Commentary on Albania
Djangoo
Albania: Love It Or Leave It
Matthew Stevenson
During the Kosovo War, the U.S. used this Balkan land as a staging
ground for its bombing runs. But no sooner did the war end than we
abandoned it to the misery and wretched life it’s always known.
Albania is one of the riddles of the Eastern Question. It seems
incredible that a fine country, with at least two harbors possible of
development, and within a few hours’ steam of Italy, should be the most
uncivilized land in the Balkan peninsula, and that for centuries no
European power should have made any serious attempt to acquire it as a
colony. Thus what might be one of the finest countries in Europe, is
left in a condition such as nowadays disgraces few Central African
tribes. —1905 travelogue
At the turn of the millennium, on the assumption that it lay beyond the
computer horizon, I spent a week in Albania— my first look at the
country for which, in Kosovo, the Holy NATO Empire fought its savage war
of peace. On my invitation it was noted that I was there to fish from
the pool of state assets, stocked for privatization. But even if I was
reluctant to bid for a stake in the Karl Marx hydroelectric plant, I did
want to fulfill a lifetime dream to see what remains of Enver Hoxha’s
brave old world.
A subsidiary of Swissair flies daily from Zurich to Tirana, the Albanian
capital. On this clear January afternoon, the Jumbolino crossed the
spine of the Italian Alps and flew down the Dalmatian coast. Tirana lies
35 miles inland, at the head of a broad valley. Behind the capital is a
long white line of snow-capped peaks, over which NATO fighters flew
their missions into nearby Kosovo and Yugoslavia. But before clearing
for our final approach, we circled above the Adriatic, and I caught a
glimpse of the Karaburun Peninsula, whose unknown chapter in the Cold
War I was reading on the flight.
In Betrayed, Lord Nicholas Bethell, the English historian, describes the
hapless missions launched by Britain and the U.S. in the late 1940’s to
overthrow the Hoxha government. The idea was to land covert operatives
in Albania who would then lead the call to arms. The North Atlantic
allies had sought to detach Tirana from the Soviet orbit, which with
little opposition had established satellites in Poland and
Czechoslovakia. But the British liaison officer in Washington was Harold
"Kim" Philby, and he betrayed the missions. At Karaburun and elsewhere,
the operatives found it was the secret police who were waiting, not the
rebel cry of freedom. Hoxha followed up the incursions with executions
and show trials, to strengthen his power, and later as a pretext to seal
Albania from imperialist designs.
At Rinas Airport arriving passengers walk from the plane to the terminal
along a palm-fringed promenade, a pleasant respite from accordion
jetways, although inside, the arrival hall has the feel of a Balkan bus
station. I paid $45 for a visa, but the man behind me paid $55. Baggage
claim meant chasing down a free-lance handler who had a prior lien on
the luggage trolleys. As I was met by a car and driver, I was spared
jostling for a taxi among the huddled masses yearning to breathe
dollars.
Until it merges with an industrial suburb, the road into the city snakes
across dust bowl farmland, notable for the absence of tilled soil and
for its crops of architectural folly. Fields may lie fallow, the sad
harvest, first of central planning and now a capital shortage. But on
many hectares there is the work-in-progress of stillborn villas:
incomplete three- and four-story houses that await either a family
conference, the return of a construction team, or the next remittance
from Milan.
Elsewhere in the countryside are the concrete igloos of Hoxha’s civil
defense plan. After the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968,
when Albania’s only patrons were in China, Hoxha ordered that 400,000
bunkers be built around the country. On the shore, in fields, on
hillsides, almost everywhere, you come across these crumbling
pillboxes—the People’s Maginot line—now as difficult to comprehend as
the mathematical equations that show up in Iowa cornfields.
Dead Puppets Dance In Tirana
Until the 1920’s, Tirana was a sleepy Balkan village. But Ahmed Zogu’s
royal pretensions—he proclaimed himself King Zog I in 1928 —and the work
of Italian architects transformed it into a regional capital. "Much of
the domestic state budget went on public buildings during Zog’s reign,"
British historian Miranda Vickers writes in The Albanians. "In fact, of
the 11 million Albanian gold francs budgeted between 1928 and 1938, 75
percent went on the construction of public and other residential
edifices in the capital, which then had a population of around 25,000."
For a while Tirana was the Brasilia or Canberra of the Balkans. As well,
like many U.S. state capitals, it was a geographical compromise. Even
today a tribal fault line divides Albania between Ghegs in the north and
Tosks in the south, and—in a country where guns are everywhere — it was
estimated recently that 60,000 people still had a stake in a blood feud.
Between checking into an Austrian-run hotel and my first meetings, I had
both a car and driver and time to explore the city. A city of open
sewers, sidewalk bazaars, and idle throngs, Tirana has the forlorn look
of a city in Soviet Central Asia, a hub of dust and socialist realism.
Near downtown, the university looks like a warehouse district, and most
apartment buildings, in several ways, appear held together with
clothesline. But such are the city’s borrowed metaphors that a 1930’s
travelogue, Dead Puppet’s Dance, could describe the Parliament as
looking "like a Methodist Chapel transplanted from a London suburb."
At the city’s center is Skanderbeg Square, which mixes Stalmist urban
planning with a few Maoist sensibilities. Around a space about the size
of Red Square is a Palace of Culture, the central bank, and a national
museum, including a fresco of Albanian peasants on a long march toward
the new world order. In the fifteenth century, Skanderbeg led an
uprising against the Turks, and his mounted bronze reincarnation
bestrides a corner of the plaza, although his Viking helmet makes him
look like a Norse god on Pegasus.
