The Unknown Genocide of Kosovo « Aletho News

The unknown genocide of Kosovo

By Kit Klarenberg | Global Offenders | September 1, 2024

June 9 marked a little-known anniversary. On that day in 1999, the Yugoslav army withdrew from Kosovo after 78 consecutive days of NATO bombing. In exchange for ceasing its criminal campaign, the US-led military alliance was granted unhindered, unchallenged freedom of movement and action throughout the province. The army’s withdrawal immediately opened the floodgates for genocide against the province’s Serb population, under the watchful eye of NATO and UN peacekeepers. To this day, the region lives with the devastating consequences of the catastrophe.

The March-June 1999 NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia was ostensibly carried out to prevent an imminent massacre of Albanians in Kosovo. Yet, as a British parliamentary committee concluded in May 2000, all the alleged abuses of Albanian civilians took place after the bombing began. Moreover, the alliance intervention appeared to be active encouraged Slobodan Milosevic wanted to aggressively eliminate the CIA- and MI6-backed, civilian-targeting narco-terrorist organization Kosovo Liberation Army (UK), with which Belgrade was effectively at war.

At that time, the KLA had been trying for years to ethnically pure Kosovo through insurgent violence, in service of construction “Greater Albania” – an irredentist, Nazi inspired entity that includes territory in modern-day Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The departure of the Yugoslav army from the province finally gave the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group a large window of opportunity to achieve that mephitic goal. There was a gap of several days before thousands of NATO and UN “peacekeepers” – known as KVOR – arrived in Kosovoon June 12, 1999.

By the time they reached Pristina, dozens of Serbs had already been killed or fled Kosovo, their homes and property stolen or destroyed. Despite the official mission to ensure a “safe and secure environment” in the province, the presence of KFOR did nothing to quell the bloody chaos. Operation Joint Guardian, a eponymous report of the work of American military historian Cody R. Phillips states:

Phillips reports that KFOR “did not anticipate the level of violence and lawlessness” and was ill-prepared, ill-equipped and understaffed to deal with the barbaric, province-wide crime wave they had embarked on. “Murder, assault, kidnapping, extortion, burglary and arson were reported daily,” the victims invariably Serbs. These were only incidents “significant” enough for KFOR to report. More often than not, the perpetrators were never identified – “no one saw anything” was “a standard refrain.” Drive-by shootings were commonplace. Meanwhile:

Serbs “were attacked daily throughout the province… routinely… harassed in public buildings, or on the streets, then robbed, beaten, or ‘arrested’ and held in prisons” by rampaging mobs of armed Albanian militants. In one community in Kosovo, an estimated 5,000 Roma were driven from their homes, “which were then looted and burned.” Albanians and Bosnians who remained in Kosovo during the war, seen by the KLA as loyal to Yugoslavia, “were harassed… some of them also disappeared.”

‘Bad Guys’

Not long after Joint Guardian was launched, a U.S. Marine patrol responded to a series of home arsons in Zegra, “a town almost evenly divided between Serb and Albanian families.” They arrived “too late to stop the violence,” and their access to the area was further blocked by a barrage of Albanian militants. “Every Serb house had been burned,” the local Orthodox church had been destroyed, a nearby cemetery had been vandalized. Nearly 600 Serbs were ultimately forced to leave.

According to Phillips, before the first week of Joint Guardian was over, “dozens of Serbs had been abducted by the KLA.” They were never seen again, their bodies never found. Elsewhere, a Serb school official “who had protected an Albanian home and family” during the NATO bombing and his wife were murdered, their “bodies (left) hanging in the town square.” This “level of violence” continued for the first month of the operation:

There was also a routine “predictability” in the way Serbs were “bullied” into leaving Kosovo – “remote villages were particularly susceptible to the unofficial pattern.” First, “roving bands” of Albanian militants would subject Serbs to escalating “intimidation tactics,” to the point that “threats became unbearable.” If these activities “failed to achieve the desired effect… thugs would break into selected houses and beat the occupants, and one or two token victims would be killed.” The process was “highly effective” in forcing Serbs to leave the province.

In July, the remaining Serb families in the town of Vitina were wrongly blamed by Albanian militants for an explosive attack that injured more than 30 Serbs and subsequently bullied out of the area. Before leaving, they “gave their homes and remaining belongings to their Albanian neighbors in gratitude for their friendship and kindness.” Within hours, those homes and their contents were ablaze. According to Phillips, the incident prompted a KFOR commander to complain, “the hatred is so intense and irrational it’s unbelievable.”

Come November 1999The KLA’s postwar campaign of “murder and kidnapping” in NATO-occupied Kosovo had reduced the Serb population of Pristina from 40,000 to just 400. Then “the killings continued until 2,000.” Serbs of all ages were regularly gunned down in the streets. A Serb preparing to leave for Belgrade “was murdered by an Albanian posing as a potential buyer” for his house.

There are strong grounds for believing that, contrary to Phillips’s account of KFOR’s well-intentioned, brave incompetence and incompetence, this violence was actively encouraged by the KLA’s Western allies. December 2010A British “peacekeeper” sent to Kosovo at the time attributed Pristina’s current status as “an impoverished, corrupt and ethnically polarized hinterland” to NATO’s “unwillingness to control KLA gangsters.” He witnessed how London under his watch consistently “encouraged the KLA to greater brutality.”

Whenever his KFOR team picked up the terrorist group’s fighters on the streets, heavily armed and “intent on killing and intimidation,” his superiors ordered them to be released:

‘Bastard Army’

In 2001, “both smuggling and signs of an insurgent campaign increased in the province, particularly in the mountainous and heavily forested border areas separating Macedonia and Kosovo,” where KFOR did not patrol. The contraband entering Kosovo was “not limited to illegal drugs or duty-free cigarettes” – “firearms and ammunition were all too common. Indiscriminate terrorist attacks continued throughout,” with hand grenades “the weapon of choice.” Grenades “were both plentiful and cheap,” costing around $7 each – “less than the price of a pound of coffee.”

At the same time, the KLA’s brutal fight for Greater Albania continued, with the active support of London and Washington. KFOR watched idly as KLA insurgents crossed a five-kilometer-wide “exclusion zone” into neighboring Macedonia, armed with mortars and other deadly weapons. This dark handshake was openly condemned by other Western powers. A European KFOR commander bitterly noted in March 2001:

The extensive technical and material sponsorship of the KLA by the Empire extended to evacuation 400 of the group’s fighters in Skopje after they were surrounded by Macedonian troops. This support was crucial to the terrorist group, which occupied and controlled almost a third of the country’s territory by August 2001. At that time, however, due to European pressure, the US withdrew all aid to the KLA. Local leaders signed a peace agreement on August 13, 2001.

In exchange for constitutional and administrative changes that guaranteed equal rights for Albanians in Macedonia, KLA rebels stopped fighting and turned over many of their weapons to NATO, while being granted amnesty from prosecution. Just weeks later, the 9/11 attacks took place. Ayman al-Zawahiri, co-founder of Al Qaeda and deputy to Osama bin Laden, has is fingered as “the person who can do the things that happened” on the fateful day. Coincidentally, one KLA unit was led by his brother.

September 1, 2024 –

Posted by aletho | Ethnic cleansing, racism, zionism | KFOR, KLA, Kosovo, NATO, Serbia