MICHEL COLLON, www.michelcollon.info, March 27, 2008
What exact rules govern the right to secession and, more generally, self-determination of peoples? Some tell us these rules are confusing. And if we believe the corporate media, we might think:
In Asia, Tibetans have that right. Not Iraqis, nor Afghans.
In the Middle East, Israelis have this right. But neither Palestinians nor Kurds.
In Africa, the gangster Generals of the East Congo have this right. But not Western Sahara.
In Latin America, wealthy (rightist) provinces of Bolivia and Venezuela have this right. But not Indigenous peoples of Chile, or of Mexico, etc...
In the Balkans, Albanians of Kosovo have this right. But not Serbs of Kosovo, nor those of Bosnia.
In Western Europe, the Flemish might have this right, but not the Northern Irish, nor the Basques.
Complicated, indeed. How can it be simplified? Like this: Only those people who are "with us" are entitled to self-determination. Noone else.
And as long as we're here, let's replace the word "democratic" by "with us" and the word "terrorist" by "against us."
That's politics. Simple when you know how!
March 26, 2008
Translated by John Catalinotto
More articles about Tibet, Iraq, Palestine, Congo, Latin America
(in French and soon also in English) : www.michelcollon.info
Showing posts with label Kosovo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kosovo. Show all posts
Russia could use force in Kosovo
BBC News, Feb. 22, 2008
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, has warned that Russia could use military force if the Kosovo independence dispute escalates.
"If the EU develops a unified position or if Nato exceeds its mandate set by the UN, then these organisations will be in conflict with the UN," he said.
In that case Russia would "proceed on the basis that in order to be respected we need to use brute force", he said.
Many EU members have recognised Kosovo, but several oppose recognition.
Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, backs Serbia, which has condemned the independence declaration issued by the Kosovo parliament on 17 February.
On Tuesday members of the Serb minority in Kosovo attacked two border posts staffed by UN personnel and Kosovo police.
The violence led the Nato troops in Kosovo - known as K-For - to reinforce the border with Serbia.
Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians are following a plan drawn up by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari for "supervised independence", which was rejected by Serbia.
Russian media outcry
The EU will soon deploy 2,000 officials to strengthen law and order in Kosovo, which has a population of about two million. Russia argues that the mission has no legal basis.
There has been a furious reaction in some Russian media to Kosovo's declaration of independence.
A commentary in the Vesti Plus analytical programme, on state-run television, called the assassinated former Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, a Western puppet who had "received a well-deserved bullet".
It said Djindjic had sold national heroes to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
The programme concluded that Serbia - and not only Serbia - must now decide whether to acquiesce in what has happened, or resist.
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, has warned that Russia could use military force if the Kosovo independence dispute escalates.
"If the EU develops a unified position or if Nato exceeds its mandate set by the UN, then these organisations will be in conflict with the UN," he said.
In that case Russia would "proceed on the basis that in order to be respected we need to use brute force", he said.
Many EU members have recognised Kosovo, but several oppose recognition.
Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, backs Serbia, which has condemned the independence declaration issued by the Kosovo parliament on 17 February.
On Tuesday members of the Serb minority in Kosovo attacked two border posts staffed by UN personnel and Kosovo police.
The violence led the Nato troops in Kosovo - known as K-For - to reinforce the border with Serbia.
Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians are following a plan drawn up by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari for "supervised independence", which was rejected by Serbia.
Russian media outcry
The EU will soon deploy 2,000 officials to strengthen law and order in Kosovo, which has a population of about two million. Russia argues that the mission has no legal basis.
There has been a furious reaction in some Russian media to Kosovo's declaration of independence.
A commentary in the Vesti Plus analytical programme, on state-run television, called the assassinated former Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, a Western puppet who had "received a well-deserved bullet".
It said Djindjic had sold national heroes to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
The programme concluded that Serbia - and not only Serbia - must now decide whether to acquiesce in what has happened, or resist.
Russian Deputy PM reiterates support for Serbia over Kosovo
www.chinaview.cn, Feb. 25, 2008
BELGRADE, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Monday reiterated his country's support for Serbia over the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo.
"Our stance is that Serbia is an indivisible state whose jurisdiction extends to the whole of its territory and we will stick to this principled stance," Medvedev said at a joint news conference with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica after their meeting.
Medvedev's short visit to Serbia, just a week after its Southern province declared independence, was aimed, among other things, to show support for Serbia at a time when Belgrade was outraged at the U.S. and some western countries over their recognition of Kosovo's independence.
"Moscow thinks the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo violates Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and it is not in accordance with principles of international law, Resolution1244, the U.N. Charter and the Helsinki Final Act," Medvedev said, warning that Kosovo's independence has complicated the situation there and may have negative consequences on other regions in Europe and worldwide.
Kostunica told reporters that Serbia is grateful to Russia and President Vladimir Putin for their support for Serbia on defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Kostunica said Serbia will continue to work with Russia to have Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence annulled at the U.N. Security Council.
There will be "no normalization of relations with those countries that have recognized Kosovo, until they annul their decisions," he said.
During his talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic, Medvedev was told that Belgrade would never recognize the independence of Kosovo and would continue to fight for its legitimate interests by peaceful, diplomatic and legal means.
The two agreed that the economic cooperation of the two countries was progressing and that bilateral relations were developed in the interests of both Russia and Serbia.
Medvedev, who is also the Russian gas giant Gazprom's chairman of the board of directors, attended Monday a signing ceremony, in which Gazprom and Serbia's state-owned gas company signed an agreement to create a joint company that will build the Serbian stretch of the South Stream gas pipeline.
The 10-billion-euro (14.65-billion-U.S. dollar) South Stream project by Gazprom and Italy's ENI is designed to bring Siberian gas to Western Europe.
Editor: Yan Liang
BELGRADE, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Monday reiterated his country's support for Serbia over the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo.
"Our stance is that Serbia is an indivisible state whose jurisdiction extends to the whole of its territory and we will stick to this principled stance," Medvedev said at a joint news conference with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica after their meeting.
Medvedev's short visit to Serbia, just a week after its Southern province declared independence, was aimed, among other things, to show support for Serbia at a time when Belgrade was outraged at the U.S. and some western countries over their recognition of Kosovo's independence.
"Moscow thinks the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo violates Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and it is not in accordance with principles of international law, Resolution1244, the U.N. Charter and the Helsinki Final Act," Medvedev said, warning that Kosovo's independence has complicated the situation there and may have negative consequences on other regions in Europe and worldwide.
Kostunica told reporters that Serbia is grateful to Russia and President Vladimir Putin for their support for Serbia on defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Kostunica said Serbia will continue to work with Russia to have Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence annulled at the U.N. Security Council.
There will be "no normalization of relations with those countries that have recognized Kosovo, until they annul their decisions," he said.
During his talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic, Medvedev was told that Belgrade would never recognize the independence of Kosovo and would continue to fight for its legitimate interests by peaceful, diplomatic and legal means.
The two agreed that the economic cooperation of the two countries was progressing and that bilateral relations were developed in the interests of both Russia and Serbia.
Medvedev, who is also the Russian gas giant Gazprom's chairman of the board of directors, attended Monday a signing ceremony, in which Gazprom and Serbia's state-owned gas company signed an agreement to create a joint company that will build the Serbian stretch of the South Stream gas pipeline.
The 10-billion-euro (14.65-billion-U.S. dollar) South Stream project by Gazprom and Italy's ENI is designed to bring Siberian gas to Western Europe.
Editor: Yan Liang
Serbia: US 'Culprit' in Kosovo Violence
By DUSAN STOJANOVIC and SLOBODAN LEKIC, AP, Feb. 23, 2008
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo (AP) — Serbia's hard-line leaders on Saturday called the U.S. "the main culprit" in the violence that has broken out since Kosovo declared independence.
Several thousand Serbs chanting "Kosovo is Serbia!" and "Russia, Vladimir Putin!" protested peacefully in the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica, the sixth day of demonstrations against Kosovo's break with Serbia. Russia backs Serbia's fierce resistance to Kosovo's secession.
On Thursday night, protesters in the Serbian capital Belgrade set fire to the U.S. embassy, angered by Washington's recognition of Kosovo. The U.S. and the European Union responded by demanding Serbia protect foreign embassies.
"The United States is the main culprit ... for all those violent acts," Serbia's Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said in Belgrade.
Other Serbian leaders have called for calm after the riots. But an aide to hard-line Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said any future violence also will be blamed on the U.S.
"If the United States sticks to its present position that the fake state of Kosovo exists ... all responsibility in the future will be on the United States," Kostunica adviser Branislav Ristivojevic said in a statement.
The comments were an indication that Serbia is drifting further from the West and more toward ally Russia.
The vast majority of Kosovo's population is ethnic Albanian and Serbs represent about 10 percent of the region's 2 million people. Kosovo's minority Serbs have staged protests daily since the territory's ethnic Albanian leadership proclaimed independence last Sunday. They have vented their anger by destroying U.N. and NATO property as well.
In the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, a few protesters hurled firecrackers as U.N. police in riot gear formed a cordon across the main bridge separating the Serb and ethnic Albanian sides. Demonstrators waved Serbian and Russian flags and chanted in support of Moscow's refusal to recognize Kosovo's independence.
The protest was far less violent than one on Friday, when angry demonstrators hurled stones, glass bottles and firecrackers at U.N. forces protecting the bridge.
In the Serb enclave of Strpce in southern Kosovo, about 100 Serbs also marched peacefully Saturday. They carried Serbian flags to a nearby church, where they rang the bells to sound their disapproval of Kosovo's statehood. Some carried posters reading "Kosovo is Serbia" and "Kosovo will never be Albania."
"The whole nation is angry," said Sinisa Tasic, one of the organizers. "We are furious with the Americans. Wherever they go they create problems."
There, too, solidarity with Moscow was on display.
"For the first time ever, Serbia is not alone — it has Russia by its side. Sooner or later, Serbia will get Kosovo back," added Radojko Kecic, 48.
Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's chosen successor and the man expected to easily win Russia's presidential election March 2, is scheduled to visit Belgrade on Monday.
On Friday, the State Department ordered between 80 and 100 nonessential embassy employees, their families and the families of American diplomats in Belgrade to leave Serbia.
"We are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here," U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter said in an interview.
The U.S. and the EU have warned Serbia to boost protection of foreign diplomats and missions, and the U.N. Security Council has unanimously condemned the attacks on foreign missions.
EU representative Pieter Feith said Saturday he recalled his staff from Kosovo's restive north.
