-Caveat Lector-
Kosovo Crisis
In conducting negotiations over the future of Kosovo, the Clinton
administration has deliberately kept both the Congress and the American
people in the dark. What follows is a detailed analysis of information
that is available in the foreign press but has so far received little if
any attention in the US. Although the details are complicated, the basic
situation is very clear:
1) The Clinton administration is calling for a NATO/US solution to the
Kosovo crisis because of a massacre of civilians which allegedly took
place in the village of Racak in Kosovo.
2) A French TV crew was present when Yugoslav police took the village and
say it was a fire-fight between Yugoslav forces and heavily-armed KLA
fighters. Yugoslav forensic authorities have declared the massacre a hoax:
dead KLA soldiers, they way, were redressed in civilian clothes and piled
into a ditch they had dug.
3) The forensic case has been settled by a Finnish team of physicians
brought in by the international community. However, the Finnish team�s
report has not been made public, even though it is now more than three
weeks since the dead have been buried. What is in that report is almost
certainly a confirmation of the Yugoslav position: a) because in leaving
Yugoslavia the Finns made a statement praising the high professional
standards of the Yugoslav forensic pathologists, and b) according to the
respected German newspaper Die Welt, the report is "a hot potato" that
will undermine the US position, and c) an independent forensics team from
Belarus came to the same conclusion as the Yugoslav doctors.
The Kosovo crisis is one of the most complex that an American government
has ever faced. On one side are the claims (somewhat exaggerated) of
majority rule; on the other side are the undisputed facts that Kosovo is,
legally, only a region of Serbia and, historically, the very core of the
Serbian heartland. Whatever the US decides to do about Kosovo, the
Congress and the people have a right to get the full story from the
administration, before even considering the use of intimidation and force.
Kosovo: The Real Story
Prepared by the editors of Chronicles and The Rockford Institute
Self-inflicted atrocities and stage-managed "massacres" have paid rich
dividends to the Muslim side in Bosnia. In May 1992 the Sarajevo
"Breadline Massacre"-�with TV crews mysteriously in attendance to film the
blood and guts-� facilitated the imposition of punitive sanctions against
Serbia, some of which are still in force. Indian General Satish Nambiar,
UN commander at the time, stated to me (March 6, 1999) that "no UN officer
in the field at the time had any doubt that the Muslims did it to
themselves in order to get political support and sympathy."
In February 1994 the show was repeated at Sarajevo�s Markale market, with
similar results: the Serbs were forced to withdraw heavy weapons around
Sarajevo, and were bombed. for the first time by NATO soon thereafter.
Subsequent UN investigation concluded that the Muslims did it to
themselves (as confirmed by Lord Owen, General Sir Michael Rose and
others), but the report was suppressed on US insistence.
In August 1995 the "Trznica Massacre" in Sarajevo was the opener for some
three weeks of massive American-led air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs,
facilitating a Croat-Muslim offensive that ethnically cleansed western
Bosnia of its Serb inhabitants. No independent investigation of the
incident � as demanded by the Serbs � was even allowed this time.
Right now the Administration is pressuring the Serbs to accept a NATO
force of 28,000 on their territory, including 4,000 US servicemen, as a
result of yet another stage-managed "massacre"-�in the village of Racak in
Kosovo--last January. That "massacre" resulted in Albright�s and Clinton�s
claim that no solution is acceptable in Kosovo unless it included a NATO
force. By now the demand for Serbia to open its borders to some tens of
thousands of foreign soldiers, or face NATO bombing, has become an
immutable tenet in Washington�s approach to the region. The fact that the
event which enabled the interventionists within the Administration to
formulate such policy was entirely bogus, while largely known in Europe,
is being actively suppressed by the US.
The facts of the case are as follows:
On January 16, 1999, from coast to coast US media went into a state of
righteous rage over the "discovery" of 45 dead Albanians at Racak,
allegedly "civilians butchered in cold blood."
The head of the OSCE observer mission in Kosovo, American diplomat William
Walker, immediately and categorically asserted that the Serbs were to
blame. Belgrade's claim that the forty five bodies were in fact KLA
guerrillas fallen during the fight in the surrounding areas was scornfully
rejected in Washington as "Serbian propaganda." Not a hint of doubt about
the affair was printed in any of the "mainstream" media in the United
States.
In Europe, however, doubts were immediately raised about the
Albanian-American version of events. According to Le Monde ("Were the dead
in Racak really massacred in cold blood?" by Christophe Chatelot in
Pristina, January 21, 1999), "two journalists of the Associated Press TV
(APTV), which filmed the police operation in Racak, contradict Walker.
When around 10 hours, they enter the locality behind an armored vehicle in
the front, the village is almost deserted. They progress along the streets
under the fire of the gunners of the Kosovo Liberation Army which took
position in the woods which dominate the village. These exchanges of
shootings will last all the time of the intervention, with more or less
intensity. It is in the woods that the main combat took place."
At 3.30 p.m., the report went on, the police completed their operation and
left the village under the sporadic KLA fire "who still resist thanks to
the steep, difficult ground." The Serbs estimated that there were 15-20
combatants dead on the KLA side. The Albanians come out from their
shelters and go down towards the village. Three vehicles of the OSCE
Verification Mission arrive.
