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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 These have been archived on Pacifica's website and are available in real audio at 14.4]: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 that conform to the perceived interests of the leaders of the civilized states and are regularly implemented by them when necessary. These facts, not particularly obscure, reveal that in the "new internationalism...the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups" will not merely be "tolerated," but actively expedited -- exactly as in the "old internationalism" of the Concert of Europe, the U.S. itself, and many other distinguished predecessors.
While the facts and the spin differ sharply, one might argue that the media and commentators are realistic when they present the U.S./NATO version as if it were the facts. It will become The Facts as a simple consequence of the distribution of power and the willingness of articulate opinion to serve its needs. That is a regular phenomenon. Recent examples include the Paris Peace Treaty of January 1973 and the Esquipulas Accords of August 1987. In the former case, the U.S. was compelled to sign after the failure of the Christmas bombings to induce Hanoi to abandon the U.S.-Vietnam agreement of the preceding October. Kissinger and the White House at once announced quite lucidly that they would violate every significant element of the Treaty they were signing, presenting a different version which was adopted in reporting and commentary, so that when North Vietnam finally responded to serious U.S. violations of the accords, it became the incorrigible aggressor which had to be punished once again, as it was. The same tragedy/farce took place when the Central American Presidents reached the Esquipulas Accord (often called "the Arias plan") over strong U.S. opposition. Washington at once sharply escalated its wars in violation of the one "indispensable element" of the Accord, then proceeded to dismantle its other provisions by force, succeeding within a few months, and continuing to undermine every further diplomatic effort until its final victory. Washington's version of the Accord, which sharply deviated from it in crucial respects, became the accepted version. The outcome could therefore be heralded in headlines as a "Victory for U.S. Fair Play" with Americans "United in Joy" over the devastation and bloodshed, overcome with rapture "in a romantic age" (Anthony Lewis, headlines in New York Times, all reflecting the general euphoria over a mission accomplished).
It is superfluous to review the aftermath in these and numerous similar cases. There is little reason to expect a different story to unfold in the present case -- with the usual and crucial proviso: If we let it.
Date: July 10, 1999/Source: www.c3.hu/actual/Original Source: World Socialist Web Site
Was CNN involved in a NATO effort to assassinate the Serbian information minister?
By Chris Marsden
8 July 1999
On Friday, July 2 the Independent newspaper in Britain ran an article by its Belgrade war correspondent Robert Fisk entitled "Taken in by the NATO line". The article presents a devastating picture of the role of the press corps in the war against Yugoslavia.
Fisk shows how, with rare execptions, reporters abandoned any standpoint of objectivity and adopted uncritically the official rationale for the war. For the most part infected themselves with the anti-Serb hysteria of US, British and NATO officials, they sought to justify the bombing campaign by reporting NATO propaganda as fact and accepting without question the statements of NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair.
He cites the example of a CNN reporter in Belgrade who "astounded one of his English colleagues after NATO had bombed a narrow road bridge in the Yugoslav village of Varvarin, killing dozens of civilians, many of whom fell to their death in the River Morava. 'That'll teach them not to stand on bridges,' he roared."
Fisk notes, "This was not the kind of language he used on air, of course, where CNN's report on the bridge killings was accompanied by the remark that there had been civilian casualties 'according to the Serb authorities'-all this when CNN's own crew had been there and filmed the decapitated corpse of the local priest."
The Independent correspondent goes on to suggest that the collaboration of major media outlets with the NATO military campaign went beyond dishonest and unethical journalistic practices. At the end of the article he suggests that CNN and the network's Larry King Live show may have been complicit in an attempt to assassinate Serbian Information Minister Aleksander Vucic.
Fisk writes: "Two days before NATO bombed the Serb Television headquarters in Belgrade, CNN received a tip from its Atlanta headquarters that the building was to be destroyed. They were told to remove their facilities from the premises at once, which they did.
"A day later, Serbian Information Minister Aleksander Vucic received a faxed invitation from the Larry King Live show in the US to appear on CNN. They wanted him on air at 2:30 in the morning of 23 April and asked him to arrive at Serb Television half an hour early for make-up.
"Vucic was late-which was just as well for him since NATO missiles slammed into the building at six minutes past two. The first one exploded in the make-up room where the young Serb assistant was burned to death. CNN calls this all a coincidence, saying that the Larry King show, put out by the entertainment division, did not know of the news department's instruction to its men to leave the Belgrade building."
The World Socialist Web Site has sought to obtain a response from the Larry King Live program in Washington and CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia to the description of events provided by Fisk. The publicist for Larry King Live and the press spokesperson for CNN News have failed to return repeated calls.
Meanwhile, Fisk has come under attack from sections of the British media. On July 4 Henry Porter of the Observer, one of the newspapers most fervent in its support of NATO's war, published a reply to Fisk's piece, all but accusing the Independent reporter of being a stooge of Yugoslav President Milosevic. Porter asserts that Fisk "was undeniably aided by the Serb authorities" and filed reports on the war "refracted through the lens of Serbian interest."
Porter grants there was "almost universal concern among editors and reporters about the level of accuracy of NATO briefings" and admits there is good reason to conclude that "the alliance was bent on an almost racist crusade against the Serbs". This, however, does not prevent him from indulging in a bit of anti-Serb racism of his own, noting that Fisk was given the sobriquet "Fiscovic" by some of his colleagues.
Porter is outraged that Fisk appears to believe "NATO is motivated by congenital imperialist tendencies," but even more intolerable is Fisk's decision to bring a dispute within the media to the attention of the public.
The attack on Fisk indicates that his exposure of the deplorable performance of the press corp has hit a raw nerve, and, in particular, his revelations concerning CNN's role in the bombing of the Serb TV center have provoked considerable concern in high places.
Date: July 16, 1999/ From: The Boston Globe <http://www.globe.com>
No, no, NATO
By waging war in the Balkans, it crossed a dangerous line
By Mikhail Gorbachev, 07/16/99
The war that NATO unleashed against Yugoslavia in March means, first of all, that the alliance, established in Washington in 1949 as a defensive organization for the protection of its members, has crossed over to offensive operations.
Second, the war provided evidence that the United States, which plays a commanding role in NATO, is willing not only to disregard the norms of international law but also to impose on the world its own agenda in international relations and, in fact, to be guided in these relations solely by its own ''national interests,'' taking the United Nations into account only if UN decisions and actions serve US interests.
Third, NATO policy, as in the Cold War years, continues to place primary emphasis on military power - the threat and actual use of military force.
At a summit meeting in Washington in April, NATO adopted a new strategic conception to replace its Cold War role. It spoke, to be sure, about the role of the United Nations along with other international organizations. But at the same time, declarations were made at the highest level that NATO was prepared to act wherever it wished and however it wished, if it considered that necessary, without any UN resolutions.
NATO's new strategic conception, as well as its actual conduct in the Balkan crisis, showed that the decisive role in determining the destinies of the European continent has been assigned to NATO rather than the Organization for Security and Cooperation Europe.
The war against Yugoslavia - the first war in Europe since World War II - set a precedent indicating the direction of the new American strategy. The war began with a great deal of fanfare about preventing humanitarian disaster in Kosovo. There is no question that the policies and actions of President Milosevic toward Yugoslavia's Albanian minority deserved condemnation and a response by the international community.
But this should have been done only with the knowledge and consent of the United Nations and under UN auspices. In violation of this generally recognized principle of international law, NATO engaged in a massive armed assault on a sovereign country. The concentrated combing of Serbia created, in addition to the Kosovo disaster, a humanitarian, ecological, and social disaster throughout Yugoslavia, a European country of long standing. Neighboring countries, such as Albania and Macedonia, were drawn into the orbit of this tragedy.
It will hardly be possible to restore Europe and the world to the status quo that existed before March 23. The actions of the United States and NATO prompt everyone - Europeans first of all - to reflect deeply on American policy on the eve of the year 2000. It has become evident that Washington has not been able to elaborate a strategy that is adequate to the challenges of our time.
The viability and future of the North Atlantic alliance itself have been called into question. Without NATO the United States could hardly carry out its highly dangerous and destructive new course, either in the world arena or in Europe alone. NATO consists above all of the European countries - with their profoundly democratic and humanistic culture. This culture, together with a rich experience of many centuries of dramatic and sometimes bloody history, especially in the 20th century, is incompatible with policies involving the crass use of force. The grumbling of dissent against the actions of the United States that were heard in European circles of the most varied kind, as well as in other countries of the Americas, is a symptom that the White House would do well to think about seriously.
The war in Yugoslavia will force Europeans to return to the idea of having a European strategy of their own for the 21st century. The need for this has long since come of age. It was on this basis that the Charter of Paris for Europe came into existence in 1990. It was dismissed with light-minded scorn, but no one since then has come up with any ideas or principles better than the ones embodied in this document, which was signed by 34 nations, including the European nations, the United States, and Canada. The present Yugoslav tragedy is partly a result of the fact that the charter, which affirmed the values of democracy, peace, and free markets, was not adopted as the basis for actual policy by the governments that endorsed it.
Renewed consideration is being given. Let me cite as an example the remarks of Helmut Schmidt, former chancellor of Germany: ''Alliance between Europe and North America remains desirable as never before. But Europe should not become a strategic satellite of Washington.... NATO cannot guarantee peace on the entire planet, let alone resolve the enormous problems of a nonmilitary character that humanity will encounter in the 21st century.''
Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the former Soviet Union. This column is an excerpt from his forthcoming book ''Gorbachev: On my country and the world.''
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 07/16/99. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
MONDAY, JULY 12,1999 /Source: www.antiwar.com/ Original Source: www.worldnetdaily.com
Clinton charged with war crimes:
Private tribunal 'indicts' President, Defense secretary
By Jon E. Dougherty
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
Charges of war crimes have been levied by a U.S.-based private criminal justice organization against President Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen for their part in initiating the NATO military action against Yugoslavia.
The indictment is to be electronically filed Monday with the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) in The Hague after the Connecticut-based International Ethical Alliance (IEA) determined that both men had violated many of the same justice standards used by the ICT to indict Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic.
In a press release, the IEA said other NATO officials would probably be included in more charges to be filed later for their part in the conflict. IEA officials said it also advocates the prosecution of Milosevic, but said both U.S. and NATO officials must be held accountable.
IEA General Counsel Jerome Zeifman, who writes for WorldNetDaily and served as counsel to the House impeachment committee in 1973, said the charges were filed"against defendants Clinton and Cohen [for] non-defensive aggressive military attacks on former Yugoslavia, which have not been necessary to defend the national security of the United States." He added that the charges "are defined and proscribed in the Charters of the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Aug. 8, 1945, and the 1947 Charter of the United Nations."
Zeifman also said the charges rely, in part, on the testimony of witnesses and experts, and in his filing he suggested the ICT contact them for possible depositions to the court. Those witnesses include, but are not limited to: former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; former Nuremberg prosecutor for the United States, Walter Rockler; Bishop Artemious of Kosovo; journalist Alexander Cockburn; and playwright Harold Pinter."
Once such charges are filed, Zeifman said, by the Tribunal's own regulations, prosecutors are obliged to investigate. He cited Article 18.1 from The Hague's court procedures, which said, in part, that the ICT must investigate "information obtained from any source, particularly ... organizations."
Zeifman has also called for the dismissal of ICT prosecutor Louise Arbour, claiming she has practiced misconduct and is subsequently unqualified for this case.
Specifically, he said, Arbour allegedly has engaged "in selective prosecution by intentionally failing to consider and act on evidence which incriminates defendants Clinton and Cohen, and other as yet unindicted officials of NATO countries; conflicts of interest, or the appearance thereof, in receiving compensation from funds contributed to theTribunal in whole or in part by governments of NATO; and bias in favor of the attacks by NATO on former Yugoslavia."
In her place, IEA is advocating the appointment of an independent prosecutor not from any NATO country, who "is compensated only from funds specifically contributed by non-NATO countries; and has an independent staff that is not compensated directly or indirectly from funds contributed by NATO countries."
The IEA is also calling for the "recusal of five justices currently representing NATO countries, including chief justice Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States."
IEA officials also said the NATO action was "contrary to the United Nations charter [since] NATO was bombing a fellow U.N. member, without U.N. authority."
Zeifman said he had not spoken with ICT officials and had no indication whether the indictment would be acted on by the World Court. But he added that it was important to get the matter on record.
The indictment also contains quotations from prominent world figures as further evidence of the alleged illegality of U.S. and NATO military action against Yugoslavia.
For instance, former President Jimmy Carter is quoted from a May 27, 1999, New York Times article as saying, "The decision to attack Yugoslavia was counterproductive, and our destruction of civilian life was senseless and excessively brutal." And Bishop Artemious of Kosovo, a leader of a resistance movement against the Milosevic regime, charged,"The greatest victim of your bombing is Democracy! Before your bombs democratic forces existed here, however embryonic. Destroying those forces is the greatest crime of your bombs."
Though other nations are planning similar actions, Zeifman told WorldNetDaily that the IEA indictment "was more severe." Non-affiliated groups in Britain, Greece and Norway are planning to file similar actions against leaders and officials in their respective countries.
Jon E. Dougherty is a senior writer and columnist for WorldNetDaily, as well as a morning co-host of Daybreak America.
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 08:31:23 +0200/ From: c3/actual /
Now it's NATO's allies doing the ethnic cleansing
Don Feder
BELGRADE -- When is ethnic cleansing not ethnic cleansing? When the victims are Serbs. As many as 60,000 of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs have already fled. Each day brings news of calculated atrocities. Human Rights Watch reports "investigations in Orahovac, Prizen and Pec revealed KLA soldiers' involvement in five murders, four abductions, one rape and 12 ... beatings."
Since the war in Bosnia, Serbs have been so effectively demonized that not only will Western opinion believe almost anything of them, no one seems to care about the fate of the most vulnerable among them.
NATO propaganda has portrayed the Serbs as Slavic Aryans who hate all non- Serbs and are determined to create an ethnically pure state. And, in the other corner, we have the Kosovo Liberation Army -- presented as the Balkans equivalent of the Minutemen.
In Yugoslavia, reality collides with this warped mythology.
Ivan Sedlak, minister of minorities for the Republic of Serbia, notes there are 26 national minorities in the country. Besides Albanians, there are 300,000 Hungarians and lesser numbers of Croats, Slovenes, Turks, Romanians and Gypsies.
All are guaranteed education in their own language, support for their culture and political equality. Minorities have their own newspapers and radio stations subsidized by the Yugoslav government. Speeches inVojvodina's regional assembly are simultaneously translated in five languages.
Except for Kosovo's Albanians, all seem satisfied to be part of this multi-ethnic state, including the 100,000 Albanians residing in Belgrade.
Yes, but, I innocently ask Sedlak, didn't this mess in Kosovo start when Milosevic took away the Albanians' autonomy?
Sedlak, a lawyer skilled at presenting his case, looks at me over the rim of his glasses. The so-called autonomy of the 1974 constitution, he patiently explains, gave Kosovo a veto over legislation throughoutYugoslavia. The changes that were made in 1988 were ratified by the parliaments of both Kosovo and Vojvodina.
After the change, Albanians still could have controlled the courts, police and schools. Instead, they used the revision as an excuse to withdraw from the government institutions and agitate for secession.
"Not only weren't they satisfied with the autonomy of 1989, they weren't even satisfied with the autonomy of 1974-1988," Sedlak relates. "There were pro-independence rallies in Pristina in 1981."
With the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army, agitation evolved to terrorism. In 1998, 115 Serbian police were murdered. Yugoslavia responded with a military push, which was the excuse for NATO intervention.
Though considerably more vigorous since the KLA came into its own, Albanian ethnic cleansing isn't of recent vintage. Since the end of World War II, as the province's ethnic balance changed in the Albanians' favor, Serbs were pressured or terrorized to leave. In 1982, the mother superior of the Devic Monastery was beaten unconscious by Albanian youth. Now, there's a new sheriff in town.
The New York Times' Chris Hedges has written that current and former KLA commanders charge at the outset of NATO's war, rebel leader HashimThaci (nicknamed "Snake") murdered a number of his potential rivals within KLA ranks.
How many of those much-publicized mass graves did Thaci fill?
Remember Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate Kosovar leader, formerly canonized by the Western media? Now that Kosovo has been liberated by NATO bombs, why is Rugova living in Italy with his family? Because he understands what his fate would be in a Kosovo run by Pretty Boy Floyd's gang.
In Athens, a Greek-American businessman told me: "Albania has no government. It's run by crime syndicates. The country is a base for drug-running and arms-smuggling. NATO is duplicating that in Kosovo."
Despite NATO's pledge, KLA fighters still carry weapons. Atrocities, like the gang-rape of Serbian nuns at a Pristina monastery and the murder of a professor at the university there, are daily occurrences.
Thaci's boys say the culprits are freelancers wearing KLA insignia. After all, what self-respecting terrorist-drug dealer would do such things?
While NATO's forensic teams scour the province for evidence of Serb war crimes, its allies are on a rampage and yet more territory is in the process of being detached from what was once the Balkans' most successful multicultural experiment.
From: http://www.stratfor.com/world/Commentaries/w9907300300.htm
Date: 0300 GMT, 990730
Washington Begins the Post-Kosovo Purge
The first of the heads responsible for the Kosovo crisis rolled on July 27, when Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Wesley Clark was sacked. Clark was ordered to resign his post in April, three months before the end of his current term, to be replaced by Air Force General Joseph Ralston, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Officially, Clark's term was shortened because otherwise Ralston, whose term as JCS vice chairman expires in February, would have been forced to retire. Instead, it is Clark who is being pensioned off, though Defense Secretary William Cohen reportedly recommended Clark be offered an ambassadorship.
Pentagon and White House officials were quick to assert that Clark's removal did not reflect any dissatisfaction with the general, insisting that it was merely part of a broader normal rotation of commanders. "No one is being pushed out. No one is being forced out," said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart. "Clark did a great job," said an anonymous White House official, quoted by the New York Times. "He won the war, for God's sake!" An anonymous Pentagon official assured the Times, "If this was in any way dissatisfaction with Clark, he'd be moved out long before."
