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IV. Balkan Archives
II. Selected Reports & Commentaries (March - October, 1999)
I. Audio Archives [During NATO's bombing of the Balkans (March 24 - June ),Amy Goodman of Pacifica's Democracy NOW! brought daily coverage and in-depth commentary. These have been archived on Pacifica's website and are available in real audio at 14.4]:
March 24, 1999: International Implications of Kosovo: with Lepa Mladjenovic (Women in Black), Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) & Jasminka Yudoviki (author).
March 29, 1999: Kosovo- with Tony Benn (labor member of Brit. Parliament) and Andreas Zumach (U.N. correspondent for German media in Geneva).
March 30, 1999: Kosovo- with Rolf Paasch (correspondent for the German newspaper Frankfurt Rundschau), Andreas Zumach (U. N. correspondent for German media in Geneva), Blerim Zhuta (from the Albanian American Islamic Center in Waterbury, Connecticut), Dr. Michael Pravica (Vice-President of the Serbian-American Alliance of New York.).
March 31, 1999: Kosovo - Alternatives to War- with Doug Hostetter (Internat'l Sec. for the Fellowship of Reconciliation).
April 2, 1999: U.S. Oil Interests in the Caspian Sea- with Jeremy Scahill (Pacifica correspondent) & Michael Lelyveld (chief correspondent of the daily Journal of Commerce).
April 5, 1999: Noam Chomsky Discusses Kosovo
April 6, 1999: Voices from Belgrade & Kosovo -with Yelena Zhaeganovic (student of medicine from Belgrade).
April 7, 1999: Listeners Talk About Kosovo
April 8, 1999: Kosovo Refugee Situation - with Rolf Past (correspondent for the German newspaper "Frankfurt Rundschau").
April 9, 1999: Ramsey Clark on Yugoslavia
April 12, 1999: Noam Chomsky & Edward Said on Kosovo (program also includes a panel discussion on the bombing from the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York).
April 13, 1999: Robert Fisk on Kosovo (British journalist of the Independent discusses the bombing).
April 19, 1999: The Environmental Impact of the Bombings in Yugoslavia - with Robert Hayden (Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University ofPittsburgh).
April 21, 1999: On Kosovo Media Coverage - with Norman Solomon (media critic & analyst).
April 22, 1999: Hypocrisy on Kosovo - with Robert Fisk (journalist of the British paper, The Independent) & John Pilger (journalist, documentary filmmaker and author).
April 23, 1999: Call on NATO to Eliminate its Nuclear Weapons Arsenal - with Gordon Clark (Executive Director of Peace Action) & Julianne Smith (Senior Analyst at British-American Security Information).
April 26, 1999: History of NATO and the Pacifist Movement - with David Cortright (President of the Fourth Freedom Forum).
April 27, 1999: Congress Votes Under the War Powers Act - with Michael Ratner (atty. with Center for Constitutional Rights).
April 28, 1999: John Pilger on Yugoslavia (John Pilger, award-winning writer, journalist and filmmaker. Speaking with Amy Goodman from London).
May 3, 1999: U.S. - Russia Talks on Yugoslavia - with Robert Hayden (Dir. of Russian and East European Studies at the Univ. of Pittsburgh) & Michael Beer (Dir. of the Non-Violence Institute).
May 4, 1999: Keeping the United Nations Out of Yugoslavia- with Thalif Deen (U.N. Bureau Chief for Inter-Press Service).
May 5, 1999: Lawsuit Against Tony Blair for NATO Bombings- with Glenn Rangwala (from the Movement for the Advancement of International Criminal Law) & Media Coverage of the Rambouillet Accord --with Sam Husseini (from the Institute for Public Accuracy).
May 6, 1999: A Look into the Weapons Used in Yugoslavia- with John Pike (Defense Analyst for the Federation of American Scientists).
May 7, 1999: Depleted Uranium is Being Used in Yugoslavia - with Scott Peterson (Middle East Correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor).
May 11, 1999: Theories Behind the NATO Bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade - with Michael Levine (former DEA agent & commentator for WBAI in New York).
May 12, 1999: Ramsey Clark Speaks on Yugoslavia
May 14, 1999: Edward Said & Noam Chomsky Speak on NATO Bombings of Yugoslavia
May 17, 1999: NATO's Use of Cluster-Bombs in Yugoslavia- with Yost Hilterman (Dir.of the arms division of Human Rights Watch) & William Arkin (consultant with Human Rights Watch).
May 18, 1999: Jeremy Scahill Reports from Belgrade--(Jeremy Scahill is a Pacifica correspondent).
May 19, 1999: Jeremy Scahill Continues Report from Belgrade--(Jeremy Scahill is a Pacifica correspondent).
May 20, 1999: NATO Bombs a Hospital in Belgrade-- with Pacifica reporter, Jeremy Scahill.
May 21, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Budapest.
May 24, 1999: War & Peace Report-- with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade & Vojislav Stojkovic (student at the University of Belgrade).
May 25, 1999: War & Peace Report -- with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade.
May 26, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade & Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights).
May 27, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade & Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).
May 28, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade.
June 1, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade & Laura Flanders (reporting on Serb military deserters in Hungary).
June 2, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade & a discussion about the Kosovo Liberation Army (with Shinasi Rama, Spokesperson for the Provisional Government of Kosova and the K.L.A., George Kenney, former State Department official, Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa & Tim Judah, a journalist based in London).
June 3, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade.
June 4, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade.
June 7, 1999: War & Peace Report- NATO Vows to Intensify Air Campaign--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade.
June 8, 1999: War & Peace Report- NATO Intensifies Air Campaign--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade & Chuck Sudetic (New York Times' correspondent in the Balkans from 1990-1995).
June 10, 1999: War & Peace Report- Serbs Withdraw from Kosovo, NATO Troops Set to Enter--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade, Robert Hayden (Dir. of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the Univ. of Pittsburgh) & Fred Weir (Moscow correspondent for The Canadian Press).
June 11, 1999: War & Peace Report: Who Is The K.L.A.?--with Chris Hedges ( Currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and 1995-1998 Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times).
June 14, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Jeremy Scahill in Belgrade.
June 15, 1999: War & Peace Report From Kosovo--with Jeremy Scahill in Pristina, Kosovo.
June 16, 1999: War & Peace Report From Kosovo--with Jeremy Scahill in Pristina, Kosovo.
June 17, 1999: War & Peace Report From Kosovo--with Jeremy Scahill in Pristina, Kosovo & Jennifer Leaning (Professor of Medicine at Harvard School of Public Health and member of Physicians for Human Rights).
June 21, 1999: War & Peace Report--with Pat Stack (from the Socialist Workers' Party, Great Britain).
June 22, 1999: War & Peace Report- Kosovo & Land Mines--with Ken Rutherford (co-founder of The Land Mines Survivors Network and teaching fellow at Georgetown University).
June 29, 1999: Protest in Yugoslavia--with Janine Di Giovanni (reporter with The Times of London. Speaking from Cacak, Yugoslavia).
II. Selected News Reports & Commentaries [March - July 1999]
1. Maj.-Gen. Bozho Novak, "An Open Letter to Gen. Wesley Clark, SACEUR" (May 14, 1999)
2. David Binder, "In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict," (New York Times, Nov. 1, 1987)
3. Richard Becker, On the Rambouillet Accord, (Nettime & International Action Center)
4. Tom Burghardt, "The CIA, KLA & International Narco-Trafficking"(ANTI-FA Newsletter, April 8, 1999)
5. Michel Chossudovsky, "Kosovo 'Freedom Fighters' Financed by Organized Crime," (ANTI-FA Newsletter, April 8, 1999)
6. Jim Naureckas, "Rescued from the Memory Hole: The Forgotten Background of the Serb/Albanian Conflict" (EXTRA, May/June 1999)
7. TASS (Russia), "USA Planning to Deploy NATO Troops in Arab States," (July 6, 1999)
8. "NATO's Kosovo Campaign Touches Nerve in the Caucasus" (Centraleurope.com, July 6, 1999)
9. "Spanish Pilots of Fighter Planes Admit That NATO Attacks Civilian Targets" (c3/actual, June 17, 1999)
10. Edward S. Herman, "Kosovo and Doublespeak" (Znet]
11. Noam Chomsky, "The Kosovo Peace Accord" (Znet)
12. Chris Marsden, "Was CNN Involved in a NATO Effort to Assassinate the Serbian Information Minister?" (World Socialist Web Site via c3.hu/actual, July 8, 1999)
13. Mikhail Gorbachev, "No,no NATO," (Boston Globe, July 16, 1999)
14. Jon E. Dougherty, "Clinton Charged with War Crimes," (WorldNet Daily, July 12, 1999)
15. Don Feder, "Now it's NATO's Allies Doing the Ethnic Cleansing," (c3/actual, July 19, 1999)
16. "Washington Begins Post-Kosovo Purge," (www.stratfor.com, July 30, 1999)
17. Michel Chossudovsky, "NATO HAS INSTALLED A REIGN OF TERROR IN KOSOVO," (Tuesday, 10 August 1999)
18. Joseph Fitchett, Clinton Tilt On Kosovo Worries Europeans (International Herald Tribune, October 1, 1999)
________________________________________________
Recently Added Articles [March 25, 2001]
19. ROBERT JAMES PARSONS, UN-Backed Cover Up: DEAFENING SILENCE ON DEPLETED URANIUM (LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE/ February 2001)
From: c3/actual
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 15:10:52 +02
AN OPEN LETTER TO GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, SACEUR
From Major-General Bozho Novak, Republic Of Srpska Army (Retired)
My name is Bozho Novak. I am the former Commander-in-Chief of the Republic of Srpska Army Air Force and Air Defense in Bosnia-Herzegovina. My specialization is in air defense missile units. During the Bosnian war, I headed a team organized by Air Defense which, despite its very small size, inflicted significant losses and remained capable of fighting until peace was declared, earning the respect of NATO commanders such as General Joulwan, General Short and others.
