BALKAN WITNESS
Articles on the Kosovo Conflict: Commentary

Historical Background   Documents   Commentary   Non-violent Solutions Reports from the Area of Conflict   Kosovo Albanians in Serbian Prisons    Post-War Kosovo   Post-War Serbia Kosovo Independence Bosnia   Croatia   Macedonia Special compilation: the Racak Massacre War-crimes Deniers

Note: Each article shown below represents the opinion of the author, and not necessarily of anyone else.

NEW Heads in the sand by Ian Williams, February 16, 2008
The Renegade by Charles Simic, New York Review of Books, December 20, 2007
Flag on the Mountain: A Political Anthropology of War in Croatia and Bosnia Reviewed by Marko Hoare, July 2007
The Scholars' Initiative: Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies 2001-2005
Ariel Sharon's support for Milosevic Robert Fisk, January 2006
Anthropology and genocide in the Balkans Thomas Cushman, Anthropological Theory, 2004 PDF
Aristotle in Belgrade Lawrence Weschler, 2004
The Balkan Wars and the New World Dis/Order David Watson, Fifth Estate, January 2002
Slobo to Expose Western Cynicism Alan Little, IWPR, June 29, 2001
FAIR Misrepresents the Racak Massacre Roger Lippman, April 30, 2001
Reconsidering Rambouillet Alex J. Bellamy, April 2001 For PDF version, click here.
Kosovo: The Devil and the Details Roger Lippman, Peter Lippman, and David Lippman, October 24, 2000
Mediating Denial Martin Shaw, June 2000
How Project Censored Joined the Whitewash of Serb Atrocities David Walls May 2, 2000 (Revised for publication in New Politics, Summer 2002)
Empire and Exterminism David Watson, New Internationalist, May 2000
Seven Misconceptions about the Organized Atrocities in Kosovo Michael Sells, April 15, 2000
Left Behind: The American Left and Kosovo Ian Williams, Human Rights Review, Jan-Feb 2000
Kosovo Fascism, Albanians' Shame Veton Surroi, Koha Ditore (Pristina), August 25, 1999
Peace will not come easily to Kosovo Peter Lippman, Seattle Times, August 13, 1999
Facing Up to Genocide: The Obligation to Intervene, by Holly Burkhalter, Physicians for Human Rights, 1999
Moving Serbia Towards Democracy U.S. Institute of Peace, June 21, 1999
Serbia Under the Threat of Fascism Interview with Bogdan Bogdanovic, June 18, 1999
Letter to the Washington Free Press (Seattle) Roger Lippman, June 17, 1999
The GOP Right, the Belgrade Lobby, and the Neo-Confederacy Michael Sells, June 14, 1999
Protecting Kosovo's Cultural Treasures Michael Sells, June 1, 1999
Kosovo and the Left: Serbian Atrocities and U.S. Intervention Roger Lippman, June, 1999
Letter to the Serbian Democratic Movement International Helsinki Federation For Human Rights, May 18, 1999
Before the Deluge: Agani's Last Interview Anthony Borden, IWPR, May 15, 1999
Why Are We In Kosovo? Susan Sontag, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 1999
Serbian aim to kill all Kosovans is nothing new Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times, April 30, 1999
The Case Against Inaction Bogdan Denitch and Ian Williams, The Nation, April 26, 1999
The Balkan Endgame Sonja Biserko, Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. April 24, 1999
The Reason Why Tony Judt, New York Review of Books, April 22, 1999
The UN's Surprising Support Ian Williams, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, April 19, 1999
Wars and the Man William Finnegan, The New Yorker, April 19, 1999
Kosovo Is Echoed Across The World Wole Soyinka, The London Independent, April 19, 1999
U. of Washington scholar's fears of Kosovo problem ignored Seattle Times, April 17, 1999
The Case Against Inaction Ian Williams, The Tribune (England), April 13, 1999
Against the Double Blackmail Slavoj Zizek, April 13, 1999
Beyond victimhood? Lawrence Weschler, The New Yorker, April 12, 1999
Statement on Genocide Holly Burkhalter, Advocacy Director, Physicians for Human Rights. April 9, 1999
Potential wealth plays hidden role in conflict Carole Hodge, The Scotsman newspaper, April 7, 1999
Kosovo Disaster Martin Woollacott, The Guardian (U.K.), April 2, 1999
The Amber Bubble of Cold-War Reflexes Andras Riedlmayer, April 1, 1999
Kosovar Conundrum Bogdan Denitch, L.A. Weekly, March 31, 1999
Kosovo Contradictions Anthony Borden, Institute for War and Peace Reporting. February, 1999

