|
of the Belgrade Coup
Editor & Webmaster
Leon Chame - 2008
Yugoslav Associates:
- Zoran Radojicic
- Dejan Vukelic
- George Orwell
Contributing Websites:
- Original Sorces
- Transnational (TFF)
- Fair sources
- WSWS
avgust 20, 2008
| |
A President Accused of Rape Destroys a Nation Because of Accusations of Rape
1997 NY Time Article Warned Us About Albanian Efforts to Ethnically Cleanse Kosovo of
Serbs
By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original
Sources April 29, 1999
In war, we are told, one needs to know one's
enemy. That is true. In the current war in Yugoslavia, it is equally important that we
also know our friends. Who are the Albanians we are now being encouraged send ground
troops to defend in Kosovo? We are now being encouraged to destroy the country and culture
of Yugoslavia because we have been TOLD that "Serbs are raping Albanian women." Why this should be a great concern to an American
population which insisted its president who was accused of raping women should remain in
office without punishment is a matter which personally escapes me."
1997 NY Time Article Warned Us About Albanian Efforts to
Ethnically Cleanse Kosovo of Serbs However, it we take the position that destroying
ancient architectural masterpieces, apartment buildings and passenger trains with million
dollar missiles is morally required of us because of alleged atrocities of Serbs against
Albanian women, perhaps we need to take a look at the alleged atrocities of Albanians
against Serb women.
Twelve years ago David Binder, on November 1, 1987, writing from
Belgrade, wrote about the ethnic strife that was beginning to engulf Kosovo because of
policies of the ALBANIANS in Kosovo. Albania, under the leadership of Enver Hoxha,
consistently aligned itself with the most repressive advocates of Communism. Hoxha was a
founder (1941) of the Albanian Communist party (Albanian Labor party from 1948), General
secretary of the party from 1943, he was premier (1946-54) of Albania after its
proclamation as a republic. Hoxha was also minister of foreign affairs (1946-53) and
commander in chief of the army (1944-54). He maintained close ties with the Soviet Union
until its rift with Communist China in 1961; he then joined Beijing in its ideological
struggle against Moscow and was branded as a Stalinist by Soviet and other Communist
leaders. He stopped Albanian participation in the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Economic
Assistance (Comecon). In 1977, Hoxha broke ties with China, protesting that country's
liberalization and the U.S.-China rapprochement. Under Hoxha's rule, Albania remained one
of the least economically developed and one of the most isolated countries in Europe.
Hoxha died in office in 1985, and was succeeded by Ramiz Alia.
Binder warned in a Special to the New York Times, from Belgrade,
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column,
"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil
Conflict" that "Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of
ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil
war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War
II.
"The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the
various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the
highest officials to the humblest peasants. A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian
origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six
others. The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its
ranks. Some arsenals have been raided."
In the article Binder listed the following factors which he believed would lead to
the civil war now under way between the Albanian communists and the Serbs:
Vicious Insults
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations
to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have
been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic
Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls. Ethnic Albanians comprise
the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third
largest, after the Serbs and Croats.
Radicals' Goals
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an
''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern
Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make
up the southern half of Yugoslavia. Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of
a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the
capital of neighboring Albania.
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving
them material assistance. The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high
plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians
there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and
Montenegrins.
Worst Strife in Years
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian
nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody
rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region,
a ''Republic of Kosovo' ' in all but name. The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is
escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.'' Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on
the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many
nationalities and religions as
Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags.
As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to
be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now
number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as
they are today. Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with
its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic
Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the
south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.
''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the
Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic
Macedonians out of the region. Attacks on Slavs Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo
said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two
years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them
characterized as severe. In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of
ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year
that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his
quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was
dismissed from the Communist Party.
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to
the Kosovo region for the first time in four years. Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic
Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called
federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces. 'Lebanonizing' of
Yugoslavia High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and
have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland. Borislav Jovic, a member of
the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias,
one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup
of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the
army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed
forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of
Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral
Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and
soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing
arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''
Concerns Over Military
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi,had
slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in
thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military
service. Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the
army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that
3,792 were potential human timebombs. He said the army had ''not been provided with
details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said
they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were
to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is
extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous
province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories.
Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the
ethnic Albanian authorities. Region's Slavs Lack Strength While 200,000 Serbs and
Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the
last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads
and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a
policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian
leader, Azem Vlasi. But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late
September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as
head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr.
Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted
the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the
hard hand.''
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,''
Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call
him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of
the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his
supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the
Kosovo ethnic Albanians. Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no
doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said
Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party. Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party
leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the
ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without
hope.'' But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia
to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet
bloc in 1948. Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to
the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress
before March to address the country's grave problems.
The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo
while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream.
Somehow, in all the propaganda designed to whip up
the emotions of the American people, especially women, the
real identity of Bill Clinton's newest friends, the Albanians, has been wrapped up in
words meant to whitewash their real identity. No longer are they identified as the most
Stalinist of all European communists, or terrorists, or ethnic cleansers (95% of the
population of Albania are Albanian - no minorities are allowed). Today we hear about the "Kosovo Liberation Army" and the
"raping of Albanian women" and the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo by the
mean, cruel Serbs in Belgrade.
Folks, we are being manipulated by Bill Clinton, again, and a
people who once were one of our staunch friends and admirers, the Serbs, whose courage and
love of freedom and willingness to die held up to 700,000 German troops at bay until
America came into the war, are being killed by American bombs.
|
