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The seven - week cure to a seven - centuries-old problem.
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/ |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
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http://www.MiddleEast.Org
ROOTS AND CONTEXT OF KOSOVO
News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups,
and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know!
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WEEKEND READING:
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND AFTERMATH
ANOTHER "PEACE TO END ALL PEACE"?
MER - Washington - 12 June 1999:
So much of the contemporary conflicts, hatreds, and regimes, in
today's Middle East and the nearby Balkans, can be traced back to the
period of the Ottoman Empire...and to the Paris "Peace Conference"
that
followed its collapse and defeat.
No, not the Paris Peace Conference of 1999 which so craftily
created
the straw man to justify the US/Nato war on Yugoslavia. This was the
Paris Peace Conference of 1918-1919 where the Western powers so
"balkanized" the Middle East into competing spheres of influence and
regimes that the region has never recovered. Indeed, for those who
have
not read David Fromkin's magnificent book about that conference, and
all
that lead up to it, we suggest putting it at the very top of your
summer
reading list. Indeed, you cannot really understand and fully
appreciate
what's going on in either the Middle East today, or in Western
capitals
that deal with the Middle East today, without a thorough understand
of the
history David Fromkin presents with unparalleled insight.
As for what's currently taking place in the Balkans today -- the
northern border of the Ottoman Empire of old, and the area where
another
type of occupation is taking hold today of new -- this crucial history
needs to be much better appreciated.
THE ROOTS AND CONTEXT OF THE KOSOVO PROBLEM
IGNORED BY MOST MEDIA AND POLICY-MAKERS
* Professor George Vide Tomashevich
It did not start in the 1980s and it cannot be resolved in the 1990s
without some understanding of what happened to both of these nations prior
to the advent of the New World Order. Six hundred years ago, Albanians and
Serbs were two neighborly Christian peoples who, together, defended their
own countries against the Islamic Turkish invasion and lost. The conquest
of the medieval Balkan states and their incorporation into the Ottoman
Empire set in motion drastic population dislocations and transformations
of many ethnic groups, the consequences of which the world is witnessing
today.
Because of their geographic location, the most profoundly affected were
the Serbs, whose territory, for centuries, was the battle-field between
the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. In the course of several hundred years
the Serbs became dispersed throughout the former Austrian imperial
provinces which, in the 20th century, are claimed by several successor
states. Following the death of their great leader Skenderbeg and the fall
of their medieval state in 1468, under the Ottoman pressure, most
Albanians converted to Islam. Some Serbs, under the same pressure, left
their cities and river valleys and withdrew to the mountains of Montenegro
and Herzegovina. Other Serbs migrated to the Austro-Hungarian domains
which included Krajina, Slavonia and the Pannonian plains of Vojvodina.
The greatest Serbian migration from Kosovo to the Austrian- controlled
territories took place in 1690, in the wake of the last Turkish siege of
Vienna in 1683. There they joined the earlier refugees and, like them,
became the Habsburg border guards (Granicari) against further Turkish
incursion into Central Europe.
By the 19th century, as the Ottoman Empire continued to decay, the Serbs
started their descent from the Dinaric Mountains back to the plains, thus
repopulating Serbia's fertile river valleys which their ancestors had left
centuries ago. There, they mounted two major insurrections against their
Ottoman rulers, in 1804 and 1815 respectively, which ultimately led to the
independence of Serbia and Montenegro and their eventual recognition as
fully sovereign Serbian sister-states, at the Congress of Berlin, in 1878.
In 1918, after the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman
Empires, the country of the South Slavs - Yugoslavia - was created from
the former provinces of these two antagonistic powers.
After 23 years of existence, during WW II, Yugoslavia was dismembered into
eleven parts by Hitler, Mussolini and their satellites. Slovenia was
divided by Italy and Nazi-occupied Austria; the so-called Independent Sate
of Croatia, ruled by the Ustasha Quisling, Ante Pavelich , included
Bosnia-Herzegovina, but not Dalmatia, most of which went to Italy; Serbia,
reduced to its smallest post-Ottoman historic nucleus, was subjected to
direct German occupation; and other regions were given to the neighboring
Hungary and Bulgaria, both on the side of the Axis.
In pursuit of his ambition to recreate the ancient Roman Empire,
Mussolini occupied Albania in 1939. Here, it should be pointed out that
ancient Illyria (which modern Albanians claim as their ancestral land),
was defeated by the Roman legions in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC and
became a province of the Roman and later Byzantine Empires. Therefore,
quite apart from the open question of the modern Albanians' relationship
to ancient Illyrians, the Serbs did not conquer any part of Albania nor
did they seize Kosovo from an Albanian or any other existing state. When
they came to the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries AD, Kosovo was a
devastated border province of Byzantium, depopulated by several Barbarian
invasions in earlier epochs. Ethnographically speaking, written documents
demonstrate that it was overwhelmingly Serbian between the 12th and 17th
centuries.