The White House could not say, "Clark helped push the president into an ill advised military quagmire, from which escape was achieved only through some particularly duplicitous diplomacy and buying off the Russians." After all, it has already claimed a triumphant military victory in Operation Allied Force. The White House could not say, "Throughout the war, Clark critically damaged U.S. relations with its European NATO allies, and his continued criticism of those allies makes reconciliation extremely difficult." After all, Operation Allied Force was a triumph of cooperation among NATO members faced with a bold new mission. The White House cannot say, "Clark's binary view of Belgrade and the Kosovar Albanians makes control of the situation in Kosovo and a quick and safe exit from the Serbian province nearly impossible." After all, Milosevic remains an indicted war criminal, and the Serbs are responsible for untold atrocities. And the White House can not mention the fact that Clark and Secretary of Defense William Cohen a man Clinton does trust are so estranged that Cohen must relay his commands to the general, including the order to step down, through JCS Chief Hugh Shelton. And so, officially, Clark is simply at the mercy of an unfortunate scheduling problem.
General Clark was one of four top Clinton advisors most responsible for pushing the U.S. and NATO into a military confrontation over Kosovo. According to a number of reports that emerged during and after the war, Secretary of State Madeline Albright in January 1999 presented the plan under which NATO should threaten air strikes. She was backed up by Clark and by envoys Richard Holbrooke and Robert Gelbard, who argued that Milosevic would buckle under a day or two of bombing, if not merely the threat of air strikes. They, in turn, were backed by a sea of anonymous analysts in the U.S. intelligence agencies who, until the bombing began, repeatedly argued that Milosevic would quickly submit under air attacks. Skeptics included Cohen, Shelton, presidential advisor Sandy Berger, and presumably Ralston.
Now NATO has won in Kosovo, or at least it has declared victory, though being stuck between the KLA and the growing threat of hostile Serb paramilitaries is a questionable triumph. The White House must now set about repairing relations with Russia, China, and its NATO allies, and seeking a way out of Kosovo. Enough time has passed for the "victory" to be accepted as common knowledge and the "heroes" of that victory to be pensioned off, hopefully making way for a team that can clean up the mess.
Technically, Clark is not the first head to roll. His is just the most public. Gelbard is being dispatched as ambassador to Indonesia, where it is questionable whether he can make the situation any worse than it already is. Holbrooke's bid for the post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations has been blocked twice by Republicans, which is understandable considering they are fond neither of him, nor of the UN. However, the Clinton administration has noticeably failed to lift a finger in his defense. Holbrooke will probably end up with his UN seat, though again, it will be more of a reflection of the Republicans' contempt for the international body than a tribute to Holbrooke's diplomatic skills, and both he and the organization will be equally ignored. And now Clark is being shuffled off to retirement ahead of schedule. That leaves Albright.
From: ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN (AFIB)/750 La Playa # 730/San Francisco, California 94121/E-Mail: tburghardt@igc.org
NATO HAS INSTALLED A REIGN OF TERROR IN KOSOVO
By Michel Chossudovsky- Tuesday, 10 August 1999 -
Department of Economics, University of Ottawa/Ottawa, K1N6N5/Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415/Fax: 1-514-425-6224/ E-Mail: chossudovsky@videotron.ca This text was presented to the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against The People of Yugoslavia, International Action Center, New York, July 31, 1999.
PART I: MASSACRES OF CIVILIANS IN KOSOVO
While the World focusses on troop movements and war crimes, the massacres of civilians in the wake of the bombings have been casually dismissed as "justifiable acts of revenge". In occupied Kosovo, "double standards" prevail in assessing alleged war crimes. The massacres directed against Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Roma and other ethnic groups have been conducted on the instructions of the military command of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
NATO ostensibly denies KLA involvement. These so-called "unmotivated acts of violence and retaliation" are not categorised as "war crimes" and are therefore not included in the mandate of the numerous FBI and Interpol police investigators dispatched to Kosovo under the auspices of the Hague War Crime's Tribunal (ICTY). Moreover, whereas NATO has tacitly endorsed the self-proclaimed KLA provisional government, KFOR the international security force in Kosovo has provided protection to the KLA military commanders responsible for the atrocities. In so doing both NATO and the UN Mission have acquiesced to the massacres of civilians. In turn, public opinion has been blatantly misled. In portraying the massacres, the Western media has casually overlooked the role of the KLA, not to mention its pervasive links to organised crime. In the words of National Security Advisor Samuel Berger, "these people [ethnic Albanians] come back ... with broken hearts and with some of those hearts filled with anger."1 While the massacres are seldom presented as the result of "deliberate decisions" by the KLA military command, the evidence (and history of the KLA) amply confirm that these atrocities are part of a policy of "ethnic cleansing" directed mainly against the Serb population but also against the Roma, Montenegrins, Goranis and Turks.
Serbian houses and business have been confiscated, looted, or burned, and Serbs have been beaten, raped, and killed. In one of the more dramatic of incidents, KLA troops ransacked a monastery, terrorized the priest and a group of nuns with gunfire, and raped at least one of the nuns. NATO's inability to control the situation and provide equal protection for all ethnic groups, and its apparent inability or unwillingness to fully disarm the KLA, has created a serious situation for NATO troops...2
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), confirms in this regard that:
"more than 164,000 Serbs have left Kosovo during the seven weeks since... the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered the province...A wave of arson and looting of Serb and Roma homes throughout Kosovo has ensued. Serbs and Roma remaining in Kosovo have been subject to repeated incidents of harassment and intimidation, including severe beatings. Most seriously, there has been a spate of murders and abductions of Serbs since mid-June, including the late July massacre of Serb farmers."3
POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS
The self-proclaimed Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK) has also ordered assassinations directed against political opponents including "loyalist" ethnic Albanians and supporters of the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL). These acts are being carried out in a totally permissive environment. The leaders of the KLA rather than being arrested for war crimes, have been granted KFOR protection.
According to a report of the Foreign Policy Institute (published during the bombings):
"...the KLA have [no] qualms about murdering Rugova's collaborators, whom it accused of the `crime' of moderation... [T]he KLA declared Rugova a `traitor' yet another step toward eliminating any competitors for political power within Kosovo."4
Already in May, Fehmi Agani, one of Rugova's closest collaborators in the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL) was killed. The Serbs were blamed by NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea for having assassinated Agani. According to Skopje's paper Makedonija Danas, Agani had been executed on the orders of the KLA's self-appointed Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.5 "If Thaci actually considered Rugova a threat, he would not hesitate to have Rugova removed from the Kosovo political landscape."6
In turn, the KLA has abducted and killed numerous professionals and intellectuals:
"Private and State properties are threatened, home and apartment owners are evicted en masse by force and threats, houses and entire villages are burned, cultural and religious monuments are destroyed... A particularly heavy blow... has been the violence against the hospital centre in Pristina, the maltreatment and expulsion of its professional management, doctors and medical staff."7
Both NATO and the UN prefer to turn a blind eye. UN Interim Administrator Bernard Kouchner (a former French Minister of Health) and KFOR Commander Sir Mike Jackson have established a routine working relationship with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and KLA Chief of Staff Brigadier General Agim Ceku.
ATROCITIES COMMITTED AGAINST THE ROMA
Ethnic cleansing has also been directed against the Roma (which represented prior to the conflict a population group of 150,000 people). (According to figures provided by the Roma Community in New York). A large part of the Roma population has already escaped to Montenegro and Serbia. In turn, there are reports that Roma refugees who had fled by boat to Southern Italy have been expelled by the Italian authorities.8 The KLA has also ordered the systematic looting and torching of Romani homes and settlements:
"All houses and settlements of Romani, like 2,500 homes in the residential area called `Mahala' in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, have been looted and burnt down".9
With regard to KLA atrocities committed against the Roma, the same media distortions prevail. According to the BBC: "Gypsies are accused by [Kosovar] Albanians of collaborating in Serb brutalities, which is why they've also become victims of revenge attacks. And the truth is, some probably did."10
INSTALLING A PARAMILITARY GOVERNMENT
As Western leaders trumpet their support for democracy, State terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO's postwar design. The KLA's political role for the post-conflict period had been mapped out well in advance. Prior to Rambouillet Conference, the KLA had been promised a central role in the formation of a post-conflict government. The "hidden agenda" consisted in converting the KLA paramilitary into a legitimate and accomplished civilian administration. According to US State Department spokesman James Foley (February 1999):
"We want to develop a good relationship with them [the KLA] as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization, ...[W]e believe that we have a lot of advice and a lot of help that we can provide to them if they become precisely the kind of political actor we would like to see them become.'"11
In other words, the US State Department had already slated the KLA "provisional government" (PGK) to run civilian State institutions. Under NATO's "Indirect Rule", the KLA has taken over municipal governments and public services including schools and hospitals. Rame Buja, the KLA "Minister for Local Administration" has appointed local prefects in 23 out of 25 municipalities.12
Under NATO's regency, the KLA has replaced the duly elected (by ethnic Albanians) provisional Kosovar government of President Ibrahim Rugova. The self-proclaimed KLA administration has branded Rugova as a traitor declaring the (parallel) Kosovar parliamentary elections held in March 1998 to be invalid. This position has largely been upheld by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) entrusted by UNMIK with the postwar task of "democracy building" and "good governance". In turn, OSCE officials have already established a working rapport with KLA appointees.13
The KLA provisional government (PGK) is made up of the KLA's political wing together with the Democratic Union Movement (LBD), a coalition of five opposition parties opposed to Rugova's Democratic League (LDK). In addition to the position of prime minister, the KLA controls the ministries of finance, public order and defence. The KLA also has a controlling voice on the UN sponsored Kosovo Transitional Council set up by Mr. Bernard Kouchner. The PGK has also established links with a number of Western governments.
