Thursday, March 01, 2007

UN COURT INDICTS ITSELF:

The International Court of Justice has delivered its verdict on a case brought by Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1993 against Serbia (accusing it of genocide during the Yugoslav Civil War of 1991-5) deciding that Serbia was not guilty of systematic genocide but was guilty of “failing to prevent” a genocidal act at Srebrenica, a town occupied mainly by Muslims where 8,000 men were segregated and then murdered by Bosnian Serb troops under the command of General Radko Mladic when his troops captured the town towards the end of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mladic has subsequently been indicted as a war-criminal by another court, the International War-Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, and is reportedly hiding out in Serbia currently.

So, what is wrong with this verdict? In the first place the wrong country was on trial. The remnant of the Yugoslav Federative Socialist Republic consisting of two members; Serbia and Montenegro; continued to exist until after the end of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. So, Serbia, on its own could not be responsible for anything being done or not done in the context of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in which it was not a party. Further, the authority in charge of Srebrenica at the time of the massacre was The United Nations itself which had declared the town a United Nations Safe Haven and had decided that a battalion of Dutch troops was sufficient force to implement this declaration(in hindsight; of course, a bad mistake. It would have had a different outcome if Irish troops had been sent there). It was therefore the authority-in-charge, the United Nations which failed to prevent the act of genocide. The Court itself declares that the massacre was carried out by “some members of the Bosnian Serb Army, but without instructions from or effective control by Serbia”. Ludicrous then, that Serbia, still a member of Federal Yugoslavia, should intervene in a civil war in a neighbouring territory where the UN had established a massive military presence and had ordered other countries not to intervene?

This verdict exposes the contradictions and the utter hypocrisy of the way the dominant powers on the UN Security Council and the leaders of the European Union handled the break-up of former Yugoslavia and the subsequent tragic and brutal civil war which resulted. All preventable, if both the UN Charter and the rules of the European Union and International Law had been followed to the letter by those sworn to uphold such statutes in the interests of regional and world peace which they are designed to effect.

Breakup

When the Federative Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia began a process of internal dissension and dispute between the individual members and there was local failure to agree on the continuation of the State, a dissolution by agreement could have been proposed and facilitated by the EU to which two of the Yugoslav territories, Slovenia and Croatia, had expressed aspirations for membership. Instead, inspired by Cold-War prejudice and former Imperialist hegemony in these two areas, both Austrian Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, and German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, conspired to interfere and offer support to the more militant of the dissidents and illegally supply them with arms. In effect, supporting rebellion against another UN member; Federal Yugoslavia. Buoyed and emboldened by this support, the dissidents proceeded to unilateral declarations of independence which were immediately recognised, contrary to International Law and the EU Common Foreign Policy by Germany and Austria. In the case of Slovenia, the ethnic majority was Slovene but, in Croatia, over a million Serbs were inhabiting their ancestral lands there and were not in favour of quitting the Federation.

Boundaries

It should be noted that the boundaries of “Croatia” and the other divisions of Yugoslavia were completely arbitrary lines decided by edict of Josip Bros Tito, the wartime and subsequent leader of Socialist Yugoslavia, and not internationally recognised boundaries. Nevertheless, the rights of the Serbs under International and European law were abridged and trampled upon by both the EU and the UN. Deprived of their legitimate and internationally recognised Yugoslav citizenship overnight and without any consultation or agreement and perceiving their lives and property under threat by a new, militant, and neo-fascist jurisdiction in Zagreb they had little option but rebel in legitimate defence of their interests.

Bosnia

The situation was tragically compounded soon after in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April, 1992, where the misguided and deluded leaders of the so-called “Muslim” faction, a designation which had no meaning in Socialist Yugoslavia, self-declared “Independence” in Sarajevo, ignoring the fact that they had little influence or control outside the half of the city which their hastily-established militias had occupied. Faced with a fait-accompli in Sarajevo and a detaching of three of its federation members with the collusion and direct political and military support of leading members of the EU, the Yugoslav leaders in Belgrade, the federal capital, withdrew the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) from Bosnia-Herzegovina at the same time de-mobbing all JNA personnel who were of Bosnian origin, a decision precipitated and impelled by the stupidity and self-serving bungling of the German and Austrian Governments and then the so-called “International Community” meaning NATO including the USA, which supported it.

Those de-mobbed, upwards of 20,000, were immediately available to form the Bosnian Serb Army and had access to large stores of equipment stored in arsenals all over the country as part of the defence strategy of Socialist Yugoslavia during the Cold War. Thus, the unilateral declaration of independence in Sarajevo by one political faction was inevitably going to be bitterly contested. To use the words of the International Court judgement in the current case “the scale of this event might have been surmised” and the bloody, brutal and tragic civil war might have been prevented. But, no, the so-called “International Community” continued its unwarranted interference and despite a UN ban on supplying weapons to the factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Clinton Government in Washington incited, colluded and facilitated the importation of 4,000 “Mujahadeen” jihadists and their armaments from various Muslim countries to join the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Clinton and later, Buckfush, regimes in Washington have continued to use this disgraceful and illegal intervention as propaganda to ingratiate themselves with the leaders of Muslim countries as “defenders of Muslims in Europe” shamelessly promoting their own selfish interests at the expense of peace in Europe.

NATO

Unfortunately, no lessons have been learned by the NATO/EU bunglers who are still involved in the aftermath of the tragedies of the Yugoslav Civil War where they still occupy the Serbian province of Kosovo-Mitrovica supposedly under UN supervision and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, former leader of the British Liberal Party, Paddy Ashdown, functions as UN “Gauleiter” ruling by diktat over the fractious multi-ethnic compromise government established by the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 in terms dictated by NATO/EU interests based, once again, on denying the Serbian population their national rights. In both areas, the NATO/EU bunglers are still playing a dangerous game of pandering to extremist factions as in Kosovo-Mitrovica where former Albanian KLA terrorist leader has been appointed “Prime Minister” of the separated province and is pushing for “independence” and a separate state for the ethnic Albanian inhabitants. There is no justification whatsoever for detaching this territory from Serbia and forming a second Albanian state in the Balkans when the Republic of Albania already exists as a recognised and sovereign member of the United Nations.

Kosovo

Such a development would likely re-ignite the flames of ethnic hatred and clashes of the recent civil wars and produce another disaster in the heart of Europe and would be an unprecedented act of violation of the sovereign rights of a UN member, Serbia, and the UN Charter itself, with untold consequences for the future of peace and stability in Europe. As it is, UN occupied Kosovo-Mitrovica has become, according to INTERPOL, the international police organization, the centre of money laundering, drug importation, people-trafficking, kidnapping, sex-slavery and child prostitution operations for the whole of Europe organized by the Albanian and Russian Mafias and gangster muscle and hit-men supplied by the KLA Albanian terrorist organization. When the NATO/EU occupation was established they immediately expelled the Serbian Police force from Kosovo leaving the area free for criminal and gangster activity which has continued to grow to this day. Only half the promised 5000 NATO/EU police has ever arrived and is totally inadequate and bereft of local knowledge in dealing with the well-organised Mafias and criminal families based there. 40,000 NATO/EU troops, including a transport battalion from Ireland, maintain only a temporary ceasefire between Serb and Albanian communities absorbed in mutual hatred and recrimination and even this fragile status quo is now threatened by extremely stupid and insane proposals for “independence” for this divided and fractured and lawless territory which has been created by misguided and blundering NATO/EU policies.

FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 28Feabhra/February 2007.

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