Le Monde points out that the Serb operation "was neither a surprise, nor a
secret": journalists and OSCE observers were invited, and encouraged by
the Serb side to witness the proceedings before the fighting started, and
allowed into the village afterwards, to find but four lightly injured
civilians. The night falls. With the police and verifiers gone, Le Monde
report continues, the events started taking an unexpected turn:
"The next morning, press and verifiers arrive and, guided by armed KLA
fighters who regained the village, they discover the ditch with twenty
bodies, mostly men. During the day William Walker arrives and expresses
horror at 'the crime committed by the Serbian police and the Yugoslav
army.' But many questions remain unclarified. How the Serb police could
gather a group of men, and quietly direct them towards the place of the
execution, while they were constantly under the fire of the KLA? How the
ditch at the edge of Racak could escape the glance of the inhabitants,
familiar of the places, present before the night?
And how come the observers, who were present for more than two hours in
this very small village, failed to see the ditch too? Why are there only a
few cartridge cases around the corpses, and little blood in this sunken
lane where 23 people were supposedly shot several times in the head?
Weren't the bodies of the Albanians killed in the combat by the Serb
police rather joined together in the ditch to create a scene of horror in
order to initiate the wrath of the public opinion?"
In the same vein, Le Figaro reported ("Massacre under a cloud" by Renaud
Girard in Racak, 20 January 1999) that "in view of a whole series of
confusing facts related to this event, this matter deserves undivided
attention":
"Taking into consideration that an AP television crew was invited as early
as 8.30 a.m. to film the operation, it seems that the police had nothing
to conceal. The OSCE was also notified about the operation, and they sent
two cars to the site. Verifiers spent the entire day on a hill, which
offered a full-length view of the village At 3:30 p.m. the police left the
village, taking along a 12.7 mm heavy machine-gun, two automatic rifles,
two snipers and some thirty Kalashnyikovs, of Chinese manufacture.
Subsequently searching for wounded civilians, international verifiers were
seen talking at ease with young Albanians in civil suits."
Le Figaro also pointed out that the "massacre" was unveiled only the
following morning, with the KLA in full control of the village. They
claimed that the previous day police separated women from men, whom they
took to the ditch, and killed on the spot:
"The AP TV journalists' testimonies, as well the material they have
filmed, give an entirely opposite interpretation of this event. The police
surrounded an empty village that morning, sneaking up along the walls.
Then KLA members opened fire on them from the ditches on a hill.
Subsequently, surrounded KLA members were desperately trying to break
through A confusing fact is that at the place of an alleged massacre on
Saturday morning there were just a few shells. Maybe the KLA has thus
wisely turned its military defeat into a political victory?"
Essentially identical account was published in Die Welt (January 22), and
reported on the BBC World Service and Radio France International, among
others.
The Serbs immediately demanded an inquest by an international, independent
team of pathologists. The OSCE sent in a team of Finnish pathologists who
were, on their own admission, granted unlimited facilities in examining
the bodies of the "victims."
There was another team of pathologists, from Belarus, who came as guests
of the Serbs. Both teams have categorically confirmed what the Serbs had
claimed all along: that the fatal wounds to the victims were inflicted
from bullets fired from considerable distance, that additional bullets
were fired at them at point blank range, and knife wounds inflicted, only
AFTER they had been dead for some hours, and that at least some bodies had
had their clothes changed (presumably to remove KLA uniforms), which was
evidenced by the discrepancy between the wounds and the damage to clothing.
This report the Finns have submitted to OSCE, which had commissioned it in
the first place, but OSCE has refused to make it public. The line now is
that "nobody wants the report to get in the way of the peace process!" Cf.
Die Welt, 8/3/1999 ("Whether or not it was a massacre, nobody wants to
know any more" by Karin Kneissl):
"Finnish legal doctors were supposed to clear up whether in fact 45 ethnic
Albanian civilians were executed by Serbian units -- or whether defeated
UCK/KLA fighters who were killed in battle were arranged to deceive
Western observers. Now the dead have been buried for three weeks-- but the
report is still not in. No wonder: "This report is a hot potato", said an
OSCE diplomat in Vienna to Die Welt, "no one really wants to touch it."
["Eine heisse Kartoffel ist dieser Bericht", sagt ein OSCE-Diplomat in
Wien gegen�ber der WELT, "Keiner will in so richtig".] At first the report
of the Finnish doctors' team was held back out of consideration for the
Kosovo peace talks in Rambouillet, although it was ready from a legal
medical viewpoint."
There can be no doubt that, had the report confirmed Walker�s claim, its
findings would have been spread all over the nation�s front pages.
It is on this basis that the proliferation of open-ended American
commitments involving the deployment of US forces continues. Since
traditional concepts of the national interest and US security can't
justify deployment, the ultimate justification is the laudable of "easing
human suffering"-and if the reality of Racak does not fit the story, too
bad for the facts. Creating a permanent hotbed of instability in the
Balkans cannot conceivably be in America�s interest, but the
Administration proudly retorts that its policy is not guided by such
selfish, narrow-minded considerations. But what is on offer instead? It is
"humanitarian" foreign policy � epitomized in Clinton�s exhortation "that
we can make a difference" and that "America symbolizes hope and resolve."
This is, in fact, a recipe for open-ended commitment in each and every
ethnic, religious, or racial conflict, anywhere in the world, whenever the
ruling establishment decides, with NATO transformed from a defensive
alliance into the enforcer of the will of Washington. Such policy has no
relation to U.S. national interests - and no limits other than the public
backlash against body bags, if and when a Mogadishu-like disaster strikes.
More at http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/hotspots.html
______________________________________________________________________
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