Expelled?

Last week in Balkan Express, I challenged the Albanian argumentum ad atrocitas for the independence of Kosovo - the notion that, because of "ethnic cleansing" and atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the army and the police, Serbia has somehow "forfeited" the right to this province.

Much as it has been the case with reported death tolls in Bosnia, the number most often cited in wire reports (10,000 dead Albanian civilians) is a complete fabrication. This is not to deny that crimes against civilians happened; the Yugoslav Army has actually prosecuted a number of its troops for violating the laws and customs of war. But the notion of widespread, state-ordered or sanctioned atrocities against Albanian civilians is simply not supported by evidence. There was no "Operation Horseshoe," much as the NATO apologist behind that Wikipedia page would hate to admit it.

So, do I deny that 800,000 (or however many) Albanians were expelled from Kosovo by Serbs? Absolutely. I don't deny that these people were displaced; that would be challenging physical reality, which happens to be the purview of the Empire. I do, however, question the claim they were deported by the police and the military. And indeed, some may have been. But all of them?

In July 1999, a Belgrade daily published a copy of the leaflet that was disseminated to Kosovo Albanians in April, just before the mass exodus to Macedonia and Albania proper. With the help of some friends, I have obtained a digital image of the leaflet. Here it is:



And here is what it says:

FELLOW CITIZENS

We invite you to temporarily evacuate the endangered territories of the Republic of Kosova, due to the ongoing major offensive by the Serbian occupation forces. We cannot protect you, and neither can the Kosova Liberation Army.

We need to save our people and our lives. Therefore, proceed immediately towards Albania and Macedonia.

We have asked NATO to help us in our struggle against the Serb occupation forces, because these forces have launched a great offensive in the entire territory of the republic of Kosova. We are getting this help, but the KLA is not able to fully resist the offensive and defend the Albanian people.

Therefore we call on all Albanians who face danger from the Serb occupation troops to evacuate to Albania and Macedonia.

Ibrahim Rugova
President, Republic of Kosova

Now, let's see. It's April 1999. NATO has been bombing Serbia for a week, on the pretext of imposing the Rambouillet "agreement" on the government in Belgrade. It's become clear that Belgrade would not surrender. The KLA - which had recovered from defeat in the fall of 1998, thanks to the intervention of Richard Holbrooke and the subsequent support from the KVM - was being routed by the Serb police and the Yugoslav military, deployed to the province to stop the NATO invasion. In other words, things were going rather badly for the Alliance.

All of a sudden, throngs of Albanian refugees pour over the borders into Albania and Macedonia, into camps set up by the KLA and staffed by KLA cadres, who are more than happy to guide the correspondents from NATO countries and OSCE reporters around, collecting testimonies and listening to sob stories. CNN can now show photos of crying Albanian women. The German government, engaged in open war for the first time since 1945, can now bolster the NATO cause by claiming the existence of a secret Serb plan to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo Albanians. Macedonia is overwhelmed, and destabilized (which would come in very handy two years later).

So, Albanians were transformed from separatist terrorists (KLA) to innocent victims of evil Serbs. NATO was provided a justification for its illegal war that sounded much better than the imposition of a fake peace plan, or a shoddily fabricated massacre. And the KLA was able to assume the role of "protector" to Albanian refugees, thus becoming the leading force among the separatists (who had until then supported Rugova).

What an utterly amazing set of "coincidences," don't you think?

Absence of Principle

In July 2004, I posted on the Antiwar.com blog some translated excerpts from an interview with Morton Abramowitz, published in the Serbian magazine NIN. Abramowitz is the founder of the International Crisis Group, a major figure in the Council on Foreign Relations, and somewhat of a guru to Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and other "stars" of U.S. policy-making in the Balkans. At the forefront of interventionism in the 1990s (to the point of advising the KLA at the 1999 Rambouillet "talks"), he has scaled down his public profile since, but has remained steadfast in his pursuit of the American Empire.

NIN was interested to hear from Abramowitz because they knew he spoke for the Democratic foreign policy establishment, and since the Kerry-Edwards ticket still looked like it might unseat Bush the Lesser, it looked like good foresight. Little did they - or anyone else - know that Abramowitz's notions of "aggressive solutions" would be embraced as official policy by the Bushites in the spring of 2005, culminating eventually in Ahtisaari's proposal.

This is what Abramowitz said then (emphasis added).

On Kosovo Albanian politicians:

“Their ability to cooperate is almost nonexistent, except when it comes to the independence of Kosovo. About that, they do not argue. This is why the West must establish a dynamic towards realizing that plan, because the Kosovars [sic] aren’t capable of doing it themselves.”

On multi-ethnic Kosovo:

“We all want a multi-ethnic state in Kosovo because that is the politically correct position. […] Unfortunately, the problem is that Serbs do not believe in Kosovo as a state. So, if you are considering a multi-ethnic Kosovo in which Serbs are safe and Albanians run the show, that is feasible, but it is far from what we call a functioning state. … [There can be no functional state] while the status of that state is unresolved. So long as Serbs believe in the return of Serbian authority to Kosovo, there will be no progress.”