There have been scattered protests against Kosovo's independence in other countries as well. In Athens, Greece, about 2,000 pro-Communist demonstrators marched to the U.S. embassy on Saturday. And in Germany, about 1,200 people demonstrated in a square in downtown Stuttgart and 500 others protested in Frankfurt.
In Belgrade, the chief Serbian state prosecutor said Saturday that authorities were searching for participants in Thursday night's riots when the U.S. embassy was attacked. Police said have they arrested nearly 200 rioters in the worst anti-Western violence seen since the ouster of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Protesters torched several offices of the U.S. Embassy's consular section and attacked the missions of Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Croatia and other countries. One person died and more than 150 were injured in the violence.
Authorities identified the dead person as Zoran Vujovic, 21, of the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad. Serbian media said Vujovic used to live in Kosovo, but fled Kosovo in the wake of Kosovo's 1998-99 war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian separatists.
Slobodan Lekic reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Associated Press writers William J. Kole in Pristina; Nebi Qena in Strpce; and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, contributed to this report.
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo (AP) — Serbia's hard-line leaders on Saturday called the U.S. "the main culprit" in the violence that has broken out since Kosovo declared independence.
Several thousand Serbs chanting "Kosovo is Serbia!" and "Russia, Vladimir Putin!" protested peacefully in the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica, the sixth day of demonstrations against Kosovo's break with Serbia. Russia backs Serbia's fierce resistance to Kosovo's secession.
On Thursday night, protesters in the Serbian capital Belgrade set fire to the U.S. embassy, angered by Washington's recognition of Kosovo. The U.S. and the European Union responded by demanding Serbia protect foreign embassies.
"The United States is the main culprit ... for all those violent acts," Serbia's Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said in Belgrade.
Other Serbian leaders have called for calm after the riots. But an aide to hard-line Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said any future violence also will be blamed on the U.S.
"If the United States sticks to its present position that the fake state of Kosovo exists ... all responsibility in the future will be on the United States," Kostunica adviser Branislav Ristivojevic said in a statement.
The comments were an indication that Serbia is drifting further from the West and more toward ally Russia.
The vast majority of Kosovo's population is ethnic Albanian and Serbs represent about 10 percent of the region's 2 million people. Kosovo's minority Serbs have staged protests daily since the territory's ethnic Albanian leadership proclaimed independence last Sunday. They have vented their anger by destroying U.N. and NATO property as well.
In the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, a few protesters hurled firecrackers as U.N. police in riot gear formed a cordon across the main bridge separating the Serb and ethnic Albanian sides. Demonstrators waved Serbian and Russian flags and chanted in support of Moscow's refusal to recognize Kosovo's independence.
The protest was far less violent than one on Friday, when angry demonstrators hurled stones, glass bottles and firecrackers at U.N. forces protecting the bridge.
In the Serb enclave of Strpce in southern Kosovo, about 100 Serbs also marched peacefully Saturday. They carried Serbian flags to a nearby church, where they rang the bells to sound their disapproval of Kosovo's statehood. Some carried posters reading "Kosovo is Serbia" and "Kosovo will never be Albania."
"The whole nation is angry," said Sinisa Tasic, one of the organizers. "We are furious with the Americans. Wherever they go they create problems."
There, too, solidarity with Moscow was on display.
"For the first time ever, Serbia is not alone — it has Russia by its side. Sooner or later, Serbia will get Kosovo back," added Radojko Kecic, 48.
Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's chosen successor and the man expected to easily win Russia's presidential election March 2, is scheduled to visit Belgrade on Monday.
On Friday, the State Department ordered between 80 and 100 nonessential embassy employees, their families and the families of American diplomats in Belgrade to leave Serbia.
"We are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here," U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter said in an interview.
The U.S. and the EU have warned Serbia to boost protection of foreign diplomats and missions, and the U.N. Security Council has unanimously condemned the attacks on foreign missions.
EU representative Pieter Feith said Saturday he recalled his staff from Kosovo's restive north.
There have been scattered protests against Kosovo's independence in other countries as well. In Athens, Greece, about 2,000 pro-Communist demonstrators marched to the U.S. embassy on Saturday. And in Germany, about 1,200 people demonstrated in a square in downtown Stuttgart and 500 others protested in Frankfurt.
In Belgrade, the chief Serbian state prosecutor said Saturday that authorities were searching for participants in Thursday night's riots when the U.S. embassy was attacked. Police said have they arrested nearly 200 rioters in the worst anti-Western violence seen since the ouster of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Protesters torched several offices of the U.S. Embassy's consular section and attacked the missions of Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Croatia and other countries. One person died and more than 150 were injured in the violence.
Authorities identified the dead person as Zoran Vujovic, 21, of the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad. Serbian media said Vujovic used to live in Kosovo, but fled Kosovo in the wake of Kosovo's 1998-99 war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian separatists.
Slobodan Lekic reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Associated Press writers William J. Kole in Pristina; Nebi Qena in Strpce; and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, contributed to this report.
Serb protests over Kosovo continue for sixth day
Serbia vows to hunt Kosovo rioters
Aljazeera.net, Feb. 23, 2008
Serbia has said it is hunting for participants in the Belgrade riots that targeted the US and other embassies, as protests over Kosovo's independence continue into their sixth day.
Pieter Feith, the European Union's envoy in Kosovo, appealed to Serbs for co-operation on Saturday, as Serb demonstrators gathered in the Kosovo town of Mitrovica.
UN police in riot gear continued to patrol the town - concerned that tensions between ethnic Albanians and Serbs could turn violent.
Feith confirmed his mission had moved its staff from the Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica.
Mobs stormed the US embassy in Belgrade, Serbia's capital, on Thursday, after hundreds of Serbs burned down two border posts in north Kosovo in response to its declaration of independence.
Slobodan Radovanovic, Serbia's chief state prosecutor, said on Saturday that the authorities were searching for those responsible.
"We are collecting evidence and are identifying the culprits," Radovanovic said in a statement.
Police said they had arrested nearly 200 rioters on the night of the disturbances, the worst anti-Western violence seen on Belgrade's streets since the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serb leader, in 2000.
Embassies attacked
Rioters protesting international recognition of Kosovo's independence set fire to several offices of the US embassy and attacked the missions of Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Croatia and a number of other countries.
"We are intensively engaged with a large number of personnel [in finding] the culprits and expect the work to be completed soon," said Radovanovic.
More than 150 were injured and nearly 100 stores were looted in the riots.
One person died. The dead man was identified by the authorities on Saturday as 21-year-old Zoran Vujovic, from the northern city of Novi Sad.
Serbian media said Vujovic was originally from the Kosovo town of Caglavica, but fled to central Serbia in the wake of the 1998-99 war.
Evacuation
On Friday, the US ordered nonessential embassy staff and families of diplomats to leave Belgrade.
"We are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here," Cameron Munter, the US ambassador, said in an interview.
Current plans call for them to remain abroad for seven to 10 days, the embassy said.
The US and EU have warned Serbia to boost protection of foreign diplomats and missions, and the UN Security Council has unanimously condemned the attacks.
But some Serb ministers condemn the US and other nations that have recognised the independence of Kosovo, which Serbs consider to be their historical heartland.
"The United States is the main culprit ... for all those violent acts," said Slobodan Samardzic, Serbia's minister for Kosovo.
Russia too has criticised those who would recongnise Kosovo's independence and some of those protesting in Mitrovica held up pictures of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
An aide to Putin on Saturday described Western recognition of Kosovo as a loaded gun waiting to go off, the Interfax news agency reported.
"With Kosovo now the gun has been cocked and no one knows when and where the shot will ring out," said Anatoly Safonov in an interview with the Russian news agency.
Aljazeera.net, Feb. 23, 2008
Serbia has said it is hunting for participants in the Belgrade riots that targeted the US and other embassies, as protests over Kosovo's independence continue into their sixth day.Pieter Feith, the European Union's envoy in Kosovo, appealed to Serbs for co-operation on Saturday, as Serb demonstrators gathered in the Kosovo town of Mitrovica.
UN police in riot gear continued to patrol the town - concerned that tensions between ethnic Albanians and Serbs could turn violent.
Feith confirmed his mission had moved its staff from the Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica.
Mobs stormed the US embassy in Belgrade, Serbia's capital, on Thursday, after hundreds of Serbs burned down two border posts in north Kosovo in response to its declaration of independence.
Slobodan Radovanovic, Serbia's chief state prosecutor, said on Saturday that the authorities were searching for those responsible.
"We are collecting evidence and are identifying the culprits," Radovanovic said in a statement.
Police said they had arrested nearly 200 rioters on the night of the disturbances, the worst anti-Western violence seen on Belgrade's streets since the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serb leader, in 2000.
Embassies attacked
Rioters protesting international recognition of Kosovo's independence set fire to several offices of the US embassy and attacked the missions of Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Croatia and a number of other countries.
"We are intensively engaged with a large number of personnel [in finding] the culprits and expect the work to be completed soon," said Radovanovic.
More than 150 were injured and nearly 100 stores were looted in the riots.
One person died. The dead man was identified by the authorities on Saturday as 21-year-old Zoran Vujovic, from the northern city of Novi Sad.
Serbian media said Vujovic was originally from the Kosovo town of Caglavica, but fled to central Serbia in the wake of the 1998-99 war.
Evacuation
On Friday, the US ordered nonessential embassy staff and families of diplomats to leave Belgrade.
"We are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here," Cameron Munter, the US ambassador, said in an interview.
Current plans call for them to remain abroad for seven to 10 days, the embassy said.
The US and EU have warned Serbia to boost protection of foreign diplomats and missions, and the UN Security Council has unanimously condemned the attacks.
But some Serb ministers condemn the US and other nations that have recognised the independence of Kosovo, which Serbs consider to be their historical heartland.
"The United States is the main culprit ... for all those violent acts," said Slobodan Samardzic, Serbia's minister for Kosovo.
Russia too has criticised those who would recongnise Kosovo's independence and some of those protesting in Mitrovica held up pictures of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.An aide to Putin on Saturday described Western recognition of Kosovo as a loaded gun waiting to go off, the Interfax news agency reported.
"With Kosovo now the gun has been cocked and no one knows when and where the shot will ring out," said Anatoly Safonov in an interview with the Russian news agency.
$1.2B B-2 stealth bomber crashes in Guam
AP, Charlotte.com, Feb. 23, 2008
HAGATNA, GUAM --A B-2 stealth bomber plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from an air base in Guam on Saturday, the first time one crashed, but both pilots ejected safely, Air Force officials said.
