Kosovo and the Myth of Serbian Depravity
Jonathan Davis sharply disputes Stephen Schwartz's negative characterization of Serbs.
Support Pajamas Media; Visit Our Advertisers
On the night of Thursday, February 21, 2008, a rabble attacked the U.S., German, British, and Croatian embassies in Belgrade, Serbia. Less than a mile away over 200,000 people, peacefully protesting against Kosovo’s declaration of independence, were praying in and around St. Sava Cathedral, completely oblivious to the violence being committed in their name. That protest was ignored; the riots commanded the world’s attention.
The embassy attacks were rightly greeted with condemnation, especially in Serbia itself. The following morning the air of Belgrade was blue with curses of ordinary Serbs damning those who had attacked the embassies and brought shame to Serbia.
The people of Belgrade were particularly hurt by the events of that night. Belgrade’s growing reputation as “Europe’s best-kept secret” was in tatters. The jewel of Eastern Europe, the London of the Balkans, a Mecca for clubbers and in-the-know travelers, was now just another Balkan trouble spot.
Serb-hating pundits were now triumphantly touting the riots as evidence that Serbs were unfit to govern Kosovo and that nothing had changed since the time of Milosevic. Serbs, it was argued, are violent, murderous thugs and the riots prove it.
That violent night was a grim micro-history of post-Cold War Yugoslavia. Yet again the wrongful acts of an unrepresentative minority of Serbs had commanded the attention of the entire world and generated undeserving condemnation of the people of Serbia. Serbophobia — a virulent, truth-resistant strain of racist chauvinism and bigotry that riddles the American and European body politic — was given a powerful boost that night.
For the last 15 years decent Serbs have been in exactly the same position as that of decent Muslims since 9/11. In the case of Muslims the actions of Islamists and other terrorists acting in the name of Islam have led to the majority of Muslims — completely innocent people — being unfairly branded as extremists and mass murderers.
Both the Serbs and moderate Muslims are expected to take the blame for acts committed by maniacs claiming to represent them. Jews are also very familiar with this problem. Since 1948 anti-Semitism has been given extra impetus by the situation in Israel and Palestine. The alleged crimes of Israel, often fabricated and exaggerated beyond recognition, are attributed to Jews everywhere. Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and Serbophobia are all thriving together, powered by the same type of myths, simplifications, ignorance, and falsehoods that animate all bigotry.
In the Serbs’ case the injustices do not end at mere hatred, slander, and unpopularity. An anti-Serb media bias, combined with a one-sided account of Bosnian war crimes, has resulted in the very word “Serb” conjuring up stereotypical images of rampaging militias, mass rape, sniping at besieged civilians, refugee columns, and ethnic cleansing.
The fact that all sides committed atrocities during the Balkan wars, and that the Serbs also suffered terribly, is obscured by the West’s unbalanced focus on Serbian war crimes in both the media and the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The Western media have consistently under-represented or ignored crimes against Serbs, while uncritically reporting even the most ludicrous of anti-Serb allegations.
Take for example the U.S.-planned and supported “Operation Storm,” where in 1995 around 200,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Croatia. Not only is this war crime virtually unknown in the West but it is celebrated as a national holiday in Croatia. I would estimate that more Serbs have been permanently ethnically cleansed in the former Yugoslavia than all the other ethnic groups put together.
I believe that most Serbophobia and the myth of Serbian guilt is based on what British journalist Nick Davies calls “flat earth news.” In a new eponymous book on the subject he defines flat earth news as a story that appears to be true and is widely accepted as true, such that eventually it becomes a heresy to suggest that it is not true — even if it is riddled with falsehood, distortion, and propaganda.
I believe most of what people of the West believe about Serbs is based on flat earth news.
Even though the truth contradicts the myth of the Serbs as the Balkan panmalefic, the myth persists in the West, where it fuels Serbophobia and serves as justification for today’s unjust policies towards Serbs and Serbia. Justifications for the bombing of Serbia in 1999, the consequential annexation of part of its sovereign territory, and the unilateral granting of recognition to Kosovo are all rooted in the myth of Serbia as the Balkan panmalefic. They are all based on falsehoods, distortion, and propaganda — in other words, flat earth news.
People often ask me, “How did Kosovo happen?” Once they learn the truth — normally after visiting Serbia — they want to know how the UN, U.S., and EU — traditionally enforcers of international law — came to reverse 60 years of diplomatic precedent and are now trying to change the borders of a sovereign democracy and create an inviable ethnic nationalist micro-state. They want to know how NATO, a defensive organization, came to carry out an offensive war against a civilian population based almost entirely on the allegations of a terrorist organization. They also want to know why the wrongs of 1999, now established as wrongs, have not been acknowledged and righted.
I can tell you what the majority of Serbs believe, even if I cannot present the evidence of their case in one article.
The Serbs believe that Kosovo independence is part of a “Greater Albania” project, which is nearly identical and at least as dangerous as Milosevic’s ill-fated “Greater Serbia” project, which was responsible for so much suffering in the former Yugoslavia. They believe that Kosovo is just the start of this project and that the Albanians of Macedonia and Montenegro will eventually seek to join a Greater Albania too, using Kosovo as a precedent.
They believe that the terrible reputation of Serbs generated by the acts of Serbian war criminals and aggravated by Western media bias (flat earth news) gifted the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) their grand strategy for creating this Greater Albania, namely: fool NATO into attacking the Serbs to force them out of Kosovo and do this by convincing the world that the war crimes of Bosnia are being repeated in Kosovo.
Serbs believe that the KLA, in combination with the U.S. Albanian lobby, teamed up with the Clinton administration and set about convincing the world of this lie. It was a successful strategy.
Serbs consider NATO’s justifications for the bombing to be not only baseless, but in some cases absurd. Serbs believe the disinformation machine we saw operating so effectively over the second Iraq war was also deployed against the Serbs to support an illegal war also based on pretexts and lies.
Serbs consider the Rambouillet “peace conference” to be a sham. They were presented with terms that bore a striking resemblance to the terms Hitler presented to them in 1941, namely that NATO forces could travel and deploy anywhere in Yugoslavia as an occupying power — something no sovereign state could allow. Serb refusal to accept these terms was presented as intransigence, even though the Yugoslav assembly had accepted the non-military parts of the agreement, including full autonomy for Kosovo.
Today a consensus is emerging that the putative crimes against Kosovo Albanians were indeed grossly and deliberately exaggerated by the KLA, probably to dupe NATO into attacking Serbia. In the light of history, the justifications for NATO’s war against Serbia do indeed seem as baseless as the WMD case against Iraq. Even the mass exodus of Albanian refugees — a sight that symbolized the conflict — is now suspected of being a KLA-orchestrated media stunt (although I have yet to see proper evidence of this).
This growing consensus is partly due to the Iraq war. Our attitude to government spin, misinformation, and lies has been transformed by that conflict. It is not just the propaganda elements of the Iraq situation that illuminate Kosovo, but there are also striking parallels between Iraq and Serbia that highlight the double standard applied to Serbia: the Kurds of northern Iraq.
The Kurds suffered terribly under Saddam Hussein’s regime. He even used nerve gas against them as part of his brutal oppression. When Saddam was forced out of northern Iraq in 1991, Iraqi Kurds enjoyed 12 years of full autonomy protected in their no-fly zone, until they were reintegrated into the national government after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. They remain very much part of Iraq and no one is even considering giving them their own country, even though they want it.
In 2000, when the Serbs liberated themselves from Milosevic after nearly 10 years of mass protests and resistance, they immediately set about establishing a stable liberal democracy, which is an exemplar of pluralist democratic governance. Serbia has some of the most forward-thinking and enlightened policies on human rights, legal reform, sustainable economic development, and the environment. In Serbia today minorities are protected and safe — ask the Roma refugees from Kosovo. Foreigners are both welcomed and treated extremely well by ordinary Serbs. Extremist parties are remarkably unpopular, especially considering the political climate. For the last five years the economy has been thriving and Serbia has been marching steadily towards hard-earned EU membership.
Did their autonomous separatist region get reintegrated into the national government after liberation? We know the answer: no.
What has been the Serb’s “reward” for reforms, compliance, and liberation from tyranny? It is to be treated exactly the same way that they have been treated since the end of the Cold War: slandered by hypocrites, bullied by superpowers, judged by a double standard, and blamed unfairly even when they are the victims.
It is no wonder the Serbs are exasperated, angry, and emotionally exhausted. Given the scale of the wrongs against them, the embassy protests were tame. Those riots took place in front of bombed-out ruins of government buildings destroyed by NATO’s unjust bombardment. The rioters were the children of people ethnically cleansed from Kosovo when the armed forces protecting them were forced out. How harshly would the world judge America if a few hundred people (out of 200,000 protesters) attacked the Saudi embassy across the road from Ground Zero?
The decent people of Serbia, the people who have struggled to build a modern inclusive democratic Serbia, remain trapped between the fury of a lost generation at home and a hostile world beyond. They are a people powerless to change their painful past, unable to accept the injustices of the present and facing what appears to be a grim future as either Russia’s vassal or Europe’s whipping boy.
A symbol of the Serbian predicament is the 19-year-old who died in the U.S. embassy fire started by the rioters. He was one of the attackers, sure, but he was also one of the hundreds of thousands of Serbian refugees from Kosovo, ethnically cleansed by Albanian violence and now living in poverty in Serbia. He died for nothing, impotently venting his fury at the countries that wronged him and his people, watched by an unsympathetic world that continues to blame and malign the very people it has wronged.
Jonathan Davis is an Irish management consultant who lives in Belgrade, Serbia. He is founder of the Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club and regularly comments on Balkan matters at his personal blog, LimbicNutrition.
| Comment |  Digg This |
 del.icio.us |
 |
 |
 PJM Home |
90 Comments
dan:I’d just like to throw out there the, in my amateur opinion, high probability that the “rioters” who assaulted the US embassy were actually Russian FSB agents, or their agents inside Serbia.
Secondly, while I disagree with Schwartz, who is a buffoon on all subjects he touches, I think the equation Milosevic=Serbians was not entirely unjustified, as sympathetic as I may be to the tales of Albanian pomposity and depravity. Pomposity and depravity seem to be the glowing fire of the Southeastern European soul, however unpolite it may be to point it out.
Mar 12, 2008 - 5:02 am Aleksandra:The problem is not only associated with foreign media, it is something we got used to. This democracy (definitely the one I’ve been fighting for) brought foreign capital, creating medias which would do anything to make any decent Serbian who loves his country (and I do, what doesn’t mean I do not like others, actually I think no one can like others if doesn’t love his own) look like potential treat to peace. So, if you ask them, it is better to be a slave and do whatever told, instead having national dignity. So after the protests, which were so touching, the only picture they shown, were those idiots who destroyed OUR city.
One more question appeared - why US embassy asked NOT TO BE protected? Am I the only one who finds it not logical?
“They believe that Kosovo is just the start of this project and that the Albanians of Macedonia and Montenegro will eventually seek to join a Greater Albania too, using Kosovo as a precedent.”
