PressInfo

Yet another evidence of TFF’s rapidly increasing international prestige is its opinion piece on CNN’s new “In Depth Special on Kosovo” – See http://europe.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/kosovo/stories/present/kfor/. It’s the third time TFF’s expertise is called upon by CNN; first during NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia and then before New Year, a longer conversation about the international community’s peacebuilding failure in today’s Kosovo/a. And now with this website feature “Misguided motives led to the chaos in Kosovo” under CNN*s heading “Missed Opportunities.” In the article TFF director Jan Oberg summarizes the Kosovo crisis through the 1990s and the foundation’s experience with conflict-mitigation there begnning 1991. In a few points, he outlines why NATO’s KFOR mission, the United Nations’ UNMIK mission and the OSCE are unlikely to succeed with building genuine peace in the Balkans. Writes Oberg: “The international community — a euphemism for a handful of top leaders — has historically been an integral party to...

“We are seeing it for the umpteenth time in international conflict-management: when intellectual analysis and politics fall apart, cover it up with military potency and give it all a human face! One would like to believe that the West’s moral, legal and political conflict ‘management’ disaster in the Balkans and in Kosovo 1989–1999 would be debated throughout the West — democracies with freedom of speech. The silence about that failure, however, is roaring. It’s just the locals who won’t understand how well-meaning we were and are! But something else is happening: the disaster is turning into a recipe. Read the statements from leading ministers, top generals, the EU and NATO during the last six months. They invariably state ‘that we have learnt in Kosovo’ that we need more military capacity, more force. NATO’s Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, tells the world that ‘the time for a peace dividend is over because there...

This is the founders’ end-of-the-year statement and a few highlights of our activities this year. It suggests that TFF will promote reconciliation and forgiveness in the year 2000 and beyond. We suggest this theme because it has been singularly missing in the century and the very decade we are now leaving behind. We agree with Desmond Tutu that there can be no future without forgiveness. Hope for change and reconciliation are now the lenses through which the future must be imagined. Why? Because if we let the present global system of violence — against other humans, other cultures and Nature — continue unabated, it is unlikely that there will be anybody around to celebrate New Year 2100. The wonderful thing about forgiveness, reconciliation and hope is that we have to take the initiative ourselves; they cannot be demanded of somebody else. You cannot force another human being to forgive you;...

“Given that democratic countries have free and independent media, President Clinton’s visit to Kosovo on November 23 would be a golden opportunity to take stock of the US-led Western policies to bring peace to the region. Here is a selection of questions with some media advisory. In other words, if I imagine I had been granted an interview as a journalist, this is what I would focus on,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. (1) Mr. President, US warplanes bombed Yugoslavia and the Kosovo province with you as the Commander-in-Chief of US forces. Does it worry you that the whole campaign was justified and conducted on the basis of what has turned out to be grossly mistaken or falsified information about a genocide planned by Belgrade? [During the campaign, President Clinton, Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright are on record with figures of between 10,000 and 100,000 missing and probably killed in...

“Read the farewell interview with Macedonian President Kirov Gligorov and the analysis by TFF’s Macedonian adviser Dr. Biljana Vankovska on our site and you will understand how fragile Macedonia’s stability and peace is. Why not try a citizens’ ‘early warning’? We invite you to send us your ideas on how we can help Macedonia avoid violence and move towards peace in spite of all the obstacles,” says director Jan Oberg. “After the Kosovo war, all citizens of Macedonia go through very difficult times; presidential elections take on October 31. If there is one lesson from Kosovo, it is this: the earlier we deal with the problems, the more options there are, and the easier it is to solve conflicts without resorting to violence. It is a safe prediction that, unless various types of violence-preventive measures are taken and taken in time, Macedonia is likely to slide into chaos. If citizens...

”With e-mail and Internet it has become so much more easy to generate and share ideas instantly. Below you find 53 different ideas about peace in Macedonia from people around the world who responded to our call in the preceding PressInfo. It’s a free gift to anyone who cares to listen and take inspiration – many could also be implemented in Kosovo,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. “Our respondents are not a representative sample but, among other things, this exciting experiment shows that: 1) there are so many ideas out there and an amazing willingness to contribute constructively; 2) people who have not been to Macedonia can share ideas and initiatives that have worked in other conflicts, a general body of knowledge and experiences are developing; 3) they focus much more on the human dimensions of conflict-resolution than governments do; 4) they by and large reject military means in peacebuilding,...

