Tanks for the Memories

Galloping Beaver blog is reporting that Canada is increasing its troop deployments in Afghanistan, despite comments by Hillier, O'Connor and McKay to the contrary. Its one of those slimy backdoor kind of deployments that the Harper government is doing which avoids having to report to Parliament.

It is the deployment of Tanks and support crews, over three hundred soldiers into Kandahar. But the Globe and Mail is reporting the deployment maybe half the size. Obviously the announcement today is only part of the deployment planned.

Ironically the last time the tanks were used was in Bill Clintons Humanitarian War in Kosovo. Remember Kosovo it's another failed state.

Again the Harper government is failing to inform Canadians exactly what we are committing to.

For the last two weeks there have been conflicting comments coming out of the government where one minute we are not sending more troops and the next we are, More troops readied for Afghan duty,

The fact is that if the big NATO nations of Germany, France, Italy do not step up to the plate and both increase and mobilize their existing forces to join us in Kandahar, we will be forced by circumstances to increase our troop deployment.

Current Afghan mission a far cry from 2002's reconstruction effort
By the time a fresh batch of Canadian troops stepped into Afghanistan early last month, illusions of peacekeeping had already dissipated from their minds.

This wasn't the Afghanistan soldiers Morgan Spurrell, Chris Desjardins and Shane Schofield visited in 2002, a few months after a U.S.-led invasion overthrew the Taliban government. Four years into supposed reconstruction and rebuilding, the country was descending deeper into drugs and violence.

This mission, they knew, was not about peacekeeping. Not yet. This was about war fierce attacks that have shaken Canada awake to a new reality.

As reported here the reason NATO is in Afghanistan is to become a world geo-political military force. The U.S. needs to get Europe involved in military campaigns, because they can't do it all themselves. They have pushed NATO to take on more of that role. NATO welcomed the opportunity to become militarly relevant as they say, starting with the Balkans war.

By 2003 the NATO operations in Afghanistan were seen as a way of releaving the U.S. troop deployment as they moved onto their second war front in Iraq.

But until this spring all NATO operations were peacekeeping. Now it is full scale combat operations. And the allies are balking even Britain. Who promised more troops last spring and has not delivered.

Inevitably it will be Canada who will continue to step up to the plate and provided troops. That is why the Harper government refuses to provide peacekeeping forces in Darfur or Lebanon. The government is holding back due to its two year commitment to war in Afghanistan, and its going to need more of our Men and Women to sacrifce themeselves for Harpers friendship with Bush.

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Bernie Sanders’s Yemen War Powers Resolution Could Help End the Monstrous War

Bernie Sanders has introduced a new resolution to cut off US support for the horrific Saudi-led war in Yemen. The measure is a crucial step toward peace — but it will have to be backed up with serious pressure on Joe Biden, so he doesn’t flout the resolution.

Bernie Sanders walks through the Senate subway on November 28, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

BYKENDRICK LU

12.10.2022

 Jacobin 

In the two months since a United Nations–brokered ceasefire expired in Yemen, a tenuous peace has held. Yet with every passing day, that peace looks more and more precarious. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government has sanctioned companies that import fuel to areas held by the Houthis, a fundamentalist movement fighting the government, and the Houthis are targeting terminals in southern Yemen with drone strikes to deter tankers from loading crude oil. Both worsen a humanitarian crisis that has long been called the worst in the world. Nor is there anything preventing the Saudis from resuming their own airstrikes, grounding all flights, or retightening the blockade.

Senator Bernie Sanders’s new Yemen war powers resolution aims to strengthen that tenuous peace by blocking US backing for the Saudi-led war. Earlier this week Sanders announced he has the requisite support to pass a resolution, and that he could bring it to the Senate floor for a vote as early as next week. If approved and signed into law, the resolution would require President Joe Biden to withdraw several forms of military support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Sanders’s resolution is certainly a positive development. It would force the Saudi-led coalition to think twice before resuming the war and, at least in theory, withdraw US collaboration in an immoral war that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and pushed millions more into near-starvation.

Unfortunately, based on previous presidents’ record of skirting war powers resolutions, the Biden administration may not heed a congressional entreaty to drop military support for Saudi Arabia. Foreign policy progressives will have to keep up the pressure even if Sanders’s resolution passes — and then initiate a broader fight against the executive branch’s unchecked war-making powers.
The United States, Yemen, and the War Powers Resolution

Sanders’s Yemen war powers resolution draws its lineage to the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR), a Vietnam-era statute designed to dial back Richard Nixon’s bombing of Southeast Asia. While the US Constitution grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war — and most constitutional scholars interpret that prerogative as including the ability to initiate war through the deployment of military force — US presidents quickly developed a habit of forgoing congressional declarations of war before sending troops into combat.

The 1973 WPR was an effort to wrest the war-making power away from the president and restore it to Congress. In a nutshell, the act requires the president — if using military forces to engage “in hostilities or situations where hostilities are imminent,” among other circumstances — to inform Congress within forty-eight hours. The president then has sixty to ninety days to recall the engaged troops unless Congress authorizes the use of military force.

Sanders’s resolution builds on this restraining mechanism. It rehearses the president’s unmet obligations under the 1973 WPR, noting that the president has introduced military forces into the Yemen conflict; that the conflict meets the definition of “hostilities” under the 1973 law; that Congress has not permitted the president to continue engaging in hostilities; and therefore, that the president must remove US armed forces from hostilities no later than thirty days after the adoption of the measure.

If approved, the resolution would bolster the fragile peace that has survived in Yemen for the past few months. A strong vote in the Senate would signal to Riyadh that continued US military support is on the ropes; that reigniting the war would mean going it alone; and that returning to the UN bargaining table is the most sensible path forward.

What is less clear is how much the resolution would limit US military support for the Saudis. The current language is encouraging, mandating Biden to pull US armed forces from “hostilities” in Yemen. Concise yet capacious, the measure provides two definitions of “hostilities”:“Sharing intelligence for the purpose of enabling offensive coalition strikes; and providing logistical support for such strikes, including by providing maintenance or transferring spare parts to coalition warplanes engaged in anti-Houthi bombings in Yemen,” and
“The assignment of United States Armed Forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of the Saudi-led coalition forces in hostilities against the Houthis in Yemen.”