You forgot Greece. They are experiencing the same problem on north. I remember the petition they’ve been signing few years ago while I was there. But Albanians and their supporters are clever, it is better to start with Serbia which already has bad reputation and leave Greece as member of EU for the end, when it will be too late to see what was done.
“fool NATO into attacking the Serbs to force them out of Kosovo and do this by convincing the world that the war crimes of Bosnia are being repeated in Kosovo.”
Here I must disagree a bit, I really do not find NATO “stupid” and “fooled”, I think it is opposite - they are fooling all of us (both Serbians and Albanians) for bigger and more important things - minerals for example and good geographical position for their base.
“the disinformation machine we saw operating so effectively over the second Iraq war was also deployed against the Serbs to support an illegal war also based on pretexts and lies.”
That frightens me a lot… If we compare Iraq and Serbia, new bombing is on my mind all the time, and knowing that USA, UK and their EU “slaves”, it is not so unrealistic.
“but there are also striking parallels between Iraq and Serbia that highlight the double standard applied to Serbia: the Kurds of northern Iraq.”
And what is Turkey doing? Shameless.
“What has been the Serb’s “reward” for reforms, compliance, and liberation from tyranny?”
The idea “I don’t want to become part of EU” maybe? I really don’t… Like Norway for example, and they live very well, aren’t they?
“It is no wonder the Serbs are exasperated, angry, and emotionally exhausted.”
How dare we?
“The decent people of Serbia, the people who have struggled to build a modern inclusive democratic Serbia, remain trapped between the fury of a lost generation at home and a hostile world beyond. They are a people powerless to change their painful past, unable to accept the injustices of the present and facing what appears to be a grim future as either Russia’s vassal or Europe’s whipping boy.”
I am signing up this, and one more addition - never liked Russia, but now I despite USA, UK and … similar.
And for the end, I will never accept “democratic lesions” from the “nation” who is responsible for destroying old cultures like Iraqi’s, Indians, Afghan… Thanks a lot, but no thanks.
Mar 12, 2008 - 5:48 am Jensen66:Well, I am really glad to hear a different voice from the crowd … It is quite curios that almost anyone who have visited Serbia has a very different opinion about the people and the country, compared with a nasty image usually presented by the official media…
Mar 12, 2008 - 6:23 am ujaklija:The reality is never black or white, but rather gray (more or less), and when ever I hear about a case too white or too black, it makes me suspicious…
The “serbian case” has been presented too black and nasty, over a last decade, there is no doubt about that. For that reason, I welcome the articles like this one, with a hope that they can make a certain balance in the name of a more realistic truth …
What an insiteful, balanced article. Regarding the mass exodous of Albanians from Kosovo, it would seem that the KLA and Mr. Rugova may have played a part in it qas well…and this aspect bears more investigation. See this blog and its thursday, April 5th 2007 entry entitled “Expelled?”. It certainly raised my eyebrows.
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50
Mar 12, 2008 - 6:39 am MelP:Excellent article!
It does not surprise me that you would disagree with Stephen Schwartz, because Stephen Schwartz is not what he seems. Schwartz converted to Islam in Bosnia http://www.naqshbandi.org/events/articles/conversion_schwartz.htm
Mar 12, 2008 - 12:55 pm Sarah:That’s not rumor, it is fact, that even appears in his Wikipedia profile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Schwartz_(journalist) Since that time, Schwartz has been called “The Trojan Horse for Islam” — especially as an apologist for Balkan Islam. http://www.serbianna.com/images/schwartz.jpg Schwartz can always be counted on to take the anti-Serb side of every argument, for that very reason.
Very seldom is it that I post comments on blogs, but having read Mr Schwartz’s diatribe, I felt I really had to come out in defence of this author. Firstly, I’d like to thank him for trying to give us as balanced a view as possible. His position and standpoint is diametrically opposed to that of Mr Schwartz, in that, his approach to the topic is to be as fair as possible, whereas Mr Schwartz is so full of bigotry, anger and bull, he can’t even get his facts straight. Whilst this author writes with integrity and justice, Mr Schwartz writes with fury and venom. This author seems to have no hidden agenda, he is simply telling it as it is from his standpoint (backed by absolute historical fact) which he cites on his blog (www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/open-serb-hatred-must-be-answered), and that of those around him. He is an Irishman living in Belgrade, why would he want to defend the indefensible, if the indefensible were the case; it makes no sense. Mr Schwartz on the other hand has distinguished himself on many forums with his outrageous, if not downright insane remarks, comments and writings. This author mentions the “flat earth news” theory, with which I wholly concur. It seems people are all too keen to take up a viewpoint which slots neatly into their personal “belief system”, whilst carelessly tossing out any truth or reality which doesn’t fit in with their preconceived ideas. Very few of we mere mortals are willing to keep an open mind, throw out old bigotries and see things from a different perspective. This is what distinguishes this author from those around him, he seeks the truth!! And does it brilliantly.
Mar 12, 2008 - 1:43 pm Yokes:Dear Mr. Davis,
you forget to mention that almost 40% of Serbs vote for Radical party which publicly favours extinction of Muslims and Croats and claims those nations don’t even exist.
What is that if not fascist? Also, you seem to forget that Albanians have been under oppression for more than 20 years. If you ever went to Kosovo, trust me, you would not have any doubts. US Bombings in 1996 in 1999 as well as US help to Bosnian and Croatian military operations made an end to the slaughter of 100 000 people. Let me remind you that 90% of that number was killed by Serbs.
And still, you find it in your hart to judge these things. Do you judge attacks on Germany in WWII? Or would you prefer sitting in your living room and waiting it to end.
It is nice to sit and write articles, but please do understand, that these are human lives.
I never supported any wars. And don’t support many US actions. But go to Bosnia, and ask people what do they think about Wesley Clark, Clinton and US politics in the 1990’s. You will hear only words of appraisal. The bloodshed would have been much bigger without it.
Unfortunately help came too late for many.
Mar 12, 2008 - 3:01 pm john:Thankyou for telling the truth, may god bless you with good health!
Mar 12, 2008 - 4:30 pm GK:This article is one of the most dishonest pieces of journalism to ever stain PJM.
Take for example this line :
“”Operation Storm,” where in 1995 around 200,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Croatia. Not only is this war crime virtually unknown in the West but it is celebrated as a national holiday in Croatia.”
From the WikiP page :
Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia at the time said: “The fact is, the [Serb] population left before the Croatian army got there. You can’t deport people who have already left.” Several videos supporting this appeared later. In 2004, one video showed the Serbian politician and paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj saying: “If they (the Croatians) come, we must tell our people to leave Croatia, rather than letting them live under Croatian rule”. In 2007, Croatian OTV television aired regular daily TV programs recovered after capture of Knin. Among others, these videos showed the Krajina Serb military instructing the local population how to evacuate, one month before the Storm.
You are a very dishonest journalist.
Mar 12, 2008 - 6:01 pm GK:Another important point missed here is that is was the Serbs who started all 4 wars - first Slovenia 1991 - which the Serbs has no historical claim over. Then Croatia in 1991, which again, the Serbs had never in history had an inch of Croatian land. They have no historic claim to any of Croatia. Then in 1992 they started the Bosnian war. In Bosnia, the Serbs have ruled at some stages in history, as have the Croatians and Bosniaks - but the fact is, it was the Serbs who invaded and started the war. Then in 98/99 they started the 4th war in Kosovo.
None of this is in dispute.
It is also not in dispute that the Serbs slaughtered the entire male population of Srebrenica - 7000, they set up concentration camps like Omarska, when they captured the 60,000 pop. Croatian city of Vukovar, they sieged the city for 3 months and destroyed every single building, killed 20% of towns population and when they finally captured the city, they executed all the doctors, nurses and patients at the hospital. And lets not forget the siege of Sarajevo for 3 years - 50,000 killed
NO ONE else in the balkans came even CLOSE to these sorts of atrocities. For this article to rewrite history it to share the blame is un-acceptable for the standards of PJM.
I have some sympathy for the Serbs losing Kosovo because of demographics of muslims out breeding them. And the part about “Greater Albania” is spot on.
But this article is the exact equivalent of the Palestinian re-writing of middle eastern history.
Mar 12, 2008 - 6:24 pm MT:You should all ignore the comments made by “Yokes” and “GK.” They are obviously Serb-haters - probably nationalist Croats or Bosnian Muslims - just like Stephen Schwartz, whose virulent polemic was nothing less than pure libel. Replace the word “Serbs” with “Muslims” or “Americans” in his seething, scornful diatribe and it would rightfully be dismissed.
Thank God for Jonathan Davis, a Westerner who truly knows and understands the situation. As he stated, “more Serbs have been permanently ethnically cleansed in the former Yugoslavia than all the other ethnic groups put together.”
You should all believe in him.
Mar 12, 2008 - 10:06 pm DT:I am signing up this, and one more addition - never liked Russia, but now I despite USA, UK and … similar.
And for the end, I will never accept “democratic lesions” from the “nation” who is responsible for destroying old cultures like Iraqi’s, Indians, Afghan… Thanks a lot, but no thanks. (from Aleksandra)
It is quite curios that almost anyone who have visited Serbia has a very different opinion about the people and the country, compared with a nasty image usually presented by the official media…(Jensen66)
Subscribe!!!
Mar 13, 2008 - 12:29 am Jonathan:Dear GK,
Jonathan here, the author of this piece.
A quick response to your two posts:
There is no dispute that the Serbs were Ethnically Cleansed from the Krajina . Unlike the temporarily displaced Kosovar Albanians, the Serbs of Eastern Croatia and Kosovo have been permanently expelled.
Since you cite Wikipedia, please note the definition of “Ethnic Cleansing” below and the fact that the Ethnic Cleansing of the Krajina Serbs is a listed instance:
“Ethnic cleansing defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide. At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of a population from a given territory. (See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing#Definitions )
Regarding the Yugoslav wars, it is a common claim that Serbia “started” 4 wars. This betrays a fundamental ignorance about what actually happened.
I invite you review this article, one of a great series, that gives a quick overview of what happened:
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/03/18/the_origin.html
You invite us to remember war crimes and massacres committed by Serbs - the same crimes everyone knows about - yet you fail to remind us that Serbs were also victims of massacres, Ethnic Cleansing and unjust bombardment. You are living proof of the widespread success of anti-Serbian propaganda and the Western public’s widespread ignorance of what really happened in Yugoslavia.
If you are claiming that ALL Serbs are somehow culpable for the acts of Bosnian Serb forces then I invite you to support that with arguments. As to my “dishonesty”, I invite you to show me a single instance where I am even factually wrong, not to mention penning falsehoods.
You might ask yourself how sure you are what you think you now about Serbs and Serbia. Could it be that you are just another victim of the Flat Earth News? I sure was about Serbia and I am damned sure I am about many matters where my information is based only on press reports. Is it possible that it is you, not me, who is signed up to the false version of history? Have the courage to ask yourself these questions honestly and educate yourself on these matters. I suspect what you learn may shock you.
