” There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating form around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the U.S. armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends we will do a fair amount of killing.” U.S. Army War College Quarterly. Summer 1997.
YUGOSLAVIA UNDER ATTACK.
” The war against Yugoslavia was conducted on behalf of the great powers because Yugoslavia stood in the way of their interests. It stood as an obstacle to the goals of the new world oppressors, the new colonialism. It represented ‘ a bad example’ for all those countries and peoples who wished to stay free and independent.” Slobodan Milosevic 17th October 2002.
The National Security Directive ‘US Policy Towards Yugoslavia’ was issued by the White House Washington DC in 1984. The document outlined a policy to forge a new Balkan order that was based on the market organisation of economies and envisaged ‘spheres of influence’ for the major powers. This policy document was issued three years before Slobodan Milosevic came to power and six years before the break-up of Yugoslavia began.
To implement this policy the United States instigated a decade of sanctions against Yugoslavia, simultaneously creating and supporting an internal opposition with funds and equipment, and launched, in 1999, a 78 day bombing blitz in an attempt to effect ‘regime change’ which would result in a compliant and pro-market government.
The pretext used to justify this illegal action was the alleged ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Albanian population from the Yugoslav province of Kosovo by the Milosevic government. Just why the government would want to ‘ethnically cleanse’ any part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was never adequately explained. Indeed there could be no logical explanation because such actions flew in the face of the multicultural policy of the Milosevic government. The western media would claim that Milosevic himself called for ‘ethnic cleansing’ in his speech delivered to an estimated 1 million people at Kosovo Field on 28th June 1989. This ‘speech’ was mentioned consistently in the build up to the 1999 bombing campaign, it was mentioned continually but significantly it was never quoted from. Why? Because the Kosovo Field speech was a call to unite the different nationalities of Serbia and Yugoslavia, the complete opposite to what the western propaganda alleged. Here is a section of it: “Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. National composition of almost all countries in the world today, particularly developed ones, has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully. Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect.”
And this was claimed to be a call for ethnic cleansing?
Only after the 3 month bombing campaign, which left Nato and the fascist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in control of Kosovo, did segments of the true situation regarding the genocide and ethnic cleansing propaganda begin to emerge.
“The scale on which the public was misled about the atrocities..and not just Nato’s bombing ‘successes’..threatens to be mind-boggling.” Andrew Alexander Daily Mail 5th November 1999.
” I called my people together and said ‘we’re finished here’. I informed my government and told them the real situation. We have become part of a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machine, because we did not find one…not one…mass grave.” Emilio Perez Pujol Head of the Spanish Forensic Team Attached to the International Criminal Tribunal. 12th October 1999.
However, once they had established full control of Kosovo a disturbing picture of Nato and the KLA’s actions surfaced, revealing an unfolding nightmare scenario for non- KLA supporters.
“Since June 18th the KLA and their Albanian supporters have terrorised the Kosovar Roma in an ethnic cleansing operation that has destroyed more than 20,000 Roma homes. Despite the UN’s declaration of preparing a multi-ethnic society and the claim of NATO and KFOR to protect everyone, the results only point to a policy of genocide…genocide of the Roma and Hashkaiya today in Kosovo.” Roma News Network 1stDecember 1999.
” The expulsion and terrorising of 240,000 Serbs and other minorities from Kosovo since NATO took charge is of little media interest. The Society for Endangered People say 90,000 Gypsies have been forced to flee an ethnic cleansing campaign conducted on a grand scale by the Kosovo Liberation Army. But who cares about Gypsies, let alone the demonised Serbs?” John Pilger New Statesman 15th November 1999.
Who indeed was caring about the ethnic minorities that were being driven from Kosovo by Nato and the KLA?
