Kosovo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Madeleine Albright
2. Bill Clinton
3. Tony Blair
4. Gen. Clark
5. Other?

How did this tragic situation in Kosovo start?

Hundreds of Serbs and Montenegrins are leaving Kosovo Province in the aftermath of rioting that erupted last spring over demands of the ethnic Albanian majority for greater autonomy. Nine people were killed and 260 others injured in the disorders, during which extremists proposed making Kosovo part of neighboring Albania, Eastern Europe's most-orthodox Communist nation."
"Minorities Leaving Yugoslav Province Dominated by Albanians" , By KENNETH JAUTZ, Associated Press Writer, October 17, 1981, Saturday.

Were the Albanians denied access to the political system in Yugoslavia?

Officially registered political parties and leaders:

• Democratic Alliance of Kosovo or LDK [Dr. Ibrahim RUGOVA, president];
• New Democratic League of Kosovo or LDRK [Hydayet HYSENI];
• Parliamentary Party of Kosovo or PPK [Adem DEMACI];

What is the KLA?

"The Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Clinton administration has embraced and some members of Congress want to arm as part of the NATO bombing campaign, is a terrorist organization that has financed much of its war effort with profits from the sale of heroin. Recently obtained intelligence documents show that drug agents in five countries, including the United States, believe the KLA has aligned itself with an extensive organized crime network centered in Albania that smuggles heroin and some cocaine to buyers throughout Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States. The documents tie members of the Albanian Mafia to a drug smuggling cartel based in Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina. The cartel is manned by ethic Albanians who are members of the Kosovo National Front, whose armed wing is the KLA. The documents show it is one of the most powerful heroin smuggling organizations in the world, with much of its profits being diverted to the KLA to buy weapons ......."
"The Washington Times, 5/3/99, "KLA finances war with heroin sales" Front page, By Jerry Seper

"Western intelligence agencies believe the UCK [KLA] has been re-arming with the aid of money from drug-smuggling through Albania, along with donations from the Albanian diaspora in Western Europe and North America ….. Albania has become the crime capital of Europe. "
Jane's Intelligence Review, 3/1/99, "Life in the Balkan 'Tinderbox' Remains as Dangerous as Ever,"

"The Kosovo Liberation Army, which has won the support of the West for its guerrilla struggle against the heavy armour of the Serbs, is a Marxist-led force funded by dubious sources, including drug money. That is the judgment of senior police officers across Europe. An investigation by The Times has established that police forces in three Western European countries, together with Europol, the European police authority, are separately investigating growing evidence that drug money is funding the KLA's leap from obscurity to power.
The Times (London), 3/24/99, "Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels", by ROGER BOYES AND ESKE WRIGHT

"The KLA "began on the radical fringe of Kosovar Albanian politics, originally made up of diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania) as well as by descendants of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World WarII"
The New York Times, 3/28/99, "Fog of War-Coping With the Truth About Friend and Foe"
"The KLA made its military debut in February 1996 with the bombing of several camps housing Serbian refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia [Jane's Intelligence Review, 10/1/96]. The KLA (again according to the highly regarded Jane's,) "does not take into consideration the political or economic importance of its victims, nor does it seem at all capable of seriously hurting its enemy, the Serbian police and army. Instead, the group has attacked Serbian police and civilians arbitrarily at their weakest points. It has not come close to challenging the region's balance of military power" [Jane's Intelligence Review, 10/1/96].
Policy Paper by US Senate Republican Policy Committee, March 31, 1999, "The Kosovo Liberation Army: Does Clinton Policy Support Group with Terror, Drug Ties?", see: http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1999/fr033199.htm

What has the First UN Force Commander and Head of Mission in Yugoslavia said?

