Subject: SIT-REP 5-12; Kosovo Violence Date: 6/12/00 4:12 PM Received: 6/12/00 4:39 PM From: ben works, BenWorks@aol.com To: ben works, BenWorks@aol.com SIRIUS: The Strategic Issues Research Institute Benjamin C. Works, Director 718 937-2092; www.siri-us.com; E-mail: Benworks@AOL.Com --Speak the Truth and Shame the Devil-- STRATEGIC ISSUES TODAY SIT 6-12; June 12, 2000 Kosovo: One Year On Hobbes on life in "The State of Nature:" No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of men, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." - Thomas Hobbes; Leviathan; 1651; I, 13 A year ago NATO forces entered Kosovo, enabling some 800,000 refugees to return to their homes. We had been told that NATO suspected that tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians may have been slaughtered in a systematic planned war crime of ethnic cleansing, called "Operation Horseshoe." Now, the International Committee of the Red Cross tells us that only some 2500 remain missing (of whom at least 400 are Serbs kidnapped by the KLA since the war) and estimates that the roster of dead is around 4000 people of all communities and sides: KLA, Serbs, Gypsies, Turks, Gorani and others. People did die, but not in the ways NATO alleged last year. There are some more mass graves to be opened and they contain many non-Albanians as well as the dead from local gunbattles, NATO bombs and some murder victims. NATO will try to report the gross numbers, but not the details so that it can maintain the illusion of systematic war crimes by Serbs against innocent Albanian civilians, but even that falls apart as forensics experts report to their national media. Meanwhile, a German general has exposed the "Operation Horseshoe" hoax. American troops were sent to war in a politically-motivated con job abetted by all our major media. Our US, Canadian, British and other troops stand exposed, in the long term, to legitimate war crimes charges and their excuse will be the same one the Germans gave: "I was only following orders." Meanwhile, the liars who perpetrated and journalists who abetted a monstrous propaganda campaign are now fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the truth, labeling we who present the facts as "revisionists." Tell that to our troops on the ground in NATO-occupied Kosovo --they know who the liars are and who the thugs are. Theory can obscure but not eradicate fact: History and human relations have a way of getting even with sophisters and manipulators over the long term. The Kosovo of the KLA and of racist Albanian politics is an unsustainable mountain of contradictions. Serbs, Gypsies and others need only be patient while the melt-down continues; difficult as waiting patiently may be. Almost 15 months ago, President Clinton allowed then-NATO Secretary General Javier Solana to launch an illegal war against Yugoslavia over the alleged oppression of the Kosovo Albanians. A year ago, today, the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and Ministry of Interior police (MUP) began their withdrawal from Kosovo under revised terms of a brokered ceasefire which allowed both NATO and Yugoslavia a plausible means for ending what was becoming a military fiasco for NATO. It is a matter of fact, not "feeling" that the war was illegal under the terms of the UN Charter. The US and its NATO allies knew that a Security Council resolution authorizing the attack would never get past Russia and China's vetoes. But the war was also illegal in that it violated other treaties, as well as NATO's own charter and other international agreements. Mr. Clinton allowed Mr. Solana -a "recovering Communist" to launch the war, which means that it will be difficult to lay blame on any one person or institution. Now that I have made that important point, one purpose in writing is to underscore that America's soldiers, and Canada's, Britain's and others already understand that the war was illegal --or highly irregular-- and also understand, after a year inside the Kosovo mad-house, that we are enmired in a criminal mess, with no sign of an exit strategy. In Kosovo, the lunatics have been running the asylum for the last year, thanks to NATO. But the lunatics of the KLA cannot get rid of the Russian military task force, which prevents NATO and the Albanians from stealing independence from Yugoslavia. The fact is that most of our soldiers do not understand the degree to which Serbs have been demonized by a long-running propaganda campaign mounted by Croat, Albanian and other interests in Washington. But they do understand that they have found no credible evidence of widespread massacres, of "rape camps," of "death camps" or the "crimes against humanity" that NATO alleged before and during the 78-day air war. They also understand