Twenty Years Commemoration of the “March Pogrom” in Kosovo

EUROPE, 15 Apr 2024

Vladislav B. Sotirovic – TRANSCEND Media Service

Introduction

8 Apr 2024 – This article deals with the question of political and human/minority rights in the region of Kosovo & Metohija twenty years after the “2004 March Pogrom” and twenty-five years after NATO’s military aggression on Serbia and Montenegro and occupation of the region. An importance of this research topic is in fact that for the first time in European history, a terrorist-style and mafia-ruled (quasi)independent state was created by a full diplomatic, political, economic, military, and financial sponsorship by the West under the umbrella of the NATO’s and the EU’s protective administration. The precedence of Kosovo’s self-proclaimed independence in February 2008 already had several negative „domino effect“ consequences elsewhere in Europe (the Caucasus, the Crimean Peninsula,  the Donbas region…). The article aims to present the current situation in Kosovo & Metohija and the possible consequences of the Kosovo case for international relations and the post-Cold War 1.0 world order.

The NATO’s intervention in 1999 and its consequences

It passed twenty years after the „2004 March Pogrom“ in Kosovo & Metohija against the local Serbs organized and done by Kosovo Albanians, led by the veterans from the Kosovo Liberation Army – the KLA and logistically supported by NATO’s occupation troops in Kosovo & Metohija under the name of the Kosovo Forces – the KFOR. That was simply a continuation of the last stage (up to now) of dismemberment of ex-Yugoslavia – the Kosovo War (1998-1999) and NATO’s military intervention (March 24th–June 10th, 1999) against and aggression on Serbia and Montenegro (at that time composing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – the FRY) by violating the international law.[1] In this context, we can say that at the end of the 20th century, the fate of ex-Yugoslavia was determined by several international organizations, but not decisively by the Yugoslavs themselves.[2]

NATO’s military intervention against the FRY in March-June of 1999 (led by the USA) for the formal reason of protection of human (Albanian) rights in Kosovo,[3] marked a crucial step toward finishing the process of creation of the global „Pax Americana“ in the form of NATO’s World Order – the NWO.[4] As NATO used force against the FRY without the UN Security Council sanctions and permission and also without an official proclamation of the war we can call this military intervention a pure „aggression “ against one sovereign state according to the international rules and law.[5] In the Balkans in the 1990s, NATO acquired not only a big military experience and an opportunity to exhaust old and use new weapons[6] but also managed to enhance its activities, making its way to a global organization.

After the Kosovo War, the UN’s Security Council Resolution 1244 (from June 1999) gave the mandate for the effective protection of the universal human and minority rights values of all inhabitants on the territory of southern Serbia’s Autonomous Region of Kosovo & Metohija (in the English language known only as Kosovo).[7] In such a way, the responsibility for the protection of human lives, freedom, and security in Kosovo was thus transferred to the “international” public authorities, but, in fact, only to NATO: the administration of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo – the UNMIK, and the “international” military forces – (the KFOR, Kosovo Forces). Unfortunately, very soon this responsibility was challenged as around 200.000 ethnic Serbs and members of other non-Albanian communities were expelled from the region by the local ethnic Albanians led by the KLA’s veterans. In any case, mostly suffered the ethnic Serbs. It left today only up to 3% of the non-Albanians in Kosovo in comparison to the pre-war situation out of a total number of the non-Albanians in this province that was at least 12%. Only up to March 2004 around 120 Serb Orthodox Christian religious objects and cultural monuments were devastated or destroyed.[8]

The “2004 March Pogrom”

