American Council for Kosovo - All News

GORIN: The blackmail of America

Something happened after President Clinton's 1999 war in Kosovo: It never ended. Its continuation was characterized by anti-Serb arson, kidnappings, bombings of NATO-escorted civilian buses and efforts to kill everyone from schoolgirls to octogenarians, plus the rare peacekeeper who tried to prevent any of this.

Toward the end of 1999, several major newspapers reported on findings that mass graves such as the infamous Trepca zinc mine turned up empty, as did the stadium we were told was being used as a concentration camp. Anyone reading this one-time follow-up also would have learned that the "cleansing" of 800,000 Albanians had more to do with NATO bombs and Kosovo Liberation Army orders than with the outrageous claim that Serbia was trying to empty the province of 90 percent of its population.

But the bombshell postwar story had no legs. No media outlet, human rights organization or congressional subcommittee launched an investigation, and the press moved on, taking the public with it. So Americans don't know that within months of our serving as the Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) air force, the Albanian insurgents also tried to seize the Presevo Valley area in southern Serbia and by early 2001 started a civil war in Macedonia, which had sheltered 400,000 refugees during the Kosovo war.

At the same time, the Albanian fighters started to engage NATO troops openly. In February 2000, the U.N. and NATO in Kosovo issued a joint statement that "two young French soldiers, who came here as peacekeepers, are lying in hospital beds suffering from gunshot wounds inflicted on them by the very people that they came here to protect," the CATO Institute's Gary Dempsey reported. He added, "As a candid intelligence officer with the U.N. Mission in Kosovo [UNMIK] explained to me in November, 'We are their tool, and when we stop being useful to them, they will turn against us.'"

In March 2000, The Washington Post reported, "A senior Pentagon official warned yesterday that U.S. troops in Kosovo this spring may have to fight their former allies, ethnic Albanian guerrillas who are rearming themselves and threatening cross-border attacks against Serbia. 'This has got to cease and desist, and if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between the Albanians and KFOR [NATO Kosovo Force].' "

But that didn't happen. Instead, we came around to seeing things the Albanian way. In November 2005, CNSNews.com explained why: "Rebels have blown up several vehicles belonging to UNMIK and the Kosovo [Police] Service, leading UNMIK to warn employees to check their vehicles for bombs before starting the engines. ... [G]raffiti across Kosovo warned 'UNMIK get out!' ... NATO's Kosovo Force has an emergency plan called 'Operation Safe Haven' in place to evacuate internationals. ... [Ex-OSCE security chief Tom] Gambill believes that Albanian frustration over the independence issue could lead armed rebels to forge an alliance with al Qaeda. Both groups want the international presence out of Kosovo and al Qaeda has a history of attempting to destabilize the Balkans region. ... The threats are played down, Gambill said, because 'it does not suit the internationals to have a serious crisis such as this at the time when they are sending out reports on how much improvement has been made in Kosovo.' "

We didn't want Albanians to start killing us, so we let them keep killing Serbs. Rather than see what would happen if we tried saying "no" to Albanian demands and designs, and risk Americans discerning the real nature of their new best friends - which of course would compound the domestic terror threat - we guaranteed ourselves a bigger, more entrenched and more global problem.

When Kosovo re-entered the headlines in 2008, some started catching on. In March 2008, Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich wrote in the New York Sun, "An important ingredient of Kosovo's success in achieving self-determination seems to be their constant threats of violence. The Kosovar prime minister ... often warned of 'dangers' and 'unforeseeable consequences' if the province were not allowed to secede. ... As a result, NATO and America have become parties to the carve-up of a sovereign state that they subdued by force. ... For international law, the entire process is a string of humiliations ... peacekeepers are hostages; and sovereignty is trumped by the threat of terror."

"Hostages" precisely describes the West in Kosovo. If anyone wonders why the George W. Bush administration joined the Clintonites in the belief that "independence is the only viable option" and "there can be no compromise," it's because in the gangster's paradise of Kosovo, the United States alternates between hostage and gangster. The Albanians give us ultimatums, and we give the Serbs ultimatums. Our government toes the Albanian line, and our press toes the government line. United Press International's Robert M. Hayden gave a glimpse of it in March 2008: "The problem is not that 'Serb nationalists' are resisting 'the West,' as it is put by those U.S. journalists who honor the First Amendment by parroting the State Department. ... [A political solution] could have been reached with Serbia, but neither the Clinton administration nor that of George W. Bush wanted one."

A clearer picture emerges of the "failed" negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, to which the Serbian delegation would come with lists of various broad compromises, and the Albanian delegation would look at their watches. Sabotaging the "negotiations" before each round - and redefining the term - Mr. Bush or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would announce that the end result would be independence.