That is my background and I believe it gives me, a military professional and a retired general, the right to address you, a military professional and a four-star general. I am certain that you possess immense knowledge and skills; if you did not, you could not have attained your rank. I am certain that during the course of your education and your professional development, you developed a personal code of ethics as a professional officer, a code of honor which distinguishes the military from all other professions. To protect his honor, integrity and respect, an officer, especially a general, will lay down his life. During times of peace, a soldier prepares himself for armed battle; during times of war, he fights against the army of his enemy.
General Clark, I ask you: What are you are doing?
For more than a month now, you have been destroying and ravaging this part of my homeland. Not a single country, political or military alliance has declared war on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Not a single United Nations organization has issued a resolution to attack the FRY. That means that the Balkans - based on your definitions and on universal legal norms - are currently at peace, not at war. That means that the forces you command are carrying out great crimes and acts of terrorism against the whole Yugoslav population. Your administration continues to emphasize that war is not being waged against Yugoslavia and against the Serbian people. They say that you are intervening to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe". Through a campaign of terror waged from the air, by striking against apartment blocks in densely populated cities, factories, heating facilities, bridges, roads and railways, civilian trains and convoys, hotels and resorts, schools, hospitals and maternity wards, oil refineries and chemical industrial complexes
YOU HAVE CREATED A HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE. YOU HAVE KILLED ANDCONTINUE TO KILL MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE. YOU ARE COMMITTING GENOCIDE OF THE YUGOSLAV PEOPLE WHICH IS COMPRISED OF MORE THAN TWENTY DISTINCT ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUPS.
The victims of the terror you are unleashing are children, women and the elderly people - the defenseless. You are destroying everything that is essential for the very existence of the population. I ask you: Did you attend the finest schools in the world in order to learn how to use the strongest military force in the world to kill children and their mothers, to prove that the ONLY thing you are capable of is the destruction of everything that noble and creative people have worked for generations to build? Honorable General, you do not need a fine education nor skills to do this: a sick, criminal mind suffices.
I am writing to you because I believe that you do not realize what you are doing. You do not realize that you are being used in the basest and most vile manner possible to promote the interests of incompetent and evil politicians whose time is quickly running out. By manipulating you, General, they have sullied the names of great military leaders such as Washington, Grant, Sherman, Bradley, Alexander, Patton, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Shwackof, Montgomery, F. D'Epére, De Gaul, Zukov and many others who are remembered and respected by the civilized world.
This evil will end. My people will survive because you simply cannot exterminate us. Our army, although it is small when compared to NATO, is inflicting losses on your troops. It is defending, and it will continue to defend, our right to live on our land. Right now, our nation has only one goal: TO DEFEND OURSELVES FROM TERRORISM AND CRIME. Through our resistance, through culture, through art, through song, through sports, through all activities which continue to show that we love life and freedom, we are proving that we belong to a developed European civilization which you are seeking to destroy.
You will not succeed in destroying us. With every passing day, the evidence against those criminals commanding and those executing this campaign of terror in the heart of Europe is growing. You must know that the evil people who command this action will be held accountable for all this.
I CALL ON YOU, GENERAL, TO RISE ABOVE THE CAMPAIGN OF TERROR AND CRIME AND TO SAY "ENOUGH!"
Let the politicians resolve political problems by political means; and humanitarian problems should be resolved through humanitarian means.
With this open letter, I call upon my professional colleagues who are generals, both active and retired, to raise their voices against the misuse of our military calling, our profession, respect, integrity and honor by politicians whose time is running out. I emphasize that we have THE RIGHT AND THE DUTY TO REFUSE TO CARRY OUT ORDERS WHICH CAUSE CRIMINAL AND EVIL ACTIONS.
Bozho Novak
* KOSOVO: IMPORTANT BACKGROUND INFORMATION *
Introduction by William Blum, BBlum6@aol.com
In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news outlets usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the Kosovo Albanians' autonomy in 1989. This was a crucial decision, one of the major reasons that the Kosovo Liberation Army was formed. It also destabilized the Yugoslavian system and contributed to the country's breakup.
Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted Kosovo's autonomy. The attached article, from the New York Times in 1987, gives important background to this decision. Although the article is easily found in the Nexis database, little to none of this information has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the Times or anywhere else.
If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would likely dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12 years ago, when Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the New York Times would not seem to have any particular interest in defending Serbs or attacking Albanians.
It should be kept in mind that some of the charges in this article may be exaggerated or politically motivated. Of course, the same is true of atrocity reports that are being carried in the New York Times and other papers today.
William Blum is the author of _Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II_, 1995, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine.
_________________________________________________________________
IN YUGOSLAVIA, RISING ETHNIC STRIFE BRINGS FEARS OF WORSE CIVIL CONFLICT
THE NEW YORK TIMES
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1
By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants. A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others. The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
VICIOUS INSULTS
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls. Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.
RADICALS' GOALS
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania. There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance. The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.
WORST STRIFE IN YEARS
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name. The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.'' Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality,as they are today. Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000. ''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.
ATTACKS ON SLAVS
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe. In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party. As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years. Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.
`LEBANONIZING' OF YUGOSLAVIA
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland. Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''
CONCERNS OVER MILITARY
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service. Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs. He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue. Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion- of the ethnic Albanian authorities.
REGION'S SLAVS LACK STRENGTH
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north. Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi. But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.
Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party. Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''
But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948. Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems. The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back intoYugoslavia's mainstream.
Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company
From: <nettime>
THE RAMBOUILLET ACCORD:
A DECLARATION OF WAR DISGUISED
AS A PEACE AGREEMENT
Chapter 4a, Article I -- "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles."
By Richard Becker, Western Regional Co-Director of the International Action Center
The official line in the big business media is that the Pentagon had no choice but to rain bombs and missiles down on Yugoslavia because the Milosevic government refused to negotiate over the issue of Kosovo, a region of that country where ethnic Albanians make up the majority.
The reality was very different: The Rambouillet accord, the U.S./NATO "peace plan" for Kosovo was presented to Yugoslavia as an ultimatum. It was a "take it or leave it" proposition, as Albright often emphasized back in February. There were, in fact, no negotiations at all, and no sovereign, independent state could have signed the Rambouillet agreement.
Appendix B of the accord would have opened the door for the occupation of all of Yugoslavia. The accord provided for a very broad form of autonomy for Kosovo. A province of Serbia, one of two republics (along with Montenegro) which make up present-day Yugoslavia, Kosovo would have its own parliament, president, prime minister, supreme court and security forces under Rambouillet. The new Kosovo government would be able to negate laws of the federal republic's legislature (unlike U.S. states) and conduct its own foreign policy.
All Yugoslav federal army and police forces would have to be withdrawn, except for a 3-mile wide stretch along the borders of the province. A new Kosovar police force would be trained to take over internal security responsibilities. Members of the U.S.-backed KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) which is supposed to disarm under the agreement, could join the police units.
But, in reality, neither the Kosovo police, the KLA nor the Yugoslav federal forces would be the basic state apparatus under Rambouillet: That function would be reserved for NATO. A 28,000-strong NATO occupation army, known as the KFOR, would be authorized to "use necessary force to ensure compliance with the Accords."
As has been reported in the mainstream media, the Yugoslav government indicated its willingness to accept the autonomy part of the agreement, but rejected other sections, including the occupation of Kosovo by NATO, as a violation of its national sovereignty and independence.
Many key aspects of the accord have been given very little or no coverage in the corporate media.
Chapter 4a, Article I -- "The economy of Kosovo, shall function in accordance with free market principles." Kosovo has vast mineral resources, including the richest mines for lead, molybdenum, mercury and other metals in all of Europe. The capital to exploit these resources, which are today mainly state-owned, would undoubtedly come from the U.S. and western European imperialists.
Chapter 5, Article V -- "The CIM shall be the final authority in theater regarding interpretation of the civilian aspects of this Agreement, and the Parties agree to abide by his determinations as binding on all Parties and persons." The CIM is the Chief of the Implementation Mission, to be appointed by the European Union countries.
Chapter 7, Article XV -- "The KFOR [NATO] commander is the final authority in theater regarding interpretation of this Chapter and his determinations are binding on all Parties and persons." "This Chapter" refers to all military matters. The NATO commander would almost certainly be from the U.S. Together, the CIM and the NATO commander are given total dictatorial powers, the right to overturn elections, shut down organizations and media, and overrule any decisions made by the Kosovar, Serbian or federal governments regarding Kosovo.
At the end of three years of this arrangement, the "final status" of Kosovo would be resolved through an unspecified process (Chapter 8, Article I, Section 3). In reality, Yugoslav sovereignty over the region would end the day the agreement was signed.
