I agree. The democracies should not have supported any ethnic group against the others. People in Yugoslavia managed to live together peacefully for a generation and its destruction was a tragedy.
NB some people say 'the Serbs' like others say 'the Jews'.

Blimey, who would have thunk it, Blair is a war criminal that has been proven this added information is just icing on the cake.

Why hasn't the bastard been arrested.

The council claims that civilians – Serbian and non-KLA-supporting Kosovan Albanians detained by the KLA in the 1999 hostilities – were shot in northern Albania and their kidneys extracted and sold on the black market.

Be that as it may, Europeans still continue to avoid the issue at hand, the most important issue for their future which they refuse to address. That being that Europeans have no interest in developing the capability to handle these situations themselves, continue to rely on the United States for help, and then complain when the United States does not do the work for them in the way they demand.

I too was shocked to hear about this, that the Kosovo government basically operate like the cast of Hostel2. But this does not mean the KLA are the people of the region, they are not. And it does not remove the blood from the hands of Europeans who did nothing when the threat of genocide reared its ugly head yet again.

But as long as the United States is paying, as long a the United States is providing, Europeans will continue being complacent in their own affairs.

Well, obviously.

"Liberal interventionism" is just a fig leaf for naked imperialism. Let's hope Ed Milliband disavows this idea.

Kosovo will come to rue one day for its decision to break away from Serbia. The appalling record of its leaders could only be ignored by equally ignoble western leaders.

US don't care about drug or kidnapping gangs around their military bases, actually all sort of mafia are the best protection for US bases, especially when mafia is a whole artificial country.

Basically maiopic Europe actively played on US side has now lost controle of US military presence in the very center of EU.

That was the ultimate goal.

It’s hardly possible to blame common brainwashed European people for that, but is should be openly said and recognized – UK and EU leaders and NATO bureaucrat knew that well and actually were paid for that with their thirty pieces of silver.

Hashim 'Mengele' Thaci and other democracy chief surgeon’s mates are the best friends of the very specific Nazi-style world domination kind of democracy, envisioned by US.

Many thanks for this excellent article, Neil. The way the whole issue of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the aftermath has just been rolling from one myth to the next, amidst the notable absence of critical thinking and honest reporting in the mainstream press.

Tony Blair was wrong about Yugoslavia and he was wrong about Iraq, and he was wrong Afghanistan - but for slightly different reasons.

Kudos to the people at The G who commissioned this.

But as long as the United States is paying, as long a the United States is providing, Europeans will continue being complacent in their own affairs.

Maybe, just maybe, if Europe didn't have the Americans and their firepower to call upon, there would have been no alternative but to back 'genuine multi-party negotiations or (offer) to lift sanctions on Belgrade if a peaceful solution to the problem of Kosovo could be found'.

I understand that while US are supporting people like Hashim Thaçi - they could eat children every morning for a breakfast and still would be painted for the world as democrats. It’s not only in Balkans – actually in Russia – a Chechen criminal butchers kidnapping and beheading men and women every day where proclaimed leaders of freedom movements. As soon it is suited US they are democrats and tons of ‘journalists’ would brainwash common people relentlessly.

Richard Holbrooke, Madlen Albright and their British cousins were responsible for few things to please Europeans:

Full scale bombing operation in center of Europe first ever since WWII
And for organizing criminal enclave in the center of Europe
Complete ethnic cleansing Serbs out of Kosovo
Biggest US military base – completely out of rich and European jurisdiction in center of Europe

Thank you for this. I remember at the time how so many people were being sucked into the Blair BS. I can only hope that Blair's teflon hide is finally worn away, so that the shit this creep deserves to be covered with finally sticks.
There is also always the problem of what the west does with allies such as Thaci i suppose it will do much the same as it always does, such as with Uzbekistan's ruling savages- shrug and rub shoulders, as usual, for 'strategic reasons', while all the time destroying the credibility of our elected leaders for such blatant hypocrisy and and undermining the basis of western 'civilisation. by revealing the squalid rhetoric and revisionism these people create and promote.
This need to be said

Far from being Tony Blair's "good war", Nato's assault on Yugoslavia was in its own way as immoral as the assault on Iraq. But as the Iraq war has become discredited, so it is even more important for the supporters of "liberal interventionism" to promote the line that Kosovo was in some way a success.

Time for a few changes. Prosecution of ALL concerned might be a start, not just the leaders of small places.

The Serbian militias of that era are the closest we've had to marauding einsatzgruppen since the originals were dispatched.

I expect you'd have protested that too Neil.