An excerpt from a 1999 Q&A in Time magazine illuminates how far we swerved from our original goals: "The alliance wants Kosovo to be given autonomy within the Yugoslav federation, but opposes the full independence that the KLA is fighting for, fearing that creating a new Kosovar-Albanian state would further destabilize an already volatile region."

Today, however, even the language is reversed: that which we knew would destabilize the region is now promoted as what is needed to "stabilize" the region. And so our military is being used to enforce KLA directives and make the last of the resisting Serbs comply with the new reality.

Most of the last resisting Serbs are in the only remaining part of Kosovo where it is still safe to be Serbian, Northern Kosovska Mitrovica, along the boundary with Serbia. The Serbs there have been open to a partition that would allow them to stay within the internationally recognized borders of their country, Serbia. But we were informed by our Albanian "partners" that a partition was out of the question, ironically invoking "territorial integrity" - which our leaders then repeated.

Rather than Kosovo's diabolical path to statehood, our bureaucrats and media point to Belgrade as the problem, because it backs Northern Mitrovica, where Serbian institutions are still in place. We are warned that the real threat is Belgrade's refusal to recognize the land grab, its turning to Moscow for support and its creation of "parallel institutions." A rich admonition indeed, given that Kosovo's parallel Albanian institutions within the host society were what brought us to the hailed secession itself.

NATO troops have been amassing around Northern Mitrovica, and in a few months, with or without Belgrade finally selling out the Kosovo Serbs (always a looming possibility), we will witness the next act of war by U.S.-led NATO against an ally that has never been a threat to America. We will be enforcing borders that only one-third of U.N. member states even recognize to deliver nothing less than the full territory that our masters demand.

This time, when Americans watch our military "contain" the Serbs, they should recognize it for what it is. The troops themselves would do well to understand what is being enforced with their hands. And when the images gracing American TVs are again exclusively of the "wild" Serbian reaction, meant to depict Serbs as violent and therefore justifying the aggression that caused it, Americans should ask themselves how they might react if coerced to secede from their country by an ethnic group that reached majority status in their area.

In February 2007, Jim Jatras, a former senior analyst for the Senate Republican Foreign Policy Committee, asked a Hungarian member of the European Parliament, "Why are you rewarding Albanian violence with state power?" The member replied, "Because we're afraid of them."

The Debacle of Serbia's "Lobbying" in Washington

The lobbying contract between the Government of Serbia and Milan Petrovic's firm appears still to be in force, but it is hard to be sure since there are no discernable activities being performed. And of course that is the real scandal, in which the 'yellow' press organs in Belgrade obsessed with my work for Bishop Artemije seem to take no interest.

Since the suspension of Bishop Artemije of Ras and Prizren from administration of his Eparchy, efforts have been made by some to use my role as a lobbyist in Washington on his behalf as a weapon in the campaign against him. I already have addressed elsewhere the questions, first raised last week by Blic (parroting an Albanian-American source), about the source of the funds used for lobbying in the U.S. and whether their use for that purpose was legitimate application of the ruling Bishop's discretion.

But the more damaging thing about these attacks is the notion that lobbying for Serbia's right to keep Kosovo was somehow a 'waste' of money, and that there were no results from it. This is more than a belittlement of the efforts that were expended by my firm and those working with us. It is, rather, a suggestion that it is immoral and futile for Serbia to struggle for her interests by lobbying to change US policy.

When we started in the spring of 2006 we were the only professional (as opposed to volunteer) activity lobbying on behalf of the Serbian cause. Our activities, through a US nonprofit organization we created, the American Council for Kosovo, were not confined to narrowly focused lobbying in the form of quiet meetings with American officials and Congressmen. More importantly, we knew we had to change the terms of debate on Kosovo, from a place where the noble West saved innocent Albanian Muslims from evil Serbs, to a place where the criminal, terrorist U�K was committing genocide of Christian Serbs. Most of our activities in the U.S. and elsewhere (Britain, Germany, Israel, India, Italy, the EU, Russia, etc.), often in cooperation with The Lord Byron Foundation and with the support of other volunteers, were focused on public opinion. We forced people to look at "the other side" of the Kosovo story, to the outraged howls of the Albanian lobby that we were trying to "hijack" US policy. While we were not able to overturn an American policy misinformed by decades of Albanian (and Croatian) anti-Serb propaganda, I believe were successful in helping to delay Washington's final push for almost two years, giving Serbia a chance to fight back. Our contract, only a part of which was ever paid, was for $100,000 per month, including (about 40% of the total) cost of advertising, conferences, travel, and other expenses.

