Since March 17 over thirty Serbs were killed in Kosovo by rioting Albanians, hundreds were wounded, and thousands expelled from their homes. In many cases their homes were set on fire, their livestock killed, and their property looted. Two-dozen Christian churches and monasteries were also gutted or dynamited, thus nearly completing the work started in the immediate aftermath of NATO’s occupation in 1999 when over a hundred shrines were destroyed.

"Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo," an official of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK) says, "a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background." Things must be out of control if even UN administrators and NATO officers, who usually deny or minimize Albanian crimes, now admit that we are witnessing a coordinated, premeditated campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The campaign has a simple objective: to expel the remaining Serbs from the province, in addition to a quarter of a million already expelled since the end of the war five years ago. It was no longer possible for the "international community" to remain in denial because its own personnel have been attacked by Albanian mobs forcing their way through UNMIK checkpoints into enclaves inhabited by the few remaining Serbs.

As Christian churches burn in the heart of Europe, as Christians are being martyred by their Muslim neighbors for the mere fact of being what they are, it is time to re-visit the history of the Kosovo conflict. Western media consumers may be forgiven for thinking that the history of that conflict starts in 1989, when the Serbs supposedly abolished the autonomy of that hitherto happy and harmonious multicultural province. This is not true, and a truthful account of the problem’s background is needed for an informed debate, lest the claims of the Albanian lobbies succeed yet again in imposing a Balkan agenda in Washington that is as offensive to decency as it is inimical to American interests.

Though few English and even fewer American history books tell us much about her, in the 300 years which lie between the Norman conquest of England and the death of Edward III, Serbia was one of the strongest and most culturally and economically advanced states in Europe. The Serbian kingdom and its autocephalous church provided the framework for the flowering of an authentically national culture and arts inspired by the Byzantine legacy. It has given Europe some of the most notable examples of medieval architecture and painting, as evidenced in the monasteries of Gracanica, Decani, Studenica, Zica, Mileseva, Sopocani, and many others.

(The church of Bogorodica Ljeviska in Prizren was turned by Ottomans into a mosque and a minaret was added on the top of the entrance tower)

Serbia’s physical and spiritual heart was in Kosovo, a bucolic valley of fertile fields and vineyards surrounded by misty hills. A mere 4,200 square miles in size (with an additional 2,000 square miles of adjacent Metohija), this cradle of the Serbian nation was inhabited, since the early medieval times, by a homogenous Serbian population. The old toponims, names of mountains, rivers, and most towns and villages are all of Slav origin. The very name of the region—Kosovo and Metohija—is derived from the Serbian word kos ("the field of the blackbird") and metoh ("church estate").

Kosovo has been a battlefield dozens of times. Various nations—Byzantines, Bulgars, Serbs, Magyars, Austrians, Albanians, Turks—and various faiths, Christian, Bogomil, Muslim, and more recently Marxist, have fought there at different times; but of all Kosovo battles the one that stands out happened on Vidovdan (St. Vitus’ Day), June 28, 1389. The Turks had already been on the European continent for some time, seemingly unstoppable and intoxicated by easy victories over the rival and disunited infidels. The Serbs, led by Prince Lazar, tried to stop them and perished; that much is certain. The lore has it that before going into battle Lazar made the famous statement that generations of Serbs have treasured and which is the essence of the Gospel message: "The Earthly Kingdom is short-lived, but the Heavenly One is forever." His mutilated body, and Kosovo itself, became a symbol of steadfast courage and Christian sacrifice, much as the Alamo was for the Americans once.

UNDER OTTOMAN RULE

The battle of Kosovo was one of the most decisive events in the whole history of South Eastern Europe. It meant not merely the fall of the medieval Serbian empire and the conquest of the whole Balkan Peninsula by a barbarous Asiatic invader, but also an important stepping stone in the struggle of Islam against Christianity. From 1459 to 1804 Serbia ceased to exist as a state and a self-governing nation. In all those years the Serbs have celebrated the great battle, not only as a day of mourning but as an event to be remembered and avenged.