On Serbia’s plans to enter the EU:

“EU membership is certainly a vital decision and goal for Balkans countries, especially for Serbia which first has to make a choice. If it wants to be a part of the EU, Serbia must give up Kosovo.“

On U.S. and the Balkans:

“America, of course, has strong interests in the Balkans and Washington very much cares about successfully finishing everything that has been done in the Balkans so far. […] In case of Kerry’s victory, Dick [sic] Holbrooke would be one of the main candidates for Secretary of State, which would probably result in a much more active role of the U.S. in the Balkans. Other candidates are [Senator Joseph] Biden and [Sandy] Berger. In any case, Holbrooke has the most personal interest in the Balkans and actual success in the region. I speculate, but I think that with Holbrooke as Secretary of State, the U.S. would seek the resolution of the Balkans situation much more aggressively. […] With a new administration and someone like Holbrooke, who is deeply interested in the region, the possibility of accelerating Kosovo’s independence is much greater.”

On Greater Albania:

“There are strong elements among the Albanians who will demand the unification of Albanian territories, but I think the West can control that and prevent it from happening. I am convinced that the U.S. believes the independence of Kosovo is inevitable, while the creation of Greater Albania can be prevented.”

On Bosnia:

“You will not get the [Bosnian] Serb Republic. Why? Because Bosnia is a result of the Dayton agreement which we have to honor, and this question will not be opened. That would mean our approval of ethnic cleansing and everything we fought against. Bosnia is a quasi-state, I agree. [But] the Serb republic is a horrible creation of Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic… Everyone knows that Dayton legitimized status quo and created the Serb Republic because we stopped the Croats from expelling all the Serbs from Bosnia. And that was humane of us. Were it not for Dayton, the Serb Republic would not have existed, and all the Bosnian Serbs would have been in Serbia now. We could not allow half a million [sic!] Serbs to be expelled.”

No context for Kosovo:

“All that can happen is that Serbs and Kosovars [sic] agree on the partition of Kosovo. If you don’t succeed in that, there will be a united, independent Kosovo. Those are the only practical solutions.[…] The only thing on the table is Kosovo and how it might be partitioned. […] What you will get for letting Kosovo go is membership in the EU, better life, growth and prosperity. […] As I said, setting the Balkans in order would require some delicate and hard compromises that can only be achieved of all the countries involved have a clear goal at the end of the road.”

To sum it up: questions of law, sovereignty and self-determination (especially when it comes to Serbs) are irrelevant to the Empire, which Abramowitz hopes will return to its “aggressive” policies in the Balkans if the Democrats win power. The sacred issue of practicality demands that Serbs surrender both their self-determination and their sovereignty for an empty promise of better life in the EU (into which, though I did not note it here, Abramowitz cautions they would enter only after completely submitting to the ICTY’s demands for “war criminals,” surrender of Kosovo notwithstanding).

But his line about the “humane” effort of the Empire to save the Bosnian Serbs from extinction that befell their western brethren is by far the most cynical and demented argument presented here. It is as if he assumes no one read Holbrooke’s memoir, in which Croatia is identified as Empire’s “junkyard dog,” armed and supported for the explicit purpose of countering Serbian claims; why should the Serbs be grateful to America for leashing its attack dogs, instead of angry that they were unleashed to begin with?

Ironically, at the time I had glossed over the most important thought in the entire interview, and didn't bring it up until November 2004. Answering the reporter's question about the self-determination of Bosnian Serbs as opposed to Kosovo Albanians, Abramowitz said this:

"My answer is that there is no entirely rational answer; you seek perfect reasoning, which does not correspond to reality on the ground."

Ponder this for a moment. There is "no entirely rational answer," he says. Because logic does not, and cannot, apply to Serbs. How else would ethnic cleansing be legal only when aimed at Serbs, self-determination be unacceptable only when those who wish to practice it are Serbs, borders be sacred only if they don't belong to Serbs? These are not minor quibbles, but fundamental issues; Abramowitz rejects "perfect reasoning" but the "reality" he preaches means no reasoning at all!

With this in mind, my end-of-the-year column in 2004 concluded with these passages:

What seems to govern events in the Balkans under Imperial rule is something that, for lack of a better term, could be termed the "Abramowitz doctrine": a complete absence of any principle that would be valid for all. Indeed, a complete absence of any principle at all, except power.

Completely different rules are in force for Serbs and for Albanians, or Bosnian Muslims; certainly, no external rules whatsoever apply to the Empire, in any of its manifestations. What "rules" that exist are made by Imperial viceroys, commanders, envoys, commissioners, and advisors, on the spot and without any need (or regard) for internal consistency. The ends – ultimately elusive, but hiding under the platitudes of "justice" and "Euro-Atlantic integration" – justify any and all means, while any resistance to them is a priori considered criminal.

The Ahtisaari Plan is just the latest manifestation of this nightmarish "order" which the Empire seeks to impose on the Balkans.

Schooled

Roger Cohen, one of the "star reporters" of the Bosnian War and a columnist for the International Herald Tribune, apparently wrote a screed recently blasting former British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd for daring to protest the war in Iraq. Hurd, opined Cohen, should keep quiet, since he stood idly by while the evil Serb aggressors were committing genocide against the poor defenseless "Bosnians," etc, ad nauseam.

Cohen's text didn't register on my radar. I was a little busy observing the anniversary of the 2004 Kosovo Kristallnacht, and about half a dozen other more important things pertaining to this corner of the world than the ramblings of some American Serbophobe.