Whereas the KLA has been spearheaded into running civilian institutions (under the guidance of the OSCE), members of the duly elected Kosovar (provisional) government of the Democratic League (DKL) have been blatantly excluded from acquiring a meaningful political voice.
ESTABLISHING A KLA POLICE FORCE TO `PROTECT CIVILIANS'
Under NATO occupation, the rule of law has visibly been turned up side down. Criminals and terrorists are to become law enforcement officers. KLA troops which have already taken over police stations will eventually form a 4,000 strong "civilian" police force (to be trained by foreign police officers under the authority of the United Nations) with a mandate to "protect civilians". Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has already pledged Canadian support to the formation of a civilian police force.14 The latter which has been entrusted to the OSCE will eventually operate under the jurisdiction of the KLA controlled "Ministry of Public Order".
US MILITARY AID
Despite NATO's commitment to disarming the KLA, the Kosovar paramilitary organisation is slated to be transformed into a modern military force. So-called "security assistance" has already been granted to the KLA by the US Congress under the "Kosovar Independence and Justice Act of 1999". Start-up funds of 20 million dollars will largely be "used for training and support for their [KLA] established self-defence forces."15 In the words of KLA Chief of Staff Agrim Ceku:
"The KLA wants to be transformed into something like the US National Guard, ... we accept the assistance of KFOR and the international community to rebuild an army according to NATO standards. ... These professionally trained soldiers of the next generation of the KLA would seek only to defend Kosova. At this decisive moment, we [the KLA] do not hide our ambitions; we want the participation of international military structures to assist in the pacific and humanitarian efforts we are attempting here."16
While the KLA maintains its links to the Balkans narcotics trade which served to finance many of its terrorist activities, the paramilitary organisation has now been granted an official seal of approval as well as "legitimate" sources of funding. The pattern is similar to that followed in Croatia and in the Bosnian Muslim-Croatian Federation where so-called "equip and train" programmes were put together by the Pentagon. In turn, Washington's military aid package to the KLA has been entrusted to Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) of Alexandria, Virginia, a private mercenary outfit run by high ranking former US military officers.
MPRI's training concepts which had already been tested in Croatia and Bosnia are based on imparting "offensive tactics...as the best form of defence".17 In the Kosovar context, this so-called "defensive doctrine" transforms the KLA paramilitary into a modern army without however eliminating its terrorist makeup.18 The objective is to ultimately transform an insurgent army into a modern military and police force which serves the Alliance's future strategic objectives in the Balkans. MPRI has currently "ninety-one highly experienced, former military professionals working in Bosnia & Herzegovina".19 The number of military officers working on contract with the KLA has not been disclosed.
PART II. FROM KRAJINA TO KOSOVO: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
A FORMER CROATIAN GENERAL APPOINTED KLA CHIEF OF STAFF
The massacres of civilians in Kosovo are not disconnected acts of revenge by civilians or by so-called "rogue elements" within the KLA as claimed by NATO and the United Nations. They are part of a consistent and coherent pattern. The intent (and result) of the KLA sponsored atrocities have been to trigger the "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs, Roma and other minorities in Kosovo.
KLA Commander Agim Ceku referring to the killings of 14 villagers at Gracko on July 24, claimed that: "We [the KLA] do not know who did it, but I sincerely believe these people have nothing to do with the KLA."20 In turn, KFOR Lieutenant General Sir Mike Jackson has commended his KLA counterpart, Commander Agim Ceku for "efforts undertaken" to disarm the KLA. In fact, very few KLA weapons have been handed in. Moreover, the deadline for turning in KLA weaponry has been extended. "I do not regard this as noncompliance" said Commander Jackson in a press conference, "but rather as an indication of the seriousness with which General Ceku is taking this important issue."21
Yet what Sir Mike Jackson failed to mention is that KLA Chief of Staff Commander Agim Ceku (although never indicted as a war criminal) was (according to Jane Defence Weekly June 10, 1999) "one of the key planners of the successful `Operation Storm'" led by the Croatian Armed Forces against Krajina Serbs in 1995.
General Jackson who had served in former Yugoslavia under the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was fully cognizant of the activities of the Croatian High Command during that period including the responsibilities imparted to Brigadier General Agim Ceku. In February 1999, barely a month prior to the NATO bombings, Ceku left his position as Brigadier General with the Croatian Armed Forces to join the KLA as Commander in Chief.
FROM KRAJINA TO KOSOVO: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
According to the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Operation Storm resulted in the massacre of at least 410 civilians in the course of a three day operation (4 to 7 August 1995).22 An internal report of The Hague War Crimes Tribunal (leaked to the New York Times), confirmed that the Croatian Army had been responsible for carrying out: "summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and "ethnic cleansing" in the Krajina region of Croatia...."23
In a section of the report entitled "The Indictment. Operation Storm, A Prima Facie Case.", the ICTY report confirms that:
"During the course of the military offensive, the Croatian armed forces and special police committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law, including but not limited to, shelling of Knin and other cities... During, and in the 100 days following the military offensive, at least 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed, and many hundreds disappeared. ...In a widespread and systematic manner, Croatian troops committed murder and other inhumane acts upon and against Croatian Serbs."24
US `GENERALS FOR HIRE'
The internal 150 page report concluded that it has "sufficient material to establish that the three [Croatian] generals who commanded the military operation" could be held accountable under international law.25 The individuals named had been directly involved in the military operation "in theatre". Those involved in "the planning of Operation Storm" were not mentioned:
"The identity of the "American general" referred to by Fenrick [a Tribunal staff member] is not known. The tribunal would not allow Williamson or Fenrick to be interviewed. But Ms. Arbour, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, suggested in a telephone interview last week that Fenrick's comment had been `a joking observation'. Ms. Arbour had not been present during the meeting, and that is not how it was viewed by some who were there. Several people who were at the meeting assumed that Fenrick was referring to one of the retired U.S. generals who worked for Military Professional Resources Inc. ... Questions remain about the full extent of U.S. involvement. In the course of the three yearinvestigation into the assault, the United States has failed to provide critical evidence requested by the tribunal, according to tribunal documents and officials, adding to suspicion among some there that Washington is uneasy about the investigation... The Pentagon, however, has argued through U.S. lawyers at the tribunal that the shelling was a legitimate military activity, according to tribunal documents and officials".26
The Tribunal was attempting to hide what had already been revealed in several press reports published in the wake of Operation Storm. According to a US State Department spokesman, MPRI had been helping the Croatians "avoid excesses or atrocities in military operations."27 Fifteen senior US military advisers headed by retired two star General Richard Griffitts had been dispatched to Croatia barely seven months before Operation Storm.
28 According to one report, MPRI executive director General Carl E. Vuono: "held a secret top-level meeting at Brioni Island, off the coast of Croatia, with Gen. Varimar Cervenko, the architect of the Krajina campaign. In the five days preceding the attack, at least ten meetings were held between General Vuono and officers involved in the campaign..."29
According to Ed Soyster, a senior MPRI executive and former head of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA):
"MPRI's role in Croatia is limited to classroom instruction on military-civil relations and doesn't involve training in tactics or weapons. Other U.S. military men say whatever MPRI did for the Croats and many suspect more than classroom instruction was involved it was worth every penny."
Carl Vuono and Butch [Crosbie] Saint are hired guns and in it for the money," says Charles Boyd, a recently retired four star Air Force general who was the Pentagon's No. 2 man in Europe until July [1995]. "They did a very good job for the Croats, and I have no doubt they'll do a good job in Bosnia."30
THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL'S COVER UP
The untimely leaking of the ICTY's internal report on the Krajina massacres barely a few days before the onslaught of NATO's air raids on Yugoslavia was the source of some embarrassment to the Tribunal's Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour.