The aircraft was taking off with three others on their last flight out of Guam after a four-month deployment, part of a continuous U.S. bomber presence in the western Pacific. After the crash, the other three bombers were being kept on Guam, said Maj. Eric Hilliard at Hickha
At least one B-2 bomber had taken off safely from Andersen Air Force Base but was brought back when another aircraft plunged to the ground.
There were no injuries on the ground or damage to buildings, and no munitions were on board. Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to build.
Thick, black smoke could be seen billowing from the wreckage at Andersen, said Jeanne Ward, a resident in the northern village of Yigo who was on the base visiting her husband.
Ward said she didn't witness the crash but noticed a rising plume of smoke behind the base's air control tower.
She said crowds began to gather as emergency vehicles arrived. "Everybody was on their cell phones, and the first thing everyone wanted to know was did the pilots make it out in time," she said.
The Air Force, without identifying the pilots, said one was medically evaluated and released, and the other was in stable condition at Guam Naval Hospital.
A board of officers will investigate what caused the bat-like aircraft to crash at 10:30 a.m., shortly after taking off from a runway. It was the first crash of a B-2 bomber, said Capt. Sheila Johnston, a spokeswoman for Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
All 21 stealth bombers are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, but the Air Force has been rotating several of them through Guam since 2004, along with B-1 and B-52 bombers.
The rotations are designed to boost the U.S. security presence in the Asia-Pacific region while other U.S. forces diverted to fight in the Middle East.
The B-2 was first publicly displayed in 1988 and took its first flight a year later. The first bomber was delivered to Whiteman in 1993.
The bombers on Guam were scheduled to return to Missouri now that six B-52s from the 96th Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., have arrived to replace them.
The distinctive B-2 is described as a "multi-role bomber" that blends stealth technology with a highly efficient aerodynamic design. It is able to deliver large payloads at great range and has been used in combat over Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The accident occurred 11 days after a Navy plane crashed into the ocean about 20 miles northeast of Guam's Ritidian Point. Four aircrew members ejected from the EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft and were rescued by helicopter.
Guam is a U.S. territory 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaii.
HAGATNA, GUAM --A B-2 stealth bomber plunged to the ground shortly after taking off from an air base in Guam on Saturday, the first time one crashed, but both pilots ejected safely, Air Force officials said.
The aircraft was taking off with three others on their last flight out of Guam after a four-month deployment, part of a continuous U.S. bomber presence in the western Pacific. After the crash, the other three bombers were being kept on Guam, said Maj. Eric Hilliard at Hickha
At least one B-2 bomber had taken off safely from Andersen Air Force Base but was brought back when another aircraft plunged to the ground.
There were no injuries on the ground or damage to buildings, and no munitions were on board. Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to build.
Thick, black smoke could be seen billowing from the wreckage at Andersen, said Jeanne Ward, a resident in the northern village of Yigo who was on the base visiting her husband.
Ward said she didn't witness the crash but noticed a rising plume of smoke behind the base's air control tower.
She said crowds began to gather as emergency vehicles arrived. "Everybody was on their cell phones, and the first thing everyone wanted to know was did the pilots make it out in time," she said.
The Air Force, without identifying the pilots, said one was medically evaluated and released, and the other was in stable condition at Guam Naval Hospital.
A board of officers will investigate what caused the bat-like aircraft to crash at 10:30 a.m., shortly after taking off from a runway. It was the first crash of a B-2 bomber, said Capt. Sheila Johnston, a spokeswoman for Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
All 21 stealth bombers are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, but the Air Force has been rotating several of them through Guam since 2004, along with B-1 and B-52 bombers.
The rotations are designed to boost the U.S. security presence in the Asia-Pacific region while other U.S. forces diverted to fight in the Middle East.
The B-2 was first publicly displayed in 1988 and took its first flight a year later. The first bomber was delivered to Whiteman in 1993.
The bombers on Guam were scheduled to return to Missouri now that six B-52s from the 96th Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., have arrived to replace them.
The distinctive B-2 is described as a "multi-role bomber" that blends stealth technology with a highly efficient aerodynamic design. It is able to deliver large payloads at great range and has been used in combat over Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The accident occurred 11 days after a Navy plane crashed into the ocean about 20 miles northeast of Guam's Ritidian Point. Four aircrew members ejected from the EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft and were rescued by helicopter.
Guam is a U.S. territory 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaii.
"Threatening the Foundations of a World Order" The Independence of Kosovo
By GARY LEUPP, CounterPunch, Feb. 19, 2008
Russia has repeatedly made it very clear that it will not recognize nor accept an independent Kosovo but rather uphold Serbia's historic claim to the province.
Recall how World War I broke out after a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austro-Hungarian archduke in 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, Russia came to the defense of its ally. The alliance system kicked in; Germany and the Ottoman Empire joined the Austro-Hungarian, while France and Britain joined Russia. That system is long gone, but the relationship between Russia and Serbia, deeply rooted in ethnic and religious ties, should not be taken lightly.
Recall how Bill Clinton's big war was "Operation Allied Force," conducted by a somewhat reluctant NATO at U.S. insistence in 1999. Building upon NATO's "Operation Deliberate Force" targeting Serbian fighters in Bosnia four years earlier, it resulted in the aerial bombing of a European capital (Belgrade) for the first time since 1945. Human Rights Watch concluded in 2000 that between 488 and 527 Yugoslav civilians were killed as a result of the bombing, which forced Belgrade to obey Washington and withdraw its troops from the heart of the Serbian homeland.
That heart, of course, is Kosovo. Since the seventh century, when the Serbs pressing eastward from Dalmatia established themselves in the old Roman province of Upper Moesia, Kosovo has been the spiritual core of the Serbian nation. The Serbs have shared it with others, notably Albanians, and the Serbian gene-pool is itself complex and changing over time. But Serbian identity was shaped by the Battle of Kosovo Polje (The Field of Blackbirds) against the Ottoman Turks in 1389, in which both Serbian King Lazar and the Ottoman sultan Murad were killed. Modern historians differ about whether this was a draw or heroic defeat of the Serbs; nationalist mythology depicts it as the latter.
During over four centuries of Muslim Turkish rule the Serbs preserved their Orthodox religious identity, maintaining the Gracanica Monastery and at least half a dozen other religious centers which have survived from the fourteenth century to the present day---threatened though they have been in recent years by desecration, vandalization and destruction.
On Sept. 13, 1999, the Church of Saints Cosma and Damian, built in 1327, was obliterated by a bomb blast. The initials of the Kosovo Liberation Army were painted at the site. By that time some 20 Serbian religious sites had been blown up, including the Dormition of Mother of God parish church, built in 1315. Another 40 others had been attacked or looted. All of this took place after Serbia's capitulation to Washington in June 1999, and the arrival of the NATO-led "peacekeeping force" (Kosovo Force; KFOR) presiding over NATO's new protectorate. KFOR, currently 16,000 strong in a province of two million, has provided some protection for Serbian holy sites; in June 1999 French troops prevented the rape and murder of nuns and a priest at Devic Monastery after the fifteenth century structure had been desecrated and looted by KLA militants. But NATO basically empowered and legitimated forces that proceeded to destroy or desecrate over 70 churches or monasteries by October 1999 (21 in the U.S. zone of responsibility). Meanwhile more than 200,000 Serbs fled the province. During the summer of 1999, 40,000 Serbs fled Pristina.
The destruction continued; 35 sites were attacked in 2004. Last March Decani Monastery (founded in 1327) came under mortar attack. Such incidents are seen by Serbs as not only as assaults on their culture and history but efforts to erase that history.
Some Albanians claim that they were the original inhabitants of Kosovo, a land four-fifths the size of Connecticut. They claim descent from the ancient Illyrians who inhabited the area from about the fourteenth century BCE. It appears as likely they migrated from what is now Albania during the Ottoman period, coming to outnumber the Serbs. One hundred years ago, however, migration into the region brought the Serb population up to the level of the ethnic Albanian: 50/50. Thereafter the greater Albanian birthrate reduced the Serb population to a mere 10% of the total. Following the ethnic cleansing of the last decade, the figure's down to maybe 4%.
Kosovo was the poorest region in Tito's Yugoslavia, but it enjoyed the status of an autonomous province and was treated as a de facto republic in accordance with Tito's philosophy that "Weak Serbia equals strong Yugoslavia." Following Tito's death in 1980, there were large demonstrations demanding full republic status. When ethnic Serbs were targeted, the little-known politician Slobodan Milosevic postured as defender of Kosovo's Serbs. As president of Serbia, he (foolishly) withdrew Kosovo's autonomy in 1989, provoking Albanian protests and the formation of the KLA in 1995. The KLA targeted police, army and civil officials, taking control of about one-quarter of the province.
Belgrade hesitated for several years before taking firm action against the KLA. After the rebels failed to seize the town of Orahovac in the summer of 1998, it launched an offensive, regaining control of almost all the province. At this point Washington became actively involved. President Clinton had sent a special envoy, Robert Gelbard, to the region in February 1998. At that time he stated that the KLA was, "without any questions, a terrorist group" in Washington's view. Indeed the State Department had concluded it was a heroin-financed terrorist group with some ties to al-Qaeda (Washington Times, May 4, 1999). A few months later, however, Gelbard was meeting with KLA leaders; the organization was soon removed from Washington's terror list. Later that year another U.S. special envoy to Kosovo, Richard Holbrooke, was photographed with KLA leaders, further encouraging their violent secessionist movement.
Yugoslavia ("land of the southern Slavs) had been a peaceful, nonaligned nation with cordial relations with both the Soviet bloc and the West for decades. But from 1991 the federation began to fall apart. First Slovenia declared independence. The U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, was unhappy with the move thinking (correctly) that it would lead to regional destabilization. But reunited, powerful Germany encouraged the breakup. Croatia and Macedonia followed suite, then Bosnia-Herzegovina descended into civil war. Washington recognized Bosnian independence in 1994. Accusing Serbian forces of atrocities, NATO bombed Bosnia in August and September 1995, paving the way for the Dayton Agreement in November and the deployment of NATO forces in Bosnia. Now Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, accustomed to making demands and being obeyed, demanded that Milosevic cease his offensive against the KLA. He did.
Following a ceasefire in October 1998, by agreement with Milosevic, peace monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) arrived in Kosovo. But the ceasefire broke down with a few months. Washington then demanded that Milosevic withdraw his troops from Kosovo. That is to say, it demanded that a sovereign state remove its troops from one of its provinces where a group the U.S. had earlier termed "terrorist" was waging a war for secession.
