kasovo crisis

"We gave everyone in the town a chance to leave," said the Serb police major, responsible for sacking the village of Prekaz in Kosovo province (Chris Hedges, New York Times, 03/09/98). Doesn't this sound just too familiar? Didn't Ratko Mladic, commander of Serb forces that overrun Srebrenica in summer 1995, said something similar about "giving everyone in town of Srebrenica a chance to leave?"

So, if Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians volunteered to abandon their homes and possessions, rubber-stamping the Serbian policies of "ethnic cleansing," their lives would be generously spared.



"Solution lies in dialogue," said the boss of above-mentioned police major. Doesn't this sound all too familiar, too? Serbian interior ministry reports 200 terrorist attacks since 1991 on Kosovo. However, the UCK (KLA: Kosovo Liberation Army) is around only for somewhat more than a year - benefiting mostly from a spin-off of smuggled AK rifles and other weapons looted from Albanian military during the recent upheavals in Albania (650,000 rifles were looted), and the Serb's loss of the Drenica region to KLA is just a few months old. Actually, Kosovo Albanian leaders shunned from armed struggle hoping for and continuously asking for dialogue in the past ten years. One of the reasons why Ibrahim Rugova, the leader of largest political bloc among Kosovo Albanians, lost so much support among his people lately, is his stubborn adherence to dialogue. As it did in Bosnia, Serbian regime again declares it's willingness for a dialogue, while in reality blocks any initiative that could lead to one. Fehmi Agani, one of the leading Albanian cause spokesmen said for B92 that the sudden Serbian government call for a dialogue, after they massacred women and children, is unearnest.
As they claimed in Bosnia that Bosnian Muslims shelled Sarajevo themselves, I've just heard Yugoslav ambassador in Zagreb saying that Kosovo kids were killed by Kosovo terorist leaders not wanting them to escape and give their positions. Other events confirm the use of the same tactics that Serbia used in Bosnian and Croatian wars:

Serbs again refuse to let international humanitarian organizations (as reported by ICRC) through to help care about refugees and displaced persons,
they refuse international mediation (Albanian leader Azem Vlassi suggested European envoy Felipe Gonzales) in the dialogue and
they disallow peaceful protests as they turned away Prishtina women that attempted a march on Drenica carrying a loaf of bread each.
In fact, nobody in Serbian government and, which is more sad, in Serbian political opposition, ever seriously thought about opening a dialogue with Kosovo Albanians. After all, neither did Russians ever consider a dialogue with Chechens, nor had the French been willing to accept a dialogue with Algerians, while Brits just recently, and only under the U.S. pressure, sat at the same table with Shin Fein's Garry Adams. Serbia behave as any other colonial power, which made Albanians in Kosovo learn their lesson: dialogue is futile. Nobody would listen to their case until the world media started reporting on the existence of KLA.

European powers are poorly equipped to deal with this crisis: Russians do not want to see Kosovo in Albanian hands, because that would spark a precedent for the situation in Chechenya; England perhaps see the similarity between KLA and IRA; France didn't give up Algeria without a fight, so it should show some understanding for Serbia today. In fact, currently the Serbian minority in Kosovo is smaller than French minority was in Algeria before that war, that France defended in front of the world community as the "internal French question." Doesn't that sound awfully familiar, too?

European powers reluctance to act against the fellow colonialist power already created one very bloody debacle for the international community: Bosnia. It is, therefore, imperative now, in the case of Kosovo, to act immediately and preventively. Check here the latest from State Department, U.S Congress and Contact Group on that issue. Human Rights Watch suggested that International War Crimes Tribunal should start prosecuting crimes against humanity in Kosovo holding Belgrade authorities liable for them, and the Tribunal said that it might do just that. Helsinki Citizens Assembly called upon sending peace-keepers to the region when there is still some peace to be kept. Society for Threatened Peoples (Gesellschaft fuer Bedrohte Voelker) wrote a report on recent human rights abuses in Kosovo by Serbian police with an emphasis on arbitrary detentions, interogations and beatings of Albanians who have relatives living and working in Germany. Sanjaki Refugee Center, comprised of Muslims "ethnically cleansed" from Serbian region of Sandjak, warns about t