Fortunately, the indomitable Taki Theodoracopulos seized on the opportunity to school Cohen in a bit of European history. After describing the centuries of Muslim invasions, often aided and abetted by power-hungry European nobles, Taki finishes thusly:

Hurd was right when he blamed ancient hatreds and warring factions for keeping cool and detached in the Balkans. If anything, Blair and Bush should have attacked the Muslim infiltrators in Kosovo. Instead, they went and attacked the only secular state in the Middle East. We armed and trained bin Laden in Afghanistan. He was given Bosnian citizenship soon after, and when his gang went down to Kosovo and began to blow up 500-year-old churches, we bombed a European city on the gang’s behalf. Cohen should shut up.

Bravo, sir.

Jihad's Other Victims

During the 1992-95 civil war in Bosnia, hundreds of Islamic militants from all over the world came to fight for the "beleaguered Bosnians" in what they considered a part of the ongoing jihad against the infidels. Many stayed after the war's end, marrying local women and taking over ethnically cleansed villages, where they would establish theocratic communities based on Wahhabi Islamic teachings.

Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic wrote as early as 1970 (PDF) about the need to "re-Islamize" the Muslims as a way to improve their position in the world (Izetbegovic devoted a lot of space in his Islamic Declaration to the pathetic state of contemporary secular Muslim countries, comparing them most unfavorably with the former Ottoman Empire - a Caliphate, whose fall he blamed on the Western infidels). The Bosnian war provided him with an opportunity to put his ideas in practice. Izetbegovic's rejection of any agreement with the Bosnian Serbs started the war in the spring of 1992; his troops clashed with their erstwhile Croat allies from 1993 to 1994; and a portion of Muslims loyal to a rival politician in Western Bosnia were declared "traitors" and mercilessly repressed in 1995. Parallel to his efforts to establish a "Bosniak" nation, Izetbegovic and his followers sought to ensure its Islamic identity. Turkish and Arabic phrases that were once used only in religious context became commonplace; the new "Bosnian" language abounded with words borrowed from Turkish, Arabic and Persian, often resurrected from century-old linguistic oblivion; and new mosques appeared in every neighborhood.

In addition to their fighting prowess (which remains dubious), foreign mujahedin were one of the instruments of "re-islamization." Their integration into the "Bosnian Army" (ARBiH) enabled the Izetbegovic regime to transform it from a self-proclaimed "people's self-defense" force into a heavily Islamic organization. Thanks to universal conscription, the subsequently demobilized soldiers would come home more receptive to the message spread by immigrant imams from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere in the Islamic world. As a side note, every Muslim soldier who died during the war was considered a "martyr" in a jihad, and given the appropriate burial. Izetbegovic himself is buried in a "martyrs' cemetery" in Sarajevo

After the war, hundreds of new mosques were built by foreign donors - most prominently Saudi Arabia - and the imams preaching there introduced a new, different version of Islam. Adherents to Wahhabi teachings were soon easily identified by long beards, distinctive headwear, and rolled-up trousers. The carefully nurtured atmosphere of hatred and mistrust of Bosnia's Serbs and Croats, coupled with a persecution complex and victim mentality (according to which the Bosnian Muslims were victims of "genocide" not just in the 1992-95 war, but multiple times in the 20th century, ever since the Ottomans were forced out), created fertile soil for widespread discontent. Jobless, frustrated men turned to the mosques, where the foreigners plied them with money and promises, if only they turned to the "true" faith.

From helping the "Bosnians" in their jihad against the Serbs and Croats, to recruiting "Bosnians" for the greater jihad in the West was but a small step. Mirsad Bektasevic, a.k.a. "Maximus," who was convicted earlier this year of a plot to conduct terrorist attacks against foreign embassies in Bosnia. Sulejman Talovic's rampage in Salt Lake City last month was in all likelihood an act of Islamic terrorism. Though Talovic was pitied by the American media as a victim of the Bosnian war (Americans even collected donations to fund Talovic's funeral; he was buried in Bosnia - as a martyr for the faith!), information that has surfaced recently indicates that he was in fact a jihadist, and that his shooting spree was a premeditated attack on "infidels" planned with the help of a "friend" at a nearby mosque. According to the young woman who claims to be Talovic's long-distance girlfriend, he had told her the night before the attack that tomorrow would be the "happiest day of his life."

Many Balkans Muslims, however, resent the heavy-handed attempts by the Wahhabis to impose their view of Islam as the only one allowed. There have actually been physical confrontations between the official Islamic clergy and the Wahhabis, both in Bosnia and in the Raska region of Serbia, which has a significant Muslim population. Last November, three people were injured in a shooting clash between the Wahhabis and traditional Muslims in Novi Pazar. And just last week, four men were arrested in Novi Pazar, when Serbian police raided a nearby Wahhabist camp and found weapons, explosives, and terrorist literature.

Serbia's leading expert on Wahhabi terrorism, Darko Trifunovic, was quoted by the Italian news service AKI on that occasion: "[T]here is no doubt that the main victims of the divisions in the Muslim community will be Muslims themselves."

With the well of coexistence with Serbs and Croats already deeply poisoned, fratricidal violence in Novi Pazar, and young Muslims being recruited for jihad across the world, it appears the bill is already coming due.

All about the Germans?

Simon Tisdall of the Guardian echoes the blustery bloviations of Richard Holbrooke from Tuesday’s Washington Post, seeking to blame Russia for a "possible new war in Europe."