However, the most terrible in the series of Kosovo Albanian eruptions of violence against the Serbs living in this region was organized and carried out between March 17th and 19th, 2004, having all the features of the organized pogrom. During the tragic events of the “2004 March Pogrom”, a destructive assault of tens of thousands by Kosovo Albanians led by armed groups of redressed KLA’s veterans (the Kosovo Protection Corpus – the KPC, a future Kosovo Albanian regular army) resulted in a systematic ethnic cleansing of the remaining Serbs was carried out, together with destruction of houses, other property, cultural monuments, and Serbian Orthodox Christian religious sites. Nevertheless, the international civil and military forces in the region have been only “stunned” and “surprised” by what was going on. The “2004 March Pogrom”, which resulted, according to the documentary sources, in the loss of several tens of lives, several hundreds of wounded (including the members of the KFOR as well), more than 4.000 exiled ethnic Serbs, more than 800 Serbian houses set on fire and 35 destroyed or severely damaged Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and cultural monuments,[9] surely revealed the real situation on the ground in Kosovo even 60 years after the Holocaust during WWII. Unfortunately, the attempts of the Serbs especially by the government of Serbia at that time led by Dr. Vojislav Koštunica (a leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia) to call international attention to the human and minority rights violation situation in this region were unsuccessful.

Toward a Greater Albania

It is thus necessary to reiterate that ethnic cleansing of the Serbs (and other non-Albanian populations) in the region of Kosovo by the local Albanians after the mid-June 1999 means putting into practice the annihilation of a Serbian territory of exquisite historical, spiritual, political, and cultural top-level significance in terms of the Serbian nation, state and the church, and its every-day visible transformation into another Albanian state in the Balkans with a real wish and possibility to unify it with a neighboring motherland Albania (almost all Kosovo Albanians are originally from Albania). In such a way, the main geopolitical goal of the First Albanian Prizren League from June 1878 is being brought to its attainment, including its implications for the Preševo Valley in Southeast Serbia, the western portion of North Macedonia up to the River of Vardar, a Greek portion of the Epirus province, and East Montenegro (Crna Gora). It is known that the Albanian political workers required within a framework of the First Albanian Prizren League (1878-1881) a creation of a Greater Albania as an autonomous province in the Ottoman Empire composed of “all Albanian ethnic territories”. More precisely, it was required that four Ottoman provinces (vilayets) of Scodra, Ioannina, Bitola, and Kosovo would be combined into a single Albanian national Ottoman province of Vilayet of Albania. However, in two out of four required “Albanian” provinces – Bitola and Kosovo, the ethnic Albanians did not compose even a single majority at that time.[10] Nevertheless, such a Greater Albania with a capital in Tirana existed during WWII under Mussolini’s and Hitler’s protectorate.

The Albanian national movement, established under the program of the First Albanian Prizren League in 1878, is continuing with its terrorist activities up today. It was particularly active in the period of Italian and German-supported Greater Albania from April 1941 to May 1945, when it undertook the organization of the Albanian Quisling network of agents. During this period around 100.000 Serbs from Kosovo & Metohija were expelled from their homes in addition to around 200.000 expelled Serbs during Socialist Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1980 led by Josip Broz Tito who was of Slovene and Croat ethnic origin born in Croatia and notorious anti-Serb.[11] The process of articulation of the Albanian secessionist movement in Kosovo & Metohija continued during the post-WWII Yugoslavia and was carried out by Kosovo Albanian anti-Serb communist partocracy. The process became particularly intense and successful in the period between 1968-1989. For instance, only from 1981 to 1987 there were 22.307 Serbs and Montenegrins who were forced to leave Kosovo & Metohija.[12] The entrance of NATO’s troops in the region in June 1999 marks the beginning of the last stage of the Albanian-planned and carried out the “Final Solution” of the Serbian Question on the territory of Kosovo & Metohija – a historical and cultural cradle of the Serbian nation, but in which only the ethnic Albanians have to live in the future.

In light of the main Albanian goal – to establish ethnically pure Greater Albania – it is “understandable” why it is so important to destroy any Serbian trace on the territory defined by the aspirations. The Albanian terrorism has been developing for more than two centuries. It has the profile of ethnically, i.e. the ethno-racist style motivated terrorism (like the Croat one), marked by excessive animosity against the Serbs.[13] Its principal features are the following:

All kinds of repressive measures were directed against the Serbian population.

Carrying practical actions to force the Serbs to leave their homes.

The devastation of the Serbian Orthodox Christian religious objects and other cultural monuments belonging to the Serbian nation as they testify the ten centuries-long presence of the Serbs in Kosovo & Metohija.

Destruction of the complete infrastructure used by the members of the Serbian community.

Destruction of the Serbian cemeteries means de facto destruction of the historical roots of the Serbs in the region.

