A commentary on the ongoing tragedy in Kosovo from the courageous and insightful Paul Weyrich. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Sparta:
Many Americans' view of Kosovo -- if they have one at all -- is shaped by the tragic stories they see on CNN.Some may even remember that our country, as part of NATO, participated in bombings there in 1999 to protect Albanian refugees as part of a war that lasted for over two months. Most Americans pay Kosovo little mind, viewing it to be the staging ground of a conflict that holds no important consequence for the United States.
However, Kosovo is more essential to the security of America and the West than many people realize.
The ability of our country, our NATO allies and the United Nations to promote stable governance that ensures minority rights very well could make the difference between peace and war in a historically and still volatile region, the Balkans, situated between Adriatic and Black Seas.
Islamists recognize the strategic importance of Kosovo and, left unchallenged by a complacent West, could use it to gain a strategic foothold in Europe.
The Serbian population is the minority. They are predominantly Christian and face persecution from an energized Albanian majority.
Right after a wave of violence shook the country in March, Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic, then the managing editor of The National Interest and a senior fellow of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy, wrote in National Review Online the article "Kristallnacht in Kosovo." In it he stated: "...Kosovo's Serbs have for years been warning of the real nature of Albanian nationalism, and the U.N. and the West have assumed they were exaggerating." ...
Many Albanian Muslims are marginally religious and, up to now, the relations between them and Albanian Christians (mostly Orthodox, some Roman Catholic) have been stable compared to the animosity directed by Albanian Muslims against the Serbs.
Middle Eastern organizations are devoting great resources to building mosques and other Islamic institutions. Given the poverty of Kosovo, it could easily become a breeding ground for Islamic extremism as we have seen in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The history of Kosovo, only some 4,200 square miles, is quite complicated: It became Christian in 874 A.D., only to become part of the Ottoman Empire when Muslims invaded Serbia in the late 14th Century. In 1912, Kosovo and Methohija were liberated from the Ottoman Empire and incorporated into Serbia, and then entered into as (at least theoretically) an autonomous state at Yugoslavia's founding in 1919.
Kosovo has remained part of Serbia since then, with the exception of World War II when Kosovo was administered as a part of Greater Albania by the Axis powers. During that time, churches and monasteries were destroyed.
Throughout the 1920s, 30s, and 40s there had been a simmering conflict between the Albanians -- largely, but not completely, Muslim -- and the Serbs who generally belong to the Serbian Orthodox Church.
The Albanians in Serbia collaborated with the Nazis against the Serbs. In 1945, Yugoslavia became a Communist country, and the authorities covered up ethnic tensions through force, intimidation, mass resettlement of Serbs from Kosovo, and ideological propaganda.
Yugoslavia's grip on its provinces diminished over time, greater autonomy was granted to Kosovo, a state of Serbia with a population composed of ethnic Serbs, Albanians, and Montenegrons. After Yugoslavian Communist Dictator Tito died, the tensions between ethnic and religious groups resurfaced.
Eventually, as Communist rule weakened, Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb, became the President of Serbia, only to crack down on the Albanian extremists bent on seeking independence through force of arms which led to bloody confrontations in 1998 between the Serbian troops and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a largely Albanian terrorist outfit. A ceasefire negotiated by NATO fell apart, setting the stage for the NATO air strikes that started in March 1999, designed to bring Milosevic to heel.
Our participation in the effort was premised on our being part of NATO; we ignored Russian arguments in favor of the Serbs. Some have called this "Monica's War" because it came soon after the Clinton impeachment. However, our effort also led to the removal of the KLA from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
Many Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo became refugees. A peace agreement was signed after a 78-day bombing campaign. Control of Kosovo was divided between German, French and American sectors, with the primary duties of peacekeeping divided between the armies of NATO countries and agencies of the United Nations.
Neither NATO nor the United Nations has been effective in keeping a lid on the animosity. For one reason, the missions of the armies are mixed. French and German soldiers are there only to protect persons. Our soldiers, numbering less than 2,000, are there to protect both persons and property. Kosovo's population is beset by high joblessness and substandard living conditions as well as crime and ethnic and religious rivalry.