Per Holbrooke, if Albanians don’t get exactly what they want, they will start a war – but it will really be Russia’s fault, and Serbia’s (of course), not theirs. Or, heaven forbid, that of London and Washington, who were behind the 1999 occupation of Kosovo and have supported Albanian separatists since.

In and of itself this British parroting of American imperialist drivel wouldn’t be extraordinary, were it not for some choice words from Martti Ahtisaari, the ICG – er, UN – envoy charged with finding a way to independence – er, a solution (there I go again, evil Serb that I am) for Kosovo…

According to Tisdall, Ahtisaari dismisses several EU members’ concern about the potential fallout from such a toxic precedent as seizing a country’s territory in clear violation of international law, UN, OSCE, NATO and other charters, calling it “mithering” (sic). Tisdall quotes from “a recent interview” Ahtisaari gave in London:

"If the EU cannot do this, it can forget about its role in international affairs. If we can't do this during the German presidency, we should give up and admit we can't do anything." (emphasis added)

Um, what’s the German presidency have to do with anything? Is Germany supposed to be the strongest power in the EU, and therefore if it cannot force a decision on this, its power is largely fictitious? Or is it that Germany is a driving force behind EU involvement in the Balkans? Let's not forget, it was Germany that in 1991 strong-armed its EU fellows into recognizing Croatia and Slovenia - one of the first in a chain of illegal and illegitimate actions outside powers have taken in the region in the past decade and a half. In 1999, Germany was one of the most vocal supporters of (and participants in) NATO's aggression in Kosovo, turning the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and Bundeswehr loose on the world for the first time since 1945. Ahtisaari’s words make it sound as if his frantic attempt to separate Kosovo from Serbia is really all about German-led EU asserting its imperial prerogative and imposing a “solution” to Balkans “savages,” sticking it to Russia in the process.

Maybe it is.

But now we have proof that it's not some "Serb conspiracy theorist with delusions of victimhood" saying it, but a Chairman Emeritus of the ICG Board of Trustees.

The Baby Doth Protest Too Much

Last week, a Brit named Ed Alexander posted on his blog ("Balkan Baby") an account of his 2006 visit to a Mitrovica cafe, owned by an Albanian who impersonated Hitler. Within a couple hours the link had made its rounds, and feedback started coming. Julia Gorin, a conservative commentator who has raised some excellent questions about the Balkans, gave full credit to Alexander for documenting this monstrosity. I mentioned it on Sivi Soko, as part of a story on Nazis and their sympathizers in the Balkans. I also included information from a Slovakian paper, Format, which covered that very same cafe some months before Alexander and his friends paid "Hitler" a visit. All of this stuff was scrupulously credited (though I probably should have explicitly noted that Alexander took the photo of the bill featuring the swastika).

Seems like Alexander is "a bit put out," though. He resents the fact that Serbianna.com and Julia Gorin "were very selective in the way they quoted" him. He describes Serbianna as a "Serbian nationalist website which tries to incite hatred and fear towards Bosnians, Croats, Kosova Albanians and anybody else that they choose to take a swipe at," while Julia is a "perennial right-wing commentator" (what's wrong with that?) he tars by association as "crony" of George Bush, "Islamophobe" and "warmonger." Well, now, who's being unfair here? Who is being racist, bigoted, intolerant or unprincipled?

What did Mr. Alexander expect, that such a bombshell of a story would remain private? He posted it - so obviously he wanted it to become public. He was given credit. So, he "wrote very favourably about the Serbian residents." Pardon me if I don't care, especially since he very graphically sympathizes with the "Republic of Kosova" (sic!) which has done its utmost to eradicate those very Serbs. If he had been quoted out of context, or misrepresented, then I would be sympathetic. But he was not - not by Julia, not by Serbianna, and not by me. Maybe by Kurir - I actually agree a great deal with his assessment of what passes for their investigative journalism - but the photo they used was from the Slovakian paper, and I'd wager the stuff he could not recognize in their coverage came from the same source.

Is anything any of us noted about his story factually untrue? Did we make anything up?

Mr. Alexander has a sizable chip on his shoulder, believing himself to be a member of some vast righteous majority - or, in his terms, "those of us who want the Balkans to progress, to admit its wrongs as to display its wonderful culture in the best possible way," while painting those who disagree with him as "nationalist Serbs, Serbs who had been duped by what they read in Kurir and a handful of American Bushites."

Seems to me like he suffers from myopia, an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and a dangerous set of delusions such as the belief in blooming bombs.

I see it almost every day. Westerners come to the Balkans and fall in love with its authenticity, but then wish to remake it into suburban Des Moines or Birmingham, so they can feel more comfortable. What they can't seem to understand is that it's the very authenticity they seek to destroy that endeared the place to them to begin with - and that both the hospitality and hatred are part of it. They desire "progress" of the same kind that made their own homelands such cultural voids, quagmires of welfare statism and political correctness. They see the world as a series of theme parks. Not their fault, I suppose; it's all they know. But it irks me when they try to forcibly remake my corner of this earth (yes, I live in the U.S. at the moment - that in itself is a long story, and one I intend to address at some point) into their distopian horror. We have enough imported delusions as it is.

Ed Alexander is entitled to his opinions, of course. But methinks he doth protest too much.

Humanitarian bombs, again

I've seen many terrible things since the outbreak of Yugoslav Succession Wars in 1991, whether live or on television screens, in newspapers or online. But this image, accompanying a Seattle Times opinion piece this weekend, filled me with revulsion such as I haven't experienced at least since 2004, and the photos of the March pogrom in Kosovo.