This language casts a wider net than Sanders’s previous Yemen resolution, which defined “hostilities” only as “including in-flight refueling of non-United States aircraft conducting missions as part of the ongoing civil war in Yemen.” The current resolution also provides the starker limitations that were missing when Biden announced in February 2021 that he would be ceasing all “offensive” support for Saudi Arabia’s coalition.

But another question looms as the Senate prepares to vote on the resolution: If it passes the Senate and avoids the president’s veto, will Joe Biden actually to observe its requirements? The executive branch has played fast and loose with the War Powers Act since its 1973 passage, and as a result, the act hasn’t had the restraining effect on the “imperial presidency” that Congress intended.

Presidents from both parties have instead twisted themselves into legalistic pretzels proving their compliance with the WPR. One move has been to exploit the definition of “hostilities,” which the 1973 act failed to define. In defending its drone missile strikes in Libya in 2011, the Obama administration claimed that the attacks didn’t amount to “hostilities” because US troops suffered no danger of return fire or casualties, and because no ground troops were involved. Donald Trump’s Department of Defense lawyers justified US involvement in Yemen on similar grounds in 2018, insisting that “hostilities” only meant “a situation in which units of US armed forces are actively engaged in exchanges of fire with opposing units of hostile forces” — insulating from scrutiny the deadly support US forces were providing. (This recent history is a large part of why the Yemen resolution’s explicit definition of “hostilities” is key.)

Other arguments have bordered on the absurd. When bombing Kosovo, Bill Clinton’s Office of Legal Counsel argued that Congress had authorized him to continue hostilities beyond sixty days because it had passed an appropriations bill for military funding — even though the 1973 WPR explicitly prohibits using an appropriations bill for inferring congressional authorization.

If the Biden administration truly wants to continue its military support for the Saudi-led coalition, it will probably concoct an equally absurd legal argument resolution to do so.

Attacking the Imperial Presidency

Whether Biden chooses to abide by the resolution’s terms or flout them will probably depend on the broader US-Saudi relationship — which has shifted in the Saudis’ favor lately.

Biden has hardly made Riyadh the “pariah” that he promised on the campaign trail; just this week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, following a recommendation from Biden’s Department of Justice that he receive head-of-state immunity. The anger in the fall over OPEC+’s oil cuts has now subsided. And Xi Jinping’s visit this week to Saudi Arabia likely reminds the Biden administration that the Saudis can pick and choose powerful allies in an increasingly multipolar world. Against that backdrop, Biden might be reluctant to drop military support for Riyadh.

Nevertheless, passing Sanders’s resolution — and pressuring Biden not to weasel out — is a vital step toward peace in Yemen. If Biden concedes, it would be a tremendous victory for ordinary Yemenis. And then perhaps progressives could turn to bludgeoning a key pillar of the US empire-making project: the president’s near-unilateral ability to make war.

CONTRIBUTOR
Kendrick Lu is a contributing writer at Foreign Exchanges.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/12/sanders-eyeing-yemen-war-powers.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/12/fragmentation-nation-how-europeans-can.html

Will the United States Again Look the Other Way When the World Court Rules?

As the ICJ reviews South Africa’s charges of Israel with genocide, it’s important to look at how the United States has responded to the court in the past.

Panorama of the International Court of Justice court room, principal judicial organ of the United Nations located at The Hague

BY STEPHEN ZUNES
JANUARY 20, 2024

Days before the start of 2024, South Africa initiated proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), charging that Israel was violating its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in its war on the civilian population of Gaza. The application requests a series of “provisional measures,” including a suspension of military operations in Gaza.

Genocide is one of those rare terms where the legal definition is broader than the popular understanding. It does not just include systematic mass extermination—such as the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, or the 1994 Rwandan genocide—but also military campaigns “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” Recent examples would include the Guatemalan junta’s campaign against Indigenous peoples in the highlands during the 1980s, Sudan’s war in Darfur, the attacks by Bosnian Serbs against Bosnian Muslims, Serbia’s war on Kosovo, Iraqi and Turkish campaigns against the Kurds, and the U.S. designation of “free fire zones” in rebel-held areas of Vietnam.

Israel’s indiscriminate military assault on crowded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, the most destructive bombardment over a comparable time period in any war this century, would appear to meet such a definition.

Israel’s indiscriminate military assault on crowded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, the most destructive bombardment over a comparable time period in any war this century, would appear to meet the definition of genocide.

Despite this, the Biden Administration and Congressional leaders have categorically denounced South Africa for submitting the application and the Court for considering it. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence presented by the South Africans, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has insisted that the submission is “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” By contrast, there have been no objections raised over the concurrent application by Gambia that accuses Myanmar of genocide for its war on the Rohingya, or disagreements with previous genocide cases before the ICJ.

While the Biden Administration has stridently objected to South Africa’s case, it has also acknowledged that it has not conducted any formal assessment as to whether Israel has violated the genocide treaty or other international humanitarian laws.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, when pressed by reporters, responded by saying he would not discuss any internal deliberations. “I’m not aware of any kind of formal assessment being done by the United States government to analyze the compliance with international law by our partner Israel,” Kirby acknowledged. “We have not seen anything that would convince us that we need to take a different approach in terms of trying to help Israel defend itself.”

Matthew Duss of the Center for International Policy noted that “the Administration issued an assessment of Russian war crimes within a month of the Ukraine invasion. The United States has far more visibility into Israeli operations, so the claim that they’ve not been able to make such an assessment about Gaza after three months really strains credulity.”

A January 16 vote in the Senate to enact a provision in U.S. foreign assistance law that requires the State Department to examine the human rights practices of governments receiving U.S. aid, including Israel, was defeated by a 72-11 bipartisan majority.