Experiment Kosovo: „Die rückkehr des kolonialismus“

A long-standing Muslim Albanian oppression and terror against the Christian Orthodox Serbian community in Kosovo & Metohija is a specific phenomenon with grave consequences not only for the local Serbs. It became, however, clear that sooner or later it would bring about severe problems for the rest of Europe as well.

Two decades have passed since the „2004 March Pogrom“ and a quarter of a century since NATO’s military aggression against a sovereign European state of the FRY. At the moment, the crucial questions are:

1) What goals did NATO pursue?

2) Whether it manage to cope with its tasks in the following (25) years?

3) What did these years bring to those who threw bombs and those who were attacked?

It has to be made clear that during the Kosovo War, NATO did not achieve a military victory as it failed to destroy the army of the FRY and the soldiers’ morale. However, a campaign of bombing got the right political atmosphere for destroying Serbia (purposely not so much Montenegro) and for imposing their conditions on the Serbian government, including the rules of cooperation with the EU, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (in the Hague) and with NATO as well. After June 1999, Serbia lost almost all opportunities to control its own state’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security becoming at the same time a Western political, financial, and economic colony. After several years of injustice and punishment by the West before 1999, the Serbs as a nation lost the will to fight, to resist as they were practically alone when tried to repel the attack of the powerful Western military alliance in March-June 1999. As a consequence, after June 1999 it became much easier for the West to continue the process of destruction of Yugoslavia and to carry out a policy of transforming the region into its own colonial domain with occupied Kosovo & Metohija as the best example of „die rückkehr des kolonialismus“.[14]

In October 2000 Slobodan Milosević, who was the head of Serbia for ten years, was ousted by the street revolution putsch-style like it was done with Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev in February 2014.[15] At first sight, the move came as unexpected, easy, and legal, in other words – Yugoslavia’s home affair. However, the „Revolution of the Fifth October 2000“ in Belgrade, in fact, had been very thoroughly prepared by special divisions („Otpor“ or „Resistance“) sponsored by the West, especially by the CIA. The method proved to be so successful that, according to one Western documentary movie based on the testimonies by the members of the Serbian “Otpor“ movement, it was later used in Georgia (the „Rose Revolution“ in November 2003) and Ukraine (the „Orange Revolution“ from late November 2004 to January 2005 and finally in 2013/2014), but failed in Moldova, and Iran in 2009. The same source claims that the Georgian opposition was taught in Serbia, while their Ukrainian colleagues of the „Orange Revolution“ were drilled also in Serbia and Georgia.[16]

From the time of the end of the Cold War 1.0 in 1989, Serbia remained a symbol of independence and disobedience to NATO’s World Order in Europe. However, the new authorities in Serbia after October 2000 obeyed NATO’s World Order and everything went smoothly. The dismemberment of the FRY started when having arrived in Belgrade in February 2003, Javier Solana, a top EU representative and official, suggested to a group of officials from Serbia and Montenegro to admit that the FRY ceased to exist, and adopt the constitution charter, written in Brussels. Its text was proclaiming, for the beginning, the appearance of a new country. Solana did not face any resistance. Consequently, the FRY was renamed to the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and officially abolished the name ”Yugoslavia” which was in official use from 1929. In 2006 Montenegro and  Serbia declared independence, thereby ending the common South Slavic state (only Bulgarians have been out from this state as the South Slavs) established in 1918 under the original name of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (this name was used till 1929). It was Javier Solana who did it even though he today remains a war criminal for the majority of the Serbs as he bombed their country in 1999 as the General Secretary of NATO killing 3.500 citizens of Serbia including children and women with a material damage to the country around 200.000 billion US $.[17]

