Buckdog

Kosovo is the ancestral Serbian homeland that most Serbs have probably never visited.

Should Serbia give up on Kosovo in order to join the EU? It could do everything that the EU wants it to do such as leaving and recognizing Kosovo, and sending war criminals to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. It will still be at least ten years before Serbia joins the EU and another 15 years before Serbians enjoy mobility rights throughout the union. The EU threats are hollow right now.

Serbia could try to seek the partition of Kosovo. Currently, there is a de-facto partition between the Albanians and Serb minority in Mitrovica. It's unlikely that the Serbs will be able to keep the Serb dominated pockets of territory south of Pristina. Serbia will use the next parliamentary election to demostrate that it still has control in the north of Kosovo by conducting polling stations unless the UN or EU forces stops Serbia.

The problem with trying to offer quasi-independence to Kosovo is that the international community is trying to offer Canandian style multicultural-federal solutions to two 19th century antagonistic tribes. The situation in Kosovo will not be resolved until both sides agree to a common resolution or until one side is defeated.

Mass graves? Are you sure? Check your facts. Glad you are pulling the NATO line, though.

"Mass Grave Holding Kosovars Found

By DUSAN STOJANOVIC
AP - 14 July, 2001

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Authorities have discovered yet another mass grave with some 50 to 60 bodies from Kosovo in a cover-up of war crimes linked to former President Slobodan Milosevic the Serbian government announced Saturday.

The government's Internet site quoted a ranking police official, Capt. Dragan Karleusa, as saying that the bodies, apparently Kosovo Albanians, surfaced in April 1999 from a hydropower lake at Perucac, about 90 miles southwest of Belgrade, and were later buried in a nearby mass grave in Serbia proper.

Authorities later discovered the mass grave, he said, without saying when.

``First, seven bodies surfaced,'' Karleusa was quoted a saying. ``Later, a freezer truck with more than 50 bodies surfaced as well.''

``Witnessed by numerous people, and with unbearable stench, the bodies were transferred to a new location where they were buried in a mass grave,'' Karleusa said, adding that the crime remained secret for more than two years.

Another case of a freezer truck containing some 80 bodies dumped into the Danube River near the Romanian border in April 1999, hundreds of miles outside Kosovo, was revealed by police earlier this year.

Milosevic was extradited to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague (news - web sites), Netherlands, on June 28. He is charged by the court with responsibility for the murder of more than 600 people and the displacement of 740,000 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.

Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic said Saturday that local Serbian courts will start bringing war crimes suspects to trial as early as next week.

He did not identify those facing trial or say if any of them are also sought by the U.N. court.

He said the Serbian government - after extraditing Milosevic - will demand that other Yugoslav war crimes suspects be tried at home."

According to the United Nations, Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia. Moreover, UN Security Council Resolution 1244 guarantees that fact.

The numbers of bodies described in that article are a trifle when dealing with war. Why, with a million dead in Iraq, no one makes any sweeping claims about U.S. moral rights.

Croatia killed an estimated 700,000 Serbs during World War II, on a territory including today's Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Yet they, according to Nato, had the "moral right" to sovereignty over the Krajina during the breakup of Yugoslavia, and have the right to expel the Krajina Serbs as they did with Nato support...

The Bosnian Muslim leaders also participated in the Ustashe slaughter. Yet, a Muslim-Croat alliance had the right to force Bosnia out of Yugoslavia in violation of the Yugoslav constitution, the Bosnian constitution, the Helsinki Act, and international law in general. Why did they not claim Muslims and Croats not to have the moral right to rule these places because of the Ustashe slaughter? Well, someone did make this case, and his name is Vojislav Seselj... he of course is an "ultranationalist", "fascist" and evil in general...

The KLA, that runs Kosovo, has recently been exposed as having run an organ harvesting racket using Serbian and Albanian captives as live organ donors. Still, these people have the moral right to rule over the Serbs in Kosovo, we are told...

Nine years ago yesterday, Nato bombed Yugoslavia to steal Kosovo. Now, they continue to occupy it and are trying to create a protectorate with alleged "independence" as Croatia and Slovakia were in World War II. Nato obtained this territory through aggression and violation of the UN Charter. It thus has no moral right to this protectorate.

"To displace 700,000 people", you say? Who famously did that in 1948? Why, Israel did that of course. Have any of those people and their descendents been allowed to return? Hell, no! Those who say they should return are branded of course as Nazis that require the experience of an atomic blast...