Since the end of the conflict in June 1999, violence has been perpetrated against Serbian Orthodox Churches and holy sites. Over 120 holy places, including many that date back to the Middle Ages, had been desecrated or destroyed by December 2003.
At the same time, at least 200,000 Kosovar Serbs and other non-Albanians have been "cleansed" from their homes, only 10,000 have returned. In March 2003, apparently false reports of violence perpetrated by Serbian children against young Albanians ignited what was called the "March Pogrom" in which 35 churches and monasteries were destroyed. Strong suspicion exists among many in Kosovo, even those within NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) peacekeeping forces, that the March Pogrom was anything but a spontaneous event.
Members of the delegation visited the Devic Monastery -- founded in the 15th Century -- which had been ransacked and burned by a mob. French troops took the nuns to safety but they refrained from doing anything further, given that the definition of their mission was to protect people. In fact, the French troops left an ailing nun to be attacked by the mob. Thankfully, she escaped unharmed. The looters smashed crosses on graves, even trying to open the sarcophagus of a saint (whose relics had already been moved). This unfortunate monastery had been rebuilt after having been badly damaged by the (terrorist?) KLA in 1999.
Robert says:"Islamists recognize the strategic importance of Kosovo and, left unchallenged by a complacent West, could use it to gain a strategic foothold in Europe"
They have already established a strategic foothold in Bosnia, thanks to Bill Clinton and Monica's War against the Serbs.
"The Clinton Green Light to Iranian Arms Shipments (page 3): In April 1995, President Clinton gave the government of Croatia what has been described by Congressional committees as a "green light" for shipments of weapons from Iran and other Muslim countries to the Muslim-led government of Bosnia. The policy was approved at the urging of NSC chief Anthony Lake and the U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith. The CIA and the Departments of State and Defense were kept in the dark until after the decision was made.
* The Militant Islamic Network (page 5): Along with the weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and VEVAK intelligence operatives entered Bosnia in large numbers, along with thousands of mujahedin ("holy warriors") from across the Muslim world. Also engaged in the effort were several other Muslim countries (including Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey) and a number of radical Muslim organizations. For example, the role of one Sudan-based "humanitarian organization," called the Third World Relief Agency, has been well documented. The Clinton Administration's "hands-on" involvement with the Islamic network's arms pipeline included inspections of missiles from Iran by U.S. government officials. *
The Radical Islamic Character of the Sarajevo Regime (page 8): Underlying the Clinton Administration's misguided green light policy is a complete misreading of its main beneficiary, the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic. Rather than being the tolerant, multiethnic democratic government it pretends to be, there is clear evidence that the ruling circle of Izetbegovic's party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), has long been guided by the principles of radical Islam. This Islamist orientation is illustrated by profiles of three important officials, including President Izetbegovic himself; the progressive Islamization of the Bosnian army, including creation of native Bosnian mujahedin units; credible claims that major atrocities against civilians in Sarajevo were staged for propaganda purposes by operatives of the Izetbegovic government; and suppression of enemies, both non-Muslim and Muslim."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
Many of these muhajideen never went home, they were granted citizenship.
Photos that demonstrate the respect and peaceful coexistance of temporal Islam in historic Kosovo(sarcasm on):
http://www.kosovo.com/pogrom_march/prizren1/page_02.htm
Was a Rhodes-scholar President duped by taqiyya and kitman? How could he have been so ignorant? With whom did he surround himself that could either advise or inform? Was he or were they "compromised" in some manner? Or was it arogance and stupidity?
Why didn't the press, many of them graduates of pretigious universities, thoroughly schooled in journalistic principles, of fact checking, or persuing the truth, of gaining background before writing on any subject, why were these people also duped into believing that the Muslims were the victims?
Or are they poliical or ideological partisans, blinded by their ideology, specifically that of the Left!
