Yugoslavia’s Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic and Vice-President of the Serbian Government Nebojsa Covic were at the headquarters of the NATO alliance in Brussels this week, trying to get support for a plan that is supposed to pacify the south of Serbia, where a new Balkan war is threatening to erupt come springtime.
For the past three months, armed Albanian terrorists have been infiltrating from NATO-“demilitarized” Kosovo into the south of Serbia trying to achieve two complementary ends. One is to provoke an armed response from Serbian police and Yugoslav Army forces that would bring the latter a new round of condemnation from the “international community.” The second is to annex this additional part of Yugoslav territory by first uniting it with an ethnically cleansed, Albanian-dominated Kosovo and then incorporating it into a long-dreamed Islamic “Greater Albania.”
The restraint (i.e. lack of armed response) that the new Yugoslav government has shown in dealing with the new wave of terrorism has gotten it much verbal praise -- but not much more from Western governments and NATO. On the other hand, from being almost non-existent in October, the Albanian terrorist presence in the areas of Serbia bordering U.N.-administered Kosovo has grown to an estimated 15,000.
Anyway, encouraged by the back-slapping received from sundry Western diplomats, some Yugoslav officials actually began thinking that they had gotten what some termed as a "green light" for anti-terrorist action should the situation get out of hand and the various peace initiatives show no results.
Slow to react to terrorism, the NATO bureaucracy in Brussels was lightning-quick to react to the mere mention of anti-terrorism. As an anonymous NATO official announced to the Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti two days before the Yugoslav delegation’s visit to Brussels, NATO “had never given such a 'green light.'" Furthermore, "such a step, although formally speaking it was a strictly internal Serbian matter, would be very stupid because it would bring on a repeat of 1999."
And we all know what happened in 1999. Having refused the U.S.-inspired Rambouillet ultimatum to de facto cede a part of its territory to NATO, Yugoslavia brought upon itself 78 days of undeclared war from the strongest military alliance ever assembled, several thousand dead civilians, depleted uranium bombs and an occupation of Kosovo, a sovereign part of its territory.
Just to be sure that the message got across, NATO General Secretary George Robertson told the Yugoslav delegation visiting Brussels on Thursday that no ultimatums should be presented to the separatist guerillas and, especially, no "so-called anti-terrorist actions."
We are now witnessing a rapid refinement of military doctrine. It took about twenty years before Orwell’s "War Is Peace" found its practical dimension when somebody uttered that a village had to be destroyed in order to be saved. Here in the Balkans, only two years after the world’s first "humanitarian bombing" we are on the verge of a new coinage: "Anti-Terrorism Is Terrorism." For it is not the Albanian terror campaigns in Kosovo or in the south of Serbia that are bringing on the prospect of perhaps bombing Albanian terrorist bases. No, it is the specter of "so-called" anti-terrorist action that is drawing veiled threats of a new bombing of Yugoslavia.
On Friday, the terrorism continued, as a bus full of Serbs was blown apart by a remote-controlled land mine just inside of Kosovo. So far, seven Serbs are dead, 40 injured. The condemnations from the Western capitals came quickly. No threat of bombing, however. Why should there be? If anti-terrorism is now terrorism, then its antithesis, what was once known as terrorism, must be "peace." It makes sense -- for once all the Serbs and other nationalities are cleared from Kosovo, or blown apart under the watchful eyes of NATO soldiers, whose only goal in this mission is to stay alive so as not to harm the political prospect of those that sent them there, peace may truly arrive.
Aleksandar Pavic in Belgrade has covered Yugoslavia's historic election and its dramatic aftermath for WorldNetDaily.com.