If Hashim, Then Why Not Bill—and Joe? Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi on Trial at The Hague for War Crimes
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Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi is currently on trial at The Hague for war crimes. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden supported him and enabled him to commit his crimes, while committing horrific ones of their own in Kosovo. So why aren’t they on trial too?
In June 2019, Bill Clinton and his former Secretary of State Madeleine Albrightvisited Pristina, Kosovo, where Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaçi awarded Clinton Kosovo’s Order of Freedom for his role in ordering the bombing of Yugoslavia.
Thaçi said that Clinton had stopped the alleged genocide by the Serbs, and that “the story of Kosovo is a story of joint success. You are our hero.”
Clinton responded that he would “always be proud of the fact that I happened to be the president of the United States when you needed someone to stand up and say no more ethnic cleansing, no more people running out of their homes, no more killing innocent civilians, there’s got to be another way.”
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton embraces Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaçi after being given an award in Pristina in June 2019. [Source: balkaninsight.com]
Four years later, Thaçi is no longer in power but a defendant at The Hague in the Netherlands at a special tribunal funded by the European Union. He stands accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity when he was a senior member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), including torturing and then ordering the execution of fellow Kosovo Albanians accused of being traitors and collaborators.
Kosovo’s George Washington or Al Capone
When he was Vice President, Joe Biden, a staunch supporter of the bombing of Kosovo as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hailed Thaçi as “the George Washington of Kosovo.”
A few months after Biden made those remarks, a Council of Europe report accused Thaçi and KLA operatives of human organ trafficking.
The report alleged that Thaçi’s inner circle “took captives across the border into Albania after the war where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.”
When “transplant surgeons” were “ready to operate, the [Serbian] captives were brought out of the safe house individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses [were] transported swiftly to the operating clinic.”
Leaked Western intelligence reports identified Thaçi and the KLA also as having exerted violent control over the regional heroin trade and said that Thaçi held a connection to a mafia cartel, which moved drugs from Turkey to Western Europe through the “Balkans Route.”[1]
A young Thaçi, in civilian clothes, with members of the KLA during a press conference in 1999. The man sitting next to Thaçi (on the left) is Fatmir Limaj, the International Criminal Court indicted Limaj for crimes against humanity, illegal detention, torture and murder of Serbs and Albanians in the Lapusnik camp (1998). He was captured on February 18, 2003, in Slovenia and extradited to stand trial in The Hague. On the right is a wanted poster for Thaçi, who’s nomme de guerre was “snake,” dating from 1997. [Source: diario.octubre.com]
Thus, Thaçi seems more like Al Capone than George Washington.
Phony Freedom Fighters
The Kosovo War was billed in the U.S. as a great humanitarian intervention, and was supported by liberal luminaries of the time like Todd Gitlin, Susan Sontag, Bernie Sanders, Paul Wellstone, Maxine Waters, Christopher Hitchens and Michael Walzer.[2]
The official pretext was to protect the Kosovo-Albanian minority in Kosovo from Serb ethnic cleansing and the depredations of Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević, who was falsely accused of committing genocide.
Curiously, the Clinton administration had shown little interest in the Kosovar Albanians’ plight when they excluded their delegates from the 1995 Dayton negotiations, avoiding discussion of the Kosovo problem at a time when they might have been able to help advance a political solution to the crisis there.
An underlying goal of the war was to separate Kosovo from Serbia—which Washington wanted to isolate—and establish a Greater Albania under U.S., NATO and Turkish influence—along with a giant U.S. military base at Camp Bondsteel, while legitimizing NATO after the end of the Cold War.
Source: arcticcompass.blogspot.com
During World War II, it was the Kosovar Albanians who had collaborated with the Nazis while the Serbs were persecuted by them.[3]
The Serbs considered Kosovo something like Jerusalem for Israelis because it was the site of the famous 1389 Battle of Kosovo against Turkey and because it is the birthplace of the Serbian Orthodox Church and many of the great Serbian monuments and monasteries are located there.