Mar 13, 2008 - 4:43 am Yokes:I thought we are to trust facts and not Jonathan Davis? I guess I was wrong.
Mr. Davis, if you had seen that war from first hand it would have been clear to you that you are talking nonsense.
“Flat Earth News”? Yes, sorry you are right. While you are certainly not influenced by your beloved girlfriend and her friends brainwashing you.
Seeing war is different than watching television talk about it. You should have seen Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia when your friends were “cleaning” it. You would have different thoughts.
I leave you to your “Flat Earth” theories. Both you and Handke
Mar 13, 2008 - 9:24 am Yokes:As for facts Mr. Davis, you very well know them, but let me illustrate them to the public:
http://www.bih-x.com/vijesti/grafika/izbori_srbija_2007.jpg
88 seats in Parlament by Tomislav Nikolic, a radical fascist claiming Croatians, Bosnians and Montenegrins are actually Serbs, they just don’t know it yet. His head of party is a war crimes convict, notorious Vojislav Seselj (google him).
http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr/index.php?cid=810&sec=194
Does that not show the state of thought in current Serbia? Does that not illustrate what ideas they support?
Kostunica, the current Prime Minister is no better. All this makes normal people think they are Balkan tribe with no respect for the ir neighbours, other nations, fellow humans.
George Bush (who many here dislike) is a kindergarten material for these guys. He just has more power than them.
Official position of Nikolic is that Serbia’s border is on Adriatic sea (deep inside Croatia). Is that not fascism?!
Mar 13, 2008 - 9:37 am Jonathan:Dear Yokes,
You have become even more incoherent.
As I requested, please address my points with either counter arguments or factual challenges. Speculations about me and personal attacks are both futile and bad mannered.
The only brainwashing I have even been subjected to is a form you have clearly never experienced. It is known as “education”.
Mar 13, 2008 - 9:52 am Jonathan:Dear Yokes,
Regarding your post about Nikolic and the Serbian Radical party, even though I loathe them I need to correct your attempt at slandering all Serbs.
The Serbian Radical Party got just over 28% of the national vote in the 2007 election.
That is in a country blighted by war, still being bullied and badly mistreated.
It is a miraculously LOW turnout for them.
Similar parties in Austria, Denmark, and Italy get similar results, and they are EU.
You are also lying about its leader Vojislav Seselj. He is not a war crimes CONVICT he is a war crime SUSPECT currently on trial.
“Does that not show the state of thought in current Serbia? Does that not illustrate what ideas they support?”
It shows that 70% of people REJECTED the Serbian Radical Party! The whole point of my article was to educate people about the existence of the ignored Serbian MAJORITY who repudiate the likes of Seselj.
How do the decent Serbs of the Democratic and Liberal Parties feel when they see you lumping them in with their bitter enemies like the SRS?
Does Mr Bush represent you? Did Mr Clinton? Does the existence of the Klu Klux Klan “prove” Americans are a racist country? Does 54% Bush support mean the country supports torture and Abu Graib? Of course not.
You are applying a grossly unfair double standard, but I and people like me are not letting people like you get away with it any more.
Mar 13, 2008 - 10:10 am PercivalWalks:Mr Davis excellent article! Finally someone who can see through the smoke and mirrors of wartime propaganda!
P.S. Yokes you are apparently an Albanian ( Muslim) supporter,fair enough,but at least be factual.You love to make statements that show your bias but are so short on facts.Personally,all readers like I expect is rather less propaganda, and rather more honesty and an acceptance that this is not a simple ‘black’ and ‘white’ choice.
Mar 13, 2008 - 11:26 am Andreas:Oh, Yokes and GT. Not again an anti-Serb attack. It’s getting tedious and even some liberals might be reconsidering Kosovo as a cause celebre in the light of the vitriol by you and others.
A bit more evenhandedness towards war criminals on the side of the Croats and Albanians and a recognition of a similarity between Rep Srpska, Rep Krajina and Kosovo, and I might start taking your Mladic/Karadzic/Seselj/Nikolic campaign seriously.
Mar 13, 2008 - 3:07 pm Wills:Yikes Yokes, getting personal just shows the limitations of your arguments. If you really had anything of any substance to say, you’d be focusing on your message not on attacking the author personally. If this forum is, supposedly, for the so called intelligent elite, I shudder to think what sort of sub-species we’re co-habiting with. Mr Davis, I implore you to keep up your valiant effort to liberate the minds of the less than hopeful candidates of the world. Let us not forget Copernicus.
Mar 13, 2008 - 4:36 pm GK:To Jonathan
haha !! So they Serb leaders themselves ADMIT that they gave the orders for the Krajina Serbs to leave Croatia BEFORE the Croatian army got there - and you call this “ethnic cleansing” !! Why dont you watch the videos of the Serb leaders calling for the population to leave 2 days before the Croatian army there ?? I doubt you will.
This is exactly what the Arabs did in 1948 and now claim that Israeli`s expelled them.
At least the Arabs werent silly enough to leave it all on video !!
Mar 13, 2008 - 6:17 pm Jonathan:Dear GK,
Why don’t you post your evidence?
Once you have we can discuss it and if I have the time I will explain the nature of Ethnic Cleansing and civilian movements in wartime.
The trial has just started of former Croatian General General Ante Gotovina.
Allow me to quote the BBC (not known for its love of Serbs):
[Emphasis mine]
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7288994.stm
That the Serbs were Ethnically Cleansed is beyond question - it was textbook Ethnic Cleansing - the only questions is, was it officially sanctioned and if so, was General Ante Gotovina involved?
Mar 14, 2008 - 1:24 am Yokes:There is plenty of evidence. See “Death of Yugoslavia” for start. It’s very convenient to be liberal, but I lived for some time in Serbia (not that long ago), and I can say that majority has radical views, except for a few intellectuals in Belgrade.
I am not sure has Mr. Davis visited some of the “events” that often take place in Serbia and are even supported by government, but when you see that it’s clear where the wind is blowing from.
Also Kostunica is not much different from Seselj and Nikolic. Still 30% is a lot, and it’s the LARGEST party in Serbia. Also, don’t forget that no Le Pen ever had such radical views as serbian (even mainstream) politicians do.
You call Kosovo “nationalist mini-state”, but forget to mention that 90% Albanians live there. More than the count of Serbs in Serbia.
Also, people here tend to call everyone “muslim” as long as he says something they don’t like. Very “intellectual”.
Serbian politics likes to call everything “ethnic cleansing”. The facts show otherwise. These people were ordered to leave by their own government.
Trial to Gotovina: statement of UN Translator and other civilians found in the area at the time.
Also video footages exist of them training evacuation to Bosnia/Serbia.
Do we have first world known case of Auto-Ethnic-cleansing. Clean yourself out? Or is it called “refugees” in the rest of the world?
Mar 14, 2008 - 3:02 am Yokes:Also my comment on Mr. Davis’s girfriend was not an attack on him (since when is having Serbian girlfriend a crime?
It was just to say that he is biased by the environment that he lives in, and people he makes contacts with (and how they perceive him).
It’s an old story of priest saying how all people give him a lot to eat and drink, therefor people have enough supplies. Where he didn’t notice to see it’s not because they are rich. It’s because he is a priest.
Mar 14, 2008 - 3:05 am Jonathan Davis:Dear Yokes,
Your comments on my girlfriend are a perfect illustration of your fatal flaw: You THINK you know something but in fact you are completely ignorant of the facts.
Here come the knockout blow: My girlfriend is not Serbian.
How does that sit with your preconceived notions and prejudices? It is so easy to go to a forum and read something about me and then start making guesses. It is much harder to get the facts not to mention understand the truth.
Even if I did have a Serbian girlfriend, even if I was a full blooded signed up Serb, my provenance, personal relations and characteristics have nothing whatsoever to do with this discussion. You are attempting argumentum ad hominem, which is a fallacy.
I suggest you familiarise yourself with what fallacies are (so you can avoid embarrassing yourself further) and perhaps have a read of “A Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion” (http://tinyurl.com/3y74eq).
I invited you to post evidence and instead you just repeat you claim that there is “plenty of evidence”. If there is plenty, then post it and lets assess it. Your problem and you know it, is that evidence destroys your slanders. They thrive on half-truth and innuendos. The truth, and its messenger evidence, are against you.
For example, had you actually watched “Death of Yugoslavia” you may have noticed how sympathetic it is to Serbs.
You say you lived for some time in Serbia and you found that the “majority” had “radical views, except for a few intellectuals in Belgrade”. My experience flatly contradicts this. The majority are angered by mistreatment of Serbs, the situation in Kosovo and slanders from the likes of Schwartz and you. Despite that, a minority support the Serbian radicals and a massive part of that minority consists of refugees and other Serb victims of war crimes seeking recognition and justice.
By the way, exactly where and when did you live in Serbia?
You mention certain “events” that are “supported by government” that show “where the wind is blowing from”. What are you talking about? You are big on glittering generalities and short of facts, specifics, arguments or evidence.
I can (and if any other commentator asks for it, I will) post dozens of links to sources as diverse as Encyclopaedia Britannica and Amnesty International establishing beyond any doubt that Serbs were Ethnically Cleansed from the Krajina. If they did not, then there is no such thing as Ethnic Cleansing.
You are, of course, welcome to keep denying that Serbs have suffered Ethnic Cleansing in the Krajina, Kosovo and parts of Bosnia just as you are welcome to deny the world is round. But now that you are in denialist territory you have completely discredited yourself. I see little point in continuing this discussion. I would not waste my time on a Srebrenica denier or a racist, so why should I indulge this anti-Serb bigotry of yours?
Mar 14, 2008 - 6:34 am Gaza:Yokes,
It is a terrible shame that there aren’t more people capable of supplying valid arguments for your point of view so that we could all enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed Mr. Davis’ article.
Attacking the author on a personal level completely disarms and disqualifies anything meaningful you might’ve presented.
Mar 14, 2008 - 6:43 am LF:GK, some of what you say is interesting, but we’d far rather laugh with you, not at you.
Mar 14, 2008 - 8:09 am Yokes:Mr. Davis, I can admit that you are a better rhetoric than me. You ask me to present a case around something you can’t confirm either. You either can’t present “evidence”. What would that evidence be? Evidence of what?
That “everyone is guilty”. Well, had you lived in Yugoslavia for a bit longer, you would have seen that you are a victim of Flat Earth News, and not me. But from another side (minority side?).
you claim that 200 000 people were cleansed, although all evidence (recordings, video tapes, documents), show that those people were ordered to leave by their own “dogs of war”. They were told that Muslims and Ustashi will kill them, slay them,… Reading transcripts from Gotovina, Cermak and Markac trial could reveal some facts to you.
Your girfriend “attack” as I said was not an attack. But you cannot impose yourself as non-biased observer when you are biased. And obviously here to promote Serbian point of view.
I strongly beleive NATO bombings in Bosnia and Serbia, as well as operation Storm have saved more lives than destroyed.
