photo by Cvetin Cilimanov for Antiwar.comPosted on 05/20/2003 8:51:59 AM PDT by Destro
Wolfowitz in Skopje – What Next for Macedonia?
by Christopher Deliso
May 20, 2003
A total eclipse of the full moon on Friday morning, street warfare between Macedonians and Albanians in Tetovo on Friday night – could these portentous events have had anything to do with the next day's visit from US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz?
Über-hawk Wolfowitz touched down briefly in Skopje on the third leg of his Balkan tour. At his first stop (Sarajevo) Wolfowitz oversaw the signing of a treaty guaranteeing that Bosnia will never extradite an American soldier to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes. At the second stop, Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel, Wolfowitz inspected the troops at this all but forgotten imperial outpost.
Wolfowitz's trip to Macedonia was decidedly low-key, and lasted only a few hours. Officially, he came for the photo op and speech praising the Iraq-bound Macedonian conscripts. However, the fact that he also met in private with former NLA boss Ali Ahmeti, President Boris Trajkovski, and later with Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski and Defense Minister Vlade Buchkovski seems to indicate that Rumsfeld's right-hand man came to talk business.
Operation Evade Journalists
However, it is slightly unclear as to what that business was. Wolfowitz's entourage, which included US Ambassador Laurence Butler and the proverbial men in dark suits and sunglasses talking on mobile phones, were escorted briskly in and out of government buildings all morning, leaving little chance for interrogation. Although Wolfowitz answered two or three mundane questions in a mundane way when meeting with Trajkovski, no real explanation for his visit was given. And the US Embassy on Saturday claimed to have no one available who could speak on the matter.
Saturday's final photo op for Wolfowitz was the Macedonian Army's Ilinden barracks, a sprawling encampment situated on a high wooded bluff overlooking Skopje. Here Wolfowitz gave a short speech to the 39 Iraq-bound Macedonian soldiers. Among them are members of the Wolves (special forces), as well as army medics.
Flanked by officials, Wolfowitz stood opposite the neatly-arrayed Macedonian troops and thanked them for playing their part in the "liberation" of the Iraqi people from "…one of the worst dictators of modern history." He also alluded to the US-imposed Ohrid Agreement when praising the Macedonians for "settling issues by talking instead of by fighting." He then proceeded down the row, cordially shaking hands with each of the conscripts. Much snapping and flashing ensued from the thicket of cameras adjacent.
photo by Cvetin Cilimanov for Antiwar.com
(Excerpt) Read more at antiwar.com ...
So you agree that there was an ugly fate that would have awaited them had they stayed. Yet you still cling to the idiotic line that the Serbs themselves are to blame for their exodus. You can't even maintain a coherent point, much less build on it to reach a proper logical conclusion.
Look, if you think the Croats were so pure as snow in all this, take it up with the war crimes tribunal. They don't buy your line of propaganda (to the extent that it can even be deciphered).
That they couldn't sustain the forces to keep those gains in later years, as in Croatia and Bosnia, speaks to the legitimacy of their goals as perceived by the Serbs themselves.
Oh yeah, I'm sure it couldn't have had anything to do with NATO intervention. Premise ---- ???Hoplite??? --- Conclusion.
There was an advanced pre-arranged Tudj-Slobo agreement. Many Serb soldiers did not adhere to this order and were counter-advancing the Croatian invasion. The sole reason the Serb military, of the ones who disobeyed Slobo's orders, pulled back from ground regained and gained was they realized no resupply was forthcoming and their "own" artillery was putting rounds down on them.
This was a very sad day in the RSK history, as the VRS could not aid them due to their own defensive actions created by the Bosnian/Croatian wide offensives.
However, given time, the Serb Armies did begin to reorganize and stop the offensive and drving back the the opposition. What made matters improve for the Serbs and nearly devestating for the Muslims was the Alija's boys began to advance beyond the pre-determined line agreed by Beograd/Sarajevo/Zagred/Wash DC. Once that happened, the Serbs scrapped that agreeement and began their counteroffensive in drving the Muslims back. Even worse for the Muslims, the Croats were helping the Serbs in various ways.
This was the time where the Serbs and Croats should have united to finish off Alija's boys.
By the way, the course map of the Pedal in Peace is now uploaded
samo 110 dinars! very inexpansive...:) Much better than McD's!
Sorry to those who have seen it before, but once again my favourite joke:
Franjo Tudjman dies and arrives at the Pearly Gates. He announces himself to St. Peter, "I am President Doctor President Franjo Tudjman, President of Croatia."
"I'm sorry," says St. Peter, "but I don't find your name on the list."
"Of course I'm on your list," says Tudjman, "Don't you understand? I'm President Doctor President Franjo Tudjman, the George Washington of Croatia. And my wife was neither a Jew nor a Serb. Check again."
"No, sorry, it's just not here," says St. Peter with a shake of his head.
So --foop!-- Franjo goes down, down to the other place.
Sometime later, Slobodan Milosevic dies and he, too arrives at the Pearly Gates. Surprised to find himself there, he thinks to himself, "So Mira was wrong about that, too." He announces himself, but St. Peter informs him that he is not on the list either. And so, --foop!-- down, down, down goes Slobo to the other place.
