Ignore the lessons of Yugoslavia at your peril

or, why 'Balkanization' isn't what you think and "retreat to hold" strategy is doomed to fail

On this day, 30 years ago, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence and the slow and violent death of Yugoslavia officially began. My American readers may not care about this quaint historical fact, except they should. As someone who lived through the demise of Yugoslavia, it's my duty to warn them there are entirely too many similarities between what happened there and what's afflicting their own country right about now. 

Yugoslavia, too, believed in diversity as strength (called "brotherhood and unity") and "equity" (equality of outcomes, achieved by elevating some and denigrating others). There, too, everyone was equal - but the ruling politicians were more equal than others. There, too, inflation and national debt were spiraling out of control.

The political system was a version of Communism adapted by Dear Leader Josip Broz Tito, who was 11 years dead by that point. The country was divided into six "republics" - and one of them was subdivided further , with two provinces carved out - and ruled by a Presidency, a council of eight. Things were already falling apart, but once Germany reunited and Communism failed across eastern Europe, all of a sudden ethnic nationalism flared up.

What I'm going to say next will probably go against what you've read in the news, seen on CNN or learned from "history" books. I don't care. I know what happened because I was there. My goal isn't to relitigate whose cause in Yugoslavia was just (the rest of this blog speaks to that) but to address the argument of some Americans along the lines of "Balkanization is the way! Get out of cities, move to the countryside, form communities with like-minded people, build our own society there, etc." Because I don't think that will work. Let me explain why. 

In June 1991, the republics of Slovenia and Croatia moved to secede. The Yugoslav presidency was deadlocked on how to react, with one of the key votes being the representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a weak-willed Serb whose mysterious and murky elevation to that position over a better qualified candidate suddenly became clear. In the power vacuum, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) - where Marxist indoctrination trumped warfighting ability - decided to send a small, lightly armed force of fresh conscripts to "restore constitutional order" on the border between Slovenia and Austria. Due to their rules of engagement, they were ambushed and massacred by Slovenian militia.

At this point, the political leader of Serbia (Slobodan Milosevic) makes the biggest strategic mistake: he decides to let Slovenia go. On a moral level, that may have been the correct choice, as keeping the Slovenes in Yugoslavia by force seemed wrong. Yet by doing so, Yugoslavia's sovereignty and survival were effectively forfeit.

Yugoslav military intelligence actually managed to infiltrate the Croatian government and secretly film them buying weapons from Germany and preparing for war. The footage was aired on national television. But instead of sending a force to occupy Zagreb, arrest those involved as traitors and crush the rebellion in its infancy, Belgrade did... nothing.

When Croatia seceded, it was the local Serbs - who made up a majority on about a third of its territory, and had suffered a genocide during WW2 when Croatia was an ally of Nazi Germany - rose up and counter-seceded. This was not done on orders from Belgrade, and the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) was never under Belgrade's direct command and control. This will prove important - and fatal - later on.

At this point, it's important to note that Croatia was not fighting a "war for independence," as Zagreb claimed. The Croats' right to secede from Yugoslavia was obviously not contested - not by the disintegrating federal government, not by Milosevic, not even by the local Serbs. While doing that might have given them the upper hand from the standpoint of international law, instead they chose to dispute only the amount of territory Croatia could claim as its own. Naturally, the Croats seized the vacated high ground and claimed they were victims of "Yugo-Serbian aggression."

The JNA actually got dragged into the conflict when Croat militias attacked their garrisons. When the JNA defended itself - de facto siding with local Serbs - the cries of "aggression" redoubled. The final ceasefire line, negotiated by the UN in late 1991, saw the Army and the Serbs in control of territories that mostly had a Serb majority.

By then, however, the Badinter commission - a bunch of European lawyers that appointed itself the arbiter of Yugoslavia's fate - had decided that the country was "in dissolution." Though the Yugoslav constitution said its PEOPLE had the right to self-determination, the commission said no, it was was the REPUBLICS, not people, and their borders were to be considered international ones.

In practice, this meant that the Serbs went from the legal and moral high ground (maintaining Yugoslavia as their homeland) to being minorities in Croatia and Bosnia - where its Muslim and Croat communities sought independence - and outlaws if they resisted. At the stroke of a foreign pen.

The Serbs in Bosnia agreed to independence (see the pattern?) but sought a power-sharing agreement by which the new country would be partitioned into ethnic cantons - like Switzerland - that would guarantee their rights. Croats agreed. Muslims, backed by the US, reneged on the deal after it had already been signed.

So what did the Serbs do? Instead of declaring the Muslim-dominated government illegitimate and its referendum illegal, they pulled back and basically abandoned several cities - most notably, the capital of Sarajevo. Their strategy was to stake out the territory where they were the majority and declared the Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SRBiH, later known as Republika Srpska, RS). The idea was to leverage their military power to negotiate a political deal.

Belgrade had already implicitly recognized Bosnia's separation (again, perhaps the moral thing to do, but a strategic mistake), declaring the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia and Montenegro. It didn't matter - foreign powers refused to recognize it as Yugoslavia's successor, and blamed Belgrade for "aggression" against Bosnia (!).

At this point, Muslims and Croats made a major tactical mistake: they attacked the JNA, which had been recalled and was retreating towards the FRY. Their officers later said this was in an attempt to capture the JNA's heavy weapons. In that, they mostly failed - but they radicalized the Serbs officers, NCOs and enlisted who might have otherwise stayed neutral to enlist in the Bosnian Serb military (VRS). One of those officers was Gen. Ratko Mladic, who took command from the ineffective JNA generals and proceeded to made quick work of Muslim commanders over the next three years. So it's not as if the Serbs were the only ones to make mistakes here.

As a consequence of Serbs giving up the moral and legal high ground, however, their situation was grim. Yugoslavia, built on some two million Serb lives over the two world wars, was gone. In less than a year, from June 1991 to May 1992, some two million Serbs went from being equal citizens of their own nation-state to being outlaws in their own homes. Their own RS and RSK were considered rogue states, while the separatists in Croatia and the Muslim government of Bosnia were internationally recognized as legitimate! That whole "let them go and hold our own in the countryside" worked out so well, didn't it?

It gets worse. By 1993, the US and NATO are openly involved, aiding Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims. Washington stops a war between Croats and Muslims - who had fallen out over territory - and forges them into an anti-Serb alliance. That's another example of their strategic error, as they thought it temporary but it's ended up poisoning their relations ever since. But for the US purposes, it worked perfectly.

UN peacekeepers were swept aside in May 1995, by US-trained Croatian troops, who overwhelmed the RSK enclave of Western Slavonia ("Operation Flash"). Then, in August, Croats launch a blitzkrieg against the rest of RSK. Neither the UN nor Yugoslavia lift a finger; it is said that Milosevic was either angry the RSK leadership was disobeying him, or was trying to disavow them to protect FRY proper. As we'll see later, it didn't work. With the RSK wiped out, the Croat troops move into Bosnia, while NATO launches airstrikes against the RS.

What happens then is an anomaly. The US sidelines the RS leadership by charging them with war crimes, so Milosevic would have to negotiate on behalf of all Serbs - thus validating the Narrative about the wars being "Serbian aggression." Yet by some miracle (if you read my review of Richard Holbrooke's memoir, you'll understand) he somehow manages to negotiate the Dayton Peace Agreement. The Muslims ended up being the reluctant ones in Dayton. They believed they could hold out and achieve "final victory" - i.e. destruction and expulsion of Serbs like in RSK - but the Clinton administration needed a peace deal right then and there, so it pressured them to sign.

Dayton pulled a partial victory from the jaws of defeat. While the RS leadership was angry that Milosevic gave up "too much" territory - including all of Sarajevo - they eventually realized that Dayton gave them recognition as a legitimate political entity within Bosnia.

Meanwhile, the RSK was a total loss. Even the eastern region bordering with FRY was eventually handed over to Zagreb, "reintegrated" into Croatia. Two thirds of the Serbs living there pre-war had been expelled, and any who thought of returning - mostly the very old - harassed and abused.