As an inducement to collaboration with the Axis powers, Mussolini
promised the Albanian Quisling leaders a Greater Albania and gave them all
of Kosovo. Tens of thousands of Serbian families were brutalized, killed
or ethnically cleansed by expulsion to occupied Serbia and Montenegro.
After WW II, in his grand design to create a Balkan Communist Union, the
then Stalinist Tito needed the support of the Albanian Stalinists. He
promised Kosovo to their leader, Enver Hoxha, and, to placate him, Tito
legally prevented the Serbs from returning to the Province, from which
they were evicted by the Fascist Albanian rulers only five years earlier.
At the same time, Albanian masses were allowed to move freely into Kosovo
from neighboring Albania. Then, after the break between Stalin and Tito,
and Enver Hoxha's turn to Stalinism and ultimately Maoism, waves of
additional refugees continued to flood into Kosovo from Hoxha's tyranny in
Albania.
During the last 50 years, these Albanian refugees transformed themselves
into permanent immigrant-settlers, most of whom were never required to
become naturalized citizens of Serbia or Yugoslavia. One Albanian-born
communist politician rose to the position of the one-year term presidency
of post-Tito Yugoslavia's Federal Presidium.
While between the two world wars the old Kosovo Albanians and Serbs lived
in relative harmony, the decades under Tito changed this relationship. In
"The Autonomous Province of Kosovo" which he established, the Serbs who,
prior to WW II, were a majority, found themselves outnumbered by the
aggressive newcomers, alien in speech and religion. In the name of a
cynically one-sided interpretation of proletarian internationalism and a
phony policy of "brotherhood and unity", systematic intimidation of the
Kosovo Serbs became the order of the day. Serbian churches and mediaeval
monasteries were damaged or destroyed, graves desecrated, barns burned,
cattle and sheep slaughtered, culminating in beatings and murder of
Serbian burghers and villagers. Without any protection from Tito's anti-
Serb government, the younger Serbian population left in the tens of
thousands for safer places and thus contributed to the deepening of the
ethnic imbalance in the Province.
Between 1941 and 1997, due to their exceptionally high birth rate (the
highest in Europe), two generations of Albanians were born in Kosovo,
representing by now over 80% of its inhabitants. Such an explosive birth
rate (registered by the UN in most under developed countries) has created
an economic burden which neither the Federal Yugoslav nor the Serbian
governments could afford and which the Croats and Slovenes refused to
support.
Today, Kosovo Albanians are tendentiously depicted as victims of Serbian
oppression. Yet, quite rightly, they have Albanian schools, newspapers,
and other media and, in Pristina, the largest Albanian University
anywhere, built and supported mostly by Serbian tax-payers Moreover, the
Kosovo Albanian demagogues, with the help from the Albanians abroad and
their anti-Serbian international sponsors, are inflaming and manipulating
the Kosovo Albanian masses as well as the uninformed or misinformed public
opinion of the Western world.
Similarly, until 1980, Yugoslav Communists encouraged Albanian
nationalism which they now punish, and punished Serbian nationalism, which
they now encourage, for the sake of keeping and perpetuating the Communist
monopoly on power. Most international (humanitarian) organizations are
presenting the Kosovo issue as a one-sided violation of human rights by
the Serbian authorities and rarely report the violations and acts of
terrorism against non-Albanian ethnic groups (Gypsies, Circassians, Greeks
and Serbs) by organized units of Albanian militants and terrorists
financed and armed by oil-rich Islamic expansionists (especially Saudis)
and their Euro-American friends. The global press and media have made much
of the overwhelming Albanian majority in Kosovo, without ever explaining
how and when it came about. It did not happen by Serbia's annexation of
Albanian territory, since historically, Kosovo was never part of Albania.
For most Serbs Kosovo remains an integral part of their country. For
centuries, prior to the Ottoman Turkish conquest, it was the Serbs'
heartland where their medieval rulers built great churches and
monasteries, decorated with beautiful pre-Renaissance frescoes, recognized
as international art treasures. Here were fought the great battles against
the Islamic invaders in 1389 and 1448.
