Kosovo, the first in a series of foreign interventions that didn’t quite turn out as planned by Mr. and then Mrs. Clinton. From Justin Raimondo, at antiwar.com:
Kosovars are celebrating the seventh anniversary of Kosovo’s independence – by leaving in record numbers. By some estimates as many as 100,000 have fled the country in the past few months. Germany is dispatching policemen to the Hungary-Serbia border to stem the rising tide, since most wind up there so they can apply for asylum.
It’s a tragic end to a long and difficult journey, however, as more than 99 percent of asylum applications from Kosovars are rejected. Germany, which supported the US-backed Kosovo “Liberation” Army (KLA), wanted an independent Kosovo: the Kosovars, not so much….
Fourteen years after the end of the Kosovo war, the “liberation” of the Kosovars has delivered them into the hands of a despotic clan of thugs who have turned the country into the crime capital of Europe, and the continent’s major source of heroin smuggling and human trafficking – a place where the former President has been credibly accused of organ harvesting. The Albanian Mafia has ruled the country ever since the “liberation,” and Kosovo’s government has taken its place among the most corrupt in the world. The unemployment rate is close to 50 percent. A piece in the Guardian quotes a refugee fleeing with his family:
“I don’t know exactly where I am heading but I am dreaming of a place where my children will have proper education and where they won’t need connections to get a job once they graduate and where neither of us need to bribe the doctor if we need health services. The government did not prove they can provide us with any of this, and I never thought I would be here 15 years after the war.”
Associated Press cites a disappointed worker:
“‘I am so disappointed with my own place, I just want to leave,’ said Bislim Shabani, an ethnic Albanian heading to Germany with his wife and four children. Shabani said he worked in a company that went bust in a botched privatization, leaving many workers mired in debt: ‘They owe me 12 months of wages. I couldn’t provide for my family any longer.’”
The last official in charge of privatizing Kosovo’s state-own industries, Blerim Rexha, had to resign after questions were raised when the agency sold off entire industries on the cheap to buyers with political connections. The previous privatization minister had been found dead at home with 11 stab wounds – officially ruled a “suicide.” Under Prime Minister Hacim Thaci, leader of the KLA, and his Democratic Party, the wholesale looting of the economy took place: not only the privatization agency but also the Central Bank (whose chieftain was arrested), and virtually every other government body is rife with corruption.
The Drenas mine, worth billions, was snapped up by an Israeli company for a pittance. PTK, the state-owned telecommunications company, was bid on by Albright Capital – former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s investment consortium – but was forced out by the pretty obvious conflict of interest. Albright was a prime architect of the Kosovo war during her tenure at Foggy Bottom and apparently became quite enthralled with tall, dark and handsome Hacim Thaci, who later became Kosovo’s chief executive and de facto strongman. The PTK sale has been canceled twice due to a power struggle within the ruling party.
Organized violence against the Serb minority, which began during the civil war and continued, unabated, after independence, is worse than ever. Over 100 Serbian Orthodox churches have been burned to the ground by Kosovar mobs. In March, 2004, the “Kristallnacht of Kosovo” saw Serbs murdered in the streets, entire towns ethnically cleansed, hospitals burned to the ground, and thousands of Serbs forced to flee their homes: an estimated 50,000 Kosovars took part in the rioting. NATO’s “peacekeeping” force stood by and watched.
The Kosovo war was sold to the American people under the rubric of a “humanitarian intervention” – a precedent and a pretext that was used many times since. It was also the first phase of Washington’s post-cold war regime change campaign, which sought to push Russian influence out of Europe – and eventually threaten regime change in Russia itself. While today we hear much talk of a new cold war, there is nothing all that new in the present policy: it began with the Clinton administration, when Gen. Wesley Clark threatened to start World War III by attacking Russian peacekeepers in Pristina, and NATO started bombing Serbia.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/02/17/happy-kosovo-independence-day/
To continue reading: Happy Kosovo Independence Day?