A confidential report by NATO’s North Atlantic Council stated that the KLA was “the main initiator of violence” in Kosovo and “launched what appears to be a deliberate campaign of provocation,” which led to the outbreak of hostilities with Yugoslav government forces.[4]
A British member of parliament compared the KLA to the “Nicaraguan Contras and other groups armed by the CIA.” The KLA and Contras were both financed in part from the drug trade and committed repeated terrorist acts.
Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, branded the KLA as a terrorist organization mere months before the war.[5]Their crimes included gunning down Serb children, organized rapes, and blowing up Serb monasteries.
James Bissett, Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia for much of the 1990s, noted that the CIA and British Special Air Service (SAS) trained the KLA to “foment an armed rebellion in Kosovo,” with KLA terrorists sent into Kosovo to assassinate Serb mayors, ambush Serb policemen and do everything to incite murder and chaos” and, in turn, provoke a NATO intervention.[6]
During the 78-day U.S.-NATO bombing targeting Serb positions from March 24 to June 9, 1999, the KLA provided crucial intelligence using satellite phone and other communications equipment provided to it covertly by the CIA.[7]
Forty eighty schools and 33 hospitals were struck in the the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo along with at least fourteen historic monasteries, and between 500 and two thousand civilians were killed.
With KLA assistance, American warplanes bombed Zastava automobile plant, a Serb government TV station, and the Chinese Embassy in the part that housed intelligence operatives, killing four, likely in an effort to intimidate the Chinese from using their veto over the UN Security Council (The official U.S. explanation was that it was using an “old map” of the city).[8]
Wreckage from U.S.-NATO bombing in Kosovo in the spring of 1999. [Source: theconversation.com]
Spanish Captain Martin de la Hoz, who lodged protests with NATO chiefs over the selection of non-military targets, concluded that the U.S. and NATO were “destroying the country.” They were “bombing it with novel weapons, toxic nerve gases, surface mines dropped with parachute bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison the crops, and weapons of which even we still do not know anything.”[9]
One of 35,000 cluster bombs dropped by U.S.-NATO fighter jets over Kosovo. The bombing was supposedly undertaken for humanitarian purposes but empowered criminal mafia elements like Thaçi, who is now on trial for crimes against humanity. [Source: halotrust.org]
These constituted clear war crimes for which Clinton and others in his administration should be prosecuted, along with Joe Biden who helped secure U.S. Senate support for the war—like he did with Iraq.
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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: jkuzmarov2@gmail.com.
Notes
Paul Lewis, “Report identifies Hashim Thaci as ‘big fish’ in organized crime,” The Guardian, January 24, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/24/hashim-thaci-kosovo-organised-crime; Jerry Seper, “KLA Finances Fight with Heroin Sales: Terror Group is Linked to Crime Network,” The Washington Times, May 3, 1999; F. William Engdahl, Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance (Mine Books, 2018), 111, 112. Thaçi ’s top deputy, Xhavit Haliti, was allegedly a big figure in the Albanian mafia involved in gambling, prostitution and drug smuggling. Prince Dobrosh, the boss of the Kosovo-Albanian narco-mafia provided weapons to the KLA that were bought from heroin proceeds. “Rugova Meets with Albanian Narco-Boss in Prague,” https://balkania.tripod.com/resources/terrorism/kla-drugs.html#a25
- See David Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), 2; Paul Gigot, “How Doves Learned To Love the B-2 Bomber,” The Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1999, A22.
- Sheldon Drobny, “Kosovo’s Nazi Past: Historical Perspective,” The Huffington Post, May 25, 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kosovos-nazi-past-histori_b_87845, Drobny quotes from Carl Savich’s essay on Kosovo’s Nazi past which asserts that, during World War II and the Holocaust, Kosovar Albanians killed 10,000 Kosovo Serbs and expelled 100,000, taking over their lands and houses. Kosovo Serb women were raped. Kosovo Serb Orthodox priests were arrested, tortured, and murdered. Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were attacked and destroyed. Serbian monuments, cemeteries, and gravestones were desecrated and demolished. In addition, Kosovar Albanian Nazi SS troops participated in the round-up of Kosovo Jews who were later killed at Bergen-Belsen.
