Albanians in Kosovo. The Conflict and its Origins

[Menydh]

Why is there Civil War in Kosovo,
Why Did Clinton Get Involved and What has Been Accomplished?


by Dr. Stephen K. Stoan, Ph.D. History,
Duke University
Director of Library and Information Services, Drury College
Springfield

Why is there a civil war in Kosovo, why did the Clinton administration get involved in it, and what has been accomplished with more than two and a half months of warfare?

Let's review pertinent facts.


The Background

Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia when the area was conquered by the Turks in the fifteenth century. In Serbian history books it is often called Old Serbia. Albanians began arriving in the seventeenth century during the Turkish occupation. It has been recognized as an integral part of Serbia by the international community since 1912.

When the Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia in 1941, they attached Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece to Albania to form a greater Albania under the rule of a fascist dictator. The Kosovo Albanians formed military units to fight for the Nazis, killed more than 10,000 Kosovo Serbs, and drove more than 100,000 out of the province into the rest of Serbia. They brought immigrants in from Albania to fortify the Albanian presence in the province.

When the Croatian Communist dictator Tito came to power in Yugoslavia in 1945, he forbade the Serbian refugees to return to their homes in Kosovo. He then signed a deal with the new Communist dictator of Albania to bring in another 100,000 Albanian settlers. The Albanian majority in Kosovo appears to date from the years around World War II.

An upsurge of Albanian Kosovo violence in 1969-1974 caused another 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins to leave Kosovo and gave Tito an excuse to separate Kosovo from Serbia. He made it an autonomous province under the total control of the now Albanian majority.

Autonomy under Kosovo Albanian control did not result in ethnic peace. Once in control of the province, the Kosovo Albanians continued harassing non-Albanians through legal and extralegal means. They required Gypsies to use Albanian first names. They enacted zoning legislation designed to break up non-Albanian residential communities. They outlawed use of the Cyrillic alphabet even among the Serbs, who had always used it. They refused to permit federal authorities to participate in census-taking, claiming they didn't know how to count Albanians.

The Kosovar Albanians required mandatory instruction in Albanian for all inhabitants of Kosovo, and they imported history and social science texts books from Albania for use in the schools. These taught Albanian nationalism rather than Yugoslav citizenship and praised the era of Turkish control over the Balkans. There were continuing incidents of violence against Serbs and frequent attacks on Orthodox churches, shrines, and monasteries. More Serbs and Montenegrins left. Ignoring Yugoslav immigration laws, the Albanian Kosovars permitted more illegal aliens to immigrate from Albania. By the early 80s, the province was three-fourths Albanian, large numbers of them born in Albania.

After Tito's death, there was another upsurge of Albanian violence beginning in 1981. Throughout the 80s, Western news media, including the New York Times, reported on the ongoing murders and rapes of Serbs and Montenegrins perpetrated by Albanians, the constant attacks on Orthodox churches and monasteries, and the inability of the local Albanian authorities ever to punish anyone.

Yugoslavia finally reversed the autonomy decision in 1989 because of obstructionist constitutional tactics by the Kosovo provincial government. This decision was not a unilateral act of Slobodan Milosevich, the newly elected president of Serbia, though he pushed for it. It was made jointly by all the republics of Yugoslavia, including Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia.

As Republican Senate aide Jim Jatras wrote: "One of the ironies of the present Kosovo crisis is that Milosevic began his rise to power in Serbia in large part because of the oppressive character of pre-1989 Albanian rule in Kosovo, symbolized by the famous 1987 rally where he promised the local Serbs: "Nobody will beat you again." In short, rather than Milosevic being the cause of the Kosovo crisis, it would be as correct to say that intolerant Albanian nationalism in Kosovo is largely the cause of Milosevic's attainment of power."

The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) was formed shortly thereafter from a Maoist organization dedicating itself to free Kosovo. As recently as a year ago, the United States government condemned the KLA as a terrorist group, linked closely to Iran, the Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin-Laden, and the heroin traffic in Europe. Europeans have likened it to a Mafia because of its lawless involvement in organized crime, including prostitution.

The stated goal of the KLA is to create a greater Albania by attaching Yugoslav Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece to Albania. Using Albania as a base and conduit for weapons, the KLA began carrying on a terror campaign against the Yugoslav government in Kosovo, assassinating and kidnapping not only Serbs but also Albanians and other ethnic groups who opposed their desires for independence.

Kosovo continues to be home not only to Albanian-speaking Muslims, but also to nearly half a million other people. The goal of the KLA is to create an ethnically pure Kosovo by driving out or culturally assimilating the rest of the population. Their claims of 1.8 million Albanians in Kosovo are demographically impossible, even with immigration, for there were only 645,000 Albanians in the last full federal census carried out in 1961. There have also been many emigrants from Kosovo to other parts of Yugoslavia and Europe.

With the collapse of the Communist regime in neighboring Albania in the 1990s and the nearly anarchic conditions in that country, more Albanians crossed the porous borders with Yugoslavia into Kosovo.

Within Kosovo, Yugoslav forces were attempting to deal militarily with KLA terrorism. Using as an excuse an alleged massacre of Albanian Kosovars at Racak by Yugoslav security forces in mid-January, 1999, Mrs. Albright and Mr. Clinton demanded to "mediate" at Rambouillet. The massacre was quickly identified as a KLA set up. This did not deter Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Albright from pursuing their designs. It is now known that Mr. Clinton had made a decision months earlier to seek to destroy Milosevich. Racak was the pretext.

The Yugoslav delegation that came to Rambouillet included Muslim Albanians, Muslim Serbs, Christian Serbs, and Turks. They were prepared to talk directly with the KLA, but Mrs. Albright never permitted this to happen. Instead, her team went back and forth between the two groups laying down terms.

The Yugoslav government accepted the basic principle that there should be autonomy in Kosovo (guaranteeing the rights of all Kosovars, not just Albanians) and consented to an international peace keeping force provided it be brought in under the auspices of the UN. Mrs. Albright insisted on bringing NATO troops in. She finally issued an ultimatum to the Yugoslav government to accept her terms or be bombed. This ultimatum is referred to as the Rambouillet Accord.

The ultimatum laid down detailed guidelines on how the province was to be governed. It demanded that Kosovo have the right to override any laws or judicial decisions made by the Yugoslav government, be permitted to conduct its own foreign policy, and be organized economically along lines dictated by NATO. It said nothing about protection of the rights of the non-Albanian Kosovars. It demanded that Yugoslavia permit NATO troops to be brought into Kosovo and to have free passage anywhere else in Yugoslavia without subjection to Yugoslav laws (a venerable imperialist practice called "extraterritoriality"). NATO troops were also to have the right to commandeer media facilities as they saw fit. The NATO forces would themselves conduct a plebiscite in Kosovo in three years on the status of the province.

There was no way Yugoslavia could accept the Rambouillet "Accord" without surrendering her sovereignty, possibly losing part of her national territory, and becoming a satellite state of NATO. Both President Milosevich, as elected president sworn to defend Yugoslav sovereignty, and the Yugoslav parliament rejected the ultimatum. An ultimatum, after all, is not an act of diplomacy. It is an act of war.

Mrs. Albright's and Mr. Clinton's have manipulated the ethnic diversity issue to suit their immediate purposes. In the case of Slovenia and Croatia, they accepted and actively promoted societies whose sole reason for seeking independence from an already multiethnic Yugoslavia was ethnic exclusivism. They are now doing the same thing in Kosovo on behalf of one ethnic group the Albanians. As one Canadian journalist put it in writing of Kosovo, "to first say that countries shouldn't be organized along ethnic lines, and then demand self-government for one group within a nation on the sole basis of ethnicity, is an exercise in self-contradiction." He adds: "This is endorsing one ethnic group at the expense of another. It's saying the Albanians may use their ethnic majority in Kosovo to assert their political identity, but the Serbs in Yugoslavia may not."

