Serbs are a heroic nation proud of their glorious exploits. We have seen the latest such achievement in the arson attack on the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, along with similar violence against embassies representing other countries that recognized the independence of Kosovo.
Embassies symbolize international mutual respect and civility. But Serbs, who revel in their bravery when it comes
to murdering children and old people – 1,200 children were deliberately killed by Serb snipers in the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995 – interpret diplomacy as aggression and attempted genocide.
In Belgrade, the stars and stripes has been torn down. What will now be said by the isolationists, Albanophobes, and sellouts to Serbian and Russian influence, inside the Beltway, who spent the last few weeks agitating against Kosovo independence? Will they be happy to see our flag burned? Our flag was torched because we were slow to assist the
Kosovar Albanians in really securing their freedom against Serbian fascism, and, being generous, kept giving the Serbs more chances to change their ways. But Serbs do not change.
Of course, there are plenty of people inside America – supporters of the Ron Paul element in national politics – who will try to justify Serb violence against our embassy and flag, as they tried to deny the reality of Serbian mass
murder at Srebrenica in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and at Racak in Kosovo.
In Washington and New York, we also have to bear with the “experts” at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), who boasted about their supposed victory in Belgrade in 2000, when the frowning fascist Slobodan Milosevic was replaced by the grinning fascist Vojislav Kostunica, now Serbian prime minister. The NED still brags about their “success” in backing the fraudulent Otpor reform movement in Serbia. Some admirers of Otpor have the nerve to suggest a similar tactic be applied to support change in Iran. Thanks for that – by all means, let’s see Ahmadinejad replaced by a pseudo-alternative. The same NED hacks tell us that “dialogue” is possible with peaceful Islamists. Maybe it’s time for the people at NED to get real, honest work.
But I digress. Serbs are indomitable fighters. They were tough and courageous when they sold out the Jews, making Belgrade the first officially “judenrein” city in Europe. They were hardy and principled when their bogus patriots, the Mihailovic Chetniks of World War II, collaborated with the Italian and German occupiers. They claimed the Chetnik terrorists fought the Nazis and were betrayed when the Allies supported Tito’s Partisans. Serbs did not join the Partisans until it was clear the Nazis were losing. The Chetniks were too busy cutting the throats of elderly Bosnian Muslim women. The Partisans – mainly Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians – fought for our side.
The Serb lobby in the U.S. told us for decades how they saved U.S. Army Air Force pilots whose planes were shot down during World War II. They demanded special recognition, monuments, and medals, as if all the heroism was on the side of Serbian troglodytes and our pilots were mere technicians.
Serbs hate Muslims because Muslims wash before praying. As a Serbian Orthodox “theologian” put it, Serbs are unafraid of dirt, because, according to them, their souls are pure. Serbian “saint” Nikolaj Velimirovic Zicka was locked up in Dachau for three months in 1944. He blamed his imprisonment, and the war, on… the Jews! And the phony humanitarian Artemije Radosavljevic, a Kosovo Serb cleric who has toured the U.S. portraying Albanians as savages, was among the biggest promoters of the sainthood of this Jew-baiting Serb Christian “thinker.” Serbs told the world for two centuries that they had defended the freedom of Europe against the Ottomans, when in reality they sold out to the Ottomans for the privilege of collecting taxes (the much-criticized Islamic cizye) from Christians under Muslim rule, and turned against the Ottomans only when Turkish power diminished and the Serbs feared the loss of their status as tax farmers.
And lest we be fooled by Serbian propaganda, there would have been no Yugoslav wars in the 1990s but for the unwillingness of Serbia to surrender the tax and financial control it exercised, from Belgrade, over the rest of the
peoples in former Yugoslavia.
That’s Serbian heroism. A lot like “Serbian truth” – a term used by Serbs themselves to refer to lying.
Serbian apologists in America like Lawrence Eagleburger appeared surprised by the embassy attacks. But everybody who has been in Kosovo, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Croatia in the past six months knew the Serbs would attempt to answer the independence declaration of the Kosovars with “Serbian statesmanship” – rioting, arson, desecration of our flag, attacks on the UN border posts in Kosovo.