Being a "key factor of peace" in Dayton didn't save Milosevic, though. In March 1999, the US launches an attack on Serbia itself and occupies Kosovo, on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists there. Because suddenly the Badinter opinion is irrelevant and the law is whatever NATO says it is.

The Serbs complain this is unfair and point to a UN resolution (1244) that says Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia. So the Americans organize a "color revolution" in Belgrade in October 2000, get rid of Milosevic, and have him put on trial for war crimes - where he dies under mysterious circumstances, without a verdict, in March 2006. Two months after his death, the US-backed regime in Montenegro rigs the independence referendum and the last vestige of Yugoslavia is officially abolished.

Macedonia (aka FYROM, now North Macedonia) got some UN peacekeepers in 1992 out of fear of "Serbian invasion" that never materialized. Instead, its service to the West was repaid by forcing it to federalize in 2001, after US-backed Albanian separatists claimed a third of its territory. Again, some rebellions are more legitimate than others. Might makes right, etc.

While the sordid history of Yugoslavia's demise is an object lesson in the perils of making deals with foreign empires to fight your wars - only to realize that you were used to fight theirs, and to hell with your goals - that's cold comfort to the Serbs, or the point I set out to make about the merits of the "retreat and Balkanize" strategy.

Remember, at no point did it occur to anyone in the Serb leadership to deny Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims or "Macedonians" their independence (Albanians were different; they had a nation-state next door, and were trying to claim historic Serbian lands). The prevailing thinking every step of the way was "we'll retreat and regroup and try to preserve our own and maybe they'll leave us alone, and if they don't we'll fight until they do."

How did that Grand Strategy work out? Objectively speaking, overwhelmingly poorly. Dayton was an outlier, obviously. And even Dayton didn't really end the war, but only its kinetic dimension. Since then, the Muslims have endeavored to dismantle the RS and create a centralized state by means ranging from lawfare and leveraging foreign support to tactical demographics (targeted resettling of internally displaced people) and even a rigged census.

Croats and Albanians did not stop until they claimed all the territory they could, and expelled or killed all the Serbs living there that could be a "disrupting factor." As I just described, the Bosnian Muslims are still working on it. The "let them go we'll protect the Serbs' minority rights" backfired spectacularly in Montenegro as well, where the NATO-backed regime embarked on a campaign of aggressive nation-building and historical revisionism intended to turn the once-proudest part of Serbdom into a new group identity that's rabidly anti-Serb.

THIS is why I am skeptical of Americans who believe some kind of peaceful separation and Balkanization of their own country is, or may, be possible. Once you cede legitimacy to the other side, especially an enemy that has no intent or incentive to leave you alone - but seeks to either subjugate or eliminate you outright - you lose the war even before the first bullet is fired.

Believe me. I was there.

Kosovo: Still an Evil Little War

March 24, 1999 is a date that rightly lives in infamy. On that day, NATO launched an unprovoked war of naked aggression, violating its own charter and international law, while claiming to be on a "humanitarian" mission.

For 78 days, the outnumbered and outgunned Yugoslavia (which would later be split into Serbia and Montenegro) resisted, turning back ground attacks from Albania, capturing a trio of US soldiers, and even shooting down a F-117 "stealth" bomber. In the end, abandoned by all and threatened with carpet bombing, the government in Belgrade accepted a compromise armistice - which NATO immediately tore up, letting the Albanian separatists terrorize the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo.

Thousands died in the war. Tens of thousands have died since, from cancers caused by depleted uranium dust. Most non-Albanians were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo, and the province turned over to warlords and organized crime. In 2008, the province illegally declared independence, which is not yet recognized by the UN.

Thanks to the shameless propaganda and spin, the Kosovo War is considered by most American politicians to be a great success and even a shining example of virtue in the "liberal world order" the US is upholding through its military might. Only one candidate in the 2016 election dared disagree with that conventional wisdom even a little; once elected, he ended up sticking with the inertia of US policy, delivering a pointless "normalization agreement" that did something Israel, a bit for the "personal project" of the Clintons, and nothing at all for the US. He was then replaced by an establishment warmonger.

 

Since the war, Serbia has served as the test bed for the first "color revolution" (October 5, 2000) and turned into a failed state ruled by a succession of servile slugs, each worse than the one before. The Atlantic Empire continued to enable Albanian aggression, in hopes of rekindling its romance with dar-al-Islam even as it bombed and invaded Iraq, Libya and Syria and fomented revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere that claimed even more Muslim lives.

Yet the Kosovo War served as a wake-up call for Russia, which had until then lionized the West even as it was being robbed blind and buried alive by Western "democratizers" and their domestic helpers. Within six months of NATO's land grab, Vladimir Putin was at the helm in the Kremlin. The rest, as they say, is history.

🔻#OTD in 1⃣9⃣9⃣9⃣ @NATO started bombing #Yugoslavia. For the first time since #WWII an aggression was committed against a sovereign European nation, an active participant in the anti-Hitler coalition, one of the @UN founders.
🔻https://t.co/EZqgWPmryq pic.twitter.com/fdPjy0eFz6

— Russian Embassy in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) March 24, 2021

It is tempting to declare the saga of Kosovo over, 21 years after the war, as the quisling regime in Belgrade is busily recognizing the Albanian land grab. But the Atlantic Empire wouldn't be the first to write the Serbs off and declare them conquered and beaten, only to see them rise again. 

Next year in Prizren. The East Remembers.

(If this sounds familiar, it's because you may have read an earlier version here)

Forbidden history: WW2 documentary series now complete

I have just found out that the final parts of the documentary series "Kingdom of Yugoslavia in WW2" - which I've mentioned here before - have been finalized and posted, completing the 18-episode project.

According to executive producer Miloslav Samardžić, the trailer for episodes 13-18 has been posted on Vimeo, where the entire 18-episode run is up for purchase or rent. 

It took the Kragujevac-based Pogledi and the society of former Royal Yugoslav Army soldiers in the UK nearly four years to crowdfund and produce the series, which shows the previously untold story of the war in Yugoslavia. 

The first twelve episodes were offered to the Serbian Radio Television (RTS), which was supposed to reply by the end of May but has yet to do so, Samardžić said.

He says the series shows a much-needed alternate perspective to the movies glorifying the Communist Partisans, which are currently being shown on RTS in re-runs.

"Our story isn't made up," Samardžić said, adding that buying or renting the series on Vimeo will support the producers' new project, a 90-minute documentary "General Draža Mihailović."

Brexit

As I process the news coming out of the UK, I can't help but think of 25 years ago, when my own country was dismembered as a ritual sacrifice to help summon the EU into existence.

More specifically, Germany demanded of other EEC members to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia - which had been declared unilaterally, illegally, and without consideration of the population that wished to remain in Yugoslavia - in exchange for backing the Maastricht Treaty that would convert the European Economic Community into a political union:

“From a position where the EC members were 11-to-1 in favor of maintaining the unity of Yugoslavia, Germany succeeded at 4 a.m. in forcing approval  for the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states.” (see here)

While I do wish the people of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all the best, and hope that their divorce from the EU (and maybe each other?) goes more smoothly and peacefully than what happened in Yugoslavia... turnabout is fair play.

The Essential Saker - now available on Amazon

One of my long-time readers, the Saker soared into prominence last year following the Maidan putsch in Kiev, cutting through the smokescreen of lies about Russia and the Ukraine with his incisive analysis. He has not always been right, but he has been consistently straightforward about his opinions, and that's a rare quality in a blogger these days.

He has also accomplished something that I have only thought about doing, and collected his most important articles into a book. "The essential Saker: From the trenches of the emerging multipolar world" came out yesterday, on Kindle and in hardcover. I would go so far as to describe it as an essential resource for understanding the conflict between the Atlantic Empire and Russia.

