G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
"Threatening the Foundations of a World Order" - The Independence of Kosovo
By Gary Leupp
Created Feb 20 2008 - 9:11am
Russia has repeatedly made it very clear that it will not recognize nor
accept an independent Kosovo but rather uphold Serbia's historic claim to
the province.
Recall how World War I broke out after a Serbian nationalist assassinated
the Austro-Hungarian archduke in 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia. When the
Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, Russia came to the defense
of its ally. The alliance system kicked in; Germany and the Ottoman Empire
joined the Austro-Hungarian, while France and Britain joined Russia. That
system is long gone, but the relationship between Russia and Serbia, deeply
rooted in ethnic and religious ties, should not be taken lightly.
Recall how Bill Clinton's big war was "Operation Allied Force," conducted by
a somewhat reluctant NATO at U.S. insistence in 1999. Building upon NATO's
"Operation Deliberate Force" targeting Serbian fighters in Bosnia four years
earlier, it resulted in the aerial bombing of a European capital (Belgrade)
for the first time since 1945. Human Rights Watch concluded in 2000 that
between 488 and 527 Yugoslav civilians were killed as a result of the
bombing, which forced Belgrade to obey Washington and withdraw its troops
from the heart of the Serbian homeland.
That heart, of course, is Kosovo. Since the seventh century, when the Serbs
pressing eastward from Dalmatia established themselves in the old Roman
province of Upper Moesia, Kosovo has been the spiritual core of the Serbian
nation. The Serbs have shared it with others, notably Albanians, and the
Serbian gene-pool is itself complex and changing over time. But Serbian
identity was shaped by the Battle of Kosovo Polje (The Field of Blackbirds)
against the Ottoman Turks in 1389, in which both Serbian King Lazar and the
Ottoman sultan Murad were killed. Modern historians differ about whether
this was a draw or heroic defeat of the Serbs; nationalist mythology depicts
it as the latter.
During over four centuries of Muslim Turkish rule the Serbs preserved their
Orthodox religious identity, maintaining the Gracanica Monastery and at
least half a dozen other religious centers which have survived from the
fourteenth century to the present day---threatened though they have been in
recent years by desecration, vandalization and destruction.
On Sept. 13, 1999, the Church of Saints Cosma and Damian, built in 1327, was
obliterated by a bomb blast. The initials of the Kosovo Liberation Army were
painted at the site. By that time some 20 Serbian religious sites had been
blown up, including the Dormition of Mother of God parish church, built in
1315. Another 40 others had been attacked or looted. All of this took place
after Serbia's capitulation to Washington in June 1999, and the arrival of
the NATO-led "peacekeeping force" (Kosovo Force; KFOR) presiding over NATO's
new protectorate. KFOR, currently 16,000 strong in a province of two
million, has provided some protection for Serbian holy sites; in June 1999
French troops prevented the rape and murder of nuns and a priest at Devic
Monastery after the fifteenth century structure had been desecrated and
looted by KLA militants. But NATO basically empowered and legitimated forces
that proceeded to destroy or desecrate over 70 churches or monasteries by
October 1999 (21 in the U.S. zone of responsibility). Meanwhile more than
200,000 Serbs fled the province. During the summer of 1999, 40,000 Serbs
fled Pristina.
The destruction continued; 35 sites were attacked in 2004. Last March Decani
Monastery (founded in 1327) came under mortar attack. Such incidents are
seen by Serbs as not only as assaults on their culture and history but
efforts to erase that history.
Some Albanians claim that they were the original inhabitants of Kosovo, a
land four-fifths the size of Connecticut. They claim descent from the
ancient Illyrians who inhabited the area from about the fourteenth century
BCE. It appears as likely they migrated from what is now Albania during the
Ottoman period, coming to outnumber the Serbs. One hundred years ago,
however, migration into the region brought the Serb population up to the
level of the ethnic Albanian: 50/50. Thereafter the greater Albanian
birthrate reduced the Serb population to a mere 10% of the total. Following
the ethnic cleansing of the last decade, the figure's down to maybe 4%.
