Chal The KLA did much to provoke the serbians and in any case I don't believe in such situations, when two sides are fighting over power, one side is innocent and the other evil.
It just doesn't happen that way IMO. The KLA were terrorists to the serbs and while the west didn't view them that way I have little doubt they would have had they been within any western countries borders. You can tell the story any way you wish but when the battle is engaged there is no moral high ground left for either side to claim.
Whatever the west may have been willing to agree to had it involved kosovo remaining apart of serbia the KLA would never have gone along with it.
In both georgia and kosovo I see small countries or wanna be countries manipulating the greater powers involved expressly to achieve their own ends.
To say the georgians didn't engage in ethnic cleansing when, had they, the russians would have responded overnight is to attempt to give them credit for not doing something they could not possibly do. You don't actually know what they might have done had a viable opportunity been available.
I never thought Iraq could ever have been a threat to the U.S. and I don't think a Georgia which is a part of NATO could be a threat to Russia but in both cases the powers involved thought differently and acted as they wished world opinion be dammed.
Thats how the big dogs behave.
I must beg your forgiveness in advance, as this will be a very long post. Please bear with me, though.
I actually agree with you in that it normally does take two to tango, and the history of the Albanians and Serbs of Kosovo has been a long one of each side oppressing the other.
From the 12th Century when the Serbs first took the region from the Byzantine Empire, the Serbs systematically cleansed the area of Albanians forcing most of them to flee to the surrounding mountains. The Serbs then enacted various laws making it impossible for the Albanians to return to their homes and began a process of giving Albanian lands to Serbs and the Orthodox Church. Visoki Decani Monastery, the largest medieval church in the Balkans, was built in 1330 on Albanian lands gifted to it by its founder King Stefan Uroš III.
The monastery at Decani stands on a terrace commanding passes into High Albania. When Stefan Uros III founded it in 1330, he gave it many villages in the plain and catuns of Vlachs and Albanians between the Lim and the Beli Drim. Vlachs and Albanians had to carry salt for the monastery and provide it with serf labour. A large number of churches were sited strategically at Prizren and in 1348 Dusan is recorded as giving Albanian catuns to a monastery there. Metohija in fact was a great monastic estate.
As this comes from a JSTOR.com article, I cannot provide for you a link, as they are a subscription service.
Due to their conversion to Islam the Albanians of Kosovo were treated very well while under the Ottoman Empire from 1455 to 1912. In fact many Albanian chiefs converted to Islam and gained prominent positions in the Turkish regimen and if anything, grew important in Ottoman internal affairs.
The Serbs and other Christians on the other hand suffered a four and a half century decline in fortunes under the Ottomans had a very hard time of it with the Ottomans abolishing their Patriarchate and forcing many Serbs to flee to Austria during the Great Serb Migrations of 1690 and 1737.
This naturally would have caused some hard feelings between the two groups, I would imagine.
When the Kingdom of Serbia took Kosovo from the Ottomans in 1912, the Serbians immediately began a colonisation of Kosovo, moving numerous Serb families into the area, equalizing the demographic balance between Albanians and Serbs.
During World War I and the Great Serbian Retreat, when the Austrians and the Bulgarians managed to push the Serbian troops out of Kosovo, the Albanians pursued and attacked the retreating Serbs, who, additionally through starvation and extreme weather conditions eventually were to lose an estimated 100,000 soldiers along the way.
The return of the Serbian Army in 1918 brought reprisals and atrocities against the Albanians in Kosovo, which was made to form a part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, later Yugoslavia (1929).
By 1921 Albanian Kosovars asked the League of Nations to unite Kosovo with Albania. They alleged 12,000 Albanians had been killed and 22,000 imprisoned since 1918. A Kachak movement of armed Albanians seeking union with Albania developed. As a result Albanians in Kosovo were increasingly seen by Serbs as being an irridentist movement, subversive to the Yugoslav constitution.
In 1937 Vaso Cubrilovic wrote his Memorandum
The expulsion of the Albanians, which is considered to be one of the main promotions of ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century.
At a time when Germany can expel tens of thousands of Jews and Russia can shift millions of people from one part of the continent to another, the evacuation of a few hundred thousand Albanians will not set off a world war. Be this as it may, decision-makers should know ahead of time what they want and unfalteringly pursue those goals, regardless of possible international repercussions.