In evaluating our degree of success, it might be useful to make a couple of comparisons. A few months after we began our effort under the direction of Vladika Artemije, the Serbian government (under Prime Minister Kostunica) hired another firm, Barbour Griffith and Rodgers, to lobby officially on its behalf. That contract was for $60,000 per month, plus costs. As far as has been publicly disclosed, they were not specifically tasked with lobbying on Kosovo, but such concentration can be inferred. Their activities were entirely closed-door meetings, and they did no public activities to make Serbia's case. They were dropped soon after the UDI in February 2008.

In the summer of 2009, Belgrade (the current government) hired another firm, Chicago-based Advanced Practical Solutions, for $85,000 per month, plus most costs. As a professional lobbyist, I don't generally like to throw rocks at a competitor, but APS seems an odd choice. They have no active website and apparently not even a Washington office. APS's President, Mr. Milan Petrovic, is known mostly as a top fundraiser for former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. According to press reports, when "Blago" was governor APS did a nice little business steering state contracts to its clients, mainly in the healthcare field. The operation fell apart with the Antoin "Tony" Rezko bribery conviction, Blagojevich's resignation, and Petrovic's withdrawal from the Indiana bar to avoid imminent expulsion. Maybe APS was hired by the Tadic government because it's a "Serbian firm," although that in itself means nothing. But an online search of US political campaign records finds several contributions to candidates (all Democrats: Blagojevich, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama) by an APS employee named Shqipe Osmani, which doesn't sound Serbian.

The APS contract appears still to be in force, but it's hard to be sure since there are no discernable activities being performed. And of course that's the real scandal, in which the 'yellow' press organs obsessed with my work for Bishop Artemije seem to take no interest. I wonder why.

I'm sure these figures for lobbying activities in the US must seem astronomical to readers in Serbia, where people are struggling to scrape by. The sad fact is, this is the kind of money it takes to array a battery of experienced media and lobbying professionals, usually with experience as government officials, Congressmen, Senators, and (like me) Congressional staff. These are people who have the access to make a foreign country's - or politician's, or political party's - case heard in Washington's corridors of power.

Many countries a lot poorer than Serbia have made the decision it's an investment they need to make, if only for self-protection. It is a choice Bishop Artemije, to his credit, made when no one else on the Serbian side was willing to step forward. And now there are those who seek to punish him for it, and punish Serbia too. Thats not just a crime, it's a blunder.

Georgian Opposition Wants U.S. To Renounce Recognition Of Kosovo

TBILISI -- The chairman of Georgia's opposition Labor Party is in Washington to discuss Georgian-U.S.-Russian relations and the recognition of Kosovo and Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, RFE/RL's Georgian and Russian services report.

Labor Party Secretary-General Joseph Shatberashvili told RFE/RL that the main goal of Shalva Natelashvili's visit to Washington is "to start a dialogue with Moscow and Washington' on Moscow's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Washington's recognition of Kosovo.

Shatberashvili says that Labor Party leaders believe that if Washington would revoke its recognition of Kosovo's independence it would cause Russia to reconsider its decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.

Shatberashvili did not specify with whom Natelashvili is scheduled to meet in Washington.

Shatberashvili said that after the talks in the United States, Natelashvili -- who is known as one of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's "most consistent critics" -- will travel to Moscow to hold similar talks with Russian officials.

Moscow recognized the Georgian republics as independent countries after a brief war with Georgia in August 2008.

Only Russia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua have recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but 62 countries have recognized Kosovo's independence from Serbia.

Not much positive news from Afghanistan

AS EVERYONE scrambles to predict a possible future outlook for war-ravaged Afghanistan, the negative variables continue to mount.

The Taliban have boldly stepped up their attacks in the power vacuum created by the failed August elections and the countrywide apathy in anticipation of the upcoming Nov. 7 presidential run-off vote.

October was by far the deadliest month of the war with 50 Allied soldiers killed, including yet another Canadian. The daring assault against the United States guest house in the fortified centre of Kabul last Tuesday - coincidental with an equally brash attack against the posh foreigners-only Serena Hotel - indicates that even in areas previously considered secure, the Taliban can now instigate violence and terror.

The steady stream of negative news has caused one international observer to warn us that "Afghanistan could become Somalia." Simon Chesterman uttered this dire warning while he was in Ottawa to deliver a speech to the International Development Research Centre.

Cited by the media as an Oxford-educated lawyer who is a specialist in state building, it was Chesterman's quotes about the Balkans that disturbed me the most.

