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June
7, 2001
Capitulations
Two
years ago this week, on June 9, 1999, a tired Yugoslav Army
general emerged from a tent of a NATO helicopter base near
Kumanovo, Macedonia, and announced that he had just signed
an agreement capitulating
to NATO, after 78 days of resistance to the Alliance’s terror-bombing.
British General Michael Jackson was more jubilant. “NATO’s
resolve in conducting a sustained air campaign has finally
achieved this agreement, and now is the time to look ahead,”
quoted New York Times.
Two
years hence, NATO’s “peacekeeping” in Kosovo has resulted
in over 250,000 non-Albanian refugees, thousands of ethnic
murders, demolition of over 100 churches and countless other
cultural monuments, a flowering of sex-slave trade, and two
new separatist wars – in Serbia’s Presevo Valley, and in Macedonia.
RETURN
TO KUMANOVO
Thanks
to NATO’s intervention and General Jackson’s “looking ahead,”
Kumanovo has become a symbol not only of Yugoslav capitulation,
but of Macedonia’s struggle for survival. It has been a month
since Albanian bandits of the so-called “National Liberation
Army (UCK)” have dug into a string of villages just outside
that city, demanding that the government of Macedonia capitulate
to their demands. Macedonian attempts to deal with
the bandits the only way other civilized countries deal with
terrorists – by force – have consistently been sabotaged by
no other than Javier Solana, former NATO Secretary-General
in charge of the Yugoslavia bombing. Judging by the news from
Macedonia, Solana and the UCK achieved their goals: Skopje
is ready
to capitulate.
STABBED
IN THE BACK
It
was hard to expect anything else, given NATO’s strong “support”
of Macedonian government shown in demands to offer a blanket amnesty to all
UCK and end
“ethnic strife” by “creating a
Macedonia that would suit the Albanians.” Prime Minister
Georgievski was forced, through Solana’s “mediation,” to create
a national unity government that included both major Albanian
parties, even though their political programs were in full agreement with the UCK bandits.
To
the perennially mendacious, government-supporting media in
the West, the struggle in Macedonia quickly became an “ethnic
conflict” between Albanians who demanded “end to discrimination”
and the repressive “Slavs” (thus robbed of their Macedonian
nationality and statehood), who only needed to give in to
achieve peace. Already there are “human rights”
organizations wailing
about the “abuses” of Albanians at the hands of Macedonian
security forces.
Framed
as an issue of “human rights,” invoking the images of black
South Africans fighting apartheid with the aging Arben Xhaferi
cast as the Albanian Nelson Mandela, the media version of
Macedonia’s plight is diametrically opposed
to the truth. For while Albanian parties are ethnically
exclusive and Albanian demands focus on separation and segregation
of ethnic communities, the so-called “Slav
parties” are neither ethnically based, nor are they exclusive
of Serbs, Turks, Roma or Albanians, for that matter. It is
the Albanian minority trying to foist an apartheid
on the Macedonian majority, destroying the Macedonian
state in the process.
Solana
and his EU/NATO patrons know better than to let facts interfere
with their argument, though. As long as their pet NGOs and pet
media keep reinforcing the desired fiction, the pressure
on Skopje is bound to grow. Even some Macedonians – albeit
those friendly to the Western imperial establishment – have
accepted
their government’s capitulation as “peace.” Solana himself
is returning to Skopje this
week, to “to help local leaders agree measures to address minority
Albanian grievances.”
MR.
MASSACRE SPEAKS
Hammering
the last nail in was this Monday’s op-ed in
the Washington Post, by no other than William Walker,
former US diplomat responsible for starting the Kosovo War.
Yes, it was Walker who – as head of the OSCE “verification
mission” in Kosovo – “discovered”
the “Racak massacre” in January 1999, and helped pave the
way for the Rambouillet ultimatum and NATO’s attack soon thereafter.
Dubbed “Mr. Massacre” for
his prior record in central America, he dutifully justified
this reputation by describing a dozen dead KLA bandits as
civilians killed by Serbs in a “clear crime against humanity.”
This
character, then, had the temerity to advise the US government
to intervene in Macedonia – on the side of the Albanians,
of course. Painting a picture of Macedonia straight out of
the UCK propaganda manual – filled with blatant lies such
as that “Macedonia is a nation of many minority groups, with none representing an
overwhelming majority,” for example – Walker was advocating,
in no uncertain terms, that Washington forces the Macedonian
government to recognize the UCK as legitimate, and grant all
of its demands. Not only did he heap legitimacy on the UCK
(“NLA”), he also compared the Macedonians to Slobodan Milosevic,
crudely appealing to the still-festering collective psychosis
in the West, inundated as it is with the vitriolic notion
of Milosevic as Evil Incarnate.
SPEAKING
OF WHICH…
Walker’s
verbal abuse came at the time when Yugoslav government is
nearing collapse over the federal extradition law. Washington,
namely, demands Milosevic’s head on a silver platter at the
so-called War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, using as blackmail
the vacuous promise of several million dollars in loans
to rebuild what NATO bombs and US sanctions have destroyed
over the past decade.
President
Kostunica, aware that direct rejection of imperial demands
is usually “rewarded” by bombing, has pledged to pass a law
allowing for extradition of Yugoslav citizens to foreign courts.
This initiative, however, has been blocked by the Montenegrin
representatives in the Yugoslav federal parliament, who
insist that extradition is not a Constitutional power of the
federal government!
Montenegro’s
current regime, however, has no intention of passing an extradition
law, and the Serbia government – led by Kostunica’s insidious
rival Zoran
Djindjic – wants none of that responsibility, either.
Extradition is extremely unpopular among the people of Yugoslavia,
overtaxed and price-gouged by the current government, so both
Djindjic and Montenegro’s separatist leader Djukanovic would
prefer that Kostunica gets the blame for passing the law –
and if at all possible, for them to get the credit if any
“aid” comes from the West.
CAPITULATIONS
Of
course, Washington could care less who passes the law
and how, or even if the law is passed, as long
as Milosevic is turned over. For that would constitute
admission of command responsibility for “crimes” ICTY will
easily “prove” by its Inquisition methods, and give full
legitimacy to NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, or its sponsorship
of massive ethnic cleansings of Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia
and Kosovo. All of Milosevic’s capitulations, numerous and
tragic as they were, would pale in comparison.
With
this problem at hand, Yugoslavia is unlikely to help Macedonia
much, even though the two countries signed a defense pact
last week.
MEANWHILE,
IN MACEDONIA
Immediately
following Walker’s call and Solana’s announcement, the UCK
restarted the fighting
around Tetovo, from which they were banished in March. Killing
five Macedonian soldiers – one of whom was Albanian, incidentally
(so much for ethnic warfare) – they sent their own
message to Skopje: Give up now, because you will have to do
it soon anyway. And if Reuters is to be believed, most Albanians
in the countryside are loyal to the UCK.
On
Wednesday, Prime Minister Georgievski again called
for a state of war, only to meet vocal US opposition. Yet,
though the government seems ready to surrender, the people
of Macedonia want nothing to do with it. Someone shot
at President Trajkovski’s office Wednesday. Riots erupted again in Bitola,
where three of the most recent victims of UCK attacks were
from – a reprise of the April riots triggered by the UCK’s
massacre of eight Macedonian policemen and soldiers.
Ironically,
“Mr. Massacre” was right about one thing. The current state
of affairs is untenable. Something will have to give
– either the determined UCK and their Western sponsors and
apologists, or the weak, clueless Macedonian government.
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