If Kosovo war wasn't about ethnic cleansing...

[knowledgeispower]

What was it about?

I have been seeing a lot of posts about the Kosovo war, including some pretty compelling cases that the genocide claim was fraudulent or extremely over-hyped.

So if this were the case, what was the real reason for war? Geo-political control in a vital region? I have heard that there was an oil pipeline constructed through the region to the Caspian Sea Basin following the war...could this be the real reason?

[madrchsod]

1. the most compelling

"case" is the bodies of slaughtered people that people are still finding today..it was genocide. the real reason is that the bush one did nothing to stop it,then the europeans sat back and did nothing. finally clinton got the backing of nato and we went in. this region had to have stabilty for the good of europe and the world. to this day it seems to be working,let us hope that it will tomorrow.

[Padraig18]

2. Exactly! n/t

[ScotTissue]

5. Hmm: Mass graves, regional stability.

I've seen such justifications for war somewhere else. But I am not saying they aren't valid.

[Bandit]

7. The difference being , those reasons were given before the war

I seem to recall hearing imminent danger to the United States and massive stockpiles of WMD and 9-11 attack. After all reasons were proven false then we hear about mass graves and regional stability. :shrug: I don't know about you but I see a difference.

[el_gato]

3. explain this

Yugoslavia was targeted for breakup at the beginning of the 1990's
with the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act passed in november of 1990.


Why?

[tinnypriv]

4. Credibility

[hedda_foil]

6. Same reason as Afghanistan and Iraq

Oil and Empire. This is in WSWS.org which is very, very left, but which often presents very substantial facts on background. I've read it elsewhere, but this is the first site I hit on google that presents the argument. Given what we've learned in the interim, I give this argument high marks for credibility. (The article ends with a classic socialist vs. communist polemic which has little or nothing to do with the points of substance.)

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/stat-m24.shtml
Washington plans for political domination of Central Asia

<big snip>

The US House Committee on International Relations has begun holding hearings on the strategic importance of the Caspian region. At one meeting in February 1998, Doug Bereuter, the committee chairman, opened by recalling the great power conflicts over Central Asia during the 19th century, then dubbed the “great game.”

In the contest for empire, Bereuter noted, Russia and Britain engaged in an extended struggle for power and influence. He went on to say that “one hundred years later, the collapse of the Soviet Union has unleashed a new great game, where the interests of the East India Trading Company have been replaced by those of Unocal and Total, and many other organizations and firms.”

“Stated US policy goals regarding energy resources in this region,” he continued, “include fostering the independence of the States and their ties to the West; breaking Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport routes; promoting Western energy security through diversified suppliers; encouraging the construction of east-west pipelines that do not transit Iran; and denying Iran dangerous leverage over the Central Asian economies.”

<snip>

EDITED BY ADMIN FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS

[RichM]

8. Exactly right.

The WSWS did an extensive series on the Kosovo war. To try to summarize it in a few words, the REAL purpose was: geostrategic advantage, control of valuable mineral deposits, establishment of huge US military bases, pipeline interests, & the opportunities offered for penetrating the heretofore off-limits former Yugoslavia, where industries & resources could be privatized & taken over cheaply by Western investors.

[Tinoire]

10. Thanks for this! Kick!

:kick:

[AnnabelLee]

11. hedda_foil

Per DU copyright rules, please do not post more than four paragraphs of copyrighted material.

Thank you
AnnabelLee
DU Moderator

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

9. Mostly, to destroy an old Soviet ally

That was an independent power in Europe, and the inter-ethnic fighting was destabilizing the region.

"Humanitarian concerns" were the pretext for the war, just like Bush's invasion of Iraq had the pretext of WMD.

Clark did his job quite well. 0 US casualties, and he won the war. If you don't like the fact that the US killed more civilians than it could have if we were willing to risk our ground troops, take it up with NATO and Bill Clinton. Clark didn't do anything he wasn't ordered to do, and as far as modern wars go, the Serbian War didn't kill that many people.

If you are really opposed to war, vote Kucinich, not Dean, nor Clark, nor Kerry, who are all pretty much pro-war, and always have been.