Moreover, it is one thing for 700,000 to be displaced during a war started by Nato. It's quite a different thing to butcher 700,000 in horrible ways as the Croat-Muslim alliance did in today's Croatia and Bosnia in 1941-45. Yet, the West has ruled that the Croat-Muslim alliance had the right to take these territories out of Yugoslavia and to rule them against the will of the victimised Serbs in those lands. Deux poids, deux mesures...

While we're at this story of 700,000 displaced Albanians, remember that this began when Nato started bombing, and many of them fled either the bombing or on KLA orders. KLA documents telling people to leave were presented before the ICTY and witnesses at the ICTY, Albanian witnesses by the way, also testified that the KLA told them to leave.

"While we're at this story of 700,000 displaced Albanians, remember that this began when Nato started bombing, and many of them fled either the bombing or on KLA orders."

That was the official line of Milosovic, I can't believe that you raise it here! Also, you justify Serbian aggression on the Kosovar people based on idiotic rationale.

You also stated, "Nato bombed Yugoslavia to steal Kosovo." What lies you tell! Why would Nato want to 'steal' Kosovo? Serbia's international neighbours are simply not going to allow ultra nationalists kill in the same way as the world did during the insanity of WW2.

This "official line of Milosevic" also happened to be supported by witnesses and documents at his trial.

What's you problem with Milosevic, anyway. A Nato official admitted days after the bombing ended that the real reason it was done was because of the lack of economic "reforms" such as shock therapy...

Another reason was to steal Kosovo on which a base was built, Camp Bondsteel, outside Urosevac.

Let's go over the dates, shall we. In 1986, Bob Dole's Senate resolution supporting Albanian separatism was passed. In December 1992, Bush the Elder declared U.S. sovereignty over Kosovo with his "Christmas Warning". In August 1995, Clinton warned Serbia not to have any of those Krajina Serbs he helped expel move to Kosovo. In late 1997, EU powers demanded the "internationalisation" of Kosovo. in early 1998, some KLA-instigated incidents caused Albright to proclaim that Kosovo was not an internal affair of Yugoslavia....

All of this is highly illegal as it is but it gets worse. In July 1998 Milosevic agrees to the creation of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission to snoop around in Kosovo. In October 1998, under bomb threat, he agrees to the Kosovo Verification Mission. Both missions did not claim any genocide was going on whatsoever.

Some KLA corpses were dragged out and suspected CIA agent who headed the KVM claimed it was a massacre of civilians. So this farcical Rambouillet exercise took place where the Nato again demanded that Kosovo be surrendered to Nato and then have it officially "independent" three years later (they tried that also in October 1998). Yugoslavia said no so there was bombing.

Yugoslavia agreed in the end to a UN-run process with a UN mission and a UN resolution guaranteeing Yugoslav sovereignty over Kosovo. It also included provisions to have Yugoslav troops and Serb police guard the borders and cultural monuments. Suffice it say that these provisions have been mercilessly violated.

Nato effectively has pretended that its deal never happened and that the unacceptable "offer" of Rambouillet was in force. Now they're setting up a EU-Nato protectorate in Kosovo and claiming it to be sovereign with sovereignty then being pledged to the EU and Nato as part of this Ahtisaari Plan. So this is stealing Kosovo. That's what's happening, that's the reality of the situation.

As for Serb ultranationalists, Milosevic certainly was not one. As for Serbia's leading party, the Serbian Radical Party, branded as ultranationalist, it must be history's first ultranationalist party to openly cater to and seek out the Roma Gypsy vote.

That article was from the summer of 1999 when they were predicting that they would unearth killing fields. In November, the ICTY teams wrapped up their work having only uncovered slightly more than 2,000 bodies...

In his sector of western Kosovo, he says, the United Nations told him to expect as many as 2,000 victims. His team found 187 corpses

Meanwhile, in the first year of the occupation, an estimated 1,000 Serbs were killed by the KLA.

It sure seems to be a weird defense of Serbia by saying "the ICTY teams wrapped up their work having only uncovered slightly more than 2,000 (Kosovar) bodies..." That makes is SO much better!

2,000 from all ethnic groups killed either by Yugoslavian forces, Nato, the KLA, anyone, in a one year period. Compare that to 2,000 Serbs wiped out when the Croatian government destroyed Republika Srpska Krajina, expelling its entire population, with Nato support in a few days in August 1995. Are you suggesting that Croatia has no moral right to rule the Krajina?

The UN estimated 750 dead between March and November 1998. For those 750, Nato threatened to shower Yugoslavia with nuclear waste and destroy vital infrastructure and kill people there with bombing.

1,000 people were killed by the KLA in one year of Nato occupation between June 1999 and June 2000.

The KLA kidnapped people and carved people up for their organs alive.