- A. B. Abrams, Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2023), 226.
- Philip Shenon, “U.S. Says It Might Consider Attacking Serbs,” The New York Times, March 13, 1998; Abrams, Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences.
- Abrams, Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences, 226.
- Mark Curtis, “Blair’s Former Allies on Trial for War Crimes,” Consortium News, April 14, 2023, https://consortiumnews.com/2023/04/14/blairs-former-allies-on-trial-for-war-crimes/
- Gibbs, First Do No Harm, 197-98; Robert Fisk, “Serbs murdered by the hundred since ‘liberation,’” The Independent, November 24, 1999; Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (New York: Skyhorse, 2013), 148; Diana Johnstone, Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (Petrolia, CA: CounterPunch Books, 2015), 64. One Serb woman in the village of Lacarak died from a U.S. air strike when splinters from a shell struck her while she stood in the yard of her house.
Michael Parenti, To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia (New York: Verso, 2000), 122, 123. The U.S.-NATO dropped an estimated 35,000 cluster bombs which shed bomblets the size of a soda can and depleted uranium, which left tens of thousands of radioactive waste that poisoned the air, waters and soil of the entire region. John Catalinotto and Sara Flounders, eds., Hidden Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia(New York: International Action Center, 2002), 135-48. More than 10,000 unexploded bomblets were scattered around the landscape when the bombing ended. The terrible environmental costs of the war were compounded by the bombing of chemical plants, petroleum and natural gas refining, processing and storage facilities and fertilizer plants which resulted in the release of toxic, radioactive and other dangerous substances into the atmosphere, soil, ground water, and food chain.
Featured image: Bill Clinton and Hashim Thaçi embrace. [Source: zlocininadsrbima.com]
Jika Hashim, Lalu Mengapa Tidak Bill—dan Joe? Mantan Presiden Kosovo Hashim Thaçi diadili di Den Haag atas Kejahatan Perang
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Mantan Presiden Kosovo Hashim Thaçi saat ini diadili di Den Haag atas kejahatan perang. Bill Clinton dan Joe Biden mendukungnya dan memungkinkannya untuk melakukan kejahatannya, sambil melakukan kejahatan mengerikan mereka sendiri di Kosovo. Jadi mengapa mereka tidak diadili juga?
Pada Juni 2019, Bill Clinton dan mantan Menteri Luar Negerinya Madeleine Albright mengunjungi Pristina, Kosovo, di mana Presiden Kosovo Hashim Thaçi memberikan Clinton Kosovo Order of Freedom atas perannya dalam memerintahkan pemboman Yugoslavia.
Thaçi mengatakan bahwa Clinton telah menghentikan dugaan genosida oleh orang Serbia, dan bahwa “kisah Kosovo adalah kisah kesuksesan bersama. Kamu adalah pahlawan kami.”
Clinton menjawab bahwa dia akan "selalu bangga dengan fakta bahwa saya kebetulan menjadi presiden Amerika Serikat ketika Anda membutuhkan seseorang untuk berdiri dan mengatakan tidak ada lagi pembersihan etnis, tidak ada lagi orang yang kehabisan rumah mereka, tidak ada lagi membunuh warga sipil yang tidak bersalah, pasti ada cara lain."
Bekas A.S. Presiden Bill Clinton merangkul Presiden Kosovo Hashim Thaçi setelah diberi penghargaan di Pristina pada Juni 2019. [Sumber: balkaninsight.com]
Empat tahun kemudian, Thaçi tidak lagi berkuasa tetapi seorang terdakwa di Den Haag di Belanda di pengadilan khusus yang didanai oleh Uni Eropa. Dia dituduh melakukan kejahatan perang dan kejahatan terhadap kemanusiaan ketika dia adalah anggota senior Tentara Pembebasan Kosovo (KLA), termasuk menyiksa dan kemudian memerintahkan eksekusi sesama orang Albania Kosovo yang dituduh sebagai pengkhianat dan kolaborator.