I'll strive to post a proper review once I've read through the 600+ pages of the volume, but I confess to skipping ahead to the latter chapters, when he puts the events of Yugoslavia's demise into the context of Empire's war on dissenters. If the Saker's explanation of how the Empire has used Islam and Muslims as a weapon (always to their detriment) is the only thing you take away from the book, it will make a big difference in your understanding of the world today. 

Bombing for Peace, and Other Hypocrisies

From Sputnik News, January 26, 2015:

Addressing reporters in New Delhi on Sunday, US President Obama has once again repeated his famous mantra "large countries shouldn't bully smaller countries," prompting the question: Wouldn't it be nice if the US President looked in the mirror before blaming others?

Trouble is, I think Nobel Peace Prize Winner Just For Showing Up has been looking in the mirror all these years - and seeing only the prettiest, cleverest, nicest, most righteous man in the world, who can literally do no wrong.

The race card has little to do with it, mind. His two predecessors acted the exact same way, even though - in the "social justice" narrative imposing itself on the American public today - they were steeped in "privilege." It's as if to ascend to the Throne of Saint Abraham, one has to recite the Creed: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

That, by the way, is Latin for "What Jupiter is allowed, an ox is not" - fittingly enough, from the story of the Rape of Europa. So these self-appointed Jupiters declare themselves exempt from all rules and strictures, while using the very law they flout as a cudgel to clobber others with. Public declarations of their righteousness and others' (supposed) wickedness are just insult to injury.

Only in the demented minds of these reality-deniers can there exist such a thing as "humanitarian intervention" via "bombs for peace". I don't know whether the latter phrase was actually coined by the late, unlamented "Dick" Holbrooke, but he used it to argue for "humanitarian" intervention in Bosnia, in 1995.

The bombing was completely unnecessary; Holbrooke's vaunted peace treaty was little different from the 1992 treaty his client - jihadist fanatic Alija Izetbegović - rejected at Washington's urging. In another ironic twist, the bombs continued to kill the very people they were supposed to be "saving": the bombed-out areas were abandoned by the Bosnian Serbs after the treaty, and settled by Bosnian Muslims - dying in droves ever since from both unexploded ordnance and effects of the oh-so-"safe" depleted uranium.

That quote from Tacitus comes to mind: they make a desolation, and call it peace.

But don't take my word for it: read George Szamuely's excellent book, "Bombs for Peace: NATO's Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia". One of these days - soon, I promise! - I will give it a proper review; been meaning to do this for months, but life got in the way. Suffice to say that Szamuely meticulously documents the West's destruction of Yugoslavia, from its very beginning in the late 1980s, to the evil little war over Kosovo.

More and more people - the Russian leadership, for example - each day are coming to the realization that the Atlantic Empire rests largely on this false narrative of the noble knight riding to humanitarian rescue, and that the root of these lies can be found in Yugoslavia. Szamuely's book is a handy compendium of facts that can help you take apart that false narrative. So perhaps the next time whoever is Jupiter-in-Chief says something breathtakingly stupid and hypocritical, it will be easier to see it for what it is.

Forbidden History: Yugoslavia in WW2

I rarely do advertising here, but today I'll make an exception.

Over the past year, Kragujevac historian Miloslav Samardžić has worked to make a documentary about the untold history of WW2 in Yugoslavia. The first six episodes of the series, "Kingdom of Yugoslavia in WW2", are now available for purchase here.

Proceeds from the first six episodes will go towards the funding of the following six. You can also buy the book on which the series is based.

I had a small part in this endeavor as well, as a pro bono translator/consultant on the series' English subtitles. So while I have no financial stake in this documentary either way, I would like to see it continue out of both professional curiosity and a desire to dig up as many facts as possible about this crucial period in history.

A Telling Slip

Here is a still from the minute-long propaganda video by "Fatherland" party of Ukrainian "Prime Minister" Yahtzee, following his trip to Brussels:

Notice anything? Right between Italy and Romania? Instead of the shards of Yugoslavia, there is now just one country: Croatia.

Is this ignorance of geography, as some have suggested, or perhaps outdated maps? I doubt it. Unlike Americans, the rest of the world actually bothers studying geography, and while I can imagine getting some frontiers wrong, erasing half a dozen countries is still a bit much.

Nor is this a pre-1991 map, as Germany is united, while Czechs and Slovaks are separated. Also note that Cyprus (a tiny speck of blue disappearing off the southeastern edge of the picture) is correctly noted as an EU member.

Far be it from me to suggest that this map betrays a delusion of the Empire that some day all of what was once Yugoslavia would be "Croatia" - though I am kind of curious what Slovenians, "Bosnians," "Montenegrians", Macedonians and "Kosovians" think of that. And I can't shake off the feeling the Serbs are being systematically bullied and brainwashed to that very end.

The Only Principle

Time and again, RT presenters and hosts ask me what I make of the U.S. selectively applying international law. Why is secession of X perfectly acceptable, while secession of Y is wrong and condemned? Why is territorial integrity of Z not up for debate, but Q can be carved up, and is?

One can analyze the details of each particular case, examine the legality of each actor and action, and still be none the wiser. Not because the pattern does not exist, but because those details are, quite frankly, irrelevant to it. The answer is in understanding how the West thinks.

In a particularly ironic turn of history, the political class in "the West" has internalized Lenin's "logic" of Who/Whom. According to this way of thinking, the "what" does not matter, only "who" does it to "whom". If Washington is carving up a country, that's fine (e.g. Yugoslavia, then Serbia). If Washington is backing a coup ("color revolutions"), that's fine too. If Washington is invading and occupying countries on made-up pretexts (Iraq, Libya) or fomenting civil wars (Syria), or waging undeclared drone warfare (Yemen, Pakistan) that is likewise fine. Washington, and its clients, can do anything, because they are by (their own) definition the "good guys."

Anyone else, however, is a different matter. (U.S. clients) Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceding from Yugoslavia is OK, but Serbs seceding from them is "aggression." Croatian and Bosnian borders are sacred, and cannot be changed, but borders of Serbia can and should, because ethnic Albanians (U.S. client) want to claim the province of Kosovo as their own independent state. And then the borders of "Kosovo" become sacred, and cannot be changed.

Not only was Serbia denied the right to defend itself from the armed Albanian rebellion, it was attacked by NATO in a clearly illegal war of aggression. NATO occupied Kosovo, and in 2008 recognized the illegal declaration of independence that clearly contravened the UN resolution (1244) upholding the territorial integrity of Serbia. It doesn't matter what the Albanians have done, or what the Serbs have not - the Serbs are a priori wrong.
 
Just to make sure, Washington installed a quisling regime in Belgrade that said all this was perfectly acceptable, and even muscled the World Court to redefine the question in order to make the land grab appear legal.

To summarize: it is an article of faith in the Atlantic Empire that Washington and its clients (EU, etc.) can do no wrong, while their victims can do no right. Once you understand that as their sole guiding principle (for lack of a better word), all the other pieces fall into place.

Agent of Albion?

Reader "Endless Struggle" sent in a comment concerning last week's piece on the Communist takeover of Yugoslavia:

Good analysis of the significance of Nov. 29, however, not enough credit goes to the British in "making" Tito, especially since the recently disclosed CIA analysis of his speech indicates that the Tito of WWII and later is not the original Tito.

"The name is Broz. Joe Broz" (via the Daily Mail)

He's referring to this document (PDF), in which the NSA analysts argue that Tito's speech patterns belie his origin story - but conclude, tellingly, that it doesn't matter, since Yugoslavia's ruler is doing the West's bidding anyway.

We now know - thanks to Michael Lees' book, "The Rape of Serbia" - the British were recruiting and training Croatian communist for a British-controlled guerrilla army in Yugoslavia in late 1941, a full half year before their official history said the British even heard of Tito. And David Martin, in his book "Web of Disinformation", tells us that is was Churchill that convinced Stalin to switch Soviet support from Mihailovic to Tito. You see, Stalin did care about who was killing Germans because the SU was close to breaking in 1941 - 42. Meanwhile Britain is safe and secure behind the Channel and the combined British and American fleets. In fact, Gen. Eisenhower, in his private journal,  accuses the British of cowardliness for not fighting the Germans by deliberately delaying D-Day for nearly two years. 