Mar 14, 2008 - 8:26 am Jonathan:Dear Yokes,
Humour me, what would you say to a situation:
It is 2013. Serbia launch “Operation Mayhem”, massive military assault to “liberate” Kosovo from the “occupation”. They are helped by Russian planners and aircraft. The Kosovo Albanian authorities order Albanian civilians to flee for their lives in the face of the Serbian assault. Those civilians flee mostly to Albania, the ones that do not flee are killed. Thousands of their properties are destroyed. All of this is witnessed by Canadian NATO peace-keepers.
13 years later, those refugees are still in Albania where they are both poor and their plight ignored. They form a large bloc of support for Radical Albanian political parties, mostly because people in the West are ignorant of their plight and deny they suffered any wrongs.
Yokes, would you say those people are “Ethnically Cleansed” or not? Would you say that what happened to them was justified? How do you think the world would react to Serbia celebrating that “liberation” of Kosovo as a national holiday?
I am sure you can see what I am saying now that I have illustrated what happened in the Krajina using more traditional victim groups and villains.
A double standard always applies when it comes to Serbs and Serbia. When Serbs are the victims they are not “Ethnically Cleansed” but Voluntarily Repatriated or merely “displaced”. When Croats forcibly suppress a regional rebellion within their sovereign borders (and permanently expel nearly the entire population) it is described as justified liberation, when the Serbs suppress an insurrection in a province within their sovereign borders, it is a war crime that requires NATO intervention.
This is my gripe with you and others. You seem to be constitutionally incapable of fairness when it comes to the Serbs. You treat them unfairly, you malign them, you insult them and you deny historical wrongs perpetrated against them and then you marvel at their rejection of the people and countries who are treating them so unjustly.
You want it both ways. You want the Serbs to be guilty of crimes they have committed but then you want exactly the same crimes to be reclassified as justified actions (i.e. NOT crimes) when Serbs are the victims.
I am afraid the magic power of the “Blame the Serbs” fairy dust is wearing off. People like me are waking up to the bigotry and hypocrisy of people like you. Democratic Serbia is limping but still on its feet. And if we can just get bigots like you to shut up and stop giving ammunition to the radicals and grievance mongers here, we may be able to finish the job started when Milosevic was toppled by the young European-inclined people of Serbia, the job of building a prosperous democratic pluralist Serbia at the heart of a stable, peaceful and prosperous Balkans.
Mar 14, 2008 - 11:19 am Catherine:Unbelievable. We have an honest and unbiased report and all we see slogans,personal attacks and propaganda replacing a deeper and more profound analysis,coming from likes of Yokes kind.Moreover, the aggressive and intimidating atmosphere generated by these ‘Kosovar’ hoodlums, , is what apparently awaits anyone who dares to oppose the creation of a gangster state within Europe: do not oppose drug trafficking, do not oppose people trafficking, accept foreign domination and a dog eat dog existence, such will be the reality of stealing this territory from Serbia.
The behavior of the ‘Kosovars’ at the web is typical. Over the years since around 1992 they would install themselves into the audience at public meetings or on the web and within a short time launch into their act - of course in those days they appeared in the form of ‘Bosniaks’ having miraculously escaped the Bosnian Serb ‘torture chambers/concentration camps’ to present themselves as ‘innocent ethnically cleansed refugees.
This “Yokes”, “GK” characters have never done anything but post the typical propaganda that NATO posted to fool the public that bombing the Serbs was just.
That might explain why our mainstream media initially reported to the public that the Fort Dix gang was a group of terrorists from the former Republic of Yugoslavia. What a disgusting dirty little trick, the majority of the western zombies listening to that crap were believing these guys were Serbs. That is an intentional use of words intending to fool people.
Well,get your facts straight, we all know the propaganda lies without you, “Yokes”. I really hope you just go away and blog on some JIHADI sites where you might be welcome.
Mar 14, 2008 - 12:30 pm Steve:It does not matter what is driving Yokes prolific posting. The general style and of-the-hip fired references are reminiscent of the professional propagandists from the CNN/BBC message board during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. There is nothing that can be said that will make him change her philipiques against Serbs. Logically, should anyone in the West try to deport their Muslim immigrants for the sake of survival of their own country, or a part thereof then they should never be allowed to ever control the area again. It is stunning how far some people would go in imposing their view on everybody, only to feel good about their own views and attitudes. Arguing with their kind is literally a headache.
My real reward came some 5 years after the Yugoslavian war, at an air show in Omaha. A recogniscance helicopter pilot asked me about my home country, and then told me that he was stationed in Kosovo for a couple of years. I did not express any opinion about his mission, we only talked about flying in the Balkans - weather, terrain etc. Than, at the end he added: “As for the war, I think Miloshevic was right.” Yes it is just one opinion of one Midwestern guy, it was not official, not recorded, may be or may not be the opinion of the other soldiers stationed there etc., etc.
Mar 14, 2008 - 1:20 pm Luka:Thus a million Yokes or pro-Albanian supporters postings can not change it.
Dear Mr. Davis, et al.
Yes, my name is Luka and I am clearly a Serb. Unfortunately, much to your chagrin (i.e. GK and YOkes), I live in CANADA and have a largely unbiased view of my native Jugoslavija due to my Western education. Unlike your Albanian, or Croatian, universities (university, singular, in Albania) we have not been taught to forget the crimes perpetrated by the Ustasha regime in WWII. As Mr. Davis is keen to point out Yokes, you, like most of the world, have a dual-standard in regards to the Serbian people. I am sure that you are quite eager to move on and forget about the 1.2 million Serbs, Jews, and Roma killed in WWII at the hands of the Croats. Unlike the Serbs, the Croats were quick to join forces with the Nazis in an attempt to become de facto rulers of the Balkans. Furthermore, contrary to your primitive views of Serbs, I am NOT a radical, murderer, or ethnic cleanser. In fact, with my annual summer visits to my home in Belgrade, I am filled with joy to see a new direction for Serbia. It is a future that I take great pride in as I will be able, as a member of the next generation, to shape the socio-economic path of my trouble nation. Moreover, the majority of my friends and family in Belgrade are like-minded. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of contemporary Serbs are tired and fed-up of politics in war, and just want to return to a normal life. For example, during the most recent demonstrations in Belgrade, I was not shocked by the destruction of the U.S. Embassy. To me, that was just an outlet for a frustrated people that have been perennial scapegoats for the West’s quest to appease the Islamic world. However, the friends I spoke to were APALLED at the U.S. Embassy fiasco, and called me a fool for condoning such outbursts of violence.
Overall Mr. Davis, I must thank you for presenting a well structured and critical text. I am sure I will get many responses claiming that I am biased, but that is far from the truth. Although I am a Serb at heart, and will always love my country and people, I am more of a Westerner by common classification. IN any case, kudos to the author for trying to sort through the rubble of modern journalism and propaganda, and attempting, albeit in vain, to educated the less fortunate (i.e. GK and Yokes).
Mar 14, 2008 - 3:42 pm Yokes:I fail to see any difference between Serbia led by Nedić in WWII and Croatia by Ante Pavelić.
Anyway, what does all this have to do with WWII? Or Muslims? Or Croats?
FYI Mr. Davis, Croatia did not harras Serbs for 30 years, as Serbia did Kosovars. On the contrary 60% of policemen employed in Croatia during Yugoslavia were Serbs by nationality (out of 10% Serbs total).
Same was on Kosovo. Albanians were treated as worthless. Situation escalated when their independence was deleted by Slobodan Milosevic with the support of the nation. This is clear to majority of the world.
I won’t be posting here anymore, not because i don’t have any arguments but because i despise salon politics and feel pitty for myself (much like Serbs?) for commenting in the first place.
To all you here, I wish you never have to live through real wars and real deaths. I’ve seen all of them on the Balkans, and I don’t want to see anymore. I beleive Serbs should live through what Germans did after WWII. To understand what they did to all of their surrondings. To feel sorry for that. And to live in peace. Not to call for more wars and deaths (like they do currently).
Mar 14, 2008 - 4:55 pm Troskya:Yokes what is truly shocking is that you don’t even question the possibility that any of this could have happened to the Serb population. Is it because you think that the Serbs are invincible or is it because it would change the whole picture of Muslim victimhood? The Serbs have only wanted justice to be done. ALL sides in the conflict have done unspeakable things but the only side which has been systematically demonised are the Serbs.
“I believe Serbs should live through what Germans did after WWII. To understand what they did to all of their surroundings”
I’m sorry but I do not see you as victim,your attitude displayed here is uncomfortably reminiscent of the bystanders who lined up to shout ‘dirty Jews’ at those being deported by the Germans in the scene from “Schinders List”. Indeed your gloating at the place being lost to Serbia and Serbs deserve that in this mentality has more than a touch of “Judenfrei” satisfaction about it.
“I won’t be posting here anymore…” Be my guest, since your Albanian propaganda, doesn’t have any effect here,try maybe on CNN or BBC.
As for the rest,what amazes me by reading postings by such people as Yokes there are there still people out there so naive to think the USA or UK governments do anything unless they are going to gain from it? The USA and UK are not do-gooders, not by a long shot. Don’t you watch the news?! i.e. USA wanting bases in Poland and Czech Republic ?! WAKE UP! If Georgian states want to break away from Russia’s hold, the USA and UK will oppose Russia as openly as they oppose Serbia? Not likely. The USA and UK are akin to bully’s in a worldwide playground, pushing the smaller kids around but too cowardly to go head to head against someone their own size. And just like any bully, the only way to stop them is for someone their own size to come along and give them a good hiding to put them in their place.
Who knows where the current Kosovo situation is going to lead, but it’s certainly clear it’s not aiding the current east / west tensions. Just how far do the USA and it’s allies have to push until Russia finally bites and says enough is enough? Is this an underlying plot? Keep pushing until Russia has no choice but to intervene? And then the world blames the Balkans for a world war? If such a war does ensue, the Balkans certainly cannot be held accountable because the true antagonists are the USA and their allies (UK lapdog included).
But it’s unlikely such a world war will ensue when the modern war is not masterminded by men in arms and medals, but is a cloak and dagger war drawn up in the boardroom by men in suits. Kosovo Albanians may be celebrating now but they’ll rue the day they took a handshake of friendship from the USA and their western European allies, after they have bled them dry and put them into ridiculous amounts of debt that they will never be able to repay. Today’s weapon of mass destruction is not the missile, it’s a shrewd combination of destabilization and finance. Cripple a country by introducing so much foreign investment that the foreign banks and countries end up owning/ruling the country behind the scenes, simultaneously forcing political hands and reducing the income of it’s workforce in order to enrich their own pockets. That’s the cloak and dagger intension of what they call free market reforms.
The game was over for Kosovo Albanians as soon as they welcomed the UN / KFOR troops. Their children and grandchildren for generations will be nothing but slaves to their ’so called’ saviors.