As we have already stressed, the mass evacuation of the Albanians from their triangle is the only effective course we can take. In order to relocate a whole people, the first prerequisite is the creation of a suitable psychosis. This can be done in various ways.
It is well known that the Moslem masses are generally readily influenced by religion and are prone to superstition and fanaticism. Therefore, we must first of all win over the clergy and men of influence through money and threats in order for them to give their support to the evacuation of the Albanians. Agitators, especially from Turkey, must be found as quickly as possible to promote the evacuation, if Turkey will provide them for us. They must laud the beauties of the new territories in Turkey and the easy and pleasant life to be had there, and must kindle religious fanaticism among the masses and awaken pride in the Turkish state. Our press can be of colossal assistance by describing how gently the evacuation of the Turks from Dobruja took place and how easily they settled in their new regions. Such information would create the requisite predisposition for the masses of Albanians to be willing to leave.
Another means would be coercion by the state apparatus. The law must be enforced to the letter so as to make staying intolerable for the Albanians: fines, imprisonment, the ruthless application of all police regulations, such as the prohibition of smuggling, cutting forests, damaging agriculture, leaving dogs unchained, compulsory labour and any other measure that an experienced police force can contrive.
From the economic aspect, this should include the refusal to recognize old land deeds. The work of the land registry should be accompanied from the start by the ruthless collection of taxes and the payment of all private and public debts, the requisitioning of all public and municipal pasture land, the cancellation of concessions, the withdrawal of permits to exercise an occupation, dismissal from government, private and municipal offices etc., all of which will speed up the process of evacuation.
Health measures should include the harsh application of all regulations, even within homes, the pulling down of encircling walls and high hedges around private houses, and the rigorous implementation of veterinary measures which will result in a ban on selling livestock on the market, etc. All these measures can be applied in a practical and effective way. The Albanians are very touchy when it comes to religion. They must therefore be harassed on this score, too. This can be achieved through the ill-treatment of their clergy, the demolition of their cemeteries, the prohibition of polygamy, and especially the inflexible application of the regulation compelling girls to attend elementary school, wherever they are.
Private initiative, too, can assist greatly in this direction. We should distribute weapons to our colonists, as need be. The old form of Chetnik action should be organized and secretly assisted. In particular, a mass migration of Montenegrins should be launched from the mountain pastures in order to create a large-scale conflict with the Albanians in Metohija. This conflict should be prepared and encouraged by people we can trust. This can be easily achieved since the Albanians have, indeed, revolted. The whole affair can be presented as a conflict between clans and, if need be, can be ascribed to economic reasons. Finally, local riots can be incited. These will be bloodily suppressed by the most effective means, though by colonists from the Montenegrin clans and the Chetniks, rather than by means of the army.
When Yugoslavia was conquered by the Axis powers in 1941, the greatest part of Kosovo became a part of Italian-controlled Greater Albania, and a smaller, Eastern part by the Nazi-Fascist Tsardom of Bulgaria and Nazi-German-occupied Kingdom of Serbia. Since the Albanian Fascist political leadership had decided in the Conference of Bujan that Kosovo would remain a part of Albania, they started expelling the Serbian and Montenegrin populations.
After World War II, Tito created the Autonomous Kosovo-Metohian Area to protect its regional Albanian majority. In the 1960's Kosovo gained inner autonomy and in the 1974 constitution, the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo's government received higher powers, including the highest governmental titles — President and Premier and a seat in the Federal Presidency which made it a de facto Socialist Republic within the Federation, but remaining as a Socialist Autonomous Province within the Socialist Republic of Serbia. Tito had pursued a policy of weakening Serbia, as he believed that a "Weak Serbia equals a strong Yugoslavia". To this end Vojvodina and Kosovo became autonomous regions and were given the above entitled privileges as defacto republics.
In the 1970's, there sprang up various nationalist movements within the province, some seeking to name Kosovo a republic within Yugoslavia and other more extreme groups advocating for full independence. These were promptly and efficiently crushed by Tito, however.
