Posted on 06/26/2005 5:31:02 AM PDT by mark502inf
Ten years after Radovan Karadzic's troops killed 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, the former Serb leader remains at large. In this remarkable report from the heart of Bosnia, Antony Barnett goes on the trail of Europe's most notorious war criminal
What strikes you first is the colour of the house. As you drive along the bumpy stone road that leads to the family home of Dr Radovan Karadzic, Europe's most wanted war criminal, its garish pink exterior bursts out in front of you. But despite its bright facade, it is a house that hides many dark secrets. On Monday 11 July it will be 10 years since Karadzic's Bosnian Serb soldiers marched into the United Nations safe haven at Srebrenica and slaughtered more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Yet Karadzic, the chief architect of this massacre - as well as the mastermind of the 1,000-day siege of Sarajevo that saw 10,000 civilians killed, 1,000 of them children - remains a free man.
Despite a $5 million (£2.7m) bounty on his head, Karadzic is a fugitive. Protected by a secret underground network made up of politicians, criminals, spies, businessmen and priests from the Orthodox church, Karadzic - a psychiatrist, children's author and poet in another life - is believed to be hiding in the mountains of eastern Bosnia close to the border with Montenegro.
His liberty remains a major embarrassment to the international community and an open sore in a country where 200,000 people were killed in a bitter ethnic war between Serb, Muslims and Croats. There can be no healing until Karadzic faces justice.
A decade after Srebenica and his indictment at The Hague, The Observer set out on a journey to reveal the network built to hide a man accused of committing the worst atrocities witnessed in Europe since the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
Karadzic's pink family home is the obvious place to start. It stands on the outskirts of a town called Pale, cradled in the Bosnian mountains. Before the war in 1992 it was a ski village 10 miles south east of Sarajevo. Today it is the capital of the Republic of Sprska (pronounced Serbska), the semi-autonomous region of Bosnia that the Serbs like to call their own. It is a state within a state, where Karadzic's nationalist Serbian Democratic Party (SDP) still holds considerable power and is linked to an organised crime network run by Serb former paramilitary leaders and war criminals loyal to him. Most towns and villages there were ethnically cleansed, with Muslim communities expelled or exterminated. Mosques came down, Orthodox Serb churches went up.
Pale was a Karadzic stronghold in the war. It was from the Panorama hotel in the town centre that Karadzic and his cronies planned their brutal campaign. It takes only a few minutes to drive from the hotel to the Karadzic home.
As I arrive at the house the front door opens. None of the three people standing by the hall, who are thought to be part of Karadzic's extended family, will be interviewed, nor answer questions asked through the locked iron security gate. 'Have you seen Radovan? Where do you think he is? Can I speak to his wife Ljiljana? Has she seen him recently?'
All the questions are greeted with silence. After a while a tall, broad-shouldered man with closely-shaved dark hair, believed to be Karadzic's brother-in-law, comes to the gate and says they cannot help us. Karadzic's wife is not here. She is at another property, painting it after it was wrecked during a raid by Nato troops searching for clues to the whereabouts of her husband.
The next-door neighbours watch nervously from their first floor balcony. They too refuse to answer questions. A man in a scruffy red polo shirt with a walkie-talkie in hand comes over to ask for my ID papers. I ask for his. He claims he is with the Republic of Sprska police. He asks us to leave. I have doubts about the authenticity of his own ID, but decide to head into the centre of Pale.
Love letters from 'Radovan' to his beloved wife 'Lili', dated 2002, have recently been published showing that these two psychiatrists, who fell in love at medical school in Sarajevo, have met at a secret location. In one letter Karadzic tells his wife it would 'take a battalion' to discover his hiding place ... Of course, caution is necessary but there is not need of such fear and paranoia.'
His apparent lack of concern appears well founded. Despite being, like Osama bin Laden, one of the world's most wanted men and hiding in a country as small as Wales, the commitment to capture him by the 7,000 overseas troops still in Bosnia seems questionable. The French are regularly accused of being 'too close' to the Karadzic network, and even the British seem reticent.
