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Peace is not an absence of war — it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. (Baruch Spinoza)
May the New Year bring us all that 2006 did not: truth, justice, compassion and understanding that are a true sign of civility and the easy way to measure humanity. Happy New Year!
Cartoon by Petar Pismestrovic
On Monday, December 25, 2006, Huns stationed in southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija have given Orthodox Christian Serbs a surprise Christmas gift: they pulled their troops — belonging to the German contingent — out of Orahovac, town with some 500-600 Serbs left, which has featured all too often in horror headlines for the past seven years, since the very start of NATO occupation.
The Hun NATO commander, Roland Kather, and the Hun head U.N. administrator, Joachim Ruecker who, together, make the two wings of the military and administrative control of the Serbian Kosovo province on behalf of the so-called “international community” have remained deaf and mute on urgent appeals to reconsider a decision that is bound to have catastrophic consequences for the Serbs and Roma stranded in the midst of terrifyingly hostile sea of SCUM.
The Christian homes in Serbian province are being marked for death and destruction by Albanian jihadists, and the bloody Huns are clearing their path for another slaughter! Cowards and barbarians, shame on you!
The barbaric Huns, who jumped at the opportunity to finish what their fathers and grandfathers, headed by their late Fuhrer, have started in 1941 and took great joy in boarding Luftwaffe in the spring of 1999 once again to rain death on Serbia from 30,000 feet above the ground, have since confirmed themselves as the most cowardly, hypocritical, inhumane Serb-haters in all of our history.
The Huns have been the driving force behind every single pogrom of Serbs in the past century, they have led and orchestrated the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, plunging it into a series of horrific civil wars, they have used every bit of wisdom their infamous propagandist, Goebbels, has passed onto his wild, cancerous tribe to demonize Serbian nation beyond recognition, they believe they have been “exonerated” from their despicable genocidal past by committing their poodles of war to another decade of aggression and attempted colonization of Serbs and now, as countless times before, they are letting their Islamofascist puppets finish the job for them, removing themselves from the military posts they have responsibility to guard. Will the bloody Huns finally seek some help for their pathological Serbophobia?!
No Handke, Goethe and no Griesendorf can ever help them wash their hands of Serbian blood — now or ever! Each and every Hun should be kicked out of the last foothold of Serbian land and prohibited to ever cross the Serbian border. Get off and out already and go stink up another part of the globe with your filthy boots!
Cartoon by Zoran Spasojevic
Article by Nebojsa Malic
To say that the year behind us has been interesting would be an understatement. On one hand, there were no wars in the Balkans; no insurgencies, pogroms, or massacres. On the other hand, Imperial influence in the region has decreased dramatically, most likely as a direct result of the long defeat it is undergoing worldwide. Emissaries from Washington, Brussels and The Hague are no longer greeted as demi-gods. Viceroys and envoys are told to sod off. Years of abuse, pressure and coercion have managed to produce the opposite effect from the one intended.
As differences between reality and Empire-construed “facts” become increasingly apparent, cognitive dissonance leads to either madness or reexamination of one’s beliefs. The edifice of lies cannot sustain itself much longer.
The year began well for the Hague Inquisition. Belgrade was under enormous pressure to find and arrest Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, and Head Prosecutor Carla del Ponte had veto power over EU’s relations with Serbia. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic wasn’t going well, though. After four years of prosecution and defense, Milosevic was getting seriously ill and the case was going nowhere. Despite having spent millions of dollars, generated hundreds of thousands of pages of paperwork, and bringing in almost three hundred witnesses over the course of three years, the prosecutors had not managed to prove any of their claims. Milosevic had successfully challenged their malicious interpretations of history and political situation in Yugoslavia, and his cross-examinations showed the witnesses as irrelevant at best, perjured at worst. So it was a relief for the Hague Inquisition when Milosevic was found dead in his cell on March 11. Although the Inquisition never convicted him, the Empire’s court of public opinion passed a posthumous sentence on him — guilty as charged, of course.
It turned out, however, that Milosevic’s death marked the high point in the Inquisition’s reign of pseudo-judicial terror. The frankly ludicrous conviction of Muslim warlord Naser Oric in July — sentenced to two years and promptly released — and the farcical conviction of Bosnian Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik in September — sentenced to 27 years for supposedly participating in an alleged Serb conspiracy — relegated the ICTY to irrelevance. By then it had already lost its leverage over Belgrade; after Del Ponte sabotaged EU’s talks with Serbia in May 2006 because the government of Vojislav Kostunica had not arrested Gen. Ratko Mladic, Belgrade simply shrugged and stopped paying attention to the Hague Harridan.
At the beginning of this year, the Empire was proclaiming with certainty that the “final solution” of the Balkans crisis was at hand and inevitable. For a while, it seemed things were going its way. Serbia’s talks with the EU were suspended in May. The end of that month brought a surprise victory for the Montenegrin separatists. After almost nine years of threatening to secede from Serbia and extorting privileges and foreign donations on that account, the venal regime of Milo Djukanovic rammed through a rigged referendum and declared independence. And nothing happened.
While the position of the majority of Montenegrins who declared themselves ethnic Serbs got worse, the position of Serbia improved dramatically. Without the “Montenegrin question,” the Empire lost another level with which to control Belgrade.
By late June, the people of Serbia have begun to put the train of abuses heading their way from the West in its proper context, telling the Imperial officials precisely where they could stuff their threats and false promises. This was met in Washington and Brussels with a growing sense of panic, because their Serbian quislings were no longer taking orders. After more than a decade of abuse — including blockade, a bombing war, partial occupation and funding a coup — directed at Serbia, the Empire was confounded as to why the Serbs might be angry and bitter.
Given a false choice to surrender Kosovo for the theoretical promise of possible membership in the EU and NATO, Serbia refused. Such “intransigence” was deemed unforgivable by the Washington Post, which railed against both the Prime Minister and President of Serbia in a hysterical July editorial, declaring that Serbia needed to elect “better leaders.”
At the end of October, the ramshackle coalition government of Vojislav Kostunica got approval for its draft constitution at a national referendum. The new constitution — cumbersome and incoherent, but an improvement over its predecessor — reasserted Serbia’s claim to Kosovo as an integral part of its territory. Its adoption started the counter for general elections, and forced the Empire to delay its decision on the status of Kosovo till after the January 2007 vote. With its last desperate attempt at bullying a failure, the Empire is now betting on “better leaders” and conducting a campaign of overt support to “democratic” parties, hoping that their expected triumph might pave the way to Kosovo’s separation.
The death of Kosovo Albanian “president” Ibrahim Rugova in late January delayed the start of “status talks” concerning that occupied Serbian province. However, an outpouring of (undeserved) praise for Rugova in the Western media created a climate of sympathy for the Albanians, and for the first time independence was openly proclaimed as the preferred solution for Kosovo.
Soon thereafter, the Contact Group issued a statement that left independence as the only acceptable option. British diplomat John Sawers, speaking to Kosovo Albanians in February, stated almost explicitly that independence was inevitable. The Empire stood squarely behind the Albanians, going so far as to orchestrate the change of leadership in Pristina. Provisional “prime minister” Bajram Kosumi was replaced in early March by the wartime leader of the terrorist KLA, Agim Ceku.
But for the rest of the year, the project to separate Kosovo from Serbia went nowhere. Empire’s pompous proclamations met with Belgrade’s determined resistance, Russia’s opposition, and the growing frustration of the Albanians that has translated into violence against both Serbs and their international “liberators.” The battle for Kosovo is far from over.
Constitutional amendments that would have made Bosnia a more centralized country, drafted by the U.S. Embassy, were narrowly defeated in April. Leading the opposition to the amendments was Haris Silajdzic, Muslim nationalist and the self-proclaimed champion of centralization.
Silajdzic’s antics won him the leadership of Bosnian Muslims and a seat on the country’s tripartite presidency, but also paved the way for an unprecedented alignment of political forces on the Serb side, and the emergence of Milorad Dodik as the key power broker in Bosnia. The project of creeping centralization, ongoing since the first High Representative took office in 1996, ground to a halt this year. Utter chaos in the governing structures of the Muslim-Croat Federation, in comparison to which the Serb Republic is a paragon of functionality and efficiency, has pulled a rug out from under the centralizers.
With its pivotal question of ethnic relations fundamentally unresolved, Bosnia remains a place where the promise of human decency constantly battles the oppressive modern state.
Sixteen years since Yugoslavia started fragmenting, its shards are nowhere close to a peaceful settlement. European and American interventions, both political and military, over this period have not created peace, but simply changed the context of conflicts and influenced their course.
The “final solution” envisioned by policymakers in Washington, London and Brussels is nowhere in reach; in fact, it is rapidly spinning out of their grasp, with the Empire failing worldwide. The year ahead may well see the complete unraveling of the Imperial design for the Balkans, as political, social and economic realities continue to hammer at propaganda-created delusions. What will replace the Imperial architecture is hard to predict, but there is a possibility for a better Balkans now, more so than ever since Yugoslavia imploded.
