After Milosevic, Crime, terror flourish in 'liberated' Kosovo

The National Post ^ | December 10, 2003 | Isabel Vincent

[Dan2001]

Four years after it was "liberated" by a NATO bombing campaign, Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-Serb violence and al-Qaeda sympathizers, say security officials and Balkan experts.

Though nominally still under UN control, the southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, mafiosi and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations and are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, such as Serbs, Roma and Jews.

In recent weeks, UN officials ordered the construction of a fortified concrete barrier around the UN compound on the outskirts of the provincial capital Pristina. This is to protect against terrorist strikes by Muslim extremists who have set up bases of operation in what has become a largely outlaw province.

Minority Serbs, who were supposed to have been guaranteed protection by the international community after the 78-day NATO bombing campaign ended in the spring of 1999, have abandoned the province en masse. The last straw for many was the recent round of attacks by ethnic Albanian paramilitaries bent on gaining independence through violence.

Attacks on Serbs in Kosovo, a province of two million people, have risen sharply.

According to statistics collected by the UN criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, 1,192 Serbs have been killed, 1,303 kidnapped and 1,305 wounded in Kosovo this year.

In June, 1999, just after the NATO bombing, 547 Serbs were killed and 932 were kidnapped.

Last summer, in one of the more grisly massacres, two Serb youths were killed and four others wounded by ethnic Albanian militants while swimming in the Bistrica River, near Pec.

The violence continues despite an 18,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force and an international police force of more than 4,000.

Serbs, who now make up 5% of the population of Kosovo, down from 10% before the NATO campaign, are the main targets of the paramilitary groups.

The bombing was partly launched by NATO countries to end the ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serb security forces in the region. In its immediate aftermath, many Serbs left Kosovo to settle in other parts of Yugoslavia, now known as Serbia and Montenegro.

Last week, Harri Holkeri, the province's UN leader, suspended two generals and 10 other officers, all members of an ethnic Albanian offshoot of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an insurgent group that emerged in the late 1980s to fight Serb security forces.

Mr. Holkeri made his decision -- the strongest UN response to violence in the province so far -- after a UN inquiry into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). Although the civilian defence organization is supposed to help local residents, over the past four years, its mostly ethnic Albanian military officials have been involved in violent confrontations with Serbs.

The inquiry found last April's bomb attack on a Kosovo railway was the work of the KPC.

"The whole process of rebuilding Kosovo-Metohija as a democratic, multi-ethnic society failed due to both the inability of the UN mission and [NATO] forces to protect Serbs and other non-Albanians from large-scale ethnic cleansing, this time primarily against Serbs," said Dusan Batakovic, a Serb diplomat and leading expert on Kosovo.

Dr. Batakovic and other Balkan experts, who attended a conference in Toronto last month to discuss Kosovo's future, say the situation is deteriorating rapidly.

"NATO forces made a real mess of Kosovo," said James Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia. "The bombing of Yugoslavia was a dreadful failure on humanitarian grounds. It failed to stop ethnic cleansing, which has continued after the so-called peace treaty."

In addition, "Balkan Taliban" -- Muslim ethnic Albanian paramilitary groups -- have vandalized Serb cemeteries and destroyed many of the region's Orthodox Christian monasteries and churches.

"This is a strategy of cutting Kosovo Serbs off from their historical and religious traditions," said Dr. Batakovic in his report to the North American Society of Serbian Studies conference.

Moreover, Kosovo has turned into one of Europe's biggest hubs for drug trafficking and terrorism.

Al-Qaeda has set up bases in the province, which has become an important centre for heroin, cigarette, gasoline and people smuggling.

The Albanian mafia and paramilitary groups, which security officials say are closely tied to al-Qaeda militants in the region, also oversee smuggling. More than 80% of Western Europe's heroin comes through Kosovo, where several drug laboratories have been set up, Interpol officials say.

During the wars (1991-99) that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia, drugs and other commodities were smuggled through Bulgaria and Turkey to Western Europe.

Now, more than 5,000 tonnes of heroin pass directly through Kosovo every month. In a recent article in Serbia's Vreme magazine, Kosovo was referred to as the "republic of heroin."

"The Albanians have become the alpha and omega of the drugs trade in southeast Europe," said Marko Nicovic, chairman of the International Police Association for the Fight Against Drugs.

