KOSOVO FOR ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS
The New York
Times of Saturday, March 27, quotes Laura
Leslie, a senior from Miramonte High School, San
Francisco: "I don't want to see another thing
like what happened with Hitler, with a terrible
person taking over countries". Laura reads the
newspaper and listens to the news, and in her
innocent way sums up the message of the
propaganda war-supporting machine.
She is not to
be blamed for oversimplifying what is going on
in Kosovo and why her country is at war again.
The media and the President try to convince you
that this is true and that you should support
the men and women of your armed forces for the
sake of your values and your children's future.
But I would like to offer you a less simplistic
explanation.
To begin with,
the rebellion in Kosovo is not the result of the
last 10 years. Albanian separatism is the oldest
nationalistic movement in what used to be Tito's
Yugoslavia, and it has started the circle of
mutual mistrust, hatred and eventually war in
there.
At the beginning of this century,
Albanians made only one third of the Kosovo
population. At the beginning of the fifties,
after somewhat prolonged fight with the remains
of what used to be the Albanian quisling state
established by Mussolini's Italy, Tito's regime
decided to give this part of Serbia a political,
cultural, economical and juridical autonomy, as
well as generous subventions from the federal
budget.
At the
beginning
of
sixties,
Albanian
population
made 2/3
of the
Kosovo
population.
At that
time the first public demand for independence
was raised during the riots in 1968 and again in
1981, several months after Tito's death.
None of
us had at that time heard anything about
Milosevic, who was a banker with no political
influence whatsoever.
Their demand for
independence had nothing to do with repression,
for if there was any repression at that time, it
could only have been an Albanian repression
against the Serbs in Kosovo.
The New York Times,
which can hardly be said to be in favor of the
Serbs, wrote at that time: "Serbs have been
harassed by Albanians and have packed up and
left the region.
The Albanian nationalists have
a two-point platform, first to establish what
they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic
and then to merge with Albania to for a greater
Albania. Some 57.000 Serbs have left Kosovo in
the last decade" (NYT, July 12, 1982). Rape,
murder, threats, the destruction of property
were the instruments of such a platform, and
with the police and courts in Albanian hands,
nobody could get protection from the state.
Milosevic rose to power and gained popular
support in 1988 with the promise that he would
put an end to the violence against Serbs in
Kosovo.
The autonomy of the region was abolished
in 1990, several months before the dismembering
of Yugoslavia started, just as the regional
parliament declared Kosovo's independence from
Serbia.
At that moment Albanians started to
organize parallel state institutions, such as
schools, a tax collecting system, courts and the
police.
There is no doubt that during the nineties
Albanians in Kosovo were exposed to repression.
The police searched their houses looking for
arms, arrested them without warrant and often
avoided the legal procedure. However, at the
same time, Serbs were exposed to the same police
harassment by the same regime in Serbia.
All political
forces among
Albanians have
publicly
acknowledged that
their aim was not
the democratization
of Kosovo, but
independence, which
means secession
form Serbia, and joining Albania.
They differ as
to what means should be most appropriate for
achieving this goal, but they have never made a
secret that the creation of Great Albania, and
not democracy in Serbia or autonomy in it, is
their aim.
Refusing to take
part in Serbia's
political life,
especially in
elections,
Albanians helped
Milosevic stay in
power. Instead of
Albanian elected
political
representatives,
Kosovo was represented in Serbia's parliament by
representatives of the tiny Serbian population
from Kosovo, who were all, needless to say,
Milosevics supporters.
If Albanians had decided
to vote for their representatives only once, and
they had a chance four times in the last ten
years, Milosevic would have lost the power.
The
Serbian democratic opposition and independent
intellectuals close to the opposition have tried
to
organize
meetings
with
leading
Albanian
politicians
several
times
during
this
period in order to convince them to vote, to
take part in Serbia's political life, which
would immediately mean the fall of the Milosevic
regime, the protection of Albanian political
rights and the end of repression, but Albanian
leaders declined any such proposal, with the
answer that the only thing they were interested
in would be independence for Kosovo.
