On back-to-back days in December 1991, the New York Times published two separate articles highlighting Germany’s alarming and audacious decision to recognize and legitimize the efforts of Slovenia and Croatia to break away from Yugoslavia. Both articles (you can read them here and here) are refreshingly honest and hold little back in their analysis of Germany’s seminal role in the violent fragmentation of Yugoslavia.
In this article, Paul Lewis cites European diplomats who warned that Germany’s decision to support Croatia and Slovenia, despite opposition from virtually the rest of the world, “underscored Germany’s growing political power in the 12-nation European Community.” Germany’s incursion into the Balkans, wrote Lewis, “has worried many in Europe who see it as an attempt to re-exert traditional Germanic influences over this area of the Balkans” (emphasis mine throughout).
Lewis exhibited little reticence in exposing the German undercurrent gushing beneath what was unfolding in Yugoslavia, even when it meant connecting Germany’s decision to recognize Croatia and Slovenia in 1991, to its sordid history with these entities during World War ii.
Moreover, in its unusual assertiveness in moving ahead with a plan to extend diplomatic recognition to the breakaway Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia, Germany has stirred troubling historical associations …. Nazi Germany dominated the two Yugoslav regions during World War ii, absorbing Slovenia into the Third Reich and creating a puppet regime in Croatia.
Then there’s this piece from the Times a month later: “Germany’s decision to press for quick recognition of the two republics, disregarding appeals from the United States and the United Nations, marked a new assertiveness that some Europeans find disconcerting” (Jan. 16, 1992).
The point?
In 1991-92, a mainstream news organ like the New York Times was not afraid to confront the reality that Germany was manipulating the Balkans in an effort to “re-exert traditional Germanic influences” over the region. A willingness to analyze the Balkans through the German prism was plainly evident.
How times have changed.
On Monday, the deadline for a mutual solution to the Kosovo dilemma expired, and Kosovar Albanians, led by former terrorist leader Hashim Thaci, said they would immediately start finalizing their declaration of independence from Serbia, which they will likely announce within the first two months of 2008.
The subject of Kosovo’s independence does not lack coverage. What it lacks is the kind of fresh, up-front, in-depth reporting practiced by the likes of the New York Times when it covered Yugoslavia’s dissolution in 1991-92. When Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia broke away from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the Times didn’t hesitate to declare Germany’s pivotal and alarming role in the crises (though later, when the U.S. and British governments switched sides, so too did the Times).
Now Kosovo is about to erupt, and few people, certainly not the mainstream press, are talking about Germany’s fundamental role in this crisis!
Why not? It’s a blockbuster angle!
What’s happening in Kosovo is covered with German fingerprints. It was Germany (and the Vatican) that first legitimized the dissolution of the state formerly called Yugoslavia. The day Bonn threw its weight behind Croatia’s and Slovenia’s decision to break away in 1991, every republic in Yugoslavia that was thinking about breaking away, including Kosovo, learned that it could do so and have the support of Germany and the Vatican.
But Germany’s intimate relationship with Kosovo runs deeper than mere ideological support. The involvement in the province by Germany, one of Kosovo’s most important and long-standing supporters, has manifested itself in very practical—and dangerous—ways. The German government has been closely linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army (kla), a terrorist organization that during the early to mid-1990s was linked to the mafia in Kosovo and other Islamic terrorists in the region.
In 1996, the German foreign intelligence service (bnd), established a major outpost in the Albanian city of Tirana, where kla terrorists were trained to fight against Serbian authorities. According to Le Monde Diplomatique, “special forces in Berlin provided the operational training and supplied arms and transmission equipment from ex-East German Stasi stocks as well as black uniforms” (May 1999).
Here’s what Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in July 2002:
Kosovo’s “internationally unrecognized government-in-exile” had a prime minister who was based in Germany and operated freely with the blessing (perhaps even the direction) of the German government! So Germany recognized Kosovo’s government-in-exile when nobody else did. But the international community submissively followed Germany’s lead. The kla guerrillas didn’t just happen. They were essentially raised up and directly supported by Germany—the powerhouse of Europe.
How many analysts, when they consider Kosovo’s independence today, are factoring in Germany’s central role in the growth and expansion of the kla? How many wonder why Germany would be so interested in, and go to such great lengths to secure, Kosovo’s independence from Serbia? What’s in it for Germany?
These questions lie at the heart of analysis on Kosovo—but few are asking them!
The Trumpet has explained how, under the umbrella of the United States and nato, Germany and Europe have, since 1991, dramatically increased their influence in the Balkans. By employing a subtle diplomatic divide-and-conquer policy, Germany has precipitated the systematic and violent fracturing of Yugoslavia. It was Germany, through cunning use of exaggerated and inaccurate claims and emotive language, that in 1999 stirred nato, predominantly comprised of U.S. troops, to bomb Serbia.
