war should not have taken place....SINCE YOU ARE IMPLYING That SINCE the liberation.....kosovo was cleansed in REVERSE.....which matches up to my statement made "" if the Serbs were later retaliated against by the Albanians....that made the Serbs correct in what they did in the first place?"(THIS WAS A QUESTION)

In reference to stating that Barbara was full of shit, you said..."because she did not mention the ~3000 Serbian and Albanian civilians who died during from the bombardment, the fact that the US air force bombed civilian targets,...

Exaggerating the Deaths of civilians during the Kosovo campaign to make your point is not acceptable.

You want to, on the one hand, minimize what was happening to the Albanians prior to intervention....and on the other maximize casualties during U.S. bombing. That makes you a Molosovic apologist...because he would have loved you to appear at the Hague to testify on his behalf (since you were there...hey!). The fact that you feel that Barbara Boxer is full of shit is what tells me that you are also an extremist. Left or right, neither is better.

So please note the following FACTS:

http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/nato061300.htm

V Casualty Figures

53. In its report, Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign, Human Rights Watch documented some 500 civilian deaths in 90 separate incidents. It concluded: "on the basis available on these ninety incidents that as few as 488 and as many as 527 Yugoslav civilians were killed as a result of NATO bombing. Between 62 and 66 percent of the total registered civilian deaths occurred in just twelve incidents. These twelve incidents accounted for 303 to 352 civilian deaths. These were the only incidents among the ninety documented in which ten or more civilian deaths were confirmed." Ten of these twelve incidents were included among the incidents which were reviewed with considerable care by the committee (see para. 9 above) and our estimate was that between 273 and 317 civilians were killed in these ten incidents. Human Rights Watch also found the FRY Ministry of Foreign Affairs publication NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia to be largely credible on the basis of its own filed research and correlation with other sources. A review of this publication indicates it provides an estimated total of approximately 495 civilians killed and 820 civilians wounded in specific documented instances. For the purposes of this report, the committee operates on the basis of the number of persons allegedly killed as found in both publications. It appears that a figure similar to both publications would be in the range of 500 civilians killed.

but carry on, I see you have a great future in debating. When I make one statement apologising for Milosevic, feel free to follow me up on it.

Barbara Boxer is full of shit for many reasons, not least for the one I gave in my original post: that her entire argument, as quoted by you (so I'll be charitable and accept that perhaps you have taken her out of context), centres on how few American caualties were suffered in the Kosovo campaign compared to Iraq. Now since you don't seem to get it, I'll spell this out for you: if one intervenes to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide, and ends up allowing the area to be ethnically cleansed in reverse, and then still wants to pretend that this was a humanitarian intervention, that makes whoever is speaking (Barbara Boxer in this example) full of shit.

have a lot to do with Kosovo. Milosevic wasn't held accountable for the previous massacres in Bosnia and felt emboldened enough to commit more in Kosovo. He kept them at a lower level in order not to trigger an international response but his intent was the same, to drive all Albanians from Kosovo the way he wanted Non-Serbs driven from Bosnia. If he has started three wars (Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia) and is planning a fourth it is not just hypothetical to argue he may use the same tactics. Your the one whose line of reasoning is a joke.

all Albanians from Kosovo, and for a very simple reason - the Serbian economy, especially in the South, was badly dependant on Albanian menial labour. His intent was to serve the interests of the Serbian ruling class, for example represented by parties like JUL, in crushing the KLA and maintaining Kosovo's natural resources and supply of labour. There was probably some interest in driving part of the Albanian population from there, because after 1995 Serbia was saddled with some 200,000 refugees from Croatia who it most certainly did not want up in the North. Serbia had neither the will nor the money to take care of them, and they were largely a pissed off bunch who thought Milosevic had betrayed them. So its not implausible that part of the motivation was to drive some of the Albanian population from Kosovo, and free up space where these refugees could then be shoved. The nationalism however was an excuse and a smokescreen for all sides, as it always is.

And I still reject this link from Bosnia to Kosovo - firstly because it relies on accepting that Milosevic was somehow behind all that went on in Bosnia, which is far too easy on the Bosnian Serb leadership, but also because it absolves the intervening party of having to prove anything. All you do is point at the past record, make dark mutterings about what will happen if one doesn't intervene, and send the bombers. Its a recipe for rampant interventionism and imperialism...

