Posted on 03/05/2008 4:08:54 PM PST by Bokababe
BELGRADE, Serbia -- As editor-in-chief of Serbia's oldest and most prestigious daily newspaper, Politika, I am at a loss to explain the West's stubborn support for Kosovo independence to my readers. Only nine years ago, my country was bombed for 78 days by the most powerful military alliance the world has ever seen, and the last thing I want is to pour oil over the fire of anti-Western sentiment. But the truth is, I find myself grappling with the same bitterness and resentment as most of my countrymen.
I was very much part of the democratic upheaveal that rid Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and all Serbia has done since was to mend its ways.
We sought to come to terms with the past, put old quarrels behind us, make peace with our neighbors and become friends with the United States and European countries that bombed us in 1999.
We set up war crimes courts and tried suspected war criminals, while extraditing others to the Hague Tribunal, where we sent a score of ex-presidents, including Milosevic himself, and roughly half of the former Army leadership.
We signed peace and cooperation treaties, invited Western companies to invest in Serbia's economy, and NGOs to monitor our progress in democracy and human rights.
We elected democratic rulers with impeccable anti-Milosevic credentials who carried out responsible and moderate policies, to the applause of Washington and Brussels.
We oppressed no ethnic minorities and violated no universal declarations.
In the meantime, a very different storyline unfolded in our southern province of Kosovo. As soon as Serb forces left Kosovo in June 1999, a massive campaign of reverse ethnic cleansing against 200,000 non-Albanians took place under the noses of 50,000 NATO troops.
Rather than the multiethnic democracy U.S. President Bill Clinton invoked on the day he dispatched the bombers, Kosovo is nowadays one of the most ethnically pure regions in Europe. Hundreds of Serb medieval monasteries, churches and cemeteries have been desecrated, dynamited, burned or razed to the ground. The few Serbs left in Albanian-majority areas live in NATO-guarded enclaves, fearful for their lives. Lawlessness is pervasive, crime is rampant, intolerance is the norm. Compared to Kosovo, post-Milosevic Serbia is a multiethnic paradise.
Why, then, the unseemly rush to grant Kosovo independence? Western officials grasp at straws to explain their motives. We are told "Milosevic lost Kosovo", and that we should blame him for the fate of the thousands and thousands of our co-nationals who have been cleansed from the mythical "old Serbia." But Milosevic is six feet under, and in Belgrade we feel as if we're witnessing the resurgence of the notion of "fundamentally evil" groups. If the Serbs' repression of Albanians in the 1990s lost them the right to govern Kosovo, as we were repeatedly told while NATO bombs rained on our heads, surely the Albanians lost political and moral high ground through ruthless discrimination against Serbs, Roma and other minorities?
Whatever Milosevic's transgressions, the Albanians' radical nationalism should neither have been encouraged nor rewarded in Kosovo. I am particularly disappointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's championing of Kosovo's unilateral independence.
German history shows that radical solutions to the national question cannot be good, even when discontent is justified and minorities have legitimate grievances. It does not do to encourage secession or advocate annexation. Turning Kosovo into an independent state, with its half-terrorist, ultra-chauvinist leadership and its monoethnic population, is a radical event in European history. Of all countries, Germany should have opposed hasty independence for Kosovo.
Intellectually and morally, I do not know how to come to terms with Western democracies' support for Kosovo secessionists. For once, Serbs and their leaders did everything by the book. All they set out to do was to preserve their country's territorial integrity and sovereignty, guaranteed under Security Council Resolution 1244, which ended NATO's bombing. Serbia agreed to permanent international guarantees of Kosovo's political autonomy within the formal territory of Serbia, Kosovo's membership in international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and Kosovo's right to enter different types of international agreements. Its leaders presented only legal arguments and negotiated peacefully under international auspices.
It did them no good. International law was broken. Under the pretext that Serbia's late dictator had been a terrible person, Serbia's Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt have been denied and scorned, while the leader of Kosovo's brutal guerrilla army, the KLA, is being hailed as a democrat and a statesman.
And no, I am not proud that hundreds of angry demonstrators went on a rampage in Belgrade last Thursday, shouting anti-American slogans, burning embassies and pillaging shops. But just like my fellow countrymen, I cannot help but note the irony in Washington's outrage. The Bush administration angrily denounced Serbia for failing to uphold its responsibility under international law to protect embassies.
The Belgrade rally that turned violent had been called to do the very same thing: chastise countries who conveniently ignore their responsibilites to protect sovereignty guaranteeed under the U.N. Charter. The last time I checked, international law was also supposed to protect small countries.
Ljiljana Smajlovic is the editor in chief of the Belgrade-based daily Politika. Her article "The Story of Kosovo" first appeared in German in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.
I don’t like either, but you’re wrong.
