By Vojin Joksimovich | Holbrooke supported Balkan Muslim sepratists in Bosnia and Kosovo and delivered victory to al-Qaeda in Europe. Then from Bosnia they turned on the US on 9/11. Holbrooke now heads Afghan policy for Obama.
Obama’s War
Eight-year old Bush’s Afghanistan war has become Obama’s war. Obama has declared that war was both necessary and winnable. He committed 21,000 additional troops this year, bringing the U.S. force to 68,000 and more are likely to be sent. The current expenditures amount to $2.6 billion a month. Percentage of Americans who believe that it was a mistake to send troops rose from 25% in 2007 to 42% this year. There were 51 military deaths in August and at least 732 overall compared to over 4,300 in Iraq. In addition, there are 38,000 NATO troops. Obama has been pushing NATO countries to send more troops and trying to stave off departures of Canadian, Dutch, German, British and other troops. Overall the war is going badly. The military is overhauling its operations including adding combat troops and talking about to avoiding civilian casualties, which most certainly have helped Taliban in recruitments. Despite orders to avert civilian deaths, most of the 70 killed the other day in a NATO airstrike were Afghan villagers. The State Department is similarly attempting to stem government corruption, improve security forces especially the police and reduce violence. However, there is yet another initiative-turning to Islamism or radical Islam, a traditional U.S. foreign policy ingredient and a Richard Holbrooke’s specialty.
Turning to Jihadists
President Obama’s special envoy to AfPac (Afghanistan-Pakistan), some call him the Afghanistan Czar, and former President Clinton’s Balkans fixer, Richard Holbrooke, a fixture of the Democrats’ foreign policy establishment, met recently with Liaqat Baloch, a leader of Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islami party or abbreviated to JI. Shortly thereafter, Baloch attended an anti-American rally across the town in Islamabad. Anti-American views of the Pakistani Islamist parties are notorious. Prior to meeting Baloch, Holbrooke met with Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party. Rehman was instrumental in Taliban’s early days and denied that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. Dealing with the Islamists is a dangerous foreign policy game, which however the U.S. has played since the 1945 Quincy Pact, between President Roosevelt and Ibn Saud, which made left both countries as the godfathers of Islamism. Dependence on Pakistan, its Islamists and Saudi Arabia, in order to defeat the Soviet Union in Central Asia, has had a troubled history for the U.S. foreign policies not only in the region but led to upheavals worldwide including creation of Al Qaeda and Taliban. A snapshot examination of this history which led to 9/11 plus Holbrooke’s track record in the Balkans implementing foreign policies of the Clintonites, now dominating the Obama administration, seems to be appropriate in particular since the compliant media is unlikely to do their job.
JI
JI ranks among the leading and most influential Islamist movements and the first of its kind to develop an ideology based on the revolutionary concept of Islam in the contemporary world. The party was founded by Moulana Abu Ala Maududi in Lahore on August 26, 1941, inspired by the Pakistani Muslim Brotherhood branch. Maududi advocated a Leninist revolutionary approach to Islamist politics in his book Jihad in Islam. With founding of Pakistan in 1947, JI was reorganized into: JI Pakistan and JI Hind. In mid-70s, JI Bangladesh was established. JI has also presence in the Indian held Kashmir. All JI organizations work for similar objectives and have identical ideological approach with no organizational link between them. JI has developed and maintained close brotherly relations with Islamist parties in the Arab world, northern Africa, Turkey, Tajikistan, Indonesia, Lebanon and Hammas in Palestine. JI is a natural ally of Saudi Wahhabists. General Muhammad Zia ul-Haqq was supported by JI.
General Zia played U.S. as Violin
In 1977 General Muhammad Zia ul-Haqq, after overthrowing and hanging Benazir Bhutto’s father, became a dictator and announced that he wanted to establish a “genuine Islamic order” in Pakistan. He imposed harsh Islamic rules and declared that “in Islam there is no provision for Western-type elections.” He played the U.S. as the violin and managed to convince the U.S. to de facto outsource its policy in Central Asia to Pakistan.