Though we have some differences in the matter, that is a very sound and fair analysis of the circumstances.

Regarding the link to Bosnia, it does seem to me a legitimate one. First, given the previous crimes, it would have been intolerable to assume they would not be repeated, when matters were unfolding in a way which suggested they might. Parties capable of intervening, but failing to do so, would have been justly held in part responsible for the repetion of such atrocity. Second, it does not much trouble me when punishment comes late, and ostensibly for some other thing than the worst of the crimes committed: life often works out that way, and any great wrong done leaves one a hostage to future fortune....

"You only get two mistakes, and usually the second one is somebody remembering the first one...."

targeted Milosevic, but the bombing campaign, seen as punishment, targeted him not one bit. In fact I would say he eventually lost the election due to:

a) A disgust over how he'd "thrown in the towel"

b) He was on the road to losing it anyhow

c) Diplomatic pressure on Yugoslavia post 99

The other matter is this issue of past actions being a guide for future ones. It is true that if one is to use intervention as a preventative measure, then your logic makes sense. I simply think the bar for acquiescing to imperialist intervention (and that is what almost all armed humanitarian intervention ends up as) should be much higher, because there is a price to be paid if one allows the intervention also. Once we go down that line, it is logical to conclude that the people in this region are incapable of governing themselves (using a similar logic of past actions being a guide to future ones) and implement a protectorate to serve until they prove "able" to take over. So I think if one ever agrees to this, it has to be under the most extraordinary circumstances, where it is clear that a crime is taking place already, and inaction is seen as being far worse. And if you can't prove the case on its merits alone, it probably doesn't qualify.

PS I was hoping you might join the fray my friend! Always good to see you.

edited for clarity

on further edit: I might add one other problem with the notion of past actions etc., which only occurred to me while reading certain other exchanges on this thread. It can lead to a mindset where if you feel intervention was delayed or not used in one instance (specifically Bosnia here), you become very anxious to intervene at the next possible opportunity (Kosovo) in order to assuage your own guilt over the first matter. And that is a bad way to formulate policy.

I should add to my previous post that it of course didn't matter to the Kosovars killed or driven from their homes by Milosevic why he was doing this, and I would like you to note that nowhere am I disputing that Milosevic was a fascist or indeed a war criminal(although it is incorrect IMO to call him a dictator, because the Serbs would have most likely elected him whether the elections were rigged or not). What I am disputing is the notion that the bombing of Kosovo in 99 was some sort of humanitarian intervention, because it most certainly was not.

Hi,

I believe you said somewhere that you are residing in Serbia and probably have extensive knowledge from personal experience about the war and surrounding events.

Could you please briefly explain why you do not dispute that Milosevic is a fascist and war criminal? Having followed most of the proceedings in The Hague -- and I guess because I'm probably heavily influenced by bad bad Marxist extremists -- I have a hard time buying into this notion. I have no reason, mind you, to "dispute" it either. But it seems to me that the Memorandum was not a fascist treatise, and that the suppression of separatist efforts is something which most, if not all nation states would try to achieve.

but I was there during the bombing, yes. Many of us came back, for various reasons...

I say that Milosevic is a fascist because of how his government was structured: it served the interests of Yugoslav business, much of which was controlled by a clique close to Milosevic himself (JUL as a party was founded largely to give a visible political presence to these elements). Milosevic implemented a large scale privatisation of key state assets throughout the 90s, in order to pay for the effects of sanctions, which were the fore-runners of the later DOS (who I have no love for either incidentally) privatisation moves. Perhaps calling him a fascist is not theoretically correct, but understand that in the SFRJ (which to my mind was the last legitimate Yugoslavia to exist) the term fascist was used for anyone who was anti-people. And Milosevic was certainly anti-people. He entered into numerous coalitions with Seselj and other far-right groups, and presided over a period during which large parts of the country only survived by becoming smugglers and recieving help from the emigre community. It is probably true that certain sections of the community have it worse now than they did under Slobo, like for example the miners, but that does not make his economic programme acceptable either. And this is before I even get into issues of civil liberties and the like - although people should understand that this was not actually such a huge problem. There was an opposition media most of the time, although it frequently changed names as it would periodically get raided, shut down, and restart. Serbia under Slobo was certainly no Uzbekistan - nontheless I believe it is possible to be both anti-Milosevic and anti-intervetion. One of the greatest problems for the left in Serbia post Milosevic is that he is still seen as a communist, and as long as the left can be blamed by association in this way it will never recover.