During the 1980s, ethnic tensions continued with frequent violent outbreaks against Serbs and Yugoslav state authorities resulting in increased emigration of Kosovo Serbs and other ethnic groups. The Yugoslav leadership tried to suppress protests of Kosovo Serbs seeking protection from ethnic discrimination and violence.
It was during this time that Slobodan Milošević began his rise to power, and he began effectively utilising the ethnic tensions in order to assist his advancement. The Communist Party had sent him to Kosovo to address a crowd of Serbs in Kosovo Polje on April 24, 1987. While Milošević was talking to the leadership inside the local cultural hall demonstrators outside clashed with the local Kosovo-Albanian police force.
After hearing about the police brutality outside of the halls, Milošević came out and in an emotional moment promised the local Serbs that "Nobody would beat you again." This news byte was seen on evening news and catapulted then-unknown Milošević to the forefront of the current debate about the problems on Kosovo.
Since the 1974 Constitution, the Albanian-controlled communist officials in Kosovo had instituted a campaign of discrimination against non-Albanians. Serbs and other non-Albanians like the Roma, Turks and Macedonians, were fired from jobs and positions within the regional government apparatus. These repressions and grievances had been swept conveniently under the rug with the pretence of "Brotherhood and Unity" policy instituted by then already late Josip Broz Tito. Any reasoning to the contradictory, was quickly silenced. To the party leaderships chagrin, Mr. Milošević insisted on finding a solution for the Kosovo situation, he was quickly labelled as a reactionary.
In order to save his skin, Milošević fought back and established a political coup d'état. He gained effective leadership and control of the Serbian Communist party and pressed forward with the one issue that had catapulted him to the forefront of the political limelight, which was Kosovo. By the end of the 1980s, calls for increased federal control in the crisis-torn autonomous province were getting louder. Slobodan Milošević pushed for constitutional change amounting to suspension of autonomy for both Kosovo and Vojvodina.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_century_history_of_Kosovo
One of the events that contributed to Milošević's rise to power was the Gazimestan Speech, delivered on June 28, 1989 to 100,000 Serbs attending the celebration in Gazimestan to mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. Many think that this speech helped Milošević consolidate his authority in Serbia.
This speech was considered by many to be a call to arms for Serbians to embrace their nationalism and to create a Greater Serbia by way of oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo and other ethnic minorities in the other regions.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton articulated the view of many Milošević critics when he told a veterans group that Milošević "sought to expand his power, by inciting religious and ethnic hatred in the cause of Greater Serbia; by demonizing and dehumanizing people, especially the Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims ... He unleashed wars in Bosnia and Croatia, creating 2 million refugees and leaving a quarter of a million people dead ... he stripped Kosovo of its constitutional self-government, and began harassing and oppressing its people."
The foundation of the war crimes charges against Milošević is based on the allegation that he sought the establishment of a "Greater Serbia". Prosecutors at the Hague argued that "the [Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo] indictments were all part of a common scheme, strategy or plan on the part of the accused [Milošević] to create a 'Greater Serbia', a centralized Serbian state encompassing the Serb-populated areas of Croatia and Bosnia and all of Kosovo, and that this plan was to be achieved by forcibly removing non-Serbs from large geographical areas through the commission of the crimes charged in the indictments. Although the events in Kosovo were separated from those in Croatia and Bosnia by more than three years, they were no more than a continuation of that plan, and they could only be understood completely by reference to what had happened in Croatia and Bosnia."[60]
Milošević was motivated to start the wars, his critics say, because of his murderous ambition to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbian state. Milošević's critics claim that forces under his command committed "atrocities against civilians as part of a systematic campaign to secure territory for an ethnically 'pure' Serb state."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobod...evi.C4.87.E2.80.99s_role_in_the_Yugoslav_wars
In 1989, Milošević, employing a mix of intimidation and political manoeuvring, drastically reduced Kosovo's special autonomous status within Serbia and started cultural oppression of the ethnic Albanian population.
Rogel, Carole. Kosovo:
Where It All Began. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 17, No. 1 (September 2003): 167-182.
According to Howard Clark's
Civil Resistance in Kosovo, Kosovo Albanians responded with a non-violent separatist movement, employing widespread civil disobedience and creation of parallel structures in education, medical care, and taxation, with the ultimate goal of achieving the independence of Kosovo.