The Rambouillet accord would have turned Kosovo into a colony in every respect, a colony of the United States, the dominant power in NATO. But it also would have gone a long way toward subordinating all of Yugoslavia.
APPENDIX B
Appendix B, the "Status of the Multi-National Military Implementation Force," includes extraordinarily intrusive provisions for Yugoslavia as a whole.
Section 6a. "NATO shall be immune from all legal process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal."
Section 6b. "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 (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia)."
Section 7. "NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY."
Together, Sections 6 and 7 comprise the old, hated, colonial concept of "extraterritoriality," under which the colonizers were immune from being tried by the courts of the colonized country, even if they committed -- as they often did -- rape, murder and mayhem.
Section 8: "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."
Section 11: "NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails, and ports without payment of fees, duties, dues, tolls, or charges occasioned by mere use."
Section 15: "The Parties (Yugoslav & Kosovo governments) shall, upon simple request, 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."
Section 22: "NATO may, in the conduct of the Operation, have need to make improvements or modifications to certain infrastructure in the FRY, such as roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems."
The stationing of 28,000 U.S./NATO troops in Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia would, by itself, be a gross violation of the country's sovereignty. But the Rambouillet accord requires that Yugoslavia allow NATO unfettered access to any and all parts of the country's territory, with all costs to be borne by the host country! The accord blatantly violates Yugoslavia's sovereignty in so provocative a manner that it cannot have been accidental. It is not difficult to imagine a working group in the State Department charged with the task of thinking up the most intrusive and insulting clauses possible to insert into the agreement.
Clearly, U.S. policymakers never intended for Yugoslavia's leadership to sign this document. It was just another step in the preparation for war. The role of Rambouillet in this process was to put the onus, unfairly, on the Yugoslav side for the failure to achieve a peaceful resolution, in order to justify the massive bombing of the entire country.
The Rambouillet Accord was, in truth, a declaration of war disguised as a peace agreement.
From: ANTI-FA Newsletter, April 8, 1999
[From: Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.org>]
Subject: The CIA, The KLA & International Narco-Trafficking
1. (AFIB) Editor's Introduction: Anatomy of a Disaster in the Balkans; selected bibliography - The CIA and Drugs
2. (MC) Michel Chossudovsky: Kosovo `Freedom Fighters' Financed by Organized Crime
1. ANATOMY OF A DISASTER IN THE BALKANS
Recent history is replete with examples of how US intelligence operations have employed "assets" with links to international narco-trafficking and right-wing death squads in order to achieve policy objectives by "other means." Indeed, the practice is so pervasive that one is fully justified in using the term "narco-fascism" to describe the phenomenon. We are told that the purpose for NATO's "humanitarian intervention" in the Balkans is to halt ethnic cleansing and to secure "self-determination" for Kosovar Albanians. But are Washington's "freedom fighters" _de jure_, the Kosovo LiberationArmy (KLA), any more committed to "human rights" and "democracy" than the bankrupt regime of Slobodan Milosevic? Or do NATO actions confirm long-held suspicions that like other CIA "assets" a sizeable proportion of the KLA budget is procured through narco-trafficking and other organized criminal activity such as prostitution and the trafficking in women across borders?
To cite one well-known European example of recent vintage to illustrate the point. In Italy during the 1970s, the "strategy of tension" implemented by CIA "assets" within Italian state security services and the military, employed neofascists and condemned war criminals with Mafia links in order to create widespread social chaos, and plant "false flags" which blamed terrorist violence on the left, thus laying the groundwork for "Plan Solo," a program for a fascist-led coup d'etat on the "Greek model" of 1967.
One such operative, Stefano Delle Chiaie, the leader of the neofascist terrorist gang, Avanguardia Nazionale, a protege of convicted war criminal, Junio Valerio "Black Prince" Borghese,was forced to flee Italy after the 1980 bombing of the Bologna railway station with great loss of life. With connections to Pinochet's DINA, the neo-Nazi Argentine generals, the CIA and the World Anti-Communist League, Delle Chiaie surfaced in Bolivia at the time of the "cocaine coup" of General Luis Garcia Meza, a close associate of narco-king Roberto Suarez. One of Delle Chiaie's henchmen was a German pimp and neo-nazi, Joachim Fiebelkorn, a key lieutenant of escaped Nazi war criminal (and CIA "asset") Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon." When the legally-constituted Bolivian government was overthrown in 1980, Barbie, Fiebelkorn and Delle Chiaie operated an international brigade of killers, torturers and dope dealers controlled by DINA and the Argentine military, the "Fiances of Death." According to Fiebelkorn's account, it was Delle Chiaie who served as a middle man between the Sicilian Mafia and Latin American drug lords. And as history also teaches, it was the Argentine military and drug traffickers (with a "nod and a wink" from the CIA) who helped organize another group of "freedom fighters," the Nicaraguan Contras. Given Gary Webb's fate, is it any wonder that "mainstream" reporters look the other way when allegations of KLA connections to narco-trafficking surface? Pious hand-wringing and cynical calls for NATO to "get the job done" won't solve the inhuman plight faced by Kosovo's refugees. As can be seen daily, their situation grows worse in direct proportion as NATO bombing intensifies. And as Michel Chossudovsky amply illustrates below, it would seem that Washington's "New World Order" allies bear striking resemblance to other well-known "patriotic forces" employed by the US during the Cold War.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: The CIA and Drug Trafficking
Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence & International Fascism, 1980, South End Press, Boston.
Stuart Christie, Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist, 1984, Anarchy Magazine/Refract Publications,London.
Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League, 1986, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.
Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control, 1987, The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York.
William Vornberger, The CIA and Heroin: Afghan Rebels and Drugs, Covert Action Information Bulletin, Washington, D.C., Number 28, Summer 1987.
Sayid Khybar, The Afghani Contra Lobby, Covert Action Information Bulletin, Washington, D.C., Number 30, Summer 1988.
Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, 1991, Lawrence Hill Books, New York.
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America, 1991,University of California Press, Berkeley.
Michael Levine, The Big White Lie, 1993, Thunder's Mouth Press, New York.
Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens, 1997, Little, Brown & Co., New York.
Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, 1998, Seven Stories Press, NewYork.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, 1998, Verso, London and New York.
For Further References, See the Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate's Pansophist Bibliothek under: War on Drugs
2. KOSOVO `FREEDOM FIGHTERS' FINANCED BY ORGANISED CRIME
By Michel Chossudovsky
[Department of Economics, University of Ottawa/ Ottawa, K1N6N5/ Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415/ Fax: 1-514-425-6224/ E-Mail: chossudovsky@sprint.ca]
- Wednesday, 7 April 1999 -
Heralded by the global media as a humanitarian peace-keeping mission, NATO's ruthless bombing of Belgrade and Pristina goes far beyond the breach of international law. While Slobodan Milosevic is demonised, portrayed as a remorseless dictator, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is upheld as a self-respecting nationalist movement struggling for the rights of ethnic Albanians. The truth of the matter is that the KLA is sustained by organised crime with the tacit approval of the United States and its allies.
Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multibillion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in "financing the conflict" in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged by numerous studies, the links of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the mid-1990s.
...The financing of the Kosovo guerilla war poses critical questions and it sorely test claims of an "ethical" foreign policy. Should the West back a guerrilla army that appears to partly financed by organised crime.[1]
While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was "preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs."[2] In the meantime, the rebel army has been skilfully heralded by the global media (in the months preceding the NATO bombings) as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
With KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year "freedom fighter") appointed as chief negotiator at Rambouillet, the KLA has become the de facto helmsman of the peace process on behalf of the ethnic Albanian majority and this despite its links to the drug trade. The West was relying on its KLA puppets to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under Western Administration.
Ironically Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, had described the KLA last year as "terrorists". Christopher Hill, America's chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement "has also been a strong critic of the KLA for its alleged dealings in drugs."[3] Moreover, barely a few two months before Rambouillet, the US State Department had acknowledged (based on reports from the US Observer Mission) the role of the KLA in terrorising and uprooting ethnic Albanians:
...the KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police, ... KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA [a process which has continued since the NATO bombings]... [T]he KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in the Stimlje region are "ready to flee.[4]
While backing a "freedom movement" with links to the drug trade, the West seems also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who has called for an end to the bombings and expressed his desire to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Yugoslav authorities.[5] It is worth recalling that a few days before his March 31st Press Conference, Rugova had been reported by the KLA (alongside three other leaders including Fehmi Agani) to have been killed by the Serbs.
COVERT FINANCING OF `FREEDOM FIGHTERS'
Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where "freedom fighters" were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.