After the year 2000, it was easier to implement NATO’s plans which seemed simply fantastic under Slobodan Milošević as president of Serbia and later the FRY.[18] The last Yugoslavia (Serbia & Montenegro) was undermined, its integration slowed down till its final dissolution in 2006, and Serbia’s strength was exhausted. What NATO, USA, and EU failed to achieve in the castle of Rambouillet (in France) in 1998/1999 (during the ultimatum-negotiations with S. Milošević on the Kosovo crisis) and through 78 days of cruel and inhuman bombing in March-June 1999, they got on July 18th, 2005, when Serbia and Montenegro signed a deal with NATO “On the Lines of Communication”. This was a technical agreement that allowed NATO’s personnel and equipment to transit through the country. Under the deal, NATO could enjoy such opportunities for quite a long time – “until all peacekeeping operations in the Balkans are over”. Thus NATO was given the green light to enlarge its presence in the region and control the army of both Serbia and Montenegro. On April 1st, 2009 Albania and Croatia completed the accession process which was followed by Montenegro on June 5th, 2017, and North Macedonia on March 27th, 2020 when all of these Balkan states joined NATO as full members and in such a way surrounding Serbia by NATO members from all sides except from Bosnian-Herzegovinian one. Today the Balkans are NATO’s permanent military base. For instance, in October 2008 Serbia’s defense minister and NATO officials signed the agreement on information security, which allows NATO to control everyone who deals with their documents or just cooperates with them. For this very reason, NATO insisted on the secrecy of the negotiations with the pro-Western government of Serbia.

The aftermath of the 1999 aggression on Serbia and Montenegro for NATO was the most favorable. Nobody condemned NATO and they felt even more confident in the global perspective (Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003…). In recent years the world has witnessed that NATO was making several attempts at its own expansion. Currently, NATO’s military bloc is occupying more positions in the Balkans, using old and building new military camps with an attempt to include into its organization after Montenegro and North Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (the latter one only after the cancellation of the Republic of Srpska as a political subject). The existence of a huge NATO military camp „Bondsteel“ in Kosovo & Metohija is the best proof that the region is going to be under US/NATO’s dominance for a longer time if the balance between the Great Powers (the US/Russia/China) will not be drastically changed. However, the current crisis (war) over Ukraine is the first herald of such change, i.e. of the beginning of the new Cold War era or even WWIII.

Ethnic/cultural cleansing and the domino effect

The most disappointing fact in the present post-war Kosovo reality is for sure an ethnic and cultural cleansing of all non-Albanians and non-Albanian cultural heritage under the NATO/KFOR/EULEX/UNMIK’s umbrella. The proofs are evident in every corner of Kosovo territory, but purposely not covered by the Western mass media and politicians. For instance, on the arrival of the KFOR (an international, but, in fact, NATO’s „Kosovo Forces“) and the UNMIK (the „United Nations Mission in Kosovo“) to Kosovo & Metohija in 1999, all names of the towns and streets in this province were renamed to have the (Muslim) Albanian forms or new names. The monuments to Serbian heroes like the monument devoted to Duke Lazar (who led the Serbian Christian army during the Kosovo Battle on June 28th, 1389 against the Muslim Turks) in the town of Gnjilane, were demolished. The Serbs were and are getting killed, assassinated, wounded, and abducted, and their houses burned to the ground. As I mentioned earlier, the most infamous ethnic cleansing was done between March 17th and 19th, 2004 – the so-called „2004 March Pogrom“.

As of today, the number of the Serbs that were killed or went missing in Kosovo & Metohija from June 1999 onward (after the KFOR arrived), is measured in thousands, the number of demolished Serbian Christian Orthodox churches and monasteries is measured in hundreds, and the number of burned down Serbian houses in tens of thousands. Even though the KFOR had as many as 50.000 soldiers at the beginning as well as several thousand policemen and civilian mission members, mainly none of the above-mentioned crimes have been solved. In fact, murdering a Serb in Kosovo is not considered a crime, on the contrary, the murderers of children and the elderly are being rewarded as heroes by their ethnic Albanian compatriots. The province is almost ethnically clean like Albania and Croatia. As a matter of fact, according to the last pre-war official Yugoslav census of 1991, there were 13% of non-Albanians in Kosovo & Metohija (in reality surely more). However, it is estimated that today 97% of Kosovo & Metohija’s population is only ethnic Albanian. In light of the main national goal of the Albanians – the establishment of another Albanian state in the Balkans and Europe, as the first step towards the pan-Albanian state unification – we can „understand“ why it is important to destroy any Serbian trace in the „territory defined by the aspirations“.[19]