The U.S. must be prepared for worse adventurism from Serbia. Airhead commentators on the news channels also acted shocked by an outcome they should have known was coming. Some of them recycled Serbian myths about Kosovo being the alleged “heartland” of their so-called “culture.” In fact, the Serbian heartland was in Raska, north of Kosovo. And
Serbian “culture” and “civilization” have been displayed to the world once again, as they were when the Serbs in
1991 bombed and shelled the historic Croatian city of Dubrovnik – a city that protected Jews during World War II; when the Serbs raped 60,000 women and girls in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and when the Serbs tried to expel two million Albanians from their homes in Kosovo.
The whole world knows who the aggressors were in ex-Yugoslavia. But who stands behind crimes like the attack on our embassy? Such an action could not have taken place without the complicity of Kostunica, whose photograph was displayed waving a Kalashnikov when he ran for the Serbian presidency in 2000. And behind the Belgrade political mafia stands the proud “former” KGB agent Vladimir Putin, who is using Kosovo to revive Russian meddling in Europe and restart the cold war. Putin is willing to provoke a repetition of that grand chapter in Serbian history, the Sarajevo assassination of 1914, which touched off the first world war.
America’s embassy in Belgrade is burning. Our flag has been torn down and set afire by the fearless Serbs. Americans should mute the repulsive gabble of the TV talking heads and just watch the spectacle, which speaks for itself. At least this is real history, not Serbian disinformation. Let Serbs dance in the ashes of their undeserved reputation for honor and glory. They will be the black hole of Europe for a hundred years. Albanians kiss our flag and express their gratitude and love for us. Let us not forget who have been our honorable and truthful friends.
Now that Kosovo has declared independence and returned to the center of world news, it is instructive, if also astonishing, to see how the lies propagated by the fascist Milosevic regime and its Serbian imperialist predecessors have been recycled and have even become widely accepted, anew, by global media. Serbs have yet again manifested their uncanny capacity to reinvent themselves as victims where they have acted as murderous criminals.
Let us examine the 10 most commonly-heard Serbian lies about Kosovo. The truth about each of these spurious claims can be easily confirmed.
1. Lie: “Kosovar Albanians are all Muslims.” Truth: Kosovar Albanians, like Albanians in general, include a significant Catholic community. There are Catholic churches in almost every major Kosovo town. Historically, Catholics were in the forefront of Albanian resistance to Serbian aggression. Catholics were therefore among the most significant victims of Serbian terrorism in 1998-99. The single worst Serbian atrocity against Kosovar Albanians mainly took the lives of Catholics: this was the massacre at Korenica on April 27, 1999, in which 377 people were killed, including infants.
2. Lie: “Kosovar Muslims are Islamists.” Truth: Kosovar Muslims despise radical Islam. Although Saudi Arabia maintains a relief office in Prishtina, and built a small number of mosques in Kosovo, their presence is resented. Kosovars disliked the Saudi Wahhabis, who defaced cemeteries on the argument that grave markers are idols, and who sought to replace historic Ottoman and modern Albanian mosques, which are also built in the Ottoman style, with new, Gulf-style mosques. More than a third of the mosques in the republic were completely destroyed by the Serbs.
3. Lie: “The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was aligned with Al-Qaida.” Truth: Unlike the army of the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, the KLA did not permit foreign Muslims to join its ranks. The KLA was founded on a national struggle, rather than defense of a religious-based identity. The KLA included Catholic commanders and many Sufis (since, as Bernard Lewis has pointed out, Sufis are peaceful but not pacifist) as well as numerous non-religious people Also, radical Muslims outside the Albanian lands may have contributed money to the relief of Kosovo, but they played no role in the struggle of the KLA. This is one of the most bizarre Serb lies because no evidence of Arab or Islamist involvement with the KLA was sustained in mainstream media during the Kosovo intervention; the lie emerged, writ large, long after the war.
4. Lie: “Kosovar Muslims hate Orthodox Christians.” Truth: Albanians include some 20 percent believers in the Albanian Orthodox Church, which was founded as an autocephalous (religiously-autonomous) entity in the United States, against Greek Orthodox opposition. Its head was an outstanding Albanian patriot named Theofan Stilian Noli (1882-1965). Perhaps the greatest 20th century Albanian poet was Lasgush Poradeci (1899-1987), who came from an Orthodox family. Another renowned and popular poet was Millosh Gjergj Nikolla (Migjeni – 1872-1924), born of a Slav Orthodox family but author of verse in Albanian, and the first modernist writer in the language.