"The successes we've had in state building, such as they are, are places like Kosovo," he said.

While Chesterman is certainly not alone in his attempt to paint the Kosovo fiasco as a "success," I think that if we are going to use it as a yardstick to measure progress in Afghanistan, a little dose of objective reality needs to be injected into the equation.

Kosovo was recognized as the sovereign territory and religious heartland of Serbia prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The ethnic Albanian majority of Kosovo, behind the armed instigation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, began a serious quest for independence in 1998 through a campaign of terror attacks on Serb police and civilians.

For years, the Central Intelligence Agency listed the army as a terrorist organization, but then had a change of heart in January 1999 when they were declared "freedom fighters."

In March 1999, the U.S. pressured the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into intervening in Kosovo on behalf of the ethnic Albanians.

The NATO bombing campaign, which lasted 78 days, triggered a massive exodus of Albanian refugees fleeing the war zone. This horde of humanity fled into neighbouring countries like Macedonia and created a humanitarian crisis the world could not ignore.

As NATO air strikes against targets in both Kosovo and Serbia failed to wear down the will of Serbs to resist, the NATO propaganda machine began spinning tales of widespread slaughter and genocide being perpetrated against the ethnic Albanians. While this may have kept morale up on the NATO home front, the body count and mass graves failed to materialize when the Serbs forced a negotiated peace settlement with the alliance.

As part of the terms of agreement for NATO soldiers to enter Kosovo unopposed, the West agreed to continued recognition of the sovereignty of the territory as that of Serbia. It was also stated in the UN Resolution 1244 ceasefire agreement that NATO would disarm and disband the Kosovo Liberation Army and protect the ethnic Serb minority and their Orthodox Christian religious sites.

As events unfolded, the army was never disbanded - it was simply renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps - and the Albanians launched an immediate wave of slaughter and destruction against Serbs and their property.

NATO troops initially dismissed these attacks against the Serbs as reprisals, but in March 2004 - five years into the international occupation - the Albanians staged a massive three-day pogrom of violence against the remaining Serbian enclaves.

The status of Kosovo remained in disputed limbo until February 2008, when Albanian leadership followed the U.S. State Department's advice and unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. The U.S. knew that Russia and China would block such a secession at the UN Security Council, and they thought that by having the Kosovo Albanians deliver a fait accompli, they could bypass the procedural roadblock.

Given that Kosovo is occupied by some 17,000 foreign troops and is entirely dependent on foreign aid for survival, one could easily argue that there is nothing truly independent about it. When you add in the fact that it is an unstable administration headed by indicted war criminals and drug lords, one has to once again question what constitutes a success in the mind of Chesterman.

Kosovo's current prime minister is Hashim (The Snake) Thaci, who was the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army when Agim Ceku was its military commander. Keen-eyed Canadian readers may recall that Agim Ceku commanded the Croatian troops who committed the barbaric massacre of Serbs at the Medak Pocket in September 1993. It was the Canadian soldiers of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry who bore witness to those events and who still question how individuals like Ceku can avoid being brought to justice. But I digress.

Despite incredible pressure from the U.S., only 62 United Nations countries to date have recognized Kosovo's declared independence. On the flip side, some 92 nations have opposed that declaration. With Russian and Chinese vetoes at the Security Council, Kosovo cannot join the UN. As there are five European Union and four NATO members opposed to its independence, Kosovo cannot hope to join those organizations either.

On Oct. 8, 2008, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to support Serbia's request to have the legality of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence reviewed by the International Court of Justice. Those hearings are set to begin in December of this year. Should the Serbian government successfully make its case, Canada may have to revoke recognition of Kosovo in order to respect the international rule of law.

Awash in violence, a rampant drug trade, war criminal leadership, occupied by foreign troops, dependant on foreign aid and a future status in limbo sounds a lot more like Afghanistan than Chesterman would care to admit.

United Nations authority: after Kosovo

The ability of the United Nations to play a leading role in the emerging era of multilateral diplomacy is compromised by the recognition of Kosovo's independence, says James Ker-Lindsay.

A number of recent developments at the United Nations have been welcomed as significant reassertions of the importance of multilateral diplomacy. Barack Obama's speech at the general assembly on 23 September 2009, followed a day later by the UN Security Council's unanimous resolution in favour of nuclear disarmament, are but two events that highlight the central role the UN can play in providing a means for states to work with one another.

There is a real danger, however, that such moves have come too late. For the UN's multilateral potential has already suffered great damage - and not always at the hands of the usual suspects (such as Iran or North Korea). Indeed, it is arguable that the single most significant challenge to the organisation's authority in recent times has been led by the western members of the Security Council: Britain, France and the United States. In particular, their decision to recognise Kosovo, following its unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in February 2008, marked a major - perhaps irreparable - break with the established rules of UN politics.

