Webloggin » Kosovo Declares its Independence - New Muslim Majority Led by Former KLA Leader

Kosovo’s parliament officially declared its independence from Serbia this afternoon in a move that pits the United States and the European Union against Russia and Serbia. This is the ultimate end result of the 1998-1999 separatist war or the Kosovo war as it is more widely known.

PRISTINA, Kosovo (CNN) — Kosovo has formally declared its independence from Serbia and become the world’s newest state in a move opposed by Serbia and Russia but backed by many western governments.

Lawmakers in the legislature of the former Serbian province approved the declaration of independence at an extraordinary session Sunday afternoon. It was read out in Albanian, Serbian and English by prime minister Hashim Thaci before the approval of state symbols including Kosovar’s new national flag and anthem.

Thaci said that Kosovo was an “independent and democratic” state, adding: “From this day onwards, Kosovo is proud, independent and free.”

CNN’s Alessio Vinci, reporting from the Kosovar capital Pristina, said that thousands of Kosovo’s Albanian population had braved the freezing wind and cold to sing, dance, wave flags in the streets and light firecrackers ahead of the much anticipated vote. Some revellers were even said to be firing gunshot into the air. “It’s been like this for several hours now,” he said.

“It’s a day they have been waiting for for such a long time that many of them are trying to figure out just how they got to this day.”

The AP notes that Kosovo’s PM is a former rebel leader of Kosovo Liberation Army. Yet in all of their reporting the AP omits the fact that the 90% majority of Ethnic Albanians that make up Kosovo’s population just happens to be Muslim and that the KLA is reported to have had ties with Osama Bin Laden and other radial Islamic groups.

PREKAZE, Serbia (AP) — On the eve of Kosovo’s declaration of independence, its prime minister paid tribute Saturday to an ethnic Albanian family whose 1998 slaying became a rallying point for the province’s struggle to break away from Serbia.

Hashim Thaci, a former rebel leader of the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, was greeted by applause and cheers as he shook hands with villagers in Prekaze, 25 miles southeast of the capital, Pristina.

Not that being 90% Muslim is a crime but many dispute the Western Media’s account of the genocide at the hands of Slobodan Milošević, noting that the press unfairly ignored the same type of crimes being committed by the Muslim’s Albanians, specifically the KLA. This is actually backed up by many groups including Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch accused the KLA of doing its own brand of ethnic cleansing and the target was, drumroll please, Orthodox Christians. Surprise? Hardly.

As presented in the Background chapter, the KLA was responsible for serious abuses in 1998, including abductions and murders of Serbs and ethnic Albanians considered collaborators with the state. In some villages under KLA control in 1998, the rebels drove ethnic Serbs from their homes. Some of those who remained are unaccounted for and are presumed to have been abducted by the KLA and killed. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, ninety-seven Kosovo Serbs who went missing in 1998 were still missing as of May 15, 2000.

The KLA detained an estimated eighty-five Serbs during its July 19, 1998, attack on Orahovac. Thirty-five of these people were subsequently released but the others remain missing as of August 2001. On July 22, 1998, the KLA briefly took control of the Belacevac mine near Obilic. Nine Serbs were captured that day, and they remain on the ICRC’s list of the missing.

In September 1998, the Serbian police collected thirty-four bodies of people believed to have been seized and murdered by the KLA, among them some ethnic Albanians, at Lake Radonjic near Glodjane (Gllogjan). Prior to that, the most serious KLA abuse was the reported killing in August of twenty-two Serbian civilians in the village of Klecka, where the police claimed to have discovered human remains and a kiln used to cremate the bodies. The manner in which the allegations were made, however, raised questions about their validity.

The KLA, which evolved between 1996 and 1999 from a scattered guerrilla group to an armed movement and ultimately to a more formidable armed force, engaged in military tactics in 1998 and 1999 that put civilians at risk. KLA units sometimes staged an ambush or attacked police or army outposts from a village and then retreated, exposing villagers to revenge attacks. Large massacres sometimes ensued, helping publicize the KLA’s cause and internationalize the conflict.