(Serbs pray over the head of a Serb killed by Muslim Albanians, near Pec, end of 19th c)

The Balkan peninsula became a two-realm society, Muslim and Christian, one privileged and the other discriminated against. It was up to each individual to decide whether he wanted to live and die as an exploited non-person, or make a compromise with his conscience, embrace Islam, and lead a more favored existence. Islamization was swift among the Albanians, who lived in the hills to the south of Kosovo and who did not have an autocephalous Church. Islamization produced a new stratification of the society under Ottoman rule, and a new power balance among national groups. The balance was shifting, and as far as the Albanians and Serbs were concerned; it was shifting drastically in favor of the Albanians, to the detriment of good relations between them. The emergence of a significant number of Islamized Albanians holding high posts at the Porte was reflected in Kosovo and Metohija. Albanians started appearing, at first as officials and tax collectors in local administration, acting as the pillar of Ottoman authority. Being divided at first by language and culture, and subsequently by religion, Serbs and Albanians gradually became members of two fundamentally opposed social and political groups.

As warriors, fascinated by swords and guns, used to discipline and obeying when ruled by a strong hand, many Albanians saw Islam as an opportunity that they could not let pass. The latent Serbian-Albanian conflict came into the open during the Holy League’s war against the Ottoman Empire (1683-1690). Many Serbs joined the Habsburg troops. The Albanians reacted in accordance with their new Islamic identity. Following the Habsburgs’ defeat a considerable number of local Serbs, fearing Muslim vengeance and reprisals, left Kosovo led by their Patriarch. On their way they were joined by many people from other parts of southern Serbia and moved to the neighboring Habsburg Empire, today’s Vojvodina. Two generations later yet another Austro-Ottoman war provoked further Serb migrations (1739), led by another Patriarch.

Fertile farmlands thus abandoned by the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija were gradually settled by the neighboring Muslim Albanian nomads. This settlement proceeded at a slow pace at first, as the number of Serbs who had stayed put was still considerable. The pattern of Albanian settlement developed in uneven waves, but typically, upon the seizure of a plot of Serb-owned land, fellow tribesmen were brought in from the mountains to protect the acquisition and to help expand the space needed for the herds. Migrant herdsmen (Albanians) were in constant conflict with the settled farmers (Serbs). This pattern of social conflict was enhanced by the religious dimension. As a Muslim, an Albanian herdsman could persecute and rob a Christian Serb with complete impunity. To the former Islam was a means for social promotion, but his ethnic identity, derived from the common tribal and patriarchal tradition, engendered far stronger loyalties and collective identities. It was only by the mid-1800s, however, that the Albanians achieved numerical parity with the Serbs in the province. By that time the Serbs’ work of national liberation was in full swing. By the end of the century the Albanians realized that the Ottoman Empire could no longer offer them protection and advancement.

(photo: murder of Fr. Damaskin Boskovic in Devic by an armed Kosovo Albanian, with a traditional white cap. The attacker has a gun in his hands. The monastery was later buned to the ground to be reconstructed in 1950ies) 

As the Serbian state was growing in size and political importance in Balkan affairs, Albanian fears and animosity grew apace. In the Kingdom of Serbia (1912-1914), during the Great War (1914-1918), in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941), under the Axis occupation (1941-1945), and under Tito’s communists, those conflicts were transferred into new rivalries, this time involving a strong international component related to the changed roles. Serbian historian Dusan Batakovic has noted that uneven levels of national integration among Serbs and Albanians gave fresh impetus to the old religious tensions:

The Albanians, similarly to other belated nations (verspätete nation), when confronted with rival nationalisms, sought foreign support and advocated radical solutions. In Kosovo-Metohija and in western Macedonia, where the Serbs and the Albanians were intermingled, with the system falling apart and with the growing social stagnation, it was anarchy that reigned: there the Christians were the principal victims and the Muslims were their persecutors.

The process was supposedly justified by the "Illyrian theory" about the Albanians’ origin. According to this theory, for which no reliable scientific evidence has ever been found, the Albanians are the oldest nation in Europe created through a mixture of pre-Roman Illyrian and Pelasgian tribes. A questionable scientific thesis was turned into the mythological basis for national integration, which—in the fullness of time—became the main pillar of the Albanians’ modern national identity and the basis for their territorial aspirations. Those aspirations needed an external source of support, however. With Turkey’s decline it was initially offered in Hapsburg Vienna, but Austria’s defeat in 1918 and the establishment of the Yugoslav state meant that Mussolini provided the only hope. The dream of a Great Albania became a reality with the fall of Yugoslavia in 1941, albeit under Italian tutelage. An immediate consequence of the Axis occupation was the expulsion of some 100,000 Serbs from Kosovo. It is estimated that by 1944 around ten thousand Serbs had been murdered by various Albanian militias. Their homes and lands were taken over by fresh settlers from Albania. In 1943-44 thousands of young Albanians enthusiastically enlisted in the SS Skenderbey division and embarked on a new wave of violence against the remaining Serbian civilian population.