“The UN and NATO missions in Kosovo violate Security Council Resolution 1244, which clearly guarantees the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The Security Council has just reaffirmed that Kosovo is a part of FRY. Resolution 1244 also demands the full cooperation of FRY in implementing the mission’s tasks. All this is pure pretence, as any visitor to Kosovo will learn – and mission members will tell you privately. The Report of the Secretary-General (S/1999/987 of September 16) does not even bother to mention whether KFOR/UNMIK cooperates with Belgrade. It seems pretty clear, rather, that the international community has fooled Belgrade and considers it so weak that it does not even have to be polite or give the world the impression that it respects the country’s sovereignty. This coincides with credible press analyses that U.S. decision makers think Kosovo must become independent. The international...

“Do you remember Kim, the 9-year-old Vietnamese girl, running as she was hit by napalm from U.S. warplanes in 1972? That picture haunted John Plummer for 24 years; he had been a helicopter pilot and helped organise the napalm raid. His marriage crashed, he isolated himself and took to drinking; he eventually became a Methodist pastor in Virginia. In 1996, Kim and John met and he says: ‘Kim saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow… She held out her arms to me and embraced me. All I could say was “I’m sorry; I’m sorry” – over and over again. And at the same time she was saying, “It’s all right, I forgive you.” They are now good friends and call each other regularly. This may be a unique story, but how can we talk about restoring peace after wars’ hurt and harm without paying attention to the human aspects of...

“Da li se još sećate Kim, devetogodišnje vijetnamske devojčice koju su 1972. godine pogodili napalmom američki ratni avioni? Ta slika je 24 godine proganjala Džona Plamera; on je pilotirao helikopterom koji je omogućio taj napad napalmom. Njegov brak je propao, on se izolovao od prijatelja i rodbine i propio; posle svega postao je metodistički pastor u Virdžiniji. Kim i Džon su se sreli 1996. godine i on kaže: „Kim je videla moj bol, moju tugu, moje sažaljenje… Ispružila je ruke i zagrlila me. Jedine reči koje sam uspevao da prozborim bile su: ‘Žalim, žao mi je’ – i to sam ponavljao i ponavljao. Ona je tada govorila: ‘U redu je, u redu, opraštam ti.” Njih dvoje su sada dobri prijatelji koji se često čuju i razgovaraju. Možda je ovo jedinstvena priča, no kako uopšte možemo govoriti o obnavljanju mira posle ratom nanesenih ozleda, štete i zla, a da svoju pažnju...

“Those who wrote the Report of the UN Secretary-General on the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) must have had other aims than accurate reporting. The report is biased, embellished, slanted. It omits important aspects which point toward the fact that this mission ignores Security Council Resolution 1244 on which it is based and is a failure in the making on its own criteria,” says TFF director Jan Oberg upon his return from TFF’s 37th mission to the region and his visit to Pristina, Skopje and Belgrade. “The report (S/1999/987 of September 16) covers the period in which at least 150,000 legitimate non-Albanian (Serbs, Roma, etc.) citizens were driven out of the province. Normally this would be called ethnic cleansing. It has happened under the very eyes of 45,000 NATO soldiers, 1,100 UN civilian police and thousands of other internationals, including the OSCE and EU. The report does NOT state that...

“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...

“Now is the time to begin to reflect on what actually happened this spring in Kosovo and, thus, to the world. I believe that historians will agree that from March 24, 1999 international politics and relations as well as the global system has changed in a deep sense,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. “Many consider NATO’s intervention a moral success, a just war, a victory for democratic values. But I believe we need to look at it from a variety of angles to a) understand it more deeply and b) to work out ideas, concepts and policies so that anything similar will never happen again elsewhere. It is indeed peculiar that this war – conducted from a moral high ground and with the aim to promote the finest ideals of Western culture – has hardly been evaluated in just such terms. I am not a philosopher of ethics, but here...