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"Blowback" is the
CIA-coined term for an unpleasant reality. Foreign mercenaries,
trained to fight our wars so as to minimize or eliminate American
casualties, have a tendency to turn against us as political situations
change. While Afghanistan is often cited as the classic example
of this reality, it lies in the past. Yet, this experience has
started to dominate the thinking about the Albanian "Bastard Army"
created by the CIA and the Pentagon for the ground invasion of
Serbia under Milosevic. This invasion did not materialize. The
Serb Third Army and police left Kosovo to NATO troops and a United
Nations Administration without any real ground combat. One of
the basic provisions built into the Serb pullout was the total
and effective disarmament of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA). It was not implemented.
The KLA "reprisals" against Serb civilians in Kosovo were even
defined as "justifiable retribution" by the top UN Officer, Bernard
Kouchner. Through our diplomatic intervention at Rambouillet and
an air war against the Serbs, Kosovo’s moderate Albanians were
completely marginalized in favor of the KLA. This has made any
future cohabitation impossible and the KLA proved it via the ethnic
cleansing of all non-Albanians from Kosovo, some 300,000 all told,
right under the "watchful eye" of the 40,000 NATO troops suffering
from self-induced myopia. Over 1,000 Serbs were abducted in a
relatively short time and never found (but for one large mass
grave). Kosovo became a paradise for white slavers, drug dealers
and all sorts of illegal activities. The UN response was to draft
the KLA fighters into its Constabulary and they promptly used
it for more of the same. It also became clear that the more egregious
charges against the Serbs in Kosovo could not be substantiated.
The Clinton Administration Officials and some very vocal pro-Albanian
Solons swept the Kosovo realities under the rug. This seemed sufficient
to avoid any serious questioning of inept and capricious diplomacy
at Rambouillet and the very need for an air war against Milosevic
(i.e. the Serbs). But the Bastard Army was still around, and very
much in-charge of Kosovo, which had been served to it on a silver
plate.
Because the American people are overwhelmingly against our
entry into foreign shooting conflicts, nothing frightens the occupants
of the White House more than the sudden arrival home of body bags
containing our GIs. The Albanian "nationalists" are keenly aware
of this major US fear. The CIA in Kosovo and the commanders at
Camp Bondsteel readily perceive this awareness. After making more
than just perfunctory noises in the Presidential race about disengagement
from Kosovo, President Bush has made a volte face. His foreign
policy advisers have opted to disregard the failures and pitfalls
of the Clintonian legacy regarding Kosovo. More than that, they
have decided to shore them up instead. Bondsteel has a new lease
of 99 years. It is now the real command post for the Kosovo and
Macedonian Liberation Armies. It has dawned on Bondsteel ‘s pacesetters
that Albanian traditional culture is intertwined with an acephalous
society dominated by the Clans and their Caids. The only "promising"
way to avoid body bags for our dead GIs, in the not too distant
future, is to help create a Greater Albania without seeming to
be doing so.
Enters again the Orwellian language. In Macedonia, there is
a weapons "harvest," with the local Liberation Army commander
transformed into a statesman, ready for a Parliament seat. In
fact, weapons can be easily resupplied and "Albanian rebels" continue
to terrorize in myriad ways Macedonia’s Slavic villagers, so that
a form of indirect, less-than-armed violence prone ethnic cleansing
is taking hold. The main Orwellian slogan is "struggle for Human
Rights." Macedonia did not have a Milosevic. It did not even attempt
to expel its Albanian minority, whose basic human rights suffered
no generalized violations, although it is true that this minority
(about a third of Macedonia’s population) was not proportionally
represented in the governing of Macedonia. The same Orwellian
slogan of Human Rights (for Albanians who are denying them to
all others in Kosovo) has predominated recently at two secret
meetings at Prizren and Piskopelica. This is where American KFOR
specialists laid out plans for all Albanian "liberation" armies
to start terrorist activities inside Serbia (and not only in southern
Serbia, which has an ethnic Albanian minority), to follow this
up in Montenegro in September and somewhat later in Greece as
well. These meetings were uncovered by a reporter from the Serb
paper Svedok ("Witness") who apparently had direct
Albanian contacts. It is most unlikely that these meetings were
simply invented by Svedok's reporter. By obvious inference,
it would be extremely unlikely that the Albanian Liberation Armies
would kill American soldiers at Kosovo under such a scenario,
even in the longer run.
To avoid the body bags, locally destabilizing and shortsighted
CIA-Pentagon field-operations are already on the way. For Serbia,
under some DOS leaders that are totally subservient to the US
desiderata, there is a new Orwellian "Partnership for Peace."
Under its cover, demands have been made to cashier the top Serb
Third Army generals familiar with Albanian tactics from Kosovo.
It also hides the formula that the "Serbs must remain calm" in
their response to Albanian terrorism and incursions. Then, Serb
restraint will be praised. In simpler terms, one way or another,
Albanians will have their Greater Albania. Peacefully where possible,
violently where necessary but a combination of the two. NATO will
piously mediate. It is headed by a new Statesman in uniform, General
Ralston.
In order to impose its will and punish defiant disobedience,
the Clinton Administration weakened a legitimate state fighting
an internal threat in favor of unsavory clan elements transformed
into "fighters for freedom and human rights." This is a most undeserved
depiction given their methods and the aftermath they have created
in Kosovo. No sane person could argue that it was necessary to
destroy Serbia’s infrastructure, poison its soil, water and air,
kill some 3,000 Serb civilians and maim three times that number
in order to turn Kosovo over to to the KLA. The net result is
that our current leaders are afraid of Albanians and are prepared
to compound the Clintonite lunacy. The lesser evil would be to
have the fortitude to take all of our troops out of Kosovo, close
Bondsteel down and save billions of dollars despite the European
complaints about the unilateral exit. Our involvement in the Balkans
has already exposed the US as an imperial state. It could turn
out in the long run that another empire, the US global one, will
find its graveyard in the Balkans if interventionist hawks prevail.
Trading support of a pivotal people in the Balkans (the Serbs),
who were seeking to suppress an externally-induced guerrilla war,
for crime-prone Albanian "liberation armies" was at best a stupid
and venal foreign policy "achievement." It cannot be washed away
by either Orwellian language or psy-op manipulations of the American
people.
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