...which was revenge for killings committed against Albanians and Turks by the armies of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia in 1912, which were revenge for terrible oppression suffered by all Christians in the last century of the Ottoman Empire.

Who's to blame, the Albanians for trying to denationalize all minorities and killing a couple of thousands since June 1999 or the Serbs for killing possibly five thousand Albanians in 1998-1999, or the Albanian rebels for killing more than one thousand Serbs, Gypsies, and Albanians before June 1999? Who's to blame, the Serbs for treating quite brutally Albanian nationalists and for rescinding in 1989 the extreme autonomy given to the Albanians by Tito, or the Albanians for abusing that autonomy and persecuting and cleansing out minorities from 1963 to 1989, or Tito for killing thousands of Albanian rebels in 1944, or the Albanians allies of the Axis for killing many thousands, burning churches, and cleansing Kosovo of non-Albanians during World War II, or the Serbs for brutally repressing an Italian-financed rebellion in the early 1920's, or the Christian alliance (Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Montenegrins) for massacring tens of thousands in the Balkan War of 1912? Should we blame the Albanian Moslem converts for a couple of centuries of killing Christians, and viceversa? Should we blame the Sultan? Should we blame the Crusaders, should we blame the Pope in Rome who sent them, should we blame the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon Him?

At which point in time, at which set of killings, do we choose history to start? For public opinion in NATO countries, Kosovo history starts and ends in 1999. "The Serbs killed 100,000 Albanians so we went in and liberated them." For western intellectuals, educators, and commentators, Kosovo history starts in 1989: any earlier events fade away in a fog of mythical pre-history. The U.S. State Department generously offers to start history in 1912 with Serb atrocities, gloss over 1913-1988, mention the 1989 withdrawal of autonomy, and then quick forward to January 15, 1999, the Racak Massacre. Shouldn't we know a bit more details before we bomb? A very brief review of history might help us understand the Balkans and might keep us from making catastrophic mistakes again.

While in earlier centuries, at the time of its expansion, the Ottoman Empire had been the most tolerant regime in Europe, if not in the whole world, in the 19th century the Istanbul government grew ever weaker, and power fell into the hands of local feudal lords. Their families had obtained power by converting from Christianity to Islam, and their rule came to be very oppressive: converts often take to persecuting non-converts. Most Albanians and many Serbs converted to Islam, and they were allowed mastery over Serb, Greek, and Macedonian Christians.

Bosnia, which until the genocide of 1941-1945 would be predominantly Serbian Orthodox, was, in 1875, part of the Ottoman Empire, when an agrarian rebellion of Orthodox serfs against their Moslem masters led to the Bosnians proclaiming union with Serbia. War broke out between the Slav nations, led by Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The Slavs won the war, and signed with the Ottomans a peace treaty which recognized the independence of Bulgaria, and awarded much of Kosovo and Bosnia to Serbia and Montenegro. The European powers, concerned about Russian and Orthodox influence spreading into the Balkans, intervened, vetoed Bulgarian independence, and ordered the return of Kosovo to the Ottoman Empire. In a burst of wisdom and generosity, the European great powers gave Bosnia to Kaiser Franz Josef of Austria, as a deadly present. The Austrians had to fight a year-long "pacification campaign", which gave rise to Serbian irredentism, centered in Sarajevo. Its Italian counterpart was the irredentism centered in Trieste, then also part of Austria. Serbian irredentism was to prove fatal to the Austrian Empire.

The oppression of the Christians in the Albanian-controlled parts of the Ottoman Empire reached new extremes, causing insurrections, which were put down in blood by the bashibazouks, mainly Albanian irregular forces. The government in Istanbul tried to modernize and proclaimed the equality of Christians and Moslems, which offended the Albanian feudal lords, who deeply resented the idea of equality with the raja, or "herd", as the Christians were called. As Istanbul tried to push the idea of equality in taxation and in front of the law, the feudal rulers rebelled against Istanbul. Serbia saw here an opportunity increase its influence and to protect Serbs in Kosovo and Macedonia, and offered arms to Albanian guerrilla leaders who would guarantee Serb lives and property. Thus Idriz Seferi had some of his followers shot for robbing Serbs, and Isa Boletini had Serbs amongst his most trusted men, his own body guards. However, when Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia went to war against the Ottoman Empire in 1912, the Albanians sided with Istambul. "Better the devil you know..." The Orthodox Christian states won the war, but the Catholic powers, Austria and Italy, intervened. Their purpose was not to protect Turks and Albanians, but to prevent Serbia and thus presumably Russia, from obtaining access to the sea. The Italian army landed and fought against Greeks and Serbs. The Serbian army was forced to abandon the Adriatic coastland it had already conquered. Rome and Vienna then ordered a meeting of Albanian feudal lords, who proclaimed an independent Albania. A Greek and a Serb minority were thus left under Albanian control.

