[kcc-news] KosovaTaskForce: The Real Victors in Kosova

[Kosova Task Force, USA]

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Kosova Task Force, USA
6.15.1999



Eric Margolis is an international syndicated columnist & broadcaster.  This
analysis is being recirculated here with the permission of the author.


THE REAL VICTORS IN KOSOVO

Geneva - Everyone involved in the strange Kosovo conflict is claiming victory -
except for its chief victims, the Albanians.

Serbia's ruler, Slobodan Milosevic, has saved his own skin, evaded prosecution
for war crimes, and managed, at least for now, to keep Kosovo, which was 93%
Albanian until this year's ethnic terror, under Serb sovereignty. NATO's
promises to the Kosovars of a future vote on independence have been forgotten in
the rush to end the war.

The muddled accord almost certainly assures continued violence in Kosovo and a
legion of future troubles for the Balkans. Many of the one million Albanian
refugees are afraid to return to Kosovo, whose borders will remain under Serb
military and police control, thus cementing Milosevic's terrorism. Albanians
know once NATO loses interest in Kosovo, the Serbs will be back.

Milosevic, who keeps power by creating trouble, will now turn his
perpetual-motion crisis machine on neighboring Montenegro, unstable Macedonia,
Bosnia, and Serbia's forgotten Muslim region of Sanjak. He will emerge from the
war a hero and inspiration to the growing force of racism among Balkan Slavs and
the Greeks.

The `peace' deal is being hailed as a triumph of sensible internationalism by
the curious, ad hoc alliance of groups that opposed the war: leftists,
right-wing isolationists, anti-Americans, and Muslim-haters. Far from a triumph,
it is a craven surrender to expediency by NATO's weak-willed leaders. At the
same time, the western democracies have not only invited Russia and China to
meddle in the Balkans, they are relying on them as `partners in peace.'

Misery loves company; so do repressive regimes. It was no coincidence
semi-communist Russia, and fully communist China, sprang to the defense of
Serbia, Europe's last communist state. Nor that Moscow and Beijing reacted
furiously to NATO's half-hearted intervention in Kosovo to protect human rights.
Both are major violators of human rights and persecutors of restive minorities.

Five years ago, the 1.2 million Muslim Chechens rose up against 250 years of
savage Russian oppression. During World War II, 80% of Chechens were massacred,
starved, or deported en masse in railroad cars to concentration camps by Stalin.
To crush Chechen resistance, in 1994 Russian carpet bombing and heavy artillery
killed 50,000 to 100,000 Chechen civilians. Torture and executions were
widespread. Virtually all Chechen cities, towns, and villages were leveled in a
horrifying prelude to Kosovo.

Russian parliamentarians recently accused President Boris Yeltsin of major war
crimes in Chechnya. Yet this same leader, and the same army that committed these
atrocities, have been invited by NATO to join the Kosovo peacekeeping force. The
Russian contingent, which was said to eventually number 10,000 troops, will be
the second largest military force after the British. Far from keeping peace, the
Russians will promote the interests of the outlaw Serb regime and, of course,
Moscow's own centuries-old strategic ambitions in the Balkans, as Russia's
seizure of Pristina airport showed this weekend.

China has been enlisted in the `peace process' because its support in the UN
Security Council is essential for diplomatic cover. The accidental bombing of
China's embassy in Belgrade presented Beijing with a golden opportunity, which
the Chinese immediately seized, to put America on the psychological defensive.
China's contrived rage over this trivial incident helped distract attention from
China's theft of US nuclear secrets, and deflected world condemnation over the
anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre. Russia and China now hold veto power over
the UN operation in Kosovo.

More important, China is currently waging an intensifying campaign of repression
against the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people, the majority in China's sensitive
western province, Sinkiang - formerly Eastern Turkistan. The Uighurs have
rebelled against heavy-handed Chinese rule, and Bejing's campaign to swamp the
region with Han Chinese settlers, repeating the process of Chinese ethnic
inundation in Inner Mongolia and Tibet.

China recently executed a score of Uighurs, arrested hundreds of suspected
nationalists, and imposed martial law in many regions of Sinkiang. While Chinese
repression in Tibet has provoked worldwide protest, its equally brutal policies
in Sinkiang remain almost unknown. Not surprisingly, NATO intervention to save
the Kosovars from Serb ethnic terror set off alarm bells in Beijing, which fears
foreign action over its own violations of human and national rights.

No wonder, then, that Russia and China, sought to be involved in Kosovo. Under
the guise of peacekeeping, Moscow and Beijing will try to ensure Kosovo never
gains independence from Serb rule, a precedent that would embolden and encourage
their own long-oppressed Muslim colonial subjects.

War and peace often make strange bedfellows. But NATO did not need to invite
such violators of rights to join its councils over Kosovo. NATO troops massed on
Serbia's borders before the bombing campaign would have ended this war before it
began, saving Serbia and Kosovo from devastation, and the need to beg Russia and
China for help. By failing to deploy sufficient military force - and being seen
as ready to use it - NATO has created a quagmire it will long regret. Seeking
the aid of big oppressors to curb a small oppressor makes a mockery of NATO's
humanitarian mission.

Russia, and to a lesser degree, China are the big winners of this botched war,
and at no cost to themselves. NATO and Serbia have achieved merely Pyrrhic
victories. They have made a desert, and call it peace. The Kosovar Albanians
have lost everything.

Copyright: Eric Margolis, 1999



======================================
Kosova Task Force, USA 
730 W. Lake St., Suite 156
Chicago, IL 60661, USA
Phone: 312-829-0087  Fax: 312-829-0089 
Email: Kosova at justiceforall.org 
Internet: http://www.justiceforall.org
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