The parallels between the Islamic Extremists of Al-Qaeda and the Serbian Fashist Orthodox Chetniks, is apparent including the fact that both groups share the same sinister apologists. Islamic Extremists and Serbian Orthodox Extremists (Chetniks) are two sides of the same coin.
Is not a surprise to see that another piece of the jigsaw puzzle has slotted into place, and that right-wing anti-Muslim bigots are beginning to view the West’s dangerous and aggressive enemy, the Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, as a desired ally in their crusade against the Muslim peoples of the world.
The division of the world, between states that have recognized, and states that are not recognising Kosova’s independence is very largely a division between the majority of democratic countries on the one hand, and those that either themselves fear ’separatist’ threats to their own territorial integrity, or that are politically hostile to the West. Russia falls into the second camp. Having itself promoted the separation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia, and of Transnistria from Moldova, Russia cannot seriously be described as ‘fearing separatism’. Russian President Vladimir Putin has deliberately manufactured an international crisis over the Kosova issue with the express intention of disrupting the expansion of the EU and NATO and of splitting the ranks of their existing members.
This has been openly stated by Moscow’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, who has threatened force in the event that the EU adopts a common policy over Kosova: “If the EU works out a single position or if NATO steps beyond its mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will be in conflict with the U.N., and then I think we will also begin operating under the assumption that in order to be respected, one needs to use force."
Russian nationalists are selective in their presentation of Russia as the aggrieved party, righteously upholding international law - an area in which Russia’s record is less than immaculate. The Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states and Japan’s Kurile Islands during and after World War, and subsequently invaded Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan - all without the sanction of the UN Security Council. The current Russian president describes the collapse of the Soviet Union as ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ of the twentieth century, and has refused to apologise for the Soviet Union’s illegal annexation of the Baltic states - an annexation that the US never recognised - claiming that the act had been consensual.
Russia has refused also to return Japan’s Kuril Islands. The entire Japanese civilian population of roughly 17,000 was expelled until 1946.
Other Putinist actions that have been less than fanatical in their respect for international law include Russia’s launching of a cyber-war to destabilise Estonia, because the Estonians decided to move a statue from one place to another; the murder of Alexander Litvinenko; and the maintenance of a military presence in Moldova’s and Georgia’s break-away territories of Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in violation of the sovereignty of two UN member-states, Moldova and Georgia. Indeed, Putin’s support for these break-away territories, which are much closer to Russia than is Kosova, suggest that Russia, as well as being less than consistent in its support for international law, is less than consistent in its opposition to unilateral ’separatism’.
Russia’s conflict with the Western alliance over Kosova is, in other words, a crisis that Putin unnecessarily manufactured for his own purpose, which is to split the EU, disrupt its expansion and cause problems for the US and Britain. This is not a conflict that can be attributed to aggressiveness on the West’s part!
Western leaders have bent over backwards to accommodate Putin since he took power in 1999. Tony Blair very publicly supported Putin’s murderous war to crush Chechnya. Putin responded to Western benevolence by supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime with military information in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Russia’s President Putin has warned that recognising Kosovo will rebound very badly upon the countries who have blundered into endorsing it. In other words, Serbia can burn down US embassies, Russia can give military information to Saddam to help him kill American soldiers, they can drive a wedge into the Western alliance, and they will still be Western ally against people who wave the American flag in gratitude?? Never mind that the Kosovars and Albanians are about the most pro-American nation on the planet!!
Albania has sent troops to Iraq and has shown much greater loyalty and staying power as USA ally there than many predominantly Christian states. Albanian Defence Minister has said that Albanian troops will remain in Iraq as long as US forces remain there.
The chorus of voices raised internationally against Kosova’s independence is a chorus of demagogues, despots and xenophobes ! Opposition has come from those whose experience of democracy is more recent and which themselves have nationalistic reasons for opposing recognition!
Spain and Greece were dictatorships as recently as the mid-1970s;
Slovakia and Romania as recently as 1989.
Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Cyprus all have strong recent histories of xenophobic bigotry and intolerance.
Western credibility was already slightly dented by the Serb attack on Kosova’s border crossings with Serbia, against which sufficient precautions were not taken. Northern Kosova, with its artificial Serb majority manufactured by ethnic cleansing, has long been an unhealed sore, and is an area where Serb obstructionists can cause problems for us if we do not resolve the problem promptly.
An informally partitioned Kosova, such as exists at present, will not simply be another Cyprus - an annoying problem whose resolution can be postponed indefinitely at minor but bearable cost to Western interests.
Serbia in northern Kosova, unlike Turkey in northern Cyprus, is not ready to rest content with a quiet, de facto partition. The Serbian government “minister for Kosova”, Slobodan Samardzic, has stated openly that the attack on the border crossings was ‘in accordance with general [Serbian] government policies.’
In other words, Belgrade intends to use northern Kosova as a weapon with which to destabilise the whole of Kosova and the stability of the Western Balkans in general. Indeed, some of the Serbs who attacked the border were in all probability agents of the Serbian Interior Ministry. Belgrade will undoubtedly make life difficult for newly independent Kosova. Ultimately, however, Serbia is not strong enough to overturn the new order in Kosova.
This raises the question of what the Serbian government is hoping to achieve by engaging in a struggle it cannot possibly win? A lot of commentators in the West like to stereotype the Serbian people as irrationally and spontaneously nationalist, and their politicians and statesmen as simply expressions of this characteristic. According to such a model, the attack on the Kosova border, as well as the demonstration and rioting in Belgrade, simply reflected the rotten Serb nationalism, which reacted to the recognition of Kosova like a bull to a red rag.
A demonstration of that size does not take place spontaneously; it was the result of careful planning and organisation by the Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and his supporters and allies, above all Tomislav Nikolic’s extreme-right Serbian Radical Party. Workers and schoolchildren were given the day off and bussed into Belgrade from all over the country to participate.
A demonstration that enjoyed the full logistical support of the Serbian state but still numbered only 150-200,000 is actually a fairly sorry affair. Milosevic’s regime in its prime was capable of mobilizing demonstrations several times larger, reaching up to and above one million people.
A demonstration that rapidly spawned a riot in which, not only the US embassy was attacked but also the Croatian and Bosnian embassies, McDonald’s restaurants and several shops, some of which were looted in the process. In other words, this was a demonstration of the state-organised hooligan fringe of Serbian society, to which the ordinary citizens and celebrities who attended merely added a respectable veneer.
There is a global struggle taking place against Islamic fascism, and it is one that all democrats should support. But in doing so, we find ourselves in some sense aligned with some unsavory bigots whose motivation has less to do with support for democracy!
Since democratic Western values include respect for freedom of conscience and religious toleration, such bigots clearly have no place in this kind of society! Their hate is essentially no different from the Islamofascist hatred of Jews, Christians, Atheists and other religions, and their bigotry only alienates ordinary religious people and pushes them into the arms of the extremists!
One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life, must not be a sexual pervert, must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer, and an ethnic cleanser ! One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character and stand above the vices of the people of his time!
No, this is not an Religious war
This is the Mafias Criminals War for controlling the World and Kosova issue has prompted these bigots to reveal their true criminal faces!