Might makes Right
"TERRORISM AGAINST SERBIA IS NO
CRIME"
by Jared Israel and Rick Rozoff
Below is a news dispatch from yesterday's edition
of the daily report issued by KFOR, that is, by NATO in Kosovo:
"KFOR News Update Pristina, 24 May 2001 By
Maj. Axel-Bernd Jandesek, KFOR Spokesman
"More Than 450 UCBMP Members Surrendered
"By the end of ...KFOR's soft policy towards UCBMP extremists, more than 450 former
extremists had taken advantage of this policy. These people voluntarily laid down their
arms and turned themselves in at several KFOR checkpoints. KFOR screened and released all
UCBMP members who are not suspected of having committed serious crimes."
Did you notice that the headline talks about UCBMP
terrorists 'surrendering' but the actual news concerns their being released?
Now, by way of contrast, consider the following
excerpts from the famous U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which is NATO's legal
justification for occupying Kosovo:
"The KLA and other armed Kosovo Albanian
groups [must] end immediately all offensive actions and comply with the requirements for
demilitarization... "[The United Nations Security Council] condemns all terrorist
acts by any party [and reaffirms] the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of
the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act... "[The UN and the security forces
operating under its jurisdiction in Kosovo will see to the] demilitarizing the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) and other armed Kosovo Albanian groups."
(http://www.kforonline.com/resources/documents/unscr1244.htm) The KFOR dispatch reports
that KFOR released about 450 terrorists, only detaining an unknown number who were
"suspected of having committed serious crimes." Keep in mind, we are not talking
about shoplifters here. We are talking about armed terrorists (if they weren't armed how
could they have "voluntarily laid down their arms"?) who invaded southern
Serbia. What crimes could they have committed that were not serious? Isn't taking part in
an armed invasion of Serbia a "serious crime"?
The contrast between the language of UN Resolution
1244 - "respect for Yugoslav sovereignty", "disarm the KLA",
"armed Kosovo Albanian groups [must] end immediately all offensive actions" -
and the reality of UN/NATO practice is striking.
What message has KFOR delivered to Albanians by
arresting and then releasing approximately 450 terrorists?
1. TERRORIST INVASION OF SERBIA =
REBELLION
Some things to consider:
1) The article makes no mention of how KFOR
determined whether a captured terrorist was "suspected of having committed serious
crimes." One assumes KFOR did not allow Serbian forces to interrogate the detainees;
that they did not stage "lineups" and bring villagers from southern Serbia who
had witnessed terrorist crimes to identify the attackers. Apparently the only way KFOR had
of suspecting that a terrorist had committed "serious crimes" was if the
terrorist confessed or was accused by his or her fellow terrorists, which seems unlikely.
2) Any soldier in any army who "commits
serious crimes" could be subject to trial and punishment. Thus, by stating that it
was allowing all the captured terrorists to go free except those "suspected of having
committed serious crimes," KFOR was declaring that the UCPMB terrorists constituted a
normal army engaged in legitimate military action.
3) But what was this normal army doing? It was
invading southern Serbia, that is, a sovereign country, and indeed a country whose
sovereignty KFOR was committed, by United Nations Resolution 1244, to protect.
4) And what were the invaders doing in southern
Serbia? They were laying land mines, killing policemen, sniping at civilians. By letting
these men go free, wasn't KFOR declaring that these acts of violence against Serbs and
uncooperative ethnic Albanians in Serbia (and by extension, against similar groups in
Macedonia) do not constitute "serious crimes?"
5) This is an unusual amnesty. Normally, amnesties
are granted as an act of forgiveness by the party which has been attacked. But KFOR was
not attacked. Yugoslavia was attacked. KFOR controls Kosovo, a part of Yugoslavia, because
of an act of war - the 1999 aggression against Yugoslavia. Moreover, the people who did
the attacking have been trained by elements of KFOR!
So what do we have? KFOR (that is, NATO) bombs
Yugoslavia; KFOR occupies Kosovo, which is part of the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; KFOR
trains terrorists who attack the rest of Serbia; KFOR detains some of those terrorists;
and then out of the kindness of its military heart, KFOR declares an amnesty and forgives
- whom? Whom does KFOR forgive? The terrorists it has trained. (3C)
The people attacking southern Serbia call
themselves the UCPMB, but they are in fact members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Another part of the KLA is attacking Macedonia with the immediate goal of intimidating,
coercing and cajoling the powerful Albanian clan leaders into supporting the KLA's
campaign to rip off chunks of various Balkans countries and create a Greater Albania. (1)
A key part of the KLA's message to local Albanian
clan leaders is: resisting us is futile because the West is on our side.
To make this argument convincing, the KLA needs
evidence of Western support. The problem is that, for political reasons, NATO cannot at
this time openly endorse the KLA. Indeed, since NATO always said Macedonia was a 'good'
country and since NATO claims not to support Albanian expansionism, NATO must publicly
seem to oppose the secessionists. By arresting 450 terrorists and then releasing all the
ones who "are not suspected of having committed serious crimes," NATO has
cleverly resolved the paradox of its duplicity: the arrest says, "We officially
oppose Albanian expansionism," while the release says, "But of course we really
consider Albanian expansionist terrorism perfectly legitimate."