The ICJ has its origins in the Permanent International Court, established in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1899. Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the ICJ—also known as the World Court—has functioned as the judicial arm of the U.N. system. Designed to better enable nations to settle their disputes nonviolently, the ICJ has been used by Washington on a number of occasions to advance U.S. foreign policy interests ranging from fishing disputes with Canada to the seizure of American hostages by Iran.

justflix, CC BY-SA 4.0
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands

The ICJ is a separate body from the International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in The Hague, which was established in 2002 to prosecute individuals for war crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so. The United States has refused to ratify the ICC treaty; it has also pressured other nations to reject it, demanded special exemption from the ICC’s authority, and raised strong objections to an ongoing ICC investigation into Israeli war crimes. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims that the ICC seeks “to target Israel unfairly,” even though the investigation also includes war crimes by Hamas and is one of more than a dozen ongoing conflicts which the ICC is also investigating.

Although the United States has expressed hostility towards the ICC, the Biden Administration is assisting in the gathering of evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Despite the United States’ key role in the development of international humanitarian law, and despite the fact that the ICJ has more often than not ruled in favor of the United States and its allies, recent decades have seen increasing American hostility toward any legal constraints upon U.S. foreign policy.


The Reagan Administration withdrew the United States from compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court.

In 1986, for example, the ICJ—in a 14-1 vote with only the American judge dissenting—called for the United States to cease its attacks against Nicaragua, both directly and through its proxy army of Nicaraguan exiles known as the FDN (or “Contras”), who were notorious for their attacks against civilian targets. The court also ruled that the United States had to pay the Nicaraguan government more than $2 billion in compensation for the damage inflicted upon the country’s civilian infrastructure. The Reagan Administration refused to comply with either directive and withdrew the United States from compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court. No subsequent President has re-committed the United States to its authority.

Similarly, in 1996, the World Court voted that the United States and other nuclear powers were legally bound by provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—signed and ratified by the United States and all but a handful of the world’s nations—to take serious steps to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. The Clinton Administration refused to comply, and Congress continues to approve White House requests for funding the development and procurement of new nuclear weapons systems.

In an advisory opinion in 2004, also by a 14-1 vote with only the U.S. judge dissenting, the court ruled that while Israel, like any country, could construct a separation barrier along its internationally recognized border, it could not build it in a serpentine manner deep inside the occupied West Bank in order to incorporate illegal settlements into Israel. The decision was roundly condemned by both the Bush Administration and by Democratic presidential nominee and future Secretary of State John Kerry, who claimed that it was a “political” decision that denied Israel’s right to self-defense. The U.S. House of Representatives, by a 361-45 majority, passed a resolution deploring the decision.

The Israeli separation wall with Palestine.

What upset Bush, Kerry, and Congress is that the ICJ, in its advisory opinion, noted that all nations “are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation arising from the construction of the wall, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation.”

Part of the hostility to the 2004 opinion was the court’s insistence that every country that is party to the Fourth Geneva Convention must “ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.”

It could be assumed that Washington might react in a similar hostile manner should the court rule favorably on South Africa’s claim of genocide.

Any such strict and uniform application of international law would interfere with U.S. policy objectives in the region, which rely heavily on the use of military force. This is why any attempt to enforce international humanitarian law must be met by slander, condemnation, and other attacks against the credibility of the international organizations daring to suggest that the United States and its allies are not somehow exempt from such legal obligations.


These attacks against the World Court by both Republicans and Democrats are not simply an endorsement of the dangerous and illegal policies of a rightwing ally. They are, in effect, a declaration of empire.

Attacks on the ICJ and ICC appear to be part of a broader effort to undermine and discredit the U.N. system. International law and intergovernmental organizations are seen by both Republicans and Democrats as interfering with the prerogatives of the U.S. government and its allies in strategically important areas like the Middle East. Given the overwhelming military dominance of the United States globally and allies such as Israel regionally, international legal institutions are among the few potential restraints on the unfettered exertion of American power.

As a result, the bipartisan attacks should not be seen simply as “pro-Israel” sentiment, particularly in light of the long-term detrimental impact on Israeli security if Israel continues its current policies. Instead, Washington’s unified hostility must be viewed as part of a broader effort to undermine international law in order to give the United States free rein in pursuing its policy objectives in the Middle East and beyond.

These attacks against the World Court by both Republicans and Democrats are not simply an endorsement of the dangerous and illegal policies of a rightwing ally. They are, in effect, a declaration of empire. If such policies go unchallenged, Palestinians will 

Stephen Zunes, a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, is currently serving as the Torgny Segerstedt Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

READ MORE BY STEPHEN ZU

DOCTRINE OF HUMANITARIAN WAR

Madeleine Albright Was a Killer

Madeleine Albright has died at 84. She was a pioneering imperialist who passionately advocated greater use of deadly violence in pursuit of a US-dominated post–Cold War global order — and killed many, many people in the process.

From 1993 to 1997, Madeleine Albright served as United Nations ambassador. In that capacity, she presided over the brutal post–Gulf War sanctions on Iraq. 

(Chatham House / Flickr)


BYLIZA FEATHERSTONE
Jacobin

Madeleine Albright, who died Wednesday at the age of eighty-four, was America’s first female secretary of state. But the countless headlines touting that fact risk reducing her accomplishments to gender. That’s not fair: she was so much more than a trailblazer.

Albright was an imperial ghoul, as ruthless in her pursuit of American global dominance as any man. She played a central role in crafting a post–Cold War policy that wrought devastation on multiple continents. Her biography was a harrowing one: her family fled Nazi persecution when she was a child, and twenty-six of her relatives, including three grandparents, were murdered in the Holocaust. It’s a traumatic story, but rest assured: she presided over of plenty of trauma and death for others in return.

From 1993 to 1997, Albright served as United Nations ambassador. In that capacity, she presided over the brutal post–Gulf War sanctions on Iraq, with the aim of maximizing the misery of Iraqis so as to encourage Saddam Hussein’s overthrow. In a 1996 interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, Albright seemed to suggest that the deaths of other people’s children were simply a cost of doing empire. “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” said Stahl. “And you know, is the price worth it?” Albright answered, “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

Although the mortality estimates Stahl was referring to have subsequently been questioned by researchers, Albright made it clear that she was quite prepared to inflict death on that scale. It’s hard to fathom the death of more than half a million children, and the refractory misery, for so many families, contained in that one statistic. Yet that was a “price” Albright was willing to extract from ordinary people in that poor country, where sanctions deprived Iraqis of medicines, clean drinking water, and essential infrastructure.