The final stage of cutting Kosovo & Metohija from their motherland of Serbia came on February 17th, 2008 when Kosovo Albanians received Washington’s permission to proclaim its formal (quasi)independence which happened, in fact, later than expected by Russia and China. At the UN Security Council Moscow said „no“ to Kosovo’s independence as Russia respects the interests of Serbia and officially condemns all attempts to impose decisions on other members of the international community by breaking international law (in the Kosovo & Metohija’s case it is the UN Resolution 1244). The fact is that the Serbs have not forgotten Kosovo, but have not done much about it either. Now there are some 80 states that recognize Kosovo’s independence, including the majority of EU’s and NATO’s members (out of 192 UNO members).[20] Almost all of them are the neighbors of Serbia and except Bosnia-Herzegovina, all the ex-Yugoslav republics have recognized Kosovo. Bosnia-Herzegovina did not recognize it for the very reason: the Republic of Srpska, still an autonomous political unit within Bosnia-Herzegovina alongside the Muslim-Croat Federation according to the Dayton/Paris Peace Agreement in 1995, has and use the veto right. At the moment, in Kosovo, there is the EULEX (European Civil Mission) and the Kosovo issue is gradually being moved out of the UNO jurisdiction and out of reach of the Russian veto in the UN Security Council becoming more and more NATO’s and EU’s governed territory. There is the so-called Kosovo Security Forces (in fact the redressed members of the KLA), which was formed according to Martti Ahtisaari’s plan with active support from NATO to be today, in fact, transformed into the unofficial regular (Albanian) Army of the Republic of Kosovo to fulfill the task of the final ethnic cleansing of the province what is during the last years, in fact, going on the agenda.

What is true about today’s political reality in Kosovo & Metohija is the fact that this territory in the form of a client (quasi)state is given to be administered by the members of the KLA – a military organization which was in 1998 proclaimed by the US administration as a terrorist one. Anyway, the KLA became both the first successful rebellious movement and terrorist organization in Europe after WWII. The movement was originally developed from a tiny Albanian diaspora in Switzerland in the second half of the 1980s to around 18.000 soldiers[21] financed and clearly supported by all means by the US administration.[22] In order to realize its own crucial political task – a separation of Kosovo & Metohija province from the rest of Serbia with a possibility to unite it with Albania, the KLA was allied with NATO between 1997-1999. The KLA’s strategy of the war terror was based on a long tradition of the Albanians to oppose by arms any organized authority in the form of a state from the Ottoman time up to today. However, the military intervention by NATO in 1999 against Serbia and Montenegro over the Kosovo question was portrayed in the American and the West European media as a necessary step to prevent the Serbian armed forces from repeating the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But the truth was that Serbia trained its military on Kosovo & Metohija because of an ongoing armed struggle by KLA’s terrorist and separatist organization to wrest independence from Serbia for the sake of the creation of a Greater Albania with ethnically pure Kosovo & Metohija and later on the western parts of North Macedonia, East Montenegro, and the Greek Epirus.[23]

Nevertheless, former US President Barrack Obama congratulated at the very beginning of his presidential mandate the leaders of the „multiethnic, independent and democratic Kosovo“ regardless of the facts that those leaders (especially Hashim Tachi – the „Snake“ and Ramush Haradinay) are proved to be notorious war criminals, that the region (state?) is not either multicultural or really independent and particularly not democratic one. However, there are several official EU declarations and unofficial political statements encouraging Belgrade and Priština to cooperate and „develop neighborly relations“ that practically means for Serbia that Belgrade has firstly to recognize Albanian Kosovo independence in order to become the EU’s member state after the years or even decades of negotiations. Another fact is that the process of international recognition of Kosovo’s independence is much slower than Priština and Washington expected at the beginning. From the time of Kosovo’s self-proclamation of independence, Serbia’s greatest diplomatic „success“ is the majority of votes in 2008 of the UNO General Assembly supporting the decision that the case of Kosovo independence should be considered by the International Court of Justice in the Hague (established in 1899). On the one hand, the Court’s decision on the issue in July 2010 was very favorable for Kosovo’s Albanian (the KLA’s) separatists and terrorists as it was concluded a verdict that a unilateral proclamation of Kosovo’s independence in February 2008 was done within a framework of the international law (in this context, probably, the proclamation of the Republic of Serbian Krayina from Croatia or the Republic of Srpska from Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s were done according to international law!?). However, on the other hand, the Court’s verdict in 2010 already became also very favorable for separatism movements elsewhere like in March 2014 for the separatists in the Crimean Peninsula or maybe soon for their colleagues from Catalonia, Scotland, the Northern Italy (Lega Nord)…[24] Kosovo’s self-proclamation of independence had a direct domino effect only a few months later when in August 2008 South Ossetia and Abkhazia did the same from Georgia.[25]

