-----Original Message----- From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. <rosserjb at jmu.edu> To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu <pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu> Date: Friday, May 28, 1999 11:49 AM Subject: [PEN-L:7392] Re: (Fwd) Guardian editorial: DISPLACED PEOPLE... HARASSED, BUT NO
>Paul,
> Two points:
> 1) Apparently there is very hard evidence that for
>large numbers of those in the refugee camps there
>was a standard sequence of events: a) village or
>town shelled, b) door to door visits by Serbian troops
>or police or masked paramilitaries ordering the people
>to leave within five minutes or be killed (with those refusing
>having grenades tossed into their homes), c) males
>of certain ages being separated off, in some cases it
>is known that some or all of them were killed, in most it
>is unknown what happened to them and hopefully most of
>them will show up one or another, so to speak, d) the remaining
>people being told what route to leave by and where to go,
>e) in many cases there homes were destroyed after they
>left, f) in many cases their personal papers were destroyed
>and they were robbed, g) a lot of other unpleasant personal
>stuff has been done to them before they got out finally.
> 2) Your argument, repeated in this posting, that it is
>reasonable for defensive purposes for the Serbians to wish
>to create a cordon sanitaire near the borders of Albania and
>Macedonia is very reasonable. This is all the more so as
>we see increasing evidence of a "stealth" effort to escalate
>towards a ground troop invasion from one of those countries
>(although Macedonia has declared that it will allow no such
>thing). This is a very serious and scary move.
> However, this argument does not explain two things:
>a) why have people been expelled from areas quite far from
>the borders, e.g. from Pristina? b) why were they not moved
>in and away from the border rather than totally expelled from
>the country?
> You have made some very useful and important points that
>I have not seen repeated much in these discussions (Lou, you
>should put these in your forthcoming history!). One is that
>the Rugova regime did not respond to the moderate Milan
>Panic regime's openings in the early 90s. Their failure to do
>so certainly encouraged the return of the hardliners (no names
>today) in Belgrade, just as the policies of those hardliners
>encouraged the irredentism of the Albanian political leaders.
> The other is the failure of NATO to stop the shipment of
>arms across the Albanian border more recently. Of course
>Albania is not a NATO member and until recently did not have
>much in the way of NATO troops. But the failure to make such
>an effort and the siding up with the "politically incoherent" (not
>to mention corrupt and generally nasty) UCK/KLA at
>Rambouillet is something that cannot be defended and certainly
>contributed severely to the current awful (and getting worse)
>situation.
> Aside to Lou: Actually the timing of things that I have been
>recounting here has been from my memory. I followed these
>events closely as they happened and remember full well when
>Vukovar was attacked and when the Croats counterattacked
>later and drove the Serbs out of Krajina and (eastern) Slavonia.
>It was this ground assault that led a certain leader to cut deals
>at Dayton, deals that for all their problems are still mostly holding.
>It is rather amazing that this war has not spilled over into Bosnia-
>Herzegovina, not yet anyway.
> To anyone who wants to justify the Serb assaults in both
>Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosmet: What if in the early 90s
>the leader of Russia had decided to a) bomb Lithuania for
>seceding from the USSR, b) arm and support Russian
>guerrillas in the Crimea to separate from Ukraine and to
>force all non-Russians to leave, c) do the same in northern
>Kazakhstan, and d) deal with the Chechens by invading
>and expelling most of the population forcibly? Would the
>appropriate response be to talk about how all of this was
>justified by US plots against the USSR, fascist links in the
>past by some Baltic and Ukrainian separatists, and the
>sexism, clannishness, and high birth rates occurring among
>the Muslim Kazakhs and Chechens?
>Barkley Rosser
>-----Original Message-----
>From: phillp2 at Ms.UManitoba.CA <phillp2 at Ms.UManitoba.CA>
>To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu <pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu>
>Date: Friday, May 28, 1999 12:37 AM
>Subject: [PEN-L:7364] (Fwd) Guardian editorial: DISPLACED PEOPLE...
>HARASSED, BUT NO
>
>
>
>------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
>Date sent: Thu, 27 May 1999 15:32:34 -0700
>To: ccpa at policyalternatives.ca
>From: Sid Shniad <shniad at sfu.ca>
>Subject: Guardian editorial: DISPLACED PEOPLE... HARASSED, BUT NOT
>NECESSARILY WORSE
>
>The Guardian (London and Manchester) Wednesday May 26, 1999
>
>Editorial:
>
>DISPLACED PEOPLE... HARASSED, BUT NOT NECESSARILY WORSE
>
>The recent UN mission to Kosovo represented an opportunity for
>objective observers to test the truth of some of the allegations made
>against the Serbs since the war began. Sergio Vieira de Mello, its
>leader, will be reporting in full to the UN Secretary General, Kofi
>Anan, later this week. The mission had just three days in Kosovo,
>and members were not able to visit all the areas they had wished to
>see, but they were able to talk to many displaced Kosovo
>Albanians. The initial impression, voiced by de Mello at a press
>conference in Montenegro earlier this week, is that 'there has been
>an attempt at displacing internally and externally a shocking number
>of civilians.' The arrival of yet more refugees at the Macedonian
>border this week shows that this tragic displacement continues.
>Indeed, whenever a pause in such departures leads to the hope that
>the uprooting of Kosovans may have ended, it seems that a fresh
>exodus is reported.
>
>But the release by the Serbians at the weekend of a large number of
>young men who had been presumed murdered underlines with what
>care these issues should be treated. We do not yet know enough
>about what has happened in Kosovo to throw about words like
>'genocide' or to use the phrase 'ethnic cleansing' without
>modification. Ethnic cleansing has certainly happened, but whether
>all of it was fully willed by the Serbs must remain an open question.
>At one end of the spectrum there is crude counter insurgency war,
>in which villages in areas where there was Kosovo Liberation Army
>activity were shelled, police and para-military units moved in, and
>villagers fled, some of them not stopping until they reached a
>foreign country. At the other, we have the Serbian authorities
>laying on buses and trains to the border. What we know suggests
>that for a year or more the Serbs were certainly ready to clear
>people out of areas they wanted to deny to the KLA, and did not
>much care where those people went. How the Nato bombing
>campaign affected this strategy, apart from quickening the pace of
>operations, is not clear. Yet it is probable that some of what
>happened was inadvertent or unplanned. The Serbs cannot be
>excused, but they should not be accused of crimes for which there
>is so far no hard evidence. The worse that has been charged might
>turn out to be true, but we ought to pause before assuming that
>every accusation made against the Serbs is a proven thing.
>
>
>