Almost a month since the pogrom in Kosovo, both its consequences and lessons seem to have faded from memory. Indeed, the occupation authorities are rewarding violence and appeasing its perpetrators, even as they grow more bold and hostile. They, too, see reports from Iraq, where a mass uprising against the occupation authorities has the Empire scrambling for more troops and vowing to “kill or capture” the organizers, but without much effect.
The wannabe global hegemons seek power, secure in their belief in their vast superiority over the rest of humanity. Since admitting errors would mean immediate adverse consequences, while perpetuating them only gives them access to more power, the second choice is obviously more appealing. So they deliberately reject a manifest opportunity for redemption, mocking the very values they claim to champion, rewarding the very behavior they claim they oppose, and continuing down the road to their own perdition.
Delusions in the UN
The official confirmation that the UN completely missed the point of last month’s pogrom came this Tuesday, when the undersecretary for peacekeeping told the Security Council that “Kosovo’s leaders and its people must take concrete steps to tackle the root causes of the ethnic violence,” and called on the leaders of Kosovo (Albanians, presumably) to “exercise true leadership and responsible government, and to marginalize and hold politically accountable those among them who may have condoned or supported the violence.”
But the root cause of violence are the “Kosovo’s leaders and its people,” or more specifically the xenophobic hatred of Kosovo’s Albanians towards primarily Serbs, but also other ethnic groups still clinging to their homes in the occupied province. Nurtured by Ottoman Turks, Austria-Hungary, Nazis and Communists, this hatred is widespread, older than 1999, and the dominant force in Kosovo Albanian politics. All the Albanian leaders – Rugova, Taqi, Haradinaj, Ceku, Rexhepi, etc. – desire an ethnically cleansed, independent Kosovo, though some are more willing to achieve that at any cost than others. They are less likely to reject it than the current government in Washington is to abandon the “war on terror.”
Acts of Appeasement
Further reflecting the UN’s confusion, Kosovo viceroy Harri Holkeri fired his privatization chief under Albanian pressure, prompting the press to eagerly embrace one Albanian excuse for last month’s rampage – that it was a result of frustration with “lack of progress on integral economic issues such as privatization” (AP).
The fired privatization chief, Marie Fucci, was hated by Albanians for halting the illegal sell-off of (Serbian) state property seized by the occupation authorities. Back in November 2003, Albanian press was abuzz with condemnations of Fucci’s actions (though not mentioning her by name). Of course, no one has bothered to note that legitimate businesses generally avoid investing in stolen property, and thus avoid Kosovo – itself stolen – like the plague.
(One exception is Madeleine Albright, whose consulting firm is reportedly supporting a bid by a Kosovo internet provider to receive a mobile telephony license. In the supposedly destitute Kosovo, everyone seems to have a cell phone, and Mad Maddie apparently wants in on the profits. Figures.)
Anyway, since it now appears that UNMIK took their complaints seriously only after a violent outburst, new Albanian attacks are that more likely. In fact, they may be inevitable. Der Spiegel writes about KLA veterans who speak of forcing KFOR out, while members of the terrorist “Albanian National Army” (AKSh) recently appeared in public at a KLA funeral, threatening “collaborators with the old and new occupiers.”
Didn’t advocates of bombing Serbia always rail about the futility of appeasement? Hypocrites, all.
A Doomed Strategy
Delusions are by no means limited to Imperial politicians, but appear to be a shared trait of all political animals. For example, last week Boris Tadic, Serbia-Montenegro’s defense minister, told the media that NATO would be crucial for resolving the Kosovo crisis, and that Serbia-Montenegro should join it forthwith. Meanwhile, his fellow Dossie, foreign minister Goran Svilanovic, appealed in the Washington Times to the “international community” to remain involved in Kosovo.
In reality, NATO is a pillar of US hegemony in Europe and beyond, and the unquestionable illegal aggressor against Serbia in 1999. The “international community” NATO purports to represent is primarily responsible for the occupation of Kosovo, and the subsequent pogroms against Serbs and their culture. By all rights, Belgrade should demand KFOR and UNMIK’s immediate withdrawal.
