http://www.dawn.com/2006/03/18/letted.htm#8
Dawn (Pakistan)
March 18, 2006
Letters
Milosevic's death
RAZA NAEEM
Lahore
THIS is in response to Mr Maqbool Ahmad Bhatty's article "Death of a mass murderer" (Dawn, March 15)
I have to say with a lot of regret that Mr Bhatty's views on Milosevic mirror the views of self-serving western commentators who unleashed balatant propaganda about Milosevic and then justified Nato's horrific bombing of Belgrade in 1999.
Mr Bhatty does not venture into the past history of the region which is important to understand the modern tragedy of Yugoslavia and the Balkans as a whole. Yugoslavia was the most secular and multi-ethnic society in Europe prior to its break-up in 1990 by a deliberate conspiracy hatched by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Germany and Nato in order to encircle Russia and give this mineral-rich region to local satraps who were little more than thugs.
Slobodan Milosevic succeeded Josip Tito as the constitutionally elected leader of Yugoslavia. The Serbs have historically been the largest ethnic group in Yugoslavia and their attachment to the former Yugoslavia was the strongest among all the other ethnic groups, namely, the Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes and Kosovars. As such when western propaganda threatened to destroy the relatively harmonious fabric of united Yugoslavia, Milosevic attempted to utilise his constitutional powers to stop an ethnic bloodbath from engulfing the country and to keep the country united.
Out of all the leaders of the different Yugoslav nationalities, Milosevic had been the most tolerant and the most impervious to the nationalistic passions which later consumed the other constituent states and led to the break-up of Yugoslavia.
So while Mr Bhatty has heaped all sorts of slanders about Milosevic, he would not say the same about the Bosnian president at the time, Alijah Izzetbegovic, who was a known Islamic fundamentalist who wanted to establish an Islamic caliphate across the Balkans. Similarly the Croatian candidate Franjo Tudjman, who was favoured by Nato to do its part in the destruction of Yugoslavia, had been on the payroll of the Nazis during the Second World War.
When Milosevic could not prevent the disintegration of Yugoslavia by the imperialist powers he sought to protect the sovereignty of Serbia and Montenegro, the only republic of the former federation which did not want to secede. He signed a humiliating compromise at Dayton with the very people who had played a big role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. By all standards of modern law, then US president Bill Clinton, his secretary of state Madeleine Albright, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the rest of the third-rate leaders of Nato are war criminals who should have been tried at the International War Crimes Tribunal.
Meanwhile as president of Serbia, Milosevic proved resilient to attempts by the World Bank and IMF to colonize his country. He was in favour of state control of essential industries and keeping prices of essential items low, for the common man. This model has now been rolled back in the newly-created UN-US protectorates of Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia.
When imperialist attempts to make Milosevic surrender were repeatedly thwarted, a thuggish army of paramilitaries known as the Kosovo 'Liberation' Army (KLA) was created and financed overnight to sabotage the Milosevic administration. The KLA was initially trained by associates of Osama bin Laden and then by the CIA. Overnight the imperialist West became a defender of white European
Muslims.There had been no social base for an independent Albanian Kosovo before the KLA was born.This was merely an attempt to weaken the Milosevic administration and bring it to its knees.
A vicious 78-day bombing which reduced one of Europe's most beautiful and historic capital cities to rubble, along with a middle-class 'revolt' engineered by US-funded NGOs, led to the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic. In this manner, the historical memory of the most secular multi-ethnic society, with the exception of Muslim Spain and Soviet Russia, was finally obliterated.
RAZA NAEEM
Lahore