"There are two reasons for this. The first is the fact that Kosovo is now under the control of the Albanian mafia lobby and the criminal police do not operate there. This is literally a paradise for all kinds of crime, especially narcotics."

The Albanian mafia also control trafficking in cigarettes, weapons, gasoline and women. Dozens of young women from impoverished towns and villages in the region are forced into prostitution rings centred in Kosovo, security officials say. Many of the women are taken by mobsters to work in Western European countries.

There is little consensus on the way ahead.

Many Serbs and moderate ethnic Albanian politicians would like a decision on Kosovo's legal status -- should it remain a province of Serbia or become independent?

Many ethnic Albanians are calling for independence, but their more extremist elements would like to fold the province into a Greater Albania that would see ethnic Albanians take over the mostly Albanian regions of neighbouring Macedonia as well.

The Serb government in Belgrade wants Kosovo to continue as part of Serbia.

Although it is four years since the NATO bombing, talks on Kosovo's future began only recently. Serb and ethnic Albanian leaders met in Vienna in October to discuss transportation and the return of Serb refugees to Kosovo.

"At this point, the chances for Kosovo remaining in Serbia are pretty slim," Mr. Bissett said. "There is a powerful Albanian lobby in the United States that is determined to make Kosovo independent."

Moreover, many Serb leaders know that to attract the much-needed aid and investment, they will need to give way on Kosovo, experts say.

In the meantime, the situation is expected to get worse, with renewed threats of violence against both the United Nations and Serbs in the province.

"It's a terrible situation," said Mr. Bissett. "If the United Nations and other organizations can't handle Kosovo, you wonder how they are going to do with something like Iraq."

[Dan2001]

www.rense.com/general45/crime.htm
www.capmag.com/news.asp?ID=838

Since you're so hung up about numbers, contact ICTY themselves. A tissue for Milosevic? No thanks, I'd rather send one for Miss Del Ponte.

[Hoplite]

Hey genius - posting links to your original article or other sites not savvy enough to recognize it as trash isn't really helping you here.

And if you call actually figuring out the truth being hung up on something, it would go a long way towards explaining your position, wouldn't it.

[Dan2001]

Helping me in what?
Are you a judge here, a moderator? Why should I have to help myself. It is very obvious what the truth is. If you don;t like it, then stop reading it.

I never knew you were trying to figure out the truth, oh well, I guess it's a new take. Well, maybe we should all work together to figure out the truth. So I would recommend that you start by watching all the Tribunal's proceedings. You can do that either at http://hague.bard.edu/ or go to
tribunal.freeserbia.com for a version in Serbian.

I think I have explained my position. If you still don't understand my position after reading the articles that I have posted, then you should go help yourself.

Just because you disagree with something does not make it trash. It's a childish form of argumentation. I recommened to you, contact the ICTY and ask them. I am perfectly fine with the National Post article and the information that is provided within it. If you are not, "that's your problem."

[jedi]

"The Albanians have become the alpha and omega of the drugs trade in southeast Europe," said Marko Nicovic, chairman of the International Police Association for the Fight Against Drugs.

"There are two reasons for this. The first is the fact that Kosovo is now under the control of the Albanian mafia lobby and the criminal police do not operate there. This is literally a paradise for all kinds of crime, especially narcotics."

The Albanian mafia also control trafficking in cigarettes, weapons, gasoline and women. Dozens of young women from impoverished towns and villages in the region are forced into prostitution rings centred in Kosovo, security officials say. Many of the women are taken by mobsters to work in Western European countries.

Your spin on this?

[Dan2001]

Kosovo drug mafia supply heroin to Europe

"International agencies fighting the drug trade are warning that Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise" supplying up to 40% of the heroin sold in Europe and North America."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,193548,00.html

I guess Kosovo, by our friend's standards is a true success story.

If that is not the truth, then I don't know what is. Maybe all these drug lords are working for the Accused Milosevic in the Hague. Maybe this will help too. A report from the international organization for migration.

"The Situation in Kosovo: the victims of trafficking in human beings can be women and men, adults or children; in Kosovo trafficked women are the major target... ."
www.iom.int/en/PDF_Files/Other/human_trafficking_kosovo.pdf

[Seselj]

It's interesting that you view 1,201 over 4 years as somehow being worse than 5,000+ in three months, which is what Slobo's forces managed to rack up.