Thus
Milosevic and Albanian leaders helped one
another: he ruled Serbia by using their votes,
and, on the other hand, with repression helped
them radicalize the political situation in
Kosovo.
Last year the
Kosovo Liberation
Army emerged as an
important player
in Kosovo's
political game.
Reading The New
York Times or
listening to NATO
leaders, one might
get the impression
that the KLA is something like The Red Cross, or
a group of peaceful old ladies who every day
bring flowers to Serbian houses.
But it is not
so.
It is an armed paramilitary formation which
last summer had two thirds of Kosovo under its
control. The KLA has ethnically pure and
independent Kosovo as its only aim.
It struggles
for it not with political, but with violent
means: attacking police patrols, Serbian
civilians and their houses, forcing them to
leave Kosovo, and bombing coffee-shops in which
Serbian kids gather.
I would like to stress the
fact that what they do is ethnic cleansing as
well.
Killing civilians is killing civilians,
and I expect your indignation to be the same in
any criminal case of this sort.
Not a single day
has passed in the year and a half without a
report that at least three people were killed by
the KLA, Serbs as well as Albanians loyal to the
state.
It would be highly hypocritical to refer
to the KLA as to "unarmed civilians", when it
calls itself an Army.
On the other hand, in the
process of regaining control over the parts of
Kosovo under the rule of the KLA, Serbian
authorities performed actions in which civilians
were murdered as in the village of Racak in
January.
There is not any excuse for this, and
The Hague Tribunal has already started an
investigation about it and all similar cases.
Last October a peace agreement between the
Serbian authorities and the leaders of the KLA
was reached.
According to it, the Serbian
government would withdraw all the special police
and some of the military units, and the KLA
would cease its operations until the final peace
agreement was reached.
Only the first part of
this deal was fulfilled.
The KLA never stopped
the killings, the excuse being that it had no
central command and that the local units cannot
be controlled by anyone.
After the Serbian
police and military units withdrew from Kosovo,
the K.L.A. simply walked into the empty space
and gained control over a large part of Kosovo
and continued the violence.
As you can see, the demand for Kosovo's
independence led to the repression, the
repression led to KLA and terrorism, terrorism
led to Serbian military and police intervention,
and it led to NATO's assault on Yugoslavia.
None
of the steps I have listed was unavoidable.
Nevertheless, everything eventually comes down
to the question of Kosovo's independence. As I
was never tempted to support the idea of Great
Serbia, I do not understand why anyone should
think that Great Albania is a noble aim.
This
aim can be achieved only at the cost of changing
borders and by ethnically cleansing Kosovo of
Serbs in the first phase, and then by repeating
the same procedure in Macedonia, which also has
a numerous Albanian minority.
Not Milosevic, but Yugoslavia is being bombed
today for the failure of its representatives to
sign the document offered in Rambouillet.
This
document is not the result of negotiations and
peace talks, and it meets all the demands of
only one side in the conflict.
According to it,
Kosovo will stay in Serbia as a self-governed
region only for the next three years, after
which period it may declare its independence.
The Albanian delegation has signed the document,
but they have enclosed a written statement which
says that they do not give up their central aim,
the independence or Kosovo.
The Serbian side
accepts a broad autonomy, but declines both the
possibility of independence, and the occupation
by some 28000 NATO solders.
As the leaders of the NATO countries say, the
bombing will stop the moment "Milosevic", who
has become a general name for 10 million Serbs,
their state and their president, agrees with the
Rambouillet document.
This means that the
bombing will last as long as there is anything
in Serbia left.
Neither Milosevic, nor anybody
in Serbia can sign such a document, for it would
mean signing that part of our country will
become part of Albania in three years.
Even
though I think that Serbia would be better off
without Kosovo, I wouldn't sign it either.
This
is neither a matter of Serbian sentimentality,
nor has it anything to do with the battle of
Kosovo in 1389, as some crash-course experts
would have it.
It has to do with the principles
and with the right of any country to protect its
borders and its integrity.