One British officer serving in Bosnia, alluding to the fact that any attempt to snatch Karadzic is likely to lead to a shoot-out, said: 'If you think we would risk the life of one British soldier for these people, then you're wrong.'
This month - a week after a remarkable video appeared revealing the horror of the massacre in Srebrenica - Karadzic's brother, Luka, said: 'My brother has made a strategic decision to never surrender to the Hague Tribunal [set up try those accused of war crimes]. If he surrendered he would betray his people and God, which has protected him from the enemies for so long.'
To those hunting the so-called Butcher of Bosnia, these people make a web of clandestine supporters who form a protective financial and spiritual cloak around Karadzic that keeps him free. Such is their influence that one source claims trackers sent from The Hague to find Karadzic are sometimes spotted as arriving at Sarajevo airport and put under surveillance. Information is fed to Karadzic's army of bodyguards, who can move him at short notice should one of these investigators get a lucky break.
To these supporters Karadzic is a folk hero, a leader who helped protect them from the Muslim hordes. They inhabit a closed world, hostile to outsiders and suspicious of questions.
An orthodox priest, Father Jeremija Starovlah, gets up from his chair when he sees me approaching. His short silver hair and beard offer a striking contrast to his traditional black robes. The small, pretty white church that he runs is in the centre of Pale, a short drive from the Karadzic home.
A local newspaper reported last March that Starovlah was calling on Orthodox believers to shelter Karadzic. A few weeks later the international authorities said they had intelligence suggesting Karadzic was staying with the priest. Nato forces raided Starovlah's home, blowing up his front door and injuring his son. Karadzic was not found.
The raid provoked street protests by more than 2,000 Bosnian Serbs. Some wore masks of Karadzic while others waved the blue, red and white flags of the Republic of Sprska.
Now Starovlah refuses to speak or answer any questions. 'Has Karadzic been here?' I ask. 'Do you regard him as a hero? Where do you think he is now? Should he go to the Hague?' He says only: 'I have no comment to make. I do not wish to speak about this.'
Starovlah shows no desire to set the record straight. This is a priest in the Bosnian Serb capital, who is close to the Karadzic family. And in the Republic of Sprska, family secrets are closely guarded.
One of the most shocking parts of a recent film of Srebenica, showing six Muslims being bound and shot at close range, was that it began with a Serb Orthodox priest blessing the camouflaged paramilitary troops who carried out the massacre. Rumours persist that Karadzic is disguised as a priest and moving from monastery to monastery.
As well as the church in Pale, intelligence agencies have monitored phone calls that disclose he has hidden in the isolated mountain monastery of Ostrog. Karadzic's grandson was christened there. According to a diplomatic source it is estimated that Karadzic spends 80 per cent of his time in church property. The source says it is not a coincidence that since the war dozens of new Orthodox churches have been built at a cost of millions of pounds. It is alleged that most of this money comes from the same illicit sources that provide the funds to protect Karadzic.
Yet while the church may offer Karadzic spiritual and physical sanctuary, an altogether more criminal network funds the $200,000 a month operation to protect the 'Doctor in the Forest'.
Milovan Bjelica is waiting for me outside Cafe Iceberg in the town of Sokolac, a 45-minute drive from Sarajevo. Smoking a Malboro and drinking an espresso he beckons us over with his steel-blue eyes. A disfigured right hand hangs loosely by his side.
Nato arrested Bjelica twice last year, detaining him for a month at a time. Armed troops swooped on the town last August and questioned him for more than two hours a day for a whole month. They had heard he had gone to Belgrade and accused him of meeting supporters of Karadzic. Bjelica claims he was there to have surgery.
Bjelica has been accused by the US State Department and the European Union of funnelling money to the Karadzic network and running the security and intelligence units that guard him. His name is on the US list of international terrorists and he is banned from travelling to any EU country.
In March 2003 the US government described him as a 'long-time friend and business associate of Karadzic, [who] presides over a network of legal and illegal businesses that are also used to provide for the protection of Karadzic'.
Bjelica denies all this but there is no doubt he is a supporter of Karadzic and was a powerful figure in his Serbian Democratic Party. Bjelica was the party president in eastern Bosnia during the war and spent time with Karadzic.