[JackRiddler]

12. System

--Is constantly at war covertly on several fronts, routinely supporting both sides in proxy wars. Prepares and launches wars on a kind of industrial basis, from the think tank scenario to arming the future enemy to defining him as enemy to the bombing to the subsequent rebuilding to the restocking of new weapons. Every stage is a profitable business, and these interests long ago bought the State. War is a racket.

--This requires open, dramatic wars on a periodic basis, to demonstrate the continuing potency of its weapons and vitality of its will to power. Ultimate backup to dollar is The Megaton Standard. Equally key is the psychology of power - making everyone feel the shock and awe.

--Given that, suitable motives will be found in the pursuit of these necessary periodic wars. The wars chosen will make sense in geostrategic/imperial/economic terms.

If it hadn't been Kosovo, it would have been Elsewhere, you can be certain.

[stickdog]

26. Yes, vote the impossible dream.

Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
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Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.
Must stop Dean.

[WilliamPitt]

13. Read the Davil Halberstam book 'Clinton and the Generals'

for an excellent background on what happened, and on Clark, and on Powell...etc. Don't trust DU for a straight answer on this one. No offense to the good folks here, but this subject has gotten too wild for rational discourse. Halberstam's book will be all you need.

[RichM]

14. I saw Halberstam say on TV that the 2000 election was not stolen.

He said it with a contemptuous snort. In early 2001, when asked directly if Bush had stolen the election, he replied, "No, OF COURSE not."

Why should his opinion about Kosovo, then, necessarily be totally reliable?

[Classical_Liberal]

17. He was wrong on the election

but then that isn't exactly something he investigated either, and if he had read the newspapers on the matter it would be easy to come to that wrong opinion. Most didn't even mention the vote purge. They still don't talk about it. If they do anything on it at all they always focus on voter errors and problems with the machines.

[bpilgrim]

18. may i suggest Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, and Noam Chomsky

via google

surely we can still trust them ;->

thank GORE he invented the internet :bounce:

peace

[Tinoire]

15. Just think Iraq and bingo! Yugoslavia was step 1 of PNAC

1. There were no WMDs mass graves, no genocide. We went in there on another manufactured pretext just like Iraq and for the same exact reasons- the expansion of Anglo-imperialist hegemony.

1. No Mass Graves

The web of lies spun by the NATO propaganda machine started to unravel once NATO’s KFOR troops entered the province. Claiming that there would be half a million internally displaced people inside the province, KFOR instead found only small isolated pockets of refugees. "We planned for what we thought was a potential disaster…and we just haven’t found it," admitted Lt. General Mike McDuffie. Lurid tales of mass genocide fell apart, as forensic specialists investigated suspected mass graves. Up to 700 bodies were said to be hidden in the Trepcha lead and zinc mines ((now controlled by Goerge Soros, chief financier behind Wesley Clark because Soros is mad at anything Bush did- he's mad at the clumsy manner in which Bush exposed the game)). When searched, not one body was found there. About 350 were buried in a mass grave in Ljubenic, the public was told. A thorough examination of the site found only seven. The leader of the Spanish forensic team, Emilio Perez Pujo, was told that his team would go to the "worst zone of Kosovo," and to "prepare ourselves to perform more than 2,000 autopsies." But, he said, "the result is very different. We only found 187 cadavers." "There were no mass graves" in his team’s area, he said. "For the most part the Serbs are not as bad as they have been painted." Faced with increasingly embarrassing questions about the lack of evidence for NATO’s justification for military aggression, The Hague war crimes tribunal scrambled to release a statement asserting that they had indeed found 2,108 bodies. Far short of genocide, but certainly more than individual reports of excavations would indicate. The final excavations yielded only 680 additional corpses. Significantly, the tribunal neglected to categorize these deaths. We are not told how many bodies of each nationality were found, how many died from executions, how many were KLA or Yugoslav soldiers killed in combat, how many died from NATO bombs, and how many died from natural causes.