I say that he is a war criminal because of his complicity in the war crimes perpetrated in Bosnia (which I don't think anyone would argue he was involved in), and also because it is clear that war crimes were perpetrated in Kosovo, even if the numbers quoted to justify the bombing were grossly exaggerated. Even when you are fighting separatism, there are lines which cannot be crossed, which he did cross - especially after the bombing started.

on edit: note that my earlier reference to 'Marxist circles' was jokey - I am a Marxist myself.

There's not a word that you said I disagree with.

As I think I've told you, I'm originally from Belgrade as well. Lived there until 1992. Got a whiff of some of Milosevic's police batons.

my family were, how shall I put it, politically undesirable; when my dad got the chance to teach abroad, we decided there were better things to do than wait to see if Solbo and Seselj's boys wanted to pay us a visit.

PS I didn't know you were a Yugo, al sad znam. Ziveli!

is influenced by "bad bad Marxist extremists"

for you to consider:



You can find the above quotes (and many more) at: Press Reports On False Claims Of Genocide By Serbs In Kosovo

"what was publicised as a search for mass graves was 'a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find one -- not one -- mass grave'"

Do you recall the name of the US firm that was busted for peddling the faked photos?

Thanks

Excellent post

:hi:

Long time no see either! It's good to have your voice of reason of reason here.



You just have to LOVE the surprising proximity of Camp Bondsteel, the largest US military camp construction effort since the Vietnam, and Halliburton's AMBO pipeline ;)

:hi:

nt

Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil (Ambo) Trans-Balkan pipeline

All the familiar names. Neocons. Kellogg, Brown and Root. Halliburton.

(snip)

One example of the work KBR did in the Balkans was Camp Bondsteel. The camp was so large that the US general accounting office (GAO) likened it to "a small town". The company built roads, power generation, water and sewage systems, housing, a helicopter airfield, a perimeter fence, guard towers, and a detention centre. Bondsteel is the largest and most expensive army base since Vietnam. It also happens to be built in the path of the Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil (Ambo) Trans-Balkan pipeline, the pipeline connecting the oil-rich Caspian Sea region to the rest of the world. The initial feasibility project for Ambo was done by KBR.

KBR's cash flow from Logcap ballooned under Cheney's tenure, jumping from $144m in 1994 to more than $423m in 1996, and the Balkans was the driving force. By 1999, the army was spending just under $1bn a year on KBR's work in the Balkans. The GAO issued a report in September 2000 charging serious cost-control problems in Bosnia, but KBR retains the contract to this day.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1266328,00.html

As we head into the 21st century, we must not allow difference to be a license to kill, and vulnerability an excuse to dominate. We will pursue a world of tolerance and freedom. From Kosovo to Kashmir, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, freedom and tolerance is the defining issue for our world. (snip)

We're making good progress. Thanks to you and those who served before you, the people of Kosovo are able to buy food and find shelter, go to school, and get medical help. Thanks to you, there will be elections here in November -- elections where we want to see the widest-possible participation.

(snip)

But there's still a lot of work to do. Civil institutions must be put in place and made stronger. Organized crime must be brought under control. War criminals must face justice. Kosovo must not be a safe haven for insurgencies elsewhere.

America has a vital interest in the European stability, and therefore, peace in the region. That's why I've recently taken steps to cut off outside support to the rebels in Macedonia. That's why we need you to keep patrolling the border and cutting off the arms flow.

(snip)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/07/20010724-1.html

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, was the spawn of all neo-cons, George W. Bush, pleased as punch over the oil companies' roaring success in the Balkans.

was I the only person to note the curious timing between the arrest of the Kosovar premier on war crimes charges and the upcoming round of talks on Kosovo's independance? Seems to me some people don't want this issue to be resolved anytime soon...

:hi:

No you weren't.