Zia’s goal was to use the U.S. power to carve out a new Mogul empire extending from Pakistan to the Soviet republics of Central Asia. Original Mogul Empire (1526-1857) covered most of the Indian subcontinent and parts of Afghanistan. Afghanistan was at the center of that policy, with Pakistan determined to install a compliant government in Kabul. It was Zia who encouraged Islamists in Afghanistan, both domestic such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf as well as imported Arabs like Osama bin Laden, to fight the Soviets while convincing Washington that the mujahideen were the best bet to defeat the Soviets in the 1980-89 U.S. Afghan proxy war against the USSR, which invaded Afghanistan to gain control over the threat of Islamism in it’s Asian republics (the “Stans”0). 70% of the U.S./Saudi multi billion dollar funding went to ultra-Islamist anti-American Afghan parties. He supported the madrassas along the Afghan-Pakistan border to serve as recruiting grounds. Saudi/Pakistani complex produced Al Qaeda, Afghan Arabs and Taliban. The Taliban took over. In the name of the War on Terror, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban. The Islamists were pushed into Pakistan, destabilizing this nuclear weapons country.
Zia authorized a Pakistani program to develop the nuclear weapons capability. The program was overlooked by Washington in order to further jihad in Afghanistan. Zia’s policies amounted to: screw India, deceive the U.S., spread Islamism, develop Islamic bomb and spread nuclear weapons technology. Pakistan has now an arsenal of Islamic bombs in the range 60-100, which presents a headache to all of those concerned about nuclear proliferation. Existence of this nuclear arsenal presents much greater threat to the world than the threat Iran might pose if they ever succeed in developing a nuclear weapons capability.
Bosnian Jihad
Rise to power of Bosnian Islamist Alija Izetbegovic and his Party of Democratic Action (SDA) in Bosnia in 1990 provided a unique opportunity for the Iran-led Islamist coalition to move into the heart of Europe. Iran’s clerics had attempted since the 1979 Khomeini revolution to find a foothold outside the Middle East and Central Asia in order to win territories, infrastructure and structures of government as a base for terrorist and political operations in order to gain leverage against the West. The ultimate target was the Great Satan. Only 15 days lapsed upon 1992 conclusion of the war in Afghanistan when the civil war in Bosnia broke out between the Bosnian Islamists and the Bosnian Christian Serbs. Compatible with the Prophet’s saying “Indeed Jihad will continue till the day of Judgment,” bin Laden’s Afghan Arabs became available and subsequently moved into a number of world hotspots. The Bosnian jihad became the overseas conflict with the greatest importance to Al Qaeda. It was considered a favored laboratory and a springboard for strategic-level operations against Maghreb countries, Algeria in particular, Western Europe and the U.S. The Bosnian jihad appears to be the first time Shiite and Sunni jihadists cooperated closely together in what could be termed the Joint Islamist Terrorist Enterprise.
Holbrooke In The Balkans
Holbrooke secretly visited Bosnian towns of Travnik and Vitez in December 1992 and in a memorandum informed the U.S. Government about the illegal transportation of arms to the Bosnian Muslims and about volunteers and mercenaries arriving from Islamic countries.
Holbrooke wrote: “There is now clear evidence that few ‘freedom fighters’ or mujahideen, and there are more and more of them, join the Bosnian forces.” Later on, Holbrooke was lionized with brokering the Dayton Peace Accords, which terminated the 42 months civil/religious war caused predominantly by the U.S. via encouragement of Izetbegovic to pull out from the Lisbon agreement brokered by the EU (EC then) and signed by all three parties to the conflict– the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Once the war was in progress, the Clinton administration sabotaged four peace agreements, endorsed by Serbian President Milosevic, thus unnecessarily prolonging the war and sufferings. Nonetheless, incessant western propaganda blamed Milosevic for all Balkan ills. Holbrooke, aided by compliant media, became the champion of Serbophobia and demonization of the Serbs, in order to appease the radical Islam including bombing of Bosnian Serbs allegedly to get them to the negotiation table although their behinds were hurting from sitting at numerous negotiations. This partnership with radical Islam included Al Qaeda. During the insurrection of the Albanian terrorists from Albania into Kosovo, Holbrooke visited with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) terrorists but called them the ‘freedom fighters.” This led to the U.S. embracing the Albanian Muslim narco-terrorists in order to insert NATO troops into Kosovo and thus amputate Serbia from the cradle of their Serbian Christian heritage.
