Looking back to look forward
“During my time in Kosovo and since then, I have always had the strong feeling that my country, the US, was an unwavering supporter of Kosovo through thick and thin.” These are some of the closing thoughts by retired US Judge Dean Pineles, who served as an international judge with EULEX in Kosovo from 2011 – 2013 in a recent article for the leftist Balkan Insight on the current flare-ups in Kosovo. You can read the whole thing here, and in it, you’ll get the distinct idea that the retired judge has accepted the long-held narrative of “Albanians good, Serbians bad,” which seems to have been the de facto narrative in the US and EU, until recently that is. In reading this, I get the feeling that the judge had not had any interaction with Kosovo, Serbia, or the Balkans prior to his arrival in 2011 other than reading materials.
But let’s go back to June 13, 2001, to Washington, DC, and to a hearing of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired, ironically, by then US Senator Joseph Biden. The title of the hearing – and you can read the transcript here – is “The Crisis in Macedonia and U.S. Engagement in the Balkans.” Among the various witnesses was the late Ambassador James Pardew (1944-2021), a name which should be familiar to Macedonians who follow such things. In his opening testimony before the committee, Pardew said, among things and concerning the various steps the US Government would take to “confront the threat of ethnic Albanian extremism in Macedonia” was “Active diplomacy to ensure that ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, Kosovo, and in the diaspora understand the damage being done to Albanian interests by these extremists, who are using force to promote their political agenda.” (Except for the fact that Kosovo exported, to a large degree, its fighters in 2001 to Macedonia to help rip the country in two).
In answering a question from Senator Biden, Pardew goes on to explain what the US Government thinks those goals might be: “…at its most basic level, I think the objectives of these people who are running this insurgency are personal power for themselves, and they are pretty flexible on what they would accept. I think some of them would like to see this romantic notion of a Greater Albania, but that’s probably a very small element. I think some of them would like to partition Macedonia. But at the end of the day, I think they are seeking greater political influence inside the Albanian community both in Macedonia and in Kosovo.”
My favorite quote by Mr. Ahmeti, which he has never denied, is this from Newsweek, March 22, 2001. In “A Troubled Dream,” author David Binder quotes Mr. Ahmeti as stating “Our aim is solely to remove Slav forces from territory which is historically Albanian.” Three years after that above statement, Ahmeti’s uncle, Fazli Veliu, a member of parliament from DUI and founding ideologue of the NLA and DUI stated on August 13, 2004 in Raduša, Macedonia, “NLA’s vision has begun with Kosovo and will end with the Albanians’ unification in the future Greater Albania, which includes Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo and eastern Kosovo…The manifestation in Radusa should celebrate a new victory of the Albanians’ unification next year.”
And Patrick Bishop, reporting in The Telegraph on March 13, 2001, in an article entitled “Macedonia Launches Attacks” wrote this: “The Albanian rebels in Macedonia demanded its division along ethnic lines and said they were prepared to plunge the Balkans into another conflict unless their demands were met. An NLA commander in Kosovo urged the West to support its cause or face the consequences. ‘If the international community wants one more war in the Balkans we are ready,’ he said in the first interview by the group. It appeared in the newspaper Fakti.” And Sinisa Jakov Marusic, who covers Macedonia for the leftist Balkan Insight, wrote the following about Ali Ahmeti and his band of “murderous thugs and criminals” as George Robertson, then the NATO Secretary-General, famously described them. Marusic writes, “At the start of the conflict, the NLA swore to oust Macedonian security forces and take control over what it described as ‘Albanian’ territories of the country, although it softened its demands as the year went on.”
So I think it is fair to say that the above quotes prove the first part of Pardew’s statement about power, Greater Albania, and partition, and those motivations exist to this very day.
Moving on in that 2001 Senate hearing, we come to the point where then Senator Robert Torricelli (a Democrat representing the state of New Jersey at the time), asked Pardew the following question: “Ambassador, looking at this historically from the perspective of 20 years forward, will people be harsh with the United States that our policies in Kosovo and Serbia generally participated in raising unrealistically Albanian expectations, which unwittingly and unfortunately may have further fueled the problems?” Pardew gives the standard answer that the US Government opposes “extremist political activities,” to which Torricelli responds again, “My question is in the perception of Albanians, who have unfortunately now given themselves to violence and terrorist operations, could it be argued, out of the current context, that they have the unfortunate, misplaced perception that this was an opportunity for them…”
Looking back 22 years ago, Torricelli is prescient: in supplying Kosovo with an air force in 1999 to bomb what was left of Yugoslavia, did the US give Albanians – wherever they lived – a false perception that the US would always “have their back” so to speak? Has the US raised the expectations of Albanians – wherever they live – that the narrative would always be “Albanians good, Serbians (and center-right Macedonians) bad”? Did US actions in Kosovo in 1999, give the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia the idea that they would be supported in all of their activities in Macedonia, then and now?
That appears to be the case – with Kosovo Albanians and their supporters wherever they live – now shocked by what they see as betrayal. Or are we finally coming to the point where the truth – that there are good actors and bad actors on all sides – is finally accepted and that the time of coddling ethnic Albanian leadership, especially in Kosovo, and hopefully in Macedonia, is over?