ICG 'Turning a Blind Eye' to Albanian Nationalism
Skopje Start in Macedonian 24 Sep 04 pp 31-33
Commentary by Socialist Party Deputy Chairman Zoran Vitanov: "ICG's Controversies"
International diplomatic circles describe the "prestigious" nongovernmental organization ICG [International Crisis Group] not as an NGO, but as NEGO -- Near Governmental Organization (that is, an organization close to governments). It is also regarded as an organization that is offering visions and proposals that further complicate the already complicated interethnic relations in the Balkans. Furthermore, international diplomats also say that if we treat the ICG as a doctor, then its patients will die due to an incorrect diagnosis. Below in this article, we will try to find some roots that prove the incorrect diagnosis in solving the Albanian issue in the Balkans, but -- in my view -- also show the intention of a deliberately incorrect diagnosis.
The ICG is turning a blind eye to Kosovo-Albanian nationalism. This nationalism profiteered in political terms, because it opposed [former Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic's arrogant and stupid approach, with which he actually violated the basic human rights of Kosovo Albanians. However, if Albanians were fighting for rights, rather than territories, then it is logical to ask why Kosovo Albanians did not cooperate with the Serbian opposition then, which guaranteed their rights in compliance with international standards. When the international community was talking about human rights, the Albanian nationalists were pondering secession. Let us ask why the things that happened in Kosovo did not happen in Vojvodina? Moreover, let us wonder about the rights of Albanian women in Kosovo, whose elementary human rights are violated precisely by Albanian men? Why are the international community and the ICG not worried about this?
They have never treated the minority issues in the Balkans equally. For example, the Serbian minority in Croatia has never received the appropriate treatment from the ICG. On the contrary, the international community helped ultra-nationalist [former Croatian President Franjo] Tudjman banish 250,000 Croatian Serbs in 1995. Most of them are still refugees in Serbia. We have also not heard a word about the treatment of Macedonians in Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania. To our proposal that the Framework Agreement also be applied for the rights of the Macedonians living in neighboring countries, the ICG promptly reacted that such an agreement could not be implemented there and continued to claim that it was an ideal solution for Macedonia. As for the Kosovo refugees who came to Macedonia in 1999, Macedonia was attacked for not providing tennis courts for them.
Instead of supporting [Kosovo President] Ibrahim Rugova and his peaceful and moderate politics, which may have been the only politics of this kind in the former SFRJ [Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia], the European Union and the United States armed the most extreme Kosovo nationalist and formed the UCK [Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA]. Therefore, in 1998 they imposed a war on Kosovo. Frankly speaking, the United States proclaimed the UCK a terrorist organization, but only for a short period, because later the same UCK, with the same members, became NATO's major official land partner during the bombing of the SRJ [Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia]. The conflict that was political before the establishment of the UCK and for which international negotiations were held has now become military. Despite all the warnings, the international community has never proposed serious talks on Kosovo. The Rambouillet "negotiations" were a sheer farce. The Serbians and Albanians did not even see each other's faces there. There, NATO proposed that it had access to every corner of Serbian territory without making Serbia a member of the Partnership for Peace. This was evaluated as a Mafia offer aimed at accusing Serbia of lack of cooperation as an excuse for the prior decision to bomb it. Recall the weapons of mass destruction that were the motive for Iraq's bombing. Where are those weapons now?
After the bombing, about 200,000 non-Albanians have become refugees in Serbia and Macedonia, but the international community does not care whether they have water, let alone tennis courts. On the contrary, 43,000 NATO soldiers are constantly witnessing an ethnic cleansing and destruction of religious objects. Kosovo is now the ethnically purest territory in Europe. The worst type of fascism was applied there under the auspices of the international community. The UCK was officially disarmed and disbanded, but the KZK [Kosovo Protection Corps -- TMK in Albanian], which was said to have exclusively civil authorities, replaced it. Agim Ceku, a general who formed the UCK in 1993, became its leader. He was a general in Tudjman's army and he participated in the operation for the expulsion of Serbs from Croatia. While the Serbian forces were leaving Kosovo, the Albanian nationalists kept their arms through the KZK. Only na?ve people can believe that the United States, which bombed the SRJ, Afghanistan, and Iraq, was unable to prevent the KZK from attacking Macedonia and occupying one third of its territory. The SDSM [Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia] leadership's support of the KZK during this occupation requires a special elaboration, so we will not analyze it here for comprehensible reasons.
