Archive 1986 – 2017

If Nato’s bombing was to create a multi-ethnic state, it has failed By Gary Younge From The Guardian I wonder if President Clinton is getting his sleep, and if he is, does he ever have nightmares about Jelica Cemburovic? In June he said that if Nato had not intervened in Kosovo: “We wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night.” A few months earlier he had explained the rationale behind the bombing thus: “I want us to live in a world where we all get along with each other, with all of our differences.” Jelica, 87, a Serb, is under virtual house arrest in the northern Kosovan town of Podujevo, left at the mercy of ethnic Albanians eager to wreak revenge on the Serb community because of the persecutions once inflicted on them by the Serb security forces. Jelica wants to stay put so that when she dies she can...

By Zhang Dezhen From International Forum of Renmin Ribao, Beijing 24 August 1999 Some people in US-led NATO military circles are immensely proud to claim that the Kosovo war which has just ended was a”clean war.” The reason they give is that in this war, fought by means of strategic air strikes, NATO achieved a record of combat without a single casualty.In fact, as far as NATO is concerned, the war it launched against the Yugoslav Federation [FRY] was indeed very “clean” and “neat.” As one of the belligerents, the cities of NATO countries were not destroyed, their inhabitants were not killed, and they lost not one military casualty. This must be the first time this has happened in the history of war. Without mentioning the Korean and Vietnam wars, from which tens of thousands of US soldiers never returned, up to 100 US servicemen lost their lives in the...

 Letter to TFF Reconciliation, NGOs and Civilian Peace Service 24 Aug 1999 Dear TFF, I have read with interest your call for world wide Reconciliation Institutes. Your proposal brings to mind a number of precedents. You undoubtedly know that is was “The Fellowship of Reconciliation” who established after World War I the first Civilian Service which brought together (mostly young) people from former enemy countries for the purpose of both reconciliation and reconstruction. The FOR policy seems sound in that it links reconciliation with reconstruction. The FOR’s Civilian Service of 1919 seems to me a forerunners of today’s Civilian Peace Service project. Are you planning to work with the FOR and NGOs such as the Mothers in Black? I have virtually no idea about the present state of those Kosovo/ Albanian and Serbian NGOs who resisted the armed conflict. Are you planning to write a post-mortem of your attempt to...

By Stephan Israel From Frankfurter Rundschau During the day the shiny new vehicles clog the streets in the seasonably hot Pristina. Some are driving with tags from neighboring Albania, where as others have no license plate. One can see the latest models that just recently came off the assembly lines. On board are often young men with dark sun glasses and not much to say. The change of scene could not be more radical. Three months ago, when the NATO peacekeeping force arrived, Pristina was a ghost town. Today primarily the young people use their freedom in the evening to meet in one of the bars. Business seems to be flourishing. From the loudspeakers boom the previously forbidden songs about the Albanian fight for freedom and the people in front of the bars crowd far out onto the terraces in the semi-darkness. At the parties in the liberated city, one...

The Economist on NATO’s Destruction of Yugoslavia By Larry Elliott From The Guardian, London August 23, 1999 Yugoslavia faces the threat of a humanitarian disaster this winter in the aftermath of Nato’s 11-week war earlier this year which caused £38bn worth of damage and transformed the country into the poorest in Europe, a new report discloses. The Economist Intelligence Unit says today that the air campaign inflicted “enormous damage on the Yugoslav economy and infrastructure”, with gross domestic product poised to shrink by 40% this year. Real GDP this year is expected to be just 30% of the level a decade ago, the sharpest decline of any of the 27 countries making the transition from communism to a market economy. Income per head will be below even that of Albania, which has until now been the poorest in Europe. The EIU added that the west’s policy of denying reconstruction aid...

“Ubeđen sam da je u načinu na koji je Zapad postupio sa Kosovom na delu bilo nekoliko momenata koji su ostali uglavnom zanemareni pa čak i potisnuti u drugi plan (takvi kao kolektivna psihologija, duboko usađeni kulturni kodovi i preovlađujuće zapadne ekspanzionističko-misionarske vrednosti), pa sam stoga ubeđen da bi nam moglo veoma koristiti da i o njima malo porazgovaramo. Na primer: da li Zapad predvođen Amerikom u suštini samo prikriva sopstvenu latentnu, duboko usađenu autoritarnu ideologiju koja ga tera na dominaciju nad čitavim svetom dok samo naizgled pokušava da postigne globalnu demokratiju, partnerstvo i multikulturalnost? Zar nije i Zapad na svoj poseban način – isto kao i Milošević i Hitler, svako na svoj način – taj koji profitira od teškoća i kriza koje proživljavaju drugi dok se samo pretvara kako im pomaže? Zapanjujuće je koliko su brzo javnost, političko-diplomatski krugovi i mediji uspeli da tu krizu premeste u prošlost kao...