What makes you think the 5000 figure refers only to those killed during the 3 months of bombing? The 5000 figure, even if accurate, does not refer to any specific time frame, and probably includes deaths from since the beginning of the Kosovo conflict (1996, when the KLA was first formed). 5000 dead people in 3 years is not a high figure considering there was a war going on. And that's before you even take into account the fact that the majority of those 5000 are probably KLA. Instead of blaming the Serbs for some atrocities which exist only in your head, maybe you should commend the Serbs for the impressive amount of restraint they used when dealing with the KLA terrorists. I could never have been that restraintful (restraintive?) if I had been Milosevic.

[greenwolf]

The Bush admin cannot go on covering for the clintons and clintonistas, particularly if Wesley Clark runs for president. Somebody is going to have to start talking about Kosovo.

[greenwolf]

And the Sudeten Germans didn't fare too well after Czechoslovakia was liberated either.

The difference is, we weren't inundated with Nazi propaganda which ignored German crimes while detailing the volksdeutch's plight.

If somebody were to do a good enough job of bombing Albania, they could eliminate 90% of ALL European crime.

[Hoplite]

Just because you disagree with something does not make it trash.

Correct - but I have pointed out the factual errors in the article you posted. Since you are relying upon said article to support your position, your position is trash too. It's a simple GIGO relationship.

Not only have I been to the Bard site, from which I have read and referenced the expert testimony documents which provide valuable insight into Milosevic's crimes and his control over forces committing atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, but I have read the majority of the ICTY's posted transcripts, and your editorializing of said transcripts isn't done in the spirit of trying to discern the facts from the testimony, but is just another attempt at spinning the trial to make Milosevic look like a victim - you belong over on the Jurist site with all the other useful idiots spewing their ignorance out into cyberspace.

Slobodan Milosevic is not a victim, he is not a hero, and he is not a friend of the United States of America. He is a criminal who used the endemic hatreds in the region to first gain power, and then to cover his seizure of his constituent's assets while he led them into a series of ruinous wars.

[Dan2001]

Since I should go over to the Jurist site, maybe you should try and start working for the Coalition for International Justice and even the IWPR. You would be suited well there.
There was one factual error, but it is not factual, since it uses different sources then you do, therefore it is not trash.

You have a very arrogant nature in your argumentation, almost like you are preaching from a higher ground.
Like you, many people have read the transcripts and have even said that the court is a political one. I would like to refer you to a dutch documentary called, Der Zaak Milosevic.

The fact of the matter is, is that many see the trial as a farce. They see NATO's intervention as illegal and even a witness from Human Rights Watch agreed with Milosevic when cross-examined. Is it your position that the court is legal, legitimate and that Milosevic is not responsible for the peace and the signing of the Dayton accords? Is it your position that no refuguees fled NATO's bombing and that NATO was acting legally when it bombed Yugoslavia.

I am assuming that your answers will be Yes, yes, and yes.
It is up to anyone here to read the transcripts of the trial which can be found at www.un.org/icty , but I also believe that people like myself have the right to provide an opinion on the trial, just like the CIJ and IWPR and Reuters and AP and CNN and BBC do.

The so-called editorializing, is done in the spirit of showing that this trial is not a trial, but rather a lynching, just like Edward Greenspan claimed, Canada's most respected lawyer. I will post the article just for you.

Till then, have a nice evening.



The documentary can be seen here:

http://info.vpro.nl/info/tegenlicht/index.shtml?7738514+7738518+7738520+14130404#loadvariables

On the right side of the site, you can see
PARTY II in SMALBAND or BROADBENT
and
PART I in SMALBAND or BROADBENT

[Hoplite]

My spin on this is that the Albanians have muscled in on many of organized crime's traditional activities, but they have not replaced all of Europe's domestic mafias - until it decided to take out Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's Mafia/State Police were doing a nice business with their Albanian counterparts, proving that money speaks louder than ideology, even amongst those purported to be the sword and shield of said ideology.

Furthermore, the Balkan route describes a generic path along which Kurdish, Turkish, Albanian, and other national mafias operate. To ascribe all its throughput to one of the groups operating along it is to give the others a free ride.

I refer you to Britain's NCIS, which reports 25 to 35 tons of heroin are smuggled into the UK, with 70% of that being brought in by Turkish organized crime groups. Furthermore, it reports that Turkish groups still continue to dominate the European heroin trade.

