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May
3, 2001
ICG’s
Blueprint for Destruction
Militant Think-Tank Plots Empire’s Balkans
Agenda
In
the perennially paranoid Balkans, political speculation is
one of the people’s favorite pastimes – right next to discussing
soccer. Conspiracy theories are more abundant than in North
America, and people are generally more suspicious – though
in some matters they can be as painfully naïve as Americans.
One
of these "conspiracy theories" spun six ways from
Sunday over the past decade has been that the United States
has a master plan for acting in the Balkans. While no one
disputes that the US targeted the Serbs for destruction, the
motivation for such a vicious policy is the subject of much
speculation.
Was
it at the behest of Germany, eager to avenge two 20th
century defeats and re-establish the statehood of a former
vassal, Croatia? Was it Turkey and the Islamic world, who
paid the Empire to fight its jihad in Bosnia and Kosovo?
Or was it the Vatican, which backed Austrian and Croatian
attempts to eradicate the "heretical" Orthodox Serbs
for almost 200 years? Historical memory aside, could it be
that the United States is simply intervening in order to assert
its supremacy in Europe and maintain its imperial reputation?
Has there been any method in the madness, anyway? Sorting
the truth from various "humanitarian" excuses and
efforts to prevent "genocide" and "defend human
rights" has often seemed impossible.
Just
because one is paranoid, though, it does not mean someone
is not out to get them. Last week, the evidence surprisingly
surfaced in the shape of a 350-page document, ambitiously
titled, "After
Milosevic: A practical Agenda for Lasting Balkan Peace,"
published by the Brussels-based International
Crisis Group (ICG). If the Empire did not have a plan
for the Balkans so far, one is out there now. And chances
are, it will be followed.
EMPIRE’S
WILLING IDEOLOGUES
Anyone
who follows Balkan events, no matter how casually, had to
have heard of the ICG sooner or later. Their offices are markers
of US influence, from the protectorates governed from Sarajevo
and Pristina, to vassals in Podgorica, Tirana and (perhaps)
Belgrade. ICG’s Board
is stacked with notables, many of whom had a hand in the Balkans
tragedies of the past ten years.
There
is Chairman Martti
Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who double-crossed
the Yugoslav government to surrender to NATO in 1999. Morton
Abramowitz advised the KLA delegation in the Rambouillet "talks."
General Wesley
Clark commanded the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, mercilessly
targeting civilian lives and infrastructure. Former ICTY prosecutor
Louise
Arbour was responsible for giving NATO a booster shot
in May 1999 by indicting Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes
that have still to be proven. Paddy Ashdown, former British
politician who – according to whispers on high – is slated
to take over the Bosnian protectorate later this year, heartily
advocated
European imperialism in both Bosnia and Kosovo. Further
down the list is George Soros, who owns most "independent"
media in the Balkans and funds most "civil society"
groups that, consequently, profess more loyalty to their paymaster
than the people they claim to represent.
This
eclectic bunch – and this is just the tip of the iceberg –
is leading an organization barely six years old, which has
managed to handily outpace the US government in anti-Serbian
sentiments. For years now, ICG has uncompromisingly howled
for arresting "war criminals," toppling Slobodan
Milosevic’s government, secession of Kosovo and unitarization
of Bosnia. After aiding the KLA during the Rambouillet "talks,"
ICG cheered the NATO attack in Yugoslavia as the triumph of
"democracy" over "genocide." Last year,
following
ICG’s recommendations to the letter, the UN viceroy took
over a Serb-run mine and smelter in northern Kosovo and turned
it over to the KLA.
FRIENDS
IN HIGH PLACES
Agencies
and newspapers have taken to quoting ICG as a "leading"
or "respectable" and its program directors as "Balkans
experts," even though they are mostly advocacy-journalists
and small-caliber political analysts. But the group definitely
has access to the corridors of power, from the US State Department
and European governments, to the boardrooms of US media.
Thus
the Balkans policy outline was promoted through an editorial
by ICG President Gareth Evans (former Aussie Foreign Minister)
in the International Herald Tribune, while the actual
promotion was hosted by the US
Institute of Peace, a pseudo-governmental (i.e. Congressionally
funded) "think tank" heavily involved in steering
the US Balkans policy. USIP President Richard Solomon and
Evans led the presentation on the "last unfinished business"
in the Balkans: destroying Serbia.
