"350,000 Albanians are worth more than 250,000 Serbs Mo"
Posted on 05/18/2004 8:49:57 AM PDT by Jane_N
Swedish KFOR General Warns About Total Ethnic Cleansing of Serbs
By
Anders Brännström
May 18, 2004
"Do not abandon Kosovo!"
Unless the Serbian minority is protected by a strong international military force, the part of the Kosovo Albanian population that is prone to violence will ethnically cleanse anything Serbian out of Kosovo as soon as it gets an opportunity. Until the violent riots in March, the external world believed that the situation in Kosovo had become stabilized. There were plans to strongly reduce the peacekeeping KFOR troops. Thanks to the disarmament not having gone very far, it was possible to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Serbs. Brigadier Anders Brännström, until recently brigade commander in Kosovo, writes that an international force must remain.
Last Friday I returned to Sweden after serving as brigade commander in Kosovo. During the last six months, Sweden has been responsible for the Multinational Brigade Centre MNB (C) -, one of four brigades in KFOR, the military force in Kosovo. This is the first time that Sweden has been in charge of a brigade reporting directly to a NATO staff.
By this article I want to explain the radical change that occurred during my time in Kosovo. I am not a politician and this is not a political brief. My responsibility has been security. This is a field where I see myself as being well informed after my Balkan missions. Apart from the recently finished mission I was commander of the Swedish batallion in Kosovo in 2000.
Before I continue the argument I would like to comment on what I write about the Kosovo Albanian population. It is important to clarify this part of the analysis in order not to get misunderstood.
The absolute majority of Kosovo Albanians are of course like in other parts of the world honest citizens who aspire to a good life for themselves and their families. I have many good friends among Kosovo Albanians. And I can testify that that friendship is often warmer and more intense then with many of my Swedish friends. We must, however, not disregard the a genuine and encompassing suspicion and aversion against Serbs is found in the Kosovo Albanian population. And let me, for the sake of completeness add that a corresponding suspicion, aversion and in addition fear of Kosovo Albanians is found in the Kosovo Serbian population.
When I travelled to Kosovo in October last year I believed as did the entire international community that the situation in Kosovo was stable. Everybody deemed that Kosovo was ripe within a near future to live in a multiethnic society where the different population groups could live together. It was therefore planned to reduce KFOR drastically, to reduce the international police force correspondingly and to hand over power and competences to local institutions.
On 17 March that illusion was broken very clearly and brutally.
As a complete surprise to the entire international community, riots broke out all over Kosovo. Kosovo Albanian crowds burnt Serbian churches, hospitals and houses in the Serbian parts of cities and villages. Women and children were forced to abandon their burning homes and flee for their lives. KFOR succeeded in preventing a total ethnic cleansing, but the damages were nevertheless vast all over Kosovo. Miraculously, no KFOR soldier was killed in the riots.
In hindsight, it is rather embarrassing that we could be this naive. How could we believe that Kosovo &endash; after all that had happened through history &endash; would be ripe already now for its different population groups to live in harmony with each other?
A positive consequence of what happened it that we discovered the frailty of the project in time. If we had had time to disarm even further, it would not have been possible to prevent the ethnic cleansing. Some 100,000 Kosovo Serbs and other minority groups would might in that case have been either dead or assembled in refugee camps, with which Balkan history is replete.
I would like to summarize my analysis of the new situation in Kosovo in four points.
1. Kosovo is not sufficiently ripe to become a multiethnic society within any near future. This was made very evident by what happened on 17-19 march this year.
2. The contradictions and the hatred are so strong that this situation will remain the same for many years. It is quite obvious that we must count with decades until a different situation can be expected.
3. Kosovo Serbian lives and Kosovo Serbian property must be protected by a strong military organization. Existing alternatives are either an international force like KFOR or the army of Serbia-Montenegro. Under present political conditions, the latter alternative is hardly implementable.
4. Unless the Serbian minority is protected by a strong military organization, the violence prone part of the Kosovo Albanian population will cleanse everything Serbian from Kosovo at the first opportunity.
In my analysis I refer to the part of the Kosovo Albanian population that committed the deeds on17-19 March. The UN estimates that there were at least 50,000 people who created the disturbances more or less spontaneously. These are people whose hate of the Serbian population is so great that they will use any means. If this group is permitted to further plan and coordinate its deeds, the destruction would no doubt become even greater.
The conclusion of my analysis is that as long as the international community is not ready to permit ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, a strong international force must be present in the area.
I started by stating that I am no politician; and that is certainly true. I nevertheless wish to conclude this article by using a citizen´s perspective to indicate some possibilities that might be used by skilled and courageous politicians.
- If the international community chooses to continue protecting Kosovo Serbs against ethnic cleansing, would it not be a good idea to attempt to cooperate with Serbia-Montenegro in these issues?
- Would it not thereby be possible for Serbia-Montenegro to enter European cooperation in other ways too?
- Would not that provide an opportunity for Serbia-Montenegro to deal with some of the negative effects of the Milosevic era and perhaps even become able to neutralise some of its radical politicians?
I am completely convinced of the relevance of this analysis of the security situation of the Kosovo Serbian minority population in Kosovo.
The question is whether there is political courage to constructively manage and exploit the opportunities created by the entirely new situation in Kosovo.
