ICG's Tangled Web
Is there some sort of unholy alliance between the NY Times/International Herald
Tribune and the International Crisis Group (ICG)? It seems hardly a week goes
by without the IHT publishing at least one editorial by ICG board members,
sympathizers or partisans, recycling the Group's message about the
"independence" of occupied ("liberated," in their parlance) Kosovo.
The latest in this string of atrocities is an op-ed by one John Norris, a
"special adviser to the president" of the ICG, who spins the indictment and
surrender of Ramush Haradinaj as a "stern test of maturity" in Saturday's IHT.
I'll give the Imperials one thing: they sure can talk pretty. Norris's prose is
very persuasive, if one for even a minute forgets that he traffics in
euphemisms alone. Indeed, the vocabulary of the editorial consists almost
exclusively of select spinwords and phrases. Thus Ramush is not an "indicted
war criminal" like other ICTY prisoners, but a "wildly popular prime minister
who has generally said and done all the right things while delivering on a wide
array of requests made by the UN administration." The anthropomorphic Kosovo
(conjured as a more acceptable image than the KLA, or Albanians) "has
languished awkwardly in a netherworld, uncertain whether it would become a
country, remain a protectorate indefinitely or be forced back into a
desperately unhappy and manifestly unworkable union with Serbia." Notice the
use of "forced", "desperately unhappy" and "manifestly unworkable" to describe
Kosovo's proper legal status. Brilliant!
When Norris says "many international officials wonder if prosecutors in The
Hague lost sight of the forest for the trees in going after Haridinaj [sic] at
this exact moment," one is not supposed to ask whether these unnamed multitudes
reflect only the Albanian partisans hand-picked by the ICG. Similarly, one is
not supposed to understand that the "growing body of sentiment that Kosovo
should be granted conditional independence" is actually the KLA/ICG position,
presented here as self-evident truth.
But while Norris is true to form in repeating the independence mantra and
attempting to manipulate people's sentiments through choice phraseology, he
departs from other ICG editorials by addressing himself partially at the
Albanians. Consider this:
"Rather than lashing out in anger, they need to understand that the end game
for their aspirations is here, and that by continuing to hold their anger in
check, avoiding attacks on the Serb minority and forming a government that can
make real progress on international standards, they can show they are ready to
assume the mantle of statehood."
He follows this up with an appeal to Ibrahim Rugova and Hashim Taqi to "rise
above a long history of mutual animus and political rivalry." (Political
unificiation of Albanians is somewhat of an ICG fetish, yet they go out of
their way to deny its ultimate logical outcome, Greater Albania.) And there you
have it, the message every Albanian partisan in the West has been shouting for
the past week: keep it cool, play along, and you'll get what you want.
Two questions spring into a skeptical mind. Why say this in the IHT, and not,
say, Koha Ditore or Kosova Sot? The NY Times' European avatar is hardly the
Kosovo Albanian daily of choice. So, Norris is making his pitch for the benefit
of western audiences as much as that of the Albanians.
The second question is whether another pogrom on the scale of March 17, 2004
would really be such a threat to the Albanian cause. The initial outrage with
the raging mob was quickly spun into momentum for accelerated status talks. The
ICG itself argues that to delay independence would provoke bloody Albanian
violence. Would proof not help their argument?
This, in turn, suggests that while the message to the Albanians may well be
genuine, its originators are hedging their bets and preparing the groundwork
for another pogrom, which they could blame on "irresponsible elements" among
the Albanians or better yet the Serbs, labeled by Norris and others as the only
possible beneficiary of further violence. So whether there is a pogrom or not,
the ICG has its bases covered.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we conspire to deceive...
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2005/03/icgs-tangled-web.html
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
