KLA -- Resurgent Nazis Under NATO's Wing

"No one, in any case, should entertain any notion that any future Kosovo, whether run by Albanians or by an international protectorate, is going to have any Serbs in it." Tim Judah, New York Review of Books.

The false historical analogy underlying NATO's war against Yugoslavia is the purported resemblance of the Serbs' anti-KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) counterinsurgency to nazi atrocities in the second world war. Clinton has compared the Serbian campaign to the Holocaust and Mrs. Clinton has stated that the images on CNN remind her of the movie Schindler's List; both implicitly analogize the Kosovar Albanians to Jews in the 1930s and '40s, and the Serbs to nazis. Other NATO leaders, and most journalists in NATO countries, have mindlessly echoed the Clintons' statements.

Not only is the analogy completely misplaced as a historical matter, but it was the Albanians who sided with the nazis and fascists in the 1940s and the current KLA that continues the ethnic eliminationist policies of that era. The Serbs are engaged in suppressing a resurgent neo-nazi movement, just as they did during and immediately after the world war. While NATO's rhetoric has served to rally an uninformed public's support for attacking Yugoslavia, even a cursory understanding of the area's recent history belies that rhetoric and refutes the false version of events that NATO has misused to justify its attack.

Mussolini's Italy occupied Albania proper in April 1939, and established a collaborationist regime with the enthusiastic support of the native population. After Hitler invaded and occupied Yugoslavia in spring 1941, the bulk of current Kosovo-Metohija was placed under Italian-Albanian collaborationist control and annexed to Albania. Kosovar Albanian fascist militias called the "Balli Kombëtar" or "Ballistas" conducted a campaign of murder and deportation against the Serb population between 1941 and 1943, the years of Italian control. Carlo Umilta, a civilian aide to the commander of the Italian occupation forces, described some of the atrocities in his memoirs and observed that "the Albanians are out to exterminate the Slavs."

The anti-Serb pogroms intensified after Italy's collapse in 1943, when the Germans assumed control of Albania, including Kosovo. In April 1944 the Germans formed the 21st "Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS Skanderbeg" (alban.Nr.1) with German leadership and Kosovar Albanian officers and rank and file. Although the Germans raised the unit as an anti-Partisan force, its Albanian members were interested solely in murdering or expelling the Serb population, as their Ballista predecessors had done so successfully. The division was dissolved in early 1945.

A major impetus for the Kosovar Albanians' attempt to drive the Serbs from Kosovo under both fascist and nazi tutelage was militant Islam. The Islamist group "Second League of Prizren" was created in September 1943 by Xhafer Deva, a Kosovar Albanian, and proclaimed a jihad against Slavs. This effort was supported by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, El Haj Emin Huseini, who similarly called for the elimination of Jews in then-British-occupied Palestine.

No one is certain how many Serbs were killed or displaced in this Albanian-sponsored Holocaust. Estimates range between 10,000 and 30,000 murdered, with at least an additional 100,000 driven from Kosovo to elsewhere in Yugoslavia and replaced with "immigrants" from Albania proper. The Kosovar Albanians' depredations were a major cause of the current demographic imbalance: the Albanians constitute a majority of the Kosovo population because of their great success as Hitler's willing executioners. But their murderous attention was not limited only to Serbs. Countless Roma (Gypsies) were liquidated, and Kosovar Albanians, both acting alone and under German direction, managed to eliminate approximately 40 percent of Kosovo's Jewish population. The definitive work concerning the nazi-orchestrated elimination of Yugoslav Jews, "The Crimes of Fascist Occupants and Their Collaborators Against the Jews of Yugoslavia" (1952, revised 1957) (published by The Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia) estimates that there were approximately 550 Jews in Kosovo at the time of Hitler's takeover of Yugoslavia, and that 210 of them, or 38 percent, were murdered, primarily by Kosovar Albanians. In fact, the Skanderbeg division's first operation was to act as an "einsatzgruppen" against the Jews. Although KLA supporters now claim that no Jews were killed in Kosovo and that Jews were sheltered by the Kosovar Albanians, such claims are false and should be treated with the disdain shown to other Holocaust deniers.

Although their German mentors surrendered in 1945, the remnants of the Albanian Kosovar nazi and fascist groups continued fighting the Yugoslav government for an additional six years, with a major rebellion occurring from 1945 to 1948 in the Drenica region, the hotbed for today's KLA recruiting, under the command of Shaban Paluzha. Sporadic resistance continued from 1948 to 1951.