If the two sides one is Christian who have never blown up in city in the US, and the other side is fanatical Moslems who are blowing up anything and everything that they can get their filthy hands on to kill Americans, then you have to be an idiot, trator or both not to choose sides.
I accept your concession.
I don't comprehend how going around in circles is helpful - I've already seen the material you posted the first time around, commented upon it, and am not partial to repeats.
There were 350,000 Kosovar Albanian refugees in Kosovo before we started bombing. The OSCE and other organizations have made available too much information regarding the situation in Kosovo leading up to our bombing campaing for you cling to your German intel reports and court opinions with any hope of convincing anyone save yourself and our resident chorus of Serb nationalist losers (literal). Those 350,000 people fled their homes to escape Serb persecution, and to put forth the premise that there did not exist in Kosovo prior to 1999 widespread, systematic repression of the Kosovo Albanian population is to simply stick one's head up one's behind - regardless of whether one is looking to deny Kosovar Albanian asylum requests or not.
So in summation, Jane, you can continue to ignore the reality, as represented by those 350,000 refugees, for as long as you want, though it may be better for you to come up with an alibi for their being driven from their homes - they were having a picnic, perhaps?
Just don't be surprised when some jackass on the other side of the ethnic divide turns around and throws your rationale back in your face as applied to Kosovo's Serbian refugees.
is that you don't have the first clue about supporting your assertions with hard facts - you're supposed to be proving that the local judges didn't issue any warrants, not highlighting those cases where the internationals did.
You've placed yourself in a position where you pretty much have to review all the case histories of the arrests made in response to the March riots in order to prove your case.
And we both know you're incapable of walking that walk to support your talk, aren't we.
Besides, those Albanians who claimed to have zero papers, always would be able to present some evidence of "Serbian, Yugoslavian" citizenship. Isn't that right, Curly?
Why accept those figures, because NATO said so? Or, we take the Serbian Govt numbers?
I think Larry is more appropriate, he was the real stupid one. Curly, at least, possessed some humorous charm about him.
One can not rely on NATO for accuracy, look at their collateral damage record as an indicator. The Hague court tried to use "statistics" experts to bolster their bogus claim of 10,000 dead/missing Albanians from the conflict, and these claims were based on "missing" paperwork.
Just out of curiosity, you wouldn't happen to know how many people "emmigrated" from Albania during the 90's? I think it would be interesting to see some statistics from this period of unrest and civil disorder in Albania and see how many of them actually "moved" to Former Yugoslavia.
legally or illegally?
“The fighting caused additional displacement both within Kosovo and across its borders”;
“So far, the fighting in Kosovo has displaced about 400,000, according to UNHCR.”
No mention of “genocide” as a cause, and the only “ethnic cleansing” noted in the piece was by Albanians against Serbs: “The souring of negotiations also brought with it Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) attacks aimed at trying to ‘cleanse’ Kosovo of its ethnic Serb civilian population.” Looks like we bombed the side that was undergoing the ethnic cleansing, not the perps thereof – but we both know the ethnic cleansing canard had nothing to do with the bombing, right Hopster?
In short, your entire premise is that the existence of refugees reflects “ethnic cleansing or genocide”. The report you cite tells the exact opposite story than what you claim and corroborates rather than refutes Bo’s statement. Given that, you might want to work on your reading comprehension skills before pulling your fake righteous schtick on Jane.
"350,000 Albanians are worth more than 250,000 Serbs Mo"
"legally or illegally?"
Would both be too much to ask for? ;)
The name Bo is rather common, but mainly among those born during the 40's and 50's. In other words it's not so popular today for kids to be named Bo. I asked my husband if it was a shortened version of something else and apparently it isn't, nor is it a nickname. By the way the swedish verb "to live" is "bo" so maybe the Bo as a name also means "to live".
You can't ask someone to prove a negative, Hoplite. Proving that something isn't true is usually not possible. If you think something is true, you try to prove that it is, and if you cannot, then it's probably not. So the onus of proof falls on you. Get cracking, show me evidence that Albanians have made any effort to chastise KLA members who committed crimes against Serbs, the way Serbs did to punish Serbian soldiers suspected of crimes against Albanians.
This is one of those "put up or shut up" moments you've gotten yourself into here, Hoppie. Kindly choose a course of action.
Even if that's true, it doesn't prove ethnic cleansing. There was fighting going on between the army and the rebels. Removing civilians from the danger zone (forcefully if they resist) is what any country would have done in Serbia's situation. It's for their own safety. Of course these Albanians probably went and told every reporter that they were "forced from their homes".
Hmm... Help me out here, Gael - my reading comprehension skills aren't apparently all I thought they were.
Either that, or you're still suffering from that particularly Serb version of HUA syndrome I've been treated to ever since wandering into these Balkan threads on FR.
What happened in Ivaja was ethnic cleansing. If you want to call it fighting, then you're just conforming to the idiocy endemic on these threads, aren't you.
By early March the VJ and police were carrying out acts of deliberate destruction and looting sometimes in plain sight of the OSCE-KVM, and the mission was recording such destruction, looting and pillage in many locations in Kosovo. source
Don't worry Gael - it wasn't ethnic cleansing, it's all some misunderstanding or conspiracy by Serbia's enemies to make her look bad.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
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