According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington's military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.[6]
The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. "The rising curve of cocaine imports to the US", wrote journalist John Dinges "followed almost exactly the flow of US arms and military advisers to Central America."[7]
The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. "Dirty money" recycled through the banking system -- often through an anonymous shell company -- became "covert money," used to finance various rebel groups and guerilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991 Time Magazine report:
Because the US wanted to supply the mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan', said a US intelligence officer.[8]
AMERICA AND GERMANY JOIN HANDS
Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established as a joint endeavour between the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) (which previously played a key role in installing a right wing nationalist government under Franjo Tudjman in Croatia).[9 ]The task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: "They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money."[10] According to Whitley, the CIA was, subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania.[11]
The covert activities of Germany's BND were consistent with Bonn's intent to expand its "Lebensraum" into the Balkans. Prior to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it had "forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the US favoured (although not officially) the formation of a "Greater Albania" encompassing Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.[12] According to Sean Gervasi, Germany was seeking a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa."[13 ]
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM IN SUPPORT OF THE KLA
Bonn and Washington's "hidden agenda" consisted in triggering nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the ultimate purpose of destabilising Yugoslavia. The latter objective was also carried out "by turning a blind eye" to the influx of mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist organisations.[14 ]
Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia.[15 ]And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.[16 ]
According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede.[17] "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations."[18]
The supply route for arming KLA "freedom fighters" are the rugged mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies Western Europe with grade four heroin. 75% of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe."[19] A recent intelligence report by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: "Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries."[20]
THE LAUNDERING OF DIRTY MONEY
In order to thrive, the criminal syndicates involved in the Balkans narcotics trade need friends in high places. Smuggling rings with alleged links to the Turkish State are said to control the trafficking of heroin through the Balkans "cooperating closely with other groups with which they have political or religious ties" including criminal groups in Albanian and Kosovo.[21] In this new global financial environment, powerful undercover political lobbies connected to organized crime cultivate links to prominent political figures and officials of the military and intelligence establishment. The narcotics trade nonetheless uses respectable banks to launder large amounts of dirty money. While comfortably removed from the smuggling operations per se, powerful banking interests in Turkey but mainly those in financial centres in Western Europe discretely collect fat commissions in a multibillion dollar money laundering operation. These interests have high stakes in ensuring a safe passage of drug shipments into Western European markets.
THE ALBANIAN CONNECTION
Arms smuggling from Albania into Kosovo and Macedonia started at the beginning of 1992, when the Democratic Party came to power, headed by President Sali Berisha. An expansive underground economy and cross border trade had unfolded. A triangular trade in oil, arms and narcotics had developed largely as a result of the embargo imposed by the international community on Serbia and Montenegro and the blockade enforced by Greece against Macedonia.
Industry and agriculture in Kosovo were spearheaded into bankruptcy following the IMF's lethal "economic medicine" imposed on Belgrade in 1990. The embargo was imposed on Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs were driven into abysmal poverty. Economic collapse created an environment which fostered the progress of illicit trade. In Kosovo, the rate of unemployment increased to a staggering 70 percent (according to Western sources). Poverty and economic collapse served to exacerbate simmering ethnic tensions. Thousands of unemployed youths "barely out of their Teens" from an impoverished population, were drafted into the ranks of the KLA.[22]
In neighbouring Albania, the free market reforms adopted since 1992 had created conditions which favoured the criminalisation of State institutions. Drug money was also laundered in the Albanian pyramids (ponzi schemes) which mushroomed during the government of former President Sali Berisha (1992-1997).[23] These shady investment funds were an integral part of the economic reforms inflicted by Western creditors on Albania.
Drug barons in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia (with links to the Italian mafia) had become the new economic elites, often associated with Western business interests. In turn the financial proceeds of the trade in drugs and arms were recycled towardsother illicit activities (and vice versa) including a vast prostitution racket between Albania and Italy. Albanian criminal groups operating in Milan, "have become so powerful running prostitution rackets that they have even taken over the Calabrians in strength and influence."[24]
The application of "strong economic medicine" under the guidance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions had contributed to wrecking Albania's banking system and precipitating the collapse of the Albanian economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several Western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes rivetted on Albania's abundant and unexplored oil-deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum... The Adenauer Foundation had been lobbying in the background on behalf of German mining interests.[25]
Berisha's Minister of Defence Safet Zoulali (alleged to have been involved in the illegal oil and narcotics trade) was the architect of the agreement with Germany's Preussag (handing over control over Albania's chrome mines) against the competing bid of the US led consortium of Macalloy Inc. in association with Rio Tinto Zimbabwe (RTZ).[26]
Large amounts of narco-dollars had also been recycled into the privatisation programmes leading to the acquisition of State assets by the mafias. In Albania, the privatisation programme had led virtually overnight to the development of a property owning class firmly committed to the "free marke." In Northern Albania, this class was associated with the Guegue "families" linked to the Democratic Party.
Controlled by the Democratic Party under the presidency of Sali Berisha (1992-97), Albania's largest financial "pyramid" VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue "families" of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests. VEFA was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money.[27]
According to one press report (based on intelligence sources), senior members of the Albanian government during the Presidency of Sali Berisha including cabinet members and members of the secret police SHIK were alleged to be involved in drugs trafficking and illegal arms trading into Kosovo:
(...) The allegations are very serious. Drugs, arms, contraband cigarettes all are believed to have been handled by a company run openly by Albania's ruling Democratic Party, Shqiponja (...). In the course of 1996 Defence Minister, Safet Zhulali [was alleged] to had used his office to facilitate the transport of arms, oil and contraband cigarettes. (...) Drugs barons from Kosovo (...) operate in Albania with impunity, and much of the transportation of heroin and other drugs across Albania, from Macedonia and Greece en route to Italy, is believed to be organised by Shik, the state security police (...). Intelligence agents are convinced the chain of command in the rackets goes all the way to the top and have had no hesitation in naming ministers in their reports.[28]
The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter): "Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek embargo [in 1993-4] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of kalachnikov rifles to Albanian `brothers' in Kosovo".[29 ]
The Northern tribal clans or "fares" had also developed links with Italy's crime syndicates.[30 ]In turn, the latter played a key role in smuggling arms across the Adriatic into the Albanian ports of Dures and Valona. At the outset in 1992, the weapons channelled into Kosovo were largely small arms including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPK and PPK machine-guns, 12.7 calibre heavy machine-guns, etc.
The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti- aircraft and anti-armor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA "funnelled through a so-called "Government of Kosovo" based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn -- notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government".[31]
The KLA has also acquired electronic surveillance equipment which enables it to receive NATO satellite information concerning the movement of the Yugoslav Army. The KLA training camp in Albania is said to "concentrate on heavy weapons training - rocket propelled grenades, medium caliber cannons, tanks and transporter use, as well as on communications, and command and control." (According to Yugoslav government sources).[32 ]
These extensive deliveries of weapons to the Kosovo rebel army were consistent with Western geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, there has been a "deafening silence" of the international media regarding the Kosovo arms-drugs trade. In the words of a 1994 Report of the Geopolitical Drug Watch: "the trafficking [of drugs and arms] is basically being judged on its geostrategic implications (...) In Kosovo, drugs and weapons trafficking is fuelling geopolitical hopes and fears"...[33]
The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome "marriage of convenience" with the mafia. "Freedom fighters" were put in place, the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to "finance the Kosovo conflict" with the ultimate objective of destabilising the Belgrade government and fully recolonising the Balkans. The destruction of an entire country is the outcome. Western governments which participated in the NATO operation bear a heavy burden of responsibility in thedeaths of civilians, the impoverishment of both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and the plight of those who were brutally uprooted from towns and villages in Kosovo as a result of the bombings.
NOTES
1. Roger Boyes and Eske Wright, Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels The Times, London, Monday, March 24, 1999.
3. Philip Smucker and Tim Butcher, "Shifting stance over KLA has betrayed' Albanians", Daily Telegraph, London, 6 April 1999.
4. KDOM Daily Report, released by the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, Office of South Central European Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, December 21, 1998; Compiled by EUR/SCE (202-647-4850) from daily reports of the U.S. element of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, December 21, 1998.
5. "Rugova, sous protection serbe appelle a l'arret des raides",Le Devoir, Montreal, 1 April 1999.
6. See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Harper and Row, New York, 1972.
7. See John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega, Times Books, New York, 1991.
8. "The Dirtiest Bank of All," Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22.
9. Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999; see also Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997.
10. Quoted in Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999).
12. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4.
13. Sean Gervasi, "Germany, US and the Yugoslav Crisis", Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93).
14. See Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1993.
15. For further details see Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997, p. 288.
16. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, 2 April 1999.
17. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 13, 1998.
19. Daily News, Ankara, 5 March 1997.
20. Quoted in Boyes and Wright, op cit.
21. ANA, Athens, 28 January 1997, see also Turkish Daily News, 29 January 1997.
22. Brian Murphy, KLA Volunteers Lack Experience, The Associated Press, 5 April 1999.
23. See Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3, see also Barry James, In Balkans, Arms for Drugs, The International Herald Tribune Paris, June 6, 1994.
24. The Guardian, 25 March 1997.
25. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, La crisi albanese, Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Torino, 1998.
27. Andrew Gumbel, The Gangster Regime We Fund, The Independent, February 14, 1997, p. 15.
29. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3.
30. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 66, p. 4.
31. Quoted in Workers' World, May 7, 1998.
32. See Government of Yugoslavia at http://www.gov.yu/terrorism/terroristcamps.html
33. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4.
* Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, 1999.
Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms contact the author at chossudovsky@sprint.ca
A frequent contributor to Antifa Info-Bulletin, Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and author of The Globalisation of Poverty, Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World Network, Penang and Zed Books, London, 1997.