Elements of the KLA are also responsible for post-conflict attacks on Serbs, Roma, and other non-Albanians, as well as ethnic Albanian political rivals. Immediately following NATO’s arrival in Kosovo, there was widespread and systematic burning and looting of homes belonging to Serbs, Roma, and other minorities and the destruction of Orthodox churches and monasteries. This destruction was combined with harassment and intimidation designed to force people from their homes and communities. By late-2000 more than 210,000 Serbs had fled the province; most of them left in the first six weeks of the NATO deployment. Those who remained were increasingly concentrated in mono-ethnic enclaves, such as northern Mitrovica, Kosovo Polje, or Gracanica.

Most seriously, as many as one thousand Serbs and Roma have been murdered or have gone missing since June 12, 1999. Criminal gangs or vengeful individuals may have been involved in some incidents since the war. But elements of the KLA are clearly responsible for many of these crimes. The desire for revenge provides a partial explanation, but there is also a clear political goal in many of these attacks: the removal from Kosovo of non-ethnic Albanians in order to better justify an independent state.

Ethnic Albanians are not exempt from the violence. Albanians accused of “collaboration” with Serbian authorities have been beaten, abducted, or killed, notably in the municipalities of Prizren, Djakovica, and Klina. Attacks against political party activists, especially against the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), continued after municipal elections on October 28, 2000.

Are you reading this? Removal of non-ethnic Albanians is code for non-Muslims; i.e. Christians. This is the kind of crap that gets omitted by the media. So knowing now what I know of the mainstream media I don’t think it’s out of the question to take the media’s view of the Kosovo war as it was being reported at the time with a grain of salt.

On the other hand this puts me in line with known leftists such as Noam Chomsky, a person of great reverence to the American left and whom I would not want to be associated with in any way shape or form.

I would be a bit uncomfortable if the United States took up sides here in support of a former KLA leader who just now happens to be in power thanks to NATO and U.S. led efforts despite being accused of conspiring to have worked with enemies of the United States such as Osama Bin Laden.

The Washington Times printed a 1999 article that actually made the connection. Although my source of the article is a geocities cache you can buy the original article here if you so desire.

KLA rebels train in terrorist camps

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden — who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.

The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO’s 41-day bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports.

The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists — members of the Mujahideen –as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight.

Known to its countrymen as the Ushtria Clirimatare e Kosoves, the KLA has as many as 30,000 members, a number reportedly on the rise as a result of NATO’s continuing bombing campaign. The group’s leadership, including Agim Ceku, a former Croatian army brigadier general, has rapidly become a political and military force in the Balkans.

The intelligence reports document what is described as a “link” between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi millionaire, and the KLA –including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports said bin Laden’s organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA.

Does this sound like the kind of group the United States should be backing, despite, or whether or not we are at war with radical Islam? It sounds to me like the Bush administration is taking a cautioned approach. If you parse President Bush’s words he speaks of supporting the Serbs while allowing for limited statehood of Kosovo.

The disputed province is dear to the Serbs, Orthodox Christians who regard it as Serbian territory. But it is equally coveted by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, Muslims who have a 90 percent majority, and two years of talks on its final status ended in failure last December.

“Its status must be resolved in order for the Balkans to be stable,” President Bush told reporters during a news conference in Tanzania Sunday.

Bush said the Ahtisaari plan — named after former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari — is the best option. The proposal would give Kosovo limited statehood under international supervision.

President Bush added that “it’s in Serbia’s interest to be aligned with Europe and the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America.” Video Watch the changing political climate in the Balkans »

“We are heartened by the fact that the Kosovo government has clearly proclaimed its willingness and its desire to support Serbian rights in Kosovo,” Bush said.

I’d like to know what others think here.