The (murky) reality in present-day Kosovo & Metohija, on the other side, is that there is not a single ethnic Albanian party in the deeply divided Kosovo’s political scene that would be ready to accept a „peaceful reintegration“ of the region into Serbia’s political sphere and there is no a single ethnic Albanian politician who is not concerned about the danger posed by the „division of Kosovo“ to the Albanian (major) part and Serbian (minor) part and does not oppose slightest suggestions of the Serbian autonomy for the northern portion of Kosovo & Metohija. However, what is more important: Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders and even the citizens of Albanian ethnic origin do not even consider national dilemmas like „Europe or independence!“ There is no doubt what their answer is going to be in that case. On the other side, what is going on in Serbia? The answer is that a nation unable to choose between territorial integrity on the one side, and membership in an international association (although an important but in many aspects anti-Serbian one) on the other, i.e. a nation who cannot choose between these two „priorities“ really deserves to lose both.

Final remarks

In the end, if the international law and fixed order are broken on one side of the globe (ex. Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq) it is nothing strange to expect that the same law and order are going to be broken somewhere else (ex. at the Caucasus, Ukraine, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, France…) following the logic of the so-called „domino effect“ reaction in the international relations. Finally, it has to be noted that if the Albanian extremism is not stopped, North Macedonia and Montenegro will have to give up parts of their territories populated by ethnic Albanians (West Macedonia and East Montenegro). In this case, Europe will have to decide how to discuss the issue of the borders’ revision and how to recognize a new enlarged state of (the Greater) Albania.

References

[1] That NATO violated the international law by bombing the FRY in 1999 was clearly recognized in March 2014 by at that time Germany’s cancellor (the PM) Gerhard Schreder (Нова српска политичка мисао, March 10^th, 2014: http://www.nspm.rs/hronika/gerhard-sreder-intervenicija-na-krimu-je-krsenje-medjunarodnog-prava-ali-to-je-bilo-i-nase-bombardovanje-srbije-1999.html). On this issue see documentary movie  in three parts: „NATO’s Illegal War Against Serbia“ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joaNkHKxapk; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaz8rzUW0Lc; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4vzr8l3FvU). On the identity and politics in the post-Yugoslavia’s successor states, see: Robert Hudson, Glenn Bowman, After Yugoslavia: Identities and Politics Within the Successor States, London-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

[2] On the issue of destruction of ex-Yugoslavia and Kosovo question, see: F. Stephen Larrabee (ed.), The Volatile Powder Keg: Balkan Security after the Cold War, Washington, D.C.: The American University Press, 1994; Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995; Richard H. Ullman (ed.), The World and Yugoslavia‘s Wars, New York: A Council on Foreign Relations, 1996; James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War, London: Hurst & Company, 1997; John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000; Jelena Guskova, Istorija jugoslovenske krize 1990–2000, I-II, Beograd: IGA“M“, 2003; Ian King, Whit Mason, Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo, London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd, 2006; David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul and Beyond: Human Rights and International Intervention, London-Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006; David L. Phillips, Liberating Kosovo: Coercive Diplomacy and U.S. Intervention, Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science, 2012; Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers 1804–2011, New York-London: Penguin Books, 2012.

[3] See: Ken Booth (ed.), The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions, London-Portland, OR: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 2001.

[4] On the issue of the NWO and the Russian Balkan policy, see: Vladislav B. Sotirović, „The NATO World Order, the Balkans and the Russian National Interest“, Vladislav B. Sotirović, Balcania: Scientific Articles in English, Vilnius: Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences Press „Edukologija“, 2013, pp. 110-129; James Headley, Russia and the Balkans: Foreign Policy from Yeltsin to Putin, London: Hurst & Company, 2008.