The Powell Doctrine — that is, the view of post–Cold War foreign policy advanced by Clinton’s Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Colin Powell (also recently eulogized here and not kindly) — was that the United States should limit its military interventions to situations in which its own national interests are threatened. Albright did not agree, and they clashed over what the US role should be in crises like Bosnia. Powell wrote in his memoir that he “almost had an aneurysm” when she asked him, “What’s the point of having this superb military we’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

As UN ambassador, Albright drove UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali from power after a relentless campaign, a sorry episode that sheds some light on her vision of the fin de siècle world order. Boutros-Ghali, whose tenure in office was supported by every country other than the United States, later attributed his ouster to his publication of a UN report arguing that an Israeli attack on a refugee camp in Lebanon, which killed one hundred people, was deliberate and not a mistake, contrary to the Israeli government’s claims. US officials denied that this was the reason, citing instead disputes over Rwanda, Croatia, and Bosnia. He had ruffled some Western ruling-class feathers by calling Bosnia a “war of the rich.” As well, Boutros-Ghali, an architect of the Camp David accords, saw Albright’s campaign against him as racist or xenophobic pandering to anti-UN Republicans (Bob Dole, for example, had taken to making fun of the Egyptian secretary general’s name: “Booootros Booootros” or “Boo Boo”), who were especially animated after fifteen US soldiers died in a botched UN peacekeeping raid in Somalia. Among other means of driving the secretary general from power, Albright falsely accused Boutros-Ghali of corruption. Writing in Le Monde Diplomatique at the time, Eric Rouleau suggested the real reason for Albright’s vendetta against her popular colleague:

The fall of the Berlin Wall had enabled the United States to conduct the Gulf War almost as it pleased and this suggested a model for the future: the UN proposes, on Washington’s initiative and the US disposes. But Mr. Boutros-Ghali did not share that view of the end of the Cold War.

From 1997 to 2001, Albright was secretary of state, under President Bill Clinton. In that much-celebrated groundbreaking role, she continued inflicting unimaginable suffering on the Iraqis. UN assistant secretary-general Denis Halliday resigned his post in 1999 in order to speak out against the sanctions; the US was “knowingly killing thousands of Iraqis each month,” he said at the time, a policy he called “genocide.” Although many Americans were shocked when the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq, the reality is that when Bush came into office, the United States was already bombing Iraq, on average, about three times a week. That’s our girl! Just as warmongering as a man.

Albright also promoted NATO’s expansion into the former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, a reckless trajectory that numerous high-ranking diplomats over the years have warned would inevitably antagonize Russia. That policy has contributed significantly to the terrifying potential nuclear conflict that we’re now facing, as well as the awful massacre of Ukrainian civilians (at least 977 for certain, as of yesterday, and the UN high commissioner for human rights believes the real number is much higher).

Albright never retired, a distinction that her fans will no doubt see as a badass rejection of ageism. But it would have been much better for the world had she taken some time off to bask in her considerable achievements. Her consulting company helped Pfizer avoid sharing their international property, although doing so would save lives around the world during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine patents remain a major cause of global vaccine apartheid and mass death. But it’s unlikely that this troubled her on her deathbed: the deaths of poor, brown people who aren’t Americans have always been “worth the price” to Albright.

During the 2016 presidential primary, she said of women (like this writer) who didn’t support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” She later apologized for the comment in an op-ed column in the New York Times, so I don’t want to be petty about it. After all, the Iraqi people never got an apology from her. But reviewing the evidence above, it was reckless of Albright to consign other women to that famous inferno.

Almost certainly, there’s already a reservation in her name at that sizzling underground hot spot. Maybe there she will finally get the recognition she deserves, as a standout among murderous imperial warmongers of any gender.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liza Featherstone is a columnist for Jacobin, a freelance journalist, and the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KOSOVO

Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Thesis on The Kosovo Crisis and the Crisis of Global Capitalism
(originally written May 1999, Bill Clinton set the stage for George W. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for humanitarian purposes.)
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/01/war-whats-it-good-for-profit.html

'End of shame': How Serbia rewards its war criminals

Issued on: 15/10/2021 -

Men in Belgrade campaign for the early release of Zvezdan "The Snake" Jovanovic -- a fellow paramilitary who killed reformist PM Zoran Djindjic in 2003

 GORAN SRDANOV AFP


Belgrade (AFP)

In the heart of Belgrade, a convicted war criminal known as "Captain Dragan" pushes for the pardon of the man who assassinated a Serbian prime minister.

He smiles for the cameras, and nobody in the busy street seems surprised by the campaign.

Three decades after the Balkans was plunged into conflict, those sentenced for committing atrocities -- a few dozen in total -- are slowly being freed from prison after serving sentences in foreign jails.

Upon their return to Serbia, they are accepted and even admired by top state officials and bask in the limelight of pro-government media.

Several high-profile war criminals have resumed political careers while others have led army parades or written books of revisionist history distributed through state-run publishers.

Rights activists say Serbia never undertook the kind of self-examination Germany did after World War II.

Grey-haired "Captain Dragan", whose real name is Dragan Vasiljkovic, is a former paramilitary commander who served 13.5 years for torture and murder of civilians and prisoners of war during the war in Croatia.

His campaign to grant early release for Zvezdan "The Snake" Jovanovic -- a fellow paramilitary who killed reformist PM Zoran Djindjic in 2003 -- has been heavily promoted by pro-government media.

The US embassy in Belgrade condemned the petition.

"It is difficult to understand why a convicted war criminal has public space to promote the release of a convict for the assassination of Serbia's first democratically elected prime minister," a US embassy spokesperson told Voice of America.

- Hero's welcome -

Historian Dubravka Stojanovic says the campaign is the final stage of a battle against the ideas Djindjic represented.