"The West appears to have learnt all the wrong lessons from the previous wars and applied it to Kosovo. Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only counterproductive but also dishonest. ......With 28, 000 forces under me and with constant contacts with UNHCR and the International Red Cross officials, we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres on all sides that are typical of such conflict conditions. I believe none of my successors and their forces saw anything on the scale claimed by the media..... I recall State Department official George Kenny turning up like all other American officials, spewing condemnations of the Serbs for aggression and genocide. I offered to give him an escort and to go see for himself that none of what he proclaimed was true. He accepted my offer and thereafter he made a radical turnaround.. Other Americans continued to see and hear what they wanted to see and hear from one side, while ignoring the other side. Such behaviour does not produce peace but more conflict. I felt that Yugoslavia was a media-generated tragedy. The Western media sees international crises in black and white, sensationalizing incidents for public consumption.... .Ultimatums were issued to Yugoslavia that unless the terms of an agreement drawn up at Rambouillet were signed, NATO would undertake bombing. Ultimatums do not constitute diplomacy. They are acts of war.... On 24th March 1999, NATO launched attacks with cruise missiles and bombs, on Yugoslavia, a sovereign state, a founding member of the United Nations and the NonAligned Movement; and against a people who were at the forefront of the fight againstNazi Germany and other fascist forces during World War Two........."
"United Services Institution", 4/6/99, "THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA" By Lt Gen Satish Nambiar (Retd.), First Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations Forces deployed in the former Yugoslavia 03 Mar92 to 02 Mar 93. Former Deputy Chief of Staff, Indian Army.

Has genocide been committed in Kosovo?

"Now the term genocide, as applied to Kosovo is an insult to the victims of Hitler. In fact, it's revisionist to an extreme. If this is genocide, then there is genocide going on all over the world. And Bill Clinton is decisively implementing a lot of it. If this is genocide, then what do you call what is happening in the southeast of Turkey? ...."
"Up until the US/NATO bombing March 24th, there had been, according to NATO, 2000 people killed on all sides, and a couple of hundred thousand refugees. Well, that's bad, that's a humanitarian crises, but unfortunately it's the kind you can find all over the world."
Prof. Noam Chomsky, MIT Institute Professor, April 1999

Was there any way to mitigate the atrocities?

"Well, I suppose there were diplomatic options that were open; the Serbian parliament passed a resolution on March 23rd, the day before the bombing, in which it said that they would not accept a NATO force, (hardly surprising, Canada wouldn't accept a Warsaw pact force) but they proposed that there could be a move toward autonomy for Kosovo, and that after that, there should be an international force. Well, is that an acceptable offer? We don't know, because the US wouldn't even pay any attention to it. ...."
"..the Kurds in Turkey, to take a case of atrocities in the '90s that are vastly more serious in human cost than anything attributed to Milosevic in Kosovo before the NATO bombings and that differ crucially from Kosovo in two respects: (a) these atrocities have been given decisive military and diplomatic support by the US and hence could easily be mitigated or terminated, and (b) they remain unprotested here, greatly to our shame, while we follow Washington's marching orders and focus attention laser-like on its chosen case: Kosovo."
Prof. Noam Chomsky, MIT Institute Professor April 1999

Was Rambouillet a peaceful agreement or an occupation ultimatum?

"The Clinton administration has repeatedly claimed that bombing is necessary because Milosevic would not agree to negotiations, citing his refusal to accept the Rambouillet text. But did Rambouillet represent real negotiations or an ultimatum? Some have said that the Serbian parliament "voted to be bombed" because it refused NATO troops as outlined in Rambouillet. But The New York Times has reported (April 8) that "just before the bombing, when [the Serbian parliament] rejected NATO troops in Kosovo, it also supported the idea of a United Nations force to monitor a political settlement there." Did the administration start bombing because it rejected the idea of a UN force and insisted on a NATO one? Has that insistence blocked the recent German peace plan? The Rambouillet text of Feb. 23, a month before NATO began bombing, contains provisions that seem to have provided for NATO to occupy the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. Excerpts from Appendix (B): 7. NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY. 8. NATO personnel shall enjoy... free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. 11. NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment... 15. [NATO shall have] the right to use all of the electromagnetic spectrum... ...."
Institute for Public Accuracy, April 16, 1999, "TROUBLING QUESTIONS ABOUT RAMBOUILLET"

Was morality the reason for the thousands of bombings and killings of civilians in Yugoslavia?

