Ghosts
of Kosovo

Friday,
Feb. 29, 2008 By SAMANTHA POWER

Kosovars hold flags as they
celebrate the independence of Kosovo in the capital Pristina on February 17,
2008

Dimitar Dilko / AFP / Getty

On Feb. 17,
after almost a decade of legal limbo and two years of unsuccessful
international mediation, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. The U.S.
moved swiftly to recognize the new country, and nearly 2 million ethnic
Albanians celebrated their long-awaited freedom, dancing in city streets,
releasing fireworks and waving flags. Having bristled under Serbian rule and
then U.N. administration, Kosovars were elated by the prospect of at last
controlling their own affairs.

The Serbs
weren't quite so thrilled. On Feb. 21, some 200,000 protested in Belgrade,
chanting "Kosovo is Serbia" and holding placards that read, RUSSIA,
HELP. Rioters set the U.S. embassy on fire; Russian President Vladimir Putin
vowed never to recognize Kosovo and threatened to support secessionist
movements in Georgia and Moldova.

Not so long
ago, the scenes of unrest would have inspired fears of the kind of ethnic
violence that devastated the Balkans in the '90s. But these are different
times. Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian leaders have belatedly tried to extend an olive
branch to the province's aggrieved 120,000 Serbs. In addition to allowing Serbs
in northern Kosovo to have their own police, schools and hospitals, Kosovo's
new Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, did the unthinkable: he delivered part of his
inauguration speech in the hated Serbian language. Even in Serbia, whose
citizens feel genuine humiliation over losing Kosovo (which Serb nationalists
call their "Jerusalem"), the protests should abate. Prime Minister
Vojislav Kostunica has threatened to retaliate against Kosovo's becoming
independent by suspending talks with the European Union, but Kostunica can't
afford to cut ties with the West. The E.U. supplies 49% of Serbia's imports and
buys 56% of its exports--a far more valuable trade relationship than Serbia's
with Russia.

But Kosovo
matters to our future because it underscores three alarming features of the
current international system. First, it exposes the chill in relations between
the U.S. and Russia, which is making it difficult for the U.N. Security Council
to meet 21st century collective-security challenges. Putin has used the Kosovo
standoff as yet another excuse to flaunt his petro-powered invincibility,
sending his likely successor, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, to
Belgrade to sign a gas agreement. If a firm international response is to be
mobilized toward Iran, Sudan or other trouble spots in the coming years, the
U.S. will have to find a way to persuade Russia to become a partner rather than
a rival in improving collective security.

Second, the
27-country E.U., which is bitterly divided over Kosovo, lacks an overarching
defense or security vision. After Kosovo declared independence, Britain, France
and other countries offered recognition, while Spain, Romania, Greece, Cyprus,
Bulgaria and Slovakia refused to do so. Keeping peace in Kosovo will require
European nations to put their citizens at risk. Unfortunately, the stated
desire of many European countries to reduce their commitments to the nato
effort in Afghanistan does little to bolster confidence in Europe's eagerness
to maintain international security.

Finally, the
disagreements over Kosovo expose the world's fickleness in determining which
secessionist movements deserve international recognition. If Kosovo's
supporters were more transparent about the factors that made Kosovo worthy of
recognition, they could help shape new guidelines. A claimant has a far
stronger claim if, like Kosovo, it is relatively homogeneous and not yet
self-governing, if it has been abused by the sovereign government and if its
quest for independence does not incite its kin in a neighboring country to make
comparable demands. Not all secessionists can clear that bar. Iraq's Kurds, for
instance, are clamoring for independence. But the Kurds are already exercising
self-government, and their independence could have the destabilizing effect of
causing the Kurdish population in Turkey to try to secede.

Western
countries will have to work hard in the coming months to ensure that Kosovo and
Serbia do not descend into violence. The larger problems highlighted by the
impasse aren't going away anytime soon. Unless they're resolved, a U.S. embassy
may not be all that goes up in flames during the next crisis.

TIME
columnist and Harvard professor Power also advises Senator Barack Obama on
foreign-policy issues

http://uruknet.info/?p=m41436&s1=h1



URUKNET (ITALY)



The Oil factor in Kosovo independence

Abdus Sattar Ghazali



February 24, 2008



On February 17, Kosovo broke away from Serbia and declared its

independence. Not surprisingly it was instantly recognized as a state by the

U.S., Germany, Britain and France. With 4203 square miles area, Kosovo may

be a tiny territory but in the great game of oil politics it holds great

importance which is in inverse proportion to its size.



Kosovo does not have oil but its location is strategic as the

trans-Balkan pipeline - known as AMBO pipeline after its builder and

operator the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation -

will pass through it.



The pipeline will pump Caspian oil from the Bulgarian port of

Burgas via Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora, for transport to

European countries and the United States. Specifically, the 1.1 billion

dollar AMBO pipeline will permit oil companies operating in the Caspian Sea

to ship their oil to Rotterdam and the East Coast of the USA at

substantially less cost than they are experiencing today.



When operational by 2011, the pipeline will become a part of the

region's critical East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway,

railway, gas and fiber optic telecommunications lines. This pipeline will

bring oil directly to the European market by eliminating tanker traffic

through the ecologically sensitive waters of the Aegean and Mediterranean

Seas.



In 2000, the United States Government's Trade and Development

Agency financed a feasibility study of pipeline which updated and enlarged

the project's original feasibility study dating from early 1996. Brown &

Root Energy Services, a wholly-owned British subsidiary of Halliburton

completed the original feasibility study for this project.



The US Trade and Development Agency's paper published May 2000,

which assesses that the pipeline is a US strategic interest. According to

the paper, the pipeline will provide oil and gas to the US market worth

$600m a month, adding that the pipeline is necessary because the oil coming

from the Caspian sea will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the

Bosphorus.



The project is necessary, according to a paper, because the oil

coming from the Caspian sea "will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the

Bosphorus as a shipping lane". The scheme, the agency notes, will
"provide a

consistent source of crude oil to American refineries", "provide
American

companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor",

"advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the
region"

and "facilitate rapid integration" of the Balkans "with western
Europe".



The pipeline itself, the agency says, has also been formally

supported "since 1994". The first feasibility study, backed by the
US, was

conducted in 1996.



In November 1998, Bill Richardson, the then US energy secretary,

spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This

is about America's energy security," he explained. "It's also about

preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're

trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west.



"We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and

political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial

political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both

the pipeline map and the politics come out right."



Professor Michel Chossudovsky, author of America at War in

Macedonia, provides a deep insight into the

Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian-Oil Pipeline project:



"The US based AMBO pipeline consortium is directly linked to the

seat of political and military power in the United States and Vice President

Dick Cheney's firm Halliburton Energy. The feasibility study for AMBO's

Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline, conducted by the international engineering

company of Brown & Root Ltd. [Halliburton's British subsidiary] has

determined that this pipeline will become a part of the region's critical

East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway, railway, gas and

fibre optic telecommunications lines.



"Coincidentally, White and Case LLT, the New York law firm that

President William J. Clinton joined when he left the White House also has a

stake in the AMBO pipeline deal.



"And upon completion of the feasibility study by Halliburton, a

senior executive of Halliburton was appointed CEO of AMBO. Halliburton was

also granted a contract to service US troops in the Balkans and build

"Bondsteel" in Kosovo, which now constitutes "the largest
American foreign

military base constructed since Vietnam".



"The AMBO Trans-Balkans pipeline project would link up with the

pipeline corridors between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea basin, which

lies at the hub of the World's largest unexplored oil reserves. The

militarization of these various corridors is an integral part of

Washington's design.



"The US policy of "protecting the pipeline routes" out of the

Caspian Sea basin (and across the Balkans) was spelled out by Clinton's

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson barely a few months prior to the 1999

bombing of Yugoslavia: This is about America's energy security. It's also

about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values.

We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We

would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests

rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment

in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and

the politics come out right.



"In favour of the AMBO pipeline negotiations, the U.S.

Government has been directly supportive through its Trade and Development

Agency (TDA) and the South Balkan Development Initiative (SBDI). The TDI

suggested the need for Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria to "use regional

synergies to leverage new public and private capital [from U.S.
companies]"

while also asserting responsibility of the U.S. Government "for
implementing

the initiative."



And the U.S. Government has fulfilled its role in promoting the

AMBO project, granting several contracts to Halliburton for servicing U.S.

troops in the Balkans, including a five year contract authorized in June of

2005 by the U.S. Army at a value of $1.25 billion, despite criminal

allegations made against Halliburton that are currently being probed by the

F.B.I., according to Craig A. Brannagan author of On the Political

Executive: Public or Private?



This leaves little doubt that the war in the former Yugoslavia

was fought solely in order to secure access to oil from new and biddable

states in central Asia. It is obvious that the former Yugoslavia, especially

Serbia, was a serious problem for the realization of the plan. The

intervention in Kosovo and Metohija was carried out in order to please

Albania, whose port of Vlore is the ultimate destination of the pipeline.



In 1998, fighting breaks out between Serbian forces and ethnic

Albanians in Kosovo. President Milosevic sends in troops, and atrocities

were committed. This opens the door for NATO's Operation Allied Force,

occupying Kosovo in 1999 and then handing it over to the UN, with a huge

American presence in the area. UN resolution 1244 is drafted stipulating

that Kosovo is Serbian land, and at the same time gives Kosovars governance

autonomy.



June 1999, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of

Yugoslavia, US forces seized 1,000 acres of farmland in southeast Kosovo at

Uresevic, near the Macedonian border, and began the construction of Camp

Bondsteel which is the biggest construction project of a US military base

since the war in Vietnam. Now, why would the United States build such a

massive camp in Kosovo?



In evaluating Kosovo's independence, it is also important to

know that Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal

self-government.



It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies

appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial

viceroy and imperialist administrators will have control over foreign and

domestic policy. It is similar to the absolute power held by L. Paul Bremer

in the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. U.S. has merely

consolidated its direct control of a totally dependent colony in the heart

of the Balkans.



An International Civilian Representative (ICR) will be appointed

by U.S. and E.U. officials to oversee Kosovo. This appointed official can

overrule any measures, annul any laws and remove anyone from office in

Kosovo. The ICR will have full and final control over the departments of

Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.



The E.U. will establish a European Security and Defense Policy

Mission (ESDP) and NATO will establish an International Military Presence.

Both these appointed bodies will have control over foreign policy, security,

police, judiciary, all courts and prisons.



These bodies and the ICR will have final say over what crimes

can be prosecuted and against whom; they can reverse or annul any decision

made. The largest prison in Kosovo is at the U.S. base, Camp Bondsteel,

where prisoners are held without charges, judicial overview or

representation.