TITOIST EXPERIMENT

In the aftermath of the war the communist regime attempted to sweep the bloody legacy of World War II under the carpet. Expelled Serbs were prevented from returning and for the first time the Albanians achieved simple numerical majority. Tito’s federalism granted the Albanian-dominated Party nomenklatura in Kosovo the status of a de facto republic. This "federalism" was but a misnomer for his game of divide et impera, in which the salient objective was to carve up the Serbs—40 percent of the population—into as many different units as possible. This created a cauldron that depended on Tito himself as the ultimate arbiter. The communist experiment in Kosovo created a permanent mechanism of keeping the old passions and animosities on the slow burner, and thus providing the ruling clique with legitimacy. When the clique disintegrated, in the absence of the dictator who died in 1980, the threat turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Those borders, allegedly "administrative," increasingly resembled the frontiers of covertly rival nation-states, linked only by the authority of the departed leader. Kosovo’s competencies were hardly any different from those of the federal republics. Albanian apparatchiks in Pristina ensured that the shift was reflected in demography: in 1946 the Albanians made up about 50 percent of the population of Kosovo, but by 1981 it was 77.5 percent. The corresponding percentage for Serbs had dropped to 15 percent. Thus, as the Albanian goal of an ethnically pure Kosovo almost turned into a reality, that reality became increasingly unbearable for those who could not pack up and leave.

(ruins of Devic monastery burned by Albanian Nazis SS Skenderbey division in WW2) 

By 1969 Kosovo had a supreme court and the Albanian flag. Pristina had an independent university focused on Tirana, which sent to Kosovo 240 university teachers, together with Albanian textbooks. Then came the aggressive folklore: Albanian movies, TV and radio, sports and cultural exchanges. With 8 percent of the Yugoslav population, Kosovo got 30 percent of the country’s Federal Development Fund. The Kosovo authorities sometimes used these funds to buy up land from Serbs and give it to Albanians. The Serbs resented being forced to learn Albanian and to attend schools with instruction in Albanian. They feared the escalation of Albanian expectations, primarily among the burgeoning ranks of the younger generation.

The demand for the creation of a "Republic of Kosovo"—with the right to secession—was advanced in 1981, only a year after Tito’s death. The attempt to hush up the Albanian question, together with visible attempts to minimize the problem of the forced emigration of the Kosovo Serbs, resulted in the deep frustration of the whole Serbian nation. That frustration was skillfully used by Slobodan Milosevic. In 1987 he uttered the famous phrase to the Kosovo Serbs—"No one will beat you again"—but his aim in the late 1980s was to renew the Party by using patriotic slogans, not to revive the nation. This was the opposite to the rest of Eastern Europe, where communism’s demise by means of genuine nationalism was under way.

Many Albanians responded to Milosevic’s rise with strikes and demonstrations. Their actions strengthened Milosevic’s position. The results were the limitation of autonomy, unrest and police repression in Kosovo (1989). Serbia, thanks to Milosevic, acquired the image of "the last bastion of communism in Europe" while the Albanian separatist movement obtained the halo of Western-approved victimhood in its supposed search for "democracy and human rights." Democracy in Serbia was blocked by the unresolved national question.

The secessionist movement of the Albanians in Kosovo, derived from the logic of the Titoist order and based on ethnic intolerance, led to the homogenization of the Serbs in Yugoslavia. It created Milosevic, the neo-communist quasi-nationalist, and resulted in the homogenization of the other Yugoslav nations. Due to the inability of the communist and post-communist leaderships to place democratic principles above narrow national interests, ethnic mobilization directly led to the civil war.

THE MASSACRE THAT NEVER WAS

In 1989 Kosovo’s autonomy was not revoked but was downgraded—at the federal level—to what it had been before 1974. Most Albanians refused to accept Belgrade’s reassertion of authority, however, and many were fired from their state jobs. The resulting standoff—of boycott and the creation of alternative institutions on the Albanian side and of increasingly severe police repression on the Serbian side—continued for most of the 1990s.

