Why Albanians Fled During NATO Bombing
NATO claims it bombed Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1999 to stop Yugoslav war crimes
against ethnic Albanians. These supposed crimes supposedly produced the much-televised
Albanian flight from Kosovo.
Yugoslavia's new more-or-less Foreign Minister Svilanovich stands with NATO on the
war crimes allegations. He has invited the NATO-controlled War Crimes Tribunal to set up
shop in Belgrade and promises to help them hunt down Serbian leaders.
As far as the evidence hunt goes, the Tribunal hasn't done
too well. It employed hundreds of forensic experts and dug up Kosovo for a year (under KLA
direction) but found no evidence of Serbian atrocities. That failure hasn't fazed NATO.
Bolstered by the improved attitude from Belgrade (Mayor Milan Protich was quoted in the
10-25 'Independent' calling for the "de-Nazification" of the Yugoslav
government) the NATO propaganda machine has stepped up attacks against ousted President
Miloshevich and others, arguing that the exodus of all those ethnic Albanians proves there
must have been atrocities. Why else would they leave?
Why else indeed?
In some areas the Army did relocate people, but not out of Kosovo. The idea was to
move them further into Serbia. You must understand, the Army was presented with a most
difficult situation. A major clash was expected between NATO and Yugoslav troops. This
kind of NATO ground attack was a special threat in the area bordering Albania.
Under those circumstances, with the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] attacking inside
Kosovo and from Albania and with NATO poised to invade and about to start bombing from
airplanes, how could the Yugoslav Army hope to protect that border population?
You should understand, the Army had had an experience like this in Vukovar. That
was in 1991. Civilians were trapped in a battlefield between the Army and the Croatian
Ustashe [neo-fascist] secessionists. To avoid making the same mistake again, the Army
wanted to empty a space 40 kilometers deep so people wouldn't be trapped between the Army,
NATO and the KLA.
At the same time there was a big increase in the number of KLA terrorists
illegally crossing the Albanian border into Kosovo. In that situation there were bound to
be some unhappy events. It was a most difficult situation, you see.
During this period, the Yugoslav government tried to organize local Albanian
Crisis Centers to distribute humanitarian aid, and also a Headquarters to work with the
Yugoslav Army, organizing ethnic Albanians who lived in the danger zone to move deeper
into Serbia, away from potential fighting.
But those ethnic Albanians who did cooperate with the Army became a target for the
KLA. Many were assassinated.
The reason they left and went out of Serbia, to Albania or Macedonia, is rooted in
the cultural history of Albanian people living in Kosovo. Because of their mindset, which
I think people in the West thoroughly misunderstand, the KLA had a big impact when it
attacked and executed Albanians who cooperated with the government.
KLA was never what you mean by a guerilla movement. It was a foreign-organized
group of terrorists delivering a message.
The so-called 'International Community,' that is, NATO, had trumpeted that they
had plans for the Albanians, that they would give them independence and a Greater Albania,
make them a major power in southern Europe. So there was this intense propaganda from the
West for ten years and at the same time the crisis in the Albanian community was quite
pronounced. Even before the bombing, some Albanian representatives asked the Yugoslav
government to allow their people to form convoys and go toward Macedonia, basically to
save themselves from this crisis.
The fighting between the Yugoslav Army and the KLA did have a big effect. So did
the bombing, which started a bit later; it had a critical psychological effect. But this
was related to the KLA. KLA was trying to fulfill their own overall goals. To achieve
these goals, which involved proving to the West they could deliver, they told the ethnic
Albanians to leave. And this was not a polite request. It was an order. At the same time
the KLA, their special units, and then a bit later NATO bombers, were attacking traffic on
important roads that led to inner Serbia.
It dissuaded them from going further into Serbia and it also told them: Yugoslavia
can't help you. Meanwhile the United States was training their KLA proxies in Albania
including in how to wage this sort of psychological warfare, to deliver the message that
Albanians should temporarily vacate Serbia. And the U.S. was telling Albanians,
"We'll help you secede; we'll make you a star. But if you reject our help we'll kill
you."
Historically, the Kosovo Albanians were never involved in frontal battles.
Instead, they had groups of warriors called kachatzi, small bands of fighters that used
hit and run tactics. But they never kept large scale weapons to use in frontline war. Part
of the purpose of the Western training was to get the KLA to surpass small group combat
and become an army able to carry out NATO's commands throughout Kosovo. NATO's foot
soldiers.
To this end, one KLA group left Kosovo and went to Albania where they were trained
by the Americans, and by the way, they became the core of what is now called the Kosovo
Protection Corps. They marched back into Kosovo with NATO in June, 1999 and seized
government offices and facilities and drove out hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Roma
["Gypsies"] Jews, pro-Yugoslav Albanians and others.
We can see the results of the action of exactly those forces today. NATO planned
the expulsion of 350,000 people. Without NATO's approval and instructions, these KLA, whom
NATO had trained and brought back to Kosovo, would never have attempted this mass
expulsion. Impossible. NATO was eliminating a potentially rebellious population.
And remember, they didn't expel only non-Albanians. Perhaps the most important
group was Albanians who in any official capacity had helped the Yugoslav government. They
had to go. NATO wanted the ethnic Albanians who stayed in Kosovo to be without a Yugoslav
alternative.
