Forget the Crummy Effigies — Burn a Church!

Many conservatives supported the 1999 air war against Serbia over Kosovo, even though it was instigated by Bill Clinton. I was not one of them; it seemed like an ill-advised use of America’s political and military capital, and a look into the background of the KLA did not inspire confidence. What did we think we were doing by going to bat on behalf of such a seedy, shadowy, and dangerous organization?

Later events only confirmed my worst expectation. Putting Kosovo into UN receivership has been a disaster for everyone except for the Kosovar Albanians, and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of Christians from Kosovo highlighted the nature of the people we were so eager to help.

Last night a reader drew my attention to a video published by CNS that shows the desecration and burning of an Orthodox church in Kosovo by a Kosovar Albanian mob. The event took place in 2005, but there’s no indication that things have improved since then. In the interim more Christians have been driven out or killed, more churches have been razed, and the remnant left behind have been forced to live in greater and greater fear. With the huge influx of Saudi petrodollars, Kosovo has been thoroughly Wahhabized, and has become a springboard for the extension of the Great Jihad into the heart of Europe.

According to the CNS article accompanying the video:

Between 1999 and 2004 approximately 150 churches, monasteries, seminaries, and bishop residences were attacked by ethnic Albanian mobs. Many of the churches contained priceless Byzantine frescoes and other religious artifacts dating as far back as the 13th century. Many of the sites were reduced to rubble.

And all under the watchful eye of the UN. At the beginning of this video a clearly marked KFOR armored vehicle rolls by as the mob gathers to destroy the church. As the smoke rises from the windows of the church, several men climb to the roof and break off the large metal crosses from the gables, pitching them over the side to the cheers of the crowd below. As the flames rise higher, an Albanian flag is seen flying in the foreground.

And this is not an isolated event; similar atrocities have occurred throughout the province. Apologists for the Kosovars have written all this off as the work of criminals and extremist elements, nothing to do with the ruling junta in Kosovo.

Does all this sound familiar?

The official Nazi government response at the time [of Kristallnacht] was that such outbreaks were spontaneous, not organized. In the Kosovo situation, analysts are also expressing doubt over a similar line touted by the government.

Referring to the destruction of 34 churches in March of last year Melady said, “Thanks to a few amateur films that were made when the protests broke out, we can see how things unfolded. At all the scenes someone would climb to the top and tear down the cross, then stomp on it. Then they would set fire to the church.”

During the Aug. 12 congressional staff briefing, Melady’s research assistant, Ivan Djurovski, showed footage of the destruction of St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Podujevo.

The 17-minute video obtained by Cybercast News Service shows crowds of men ranging in age from about 15 to 50, calmly and methodically fanning out around the church after marching through town. After setting the church on fire, one of the vandals enters the bell tower to ring the church bell, which draws cheers from the crowd. Men scale the roof of the church to tear down three crosses, resulting in more cheers. Cybercast News Service edited the 17 minute video down to approximately two-and-a-half minutes.

The video also shows the presence of a Kosovo Force tank and soldiers. The Kosovo Force (KFOR) is a NATO-led international contingent responsible for establishing and maintaining security in the province. French and German forces later said their mandate was to protect lives, not property. [emphasis added]

A further reminder (as if we needed one) that UN “peacekeepers” do not keep what you and I would call peace.
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“This is a very grave threat,” said [defense analyst Frederick] Peterson. “With final status changing from Serbian Orthodox hegemony into at very best a gray line, the dividing line between the Christian and Islamic world moves closer to the European Union, and we’re at great risk of tolerating what should not be tolerated in order to buy some peace in our time.”

In the war against an expanding radical Islam, Peterson said, “We have three choices: convert, submit or die. But there’s a fourth choice and that’s to fight.

“What is going on in Kosovo today is the future of Europe tomorrow,” he added.

As Dahn Pettersson recently discovered, speaking the plain truth about the Muslims of Kosovo violates the precepts of multicultural political correctness and can get a man in serious trouble.

But the fact remains that Kosovo is essentially a proto-state being run by a Wahhabist criminal mob. This is the same entity that President George W. Bush wants the international community to recognize, to reward with its own sovereign nation.

Here’s an excerpt from an article called “Albanian Terrorism and Organized Crime in Kosovo and Metohija”, which is part of a site run by the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo:

At the time KLA was being founded, in the first half of 1993, organized crime was not so prominent in this region. Primarily for the purpose of arming the newly organized groups, members of KLA in the areas of Drenica and Metohija established connections with their relatives, migrant workers in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and other countries, who had already been involved in illicit activities, and established multiple channels for transporting the arms and equipment, as well as financial resources for the needs of K&M terrorists.

This way, a firm link of the key persons of Albanian terrorism and the leaders of organized crime in the region with the highly criminalized and politically manipulated Albanian diaspora, a very important factor in the operation of the partnership between Albanian terrorism and criminal organizations, was established.

At the same time, the sanctions imposed on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by the international community and the trade blockade of the FYRepublic of Macedonia by Greece have switched drug trafficking from the routes connecting Turkey with the Western European market to a new one, across the territory of Albania and K&M. A part of the money earned in these illicit operations was paid to some allegedly humanitarian funds that were actually used to sponsor the activities of KLA members.

Of almost DM 900 million that reached Kosovo and Metohija in the between 1996 and 1999, nearly a half was the money earned in drug trafficking, which made Interpol experts conclude (in December 2000) that the activities of fund raising for Kosmet and KLA were used for laundering of illegally acquired money.

KLA did not use the channels for illegal transportation of drugs only as a way to ship heroin to Europe in order to earn enormous profits, but also to smuggle arms to the Balkans. Drugs were directly traded for arms, or the arms were purchased with the money earned from drug trafficking in Albania, B&H, Croatia, Cyprus, Italy, Montenegro, Switzerland and Turkey.

These are the people that the West want to do business with. The only conclusion one can draw is that there must be some very lucrative stakes indeed to induce our leaders to climb into bed with the likes of the KLA.

This is a good opportunity to follow the money into the shadows and see where it leads.