While after 1989 there was a tense stand off in Kosovo, there was no warfare. That changed in early 1998, as the result of the KLA’s deliberate strategy to turn a political confrontation into a military confrontation. Attacks directed against Serbian police and officials, Serb civilians and insufficiently militant Albanians were calculated to trigger a response by Serbian forces. The growing cycle of violence led to the possibility of NATO military involvement. NATO intervention was the KLA’s real goal rather than any realistic expectation of victory on the battlefield. Some atrocities were committed in Kosovo, by Milosevic’s forces as well as the KLA, in the months before the bombing. The extent and specifics of the reports that the media often treated as fact were open to question, however. Then the "massacre" at Racak happened.

Let it be recalled that in February 1994 the Bosnian Muslim government staged the infamous "marketplace massacre" in Sarajevo, killing scores of its own people. Ballistic, forensic and circumstantial evidence notwithstanding, the U.S. government promptly blamed the Serbs for the carnage. The U.N. on the ground knew the score, so did everybody else involved in this sordid matter, but Washington used Markale as a pretext for the first bombing raids against the Serbs.

(desecrated Serb tombs in 1980ies, Kosovo)

The prelude to NATO’s war against Serbia in 1999 was yet another stage-managed "massacre," in January 1999. This time the venue was the village of Racak, in Kosovo. The principals were all Albanians: the victims, the stage-managers, and the ultimate political benefactors. The media went into a fit of rage over the discovery of 45 dead Albanians there, allegedly "civilians butchered in cold blood" by the Serbs. The head of the OSCE observer mission in Kosovo, American "diplomat" William Walker, immediately asserted that the Serbs were to blame. Belgrade’s claim that the bodies were in fact KLA guerillas fallen during the fight in the surrounding areas was scornfully rejected as "Serbian propaganda." But according to Le Monde (January 21, 1999), Walker and the Albanians "gave the version which does not give answer to many questions":

"Isn’t the massacre of Racak too perfect? . . . How the Serb police could gather a group of men and quietly take them to the place of execution, while they were constantly under the KLA fire? How the ditch at the edge of Racak could escape the glance of the inhabitants, familiar of the places, present before the night? And how come that the observers present for more than two hours in this very small village failed to see the ditch too? Why are there only a few cartridge cases around the corpses, and little blood in this sunken lane where 23 people were supposedly shot several times in the head? Weren’t the bodies of the Albanians killed in the combat by the Serb police, and joined together in the ditch to create a scene of horror, in order to initiate the predictable wrath of the public opinion?"

Part of the answer was provided in 2003 by retired Swedish Brigadier General Bo Pellnas, who was head of U.N. Military Observers (UNMO's) in Croatia, and—later—in charge of a monitoring mission to Yugoslavia sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He claims that the U.S. "fabricated evidence" against the Serbs both in Bosnia and Kosovo. Writing in the leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet, he warned that his experiences in the Balkans make him weary of American claims: "if the US were to present evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the countries of the Western world would have no way to substantiate these reports due to the technical superiority of the US."

The conclusive answer was given by Finnish pathologist Helena Ranta who headed the forensic team the European Union sent to Racak in January 1999 to investigate the alleged massacre. In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung she criticized The Hague Tribunal for not following up the evidence that there was heavy fighting between Serb soldiers and the Albanian fighters during the night of January 15-16, 1999 in the Racak-region. She said she knew that at that time a number of KLA fighters were killed in Racak as well as several Serb soldiers; it would be appropriate "to ask the tribunal why they are not interested in that number." Ranta demanded that the tribunal looks at the pictures taken several hours prior to the arrival of OCSE-observers. They show that at least one of the bodies was moved afterwards. She concluded that several governments "were interested in a version of Racak that blamed only the Serb side, but I could not provide that version."

SET-UP AT RAMBOUILLET

(nun Hilaria in the 70ies, defended her monastery from Albanian looters by her hunting rifle. She'd shoot in the air to frighten the attackers. upper photo Albanians blinded her ox. Kosovo Albanian police at that time would do nothing to protect Serbs from everyday violence)

The meaning of The Massacre That Never Was of January 1999 became clear at Rambouillet a month later. It was a necessary massacre, a prelude to a premeditated war. The primary justification for NATO attack against Yugoslavia was not the "human tragedy" but its refusal to sign the Kosovo peace agreement put forward by the United States and some of its allies at Rambouillet. President Clinton claimed at that time that the Albanians "chose peace" by eventually signing the agreement, even though "they did not get everything they wanted." The Serbs, he claimed, refused to negotiate, even though the deal left Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia.