If you look further into the trafficking of women issue, Belgrade is the nexus from where sex slaves are routed Westward, and South to Kosovo for that matter. See Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Yugoslavia Sect 6f.

So while the Kosovar Albanian mafia needs to be dealt with, allocating international law enforcement assets on the basis of erroneous information is not in our interest, to say nothing of forming and holding opinions based upon said erroneous information.

[Hoplite]

The 5,000 figure refers to the 4,211 Kosovar Albanians exhumed from mass graves by ICTY investigators in Kosovo up through 2001 and to the 800+ Kosovar Albanians exhumed in Serbia itself.

Go find a wall and bounce your forehead off of it until the urge to post BS passes.

[Hoplite]

Being right is to hold the higher ground.

Get used to looking uphill.

If the ICTY is illegitimate, then Milosevic missed his chance to contest the issue when he signed the Dayton Accords, where he in effect sold out his Bosnian subordinates.

If Kosovar refugees were fleeing NATO's bombs, then they would have kept coming across the border during Milosevic's Easter cease fire, rather than the flow across the borders reflecting the lack of activity on the part of Serbia's forces while NATO kept bombing without pause - Patrick Ball addressed this very issue in his testimony and report on the Bard site. How shocking is it that a commentator of your caliber would disregard what amounts to statistical proof that your position on the matter is garbage? Whoops - there I go with that trash analogy again, and I didn't even give you a chance to endorse yet another stupid Milosevic lie. I'm just getting ahead of myself here.

If you're upset about NATO bombing Yugoslavia, I'd love to hear your position on our invasion of Iraq. What's the deal? The UN is only to be listened to in matters relating to Serbia, with the caveat that any UNSC Resolutioins directed against Serbia can be ignored?

You're making a habit of being wrong here, Dan. Don't get all snitty that I have the temerity to point it out to you.

[Dan2001]

Patrick Ball is indeed one of the witnesses who appreared in the Hague. Patrick Ball, who claims to have demonstrated, with a statistical analysis, the justice of the charges against Milosevic.

We shall get to that shortly. But first, let us ask, who is he? The American Association for the Advancement of Science explains:[1]

[Start Quote From AAAS Website]

“Patrick Ball, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Program. Since 1991, he has designed information management systems and conducted quantitative analysis for large-scale human rights data projects for truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, tribunals and United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, and Kosovo. His 1997 Ph.D. dissertation “Liberal Hypocrisy and Totalitarian Sincerity” examined the roots of the non-governmental human rights movements in Ethiopia, Pakistan, and El Salvador. AAAS has published two previous books by Dr. Ball: Who Did What to Whom? Planning and Implementing a Large Scale Human Rights Data Project (1996), and State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: a Quantitative Reflection (1999, with Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer).”

[Start Quote From AAAS Website]

It is obvious from the description that Patrick Ball is considered a leader in the application of science to questions of human rights abuses around the world, and it seems he has a hand in deciding who did what to whom in just about every conflict.

This is cause for considerable worry.

As this piece will show, Patrick Ball’s own data directly contradict the hypothesis that Milosevic’s government carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo. In other words, when Mr. Ball concludes that there was such an ethnic cleansing campaign, he is doing so in defiance of his own analysis. This does not inspire confidence in the various ongoing efforts to assign blame around the world (listed in the quote above), and which feature Mr. Ball’s work rather prominently.

The problems with Patrick Ball’s study are dramatic and obvious on first inspection.

(1) He did not test as a hypothesis the claims of the defense.

(2) He used the most tainted data possible.

(3) Despite using such data, he was unable to put anything together that even remotely indicts Milosevic. On the contrary, Mr. Ball's analysis, on the face of it, suggests that Milosevic's claims are true.

(4) But since the claims of the defense were not even included as a hypothesis, that Milosevic's version of events might be what really happened was not even possible as a conclusion in Mr. Ball's fatally biased study.

That Hague Tribunal prosecutors should accept such trash, as you might call it, and pretend that it convicts Milosevic, demonstrates that the Hague Tribunal is not interested in the truth. Its purpose is simply to convict the former Yugoslav president, come what may.

