APIS Group

Kosovo & Metohija

Pro Memoria
Pogrom on Kosovo � a year after
Do you remember this event?

March 2004 marked a watershed in the Imperial occupation of Kosovo; that much is clear. But while those honestly disgusted with such an outpouring of hatred and violence hoped it would change the nature of the occupation and prompt some soul-searching, they were to be cruelly disappointed.

Into the shocked vacuum stepped a skilled spin machine, unleashing a barrage of deception that soon set the Imperial policy back on track, more vicious than ever.

The same people who in the spring of 2004 deliberately misrepresented the murderous rage of Kosovo Albanians as a legitimate outburst of noble frustration are now at work again, endeavoring ceaselessly to pervert the truth about what is arguably Europe�s darkest corner.

Members of this cabal aren�t Albanian agents. Rather, they seek to make Albanians the agents of the Empire in the Balkans, much as the Ottoman Turks once did. That is what drove their advocacy and support of the illegal, immoral 1999 war and the subsequent occupation. It is what drives their efforts today.

They are not quite the movers and shakers they imagine themselves to be; much of their reputation is a result of shameless self-promotion and bluster.

They do, however, stand out in Imperial policy circles for their very passion for the "Kosovo cause." In a climate where most policymakers are at best ambivalent, they are a force that accomplishes much simply because it encounters little or no opposition. That officialdom, from the UN to the EU, is increasingly echoing their propaganda is downright alarming.

Their "arguments" are easy to demolish, their "logic" simple to disprove. But Belgrade, paralyzed from within, doesn�t seem to have the skill (or worse yet, the will) to do so.

The cabal may be a mendacious mob of hypocrites, but they believe in their deplorable cause. Against a Serbia that increasingly believes in nothing at all, even they can win.

Will they?

A year after pogrom on Kosovo, March 2, 2005, head of the OSCE Mission in Kosmet Pascal Fieschi assessed that the implementation in Kosmet of certain democratic and legal standards of the international community does not progress well.

Fieschi particularly underlined that poor results had been achieved in the field of Serbs� human rights, and their right to property and freedom of move. He did not want to say whether the deadline for the fulfillment of standards would be extended, but pointed to the fact that the international factors would perform an objective assessment of implementation of the set standards.

Do you remember this event?

A pogrom started in Europe on Wednesday, March 17, 2004. A UN official is quoted as saying that "Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo." Serbs are being murdered and their 800 year old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be lost forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo's Albanians have shown that all the speeches about democracy and multiethnicity we have been hearing in Kosovo since June 1999, and the na�ve repetition of them by the international community, are false. These words too are burning, as is the hope in the hearts of right-thinking policymakers across the world that Kosovo's barbarians can be civilized at little cost to the West.

Just as in the 1930s, a rumor became a fact and prearranged plans were put into action. Members of the victimized community in Kosovo, in this case, Serbian children, were accused of chasing four Albanian children into a river and causing the death of three of them. Hours later, what passes for authority in Kosovo, the UN Mission, issued a statement that the accusation against the Serbs was false, that the surviving Albanian child had told the UN that there had been no Serbs--yet the violence escalated. And yesterday it continued unabated. And today Kosovo burns still.

Beginning in the ethnically-divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica, in the northern third of the entity, when a horde of armed Albanians crossed into the Serbian half of the city, breaching a Polish peacekeepers' line, the ensuing violence killed half a dozen people of both ethnic groups.

Hours later, busloads of Albanians were transported to areas where Serbs are concentrated--in some cases, clashing with international peacekeepers. In some areas, entire Serbian villages have been burned to the ground. The UN, ever courageous, evacuated its missions from at least three cities in Kosovo. In two of them, Serbian Orthodox churches are in flames. And it only got worse during that first night, and then again the next day.

Monasteries and churches dating back to the 12th century are burning; 14 have been completely destroyed. Their cultural significance--not only for Christians but for all humanity--is irreplaceable. Photographs and memories are all the remain of these objects of civilization. And the UN fled.