Elsewhere what defines the city is trash, as if garbage men were swept
away in a purge as revisionists. At one time there was a popular Kosovar
expression: "The streets of Tirana are so clean because the Albanians
have nothing to throw away." But times have changed, and today if
rubbish were an economic indicator, Albania would find itself in the
growth tables of Singapore. Vacant lots, roadsides, parking lots, and
even window sills at important ministries bear witness that Albanians
have joined the ranks of the disposable society.
In some corners of Tirana, minarets are all that is distinctive on the
monochromatic skyline. Nominally Albania is a Moslem country. But most
of the mosques look as forlorn as the shop windows. Hoxha suppressed
religion, fearing Catholic encroachments or Orthodox hegemony. One of
the ironies of Kosovo is that Moslem Albanians often took better care of
the Serbian Orthodox churches than did their parishioners. More recently
the Pope has described Albania as an emerging market, perhaps in keeping
with a local expression: "Where the sword is, there lies religion."
Friend Enver
As a winter fog encased the city, I stood before the gates of the former
Hoxha residence, a sprawling complex that anywhere in Eastern Europe
could be a People’s Hall of Friendship. Until Communism fell in 1992,
Albanians were barred from the neighborhood, lest they glimpse the
leadership—a bit like Boo Radley—living in their gated mansions. Today
several guards, with the air of forlorn retainers, patrol the grounds.
Otherwise the house is dark, save for the security lamps, which glow in
the mist, as if it were still darkness at noon.
Even though, during Hoxha’s time in power, a leading Albanian export was
his collected works, not many can recall particular details about the
Communist dictator. He got his start as a Party functionary, but only
reached power as the agent of the Yugoslav general secretary, Marshal
Tito. During the war Hoxha was just one of many Partisan officers who
fought both the Axis occupation and their domestic foes, real or
imagined. On the battlefield he is noteworthy for campaigning with his
catamite. Only after the war did he consolidate his reign of terror with
Yugoslav backing.
When his master, Tito, broke with the Soviets, Hoxha supported Moscow.
But the suggestions of Khrushchev, among others, that Albania’s future
lay as a Soviet banana republic pushed Hoxha into the arms of the
Chinese, who littered the countryside with now decaying industrial
works. He dated his fear of imperialism to the betrayed 1949 covert
actions.
Such was Hoxha’s paranoia that his food taster worked overtime, as
apparently did others in his retinue. He led an opulent lifestyle but
went by the epithet Shokut or Friend. It was natural causes that
dispatched him to his tomb, an enormous marble wigwam in downtown Tirana
that, after the Communist liquidation, some wanted to convert to a
disco.
In the damp chill of the national museum, I was the only visitor. The
attendants and guards never stirred from their corner space heaters, so
I walked alone among the marble busts of Albania’s Greek, Roman, and
Byzantine past. Albanians cling to their Ilyrian origins, in part to
distance themselves from neighboring Slavs, but also to stake the
earliest possible claim to Kosovo.
During Hoxha’s curatorship, the museum celebrated the heroic people’s
struggle. But after 1992—to the country’s credit—the directors posted a
roll call of those killed during "the Communist occupation" from
1949—1992. As at the Vietnam Memorial, the names are listed on stark
tablets, and maps show where each fell, including those whose blood
remains on Philby’s hands. The exhibit also re-creates a prison cell of
the secret police—further testament to the Albanian obsession with
concrete bunkers.
Albanian Banks: Where The Money Isn’t
My first business meeting was up a dark flight of stairs at the Ministry
of Public Economy and Privatization, in an office the temperature of a
meat locker. I made the mistake of taking off my overcoat and, during
the presentation, my mind wandered to warmth and dinner instead of the
case the minister made for an Albanian investment.
Most of the men running the Albanian economy are in their thirties and
forties, as if the government were an Internet company. I liked each
that I met and admired their optimism. Many were trained abroad and used
phrases like "foreign investment" and "joint-venture" as easily as those
earlier, perhaps in this same meeting room, had quoted the theorems of
Marx and Engels.
With our breath misting over the conference table, we reviewed the
privatization as though discussing a five-year plan. Albania needs a
natural gas pipeline, an airline, a road system, increased oil
production, a tourism infrastructure, and investment in the financial
system. But few beyond the Clinton administration have banked on
Albania’s future, and even then Washington has put little into the
country aside from its displays at the air show over Kosovo.
So far investments have been limited to Greek and Italian companies,
many run by Albanian expatriates. International oil corporations have
not tried to colonize the off-shore oil acreage, despite whispers of
reserves exceeding a billion barrels. What sends most transactions to
the dustbin of deals are the terms. When I interrupted one meeting to
ask what investors would get if they invested $60 million in a certain
project, everyone fell silent, as if in warming my hands I had, by
accident, given the Zogist salute.
As best as I could tell, Albania is one of the few countries outside
Africa that missed the economic revolutions of the twentieth century.
Prior to 1939, when he fled the Italian invasion to the Ritz Hotel in
London, King Zog had franchised the economy’s few assets to Rome’s
interests, and his ministers took the rest, giving rise to a popular
expression: "True, there are no brigands in Albania, because all of them
have gone to Tirana, where they rob with authority from behind their
desks."
After the war, Friend Enver sublet the economy to Mao’s theories of
industrial self-sufficiency. In remote valleys he used the country’s
limited foreign aid to build Chinese oil refineries and power stations.
Petroleum production reached two million tons a year, far below the
country’s requirements, so he banned the private ownership of cars and
rationed the balance to Party stalwarts, who proved as demanding as the
king’s courtiers. In short, Albania spent most of the twentieth century
devouring its own — resources or otherwise.