I am convinced that there are few true journalists operating in the world today. They seem to be stupid, which not the same as ignorant, ignorant, and lazy.
Thanks justamomof4. I got this link on another thread and I have advanced it to several Clinton fans.
To think that I once thought the Clinton's involvement in the Balkans was such a great idea. Given that they did this pre-9/11 (when so many of us were naive) I would be able to forgive them but...
...the Clintons are currently schilling for another candidate (Kerry) who wants to go back to the same B.S. foreign policy. Hence, I cannot forgive the Clintons. As Zell Miller said, party loyalty has its limits.
Rublev~ I have to admit, at the time I also thought Clinton was doing the right thing. (I even voted for him V.V )
At that point, virtually none of my history studies went past the 50s. I had been concentrating on neo-nazi groups and how the communists had co-opted the black movements (blame whitey), which last the Left has continued to this day.
I also believed in the idea of all three faiths- Christian, Jewish, muslim- being Abrahamic faiths. I realize now that was never true.
And just as surely as Clinton helped Cheney make some of his millions, by using Haliburton in Kosovo...
I am voting for Bush.
One could be tempted to implement Clinton's strategic plan: "deny it; deny it; deny it!"
But, this devil incarnate i.e. Clinton, now wants to run the UN !
In fact, he is trying to encourage Koffi to end his term early and is in the process of garnering votes from little cesspool islamic dictatorships around the globe; to approve his ascention to the empyrean seat of this "noteworthy" world body.
No doubt his Albanion minions in kosovo will highly recommend the swine.
Maybe we will be called upon again to drop cluster bombs on the schools in Belgrade -- and "deny it, deny it deny it"; and again "re-define" hospitals as "military targets" and "deny it, deny it, deny it"; and of course blast civilian passenger trains off their tracks and "deny it, deny it, deny it." After all --"does is mean is?"
Naturally, we will have to rain depleated uranium shells all over the country side and dipict the poor muslim as "the real victims" all over again.
I won't forget what Clinton and his cronies had our country do in Kosovo; and MANY others remember too.
Unfortunately, one has to follow the chain of command and orders comming from the top, no matter how nefarious, are legal and binding orders as such.
Nevertheless, that puke was never fit to be commander in chief -- maybe he is better suited for the high UN office instead.
May he rot there.
I thought so! Back in l999 or whenever, I was close to someone who worked with the UN and who thought it was great that we were against the Serbs. I was not very politically astute or well read, but from what I read in the papers and magazines, I used to argue with him that the Serbs seemed to be the victims of the Muslim Albanians.
I also have been amazed at how stupid and misinformed the media can be, it's as if there are very few thinkers, just people who parrot a certain belief and never challenge it.
More and more I look at the media, especially newspapers as sheepherders and hold them responsible for much of the insanity in our culture.
Must admit, i supported the wrong side in Kosovo.
Should have supported the Serbs.
As for Clinton, brilliant, and a total dud.
He never took the high road, the harder road, when there was an easy road available - thus the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda, the islamic takeover of Kosovo, the flaccid response to obl's attacks on American assets abroad, etc.
( gosh, why risk your popularity by doing what is really needed, things that might cost $$, things that might upset some of our so-called friends, things that might cost american lives now though save many more later ).
Monica and the cigar sums Clinton up - a great tragedy; he had such potential.
Do you think that USA had made the same thing in Bosnia and Kosovo, supporting muslims like it was made in 1995 and 1999, later of 9/11 because I doubt it, I think that the support of mujahidin in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo and before in Indonesia for ending the comunism insurgency were great mistakes that we are paying everybody, greetings
Our old cold-war thinking made us help the Kosovars. Thanks to General Wesley Clark who followed old cold-war beliefs that if we help the muslims we'd be working against an ally of the Soviet Union (Serbia) we'd be on the right side. Turns out that we were not helping the right side after all. We were providing intelligence aid to muslims and also to those Mujahideen who were present in Kosovo and remain there today probably preparing for Jihad against Christian Serbs.
We have a sin to answer for on this one.