http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/21/delivering-serbs-to-the-wolves
The Balkans Wars may be over, but the European Union continues its biased attempt at geopolitical social engineering. As always, the principal victims are ethnic Serbs.
Serbia and Kosovo last month announced an agreement for Belgrade’s de facto recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The parties have been squabbling over the pact’s implementation, but the delay likely is merely temporary.
The winners and losers are obvious. Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic admitted: “I’m not saying that the agreement is good, but at this stage we could not get anything better.” The EU offered fulsome congratulations to itself for imposing the plan — by threatening to block Serbian accession to the organization. In fact, since intervening in the Balkans roughly two decades ago Europe and the U.S. have followed only one consistent policy: the Serbs always lose. Even if that meant acquiescing to human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing by the West’s allies.
The Balkans was an inadvertent casualty of the end of the Cold War. Yugoslavia was an artificial creation out of World War I that united antagonistic ethnic groups. After World War II the threat of Soviet intervention helped hold Yugoslavia together. However, long-time dictator Josip Broz Tito died in 1980 and the Cold War ended a decade later. The country’s disintegration was accelerated by Slobodan Milosevic’s use of Serbian nationalism to gain power.
In 1990 nationalists won elections in various Yugoslav republics, which began declaring independence the following year. Civil war erupted in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. Fighting in the latter was particularly vicious. Serb forces were brutal, but no side was innocent of atrocities. The West, however, preferred to see only Serbian crimes, intervening to impose the Dayton accords, which allowed ethnic Muslims and Croats in Bosnia to secede from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, but required ethnic Serbs to remain in Muslim-dominated Bosnia.
Allied policy toward Croatia was particularly grotesque. The West supported the anti-Semitic nationalist Franjo Tudjman, even training Croatian forces that conducted the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing — essentially wiping Serbs out of their historic homeland in Croatia’s Krajina region — until Kosovo. However, Washington and Brussels declined to criticize Zagreb for its atrocities. Years later the region remained scarred by war, dotted with wrecked homes, empty churches, and bullet-marked buildings, courtesy of allied policy.
Kosovo was the final piece of Yugoslavia to separate through war. The historic heartland of Serbian culture, Kosovo was transformed over the years, resulting in an ethnic Albanian majority. During local self-rule the minority ethnic Serb population suffered. When Milosevic reestablished central government control, ethnic Albanians suffered. The result was a violent struggle in which insurgents, described as “terrorists” by one U.S. diplomat, and security forces traded brutalities.
Although Western governments largely ignored mass slaughter in Africa, they declared their shock and horror at the deaths of hundreds of white Europeans. After unsuccessfully attempting to convince Belgrade to voluntarily cede control of Kosovo and give the allies free military access throughout Serbia, NATO launched its first war — against a country that had neither attacked nor threatened to attack any alliance member.
