Note from Fjordman: This is not related to this essay, but in the Wikipedia page dedicated to me, I think the excellent bilingual website Honest Thinking should be included among websites quoting my work, perhaps also websites Snaphanen and Human Rights Service. I don’t have anything to do with Wikipedia, including my own page, but perhaps somebody else could include these sites.
Why We Should Oppose an Independent Kosovo- - - - - - - - -
President Bush declared a “war on terror” after the Jihadist attacks on the United States in 2001. Six years later, all he has achieved is bleeding American tax payers financially and American soldiers literally while overseeing the eradication of non-Muslim communities in Iraq. Now his administration supports independence for terrorist-sponsoring Muslims in the Balkans and in the Palestinian territories. Unless he does something very substantial in 2008, George W. Bush risks being remembered as one of the worst presidents in American history.
I listened to a speech by Patrick Sookhdeo, a former Muslim who recently launched his latest book, Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam . Sookhdeo had done a lot of excellent – and frightening – research regarding the Islamization of Western Europe, especially Britain. He recalled having a conversation with a senior Western official regarding what would happen if Muslims in a region of, say, Britain or the Netherlands, should declare that they would no longer accept the laws of the central government and would form a breakaway Islamic Republic. This official then stated that they would probably just have to quietly accept that. When witnessing the Muslim riots in France, which more and more resemble a civil war, this question is no longer just hypothetical.
As writer Julia Gorin has warned, “An independent Kosovo will serve as a nod to secessionists worldwide,” and “history will show what no one cares to understand: the current world war began officially in Yugoslavia.”
Granting Jihadist Muslims independence in Kosovo after they have conducted ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims will establish an extremely dangerous precedent. Not only is it immoral to sacrifice the freedom or perhaps existence of smaller nations, be that the Serbs or the Israelis, in order to save your own skin. As the example of Czechoslovakia demonstrated during WW2, it is also counterproductive. Supporting independence for Muslim Albanians in Kosovo will not lead to stabilization of the Balkans; it will rather lead to the Balkanization of the West. The new thug state will serve as a launching pad for Jihad activities against non-Muslims, just like an independent Palestinian state would do in the Middle East. In the case of Kosovo, the Russians are right and Western leaders, both in the European Union and the United States, are wrong. The Serbs have suffered enough. Give them a break!
In a conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims, other infidels should always support the non-Muslim side. That goes for Kosovo as much as it goes for Kashmir or southern Thailand. It’s time to end the demonization of the Serb people and support their struggle against the global Jihad. We are all next in line.
Read the whole thing at Dhimmi Watch.
29 comments:
I know I am biased, being from the region (the flip side is that I understand the situation much better), but what Clinton did was catastrophic.
He took sides against the Serbs, our old ally.
Kosovo is the cradle of the Serbian people and the muslims, brought by the ottoman turks, brought unspeakable suffering to the Christian local population (in this case Serbian).
If the west recognizes Kosovo, it will throw Serbia in Russia arms for a very long time and it may lighten the powder keg once more.
I do not know if Clinton's action was stupidity or it was a classic "wag the dog" war, but the results are very, very bad.
I take it the leftbats approve of independance?
what will unfold i believe from the independence of kosovo would be a staging point for further independence movements but also kosovo would be a stronghold for muslim extremists looking to spread the jihad across europe with force. Kosovo is not looked at with much attention in the US but this mistake of backing muslims will come back to haunt us.to homophobic horse the left definatly approves of kosovo independence stronger than those on the right. The serbs are no angels but they are not our enemy, non-muslims do need to unite against what is coming and giving kosovo independence will only help muslims carry out the global jihad. if anyone wants some good info on the kosovo situation check out serbiana.com, it is very informative.
Well yes, any European government, committed to pacifist surrender would meekly accept any declaration of independence. The people however would not.
Once weakness is displayed it can't be taken back. It invites other attackers. If say, the Independent Islamic Republic of the Netherlands can declare itself, so too can others. And a general European civil war commences for land and people -- and who will rule both.
Who can put people in the street with enough violence to make things stick? Islamists (seen already in France, I'm surprised they have not already declared independence) particularly with an Iranian patron threatening nuclear reprisals as a "protector" -- but also soccer clubs, various parties (particularly the NPD) and various criminal organizations threatened by Islamists.
Being weak only invites attack and most European governments have fetishized weakness.
whiskey_199: Indeed, I wonder how the split brewing within Belgium factors into this. If the EU sits idly by while Muslim enclaves break away, would they allow, say, Flanders to follow the same precedent? If not, that strikes me as a surefire way to start a European civil war.