The entire international community was convinced that an embargo was an efficient means to exert pressure on Milosevic. As we can all see, Milosevic, unfortunately, did not lose a hair, but his people in the entire region have been totally impoverished. The Macedonian economy has been destroyed. Not a single member of the international community has even lifted a finger to help the Macedonian economy. Although its key trade partner was the SRJ, it was forced to obey the embargo. A Mafia appeared as a result of the embargo. The Mafia is now very influential in Serbia and Kosovo as well. The embargo and the gray economy, along with criminal privatization, have created a society divided into classes and a great increase in poverty. The ICG certainly did not realize the absurdity of its argument that we must (once again) understand Kosovo Albanians and that they were engaged in crime because of their poverty. This is why they ignore prostitution, cigarette smuggling, the hundreds of illegal gas stations in Kosovo, which serve as excellent money laundries, and the smuggling of drugs directly from Afghanistan. Let us mention that the Western administrative workers who are there have once again approved the production of opium. Kosovo's ties with the European underworld are a special story. Citizens' poverty is the last excuse for the Albanian extremists' ethnic cleansing.
The na?ve trust the ICG when it says that Kosovo Albanians are seriously interested in Kosovo's EU and WTO integration. The truth is that they are only interested in an independent Kosovo that will include parts of Montenegro and Macedonia. They do not even want a Greater Albania, but a Greater Kosovo. Why not? Kosovo Albanians' leaders see themselves as historical, philosophic, and intellectual centers of the Albanian nation. They do not accept anything apart from an independent Kosovo. By the way, they have been teaching their children in school for 15 years that Kosovo is independent. What happened in Kosovo could have been avoided if the civil approach instead of the military approach was accepted. Unfortunately, not only in Kosovo, but in the Balkans in general, the military approach is accepted when solving problems at the ICG's proposal. This is why [ICG Director for Europe] Nicholas Whyte does not regard the referendum as a solution, although it is the most democratic and also most civilized solution in the history of mankind.
In the end, let us see who is behind the ICG. Who are they actually? These are the members of the board. First there is Morton Abramowitz, the man who helped the delivery of Stingers to the Afghanistan mujahedins and the redefining of the new world order in the United States, as the most powerful state. He was Mrs. Madeleine Albright's gray eminence. He was also the Kosovo Albanians' adviser in Rambouillet. Then there is Kennett Adelman, a prominent security policy expert and one of the leaders of the New American Century project; Richard Allen, former associate of Nixon and Reagan and current member of the US Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee; Luis Arbur, former ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia] executive head and present UNHCR manager; and Wesley Clark, whom we know well. This is how Clark explains on his website that he saved 1.5 million Albanians from certain death: "From 1997 until May 2000, General Clark was the NATO allied forces commander and commander of the European and US forces. From this post, General Clark commanded the allied forces' operation with which he saved 1.5 million Kosovo Albanians from ethnic cleansing. This was NATO's first military operation." He later tried to become the next US president. William Shawcross, writer and publisher, wrote, "All in all, about 200,000 people would have died in the Balkans in front of Europe's eyes. It was the United States that stopped the killing. In 2001, only the United States liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. The results in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan are not remarkable, but all these countries are in a better situation now. Only the United States has made these positive changes. Tony Blair has realized this, but many other European leaders have not." There is also former US Congressman Steven Solartz, who presented his own strategy on isolating Serbia even more. There are also Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros, whom we know very well. Honestly speaking, there are also men of principles (at least in my view) within the ICG, such as Oscar Arias Sanchez, Emma Bonino, Marika Fallen, Salim Salim, Torvado Stoltenberg, Shirley Williams, Martti Ahtisaari (chairman), and Gareth Evans. However, it seems that they do not have great influence on the ICG's reports.
