Ralph Raico on the Kosovo War

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Marko replied on Sat, Feb 26 2011 10:24 PM

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There’s really no point having an argument here. So indeed, if you’re really interested, try to check as many sources as possible. An approximation of the truth will come out of there.

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Bardhyl N. Salihu replied on Sun, Feb 27 2011 5:32 PM

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Marko,

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Bardhyl N. Salihu replied on Sun, Feb 27 2011 5:37 PM

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LeeO:

Bardhyl,

Thank you for your firsthand insight and links.

Always welcome for any future help to gather information on this subject as well as to discuss the question of interventionism as a principle.

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Bardhyl N. Salihu replied on Sun, Feb 27 2011 6:06 PM

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Marko:

Unfortunately, I feel as confused as ever about this issue given the divided opinions on this thread (including the account of a firsthand victim of Serbian agression).

If that is important to you then you should understand that no ethnicity or side had the monopoly on suffering in Kosovo. Between 200,000 to 250,000 non-Albanians (the largest groups targeted were Serbs and Roma) were driven out following the withdrawal of army of Yugoslavia by the KLA. Unlike the Albanians that were expelled it is impossible for them to return. Some tried to return after the war but gave up when buses with returnees were met with roadside bombs. In this violence following the withdrawal also some 800-1000 non-Albanians were killed and disappeared. It has surfaced that some of them had been held captive for months by the KLA then executed for their kidneys to be sold on the black market. This is a crime that Hashim Thachi, the leader of the KLA and the PM of Kosovo is directly implicated in, as per a recent report of the Council of Europe. (The report also reveals western functionaries knew about the crime, but kept silent and even helped keep it secret by destroying the evidence that had already been collected.) The KLA before the war targeted Serbs civilians alongside the police. It also targeted those Albanians it percieved as loyalist, Albanian members of the state forrestry service (park rangers) were among its favourite targets. Another 4,000 Serbs were driven out of their homes (never to return) in March, 2004 when Albanian mobs descended on Serb villages and ghettos to burn them out and beat them up (NATO contingents from most countries stood by and did nothing). I am not using "ghettos" metaphorically here. In towns the Serbs live in tiny neighbourhoods surrounded with barbed wire for their own protection. NATO troops guard them and have to escort them any time they venture out, this includes children going to school etc. I remember watching a documentary on Croatian state TV, where the Croats in Kosovo (the few remaining ones) said they were afraid to venture out of their villages into the towns where they are not know personally for fear they would be mistaken for Serbs and killed. Years ago there was a Bulgarian UN worker who was brutally killed because his speech was mistaken for Serbian. In 2000 a scandal broke out when a unit from the 82nd airborne was acussed in an army report of mistreating Albanians and displaying Serbs favoritism, when they fed up with the Albanian treatment of the Serbs lashed out against Albanians. The Czech NATO troops became virtually notorious when following the March 2004 pogroms they turned against Albanians routinely provoking them by displaying the Serbian three-finger salute.

Victims of an attack by KLA gunnmen on a caffe in Peč, December 1998. Six Serbs were killed, one Serb and one Bosniak heavily wounded. Lord Robertson, the British secretary of defense stated that before the onset of bombing the KLA was responsible for more deaths than the Yugoslav authorithies had been

You're completely wrong about the "monopoly of suffering." While it is true that Albanians have killed or mistreated Serbs in isolated cases, the Serbian State has systematically oppressed Albanians ever since the occupation of Kosovo in 1913. The evidence is clear, in addition to the fact that only one State existed, that of Serbia, that the Albanians were the most persecuted minority in ex-Yugoslavia.

The number that you mention (the expulsion of 200,000 to 250,000 non-Albanians) is not verified and is believed by all sources to be heavily exaggerated. The number becomes even more ridiculous when we take into consideration that in the 1.9 million population of Kosovo (then), Serbs composed barely 4-5%. 

Some Albanians couldn't also come back home. They lost all their property and starting all over again from scratch was almost impossible. This way they decided to rely on refugee aid in foreign countries and settled abroad forever. You can say this turned out to be better for them, but then again who knows, maybe it turned out better for Serbs as well.

The allegations about human trafficking are ongoing an investigation. A lot of things were blown out of proportion. Until conclusive evidence comes to light nothing can be said any further. Dick Marty, the person responsible for bringing up these allegations, has only provided some written accounts but not any conclusive facts (which surprised me because he's a prosecutor and as such he should know that evidence is a key element in court). Some two years ago, two Serbs were caught by Kosovo police (on tape, available here) offering Albanians money in order to lie that they were witnesses to this organ trafficking affair. If you ask my own opinion, I doubt this is true but I don't rule out that the people who are accused (Hashim Thaci, the current re-elected Prime Minister of Kosovo) can do such things. After all they are perfectly fine with plundering their own people. It would be a mistake though to blame this on the whole guerrilla force, which was as I argued in a few posts above, an un-coordinated force comprised of different small units which had almost nothing to do with each other except that they fought for the same goal.

The March 2004 riots were a sad case. There many Albanians aggressed against Serbs (although it was the Serbs who lit the whole trouble when a Serbian guy chased two Albanians boys with his dog and they jumped in the river out of fear, leading to the drowning of one of them). Of course everyone responsible should be brought to justice, Serb or Albanian. But this is not a case of systematic violence, it is a case of rioting. There were other elements involved in it that added fuel to the fire, led by various intelligence agencies who wanted to stain the image of Kosovo and prevent international support for its independence.

Serbs DO LIVE in these so-called ghettos, but it's not entirely out of fear. It's primarily because they still can't get around the idea that Albanians don't have to clean their shoes and obey their orders. They are used to seeing Albanians under them, slapped when they don't comply with their aggressive attitude (both institutionally and even personally). Another thing is that they don't want to integrate as a result of this, they reject any change or any step that is taken forward even by their own representatives, who by the way have secured seats in the parliament regardless of the fact that Serbs now comprise a measly 3-4% of the population. The past eleven years have been more about begging them to cooperate than compensating Albanians for the genocide they went through (Kosovo Government built homes in these "ghettos" after the March 2004 riots with the tax money of 20% of Albanians in Kosovo who live in severe poverty).