“The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia currently has the largest refugee and displaced population in Europe. Even before the Kosovo crisis, Yugoslavia had the largest number of refugees following the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia: There were 500,000 identified refugees. The Kosovo crisis then saw a further 230,000 people displaced into Serbia, which receives very little media attention or funding, and whose civilian population has suffered hugely from the effects of sanctions and recent armed conflicts.” Sam Younger. Director General British Red Cross 1stDec. 1999.
So despite suffering from almost ten years of sanctions and trying to recover from a three month bombing blitz, it was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the government of Slobodan Milosevic that took in ¾ million refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and those refugees comprised twenty-six different ethnic groups. Yet it was Yugoslavia and the Serbs that were, and still are, believed to be responsible for acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, in the New World Order the truth is firmly stood on its head, and the majority of the political left in Britain are only too eager to accept it.
THE 5th OCTOBER COUP/ARRESTS AND PURGES.
Securing control of Kosovo was only part of the United States objective. The plan was to seize control of the entire country and wipe the name of Yugoslavia off the world map. The Rambouillet document, which, prior to the bombing campaign both Clinton and Blair had demanded that Yugoslavia sign, contained the following clauses:
Chapter 7. Appendix B. ‘Status of Multinational Military Implementation Force.’
6b. Nato personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal or disciplinary offences which may be committed by them in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
8b. Nato personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia including associated airspace and territorial waters.
11. Nato is granted the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment of fees, duties, dues, tolls or charges.
This was a document for occupation not a document for peace. Blair boasted that the Kosovo Liberation Army had signed it. No surprise there then. However nobody deemed it fit to ask what had the rest of Yugoslavia to do with the Kosovo Liberation Army? The Yugoslav government refused to sign.
Having made their intentions clear via the Rambouillet document, it was no surprise that once the bombing campaign ended the U.S. would increase its financial support to the Yugoslav opposition which Clinton, through the offices of Madeleine Albright and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had cobbled together under the title of Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). The NED gave over one hundred million dollars to the DOS and this money funded political parties, TV and radio stations, newspapers and even trade unions. (The Washington Post ran a piece in December 2000 about how U.S. agencies held strategy meetings in Budapest with opposition parties and how they trained the student group Otpor. It continued: “in the 12 months following the strategy session, U.S. funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive, training thousands of opposition activists.” Washington Post 11th December 2000).
As a point of note and in the interests of historical accuracy, opposition parties, opposition newspapers, opposition TV and radio stations, were all allowed under the Milosevic government. (Today, the new, US backed ‘democratic’ government, allows no platform for opposition tendencies).
The U.S. had earmarked the Yugoslav elections of September 2000 to implement their strategy of ‘regime change’. The plan was never going to depend on the results of the Yugoslav elections but would revolve around an orchestrated coup, pencilled in for 5th October. This was because even if the DOS front man Kostunica, had beaten Milosevic in the Presidential election that would still have left the Yugoslav parliament in the hands of Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), who had won a clear majority in the parliamentary elections. Former American Attorney General in the Johnson Administration, Ramsey Clark, analysed the situation as follows: “Milosevic said no to the ‘new world order’ and the International Monetary Fund. His government refused to join NATO or accept IMF-dictated ‘economic restructuring’. It refused to sell off all state owned industry and let Wall Street bankers run the country’s economy. For that reason – and that alone – Yugoslavia was the target of eight years of war and economic sanctions by the U.S. and NATO and a non-stop campaign of lies by the biggest propaganda machine in history, the U.S. corporate news media. Yugoslavia was a parliamentary democracy, and the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS) had an elected majority. That’s why Kostunica’s CIA advisors told him not to take part in the second round of elections. Even if he won – a big if – the lawmakers would block the IMFs program. Washington wanted Kostunica to take power by force, to crush parliament and the Serbian Socialist Party, the country’s largest political force”. Ramsey Clark 12thOctober 2000.