In the transition from Communism to capitalism, governments became
impossible to distinguish from hedge funds or crime syndicates, where a
perk of office is to leverage influence in cornered markets. In the
mid-1990’s, for example, the ruling Democrat Party did brisk business in
fuel oil, girls, cigarettes, drugs, and weapons, not to mention running
one of the many Ponzi schemes whose collapse in 1997 brought down the
government of Dr. Sali Berisha—adding Albania to the footnotes of
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
Looking For Work In A BMW
The premise behind Albania’s pyramid schemes differed little from the
asset and liability management of an Arkansas savings-and-loan. Alluring
deposit rates blinded customers to the reality that their investments
were worth little more than Dutch tulips, and before long the
shareholders had skipped town, leaving clients to ponder a future
without either toasters or deposit insurance.
Despite the economic three-card Monty, the central bank has recently
maintained the lek as one of eastern Europe’s more stable currencies,
even if most foreign exchange dealers crowd the sidewalks outside the
bank rather than the desks of its trading rooms. Albania has few
commodities to export, and lives on the remittances of overseas workers,
who send in about $1 million a day. The country has 13 banks and about
$300 million in foreign reserves. Like Washington, Tirana covers the
trade deficit with easy money from abroad.
After some meetings, we would drive into the countryside as part of the
due diligence. Albanian roads, which have seen little improvement since
the Italian occupation in the 1930’s, are rivets of potholes. Car rides
feel like descents into white water. One morning, for example, it took
us four hours to drive 70 miles south, and thus we had to abandon our
hope to inspect either the tourist potential of Vlore or a refinery at
Ballsh, both of which were only another 20 miles down the road.
Since the ban on the private ownership of automobiles was lifted in
1991, Albanians have made up for lost time by building up a fleet in
which—as even ministers acknowledge—60 percent of the cars are stolen,
most from Western Europe. The average Albanian wage is between $100 and
$200 a month, and judging by the throngs of idle men in most town
squares or those selling roadside soda, unemployment is the highest in
Europe. But pitching among the potholes are the latest Mercedes and
BMWs, part of what a World Bank report might call invisible imports.
The Pyramid Collapses On Kosovo
The Albanian economy as the province of pyramid schemes and stolen cars
would have no more consequence than Hoxha’s paranoia, except that it was
the country’s domestic anarchy that set in motion the events that led to
war in Kosovo.
A consequence of the pyramid-scheme collapse in 1997 was the
government’s fall, during which the stores of the Albanian army were
looted. More than a million guns and rounds of ammunition were hauled
off. When arms sales and barter put this weaponry in the hands of the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the dream of rebellion became a reality.
In searching for the causes of war, the NATO alliance only found reasons
in Belgrade: Milosevic had revoked Kosovo’s 1974 autonomy and flouted
the diktats of Rambouillet; Serbia ruled the province by oppression and
fiat; without intervention, the Serbian predilection for ethnic
cleansing would bring another Holocaust to the region. But it was by
Allied design that Kosovo was Serbian for most of the twentieth century.
Turkish for 500 years, Kosovo was a spoil of the First World War,
awarded to Serbia after it lost a fifth of its population fighting the
Central Powers. Following the Italian and German occupations of World
War II, when an Albanian division fought ruthlessly for the Nazis, Tito
made it an autonomous region within Serbia, both to weaken Serbian
influence in Yugoslavia and to placate Albanian separatist sentiments.
But when his dream of a Communist Balkan federation, incorporating
Bulgaria and Albania, faltered, Kosovo became yet another minority
stepchild, caught between Serb nationalism and Hoxha’s bunker mentality.
Similarly, Kosovo has never been an easy issue for Albanian governments.
When I raised it in conversation, I generally got a standard answer that
Albania has few problems with nearby countries, save for Serbia. But
since its creation in 1912, Albania has been at odds with its neighbors.
The Greeks have a long simmering claim to southern Albania, which has a
largely Greek population. In turn, with its large Albanian minority,
Macedonia fears a rerun of Kosovo.
Kosovars have often dismissed the Albanians across the border as poor
relations and feared unification, much the way many in Northern Ireland
want nothing to do with the Republic. Nor did they welcome those
Albanians who fled into Kosovo seeking the prize of a Yugoslav passport,
on which they could flee Hoxha’s regime. Although both Zog and Hoxha
avoided irredentism to cultivate better relations with Belgrade, the
post-pyramid governments had to support insurrection in Kosovo, lest
they find themselves the target of the looted guns that were eventually
aimed at the Serbs.
Throughout the 1990’s the United States has thought it could impose
peace in the Balkans by drawing Wilsonian borders around the feuding
nationalities, even though an ethnic map of the region looks like a
Jackson Pollock painting. In 1908, after traveling through Albania, the
English writer, Edith Durham, described the futility of setting policy
by Balkan borders: "The frontiers drawn by the Treaty of Berlin were so
impossible that in many places they could not be defined, much less
enforced. As the borderers themselves described it .... The frontier
floated on blood."
The Audit Of War
Waiting for the flight home at Rinas Airport, where much Arnerican
weaponry was staged for the attacks on Serbia, I recalled the
after-action reports, few of which justify the press notices of the
Clinton administration that Kosovo was a splendid little war.
According to the BBC’s Audit of War, it cost NATO $4 billion to drop
23,000 bombs on the remnants of Yugoslavia. Some 10,000 bombs, scattered
across Yugoslavia, never exploded, to create future havoc for farmers or
curious children—the same group at risk to run across the depleted
uranium dropped to revive the Prizren League. The 78-day air campaign
killed about 600 Yugoslav soldiers and, depending on whose figures you
believe, disabled either 13 or 93 enemy tanks—which for Gen. George
Patton would have been an afternoon’s work.