After this elaboration, let us return to Nicholas Whyte and his views on the referendum. Just like the ICG deliberately diagnosed the Kosovo situation incorrectly, it also wants to incorrectly diagnose the situation in Macedonia. It actually uses human rights to implement the policy of conquering new Albanian ethnic territories. This is the crucial difference between the polemics of the gangs of [FYROM President Branko] Crvenkovski and [Ali] Ahmeti [leader of the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI -- BDI in Albanian], on the one hand, and the opposition, on the other, regarding the new law on territorial division. Does this mean that Albanians in Macedonia will have greater rights, or that Macedonia will be partitioned? Bearing in mind that precisely the ICG formed the current coalition between the UCK and the SDSM through Edward Joseph (who was trying to persuade me personally that the SPM [Socialist Party of Macedonia] should stay in the coalition between Branko and Ali), it is clear that there are no dilemmas regarding the aforementioned things. It is obvious that the new law will carry out a territorial division with the ultimate goal of a Greater Kosovo!
Therefore, by preventing the law, with which former UCK members in Ahmeti's company control part of western Macedonia, we will also prevent Macedonia's division, rather than reduce Macedonian Albanians' rights. SDSM members who have honest intentions for their homeland must discover the truth, that is, whether this is all about territories or rights. We should learn our lesson from the outcome of the Kosovo conflict, which ended with independence (once again at the ICG's proposal). We should only look truth in the eyes. Crvenkovski has not offered anything else in his disgraceful political career apart from throwing dust into our eyes and making false promises.
If this is related to human rights, I will be the first to appeal "against" the forthcoming referendum. Nevertheless, facts indicate completely the opposite and even the gods are silent when it comes to facts.
Commentary by Socialist Party Deputy Chairman Zoran Vitanov: "ICG's Controversies"
International diplomatic circles describe the "prestigious" nongovernmental organization ICG [International Crisis Group] not as an NGO, but as NEGO -- Near Governmental Organization (that is, an organization close to governments). It is also regarded as an organization that is offering visions and proposals that further complicate the already complicated interethnic relations in the Balkans. Furthermore, international diplomats also say that if we treat the ICG as a doctor, then its patients will die due to an incorrect diagnosis. Below in this article, we will try to find some roots that prove the incorrect diagnosis in solving the Albanian issue in the Balkans, but -- in my view -- also show the intention of a deliberately incorrect diagnosis.
The ICG is turning a blind eye to Kosovo-Albanian nationalism. This nationalism profiteered in political terms, because it opposed [former Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic's arrogant and stupid approach, with which he actually violated the basic human rights of Kosovo Albanians. However, if Albanians were fighting for rights, rather than territories, then it is logical to ask why Kosovo Albanians did not cooperate with the Serbian opposition then, which guaranteed their rights in compliance with international standards. When the international community was talking about human rights, the Albanian nationalists were pondering secession. Let us ask why the things that happened in Kosovo did not happen in Vojvodina? Moreover, let us wonder about the rights of Albanian women in Kosovo, whose elementary human rights are violated precisely by Albanian men? Why are the international community and the ICG not worried about this?
They have never treated the minority issues in the Balkans equally. For example, the Serbian minority in Croatia has never received the appropriate treatment from the ICG. On the contrary, the international community helped ultra-nationalist [former Croatian President Franjo] Tudjman banish 250,000 Croatian Serbs in 1995. Most of them are still refugees in Serbia. We have also not heard a word about the treatment of Macedonians in Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania. To our proposal that the Framework Agreement also be applied for the rights of the Macedonians living in neighboring countries, the ICG promptly reacted that such an agreement could not be implemented there and continued to claim that it was an ideal solution for Macedonia. As for the Kosovo refugees who came to Macedonia in 1999, Macedonia was attacked for not providing tennis courts for them.
