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Wrong Choice in Kosovo
The Japan Times ^ | March 1, 2011 | Gregory Clark

Posted on 03/01/2011 5:48:47 PM PST by Ravnagora

A recent Council of Europe report says that during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict, militia leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) tortured and killed hundreds of Serbs and political rivals in secret Albanian hideouts, removed their organs for sale and dumped their bodies in local rivers.

The report added that these people were also heavily involved in drug, sex and illegal immigrant trafficking across Europe. Yet while all this was going on, the NATO powers had decreed that Serbia should be bombed into accepting the KLA as Kosovo's legitimate rulers — rather than the more popular Democratic League of Kosovo headed by the nationalist intellectual Ibrahim Rugova advocating nonviolent independence.

Recent years have not been kind to Western policymakers. They have shown an almost unerring ability to choose the wrong people for the wrong policies. Think back to the procession of incompetents chosen to rescue Indochina from the communist enemy. Does anyone even remember their names today? Yet at the time they were supposed to be nation-savers.

Before that the United Kingdom, United States and Australia had banded to try to prevent Lee Kuan Yew from being elected prime minister of Singapore. He was seen as a crypto-communist. They preferred the incompetent pro-British Lim Yew Hock.

Then we saw the West, and Japan, throw their support behind the hapless Afghan President Hamid Karzai as the strongman to defeat the evil Taliban whom the U.S. had once embraced as the good Taliban.

If not for the end of the Cold War, we almost certainly would be seeing the U.S. and U.K. today once again backing Middle East dictators against their protesting masses.

And now we discover that the people chosen to take over Kosovo from Serbia were not quite the heroes they were made out to be at the time.

Western involvement in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia had more than its share of such mistakes. The Serbian forces resisting the breakup were accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing. But anyone aware of that nation's troubled history should have realized that the Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia would not accept domination by the successors to their former pro-Nazi oppressors.

Retaliations and violent resistance, including even the shocking Srebrenica killings, were inevitable. Besides, the final result was that close to a million Serbs had to seek refuge in Serbia itself. So who had been cleansing whom?

Kosovo too had seen wartime ethnic cleansing against Serbs by pro-Nazi elements. The cleansing continued during the 1990s as U.S.-trained KLA guerrillas targeted Serbs isolated in rural districts and towns (by then Belgrade's efforts to give the province autonomy had failed on the rock of ethnic Albanian noncooperation).

When Belgrade finally sent in troops to resist the guerrillas, it was accused of war crimes even though the illegitimate force used was much less than what we see when most other Western nations, the U.S. particularly, intervene against guerrillas they do not like.

When many ethnic Albanians fled temporarily after the NATO bombing intervention, that too was supposed to be Serbian ethnic cleansing.

Even after gaining power, the KLA violence and cleansings continued. Their victims included the Jewish and Roma minorities and ethnic Albanians who had cooperated with Serbia's attempt to offer autonomy. The trafficking of drugs, women and body organs continued, right under the noses of the U.N. forces sent in to maintain order. Rugova supporters were eliminated.

The U.S., U.K. and Germany bear most of the blame for this horror; Germany especially should have realized the passions that would be unleashed by any sudden breakup of the former Yugoslavia. But they seemed more interested in the geopolitical gains.

In exchange for helping the KLA, the U.S. got to add the strategic Bondsteel military base in Kosovo to its global base network. And the feisty U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright got to play world leader at the 1999 Rambouillet conference by decreeing that the dashing, handsome KLA leader Hashim Thaci was far preferable to the elderly, unpretentious Rugova as Kosovo's future leader, and that Serbia should be bombed if it did not agree. Belgrade's agreement to Rugova as leader of an independent Kosovo was dismissed as irrelevant.

One wonders how the Serbs saw this performance. Two generations earlier, they had been the only European nation with the courage to resist Nazi attack. They had been bombed and massacred as a result. Now they were to suffer again at the hands of the NATO-supporting European nations, most of whom had spinelessly succumbed to, or had even collaborated with, that former Nazi enemy.

True, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has now resolved that it is "extremely concerned" over the recent KLA revelations. But is that not rather too late?

And will we see apologies from the people behind the past policies, particularly from the likes of former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair who still boasts that his firm resolve against Serbian "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo led him to support the U.S. in Iraq? I doubt it.

Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and longtime resident of Japan. A Japanese translation of this article will appear on www.gregoryclark.net

*****


TOPICS: Politics
KEYWORDS: albanians; balkans; kosovo; serbia; serbs
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1 posted on 03/01/2011 5:48:53 PM PST by Ravnagora
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To: Ravnagora

true words.....and sad..


2 posted on 03/01/2011 5:50:55 PM PST by cherry
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To: joan; Smartass; zagor-te-nej; Lion in Winter; Honorary Serb; jb6; Incorrigible; DTA; vooch; ...

3 posted on 03/01/2011 5:53:22 PM PST by Ravnagora
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To: Ravnagora

bump


4 posted on 03/01/2011 6:45:50 PM PST by Freee-dame
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To: Ravnagora

What is it about the one Whirlders that makes them acknowlege truths ten years after everybody else?