US has argued the case of Kosovo is unique and that separatists

in other states in Europe and the Balkans will not receive aid and welcome

from major powers. "It is incorrect to view this as a precedent and it

doesn't serve any purpose to view it as a precedent," said Alejandro
Wolff,

US deputy permanent representative to the UN. He may be right because other

separatists may not have any attraction for the oil giants.



However, the Kosovo independence bolsters hopes of militants in

the Indian-controlled Kashmir to achieve the same status for the disputed

territory. "The world community, the European Union in particular, should

play a Kosovo-like role in getting the dispute resolved in Kashmir," says

Yasin Malik, chairman of pro-independence group Jammu Kashmir Liberation

Front.



Although several countries have recognized Kosovo as a new state

but India said it was studying the legal ramifications. India is wary of

recognizing Kosovo as an independent state because of its potential

implications for Kashmir, racked by a nearly two-decade freedom struggle

against New Delhi's occupation that has left more than 43,000 people dead.



Article nr. 41436 sent on 25-feb-2008 12:21 ECT

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=916336



ST. CATHARINES STANDARD (CANADA)



EDITORIAL



Kosovo's independence could haunt us

Posted By Scott Taylor



Posted 44 mins ago



On the weekend of Feb. 16-17, the streets of Kosovo were flooded with

citizens celebrating a unilateral declaration of independence by ethnic

Albanian Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. This much-anticipated announcement

formally severed all official ties between the disputed province and the

rest of Serbia, thereby creating Europe's newest state.



The United States was the first to recognize Kosovo's independence, with

President George W. Bush sending his congratulations to Thaci from a stop in

Tanzania. The United Kingdom, Germany and France were quick to follow suit,

and with these big powers on board, the Albanian Kosovars popped the

champagne corks and throughout the capital city of Pristina throngs of

people waved a sea of red and black flags in celebration.



For people only paying casual attention to this long-simmering Balkan hot

spot, Thaci's declaration of independence may indeed be viewed as a joyous

occasion. In fact, most Canadians may be forgiven if they thought this whole

matter was resolved back in the summer of 1999.



After a 78-day bombing campaign, NATO had negotiated a ceasefire agreement

with the Serbian government. Under the terms of UN Resolution 1244, Serbian

security forces would withdraw from Kosovo, and under NATO military

supervision, the 800,000 Albanian Kosovar refugees who had fled the fighting

would be repatriated. The Albanian guerrillas - known as the Kosovo

Liberation Army (KLA) - were to be disarmed and demobilized by NATO troops,

who would also ensure the safety of Kosovo's 200,000 ethnic Serb civilians.



Resolution 1244 made it very clear that under the UN Charter, Kosovo would

remain the sovereign territory of Serbia. Over the past nine years, NATO has

failed to uphold its part of the bargain. The KLA was never disarmed; they

were simply formalized into the Kosovo Protection Corps. Serb civilians

suffered widespread violent reprisals from Albanian extremists resulting in

a mass exodus with fewer than 40,000 ethnic Serbs still residing in

protected enclaves. There was also no progress made towards a negotiated

settlement of Kosovo's status between Belgrade and Pristina authorities.



With Serbia unwilling to relinquish the sovereignty of this province - the

religious heartland of the Serbian people - there was no legal way to push

independence through the UN Security Council. That impasse is what led to

the Feb. 17 unilateral declaration, and the deep divide within the

international community over this clear violation of the rule of law and the

UN Charter. The Canadian Foreign Affairs Department understands that any

rapid recognition of a disputed province's declaration of independence from

another country could create a dangerous precedent, which might come back to

haunt us.



So while Canada looks at what diplomatic options are available, let's review

some of the background. Up until 1998, the U.S. State Department regarded

the KLA as a terrorist organization. The KLA's assassinations and bomb

attacks against government officials led to a heavy-handed Serbian military

crackdown. At this point the Americans changed horses and decried the Serb

reprisals rather than the terror provocations of the KLA. Under U.S.

pressure an ultimatum was issued by NATO to Serbia in February 1999, and the

KLA was suddenly legitimized as freedom fighters.



By March 24 of that year, when the deadline expired without Serbia's

compliance, NATO began bombing Kosovo and Serbia. Within days a trickle of

refugees became a flood as some 800,000 Albanians fled the renewed fighting

and the NATO bombing. Once this whole incident had ballooned into a

humanitarian crisis of epic proportion, NATO used the suffering of the

Albanians to further justify their intervention.



Putting recent history aside, the fact remains that Kosovo is simply not

viable as an independent country. It is a landlocked, mountainous province,

not quite twice the size of Prince Edward Island, with a population of two

million. The unemployment rate stands at 50 per cent; for those working the

average annual income ranges around $2,400 Cdn. a year. Prostitution and

illegal drugs form the major pillar of Kosovo's economy, with the other main

infusion coming from the annual foreign donations of approximately $600

million.



The red and black flag they wave is the Albanian flag, not Kosovar. And as a

result of the ongoing violent attacks against non-Albanians in the province,

this is now one of the most ethnically-cleansed territories in all of

Europe.



Prime Minister Thaci is a former ruthless KLA warlord who called himself

"Snake" and the commander of the Kosovo Protection Corps is Agim
Ceku, who

made a notorious name for himself as a war criminal in Croatia.



Given the rotten foundation upon which Kosovo intends to build its own

independent state, I think Canada would be well advised to uphold the UN

Charter in this instance, and to respect the rule of international law.



Scott Taylor reported from inside Serbia and Kosovo during the 1999 bombing

campaign and has made more than 20 subsequent visits to the region. He is a

member of the Osprey Writers Group.

February 23 / 4, 2008

Lessons in the
Bi-Partisanship of Empire

The Real Story Behind Kosovo's
Independence

By JEREMY SCAHILL

News
Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as
international law.

But, predictably, it is not being
invoked to address the US prison camps at Guantanamo, the wide use of torture,
the invasion and occupation of sovereign countries, the extraordinary rendition
program. No, it is being thrown out forcefully as a condemnation of the Serbian
government in the wake of Thursday's attack by protesters on the US embassy in
Belgrade following the Bush administration's swift recognition of the
declaration of independence by the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Some
1,000 protesters broke away from a largely non-violent mass demonstration in
downtown Belgrade and targeted the embassy. Some protesters actually made it
into the compound, setting a fire and tearing down the American flag.

"I'm outraged by the mob attack
against the U.S. embassy in Belgrade," fumed Zalmay Khalilzad,the US
Ambassador to the United Nations. "The embassy is sovereign US territory.
The government of Serbia has a responsibility under international law to
protect diplomatic facilities, particularly embassies." His comments were
echoed by a virtual who's who of the Bill Clinton administration. People like
Jamie Rubin, then-Secretary of State Madeiline Albright's deputy, one of the
main architects of US policy toward Serbia. "It is sovereign territory of
the United States under international law," Rubin declared. "For
Serbia to allow these protesters to break windows, break into the American
Embassy, is a pretty dramatic sign." Hillary Clinton, whose husband
orchestrated and ran the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, said, "I
would be moving very aggressively to hold the Serbian government responsible
with their security forces to protect our embassy. Under international law they
should be doing that."

There are two major issues here. One is
the situation in Kosovo itself (which we'll get to in a moment), but the other
is the attack on the US embassy. Yes, the Serbian government had an obligation
to prevent the embassy from being torched and ransacked. If there was
complicity by the Serbian police or authorities in allowing it to be attacked,
that is a serious issue. But the US has little moral authority not just in
invoking international law (which it only does when it benefits Washington's
agenda) but in invoking international law when speaking about attacks on
embassies in Belgrade.

Perhaps the greatest crime against any embassy in the history of
Yugoslavia was committed not by evil Serb protesters, but by the United States
military.

On May 7, 1999, at the height of the
78 day US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the US bombed the Chinese embassy in
Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens, two of them journalists, and wounding
20 others. The Clinton administration later said
that the bombing was the result of faulty maps provided by the CIA (Sound
familiar?). Beijing rejected that explanation and alleged it was deliberate.
Eventually, under strong pressure from China, the US apologized and paid $28
million in compensation to the victims' families. If the US was serious about
international law and the protection of embassies, those responsible for that
bombing would have been tried at the Hague along with other alleged war
criminals. But "war criminal" is a designation for the losers of
US-fueled wars, not bombers sent by Washington to drop humanitarian munitions
on "sovereign territory."

Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of the US
condemnations of Serbia and the sudden admission that international law exists,
the Kosovo story is an important one in the context of the current election
campaign in the United States. Perhaps more than any other international
conflict, Yugoslavia was the defining foreign policy of President Bill
Clinton's time in power. Under his rule, the nation of Yugoslavia was
destroyed, dismantled and chopped into ethnically pure para-states. President
Bush's immediate recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation was the icing
on the cake of destruction of Yugoslavia and one which was enthusiastically
embraced by Hillary Clinton. "I've supported the independence of Kosovo
because I think it is imperative that in the heart of Europe we continue to
promote independence and democracy," Clinton said at the recent Democratic
debate in Austin, Texas.

A few days before the attack on the US
embassy in Belgrade, Clinton released a Molotov cocktail statement praising the
declaration of independence. In it, she referred to Kosovo by the Albanian
"Kosova" and said independence "will allow the people of Kosova
to finally live in their own democratic state. It will allow
Kosova and Serbia to finally put a difficult chapter in their history behind
them and to move forward." She added, "I want to underscore the need
to avoid any violence or provocations in the days and weeks ahead." As
seasoned observers of Serbian politics know, there were few things the US could
have done to add fuel to the rage in Serbia over the declaration of
independence -- "provocations" if you will -- than to have a
political leader named Clinton issue a statement praising independence and
using the Albanian name for Kosovo.

On the campaign trail, the Clinton camp
has held up Kosovo as a successful model for how to conduct US foreign policy
and Clinton criticized Bush for taking "so long for us to reach this
historic juncture."

Perhaps a little of that history is in
order. If Kosovo is her idea of solid US foreign policy, it speaks volumes to
what kind of president she would be. The reality is that there are striking
similarities between the Clinton approach to Kosovo and the Bush approach to
Iraq.

On March 24, 1999, President Bill
Clinton began an 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Like Bush with
Iraq, Clinton had no UN mandate (he used NATO) and his so-called
"diplomacy" to avert the possibility of bombing leading up to the
attacks was insincere and a set-up from the jump. Just like Bush with Iraq.

A month before the bombing began, the
Clinton administration issued an ultimatum to President Slobodan Milosevic,
which he had to either accept unconditionally or face bombing. Known as the
Rambouillet accord, it was a document that no sovereign country would have
accepted. It contained a provision that would have guaranteed US and NATO
forces "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access
throughout" all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. It also sought to immunize
those occupation forces "from any form of arrest, investigation, or
detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia]," as well as grant the
occupiers "the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without
payment." Additionally, Milosevic was told he would have to "grant
all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the
Operation, as determined by NATO." Similar to Bush's Iraq plan years
later, Rambouillet mandated that the economy of Kosovo "shall function in
accordance with free market principles."

