The blackmail of America

Something happened afterPresident Clinton's 1999 war in Kosovo: It never ended. Its continuation wascharacterized by anti-Serb arson, kidnappings, bombings of NATO-escortedcivilian buses and efforts to kill everyone from schoolgirls to octogenarians, plusthe rare peacekeeper who tried to prevent any of this.

Toward the end of 1999,several major newspapers reported on findings that mass graves such as theinfamous Trepca zinc mine turned up empty, as did the stadium we were told wasbeing used as a concentration camp. Anyone reading this one-time follow-up alsowould have learned that the "cleansing" of 800,000 Albanians had moreto do with NATO bombs and Kosovo Liberation Army orders than with theoutrageous claim that Serbia was trying to empty the province of 90 percent ofits population.

But the bombshell postwarstory had no legs. No media outlet, human rights organization or congressionalsubcommittee launched an investigation, and the press moved on, taking thepublic with it. So Americans don't know that within months of our serving asthe Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) air force, the Albanian insurgents alsotried to seize the Presevo Valley area in southern Serbia and by early 2001started a civil war in Macedonia, which had sheltered 400,000 refugees duringthe Kosovo war.

At the same time, theAlbanian fighters started to engage NATO troops openly. In February 2000, theU.N. and NATO in Kosovo issued a joint statement that "two young Frenchsoldiers, who came here as peacekeepers, are lying in hospital beds sufferingfrom gunshot wounds inflicted on them by the very people that they came here toprotect," the CATO Institute's Gary Dempsey reported. He added, "As acandid intelligence officer with the U.N. Mission in Kosovo [UNMIK] explainedto me in November, 'We are their tool, and when we stop being useful to them,they will turn against us.'"

In March 2000, The WashingtonPost reported, "A senior Pentagon official warned yesterday that U.S.troops in Kosovo this spring may have to fight their former allies, ethnicAlbanian guerrillas who are rearming themselves and threatening cross-borderattacks against Serbia. 'This has got to cease and desist, and if not,ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between the Albanians and KFOR[NATO Kosovo Force].' "

But that didn't happen.Instead, we came around to seeing things the Albanian way. In November 2005,CNSNews.com explained why: "Rebels have blown up several vehiclesbelonging to UNMIK and the Kosovo [Police] Service, leading UNMIK to warnemployees to check their vehicles for bombs before starting the engines. ...[G]raffiti across Kosovo warned 'UNMIK get out!' ... NATO's Kosovo Force has anemergency plan called 'Operation Safe Haven' in place to evacuateinternationals. ... [Ex-OSCE security chief Tom] Gambill believes that Albanianfrustration over the independence issue could lead armed rebels to forge analliance with al Qaeda. Both groups want the international presence out ofKosovo and al Qaeda has a history of attempting to destabilize the Balkansregion. ... The threats are played down, Gambill said, because 'it does notsuit the internationals to have a serious crisis such as this at the time whenthey are sending out reports on how much improvement has been made in Kosovo.' "

We didn't want Albanians tostart killing us, so we let them keep killing Serbs. Rather than see what wouldhappen if we tried saying "no" to Albanian demands and designs, andrisk Americans discerning the real nature of their new best friends - which ofcourse would compound the domestic terror threat - we guaranteed ourselves abigger, more entrenched and more global problem.

When Kosovo re-entered theheadlines in 2008, some started catching on. In March 2008, NorthwesternUniversity law professor Eugene Kontorovich wrote in the New York Sun, "Animportant ingredient of Kosovo's success in achieving self-determination seemsto be their constant threats of violence. The Kosovar prime minister ... oftenwarned of 'dangers' and 'unforeseeable consequences' if the province were notallowed to secede. ... As a result, NATO and America have become parties to thecarve-up of a sovereign state that they subdued by force. ... For internationallaw, the entire process is a string of humiliations ... peacekeepers are hostages;and sovereignty is trumped by the threat of terror."

"Hostages"precisely describes the West in Kosovo. If anyone wonders why the George W.Bush administration joined the Clintonites in the belief that"independence is the only viable option" and "there can be nocompromise," it's because in the gangster's paradise of Kosovo, the UnitedStates alternates between hostage and gangster. The Albanians give usultimatums, and we give the Serbs ultimatums. Our government toes the Albanianline, and our press toes the government line. United Press International'sRobert M. Hayden gave a glimpse of it in March 2008: "The problem is notthat 'Serb nationalists' are resisting 'the West,' as it is put by those U.S.journalists who honor the First Amendment by parroting the State Department.... [A political solution] could have been reached with Serbia, but neither theClinton administration nor that of George W. Bush wanted one."

A clearer picture emerges ofthe "failed" negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, to which theSerbian delegation would come with lists of various broad compromises, and theAlbanian delegation would look at their watches. Sabotaging the"negotiations" before each round - and redefining the term - Mr. Bushor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would announce that the end result wouldbe independence.

An excerpt from a 1999Q&A in Time magazine illuminates how far we swerved from our originalgoals: "The alliance wants Kosovo to be given autonomy within the Yugoslavfederation, but opposes the full independence that the KLA is fighting for,fearing that creating a new Kosovar-Albanian state would further destabilize analready volatile region."

Today, however, even thelanguage is reversed: that which we knew would destabilize the region is nowpromoted as what is needed to "stabilize" the region. And so ourmilitary is being used to enforce KLA directives and make the last of theresisting Serbs comply with the new reality.

Most of the last resistingSerbs are in the only remaining part of Kosovo where it is still safe to beSerbian, Northern Kosovska Mitrovica, along the boundary with Serbia. The Serbsthere have been open to a partition that would allow them to stay within theinternationally recognized borders of their country, Serbia. But we wereinformed by our Albanian "partners" that a partition was out of thequestion, ironically invoking "territorial integrity" - which ourleaders then repeated.

Rather than Kosovo'sdiabolical path to statehood, our bureaucrats and media point to Belgrade asthe problem, because it backs Northern Mitrovica, where Serbian institutionsare still in place. We are warned that the real threat is Belgrade's refusal torecognize the land grab, its turning to Moscow for support and its creation of "parallelinstitutions." A rich admonition indeed, given that Kosovo's parallelAlbanian institutions within the host society were what brought us to thehailed secession itself.

NATO troops have beenamassing around Northern Mitrovica, and in a few months, with or withoutBelgrade finally selling out the Kosovo Serbs (always a looming possibility),we will witness the next act of war by U.S.-led NATO against an ally that hasnever been a threat to America. We will be enforcing borders that onlyone-third of U.N. member states even recognize to deliver nothing less than thefull territory that our masters demand.

This time, when Americanswatch our military "contain" the Serbs, they should recognize it forwhat it is. The troops themselves would do well to understand what is beingenforced with their hands. And when the images gracing American TVs are againexclusively of the "wild" Serbian reaction, meant to depict Serbs asviolent and therefore justifying the aggression that caused it, Americans shouldask themselves how they might react if coerced to secede from their country byan ethnic group that reached majority status in their area.

In February 2007, Jim Jatras,a former senior analyst for the Senate Republican Foreign Policy Committee,asked a Hungarian member of the European Parliament, "Why are yourewarding Albanian violence with state power?" The member replied,"Because we're afraid of them."

Julia Gorin specializes inBalkans issues and is an unpaid advisory board member of the American Councilfor Kosovo.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/04/the-blackmail-of-america/