Notwithstanding the eventual suppression of these last Axis holdouts, Tito instituted a Kosovo policy of rewarding Albanians and subordinating Serbs instead of "denazifying" the Albanians. The Serbs that had been driven from Kosovo were as a general matter prevented from returning, while immigration from Albanian was encouraged to further skew the province's demographic profile. Tito granted an enhanced autonomy that placed Kosovar Albanians in local political control, and this power was used to continue making life intolerable for the Serbs, with the result that many thousands more fled during the 1970s and 1980s. The persecution of the Serbs during this time has been well documented elsewhere, particularly by David Binder of the New York Times who in 1982 -- long before Milosevic attained political power -- reported that the Albanians' violent "incidents have prompted many of Kosovo's Slavic inhabitants to flee the province, thereby helping to fulfill a nationalist demand for an ethnically 'pure' Albanian Kosovo." New York Times, Nov. 9, 1982 at A6. Facts on File reported similar findings, quoting an ethnic Albanian Communist Party official as saying "[t]he nationalists have a two-point platform, first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania". Facts on File World News Digest (Sept. 10, 1982).

In short, the same desire to drive out Serbs that animated the Albanian nazi and fascist units in the 1940s remained active throughout the post-war period. It flared anew into spectacular violence with the KLA's advent. In both form and substance, the KLA is merely a continuation of the Ballistas and Skanderbegs.

In form, the KLA has named its units after "heroes" of the Albanian nazi and fascist units. It has adopted the exact same insignia that was used by the Skanderbeg division. Many of its leaders and earliest members are the sons and grandsons of members of the Skanderbeg and Ballista units. A KLA-affiliated website, sponsored by the Kosova Liberation Peace Movement (www.klpm.org), looks with approbation on the nazi occupation:

As Germany overtook Yugoslavia in 1941, the Kosovar people were liberated by the Germans. All Albanian territories of this state, such as Kosova (sic), western Macedonia and border regions under Montenegro, were re-united into Albania proper. Albanian schools, governmental administration, press and radio were re-established.

And, needless to say, the Serbs were eliminated. The areas referred to constitute the "greater Albania" that the more audacious KLA leaders now seek to recreate. The kplm website envisions a similar "liberation" in the future: "The KLA is committed to liberate Kosova and to bring their motherland to freedom." Having seen that the previous liberation had resulted in the wholesale murder of the Serb and Jewish population, it is no wonder that the Serbian authorities took the strongest steps to prevent its promised recurrence.

Even more telling than the KLA's pedigree and self-chosen symbolism are its actions, for these truly demonstrate the group's unreconstructed nazism. The focus of the organization's efforts was the murder of Serb civilians, as well as Albanians that did not wish to provide their support. The KLA's 1998 terror campaign was designed to force all Serbs from areas under its control, and it was quite successful in doing so. In the autumn of 1998 the Associated Press reported that the Serbian populations of nearly 100 villages had been driven out, either by death or intimidation. KLA commanders Remi and Haradjani were particularly ruthless, and their documented campaign of terror against Serbs, Albanians and Roma, documented at www.siri-us.com, would earn them an indictment in the Hague if the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia had any interest in justice.

The methods used by the KLA reek of Hitler-era barbarity. In Klecka, 22 Serb civilians were tortured and executed and their remains disposed of in an improvised crematorium, and near Glogovac Serb farmers and their families were butchered and thrown in a muddy ditch. While these incidents were ignored in the American press, which had long since picked the KLA as its favorites in the Kosovo conflict, the Serb authorities and citizenry were quite familiar with them and knew they portended a similar fate for the entire non-Albanian population unless the KLA was defeated.

And make no mistake: KLA victory and Kosovo's forced removal from Serbia will complete the process begun in the 1940s of eliminating the remaining Serbs. As Tim Judah, a strong supporter of the KLA, approvingly predicted in the May 1999 New York Review of Books: "No one, in any case, should entertain any notion that any future Kosovo, whether run by Albanians or by an international protectorate, is going to have any Serbs in it." Judah's words echo those of Carlo Umilta, the Italian fascist who at least had the decency to be disgusted by that prospect. In short, the KLA, with NATO's armed support, will complete what Hitler and Mussolini started, as people like Judah cheer them on.

Nor can the leaders and citizens of NATO countries feign ignorance of the KLA's true nature. Former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, no friend of the Serbs, wrote in the May-June 1999 edition of Foreign Affairs that the KLA shows "hints of fascism on one side and whiffs of communism on the other" and notes the genealogical link between its leaders and members of "the Skanderbeg volunteer SS division raised by the Nazis" and their "part in the shameful roundup and deportation of . . . [the] few hundred Jews during the Holocaust." This description has been widely circulated although, predictably, Hedges ignored the shameful roundup and mass murder of Serbs during the nazi period. While most Americans, like Mrs. Clinton, may get their (mis)understanding of historical events through fictional movies, they should have at least a minimal understanding of the real historical facts before launching a war and destroying a country based solely on supposed historical analogies.