In its lavish ways, the U.S. Army alone paid $480 million to move its
Apache helicopters to Albania, where they never fired a missile in
anger. Just to position the squadron at Rinas Airport, according to the
Washington Post, required an escort of M1 Abrams tanks, 6,200 soldiers,
42 support vehicles, and another 37 Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters.
But after two Apaches crashed during training missions, the armada
returned home to base, save for the equipment that later turned up in
Albania’s used car market.
At war’s end many of the 800,000 Kosovar refugees (who fled NATO’s blitz
as they did Milosevic’s goons) returned home. But the Allies turned a
cynical eye to the cleansing of 150,000 Serbs from Kosovo — much as in
1914 they went to war to defend violated Belgian neutrality, but nine
months later promised to partition Albania to entice Italy to the Allied
side.
Nor could the Clinton administration prove its Holocaust charges against
the Serbian government. Toward the end of 1999, 2,108 Kosovar war dead
had been found, not many more than the numbers of Yugoslav civilians who
were killed by the NATO air campaign. As Charles Simic writes in the New
York Review of Books: "As for the much-praised ‘humanitarian
intervention,’ no matter what Ms. Albright says, the NATO bombing was a
form of collective punishment in which innocent Serbs were made to pay
the full price for the sins of their leaders who, of course, remained
well protected in their shelters."
Both the Yugoslav army and its leader, Milosevic, ended the war
unscathed. The closest NATO came to deposing the Party stalwart was
blowing up his empty house. But the air campaign over Serbia, which took
out percent of Yugoslavia’s industrial capacity, consolidated his power
better than any Communist purge. The cost to rebuild Yugoslavia is
estimated at $30 billion, that for a country that is now the poorest in
Europe, still embargoed in the West, and without foreign reserves—thus
insuring regional instability for the next generation.
Even by Hollywood standards, so dear to the administration, the Kosovo
production was a sequel to Waterworld. Never mind that the NATO stealth
bombers could no more correct the injustices of the Balkans than could
they locate Private Ryan on the outskirts of Pristina, or that our
Albanian allies were in league with our enemies—the Islamic
fundamentalists—who helped write checks to the KLA. Perhaps one reason
the Clinton administration was so eager for the studio rushes over
Kosovo was that, if the missiles fell on either Serb militiamen or
Moslem fundamentalists, the Pentagon could take credit for a direct hit.
Leaving Albania For Turkish Delights
As striking during the week in Albania was the absence of an American
presence. During the war billions were pledged for Balkan
reconstruction, especially for front-line states like Albania that
contained Serb aggression. The president himself made a cameo in
Pristina, to promise the Albanians that the world would not forget their
suffering.
Unless the international community has hidden its aid in the trunks of
stolen cars, most of the checks must still be in the mail. None of the
ministers I met mentioned American largesse, and aid projects like the
north-south highway are in the same state of idle disrepair as Hoxha’s
bunkers, which in their own way sound notes of caution about foreign
entanglements.
Waiting for the passengers to board, the pilot threw a stick for the
dogs that idle on the tarmac. Before climbing the stairs, I tried to
glimpse the heavy pods brought in to keep the Apaches from sinking into
an airport pothole. But the army had left no trace of its encampment,
and as I stood looking up at the snow-capped mountains, I thought of how
the American alliance had paid $4 billion to inherit the mantle of the
Ottomans, who came to measure the state of their empire by its ability
to dictate events in the Balkans.
The Ottomans clung to power by violently dividing and conquering their
subject nationalities, as in Kosovo, where in the seventeenth century
the Turks treated the remaining Serbs as later would NATO’s Janissaries,
the KLA. Vickers recalls one chapter: "In 1690, unwilling to convert and
fearing a massacre if they remained [in Kosovo], the Orthodox Patriarch
of Pec, Arsenije IV, led some thirty thousand Serbian families to
migrate from Kosova to Hungary." It could easily be the modern story.
In driving the Serbs from Kosovo but leaving the province as part of
Yugoslavia, the NATO forces—like some Turkish garrison — suppressed a
nationalist uprising on a remote frontier. Just as quickly, a
divide-and-rule occupation had resumed and, one suspected, the sultan
had retreated to the pleasures of the harem—leaving only a legacy of
violence, not the answers to a 600-year-old problem. In the words of
Robin Okey, who wrote about the Ottomans but might well have been
describing the Clintonians: "The Porte made up in terror for what it
lacked in efficiency."
kirill
>
> THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, April 2000 p. 30
>
> Albania: Love It Or Leave It
>
> Matthew Stevenson
>
>
>
> royal pretensionsБ??he proclaimed himself King Zog I in 1928 Б??and the work
> of Italian architects transformed it into a regional capital.
Funny. If the Albanians are the descendants of Illyrians and have been
in the Balkans for over 1500 years, how come they had no royal dynasty?
The Turks, Arabs, Iranians all have some form of "royalty". If they lost
power it was because of revolutions; there weren't any revolutions in
Albania before the 1920's.
> Elsewhere what defines the city is trash, as if garbage men were swept
> away in a purge as revisionists. At one time there was a popular Kosovar
> expression:
What?! Albanians living in Albania are called Kosovars? Get f*cking real.
> "The streets of Tirana are so clean because the Albanians
> have nothing to throw away."
> In the damp chill of the national museum, I was the only visitor. The
> attendants and guards never stirred from their corner space heaters, so
> I walked alone among the marble busts of AlbaniaБ??s Greek, Roman, and
> Byzantine past. Albanians cling to their Ilyrian origins,
These are merely their nationalist myths. There is no archeological evidence
linking Albanians to Illyrians.
> in part to
> distance themselves from neighboring Slavs, but also to stake the
> earliest possible claim to Kosovo.