Washington summoned the "Contact Group" (including the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia) as well as Belgrade and Albanian secessionist representatives to Rambouillet, France in February and March 1999. The "Rambouillet Accords" were signed by all parties---except forYugoslavia and Russia. The agreement specified that Kosovo would obtain autonomy but remain part of Serbia. That was the one concession to Belgrade, and an initial cause for the KLA representatives to balk. But the separatists were won over, no doubt realizing that they would gain independence in time. (They just declared that, with Washington's approval, February 17.)
The Accords dictated that Belgrade accept a NATO force with liberty to act throughout the territory of Yugoslavia. It was a demand no sovereign state could accept. A top French official accused the U.S. of behaving like a hyper-puissance ("hyper-power"); NATO itself was divided and disturbed by U.S. demands. (The Spaniards, Italians and Greeks in particular were troubled about the NATO bombing of Belgrade.) Washington was calling for an organization founded to defend western Europe from Soviet attack to intervene in a friendly, non-threatening country, to force it to accept further dismemberment. From March 24 to June 10 NATO air forces, including the German Luftwaffe deployed for the first time since 1945, bombed Yugoslavia.
I didn't think at the time that Clinton's actions resulted from some geo-strategic designs on Kosovo. (There's not that much there, other than lots of coal.) But had he done nothing, and the violence continued, he would have been criticized for failing to use American power ("to prevent genocide") and left the door open for other interested parties (Germany) to take unilateral action. He had to rally NATO to send a message to the world that the U.S. remained the leader and policeman of the western camp. Ongoing chaos in the Balkans would have suggested that the U.S. was sloughing off the responsibilities of power. Strong action would signal allies, as well as the Russian Federation, that the U.S. facing an increasingly united and competitive Europe could continue to deploy NATO in pursuit of its own aims. (Similarly the use of NATO in Afghanistan after 9-11 has served to bind the alliance around a U.S.-dictated agenda, while the public in member states increasingly questions the value and logic of the mission.)
We associate the Bush administration and its neocons with the systematic dissemination of disinformation designed to justify war. But the Clinton administration used the same tactic as it prepared to bomb Yugoslavia. There were horror stories about "ethnic cleansing," and Yugoslav government forces' attacks on innocent Bosnians. Defense Secretary William Cohen, echoed Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), and former Sen. Bob Dole accused Belgrade of "genocide." "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing... They may have been murdered," warned Cohen. "There are indications genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," declared State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin.
But German reports told a different story. Four German court opinions from October 1998 to March 1999; two Foreign Office intelligence reports in January 1999; and one report from the Foreign Office to the Administrative Court in Mainz in March 1999 all challenged such accusations. According to the Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Munster (March 11, 1999), "Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed to regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
After the glorious victory of NATO over Yugoslavia, it was discovered that as few as 2,108 people were actually killed in the province during 1998-9 before the bombardment began. Quite likely more Serbs have been killed by Albanians than vice versa since 1998. The "genocide" charge (reminiscent of the rhetoric of those urging U.S. intervention in Darfur) had been exaggerated, if not contrived; the depiction of Milosevic as a "new Hitler" (reminiscent of the hysterical characterization of Saddam Hussein) equally overblown.
Washington got what it wanted, almost. It destroyed the Yugoslav state, hauled
Milosevic to a kangaroo court at the Hague (where after enhancing his reputation among Serbs by a spirited defense, he died of a heart attack), and planted NATO in what had once been proudly nonaligned European territory. But in the closing days of NATO's war on Yugoslavia in June 1999 Russia dispatched troops based in Bosnia to Kosovo's capital of Pristina, where they took control of the airport. It was a clear statement that Russia would not concede total control of the former Yugoslavia to NATO. It shocked Madeleine Albright, and disturbed Gen. Wesley Clark enough to order an airborne assault on the Russians. But the British general heading the NATO force at the time, Michael Jackson, told Clark: "Sir, I'm not starting World War Three for you."
Thus the Russians were included in the post-bombing "peace-keeping" mission in Kosovo and have since been regarded as the protectors of the remaining Serbs in the Serbian province. Their opposition to Kosovo's independence might be perceived as a slight irritation in Washington among those eager to establish a new client-state and drag it into NATO. But this move comes on the heels of U.S. meddling in Georgia, Belarus, and the Ukraine, the relentless eastward expansion of NATO, and moves to locate missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russian government is in effect saying: "Look, you intervene at will in Latin America, forming and toppling governments as you will, arguing it's necessary for your 'national security.' We who have been invaded many times from the west have legitimate reasons to support our friends in the Balkans, including the Serbs whom you've maligned and mistreated disgracefully. Do you really think you can just wrench away a province from a Slavic country friendly to us, through brutal military force, and expect us to take it lying down?"
I have the feeling that Washington blew it here---and that there will be some blowback. It is all very nice for a people comprising 90% of the inhabitants of a land to form their own state after decades of aspiration and (under Milosevic) undeniable national oppression. But look at this video on youtube: Watch the young Albanian try to rip down the cross from a burning Serbian church in March 2004. Look at this one of the gutted interior of the Manastir Devic monastery, built up in 1434 and torched in March 2004. Or this, showing an ancient Serbian cemetery desecrated in April 2005.
One can find equally ugly images of Serbian actions no doubt, and both Kosovar-Albanian nationalism and Serbian nationalism retain the potential for further destruction. But the leadership in Pristina hoisted into power by U.S. action looks especially unsavory and apt to produce disaster.
The leadership of the newly declared nation of Kosovo is rooted in the KLA; Hashim Thaçi, the new Prime Minister, was a member of its inner circle. The Government of Serbia alleges that he met with Osama bin Laden in Tirana in 1995.
He has been accused of connections with the Albanian, Czech and Macedonian mafia, and of membership in the Drenica Group, controlling 10-15% per cent of criminal activities in Kosovo including arms smuggling, car theft, prostitution and illegal trafficking in oil and cigarettes.
Yugoslav courts in 1997 and 1998 found him guilty of terrorism charges, including attacks on Serbian policemen, but he was a Kosovar Albanian representative at the Rambouillet talks. With the disbanding of the KLA in 1999 he became head of largest party in Kosovo, the Democratic Party. Meanwhile former KLA members have become involved in ethnic Albanian insurgencies elsewhere in the Presevo Valley in Serbia and in Macedonia. (The Albanian population in Macedonia is now about 25% of the total.) An "Albanian National Liberation Army of Macedonia" waged war on Macedonian security forces until the Ohrid Agreement was signed in August 2001, meeting some of its demands. Another armed group headed by Avdil Jakupi ("Commander Cakalla") was formed in 2003, while another, led by Agim Krasniqi, held a village outside Skopje for six months in 2004.
Those dreaming of a "Greater Albania" (optimally to include Albania, Kosovo and other parts of Serbia, and parts of Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece), taking heart at Kosovar independence, may redouble their efforts throughout the region. There are potential religious dimensions to Albanian nationalism; while the Albanians (like Bosnians) are overwhelmingly secular Muslims, the product of generations of atheistic education in Albania and Yugoslavia, they are indeed Muslims. So there are now, aside from Turkey, two Muslim European countries: Albania and Kosovo. (Bosnia-Hezegovina's Muslim population is under 50%). The Saudis, Kuwaitis and others have been pouring money into mosque construction in Albania and Kosovo, encouraging fundamentalist forms of Islam. The Saudi Joint Committee for the Relief of Kosovo has repaired 190 damaged mosques in Kosovo and the Saudis have built mosques there. (One, for a time, was actually named the Bin Laden Mosque.)
Whether intended to do so or not, these efforts to spread Salafi-style Islam dovetail with al-Qaeda's efforts to exploit instability in the Balkans. The organization was active in Bosnia during the war in the early '90s, and surely endorses the idea of "Greater Albania" and a jihad to realize it. What better vehicle for the propagation of its ideology than an ethnic-based web of insurgencies coordinated from Kosovo?
That's one blowback possibility traceable to NATO's 1999 war and events in Kosovo in its aftermath. Another is the emboldening of the Albanian regime in Tirana. Serbia has indicated that it will now beef up security in the Serb-majority areas of what it continues to consider its province. Some might see this as an effort to divide Kosovo. Albanian Foreign Minister Besnik Mustafaj declared in March 2006, "If Kosovo is divided, we can no longer guarantee its borders with Albania, or the border of the Albanian part of Macedonia." In other words, Albania might take military action to do some regional re-dividing itself, backed up, perhaps, by Turkey.
Meanwhile Vladimir Putin, shrewd and careful, considers how to use this blow to pan-Slavic pride to revive Russian influence in the Balkans. His Foreign Ministry declares that Kosovo's claim to independence threatens "the foundations of a world order that has developed over decades." That is true of course. Even before Bush and his neocons came to power Washington was playing with those foundations, gleefully undermining them, flushed with post-Cold War triumphantalism. Time and again there has been blowback.
NATO, as military historian Andrew J. Bacevich has recently written, is in its twilight. Secretary of Defense Gates complains about European lack of zeal in pursuing the enemy in Afghanistan. This of course reflects European public opinion that now sees Afghanistan as a fruitless counterinsurgency mission imposed on Europe by Washington on the heels of other questionable missions resulting from U.S. policy.
The U.S., deeply bogged down in Southwest Asia, has left the Europeans holding the ball in Bosnia; Germany contributes 800 of the 3000 European Union Force (EUFOR) peacekeeping troops. The 16,000-strong KFOR in Kosovo includes 2,567 Italians, 2,374 Germans and 2,269 French troops (but only 1,456 U.S.) Having invaded Iraq, the U.S. urged NATO countries to send troops, and Britain continues to oblige with some 4,500. Others with sizeable commitments (such as Spain, with 1,300; the Netherlands, with 1345; and Italy, with 3,300), have all withdrawn from Iraq.
In Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) consists of 28,600 troops trying to stabilize a country the size of Texas with a population of 30 million. The U.S. supplies 15,000 troops; the UK, 7,800; Germany, 3,210; Italy, 2,880; Canada, 2,500; the Netherlands, 1,650; France, 1,515; Poland, 1,100. ISAF military fatalities have increased every year since 2003 (57) to 2007 (232) as the Taliban has revived.
Public opinion in Canada and Germany has turned decisively against the Afghan deployments. Last year a poll conducted by the German magazine Focus found that 63% of Germans believe the current deployment in northern Afghanistan does not serve German interests and 84 percent of Germans oppose sending combat troops to the south as requested by the U.S. In a Canadian poll last May, 55% of respondents favored a pullout from Afghanistan, while 67% agreed that the presence of Canadian troops there makes Canada more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
U.S. allies weary of efforts to drag them into U.S. wars. U.S. imperialism confronts something of a crisis as its partners rethink where their real interests lie. The GDP of the EU now exceeds the U.S. figure. The euro is much stronger than the dollar. People everywhere hate the U.S. government, which they associate with war-promoting lies and general savagery. Bush is out of political capital, domestically and internationally, as Kosovo announces its independence, made possible by U.S. lies and bloody intervention, "threatening," as the Russians put it, "the foundations of a world order."