That's not to say the other parties were lilywhite, but then they never are. But what are you gonna do, stand by and watch ethnic slaughter in our backyard once again?

I've not time for Blair but I think he was right on this one.

MartynInEurope
...
Kudos to the people at The G who commissioned this.

Don't get overly excited Martyn, wait for the response first.

As usual, the G gives the decent opinion piece, so that it can be annihilated by the "politically correct" (read neocon) message a bit later. Thus, the last word remains their paymasters'...

wearetheworld

Honestly, I am not sure that the situation needed to be "...handled..." by anybody.

It was a dispute over territory between ancient enemies who had been held together in relative peace only by the ruthlessness of Tito.

It had to end and, had it been fought out or talked out by the parties, things would have been better.

switzerland-

I know. And the Serbs were our allies in 2 wars and the whole thing fell apart due to a unilateral diplomatic move by Germany.

The sebs were not wrong about everything and it was less than 70 years ago when the Croats and the Muslims-cooperating for the first time in history- massacred their Serb friends and neighbors.

I hope the Russians liberate Kosova soon and return her to the Serbian motherland.

a brave article for the guardian to print and neil clark, excellent work. it was shocking how so many people covered up the kosovan crimes and concentrated on serbian atrocities. the kla were just as much monsters as the worst of the serbian groups. nice to see some balance at long last

Our military attack on Serbia was every bit as "illegal" as our attack on Iraq - something that our chief lawyer pointed out when he finally gave the green light for the latter invasion.

In other words, international law is a complete waste of breath, because there's no one to enforce it or to adjudicate impartially. It's not worth the paper it's written on.

There are at least 7 little 'Tony Blair's' running around Kosovo since the war ended.
I wonder how many there will be in a decade or so ?
And how many will be running a car wash?

The Wall came down in Berlin and "Liberal intervention" began first in Kovoso and then Afghanistan and Iraq.
The veil was lifted for the world to see. The real evil started in Washington and London. Western politics was shown to be a exercise in hypocrisy.

Some factual backing

Interesting that the Gurardian's article on this issue blandly repeated the 1999 Blairite 'estimate' that the Serbs killed 10,000 Albanians. Odd isn't it that these are still "estimates" so long after, with Kosovo peaceful and our ally. Hasn't anyone counted?

Well they have and its not a figure the Guardian give. The impeccably anti-Serb and anti-Milosevic 'Bosnia Report" has noted for some years that the Kosovo "Book of the Dead", the equivalent of the Bosnia Book of the Dead which finally counted the slain, has since the Kosovo war been able to establish a total about 10,000 dead or "permanently missing" (i.e. dead), of which just under 5000 are Albanians, and the rest Serbian, other minorities, or ethnicity not known. So its not 10,000 dead Albanians but 10,000 dead, and Albanians made up around 50% off the dead despite making up 85% of the population, ie they suffered proportionately much less in terms of deaths than any other group.

http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/report_format.cfm?articleid=3175&reportid=173 fifth paragraph down.

Every one a tragedy of course, but far from the simple narrative of Milosevic killing 10000 Albanians after which we intervened and freed them.

The other point is that not just thousands (not hundreds) of Serb civilains were killed in retaliatory attacks, but all Kosovo's non-Albanian minorities, notably the Roma, (who hadn't done anything so there was no question of "retaliation"), were targetted, and most expelled permanently by the victorious Albanians. In 2009 approximately half the UNHCR-registered refugees were not ethnic Serbs but Roma, Goranis, Ashkeli and Turks. Minority Rights Watch had a good summary of this, while Human Rights Watch highlighted individual cases.
http://www.minorityrights.org/7860/press-releases/kosovos-independence-leaves-vacuum-in-international-protection-for-minorities.html
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/09/evidence-kla-secret-prisons-kosovo-and-albania

Sometimes discussion of who did what when and exact numbers of slain can be pettifogging, but in this conflict its not. Kosovo's independence narrative and Blairs intevention invariably invoked a simplistic version of heroes victims and and villains, which in this case is very misleading.

Indeed a story of "its messy and a lot of the blame was our side" no matter how accurate is not going to get much media traction, and nor will it assist intervention, but teh poin tlike Iraq is that if it doesnt' stand up to scrutiny, you shouldn't be doing it.

Many congratulations on a fantastic article. The truth is that without the liberal left support of this bombing campaign, Afghanistan (at the time still supported by useful idiots among the liberal left) and Iraq could not have happened.

The bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was the softening up process during which the liberal left acquiesced, believing the ludicrous images conjured up in the run-up and during this war.