The victims of the attack you show are policemen, not civilians (they were not on duty). There was no known case of a terrorist attack by KLA on Serb civilian citizens during Kosovo War (except for two cases: 1) a hand-grenade exploded in a neighbourhood, nobody was injured, still not certain whether it was a malfunction or an attempt to kill Serb civilians; and 2) a professor in the University of Prishtina had a bomb planted in his car, he was however closely linked with the military). There are cases of KLA aggressing against Albanians, but these people were closely linked with UDBA (Serbian secret service) and can be easily considered as part of the army apparatus. 

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Marko replied on Sun, Feb 27 2011 9:43 PM

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The number becomes even more ridiculous when we take into consideration that in the 1.9 million population of Kosovo (then), Serbs composed barely 4-5%.

This categoric refusal to even acknowledge the existance of most of the Serbs that were then victimised is disturbing. I am familiar with the technique. To raise bombastic claims on one hand, but to outright deny everything else on the other. But the number of non-Albanians in Kosovo in 1999 is easily verifiable and anyone who does only a short search will be able to find it.

Then, the numbers game has always been a part of the Albanian separatist propaganda effort. All the Muslim ethnicities were for decades under immense pressure to declare themselves as Albanian. And the rest were under pressure to sell their property and take a hike.

The number that you mention (the expulsion of 200,000 to 250,000 non-Albanians) is not verified and is believed by all sources to be heavily exaggerated.

Well, you are from Priština right? Tell us how many Serbs lived there in 1999 and how many are there now?

The allegations about human trafficking are ongoing an investigation. A lot of things were blown out of proportion. Until conclusive evidence comes to light nothing can be said any further. Dick Marty, the person responsible for bringing up these allegations, has only provided some written accounts but not any conclusive facts (which surprised me because he's a prosecutor and as such he should know that evidence is a key element in court). Some two years ago, two Serbs were caught by Kosovo police (on tape, available here) offering Albanians money in order to lie that they were witnesses to this organ trafficking affair.

I don't know what a video like that can disprove. On the other hand the level of intimidation in Kosovo against anyone who would speak up has been reported on many times including by Marty.

If you ask my own opinion, I doubt this is true but I don't rule out that the people who are accused (Hashim Thaci, the current re-elected Prime Minister of Kosovo) can do such things. After all they are perfectly fine with plundering their own people. It would be a mistake though to blame this on the whole guerrilla force, which was as I argued in a few posts above, an un-coordinated force comprised of different small units which had almost nothing to do with each other except that they fought for the same goal.

The only problem with that view is that it turns out all the highest ranking members are guilty of horrendous stuff, and the fact the KLA killed way more civilians than military/police.

The March 2004 riots were a sad case. There many Albanians aggressed against Serbs (although it was the Serbs who lit the whole trouble when a Serbian guy chased two Albanians boys with his dog and they jumped in the river out of fear, leading to the drowning of one of them). Of course everyone responsible should be brought to justice, Serb or Albanian. But this is not a case of systematic violence, it is a case of rioting.

There was nothing spontenous about the pogrom. Like the Kristallnacht it was well planned in advance, including with the lie about the drownings which you here repeat that was meant to act as a cover to justify it. It saw 40,000 thugs rise up at the same moment, with groups of them systematicaly moving from one village to another, from one ghetto to another, from one church or monastery to another.

There were other elements involved in it that added fuel to the fire, led by various intelligence agencies who wanted to stain the image of Kosovo and prevent international support for its independence.

Heh. I can't believe you think somebody could actually buy this. This is a near-Stalinist level of lack of sophistication in propaganda.

Actually perversly the killings, and the burning out of people and the desecration of churches instantanously became the biggest argument for giving Kosovo to Albanians. It was quickly spun in western media as having been caused by Albanian frustration over not having been granted independence jet.

Serbs DO LIVE in these so-called ghettos, but it's not entirely out of fear. It's primarily because they still can't get around the idea that Albanians don't have to clean their shoes and obey their orders. They are used to seeing Albanians under them, slapped when they don't comply with their aggressive attitude (both institutionally and even personally).

Even here where you are trying to win people over to your side you can not conceal your hostility to these people.

Kosovo Government built homes in these "ghettos" after the March 2004 riots with the tax money of 20% of Albanians in Kosovo who live in severe poverty.

What tax monex? You mean foreign aid money, conditioned by taking some cosmetic steps to alliviate this huge embaressment to Albanians' foreign backers.

The victims of the attack you show are policemen, not civilians (they were not on duty).

I suppose it is not impossible, do you have a link of some sort? My argument doesn't depend on any one case, because there were many. This was just the first page one I found.

There are cases of KLA aggressing against Albanians, but these people were closely linked with UDBA (Serbian secret service) and can be easily considered as part of the army apparatus.

That is not correct. During the 1990s boicott of all state institutions not under the sway of Rugova's shadow government there was pressure on any Albanians who did not participate in the boicott to turn around. Starting with 1997 the KLA escalated this by liquidating Albanians for crimes such as being a forrest ranger and therefore drawing a paycheck from the government in Belgrade or being a member of Milošević's Socialist Party.

You have the case of Vasa Cubrilovic, a professor of history and head of department at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences Institute for Balkan Studies who in 1937 came up with a paper titled "The Expulsion of Albanians." It was an open, hostile plan to expel Albanians from their homes and lands where they have been living for centuries. I'm sure Himmler and Eichman took notes and got inspired for the Final Solution.

What a silly argument. What exactly is supposed to be the story here? Some guy wrote an essay in 1937 and then the Serbs found it in some dusty drawer 60 years later and decided to act on it?