Some commentators in the U.S. have acknowledged the nazi/fascist affiliation of Kosovar Albanians in the 1940s, but argue that this is "ancient history" (to quote one U.S. congressman) and has no bearing on the current war. Aside from the fact that the Serb Holocaust is no more "ancient" than the gas chambers at Auschwitz, today's KLA has adopted the same goals and tactics of the Ballistas and Skanderbegs and should be given the same shrift that violent neo-nazi groups would receive in any other country.

Any group that considers the nazis as liberators, looks with nostalgia on nazi control, wishes to replicate that era today, and resorts to mass murder to do so deserves to be ruthlessly uprooted. Instead, NATO has allied itself with the KLA and gone to war to prevent the Serbs from eliminating this resurgent nazi cancer. What we have in the KLA is the resurrection of a 1940s nazi/fascist group, dressed up for 1990s media success and this time supported by the former world war 2 Allies along with, of course, Germany. The Serbs are no more the reincarnation of nazis than were the world war 2 resistance groups that fought against Hitler while the KLA's predecessors fought for him. The Serbian fight against the KLA was a continuation of the earlier struggle against Hitler's Kosovar Albanian allies. That Clinton's false analogy gained any credence among the ignorant populations of the United States and western Europe is, perhaps, a bigger injury than all the bombs and missiles dropped by NATO to help fulfill Hitler's agenda six decades later.

The Washington Post reported on June 5, 1999 that half the remaining Serb population had recently fled Kosovo, and the Washington Times of June 5 reported that the Pentagon expects the rest to follow. NATO has accomplished what even Hitler could not: the elimination of Serbs in Kosovo. Congratulations, America; you have done the Nazis' work, and Hitler is smiling in his grave..

CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army

Datas from Noel Malcoms;Kosovo a short history.(the translation is mine)

The serb official for Kosovo Djorde Kristic,described the colonization program,like an success:"we was only 24% of the region in 1919 but now we are up to 38%."It was the year 1928.

Also a quote from NM book:

The whole kosovar territory had 584'000 ha of arable lands,of which 200'000ha were expropriated and distribuited among the new serbian settlers.13'000 serbian familys (about 70'000,10% of the whole population)were settled in kosova.the state investment for the colonizaton was 10'000'000 dinars(180 million dollars).

 his source:

fonts:Krstic.Kolonizacja pg3/Obradovic.Agrarna reforma pg 201.Roux,Le Albanais,p195/Verli,reforma

You stated smth and your Serbian source was saying smth else,so make up your mind.

You don’t have a clue.For sure there was a slight change in the population balance in favour of the Albanians during ottomans times as it was a change favoring serbs during Stephan Dushans Serbian empire.And your claims that this was an organized process  are just erroneous Albanians repopulated those few lands that serbs gradually(in 500 years) abandoned, their political an cultural center was in Belgrade so was natural for them to move north. That of the Serbian suffering under the Albanian-Turkish rule is just Serbian invention to justify their later negative attitude against Albanians.

One of their myths, often called history ,is that of the Serbian emigration after the Austrian-Turkish war, from Kosovo, when indeed smth like that never happened in a large scale in Kosova. Funnily in Kosova during that war there was a pro Austrian uprising,under the lead the Albanian catholic Archbishop Pjeter Bogdani,and the fighting force was composed from both catholic and muslim Albanians.

Btw here you have the speech made by the Serbian King addressed to the serbuian people,when the Serbian attack in Kosova was ready to start.His motivation are totally different from yours or from those of the modern Serbian nationalist.

18 October 1912

 "The Turkish governments showed no interest in their duties towards their citizens and turned a deaf ear to all complaints and suggestions. Things got so far out of hand that no one was satisfied with the situation in Turkey in Europe. It became unbearable for the Serbs, the Greeks and for the Albanians, too.
    By the grace of God, I have therefore ordered my brave army to join in the Holy War to free our brethren and to ensure a better future.
    In Old Serbia, my army will meet not only upon Christian Serbs, but also upon Moslem Serbs, who are equally dear to us, and in addition to them, upon Christian and Moslem Albanians with whom our people have shared joy and sorrow for thirteen centuries now. To all of them we bring freedom, brotherhood and equality."

But he never practiced his own preaches.

