Ramush Haradunaj, the ethnic Albanian prime minister of Kosovo (known to the Albanians as Kosova) stepped down from his post and boarded a flight for the The Netherlands March 9, turning himself over to international authorities at The Hague, where he is wanted in connection with atrocities carried out when he was a commander of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA). He shared the flight with another ex-KLA commander, Lahi Brahimaj. The two are now being held at the same prison as former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. (UK Independent, March 10) Hopefully this development will put an end to the incessant whining of the Slobo-suckers that their boy is being unfairly singled out. Meanwhile, two other of their faves, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain at large—presumably in Serb-controlled Bosnia.
For more on the controversial Mr. Haradunaj, see our last blog post on Kosovo/a.
the hardinaj affair
Nebojsa Malic has an excellent article on the Haradinaj affair see here http://antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=5135 . I suggest you read it. The indictment was largely meant for public consumption, to elicit the prescribed response from people (like Bill) critical of NATO but who have also fallen for more than their fair share of anti-Serb propaganda.
The ICTY serves as NATO’s tribunal http://www.swans.com/library/art6/zig041.html
You also seriously misrepresent the issues when you state that "Hopefully this development will put an end to the incessant whining of the Slobo-suckers that their boy is being unfairly singled out. Meanwhile, two other of their faves, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain at large—presumably in Serb-controlled Bosnia." Why the hostile insults and ridiculous name calling? A lot of people (and many of them do not like Milosevic or Karadzic or Mladic) believe that the Serbs are unfairly targeted and there is ample proof to support this. The real issue is that the Serbs and Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montengro) have been unfairly singled out by the imperial powers (the so-called "International Community") which have attacked with devastating sanctions, bombing, threats, and continous demonization. The Western powers gave substantial aid and diplomatic backing to their opponents Izetbegovic’s bosnikak forces, the Croatian army and the KLA. Were the Serbs really the terrible oppressors they were made out to be in Kosovo? Documents from the German Courts and Foreign Ministry in 1998 and 1999 say otherwise. The Serbs were combatting the KLA but were not comitting genocide, ethnic cleansing and the like.
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/Kosovo/Kosovo-controversies49.html
(if anything the signifigance of thses documents is downplayed)
http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/kam/kam04.html
These documents square with the observations of an honest OSCE officer see here http://www.humanrights.de/doc_en/archiv/antikrieg/texte/keith_d.htm
Also the admission, as reported in the Times of London, that the CIA had infiltrated the OSCE’s verification mission and was working with the KLA is highly significant and should be noted.
http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/kam/kam01.html
Evidence of "genocide" committed by the Serbs in Kosovo did not materialize depite substantial attempts to find it. Journalist John Laugland who was in Kosovo wrote an interesting piece on this in Nov. 1999
http://www.antiwar.com/rep/laughland1.html
The body count never came out to anything remotely resembling NATO claims. It was essentially dropped quite a while back. But in fact the total number of bodies AND body parts recovered by late 2000 was less than 4,000. This was a total of the bodies dug up by the Hague Tribunal’s backers and it included not only Albanians but Serbs and people of various other ethnicities as well dead from a variety of causes
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/ga103.html
This is an opening and I will post more soon.
Haradinaj affair
Nebojsa Malic has an excellent article on the Haradinaj affair see here http://antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=5135 . I suggest you read it. The indictment was largely meant for public consumption, to elicit the prescribed response from people (like Bill) critical of NATO but who have also fallen for more than their fair share of anti-Serb propaganda.
The ICTY serves as NATO’s tribunal as was clear long ago. http://www.swans.com/library/art6/zig041.html
Um, posting that once would have been quite sufficient
Gee, a mere 4,000 bodies. Chump change. And so convenient to just look for dead bodies and ignore the 800,000 refugees. (Oh, I know–they were fleeing the bombing. Never mind that they said they were fleeing Serb militias, everybody knows you can’t trust those slippery Albanians.)
However, I agree that the Serbs were unfairly singled out. If US foreign policy were applied with a single standard, the Serbs would have been given a blank check to carry out their campaigns of ethnic cleansing, just like the Croats, Turks, Israelis, Colombians, etc.