The wave of violence has been too well-planned and coordinated to be a spontaneous reaction to rumors. "It was planned in advance", said Derek Chappell, the UN's Kosovo mission spokesman. All that was needed was a pretext. It is clear that some in the Kosovo Albanian leadership believe that by cleansing all remaining Serbs from the entity (having already achieved the cleansing of two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs after "liberation" in 1999) and destroying all Serbian cultural sites, they can present the international community with a fait accompli. But ethnic purity cannot be allowed to be the foundation for democracy and independence.

Upon hearing the news of the pogrom and the burning of churches in Kosovo, a small crowd of Belgraders surrounded the city's mosque in retaliation. Windows were broken, and a fire was started. (They did the same in Serbia's second largest city, Nis.) In contrast to the scene in Kosovo, the Serbian government dispatched several hundred police to try and control the crowd; joining them was a Serbian Orthodox bishop who tried to talk the crowd down. They did not succeed entirely. The Belgrade crowd is as despicable, but it is far smaller (numbering in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands), and they had to fight government authorities and disregard the pleadings of a bishop to commit their deeds. And 78 of them have been arrested. In Kosovo, where are the Albanian politicians standing in front of the Serbian holy sites? Who was guarding the Serbian churches and villages? Why are they in flames? There are 18,000 foreign troops in Kosovo. Why have they not doing more?

The Kosovo Albanian leadership, while insisting they are capable of governing an independent state, claim that they are unable to control their constituents and stop the pogrom. At the same time, they argue that immediate independence for Kosovo will ensure that Kosovo's Serbs and the holy sites will be protected. So while the leader of the most influential political party in Kosovo, Hasim Thaci, travels abroad preaching the virtues of multiethnicity and a civic-based identity, all five Serbian holy sites in his own home town of Prizren have burned. Meanwhile, his political party and other Kosovo Albanian parties issue statements blaming all this on the Serbs. In the 1930s, they did this as well.

This does not mean that individual Albanian leaders and ordinary Albanians have not acted honorably. Thaci did not want this to happen, and his hastily arranged return to Kosovo may well calm the situation. As a former KLA man, he might be able to reign-in some of the pogrom's leaders. The Kosovo Albanian prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi, and Ramush Haradinaj, a former KLA terrorist commander and the leader of one of their political parties, have been commended by local officials and Serbian Orthodox Church figures for their assistance. But on the other hand, these same men have been promissing for 5 years to rebuild Serbian churches and homes, and to investigate the approximately 3,000 ethnically murders and kidnappings, that have taken place since June 1999. Their words did not translate into actions. Where have they been for the past five years? Their inaction certainly contributed to the perception by Albanian extremists that they could get away with murder and with arson. And they have.

How many arrests will we see this time? Will an Albanian judge convict one of his own for a crime against a Serb? It hadn't happened before Kristallnacht in Kosovo. Can it happen now?

Post-June 1999, Kosovo's Serbs were willing to reject the lessons of history and try to work with--even trust their Albanian neighbors--and believe Kosovo's Albanian politicians who promised that religious freedom and multiethnicity would be made permanent--that the values of the West would take root in Kosovo.

At the same time, Kosovo's Serbs have for years been warning of the real nature of Albanian nationalism, and the UN and the West have thought these to be exaggerations.

But as the Diocese of Kosovo's statement from Wednesday makes clear, "What has happened today and is happening this evening in Kosovo and Metohija represents a horrible defeat for the entire UN mission which has been deceiving the world for the past five years with their alleged successes when in fact they were enabling militarization."

Murder upon murder, kidnapping upon kidnapping, arson upon arson, and now finally this pogrom--have led the Serbs to the awful realization that they are at the mercy of barbarians. This is ethnic aggression of the worst sort "in the heart of Europe," as Madeleine Albright famously called Kosovo before she bombed Serbia.

Today we see the true face of the multiethnicity of which they all spoke so highly. And all this is happening under UN and NATO administration. Imagine how bad it could get if they get their independence.

