Free Republic

When did you become interested in Balkan crisis? In March of 1999, when there was suddenly talk of America bombing a European country, I became very suspicious. Particularly because the president was a clown named Bill Clinton who had gotten into trouble too many times. It was obvious to me that this was being done against national interest and in Bill Clinton’s interest. I couldn’t believe that this was actually going to happen, that it was unstoppable. Everything started to feel surreal; my husband and I were going through life day to day as if just existing, just going through...

Serb prisoners 'were stripped of their organs in Kosovo war' By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin and Malcolm Moore in Rome Last Updated: 10:28am BST 11/04/2008 Serb prisoners had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war, according to allegations in a new book by the world's best known war crimes prosecutor. Harry de Quetteville: Snippets from Carla Del Ponte's bookCarla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, said investigators found a house suspected of being a laboratory...

Podgorica, Belgrade – The Association of the families of Serbs abducted and killed in Kosvo shall sue the former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal Carla Del Ponte for hiding of crimes committed against Kosovo Serbs by Kosovo Albanians that abducted and killed them, the president of that association Simo Spasic said. ‘In 2004 Del Ponte told us in The Hague that she had information that all abducted Kosovo Serbs were killed later on. She, however, has not told us that before they were killed, their body organs were taken out and sold’, Spasic told ‘Dan’ daily of Podgorica. In...

Last month, the Serbian province of Kosovo declared its independence. This week, Canada became the 31st country to recognize it. Foreign affairs critic Bob Rae wondered what took our government so long. Well — perhaps we hesitated recognizing what we went to war for because we recognized that we should have hesitated going to war for it. Wait a minute, someone might say. Canada didn’t go to war in 1999 as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to help Kosovo secede from Serbia. That would have been like Germany dismantling Czechoslovakia in 1938 to liberate the Sudetenland....

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Regional UNMIK chief Gerard Gallucci has resigned, but the UN HQ has not accepted his resignation. The U.S. diplomat in charge of the UN operations in Kosovska Mitrovica was asked to withdraw his resignation. This is what an anonymous diplomatic source told Beta news agency tonight, adding that Gallucci was "currently on vacation, and will resume his duties once he returns". Earlier today, KIM Radio reported that Gallucci, who is currently abroad, opted for this move because of the differences he has with Priština. KIM's sources with the UN mission in the province's capital confirmed this. "Gallucci...

The Hague, 11 March (AKI) – Three Croatian generals went on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday for crimes allegedly committed against Serb civilians in 1995. Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak, and Mladen Markac are the first Croatian officers to be tried for crimes committed in the operation, Storm, in August 1995. More than 350 Serb civilians were killed, thousands of homes were destroyed and up to 250,000 Serbs were deported from the country, prosecutor Alan Tieger told the court. He said he would prove that the three generals were part of a “joint...

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, PRIŠTINA, -- Kosovo Serbs yesterday marked Zadušnice, a religious holiday dedicated to the souls of the dead. Orthodox Christian Serbs observe four such days each year, when families visit cemeteries to light candles and say prayers at the graves of their loved ones. For many Serbs in Kosovo, especially those whose relatives were buried in cemeteries that are now located in ethnic Albanian communities, observing the holiday has since 1999 been a practice that endangered their personal safety, but also brought with it a particular heartbreak – that of finding the grave of a loved one desecrated. Serb...

Readers with exceptionally tenacious memories will recall that this pundit was opposed to the NATO intervention in Kosovo nine years ago. This may come as a surprise to readers without tenacious memories, since it is widely believed that I never saw a war I didn't like. Yet, believe it or not, I was opposed not only to the wanton bombing of Serbia, but also to the whole "inevitable" project of carving a new European Muslim state out of the flesh of that Orthodox Christian country. I was not without sympathy for the "plight of the Kosovars," however. Like virtually all...

“Without involvement in the wounds of the Balkans I would not be a true writer”. “There are no human rights, nor democratic guarantees. The remaining Serbs are not even allowed to tend their graves, they are living in terror. And the EU, headed by the Slovene Janez Janza, a leading criminal of the Yugoslav drama, will recognise its independence, otherwise the Albanians are threatening a new war”/

It is expected that early on in 2008, probably February, the United Nations-supervised Albanian Muslim Administration of the Serbian province of Kosovo will make a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). The United States has said it is prepared to recognize Kosovo, despite the objections of the Serbian government and more importantly, despite the fact that Russia, a key ally of Serbia, does not want Kosovo independence. While unclear, it is likely a number of European countries starting with the United Kingdom, France and Germany will follow Washington's lead. Several other countries, notably Spain, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia and Greece say they...