I think it is telling that you need to go back to 1937 to find "proof". The paper in question was a policy proposal. The equivalent today would be a think-tank suggesting the government do something. But obviously the proposal was not acted upon. It was either ignored, or rejected. There were no deported people in 1937, no victims, no planning by the government to deport anyone. So how could this inspire Hitler and Eichman, lol?

Then Operation Horshoe, the goal of which was to expel Albanians in one direction by pressing from three diferent sides (in a way forming a down-side horseshoe) in order to send them to Albania.

You are stil going with this piece of wartime propaganda? It has been 10 years since the German media revealed "Operation Horseshoe" had been a fabrication of the German intelligence. Though it was obvious that it was from the start. The alleged name of the thing in Serbian was "Operation Potkova", but actually the Serbian word for a horsehoe is potkovica.

This lasted until in 1912 when the Ottoman Empire started dissolving (becoming the Republic of Turkey that we know today), the Serbian State moved in to fulfill the vacuum and occupy Albanian lands. This ended up with the occupation of Kosovo as well as other parts of modern-day Macedonia. Since 1913 up until when the Serbian State was de-facto ousted from the territory of Kosovo in 1999, Serbian police, military and even civilian forces committed numerous atrocities against Albanians (who comprise by the way around 92% of the population). Killings, massacres, oppression, discrimination, refusal to allow Albanians have schools, refusal to have private properties intact, and what not.

You keep returing to things like that so I guess I will respond. Actually if we want to take a holistic picture of Kosovo's history we have to mention that initially under the Ottomans where Christians endured under a type of heavy-duty Jim Crow status, Muslim Albanian tribesmen from the rugged Northern Albania for centuries raided the Christian (mainly Serb) peasants in Kosovo, taking for themselves their property (eg cattle) making their lives even more miserable. The Serbs were in no position to defend themselves because Christians were not permitted to own arms, and the Ottoman authorithies did very little to reign in the tribesmen on behalf of the Serbs who were not going to be loyal to the Ottomans anyway. One part of the Christians responded by converting to Islam, thus securing for themselves a set of basic rights and the protection of the Turks. One other part responded by moving away from Kosovo, to somewhere out of reach of the raiding Albanians. So for 2 centuries there was a slow trickle out of the region by Serbs under duress. Simultanously Albanians started to come down from the mountains and settle in the richer land in the relatively flater Kosovo. For some of the settlers this was a way to better life on better land, and for many others it was escape from the tribal custom of blood vengance.

By the time the Serbian army ejected the Turks from the region in 1912 there was already more Albanians in Kosovo than Serbs, although the margin was much narrower than it became later. After that there was mistreatment of Albanians, particularly by Montenegrins who were themselves a tribal society and who decided to do some raiding and pillaging of their own. Another way in which the Albanians were screwed is they were discriminated against in the land reform that instead favoured Serbian settlers. There were problems with education in Albanian, but actually that was rarely if ever a complaint raised by Albanians at the time. If you read about the complaints of ethnic minorities in royalist Yugoslavia, the minorities in the north consider the state of schooling their main grievance, but the Albanians instead talk about land all the time. The stil semi-tribal Albanians of Kosovo simply didn't gave jack shit about being or not beig provided schools by the government.

In 1941 Yugoslavia was conquered by the Axis, so it was again the Serbs' turn to be mistreated as many Albanians collaborated first with Italians, and then the Germans, and since these two powers favoured the Albanians. The main thing the collaborators among the Albanians did was to expel all the Serb settlers that had arrived after 1912.

After the liberation of Yugoslavia from the Axis occupation, the Communists came to power who were doctrinarily opposed to what they deemed "Serb bourgeois nationalism". Post 1945 it is impossible to talk of Serb rule, it was the rule of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. The Communist authorithies blocked the return of the settlers driven out by Albanians in 1941-44 and carried out a revision of the land reform to rectify its discrimination. Also the authorithies were convinced they could win over the Albanians and launched an ambitious campaign to do so. They cracked down on any 'hate speech' and worked hard to enter Albanians into the League of Communists. They opened up numerous schools, an Albanian language university, encouraged Albanians to write about their culture... They played a big role in boosting the Albanian inteligentsia and actually there was greater leeway for the expression of Albanian national sentiment than for the expression of Serb national sentiment. They also instituted a programme of affirmative action in state buerocracies. For example in the military it resulted in a situation where for every 18 Serbian colonels there was 1 Serbian general, but for every 1 Albanian colonel there was 1 Albanian general (the affirmative action ethnic quotas kicked in at the level of general).

To talk of any sort of Serb opression of Albanians in this period is ridicilous. On the contrary Kosovo was designed as an autonomous region and Albanians promoted to the positions in the autonomous regional buerocracy. The autonomy was widened in 1974 after which we can safely talk about Albanian run Kosovo. That is local Serbs were subject to a largely Albanian government. The things eventually turned quite bad for the Serbs in this situation because despite the attempts of the Communist Party the Albanians were not won over for Yugoslavia and strived to secure eventual independence instead. All the more so since, as a result of the much higher birthrates among the Albanians than among Serbs their proportion in the total population had increased greatly. However they saw an obstacle to their self-determination in the presence of Kosovo Serbs and so around 1981 persistent low-scale violence by Albanian thugs against Serbs began, who were pressured to vacate the province. Meanwhile the Albanian-controlled provincial authorithies turned a blind eye and did nothing to protect them, but let it go on. In this situation in 1989 Milošević scaled down the autonomy of the provincal government instituting greater federal control and boosted police numbers who now began to protect the Serbs in earnest.

