antiwar.com
MACEDONIA, R.I.P.?
EU and US team up to destroy a nation
Macedonia is doomed. How do I know that? You don't have to read
between the lines to get the import of the stories coming out of the European
media, especially the British press, to understand that the Macedonians have
been chosen as the next target of the "human rights" crowd. The lead story in
Tuesday's [London] Times, headlined "Chilling note revives fear of ethnic
cleansing," should evoke in the reader a sense of deja-vu:
"On a dusty side road in a grim commercial district of Skopje, the Balkan
curse of ethnic cleansing finally came to Macedonia yesterday. Faradin, a
frightened middle-aged shopkeeper, was hurriedly packing up his goods
and preparing to close his shop, one of the last Albanian premises still in
business. 'Have some peach juice,' he said, handing me a carton from a
stack on his shop floor. 'I can't possibly move it before the deadline tonight.
Who knows what will be left of this place by the morning?' The reason for
his fear became clear when he took out his wallet and unfolded a brief
type-written notice. The message, photocopied and pasted on shopfronts
throughout the area, was from a shadowy group calling itself Macedonia
Paramilitary 2000. It ordered all Albanian businesses to close or face being
firebombed."
THE "BALKAN CURSE"
Like some cynical Hollywood hack writer churning out
formulaic scripts, the authors of the Macedonia scenario are
sticking with what has worked in the past. It worked in
Kosovo, where Albanians (who always seem to have only
one name) told the tallest tales with the straightest of faces.
The American and European audience fell for it, at least for
as long as it took to reduce Yugoslavia to rubble and
conquer Kosovo. Let's call this one "The Balkan Curse" – a
nice touch of sumptuous vulgarity, Hollywood-style – and
people it with all the by-now-familiar stock characters. The
Bad Guys are, of course, the evil racist Macedonian
"paramilitaries," whose shadowy "death squads" have
targeted the Muslim heroes of this docudrama – the poor,
downtrodden, eternally victimized Albanians. You can tell
the Macedonians are the bad guys because, not only do
they threaten their enemies with death, but they also use
racist language:
"'It is ordered that all shiptars [a derogatory word for
Albanians] who have businesses in and around
Kvantashki Market relocate within three days and those
shiptars who are from Aracinovo within 24 hours. After
this deadline all stores will be set on fire and if anyone
puts up a defense they will be shot without warning,' the
notice said. 'We put shiptars in the Republic of Macedonia
on notice that for every policeman or soldier killed, 100
shiptars, who are not Macedonian citizens since 1994,
will be killed.'"
MADE IN USA
No doubt they fly the Confederate flag, too. "Macedonia
Paramilitary 2000"? If you believe that one, then you'll
believe anything. If the "2000" is supposed to mean that the
group was founded last year, then it's not too convincing,
especially since no one ever heard of it before. You would
think that a Macedonian paramilitary organization with
ultra-nationalist sympathies would have a distinctively
Macedonian name: perhaps it would even be in the
Macedonian language. Whatever spook thought that one up
ought to be demoted. "Macedonia Paramilitary 2000" is the
product of some government employee's parched
imagination – and while I'm not saying which government
(although you would think that the Europeans would be a
little more sophisticated about these things), in its stupidity
and crudity "Macedonia Paramilitary 2000" has "Made in
USA" written all over it. Besides, it seems the Americans
are the ones doing all the heavy lifting in this little operation,
while the EU does the "negotiating."
BLACKMAIL
This division of labor has been underscored by the
events of the past few days. EU "external affairs
coordinator" Chris Patten made the Eurocrats' position all
too clear, threatening to freeze the next two aid payments to
the Macedonian government unless and until Skopje caved
in to the demands of the Albanian guerrilla fighters:
"There is little we can do in terms of financial support
until there's a political settlement. It is difficult to build
people's confidence when money, which is clearly in very
short supply, is being spent on bombs and rockets. The
sooner there can be a ceasefire, permanently, and the
sooner there can be a political settlement, the sooner we
can discuss investing."
