Macedonia Being Maneuvered into a Kosovo Solution
By Joel Skousen
I have long predicted that what happened in Kosovo was not accidental but
the first application of a new formula of intervention by the West designed to
irritate and antagonize Eastern bloc countries that have been historically
allied with the old Soviet Union. The long-term strategy is to build up the
image of the West as aggressors to help Russia justify the coming war against
the US. Macedonia, the southernmost territory of the former Yugoslavia, is the
next victim.
The majority of Macedonians are Christian Slavs with close ties to Serbia. The rest compose an Albanian Muslim minority whose relatively minor grievances are being amplified to serve as the spark igniting sufficient unrest to justify NATO intervention. Incursions from NLA Albanian guerrillas (a branch of the US-trained and equipped KLA army) into northwestern Macedonia are ongoing and, as noted by local observers, ALWAYS originate from US-controlled regions of Kosovo. US KFOR troops have tracked NLA movements across the border nightly, but do nothing to stop them. In the latest moves, NATO has prepared a force of 3,000 European troops to be ready to "disarm" the NLA as soon as a suitable "negotiated settlement" can be foisted upon the Macedonian government. Such negotiated settlements always involve giving some form of legitimacy to the "rebels" which they could never achieve by fighting. Even the coming disarmament maneuver overseen by NATO will be a sham, as it was in Kosovo. In Kosovo, the KLA was allowed to hide their personal weapons in houses and put away their large military weapons in KLA controlled weapons depots, and thus be certified as disarmed.
The US says they are not providing troops, only logistical support. It seems that logistical support involves over 700 US military personnel. Whenever the US downplays the involvement of its own troops, Americans would do well to remember that when US involvement in Bosnia started, President Clinton promised that the troops would be in place less than a year. One delay led to another. US troops are still in Bosnia, and the US has ceased to remember the continual lies and deception of its own government. Congress no longer complains about this indefinite deployment. Slowly we are being drawn into a planned future conflict that will have Americans someday wondering, "How did this all happen?" It happens one small step at a time.
This strategy is complex and difficult to follow because those that conspire to implement the New World Order are adept at playing both sides of the fence in any conflict. Below I will quote from a piece on Macedonia written by Jan Oberg, entitled A Prelude to Military Intervention. Oberg is a Swedish pacifist and the director of TFF (http://www.transnational.org), who is rightfully suspicious of his own government’s involvement in the NWO. His analysis is particularly compelling in its depiction of how the US operates continuously from two opposite sides of the issue to create a destabilization, all in the name of stability. Emphasis added is mine.
"These days I am reminded of my conversation in the early 1990s with the first representative of the United States to independent Macedonia. Two things came out clearly: no matter the question I asked him he said that the policies of the United States aimed at stability; second, if he had any knowledge about the Balkans in general and Macedonia in particular he kept it to himself. Today, we should not be surprised if stability, the post-Cold War buzz-word, in reality means instability or de-stabilization.
"On June 4, in Washington Post, retired Ambassador William G. Walker, condemned the Macedonian government for treating the Albanians as second-class citizens and, when it comes to its military response to fighting the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA), compares it with Milosevic. He advocates a stronger high-level US involvement by hosting a Dayton-like conference (not a word about the EU) and insists that NLA shall participate as it is a legitimate actor with popular support.
"Further, he believes that a recent agreement brokered by American Ambassador Robert Frowick, the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office for the situation in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, between the two main Albanian parties and the NLA should be welcomed. (Incidentally it was signed outside Macedonia, close to Prizren in Kosovo, and behind the back of the Macedonian political leadership and, thus, Frowick was considered persona non grata). The EU's reaction to it indicates a deep rift with the US.
"So, who is William Walker? A former persona non grata in Yugoslavia where he headed OSCE's Kosovo Verifiers' Mission, KVM, negotiated in October 1998 between US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and President Milosevic. It is public knowledge that his mission had a substantial CIA component and that his verdict on the spot in Racak that Milosevic was behind that massacre lacked every evidence at the time. Today he is an honorary board member of National Albanian American Council's ‘Hands of Hope Campaign.’ To give you the flavor of the group: one of its honorary co-chairs is Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel who, over the years, have delivered more factually incorrect and propagandistic statements on Kosovo than most.