Patrick Ball’s study is entitled “Policy or Panic: The Flight of Ethnic Albanians From Kosovo.” You may read it here : http://shr.aaas.org/kosovo/policyorpanic/toc.html

Patrick Ball says that “many arguments were advanced” but in fact he lists only two:

(1) PANIC. Albanians were fleeing in fear because of the fighting in Kosovo (whether because of NATO bombs or fighting between the Yugoslav army and the KLA - or both), or else

(2) POLICY. Albanians fled because, as NATO alleges, the Yugoslav forces under Milosevic’s command carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Either-or. And Mr. Ball proposes to adjudicate between the two.

But nothing in nature limits the number of possible hypotheses to two. And Patrick Ball is supposed to be a scientist. Hence, one expects that he will put on the table *all* of the relevant and obvious hypotheses. But he hasn’t. Incredibly, the claims of Milosevic’s government that the Albanians were chased out of Kosovo in an organized campaign that used both KLA intimidation and NATO bombs in order to blame the Serbs for fictitious ethnic cleansing - *these* claims are not even included for consideration. Here is Milosevic repeating the argument in court:

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: The movement of Albanians from Kosovo was of strategic importance for the Clinton Administration to win the support of the media and public opinion, [in order to give the appearance of] confirmation [for their allegations against the Serbs] and justification for what they were doing... I wish to underline that under the threat of bombs, more than 100.000 Serbs also fled Kosovo. And this is an official figure of the International Committee for the Red Cross in Geneva...

...simultaneously with the fierce bombing, the KLA terrorists forced all Albanians that did not leave Kosovo upon their orders and the requests of NATO and under pressure of leaflets and horrific round-the-clock bombing. So they referred to all these Albanians who did not leave Kosovo as traitors because they betrayed the wartime concept which should have created the illusion of an exodus of the population before what you are referring to as the Serb forces. Simply the allegations of Albright... of Serb deportations needed to gain confirmation. And there were hundreds of cameras waiting at the borders to examine the witnesses of alleged Serb misdeeds and to perform that part of the media war

[Quote From ICTY Transcript Ends Here]

Milosevic's point about the phony interviews of Albanian refugees at Kosovo’s borders is well documented. As Daniel Pearl (since murdered) and Robert Block explained in the Wall Street Journal:

[Quote From Wall Street Journal Starts Here]

“The KLA helped form the West’s wartime image of Kosovo. International human-rights groups say officials of the guerrilla force served on the Kosovo-based Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms, whose activists were often the first to interview refugees arriving in Macedonia.”

[Quote From Wall Street Journal Ends Here]

As further documentation of this view of things, Milosevic submitted in court a flyer that instructed Albanians to leave the province of Kosovo, and which bore the seal of the KLA and Ibrahim Rugova’s signature (Rugova was one of the main secessionist Albanian leaders).

Now, of course, the claims made by the former Yugoslav government, repeated in court by Milosevic, don’t *have* to be accepted as correct a priori. The evidence should be examined to see whether the version defended by Milosevic’s government has merit. It is a hypothesis, and it should be tested along with the others, because the point is to find out what happened. Or isn’t it? Well, apparently not for Patrick Ball, whose study does not even *mention*, let alone test, the claim made by the defense!

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: ...is it clear to you that, in this war, NATO and the KLA were acting with the same objective in mind? Did you give any thought to that?

PATRICK BALL: I did not give any thought to that idea.

JUDGE MAY: ...Now, the question appears to be this: Were there, in your view, other matters or did you consider other possible causes for, it seems to be, the refugee flight, namely, propaganda and threats of the KLA?

PATRICK BALL: This was an occasional topic of discussion among my co-authors and myself. We did not consider the effect.

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: ...I'm also talking about threats that were not empty threats only, because the KLA killed many Albanians as well in order to discipline them...

JUDGE MAY: ...Did you consider threats made by the KLA?

PATRICK BALL: No. We considered it unlikely...

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: So this has no effect, propaganda, calls, threats, orders issued by the KLA to the population to leave the territory. Is that the way it is in your opinion? Or the media war either that was part of this war as well?

PATRICK BALL: As I said and I think as is clear from the report, we did not consider these hypothesized causes presented by the question in a direct way.

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: I am asking you about the effect of such a message, when a column of peasants who are going back to their village are bombed and at the same time there are orders and requests put through the media that Albanians should leave Kosovo. Did you take that into account as an effect of this message or did you only add up the persons killed by NATO in these columns?