What Milosevic was actually asked to
sign is never discussed. That it would have effectively meant the end of the
sovereignty of the nation was a non-story. The dominant narrative for the past
nine years, repeated this week by William Cohen, Clinton's defense secretary at
the time of the bombing, is this: "We tried to achieve a peaceful
resolution of what was taking place in Kosovo. And Slobodan Milosevic
refused." Refused peace? More like he unwisely refused one of Don
Corleone's famous offers. Washington knew he would reject it, but had to give
the appearance of diplomacy for international "legitimacy."

So the humanitarian bombs rained down
on Serbia. Among the missions: the bombing of the studios of Radio Television
Serbia where an airstrike killed 16 media workers; the cluster bombing of a Nis
marketplace, shredding human beings into meat; the deliberate targeting of a
civilian passenger train; the use of depleted uranium munitions; and the
targeting of petrochemical plants, causing toxic chemical waste to pour into
the Danube River. Also, the bombing of Albanian refugees, ostensibly the people
being protected by the U.S.

Similar to Bush's allegations about
Iraqi WMDs in the lead up to the US invasion, in 1999 Clinton administration
officials also delivered stunning allegations about the level of brutality
present in Kosovo as part of the propaganda campaign. "We've now
seen about 100,000
military-aged men missing ....They may have been murdered," Cohen said five weeks into the
bombing. He said that up to 4,600 Kosovo men had been executed, adding, "I
suspect it's far higher than that." Those numbers were flat out false.
Eventually the estimates were scaled back dramatically, as Justin Raimondo
pointed out recently in his column on Antiwar.com, from 100,000 to 50,000 to
10,000 and "at that point the War Party stopped talking numbers altogether
and just celebrated the glorious victory of 'humanitarian intervention.'"
As it turned out "there was no 'genocide' -- the International Tribunal
itself reported that just over 2,000 bodies were recovered from postwar Kosovo,
including Serbs, Roma, and Kosovars, all victims of the vicious civil war in
which we intervened on the side of the latter. The whole fantastic story of
another 'holocaust' in the middle of Europe was a fraud," according to
Raimondo.

Following the NATO invasion of Kosovo
in June of 1999, the US and its allies stood by as the Albanian mafia and gangs
of criminals and paramilitaries spread out across the province and
systematically cleansed Kosovo of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Romas and
other ethnic minorities. They burned down houses, businesses and churches and
implemented a shocking campaign to forcibly expel non-Albanians from the
province. Meanwhile, the US worked closely with the Kosovo Liberation Army and
backed the rise of war criminals to the highest levels of power in Kosovo.
Today, Kosovo has become a hub for human trafficking, organized crime and
narcosmuggling. In short, it is a mafia state. Is this the
"democracy" Hillary Clinton speaks of "promoting" in
"the heart" of Europe?

It didn't take long for the US to begin
construction of a massive US military base, Camp Bondsteel, which conveniently
is located in an area of tremendous geopolitical interest to Washington. (Among
its most bizarre facilities, Bondsteel now offers classes at the Laura Bush
education center, as well as massages from Thai women and all the multinational
junk food you could (n)ever wish for). In November 2005, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the
human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described Bondsteel as a
"smaller version of Guantanamo." Oh, and Bondsteel was constructed by
former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Herein lies an interesting point. The
Serbian government is largely oriented toward Europe, not the US. The country's
prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is a conservative isolationist who is not
enthusiastic about a US military base on Serbian soil any more than Cuba is
about Gitmo. He charged that, in recognizing Kosovo, Washington was "ready
to unscrupulously and violently jeopardize international order for the sake of
its own military interests." To the would-be independent Kosovo
government, however, Bondsteel is no problem.

Russia and a few other nations are
fighting the recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, but that is
unlikely to succeed. Still, this action will undoubtedly reverberate for years
to come. "We have in Serbia a situation in which the U.S. has forced an
action --the proclamation of independence by the Kosovo Albanians -- that is in
clear violation of the most fundamental principles of international law after
World War II," argues Robert Hayden, Director of the Center for Russian
and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. "Borders cannot
be changed by force and without consent -- that principle was actually the main
stated reason for the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq."

And this brings us full circle.
International law matters only when it is convenient for the US. So too are the
cries for "humanitarian interventions." And despite the extremism of
the Bush administration, this is hardly a uniquely Republican phenomenon. In a
just world, there would be a humanitarian intervention against the US
occupation of Iraq -- with its indiscriminate killings of civilians, torture
chambers and widespread human rights violations. There certainly would have
been such an intervention during the bipartisan slaughter, through bombs and
sanctions, of Iraq's people over the past 18 years. But that's what you get
when the cops and judges and prosecutors are the criminals. US policy has
always operated on a worthy victim, unworthy victim system that is almost never
primarily about saving the victims. Humanitarianism is the publicly offered
justification for the action, seldom, if ever, the primary motivation. With
Iraq, Bush wheeled out the humanitarian justification for the
occupation--Saddam's brutality -- only after the WMD lies were thoroughly
debunked. In Yugoslavia, Clinton used it right out of the gates. In both cases,
it rang insincere.

If you are a victim who happens to
share a common geography with US interests, international law is on your side
as long as it is convenient. If not, well, tough. The UN is just a debate club
anyway. Just ask the tens of thousands of Kurds who were slaughtered by Turkey
with weapons sold to them by the Clinton administration during the 1990s. Or
the Palestinians who live under the brutality of Israel's occupation.

[They're really in danger if they go
to Sbarro's Pizzeria:jpm.]

In some cases, the "victims"
allegedly being protected by the US actually get bombed themselves, as was the
case with President Clinton's "humanitarian" bombings of the north
and south of Iraq once every three days in the late 1990s.

In the bigger picture, the Bush
administration's quick recognition of an independent Kosovo has given us a
powerful reminder of a fact that is too often overlooked these days: empire is
bipartisan, as are the tactics and rhetoric and bombs used to defend and expand
it.

Jeremy Scahill is author of The New York Times-bestseller "Blackwater:
The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.". He can be
reached at jeremy(AT)democracynow.org

This article was originally published
by Alternet.

Jeremy Scahill: The
Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/080223/8/45d0.html

Sunday February 24, 02:21 AM

Pressed by US, Serbs play on Moscow card

BELGRADE (AFP) - Serb officials welcomed the support of old ally Russia in
opposing Kosovo's independence Saturday, as Moscow warned the West was
jeopardising international relations in recognising the new state.

"Russia enters in war for Kosovo!," read the front-page headline of
Belgrade-based daily Press in response to a stream of Russian rhetoric.

Serbia is under pressure from Washington and Brussels to stop the violence
that erupted after Kosovo's February 17 declaration, but Moscow has weighed
in on Belgrade's behalf -- increasing already tense relations with the West.

An aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday described Western
recognition of Kosovo as a cocked gun ready for firing, telling Interfax
news agency that "no one knows when and where the shot will ring out."

Islamist "jihadists of terror" who had settled in Kosovo could now be
expected to come out into the open, said Anatoly Safonov, Putin's envoy for
international cooperation in combating terrorism and organised crime.

Putin himself on Friday described Kosovo's independence as a "terrible
precedent" that would come back to hit the West "in the face" and would have
"unforeseeable consequences."

And Russia's newly-appointed representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said
the same day that Moscow had the right to "use force" if NATO or the EU
challenged the UN over Kosovo.

The Press daily quoted a senior official of the ultra-nationalist Serbian
Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic, saying that "only Russians could stop
NATO's fascist measures in Kosovo."

It also quoted a Kosovo Serb leader, Goran Bogdanovic, as welcoming the
attitude of Moscow.

"Obviously, the Kosovo problem exceeded the frame of the Balkans and one
could expect (further) dispute among great powers over the issue," he said.

"I understood Rogozin's statement primarily as a warning to the West that
their presence in Kosovo must remain within the (UN Security Council)
Resolution 1244. Otherwise it could lead to increasing tensions and even
conflict of worldwide proportions," he said.

The resolution, passed in June 1999, ended conflict between Serb forces and
ethnic Albanians separatists in Kosovo, putting the province under UN
administration but formally keeping it within Serbian borders.

The resolution was also one of Madrid's arguments against recognising the
independence of Kosovo, Spanish Secretary of State for foreign affairs
Bernardino Leon Gros wrote in an article published by independent Blic
daily.

"Unlike other countries that separated, like Slovakia and Czech Republic,
there has been neither agreement of the involved sides nor a UN resolution
in the case of Kosovo," he wrote.

"Beside legal reasons, this proclamation of independence is contrary to
everything that the international community has proclaimed in the Balkans
since the (conflicts) 1990s," Gros said.

Along with Spain, four other EU members -- Romania, Cyprus, Greece and
Slovakia -- have announced they will not recognise the new state.

Meanwhile, Serbian Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic again attacked the
US for their support to ethnic Albanian majority's declaration of the
independence of Kosovo.

"The government of Serbia will not stop to hold the US accountable for
having broken off the international law and seceded a part of Serbia's
territoriy in a violent way," the minister told state-run Tanjug news
agency.

Samardzic rejected Washington's accusations that Serbian authorities had not
properly protected the US embassy in Belgrade when rioting broke out on
Thursday and protesters set fire to the mission, leaving one person dead.

"The main culprit for all the troubles that occurred since February 17 is
the United States," Samardzic said, referring to the date when Kosovo's

U.S. Hands Off Serbia! U.S./Nato OUT of the Balkans!

No to a new U.S. colony in Kosovo!



A Giant U.S. Military Base and Total Domination Is the Reality – NOT
Independence



Serbian Demonstrators Show Resistance to U.S. Colonial-Style Land
Seizure



Download pdf flyer



The demonstration of over 500,000 people in Belgrade and the attack on the U.S.
Embassy show the depth of outrage and anger over the seizure of the Serbian
province of Kosovo. In the past three days two Kosovo border posts were
destroyed, one by fire the other in an explosion, along with ten McDonald's
outlets and several Western banks and other hated targets.



The Western media had overwhelming applauded the U.S. destruction in 1999 and
it now has a responsibility to explain the reason for the mass anger of
millions of people. The outrage is because the province of Kosovo is not
actually being granted “independence.” Millions of people see this week’s
recognition of Kosovo “independence” as an effort to legitimize a direct U.S.
colony and to permanently secure a giant U.S. military base in the region.