Senator Sam Brownback, after having met Artemije, the Bishop of Kosovo, several weeks ago in Washington, wrote a letter to President George W. Bush in which he concluded "We should not consider advancing the cause of independence of a people whose first act when liberated was to ethnically cleanse a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens and destroy over a hundred of their holy sites." What might he say now? What will we all say? Will we do nothing, just like in the 1930s? Techniciens of the site ERP MIM made the copie of an albanian site showing the barbarism in Prizren and in Kosovo from March 17 to March 19, 2004. See the following adress: http://www.kosovo.com/www.besimi.com/prizreni/default.htm

German troops in Kosovo ill-prepared, ineffectual: internal report

Agency AFP wrote german peacekeepers were woefully unprepared for the inter-ethnic strife that erupted in Kosovo in March, according to a leaked internal defense ministry report cited Wednesday in the German press.

The report found that the units had no crisis plan for the outbreak of violence between the ethnic Albanian majority and the Serb minority, were poorly trained in using weapons, were not proficient in English and had insufficient protective equipment.

The investigation noted that many of the problems had since been tackled, including providing troops with tear gas to deal with riots.

Defense Minister Peter Struck has been under pressure for the German troops' apparent failure to recognize the extent of the clashes where they were stationed in the southwest of the province, amid opposition calls for a formal parliamentary probe.

Speaking to the Bundestag lower house Wednesday, Struck acknowledged general problems in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo including what he said was a lack of communication between the NATO-led force there, KFOR, and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo.

Although he admitted German troops had mistaken the mounting tensions between Serbs and Albanians as "routine", Struck denied that grave mistakes had been made.

"Soldiers are only human," he said.

He called for better training to deal with violent demonstrations but said there was no reason to question the mission as a whole.

The anti-Serb riots by ethnic Albanians dealt a major blow to UN efforts to reconcile the two embittered communities following their 1998-99 conflict.

The violence in Kosovo, which is officially part of Serbia but whose population is mainly ethnic Albanian, left 19 people dead and over 900 injured.

Serb leaders have condemned the UN mission and NATO peacekeepers for failing to prevent the attacks.

Germany has about 3,600 troops stationed with KFOR.

According to agency DPA german Defence Minister Peter Struck admitted mistakes involving the country's armed forces during their mission in Kosovo.

Struck said there was poor communication between the NATO-led multinational force in Kosovo (KFOR) and United Nations police (UNMIK) during rioting in March which left nearly 30 dead and hundreds injured, according to reports at the time.

A Bundeswehr report to the defence ministry has acknowledged shortcomings by German forces during the outbreak of ethnic violence in the U.N.-administered province on March 17 and 18.

Struck said before reporting to a parliamentary defence committee on the affair that German soldiers had regarded the situation in Kosovo as routine and consequently may have dropped their guard.

"I think one has to be surprised about some of the things which are contained in our reports," he said.

There were most definitely shortcomings in the area of military communication between KFOR forces and the UNMIK police forces.

"However soldiers are only human, and of course mistakes are made."

The German forces in Kosovo have come under fire for their role when ethnic Albanians targeted Serbs and other minorities in two days of ethnic rioting and burning of homes, churches and other property.

In July, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused KFOR and UNMIK of failing "catastrophically" to protect minority communities during the March violence.

KFOR, UNMIK and the locally-recruited Kosovo Police Service "almost completely lost control" as at least 33 major riots broke out across Kosovo involving an estimated 51,000 people, it said.

"In Prizren, German KFOR troops failed to deploy to protect the Serb population and the many historic Serbian Orthodox churches, despite calls for assistance from their UNMIK international police counterparts, who later accused German KFOR commanders of cowardice," the report said.

The confidential Bundeswehr report, seen by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, admits that the German forces in Kosovo had no crisis plan to deal with the clashes and that soldiers were not mentally prepared for the danger.

The report says Bundeswehr troops were also uncertain how to use their weapons, their equipment was deficient and their knowledge of English insufficient. According to the report, all the shortcomings have now been rectified.

Struck is being asked to respond to a catalogue of questions on the affair from the opposition Christian Democrats.

The opposition is calling for an investigation after it was revealed that Struck had not been informed about the death of a Serb civilian in Prizren during the rioting.

Struck only found out about the incident in August following a German newspaper story. The government had previously insisted there had been no Serb deaths in the area under German command.