Clinton was taking his customary liberties with the truth. Few journalists and fewer commentators had taken the time to look at the actual agreement. The "peace plan" actually gave the Albanians what they wanted: de facto independence immediately, with guaranteed de jure independence in three years. For the Serbs, signing the Rambouillet agreement would actually be signing away all Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo immediately. It was not even a "take it or leave it" proposition, as Secretary of State Albright said back in February 1999, but "sign it or get bombed." There were, in fact, no negotiations at all, save those between the U.S. and the KLA. No sovereign, independent and self-respecting state could have signed the Rambouillet agreement, which—inter alia—postulated that:

• "Kosovo will have a president, prime minister and government, an assembly, its own Supreme Court, constitutional court and other courts and prosecutors."
• "Kosovo will have the authority to make laws not subject to revision by Serbia or Yugoslavia, including levying taxes, instituting programs of economic, scientific, technological, regional and social development, conducting foreign relations in the same manner as a Republic."
• "Yugoslav army forces will withdraw completely from Kosovo, except for a limited border guard force (active only within a 5 km border zone)"; the same was to apply to all Serb police forces.
• "The parties invite NATO to deploy a military force (KFOR), which will be authorized to use necessary force to ensure compliance with the accords."
• "The international community will ensure that these provisions are carried out through a Civilian Implementation Mission appointed by NATO."
• The Chief of the CIM may issue "binding directives to the Parties on all matters he sees fit, including appointing and removing officials and curtailing institutions."
• "Three years after the implementation of the Accords, an international meeting will be convened to determine a final settlement for Kosovo on the basis of the will of the people."

So much for the political stipulations of the "peace" deal. But the Rambouillet accord had a remarkable military annex, too. That annex—besides turning Kosovo into a NATO colony in every respect—would have subjected all of Yugoslavia to its military occupation. It revived the hated colonial concept of "extraterritoriality," under which the colonizers were immune from the courts of the colonized country, even if they committed rape or murder. Remarkably,

• "NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations."

• "NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails, and ports without payment of fees, duties, dues, tolls, or charges occasioned by mere use."
• Yugoslavia shall "grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO. This shall include the right to utilize such means and services as required to assure full ability to communicate and the right to use all of the electromagnetic spectrum for this purpose, free of cost."
• "NATO may . . . make improvements or modifications to certain infrastructure in the FRY, such as roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems."
• "NATO shall be immune from all legal process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal."
• "NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY. NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties, jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY."

The arrival of NATO troops in Kosovo would have been, by itself, a violation of Serbia’s sovereignty. But this proposal demanded unfettered NATO access to any and all parts of the FRY, with all costs to be borne by it! This violated Yugoslavia’s sovereignty in so provocative a manner that it could not have been accidental. It is not difficult to imagine a working group in Washington charged with the task of thinking up the most intrusive and insulting clauses possible to insert. Clearly, U.S. policymakers never intended the Serbs to sign this document. It was meant to be unacceptable. The "Rambouillet Peace Accord" was, in truth, a declaration of war disguised as a peace agreement. Belgrade was ready to grant Albanians a wide autonomy, including religious, education and health care systems, and local government operations. But their negotiating efforts were summarily dismissed and they were told they had only two choices: sign the agreement as written, or face NATO bombing.

The war could have been easily avoided. As Le Monde Diplomatique pointed out ("Behind the Rambouillet talks," May 1999), the Serbs had accepted its main provisions. The only outstanding issue was the nature of the force to be deployed in Kosovo. It was only when the United States unilaterally introduced the provision of a three-year transition to Kosovo’s independence, and added the amazing military protocol, that the Serbs had no choice but to refuse.

THE KLA: FROM "TERRORISTS" TO "PARTNERS"

(Kosovo Liberation Army and its terrorist groups destroyed in the NATO and UN presence since June 1999 112 Serbian Orthodox Chruches, many of them dated from the Middle Ages, photo. Sv. Uros Monastery near Urosevac)

On 19 March 1999 the "Kosovo Liberation Army," previously dismissed as terrorists, signed the "accords." The Serbs had been nicely stitched up. By that time, after the U.S. Administration’s decision to bomb had turned Kosovo from a crisis into a disaster, Washington no longer had a "Kosovo policy"—it only had a KLA policy. That group’s true colors have become all too apparent when it unleashed an orgy of anti-Serbs violence in the aftermath of the Yugoslav Army’s withdrawal in June 1999. The U.S. has promoted, as the legitimate representative of the Kosovo Albanians, a terrorist group steeped in criminal activities—particularly the drug trade—and with strong links with radical Islamic groups.