APPETITE
FOR DESTRUCTION
If
reading the actual 350 pages of Imperialism 101 does not sound
appealing, there is the helpful Executive
Summary, posted conveniently on ICG’s web site. Therein,
one can clearly see that the "democratic overthrow"
[sic] of Milosevic opened the doors to dealing with the Empire’s
unfinished business: "to peacefully and enduringly settle
unresolved political status and minority rights issues in
all the areas, beginning with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
and its component entities."
Translated
into plain English (with guidance from ICG’s previous reports),
this means partitioning FRY into ethnic enclaves. Says ICG,
"Hopes that the FRY can be reconstituted - on a transitional
or permanent basis … appear painfully detached from political
reality."
"FREE"
KOSOVO!
Having
labeled it inaccurately as a "constituent part"
of Yugoslavia – rather than a territory of Serbia - ICG authoritatively
claims that "Kosovo wants nothing to do with Serbia or
the FRY at all." Apparently, Kosovo Albanians are the
only legitimate denizens of the province – a position further
confirmed when the report puts Serb resistance to ethnic cleansing
in Mitrovica on equal footing with Albanian terror-bombings
in Kosovo and armed rebellions in Macedonia and Presevo.
ICG’s
solution for Kosovo is "conditional independence"
– a concept falsely presented last fall as a UN-sanctioned
solution, while in reality penned by a self-proclaimed "independent
commission" headed by another ICTY alumnus, Richard Goldstone.
This goal would be realized in three stages:
-
establishing
"the full set of ‘provisional institutions’, legislative,
executive and judicial, referred to in Resolution 1244
and described in more detail in the Rambouillet
accords;" [added emphasis]
-
establishing
a "focal point for Resolution 1244’s ‘political process
designed to determine Kosovo’s future status’. The most
obvious candidate for that role is the ‘international
meeting’ (anticipated as occurring three years out by
the Rambouillet negotiators in 1999);" [emphasis
added again]
-
at
that meeting, reach a "peacefully agreed adjustment
of Kosovo’s border (possibly involving both northern Kosovo
and the Presevo valley) … This would not be rewarding
ethnic cleansing, and there are no relevant parallels
with demands for partition in Bosnia."
Given
that in the minds of ICG only Serbs are capable of ethnic
cleansing, the ethnic purity of Kosovo – reinforced with more
"ethnically purified" territories of inner Serbia
– becomes a humanitarian value. "As long as Albanians
fear and Serbs hope that Belgrade’s rule might return, each
side will be preparing both psychologically and practically
for the next war," says the report. But Albanians hoping
NATO would give them independence and Serbs rightfully fearing
death at the hands of those same Albanians are simply not
parts of the equation.
Throughout
the report, ICG insists on Kosovo’s independence, claiming
it would make no difference to Montenegro, that it would actually
help stop the conflicts in Macedonia and Presevo (as appeasement
usually does for greedy conquerors, I guess), and that Serbia
should have absolutely no right to govern this piece of territory
stolen from it by NATO. Indeed, the few surviving Serbs in
Kosovo must be crushed if Kosovo is to become the paradise
of ICG’s vision. The report says, verbatim, "A critical
element in dealing with the Serbs of Kosovo, and indeed in
preserving Kosovo as a single entity, is regaining control
of Mitrovica."
The way the rest of Kosovo was "regained,"
perhaps?
ADIO,
MONTENEGRO!
Additionally,
"Montenegro should no longer be discouraged… by the international
community, from seeking independence," since outside
opposition has "discouraged Belgrade from engaging in
meaningful dialogue." Once one’s established that only
Albanians have legitimate rights in Kosovo, claiming that
only 44% of Montenegro’s population represents the will of
the entire republic comes out easily enough.
To
be honest, ICG does acknowledge that "opposition to independence
is strong, especially in parts of the north, but it does not
appear severe enough to trigger violence or a counter separatist
movement." Well, as long as people do not intend to actually
fight for their rights, by all means, trample them.
Libertarians in the US should know where this theory comes
from.
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