Cartoons by Nikola Otas and Milenko Kosanovic
Abandoned towns: Without announcement NATO simply pulled the military unit that was protecting Serbs and Roma remaining in volatile town of Orahovac, where Serbs are the constant target of Albanian terrorists.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 — The surprise withdrawal of KFOR troops from Orahovac has provoked unrest among the remaining Serbs and Roma there who have been living in the upper part of town for the past seven years under the protection of international forces, stated Orahovac coordinator Dejan Baljosevic. He said that KFOR’s decision to leave was incomprehensible.
On Monday, without any previous announcement or notification, KFOR forces removed their armored vehicles and military equipment, abandoning the military base located in immediate proximity to the Serbian church in the upper part of Orahovac.
According to Baljosevic, since KFOR’s departure this part of Orahovac is completely deserted. About 100 students are attending classes but both children and adults are in their houses by dusk. Since KFOR has also removed the electric power generator, the streets the Serbs are living in are left in complete darkness.
In an open letter to the KFOR commander, a German national Roland Kather, Coordinating Center president Sanda Raskovic-Ivic has asked the commander to reevaluate decision to withdraw the NATO unit from Orahovac, warning that such a move could have devastating consequences.
“The decision to leave the Orahovac population unprotected in the midst of extremely hostile surroundings can have the catastrophic consequences. I expect you to reevaluate that decision without delay and return the protective military unit in the part of town where it has been stationed for the past seven years, thanks to which members of Serbian and Roma population remained in this town,” said Raskovic-Ivic in a letter to Kather.
She underlined that withdrawal of the KFOR unit has caused unrest in the entire Serbian community, not just among the remaining Orahovac residents whose lives are in constant danger.
“The safety of the non-Albanians has not only been unimproved, but has very much worsened in comparison to the year before. The responsibility for this lies with KFOR troops too, under your command, since protection of the endangered population is KFOR’s obligation,” emphasized the letter to Kather.
Abandoned Seat of Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo province, Pec Patriarchate: There is only one soldier left to guard the entrance of 13th century UNESCO’s World Treasure.
Raskovic-Ivic reminded Kather that he is a witness to daily ethnic-motivated attacks on members of the Serbian community, and of the fact that in the last three months alone there were 75 attacks on lives, material possessions and the dignity of Serbian and non-Albanian citizens.
According to Serbian daily Blic, NATO troops have also been withdrawn from the military station at the entrance to the Pec Patriarchate, few kilometers away from the town of Pec. Tanks, other military vehicles and KFOR soldiers from Italian contingent were stationed at the Patriarchate entrance. Right now, there is only one lone soldier left there.
Representatives of Kosovo Serbs have condemned the withdrawal of KFOR troops from northern Orahovac, leaving approximately 600 Serbs who have remained in the town without protection.
Serbian National Council of Kosovo province president Milan Ivanovic said that KFOR’s actions differ from its rhetoric advocating ensuring the safety for all in Serbian Kosovo and Metohija province.
“Withdrawal of KFOR troops from north Orahovac is a move that shows their words are mere rhetoric and that in some sort of independent Kosovo, Serbs would be abandoned to the Albanian extremists,” believes Ivanovic. He emphasized that such moves by KFOR should serve “to reinforce our conviction that we must rely completely on ourselves and our homeland.”
“If KFOR doesn’t want to undertake measures to protect Serbs then our homeland must inform the international community that it will protect its people. With its latest move, KFOR has taken a step too far,” said Ivanovic.
The president of the Union of Serbian Municipalities and Settlements in Kosovo and Metohija Marko Jaksic stated that “KFOR has not come here to protect the Serbs but primarily to protect the Albanians and a pseudo-sovereign creation that is supposed to be called conditionally independent Kosovo.”
Abandoned villages: A group of U.N. officials watches burning houses and stables in the Serbian village of Svinjare, south of Kosovska Mitrovica, March 20, 2004. All of the Serbian houses as well as the Orthodox Christian cemetery in the village have been destroyed and burnt by Albanian Muslims in a wild rampage during 2004 pogrom of remaining non-Albanians.
“This is why we have such a large number of displaced Serbs; we also have the departure of KFOR from the so-called Serbian Street in Orahovac, gathered around the Serbian church in the Serbian part of the town,” he said.
Jaksic assessed that KFOR’s decision to withdraw from the Serbian part of Orahovac constitutes further proof that neither KFOR nor UNMIK care much about protecting the Serbs; they are here primarily for strategic and political reasons, as well as to form yet another Albanian state in the Balkans.
Residents of Svinjare that were, during the Kosovo Kristallnacht in March 2004, expelled from their village near Kosovska Mitrovica, have sent an open letter to the UNMIK chief, another German — Joachim Ruecker. Reacting to the administrator’s claim Serbs are not returning to their village because of “political obstacles,” more than hundred villagers who signed the letter assured Ruecker they will return to their village as soon as their basic human rights are guaranteed: the right to freedom of movement, the right to personal possessions and the right to life.
Out of 580 Serbs who up to March 2004 pogrom lived in Svinjare, only three have remained in the devastated village.
Read this and make up your mind whether Ratko Mladic is guilty until proven innocent ... or innocent until proven guilty.
David Binder, New York Times Reporter since 1963
“Ratko Mladic: Tragic Hero” is the first book-length study to appear in English about the controversial Serbian general. It departs radically from mainstream news coverage of General Mladic because it presumes him to be innocent of charges of war crimes and genocide until he has been proven guilty. Furthermore, Ratko Mladic: Tragic Hero presumes that the West has been acting against its own best interests by supporting Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in the former Yugoslavia, while at the same time attempting to prosecute General Mladic for alleged crimes for which there is still no proof, even after the passage of more than a decade. Genegal Ratko Mladic was the first General to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Europe. Why has he been demonized while others, who have done little or nothing—or who have even aided and abetted the rise of Islamic fundamentalism—have been praised?
“Ratko Mladic, Tragic Hero” consists of an abridgment of Mr. Stojadinovic’s book, “Ratko Mladic, Hero or War Criminal?” (Evro, Belgrade, 2001) which discusses Mladic’s biography, his successes and failures as a general, the dilemmas he faced as a soldier, and tries to answer the question: how good a general was he, and is he a war criminal? It is followed by “Bringing Democracy to Bosnia,” by Gregory Elich, a respected journalist whose work has appeared on CounterPunch.org and Covert Action, which examines the results of the Dayton Peace Accords in Bosnia, and demonstrates that the West has imposed a dictatorship in Bosnia that benefits only globalists and multinational corporations.
Background chapters provide a context for the Bosnian War that the mainstream media has systematically ignored. “Bosniacs, Nazi Muslims, Mujahideen, and Bin Laden” traces the rise of Bosnian Muslim fascism and its connection to Islamic fundamentalism as exemplified by the Nazi SS Handzar Division during WWII, which was organized by Himmler and Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Alija Izetbegovic, former President of Bosnia-Herzegovina, began his career as recruiter for the Handzar Division and acted as a historical link, connecting resurgent Muslim fascism and fundamentalism in Yugoslavia in the 1990s to that of WWII. “Ustashi, Murderer Monks, and the Modern Croatian State” examines the Ustashi Nazi Puppet state created by Hitler in Croatia during WWII, and the involvement of the Roman Catholic clergy in the administration of the Jasenovac death camp, as well as many others like it. The contemporary Croatian state is shown to be a direct heir to the Croatian Nazi puppet state of WWII.
The most controversial chapter is “Srebrenica, the Phantom Massacre,” which analyzes the alleged “Srebrenica Massacre” and challenges the groundless accusation that “7,000 Muslim men and boys” were killed there. This analysis relies on mainstream news coverage of The Hague Tribunal, the work of independent analysts, and the Srebrenica Report (authored by Darko Trifunovic) that was issued by the Republika Srpska in 2002. UN High Representative Paddy Ashdown dismissed this 2002 Report without ever having read it. The analysis argues persuasively that at most about 1,800 armed Bosnian Muslim soldiers died in combat, and that about 100 were killed in summary executions. In other words, there was no massacre—only combat fatalities.
Seventy pages of interviews with General Mladic appear in English for the first time, along with appendices that reprint key articles by David Binder, A.M. Rosenthal, Chris Hedges, Kosta Cavoski, and T.W. Carr. The Hague indictment is also reprinted.
“Ratko Mladic: Tragic Hero” will contribute to a greater understanding of General Mladic’s role in the Bosnian war that will benefit scholars, historians, journalists and students, as well as Americans who want to take a more critical look at U.S. military adventures overseas.
Ratko Mladic is a tragic hero because he fought the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism and neo-fascism in the Balkans.
