Canadian General On Kosovo: We Bombed The Wrong Side

[Andrej Tisma]

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/comment/story.html?id=46d925b4-8d36-470a-accd-34642b09c5bf


National Post (Canada) 
April 6, 2004


We bombed the wrong side?

Lewis MacKenzie*



Five years ago our television screens were dominated
by pictures of Kosovo-Albanian refugees escaping
across Kosovo's borders to the sanctuaries
of Macedonia and Albania. Shrill reports indicated
that Slobodan Milosevic's security forces were
conducting a campaign of genocide and that at least
100,000 Kosovo-Albanians had been exterminated and
buried in mass graves throughout the Serbian province.
NATO sprung into action and, in spite of the fact no
member nation of the alliance was threatened,
commenced bombing not only Kosovo, but the
infrastructure and population of Serbia
itself - without the authorizing United Nations
resolution so revered by Canadian leadership, past and
present.  

Those of us who warned that the West was being sucked
in on the side of an extremist, militant,
Kosovo-Albanian independence movement were dismissed
as
appeasers. The fact that the lead organization
spearheading the fight for independence, the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA), was universally designated a
terrorist organization and known to be receiving
support from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda was
conveniently ignored.  

The recent dearth of news in the North American media
regarding the increase in violence in Kosovo compared
to the comprehensive coverage in the European
press strongly suggests that we Canadians don't like
to admit it when we are wrong. On the contrary,
selected news clips on this side of the ocean
continue to reinforce the popular spin that those
dastardly Serbs are at it again.  

A case in point was the latest crisis that exploded on
March 15. The media reported that four Albanian boys
had been chased into the river Ibar in
Mitrovica by at least two Serbs and a dog (the dog's
ethnic affiliation was not reported).Three of the boys
drowned and one escaped to the other side.
Immediately, thousands of Albanians mobilized and
concentrated in the area of the divided city. Attacks
on Serbs took place throughout the province
resulting in an estimated 30 killed and 600 wounded.
Thirty Serbian Christian Orthodox churches and
monasteries were destroyed, more than 300
homes were burnt to the ground and six Serbian
villages cleansed of their occupants. One hundred and
fifty international peacekeepers were injured.  

Totally ignored in North America were the numerous
statements from impartial sources that said there was
no incident between the Serbs, the dog and the
Albanian boys. NATO Police spokesman Derek Chappell
stated on March 16 that it was "definitely not true"
that the boys had been chased into the river by
Serbs. Chappell went on to say that the surviving boy
had told his parents that they had entered the river
alone and that three of his friends had been swept
away by the current. Admiral Gregory Johnson, the
overall NATO commander, further stated that the
ensuing clashes were "orchestrated and well-planned
ethnic cleansing" by the Kosovo-Albanians. Those Serbs
forced to leave joined the 200,000 who had been
cleansed from the province since NATO's "humanitarian"
bombing in 1999. The '"cleansees" have become very
effective "cleansers."  

In the same week a number of individuals posing as
Serbs ambushed and killed a UN policeman and his local
police partner. During the firefight one of
them was wounded which caused an immediate switch from
Serbian to Albanian as he screamed, "I've been hit"!
The UN pursued the attackers and tracked
them to an Albanian-run farm where they discovered
weapons and the wounded Albanian who had died from his
wounds. Four Albanians were arrested. Once again, the
ambush had been reported in the United States but not
the follow-up which clearly indicated yet another
orchestrated provocation by the Albanian terrorists.  

Kosovo is administered by the UN, the very
organization many Canadians have indicated they would
like to see take over from the United States in Iraq.
The fact the UN cannot order its civilian employees to
go or stay anywhere -- they have to volunteer --
combined with recent history that saw the UN
abandon Iraq after a single brutal attack on their
compound in Baghdad and the reality that Kosovo, under
the organization's administration, is a
basket case, disqualifies it from consideration for
such a role.  

Since the NATO/UN intervention in 1999, Kosovo has
become the crime capital of Europe. The sex slave
trade is flourishing. The province has become an
invaluable transit point for drugs en route to Europe
and North America. Ironically, the majority of the
drugs come from another state "liberated" by the West,
Afghanistan. Members of the demobilized, but not
eliminated, KLA are intimately involved in 
organized crime and the government. The UN police
arrest a small percentage of those involved in
criminal activities and turn them over to a judiciary
with a revolving door that responds to bribes and
coercion.  

The objective of the Albanians is to purge all
non-Albanians, including the international community's
representatives, from Kosovo and ultimately link
up with mother Albania thereby achieving the goal of
"Greater Albania." The campaign started with their
attacks on Serbian security forces in the early
1990s and they were successful in turning Milosevic's
heavy-handed response into worldwide sympathy for
their cause. There was no genocide as claimed by
the West -- the 100,000 allegedly buried in mass
graves turned out to be around 2,000, of all ethnic
origins, including those killed in combat during
the war itself.  

The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a
Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly
supported their violent campaign for an ethnically
pure and independent Kosovo.We have never blamed them
for being the perpetrators of the violence in the
early '90s and we continue to portray them as the
designated victim today in spite of evidence to the
contrary. When they achieve independence with the help
of our tax dollars combined with those of
bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of
encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported
independence movements around the world.

Funny how we just keep digging the hole deeper!  


*Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN
troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.
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