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Interview: Scott Taylor on the Balkans
About Scott Taylor
Scott Taylor, a former soldier, is the editor and publisher of Esprit
de Corps, an Ottawa based magazine celebrated for its unflinching
scrutiny of the Canadian military. Taylor appears regularly in the
Canadian media as military analyst, and is the recipient of the 1996
Quill Award for outstanding work in the field of Canadian
communications. That same year, he won the Alexander MacKenzie Award
for journalistic excellence.A columnist for the Halifax Herald and the
host of Situation Report, Taylor has been a contributor to Maclean's
and Globe and Mail, The Financial Post, Media Magazine and Reader's
Digest.
Works by Scott Taylor
- Tarnished Brass: Crime and Corruption in Canadian Military
(co-author wit Brian Nolan), 1996 (reprinted 1997)
- Tested Mettle: Canada's Peacekeepers at War (co-author with
Brian Nolan), 1998
- Inat: Images of Serbia and Kosovo Conflict (author), 2000
- Canada at War and Peace, II: A Millennium of Military
Heritage (editor-in-chief), 2001
- Diary of an UN Civil War (author), 2202
For additional information, visit the Esprit de Corps website at
www.espritdecorps.on.ca
"Do they have oil, is there a pipeline? They look at this as an
economic thing but they don't understand the cultures and regional
differences"
Mr. Taylor, if I can take you back to an earlier time to a television
interview with Pobeda Piskacheva of the "Macedonian Edition", I
believe you said, if the Albanians take a part of Macedonia then there
will only be a small part left, which will probably become part of
another country, maybe Bulgaria.
Scott Taylor: The idea was that if that happens, according to one
American envoy, who said give half of Macedonia to the Albanians and
the other half to the Bulgarians in December 2000, then it would all
be over.
Why do the Powers to be want to wipe out Macedonia as a country and as
a people? Don't they know what happened to our people when Macedonia
was divided in 1913? Don't they know that some Balkan countries hardly
recognize the Macedonians as an identity? If Macedonia is divided up
again we will disappear from the face of the earth. What is that all
about?
Scott Taylor: Well it's almost impossible for Macedonians to
disappear. The Macedonian Diaspora is so entrenched in certain
communities in Canada and Australia and everywhere else. I mean it's
very powerful. There are a lot of wealthy and very influential
Macedonians everywhere. They will exist.As for the powers to be, when
you ask about American policies towards Macedonia they're probably no
more thought out than their policy towards Mongolia or their policy
towards Uzbekistan which they've just been kicked out of and the
Uzbeks have just said to hell with you. And they need Uzbekistan for
their operations in Afghanistan. So the Americans are not that well
versed. You've almost got this bastard child that's now suddenly found
itself in control and with enough influence all over the world but
they don't have the depth of knowledge of having an Empire or having
grown through this like the British or the French. It's all new to
them, they don't really even understand Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, these
places where they are into."Do they have oil, is there a pipeline?"
They look at this as an economic thing but they don't understand the
cultures and regional differences. It takes a long time. I'm still
covering these areas and it takes so much on the ground knowledge
which these guys can't possibly have.If you're an oil executive who
spent his life working for the Republican Party and then becomes an
advisor to George Bush and you're forty-five years old, how the hell
could you know what it's like in Iraq, in the Balkans or Tajikistan?
You can't and if you're not there you don't know it, that's what I'm
finding all the time. And I'll think there's got to be much smarter
people than me who know this.And you talk to people with PhD's in
Middle East studies and you're bringing them the information which
they have no idea. They're like, " Where did you get this from?"Well!
I just came from there, this is what it's like!" and they are, "Wow we
need to factor that in." They're looking at me coming and briefing
congress on northern Iraq. And if I've become an expert on northern
Iraq through my visits and being taken hostage, I mean what the hell
were they dealing with before? And yet if you look at the amount of
money they pump into Iraq, $320 billion, 2,000 soldiers killed, 20,000
wounded and now they're asking me to come in and say who are we
fighting?So don't think too much about the mental investment the
Americans have put into Macedonia and the future of your people. They
are looking for short term solutions to try to cut some costs. They
believe their own propaganda, they bought into the Albanian lobby and
that's the problem. I think the Macedonians and the Serbs were behind
the eight ball. The Albanians jumped up, they won the popular opinion
vote in Washington and now you guys have been denigrated and demonized
as Slavs.
But why do these powers help and support the Albanians so much? What's
in it for them?
Scott Taylor: The American mentality is they want to be loved. They're
like a great big schoolyard bully who really just wants a friend and
they don't understand that the Albanians don't really like them.