The 1914 killing of the son and heir of Kaiser Franz Josef by a Bosnian Serb student gave Austria the opportunity to order its own demise by starting WWI. The Vatican was in favor of war against Serbia and saw it as a crusade against "schismatics", as people of the Orthodox faith were called. It did not work out so well the first time. The opportunity to roll back Orthodoxy would not come again until Hitler's conquest in 1941, when the ruling Croat clerical party, with support of the local Catholic hierarchy, embarked on a policy of triage to solve the Serbian Problem in Bosnia and Croatia. The policy was openly announced by government leaders in Zagreb: one third was to be expelled, one third killed, and one third converted. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled, hundreds of thousands killed, while hundreds of thousands did convert to Catholicism, under the penalty of death.. The Vatican had mixed feelings about such convertions but refused to excommunicate even armed clergymen who were participating in the actual killing. The opportunity for a final successful religious rollback would present itself again in 1995, when Operation Storm, with strategic support by NATO air forces and planning by U.S. Army General Staff advisors, solved the Serbian Orthodox Problem in the Croatian Krajina.

Back in 1914, the rallying cry in Vienna and Berlin had been "Serbien muss sterben!", "Serbia must die!" Serbia held the line for fifteen months, losing over the course of the war half of its men of fighting age, 18 to 55. The German and Bulgarian armies joined the attack and the Serbian front collapsed in 1915. Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia, and Kosovo were subjected to rather severe treatment at the hands of the Austrian occupiers. However, the Serb army had made a Dunkirk-type of escape and returned in 1918 with enough strength to block Italy from seizing Slovenia and Dalmatia. In Kosovo the returning Serb army behaved honorably this time, mostly.

Italy, foiled in its objective of controlling both sides of the Adriatic Sea, decided to re-start the Kosovo conflict by financing a rebellion. The gold was distributed by Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian ruler of Fiume, to help start rebellions in Montenegro and Kosovo. Now Serb counter-insurgency forces behaved as brutally as the Austrians had. Negotiations between Serbia and Albania followed, and in 1924 the future King Zog of Albania had the rebel chiefs killed. The King of Yugoslavia proclaimed an amnesty, and until the next spate of malevolent foreign interest in Kosovo, peace reigned under a royal regime or parliamentary coalition governments which included the Moslems of Bosnia.

In 1941 Italy and Germany conquered Kosovo, thus restarting the conflict, which at once became a great anti-Slav pogrom. A pogrom, by the way, is a religious/patriotic celebration in which young men run around the neighborhood knocking over market stands, beating up Jews--or Blacks or Serbs or Los Angeles Koreans or whatever minority is taking the blame today--and occasionally setting their houses on fire. As long as the boys act with restraint, everything is fine, a controlled pogrom is a good way to blow off steam. In such situations, however, it behooves responsible leaders to keep watch, lest the boys get carried away by their youthful patriotic exhuberance. Suppose the boys, instead of just setting fire to a synagogue or a couple of bookstore, were to torch the entire Jewish quarter, then the event would quickly lose any positive patriotic traits it had before. On the contrary, it would bring embarrassment to sensible politicians who want to see the Jews--or Blacks or Gypsies or Serbs--put in their place but do not want to see them killed too much; it is a fact of life, that excessive killing, even of Serbs, is bad for business. So that's a pogrom. Anyway, in 1941, the Italian army behaved much better than one would have expected a fascist army to behave. In a parallel to future events in 1999, the Italians in 1941 tried their very best to protect the Slavs of Kosovo from the violence which Rome had made possible. In 1943 the Germans pushed the Italians out and organized the Skanderbeg division of the Waffen SS, staffed mostly by Kosovo Albanians, who labored efficiently and diligently on the final solution of the Serbian, Gypsy, and Jewish Problem. Until then, the Serbs, with Gypsies and Jews, Turks and Circassians, Gorani and Croats, were 45% of the population of Kosovo.

In 1944 the Yugoslav partisans took over. An Albanian insurrection was brutally repressed. After the end of WWII, Belgrade began to give ever greater control of Kosovo to the Albanians. In the sixties and seventies, the Albanian communist authorities began a program of forced Albanization. All minorities had to accept the Albanian language instead of the national lingua franca, which had been Serbo-Croat. In most European countries people use the local language at home, and switch to the national language in school. To the teacher you speak one language, to the kids another. Elimination of the national lingua franca had a negative long term effect on the economy in Kosovo: anywhere in the world, successful minorities are bilingual. Albanians miraculously achieved a 90% numerical majority, as Gorani, Roma (Gypsies), and Turks were counted as Albanians. Controlled anti-Serb pogroms were organized. Harrassment and violence against Serbs gradually became once again very popular. A parallel persecution led to the cleansing of Serbs and Montenegrins from Albania. Such events of course did not raise any eyebrows in Washington, or in the other centers of western morality, places such as The Hague, Rome, Berlin, Paris, or London. The persecution of minorities in Kosovo resulted in the re-establishment of central control by Belgrade in 1989.