Mrs. Albright's tactics at Rambouillet are considered by some experts to be a violation of recognized international law. It is a basic principle of international law embodied in the Vienna Convention on Treaties adopted on May 26, 1963, which entered into force on January 27, 1980, that agreements negotiated under threat of force are null and void. Section 2, Articles 51 and 52 make clear that coercion is impermissible as a negotiating instrument.

There was no "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo before the NATO attacks, only an ongoing conflict between Yugoslav security forces and KLA separatists. In January of this year, an intelligence report from the German Foreign Office stated: "Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still not involved in armed conflict. Public life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc. has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a relatively normal basis." The "actions of the security forces (were) not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."

Once the NATO air attacks began, Yugoslavia took the essential defensive step of moving an army into Kosovo to wipe out KLA terrorist bases and secure the borders against a possible ground attack by NATO. The war between the government and the KLA along with the NATO bombing created an unstable environment in many areas that caused large numbers to flee. About 200,000 Kosovo refugees of all ethnic backgrounds have moved further into Yugoslavia, into either Montenegro or other Serbian provinces.

In some areas, Albanians saw the initiation of NATO bombing as a signal to begin killing their Serb neighbors. Yugoslav security forces and the army responded by forcing them out or incarcerating many for common crimes. In some parts of Kosovo, Serb paramilitary forces took advantage of the anarchic situation to settle old scores and intimidate Albanians into leaving.

Yugoslav troops were involved in expulsions where they perceived a security threat in the event of invasion or saw an area as heavily compromised with the KLA. The United States had similar motivation in 1941 with the internment of Japanese Americans because of our fears of invasion. It isn't nice, but it happens when war breaks out.

Yugoslav troops may also have targeted Albanians who are "illegal aliens" in the country, who may number around 300,000. These people, born in Albania with no sense of Yugoslav citizenship, have been a major contributor to dissidence in the province. Many of them fled as soon as the bombing started, deciding to return to their homes in Albania. They make up a goodly portion of the "refugees."

The KLA itself played a major role in the flow of refugees, using its armed men to force Albanian Kosovars out of the province and commandeer young men to be trained and used as soldiers. They intimidated Albanian Kosovars into not returing to Kosovo. Like the Bosnian Muslims with whom they have had close ties for years, the KLA has been getting direct assistance from Iran and other Muslim nations, some of which have sent Mujehadeen to the Balkans to fight with them against the Christians.

An estimated half million Albanians never left Kosovo. Many told Western journalists even in recent weeks that they were under no pressure to leave because the KLA has never been active in their areas.

It is worth noting that there were 100,000 Albanians living in Belgrade who were not touched. Nor has Yugoslavia made any effort to "cleanse" the country of more than 350,000 Hungarians and many Ruthenians, Slovaks, Croats, Rumanians, Turks, Gypsies, Macedonians, or other minorities. Yugoslavia has given refuge to 15,000 Croats and Muslims who fled the fighting in Bosnia. These minorities were harmed only by the NATO attacks.

Before the NATO bombing began, Yugoslavia was only 63 percent Serb, the most ethnically diverse state in the former Yugoslavia. All major linguistic groups, including the Albanians, were and are guaranteed instruction in their own language. During World War II, when Serbia was occupied by the Germans, the Serbs refused to cooperate in killing Jews and Gypsies. Orthodox clergymen and ordinary Serb citizens risked their lives to save these people from extermination. Indeed, in the midst of the bombing of their country, many Serbs took to wearing Stars of David.

In attacking Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO ignored the United Nations charter and the NATO treaty itself, which justifies war only to defend a NATO member from attack. Only one NATO nation even borders Yugoslavia, the recently admitted Hungary. Since international treaties signed by the United States are considered U.S. laws under our Constitution, some legal experts say that Albright and Clinton have violated the American Constitution as well.

Mr. Clinton also ignored the War Powers Act, which requires that he seek congressional authorization to continue a military conflict more than 60 days. He suggested at one point imposing a naval blockade on Yugoslavia until his own European allies pointed out to him that it is considered an act of war to detain ships of other nations on the high seas.

The petty refusal by Mrs. Albright and Mr. Clinton to suspend the bombings even for the Eastern Orthodox Easter, when we have been sensitive not to bomb the Muslim Iraqis during all of Ramadan, sent a powerful message to Eastern Orthodox Christian nations that we disdain them. Public opinion polls in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Rumania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece show overwhelming popular opposition to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia.

The suspicion among many in the world is that Mrs. Albright's real reason for the war was to establish total U.S. hegemony over the Balkans and its land routes to the oilfields of the Middle East and Central Asia. Active Western collusion, initially led by Germany, in the breakup of Yugoslavia has converted Slovenia, Croatia, and the Muslim-Croat Confederation in Bosnia into client states of the U.S., established a NATO military presence with bases in Bosnia, enabled NATO to land troops in Macedonia, and is now enabling NATO to put troops and military bases in Albania. Only Yugoslavia stands in the way of total U.S. domination of the region, which Rambouillet would have achieved. This was part of Mr. Clinton's New World Order.

It has also been pointed out that Kosovo proper is extremely rich in minerals, has some of the largest coal reserves in Europe, and has petroleum reserves potentially as vast as those in the Caspian Sea area. Its minerals may be worth $3 trillion. These facts may explain the very explicit statements in the Rambouillet Accord that the economy of Kosovo had to be organized along economic lines dictated by the U.S., which would open the province up to American investors.

In our propaganda to get rid of Milosevich, we fail to note that he was elected President in an open election in which his own party controls only 35 percent of the seats in the Yugoslav parliament. In the last election, the U. S. preferred him because his principal opponent was considered an ultranationalist. The Yugoslav parliament itself rejected the Rambouillet Accord. The unrest in Kosovo that he has been trying to deal with has existed in various manifestations since at least the 1920s. Milosevich has attacked no neighbors nor engaged in any terrorist activities around the world. He is not manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.

The assistance that Milosevich provided the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia when Yugoslavia was breaking up must be understood in the context of what was in effect a civil war within Yugoslavia, where Serbs had justifiable reasons to fear a recrudescence of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the 1940s by Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who massacred more than 600,000 Serbian non-combatants during World War II.

Franjo Tudjman, the current president of Croatia, has resurrected the flag, other national symbols, and even the uniforms and arm bands of the Croatian fascists of World War II. He declared a few years ago that the Jewish Holocaust was a fabrication, and he destroyed all records of the notorious Croatian concentration camp at Jasenovac in Bosnia, where tens of thousand of Jews, Gypsies, and Serbs perished in the 1940s. In 1995, with the assistance of the CIA and American military advisers, he drove several hundred thousand Serbs from their ancestral homes in Croatia where they had lived since the fifteenth century. The U.S. cooperated in this act of ethnic cleansing.

Alija Izetbegovich, the Muslim fundamentalist leader in Bosnia, helped organize the notorious Muslim Waffen SS "Handzar Division" during World War II. Officered by Germans, the division slaughtered thousands of Bosnian Serb civilians before going off to Russia to fight for the Nazis. When declaring Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia, he obtained military assistance from Iran and brought in Muslim mujehadeen from the Middle East to fight on his behalf. Tudjman and Izetbegovich have been the U.S.'s friends in the Balkans.