The KLA made its military debut in February 1996 with the bombing of several camps housing Serbian refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia. The group expanded its operations through 1996 but was given a major boost with the collapse of neighboring Albania into chaos in 1997. This facilitated a huge influx of arms into Kosovo from the areas of northern Albania no longer controlled from Tirana. From its inception, the KLA has targeted not only Serbian security forces but Serbian and Albanian civilians as well. In view of such tactics, the Clinton Administration’s then-special envoy for Kosovo, Robert Gelbard, had little difficulty in condemning the KLA (also known by its Albanian initials, UCK) in terms comparable to those he used for Serbian police repression: "The violence we have seen growing is incredibly dangerous," Gelbard said. He condemned the actions of [the] Kosovo Liberation Army . . . "We condemn very strongly terrorist actions in Kosovo. The UCK is, without any questions, a terrorist group," Gelbard said.

In the ensuing year the KLA’s strategy was to escalate the level of violence to the point where outside intervention would become inevitable, and it worked. Given the military imbalance it is clear that the KLA had always expected to achieve its goals less because of its own prospects for military success than because of a hoped-for outside intervention. As one KLA activists openly put it, "We hope that NATO will intervene, like it did in Bosnia, to save us" (New York Times, June 22, 1998). At the time of Rambouillet, cultivating the goodwill of the KLA became an imperative for the U.S. Administration.

In the months leading up to the beginning of the Kosovo war the KLA escalated its guerilla campaign. It constantly urged NATO to bomb the Serbs—even if this meant that hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians might perish or be driven from their homes once the war began in earnest. When KLA officials were warned that NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia would trigger retaliatory violence by Serb forces in Kosovo, one KLA leader replied: "We don’t care. Four hundred thousand Kosovars can be sacrificed for our independence."

By the time the NATO air strikes began, the Clinton administration’s partnership with the KLA was unambiguous. Its effusive embrace of an organization that only a year ago its own officials labeled as "terrorist" was startling. Among the most troubling aspects of the Clinton Administration’s effective alliance with the KLA are numerous reports from reputable unofficial sources that the KLA is closely involved with the extensive Albanian crime network throughout Europe and into North America. A major portion of the KLA finances were derived from that network, mainly proceeds from drug trafficking. In addition, it was connected to terrorist organizations motivated by the ideology of radical Islam, including assets of Iran and of the Osama bin Laden.

THE "KOSOVO GENOCIDE": A MODEL FOR IRAQ’S "WMD"?

"The Kosovo Genocide" is now known to be one of the most outrageous lies of the 1990's, on par with the "Bosnian Genocide" and "I did not have sex with that woman." It was debunked even before the year of the war, 1999, was out; the details remain unknown in the United States, however.

The setup at Rambouillet notwithstanding, the U.S. media-transmitted justification for Clinton’s war against the Serbs was the alleged genocide against the Albanians. The administration subsequently went out of its way to conceal the fact that to proof of any "genocide" was found in situ in the aftermath of NATO’s intervention and occupation. Some Europeans let the cat out of the bag and questioned the rationale of Clinton’s policy as early as the second half of 1999 (unlike the Gray Lady and your local Gannett subsidiary who’d never do any such thing). In September, only three months after NATO occupied Kosovo, El Pais of Madrid published a report on the findings of the Spanish police and forensic experts who had just returned from the southern Serbian province. The first line of Pablo Ordaz’s article sent a clear message: "Crimes of war—yes; genocide—no."

Even next door in Canada mainstream outlets were allowed to voice doubt about the Clintonian version of events. For instance the Toronto Star (November 3, 1999) carried Richard Gwyn’s commentary "No genocide, no justification for war on Kosovo" in which the author comprehensively debunked repeated U.S./NATO claims, made during the bombing, that the genocidal Serb forces had dumped some of the countless thousands of slaughtered Albanian civilians into the Trepca mine by trucks under the cover of darkness.

That mine story was very big for a while: "Trepca—the name will live alongside those of Belsen, Auschwitz and Treblinka," verily chortled the Daily Mirror of London. Giving it an aura of authenticity the New York Times claimed at the time that the residents on the edge of the mine reported an "unusual, pungent bittersweet smell, which they assumed to be burning bodies." The corpses were supposedly thrown down the shafts, or were disposed of entirely in the mine’s huge vats of hydrochloric acid. On October 12 1999, however, Kelly Moore—a spokeswoman for The Hague War Crimes Tribunal—was compelled to admit that the investigators had found "absolutely nothing" at Trepca. There were not 1,000 bodies down the mine shafts, there were none at all; and the vats had never been used to dispose of human remains.

