KOSOVO IN FLAMES - Chronicles Magazine

Kosovo in flames. Ancient Orthodox churches in ruins. Serbs beaten, murdered, and ethnically cleansed from their villages. If you believe the liberal media, these atrocities, committed by the ruling Albanian majority in the Kosovo region of Serbia, were either directly incited by Serb violence against Albanian children or a delayed response to the violence and repression inflicted by the Yugoslav government in the Milosevic years. The poor suffering Albanians, claims Richard Holbrook, architect of the Clintons’ Balkan policy, have grown tired of waiting for the international community to give them what they deserve.

The truth is, as it almost always is, the opposite of what they want you to believe. Despite the distorted accounts being circulated by AP and the Gannet press (to name only two press outlets conspicuous for bad reporting), Albanian militants had been planning this anti-Serb pogrom for some time, and both UNMIK (the U.N. command in Kosovo) and the Council of Europe have debunked the story that Albanian children, drowned by the evil Serbs, were the casus belli. Gregory Johnson, commander of the NATO Southern Wing, describes the violence in Kosovo as ethnic cleansing and as the “violence of a mob, of criminals.” Admiral Johnson’s assessment that the Albanian action was “orchestrated” is shared by Jonathan Eyal, Director of the Royal Institute of Armed Forces in London:

That has not happened accidentally. There were ongoing debates about withdrawal of large number of NATO soldiers from Kosovo and Bosnia. It is clear that for the authorities in Belgrade the crisis occurred at the worst possible time, only few days after setting up of new government. On the other hand this is an ideal time for Pristina. Albanians think that the world has lost interest in Kosovo since the countries of the West are preoccupied without world spots of crisis.

In other words, the Albanian terrorist campaign to change world opinion is no different from the Al Qaeda bombings in Madrid. Most Americans probably do not realize that Osama bin Laden was an ally both of the Bosnian Muslims and of the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo.

Albanian violence in Kosovo is not a new phenomenon. Albanians have been terrorizing Orthodox Serbs, Gypsies, Catholics, and non-Albanian Muslims for as long as they have been in Kosovo. To this extent, Richard Holbrook is right: The Albanians want a Christian-free Kosovo, and if the United Nations won’t finish the job they started—killing and expelling the Serbs—then they will take matters into their own hands.

The governments of Great Britain and the United States claim to be waging a war against terrorism and portray the occupation of Iraq as a key campaign in that war. Unfortunately, the continued presence of U.S. and allied troops in Iraq is inspiring rather than repressing terrorism. In the meantime, they are doing next to nothing to punish the countries that have been funding and arming the terrorists, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and they continue to preside over an illegal U.N. occupation of Kosovo whose fruits are murder, ethnic cleansing, and an international crime spree (drugs, white slavery, kidnapping, murder) conducted by the Albanian mobs in Europe.

Although fundamentalist Islam presents a graver threat to the peace and security of Europe and the United States than either Nazism or Communism ever did, our own leaders continue to repeat their chant of multi-culturalism, tolerance, and diversity. Islam, as our President never tires of repeating, is a “religion of peace”—a lie that is an insult both to the Muslims who oppressed Christians and Jews for 1000 years and to the victims.

Hindsight may some day provide a reasonable justification for the invasion of Iraq, but if we are determined on resisting Islamic terrorism, that resistance should be mounted here in the United States, where Islamic advocacy groups have been supporting terrorists and where Islamic schools are inculcating terrorist principles in the next generation, and in Europe where an Islamic terrorist state is being established, under our auspices, in Kosovo.

If George W. Bush wants to show that he is serious about fighting terrorism, he will restore Kosovo to its rightful owner, Serbia, and he will arrange international compensation for the Christian victims, whose churches, homes, and villages have been destroyed.