On the other hand, suppose Belgium splits up first, with or without EU consent. Would Europe's Islamic supremacists not quickly interpret this as a declaration of open season for separatism?
The term "War on Terror" is folly and foolishness, in my opinion.
It is akin to declaring a "War on Torpedoes" after Pearl Harbor in the 1940's or a "War on Assassinations" after Kennedy was gunned down.
Each time I hear Bush (or anyone else for that matter) use this term, it causes me to have a greatly diminished respect for what they have to say...
The correct term is: "Islam's War on The World"
Acknowledging anything less is absurd.
~Norsk Troll
Hmmm, it would seem the Kosovar Albanian Muslims already have a homeland. Last I checked, they called it Albania.
Fjordman - on target as usual. Thanks.
They call it "the war on terror" and not the "war against Islamic expansion" because to call it the latter would repudiate the newcons belief in a single united humanity "united in diversity".
all you here are freaks and idiots
Albiqete said...
all you here are freaks and idiots
..
..
Very eloquent argument in support of the Albanian worshippers of the blood thirsty moongod and his pedophile prophet who have been burning churches and beating old women in Kosovo for the past decade there, albino pete.
It is not that obvious. Albanians are already there, that's the problem. Would serbs be better off in a multinational state with albanians, or it's better to have albanians behind a fence? Both solutions are not ideal and have both advantages and disadvantages.
To my opinion, important is spirit, not temporal beurocratic solutions and treaties. If serbs have the spirit to fight, we should not interfere. But if they only care about being formal rulers, simultaneously giving up to islamization, then it's better to have a border with a fence.
Of course, not all Albanian-Americans are complete turdlettes like Albino Pete.
John Belushi was darned funny, until he learned the hard way the dangers of mixing hypodermic heroin and cocaine.
OT
Good news re: a few days old thread and creeping hate speech garbage in US.
Good news, Florida Attorney General advises University of Florida that squelching showing of movie 'Obsession' violates free speech rights of students
It is rather interesting to note that "albiqete" also wrote the following.
All you Serbs born with a dysfunctional brain.
On 18 August 2007, Albiqete wrote the following at the New Statesman.
Serbian ESCAPISM AND DENIAL
HONEST DECLARATIONS –believing what you say is the truth- in fact is not
OUTRIGHT LIES – avoiding to admit the truth
SELECTIVE PERCEPTION- chooses only an opinion to support or favor their viewpoint in the matter
SELECTIVE RECOLLECTION chooses to recollect only facts / fiction who favor only their viewpoint in the matter
SELECTIVE INTERPRETATION chooses only to interpret the topics who favor only their viewpoint in the matter
How enlightening.
Albino Pete does not appear to be a native English or American English speaker, or at least has some real problems using the proper form of the verb 'to be'.
As Ed mentioned above, the Kosovars have a homeland- Albania. And the Albanian minorities in neighboring countries are getting restless as well. Give them Kosovo, and they'll want Macedonia and a few more places besides.
Then we'll see what they're really made of- remember that the Kosovars are the leading drug smugglers in Europe (right?), and were, until Clinton had another of his brilliant ideas, a terrorist group.
But he had to change that so that the evil wicked Serbs could get bombed.
Darn right, Fjordman, and I said so back in 1999, too. One thing about Serbia, though, it has got some seriously bad mojo for having sparked the First World War, which was the beginning of the great disaster of Western civilization. Being on its side feels about as satisfying as being on Stalin's side.
I also support Russian revanchism in Central Asia, and wonder why Putin has allowed that absurdity called "Kazakhstan" to continue for so long. In other words, how many of you really mean it?
I'm living close to that area andhistorically, that area has ALWAYS caused troubles. Remember 1914?
Independant Kosovo = the next war in the Balkans will come more sooner than later.
Because, if the Kosovo is independant, then the Serbs in the Kosovo will want the same. Ergo they will bash in their heads once again. And who will have to step in then? The EU, the UN, the NATO, we start over again, waste another 7 or so years, risk the lives of our soldiers for those fools, waste an awful lot of money and the result will be... nothing. Not to mention that an independant Kosovo is a great base of operation for the Islamo-fascists.
I'm just a hapless Yank but isn't Balkanization of Europe already in place? I'm referring to the redistricting by the EU.
Once national boundaries are no longer recognized as sovereign and there are only districts it will be very easy indeed for a large and aggressive power to prevail.
takekaze,
"if the Kosovo is independant, then the Serbs in the Kosovo will want the same."