During the first two weeks of the war, a refrigerator truck containing the bodies of about thirty civilians surfaced in the Danube. A reporter investigating the matter nearly two years later agreed to meet with three police officers who attempted to pressure him into dropping his investigation. One of the men claimed that he would kill the people who were found in the refrigerator truck again. Three mass graves located in Serbia were discovered shortly thereafter, one located at a police training center near Belgrade. These graves yielded a total of 405 bodies that had been transported out of Kosovo in a bid to cover up crimes by renegade police or to protect paramilitary perpetrators. The post-Miloshevich Yugoslav government at the time was preparing to permit the kidnapping of Miloshevich to The Hague in order to appease Western demands. Despite a frantic effort to produce evidence linking Miloshevich to these graves, the government could only produce one witness, Police Captain Dragan Karleusha, who claimed that in a meeting which took place early in the war, Miloshevich ordered a cover up. Karleusha admitted, however, that he was not present at the meeting, nor had he heard about it from others. He merely surmised that such a meeting took place. In other words, there was no evidence.

Shortly after the war began, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer announced the existence of a secret Yugoslav plan to expel the Albanian population from Kosovo. Termed Operation Horseshoe, the plan was the subject of numerous news reports. One year later, retired German brigadier general Heinz Loquai claimed that the plan was a fabrication. "I have come to the conclusion that no such operation ever existed," he said. The German news weekly Die Woche reported that the maps presented as evidence of Operation Horseshoe were drawn up at German Defense headquarters. The plan wasn’t even a good fabrication. Loquai pointed out that the name given the plan, Potkova, is the Croatian variant of the word for horseshoe. The Serbian variant is Potkovica.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ELI202A.html

(Excerpt)

The claim of genocide

The assault on Yugoslavia has been justified by NATO and the media as a humanitarian effort to halt repression of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The heavy-handed and cynical character of the propaganda campaign that has accompanied the bombing in its own way reflects the glaring contradictions in NATO's defense of the war. The crude demonization of Yugoslav President Milosevic, the wildly divergent claims of Serb massacres and Kosovan Albanian deaths, the endless claims of “genocide,” and the barrage of TV images of suffering refugees are designed not so much to convince through the force of argument, as to wear down, inure and intimidate the public. “Opposition to NATO means support for the forced expulsion and mass murder of Albanians!” the establishment politicians and media pundits declare.

In the mobilization of public opinion behind the bombing of Iraq, the Clinton administration repeated endlessly the phrase, "weapons of mass destruction.” Only by pounding Iraq day after day, the Clinton administration declared, could the world be saved from Saddam Hussein's invisible arsenal of deadly gases, germs and chemicals. In the war against Yugoslavia, “weapons of mass destruction” has been replaced with a more powerful and evocative mantra—that of “Ethnic Cleansing.” The principal value of this phrase is that it conjures up the image of Nazi Germany. The “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, NATO would have it, is the 1990s version of the Holocaust.

The comparison is so misleading and historically false as to be obscene. The Holocaust consisted of the rounding up of millions of Jews throughout all of Nazi-occupied and -controlled Europe and their transportation to death camps that were essentially assembly lines of mass murder.

Six million defenseless Jews were killed by the Nazis. This compares to an estimated two thousand people who were killed in Kosovo last year. (The recent claims that 250,000 Albanian men have been killed, it must be added, are noxious fabrications, which have been contradicted by first-hand observers from Western newspapers.)

<snip>

In evaluating the claim of “ethnic cleansing,” it should also be remembered that the major world powers have, on more than one occasion, cited ethnic conflicts as a justification for imperialist meddling, setting the stage for disaster. Let us recall that one of the most horrific episodes of the 20th century occurred in 1947 when Britain, citing conflicts between Hindus and Moslems in India, arranged for the establishment of the separate state of Pakistan. The violence that followed the partition claimed one million lives and created twelve million refugees.

<snip>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/stat-m24.shtml

2. The reasons for destabilizing Yugoslavia ((Notice the similarities with Iraq))

U.S. to push for Yugoslavia oil embargo
Albright says Milosevic's removal not goal of airstrikes

April 20, 1999

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As they made plans to tighten pressure on Yugoslavia with a NATO-approved oil embargo, U.S. officials reaffirmed Tuesday that President Slobodan Milosevic can only end airstrikes by withdrawing his forces from Kosovo and allowing refugees to return.

"We are not going to negotiate with him," said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as the war ended a fourth week. ((Btw, Kucinich and Campbell were loudly demamdint negociations but, no surprise, were ignored))

NATO's goals for the air campaign do not include removing Milosevic from power, she told reporters at a White House briefing. But, Albright added, "we believe that the Serb people would be better served by having a democratically elected government that represents their values."