“This book allows the reader to determine whether the Ratko Mladic case is about “justice” or about triumphal vengeance, about going after and destroying those who would dare to oppose the New World Order. It offers another perspective, a perspective meticulously censored and suppressed in the US and Western mainstream. Moreover, the book is essentially antiwar because it shows how wars are manipulated and exploited and fomented by self-interested outside powers and interests. They maliciously foment war and incite hatred and encourage killing, then sit back and judge and impose their “justice.”
This book is highly recommended. It encourages critical and independent thought, not mindless, lock-step conformity and obeisance.”
An excerpt from the “Ratko Mladic: Tragic Hero” book review by Carl Savich
Book by Vojin Joksimovich, Ph.D., also available at Regina Orthodox Press
“Vojin Joksimovich has gone to great lengths to bring some sense of great understanding to Western audiences about the Islamist threat which they have refused to comprehend. Few people have paid heed to the understanding and warnings contained in Dr. Joksimovich’s Kosovo Crisis study in 1999. If they read and debated his findings at the time, then the current crisis of ineptitude and arrogance of the international community in managing Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina situations would not have reached such profoundly sad and destructive proportions. I commend this book to you as a part of the process of that great and necessary understanding.”
Gregory Copley, President of International Strategic Studies
Association and Editor GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs
The subject of 9/11 root causes did not receive due attention in the 9/11 Commission report. Islamism, the radical fusion of religion and politics with jihad at its center, is an obvious root cause. Islamist ideology is centered on reintroduction of a caliphate, an Islamic super-state governed by Islamic Sharia law. In the post Cold War era, Islamism has been competing with the U.S.-led globalization ideology for world domination.
The primary tool for long-term expansion of Islamism is proselytism of Islam, Saudi Wahhabi Islam in particular. Terrorism is a tactic of asymmetric warfare, a great cost-effective equalizer, causing huge political and economic impact on a short-term basis.
The Islamist terrorist networks flourished and grew exponentially during the Clinton era. The President’s lack of resolve to fight terrorism and his turning the blind eye to radical Islam fueled the rise of Osama bin Laden from isolation and obscurity to a planetary hydra-like monster. The track record qualifies Clinton to be characterized as the Neville Chamberlain of the 1990s. His predecessors going back to President Roosevelt in 1945 have also contributed a great deal to empower radical Islam.
Book by Gregory Elich, also available at Llumina Press
From war and sanctions to corporate plunder and the looming threat of climate change, the harrowing accounts in Gregory Elich’s Strange Liberators comprise an essential source for understanding today’s world. This is U.S. foreign policy as seen by those on the receiving end.
“Informed Americans know about their government’s interventions into Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. They know about the violations of international law, the injustices, the lies, and the harm caused by these actions. But the case of Yugoslavia tends to draw a blank. Even worse, it tends to elicit support for this ‘humanitarian’ intervention. Correcting this gross misunderstanding and distortion of history is one reason among many for reading this book.”
William Blum, author of Killng Hope and Rogue State
“Using a wealth of historic evidence and revelatory analysis, deep research and eye-witness investigation, Gregory Elich treats what lawyers call the ‘hard cases’: Yugoslavia, Croatia, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and certain untouched questions about Iraq, issues that have been most thoroughly misrepresented in the corporate media and even by political commentators and activists who claim to be on the left.
Elich wastes no time with genuflections to the dominant ideology. Instead he sticks to the awful facts and glaring truths that compose the underlying reality of the U.S. global empire. He ties in his deeply informed case studies to the wider issues of U.S. imperial policy, the broader questions of war and peace, and the general crisis that faces the entire world and the planet’s ecology itself. Thereby he performs a most valuable service to persons all across the political spectrum.”
Michael Parenti, author of The Culture Struggle,
The Assassination of Julius Caesar and To Kill a Nation
“Gregory Elich is the model investigative journalist of the anti-imperialist left; tenacious, thorough, penetrating, meticulous and above all, uncompromising. On Yugoslavia, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Iraq, no one digs deeper, and no one uncovers more, than Elich.”
Stephen Gowans, political commentator, What’s Left
“For years, Gregory Elich has made his mark as a journalist-historian who pairs a special literary flair with a talent for uncovering real time, tightly held intelligence secrets. In this profoundly ominous time of modern history, there are precious few contemporary writers who brook no compromise with the truth. This volume stands tall, and the author is a special breed.”
Louis Wolf, publisher of Covert Action Quarterly
“Gregory Elich offers a clear and vital analysis of the goals of private interests and their secret collusion with the Bush administration to cover up a broad range of dangers, from war to global warming. Scholars, researchers and the lay public interested in US foreign policy will find this book both vital and illuminating.”
Lenora Foerstel, Vice President of Women for Mutual Security
and author of
Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy
“Gregory Elich has dedicated himself to skillfully unearthing and disseminating the information that typically goes unsaid. He provides us with the well-researched fundamentals we cannot and should not expect to get from our newspapers or televisions. Put another way, Elich teaches us to identify the ‘gates’ that restrict our freedom of thought.”
Mickey Z, author of The Seven Deadly Spins and
50 American Revolutions You’re Not Supposed to Know
“Friendly” Albanian Muslims during their latest violent riots in Serbian Kosovo province, on November 28, 2006. Click to view large.
More photos from the latest outbreak of Albanian violence in the Serbian province.
Pristina, Serbia, Dec. 25, 2006 — A Bulgarian citizen was shot in a café in the town of Urosevac in Kosovo province yesterday, the police in Kosovo announced. The café is opposite the technical school in the town. The young woman (30) who had Bulgarian citizenship was shot by a firearm and instantly died. The Albanian killer (44) has escaped and is, supposedly, searched by police.
Although the Albanian Muslim “police,” comprised of members of the terrorist KLA/UCK operating in the southern Serbian province issued its usual claims “the motive of the killing is not clear,” there is no doubt this is another ethnically motivated crime. Bulgarian language belongs to the same group of Slavic languages as the Serbian and is often mistaken for Serbian among the ruthless Albanian minority occupying Serbian province.
In October 1999, a Bulgarian U.N. official was beaten and executed by the group of Albanian Muslim teenagers on the street of Pristina, when he gave them the time of day in the “wrong language” — Bulgarian, mistaken for Serbian.
Belgrade, Serbia, Dec. 25, 2006 — The prospect of Kosovo-Metohija province independence and the breakup of Serbia is the “most dangerous and most destructive” idea in Europe today, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Monday.
Such a development would have unforeseeable consequences for international stability, Kostunica said in comments carried by Serbian news agency Beta.
Any future resolution of the status of Serbian Kosovo province must be based on the foundation that Serbia’s borders remain unchanged, Kostunica said. The international community must be mindful of the United Nations charter and prevent division of the territory of a democratic state, he added.
Belgrade, Serbia, Dec 25, 2006 — President of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Sanda Raskovic-Ivic said in an interview for today’s edition of the daily Blic that the general position of the UN Security Council is that after the presentation of the draft solution for Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province by UN Special Envoy Marti Ahtisaari, negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina must continue which should lead to a compromise solution.
The official website of the Serbian government presents excerpts of the interview.
Promises, promises... Multiculturalism, human rights and multi-ethnicity the Albanian Muslim Way: Kill the Serbs!
Continuation of negotiations:
We are prepared for continuation of negotiations. We will make efforts to have frequent rounds of talks and to discuss issues which were barely touched upon until now or were not discussed at all. From 15 of the permanent members of the Security Council 12 agreed that the draft solution by Marti Ahtisaari is just a good basis for further discussion. That is why, at least we here in Serbia, should not worry about deadlines and discuss whether a solution will be announced in March or June, because I am certain that will not happen. I don’t want to say that the conflict will last the next 30 years, but it is a fact that a distinct change has taken place in positions among the international community concerning the deadline. Important members of the Contact Group, such as Germany and Italy, are also against a hastily brought decision.
Has Serbia been officially told which decisions will be vetoed by Russia?
Yes, we have been told officially that firstly, if it comes to voting in the Security Council on a solution favouring independence, Russia will not agree. Secondly, it was clearly said that Russia will be against the adoption of any unclear, neutral, and new resolution which mentions neither the sovereignty of Serbia nor the independence of Kosovo-Metohija province. Russia will also be against Serbian province being declared a special case.
What will be the status of Kosovo-Metohija province?
I can only tell you what Serbia advocates, which is substantial autonomy. I can not tell you what status Kosovo will have, because that does not depend on Serbia alone. But if Serbia’s will had not been taken into account, the status issue would have been solved a long time ago, by providing independence.
Is it possible that the decision on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija province will be brought outside the Security Council?
That would be very bad not just for us, but also for permanent members of the Security Council. A new chapter would be opened, which would mean that Russia and China could do whatever they want regarding their interests. But I think that it cannot happen that the decision is not discussed in the Security Council. Otherwise, the possibility would remain that Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province is recognized unilaterally. There are a number of countries which would not recognize part of Serbia’s territory as an independent state, making it only a hypothetical new state, which involves a number of other problems besides entering the UN.
