Library:To kill a nation/Ethnic cleansing, KLA-NATO style

What is still not widely understood in the West is that most of the ethnic cleansing throughout the former Yugoslavia was perpetrated not by the Serbs but against them. More than one million Serbs were driven from their ancestral homes in the breakaway republics. Some were triply displaced, uprooted from Croatia into Bosnia, then fleeing to Kosovo, and finally ending up in what remained of unoccupied Serbia. As of the year 2000, the rump nation of Yugoslavia hosted more displaced persons per capita than just about any other nation, including some 300,000 who had always lived in Serbia and were internally displaced by the NATO bombing and related hardships.

Three well-constructed refugee settlements built by the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia, intended as permanent homes, were destroyed by NATO air attacks, as was the headquarters of the Serbian Socialist party agency that dealt with the daunting refugee problem. The NATO attacks not only greatly increased the number of refugees but also destroyed many of the resources needed to cope with them, further exacerbating the FRY's housing and unemployment problems and adding to its deepening poverty.

Soon after NATO troops rolled into Kosovo, it was widely reported that the KLA itself had disarmed and disbanded. In fact, by early 2000, it was generally understood that KLA gunmen had not disarmed in any appreciable numbers. KLA personnel became the core of a civilian police force and administrative staff, the Kosovo Protection Corps, that did even less than the KFOR troops (NATO's Kosovo Force) to protect the non-Albanian minorities from violence. Indeed, former KLA members were soon involved in the misdeeds, including torturing and killing local citizens and illegally detaining others. The rule of law in Kosovo was visibly inverted, as criminals and terrorists became the law officers. John Pilger writes:

[We have witnessed] the installation of a paramilitary regime with links to organized crime. Indeed, Kosovo may become the world's first Mafia state...with war criminals, common murderers and drug traders forming an 'interim administration' that will implement the 'free-market reforms' required by the US and Europe. Their supervisors are the World Bank and the European Development Bank, whose aim is to ensure that Western mining, petroleum and construction companies share the booty of Kosovo's extensive natural resources: a fitting finale to the new moral crusade.

In the first few months that Kosovo was under KFOR occupation, 200,000 Serbs were driven from the province and hundreds were killed by KLA gunmen in what were described in the Western press as acts of revenge and retaliation, as if Serb civilians were not themselves war victims but war criminals deserving of retribution. Certainly that seemed to be the impression Cheryl Atkinson strove for when she began a CBS evening news report on the KLA attacks against minorities by saying, "Payback in Kosovo!"

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), "A wave of arson and looting of Serb and Roma homes throughout Kosovo has ensued. Serbs and Roma remaining in Kosovo have been subject to repeated incidents of harassment and intimidation, including severe beatings. Most seriously, there has been a spate of murders and abductions of Serbs since midJune, including the late-July massacre of Serb farmers."

A joint report by the OSCE and UNHCR describes "a climate of violence and impunity" with attacks being directed against the dwindling Serb, Roma, Turkish, Egyptian, Jewish, and Gorani (Muslim Slav) populations. Within months of the NATO occupation of Kosovo, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, "a sinister pattern of violence and intimidation is emerging. Serb houses are bombed and set ablaze" and Serbs are beaten and murdered in what amounts to "systematic ethnic cleansing." (Most mainstream publications avoided the term "ethnic cleansing" as applied to the forced expulsion of Serbs and other minorities from Kosovo.)

Cedda Prlincevic, the leader of Pristina's small Jewish community, told how Jews—who had lived securely when Kosovo was under Serbian rule—were driven from their homes, which were then pillaged and vandalized. KFOR saw it all, and allowed it to happen, he claimed. Before the war, Prlincevic insisted, he had never encountered anti-Semitism, from either Serbs or Albanians. Most of the Jews in Pristina had already intermarried or were the products of intermarriage, being Serbian-Jewish, Roma-Jewish, Albanian-Jewish, and the like. "We [Jews] were not driven out from Kosovo by Albanians from Pristina but by Albanians from Albania...they are in Kosovo now."

