US and EU have strange friends

[RPGmasterBoo]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/1...like-mafia-boss

[Meshugger]

...and why hasn't he resigned yet? Let alone being sent to The Hague?

 

"The allegations have been investigated several times by local and international judiciary, and in each case, it was concluded that such statements have were not based on facts and were construed to damage the image of Kosovo and the war of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

 

Sounds like a response that you would get from soviet Pravda or from the foreign relations beauro in Pyongyang. Simply juvenile.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Maybe because he's the head of a mafia like pyramid and without him the US pet project of independent Kosovo would collapse.

 

Also because the NY based Albanian mafia is extremely wealthy through heroin trade (which goes from Afghanistan, through Kosovo to the west) and has basically been bribing every official of note since the Clinton administration.

 

The Hague has made no effort to truly prosecute anybody of note from the Albanian side. One isn't likely to put ones allies on trial in ones own court.

 

The US really needs to make lobbying illegal. The "foreign policy for sale" thing ain't doing it any good.

[Humodour]

Boo, one day you and your kin will have to accept that Kosovo is now an independent country.

 

In regards to this guy: I hope he meets justice. Just like I hope the many war criminals in Serbia do.

[Meshugger]

Before this dwelves into a balkanese pie-throwing contest, i would like to point out that the qualifications for a nationstate are not determined on who was more oppressed, who was there first and so on. Only two things matters: War and diplomacy. The territory in question is either conquered, or separatist elements throw governing body out. A newer method is through diplomacy; the territory is deemed as sovereign by most memberstates of the UN.

[Gorth]

It's still funny how standards change though. Everybody lined up in the queue to support the Albanian seperatists in their seperation efforts, yet when South Ossetia wanted to do the same thing from Georgia, everybody screamed bloody murder and NOWAI. Hypocrisy at its most disgusting

[Humodour]

Do you think those two situations are basically the same, Gorth? To me you've got a significant difference in persecution and animosity levels between the two situations (am I wrong?)

 

I didn't and don't want South Ossetia breaking away only to become less democratic and more authoritarian under Russia's thumb. That really is my main motivating interest when deciding whether I support separatist groups - are human rights, living standards, freedoms, etc elevated by doing so.

Edited December 21, 2010 by Krezack

[Gorth]

Do you think those two situations are basically the same, Gorth? To me you've got a significant difference in persecution and animosity levels between the two situations (am I wrong?)

Short version, you have two regions, each with a significant ethnic group who doesn't get along with the ethnic group of the nation state they are part of and the vast majority doesn't want to be part of that nation state. Where the similarities ends is in the strategic interest of "the western world". Georgia's only redeeming feature is its strategic location, hosting the oil pipelines going from Baku to the Mediterranean area. It sure isn't because of it's democratic traditions that Georgia is popular to support (it's about as democratic as Zimbabwe, i.e. not very).

 

Edit to add:

 

This image brought to you by CIA (without their knowledge) showing my point:

Nobody really cares about Abkhasia, only South Ossetia. The map sort of shows why

 

hint: The blue line is the oil pipeline.

[Zoraptor]

Do you think those two situations are basically the same, Gorth? To me you've got a significant difference in persecution and animosity levels between the two situations (am I wrong?)

 

I didn't and don't want South Ossetia breaking away only to become less democratic and more authoritarian under Russia's thumb. That really is my main motivating interest when deciding whether I support separatist groups - are human rights, living standards, freedoms, etc elevated by doing so.

The Georgians were pretty nasty (~100k Ossetian refugees in the conflict of the early 90s per HRW, SOs current population ~70k), neither Abkhazia nor SO were integral parts of Georgia (added to the GSSR by Stalin in yet another of his rational acts designed to promote fluffy bunnies and happy puppy dogs) and Saakashvili is... not very democratic at the best of times. Probably a bit better than Mugabe, to be fair, but not much.

 

In short, the only way either is going to be reintegrated is at the point of the bayonet, as Misha tried (and failed) to do a couple of years ago, and had done with another breakaway region (Adjaria) a few years previous.

[Wrath of Dagon]

There's no fundamental difference in the two situations, in fact it's even worse in Serbia as Kosovo has always been internationally recognized to be part of Serbia, including by US and NATO countries. At least with Ossetia I don't think Russia ever recognized it as part of Georgia. In both cases it's a case of might makes right, and there's no question US/Nato acted illegally and without justification. Also the stupidity of helping Islamic terrorists against people who have always been at least friendly, if not outright allies.

Edited December 21, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Humodour]

There's no fundamental difference in the two situations, in fact it's even worse in Serbia as Kosovo has always been internationally recognized to be part of Serbia, including by US and NATO countries. At least with Ossetia I don't think Russia ever recognized it as part of Georgia. In both cases it's a case of might makes right, and there's no question US/Nato acted illegally and without justification. Also the stupidity of helping Islamic terrorists against people who have always been at least friendly, if not outright allies.