Bjelica has agreed to meet us because he wants to ensure I understand that many Serbs were killed in the war and suffered Muslim ethnic cleansing. He takes my notebook and draws a sketch of Sarajevo, pointing out areas where he claims 5,000 Serbs were killed.
Bjelica has seen the video of Srebenica and thought it was 'terrible'. But he claims there are films of the Bosnian Muslims, or mujahideen, as he calls them, beheading Serbs. 'Why is that not shown on your TV?' he says.
Like many of Karadzic's closest allies, he believes their leader 'signed a contract' with Richard Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton's chief adviser during the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995 that ended the war. This stipulated that if Karadzic disappeared from frontline politics he would not be arrested.
'To over 90 per cent of Bosnian Serbs he is a hero,' says Bjelica. 'He protected the Serbian people during the war.'
So where does Bjelica, whose nickname 'Cicko' means pussycat, think his friend is hiding? He shrugs. Stubbing out his cigarette, he gets up from the table, shakes my hand and leaves.
The centre Sarajevo is a long way from the corridors of Westminster, but the heated complexity of Bosnian politics makes the hurly-burly of the House of Commons seem tame. Yet it is the former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, who, as the High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia, has overall responsibility for stability in the region. As part of Lord Ashdown's brief, the capture of Karadzic and other war criminals such as General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, is pivotal.
'You can't have peace without justice,' says Ashdown. 'And only after that you can get to reconciliation. This can only happen when the major architects of these crimes are brought to justice.'
His office sits on the former front line of the Sarajevo's bloody battle, and the surrounding buildings are pockmarked with bullet holes. The former Bosnian parliament building across the street remains a burnt-out wreck, a vivid reminder of the horrors faced by civilians in the siege of the city that was inspired by Karadzic. It was largely Serbian sniper bullets and shells that rained down from the surrounding mountains killing those queuing for bread or buying fruit in the main street market.
So why, 10 years on, has Karadzic not been found? 'Catching war criminals is a campaign, not a commando raid,' says Ashdown. 'It requires changing the political climate, attacking corrupt networks, removing the money he uses to fund himself. It requires isolation by taking out lower-level war criminals. Then we have a better change of catching him.' Ashdown describes Karadzic as 'the head of a vast criminal organisation' that thrives on corruption and extortion. Visits are paid to businessmen from dark forces who ask for contributions for the 'doctor in the forest'. These organised crime networks make vast sums from smuggling drugs, petrol and tobacco as well as trafficking young girls for the sex trade.
Ashdown's office has carried out investigative audits on many of the state-owned companies, such as the electricity firm Electroprivreda and discovered tens of millions of dollars missing.
'We have just carried out an audit of Sprske Sume, the Serb forestry organisation, and found it riddled with political backhanders just siphoned out of the system. This is public money just disappearing into political parties such as the SDS. From there siphoning it to Karadzic is not a difficult thing to do.'
Ashdown's office believes that one of the key 'bankers' to Karadzic's network is Momcilo Mandic, a former minister who commanded Karadzic's police force. Mandic has made a fortune from running petrol stations, a bank and other businesses. Like Bjelica he is on a number of international blacklists but lives freely in Belgrade. The US has described him as a 'major funding source for Karadzic through his control of an elaborate network of criminal enterprises engaged in embezzlement, business fraud and fictitious loans'. He too has denied the claims.
Another Bosnian Serb accused of providing money for the Karadzic network is Radomir Kojic, who is also on the US terrorist list and banned from travelling. Last month an Observer investigation discovered that his mine-clearing company, Unipak, won many lucrative contracts from foreign governments including six from the UK Department for International Development. Kojic, a wartime Serb commander in the hills around Sarajevo, rejects the claims, saying his he is the victim of false rumours spread by business rivals who have provided no evidence of wrongdoing.