Everything dies eventually. Hitler's "New Order in Europe," Japan's "New Order in East Asia," George H. W. Bush's "New World Order" proclaimed as he launched the first Gulf War in 1990. The present world order is profoundly unfair and deserves to be threatened, by the right people, with a better alternative. But the assault on Yugoslavia in 1999 brought nothing positive; rather, more intolerance and suffering, more ethnic cleansing. A new regime emerges, applauded by its American sponsors and most of the EU (but rejected by Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Bulgaria). It is wrapped in smoke, in a legacy of smoldering churches. Smells like the cremation of a world order.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Russia has repeatedly made it very clear that it will not recognize nor accept an independent Kosovo but rather uphold Serbia's historic claim to the province.
Recall how World War I broke out after a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austro-Hungarian archduke in 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, Russia came to the defense of its ally. The alliance system kicked in; Germany and the Ottoman Empire joined the Austro-Hungarian, while France and Britain joined Russia. That system is long gone, but the relationship between Russia and Serbia, deeply rooted in ethnic and religious ties, should not be taken lightly.
Recall how Bill Clinton's big war was "Operation Allied Force," conducted by a somewhat reluctant NATO at U.S. insistence in 1999. Building upon NATO's "Operation Deliberate Force" targeting Serbian fighters in Bosnia four years earlier, it resulted in the aerial bombing of a European capital (Belgrade) for the first time since 1945. Human Rights Watch concluded in 2000 that between 488 and 527 Yugoslav civilians were killed as a result of the bombing, which forced Belgrade to obey Washington and withdraw its troops from the heart of the Serbian homeland.
That heart, of course, is Kosovo. Since the seventh century, when the Serbs pressing eastward from Dalmatia established themselves in the old Roman province of Upper Moesia, Kosovo has been the spiritual core of the Serbian nation. The Serbs have shared it with others, notably Albanians, and the Serbian gene-pool is itself complex and changing over time. But Serbian identity was shaped by the Battle of Kosovo Polje (The Field of Blackbirds) against the Ottoman Turks in 1389, in which both Serbian King Lazar and the Ottoman sultan Murad were killed. Modern historians differ about whether this was a draw or heroic defeat of the Serbs; nationalist mythology depicts it as the latter.
During over four centuries of Muslim Turkish rule the Serbs preserved their Orthodox religious identity, maintaining the Gracanica Monastery and at least half a dozen other religious centers which have survived from the fourteenth century to the present day---threatened though they have been in recent years by desecration, vandalization and destruction.
On Sept. 13, 1999, the Church of Saints Cosma and Damian, built in 1327, was obliterated by a bomb blast. The initials of the Kosovo Liberation Army were painted at the site. By that time some 20 Serbian religious sites had been blown up, including the Dormition of Mother of God parish church, built in 1315. Another 40 others had been attacked or looted. All of this took place after Serbia's capitulation to Washington in June 1999, and the arrival of the NATO-led "peacekeeping force" (Kosovo Force; KFOR) presiding over NATO's new protectorate. KFOR, currently 16,000 strong in a province of two million, has provided some protection for Serbian holy sites; in June 1999 French troops prevented the rape and murder of nuns and a priest at Devic Monastery after the fifteenth century structure had been desecrated and looted by KLA militants. But NATO basically empowered and legitimated forces that proceeded to destroy or desecrate over 70 churches or monasteries by October 1999 (21 in the U.S. zone of responsibility). Meanwhile more than 200,000 Serbs fled the province. During the summer of 1999, 40,000 Serbs fled Pristina.
The destruction continued; 35 sites were attacked in 2004. Last March Decani Monastery (founded in 1327) came under mortar attack. Such incidents are seen by Serbs as not only as assaults on their culture and history but efforts to erase that history.
Some Albanians claim that they were the original inhabitants of Kosovo, a land four-fifths the size of Connecticut. They claim descent from the ancient Illyrians who inhabited the area from about the fourteenth century BCE. It appears as likely they migrated from what is now Albania during the Ottoman period, coming to outnumber the Serbs. One hundred years ago, however, migration into the region brought the Serb population up to the level of the ethnic Albanian: 50/50. Thereafter the greater Albanian birthrate reduced the Serb population to a mere 10% of the total. Following the ethnic cleansing of the last decade, the figure's down to maybe 4%.
Kosovo was the poorest region in Tito's Yugoslavia, but it enjoyed the status of an autonomous province and was treated as a de facto republic in accordance with Tito's philosophy that "Weak Serbia equals strong Yugoslavia." Following Tito's death in 1980, there were large demonstrations demanding full republic status. When ethnic Serbs were targeted, the little-known politician Slobodan Milosevic postured as defender of Kosovo's Serbs. As president of Serbia, he (foolishly) withdrew Kosovo's autonomy in 1989, provoking Albanian protests and the formation of the KLA in 1995. The KLA targeted police, army and civil officials, taking control of about one-quarter of the province.
Belgrade hesitated for several years before taking firm action against the KLA. After the rebels failed to seize the town of Orahovac in the summer of 1998, it launched an offensive, regaining control of almost all the province. At this point Washington became actively involved. President Clinton had sent a special envoy, Robert Gelbard, to the region in February 1998. At that time he stated that the KLA was, "without any questions, a terrorist group" in Washington's view. Indeed the State Department had concluded it was a heroin-financed terrorist group with some ties to al-Qaeda (Washington Times, May 4, 1999). A few months later, however, Gelbard was meeting with KLA leaders; the organization was soon removed from Washington's terror list. Later that year another U.S. special envoy to Kosovo, Richard Holbrooke, was photographed with KLA leaders, further encouraging their violent secessionist movement.
Yugoslavia ("land of the southern Slavs) had been a peaceful, nonaligned nation with cordial relations with both the Soviet bloc and the West for decades. But from 1991 the federation began to fall apart. First Slovenia declared independence. The U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, was unhappy with the move thinking (correctly) that it would lead to regional destabilization. But reunited, powerful Germany encouraged the breakup. Croatia and Macedonia followed suite, then Bosnia-Herzegovina descended into civil war. Washington recognized Bosnian independence in 1994. Accusing Serbian forces of atrocities, NATO bombed Bosnia in August and September 1995, paving the way for the Dayton Agreement in November and the deployment of NATO forces in Bosnia. Now Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, accustomed to making demands and being obeyed, demanded that Milosevic cease his offensive against the KLA. He did.
Following a ceasefire in October 1998, by agreement with Milosevic, peace monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) arrived in Kosovo. But the ceasefire broke down with a few months. Washington then demanded that Milosevic withdraw his troops from Kosovo. That is to say, it demanded that a sovereign state remove its troops from one of its provinces where a group the U.S. had earlier termed "terrorist" was waging a war for secession.
Washington summoned the "Contact Group" (including the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia) as well as Belgrade and Albanian secessionist representatives to Rambouillet, France in February and March 1999. The "Rambouillet Accords" were signed by all parties---except forYugoslavia and Russia. The agreement specified that Kosovo would obtain autonomy but remain part of Serbia. That was the one concession to Belgrade, and an initial cause for the KLA representatives to balk. But the separatists were won over, no doubt realizing that they would gain independence in time. (They just declared that, with Washington's approval, February 17.)
The Accords dictated that Belgrade accept a NATO force with liberty to act throughout the territory of Yugoslavia. It was a demand no sovereign state could accept. A top French official accused the U.S. of behaving like a hyper-puissance ("hyper-power"); NATO itself was divided and disturbed by U.S. demands. (The Spaniards, Italians and Greeks in particular were troubled about the NATO bombing of Belgrade.) Washington was calling for an organization founded to defend western Europe from Soviet attack to intervene in a friendly, non-threatening country, to force it to accept further dismemberment. From March 24 to June 10 NATO air forces, including the German Luftwaffe deployed for the first time since 1945, bombed Yugoslavia.
I didn't think at the time that Clinton's actions resulted from some geo-strategic designs on Kosovo. (There's not that much there, other than lots of coal.) But had he done nothing, and the violence continued, he would have been criticized for failing to use American power ("to prevent genocide") and left the door open for other interested parties (Germany) to take unilateral action. He had to rally NATO to send a message to the world that the U.S. remained the leader and policeman of the western camp. Ongoing chaos in the Balkans would have suggested that the U.S. was sloughing off the responsibilities of power. Strong action would signal allies, as well as the Russian Federation, that the U.S. facing an increasingly united and competitive Europe could continue to deploy NATO in pursuit of its own aims. (Similarly the use of NATO in Afghanistan after 9-11 has served to bind the alliance around a U.S.-dictated agenda, while the public in member states increasingly questions the value and logic of the mission.)
We associate the Bush administration and its neocons with the systematic dissemination of disinformation designed to justify war. But the Clinton administration used the same tactic as it prepared to bomb Yugoslavia. There were horror stories about "ethnic cleansing," and Yugoslav government forces' attacks on innocent Bosnians. Defense Secretary William Cohen, echoed Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), and former Sen. Bob Dole accused Belgrade of "genocide." "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing... They may have been murdered," warned Cohen. "There are indications genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," declared State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin.
But German reports told a different story. Four German court opinions from October 1998 to March 1999; two Foreign Office intelligence reports in January 1999; and one report from the Foreign Office to the Administrative Court in Mainz in March 1999 all challenged such accusations. According to the Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Munster (March 11, 1999), "Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed to regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
After the glorious victory of NATO over Yugoslavia, it was discovered that as few as 2,108 people were actually killed in the province during 1998-9 before the bombardment began. Quite likely more Serbs have been killed by Albanians than vice versa since 1998. The "genocide" charge (reminiscent of the rhetoric of those urging U.S. intervention in Darfur) had been exaggerated, if not contrived; the depiction of Milosevic as a "new Hitler" (reminiscent of the hysterical characterization of Saddam Hussein) equally overblown.
Washington got what it wanted, almost. It destroyed the Yugoslav state, hauled
Milosevic to a kangaroo court at the Hague (where after enhancing his reputation among Serbs by a spirited defense, he died of a heart attack), and planted NATO in what had once been proudly nonaligned European territory. But in the closing days of NATO's war on Yugoslavia in June 1999 Russia dispatched troops based in Bosnia to Kosovo's capital of Pristina, where they took control of the airport. It was a clear statement that Russia would not concede total control of the former Yugoslavia to NATO. It shocked Madeleine Albright, and disturbed Gen. Wesley Clark enough to order an airborne assault on the Russians. But the British general heading the NATO force at the time, Michael Jackson, told Clark: "Sir, I'm not starting World War Three for you."