They're just using them and the Kurds in northern Iraq are just using
the Americans. It's the inherent weakness of this great big giant,
blind, stupid bully. He wants to be liked so if somebody says we like
you they believe him because they want to be liked. The Macedonians
aren't going to play that game. The Serbs are definitely not going to
play that game.
Are there any other independent foreign reporters who are recording
the news besides yourself?
Scott Taylor: There is. Nobody wants to hear their own propaganda and
that's why I use this guy, that I trust, all the time. His name is
Chris Deliso, he does a thing called Balkan analysis. It's a website
and he works for antiwar.com. He's been living in the region since
before the conflict in 2001, he's married to a Macedonian girl. He was
living in Kumanovo, now he's living in Skopje. He is very well versed
on the players, the politics, and what's going on there. He is well
connected and he was the one who contacted me just last week about
tracking down a Canadian policeman. This guy I did track down. He is
now hopefully going to testify at the Hague. He's another great
source. He was one of the detectives working for the UN. He came in on
the wake of NATO coming through Kosovo. Their job was to go to the
Ratchak massacre site to secure it and get the evidence they needed
dug up so they could get the forensics.He told me when we spoke last
week that when they arrived it was the Albanians, the UCK, that
prevented them at gunpoint from digging up the bodies. They went back
and they had to get NATO tanks to come back and secure the so-called
massacre site, which as we now know forensic evidence completely
refuted the idea that there was a massacre. Deliso is in contact. He's
going to publish an interview with Stu Kellic, the detective. He has
never been interviewed before. He was also the detective who was
involved when a Nish express bus was blown up, bringing Serbs back to
Nish in either late '99 or 2000. The bomb was under the road and
somebody was laying in ambush and waited until that vehicle came and
then blew it up. The police had a huge success because they found
where the guy had lain. He had smoked cigarette after cigarette,
typical Balkan guy, he had smoked all these cigarettes. They took the
cigarette butts and took the DNA. They found it through a German
criminal bank, identified the guy, made the arrest and then they
turned him over to the US because they felt the UN police station was
not secure. He went into camp Bonnsteel. Seventy-two hours later the
Americans came and told the UN police; sorry he's gone. One of his
friends brought him a cake. Inside the cake was a small saw and a
small file. So this guy in an orange jumpsuit cuts through the bars,
gets out into this camp and escaped through 7,000 American soldiers
without being seen. He's gone. This policeman knows this is his catch,
his success.
During the Yugoslav era, the Macedonians from western Macedonia and
the Serbs from Kosovo were leaving in panic from the Albanian terror,
which lasted for decades. The then Yugoslav Government never made
these incidents public. Is what has happened in the last ten years
related to that era?
Scott Taylor: Albanians next to this Albanian enclave through south
Serbia and Macedonia had influence from this. They have their own
cultural identity. It was not being represented by a unified entity
called Yugoslavia. Which means a union of Slavs but they're not Slavs.
So it was a problem they ignored, Tito tried to appease them, then he
would try to oppress them. It would blow up – it was a whole seesaw
motion. When they would try to release the pressure and give them what
they wanted, give them more independence, then revoke it like Slobodan
Milosevic did. But in the meantime the real battlefield was what they
call the war of the womb. They were having babies like crazy, they
changed the demographics. By spitting out babies you then change the
entire environment. So if you're living in a village that's 50/50 then
it becomes 70/30 and you don't feel your women are safe around them.
You don't feel there's a future for your kids. You send your kids away
to school. All that's left are the old people and they're not having
any more babies so the Serbian population goes down and the Albanians
expand.
"They were using NATO maps and my driver was told to take me out so I
wouldn't see anything but it was too late…the Albanians were using
NATO supplied maps of northern Macedonia."
Was it the same in Macedonia?
Scott Taylor: The same exactly. That's was what was happening and it
finally came to a head and they said look now we represent this much
of the population. We want complete control. The world looks at this
and says of course this is natural, it makes sense.
After 2001after what happened in Yugoslavia and Kosovo between the
Serbs and Albanians, we had the war in Macedonia. I had a chance to
talk to some people who were from Tetovo and the surrounding villages.
They told me that they saw foreign helicopters – not from the
Macedonian army – dropping containers, huge containers, delivering
modern weapons to the Albanians. One young guy said "We were lucky
because the Albanians did not know how to use those powerful weapons".
Do you know who was behind that?
