Re: NATO, Kosovo, Russia

At 10:38 AM 3/25/99 -0500, noplace@geocities.com wrote:
>how many times have I heard this mind-numbing line?  I know people who
>have been the first (and in some cases the only) to document cases of
>mass murder in Kosovo.  What EXACTLY do you suggest doing when the
>Serbian army/police are pursuing an ACTIVE policy of KILLING Albanians?

Diana Johnstone, from an article in Covert Action Quarterly:

The current campaign to demonize the Serbs began in July 1991 with a
virulent barrage of articles in the German media, led by the influential
conservative newspaper, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ). In
almost daily columns, FAZ editor Johann Georg Reismuller justified the
freshly, and illegally, declared "independence" of Slovenia and Croatia by
describing "Yugo- Serbs" as essentially Oriental "militarist Bolsheviks"
who have "no place in the European Community". Nineteen months after German
reunification, and for the first time since Hitler's defeat in 1945, German
media resounded with condemnation of an entire ethnic group reminiscent of
the pre-war propaganda against the Jews".

This German propaganda binge was the signal that times had changed
seriously. Only a few years earlier, a seemingly broad German peace
movement had stressed the need to put an end to "enemy stereotypes"
(Feindbilder). Yet the sudden ferocious emergence of the enemy stereotype
of "the Serbs" did not shock liberal of left Germans, who were soon
repeating it themselves. It might seem that the German peace movement had
completed its historic mission once its contribution to altering the image
of Germany had led Gorbachev to endorse reunification. The least one can
say is that the previous efforts at reconciliation with peoples who
suffered from Nazi invasion stopped short when it same to the Serbs.

In the Bundestag, German Green leader Joschka Fisher pressed for disavowal
of "pacifism" in order to "combat Auschwitz", thereby equating Serbs with
Nazis. In a heady mood of self- righteous indignation, German politicians
across the board joined in using Germany's past guilt as a reason, not for
restraint, as had been the logic up until reunification, but on the
contrary, for "bearing their share of the military burden". In the name of
human rights, the Federal Republic of Germany abolished its ban on military
operations outside the NATO defensive area. Germany could once again be a
"normal" military power - thanks to the "Serb threat".

The near unanimity was all the more surprising in that the "enemy
stereotype" of the Serb had been dredged up from the most belligerent
German nationalism of the past. "Serbien muss sterbien" (a play on the word
sterben, to die), meaning "Serbia must die" was a famous popular war cry of
World War I. Serbs had been singled out for slaughter during the Nazi
occupation of Yugoslavia. One would have thought that the younger
generation of Germans, seemingly so sensitive to the victims of Germany's
aggressive past, would have at least urged caution. Very few did.

On the contrary, what occurred in Germany was a strange sort of mass
transfer of Nazi identity, and guilt, to the Serbs. In the case of the
Germans, this can be seen as a comforting psychological projection which
served to give Germans a fresh and welcome sense of innocence in the face
of the new "criminal" people, the Serbs, But the hate campaign against
Serbs, started in Germany, did not stop there. Elsewhere, the willingness
to single out one of the Yugoslav peoples as the villain calls for other
explanations.

 From the start, foreign reporters were better treated in Zagreb and in
Ljubljana, whose secessionist leaders understood the prime importance of
media images in gaining international support, than in Belgrade. The
Albanian secessionists in Kosovo or "Kosovars" Albanians in Albania and in
Yugoslavia call themselves "Shqiptare" but recently have objected to being
called that by others. "Albanians" is an old and accepted term. Especially
when addressing international audiences in the context of the separatist
cause. Kosovo Albanians prefer to call themselves "Kosovars", which has
political implications. Logically, the term should apply to all inhabitants
of the province of Kosovo, regardless of ethnic identity, but by
appropriating it for themselves alone, the Albanian "Kosovars" imply that
Serbs and other non-Albanians are intruders. This is similar to the Muslim
parties appropriation of the term "Bosniak" which implies that the Muslim
population of Bosnia-Herzegovina is more indigenous than the Serbs and
Croats, which makes no sense, since the Bosnian Muslims are simply Serbs
and Croats who converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest, the Croatian
secessionists and the Bosnian Muslims hired an American public relations
firm, Ruder Finn, to advance their causes by demonizing the Serbs. The role
of the Washington public relations firm, Ruder Finn, is by now well-known,
but seems to have raised few doubts as to the accuracy of the anti-Serb
propaganda it successfully diffused. Ruder Finn deliberately targeted
certain publics, notably the American Jewish community, with a campaign
likening Serbs to Nazis. Feminists were also clearly targeted by the
Croatian nationalist campaign directed out of Zagreb to brand Serbs as
rapists. No one denies that many rapes occurred during the civil war in
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, or that rape is a serious violation of
human rights. So is war, for that matter. From the start, however, inquiry
into rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina focused exclusively on accusations that
Serbs were raping Muslim women as part of a deliberate strategy. The most
inflated figures, freely extricated by multiplying the number of known
cases by large factors, were readily accepted by the media and
international organizations. No interest was shown in detailed and
documented reports of rapes of Serbian women by Muslims or Croats.

The late Nora Beloff, former chief political correspondent of the "London
Observer", described her own search in verification of the rape charges in
a letter to "The Daily Telegraph" (January 19, 1993). The British Foreign
Office conceded that the rape figures being handled about were really
uncorroborated and referred her to the Danish government, then chairing the
European Union. Copenhagen agreed that the reports were unsubstantiated,
but kept repeating them. Both said that the EU has taken up the "rape
atrocity" issue at its December 1992 Edinburgh Summit exclusively on the
basis of a German initiative. In turn, Fran Wild, in charge of the Bosnian
Desk in the German Foreign Ministry, told Ms. Beloff that the material on
Serb rapes came partly from the Izetbegovic government and partly from the
Catholic charity Caritas in Croatia. No effort had been made to seek
corroboration from more impartial sources.

The Yugoslav story was complicated; anti-Serb stories had the advantage of
being simple and available, and they provided an easy- to-use moral compass
by designating the bad guys. 


Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)