So how come that all the archeological digs in Kosovo yield only
Slavic artefacts? Ilyrians weren't settled in present day
Serbia and Kosovo according to accepted history.
>
> The Pyramid Collapses On Kosovo
>
> The Albanian economy as the province of pyramid schemes and stolen cars
> would have no more consequence than HoxhaБ??s paranoia, except that it was
> the countryБ??s domestic anarchy that set in motion the events that led to
> war in Kosovo.
>
> A consequence of the pyramid-scheme collapse in 1997 was the
> governmentБ??s fall, during which the stores of the Albanian army were
> looted. More than a million guns and rounds of ammunition were hauled
> off. When arms sales and barter put this weaponry in the hands of the
> Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the dream of rebellion became a reality.
Spare us this pathetic propaganda crap. The USA sponsored and armed
the KLA. NATO was staging military exercies on Serbia's borders with
Albania and its advisers were preparing the KLA "Contra" outfit for
invasion of Kosovo (some Kosovars!).
>
> In searching for the causes of war, the NATO alliance only found reasons
> in Belgrade: Milosevic had revoked KosovoБ??s 1974 autonomy and flouted
> the diktats of Rambouillet; Serbia ruled the province by oppression and
> fiat; without intervention, the Serbian predilection for ethnic
> cleansing would bring another Holocaust to the region. But it was by
> Allied design that Kosovo was Serbian for most of the twentieth century.
So who built all those pre Turkish occupation period Orthodox monasteries and
churches?
>
> Turkish for 500 years, Kosovo was a spoil of the First World War,
> awarded to Serbia after it lost a fifth of its population fighting the
> Central Powers.
Perverted sophistry. The whole region was under Turkish occupation
and when liberation arrived it was supervised by the Great Powers
unfortunately. No one gave Kosovo to Serbia, it wasn't anyone
else's to give.
> Following the Italian and German occupations of World
> War II, when an Albanian division fought ruthlessly for the Nazis, Tito
> made it an autonomous region within Serbia, both to weaken Serbian
> influence in Yugoslavia and to placate Albanian separatist sentiments.
Interesting how the swath of history between WWI and WWII is omitted
by this "commentator". During most of this period Albanians were less
than 33% of the population of Kosovo. Thanks to ethnic cleansing of
100,000 Serbs during WWII by the Axis allied Albanians and the
settling of a similar number of Albanians from Albania, this
number increased but was still less than 50% in 1945. Tito
prevented Serb refugees returning home and didn't expel the
criminal squatters back to Albania.
> But when his dream of a Communist Balkan federation, incorporating
> Bulgaria and Albania, faltered, Kosovo became yet another minority
> stepchild, caught between Serb nationalism and HoxhaБ??s bunker mentality.
What about the behaviour of Albanians? What the heck are they,
angels sent from heaven?
> Similarly, Kosovo has never been an easy issue for Albanian governments.
> When I raised it in conversation, I generally got a standard answer that
> Albania has few problems with nearby countries, save for Serbia. But
> since its creation in 1912, Albania has been at odds with its neighbors.
> The Greeks have a long simmering claim to southern Albania, which has a
> largely Greek population. In turn, with its large Albanian minority,
> Macedonia fears a rerun of Kosovo.
Just a claim? If Albanians can claim Kosovo through some mythical
link to Illyrians who never settled there, then Greeks sure as hell
have a right to North Epirus considering that they have been there
for thousands of years.
>
> Kosovars have often dismissed the Albanians across the border as poor
> relations and feared unification, much the way many in Northern Ireland
> want nothing to do with the Republic.
This clueless twit doesn't even know that not all the Catholics in
Northern Irelnand are Irish and most of the Protestants aren't
Irish either. So it isn't just Northern Irish and Southern Irish.
Of course this is even without the religious divide. Those poor
dear oppressed "Kosovar" Albanians lived so well in Serbia that
they didn't even like other Albanians of the same race and religion!!!
> Nor did they welcome those
> Albanians who fled into Kosovo seeking the prize of a Yugoslav passport,
> on which they could flee HoxhaБ??s regime. Although both Zog and Hoxha
> avoided irredentism to cultivate better relations with Belgrade,
Nonsense, Tito went out of his way to accomodate illegal Albanian
migrants into Kosovo. Tito also coddled the Albanians as they
continued to ethnically cleanse Kosovo after WWII.
> the
> post-pyramid governments had to support insurrection in Kosovo, lest
> they find themselves the target of the looted guns that were eventually
> aimed at the Serbs.
>
> Throughout the 1990Б??s the United States has thought it could impose
> peace in the Balkans
What a brazen lie! In the case of Krajina, West and East Slavonia the
USA went out its way to support the territorial integrity of a former
province. Over 450,000 Serbs were driven out of "Croatia" during the
1990s with the help of NATO bombs on INDIGENOUS Serbs. In Kosovo the
policy was reversed completely. So there is only one policy and that
is to bring down Serbs, to rob them of their land and to have as many
of them die as possible at the hands of various "nationalists".
> by drawing Wilsonian borders around the feuding
> nationalities, even though an ethnic map of the region looks like a
> Jackson Pollock painting. In 1908, after traveling through Albania, the
> English writer, Edith Durham, described the futility of setting policy
> by Balkan borders: "The frontiers drawn by the Treaty of Berlin were so
> impossible that in many places they could not be defined, much less
> enforced. As the borderers themselves described it .... The frontier
> floated on blood."
So what happened to the previous comment about Kosovo being "given"
to Serbs? If it ain't so simple, that is.
> The Audit Of War
>
> Waiting for the flight home at Rinas Airport, where much Arnerican
> weaponry was staged for the attacks on Serbia, I recalled the
> after-action reports, few of which justify the press notices of the
> Clinton administration that Kosovo was a splendid little war.
