M. Bozinovich Column on Serbianna.com

In 1993, President Clinton reached out to Yasser Arafat and elevated him from an Islamic terrorist to a world statement worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. The farcical result is that Arafat simply transferred his zesty desire to kill Jews from the overt, as exemplified by his murder of Jews in Berlin, to the covert by acquiescing to the murdering rampages of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa and others that use Arafat’s Palestine as a base to kill Jews.

In a similar move in the Balkans 6 years later, Clinton once again reached out to an Islamic terrorist, Albanian Hasim Taci, and proclaimed him a statesman of a province inside another country. In the arafatesque style, this Kosovo terrorist-cum-diplomat got his KLA terror army renamed into a farcical Kosovo Protection Force, and is, just like Arafat, acquiescing to the murdering rampages of the Albanian terrorists that use Albanian-dominated Kosovo as a base to kill Christians in the Balkans.

A result of Clinton’s policy that seeks to politically morph killers into democracy-loving statesman is all too clear from the post-1993 Middle East experience.

Since 1993, Jews of Israel live in a daily fear that some supposedly Allah-loving killer will blow up dozen of their loved ones. As a leader of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat has done nothing authoritative to quell violence his countrymen are perpetrating against the Jews. Instead of action against violence, Arafat is more comfortable blowing kisses to Arab crowds chanting death to Israel.

It should come to no surprise, for example, that during his recent visit to Kosovo, Clinton found parallels between his ill-begotten Balkan venture with the violence his policy unleashed in the Middle East. Clinton urged Kosovo Albanians “to create a positive model in Kosovo” that would encourage people in the Middle East.

Similarity between Arafat and current Kosovo Albanian leadership does not end here however.

Both Arafat and Kosovo leadership deny any ties with their respective national terrorist groups. Both have an armed security apparatus and both do not use it to stop the terrorist operations. Both demand an independent state yet both fester insecurity, economic failure and cultural and religious intolerance.

Arafat blowing kisses to a crowd chanting "Death to Israel"

Both are also busy justifying civilian murders. Arafat by claiming that murdering civilian Jews is a legitimate result of a war of liberation from Israel, while Kosovo Albanians behave as though surprised every time an Albanian axes a Serb family. According to the Kosovo Albanian President, “the rights of Serbs [in Kosovo] are guaranteed”.

In the post 9/11 world where a battle against terrorism is the paramount paradigm of the civilized world, entities that acquiesce to terrorism - like Arafat’s in the Middle East or Kosovo Albanian one in the Balkans - should be pressured to either assure civilian security or lose the self-rule granted to them.

In an address to a university crowd in Pristina in March of 2003, Jamie Shea outlined 4 criteria the Albanian leadership in Kosovo must meet before any status talks begin: 1) Proof of European standard; 2) Ability to manage the economy; 3) Fight organized crime and 4) Provide all citizens with safety.

Since then, repetitive headlines about trial witnesses that narrowly escaped assassination, killings of policemen and UN workers, axing to death of families, explosions and narratives about Kosovo Albanian culture of vendettas and of gun raise serious questions whether the territory can ever provide any safety to citizens much less achieve a European standard. With unemployment in access of 40% the organized crime may be the only stable employment opportunity.

Since the deployment of UN in Kosovo in June of 1999, for example, 6,535 attacks have been reported by the UN of which 1,201 have been fatal killings, 1,146 civilians have “disappeared” and 1,328 have been injured. Moreover, the Albanian leadership in Kosovo has presided over expulsion of over 200,000 Serbs out of the province while hundreds of Christian churches have been burned, looted and otherwise desecrated during the 4 year long Albanian self-rule in Kosovo.

In a striking similarity to the Nazi-type ghettos for Jews, Kosovo Albanian leadership seems happy to have placed the Kosovo Serbs into NATO protected ghettos as their silence about the issue attests.

Furthermore, according to the UN police spokesman Derek Chappell as recently as last month, Kosovo is a “transit point for the heroin and the drugs… intended for sale in western Europe". As far back as March, 2000, moreover, the London-bases Guardian notes that Kosovo drug mafia is the major heroin supplier to Europe. More alarming and illustrative of the global reach of the Albanian mafia is the report by the US military newspaper, Stars and Stripes from October, 2001 citing an arrest of a California man with ties to criminals in Kosovo.