Scott Taylor: Well I was able to verify that the Americans were
supporting the Albanians in Tetovo. They confirmed it. They talked
about the helicopters coming in, the mortars they were given which
they then used. I was there when they used them on Tetovo. There
wasn't anything too sophisticated. When they took the town of Tetovo
in August I was there. I went up and I was filming and they took me
into the bunker so I got to see it. As a soldier I got to see and I
saw a very professional setup – the bunker was dug over some time, it
wasn't dug just two days earlier as was assumed. It was reinforced and
they were living there as a very disciplined well trained force,
trained to a western standard.
Albanian trained?
Scott Taylor: MPRI, they trained them obviously, the way they stacked
their weapons, they stacked their food. It was traditional
British/American mentality of how things should be and it was all set
up inside, well protected. They had endured the artillery coming down
and one would have presumed they were all killed but they weren't.
They were all alive. It was a big, big bunker. They took me back to
their headquarters etc. They were using NATO maps and my driver was
told to take me out so I wouldn't see anything but I mean I had seen
it, it was too late. I didn't see any NATO officials but the Albanians
were using NATO supplied maps of northern Macedonia.
Shortly after the war the Albanian terrorists were liberated. You
remember the incident in Arachinovo where the Macedonian army caught
all those terrorists with nineteen American high ranking military
advisors? It seems that after a few monts all of those terrorists were
pardoned by Trajkovski, the then Macedonian president.
Scott Taylor: That was part of the Ohrid agreement.
What was that all about? Was it right or wrong? Obviously the
Macedonian authorities thought that they should do that.
Scot Taylor: They were pressured to do so. I mean I have to
acknowledge that the Macedonian government was in a very weak position
economically. They were trying to fight a war, a domestic war, with a
military that they were building from scratch. They were renting
Ukrainian helicopters and they were borrowing and begging for military
hardware. At the same time the Americans were simply pushing in
whatever was necessary to change the balance. And threatening, I mean
who was the secretary of state it wasn't Rice but they went and told
the Ukrainians to stop the shipment, the weaponry of helicopters. The
helicopters were flying in the last days of the Ohrid agreement.It was
Rice who told the Ukrainians to stop flying offensive missions; only
do intimidation flights. The Albanians knew that they would not be
fired upon when they heard helicopters flying. So the last few days of
the offensive I was there. The Macedonians could do nothing. They
couldn't stop the Albanians from pushing so they were forced to sign
the Ohrid agreement, which anybody who understands it understands it's
unworkable. It further weakened the Macedonian government who are
desperately trying to get into the EU and get into NATO and to try to
find something. And I think if we back it up again, in 1999 the
Macedonians did the international community's bidding. What was going
on in Kosovo may have been distasteful and they had their own Albanian
minority in these areas. The Macedonian government did everything it
thought it could to please NATO. The Macedonians facilitated NATO with
bases and gave it access etc.But there's an old phrase in the
prostitution business that says "you pay before you play". The
Macedonians never demanded concessions from these people. They gave
them immediate access into whatever these parties wanted and never
asked for anything in return. So when it was over they just said "okay
thanks".
"Cheku was responsible for the massacre in '93 in Croatia…he was
involved in shelling the Serbs in '95 in operation storm…teenage girls
burnt alive, raped, murdered, Cheku responsible"
The Macedonian government is still under pressure because Ali Ahmeti
who was one of the terrorist leaders is now in government.
Scott Taylor: Of course and these guys are linked to the
clowns who are in government in Kosovo now still planning further
mischief. These guys released the senior Kosovo army commanders just
before the fighting in 2001 so they can go to their units to fight in
Macedonia. The mayor in one of the towns was a general before Kosovo
and went and fought in Macedonia, now he is mayor. You can easily find
him, he doesn't hide like an outlaw, but all the same, he is a
terrorist who fought in Macedonia.But this guy Agim Cheku, the head of
the Kosovo protection corps, fired his officers who were
collaborating with Macedonian-Albanians which only freed them up.
They went to their units, fought the campaign and then came back
quietly. So of course if they got killed in Macedonia, on the payroll,
from KPC it would be a problem but by firing them first he looks like
I'm arms length. He fired them because they were giving money to
Macedonian-Albanians. In most countries if you do that you go to jail.
You'd be arrested but this was prior to 911.
You mentioned Cheku. I just remembered reading an article published
some years ago by one of the Canadian daily newspapers. It was written
by the Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bisset, where he mentioned
that Cheku was on the payroll of the United Nations. Kofi Anan used
to sign the cheques for his and other terrorists.