The assertion that Tito was Stalin's pawn rings false on many levels. For one thing, there is 1948, and the Tito-initiated split. But way before that, there was the case of Mustafa Golubic. A WW1 Serbian veteran, Golubic became a NKVD general and ran several Soviet networks in the West (e.g. he's alleged to be the mastermind behind the assassination of Trotsky). He was sent to Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941, to be Tito's minder - and in June 1941, he was ratted out to the Gestapo, tortured and executed. Although officially it is still a mystery who sold him out, rumors allege it was Tito's aide Milovan Djilas, on Tito's orders.

Also, since Churchill had liaison officers at Tito's HQ, it is much more credible that Tito arranged the Jajce event to coincide with Churchill asking Stalin (and not the other way around) in Tehran to abandon Mihailovic, than the official story. Certainly, the British betrayal of the royal Yugoslav government was entirely too enthusiastic for something allegedly forced on them by Stalin. Though I wouldn't put it past Tito to play Moscow and London against each other, for his benefit.

And since Tito's true significance was to cover up the Serbian Holocaust and save the indispensable Roman Catholic Church for the Cold War becomes logical and clear. Or perhaps we are to believe the British are so noble that they "fought" Hitler out of pure altruism. then I suggest you read John Costello's "Ten Days to Destiny: How the British Tried to Strike a Deal with Hitler".
As many have commented, since the end of the Cold War, the true history of WWII is only now seeing the light of day. 

I, for one, never thought Britain fought Hitler out of altruism. In both 1914 and 1939, London went to war to safeguard the Empire - and in both cases, only hastened its demise. As far back as the Seven Years' War, it has been British policy to foment unrest in Europe. So I have no trouble believing Churchill's intent was to have the Germans and the Soviets smash each other to bits, whereupon Britain would leverage their American cousins' (Churchill himself was half-American) manpower and industry to conquer and rule the ashes.

On one hand, it didn't quite work out that way: Britain never really recovered from the war, sliding into moribund welfarism. India became independent in 1947; the rest of the Empire followed soon enough. On the other hand, the spirit of British imperialism moved across the Atlantic and infested the American host; hence the Cold War and the Atlantic Empire of today. But as I've been pointing out for over a decade, that hasn't been going well for the imperialists, either.

Of course, none of that is any comfort to the people they've sacrificed like pieces in a board game, in the 1940s or today. It just goes to show that, once you agree to be a piece on the board, you lose your say in how the game is played.

Still, conniving as the British - and their American apprentices - may be, they are hardly all-powerful. While they can and do a lot of damage, their dreams of conquest routinely fail. Or as one famous Englishman wrote, in an entirely appropriate context, "Oft evil will shall evil mar."

Usurpation Day

On this day, exactly seventy years ago, a group of revolutionaries meeting in the Bosnian town of Jajce proclaimed themselves the only legitimate government of Yugoslavia.

By itself, their declaration meant little. Yugoslavia hardly existed in practice, partitioned between the German Reich and its Hungarian, Bulgarian and Croat allies. The royal government, which in April 1941 left the country to continue the fight from exile (as did the governments of Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and Greece, among others) had appointed General Mihailovich, a staff officer leading the guerrilla movement, their Minister of War and commanding officer of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland. In addition to fighting the Germans, Croats, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Albanians and even some collaborators among the Serbs, Mihailovich's guerrilla also fought the Communist partisans, who emerged following the Nazi invasion of the USSR and made their priority to claim Yugoslavia for the socialist workers' revolution.

By late 1943, after Stalingrad and Kursk, it was clear that Germany would lose the war. That the Soviet tanks would show up was a question not of whether, but of when. Meanwhile, the Western Allies landed in Italy, forcing its surrender in September 1943.

That had multiple consequences for the war in Yugoslavia. Until then, the Italians were able to suppress the genocidal rampages of Croats and Albanians. Afterwards, they had a free hand and full German support, in exchange for Waffen-SS divisions made up of Albanians and Bosnian Muslims (Skenderbeg, Handschar, Kama).

The Communists did nothing to stop the atrocities. In line with their dogma, the Serbs were "oppressors", while the Croats and Albanians were the "oppressed" - so even though the Albanian leadership and the Ustasha were "reactionaries" and "fascists" in the Communist book, the mass murder and expulsion of Serbs were not objectionable as such.

To be fair, Communists weren't the only ones at the meeting in Jajce. Some of the "delegates" were pre-war politicians from opposition ranks: Croat separatists, Bosnian Muslims, and others generally sympathetic to the Communist platform of resurrecting Yugoslavia, but as a federation. If the Communists were the radicals, these "democrats" were their useful idiots.

Meanwhile, the Serbs in Communist ranks have by then so internalized the dogma of their own collective guilt for alleged "bourgeois imperialism", become so fanatical in their faith - and make no mistake, Marxism was a religion, though its deity was of this world - that they not only agreed to stand by while their families were being slaughtered, but to shift blame for the atrocities onto the designated "fascists," while the collectives that participated were actually rewarded. Thus arose the post-war Socialist Republic of Croatia, laying claim to Istria, all the Adriatic coast, Dubrovnik and western Syrmia, for example. Thus came about the "Autonomous province of Kosovo".

Why did the Communists believe that November 1943 was the right time to declare themselves the new rulers of a country they had yet to resurrect from under the Nazi heel? The Red Army was coming, but it would take them another nine months. Could the answer lie in the West?

In 1915, the Serbian Army and government retreated before the German, Austrian and Bulgarian invasion; the survivors reached Entente territory in Greece, and were deployed at the Salonica Front. In September 1918, the Serbs spearheaded the Entente attack and rolled up the front; six weeks later, they had not only liberated their homeland, but were approaching Vienna. The royal Yugoslav government hoped for a repeat performance, with an Allied landing along the Adriatic coast helping Mihailovic launch a general uprising. But the plans for an Adriatic Landing never went beyond the theoretical.

A day before the meeting in Jajce, Stalin met with Churchill in Tehran, and demanded the British switch their support from Mihailovich to Tito's Communists. Churchill wasted no time in agreeing. Supposedly, this is because Tito's men were "killing more Germans" - which was simply not true. But the fact that Stalin's demand and the meeting in Jajce were almost simultaneous suggests it was coordinated on the Communist part.

As for Britain's betrayal, it is a fact of history - only the motivations remain beyond conclusive explanation just yet. There are several theories to explain it, from secret Communist sympathizers in British intelligence (who did exist), to a story that young Churchill was roughed up by some Serbian officers for libeling the Serbs while he covered the Balkan Wars as a journalist. But the best explanation is probably the simplest: to London, the Serbs have ever been but an extension of the hated Russians, so Whitehall preferred a Croat-led Yugoslavia that would keep the Serbs under control. Interestingly enough, Hitler thought the same.

Another clue can be found in the decision of Jajce revolutionaries (calling themselves the "Anti-Fascist Council of People's Liberation of Yugoslavia, or AVNOJ) to ban the royal government from returning to the country. In sections 3 and 4, the AVNOJ leadership is tasked to "review all the international treaties and obligations" the royal government entered into, "for the purpose of nullification or approval", and declared all subsequent treaties made by the royals null and void.

This enabled both London and Washington to effectively confiscate the gold reserves the royals managed to take with them, as "payment" for all the military aid provided to both Mihailovich and the Communists. The remaining gold, hidden in Montenegrin caves, was discovered in 1943 by an enterprising Italian officer - who sent a small portion to Mussolini, gave the half of the remainder to Tito in 1944, and kept the rest for himself. Meanwhile, the Communists kept telling the people the "corrupt plutocrats" of the royal government stole all their gold. And while King Peter II died broke, Tito lived and died like a pharaoh.

