“Western leaders are busy re-writing history to
justify their Balkan bombing blunder. The change in
information, rhetoric and explanations since the bombings
started on March 24 is literally mind-boggling. Most likely
they fear they have opened a very dark chapter in history
and may be losing the plot. One way to make failure look
like success is to construct a powerful media reality and
de-construct real reality. That’s the essence of media
warfare and that’s what happens now,” says TFF director Jan
Oberg.
“For instance, you must have noticed that the The Kosovo
Liberation Army, KLA or UCK, which existed some weeks ago
and allegedly participated in Rambouillet now suddenly never
existed. The 13-months war in Kosovo/a also conveniently has
been expurgated.
The last few days President Clinton, prime minister
Blair, NATO General Wesley Clark, foreign secretary Cook,
foreign minister Fischer, secretary Albright, defence
minister Robertson and other Western leaders have explained
to the world why NATO bombs Yugoslavia. They made NO MENTION
of KLA or the war. Their speeches are surprisingly uniform.
Their main points are:
• We have evidence that Yugoslavia, i.e.President
Milosevic had a plan to ethnically cleanse Kosovo/a of all
Albanians.
• One proof of this plan is that some 700.000 have
been driven over the borders; it would have been many more,
if not all 2 million Albanians, had NATO not taken
action.
• Milosevic deployed 40.000 troops and 300 tanks in
the region even while his delegation was in Paris.
• ‘We have reports’ and ‘there are stories’ about
mass graves, rapes, and endless atrocities. We have no hard
evidence, but that’s what refugees consistently tell.
• Milosevic is now ‘a cruel dictator’ and ‘a serial
ethnic cleanser.’
• Innocent civilians are driven away ‘only because
of who they are and not because of anything they have done,’
as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair express it.
• Milosevic has not been in compliance with the
agreement he signed with ambassador Holbrooke in October
last year.
Why is this not credible, why is this probably a
‘narrative’ made to influence emotions, perceptions, enemy
images, and ultimately the behaviour of governments,
organizations, groups, and individuals?
Let me give you a few facts from my own visits and
repeated meetings over the years with the civilian Kosovar
Albanian leadership, the opposition and independent
intellectuals in Pristina,” says Oberg. “Dr. Ibrahim Rugova
repeatedly told me, as he did everyone from the West who
cared to listen, that he feared he could not keep the
Albanian people behind his pragmatic nonviolent strategy if
the West did not ‘do something’ such as persuade Belgrade to
participate in talks mediated by the international
community.
Years ago I met Kosovar Albanians who were very critical
of Dr. Rugova’s ‘passive’ leadership and advocated guerrilla
struggle as the only way out, sooner or later. In 1996 I was
told by well-informed Albanian intellectuals that they would
not rule out that there existed an armed fraction. Last year
advisers to Dr. Rugova told me that they had heard about the
liberation army as early as 1993.
For years, I would say, Kosovo has been a police state.
The only response Belgrade had to the legitimate Albanian
grievances was to step up police repression. I have no
doubts about the fact that there were gross, systematic
violations of political, economic, cultural and other human
rights. The Albanians feared Belgrade – which insisted that
it was an internal problem but never took steps to find a
solution. At the same time, the Albanian leaders ‘needed’
the repression to mobilize international support for their
project of an independent Kosova. Thus, they refused to deal
with moderate, dialogue-inclined leaders such as prime
minister Milan Panic and his excellent ministers in
1993.
Be this as it may, the truth is that there was no war, no
mass killings, no systematic ethnic cleansing, no genocide.
Many Albanians left because of the repression but also
because of the misery, the utter poverty and lack of future
opportunities for themselves and their children. Serbs, too,
left for such reasons and not – as they sometimes claim –
because they were victims of an Albanian genocide plan.
The conflict that was said to have started in 1989
erupted into war in February 1998 when KLA surfaced. It can
NOT be denied that KLA activity changed the situation from
repression to war. The most surprising is a) that the West
turned a blind eye to Albania’s role as a training ground
and base for KLA, b) that, in its consequences, Albanian
policies amounted to de facto aggression against Yugoslavia,
c) that KLA was armed by predominantly Western sources in
contravention of the United Nation Security Council’s
embargo on any arms imports into the territories of former
Yugoslavia, d) that nobody thought of closing the border to
prevent spilling-in of soldiers, weapons and ammunition and
the spilling-over of Yugoslav reprisals and e) that Yugoslav
armed forces, by and large, let these incursions happen for
months without taking action against them.
US envoy Robert Gelbard said on February 23, 1998 that he
was “deeply disturbed by the UCK” and that it was
“undoubtedly a terrorist organization.” One week later the
Yugoslav offensive against it began. So much for the present
Western cover-up which seek to make us forget the pivotal
role of KLA in this crisis.
Next, what about the argument that Milosevic did not keep
his promise to Holbrooke of October last year? It would be a
good point if that was not a one-sided agreement. While
there were two forces fighting fiercely in Kosovo – various
Yugoslav/Serb police and military forces on the one side and
KLA on the other – the agreement was signed only by
Milosevic. KLA declared a cease fire on their side, but
never signed any document. One-party cease fires are as
unique as they are untenable.
