AMERICA'S WAR AGAINST MUSLIM TERRORISTS: A WAR THAT THE ORTHODOX SERBS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING FOR YEARS

On Monday, February 26, 2007 the U.N.'s highest Court will hand down the judgment as to whether Serbia as a nation will be held accountable for the alleged genocide perpetrated against the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s. I'm posting here an essay written shortly after September 11, 2001 by Sandy Marquette that will hopefully provide some perspective. It may even be more relevant now than it was six years ago when it was written.

Imagine what it must be like now for Serbian-Americans and American Serbs. I can and have often in the past 10 years. Now, with the issue forced for real on American soil, the Serbian issue takes on even deeper meaning. I love this country, America. I love it more now, and appreciate it more now, than ever before. I've grown less and less tolerant of Anti-Americanism over the years, despite my education and some of those around me teaching and preaching at me that America is flawed and that she does not deserve the blind faith and allegiance she has been afforded for so long by so many of her citizens. The last ten years have put American Serbdom in an especially difficult dilemma, for when America turned against her one loyal and true ally in the Balkans, loyalties and faith became tested and challenged.

Two years ago, American led NATO began bombing the Serbs, after years of sanctions and demonization and lies and punishments leveled against the Serbian people and years of undercutting and undermining sincere Serbian efforts to do the right thing by their people and their country, and in many cases, by their faith and by God. Suddenly, being an American Serb or Serbian American posed a very real problem. It was as if suddenly you had to take sides, and no matter which side you took, you could be considered a traitor by your own people, whichever those people happened to be at the moment. The NATO war against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia was a war against people like me, too. And now there is the irony of America's war not against the Serbs, but those very same enemies the Serbs have been battling for years. Osama was everywhere in Bosnia, and the Serbs were dealing with him everyday, while the Americans were ignoring the Muslim threat and encroachment of Islam into Europe.

Two years ago, I sat at a desk in the office where I worked and listened to a co-worker, a young man who'd been in the American military, tell his friend on the phone that ‘what America needed to do was "carpet bomb" them, the Serbs...to level Belgrade....to finish the job.’ And I listened to him remark about Madeleine Albright and how great she was, because she knew how to get the job done. I couldn't take it. I told him that I'd love to see him get sent over there, to Muslim territory in Yugoslavia and see how he'd like it...that these Muslims he was supporting would be more than happy to lay him out on the grill and have a picnic.... My boss at the time, a young man who didn't much care about Bosnia or Kosovo or Serbs or much of anything else over there, recognized that there was a problem in his office and called his lawyer. After the talk with the lawyer, he called a meeting of the entire staff of the office and informed us that this issue was not to be discussed in his office ever again, not on company time or on company property. My fellow employees, some of whom had suddenly come to see me as a "foreigner" who was impinging on their "American civil rights", listened as he dictated the new rules. One spoke up, and while looking directly at me, reminded my boss that this was America and couldn't people say what they wanted? My boss answered with: "This may be America, but this right here is my office and those rights don't apply."

I would not have to listen to fellow employees talk about what America should do to the Serbs to "finish the job" anymore after that. But it was in the air. And the next day, a few of the guys, to make their own statement in their own way, brought little American flag lapel pins and placed them on the desks of everyone in the office, except for me. I was no longer an "American" in their eyes.

That same Spring of 1999, the Spring of the bombing, a Serb who was looking to get citizenship in this country, America, by hook or by crook and using whatever means he could manipulate to get that privilege, challenged me when I protested his vitriol against the Americans. Here he was, a Serb who had manipulated his way into America and who had manipulated his way into staying here after coming within a hairsbreadth of being deported back to the homeland he had escaped from, now suddenly laying down the line about loyalty. He yelled, "Are you an American or a Serb!" It was then that it was brought home to me. To hear an American beating down the Serbs made me a Serb. To hear a Serb beating down the Americans made me an American.

Now, two years later, though I knew what the Serbian reaction would inevitably be upon the tragic events of September 11, 2001, when the heart of America learned firsthand about what was in the heart of the Muslim terrorists, I also knew that I would not accept any Serbian reaction that celebrated that day. I did not, nor will I ever want, to hear any Serb saying that America got what was coming to her and that she deserved it on account of what had been done to the Serbs. That would hurt too much and would make me too angry. Angry enough to forget all about that fact that it was completely understandable given what had been done to the Serbs all these years, and so unjustifiably so. I guess then that this makes me an American.

What I am thinking now is that somehow I hope the Americans realize that the war they are now waging is the very same war the Serbs have been waging. The Serbs recognized who the bad guys were on their own soil and they tried to do something about it. Unfortunately, unlike the Americans, they did not have so much of the world on their side and all the resources and means at their disposal to get the job done. Instead, not only did the Serbs have to struggle against the enemy and fight them under the harshest of circumstances, those who should have been their allies in that struggle turned against them instead and punished them for their efforts.

I hope this will be the wake up call. I hope that America concedes that the Muslim terrorists they have been aiding and abetting in the former Yugoslavia are the same Muslim terrorists who have been aided and abetted by the Osama bin Ladens of the world, and for whom bin Laden is not the villain, but the hero. I hope the Americans realize just how badly they screwed up in taking sides against the Serbs. I hope they realize that the Serbs have been fighting the very same war against the very same enemy that America now finds itself facing down.

I can almost see it now. They are recognizing that Osama bin Laden got a whole lot of help from the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanians, and that they got a whole lot of help from him in their war against the Serbs. In light of all this, it isn't so farfetched to imagine that come one day soon, it will be determined that there "just isn't enough evidence" against Mr. Milosevic or any of the other Serbian fighters who now await trial for "crimes against humanity," and that these "Serbian war criminals" will be released. I don't know. Maybe it is farfetched, because then the Americans would have to face the world with the admission that they made a huge error in judgment: they took the wrong side.

I am an American. I'm getting worse in my patriotism. I tolerate Anti-Americanism less and less. I can only hope that doesn't make me less of a Serb. And though it is wrong and ignorant of me, I am glad that now the world is taking a whole new look at who the "bad guy" is, and that it is the Muslims who are having to concern themselves with demonization and prejudice and the consequences of being a certain nationality or religious faith, and with being the target of world condemnation. I can only hope that this attitude does not make me less of an American or a Christian.

Right or wrong, good or bad, there is one thing I know to be true, whether as an American or as a Serb. The Serbs knew who the bad guy was.

I've posted this article here before. I think it's interesting to read what was written before everyone agreed upon the "truth."

The New York Times
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia
Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.
A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Vicious Insults
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.
Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.

Radicals' Goals
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance.
The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

Worst Strife in Years
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name.
The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.''
Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today.
Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.
''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

Attacks on Slavs
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.
In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.

'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland.
Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''

Concerns Over Military
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service.
Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.
He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.

Region's Slavs Lack Strength
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.
Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.
Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''
But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.
Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems.
The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream.

ML/NJ

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