Regarding the hypocritical condemnation by Washington that angry demonstrators
had targeted the U.S. Embassy, it should be remembered that when the U.S.
bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999, U.S. bombs destroyed the Chinese Embassy.
Nineteen other diplomatic and consular missions were damaged in the U.S.
bombing, along with 480 schools and 33 hospitals, heating plants, sewage
plants, bridges, communications, the electric grid and other civilian targets.



The “declaration of independence” by Kosovo, a province of Serbia, and its immediate
recognition as a state by the U.S., Germany, Britain and France, is a fraud.
Three things should be understood about the events this week.



First, Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal
self-government.



Kosovo will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies appointed by
the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial viceroy and
imperialist administrators will have control over all aspects of foreign and
domestic policy. Washington has merely consolidated its direct control of a
totally dependent colony in the heart of the Balkans.



Second, Washington’s immediate recognition of Kosovo confirms once
again that the U.S. government will break any and every treaty or international
agreement it has ever signed, including agreements it drafted and imposed by
force and violence on others.



The recognition of Kosovo is in direct violation of such law—specifically U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1244, which the leaders of Yugoslavia were forced
to sign to end the 78 days of NATO bombing of their country in 1999. Even this
imposed agreement affirmed the “commitment of all Member States to the
sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Serbia, a republic of Yugoslavia.



Thirdly, U.S. imperialist domination does not benefit the occupied
people.



Kosovo after nine years of direct NATO military occupation has a staggering
60 percent unemployment rate. It has become a center of the international drug
trade and of prostitution rings in Europe.



The once humming mines, mills, smelters, refining centers and railroads of this
small resource-rich industrial area all sit silent. The resources of Kosovo
under NATO occupation were forcibly privatized and sold to giant Western
multinational corporations. Now almost the only employment is working for the
U.S./NATO army of occupation or U.N. agencies.



The only major construction in Kosovo is of Camp Bondsteel, the largest U.S.
base built in Europe in a generation. Halliburton, of course,
got the contract. The U.S. base guards the strategic oil and transportation
lines of the entire region.



Over 250,000 Serbian, Romani and other nationalities have been driven out of
this Serbian province since it came under U.S./NATO control. Almost a quarter
of the Albanian population has been forced to leave in order to find work.



The plan under which Kosovo’s “independence” is recognized by the U.S, Germany,
France and Britain not only violates U.N. resolutions but it is consolidates a
total colonial structure. It is similar to the absolute power held by L. Paul Bremer
in the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The documents setting
out the new government for Kosovo are available at unosek.org/unosek/en/statusproposal.html.
A summary is available on the U.S. State Department’s Web site at state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/100058.htm

An International Civilian
Representative (ICR) will be appointed by U.S. and E.U. officials to oversee
Kosovo. This appointed official can overrule any measures, annul any laws and
remove anyone from office in Kosovo. The ICR will have full and final control
over the departments of Customs, Taxation, Treasury and Banking.



The E.U. will establish a European Security and Defense Policy Mission (ESDP)
and NATO will establish an International Military Presence. Both these
appointed bodies will have control over foreign policy, security, police,
judiciary, all courts and prisons. They are guaranteed immediate and complete
access to any activity, proceeding or document in Kosovo.



These bodies and the ICR will have final say over what crimes can be prosecuted
and against whom; they can reverse or annul any decision made. The largest
prison in Kosovo is at the U.S. base, Camp Bondsteel, where prisoners are held
without charges, judicial overview or representation.



The recognition of Kosovo’s “independence” is just the latest step in a
U.S. war of re- conquest of this strategic region. But as yesterday’s massive
demonstration shows this reckless and illegal maneuver may unleash a whirlwind
of opposition and resistance.



U.S. Hands Off Serbia!

U.S./Nato OUT of the Balkans!

No to a new U.S. colony in Kosovo!

The International Action Center
sent a delegation to Serbia during the US/NATO bombing in 1999 and has
published several books on the crisis in the Balkans, including Hidden
Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia, NATO in the Balkans: Voices
of Opposition, and The Defense Speaks for History and the Future -
all available from Leftbooks.com.



Sign up for updates

http://iacenter.org/action_list/




Donate to help with organizing
expense

http://iacenter.org/donate/



About the IAC

http://iacenter.org/about/

http://www.iacenter.org/balkans/serbia022208/

JPOST Kosovo's stark warning
Fri Feb 22, 2008 8:52 am (PST)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203605149058&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

JERUSALEM POST (ISRAEL)

Column One: Kosovo's stark warning

Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 21, 2008

Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By
setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities,
it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it
destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system.

States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China
currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply
concerned by the Kosovo precedent. Even the US has latent sovereignty issues
with its increasingly politicized Hispanic minority along its border with
Mexico. It may one day experience a domestic backlash from its support for
Kosovar independence from Serbia.

Setting aside the global implications, it is hard to see how Kosovo
constitutes a viable state. Its 40 percent unemployment is a function of the
absence of proper economic and governing infrastructures.

In November, a European Commission report detailed the Kosovo Liberation
Army's failure to build functioning governing apparatuses. The report noted
that "due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to
insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still
widespread... Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference,
corrupt practices and nepotism." Moreover, "Kosovo's public administration
remains weak and inefficient."

The report continued, "The composition of the government anti-corruption
council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little
progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of
trafficking in human beings."

Additionally, the prosecution of Albanian war criminals is "hampered by the
unwillingness of the local population to testify" against them. This is in
part due to the fact that "there is still no specific legislation on witness
protection in place."

The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad.
It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical
Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used
as bases for al-Qaida operations; that members of the ruling Kosovo
Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida; and that the Islamic world as
a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for
Islamic domination of the disputed province.

According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al-Qaida began operating
actively in Kosovo, and in the rest of the Balkans, in 1992. Osama bin Laden
visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the
Bosnian Embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden's orders, in 1994
his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans
including one in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al-Qaida set up drug
trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan
and beyond.

In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence
service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and
the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "The man
at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an
Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader
of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."

Then, too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic
Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a
jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on
the occupied Muslim territories."

Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims
deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for
annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48%
of the population in 1948 to 92% today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78%
of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.

In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo's Serbian Christians, not its
Albanian Muslims, who are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999,
two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs - some 250,000 people - have fled the area.

The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an
instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law,
Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security
Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal
basis for Kosovar sovereignty, explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty
over Kosovo.

For Israel, Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence should be a
source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy.
Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo,
the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they
are reenacted in the international community's treatment of Israel and the
Palestinians. Today, Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the
political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally
recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.

By accepting the "Road Map Plan to a Two-State Solution" in 2004, Israel
empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international
Quartet, to serve as judges of Palestinian and Israeli actions toward one
another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the
Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and
judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."

That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was
made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's
ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community
that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their
negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Livni's move
was precipitated by growing European and US dissatisfaction with the pace of
those negotiations and by reports from the meeting of Quartet members in
Berlin on February 11. There all members voiced anger at the slow pace of
negotiations and opposition to Israel's military actions in Gaza, which are
aimed at protecting the western Negev from rocket and mortar attacks.

The US representative at the Quartet's meeting, Assistant Secretary of State
David Welch, reportedly told his colleagues, "First, we must not allow the
suicide bombing in Dimona and the shooting on Sderot to affect the
negotiations."

Welch reportedly added, "It is also important to us that neither the
Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israelis in Sderot are hurt. Also, we must
continue to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad."

Moreover, Ran Koriel, Israel's ambassador to the EU, reportedly warned Livni
that the Russians are pushing for the re-establishment of a Fatah-Hamas
government. Several EU states, including France, are reconsidering their
refusal to recognize Hamas.

If Israel had not empowered the Quartet generally and the US specifically to
determine whether the PA and Israel are behaving properly, a European or
Russian decision to recognize Hamas would have little impact. But given
their role as arbiters, Quartet members can take punitive action against
Israel if it fails to comply with their wishes. The Quartet can replace
international law in determining who can assert sovereignty over Gaza, Judea
and Samaria and how Israel can exercise its own sovereignty. And so, Livni
is reduced to begging them not to recognize Hamas.

Once the US decided in 1999 to commit its own forces to NATO's bombing of
Serbia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo, the jig was up for Serbian
sovereignty over the area. The fact is, NATO forces in Kosovo were deployed
for the express purpose of blocking Serbia from exercising its sovereignty
over Kosovo, not to prevent violence between the Kosovars and the Serbs or
among the Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. That is, NATO deployed in Kosovo
to enable it to gain independence.

And if US or NATO forces are deployed to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, they
will not be there to protect Israelis from Palestinian terror or to prevent
the areas from acting as global terror bases. They will be there to
establish a Palestinian state.

Failing to understand the meaning of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak
government refuses to understand this point. Indeed, the government is
actively lobbying NATO to deploy forces in Gaza. Just as it wrongly hoped
that UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon would fight Hizbullah for it, so today,
the Olmert-Livni-Barak government insists that NATO forces in Gaza will
fight Hamas for it.

If applying the lessons of UNIFIL to Gaza is too abstract for the
Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Israel has experience with EU monitors in
Gaza itself to learn from. Wrongly assuming that the Europeans shared
Israel's interest in preventing terrorists and weapons from entering Gaza,
Israel requested that EU monitors set up shop at the Rafah terminal linking
Gaza to Egypt after Israel withdrew from the border in 2005. Yet whenever
confronted by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, rather than fight the EU monitors
flee to Israel for protection. And its monitors' experience with Palestinian
terrorists taking over the border has never caused the EU to question its
support for Palestinian statehood.

Then, too, since the US, EU, UN and Russia all consider Gaza, Judea, Samaria
and Jerusalem to be one territorial unit, it is not surprising that Israel's
request for NATO forces in Gaza has been greeted by a US plan to deploy NATO
forces in Judea and Samaria. If NATO forces in Gaza would do nothing to
secure the border with Egypt or to fight terrorists and would scuttle
Israeli operations in the area, NATO forces in Judea and Samaria would not
simply prevent Israel from protecting its citizens who live there. They
would also prevent Israel from taking action to prevent the Palestinians
from attacking central Israel and asserting control over the border with
Jordan. And yet, as The Jerusalem Post reported this week, Israel is
conducting talks with the US regarding just such a NATO deployment.

What the Serbs made NATO fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering
NATO on a silver platter.

Not surprisingly, Abbas's adviser and PA propaganda chief Yasser Abd Rabbo
reacted to Kosovo's declaration of independence by recommending that the
Palestinians follow the example. Abd Rabbo said, "Kosovo is not better than
us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing
of the United States and the European Union for our independence."

For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo's
declaration of independence with customary confusion. But the lessons of
Kosovo are clear. Not only should Israel join Russia, Canada, China, Spain,
Romania and many others in refusing to recognize Kosovo. It should also
state that as a consequence of Kosovo's independence, Israel rejects the
deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and
refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and
Jerusalem to international arbitration.