I don't think so; Albanian Kosovars outnumber Serb Kosovars by at least 9 to 1. Serbs have been quietly "relocating" to Serbia proper for years. No doubt NATO's passivity to the ethnic cleansing and church burning has something to do with that...
By the time Kosovo becomes independent, there won't be any Serbs left to present a problem.
"And who will have to step in then? The EU, the UN, the NATO, we start over again, [...], waste an awful lot of money and the result will be... nothing."
That scenario will only play out if the nation of Serbia attacks the newly indempendent nation of Kosovo. The Serbs may have thought in the 90's that they could easily get away with a little "internal population realignment" but subsequent events proved them disastrously wrong. Attacking another nation whose birth was midwifed by the UN is an order of magnitude riskier, to the point of requiring drooling idiocy to attempt.
"Not to mention that an independant Kosovo is a great base of operation for the Islamo-fascists."
If the West allows Kosovo to achieve independence, that will indeed be the outcome. We get a militant Jihadist state, with an active terrorist element funded (in true Jihadi fashion) through the existing drug trade, and if Turkey's shift towards Islamism continues on its current trajectory it will have a powerful "mainstream" ally to run interference. Combine this with Russia's newfound assertiveness and historical ties to Serbia, the opportunities for major conflict are legion.
Oh joy, another world war starting in the balkans.
Last October, after leaving the Counter-Jihad conference I was in need of ride to the Brussels Noord station from Genval, situated in the Walloon portion of Belgium. I would have most likely missed my train connection to Amsterdam, if not for a man delivering news papers to a closed shop across the street from where I was standing. I asked him if he spoke English and he said yes, told him my predicament and he said "toss your stuff in the side of the truck and I'll give you a ride, it's on my way".
He didn't speak English fluently, but we were able to talk somewhat. After delivering the last of his papers to four more shops, we were finally on our way back to Brussels. I found out that he was an Albanian Kosovar and he found out that I was from Finland. He has worked in almost all of the major cities in Europe as a truck driver, and sends most of what he earns to his wife and three children in Kosovo.
Upon hearing that I was from Finland he expressed his admiration for Finland's former president, Martti Ahtisaari, --who is currently trying to get Kosovo to become an independent state-- and spoke about all the problems Muslims are currently facing around the world. What I find interesting is his focus on the areas of conflict --Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine-- as examples of victimization of Muslims by the West.
Here is a guy that works rather freely in Europe, very friendly, and from a Muslim region inside Europe, but "he chooses to identify with the Islamic world and portray the West as the oppressors.... not Iran, the Saudis and the former Iraqi regime as the worst violators of Muslim human/civil rights.
I of course didn't get into a deeper discussion with him due to language and the fact that I was very much dependent upon his "goodwill" in getting me to Brussels. It does however, cause me to think back to the first encounter a few day earlier on my first day in Brussels, with the two Iranian men who were disseminating material about the dictatorial mullocracy of Iran. These two Muslim men knew very well what brutality and victimization was, and in their opinion, it wasn't coming from the West, but from the very heart of the Islamic world itself.
The Kosovo's are indeed being radicalized by jihad ideology, and this lonely truck driver appears to be only too willing to view them (Islamism) as being the answer, not the liberal democracy he is thriving in, and sending money back to his family from.
If Muslims are being victimized by the multi-culti social engineers in Iraq and Afghanistan then PC is to blame. Ironic don't you think?
Fjordman's analysis is fatally flawed at its core.
The fatal flaw is that there is a profound difference between Albanian nationalism, with Albanians happening to be Muslims, and Muslim immigrants in Western Europe. The latter are brand new communities that call into question the ethnic and cultural identities of their host states.
In contrast, the Albanians represent several hundred years of settlement in Kosovo - since 1389 in fact.
The best analogy to Albanian Muslims in Kosovo is not Muslims in the Netherlands or Belgium, but rather Northern Irish Protestants, who moved to the Emerald Isle from Scotland and Great Britain starting in the 16th century. And the Serb demands for Kosovo united with Serbia can be compared to demands that Northern Ireland be forcibly integrated into a Catholic united Ireland.
The actions of the leaders that have been chosen by the Serbian people since they chose Slobodan Milosevic in the 1980's are the primary cause for the current crisis, which is the last sorry part of the saga of the breakup of Yugoslavia. If the Serb leadership and their Croat counterparts had worked to keep Yugoslavia together then Kosovo would now be what it was before, an autonomous region within the Serbian portion of Yugoslavia. Thanks to Serb nationalism and Slobodan Milosevic's cynical manipulation of it, Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back together again.
