A recent article in Washington Times, “Let Bill Clinton’s failed Kosovo strategy wither amid the COVID-19 pandemic” https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/22/let-bill-clintons-failed-kosovo-strategy-wither-am/ misrepresents the American engagement in Kosova, as a Clinton project, that has done nothing else but drain millions of American taxpayers over the years.
The author could not have been more uninformed and ignorant on the subject. Everything in his piece have been written and debunked before. It is basically a repetition of Serbian government propaganda that should have been rejected by Washington Times.
The American engagement in Kosova did not begin with Bill Clinton and did not end with him. There is a great friendship between the American and the Albanian people. It began with President Woodrow Wilson, more than 100 years ago, and it has only gotten stronger. Had the author done some research he would have discovered that nowhere in the world is the support for the United States stronger than in Kosova. It leaves behind every other country including Israel.
US engagement in Kosova has always been bipartisan. From George HW Bush, to Clinton, to W Bush, to Obama and now with Donald Trump, the United States have stood the line to support its staunch ally in the region.
The support in US Congress has been bipartisan as well, with both Republicans and Democrats standing up for the American principles while defending Kosova from the regime of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, basically the last communist leader in Europe. Some of them were Senators Bob Dole, Al D’Amato, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Gary Peters, etc or Congress members like Tom Lantos, Eliot Engel, Susan Molinari, Peter King, Christopher Smith, Lee Zeldin and many more.
We owe a lot to Senator Bob Dole who organized the first group visit from US Senate to Kosova in July 1990. But, I’d like to credit my good friend Eliot Engel, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives. He has been for 30 years a great supporter of Kosova’s cause. He has worked with every administration and has never stopped believing in the Kosovars’s right for self-determination, freedom, and democracy. In the end, the entire region has benefited from Kosova’s independence.
In December 1992, President George HW Bush, sent what is known as the “Christmas Warning” to Slobodan Milosevic, in which he told the Serbian dictator, in explicit terms that a war in Kosova would endanger the entire region and would provoke a military response by the United States.
When Clinton became US President, the new administration renewed the policy and repeated the warning to the fascistic militarized regime in Serbia.
Serbia is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and rapes in other parts of former Yugoslavia as well. Before the war in Kosova, they started wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia.
When they turned to Kosova, too, finally the West said “Enough!” Clinton invoked President Bush’s Warning and intervened. If Dole had won in 1996, the United States would have done the same. Future US President, then a businessman in New York, Donald Trump supported the intervention too and criticized the operation for limiting only to air strikes.
About 15,000 civilians were murdered by the Serbian military and paramilitary. Many of them remain in secret mass graves all over Serbia. The Serbian “democratic” government refuses to reveal their whereabouts to this day.
More than 20,000 women and girls were raped; large areas were destroyed and devastated. More than a million of Kosovars were deported by force out of the country.
Kosova finally became independent thanks to the great support and recognition of George W Bush administration.
Today, Trump Administration has taken decisive steps to achieve a long-lasting agreement between Kosova and Serbia, something that previous administrations should have done as well.
Furthermore, the conflict in Kosova was never a religious one, an old propaganda trick that the article tries to bring back. The Albanian population is multi-religious. The “Christian” Serbian regime burned and destroyed Albanian churches in Kosova, just like it did in Croatia and Bosnia.
Albanian Roman Catholic Bishops have traveled to Washington to denounce Serbian crimes and lobby for Kosova’s independence.
Not only are Albanians famous for their rescue of the Jewish population during Holocaust, but Kosova remains a great example of religious pluralism and tolerance. It is one of the few places in the world where the Cathedral that bears the name of the Albanian nun and saint, Mother Teresa is located in proximity of a large mosque and an orthodox church.
The people of Kosova have a simple desire. They want to live in peace, in their own country, in the land of their ancestors. After starting four wars and losing them all, Serbia should accept the reality and recognize the independence of Kosova.
Instead of retreating from the region and allowing it to become a playground for Chinese, Russian, and Iranian interests, the United States should stay and finish the job. Peace and stability in Europe are in the strategic and economic interests of the United States and any expense by the taxpayers has been repaid or will be recompensed indirectly in the future. Resources used in this region are dwarfed by other military engagements and installments elsewhere in the world. Unlike, other interventions, Kosova stands out as a successful story that has been great for the public image of the United States around the globe. It is a story that makes us all proud, as Albanians and as Americans.
Harry Bajraktari is founder and publisher of Illyria newspaper (1991-1998), an Albanian-American community leader, philanthropist and recipient of many awards, including the Honor of the Nation Order by the President of Albania, Kosova’s Presidential Medal for Merits & the White House Presidential Call to Service Award.