Djindjic spearheaded the uprising that ousted the Slobodan Milosevic regime and sought to bring war criminals to justice but was murdered by former paramilitaries in league with the criminal underworld.

By 2012, former Milosevic loyalists had found a way back into power.

President Aleksandar Vucic, currently Serbia's most powerful man, gained infamy as Milosevic's information minister.

He has since reinvented himself as a centre-right leader committed to delivering EU membership for his country.

The US embassy in Belgrade condemned the petition to release "The Snake", calling it "difficult to understand" 

GORAN SRDANOV AFP

However, rights activists claim Vucic and his allies have also been busy revising history.

"This government made avoiding responsibility for what happened a national interest," Jovana Kolaric, from Belgrade-based NGO Humanitarian Law Center, told AFP.

The first war criminal to get formal recognition from the state was Vladimir Lazarevic, a former army commander responsible for violent expulsions of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.

After a decade in prison, a government delegation organised a hero's welcome for him in 2015.

He was invited to give lectures at Serbia's military academy and the defence ministry published his book along with the work of Nebojsa Pavkovic -- another convicted war criminal.

- 'A free man' -

Aleksandar Vulin, one of the president's closest associates, proclaimed the "end of shame" and the dawn of "a silent pride" at an army event in 2017 when he was serving as defence minister.

"Nobody will ever again be ashamed of these men," he said of two convicted war criminals in the audience.

"Because the army they commanded and the people they defended weren't ashamed."

One of the war criminals in the audience, Nikola Sainovic, was Milosevic's right-hand man.

He was propelled back to politics shortly after his release in 2015, and given a top job in the Socialist party, the junior partner in the governing coalition.

His path from conviction to release to political rehabilitation is becoming a well-trodden one.

Former Yugoslav army officer Veselin Sljivancanin -- convicted over a 1991 massacre of some 260 people in Croatia -- was admitted into the top body of Serbia's ruling party and often appears at their events.

"He is a free man who served his sentence. What would you like to do -- arrest him? kill him?" Vucic said when Sljivancanin first appeared.

According to Sljivancanin, Vucic was the sole reason for his involvement in politics, and a man he would "give his life for".

"Us, the fighters, always had his support. Ever since he took power, we don't have to walk with our heads down," Sljivancanin told local media.

- 'The ugly truth' -

According to human rights lawyer Milan Antonijevic, the state is "logistically, financially and morally behind the actions of convicted war criminals".

Antonijevic argues that officials' support for those who committed atrocities is a calculated way to appease right-wing voters.

But historian Stojanovic believes this disguises an "ugly truth" -- that many Serbians supported the politics that led to massacres and mass expulsions of the 1990s.

Despite Serbia formally recognising international tribunals, polls show most Serbians do not trust these courts to be impartial.

"Everyone wants to hide their own shame. The revision of history serves both those in power and society," Stojanovic told AFP.

"The government, because it is neck-deep in the wars they once supported, and society, because it doesn't want to face responsibility for mass support that Milosevic's war programme had."

© 2021 AFP

FIRST NATO NATION BUILDING WAR

Kosovars Tire Of Knocking At Europe's Closed Doors


By Ismet HAJDARI
06/16/22

Of all the passports in the world, Kosovo's opens fewer doors than most, even the doors to other parts of Europe.

"It's a contradiction to be called European when you are not allowed to see, touch or travel around Europe," 27-year-old journalist Aulona Kadriu told AFP.

"I don't see why an entire population should be locked out and isolated."

Of the 199 countries ranked by the number of destinations their passport holders can visit according to the Henley index, only 10 offer fewer opportunities than Kosovo. The former province of Serbia languishes in the company of places like Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and North Korea.

Kosovars still still need visas to enter the EU. Kosovo's journalist Aulona Kadriu shows her visa photos Photo: AFP / Armend NIMANI


Kadriu gave up trying to travel within Europe for work or for leisure, because she found the hoops Kosovars have to jump through too frustrating.

The landlocked country's 1.8 million citizens are the only people in the Balkans to need a visa to do so, and that magic pass is tricky to obtain.

"It's beyond humiliation," she grumbled.

Kosovars still need visas to enter other European countries and the queues at embassies to get them can be long 

Photo: AFP / Armend NIMANI

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but is not universally recognised.

Five European Union countries are among the opponents, alongside Serbia itself -- with whom relations remain unstable -- and its Russian and Chinese allies.

So the tiny country applauded when the European Commission -- the EU's executive body -- decided in 2018 that Kosovars should be eligible to travel freely to all 26 countries in Europe's borderless Schengen Area.

But EU governments, who have the final say, have yet to follow suit and four years on, Kosovars still need visas and the queues to get them are as long as ever.

Pensioner Igballe Kryeziu hopes to visit her children in Germany, where around half the 800,000 Kosovars living abroad currently reside.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but is not universally recognised, with five EU countries among the opponents Photo: AFP / Armend NIMANI

It has taken her five months and 200 euros ($210) in paperwork just to get a place in the queue outside the consulate.

Work and study permits are just as hard to come by.

Berlin's embassy in Pristina said it had received more than 100,000 requests in December and January alone. It only has capacity to issue 5,500 in a full year.

Local charities believe the hold-up is due to reserves on the part of EU heavyweights like France about Kosovo's ability to tackle corruption and organised crime.

More than 80 local NGOs wrote recently to French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, urging him to end the "isolation of Kosovo citizens".

Talks between Pristina and Brussels about visa-free travel had dragged on for 10 years, they pointed out -- longer than it took neighbouring Croatia to go from applying to join the EU to actually becoming a full member.

Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi told AFP Kosovo had "done more than was asked of it" to meet the conditions imposed on it and the delay was essentially "due to the dynamics between different EU members".

Political analyst Donika Emini concurred.

"We've seen the stick but not the carrot," she said.

Architecture student Teuta Rexhaj, 22, had to say goodbye to her plans to study at Vienna University.

"It was a real blow," she told AFP. "I belong to a generation that has not been able to fulfil its European dream."

"When I see other young people from the Balkans travelling to Europe without any difficulty, I can't help thinking Kosovo is being discriminated against."