One would be extremely naïve to assume that terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda would not seek to exploit such a well-established global Albanian criminal network based in Kosovo.

In fact, in January 2003, a UPI report notes an alarming spread of the Islamic extremist infrastructure in Kosovo that is funded by the radical Islamic Wahabi sect that preaches death of Christians and Jews and a destruction of West. For example, 24 Wahabi mosques and 14 orphanages have been built in Kosovo since 1999, along with 98 primary and secondary Wahabi funded schools.

Wahabi schools where major indoctrination centers for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and was a source of inspiration for the 19 terrorists that crashed the civilian planes into the Twin Towers in New York.

Presiding over a judicial system plagued with corruption; a Parliament that passes unenforceable legislation and cannot agree on basic negotiation points with Belgrade; no economic policy to address Kosovo unemployment; an entity that acquiesces to terrorism, drugs, extortion and culture of a gun and vendettas is an entity unfit for self-rule.

Western diplomats running Kosovo are reluctant to characterize their mission as a failure because to do so would be a self-indictment of their personal diplomatic ability. Instead, the diplomats, like the Kosovo Albanian leadership, are engaged in explaining away the charges of failure.

In an attempt to deflect the concerns of the increasing influence of the radical Islam in the Balkans, Bosnia chief Ashdown, for example, cites the communist legacy of state sponsored atheism. According to Ashdown, al-Qaeda influence is negligible because only a small percentage of people in the Balkans are fervent Muslim believers.

"Those of us who live in the Balkans have yet to see any evidence of Islamic terrorism", Reuters recently quoted Ashdown.

On a more bizarre end of apologetics, and ones whose diplomatic ability would be personally questioned if policy on Balkans changes, are the former operatives who have constructed current Balkan insecurity.

Is there money to be made from perpetuating crisis?

During the height of the Kosovo crisis in 1999, Richard Holbrooke made $205,000 in speaking fees on top of a $166,000 in a book advance fees. Just as the talks reached what Mr. Holbrooke called a "dangerous moment," for example, he flew to Athens to give a speech about Kosovo to the Crans Montana Forum, picking up a $16,000 payment.

Recent Clinton’s visit to Kosovo and Bosnia also carried a speaking fee. Clinton reportedly got $250,000 for talking in Srebrenica for the opening of the statue.

It is yet to be reported wheather Holbrooke received any money from Kosovo Albanians for publishing an article in the Wall Street Journal that calls for blackmailing Serbia.

After a visit to their Kosovo Albanian and Bosnian Muslim surrogates in the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke and Bernard Kouchner declare, in a noticeably dramatic spasm of fantasy, that Bosnia and Kosovo are a success because the alternative such as Iraq makes it so. “Coalition forces in Iraq are being attacked some 10 times per day… in the eight years since Dayton there have been no – repeat, no – casualties” write these two.

According to Holbrooke’s logic, WWI was presumably heaven because the alternative, WWII was bloodier.

Mindful that Islamic terrorism is only one problematic component in the region that does not need a believing majority to thrive, media such as Reuters or Financial Times is more comfortable addressing the other troublesome components such as law and order by redefining the UN mandate that governs the UN mission in the region in the first place.

For example, Financial Times is repeatedly blaming the law and order problems in Kosovo on the delay of the final status of the province as though the status is the paramount reason for the Kosovo Albanian impotence to crack down on terrorism.

“[F]inal status talks is creating insecurity, permitting organised crime to flourish and could provide conditions for terrorism” claims Financial Times.

This paper further insinuates that, “Kosovo's de facto separation from Serbia” that is a temporary condition based on an UN Resolution 1244 could be converted into a “de jure independence” despite that such conversion would violate the UN Resolution and may precipitate more ethnic violence and fragmentation of the region.

The line of reasoning that shifts the blame as exhibited by the architects of Balkan insecurity is a typical one of advocates who seek to scare the policy makers into a territorial repatriation of the region. In a thinly veiled phraseology, Financial Times is in fact pitching the upcoming Belgrade-Pristina talks as “the last big unresolved territorial dispute in the former Yugoslavia.” Holbrooke, meanwhile, advocates Kosovo independence outright despite that the position violates a UN Resolution he helped negotiate.