Instead of supporting [Kosovo President] Ibrahim Rugova and his peaceful and moderate politics, which may have been the only politics of this kind in the former SFRJ [Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia], the European Union and the United States armed the most extreme Kosovo nationalist and formed the UCK [Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA]. Therefore, in 1998 they imposed a war on Kosovo. Frankly speaking, the United States proclaimed the UCK a terrorist organization, but only for a short period, because later the same UCK, with the same members, became NATO's major official land partner during the bombing of the SRJ [Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia]. The conflict that was political before the establishment of the UCK and for which international negotiations were held has now become military. Despite all the warnings, the international community has never proposed serious talks on Kosovo. The Rambouillet "negotiations" were a sheer farce. The Serbians and Albanians did not even see each other's faces there. There, NATO proposed that it had access to every corner of Serbian territory without making Serbia a member of the Partnership for Peace. This was evaluated as a Mafia offer aimed at accusing Serbia of lack of cooperation as an excuse for the prior decision to bomb it. Recall the weapons of mass destruction that were the motive for Iraq's bombing. Where are those weapons now?
After the bombing, about 200,000 non-Albanians have become refugees in Serbia and Macedonia, but the international community does not care whether they have water, let alone tennis courts. On the contrary, 43,000 NATO soldiers are constantly witnessing an ethnic cleansing and destruction of religious objects. Kosovo is now the ethnically purest territory in Europe. The worst type of fascism was applied there under the auspices of the international community. The UCK was officially disarmed and disbanded, but the KZK [Kosovo Protection Corps -- TMK in Albanian], which was said to have exclusively civil authorities, replaced it. Agim Ceku, a general who formed the UCK in 1993, became its leader. He was a general in Tudjman's army and he participated in the operation for the expulsion of Serbs from Croatia. While the Serbian forces were leaving Kosovo, the Albanian nationalists kept their arms through the KZK. Only na?ve people can believe that the United States, which bombed the SRJ, Afghanistan, and Iraq, was unable to prevent the KZK from attacking Macedonia and occupying one third of its territory. The SDSM [Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia] leadership's support of the KZK during this occupation requires a special elaboration, so we will not analyze it here for comprehensible reasons.
The entire international community was convinced that an embargo was an efficient means to exert pressure on Milosevic. As we can all see, Milosevic, unfortunately, did not lose a hair, but his people in the entire region have been totally impoverished. The Macedonian economy has been destroyed. Not a single member of the international community has even lifted a finger to help the Macedonian economy. Although its key trade partner was the SRJ, it was forced to obey the embargo. A Mafia appeared as a result of the embargo. The Mafia is now very influential in Serbia and Kosovo as well. The embargo and the gray economy, along with criminal privatization, have created a society divided into classes and a great increase in poverty. The ICG certainly did not realize the absurdity of its argument that we must (once again) understand Kosovo Albanians and that they were engaged in crime because of their poverty. This is why they ignore prostitution, cigarette smuggling, the hundreds of illegal gas stations in Kosovo, which serve as excellent money laundries, and the smuggling of drugs directly from Afghanistan. Let us mention that the Western administrative workers who are there have once again approved the production of opium. Kosovo's ties with the European underworld are a special story. Citizens' poverty is the last excuse for the Albanian extremists' ethnic cleansing.