Mar 14, 2008 - 6:46 pm Luka:What the current situation has to do with WWII is to illustrate the absurdity in the erroneous statements you have made Yokes. I am simply stating that Croats, as well as much of their Western sympathizers and tourists, have rather rapidly dismembered any connection between themselves and their atrocities committed in WWII. In my humble opinion, 1.2 million people killed in Ustasha death camps is FAR WORSE than any thousands that have been killed during the 90s in the former Yugoslavia. I am in no way condoning the haphazard politics of Milosevic or his Western-puppet successors, but I am merely emphasizing the duality of the situation: on one hand you are unwilling to move on and forget Serbia’s struggle with Albanians, yet on the other Croats are quick to properly hide their past history. My argument is that war is war, and you cannot forget ANY ONE SIDE’S ATROCITIES. Nobody will ever forgive the U.S. for Agent Orange and Napalm in Vietnam. South Korea will surely never pardon Japan’s capture and subsequent use of “pleasure girls” as prositutes for their army. Heck, I doubt I as a Canadian can ever truly feel at ease in my adopted home knowing what the Canadian AND U.S. governments (albeit non-existent at the time)did to the Native Indians. Moreover, the Native Indians keep getting harassed and live in plight. I don’t see you calling the U.S. or Canada butchers (smallpox blankets to Native Indians anyone?) and demanding that they hand over territory. Learn your history, then talk. And for your information yokes, I saw the wars in Yugoslavia. I left after the first one, and was subsequently joined by my cousin who had to flee from Kosovo at the hands of Albanian mobs.
Mar 14, 2008 - 9:22 pm Land of de Free:Today in so -called West it is politically incorrect to attack blacks, Asians, Arabs/Muslims and homosexuals, but perfectly acceptable to attack a Serb-a name that has become synonymous with evil.
Terminology that demonizes Serbs with collective guilt thrives,we have Stephen Schwartz a.k.a. “Suleyman Ahmad” ( his own Muslim/Arabic name,since he converted in Bosnia to Islam as MelP rightly pointed out earlier)as evidence of it.
I honestly believe that all the intense hatred displayed at the Serbs stems directly from their refusal to take orders from the Empires of history. All the other members of the former Yugoslavia only wish they had that kind of fortitude.The Albanians have been totally opportunistic and obedient to whatever great power has wielded influence over the Balkans and have absolutely no historical record of principled behavior whatsoever. Even their newly found “secularism” in Kosovo is a convenient placation of the neo-marxist Eurocrats who frown on faith.
NATO led by the USA and hates Serbs for not being sufficiently “compliant” in the way that so many vassal states of Europe are. Who in eastern Europe has had the temerity to resist America’s/NATO “invitation” to host garrisons, permanent military bases or missile installations - other than “hated” Serbia and Belarus? Contrary to what mainstream media says on daily basis, Serbia suffers precisely because she does not regard EU/USA as her “master”.Look at all Balkan countries, they have all benefited at the expense of Serbia, because Serbian voice is ignored and never heard.
When Kosovo inevitably becomes a member of the EU the real fun will start. As I understand it rather a lot of Al Quaida “freedom fighters” ( PC mantra) settled in the region before, during and after the war. I suppose they will be entitled to invite their rather extended families to come and join?
BTW,it’s well documented by now,the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part.
These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The February testimony of an Islamist ringleader associated with the East Africa bombings have also helped throw light on these actions.
They have however been disguised under the cover of dozens of “humanitarian” agencies spread throughout Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Funding has come from now-defunct banks such as the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank and from bin Laden’s so-called Advisory and Reformation Committee. One of his largest Islamist front agencies, it was established in London in 1994.
With all that,I just don’t get it. The Western MSM media and leadership seems to have two al-Qaedas - west of the Aegean lies good al-Qaeda, whose opponents must be jailed, while the East is home to bad al-Qaeda, whose presence justifies the massacre of nigh on a million souls.
In closing a message to Serbs reading this. Whilst it may appear most of the world is against you, there are some of us who sympathize with your situation and while I understand burning our embassies and flags is purely an inevitable act of venting frustrations and anger against our governments, please don’t hate all Americans because not every American blindly believes everything our government says or agrees with what they do.
Mar 15, 2008 - 11:10 am Simon Saivil:Mr. Davis:
It is commendable of you to side with a very unpopular cause in the West - the injustice done to the Serbs.
Stephen Schwartz is a man with an agenda. Most commentators of your article seem to have understood that.
One point that I find disconcerting about your, otherwise praiseworthy and bold article, are the assumptions about Mr. Milosevic. In that respect you yourself seem to be a victim of the “flat earth news.”
Nationalism, “greater-Serbia” ambitions, lack of democratic credentials, and such are taken granted about Mr. Milosevic. I think that all of these can, and to a large extent have been proven as charges without merit. In fact they are easily disproved.
The problem with defending the Serbs but agreeing with the West’s assesment of Milosevic leads nowhere but to where the West wants it to lead. That logic remind me of a crude anecdote:
Monied, good-looking man asks young female acquaintance:
-If I gave you $10,000 would you sleep with me?
-That’s a lot of money, yes I would!
-What if I offered you $100.00?
-Of course not! she snapped, What do you think I am? A slut?
-We’ve already established that. We are now haggling over the price, he answered calmly.
William Safire of NYT said that Milosevic was not a dictator who oppressed the Serbs but the one who led them. In other words Serbs were the opressors of the Balkans.
Agreeing apriori to the West’s characterisation of Mr. Milosevic deligitimizes much of your otherwise exceptional article.
Sincerely,
Simon Saivil
Mar 16, 2008 - 12:29 pm Joseph1832:I agree that the west have unfairly demonised the Serbs, although it must always be noted that they did much in the 1990s worthy of condemnation. I have always thought of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia as being about secession and counter-secession. When they escalated to war, the wars were brutal, but civil wars usually are.
However, the West’s analysis was always hampered by its limited historical horizons. In fact, it scarcely exaggerates to say that much of the West carries around two historical precedents:
a) Munich - if you see a bad guy, not hitting him is appeasement.
b) Holocaust - brutal conduct combined with ethnic hatred is likely to end in extermination camps.
With these as precedents, the West has an awful tendency of trying to fit what it sees into one or both of these categories. It was impossible to say that both Bosnian Serbia and Bosnian-Muslims were fight wars of secession, with the Serbs committing the most number of war crimes. It had to be a Hitleresque figure fighting for the Third Reich style “Greater Serbia” out to exterminate Muslims.
The West could not see that, had the former Yugoslavia been divided up in the style of Wilson’s 14 points, then Serbia would have received an awful lot of Croatia and Bosnian territory. What Serbia specifically asked for was the right of Serbian areas for self-determination, which is hardly of itself repugnant. Of course, if your only precedent is Hitler, it all sounds scarily familiar. but if your knowledge goes beyong GCSE Grade C, then it is a not unreasonable demand. (Instead, we insisted that the earlier pre-secession borders were sacred (mis)applying the great 1986 ICJ authority of Burkina Faso v Mali - which concerned rewriting international borders that had long appeared on world maps as such.)
So, in Kosovo, we were well primed to believe the worst - well, I wasn’t!! When 33 Albanians die after a battle in Racak, it must be a death squad. (I dare say most in the west would have called it an Einsatzgruppen if their knowledge stretched that far, but doubtless they made the connection.) Yet, to those who know better, post-battle massacres are depressingly familiar parts of all conflicts. Perhaps had we looked to Mai Lai or to the Belgian massacres of 1914 we could have better understood the nature of the war crimes in the former-Yugoslavia.
Heaven knows, our leaders (even those who bombed Serbia) are for more understanding of the dynamic of anti-insurgency when our own troops walk away with a 70-0 scoreline in Iraq and Afganistan.
Mar 16, 2008 - 2:22 pm Anna:To the writer regarding evidence:
” conflict - is now suspected of being a KLA-orchestrated media stunt (although I have yet to see proper evidence of this).”
Well I can provide you one story regarding propaganda - Nancy Durham 1998 and CBC ”
Nancy Durham became a journalist at the age of 25 and she came to the Balkans at the beginning of 90s to report for the biggest world television stations. Contrary to her colleagues, she always went alone carrying a little Sony camera. In September 1998, reporting on an illegal KLA hospital, she met an 18-year-old girl Rajmonda Reci. Rajmonda was in the hospital allegedly for stress, caused by her sister’s death, who was murdered by Serb forces. She said that she had joined the KLA because of that loss, that her sister had died for the future of Kosovo and that she was ready to do the same. The story about Rajmonda’s sad destiny went around the world.
Several days after KFOR entered Kosovo in June 1999, Nancy Durham returned in order to see what happened with the main character of her film during the war. Truth was very painful: it turned out that Rajmonda lied and used her to spread Albanian propaganda.
“I had the impression that I was sinking. I thought: “This is a catastrophe.” I sympathized with those people and they deceived me. I was very depressive,” Durham said.
http://www.mediaonline.ba/en/?ID=198
http://www.aeronautics.ru/nws001/cbc01.htm
Do you need more? Please if you can open your eyes and look pass the media brain washing regarding Slobodan Milosevic - visit web http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org - a great collection of articles collected over years - doing exactly that - exposing lies.
Mar 16, 2008 - 2:51 pm Mr. R:The Radical Party does not want to exterminate anyone. They are a a party “of love”, as Seselj put it during his testimony. He considers most Croats and Muslims in Bosnia to be Serbs. Thus, they are to be a part of his Greater Serbia, not to end up as smoke up a chimney or landfill for a mass grave.
Milosevic was elected and was in fact less nationalist than the opposition during his time in power (except the 1998-2000 SPS-SRS governments). Captain Dragan and people of his kind said things like “I want to see that man hang” not because he helped Krajina Serbs but because he did not do so sufficiently and they ended up being expelled.
Mar 16, 2008 - 6:49 pm Trenox:Milosevic is a scapegoat!
As catastrophic policies, dictated by diseased “geopolitics” go, Kosovo independence must rank among the very top. This is not the first time in history, of course, that cutthroats are elevated to “legitimacy” by the intervention of outside powers, but Muslim, organized crime-controlled, jihadist-heaven Kosovo must figure a special case.
Its prime sponsor, the United States, has suffered a devastating attack by Muslim terrorists, the very same who have been repeatedly linked to Albanian Kosovar terrorists, drug smugglers, arms traffickers, and prostitution kingpins, and is currently fighting a life-and-death struggle with Muslim terrorist insurgents in Iraq and the Taleban Muslim fundamentalist sect in Afghanistan.
It is indeed remarkable that while the US is pressing its European “allies” to contribute more military means against the Taleban, it is simultaneously moving to create an Islamic fundamentalist hub in the heart of Europe.
Europe won’t be approaching the establishment of HRK in a united fashion; several EU countries are not happy with the prospect. Those European countries that are clamoring for “justice” for the Kosovar Albanians, like Britain and France, do so though in the face a major internal threat in the form of both dormant and active Muslim fanatical cells, not to mention foreign Muslim terrorists instigated by such paragons of world stability as Iran and Syria; by declaring Kosovo independent, these countries offer Muslim terrorism a fantastic logistics and training base, and one that will be protected and babysat by a European law enforcement group to boot!