Substantial autonomy:
All those who claim that autonomous Kosovo-Metohija province within Serbia will not be able to develop are proved wrong by the concept of substantial autonomy, because relations with various international institutions are envisaged and Albanians will keep all that they have now. The difference between substantial autonomy and conditional independence is only in dynamics. Conditional independence implies that it will one day change into full independence, while autonomy does not include those dynamics and always remains autonomy. According to both solutions Kosovo-Metohija province will not have a ministry of defense, a ministry of foreign affairs and a seat in the UN.
Were any unacceptable solutions for Kosovo-Metohija presented?
Only by Rupel [former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia’s foreign minister; meanwhile, Slovenia itself has unresolved territorial disputes with both Croatia and Italy — perhaps Slovenian foreign minister will sign off parts of Slovenia his neighbors claim as their own, before making gifts to Albanians in the shape of a chunk of Serbian historical territory], who told us that we should choose whether we want to enter the EU or keep Kosovo-Metohija part of state. But not a single country had to give up part of its territory to pay for EU membership.
Bishop Artemije: “Albanian Muslim jihadi terrorists have committed a pogrom of Christians in Kosovo and Metohija.”
Jim Jatras: “Planned jihad in Kosovo is well known and simply ignored by the Western governments.”
Ambassador Bissett: “NATO’s and U.N’s record in Kosovo has been marked by double standards, by duplicity and by outright cowardice.”
Bishop Artemije: “Albanians are a minority in Serbia and nowhere else in the world can a minority secede part of the mother-country they inhabit.”
Jim Jatras: “ [Serbian] ‘Genocide’ in Kosovo is like the WMD in Iraq: it is not there — it did not happen.”
Ambassador Bissett: “The ‘negotiations’ are not real and the U.N’s special envoy Martti Ahtisaari has openly stated that the end result will be independence [...] He has also gone further and said that the punishment of the Serbs for “Milosevic’s crimes” have to be borne collectively by the Serbian people — so collective guilt becomes a part of his decision making. That statement alone should have completely disqualified him and he should have been asked to step down as the special envoy.”
His Grace Artemije, Bishop of Ras-Prizren and Kosovo and Metohija, Canadian Ambassador James Bissett and Jim Jatras of Venable LLP, Director of the American Council for Kosovo have addressed Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, Canada, on October 26, 2006.
From the latest report by American Council for Kosovo
A fanatic has been defined as someone who, having lost sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts. Fanaticism would indeed be an apt description of the December 20 recommendations of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which, even as prospects for the forcible and illegal detachment of Kosovo from Serbia continue to recede, desperately called for stepped-up efforts to that end.
In specific, the ICG report calls for renewed international support for the efforts of the by-now thoroughly discredited U.N. mediator Martti Ahtisaari, who also happens to be Chairman Emeritus of ICG -- even while conceding that more and more countries, especially in Europe, are moving toward the Serbian position.
Amazingly, the ICG recommendations allude to the increasingly violent atmosphere in Kosovo not as reason for rethinking their whole dogged approach to Kosovo but for closing their eyes and plunging forward: A botched status process that fails to consolidate the prospect of a Kosovo state within its present borders and limits the support the EU and other multilateral bodies can provide would seed new destructive processes. A sense of grievance would become ingrained among Albanians throughout the region, strengthening a pan-Albanian ideology corrosive of existing borders and possibly even enriching the soil for radical Islam. “Pan-Albanian ideology”? “Radical Islam”? In Kosovo -- and “among Albanians throughout the region”? Really?
Indeed, it is precisely these “destructive” forces we at the American Council for Kosovo have sought to show have been the sources of the crisis from the beginning. And worse, they are exactly the forces that would triumph if ICG’s misguided recommendations were followed.
On the same day ICG released its report warning of “destructive processes” should Muslim Albanians fail in their effort to coerce independence from the international community through violence and intimidation, Kosovo government officials were arrested transporting a large weapons cache.
On December 21, Reuters reported:
Two officials of Kosovo’s governing coalition have been arrested after police found a minibus packed with heavy weapons and ammunition. A police source said the haul included a 12.7 mm anti-aircraft gun and more than 100 rocket-propelled grenades. Local media reports said the find, made late on Wednesday in the Drenica region of central Kosovo, was the largest in Kosovo since the war and the deployment of NATO peacekeepers.
Three men were arrested, including a senior adviser to the Kosovo labor minister and a member of the governing Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), which emerged from the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army. The find sharpened fears of unrest in the U.N.-run province, where major powers have delayed a decision on the demand of 2 million ethnic Albanians for independence from Serbia.
The Associated Press reported:
NATO peacekeepers and police seized a large weapons cache during a raid in Kosovo and arrested three suspects, a police official said Thursday. Police raided locations in the village of Stutica, in central Kosovo, after receiving information on weapons smuggling late Tuesday, said police spokesman Veton Elshani.
The weapons, which were being examined by NATO-led peacekeepers, included rockets and ammunition…Two suspects were arrested at the scene and police also arrested a suspect in eastern Kosovo, Elshani said. Local media identified one of the suspects as a member of the Alliance for Future of Kosovo, part of the province’s ruling coalition government, and the other as an adviser to the Ministry of Social Welfare.
Violence against non-Albanians continues unimpeded, as always. RTS SAT TV reported on December 10:
Another incident has occurred in Kosovo-Metohija, fortunately, without any victims. A bus on the Belgrade-Strpce line carrying 30 Serb passengers was stoned yesterday in Doganovic, near Stprce [southern Kosovo].
On December 9, B92 reported:
Kosovo Police Service have confirmed that an explosion damaged the railway tracks near Vučitrn yesterday. Serb sources in Kosovo said that the explosion occurred only a few minutes before a train carrying Serbs from Prilužje and Plementin villages was scheduled to pass that section of the railway.
In a December 13, 2006 speech to the UN Security Council, President of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija for the Government of Serbia, Dr. Sanda Raskovic-Ivic stated:
I must regrettably inform the Council about the cruel reality in Kosovo and Metohija, which testifies to the lack of freedom and security there.
From 15 August to 1 December 2006, 75 ethnically motivated attacks were committed, in which 23 persons of Serb nationality were injured. The extremists also targeted members of other communities. The house of Zecir Zurapi, a member of the ethnic Gorany community in the village of Gornja Rapca , was blown up on 1 October 2006. The perpetrators of that terrorist act, like so many others in the past, have not been identified. It is significant, however, that immediately before the attack, Zurapi was involved in plans to have the Gorany students educated in line with the Serbian curriculum. As a result, more than 1,000 students in three schools were not able to attend classes for more than 30 days.
UNMIK Doing its Best to Violate Serbia’s Sovereignty
Over the same period, in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, 17 transmitter stations belonging to the Serbian mobile operator Telekom Srbija were put out of operation. This is a virtual criminal act that is taking place before the very eyes of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) because, since 1997, Telekom Srbija has had a valid license to operate throughout the entire territory of Serbia, and has paid all of its taxes to UNMIK and the Kosovo Provisional Government. That act has further isolated the Serbian population.
It should also be pointed out that, in the context of all types of communications, UNMIK has consistently tried, to varying degrees, to extend its mandate, thus violating the sovereignty of Serbia. There are many examples of that in its activities related to the International Civil Aviation Organization, the International Union of Railways, the International Committee for Railway Transport, the Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunication Union. All of those activities are aimed at taking away attributes and symbols through international specialized organizations, thus prejudging the final status of Kosovo and Metohija. In that way, preconditions for cooperation and confidence are naturally further undermined.
Continued Ethnic Cleansing of Serbs
Furthermore, there have been drastic and selective electricity cuts. Such discrimination reached its apogee in the Serbian communities of central Kosovo and the municipality of Strpce , where one hour of power supply is followed by 10 to 20 hours of blackouts.
Add to that the fact that there have been 260 inter-ethnic incidents since 24 October 2005, in which all the victims were Serbs, and the trend becomes more than obvious. Let me add another sombre detail: even with the assistance of UNMIK, we have not been able to make the Albanian side agree — at least at a declaratory level — to the need to rebuild the houses of Serbs from Badovac village who were expelled in the riots of March 2004. At that time, Serbian houses all over Kosovo were set on fire and destroyed. People were expelled, and some were killed.
As for the return of expelled and internally displaced persons, I would like to recall that, from 1999 to date, as many as 250,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have not been in a position to return to Kosovo and Metohija. According to our data, 2 per cent have returned; according to UNMIK, the figure is 5 per cent.
Major demographic and migratory shifts have taken place in Kosovo and Metohija. The population in Pristina, the capital, has increased threefold, and it is currently estimated at 600,000. There are no more than some 100 Serbs in Pristina. Before 1999, there were about 40,000 Serbs in Pristina.