New economic sanctions

At a White House briefing where Albright was joined by Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Adviser Samuel Berger,((If you really want to have fun with those last 2 names to draw up more disgusting similarities with the war against Iraq, please google Albright Berger OSU Iraq and read all about their little trip to drum up support so that Bill Clinton could start the war against Iraq that George Bush waged)) they outlined the agenda for the upcoming NATO summit originally planned to celebrate the alliance's 50th anniversary, but now overshadowed by its war on Yugoslavia.

During the three-day summit, which begins on Friday in Washington, U.S. officials will push for allied agreement on new economic sanctions including an oil embargo to deny Yugoslavia the ability to wage war in Kosovo.

<snip>

http://www.cnn.com/US/9904/20/us.kosovo.01/


Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World power, oil and gold

Since March 24, 1999, the military forces of NATO, led by the United States, have been subjecting Yugoslavia to a devastating bombardment. Flying more than 15,000 sorties, NATO has pummeled Yugoslav cities and villages, hitting factories, hospitals, schools, bridges, fuel depots and government buildings. Thousands have been killed and wounded, including passengers on commuter trains and buses, and workers at television broadcast and relay facilities. Civilian neighborhoods in both Serbia and Kosovo have been hit.

Little is being said by those who planned and launched this war about its long-term consequences for Yugoslavia, the entire Balkans and Eastern Europe as a whole. Much of the industrial and social infrastructure developed by Yugoslavia since the end of World War II lies in ruins. The Danube River, a vital economic lifeline for much of Central Europe, is impassable. In Serbia, the basic requirements of modern civilization—electricity, water, sanitation—have been struck repeatedly. As in Iraq, the full dimension of the havoc wreaked by American, British and French bombs will only become clear when the war ends and reports begin to seep out about abnormal mortality rates, especially among the young.

<snip>

For starters, the Western powers are positioning themselves to exploit Kosovo's abundant mineral reserves, which include substantial deposits of lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold. Kosovo also holds an estimated 17 billion tons of coal reserves. But this is merely the “small change” of imperialist calculations. The immediate material gains that might be plundered from Kosovo are dwarfed by the far greater potential for enrichment that beckons in regions further to the east where the NATO powers have developed immense interests over the past five years. It is astonishing that so little attention has been paid to the connection of this war to the world strategic ambitions of the US and the other NATO powers.

<snip>

Caspian oil and the new foreign policy debate

“The Caspian region is one of the largest remaining potential resources of undeveloped oil and gas in the world,” explained one Exxon executive in 1998, adding that the area might be producing as much as 6 million barrels of oil per day by 2020. He expects the oil industry to invest $300-$500 billion in the interim to exploit the reserves. The US Department of Energy estimates that 163 billion barrels of oil and up to 337 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are to be found. If the estimates are borne out, the region will become a petroleum producer comparable in scope to Iran or Iraq.

Western analysts also expect the Caspian region to become a major world gold producer. Kazakhstan, with 10,000 tons, has the second largest reserves in the world. Mining companies from the US, Japan, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Israel are already operating in the region.

<snip>

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/stat-m24.shtml


More maps here: http://www.inogate.org/html/maps/maps2.htm
----------------

Getting the Pipeline Map and Politics Right

<snip>

Echoing the report, Clinton's Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, explained, "We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right." (6)

Except, curiously, Richardson said this in connection with US threats to bomb Yugoslavia, just months before the first NATO bombs began to rain down on Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis.

So, what does the Caspian have to do with the Balkans?

The answer, it seems, is a pipeline, to carry the "black gold" Farish is fascinated by, that comes from a region Cheney says has emerged quickly to become strategically significant. One planned pipeline route would see oil from the Caspian transit the Balkans into Europe, bypassing Russia.

Is that why the US-led NATO coalition spent 78-days bombing Yugoslavia? Richardson's words certainly point to a connection.

Another pipeline would see oil from the Caspian Basin piped to the coast of Pakistan through the second country Washington has, in the space of the last three years, bombed around the clock -- Afghanistan. Getting the pipeline map and politics right, means ensuring Washington controls the pipelines. And that means controlling the Balkans and Afghanistan. And that's meant bombing the stuffing out of both countries. Before NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and the ouster of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic -- who's been knocked off his perch by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as Washington's official enemy number one -- Washington didn't control the Balkans. Now it does.