The op-ed itself is fluff. Written by Deborah Senn, in places it seems copied out of ICG's handbook: Serbia's people, she says, "have the intellectual skills, determination and know-how to create a prosperous future, as long as their nation can leave behind the nationalism and ethnic divisions of the past."

Senn gushes over "well-educated and eager young people" who can make a "giant leap" and "[write] a new chapter in its colorful history — this time as a tolerant, pluralistic country"...

Never mind any of this naive, liberal-imperialist bovine excrement. Look at the picture the Seattle Times editors ran next to the article.

LOOK AT IT.

Flowers in blue, white and red - the national colors of Serbia - are blooming from the ground seeded with bombs. This is the message: (American) bombs bring democracy, prosperity, tolerance.

Well, Ms. Insurance Inspector, you can take your bright shining future and shove it. Serbia is not latte-sipping lumpen-studentariat gushing over the newest Western celebrity craze and blaming the "evil old regime" for every ill sent its way by the Empire in the past decade. That Serbia which you envision is never going to exist, save in the demented imaginations of western imperialists and domestic sycophants. If it gets its act together, Serbia will bloom and grow - not out of those "humanitarian" bombs of yours, but despite them. In defiance to them.

And you better hope and pray that some time down the line, when the American Empire is no longer the most powerful military force in the world (which may be sooner than you think), someone else doesn't decide to "humanitarianize" Seattle the way Americans "brought democracy" to Belgrade.

For shame.

A compliment, of sorts

So I'm a little behind the times (which is ironic; it'll be self-explanatory in a second), but I just saw Bruce Sterling's op-ed in last weekend's Washington Post. Most of the piece is talking about the "dot-green" revolution sweeping the globe, as more and more people get on the "global warming" bandwagon, but at one point he mentions this:

Serbia may be the world's single-greatest locale for a professional futurist. Awful things happen there faster than awful things happen anywhere else. The Balkans is a tragic region that denied stark reality, broke its economy, started multiple unnecessary wars, and basically finger-pointed and squabbled its way into a comprehensive train wreck. It suffered all kinds of pig-headed mayhem, all unnecessary.
...
So what's the good part? They never gave up around here. On the contrary: There's a certain vivid liveliness in the way they're scrambling and clawing their way out of yawning abyss. The food is great, the women dress to kill, and sometimes they even laugh and dance.

You don't have to predict the future when you live in it.

See, Sterling now lives in Belgrade. He is married to Jasmina Tešanović (of the "Women in Black," B92 and such crowd), which helps explain the scornful analysis of "unnecessary mayhem," but he is still capable of seeing the essence of the people: the "vivid liveliness" and determination. His wife's colleagues in the "human rights" industry lament and harangue on a daily basis the "primitive backwardness" of Serbia, and desire to drag it into "modernity" at all costs (preferably without Serbs)... but if Sterling is to be believed, Serbia is already living in the future.

It's a compliment, of sorts.

Jacobins in Serbia

Here's a Photoshop parody I received from a friend, via email. It's the cover of a faux-magazine called Les Jacobins, with a tagline "Your source of demagoguery."

That is Čedomir Jovanović, leader of the "Liberal Democrats" on the cover, powdered up like a French revolutionary.

Some of the topics from the front cover:

• "Serbia without Serbs"
• "A thousand questions... one answer."
• "Democracy, that's me!"
• "Global warming caused by... Serbs?"

Whoever did this... I like his sense of humor. The most appropriate response to the neo-Jacobin nonsense of Chedists and their ilk is indeed ridicule.

"Not enough"

My commentary on Monday's ICJ verdict clearing Serbia of genocide charges will be up on Antiwar.com tomorrow; in the meantime, there is a lot of good coverage up on the Byzantine Sacred Art blog.

I did want to share a memory from the war in Sarajevo, concerning some reactions to the verdict coming from Bosnian Muslims. For years, they've been convinced of the righteousness of their cause and their claim before the ICJ. Now that the court has said their "evidence" failed to prove their point, they reject the court itself and once again wallow in the wronged victim mentality.

Well, back in the early 1990s, after Alija Izetbegovic rejected yet another peace plan because it didn't give his regime enough land, a joke appeared in Sarajevo that went something like this:

Mujo and Suljo are sitting down, drinking coffee and smoking in proper silence. At some point, Mujo asks, "Suljo, what do you get when you add one and one?"
Suljo ponders for a moment, sips his coffee, shakes the ashes off the cigarette, and replies,"Two."
Mujo sighs, shakes his head, and says, "Not enough."

"Modern" Morality

Slobodan Antonić writes in Politika (Serbian original here):

... My "favorite" is the argument that says, "This isn't evil; the sooner we realize it's actually appropriate, the better off we will be!" Because, you see, "that's not ours anyway," and "who has ever actually been there," and "only priests and romantics care" and "queues in front of foreign embassies are a much bigger problem" and "they are actually doing us a favor," etc.

But when a NGO elitist says these words, he is really talking about himself. His mouth says "that's not ours anyway," but his eyes are betraying his thoughts: "that's not mine, so I don't care." His mouth says "who has ever actually been there?" but his eyes are going "I have never been there, so why would I care?" His mouth says "only priests and romantics care," his eyes are saying "I hate priests anyway, one church more or less, all the same to me." While his mouth says "queues in front of foreign embassies are a much bigger problem," his eyes are saying "why should I have to wait in those queues because of that damn Kosovo?" He considers it one and the same to "be modern" and "think only of oneself and money," and is now trying to persuade the rest of us that we should also be "modern," so we would feel as good as he does.

