READ THIS ARTICLE AND U FIND OUT WHAT AHPENED AND WHAT IS GOING ON IN KOSOVO. THATS EUROPIAN VIEW, BUT NOT THE TRUTH.
Kosovo
The U.S. claimed that protection of the Albanian community guided its aggressive policy in the Kosovo conflict. Examination of the validity of that claim requires brief examinations of:
Serbian legal claims to Kosovo and its treatment of the Albanians,
Western diplomatic initiatives in attempts to prevent war,
The refugee crisis and who created it,
Legality of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, and
The future of Kosovo.
Serbian involvement in Kosovo
Serbian nationalism has Kosovo as the medieval center of a Serbian empire. As a result, Kosovo contains sites of Serbia's most sacred churches and monasteries. In 1389, the Serbs lost the land to the Ottoman Turks in a decisive battle fought in Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds. Serbia was unable to reincorporate Kosovo into its territory until 1912, immediately after the Balkan wars. Kosovo's status as a part of Serbia wavered between the two world wars. After World War II, the mostly Albanian populated land, became officially attached to Yugoslavia. The 1974 Yugoslavian Constitution designated Kosovo as an autonomous province within Serbia. After this consideration, the trouble started.
The greatly outnumbered Serbs constantly accused the Kosovo Albanians of mistreatment and unprovoked attacks. The anguish of his fellow Serbs moved newly elected Serbian Republic President Milosevic and, in 1990, he reacted, but too strongly. Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy, and eventually dissolved the Kosovo Provincial Assembly. Kosovo Albanians( Kosovars) resisted their declining status and soon, as in all rebellions, a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), emerged. Attacks against Serbian security forces were countered, as they usually are in rebellions, by military actions against the rebels, which also affected the general population.
Although Kosovo was only a twentieth century addition to Serbia (~100 years), and 1.8 million ethnic Albanians greatly outnumbered 200,000 Serbs, the attachment of Kosovo to Serbia and the skewed demographics are not unique. Kurds occupy regions in Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Tamils occupy a region in Sri Lanka, a country created after World War II. Palestinians are 20% of the relatively new state of Israel. Basques and Catalans clamor for more autonomy within Spain. Northern Ireland's Catholic population argues they are being repressed by the British. What have nations done when their minorities became rebellious - except for Spain, they have reacted harshly; and in some cases more harsh then Milosevic acted against the Kosovo Albanians. What would the United States of America do if their Mexican minorities in California and Texas formed a liberation army and attacked American civilians and federal army posts?
Milosevic welcomed a solution to the conflict if it didn't compromise Yugoslavia's sovereignty. Western power diplomatic approaches to assist in the problem failed to consider Miliosevic's legitimate fears.
Western diplomatic initiatives
Milosevic could easily argue: "What right did other nations have to interfere in the internal problems of Yugoslavia, and why weren't they applying the same measures to nations with more serious internal conflicts?" Nevertheless, the Serb leader tacitly accepted initiatives to resolve the conflict, including some form of United Nations military buffers in Kosovo and many of the principal provisions of the complicated Rambouillet peace agreement. This agreement, presented at a conference in Paris in March1999, became a take-it-or- leave agreement for Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Albanians. The latter reluctantly signed the agreement before its expiration date. Milosevic refused the agreement, and for one principal reason - it indicated that NATO troops would be stationed in Kosovo and, by the agreement's wording, NATO "peacekeeping" forces could possibly be stationed in all of Yugoslavia, including Serbia.
The diplomatic initiative failed to relieve Milosevic's legitimate fear of having a strong foreign troop presence from nations that had already shown hostility to Serbia stationed at Serbia's borders . What national leader, representing the best interests of a nation, would have done otherwise?
Serbian disagreement to Rambouillet meant NATO was prepared to go to war, and even bomb the Yugoslavian republic. NATO's procession to a next stage in the conflict precipitated a mass refugee crisis.
The refugee crisis
A preponderance of media blame the Serbian government for the severe refugee crisis, in which almost one million Albanian Kosovars temporarily left their homes and moved into adjacent countries. For most refugees, the refuges were only 10-50 kilometers away. Massive NATO bombing of targets in Kosovo started on March 24. Massive refugee movements started on March 27. These two incidents are obviously related. Directly, or indirectly, the aerial war in Kosovo, that included bombings of Albanian villages, precipitated the refugee exodus.