>
> According to the BBCБ??s Audit of War, it cost NATO $4 billion to drop
> 23,000 bombs on the remnants of Yugoslavia. Some 10,000 bombs, scattered
> across Yugoslavia, never exploded, to create future havoc for farmers or
> curious childrenБ??the same group at risk to run across the depleted
> uranium dropped to revive the Prizren League.
Don't forget, now, that a lot of this was on those beloved Kosovars in
Kosovo.
> The 78-day air campaign
> killed about 600 Yugoslav soldiers and, depending on whose figures you
> believe, disabled either 13 or 93 enemy tanksБ??which for Gen. George
> Patton would have been an afternoonБ??s work.
Sounds like this joker wanted a real war. I guess perverts like
him are safe and secure in North America. Too bad.
> In its lavish ways, the U.S. Army alone paid $480 million to move its
> Apache helicopters to Albania, where they never fired a missile in
> anger. Just to position the squadron at Rinas Airport, according to the
> Washington Post, required an escort of M1 Abrams tanks, 6,200 soldiers,
> 42 support vehicles, and another 37 Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters.
> But after two Apaches crashed during training missions, the armada
> returned home to base, save for the equipment that later turned up in
> AlbaniaБ??s used car market
Something fishy about this theory. The news I have is that
Serb jets took most of those Apaches out on the ground in a
surprise attack.
.
>
> At warБ??s end many of the 800,000 Kosovar refugees (who fled NATOБ??s blitz
> as they did MilosevicБ??s goons)
And the KLA which was interested in producing refugees at the border
for the CNN. Albanians even admit that there were at least 150,000
illegal migrants in Kosovo (who could be legitimately targeted for
expulsion).
> returned home. But the Allies turned a
> cynical eye to the cleansing of 150,000 Serbs from Kosovo Б??
The real number is over 200,000 of the total 250,000 driven out.
About 100,000 non-Albanians (mostly Serbs) remain in Kosovo.
So there were never 90% of Albanians in Kosovo out of a population
of 1.6 million that keeps being rounded up to 2 million and multiplied
by 0.9 to produce the absurd 1.8 million "Kosovars" figure. As
if a local majority makes any diffrence. I am a local majority
in my house, do I get to secede and stop paying taxes?
> much as in
> 1914 they went to war to defend violated Belgian neutrality, but nine
> months later promised to partition Albania to entice Italy to the Allied
> side.
>
> Nor could the Clinton administration prove its Holocaust charges against
> the Serbian government. Toward the end of 1999, 2,108 Kosovar war dead
WRONG. This figure includes all bodies recovered including Serbs and
KLA, and especially Albanians killed by NATO which by a count of news
reports of the time should be over 300. Given that the KLA was engaged
in a futile battle to seized Kosovo territory during the 78 day bombing campaign,
it is more than likely that most of this 2,108 dead is KLA that were killed
in action.
> had been found, not many more than the numbers of Yugoslav civilians who
> were killed by the NATO air campaign. As Charles Simic writes in the New
> York Review of Books: "As for the much-praised Б?~humanitarian
> intervention,Б?? no matter what Ms. Albright says, the NATO bombing was a
> form of collective punishment in which innocent Serbs were made to pay
> the full price for the sins of their leaders who, of course, remained
> well protected in their shelters."
Similarly, over a MILLION Iraqis have died in the name of collective
punishment.
>
> Both the Yugoslav army and its leader, Milosevic, ended the war
> unscathed. The closest NATO came to deposing the Party stalwart was
> blowing up his empty house. But the air campaign over Serbia, which took
> out percent of YugoslaviaБ??s industrial capacity, consolidated his power
> better than any Communist purge. The cost to rebuild Yugoslavia is
> estimated at $30 billion, that for a country that is now the poorest in
> Europe,
This guy is totally clueless. Albania remains the poorest in Europe.
> Leaving Albania For Turkish Delights
>
> As striking during the week in Albania was the absence of an American
> presence. During the war billions were pledged for Balkan
> reconstruction, especially for front-line states like Albania that
> contained Serb aggression.
Wow. The bullshit keeps on piling deeper and deeper. Since when
was Serbia engaged in aggression against Albania? According to all
the news reports the KLA was engaged in aggression against Serbia
from Albania. Serbia wasn't even willing to bomb their bases!
> The president himself made a cameo in
> Pristina, to promise the Albanians that the world would not forget their
> suffering.
The world will not forget their lies: if all those stories they
told at the Albanian border were true there would have been 500,000
dead "Kosovars". As it stands, most of these "suffering" people
were brazenly lying.
> The Ottomans clung to power by violently dividing and conquering their
> subject nationalities, as in Kosovo, where in the seventeenth century
> the Turks treated the remaining Serbs as later would NATOБ??s Janissaries,
> the KLA. Vickers recalls one chapter: "In 1690, unwilling to convert and
> fearing a massacre if they remained [in Kosovo], the Orthodox Patriarch
> of Pec, Arsenije IV, led some thirty thousand Serbian families to
> migrate from Kosova to Hungary." It could easily be the modern story.
Oh, and what were they doing in Kosovo if Kosovo was "given" to Serbia
in 1912?
Darko Peric
kirill <kir...@univeristy.ca> wrote in message
news:38FE5C24...@univeristy.ca...
> What a brazen lie! In the case of Krajina,
Darko: No such thing as Krajina, Kirill. Do you mean Northeastern
Dalmatia, Eastern Lika, Kordun, and Banija?
West and East Slavonia the
> USA went out its way to support the territorial integrity of a former
> province.