The hypocrisy of NGO "modernists," says Antonić, is best tested by the following hypothetical scenario: would they be as willing to give up one of the parking spots reserved for their SUVs, as they are willing to cede Kosovo? Ah, well, that's different, you see...

This is quotable enough, but Antonić offers another great passage in the same article:

Someone once compared the seizure of Kosovo with rape. The rapists are big and strong, the poor girl could get a beating if she resists too much, and maybe it is really better for her to give in. But for crying out loud, how can anyone say on top of that, "Oh be smart! Maybe they are rapists, but they are rich, powerful, you can't risk ruining your future relations with the, so don't dare complain. Think of your future, think of becoming a part of their rich and beautiful society tomorrow. Cry a little, then come back and smile as if nothing happened."

Can it really be like that? As if nothing had happened? Are you serious about the smiling? What if the boys get a desire to have a little bit of fun again? And what could one possibly say about those who jeer at the unfortunate woman, "Come on, sister, don't be conservative, the boys are doing you a favor, you need to be modern, enjoy the sex, and especially when the Big Boss goes on top of you. Then you have to be particularly enthusiastic, groan and sigh and scream - Yes! Yes! More!"

Yes, Big Boss likes to be the ladies' man. But dear Serbia, you don't have to put on an act for him. Cry freely. And most importantly, remember them all, both those who took their turns with you and those who jeered and cheered. Because one day...

Howling Mad

I've been writing columns about the Balkans for almost eight years now, and have always made the utmost effort to document every claim included there. If I recall correctly, my detractors have found only two factual errors in any of my columns. I once wrote that the indictment against Milosevic had been filed by Carla del Ponte (it was Louise Arbour). The other one was when I asserted that modern Croatian arms (chequy gules et argent) were the same as the World War Two arms of the Nazi-allied "Independent State of Croatia" - and an intriguingly well-informed Croat said this was patently false, because the WW2 arms were chequy argent et gules.

Alright, so that second case is more comical than truly illustrative - but the point I was trying to make is that I do my homework. If I am making a claim in any of my articles, I am doing my damnedest to provide some backing to it, preferably a source that can hold up to serious scrutiny, rather than assertions of the "everyone knows" variety. And it is such "history," often quoted in shrill tones by professional [insert ethnicity here] at events and in letters, that annoys me to no end. Worse yet, people spouting such pseudo-historical drivel are deeply convinced of its accuracy and allow that sentiment to pervade their, um, presentation.

Perfectly illustrating the point are letters and responses from Croats following the publication of Julia Gorin's article "When will world confront the undead of Croatia?" in the Baltimore Sun two weeks ago or so. Croats worldwide wrote to the Sun denouncing her piece as "Serbian propaganda" (right, because everything in the world is the fault of Serbs - the sentiment itself proving Julia's point that hatred of Serbs is not a thing of the past). Many wrote to Julia personally, using language so vile I admire her for having the fortitude to preserve the messages and post them online (latest post here, see her blog for more).

Julia Gorin's researched, documented article, could not be challenged factually. Therefore it became the subject of a firestorm of spitting and howling by people who "knew" the "actual truth" and spouted it free of Serbodiabolical constraints of proper English and decency. Even the polite letters were based on premises so ridiculously false, even I had a hard time believing there were folks who actually thought that way. And I'm supposed to be used to all manners of Balkans oddities, having lived there for almost 20 years and written about them since 1999.

Some years ago I would have been tempted to say "Well obviously their problem is ignorance... once they realize their beliefs are false, they would stop hating." Now I know better. Ignorance is the consequence of hatred, not its source. Those Croats who spat on Julia over the Internet, much as those Croats, Muslims, Albanians, or Serbs who have railed at me for years, don't just disagree with the message - they hate the messenger. Just look at the sheer number of hate-mail pointing out Julia is Jewish (thus proving her point even more...).

And it's not just the "uninformed" private citizens doing this. A couple years back, when I published on this blog the results of an ICTY-sponsored inquiry into Bosnian War deaths, a Reuters correspondent tried to discredit the scoop by calling it "reports circulating on Serbian weblogs" and "internet rumours."

Last week I was at the University of Michigan, at a conference about Europe and globalization. One of the panels was dedicated to the future of Kosovo, and it happened to be on the very day Martti Ahtisaari presented his plan to Belgrade and Pristina. I had the dubious pleasure of sitting on the panel with two top Albanian lobbyists in the U.S., who turned the session into their political rally (most of the audience were ethnic Albanians). Nothing I could say to that crowd would have made the slightest difference. All they wanted to know was what the world owed the Albanians for their centuries of suffering under the brutal, fascist, genocidal Serbs, and how dare anyone suggest any of the "history" presented by the lobbyists (or the people from the audience, which was often even more "flavorful") was anything but absolutely accurate?!

And then people wonder why there's hatred and war.

The Sum of Empire

I've read (and written) many pieces about the American Empire, but this one, today at LewRockwell.com, strikes me as possibly the very best:

"Bush the Empire Slayer," by Bernard Chazelle

Informative, analytical, and poetic at the same time. Somewhat of a rarity in this day and age.

Plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute

No doubt, those who suffered under Saddam Hussein's regime welcomed his hanging earlier today. As did those who masterminded the Imperial invasion of Iraq in 2003, some of the very same people who gave Hussein weapons and support back in the 1980s, and a carte blanche for the atrocities he was hanged for.

Debating the fairness of his trial or the legitimacy of the court is a moot point now. Let me dwell for a moment on the timing of Hussein's execution, though. You see, today is the first day of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice that marks the end of the hajj. It is a holiday marked by ritual slaughter of lambs - sacrifices - to celebrate the fulfillment of Muslims' religious duty to make pilgrimage to Mecca.

Because he was executed on this day, and his last words (reportedly) called for jihad, Saddam Hussein may well become a martyr for millions of Muslims. That's a long way from being a secular dictator who waged war on the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s. And it was American intervention that created "Saddam the martyr," of that there is no question.

Napoleon's foreign minister, Talleyrand, once commented on a politically motivated murder: "Worse than a crime, it was a blunder." ("C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute." - Lucien Bonaparte Mem. an. 1804 (1882) I. 432, quoted here)

While I consider the 2003 invasion and the subsequent occupation of Iraq clearly evil, the execution of Saddam Hussein, and on a major Islamic holiday no less, is seriously stupid.

The Last Christmas

Antiwar.com today has a whole section dedicated to the Christmas Truce of 1914. Four months into the Great War, German, British and French troops in the trenches spontaneously ceased killing each other and spent a day exchanging gifts, playing football and caroling. Afraid that the truce might end the war altogether, generals on both sides ordered the resumption of hostilities and threatened punishment against anyone who even contemplated a truce again. The war went on for three more years, killing millions and mortally wounding European civilization.

Out of its ashes arose the Versailles system, a conflicted Middle East, a vengeful (soon to be Nazi) Germany, and the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, Europe was finished. What exists today is the pale shadow of a once-great civilization, a decadent, nihilistic, post-modernist mess. The mere mention of Christmas has become forbidden in the "tolerance"-obsessed statist anti-culture that is the West today.

The Communist experiment has nearly destroyed eastern Europe. Conflicts created by the post-1918 partition of the Middle East are fueling a global resurgence of Islamic jihad. The American Empire, which arose from World War Two and scored a Pyrrhic victory in the Cold War, is now bleeding itself to death all over the world.

In some ways, that day in 1914 was perhaps the last true Christmas in the West.

There is no going back to that time, of course. And, given that the men who stopped the truce and willingly took their countries to war were a product of that time as much as the soldiers who caroled together after four months of trying to kill each other... I would say that's a good thing. But if there is to be a future for European civilization, we must come to a realization that the past 92 years have not been "progress," but rather a tragedy of some magnitude.

Dying for nothing

A brilliant, heartfelt and altogether too true piece by Fred Reed:

"It’s all but official: The war in Iraq is lost... The troops from now on will die for a war that they already know is over. They are dying for politicians. They are dying for nothing. By now they must know it."

I won't quote more. Wouldn't do it justice. Go read it yourself.

Oh, but the Democrats are in charge now, and everything will be different, right? And as soon as Barack Obama replaces Dubya on the White Marble Throne, things will change, right?

Wrong.

Random Airport Thoughts

I'm on my way to Bosnia again, on family business - though, being a workaholic, I fully intend to do some investigative analysis once there.

Right this moment, I'm sitting on the floor in the corner of the departure lounge of the Vienna Airport, the only place where one can find a free electrical outlet. Most people toting laptops keep them on for an hour or so at most. I have a three-hour layover. I'll be damned if I spend it watching the battery indicator.

I would have been outraged at this obvious oversight on part of the airport management, had I not learned better on my frequent trips to the Old Continent; thanks to their advanced cell phone networks, Europeans tend to use their mobile phones the way Americans use laptops. Besides, at least they do have free Wi-Fi. At the Dulles Airport in Washington, I was barely able to register a signal - for a pay-per-use T-Mobile network, ironically operated by Germans.

Flying in this day and age includes a set of humiliating "security" rituals one has to subject himself to in order to enter a departure concourse. Ever since the idiotic Richard Reed tried to set his shoes on fire, people are made to pad through the security checkpoints barefoot. We never did find out whether Reed's shoes were actually explosive or not. The shoeless requirement has recently been joined by the liquids restriction (3 oz. in the U.S., 100 ml in the E.U.), resulting from an alleged terror plot from this summer.

A thought occurred to me, seeing all the signs and warnings about the danger of toiletries. In order to keep winning, the jihadists don't have to carry out a single successful terrorist attack. Or even bother to try. All it takes is to feed some misinformation about theoretical plots using far-fetched and, frankly, ludicrous methods. Obsessed with "security," the Empire would obligingly react in the predictably paranoid fashion.

I can just imagine some two-bit jihadist "confessing" under torture the existence of "underwear bombs," and the resulting strip-searches of air travelers. Maybe the government "security" bureaucracies would start requiring all passengers to change into hospital gowns and disposable slippers, duly stocked at specialized concessions stores at airports (provided by Halliburton on a no-bid contract, perhaps?). Opportunities for humiliation are endless. The jihadist scum can just sit back and cackle at the stupid, gullible kuffar. Which they probably do already, come to think of it.