5 posted on 03/01/2011 8:08:09 PM PST by MurrietaMadman (If it isn't a Party shortcut, count on it mostly going downhill.)
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To: Ravnagora

Bump


6 posted on 03/01/2011 8:45:27 PM PST by Amerisrael
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To: Ravnagora
After more than a decade's worth of failed attempts at denial and revisionism, of which Mr. Clark's addition is duly noted, what has been gained?

Nothing worthwhile.

And in the real world, Vlastimir Djordjevic is but the latest to be held accountable for those things Mr. Clark has managed to remain ignorant of all these years.

In short, the "KLA worse than the Serbs" line of argument never came anywhere close to the truth, and has grown ever farther away from it over time. That there are still fools willing to put it forth is nothing more than a testament to the fact that some are happy to remove all doubt, as the saying goes.

7 posted on 03/01/2011 9:46:53 PM PST by Hoplite
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To: Ravnagora

Sadly, most American’s will never know read this...


8 posted on 03/01/2011 10:59:31 PM PST by XHogPilot
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To: XHogPilot

Only a fraction reads anything beyond standard propaganda sources. If it’s in the paper or on TV then by God it must be true. Sheep


9 posted on 03/02/2011 5:57:17 AM PST by SQUID
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To: Hoplite
Here we go again with the Croatian sensation, Hoppy! Ladies and gentlemen, Hoppy's role is to make sure he tries to “balance” the news of the day. Of course it has nothing to do with his background and his involvement during the conflict. Hoppy, please don't let me reveal who you really are old boy.

Your searing hatred for the Serbs is clear, obvious and predictable.

10 posted on 03/02/2011 6:02:41 AM PST by SQUID
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To: SQUID
please don't let me reveal who you really are old boy

Knock yourself out - I could use a good chuckle.

11 posted on 03/02/2011 6:21:17 AM PST by Hoplite
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To: Ravnagora
Wonder if Thaci will want to harvest Mad Madeline's organs????

A modern day Vampire????


12 posted on 03/02/2011 10:06:21 AM PST by MadelineZapeezda (MadelineAlbrightZapeezda)
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To: Ravnagora; Bokababe; marron
Grr. Once again, journalists, there are no UN forces in Kosovo. All military forces are NATO and under NATO command.

Meanwhile, a grateful "Kosovar Albanian" from Mitrovica just killed two of our airmen and wounded two more in a terrorist attack in Frankfurt. What a nice way to say "thanks".

13 posted on 03/02/2011 1:19:04 PM PST by wonders (Whoever said "all is fair in love and war" probably never participated in either.)
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To: Ravnagora
Christian Serbs were the early warning system to what lay in store for the West in the war against Islamic Terror. But the West chose to align itself with Islamic Terror groups like the KLA and bomb the Serbs in what amounted to a combined 5th Crusade against Orthodox Christians.

The West was sent a thank you card postmarked 9/11,sent via air mail delivery, ironically from fanatical followers of the religion of "peace" it sought to appease.

Shame on Clinton, Albright,Blair, etc.........

14 posted on 03/02/2011 2:09:59 PM PST by gitmogrunt
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To: gitmogrunt

That just about says it all in just a few words.

Thanks Gitmogrunt.

*****


15 posted on 03/02/2011 2:25:59 PM PST by Ravnagora
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To: Ravnagora

The time must come soon - to undo the narco parastate established under false pretenses by NATO and their minions.


16 posted on 03/02/2011 4:56:00 PM PST by eleni121 ("All Along the Watchtower" Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; Delacon; ...

Thanks Ravnagora.
A recent Council of Europe report says that during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict, militia leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) tortured and killed hundreds of Serbs and political rivals in secret Albanian hideouts, removed their organs for sale and dumped their bodies in local rivers. The report added that these people were also heavily involved in drug, sex and illegal immigrant trafficking across Europe.

17 posted on 03/02/2011 8:17:05 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: Ravnagora

Kosovo too had seen wartime ethnic cleansing against Serbs by pro-Nazi elements. The cleansing continued during the 1990s as U.S.-trained KLA guerrillas targeted Serbs isolated in rural districts and towns (by then Belgrade’s efforts to give the province autonomy had failed on the rock of ethnic Albanian noncooperation).


This was reported by no less than the NYTimes during the early 1990s. Of course, they changed their tune, making the Serbs the bad guys, in the late 1990s.

The Albanians would get a voting majority in an area, then take over the government and police; so when muslim teenagers would rape the Kosovo school girls and beat the Kosovo boys, and the parents went to the police, the (now muslim) police did nothing to protect them — except their farm would be burned out [this was the source of the rage that resulted in the later rape of muslim women - payback is not pretty].

When the Serbs complained to the federal government, only one politician would listen to their tale of injustice ... Slobodon Melosovic. The rest is history.

Note that you see the same pattern all over Europe where Muslims create enclaves — non-muslim women get raped, non-muslim neighbors get beaten, and non-muslim store owners get burned out ... and the enclave grows just a little bit larger. And world wide, almost every war or uprising you see will have Muslims on one side.


18 posted on 03/03/2011 12:00:44 PM PST by Mack the knife
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To: SQUID

What does one expect from a majmun?


19 posted on 03/03/2011 2:34:29 PM PST by montyspython
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To: Hoplite

Your world is crumbling, Rooster; the truth is known.


20 posted on 03/03/2011 4:44:12 PM PST by FormerLib (Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad.-Bishop Artemije of Kosovo)
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