In spite of repeated
claims that the NATO countries are not in favor
of Kosovo's independence, this is exactly what
they are supporting by their military
intervention.
In Rambouillet Serbia was
confronted with the alternatives to agree with
the secession, or to be bombed and thus forced
to agree with it; not much of a choice, as you
see.
If the term ethnic cleansing is to be used, it
has been committed by both Albanians and Serbs
over the last 20 years, but a genocide has not
taken place, and the killings happen on a much
smaller scale than in Algeria or Ethiopia, to
name only two current crises in the world.
Yugoslavia is a sovereign state and Kosovo is a
part of it; Yugoslavia has not committed an
aggression against any neighboring state. On the
contrary: it is being threatened by Albania as a
KLA base and by Macedonia as a NATO base.
(Leaving the Yugoslav territory the other day
U.S. diplomat William Walker said "Next time I
will not need a visa to enter Yugoslavia", a
sentence which, as you might assume, does not
mean that the visa regime between our countries
will be suspended.)
The assault on Yugoslavia is
a clear case of violating the UN Charter, and no
rhetoric can change this fact.
If Serbia refuses
to allow a province to secede, outsiders have no
right to label such defense of its national
borders an "aggression" and to support the
rebels.
Great Britain fought for the Folkland
Islands, the small leftover of its colonial
empire, and nobody bombed London for that.
The ongoing bombing of Serbian cities has taken
its first victims.
As I write this text, the
number of civilian casualties among Serbs is
1000, and I invite you to compare it with the
number of Albanian casualties in the village of
Racak in January this year, which was 40.
Among
other things, NATO bombs have destroyed or
damaged 50 schools, the printing facilities of
Koha Ditore, the leading Albanian daily
newspaper, the ice cream factory in Sombor, the
600 year old monastery Gracanica in Kosovo and
the monastery Rakovica in Belgrade. Recalling
high human values and morality, the NATO leaders
do exactly the same thing of which they accuse
the Serbs.
The bombing of Yugoslavia has produced exactly
what NATO claims to have tried to prevent: more
destruction, more dead bodies, more violence.
While the KLA is in offensive, rightly
understanding the NATO missiles and planes as
its own airforce, Serbian extremists can be
expected to try to take their revenge, and thus
take into the conflict the parts of Kosovo
spared killings and destruction so far.
Contrary
to the media reports I hear and read in the
U.S., French intelligence sources from Kosovo do
not confirm that the Serbian counter-offensive
has taken place yet, which does not mean that
such a possibility is improbable in the future.
The further result of NATO's aggression on
Yugoslavia seems to me easy to foresee.
A new
era of insecurity has begun, for nobody knows
when the NATO leaders are going to s to invoke
values and principles, moral imperatives and,
last but not least, American geopolitical
interests, as a pretext of attacking some other
country without the authorization of the UN.
It
can be Macedonia when Albanians take arms, or
Romania, with its huge Hungarian minority, or
any other multi-ethnic state in the world.
I am
pretty sure it will not be Turkey, even if a new
Kurd upsurge breaks out, and you probably do not
need my help to understand why not.
Second: from
now on no argument can prevent Bosnian Serbs to
secede stating the very same arguments the NATO
leaders used in case of Kosovo, - to be able to
live in their own country- and that means the
end of the Dayton peace agreement.
Thirdly: it
doesn't take much to predict that Yugoslavia
cannot defend itself against the overwhelming
power of NATO.
It is only a matter of time when
NATO accomplishes its goal of seceding Kosovo
from Serbia.
The new, greater Albania will not
be a democratic and peaceful state, but
aggressive and violent, and the region will be
shaken with violence and conflicts even more
than so far.
As far as Serbia is concerned,
Milosevic will emerge from this crisis even
stronger than before, but no Western oriented
and democratic Serb will be able to say aloud
words like democracy, the rule of law, and
justice.
If the states usually identified with
these values were able to violate international
laws and the UN Charter, hypocritically
recalling the values that were renounced by
their deeds at the same moment, in order to help
dismember Yugoslavia, then we in the opposition
are left without any argument.