"... The struggle of people against power,' wrote Milan Kundera, 'is the struggle of memory against forgetting.' The idea that the Nato bombing has to do with 'moral purpose' (Blair) and 'principles of humanity we hold sacred' (Clinton) insults both memory and intelligence. The American attack on Yugoslavia began more than a decade ago when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund set about destroying the multi-ethnic federation with lethal doses of debt, 'market reforms' and imposed poverty. Millions of jobs were eliminated; in 1989 alone, 600,000 workers, almost a quarter of the workforce, were sacked without severance pay. But the most critical 'reform' was the ending of economic support to the six constituent republics and their recolonisation by Western capital. Germany led the way, supporting the breakaway of Croatia, its new economic colony, with the European Community giving silent approval........"
The Guardian Tuesday April 20, 1999, "Morality? Don't make me laugh", By John Pilger

Who is being targeted by the NATO bombs?

"Isn't it time we stopped using the word ''accidental'' to describe the NATO bombing of Yugoslavian hospitals, residential neighborhoods, buses, trains, trucks, and refugees on roads that has killed or maimed at least 1,000 civilians, including children?.... An accident implies something unforeseen. True, a recent bombing - to take an example of the hospital bombed in Belgrade - may have been unforeseen as a specific consequence of bombing the city. But it was foreseeable, given the magnitude and nature of the bombing, that some hospital, school, village, or bus would at some point be hit, and civilians would die. If I drive my car at 80 miles an hour down a street crowded with children, and 10 of them are killed, I cannot dismiss this as an accident, even if I had not intended to kill these particular children. When an action has inevitable and terrible consequences, it cannot be excused as ''accidental.'' ..... When Serbian troops in Kosovo kill Albanians, the proper word is ''deliberate.'' But when our planes drop cluster bombs on a residential neighborhood and children are either killed or left in agony because of the steel fragments penetrating their bodies, that should not be passed off as an accident, even if it is not ''deliberate'' in the same sense as Milosevic's evil deeds. Both are war crimes, legally and morally..."
The Boston Globe, "The deadly semantics of NATO bombings", 05/28/99, By Howard Zinn

".... The room is filled with the bodies of children killed by Nato in Surdulica in Serbia. Several are recognisable only by their sneakers. A dead infant is cradled in the arms of his father. These pictures and many others have not been shown in Britain; it will be said they are too horrific...... Eighteen hospitals and clinics and at least 200 nurseries, schools, colleges and students' dormitories have been destroyed or damaged, together with housing estates, hotels, libraries, youth centres, theatres, museums, churches and 14th-century monasteries on the World Heritage list. Farms have been bombed, their crops set on fire. ...."
The Guardian, 05-18-99, "Acts of murder", By John Pilger

".... The worst night the zoo can remember was when NATO hit an army headquarters only 600 meters (yards) away, with a huge detonation. ``The next day we found that some of the animals had killed their young,'' the director said. ``A female tiger killed two of her four three-day-old cubs, and the other two were so badly injured we couldn't save them.'' ``She had been a terrific mother until then, raising several litters without any problems. I can't say whether it was the detonation or the awful smell that accompanied the bombing. I personally think it was the detonation,'' he added. On the same night, an eagle owl killed all of its five young, and ate the smallest of them. ``It wasn't because she was hungry. I can only think it was fear.'' The most disturbing case was of the huge Bengal tiger, who began to chew his own paws. ``He was practically raised in my office. He trusted humans…..''
Reuters News Agency , "Belgrade Zoo Animals Provide Early Bombing Warning", 5/30/99 By Colin McIntyre

"In more than two months, NATO has dropped about 15000 bombs, releasing about 13000 tons of explosive power.…. Yet Serbian sources have reported, and NATO officials do not deny, that those errant bombs have killed 1200 civilians - or roughly one civilian for every 10 tons dropped. The ratio is remarkably similar to that of major bombing campaigns in the Vietnam War. ... By this measure, the rate of civilian casualties was lower during the 1991 air war against Iraq….."
Boston Globe, 5/30/99, "Bombs killing more civilians than expected", by Fred Kaplan

Is NATO committing violations of international law and war crimes?