In every war, civilians try to escape the ravages of the war. In the Kosovo war, geographic and social conditions facilitated the movement of refugees. Both Albanian and Serb refugees could quickly move to safer havens in the neighboring countries of Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and even Serbia, that had populations similar to their own, and where they were assured temporary relief by UN agencies and compatriots.
Some refugee movements occurred before the war and during a period of aggravated hostilities between Serb police and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). It is also possible, as some refugees alleged, that Serbian police threatened Albanian populations and urged them to leave. These threats, which were prompted by KLA attacks and killings of Serbian police and civilians, might have played a minor role in the refugee crisis. Nevertheless, logic contradicts the assumption that the Serb authorities caused the mass exodus:
Serbia had a decade to promote an Albanian exodus but during that time did not facilitate any mass exodus of Albanians.
Many Albanians entered Serbia in order to escape the bombings.
Serbia did not have the logistics and mechanisms to permanently remove the Albanians from all of Kosovo
Why would the Serbian government create a barren land? Serbs had not shown an eagerness to move to Kosovo.
After hostilities ceased, the refugees returned quickly to their homes , which indicated they had traveled light, not far and were prepared to return.
Two other significant facts:
Intelligence report from the (German) Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to the Administrative Court of Trier (Az: 514-516.80/32 426):
"Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still not involved in armed conflict. Public life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc. has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a relatively normal basis." The "actions of the security forces (were) not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer contradicted the intelligence report. On April 6, 1999, two weeks after the start of the bombing campaign, Fischer spoke of an uncovered operational plan, termed Operation Horseshoe, which described a Serbian plan for a massive ethnic cleansing operation. The German Foreign Minister claimed the plan had been initiated in early March, one month before NATO attacks. Rudolf Scharping, the German Defense Minister, presented maps containing the names of towns and villages which showed arrows representing Serbian army and police militia units progressively encircling Kosovo in a horseshoe-shaped pincer movement.
Undoubtedly, if finally faced with no satisfactory alternative for directing Kosovo Albanians to follow its dictates, the Serbian government was prepared to elevate its force to pacify and contain the Albanian population in Kosovo. NATO attacks in Kosovo only impelled Serbian military to increase its desperation. What military would allow a subversive force in its midst, that could willingly and easily assist an aggression against its sovereignty, to remain undisturbed? Indirectly or directly, and mostly due to the latter, the NATO aerial war in Kosovo precipitated the mass exodus of refugees.
NATO enhanced its awkward and poorly conceived diplomatic strategy for resolving the Kosovo conflict by extending the bombing missions to the Yugoslavian capital and other Serbian regions.
Legality of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia
How can it be legal for a foreign military organization, which was formed to take defensive actions against a military strike on western Europe, suddenly use its might in an offensive manner and attack a sovereign nation that has not harmed the organization's interests and has not declared war against it?
From March 24,1999 to June 10,1999 NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat sorties (Source: Amnesty International Public document - AI Index EUR 70/025/2000) and dropped over 23,000 bombs and missiles on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).The civilian death tolls given in detailed FRY government accounts range from 400 to 600. (Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES
February 7, 2000).
NATO's actions resolved the problems of the Kosovo Albanians. It didn't resolve the problems of the Kosovo Serbs or those of the western world. Kosovo is now faced with a new set of problems.
The Future of Kosovo
On February 17, 2008, the Kosovars declared their independence. Despite UN Security Council Resolution 1244 that recognized the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and ended the Kosovo war, the Kosovo war succeeded in detaching Kosovo from Serbia and the Kosovo Serbs from their Kosovo homeland. The Albanians have Kosovo and the only ethnic cleansing has been the reduction of Serbs in Kosovo due to oppressive actions by the KLA. The Serbian minority population in Kosovo has been reduced, mainly by physical and psychological force, to ~100,000 from a pre-war total of ~200,000 to 250,000. The UN is now attempting to return many of these refugees to their former homes.
A November 10, 2005 Bulletin of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Serbia-Montenegro, described the most the Serbs could have hoped to achieve in negotiations:
BELGRADE, November 9 (Beta)-Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said Serbia's minimum in the negotiations on Kosovo consists of two stands: first to defend the present international status of its state borders with Albania and Macedonia, and second to obtain international guarantees for a European level of protection of the Serbs and other ethnic communities in Kosovo and Metohija.