Kosovo was the poorest region in Tito's Yugoslavia, but it enjoyed the
status of an autonomous province and was treated as a de facto republic in
accordance with Tito's philosophy that "Weak Serbia equals strong
Yugoslavia." Following Tito's death in 1980, there were large demonstrations
demanding full republic status. When ethnic Serbs were targeted, the
little-known politician Slobodan Milosevic postured as defender of Kosovo's
Serbs. As president of Serbia, he (foolishly) withdrew Kosovo's autonomy in
1989, provoking Albanian protests and the formation of the KLA in 1995. The
KLA targeted police, army and civil officials, taking control of about
one-quarter of the province.
Belgrade hesitated for several years before taking firm action against the
KLA. After the rebels failed to seize the town of Orahovac in the summer of
1998, it launched an offensive, regaining control of almost all the
province. At this point Washington became actively involved. President
Clinton had sent a special envoy, Robert Gelbard, to the region in February
1998. At that time he stated that the KLA was, "without any questions, a
terrorist group" in Washington's view. Indeed the State Department had
concluded it was a heroin-financed terrorist group with some ties to
al-Qaeda (Washington Times, May 4, 1999). A few months later, however,
Gelbard was meeting with KLA leaders; the organization was soon removed from
Washington's terror list. Later that year another U.S. special envoy to
Kosovo, Richard Holbrooke, was photographed with KLA leaders, further
encouraging their violent secessionist movement.
Yugoslavia ("land of the southern Slavs) had been a peaceful, nonaligned
nation with cordial relations with both the Soviet bloc and the West for
decades. But from 1991 the federation began to fall apart. First Slovenia
declared independence. The U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, was unhappy
with the move thinking (correctly) that it would lead to regional
destabilization. But reunited, powerful Germany encouraged the breakup.
Croatia and Macedonia followed suite, then Bosnia-Herzegovina descended into
civil war. Washington recognized Bosnian independence in 1994. Accusing
Serbian forces of atrocities, NATO bombed Bosnia in August and September
1995, paving the way for the Dayton Agreement in November and the deployment
of NATO forces in Bosnia. Now Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, accustomed to making demands and being obeyed, demanded
that Milosevic cease his offensive against the KLA. He did.
Following a ceasefire in October 1998, by agreement with Milosevic, peace
monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) arrived in Kosovo. But the ceasefire broke down with a few months.
Washington then demanded that Milosevic withdraw his troops from Kosovo.
That is to say, it demanded that a sovereign state remove its troops from
one of its provinces where a group the U.S. had earlier termed "terrorist"
was waging a war for secession.
Washington summoned the "Contact Group" (including the UK, France, Germany,
Italy and Russia) as well as Belgrade and Albanian secessionist
representatives to Rambouillet, France in February and March 1999. The
"Rambouillet Accords" were signed by all parties---except forYugoslavia and
Russia. The agreement specified that Kosovo would obtain autonomy but remain
part of Serbia. That was the one concession to Belgrade, and an initial
cause for the KLA representatives to balk. But the separatists were won
over, no doubt realizing that they would gain independence in time. (They
just declared that, with Washington's approval, February 17.)
The Accords dictated that Belgrade accept a NATO force with liberty to act
throughout the territory of Yugoslavia. It was a demand no sovereign state
could accept. A top French official accused the U.S. of behaving like a
hyper-puissance ("hyper-power"); NATO itself was divided and disturbed by
U.S. demands. (The Spaniards, Italians and Greeks in particular were
troubled about the NATO bombing of Belgrade.) Washington was calling for an
organization founded to defend western Europe from Soviet attack to
intervene in a friendly, non-threatening country, to force it to accept
further dismemberment. From March 24 to June 10 NATO air forces, including
the German Luftwaffe deployed for the first time since 1945, bombed
Yugoslavia.
I didn't think at the time that Clinton's actions resulted from some
geo-strategic designs on Kosovo. (There's not that much there, other than
lots of coal.) But had he done nothing, and the violence continued, he would
have been criticized for failing to use American power ("to prevent
genocide") and left the door open for other interested parties (Germany) to
take unilateral action. He had to rally NATO to send a message to the world
that the U.S. remained the leader and policeman of the western camp. Ongoing
chaos in the Balkans would have suggested that the U.S. was sloughing off
the responsibilities of power. Strong action would signal allies, as well as
the Russian Federation, that the U.S. facing an increasingly united and
competitive Europe could continue to deploy NATO in pursuit of its own aims.