The claim by the European Union that a 1,800-member “policing and administrative” unit will be able to take hold of the situation in the HRK sounds surreal, not to say asinine and laughable, in view of a record of overwhelming European indecision and ineffectiveness in times of crisis. The Europeans, the very same who failed miserably in controlling the disintegration of Yugoslavia; the very same who are still debating and forming committees in order to decide on how to treat homicidal Muslim fundamentalism inside their own countries; the very same who have learned nothing from the London and Madrid bombings; the very same whose law enforcement agencies warn of the Albanian Mafia and the links between organized crime and Islamic terrorism to no apparent avail will be the ones to control the UCK and its genocidal scheming? Please …!
In America, even diehard conservatives, like John Bolton and Lawrence Eagleburger, have their doubts about allowing the HRK to come into being and are not afraid to state them in public, including the fact that even if HRK “… is allowed [to declare itself] an independent state, it would be a dysfunctional one and a ward of the international community for the indefinite future…:”
The train has left the station though and the Kosovar Albanian killer bandits are celebrating the stupidity and shortsightedness of their Western saviors. Now, let’s watch as a new Albanian rampage unfolds in an effort to bring the Final Solution upon Kosovo’s remaining Christian population and their cultural and religious monuments as NATO and the rest of the armed Westerners sit by idly and observe the carnage.
PS: There’s a YouTube clip with John Bolton making his point.
Mar 16, 2008 - 8:43 pm Cliff:CONGRATULATIONS and what a phenomenal elucidation of the inside story. Well done, Johathan Davis. As an outsider from South Africa, this article has really stirred my curiosity. I have taken the time to read the original article and your reaction is well justified given the generalisation of the important issues - the people mostly affected.
We will be entering into a new age shortly and I pray that when we emerge from Photon Belt the world will become a better place.
Mar 17, 2008 - 12:48 pm MikeL:Even thoung Mr. Davis has been in Serbia Belgrade etc. He hasn’t been in Kosovo or Bosnia. I don’t think he was shown what serbs have done to Albanians In Kosovo. They were denied the right to use their language, to go to schools, practice their religion freely, their autonomy granted to them in 1974 was stripped. I have Kosovar friends that told me that their albanain friands and them were expelled from school simply for being Albanain and to quote on what the Serbian police told them: “This school is for Serbians only, not for Siptar dogs”. They had to be home schooled. Also they were aways regarded as 2nd class citizens since they were not slavs. People need their rights to exist in order to coexist with their neighbors.
Now not all Serbs are radicals as they are portrayed in the media, and they are very nationalistic people like most in the world. Granted that Serbia has moved forward into more moderate leadership and removed Milosevic from power, the Kosovars could not take the chance of having Serbian misrule again. But previous governments have mismanaged and oppressed the Albanians to a point that there isn’t an easy coexistence between the Serbs And Albanians. Thus Kosovar Albanians cannot trust to being ruled as they were before.
Mar 31, 2008 - 5:34 pm Andy:How biased can this article get??
Not only has he not been to Bosnia or Albania! He lives in Belgrade and is founder of the Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club lol..
Serbia has been the aggressor in every war in the Balkans and oppressor of non-serbs under their government. I think the facts speak for themselves, just have a look at why Yugoslavia broke up?? Do u think it was because everyone was being treated fairly and equally??
Like Mike puts it ‘people need rights to exist to coexist with their neighbours’ and their government failed to do that, instead choosing to provoke hate against other ethnic groups through carefully planned propaganda. Not to mention that a large percentage of the population still supports the Serbian Radical Party which embraces the ideology of the Milosevic regime and who is lead by no other than Serbian War Criminal Vojislav Seselj!
It is time for Serbia to move on and succumb to reality instead of living in fantasyland! They need to accept the consequences of their actions and stop continuing the same politics.
Mar 31, 2008 - 10:32 pm Edd:Ah Jonathan.
What a great humanitarian you are.
You have the patience of a saint, to keep responding with fairness and objectivity in the face of such predjudice,intransigence and hatred.
My hat is off to you Sir.
Edd
Apr 1, 2008 - 11:53 pm Anon User:Yeah, Serbs always the civilized and peaceful people. How many wars have they started so far? Oh, I forgot those concentration camps and rapes were either hoaxes or self-defense. How many catholic churches did the Serbs destroy? How many houses did they burn in Kosovo (40% of them) ? Rape, murder, mass graves and looting and they still deny it. Cry me a river.
I can understand why the hate Albanians (Not Slavs, refuse to assimilate to “superior” Serb culture, been living in “Serbia’s Jerusalem” for ages before Slavs came) but the Bosnians are 100% Serbs in blood. Preach hate and eventually people will act on them. You will then reap the benefits.
“Small enough is this our land,
Yet two faiths there still may be
As in one bowl soups may agree
Let us still as brothers live.
No single seeing eye, no Muslim tongue,
May 1, 2008 - 7:36 pm Anne:escaped to tell his tale another day.
We put them all unto the sword
All those who would not be baptised.
But who paid homage to the Holy Child,
were all baptised with sign of Christian cross.
And as brother each was hail’d and greeted.
We put to fire the Turkish houses,
That there might be no stick nor trace
Of these true servants of the devil!”
Pro-Albanian supporters and/or Albanians themselves commenting on this well writen article propaganda lies with you.
First of all isn’t it peculiar how so called Serb genocide in Kosovo fast forward eight years of illegal NATO intervantion and creation of Kosovo ’state’ became DISAPPEARING GENOCIDE!
truly astonishing is revealed by media coverage of the death of Slobodan Milosevic. Because it could not be clearer from current media reporting that journalists have come to understand that the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia from March 24 to June 10, 1999 was also based on lies. It is therefore clear to them that the government deceived the public and, once again, the media supported the deception. And yet, despite this, despite the endless horror of Iraq, journalists cannot bring themselves to expose either the earlier lies of government or their own complicity in them.
Virtually to a man and woman, journalists sold the lie to the public in 1999. This makes them complicit in the killing of 500 Serb civilians and $100 billion worth of destruction. More importantly (for the media), the lies about Kosovo provided a template and justification for the subsequent lies surrounding the “humanitarian intervention” in Iraq. An Observer editorial gives an idea of the significance, explaining that the West’s “belated response to political thuggery” in the Balkans resulted in “a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention”. It was led “at first by President Clinton over Bosnia, and again in Kosovo. The rationale behind those interventions was then invoked for the invasion of Iraq”. (Leader, ‘Let a dictator’s death remind us of the evil of unchecked nationalism,’ The Observer, March 12, 2006)
Dissident writer Alexander Cockburn translates this into meaningful English: “the legal, military and journalistic banditry that have accompanied the Iraq enterprise from the start were all field-tested in the late 1990s in the Balkans”. (Cockburn, ‘Did Milosevic or His Accusers “Cheat Justice”? The Show Trial That Went Wrong,’ CounterPunch, March 14, 2006; http://www.counterpunch.org)
Kosovo - Genocide It Wasn’t
Just as they knew Iraq possessed WMD in 2003, so in 1999 politicians and journalists knew exactly what the Serbs were doing in Kosovo. Bill Clinton, then President, talked of “deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide”. (John M. Broder, ‘Clinton underestimated Serbs, he acknowledges,’ New York Times, June 26, 1999)
British defence Secretary, George Robertson, insisted that intervention in Kosovo was vital to stop “a regime which is intent on genocide”. (Nic North, Kevin Maguire And Harry Arnold, ‘A pilot saved,’ Daily Mirror, March 29, 1999)
A year later, Robertson conjured up the ghost of Nazism to justify NATO’s action:
“We were faced with a situation where there was this killing going on, this cleansing going on - the kind of ethnic cleansing we thought had disappeared after the second world war. You were seeing people there coming in trains, the cattle trains, with refugees once again.” (ITV, Jonathan Dimbleby programme, June 11, 2000)
US Defence Secretary, William Cohen, claimed: “We’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing… They may have been murdered.” (Quoted, Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Degraded Capability, Pluto Press, 2000, p.139)
Across the spectrum, the media instantly rallied to the cause. A Daily Mail news report was titled: “Flight from genocide; as half a million Kosovans flee their homes in terror from Milosevic, a haunting echo of another war 60 years ago.” (Steve Doughty, Daily Mail, March 29, 1999)
The Mirror referred to “Echoes of the Holocaust.” (Quoted, John Pilger, ‘The lies that brought hell,’ Morning Star, December 13, 2004) The News of the World declared: “The aim of this war is to stop Serbian genocide in Kosovo.” (Cited, Monitor, The Independent, April 19, 1999) A 2002 BBC documentary on the alleged Serbian genocide, ‘Exposed’, was billed as a programme marking Holocaust Memorial Day. (Exposed, BBC2, January 27, 2002)
As we will see, this constitutes a tiny sample - in fact British media were filled with hundreds of claims of genocide in Kosovo. A Lexis Nexis database search similarly showed that between 1998-1999, the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and Time used ‘genocide’ 220 times to describe the actions of Serbia in Kosovo.
And yet, following the war, NATO sources reported that 2,000 people had been killed in Kosovo on all sides in the year prior to bombing. In November 1999, the Wall Street Journal published the results of its own investigation. Instead of “the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect… the pattern is of scattered killings (mostly) in areas where the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army had been active”.
The Journal concluded that NATO had stepped up its claims about Serb killing fields when it “saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story - civilians killed by NATO bombs. The war in Kosovo was cruel, bitter, savage. Genocide it wasn’t.” (Quoted, Pilger, op., cit)
In 2004, Neil Clark, a Balkans specialist, reviewed Milosevic’s trial in the Guardian, noting that the charges relating to the war in Kosovo were expected to be the strongest part of the case. But “not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove Milosevic’s personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, the nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into question”. (Neil Clark, ‘The Milosevic trial is a travesty,’ The Guardian, February 12, 2004)
Philip Hammond of South Bank University summarised the extent of the political and media deception:
“We may never know the true number of people killed. But it seems reasonable to conclude that while people died in clashes between the KLA and Yugoslav forces… the picture painted by Nato - of a systematic campaign of Nazi-style ‘genocide’ carried out by Serbs - was pure invention.” (Degraded Capability, The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Pluto Press, 2000, p.129)
What A Difference Seven Years Make - The Genocide Disappears
Without recognising their earlier role in propagandising for war against Serbia, and without drawing attention to the implications for US-UK criminality, the media has completely re-written its own history on Milosevic. A media database search by Media Lens has failed to turn up a single example of any British journalist describing Kosovo as ‘genocide’ since Milosevic’s death.