UNDERMINING MACEDONIA
How dare the Macedonians respond to the invasion of
their territory and the initiation of terrorist activities inside
their own borders by fighting back! One can only marvel at
the brazen arrogance of the Eurocrats as they speak of
"building confidence" – even as NATO troops (Americans)
escort armed Albanian guerrillas in US military vehicles to
NLA-held villages, returning weapons to the guerrillas at
journey's end. This is supposed to build "confidence" all
right – the confidence of the Albanians, emboldening them
to press their attack.
SHOCKED AND NOT-SO-SILENT
One Agence France Presse account of the NATO
operation is headlined "Macedonian government in disarray
as rebels chalk up victory" – a victory won for them by US
troops acting at NATO's behest. "Ethnic Albanian rebels
claimed a major success Tuesday," the AFP article
continues, "after they were escorted, with their weapons, by
US troops to the Black Mountain, north of Skopje, leaving
Macedonian authorities shocked and silent." The compliant
government may have been silent, but the Macedonian
people were roaring their defiance: their response to this
monstrous sell-out was to overrun the Parliament building,
tear down the flag, and replace it with "a more nationalist
one" as one news account put it: whereas the old flag is a
red-and-yellow sunburst, the new one features a lion roaring
beneath the stylized rays of the Macedonian sun. President
Boris Trajkovski was upstairs at the time, negotiating his
country's existence away to its Albanian would-be
conquerors, but the whole cabal was forced to flee out the
back door. Whether Macedonia's President will escape the
wrath of a people betrayed is up in the air as of this
moment, but there can be no doubt that the power vacuum
will be filled soon enough by NATO troops and EU/UN
overlords.
AN ARMY WITHOUT WEAPONS
During the war for Kosovo, NATO warplanes
functioned as the Albanian air force, clearing the way for
the KLA to inherit the rubble: in Macedonia, the idea is to
use NATO ground troops to clear out whatever opposition
should arise – and they obviously don't expect much. After
all, the commander of the Macedonian army bailed out last
week: what's the use of having an army, even one as
ill-equipped as Macedonia's, if it is not allowed to fight?
And I wouldn't worry too much about the Macedonian air
force, which consists of two rather wilted-looking
helicopters. Under the pretext of "disarming" the Albanian
insurgents, NATO is now escorting their protégés to safety,
helping them consolidate their newly-won territory while the
Eurocrats use the traitorous Trajkovski to legitimize the de
facto partition of the country.
THE YANKS AREN'T COMING –
THEY'RE HERE
While the Europeans are playing the most visible role,
clearly the Americans provided the TNT that sparked the
Macedonian implosion. It was US diplomat Robert Frowick
– currently on "loan" to the OSCE – who hammered out a
joint statement by the Albanian political parties and the
supposedly "indigenous" National Liberation Army rebels
just as the negotiations were reaching a crucial stage. This
agreement hardened the Albanian side, and brought the
negotiating process to a standstill. It was US troops who
escorted the armed NLA fighters back to their lair and then
politely returned their weapons. The New York Times
reports that the Macedonian bus companies that originally
contracted for the job all flaked out at the last minute, and
only the US Army had the means to pull it off with "15
buses, 3 trucks, 3 ambulances and 16 Humvees" along with
an unknown number of American soldiers. It isn't a
question of sending US troops into the country: they're
already there. At least 500 G.I.'s have been stationed in
Macedonia since before the start of the Kosovo war –
Michael New, the soldier who wouldn't wear the blue beret
of the UN, was one of them – and it is merely a question of
utilizing them to the Albanians' best advantage, without
being too obvious about it.
A LITTLE TOO MUCH
This latest maneuver, however, was really too much, and
is bound to excite some interest in the US Congress, where
resentment over George W. Bush's abandonment of his
promise to get us out of the Balkans is bound to reach the
boiling point. One day NATO chieftain George Robertson is
denouncing the NLA as "terrorists" and "murderous thugs"
with whom he will have no truck, and the next day NATO
troops are escorting these terrorists down the road like
beloved children on their first day of school. Conservative
Republicans are bound to start asking questions, and one
can only hope that they do so loudly and even rudely. For
what is happening in the Balkans is a crime not only against
the Slavs in the region, but also against the national security
of the US: America has no national interest in turning
Macedonia into another EU/UN protectorate.