that the KLA is nothing more than an armed an ugly gang of thugs, and they do know about the heroin and cocaine smuggling, white slavery (kidnapping girls and forcing them into prostitution) and the other activities of the KLA and Kosovo Heroin Mafia.. Further, our military personnel understand how little damage the NATO air forces inflicted on the Yugoslav Army and police. But for today's essay, it is important to note that our troops can see just how incompetent the UN and NATO are at restoring even the most basic aspects of civil government in Kosovo. It has been a whole year and the occupiers have not even been able to re-initiate garbage collection, nor to provide a reliable flow of electricity. An entire year, mind you! Consider this, after a hurricane, tornado or flood in America, if you did not start restoring services in 49 hours, there would be a growing level of public impatience with government and local utilities. And imagine if the Federal Emergency Management Agency, governments and utilities did not have "normality" restored in a week. The hue and cry would be universal. But the UN viceroy in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner --a "caring socialist" incompetent who postured his way into the Nobel Laureat for his Doctors Without Borders agency-- tells a sympathetic press that the UN mission (UNMIK) has only just begun. He has had more than the time it takes for a woman to get pregnant and give birth, yet he has not even squared away garbage collection in the major towns. Nor has UNMIK been able to establish a credible court system, and as a consequence, UNMIK is imposing injustice in Kosovo, rather than restoring justice. The US Constitution's preamble lists the six purposes of government: "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," After a year, the UN and NATO have not achieved even the initial steps in those six purposes. Instead, we have managed to re-create the conditions of Hobbes' state of nature and life in Kosovo is truly, "nasty, brutish and short." One thousand Serbs, Gypsies, Turks, Gorani, Egyptians, Croats and other minorities have been murdered, as well as a Bulgarian-American employee of the UN. At the same time, another thousand or so non-Albanian minorities have been reported missing, some kidnapped, some probably murdered. On top of that, there have been some 400 or more Albanians murdered by the KLA, by mafiosi, or in "blood feud" attacks. This category includes at least 23 prominent KLA and political leaders in factional fighting. Though there have been several high-profile murders in Serbia and Montenegro in recent months, the more interesting political murder campaign is ongoing in Kosovo. Among the Gypsies (or Roma) the situation is doubly tragic. The Roma enjoy full civil rights in Yugoslavia and are more involved in the economy and society than any where else in Europe. But in Kosovo, the Agence France Presse reported on June 10 that 14,000 out of 19,000 homes owned by gypsies have been burned by Albanian xenophobes who are busy trying to chase every other ethnic community out of this ancient Serb homeland. And Muslims are just as much a target of this xenophobic ethnic cleansing conspiracy, as Slavic Catholics and Orthodox Serbs. When NATO entered Kosovo last year, they found the housing stock surprisingly intact, given all the propaganda about the Serbs burning villages while implementing the vicious Milosevic scheme "Operation Horseshoe," that NATO alleged as the justification for its actions. In fact, in the few photos I saw shown as proof of burning villages, typically showed one burning house on a village outskirts, probably the result of a local gunfight between the KLA and the police, or possibly the result of an air force attack on a hidden tank. About 100 Serb monasteries and churches have been destroyed in the last 12 months. Many of these dated back to before the Turkish occupation in the 15th and 16th centuries. Nor is there any prospect of a decline in the rate of murder, robbery, looting, and all. Last week there was a surge of violence, leaving 8 Serbs dead (including two women and a four year old boy) and 20 wounded. A land mine that killed two and wounded three, was barely missed by a loaded school bus just minutes earlier --that was probably the target the KLA wanted to hit. If anything is clear about this ongoing failure, it is that our own "Posse Comitatus" Act of 1873 is a profound insight that we should consider. That law recognized that the attempt to restore order in the US South after the Civil War by using army troops was a failure. Soldiers are not cops, and cannot substitute except in an extreme emergency, for a short time. The UN cannot use international military forces as a substitute for law