Summaries of articles listed above

NEW Heads in the sand There may be practical arguments against Kosovo's independence, but citing international law ignores the genocide committed by Belgrade. By Ian Williams, February 16, 2008

The Renegade Smug in their ethnocentricity, certain of their own superiority, indifferent to the cultural, religious, and political concerns of their neighbors, all the Serbs needed in 1990 was a leader to lead them into disaster. The most repellent crimes in the former Yugoslavia had the enthusiastic support of people whose education and past accomplishments would lead one to believe that they would know better. The role of the patriotic intellectual in Serbia was to make excuses for the killers of women and children. As for journalists and political commentators, their function was to spread lies and then prove that these lies were true. I was being asked by my own people to become an accomplice in a crime by pretending to understand and forgive acts that I knew were unforgivable. By Charles Simic, New York Review of Books, December 20, 2007

Flag on the Mountain: A Political Anthropology of War in Croatia and Bosnia Today, much of politics involves battles over symbols and signifiers in which intellectual rigour is largely abandoned. Ivo Zanic's book Flag on the Mountain: A Political Anthropology of War in Croatia and Bosnia is a brilliant study of how motifs drawn from the common post-Ottoman cultural heritage of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims were manipulated in an often contradictory manner by politicians and warlords from all three nationalities for the purposes of self-legitimisation and nationalist mobilisation during the 1990s. Yet it is a study that will be of wider interest for anyone wishing to understand the politics of symbolism and the manipulation of ideological heritages. Reviewed by Marko Hoare, July 2007

The Scholars' Initiative: Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies 2001-2005 An international effort to resolve lingering questions about the decade of wars in former Yugoslavia. The initiative created research teams combining reputable scholars from the Balkan region with their counterparts in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and elsewhere. The groups addressed historical flashpoints created by the conflicts, with the goal of writing a history - anchored in solid scholarship - by consensus. Among the questions considered:
    ·    Was the collapse of Yugoslavia inevitable?
    ·    Is there bias in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)?
    ·    What would have happened if NATO had not intervened in Kosovo in 1999?

Ariel Sharon's support for Milosevic Sharon has made it clear that there is a similarity between Milosevic's attitude towards Kosovo and Sharon's attitude towards the Palestinians. -- Robert Fisk, January 2006

Anthropology and genocide in the Balkans During the war in the former Yugoslavia and after, the history of events included a steadfast denial of and indifference toward the crimes committed there. This denial was perpetrated by political elites, but they did not do so alone. In fact, the denial that genocide was occurring in the Balkans was written by policy consultants, public intellectuals, and academic experts, including several key anthropologists, all of whom provided the conceptual and analytical apparatus which legitimated indifference in the face of the worst crimes against humanity to have occurred in Europe since the Second World War.
In the case of legal and social-scientific analysis of the war, there was a distinct class of experts who aided and abetted this indifference by providing analytical and conceptual justifications for it. By denying the reality of events in the Balkans, such experts provided the cultural legitimation for indifference and non-intervention to prevent genocide and other crimes against humanity. -- Thomas Cushman, Anthropological Theory, 2004 (PDF)

Aristotle in Belgrade On the Serbian opposition to Milosevic -- Lawrence Weschler, 2004

The Balkan Wars and the New World Dis/Order  The so-called radical movement is losing its sense of complexity, of history, of ambivalence, and ultimately its own humanity. Most ostensible oppositionist discourse on the Balkans has sunk to conspiracy mongering and holocaust denial, or to the nostrums of diplomatic conflict-resolution, or to crass and aggressive apologetics for mass murderers. Healthy ethical reasoning is driven out by paranoia and dogmatism.-- David Watson, Fifth Estate, Spring 2002