COLD WAR WITH EUROPE
Regular readers of this column need no reminder that I
consider the EU to be the reincarnation of the old Soviet
Union, a socialist Frankenstein monster raised from the
dead by the "ex"-Commies of Europe and their left-wing
friends in the US. For the past year, Antiwar.com has been
warning that the consolidation of a European socialist
super-state is a deadly threat to the peace of the world and
the liberties of us all, and now it appears that some
American conservatives are waking up. A recent editorial in
National Review opined that, in view of the reception
afforded George W. Bush on his European sojourn, it
appears that we are in a state of "cold war" with Europe:
"The noise that can be heard is the sundering of old ties
and old assumptions. For about a decade now, it has been
evident that the EU is projecting itself as a bloc in rivalry
with America. 'Whole and free' in this view means
centralized government, common foreign and defense
policies, a single currency, and a leadership willing to
entertain a new, supposedly more benign, cold war.
Already well on the way to militarization, the EU ideology
is divisive and dangerous because it is anti-American –
and in the last resort antidemocratic."
THE COMING GROUND WAR
If so, then why is a Republican administration placing
American troops at the Europeans' disposal, using American
brawn (and tax dollars) to establish another EU beachhead
in the Balkans? If it's been ten years since the general
outlines of the rising US-EU rivalry have been apparent,
then during that same decade the destruction of the Balkan
states has been an ongoing project of those same
Europeans, who (along with John McCain) were so insistent
during the Kosovo war that the Americans launch a ground
war. Well, now they might have their ground war, for that
is what may very well develop as events unfold in
Macedonia. There is bound to be resistance to the
NATO-Albanian takeover, and you can bet that US troops
will be in the thick of it.
ON TO SOFIA!
From Macedonia, it's on to Bulgaria – which recently
placed the party of King Simeon II in power, a would-be
monarch who may or may not be amenable to the
EU-Albanian agenda. The Slavs of the Balkans have always
been an ungovernable and prickly lot, stubbornly insisting
on their independence, and the would-be colonizers of the
West have traditionally used the Albanians as their
cat's-paw: the Austro-Hungarian empire employed their
services in an earlier time, and now that a new European
empire is on the horizon the Albanians are again on the
Western payroll. This time, they have little or no opposition:
with Russia in decline, and the Slavic states of the region
weakened by communism and the resultant economic
malaise, the conquest of the Balkans promises to be a
cakewalk. First Bosnia, then Kosovo, and now Macedonia
– it won't be long before the EU's Albanian proxy army
makes it all the way to the Black Sea. If I lived in Romania
or Bulgaria I would start making plans.
WHOLE AND FREE
I note, in passing, that the methods of the Eurocrats and
their American allies follow a similar pattern. In the former
Yugoslavia, where the market nationalism of President
Vojislav Kostunica poses a threat to EU expansion, the US
is blackmailing Belgrade into handing over Slobodan
Milosevic by threatening to cut off the aid spigot – a ploy
designed to bring down the Yugoslav federal government.
In Macedonia, the EU pulls the rug out from under
Trajkovski's coalition government and threatens the
withdrawal of aid unless he hands over the country to the
Albanians. Working in tandem, the US and the Eurocrats
are building a Europe "whole and free" – free of the last
traces of liberty, that is, as well as bereft of whatever
restraining influence the US might once have had.
TAKING THE FUN OUT OF GLOATING
The Balkan policy of the Bush administration is not one
whit different from that of its predecessor: this is what we
might have expected to occur if not for a few handing chads
in Florida. To all those conservative Republicans who
chastised me for supporting Patrick J. Buchanan's Reform
party campaign, and who insisted that things were going to
be different once the "adults" got into the White House, I
can safely say: I told you so. As much as I enjoy gloating,
however, there is no real joy in it this time. As I witness the
dismemberment of Macedonia by the West's Albanian
pit-bulls, I cannot help but reflect on the sad fate of a brave
people, who foolishly trusted the West – and deserved
better.
DO I HEAR THE LION'S ROAR?
Of course, this obituary for Macedonia is not necessarily
the final word. Perhaps some real resistance will arise, an
authentic Macedonian "paramilitary" army that will take up
arms against NATO and their Albanian proxies. Perhaps the
Macedonian lion will awaken, and, once roused, not only
roar his defiance but fight tooth and claw: a few American
casualties should make the Bush administration think twice
before they lead us into this briar patch. |