5. Lie: “Kosovo is the ‘Serb heartland.’ ” Truth: The Serb heartland in the Balkans was located in Raska, north of Kosovo. Serbia today speaks a variant of the South Slavic language originating in Vojvodina, which is relatively far to the north of Kosovo, and was part of Hungary until 1918.
6. Lie: “Serbs built the Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo.” Truth: The origin of most of the Orthodox monasteries remains unclear; they may have been established by Albanian, Byzantine, Romanian (Vlach), Macedonian, or Bulgarian Orthodox Christians. A wall fresco in the famous monastery at Peja in Kosovo portrays the Orthodox St. Sava in the company of Albanian believers, identifiable by their distinctive white felt hats, or plisat. The likeliest theory is that the monasteries were built by Bulgarians, who ruled Kosovo in the 9th and 10th centuries. The first council of Christian bishops from the west Balkan region of Dioclea, which was centered in today’s Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, met in 1199 in Antivari (Tivat), and was totally Albanian in composition, without Slav participation.
7.Lie: “Serbs fought the Ottoman Turks for centuries.” Truth: After the Ottoman victory at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Turkish Sultan Bayazet I married a Serbian princess, Despina, and Serbia became a Turkish ally. Serbia did not rebel against the Ottomans until 1804.
8. Lie: “Serbs saved Jews in World War II.” Truth: Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, was officially designated “the first judenrein city in Europe” by the Serbian pro-Nazi regime of Gen. Milan Nedic. Statistics published by the Federation of Jewish Communities in then-Yugoslavia, in 1989, showed the highest rate of liquidation of Jews in Banat, ruled by Serb collaborationists (93 percent killed) and Serbia proper (88 percent killed). The lowest rate of genocide of Jews was in Albanian-ruled Kosovo (38 percent killed). Albania itself, which drew many Jewish refugees
from Central Europe, did not turn a single Jew over to the Nazis; it was the only Axis-occupied nation to come out of the war with more Jews than lived on its soil before the conflict began. The role of Albanians as Righteous Gentiles was recently recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Heroes’ and Martyrs’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. Most of the Albanians who saved Jews were Muslim. The figure for Jewish deaths in Kosovo during the Holocaust has recently been challenged. The disclosure of the original German roster of individuals deported to death camps from Kosovo, as well as other documents, preserved by Shaban Sinani, former director of the Albanian National Archives, and distributed by Claire Lavoine, a disinterested Frenchwoman of high ethics, is of exceptional importance. These sources show that no more than 40 Jews or offspring of mixed marriages were deported by the Nazis from Kosovo. That figure would render a Jewish liquidation rate of only eight percent.
9. Lie: “Albanians became a majority by immigrating to Kosovo after World War II, and now seek a union with other Albanian-speaking territories in a Greater Albania.” Truth: The first Yugoslav census, taken in 1921, showed an overwhelming Albanian majority in Kosovo, even though they were systematically undercounted. Kosovo and Albania proper have much less in common than foreigners think. Kosovars speak the northern variant of Albanian, known as Gheg. Albanians in south and central Albania speak another variant, Tosk. Although Kosovo is still poor, thanks to the obstructionist policies of the United Nations on privatization and other issues, it has a higher standard of living than Albania. Kosovo has removed the remnants of Communism from its political life, while there has yet to be a reform of the judiciary and other institutions in Albania, aside from the holding of free elections and a proliferation of mediocre, politically-corrupt newspapers. No serious political leader in either country calls for a Greater Albania.
10. Lie: “Kosovo is a center of Albanian drug-smuggling.” Truth: Kosovo is the most heavily-policed region in Europe. Serbs and their supporters who make this charge cannot cite indictments, trials, or sentences, much less any other serious data about alleged drug-dealing in Kosovo, aside from an occasional petty seizure of marijuana. The republic’s foreign supervisors have no incentive to ignore such activities, if they existed.
Kosovar Albanians are not stupid or crazy. They owe their freedom to U.S.-led intervention and they will not forget
it. They are entrepreneurial, moral, traditional people who are anxious to take their place as a responsible European nation. The U.S. has been correct in supporting the freedom of Kosovars, who will repay American help honorably and fully.