Recent articles by Chossudovsky on the global economic crisis at:
http://wwwdb.ix.de/tp/english/special/eco/6373/1.html
http://www.transnational.org/features/chossu_worldbank.html
http://www.transnational.org/features/g7solution.html
http://www.twnside.org.sg/souths/twn/title/scam-cn.htm
http://www.interlog.com/~cjazz/chossd.htm
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco/
http://heise.xlink.de/tp/english/special/eco/6099/1.html#anchor1
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From: Extra!/ May/June 1999
Rescued from the Memory Hole
The Forgotten Background of the Serb/Albanian Conflict
By Jim Naureckas
In times of war, there is always intense pressure for media outlets to serve as propagandists rather than journalists. While the role of the journalist is to present the world in all its complexity, giving the public as much information as possible so as to facilitate a democratic debate, the propagandist simplifies the world in order to mobilize the populace behind a common goal.
One of propaganda's most basic simplifications is to divide participants in a conflict into neat categories of victim and villain, with no qualification allowed for either role. In the real world, of course, responsibility cannot always be assigned so neatly. Both sides often have legitimate grievances and plausible claims, and too often genuine atrocities are used to justify a new round of abuses against the other side.
In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news outlets have focused overwhelmingly on the very real crimes committed by Yugoslavian and Serbian forces against ethnic Albanians. In the process, they have downplayed or ignored the ways that Albanian nationalists have contributed to ethnic tensions in the region. These one-sided accounts have reduced a complex dynamic that calls for careful mediation to a cartoon battle of good vs. evil, with bombing the bad guys as the obvious solution.
In order to eliminate any moral ambiguity from the NATO intervention, media attempts to provide "context" to Kosovo generally start the modern history of the conflict in 1987, when Slobodan Milosevic began using Serb/Albanian tensions for his own political ends. A New York Times backgrounder (4/4/99) by Michael Kaufman basically skips from World War II until "1987, when Slobodan Milosevic, now the Yugoslav president, first began exploiting and inflaming the historical rivalries of Albanians and Serbs." In Kaufman's account, "the conflict was relatively dormant until Mr. Milosevic stirred up hostilities in 1989 by revoking the autonomous status that Kosovo had enjoyed in Serbia."
The revocation of autonomy was a crucial decision, one which greatly destabilized the multi-ethnic Yugoslavian system and contributed to the country's breakup. The loss of autonomy was a grievance that helped pave the way for the rise of an armed separatist movement, in the form of the Kosovo Liberation Army. But the decision to end Kosovo's autonomous status did not come out of nowhere, or out of a simple Serbian desire to oppress Albanians. To get a more complicated picture of the situation in Kosovo in the '80s, Kaufman would only have had to look up his own paper's coverage from the era.
Origins of "ethnic cleansing"?
New York Times correspondent David Binder filed a report in 1982 (11/28/82): "In violence growing out of the Pristina University riots of March 1981, a score of people have been killed and hundreds injured. There have been almost weekly incidents of rape, arson, pillage and industrial sabotage, most seemingly designed to drive Kosovo's remaining indigenous Slavs--Serbs and Montenegrins--out of the province."
Describing an attempt to set fire to a 12-year-old Serbian boy, Binder reported (11/9/82): "Such incidents have prompted many of Kosovo's Slavic inhabitants to flee the province, thereby helping to fulfill a nationalist demand for an ethnically 'pure' Albanian Kosovo. The latest Belgrade estimate is that 20,000 Serbs and Montenegrins have left Kosovo for good since the 1981 riots."
"Ethnically pure," of course, is another way to translate the phrase "ethnically clean"--as in "ethnic cleansing." The first use of this concept to appear in Nexis was in relation to the Albanian nationalists' program for Kosovo: "The nationalists have a two-point platform," the Times' Marvine Howe quotes a Communist (and ethnically Albanian) official in Kosovo (7/12/82), "first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania." All of the half-dozen references in Nexis to "ethnically clean" or "ethnic cleansing" over the next seven years attribute the phrase to Albanian nationalists.
The New York Times returned to the Kosovo issue in 1986, when the paper's Henry Kamm (4/28/86) reported that Slavic Yugoslavians "blame ethnic Albaniansfor continuing assaults, rape and vandalism. They believe their aim is to drive non-Albanians out of the province." He reported suspicions by Slavs that the autonomous Communist authorities in Kosovo were covering up anti-Slavic crimes, including arson at a nunnery and the brutal mutilation of a Serbian farmer. Kamm quoted a prescient "Western diplomat" who described Kosovo as "Yugoslavia's single greatest problem."
By 1987, the Times was portraying a dire situation in Kosovo. David Binder reported (11/1/87):
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981--an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo" in all but name.
This is the situation--at least as perceived by Serbs--that led to Milosevic's infamous 1987 speech promising protection of Serbs, and later resulted in the revocation of Kosovo's autonomy. Despite being easily available on Nexis, virtually none of this material has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the New York Times or anywhere else.
Consistent skepticism
It may be, of course, that some of the charges levied against Albanian nationalists during the '80s were exaggerated or even fabricated by politically motivated Serbs. Those who are tempted to dismiss these accounts based on this possibility, however, should be careful to apply the same critical standards to media coverage of anti-Albanian atrocities in the '90s. The current coverage of Serbian crimes, if anything, should be viewed with even greater skepticism, since Yugoslavia has now become an official enemy of the U.S., and establishment reporting generally shows a strong bias against such countries. (See Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky.)
And if one suggests that the New York Times had a peculiar anti-Albanian bias in the '80s, one still has to explain why similar reports of proto-ethnic cleansing appeared in the Washington Post (11/29/86) and the Financial Times (7/20/82, 7/22/86).
It would not be responsible journalism, of course, to imply that crimes against ethnic Slavs justify assaults of even greater magnitude against ethnic Albanians. The challenge of reporting on a cycle of violence is to make sure that the wounds nursed by each side are not presented as if they vindicate further violence. The Times' Binder makes an attempt at this in his November 1, 1987 piece:
Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today.
Of course, it's not always the case that both sides are equally or even partially at fault in an ethnic conflict: The Holocaust was not a response to historic crimes committed by German Jews against German Christians, and the people of East Timor did not provoke an Indonesian invasion by anti-Javanese pogroms. The question of historical responsibility is one that must be answered through careful research and reporting. Overwhelmingly, the U.S. media have failed to do that research, instead relying on a simplified, truncated official history that serves NATO's propaganda purposes more than it serves the citizenry's need for a complete and accurate context.
[FAIR's Resources on the Kosovo war] | [FAIR Home]
Source: www.tass.ru
USA planning to deploy NATO troops
in Arab states
ABU DHABI, July 6 (Itar-Tass) - The United States is considering the possibility of deploying NATO troops in five Arab countries. The possibility of drawing Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Mauritania into the alliance's sphere of interests was discussing during President Hosni Mubarak's recent visit to the United States.
The Jordanian newspaper "Al-Madj" reports that President Clinton asked Hosni Mubarak to discuss with his Arab colleagues the possibility of deploying large NATO contingents in five Arab countries to "strengthen strategic ties" with the nations of the Arab world. The newspaper notes that Washington had recently held consultations on this problem also with Algeria. The NATO troops that are to be deployed in the region will reportedly be used only in critical situations.
12:15, 06 july 1999
Source: www.centraleurope.com/
Tuesday, Jul 6 at Prague 08:30 pm, N.Y. 02:30 pm
NATO's Kosovo Campaign Touches Nerve In The Caucasus
BAKU, Jul 6, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) NATO's campaign to halt Serb repression in Kosovo has resonated beyond the Balkans to the troubled Caucasus, where governments are grappling with the implications of the Yugoslav war for their own minorities.
Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia are all laying claim to the role of victim, arguing that if NATO were to intervene, it would be to support them against aggression.
"I believe that a NATO operation in the Caucasus would be desirable," Azeri foreign policy aide Vafa Gulizade told AFP. "Azerbaijan has undergone its own ethnic cleansing."
"Thanks to a NATO operation, the Kosovo refugees are returning home," he added. "I think that if NATO forces were brought into the region, the Armenians would be forced to leave our occupied territories."
Baku and Yerevan fought a six-year war over the breakaway territory of Nagorno Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region in Azerbaijan that declared independence in 1988.
When a cease-fire was signed in 1994, Karabakh Armenian forces controlled most of the territory and a large swathe of Azerbaijani land outside.
More than 600,000 Azerbaijanis were driven from their homes during the fighting, close to 10 percent of the republic's population.
Gulizade said that he would ask NATO troops "to stand on the ... border while we conduct peace talks."
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze echoed Goulizade's statements recently and compared Belgrade's aggression against the Kosovars to Georgia's refugee problem after the war in the northwestern republic of Abkhazia.
"Genocide and ethnic cleansing are unacceptable and should be punished," Shevardnadze said. Some 250,000 people fled the fighting in 1993, as Abkhaz separatists overwhelmed Georgian forces and achieved de facto independence.
Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, speaking to an audience in Washington last week, compared the Karabakh Armenians to Kosovar Albanians in their fight for independence, the Turan News Agency reported.
Oskanian, unlike Goulizade and Shevardnadze, did not call for NATO involvement in the Karabakh conflict, but said that if comparisons were to be made, NATO would have to bomb Baku.
Secretary General Javier Solana, however, was quick to end all talk of NATO's presence in the south Caucasus.
Speaking after a meeting in Brussels with Armenian President Robert Kocharian, Solana said that the alliance was not thinking of deploying any troops and that it enjoyed good relations with all countries in the region.
One Western diplomat was more blunt, however. "Be serious," he said. "They'd be crazy to think that NATO would come into the south Caucasus." "Azerbaijani and Georgian officials made these comments just to get a reaction out of Russian and Iran," added the official, referring to the two countries which Baku and Tbilisi perceive as their greatest threat.