• 
  John Laughland
  
• 
  The Guardian,
  
• Tuesday February 19 2008

There seemed to be no immediate
consequences when, in 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vienna
was in clear violation of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, which it had
signed and kept Bosnia in Turkey, yet the protests of Russia and Serbia
were in vain. The following year, the fait accompli was written into an
amended treaty. Six years later, however, a Russian-backed Serbian
gunman exacted revenge by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne
in Sarajevo in June 1914. The rest is history.

Parallels between
Kosovo in 2008 and Bosnia in 1908 are relevant, but not only because,
whatever legal trickery the west uses to override UN security council
resolution 1244 - which kept Kosovo in Serbia - the proclamation of the
new state will have incalculable long-term consequences: on
secessionist movements from Belgium to the Black Sea via Bosnia, on
relations with China and Russia, and on the international system as a
whole. They are also relevant because the last thing the new state
proclaimed in Pristina on Sunday will be is independent. Instead, what
has now emerged south of the Ibar river is a postmodern state, an
entity that may be sovereign in name but is a US-EU protectorate in
practice.

The European Union plans to send some 2,000 officials
to Kosovo to take over from the United Nations, which has governed the
province since 1999. It wants to appoint an International Civilian
Representative who - according to the plan drawn up last year by Martti
Ahtisaari, the UN envoy - will be the "final authority" in Kosovo with
the power to "correct or annul decisions by the Kosovo public
authorities". Kosovo would have had more real independence under the
terms Belgrade offered it than it will now.

Those who support the
sort of "polyvalent sovereignty" and "postnational statehood" that we
already have in the EU welcome such arrangements as a respite from the
harsh decisionism of post-Westphalian statehood. But such fictions are
in fact always underpinned by the timeless realities of brute power.
There are 16,000 Nato troops in Kosovo and they have no intention of
coming home: indeed, they are even now being reinforced with 1,000
extra troops from Britain. They, not the Kosovo army, are responsible
for the province's internal and external security.

Kosovo is also
home to the vast US military base Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac - a
mini-Guantánamo that is only one in an archipelago of new US bases in
eastern Europe, the Balkans and central Asia. This is why the Serbian
prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, speaking on Sunday, specifically
attacked Washington for the Kosovo proclamation, saying that it showed
that the US was "ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise
international order for the sake of its own military interests".

In
order to symbolise its status as the newest Euro-Atlantic colony,
Kosovo has chosen a flag modelled on that of Bosnia-Herzegovina - the
same EU gold, the same arrangement of stars on a blue background. For
Bosnia, too, is governed by a foreign high representative, who has the
power to sack elected politicians and annul laws, all in the name of
preparing the country for EU integration.

As in Bosnia, billions
have been poured into Kosovo to pay for the international
administration but not to improve the lives of ordinary people. Kosovo
is a sump of poverty and corruption, both of which have exploded since
1999, and its inhabitants have eked out their lives for nine years now
in a mafia state where there are no jobs and not even a proper
electricity supply: every few hours there are power cuts, and the
streets of Kosovo's towns explode in a whirring din as every shop and
home switches on its generator.

This tragic situation is made
possible only because there is a fatal disconnect in all
interventionism between power and responsibility. The international
community has micro-managed every aspect of the break-up of Yugoslavia
since the EU brokered the Brioni agreement within days of the war in
Slovenia in July 1991. Yet it has always blamed the locals for the
results. Today, the new official government of Kosovo will be
controlled by its international patrons, but they will similarly never
accept accountability for its failings. They prefer instead to govern
behind the scenes, in the dangerous - and no doubt deliberate - gap
between appearance and reality.

· John Laughland is the author of Travesty: the Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice

jlaughland@btinternet.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/19/kosovo.eu

February
21, 2008

Serbs Press Their Drive to Control
Northern Kosovo

By
DAN BILEFSKY

CABRA, Kosovo
— Serbs in northern Kosovo on Wednesday continued what appeared to be a drive
to force a partition three days after the ethnic Albanian majority declared the
province’s independence from Serbia.

A mob of 300 Serbs wielding
clubs and tools gathered on a road near this small village of ethnic Albanians
in northern Kosovo, prompting NATO to send armored vehicles and tanks to head
them off.

Earlier, ethnic Albanian
police officers, part of Kosovo’s multiethnic police force, were forced out of
the neighboring Serb village, where they were patrolling with fellow Serbs. It
was the latest sign that Serbs in Kosovo, incensed by the declaration of
independence, are trying to assert control over the northern part of Kosovo,
the majority of whose residents are ethnic Serbs.

NATO peacekeeping troops
closed off roads between Serbia and northern Kosovo, and United
Nations police officers guarded checkpoints still smoldering after
they were burned down Tuesday by several hundred Serbs in what the police said
appeared to be an organized operation, The Associated Press reported.

Indicating that the violence
could be a prelude to an effort to force a partition of northern Kosovo, the
Serbian minister for Kosovo, Metohija Slobodan Samardzic, said the destruction
of the United Nations checkpoints was in line with Serbia’s policies. “It might
not be pleasant, but it is legitimate,” he said, adding that Serbia would be
seeking to enlarge its operations in northern Kosovo, where it provides
education, culture and health services to the ethnic Serb population.

In Mitrovica, a northern
Kosovo city that is divided between Serbs in the north and ethnic Albanians in
the south, 3,000 demonstrators marched to the bridge dividing the communities,
chanting, “We won’t give up Kosovo!” The daily protest, begun this week, starts
precisely at 12:44 p.m., in reference to United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, under which Serbia insists
that it still has sovereignty over Kosovo under international law.

Capt. Bertrand Bonneau, a
spokesman for NATO’s 16,000-member peacekeeping force in Kosovo, said the
peacekeepers were under orders to maintain security in all of Kosovo, including
the north, and would not tolerate any action by either side that undermined
this goal.

The European
Union on Wednesday formally began a program that will bring 1,800
police officers and judges to Kosovo to help administer its affairs. The move
provoked criticism from Russia, which has supported the Serbs in opposing an
independent Kosovo. Pieter Feith, the European Union’s special envoy, appealed
to Serbs, who consider the mission an occupying force, to stop demonstrating.

But European diplomats,
speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to
discuss the subject for attribution, expressed worries that Kosovo’s Serbs
could provoke ethnic Albanians, undermining whatever collective Serbian and
Albanian authority remained in northern Kosovo, and entrenching Serbian control
so that de facto partition became a political reality.

“The Serbs appear intent on
provoking an Albanian reaction and to make the international community’s
mission here impossible, but we will not allow legal partition,” said one
senior European Union diplomat.

But another European diplomat
said that if Serbs pursued de facto division, “there is not a lot that could be
done.”

The political temperature in
Cabra, an agricultural village of about 70 ethnic Albanian families, has
particular resonance because it was here in March 2004 that three ethnic
Albanian boys drowned under mysterious circumstances, prompting Albanians to
riot across Kosovo.

As the Serb protesters
gathered on the road outside the village Wednesday, local ethnic Albanians
vowed they would stay to ensure that northern Kosovo remained in ethnic
Albanian hands. Children wearing T-shirts with Albanian flags gathered to
observe the peacekeepers’ tanks parked at the edge of the town.

“This is my land, and we must
stay here to show Serbia that this is Kosovo,” said Zuka Ilir, an unemployed
28-year-old. “But we are afraid. We don’t know what will happen.”

Xhevadet Beka, a 26-year-old
engineer, added: “I will stay here and fight if I have to. For now we put our
faith in NATO, the E.U. and the United States. But we are very, very afraid
that the Serbs will try and take over northern Kosovo, and it is impossible. We
will not allow it.”

Kosovo was placed under
United Nations administration in 1999, after NATO intervened to halt repression
by the Serbian leader, Slobodan
Milosevic, of ethnic Albanians, who make up 95 percent of the
population. Yet the northern part of Kosovo — 15 percent of its territory —
remains under de facto Serbian control.

The Serbian leader of Kosovo,
Nebojsa Radulovic, demanded Wednesday that the border between Serbia and
Kosovo, sealed on Tuesday by NATO troops to keep militants from crossing into
Kosovo, be reopened or “the Serbs will continue with the protests, with
consequences we cannot predict.”

Germany, meanwhile, joined
the United States, France, Britain and seven other countries in recognizing
Kosovo, calling Kosovo’s independence a necessary measure to stabilize the
Balkans. Austria and Norway said they also were planning to recognize Kosovo’s
sovereignty.

The Serbian foreign minister,
Vuk Jeremic, addressed the European
Parliament in Strasbourg, France, warning that diplomatic relations
with countries that recognized Kosovo would be damaged. “This is going to have
an impact on our future progress to European Union membership,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/world/europe/21kosovo.html?ex=1204174800&en=6b7a9a517e416f9e&ei=5040

A postmodern declaration

Kosovo's sovereignty is a fiction: real power lies with EU
officials backed by western firepower

• John Laughland
  
• The Guardian,
  
• Tuesday February 19 2008

There seemed to be no immediate consequences when, in 1908,
Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vienna was in clear violation of the 1878
Treaty of Berlin, which it had signed and kept Bosnia in Turkey, yet the
protests of Russia and Serbia were in vain. The following year, the fait
accompli was written into an amended treaty. Six years later, however, a
Russian-backed Serbian gunman exacted revenge by assassinating the heir to the
Austrian throne in Sarajevo in June 1914. The rest is history.

Parallels between Kosovo in 2008 and Bosnia in 1908 are relevant, but not
only because, whatever legal trickery the west uses to override UN security
council resolution 1244 - which kept Kosovo in Serbia - the proclamation of the
new state will have incalculable long-term consequences: on secessionist
movements from Belgium to the Black Sea via Bosnia, on relations with China and
Russia, and on the international system as a whole. They are also relevant
because the last thing the new state proclaimed in Pristina on Sunday will be
is independent. Instead, what has now emerged south of the Ibar river is a
postmodern state, an entity that may be sovereign in name but is a US-EU
protectorate in practice.

The European Union plans to send some 2,000 officials to Kosovo to take over
from the United Nations, which has governed the province since 1999. It wants
to appoint an International Civilian Representative who - according to the plan
drawn up last year by Martti Ahtisaari, the UN envoy - will be the "final
authority" in Kosovo with the power to "correct or annul decisions by
the Kosovo public authorities". Kosovo would have had more real independence
under the terms Belgrade offered it than it will now.

Those who support the sort of "polyvalent sovereignty" and
"postnational statehood" that we already have in the EU welcome such
arrangements as a respite from the harsh decisionism of post-Westphalian
statehood. But such fictions are in fact always underpinned by the timeless
realities of brute power. There are 16,000 Nato troops in Kosovo and they have
no intention of coming home: indeed, they are even now being reinforced with
1,000 extra troops from Britain. They, not the Kosovo army, are responsible for
the province's internal and external security.