Albanians responded with a boicott of all state institutions refusing to have almost anything to do with anything connected to the goverment, but instead pledged allegiance to the Albanian shadow-government of Ibrahim Rugova. Belgrade did not try to integrate them forcefully but let them do as they please, but it did continue to offer government provided services (hospitals, schools...) and to encourage Albanians to take advantage of them. This 1989-1999 episode may actually be interesting for libertarians to study as an approximization of some sort of pan-anarchy where you simultanously have two governments co-existing on the same stretch of territory. But it also had mayor defects. One was that Albanians used some coercion to enforced the collective boicott, as any Albanian not taking part was a propaganda coup for Milošević. Another that Albanians sought to derive the maximum propaganda effect of the boicott by misrepresenting it as a government insituted policy of segragation that was not permitting them access. Though officially desiring to resolve the situation the boicott suited Milošević just fine, because Albanians not taking part in the elections meant it was that much easier for him to secure a mayority in the parliament and hold on to power in Belgrade. So quite differently from an era of repression, much of the 1990s period was a sort of detante, made possible by an unspoken agreement between Milošević and Rugova to stick to the rules of the game so as not risk a balance that was not unfavourable for either of them. However the situation was fundamentally unstable and it all went to hell once Rugova's rivals formed the KLA, hoping to deliver what Rugova was promising to deliver in some distant future much faster, by securing for Kosovo Albanians a foreign intervention against the Serbs that Washington had already positioned itself against, on their own terms. Their sucess was rapid and in 1998 the KLA had already been adopted by western inteligence services.

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Marko replied on Sun, Feb 27 2011 10:12 PM

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Now this Nebojsa Malic guy is one of the worst and most evil people I have ever read on the internet. Not only is he completely alien to the libertarian notions, he is a blatant liar, a propaganda-servant, who distorts ALL the facts which are confirmed by clear evidence. He uses the label of anti-war.com to gain appeal for his bunch of bullshit and label himself as a "pro-peace" guy in an attempt to make Albanians look like animals. The truth is that he's the impersonification of evil and unscrupulous treachery. Although I am Albanian, I still do recognize and concede the good points (if they have any) of people who even go as far as to say that I shouldn't exist. But this guy is compeltely outside the realm of academic discussion and I bet he'd be second-in-command in Goebbel's propaganda ministry.

I see that your tactics are adapted to an athmosphere where Serbs have already been demonised, but this is not going to work here. Here Nebojša Malić isn't a Hitlerite propagandist, but only some random dude of whom nothing much is known except that he has a Serbian name, and happens to hold the same opinion on the "Kosovo genocide" issue that Ralph Raico does.

The official claim is not 10,000, it is 11,000, plus around 2,000 who are missing (read dead) for 11 years. I hope you do realize that the exact numbers are impossible to measure for one thing. Second, who cares about the exact numbers? Are we supposed to forget and forgive Serbs for what they did to Albanians if the number is "small"

Your appropriation of the 2,000 missing as victims of the Serbs is misleading. Of the 2,000 missing 1,300 are Albanians. Furthermore there is no way to ascertain how they died. Many undoubtedly went missing as KLA fighters, fell victim to KLA score-settling or NATO bombs.

11,000 is a claim of one of the warring sides, put out at a time (June 1999) when they could not have possibly known how many had been killed, and insisted upon as a matter of fact ever since, without offering credible evidence.

Lastly even if the number of 11,000 were correct (which it isn't), it wouldn't justify the use of the term "genocide".

Who defines the number of people that have to die before a campaign of ethnic cleansing should be taken into serious consideration?

Except that the refugees started to cross the borders only after the bombs started falling. The initial justification for Operation Allied Force were not any refugees or ethnic cleansing, but forcing the Serbs to accept the Rambouillet "Aggreement".

I'd like to add that libertarian tenant is not secession according to demographics, but secession according to property ownership. Though the Serbs in 1999 consituted only 10% of the population the proportion of the land owned by them was way higher than that. - They have since been for the most part dispossed.

Also it is very interesting to me that in Serbia, live many minorities without mayor complaints with much the same status and rights as other ethnic minorities all across East-Central Europe. Hungarians, Roma, Croats, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Ukrainians... In Kosovo however not just Serbs but all the other minorities were subject to some level of violence from the Albanians and saw their numbers decrease. If the Serbs were kicked out because they were genociders (if the aim was genocide why not first go for the small Albanian community in Belgrade?), then why also kick out the Roma? And how come the Roma escaped to territories held by these genocidal Serbs?

http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Rifati_Kosovo.htm
 

How come Amnesty International raises alarm against forcible returns of Roma from Western Europe to Albanian controlled Kosovo for "risk of persecution", but not against such deportations to Serbia?

"EU countries risk violating international law by sending back people to places where they are at risk of persecution, or other serious harm. The EU should instead continue to provide international protection for Roma and other minorities in Kosovo until they can return there safely," said Sian Jones, Amnesty International's expert on Kosovo." http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/stop-forcible-returns-roma-kosovo-2010-09-28

More foreign inteligence agencies at work?

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Bardhyl N. Salihu replied on Mon, Feb 28 2011 11:47 AM

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I see that your tactics are adapted to an athmosphere where Serbs have already been demonised, but this is not going to work here. Here Nebojša Malić isn't a Hitlerite propagandist, but only some random dude of whom nothing much is known except that he has a Serbian name, and happens to hold the same opinion on the "Kosovo genocide" issue that Ralph Raico does.

No tactics here, again, I'm not here to campaign for anything because 1) the facts are on our side, 2) this isn't even the place to do this, 3) Serbia lost Kosovo a long time ago so all they're doing is clutching at straws with their clownish attempts to re-establish their genocidal plan. Game over. It's sad to see Raico join the side of people who defend genocide. What's next? A defense of Nazi Germany? Quite an advertisment for libertarians.

Your appropriation of the 2,000 missing as victims of the Serbs is misleading. Of the 2,000 missing 1,300 are Albanians. Furthermore there is no way to ascertain how they died. Many undoubtedly went missing as KLA fighters, fell victim to KLA score-settling or NATO bombs.

No, around 2,000 are Albanians only. There is a way to ascertain how they died; keep looking for massive graves in Serbia (four found so far.)