Clinton Administration Provided Invaluable Service to Al Qaeda in Bosnia
President Clinton sided with the Bosnian and Iran-led Islamists against the Christian Serbs in the civil/religious war in Bosnia. The Clinton administration not only turned a blind eye to radical Islam but also actively supported the Islamists, including the Al Qaeda terrorists. This commitment to actively support an Islamist agenda in the Balkans offers a plausible explanation why bin Laden and Al Qaeda did not show up on the radar screen in Washington until late 1995. By then, Al Qaeda fully established its base for operations in Europe against Al Qaeda’s true enemy, the U.S. Bosnia, serving as the recruiting sergeant, provided a big surge in growth of several terrorist groups on Clinton’s watch.
In the conduct of this deeply flawed policy the Clinton administration opted for an Iran-Contra style operation in flagrant violation of the UN Security Council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia. Despite Iran’s responsibility for the deaths of over 1500 Americans (according to the State Department) and being the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism, the Clinton administration chose Iran to be a partner in Bosnia. By virtue of making Iran-led Islamists and Al Qaeda allies of convenience in the Balkans, the Clinton administration had provided an invaluable service to terrorism. Iran and Al Qaeda established a beachhead in the center of Europe. Al Qaeda formed a terrorist brigade called Al Mujahid, whose members played the pivotal part in 9/11, the Madrid train bombings and other terrorist acts.
Brendan O’Neill wrote that the Bosnian war “taught Islamic terrorists to operate abroad. For all the millions of words written about Al Qaeda since the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked—the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahideen of the 1980s into the roving Islamist terrorists of today.” This was tragic for almost 3,000 victims of 9/11. O’Neill further wrote that the Bosnia venture led to the emergence of today’s cross-border Islamist terrorists who think nothing of moving from state to state in search of outlets for their jihadists missions. The Pentagon transported thousands of mujahideen from “the ghettos of Afghanistan and the Middle East into Europe; from an outdated battleground of the Cold War to the major world conflict of the day; from being yesterday’s men to fighting alongside the West’s favored side in the clash of the Balkans. If the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan created mujahideen, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalized it. According to Tomazi, an Italian author, some 20,000 mujahideen had been transported by American planes.
Dismemberments of Yugoslavia and Serbia
It has become apparent that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had broader objectives than fighting terrorism against Al Qaeda and Taliban. So called “war on terror” was an excuse for the Pax Americana in the Middle East and Central Asia. In this context, dismemberment of Yugoslavia into a series of “banana” republics could be interpreted as a creation of Western vassals in the Balkans through wars, but with the blame falling, not on the NATO as the naked aggressor, but on Serbs and Milosevic, former communist, who opposed dismemberment of Yugoslavia and then Serbia. It is now seen by many that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was an important precursor for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Similar to what had happened during WWII, the Great Powers, this time U.S.-led NATO, exploited and aggravated the Serb-Albanian ethnic conflict for their own purposes to strengthen their position in the Balkans at the expense of Serb Orthodox Christians. NATO, supported by the compliant media, sided with the interests of pan-Islamists, bin Laden and his Al Qaeda included, in echoing and even amplifying the chauvinist Albanian propaganda.
Serbs, characterized as junior Russians sharing the Orthodox religion and the Slavic background, have traditionally enjoyed the reputation of being rebellious people unwilling to accept foreign occupations and dictates, had to be demolished as the historical entity. Strobe Talbott, former U.S. deputy secretary of state, has written: “It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader terms of political and economic reform—not the plight of Kosovar Albanians—that best explains NATO’s war.”