The Muslim angle of the Kosovo issue is the result of opportunistic foreign jihadis taking advantage of the mess made by Serbia and Milosevic to gain a wedge in. It is best handled by granting Kosovo independence and then isolating Jihadi elements within the country.
Also, the far northern part of Kosovo is still majority Serb (approximately 10% of the country). Serbia and Russia should drop their losing battle in exchange for cession of this northern territory back to Serbia.
Stop letting murderous Serb nationalists use Jihadi chicken littleism to conflate this issue with the issue of Muslim immigration into Western Europe.
Shame on you, Fjordman, for either manipulating the Counter-jihad movement, or letting yourself be manipulated by others.
And Ed, I suggest you do some more fact-checking on the issue of Kosovo before blindly following the likes of "1389" into this argument.
Ex-Gordon, I don't think there's reason to shame Fjordman, neither for you disagreeing with him, or in the case that Fjordman has bad or missing information. The latter happens to all of us, and a sign of a credible debater is one who'll accept evidence and let it modify his position.
Let me do that myself: I take ad notam that the Albanian population of Kosovo may have been over 60 % before WWII, and will not use the 'population transfer' argument again, unless I find more facts to substantiate it.
Fjordman isn't manipulating anyone. He's presenting his point of view, in extensive detail as usual, and open to debate. Balkan is more complex than just about anything else in Europe, and the scarcity of unbiased sources (can you mention even a single usable one?) makes it hard work to puzzle everything together.
Like pretty much everyone else, I'm learning as I go along. Contributions from either side of the fence are welcome, and I reserve the right to change my opinion here and there as appropriate.
In the current situation, I think a division of Kosovo would be the best solution. Along with a division of Bosnia, lest the Muslim-dominated country will grab the first possible opportunity to start ethnic cleansing against the Serb minority.
henrik: Sorry to both you and Fjordman if I was too insulting. Given what I have read of Fjordman he appears to be sincere even when in error, as in here. I think the "1389"-type Serbian nationalist folks are manipulating him and many others by conflating their dreams of centuries-old revenge and ethnic cleansing with the worldwide Islamic threat.
I don't believe that a division of Bosnia is necessary, if the Bosnian Serbs are willing to accept that they are a minority. What you may not be aware of is that Bosnian Muslims are also a minority of 40% of the population, with 40% being Serb and 20% Croat. Even if they wanted to, Bosnian Muslims could not impose Sharia or Jihad. And given the history of Bosnian Islam, and even the reputed statements of one of their former leaders (Izetbegovic) over 30 years ago, I highly doubt that there is any possibility of that.
Both here, and in the comments that follow WRONG ON SERBIA at Atlas Shrugs, Nodrog (formerly known as Gordon) and other crypto-jihadist lizardroids reveal, among other things, their own rabid racism against Serbs.
THEY, and only they, are the real racists, as shown by their own words. Not the Serbs, not the European anti-immigrant parties - but the leftists who spread their lies in the MSM and the blogosphere, and their jihadist allies - those are the racists and the real neo-Nazis of our era.
Let me remind Nodrog, and everyone else currently or formerly associated with Leftist Green Footballs, that false accusations of genocide have been used, and are still being used, to incite real genocide against those falsely accused - in this case, the Serbs. This, in itself, is a war crime - on your part - and it has not gone unnoticed.
Oh, I'm not done yet - I have several other points to make!
The Albanians who have infiltrated Kosovo over the past century do have a place to which they can, and must, return: Albania. The fact that their own relatives and countrymen have made Albania unfit to live in matters not. They must return there. To allow them to remain in Kosovo would be to reward a century of genocide against Serbs. That is intolerable.
Milosevic was no Serb nationalist, but a hapless appeaser who was repeatedly hoodwinked by the US and NATO, and ultimately disposed of. See Emperor's Clothes for background. That site has the whole history of MSM pro-jihadist taqiyya!
If you want to know what a Serb nationalist is all about, I am a Serb nationalist. I am not ashamed of being a Serb nationalist, nor should anyone ever be!
1) I claim that the Serbian people has a right to exist.
2) I claim that those of us who are of Serbian ancestry have the right to be known and identified as Serbs (or as Serbian-Americans, Serbian-Canadians, Serbian-Australians, as the case may be), without anyone else thinking that this gives them the right to attack us.
3) I claim that Orthodox Christian Serbs have the right to continue practicing our religion, wherever in the world we may happen to be.
4) I claim that we as Serbs have the same right to defend ourselves against attack that anyone else has - and that this includes the right to cooperate among ourselves for mutual protection.
Anybody out there who disagrees with me? I've already thrown the glove down - if you pick it up, you'd better be loaded for bear. Be advised that I expect valid logic supported with provable factual information. I expect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Anything else will be met with the most thorough takedown imaginable.