The same applies
to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The
Hague, established to investigate war crimes
against the civilians committed in last ten
years in the former Yugoslavia, for there is no
difference between Serbian officers who planned
and executed the bombing of the Croatian city of
Vukovar, and people who plan and execute the
bombing of Serbian cities and villages today.
They can both list their reasons endlessly, and
the words like "moral imperative", "defenseless
people", "our children", as well as the sentence
"the enemy understands only the language of
force" can be heard from them very often.
Moreover, this will give a perfect justification
for all those who during the wars in the former
Yugoslavia supported or took part in assaults on
civilians, and a perfect excuse for further
crimes.
What are the rules in the game of dismembering
the former Yugoslavia? Addressing the nation
President Clinton made a hardly understandable
analogy with the holocaust, which would suppose
that the Jews in Germany had a Jewish Liberation
Army, that they controlled part of, say, Bavaria
and intended to join it with Israel.
However,
the real analogy with Albanians in Kosovo can be
found in comparison with Serbs in Croatia. As
Albanians in Kosovo, Serbs in Krajina, Croatia,
were the majority. As Albanians in Kosovo, Serbs
in Krajina were repressed and frightened by
President Tudjman's resurrection of Ustasa-Nazi
ideology and its symbols. As Albanians were
deprived of their autonomy, Serbs in Krajina
were deprived of their constitutional rights.
And, finally, as Albanians now, Serbs then took
arms and started to fight.
In August 1995 the
Croatian forces attacked Krajina, bombed cities
and villages and killed civilians, even fleeing
refugees. In only three days 250 000 Serbs were
ethnically cleansed from Croatia and made to
join other 200 000 who came to Serbia from other
parts of Croatia, without being so far allowed
to return to their homes.
NATO was silent and
nobody said a word about bombing Croatia. On the
contrary: Warren Christopher, who was the State
secretary at that time, said: Let us wait and
see, maybe there is something good for us in it.
Consequently, the U.S. did not cooperate in this
matter with The Hague Tribunal, which
investigated it as a case of large-scale ethnic
cleansing, by refusing to give the satelite
photos taken during the action of the Croatian
army.
What were the principles and the values defended
by the U.S. in 1995? The principle was that no
border in the former Yugoslavia could be
changed, and that no national minority had the
right to form a new state on other state
territories.
Four years later, the principle has
been changed, new values defended, and we
witness the U.S. pushing Kosovo towards
independence, helping Albanians change the
borders within three years and form a new state
on Yugoslavia's territory.
This is what happened
in Rambouillet, and no high-flown rhetoric can
make it look better, as no rhetoric can diminish
the fact that the number of refugees, according
to NATO sources, was 40 000, and six days after
the assault on Yugoslavia the same sources claim
almost half a million.
If this is not just a
belated justification for the assault like the
case of the Kuwaits ambassadors daughter, who
appeared in the Security Counsel during the Golf
War to testify that she has been raped by the
Iraqi solders in Kuwait, although she was safely
in Washington all the time then somebody must be
able to recognize the fact that the number of
refugees increased during the assault, and that
the assault produces the result NATO leaders say
they want to prevent.
Smart bombs fall on
Albanian heads as well.
If the U.S. are
really interested
in the peace in
the region, then
their policy is totally counterproductive.
Instead of supporting non-nationalist and
democratic forces, the U.S. keep supporting one
nationalistic and anti-democratic group against
the other.
Robert Gelbard, the U.S. diplomat and
former Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans,
was the first to understand that. He publicly
said that the KLA was a terrorist organization,
and promised moral support for democratic forces
in Serbia, thus isolating extremists on both
sides and announcing the only solution for this
part of Europe: Kosovo without terrorism and
Serbia without autocracy. The current U.S.
policy towards Yugoslavia took another turn:
supporting terrorism and antagonizing even
democrats among Serbs.
A Letter from prof. Zoran Milutinovic,
University of Belgrade