 

So Kosovo is full of Islamic terrorists now...?

 

Um... *dumbfounded*

[~Di]

Gawk! Good grief, WOD, just because Albanians are Muslim does not make them freaking Al Qaeda. I'll confess that the KLA were pretty damned harsh with captured Serbians, and not without reason, but I've yet to see an Albanian terror cell targeting western cities. Not every Muslim is a terrorist. I shouldn't even have to point this out.

Edited December 22, 2010 by ~Di

[Nepenthe]

There's no fundamental difference in the two situations, in fact it's even worse in Serbia as Kosovo has always been internationally recognized to be part of Serbia, including by US and NATO countries. At least with Ossetia I don't think Russia ever recognized it as part of Georgia. In both cases it's a case of might makes right, and there's no question US/Nato acted illegally and without justification. Also the stupidity of helping Islamic terrorists against people who have always been at least friendly, if not outright allies.

 

So Kosovo is full of Islamic terrorists now...?

 

Um... *dumbfounded*

I was a lot more entertained by the claim that Serbs have been "always at least friendly, if not outright allies", tbh.

[Zoraptor]

That's... fairly accurate, arguably. It's only really post Tito and more especially post cold war that there were any problems. The Serbs were allies in WW2 and almost exclusively anti-German (in sharp contrast to the Croat Ustache, well remembered by the Germans as the Croats mysteriously ended up with a bunch of Leopard tanks despite the supposed arms embargo in the 90s war; and one Josip Broz notwithstanding), plus Tito was relatively friendly despite both being communist and the historical religious and cultural bonds with the Russians. I wouldn't quite go so far as WoD but it certainly ain't indefensible.

 

Neither's labeling the KLA as muslim terrorists- it certainly was a muslim terrorist organisation as much as, say, the IRA was a catholic terrorist one.

[Nepenthe]

That's... fairly accurate, arguably. It's only really post Tito and more especially post cold war that there were any problems. The Serbs were allies in WW2 and almost exclusively anti-German (in sharp contrast to the Croat Ustache, well remembered by the Germans as the Croats mysteriously ended up with a bunch of Leopard tanks despite the supposed arms embargo in the 90s war; and one Josip Broz notwithstanding), plus Tito was relatively friendly despite both being communist and the historical religious and cultural bonds with the Russians. I wouldn't quite go so far as WoD but it certainly ain't indefensible.

 

Neither's labeling the KLA as muslim terrorists- it certainly was a muslim terrorist organisation as much as, say, the IRA was a catholic terrorist one.

 

I'd say that Tito-> is already a long-enough chunk of time for the present discussion.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Gawk! Good grief, WOD, just because Albanians are Muslim does not make them freaking Al Qaeda. I'll confess that the KLA were pretty damned harsh with captured Serbians, and not without reason, but I've yet to see an Albanian terror cell targeting western cities. Not every Muslim is a terrorist. I shouldn't even have to point this out.

KLA was intentionally trying to provoke Serbs by committing terrorist acts against them, and they and other Muslim groups in the Balkans received support from both Al Qaeda and Iran.

[Walsingham]

Gawk! Good grief, WOD, just because Albanians are Muslim does not make them freaking Al Qaeda. I'll confess that the KLA were pretty damned harsh with captured Serbians, and not without reason, but I've yet to see an Albanian terror cell targeting western cities. Not every Muslim is a terrorist. I shouldn't even have to point this out.

KLA was intentionally trying to provoke Serbs by committing terrorist acts against them, and they and other Muslim groups in the Balkans received support from both Al Qaeda and Iran.

 

Evidence? Any? I've never heard anything of the kind. Not to any significant degree.

[Wrath of Dagon]

From Wikipedia:

Status as terrorist group

The Yugoslav authorities, under Slobodan Milosevic, regarded the KLA a terrorist group[32]. The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization for attacking Serbian police and military targets, until 1998,[8][9] and President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, described that same year the KLA as, "without any questions, a terrorist group".[11][36] Around 1998, some months before the war of March 1999, the US government removed the KLA from its list of terrorist organizations, and they approached the KLA leaders to make them interlocutors with the Serbs.[9][37] France didn't delist it until late 1998, after strong US and UK lobbying.[10] During the war, the KLA troops collaborated with the NATO troops, and they were qualified by the NATO as "freedom fighters".[9] In late 1999 the KLA was disbanded and its members entered the Kosovo Protection Corps.[9] KLA is still present in the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base list of terrorist groups,[32] and is listed as an inactive terrorist organization by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism from the Homeland Security.[38]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Libera...terrorist_group

 

The wikipedia page also provides a lot of other info on this, as well as links. As far as links with Al Qaeda and Iran, that info is quite a few years old now, but you could probably google about it.