Meeting us outside his hotel in the ski resort of Jahorina, where Sarajevo's Winter Olympics was held in 1984, he claims his business now faces ruin. 'It is better for my family if I kill myself,' Kojic says. He does, however, admit he was a member of Karadzic's party in 1990 and the property developer who built Karadzic's family home in Pale. The pink house, it seems, is never far from the centre from the story.
They call the area the heart of darkness. The geographical triangle created by the towns of Visegrad, Cajnice and Foca in the Republic of Sprska in the far east of Bosnia is indeed a cold, dark place. But these are not adjectives used to describe the region's physical appearance. It is rich in natural beauty, with the majestic River Drina snaking its way through the glorious pine forests in the valley as the peaks of the Zelengora mountains tower above.
The chill comes from the history that swept across the nearby borders of Serbia and Montenegro and whipped up a storm of ethnic hatred that brutalised a generation. It remains a hotbed of fervent Serb nationalism where some of the worst genocidal crimes of the Bosnian war were committed. Ten years ago it was not dead branches from the pine trees that the Drina carried in its fast-flowing, but the bodies of hundreds of butchered Muslims that were swept along in its bloodstained water.
It is among these mountains and remote villages of his loyal supporters that many believe Karadzic is hiding. It is close enough to the porous borders of Montenegro, the country of Karadzic's birth, that the 'Doctor from the Forest' can easily slip through out of the clutches of Nato and European Union forces.
At the apex of the triangle is Foca, a place renowned for harbouring war criminals. Before the war more than half of the town's 40,000 population was Muslim, now there are none. Rape, torture and murder changed that.
Today the centre of Foca is a scene of normality. Teenagers wearing fashion able sunglasses sip beer and smoke cigarettes at cafes overlooking the river while rock music pumps from the speakers. At Cafe Uno, a group of four older men sit around a table eating the traditional local Bosnian dish of cevapi, small sausages made of lamb and beef.
I ask if they will talk about Karadzic. At first nobody wants to speak. 'We don't want to talk about politics,' said one. 'Do you think of him as a hero or a war criminal?' I ask. After a pause, one of them, a chubby man with curly hair, barks: 'A hero, of course. He protected us.'
The oldest in the group, with a moustache and fine grey hair, then takes over. He snarls: 'You English and Americans, you know where he is. You are protecting him. If you wanted to arrest him you could.' The others around the table nod in agreement. They want us to leave.
As I start driving high into the mountains towards the Montenegro border, it becomes increasingly clear why it has been so difficult to catch Karadzic. Not only is he among people who view in him as one of a long line of Serb heroes who have fought off foreign invaders. But the terrain itself is almost impassable in a normal car. The roads are practically dirt tracks and wind their way up steep mountainous slopes that rise into the clouds. If Karadzic was hiding anywhere here, his security people would see anybody coming from miles away.
As I leave Foca and head back to Sarajevo there is a sign for Niksic, the home town of Karadzic's mother, which is 105km east in Montenegro. As I drive on, three young boys coming from a game of football pass by. They raise their hands in the infamous three-fingered salute of Serb nationalists.
Fugitives from justice
General Ratko Mladic Mladic was commander of Serbian troops in Bosnia during the war. Along with Karadzic he is charged with genocide for ordering the massacre of Muslims in Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 civilians were killed. He is blamed for abetting the 'systematic' campaign of sniping at civilians in the city over the past three years and for the seizure and use as human shields of 284 UN peacekeepers in May and June 1995. He is accused of shelling the towns of Tuzla and Srebrenica 'in order to kill, terrorise and demoralise the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilian population'. Aged 50.
Ante Gotovina A Croatian, he is the Hague tribunal's third most wanted man. He is accused of the murder of hundreds of Serbs. Aged 49.
Milan Lukic The notorious leader of the White Eagles paramilitary group, he is accused of masterminding the massacre of thousands of Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Visregrad. Many were burned alive. Women and children were forced across the bridge over the River Drina and shot. Thousands of local men were killed elsewhere. Aged 38.
Dragan Zelenovic Zelenovic is charged with organising the mass rape and torture of Muslim women in the Bosnian town of Foca. Aged 44.