Yes but  how do you intend to prove that this actually happened,and when?

Actual actions?Here you have some:

Leon Trotsky, writing this in January 1913 as an open letter in the (Menshevik) paper Luch ("The Ray") was addressing the "liberal" Russian chauvinist politician Pavel Miliukov:

Do not the facts, undeniable and irrefutable, force you to come to the conclusion that the Bulgars in Macedonia, the Serbs in old Serbia, in their national endeavor to correct data in the ethnological statistics that are not quite favorable to them, are engaged quite simply in systematic extermination of the Muslim population in the villages, towns and districts?

Quoting a Serbian soldier whose civil and political conscience had been revolted, Trotsky reported:

The horrors actually began as soon as we crossed the old frontier.... The darker the sky became, the more brightly the fearful illumination of the fires stood out against it. Burning was going on all around us. Entire Albanian villages had been turned into pillars of fire, dwellings, possessions accumulated by fathers and grandfathers were going up in flames, the picture was repeated the whole way to Skopje. There the Serbs broke into Turkish and Albanian houses and performed the same task in every case: plundering and killing. For two days before my arrival in Skopje the inhabitants had woken up to the sight of heaps of Albanian corpses with severed heads. Among the mass of soldiers you see Serb peasants who have come from every part of Serbia on the pretext of looking for their sons and brothers. They cross the plain of Kosovo and start plundering, from the area around Vranje the population has crossed over en masse into the Albanian villages to pick up whatever may catch the eye. Peasant women carry away even the doors and windows of Albanian houses.”

(See Leon Trotsky,The Balkan Wars—1912-1913, New York, 1980, p.267)

Fritz Magnussen, war correspondent for the Danish newspaper Riget

Serbian military activities in Macedonia have taken on the character of an extermination of the Arnaut population. The army is conducting an unspeakable war of atrocities. According to officers and soldiers, 3,000 Arnauts were slaughtered in the region between Kumanova / Kumanovo and Skopje and 5,000 near Prishtina. The Arnaut villages were surrounded and set on fire. The inhabitants were then chased from their homes and shot like rats. The Serbian soldiers delighted in telling me of the manhunts they had conducted.

Daily Telegraph

All the horrors of history have been outdone by the atrocious conduct of the troops of General Jankovic. On their march through Albania, the Serbs have treacherously slaughtered not only armed Albanians, but in their savagery even unarmed individuals - old people, women, children and babies at their mother's breasts.
    Drunk with victory, Serbian officers have proclaimed that the only way of pacifying Albania is to exterminate the Albanians. They slaughtered 3,000 people in the region between Kumanova / Kumanovo and Skopje alone. 5,000 Albanians were murdered by the Serbs in the Prishtina area. These people did not die with honour on the battlefield, but were slain in a series of gruesome raids. The Serbian soldiers have found new methods of butchery to satisfy their thirst for blood. Houses were set on fire in several villages and the inhabitants slaughtered like rats when they tried to flee the flames.

Anyone who denounces an Albanian to the Serbs can be sure that the Albanian will be executed. There were people who owed money to Moslem Albanians. They went and denounced them to the Serbs as traitors. The wretched Albanians were immediately hanged and the informers later found ways of acquiring the home and land of their victims for a ridiculously low price.

The following is from central Albania,not even in Kosova.

 The Albanische Korrespondenz reported from Trieste on 21 March 1913:

 The suffering in Albania has reached an unspeakable zenith. The Serbian troops who took Durrës (Durazzo) were immediately ordered to proceed into the countryside although no provision had been made for their food and drink. They were therefore forced to rely on food they confiscated from the population, which they did with exception cruelty. They took nine-tenths of all the stocks available, and refused to give written receipts for the goods they requisitioned.
    The Serbian troops not only confiscated goods for their own usage. They seized or destroyed all the food that fell into their hands. Ancient olive trees which had been planted in the Venetian period and had provided sustenance to generations were cut down by the Serbs. Farm animals were slain. No sheep, no chickens, no corn which the Serbs could get their hands on remained untouched. They conducted extensive raids and looted wherever they could. In Durrës (Durazzo), the Serbs loaded ships with carpets and other stolen goods for transportation to Salonika whence the cargo was transferred back to Belgrade. Even antique benches from the government offices in Durrës were confiscated and loaded onto the booty ships.

The following report was received from Durrës (Durazzo) on 6 March:

Serbian troops have burnt the following villages to the ground: Zeza, Larushk, Monikla, Sheh and Gromni. In Zeza, twenty women and girls were locked in their homes and burnt alive.
    The inhabitants of the village of Kruja-Kurbin have taken to the mountains, in order to save their lives, leaving behind all their possessions.