(Similarly the use of NATO in Afghanistan after 9-11 has served to bind the
alliance around a U.S.-dictated agenda, while the public in member states
increasingly questions the value and logic of the mission.)
We associate the Bush administration and its neocons with the systematic
dissemination of disinformation designed to justify war. But the Clinton
administration used the same tactic as it prepared to bomb Yugoslavia. There
were horror stories about "ethnic cleansing," and Yugoslav government
forces' attacks on innocent Kosovar Albanians. Defense Secretary William
Cohen, echoed Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), and
former Sen. Bob Dole accused Belgrade of "genocide." "We've now seen about
100,000 military-aged men missing... They may have been murdered," warned
Cohen. "There are indications genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," declared
State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin.
But German reports told a different story. Four German court opinions from
October 1998 to March 1999; two Foreign Office intelligence reports in
January 1999; and one report from the Foreign Office to the Administrative
Court in Mainz in March 1999 all challenged such accusations. According to
the Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Munster [1] (March 11,
1999), "Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed to
regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia."
After the glorious victory of NATO over Yugoslavia, it was discovered that
as few as 2,108 people were actually killed in the province during 1998-9
before the bombardment began. Quite likely more Serbs have been killed by
Albanians than vice versa since 1998. The "genocide" charge (reminiscent of
the rhetoric of those urging U.S. intervention in Darfur) had been
exaggerated, if not contrived; the depiction of Milosevic as a "new Hitler"
(reminiscent of the hysterical characterization of Saddam Hussein) equally
overblown. Washington got what it wanted, almost. It destroyed the Yugoslav
state, hauled Milosevic to a kangaroo court at the Hague (where after
enhancing his reputation among Serbs by a spirited defense, he died of a
heart attack), and planted NATO in what had once been proudly nonaligned
European territory. But in the closing days of NATO's war on Yugoslavia in
June 1999 Russia dispatched troops based in Bosnia to Kosovo's capital of
Pristina, where they took control of the airport. It was a clear statement
that Russia would not concede total control of the former Yugoslavia to
NATO. It shocked Madeleine Albright, and disturbed Gen. Wesley Clark enough
to order an airborne assault on the Russians. But the British general
heading the NATO force at the time, Michael Jackson, told Clark: "Sir, I'm
not starting World War Three for you."
Thus the Russians were included in the post-bombing "peace-keeping" mission
in Kosovo and have since been regarded as the protectors of the remaining
Serbs in the Serbian province. Their opposition to Kosovo's independence
might be perceived as a slight irritation in Washington among those eager to
establish a new client-state and drag it into NATO. But this move comes on
the heels of U.S. meddling in Georgia, Belarus, and the Ukraine, the
relentless eastward expansion of NATO, and moves to locate missile defense
systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russian government is in
effect saying: "Look, you intervene at will in Latin America, forming and
toppling governments as you will, arguing it's necessary for your 'national
security.' We who have been invaded many times from the west have legitimate
reasons to support our friends in the Balkans, including the Serbs whom
you've maligned and mistreated disgracefully. Do you really think you can
just wrench away a province from a Slavic country friendly to us, through
brutal military force, and expect us to take it lying down?"
I have the feeling that Washington blew it here---and that there will be
some blowback. It is all very nice for a people comprising 90% of the
inhabitants of a land to form their own state after decades of aspiration
and (under Milosevic) undeniable national oppression. But look at this video
on youtube [2]: Watch the young Albanian try to rip down the cross from a
burning Serbian church in March 2004. Look at this one of the gutted
interior of the Manastir Devic monastery, built up in 1434 and torched in
March 2004. Or this, showing an ancient Serbian cemetery desecrated in April
2005 [3].
One can find equally ugly images of Serbian actions no doubt, and both
Kosovar-Albanian nationalism and Serbian nationalism retain the potential
for further destruction. But the leadership in Pristina hoisted into power
by U.S. action looks especially unsavory and apt to produce disaster.