Kosovo is also home to the vast US military base Camp Bondsteel, near
Urosevac - a mini-Guantánamo that is only one in an archipelago of new US bases
in eastern Europe, the Balkans and central Asia. This is why the Serbian prime
minister, Vojislav Kostunica, speaking on Sunday, specifically attacked
Washington for the Kosovo proclamation, saying that it showed that the US was
"ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise international order for
the sake of its own military interests".

In order to symbolise its status as the newest Euro-Atlantic colony, Kosovo
has chosen a flag modelled on that of Bosnia-Herzegovina - the same EU gold,
the same arrangement of stars on a blue background. For Bosnia, too, is
governed by a foreign high representative, who has the power to sack elected
politicians and annul laws, all in the name of preparing the country for EU
integration.

As in Bosnia, billions have been poured into Kosovo to pay for the
international administration but not to improve the lives of ordinary people.
Kosovo is a sump of poverty and corruption, both of which have exploded since
1999, and its inhabitants have eked out their lives for nine years now in a
mafia state where there are no jobs and not even a proper electricity supply:
every few hours there are power cuts, and the streets of Kosovo's towns explode
in a whirring din as every shop and home switches on its generator.

This tragic situation is made possible only because there is a fatal
disconnect in all interventionism between power and responsibility. The
international community has micro-managed every aspect of the break-up of
Yugoslavia since the EU brokered the Brioni agreement within days of the war in
Slovenia in July 1991. Yet it has always blamed the locals for the results.
Today, the new official government of Kosovo will be controlled by its
international patrons, but they will similarly never accept accountability for
its failings. They prefer instead to govern behind the scenes, in the dangerous
- and no doubt deliberate - gap between appearance and reality.

· John Laughland is the author of Travesty: the Trial of
Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice

jlaughland@btinternet.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/19/kosovo.eu

"Thank
You Germany!"

2008/02/18

PRISTINA/BELGRADE/BERLIN

(Own
report) - Sunday, after Berlin's years of preparations, the South-Serbian
province, Kosovo, declared its secession in violation of international law.
Kosovo is "independent" of Serbia, declared Hashim Thaci, the Prime
Minister of the Provincial Administration in Pristina. The German government
intends to recognize the secession soon. Berlin will thereby be participating
in the violation of the UN Charter and other valid legal norms, just as the
German police and judicial officers, who will be dispatched to Kosovo within
the framework of a so-called EU mission. Their deployment will be without a
valid, internationally recognized legal basis and will therefore constitute an
illegal occupation. The objective is to establish an informal protectorate,
while keeping its nationalist forces in check. Kosovo's secession is the
preliminary finale of a policy seeking the parcelization of the Balkan states
along the lines of allegiance, which began with Berlin's recognition of the
Croatian secession. Each of the EU states, after brief hesitation, joined this
policy and along with Washington, militarily attacked what was left of
Yugoslavia in 1999. Since that time, Berlin has been fostering the Kosovo
nationalists, whose representatives in Pristina are designated as the bosses of
organized crime. One of them is the current Prime Minister Thaci. On the murals
celebrating Thaci's proclamation of secession, one reads "Thank You
Germany!"

With
yesterday's proclaimed secession the provincial administration in Pristina has
concluded what Berlin has been preparing for years - at first with covert
secret service support for the KLA, then with participation in the military
aggression against Yugoslavia in March 1999 and finally within the framework of
the UN Administration in Pristina (UNMIK) (german-foreign-policy.com reported
[1]). The secession of Serbia's southern province was carried out in violation
of the UN Charter - guaranteeing all UN member states the sovereignty and
territorial integrity - and in disregard of the decisions taken by the UN
Security Council. Most significant is the Resolution 1244 explicitly
reconfirming to Belgrade the integrity of its sovereign territory. The German
government intends to recognize the secession soon and demands that all EU
member states do the same. Berlin thereby proves once again that it is the
driving force behind a growing degeneration of international law, blatantly exalting
the despotism of power to the highest principle of foreign policy.

Fantasy

With
the aid of fantasy the foreign ministry seeks to cover up the German
government's renewed breach of international law. In its statement before the
Foreign Relations Committee of the German Parliament, the ministry alleged that
the guarantees of Serbia's sovereignty and integrity, laid down in UN
Resolution 1244, refer merely to a "transitional government" in
Kosovo and does not preclude secession. A reading of the text proves this
audacious fabrication to be groundless. According to the Foreign Ministry, the
UN Resolution - except for the guarantees for Serbia's sovereignty and
territorial integrity - is still in force, so as not to jeopardize the
legitimacy of NATO's and the EU's deployment, because if the resolution were no
longer valid, it would mean that the western countries' occupation of Serbian
territory would be dependant upon the "invitation" of their Kosovo
vassals in Pristina, an embarrassing dependency that Berlin and Washington
would like to avoid.[2]

Precedence

This
ludicrous approach that degrades UN Resolutions to non-binding suggestion
lists, from which one can pick and choose to apply clauses at preference, meets
open contradiction even within the entourage of the Foreign Ministry. Warnings
of incalculable counter-measures are being heard. "Unilateral
interpretations of Security Council Resolutions constitute (...) cases of
precedence that, under other circumstances, can be turned against the western nations,"[3]
a member of the Foreign Ministry's Council of International Jurists wrote in a
newspaper article.

Decree

German
legal arbitrariness can also be seen by the way the decision was taken to
dispatch a so-called police and judicial mission to Kosovo. In spite of massive
pressure from Berlin, six EU member states are still rejecting the secession,
because their own sovereignty is threatened by separatists. With the refusals
of Spain, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus to actively support
the new "EU-mission", the modalities for decision making were changed
without further ado and the dispatching of 2000 police and judicial officers
was virtually taken by decree. In Brussels one could hear concerning the
decision-making, that the dispatching had been proposed and "formally
adopted" when the time-limit for lodging an objection - at midnight on
Saturday - had expired without a veto from an EU member state. With this new
voting technique, final approval becomes superfluous. Berlin had made it clear
that it would accept a veto under no circumstances. To demonstrate its
determination, Germany had already chosen its first 63 police officers for the
"mission" before the time-limit had expired.[4]

Impunity

Amnesty
International has recently published a report on its research concerning the
"police and justice mission" being conducted in the name of the
United Nations, but also under western control. The conclusions are devastating
for the numerous -among them also German - police and judicial officers who have
been deployed in Kosovo since 1999. According to Sian Jones, Amnesty
International's researcher on Kosovo, "hundreds of cases including
murders, rapes and enforced disappearances have been closed, for want of
evidence that was neither promptly nor effectively gathered" by the UN
Mission. There is persistent "impunity" for war crimes and crimes
against humanity in the southern Serbian province claiming to be an independent
state and about to be recognized by Germany.[5] According to Amnesty „no
progress is ever made", quite the contrary, the situation has worsened in
recent months. Amnesty International "urges the UN not to undertake any
similar international justice missions in the future until effective steps have
been taken to ensure that none of the extensive flaws identified in this report
are repeated."[6]

Networks

The
current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci is among those persons whose past
could shed light on what Amnesty considers "extensive flaws".
Washington and Berlin's close ally proclaimed the southern Serbian province's
"independence" in Pristina yesterday. If the UN police and judicial
officers would have accomplished their mission, Thaci would have been brought
to trial long ago. Already in 1997, Serbian judges had sentenced him to ten years
in prison - for several murders. "Thaci had ordered liquidations within
his own ranks," two former KLA fighters report about their former
leader.[7] In the eyes of the German Foreign Intelligence Service
(Bundesnachrichtendienst), the current Prime Minister is one of the heads of
the Kosovo Mafia and a sponsor of a "professional killer".[8] A
survey commissioned by the German Bundeswehr asserts that "in intelligence
circles" Thaci "is considered to be 'far more dangerous'" than
Ramush Haradinaj, who is indicted for war crimes [9], "because the former
KLA leader has an extensive international criminal network at his
disposal."[10]

Last
Question

With
the Kosovo declaration of secession, that, in violation of international law,
has granted criminals their own state, German efforts to achieve the
disempowerment of its traditional opponent, Serbia, has attained its objective.
Belgrade has lost the control over most of the territory of what had formerly
been Yugoslavia, has been deprived its access to the sea and is surrounded by
hostile states. On the other hand, through a new war against Belgrade and the
break-up of Serbian territory, Berlin was able to successfully reassert its
claim as hegemonic power in Southeast Europe. With yesterday's declaration of
secession, according to the German government, the "last remaining open
question concerning the disintegration process of Yugoslavia (...) has been
resolved."[11]

[1]
see also Neuer
Vasall, Imperial
Consummation, Teil
der Verwaltung, A
Sort of Resurrection for Yugoslavia, Die
Herren des Rechts, Paketlösung,
Abmontiert,
Sieger
im Kalten Krieg, Selbstbestimmung,
Die
zweite Welle, Dayton
II, Mit
kreativen Tricks, Angelpunkt,
Countdown
and Kooperationsraum.

[2] Die Argumentationen entstammen einem Papier des Auswärtigen Amts mit dem
Titel "Kosovo. Resolution des Sicherheitsrates 1244 (1999) und eine evtl.
Unabhängigkeitserklärung des Kosovo".

[3] Kein Recht auf Abspaltung; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 14.02.2008

[4] EU entsendet Polizisten und Juristen in das Kosovo; Reuters 16.02.2008

[5] amnesty international legt neuen Kosovo-Bericht vor; www.amnesty.de

[6] Kosovo (Serbia): The challenge to fix a failed UN justice mission;
www.amnesty.org

[7] "Die Schlange" greift nach der Macht im Kosovo; Die Welt
28.01.2006

[8] Jürgen Roth: Rechtsstaat? Lieber nicht!; Die Weltwoche 43/2005

[9] see also Political
Friendships and Heldenfigur

[10] Operationalisierung von Security Sector Reform (SSR) auf dem Westlichen
Balkan; Institut für Europäische Politik 09.01.2007. See also Aufs
engste verflochten

[11] Erklärung zur Entscheidung des Parlaments im Kosovo; Presse- und
Informationsamt der Bundesregierung 17.02.2008

 http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56134

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8019

Warning: NATO-UN
record is bad news for Canada

James
Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia

The Immorality of Moral Universalism

From the desk of John
Laughland on Wed, 2008-02-13 17:14

Pas de
liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté! No liberty for the enemies of liberty has
always been the revolutionary principle, ever since Saint-Just (“The Angel of
the Terror”) pronounced the phrase in Paris in 1793. Because Islam is now
widely seen as an existential threat to liberal values the speech by the Archbishop
of Canterbury last week, saying that the introduction of sharia law was
both inevitable and desirable, and that idea of a sovereign state with a single
law for all was “problematic” because it is not pluralist and tolerant enough,
has inevitably caused a storm.