Scott Taylor: Cheku was responsible for the massacre in "93 in
Croatia. He was fighting in the Croatian army, he's an Albanian. The
Canadian soldiers witnessed that. That's how I found out.He fought
against Serbs in Craina. The unit he fought for, gave him a citation
and they recorded this. He was never indicted and he was involved in
shelling the Serbs in '95 in operation storm. Canadians again wanted
him indicted. Cheku, is a blood thirsty killer.On the eve of the war
in January 1999 there was a big announcement and he was named the head
of the KLA, UCK. It was NATO's blessing. It was after Ratchak and
then they said they're going to bomb, the ultimatum is coming. He was
named the head of the UCK. They trained and groomed him. He left the
JNA from the breakup and joined the Croatian army. He had mostly
Albanians fighting with him against Serbs.
Who trained him? NATO?
Scott Taylor: The MPRI trained him and he fought the one mission in
the Meduc in 1993 and then they trained him again in artillery and he
became a career general. He was the man who shelled Knin when they
forced the Serbs out. All the time the Canadians were indicting him,
specifically him for what he had done and NATO turns a blind eye in
1999 and says this guy is a good guy. So the fact that he's collecting
a UN paycheck, they know what he did in '93 and they know what he did
in '95 and they know what his people did after the Serbs were flushed
out of Kosovo. So for the UN, for NATO, they can never admit that they
knew what he did before because he's an indicted criminal. How can you
put an indicted criminal in charge of a guerrilla army in times of war
and not expect him to commit crimes?
We're talking about United Nations?
Scott Taylor: Well we're talking about them in the rape and the
murder. It was brutal. What our guys saw – teenage girls burnt alive,
raped, murdered, of all the events that they saw this was one of the
worst. They know Cheku is responsible.
But why did they permit that?
Scott Taylor: They facilitated – permit nothing – they facilitated,
they groomed him and they liked him. He's a good friend of Michael
Jackson. He was a good friend of General Wesley Clark. There's a
picture of them all shaking hands and yet at the same time the
Canadian soldiers who witnessed what he did, they know that this man
has committed, and been responsible for, murders, rapes and everything
else. He's now sitting in a uniform collecting pay. He's the one who
cut his officers loose to go into Macedonia. Agim Cheku is my age,
he's just 45.
Is it true that there are many Muslims from Afghanistan and Pakistan
fighting on the Albanian side?
Scott Taylor: There was, I don't know if there is now but there was.
In 2001 obviously yes the Mujahadeen were there and the Mujahadeen
were in Kosovo and Bosnia. And this is something which, the numbers,
no one knows exactly but they know the Americans facilitated it and
the Canadians were aware of it. In Srebrenitsa they committed
atrocities against the Serbians. I mean inside the enclave it was full
of Mujahadeen going out and committing atrocities against the Serbian
villages.
Srebrenitsa is known in the world as a place where atrocities were committed...
Scott Taylor: Black and white, Serbians came in and just simply
committed genocide. Canadian soldiers, Canadian police were there.
Nasser Aurich was the Muslim leader inside the town. He is now
indicted, finally he's in the Hague for what he did. It took them a
long time but it was Canadian police who witnessed him come in and
shoot Serbs in the hospital in front of UN police. Everyone knew what
was going on. They were provoking the Serbs outside the enclave and
inside the enclave they were massacring in front of UN police and
everything. They had Mujahadeen, lots of Mujahadeen in the enclave.
And at the end there was a guy who worked for me for a couple of
years. He was a major in the infantry and when the date in court was
assigned, his job was to repatriate the Mujahadeen from Bosnia. If
they came from Yemen he was to phone the Yemeni's and say, "Can you
take them back?"If they said no, he sent them down the hall and they
went to the Bosnian office and they gave them citizenship. There were
two villages, I think they were mentioned in the book, that they
resided in, that they put them all into. Well, these guys didn't go to
Bosnia to farm or to raise sheep. They went to fight for Islam so when
the fighting started in Kosovo they went to Kosovo. And, when the
fighting started in Macedonia they went to northern Macedonia of
course. The cutting off of heads and all these things they did to
Macedonian police were all the trademarks of these guys.
Independent Kosovo will affect the whole area. What do you think are
the consequences for the Republic of Macedonia?
Scott Taylor: The Parliament of Kosovo, as it's called, has already
made one ruling, passed one law. They did not recognize the border
with Macedonia. This was a while ago about 18 months ago. They see the
border as south of where it currently is. In other words, taking
Tetovo and any others that are Albanian.At the time it was Stiner in
UNMIC, he ran downstairs to the parliament and he said, " No! You
can't do this. You're allowed to play and you can make your laws about
traffic lights and you can make your laws about taxes on the donut
shops and you can make your laws about this and that but you cannot
make this law because this is basically a future declaration of war.