The leadership of the newly declared nation of Kosovo is rooted in the KLA;
Hashim Tha
By Gary Leupp
Created Feb 20 2008 - 9:11am
Russia has repeatedly made it very clear that it will not recognize nor
accept an independent Kosovo but rather uphold Serbia's historic claim to
the province.
Recall how World War I broke out after a Serbian nationalist assassinated
the Austro-Hungarian archduke in 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia. When the
Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, Russia came to the defense
of its ally. The alliance system kicked in; Germany and the Ottoman Empire
joined the Austro-Hungarian, while France and Britain joined Russia. That
system is long gone, but the relationship between Russia and Serbia, deeply
rooted in ethnic and religious ties, should not be taken lightly.
Recall how Bill Clinton's big war was "Operation Allied Force," conducted by
a somewhat reluctant NATO at U.S. insistence in 1999. Building upon NATO's
"Operation Deliberate Force" targeting Serbian fighters in Bosnia four years
earlier, it resulted in the aerial bombing of a European capital (Belgrade)
for the first time since 1945. Human Rights Watch concluded in 2000 that
between 488 and 527 Yugoslav civilians were killed as a result of the
bombing, which forced Belgrade to obey Washington and withdraw its troops
from the heart of the Serbian homeland.
That heart, of course, is Kosovo. Since the seventh century, when the Serbs
pressing eastward from Dalmatia established themselves in the old Roman
province of Upper Moesia, Kosovo has been the spiritual core of the Serbian
nation. The Serbs have shared it with others, notably Albanians, and the
Serbian gene-pool is itself complex and changing over time. But Serbian
identity was shaped by the Battle of Kosovo Polje (The Field of Blackbirds)
against the Ottoman Turks in 1389, in which both Serbian King Lazar and the
Ottoman sultan Murad were killed. Modern historians differ about whether
this was a draw or heroic defeat of the Serbs; nationalist mythology depicts
it as the latter.
During over four centuries of Muslim Turkish rule the Serbs preserved their
Orthodox religious identity, maintaining the Gracanica Monastery and at
least half a dozen other religious centers which have survived from the
fourteenth century to the present day---threatened though they have been in
recent years by desecration, vandalization and destruction.
On Sept. 13, 1999, the Church of Saints Cosma and Damian, built in 1327, was
obliterated by a bomb blast. The initials of the Kosovo Liberation Army were
painted at the site. By that time some 20 Serbian religious sites had been
blown up, including the Dormition of Mother of God parish church, built in
1315. Another 40 others had been attacked or looted. All of this took place
after Serbia's capitulation to Washington in June 1999, and the arrival of
the NATO-led "peacekeeping force" (Kosovo Force; KFOR) presiding over NATO's
new protectorate. KFOR, currently 16,000 strong in a province of two
million, has provided some protection for Serbian holy sites; in June 1999
French troops prevented the rape and murder of nuns and a priest at Devic
Monastery after the fifteenth century structure had been desecrated and
looted by KLA militants. But NATO basically empowered and legitimated forces
that proceeded to destroy or desecrate over 70 churches or monasteries by
October 1999 (21 in the U.S. zone of responsibility). Meanwhile more than
200,000 Serbs fled the province. During the summer of 1999, 40,000 Serbs
fled Pristina.
The destruction continued; 35 sites were attacked in 2004. Last March Decani
Monastery (founded in 1327) came under mortar attack. Such incidents are
seen by Serbs as not only as assaults on their culture and history but
efforts to erase that history.
Some Albanians claim that they were the original inhabitants of Kosovo, a
land four-fifths the size of Connecticut. They claim descent from the
ancient Illyrians who inhabited the area from about the fourteenth century
BCE. It appears as likely they migrated from what is now Albania during the
Ottoman period, coming to outnumber the Serbs. One hundred years ago,
however, migration into the region brought the Serb population up to the
level of the ethnic Albanian: 50/50. Thereafter the greater Albanian
birthrate reduced the Serb population to a mere 10% of the total. Following
the ethnic cleansing of the last decade, the figure's down to maybe 4%.