Darko: Croatia was not a province, but a republic. As for territorial
integrity, the US went out of its way to support a unitary Yugoslavia when
Baker went to Belgrade in 1991.
Over 450,000 Serbs were driven out of "Croatia"
Darko: Of Croatia's 560,000 Serbs, half lived behind Croatian lines
during the occupation of much of Croatia. Many decided to move to Serbia,
or abroad, many stayed and still live there. As for the other half in
occupied Croatia, many left during the occupation for Serbia or the West.
Some 125,000-150,000 were there (in Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, and Banija) as
of August 1995. They fled prior to the arrival of Croat troops during the
liberation of occupied territory. They fled, they weren't driven out.
during the
> 1990s with the help of NATO bombs on INDIGENOUS Serbs.
Darko: What happened to the indigenous Croats of the same regions in
1991 and 1992? What happened in Kijevo and Skabrnja?
kirill
>
> kirill <kir...@univeristy.ca> wrote in message
> news:38FE5C24...@univeristy.ca...
>
>
> Dalmatia, Eastern Lika, Kordun, and Banija?
What a pathetic fool. Take a look at ALL the western newspapers during
the 1990's. Then take a look at some western history books on the Balkans.
> West and East Slavonia the
> > USA went out its way to support the territorial integrity of a former
> > province.
>
> Darko: Croatia was not a province, but a republic.
Its borders were defined by Tito in the context of a unitary state,
in other words a province. There are parts of "Croatia" which
are the land of the Croats and there are parts (Krajina, East and
West Slavonia) which are the land of the Serbs. Tito was a commie
dictator who shaped his "Croatia" borders on the basis of the
Nazi created puppet state. These borders have zero legitimacy.
> As for territorial
> integrity, the US went out of its way to support a unitary Yugoslavia when
> Baker went to Belgrade in 1991.
That was a show. The USA went out its way to break up Yugoslavia.
For example the law pushed through by Bob Dole linking foreign
financing of Yugoslavia to referenda on independence within each
of the provinces.
>
> > Over 450,000 Serbs were driven out of "Croatia"
>
> Darko: Of Croatia's 560,000 Serbs, half lived behind Croatian lines
> during the occupation of much of Croatia.
What occupation? That transient attempt by the JNA to maintain law
in order that collapsed over the course of a few weeks?
> Many decided to move to Serbia,
> or abroad, many stayed and still live there. As for the other half in
> occupied Croatia, many left during the occupation for Serbia or the West.
What a pile of BS. People who lived in Zagreb all of a sudden decided to
flee leaving everything behind just because they got the urge?
The ethnic cleansing of West Slavonia is well recorded by the western
media (which is bised against Serbs to start with). It was a brutal
Croat military operation the same as in Krajina. East Slavonia was
under Serb control until the UN took over and then handed the land
back to "Croatia" after which tens of thousands of residents fled the
harassement and intimidation.
> Some 125,000-150,000 were there (in Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, and Banija) as
> of August 1995. They fled prior to the arrival of Croat troops during the
> liberation of occupied territory. They fled, they weren't driven out.
Keep on trying to erase history, you only look like a sick freak. The
shelling of Knin is what you call "fleeing before the arrival of Croat
troops". What a pervert.
> during the
> > 1990s with the help of NATO bombs on INDIGENOUS Serbs.
>
> Darko: What happened to the indigenous Croats of the same regions in
> 1991 and 1992? What happened in Kijevo and Skabrnja?
Yeah, really, what happened? None of this changes the fact that it
is Serb land and the insistance of the west on provincial
partitions is the origin of all the war and misery. Just like
Rwanda and Burundi were idiotic colonial partitions of the lands
of two different ethnic groups, so is "Croatia", "Bosnia" and
"Kosovo".
Zvonimir Siljkovic
are illiterate fools. But then what do I know, I guess they US congress long
ago figured you out for the thieves you are. I guess it must urk you to see
the sixth fleet enjoying themselves in Croatia while the only foreign guests
you have is chinks trying to get to Europe. Enjoy that big whore house you
call a country, ahem province of China-Russia!
--
Zvonimir Siljkovic
Stanciceva 11
3 Kat
Zagreb Medvescak 10000
hus...@msn.com
"kirill" <kir...@univeristy.ca> wrote in message
news:38FF66B1...@univeristy.ca...
> Darko Peric wrote:
> >
> > kirill <kir...@univeristy.ca> wrote in message
> > news:38FE5C24...@univeristy.ca...
> >
> > > What a brazen lie! In the case of Krajina,
> >
> > Darko: No such thing as Krajina, Kirill. Do you mean Northeastern
> > Dalmatia, Eastern Lika, Kordun, and Banija?
>
> What a pathetic fool. Take a look at ALL the western newspapers during
> the 1990's. Then take a look at some western history books on the
Balkans.
>
> > West and East Slavonia the
> > > USA went out its way to support the territorial integrity of a former
> > > province.
> >
> > Darko: Croatia was not a province, but a republic.
>
> Its borders were defined by Tito in the context of a unitary state,
> in other words a province. There are parts of "Croatia" which
> are the land of the Croats and there are parts (Krajina, East and
> West Slavonia) which are the land of the Serbs. Tito was a commie
> dictator who shaped his "Croatia" borders on the basis of the
> Nazi created puppet state. These borders have zero legitimacy.
>
> > As for territorial
> > integrity, the US went out of its way to support a unitary Yugoslavia
when
> > Baker went to Belgrade in 1991.
>
> That was a show. The USA went out its way to break up Yugoslavia.
> For example the law pushed through by Bob Dole linking foreign
> financing of Yugoslavia to referenda on independence within each
> of the provinces.
