Another side to the Balkans
by Eve-Ann Prentice
The marathon trial of former president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic has
reached its second anniversary in February 2004, with Serbs continuing to
take the brunt of the sentences meted out by the International War Crimes
Tribunal in The Hague.
It is ironic then that ethnic Albanian members of the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA) - trained and encouraged in the past by the West - have been free to
sell Semtex explosives to undercover journalists from Britain. In late 2003,
the journalists posed as Irish terrorists determined to blow up British
targets with their booty.
Furthermore, one of the KLA men - offloading enough Semtex to down 40 jumbo
jets - also stands accused of torturing and killing Serbs in Kosovo during
the war there, which led to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. This was
a war where the Serbs were seen as the guilty party and the Albanians as
victims.
It is significant that the KLA man felt cocky enough to show off a photo of
what he boasted was the disjoined head of one of his victims, a Serb,
according to the undercover journalist, Graham Johnson, investigations
editor of the Sunday Mirror newspaper, and a British Channel Five TV
documentary crew.
Where is The Hague when it comes to charging Albanians with war crimes in
the conflict that brought down the wrath of NATO on Yugoslavia in the spring
and summer of 1999?
Whenever Albanians are arrested by international forces in Kosovo, KLA
hardliners frogmarch ordinary moderate Albanians on to the streets to
protest the innocence of the accused - and the charges are usually dropped
at source. Some Albanians have been handed to The Hague but the number is
believed to be tiny; the tribunal says it cannot say how many as it refuses
to break down the accused into ethnic groups. A spokesperson admits, though,
that the vast majority of those so far charged have been Serbs.
Meanwhile, atrocities by the KLA against the few Serbs who have stayed
behind in Kosovo since NATO's entrance in June 1999 continue under the noses
of the international community, while London and Washington proclaim the
Kosovo mission a success.
In June 2003, for instance, an elderly couple, Slobodan (80) and Radmila
Stolic (76) along with their middle-aged son, 52-year-old Ljubinko, were
tortured and killed at their home in Obilic, Kosovo. In the week leading up
to their deaths, they were threatened and bullied when they refused to sell
their home to a group of Albanians. The killing of the family came just
after agreement had been reached for 20 Serb families to return to their
homes in that area; the Stolics' murder was seen by many Serbs as a clear
warning not to return.
Although Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator for Kosovo,
condemned the killings as a 'heinous and perfidious crime.directed against
multi-ethnicity in Kosovo', the UK Parliament took a different view. In a
debate on Kosovo on 17 June 2003, Minister for Europe Denis MacShane said he
believed the Stolics perished in a 'family feud' - a theory he reportedly
had taken from an Albanian newspaper in Kosovo.
Most of the Western public is under the impression that all is now sweetness
and light in the Balkans after the Western interventions in Bosnia and
Kosovo. How many are aware, though, that Bosnia is now a base for some
hardline Muslim militants? Bosnian Muslims have historically been a very
secular, gentle people; the extremist Muslims who have taken up bases in
their country are from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia and they have found a foothold in Europe largely thanks to the chaos
of the Bosnian war.
The KLA was trained and equipped in part by Islamic Mujihadeen
fighters
Many believe that one of NATO's finest hours was in June 1999, when bombing
forced Milosevic to pull his forces out of Kosovo. Is it such a success
story when you realise that hundreds of thousands of Serb civilians,
ordinary families, including young children, have been forced to flee Kosovo
in fear of their lives? They have been hounded out by extremists from the
very community the West said it was protecting - the ethnic Albanians.
The big powers do not want people to ask too many questions about any links
between the Balkans and the so-called 'war on terror' following 9/11. But
the links are there.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is Public Enemy Number One in the West. Yet
only a few years ago, he was actively encouraged to take up arms by the very
people who now want him dead. The Saudi dissident-turned-Afghan warlord and
global terrorist played a key role in training and organising Muslim forces
in the former Yugoslavia during the wars in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. Why?
Because the West was so determined to crush 'communistic' Serbs following
the fall of the Berlin Wall that it was not as fussy as it might have been
in choosing its friends.
Mention the Balkans to most people in the West (including senior journalists
who should know better) and their eyes glaze over with boredom or confusion.
Yet the wars there in the past 10 years are inextricably interwoven with
what is happening today in America, Afghanistan, Iraq and across the world.
Washington's determination to portray the civil wars in Bosnia and later in
Kosovo as straightforward battles of good vs evil was based on deceit.
Indeed, the lies masquerading as propaganda helped feed the school of
terrorism which struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Political
and military leaders in Washington should not have been surprised when the
monster they helped to create turned against them.
When the World Trade Center was bombed, it was lunchtime in Britain. On the
far side of Europe, it was mid-afternoon. Millions of people in Yugoslavia
also looked aghast at the horror-film scenes unfolding on their TV screens.
But in Belgrade, shock and revulsion was tinged with a sense of realism.
Just over two years before, many had watched first-hand as high-rise
buildings were turned into balls of fire and reduced to rubble, also by
airborne instruments of death. Serbian civilians had felt the violence of
Cruise missiles and conventional bombs hitting home in towns and cities
across the country as NATO pursued its campaign against the Milosevic
regime.
Many Serbs know that the hardline KLA was trained and equipped in part by
Islamic Mujihadeen fighters who saw action in Afghanistan against the
Russians, from the same stable of Muslim extremism which attacked New York
and Washington on 9/11.
When the Bosnian war looked imminent, Britain's ambassador to Belgrade,
Peter Hall, advised a hands-off approach by the West. The Muslim leader of
the would-be breakaway state of Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic, who died in 2003,
initially wanted to avoid putting up barricades which he knew would provoke
the first shots, but he was persuaded by US diplomats that the West would be
right behind him in the coming conflict. Western leaders knew, but chose to
ignore, that Izetbegovic had friends in Arab countries and had made several
visits to Tehran to see Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he
was imprisoned by the Yugoslav authorities for writing an Islamic treatise
which was seen as treason.
By 1994 there were large numbers of Mujahideen in Bosnia, including fighters
from Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. 'Muderis'
was the nom de guerre of one Mujihadeen in charge of a 100-strong unit which
wore black scarves wound round their heads. Militant Muslims did not stop
with Bosnia - some made alliances with extremist Albanians and ethnic
Albanians from Kosovo. These ethnic Albanians embarked on a campaign to
dominate first Kosovo, then surrounding areas, including Macedonia.
Where it will all end now is anybody's guess - but it is unlikely to end
happily.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA412.htm
<http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/Support/Index.stm>
Eve-Ann Prentice is a freelance journalist who has covered events in the
Balkans for the Guardian, Sunday Correspondent and The Times (London) for 25
years. She is also the author of One Woman's War, Duckworth Publishing, 2002
(buy this book from Amazon (UK)
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631047/spiked> or Amazon
(USA) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631047/spiked-20> ), which
explores in depth issues raised in this article.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