Representatives of the Historical Archive in Kosovska Mitrovica report that, since the arrival of KFOR, Albanian terrorists have destroyed more than two million books in the Serbian language...Important archival material has also been destroyed. Nothing has been done by KFOR to protect the books in libraries and other cultural institutions. Thus the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, and other famous writers are burned in front of soldiers from their countries. Hardest hit are communal libraries in the cities of Prizren, Djakovica, Istok, Glogovac, Srbica, Podujevo, all of them under control of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) members. [Had Milošević taken to burning non-Serbian books, we would still be hearing about it.]

UN officials admit "there was growing evidence that the Kosovo Albanian leadership was behind some of the harassment and was encouraging the formation of an intolerant monoethnic state."' Certain Albanian newspapers, especially Bota Sot, "are full of hate speech directed at Serbs, Roma, and even moderate Albanians, with even some incitement to violence."

Kosovo Albanians themselves have been victimized by gun/ thug rule. In Pristina, the provincial capital, there was growing fear of kidnappings." [Albanian] teenagers, both boys and girls, are being abducted off the streets," said Major Simon Plummer of Britain's Royal Greenjackets regiment. Some fifteen cases were reported in two weeks. Corporal Mark Moss, who was leading one of the British security patrols, said the problem was difficult to stop. He referred to reports of "an Albanian mafia coming across the border and abducting them [teenagers] into prostitution in Germany and Italy.... It's a definite problem. You will not see a single girl alone on the streets; they only go out in packs. Relatives take them to school."

Also forced into exile or otherwise victimized were Albanians who had "collaborated" with the Serbs by opposing separatism, or by working for the federal government or the Serbian Republic, or identifying themselves as Yugoslavs, or just speaking Serbian. Catholic Albanians complained of intimidation and violence directed against themselves. Moderate Albanians, who spoke out against the violence perpetrated against Serbs and other minorities, were subjected to threats. Many quickly learned to keep quiet. Under NATO's permissive regency, KLA gunmen assassinated Albanian political opponents, including supporters of the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL), a competing separatist organization that was sometimes branded a "traitor" group by the KLA for not being sufficiently committed to armed struggle. When the KLA murdered Fehmi Agani, a KDL leader, the Serbs were blamed for the killing by NATO spokesperson and propagandist Jamie Shea.

The International Crisis Group, a private strategy organization chaired by former United States Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, cites mounting evidence that the KLA has "lashed out at political rivals." The anti-independence Reform Democratic Party of Albanians (RDPA), for example, claimed that "six of its members were killed in Djakovica, two killed and ten reported missing in Mitrovica, nine disappeared in Pristina and twelve reported missing in Pec." NATO itself reported that 379 people had been murdered in the first five months of its occupation of Kosovo. Of these, 135 (35 per cent of the total) were Serbs, despite making up just 5 per cent of Kosovo's population. A further 145 (38 per cent) were ethnic Albanians and 99 (26 per cent) were of unknown or other ethnicity.

One of the hardest hit groups in the KLA cleansing of Kosovo was the Romany people. Driven out of homes they had lived in for generations, many Roma fled to Macedonia—only to find the refugee camps there being run by the KLA. In order to gain entry, they had to pay 500 German marks and declare Albanian nationality, according to refugees interviewed by Sani Rifati, president of Voice of Roma, an educational and humanitarian aid organization based in California. Rifati traveled to Italy to deliver aid and interview Romany refugees arriving in Brindisi. They told of being surrounded by police upon arrival, then approached by Albanian interpreters who informed them that in order to procure food they would have to present themselves as Albanians fleeing from Serbs—instead of what they really were: Roma fleeing from KLA militia and other toughs. Other Romany refugees testified that KFOR collaborated with the KLA in the expulsion of Roma.

