How it is done Taking over the Trepca mines: Plans and Propaganda

As usual, M. P attacked at the writers of Boston based magazine
_Emperor's Clothes_  (Jared I, Diana J., Michael C.).  Here are some
excerpts from their articles about the issue of  NATO sponsored war in
Yugoslavia. Diana J discusses how the  "top U.S. policy makers" ( such
as  Morton Abramowitz) sponsored NATO's new  "humanitarian intervention"
policy in Balkans in the name of defending Kosovo Albanian separatists.
Since M. P cannot address the  issues without insulting or somehow
finding a Stalinist connection regarding those opposing  NATO war,  I
wonder what his real aim is besides collecting information for the US
intelligence agency.


Mine

How it is done Taking over the Trepca mines: Plans and Propaganda

 by Diana Johnstone (2-28-00)

                       www.tenc.net
                    [emperors-clothes]

 Comparison of two documents, a November 1999 International Crisis
 Group (ICG) paper on the Trepca mining complex, and a February
 2000 article in the Toronto Star by ICG consultant Susan Blaustein,
 provides an exceptionally clear glimpse into the workings of the
 "international community".

 The International Crisis Group is a high-level think tank supported
 by financier George Soros. It was set up in 1995, primarily to provide
 policy guidance to governments involved in the NATO-led reshaping
 of the Balkans. Its leading figures include top U.S. policy maker
 Morton Abramowitz, the eminence grise of NATO's new
 "humanitarian intervention" policy and sponsor of Kosovo Albanian
 separatists.

 Last November 26, the ICG issued a paper on "Trepca: Making
 Sense of the Labyrinth" which advised the United Nations Mission
 In Kosovo (UNMIK) to take over the Trepca mining complex from
 the Serbs as quickly as possible and explained how this should be
 done. The February article by the ICG journalist represents a
 vulgarization of the anti-Serb position designed to prepare public
 opinion for carrying out the ICG policy. There will no doubt be more.

 The ICG Paper: Manipulative Ambiguities

 Trepca is a conglomerate of some 40 mines and factories, mostly but
 not all in Kosovo, notably including Stari Trg, "one of the richest
 mines in Europe" and the richest in the Balkans, currently shut
 down, and the Zvecan smelter, located northwest of Mitrovica and
 still being operated by Serb management. The ICG calls on UNMIK,
 headed by Bernard Kouchner, to cut through legal disputes over the
 industry's ownership and take over management of Trepca itself.

 On July 25, Kouchner issued a decree that "UNMIK shall
 administer movable or immovable property, including monetary
 accounts, and other property of, or registered in the name of the
 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the Republic of Serbia or any of
 its organs, which is in the territory of Kosovo". The ICG paper
 concluded that "UNMIK and KFOR should implement a rapid and
 categorical takeover of the Trepca complex, including the immediate
 total shutdown of the environmentally hazardous facilities at
 Zvecan". What is really wrong with Zvecan is that it is run by Serbs
 and provides revenue to Yugoslavia.

 But in the "game-plan of measures" recommended by the ICG,
 UNMIK is advised to instruct a "Zvecan environmental assessment
 team" to report on the status of the equipment and thereupon
 "advise as to what measures must be taken"... Environmental
 hazards are to be the pretext to shut down Zvecan and deprive the
 last Serbs in Kosovo of their livelihood. Meanwhile, "Stari Trg, one
 of the richest mines in Europe, must be potentially profitable again
 and should be a priority for donors interested in setting Kosovo on
 its feet".

 The game-plan calls for a gradual start up of mining to reassure the
 "Kosovars", meaning ethnic Albanians, of their future. For although
 the ICG says that the "workforce and management of all Trepca
 facilities should be selected on a merit basis only", it adds that "no
 one with ties to the Belgrade regime should be considered" -- and it
 is habitual to identify all Serbs with "the Belgrade regime", even to
 ignore their existence other than as "agents of Milosevic".

 This blatant takeover of valuable property in what is still nominally
 part of Serbia is of course justified as a necessary measure to
 reassure the oppressed Albanians. "The return to work of even a
 few hundred Kosovar miners would represent, for all Kosovars, the
 reclaiming of their patrimony".

 The media event is easy to imagine. But if the ICG hostility toward
 the Serbs seems genuine, the love for the Albanians may be less
 than perfect. In the ICG's brief account of past ethnic clashes over
 Trepca management, underlying the habitual anti-Serb bias is the
 basic hypocrisy of dominant powers manipulating two peoples against
 each other. The ICG report notes that Trepca "has long stood for
 Kosovar Albanians as the symbol of Serbian oppression and of their
 own resistance", and recounts that after 1974, finally able to manage
 the Trepca facilities themselves, Kosovars "created thousands of
 jobs", but that "in 1981-82, a sort of `Trepca-gate' scandal -- in
 which Kosovar Albanian workers were accused of having stolen vast
 quantities of gold and silver -- was the pretext for firing many
 engineers and technicians". Whether the theft was real or merely a
 "pretext" is of no interest to the international community ... so long
 as the Serbs were in charge.