Such a statement may seem unduly harsh, if not a gross exaggeration. After all, climate change, nuclear proliferation and the conflicts in the middle east and Afghanistan would all rank as more serious threats to human peace and security than a relatively insignificant issue in the western Balkans. But the argument here is not about the magnitude of the threat but the erosion of UN authority. And if the UN is considered as the supreme forum for international cooperation of matters of peace and security, the handling of Kosovo has dealt a great blow to the UN's authority. Even the invasion of Iraq does not compare, for in that case the decision was at least based on a particular reading of a UN Security Council resolution. In the case of Kosovo, by contrast, the problem was that action was taken to bypass the Security Council altogether.

The process

The UN Security Council authorised the start of future-status talks between the Serbian government and the Kosovo Albanian leadership in autumn 2005; it appointed Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, to lead the talks. Ahtisaari decided that there was no alternative to independence - an option bitterly opposed by Serbia - and thus set to work drafting a proposal to this end.

Florian Bieber, "Kosovo: one year on" (17 February 2009) This approach was troubling on two counts. First, in making no effort to reach a solution acceptable to both sides, it broke with established principles of conflict-resolution. Instead, one side was given everything it wanted, and the other side told that it should accept it. Many officials defended this decision by arguing that there was no other option, because the wars of the 1990s in the region had made reconciliation impossible. This is a weak argument. The same line of reasoning, after all, is not applied to other groups around the world who have suffered persecution at the hands of a larger or more powerful ethnic group (the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Kurds of Turkey or Iraq, for example); and the claim that Kosovo's position in Yugoslavia supported its right to statehood alongside the six republics (Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) does not hold up.

Second, the decision to propose independence marked an important departure from international practice on the creation of new states. Ahtisaari, by proposing statehood against Belgrade's wishes, undermined the principle enshrined in the UN charter of the territorial integrity of states. This prompted Russia's then representative at the UN, Vitaly Churkin, to suggest that it was the most important issue to come before the organisation in the past decade. In response, many would see another right embodied in the UN charter - that of self-determination - as supporting Kosovo's independence. But this is not the position of western officials, who have instead consistently argued that the case for independence is rooted in unique factors arising from the collapse of Yugoslavia - something that many other groups around the world could equally claim.

The rules

The Russian government, influenced by these considerations (as well as other, perhaps less honourable, intentions) decided to block a resolution implementing Martti Ahtisaari's proposals when they were brought before the UN Security Council. Moscow held fast to its position against numerous pressures and inducements (including the offer of a further series of talks). In the end, the three western members of the Security Council - after Russia's veto of the Ahtisaari proposals in the UNSC, and amid a deteriorating situation in Kosovo itself - decided that there was no alternative but to let Kosovo go its own way without UN approval.

The serious problem is that, in the context of a debate on UN authority, this argument has no validity. The permanent members' right to block decisions in the Security Council, whatever problems this may cause to the decision-making process, is also enshrined within the UN charter - and thus a fundamental cornerstone of international law. It cannot merely be ignored. Britain, France and the United States all expect their decisions to veto resolutions to be respected and accepted; even if it is deeply unpopular and isolates them in the council. If the sanctity of the UN system is to be preserved, the same principle must apply to all.

True, it is inherently troubling and uncomfortable to see powerful states such as Russia blocking UNSC decisions on grounds of selfish national interest or Realpolitik. But Moscow has the same legal right as the other permanent members to express a view and cast a veto; and the UN's integrity cannot be retained if the will of one permanent member is simply ignored. The UN system desperately needs reform, but until this is achieved the rules it operates under should be observed.

The repair

The decision of three permanent members of the Security Council to recognise Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence without an explicit council resolution was understandable in terms of the regional situation in the Balkans, and may have been done with the best of intentions. It has also severely undermined the UN and opened the way for others to follow suit. It was all too apparent that Russia was able to use the decision of Britain, France and the United States in justification for its own recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August 2008. If the western members can choose when to ignore the Security Council and the principles of international law when it suits them, so too can Russia - and China.

Indeed, in an era when the balance of power is shifting in international affairs and new leaders are emerging on the world stage, it is ever more important to ensure that the rule of law and the principles established over sixty years are bolstered rather than weakened.

The evidence of renewed commitment to the strengthening of the United Nations as a global actor, including from the Barack Obama administration, is welcome. The question is whether it is too late to repair the damage that has already been done - and if not, how to do it?