Uprooting Christianity Continues Unabated
As far as Serbian religious monuments, cultural heritage and religious freedoms are concerned, Albanians pay lip service to their protection. Serbian shrines are in fact looted and desecrated on a daily basis. The church of the Holy Shroud in the village of Babin Most near Obilic and the church of Saint Petka in Gojbulja, in the municipality of Vucitrn, were broken into and ransacked. The orchards of the Devic monastery, in the village of Lausa in the municipality of Srbica, were completely destroyed, even though they were guarded by KFOR and the Kosovo Protection Service police after having been set on fire in March 2004.
Illegal construction close to cultural sites within the proposed protected zones is rampant. At the end of September, large-scale construction was begun in the vicinity of the monument honoring the medieval Serbian Kosovo heroes in Gazimestan, near Pristina.
During the same period, in the neighborhood of the village of Velika Hoca — a village that has 13 churches dating from the twelfth to the fifteenth century — an industrial facility is being built. There are plans to build a large hotel close to Gorioc monastery. These so-called construction activities naturally give rise to serious concern, since they are being carried out in close proximity to religious and cultural sites, which, in the negotiations on the future status of the province, should be granted the status of protected zones where urbanization and industrial construction are not allowed. Those activities are obviously a deliberate attempt to prevent the preservation of the cultural and environmental integrity of the sites. The Government of Serbia and all the members of the Contact Group are insisting on that, making the negotiations on cultural heritage one of their priorities…
Mafia-Style Albanian Clans Flourishing
Anyone can see that organized crime, human trafficking and corruption are rampant in Kosovo and Metohija. The drug and arms trade and smuggling provide a lifeline for the criminal and terrorist business, before the very eyes of the international community, the police and the military.
Mafia-style Albanian clans are currently flourishing. The most recent and alarming incident occurred 10 days ago, when an Albanian terrorist paramilitary formation in Kosovo and Metohija began to intercept vehicles, asking for identification papers and intimidating passengers. Also, several days ago, on 8 December, barely a few minutes before a train was scheduled to arrive, unidentified terrorists blew up railway tracks in the vicinity of Mijalic village, in the municipality of Vucitrn. The only passengers in the train were Serbs, who travel regularly from Priluzje, Plemetine and Zvecan on this line. The blowing up of the tracks was yet another horrific terrorist attack against the Serbs.
Illustration by Alfredo Sabat
NATO troops stationed in Serbian Kosovo and Metohija province have seized a large weapons cache during a raid and arrested three suspects, a police official said Thursday. Local media reports said the find, made late on Wednesday in the Drenica region of Kosovo province, was the largest since the 1998-99 war and since the subsequent occupation of the Serbian province by NATO troops.
The arrested Albanian Muslims included a senior adviser to the Kosovo province “labor minister” and a member of the Albanian governing Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, which emerged from the terrorist KLA/UCK organization that started the war in Serbia in order to hijack the province from Serbian state. Two members of the self-imposed “governing coalition” are Skenderbej Habibi and Naim Bazaj, of the province’s ruling “Alliance for the Future.”
Part of the “future” Albanian Muslim alliance, headed by their war criminal Ramush Haradinaj, has in mind apparently involves heavy weapons, large quantities of explosive and ammunition, and it includes 12.7 mm anti-aircraft guns, artillery rounds, anti-tank mines and more than 100 rocket-propelled grenades stashed in this cache alone. A wonderful promise for a wonderful future, indeed.
According to the information from Decani Monastery, Albanian Muslim “ministry of labor” is led by one of war criminal Ramush Haradinaj’s closest aides who was involved in aggressive attacks of November 28 this year when the UNMIK building was attacked. Vehicles of the self-styled “ministry of labor” assisted in bringing blocks of concrete to the violent rioters attacking the foreign officials’ buildings in Pristina, southern Serbian province’s capital.
While the talking sock-puppets and Albanian lobbyists worldwide immediately rushed to inform us the latest weapons cache that was discovered was “almost certainly” meant for targeting the Serbs and other non-Albanians hanging by their nails in Kosovo province, it would be nice if they’d offer some explanation to go with the convenient theory, like why would Albanian Muslim thugs need anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank mines and rocket-propelled grenades to continue the ethnic cleansing of unarmed, ghettoized Serbs, Roma, Gorani and the rest.
The only ones in the southern Serbian province who do have tanks, aircrafts and the equipment that would warrant such serious collection of heavy weapons are the U.S./NATO troops occupying Serbian province — Albanian Muslim terrorists’ “liberators.” Unless ICG and other white al-Qaeda groupies think that Serbs have started flying 30,000 feet above the ground and dropping explosives out of their butts, the anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank mines and the rest Albanian self-imposed “government” has been stashing away must be meant for someone else.
Now, who on Earth could that be... ?
Cartoon by Dragan Grujic
Article by Dr. Vojin Joksimovich, Ahtisaari Must Go
The UN special envoy for Kosovo, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, suggested that Serbia must take into account the legacy of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime while negotiating the Kosovo status. During Vienna talks on August 8, according to the Belgrade negotiators and there is unanimity among them (four of them), Athissari said, “Serbs are guilty as a people.” Subsequently, his spokesperson attempted to spin that his remarks were misrepresented and taken out of context.
The Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, issued a number of statements saying: “Although Ahtisaari has been entrusted with the mandate of enabling negotiations in order to achieve a compromise, a historical just solution based on the principles of international law, it appears that Ahtisaari is doing everything but that… On several occasions in the past, he has more or less covertly advised that compromise and negotiations are superfluous because a solution already exists that need only to be implemented, and that is independent Kosovo. For this solution, which is in direct contravention of the fundamental principles of international law, Ahtissari has now offered a justification… Ahtisaari has thus joined the advocates of the darkest ideas in the history of mankind on the collective responsibility of entire nations… Ahtisaari has thus not only trampled the mandate entrusted to him but declared war on international law, democratic values and historical facts…What represents a threat to Serbia today may soon represent a threat to other countries, too, and to the entire world.”
Former U.S. ambassador to Belgrade William Montgomery said that the talks for Kosovo future status that are held in Vienna are a “farce directed by the international community. We saw how even in public statements various Contact Group representatives give signals that the inevitable result of this process would be an independent Kosovo.” It is true that Ahtissari was not the first one in so-called international community to make such outrageous remarks. Similar remarks are only to be expected from Serbophobes, like Mort Abramowitz, or the entire International Crisis Group, as they have run out of any compelling arguments why independence should be given to the Serbian province run by Albanian thugs, war criminals and terrorists. Nicholas Burns, number three in the State Department, has even suggested that Kosovo is a unique case. This in contrast to the statements made repeatedly by the Russian officials, president Putin included, that Kosovo independence would set a clear precedent in the international law that cannot but be projected to numerous frozen conflicts and not only in the post-Soviet space. Hence, yet another Pandora’s box would be open after Iraq with potential detrimental consequences for the world. This Pandora’s box would lead to creation of micro nationalist states boosting the UN membership to over 400 and in the process causing perpetual wars. Does the world really want to see two Albanias?
It should be borne in mind that Athisaari represents the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, whose continent of Africa was a most notorious victim of racism. It was smart on behalf of the Serbian government to seek from Kofi Annan to clarify Ahtisaari’s statements. Dr. Raskovic-Ivic, head of the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija, pointed out: “To say the Serbs are responsible as a people or that any nation is responsible as a nation is one of the axioms of fascism and we simply cannot ignore it.”
The Third Reich was a promoter and implementer of racism in the 20th century in proclaiming the superiority of the Aryan race. Even after all Nazi horrors including the holocaust the Germans were not deemed guilty as a people. Both NATO and the German Federal Republic were created in 1949. Democratic Germany joined NATO in 1955 as an important step in the country’s post-war rehabilitation. This most applicable example seems to reject the notion that any people can be characterized as guilty because of some misdeeds of their leaders or egregious crimes committed by some of their members. [...]
What is this Serbian historic legacy that must be taken into account during the status process and what is the Albanian legacy that Ahtissari and others choose to ignore? Serbia should also demand from the Contact Group and others to spell out what exactly is that historic responsibility. The millennium old history apparently starts and ends with Milosevic. Nothing happened either beforehand or afterwards! Even during the Milosevic era the fairy tale propaganda stories are used instead of the hard facts.
As an example Milosevic allegedly ethnically cleansed and deported Albanians. During the vicious fighting between the KLA insurrections from Albania, supported by the Islamic world including Al Qaeda as well as by the Western intelligence agencies, there were some 2000 fatalities on both sides but mainly between the KLA fighters and the Serbian police. There were some displacements of civilians within Kosovo but applies not only to Albanians but to Serbs, Roma and the others. The claim that Milosevic deported some 800,000 Albanians into Macedonia and Albania is nothing short of absurd. The scores of witnesses testified in the Hague, including a British journalist on the ground, that the Albanians were by and large running away from NATO bombs as well as being ordered by the KLA to leave their homes for Macedonia and Albania. Recently about 800,000 Lebanese civilians were uprooted from their homes during the 34-day Israeli-Hezbollah war. Were they deported or they were running away from the Israeli bombs as well as from fighting in Southern Lebanon?