The Charge is the interim ambassador, speaks for the President, and his/her communications represent official U.S. statements. That’s the way it works whether you agree with it or not. If you want to hear from someone further up the food chain, this is from a couple weeks ago by Nicholas Burns, Condi Rice’s Undersecretary of State: “There is no possibility of a normal relationship” between the United States and either Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia and Montenegro while the major war criminals – Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic – are still at large, said Burns.
You can read all about the Bush Administration’s position on arresting and trying Karadzic and other criminals by going to this site and typing Karadzic in the search window.
Many people in the world did not agree with the UN siding with muslim murderers in the Balkans. WHOEVER is helping them, has to be somebody BIG and powerful because the UN flunkies are offering ALOT of money for their capture. Anybody "little" would be too tempted to give in.
That somebody BIG is helping the wanted men, is just killing the loosey muslim crybabies and liars!!
"Indiscriminate bombing"? Horse manure. The modern United States military does not operate that way and did not do so in the Kosovo campaign. Our Air Force, Marine, and Navy pilots who flew 14,000 strike sorties were careful in target selection and precise in their aim. There were mistakes (e.g. Chinese Embassy, Kosovar refugee convoy) and there were accidents (e.g. cruise missile falling short vic Nis, civilian train on bridge), but the relatively small civilian death toll of 500* gives ample testimony of the proficiency and professionalism of our airpower.
*The Former Republic of Yugoslavia Ministry of Foreign Affairs publication "NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia" came up with 495 deaths. The decidedly unfriendly-to-America Human Rights Watch did a study and came up with 488-527 bombing deaths; closely corresponding to Belgrade's 495. Go to para 53.
Of note, about half of those approximately 500 civilian casualties were in Kosovo, most of whom were the Kosovar Albanian refugees attacked by mistake in the Korisa Woods and in the Djakovica road incidents.
Yeah, right. Your hero Slobo was a communist atheist who could care less about Christianity; as evidenced by the fact that he is indicted for more counts of war-crimes against the Christian Croats than against any other group in the Balkans. And explain how fighting a war against the Slovenes, killing civilians in Croatia, shelling cities and raping women in Bosnia, slaughtering prisoners at Srebrenica, and burning villages in Kosovo protected Serbia.
LOL!
Condor, I agree with mark - there was no indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in Serbia - civilian targets were bombed on purpose with a high degree of prejudice. Serbian civilian targets were terror bombed as an effort to break their will (a Clinton-Clark war crime) to end the war in favor of NATO's ultimatum (also a war crime). The reason we terror bombed the Serbs but not the Iraqis is because we planned to occupy the Iraqis and thus could not carry out a campaign of civilian terror - but we only wanted to break the will of the Serbs to resist in Kosovo - which is by definition a war crime.
Tell it to the families of Slavko Curuvija or Ivan Stambolic.
Slobo had about as much respect for his fellow citizens as you do for the truth, Destro.
Which is to say none.
Unfortunately true; hate trumps morality.
Let's see, he fought wars with Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. And it took the deployment of US troops to Macedonia to deter him from using force to adjudicate the boundary with Macedonia. He used nationalism and hate to get into power and conducted and supported ethnic cleansing of "Yugoslavia citizens" who weren't Serbs. He looted his nation's treasury, sent munitions and advisers to Saddam Hussein, was one of the biggest recipients in Europe of Saddam's oil for food money, murdered fellow Serbs who were his political opponents, followed policies that estranged him politically and economically from the rest of the world, and was eventually thrown out of office and bundled off to the Hague by his own people. Yep, he really protected his citizens!
Wrong again, Destro. We had complete air superiority over Serbia and bombed for 72 days. The USA alone conducted 14,000 strike sorties. Yet there were only 500 civilian deaths. the U.S. Air Force, Marine, and Navy pilots were careful in planning and conducting their operations to do their best to ensure civilian casualties were minimized.
You mean Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo started wars on Serbia/Yugoslavia - or do you blame the Union/Linclon for the Civil War?
Attacking civilian targets like bridges and power works is terror bombing regardless of lack of casualties. Geneva convention.
Ouch.
