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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (12246)	6/16/1999 11:09:00 PM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Genocide is the systematic, deliberate, pre-meditated extermination of a demographic group, for whatever purposes. Ethnic-cleansing is not a rigorously defined term, but it can mean depending on your precision, one of two things. Genocide, or the mass expulsion of a demographic group from a geographic area, for whatever purposes, and not necessarily coinciding with mass killings. "Ethnic cleansing" is a new term for an old practice. The rendering of entire demographics as stateless by repealing their citizenship or other recognition as by a State is as old as the nation-state. Hitler made good use of it with the Jews, by repealing the citizenship of all German Jewry, and pushing them into Europe as stateless people. When it became apparent that Europe did not want these people, and kept shunting them about, it paved the way for Germany to take them back, and execute the Final Solution. However, the two are not necessarily linked. It is my opinion that what has happened in Kosovo is not genocide, but nonetheless repugnant. After Slovenia and Croatia broke away, and Bosnia was in disarray, Milosevich repealed autonomy for Kosovo and Vojvodenia in an attempt to solidy his powerbase and hold these provinces in the name of Serbian nationalism. This much is not controversial. However, the repealing of Kosovar autonomy led to at least two Albanian counter movements: the KLA, and the one spearheaded by Ibrahim Rugova. The KLA was inactive in Kosovo until two years ago, but was active in Bosnia until the 95 Dayton Accords. Prior to the entrance of KLA, Serbian authorities apparently commited various acts against Rugova and other dissidents. The KLA initiated violence increased the brutality of the repression leading to outright warfare between KLA and Serbian police units in 97 and 98. In 98 several UNSC resolutions were passed condemning Serbian brutality against ethnic Kosovar Albanians. The rest is relatively well known by everyone here. What I have concluded is the case, is that ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, wishing to overturn their loss of representation and voice in Kosovo and Yugoslavia, brought on a reaction from Belgrade, including the expulsion and or brutalizing of Albanians in Kosovo. When certain radical elements amonst the Albanian Kosovars resisted (KLA) the magnitude of this brutality and arrests and expulsions increased. When the bombing began, it gave Milosevich a free hand to expell all Kosovar Albanians from the province, giving NATO a fait accompli: a Serb majority in the province cleansed of Albanians. Some killings have occurred, no doubt and obviously. This I believe can be attributed to Serbian lack of care in distinguishing KLA from Albanian male, which might as well to them have been synonomous. To those who say that the Albanians were fleeing bombs, I also say hogwash. A government does not burn all records of citizens fleeing bombing, all of which just by coincidence happen to be Albanian descent. Nor does a government's armed forces and paramilitaries burn down the homes of fleeing citizens. Make no mistake that the expulsions were deliberate, cattle cars and all. However it was not genocide, rigorously defined. Neither was it completely the fault of either party. Belgrade takes the lion's share of blame, for instigating this. However, the KLA takes a burden of the blame as well, for inflaming the affair. Both parties should be held squarely responsible. IMO Derek