Thus the Russians were included in the post-bombing "peace-keeping" mission in Kosovo and have since been regarded as the protectors of the remaining Serbs in the Serbian province. Their opposition to Kosovo's independence might be perceived as a slight irritation in Washington among those eager to establish a new client-state and drag it into NATO. But this move comes on the heels of U.S. meddling in Georgia, Belarus, and the Ukraine, the relentless eastward expansion of NATO, and moves to locate missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russian government is in effect saying: "Look, you intervene at will in Latin America, forming and toppling governments as you will, arguing it's necessary for your 'national security.' We who have been invaded many times from the west have legitimate reasons to support our friends in the Balkans, including the Serbs whom you've maligned and mistreated disgracefully. Do you really think you can just wrench away a province from a Slavic country friendly to us, through brutal military force, and expect us to take it lying down?"
I have the feeling that Washington blew it here---and that there will be some blowback. It is all very nice for a people comprising 90% of the inhabitants of a land to form their own state after decades of aspiration and (under Milosevic) undeniable national oppression. But look at this video on youtube: Watch the young Albanian try to rip down the cross from a burning Serbian church in March 2004. Look at this one of the gutted interior of the Manastir Devic monastery, built up in 1434 and torched in March 2004. Or this, showing an ancient Serbian cemetery desecrated in April 2005.
One can find equally ugly images of Serbian actions no doubt, and both Kosovar-Albanian nationalism and Serbian nationalism retain the potential for further destruction. But the leadership in Pristina hoisted into power by U.S. action looks especially unsavory and apt to produce disaster.
The leadership of the newly declared nation of Kosovo is rooted in the KLA; Hashim Thaçi, the new Prime Minister, was a member of its inner circle. The Government of Serbia alleges that he met with Osama bin Laden in Tirana in 1995.
He has been accused of connections with the Albanian, Czech and Macedonian mafia, and of membership in the Drenica Group, controlling 10-15% per cent of criminal activities in Kosovo including arms smuggling, car theft, prostitution and illegal trafficking in oil and cigarettes.
Yugoslav courts in 1997 and 1998 found him guilty of terrorism charges, including attacks on Serbian policemen, but he was a Kosovar Albanian representative at the Rambouillet talks. With the disbanding of the KLA in 1999 he became head of largest party in Kosovo, the Democratic Party. Meanwhile former KLA members have become involved in ethnic Albanian insurgencies elsewhere in the Presevo Valley in Serbia and in Macedonia. (The Albanian population in Macedonia is now about 25% of the total.) An "Albanian National Liberation Army of Macedonia" waged war on Macedonian security forces until the Ohrid Agreement was signed in August 2001, meeting some of its demands. Another armed group headed by Avdil Jakupi ("Commander Cakalla") was formed in 2003, while another, led by Agim Krasniqi, held a village outside Skopje for six months in 2004.
Those dreaming of a "Greater Albania" (optimally to include Albania, Kosovo and other parts of Serbia, and parts of Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece), taking heart at Kosovar independence, may redouble their efforts throughout the region. There are potential religious dimensions to Albanian nationalism; while the Albanians (like Bosnians) are overwhelmingly secular Muslims, the product of generations of atheistic education in Albania and Yugoslavia, they are indeed Muslims. So there are now, aside from Turkey, two Muslim European countries: Albania and Kosovo. (Bosnia-Hezegovina's Muslim population is under 50%). The Saudis, Kuwaitis and others have been pouring money into mosque construction in Albania and Kosovo, encouraging fundamentalist forms of Islam. The Saudi Joint Committee for the Relief of Kosovo has repaired 190 damaged mosques in Kosovo and the Saudis have built mosques there. (One, for a time, was actually named the Bin Laden Mosque.)
Whether intended to do so or not, these efforts to spread Salafi-style Islam dovetail with al-Qaeda's efforts to exploit instability in the Balkans. The organization was active in Bosnia during the war in the early '90s, and surely endorses the idea of "Greater Albania" and a jihad to realize it. What better vehicle for the propagation of its ideology than an ethnic-based web of insurgencies coordinated from Kosovo?
That's one blowback possibility traceable to NATO's 1999 war and events in Kosovo in its aftermath. Another is the emboldening of the Albanian regime in Tirana. Serbia has indicated that it will now beef up security in the Serb-majority areas of what it continues to consider its province. Some might see this as an effort to divide Kosovo. Albanian Foreign Minister Besnik Mustafaj declared in March 2006, "If Kosovo is divided, we can no longer guarantee its borders with Albania, or the border of the Albanian part of Macedonia." In other words, Albania might take military action to do some regional re-dividing itself, backed up, perhaps, by Turkey.
Meanwhile Vladimir Putin, shrewd and careful, considers how to use this blow to pan-Slavic pride to revive Russian influence in the Balkans. His Foreign Ministry declares that Kosovo's claim to independence threatens "the foundations of a world order that has developed over decades." That is true of course. Even before Bush and his neocons came to power Washington was playing with those foundations, gleefully undermining them, flushed with post-Cold War triumphantalism. Time and again there has been blowback.
NATO, as military historian Andrew J. Bacevich has recently written, is in its twilight. Secretary of Defense Gates complains about European lack of zeal in pursuing the enemy in Afghanistan. This of course reflects European public opinion that now sees Afghanistan as a fruitless counterinsurgency mission imposed on Europe by Washington on the heels of other questionable missions resulting from U.S. policy.
The U.S., deeply bogged down in Southwest Asia, has left the Europeans holding the ball in Bosnia; Germany contributes 800 of the 3000 European Union Force (EUFOR) peacekeeping troops. The 16,000-strong KFOR in Kosovo includes 2,567 Italians, 2,374 Germans and 2,269 French troops (but only 1,456 U.S.) Having invaded Iraq, the U.S. urged NATO countries to send troops, and Britain continues to oblige with some 4,500. Others with sizeable commitments (such as Spain, with 1,300; the Netherlands, with 1345; and Italy, with 3,300), have all withdrawn from Iraq.
In Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) consists of 28,600 troops trying to stabilize a country the size of Texas with a population of 30 million. The U.S. supplies 15,000 troops; the UK, 7,800; Germany, 3,210; Italy, 2,880; Canada, 2,500; the Netherlands, 1,650; France, 1,515; Poland, 1,100. ISAF military fatalities have increased every year since 2003 (57) to 2007 (232) as the Taliban has revived.
Public opinion in Canada and Germany has turned decisively against the Afghan deployments. Last year a poll conducted by the German magazine Focus found that 63% of Germans believe the current deployment in northern Afghanistan does not serve German interests and 84 percent of Germans oppose sending combat troops to the south as requested by the U.S. In a Canadian poll last May, 55% of respondents favored a pullout from Afghanistan, while 67% agreed that the presence of Canadian troops there makes Canada more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
U.S. allies weary of efforts to drag them into U.S. wars. U.S. imperialism confronts something of a crisis as its partners rethink where their real interests lie. The GDP of the EU now exceeds the U.S. figure. The euro is much stronger than the dollar. People everywhere hate the U.S. government, which they associate with war-promoting lies and general savagery. Bush is out of political capital, domestically and internationally, as Kosovo announces its independence, made possible by U.S. lies and bloody intervention, "threatening," as the Russians put it, "the foundations of a world order."
Everything dies eventually. Hitler's "New Order in Europe," Japan's "New Order in East Asia," George H. W. Bush's "New World Order" proclaimed as he launched the first Gulf War in 1990. The present world order is profoundly unfair and deserves to be threatened, by the right people, with a better alternative. But the assault on Yugoslavia in 1999 brought nothing positive; rather, more intolerance and suffering, more ethnic cleansing. A new regime emerges, applauded by its American sponsors and most of the EU (but rejected by Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Bulgaria). It is wrapped in smoke, in a legacy of smoldering churches. Smells like the cremation of a world order.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Kosovo secession linked to NATO expansion
By Heather Cottin, International Action Center, Jan 30, 2008
The U.S. calls it "Operation Status." The United Nations calls it "The Ahtisaari Plan." It is the U.S./NATO "independence" project for Kosovo, which has been a province of Serbia since the 14th century. With NATO's 17,000 troops backing it, Kosovo's government is set to secede on Feb. 6, declaring itself a separate country.
Kosovo’s president is Hashim Thaci, who was the leader of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK for its Albanian initials), which U.S. diplomat Robert Gelbard called “terrorist” in 1998, just before the U.S. started funding the UCK to use it against Yugoslavia. Thaci, whose UCK code name was “Snake,” and his UCK cronies are well funded by drug running and the European sex trade.
In a series of wars and coercive diplomacy in the 1990s, the U.S. government and the European NATO powers backed the secession of four republics of Yugoslavia, a sovereign socialist state. It took another 78 days of NATO bombing in 1999, aggression that President Bill Clinton described as “humanitarian,” and a coup financed by the National Endowment for Democracy and other imperialist agencies in 2000, to install a pro-western regime in Serbia that was open to Western intervention and privatization.
State resources were privatized. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was almost totally dismantled politically and economically.
But the U.S. then moved to break up the rest of Yugoslavia. Through lies and raw military power, the U.S. supported a pro-imperialist group of gangsters—the UCK—in the war against Yugoslavia, and this gang then took over Kosovo.
Then the U.S. supported UCK moves to detach Kosovo, where the U.S. had built the massive military base “Bondsteel.” Washington and its NATO allies allowed this criminal element to drive over 200,000 Serbs, Roma people and other minorities out of Kosovo, and terrorize the impoverished Albanian population.
Wealth and poverty in Kosovo
Kosovo is sitting on fifteen billion tons of brown coal. Its mines contain 20 billion tons of lead and zinc and fifteen billion tons of nickel. EU and U.S. corporations are going to buy Kosovo as soon as its status is settled as “independent.” (Inter Press Service Italy, Jan. 15)
But in Stari Trg, the most profitable state-owned mine in former Yugoslavia, inactive since 1999, rich with lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver, unemployment is above 95 percent. With unemployment high, wages will be low, and profits fabulous.
In Kosovo half of the population doesn’t get enough to eat. Unemployment hovers near 60 percent (IHT Jan. 28). Kosovo Albanians in the U.S. or Europe send home 450 million euros in remittances each year, half of Kosovo’s entire budget. “I don’t know how we would survive without this,” said economist Ibrahim Rexhepi. (Deutche Welle, Jan 27).