The conservative blogosphere is being MUCH too patient with crypto-jihadist leftists such as Nodrog, who serve the cause of expansionist Islam by persistently uttering blood libels against Serbs, Jews, and European conservatives. In particular, I have seen no evidence that any of these LGF stooges are arguing in good faith. Any leftist who argues in good faith will soon find no alternative but to abandon leftism.
Leftist ideology is always and everywhere harmful and wrong, and is especially harmful to those it purports to help.
Thus, the only way leftists such as Nodrog can peddle their poison with any degree of success is by committing evil:
Lying
Cheating
Stealing
Libeling and slandering innocent people
Using violence whenever they don't get their way.
The only difference between leftists like Nodrog, and ordinary jihadists, is that some of the leftists are so deluded by their own sense of self-importance that they actually believe their own taqiyya.
Notice that these leftists keep repeating the same lies even after they are soundly refuted, just as Nodrog is doing here. They are deaf and blind to any evidence that contradicts the gutter racist propaganda that they spew forth. This is an object lesson in identifying those who are not presenting their arguments in good faith.
I claim that Charles Johnson has never been a member of the counterjihad, much less a leader of it. He is a greedy blogger who uses terrorism stories to get page views, while at the same time serving the interests of the jihadists by exerting a chilling effect on all attempts to counteract jihadism. CJ and his followers must be, and are being, discredited with the utmost thoroughness and finality, so that none of them will ever again be able to do any further damage to the counterjihadist cause.
Finally, by uttering these blood libels against the Serbian people, Nodrog (who might even be one of Charles Johnson's sockpuppets/multiple personalities) is spreading enemy propaganda.
Nodrog is knowingly and deliberately giving a tremendous amount of aid and comfort to our AQ-affiliated jihadist enemies in the Balkans. The same is true of CJ himself and of all others who are doing CJ's and LGF's dirty work in this regard, whether or not they are officially affiliated with LGF.
Last I checked, treason is a capital offense. When things deteriorate further, enforcement of applicable laws will no doubt resume.
Rope, tree, US Constitutional definition of treason, lizards...
April 2000
Germany and the Kosovo
How Germany paved the way to the Kosovo War · By Matthias Küntzel
Contribution to the 2nd International Hearing of the European Tribunal concerning Nato’s war against Yugoslavia. Hamburg, April 16, 2000 [1]
In 1991, a delegation of the German Bundestag visited Kosovo for the first time in order to talk with Kosovo Albanian nationalist leaders. This prompted – as early as 1991! – the warning by a senior member of the Yugoslavian parliament that “the British and the Germans would create a common intervention force with 70,000 soldiers in order to intervene in Kosovo.” [2] Indeed an early and accurate prophecy! So what about Germany’s role in preparing for the Kosovo war?
There were and there are strategic differences between German and the US policies about how to retain or enhance hegemony. “As a wealthy status quo power, the United States has an interest in maintaining international order”, wrote Joseph S. Nye, Jr, a former US deputy secretary of defense. “In a world where there are some two hundred states but many thousands of often overlapping entities that might eventually make a claim to nationhood, blind promotion of self-determination would have highly problematic consequences.” [3] Berlin, however, in seeking to create conditions for an ongoing expansion of German influence (that means: changing the international order) does not share this priority. As Rupert Scholz, the former German secretary of defense, explained: “The aim of maintaining “stability” in Europe seems to be a most dangerous one. There will not be any real stablity, which is able to maintain peace, if individual nations are held prisoner in unwanted and unnatural (“unnatürliche”) state organizations, which have been imposed upon them.” Since 1990, German foreign policy has “constantly persisted in activly advocating a universal right of self-determination.” [4]
This policy has a particular bearing on Kosovo. The hidden war about Kosovo’s future started in 1995 at the latest. In February 1995 in the presence of Roman Herzog, Germany’s President at that time, Germany and Albania signed a common declaration of principle at Tirana. This declaration is rarely mentioned in the literature but nevertheless decisive because it promised to find a “solution to the Kosovo question” by advocating the right of self-determination for Kosovo’s Albanians. [5] Advocating self-determination for Kosovo´s Albanians, however, meant advocating their right to secede from Yugoslavia. This declaration was in so far a kind of advance notice to continue Germany’s 1991 course (recognition of Croatia) in order to further split up Yugoslavia following a racist (völkisch) concept of self-determination.