You are disputing a boundary which is recognized internationally!" So,
Stiner put the veto through this. The Albanians were very upset and
the Serbs declined to vote. So you know where they are going to go
with this. If the international community says you are independent
we're going to pull out they still have claims. Internally that's
their desire. They've never made a secret about it. They want to
expand their territory. They've got willing supporters, we saw that
when the fighting took place in Tetovo. The population is a young
population and supports their fighters. I was there, I saw, I stayed
in the households of these people. Everybody supported the UCK
fighters, if they couldn't carry a gun then they stood out with
binoculars. Everybody was watching for the Macedonians.
"So any agreement between Serbia and Macedonia will be null and void
if Kosovo becomes a reality."
Just a few weeks ago Branko Crvenkovski, the president of Macedonia
had a meeting in Ohrid with Kadich, the current presidentof Serbia and
Montenegro and Parvanov the Bulgarian president. Kadich said at that
meeting that the Serbian Montenegrin government and Macedonian
government are the only ones who are in charge of the borders between
Serbia and Macedonia. Not the Albanians.
Scott Taylor: At the moment on paper Kosovo, administratively, is
being recognized as being part of Serbia until there is some sort of
independence. The independent parliament that's existing and making
its own votes etc., they've already declared and even though it's been
abolished they voted unanimously not to recognize the border. So the
international community knows this is happening and this was before
the program in 2004 when the Albanians all orchestrated, rose up and
chased the Serbs out of and burnt 800 houses and entered the enclaves,
this mass violence. So they sent a message to all the Serbs living in
Kosovo if the international community leaves then you had better go.
That's the message that was sent and they've already put it on paper
that we will not recognize you. If they are recognized as independent
Kosovo, they will then turn around and say the border is not as we see
it. So any agreement between Serbia and Macedonia will be null and
void if Kosovo becomes a reality.
How do you see the future of the Balkans especially the Macedonians
who are most affected by the Albanians? The dream of greater Albania?
Scott Taylor: I think the wish of the Americans is to
create this independent country. This is the Clinton administration's
legacy. They want to create a new country and then be able to have a
statue of themselves as the creator of whatever, but it's not that
simple. The people themselves, it demeans the future of Macedonia if
you declare independent Kosovo. It's going to destabilize south
Serbia, it's going to destabilize northern Macedonia. The Serbian
government itself will be weakened again because people have strong
ties with what they are going to do and at the moment no one is really
paying attention to it. They're working on their own economies. The
Macedonian government is trying so hard to pretend; it's like
whistling past the graveyard; they're pretending they're not afraid
there's nothing to worry about. Please come and invest in our country,
everything is stable, one big happy family. It's not and those issues
that flared up in 2001, anybody who's an international investor knows
that it can happen again tomorrow. The ink is not dry on any new map.
So it's almost impossible to predict the future without further
bloodshed. People are very emotional about them and nationalistic.
Macedonians are proud they're different than Serbs in a sense perhaps
not as volatile but if pushed far enough we saw what happened in 2001.
The same paramilitary sort of groups presented themselves when pushed
far enough, people whose traditional homeland is being taken away from
them.
So are we to expect another war?
Scott Taylor: I'm hoping there are smarter people than me who are able
to find the solution but I think in the moment the direction they are
going – to make it a quick term solution just to pave it over so the
American troops can come out of Kosovo to Iraq is the wrong answer. I
think it's finished, I don't think there was any long term planning.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P2615_0_1_0
AntiWar.com
Blog
The Bully Complex
Canadian war reporter Scott Taylor was recently interviewed by the
Canadian-Macedonian News newspaper. He kindly mentions myself, but
that is not the primary reason I suggest the article. More interesting
is the following insight into why the Americans tend to support who
they do.
When asked why the Americans fell for the fawning accolades and
desperate pleas of the Albanians (as well as the Kurds), Scott notes:
"...The American mentality is they want to be loved. They're like a
great big schoolyard bully who really just wants a friend and they
don't understand that the Albanians don't really like them. They're
just using them and the Kurds in northern Iraq are just using the
Americans. It's the inherent weakness of this great big giant, blind,
stupid bully. He wants to be liked so if somebody says we like you
they believe him because they want to be liked. The Macedonians aren't
going to play that game. The Serbs are definitely not going to play
that game."
Of course, at work are also all the numerous geostrategic and economic
interests, some of which Scott mentions, but this insight into
America's collective psychology has a devastating ring of truth to it,
for me anyway.
Today we live in an imperial moment like any other. And when it
becomes necessary to grovel at the feet of empire to curry favor,
those who have neither self-respect nor an interest in self-reliance
always win. Sometimes it's better to lose.
Posted by: Christopher Deliso on Jan 29, 06 | 2:39 am
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