In fact, there are currently more than 700,000 Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia living in what is left of Yugoslavia after being driven from homes they had lived in since the fifteenth century or earlier. No Western TV crews filmed their plight or interviewed them about the atrocities they had suffered. No international relief agencies have come to their assistance. Yugoslavia has had to absorb them while under an economic embargo since 1992.

The War

The war initiated on March 24 did not go well for NATO. A ground invasion was never a serious military or political option, and Mr. Clinton had been advised to that effect beforehand. There are few logical routes through which Yugoslavia could be invaded. Hungary, the only NATO country bordering Yugoslavia, was admitted to NATO only a few weeks before being pushed into war with its neighbor, and would be unlikely to consent to being used as a staging area. The neighboring Serbian province of Vojvodina that would come under immediate attack is home to more than 350,000 ethnic Hungarians.

Neither would Rumania, Bulgaria, or Madedonia likely consent to being a staging area for an invasion. They are not NATO members, and public opinion in all three is strongly anti-NATO after the bombing started. An attack from Bosnia, also not a NATO nation, would have to go through the Republika Srpska and ignite the conflagration in Bosnia all over again. An invasion from Albania into Kosovo would be a costly military operation, given the extremely poor infrastructure in Albania and the few passes through mountainous terrain that an invader would have to use.

Another very significant factor in a land invasion was the Yugoslav Army itself. In preparing since the 1940s for a possible invasion by the Soviet bloc, it built up an enormous network of underground ammo dumps, hangars, petroleum storage facilities, bunkers, barracks, and perhaps even petroleum refineries in the mountainous terrain of the nation. Most of this infrastructure remained untouched by NATO bombing after two and a half months, since it was designed to withstand nuclear blasts. The Yugoslavs have also developed a flexible command structure for concentrating and dispersing troops as needed in fighting a defensive war.

In these circumstances, there was little likelihood that a ground invasion would ever take place. The costs of victory would have been very high against a well trained professional army. During World War II, Serbian forces tied down 700,000 Axis troops with only the Greeks as their allies in the Balkans. Albanians, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Hungarians, Rumanians, and Bulgarians all fought for the Axis, and Germany herself had 23 divisions in Yugoslavia. Assuming we did occupy the country, what would we then do to govern a hostile population of 11,000,000? How long would we have to stay to control our new protectorate? A land invasion, moreover, would have provoked even stronger reactions around the world and within NATO countries.

Militarily, the air war was a debacle for NATO. The Yugoslavs had great success in preserving their anti-aircraft capabilities throughout. Many of their fixed sites were destroyed early, but they retained mobile sites and were strong in their ability to target lower flying aircraft. They set up dummy tanks, trucks, and SAM sites for NATO planes to attack, regularly moved and carefully concealed AAA and SAM sites, confused NATO aircraft with fake radar signals, and were highly successful in targeting the UAVs that NATO had to rely on to get real time surveillance over moving targets. Though they lost about half of their few MIG 29's, their most advanced aircraft, their pilots also shot down a number of NATO aircraft, including a Stealth fighter. The great bulk of their air force remained intact in underground hangars. Already, other nations in the world who assume they too might one day face a bomb-happy NATO are studying Yugoslav defensive tactics.

Though the official NATO line thus far is that only a few aircraft and no lives were lost, it is unreasonable to assume that such could be the case. The International Strategic Studies Association of Alexandria, Virginia, in its April issue of Defense & Foreign Affairs, reported that in the first month of the fighting NATO lost at least 38 fixed winged aircraft, including three Stealth fighters, six helicopters, seven UAVs (unmanned reconnaissance drones), and large numbers of cruise missiles. Remains of one Stealth aircraft and intact cruise missiles are already in Russia. These calculations were based on intelligence coming from a variety of sources.

The most careful ongoing effort to post to the Web information on NATO losses gathered from newspaper, radio, TV, and e-mail reports all over Europe, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, and Yugoslavia itself now lists more than 300 NATO aircraft of all kinds as having been downed or disabled by early June. Several F-117 stealth fighters were lost. Recently, two B-2 stealth bombers appear to have gone down over Yugoslavia. Several B-52s were shot down. A minimum of four Apache helicopters (two were said to have been lost in "training exercises") were downed before the U.S. announced it would not use them. At least 25 UAVs were downed, and more than 200 cruise missiles were hit in the air. Macedonian and Greek sources have verified the passage of dozens of coffins through their countries.

Whatever the exact figures, which NATO will not publicize, it is true that General Wesley Clark asked twice to increase the numbers of aircraft committed to the war. On May 8 it was announced that 176 additional aircraft would be brought into action. At the end of May it was announced that an additional 68 aircraft would join the war. These were only American aircraft. Additional helicopter rescue crews were also brought in, since efforts to rescue downed NATO pilots often resulted in the loss of helicopers, their crews, and some commando units. Some military experts feared that if another serious military front were to open up elsewhere in the world, the U.S. would be hard pressed to respond adequately.

Indeed, the war against Yugoslavia may have the effect of undermining the mystique of Western air power that had developed in the bombing of Iraq, a poorly defended desert state. Intelligence communities will not be fooled. In Yugoslavia, Stealth fighters and bombers have proven not to be invincible, and their remains are now in the hands of other countries for scientific and engineering analysis. Older Russian-built AAA and SAM sites, handled by well trained Yugoslav crews, proved to be effective against aircraft. Shoulder-held missiles have been very destructive. The Russian-built MIG-29s, flown by competent pilots, acquitted themselves well in air-to-air combat with NATO aircraft. The MIGs that were lost were almost all destroyed on the ground in air raids.

Because NATO was largely unable to get at truly military targets, it soon had to broaden its definition of "military" to go after the civilian infrastructure. Some describe what resulted as a campaign of terror to intimidate Yugoslavia into surrendering. One result is what the Defense & Foreign Affairs article reported as morale problems among the NATO military. They found themselves fighting a war in which "there are questions about the wisdom of the orders they are receiving, and a total lack of clear strategic (let alone military) objectives."

NATO took to bombing public buildings, bridges, rail lines, fertilizer plants, automobile factories, plastics factories, shoe and clothing factories, pharmaceutical plants, post offices, power plants, refugee columns, trains, buses, and other essentially non-military targets. Numerous bombs and missiles struck purely residential neighborhoods or small isolated villages. NATO has destroyed much the infrastructure of the Yugoslav economy, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and creating widespread suffering for civilians, whose deaths have outnumbered military casualties by 4 to 1. GDP has declined by an estimated 25 percent.

Since 300 schools were hit in "collateral damage," the country had to close down its educational system. Collateral damage also affected hospitals, libraries, museums, cemeteries, and numerous religious sites and shrines. Recent attacks on electrical installations and water supplies have endangered the lives and health of large numbers of civilians. Hospitals could not run dialysis equipment or incubators, bakeries could not bake bread, fresh water could not be pumped. Unable to defeat the Yugoslav military through the air and unwilling to confront them on the ground, NATO resorted to making hostages of Yugoslav civilians in a shameful campaign aimed primarily at the helpless.

Italian fishermen in the Adriatic were killed pulling up cluster bombs in their nets, and many ceased fishing out of fear. NATO first claimed they were World War II bombs, then stated that it was routine practice for NATO planes returning from raids over Yugoslavia to drop their remaining bombs into the Adriatic.

A damaged aircraft would likely jettison its ordnance before landing. However, the presence of bombs in the Adriatic would also corroborate reports that some NATO pilots were dropping their bombs and missiles over the Adriatic rather than on Yugoslavia. There are uncorroborated reports that one NATO country pulled its pilots out of the war. NATO pilots, when interviewed, admitted that the Yugoslav antiaircraft defenses were resourceful and highly professional. Another said that this was a "credible" enemy.

