Trial and Error by Nebojsa Malic / Antiwar.com

http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2009/12/04/trial-and-error/
Trial and Error
by Nebojsa Malic, December 05, 2009

World Court Ponders Kosovo "Independence"

In October 2008, the government in Belgrade gloated for one whole day because the UN General Assembly allowed it to request an advisory opinion from the World Court (International Court of Justice) concerning the "independence" of its occupied province of Kosovo. Only Albania and three South Pacific states joined the U.S. in opposing the request. That may have been slightly embarrassing for Washington, but did absolutely nothing to derail its pet project in the Balkans.

Most likely, neither will the World Court’s decision in the proceedings that finally began at The Hague this week. A ruling by the ICJ matters only to those who abide by international law to begin with. It will have zero effect on countries that have already decided they were above such law and demonstrated this by setting up the "Independent state of Kosovo," or invading Iraq.

Law and Politics

Though it is a legitimate international court (unlike the ad hoc "Tribunal" for war crimes in Yugoslavia, also seated at The Hague), the ICJ has not been immune to matters of politics and power. In 1999, it famously refused to hear Yugoslavia’s case against NATO countries, claiming it had no jurisdiction in the matter.

Just a few years later, however, the ICJ decided Yugoslavia had standing to be sued by the "Bosnian" government (a case originally filed in 1993). Those expecting another railroading of Serbia (Yugoslavia having ceased to exist in 2006), were surprised by the verdict in March 2007, which absolved it of any responsibility for the atrocities in Bosnia.

Continued at link

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Nebojsa Malic left his home in Bosnia after the Dayton Accords and currently resides in the United States. During the Bosnian War he had exposure to diplomatic and media affairs in Sarajevo. As a historian who specializes in international relations and the Balkans, Malic has written numerous essays on the Kosovo War, Bosnia, and Serbian politics. His exclusive column for Antiwar.com debuted in November 2000.

NATO / Media Lies in Former Yugoslavia

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6386/
I've begun digging on this topic, following this claim by a friend, elsewhere:

"Remember the ex-Yugoslavia? Remember all those front page articles about the supposed "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs? That demonised sovereign nation which was likened by those "erudite" broadsheets as akin to Nazi Germany?

Remember?

Let me tell you a little "secret"... one which your [US] newspapers failed to reveal.

The Serb "holocaust"? The one which lead NATO (the gendarmes of the USA) to bomb a country for 78 days non-stop? You know how many "mass graves" were found?

Yeah... I didn't think so.

The FBI failed to find a single mass grave. Uh huh. Funny how that "little" secret failed to get mentioned.

The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines". That's right.

Del Ponte's tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA.

2,788. That's less casualties than the American Civil War. And an entire nation was smashed to smithereens because of a US lead PR campaign. The war mongers at work. Tell me which one of your great newspapers spilled the beans regarding THAT little secret?

So, forgive me if I take what you say with the proverbial pinch of sodium chloride."

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My co-moderator here, Diio, remarked that he was unable to find much online to back up this statement, so I'm looking...

Here's one or two to start us off...

The Rise of The Laptop Bombardier

March 2009

"Journalists and editors did more than simply cheer NATO’s bombing of Belgrade: they wrote the script for it."

Full article at link


Meanwhile... Gurcan, if you will, I remember a great piece you wrote (for yourself) on the Balkans in general... would you mind posting it here?

Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia etc.... I still don't think I've quite got my head around it all


Don't Forget Yugoslavia

by John Pilger

The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir, The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the West's intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus.

The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte's role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this include NATO's 78-day bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, which killed hundreds of people in hospitals, schools, churches, parks, and television studios and destroyed economic infrastructure. "If I am not willing to [prosecute NATO personnel]," said Del Ponte, "I must give up my mission." It was a sham. Under pressure from Washington and London, an investigation into NATO war crimes was scrapped.

Readers will recall that the justification for the NATO bombing was that the Serbs were committing "genocide" in the secessionist province of Kosovo against ethnic Albanians. David Scheffer, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as "225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been murdered. Tony Blair invoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War." The West's heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose murderous record was set aside. The British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him anytime on his mobile phone.

With the NATO bombing over, international teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume the "holocaust." The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines." A year later, Del Ponte's tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide in Kosovo. The "holocaust" was a lie. The NATO attack had been fraudulent.

That was not all, says Del Ponte in her book: the KLA kidnapped hundreds of Serbs and transported them to Albania, where their kidneys and other body parts were removed; these were then sold for transplant in other countries. She also says there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the Kosovar Albanians for war crimes, but the investigation "was nipped in the bud" so that the tribunal's focus would be on "crimes committed by Serbia." She says the Hague judges were terrified of the Kosovar Albanians – the very people in whose name NATO had attacked Serbia.

Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of "liberated" Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province. Last February the "international community," led by the U.S., recognized Kosovo, which has no formal economy and is run, in effect, by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband, and women. But it has one valuable asset: the U.S. military base Camp Bondsteel, described by the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner as "a smaller version of Guantanamo." Del Ponte, a Swiss diplomat, has been told by her own government to stop promoting her book.

Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multi-ethnic, if imperfect, federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991, a secret deal had been struck; Germany recognized Croatia, and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the U.S. ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct NATO was reinvented as an enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in France, the Serbs were told to accept occupation by NATO forces and a market economy, or be bombed into submission. It was the perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Link:

http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=13303


Related:

http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2007/03/carla-del-ponte-slams-muted-response.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/12/warcrimes.kosovo


Pictured: Carla Del Ponte

Maps 2