FEELING
BETTER?
In
case you need a little more reassurance that the KLA is the
Albanian equivalent of the Founding Fathers: at a separate
news conference, Chekhu averred that the KLA has never
intimidated civilians, either before or after the Serb withdrawal.
Now, don't you feel much better?
A
KOSOVAR GEORGE WASHINGTON
Although
as the commander-in-chief of the KLA, Cheku might be called
the father of his country, he is not exactly patterned after
George Washington. It was he who commanded a Croatian army
offensive, backed by the U.S. that ethnically cleansed over
300,000 Serbs from the Krajina region, slaughtering thousands
and pushing the rest into Serbia. At one point, the Solomonic
Louise Arbour was going to investigate these war crimes, but,
strangely, we have heard no more about this phase of the UN
Tribunal's investigation into Balkan war crimes.
SEE
NO EVIL
"Clearly
there is no organized effort to retaliate against the Serbs,"
said an administration spokesman who refused to be identified
– and just to make sure that none is ever discovered,
the US and the United Nations have announced that they have
no plans to investigate the KLA for war crimes. Paul Risely,
a spokesman for the International War Crimes Tribunal, said
that his agency is not interested in any killings or ethnic
cleansing that occurred after the cessation of formal hostilities
between NATO and Yugoslavia: "Our mandate is to investigate
crimes that occur during war," said Risely, "during
armed conflict that involve members of armed entities"
[Washington
Times, June 29, 1999]. And, of course, since the KLA
is no longer an "armed entity" – and if you
believe that, I have a bridge over the Danube I want to sell
you – they are exempt from the Tribunal's scrutiny.
DOUBLE
STANDARD
Meanwhile,
outside the city of Pec, once the seat of Serbia's Orthodox
Church, armed KLA thugs patrolled the roads, watching as their
supporters looted Serbian homes and drove the last Serbs out
of town. NATO troops in the area did not intervene. Serbian
Orthodox Bishop Artemije of Kosovo, who had been driven out
of the city by howling Albanian mobs, called on the international
community to abandon its double standard: "Serbs have
not decided to leave Kosovo but they are being forced to –
and it is all happening under the protection of the United
Nations," he said at ceremonies marking the Serbs' defeat
on the Field of Blackbirds by Ottoman invaders 610 years ago.
ON
DOING THE RIGHT THING
The
Clinton administration concedes that atrocities are being
committed against Serbs, but the spin is that these are relatively
few, are happening in spite of the KLA rather than because
of it – and that the Serbs deserve it. "You wake
up in morning and get reports of three dead or four dead in
the morning – not significant numbers," said one
administration official, who no doubt covered his mouth as
he yawned. "In no way can this be compared" to what
Serbs are alleged to have done to Albanians. The Washington
Times cites this official as saying that Albanians have
returned and many have discovered "a worst case scenario
– their family is dead and they discover their bodies
decomposing in the woods." Or, as UN Tribunal official
Risely put it: "It's just a few guys doing what they
think is the right thing – burning houses." From
the viewpoint of those who pine for another war, the KLA is
indeed doing the right thing. Sealing NATO's victory in a
paroxysm of massive and coordinated violence, the KLA is doing
what it was set up to do: serve its foreign masters faithfully
in the hope of being rewarded with the gift of a Greater Albania.
The KLA is doing "the right thing" if the right
thing is another war, and that is just where we are headed.
The Clinton administration may have signed a cease-fire with
Slobo, but the war against Yugoslavia continues on a semi-covert
basis – and ready to burst through to the surface in
an open military confrontation at any moment.