After the 5th October coup the DOS claimed power and although their front man, Kostunica was installed as President, it became apparent that the real power behind the DOS was Zoran Djindjic. Djindjic had fled Serbia during the Nato bombardment and continued before and after the bombing to meet with Madeleine Albright and U.S. Special Balkans envoy Richard Gelbard. He immediately called for complete Yugoslav submission to the United States and intimated that the Yugoslav Federation should be broken up and the name ‘Yugoslavia’ no longer used.
Shortly after seizing power the new U.S. backed Yugoslav government launched an assault against any possible opposition movement by targeting the leading cadres of the SPS, the New Communist Party and the United Left as well as conducting purges throughout the Yugoslav Army, the security services and the judiciary. The offices of Socialist organisations throughout Serbia were ransacked and their members arrested and beaten. As former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark commented, “You won’t hear about this on CNN.”
On the night Slobodan Milosevic was arrested over 500 other pro-Yugoslavia and anti-Nato politicians were taken. The arrests of the Yugoslav leaders who opposed the bombing of their country was ordered by the United States, backed by the threat of economic and political blackmail, a fact that was openly admitted by the new Yugoslav government. The kidnapping of Milosevic on 28th June 2001 from his Belgrade prison cell to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, was orchestrated by Djindjic and Nato forces. As this was an illegal act under the Yugoslav constitution the new ‘President’ of Yugoslavia, Kostunica, claimed shock and horror at such an outrage and pleaded his ignorance of events. After all, how is the President of the country supposed to know what his underlings are doing? Having served his initial purpose Kostunica’s irrelevance was transparent.
THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL.
” The war against Yugoslavia was and still is waged without any moral scruples. The illegal ‘court’ in The Hague is one of the means of that war and the proof that the war is still ongoing.” Slobodan Milosevic. 17th October 2002.
The War Crimes Tribunal as it is sometimes called, is the creation of the United Nations Security Council. It is legally invalid. According to the provisions of the UN Charter, the Security Council has no competence whatsoever in judicial matters. The Charter determines the Council’s competence in matters of international security but not in matters of criminal justice or other judicial matters. The sole authority in international judicial matters rests with the International Court of Justice and not with the War Crimes Tribunal. The original idea for the Tribunal emanated from the Department of the United States Army and the then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright drove it through the UN Security Council. It receives much of its funding from private American Corporations such as Time Warner, who own CNN and it is CNN who have exclusive rights to broadcast, or not, the Tribunal’s proceedings.
The Tribunal also receives funding from the American billionaire financier George Soros through his Open Society Institute. (The Open Society Institute operates throughout the former Soviet Bloc with its task being to convert the area to a free enterprise system). The tribunal is mainly staffed by Americans drawn from George Soros’s Central East European Law Institute. The aim of this Institute is to restructure the legal systems of the former Soviet countries and gear them to the free enterprise system. It is also worthy of note that George Soros funds the main KLA newspaper in Pristina, Kosovo.
Given this background it is obvious to see that the Tribunal is primarily a political tool for the United States of America. Its task is to justify the crimes of the U.S. and Nato. However its claim to be independent has already been undermined. For instance Dr Hans Koechler, the President of the International Progress Organisation noted: “As long as the ‘Tribunal’ does not take action against those Nato politicians and military officers responsible for breeches of international humanitarian law, the ‘Tribunal’ can only be considered as one more futile exercise in the political use of judicial procedures within the framework of a ‘policy of double standards’ which seems to be the essence of power politics in the ‘New World Order’.
The ‘Tribunal has introduced some frightening procedures into the world of international law. It claims that investigation of facts can be halted on the grounds ‘that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice’. It goes further when stating that ‘arrest is allowed for any reason. It ensures that the person does not obstruct an investigation’. It allows evidence to be withheld from the Defence and also accepts ‘hearsay’ evidence. And most bizarrely claims that ‘the accused may be held in detention even when acquitted’. It is in essence a law unto itself.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia issued an indictment against President Milosevic for ‘war crimes in Kosovo.’ The then prosecutor, Louise Arbour, reported the decision to indict Milosevic directly to the President of the United States, two days before she announced it to the rest of the world, giving the lie to the pretence that the ‘Tribunal’ acts independently of the United States. Belatedly two further indictments were added whilst Milosevic was in custody for the first indictment, the additional charges being genocide in Croatia and Bosnia. Apart from the fact that this procedure has no basis in law it underlines the fact that the prosecution, so bereft of a valid case over Kosovo, desperately needed to widen their attack.