"But there are other American policy-makers. Listen to State Department's Mr. [Richard] Boucher on June 6. He calls NLA in Macedonia ‘extremists’ and ‘insurgents’ - - much like Lord Robertson of NATO always calls these NATO/KFOR- and US-supported insurgents ‘thugs’! Boucher talks in terms of ‘ethnic Albanian violence’ and states that ‘we have never seen a role for them [NLA/terrorists] in the political negotiations.’ He adds that NLA proves ‘every day that they are not interested in addressing real concerns and needs of the Albanian community.’
"In contrast to Mr. Frowick's private diplomacy with NLA and to Walker's embrace of them as legitimate, Mr. Boucher sides with the Macedonian government. It has, he says, taken the right path, ‘the path of inter-ethnic dialogue, to address the concerns of all citizens of Macedonia together with a continuation of their measured response to extremist provocations.’ He sees no contradiction between dialogue and military response.
Then he is asked what he thinks about William Walker's article in Washington Post and answers: ‘Yes, that doesn't make sense at all. Anyway he is a former colleague.’
"To complete the picture, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld visits the region and lauds the American presence and the NATO/KFOR forces in Kosovo, conveniently forgetting that they and his country's bombing are the main causes of the de-stabilization of Macedonia. He expresses his support for the Macedonian state and its National Unity Government and condemns the violence of the (US-armed and -trained) UCK/NLA!
"As mentioned in earlier TFF Press Infos, it is common knowledge that CIA and the American firm Military Professional Resources Inc, MPRI, are among those who have made UCK/KLA possible. After officially having been disarmed and dissolved in September 1999, KLA/UCK must have been permitted to pass through the American NATO/KFOR sector in Kosovo to conduct military activities in Southern Serbia (under the name UCPMB) and now in Macedonia (NLA/UCK/ONA).
"In other words, without the active help of at least one branch of the American foreign policy establishment, the present fighting in Macedonia would hardly have been possible. No matter how much people like Walker emphasize internal ethnic problems in Macedonia, it remains an indisputable fact that the militarization of local tension, which was made possible by NATO's disgraceful terror bombing of Yugoslavia and the subsequent occupation of Kosovo, is the work of foreign actors. The rhetoric about human rights is just a facade.
The US Bondsteel Base in Kosovo, the largest built by the United States since Vietnam, signals a considerable strategic interest in the triangle made up of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Caucasus, the oil fields of the latter becoming increasingly important. Huge oil pipelines will go through the Balkans, as do Transport Corridors 8 and 10, and all of it is, of course, part of a game way beyond human rights, humanitarian concerns, democratization, tolerance and civil society empowerment. [Well intentioned people from the left always see the conspiracy in terms of capitalist greed, and fail to see the overall global purpose of destroying national sovereignty.]
"It is also quite easy to see Kosovo and Macedonia in the light of NATO expansionism, present and future. It relates to three world order goals: containment of Russia; US/NATO marginalization of the UN and OSCE as peacekeeping organizations, and a long-term development of a Second Cold War. The main building block of the latter is the systematic antagonization of the Chinese, the Russians and others who do not obey a US-centered world order." [Oberg is partially wrong here. He doesn’t understand the nature of the two western factions trying to control the NWO, nor does he understand that the controlling US/British faction is actually covering for and assisting Russia and China’s military build-up, and the "long term development" he mentions is not of a "Second Cold War" related to the "military industrial complex" but, rather, a Third HOT World War.]
In typical Hegelian fashion, it appears that someone is preparing a catalyst for direct NATO intervention. Suddenly from out of nowhere a new paramilitary group is supposedly emerging and threatening Macedonia with "ethnic cleansing." This new group, called Macedonia paramilitary 2000 (a very suspicious sounding name) claims that in response to US pressure on Macedonian president Boris Trajkovsky, they will begin cleansing Albanian villages in Macedonia which refuse to distance themselves from the NLA extremist. Frankly, I find this hard to believe. Everyone knows what happens when "rogue militias" start to do ethnic cleansing: NATO is forced to intervene militarily. Who would be stupid enough to refer to their secret organization as a "paramilitary" group and announce in advance their intention to start cleansing the opposition? This follows a pattern of "creating a phony" enemy that happens all the time in Latin America. The leftist media begins to run stories about private "right-wing death squads" as an excuse for US intervention and a forced "cease fire" between leftist guerrillas and pro-western government forces. The resulting coalition government always becomes dominated by the Left. Later, it becomes known that the CIA funded these paramilitary organs and provided them with arms, creating an atmosphere that paints all opposition to the Left as evil killers. I suspect the same is happening in Macedonia.
WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF (excerpt) June 22, 2001 Copyright Joel Skousen. Quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief. Website: http://www.joelskousen.com
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