In the period following, the German goverment did everything it could to spur on the separation of Albanians within Kosovo. Germany supported and financed those nationalists who sought to pursue the goal of full independence by creating alternative governing institutions as well as independent Albanian educational and medical systems in Kosovo which systematically separated the majority of the people in Kosovo from the other peoples of Yugoslavia. In addition, German secret diplomacy was instrumental in helping the “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA), as they call themselves, since its creation in February 1996. The daily newspaper “The European” stated that “German civil and military intelligence services have been involved in training and equipping the rebels with the aim of cementing German influence in the Balkan area.” [6]
During those years, Germany unilaterally supported the secessionist movements. In 1997 editor Johann Georg Reißmüller of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (a German daily newspaper) wrote: “The US government is not at all happy with Germany’s policy in Kosovo”.
It was, however, exactly that year – 1997 – that the crisis in Kosovo began to escalate. After the destruction of the Albanian army arsenals the KLA armed itself in order to start a large-scale nationalist rebellion. This development and the following counter-attack by the Serbian police moved Kosovo into the headlines and into the focal point of NATO’s considerations. How did Germany and the United States react?
“The Clinton administration is still uncertain about how to deal with this crisis”, later wrote the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. A senior official from the German foreign office was sent to Washington to put pressure on the deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott. “We urgently need U.S. leadership now” claimed Germany’s emissary. [7] This pattern: Germany calls for the U.S. government – actually for a special wing of the U.S government – to act against Yugoslavia were repeated between March 1998 and March 1999 over and over again. Let us now take a closer look at that pre-war diplomacy which paved the way to war.
The US government is responsible for most of the war crimes NATO committed against Yugoslavia. But even in 1998, the Clinton administration – split in several fractions on how to deal with Milosevic and the Kosovo Albanians’ nationalism – hesitated, reacting uncertainly on a case-by-case basis, oscillating between supporting the KLA and letting Milosevic have a free hand in smashing them. Germany on the other hand knew what to do and how to act. The grand design of Germany’s Kosovo policy had been in effect by March 1998. It was revealed by Germany’s informal ambassador to the Balkans, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, who on March 16, 1998 said: “We should try to tell Milosevic the plain truth through pressure and even military interventions that he can retain control over Kosovo as a part of Yugoslavia only if certain fundamentals are met. And if this is not the case, the territory there will have to be transformed into a kind of protectorate until those fundamentals are provided for.” [8]
This idea of pushing the Kosovo´s Albanians towards a military confrontation with Milosevic in order to create a Kosovo protectorate from now on became the central point of Germany’s Kosovo policy – either by the Kohl/Kinkel CDU government or the Schröder/Fischer SPD-Green coalition. One condition was that international troops be stationed on Kosovo soil. As early as March 1998 Germany accordingly put this matter on the agenda at the London meeting of the international Contact Group on Yugoslavia. [9]
The other condition was that Nato would have to enter Kosovo against the will of the Yugoslav government. Accordingly, Germany sharpened its tone towards Belgrad. Milosevic became the main target and remained so whatever his policy looked like.
But France, the UK, Italy and the dominating voices within the US government still prefered to follow a less confrontational policy. In 1998, The European for example stated that “Washington realised that pushing the Kosovars towards a military confrontation with Milosevic, as the Germans wanted to do, would have a boomerang effect on the Balkans. The United States put maximum pressure on Germany to stop supporting the KLA behind the scenes, as did the other European countries such as Britain and France.” [10] They termed the KLA activities “terrorist” and supported indirectly a Serbian counteroffensive against the KLA during the summer of 1998 and appealed to Milosevic and the moderate Albanian leader Rugova to begin talks. The KLA, however, succeeded in provoking the Serbian police force and in escalating armed clashes time and again. The policy of de-escalation turned out to be a permanent failure as long as there was a continuity in the supply of KLA weapons and KLA mercenaries across the Albanian border.
It was therefore not at all surprising that in the summer of 1998 all the efforts of the United Nations and the majority of Nato countries (including the US) concentrated in the goal of cutting off the arms and soldiers supplies in favor of the KLA. The Albanian government headed by Fatos Nano who had disassociated himself from the KLA supported this plan. Inside NATO the idea of sending 7000 soldiers to cut off the traffic in weapons began to take shape.
During this crucial situation,however, Germany’s covering up for the KLA became both public and evident: The German government vetoed the cutting-off of the supply of weapons for the KLA! Klaus Kinkel, then head of the German foreign office said: “Of course you have to consider whether you are permitted from a moral and ethnical point of view to prevent the Kosovo-Albanians from buying weapons for their self-defense.” [11] Volker Rühe, then head of the ministry of defense answered to this consideration with an unequivocal No: “You cannot resolve the Kosovo conflict by sending troops to Albania to seal the border and thus be acting in favor of Milosevic.” [12] Rühe’s message was quiete clear: everyone who tries to seal the border in order to find a peaceful solution is taking sides with Milosevic. In order to disassociate yourself from Milosevic you have to escalate the war between the Kosovo Albanians and the Serbs by delivering more and more weapons to the KLA!
