FW: Myth and Fact: the US/NATO War in Yugoslavia
Magne Haagen Flatval (magne@kvalito.no)
Wed, 14 Apr 1999 23:14:02 +0200
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> REVISED--April 14, 1999
> 8 Myths
>
> The US/NATO War in Yugoslavia: 8 Myths and Facts
>
> Myth #1. U.S./NATO had to attack "the Serbs" because the Yugoslav
> government and President Slobodan Milosevic refused to negotiate on
> Kosovo, a region of Yugoslavia where ethnic Albanians are the
> majority.
>
> Reality: U.S./NATO bombs are falling on all Yugoslavs: Serbs,
> Montenegrins, Albanians, Hungarians, Romanis (called Gypsies) and
> other peoples who make up the multiethnic Federal Republic of
> Yugoslavia. There were no "negotiations." U.S. officials like
> Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went out of their way to make
> this point when "peace talks" were held in France in February.
> Instead, the U.S. government presented an ultimatum to the Yugoslav
> government that had three points: 1) Kosovo must be granted autonomy;
> 2) NATO must be allowed to station 30,000 ground troops in Yugoslavia
> to ensure this autonomy; and 3) A NATO-conducted referendum for
> Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia would take place within three
> years.
>
> The Yugoslav government agreed to the first condition, and rejected
> the second and third, saying they were a gross violation of their
> sovereignty and the independence of their country. The one breaking
> point that Yugoslavia refused to negotiate is that they will not allow
> a foreign occupying army. The only constant U.S. demand was that NATO
> troops must be based in Yugoslav territory. The U.S. refused to allow
> the Yugoslav delegation to meet with the Albanian delegation, or even
> to see 56 pages of the 80-page agreement.
>
>
> Myth #2. Yugoslavia is the aggressor in this conflict and Milosevic is
> a "new Hitler."
>
> Reality: No Yugoslav soldiers, planes or ships are attacking another
> country. The conflict in Kosovo is an internal issue. Yugoslavia is a
> small developing country of 11 million people, being attacked by 19
> countries, including the biggest military powers in the world, which
> have a combined population of more than half a billion people.
> Milosevic has been demonized much like Saddam Hussein was during the
> war against Iraq. A State Department official admitted: "The
> demonization of Milosevic is necessary to maintain the air attacks."
> (San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 1999)
>
>
> Myth #3. Clinton, Albright and the Pentagon generals were moved to
> action by their concerns about "ethnic cleansing" and human
> suffering.
>
> Reality: The U.S., Germany and other NATO powers played a key role in
> breaking up Yugoslavia in 1991-92, arming and supporting secessionist
> movements. It was the International Monetary Fund that demanded an end
> to "special privileges" for Kosovo in the 1980s. For 45 years after
> World War II, the many nationalities that made up Yugoslavia lived
> together in peace. In the civil wars, which followed the break-up of
> Yugoslavia, there was much bloodshed and human-rights violations on
> all sides. The biggest single act of "ethnic cleansing" was the forced
> removal of 600,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of the former
> Yugoslav Republic Croatia by the U.S.-trained and armed Croatian
> military in 1995. More than 55,000 of these Serbs, who were resettled
> in Kosovo, are among the hundreds of thousands of people made refugees
> by NATO bombing and the conflict in Kosovo. (Julia Taft, Asst.
> Secretary of State on C-SPAN, March 29, 1999) The U.S. "concern"
> about removal of people from their homeland is very selective. This is
> not surprising: Virtually the entire continent of North America was
> "ethnically cleansed" of Native people to make way for the U.S. and
> Canada, two NATO powers. U.S. policy has supported, with arms and
> money, the removal of Kurdish people in Turkey and of Palestinians,
> East Timorese, Guatemalan indigenous people -- the list goes on.
>
>
> Myth #4. The U.S./NATO goal is to protect the rights of the
> predominantly Muslim Albanians in Kosovo.
>
> Reality: U.S. officials pretend to care about the rights of Muslim
> people in Yugoslavia, while their policy of sanctions and war kills
> 300 mostly Muslim Iraqis every day -- half children under 5 years
> old.
>
> The Pentagon is not a humanitarian relief agency and the
> corporate-owned politicians don't really care about any
> people--Albanians, Serbs, Kurds, Iraqis, or the poor and working
> people of this country. This war is killing people of all
> nationalities in Yugoslavia, and poisoning their land with radioactive
> depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, U.S.