In addition to throwing Stalin a bone - on account of the Red Army doing the bulk of the fighting in Europe - the Western Allies had a few more reasons to back Tito. For one, that avoided the sticky matter of the wartime Croatia. Horrific crimes of the Croatian state, backed by the Roman Catholic Church, had disgusted the Italians and unsettled even the Germans. How could anyone ask of the Serbs to re-create Yugoslavia with the Croats, after that? Easy enough: by having Tito denounce the Pavelic regime as "a handful of fascists," then rehabilitate Croatia as a federal republic in the new Yugoslavia. And while the Serbs had to continue apologizing for their existence - "oppressors," remember? - a top Croat official (Stevo Krajacic) was able to tell the families of Serbs murdered in the Jasenovac camp complex,"we killed too few of you here." (1968)

The suppression of Croat atrocities not only made Tito's Yugoslavia possible, it was also extremely useful for keeping the Church of Rome useful during the Cold War, as a tool of anti-Communism in places like Poland.

And so, on that November night in Jajce, a plan approved in Tehran was set in motion. Hitler had already unwittingly provided a template. Eighteen months later, when Soviet tanks drove the Germans out, Tito became the pharaoh of a reanimated Yugoslavia. Though the principal victims of Nazi invaders, and principal fighters against them, Serbs loyal to the king were persecuted, and even those who backed Tito found themselves third-rate subjects in their own country. Adding insult to injury, they were told this nightmare was the ultimate fulfillment of their historical dream of freedom.

Though both Tito and Yugoslavia are long gone, the nightmare endures. Seventy years later, it is high time for the sleeper to awaken. 

Truth, not Absolution

In this week's column over on Antiwar.com, I wrote of eerie similarities - too many to be coincidental - between the policies of the EU and the Atlantic Empire and those of the Third Reich. Specifically, I underlined the parallels between the dismemberment of Yugoslavia between 1941-45 and the one of 1991-95, as well as the hostility towards Russia.

via Wallpapers Online

Mind you, there is a distinction between arguing that the West today is implementing specific National-Socialist policies and simply calling them Nazis, which would be both facetious and inaccurate. To focus on labels and not the substance is a mark of postmodern who/whom-ism, which is not my thing.

One of the readers, however, made a comment I want to expand on here:

Guest, May 11:
"...The only thing that held Yugoslavia together for 35 years was its supreme leader, Marshal Josip Broz “Tito”...."
This, I think, is both a wrong conclusion and harmful to Mr. Malic's argument itself. It is a convenient myth in the West that Yugoslavia was a low hanging fruit, ready to be picked, after Tito's passing away. That is not so.
West has vested interest in promothing that falacy and thereby absolving itself of the horrendous crimes perpetrated on the people of Yugoslavia and of any responsibility for attacking and dismantling a sovereign state.
A handful people with an ax to grind (Tudjman, Izetbegovic, Jansha,) and other anti-Yugoslav elements were supported by the West and assisted in bringing about what is now where Yugoslavia once was.
I do not understand Mr.Malic gifting these criminals an absolution by repeating the myth created in the West, that Yugoslavia existed only because of Tito. Mr. Malic is a good analyst, but, for some unknown reason, naively promotes this myth.

Where to begin? Perhaps with this 2005 essay about Tito, which contains the same argument as I've laid out, albeit much condensed, in the column.

Pointing out facts about the Communist approach to Yugoslavia, the internal boundaries, ethnic engineering and the 1974 Constitution does not, and never shall, absolve the murderers of Yugoslavia, internal or external. Just as pointing out the problems of the first Yugoslavia doesn't validate the Axis invasion and dismemberment of it. Though the Communists certainly did just that, arguing that the "rotten" old Yugoslavia deserved to be destroyed and then reborn in a "revolution".

As I've noted in another essay, the Serbs have paid with millions of lives for believing the lie that those who identified as Croats and Muslims considered the Serbs their kin. Some have, and perhaps given enough time and peace, that could have become the belief of the majority. But time and peace were not to be had. The bitter truth is that becoming Catholic (in Austrian-held lands) or Muslim (in Turkish-held lands) meant escaping the life of oppression and contempt in which the Orthodox Serbs were held by both empires. These converts did not see the Serbs as their kin, but as their inferiors. And in some cases, officially sanctioned victims.

This was the problem with the first Yugoslavia, which King Aleksandar tried to fix by promoting the idea of "one nation, three faiths." After Aleksandar was assassinated in 1934, Regent Prince Pavle tried appeasing the Croats, a policy culminating in 1939 with the unprecedented creation of their own ethnic province (Aleksandar's provinces were geographical, named after rivers). Not two years later, Croat officers sabotaged Yugoslav Army units, Croat civilians greeted the Nazi tanks with flowers, and the Ustasha regime of Ante Pavelić found plenty of those willing to slaughter Serbs with knives, pickaxes, mallets and whatever else was handy.

To argue that Croat atrocities were somehow caused by "Serb oppression" is to ignore the rabid Serbophobia of the Croat identity as articulated by Starčević and Frank, and adopted by Radić and Pavelić. Or the fact that similar atrocities were perpetrated during WW1 in Serbia by the Austro-Hungarian occupation forces. Among them were many that would later welcome the "Independent State of Croatia," including a metalworker from Zagorje called Josip Broz.

Broz supposedly became a Communist during the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, survived the purges of the 1930s and became leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party (KPJ) in 1937. Almost a decade prior, at the 1928 congress in Dresden, the KPJ had decided that Yugoslavia needed to be destroyed, and that the "captive nations" such as Croats, Macedonians, Albanians and Slovenes needed to be "liberated" from "Greater Serbian tyranny."

During the war, the priority of Tito's partisans was establishing pro-Communist institutions, preparing for the inevitable Axis defeat. Their primary target was not the Germans, but the royalist resistance of General Mihailović, which tried to help the Allied war effort by sabotaging roads, railways, and communications and harassing German garrisons. Both sides were aware that they could not defeat the Germans alone; Tito waited for the Soviets, Mihailović waited for the British. In the end, the Soviets showed up, and the British sold out Mihailović.

Triumphant, Tito executed Mihailović, declared the monarchy abolished and the exiled king undesirable, and proceeded to reinvent Yugoslavia. The result was a compromise between the vision from 1928 and practicalities of the time. Why break up a country, when you can rule it as pharaoh? Under Tito, Slovenia exploited the rest of the country for raw materials, Croatia had the entire coastline, and Serbia was cut up into "autonomous provinces" and reduced to WW2 occupation borders (more or less). But the worst part was the imposed doctrine of moral equivalence, in which the royalists were just as evil as the Ustasha, or the Waffen-SS recruited from Muslim populations. Serb guilt for "Chetnik atrocities" (real and imagined) and "oppression" of others in the old kingdom was supposed to balance out the Croatian genocide of Serbs.

Still the Croats were not happy. Even Tito's Yugoslavia was too stifling for them. As Communists in Serbia  (e.g. the so-called "liberals" like the book-banning Latinka Perović, today the gray eminence of the most rabidly pro-Empire "liberal democrats") plumbed the depths of self-hatred, in Croatia they demanded more Croatian pride! Though Tito purged both party leaderships, he gave the Croats most of what they wanted: the 1974 Constitution empowered the republics at the expense of the federal government. Serbia, however, was paralyzed by the requirement that both provinces approve every single decision of the republic legislature, effectively giving the Albanian-dominated Kosovo and a pro-Croat establishment in Vojvodina veto power over Belgrade's affairs.

Such was the situation that Slobodan Milošević sought to repair in 1987-89, only to be accused of "nationalism" and "greater Serbian hegemonism" - both by the self-hating Communists in Serbia that he'd purged, and the leadership of Croatia and Slovenia, who felt their privileged position within Yugoslavia would be endangered. I am not sure Milošević ever understood that the second-rate status of Serbs in Tito's Yugoslavia was never a bug, but a very deliberate feature - he never spoke of it that way, and kept defending Yugoslavia till his dying day. But the party leaderships in other republics understood Tito's setup entirely too well.