[Nepenthe]

Paging TheHarlequin to this thread to explain the value of wikipedia as a source.

[Zoraptor]

That's... fairly accurate, arguably. It's only really post Tito and more especially post cold war that there were any problems. The Serbs were allies in WW2 and almost exclusively anti-German (in sharp contrast to the Croat Ustache, well remembered by the Germans as the Croats mysteriously ended up with a bunch of Leopard tanks despite the supposed arms embargo in the 90s war; and one Josip Broz notwithstanding), plus Tito was relatively friendly despite both being communist and the historical religious and cultural bonds with the Russians. I wouldn't quite go so far as WoD but it certainly ain't indefensible.

 

Neither's labeling the KLA as muslim terrorists- it certainly was a muslim terrorist organisation as much as, say, the IRA was a catholic terrorist one.

 

I'd say that Tito-> is already a long-enough chunk of time for the present discussion.

If you take Tito -> kick off of Yugoslav Wars that's still only a decade or so; and relations were certainly not negative in the USSR/ Iran/ DPRK vs USA mold until well into the 90s. So long as the USSR was a threat- until 1990, basically- keeping the Yugoslavs on side (/off their side) was pretty important to the west as it deprived the soviets of ports on the Med and left their underbelly more vulnerable, while providing passive support to Greece.

 

Relations have been 'strained' for the past fifteen years or so? No kidding, that's a consequence of bombing a country and arbitrarily chopping bits off to satisfy Tony Blair's Messiah Complex. If they wanted to intervene they should have done so early, in Bosnia, and put a lid on the whole thing as quickly as possible.

[~Di]

Gawk! Good grief, WOD, just because Albanians are Muslim does not make them freaking Al Qaeda. I'll confess that the KLA were pretty damned harsh with captured Serbians, and not without reason, but I've yet to see an Albanian terror cell targeting western cities. Not every Muslim is a terrorist. I shouldn't even have to point this out.

KLA was intentionally trying to provoke Serbs by committing terrorist acts against them, and they and other Muslim groups in the Balkans received support from both Al Qaeda and Iran.

 

According to the Serbians the KLA were "trying to provoke Serbs"... but NATO found no evidence of this, nor has any legitimate evidence been brought forth to my knowledge to link the Albanians to Al Qaeda or Iran. NATO found huge amounts of evidence that Serbians were slaughtering Albanians, as evidenced by the corpses found in locked, burned out buildings and myriad mass graves.

[Wrath of Dagon]

If you read my link, you'd see that US considered KLA a terrorist organization, as well as reports on KLA atrocities and ethnic cleansing by groups lke HRW. Also it's Serbs, not Serbians. Here's a link about Iran and Al Qaeda involvement in the Balkans: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m157...ag=content;col1

[Hildegard]

That's... fairly accurate, arguably. It's only really post Tito and more especially post cold war that there were any problems. The Serbs were allies in WW2 and almost exclusively anti-German (in sharp contrast to the Croat Ustache, well remembered by the Germans as the Croats mysteriously ended up with a bunch of Leopard tanks despite the supposed arms embargo in the 90s war; and one Josip Broz notwithstanding), plus Tito was relatively friendly despite both being communist and the historical religious and cultural bonds with the Russians. I wouldn't quite go so far as WoD but it certainly ain't indefensible.

 

Neither's labeling the KLA as muslim terrorists- it certainly was a muslim terrorist organisation as much as, say, the IRA was a catholic terrorist one.

 

 

The amount of crap that you're able to produce in just one short post is fascinating.

 

First of all, Serbs weren't exclusively anti-German. Chetniks (Serb fraction) collaborated extensively with the Nazis because they had a common enemy - Tito and the communist (who were consisted of Serbs and Croats). Here are a couple of pictures to prove my point were you can see German soldiers together with Serbs posing. The leader of the Chetniks had a totally different idea how to form a state in the Balkans after the war, not a Yugoslavia but a Great Serbia, similar like the one Milosevic wanted to create.The other bull**** you claim is that Croats were all Ustachi on the side of the Nazis which is a damn lie. Ustachi regime and the people who supported it were primarily from North Croatia and from abroad, Croats from the South were almost all in the Partisans (Tito's fighters) as was my grandfather who died fighting the Germans in the WW2. As I said Partisans consisted of Serbs and Croats not just from the South but from North as well. You can say Croats were separated into two fractions, those supporting the Ustachi fascist regime and the Partisans. And a note, the Partisans were the only resistance force in WW2 large enough and capable enough to engage the Germans in the open battlefield on a division scales. Next crap you say is that Croatia received bunch of German Leopard tanks in the 1991 war. Hahahahahaha, how amusing. In the start of the war Croatia didn't have a single tank, most of the hardware equipment was in the hands of Serbs since most officers in the Yugoslav military were Serbian. Croats acquired tanks capturing them in battles and from Yugoslav military bases located in Croatia that weren't emptied on time and those were T-55 and T-72, not any silly Leopard tanks which Croatia never had back then. The British and the French ensured that the arms embargo was imposed although they knew very well that Croats and Bosnians were largely inferior to Serbs when it came to firepower and military hardware. But that is no surprise since the British and the French were silent Serb allies in fact and was their initial estimate that the Serbs would crush their opponents easily due to the military superiority. But when things got ugly in the Balkans and Milosevic's plan for a great Serbia didn't work out the current British and French regime were of course quickly appalled and always seemed neutral on the international stage, but they weren't at all. Scum. On the other side, yes Germany was a Croatian ally and did everything they could through diplomatic and humanitarian channels to aid Croatia. The ones who helped Croatia most smuggle arms to fight the Serbs was Hungary God bless them, and that was small arms in question, not any tanks. Do you have any more crap to produce?