The Tribunal (ICTY) attempted to cover up the matter and trivialise the report's findings (including the alleged role of the US military officers on contract with the Croatian Armed Forces). Several Tribunal officials including American Lawyer Clint Williamson sought to discredit the Canadian Peacekeeping officers' testimony who witnessed the Krajina massacres in 1995.31
Williamson, who described the shelling of Knin as a "minor incident," said that the Pentagon had told him that Knin was a legitimate military target... The [Tribunal's] review concluded by voting not to include the shelling of Knin in any indictment, a conclusion that stunned and angered many at the tribunal"...32
The findings of the Tribunal contained in the leaked ICTY documents were downplayed, their relevance was casually dismissed as "expressions of opinion, arguments and hypotheses from various staff members of the OTP during the investigative process".33 According to the Tribunal's spokesperson "the documents do not represent in any way the concluded decisions of the Prosecutor."34
The internal 150 page report has not been released. The staff member who had leaked the documents is (according to a Croatian TV report) no longer working for the Tribunal. During the press Conference, the Tribunal's spokesman was asked: "about the consequences for the person who leaked the information", Blewitt [the ICTY spokesman] replied that he did not want to go into that. He said that the OTP would strengthen the existing procedures to prevent this from happening again, however he added that you could not stop people from talking".35
THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN CROATIA
The massacres conducted under Operation Storm "set the stage" for the "ethnic cleansing" of at least 180,000 Krajina Serbs (according to estimates of the Croatian Helsinki Committee and Amnesty International). According to other sources, the number of victims of ethnic cleansing in Krajina was much larger. Moreover, there is evidence that chemical weapons had been used in the Yugoslav civil war (1991-95).36 Although there is no firm evidence of the use of chemical weapons against Croatian Serbs, an ongoing enquiry by the Canadian Minister of Defence (launched in July 1999) points to the possibility of toxic poisoning of Canadian Peacekeepers while on service in Croatia between 1993 and 1995:
"There was a smell of blood in the air during the past week as the media sensed they had a major scandal unfolding within the Department of National Defense over the medical files of those Canadians who served in Croatia in 1993. Allegations of destroyed documents, a coverup, and a defensive minister and senior officers..."37
The official release of the Department of National Defence (DND) refers to possibility of toxic "soil contamination" in Medak Pocket in 1993 (see below). Was it "soil contamination" or something far more serious? The criminal investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) refers to the shredding of medical files of former Canadian peacekeepers by the DND. In other words did the DND have something to hide? The issue remains as to what types of shells and ammunitions were used by the Croatian Armed Forces ie. were chemical weapons used against Serb civilians?
OPERATION STORM: THE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN REGIMENT
Prior to the onslaught, Croatian radio had previously broadcasted a message by president Franjo Tudjman, calling upon "Croatian citizens of Serbian ethnicity... to remain in their homes and not to fear the Croatian authorities, which will respect their minority rights."38 Canadian peacekeepers of the Second Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment witnessed the atrocities committed by Croatian troops in the Krajina offensive in September 1995: "Any Serb who had failed to evacuate their property were systematically "cleansed" by roving death squads. Every abandoned animal was slaughtered and any Serb household was ransacked and torched".39
Also confirmed by Canadian peacekeepers was the participation of German mercenaries in Operation Storm:
"Immediately behind the frontline Croatian combat troops and German mercenaries, a large number of hardline extremists had pushed into the Krajina. ...Many of these atrocities were carried out within the Canadian Sector, but as the peacekeepers were soon informed by the Croat authorities, the UN no longer had any formal authority in the region."40
How the Germans mercenaries were recruited was never officially revealed. An investigation by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) confirmed the that foreign mercenaries in Croatia had in some cases "been paid [and presumably recruited] outside Croatia and by third parties."41
THE 1993 MEDAK POCKET MASSACRE
According to Jane Defence Weekly (10 June 1999), Brigadier General Agim Ceku (now in charge of the KLA) also "masterminded the successful HV [Croatian Army] offensive at Medak" in September 1993. In Medak, the combat operation was entitled "Scorched Earth" resulting in the total destruction of the Serbian villages of Divoselo, Pocitelj and Citluk, and the massacre of over 100 civilians.42
These massacres were also witnessed by Canadian peacekeepers under UN mandate:
"As the sun rose over the horizon, it revealed a Medak Valley engulfed in smoke and flames. As the frustrated soldiers of 2PPCLI waited for the order to move forward into the pocket, shots and screams still rang out as the ethnic cleansing continued. ...About 20 members of the international press had tagged along, anxious to see the Medak battleground. Calvin [a Canadian officer] called an informal press conference at the head of the column and loudly accused the Croats of trying to hide war crimes against the Serb inhabitants. The Croats started withdrawing back to their old lines, taking with them whatever loot they hadn't destroyed. All livestock had been killed and houses torched. French reconnaissance troops and the Canadian command element pushed up the valley and soon began to find bodies of Serb civilians, some already decomposing, others freshly slaughtered. ...Finally, on the drizzly morning of Sept. 17, teams of UN civilian police arrived to probe the smouldering ruins for murder victims. Rotting corpses lying out in the open were catalogued, then turned over to the peacekeepers for burial."43
The massacres were reported to the Canadian Minister of Defence and to the United Nations: "Senior defence bureaucrats back in Ottawa had no way of predicting the outcome of the engagement in terms of political fallout. To them, there was no point in calling media attention to a situation that might easily backfire. ...So Medak was relegated to the memory hole no publicity, no recriminations, no official record. Except for those soldiers involved, Canada's most lively military action since the Korean War simply never happened."44
PART III. NATO'S `POST CONFLICT' AGENDA IN KOSOVO.
Both the Medak Pocket massacre and Operation Storm bear a direct relationship to the ongoing security situation in Kosovo and the massacres and ethnic cleansing committed by KLA troops. While the circumstances are markedly different, several of today's actors in Kosovo were involved (under the auspices of the Croatian Armed Forces) in the planning of both these operations. Moreover, the US mercenary outfit MPRI which collaborated with the Croatian Armed Forces in 1995 is currently on contract with the KLA. NATO's casual response to the appointment of Brigadier General Agim Ceku as KLA Chief of Staff was communicated by Mr. Jamie Shea in a Press Briefing in May:
"I have always made it clear, and you have heard me say this, that NATO has no direct contacts with the KLA. Who they appoint as their leaders, that is entirely their own affair. I don't have any comment on that whatever."45
While NATO says it "has no direct contacts with the KLA", the evidence confirms the opposite. Amply documented, KLA terrorism has been installed with NATO's tacit approval. The KLA had (according to several reports) been receiving "covert support" and training from the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) since the mid-nineties. Moreover, MPRI collaboration with the KLA predates the onslaught of the bombing campaign.46 Moreover, the building up of KLA forces was part of NATO planning. Already by mid-1998, "covert support" had been replaced by official ("overt") support by the military Alliance in violation of UN Security Council Resolution UNSCR 1160 of 31 March 1998 which condemned:
"...all acts of terrorism by the Kosovo Liberation Army or any other group or individual and all external support for terrorist activity in Kosovo, including finance, arms and training."
NATO officials, Western heads of State and heads of government, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan not to mention ICTY chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour, were fully cognizant of General Brigadier Agim Ceku's involvement in the planning of Operation Storm and Operation Scorched Earth. Surely, some questions should have been asked...
Yet visibly what is shaping up in the wake of the bombings in Kosovo is the continuity of NATO's operation in the Balkans. Military personnel and UN bureaucrats previously stationed in Croatia and Bosnia have been routinely reassigned to Kosovo. KFOR Commander Mike Jackson had previously been responsible as IFOR Commander for organising the return of Serbs "to lands taken by Croatian HVO forces in the Krajina offensive".47 And in this capacity General Mike Jackson had "urged that the resettlement [of Krajina Serbs] not [be] rushed to avoid tension [with the Croatians]... while also warning returning Serbs "of the extent of the [land] mine threat."48 In retrospect, recalling the events of early 1996, very few Krajina Serbs were allowed to return to their homes under the protection of the United Nations.
And a similar process is unfolding in Kosovo, ie. the conduct of senior military officers conforms to a consistent pattern, the same key individuals are now involved in Kosovo. While token efforts are displayed to protect Serb and Roma civilians, those who have fled Kosovo are not encouraged to return under UN protection... In postwar Kosovo, "ethnic cleansing" implemented by the KLA has been accepted by the "international community" as a "fait accompli"...
While calling for democracy and "good governance" in the Balkans, the US and its allies have installed in Kosovo a paramilitary government with links to organised crime.
The foreseeable outcome is the outright "criminalisation" of civilian State institutions and the establishment of what is best described as a "Mafia State". The complicity of NATO and the Alliance governments (namely their relentless support to the KLA) points to the de facto "criminalisation" of KFOR and of the UN peacekeeping apparatus in Kosovo. The donor agencies and governments (eg. the funds approved by the US Congress in violation of several UN Security Council resolutions) providing financial support to the KLA are, in this regard, also "accessories" to the de facto criminalisation of State institutions. Through the intermediation of a paramilitary group (created and financed by Washington and Bonn), NATO ultimately bears the burden of responsibility for the massacres and ethnic cleansing of civilians in Kosovo.
STATE TERROR AND THE `FREE MARKET'
State terror and the "free market" seem to go hand in hand. The concurrent "criminalisation" of State institutions in Kosovo is not incompatible with the West's economic and strategic objectives in the Balkans. Notwithstanding the massacres of civilians, the self-proclaimed KLA administration has committed itself to establishing a "secure and stable environment" for foreign investors and international financial institutions. The Minister of Finance Adem Grobozci and other representatives of the provisional government invited to the various donor conferences are all KLA appointees. In contrast, members of the KDL of Ibrahim Rugova (duly elected in parliamentary elections) were not even invited to attend the Stabilisation Summit in Sarajevo in late July.
"Free market reforms" are envisaged for Kosovo under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions largely replicating the structures of the Rambouillet agreement. Article I (Chapter 4a) of the Rambouillet Agreement stipulated that: "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles". The KLA government will largely be responsible for implementing these reforms and ensuring that loan conditionalities are met.