 But afterwards? The report concludes that: "Simply handing Trepca
 over to the Kosovars is ruled out by the shortage of modern skills
 available locally, the need for internationally-verifiable standards to

 avoid corruption" as well as damage to the installations. And as for
 those "thousands of jobs" created by and for Kosovo Albanians,
 they are not on the international community agenda. "The social
 impact of the reduced work force would need to be balanced against
 the need for competitively based private investment", the ICG
 observes. Fortunately, the ICG finds that the young leadership of the
 "Kosovo Liberation Army" is "somewhat impatient" with the older
 Kosovo Albanian leadership group's interest in "a huge workforce"
 and prefers modernization that will require foreign investment
 capital. No wonder Washington chose to back the violent KLA.

 The manipulative hypocrisy of the ICG policy designers is even more
 blatant concerning the Serbs. The ICG urges UNMIK to hurry up
 with the game plan for taking over the valuable mining complex
 _before_ Serbian elections so that a new government more to the
 West's liking cannot be accused of "losing Trepca". All Serbian
 leaders, including opposition leaders, the ICG observes, will have to
 protest when UNMIK takes over Trepca and the Zvecan smelter.
 "However they could exploit the argument that the `loss' was due to
 the pariah status of Milosevic himself, so that once again Serbia has
 lost assets due to his presence in office. So provided action were
 taken before any elections in Serbia it need not upset, and might
 contribute to, any strategy for unseating Milosevic." In short, the
 international community is going to take over Trepca whoever is in
 charge in Belgrade; better do it while Milosevic is there, so that the
 Western-backed "progressive, democratic" opposition can pretend it
 was the fault of Milosevic!

 Media Propaganda: Familiarity versus Truth

 Such cynicism is hard to surpass, but there is always room to add a
 few lies. This is the task of the media propaganda aimed at getting
 the general public to swallow the policies decided by elite think tanks

 and governments. The February 23, 2000 article in The Toronto Star
 by ICG senior consultant Susan Blaustein, "Mitrovica flashpoint for
 the next Balkan war", deserves a Jamie Shea award for the most
 shameless war propaganda of the month. The clichés are all there,
 "centuries-old hatreds" (not our fault, folks); then focus on the
 single culprit: Milosevic; the unreliable French seeking appeasement
 versus the need for the international community to display
 "backbone" and stand up to "Milosevic's test of its resolve". For
 Blaustein, it is Milosevic, of course, who is causing trouble in the
city
 of Mitrovica because of his "keen financial interest" in the Trepca
 mining complex and the Zvecan smelter. NATO has occupied
 Kosovo and watched for eight months while Albanians murder,
 terrorize and drive out most of the non-Albanian population, but
 Blaustein is able to write (and the newspaper to publish) that: "The
 city is a lynchpin in Belgrade's `Greater Serbia' strategy of expelling

 non-Serbs from the region." The November 1999 ICG report noted
 that: "International financial officials have long recognized the
 minerals industry as being prime for money laundering" throughout
 the world because of its structure and suggested that "the interest of
 the Milosevic circle in exploiting the Trepca facilities might go
 beyond the simple operation of sharing out the profits." This
 speculation is taken a step further by Blaustein, who writes that the
 smelter in Zvecan "is widely believed to have served the regime as
 an efficient money-laundering mechanism". But in any case, if the
 Serbs are running Zvecan to their profit, why would they want to
 make trouble? Ah, that Milosevic! It is because "Mitrovica is
 Milosevic's only remaining foothold in Kosovo" so "he has decided
 to call the bluff of the international community". The world is one big

 "test of wills" where little guys are forever "calling the bluff" of
 giants so the giants will wipe them out. The little guys seem to enjoy
 doing that, don't ask why. Blaustein goes on to excuse the Albanians
 for recent violence and blame the French. It is not the Serbs who are
 being driven out of Kosovo, but the Albanians who are victims of
 "Milosevic's operatives" who "monitor, harass, terrorize and expel
 ethnic Albanian civilians who dare to live in or travel to the Serb
side
 of town". The rocket attack on a bus carrying Serb civilians, which
 killed two of them, was "not unprovoked"; the Albanians were
 impatient with the international community for turning a blind eye to
 "Serbs' oppression of ethnic Albanians"... By not allowing mobs of
 angry ethnic Albanians to take over the last part of Kosovo where
 Serbs are still managing to live more or less normally, "international
 officials are abandoning the U.N.'s stated commitment to create and
 protect a multi-ethnic society in Kosovo", according to Blaustein.
 This tract is meant to cast the blame in advance for what Blaustein
 calls the "next Balkan war". It is in total contradiction to the facts
of
 what has been happening in Kosovo during eight months of foreign
 occupation.

 How then can anyone dare to write or publish such an article? The
 answer is that the propagandists are counting on the tendency of
 uninformed readers to mistake what is familiar for what is true. The
 cliches about "Milosevic" and "Greater Serbia" are familiar. The
 truth is not. If and when the "next Balkan war" breaks out and the
 "international community" takes full control of the Trepca industrial
 complex, the distracted public need not pay too much attention, since
 everybody already knows what it's all about: that evil dictator
 Milosevic is causing trouble again.

 - Diana Johnstone, 28 February 2000

 ***

--
Mine Aysen Doyran
Ph.D Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222



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