@edmundberk

The only thing Blair's been right on was backing his slimey backside away from that book signing recently...............

A bit like American sponsorship of the IRA.

Richard Holbrooke was itching to give Milosevic a bloody nose, having seen how duplicitous he was during the Bosnian war. I suspect this may have played a part in the eagerness with which the USA took up with the KLA. American policy in Kosovo was highly one-sided. Idiots like Mr Lieberman were either taken in or being their usual nauseous selves.

Interestingly no-one seems to give Robin Cook a bad press. Much as I admired him I think his behaviour at Rambouillet was pretty awful. He represented it as Serbia being unreasonable, but as admitted above the European 'powers' deliberately offered an impossible agreement to the Serbs.

Neil Clark is a real journalist.

He is very brave to put true words of US/UK criminal operation against Serbs and actually against Europe. But how many of these real journalists in ‘free press’ world?

Is there any chance for common people not be brainwashed by neocon propaganda mashine?

...I am sorry....but the Genocide came from the Serbian Authority's. Dick MARTY is nothing more than the Serbian Puppet. The war and interevention in Kosovo was the best, the most and the only solution to STOP the Genocide...Sorry for the SERBIAN people but the TONY BLAIR in Kosovo is real HERO.

Btw, where do the 'Leftist' opponents of 'liberal intervention' stand on the Spanish Civil War's International Brigades nowadays?

harryhamilton-

speaking as a Yank, let me please say that "...support for the IRA..." was pretty much limited to part of the Irish-catholic community here- and not all of it either.

east Coast Americans- the irish aside- are still instinctively fond of England/the UK. Southerners too, many of them are English or scots-Irish on both sides, going abck for generations.

Free democratic world means responsibility and accountability, doesn’t it?

When we would see Thaçi, Albright, Blair and other US Nazi-style world domination cronies in the Hague?

Do you think that will ever happen?

@MacAdder

Blair's intevention invariably invoked a simplistic version of heroes victims and and villains, which in this case is very misleading

.

This just about sums up Blair's world view.

Sir Ivor Roberts (HM Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
1994-1997) interviewed on BBC News (PM) 15 Dec 2010.

"... the supposition that all this [the Yugoslav wars] was the activity of only one side in the wars [the Serbs] has to be exposed for the nonsense that it is, and I'm afraid that Western powers have often been complicit in this in their desperate desire to see an independent Kosovo emerge from the chaos of the Yugoslav wars"

So, I see we have the Far Left and "anti-imperialist" types picking and choosing what conflicts and interventions are right.

Is it that they are so glued to their agenda, or are they moral cowards?

I'm not sure myself whether our ("The West") actions were right in the Balkans, but I do enjoy watching the usual opponents of any kind of "Western military imperialism" offer absolutely no alternatives other than the notion that sitting down with tea and biscuits, and singing peace songs, the Balkan situation would have sorted itself out.
____________________
WorldLocal
15 December 2010 10:20PM

Is there any chance for common people not be brainwashed by neocon propaganda mashine?

So anyone who disagrees with you is brainwashed? "Neocon propaganda machine"? Really, this is not the school playground.

MartyninEurope :

Tony Blair was wrong about Yugoslavia and he was wrong about Iraq, and he was wrong Afghanistan - but for slightly different reasons.

What would you have done to stoip the slaughter in that region.

Don't tell me what others should not have done.

Now I don't mean you tell me what you would have done WHILE the slaughter was going on, but what would you have done to stop ithe slaughter.

Tell me what you would have done?

WorldLocal
15 December 2010 10:25PM

When we would see Thaçi, Albright, Blair and other US Nazi-style world domination cronies in the Hague?

Nazi? Grow up, mate.

"Liberal intervention" - every historic period politician and ‘journalists’ find excuses and explanations for war. So did Nazi ones as well.

Whoa, hold on there Neil Clark. You have neglected the entire eight-year background of the Kosovo conflict and the context in which NATO (prompted by the UK) bombed Serbia. Milosevic had started three conflicts in four years up to 1995 as the Serb part of Yugoslavia first resisted the break-up and then unleashed violence to grab as much as possible of what was left. The result was over 350,000 dead, the partition (still ongoing) of Bosnia, the biggest mass murder since 1945 at Srebrenica (over 8000 Muslim men and boys), a systematic process of ethnic cleansing, concentration camps and rape as a weapon of war - all of this a result of deliberate Serbian policy.

