The Template: NATO Consolidates Grip On
Former Yugoslavia
18 July 2012By Rick Rozoff
North Atlantic Treaty Organization chieftain Anders
Fogh Rasmussen has spent much of the past week in the
former Yugoslavia, visiting Slovenia and Croatia on
July 5 and 6, respectively, then arriving in Kosovo
with the 28 members of the North Atlantic Council on
July 11.
Twenty years after NATO was unleashed as an active
warfighting force with a naval blockade of
Yugoslavia's Adriatic coast (Operation Maritime
Monitor and Operation Maritime Guard, 1992),
enforcement of a no-fly zone in Bosnia (Operation Deny
Flight, 1993, which included shooting down Bosnian
Serb jets) and large-scale bombing of Serb targets
(Operation Deliberate Force, 1995, involving 400
alliance aircraft), NATO has returned to the Balkans
to complete the absorption of former Yugoslavia as a
base for operations elsewhere in the world and for the
recruitment of expeditionary troops for wars abroad.
In the interim the Western military bloc conducted a
savage 78-day bombing campaign against the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 before expanding the
scope of its wars and other military operations to
include Afghanistan and Pakistan, Libya and the Horn
of Africa.
NATO military intervention in former Yugoslavia
brought about the total dissolution of that nation
into its six federal republics and the secession of
the Serbian province of Kosovo, which is the world's
first NATO-created pseudo-state; a crime-ridden,
ethnically-cleansed, economically unviable black hole
which should serve, and for the past thirteen years
should have served, as a stark, irrefutable warning of
what the aftermath of NATO intervention portends for
later victims of the same.
In his visit to Slovenia, the first former Yugoslav
republic to be recruited into NATO, Rasmussen praised
his hosts for contributing to the bloc's missions in
war zones and post-conflict occupied territories in
stating:
"Your contribution to our missions proves that despite
tough economic times, Slovenia can be counted upon.
That is why we greatly appreciate your participation
in Kosovo and Afghanistan. You are showing a strong
commitment to Kosovo and you are doing a great job in
helping to advise and train Afghan security forces."
All former Yugoslav republics are now either full NATO
members or partners. Slovenia joined the bloc in 2004
and Croatia in 2009. Macedonia would have been
dragooned into the alliance along with Croatia except
for the longstanding name dispute with Greece, but it
has been granted a Membership Action Plan, the final
stage before full NATO accession, as has Montenegro,
with Bosnia to soon follow.
Montenegro, which became an independent micro-state in
2006 in no small part with NATO assistance, joined the
alliance's Partnership for Peace program only six
months after declaring independence, while the ink was
hardly dry on the declaration. In the same month,
December, Bosnia and Serbia, which had also become an
independent nation in June after the breakup of the
State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, also joined the
Partnership for Peace. In October of that year the USS
Anzio Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser docked
in the Montenegrin port of Tivat, demonstrating the
rapidity with which the Pentagon and NATO move to
effect the military integration of newborn states it
had not much earlier bombed. (As of earlier this year,
Afghanistan and Iraq are members of NATO's new
Partners Across the Globe military cooperation
program.) The Associated Press reported of the above
visit: "Montenegro is eager to join NATO's Partnership
for Peace outreach program, considered a stepping
stone to alliance membership."
Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia have provided NATO
contingents for its Kosovo Force (KFOR), initially a
50,000-troop army that entered Kosovo in June 1999.
Montenegro didn't exist as a sovereign state at the
time, but Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia
fulfilled their NATO obligations by deploying troops
to Iraq from 2003 onward. Currently Bosnia, Croatia,
Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia have troops serving
with the NATO-led International Security Assistance
Force in Afghanistan.
While in Slovenia last week, NATO's Rasmussen also
lauded the nation's joint contribution with fellow
Adriatic Charter members Albania, Bosnia, Croatia,
Macedonia and Montenegro (and Slovenia) in training
Afghan security personnel at the Military Police
School in Kabul as part of the broader NATO program to
create NATO-standard security structures in the
war-afflicted country.