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KOSOVO

Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Thesis on The Kosovo Crisis and the Crisis of Global Capitalism
(originally written May 1999, Bill Clinton set the stage for George W. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for humanitarian purposes.)
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/01/war-whats-it-good-for-profit.html

 

Why Is the US So Unhappy That China Offered a Peace Proposal?

by Ted Snider Posted onMarch 09, 2023

On February 24, China published its "Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis." The US reacted very negatively very quickly. They reacted more negatively even than Ukraine.

What is it about the Chinese proposal that so unnerves the US? It is not even a fully developed settlement proposal ripe for negotiation. There was no hurry to take it off the table. It is merely a declaration of China’s position and a pledge that China is willing to assume "a constructive role in this regard."

In a first response so comical it could only be intended for public consumption, the US discredited China as a broker because they are not neutral in the war in Ukraine and then scolded them for considering sending weapons to Russia.

Though neutrality may be a desirable stance for a peace broker, the US, who has many times in recent history demanded the role of broker without the requisite neutrality, has reserved the right to encourage or discourage peace talks in the war in Ukraine while being blatantly un-neutral in the war in Ukraine: far less neutral than China.

And as for considering sending weapons, the US has crossed the line of consideration by over $45 billion. That’s a lot more than "considering."

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the US has “information that gives us concern that [China is] considering providing lethal support to Russia in the war against Ukraine.” He said that China is “strongly considering providing lethal assistance to Russia.” CIA Director William Burns repeated that claim, reporting that "We’re confident that the Chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment." The claim is reportedly based on information "gleaned from Russian government officials."

However, at a March 2 White House press briefing, when National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby was asked how serious the Biden administration thinks China is about sending Russia weapons, he responded, "We actually don’t know." When asked at a previous press conference why the US had not shared any of the intelligence, Kirby answered that "I just don’t have any intelligence to speak to today."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen repeated the lack of knowledge. On March 5, she told reporters that the US had not provided Europe with the evidence: "So far, we have no evidence of this. . . ."

Even President Biden said, in a February 24 interview that "I don’t anticipate – we haven’t seen it yet, but I don’t anticipate a major initiative on the part of China providing weaponry to Russia."

When the US finished attacking China, they at last turned to attacking China’s proposal.

The first point of the position paper is "Respecting the sovereignty of all countries." The paper insists that "[t]he sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld."

The US can have no complaint with that point: it seems to lean to the Ukrainian and American position. Sticking to the US position that the war is unprovoked, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan scoffed that "My first reaction to it is that it could stop at point one, which is to respect the sovereignty of all nations." Reading from the same script, Blinken quipped that "If they were serious about the first one, sovereignty, then this war could end tomorrow."

But the criticism of the first point can be received as no less comical by most of the world than the criticism that China is not neutral and has considered sending weapons to Russia. Most of the world, including much of Europe, can remember the US disrespecting their sovereignty or their territorial integrity. According to Lindsey O’Rourke, Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College and the author of Covert Regime Chang: America’s Secret Cold War, the US conducted 72 regime changes during the Cold War. The staggering pace did not let up when the Cold War ended.

Much of Latin America, Africa and the Middle East must find it hard not to marvel at the US setting itself up as the antidote to Russian interventionism. Most of what Russia calls the global majority resonates with a recent report by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that harshly catalogues US violations of state sovereignty. Called "US Hegemony and Its Perils," the report cites a Tufts University report that found that since its birth in 1716, the US undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally. It criticizes the US for political and military interference in Latin America, including regime change. It criticizes its "double standards on international rules." It reminds the world of Vietnam, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. It reminds the world of the $700 billion US military budget and of the approximately 800 oversees military bases with troops deployed in 159 countries.

The first point of the Chinese position paper is welcome to the US and sides with its position. The US can have no complaint with that point. But, according to the global majority, it also has no right to make that point or to set itself up as the international defendant of that point.

But if it is not the first point that unnerves the US, then what is it?

It can’t be point three, "Ceasing Hostilities;" though the US may cringe a bit at the insistence to "avoid fanning the flames."

It can’t be point four on "Resuming peace talks;" though the US may cringe at the memory that it has, on at least two occasions, according to Turkish officials and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, prevented promising peace talks.

It can’t be point five or six’ desire to resolve the humanitarian crisis or protect civilians and prisoners of war. Nor can it be points seven and eight and their protection for nuclear plants and from nuclear weapons. Points nine and eleven on "Facilitating grain exports" and "Keeping industrial and supply chains stable" cannot offend. Nor can the final point on "Promoting post-conflict reconstruction."

That leaves points two and ten. Aside from the very fact that China is putting itself forward in a unipolar US world, if there is anything in the Chinese position paper that upsets and unnerves the US, it has to be points two and ten.

Point two calls for "Abandoning the Cold War mentality." It objects to "military blocs" and demands that "[t]he security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others." The former point is aimed at NATO, and the later is a point long made by Russia.

The US has defended holding NATO’s door open to Ukraine by appealing to the international principle of the free and sovereign right of states to choose their own security alignments. But Russia has long countered with the indivisibility of security: the international principle that the security of one state should not be bought at the expense of the security of another. This core conflict has been identified and explained by Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, in his essay “The March of Folly resumed: Russia, Ukraine and the West” and, with Andrej Krickovic, in “War in Ukraine: The Clash of Norms and Ontologies.”

While the Chinese position paper prohibits any country, including Russia, from violating the sovereignty of another country – which the US likes – point two rejects that the war was unprovoked and criticizes US expansion and potential NATO expansion into Ukraine without having "taken seriously and addressed properly" the "legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries." And that is what the US does not like. The position paper echoes Russia’s long time call for a "sustainable European security architecture" that treats Russia as an equal partner with equal security concerns. The Chinese position paper legitimizes Russia’s demand that "[a]ll parties should oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security, prevent bloc confrontation, and work together for peace and stability on the Eurasian Continent."

