kosovo 1999-2004
by alexandros roushias on jul 20, 2004, 11:51
kosovo receives tony blair
the ombudsperson institution in kosovo, a branch of the u.n. mission, has published a report condemning ethnic albanian leaders, the u.n., and nato for failing to achieve even a minimal level of human rights and protection for serb, roma and other ethnic minority populations.
they have been confined to their homes, relying mostly on escorted transport for occasional visits to other places populated by minority ethnicities, the report’s author, marek antoni nowicki of poland, said in a foreword to the document. hundreds of serbs as well as non-conformist albanians have been murdered since the nato occupation began in 1999, and there has been a failure to create conditions for the safe return of non-albanian refugees.
the report was published 4 months after a wave of attacks by albanian gangs against serb ghettos and enclaves throughout the u.n. run province. these were widely reported in english language newspapers as constituting ‘revenge attacks’ for the alleged chasing of three albanian children into the river ibar, despite u.n. police spokesman derek chappell’s insistence, in pristina on the 17th march, that ‘serbs had nothing to do with it’. around 30 people were killed and the same number of churches burned in the following days. derek chappell was then transferred to another post.
veton surroi, the albanian editor of koha ditore newspaper, wrote about a situation “dictated by figures almost anonymous in our institutional life”, and harri holkeri, now retired as u.n. chief administrator of kosovo, said that, “maybe this began spontaneously but, after the beginning, certain extremist groups had an opportunity to orchestrate."
lieutenant-colonel jim moran, a spokesman for the u.n. peacekeeping force, then declared: "i don't think we will have any more problems."
in this sunday’s independent review, chris steele-perkins felt free to write that ‘in the 1990s, mass graves hid the victims of kosovo’s genocide in which albanian kosovans where (sic) killed by serbs.’
a conviction that western multiculturalism can be exported to kosovo has for 5 years been allied to a facile belief in the existence of a serb orchestrated genocide, which once led a telegraph writer to advocate in print the nuclear annihilation of belgrade – a city that the metro newspaper has just profiled for its bars and clubs. as a reality, however, these convictions only ever possessed psychological substance for western liberals who took comfort in wrestling with their consciences and joining blair and clinton on a giddy crusade of humanitarian intervention.
funeral of panta dakic, serb youth shot dead whilst swimming, 2003
john laughland, writing in the spectator (10 july) about proceedings at the international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia, compared allegations of genocide in kosovo to wmd in iraq... ‘the realisation is now dawning that lies were peddled to justify the kosovo war just as earnestly as they were to justify the attack on iraq.’
two fingers of this rosy dawn were foremost in television media as long ago as 1999. the first, lord owen’s channel 4 news post-bombing denouncement of the pre-bombing ultimatum put to yugoslavia as ‘an extra-ordinary document that would have had nato crawling all over belgrade’. the second, james rubin’s frank documentary admission that madeleine albright’s strategy at the rambouillet ‘peace’ conference was to get the yugoslavs to say no and the kosovo liberation army to say yes. a strategy that the sainted robin cook presumably didn’t refer to when, after 78 days of bombing, he spoke of ‘the tragic intransigence of the serbs that necessitated this bombing campaign’.
kosovo without genocide
as diana johnstone writes in fool’s crusade: yugoslavia, nato and western delusions, it was communism that brought education to kosovo, notorious throughout the balkans for its backwardness, clan-rule, chauvinism, and illiteracy, and which provided hitler with two ss divisions. in the 1970s, an independent university at pristina offered courses taught in albanian by teachers and textbooks imported from neighbouring albania. young people enjoyed an explosion in education, but there existed an absence of serious scholarship, let alone scientific or technical literature, in the albanian language. in the 1980s, when children entered school, their parents choose turkish, albanian, or serbian as their language of instruction. the communist concession to reactionary nationalism, presumably lauded in the west and propagandized within yugoslavia as a multicultural exercise, was unchecked for a decade and resulted in parallel monolingualism and monoculturalism, so that in 1982 and 1987 the new york times published reports of serbs being driven out of kosovo by albanian ‘ethnic cleansing’.
in the 1980s it was the albanian communists under azem vllasi who repressed albanian nationalism. a hard-line marxist who opposed limited market-orientated reforms, he was removed by cash-strapped belgrade that could no longer countenance the sums used to maintain the most heavily subsidised region of yugoslavia.
despite every subsidy and inducement, coupling socio-economic improvements with dubious concessions to outbreaks of nationalist violence, the material conditions of existence had failed to determine a nation building rather than nation splitting consciousness within sufficient numbers of kosovo albanians. the 1990s saw the creation of a parallel albanian state in kosovo, which despite being widespread was so rudimentary that yugoslav institutions were still discreetly used by those who nominally boycotted them. since 1996, suggestions from belgrade for a peaceful partition have been rejected out of hand by the west.
if there is one parallel that can usefully be drawn from kosovo, it is with afghanistan’s descent, via american interference, from a relative communist enlightenment to the dark ages of the taliban. titoist brotherhood and unity was a tolerable success while it worked within a political vacuum and certainly before yugoslavia’s economic troubles from the 1980s onwards.
how can the u.n., with limited funds, now facing huge unemployment, a notorious mafia involved in international sex slavery, an indigenous ersatz police force that probably facilitated the action of racist gangs in march 2004, promote a desire for multiculturalism rather than mono-ethnicity among enough kosovo albanians where tito failed? an absence of rule of law stood in contrast to police action in belgrade, where an empty mosque was burned ‘in revenge attacks’ and law enforcement moved swiftly to arrest perpetrators, who were widely condemned by government and church officials. a final solution to intolerant albanian nationalism has in fact disseminated from belgrade, where 100,000 albanians reside, since well before the milosevic era. the problem is that not everyone wants brotherhood and unity. or western multi-ethnicity.