Bridges used for military movements and logistics by the adversary are legitimate targets. Power networks used to supply military functions such as air defense systems are also legitimate targets. The relevant criteria are "military necessity" and whether the target is involved in work of a "military character". Geneva Convention.
War was in Kosovo - South - no war in the North - no northern Yugoslav bridges used to fight the Albanians in the South. Terror bombing - admitted goal by airforce general at that time.
The targeted bridges were used variously for repositioning air defense assets, moving troops from one part of Serbia to another, and for truck/train traffic to supply fielded forces. That makes them a legit target regardless of how close or how far they were from Kosovo.
''I think no power to your refrigerator, no gas to your stove, you can't get to work because the bridge is down - the bridge on which you held your rock concerts and you all stood with targets on your heads. That needs to disappear at three o'clock in the morning." (U.S. Air Force General Michael Short quoted in 'International Herald Tribune' 14 May 1999 explaining the philosophy behind bombing civilian facilities .
Commander, 16th Air Force, United States Air Forces, Europe Commander, Allied Forces, Southern Europe
Dear General Short:
On 21 October, Reuters reported: "His voice breaking with emotion at a Senate hearing, the U.S. Air Force general who headed NATO's spring bombing of Serbia lashed out at France on Thursday for repeatedly vetoing proposed targets in Belgrade." You were also quoted as saying, "This is a personal thing with me." You explained that your son flew 40 missions in the A-10 in Kosovo and that he was hit by an SA-13, and that, "He called me that night on a secure phone and the first words were 'Don't tell mom'."
As the wife of a retired Air Force fighter pilot and the mother of two sons, I share your concern for the safety of those whom we love; however, General, just as my husband was a legitimate target when he flew his missions over Vietnam, your son was a legitimate target, unlike the civilians he bombed.
Lest what I have to say be misconstrued as being anti-military or anti-American, let me make it clear that I love our country and I have always supported our military. However, I deplore the fact that young Americans such as your son were ordered to attack a sovereign nation, in violation of international law and the basic tenants of NATO. When the initial attacks against the military and political structure of Yugoslavia failed, those young men were ordered by you and your superiors to wage a war of terror against the civilian population. Our warriors go into battle trusting in the honesty, honor and ethics of their superiors. "Theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is but to do or die." You and the other lackeys of the Clinton administration failed them.
I now ask you, General:
Was it your son whose bombs hit a bridge in central Serbia crowded with traffic and pedestrians on a Sunday afternoon, where 17 people were wounded and nine people died, including "a priest with his head blasted away?" (Reuters, 30 May). Or was it your son who, four minutes after the initial attack, hit the bridge again just as help arrived for the surviving victims?
- Was it your son whose bombs decapitated a Serbian child? "We found the head of a child in a garden and many limbs in the mud. But you don't want to report that. CNN filmed the bodies, but they don't show them on television" (The Independent, 29 April).
- Was it your son whose bombs dismembered Serbian children making it almost impossible to match the children's torsos with their arms and legs, although several were recognized by their sneakers? (The Guardian, 18 May).
- Was it your son whose bombs buried people alive under tons of rubble from destroyed apartment buildings?
- Was it your son whose bombs hit the convoy of ethnic Albanians reducing the victims to ashes, and then have your NATO pimp spokesperson, Jamie Shea, have the gall to deny that NATO pilots, possibly your son, were responsible for this atrocity by blaming it on the Serbs?
- Was it your son who bombed hospitals, schools, orphanages, cemeteries, churches, 14th century monasteries on the World Heritage list, in a barbaric act to destroy Serbian culture, society and religion?
- Was it your son whose bombs hit oil supplies polluting the air so that civilians couldn't breath, as well as water supplies, civilian apartments, civilian factories so as to destroy the quality of life and terrorize those who were not killed? And let us not forget the pollution of the Danube caused by NATO bombs which has affected all the surrounding nations' international trade costing them millions of dollars.
- Was it the depleted uranium from the shells of the Gatling Gun on your son's A-10 that poisoned the soil and the air of the Serbian people so that their children will be born deformed, and rendered the soil unfit toproduce food for the people to eat?