An Albanian living in New York told Workers World recently that he knows many families in Kosovo and Albania that have had to sell their daughters to get the remittances from their work in the sex trade. “Unemployment is so high that most people are poor, and many bought into the Ponzi scheme in 1997 that robbed most Albanians at home and in Kosovo of their entire life savings.”
The U.N. Charter forbids the forced breakup of nations, and U.N. Security Council resolution 1244 guarantees the territorial integrity of Serbia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Kosovo independence “is fraught with serious damage for the whole system of international law, negative consequences for the Balkans and the whole world and for the stability in other regions.” (Interfax, Jan. 25)
The U.S. and its NATO partners are ignoring legalities. But they have to pay attention to the possibility of Serbia making energy deals with Russia. The two countries agreed to build a large gas storage facility in Serbia, while Russia’s state-controlled oil concern Gazprom signed an agreement granting Gazprom control of 51 percent of Serbia’s state-owned oil-refining monopoly NIS. The Russians have commenced work on the South Stream gas pipeline through Serbia to supply southern Europe.
The U.S. and the EU have been working feverishly on the rival Nabucco pipeline to cut European dependence on Russian energy (Reuters, Jan 25).
Kosovo and NATO growth
The Kosovo crisis has prompted leading Serbian presidential candidate Tomislav Nikolic, of the Radical Party, to suggest the creation of a Russian military base in his country. (Itar-Tass, Jan. 25).
Why is Kosovo so crucial to NATO expansion?
The creation of Kosovo as an “independent” state would be a precedent for other schemes U.S. imperialism could take advantage of to break away areas of other sovereign nations, including China and Russia, applying the old “divide and conquer” strategy perfected by British imperialism.
The Russian and Chinese governments both have spoken out against the Ahtisaari plan.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergy Lavrov said NATO’s buildup in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet republics are “a process of territorial encroachment similar to what Napoleon and Hitler failed to achieve by cruder means.” (Voice of Russia, June 28, 2007)
The planned NATO/U.S. plot to make Kosovo independent is a continuation of NATO military expansionism to ensure U.S. economic control in Eastern Europe. NATO is the military arm of international capital on five continents. Popular opposition is rising in Serbia, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Ukraine, Afghanistan and Africa.
But anywhere NATO tries to go, resistance grows. The secession of Kosovo may still blowback to haunt the imperialists.
The U.S. calls it "Operation Status." The United Nations calls it "The Ahtisaari Plan." It is the U.S./NATO "independence" project for Kosovo, which has been a province of Serbia since the 14th century. With NATO's 17,000 troops backing it, Kosovo's government is set to secede on Feb. 6, declaring itself a separate country.
Kosovo’s president is Hashim Thaci, who was the leader of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK for its Albanian initials), which U.S. diplomat Robert Gelbard called “terrorist” in 1998, just before the U.S. started funding the UCK to use it against Yugoslavia. Thaci, whose UCK code name was “Snake,” and his UCK cronies are well funded by drug running and the European sex trade.
In a series of wars and coercive diplomacy in the 1990s, the U.S. government and the European NATO powers backed the secession of four republics of Yugoslavia, a sovereign socialist state. It took another 78 days of NATO bombing in 1999, aggression that President Bill Clinton described as “humanitarian,” and a coup financed by the National Endowment for Democracy and other imperialist agencies in 2000, to install a pro-western regime in Serbia that was open to Western intervention and privatization.
State resources were privatized. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was almost totally dismantled politically and economically.
But the U.S. then moved to break up the rest of Yugoslavia. Through lies and raw military power, the U.S. supported a pro-imperialist group of gangsters—the UCK—in the war against Yugoslavia, and this gang then took over Kosovo.
Then the U.S. supported UCK moves to detach Kosovo, where the U.S. had built the massive military base “Bondsteel.” Washington and its NATO allies allowed this criminal element to drive over 200,000 Serbs, Roma people and other minorities out of Kosovo, and terrorize the impoverished Albanian population.
Wealth and poverty in Kosovo
Kosovo is sitting on fifteen billion tons of brown coal. Its mines contain 20 billion tons of lead and zinc and fifteen billion tons of nickel. EU and U.S. corporations are going to buy Kosovo as soon as its status is settled as “independent.” (Inter Press Service Italy, Jan. 15)
But in Stari Trg, the most profitable state-owned mine in former Yugoslavia, inactive since 1999, rich with lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver, unemployment is above 95 percent. With unemployment high, wages will be low, and profits fabulous.
In Kosovo half of the population doesn’t get enough to eat. Unemployment hovers near 60 percent (IHT Jan. 28). Kosovo Albanians in the U.S. or Europe send home 450 million euros in remittances each year, half of Kosovo’s entire budget. “I don’t know how we would survive without this,” said economist Ibrahim Rexhepi. (Deutche Welle, Jan 27).
An Albanian living in New York told Workers World recently that he knows many families in Kosovo and Albania that have had to sell their daughters to get the remittances from their work in the sex trade. “Unemployment is so high that most people are poor, and many bought into the Ponzi scheme in 1997 that robbed most Albanians at home and in Kosovo of their entire life savings.”
The U.N. Charter forbids the forced breakup of nations, and U.N. Security Council resolution 1244 guarantees the territorial integrity of Serbia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Kosovo independence “is fraught with serious damage for the whole system of international law, negative consequences for the Balkans and the whole world and for the stability in other regions.” (Interfax, Jan. 25)
The U.S. and its NATO partners are ignoring legalities. But they have to pay attention to the possibility of Serbia making energy deals with Russia. The two countries agreed to build a large gas storage facility in Serbia, while Russia’s state-controlled oil concern Gazprom signed an agreement granting Gazprom control of 51 percent of Serbia’s state-owned oil-refining monopoly NIS. The Russians have commenced work on the South Stream gas pipeline through Serbia to supply southern Europe.
The U.S. and the EU have been working feverishly on the rival Nabucco pipeline to cut European dependence on Russian energy (Reuters, Jan 25).
Kosovo and NATO growth
The Kosovo crisis has prompted leading Serbian presidential candidate Tomislav Nikolic, of the Radical Party, to suggest the creation of a Russian military base in his country. (Itar-Tass, Jan. 25).
Why is Kosovo so crucial to NATO expansion?
The creation of Kosovo as an “independent” state would be a precedent for other schemes U.S. imperialism could take advantage of to break away areas of other sovereign nations, including China and Russia, applying the old “divide and conquer” strategy perfected by British imperialism.
The Russian and Chinese governments both have spoken out against the Ahtisaari plan.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergy Lavrov said NATO’s buildup in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet republics are “a process of territorial encroachment similar to what Napoleon and Hitler failed to achieve by cruder means.” (Voice of Russia, June 28, 2007)
The planned NATO/U.S. plot to make Kosovo independent is a continuation of NATO military expansionism to ensure U.S. economic control in Eastern Europe. NATO is the military arm of international capital on five continents. Popular opposition is rising in Serbia, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Ukraine, Afghanistan and Africa.
But anywhere NATO tries to go, resistance grows. The secession of Kosovo may still blowback to haunt the imperialists.
UN Security Council meets on Kosovo
By JOHN HEILPRIN, AP, Feb. 17, 2008
UNITED NATIONS - Russia tried to block Kosovo's independence during a closed-door emergency session of the U.N. Security Council on Sunday, saying it is deeply concerned about the safety of Serbs living in the territory.
The discussion among members of the 15-member council continued to expose their divisions on the future of Kosovo. Russia backs its close ally Serbia, while the United States, Britain, France and other European Union members support Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians.
The council met at the request of Serbia and Russia, which argue that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia made earlier Sunday violates a 1999 council resolution that authorizes the U.N. to administer the territory.
The session got off to a rocky start; shortly after it began, the session had to be suspended for a couple hours because of a lack of interpreters.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Serbia's president told him that Kosovo's declaration carries no legal weight, while Kosovo's prime minister assured him he was committed to "equal opportunities and no discrimination" against anyone in Kosovo.
Ban urged all sides to "refrain from any actions or statements that could endanger peace, incite violence or jeopardize security in Kosovo and the region."
The Security Council resolution on Kosovo remains in force and the U.N. "will continue to implement its mandate in the light of the evolving circumstances," Ban said.
Before the session, Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow was "highly concerned" about Sunday's decision by Kosovo's parliament in Pristina "to declare unilateral independence of Kosovo."
The past Security Council resolution means the U.N. still runs Kosovo and "it is not obvious at all what could possibly be the legal basis for even considering" Kosovo's declaration of independence," Churkin said.
He specifically addressed the estimated 120,000 Serbs living in enclaves in Kosovo.
"Our concern is for the safety of the Serbs and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo," Churkin told reporters. "We'll strongly warn against any attempts at repressive measures, should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence."
U.S. and other Western countries said there was little danger to the Serbs in Kosovo and that the 1999 resolution does not preclude Kosovo's independence.
"We've knocked it down over and over again. This is an unprecedented situation, it creates no precedent," Alejandro Wolff, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., told reporters before the session
Wolff said the United States is not "particularly concerned or sees no particular danger to be worried about" with regards to the safety of Serbs in Kosovo.
"We're pleased by the commitments made to respect for religious and ethnic communities in Kosovo," he told reporters. "We're very much pleased that the declaration also reflects a position of the United States that's longstanding."
Kosovo's 2 million population is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, mainly secular Muslims, who do not want to be part of Serbia, a predominantly Christian Orthodox nation.
Kosovo has been under U.N. and NATO administration since a NATO-led air war halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999.
In April 2007, U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari recommended that Kosovo be granted internationally supervised independence — a proposal strongly supported by the province's ethnic Albanians, the U.S. and most of the European Union, but vehemently opposed by Serbia and Russia, a traditional Serb ally.
Russia blocked the Ahtisaari plan. An additional period of negotiations failed to bridge the differences between the Serbs, who have offered wide autonomy, and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders, who insist on independence.
Kosovo hopes for international recognition that could come on Monday when European Union ministers meet in Brussels, Belgium. Russia, which has veto power on the council, insists Kosovo is a Security Council issue — not an EU issue — and argues that Kosovo's move sets a dangerous precedent for separatist groups globally.
On Tuesday afternoon, a more formal and open debate is planned by the Security Council at Serbia's request. Churkin said Russia insisted it should be an open meeting, and the president of Serbia will attend.
However, diplomats said it was unlikely the council would be able to reach agreement on a resolution or statement.
