For years ago the NATO started to bomb Serbia to "free" the Kosovo from the Serbian Oppression. Now the NATO and the UN tries to rebuild it and bring peace to this small semi-independant country in Europe. How successfull are they? This article takes a look at the current situation. It is not very pretty - unsurprising not unlike Afghanistan and Iraq:
The Forgotten War
John Horvath 17.02.2004
Remember Kosovo?
With our modern-day communications systems of radio, television, and the internet, we tend to forget many important things, even when it comes to crucial issues such as war and peace. Most had already started to forget about Afghanistan, and would have done so, if it were not for the recent spate of attacks which saw one Canadian, one British, and seven American soldiers killed in one week, leading to talk of a spring offensive against a "Taliban rebellion". The Taliban? Weren't they already defeated long ago, with a new Afghanistan rising from the ashes?
Sadly, the same holds true much closer to home, and our blindness is all the more unforgiving considering that wars within Europe, which cost over tens of thousands of lives, have promptly been forgotten. There was a time when almost everyone in the western world knew where Kosovo was, and journalists were falling over each other to cover what was happening. Even on the internet, hip and over-hyped intellectuals like Richard Barbrook would tag the end of each e-mail message with "Victory to the KLA!"
But for those intent on pursuing a programme of perpetual war for perpetual peace, it would do no good to dwell on the past. Thus, Kosovo is to this day trumpeted as a victory for the concept of humanitarian warfare. Everyone is happy, and the mission was accomplished; been there, done that, time to move on to the next target.
Yet Kosovo is anything but the happy and prosperous place that it was supposed to be. Nor has peace been brought to region. Crime, terror, ethnic cleansing, and smuggling is rampant -- this time under the aegis of the UN and not Belgrade.
Four years after it was "liberated" by a NATO bombing campaign, Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-ethnic violence, and even al-Qaeda sympathizers. Though nominally still under UN control, this southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, mafia gangs, and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations and are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, namely Serbs, Roma and Jews. This, despite an 18,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force and an international police force of more than 4,000.
Typically, the response by the international community to this is to look the other way, for it's far easier to do this than explain why NATO should go against the ones they "liberated" just a few years ago. Furthermore, it would distract the west from other "nation-building" projects that are currently underway around the world.
So as to not have an uncomfortable news item suddenly hit the headlines of the western media, a fortified concrete barrier around the UN compound on the outskirts of the provincial capital Pristina was constructed recently -- just in case. The barrier is supposed to protect the UN against terrorist strikes by "Muslim extremists" who have set up bases of operation in what has become a largely outlaw province. [..]