The Sunday Express provides a typical example of the kind of language used:
“He [Milosevic] was facing 66 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity for his central role in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the 1990s, in which 200,000 people died. The worst incident was the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, when an estimated 8,000 Bosnian men were murdered.“ (Tominey, ‘Milosevic cheats justice by dying in his jail cell,’ Sunday Express, March 12, 2006)
Thus, also, the Guardian website:
“Milosevic faced 66 charges including genocide in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The most egregious act committed under his watch was the Srebrenica massacre, in which up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys died.” (Guardian Unlimited, ‘Closure perhaps, but no justice,’ March 11, 2006)
It seems the earlier massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 is now Milosevic’s worst crime. Of the 1999 ‘genocide’ in Kosovo, the alleged mass slaughter of tens of thousands, there is not a word.
And yet in 1999, the Guardian’s Timothy Garton Ash observed that the Nato attack on Serbia was intended to stop “something approaching genocide“. (Garton Ash, ‘Imagine no America,’ The Guardian, September 19, 2002)
Francis Wheen ridiculed opponents of the war who believed, “that genocide is a lesser evil than bombing military installations“. (Wheen, ‘Why we are right to bomb the Serbs,‘ The Guardian, April 7, 1999)
Also in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland wrote of Milosevic‘s plan “to empty a land of its people“. (Freedland, ‘No way to spin a war,’ The Guardian, April 21, 1999)
A Guardian editorial described the war as nothing less than “a test for our generation“. (Leader, The Guardian, March 26, 1999)
This month, Ian Traynor of the Guardian wrote of Milosevic‘s death:
“… he left a legacy of more than 200,000 dead in Bosnia and 2 million people (half the population) homeless. He ethnically cleansed more than 800,000 Albanians from their homes in Kosovo”. (Ian Traynor, ’Obituary: Slobodan Milosevic,’ The Guardian, March 13, 2006)
Traynor mentions forced displacement in Kosovo, but does not mention the ‘genocide’ described by the Guardian in 1999.
Admirably, John Laughland has even noted in the Guardian how “witnesses have been trooping into The Hague for nearly two years now, testifying that there was neither genocide in Kosovo nor any plan to drive out the civilian ethnic Albanian population“. (Laughland, ‘Criminal proceedings,’ The Guardian, March 14, 2006)
But Laughland made no mention of what virtually the entire British media, including the Guardian, had been insisting just seven years earlier.
In 1999, a team of Observer reporters wrote:
“His [Slobodan Milosevic’s] troops in Serbia are out of barracks. But in Kosovo they are scouring the fields, villages and towns, pursuing their own version of a Balkan Final Solution.” (Peter Beaumont, Justin Brown, John Hooper, Helena Smith and Ed Vulliamy, ‘Hi-tech war and primitive slaughter,’ The Observer, March 28, 1999)
An Observer leader declared:
“There are already grounds for considering events in Kosovo as genocide.” (Leader, ‘Time, now, to raise the stakes,’ April 4, 1999)
Leading Observer commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, wrote of how Milosevic had “embarked on his latest campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’, that vile euphemism for genocide”. (Rawnsley, ‘You can’t deal with barbarism by washing your hands – nor by wringing them,’ The Observer, March 28, 1999)
But ‘genocide’ has now also disappeared from the Observer’s vocabulary:
“Europe and the US watched and failed to act for far too long. The consequences were the massacres of Srebrenica and Gorazde, the prolonged siege of Sarajevo and the forced displacement of a large part of Kosovo’s Albanian population.” (‘Leading article: Let a dictator’s death remind us of the evil of unchecked nationalism,’ The Observer, March 12, 2006)
Again, the emphasis is on Srebrenica. Again, the crime is “forced displacement” rather than ‘genocide’.
In 1999, David Aaronovitch - then employed by the Independent - described Serbian actions in Kosovo as “the worst crime against humanity committed in Europe since the Second World War“. (Aaronovitch, ‘The reality is that war, tragedy and incompetence go together,‘ The Independent, May 11, 1999)
In a tragicomic moment, Aaronovitch even asked:
“Is this cause, the cause of the Kosovar Albanians, a cause that is worth suffering for?… Would I fight, or (more realistically) would I countenance the possibility that members of my family might die?”
His answer: “I think so.“ (Aaronovitch, ‘My country needs me,’ The Independent, April 6, 1999)
And yet in reviewing the death of Milosevic in the Times last week, Aaronovitch wrote of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica:
“In front of our eyes, just about, with our full knowledge, thousands were taken to European fields - just as they had been 50 years earlier - and murdered en masse. It was the most shaming moment of my life. We had let it happen again.” (Aaronovitch, ‘The meaning of Milosevic: how the Butcher of the Balkans changed us,’ Times, March 14, 2006)
Aaronovitch made passing mention of Kosovo four times in the article, but he made no mention at all of the extent of the killing. Instead, he wrote:
“If Bosnia was the betrayal through inaction and appeasement, Srebrenica the consequence and Kosovo the determination not to let it happen again, then the line runs clear.”
But, according to Aaronovitch in 1999, Kosovo was all about the fact that “it” +had+ happened again in a more extreme form. We wrote to Aaronovitch:
“Why no mention of this, given that Kosovo was ‘the worst crime against humanity committed in Europe since the Second World War‘? Do you still believe there was a genocide in Kosovo 1998-1999? If so, what is your evidence for this?” (Email, March 14, 2006)
We have received no reply.
In 1999, Marcus Tanner wrote in the Independent:
“NATO stepped up the air war against Yugoslavia last night in what appeared a desperate race against time to stop the Serbs from committing ‘genocide’ against Albanian civilians in Kosovo.” (Tanner, ‘NATO targets troops as refugees flee genocide and tells Serbs to pull back or die,’ The Independent, March 29, 1999)
A month later, Tanner wrote:
“RTS [Radio Televisija Serbija] has turned into a vehicle that whips up genocidal passions, a vital cog in the business of psychologically preparing the entire Serbian nation for the necessity of exterminating its enemies.” (Tanner, ’I watched as “TV Slobbo” turned into voice of hate,’ The Independent, April 24, 1999)
This month, Tanner notes that in the spring of 1998 a new group, the Kosovo Liberation Army - which in fact was funded by the CIA - organised an insurrection that spread rapidly across the province:
“Milosevic responded with the ruthless brutality that had become his trademark, pouring special police units and paramilitaries into the province and burning down villages where the rebels were based.“ (Marcus Tanner, ‘Obituaries: Slobodan Milosevic,’ The Independent, March 13, 2006)
Tanner writes of how the “conflict worsened” and how “the policy of burning villages and expelling Kosovar Albanians was stepped up, massively so after Nato began air strikes” - but about the alleged “genocide” there is not one word.
Likewise, an Independent leader last week referred, not to ‘genocide’, but to “thousands killed in Kosovo and Croatia“. (‘Leader, ‘A death that cheats justice and Serbia’s democracy,’ The Independent, March 13, 2006)
The Independent on Sunday also noted blandly: “1998: Milosevic sends troops to crush uprising in Kosovo.” (‘The bloody life and times of the butcher of Belgrade,’ The Independent on Sunday, March 12, 2006)
In 1999, in an article titled, ‘Europe’s turn in the killing fields,’ Jon Swain wrote in the Sunday Times:
“The symbols of death found in Cambodia under Pol Pot are everywhere in Kosovo today - in the blackened ruins of houses where the victims of ‘ethnic cleansing’ lie, in the broken and homeless people on the move in their tens of thousands.
“Only this is Europe. This continent has not seen such a procession of human misery since the end of the second world war, and for it to be allowed to happen again has diminished us all.” (Swain, ‘Europe’s turn in the killing fields,’ Sunday Times, April 4, 1999)
Last week, the same newspaper argued:
“It was only in 1998-99, when Milosevic reacted to Albanian guerrilla tactics in Kosovo with large-scale repression, that the West finally ended its long courtship and took up arms against him.“ (Brendan Simms, ’The butcher is dead,’ Sunday Times, March 12, 2006)
Again, no genocide - the description cannot be compared to the picture painted by the Sunday Times in 1999.
Conclusion - Safety In Numbers
In 1999, moving as an intellectual herd, almost all journalists portrayed Serbian actions in Kosovo as ‘genocide’ and supported military action. The Blair government needed a black and white picture of the world to generate public support for the killing. A civil war was not enough, “scattered killings” were not enough. The state needed atrocities, Nazi-style horror - it needed a ‘genocide’. And the media obliged. How ironic that politicians and journalists used comparisons with the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ to sell their war. In August 1939, one week before invading Poland, Adolf Hitler declared:
“The wave of appalling terrorism against the [minority] inhabitants of Poland, and the atrocities that have been taking place in that country are terrible for the victims, but intolerable for a Great Power which has been expected to remain a passive onlooker. We will not continue to tolerate the persecution of the minority, the killing of many, and their forcible removal under the most cruel conditions.” (Hitler, August 23, 1939, from letters sent to the UK and French governments, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, April 2003; http://www.swt.org/share/ancientciv.htm)
In 2008, again moving as a herd, journalists have now silently rejected their own fraudulent claims of ‘genocide’ from 1999. Moreover, they have rejected the need to examine how they got it wrong, why, what it tells us about Clinton, Blair and Bush.
May 15, 2008 - 4:17 pm Taylor:Anon and rest of you claiming “Serbs started it all” I have only to say to you in the words of Howard Zinn, If we don’t know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again.
The lies on the Serbs have been supported, forcefully distributed, continuously since 1988, or even created by the occidental media and/or governments, in particular by the Clinton Government of the USA, such as the following that contradict shamefully the truth:
- The false claim that the Republics of ex-SFR Yugoslavia had a legitimate right for their secessions.
The legitimate right for self-determination including separation was given exclusively to Yugoslav nations, and not to Yugoslav Republics. This is clearly expressed by the first sentence of the Constitution of ex-SFRY. The occidental countries anti-constitutionally and forcefully recognised the secessions of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia from ex-SFRY. This forced the Serbs to defend their lives, rights and properties in their ancestral land. The Serbs have had the equal right for self-determination including separation as all other Yugoslav nations, which is clearly expressed also by the UN Charter (Paragraph 2 of the Article 1 of the UN Chapter). The occidental Governments recognised the rights and the results of the referendums of all Yugoslav nations except those of Serbs.
- The false claim that the Serbs started the wars in Slovenia and Croatia.
The Serbs did not start any war in ex-SFR Yugoslavia, but they were forced to defend themselves in Croatia. Majority of the federal army soldiers and officers in the federal Yugoslav Army in Slovenia were not Serbs. The majority of the federal Yugoslav Army leaders were not Serbs. Besides, Serbs were not majority in the Presidency of ex-SFRY. The last President of Yugoslav Presidency was not Serb. The federal Prime Minister was not Serb. The Republic of Croatia eliminated the status of the Serbs as one of two constitutive nations from the Constitution, which was recognised to the Serbs in the Constitution of the former Socialist Republic of Croatia. Moreover, the Republic of Croatia rejected to recognise either the autonomy of the Serbs in Krayina and Slavoniya or the result of their referendum. Such changes and increasing campaign against the Serbs, which forced them to remind themselves of their history in the Hitler established Nazi Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War, pressed them to defend themselves and their rights in Krayina and Slavoniya — the parts of Croatia inhabited by the Serbs for at least last six centuries. The accusation was false also due to the following facts:
it was the Croatian paramilitary unit that started fighting against the Serbs in Krayina and Slavonia in order to prevent Serbs in their endeavours to realise their equal human and national rights and to implement the result of their constitutional referendum,
the Serbs became constitutionally one of national minorities in the Republic of Croatia,
the Serbs were forced to accept the treatment as minority in their ancestral land where their number was inherently reduced due to the genocidal torture by the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War,
the Serbs in Krayina and Slavoniya were pressed to separate from Yugoslavia against the result of their referendum, and
several hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled from their ancestral land Krayina and Slavoniya during the well prepared and actually supported by the Clinton USA Government military offensive “Storm” for the ethnic cleansing (1995).
