My meeting with Johan Mekkes in December 2000. He claimed to have killed Serbs for Albanian insurgents after NATO’s war with Yugoslavia had ended

After KFOR and the so-called International Community took control of Kosovo from June 12 1999, we allowed and supported Albanian guerrillas, call them terrorists if you like, to destabilize Serbia. In this article, I will take you on a journey through my personal experiences and encounters with these rebels as a journalist.

It is also likely that the rebel movement UÇPMB, the so-called Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanova, received US-style infantry training to fight the Serbs after June 12, 1999 when hostilities between NATO and Yugoslavia should have seized according to the Military Technical Agreement.

The book is available on Amazon

Together with my old colleague John Phillips, the former Balkan correspondent for The Times of London, we had many interesting experiences together covering the conflict in South Serbia and Macedonia in 2001. In his book Macedonia warlords and rebels in the Balkans, he wrote the following on page 2:

“American intelligence was active in Serbia and Kosovo but its operatives were evidently struggling to come to terms with the new era ushered in by the demise of Milošević’s brutal regime. An ethnic Albanian arrested by British troops for a bomb attack on a busload of Serb civilians in northern Kosovo, Florim Ejupi, was identified credibly as a CIA-trained agent months later after he vanished from American custody, for example.“

In his book, Phillips also mentions the British officer Bob Churcher of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst who observed in his paper Kosovo Lindore Preshevo 1991-2002 & The FYROM Conflict that the UÇPMB:

“also seem to have received training assistance from someone or some organisation training in an American military style. This became apparent both from the style of marching, complete with US-type marching songs, and the infantry tactics used. (The effectiveness of this was seen in November 2000 when a series of well coordinated infantry attacks demonstrated the UÇPMB’s ability to coordinate the use of 82mm mortars and to effectively “re-organise on the objective” -something that the Bosnian army never learnt in three years.)“

Whether the US support for the UÇPMB was direct or indirect through a company like the MPRI or similar, I do not know, but soon, I will have new and revealing information about events connected to this. However, I would like to publish this information first in Norwegian and English language media.

In the meantimes, you an old newsletter from December 2000, you can read the story Dutch sniper killing Serbs. Below you can also read you can read a couple of stories from my experiences as a  war reporter in South Serbia and Macedonia. It should also be noted that the UÇPMB has a Facebook page that has been recently updated.

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For those interested in how NATO ended up going to war against Yugoslavia, it could be very useful to read the book Fools’ Crusade, Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions from 2002 written by Diana Johnstone. In this article I have written a summary.

In her book, Johnstone explains the geopolitical mechanisms in for example Germany and the United States. For a German it would not be very pleasant to see how the reunified Germany first said that it would fight no more wars and later promoted nationalism instead of a multiethnic Yugoslavia. It is also interesting to see how Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was happy to see Albanians in Kosovo greet the German KFOR troops in 1999 with Nazi salutes from WWII.

Johnstone is somewhat controversial in some circles, and her book was even rejected in Sweden. However, I am not very surprised by the Swedish rejection because I know no other democracy where freedom of speech and a fair and open debate is suppressed as much as it is in Sweden. In the spirit of multiculturalism, Swedish media and politicians are ridiculously politically correct, and it is virtually impossible to be critical to the massive non-Western immigration or Islam without being labeled a racist. Please read a letter signed by Noam Chomsky.

I believe Diana Johnstone’s book is very well documented, and you should read the whole book if you can. However, if you are not able, please read my selected segments below. I have included the page numbers before every paragraph, and I have also included her footnotes where appropriate. In addition I have also added relevant hyperlinks for a better interactive reading. Continue reading →

In 1999, we, the international community, took full control of the rule of law and security in Kosovo,  but we failed to protect Serbs and non-Albanians and investigate crimes against them. As a former NATO officer, let me once again repeat my sincere personal apology.

The case of the Serbian mother S.C. in Prizren, who had her husband and son kidnapped and murdered by what was most probably members of the UÇK, is not much different from all the other cases of murder and ethnic cleansing of Serbs and non-Albanians after 1999. However, the difference with this case is that it has been through a thorough evaluation.

The Human Rights Advisory Panel, established to examine complaints of alleged human rights violations committed by or attributable to UNMIK, carried out an exhaustive investigation of this case, and you can also read its complete opinion and recommendations. Although it uses a lot of legal language, we can see very strong language for the failure to investigate these crimes. The panel has also published a press release with easier language on March 1, 2013.

We went to war against Yugoslavia in 1999, but we were not at all prepared to take responsibility for the rule of law in Kosovo. Our politicians thought war was an easy solution, but we kicked out Serbian police, judges and other law enforcement mechanisms, creating a power vacuum. As the panel writes in paragraphs 18 and 92,  the necessary police and justice structures were not in place before January 2003! Of course, we are suffering with this failure also today when we see that organized crime suffocates Kosovo.