That leaves Afghanistan, key not only to making sure the "pipeline map and politics come out right," but also key to undermining Moscow's and Beijing's Shanghai cooperation organization.

As George Monbiot puts it, "If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government, and if the US then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China." (7)

<snip>
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/gowans10.html


I really like this little summation- the entire article is excellent:

<snip>

Big Oil's greed has not abated a whit.The American and British rulers have a new imperialistic strategy by which they hope to gain total control of the world's energy supplies and the strategic Eurasian land mass. First, they sell armaments to a regime (for example, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Afghan/Pakistan/Taliban Mujaheddin, Saudi Arabia). Then, they demonize the regime to which they sold the armaments and declare war on it (e.g. Panama Invasion, Gulf War, UN Kosovo war, Afghanistan war, Iraq War). After the war, they station permanent military bases in the country and use the military bases to control the energy resources in the surrounding countries. Current U.S. foreign policy is governed by the doctrine of "full-spectrum dominance": the U.S. must control military, economic and political developments everywhere.

<snip>

This new strategy began with the Panama invasion, next created the so-called Gulf War, continued with the UN-sanctioned war in the Balkans, and now expands with the new wars against terrorism (Afghanistan, the Philippines, Iraq, and beyond). On January 20, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he was willing to deploy U.S. military forces in "another 15 countries" if that is what it takes to combat terrorism. The reason the so-called "war against terrorism" began in Afghanistan is because it is critical to the U.S.-British rulers' plans to control the Caspian Sea area oil and gas.

The UN-sanctioned war in the Balkans was all about oil and the pipeline easement for Caspian Sea oil to Western European markets through Kosovo to the Mediterranean Sea. When Yugoslavia refused to play ball with the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. and Germany began a systematic campaign of destabilization, even using some of the veterans of Afghanistan in that "war." Yugoslavia was broken up into compliant statelets, and the former Soviet Union was contained. The outcome: the de facto U.S. occupation of Kosovo--where America built its largest military base since the Vietnam War.

The Caspian Sea area has proven oil reserves of fifteen to twenty-eight billion barrels plus estimated reserves of 40-178 billion, a total of 206 billion barrels--16 percent of the earth's potential oil reserves (compared to Saudi's 261 billion barrels of oil and America's own 22 billion barrels). Even at today's low prices, that could add up to $3 trillion in oil. With the Saudi regime tottering--an aging king about to die, widespread internal corruption creating calls for revolutionary overthrow--and a new source of oil and gas in the Caucasus, the Standard Oil suzerainty is looking to create a new regime in Saudi Arabia and develop a new center of operations in Southern Asia.

<snip>

Despite the misgivings of Russia, China, India, or any other nation, Afghanistan and Iraq will now become the base of operations in destabilizing, isolating, and establishing control over the South Asian regimes and the Middle-East. After the conquest of this area is complete and the permanent military posts are set up, they will begin construction of a pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market.

<snip>

In the spring of 2001, Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's company, signed a major contract with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan to develop a 6000-square-meter marine base to support offshore oil construction in the Caspian Sea. The base will be used to assist Halliburton's catamaran crane vessel, the Qurban Abbasov, in upcoming offshore pipe-laying and subsea activities, according to a statement the company released May 15, 2001. UNOCAL cut off its earlier agreement with the Taliban in 1998 when it became clear that the Taliban could not control all of Afghanistan and provide a stable political environment for a north-south pipeline construction project. It was likely at this juncture that a new "war against terrorism" ploy was conceived by the Standard Oil-influenced U.S. government. The "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan has come to a hiatus, with war-lords once again ruling the country, and the Bush administration has put their own man, Karzai, in power to control Afghanistan.

<snip>
http://www.hermes-press.com/impintro1.htm


It was under Clinton that my dying father, a lifelong (disgusted) Democrat, advised me on my investments... The US and Britain were going to go everywhere and anywhere looking for oil regardless of who was President and who controlled Congress. This would be accomplished with Israel's help- Israel who he told me would drag is into such madness that all our allies would abandon us because of the sheer folly. His financial advice was prescient and spot on.