enforcement professionals either, and for the additional reasons that nowadays politicians are much less willing to risk casualties among these occupying troops. About Operation Horseshoe: As to Operation Horseshoe, The Sunday Times of London reported on April 2 that the whole thing was a propaganda tale, spun in haste by German intelligence. Here in America, Joseph DioGuardi, Bob Dole, President Clinton and others quickly took up the lie to cover over what was an increasingly lengthy war with no end in sight. Horseshoe helped sustain the illusion until the Columbine High School massacre allowed the administration to divert the media's attention away from the Kosovo mess entirely. Here's part of what "The Times" reported on April 2: "Horseshoe - or "Potkova", as the Germans said it was known in Belgrade - became a staple of Nato briefings. It was presented as proof that President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia had long planned the expulsion of Albanians. James Rubin, the American state department spokesman, cited it only last week to justify Nato's bombardment." All those people were fleeing the bombs and it must have been deliberate province wide cleansing, wasn't it? Heinz Loquai, a retired brigadier general, explained in a new book that it was all made up. The proof is indicated by the fact that those who made it up mistakenly used the Croat term for horseshoe, "potkova," rather than the Serb "potkovica." Time after time, I have found, it is that extra little embellishment, which liars cannot resist and which only "gilds the lily" that gives the lie away. There were two reasons for the massive exodus last year. The early departures for Macedonia, included many non-Albanians just trying to get out of the way of the bombing and fighting. Civilians always take the common-sense option of getting out of the way of bombs and artillery --it's called the will to survive. But many Serb-speaking Muslims, Serbs and Roma were misrepresented by American TV reporters as being Albanians. The Albanian refugees came in response to orders from their clan chiefs and KLA leaders --if you did not "flee" you faced murder to satisfy the "blood feud" clan law under the Kanun of Lek Djukajini. Here's testimony from Cedomir Prlincevic, a leader of the Jewish community in Pristina, a community that was entirely cleansed by the KLA under NATO's watchful eye: "For months people in the West, and also, through satellite transmission, those of us in Yugoslavia, have been bombarded with Western media claims that NATO, that is the US and Germany, want to create, in Kosovo, a multiethnic, democratic society. The disadvantage of citizens of Serbia in dealing with NATO is that we tend to believe that other people mean what they say. And therefore I and others in Pristina believed that when KFOR, that is NATO, marched into Kosovo, they would protect the rights of Serbs and other non-Albanians. "The KFOR troops and the UCK crossed the border into Kosovo together; they came down the roads together; they entered Pristina together. "Immediately the UCK and gangster elements under their leadership took over government institutions and fanned out, going after the homes of non-Albanians and pro-Yugoslav Albanians. I lived in a large complex of nice apartments inhabited by doctors, lawyers, university professors, managers of various institutions, the intellectual core of Pristina society. Right after KFOR arrived, the gangster elements attacked this section, called Milana. They moved up and down through the buildings, banging on doors, breaking down doors, throwing tear gas into people's apartments, forcing them out on pain of death. "The Western media claims that KFOR has been "unable" to control the action of "mysterious gangs" who unfortunately have targeted Serbs, nor have they the manpower needed to prevent ethnic Albanians from Kosovo from exacting revenge. "This is simply untrue. For one thing, the Albanians who attacked our apartment complex spoke a dialect that made it clear they were from Albania, not from Kosovo. "When the Albanians attacked, one of my neighbors (a doctor) called KFOR. An English Major arrived with his squad. But the Albanians did not flee. "I spoke to this Major. I asked him why he didn't do anything. He said "This is a job for the Civil Authorities." But you see, by then there were no civil authorities other than the UCK. He said KFOR was only interested in cases of murder. "I showed him documents, confirming that I was the President of the Jewish community in Pristina. He replied: "Later." He didn't have time to examine these papers. While the Major and his squad were there - before their eyes - the gangsters continued their work. In some cases, when residents appealed to these British KFOR