- Or perhaps it was your son who bombed the Chinese Embassy in another "mistake."
Besides hitting the Chinese Embassy, your not-so-smart bombs damaged the embassies of Italy, Switzerland, Pakistan, India, Libya, and Iraq. Not only could your smart bombs not find the right target, they couldn't even find the right country as they hit Macedonia once and Bulgaria five times.
NATO pilots bombed Yugoslavia more in 78 days than Hitler did in all of World War II. Can you understand what that means to a people who were our allies in two world wars? It was the Serbian nationalist leader, General Draza Mihailovich, who rescued over 500 downed American pilots while Croatian and Bosnian/Kosovar/Albanian Muslims at the same time were turning them over to the Germans for execution. Prior to the impending bombing of Serbs in Bosnia, which turned out to be a rehearsal for Kosovo, retired Air Force Major Richard Felman, President of the National Committee of American Airmen Rescued by General Mihailovich, Inc., placed an ad in The Washington Times on 9 June 1994. In his emotional appeal, Major Felman said, "It would be the cruelest of ironies and break our hearts to see our fellow Americans go charging into Bosnia with their guns blazing to kill the very Serbian people who saved our lives while at the same time helping some of the people who were shooting at us and turning us over to the Germans." The ad went on to say, "Mr. President, where is America's sense of honor, decency and gratitude to those on foreign soil who save American lives? Do we return their sacrifice and kindness by killing them?"
Apparently, the answer is, Yes, for in August of 1995, NATO, in violation of its mission as a defensive force, assumed the mantra of an offensive force by dropping over 6,000 tons of bombs within a two-week period on Bosnian Serbs hitting hospitals, churches, schools and homes. This act of US-led NATO aggression was based on the Markale marketplace massacre. The disgraceful irony is that a UN report confirmed that Bosnian Muslim forces had committed the atrocity. The UN report was also confirmed in European newspapers, such as The [London] Sunday Times which headlined, "Serbs 'not guilty' of massacre, Experts warned US that mortar was Bosnia." (1 Oct 95). Further substantiating the claim that Muslims forces had committed the massacre, a British think tank, The Islamic Affairs Analyst, wrote, "US Framed Serbs for Market Bombing." (18 Oct 95). Just as we betrayed the Serbian people in World War II and delivered them into the hands of the communist dictator, Marshall Josef Tito, himself a Croat, we betrayed the Serbian people for a second time in this century when we took sides against them in this latest Balkan tragedy.
And the horror we have wrought on innocent civilians doesn't stop there. NATO cluster bombs continue to kill children. And just what has our illegal and immoral air campaign against a sovereign nation accomplished?
Since KFOR entered Kosovo, General, this great victory of which you are so proud, these "peacekeepers" have stood by while the 200,000 Serbian men, women and children who remained in Kosovo have been reduced to fewer than 12,000, with the number steadily approching zero. While the eradication of Serbs is taking place, NATO and the media remain silent. Serbian nuns are being gang raped or forced to stand naked before their KLA tormentors, Serbian priests are being beaten and murdered, "Grannies" have been targeted for special horrors, such as decapitation, drowning (in bathtubs), stabbing or raped and the atrocities continue. The demonization of the Serbian people is complete. Christian humanitarian organizations are collecting millions of dollars to help ethnic Albanians but not one penny goes to a hungry or suffering Serbian child. The 1999 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, France's Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors without Borders, (DWB) recently expelled the Greek arm of DWB because the Greeks showed compassion by treating those injured in Yugoslavia during NATO's bombing campaign, just as they showed compassion when Greece was the first country to go to Turkey's aid following the tragic earthquake. However, administering to a dying Serbian child is in violation of the inhumane US-led sanctions which prevent any medical assistance to the Serbian people. It appears that the Hippocratic Oath by France's Medecins Sans Frontieres stops at the Serbian border.
But cruelty towards the Serbian people does not stop there. President "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton has decreed that there will be no fuel for Serbs facing a harsh winter until Serbian President Milosevic is thrown out of office in spite of the fact that tens of thousand of Serbs have demonstrated against Slobo at great risk to themselves. What the president is offering the Serbs is, "You can either die by freezing or by starving to death through my sanctions." Some choice!