Only after the Dayton Agreement ending the Bosnian War failed to address the question of Kosovo did the KLA appear and begin its armed resistance to Serbian and Yugoslav security forces, resulting in the early stages of the Kosovo War.
By this time, however, Serbian violence against and displacement of the Albanians ha finally garnered Western interest and the Serbs were forced to sign a ceasefire agreement monitored by OSCE observers.
Serbia broke this agreement and fighting continued, culminating in the Račak massacre in 1999, wherein 45 Kosovo Albanian civilians were systematically murdered by Yugoslav and Serbian security forces. You can read all about that incident
here.
In its indictment of Slobodan Milošević and four other senior Yugoslav and Serbian officials, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia's Chief Prosecutor stated that:
On or about 15 January 1999, in the early morning hours, the village of Račak was attacked by forces of the FRY [Yugoslavia] and Serbia. After shelling by VJ [Yugoslav Army] units, the Serbian police entered the village later in the morning and began conducting house-to-house searches. Villagers, who attempted to flee from the Serb police, were shot throughout the village. A group of approximately 25 men attempted to hide in a building, but were discovered by the Serb police. They were beaten and then were removed to a nearby hill, where the policemen shot and killed them.
http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm
I will not go into a full account of the entire conflict, as this post is already long enough. I simply wanted to elucidate for you the reasons why in this case the Albanians had a legitimate issue with the Serbs and that the KLA, while playing a part in the hostilities, were merely acting in defence of their own people who were suffering from the harsh treatment of the Serbs.
Call them terrorists if you wish, but the Albanians had no other protection, and no one from the West at the time was lifting a finger to do protect them. It is inconceivable that the Albanians would not seek to defend themselves somehow. If the KLA used guerilla tactics, it was because they were vastly outnumbered and overpowered by the Serb and Yugoslav armies.
The KLA was not a signatory to the final peace agreement between NATO and the Serbs and was immediately disbanded and co-opted into a new organisation called the Kosovo Protection Corps, which was charged with disaster response, search and rescue, assistance with de-mining, providing humanitarian assistance, and helping to rebuild infrastructure and communities. It is highly unlikely that they would therefore have had any effect on the subsequent final status negotiations backed by the UN.
International negotiations began in 2006 to determine the final status of Kosovo, as envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 1244. The UN-backed talks, lead by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, began in February 2006. Whilst progress was made on technical matters, both parties remained diametrically opposed on the question of status itself.
In February 2007, Ahtisaari delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposes 'supervised independence' for the province. A draft resolution, backed by the United States, the United Kingdom and other European members of the Security Council, was presented and rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty. Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five permanent members, had stated that it would not support any resolution which was not acceptable to both Belgrade and Kosovo Albanians. Whilst most observers had, at the beginning of the talks, anticipated independence as the most likely outcome, others have suggested that a rapid resolution might not be preferable.
After many weeks of discussions at the UN, the United States, United Kingdom and other European members of the Security Council formally 'discarded' a draft resolution backing Ahtisaari's proposal on 20 July 2007, having failed to secure Russian backing. Beginning in August, a "Troika" consisting of negotiators from the European Union (Wolfgang Ischinger), the United States (Frank Wisner) and Russia (Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko) launched a new effort to reach a status outcome acceptable to both Belgrade and Pristina. Despite Russian disapproval, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and France appeared likely to recognise Kosovar independence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo
As to your comments regarding Georgia, I am frankly at a loss. What you are saying here is that Georgia, because it did not engage in ethnic cleansing, simply didn't do it because they couldn't but surely they wanted to.
Do you have any evidence of this? Can you verify this in any way? You cannot possibly justifiably accuse Georgia of wanting to commit ethnic cleansing if there has been no indication of this whatsoever. It makes no sense. It is akin to Stalin's purges wherein he had people murdered and imprisoned because he was afraid of what they MIGHT be thinking, but never had any evidence to back up his fears.
I agree with you that Georgia as a member of NATO could not possibly be a threat to Russia. But as the Russians are a paranoid bunch, it is highly unlikely that they will ever see such a scenario in any other light.