When you think that Kosovar leaders lobbied for ghastly and ruinous Nato bombing, that Serbs didn't carry out pogroms and massacres of those they claim to represent is a show of great restraint. That this didn't happen shows the great restraint and honour of Serbians and their armed forces.

That this didn't happen shows that Serbia's moral right to rule Kosovo on humanitarian grounds is most certainly assured.

unfortunately, buckdog, you will always come across those who will try to undermine the heinous crimes that happened in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999. The truth is, the West heard about it all in 1999. However, it wasn't anything new to Kosovars.They had suffered long in the hands of bloodthirsty nationalist Serbs.

In the early 1930s, Vaso Cubrilovic, who belonged to the terrorist group “Mlada Bosna,” which planned the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, along with Djoka Perina, had the plan of “introducing 470,000 Serbian colonists and expelling 300,000 Albanians,” therefore reaching “a 67,5 percent majority of Serbs” in Kosovo.

Cubrilovic’s plan to ethnically cleanse Kosovo, a plan that made it to the Serbian government, which jumped at the chance to claim Kosovo for their own: “At a time when Germany can expel tens of thousands of Jews ... the shifting of a few hundred thousand Albanians will not lead to the outbreak of a world war.”

Cubrilovic continues:
“The law must be enforced to the letter, to make [it] intolerable for the Albanians [to live here] … such as punishment for smuggling, for cutting the forest, for damaging agriculture, for leaving dogs unchained … any other measure that an experienced police force can contrive. From the economic aspect: the refusal to recognize old land deeds … the requisitioning of all state and communal pastures … dismissal from state, private and communal offices… When it comes to religion, the Albanians are very touchy. Therefore, they must be harassed on this score too. This can be achieved through the ill-treatment of their clergy, the destruction of their cemeteries… There remains one more means, which Serbia had employed very successfully after 1878: secretly burning down Albanian villages and city quarters.”

From 1933 to 1935, the Serbian government was forging secret deals with the Turkish government to send over 300,000 Albanians to Turkey by force. Milan Stojadinovic, the founder of the now-infamous Serb Radical Party, who had also become the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia in 1938, personally signed the agreement with Turkey to send these hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians to rural Turkey. The Serbian government of the time paid 500 Turkish pounds per family [there were 40,000 families] to the Turkish government. The deal never solidified, as the WWII started…The whole thing would take shape at the end of WWII [Read more here, with references to original, Serbian sources attesting to the fact: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/kosovo/chap3.htm#n4]

References from Vaso Cubrilovic come from “Cubrilovic, Vaso. “The Expulsion of the Albanians by the Serbs” in That Was Yugoslavia: Information and Facts, nos.4-5 (1993).

Whether it was 2,000 or 20,000, it matters not. What matters is that deliberate action was taken against a group of people because of their ethnicity. That, my friends, has been known as genocide in the past. Don't even get me started on the merits of the Kosovo conflict as a case for genocide. After all, speaking and teaching Albanian was strictly forbidden in Kosovo until 1968. The law was enforced by Aleksandar Rankovic.

Finally, Kosovars can speak their language, raise their flag and not fear being beaten, arrested, tortured or even murdered for showing their dedication to their land.

We can only hope that Serbians will embrace independent Kosovo as other minorities, including the Roma, Turks, Bosnians, Croats and the Gorani have done. The time to take orders from Belgrade is over :)

Do you believe that Serbians have been unfairly persecuted? I think that you could find many other ethnic groups in the world who have experienced unfair persecution. Look at Afro-Americans who were forcibly moved from Africa to America as property! They have experienced much worse persecution than Serbs have.

I come from Irish ancestry. My people were forcibly removed from Ireland during the potatoe famine by the British because they did not want to feed the Irish. Millions died and were banished to North America.

There comes a time, when in order to heal and move forward, the sins and pains of the past must be resolved. It seems to me that many Serbians are having difficulty in moving beyond past grievances.

Mr. R:

you seem to be "putting aside" my comments about the black spots [of which there are many] of Serbian nationalist history, but you don't "put aside" your feelings of victimization, which, despite causing the break-up of Yugoslavia and claiming as much land as Serbs could for themselves, still is the dominant part of Serb nationalist identity...

Please, get on with the times...

On your point of non-Serbs preferring the Serbian rule, once again, you're wrong. The non-Albanian minorities [excluding the Serbs] have all supported Kosovar independence. I,for one, belong to one of the five groups of minorities. Remember, Serbs are only one of the five...

UPDATE!

Serbians convicted of War Crimes - Mass murder in execution of hundreds of prisoners during Balkan conflict!
(this is good news)!