Kosovo was the poorest region in Tito's Yugoslavia, but it enjoyed the
status of an autonomous province and was treated as a de facto republic in
accordance with Tito's philosophy that "Weak Serbia equals strong
Yugoslavia." Following Tito's death in 1980, there were large demonstrations
demanding full republic status. When ethnic Serbs were targeted, the
little-known politician Slobodan Milosevic postured as defender of Kosovo's
Serbs. As president of Serbia, he (foolishly) withdrew Kosovo's autonomy in
1989, provoking Albanian protests and the formation of the KLA in 1995. The
KLA targeted police, army and civil officials, taking control of about
one-quarter of the province.
Belgrade hesitated for several years before taking firm action against the
KLA. After the rebels failed to seize the town of Orahovac in the summer of
1998, it launched an offensive, regaining control of almost all the
province. At this point Washington became actively involved. President
Clinton had sent a special envoy, Robert Gelbard, to the region in February
1998. At that time he stated that the KLA was, "without any questions, a
terrorist group" in Washington's view. Indeed the State Department had
concluded it was a heroin-financed terrorist group with some ties to
al-Qaeda (Washington Times, May 4, 1999). A few months later, however,
Gelbard was meeting with KLA leaders; the organization was soon removed from
Washington's terror list. Later that year another U.S. special envoy to
Kosovo, Richard Holbrooke, was photographed with KLA leaders, further
encouraging their violent secessionist movement.
Yugoslavia ("land of the southern Slavs) had been a peaceful, nonaligned
nation with cordial relations with both the Soviet bloc and the West for
decades. But from 1991 the federation began to fall apart. First Slovenia
declared independence. The U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, was unhappy
with the move thinking (correctly) that it would lead to regional
destabilization. But reunited, powerful Germany encouraged the breakup.
Croatia and Macedonia followed suite, then Bosnia-Herzegovina descended into
civil war. Washington recognized Bosnian independence in 1994. Accusing
Serbian forces of atrocities, NATO bombed Bosnia in August and September
1995, paving the way for the Dayton Agreement in November and the deployment
of NATO forces in Bosnia. Now Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, accustomed to making demands and being obeyed, demanded
that Milosevic cease his offensive against the KLA. He did.
Following a ceasefire in October 1998, by agreement with Milosevic, peace
monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) arrived in Kosovo. But the ceasefire broke down with a few months.
Washington then demanded that Milosevic withdraw his troops from Kosovo.
That is to say, it demanded that a sovereign state remove its troops from
one of its provinces where a group the U.S. had earlier termed "terrorist"
was waging a war for secession.
Washington summoned the "Contact Group" (including the UK, France, Germany,
Italy and Russia) as well as Belgrade and Albanian secessionist
representatives to Rambouillet, France in February and March 1999. The
"Rambouillet Accords" were signed by all parties---except forYugoslavia and
Russia. The agreement specified that Kosovo would obtain autonomy but remain
part of Serbia. That was the one concession to Belgrade, and an initial
cause for the KLA representatives to balk. But the separatists were won
over, no doubt realizing that they would gain independence in time. (They
just declared that, with Washington's approval, February 17.)
The Accords dictated that Belgrade accept a NATO force with liberty to act
throughout the territory of Yugoslavia. It was a demand no sovereign state
could accept. A top French official accused the U.S. of behaving like a
hyper-puissance ("hyper-power"); NATO itself was divided and disturbed by
U.S. demands. (The Spaniards, Italians and Greeks in particular were
troubled about the NATO bombing of Belgrade.) Washington was calling for an
organization founded to defend western Europe from Soviet attack to
intervene in a friendly, non-threatening country, to force it to accept
further dismemberment. From March 24 to June 10 NATO air forces, including
the German Luftwaffe deployed for the first time since 1945, bombed
Yugoslavia.
I didn't think at the time that Clinton's actions resulted from some
geo-strategic designs on Kosovo. (There's not that much there, other than
lots of coal.) But had he done nothing, and the violence continued, he would
have been criticized for failing to use American power ("to prevent
genocide") and left the door open for other interested parties (Germany) to
take unilateral action. He had to rally NATO to send a message to the world
that the U.S. remained the leader and policeman of the western camp. Ongoing
chaos in the Balkans would have suggested that the U.S. was sloughing off
the responsibilities of power. Strong action would signal allies, as well as
the Russian Federation, that the U.S. facing an increasingly united and
competitive Europe could continue to deploy NATO in pursuit of its own aims.