Let me finish with the recommendations.The panel unanimously recommends that UNMIK:

1. urges EULEX and other competent authorities in Kosovo to take all possible steps in order to ensure that the criminal investigation into the disappearance and killing of the complainant’s family members is continued in compliance with article 2 of the ECHR and that the perpetrators are brought to justice;
2. publicly acknowledges responsibility for its failure to conduct an effective investigation into the disappearance and killing of the complainant’s family members and makes a public apology to the complainant and her family;
3. takes appropriate steps towards payment of adequate compensation to the complainant for moral damage;
4. takes appropriate steps towards the realisation of a full and comprehensive reparation programme;
5. takes appropriate steps at the United Nations as a guarantee of non repetition;
6. takes immediate and effective measures to implement the recommendations of the panel and to inform the complainant and the panel about further developments in this case.

Thank you to Branko Ilić for making me aware of this case. Read his article UNMIK: KLA murders in Kosovo were never investigated.

Some people have been contacting me asking if there is any English translation of two books written by  Thorvald Stoltenberg,  a former Norwegian foreign minister and from 1993-96 the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the former Yugoslavia. The two books of interest for people interested in the former Yugoslavia are  Det handler om mennesker or  It’s all about people from 2001 and De tusen dagene, fredsmeklere på Balkans or  Thousand Days, Peace Negotiators in the Balkans in English. I have been talking to Stoltenberg and he wants a wider audience for his books. Therefore I am publishing my summary of the two books, and it would be great if an English publisher would be interested in publishing the books in English. Continue reading →

Norwegian Air Force Major Dag Henriksen at the Norwegian Air Force Acadamy has written the excellent analysis Nato’s Gamble: Combining Diplomacy and Airpower in the Kosovo Crisis, 1998-1999, a book published in 2007. Henriksen has interviews with key officers, politicians and diplomats making the decisions about NATO’s war against Yugoslavia.

With the accounts from first hand sources, Henriksen tells the story how NATO went to war without having a clear political goal with the bombing and how the war rhetoric forced NATO into a corner where they had no other choice but to go to war in order to save face; he tells the story how NATO became an ally of the UÇK and how they became their surrogate army, and he tells the story how small NATO countries had little influence on the events.

When I talked to former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik in February this year, he claimed that his government was well informed about the different phases in the war, but these statements seems strange confronted with the documentation Henriksen provides. He writes for instance on page 25:

When I asked the Norwegian minister of defense, Eldbjørg Løwer, how she perceived political control regarding the transition from one phase to another, she said, “It was not evident when one moved from one phase to another. It was clear that the dynamics of events once the campaign started made it difficult to distinguish the phases. Norwegian foreign minister Knut Vollebæk confirmed the perception of the defense minister: The transition from one phase to another was not entirely clear – the dynamics of war influenced the process.  

If you are interested in an inside view how NATO thought before they went to war, you should get hold of this book. Below you can read my selection of quotes from the book, very interesting and revealing information.
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Unfortunately, none of those who were responsible for going to war against Yugoslavia will answer for their crimes in a court. Thorvald Stoltenberg was a former Norwegian foreign minister and from 1993-96 the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the former Yugoslavia. He has good reflections about war crimes tribunals and powerful nations in his book “Det handler om mennesker” or “It’s all about people” from 2001. My translation from pages 294-295:

A court that is not for all

In recent years I have thought a lot about the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Constantly I meet highly gifted people who believe that we live in a world where there is an international court that is beyond power relations and political realities.

This is not how it is. Not infrequently, I think back on the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945, at that time, over 55 years ago, I was very happy because I understood that the peace was closer. This bombing, that claimed at least 50,000 deaths, can hardly be described as anything but a crime against humanity.

No one was ever drawn to the responsibility, of course, because we won. What is right and just is still defined by the victors.

Yugoslavia is no exception. But let me be clear – as so long as the world is as it is, I prefer of course that the U.S. is the winner and loser types like Miloševic’. But the world has not yet come so far that we have managed to establish an independent tribunal for war crimes, where they themselves can decide about investigation and preparation for the court. The world’s strongest country will not risk this.

Currently, there are only losers and the weak parties that are presented in a war crimes tribunal. Therefore, it is significant that it is only for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda we have such courts. To put it clearly: Citizens of the United States, Britain, Russia, China, Germany and France will never be tried by an international war crimes tribunal, whatever they may be guilty of.

The border runs right there. Under France. From Italy and down it’s different. An Italian could face war crimes charges, like all of us who are not of the world’s most powerful nations.

It will take generations before we see a court that also prosecutes the citizens of the great powers, but it’s a goal there is every reason to work for. The day that happens, we will have taken a major step toward a world with stronger democratic institutions than we have today, in short, a better organized world.

We will also have come closer to a world where justice means more than power.