Sadly, his analyses were totally correct. I won't even share his biblical analyses and how they ran parallel with all of this. We are living in a truly mad world. I pity the children.

[Classical_Liberal]

16. It was done with the cooperation of NATO

and many of the troops used after the surrender were European. That is nothing like a neocon operation. You have to remember what happened in Bosnia to understand. Yes there was definately ethnic cleansing there and a threat of it in Kosovo.

[KharmaTrain]

19. Definitely the timeframe

By the time we did something in Kosovo, the Balkans had been inflamed for nearly a decade and it appeared the ethnic strife and ethnic cleaning (and what do you call Szebericza <sp>?) was not only spilling into Kosovo, that had been under virtual martial law with the Kosovars unable to live in their own land and problems brewing also in Macedonia and Albania. Years of diplomatic games with Milosevic ended with another round of blood-letting.

If there was a financial interest to this country, it was in the havoc Milosevic and his thugs were having running a black market in that corner of Europe. Just like Hussein, he and his family ran Serbia like a drug gang and futhered his power by distracting the public from their economic plight with adventurous wars to create a "Greater Serbia" (gee this almost sounds too close to home).

This was the context I suported the Kosovo campaign in '99 and we're going on 4 years without a major war in that region, Milosevic is on trial for his crimes, reforms have begun in Serbia and the people in that region are able to have now rebuilding (I fear for the next round). That's a hell of a lot better than what we see going on in Iraq.

[Blue_Chill]

20. So the mass graves were what? Nothing of concern?

Seven to eight thousand Muslims were killed after the Bosnian Serb army seized the UN-declared safe haven of Srebrenica, says Stover. About 200 patients and staff taken from a Vukovar hospital were summarily executed. Stover estimates there are hundreds of mass graves in Bosnia, of which close to 200 have been discovered.




Picture: Forensic anthropologist William Haglund removes a decomposing body from a mass grave in Pilica, Bosnia

source: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/1209/bosnia.html

[happyslug]

22. We are taking about the Kosov War NOT Bosnia.

These were two different wars fought by two different groups (through the Serbs in both wars were related, ther were NOT the same serbs see my thread that it was easier to go to war than not to.

[Classical_Liberal]

23. They weren't different Serbs

Molosivic was responsible for both incidences. Having done that to Bosnia, why wouldn't we be legitimately afraid of him doing that in Kosovo? While the Bosnian serbs may have been born in Bosnia there is no doubt the plan was to cleans the muslims and join Serbia, that is why Malosovic invaded Bosnia to back up the Bosnian Serbs. There was no doubt Molosovic was trying to do the same thing in Kosovo. The other difference here is the the war was in no way unilateral. 50% of the occupation force was Continental Europeans who had a direct interest in seeing this stopped.

[happyslug]

25. But was he is command?

Molosvic was NOT in direct command of the Serbs in Bosnia (and there have been no evidence he even issued any orders to said Serbs), he did fund them and gave them ammunition but no evidence has been produced to say he controlled the Serbs in Bosnia OR Croatia. There is some evidence that he even tried to stop some ethic cleaning but the locals Serbs in Bosnia just ignored his requests (I did not say it was a real serious effort, but he did give one or two speeches saying he opposed ethic cleansing).

On the other hand He was in Command in Kosovo. That is clear. It is also clear he made every effort to protect the native Roma population in Kosovo who claimed to be being attacked by the Native Kosovo Albanians. They have NOT been any evidence to support ANY ethic cleansing by Serb forces in Kosovo (There have been some evidence by the Kosovo Albanians but no where near what happened in Bosnia).

Now one the repots at the time was that Serbs were stealing microwaves from any home in Kosovo, nothing have been said of this since. Why the looting of microwaves? No one knows through one report indicated that the Serbs were using the Microwaves to upset some of our high tech smart bombs. I do not know how or why nor do I rely on the report as being accurate, but the microwave looting has not been charged to him AND that cause to wonder (For if his troops did use them in some way to interfere with our weapons than that is permitted under the laws of war as a defensive move).

[happyslug]

21. It was easier to go to war than not to.

You can not understand Kosovo independent of the previous war In Bosnia and to understand that War you have to understand Yugoslavia under Tito and that Bosnia and Kosovo started with the death of Tito.