This was no "handful of malcontents" as Guest implies in his commentary - Kučan received overwhelming support for his separatist policies in 1990. Tuđman's plan to separate Croatia and expel the Serbs was never challenged by the Croatian opposition. Albanians have laid claim to certain territories since at least 1878, long before there was ever a Yugoslavia, or Tito, or Milošević. Only in the case of Bosnia was there a handful of zealots that ended up running things.
Izetbegović, however, did manage to set himself up as the leader of Muslims - with American help, and the war played no small part in the process - and the parameters he set remain the framework of Bosnian Muslim politics even today, no matter which party nominally runs things.

If you read the mainstream Western propaganda about Yugoslavia's demise, you'll notice very quickly that it rejects the notion of internal conflict between Yugoslavia's inhabitants. Rather, it sings paeans to Yugoslavia's multiethnic diversity and peaceful cohabitation, disturbed only by the periodic eruptions of "Greater Serbian ultranationalism." So to save Yugoslavia, they had to destroy it:

"The consequences of this campaign are extraordinary. In view of the fact that a small set of conspirators in Belgrade again were able to foment trouble... the radical elimination of this danger means the removal of an element of tension for the whole of Europe."

Does this not sound like something an EU commissar or State Department errand boy would say? Was it written by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Wesley Clark, Richard Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright, or any of the "judges" or prosecutors at the ICTY? Though it could have come from any of them, the quote in question is actually from Adolf Hitler's address to the Reichstag, on May 4, 1941, following the conquest of Yugoslavia and Greece.

Again, pointing out Yugoslavia's flawed premises doesn't absolve those who destroyed it, be that the West in the 1990s, or Hitler fifty years prior. It does, however, explode the premise that Yugoslavia was some sort of "Greater Serbian" project, or that those who destroyed it from within not once but twice were somehow oppressed or terrorized.

Once the Serbs themselves realize this, as well as the disturbing fact that Hitler and the Atlantic Empire apparently share the same view of them, they may rebel against the doctrine of "Serb guilt" and end the policy of capitulation to Imperial demands. Which probably explains why these issues remain a taboo topic, even today.

Victory Day

"To our Victory!" Soviet propaganda poster, 1945 (source)

Sixty-seven years ago, Nazi Germany officially surrendered to the Soviet forces in the ruins of Berlin. The "Thousand-year Reich" had lasted not even a dozen. Lacking courage to face defeat and blaming everyone but himself for it, Hitler had committed suicide a week earlier. The war that had devastated Europe for a second time in a generation was officially over.

But who won? Oh, we're supposed to believe it was the "good guys," the noble Allies who bravely sacrificed millions of lives to stop the unprecedented evil of Nazism and its genocidal plans. Yet the cold hard truth is that no one but the Jewish resistance fought Hitler because of what he was doing to the Jews. British, French, Soviet or American governments couldn't have cared less. They all entered the war for entirely selfish reasons: London and Paris to keep their empires, Washington to make America into one, and Stalin to stay alive.

Of all the major Allied powers, only the people of the Soviet Union actually had a legitimate reason to fight: they were being invaded and murdered en masse. Perhaps that is why only the Russians still commemorate the victory today.

The West doesn't dwell on the actual facts of WW2. It prefers useful myths, such as that D-Day and the campaign in France equaled the struggle on the Eastern Front (which was 90% of the actual war effort against Germany). Or that the war was about stopping the "Final Solution." Or that the Nuremberg trials were about the genocide (the Nazis were actually condemned for starting the war). Or that Pearl Harbor somehow deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki in return. Hypocritical cries of "Munich!" and reductio ad Hitlerum are used against the ruler of any country the American Empire wishes to invade.

Yet when you look at the EU, it resembles nothing so much as what Nazi slogans described as the "European family of nations" working together for the prosperity of all. The whole endeavor has roots in National-Socialism. Modern managerial state lives up to Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato." Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. All demands to retain national sovereignty, or stop social engineering through the flood of immigrants and the tyranny of diversity, are branded "fascist". Meanwhile, EU bodies adopt resolutions equating Fascism, Nazism and Communism, spitting in the face of Russia - a nation itself grievously harmed by Communism, but refusing to dishonor the banner under which it bore the brunt of the fighting against Hitler.

Then there is the bizarre situation that the map of Europe today looks suspiciously like the one from 1942, and all of Hitler's allies in the Balkans are now the staunchest allies of the American Empire. In that corner of Europe, at least, WW2 is still being fought. Only this time, the Luftwaffe and the panzers are supposedly the "good guys".

In April 1941 Hitler made it a personal mission to obliterate a country called Yugoslavia. Partly to make an example of anyone attempting to weasel out of surrendering to his demands, and partly to indulge grudges from the previous war. Remember, WW1 started with an Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia. After two failures, the Austrians and their German and Bulgarian allies finally thought they'd crushed the Serbs, only to have them return in 1918 and win a decisive victory that collapsed the Central Powers' southern flank.

So Hitler wiped Yugoslavia off the map. Parts of its territory were annexed directly to the Reich, others given to Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania (an Italian protectorate until 1943, a German ally thereafter). An "independent" Montenegro was set up as an Italian protectorate, while most of today's Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina became the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). The remainder was dubbed Serbia and placed under German occupation.

While the Serbs in the NDH faced wholesale extermination (the visceral brutality of which appalled even the Nazis), the brutality of the occupation forces in "Serbia" rivaled that of the Eastern Front. In June 1941, royalists guerrillas (commonly mislabeled "chetniks") launched an uprising against the Germans. With Germans executing up to 100 civilian hostages for every one of their soldiers killed, and 50 for every soldier wounded, the royalists were quickly compelled to adopt a lower profile. Soon they were engaged in a shooting war with the Communists, who launched their own insurrection in June, after Hitler invaded the USSR. While the royalists expected an Anglo-American landing, the Communist waited for the Soviets, meanwhile slaughtering each other and occasionally raiding German supplies.

In the end, the Communists prevailed. By 1944, they had secured British backing, and successfully lobbied the Allies for massive air strikes against cities in Serbia, which did little damage to the German war effort but caused great loss of civilian life in royalist strongholds. In September 1944, Soviet forces – reinforced by Bulgarian troops, who had switched their allegiance from Hitler to Stalin – entered Serbia and drove out the Germans.

Think about that for a second: the territory of Nazi-occupied Serbia had to deal with four years of brutal repression, a civil war, tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Croatia's genocide, heavy bombing by the Allies, and a Communist takeover. Having been thus despoiled, Serbia was then ground into dust by the Communists, who in the true tradition of victim politics claimed the principal problem had been the old kingdom’s alleged "Greater Serbian hegemony", rather than alliances of other groups with Axis powers, and the atrocities they committed.

After the war, the  Communists  made Hitler's dismemberment more or less official. Parts annexed by Germany ended up the "republic" of Slovenia. The NDH was split into Croatia and Bosnia, with Croatia getting the entire Adriatic coast. Montenegro remained separate, while the territories held by Bulgaria became Macedonia. The stump Serbia created by Hitler became the "Republic of Serbia", while the Hungarian- and Albanian-occupied areas in the north and the south became its "autonomous provinces" of Vojvodina and Kosovo. The borders didn't correspond exactly, but the spirit of the division was what counted.

Future generations were taught that “Yugoslavia” had been among the victors in WW2. Official history claimed that Tito's multiethnic Communist partisans were the only real resistance movement, fighting the very few Croatian Ustasha, the Albanian Balli Kombetar, and the worst of the lot - the bloodthirsty Greater Serbian nationalist "chetniks". Any suggestion that the royalists had actually helped the Allied war effort was suppressed - and the West went along with it.

Ten years after Tito's death, the myths collapsed under their own weight, no longer propped by Western credit and Eastern markets. The newly reunited Germany, the nascent European Union and the rising American Empire all saw an opportunity in dismembering Yugoslavia.

What followed was an eerie re-run of the 1940s carnage. Croatia's "democratic" president, Franjo Tudjman, led a NDH revival - but because he was allied with the U.S. and not Hitler this time around, he succeeded where his predecessor failed. In Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic had Washington's support to make a bid for an Islamic state, causing a bloodbath when both Serbs and Croats objected. Albanians were likewise armed and supported to re-establish the "Natural Albania" of 1941-45.

