-Caveat Lector- Sunday 18 March 2001 NATO still has no business in Kosovo http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010318/5024111.html GEORGE JONAS Freelance During the past two weeks, American KFOR troops have been engaged in sporadic firefights with ethnic-Albanian guerrillas at the Macedonian border. Earlier this month, the insurgents killed three Macedonian border guards, while the KFOR troops wounded two Albanian guerrillas. On March 9, an Associated Press photograph, showing soldiers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division on "aggressive patrol" along the Kosovo-Macedonian border, made the rounds of the world's press. Macedonia's population is 30-per-cent ethnic-Albanian. The guerrillas, linked to the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which was disbanded after the end of the hostilities and subsequently defeated at the polls, continue to pursue their goal of an independent Albanian Kosovo. Albanians see this entity, territorially enlarged at the expense of Macedonia and western Serbia, either as a sovereign country or eventually as a part of greater Albania. The apparent aim of the guerrillas (now calling themselves the National Liberation Army) is to initiate terrorist attacks in border areas, forcing a heavy-handed response from Macedonian and Serbian forces, which in turn would induce the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations to carve out larger protected zones for the Albanian population along Kosovo's frontiers. In time, these areas would also become part of an independent Kosovo. This was the KLA's strategy during the late 1990s. The method worked, at least up to a point. The Albanian guerrillas attacked; Serb forces under Slobodan Milosevic responded with brutality and ethnic cleansing, until NATO bombed a truncated and truculent Yugoslavia into submission. Though the West didn't detach Kosovo and give it independence, NATO forces occupied the region and made it a Western protectorate. The Albanian militants are hoping for the same thing to happen again, but this time circumstances might not favour them. Yugoslavia's president is no longer the savage Milosevic but the moderate Vojislav Kostunica. NATO has invited Serbian forces to reoccupy the border zone. The West, until recently the ally of ethnic-Albanians against the Serbs, is posed to emerge as the ally of the Serbs against the Albanians. One is hardly surprised. "As the curtain falls on the first act," I wrote 18 months ago, "NATO has put an end to the ethnic cleansing of an Albanian majority by a Serb minority in Kosovo, and is now all set to preside over the ethnic cleansing of a Serb minority by an Albanian majority. "It was the KLA's war long before it was NATO's, and now the KLA feels that it has won. Unlike NATO's soldiers, ethnic-Albanian guerrillas have shed their blood. Not unreasonably, they want to claim the fruits of their victory, which they don't see as running for office in UN-supervised elections. They see it as ruling over an independent Kosovo. "If NATO's new-world-order liberals acquiesce, they'll have simply endorsed one ethnic state over another. If they don't, their next war will be with the KLA. NATO can bomb, and maybe ask Slobodan Milosevic or his successor to help out on the ground." Less than a year later, nearly 80 per cent of ethnic-Serbs had been forced out of Kosovo. By May 2000, the reverse ethnic cleansing impelled KFOR's commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, to remark: "When NATO came into Kosovo we were only supposed to fight the Yugoslav army if they came back uninvited. Now we're finding we have to fight the Albanians." After the passage of another 10 months, the new Yugoslav president, Kostunica, was speaking with no more enthusiasm for NATO's mission than his predecessor, Milosevic. Accepting KFOR's invitation to reoccupy the border zone, Kostunica remarked earlier this month that NATO's protectorate in Kosovo had only "stimulated terrorism instead of getting rid of it." Kostunica's deputy prime minister, Momcilo Perisic, went a step farther, according to the Yugoslav newspaper BLIC. In a March 12 interview, Perisic suggested NATO should bomb the Albanian insurgents, if necessary. If NATO accepts the deputy prime minister's suggestion, things will have gone full circle, exactly as predicted nearly two years ago. In a conflict involving two ethnic groups' desire for mastery over a region - as in Kosovo - a third party has no business. Some conflicts, like some fires, have to be allowed to burn out. Using NATO to act out mushy liberal fantasies, and trying to fit every region into the procrustean bed of a multicultural dream, accomplishes little beyond dragging the West into a quagmire. - George Jonas is a Toronto-based author and freelance journalist. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