The NATO bombing of petroleum and chemical installations in the Belgrade area is threatening a large scale ecological disaster as dangerous chemicals such as phosgene, chlorine, hydrochloric acid, naphtha, ethylene dichloride and transformer oil are released into the atmosphere or into the Danube and seep into underground water supplies. In some areas, water has become undrinkable. It was nearly miraculous that a NATO bomb did not explode a liquid ammonia tank that would have poisoned many in Belgrade. The result of such bombing is a kind of low intensity chemical warfare.

It was admitted that American aircraft were using munitions tipped with depleted uranium (DU), whose use in Iraq has precipitated a seven-fold increase in leukemia, caused thousands of children to be born with various deformities, and is a suspect in Gulf War Syndrome. The U.S. was also using cluster bombs in clearly civilian areas such as Nish. This is strictly an antipersonnel weapon akin to a type of land mine whose use has been outlawed because of its continuing destructiveness long after fighting has ceased.

In the attack on the village of Korisa, where many Albanians died in homes they had just returned to, the U.S. planes were using a type of thermal bomb that generates up to 2000 degrees Celsius and burns people beyond all recognition. Besides the attack on Korisa, NATO aircraft on at least three other occasions targeted refugees who were returning to their homes in Kosovo. NATO aircraft targeted a Greek and a Rumanian humanitarian relief convoy going into Yugoslavia whose movements had been announced in advance. They attacked a convoy of Western journalists in Kosovo, which included the French philosopher Daniel Schiffer. The three low yield missiles that struck the Chinese Embassy each hit the apartment of a Chinese journalist who had been writing against the war.

The extensive bombing of bridges and the pollution of portions of the Danube River have had economic repercussions for Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, since all traffic and trade on the waterway have been halted. Tourism has also been affected.

The Aftermath

The adversaries finally agreed to a settlement each for their own reasons. On the Yugoslav side, the NATO attacks on the power grid in Yugoslavia in the last few weeks were threatening massive civilian suffering and death that the Yugoslav government had to be sensitive to. Also, NATO had used various indirect means to build up and arm a larger KLA military force to use as a ground army in attacks on Kosovo, changing the military complexion in the province.

On the NATO side, the alliance was becoming hopelessly divided within. Opposition in may parts of the world was strong, and criticism was arising within the Western nations themselves as the horrors of a war against civilians sank in. Greece opposed the war from the outset, and all three new members, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, expressed powerful reservations about the direction NATO was taking. Norway appears to have had second thoughts very quickly about the nature of the air war. Belgium and the Netherlands followed suit. Ultimately, Italy and Germany both began to push for a compromise negotiated through the Russians, with the U.S. and Britain continuing to hold out for Yugoslavia's unconditional surrender. Clinton finally had to give in.

What have been the actual results of the war diplomatically? Though the rhetoric is seeking to conceal the reality, Clinton and Albright have agreed to a UN force rather than a NATO one, though NATO nations will be represented as UN members. Russian forces may also be used. Moreover, since the operation will be under UN supervision, China and Russia will have much say in the decision-making.

Clinton and Albright have yielded on occupying Yugoslavia in general or even Kosovo in particular. The exact form that home rule will take is not being dictated and will be worked out under a UN-appointed administrator. There is a commitment to recognize Kosovo as an integral part of Yugoslavia, and there will be no referendum in three years.

Very important is that UN forces must now seek to "demilitarize" the KLA, whom Clinton used when he thought he could get leverage to take over Yugoslavia. It was always dangerous to dither with the KLA for any purposes, since they are a terrorist organization that can also disrupt Macedonia and Greece. News reports from everywhere are indicating that getting the KLA to put down its arms or desist from military activity could be the most difficult part of the entire process.

Just what will happen now in Kosovo in the near and far future is impossible to discern. Just how much control the UN will be able to exercise over the peacekeeping force, consisting at the moment exclusively of troops from NATO countries, is impossible to say. How vindictive Clinton will be in continuing to pursue Milosevich or seek to undo Yugoslavia in other ways is an unknown. What anyone can do about the KLA is uncertain. Macedonia, which is nearly 25 percent Albanian, has been disquieted throughout this war because of seeming NATO support for the KLA. Greece also has an Albanian population, as does Montenegro, a part of Yugoslavia.

It was disturbing to see the much publicized news footage of the meetings on the Macedonian border between NATO and Yugoslav officers. With much macho bluster, the NATO generals were trying to force their way into Kosovo before the UN mandate had been approved as outlined in the plan that the Yugoslav parliament had approved. The Yugoslavs were not resorting to delaying tactics; they were standing on the text of the agreement. Were NATO actions merely a propaganda show, seeking to put the best public face on what can certainly be seen as a NATO loss? Or was NATO seeking to subvert the signed agreement in an effort to snatch a victory out of the jaws of defeat and manipulate the UN into also becoming an appendage of NATO? It is frightening to contemplate the latter scenario.

In short, after two and a half months of bombing that devastated the province we were supposed to be saving, created enormous suffering for all Kosovars, Albanian and non-Albanian alike, and destroyed much of the economy of the rest of Yugoslavia, we are right where we could have been in March without ever dropping a bomb: a guarantee that Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia, a negotiated local autonomy for the province with protections for all Kosovars, a UN peacekeeping presence, and demilitarization of the KLA terrorists.

In the meantime, Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Albright have squandered billions of dollars in NATO resources, killed thousands of Yugoslavs, mostly innocent civilians many of whom were children, and sacrificed the lives of many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of NATO pilots, airmen, and commandos. They have driven the Russians and Chinese closer together than they have been in decades, exposed internal weaknesses in NATO, and caused many to question the rationale for that organization. There is talk in Europe of creating a separate European military organization with its own separate command structure that will not include the United States, Great Britain, Canada, or Turkey.

The war has caused much revulsion among thoughtful people the world over. A Greek court ruled that Greece could not enter the war militarily because NATO had committed war crimes in violatation of the Geneva Conventions, whose articles are intended to protect civilians and make militaries wage war on other militaries. A group of legal experts from the United Kingdom, Canada, Greece, and Norway have presented a case to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to indict NATO leaders for war crimes. Nothing is likely to come of this, since that same tribunal has been sitting on a request for some time to condemn Croatia for war crimes in carrying out the brutal ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs from that nation.

There is real danger of a reversion to global polarization. After the bombing started, the Ukrainian parliament voted unanimously to revert the country to its former nuclear status. The Ukraine supplied petroleum to Yugoslavia during the fighting. On April 30, a meeting of the Russian National Security Council approved the modernization of all strategic and tactical nuclear warheads. It decided to develop strategic low-yield nuclear missiles capable of pin-point strikes anywhere in the world.

Indian nationalists have now found new reason to continue their march toward nuclear armaments. China, needless to say, is demonstrating unaccustomed hostility to the U.S. and NATO. All over Latin America, previously subdued regimes have been decrying Yanqui imperialism once again. Even Muslim regimes, whom we might have expected to be vociferously pro-NATO in this war, have been subdued, understanding as they do the consequences of a world in which a rogue NATO seeks to replace the UN and a whole web of treaties and international understandings as the arbiter of international "peace" and international boundaries.

Albright and Clinton have done great harm to U.S. and NATO standing in the international community. They have alienated many other nations who fear NATO's efforts to define an entirely new role for itself in the international arena. They have destroyed the military mystique of NATO by suffering heavy losses in a failed attempt to defeat the Yugoslav military from the air. They have destroyed the mystique of Stealth technology. They ultimately resorted to a cowardly war against civilians in an effort to get their way, and still failed to achieve their "non-negotiable" terms at Rambouillet. And yet, they are now crowing about a great NATO victory.

