The genocide in Kosova has transformed many of the survivors from self-sufficient, productive people with a virtual shadow-government of their own into objects of charity. Although some Muslim agencies and individuals have strained their resources to offer aid to the Kosovars, the relief-work has been clearly dominated by western secular and Christian groups.
NATO’s 11-week war with Yugoslavia over Kosova appeared finally to have ended on June 10, when its Secretary General Javier Solana suspended military operations saying that alliance intelligence sources had verified that Yugoslavia troops had begun to withdraw from Kosova.
After a meeting in Bonn on May 6, the foreign ministers of the G8 group of countries (the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia) announced a set of ‘general principles’ which they had agreed as the basis for a political solution to the Kosova crisis.
The NATO summit which took place in Washington from April 23-26 ended with a typically western fudge. After weeks of strong words against Slobodan Milosevic’s government regarding the genocide of Kosova’s Muslims, the Alliance concluded their 50th Anniversary session by authorising Russia to seek a mediated settlement to its war with Yugoslavia.
The west finally accepted the necessity to bomb Yugoslavia on March 25, after their repeated attempts to help Milosevic to solve his Kosova problem were rebuffed. Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy on the Balkans, had left Belgrade on March 23 admitting that he had failed to persuade president Slobodan Milosevic...
The west finally accepted the necessity to bomb Yugoslavia on March 25, after their repeated attempts to help Milosevic to solve his Kosova problem were rebuffed. However, the strategy they implemented, and the predictable results of the first few days of their attacks, raise serious questions about their genuine intentions.
America’s senior envoy to the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton Accords which ended the Bosnian war in December 1995, flew to Belgrade on March 9 to negotiate a final Kosova peace deal directly with Slobodan Milosevic, confident of having finally obtained the Kosovars’ agreement.
When Muslims hear the word ‘peace,’ the ‘peace process,’ or ‘peacekeepers,’ they should be deeply concerned. The Muslims’ experience with each has been nothing short of disastrous. The cases of Palestine and Bosnia immediately spring to mind.
The bodies of six murdered Kosovars were found in different locations in the country on February 8, the day after ‘proximity’ peace talks between the Serbs and Kosovars began in France. They included a 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl found together in Djakovica, 45 miles south-west of Pristina...
The NATO Council, which is co-ordinating American and European policy towards Kosova, agreed in Brussels on January 6 that Serbia and the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) were equally to blame for the month of increased troubles in the country from mid-December onwards.
Five members of one Kosovar family--two adults and three children – were massacred by Serbian troops near Rakovina in southwestern Kosova on January 25. The killings came just 10 days after the murders of 45 Kosovar civilians, including women, children and elderly men, in the village of Račak...
A major Serb offensive which began in late July has made major gains against the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) during August.
Talks between Belgrade and Prishtina on the future of Kosova finally began last month, following pressure on Kosova president Ibrahim Rugova by Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomatic ‘troubleshooter’ who mediated the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the Bosnian war in December 1995.
Two Kosovar activists died at the hands of Serb police last month, shortly before they were due to go on trial charged with terrorism and other offences against state security. Adrian Krasniqi was gunned down in the street on October 16, and Jonuz Zeneli died two days later in a prison hospital in Belgrade...