This open German solidarity with the KLA has been as much an isolated provocation as has the recognition of Tudjman’s Croatia in 1991, 50 years after the formation of the first Croatian state under the rule of the fascist Ustashi regime.
Just like 1991 Germany again stood nearly alone against a huge majority of countries in Europe and the world. Just like 1991 Germany again supported a movement with a background rooted in the Nazi past, because the KLA is partly led by the sons and grandsons of extreme right-wing Albanian fighters, the heirs of those who fought during World War II in the fascist militias and the “Skanderbeg Volunteer SS Division” raised by the Nazis. [13] The “National Front of Albania” (Balli Kombetar) which collaborated with Nazi leaders in 1943/44 today boasts about its influence within the KLA which has a program that seems to be a modified version of the 1943 Nazi utopia.
Thus the program of “ethnic cleansing” which Germany exported into the Balkans in 1941 remained alive within the movement of the Kosovo Albanian nationalists during the 80s. “The nationalists have a two-point platform” wrote the New York Times in 1982: “First to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania.” [14] Whenever the KLA talks about “liberation” or “freeing” this has been up to now understood in the Nazi-sense of “free of something” i.e. “free of Jews” (“judenfrei”), “free of Gypsies” or “free of Serbs”. Noone could be really surprised when, beginning with June 1999, the de facto rule of the KLA turned out to be a daily and a deadly trap for thousands of non-Albanians, especially defenceless Serbs.
In the summer of 1998 Germany and the USA took not only opposite but conflicting sides: While the USA – in the words of General Shelton, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – has had “concerns about the techniques that are being used to put down, to squelch the uprising” [15] Germany on the other hand acted as the protective power for the KLA. This confrontation includes a strategic conflict within NATO: Is the Atlantic Alliance supposed to help or to hinder the KLA? Should NATO as the KLA’s airforce contribute to the revision of state borders and the further diminishing of Yugoslavia? Or is the alliance bound to clap down on such a type of militant secessionism?
It was Germany’s insistence and the ignorance or thirst for adventure within the leadership of the other NATO powers that brought the world’s biggest military alliance eventually in favor of the Albanian nationalists. Germany has “given evidence of its prepareness to lead” praised the influential Frankfurter Allgemeine. [16] Now Germany once again took the lead in pressing for military intervention in Kosovo. The New York Times reported: “German officials seem increasingly inchined towards charting a military course to stop the violence in Kosovo.” [17] Indeed. “Mr. Kinkel threatens with a Nato intervention in Kosovo” proclaimed the headlines of German papers on June 5, 1998. “The United States, unlike Germany, rejects a snap decision about a military intervention”, wrote Frankfurter Allgemeine the following day. Volker Rühe was the first government official in Europe who as early as June 15, 1998 spoke in favor of a strike against Yugoslavia even without a UN Security Council green light. This suggestion played havoc with not only the UN Charter but also with the German constitution and the Treaty of Moscow concerning German unification. This proposal was later taken up positively by the USA. We have to conclude, therefore, that Germany is not only guilty of committing the crimes which are connected with the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia, but is responsible for ardently working towards triggering this war. The German concept for Kosovo includes the following:
to make a stand against the Yugoslav government
unlimited support for the Kosovo Albanian nationalists who demand independence and a lasting unification with Albania
to demand for air-strikes against Yugoslavia in order to achieve a NATO protectorate for Kosovo which is supposed to be only an interim step towards the independence of Kosovo.
Strategic differences between German and the US policies diminished considerably in 1999 when the Clinton administration decided to go to war in favor of the ultra-secessionist KLA. They seem to gain, however, new weight in the post-war debate about the final status of Kosovo. US Secretary of State Madelaine Albright recently rejected the idea of creating a greater Albania, whereas German policy seems to be pushing in the opposite direction.