But Gulizade still sounded optimistic, arguing that over the long term NATO would have to justify why human rights had to be defended in Kosovo and not in the Caucasus, which is also part of Europe. "I know that today, a NATO troop deployment is not real. I know that tomorrow it isn't real. But to say that it will never happen would be stupid," Gulizade said. "We should be speaking not of beliefs, but of principles," Goulizade added. "If the conflict isn't resolved, NATO needs to get involved. We don't have to speak of how long it will take." ((c) 1999 Agence France Presse)
© 1999 European Internet Network Inc. All rights reserved.
From: c3/actual
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 20:30:05 +0200
THE SPANISH PILOTS OF FIGHTER PLANES ADMIT THAT NATO ATTACKS CIVILIAN TARGETS
The pilots of Spanish planes who participated in bombing raids against Yugoslavia do not feel like "supermen" nor as masters of air space. Quite on the contrary, they say that our forces play to the tune of music played by the North Americans, and accuse NATO of having honored with medals the bombing of civilian targets, what they otherwise name "collateral damages". Jose Luis Morales
Captain Adolfo Luis Martin de la Hoz, who returned to Spain end of May after having participated in the bombings since the beginning, an "authentic expert for the dreadful F-18", the war plane most often used in the war strategy of "scorched land" in the Balkans, is very categorical: "First of all, I want to make it clear that the majority, I say the majority, of my colleagues, even if not all, are against the war in general and against this war of barbarity in particular." Martin de la Hoz says that he and his colleagues "are burnt out". "Since a few days ago there appeared in the papers certain statements of the commander Maches Michavilla, who is now in the air base at Aviano with the pilots who replaced us, in which he said that our worst enemy in the air was our mental and physical health.
But I tell you that our worst enemies are our own authorities, the Defense Minister and his whole team, the members of the Government, who know nothing about war and go along with it without informing themselves about anything and, what is gravest, are guilty of lying to the Spanish people through the papers, radio and television, foreign correspondents and press agencies."
The suspicions that NATO's repeated bombings of civilian victims and non-military targets are not the result of war "errors", are confirmed by Captain Martin de la Hoz: "Several times our Colonel protested to NATO commanders why they select targets which are not military targets. They threw him out with curses saying that we should know that the North Americans will lodge a complaint by the Spanish Army, once through Brussels and again by the Defence Minister. But there is more, and I want to tell it to the whole world: once there was a coded order of the North American military that we should drop anti-personnel bombs over the localities of Prishtina and Nish. The colonel refused it altogether and, a couple of days later, the transfer order came. But what I say now is nothing compared to what I shall have to say when the time comes."
The Spanish military announces that "the Spanish Government not only does not try to inform themselves but they also accept the false reports that are edited for them in Aviano, where there is a sort of military press cabinet in the hands of North American generals and function aries. Ever since we arrived in Italy - the Captain goes on - there is no end to humiliations and insults. The order givers are only the North American generals, and no one else. We are zeroes, just as our replacements are going to be. But there is still more to that. Here they say that several operations were directed by Spanish commanders and pilots. Lies over lies. All the missions that we flew, all and each one, were planned by US high military authorities. Even more, they were all planned in detail, including attacking planes, targets and type of ammunition that we have to throw. We never directed anything, and our missions were limited to flying over the borders of Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Slovakia."
GOVERNMENT'S LIES
None of the pilots presently stationed at Aviano, who replaced those who went to the Italian base a little before the start of war, last March 23, were there with clean conscience, says the Spanish military. "It is being written to saturation that the disciplined and patriotic Spanish pilots according to Minister Eduardo Serra - are concentrating on the complexity of their war missions". But we read so many discrepancies, so many lies that we agreed to not read a single newspaper until we return. Our anger is enormous. The President of the Government, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Defense Minister are lying brazenly each time they talk about the war.
Some of us are of another opinion and believe they do not inform themselves, because the North Americans - the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Embassy or military information service, whoever, do not inform them about anything. How should they inform themselves if our own Javier Solana has not informed himself since the war broke out? Solana is a puppet who has been put there by the Yankees to do what they tell him he has to do. And so he does, standing straight before General Clark when he talks to him, or better said, when he issues him the orders that he has to implement without delay."
On the subject of manipulation of information about the war, Captain de la Hoz says that "no one has said anything about the incidents that took place in Aviano, about the disastrous maintenance of Spanish machinery, and above all about the constant humiliations to which we were subjected from the beginning. Not that we were cannon food. No. We were nothing. About the fatal accidents, the losses suffered without connection to combat, the contempt and sanctions, not a word. From no one!"
For the wrong selection of targets and humiliations the Spanish militaries are ever more certain that there is no alibi. "We know perfectly well that we are intervening in a conflict - says Martin de la Hoz - which is rejected by the majority of the Spanish people and this is most important for us. But what they do not say in any information, commentary or speech, is that the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese... that we are there to cover up the North American generals who are dealing and wheeling in the war. There is no journalist who has the slightest idea what is happening in Yugoslavia.
They are destroying the country, bombing it with novel weapons, toxic nerve gases, surface mines dropped with parachute, bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison the crops and weapons of which even we still do not know anything. The North Americans are committing one of the biggest barbarities that can be committed against humanity. A lot of very bad things will be told in the future about what was happening there, because, by the way, judging by what we talked about with the British and German officers, it was designed in order to divide the Europeans and keep us subjected for many decades. Therefore, Captain Martin de la Hoz is enraged when there are talks about the costs of the war. There should be no doubt, he confirms that the militaries detached in Aviano are receiving bonuses which are "five times our salary", without counting daily expenses and other prerequisites.
We could say that we should be satisfied with what this war means economically for each one of us, but it is not true, what they give us is the chocolate for the parrots. This war is going to cost the Spaniards more than all money allocated for culture in the last five years. And how, even if now no one says anything because of the elections, it will be evident in a few months and will be felt in our pockets. Because this brutal solely Yankees' war, no one's but Yankees', is going to be paid by all of us. Be sure that what I say is not to exculpate myself and to intone 'mea culpa' for having participated in it, because I will never be able to forget that what was being committed there was one the biggest savageries of history."
KOSOVO AND DOUBLESPEAK
By Edward S. Herman
War, propaganda, and the proliferation of doublespeak have always gone hand-in-hand. As was the case during the Persian Gulf war, the NATO war against Yugoslavia witnessed a collapse of mainstream media integrity and a new surge of doublespeak in the service of the war party. It was grimly humorous that NATO and its compliant media partners justified the bombing of Serbian radio and TV on the grounds of propaganda service to Milosevic's war machine. In reality, the parallel service of the U.S. and British media differed from that of the Serbs mainly in their ludicrous self- designation as objective and propaganda-free.
Let me briefly review here a short-list of purr and snarl words that have been of outstanding service to U.S. and British propaganda.
Credibility: Credibility is a purr word, that oozes goodness. Hawks always resort to credibility as a form of flag-waving, using it to make compromise or withdrawal a form of moral and unpatriotic defeat. But it is an appeal to irrationality and assures that a mistake can be transformed into a catastrophe. The media have been extremely lax in giving uncontested space to Senator John McCain and Zbigniew Brzezinski to play the credibility gambit and failing to look behind this purr word to the real issues at stake. And they have thereby allowed it to serve as an instrument of war propaganda.
Humanitarian bombing: NATO allegedly began bombing in March for humanitarian purposes. Humanitarian is a purr word, but humanitarian bombing is an oxymoron, blending the warm-hearted with dealing death. As the NATO bombing exponentially increased the damage inflicted on the purported beneficiaries, as well as large numbers of innocent Serb civilians, it has been anti-humanitarian at all levels. The CIA and NATO military officials like General Wesley Clark have admitted that the negative humanitarian effects were expected. The phrase is a propaganda fraud covering over a hidden agenda, in which Kosovo Albanian welfare had little or no place. But the media have never considered the phrase an oxymoron or the policy a human rights fraud.
Victory: With the end of the bombing, the media trumpet the official view that NATO won a "victory," but they do not ask whether this triumph was in fulfilment of the alleged humanitarian aim--they have implicitly abandoned that purported objective in favor of celebrating a mighty military victory over another tiny and overmatched enemy power. The NATO and media celebration recalls George Santayana's words: "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
Military targets: NATO repeatedly claimed that it was avoiding civilian and sticking to military targets. However, it steadily expanded the definition of military target to encompass anything that directly or indirectly helped the Serb war effort, so that electric and water facilities (among other things) primarily serving civilians were included as military targets. This is in violation of international law and the army's own rules of warfare, and therefore amounts to the commission of war crimes. Christopher Simpson recently cited a President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection finding that the bombing of electric and water facilities in U.S. cities would be criminal "terrorism." The media have of course never mentioned this report, which suggests that NATO engaged in wholesale criminal terrorism, and they have treated the commission of war crimes with the lightest touch. In fact, pundits like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times have urged the direct bombing of civilians and thus the commission of war crimes.
Collateral damage: This is our old friend from the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. It purrs, suggesting inadvertence and "errors." But where the likelihood of "errors" in a bombing raid have a probability of over 90 percent, the damage is intentional even if the particular victims were not targeted. If somebody throws a bomb at an individual in a crowded theater, and 100 bystanders are also killed, would we say that the bomb thrower was not clearly guilty of killing the 100 because their deaths were "unintended" and the damage was "collateral"? The propaganda agencies reserve such purr word excuses for "humanitarian" bombing.