11,000 is a claim of one of the warring sides, put out at a time (June 1999) when they could not have possibly known how many had been killed, and insisted upon as a matter of fact ever since, without offering credible evidence.

Lastly even if the number of 11,000 were correct (which it isn't), it wouldn't justify the use of the term "genocide".
 

This number was confirmed by many sources during and after the war. Your suggestion that 11,000 deaths are not enough to call it a genocide is proposterous. How many should have been killed? Genocide is not defined quntitatively; it's irrelevant whether 11,000 or 6 million die. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. What if all Lichtenstein with a population of 36,000 is entirely wiped out -- is it too small to be considered worthy of genocide? Nowhere is genocide defined by arbitrary numbers and your suggestion that the killing of 11,000 people is not enough for it to be called a genocide is disgusting.

Except that the refugees started to cross the borders only after the bombs started falling. The initial justification for Operation Allied Force were not any refugees or ethnic cleansing, but forcing the Serbs to accept the Rambouillet "Aggreement".

Except that it's not true; refugees DID start crossing borders ever since the first villages in the rural areas came under fire by Serb forces. It's only after the Serbs retaliated with an aggressive campaign, after NATO bombings started, that this wave of refugees increased.

I'd like to add that libertarian tenant is not secession according to demographics, but secession according to property ownership. Though the Serbs in 1999 consituted only 10% of the population the proportion of the land owned by them was way higher than that. - They have since been for the most part dispossed.

And just how did they get to "own" that land? Oh, wait, you admitted it yourself that a land reform took place in order to give the property of Albanians to Serbs. Besides, Serbs in 1999 constituted 7%, not 10% , and what about the property owned by Albanians? Why didn't Serbs allow them to secede in that case?

Also it is very interesting to me that in Serbia, live many minorities without mayor complaints with much the same status and rights as other ethnic minorities all across East-Central Europe. Hungarians, Roma, Croats, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Ukrainians... In Kosovo however not just Serbs but all the other minorities were subject to some level of violence from the Albanians and saw their numbers decrease. If the Serbs were kicked out because they were genociders (if the aim was genocide why not first go for the small Albanian community in Belgrade?), then why also kick out the Roma? And how come the Roma escaped to territories held by these genocidal Serbs?

http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Rifati_Kosovo.htm
 

How come Amnesty International raises alarm against forcible returns of Roma from Western Europe to Albanian controlled Kosovo for "risk of persecution", but not against such deportations to Serbia?

"EU countries risk violating international law by sending back people to places where they are at risk of persecution, or other serious harm. The EU should instead continue to provide international protection for Roma and other minorities in Kosovo until they can return there safely," said Sian Jones, Amnesty International's expert on Kosovo." http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/stop-forcible-returns-roma-kosovo-2010-09-28

More foreign inteligence agencies at work?

Croats, Slovaks and Bosniaks already went through the same ethnic cleansing campaign that Serbia undertook in Kosovo, so your point falls down immediately. Hungarians are already marginalized and only recently were they given some autonomous rights in Vojvodina in order to quell any dissatisfaction. Besides, Serbia can't chase minorities forever, can they? They were exposed; pursuing the same chauvinistic policies would officially leave the emperor without any clothes. The small Albanian community in Belgrade is already harrassed, they keep their heads down and don't raise the voice too much. Exterminating them would be too obvious, surely Serbs are not that stupid. Roma escaped to territories held by these genocidal Serbs because, uhm, they collaborated with them during the war. We have a saying for them: "Roma are like the wind; whichever way the wind goes they go." Now they say they're Albanian and support us; when Serbia made the law they were joining military forces and going to the front. I remember during the War a Roma woman came to the door to beg, and when we didn't give her anything, she said I hope my man slaughters your people. While Roma women were left home raising their children and begging in the streets, their men were sent to war looting Albanian houses like they looted mine and that of my other relatives. To conclude, I live in Vienna, Austria. Here there are around 200,000 Serbs. Everywhere I go when I hear Serbian, it's more likely to see a Roma than a white Serb. Romas not only have embraced their language, but the religion as well. They are basically one.

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Marko replied on Tue, Mar 1 2011 10:00 PM

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Well, the very fact that you took it from Serbianna.com is akin to arguing in the Nazis side by using goebbels-services.com. ... While we're at the city of Peja, Serbian police commander Vlastimir Dzordzevic was just recently sentenced to 27 years in prison for the massacre of Qyshk where 46 Albanians were killed.

It is very interesting. On the one hand a small website run by private Serbian-American citizens can be likened to Goebbels and discounted out of hand. On the other, a sentance passed down by the ICTY which is a tool of NATO and of the Western states (themselves a warring side guilty of war crimes that engaged in furious propaganda) to justify their interventions is supposed to serve as some sort of proof.

Your appropriation of the 2,000 missing as victims of the Serbs is misleading. Of the 2,000 missing 1,300 are Albanians. Furthermore there is no way to ascertain how they died. Many undoubtedly went missing as KLA fighters, fell victim to KLA score-settling or NATO bombs.

No, around 2,000 are Albanians only.

Just taking the first ten names of the list:

I can see 5 of these 10 are Albanians (Abdullahu, Ademaj, Ademi, Ademi, Agushi). And the other 5 are Slavs.

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Marko replied on Tue, Mar 1 2011 10:59 PM

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I think I'll add spiked as a useful resource. Like the guys at antiwar.com they equip their stuff with plenty of footnotes. Its piece The Rise of the Laptop Bombardiers is something of a classic and very useful for people too young too remember in what atmosphere the interventions took place.

And I have been able to find this work, Degraded Capability, edited by one of the spiked guys. It is a collection of essays centering on how the media packaged the conflict, with contributions ranging from John Pilger to Thomas Deichmann of the Picture That Fooled the World fame.

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Marko replied on Wed, Mar 2 2011 4:31 AM

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I suppose it is not impossible, do you have a link of some sort?

Well, the very fact that you took it from Serbianna.com is akin to arguing in the Nazis side by using goebbels-services.com.