A few months later, hundreds of thousands of little devils come boiling up and begin pounding furiously on the Pearly Gates.
"St. Peter! St. Peter! You've got to let us in! We're the refugees from h*ll!"
I think that joke pretty much sums it all up, and your post #142 is correct, but will try to write more and add a bit tomorrow.
Just to make sure we're on the same page, I believe Hoplite was referring to an order for civilians to evacuate. In other words, he was basically trying to claim that the Serbs "ethnically cleansed" themselves of the region, which I simply don't buy, and neither does the war crimes tribunal.
Wrong. You understand nothing.
You were questioning who was actually a refugee from ethnic cleansing:
Are you referring to a single operation in 1991, or many different operations? And do we have some magic way of distinguishing between people who were merely fleeing fighting and those who were actually driven out deliberately, like they were in 1995?
Stupid reindeer games - remember?
I provided the example of Martic's order for you to choke on.
You're not really doing very well on this thread, inquest - slow down, re-read what's been posted, and think a bit before continuing. You're starting to misrepresent not only history, which can be attributed to an ignorance of events on your part, but my position as well, which is just stupid.
Wrong. You understand nothing.
So I misunderstood you? Well if the Serbs weren't the cause of their own ethnic cleansing, then who was?
Compare and contrast:
Martic
42. From 1 August 1991 until 31 December 1995, Milan MARTIC, acting individually or in concert with other known and unknown members of a joint criminal enterprise, planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation, or execution of the deportations or forcible transfers of the Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilian population from the SAO Krajina in Croatia and from Bosanski Novi, Bosanska Gradiska, Prnjavor and Sipovo in the ARK in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Gotovina
30. Between 5 August 1995 and 15 November 1995, Croatian forces committed numerous acts of killing, arson, looting, harassment, terror and threat of physical harm to person and property. By these acts, Croatian forces intimidated and coerced Krajina Serbs into leaving their villages, hamlets and homes. Ante GOTOVINA acting individually and/or in concert with others, including President Franjo Tudjman, planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of the deportation and forced displacement of the Krajina Serb population.
If you read down into paragraph 43 of the Martic indictment, there really isn't too much to choose between other than the ethnicity of the victims and the time frame.
Wonders was a UN officer in Croatia during this, and her estimate, given on FR, was that the number was much greater than 400. She estimated, once on FR, that between 5,000 - 7,000 Serb civilians were killed in Operation Storm and the aftermath, much more than 400.
She witnessed the carnage and the aftermath. She was aware of the Croats' methods in disposing of Serb bodies and the hosing of blood off the streets. She believes that German soldiers helped there.
She also knew well of a Serb teen who was captured and imprisoned by the Croats. He lost his kidneys from the ordeal - from beatings and torture. Hoplite wasn't there to see the wreckage, the dead, nor did he meet the traumatised and injured victims.
Those who chose to stay behind were mainly elderly and/or handicapped and there were precious few of them. They were not buried in those graveyards. I have a pretty good idea of where their bodies went, more or less. (Buried on top of others in old graves in established Serbian cemeteries... so many freshly-dug graves in grave plots supposedly settled some twenty to fifty years ago, with tank tracks leading up to the graveyard and all those hygienic latex gloves lying about the freshly-turned earth! But the exhumation laws in Croatia are quite strict and something else, so no one knows for sure.
It was OBVIOUS, what they were doing --- burying the bodies on top of other bodies in old graves – but not at all provable and therefore not reportable (no, much to my shame, I simply could not report this). Pretty slick. Gotta hand it to those Wanna-Be-German Croats who did that. And to the “retired” American military advisors in Jarstrebarsko, those “gurus” who thought it a brilliant plan and thus endorsed that plan (what separates them from the SS, pray tell? And God rest their souls). Sick, depraved, even? Oh, yes. Effective? Yes, yes, yes! I couldn’t write it up in my reports because I couldn’t prove it. All I could do was take pictures of the latex gloves and the tracks and the graves… and who cares about the pictures with no proof??? My colleagues from other countries and other UN Components felt the same.
The Knin graveyard contains the bodies of those killed during the shelling of Knin, etc. The Dvor graveyard contains the bodies of those killed in the "Dvor Massacre" (conservative count of those actually killed in the "Dvor Massacre" is about 450 -- there were two UN Danish OPs there).
The "Dvor Massacre" was a massacre of civilians attempting to flee and cross the Dvor Bridge into BiH. These civilians were turned aside by HV into a certain area of Dvor, funneled directly into a "turkey shoot". Yes, I'm pretty sure where many of the bodies of the other 250+ were disposed of. Others were carried off in "dirt trucks" as we called them. These were trucks loaded with earth which were busily plying the roads in the Dvor area at the time, which HV justified as helping them with dug-in positions, trenches, etc. But the trucks were heading north, away from where such things might be constructed, HV never constructed such dug-in positions despite intensive UN observation, and... I and two other UN (one Brit, one Dutch, one Czech) saw the bloodied white blouse which looked as if it would have fit a girl of about four years old blow off one off one of these trucks. I have a photo of that little blouse where it landed beside the road. Looking at that photo still makes me cry. She was just an innocent little girl! Fat lot of good it does toward proving anything! So it went unreported, even though my colleagues from the Czech Republic, UK and Holland (yes, tears welled up in ALL our eyes, although I was the only female among us) —all of us knew what that little gauzy blouse blown off that truck meant.