Russia has frequently reminded the US of this obligation. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on January 27, 2022, that all the relevant international agreements commit nations “to indivisible security and their pledge to honor it without fail.” He pointed out the legal implication that the sovereign right of nations to choose their own alliances is balanced by the “obligation not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other states.” On December 7, 2021, Putin told Biden that “Every country is entitled to choose the most acceptable way to ensure its security, but this should be done so as not to encroach on the interests of other parties and not undermine the security of other countries. . . . We believe that ensuring security must be global and cover everyone equally.” Three weeks later, he stressed to Biden that “the security of any nation cannot be ensured unless the principle of indivisible security is strictly observed.”

Point two means giving up the right to keep the door open to Ukraine’s admission to NATO, a core principle for the US in the war.

If point two is the most important reason for the swift, negative US reaction to the Chinese position paper, point ten gave more cause.

Point ten says that "China opposes unilateral sanctions unauthorized by the UN Security Council." It not so subtly refers to "[r]elevant countries" and says they "should stop abusing unilateral sanctions" that "cannot solve the issue" and "only create new problems." The paper says that "[s]topping unilateral sanctions" is necessary "in de-escalating the Ukraine crisis."

As with point two and the hypocritical US position on point one, the global majority resonates with the Chinese position. Many know what it feels like to be sanctioned, or threatened with sanctions, by the US, most notably Cuba. In September, 2021, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called sanctions "the US’s new way of war with the nations of the world.”

In "US Hegemony and Its Perils," China says that between 2000 and 2021, "U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent." It says that "the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world’s population.

In addition to feeling uneasy with not fanning the flames and resuming peace talks, the real reason the US is so unhappy with China’s emergence as a potential broker – aside from the audacity of China’s emerging as a potential broker in a US led unipolar world – is the criticism of NATO expansion and the insistence on taking seriously Russia’s legitimate security concerns, and the rejection of the oft wielded US weapon of unilateral sanctions.

It is interesting, though, that Europe may have less difficulty with all of these points in the Chinese position paper. Europe, too, has suffered US violations of sovereignty and US coups. Europe is also less opposed to China and Russia’s claim of the indivisibility of security. Both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have recently defied the US in suggesting that negotiations with Russia include addressing Russia’s security concerns. Macron spoke of giving "guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table" and went so far as to call for addressing Russia’s "fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.” Scholz said there was a “willingness” to engage with Putin on issues of arms control and missile deployment." Then he said that “all questions of common security could be solved and discussed." Europe, and, perhaps, especially Germany has also been more wary of comprehensive sanctions.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

 

Why did Serbia react so harshly to the UN resolution on Srebrenica?

WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS

Copyright Darko Bandic/Copyright 2021 The AP. All rights reserved

By Sergio Cantone

Published on 25/05/2024 - 

Serbian government and public opinion have continued to harshly criticise the UN General Assembly's decision on Thursday to pass the resolution commemorating the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. Why is this the case?

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution decision on Thursday to declare 11 July the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica has a highly political role, according to the regional actors. 

The Serbian government and public opinion have been staunchly criticising it since its preliminary phases.

Belgrade sees the declaration as a part of a comprehensive Western political and diplomatic offensive against Serbia and the Serbs on issues covering a spectrum from Kosovo to the Bosnian question, two main key talking points for the government in Belgrade, which regards them as unresolved issues stemming from the wars of Yugoslavia in the 1990s

Bosnian Serb leader threatens secession ahead of UN genocide vote

UN approves annual commemoration of 1995 Srebrenica genocide

Meanwhile, its proponents highlight that the resolution is solely meant to commemorate the victims of the July 1995 events in the eastern Bosnian town.

The document is comparable to the UN resolution designating 7 April as the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Germany and Rwanda, the two countries that proposed and drafted the settlement on the Tutsi massacre approved by the UNGA in 2018, were the main co-sponsors of the Srebrenica resolution.

Serbian political context

As Serbia prepares to hold key local elections on 2 June — including who will rule over Belgrade — Bosnia and Kosovo are still crucial factors in the public political debate of the Western Balkans country. 

Serbian conservative President Aleksandar Vučić's reluctance to join the EU sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine has also contributed to strained relations between his country on the one side and the EU, the US and some of its neighbours on the other.

Serbian President Aleksandar VucicDarko Vojinovic/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserv

Serbia's potential EU membership could be put on hold, while according to various opinion polls, Euroscepticism in the Balkan country has prevailed over the blossoming Europhilia of the early 2000s. 

Whether this is a reaction to the enlargement blues outspokenly displayed by some in the EU or a genuine national sentiment, in the eyes of some in Serbia, hesitance toward the West is a part of pushback against its many demands.

Former Yugoslavia and international justice

The verdicts from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) clearly established the personal responsibility of individuals and concrete military units and made a distinction between those and any collective actors, such as Serbia and the Republika Srpska — the Serb-majority entity of Bosnia — and the genocide in Srebrenica. 

Serbia initially started to take steps and recognise the rulings at home. In 2010, the country's National Assembly adopted its own Resolution on Srebrenica based on the ICJ's verdict, but without explicitly mentioning genocide. Then, in 2015, President Vučić went to Srebrenica to pay tribute to the victims.

Meanwhile, the text of the UN resolution commemorating the Srebrenica genocide excludes the Serbian collective responsibility for the "Bosnian Genocide" thanks to a Montenegrin amendment.

Supporters of Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad DodikRadivoje Pavicic/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved

"Serbia is afraid that the resolution could be misused at the international fora, and it could become 'evidence' that the Serbian nation, the Serb people and the Republika Srpska bear the responsibility for the genocide, Serbian legal expert Milan Antonijević said. 

"When one reads the text of the resolution, one realises that without any doubt, it is condemning the genocide in Srebrenica and not linking it to any of the nations involved (in the conflict). But the legal level and its wording are one thing, and the political PR is another."

During the Bosnian war, over the course of three days around 11 July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army of the Republika Srpska killed 8,000 Bosniak men and boys despite the area having been officially designated by the UN as a “safe area” for civilians. 

Those units were under the military orders of General Ratko Mladić and the political leader of the former president of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić.

banners of the former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko MladicAndrej Cukic/AP

A considerable number of Bosnian Serb officials, both army officers and politicians, were condemned by the ICTY for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Both Mladić and Karadžić were sentenced to life for genocide, among other counts.