(Similarly the use of NATO in Afghanistan after 9-11 has served to bind the
alliance around a U.S.-dictated agenda, while the public in member states
increasingly questions the value and logic of the mission.)
We associate the Bush administration and its neocons with the systematic
dissemination of disinformation designed to justify war. But the Clinton
administration used the same tactic as it prepared to bomb Yugoslavia. There
were horror stories about "ethnic cleansing," and Yugoslav government
forces' attacks on innocent Kosovar Albanians. Defense Secretary William
Cohen, echoed Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), and
former Sen. Bob Dole accused Belgrade of "genocide." "We've now seen about
100,000 military-aged men missing... They may have been murdered," warned
Cohen. "There are indications genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," declared
State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin.
But German reports told a different story. Four German court opinions from
October 1998 to March 1999; two Foreign Office intelligence reports in
January 1999; and one report from the Foreign Office to the Administrative
Court in Mainz in March 1999 all challenged such accusations. According to
the Opinion of the Upper Administrative Court at Munster [1] (March 11,
1999), "Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have neither been nor are now exposed to
regional or countrywide group persecution in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia."
After the glorious victory of NATO over Yugoslavia, it was discovered that
as few as 2,108 people were actually killed in the province during 1998-9
before the bombardment began. Quite likely more Serbs have been killed by
Albanians than vice versa since 1998. The "genocide" charge (reminiscent of
the rhetoric of those urging U.S. intervention in Darfur) had been
exaggerated, if not contrived; the depiction of Milosevic as a "new Hitler"
(reminiscent of the hysterical characterization of Saddam Hussein) equally
overblown. Washington got what it wanted, almost. It destroyed the Yugoslav
state, hauled Milosevic to a kangaroo court at the Hague (where after
enhancing his reputation among Serbs by a spirited defense, he died of a
heart attack), and planted NATO in what had once been proudly nonaligned
European territory. But in the closing days of NATO's war on Yugoslavia in
June 1999 Russia dispatched troops based in Bosnia to Kosovo's capital of
Pristina, where they took control of the airport. It was a clear statement
that Russia would not concede total control of the former Yugoslavia to
NATO. It shocked Madeleine Albright, and disturbed Gen. Wesley Clark enough
to order an airborne assault on the Russians. But the British general
heading the NATO force at the time, Michael Jackson, told Clark: "Sir, I'm
not starting World War Three for you."
Thus the Russians were included in the post-bombing "peace-keeping" mission
in Kosovo and have since been regarded as the protectors of the remaining
Serbs in the Serbian province. Their opposition to Kosovo's independence
might be perceived as a slight irritation in Washington among those eager to
establish a new client-state and drag it into NATO. But this move comes on
the heels of U.S. meddling in Georgia, Belarus, and the Ukraine, the
relentless eastward expansion of NATO, and moves to locate missile defense
systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russian government is in
effect saying: "Look, you intervene at will in Latin America, forming and
toppling governments as you will, arguing it's necessary for your 'national
security.' We who have been invaded many times from the west have legitimate
reasons to support our friends in the Balkans, including the Serbs whom
you've maligned and mistreated disgracefully. Do you really think you can
just wrench away a province from a Slavic country friendly to us, through
brutal military force, and expect us to take it lying down?"
I have the feeling that Washington blew it here---and that there will be
some blowback. It is all very nice for a people comprising 90% of the
inhabitants of a land to form their own state after decades of aspiration
and (under Milosevic) undeniable national oppression. But look at this video
on youtube [2]: Watch the young Albanian try to rip down the cross from a
burning Serbian church in March 2004. Look at this one of the gutted
interior of the Manastir Devic monastery, built up in 1434 and torched in
March 2004. Or this, showing an ancient Serbian cemetery desecrated in April
2005 [3].
One can find equally ugly images of Serbian actions no doubt, and both
Kosovar-Albanian nationalism and Serbian nationalism retain the potential
for further destruction. But the leadership in Pristina hoisted into power
by U.S. action looks especially unsavory and apt to produce disaster.
The leadership of the newly declared nation of Kosovo is rooted in the KLA;
Hashim Tha