I shouldn't have bothered. I hadn't realised 3 of the lads were 17 and 1 was 18. They were no "off-duty policemen". You are full of it.

And just how did they get to "own" that land? Oh, wait, you admitted it yourself that a land reform took place in order to give the property of Albanians to Serbs.

You only read the part that was favourable for you. As I said the Communists carried out a revision of the land reform, so the injustices of the original reform were corrected.

Besides, Serbs in 1999 constituted 7%, not 10%

And earlier you claimed they represented 4%. The 1981 and 1991 censuses recorded 200,000 Serbs (that's discounting Montengrins and Yugoslavs). How much is 200,000 of 2 million?

and what about the property owned by Albanians? Why didn't Serbs allow them to secede in that case?

As if Albanians ever made such a proposal. The demands were for the separation of the whole territory.

Roma escaped to territories held by these genocidal Serbs because, uhm, they collaborated with them during the war. We have a saying for them: "Roma are like the wind; whichever way the wind goes they go." Now they say they're Albanian and support us; when Serbia made the law they were joining military forces and going to the front. I remember during the War a Roma woman came to the door to beg, and when we didn't give her anything, she said I hope my man slaughters your people. While Roma women were left home raising their children and begging in the streets, their men were sent to war looting Albanian houses like they looted mine and that of my other relatives. To conclude, I live in Vienna, Austria. Here there are around 200,000 Serbs. Everywhere I go when I hear Serbian, it's more likely to see a Roma than a white Serb. Romas not only have embraced their language, but the religion as well. They are basically one.

In other words, the Roma get along better with the Serbs than with the Albanians. Something which in the last decades has been true of all ethnic communities in Kosovo without exception. I find this indicative.

Then you contradict yourself: you call my numbers bombastic but then go on to say that the number of non-Albanians in Kosovo in 1999 is easily verifiable. When it comes to your statistics it's easy to verify...

Sure they are easy to verify. There is such a thing as a census you know.

Then you contradict yourself: you call my numbers bombastic but then go on to say that the number of non-Albanians in Kosovo in 1999 is easily verifiable. When it comes to your statistics it's easy to verify, but when it comes to mine, despite the fact that I also lived with these people, I seem to be making bombastic claims.

You have trouble with reading comprehension. I am not talking about the middle ages. I am talking about Albanian bullying of Turks to declare their nationality as Albanian in the last 30 years, but particularly in the 1980s.

First, it's Prishtina, not Priština.

Oh please, I think I know how to spell an etymologicaly Slavic name.

Sure, more Serbs lived there in 1999 than now, so what? This is supposed to prove that the number of 200,000 to 250,000 you gave is correct?

Well, why won't you just say the numbers, anyway? The number of Serbs in Priština before 1999 was in the low tens of thousands. Now it is in the low dozens. It goes to show Albanians pretty much drove away any Serb they could lay their hands on.

for Priština:

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2008&mm=06&dd=15&nav_id=51096

for total number:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/kla-a20.shtml
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cahier/kosovo/hcr012000

First, the kids were chased by the dog and one of them drowned in the river (the burial of the kid was filmed and broadcast in TV).

Except he wasn't chased into a river by no Serbs with a dog was he? Jet it went on air as a matter of fact statement. http://www.princeton.edu/~dands/editorial/kosovo The story was discounted by the pro-Albanian UNMIK soon after the events, jet here you are stil using it all these years later.

It was a deeply disturbing lie, to acusse people of something so depraved as going after children like that, but apparently it worked. Here we are discussing non-existant Serbs with non-existant dogs drowning Albanian children. When there was a real attrocity that saw 4,000 burned out from their homes never to return, a dozen killed and around 20 sacral objects destroyed - with the bold, humanitarian NATO in most places running away and hidding.

We pay 16% VAT tax, 5-10% income tax, customs and excise tax. Sure foreign aid has added to the budget of Kosovo in the past, but the majority of money used to build Serb minority homes came from tax-money collected from poor Albanians.

The German intelligence provided the army with the arguments to go into war, and these arguments were, citing from your own source, "Rudolf Scharping stated on March 27, 1999: “We never would have taken military action if there weren't this humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo, with 250,000 refugees within Kosovo and far more than 400,000 refugees in total, and with a death toll we are not even able to count yet.”

Actually my source shows that when he said this he was lying through his teeth as confirmed by the pro-Albanian OSCE. You are world champion at selective reading.

And just where the hell did you find that statistic to prove your "KLA killed way more civilians than military/police" claim?

That is obvious, seeing Serbian civilian deaths were much higher than military/police deaths. Yugoslavia sustained 550 military and 110 police fatalities. Around a third of these were inflicted by NATO which leaves around 440 as killed by the KLA. While on the list of the missing people of the Red Cross are 500 Serbs and 200 other non-Albanians (2007 data). And on the partial list of Serbs known to be killed between the withrawal of Army of Yugoslavia and the end of 1999 are 391 people http://www.neobyzantine.org/movement/problems/kosovo/killed_june_dec_1999.php. That is 1100 non-combatants not even counting the period after January 1st 2000 or before June 1999.

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Bardhyl N. Salihu replied on Wed, Mar 2 2011 6:39 PM

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It is very interesting. On the one hand a small website run by private Serbian-American citizens can be likened to Goebbels and discounted out of hand. On the other, a sentance passed down by the ICTY which is a tool of NATO and of the Western states (themselves a warring side guilty of war crimes that engaged in furious propaganda) to justify their interventions is supposed to serve as some sort of proof.

OK, conspiracy theorist. Now tell me the story how Jews run the world because they own the majority of media.

As for the number of missing Albanians, see here, second paragraph, first sentence. It's from Humantiarian Law Center, the most legitimate non-governmental organisation to consult on such matters. And hey, it's run by a Serbian.