Negotiations: During the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, U.S. officials regularly claimed to be interested in "negotiations," when in reality they were only ready to accept surrender. With patriotic gullibility the media swallowed the official propaganda claims and helped pave the way for war and the prolongation of war. At Rambouillet, NATO offered Yugoslavia an ultimatum that included NATO's right to occupy all of Yugoslavia. This offer was one no sovereign nation could accept and was designed to be rejected. But just as in the earlier cases, the media accepted the false official claim that Milosevic rather than NATO was unwilling to negotiate or accept reasonable terms. And once again the media helped pave the way for war.
Rule of law: This is a purr phrase, that is used only when convenient. During the Persian Gulf war, at which time the Bush administration could get Security Council agreement for action against Iraq, President Bush declared that the issue at stake was the "rule of law" versus the law of the jungle. However, at the time of the U.S. incursion into Panama in 1989, when Security Council approval was not obtainable and the incursion was in clear violation of the OAS agreement, the matter of law was muted. Similarly, unable to obtain Security Council approval for the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, with the attack in evident violation of the UN Charter, and with U.S. participation eventually in violation of the War Powers Act, U.S. and NATO officials were singularly uninterested in questions of law. And the U.S. mainstream media cooperated by setting this issue aside as well. They now ignore their old favorite Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who says today that "The aggressors have kicked aside the UN, opening a new era where might is right."
Genocide and ethnic cleansing: These snarl words have been frequently applied to the Serbs, helping justify the NATO war. In a recent masterpiece of propaganda (June 13, 1999), New York Times reporter Michael Wines explains that "Fifty-four years after the Holocaust revelations, America and Europe had finally said 'enough,' and struck a blow against a revival of genocide." The West found a "revival of genocide" in a locale where some 2000 people had been killed in the year prior to the NATO attack, which inspired those great moralists Clinton and Blair to act. If this seems like a relatively small number in the light of other modern day slaughters, Wines advises us that "there is a yawning gap between the West and much of the world on the value of a single life." The West is concerned with each individual life, so 2000 can understandably activate its sensitive leaders.
Wines does not mention that Clinton and Blair are the leaders supporting the sanctions against Iraq that, at the time they had "had enough" of genocide in Kosovo, had killed a million Iraqi civilians. Blair is still the biggest arms supplier to Indonesia, and both the moralists sell arms to and are on entirely friendly terms with the Turkish government that has ethnically cleansed Kurds on a large scale for many years. The greatest single case of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia in the 1990s occurred at Krajina in Croatia in 1995, where several hundred thousand Serbs were put to flight and many killed. This action was done with U.S. and NATO aid and was not objected to in any way by NATO.
In short, U.S. and NATO policy toward Kosovo has been riddled with contradictions and hypocrisies, and has enlarged a local human rights crisis to a regional disaster. This has been helped by a system of doublespeak that the mainstream media have not only failed to challenge but have incorporated into their own usage. Contrary to their proclaimed objectivity, this failure has made them agents of state propaganda, rather than information servants of a democratic community. _
From: znet.org
Kosovo Peace Accord
By Noam Chomsky
On March 24, U.S.-led NATO air forces began to pound the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FYR, Serbia and Montenegro), including Kosovo, which NATO regards as a province of Serbia. On June 3, NATO and Serbia reached a Peace Accord. The U.S. declared victory, having successfully concluded its "10-week struggle to compel Mr. Milosevic to say uncle," Blaine Harden reported in the New York Times. It would therefore be unnecessary to use ground forces to "cleanse Serbia" as Harden had recommended in a lead story headlined "How to Cleanse Serbia." The recommendation was natural in the light of American history, which is dominated by the theme of ethnic cleansing from its origins and to the present day, achievements celebrated in the names given to military attack helicopters and other weapons of destruction. A qualification is in order, however: the term "ethnic cleansing" is not really appropriate: U.S. cleansing operations have been ecumenical; Indochina and Central America are two recent illustrations.
While declaring victory, Washington did not yet declare peace: the bombing continues until the victors determine that their interpretation of the Kosovo Accord has been imposed. From the outset, the bombing had been cast as a matter of cosmic significance, a test of a New Humanism, in which the "civilized states" (Foreign Affairs) open a new era of human history guided by "a new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated" (Tony Blair). The civilized states are the United States and its British associate, perhaps also others who enlist in their crusades for justice.
Apparently the rank of "civilized states" is conferred by definition. One finds no attempt to provide evidence or argument, surely not from their history. The latter is in any event deemed irrelevant by the familiar doctrine of "change of course," invoked regularly in the ideological institutions to dispatch the past into the deepest recesses of the memory hole, thus deterring the threat that some might ask the most obvious questions: with institutional structures and distribution of power essentially unchanged, why should one expect a radical shift in policy -- or any at all, apart from tactical adjustments?
But such questions are off the agenda. "From the start the Kosovo problem has been about how we should react when bad things happen in unimportant places," global analyst Thomas Friedman explained in the New York Times as the Accord was announced. He proceeds to laud the civilized states for pursuing his moral principle that "once the refugee evictions began, ignoring Kosovo would be wrong...and therefore using a huge air war for a limited objective was the only thing that made sense."
A minor difficulty is that concern over the "refugee evictions" could not have been the motive for the "huge air war." The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported its first registered outside of Kosovo on March 27 (4000), three days after the bombings began. The toll increased until June 4, reaching a reported total of 670,000 in the neighboring countries (Albania, Macedonia), along with an estimated 70,000 in Montenegro (within the FYR), and 75,000 who had left for other countries. The figures, which are unfortunately all too familiar, do not include the unknown numbers who have been displaced within Kosovo, some 2-300,000 in the year before the bombing according to NATO, a great many more afterwards.
Uncontroversially, the "huge air war" precipitated a sharp escalation of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities. That much has been reported consistently by correspondents on the scene and in retrospective analyses in the press. The same picture is presented in the two major documents that seek to portray the bombing as a reaction to the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. The most extensive one, provided by the State Department in May, is suitably entitled "Erasing History: Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo"; the second is the Indictment of Milosevic and associates by the International Tribunal on War Crimes in Yugoslavia after the U.S. and Britain "opened the way for what amounted to a remarkably fast indictment by giving [prosecutor Louise] Arbour access to intelligence and other information long denied to her by Western governments," the New York Times reported, with two full pages devoted to the Indictment. Both documents hold that the atrocities began "on or about January 1"; in both, however, the detailed chronology reveals that atrocities continued about as before until the bombing led to a very sharp escalation. That surely came as no surprise. Commanding General Wesley Clark at once described these consequences as "entirely predictable" -- an exaggeration of course; nothing in human affairs is that predictable, though ample evidence is now available revealing that the consequences were anticipated, for reasons readily understood without access to secret intelligence.
One small index of the effects of "the huge air war" was offered by Robert Hayden, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Pittsburgh: "the casualties among Serb civilians in the first three weeks of the war are higher than all of the casualties on both sides in Kosovo in the three months that led up to this war, and yet those three months were supposed to be a humanitarian catastrophe." True, these particular consequences are of no account in the context of the jingoist hysteria that was whipped up to demonize Serbs, reaching intriguing heights as bombing openly targeted the civilian society and hence required more fervent advocacy.
By chance, at least a hint of a more credible answer to Friedman's rhetorical question was given in the Times on the same day in a report from Ankara by Stephen Kinzer. He writes that "Turkey's best-known human rights advocate entered prison" to serve his sentence for having"urged the state to reach a peaceful settlement with Kurdish rebels." A few days earlier, Kinzer had indicated obliquely that there is more to the story: "Some [Kurds] say they have been oppressed under Turkish rule, but the Government insists that they are granted the same rights as other citizens." One may ask whether this really does justice to some of the most extreme ethnic cleansing operations of the mid '90s, with tens of thousands killed, 3500 villages destroyed, some 2.5 to 3 million refugees, and hideous atrocities that easily compare to those recorded daily in the front pages for selected enemies, reported in detail by the major human rights organizations but ignored. These achievements were carried out thanks to massive military support from the United States, increasing under Clinton as the atrocities peaked, including jet planes, attack helicopters, counterinsurgency equipment, and other means of terror and destruction, along with training and intelligence information for some of the worst killers.
Recall that these crimes have been proceeding through the '90s within NATO itself, and under the jurisdiction of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, which continues to hand down judgments against Turkey for its U.S.-supported atrocities. It took real discipline for participants and commentators "not to notice" any of this at the celebration of NATO's 50th anniversary in April. The discipline was particularly impressive in light of the fact that the celebration was clouded by somber concerns over ethnic cleansing -- by officially-designated enemies, not by the civilized states that are to rededicate themselves to their traditional mission of bringing justice and freedom to the suffering people of the world, and to defend human rights, by force if necessary, under the principles of the New Humanism.
These crimes, to be sure, are only one illustration of the answer given by the civilized states to the profound question of "how we should react when bad things happen in unimportant places." We should intervene to escalate the atrocities, not "looking away" under a "double standard," the common evasion when such marginalia are impolitely adduced. That also happens to be the mission that was conducted in Kosovo, as revealed clearly by the course of events, though not the version refracted through the prism of ideology and doctrine, which do not gladly tolerate the observation that a consequence of the "the huge air war" was a change from a year of atrocities on the scale of the annual (U.S.-backed) toll in Colombia in the 1990s to a level that might have approached atrocities within NATO/Europe itself in the 1990s had the bombing continued.