In close liaison with NATO, the Bretton Woods institutions had already analysed the consequences of an eventual military intervention leading to the military occupation of Kosovo: almost a year prior to the beginning of the War, the World Bank conducted "simulations" which "anticipated the possibility of an emergency scenario arising out of the tensions in Kosovo."49
The eventual "reconstruction" of Kosovo financed by international debt largely purports to transfer Kosovo's extensive wealth in mineral resources and coal to multinational capital. In this regard, the KLA has already occupied (pending their privatisation) the largest coal mine at Belacevac in Dobro Selo northwest of Pristina. In turn, foreign capital has its eyes rivetted on the massive Trepca mining complex which constitutes "the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, worth at least $5 billion."50 The Trebca complex not only includes copper and large reserves of zinc but also cadmium, gold, and silver. It has several smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, a power plant and Yugoslavia's largest battery plant. Northern Kosovo also has estimated reserves of 17 billion tons of coal and lignite.
In the wake of the bombings, the management of many of the State owned enterprises and public utilities were taken over by KLA appointees. In turn, the leaders of Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK) have become "the brokers" of multinational capital committed to handing over the Kosovar economy at bargain prices to foreign investors. The IMF's lethal "economic therapy" will be imposed, the provincial economy will be dismantled, agriculture will be deregulated, local industrial enterprises which have not been totally destroyed will be driven into bankruptcy.
The most profitable State assets will eventually be transferred into the hands of foreign capital under the World Bank sponsored privatisation programme. "Strong economic medicine" imposed by external creditors will contribute to further boosting a criminal economy (already firmly implanted in Albania) which feeds on poverty and economic dislocation. "The Allies will work with the rest of the international community to help rebuild Kosovo once the crisis is over: The International Monetary Fund and Group of Seven industrialized countries are among those who stand ready to offer financial help to the countries of the region. We want to ensure proper coordination of aid and help countries to respond to the effects of the crisis. This should go hand in hand with the necessary structural reforms in the countries affected helped by budget support from the international community."51
Morever, the so-called "reconstruction" of the Balkans by foreign capital will signify multibillion contracts to foreign firms to rebuild Kosovo's infrastructure. More generally, the proposed "Marshall Plan" for the Balkans financed by the World Bank and the European Development Bank (EBRD) as well as private creditors will largely benefit Western mining, petroleum and construction companies while fuelling the region's external debt well into the third millennium.
And Kosovo is slated to reimburse this debt through the laundering of dirty money. Yugoslav banks in Kosovo will be closed down, the banking system will be deregulated under the supervision of Western financial institutions. Narcodollars from the multibillion dollar Balkans drug trade will be recycled towards servicing the external debt as well as "financing" the costs of "reconstruction." The lucrative flow of narcodollars thus ensures that foreign investors involved in the "reconstruction" programme will be able reap substantial returns. In turn, the existence of a Kosovar "narco State" ensures the orderly reimbursement of international donors and creditors. The latter are prepared to turn blind eye. They have a tacit vested interest in installing a government which facilitates the laundering of drug money.
The pattern in Kosovo is, in this regard, similar to that observed in neighbouring Albania. Since the early 1990s (culminating with the collapse of the financial pyramids in 1996-97), the IMF's reforms have impoverished the Albanian population while spearheading the national economy into bankruptcy. The IMF's deadly economic therapy transforms countries into open territories. In Albania and to a lesser extent Macedonia, it has also contributed to fostering the growth of illicit trade and the criminalisation of State institutions.
ENDNOTES
1. Jim Lehrer News Maker Interview, PBS, 26 July 1999.
2. Stratfor Commentary, "Growing Threat of Serbian Paramilitary Action in Kosovo", 29 July 1999.
3. Human Rights Watch, 3 August 1999.
4. See Michael Radu, "Don't Arm the KLA", CNS Commentary from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, 7 April, 1999).
5. Tanjug Press Dispatch, 14 May 1999.
6. Stratfor Comment, "Rugova Faced with a Choice of Two Losses", Stratfor, 29 July 1999.
7. Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Yugoslav Daily Survey, Belgrade, 29 June 1999.
8. Hina Press Dispatch, Zagreb, 26 July 1999.
10. BBC Report, London, 5 July 1999.
11. New York Times, 2 February 1999.
12. Financial Times, London, 4 August 1999.
13. See Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Mission in Kosovo, Decision 305, Permanent Council, 237th Plenary Meeting, PC Journal No. 237, Agenda item 2, Vienna, 1 July 1999.
14. Statement at the Sarajevo Summit, 31 July 1999.
15. 106th Congress, April 15, HR 1425.
16. Interview with KLA Chief of Staff Commander Agim Ceku, Kosovapress, 31 July 1999.
17. See Tammy Arbucki, "Building a Bosnian Army", Jane International Defence Review, August 1997.
19. Military Professional Resources, Inc, "Personnel Needs", http://www.mpri.com/current/personnel.htm
22. The actual number of civilians killed or missing was much larger.
23. Quoted in Raymond Bonner, War Crimes Panel Finds CroatTroops Cleansed the Serbs, New York Times, 21 March 1999).
27. Ken Silverstein, "Privatizing War", The Nation, New York, 27 July 1997.
28. See Mark Thompson et al, "Generals for Hire", Time Magazine,15 January 1996, p. 34.
29. Quoted in Silverstein, op cit.
30. Mark Thompson et al, op cit.
33. ICTY Weekly Press Briefing, 24 March 1999).
36. See inter alia Reuters dispatch, 21 October 1993 on the use of chemical grenades, a New York Times report on 31 October 1992 on the use of poisoned gas).
37. Lewis MacKenzie, "Giving our soldiers the benefit of the doubt", National Post, 2 August 1999.
38. Slobodna Dalmacija, Split, Croatia, August 5 1996.
39. Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan, The Sunday Sun, Toronto, 2 November 1998.
41. United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Fifty-first session, Item 9 of the provisional agenda, Geneva, 21 December 1994).
42. (See Memorandum on the Violation of the Human and Civil Rights of the Serbian People in the Republic of Croatia, http://serbianlinks.freehosting.net/memorandum.htm).
43. Excerpts from the book of Scott Taylor and Brian Nolan published in the Toronto Sun, 1 November 1998.
45. NATO Press Briefing, 14 May 1999.
46. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo `Freedom Fighters' Financed by Organized Crime, CAQ, Spring-Summer 1999.
47. Jane's Defence Weekly, Vol 25, No. 7, 14 February 1996.
49. World Bank Development News, Washington, 27 April 1999.
50. New York Times, July 8, 1998, report by Chris Hedges.
51. Statement by Javier Solano, Secretary General of NATO, published in The National Post, Toronto May 1999.
Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, August 1999. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on "community internet sites" provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. For community postings, kindly send a short message to chossudovsky@videotron.ca. To publish this text on commercial internet sites, in printed and/or in other forms (including excerpts), contact the author at chossudovsky@sprint.ca; fax: 1-514-425-6224.
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.
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Date: October 1, 1999/ Source: International Herald Tribune
Clinton Tilt On Kosovo Worries Europeans
By Joseph Fitchett International Herald Tribune
NOVGOROD, Russia - Both the European allies and Russia are alarmed by signs of readiness in the Clinton administration to envisage Kosovo as an independent ethnic Albanian state - a development that critics say could have a disastrous domino effect in the Balkans.
U.S. policymakers insist that a decision about the province's ultimate political status is a long way off, but critics assert that the Clinton administration has started accommodating a blueprint long nurtured by leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army to make Kosovo the core of a greater Albania.
This dream among Albanian nationalists has become a nightmare for European governments, which are frightened by ethnic Albanian nationalism and fearful that independence for Kosovo would lead quickly to the breakup of neighboring states. They fear this would trigger fresh refugee flows and perhaps wider conflict in the Balkans.
''Kosovo's independence would pry apart Macedonia, whose western third is already populated by Kosovar Muslims who have moved there over the last decade,'' said a European specialist. With Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, better situated than Tirana, the capital of Albania, a state in Kosovo would inevitably suck in at least the northern, Muslim-populated part of Albania, the expert added.
That outcome, European officials said, would discredit the continuing NATO intervention, exposing the organization to accusations that it was carving out a new country in violation of allied promises to respect Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. It would partly vindicate Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who has constantly insisted that the West's real aim in the air war this spring has been to weaken the Serbs and wrest away Kosovo.
Moscow, instead of gaining confidence from the West's discomfort, would become more suspicious of U.S. motives, according to Russian officials. They say that Moscow already suspects Washington of encouraging the emergence of a new Muslim state in the Balkans as a way of inciting separatism among Muslims in such places in southern Russia as Dagestan.
Publicly, European and U.S. officials maintain a solid front behind the Western plan to maintain an international administration over Kosovo for as long as it takes to promote forward-looking leaders among the Kosovar Albanians and lay the foundations for democratic governing institutions.
Privately, however, policymakers acknowledged a neuralgic divergence between Washington and European capitals about what tone to adopt and what to do next in postwar Kosovo.
The trans-Atlantic cracks were apparent at a seminar on security issues last weekend among U.S., European and Russian officials and analysts in Novgorod, near St. Petersburg, organized by the Aspen Institute of Berlin and Russia's Integration Institute. While the proceedings were off the record, the participants - like U.S. and other officials elsewhere - agreed to be interviewed but insisted on anonymity.
Already, critics said, the Clinton administration has made concessions in Kosovo - notably a compromise on the future of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanians' guerrilla movement - that the local hard-liners will interpret as evidence of Western weakness.