The Serbs have a problem dealing with the West.
Their political culture affirms the value of honesty, which tends to leave them unprepared
for the current world. They naively believe that if someone signs an agreement he can be
expected to carry it out. How quaint.
The so-called International Community did of course
swear (in Resolution 1244) to defend Yugoslav sovereignty and prevent Albanian terrorism,
but no matter: the West has discovered that the supposed oppression of Albanians in
Kosovo, which though never actually proven to exist was nevertheless the justification for
the 'humanitarian bombing' of Yugoslavia, has now migrated to southern Serbia and
Macedonia. Soon it may extend to Northern Greece and other European countries as well.
The existence of this contagious epidemic of
anti-Albanian discrimination is accepted by the mass media as fact without evidence. It is
an axiom of Balkans life: wherever Albanians exist they are oppressed. Once accepted, this
axiom renders any crime committed by Albanian terrorists understandable: after all, they
are oppressed. And so the various terrorist forces who are killing uncooperative
Macedonian Albanian clan members not to mention Macedonian policemen are described in the
mass media as rebels, the same as two and a half years ago when they were killing
uncooperative Kosovo Albanian clan members not to mention Serbian policemen.
According to Resolution 1244, KFOR and UNMIK (the
United Nations in Kosovo) were supposed to disarm the KLA terrorists two years ago.
Instead, the KLA handed over a few obsolete weapons after which KFOR and UNMIK announced
that the KLA had been disarmed. Commented a Russian writer:
"The head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo,
Bernard Kouchner, has announced that KLA representatives had turned in 10,000 units of
various types of weapons which allows the mission to speak about the completion of the
disarmament process. 'We are satisfied that the OAK [KLA] handed in 10,000 firearms, even
if we know that they still have another 100,000 guns,' joked one of the members of the
U.N. mission in Kosovo." ('Russian Press Digest' September 21, 1999)
This duplicity made UNMIK and KFOR accomplices in
every crime the KLA has committed with those weapons ever since, including murders in
Kosovo, southern Serbia and Macedonia.
Next, KFOR and UNMIK declared that the KLA had been
dissolved (another lie) and set up the so-called Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), comprised
of KLA members. To head the KPC, the UN appointed KLA chief Adam Ceku. Ceku is a notorious
and experienced war criminal, thus right for the job. (2)
Then the KPC members - who you will recall are
members of the KLA - were recruited into a new group with even more initials, the UCPMB,
and dispatched to attack Southern Serbia. The BBC (that's the British public TV/Radio
network, not a subsidiary of the KLA) recently admitted that NATO has been training these
terrorists since they first attacked southern Serbia. (3) The BBC attributed this ongoing
training to an oversight on the part of the trainers. (These things will happen.)
And now, KFOR gives 450 terrorists a blanket
amnesty.
Let's put KFOR's behavior in perspective. Imagine
that Canada has created, trained and armed a narco-terrorist secessionist group. The
Canadians, who have seized and occupied Buffalo, New York, in order to prevent human
rights abuses, unleash said terrorists, whom the Canadian media refers to as 'rebels', to
lay waste northern New York State.
The rebels ambush American police, plant land mines
in shopping malls and murder civilians. They especially target the leaders of local
minority groups, pointing out that a) they are oppressed and b) they will be killed unless
they supply recruits for the rebels. (1)
When the rebels capture American security forces
they mutilate them and ship back the pieces; this demonstrates the intensity of rebel pain
over human rights abuses. (3b)
In addition, some rebels commit serious crimes.
The rebels, who are entirely indigenous, go into
battle under a blanket of Canadian attack helicopters which impartially fire missiles at
U.S. forces. This levels the playing field. (3b)
Of course U.S. forces are banned from pursuing the
rebels back into Buffalo, which would constitute expansionist aggression. They are also
banned from using heavy weapons (anything more powerful than a pistol) which would be a
war crime. Any U.S. officer ordering the use of heavy weapons is immediately declared
guilty of crimes against humanity followed by his arrest and subsequent trial by the
Criminal Tribunal for the Former USA, an impartial court paid for by Canada and other
philanthropic organizations. (4)
Refusing to countenance lawlessness, Canada detains
some terrorists; in the spirit of forgiveness, Canada releases the terrorists unless they
are "suspected of having committed serious crimes." (To determine
suspect-ability, each terrorist is asked the following question: "Do you recall
committing any serious crimes?" If a terrorist (that is, rebel) answers
"Yes" he or she is held for psychiatric examination.
Well? What do you think?
If Canada did the above would there be mushroom
clouds over Ottawa? You better believe it.
But for NATO, which organized the KLA and has been
using it as a proxy army to break up the Balkans into manageable protectorates, it's all a
matter of Human Rights.
OR should we say, "Might Makes Right."