> veterans and their families are suffering from Gulf War Syndrome as a
> result of depleted-uranium poisoning. The Clinton administration and
> the Pentagon talk about "supporting our troops" before they go into
> battle, but then deny medical benefits to veterans who suffer from the
> after-effects of Agent Orange from Vietnam or DU from Iraq.
>
> This war will cost many billions of dollars, money stolen from
> housing, health care, education and other social programs. Each cruise
> missile costs $1 million. The only ones who will benefit from this war
> will be the military-industrial complex and big business.
>
> The real U.S./NATO goal is to break Yugoslavia into ever-smaller
> pieces and bomb its people into submission. The Balkans is a strategic
> region, a crossroads between Western Europe and the oil-rich Middle
> East and Caspian Basin. The U.S. has established, in only five years,
> military domination of the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia,
> Bosnia and Macedonia, as well as Hungary and Albania. The only
> hold-out has been what is today the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
> This is the real reason why Yugoslavia has become the target in the
> Balkans, just as it is the real reason that Iraq has become the target
> in the Persian/Arabian Gulf region.
>
>
> Myth #5. U.S. news reports are balanced and impartial, giving us the
> true story.
>
> Reality: What we see today is a gross distortion of the facts. The
> media is dominated by big business interests, and functions as a
> Pentagon propaganda machine. For political purposes, the suffering of
> only one group, the refugees leaving Kosovo, is shown, while the other
> Yugoslav victims of the NATO bombing are virtually ignored. The New
> York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Chronicle Examiner, and others
> have given a very slanted view of events in Yugoslavia, to justify the
> massive bombing. General Electric, one of the country's largest
> military contractors which supplies engines for NATO jet fighters,
> owns NBC and co-owns MS/NBC.
>
>
> Myth #6: The U.S. is trying to defend the rights of the people of
> Kosovo because they have no rights.
>
> Reality: All minorities in Yugoslavia have much greater rights than
> national minorities have in the United States or in Europe. While
> bilingual education is under attack from California to New York,
> Albanians in Kosovo have schools and tuition-free universities in the
> Albanian language. Medical care is free for all citizens in
> Yugoslavia. Albanian separatists boycotted the government school
> system and health care system. To refuse to use what exists is very
> different from being denied these rights.
>
> The population information commonly given out is also misleading. For
> example saying that 90 percent of the population is Albanian is not
> accurate. This figure actually includes all non-Serbs in
> Kosovo--Romanis, Turks, Egyptians, Goramacs (Serb Muslims from Kosovo)
> and others. At the Rambouillet talks, the Yugoslav delegation
> represented not only Serbs, but all of the nationalities in Kosovo,
> including two Albanians, while the Albanian separatist delegation
> consisted only of Albanians. The religious differences are also
> exaggerated. While many Albanians are Muslim, 10 percent of the Serb
> population is also Muslim. In addition, 25 percent of the Albanian
> population is Roman Catholic such as Mother Teresa, who was a Kosovo
> Albanian.
>
>
> Myth #7: The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) is a genuine liberation
> army.
>
> Reality: The KLA is a terrorist force similar to CIA-funded Contras
> used by the U.S. in Nicaragua in an effort to overthrow the
> government. NATO uses the KLA to justify sending U.S. troops to
> occupy and further break up Yugoslavia. The KLA did not exist one year
> ago. Suddenly, it has the latest high tech weapons.
>
> What kind of liberation struggle calls for the bombing of its own
> people and for a foreign army of occupation on its soil? This is the
> KLA demand. The Society of Albanian American Students released a call
> for a demonstration on Wednesday, March 31 "organized with the
> invitation of the U.S. State Department to support NATO strikes, and
> above all, will focus to pressure for Ground Troops in Kosova and Arms
> for KLA." Al Gore addressed the crowd. The signs of KLA supporters at
> rallies organized by the U.S. State Department--"NATO Bombing, Just Do
> It," "KLA is NATO"--express the real relationship between the KLA and
> the U.S. government.
>
>
> Myth #8: The NATO bombing is not the cause of the refugee crisis.
>
> Reality: There were no waves of refugees until the beginning of the
> NATO bombing on March 24. The U.S. government used similar scripts of
> defending civilians and stopping massacres to justify massive bombing
> campaigns in both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Again and again it was
> the massive bombing that created refugee crises. The London Sunday
> Times interviewed refugees and found: "Nor was there much fodder for
> NATO propagandists among the 200 or so refugees waiting to register at
> a Skopje district police station early on Friday [March 26]. Mirvei, a
> tall Albanian woman clutching her four-month-old baby, looked
> bewildered when asked if Serbian troops had driven her out. `There
> were no Serbs,' she said. `We were frightened of the bombs.'"