Slobo to Expose Western Cynicism When Milosevic takes the stand at The Hague he will give chapter and verse on the deals he did with those who came to try to make peace - how much they knew, how much they tacitly agreed to. -- Alan Little, IWPR, June 29, 2001

FAIR Misrepresents the Racak Massacre In claiming that there is “new evidence casting doubt on claims that the bodies were civilian victims of a massacre,” Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting endorses a biased and error-filled article on Racak. FAIR misrepresents the position of Dr. Helena Ranta, the forensic pathologist who investigated the Racak massacre. FAIR's article is at odds with substantial previous (and subsequent) credible documentation on the Racak incident. -- Roger Lippman, April 30, 2001

Reconsidering Rambouillet The Rambouillet negotiations provide one of the greatest 'what-ifs' of the Kosovo war. The British anti-war movement used Rambouillet to justify its arguments against NATO. They contended that the Interim Settlement offered there was deliberately unworkable and designed solely to offer a pretext for bombing Yugoslavia. This article challenges this view, which has become the orthodox position within media and academic circles. After detailing five key anti-war arguments, it argues that Rambouillet offered the best chance for peace in Kosovo. The article returns to Rambouillet to take up John Pilger's challenge to decipher 'what really happened'. It shows that under the Settlement, the role of KFOR would have been limited and the supreme authorities would have been indigenous. The article demonstrates that the Yugoslav government never accepted the core principles of the negotiating process, such as the principle of autonomy, and that it was this intransigence that necessitated NATO's war to save Kosovo. -- Alex J. Bellamy, April 2001   For PDF version, click here.

Kosovo: The Devil and the Details A progressive visits the scene of some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II and then writes about it without any acknowledgement of who the victims were. We respond. -- Roger Lippman, Peter Lippman, and David Lippman, October 24, 2000

Mediating Denial A critical review of Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward Herman. In twenty-first century war, media are battlefields. Those who would expose a simple 'truth' in complex situations often perpetrate a distortion quite as fundamental as the media they criticize. So it is with this volume, with contributors extravagantly lauded as 'the world's leading authorities' on the subject of media in NATO's Kosovo war, and who turn out to be far from disinterested participants in the world struggles they analyze. The review covers, among other topics, the book's denial of the Serbian slaughter in Kosovo and its denigration of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. -- Martin Shaw, June 2000

How Project Censored Joined the Whitewash of Serb Atrocities Project Censored's coverage of Kosovo and Bosnia lacks historical perspective and relies on biased, discredited sources. -- David Walls May 2, 2000 (Revised for publication in New Politics, Summer 2002)

Empire and Exterminism The imperial arrogance and hypocrisy of NATO’s war, its incompetence, its cowardly and contemptible willingness to harm civilians in order to safeguard its pilots, were all sickening. Still, it was stunning to see solidarity activists in the West essentially apologizing for a regime that had perpetrated genocide in Bosnia, and that was carrying out a pogrom in Kosovo even before NATO’s ultimatum. The Left’s largely exclusive focus on damage to Serbian civil society, its repetition of Serb nationalist disinformation, and its willingness to downplay and deny Serb violence against the Albanians was at least as morally numb as mindless support for the war. -- David Watson, New Internationalist, May 2000

Seven Misconceptions about the Organized Atrocities in Kosovo The writer responds to each of these points. -- Michael Sells, April 15, 2000

Left Behind: The American Left and Kosovo The war in Kosovo split the American left. However, it did not create the fissures, rather it revealed that beneath the spurious unity of support for socialism, there were two very different conceptions of politics. One that put humanitarian concerns and human rights as, not only the first item on the agenda, but the reason for having an agenda at all, and the other that saw these as occasionally and expediently useful rallying calls for struggles against imperialism and the ruling class. -- Ian Williams, Human Rights Review, Jan-Feb 2000