"We have engaged in a flagrant military aggression, ceaselessly attacking a small country primarily to demonstrate that we run the world. The rationale that we are simply enforcing international morality, even if it were true, would not excuse the military aggression and widespread killing that it entails. It also does not lessen the culpability of the authors of this aggression.... The United Nations Charter views aggression similarly. Articles 2(4) and (7) prohibit interventions in the domestic jurisdiction of any country and threats of force or the use of force by one state against another. The General Assembly of the UN in Resolution 2131, "Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention," reinforced the view that a forceful military intervention in any country is aggression and a crime without justification...... Putting a "NATO" label on aggressive policy and conduct does not give that conduct any sanctity. This is simply a perversion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed as a defensive alliance under the UN Charter. The North Atlantic Treaty pledged its signatories to refrain from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations, and it explicitly recognized "the primary responsibility of the Security Council (of the United Nations) for the maintenance of international peace and security." Obviously, in bypassing UN approval for the current bombing, the U.S. and NATO have violated this basic obligation. From another standpoint of international law, the current conduct of the bombing by the United States and NATO constitutes a continuing war crime. Contrary to the beliefs of our war planners, unrestricted air bombing is barred under international law. Bombing the "infrastructure" of a country-- waterworks, electricity plants, bridges, factories, television and radio locations--is not an attack limited to legitimate military objectives. Our bombing has also caused an excessive loss of life and injury to civilians, which violates another standard. We have now killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Serbs, Montenegrins and Albanians, even some Chinese, in our pursuit of humanitarian ideals...."
Chicago Tribune, 5/23/99, "WAR CRIMES LAW APPLIES TO U.S. TOO, By Walter J. Rockler, Washington lawyer, and prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial

"On March 24, the United States led NATO into the first campaign of military aggression against a sovereign state in Europe since World War II. It did so against the principles of international law and of the United Nations charter. It also did so against the rulings of the Nuremberg trials, which declared that "to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime" ....perhaps the "values" are the need to protect civilians from military attack. In that case, the United States will need to put Turkey on its target list... Of course, Bill Clinton referred to "genocide" in his speech justifying the attacks on Yugoslavia. Yet in Kosovo, about 2,000 people have died in two years, in the course of the brutal repression of an armed insurrection. This is a condition usually called "civil war." Tragic, yes. Incidents of war crimes, almost certainly. But "genocide," no. This is an insult to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust...."
Pittsburg Post-Gazette, "Bombing Serbia To Prevent A Wider War Is Not Only Hypocritical But Also Insane", By Robert M. Hayden

"No matter what the outcome of the NATO bombing campaign, the fundamental architecture of international law, centered on the United Nations during the 50 years since World War II, has suffered a severe blow from which it may never recover. Under the United Nations Charter and subsequent U.N. resolutions, the use of force is banned unless specifically authorized by the Security Council, after the Security Council has determined that peaceful methods have failed, or when "self-defense" is required in the case of an armed attack. It is a clear violation of fundamental United Nations principles for one sovereign member state to attack another, even for "humanitarian purposes." Respect for national sovereignty was the mechanism that the U.N. Charter adopted to prevent powerful nations from using "humanitarian intervention" as a guise for military adventurism and imperialism. It is the cornerstone of all international legal systems. The world's only remaining superpower has established the principle that, once again, claims of humanitarian intervention can be used to justify acts of war against a sovereign nation without U.N. authorization. How this principle might be used to justify U.S. military intervention in the future is anyone's guess. Should the United States intervene to protect the Kurds from Turkish depredations?..."
Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 4/4/1999, "NATO Action Unwisely Undercuts U.N.", By Peter Erlinder

How people in the Balkans, who know the facts better, feel about the war in Yugoslavia?