A crucial initial round was won by Albanian hard-liners in derailing NATO's plan - confidently promised by organization commanders as the air war ended - for the complete dissolution of the KLA.
The demilitarization deal signed last week accepted KLA demands to preserve its organizational coherence by converting itself into a new force, the Kosovo Defense Corps.
The compromise, a U.S. specialist said in Novgorod, left ''the KLA in a position to re-coalesce as a fighting force whenever it chooses.''
European governments, including Britain, initially rejected the North Atlantic Treaty Organization plan and had to be convinced by Washington.
Essentially, another U.S. expert said, the West dropped its bolder plans because it ''hesitated to start a guerrilla war between NATO peacekeepers and Albanians - a military risk and political embarrassment that the Clinton administration cannot accept.''
Other controversial U.S.-led policies fueling Kosovars' ambitions - circulating Western currency in Kosovo or continuing to reject a limited return of Serbian customs officials - have been defended as pragmatic decisions to spark recovery.
''The Kosovars need to get an economy going, the Serbs are being obstructionist, the KLA has got to have a role in this country's future,'' a U.S. policymaker said.
Often, U.S. officials' tone sounded even more forward-leaning on independence. ''Sovereignty now has to be earned in Kosovo, by one side or the other,'' a U.S. policymaker recently told journalists.
So far, European officials feel that Washington remains committed to hopes that time can eventually soften Kosovar bitterness and provide Albanians enough confidence to accept at least a nominal link with Serbia. But the new U.S. nuances worry Europeans, according to German and Italian officials.
If Washington overestimated its ability to manage the Kosovar Albanians, it could hope to duck the consequences by signaling acceptance of independence, the Europeans said. That would avoid a clash with the Kosovars and leave the consequences for Europe to handle later.
No Western capital expects Kosovo's ethnic Albanians to compromise on their quest for independence and contemplate even the slightest formal ties with Serbia as long as it is ruled by Mr. Milosevic, the man who persecuted them so brutally.
If he clings to power, independence for Kosovo could be depicted as the only practical course. It would also offer revenge against Belgrade for a decade of affronts to the West.
Behind any differences in timing and nuance on how to square this diplomatic circle about Serbian sovereignty, the divide between U.S. and European officials about a possible new Albanian state arises from a cultural gap - a European feeling that Americans are too remote from the Balkans to sense the implications of Albanian nationalism.
''Americans see Albanians primarily as victims of Serbian barbarism and that sympathy could blind them to the difficulties of changing a political culture deeply colored by clan loyalties and vendetta violence,'' according to a U.S. specialist.
A German policymaker, interviewed by phone in Berlin, said, ''Europeans have a sense that Albanian nationalism could be as damaging and destabilizing as Serbian power, but we sometimes worry that the force of Albanian ambitions is little understood in the United States.''
An important subtext, which high-level policymakers rarely articulate, concerns European fears that a Pristina-based Albania could become a hotbed of mafia-style politics.
The Albanian mafia has become notorious in Europe in the last two years as gangs from Kosovo have pushed into Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy.
The Albanian mafia played a key role in the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army, a U.S. official explained: ''The KLA needed cash, firepower, smuggling routes and contacts in the Kosovar diaspora and in exchange it provided political legitimacy for gangsters who came up with the goods.''
Western officials admit they have questions about Kosovo Liberation Army links to Albanian organized crime.
''A lot of KLA people are doing a lot of things that we don't like, but we have not got any proof of a structural link between the leadership and organized crime,'' a U.S. official said at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Publicly, U.S. and European officials vow to keep Kosovo under international administration as long as it takes, but four months into reconstruction they have started to sound frustrated about the prospects for a political takeoff.
Kosovars' political culture reflects Albania's traditional focus on vendettas, utter lack of confidence in government administration and lack of exposure to democracy or ethnic tolerance. U.S. officials set the postwar tone in promising to set up a constructive leadership, marginalizing separatist extremists.
Those initial expectations have not been met, a U.S. official said.
DEAFENING SILENCE ON DEPLETED URANIUM
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LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE/February 2001
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/2001/02/03uranium
by ROBERT JAMES PARSONS *
In spite of the growing number of unexplained deaths and illnesses among servicemen returning from the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo, UN agencies have, to different degrees, cast a veil of silence over the chemical and radiological hazards of depleted uranium. It was not until this January that the World Health rganisation proposed a study of DU's effects on the peoples of the Gulf region.
* * *
The World Health Organisation's report on depleted uranium (DU) has still not materialised; since being announced, it was postponed several times and only put back on the agenda because of pressure from international aid agencies working in Kosovo. When news of "Balkan syndrome" first broke, the WHO published in January this year a four-page "fact sheet" that claimed to deal with the subject (1). Designed to calm the storm and reassure the public, the information it contains is vague and often at odds with current scientific knowledge. If there is any radiation, the fact sheet claims, it is within acceptable levels: "From the science it appears unlikely that an increased leukaemia risk related to DU exposure would be detectable among military personnel in the Balkans."
How could the WHO, the world's highest authority in health matters, have produced such a document? It recommends as "reasonable", for example, such unlikely "clean-up operations" as collecting the thousands of billions of invisible radioactive particles scattered over hundreds of square kilometres and mixed with hundreds of thousands of tons of earth.
In fact, an agreement entered into with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1959 prevents the WHO from dealing with radiation and public health matters without the former's approval. Approval that is hardly ever given.
In the 1950s in the United States the Eisenhower administration made much of the civilian spin-offs from military research in order to justify the enormous sums being spent on the nuclear arsenal. In 1954 it started the Atoms for Peace programme, promising the public electricity that was not only "clean" but so abundant as to be "unmeterable".
At the time many members of the scientific community, with little or no involvement in military research, recalled the work that had earned Herman Joseph Muller a Nobel prize in 1946. He had discovered the terrifying mutagenic effects of ionising radiation. It was this very radiation that
the power plants envisaged by Atoms for Peace were to introduce into the heart of the civilian population. Yet Dr John W Gofman, who led the team that isolated the first milligram of plutonium in 1942, continued to hammer home his point that "by any reasonable standard of biomedical proof, there is no safe dose" (2). In spite of such warnings the US pressed for the formation in 1956 of the IAEA - a UN organisation whose remit is quite simply to promote the nuclear industry.
In 1957 the WHO organised an international conference on the effects of radiation on genetic mutation; its basic premises, derived from Muller's experiments, are found in the papers presented to the conference and subsequently published (3). But in 1959 the debate was closed. The WHO accepted the agreement with the IAEA according to which "whenever either organisation proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organisation has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement" (4). That "mutual agreement" stipulation was to allow the IAEA to block almost every WHO initiative concerning the relationship between radiation and public health.
That is why, when the WHO proposed publishing a fact sheet on depleted uranium, nothing came of it. The generic study, still awaited, was to be confined to chemical contamination from DU as a heavy metal. Only when DU hit the international headlines did the WHO announce that the study would be extended to radiation. The additional work would be done by experts from such bodies as the United Kingdom's National Radiological Protection Board (much criticised by British veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome) and, of course, the IAEA. The humanitarian aid organisations working in Kosovo, such as the High Commission for Refugees (HCR), the World Food Programme, the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs and the International Organisation for Migration, have to refer to the WHO for all public health matters since they belong to the UN system. So they are still waiting.
The current standards for the "tolerable" radiation dose presenting no danger to the human organism were set on the basis of studies by the Pentagon's Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission on survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima; one of the major objectives of those studies, if not the main one, was to determine the bomb's effectiveness as a weapon of war. The studies (details of which were not published until 1965) began in 1950, when many victims who had initially survived had already died from the consequences of the bombings. The group studied consisted mainly of young sportsmen in relatively good shape. Those particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of radiation - children, women and the elderly - did not appear at all.
These studies of survivors were soon brought to an end: there was no waiting for the cancers that would take decades to appear. They were also carried out by physicists with no training in biology. At the time they knew nothing of the existence of DNA, let alone how it works, and they made no distinction between the effects of a single, sudden, intense explosion and those of radiation from an internal, slow, constant source - like that given off by particles of depleted uranium which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion or through open wounds.
The nuclear lobby has always claimed that the effects of low-level radiation are too small to be studied. They therefore extrapolated from the observed effects of high dose irradiation (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), on the basis that if 1,000 survivors became ill after exposure to a dose of 100 (an arbitrary figure), 500 would be ill when exposed to 50 and only one from a dose of 0.5. Thus, below that exposure no-one is affected (5).
'Safe' doses
But the British researcher Alice Walker showed the danger of low-level radiation to the human organism in a study of children whose mothers were x-rayed during pregnancy. In the 1970s she reached the same findings for employees of the nuclear weapons plant in Hanford, US. In 1998, still going strong despite her 91 years, she published with George W Kneale an in-depth reappraisal of the studies made of the 1945 survivors, showing irrefutably the errors present in the work on which the present standards are based (6). But it is these standards that allow the WHO fact sheet to speak of a "tolerable daily intake" for persons exposed to depleted uranium. Likewise, Dr Chris Busby, a British researcher who has written a number of works on the effects of low-level radiation (7) (disputed by the nuclear establishment), has explained how chronic internal low-level radiation systematically destroys the DNA of cells to produce the mutations that lead to cancer.