The American people are finally beginning to realize that they have been lied to in order for this President to justify NATO's war on innocent civilians and to send our sons and daughters into harm's way. "War Reports: The Lies Are Unraveling," writes Agence France-Press, March 31. "The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia must stop, the moderate Kosovo Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova told journalists in Pristina Wednesday." The American people were told that Rugova, along with his entire family had been executed by Serbs. However, while that was being reported by the American media, they were alive and well and had taken refuge in Belgrade from the Kosovo Liberation Army, but the lie was more believable. Considering the following. There were:
No mass graves containing the bodies of ethnic Albanians. Thus far several hundred bodies have been found, not an astounding number in a land where ethnic stife and war have been going on since 1992. This number is a far cry from the lie of 100,000 that President Clinton used in his successful effort to demonize the Serbian people.
- No 600,000 ethnic Albanians trapped in Kosovo either lying in mass graves, starving, or too afraid to go home as claimed by President Clinton when he lied to the American people (USA Today, 1 July)
- No "genocide" as the American people were led to believe. A tragedy, yes. A genocide, no. I know of no genocide that provided modern buses and trains (referred to as "boxcars" by the media so that the insinuation would not be lost) to take refugees to the borders of Macedonia and Albania and not to the gas chambers. Hardly any mention was made that many ethnic Albanians fled to Serbia proper and Montenegro to escape NATO's bombs.
- No great numbers of ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo until NATO began its bombing campaign of terror which prompted one refugee to say to Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma when he was visiting the refugees, "We wouldn't be here if it weren't for YOU (the United States). "Mirvei, a tall Albanian woman clutching her four-month-old baby, looked bewildered when asked if Serbian troops had driven her out. 'There were no Serbs,' she said. 'We were frightened of the bombs.' - Red Cross officials say many of the most recent arrivals [in Macedonia] intend to return to Kosovo as soon as the NATO bombardment stops." [London Sunday Times, March 27].
- "The number of civilians killed during the war in Kosovo may be no more than 2,500, according to a British Sunday Newspaper. The figure was estimated by a Spanish pathologist sent to the southern Serbian province immediately after the end of hostilities last summer to look for the bodies of ethnic Albanians killed by Serb forces. It contrasted sharply with a claim by U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen at the height of the NATO bombing in May that up to 100,000 ethnic Albanian men were missing and might have been murdered." (Reuters, 31 Oct). In other words, General, we dismembered a sovereign nation, a founding member of the United Nations based on lies of mass murder and atrocities when there were no more than 2,500 civilian deaths, on all sides. Why? Because the tiny nation of Yugoslavia had to be destroyed as an example to other nations which might defy of the New World Order. Hitler said in 1939, "The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one." President Clinton threw out the hook, and the American people took the bait.
And with whom have we jumped into bed? We have jumped into bed with a bunch of narco-terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA)cutthroats who were trained in Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and who have now established their own mini-Afghanistan in Kosovo. The most disgusting picture that sticks in my craw is the one of Hashim Thaci, leader of the KLA, kissing Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, on both cheeks after he had just executed six of his top officers. And just what have we succeeded in doing? We have succeeded in turning over Serbia's Jerusalem to these cutthroats.
And finally, I return to the Reuter's dispatch where you said, "this is a personal thing with me." Just what did you think, General, was happening to Americans of Serbian descent, many of whom still have fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers living in the Mother country, watching your son destroy a nation and a people? Was that not "a personal thing" for them?
The Serbian people survived 500 years of suffering under the Ottoman Empire. They survived the atrocities committed under the Nazis by their fascist Croatian and Muslim enemies. They survived under Tito's brutal communist system. Now through our ignorance, our gullibility and a deliberate, concerted campaign of lies and disinformation to destroy these heroic people, they are facing annihilation by a hostile world.
And finally, General, welcome to the New World Order you have helped to create. Maybe the job you did in Kosovo and your performance at the Senate hearing will get you another star on your shoulder. Wear it in shame.
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