UNITED NATIONS - Russia tried to block Kosovo's independence during a closed-door emergency session of the U.N. Security Council on Sunday, saying it is deeply concerned about the safety of Serbs living in the territory.
The discussion among members of the 15-member council continued to expose their divisions on the future of Kosovo. Russia backs its close ally Serbia, while the United States, Britain, France and other European Union members support Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians.
The council met at the request of Serbia and Russia, which argue that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia made earlier Sunday violates a 1999 council resolution that authorizes the U.N. to administer the territory.
The session got off to a rocky start; shortly after it began, the session had to be suspended for a couple hours because of a lack of interpreters.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Serbia's president told him that Kosovo's declaration carries no legal weight, while Kosovo's prime minister assured him he was committed to "equal opportunities and no discrimination" against anyone in Kosovo.
Ban urged all sides to "refrain from any actions or statements that could endanger peace, incite violence or jeopardize security in Kosovo and the region."
The Security Council resolution on Kosovo remains in force and the U.N. "will continue to implement its mandate in the light of the evolving circumstances," Ban said.
Before the session, Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow was "highly concerned" about Sunday's decision by Kosovo's parliament in Pristina "to declare unilateral independence of Kosovo."
The past Security Council resolution means the U.N. still runs Kosovo and "it is not obvious at all what could possibly be the legal basis for even considering" Kosovo's declaration of independence," Churkin said.
He specifically addressed the estimated 120,000 Serbs living in enclaves in Kosovo.
"Our concern is for the safety of the Serbs and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo," Churkin told reporters. "We'll strongly warn against any attempts at repressive measures, should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence."
U.S. and other Western countries said there was little danger to the Serbs in Kosovo and that the 1999 resolution does not preclude Kosovo's independence.
"We've knocked it down over and over again. This is an unprecedented situation, it creates no precedent," Alejandro Wolff, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., told reporters before the session
Wolff said the United States is not "particularly concerned or sees no particular danger to be worried about" with regards to the safety of Serbs in Kosovo.
"We're pleased by the commitments made to respect for religious and ethnic communities in Kosovo," he told reporters. "We're very much pleased that the declaration also reflects a position of the United States that's longstanding."
Kosovo's 2 million population is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, mainly secular Muslims, who do not want to be part of Serbia, a predominantly Christian Orthodox nation.
Kosovo has been under U.N. and NATO administration since a NATO-led air war halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999.
In April 2007, U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari recommended that Kosovo be granted internationally supervised independence — a proposal strongly supported by the province's ethnic Albanians, the U.S. and most of the European Union, but vehemently opposed by Serbia and Russia, a traditional Serb ally.
Russia blocked the Ahtisaari plan. An additional period of negotiations failed to bridge the differences between the Serbs, who have offered wide autonomy, and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders, who insist on independence.
Kosovo hopes for international recognition that could come on Monday when European Union ministers meet in Brussels, Belgium. Russia, which has veto power on the council, insists Kosovo is a Security Council issue — not an EU issue — and argues that Kosovo's move sets a dangerous precedent for separatist groups globally.
On Tuesday afternoon, a more formal and open debate is planned by the Security Council at Serbia's request. Churkin said Russia insisted it should be an open meeting, and the president of Serbia will attend.
However, diplomats said it was unlikely the council would be able to reach agreement on a resolution or statement.
The European Union acts like a colonial power in the Balkans
Workers World, Feb. 15, 2008
Following is an interview by Yugoslavia scholar Cathrin Schütz with Branko Kitanovic, general secretary of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ), and published in the German daily newspaper Junge Welt on Feb. 12. The Belgrade-based NKPJ was established in 1990 and has its departments in all former republics of Yugoslavia. Schütz and Kitanovic discuss mainly Yugoslavia and European imperialism, but U.S. imperialism played a similar role as its European allies, and of course led the military assault on Yugoslavia. —WW editors
Cathrin Schütz: The West’s favorite candidate, Serbia’s President Boris Tadic, has just been confirmed in office. What position did the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ) take during the election campaign?
Branko Kitanovic: We supported Tadic’s opponent Tomislav Nikolic from the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), who lost by a small margin. He represents an anti-imperialist position, which refuses to accept either the separation of Kosovo or the membership of Serbia in NATO and the European Union, even though his position towards the EU is ambivalent. We are a Marxist-Leninist party and categorically against NATO, not only because it bombed our country in 1999, but because it is an aggressive alliance that supports the policy of the leading western states by military means. We are against Serbia’s entry into EU. The European Union is a creature of big western capital, especially German, English and French. The EU acts like a colonial power towards Eastern Europe and the Balkans. An EU membership would be a harder imprisonment than the ones we suffered under Ottoman or Austrian rule.
CS: So you support the SRS because of its foreign policy?
BK: Right. It is a bourgeois, patriotic party and we do have different ideas on how to achieve the national liberation of our country. The SRS stands for “honest capitalism,” for “fair privatization.” That’s nonsense. Any privatization of public property is theft. Nevertheless, the SRS, which is presently the strongest patriotic party in Serbia, struggles against the government, which carries out the interests of the West. Of course, we as communists are patriots, too.
CS: The term “patriotism” is upsetting to progressive movements in Germany.
BK: Patriotism is a characteristic of anti-imperialism. As Germany itself is an imperialist country, you probably understand the term “patriotism” as meaning support of imperialism. For us, it has a defensive character. We fight for our sovereignty and national integrity, and as a party, for the reestablishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The FRY had deficiencies, for example, Serbia did not enjoy the same rights as the other republics. However: even the worst socialism is better than the best capitalism.
CS: During the 1999 war, the majority of the western left did not oppose their governments’ anti-Serbian agitation and shared the position that then-President Slobodan Milosevic was responsible for the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. What was your relationship to the Milosevic government?
BK: Since its establishment in 1990, the NKPJ supported the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), whose chairperson was Milosevic. The international circumstances at the beginning of the 1990s forced Milosevic to adapt to some sort of social democratic line and to carry out some limited privatizations. I think that he thought that this was the way Serbia could exist in peace. It turned out to be an error. The West, Germany and the UK in particular, wanted to destroy first Yugoslavia and than Serbia. In the end, Milosevic was harmed by not having followed a stricter ideological line. He was surrounded by the wrong people, many of whom turned out to be traitors. We did not support the bourgeois orientation of his party, but we completely stood behind the anti-imperialist features of his foreign policy.
During the years when Milosevic was president, we were able to participate in all elections. Since the pro-western “democrats” had come to power by the coup in October 2000, they made unconstitutionally high demands for the registration for the elections that we still have been unable to fulfill even once.
CS: How will you remember Slobodan Milosevic?
BK: In some respect, he cooperated with the West as president of Serbia and Yugoslavia. After he had been extradited and stood before the Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague, he was incredible. What he did not fully understand before—he realized much better then. In The Hague he made sure the truth was heard. He exposed the methods which the western states used to destroy Yugoslavia and the rest of the world. “Slobo” will go down in history as a symbol of the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle.
Translation by Zoran Sergievski
Following is an interview by Yugoslavia scholar Cathrin Schütz with Branko Kitanovic, general secretary of the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ), and published in the German daily newspaper Junge Welt on Feb. 12. The Belgrade-based NKPJ was established in 1990 and has its departments in all former republics of Yugoslavia. Schütz and Kitanovic discuss mainly Yugoslavia and European imperialism, but U.S. imperialism played a similar role as its European allies, and of course led the military assault on Yugoslavia. —WW editors
Cathrin Schütz: The West’s favorite candidate, Serbia’s President Boris Tadic, has just been confirmed in office. What position did the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ) take during the election campaign?
Branko Kitanovic: We supported Tadic’s opponent Tomislav Nikolic from the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), who lost by a small margin. He represents an anti-imperialist position, which refuses to accept either the separation of Kosovo or the membership of Serbia in NATO and the European Union, even though his position towards the EU is ambivalent. We are a Marxist-Leninist party and categorically against NATO, not only because it bombed our country in 1999, but because it is an aggressive alliance that supports the policy of the leading western states by military means. We are against Serbia’s entry into EU. The European Union is a creature of big western capital, especially German, English and French. The EU acts like a colonial power towards Eastern Europe and the Balkans. An EU membership would be a harder imprisonment than the ones we suffered under Ottoman or Austrian rule.
CS: So you support the SRS because of its foreign policy?
BK: Right. It is a bourgeois, patriotic party and we do have different ideas on how to achieve the national liberation of our country. The SRS stands for “honest capitalism,” for “fair privatization.” That’s nonsense. Any privatization of public property is theft. Nevertheless, the SRS, which is presently the strongest patriotic party in Serbia, struggles against the government, which carries out the interests of the West. Of course, we as communists are patriots, too.
CS: The term “patriotism” is upsetting to progressive movements in Germany.
BK: Patriotism is a characteristic of anti-imperialism. As Germany itself is an imperialist country, you probably understand the term “patriotism” as meaning support of imperialism. For us, it has a defensive character. We fight for our sovereignty and national integrity, and as a party, for the reestablishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The FRY had deficiencies, for example, Serbia did not enjoy the same rights as the other republics. However: even the worst socialism is better than the best capitalism.
CS: During the 1999 war, the majority of the western left did not oppose their governments’ anti-Serbian agitation and shared the position that then-President Slobodan Milosevic was responsible for the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. What was your relationship to the Milosevic government?
BK: Since its establishment in 1990, the NKPJ supported the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), whose chairperson was Milosevic. The international circumstances at the beginning of the 1990s forced Milosevic to adapt to some sort of social democratic line and to carry out some limited privatizations. I think that he thought that this was the way Serbia could exist in peace. It turned out to be an error. The West, Germany and the UK in particular, wanted to destroy first Yugoslavia and than Serbia. In the end, Milosevic was harmed by not having followed a stricter ideological line. He was surrounded by the wrong people, many of whom turned out to be traitors. We did not support the bourgeois orientation of his party, but we completely stood behind the anti-imperialist features of his foreign policy.
During the years when Milosevic was president, we were able to participate in all elections. Since the pro-western “democrats” had come to power by the coup in October 2000, they made unconstitutionally high demands for the registration for the elections that we still have been unable to fulfill even once.
CS: How will you remember Slobodan Milosevic?
BK: In some respect, he cooperated with the West as president of Serbia and Yugoslavia. After he had been extradited and stood before the Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague, he was incredible. What he did not fully understand before—he realized much better then. In The Hague he made sure the truth was heard. He exposed the methods which the western states used to destroy Yugoslavia and the rest of the world. “Slobo” will go down in history as a symbol of the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle.
Translation by Zoran Sergievski
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