But the cruelest twist was that these Imperial allies accused the Serbs of Nazism - and their PR flacks used Communist propaganda to do so. And they are still at it, even today. The Serbs, for their part, reacted with utter confusion. They didn't create a grievance lobby, as is common in modern politics. Rather, they followed their instinct and history and reached for their guns - fighting first for Yugoslavia, then for independence, then for survival, but all the while unable to understand what was happening. That confusion is also an enduring condition, unfortunately.

Even though they were the principal victims of Nazi aggression, and the overwhelming majority in both the Communist and the royalist resistance movements, the Serbs first became second-class citizens in Yugoslavia (which they allegedly "dominated") and then got smeared as Nazis reborn - by actual Nazi heirs, people who had their own Waffen-SS, two-time winners of WW2. Who would have ever thought to see American bombers, German tanks and Communist propaganda working together towards a goal Hitler once had: to crush Serbia as an example to others.

When Hitler invaded, Yugoslavia had been rotten already. Croats actually greeted the Wehrmacht with flowers. Few have dared ask how Tito could have put Yugoslavia back together, after all that. Yet the answer is very simple: he allowed many of the Nazi collaborators to change their uniforms at the last moment, defecting to the winning team, while smearing the Serb royalists as traitors and quislings, thus imposing moral equivalence. The laundering process was completed in the 1990s, by projecting the stigma of Nazism onto the Serbs.

No wonder only Russia still celebrates Victory Day. In the rest of Europe, it's Hitler's ghost that rejoices.

An Evil Little War

On the 13th anniversary of NATO's attack on then-Yugoslavia, I'm re-posting a piece that ran on Antiwar.com in March 2005. Even after the creation of the "Independent state of Kosovia" in 2008 - or perhaps even more so because of it - every word still applies.

An Evil Little War 

[13*] Years Later, Kosovo Still Wrong

  In the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For some reason, many in the targeted nation thought the name of the operation was "Merciful Angel." In fact, the attack was code-named "Allied Force" – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker. For, however much NATO spokesmen and the cheerleading press spun, lied, and fabricated to show otherwise (unfortunately, with altogether too much success), there was nothing noble in NATO’s aims. It attacked Yugoslavia for the same reason then-Emperor Bill Clinton enjoyed a quickie in the Oval Office: because it could.

Most of the criticism of the 1999 war has focused on its conduct (targeting practices, effects, "collateral damage") and consequences. But though the conduct of the war by NATO was atrocious and the consequences have been dire and criminal, none of that changes the fact that by its very nature and from the very beginning, NATO’s attack was a war of aggression: illegal, immoral, and unjust; not "unsuccessful" or "mishandled," but just plain wrong.

Illegal

There is absolutely no question that the NATO attack in March 1999 was illegal. Article 2, section 4 of the UN Charter clearly says:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Some NATO members tried to offer justification. London claimed the war was "justified" as a means of preventing a "humanitarian catastrophe," but offered no legal grounds for such a claim. Paris tried to create a tenuous link with UNSC resolutions 1199 and 1203, which Belgrade was supposedly violating. However, NATO had deliberately bypassed the UN, rendering this argument moot.

Article 53 (Chapter VIII) of the UN Charter clearly says that:

"The Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilize such regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority. But no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council." (emphasis added)

Furthermore, Article 103 (Chapter XVI) asserts its primacy over any other regional agreement, so NATO’s actions would have been illegal under the UN Charter even if the Alliance had an obligation to act in Kosovo. Even NATO’s own charter – the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949 – was violated by the act of war in March 1999:

"Article 1
"The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. […]
"Article 7
"This Treaty does not affect, and shall not be interpreted as affecting in any way the rights and obligations under the Charter of the Parties which are members of the United Nations, or the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security." (emphasis added)

The attack violated other laws and treaties as well: the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 (violating the territorial integrity of a signatory state) and the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (using coercion to compel a state to sign a treaty – i.e., the Rambouillet ultimatum).

Yugoslavia had not attacked any NATO members, nor indeed threatened the security of any other country in the region; it was itself under an attack by a terrorist, irredentist organization. What NATO did on March 24, 1999 was an act of aggression, a crime against peace.

Illegitimate

Perfectly aware that the bombing was illegal, NATO leaders tried to create justifications for it after the fact. They quickly seized upon a mass exodus of Albanians from Kosovo, describing it as "ethnic cleansing" and even "genocide." But as recent testimonies of Macedonian medical workers who took care of Albanian refugees suggest, the Western press was engaging in crude deceit, staging images of suffering refugees and peddling the most outrageous tall tales as unvarnished truth.

Stories abounded of mass murder, orchestrated expulsions, mass rapes, seizure of identity papers, even crematoria and mine shafts filled with dead bodies. Little or no evidence was offered – and not surprisingly, none found afterwards. The stories were part of a Big Lie, aimed to justify the intervention, concocted by professional propagandists, and delivered by the KLA-coached refugees. The KLA ran every camp in Macedonia and Albania, and there are credible allegations they organized the exodus in many instances. Albanians who did not play along were killed.

Eventually, the "genocide" and other atrocity stories were debunked as propaganda. But they had served their purpose, conjuring a justification for the war at the time. They had allowed NATO and its apologists to claim the war – though "perhaps" illegal – was a moral and legitimate affair. But there should be no doubt, it was neither.

Unjust

Even if one can somehow gloss over the illegal, illegitimate nature of the war and the lies it was based on, would the war still not be justified, if only because it led to the return of refugees? Well, which refugees? Certainly, many Kosovo Albanians – and quite a few from Albania, it appears – came back, only to proceed to cleanse it systematically of everyone else. Jews, Serbs, Roma, Turks, Ashkali, Gorani - no community was safe from KLA terror, not even the Albanians themselves. Those suspected of "collaborating" were brutally murdered, often with entire families.

According to the Catholic doctrine of "just war," a war of aggression cannot be just. Even if one somehow fudges the issue, "the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated." The evil conjured by NATO’s and KLA’s propaganda machine was indeed grave. But it was not real. In contrast, what took place after the war – i.e., under the NATO/KLA occupation – is amply documented. At the beginning of NATO’s aggression, there were fewer dead, fewer refugees, less destruction, and more order than at any time since the beginning of the occupation. NATO has replaced a fabricated evil with a very real evil of its own.

Monument to Evil

What began six years ago may have been Albright’s War on Clinton’s watch, but both Albright and Clinton have been gone from office for what amounts to a political eternity. For four years now,* the occupation of Kosovo has continued with the blessing – implicit or otherwise – of Emperor Bush II, who launched his own illegal war in Iraq. Kosovo is not a partisan, but an imperial issue; that is why there has been virtually no debate on it since the first missiles were fired.

Six years* to the day since NATO aircraft began their onslaught, Kosovo is a chauvinistic, desolate hellhole. Serbian lives, property, culture, and heritage been systematically destroyed, often right before the eyes of NATO "peacekeepers." Through it all, Imperial officials, Albanian lobbyists, and various presstitutes have been working overtime to paint a canvas that would somehow cover up the true horror of occupation.

Their "liberated" Kosovo represents everything that is wrong about the world we live in. It stands as a monument to the power of lies, the successful murder of law, and the triumph of might over justice. Such a monument must be torn down, or else the entire world may end up looking like Kosovo sometime down the line. If that’s what the people in "liberal Western democracies" are willing to see happen, then their civilization is well and truly gone.

(*originally published March 25, 2005)

Lawrence Eagleburger and the Murder of Yugoslavia

Lawrence Eagleburger passed away today at his estate in Virginia, at age 80.

He had been Washington's envoy to Yugoslavia twice, spending seven years in Belgrade altogether. After retiring in 1984, he returned to the State Department in 1989, as James Baker's right hand. Eagleburger was acting Secretary for a while, and actually held the post for just over a month, from December 1992 to January 1993.