[5] Costis Hadjimichalis, „Kosovo, 82 Days of an Undeclared and Unjust War: A Geopolitical Comment“, European Urban and Regional Studies, 7 (2), 2000, pp. 175-180.

[6] On the issue of used depleted uranium by the NATO during the Persian Gulf War and the Kosovo War, see: Darryl P. Arfsten, Kenneth R. Still, Glenn D. Ritchie, „A Review of the Effects of Uranium and Depleted Uranium Exposure on Reproduction and Fetal Development“, Toxicology and Industrial Health, 17, 2001, pp. 180-191. It has to be noticed that the depleted uranium was used by NATO’s forces in 1999 bombing of the FRY in armour-penetrating munitions, military vehicle armor, and aircraft, ship and missile counterweighting and ballasting applications. The combat applications of the depleted uranium alloy in the Persian Gulf War and the Kosovo War resulted in human acute exposure to the depleted uranium’s dust, vapor or aerosol, and to the chronic exposure from tissue embedding of the depleted uranium’s shrapnel fragments.

[7] On the universal human and minority rights, see: Will Kymlicka (ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures, Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2000; Jan Knippers Black, The Politics of Human Rights Protection, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010; Dinah L. Shelton, Paolo G. Carozza, Regional Protection of Human Rights: Basic Documents, Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. It has to be stressed that the Albanian minority in Serbia within the region of Kosovo & Metohija in the Socialist Yugoslavia enjoyed all kind of minority rights according to the international law and even above it. The region has its own president, constitution, parliament, police, academy of science, law, press, education system, etc. In other words, Albanian-run and dominated Kosovo & Metohija was in fact an independent political subject in Yugoslavia equal with all Yugoslavia’s republics. Within such political conditions Kosovo Albanians developed a high range of the policy of the oppression and expulsion from the region of the ethnic Serbs with a strong tendency to separate the region from the rest of Serbia and include it into a Greater Albania. What S. Milošević’s government did in 1989, in fact, it was abolishment of just political independence of both autonomous regions in Serbia – Vojvodina and Kosovo & Metohija in order to protect Serbia from territorial destruction. However, even after 1989 Kosovo Albanians enjoyed minority rights according to the basic standards of the international law. Many minorities in Europe or elsewhere today can just dream about minority rights left to Kosovo Albanians by Serbia’s government in 1989. For the matter of comparison, for instance, the Kurds in Turkey (from 1999 a candidate country for the EU membership) enjoy no single minority right for the very reason as they are not recognized as minority group at all. From the legal point of view by the Turkish government, the Kurds do not even exist in Turkey as the ethnocultural and linguistic group. For this reason, the process of Kurdish assimilation in Turkey is on the way on. On the Kurdish question in Turkey, see: Metin Heper, The State and Kurds in Turkey: The Question of Assimilation, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; Cenk Saraçoglu, Kurds of Modern Turkey: Migration, Neoliberalism and Exclusion in Turkish Society, Tauris Academic Studies, 2010; Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; Noah Beratsky (ed.), The Kurds, Greenhaven Press, 2013; Ramazan Aras, The Formation of Kurdishness in Turkey: Political Violence, Fear and Pain, London-New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

[8] On this issue, for instance, see: Мирко Чупић, Отета земља. Косово и Метохија (злочини, прогони, отпори…), Београд: НОЛИТ, 2006;

Video: Boris Malagurski, “Kosovo: Can You Imagine?”, Canada, 2009

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nHWsWOgtiw&index=2&list=PL999EB6ACC07FC959);

Video: “La Guerra Infinita”, First part, RAI, Italy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho2yXwa2dtE&index=21&list=PL999EB6ACC07FC959);

Video: “La Guerra Infinita”, Second part, RAI, Italy

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EnMJXvK7Bw&index=37&list=PL999EB6ACC07FC959).

[9] March Pogrom in Kosovo and Metohija. March 17–19, 2004 with a survay of destroyed and endangered Christian cultural heritage, Belgrade: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia-Museum in Priština (displaced), 2004, p. 8.

[10]Душан Т. Батаковић, Косово и Метохија: Историја и идеологија, Београд: Чигоја штампа, 2007, p. 61.