"What’s your connection to…this…Serbian thing?” I get that a lot. I usually answer: “Just being an American hyper-patriot.” That was, after all, my original motivation for protesting a war for the first time in my life at the age of 25. When my country bombed a European nation on behalf of Muslims making the usual claim of oppression, my concerns were two-fold: America’s security, and America’s soul. It’s hard to describe the dizzying disorientation I felt on March 24, 1999, the day I learned that the United States was going through with bombing an ally from two world wars. It...

Forget about status negotiations for a moment. The near-term outlook for Kosovo is unalterably grim: An economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of young people with "criminality as the sole career choice;" an insupportably high birthrate; a society imbued with corruption and a state dominated by organized crime figures. These are the conclusions of "Operationalizing of the Security Sector Reform in the Western Balkans," a 124-page investigation by the Institute for European Policy commissioned by the German Bundeswehr and issued in January. This month the text turned up on a Web log. It is labeled "solely for internal use."...

The United States on Wednesday slammed as "baseless" a Serbian minister's accusation that Washington wanted to create a "NATO state" in Kosovo. A plan drawn up by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari -- which envisaged a supervised independence for Kosovo -- has been backed by the United States, the European Union and most Western countries. "Calling the Ahtisaari plan for Kosovo a NATO state is quite a stretch," US State Department spokesman Gonzo Gallegos said, commenting on the reported remarks by Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic last week. "We do not consider this statement to represent the official view of the...

GRAČANICA -- Three unidentified persons kidnapped and raped a Serb girl in Gračanica Monday evening, Tanjug reported. Another Serb, who was with her, was severely beaten and robbed, Kosovo Police Service (KPS) representatives told the agency Tuesday. KPS regional spokesman Agron Borovci said the incident occurred in Gračanica at around 9 p.m. yesterday, and that police were in active search of the perpetrators. “An Opel Vectra automobile blocked the road ahead of the victims and then three persons dragged the young man out of his vehicle, beat him up and closed him in the trunk, from where he was released...

The younger brother of the slain 11-year-old Pantelija Dakic was carrying the cross to mark his brother’s grave at the funeral. August 13, 2003, Gorazdevac, Kosovo-Metohija, Serbia.Four Years Later: Massacre of Serbian Children Unpunished Monday August 13 marks the four year anniversary since the brutal massacre of two Serbian children and wounding of four more in the Bistrica River, in the village of Gorazdevac, close to Pec in Kosovo province. The memorial service held each year for the slain boys was held today in the Church of the Most Holy Mother of God in Gorazdevac. Out of six Serbian boys...

After my article exposing the farce of our Kosovo mission ran in American Legion Magazine last month, I heard from a soldier in Kosovo who was incredulous that someone was actually and finally talking about the region. I proceeded to publish two letters from him in this space, about his experiences and observations there, some of which confirm the free run that jihadists have in Kosovo, the fact that Albanians are being radicalized, and the notion that we should not have intervened in Kosovo as we did. Only there since November, the National Guard soldier stopped short of confirming the...

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently reported about Canadian officers being frustrated by inaction over On March 27, 2006, Taylor wrote again about the Medak Pocket slaughter in Croatia: “[...] Over 200 Serbian inhabitants of the Medak Pocket were slaughtered in a grotesque manner (the bodies of female rape victims were found after being burned alive). Our traumatized troops who buried the grisly remains were encouraged to collect evidence and were assured that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.... “Nevertheless in 1995, Ceku, by then trained by U.S. instructors as a general of artillery, was still at large. In fact,...

While few businesses seem willing to invest in ‘risky’ Kosovo, some wealthy New York Albanians hope to combine their patriotic instincts with their wish to make a profit. By Andi Balla in New York With its nondescript offices in Brooklyn, Triangle General Contractors could be a typical small American business aspiring to expand its niche market - roofing and construction in New York City. But its owner, Florin Krasniqi, has other plans. Against the advice of many, he bets that Triangle can flourish by investing in his native Kosovo. When the company won an international bid to reconstruct an 8.3...

Citizens of a free country ought to expect they won't be burdened with the kind of propaganda barrage that has come to be associated with Nazi "interior ministers" such as Josef Goebbles or Soviet "media spokesmen" like Vladimir Posner. However, the more information that comes out about the NATO war in Kosovo, the more evident is the fact that NATO made an apparent "policy decision" to lie about Serbian atrocities. It seems the western democracies "stole a page from the play books" of their former totalitarian adversaries in Germany and the Soviet Union. Writing recently in Liberty Magazine, David Ramsey...

VIENNA, Austria-Police said Saturday they arrested an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo after he allegedly stabbed a Serbian man during an argument at a hotel restaurant in eastern Austria. Authorities said the 52-year-old suspect, whose name was not released in line with Austrian privacy laws, stabbed the unidentified 33-year-old Serb with a hunting knife on Friday at the restaurant in Oberwart, in the easternmost province of Burgenland. Investigators said the victim was seated at the restaurant when the suspect and his 24-year-old son entered and approached him. They said the Serb was stabbed in the chest and face during the altercation,...