Reports said the man had been killed after Albanians stormed and burned down a Serb-Orthodox seminary.

The Bundeswehr report said German forces in Kosovo had not reported the civilian's death at the time because there appeared to be no connection with the Bundeswehr or the outbreak of rioting.

Opposition politicians are accusing the defence ministry of not revealing all its information about the Bundeswehr's response to the violence.

Christian Social Union defence expert Christian Schmidt said the ministry was only revealing "piecemeal" information on the affair.

"It now turns out that there is an internal ministry report which had been withheld from us," he said.

The report was only presented to the parliamentary committee at the start of the hearing Wednesday. As a result, a decision would probably not be taken until next week on whether to set up a committee of inquiry, he said.

Sweet dreams, Colonel Hintelmann

During the March 17-18, 2004 ethnic Albanian violence in Kosovo and Metohija
against Serbs and other non-Albanians, almost 3,600 German KFOR failed to
intervene to save a single Orthodox church in Prizren, allowing rampaging
Albanian mobs to barbarically destroy the entire old quarter of Prizren,
including the Bishop's residence, and the medieval monastery of Holy
Archangels near Prizren.

Just after that, a german film company, Zepo Productions, has prepared a special tribute to colonel Dieter Hintelmann, the commander of German KFOR forces in Prizren at that time, which can be downloaded here: "Sweet Dreams, Colonel Hintelmann" www.unitedstudio.net/Germans/GermanSoldier.zip (about 20MB)

Tragic balance of pogrom, March 17-19

- According to information received so far by the Diocese of Raska and Prizren, 12 persons of Serb nationality have been killed or are listed as missing. These numbers are not final.

- Dozens of Serbs have been wounded or beaten up. Over 4,000 Serbs (according to UNMIK data, the exact number is 4,012) have been expelled from their homes and are presently either internally displaced in Kosovo and Metohija or have crossed the administrative line into central Serbia. Of that number, 334 people are still temporarily lodged in KFOR military facilities.

- According to UNMIK data, 561 Serb houses have been burned down and 218 more Serb houses have been seriously damaged. Since the entire Serb quarter of Potkaljaja in Prizren has been torched, the number of destroyed or seriously damaged houses (including those that were empty due to the fact that their Serb owners were expelled in 1999), according to assessments of the Diocese of Raska and Prizren the number exceeds 1,000. The Serb returnee village most damaged is Belo Polje near Pec where some 20 just restored homes and the parish hall were burned down. The inside of the church was also burned again.

- A total of 35 Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed or seriously damaged, as well as dozens of cemeteries from which the deceased were unburied and their bones scattered. The tombs of St. Ionnachius of Devic, the Serbian Emperor Dusan and old tombs in the villages of St. George in Prizren and St. Nicholas in Pristina were opened and desecrated. In the churches, hundreds of valuable icons, chalices, vestments and other church valuables were destroyed, as

well as medieval frescoes and many church documents (books of baptisms, marriages, deaths).

Do you want more?�

More German KFOR Troops for Kosovo

NATO [German troops in particular] has been criticised for failing to stop three days of violent riots against the Serb minority in March last year, the worst violence in the province since the war.

NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo (KFOR) said on Wednesday it would deploy 600 more German troops to Kosovo next week as part of a reinforcement exercise, according to AFP.

A German armored infantry unit would be deployed from March 6 to April 13 to "send a clear message from NATO and the international community of a strong resolve and commitment to maintain peace and stability in Kosovo," the KFOR statement read.

The troops would arrive by air and join 18,000 NATO troops already stationed in the southern Serbian province, which was rocked by a 1998-1999 war between ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas and Serbian forces.

A NATO bombing campaign forced troops under then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw from the ethnic Albanian dominated province, which is seeking independence from Serbia.

NATO has been criticised for failing to stop three days of violent riots against the Serb minority in March last year, the worst violence in the province since the war.

Source:

Deutsche Welle, March 2, 2005 http://www.dw-world.de/dw/briefs/0,1574,1506794,00.html

[news] Pogrom on Kosovo - a year after

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