[11]On Tito’s biography, see: Jasper Ridley, Tito. Biografija, Zagreb: Prometej, 2000;  Перо Симић, Тито. Феномен 20. века, Београд: Службени гласник-Сведоци епохе, 2011.

[12] Јеврем Дамњановић, Косовска голгота, Београд: Интервју, специјално издање, (22. октобар) 1988, p. 38.

[13] On terrorism in Yugoslavia, see: Радослав Гаћиновић, Насиље у Југославији, Београд: Евро, 2002.

[14] Hannes Hofbauer, Eksperiment Kosovo: Povratak kolonijalizma, Beograd: Albatros Plus, 2009 (original title: Experiment Kosovo: Die Rückkehr des Kolonialismus).

[15] On the street-putsch in Ukraine in February 2014, see: „Vitrenko Says World Must Name ‚Neo-Nazi Putsch‘ in Ukraine; Cites Zepp-LaRouche on Danger of World War III“ (http://larouchepac.com/node/29889).

[16] Video: „Beyond the Revolutions: The CIA’s Otpor Organization“ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWhtdPZNsns).

[17] On NATO’s „humanitarian“ intervention in Yugoslavia, see: David N. Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009.

[18] On Slobodan Milošević from the Western perspective, see: Louis Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the destruction of Yugoslavia, Durham-London: Duke University Press, 2002; Adam LeBor, Milosevic. A Biography, London-Berlin-New York-Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2012.

[19] On this issue, see: Petar V. Grujić, Kosovo Knot and Destruction of Yugoslavia, Vol. I, Vilnius, 2014 (http://kosovo-knot.webs.com/).

[20] On Kosovo’s transition to (quasi)independence, see: Aidan Hehir (ed.), Kosovo, Intervention and Statebuilding: The International Community and the Transition to Independence, London-New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010. On the question of contested states, see: Deon Geldenhuys, Contested States in World Politics, London-New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

[21] James Pettifer, The Kosova Liberation Army: Underground War to Balkan Insurgency, 1948–2001, London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd, 2012, the back cover. This book is official history of the KLA ordered and financed by the Albanian-run Kosovo government composed by the KLA veterans.

[22] Sinisa Ljepojevic, Kosovo Murky Reality, Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorsHouse, 2008, p. 1.

[23] See pro-Albanian and pro-western points of view on historical background for the KLA with described its activities up to and including the NATO intervention: Henry H. Perritt Jr. Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of An Insurgency, University of Illinois, 2008. The Albanian KLA is not lesser separatist and terrorist than, for instance, the Kurdish PKK. However, it is allowed for the Turkish government by the „international“ community to use all legal and other means to fight the PKK including and a clear violation of the human rights. On the question of the PKK party, see: Ali Kemal Özcan, Turkey’s Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Öcalan, London-New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006; Aliza Marcus, Blood and Belief: The Kurdish Fight for Independence, New York-London: New York University Press, 2007; Abdullah Öcalan, Prison Writings: The PKK and the Kurdish Question in the 21^st Century, London: Transmedia Publishing Ltd, 2011; Charles Strozier, James Frank, The PKK: Financial Sources, Social and Political Dimensions, VDM-Verlag Dr. Müller, 2011.

[24] On Lega Nord, see: Anna Cento Bull, Mark Gilbert, The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian Politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001; Thomas W. Gold, The Lega Nord and Contemporary Politics in Italy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; Manlio Graziano, The Failure of Italian Nationhood: The Geopolitics of a Troubled Identity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; Andrej Zaslove, The Re-Invention of the European Radical Right: Populism, Regionalism, and the Italian Lega Nord, Montreal & Kingston-London-Ithaca: McGill-Queens University Press, 2011.

[25] Vladislav B. Sotirović, “Kosovo and the Caucasus: A Domino Effect”, Vladislav B. Sotirović, Balcania: Scientific Articles in English, Vilnius: Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences Press „Edukologija“, 2013, pp. 130-141.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic is an ex-university professor and a research fellow at the Centre for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade, Serbia. Email: sotirovic1967@gmail.com – www.geostrategy.rs

Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 15 Apr 2024.

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