Some experts have stated their belief that the Clinton-Albright team is the most incompetent foreign policy team in the U.S. in the last half century. This may be. Mrs. Albright seems dominated by a Central European Catholic prejudice against the Serbs that has so warped her judgment as to make her ineffective as a negotiator or mediator, which requires some element of neutrality and willingness to understand the legitimate security concerns of all parties. Mr. Clinton's whole political career has been characterized by media manipulation, lying, bullying, vindictiveness, and buying people off. Applying these qualities in domestic politics has been bad enough. Applying them on the international scene can have huge consequences for the entire planet. Much of the world has now become frightened of Mr. Clinton's New World Order, including many of our own European allies. For a man preoccupied with his legacy, he has much to be preoccupied about.

A Historical Postscript

This is the third time in the twentieth century that Serbia has been issued an ultimatum to surrender its sovereignty or be attacked. In 1914, the Austrian Empire issued a 14-point ultimatum to Serbia designed to force the nation to surrender her sovereignty under threat of attack. The Serbs refused and World War I started. It ultimately took an Austrian Army, a German Army, and a Bulgarian Army to occupy the nation. The Serbian Army escaped intact and came back to fight in 1916-1918. Germany and Austria lost the war, Austria lost an empire, and the map of Europe was redrawn.

In 1941, the Serbs rejected a German ultimatum to let German troops move through their country to help Mussolini's beleaguered forces in Greece. The subsequent German invasion delayed the planned invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks and prevented a knockout blow before the Russian winter came. It also resulted in a prolonged war of attrition against Serbian guerrillas that tied down large numbers of Axis troops, preventing them from being used on either the Eastern or Western fronts. These were crucial factors in turning the tide against Germany, which lost the war. The map of Central and Eastern Europe was redrawn.

The larger consequences of this latest failed ultimatum are yet to be played out. They could also be enormous.

[Menydh]

[...]

[Marulus]

This article is teeming with factual errors.

When the Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia in 1941, they attached Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece to Albania to form a greater Albania under the rule of a fascist dictator.

Actually, Albania was at that time protectorate of the fascist Italy.

When the Croatian Communist dictator Tito came to power in Yugoslavia in 1945

He was not Croatian, to begin with.

An upsurge of Albanian Kosovo violence in 1969-1974 caused another 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins to leave Kosovo and gave Tito an excuse to separate Kosovo from Serbia. He made it an autonomous province under the total control of the now Albanian majority.

Kosovo was made autonomous province inside Serbia already in 1945. Serbia was officially one of the republics of the Yugoslav Federation and she (Serbia) consisted of Serbia proper, Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. So Kosovo was never entirely separated from Serbia.

The Kosovar Albanians required mandatory instruction in Albanian for all inhabitants of Kosovo, and they imported history and social science texts books from Albania for use in the schools. These taught Albanian nationalism rather than Yugoslav citizenship and praised the era of Turkish control over the Balkans. There were continuing incidents of violence against Serbs and frequent attacks on Orthodox churches, shrines, and monasteries. More Serbs and Montenegrins left. Ignoring Yugoslav immigration laws, the Albanian Kosovars permitted more illegal aliens to immigrate from Albania. By the early 80s, the province was three-fourths Albanian, large numbers of them born in Albania.

I am not able to verify the veracity of all of these claims, some of which may be exaggerated, but there is one basic fact that has to be pointed out in connection with this: a great deal of what was happening in Kosovo was approved by the Serbian Communists. They didn't oppose much any of these things.

The fact that author (intentionally?) omitted to mention is that Yugoslavia was ruled by a megalomaniac clique which indulged in wild dreams of power and influence in the international arena, in plans that vastly surpassed the real resources and possibilities of the country. One of these plans was to rule the whole Balkans, even propositions of a confederation with Bulgaria and Albania were at table. Fostering Kosovan-Albanian identity was one of the ways by which they wanted to absorb Albania into Yugoslavia's orbit.

Mrs. Albright's and Mr. Clinton's have manipulated the ethnic diversity issue to suit their immediate purposes. In the case of Slovenia and Croatia, they accepted and actively promoted societies whose sole reason for seeking independence from an already multiethnic Yugoslavia was ethnic exclusivism.

At the time when Slovenia and Croatia became independent (1991), neither Clinton nor Albright were in charge, but Bush senior was the US President and James Baker Secretary of State. Bush's administration was strongly opposed to Croatian and Slovenian independence and favoured the preservation of Yugoslavia.

During World War II, when Serbia was occupied by the Germans, the Serbs refused to cooperate in killing Jews and Gypsies.

Untrue. Serbia had its puppet government under the leadership of the colonel Milan Nedić. The police of Nedić's Serbia assisted Germans in everything...it doesn't mean that Serbian population didn't suffer, it suffered very much indeed, but German occupying forces had their accomplices.

The suspicion among many in the world is that Mrs. Albright's real reason for the war was to establish total U.S. hegemony over the Balkans

That's correct.

Active Western collusion, initially led by Germany, in the breakup of Yugoslavia

The good old myth, with no base in reality, that the West destroyed the lovely Yugoslavia.

has converted Slovenia, Croatia, and the Muslim-Croat Confederation in Bosnia into client states of the U.S.

Croatia became client state of the USA only in 2000. (unfortunately)

Only Yugoslavia stands in the way of total U.S. domination of the region, which Rambouillet would have achieved. This was part of Mr. Clinton's New World Order.

Yes, and Milošević became villain in the eyes of the "international community" only after he declined (rightfully) to let the international forces into his country. Previously he was considered a "peace-maker of the Balkans".

In our propaganda to get rid of Milosevich, we fail to note that he was elected President in an open election in which his own party controls only 35 percent of the seats in the Yugoslav parliament. In the last election, the U. S. preferred him because his principal opponent was considered an ultranationalist.

Last Milošević's government consisted of the coalition of his party and the party of the ultranationalist in question (Šešelj-Serbian Radical Party).

The assistance that Milosevich provided the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia when Yugoslavia was breaking up must be understood in the context of what was in effect a civil war within Yugoslavia, where Serbs had justifiable reasons to fear a recrudescence of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the 1940s by Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who massacred more than 600,000 Serbian non-combatants during World War II.

The Holocaust that once happened and might happen again some day, against which we should be constantly on guard. Hmmm...sounds familiar, as if it were coming from another ethnic group, you-know-which...

In fact, the author is recycling the old claim of 700 000 victims of the concentration camp Jasenovac (reducing it to 600 000, according to the official figure of the Yad Vashem). It was physically impossible and the figure was discredited long ago.

Franjo Tudjman, the current president of Croatia, has resurrected the flag, other national symbols, and even the uniforms and arm bands of the Croatian fascists of World War II.

Absolute nonsense. The flag of the so-called Independent State of Croatia was quite different from the present day Croatian flag.

The flag of the Independent State of Croatia (the Ustaša state):



The coat of arms of the Indpendent State of Croatia:



The flag of today's Republic of Croatia:



Coat of arms of the present day Republic of Croatia:

He declared a few years ago that the Jewish Holocaust was a fabrication, and he destroyed all records of the notorious Croatian concentration camp at Jasenovac in Bosnia, where tens of thousand of Jews, Gypsies, and Serbs perished in the 1940s.

He never said that Holocaust was fabrication. He even less destroyed the memorial centre at the place of the former camp Jasenovac. The center is standing there, with its records. And Jasenovac isn't in Bosnia...