I'm all for actual security, but government bureaucracies are institutionally incapable of providing it. The sorry sight of shoeless travelers and baggies filled with toothpaste, lotions and perfume is demonstration enough.

The Germans are coming!

Germany is about to turn Bundeswehr into an international intervention force, writes Financial Times. Great. In the words of another blogger, "that's the real problem with the European Union, isn't it... not enough armed Germans with a mandate for international intervention."

On one hand, more German involvement in "peacekeeping" makes me nervous. One of the first things the reunified Germany did was browbeat the nascent EU into dismembering Yugoslavia, back in 1991. Berlin used the Bosnian war to deploy the Luftwaffe outside of Germany for the first time since 1945. The Kosovo Albanian terrorists ("KLA") were originally trained by BND, the German intelligence. The 1999 NATO aggression was actually the first time German troops went to war since 1945, against a country and a people their Nazi predecessors had targeted for destruction with particular malice.

On the other hand, once German troops occupied Kosovo (again), they acted more like caricatures of Nazis from BBC comedies, fleeing in panic before Albanian mobs when even the French showed more spine.

There isn't much anyone can to do stop the Bundestag and Frau Kanzler Merkel from sending German boys to kill and die in foreign lands for the "greater glory of humanitarian imperialism." That is, until those occupied by the "humanitarians" let their displeasure show through bombs and bullets, just as those occupied by the Nazis once did.

27 years for....?

Momcilo Krajisnik, former Speaker of the Bosnian parliament and that of the Bosnian Serbs, was sentenced yesterday by the Hague Inquisition to 27 years in prison (for a man his age, that's a de facto life sentence).

According to Andy Wilcoxson of Slobodan-Milosevic.org, the Inquisition could not find a direct link between Krajisnik and any of the crimes committed (allegedly or demonstrably) by the Bosnian Serbs in the course of the war. So they convicted him of supposedly belonging to a "joint criminal enterprise" to establish a "Greater Serbia" - a fictitious, quasi-legal category developed for the Inquisition by an American lawyer in order to justify blanket indictments of Serb political and military leaders.

As an example of the Inquisition's deliberate duplicity, Wilcoxson cites that "proof" of Krajisnik's alleged participation in a Serb criminal conspiracy was a statement he made in March 1992 that supposedly set off a Serb "expulsion programme." Wilcoxson demonstrates the statement directly referred to the Cutilheiro peace plan (the one Alija Izetbegovic's illegitimate government rejected). To the best of my knowledge, no one at the Inquisition has ever bothered to present evidence that a "Serb expulsion programme" was more than a figment of the prosecutors' imagination; its existence was treated as an established fact.

Naser Oric, who boasted of his atrocities and even filmed them, got two years for "failing to stop human rights abuses" or some such nonsense. Krajisnik gets 27 years for alleged participation (based on deliberately misinterpreted evidence) in a fictitious conspiracy.

Let's call this what it is: "Walking while Serb."

Ahtisaari: Patron of the SS?

I've long considered Martti Ahtisaari of Finland a Serbophobe simply because he was an agent of the Empire in 1999 and subsequently a Board member of the International Crisis Group. His statement that Serbs bore collective guilt for what (allegedly) happened in 1999 - and, by obvious implication, that Albanians bore no guilt whatsoever, collective or individual, for what has happened since - did not surprise me much.

According to Carl Savich of Serbianna.com, however, there's another reason Ahtisaari is a Serbophobe: during his presidency, the Finnish government wanted to sponsor a monument to Nazis! Savich writes that Ahtisaari's government wanted to bankroll a monument to the Finnish Waffen-SS volunteers, some 1400 members of the Waffen-SS division "Wiking." (This is in addition to the Finnish troops who fought against the Soviet Union between 1940 and 1945, as allies of Nazi Germany.)

Retired NY Times reporter David Binder wrote that Ahtisaari was one of the Finns displaced by the Soviet invasion of Karelia during the 1940 Winter War. So, it stands to reason he would have anti-Soviet (and anti-Russian, by extension) sentiments. A lot of the early 1990s Serbophobic propaganda played on leftover Cold War stereotypes, endeavoring to portray the Serbs as "Communists" and "Russians lite." Ahtisaari would have absorbed this propaganda when he was involved in the early EU efforts to mediate the conflict between Yugoslav republics - efforts that failed miserably when Germany strong-armed the rest of EU countries into recognizing the unilateral secession of Slovenia and Croatia.

So, Ahtisaari has a family history of being displaced by Russians; his country was allied with Hitler in WW2; he sponsored a monument to the Waffen-SS during his presidency, and he was in position to acquire anti-Serb bias as a diplomat involved in Yugoslav affairs in the early 1990s. I'm no psychologist, but I can see how all that would predispose him towards, say, Kosovo Albanians - who were actually allied with Hitler themselves, but claimed they were victims of "Serb Nazis," and came up with horror stories accusing the Serbian authorities of Hitleresque crimes. Although these stories have never been substantiated, they served as the propaganda justification for NATO's invasion, so anyone involved in that enterprise cannot afford to disavow them. And Ahtisaari was very much involved.

But the issue here isn't whether Ahtisaari is biased. That's been obvious even without these background details that have recently emerged. The issue is what to do about him? Would his inclination towards the Waffen-SS be enough of a political tarnish to have him removed? Or are charges of sympathy for the Nazis taken seriously only when their target is an enemy of the Empire, not its agent?

(Edited on September 18 for clarity)