I think I'll add spiked as a useful resource. Like the guys at antiwar.com they equip their stuff with plenty of footnotes. Its piece The Rise of the Laptop Bombardiers is something of a classic and very useful for people too young too remember in what atmosphere the interventions took place.

And I have been able to find this work, Degraded Capability, edited by one of the spiked guys. It is a collection of essays centering on how the media packaged the conflict, with contributions ranging from John Pilger to Thomas Deichmann of the Picture That Fooled the World fame.

Another wonderful site, all the articles of which deal with the issue of Kosovo by suggesting that no genocide took place and that somehow the West had deep interests in intervening in a country whose best natural resource at that time was mud. And guess who they look at for inspiration? 

I shouldn't have bothered. I hadn't realised 3 of the lads were 17 and 1 was 18. They were no "off-duty policemen". You are full of it.

I confused it with another case from Peja where policemen were killed. But what does this suggest? That Serb teenagers were killed on a daily basis, as part of a wider plan of ethnic cleansing, pursued by a State army and supported by a nationalist public with the blessing of Orthodox Church? I never said there were no innocent Serb victims; that's not what we're discussing here. The point is you're attempting, in a rather silly way, to shush what happened to Albanians and equate every isolated case of aggression against Serbs with the wide-scale, planned genocide that Serbian military, police and civilians conducted against Albanians. It's despicable. 

You only read the part that was favourable for you. As I said the Communists carried out a revision of the land reform, so the injustices of the original reform were corrected.

This made me laugh out loud. How do you even post at Mises? The idea that a purely arbitrary land reform carried out by the Communists corrected the injustices that occured when the Serbian State expropriated the property of Albanians to attract and reward Serb settlers to live in the Albanian-populated Kosovo is proposterous. Far from it, the Communist reform only extended the injustices carried out earlier. The worst is that it didn't even have the egalitarian principle that land should be divided equally by taking it from the rich and giving it to the poor, as one would expect from it. On the contrary, the Communist reform had every bit of that nationalist principle that the previous reform had (since the Serbs were leading this reform in Kosovo and Albanian Communists had nominal roles to perform). Again, I strongly suggest you read Noel Malcolm's book in order to rid yourself off your historic consistencies about Kosovo. 

And earlier you claimed they represented 4%. The 1981 and 1991 censuses recorded 200,000 Serbs (that's discounting Montengrins and Yugoslavs). How much is 200,000 of 2 million? 

You apparently don't read my posts, just skim through them and errect strawmans so your weak points can stand. I said Serbs constitute 4% of the population today, and that in 1999 (11 years before) they constituted 7%. Here's an extract from my previous post: "[...] who by the way have secured seats in the parliament regardless of the fact that Serbs now comprise a measly 3-4% of the population." Since the censuses that you cite are 20 and 30 years before the the time that I am refering to they become irrelevant.

As if Albanians ever made such a proposal. The demands were for the separation of the whole territory.

No, they didn't, but my question stands: Should Albanians be free to determine their fate on property(ies) which they own? And if the majority of property in Kosovo is owned by Albanians, should the majority of Kosovo then belong to them? I'm afraid the answer to this question is entirely against your stance.

In other words, the Roma get along better with the Serbs than with the Albanians. Something which in the last decades has been true of all ethnic communities in Kosovo without exception. I find this indicative.

Well, that's one thing you can generalize from what I said. But the crux of my paragraph was that Roma and Serbs are one, and that a distinction between them may be valid insofar as we're talking about semantics and dividing up race, origin, history, but not insofar as we're talking about the political stance on Kosovo. Other communities in Kosovo have virtually no contact with the Serb community, so the question of getting along can't be asked at all. Serbs live largelly in the north, around the area known as Gracanica (middle), and in very small numbers in various villages. Their contact with minorities is minimal. In places where this minimal contact exists the relations with other minorities are good, but so are the relations of Albanians with other minorities (Turks, Bosnians and even Roma who wander around my garbage can and nobody bothers them).

Sure they are easy to verify. There is such a thing as a census you know.

You have trouble with reading comprehension. I am not talking about the middle ages. I am talking about Albanian bullying of Turks to declare their nationality as Albanian in the last 30 years, but particularly in the 1980s.

You have overconfident trust on censuses and as someone posting regularly in a libertarian forum you should know that the State has many different incentives as well as the power to manipulate them. The census of Cuba shows they've got the lowest mortality rate of infants in the world but I wouldn't really use it as a source in any discussion. Since the Serbs were the State in Kosovo, they decided what the numbers look like -- this is common sensical. The same is occuring today in Macedonia where the Albanian population was estimated through different sources to be 40% but is officially shown to be around 35%. As for the Turks, virtually all of them have learned the Albanian language and feel Albanian. This occured through a process of natural assimilation; if it was done, as you say, through intimidation, Albanians wouldn't have good relations with them nor would they feel Albanian. To conclude, even if Albanians intimidated all the Turks into becoming Albanian, their number was and is so small that it wouldn't have any serious impact in the census.

Oh please, I think I know how to spell an etymologicaly Slavic name.

Prishtina is not a Slavic name, it is the derivative of the Byzantine name Prishtiniana which at that time meant 'city built on ruins' (and incidentally it has a similar meaning in modern Albanian). The city was given that name because it was re-built (after an earthquake) over the ruins of the old one called Ulpiana. This happened in 527 B.C., whereas Slavs descended in Balkans rooting and pillaging only after 7th century A.D. Besides, if it's an Albanian city and Albanians like to call it that way, it should be called that way. It's not like we can go back and call Istanbul Constantinople.

Well, why won't you just say the numbers, anyway? The number of Serbs in Priština before 1999 was in the low tens of thousands. Now it is in the low dozens. It goes to show Albanians pretty much drove away any Serb they could lay their hands on.

I don't know the number and I don't care. It doesn't and it categorically can't prove your point that 200,000 to 250,000 Serbs left Kosovo after the War because it is doubtful so many Serbs lived in Kosovo to begin with. You remind me of Obama's fradulent statistics when he once said stimulus saved X number of jobs in a certain city when in truth X number of jobs didn't exist there in the first place.