In 1995, with the assistance of the CIA and American military advisers, he drove several hundred thousand Serbs from their ancestral homes in Croatia where they had lived since the fifteenth century.

They left on their own will, with the assistance of their leaders.

Militarily, the air war was a debacle for NATO. The Yugoslavs had great success in preserving their anti-aircraft capabilities throughout. Many of their fixed sites were destroyed early, but they retained mobile sites and were strong in their ability to target lower flying aircraft. They set up dummy tanks, trucks, and SAM sites for NATO planes to attack, regularly moved and carefully concealed AAA and SAM sites, confused NATO aircraft with fake radar signals, and were highly successful in targeting the UAVs that NATO had to rely on to get real time surveillance over moving targets. Though they lost about half of their few MIG 29's, their most advanced aircraft, their pilots also shot down a number of NATO aircraft, including a Stealth fighter. The great bulk of their air force remained intact in underground hangars. Already, other nations in the world who assume they too might one day face a bomb-happy NATO are studying Yugoslav defensive tactics.

This would be interesting to study...

In 1941, the Serbs rejected a German ultimatum to let German troops move through their country to help Mussolini's beleaguered forces in Greece. The subsequent German invasion delayed the planned invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks and prevented a knockout blow before the Russian winter came.

The reason for Germany's attack on Yugoslavia in 1941 was that the country had stepped out from the Triple Alliance. The coup that overthrew the previous government, which had signed accession in to the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, Japan) and substituted it with a new, pro-British government, was in fact the ruse of the British secret services. The aim of the Brits was to delay Germany's attack on USSR as much as they can. They Brits succeeded in their scheme, but Yugoslavia and Greece paid the price.

The map of Central and Eastern Europe was redrawn.

In the case of Yugoslavia the map wasn't redrawn, because the country that was part of the pre-war system in Europe was reestablished.

[Marulus]

A bit from the history of the Yugoslav-Albanian relations, with special emphasis on Kosovo.

RAD Background Report/91
(Albania)
2 June 1975

KOSOVO: AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT IN YUGOSLAV-ALBANIAN RAPPROCHEMENT

By Louis Zaaga

Summary: Yugoslavia and Albania are currently pursuing a policy
of rapprochement, A new feature is the emergence of Kosovo as
a key factor in relations between them. Tito's recent visit to
the province and a number of events connected with important
anniversaries both there and in Yugoslavia as a whole have
provided opportunities for declarations of good will and of
determination that the improvement in relations shall continue.

* * *

It has been clear for some time that Yugoslavia is anxious to "normalize"
its relations with Albania, and a crucial role in this process appears to have
been assigned to Kosovo, a virtually autonomous province that is formally part
of the Republic of Serbia and has a predominantly Albanian population.
The selection of Kosovo for this role is not without its irony. In the
past the province has been a major source of friction between Belgrade and
Tirana, and only in comparatively recent years has the neglect that made it
one of the least developed regions of Europe been replaced by concern for its
economic development and political status. These changes, coupled with
apprehensiveness felt in both Yugoslavia and Albania over possible Soviet moves in
the Balkans, have made the province an obvious choice as a catalyst for the
dissolution of past mistrust and the encouragement of rapprochement.

Tito's Visit: The Growing Importance of Kosovo

During the first week of April 1975, President Tito paid a two-day visit
to Kosovo, his fourth to date and his second in the past four years. This fact
alone is clear evidence of the Yugoslav central authorities' concern over the
province's knotty internal problems, such as an obstinately low economic growth
rate, and of their recognition of its growing political stature.

Shortly before going to Kosovo, Tito visited the Republic of Macedonia and
took the occasion to criticize Bulgaria's attempts to belittle Yugoslavia's
contribution to victory in World War II. His tone contrasted markedly with the
friendliness he displayed toward Albania during his stay in Kosovo and the
difference is a clear indication that perceptions of Soviet intentions in the

[page 2]

Balkans have tended to throw Yugoslavia and Albania together, while relations
between Belgrade and Sofia continue to be cool.

Tito's main speech in Kosovo was delivered at a gathering of the
province's activists [1] and he prefaced his comments on Yugoslav-Albanian
relations with a warning about Kosovo's vulnerability to attack by both internal
and external enemies; an unstable Kosovo could seriously prejudice the
internal cohesion of Yugoslavia, he said:

Yugoslavia is faced by enemies whose common goal is to destroy
the country and its people. Among them are people who have
chosen Kosovo as a focal point for their attempts to undermine
the whole country. I wish to add my voice to those who declare
that the problems of Kosovo are not confined to the province
and the Republic of Serbia but concern the entire country.

This sounded like an oblique reminder to the rest of Yugoslavia, and in
particular to the richer northern republics, that Kosovo's difficulties must
be taken more seriously, since they are a potential threat to the whole
country. It has become apparent in recent years that quite a number of people
have no wish to become involved in what they consider to be Kosovo's
insoluble problems -- in particular, they do not want to provide the investment
resources the province so badly needs. Tito's comments were probably intended
as a broad hint to such persons.

Certainly, his words evoked an immediate response: the Belgrade
parliament debated Kosovo's problems soon after the president's return, and the tone
of the discussion was more urgent than is customary when the province's affairs
are under review. One deputy said that the measures so far proposed would
"fail to make up for lost time"; another noted that Kosovo's per capita income
is only about 30 per cent of the national average; and a third complained that
in the past there had been much talk of "special" and "speedier" action but
that little had happened. Finally, a deputy from Slovenia said that his
republic intended to translate words into deeds -- a delegation from Slovenia
would visit Kosovo in the near future to discuss "concrete issues." [2]
Obviously, time is working against the province, and, although some cynics
believe that the wealthy northern republics are not averse to seeing Kosovo's
poverty act as a drain on the resources of the powerful Republic of Serbia, it
seem unlikely that the deputies were merely attempting to stall off action by
their statements of concern.

To return to Tito's speech: the Yugoslav leader devoted a large part of
what he said to relations between Belgrade and Tirana, and warned that Kosovo's
role as a bridge-builder cannot be taken for granted. While welcoming what had
been done, he said that "Yugoslavia's enemies are stubbornly drawing all sorts
of conclusions about Kosovo and our relations with Albania." Apart from any
enemies outside the country, Tito may have had in mind here certain elements
in Belgrade and in Serbia who possible view with skepticism and apprehension
the contacts between Pristina and Tirana. The improvement in Yugoslav-Albanian
relations, he said, was due to a common desire to maintain national independence,

-----------------------------

(1) Rilindja a daily published in Pristina, the capital of the province,
5 April 1975.

(2) Ibid., 16, 25, and 26 April 1975.

[page 3]

but he rebuked Tirana mildly for its failure to stop even "those few attacks"
that have been made on Yugoslavia in recent times.

In general, however, his tone was conciliatory: "let us not be too
sensitive," he said, and went on to urge the Kosovo leadership to make a "further
contribution" toward the improvement of relations with Albania. Tito stressed
that "what unites the two countries is more important than what divides them"
-- a significant comment at a time when both are showing signs of uneasiness
about the threat (real or imagined) from the northeast.

Tito ended by stating that the improvement of Yugoslav-Albanian relations
must be considered a key factor in the peace of the Balkans:

If the two countries were to start quarreling with each other,
many others would try to get into the act. But our common
interests are so great (and I am sure the Albanian leaders
realize this) that I believe the relationship will develop to
our mutual benefit.

By extending the olive branch in this way, Tito was reciprocating a
gesture made in 1974, when Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu made self-interested but
obviously sincere overtures to Belgrade and expressed their wish for "full
solidarity" in the event of external aggression. [3] The Yugoslav president
underlined his good will by devoting part of his brief sojourn to a visit to
a war memorial in honor of Yugoslavs and Albanians who lost their lives during
World War II. Such a gesture will not be overlooked by the Albanian leadership.

