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Happy Michael Kelly Day! (Kosova)
 8 Dec 1999

Kosovo's Killers
  By Michael Kelly

Wednesday, December 8, 1999; Page A33 (Washington Post)

"This report makes sobering reading." Thus begins a 300-page document
titled "As Seen, As Told, Part II," which was released Monday by the
Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe. True words.

The OSCE report covers human rights violations that occurred in Kosovo
in the months following the June 12 entry into Pristina by the forces of
KFOR, the 48,000-strong peacekeeping army that moved into Kosovo under
the auspices of the United Nations. In other words, it covers what has
happened in Kosovo since the forces for good assumed responsibility. The
findings are not a surprise but a scandal.

The war in Kosovo was fought to force an end to ethnic cleansing there,
and this great goal was partially met. The large-scale and systematic
campaign by the Serbs to rid Kosovo of its ethnic Albanians--a campaign
detailed in the OSCE report "As Seen, As Told, Part I," also released
Monday--was halted. Most of the 1 million displaced ethnic Albanians
returned to Kosovo.

But this did not mean an end to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. It meant the
beginning of a new round of violence and terror, this time conducted by
the Albanians, against their ethnic Serb, Croatian, Roma and Muslim
Slavic neighbors.

From the foreword of the OSCE report: "The human rights violations . . .
for the period June-October 1999 include executions, abductions,
torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrests and
attempts to restrict freedom of expression. House burnings, blockades
restricting freedom of movement, discriminatory treatment in schools,
hospitals, humanitarian aid distribution and other public services based
on ethnic background, and forced evictions from housing recall some of
the worst practices of Kosovo's recent past."

The OSCE report is an exhaustive catalog of ethnically motivated evil in
its various banal forms. A day-by-day chronology of all human rights
"events" that occurred between June 12 and Oct. 31 runs to 135 pages of
single-space type, covering murders (more than 150), shootings,
house-burnings, beatings and various other acts of revenge-seeking and
terror.

Many of the crimes were committed by free-lancers, and the Kosovo
Liberation Army has declared itself against all such acts. But this
declaration is perhaps not as convincing as it might be. The report
lists many murders and other crimes committed by men wearing KLA
uniforms or badges. It is clear that the violence aimed against
non-Albanians in Kosovo is to a real degree directed by elements of the
KLA.

It is also clear that the violence is intended not merely to inflict
revenge but to purge Kosovo of its non-Albanians. There is much in the
patterns of ethnic cleansing that is familiar here: execution-style
murders that serve to frighten the target populations into flight;
campaigns of house-burnings and beatings and intimidation; the
systematic expulsions from jobs and denials of jobs to members of the
target populations. At any rate, the effect has been to cleanse Kosovo
of almost all but Albanians. Large numbers of Serbs and Roma people have
fled Kosovo since June; the Yugoslav Red Cross listed 234,000 refugees
in Serbia and Montenegro as of October.

Of course, the ethnic Albanians' cleansing efforts are not to be
compared with those of the Serbs in Kosovo in the months and years
before June 1999. That, however, is not the important point now. What
the Serbs did to the Albanians was a great crime and what the Albanians
did in return was a much lesser crime. But they are both crimes, and the
latter has occurred, and is still occurring, under what is supposed to
be the United Nations' rule of law. This is the point that matters.

In expelling the forces of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo, the United
States and its allies took it upon themselves, as President Clinton
said, "to protect the ethnic Kosovar Albanians and the ethnic Serbs
alike." This, to put it mildly, we have failed to do. And this matters
tremendously. The perpetuation of ethnic cleansing promises the next
round in the Balkan cycle of blood. That this campaign is being waged
under U.N. rule does immense damage to the United Nations and to the
United States, which are seen by the Serbs and their co-religionists in
Russia and Greece as enforcers not of justice but of victory for one
side over the other in wars of ethnicity and faith.

It is therefore surprising that the OSCE report has been met with utter,
silent indifference by President Clinton, Secretary of State Albright
and all those others, in the media and in the ranks of right-thinking
people, who once cared so very, very deeply about suffering in Kosovo.
Actually, it is not surprising, is it?

-----

What an unpatriotic and unnatoholic ratfink! "Knock, knock, knock"
all the way, with nary a glimmer of "boost"!

== Yours, J. H. McDove ==  ... sobie spiewam a Muzom ... ==


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