The speech
did not come entirely out of the blue. For many decades now, clerics including
in the Catholic church have espoused nothing but a tepid brew of secular
left-liberalism. People used to say that the danger of people believing in
nothing was that they would start to believe in anything. But as Paul Gottfried
argued some years ago in his excellent book, Multiculturalism
and the Politics of Guilt, the secularist project merely causes
theological forms of behaviour to erupt into the political realm, often in a
particularly nasty and deformed way. When priests stop talking about morality,
other people start talking about it instead.

This was
illustrated on 12th February in a
speech by the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. He called the
speech “The Democratic Imperative”, perhaps an unconscious allusion to “the
categorical imperative,” the centrepiece of the moral philosophy of the man who
did most to introduce secularism and to banish God from the public realm,
Immanuel Kant. Miliband’s view is that the democratic states of the world have
a moral duty to intervene, including with military force, to support democracy
around the world.

Miliband’s
debt to Kant is very great, since he invokes the concept of moral universalism,
but it is perhaps greater to his mentor, Tony Blair, who advocated the same
thing at the height of the Kosovo war in 1999, in his speech entitled “The Doctrine of the
International Community” and greater still to Leon Trotsky and V. I. Lenin,
the men for whom his
grandfather fought in the Red Army, and who, like Miliband, also believed
in enforcing world revolution by military might.

The Foreign
Secretary marshalled three arguments which, he said, are counter-arguments to
“the democratic imperative”. Although he claimed to demolish each one in turn,
he in fact failed to address the single most important counter-argument to
interventionism and its claim that promoting democracy is “moral”, namely that,
on the contrary, interventionism is deeply immoral.

This is not
difficult to show. Kosovo is about to declare its independence. Naturally there
will be a lot of crowing about how the NATO war of 1999 was fought for
universal values and about how it therefore showed the rightness of
interventionism. Yet you do not have to accept that the original war was evil
(as I believe it was) to see that the subsequent administration of the province
has been catastrophic. As Matthias Brügmann reported in Handelsblatt on
2nd February (“Das
Scheitern der Welt” – “The World’s Failure”), and as I know from my own
bitter experience, Kosovo is a hell-hole. The United Nations administration
there has ruthlessly sacrificed its own institutional self-interest to that of
the Kosovo people; it has consumed tens of billions of dollars without
providing for any of the basics for civilised life – there is no proper
electricity supply and there are power cuts all the time; and the place is run
by the Mafia, the former KLA leader Hashim Thaci having been Prime Minister since
2007. Unemployment is nearly universal and the place is a sump of corruption
and violence. What is moral about that?

Anyone
interested in reading more on this would do well to consult the terrible
indictment published in 2006 by two well-meaning former officials in the UN
administration in Kosovo, Iain King and Whit Mason, Peace
at any price: How the world failed Kosovo. Even the European
Commission’s annual progress report on candidate states admits, Kosovo
government is “weak an inefficient” while corruption remains “widespread” [pdf].

I have written elsewhere about the
immorality of supporting the independence of Kosovo while denying it to
Flanders, Northern Cyprus, Republika Srpska, Transnistria or any of the other
numerous territories around the world which do not want to belong to the states
they are in. David Miliband says that one of his ideological enemies is Realpolitik,
but what other word can there be for supporting the independence of those
countries you like, while denying it to those you do not?

The only
other possible word which describes such an approach is “double standards” and
these are the opposite of moral. Yet they are precisely what another
interventionist, Robert Cooper, once wrote (in The Post Modern State and the
World Order were what should guide the foreign policy of the West: “We need
to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the
basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more
old-fashioned kinds of state outside the post-modern continent of Europe, we
need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive
attack, deception.”

Similar
theories have been advanced, for instance, by Robert Kaplan, another
interventionist, in his apology for brutalism, Warrior
Politics: Why Leadership demands a Pagan Ethos.

On one
level, Miliband’s and Blair’s invocation of morality in justification of
horrible acts of war is simply the sign of a psychotic personality – what one
Iraq expert called to advise the then Prime Minister before the invasion of
Iraq, “a strange combination of moral fervour and cynicism”. At a deeper level,
however, I believe that double standards and hypocrisy are the inevitable
results of any policy based on abstract, universal values. Appeals to universal
values will always lead to hypocrisy because values cannot be apprehended in
the abstract, only in the concrete. The only way to appreciate the value of
something is by comparing it to something else.

We need to
renew, therefore, with the ancient tradition of justice and morality,
formulated by Cicero and Aristotle and transfigured by St. Thomas Aquinas,
according to which justice is the administration to each of his deserts. It is
the role of the state to establish such deserts and administer such justice,
but, more profoundly, it is the role of the polis to provide a forum in
which such values can be publicly apprehended and judged. The state is also the
forum by which accountability for the wielding of power is ensured:
international power, by contrast, is structurally unaccountable because there
are literally no mechanisms by which decisions are subjected to any sort of
democratic scrutiny or approval.

Miliband’s
approach, therefore, is to deny the state its noble role of providing a forum
for the establishment of value, and, in the name of an morality which is as
capricious as it is abstract, to argue for nothing less than the right to wield
power without responsibility.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2964

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/11-02-2008/103989-eueulekskosovo-0

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Kosovar Endgame

Nearly unreported in the American media is the imminent culmination of one of America’s modern wars: in this case, the 1999 Kosovo War, in which NATO attacked Serbia on behalf of a Kosovar Albanian guerrilla movement, and forced a de facto – though not de jure
– cession of the province to an international force under a United
Nations mandate. According to all available reports, in exactly one
week – February 17th – Kosovo will declare its independence as an Albanian-dominated statelet
under the aegis of the Western powers. Contrary to the benign apathy
with which our media and policy communities will greet it, this is a
malign development on several levels.

The 1999 war itself was a strange replay of the “cabinet wars” of
earlier centuries, commanding little popular support in any of the
participating nations, and motivated almost entirely by an elite
consensus in the West that the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic had
to go. Indeed, that regime did more than its share to solidify that
consensus with its rhetorical ineptitude and its sponsorship of the
bloody-minded Serb war in Bosnia. The Western elites, including the
Clinton Administration, were for their part embarrassed by their years
of inaction in Bosnia, and as such were hypersensitive to replays of
that situation elsewhere – and concurrently eager to show, if only to
themselves, that they had learned its lessons. Kosovo’s simmering
conflict between Serbs and Albanians struck all the right chords, down
to the main villain.

The flaw in Western thinking lay in the assumption that the Bosnian
horrors were provoked by basic Serb intolerance of ethnic minorities.
This was inaccurate. The Serbian forces in Bosnia (and, to a lesser
extent, in Croatia) did not perpetrate their barbarous cruelties simply
to erase other ethnicities per se: rather, it was done when
those other ethnicities were perceived to be equal or superior threats
to Serb communities. This is not to excuse what was done, but to
contextualize it. Serbs felt threatened by superior Croat numbers in
the Krajina and Slavonia,
and by superior Bosniak and Croat numbers in Bosnia proper. This was
not an issue within Serbia itself, where, if ethnic minorities were not
necessarily tolerated in the Western, liberal sense of the world,
neither were they dispossessed or systematically slaughtered. Even at
the nadir of the Bosnian atrocities, Muslims within Serbia were living in the Sandzak, Hungarians
were living in the Vojvodina, Montenegrans were living in, well,
Montenegro – and Muslim Albanians were living in Kosovo. (A 2002 map of
ethnicities in Serbia is available here.)

Things went awry in the latter province after the end of the Bosnian war, when the Kosovo Liberation Army
began its guerrilla campaign against Serbian authorities. The
provocation for this campaign lay in the decade-long campaign, under
Milosevic, to curb local autonomy and reassert Serbian cultural
dominance in the heartland of Serb national identity. (The province of
Kosovo contains within it the site of Kosovo Polje,
the “Field of Blackbirds” upon which Serbia lost its independence for
nearly five hundred years to the advancing Turks.) This provocation,
though, was not inherently subject to solely violent resolution, as
evidenced by the existence of “mainstream” Kosovar Albanian political
figures who pursued change through peaceful means. The KLA therefore
pursued a strategy drawing from lessons in Ireland and Palestine,
assassinating Serbs who tolerated Albanians, and Albanians who
tolerated Serbs, and innocents from both groups. The clumsy and
ham-handed Serbian authorities responded as the KLA wished, deploying
regular army units against guerrilla forces, neglecting political
amends, and progressively alienating an already suspicious and
ill-disposed West. By the time of the Račak massacre, the truth no longer mattered: all the West saw was Serbs killing non-Serbs, again, and war was inevitable.

In the two-and-a-half months of war in 1999, Serbian authorities did terrible things
to Kosovar Albanians. The war precipitated the very crisis that the
West imagined, but had not actually come to pass: the “ethnic
cleansing,” via mass expulsions,
of Kosovo of its Muslims. But in the nine years since, Kosovar
Albanians have done terrible things to their Serb neighbors — and it is
no exaggeration to state that a Serb in post-1999 Kosovo is worse off
than an Albanian in pre-1999 Kosovo. To our shame, this situation is a
direct result of our intervention — and has evolved under our watch.

The KLA and its associates in Kosovar politics, in radicalizing the
situation to provoke the 1999 war, thereby made it impossible to return
to a situation of peaceful coexistence. Whereas the intervening West
envisioned — if they envisioned anything at all — a tolerant,
multiethnic Kosovo along the lines of what was sought on Bosnia,
Kosovar Albanians envisioned their own ethnic cleansing, of Serbs from
Kosovo. What the NATO allies waded into was not a rescue of a wronged
party as such, but a party determined to wreak precisely the evils upon
its foe that its foe perpetrated upon it. Under NATO occupation and UN administration,
this goal is met with appalling thoroughness. A brief and far from
comprehensive list of crimes should suffice to illustrate the process
underway:

* In the aftermath of the Serb surrender in June 1999,
the victorious KLA seized the opportunity to drive approximately
200,000 non-Albanians — overwhelmingly Serbs, but also Roma — out of
the province. Human Rights Watch reported
that this flight was motivated largely by concrete threats and the
occasional local massacre, with a reported total of one thousand Serb
men, women and children murdered.
* In February 2001, an IED planted by Albanians destroyed a bus carrying Serbs to family gravesites at the Gračanica monastery.
* In August 2003, Serb boys swimming were machine-gunned from a riverbank.
* In March 2004, a deliberate anti-Serb pogrom claimed dozens of lives, and further ghettoized the remaining Serbs in their northern enclaves.
* Perhaps most distressing from a cultural standpoint
is the deliberate and systemic destruction of Serbian Orthodox Church
parishes, properties, monasteries, and art throughout Kosovo since
1999. Students of the 20th century will recall the Nazi efforts to
comprehensively erase Jewish culture from the Continent, which included
the demolition of synagogues and the use of Jewish headstones as
paving: since then, only the Kosovo Albanian program to exterminate
Serbian culture in Kosovo compares in European history. In the summer
following the Serbian defeat, the KLA demolished the Church of the Holy Virgin at Musutiste and St Mark’s of Korisa Monastery.
Sadly, they did not stop there. In lieu of the long list of churches
and cultural sites destroyed by the Kosovar Albanians since 1999, is it
enough to note the documentation here, here, here, here, and here.