troops, the KFOR people took the part of modern day Solomons. The Albanians explained their plight: "We have no place to stay tonight." You see they felt themselves to be victims of a housing shortage. So the KFOR people said, "Why don't you share this apartment amongst yourselves!" - in other words, the gangsters were to move in with the prey. SO KFOR left, the Albanians moved in, and then the Albanians said, "Now leave or we will slaughter you." "Under these circumstances, who would stay? We lost everything, years of our lives - our lives, and our community, the only place we can ever be at home - gone. Stolen. "About 30,000 people were driven from this huge complex in Milana in a matter of days. I have had to flee to tiny quarters in Belgrade, I and my family, including my 81 year old mother. "The Jewish community in Pristina existed by fortuitous accident. During World War II the ethnic Albanian fascists in alliance with Italian and then German forces shot some local Jews. Then they arrested the rest and shipped them, in stages, to death camps. One large trainload of Jews took a wrong turn and got stalled several days at a train station, and was liberated by the Russian Army. My family thus exists only by virtue of error; but my 81-year-old mother, alive through this accident of fate, now has to face the destruction of her life, of all our lives. I personally was Chief Archivist in Pristina, and now at 61 years of age, what am I to do? What are any of us to do? "The behavior of a large part of the Albanian population was terrible. They lied to support the NATO campaign of lies, inventing tales of harassment and mass executions. Secretly, and then openly, they supported the UCK. These people would never have done such terrible things were it not for years of encouragement from two centers - the United States and Germany. Albanian culture unfortunately includes a strong strain of intolerance; it also has a powerful Clan structure which puts Clan leaders in a dictatorial position. These two cultural traits have been utilized by NATO to provide foot soldiers for modern-day fascism, complete with a liberal rhetorical cover. "Recently I have tried to communicate to interviewers why the Albanians left for Macedonia and Albania during the war. I told the interviewers they didn't understand the significance of certain features of modern Albanian culture. It is very closed off, very self-oriented, and very much under the control of the leaders of Clans. The word 'clans' is not used here simply to describe a formal structural feature of Albanian society. Quite the contrary, clans are the actual, functioning social unit of vast numbers of Albanians. "During the bombing, my neighbor, an ethnic Albanian, left. And I said to him why are you leaving? We're not getting killed in this housing development, we're all helping each other, and we're all together in the air raid shelter - why are you leaving? And he just looked at me, and he said, "I have to. I've been told to leave now. Everyone will be leaving now." "And that was that. This man and his wife, who were sophisticated intellectuals, whose children played with the Serbian children, whom I had considered to be friends - they were leaving. "Many opponents of the war thought the UCK was making a big mistake by terrorizing Albanians. But it wasn't making a mistake. It was making a point to the clan leaders: we have the backing of NATO and we will kill Albanians who buck us. Given the existence of anti-Serb racism among Albanians, this we're-the-winning-team argument brought the leaders into line. "Huge numbers of Albanians left Kosovo during the bombing. They did not leave because Serbs were slaughtering them, which was a made-up story. They did not leave because they were getting bombed; though they were getting bombed. "They left because they were told to leave by their clan leaders. "Vast numbers of people from all over the world have protested the bombing of Yugoslavia. In doing so they have created a movement out of the political shambles of our world. "And yet it is now, after the cessation of bombing, that we have entered the worst hell. This terrible fascist-like invasion has created far worse suffering than the bombing. Some are driven out, some disappear, some are murdered and their murders attributed to forces beyond NATO's control. Some, like the Serbs and Roma of Orahovac, have been imprisoned in a new Warsaw Ghetto. "I urge those who care about Justice not to remain silent." * * * More of Mr. Prlincevic's testimony may be found at "The Emperor's Clothes website: www.tenc.com © Copyright 2000 by Benjamin C. Works --SIRIUS www.siri-us.com Readers may repost this report, in whole or in part, for "fair use only," so long as this copyright notice is included.