A survey in late 1999 by independent researcher Paul Polansky placed the number of Roma remaining in Kosovo at approximately 30,000. He reported that since the KFOR occupation began, more than 14,000 Roma homes had been burnt. Aid agencies also discriminated against the Roma. "In many districts," Polansky writes, "I found the Mother Teresa Society openly refusing to deliver food to Gypsies. Islamic Relief also seems to have a policy of not providing aid to Gypsies although the Roma are Muslim." Albanian officials accused the Roma of being allied with the Serbs—because of their loyalty to Yugoslavia and lack of support for Albanian supremacy in Kosovo.

OSCE monitors entrusted with preparing for elections "expressed especially strong alarm over the ugly atmosphere that is spreading across the province." A prime example was the Prizren region. Under the earlier Yugoslav communist government, Prizren had been "a center of culture and learning," and "had always been regarded as an example of tolerance and multi-ethnic harmony in Kosovo." Under NATO! KLA rule, the region was ravaged by ethnic purges. The OSCE reported that "revenge-inspired violence against Kosovar Serbs had grown worse since the NATO troops arrived. The report made clear that the attacks often occurred under the nose of the troops, a contention that NATO denied." Accounts by Kosovo Serbs of KFOR noninterference and even active collaboration with Albanian gunmen who set about beating, intimidating, confining, or deracinating Serbs support the OSCE complaint.

According to a New York Times story, "the patrols of the NATO-led peacekeeping force are generally static and unaggressive. The burning of Serbs' homes takes place almost daily in an organized fashion...Meanwhile, the NATO occupying force of 50,000 and its officials were doing little to restore a civil structure. Justice was rare; perpetrators were seldom apprehended; court trials were almost nonexistent. So "apartment thefts, extortion and even murders [took] place with near impunity, some of it [sic] a function of organized crime."

The United Nations civilian mission in Kosovo was seriously underfunded and had no ability to restore public services or public security. Its budget suffered a shortfall of $150 million— the price of half a day's NATO bombing. The Western powers had plenty of money for war but little with which to build a decent peace.

A 332-page OSCE report noted that Kosovo was a territory beset by unchecked lawlessness with "a disturbing pattern" of ethnically motivated violence by men dressed in uniforms of the former KLA. Bernard Kouchner wrote a forward to the OSCE report in which he took the opportunity to demonize the Serbs. He asserted that Yugoslav and Serb forces had used "executions, arbitrary arrests, torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence" in their campaign against the KLA and were the main culprits. The burden of Kouchner's comments was to urge readers to give less weight to the confirmed OSCE findings about KLA atrocities in the report and more weight to the unconfirmed media-marketed stories about Serbian genocide and unspecified "forms of sexual violence" that served as the pretext for NATO's intervention.

Albanian extremists also systematically set about to eradicate the Serbian religious and historical culture in Kosovo and Metohija by destroying some eighty parish churches, monasteries, and cathedrals, some of them world-renowned, dating back to early medieval times. Some were considered priceless jewels of medieval art and architecture that had managed to survive centuries of turmoil, including Nazi occupation. Other historical Serbian Orthodox landmarks in the UNESCO World Heritage list were destroyed.

Western leaders treated the NATO bombings of 1999 as having put an end to the widespread violence. The truth is something else. According to a report by the International Crisis Group, in the two months before the US-NATO air strikes, an average of thirty people a week were killed in Kosovo, about half of whom were Serbs and half Albanians. Under NATO occupation, the rate of killing was about the same as before the bombings, thirty or so a week. The very level of killing that had been depicted as a human rights catastrophe and used to justify an eleven-week bombardment, continued after the bombardment, "with barely a mention by the Western governments that prosecuted the war and the media organizations that promoted it."

There were additional everyday casualties as Kosovo residents, including Albanians, continued to be killed or maimed by the large number of NATO cluster bombs sprinkled over the land, and by mines planted by both KLA and Serb forces during the 1999 fighting. Pilger refers to the scant reports that appeared in US and British newspapers telling how parts of Kosovo were turned into a no-man's-land "littered with unexploded bomblets," delayed-action clusters that inflicted "horrific wounds" upon Albanian children. In sum, NATO's aerial aggression accomplished nothing, except to deliver a magnitude of death and destruction across Yugoslavia far greater than any it claimed to arrest.