“I believe there were overlooked or suppressed dimensions such as collective psychology, deep cultural codes and domain Western expansionist/missionary values at work in the West’s handling of Kosovo, and I think we do wise to discuss them. For instance, does the US-led West in fact hide a latent, deep-seated authoritarian ideology that seeks world dominance while pretending to create global democracy, partnership and multiculturalism? And does it in its own manner – like Milosevic and Hitler in their different manners – thrive on somebody else’s crisis while pretending to help them?It is fascinating to see how quickly the public, the politico-diplomatic discourse and the media have managed to relegate the crisis, this turning point in contemporary history, to the past. But what has happened in, and to, the West itself during the Balkan wars and during Kosovo in particular deserves a bit of introspection – and perhaps we won’t like...

By Philip Hammond* From Transitions Online http://www.transitions-online.org Throughout Nato’s war against Yugoslavia, no opportunity was missed to contrast the propaganda emanating from Yugoslavia’s state-controlled media with the truthful, reliable free press of the West. The contrast was used by Nato as a reason to kill civilians, when it bombed the Belgrade RTS television building in April; and by journalists as a way to brush aside criticism of British media coverage and Nato news-management. As a demonstration of the vibrant diversity of Britain’s unshackled media, take the stories written as reporters entered Kosovo alongside British paratroopers on 12 June, carried in the following day’s Sunday editions. This is what James Dalrymple wrote in the Independent on Sunday, describing the town of Kacanik: ‘It looked peaceful and intact – except for the silence .There were no curtains, no ornaments, no door handles, no light fittings. Every item of value had been removed...

LONDON- Continental Europe, that fabled land of sclerosis, high unemployment, over-taxation, weighed down by rigid labour practices and over strong unions and with mainly left of centre governments presiding over low economic growth, looks as if it is ready to give America a big surprise. It’s about to bounce back. The Euro, the single currency of most of the members of the Economic Community, appears to be on the mend. After falling since the day of its inception at the beginning of the year, it is now turning up against the dollar. Inflation and interests rates are at historic lows. Growth rates are beginning to find their stride. Seen from this vantage point in Nordic Europe the only question that seems relevant is when will the Americans and their British partners in the world of ultra free market doctrine come to understand the inner strengths of continental Europe? Have they been...

An Interview with George Kennan* The New York Review of Books Volume XLVI, Number 13 By Richard Ullman* August 12, 1999   The following interview with George Kennan took place in Princeton in June, during the days following the end of the war in Kosovo. Richard Ullman: Are you surprised at the role that Russia has played in the bargaining over Kosovo? George Kennan: Not really. It is, for them, largely a matter of prestige. Precisely because they now have no great military power they fear that the rest of the world will forget that they are a great people, which of course they are in many respects, and by no means only the military ones. To be able to play a useful part in the resolution of the Kosovo crisis is, for many of them, a much-needed source of reassurance about themselves; and I see no reason why we should not,...

Husker Du den lille vietnamesiske pige, der løb fra amerikanske napalmbomber? Piloten kom aldrig over sin ugerning og blev præst. For et par år siden traf de to hinanden, hun tilgav ham på stedet og omfavnede ham med et smil. Og – om kort tid vises i USA en film om Pete Peterson, en anden bombepilot, som sad i vietnamesisk fængsel i 6 år, kom hjem og blev medlem af kongressen og deltog i forsoningsarbejdet mellem de to lande – “jeg kan ikke gøre det om der skete, men jeg kan hjælpe til med at bygge fremtiden.” I 1996 blev han USAs ambassadør i Hanoi og sidste år giftede han sig med vietnamesiske Vi Ly. Tillad mig den påstand at vi aldrig vil lykkes at hjælpe krigsførende til fred, medmindre vi sætter de menneskelige dimensioner af konflikter, krig og genopbygning i centrum. Ødelagte huse og infrastruktur er det principielt let nok...

MADRID- After Kosovo why not next Colombia, land of the drug barons and 40 years of near continuous civil war? The rest of the world may drop its jaw at the idea of Nato troops being sent to pacify leftist guerrilla groups, army-backed, fascist-inclined paramilitaries and the world’s most ruthless drug cartels. But in Bogota, Colombia’s capital, it is being touted by some as a necessary solution. And if not Nato, at least the U.S. army. Don’t drop your jaw too far. For none less than the U.S. commander in chief, Bill Clinton, said last month that vital American interests were at stake in Colombia. It is “very much in our national security interests to do what we can”. When a U.S. president uses these code words it essentially means that the backbone of the U.S. military, intelligence and national security bodies has decided that, if necessary, the U.S. is prepared...