Before I go on I must define terms as those terms are used in this thread, First when I used the term Serbia Army I meant the Serbia Army raised in either Bosnia or Croatia by the Serbs living in Bosnia or Croatia, NOT the State of Serbia Army (Which was technically still the Yugoslavia Army). As to the Croatia Army, I mean the State of Croatia’s Army when I refer to fighting in Croatia, but the Croatian Army of Bosnia, raised by the Croats living in Bosnia, when I refer to the Croatia Army in Bosnia. In the fighting in Bosnia neither the State of Serbia nor the State of Croatia sent in troops in their own name (Both Countries supplied ammunition, food, money, medical supplies, etc and soldiers, but technically never sent in troops).

Yugoslavia has always been a mismatch of various ethic groups since it was settled by the Croats and Serbs at the fall of the Western Roman Empire. With the Expansion and decline of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Bulgarian Empire and the Serbia Empire, and finally the Ottoman Empire, you had a mix of people of different nationality living next to each other. The Eastern and Western Empires divided through modern Day Yugoslavia, The Catholic and Orthodox religions also divided in this regions (with the Croats being Catholic and the Serbs being Orthodox), and the Turks and Hapsburg Empires dividing the whole area for the four hundred years prior to WWI. Both the Hapsburg and the Ottoman Turks, were especially adept to make sure different nationalities were next to each other so to keep them at each other throats AND not united against either the Hapsburg Emperor or the Turkish Sultan.

Thus you had a mixture of people who have NOT been divided along rational lines for centuries. This caused problems in the Inner war years after the formation of Yugoslavia as the Croats and other Nationalities resented the domination of th National Government by the Serbs (who were the single largest Ethic group in the Country). This caused all types of problems during WWII leading the Croats to from their own Government allied with Hitler.

After WWII Tito came to power. He abolished the old centralized Government and formed Yugoslavia into a federation of States. The problems of how to divide the Country into their respective states was solved by cutting back Serbia to that area of the Country that was 100% Serb (and also Kosovo, the site of the Middle Age’s Serbia Kingdom’s great battle with the Turks) AND granting all the other Nationalities all of their territories including territories that were mostly Serbs but could not fit into Serbia without including other nationalities into Serbia (Except for the Albanians in Kosovo). This was the Compromise imposed by Tito, the Serbs outside Serbia had access to the National Yugoslavia Government to correct any wrong imposed by the dominate nationality in the other states of the Yugoslavia Federation AND the various other Nationalities were given control over almost all of their Nationalities.

When Slovenia Declared its independence that did not cause to much problem, few Serbs lived in Slovenia. Croatia and Bosnia on the other hand had large Serb Populations and these Serbs did not want to live under Croatian or Bosnian rule. They had NEVER planned to do so, since WWII they had lived in a Country where they were protected by a Federal Government against discrimination by the local majority. This was the Compromised they had lived under since WWII and now, the Croats and Bosnians were breaking that compromise.

Throughout history when a Compromise between peoples had broken down you had a bloody Civil War, and that what happened in both Croatia and Bosnia. The Bosnian War received more press than the War in Croatia, and thus we hear of the ethic cleansing of various parts of Bosnia that lays next to Serbia. Both Serbia and Croatia supported sides in Bosnia but technically neither country intervened into Bosnia. The Serbs in Bosnia did some well documented war crimes (including killing Prisoners and Ethic Cleaning of areas) but none of that can be traced to Serbia Proper. In Croatia the Serbs held onto their piece of Croatia till the Croats organized a full scale assault on the concave and drove not only the local Serbia Army out but also the Serbs living in that Concave (a ethic cleaning rarely mentioned in the West for it was done by our great new ally Croatia). Right after this operation (and influenced by the speed in which the Croatian Army was able to drive out the Serbs, a compromise was reached as to Bosnia, the Croats and Bosnian Muslims agreed to form one Government in Conjunction with a Serbian Government over the part of Bosnia controlled by its Serbia population. This compromise brought in the present occupation force in Bosnia but the situation on the ground is the same as before the Occupation force went in, they have been no changes, the Serbs are NOT working with the Croats and Muslims in Bosnia and in fact you have two countries in Bosnia, Bosnia Proper consisting of the Croat and Muslims sections of Bosnia and the Independent for all practical purposes Serbia section.