Tito's personal concern for Kosovo's welfare and status, to which his
visits and regular contacts with the province's leaders in Belgrade bear
witness, has probably played a decisive role in its rise to autonomy. The local
leaders in Pristina have made it abundantly clear that in their view the
majority of the citizens acknowledge the Yugoslav president's personal involvement
and appreciate his backing. For example, Rilindja [4] recently carried an
interview with the chairman of the Kosovo Provincial Presidium, Xhevat Nimani,
whose title summed up its contents: "Everything Accomplished in Kosovo Has
Been Achieved by Tito's New Yugoslavia"; Bahri Oruci, the head of the Kosovo
trade unions, declared that "all our victories are linked with the name of
Tito" [5]; and the president of the Provincial Assembly, Iliaz Kurtesi,
??aimed that "all the progress made in the material and social development of
Kosovo is the work of Comrade Tito and the League of Communist of Yugoslavia."[6]
Such an attitude goes a long way to explain Tito's reliance on the predominantly
Albanian leadership of Pristina, with a young intellectual named Mahmut Bakalli
at its head, and his willingness to let them run the complex affairs of the
province fairly independently -- provided, of course, that Belgrade's
requirements are met.

-----------------------------

(3) See Louis Zanga, "The Albanian Leadership at the Crossroads?" Research
Report No. 2132, Radio Free Europe Research, 6 November 1974.

(4) 8 May 1975.

(5) Rilindja, 19 April 1975.

(6) Ibid., 20 April 1975.

[page 4]

Bakall's Speech

While introducing Tito, Bakalli took the occasion to deliver a lengthy
report on the general situation in Kosovo, including an evaluation of its
relations with Albania. [7] Rarely has a Kosovar official spoken so openly about
this question, and it was clear from what he said that Yugoslav-Albanian
affairs were to take a high place on the agenda for Tito's visit. Bakalli affirmed
that the role and responsibility assigned to the province by the new
Constitution enabled it to play a more active part in Yugoslavia's foreign affairs,
especially in seeking friendly contacts with other countries. This
co-operation is likely to grow, he said, and a large number of specialists are being
trained for the work. He told Tito:

Starting from our known principles and positions, and encouraged
by your personal understanding of our interest in and special
efforts to co-operate with foreign countries, we can claim that
in recent years there has been a normalization of relations
between Yugoslavia and Albania, brought about by the continued
successful development of contacts between them. The process
has been primarily motivated by each country's long-term
interests and desire to defend its independence.

Lake the Yugoslav president himself, Bakalli used the "independence"
argument to justify a political accommodation with Tirana, arid his moderation of
tone here contrasted sharply with his bluntness in dealing with the province's
internal problems: "We may face major sociopolitical clashes now or in the
future because of the failure to develop Kosovo more rapidly."

In dealing with Pristina's direct contacts with Tirana, Bakalli said that
this policy was necessitated by the special position of the province vis-a-vis
Albania -- notably in the field of cultural and scientific co-operation. These
contacts had enabled Kosovo to help familiarize Albania with "the successes of
socialist construction" in Yugoslavia, and to "create and build up trust"
between the two countries. He then took the unusual step of divulging certain
"irregularities" that had marred the early stages of Kosovar-Albanian
collaboration. He may have done this in order to mollify those Yugoslavs (mainly
Serbs) who look askance at what is going on in Kosovo. He admitted that there
had been some "confusion, disorganization, and haste" in the early days, which
had been brought under control by the party. In the future, he said, the party
will be on its guard against "potentially subversive ideological, political,
nationalist, and other similar tendencies" in the field of relations with
Albania. Presumably the early stages of rapprochement induced a certain
euphoria, to the chagrin of the non-Albanian ethnic element in Kosovo, and
Bakalli was apparently claiming success for the local leadership in damping
down this reaction and implying that it therefore deserves Belgrade's
continued trust and support.

Looking to the future, Bakalli said that, while cultural co-operation
with Albania will continue, the main emphasis will be on economic
collaboration. Surprisingly enough, Albania's trade with Kosovo has failed to reflect
the upward trend experienced in its commerce with Yugoslavia as a whole, an
anomaly partly explicable by the province's low level of industrialization.
This situation should change for the better in the near future, and Bakalli

-----------------------------

(7) Ibid., 4 April 1975.

[page 5]

emphasized that Kosovo's collaboration with Albania must develop in parallel
with that of the rest of Yugoslavia; it follows, he said, that the various
republics must become more deeply involved if Albanian-Kosovar co-operation
is to flourish. What he meant, plainly, was that only an economically
thriving Kosovo can achieve such co-operation, and that the republics must
contribute to the province's economic growth.

The local leaders' emphasis on Tito's personal contribution to Kosovo's
emergence from its former lowly state has already been noted They are equally
eager to stress his involvement in the Albanian-Kosovar relationship. Kurtesi,
for instance, during a meeting with the editors of Rilindja, [8] spoke of the
"extraordinary and many-sided significance" of the president's visit to Kosovo.
He added that "the climate today is such that steps will be taken soon to
improve relations still further,"

Dolanc Recognizes Albania's Wartime Role

Stane Dolanc, LGY CC Presidium member and secretary of the Executive
Committee, made some frinedly references to Albania's contribution to the defeat
of Nazi Germany in a recent interview with the Yugoslav press, [9] What he
said has no direct connection with Albanian-Kosovar relations, but is
important within the general context of Yugoslav-Albanian rapprochement. He stated
that the Albanian people, "led by its communist party," had resisted the
Italian invasion from its inception (i.e., from 7 April 1939), and went on:

Between 1941 and 1945, the Albanian people joined en masse in
the armed struggle for national liberation. The partisan units
and battalions formed in 1942 merged into the Albanian National
Liberation Army, which in November 1944 numbered 70,000 men and
women. This army fought a series of battles that resulted in
heavy human and material losses; in the course of them, 40,000
Albanians fell or were wounded.

Dolanc also mentioned, that Albanians fought with the Yugoslav National
Liberation Army.

Yugoslavia thus became the only East European country to mention, apropos
the 30th anniversary of V-E day, Albania's contribution to victory, and this
at a time when Belgrade was showing considerable annoyance at Soviet attempts
to belittle the Yugoslavs' own wartime efforts. The Albanians had already
defended their contribution in typically outspoken style; an editorial in
Zeri i Popullit [10] rejected attempts by "revisionist generals" to
"absolutize" the Soviet role in the defeat of the Nazis, and said that there were
those in the Balkan Peninsula "who did not wait until the fall of 1944 to
rise against fascism." The Soviet Army was well aware that "in the mountains
of Albania, Yugoslavia, and Greece . . . thousands upon thousands of people
were giving their lives to make it easier for them [the Soviet Army] to
repulse the Nazi attack." Yugoslav and Albanian reactions to the anniversary,
and in particular to its treatment by the USSR, highlight the similarity of
their concern over current Soviet-inspired pressures in the Balkans.

-----------------------------

(8) Ibid., 24 April 1975.

(9) Ibid., 4 May 1975.

(10) 20 April 1975.

[page 6]

Dolanc's gesture is of some significance for the future of relations
between Belgrade, Pristina, and Tirana. He was the second highest official to
accompany Tito on his visit to Kosovo in April, which suggests that he takes
a personal interest in the province's affairs, including its direct links with
Albania, and that, if the speculations that he is to be Tito's heir prove
well-founded, he will preserve the continuity of current policy in this sphere in
the post-Tito era.