The Adriatic Charter is an American initiative
established in 2003 to recruit Adriatic Sea littoral
and neighboring states into full NATO membership. The
original four members were the U.S., Albania, Croatia
and Macedonia. Albania and Croatia have since joined
the bloc and Macedonia has not only for the reason
mentioned above. In 2008 Bosnia and Montenegro became
members and Serbia joined as an observer.
At a U.S.-Adriatic Charter defense ministers meeting
in Macedonia this March, Celeste Wallander, Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, said the U.S. expects Kosovo
and Serbia to join the group. Agim Ceku, minister of
Kosovo's fledgling armed forces, the NATO-created
Kosovo Security Force, participated in the meeting
along with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's
representative Wallander and the defense ministers of
Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro.
In Croatia on July 6 Rasmussen praised the nation's
role in heading up the Adriatic Charter nations'
training mission in Afghanistan: "Together, under
Croatia's leadership, those countries are building
stability in Afghanistan – and cooperation between
themselves. They are building security in the heart of
Asia but also in the heart of Europe."
Croatia's non-NATO partners in Afghanistan – Bosnia,
Macedonia and Montenegro – are serving an
apprenticeship for NATO membership, as Croatia and
Slovenia did earlier in Iraq. In Rasmussen's words:
"NATO is committed to the future of the whole region
in the Euro-Atlantic family. And we are determined to
help you along that path."
The self-serving flattery bestowed on Croatia and
Slovenia was too much for the leading Slovenian
newspaper Delo, which on July 7 urged the nation to
leave NATO as the obligation to spend money on the
"failed project" in Afghanistan is diverting resources
desperately needed for retirees, young families,
culture and education.
Joining NATO, the daily continued, was the largest and
most expensive mistake in the country's history, as it
is not an alliance that protects its member states but
one which intervenes around the world; in fact has
waged wars in three continents.
On July 11 Rasmussen and the ambassadors of the 28
NATO member states, collectively constituting the
North Atlantic Council, arrived in the Kosovo capital
Pristina to meet with head of state Hashim Thaci, who
like de facto defense minister Agim Ceku is a former
leader of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army.
Without a scintilla of irony, shame or qualification,
he delivered himself of this statement:
"NATO is fully committed to the stability and security
of the Western Balkans – nowhere more than in Kosovo.
For the past 12 years, the NATO-led mission here has
helped preserve a safe and secure environment for all
people in Kosovo – firmly, fairly and impartially."
Practically as he spoke, two suspects were arrested
for the murder of a Kosovo Serb, Sava Mojsic, and the
wounding of two others last November. A raid conducted
by EULEX (European Union Rule of Law Mission in
Kosovo) police also resulted in the arrests of two
other men for possession of automatic rifles and hand
grenades.
The Serbian mayor of Kosovska Mitrovica, Krstimir
Pantic, said EULEX and KFOR had no intention of
apprehending the murderers, although they knew who
they were, stating, "There is evidence, the suspects
are well-known and they are protected by the interior
minister of the so-called Republic of Kosovo and the
Kosovo secret police chief."
Over a quarter of a million Serbs, Roma, Gorani, Turks
and other members of ethnic minorities have been
driven out of Kosovo since NATO arrived thirteen years
ago – several hundred, along with ethnic Albanians,
have been murdered in cold blood – and the NATO chief
can pontificate about "stability and security" and "a
safe and secure environment for all people in Kosovo."
Having dispensed with such obligatory rhetoric –
monstrous lies – Rasmussen got down to business at his
press conference in Pristina, stating:
"Make no mistake. We will make sure KFOR remains
robust and credible. We will make sure it has the
support it needs for as long as it needs."
Because, and only because, "We are committed to the
Euro-Atlantic future of this region." Which is to say,
having bombed and occupied the former Yugoslavia for a
generation, NATO is now conducting the final
mopping-up operation.
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