Apt Comparison

One would think that, for an analysis titled "What Kosovo means to the Serbs," Olivia Ward of the Toronto Star would have talked to, you know, an actual Serb or two.

No such luck; the story quotes two (!) officials of the International Crisis Group, and former NATO commander in Bosnia Gen. William Nash, now at the Council of Foreign Relations. The rest is a rather familiar dish of boilerplate serbophobic rhetoric wrapped in distortions of history.

And yet, I cannot help but wonder what James Lyon (ICG's man in Belgrade) was thinking when he said:

"Kosovo plays an integral role in Serbian identity," says Belgrade-based James Lyon, senior adviser on the Balkans for the International Crisis Group. "Without Kosovo, they suffer an identity crisis that is much more serious than just losing territory."

But he added that "the overriding factor is how easy it is to mobilize the crowds. You could compare it with mobilizing an anti-Muslim rally in New York the day after Sept. 11."

Yes, he did just compare the U.S. recognition of Kosovo to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps now it will be easier for Americans to understand why the Serbs are so upset.

Perhaps.

Greece Endorses the ICG Agenda

Friday's Washington Times carried a piece by Greek foreign minister Petros Molyviatis, unimaginatively titled "Back to Kosovo: Athens' view."

The moment Molyviatis mentions the 1999 war as "dramatic events," it becomes obvious something is seriously wrong. Indeed, the Greek FM suffers from a terminal case of absurd terminology. To him, the 2004 pogrom was "incidents;" Kosovo is a "country;" and security of Serbs, their property, and the Orthodox temples "remain major concerns," instead of being nonexistent.

"Fostering democracy, respect for human rights and—especially—minority rights, as well as good governance, have been the great challenge from the outset," says Molyviatis. "The international community’s initial goal of a stable, democratic and multiethnic Kosovo has not yet been achieved."

Challenge? More like an abysmal failure - even if these have been the goals of the so-called international community (what does that mean, anyway?). What is so challenging about some 40,000 occupying NATO troops failing entirely to prevent the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians, the plunder and destruction of their property, and the ongoing murder and violence against those who remained? All they had to do is stand and watch - a duty they performed superbly.

Despite all this, Molyviatis wants Belgrade and the Kosovo Serbs to become "involved" - i.e. collaborate with the occupation, offering a smarmy quote supposed to be a proverb: "the absent are always in the wrong." Huh?

It would be easy to say that Petros Molyviatis must have fallen off the stupid tree, hitting every branch on the way down. He is, however, Athens' foreign minister, and the editorial was titled "Athens' view." So this is not just his, but the Greek government's agenda. Its goal becomes obvious at the end of the article, when Molyviatis starts extolling the virtues of Greece as the best mediator for Kosovo, "as a member of the EU and NATO, as a member of the U.N. Security Council for 2005-2006, as a friend and ally of the United States, and as the chairman in office of the South East European Cooperation Process. And, of course, as a country with strong bonds of friendship and cooperation with all Contact Group members."

What this amounts to is Athens trying to score points with the EU and the Empire, while trying to appease Albanian territorial aspirations by throwing them the Kosovo bone and hoping the "Chamerian Liberation Army" never comes into being. This is both stupid and wrong - but I suppose the Greeks are about to find that out the hard way.

As for the Serbs who hoped for some kind of "friendship" with Greece, they should remember the crucial difference between the people and the State: while people may have friends, the State has only interests. If the Greek State had been friendly, it would have vetoed the 1999 bombing. Enough said.

ICG's Tangled Web

Is there some sort of unholy alliance between the NY Times/International Herald Tribune and the International Crisis Group (ICG)? It seems hardly a week goes by without the IHT publishing at least one editorial by ICG board members, sympathizers or partisans, recycling the Group's message about the "independence" of occupied ("liberated," in their parlance) Kosovo.

The latest in this string of atrocities is an op-ed by one John Norris, a "special adviser to the president" of the ICG, who spins the indictment and surrender of Ramush Haradinaj as a "stern test of maturity" in Saturday's IHT.

I'll give the Imperials one thing: they sure can talk pretty. Norris's prose is very persuasive, if one  forgets for even a minute that he traffics in euphemisms alone. Indeed, the vocabulary of the editorial consists almost exclusively of select spin-words and phrases. Thus Ramush is not an "indicted war criminal" like other ICTY prisoners, but a "wildly popular prime minister who has generally said and done all the right things while delivering on a wide array of requests made by the UN administration." The anthropomorphic Kosovo (conjured as a more acceptable image than the KLA, or Albanians) "has languished awkwardly in a netherworld, uncertain whether it would become a country, remain a protectorate indefinitely or be forced back into a desperately unhappy and manifestly unworkable union with Serbia." Notice the use of "forced", "desperately unhappy" and "manifestly unworkable" to describe Kosovo's proper legal status. Brilliant!

When Norris says "many international officials wonder if prosecutors in The Hague lost sight of the forest for the trees in going after Haridinaj [sic] at this exact moment," one is not supposed to ask whether these unnamed multitudes reflect only the Albanian partisans hand-picked by the ICG. Similarly, one is not supposed to understand that the "growing body of sentiment that Kosovo should be granted conditional independence" is actually the KLA/ICG position, presented here as self-evident truth.

But while Norris is true to form in repeating the independence mantra and attempting to manipulate people's sentiments through choice phraseology, he departs from other ICG editorials by addressing himself partially at the Albanians. Consider this:

"Rather than lashing out in anger, they need to understand that the end game for their aspirations is here, and that by continuing to hold their anger in check, avoiding attacks on the Serb minority and forming a government that can make real progress on international standards, they can show they are ready to assume the mantle of statehood."

He follows this up with an appeal to Ibrahim Rugova and Hashim Taqi to "rise above a long history of mutual animus and political rivalry." (Political unificiation of Albanians is somewhat of an ICG fetish, yet they go out of their way to deny its ultimate logical outcome, Greater Albania.) And there you have it, the message every Albanian partisan in the West has been shouting for the past week: keep it cool, play along, and you'll get what you want.

Two questions spring into a skeptical mind. Why say this in the IHT, and not, say, Koha Ditore or Kosova Sot? The NY Times' European avatar is hardly the Kosovo Albanian daily of choice. So, Norris is making his pitch for the benefit of Western audiences as much as that of the Albanians.

The second question is whether another pogrom on the scale of March 17, 2004 would really be such a threat to the Albanian cause. The initial outrage with the raging mob was quickly spun into momentum for accelerated status talks. The ICG itself argues that to delay independence would provoke bloody Albanian violence. Would proof not help their argument?

This, in turn, suggests that while the message to the Albanians may well be genuine, its originators are hedging their bets and preparing the groundwork for another pogrom, which they could blame on "irresponsible elements" among the Albanians or better yet the Serbs, labeled by Norris and others as the only possible beneficiary of further violence. So whether there is a pogrom or not, the ICG has its bases covered.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we conspire to deceive...