The scare tactic that is resounding in these left-leaning, typically anti-Bush, media outfits has been picked up by the Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova who recently raised the threat of violence if independence is not granted soon. “If the independence of Kosovo is not recognised sooner rather than later, extremists can be expected to try to form a unified state, whatever it might be called.” recently declared Rugova for Voice of America.

One is then left wondering: Why doesn’t this president use his self-rule and do something about these extremists? Why does he instead use their threat to pre-empt Kosovo’s status?

Whether deliberately orchestrated or not, this pre-emption of Kosovo’s final status has recently been rejected by the Kosovo Contact Group. Comprised of US, Russia, France, Germany, UK and Italy, the Contact Group has endorsed a policy of “standards before status” for Kosovo.

Additionally, to reinforce a balance to the upcoming Belgrade-Pristina talks perhaps, the Group has also rejected Belgrade’s recent declaration of sovereignty over Kosovo with a remainder that the Group has the final say on the Kosovo status and not the negotiating participants.

What then is the purpose of Belgrade-Pristina talks? Why talk at all if the Group has the final say on the status matter?

The initial agenda of the Kosovo talks is limited to four topics: energy, transport, missing persons and the return of wartime refugees. Although diplomats hope that the negotiations could lead to the status settlement, the initial agenda that tackles peripheral issues suggests that the Contact group does not have a consensus on the status.

Belgrade has initiated the persuasion of the Contact Group members by coinciding its privatization effort with the initiation of the dialogue. For example, large US firms have already taken stakes in Serbia’s strategic and potentially profitable industries: steel and tobacco. UK has also gained a profitable foothold in Serbia through BP and BAT acquisitions of the petroleum and tobacco industry, respectively, while Russia also gains with entrance of its gas giant Lukoil.

It is a reasonable to expect that the German Chancellor’s visit to Belgrade could lead to some strategic business arrangement with Germany such as the auto industry.

In contrast, the privatization of government owned firms in Kosovo has recently been halted until further notice. In this reversal of policies initiated by Kosovo’s previous chief Steiner (whose wife is a ‘Kosovar’ and has a family relationship with Kosovo’s President Rugova), the halt of the privatization may signal West’s rejection of a policy of redefinition of the UN Resolution 1244 advocated by Kosovo Albanians and their surrogates in the media and elsewhere.

Belgrade was also quietly instrumental to the US on the military field by providing the intelligence on Saddam’s bunkers during the Coalition’s build-up in the Middle East.

Moreover, Serbian military has been calm to the provocation of the Albanian terrorists signaling military maturity. Furthermore, Belgrade is near a completion of its crackdown on the paramilitary thugs responsible for killing and looting of civilians in the Balkans.

Combination of Belgrade’s help in fighting terror and exhibition of the military maturity may be behind West’s decision to engage the now reformed Serbian special forces in Afghanistan to help combat terrorism.

By contrast, Rugova’s recent frantic offer made through Holbrooke to send his police “to Iraq, to Afghanistan or other places” has been categorically rejected by the State Department and at a deep sorrow to the New York Times. In a reply to Rugova’s pleading, secretary of state for European affairs, Elizabeth Jones, wrote back that he could contribute to the campaign against terrorism by “building a stable, democratic Kosovo”.

Europe or Kosovo?

The initiated Clintonite policy of blackmail of Serbia seems that it would have proceeded regardless whether Serbia rid itself of Milosevic or not.

Specifically, immediately following the fall of Milosevic, the policy of blackmail could have been placed on hold pending the outcome of the redefinition of Yugoslavia into a Serbia-Montenegro union. Against the hopes of Clintonites, EU recognized Serbia as the successor state to the UN Resolution 1244 thus implicitly recognizing Serbia’s sovereignty over its Kosovo province.

Assassination of Serbian Premiere Djindjic placed another hold on the media blitz against the Western-minded Serbia. By August 2003, euphoria over Djindjic murder subsided and the policy gets initiated by George Soros who publicizes the policy with an elaborate opinion piece in the Financial Times. Soros then holds a meeting with the Serbian President Micic and offers her an exchange: fast track to EU for Belgrade’s recognition of Kosovo independence.

Micic refuses and few days later Albanian extremists punish the rejection by axing an entire Serb family to death in Obilic, perhaps as a remainder of the costs associated with Serbian demand that its territorial integrity is respected.