Kosovo Fascism, Albanians' Shame Today's Albanian violence - more than two months after the arrival of NATO forces - is more than simply an emotional reaction. It is the organised and systematic intimidation of all Serbs simply because they are Serbs and therefore are being held collectively responsible for what happened in Kosovo. Such attitudes are fascist. Moreover, it was against these very same attitudes that the people of Kosovo stood up and fought, at first peacefully and then with arms, during the past 10 years. -- Veton Surroi, Koha Ditore (Pristina), August 25, 1999

Peace will not come easily to Kosovo A couple of weeks ago in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, I observed a protest demonstration. A couple of thousand people wound silently through the center of town carrying signs that read, "Release Our Loved Ones," and "Act Now, Tomorrow Will Be Too Late." The demonstrators were protesting the ongoing detention of up to 5,000 Albanian political prisoners in Serbian jails.
All raw emotions are on display in the streets of Kosovo: joy at the first taste of freedom, rage at the atrocities committed by Serbs during the NATO intervention, grief at the widespread loss of family, property and livelihood, and fear of the chaos and insecurity that the future may bring. -- Peter Lippman, Seattle Times, August 13, 1999

Serbia Under the Threat of Fascism Former mayor of Belgrade Bogdan Bogdanovic discusses the nature of Serbian nationalism. -- Published in Monitor (Podgorica, Montenegro), June 18, 1999

Moving Serbia Towards Democracy This article cautions against isolating Serbia or assigning collective guilt to the Serbian people. It suggests steps to revitalize democratic forces within Yugoslavia without strengthening the Milosevic government.
The Institute of Peace is a U.S. government agency. While we have generally avoided posting information coming directly from the U.S. government, the article addresses the present situation of wreckage in Serbia and takes a specific position on what kind of sanctions to maintain against Serbia. Unfortunately, little else is available that addresses these problems constructively. -- U.S. Institute of Peace, June 21, 1999

Facing Up to Genocide: The Obligation to Intervene Those in the human rights movement who had appealed for intervention to save Rwandans vowed not to let our government sit idly by the next time mass ethnic killing began. That "next time" for Physicians for Human Rights was Kosovo. -- Holly Burkhalter, Physicians for Human Rights, 1999

The GOP Right, the Belgrade Lobby, and the Neo-Confederacy Demonstrates ideological affinities as well as financial and political connections between the Republican right and the Belgrade lobby, as well as links with neo-Confederate groups angry at Hispanic immigration in Texas, who see the Yugoslav army and police action against alleged Albanian immigrants as eminently understandable and, they imply, perhaps a model. -- Michael Sells, June 14, 1999

Letter to the Washington Free Press (Seattle) The Free Press coverage of Kosovo (May-June, 1999) got it wrong from start to finish. The front cover portrayed Kosovo in ruins, under attack by NATO warplanes, as if the Serbian destruction of Kosovo's villages and the expulsion of its population never happened. Not a marauding Yugoslav soldier is to be seen; no mass graves, now being discovered daily, are depicted. The cover and stories feed the misconception, more common among progressives than others, that this is NATO's war. -- Roger Lippman, June 17, 1999

Protecting Kosovo's Cultural Treasures Members of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Yugoslav government allege, without providing evidence, that NATO has bombed the great medieval Serbian Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo. -- Michael Sells, June 1, 1999

Kosovo and the Left: Serbian Atrocities and U.S. Intervention The response of many progressives to the Serbian repression of the people of Kosovo has been to condemn U.S. intervention, and even to minimize the Serbian atrocities. Many people are largely unaware of what happened before the NATO intervention. March, 1999, was not when the problem began. In 1989 Milosevic unconstitutionally revoked the autonomous status of Kosovo and instituted a brutal occupation very similar to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. The 90% ethnic Albanian majority was denied the right to have schools in its own language, and large numbers of Albanian professionals were fired from their jobs. Over the past decade there were arrests without charge, indefinite detention, disappearances, torture, assassinations, and attacks on villages. -- Roger Lippman (Updated June 3, 1999.)