The "humanitarian" justification for the Kosovo war—the contention that this is about returning Albanian refugees to their homes—was rank hypocrisy. The Clinton administration was not bothered by ethnic cleansing: It had not only turned a blind eye to the cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina, it had actively abetted the Croatian Army.

THE CLINTON DOCTRINE

In his article "A Just and Necessary War" (NYT, May 23, 1999) President Clinton elaborated on his "vision," arguing that, had it not bombed Serbia, NATO itself would have been discredited for failing to defend the very values that give it meaning. The war was in fact unjust and unnecessary, but the significance of Clinton’s statement is that the international system in existence ever since the Peace of Westphalia (1648) was openly declared null and void. It was an imperfect and often violated system, but nevertheless it provided the basis for international discourse from which only the assorted red and black totalitarians have openly, brazenly deviated. Since 24 March 1999, this was replaced by the Clinton Doctrine, a carbon copy of the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty that supposedly justified the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Like his Soviet predecessor, Clinton used an abstract and ideologically loaded notion—that of universal "human rights"—as the pretext to violate the law and tradition. The Clinton Doctrine was rooted in the bipartisan hubris in Washington. Legal formalities are considered passé by the neocons and Clintonites alike, and moral imperatives—never sacrosanct in international affairs—are replaced by a cynical exercise in situational morality, dependent on an actor’s position within the superpower’s value system.

Humanitarian argument has been invoked. But what about Kashmir, Sudan, Uganda, Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone, Chiapas, Sri Lanka, Algeria . . . ? Properly videotaped and Amanpourized, each would be good for a dozen "Kosovos." Compared to the killing fields of the Third World, Kosovo before the bombing was a brutal but unremarkable low-intensity campaign, uglier than Northern Ireland ten years ago, but much less so than Kurdistan. A total of 2,108 fatalities on all sides in Kosovo until June 1999, in a province of over two million, favorably compares to the annual homicide tally of 450 in Washington, D.C., (population 600,000). Bearing in mind the many brutalities, aggressions and "ethnic cleansing" ignored by the Western alliance—or even condoned, notably in Croatia, or in eastern Turkey—it is clear that "Kosovo" is not about universal principles.

What was it about, then? "Regional stability", we were told next: if we didn’t stop it, it would engulf Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, the whole of the Balkans in fact, with much of Europe to follow. But the "cure"—bombing Serbia into effectively detaching Kosovo to the KLA under NATO’s benevolent eye—has engendered new hotbeds of instability. Its first victim was the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.

The demand for Serbia’s submission that had preceded the war was an act of self-betrayal by the West, incompatible with the logic of a system of sovereign states which for the past 350 years has formed the basis of Western politics and the rule of law. The problem is that the notion of "human rights" can never provide a basis for either the rule of law or morality. "Universal human rights," detached from any rootedness in time or place, will be open to the latest whim of outrage or the latest fad for victimhood.

PRO-ALBANIAN LOBBYISTS PRESSURE BUSH

By 2003 it looked as if the independence of Kosovo was a done deal, that the combined pressure of Albanian-paid advocates and their media cohorts would yield the ultimate divident. In Washington a dozen or so KLA apologists and lobbyists parading as think-tanks experts started simultaneously clamoring for Kosovo’s independence, making identical or similar statements in a ten-day period.

The pursuit of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia provided "the only prospect for long-term stability in the Balkans" and should not be postponed, claimed Paul Williams and Janusz Bugajski in a report ("Achieving a Final Status Settlement for Kosovo") published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Bugajski, until not too long previously a lavishly-paid consultant for Milo Djukanovic’s kleptocratic little fiefdom in Montenegro, applied the same "analysis" vis-à-vis Kosovo: "the only way" to achieve peace and stability was to cut another slice from the depleted Serbian salami. Until and unless this is done, Bugajski and his somewhat obscure co-author claimed, the ethnic tensions in the region and political and economic stagnation in the Balkans would continue. The authors argued that a "freely elected" government in Kosovo would reduce the potential for social unrest and promote the rule of law and pluralism.