Holbrooke Played Key Role in Amputation of Kosovo from Serbia
The Clinton administration was determined to deliver the Serbian provinces of Kosovo and Metohija to Albanian Muslim narco-terrorists and thus to supplant a radical Muslim culture over an ancient Christian one. Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke were assigned to implement this “noble” objective. As a first step, on June 24, 1998, Holbrooke met with a KLA commander Gani Shehu in Junik, near the Yugoslav-Albanian border, which served as a supply line for the KLA insurrection from Northern Albania into Kosovo. It didn’t matter that in February of the same year the KLA was characterized as a terrorist organization by then Clinton’s Balkans envoy Robert Gelbard. Despite this, Holbrooke recommended that the KLA, better name should be the “National Front for a Greater Albania,” participate in negotiations which indeed took place at Rambouillet, near Paris, in February 1999 amounting to legitimization of violence.
In August 1998 the Serbian forces defeated the KLA and pushed them back into Northern Albania. Milosevic offered Albanian separatists an interim agreement for a 3-5 year period that would grant the province self-government using South Tirol as a model. This, however, wasn’t good enough for the Clinton administration in their zeal to advance radical Islam in the Balkans. On September 23, 1998 the UN Security Council passed a resolution #1199 threatening Yugoslavia a military action. Holbrooke arrived in Belgrade on October 5 for a 50 hour negotiating session with Milosevic hoping to convince Milosevic to allow NATO presence in Kosovo. The Western diplomacy had one apparent goal: to force, one way or the other, troops into Kosovo in order to establish a NATO protectorate. After 50 hours of face-to-face negotiations, involving many whiskey drinking sessions, Holbrooke and Milosevic reached a cease-fire deal in compliance with the UN Resolution #1199 to be verified by an international team of 2,000 OSCE “compliance verifiers.” The KLA never honored the deal but that didn’t matter as the U.S./NATO interest was to force NATO troops into Kosovo as a part of Pax Americana. In order to accomplish this objective the KLA terrorist actions were right on the mark. The subsequent Rambouillet conference was nothing more than a setup for the war.
Shortly before March 24, 1999, when 78-day bombing of Serbia began, which I call 78 days of infamy, Holbrooke delivered the final ultimatum to Milosevic: if Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro then) doesn’t agree with the Rambouillet conference text, calling for a de facto occupation of Yugoslavia, NATO would strike. Subsequent to initiation of bombing Holbrooke claimed that it wasn’t the occupation which was threatened. Several weeks later, confronted by a journalist, Holbrooke said: “I never said that.” This was a lie and a tacit admission that the Rambouillet text called for occupation of Yugoslavia. Holbrooke is a liar. He promised to Dr. Karadzic, a former Bosnian Serb president, that he wouldn’t face indictment from the $2 billion International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) if he agreed to step down from presidency of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Karadzic indeed stepped down and recently told the Hague Tribunal judges about the Holbrooke’s promise. Holbrooke denied despite the fact that several eye-witnesses have confirmed that the promise was delivered in their presence.
A detailed account of what transpired in Kosovo during the UN/NATO protectorate phase (June 1999-todate) is offered in my book Kosovo is Serbia: The Amputation of a Sovereign Country by U.S,-Sponsored Muslim Terrorists. Essentially it boiled to mayhem for the Serbs, Roma and other minorities including massive ethnic cleansing of some 250,000 Serbs and mostly Roma. 151 Serbian churches and monasteries have been demolished but over 400 Wahhabi style mosques have been built or are under construction. One of them was initially named after Osama bin Laden, but subsequently renamed Medina. Upon arrival of NATO forces, a silent genocide took place in Kosovo. In March 2004, Kosovo Kristallnacht took place; a 60,000 strong Albanian mob drove 4,500 Serbs from their homes causing 19 deaths and some 900 injuries. The human rights organizations slammed UN/NATO but there were apologists for the Albanian thugs including Holbrooke, who wasn’t in the government then since the republican administration was in. On the sidelines Holbrooke continued to support the Albanian separatists and terrorists and continued to be a major force for the 2008 unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in violation of all international laws on the books.