The international standards have been revised downwards several times, most recently in 1965, 1986 and 1990, by the International Commission for Radiation Protection - which draws up the standards that are then applied by the IAEA. The 1990 revision cut the permitted dose by a factor of five. The US has still not accepted that revision. It is therefore on the basis of doses five times higher than accepted by the rest of the world that they claim their soldiers received "safe" doses during the Gulf war.
The highest authority in the matter in the US is the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a civilian agency but in fact headed up by the military high command, which in that way controls the development of all nuclear technology. All the main sources of ionising radiation are therefore controlled by persons and institutions with no interest in exploring their dangers. The four most eminent scientific authorities to have worked for the AEC were John Gofman, Karl Z Morgan, Thomas Mancuse and Alice Stewart. Each in turn was sacked for presenting findings showing that exposure to low-level radiation causes cancer (8). The WHO fact sheet therefore comes in the context of a history of general denial of which the affair of depleted uranium in Yugoslavia is only the latest episode.
In May 1999, during the Kosovo war, the UN arranged for representatives of all the agencies involved in the conflict to go and make an initial assessment of the situation. Each wrote a report that was then shared with the other agencies. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) took part, but its report was suppressed. After it was leaked, the document, penned by Bakary Kante, advisor to UNEP director general Klaus Toepfer, was made public on 18 June 1999 in two Swiss French-language newspapers, Courrier and Liberté. The report sounded the alarm on the pollution caused by the bombings, specifically mentioning depleted uranium (9).
Another report on pollution, funded by the European Commission and published that same June shortly after the end of the war, takes the trouble to identify its sources (experts in the field, literature, specialist monographs, etc.) but makes virtually no mention of depleted uranium (10). The only reference appears in a brief list of the types of pollution: "DU" followed by "in Yugoslavia - claimed". One might have thought that the working party had been unaware of the Kante report. But several paragraphs of its report reproduce it word for word, and the list of 80 or so shelled sites is identical to that compiled by Kante.
Not long after that, the UNEP set up a working party, the Balkans Task Force (BTF), to make a full report. Toepfer appointed Finland's former environment minister Pekka Haavisto to lead it. He was adamant that depleted uranium was part of the overall pollution picture and could not be left out of the enquiry. If he was barred from studying it as radioactive pollution, he would study it as chemical pollution.
Where are the contaminated sites?
On completion, it was announced that the BTF report (11) would be released in Geneva on 8 October 1999. A journalist who went to the UNEP's Geneva office, where the BTF is based, expecting to obtain a copy, was received by Toepfer's spokesman and right hand man Robert Bisset, who refused him any contact with Haavisto's team. Eventually, he was told there had been a change of plan and that Haavisto would be giving a press conference on 11 October in New York. Since the journalists who were closely following the issue of depleted uranium in Kosovo were all based in Geneva, they were thus denied any possibility of interviewing the man who had written the report.
Reworked by Bisset, the final part of the report was cut from 72 pages to two (later, the missing parts were posted on the UNEP's internet site) (12). Its findings and recommendations spoke of cordoning off contaminated sites - while saying simultaneously that they could not be identified. The Canadian expert Rosalie Bertell had advised the BTF to take samples from the air filters of vehicles in Kosovo, from armoured tanks that had been struck and from sites likely to have been affected by DU weapons; but no such samples were taken while the teams were in the field.
Throughout this time a whole procession of people directly involved in the question came to Geneva. The HCR's special envoy to the Balkans, Dennis McNamara, spoke of refugees returning to a "secure nvironment". But by "secure" he meant "militarily secure", stressing at a press conference at the Palais des Nations on 12 July last year Nato's assurances that depleted uranium posed no problems. US nder-secretary of state for population, refugees and migration Julia Taft came to Geneva to boast to the UN Economic and Social Council of the success of this "humanitarian war"; she admitted during another press conference (Palais des Nations, 14 July 1999) that she did not know what depleted uranium was.
IAEA spokesman David Kyd claimed in an interview that his agency's mandate did not allow it to investigate DU, saying that it was, in any case, perfectly harmless. Dr Keith Baverstock of the WHO regional office for Europe came out with the same weasel words about there being absolutely no danger, though he added that depleted uranium could cause problems in a battle situation. Finally, former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, now the UN Secretary General's special envoy to the Balkans, abruptly stated that depleted uranium was a "non-issue".
Last March the Military Toxics Project, an American anti-nuclear NGO, announced that Nato had, that January, sent the UNEP a map of targets affected by depleted uranium in Kosovo; and this was confirmed by a source at the Netherlands foreign ministry (13). Fearing a general outcry, Toepfer convened a crisis meeting in Geneva on 20 March to decide on a strategy. But he was too late. Switzerland's last independent French language newspaper, Courrier, published the map that same morning.
The next day Haavisto held a press conference. Although he tried to be reassuring, he referred to the recommendations of the October report - that contaminated sites should be cordoned off - while adding that the map available was not accurate enough to identify them. A press release referred to the WHO study that was still being prepared and another commissioned by the BTF from the UK's Royal Society (that has not been heard of since).
The map, purportedly showing the 28 sites affected by 30 mm anti-tank Penetrator missiles launched from A-10 aircraft, raised a number of questions. The targets were concentrated close to the Albanian border (areas occupied by Italian and German forces) where former Yugoslav leader Tito, fearing the irredentism of the then Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, had built substantial concrete military installations underground. According to Swiss military analyst Jacques Langendorf, who visited the area in Tito's days, 30 mm Penetrators would have little impact on the concrete, but DU-reinforced Cruise missiles might be effective. And according to British analyst Dennis Flaherty, one of the aims of the war was to test such missiles equipped with a new technology (known as Broach) allowing as many as ten Penetrators to be fired at a time in order to penetrate underground bunkers more effectively.
Following insistent demands from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Nato gave Toepfer a new map in July last year. It showed 112 targets and had a list of the munitions supposedly released there. For about 20 sites, the type of munitions was given as "unknown", which seems unlikely given the computer tracking systems available to Nato and the Pentagon. Apparently the map was kept from Haavisto until September. When he discovered it, he wanted to send a team of investigators to Kosovo straight away. Toepfer apparently vetoed such a move before the 24 October elections, fearing a massive exodus like the one during the war if worrying findings were made.
Whatever the case may be, tired of waiting for the WHO, the High Commission for Refugees has drawn up its own instructions for its staff (14): no pregnant woman will be sent to Kosovo, anyone approached about going there must have the option of being posted elsewhere, and any official sent to Kosovo must have his file marked "service in the field" to facilitate any claim for compensation in the event of illness resulting from contamination. According to Frederick Barton, deputy high commissioner for refugees, the HCR's efforts to draw the civilian population's attention to the risks of contamination met with tremendous resistance both from Albanian politicians and from Nato and Unmik (UN Mission in Kosovo) administrators.
For Rosalie Bertell, the "non-issue" of depleted uranium is just the latest episode in a long story that is far from over. Watch this space.
______________________________________________________________
* Journalist, Geneva
(1) " Fact sheet No. 257, Depleted Uranium ", 12 January 2001, World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva.
(2) Taken from his monograph " Radiation Induced Cancer from Low-Dose Exposure " and quoted in an open letter dated 11 May 1999 signed John W Gofman, MD, PhD.
(3) "Effects of Radiation on Human Heredity: Report of a Study Group convened by WHO together with Papers Presented by Various Members of the Group", WHO, Geneva, 1957.
(4) Agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation, approved by the 12th World Health Assembly on 28 May 1959 in resolution WHA12.40. World Health Organisation, Basic Documents, 42nd edition, World Health Organisation, Geneva, 1999.
(5) Rosalie Bertell, " The Hazards of Low Level Radiation", http://ccnr.org/bertell_book.html.
(6) "A-bomb survivors: factors that may lead to a re-assessment of the radiation hazard", International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume XXIX, No. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, pp 708-714.
(7) Including Wings of Death : Nuclear Pollution and Human Health, Aberystwyth, Green Audit 1995.
(8) Jay M Gould, director, and Benjamin A Goldman, assistant director, Overview: Deadly Deceit, Low-Level Radiation, High-Level Coverup, Radiation and Public Health Report, New York, December 1989.
(9) Bakary Kante, Senior Policy Advisor to the Executive Director of ENUP, "United Nations Inter-Agency Needs Assessment Mission to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Environment and Human Settlements Aspects", United Nations, May 1999.
(10) "Assessment of the Environmental Impact of Military Activities During the Yugoslavia Conflict: Preliminary Findings", June 1999, prepared by the Regional Environmental Centre for Central and Eastern Europe, Szentendre, Hungary, for the European Commission DG-XI - Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection (Contract No B7-8110/99/61783/MAR/XI.1).
(11) "The Kosovo Conflict: Consequences for the Environment & Human Settlement", United Nations Environment Programme and United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, Geneva, 1999.
(12) http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf/pressreleases/unep21032000.html and http://balkans.unep.ch/du/du.html
(13) See maps on Le Monde diplomatique's site.
(14) File of instructions of the HCR personnel department.
Translated by Malcolm Greenwood
Copyright 1997-2001 Le Monde diplomatique. All rights reserved.
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