  On 20 March, the Neue Freie Presse reported:

On 7 March, the soldateska joined fanatic Orthodox priests in and around Gjakova / Djakovica to forcefully convert the Catholic population to the Orthodox faith. About 300 persons, men, women and children, among whom Pater Angelus Palic, were bound with ropes and forced under threat of death to convert. An Orthodox priest pointed to the soldiers standing by with their rifles in hand and said, "Either you sign the declaration that you have converted to the one true faith or these soldiers of God will send your souls to hell."
    All the prisoners then signed the forms prepared for them which contained a declaration of conversion to the Orthodox faith. Pater Angelus was the last. He was the only one of them who had the strength, in a calm and dignified manner, to refuse to give up his faith. Pater Angelus stood by his word, even when ordered three times to convert and even when entreated by the other forcefully converted Catholics. The result was one of the most appalling scenes imaginable in twentieth-century Europe.
    After a sign from the Orthodox priest, the soldiers fell upon the Franciscan, ripped off his tunic and began beating him with the butts of their rifles. Pater Angelus collapsed after several of his bones and ribs had been fractured. At this moment, the Orthodox priest stopped the soldiers and asked him if he was now willing to convert. Again he shook his head and said placidly, "No, I will not abandon my faith and break my oath." Pater Angelus was beaten with the rifle butts again until one of the soldiers plunged a bayonet through the priest's lungs and put an end to his suffering.

Personally I have nothing against ,but in that case Albanians in South Serbia should have the right to secede  and join Kosova.

In June NATO and Yugoslavia signed a peace accord outlining troop withdrawal and the return of nearly one million ethnic Albanians as well as another 500,000 displaced within the province.

Source  Britannica

The others are official data’s that you can find by your own.

That’s simply not true:

Be sure that the Serbian official history,doesn’t claim that we came from Caucasus,or  explain our presence with a post ww2 emigrantions,like you do.  

Our reap is Independence ,and i can show you photos too but its not my intention.As i said for me a church and a mosque are exactly the same thing. But this is is disgusting:

It makes me wonder if perhaps Vaso did have the right idea

First of all you have to bring here names.I don’t doubt that actually a English said that but at least have the decency to bring his name.

Some info about the Prizren league:

The Treaty of San Stefano triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in Constantinople--including Abdyl Frasheri, the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On June 10, 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly Muslim religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman vilayets, met in the Kosovo town of Prizren. The delegates set up a standing organization, the Prizren League, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The Prizren League worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin, which was called to settle the unresolved problems of Turkish War, demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.

The Sublime Porte, in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of Ulcinj. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only Thessaly and the small Albanian-populated district of Arta.

Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under Dervish Turgut Pasha to suppress the Prizren League and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The Prizren League's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the Prizren League effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+al0021)

You are speaking without thinking,and you don’t look very neutral.As I said I would like to see some proofs backing your statements:

Obviously you don’t know the difference between ignorance and stupidity,and as I said I never called you stupid.And spare me the rest please.

Here you have another NYT article:

 The World; Kosovo's Brutal Game of See-Saw

ANTAGONISMS between Serbs and Albanians have marked Kosovo's history since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Christian Serb forces seized the province in October 1912 during the first Balkan War. Massive recriminations against local Muslim Albanians followed, including the burning of villages and forced conversions, which were described by reporters, including the Vienna correspondent of the Ukrainian newspaper Kievskaia Mysl, Lev Bronshtein, later known as Leon Trotsky. At the time, Serbs made up about 25 percent of a population of about 300,000; most of the rest were Muslims who identified themselves as either Turks or Albanians. An estimated 20,000 Albanians were killed.

Under Serb rule, periodic revolts by Albanian guerrillas known as kacaks broke out. The Government confiscated land for Serb settlers, many of whom formed armed bands known as chetniks to fight the kacaks. Perhaps 70,000 Serbs settled between the wars; nearly 100,000 Albanians were driven out.

When Italy and Germany occupied Kosovo in 1941, the Albanians, armed by the fascists, forced out at least 40,000 Serbs and Montenegrins.

Then Tito's partisans took the province, after quelling a rebellion that left as many as 10,000 Albanians dead. Tito largely suppressed ethnic rivalries and in 1974 granted Kosovo autonomy; harassment of Serbs increased and perhaps as many as 50,000 left. Slobodan Milosevic, as Serbia's President, revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989. Some 200,000 Serbs were left -- 10 percent of the population. CHRIS HEDGES

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E6DA1030F93BA15750C0A96F958260