"A majority of Greeks wants President Clinton to face war crimes charges for his role in the Kosovo conflict, while just 14 per cent want President Slobodan Milosevic tried, an opinion poll showed yesterday. The poll showed 69.7 per cent of Greeks want Mr Clinton tried and 35.2 per cent want the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, also charged over NATO's campaign of air strikes against Yugoslavia. But only 14 per cent believe Mr Milosevic should face international sanctions for his role in the repression and expulsion of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population"
The Irish Times, 5/27/99, "Majority in Greece wants Clinton tried for war crimes"

How reliable and credible is the anti-Serb propaganda?

"Mr. Cook has also assured us that he "knows" that the Serbs executed 20 Albanian teachers in front of their pupils in Goden. What he does not appear to know is that Goden is a village with just 200 inhabitants - yet, it seems, with a teacher/pupil ratio beyond even the fantasies of the NUT conference fringe ...."
The Times, 4/15/99, "The war against the Serbs is about projecting a self-image of the ethical new Britain bestriding the world. It is a crusade", by Mick Hume

"In Kosovo, an explosion from a land mine or booby trap killed two British soldiers Monday, causing the first NATO casualties since the peacekeepers moved into the province.."
CNN, June 21, 17:00 EST.
"The Nato-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo has suffered its first casualties - two British army soldiers killed in an explosion during an operation to clear munitions. BBC Correspondent Paul Wood - reporting from the scene - says the blast appears to have been caused by the remains of a Nato bomb......"
BBC, June 21, 17:00 EST.
SAME DAY!, SAME TIME!, SAME INCEDENCE ... as above

What is the opinion of a former president of the USA?

"....The approach the United States has taken recently has been to devise a solution that best suits its own purposes recruit at least tacit support in whichever forum it can best influence, provide the dominant military force, present an ultimatum to recalcitrant parties and then take punitive action against the entire nation to force compliance..... The United States' insistence on the use of cluster bombs, designed to kill or maim humans, is condemned almost universally and brings discredit on our nation (as does our refusal to support a ban on land mines). Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means...."
The New York Times, May 27, 1999, "Have We Forgotten the Path to Peace?", By Jimmy Carter

Does the US respect the Freedom of Speech?

"Hanging upside-down from the wreckage was a dead man, in his fifties perhaps, although a benevolent grey dust had covered his face. Not far away, also upside-down - his legs trapped between tons of concrete and steel - was a younger man in a pullover, face grey, blood dribbling from his head on to the rubble beneath. Deep inside the tangle of cement and plastic and iron, in what had once been the make-up room next to the broadcasting studio of Serb Television, was all that was left of a young woman, burnt alive when Nato's missile exploded in the radio control room. Within six hours, the Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, declared the place a "legitimate target".... I wonder. I seem to recall Croatian television spreading hatred a-plenty when it was ethnically cleansing 170,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995. But we didn't bomb Zagreb. And when President Franjo Tudjman's lads were massacring Serbs and Muslims alike in Bosnia, we didn't bomb his residence. Was Serbian television's real sin its broadcast of film of the Nato massacre of Kosovo Albanian refugees last week, killings that Nato was forced to admit had been a mistake?........".
Independent Saturday 24 April 1999, "Once you kill people because you don't like what they say, you change the rules of war", By Robert Fisk

Does bombing serve any purpose?

"NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, we are told, enjoys remarkable success. ...But now the war's collateral damage and unintended consequences are outweighing the targeted and the intended.... The bombing serves no direct military purpose for the Kosovars. It does not protect the innocent; it adds to the bloodlust. So there is no reason not to pause to talk rather than sending messages by missile. I believe that we are very close to a settlement that will allow the Kosovars to return with security and renewed autonomy.... ".
Working Assets, 5/18/99, "Halt The Bombing! Unintended Consequences and Collateral Damage", by Jesse Jackson

What a NATO pilot had admited?