It was the first time in Europe since World War II and the Nuremberg trials against Nazi German top officials that an international tribunal issued a verdict on genocide.

"When the Serb (political actors) accepted, reluctantly, their responsibility for the Srebrenica genocide, they believed that they were forced to do that. And if you look at their actions and their rhetoric, you do realise this reluctant acceptance of responsibility happened under a lot of pressure in a different geopolitical situation," Bosnian historian Adnan Huskić, from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, told Euronews. 

"And ever since, what they have been doing was to permanently deny that the genocide took place and used any available opportunity to rehabilitate the persons who were found guilty in front of the ICTY," Huskić said.

'Missing an opportunity to use an opportunity'

After the military and political setbacks of the 1990s and the fall of the Slobodan Milošević regime, Serbia started a process of rapprochement with the EU and the US. 

At that time, Russia and China were much less assertive than they are today — the "different geopolitical context" Huskić mentions.

According to opposition politician, writer, and former Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Drašković, Serbia should have joined the initiative and backed the resolution.

"Unfortunately, the Serbian government missed an opportunity to use an opportunity to support this resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica, explaining that the Serbian nation further condemned crimes because Serbs, as a people, were the victims of a genocide during World War II," Drašković told Euronews. 

"By paying tribute to the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica, we would have paid tribute to the Serb victims in World War II," he explained.

Overview of the courtroom at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, in The Hague, the NetherlandsBAS CZERWINSKI/AP2007

In the early 1990s, Vuk Drašković proposed a general reconciliation among the peoples of former Yugoslavia to rebuild inter-communitarian confidence in the region through a collective recognition of the mutual and respective historical guilts for the massacres of the past. This was the central focus of his foreign and security policy, along with the full integration of Serbia into the West.

After the wars, Drašković opposed the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and the role played by Milošević's Serbia as he participated in the democratic governments in Belgrade. As the head of Serbian diplomacy, he established the basis for his country's EU membership application and a clear path to softening relations with NATO. 

Unresolved Bosnian question

Nevertheless, more than thirty years have passed since the end of the war, and the question of the future of Bosnia and the delicate balance between the three main ethnic communities is still a source of concern in the region. 

The key to the complex and complicated political system can be traced back to the 1995 US-brokered Dayton Agreement, which put an end to the bloodshed between Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, turning Bosnia into a de facto protectorate of the international community.

Last month, Vučić criticised the draft resolution, saying it should have been presented at the UN Security Council rather than in front of the UN General Assembly because the "region is not stabilised yet".  

A constitutional reform could have revised the strict political separation among the Bosnian communities established by the Dayton Peace Accords and eliminated mechanisms that blocked almost all decision-making processes along ethnic lines — the root cause of all divisive politics in the country.

Nevertheless, after decades of attempts, the process collided with the new political instability generated by the Russian war in Ukraine.  



from left, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and U.S. Secretary of State Warren ChristopherJoe Marquette/AP

"I don't think that there is an overwhelming will to replace the current communitarian power-sharing system. I don't see the actors that could push the process forward," commented Huskić.  

I don't think that there is either a regional or a global environment favourable to that move. The process is going in another direction, and I think Bosnia is becoming more communitarian than before. The constitutional reform has stalled," he concluded. 

Serbia, Bosnia and the war in Ukraine

The Ukrainian war and its spillover have deeply influenced the situation in Central and Eastern Europe and reignited the unresolved conflicts between old adversaries.

"I cannot forget the very wrong message conveyed by the Serbian Orthodox Church that Russians, whatever they are doing, must be supported by the Serbs because they are our Orthodox brothers. This is why the (Serb Orthodox) Church did not condemn the Russian aggression on Ukraine," Drašković said. 

The Serbian government believes that German diplomacy, led by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, seems to be putting more pressure on Belgrade than other countries on many issues, from Kosovo to Russia and Bosnia. Germany was the co-sponsor of the UN resolution on the Srebrenica genocide, after all.

Vuk Draskovic, center, the veteran charismatic Serbian opposition leader,Joe Marquette/AP

"I think that the German foreign policy since Angela Merkel stepped down is much harsher towards Serbia," Antonijević said. 

"It is true that Germany is still supporting the accession of Belgrade to the EU and investing huge (amounts of) money in Serbia. Yet, Berlin should coordinate more with Belgrade, especially because next year, 2025, will mark the 30th anniversary of Srebrenica," argues Milan Antonijević.

The international community's high representative — the peace watchdog in Bosnia — is a top German official, Christian Schmidt.

Early this year, he drafted the so-called "integrity package" for  Bosnia and Hercegovina, a set of reforms concerning electoral transparency and anti-fraud systems with rules supposed to introduce ineligibility for the war criminals to honour the EU Enlargement requests. 

The head of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, opposed the "integrity package" and threatened the secession of the Serbian entity from the rest of the country if it were forced to implement it. He has also repeatedly rejected Schmidt's authority — granted to him by the UN — labelling him as a "German occupier".

Dodik is the only top official from a European country who has repeatedly visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow since February 2022.

Russia's meddling to be addressed?

As a long-time opposition stalwart, Drašković thinks that the current Serbian establishment is not fit to rule the country in the years to come and that there are still many unresolved questions in Belgrade.

"Russia is doing everything to open a Balkan front. It wants a Balkan front. It can do it because it controls the security structures of the Serbian state," denounced Drašković.

"The EU missed the opportunity to make the rulers of Serbia open the files about the activities of the Russian security services in Serbia. The European Commission's obligation is to impose on Serbia to open those secret files. It should be a priority," he insisted.

In the end, the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica won't make any difference, according to Drašković. "Milorad Dodik recognised that genocide fifteen years ago. He simply changed his mind", he concluded.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KOSOVO

Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Thesis on The Kosovo Crisis and the Crisis of Global Capitalism
(originally written May 1999, Bill Clinton set the stage for George W. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for humanitarian purposes.)
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/01/war-whats-it-good-for-profit.html