However, even though Vojislav Kostunica’s government plans to dismiss both Svilanovic and Tadic as prominent leaders of the previous government and implacable political foes, it does not appear to disagree with their arguments, at least as far as foreign meddling in Kosovo is concerned. They seem to have accepted the occupation and its stated goals as legitimate and even desirable (!!!), questioning only their implementation – a strategy that is logically doomed to failure.
A ‘Democratic’ Empire
What Belgrade doesn’t seem to understand, but should be abundantly clear, is that for all the talk about democracy, human rights, multi-cultural multi-ethnic coexistence and humanitarianism, the Empire really operates on the simple premise that “might makes right.”
Previously considered a stalwart of realpolitik, Henry Kissinger sounded positively ideological as he exhorted American policymakers on Easter Sunday to “stay the course.” Says Kissinger:
“The debate between the relative role of interest and values in the nation’s foreign policy is not an issue of theory but of application. The advocates of the important role of a commitment to democracy in American foreign policy have won their intellectual battle […] support for democracy is a fundamental goal that must be built into American policy. The proponents of a value-based foreign policy need to understand that their challenge is no longer to establish their principle but to implement it…”
In other words, the Empire is here to stay, the only issue is how to make it work. And, he warns, “Success is the only exit strategy.”
This would not only mean no withdrawal from the bloody fiasco in Iraq, but no pullback from the protectorates in the Balkans, either. Kissinger and his like-minded colleagues are determined to occupy, browbeat, blackmail, pressure and bomb for however long it takes so that their targets develop not just into “democracies,” but places friendly to “American values and interests,” they way they define them.
Such treasonous nonsense fits the definition by columnist Fred Reed: “As I see it, realpolitik is a mood of self-congratulatory pugnacity accompanied by complete witlessness about how people work. It is usually associated with paranoia and the empathy of a table-leg. And it isn’t spelled well.”
The Erased and the Mythical
Putting the kibosh on Kissinger’s claptrap about “values” – but proving right his contention about pragmatic imperialism – are two more examples of Balkans malfeasance, demonstrating that loyal servants of the Empire can act with impunity, and that inconvenient facts are ignored or “adjusted” to fit.
Citizens of Slovenia, which just joined NATO and is set to join the EU in two weeks, overwhelmingly rejected the motion to restore civil rights to a number of residents who weren’t ethnic Slovenians. They were “erased” from government books in 1991, after Slovenia’s secession from Yugoslavia, and denied citizenship, residency and work permits, and even birth certificates for their Slovenian-born children. Though some sources mention a figure of 18,000 – staggering, in a country of 2 million – others indicate The Erased number up to 130,000. They cannot expect any help from the EU, either – the issue was never brought up in accession talks, and since they aren’t citizens, they cannot sue Slovenia before the EU’s human rights courts.
As far as Slovenians are concerned, these people have not existed since 1991, and are as good as dead. The EU and NATO have accepted Slovenia as a member nonetheless. So much for their commitment to “human rights,” then.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia is gearing up for electing a new president, after Boris Trajkovski perished in a plane crash in February. But Western reports about the pending election have little to do with reality, much like their eulogies of Trajkovski. According to Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis.com, the few outlets who mentioned the election got it entirely wrong. They mostly quoted each other, and “sources” such as IWPR, three officials, and an Albanian shoemaker. Deliso terms their arguments “threadbare… incestuous, [and] self-perpetuating,” and says, “that which says so little pretty much says it all about the sorry state of Balkan reporting in the international press.”
Of Pride and Fall
The ignorance, the lies, the violence, the excuses, the deception, they all come together to form a picture of a nation trapped in the madness of Empire (though it originally stood for the exact opposite!) seeking to dominate the entire world. Its interventions in the Balkans had little or nothing to do with good intentions or lofty goals – those were the slop for public consumption – and everything with gaining power for power’s sake. In this quest, it relied on racists, murderers, ethnic cleansers and terrorists, while blaming everything under the sun on Serbs and (later) Macedonians. Not that they were angels – but there is no question they have been railroaded and used as whipping boys, none whatsoever.
Now its troops occupy foreign lands, establish concentration camps for “enemy combatants,” blithely shell mosques, besiege cities, and indiscriminately bomb and machine-gun civilians. Yet Washington claims the moral high ground and accuses Serbia of doing all this (often without any proof), calling it “genocide.”
The ancients knew well what the Empire seems to have forgotten: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs, 16:18)
It’s something to think about, as we watch it unfold.