We were told and saw pictures of a war that had raged in
the province for 13 months. Albanians intellectuals and
editors I talked with during visits to Pristina in autumn
1998 told me proudly when asked who the KLA was that ‘that’s
everyone of us, we are a people in arms.’ Sheltered by the
Holbrooke-Milosevic deal, KLA seized 30% of the province’s
territory. Radical Albanians gave visitors the crystal clear
impression that victory was around the corner. That is,
until Belgrade had had enough.
During those 13 months, around 2000 people were killed
and 250.000 people displaced – about 10% of the province’s
Albanians and 10% of its Serbian citizens – but few of them,
fortunately, fled outside Kosovo. Two weeks after NATO
action began, suddenly 750.000 had run over the borders and
NOW we are told that there were only innocent civilian
Albanians in Kosovo who, as President Clinton stated it on
April 12, are driven away ONLY because of who they are and
not because of anything they have done.
It seems more probable to me that people run away for
three reasons, not one: a) because of ethnic cleansing by
Serb/Yugoslavs who feel that the ongoing destruction of
Yugoslavia is the result of Albanian policy, b) because of
the war between Yugoslav and KLA forces, and c) because of
NATO’s bombs which repeatedly also happens to hit civilian
targets.
Was there a plan to cleanse the area? No one who
maintains it has shown any hard evidence. Before March 24
this year no politician had told us about Milosevic’ alleged
plan. No humanitarian organizations had warned about a
major, systematic campaign to drive out 1-2 million people.
If OSCE with 1500 verifiers knew about such a plan – and
they listened in on Yugoslav communication – why did it not
alert the world? If Belgrade wanted to get rid of all
Kosovo-Albanians, it could have done so at any time since
1991. It never touched any Albanian leader or tried to
prevent the building of their parallel state. Why did NATO
threaten to bomb Yugoslavia if it would not sign the
Rambouillet document but said nothing about bombing it
because of the existence of such a plan?
Are 40.000 troops and 300 tanks indicative of such a
plan? Hardly. Troops and tanks are not the prime tools to
make people run away. They were deployed in the province
when NATO deceived Yugoslavia. You see, Holbrooke probably
forgot to tell Milosevic that NATO would deploy an
‘extraction force’ in Macedonia. Its task was to protect the
‘extraction’ from Kosovo of the unarmed OSCE verifiers in
the event of NATO bombings – an activity that could lead to
them being taken hostage by the Serbs. So, NATO’s bomb
threat was real from October. Would your country do nothing
if threatened for months with bombings by history’s most
powerful military alliance?
With the OSCE verifiers peacefully out, NATO did not
withdraw the force but had already begun to increase it from
3.000 to 12.000 (and forgot to consult the Macedonian
parliament). Yugoslavia had very legitimate reasons to see
this as an extremely unfriendly “signal” and moved troops
down to the Macedonian border to “signal” its determination
to fight that force, should it cross the border into Kosovo.
KLA was sucked in by the presence of the Yugoslav units and
fighting intensified in an area where no fighting had taken
place before. All this BECAUSE of NATO’s policies.
What is now called evidence of a grand design for ethnic
cleansing by Western leaders was nothing but the response to
NATO’s remarkably unwise, clumsy and adventurous attempt to
force Macedonia into the role of an ally and major NATO
base. It was a perfectly natural response to NATO’s repeated
threat of a massive air campaign. It – predictably –
resulted in an almost complete political destabilization of
the Macedonian government and a socio-economic
destabilization because of the NATO-provoked refugee
flows.
Finally, Milosevic is a ‘cruel dictator’? Well, if so why
has the West helped him be central, relied on his signature
in Dayton and never extended any help to the opposition in
Belgrade – not even when 1,5 million people demonstrated
against him a couple of years ago? Why has ambassador
Holbrooke and scores of Western diplomats had ‘interesting’
talks with him? Why did the West hope for a last-minute
concession from him to avoid the bombing it threatened? What
do we do with ‘cruel dictators’ who are elected by citizens
many of whom would certainly call him authoritarian or see
his policies a catastrophic but who never saw him as a cruel
dictator? And why does NATO repeat the mistake from Iraq –
to bomb a country only to see its people unite completely
behind their leader?
In summary, NOT ONE OF NATO’s
PRESENT ARGUMENTS HOLD WATER. They contradict
facts, they contradict what Western leaders themselves told
us yesterday. What we witness is a pitiful attempt at
“perception management” and media war against public
opinion.
We should get suspicious,” concludes Jan Oberg, “when
Western civilian and military top leaders within days seek
to rewrite and falsify history, omit well-documented facts
and central actors, change the sequence of events and forget
what they stated and did only a couple of weeks ago. It’s
particularly disturbing if you see a systematic bias or
tendency in those changes. And it bodes ill, indeed, when
the majority of journalists ask only politically correct
questions to State Department and NATO spin doctors and
spokespersons at a time that could well turn out to be a
defining moment of history.”
© TFF 1999
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