War and Peace in Kosova

By Khalid Baig

War in Kosova is all but ended. A Peace Plan has been agreed upon. A strange war and a strange peace.

When NATO started its air campaign in Kosova, there were 40,000 Serb troops there. At the end of the ten-week campaign, there were 55,000. At that time, there were 1.8 million Muslims in Kosova. By the war's end, most of them had been killed, imprisoned, or expelled. For all practical purposes the removal of Muslims from Kosova had been completed with murderous efficiency. Despite round the clock bombing campaigns, not one Muslim victim of Serb aggression was protected. Not one Muslim woman was saved from the advances of Chetnik criminals. Not one Muslim house was saved from destruction. Yet, NATO leaders have been excitedly telling us that they have been successful. In the annals of war history, this was a unique war, whose success lied in its failure.

The real achievement of this war was to deny the Kosovar Muslims their right to self-defense. Muslims were not allowed to get weapons or get military help from anywhere. Kosova Liberation Army had liberated 40% of the territory before NATO got involved; through the miracle of NATO's "help," they lost most of that.

The "Peace Plan" that follows the strange war is equally strange. It is an agreement between an indicted war criminal and NATO, reached to their mutual satisfaction. The actual victims had no representation whatsoever in the negotiations, for they can be pitied but not consulted or trusted. And in any case, big powers know better what is good for them. Quite naturally, it calls for the victims to be disarmed. It guarantees that they will never be allowed freedom from the Serb murderers, rapists, and thugs. It is the peace of the victors imposed over the victims. While the "war" denied the Kosovars their right to self-defense, the "peace" denies them the right to self-determination and the right to self-defense. Is it any wonder that NATO considers Kosova Liberation Army the "real danger" in the days ahead? In other words the NATO ground troops will now be used to subdue the Kosovars. Welcome to the New World Order and the Crash of Civilization.

In this war, as always, the propaganda machine has been solidly on the side of the war machine. It has labeled the Kosovars as separatists. That suggests that Kosova is a province of Serbia. That is a blatant lie. The fact is that according to the 1974 Constitution, Kosova was a Constituent Unit of FYR (Federal Yugoslav Republic), not of Serbia. When FYR was dissolved in 1991, all the constituent units were automatically free to go their own way. This meant that those who had suffered under the yoke of communism for decades, could at last be free. Indeed they could be, except the Muslims. This is the "principled" position that the West has taken and that is the key factor behind the carnage in the Balkans.

Slovenia and Croatia gained their independence and won immediate recognition from the European Community without any trouble. Bosnia-Herzegovina's recognition was delayed until a referendum could be held so the Badinter Commission set up by EC (in December 91) could "learn what the people wanted." When the referendum was finally held in March 92, 99% of the ballots were cast in favor of independence; the 33% Serbs had boycotted it. The recognition was granted, yet the delay resulted in the predictable devastation that followed.

For Kosova it was very clear what the people wanted. First, the population, unlike Bosnia, is homogenous: more than 90% are Muslims. Second, a referendum had already been held in 1991 and 85% of the ballots were cast in favor of independence. Yet the Badinter commission refused to grant recognition to the Republic of Kosova.

According to the same Peace Plan that will disarm the Kosovars, the hundreds of armed Chetnik terrorists (aka Serb soldiers) will be allowed to "protect Serb churches and historic sites." To understand the cynicism and wickedness of this statement, one only needs to listen to Franc Perko, Archbishop of Belgrade: "And you know what? the KLA hasn't destroyed even one Orthodox church. In Bosnia the Serbs didn't leave one mosque standing, and there were a thousand."

The fact remains that the Western foreign policy establishment harbors deep-seated hatred of Islam. In Bosnia or Palestine, Kashmir or Kosova, it is the same story. What other explanation one can give for the fact that in all of these places Muslims are being denied both their right to self-defense and their right to self-determination. However there are two reasons why the leaders cannot expose this enmity openly and have to resort to the kind of absolute wickedness and trickery that gave rise to the Operation Allied Farce. First, West has vast interests in the Muslim world and it cannot afford to antagonize it too much. Second, the common people in Western countries do not share these extreme views and would be appalled if they knew the full extent of what their governments are doing in the world.

Therein lies the way out. It is our job to expose the lies and tell the truth. Plain, unvarnished truth. NATO did not come to help Muslims; it came to help the Serbs decimate them. The Peace Plan is a plan for permanent enslavement of Kosovar Muslims. NATO did not "fail" in Kosova, it has succeeded in a brilliantly devilish way. Now, as Impact International noted in its May issue, "Kosovans should be preparing themselves for a new freedom struggle: liberation from NATO as well as Serbia."

In a world where lies and deceptions have become the norm, truth will be considered extreme and those telling it extremists. But how many more catastrophes have to occur before we stop telling lies to be considered moderate?