Speaking for Serbia, a newsletter by the Serbian Atlantic Initiative Assn.Washington, D.C. December 2, 2005
Kosovo's Albanian majority can have the self rule they seek, but it should be as part of Serbia-Montenegro, not as an independent state. That is the essence of a proposal by Serbian President Boris Tadic that calls for partitioning the province along ethnic lines while retaining Serb sovereignty.
The Kosovo map gave a clue as to what would happen in any negotiations. Kosovo would obtain complete autonomy with a promise of a referendum for independence. Protection of the Serb minority would be assured and enforced. Already Prizren and Prisitina had been emptied of Serb populations. Eventually, the Serb areas that are contiguous with Serbia would be merged into Serbia, and Kosovo would become an independent state. The February 17, 2008 declaration leaped over all negotiations and established a fait accompli.
Was NATO's war against a sovereign state of Yugoslavia only an attempt to bring stability to an unstable area? That assumption is difficult to believe or defend. The world is replete with unstable situations, and several are in NATO's backyard - Northern Ireland, Basque Spain, and former Soviet Republics. The benefits that NATO gained in its war might have actually been its principal objectives. The war witnessed the almost complete collapse of the last Socialist state in Europe, and NATO had an opportunity to test offensive weapons, communications, command and control facilities and its air war logistics.
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MY PROBLEM AND YOUR VIEW.
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tomkingsbury
- Posts: 1227
- Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:15 am
- Location: coventry
Yep i thught that this article was for toilet flush too. Because it sucks.tomkingsbury wrote:the laces!! they were in, they were in!!gusher311 wrote:Goonanana wrote:So hang on let me get this straight...
Finkle is Einhorn???!!
LACES OUT!!!!!!!!!!
oops, did i hear a toilet flush? i think somebody lost a turtle!!
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gus ceasar is a legend
- Posts: 9078
- Joined: Sun Jun 24, 2007 12:42 pm
Seconded (blimey am I actually agreeing with Gusgus ceasar is a legend wrote:Kaqak,
Mate, frankly I cannot be arsed!
I hate to say this but you are coming across as more interested in political/religous point scoring than Arsenal or having a laugh!
I understand and maybe sympathise but too much, too often!
)
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Radford149
- Posts: 3295
- Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 8:47 pm
Re: MY PROBLEM AND YOUR VIEW.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZKAQAK wrote:READ THIS ARTICLE AND U FIND OUT WHAT AHPENED AND WHAT IS GOING ON IN KOSOVO. THATS EUROPIAN VIEW, BUT NOT THE TRUTH.
Kosovo
The U.S. claimed that protection of the Albanian community guided its aggressive policy in the Kosovo conflict. Examination of the validity of that claim requires brief examinations of:
Serbian legal claims to Kosovo and its treatment of the Albanians,
Western diplomatic initiatives in attempts to prevent war,
The refugee crisis and who created it,
Legality of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, and
The future of Kosovo.
Serbian involvement in Kosovo
Serbian nationalism has Kosovo as the medieval center of a Serbian empire. As a result, Kosovo contains sites of Serbia's most sacred churches and monasteries. In 1389, the Serbs lost the land to the Ottoman Turks in a decisive battle fought in Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds. Serbia was unable to reincorporate Kosovo into its territory until 1912, immediately after the Balkan wars. Kosovo's status as a part of Serbia wavered between the two world wars. After World War II, the mostly Albanian populated land, became officially attached to Yugoslavia. The 1974 Yugoslavian Constitution designated Kosovo as an autonomous province within Serbia. After this consideration, the trouble started.
The greatly outnumbered Serbs constantly accused the Kosovo Albanians of mistreatment and unprovoked attacks. The anguish of his fellow Serbs moved newly elected Serbian Republic President Milosevic and, in 1990, he reacted, but too strongly. Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy, and eventually dissolved the Kosovo Provincial Assembly. Kosovo Albanians( Kosovars) resisted their declining status and soon, as in all rebellions, a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), emerged. Attacks against Serbian security forces were countered, as they usually are in rebellions, by military actions against the rebels, which also affected the general population.
