http://www.antiwar.com/malic/
ANTIWAR, Thursday, October 19, 2006
Balkan Express
by Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar.com
The Edge of Madness
Delusions and Hysteria Rule the Frustrated Balkans
It has been eight years since the "Kosovo Liberation Army" openly received
NATO support for its separatist war against Serbia; over 12 years since
Washington and Brussels recognized the declaration of independence issued by
the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government that plunged that country into civil
war. In both cases, support from the "international community" produced far
less than the leaders of Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians desired.
Almost 11 years after the Dayton Accords, Bosnia is not a centralized,
Muslim-dominated country. Seven years after KLA thugs rode into Kosovo on
NATO tanks, that province is not yet independent from Serbia. The passage of
time reinforces differences between wishful thinking and reality, creating
cognitive dissonance and frustration that occasionally spill over into acts
that can only be described as madness.
Trust and the Great Game
For years since the NATO occupation began, the separation of Kosovo from
Serbia has been described as "inevitable" and only a matter of time. And
yet, even though the Empire has put its military, diplomatic, and propaganda
muscle behind independence, it doesn't appear any more within reach today
than it was this spring, when sham "negotiations" began in Vienna under the
chairmanship of an Albanian partisan, former Finnish president Martti
Ahtisaari.
Simon Tisdall, writing in the Guardian last Friday, blamed Ahtisaari for
"giving the game away" on Kosovo by publicly stating the imposition of
independence might be delayed because of Serbian and Russian opposition:
"Moscow's stance has little to do with resolving the Kosovo conundrum and a
lot to do with the wider, ongoing geopolitical struggle between Russia and
the West."
(Perhaps that is why Ahtisaari and his ICG buddies lost their bid for the
Nobel Peace Prize, although dubbed as favorites. The prestigious award went
to a Bangladeshi banker who financed free enterprise.)
The day before, Agim Ceku was visiting London in the capacity of "prime
minister" of Kosovo. After talking to British government officials, the
former Croatian general and KLA leader told the press that "We trust the
international community to drive this process through to the correct
conclusion." Just so no one has any doubts as to what this conclusion might
be, Ceku added: "We need independence now because we are convinced that
there is no other workable solution." (Reuters)
Trust, do you? History is a graveyard littered with bones of peoples who
"trusted" the great powers to do the right thing. Albanians think the right
thing is independence, because they are 90 percent of the population, they
are in de facto possession of the province, and they have the image of
victims from the 1998-99 war. Serbs think the right thing is no
independence, because they have a de jure claim to the province, because the
Albanian majority was created through terror and ethnic cleansing, and
because they are victims of the post-1999 occupation, however hard that's
been covered up. But the Empire doesn't care either way. As Tisdall
unwittingly reveals, the "game" is bigger than Kosovo, Serbs, or Albanians –
it's about the old rivalry between East and West, going back to the Cold War
and maybe even as far as the 19th-century Great Game.
In opposing the separation of Kosovo, Moscow is seeking to protect its own
interests, not those of the Serbs – regardless of Western propagandistic
prattle about "ancient alliances" or "Slavic solidarity," those dogs that
never bark. In advancing the separation of Kosovo, Washington, London,
Paris, and Berlin are pursuing their own imperial agendas – seeking to
legitimize their 1999 aggression for one, on which rests their present claim
to intervene anywhere, anytime, against anyone – without a second thought
about the Kosovo Albanians, much less Serbs.
Ironically, it appears the Serbs are at a bit of an advantage here, if
anything because they don't have a powerful sponsor and don't place their
fate in the hands of Moscow, seeing as Russia has sold them down the river
plenty of times in centuries past. Albanians, on the other hand, have
persuaded themselves that the world owes them a debt (independence now,
something else later perhaps), and proceed to make demands from that
premise. Making demands of the Empire is a lucrative racket, if you can get
it – and so long as it lasts.
The Bizarre and the Ridiculous
Many Bosnian Muslims are similarly frustrated with the "international
community" for failing to deliver the centralized state supposedly promised
in the Dayton Accords. Driven by belief that they were the righteous victims
of the 1992-95 conflict, and that the world owes them a debt as a result,
many Muslim voters supported militant nationalist Haris Silajdzic at the
polls two weeks ago. Silajdzic's campaign reveled in nationalist hysteria,
mainly against the Bosnian Serbs but also against the small Croat community,
trapped in an increasingly oppressive marriage of inconvenience called the
"Bosniak-Croat Federation."
Out of such hysteria come tabloid allegations that would make the editors of
American tabloids laugh – but in Bosnia, they are taken perfectly seriously.
Sarajevo county prosecutor Oleg Cavka told AFP last Thursday that he was
investigating Canadian Gen. Lewis McKenzie, first commander of the UN
peacekeepers in Bosnia, for allegedly visiting a Serb-run brothel and raping
Muslim women who were supposedly held captive there.
McKenzie angrily rejected the allegations, explaining that a smear campaign
against him has been conducted by the Muslim government in Sarajevo ever
since he urged the U.S. in 1992 not to intervene militarily in the Bosnian
civil war. The rape allegations were taken from a "confession" by a captured
Serb soldier who had been tortured into admitting to all sorts of things –
all of which were later proven false. McKenzie wasn't anywhere near Sarajevo
when his alleged visit to the alleged rape-brothel allegedly happened.
Perhaps the final bit of cynicism was the claim that a photograph of
McKenzie with four crying women showed his victims. In reality, they were
four local women that worked for the UN staff, evacuated by McKenzie at the
beginning of hostilities in Bosnia. The photo was from their tearful reunion
several months later.
For 12 years, the Canadian government has shamefully refused to defend
McKenzie, failing even to lodge an official protest with the Sarajevo
authorities through their embassy, allowing these kinds of fabrications to
periodically resurface and continue to smear the good name of one of their
most experienced peacekeepers. This matches the treatment of Canadian
soldiers who fought Croatian troops in the Medak pocket in 1993, witnessing
atrocities against the local Serbs; their story was suppressed for years.
Perhaps seeing as how bringing up 12-year-old canards sold papers, Amir
Pleho, a retired Sarajevo professor introduced as a biological warfare
expert, made a claim to several dailies in Croatia and Slovenia this week
that Slobodan Milosevic planned to build a nuclear bomb in the early 1990s.
"Milosevic's [sic] wanted to build atomic bomb as he was well aware that
possession of nuclear weapon would help him confront the world and put in
motion the Greater Serbia ambitions," according to Macedonian agency MakFax.
Serbian officials rejected Pleho's allegations with a mixture of ridicule
and disgust, calling it crass propaganda. Pleho's story does sound like the
plot of a cheap "techno-thriller" even Tom Clancy would have rejected as too
shallow: secret Russian shipments, sinister Serb plots, and the good fortune
of international sanctions and NATO bombs that saved the day. All sorts of
seemingly incredulous plots have come true in the Balkans, but this does not
appear to be one of them.
Unraveling "Realities"
At the end of the Cold War, exuberant imperialists in America and Europe
thought they could change not just the face of the world, but the principles
according to which it worked, through force and fear. For a while, in the
Balkans, it almost looked as if they were right. It took carnage in the
Middle East to demonstrate the error of their beliefs – an error they are
still unwilling to acknowledge. People of the Balkans, who've constructed
entire realities out of conflicting fabrications, are finding those
"realities" increasingly fragile these days – and resort to even more
fabrications, hysteria, and downright insanity to preserve them. If it
weren't so tragic, it would be hilarious.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