Letter to the Serbian Democratic Movement We respect your lonely and courageous struggle for democratization in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But unfortunately, it seems to us that hardly any of your fellow citizens have supported a just settlement to the Kosovo issue, and that the crisis has been caught in a downward spiral of radicalization for many years. Thus when you say that "NATO military intervention has undermined all results we have achieved," one must ask if these results were of such a scope and significance to bring hope that the plight of Kosovo could be relieved by peaceful means. We are in sympathy with your extremely difficult situation, but we cannot agree with the conclusions you have drawn as to who bears primary responsibility for improving it. It is our view that your appeal should properly be addressed to the FRY and Serbian authorities which bear the responsibility for systematic and grave crimes of war and crimes against humanity in Kosovo, and for the dangers you, as members of the civil sector in Serbia, are currently facing. -- From the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, May 18, 1999

Before the Deluge: Agani's Last Interview. Professor Fehmi Agani - Ibrahim Rugova's deputy in the Democratic League of Kosovo and a member of the Rambouillet negotiating delegation - discusses life for Albanians in Kosovo during the 1974-1989 period of autonomy, and after autonomy was revoked by Milosevic, as well as the political struggle for Kosovo's independence. Agani was killed in early May, 1999. -- Anthony Borden, IWPR, May 15, 1999

Serbian aim to kill all Kosovans is nothing new After Milosevic came to power, on the back of his promises to "defend" the Serbs of Kosovo, Kosovo's autonomy was withdrawn and a systematic oppression of the Kosovars was resumed. This was not oppression for its own sake. It was aimed at the actual removal of the Albanians. Arkan, the notorious gangster and war criminal, who was elected to the Serbian assembly as a "representative" of Kosovo in elections boycotted by the Albanian population, made this quite clear. Most of the Kosovars, he explained, had come in from Albania in the last 50 years and they ought to be regarded as "tourists". This claim is, of course, utterly ludicrous, even by the standards of Serb nationalist rhetoric. But it's not meant as a rational argument. It is an implicit demand for the mass expulsion of the vast majority of the population of Kosovo. Tourists, after all, go "home," in this case presumably to Albania. -- Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times, April 30, 1999

Why Are We In Kosovo? Those of us who spent time in Sarajevo used to say that, as the 20th century began at Sarajevo, so will the 21st century begin at Sarajevo. If the options before NATO all seem either improbable or unpalatable, it is because NATO's actions come eight years too late. Milosevic should have been stopped when he was shelling Dubrovnik in 1991. -- Susan Sontag, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 1999

The Case Against Inaction Sadly, some on the left are angrier about NATO's bombing than they are about the Serbian forces' atrocities, even though Milosevic's men have killed more in one Kosovo village than have all the airstrikes. Those who want an immediate NATO cease-fire owe the world an explanation of how they propose to stop and reverse the massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, in light of Milosevic's history as a serial ethnic cleanser and promise-breaker. -- Bogdan Denitch and Ian Williams, The Nation, April 26, 1999

The Balkan Endgame By taking Kosovo and the whole Kosovo Albanian community hostage, Milosevic triggered a reaction he did not expect and has no answer for. Milosevic's decision to reject the Rambouillet accords finally forced the NATO powers to define the nature of the conflicts that have plagued southeastern Europe for the past decade. For the first time, the West recognised them clearly as a series of Serbian wars of aggression and conquest. --  Sonja Biserko, director of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. April 24, 1999

The Reason Why We can indeed learn from history - but only if we choose the right examples. The war in the Balkans has been the occasion for all manner of claims about the things the past does and doesn't teach. We have been told that it is an "age-old" conflict dating at least to 1389, and that our intervention would change nothing: a half-truth invoked to support a self-serving falsehood. We have been told by leftists nostalgic for cold war certainties that the US's own past misdealings overseas make us no better than those we are attacking and that we thus have no business judging the behavior of others: a sophistic assertion of moral equivalence that cuts the ground from under the very universal principles upon which the left itself purports to stand. --  Tony Judt, New York Review of Books, April 22, 1999

The UN's Surprising Support The Security Council has not authorised the bombing. But whatever the legalities of NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia, the action has broad support at the UN from a number of delegates who otherwise look askance at US military interventions. --  Ian Williams, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, April 19, 1999