Except he wasn't chased into a river by no Serbs with a dog was he? Jet it went on air as a matter of fact statement. http://www.princeton.edu/~dands/editorial/kosovo The story was discounted by the pro-Albanian UNMIK soon after the events, jet here you are stil using it all these years later.

It was a deeply disturbing lie, to acusse people of something so depraved as going after children like that, but apparently it worked. Here we are discussing non-existant Serbs with non-existant dogs drowning Albanian children. When there was a real attrocity that saw 4,000 burned out from their homes never to return, a dozen killed and around 20 sacral objects destroyed - with the bold, humanitarian NATO in most places running away and hidding.

Attaboy, keep on citing narrow-minded, propaganda-servant Serbs. Not only do you fail to provide an Albanian point of view, your neutral references are absent as well. Just about everything you provided so far was either from a Serbian fascist propaganda website or from some Commie/Hippie website which says every foreign intervention is part of a global conspiracy to suppress the poor and impose a neo-colonialist agenda on them. 

And the Serbs in the ghettos, they do not pay taxes? In any case it is a moot point. The houses weren't built for the benefit of the Serbs, they were built so the government could  use them as a propaganda point. If the government was actually interested in their quality of life and in their staying on their property it would take steps to shield them from violence so they can lead somewhat normal lives, not repaint their cages. (Not that you have offered any proof of these houses existing mind you. What percentage of ghetto Serbs got a new house?)

No they don't. Another proof that your basic knowledge of Kosovo is absent. Serbs not only refuse to pay taxes to the Government of Kosovo, they also refuse to pay the bills of electric energy, water, garbage collection and road fees, all of which are publicly provided (they don't do it on the libertarian principle that it's their own money, by the way). The tax burden falls entirely on Albanians and other communities alone. Your point about propaganda doesn't really hold true because the Government got more bad press than good recognition by building their houses. As for protection, I already told you that they don't want to integrate not because they're scared (they love to act like victims) but because they can't stand the sight that Albanians are free for once and can't be reduced to the status of animals anymore. Even if you give them 100% protection they would never want to get out of those ghettos and interact like other minorities have. Besides, protection has already been granted to them after the March 2004 riots. All the churches (which used to be Christian Catholic churches long before Serbs came to Balkans but were forcefully converted into Orthodox) are now heavily protected by KFOR troops. And finally, here's the proof here and here (this one is in Albanian, you can use Google Translate, couldn't find it in English) that homes were actually built.

Actually my source shows that when he said this he was lying through his teeth as confirmed by the pro-Albanian OSCE. You are world champion at selective reading.

OK, first Operation Horseshoe is a lie, now the fact that Albanians were slaughtered is a lie. Which one was supposed to be the first lie or am I just piling them up? You're world champion at selective "facts."

That is obvious, seeing Serbian civilian deaths were much higher than military/police deaths. Yugoslavia sustained 550 military and 110 police fatalities. Around a third of these were inflicted by NATO which leaves around 440 as killed by the KLA. While on the list of the missing people of the Red Cross are 500 Serbs and 200 other non-Albanians (2007 data). And on the partial list of Serbs known to be killed between the withrawal of Army of Yugoslavia and the end of 1999 are 391 peoplehttp://www.neobyzantine.org/movement/problems/kosovo/killed_june_dec_1999.php. That is 1100 non-combatants not even counting the period after January 1st 2000 or before June 1999.

The numbers about military and police casualties are wrong. NATO killed 462 not 550 military personnel and 114 not 110 police personnel. The number killed by KLA is not known and I suspect it to be much, much higher than 440. The Wikipedia entry for KLA gives 581 as an estimation. Red Cross lists 400 not 500 Serb casualties and 100 not 200 non-Albanians casualties. This, however, doesn't mean they were killed by KLA. NATO bombed Kosovo as much as it bombed Serbia and 200 Albanians died from NATO bombing alone (one of them the aunt of my friend, who was put in a Serbian army truck with other people who were told "you will now feel how it is to be bombed by NATO"). And finally, the list you give is suspicious because many Serbs say that Serbs largelly left Kosovo with the Serbian army on June 12, 1999 whereas most of these alleged killings in the list took place after that date. I can always create a list like this within minutes, with names, dates and invent as many death scenarios as possible (in fact mine would be genuine because I was in at least one of them). It doesn't mean it should be used as proof. Proof is this.

If you were interested to constructively discuss the facts of Kosovo War or the question of internvetion/non-intervention on principle, I would be more than willing to continue the discussion. But since you seem to be someone who is not only unacquinted with what happened in Kosovo but also someone who wants to push a certain view as a classic propagandist, I have no incentive to deal with you. I'll be the bigger man and allow you to have the last word, or should I say, the last charade. It is despicable to meet people like you who not only deny the crimes that were comitted against my people but also deny my very right to exist.

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Smiling Dave replied on Thu, Mar 3 2011 7:43 PM

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I found a site that seems to prove Ralph Raico knows what he is talking about.

http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm

and http://www.hirhome.com/method.htm

I am impressed by the deductive work.

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Merlin replied on Fri, Mar 4 2011 1:32 AM

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Smiling Dave:

I found a site that seems to prove Ralph Raico knows what he is talking about.

http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm

and http://www.hirhome.com/method.htm

I am impressed by the deductive work.

 

Indeed to be added to all the links mentioned above by Bardhyl and Marko. But one may have noted how multi-faceted and contrived the war was, so I’d strongly advised against picking one source and going with Raico one that source’s account alone. Otherwise Balkan conflicts are not for you.

 As for the article, I may only reiterate what I’ve said before: I’ve seen an entire people flee for their lives and amass in makeshift houses in miserable conditions (or live with dirt poor Albanian families) for months with my own frigin’ eyes. If that is not disgusting, let me know what is.