Today's NY Times obituary claims Eagleburger "was unable to keep Yugoslavia from dissolving" in the early 1990s. Well, here's an interesting question: did he even try?

Conventional wisdom has it that the Bush I administration supported Yugoslavia's survival, and only reluctantly changed its mind after "Serbian atrocities". Warren Zimmerman, the last US ambassador to Yugoslavia, claims that Washington supported Yugoslav unity, but not "if it were maintained at the expense of democracy or by force." That was at best facetious (isn't that precisely what Lincoln did?), at worst disingenuous: in the paragraph preceding that claim, Zimmerman explained the influence of Croatian and Albanian ethnic lobbies, which very much worked towards dismembering Yugoslavia.

Washington's official position - paying lip service to Yugoslav unity, openly opposing the use of force to preserve it, and talking about democracy and human rights - amounted to tacit support for the separatists.

The NY Times obit quotes Eagleburger's warning to the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, “You can’t hold Yugoslavia together by force.” But the claim that Milosevic tried to do just that is simply not true.

It was, in fact, Milosevic who supported the secession of Slovenia and Croatia -though not Croatia's claim to Serb-inhabited territories, at least not without rescinding the clause in Tudjman's new constitution disenfranchising the Serbs - and even tacitly recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, by creating the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) in April 1992. None of that mattered to the policymakers in Washington and several European capitals, who by then had decided to designate the Serbs as the principal villain of the Balkans drama, the better to cast themselves as heroes.

In 2008, Eagleburger gave an interview to Voice of America, arguing that carving out Kosovo from Serbia set a bad precedent. It was too little, too late - the precedent was already set, back in 1992, when the Badinter Commission decided that Yugoslavia had "dissolved", and Washington went along with this. By 2008, as well, there was a new generation at the State Department, which believed they could shape the world with their willpower, disdaining the "reality-based community" and all that.

Still, I'll always wonder whether people like Eagleburger and Zimmerman, with their extensive Balkans experience, could have contributed to things unfolding differently, rather than being accessories to the murder of Yugoslavia. Perhaps some day American historians and media will honestly re-examine their country's role in this sordid episode, rather than dismissing it as "the fault of those evil Serbs" - but I'm not holding my breath.

Holding on

My post from the other day on mixed marriages in Bosnia caught the attention of the Witch-King, and I thank him for it.

His conclusion made me think some more:

They may have retained their lives but lost their homeland and anything resembling an identity. There was very little option for them but to find another place to live, and start rebuilding from scratch, not only in a material but in spiritual sense as well.

The devil of it is, they aren't the only ones. All of us who've been through the 1990s have had to deal with this to some extent. Whether they want to admit it or not, many people's identities were tied into Yugoslavia, socialism, and Tito's cult of personality. Some folks still haven't got over any of them. Others found it easier to slip into the new, custom-made identities furnished by opportunistic politicians. And a few have chosen the thorny path of rediscovering what it truly meant to be a Serb, Croat, Muslim, or whatever.

Whoever it was that said that "you can never go home again" was right. For many people, not just those of mixed ancestry, Yugoslavia was home. That place is no more. There is something else, many something-elses, there now. Things may still look the same, sound, or smell, or taste the same. But the same they are not.

I can understand why many people choose to remember Yugoslavia fondly. Trying to build a new life in a foreign country can be frustrating at times, so to those who left memories are a way to cope. And those that stayed live in a world of cronyism, "transition" and crime, where all the seedy aspects of socialism seem to have endured, and none of the things that made it bearable: unimpeded travel, annual seaside vacations, and a country in which everyone had a job, a car and a place to live (and let's not quibble about the quality of any of those). Time burnishes their memory of Yugoslavia so that only the good things remain. This romantic vision of the past gives them hope that the world wasn't always bleak, cruel and capricious, and that things can be good again.

And they can. They might. But nothing can ever be the way it was.

I'm still trying to decide whether those of us who understand this are better off for it. I don't think I'll ever really know.

Tito, Mihailovic and the British

Reader "Suvorov" was curious:

How many Chetniks were there under Mihajlovic's command? How many were there in other factions? How many people were in Nedic's guard and other similar "German-inspired" formations? How many Partizans were there and what percent of them were Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, (of course there were also Bosniaks, Albanians, and other small numbers of ethnic groups living in Yugoslavia)?

[...] By the way, is there any book in English about Balkans during WWII which you would recommend? Thanks again.

The numbers varied throughout the war. The leading authority on the WW2 Royalists in Serbia, Miloslav Samardžić, says that in the spring of 1944 there were "over 100,000" Chetniks* under Mihailović's command. Nedić's gendarmerie numbered around 20,000, and there were about 8,000 or so men loyal to Dimitrije Ljotić, a fascist who eagerly collaborated with the Germans.

Samardžić also says that Serbs made up the vast majority of the Partisans. When you hear about "Croatian" partisans and "Croatian" brigades, he says, those were actually Serbs from territories called Croatia, not necessarily Croats.

The most commonly used figure for Partisan numbers is 800,000. It comes from official Communist history. Even if we assume its accuracy, the figure comes from late 1944, when many Chetniks as well as Domobrani (Croatian regulars called up by the Pavelić regime) and Italians had joined up. (According to the same source, the partisans had suffered over 300,000 casualties during the war, mostly in the open battles of late 1944 and early 1945.)

I have heard good things about Michael Lees' "The Rape of Serbia" (subtitled "The British Role in Tito's Grab for Power 1943-1944"), published in 1990. I haven't actually managed to obtain a copy, but I've been following a lot of work in Serbia about the intrigue and power games involving the British, Tito, Mihailović and the royal government in exile. The picture that emerges is that the Brits sidelined the royal government, cherry-picked one of its members (Ivan Šubašić, the pre-war ban of Croatia) to sign a treaty with Tito, then bullied the young king into issuing a radio endorsement of Tito as the supreme commander of the resistance.

It wasn't just the Serbs who were used then abandoned by the British. The Poles and Czechs who escaped to the West were similarly betrayed when all of Easter Europe was given to Stalin. And then there was Operation Keelhaul...

(* The proper name for this force was the "Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland")

Freedom, Real and Imagined

From an article by Joseph Sobran, titled National Socialism Comes to America:

"Americans are still permitted to do a great many things, though not as many things as their ancestors could take for granted. Fine. But permission isn’t freedom. The privilege of a subject isn’t the right of a free man. If you can own only what the government permits you to own, then in essence the government owns you. We no longer tell the state what our rights are; it tells us.

Such is the servitude Americans are now accustomed to under an increasingly bureaucratic state. Permission, often in the form of legal licensing, is the residue of the old freedom; but we’re supposed to think that this is still “the land of the free,” and that we owe our freedom to the state, its laws, and especially its wars. The more the state grows — that is, the more it fulfills the character of national socialism — the freer we’re told we are."

These past several weeks, while I wasn't posting on the blog, I've been thinking about the American bureaucratic state and comparing it to the Socialist Yugoslavia of my youth. Back then, people had a distrust of government born out of many failed promises, and decades of experience with "gaming" the bureaucratic system to provide themselves and their relatives the services (monopolized by the state, and therefore both unreliable and shabby) they needed. We understood we were better of than Soviet client-states and even the USSR itself, but few fully realized the reason for that was a higher degree of economic liberty. To further complicate things, much of our "prosperity" was a result of easy credit, fueled by IMF and World Bank loans.

Now I look at the country where I've lived for almost 10 years, and I see the same state-supremacist thinking I grew up with in Socialism, the same credit boondoggles that preceded my country's downfall, the same bureaucratic incompetence that we used to joke about, then circumvent (something not easily achieved here). Add to that the gargantuan military, the National Security state, and a dictatorial Emperor - um, President, yes - and a population 10 times that of Yugoslavia in 1991, and the problems that killed my country are that much more amplified in this one.

But hey, people believe they are free - even though that word has lost all its meaning for them long ago. If you're completely oblivious to something, you can't really miss it when it disappears, right?