The EU had been supine and useless. It was clear that Milosevic correctly calculated that they would not undertake joint military action - shadowing a few convoys didn't count. Serbia was able to embark on the actions in Kosovo because Milosevic believed he wouldn't be militarily challenged. Had NATO not acted, we would have had a re-run of Bosnia. Milosevic was not interested in diplomatic avenues or multi-party anything.

The KLA were not innocent - but they did start as a defensive militia when Serb police, army and irregular began their campaign. The KLA demonstrate the mess and fog of war, but not some kind of moral equivalence with the people who started four conflicts and would have carried out the first genocide since the 1940s.

So yes, Blair was wrong on Iraq but on Kosovo he was dead right. Milosevic died in prison while on trial for his crimes, and Blair helped put him there.

Nazi? Grow up, mate.

Please tell me who had world domination dreams just before US neocons?

Do not also forget that Nato also deliberately bombed a TV station in Belgrade killing lots of innocent civilians. This was a war crime if ever there was one. But of course war crimes are never committed by the Uk or its allies.

This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.

The way the Americans see the World is that they "own it" and have the right to do as they wish supported by idiots like Tony Blair (innocent,deluded ,evil take your pick they all fit).Kosovo was just another example of US diplomacy via "excessive force " against a country unable to defend itself (do not dare talk about Vietnam,it never happened, according to most Americans in America).

The problem is that they are crap at being a superpower !.They demand any American serviceman/diplomat/well connected person must be returned to USA where he will escape the punishment for any crime he commits (like killing skiers on a ski lift -cutting the support cables with a banned flying trick that went wrong in Italy).However,anyone who injures perceived USA interests, who resides in UK must be handed over for a trial in America, without any evidence.They will be prosecuted and bankrupted by the US legal system, to assure Americans "USA rules".

Problem is they have favourites who can humiliate USA and USA can do nothing about it.The big bully is a wimp when it comes to SaudiArabia,Israel,Burma,N.Kores,Iran.The USA is past it's sell by date and is starting to show signs of decay but,as long as the US armed forces can be shown on TV kicking "foreign butts" the US population do not seem to care about the need for charity handouts,abandoned homes ,dying cities,politicians who always seem to be keener on staying in Congress (an old boys club with some girls ) than sorting USA problems .

History repeats itself once again, like all previous empires of the World ,USA is collapsing under its own weight.

@edmundberk

The Serbian militias of that era are the closest we've had to marauding einsatzgruppen since the originals were dispatched.

That's not to say the other parties were lilywhite, but then they never are. But what are you gonna do, stand by and watch ethnic slaughter in our backyard once again

A perfect Blairite pice - ie wrong in its basic facts. There is no excusing the random brutality of the later Serbian ethinc cleansing, but it was very far from the Einsatzgruppen. With around 5000 Albanian dead in total after a year of sputtering war and four months of full-on war, there is no coparison to teh einstazgruppen, basically the 30,000 or so Serb troops killed one Albanian between every six of them in the whole war. The real Einsatzgruppen did that in a day. Before making holocaust comparisons, check what happend in the Holocaust and in Kosovo. Try Mark Mazower's excellent history of Nazi occupied europe. For what its worth invoking 'Nazi' and 'genocide' during the war - though it mysteriously faded away after when the genocide failed to occur - was a standard Blair technique in the war

Secondly there was no question of "standing by and watching slaughter" like in Rwanda. Remember the chronology, its not a case of the Serbs slaughtered and then we intervended; we attacked first, and the Serb action was conditional on that. Check the internet for the news of the time - the ethnic cleansing and associated nasties happened after we attacked, not before. Again, after the event mixing up the timing to post-date our intervention until after the Serb atrocities rather than before was a favourite fudge of apologists for the war. It reads much better and makes sense, its just not true.

you say "once again" and thats a common muckup re Kosovo, the idea that it was somehow Bosnia 2 and we should 'get it right this time. In fact the players and dynamics were very different, it was the Albanains trying to separate by violence - with our encouragement - and the Serbs trying to suppress it, exactly the opposite of the Bosnia situation of Serb separatism. We upheld the "principle" of unity by force re Bosnia and oddly enough the principle of separation by violence by an ethic group in Kosovo.

WorldLocal
15 December 2010 10:34PM

Please tell me who had world domination dreams just before US neocons?

The Soviet Union, perhaps? The Communists?

I simply don't accept your premise that "US neocons" want "world domination". They wouldn't have bothered with such triviality as messing around in the Balkans if that was the case.

Now, you are starting to sound like a bit of a 'troofer'.

.

Good article.