>
> >
> > > Over 450,000 Serbs were driven out of "Croatia"
> >
> > Darko: Of Croatia's 560,000 Serbs, half lived behind Croatian lines
> > during the occupation of much of Croatia.
>
> What occupation? That transient attempt by the JNA to maintain law
> in order that collapsed over the course of a few weeks?
>
> > Many decided to move to Serbia,
> > or abroad, many stayed and still live there. As for the other half in
> > occupied Croatia, many left during the occupation for Serbia or the
West.
>
> What a pile of BS. People who lived in Zagreb all of a sudden decided to
> flee leaving everything behind just because they got the urge?
> The ethnic cleansing of West Slavonia is well recorded by the western
> media (which is bised against Serbs to start with). It was a brutal
> Croat military operation the same as in Krajina. East Slavonia was
> under Serb control until the UN took over and then handed the land
> back to "Croatia" after which tens of thousands of residents fled the
> harassement and intimidation.
>
> > Some 125,000-150,000 were there (in Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, and Banija)
as
> > of August 1995. They fled prior to the arrival of Croat troops during
the
> > liberation of occupied territory. They fled, they weren't driven out.
>
> Keep on trying to erase history, you only look like a sick freak. The
> shelling of Knin is what you call "fleeing before the arrival of Croat
> troops". What a pervert.
>
> > during the
> > > 1990s with the help of NATO bombs on INDIGENOUS Serbs.
> >
Zvonimir Siljkovic
firefly
Zvonimir Siljkovic <hus...@email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:#CAXBPzq$GA.307@cpmsnbbsa04...
> Austria-Hungary. Great you see people. This disease is contagious!
Serbitis is spreading. Send money fast so that we can find a cure!> Frank George Valoczy <val...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
news:8do15k$ada$1...@sylvester.vcn.bc.ca...
> > Actually it was Hungary without the Austria...eventually will be again,
> > too.
> >
> > I love this about how people like you attack others' intelligence and
are
> > unable to come up with coherent, thoughtful things to say. Further, you
as
> > a Croat should be able to tell that I am not a Serb, but a
> > Magyar. Sympathetic to the Serbian cause, yes, I am proud to say that
> > because it is the truth and I have no need to deny my beliefs or hide
them
> > behind insults against anyone I don't happen to agree with.
> >
> > My family is mostly from Vojvodina and I have no problems with that
> > remaining together with the Serbs as the Serbs have been least cruel and
> > unfriendly towards Hungarians, unlike the Slovaks, Slovenes, Romanians
and
> > Croats, and even the Austrians. Funny how the uncivilised always accuse
> > the civilised of being uncivilised.
> >
> > ferko
> >
> > In soc.culture.yugoslavia Zvonimir Siljkovic <hus...@email.msn.com>
wrote:
> > > Actually it was Austria-Hungary! But I understand that Serbs have a
limited
> > > brain capacity limiting their ability to retain such complex ideas
such as
> > > history and facts or geography. I must continue my appeal to the world
to
> > > recognize the Serbs as a disabled peoples who need our constant care
and
> > > attention. It not their fault they were born without brains. So please
,
> > > join my effort and contribute to the Help Zvonimir Help Stupid Serbs.
HZHSB!
> > > Send money to the below address. Only by working together can we find
a cure
> > > to this disease called Serbitis!
> >
> > > When they release you from the Mental Hospital.
--
> > > Zvonimir Siljkovic
> > > Stanciceva 11
> > > 3 Kat
> > > Zagreb Medvescak 10000
> > > hus...@msn.com
> >
> >
> > > "> And yes, the birthplace of the great Nikola Tesla is Serbian.
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> -------ferke
> > >> Ferenc Gy. Valoczy
> > >> Zeljezni Bik Models
> > >> http://zeljezni-bik.tripod.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > -------ferke
> > Ferenc Gy. Valoczy
> > Zeljezni Bik Models
> > http://zeljezni-bik.tripod.com
> >
> > Njeleci ptack k nanej, maceri, ale k rodnej zemi.
> >
> > Personal page: http://www.extra.hu/svejk/index.html
> > Tu-134 page: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/7482/
> > railways page: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/3976/
> > Virtual Votia: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3259/
> >
> > Zaradi politicnega delovanja
> > je oblast
> > v letu 1982
> > razpustila:
> > Svobodo
> >
> > Due to political activity
> > the authorities have
> > in the year 1982
> > outlawed:
> > Freedom
> > (Laibach)
>
firefly
firefly
Zvonimir Siljkovic <hus...@email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:#X1BMhxq$GA.232@cpmsnbbsa03...
firefly
> Ah firefly, I know its not easy to live with Serbitis. But someday soon we
hope to extract the healing quantities of Tudjmaphobia! It worked so well in
Croatia. But if you send me money to fund my research, I can include you in
the trial run for FDA approval! Good luck with fighting your disability!> firefly <hvi...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:EQPL4.26961$WF.10...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> > You swas born dummy and you will die like one.
> >
> >
> > Zvonimir Siljkovic <hus...@email.msn.com> wrote in message
> > news:#X1BMhxq$GA.232@cpmsnbbsa03...
> > > Actually it was Austria-Hungary! But I understand that Serbs have a
> > limited
> > > brain capacity limiting their ability to retain such complex ideas
such as
> > > history and facts or geography. I must continue my appeal to the world
to
> > > recognize the Serbs as a disabled peoples who need our constant care
and
> > > attention. It not their fault they were born without brains. So please
,
> > > join my effort and contribute to the Help Zvonimir Help Stupid Serbs.
> > HZHSB!
> > > Send money to the below address. Only by working together can we find
a
> > cure
> > > to this disease called Serbitis!
> >
You better find the cure for your self. >You are really mentally sick one.