In a word, the roots of the Serbian national identity and their greatest
and most sacred cultural heritage are in Kosovo, which is to the Serbs
what Mecca is to the Arabs and Moslems. This century has seen many
population movements caused by the collapse of empires, ideological and
religious persecutions as well as poverty. Many of these mass migrations
created heavy concentrations of refugee-immigrants in foreign countries
where, after several decades, they reproduced new generations and became a
majority in certain regions. (Cuban refugees in Florida, Mexicans in
California, North African, Near Eastern and Bosnian immigrants in certain
centers of Western Europe). Are such "majorities" entitled to
"independence" merely because they happen to constitute homogeneous ethnic
or cultural islands in their host countries ? Such complex moral and
political questions, too often exploited by the media and the arms
merchants, call instead for compassion, diplomacy, tact and wisdom, and,
above all, for some knowledge of the history that created these problems.
The Serbs, most of whom dislike Milosevic, are not unsympathetic to the
plight of the Albanians with whom they share similar past and present
predicaments. The Serbs know well that during the Ottoman centuries, the
Albanians suffered a cultural transformation of monumental proportions.
They lost most of their European cultural heritage, including their
Christian tradition, much of their original language and socio-economic
institutions and became an isolated residue of the Ottoman world in
Europe. They themselves, like their Serbian neighbors, rebelled against
the Turks several times. Early in this century, however, Islamized
Albanians were used by the withdrawing imperial Turks against Balkan
Christians (Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians and Macedonian Slavs) and memories
of their misdeeds are not yet forgotten. More recently, no matter how
reluctantly, they served Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Today they are
being manipulated not only by their own "reformed" ex-Communists, but also
by the Saudi, Turkish, German, Italian, American and other foreign powers,
primarily interested in Albania's "military real-estate", particularly
along its underdeveloped but oil-rich coast. Whether the Albanians will
benefit from the New World Order remains to be seen. There is no easy
solution for the Kosovo problem which literally calls for the patience of
Job and the wisdom of Solomon, both, alas, in short supply on all sides.
The most realistic and balanced "solution", relatively fair to both
sides, may require:
-determination of citizenship of the Kosovo Albanians who, in large
numbers, crossed the open border into Yugoslavia especially under Hoxha
and Tito;
-partitioning of the Province which would yield an equitable portion of
territory to the Kosovo Albanians and most of Kosovo's Serbian cultural
monuments to the Serbs;
-detaching a part of Kosovo from Yugoslavia, in accordance with a border-
correcting agreement to be negotiated between Albania and Yugoslavia;
-creating an internationally recognized boundary, based on the US-Mexican
model, which would control and prevent further influx of unauthorized
Albanians into Serbian territory;
-voluntary population exchanges with equivalent property compensation to
the affected parties, assisted and supervised by the international
financial and humanitarian organizations.
Such an approach, based on a carefully negotiated compromise, could
entirely eliminate the prospect of a potentially dangerous international
military involvement. For, it should be recognized that the Albanians did
not become the majority only in Kosovo. They are in the majority in the
Western regions of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as well, not
to mention their economic migrations to northern Greece . We all recall
the desperate attempts of impoverished modern Albanians to flee to Italy ,
after the recent collapse of their banking system.... Both Italy and
Germany are deporting them, while Serbia is forced to accept them, despite
the fact that many of the present Kosovo Albanian settlers were born not
in Serbia but in Albania or Western Europe.
Instead of arming and training the Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army",
supported by mercenaries, fundamentalist Islamic holy warriors,
international volunteers and NATO, would it not be safer for Europe if the
West provided massive economic aid to Albania, so that its large and
desperately poor families, which had to look for refuge in other
countries, might be induced to return home to build a modern, democratic
state of their own--the existing Albania which they already have. How
many additional Albanias does the West have in mind ? Or, could it be that
it wants to create one Greater Albania, at the expense of Serbia,
Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece, by sponsoring temporary formations of
"autonomous provinces " for the Albanian population in those countries,
provinces ultimately destined to secede and, in due course, join mother
Albania ?
Regardless of the fact that the members of the so-called "Contact Group"
and other involved powers do not have identical interests or intentions,
and despite the US insistence that its Imperial will always be done, the
local protagonists and antagonists, locked in this explosive conflict, may
refuse to oblige their Western sponsors by disregarding their physical
threats and disobeying their pious sermons. Suspicious of double-crossings
or secret deals, they may unexpectedly decide to act in their own
(possibly misperceived) self interests, and suddenly slip from under
everyone's rational control. In other words, events on the ground may
outrun diplomatic plans and decisions made in the Chanceries, whether they
are biased and one-sided, as they have been, or impartial and balanced, as
they should be.
* Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, State University College at Buffalo
______________
M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
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