- The false claim that the Serbs were aggressor in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Serbs were severely forced to defend themselves, their rights and their heritage. Bosnia and Herzegovina have been a part of the ancestral land of the Serbs, who were one of three constitutive nations of S. R. Bosnia and Herzegovina. Serbs were inhabiting more than 73% and were possessing and defending through centuries more than 62% of the land being their family heritage private property for ever. The accusation was false also due to the following facts:
it was a Muslim group that killed the groom’s father Mr. Nikola Gardovitch and wounded another their cousin at Serbian wedding in Sarajevo, (beginning of 1992),
it was a Croatian paramilitary unit that entered Bosnia and massacred Serbs in Bosanski Brod including its Mayor (1992),
the Croatian paramilitary unit continued the next day jointly with a Muslim paramilitary unit to fire Serbian village Siyekovats together with its inhabitants,
it was the further escalation of the atrocities committed against Serbs when Muslim paramilitary units massacred more than thousand two hundred of innocent civil Serbs around Srebrenitsa, Skelani, Militchi and Bratunats in Bosnia,
it was the series of these events which forced Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina to defend themselves military in order to escape the repetition of the destiny that their parents had passed under the Hitler Nazi occupation during the Second World War,
the Serbs were forced to suffer in silence for Muslim killing of more than thousand innocent Serbs on orthodox Christmas in the village Kravitse (7 January 1993) and in burnt several villages: mainly women and children since the men were on the front,
the Serbs were forced to be silent when they were falsely accused that they had organised concentration camps in Bosnia, which should have been proved by showing a falsified photo,
the Serbs were forced to suffer also in silence for video cassettes showing Muslim commander Naser Oriæ holding heads of Serbs, or showing him killing Serbs, which were circulating at that time in Bosnia in order to please those who were financing Mujahedeens’ participation in the war.
- The false accusation against the Serbs that they committed bombing of civilians at the Sarayevo market Markale.
The Serbs did not commit that crime. This fact has become well known, but still shamefully hidden from the occidental nations.
- The false accusation against the Serbs that they committed massacre of 7-8 thousands of innocent Muslims in Srebrenitsa.
Such massacre did not take place. The truth has been severely forbidden to be publicised in the occidental media.
The above false accusations against the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina were world-wide used to justify unjustifiable bombing of Republic of Srpska (1995) and to enforce their demonisation.
- False accusation against the Serbs that Albanians had lost their human rights, that they were tortured and subjected to genocide.
This contradicts the truth that Albanian immigrants into Serbia enjoyed the human rights equal to or even greater than what immigrants have had in occidental countries and that Albanian terrorist were torturing Serbs for decades.
The Serbs were exposed to the fascist Great Albania inhuman occupation in the South West part of Serbia — in the Serbian cradle Kosovo and Metohiya, which is their ancestral land, during the Second World War. This resulted in a more than hundred fifty thousands of expelled autochthon Serbs and more than hundred thousands of Albanian Nazi protected newcomers.
The Serbs were forbidden by the communist Government of Josip Broz Tito to help the expelled autochthon people to return to their homes and properties in Kosovo and Metohiya after the Second World War.
Serbia was admitting after 1948, by understanding the suffering of the Albanian people under Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoja, hundreds of thousands of Albanian immigrants to Kosovo and Metohiya.
Serbia was enabling the Albanian immigrants to live in freedom, with equal political rights and employment opportunities, full social and health security, cheap good apartments, and free of charge scholarship for education in their native language.
The Serbs had to observe silently and to suffer from the continued terror after the Second World War of those Albanians who were forcing Serbian families to leave their houses and properties in order to get ethnically clean Albanian region and then to separate Kosovo and Metohiya from the other part of Serbia.
The artificially granted autonomy to Kosovo and Metohiya was changed legally and legitimately by the valid decision of its Assembly (1989).
- The false accusation against the Serbs that they committed the massacre of innocent civil Albanians in Racak (1999).
Such a massacre did not ever happen. This false accusation, together with the former false accusations that Albanian people did not enjoy human, social and political rights in Serbia, was used as the reason and justification to start unjustifiably bombing the people of Serbia and Montenegro (1999).
- The false accusation against the Serbs for the exodus of the Albanian people.
It started only on the third day of the NATO bombardment as its consequence. This lie was used not only to demonise further the Serbs but also to justify the continuous bombing of the people of Serbia through 78 days and nights altogether.
- False information that the UN forces are liberating troops in Kosovo and Metohiya.
The Serbs have been forbidden to defend themselves and they have been subjected to the recovered Hitler-like fascist occupation in their ancestral land. The Albanian terrorists, partially organised by Mujahedeens and instructed by Bin Laden, who came freely to fight in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia - Kosovo and Metohiya, partially instructed by the USA military experts, have become protected, sometimes even supported, by KFOR. In the presence of the so called international peacekeeping forces, the Serbs have been expelled almost completely (more than two hundred fifty thousands) from Kosovo and Metohiya. Their ancient invaluable and internationally appreciated monuments, monasteries, as well as private properties, have been destroyed in the presence of the international UN troops. The innocent civil Serbs (more than three thousands only after the NATO bombardment 1999) have been massacred every day in the presence of the international UN troops.
- Hidden information that more than 7 thousands children were killed in Yugoslavia’s Civil Wars, twice as many as Croat and Muslim children combined. Tragedy for all three nations.
The lies on the Serbs were used to justify unjustifiable:
treatment of the Serbs as the aggressor,
eight years long exhaustive sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro,
the propaganda against the Serbs and the world-wide their demonisation,
expulsion of Serbs from Krayina and Slavoniya,
the reduction of the land belonging to the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 64% to 49%,
the Clinton USA Government led bombing of the Serbs in Republic of Srpska,
the unacceptable reduction of human and national rights of the Serbs in all parts of ex-SFR Yugoslavia,
the Clinton USA Government led NATO bombing of Serbia and Montenegro,
the continuous escalation of the Hitler-like Albanian fascistic occupation of Kosovo and Metohiya and crimes under the protection of KFOR against the autochthon Serbs.
Your lies are seen for what they real are.But the worst lies are the lies you tell to yourself.
May 15, 2008 - 4:30 pm DianaJ:MikeL, what Serbs did? Here we go again * rolls eyes* You need to re-educate us what Clinton ‘good’ war was all about?
But while the WMD deception has been exposed, the founding lie behind the Kosovo war is still widely believed. It effectively distracts from the very existence of the what Marshall calls the “parallel goal”of strengthening NATO. Aside from the crippling material damage inflicted on the targeted country, the Kosovo lie has caused even more irreparable damage to relations between the Serb and Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo.
The situation in that small province of multiethnic Serbia was the result of a long and complex history of conflict, frequently encouraged and exploited by outside powers, notably by the support to Albanian nationalism by the Axis powers in World War II. Each community accused the other of plotting “ethnic cleansing” and even “genocide”. But there were reasonable people on both sides willing to work out a compromise solution. The constructive role of outsiders would have been to calm the paranoid tendencies in both communities and support constructive initiatives. Indeed, the Kosovo problem could have been easily managed, and eventually solved, had the Great Powers so desired. But as in the past, the Great Powers exploited and aggravated the ethnic conflicts for their own purposes. In total ignorance of the complex history of the region, sheeplike politicians and media echoed and amplified the most extreme nationalist Albanian propaganda.
This provided NATO with its pretext to demonstrate “credibility”. The Great Powers have in effect told the Albanians that all their worst accusations against the Serbs were true. Even Albanians know who know better (such as Veton Surroi) are intimidated and silenced by the racist nationalists backed by the United States.
The result is disastrous. Empowered by their official status as unique victims of Serb iniquity, the Albanians of Kosovo — and especially the youth, raised on a decade of nationalist myth — can give free rein to their cultivated hatred of the Serbs. Armed Albanian nationalists proceeded to drive the Serbian and gypsy populations out of the province. Those remaining do not dare venture out of their ghettos. Albanians willing to live with the Serbs risk being murdered. Ever since the NATO-led force (KFOR) marched into Kosovo in June 1999, violent persecution of Serbs and Roma has been regularly described as “revenge” — which in the Albanian tradition is considered the summit of virtuous conduct. Describing the murder of elderly women in their homes or children at play as acts of “revenge” is a way of excusing or even approving the violence.
Last March 17, following the false accusation that Serbs were responsible for the accidental drowning of three Albanian children, organized mobs of Albanians, including many teenagers, rampaged through Kosovo destroying 35 Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries, some of them artistic gems dating from the fourteenth century. Well over a hundred churches had already been attacked with fire and explosives in the past five years. The objective is quite clearly to erase all historic trace of centuries of Serb presence, the better to assert their claim to an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo.
The self-satisfaction of the “international community” was severely shaken by the March violence. The occasional KFOR units that tried to protect Serb sites found themselves in armed clashes with Albanian mobs. In the wake of the rampages, Finnish politician Harri Holkeri resigned two months before expiration of his one-year renewable mandate as head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) supposed to administer the province. He was the fourth to get out of the job as fast as he could. Apparently on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Holkeri lamented to a press conference that UNMIK has no intelligence service of its own, and had received no prior hint of the March pogroms. In short, the mass of international administrators, military occupation forces and non-governmental agencies have no idea what is going on in the province they are theoretically running. Indicating his awareness that the only role left for UNMIK was that of scapegoat, Holkeri warned of “difficult days ahead”. That is a safe prediction.
Trouble ahead
On June 11, the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci, the protege of Madeleine Albright and her press officer James Rubin, denounced UNMIK as a “complete failure” and announced that, if he wins Kosovo’s forthcoming elections in October, he will implement his “vision of Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state”.
The circumstances suggest that not only Thaci, but any newly elected Kosovo may do the same. Proclamation of Kosovo’s independence on the eve of U.S. presidential elections could be shrewd timing. With Iraq exploding, American leaders need to maintain the myth of the “success” in Kosovo. Getting into open conflict with the Albanians could be politically disastrous.
At the same time, many Europeans saw the anti-Serb pogroms in March as evidence that Kosovo has a long way to go to reach the “standards” of democratic human rights and ethnic harmony which UNMIK is mandated to achieve before any final decision on the province’s status.
There are serious reasons not to give in to the Albanian demand for an “independent and sovereign Kosovo”.
First of all, there is the minor question of