Kosovo won't be free again for a long time sadly, not until places like Camp Bondsteel are emptied out and we smash the self-serving, ludicrous, myth that we did it out of the "goodness" of our heart.

Goodness of our heart needed go no further than America's very own Appalachia.

One must wonder why "goodness of heart" always ends up in the world's most valuable & strategic areas and never leaves.

frontline. It's a geo-strategic positioning that allows for expanded U.S. interests in the area. Those interests are many, but for starters it puts us closer to the oil pipelines.

For a thorough understanding of our presense there read his book, The Grand Chessboard, online:
http://book-case.kroupnov.ru/pages/library/Grand/


Here's an excerpt from the chapter titled, The Eurasian Balkans:

The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia's richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.

The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.

Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable. Every one of its countries suffers from serious internal difficulties, all of them have frontiers that are either the object of claims by neighbors or are zones of ethnic resentment, few are nationally homogeneous, and some are already embroiled in territorial, ethnic, or religious violence.

http://book-case.kroupnov.ru/pages/library/Grand/part_5.htm


Another site:

http://www.treemedia.com/cfrlibrary/library/geopolitics/brzezinski.html#top

I constantly marvel at the spin we hear about this issue when the gameplan was laid out for all to see.

But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.

:hi: Welcome to DU!!

(They learn so fast)

...Europe, which in my mind was the purpose of that mission to begin with.

The spoils of another war

Five years after Nato's attack on Yugoslavia, its administration in Kosovo is pushing through mass privatisation

Neil Clark
Tuesday September 21, 2004
The Guardian

(snip)

The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year's invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors.

(snip)

But equally revealing about the west's wider motives is chapter four, which dealt exclusively with the Kosovan economy. Article I (1) called for a "free-market economy", and article II (1) for privatisation of all government-owned assets. At the time, the rump Yugoslavia - then not a member of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - was the last economy in central-southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. "Socially owned enterprises", the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated.

Yugoslavia had publicly owned petroleum, mining, car and tobacco industries, and 75% of industry was state or socially owned. In 1997, a privatisation law had stipulated that in sell-offs, at least 60% of shares had to be allocated to a company's workers.

The high priests of neo-liberalism were not happy. At the Davos summit early in 1999, Tony Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embark on a programme of "economic reform" - new-world-order speak for selling state assets and running the economy in the interests of multinationals.

In the 1999 Nato bombing campaign, it was state-owned companies - rather than military sites - that were specifically targeted by the world's richest nations. Nato only destroyed 14 tanks, but 372 industrial facilities were hit - including the Zastava car plant at Kragujevac, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed.

(snip)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,1309165,00.html

THE ROVING EYE
Pipelineistan's biggest game begins
By Pepe Escobar

History may judge it as one of the capital moves of the 21st century's New Great Game: May 25, the day high-quality Caspian light crude started flowing through the Caucasus toward the Mediterranean in Turkey. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) - conceived by the US as the ultimate Western escape route from dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf - is finally in business.

This is what Pipelineistan is all about: a supreme law unto itself - untouchable by national sovereignty, serious environmental concerns (expressed both in the Caucasus and in Europe), labor legislation, protests against the World Bank, not to mention mountains 2,700 meters high and 1,500 small rivers. BTC took 10 years of hard work and at least US$4 billion - $3 billion of which is in bank loans. BTC is not merely a pipeline: it is a sovereign state.

This BTC state slices Azerbaijan in half from east to west, then slices Georgia in half almost from east to west, before taking a dip south, bypassing secessionist Ajaria and slicing Turkish Anatolia diagonally from the northeast toward the south. The founding stone is at British Petroleum's (BP's) gleaming terminal at Sangachal, half an hour along the Caspian south of Baku. The state is 44 meters wide, snaking 1,767 kilometers across three countries, two of those (Azerbaijan and Georgia) extremely volatile, and the other (Turkey) faces potential trouble from dispossessed Kurds.

The pipeline itself is only 126 centimeters wide, a dizzying steel serpent of no less than 150,000 segments made in Japan, finished in Malaysia and delivered by ship to the Georgian port of Batumi, capital of the separatist micro-republic of Adjaria - which is virtually uncontrolled by Tbilisi. ...cont'd

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GE26Ag01.html