The break-up of Yugoslavia was the goal of the US and its allies. All the carnage and suffering were the consequence of the wars they fomented between various separatist groups. They backed leaders such as the loathsome Hashim Thaçi, identified by the Council of Europe inquiry as "the boss" of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the run-up to the 1999 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since.

Please tell me who had world domination dreams just before US neocons?

The Soviet Union, perhaps? The Communists?

So you see - you compare neocons with Communists (liberated Europe from Nazi), I compare them with Nazi, because only Nazi has so articulated programs like neocons - have heard of US full spectrum dominance doctrine?

So anyone who disagrees with you is brainwashed? "Neocon propaganda machine"? Really, this is not the school playground.

You and people like you need to see WikiLeaks file to start to think about things which are deadly evident for the rest of the World. Yes, I call it brainwashing.

Disagreement has nothing to do with that,

We were lied to by Blair and the Yanks in the support of a Great Albania and were tricked into supporting the Albanian mafia and terrorists of the KLA. The later trained and equiped by the US . Thus the war time aims of the Albanian SS regiments have been achived only Macedonia to go. The Yanks did not want a peaceful solution and needed the terrorism of the KLA to do their work in return for deals on mineral and over goods as well as base for their forces in the Balkans. let us at least undo some of the damage by forcing the partition of Kosovo so that the North goes at least back to the Serbia. And let no Yank stand it the way!!!

bignowitzki- if we did not want "world-dominance" then why was our military policy-under Clinton and Bush, and now Obama too, - one of "...Full Spectrum Dominance..."?

@Henry245

The 'Genocide' that occured in Kosovo was courtesy of that fat prick 'Tito',
who invited half the population of Albania to Serbia's province so that the rest of the working population of the former Jugoslavija could give 10% of their wages to feed their starving mal-nurished carcases !

All at the expense of the Serbs !

I am a libertarian when it concerns foreign policy especially on the use of the military.

I am a pacifist, and I only believe in maintaining a small military, strong enough to repel an invasion.

Kosovo was about Britain's national energy security, what I mean by that is, within the region there are natural gas pipelines. A completely broken region would be no good to Western Europe.

BIGN- but why did anybody ahve to sort it out? it concerned disputed territory. Honestly, why couldn't the aprties just fight it out if they could not make a deal?

Wow, a whole article on the Yugoslavia campaign and not one mention of the main instigator of the entire affair (Germany).

The last remnant of the Soviet empire, Yugoslavia, had to be broken so NATO could expand east. Western influence into the Eastern Bloc would be complete and peace in Europe was assured (Germany would be unchallenged too). As an added bonus, the Russians had to sit there and take it while their Serbian pals were getting bombed (also Germany's historical enemy).

Anyways, it was the Germans that were supplying the KLA with military intelligence, training, and weapons from '91 onward.

“Without any questions,” the kla is a “terrorist group,” said President Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, on Feb. 23, 1998. “The future of Kosovo is within Yugoslavia,” Gelbard added, after meeting with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for several hours.

The Germans were the ones that persuaded the U.S. to switch sides after that meeting. It was also the Germans that kicked off the whole affair in the region with their unilateral recognition of Croatia and Slovenia despite protests from the U.S. and the rest of the E.U. Finally, the German's were able to give one final kick to their old nemesis (Serbs) with the Kosovo succession.

WorldLocal
15 December 2010 10:44PM

So you see - you compare neocons with Communists

I didn't. Why would I do that - I think you deliberately overestimate the role that "neocons" have in this world. Typical that someone with anti-U.S. views resorts to conspiracy theory and talk of "neo-cons". What next? The Bilberberg Group? The Illuminati?

(liberated Europe from Nazi),

Along with the Allies. But that doesn't excuse the behaviour of the Communists in the decades before and after WW2.

I compare them with Nazi, because only Nazi has so articulated programs like neocons

Articulated programs? What kind of insanity are you jibbering on about. What "articulated programs" are those. Evidence please. I think you use the term "Nazi" because you have so little understanding of the concept.

- have heard of US full spectrum dominance doctrine?

That is merely a concept given far too much credence by the anti-U.S. mob. Yet again, we are delving into conspiracy theory.

You and people like you need to see WikiLeaks file

I have. I've seen nothing to back up your crazy arguments.

to start to think about things which are deadly evident for the rest of the World.

Deadly evident? Well, care to show us the evidence? You really sound like one of those people who state the the 9/11 conspiracy is "deadly evident". To sensible people, it isn't.

Yes, I call it brainwashing.

As I've already said, you think anyone who disagrees with you is brainwashed. But you can't actually back up your statements with any credible facts or information. Instead it's the old conspiracy theory rhetoric.