Kosovo Experiment: A Grand Failure
An Austrian historian, journalist and publicist, Hannes Hofbauer, published a book Kosovo Experiment: Return to Colonialism. He characterized the Kosovo UDI as the fatal blow to the post WWII world order and a return to colonialism. The beneficiaries are NATO, EU and others, who have practiced imperialism in the Balkans, but not the Albanians. The goal of imperial powers is to establish non-Slavic centers in the Slavic lands, to exert control over natural resources, and at the same to experiment with countries at the EU margins in addition to pleasing the radical Islam. Kosovo is an experiment intended to redefine the international law using economic and military might. The unemployment rate in Kosovo as well as in Bosnia runs at ~50%. Kosovo ranks at one of the world’s most corrupt places with 67% of the population reporting that they have to pay a bribe to get a service. In addition it is called by some the Black Hole of Europe and by others the Republic of Heroin.
Despite all of this, the Clintonites in the Obama administration, delusional and disingenuous, continue to maintain that Kosovo has been a great success instead of an ugly experiment and a fiasco. The U.S. has become an international law pariah. It has created a model Russia used to declare Abkhazia and South Ossetia independence: KosovOssetia. Needless to say, while Holbrooke was passed over for the Secretary of State position in the Obama administration he continued to advocate together with Hillary Clinton that there is unfinished business in the Balkans. The primary target would be abolition of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and even greater pressure on Serbia to recognize the illegitimate Kosovo Republic. This despite the Obama administration’s effort to restore America’s reputation and leadership in the world.
Media Silence and Complicity Regarding Kosovo “Success”
Lee Jay Walker wrote recently the following in The Seoul Times: “The ongoing de-Christianization of Kosovo continues and unlike the past frenzy of the anti-Serbian mass media in the West, we mainly have a deadly silence about the reality of Kosovo and continuing Albanization of this land. However, how is it ‘just’ and ‘moral’ to persecute minorities and to alienate them from mainstream society, and then to illegally recognize the land without the consensus of the international community? How ironic it is that the sane Unites States of America and the United Kingdom, two nations who were in the forefront of covertly manipulating the mass media; remain mainly silent about the destruction of Orthodox Christian churches, Serbian architecture, and of course the past killings of Serbians and other minorities in Kosovo.” The U.S./NATO had portrayed the Serb-Albanian conflict about human rights, democracy and liberty. However, these “noble” goals applied to Muslims but not to the Christians. It should be noted that de-Christianization took place in Iraq as well, which was also all but ignored by the media.
It appears that in order to get informed the American public needs to read The Seoul Times and other similar sources of information based on facts rather than the propaganda. Not only that the American mainstream media has not been reporting ugly events in now decade old UN/NATO protectorate of Kosovo but they are hiding identity of Albanian and Bosnian Muslims criminals for the crimes committed in the U.S. As an example, there is the case of “Fort Dix Six,” sentenced for plotting to blow up U.S. Army base in New Jersey in order “to kill as many soldiers as possible.” Four of them are Albanians, but the media reported that they were Yugoslavs. Second example, Bosnian Muslim Sulejman Talovic went on a shooting spree at a Utah shopping mall, killing five and wounding four. He was identified as a “Bosnian.” On the other hand media has never failed to report that Dr. Karadzic or General Mladic are Bosnian Serbs. Third, one of seven recently arrested terrorists, charged with plotting to wage jihad, is a Bosnian Muslim (Anes Subasic) and another is Kosovo Albanian (Hysen Sherifi). The media reported that they were naturalized American citizens.
A Conclusion
Obama has committed the country to yet another unwinnable war despite the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression including the mushrooming deficit. The Brits and the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, so why would the U.S. do any better? Can Obama convince the nation that additional hundreds of billions of dollars should be spent and additional hundreds of young American lives sacrificed? As was the case with Lyndon Johnston in Vietnam and George Bush in Iraq, the Afghan war will likely hold his administration hostage.
To make already bad things worse, Obama has surrounded himself with Clintonites with their foreign policy disasters claimed to be successes. One of the worst is the partnership with radical Islam in the Balkans used by Islamists as a staging ground for jihad against the rest of Europe as well as the U.S. including 9/11.
Vojin Joksimovich, Ph.D is a nuclear physicist and an author of a new book called Kosovo is Serbia.
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