You'r eright; the KKKlintlers, Albright, Clark, and everybody else responsible for the abomination which took place in 1999 should have been handed over to some sort of a REAL international war crimes tribunal.
wrong in your view yet right in so many others view
I would never say you are wrong or right but I will say this
why
They went to war without approvel from anyone and it wasn’t just a war it was to help ethnic cleansing
of course some of the sheep and easily led dweebs only think ethnic cleansing happened when the serb army went in because they believe the likes of our media and especially christina ammanpour
They were reponsible for thousenads of deaths, responsible for helping a band of islamic radicals to ethnic cleanse a part of a country to as those radicals could take a part of serbia over
What wesley clark and clinton did was absolutly no different to what milosovitz did
just because they decided to do it from the air doesn’t make it easier to ignore
I have been there while deployed and the few serbs left are living in fear because of what clinton and wesley clark did
Maybe some won’t look at it like that because they only go by what the media sayts, soome will think no Americans should ever be tried for war crimes
In the end when you take off the glasses what they did was wrong and has set a dangerous precedent for the future
exactly
those two roam around scott free yet they did the very same thing as to what other war criminals did except they did it from the air
Even more ironic is that wesley clark seems to think he is somoe sort of an hero
Welcome to the forum. :-)
‘You’r eright; the KKKlintlers, Albright, Clark, and everybody else responsible for the abomination which took place in 1999 should have been handed over to some sort of a REAL international war crimes tribunal.’
No such animal and not the forum the US should subject itself.
‘soome will think no Americans should ever be tried for war crimes’
I’m one of those. Our system works, not all the time but enough that compared to the rest of the world all the guilty are punished.
‘In the end when you take off the glasses’
Don’t wear them. I was AD during this time and thought it was a bad idea, but nobody asked me.
‘what they did was wrong and has set a dangerous precedent for the future’
No argument. BUT, Intl tribunals/courts that work are staffed by the winners, not some ‘neutrals’.
I have to disagree with that; Milosevic's actions involving Kosovo were fully justified.
That link is to a NYT artivcle from the 80s before there was any sort of an axe to grind on the issue wrt American politics. Articles from that time period from all sides basically indicate the truth of the matter, i.e. that Serbs are fairly normal, decent people as you would expect of Christians, and that Albanians are basically a bunch of savages, as is often normnal for slammites.
But, for most of the important years in question, subject to Austrian jurisdiction.
Just like Serbia was under Turkish administration. Your point?
Pre-WWII, all the Dalmatinci (people from Dalmatia) here in the US NEVER called themselves “Croatians” — always called themselves, “Dalmatians”. They didn’t even loosely identify themselves with Croatia until about the 1960’s, after their kids were sent off to university in Zagreb If you called any Dalmatian (or kid here with pre-WWII roots there), a “Croat”, it was usually grounds for a fight.
You have to understand, Dio, that pre-WWII, people didn’t really identify themselves with as large a whole of anything, geographically. They saw themselves as identified with more local territories, and secondarily with something bigger than than their local territory, but not the large geo-political national divisions we now see.
My father, who was from Boka Kotorska, swore until the day he died that he was NOT “a Montenegrin”. His friend, half- Croat & half-Albanian & Roman Catholic from Dubrovnik, always said that first he was a Dubrovcanin (from Dubrovnik) and second he was “Dalmatian” — Croatia didn’t even figure into the equation for him.
Croatians always wanted the Dalmatians as part of them, just as Montenegro always wanted the Bokezi, but both the Dalmatians and the Bokezi were always lukewarm about their identification with the Croatia or Montenegro — until the 1990s wars. At that point, the battle lines were drawn.
You’re bordering on the absurd, Banat is correct, you can’t be a history buff when basic tenants are incorrect.
If I were half Croatian and half Albanian I wouldn't want to admit that either, better off being a Cigan.
NDI Chair is Madeline Albright -- and it is all paid for by OUR tax dollars through the National Endowment for Democracy. Democrats have the NDI and Republicans have the IRI, chaired by John McCain.
Want to know where our backward ass Balkan policy is coming from? It's these two NGOs, whose leaders we didn't even elect, along with Soros' "Open Society Institute".
So, is it any surprise that there is financial cross-pollination between, McCain, Clinton, Obama & Soros? Nope!
Utter crap. I suggeset you take a look at ellisislandrecords.org and you'll see that the overwhelming majority of those that arrived at Ellis Island from Dalmatia called themselves Croatians.
They didn’t even loosely identify themselves with Croatia until about the 1960’s, after their kids were sent off to university in Zagreb If you called any Dalmatian (or kid here with pre-WWII roots there), a “Croat”, it was usually grounds for a fight.
It's amazing how you make this up. Simply amazing.
You have to understand, Dio, that pre-WWII, people didn’t really identify themselves with as large a whole of anything, geographically. They saw themselves as identified with more local territories, and secondarily with something bigger than than their local territory, but not the large geo-political national divisions we now see.
Pure crap...especially considering that both sides of my family come from Dalmatia.
Croatians always wanted the Dalmatians as part of them, just as Montenegro always wanted the Bokezi, but both the Dalmatians and the Bokezi were always lukewarm about their identification with the Croatia or Montenegro — until the 1990s wars. At that point, the battle lines were drawn.
Again, it's simply amazing how you make crap up and expect people who actually know the truth to believe it.
Too bad these self-haters can't find a way to get themselves exterminated as atonement for their "sins" that will leave the rest of us in peace.
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