Only days earlier, on May 21, the House of Representatives Committee on International Relations held an open hearing ("The Future of Kosovo") and heard Daniel Serwer of the United States Institute of Peace declare that the "specific problems" of Kosovo included "failure of the Serbs to participate consistently in the Kosovo Assembly and continuing Serb control in the north." Almost simultaneously James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation and a key advocate of the war against Serbia in the Clinton administration, joined the chorus by saying that the unresolved nature of Kosovo’s status as potential independent state continues to be an obstacle to reconciliation between the ethnic groups in the region: "I always believed that the only result that would satisfy a majority of the people is some form of independence." Charles A. Kupchan, director of European studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, bewailed that "the Balkans as a whole have slipped off the radar screen" and insisted that the formal separation of Kosovo from Serbia would be a welcome opportunity to put the region back on the map.

What some of these people have in common is that they are supported, directly or indirectly, by the billionaire self-styled "philantropist" and speculator-extraordinaire George Soros, who even went to Belgrade (May 27, 2003) to tell the Serbs that it was in their interest to support the independence of Kosovo. He said that Serbia could be put into the "fast-lane to European integration" in exchange for Kosovo’s independence. Only days before his trip Soros wrote an article in London’s Financial Times (May 22) saying that Kosovo’s independence would be the logical end of Yugoslavia’s disintegration and that Macedonia in particular should be given some assurance that Kosovo’s independence does not herald any further fracturing of Balkan states.

In Washington the consensus among political analysts, including those who oppose any change in Kosovo’s status, was that these pro-Albanian lobbyists intended to package Kosovo’s independence in "realpolitical" terms in their pitch to the Bush administration: that doing a big favor to a Muslim community—the Albanians—could be subsequently presented as a counterweight to the post-Iraq slump of America’s standing in the Muslim world.
The precedent already existed in Donald Rumsfeld’s pointed invocation, during the war in Afghanistan, of America’s intereventions in Bosnia and Kosovo as the conclusive proof that the United States is not a priori anti-Muslim. The KLA’s Washingtonian friends claimed that strip-mining Serbia cost nothing—the heirs of Zoran Djindjic in Belgrade would do exactly as told, whatever was demanded of them—and may yield rich rewards in giving America leverage in appeasing enraged Muslim opinion around the world.

WHY NOT INDEPENDENCE FOR KOSOVO?

If Kosovo is granted independence, will the same model not be demanded by the Hungarians in Rumania (more numerous than Kosovo’s Albanians) and in southern Slovakia? What will stop the Russians in the Ukraine (Crimea), in Moldova, in Estonia, and in northern Kazakhstan from following suit? What about the Turks in Thrace, and the chronically unstable and unviable Dayton-Bosnia, to mention but some of the European dominos that may fall in the wake of Kosovo’s evolution under NATO? And finally, will the same apply when the Mexicans in southern California, New Mexico, Arizona, or Texas eventually outnumber their Anglo neighbors and start demanding bilingual statehood, leading to reunification with Mexico? Are Russia and China to threaten the United States with bombing if Washington does not comply?

The Bush administration must not allow the spirit of Clinton to prevail and Kosovo to become independent for seven main reasons:

1. It will reward mass ethnic cleansing and murder, carried out on a massive scale by the Albanians ever since the beginning of the NATO occupation four years ago;

2. It will condone the principle that an ethnic minority’s plurality in a given locale or region provides grounds for that region’s secession—a precedent that may yet come to haunt America in the increasingly mono-ethnic and mono-lingual Southwest;

3. It will terminally alienate the Serbs, whose cooperation is crucial to making the Balkans finally stable and peaceful, at a time when American energy, money and manpower is more pressingly needed further east;

4. It will create an inherently unstable polity that will be an even safer haven for assorted criminals and Islamic extremists than it is today;

5. It will reignite the war in neighboring Macedonia, where the current semblance of peace is absolutely predicated upon the continuing status quo in Kosovo;

6. It will contribute to further deterioration of relations with the Europeans and Russians with no tangible benefit to the United States;

7. It will commit itself to continuing the Clinton-Gore "nation-building project" in Kosovo that culminated with the bombing of Serbia in 1999—an illogical, immoral, and utterly untenable rearrangement of the Balkan architecture which it would be in America’s interest to reverse, not ratify and make semi-permanent.

This time the "realists" have ample arguments against Cilnton’s model of the new Balkan order that seeks to satisfy the aspirations of all ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia—except the Serbs. Whatever is imposed on them in this moment of weakness, the Serbs shall have no stake in the ensuing order of things. Sooner or later they will fight to recover Kosovo, whatever its "status." The Carthaginian peace imposed on them today will cause chronic regional imbalance and strife for decades to come. That is not in America’s interest, and therefore should not be condoned.