Karl Lamers, the influential CDU foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition in the Bundestag said about the transformation of Kosovo into a NATO protectorate that this is “only the first step towards the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia” and that an independent Kosovo will be “only an interim step to merging (“Anschluss”) with Albania.” [18] Recently, Lamers mentioned with great satisfaction “that everything we are actually doing in Kosovo, e. g. the creation of a new currency zone, is aimed at creating an independent Kosovo…”. [19] Even Germany’s red/green coalition government does not want to recognize Kosovo as being a province of Yugoslavia. That is the reason why in his last major statement Joschka Fischer – Germany’s vice-chancellor and secretary of state – let the question of “the future status of the Kosovo” open claiming that it would be impossible to resolve this now. In an interview with a French newspaper, however, he made clear that he had no doubts about the Kosovo’s future status: “The international community is present in Kosovo and the Balkans in order to show that – according to the example of resolving the ,German question’ in 1990 – the ,Albanian question’ could be resolved only with the agreement of the neighbouring states.” [20]
US government circles are quite aware of the ambitions of their rival, Germany. Zbigniew Brzezinski called the Berlin republic a “geostrategic main actor” and a “subversive big power inspired by an ambitious vision”. Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state, characterized Germany as the seismic focal point of the current geopolitical earthquakes which are disrupting the Atlantic Alliance as well as the Balkans. He emphasized that Germany is “the epicentre of thoses processes – enlargement and expansion, extension and deepening.” [21]
Within the context of the war against Yugoslavia the other great powers, however, not only reacted to aggressive German moves but pursued their own special interests as well. The United States wanted to retain its influence in Europe, to strengthen a worldwide role for NATO and to weaken Russias influence within the new world order. Great Britain und France were eager to demonstrate their military superiority over Germany and wanted to give a starting signal for the establishing of an independent European intervention force (together with Germany) vis-a-vis the USA. Each of these nations is a rival to the others and is trying to retain or achieve as much influence and power as possible. The war against Yugoslavia has been the first, however, to be spurred on by Germany as an attempt to redesign current world order after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This war has put the irrational elements and the destructive roots of capitalistic societies into a new light.
(Not published)
———————————————————————————————
[1] This contribution is a short description of a broader study: Matthias Küntzel, Der Weg in den Krieg. Deutschland, die Nato und das Kosovo, Elefanten Press, Berlin 2000. The author´s e-mail address: MatKuentzel@aol.com.
[2] This warning was published in the Yugoslavian journal Polityka; see the minutes of the Bundestag meeting June 16, 1991, pp. 2560-1.
[3] Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Redefining the National Interest, Foreign Affairs Vol.78 No.4, July/August 1999 pp. 22-35.
[4] See Rupert Scholz, Das Festhalten an ungewollten Staaten schafft keine Stabilität, in: Die Welt, December 12, 1991; Rupert Scholz, Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht und die deutsche Politik, in: Internationale Politik 4/1995, S.51.
[5] “Deutschland und Albanien … bekräftigen das Recht aller Völker, frei und ohne Einmischung von außen ihr Schicksal zu bestimmen und ihre politische, wirtschaftliche, soziale und kulturelle Entwicklung nach eigenem Wunsch zu gestalten.” This declaration is published in the Archiv der Gegenwart, March 13, 1995, pp. 39819-20.
[6] Roger Fallgot, How Germany Backed KLA, in: The European, 21-27 September 1998. See for more details M. Küntzel, Der Weg in den Krieg pp. 59-64.
[7] See Die Zeit, May 12, 1999.
[8] Christian Schwarz-Schilling, March 16, 1999, Deutschlandradio, quoted in: Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Stichworte zur Sicherheitspolitik, April 1998, p. 47.
[9] Russia, the USA, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany are members of this informal but influential group.
[10] Roger Fallgot, ibid.
[11] Interview with Klaus Kinkel, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 30, 1998.
[12] Mr. Rühe is quoted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, June 9, 1998.
[13] See Chris Hedges, Kosovo´s Next Masters? in: Foreign Affairs, Vol.78, No.3, May/June 1999, pp.24-42. “Although never much of a fighting force, the Skanderbeg Division took part in the shameful roundup and deportation of the province´s few hundred Jews during the Holocaust. ... The decision by KLA commanders to dress their police in black fatigues and order their fighters to salute with a cleched fist to the forehead has led many to worry about these fascist antecedents.” (ibid.)
[14] See Marvine Howe, Exodus of Serbians Stirs Province in Yugoslavia, New York Times July 12, 1982.
[15] See New York Times, June 16, 1998.
[16] See Frankfurter Allgemeine, September 26, 1998.
[17] See New York Times, June 10, 1998.
[18] See the minutes of the Bundestag parliamentary session of April 15, 1999.
[19] See the minutes of the Bundestag parliamentary session of April 5, 2000.
[20] See Le Monde March 25, 2000, emphasis by the author.
[21] See Frankfurter Allgemeine, February 5, 1999.
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