PATRICK BALL: We did not take that into effect...

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: Did it cross your mind that... the appearance of refugee columns were preplanned and organized in advance in order to create an impression around the world that they were a product of an ethnic cleansing campaign, and other things that you are claiming, rather than the war in all its complexity, as is obvious?

PATRICK BALL: ...on your new question, did it occur to me that this was preplanned, the answer is no.

So there you have your expert witness. I was hoping you would bring him up, which you obviously did.

Unbelievable. Patrick Ball confessed repeatedly, under cross examination, that not one of the claims made by the Yugoslav government - that is, not one of the claims made by the *defense* in the Milosevic trial - had even been considered in his study!

I can go on and on about Mr. Ball. I have read his whole anaylsis and even talked to several people who have expertise in statistics and they also pointed out:

“The report also examines other official records of refugee movements as well as surveys conducted in refugee camps in Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

Now, there is an important omission here, because no Albanians who fled Kosovo into Serbia made it into Ball’s data set. Those who consume only NATO propaganda for ‘news’ don’t know this, but many Albanians were fleeing north, to Serbia, because they knew this was the safest place.

How do we know this? One dramatic piece of evidence comes from an article published in the Daily Telegraph, after the bombing, by a puzzled David Millward, who reported on just how eager Albanians were to leave Kosovo and go to Belgrade.

And yet Patrick Ball did not use any data concerning Albanians who fled north to Serbia. Rather, he uses ‘data’ only from refugees who fled to the Albanian part of Macedonia, to Albania, and to Bosnia-Herzegovina. In other words, Mr. Ball was careful to use ‘data’ only from refugees who went to places where NATO and its allies (the terrorist KLA) could control the interviews.

And this all demonstrates something else: Mr. Ball’s study was never peer reviewed in proper fashion. The problems with his sources of data and with his mode of reasoning are *obvious*, and an insult to anybody with normal intelligence. That Mr. Ball should be the Deputy Director of the Science and Human Rights Program of something calling itself the American Association for the Advancement of Science is, quite simply, a scandal.

Slobodan Milosevic, Question to Doctor Patrick Ball:
Do you know what homo sapiens means?
Judge May (NATO):
You don't have to answer this question!

[Dan2001]

Just to add, I was opposed to both wars. The war against Yugoslavia and Iraq, both of which in my opnion were not authorized by the UN.

[Hoplite]

You're wasting your time.

Ball's testimony didn't directly support the contention that Milosevic's forces were conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign, it merely eviscerated the alternate hypotheses, being NATO or KLA activity were the cause.

Don't worry, it's all too complicated for either you or Slobo to counter in a meaningful manner - you're just Milosevic's little dancing marionette, and if the master couldn't hack it, you have no chance yourself.

If you want to hitch your horse to the UN in situations where it has demonstrably failed, then your personal issues extend well past your affinity for failed European despots.

[Dan2001]

Your are wrong my friend.

" it merely eviscerated the alternate hypotheses, being NATO or KLA activity were the cause."

Hoplite, if you had read the transcript, Mr. Ball admitted that he did not even investigate that possibility. I don't think lookin at a witnesse's report is the waste of time and I also don't think trying to point out flaws is either, which is what you seem to do whenever someone posts an article on Milosevic. Now, since you mentioned Ball, it is perfectly find to correct you and your masters. I never knew I had one, but I guess you know us all better than we do ourselves.

You have a talent for ad hominem fallacies. I am really impressed.

Going back to Mr. Ball,

What data did Patrick Ball use? His report states:

“This report is based on administrative records maintained by Albanian government officials who registered hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians as they passed through the small border post near the village of Morina between March and May 1999.”

In other words, these data come from the same Albanian government that cooperated with NATO’s attack because it has an interest in prying Kosovo away from Serbia. This is what one might call a biased source...

Even worse: the compilation of those records at the Albanian border were supervised by NATO’s own ‘civil emergency unit’ (and it was NATO that bombed Serbia, recall). As reported in March 1998:

[Quote From The Associated Press Starts Here]

"NATO agreed today to provide more money and technical aid to help Albania monitor its border with Yugoslavia's troubled Kosovo province, but called any talk of sending troops premature. NATO also is activating a civil emergency unit to help Albania and neighboring Macedonia cope with any influx of refugees from Kosovo, officials said."[14]

[Quote From The Associated Press Starts Here]

And in mid-1998 (a year before NATO's bombing) it surfaced that the CIA was working extensively in Albania, especially in the north, where the KLA had its bases of operation.