At his first appearance before the ‘Tribunal’ Mr Milosevic made his position clear:
“I consider this tribunal a false tribunal and the indictment a false indictment….I have no need to appoint counsel to an illegal organ.” He added that the ‘Tribunal’ aimed to ” produce false justification of the war crimes of Nato.” (3rd July 2001).
It would not be until February the following year that the media dubbed, ‘the trial of the century’ would commence in earnest but at his pre-trial appearance on 11th December 2001 Milosevic lambasted the court: ” During the conflict in Bosnia no Moslem was expelled from Serbia. During the conflict in Croatia no Croat was expelled from Serbia. More than that, during the conflict in Bosnia – look at the records at UNHCR – over 70,000 Moslem refugees found shelter in Serbia. What nation, what tens of thousands of people would seek shelter among those who had committed aggression against them? Do you know that more Moslems live in Serbia than in Bosnia and Herzegovina? The Moslems in Bosnia were pushed into that disaster, into that war, so that outside forces, appearing as their supporters, could hide their responsibility for the deaths of many times more – millions of Moslems – in accordance with their interests of enslaving the World and a new colonialism.” Milosevic defiantly added: ” I can tell you that I am proud that I commanded the armed forces of Yugoslavia…I am here as a punishment for standing up against the danger of the biggest tyranny that has threatened mankind.” (11th December 2001).
The role of the War Crimes Tribunal, or the WTE, Washington’s Tribunal in Europe, as the Yugoslavs call it, was summed up perfectly in an exchange of letters between Tribunal advocate Antonio Cassese and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Boutros Ghali. In a letter dated 21st January 1994 Cassese wrote, “Our Tribunal will not be simply ‘window dressing’ but a decisive step in the construction of a new world order.”
YUGOSLAVIA TODAY.
Actually it is no longer politically correct to use the name ‘Yugoslavia’ because in February 2003 the U.S. backed Yugoslav government of Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic oversaw the removal of the name ‘Yugoslavia’ from the map of the world and introduced its replacement the ‘Republic of Serbia and Montenegro’.
Journalist Neil Clark in his ‘elegy for Yugoslavia’ review commented: ” On 4th February 2003, quietly and almost unnoticed, while the rest of the world’s attention was focused on the charade of weapons inspections in Iraq, a country disappeared from the map of the world. The final dissolution of Yugoslavia and its metamorphosis into the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro passed virtually without comment in the British media, with almost no one picking up on its deep significance, yet it was an event that ought to have been mourned by democrats, socialists and progressives the world over.”
In the same article Clark elaborated on the fate of the territories and peoples of the former Yugoslavia: ” What is clear is that it is the people of ex-Yugoslavia, many of whom never wished for the break up of their country, who have been the big losers. As economic problems mount up, the novelty of statehood seems less appealing in Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro are under a state of emergency. Kosovo is Europe’s first mafia-run state, while the poor Bosnians have the ultimate humiliation of being governed by Lord (Paddy) Ashdown.”
The chaos and poverty that has befallen the former Yugoslavia since the overthrow of Milosevic and the coming to power of the U.S. backed government can be partly illustrated by the following observations:
” Kosovo remains a lawless society, completely intolerant of ethnic minorities and one of the most dangerous places on earth.” James Bisset, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia. Ottawa Citizen June 22nd 2002.
” The drug barons of Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia have become the new economic elite, often linked to important Western commercial interests. The income from trafficking in drugs and arms was then recycled into other illegal activities like networks of prostitution.” Michel Collon. Two Years Later – Where is Yugoslavia. November 2002.