The Serbs in Kosovo have been subjected to ethnic cleansing for five centuries during the Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mussolini/Hitler rule, communist dictator Tito rule and lastly during the UN/NATO rule. Albanian terrorism can be traced back to 1912 when the Serbian troops liberated Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire. During WWII, the Albanian Balli Kombetar and the 21st Waffen SS Division Skanderbeg committed merciless persecution of Serbs killing 10-20,000 and ethnically cleansing 100-120,000. Massive colonization of Albanians into Kosovo took place, which continued during the communist dictatorship. The Albanians matched their WWII “performance” during now 7-year UNMIK/KFOR rule: — 3000 Serbs and other minorities were murdered (missing ones are presumed dead), — 230,000 have been ethnically cleansed and an eradication of Christianity took place with over 150 Serbian churches/monasteries demolished while — 200 mosques were built [according to the latest information from southern Serbian province, over 400 new mosques were built since NATO occupied Kosovo province]. Should all these facts be ignored?
Albanian terrorists instantly responded to Ahtisaari’s statement by throwing a bomb in Kosovska Mitrovica wounding nine–seven innocent Serb citizens, a Dutch pregnant woman and a UK policeman. Both Kostunica and President Tadic sharply condemned the attack. In the last six months over 70 attacks on Serbs have been recorded. By their irresponsible behavior and cover up of crimes UNMIK/KFOR as well as individuals like Ahtisaari have been encouraging Albanians to commit them.
Kofi Annan and the UN Security Council should have never appointed Ahtisaari. His track record is the one of a Muslim appeaser. Together with former Russian prime minister Chernomyrdin he convinced Milosevic to capitulate without providing effective guarantees for the Kosovo Serbs as the Serbian troops withdrew and the KLA terrorists started murdering and ethnically cleansing helpless Serbs and other minorities. Subsequently he became the honorary president of the most Serbophobic organization on the globe—The International Crisis Group (ICG)—that has been championing Albanian separatism for years. Very recently the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, asked him to negotiate Israeli soldier’s release from Hamas. Ahtissari is viewed as an outstanding expert on Muslim affairs and negotiations. He is believed to have good connections with the Qatar-based Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qadarawi, a mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood and a recognized religious authority who says it is a duty for Muslims to turn themselves into human bombs in Israel and Iraq and who, in a speech to an Islamic conference in Ohio in 1995, had said: “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America, not through the sword but through dawah [proselytism].”
There is little doubt that Ahtisaari has breached his mandate, is in conflict with the international law, democratic values and historic facts. His integrity as a special UN envoy has now been compromised and this cannot be good for an equitable resolution of the Kosovo issue. [...]
Cartoon by Arsenic
Serbian Jerusalem, the cradle of Serbian Orthodox Church and nation, being handed over to Albanian Muslims by the so-called “international community:” since NATO/U.N. occupied Serbian Kosovo and Metohija province in June of 1999, over 150 churches and monasteries were destroyed, while more than 400 mosques have been built.
Article by Raymond Ibrahim, Orthodoxy Today
What they capture, they keep. When they lose, they complain to the U.N.
In the days before Pope Benedict XVI’s visit last Thursday to the Hagia Sophia complex in Istanbul, Muslims and Turks expressed fear, apprehension and rage. “The risk,” according to Turkey’s independent newspaper Vatan, “is that Benedict will send Turkey’s Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims.” Apparently making the sign of the cross or any other gesture of Christian worship in Hagia Sophia constitutes such a sacrilege.
Built in the 6th century, Hagia Sophia -- Greek for “Holy Wisdom” -- was Christendom’s greatest and most celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from Arabs, Constantinople -- now Istanbul -- was finally sacked by Turks in 1453, and Hagia Sophia’s crosses were desecrated, its icons defaced. Along with thousands of other churches in the Byzantine Empire, it was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph. Nearly 500 years later, in 1935, as part of reformer Kemal Ataturk’s drive to modernize Turkey, Hagia Sophia was secularized and transformed into a museum.
Protests aimed at keeping the pope out of Hagia Sophia rocked Istanbul right up to the morning of his visit to the site. Contrast that intolerance with the tolerance granted Muslims in regard to the Al Aqsa mosque -- this time, an Islamic site in Jerusalem annexed by Judaism. Unlike the permanent Muslim desecration of Hagia Sophia, after Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, the Jews did not deface or convert the mosque into a Jewish synagogue or temple, even though the Al Aqsa mosque is deliberately built atop the remains of the Temple Mount , the holiest site of Judaism and, by extension, an important site for Christians. Moreover, since reclaiming the Temple Mount, Israel has granted Muslims control over the Al Aqsa mosque (except during times of crises).
All this illustrates the privileged status that many Muslims expect in the international arena. When Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories -- such as Constantinople, not to mention all of North Africa , Spain and southwest Asia -- those whom they have conquered as well as their descendants are not to expect any apologies, let alone political or territorial concessions.
Herein lies the conundrum. When Islamists wage jihad -- past, present and future -- conquering and consolidating non-Muslim territories and centers in the name of Islam, never once considering to cede them back to their previous owners, they ultimately demonstrate that they live by the age-old adage “might makes right.” That’s fine; many people agree with this Hobbesian view.
But if we live in a world where the strong rule and the weak submit, why is it that whenever Muslim regions are conquered, such as in the case of Palestine, the same Islamists who would never concede one inch of Islam’s conquests resort to the United Nations and the court of public opinion, demanding justice, restitutions, rights and so forth?
Put another way, when Muslims beat infidels, it’s just too bad for the latter; they must submit to their new overlords’ rules with all the attendant discrimination and humiliation mandated for non-Muslims. Yet when Islam is beaten, demands for apologies and concessions are expected from the infidel world at large.
Double standards do not make for international justice. Either territorial conquests are always unjust and should therefore be ameliorated through concessions, or else they are merely a manifestation of the natural order of things -- that is, survival of the fittest.
If some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until Islam dominates the globe, they are only being true to Islam and its doctrines as they understand it. However, in that case, where the world is divided into two warring camps, Islam and Infidelity -- or, in Islamic terms, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War -- how can these Muslims expect any concessions from the international community? The natural conclusion of the view that “might makes right” is “to the victor go the spoils.”
The fact that Turkey conquered Constantinople more than 500 years ago does not prevent the Turkish government from returning Hagia Sophia to Christendom today, which would undoubtedly be a great gesture. But of course that can never be. The Muslim world would undergo a “paroxysm of fury” if a Christian pope dares pray in the conquered church; what would the Muslim world do if Hagia Sophia were actually converted back to a church?
But perhaps Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting special treatment, as well as believing that jihad is righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out of its way to confirm such convictions. By criticizing itself, apologizing and offering concessions -- all things the Islamic world has yet to do -- the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged status in the world.
And what did the pope do in his controversial visit to Hagia Sophia? He refrained from any gesture that could be misconstrued as Christian worship and merely took in the sights of the museum. Moreover, when he was invited into the Blue Mosque nearby, he respectfully took off his shoes and prayed, eyes downcast, standing next to the the grand mufti of Istanbul like a true dhimmi -- a subdued non-Muslim living under Islamic law and acknowledging Islamic superiority.
And therein is the final lesson. Muslims’ zeal for their holy places and lands is not intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there’s something to be said about being passionate and protective of one’s own. Here the secular West -- Christendom’s prodigal son and true usurper -- can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West concedes ideologically, politically and especially spiritually, Islam will be sure to conquer. If might does not make right, zeal apparently does.
Raymond Ibrahim is a research librarian at the Library of Congress. His book, “The Al Qaeda Reader,” translations of religious texts and propaganda, will be published in April.
American-Albanian terrorist unit in KLA/UCK uniforms in southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.
PODGORICA, Montenegro, December 17, 2006 (AP) - Relatives of two jailed U.S. citizens accused of plotting an Albanian insurgency in their native Montenegro, rallied Sunday outside the U.S. Embassy here demanding freedom for the suspects.
“Help American citizens imprisoned without evidence” read a banner held by some of the several dozen protesters who claimed that the charges against the Michigan-based cousins, Rok and Kolja Dedvukaj, were politically motivated.
The two were arrested in September along with a dozen local ethnic Albanians, all accused of preparing terrorist attacks and other violence with the aim of carving out an autonomous ethnic Albanian region in eastern Montenegro.
Four of the suspects have been released pending trial, while others remain in custody and have accused the police of mistreating them.
The allegations of police beating the suspects led to an internal inquiry, which ended inconclusively as Montenegrin authorities said they could not reconcile the conflicting accounts by police and the suspects.