[Quote From Associated Press Starts Here]

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is operating in Albania, helping rebuild the country’s internal security capability, the head of the Albanian Secret Service was quoted Thursday as saying.

In an interview with the independent newspaper Shekulli, Fatos Klosi said that relations between his Albanian Secret Service, or SHIK, and the CIA “were intensified in the last months” and that “CIA specialists” were operating in the country.

“They even have offices in the north,” he added, referring to the area near the border with Yugoslavia's Kosovo province, where the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] maintains sanctuaries.[15]

[Quote From Associated Press Ends Here]

Mr. Ball explains the point of his study:

“Unlike previous analyses which have relied exclusively on refugee testimonies, this study...breaks new ground for human rights analysis by contextualizing the claims made by witnesses with analysis of objective administrative data.”

In other words, Mr. Ball is supposed to be comparing what the refugees supposedly said with the supposed data about their movements. And this is what he concluded:

“...the mass exodus of refugees from Kosovo occurred in patterns so regular that they must have been coordinated. In the context of qualitative accounts given by refugees, the most likely explanation for the migration is that Yugoslav authorities planned and implemented a centrally organized campaign to clear at least certain regions of ethnic Albanians.”

If we make believe that Mr. Ball makes a logical argument above, then what do we have?

On the one hand, the context provided by what the Albanian refugees said through... through whom? Through interpreters provided by the terrorist KLA. Aha. And on the other hand we have the “objective administrative data” gathered by... by whom? By the Albanian government which hosted the CIA trainers of the KLA, and which invited NATO in to oversee the gathering of the data, afterwards sending soldiers and paramilitaries to help out with the KLA’s racist campaign of murder in Kosovo. Yes. And since, according to Mr. Ball, these two sources of data agree with each other, he concludes that the Serbs were bad.

Did you swallow?

Even if the two sources of data agreed with each other, since they are both tainted beyond belief, there would be no reason to take Mr. Ball's analysis seriously. However, incredibly, the data do *not* even agree with each other and therefore undermine rather than support Mr. Ball's conclusions! This will be examined below.

And Mr. Ball is not even making a logical argument, and I shall examine this below as well.

Let us take another look at the paragraph quoted above:

“...the mass exodus of refugees from Kosovo occurred in patterns so regular that they must have been coordinated. In the context of qualitative accounts given by refugees, the most likely explanation for the migration is that Yugoslav authorities planned and implemented a centrally organized campaign to clear at least certain regions of ethnic Albanians.”

What is the premise, here? Mr. Ball obviously reasons in the following way: if the refugees are leaving Kosovo in regular patterns, this means the movements were coordinated. Since ethnic cleansing produces regular and coordinated movements of refugees, he concludes that there was ethnic cleansing.

Wait a minute. Slower now... Ethnic cleansing produces regular and coordinated movements of refugees?

Well, what was the ethnic cleansing supposed to be like? Mr. Ball said it himself:

“This report compares the refugee flows to the location and timing of NATO bombings and mass killings allegedly carried out by Yugoslav forces.”

Mass killings...

The NATO allegation was that *mass killings* by the Yugoslav government had produced an exodus of Albanian civilians who fled in terror. These allegations were the very justification that NATO used to intervene in Kosovo. And according to NATO these weren't just any mass killings. NATO alleged that as many as 500,000 Albanian civilians were being slaughtered.

Are spectacular mass killings supposed to result in regular and coordinated movements of refugees? What planet is Patrick Ball from?

If Albanians were fleeing in terror ahead of mass killings, then there was bound to be much disorder. Different individuals make all kinds of different decisions when faced with imminent death, precisely because the prospect of imminent death makes it difficult for them to organize for the purpose of reaching orderly, coordinated decisions. Hence, since Mr. Ball claims that Albanians were streaming out of Kosovo in regular and coordinated movements, what hypothesis would this support? Wouldn't it support Milosevic’s claim that they were herded out as part of an organized NATO/KLA effort of cajoling, threats, and intimidation?

No, says Mr. Ball. If people come out of Kosovo in regular and apparently coordinated movements, the most likely explanation is... that they are fleeing mass killings!