Your tax dollars at work.

What
is astonishing about these atrocities, aside from their plain
brutality, is that they are perpetrated by a segment of Kosovo’s
population that enjoys every advantage. Albanians constitute 90% of the
population; they control the politics of the province; they have
foreign sponsorship and foreign armies for protection; they are
definitive victors in the late civil conflict; and they enjoy the
overwhelming bulk of patronage from official sources. The persistence
of organized violence against the Serbs now is not the guerrilla
campaign of 1995-1999, but an actual state persecution of a minority.
Self-pity is a recurring and malevolent feature of Serbian nationalism,
and it is important to not lend credence to it — but we must
nonetheless acknowledge these facts for what they are.

With all this in mind, we return to the baleful reality of the imminent declaration of Kosovar independence under Albanian rule.
The declaration is happening for several reasons, but the major one is
that the Kosovo Albanians feel they can get away with it with minimal
repercussions. Having tested the limits of their Western sponsors’
tolerance, they found those limits were extensive: the 2004 anti-Serb
pogroms conclusively demonstrated that little if anything could sour
their relationship with the West, and with the United States in
particular. They know that Putin’s resurgent Russia is still unable to
bring meaningful pressure to bear; and they know that a NATO embroiled
in Afghanistan, and a United States mired in Iraq, will take the path
of least resistance. Lurking behind all this is the unstated
possibility that the KLA would be willing to launch a guerrilla
campaign against a NATO unwilling to validate its aspirations. In this
light, when Kosovar Albanian leaders boast of “100 nations” willing to
recognize their new state, they are probably not exaggerating. A world
weary of conflict, and with bigger strategic headaches than the Balkans
— so 1990s, that — is almost certainly willing to sacrifice the Serb
remnant in Kosovo to the predations of their Albanian neighbors.

For all this, the United States should not accede to Kosovo’s independence. The reasons present themselves:

* Kosovo is not politically ready. A
would-be state with a pervasive internal culture of violence and
persecution is a disaster-in-waiting. Imagine, for example, granting
statehood to the Gaza Strip: its political culture would make a mockery
of the very term, and the fiction demanding co-equal status between it
and, say, France would ill-serve all concerned. Until Kosovo can
function as a reasonably inclusive democracy with reasonable guarantees
for its minorities, and have regular, peaceful transfers of
power, it does not merit statehood. The province, for many reasons, is
simply not there yet.
* Kosovo is not culturally ready.
The campaign of brutalization against non-Albanian and non-Muslim
minorities has been addressed at length here. Suffice it to say that
this is not a polity ready for just self-governance; and suffice it to
say that we ought not be a party to cultural erasure.
* Kosovar independence would generate instability elsewhere.
The old Wilsonian idea that a geographically-bounded majority
population deserves its own sovereignty dies hard. In this decade, with
American foreign policy predicated more than ever on quasi-Wilsonian
principles, it is especially formidable. It is also a recipe for
disaster: with the United States engaged in two wars in multiethnic
states, to explicitly affirm this precedent in Kosovo invites more
serious problems and bloodshed elsewhere. With Kosovo independent, what
grounds do we have for dissuading the independence aspirations of the
Kurds, the Pashtuns, the Baluchis, the Assyrians, the Arab Shi’a, et
al.? Furthermore, what prevents Russia from seizing upon this precedent
to cause trouble in the Caucasus and Moldova? (They say they won’t — for now — but why give them the leverage?) Contra
the rhetoric of some neoconservatives, we ought not be in the business
of redrawing borders, nor sponsoring particular ethnic groups for their
own sake.
* Kosovar independence would reverse progress in the Balkans. Memories are short, but in the 1990s, the Balkans were a cauldron of bloodshed and horror. If they are peaceful now, and if Sarajevo has a tourist industry,
there is nothing inherent or irreversible about this. Since the last
Balkan war in 1999, Serbia has modernized, liberalized, and moved
toward the European Union; Bosnia has been, if divided, at least
quiescent; and we’ve not seen Albanian irredentism cause an
international crisis apart from an abortive 2001 insurgency in Macedonia. Kosovo independence threatens all this: the imminent declaration of independence has already damaged Serb-EU relations; the rationale for the existence of the Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina fades dramatically if the three parts believe they may simply separate; and Albanian irredentism
receives a massive boost. The history of the Balkans in the past
century has been the history of nations either pursuing irredentist
aims, or reconciling themselves to abandoning those claims. Albania,
with claims against each of its neighbors — Serbia, Montenegro, Greece,
and Macedonia — is also the only Balkan nation with a shot at making
good on significant portions of them. Kosovar independence is thus the
worst of all possible worlds for the Balkans, in reviving one source of
Balkan instability in a resentful Serbia, and with the Albanians
rewarding precisely the sort of irredentist sentiment that has
repeatedly plunged the peninsula into savage war.
* Kosovar independence would further strain the US-Russian relationship. This
relationship is already under sufficient pressure thanks to Vladimir
Putin’s decision to reclaim much of the old Soviet-era paranoia and
tension as Russia’s own. This is, to be sure, mostly Russia’s own doing
— but it defies reason to assume that the United States ought to
therefore aggravate it further. The American relationship with Russia
is self-evidently more important and enduring than the American
relationship with Albania, to say nothing of Kosovar Albanians. The
Russians have warned us repeatedly
of their profound reservations over Kosovar independence: in being
sensitive to their sensitivities, we lose nothing, and stand to gain in
the long run.

So much for what ought to happen: what will happen? This
is regrettably easy to predict: on Sunday, February 17th, 2008, Kosovo
will declare its independence. Many if not most of the remaining Serbs
will migrate to Serbia proper. Some Serbs will stay and try to force a
partition of the province; this will swiftly degenerate into violence
as the Kosovar Albanian government seeks to extend its writ to the full
territory it now claims. The NATO forces in place will be forced to act
as the gendarmerie of a sovereign state, or to oppose that
state in its quelling of Serb resistance. Neither are good options.
Within Serbia, the citizenry will ask themselves what exactly
rapprochement with the West has brought them and theirs. Within the
coming few years, the issue of Kosovo’s political union with Albania
will come to the fore, and this will draw in Greece at minimum, and
Turkey and Russia at worst. From benign if cruel stasis, the Balkans
will again remind us why the word is also an adjective.

And we Americans will feel quite blameless about it, no doubt.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2956

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By Nikos Konstandaras

The ethnic Albanians of Kosovo are expected to make a unilateral
declaration of independence within days. Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim
Thaci claimed on Friday that about 100 countries were ready to
recognize Kosovo when it breaks away from Serbia. Every nation seeks
its independence and no one can blame the Kosovo Albanians for the
persistence with which they have pursued theirs. Through the mistakes
and brutality of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and by very cleverly
playing on the West’s guilt over its negligent handling of the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Kosovar Albanians have managed to draw Western
public opinion in the direction that benefited them.

What is less
understandable is how Europe has acted in such a frivolous and
thoughtless way as to stoke division in Serbia and send this important
country into isolation. For the sake of Kosovo, Europe is in danger of
losing Serbia.

We may blame the Serbs for many things – among
them an inability to come to grips with the past and to send to the
international tribunal in The Hague those among them who are accused of
war crimes. But that is no reason to push them into desperation. The
reaction of many Serbs to the threats and deadlines they have faced is
what we would expect of a proud and talented people (who were among the
first to fight for and gain their liberation from the Ottoman yoke,
starting their revolt in 1804). Over the past few years, the Serbs have
suffered a series of humiliations in the breakup of Yugoslavia (a
disintegration in which they were instrumental). In 1999, there was the
secret annex to the Rambouillet talks aimed at averting war over
Kosovo, in which Serbia was ordered to accept the presence of NATO
forces on its territory. In 2001, after the war, the Serb authorities
arrested Milosevic on the day that a US ultimatum to do so expired.

Naturally,
the government of Prime Minister Zoran Djindic was criticized for
bowing to the Americans. Two years later, the man who assassinated
Djindjic claimed that the prime minister was a “traitor.”

No Serb
politician can acquiesce to the loss of Kosovo, the traditional
heartland of the Serb nation – neither pro-Western President Boris
Tadic nor nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. In last
Sunday’s runoff presidential elections, Tadic won 50.5 percent of the
vote to 47.9 percent for Tomislav Nikolic, who ran on a strongly
nationalist platform. The nation is divided equally and no one has the
luxury of being able to provoke public anger by signing on to the
further loss of Serb territory. Policymakers in Washington, Brussels
and all other European capitals ought to be weighing the dynamics that
will arise with Kosovo’s independence. Among the many ills is the fact
that the progressive Serb president and his political friends will be
seen to have sat by quietly, betraying their national cause, while at
the same time being the victims of betrayal by their Western allies
abroad.

Unfortunately, in their demand that the Serbs accept the
loss of Kosovo, with the promise of EU accession sometime in the
distant future, European leaders do not appear to care much about what
will happen if the Serbs, out of national pride and their leaders’
political survival, turn their backs on Europe. The damage will not be
to Serbia alone. For example, what kind of independence can Kosovo
enjoy when it will forever face the enmity of a far more powerful
neighbor? What economic and social development will Kosovo achieve if
it must forever rely on foreign powers for its existence, and when
organized crime is rife? Where will the political scene in Serbia – and
Belgrade’s increasing dependence on Russia – lead? How long will Europe
be able to provide Kosovo with police officers and judges, in
accordance with a recent EU decision? It was this last decision that
raised the anger of Prime Minister Kostunica, who saw it as an active
move toward tearing Kosovo away from Serb sovereignty and therefore
refused to agree to the last-minute carrot the EU threw to Serbia a few
days ago: In the wake of the presidential elections, Brussels offered
Belgrade an agreement on trade, and easier visa requirements and
student exchanges.

If the Europeans truly wanted to solve the
Balkans’ most complicated problem (and win the steadfast cooperation of
Serbia) they would put Serbia on a fast track to EU accession and make
it crystal clear to the Albanians of Kosovo that they would get their
independence on the day that they and the Serbs both become members of
the European Union. The EU has not made that offer. Now we will all
have to live with the result, and watch as one problem succeeds another.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_100024_11/02/2008_93222

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