The na?ve trust the ICG when it says that Kosovo Albanians are seriously interested in Kosovo's EU and WTO integration. The truth is that they are only interested in an independent Kosovo that will include parts of Montenegro and Macedonia. They do not even want a Greater Albania, but a Greater Kosovo. Why not? Kosovo Albanians' leaders see themselves as historical, philosophic, and intellectual centers of the Albanian nation. They do not accept anything apart from an independent Kosovo. By the way, they have been teaching their children in school for 15 years that Kosovo is independent. What happened in Kosovo could have been avoided if the civil approach instead of the military approach was accepted. Unfortunately, not only in Kosovo, but in the Balkans in general, the military approach is accepted when solving problems at the ICG's proposal. This is why [ICG Director for Europe] Nicholas Whyte does not regard the referendum as a solution, although it is the most democratic and also most civilized solution in the history of mankind.
In the end, let us see who is behind the ICG. Who are they actually? These are the members of the board. First there is Morton Abramowitz, the man who helped the delivery of Stingers to the Afghanistan mujahedins and the redefining of the new world order in the United States, as the most powerful state. He was Mrs. Madeleine Albright's gray eminence. He was also the Kosovo Albanians' adviser in Rambouillet. Then there is Kennett Adelman, a prominent security policy expert and one of the leaders of the New American Century project; Richard Allen, former associate of Nixon and Reagan and current member of the US Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee; Luis Arbur, former ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia] executive head and present UNHCR manager; and Wesley Clark, whom we know well. This is how Clark explains on his website that he saved 1.5 million Albanians from certain death: "From 1997 until May 2000, General Clark was the NATO allied forces commander and commander of the European and US forces. From this post, General Clark commanded the allied forces' operation with which he saved 1.5 million Kosovo Albanians from ethnic cleansing. This was NATO's first military operation." He later tried to become the next US president. William Shawcross, writer and publisher, wrote, "All in all, about 200,000 people would have died in the Balkans in front of Europe's eyes. It was the United States that stopped the killing. In 2001, only the United States liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. The results in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan are not remarkable, but all these countries are in a better situation now. Only the United States has made these positive changes. Tony Blair has realized this, but many other European leaders have not." There is also former US Congressman Steven Solartz, who presented his own strategy on isolating Serbia even more. There are also Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros, whom we know very well. Honestly speaking, there are also men of principles (at least in my view) within the ICG, such as Oscar Arias Sanchez, Emma Bonino, Marika Fallen, Salim Salim, Torvado Stoltenberg, Shirley Williams, Martti Ahtisaari (chairman), and Gareth Evans. However, it seems that they do not have great influence on the ICG's reports.
After this elaboration, let us return to Nicholas Whyte and his views on the referendum. Just like the ICG deliberately diagnosed the Kosovo situation incorrectly, it also wants to incorrectly diagnose the situation in Macedonia. It actually uses human rights to implement the policy of conquering new Albanian ethnic territories. This is the crucial difference between the polemics of the gangs of [FYROM President Branko] Crvenkovski and [Ali] Ahmeti [leader of the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI -- BDI in Albanian], on the one hand, and the opposition, on the other, regarding the new law on territorial division. Does this mean that Albanians in Macedonia will have greater rights, or that Macedonia will be partitioned? Bearing in mind that precisely the ICG formed the current coalition between the UCK and the SDSM through Edward Joseph (who was trying to persuade me personally that the SPM [Socialist Party of Macedonia] should stay in the coalition between Branko and Ali), it is clear that there are no dilemmas regarding the aforementioned things. It is obvious that the new law will carry out a territorial division with the ultimate goal of a Greater Kosovo!
Therefore, by preventing the law, with which former UCK members in Ahmeti's company control part of western Macedonia, we will also prevent Macedonia's division, rather than reduce Macedonian Albanians' rights. SDSM members who have honest intentions for their homeland must discover the truth, that is, whether this is all about territories or rights. We should learn our lesson from the outcome of the Kosovo conflict, which ended with independence (once again at the ICG's proposal). We should only look truth in the eyes. Crvenkovski has not offered anything else in his disgraceful political career apart from throwing dust into our eyes and making false promises.
If this is related to human rights, I will be the first to appeal "against" the forthcoming referendum. Nevertheless, facts indicate completely the opposite and even the gods are silent when it comes to facts.