Again, what planet is he from?

Here is a thought experiment. Suppose that Mr. Ball's data had showed people streaming out chaotically. What would Mr. Ball have concluded? Here is my guess: "The arrival of refugees at the border was so disorderly and chaotic that it suggests they were fleeing a terror campaign of mass killings."

But all of the nonsense we have been considering so far pales next to this gem, which is Mr. Ball’s concluding paragraph in his Executive Summary:

“The findings of this report suggest that the refugee flows do not necessarily follow sequences of mass killings. As with bombing, mass killings occasionally coincided with heavy refugee flows. However, there are many areas from which many refugees departed but where there were no massacres, and there are other areas in which mass killings were committed yet from which there were relatively few refugees. Finally, this report finds that NATO’s bombing was tactically ineffective at stopping the forced eviction of Kosovar Albanians. While NATO bombing was not the cause of the mass migration, neither did the bombing stop Yugoslav forces from driving hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians from their homes.”

This is quite a whopper. The entire paragraph is a version of the “do you still beat your wife?” argument - also know as the logical fallacy of “affirming the consequent.”

If I ask you, in public, “Do you still beat your wife?”, anybody who overhears will think it is established fact that you beat your wife, or else I would not construct my sentence this way. It is a sly maneuver: it is only possible for you to *still* be beating your wife if you have beaten her in the past. You see?

Now consider Ball's first sentence:

“The findings of this report suggest that the refugee flows do not necessarily follow sequences of mass killings.”

What is he saying? That refugee flows sometimes, but only sometimes, follow sequences of mass killings. Which means he is saying that mass killings definitely occurred. For, you see, the only way that refugee flows can *sometimes* follow mass killings is if mass killings occur in the first place! But whether *any* mass killings occurred is what is in dispute, and Ball has no evidence that they did. Neither does anybody else.

Patrick Ball’s absurd job was to argue for mass killings on the basis of correlations between the allegations of mass killings, and the refugee movements. But he was unable to show any such correlation, as he confesses himself. Notice:

"...mass killings occasionally coincided with heavy refugee flows. However, there are many areas from which many refugees departed but where there were no massacres, and there are other areas in which mass killings were committed yet from which there were relatively few refugees."

In a normal world, he would look at his data, and conclude that it does not support the idea that there were mass killings. (And this is a double whammy, given that the only reason Mr. Ball was asked to do this study in the first place is that no physical evidence of mass killings whatever has turned up.)

Instead, Mr. Ball drops all use of the word "allegation" or "alleged" and refers just to "mass killings," as if nobody contested that they happened (but people *do* contest that they happened, or Mr. Ball would not have been called). In doing so, he absurdly pretends that the absence of any correlation between allegations of mass killings and refugee movements shows that there *had* been mass killings!

Mr. Ball should be saying that *allegations* of mass killings only occasionally coincide with heavy refugee flows. And then he should be concluding that this weakens the case against Milosevic.

If one assumes from the beginning that mass killings occurred, and the evidence be damned, then it certainly won't matter whether the allegations of mass killings and the refugee movements match up. And, indeed, it doesn't seem to matter to Mr. Ball. But then we hardly need Mr. Ball to run any statistics!

Every one of the sentences in Mr. Ball's concluding paragraph commits the logical fallacy of "affirming the consequent" (this may be a first in the history of Western literature). Mr. Ball just *assumes* that the mass killings took place.

This speaks volumes about what Mr. Ball's job really was. Just as the Hague Tribunal is not there to find the truth, but to convict Milosevic *in spite of* the truth, Mr. Ball's role is to conclude that there were mass killings, even if his spectacularly tainted data cannot - despite this - produce the correlations between allegations of mass killings and population movements that would at least be consistent with this accusation.

To conclude, I think this has been hacked a while ago like much of the tria's 'trash'.

[Fledermaus]

LIES! General Ashley Clark fixed all of that!

[Fledermaus]

You should fact check the articles you post - this author doesn't appear to be able to do that for herself.

Why should Dan2001 be the editor for the idiots he post? Geez.

[Fledermaus]

You must be a liberal, left wing, Democratic kook. You seem to love shooting the messenger.

I guess if I posted some diatribe full of bile from Pat Buchanan to get a repsonse and comments (after making my own) and you disagreed, you'd attack me for the post and not the substance of the debate.

That's really sad.