 

KLA was intentionally trying to provoke Serbs by committing terrorist acts against them, and they and other Muslim groups in the Balkans received support from both Al Qaeda and Iran.

 

Hahahaha excellent propaganda!!! This is like saying: In 1939 the Polish terrorists executed numerous acts of terrorism on German people in West Poland and Germany, therefor Germany launched an invasion to ensure the freedom and security of the German people where ever they are! Heil Hitler!!!

 

To be serious now, the KLA did commit a number of atrocities against Serbs living in Kosovo, especially in Mitrovica. But that was nothing compared to the size of killings Serbs committed on the Muslim population in Kosovo and the severity of which would be much grater if NATO didn't step in. And any wrongdoings by the KLA wasn't a factor that started troubles in Kosovo, they started long long before. They accumulated then because the population of Albanians living there through the years out surpassed the Serbian population which started to want more power and rights which Milosevic wouldn't give them for anything.

 

From Wikipedia:

Status as terrorist group

The Yugoslav authorities, under Slobodan Milosevic, regarded the KLA a terrorist group[32]. The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization for attacking Serbian police and military targets, until 1998,[8][9] and President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, described that same year the KLA as, "without any questions, a terrorist group".[11][36] Around 1998, some months before the war of March 1999, the US government removed the KLA from its list of terrorist organizations, and they approached the KLA leaders to make them interlocutors with the Serbs.[9][37] France didn't delist it until late 1998, after strong US and UK lobbying.[10] During the war, the KLA troops collaborated with the NATO troops, and they were qualified by the NATO as "freedom fighters".[9] In late 1999 the KLA was disbanded and its members entered the Kosovo Protection Corps.[9] KLA is still present in the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base list of terrorist groups,[32] and is listed as an inactive terrorist organization by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism from the Homeland Security.[38]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Libera...terrorist_group

 

The wikipedia page also provides a lot of other info on this, as well as links. As far as links with Al Qaeda and Iran, that info is quite a few years old now, but you could probably google about it.

 

This just proves how easily the United States can change the label of an organization from terrorist to freedom fighters and vice versa depending how it suits its interests.

Edited December 24, 2010 by Gorth
The language filter is there for a reason

[Zoraptor]

no insult was intended, it's a complicated subject difficult to get any nuance without ending up looking like (and being the length of) a wikipedia article or using more parentheticals than is healthy.

 

I didn't actually say all Croats supported the nazis- not even all Germans supported the nazis, after all- but that the Croat Ustache did (ie, puppet Croatia), and I did name check the most prominent anti nazi Croat which was one more anti nazi Croat than Serb.

 

However, it is indisputable that the Croats had a puppet state which contributed significant forces to the axis, formal, volunteer and anti partisan. They certainly contributed far more than Mihailovic's lot* ever did to the German cause and it is certainly true that the Croat regime was the primary pro nazi force in Yugoslavia in WW2 by a large margin. While genuinely fascist/ pro nazi Serb forces did exist they were not comparable in size or effect to their Croat equivalents. Please take the role of all ethnicities in the partisans as acknowledged- but when it comes right down to it and for the purposes of what WoD said the simple fact is that Croatia was formally on the side of the axis.

 

As for the Leopards, that was not to be taken seriously. So far as I am aware Croatia has no Leopard tanks now. It was a flippant reference to the rumours prevalent at the time which I found amusing as they were apparently sparked by someone painting the word 'Leopard' on the side of their ?T55? (T34, apparently, per google) tank.

 

*Which as you noted was far more internecine anti communist/ partisan than it was ever pro German. Not that Mihailovic was a 'good guy' by any stretch and in a choice of him and his Serb nationalism or Tito then Tito was a far better result.

[Wrath of Dagon]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110210/wl_time/08599204672600