Although Kosovo was only a twentieth century addition to Serbia (~100 years), and 1.8 million ethnic Albanians greatly outnumbered 200,000 Serbs, the attachment of Kosovo to Serbia and the skewed demographics are not unique. Kurds occupy regions in Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Tamils occupy a region in Sri Lanka, a country created after World War II. Palestinians are 20% of the relatively new state of Israel. Basques and Catalans clamor for more autonomy within Spain. Northern Ireland's Catholic population argues they are being repressed by the British. What have nations done when their minorities became rebellious - except for Spain, they have reacted harshly; and in some cases more harsh then Milosevic acted against the Kosovo Albanians. What would the United States of America do if their Mexican minorities in California and Texas formed a liberation army and attacked American civilians and federal army posts?
Milosevic welcomed a solution to the conflict if it didn't compromise Yugoslavia's sovereignty. Western power diplomatic approaches to assist in the problem failed to consider Miliosevic's legitimate fears.
Western diplomatic initiatives
Milosevic could easily argue: "What right did other nations have to interfere in the internal problems of Yugoslavia, and why weren't they applying the same measures to nations with more serious internal conflicts?" Nevertheless, the Serb leader tacitly accepted initiatives to resolve the conflict, including some form of United Nations military buffers in Kosovo and many of the principal provisions of the complicated Rambouillet peace agreement. This agreement, presented at a conference in Paris in March1999, became a take-it-or- leave agreement for Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Albanians. The latter reluctantly signed the agreement before its expiration date. Milosevic refused the agreement, and for one principal reason - it indicated that NATO troops would be stationed in Kosovo and, by the agreement's wording, NATO "peacekeeping" forces could possibly be stationed in all of Yugoslavia, including Serbia.
The diplomatic initiative failed to relieve Milosevic's legitimate fear of having a strong foreign troop presence from nations that had already shown hostility to Serbia stationed at Serbia's borders . What national leader, representing the best interests of a nation, would have done otherwise?
Serbian disagreement to Rambouillet meant NATO was prepared to go to war, and even bomb the Yugoslavian republic. NATO's procession to a next stage in the conflict precipitated a mass refugee crisis.
The refugee crisis
A preponderance of media blame the Serbian government for the severe refugee crisis, in which almost one million Albanian Kosovars temporarily left their homes and moved into adjacent countries. For most refugees, the refuges were only 10-50 kilometers away. Massive NATO bombing of targets in Kosovo started on March 24. Massive refugee movements started on March 27. These two incidents are obviously related. Directly, or indirectly, the aerial war in Kosovo, that included bombings of Albanian villages, precipitated the refugee exodus.
In every war, civilians try to escape the ravages of the war. In the Kosovo war, geographic and social conditions facilitated the movement of refugees. Both Albanian and Serb refugees could quickly move to safer havens in the neighboring countries of Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and even Serbia, that had populations similar to their own, and where they were assured temporary relief by UN agencies and compatriots.
Some refugee movements occurred before the war and during a period of aggravated hostilities between Serb police and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). It is also possible, as some refugees alleged, that Serbian police threatened Albanian populations and urged them to leave. These threats, which were prompted by KLA attacks and killings of Serbian police and civilians, might have played a minor role in the refugee crisis. Nevertheless, logic contradicts the assumption that the Serb authorities caused the mass exodus:
Serbia had a decade to promote an Albanian exodus but during that time did not facilitate any mass exodus of Albanians.
Many Albanians entered Serbia in order to escape the bombings.
Serbia did not have the logistics and mechanisms to permanently remove the Albanians from all of Kosovo
Why would the Serbian government create a barren land? Serbs had not shown an eagerness to move to Kosovo.
After hostilities ceased, the refugees returned quickly to their homes , which indicated they had traveled light, not far and were prepared to return.
Two other significant facts:
Intelligence report from the (German) Foreign Office, January 12, 1999 to the Administrative Court of Trier (Az: 514-516.80/32 426):
"Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of Kosovo is still not involved in armed conflict. Public life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc. has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a relatively normal basis." The "actions of the security forces (were) not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer contradicted the intelligence report. On April 6, 1999, two weeks after the start of the bombing campaign, Fischer spoke of an uncovered operational plan, termed Operation Horseshoe, which described a Serbian plan for a massive ethnic cleansing operation. The German Foreign Minister claimed the plan had been initiated in early March, one month before NATO attacks. Rudolf Scharping, the German Defense Minister, presented maps containing the names of towns and villages which showed arrows representing Serbian army and police militia units progressively encircling Kosovo in a horseshoe-shaped pincer movement.