The pilots of Spanish planes who participated in bombing raids against Yugoslavia do not feel like "supermen" nor masters of aerospace. Quite the contrary, they say that our forces play to the tune of music played by the North Americans, and accuse NATO of having honoured with medals the bombing of civilian targets, what they otherwise name "collateral damages".
Captain Adolfo Luis Martin de la Hoz, who returned to Spain at the end of May after having participated in the bombings from the beginning, an "authentic expert for the dreadful F-18", the war plane most often used in the war strategy of "scorched land" in the Balkans, is very categoric: "First of all, I want to make it clear that the majority, I say the majority, of my colleagues, even if not all, are against the war in general and against this war of barbarity in particular."
.... The suspicions that NATO's repeated bombings of civilian victims and non-military targets are not the result of war "errors", are confirmed by Captain Martin de la Hoz: "Several times our colonel protested to NATO chiefs as to why they select targets which are not military targets. They threw him out with curses, saying that we should know that the North Americans would lodge a complaint to the Spanish Army, once through Brussels and again to the Defence Minister.
Articulo 20 (Spain-weekly), "Spanish Fighter Pilots Admit NATO Purposely Attacks Civilian Targets", By Jose Luis Morales , June 14, 1999.

Were the bombing and killings of thousands innocent civilians in Yugoslavia necessary?

Someone, who has not been brainwashed by western media, can very easily answer this question based on history and the actual facts behind this coward murdering of so many innocent people in order to protect the prestige of the bloodthirsty western hawks.

Whether all these killings were done in the name of "humanity", someone needs only to look to nearby US-ally Turkey where 20 times more Kurds have been slaughtered by the Turks, with the full assistance and support of the US and UK hypocrits, than the total number of casualties, from all sides, in Kosovo, before the NATO bombing.

Someone needs only to look to Cyprus, which, since the 1974 brutal Turkish invasion, is still for 25 years occupied by the barbaric Turkish troops, while the US politicians keep their eyes closed to those hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled under the bombardment of the US provided Turkish planes.
Considering the invasion of Kuwait by Irak and the western reaction, it is rather obvious that for the US/UK foreign policy a barrel of crude oil worths much more than the dignity and the human rights of nations with thousands of years of history, culture, and civilization.
This is mine. Petros

What the NATO occupation of Kosovo, the heartland of Serbia, has achieved

"OBRO SELO, Yugoslavia--On Day One of NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, Dragan Radakovic stood at the edge of Serbia's largest coal mine and watched it pass from one army's control to another's with clockwork precision.
Serbian infantrymen who had guarded the Belacevic open pit mine during 16 months of guerrilla war pulled out at 8 a.m. Saturday. Their army's withdrawal from Kosovo was supposed to be tightly synchronized with the arrival of NATO-led troops to pacify the province.
Instead, the advancing foot soldiers the mine director saw in his binoculars were from the Kosovo Liberation Army. Much to his alarm, the ethnic Albanian separatists who looked all but defeated several weeks ago had returned in force to seize one of the mine's two giant pits, its administration building and four employees.
Los Angeles Times, "KLA takes over strategic Serbian coal mine", By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, 6/14/99

"KFOR spokesmen said Thursday the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the Serbian province was proceeding ahead of schedule. But the shrine's desecration could hurt KFOR's attempt to prevent a second flood of refugees from Kosovo -- this time, from Serb neighborhoods.
French peacekeepers put the Devic monastery under guard after they said Kosovo Liberation Army fighters terrorized a priest and several nuns for four days, from Sunday to Wednesday.
The KFOR troops said KLA rebels vandalized centuries-old murals and paintings in the chapel and stole two cars and all the monastery's food.
In addition, a French soldier said, the KLA stripped the clothes from a young nun and took her into a back room. The soldier said she was hysterical and appeared to be traumatized when she was found. When asked if the woman had been raped, the French soldier responded to CNN, "What do you think?"
The 15th-century monastery is one of the shrines from which the Serbian nation draws its cultural identity."
CNN, " KLA rebels accused of vandalizing Serb monastery", June 17, 1999

"Fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are moving into town after town across Kosovo, setting themselves up as the new authorities in areas vacated b the Serb security forces...
In many cases, KLA troops have set up check-points and are conducting house-by-house searches - acting, in effect, like a new paramilitary police force.
BBC, "KLA move in despite K-For", 6/17/99

"PRIZREN, Yugoslavia, June 18—German NATO troops raided the former Serbian Interior Ministry police headquarters here today and disarmed about 25 ethnic Albanian rebels who apparently had imprisoned and severely beaten 15 elderly people, including a man found chained to a chair who had died, German army officials said....."
Washington Post Foreign Service, KLA Accused of Beating Gypsies Discovery Raises Doubts About Rebels Discipline", Saturday, June 19, 1999; Page A01, By John Ward Anderson

".. if you want to know who the real winner is, it's the Kosovo Liberation Army. It won the war and, in the bargain, Kosovo itself.
Say what you will about the KLA, it has been the one player in the current Balkan drama that has known from the start precisely what it wanted and how to get it. Back in May 1998, I spoke in Istanbul to a KLA leader. His business card said he was the prime minister of the Republic of Kosovo and he was a physician named Bujar Bukoshi. At the time, Kosovo was under the Serbian boot and hardly anyone's idea of a republic. All that would change, Bukoshi said. He has been true to his word.
The KLA had a simple, but effective, plan. It would kill Serb policemen. The Serbs would retaliate, Balkan style, with widespread reprisals and the occasional massacre. The West would get more and more appalled, until finally it would -- as it did in Bosnia -- take action. In effect, the United States and much of Europe would go to war on the side of the KLA. It worked...."
Washington Post, "And the Winner Is . . . the KLA", By Richard Cohen, Thursday, June 17, 1999; Page A35

"...despite the heavy presence of NATO troops in armored vehicles and tanks, the soldiers also seemed unable to control Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas armed with pistols and grenades who were telling Serbs to leave their homes and in some instances overseeing the ransacking of Serb homes.
Just off the main road that runs through Mitrovica, Yugoslav Nasic, 64, and his wife were shaking in fear as a NATO armored personnel carrier dropped them in front of their home. The Serb couple pleaded with NATO French peacekeeping forces, which are responsible for the area, to protect them from KLA soldiers, who they said had threatened to kill them if they remained. Nasic said KLA soldiers burst into their home yesterday and ''seemed polite at first.'' Then he said one of the soldiers wrenched his wife's left forefinger, apparently breaking it.
Boston Globe, "Serbs in Kosovo suffer reprisals", By Charles M. Sennott, 06/20/99

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia--The final steps of the three Serbs took them down a gray marble staircase in Pristina University's new economics building, where each--bound and gagged--was shot in the head. The men's bodies were discovered Thursday morning on the floor of the women's bathroom in the basement....
Beside the professor's corpse lay the body of Mladenovic, his mouth gagged with a burgundy red necktie. Another tie bound his hands behind his back. Nearby, a small hammer lay inches away from the professor's wire-rimmed glasses, which landed lenses down on the floor, spattered with blood. The killers "are trying to scare us and they are working everywhere to do so," another Serb said. "Now they are doing it in the university. Tomorrow it's going to happen in another place.....
Staff members at the new economics building said they waited at least two hours for British troops to come after reporting the three slayings. Two British soldiers arrived about 9:20 a.m. After looking through the door of the women's bathroom with his assault rifle pointed at the ceiling, an army sergeant asked in English: "Serbs or Albanians?" "Serbs," a faculty member replied from the hallway. "No problem," the British soldier said, getting ready to seal off the crime scene.
Los Angeles Times.Friday, "Serbs terrified by 3 killings at University", by Paul Watson, June 25, 1999