Yugoslav-Albanian Solidarity in Face of External Threats

Much has been written about the long and bitter feud between Belgrade and
Tirana, but little has been said about the ties that have bound them together
when confronted with a common threat -- notably during the 1939-1945 war.
Recently, however, the two countries have soft-pedaled their differences and
made much of what they have in common. Is this merely a reaction to the 30th
anniversary celebrations, with their evocation of "battles long ago," or is it
a response to a present threat which both Yugoslavia and Albania believe to be
real and menacing? The latter seems the more likely hypothesis and, since the
polemics during the anniversary commemoration were directed mainly against
Moscow -- bluntly (as usual) by Tirana and rather more subtly by Belgrade --
it is clear that any potential challenge to their independence is believed by
both countries to emanate from the Soviet Union. Hence the revival of memories
of their joint response to the threat posed by one superpower 30 years ago at
a time when they believe themselves endangered by another; and hence too the
new, unexpected significance of Kosovo in the changing pattern of Balkan policy.
In recent months the anniversary of the end of the war in Europe has
provided a suitable occasion for tributes to the solidarity between the two
countries in face of external danger. Earlier this year the Tirana party daily
carried an article on Albania's contribution to the fighting inside Yugoslavia
in the closing stages of the war; it was entitled "A Fine Gesture of
Proletarian Internationalism," [11] and stated that 15,000 Albanians had joined
their "brethren" in Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia in a number of battles
against the retreating enemy. Certainly, the Albanian media have in the past
made much of this contribution to the common cause, but the present publicity
is directed at a different target -- it emphasizes Albania's earlier solidarity
with Yugoslavia rather than the national glory of its own past.

Yugoslavia has acknowledged its neighbor's help in the last days of the
war, and Tito himself spoke of it during a recent television interview:

I would also like to recall the part played by a number of units
of the Albanian National Liberation Army in the struggle on our
own territory. By mutual agreement they joined our forces in
opposing the Germans, the Ballists, and the Chetniks in Western
Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and on toward Bosnia. After the
battles -- again in accordance with previous agreements -- they
returned to Albania. [12]

Expressions of solidarity have been backed up by deeds, symbolic but
important. In March of this year agreement was reached on the return of the remains

-----------------------------

(11) Zeri i Popullit, 15 February 1975.

(12) Rilindja, 9 May 1975.

[page 7]

of Albanians who fell in these battles to their native land; the transfer is
to be completed by October 31. During the signing of the protocol in Belgrade,
the Yugoslav delegate, Nevenka Novakovic, drew attention to its significance;
the agreement, she said, coincided with the 30th anniversary of the victory
over fascism, "in which the peoples of Yugoslavia and Albania played an
important role." [13]

Commemoration of Popovic1s Death

Another anniversary with overtones of Yugoslav-Albanian solidarity was
celebrated during March in Kosovo -- the 30th anniversary of the death of
Miladin Popovic, [14] secretary of the Kosovo-Metohija provincial committee
of what was then the Yugoslav Communist Party.

Popovic, born in Kosovo but of Montenegrin stock, was fluent in the
Albanian language -- an important accomplishment for non-Albanian officials in
Kosovo -- and was acclaimed as a supporter of the rights of Albanian nationals
in the province. He was chosen personally by Tito to help found the Albanian
Communist Party and the subsequent Albanian National Liberation Movement. [15]
The YCP also sent Dusan Mugosa and Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo to help in this
work, but Popovic, unlike them, was and still is popular with the Albanians,
and is said to have developed a close friendship with Hoxha. The line that
Tirana draws between Popovic and these other two figures from the past was
clearly demonstrated in a recent article by Stefanaq Polio, a member of the
Albanian Academy of Sciences, which appeared in a journal intended for foreign
readers. [16] He said:

The importance and role of Albanian-Yugoslav collaboration in
the struggle against the common enemy, the fascist invader, is
well known, as is the view taken by Albanian historians of the
work of the representative sent by the Yugoslav Communist Party,
Miladin Popovic. But the memoirs of Vukmanovic-Tempo and
Mugosa dealing with events in Albania are riddled with the idea
-- as false as it is vain -- that every good and valuable
achievement, every important military or political success during the
War of National Liberation, was the result of their invervention.

It is not surprising to learn that neither Vukmanovic-Tempo nor Mugosa was
present at the Pristina meeting in honor of Pppovic's memory.

-----------------------------

(13) Ibid., 4 March 1975.

(14) His assassination remains shrouded in mystery. Bakalli said during the
commemorative meeting that "the arm of the enemy and of
counterrevolution" had stretched forth and encompassed his death, but the Albanian
version is that he was killed in a plot "planned by the Yugoslav secret
service" (Historia e Partise se Punes te Shqiperise ["History of the
Albanian Workers' Party], Tirana: Nairn Frashreri Publishing House,
1968, p. 177).

(15) According to Bakalli, Tito dispatched his emissaries to Albania at the
request of the Comintern. Popovic was arrested in Albania in July 1941,
but was freed by the Albanian Communists soon afterward.

(16) Albania Today No. l/75.

[page 8]

Bakalli's long speech on that occasion read like a revised version of the
history of Yugoslav-Albanian collaboration during a critical phase of the two
countries' histories, [17] and the slant he gave his remarks may have been
designed to foster good relations between Kosovo and Albania. His most
striking point, however, was the suggestion that the proper lesson to draw from
Popovic's "internationalist contribution" of 30 years ago is that wartine
cooperation set an example for the present day. Popovic, he said, had devoted
most of his life to building confidence and respect "on an internationalist
basis" between the peoples and the Communists of the two nations. Firm
foundations for collaboration were laid during the War of National Liberation, during
the two countries' socialist revolutions, and in the struggle against the
common enemy, and Popovic had made an "extraordinarily powerful contribution" to
the joint struggle. Bakalli went on:

Long-term possibilities of fuller co-operation undoubtedly exist
between the two countries, which will deepen the trust and
good-neighborly relations that obtain between them. Our position is
the result of the principles on which our foreign policy is based
-- principles of nonalignment, resistance to imperialism and
hegemony, a refusal to yield to bloc policies, and a readiness
to engage in co-operation with nonaligned, independent, and
developing countries. The foundation and guiding star of
good-neighborly collaboration between Yugoslavia and Albania must be those
positive and shining moments in the past which help to remove
everything that creates division and lack of confidence. The
shared struggle against a common enemy and our shared losses are
the charter for further and deeper co-operation. The
revolutionary personality and work of Miladin Popovic are the best
symbol of good-neighborly collaboration, of trust and unity between
the nationalities of Yugoslavia and the peoples of Albania.

Conclusion

Recent events in Yugoslavia and its protestations of solidarity with
Albania provide ample evidence of the seriousness of Belgrade's intention to
pursue a pro-Albanian policy, and Kosovo has obviously been assigned an
important role in its implementation. The Albanians have been characteristically
more cautious in their approach to the improvement of relations with their
neighbor, but their leaders have made it clear on several occasions that
today, more than at any time since the end of the war, it is imperative for the
two countries to march in step. As already noted, this was demonstrated by
Hoxha�s self-interested but sincere overtures in his October 1974 speech,
which was probably the catalyst of the gestures of friendship reviewed in
this paper.

The new feature of the situation is the emergence of Kosovo as a common
denominator of relations between the two countries, with a role to play out
of proportion to the province1s size. This is a new and important development
in the Balkans, and it has probably been precipitated largely by a perception
of Soviet-inspired pressures on a traditionally restless part of the European
continent.

- end -

-----------------------------

(17) Rilind.ja, 14 March 1975.

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