Undoubtedly, if finally faced with no satisfactory alternative for directing Kosovo Albanians to follow its dictates, the Serbian government was prepared to elevate its force to pacify and contain the Albanian population in Kosovo. NATO attacks in Kosovo only impelled Serbian military to increase its desperation. What military would allow a subversive force in its midst, that could willingly and easily assist an aggression against its sovereignty, to remain undisturbed? Indirectly or directly, and mostly due to the latter, the NATO aerial war in Kosovo precipitated the mass exodus of refugees.
NATO enhanced its awkward and poorly conceived diplomatic strategy for resolving the Kosovo conflict by extending the bombing missions to the Yugoslavian capital and other Serbian regions.
Legality of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia
How can it be legal for a foreign military organization, which was formed to take defensive actions against a military strike on western Europe, suddenly use its might in an offensive manner and attack a sovereign nation that has not harmed the organization's interests and has not declared war against it?
From March 24,1999 to June 10,1999 NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat sorties (Source: Amnesty International Public document - AI Index EUR 70/025/2000) and dropped over 23,000 bombs and missiles on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).The civilian death tolls given in detailed FRY government accounts range from 400 to 600. (Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES
February 7, 2000).
NATO's actions resolved the problems of the Kosovo Albanians. It didn't resolve the problems of the Kosovo Serbs or those of the western world. Kosovo is now faced with a new set of problems.
The Future of Kosovo
On February 17, 2008, the Kosovars declared their independence. Despite UN Security Council Resolution 1244 that recognized the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and ended the Kosovo war, the Kosovo war succeeded in detaching Kosovo from Serbia and the Kosovo Serbs from their Kosovo homeland. The Albanians have Kosovo and the only ethnic cleansing has been the reduction of Serbs in Kosovo due to oppressive actions by the KLA. The Serbian minority population in Kosovo has been reduced, mainly by physical and psychological force, to ~100,000 from a pre-war total of ~200,000 to 250,000. The UN is now attempting to return many of these refugees to their former homes.
A November 10, 2005 Bulletin of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Serbia-Montenegro, described the most the Serbs could have hoped to achieve in negotiations:
BELGRADE, November 9 (Beta)-Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said Serbia's minimum in the negotiations on Kosovo consists of two stands: first to defend the present international status of its state borders with Albania and Macedonia, and second to obtain international guarantees for a European level of protection of the Serbs and other ethnic communities in Kosovo and Metohija.
Speaking for Serbia, a newsletter by the Serbian Atlantic Initiative Assn.Washington, D.C. December 2, 2005
Kosovo's Albanian majority can have the self rule they seek, but it should be as part of Serbia-Montenegro, not as an independent state. That is the essence of a proposal by Serbian President Boris Tadic that calls for partitioning the province along ethnic lines while retaining Serb sovereignty.
The Kosovo map gave a clue as to what would happen in any negotiations. Kosovo would obtain complete autonomy with a promise of a referendum for independence. Protection of the Serb minority would be assured and enforced. Already Prizren and Prisitina had been emptied of Serb populations. Eventually, the Serb areas that are contiguous with Serbia would be merged into Serbia, and Kosovo would become an independent state. The February 17, 2008 declaration leaped over all negotiations and established a fait accompli.
Was NATO's war against a sovereign state of Yugoslavia only an attempt to bring stability to an unstable area? That assumption is difficult to believe or defend. The world is replete with unstable situations, and several are in NATO's backyard - Northern Ireland, Basque Spain, and former Soviet Republics. The benefits that NATO gained in its war might have actually been its principal objectives. The war witnessed the almost complete collapse of the last Socialist state in Europe, and NATO had an opportunity to test offensive weapons, communications, command and control facilities and its air war logistics.
Return to Top
I agree, sometimes i'm pissed at myself too,gus ceasar is a legend wrote:Kaqak,
Mate, frankly I cannot be arsed!
I hate to say this but you are coming across as more interested in political/religous point scoring than Arsenal or having a laugh!
I understand and maybe sympathise but too much, too often!
definitely a lose my plot sometimes and in the last time this is happening to often, i really apologise for my stupid non Arsenal opinions, i will take care of not post anymore any crap, but i will allways be by side and enjoy reading the posts related to Arsenal as i allways do, and maybe sometimes when i fell comfortable post something. So far enjoy the forum guys because i will be quiet in future. 