It must’ve slipped the AP comrades’ minds, but it should be noted that Albanians with American citizenship, as well as those packing passports of other Western states, have been very active in the preceding Balkan wars. The entire Albanian diaspora was obliged to give 10 percent blood-tax of each of their paychecks for arming their terrorists (through an organization named “Homeland Calling”), some went on to raise millions of dollars used to equip their Albanian gangs in the Balkans with latest destruction devices and with fancy new uniforms, and many of them donned terrorist KLA/UCK uniforms themselves, as soon as the word was out that the moment for hijacking Serbian Kosovo province has come, flying to Serbia to bloody their hands, and returning to States afterwards.
This is the kind of “American citizens” we’re talking about here, not poor Albanian retirees who scraped their five-decades of savings for Montenegro sightseeing, and ended up arrested “for political reasons” while admiring the view.
Albanian Nazi teacher saluting on an outing with school children. Kosovska Mitrovica, 1942, Serbian Kosovo province.
The AP goes on to cite the sister of one of the Albanian terrorists arrested in Montenegro: “The Montenegrin government has arrested and tortured my brother to the point where I could not recognize him,” said Rok’s sister, Katrina Dedvukaj, who also holds U.S. citizenship. “Montenegrin government has tried to falsely portray my brother as a terrorist.”
The U.S. Embassy in Podgorica has “followed the case from the beginning ... and will continue to provide all adequate consular assistance” to the indicted U.S. citizens, the embassy’s information assistant Sasa Brajovic told The Associated Press, without providing specifics.
Prosecutors, however, have accused 18 ethnic Albanians - including the Dedvukaj cousins and three others living in the United States - of conspiring to destabilize the tiny Balkan state, which became an independent country in June after splitting from Serbia.
According to the charges, the U.S- based part of the group funded and instructed their ethnic kin in Montenegro to “use explosives and weapons for terrorist acts aimed at controlling ... military posts, police precincts and other important facilities” in the ethnic Albanian-populated area close to the border with Serbian Kosovo province.
And that is exactly how it all started in Serbia long time ago.
But, interestingly enough, whenever an ethnic Albanian pipes up from wherever, you’ll learn that not a single member of his or her family was or is a member of the terrorist KLA/UCK, that no one they know has ever had any connections to the notorious Albanian mafia/terrorist organization, that no Albanians were ever fascists while Greater Albania was fascist (Hitler’s puppet state), that all Albanians were doing during the time they were fascists, in WWII, was protecting Jews and all they were doing after the WWII was suffering from Serbs.
They’ll tell you that Albanians are always victims, never the culprits. They have never done any wrong to anyone, and they feel they suffered enough and should, therefore, be finally rewarded with another Greater Albania based on the Hitler’s model
, because of all the “suffering” they had to endure.
That is Albanian story and they stick to it: lie, deny and pretend, while grabbing whatever they can, destroying other people’s states, ripping other people’s land, and terrorizing all of their neighbors. It worked with Clinton’s NATO, why wouldn’t it keep on working the same way with everybody else?!
Accordingly, the terrorist’s sister insists “There is no evidence against Rok,” adding she hoped “America will show Montenegro what real democracy is.”
In other words: U.S./NATO should bomb Montenegro now, after teaching the Serbs “what real democracy is,” for daring to send army in a southern corner of their own state, to end the armed foreign insurrection. You can do whatever you want, but don’t you dare arrest or fight Albanian terrorists, or Uncle Sam will be hired once again to pound you back into the stone age and take your land away.
Montenegro, you’ve been forewarned!
According to the Press Online, American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has recently issued a report which, among other issues, designates “the most reliable” Western “partners” (i.e. traitors) among Serbian political parties. Just before Serbia’s elections, CIA is announcing it will use its civic rights in Serbia to vote for Boris Tadic’s Democratic Paty (Demokratska Stranka, DS); bunch of undefined, sold-soul “reformers” under the collective conspiracy code of G17, and/or Vuk Draskovic’s Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski pokret obnove, SPO).
When American Government along with its spy-network elects one of these to rule Serbia, CIA says their Serbian puppet will solve all of their problems and get Serbia in line with perceived American interests.
On the other hand, CIA deems Serbian conservatives—Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS) the worst option for American interests (therefore, best for Serbian interests, since amputating Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija seems to be an important part of perceived “American interests” in the Balkans). The main part of the SRS badness, according to the American Spying Elite, is that they would end the “cooperation” with the Hague Inquisition and stop sending Serbia’s citizens into the belly of The Beast — instantly.
The second worst Serbian candidate for presidency, according to the CIA, not surprisingly, is Prime Minister Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS). American intelligence agency has marked P.M.’s party “an unreliable option” — their problem being that, although a staunch democrat, a constitutional lawyer and very much for Serbia joining the EU, NATO and other Western Clubs, Kostunica refuses to dance to CIA/State Department’s tune and sign off southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.
It is a very good thing CIA decided to make its report public, so now Serbs know exactly whom not to vote for: as it is, whomever CIA suggests as “the best” or “most reliable” candidate is bound to betray interests of Serbian people and work for “American interests” (i.e. the interests of Albanian lobbyists entrenched in the U.S. State Department and partnered with CIA). And vice versa: everyone considered “unreliable” by the CIA will be more concerned with Serbian than “American”—Albanian interests.
Thanks, guys! Feel free to tell us more of what you want, so we know exactly what not to do and whom not to vote for. Unless, of course, you finally decide to stop trying to destroy Serbia while restoring Hitler’s Greater Albania.
Cartoon by Misa Zlatkovski
Albanian war criminal, Agim Ceku, in KLA/UCK uniform. Recently, his brother-in-arms Hashim Thaci has publicly accused the self-styled Kosovo “prime minister” of organizing Albanian paramilitary activities in Serbian province.
RTS, Belgrade/Dan, Podgorica, 15 December 2006 — KFOR has seized a large quantity of weapons designated for Albanian terrorist activities in Montenegro, the electronic media in Podgorica reported. According to the Montenegro’s daily Dan, the weapons had been dug up in a forest in the municipality of Pec and discovered by the Italian soldiers deployed in that part of Kosovo province. The seized weapons include dozens of rocket propelled launchers, machine guns, automatic rifles, pistols, hand grenades, rifle grenades, anti-tank mines, various types of explosives and detonators, as well as some 10 thousand bullets. KFOR believes that the weapons come from the arsenal of the terrorist KLA/UCK and should have been smuggled to Montenegro to be used in terrorist actions in a tiny new state that seceded from federation with Serbia in June this year.
The daily writes that the arms should have gone to the organized group of Albanians, some of which members were arrested in the region of Malesia in Montenegro under the charges of planning the terrorist actions against religious and official institutions in Montenegro. Five persons from southern Serbian province of Kosovo have been arrested in the investigation regarding the hidden weapons. It has been established that three of them were frequently crossing the border between Serbian province and Montenegro, and had several meetings with Albanian terrorists in Montenegro’s region of Malesia.
German Press Agency, DPA, reports on 15 December, 2006, that a group of armed, masked Albanians robbed villagers in Guska, in western Kosovo (Metohija region), as confirmed by the Albanian police Friday.
According to the police, this is the same gang of Albanian paramilitaries that had been setting up illegal checkpoints on the back roads of Metohija region in Serbian province since last week.
The description of the thugs, as well as of the previously reported paramilitaries, was that they were wearing masks and supposedly “unidentified” paramilitary uniforms, and were well armed.
According to DPA, Albanian police employed in the Serbian province by the UNMIK said that these paramilitary gangs operating in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo “could be members of an ultra-militant offshoot of the Kosovo guerrilla army” terrorizing Serbian province further.
The Albanian terrorist KLA/UCK that provoked the war in Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija in 1998-1999 in order to secede part of Serbian territory and adjoin it to Albania has been nothing but “ultra-militant” criminal organization since its inception, when it was officially listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, among others.
Speaking of “an ultra-militant offshoot” of an ultra-militant terrorist organization is nothing short of absurd. But then again, German and other Western mainstream news agencies do have a remarkably dishonorable tradition of spouting half-truths and utter nonsense with all the seriousness of respectable and supposedly “objective” media services.
...The untold news is that Kosovo will not become independent. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the Western “mainstream” will go on huffing and puffing and pretending otherwise, but there is not much they can do: Kostunica will not be duped, Serbia will not cave in, Russia will not relent, and the Albanians will not give up on what they had been promised by those who had never had the right to make the promise in the first place. They threaten renewed violence, but the threat only serves to reinforce the argument that they should not be allowed to get away with it. As Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. told his Western colleagues last Wednesday, “you may be willing to give in to Albanian blackmail, but we are not.”