To be fair and balance things out, just up the road, slightly to the north of Dvor, an HV unit diverted some fleeing refugees into an alternate road to the village of Pedalj to help them escape the cross-fire of HV and the Bosnian Muslim 5th Corps, (many, many were killed on that road because of this) and those HV acted most correctly and as befitted honourable military officers. These Croat officers saved many lives by this action, and they knew would do so at the time.
Pedalj was my "model village" in all of Sector North with people living there just fine. It was such a pleasure to visit there. I think (know) this is because of the pride and conscience of those Croat officers. These Croat officers, were, to a man, entirely decent young people who had a vision of a just world. My opinion is that these HV had been trained in the "Alpine Division" (very good moral reputation) but that's just my own opinion. (I also had occasion to admire the moral conviction of a Croat Alpine Division Officer in Topusko – this officer went to great lengths, and seemed to relish the opportunity to help me locate a languishing child who needed the “baby milk” I had to offer, or the medical assistance I could offer to a sick or injured person. All this might be my own prejudice, of course. Still, I think this particular young man was to be commended and truly believed in treating people as Jesus would want us to treat them and worked to do so, as I did. We sort of “recognized” each other in that sense.
She estimated, once on FR, that between 5,000 - 7,000 Serb civilians were killed in Operation Storm and the aftermath, much more than 400.
This includes Op Storm and its aftermath in former Sectors North and South (August 1995)and what I know of displaced families from former Sector West to former Sector North from Op Flash (Former Sector West, May 1995). It's a conservative estimate, several thousand below what is estimated by the "missing, never located" rosters.
She witnessed the carnage and the aftermath. She was aware of the Croats' methods in disposing of Serb bodies and the hosing of blood off the streets. She believes that German soldiers helped there.
Yes, I did and wish I hadn't. Actually, they didn't hose it off, they used German-made street-cleaning machines. No, I don't think German soldiers helped them. I do think German-made machines helped them. (I didn't mean this to sound harsh at all, joan, and it isn't meant that way at all! I know how it is on FR that you remember something, but might subsitute "soldier" for "machine" as in any case, Germany helped in one fashion or another. Truly, I do understand and I do think HV did this perhaps upon the advice of their American "advisors" in Jarstrebarsko and it certainly suited these particular Croats' wanna-be German psychology. I hope you understand my correction and don't take it as an argument or reproof. I want only to tell the truth (the idealistic UN Officer in me, sworn to always tell the truth) and feel compelled to clarify.)
She also knew well of a Serb teen who was captured and imprisoned by the Croats. He lost his kidneys from the ordeal - from beatings and torture. Hoplite wasn't there to see the wreckage, the dead, nor did he meet the traumatised and injured victims.
This boy was from Sector West, imprisoned by Croats in Pakrac, passing through Sector North on his way to relatives in BiH (his immediate family was killed in Sector West). I interviewed him and had UN doctors examine him in June of 1995. His left kidney was pretty much gone, his right damaged, but still functioning somewhat. The OSCE and ICRC reps who were stationed in Pakrac at the time informed me they were barred from seeing the prisoners (a gross human rights violation). The OSCE guys there tried really hard and put up a heroic protest, but in vain. I still pray for him.
I met both Croats and Serbs who were more Children of God than given over to the idiot transient ideology of their day, who put their lives on the line to help those of the "other" ethnicity. These people leave me in awe. They are all Saints of an order we smug and safe Americans can't fathom.
Then there was the more tangible evidence: the materiel and intelligence suppplied by the US to the Croats. Yup, we did it by proxy!
Ref "environment" never mind Hoppie. He thinks Serbs should be "punished" just for being Serbs. His premise is that Croats in 1995 were "justified" by what Serbs supposedly did in 1991. He doesn't take into account what Croats did to Serbs 1987-1991. Those three years simply don't count for him.
My own opinion is that what Serbs did to Croats because of what Croats did to Serbs because of what Serbs did to Croats because of what Croats did to Serbs... just doensn't wash. The wash-rinse cycle has to stop somewhere or else end in mutual annihilation.
The Serbs did try to stop it and threw themselves into Forgive-and Forget mode for some fifty years in the Krajina. The Croats remembered and could not stand their own guilt (after all, how could they, the superior Croats, possibly be ((gasp)) guilty?). They had to expunge it in the only way they could -- get rid of their pesky Serbs who were the evidence.
What the Serbs did in terms of ethnic cleansing in retaliation for Croat ethnic cleansing of Serbs was wrong. As was the Croat ethnic cleansing wrong. It's all just wrong. "Revenge killing" of whoever or wherever is wrong. No matter who does it.
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