-Caveat Lector-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999
Subj: ForeignCorrespondent THE REAL VICTORS IN KOSOVO
Foreign Correspondent
Inside Track On World News
By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
Eric Margolis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
www.foreigncorrespondent.com
THE REAL VICTORS IN KOSOVO
By
Eric Margolis 13 June 1999
Geneva -- Everyone involved in the strange Kosovo conflict is
claiming victory - except for its chief victims, the Albanians.
Serbia's ruler, Slobodan Milosevic, has saved his own skin, evaded
prosecution for war crimes, and managed, at least for now, to keep
Kosovo, which was 93% Albanian until this year's ethnic terror,
under Serb sovereignty. NATO's promises to the Kosovars of a
future vote on independence have been forgotten in the rush to end
the war.
The muddled accord almost certainly assures continued violence in
Kosovo and a legion of future troubles for the Balkans. Many of
the one million Albanian refugees are afraid to return to Kosovo,
whose borders will remain under Serb military and police control,
thus cementing Milosevic's terrorism. Albanians know once NATO
loses interest in Kosovo, the Serbs will be back.
Milosevic, who keeps power by creating trouble, will now turn his
perpetual- motion crisis machine on neighboring Montenegro,
unstable Macedonia, Bosnia, and Serbia's forgotten Muslim region of
Sanjak. He will emerge from the war a hero and inspiration to the
growing force of racism among Balkan Slavs and the Greeks.
The `peace' deal is being hailed as a triumph of sensible
internationalism by the curious, ad hoc alliance of groups that
opposed the war: leftists, right-wing isolationists,
anti-Americans, and Muslim-haters. Far from a triumph, it is a
craven surrender to expediency by NATO's weak-willed leaders. At
the same time, the western democracies have not only invited Russia
and China to meddle in the Balkans, they are relying on them as
`partners in peace.'
Misery loves company; so do repressive regimes. It was no
coincidence semi-communist Russia, and fully communist China,
sprang to the defense of Serbia, Europe's last communist state.
Nor that Moscow and Beijing reacted furiously to NATO's
half-hearted intervention in Kosovo to protect human rights.
Both are major violators of human rights and persecutors of
restive minorities.
Five years ago, the 1.2 million Muslim Chechens rose up against
250 years of savage Russian oppression. During World War II,
80% of Chechens were massacred, starved, or deported en masse in
railroad cars to concentration camps by Stalin. To crush Chechen
resistance, in 1994 Russian carpet bombing and heavy artillery
killed 50,000 to 100,000 Chechen civilians. Torture and executions
were widespread. Virtually all Chechen cities, towns, and villages
were leveled in a horrifying prelude to Kosovo.
Russian parliamentarians recently accused President Boris Yeltsin
of major war crimes in Chechnya. Yet this same leader, and the
same army that committed these atrocities, have been invited by
NATO to join the Kosovo peacekeeping force. The Russian
contingent, which was said to eventually number 10,000 troops, will
be the second largest military force after the British. Far from
keeping peace, the Russians will promote the interests of the
outlaw Serb regime and, of course, Moscow's own centuries-old
strategic ambitions in the Balkans, as Russia's seizure of Pristina
airport showed this weekend.
China has been enlisted in the `peace process' because its support
in the UN Security Council is essential for diplomatic cover. The
accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade presented Beijing
with a golden opportunity, which the Chinese immediately seized, to
put America on the psychological defensive. China's contrived rage
over this trivial incident helped distract attention from China's
theft of US nuclear secrets, and deflected world condemnation over
the anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre. Russia and China now
hold veto power over the UN operation in Kosovo.
More important, China is currently waging an intensifying campaign
of repression against the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people, the
majority in China's sensitive western province, Sinkiang --
formerly Eastern Turkistan. The Uighurs have rebelled against
heavy-handed Chinese rule, and Bejing's campaign to swamp the
region with Han Chinese settlers, repeating the process of Chinese
ethnic inundation in Inner Mongolia and Tibet.
China recently executed a score of Uighurs, arrested hundreds of
suspected nationalists, and imposed martial law in many regions of
Sinkiang. While Chinese repression in Tibet has provoked worldwide
protest, its equally brutal policies in Sinkiang remain almost
unknown. Not surprisingly, NATO intervention to save the Kosovars
from Serb ethnic terror set off alarm bells in Beijing, which fears
foreign action over its own violations of human and national rights.
No wonder, then, that Russia and China, sought to be involved in
Kosovo. Under the guise of peacekeeping, Moscow and Beijing will
try to ensure Kosovo never gains independence from Serb rule, a
precedent that would embolden and encourage their own
long-oppressed Muslim colonial subjects.
War and peace often make strange bedfellows. But NATO did not need
to invite such violators of rights to join its councils over
Kosovo. NATO troops massed on Serbia's borders before the bombing
campaign would have ended this war before it began, saving Serbia
and Kosovo from devastation, and the need to beg Russia and China
for help. By failing to deploy sufficient military force -- and
being seen as ready to use it -- NATO has created a quagmire it
will long regret. Seeking the aid of big oppressors to curb a
small oppressor makes a mockery of NATO's humanitarian mission.
Russia, and to a lesser degree, China are the big winners of this
botched war, and at no cost to themselves. NATO and Serbia have
achieved merely Pyrrhic victories. They have made a desert, and
call it peace. The Kosovar Albanians have lost everything.
Copyright eric margolis 1999
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