The Kosovo Crisis (Part Four), The Effects of Intervention

NATO may have won a military campaign in the Balkans, but the effects of this involvement prove it to be an unmitigated failure. Under NATO’s watch Kosovo has instituted a program of ethnic cleansing against the Serbs, become a breeding ground for terrorism, and a center of drug and sexual trafficking.

James Jatras, the director of the American Council for Kosovo, has said that, far from the usual claims that NATO stopped a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in 1999, the past nine years have seen a slow-motion genocide in progress against the province's Christian Serbian population under the nose of the U.N. and NATO, and at times with their facilitation. In regards to this a UN official stated “What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background.”

Two-thirds of the Serbian population of Kosovo along with similar proportions of other groups (Roma, Gorani, Croats and all the Jews), have already been expelled and prevented from returning safely to their homes. At a Serb monastery in Pec Italian troops protect the holy site, which is surrounded by a massive new wall to shield elderly nuns from stone-throwing and other abuse by passing ethnic Albanians. Countless cemeteries have been intentionally defiled. Over 150 churches and monasteries have been destroyed, with crosses and icons of Christ attracting particular vandalistic rage, a testament to Kosovo Albanians' supposed secularism and pro-Western orientation. By intervening on behalf of only one side the West has allowed the Albanians of Kosovo to oppress the Serbs without fear of reprisal. For the moment the Serbs are tempted to defend themselves the memory of the brutal bombing of 1999 comes to mind. Western intervention did not prevent a humanitarian crisis, it created one. For instead of preventing genocide, Western involvement facilitated it.

Terrorism is another consequence of the NATO intervention. Beginning with the conflict in Bosnia, much like it had done in the conflict in Afghanistan a decade earlier, the United States began to encourage radical Muslims to enter the region and join the fight. These Muslims did not return to the Middle East after the conflict was over, but rather, just like in Afghanistan, they set up terrorist operations in the region. Since then, hundreds of new Saudi-funded mosques fomenting the extreme Wahhabi doctrine have sprung up. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has warned: "Kosovo will be a weak state susceptible to radical Islamist influence from outside the region, with the support from some Albanians, in other words, a potential gate for radicalism to enter Europe."

It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as a base for al-Qaida operations, that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida, and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province. Jihadists from Yemen to Chechnya have joined or financially supported the KLA.

Already these radicals in Kosovo have been linked to the missile that struck the US embassy in Athens in 2006 and the explosives used in the London and Madrid train bombings. Further, both the London and Madrid bombings were planned in Kosovo with members of the KLA. Finally, four of the six defendants of the jihad terror plot to attack Fort Dix, NJ were Albanian Muslims from Kosovo.

By encouraging radical Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan the United States allowed the creation of a terrorist run state that in turn attacked it. In the same way its recent involvement in Kosovo and the empowerment of the KLA has already, and will continue, to haunt the West as Kosovo becomes a launching ground for terrorist attacks. Much like Afghanistan before it, Kosovo has ties to al-Qaida and Bin Laden, is becoming a safe haven and launching ground for terror activity, and is active in the global narcotics trade.

Organized crime is used to fund these terrorist operations. Within only six months of the NATO intervention Kosovo was one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. The KLA had long been involved in trafficking, but now, with the backing of Washington they became the defacto rulers of Kosovo. This allowed them to extend their operations. Their drug network exists throughout all of Europe and has even made significant in roads as far away as New York and California. The proceeds for this smuggling go to fund their already mentioned terrorist operations.

Even worse is the explosion of the sex trade in the region. According to a May 2004 report by Amnesty International, “Since the deployment in July 1999 of an international peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) civilian administration, Kosovo has become a major destination country for women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution.” Girls are being both trafficked into Kosovo from other Balkan countries and taken from Kosovo and shipped out of the region. This process began less than three months after the deployment of international forces and police officers to Kosovo.

In this report, one girl explained the conditions she existed in while she was held in Kosovo. After being kidnapped and transported to Kosovo she was locked inside a bar and forced into prostitution. She explained, “In the bar I was never paid, I could not go out by myself, the owner became more and more violent as the weeks went by; he was beating me and raping me and the other girls. We were his ‘property’, he said. By buying us, he had bought the right to beat us, rape us, starve us, force us to have sex with clients." Another girl complained that she was forced to have sex 2,700 times in less than one year. She was subjugated to group sex and sex at gunpoint. All the while her owner earned more than 200,000 Deutschmarks.

Worst of all, many of these girls are forced to serve international soldiers and police officers. The very people brought into the region to protect serve and protect it, are exploiting and bringing further misery to its citizenry. A recent report by the European Commission states that there has been no progress made during the past few years in combating organized crime and sexual slavery. For the girls trapped in bondage, Western involvement made life much worse than it had ever been.

This is the basest of all exploitation and brutality. NATO’s involvement destroyed order and empowered a terrorist organization that promotes and benefits from these despicable acts. The rulers the West has empowered are not keepers of law, but allowers of evil. They have cleansed the Serbs from the region, they peddle drugs to fund terrorism, and they traffic young girls. Considering these consequences we must ask ourselves if meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation-state is such a good idea.