Eroding media focus of the Balkans as well as an eroding support for Kosovo’s independence alarms Clintonites. Holbrooke is then dispatched to the Balkans and after rounds with his separatist surrogates in Islamic part of Bosnia and Kosovo, obtains space in the Wall Street Journal in order to mobilize the forces to endorse the new policy of blackmail of Serbia.

It is reasonable to expect that the near future will bring an elaborate and recurring Kosovo pieces in the media outfits such as New York Times, Financial Times and LA Times. By presenting the policy as a fact they will then use that to claim that Bush and his foreign policy has failed in the Balkans.

Concerned that Kosovo Albanian Islamic separatism is in jeopardy and may not yield independence, it appears that Holbrooke is attempting to mobilize the proponents of Albanian separatism and, in addition to blaming the unresolved status for the escalating terrorist threat in Kosovo, initiate a new policy of blackmail of Serbia: Europe or Kosovo?

Recent articles by US think tank Strategic Forecasting and Washington Post acknowledge the emerging extremist Islamic threat in the Balkans and argue for a new US policy in the Balkans. While both argue that Washington should assign monopoly of security in the Balkans, they differ as to who should be anointed with it.

For example, Washington Times points that Bosnia serves as a “base for al Qaeda operatives” and is urging the Bush administration to establish closer ties with Croatia and anoint it as the security chief in the war against Islamic terrorism in the Balkans.

Citing similar concerns, US think tank Strategic Forecasting concludes that Balkans is a "frontier conflict...in the U.S. war against the Islamist world” and is urging the Bush administration to hand the security of the region to the Serbs.

While correctly urging Washington to change its Balkan policy, recent history of the Balkans where both Croatia and Serbia fought one another for the military monopoly suggests that Washington should not be in business of anointing any single of these two states with an exclusive security care of the Balkans. To do so is to provoke immediate animosities between Croatia and Serbia because it would give an immediate political fuel to the nationalists in either camp to win elections precisely when both states are engaged in a constructive dialogue and rebuilding of a relationship.

Instead, Washington should expand its relationship with both states in an equal measure so that their respective influence may expand.

For example, Zagreb might be directly responsible for the anti-terror campaign in the Croat side of Bosnia while Serbian military forces should join NATO patrols in Kosovo with a future military mandate to eradicate terrorists out of the province under NATO command.

Both of the measures are consistent with the international agreements: with Dayton and the UN Resolution 1244, respectively.

Finally, further expansion of responsibility to these two Balkan states could be made contingent upon their commitment to political and economic transition towards democracy and free market as well as normalization of mutual relations.

Initiation of such new Washington policy should be immediate in order to curtail the rising popularity of radical anti-reform nationalists in both Croatia and Serbia that are readying up for elections.

The alternative of not changing the Balkan policy is a recipe for a prolonged NATO and US presence in the region and an ongoing burden to the already noticeable US military over stretch. Moreover, the noticeable absence of logic of the current Balkan policy, as initiated by Clinton and advocated by Holbrooke, indicates that an alternative is desirable.

On a more psychological platitude, however, the increasing influence of Islamic terrorists, rise of a gun culture and drug smuggling could be a result of spite and not a reasoned discourse of the architects of the Balkan instability.

For example, when Croatia was ethnically cleansing its minority Serbs in August 1995, oblivious to human suffering, Holbrooke remarked that the outcome is ideal for a peace settlement. Then, Holbrooke vehemently opposes Bosnian Serb separatism while endorsing Kosovo Albanian separatism.

Alarmingly still, this “Balkan troubleshooter” is now advocating blackmail of Serbia. “Serbia cannot have both Kosovo and Europe” recently declared Holbrooke in the Wall Street Journal although he was the “architect” of the UN Resolution 1244 that guarantees Serbia’ sovereignty over Kosovo.

Didn’t Clinton and Holbrooke had us believe that Kosovo war was to oust Milosevic from power and not take away Serbian territory? Were these two lying again?

The duplicitous diplomatic legacy of Bill Clinton in the Balkans has arafatized it to the point that the Islamic terror threat emanating from his paying surrogates in Bosnia and Kosovo is identical to the one in the Middle East. It is this duplicity, caused by Clinton and his Democrats, that is only now expressed as the resentment of the US throughout the world.