That is the First Yugoslavian War which ended just before the war with Kosovo. Once the sides had come to a new compromise, i.e. Serbia will eventually get southern Bosnia (Through it may take a few years before it is official), and Croatia will get the rest of Bosnia (Bosnia may stay technically independent to appease the Bosnian Muslims but integration between the two countries has already started). Once the deal was made, NATO went in to provide cover for both sides (and this was do to Clinton’s ability to get the Serbs, the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims to work together to come to a compromise).

Once Bosnia was resolved, that everyone’s attention turned to Kosovo. Unlike Bosnia, Kosovo had never been an independent state within the Yugoslavia Federation. Tito seems to fear the loss of Kosovo to Albania (Both are dominated by the Albanian Nationality) thus never permitted Kosovo much independence (Tito did the same to that part of Yugoslavia near the Danube with its large Hungarian population, least the locals want to rejoin Hungary).

After Tito some Self-Government of Kosovo was permitted but the Serbia Government always feared discrimination against Serbs and Roma (Gypsies) population by the majority Albanians and removed that self-government when the discrimination became to much for its liking. Unlike the earlier Bosnian War, the Kosovo war did involve the Serbian Regular Army (Still calling itself the Yugoslavian Army). In the WSWS.org web site this is the war being talked about NOT the earlier Bosnia war. In Kosovo, I have to lean to the Serbs for when the fighting started the Roma went to the SERBS for protection from the Albanians. While I do not fully believe the Serb’s claim of being completely innocent as to discrimination against the Albanians, if the Serbs were so bad why did the Roma go to the Serbs for Protections instead of the Albanians?

Kosovo also seems to have been a crack down on drug running by the Albanians done by the Serbs at the end of the Bosnian War. With the End of the Bosnian War the Kosovo Albanians could no longer (as easily) smuggle drugs into Europe and this caused economic hardship in Kosovo and increased discrimination against Serbs and Roma by the Albanians. Serbia responded with protection of the Serbs and Roma. It was at this point in time that the US moved against Serbia demanding a resolution of the Kosovo situation. The problem with Kosovo was to close to the NATO troops in Bosnia for NATO to be happy. Serbia could not and would not pull out of Kosovo so the war began technically to protect the Albanians from being ethically cleansed by the Serbian Army. Another reason was for NATO to secure its border from any further fighting.

Yes, I am unsatisfied with both reasons for the War with Serbia, but I can not believe the war was to protect the Drug smuggling rings of the Kosovo Albanians. The oil line is even worse argument for a better pipeline would be through Asiatic Turkey around the Bosporus and Dardanelles. I think the reason may be NATO wanted to show it can do something outside its borders (and thus teach ethic groups in the rest of Eastern Europe to Behave). Outside the Danube (Which Kosovo does not border, but Croatia and Serbia do) the rest of Europe has little interest in the Balkans. It is not a source of materials, labor and except for the Danube of little transportation interest.

The best explanation of the Kosovo War may be that various people just got caught in their own devious plans before they knew what had happened and is was easier to go to War than not to. That may be the best explanation and once the Air Campaign was over and the Serbs accepted a NATO occupation of Kosovo (With the agreement retaining Kosovo in Serbia) cooler heads prevailed and ended the bloodshed, and thus no problems since Kosovo (and NATO using the change of Serbian Presidents as the reason to declare victory even through the Old Serbian President was replaced by a President even more pro-Serbia than he was).

[MrPrax]

24. Bust up Yugoslavia!!!

Yugoslavia was independent to the Soviet Union under Tito...the wall fell down every where else except there...
The usual suspects (France-UK-Germany) did what they having been doing to the balkans for two centuries--'balkanization'

Note in the aftermath, the only real glimmer of 'democracy' is Serbia, while the other 'two' parititions (our allies) are still ruled by NATO or Tudjman 'strongman'.

Mission Accomplished--

Tehcnically speaking any civil war could be referred to as 'ethnic cleansing'...I mean Sherman didn't had out chocolate bars on his March

[Gore1FL]

27. Eurpean stability

It isn't good when a powder keg is surrounded by fire. The Yugoslavian civil war (for lack of a better term) would have eventually sucked a ggodly chunk of Europe into it.

After not taking any useful action for a long time, The decison was made to end the conflict.