” The highest unemployment rates in all of Europe are in Bosnia 60% and Kosovo 57%” Associated Press 8th October 2002.
” In Kosovo the United States have built the largest military installation outside of America, ‘Camp Bondsteel’. It was built by Brown & Roots Services, a subsidiary of the US petroleum services firm Halliburton. The Head of Halliburton is Dick Cheney current vice-president of the U.S. Brown & Root is now the number one employer in Kosovo.” Balkans-infos June 2002.
In addition to the above prime minister Djindjic announced the closure of Serbia’s four largest banks, they are to be handed over to foreign control. Djindjic also followed the demand made by the World Bank that all public services be privatised and state-run industries sold at auction, effectively handing control of the Serbian economy over to foreign interests. On the 12th March 2003 Zoran Djindjic was assassinated by assailants unknown.
The Guardian article on 14th March 2003 was one of the few pieces to appear in the Western press that sought to outline the true role which Djindjic had played on behalf of the United States: ” Djindjic will be mourned by few in Serbia. For the great majority of Serbs, he will be remembered as a quisling who enriched himself by selling his country to those who had waged war against it so mercilessly only a few years earlier. Djindjic’s much lauded reforms have led to soaring utility prices, unemployment has risen sharply to over 30%, real wages have fallen by up to 20% and over two-thirds of Serbs now live below the poverty line.” Neil Clark. The Guardian 14th March 2003.
The new Serbian authorities have used the assassination of Djindjic as an excuse to declare a state of emergency and launch wholesale arrests and imprisonment of their political opponents. To date 3000 people, mainly socialists, are imprisoned. Even Serbia’s most popular folk singer Ceca Ravnatovic, now lies in a Belgrade prison cell. Stories of torture are widespread and inhumanely include the prisoner’s wives and children.
During a court appearance in late March Slobodan Milosevic angrily denounced the new purges in Yugoslavia and accused the Hague Tribunal of complicity in these renewed attacks. The declared state of emergency has several intentions. However primarily it is being used to crush completely the growing internal opposition to the pro-US government. Also, flowing from the mass arrests, the authorities hope to be able to ‘turn’ certain people into giving false testimony at the War Crimes Tribunal in return for their own freedom or for a lighter sentence. This tactic has already been used but embarrassingly backfired on the Hague prosecutors when the courageous former Yugoslav State Security chief, Radamir Markovic, exposed from the witness box that he had been tortured to give false testimony against Milosevic. Trial judge Richard May, a Tony Blair appointee, called this ‘irrelevant’ and duly returned Mr Markovic back to his cell and back into the custody of his torturers. However, when any witness in any court case, appeals to the judge that his captors have mistreated him, then it is the legal duty of the judge to take the witness into protective custody until his claims can be independently investigated. No wonder then that this ‘trial of the century’ has disappeared from Western television screens!
It is clear that the events in Yugoslavia and the developments at The Hague are intrinsically linked. Despite, or rather because of, the imposition of a quisling government in Belgrade the country is in chaos, the Hague ‘Tribunal’ has developed into farce, and its credibility so undermined that mention of it, let alone any live television broadcast from it, is virtually non-existent. Even though Mr Milosevic is denied visits from his legal advisors, his family, and his Yugoslav colleagues, even though over the period of the trial he has been deluged by the court with 300,000 pages of material and 1000 hours of videotape, even though with heart and blood pressure problems he has been denied specialist treatment, and even though despite not a scrap of credible evidence against him, he is fully aware of the pre-determined sentence that awaits him, the philistines of the new world order have been unable to break him. Milosevic spoke for all those who are united in struggle when he declared recently:
“But the events, contrary to the intentions of the creators of the new world order and of The Hague ‘Court’, show every day that there is a growing consciousness in the world of the need to unite the forces of resistance to the new oppressors.”