Article by Dr. Srdja Trifkovic, The Untold Story of Kosovo Negotiations, Chronicles Magazine
Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia’s prime minister for the past three years, has one of the most challenging jobs in the world. He nevertheless seems at ease with that burden, and appears more confident than while he was Yugoslavia’s last president). When we met in Belgrade last week, he was as matter-of-fact about the problems he is facing as ever; but whereas in the past he had occasionally agonized about the magnitude and complexity of those problems, today he treats them as facts of life that neither intimidate nor depress him. It may be telling that in appearance he has hardly aged over the past decade, while in substance he has become the key figure on Serbia’s political scene for many years to come.
The most pressing of those problems is of course Kosovo. The United States, NATO and several leading European Union countries have occupied one-seventh of his country’s territory for over seven years, and the officials who run the “international community” appear keen—for now—to detach the southern province permanently from Serbia. Kostunica’s best defense against the pressure to sign Kosovo away—and that pressure keeps coming from Washington, Brussels, London and other power centers—has been to insist on the need for any solution to be legal, to conform to the letter and spirit of the international law.
The law is clear: Kosovo belongs to Serbia, and its status was reiterated in the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 that stopped NATO bombing in June 1999. Detaching it from Serbia against Belgrade’s will would be an unprecedented violation of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. Ahtisaari and his political masters know that, of course, but like to pretend that it is but a minor irritant. As Kostunica says, “When we mention the need for legality, some of these officials become exasperated, even agitated. They respond with various comments to the effect that we should not be bound by ‘mere’ legality.”
This, Kostunica adds, reminds him of the attitude of Yugoslavia’s late communist dictator, Marshal Tito. When commenting on how the country’s judges should try political cases, Tito famously advised them “not to stick to the law like a drunk sticks to a fence.” Such attitude irritates Kostunica—a constitutional lawyer, whose nickname in Serbia is “the Legalist”—but it does not surprise him. “The whole negotiating process had been designed from the outset to lead to only one outcome: Kosovo’s independence,” says he; and the role of the U.N. mediator, Finland’s former president Marti Ahtisaari, was simply to choreograph that outcome.
Kostunica’s account of Ahtisaari’s bungled attempt to “deliver” the Serbs indicates that the promoters of the Albanian cause had selected the wrong person for the job. The Finn came to it as a self-declared proponent of detaching Kosovo from Serbia and an associate of the Soros-funded International Crisis Group, a leading pro-Albanian lobby group. Ahtisaari’s opening gambit nevertheless was to try and assure Kostunica of his good intentions: he really wanted to assist Serbia, he said, in ridding herself of a problem—of Kosovo, that is; and “we” should work together on finding the formula to make it happen smoothly and painlessly, since “we” (men of the world, big-time players in the “international community”) surely realize that Kosovo is lost to Serbia anyway.
Ahtisaari’s approach may have been based on six years’ worth of flawed advice that he and others in the “international community” had received from Western diplomats in Belgrade and from a small but influential clique of “pro-Western” Serbian officials and analysts. All along their assumption had been that Serbia would cave in yet again and agree to Kosovo’s detachment, albeit with some meaningless fig leaf (“conditional independence,” “international guarantees for minority rights,” etc, etc); that Russia and China would endorse the deal at the Security Council; and that the problem would be taken off the agenda by the end of this year with the admission of yet another part of ex-Yugoslavia into the “international community.”
Observers agree that the nature of the new entity would be clear not so much for what Kosovo would be (an international protectorate, an EU-NATO condominium, a future province of Greater Albania) but for what it would no longer be: part of Serbia. As a Washingtonian insider has noted, “The UN, the EU, the Contact Group countries, would issue the appropriate guarantees, mainly protection for the remaining Serbs—and everyone would know the guarantees were just new lies on top of the old. When all the Serbs were cleared out and their holy places destroyed, there would be expressions of regret from Washington, Brussels, London, etc: ‘Indeed, how sad. How unfortunate that these Serbs should have made themselves so hated’.”
The belief that this scenario might work was reinforced by none other than President Boris Tadic’s chief foreign policy advisor Vuk Jeremic, one of very few Serbian enthusiasts for John Kerry’s victory in November 2004. Mr. Jeremic (who happens to be a Muslim on his mother’s side) came to Washington on 18 May 2005 to testify in Congress on why Kosovo should stay within Serbia; but in some of his off-the-record conversations he assured his hosts that the task is really to sugar-coat the bitter pill that Serbia will have to swallow anyway—and to ensure that the nationalist Radical Party does not score excessive gains in the process.
When confronted with Kostunica’s polite but firm refusal to operate on those assumptions, Ahtisaari tried subterfuge, suggesting tête-à-tête off-the-record conversations with individual Serbian leaders. Aware of the potential for intrigue and double-dealing contingent upon such arrangements, Kostunica refused. All his meetings with Ahtisaari were strictly official, on-the-record, minuted, and attended by advisors. In the meantime the negotiations between Serbs and Albanians in Vienna, supposedly mediated by Ahtisaari, failed because they were doomed to fail. As Kostunica says, the Albanians were led to believe that they would get independence anyway, and therefore had no incentive to negotiate.
The biggest internal challenge for the prime minister was to ensure coherence of the official Serbian position, between himself, President Tadic, and foreign minister Draskovic. That has not been easy, and may have become impossible were it not for the remarkable unity of the country’s public opinion on this issue, manifested in the referendum on Serbia’s constitution last October that reiterated Kosovo’s status as integral part of Serbia. Confronted with the strength of popular sentiment, Kostunica’s coalition partners and Tadic—whose Democratic Party is not in government—realized that breaking ranks would be tantamount to political suicide. Some of the lingering ambiguities in Belgrade’s leadership remain, however, and became apparent only days after our meeting when President Tadic announced that he would fight to save Kosovo—but added that he does not believe that the fight would be ultimately successful.
Kostunica disagrees with that assessment, and believes that the chances of success—of a compromise that would give self-rule to the Albanians but keep Kosovo within Serbia’s boundaries—are better now than at any time since 1999. The fact that Ahtisaari felt compelled to move the deadline, long set for the end of this year, has tremendous psychological and political significance: the surest means of denial is delay. Many proponents of Kosovo’s independence now realize that setting a firm deadline was a grave mistake. We are witnessing a shift in momentum that does not work to their advantage.
The shift would not have been possible without Russia’s firm and unambiguous commitment not to support any Security Council resolution that is not acceptable to Serbia. We can only speculate whether Moscow’s stand would be so solid had the United States promised to treat Kosovo as a valid precedent for Transdnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh; but having rejected any such possibility out of hand, Washington has ensured that Putin has no incentive to play ball. As for China, the danger works in the opposite direction: had Peking supported Kosovo’s independence, it could have facilitated the creation of a precedent that could be and therefore would be used against it vis-à-vis Taiwan (or even Tibet) at some future date.
Option B for the proponents of Kosovo’s independence was stated by the province’s “prime minister,” war criminal Agim Ceku, earlier this week: Albanians proclaim independence regardless of the UN and invite bilateral recognition by individual countries, most crucially the United States. The trouble is that the Europeans hate that option, even those (notably in London and Berlin) who are supportive of independence. Option B cannot work unless the European Union supports it as a whole, and within the EU so many countries have announced their opposition—Spain, Greece, Rumania, and Slovakia unequivocally—that it is not practicable. No individual EU country will recognize a self-proclaimed “state” in Kosovo unless it is an agreed policy consensually approved in Brussels. Ceku et al may try it nevertheless, but Washington is certain not to extend recognition that bypasses the Security Council if that risks a rift with the Europeans: the U.S. needs them on board to manage the mess in Afghanistan, and for the forthcoming disengagement from Iraq.
In conclusion, the untold news is that Kosovo will not become independent. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the Western “mainstream” will go on huffing and puffing and pretending otherwise, but there is not much they can do: Kostunica will not be duped, Serbia will not cave in, Russia will not relent, and the Albanians will not give up on what they had been promised by those who had never had the right to make the promise in the first place. They threaten renewed violence, but the threat only serves to reinforce the argument that they should not be allowed to get away with it. As Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. told his Western colleagues last Wednesday, “you may be willing to give in to Albanian blackmail, but we are not.”
As Kostunica says, once the reality sinks in we’ll finally have some real negotiations. We do not know what the end result will be, but that is in the nature of all genuine negotiations: their outcome is unknown. Ahtisaari has failed, and his supporters are getting very nervous. As Misha Glenny confided to the former U.S. ambassador in Belgrade William Montgomery on December 7, “I am seriously worried about the Kosovo situation ... entre nous, I am very disappointed with Martti’s performance.”
Good. Very, very good.
Cartoons by Toso Borkovic and Goran Kljajic
BRUSSELS, Belgium, December 14, 2006 (Beta) — Belgian TV broadcasters have sent shock waves throughout the country when they informed viewers during the main evening news that, according to the decision of Flemish parliament, Flanders, a part of Belgian Kingdom, has proclaimed independence and seceded from Wallo