At that point very influential politicians in Serbia proposed the Palestinian solution, i.e. partition. One could have expected such a proposal to be welcomed with relief by the NATO powers. But policymakers in the West have not as yet accepted the idea that peace is in the national interest. Politicians are always unaware of world history, suffer from arrogance of power combined with fear of losing face, and have personal investments and business connections. They receive "contributions", and exert pressure on foreign policy makers: thus policy is made on the basis of ignorance, arrogance, greed, and fear of losing face. In 1992, President Bush was under great pressure by powerful members of congress financed by Croatians and Albanian Americans. Bill Clinton used the Yugoslav secession wars to portray Bush as "weak on Serb aggression." These were the most important factors in moving American foreign policy from support of Yugoslav unity to support of anyone who wanted to make war on the Orthodox and their Moslem allies. The reputation of no politicians, ever since Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe set out to liberate Canada in 1812, ever suffered from taking the country to war, whether it resulted in victory or in the burning of the capital. Fearful of losing his warrior aura won in Kuwait, President Bush decided to get tough with Milosevic. Here was an ex-communist who would make a perfect and easy new target because of his propensity for blustering combined with an uncanny disposition to give up territory. Thus President Bush decided that partition was good enough for Palestine but not good enough for Kosovo, and authorized the insurrection: to any perspective rebels in Kosovo he promised an air force and a navy.

No nationalist from any minority in the world could have failed to seize such an opportunity. The diplomatic note of Bush to Milosevic became known as the "Christmas Warning." It was released for dissemination to some chosen reporter and was published by The New York Times on December 28, 1992: "The United States will be prepared to employ military force against the Serbs in Kosovo and in Serbia proper." The publication of such a "diplomatic" note would have brought war anywhere on the globe.

Secessionist groups received massive financing from Islamist governments and from NATO countries. Wages ten times greater than the going salary for a doctor were offered to the most inexperienced recruits, while foreign explosive specialists could expect much more. Killing of policemen and of civilian Serbs, Roma, and disobedient Albanians began in 1993, bringing the opportunity to avenge the most recent and the most ancient wrongs. The raiding culture returned to Kosovo. Many tribal societies, from the Americas to Papua New Guinea, used to accept the raiding custom, in which robbing and murdering neighbors, even children, is glorious . The raiding culture can reappear in every society in which the authorities fail to nip it in the bud. In the first 100 years after the Civil War, raiding was common in the United States and it was tolerated, as long as the targets were Native Americans and Blacks. In June 1999, the United States government gave the green light to raiding and ethnic cleansing when Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told the world, "I don't think that Kosovo is going to be a very happy place for Serbs when NATO comes in. I don't think the Serbs would want to stay there."

Some KFOR units recognized that their orders implied toleration of ethnic cleansing and acted accordingly. Other KFOR military and UNMIK police units, believing that theirs was a mission of pece, took action against participants in the Great Pogrom of the summer of 1999. However, fearing the Northern Ireland Syndrome, the NATO governments decided to deny KFOR and the UNMIK police the means (personnel and cash) to seriously counter the raiding practice. Clearly, looking the other way is the easiest reaction when some guys kill an old Serb woman and take her cows: NATO governments do not want KFOR and UNMIK men to look for trouble by following the obvious tracks of the cattle and arresting the culprits. See the case of Zecevic Bozana, born in 1919, found strangled in her house on August 20th, 1999. Our policies have made raiding common and acceptable in Kosovo

On this site, under the heading The Dead and Missing, you see thousands of names, all of them victims not so much of dumb primitive killers, but of the educated foreign elites who authorized the war and the destruction of multi-ethnic society in Kosovo and Bosnia. Four victims stand out:

Ana Takic, a six year old Serbian girl, arrested with her father in Prizren at the end of August 1999. Her hand was removed, hopefully after her execution.

Merit Shabiu , a 13 year old Albanian girl, beaten, raped, and strangled by a U.S. Army seargent in Vitina, on January 13, 2000.

Isabela Tamniku , a 12 years old Turkish girl, killed in Prizren on October 2, 2000

Samira Kastrati , a six months old Roma girl, who was disappeared on August 9, 1999 in Prizren, together with her family.

They would live today, if the Leader of the Free World had not chosen to bring war to Kosovo.

100,000 non-Jewish German opponents of nazism died in the camps. However, the great majority of Germans remained quiet--please remember, the penalty for complaining was death. Oddly enough they are still blamed today, and German haters, with sarcasm, call them "good Germans." If non-resisting Germans living under Nazi terror are to be seen as guilty , then who could deny that in western democracies we are collectively responsible for the actions of our governments? It is in democratic NATO countries that we find the true "good Germans", people who could openly object to murderous government policies without threatening their families' survival, their jobs, or even their careers. Yet they have chosen not to object, they are too busy delving into the great issues of humanity: public and private morality, personal growth, spirituality, shopping, and human rights...in China.

Gentle reader, the blood of Ana, Merit, Isabela, and Samira is on your hands.