The marching orders from Washington, however, are the usual ones: Focus laser-like on the crimes of today's official enemy, and do not allow yourself to be distracted by comparable or worse crimes that could easily be mitigated or terminated thanks to the crucial role of the civilized states in perpetuating them, or escalating them when power interests so dictate. Let us obey the orders, then, and keep to Kosovo.
A minimally serious investigaton of the Kosovo Accord must review the diplomatic options of March 23, the day before "huge air war" was launched, and compare them with the agreement reached by NATO and Serbia on June 3. Here we have to distinguish two versions: (1) the facts, and (2) the spin -- that is, the U.S./NATO version that frames reporting and commentary in the civilized states. Even the most cursory look reveals that the facts and the spin differ sharply. Thus the New York Times presented the text of the Accord with an insert headed: "Two Peace Plans: How they Differ." The two peace plans are the Rambouillet (Interim) Agreement presented to Serbia as a take-it-or-be-bombed ultimatum on March 23, and the Kosovo Peace Accord of June 3. But in the real world there are three "peace plans," two of which were on the table on March 23: the Rambouillet Agreement and the Serb National Assembly Resolutions responding to it.
Let us begin with the two peace plans of March 23, asking how they differed and how they compare with the Kosovo Peace Accord of June 3, then turning briefly to what we might reasonably expect if we break the rules and pay some attention to the (ample) precedents. The Rambouillet Agreement called for complete military occupation and political control of Kosovo by NATO, and effective NATO military occupation of the rest of Yugoslavia at NATO's will. NATO is to "constitute and lead a military force" (KFOR) that "NATO will establish and deploy" in and around Kosovo, "operating under the authority and subject to the direction and political control of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) through the NATO chain of command"; "the KFOR commander is the final authority within theater regarding interpretation of this chapter [Implementation of the Agreement] and his interpretations are binding on all Parties and persons" (with an irrelevant qualification). Within a brief time schedule, all Yugoslav army forces and Ministry of Interior police are to redeploy to "approved cantonment sites," then to withdraw to Serbia, apart from small units assigned to border guard duties with limited weapons (all specified in detail). These units would be restricted to defending the borders from attack and "controlling illicit border crossings," and not permitted to travel in Kosovo apart from these functions. "Three years after the entry into force of this Agreement, an international meeting shall to be convened to determine a mechanisms for a final settlement for Kosovo." This paragraph has regularly been construed as calling for a referendum on independence, not mentioned.
With regard to the rest of Yugoslavia, the terms for the occupation are set forth in Appendix B: Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force. The crucial paragraph reads: 8. 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. The remainder spells out the conditions that permit NATO forces and those they employ to act as they choose throughout the territory of the FRY, without obligation or concern for the laws of the country or the jurisdiction of its authorities, who are, however, required to follow NATO orders "on a priority basis and with all appropriate means." One provision states that "all NATO personnel shall respect the laws applicable in the FRY...," but with a qualification to render it vacuous: "Without prejudice to their privileges and immunities under this Appendix, all NATO personnel...." It has been speculated that the wording was designed so as to guarantee rejection. Perhaps so. It is hard to imagine that any country would consider such terms, except in the form of unconditional surrender.
In the massive coverage of the war one will find little reference to the Agreement that is even close to accurate, notably the crucial article of Appendix B just quoted. The latter was, however, reported as soon as it had become irrelevant to democratic choice. On June 5, after the peace agreement of June 3, the New York Times reported that under the annex to the Rambouillet Agreement "a purely NATO force was to be given full permission to go anywhere it wanted in Yugoslavia, immune from any legal process," citing also the wording. Evidently, in the absence of clear and repeated explanation of the basic terms of the Rambouillet Agreement -- the official "peace process" -- it has been impossible for the public to gain any serious understanding of what was taking place, or to assess the accuracy of the preferred version of the Kosovo Accord.
The second peace plan was presented in resolutions of the Serbian National Assembly on March 23. The Assembly rejected the demand for NATO military occupation, and called on the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the UN to facilitate a peaceful diplomatic settlement. It condemned the withdrawal of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission ordered by the United States on March 19 in preparation for the March 24 bombing. The resolutions called for negotiations leading "toward the reaching of a political agreement on a wide-ranging autonomy for Kosovo and Metohija [the official name for the province], with the securing of a full equality of all citizens and ethnic communities and with respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Furthermore, though "The Serbian Parliament does not accept presence of foreign military troops in Kosovo and Metohija," The Serbian Parliament is ready to review the size and character of the international presence in Kosmet [Kosovo/Metohija] for carrying out the reached accord, immediately upon signing the political accord on the self-rule agreed and accepted by the representatives of all national communities living in Kosovo and Metohija. The essentials of these decisions were reported on major wire services and therefore certainly known to every news room. Several database searchs have found scarce mention, none in the national press and major journals.
The two peace plans of March 23 thus remain unknown to the general public, even the fact that there were two, not one. The standard line is that "Milosevic's refusal to accept...or even discuss an international peacekeeping plan [namely, the Rambouillet Agreement] was what started NATO bombing on March 24" (Craig Whitney, New York Times), one of the many articles deploring Serbian propaganda -- accurately no doubt, but with a few oversights.
As to what the Serb National Assembly Resolutions meant, the answers are known with confidence by fanatics -- different answers, depending on which variety of fanatics they are. For others, there would have been a way to find out the answers: to explore the possibilities. But the civilized states preferred not to pursue this option; rather, to bomb, with the anticipated consequences.
Further steps in the diplomatic process, and their refraction in the doctrinal institutions, merit attention, but I will skip that here, turning to the Kosovo Accord of June 3. As might have been expected, it is a compromise between the two peace plans of March 23. On paper at least, the U.S./NATO abandoned their major demands, cited above, which had led to Serbia's rejection of the ultimatum. Serbia in turn agreed to an "international security presence with substantial NATO participation [which] must be deployed under unified command and control...under U.N auspices." An addendum to the text stated "Russia's position [that] the Russian contingent will not be under NATO command and its relationship to the international presence will be governed by relevant additional agreements." There are no terms permitting access to the rest of the FYR for NATO or the "international security presence" generally. Political control of Kosovo is not to be in the hands of NATO but of the UN Security Council, which will establish "an interim administration of Kosovo." The withdrawal of Yugoslav forces is not specified in the detail of the Rambouillet Agreement, but is similar, though accelerated. The remainder is within the range of agreement of the two plans of March 23.
The outcome suggests that diplomatic initiatives could have been pursued on March 23, averting a terrible human tragedy with consequences that will reverberate in Yugoslavia and elsewhere, and are in many respects quite ominous.
To be sure, the current situation is not that of March 23. A Times headline the day of the Kosovo Accord captures it accurately: "Kosovo Problems Just Beginning." Among the "staggering problems" that lie ahead, Serge Schmemann observed, are the repatriation of the refugees "to the land of ashes and graves that was their home," and the "enormously costly challenge of rebuilding the devastated economies of Kosovo, the rest of Serbia and their neighbors." He quotes Balkans historian Susan Woodward of the Brookings Institution, who adds "that all the people we want to help us make a stable Kosovo have been destroyed by the effects of the bombings," leaving control in the hands of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army). The U.S. had strongly condemned the KLA as "without any question a terrorist group" when it began to carry out organized attacks in February 1998, actions that Washington condemned "very strongly" as "terrorist activities," probably giving a "green light" thereby to Milosevic for the severe repression that led to the Colombia-style violence before the bombings precipitated a sharp escalation.
These "staggering problems" are new. They are "the effects of the bombings" and the vicious Serb reaction to them, though the problems that preceded the resort to violence by the civilized states were daunting enough.
Turning from facts to spin, headlines hailed the grand victory of the civilized states and their leaders, who compelled Milosevic to "capitulate," to "say uncle," to accept a "NATO-led force," and to surrender "as close to unconditionally as anyone might have imagined," submitting to "a worse deal than the Rambouillet plan he rejected." Not exactly the story, but one that is far more useful than the facts. The only serious issue debated is whether this shows that air power alone can achieve highly moral purposes, or whether, as the critics allowed into the debate allege, the case still has not been proven. Turning to broader significance, Britain's "eminent military historian" John Keegan "sees the war as a victory not just for air power but for the `New World Order' that President Bush declared after the Gulf War," military expert Fred Kaplan reports. Keegan wrote that "If Milosevic really is a beaten man, all other would-be Milosevics around the world will have to reconsider their plans."
The assessment is realistic, though not in the terms Keegan may have had in mind: rather, in the light of the actual goals and significance of the New World Order, as revealed by an important documentary record of the '90s that remains unreported, and a plethora of factual evidence that helps us understand the true meaning of the phrase "Milosevics around the world." Merely to keep to the Balkans region, the strictures do not hold of huge ethnic cleansing operations and terrible atrocities within NATO itself, under European jurisdiction and with decisive and mounting U.S. support, and not conducted in response to an attack by the world's most awesome military force and the imminent threat of invasion. These crimes are legitimate under the rules of the New World Order, perhaps even meritorious, as are atrocities elsewhere