PDT PEC, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Serbs fled the Kosovo city of Pec in panicked, tearful convoys Friday, abandoning the revered cradle of their faith, where ethnic Albanians looted and burned their homes. Smoke rose across the western city from about 20 burning, abandoned homes in Friday afternoon. About a score more -- belonging to Serbs and Gypsies -- had gone up in flames in the previous 24 hours. Gunfire crackled in the city intermittently through the night and day. NATO armored vehicles escorted a convoy of cars, buses and tractors toward neighboring Montenegro. The night before, NATO escorted away hundreds who had taken shelter behind the walls of Pec's 14th-century Serbian Orthodox patriarchate. The last remaining 50 people there, mostly old women and men, were leaving Friday, clerics said.
AP, "Serbs flee historic center of the Church as home are burned", By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press Writer, Friday, June 25, 1999

The flat stank of urine and decay. Something was very badly wrong. She said her name, she is 70 years old and a Serb in a place where Serbs are no longer welcome. She was weak and confused. Her front door had been kicked in, the neighbours said by Albanian fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Her photo album was open. It showed the family in better times: A young Serb paramilitary, perhaps a grandson with a machine gun and her husband in the Yugoslav army in World War II.
She kept looking back. Then we realised the decomposing body of her husband was in there with her. He had been dead for six days. No police to call In normal countries you would call the police. But in Kosovo, there are no police. Nato smashed their buildings and forced the policemen, all Serbs, to leave.
BBC World: Europe, "When society breaks down: There were no police for her to call to report a dead body, By Jeremy Bowen in Prizren, 6/25/99

"NATO SAID at least three civilians had been killed Saturday, including a Serbian woman whose mother said she was raped and killed by ethnic Albanian rebels as their village was being looted and burned..... The Serbian village village of Bellopoje, outside the city of Pec in western Kosovo, was set on fire on Sunday after the furniture, livestock and cars of the vanished residents were looted by ethnic Albanians....
Soldiers of an Italian contingent of the KFOR peacekeeping mission in the southern Serbian province kept a vigil. But they made no attempt to intervene as hundreds of ethnic Albanians piled everything from beds to washing machines on tractor-pulled wagons, then set houses and barns on fire. The Italian soldiers said it was not part of their brief to stop the destruction of the village of about 1,500 people, which the ethnic Albanians said the Serbs abandoned when the Serbian military forces pulled out of Kosovo two weeks ago as part of the peace deal....
Serbs sheltered at a monastery outside the city said Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers beat them as they forced them from their homes. One woman showed the curled, comatose form of a 63-year-old brother she said had been taken from his wheelchair and hurled into a yard. "It is ethnic cleansing, under cover of NATO," said the church leader, Metropolitan Amfilohije Radovic, at the 14th-century monastery, now a sanctuary for Serbs guarded by Italian NATO tanks. "
MSNBC, June 27, 1999

In Newsweek last week Tony Blair described the "new moral crusade" that is to follow NATO's attack on Yugoslavia. "We now have a chance to build a new internationalism based on values and the rule of law," he wrote. George Robertson was more blunt. The "Rubicon has been crossed", he said, paving the way for the end of the UN charter that protects the sovereignty of nations. Robin Cook chimed in, making threats towards "governments using aggression against their own people". The warning did not apply to the government of Turkey, a NATO member, whose aggression against its own people has left 3,000 Kurdish villages ethnically cleansed, 30,000 people dead and three million refugees. Atrocities committed by the authorities in Indonesia, Israel, Colombia and other countries where western "interests" are in safe hands will also be exempt.
The New Statesman, ""Humanitarian intervention is the latest brand name for imperialism as it begins a return to respectability, By John Pilger, 28th June 1999

What Tacitus had said many centuries ago?

Answer to the Quiz Question: Adolf Hitler (1940)

Thank you for reading this information.
For those in Boston area: please, join us to help Yugoslavia and the victims of this coward bombing.

Petros Komodromos

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Moment of silence at MIT for the victims of the NATO bombings

Symbolic march over Harvard bridge towards MIT Campus

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MIT Organization of Serbian Students

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