In March 1999, German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said in a television interview on zdf that “genocide is starting” in Serbia. His alarmist vocabulary turned the collective Western mindset against Serbia. The Australian reported on April 1, 1999, “With thousands of refugees continuing to stream out of the war-torn province, German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping claimed in Bonn last night that evidence had emerged of concentration camps being set up by Serb forces.”
“People watched television and saw the streams of Albanian refugees,” wrote Gerald Flurry at the time. “Then they totally blamed the Serbs. Most knew very little about Kosovo, yet spoke of ‘genocide’—the deliberate and systematic destruction of a race. Then came talk about ‘concentration camps.’ Genocide and concentration camps—words introduced by the German defense minister” (The Rising Beast).
Are Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s supposed atrocities against Albanians the real reason America and nato bombed Belgrade into submission? During the 1990s, actual genocides were occurring in Rwanda and Sierra Leone—not to mention the slaughter of Serbs by Croatians and the Kosovo Albanians themselves—and the Clinton government did little to intervene. Why was America prepared to bomb Serbia into submission, but not the evil forces killing hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Rwanda or Sierra Leone? Because America was pressured into bombing Serbia! Germany and Europe convinced all of nato to fight for their Balkan cause!
From the very beginning, Germany and Europe have been determined to conquer the Balkans, be it by force or in a web of diplomatic maneuvers.
In 2003, EU Commission President Romano Prodi promised that all Balkan countries—if they danced to the EU’s tune of course—could “become members of the EU one day.” While they might not necessarily become members on the same day, and each would have to follow its own course, he said, nonetheless, “in the long run, [the] Balkans belong strictly to the EU” (EUobserver, Jan. 10, 2003).
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks!
This is why Germany wanted Serbia, its historical enemy and counterweight in the region, destroyed by nato. Germany and Europe believe the Balkans belong “strictly to the EU.” Without the pesky Slobodan Milosevic around to interrupt their plans, Germany and Europe could more easily conquer the Balkans!
Any in-depth analysis of the events unfolding in Kosovo must account for this history.
The International Herald Tribune reported yesterday on a plan concocted by Slovenia (which will likely be holding the EU presidency when Kosovo declares its independence) by which the European Union will embrace Kosovo when it declares statehood. Europe is prepping itself for action in Kosovo.
The Tribune quoted one diplomat who said that if violence breaks out in Kosovo, Europe’s response must be “fast and decisive because the EU is showing it’s boss in its own courtyard. We want to show we don’t need Washington or Moscow to tell us what to do.”
Considering the history we just covered, against whom do you think Germany and Europe will take action?
On Monday, the Itar-Tass news agency reported that Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat representing the EU in the group of three international mediators (Russia, the United States and the EU) at the talks that were held between Serbia and Kosovar Albanians, told Radio Berlin Brandenburg that the EU would soon be in agreement on the Kosovo issue.
Ischinger’s interpretation of what Kosovo’s independence will look like was intriguing. “It will be a state entity,” he said, “which will continue to be under broad international observation. The nato troops will continue to be deployed there. A further international presence of the UN and, consequently, of EU, will be ensured.”
Germany and Europe are making plans to cement their control of Kosovo via the UN and nato!
In 1991, both Germany and Europe as a whole were significantly weaker, less unified and less defined than they are today. Germany was a newly united, largely inward-focused state in the early stages of resurrecting itself as the leader of Europe and on the global scene. Europe was even more amorphous than it appears today.
But this seemingly innocuous appearance didn’t stop a major newspaper from ringing alarm bells when Germany boldly announced it would support Croatia and Slovenia in their quest for independence, a decision that many knew would set a dangerous precedent and likely cause Yugoslavia’s dissolution. At that time, even a mainstream news source analyzed the breakdown of Yugoslavia in the context of German ambition in the Balkans!
Today, we don’t see any such analysis in the news media. Germany and the EU are widely embraced as legitimate and influential global powers with a formidable economic, military and geopolitical imprint. Europe, with Germany at its vanguard, has become a respected and increasingly powerful geopolitical force motivated by lofty ambitions of becoming a united superpower.
Still, the mainstream media today refuse to analyze the Balkans in the context of what’s happening in Germany and Europe, and of Germany’s history with the region. This is the most dangerous and ominous angle of the story, and the most underreported one!
In time, this shameful ignorance will prove to be an expensive mistake. •
Topic: Misreporting Kosovo (Read 2368 times)