BOOMERANG
In 1998, the Pentagon announced
that, in addition to the traditional three realms of modern
warfare – land, air, and sea – it was adding a fourth:
cyberspace. The "info-war" directorate of the Pentagon
was set up, and has now been ordered into battle by the Clinton
administration As we reported in this column a couple of months
ago, the US is conducting an all-out "cyber-war"
against Milosevic, ordering its cadre of hackers – the
electronic version of the 82nd Airborne Division – to
break into and drain his bank accounts. Opposed by many top
officials, who fear the unintended consequences of legitimizing
computer hacking, this harebrained scheme is part of a six-point
program developed by the Clinton administration to overthrow
Milosevic. But these dissident officials fear that another
"accident," far worse than the bombing of the Chinese
embassy, could come to pass – the overthrow of the world
financial system. By demonstrating the vulnerability of financial
institutions to hackers, this cyber-war could seriously undermine
confidence and inflict considerable economic damage not too
far down the road. According to Sunday's
London Telegraph [July 4, 1999], the plan is to
launch an electronic assault on Milosevic's accounts purportedly
existing in Russian, Greek, and Cypriot banks – a clear
signal that the territorial integrity of Greece, a NATO ally,
means as much to Washington as Yugoslav national sovereignty.
BRIGHT
IDEAS
The effort to win the hearts
and minds of the Serbian people, and overthrow Milosevic –
a joint CIA-State Department project – is clearly designed
to achieve the exact opposite of its intended result. Funding
opposition parties, newspapers, and other media, trying to
instigate a military coup, and dropping leaflets promising
to turn on the American foreign aid spigot to rebuild the
country if Milosevic is ousted – these bright ideas are
provocations, pure and simple, a goad to enrage and humiliate
a proud people. Such "democratic" groups as accept
Washington's gold will be tarnished by it: this public declaration
has the effect of completely discrediting the democratic opposition
in Serbia. The nationalist backlash that is sure to follow
may indeed overthrow Milosevic – and pave the way for
the ascension of Vojislav Selsej, the leader of the Serbian
Radical Party who vows that Serbia must one day regain Kosovo,
and who is even more unacceptable to the NATO-crats than Slobo.
Vojislav, too, can be accused of war crimes, since his party
is said to have sponsored paramilitary outfits that are now
being accused of carrying out the most horrific crimes in
Kosovo. As it may be difficult for the UN War Crimes Tribunal
to establish a direct link between Milosevic and the paramilitaries,
Slobo's overthrow and the rise of the Radicals would be very
convenient.
FLASHPOINT
MONTENEGRO
While
the covert war against the remnants of Yugoslavia continues
on several fronts, there is a renewed threat of overt military
action in Montenegro. Traditionally allied with Serbia, the
elected government of this small Adriatic republic has tried
to distance itself from Belgrade without provoking an armed
response. During the war, no one noticed the sudden expansion
of NATO's war aims to include de facto independence for this
autonomous region of Yugoslavia: US State Department officials
have consistently said that there would be swift retaliation
if the pro-Western regime of President Milo Djukanovic were
threatened. During the war, however, the government's position
was not helped when NATO insisted that it must bomb Montenegro,
where some 40,000 troops are stationed.
RACIAL
QUOTAS, NATO STYLE
Djukanovic
recently met with Clinton and Albright, who praised this former
close ally of Milosevic as a beacon of democracy. But the
tightrope Djukanovic is walking showed signs of serious fraying,
last week, as the Yugoslav federal authorities proclaimed
a state of siege. The siege was lifted shortly afterward,
but the tension between the Montenegrin government and the
pro-Serbian party – which has taken to the streets –
threatens to careen out of control. The presence of Yugoslav
troops in Montenegro has drawn the ire of General Wesley Clark,
who, in testimony before the US Senate recently detected a
suspicious "pattern of troop movements." How dare
the Yugoslavs move troops within the borders of their own
country! Clark also voiced his concern that too many ethnic
Serbs are moving into Montenegro – an apparent violation
of the Serbian quotas set by NATO's affirmative action program.
PREPARATIONS
FOR WAR
"All
these are preparatory stages," says Clark, but the most
ominous preparations are being made by the United States and
its allies, who are looking for any pretext to start phase
two of the Balkan War. The conquest of Kosovo is to be followed
by chipping away at Montenegro, Vojvodina, and the predominantly
Muslim Sandjak region. When the cease-fire was signed, the
disappointment of the War Party's "ground war" faction
was palpable – but their bloodlust may yet be assuaged.
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