George Washington atau Al Capone dari Kosovo
Ketika dia menjadi Wakil Presiden, Joe Biden, pendukung setia pengeboman Kosovo sebagai ketua Komite Hubungan Luar Negeri Senat, memuji Thaçi sebagai "George Washington dari Kosovo."
Beberapa bulan setelah Biden membuat pernyataan itu, laporan Dewan Eropa menuduh operasi Thaçi dan KLA melakukan perdagangan organ manusia.
Laporan tersebut menuduh bahwa lingkaran dalam Thaçi "membuat tawanan melintasi perbatasan ke Albania setelah perang di mana sejumlah orang Serbia dikatakan telah dibunuh karena ginjal mereka, yang dijual di pasar gelap."
Ketika "ahli bedah transplantasi" "siap untuk beroperasi, para tawanan [Serbia] dibawa keluar dari rumah aman secara individu, dieksekusi secara singkat oleh seorang pria bersenjata KLA, dan mayat mereka [diangkut dengan cepat ke klinik operasi."
Laporan intelijen Barat yang bocor mengidentifikasi Thaçi dan KLA juga telah melakukan kontrol kekerasan atas perdagangan heroin regional dan mengatakan bahwa Thaçi memegang koneksi ke kartel mafia, yang memindahkan narkoba dari Turki ke Eropa Barat melalui "Rute Balkan."[ 1]
Seorang Thaçi muda, berpakaian sipil, dengan anggota KLA selama konferensi pers pada tahun 1999. Pria yang duduk di sebelah Thaçi (di sebelah kiri) adalah Fatmir Limaj, Pengadilan Kriminal Internasional mendakwa Limaj atas kejahatan terhadap kemanusiaan, penahanan ilegal, penyiksaan dan pembunuhan orang Serbia dan Albania di kamp Lapusnik (1998). Dia ditangkap pada 18 Februari 2003, di Slovenia dan diekstradisi untuk diadili di Den Haag. Di sebelah kanan adalah poster buronan untuk Thaçi, yang nomme de guerre-nya adalah " ular", yang berasal dari tahun 1997. [Sumber: diario.octubre.com]
Dengan demikian, Thaçi tampak lebih seperti Al Capone daripada George Washington.
Pejuang Kebebasan Palsu
Perang Kosovo disebut di AS sebagai intervensi kemanusiaan yang hebat, dan didukung oleh tokoh-tokoh liberal saat itu seperti Todd Gitlin, Susan Sontag, Bernie Sanders, Paul Wellstone, Maxine Waters, Christopher Hitchens dan Michael Walzer.[ 2]
Dalih resminya adalah untuk melindungi minoritas Kosovo-Albania di Kosovo dari pembersihan etnis Serbia dan pemusnahan pemimpin Serbia Slobodan Milošević, yang dituduh melakukan genosida.
Anehnya, pemerintahan Clinton telah menunjukkan sedikit minat pada penderitaan orang Albania Kosovo ketika mereka mengecualikan delegasi mereka dari negosiasi Dayton 1995, menghindari diskusi tentang masalah Kosovo pada saat mereka mungkin dapat membantu memajukan solusi politik untuk krisis di sana.
Tujuan mendasar dari perang adalah untuk memisahkan Kosovo dari Serbia—yang ingin diisolasi Washington—dan mendirikan Albania Raya di bawah pengaruh AS, NATO, dan Turki—bersama dengan pangkalan militer raksasa AS di Camp Bondsteel, sambil melegitimasi NATO setelah berakhirnya Perang Dingin.
Sumber: arcticcompass.blogspot.com
Selama Perang Dunia II, orang Albania Kosovo-lah yang telah berkolaborasi dengan Nazi sementara orang-orang Serbia dianiaya oleh mereka.[ 3]
Orang Serbia menganggap Kosovo seperti Yerusalem bagi orang Israel karena itu adalah tempat Pertempuran Kosovo 1389 yang terkenal melawan Turki dan karena itu adalah tempat kelahiran Gereja Ortodoks Serbia dan banyak monumen dan biara Serbia yang hebat terletak di sana.
Laporan rahasia oleh Dewan Atlantik Utara NATO menyatakan bahwa KLA adalah "penggagas utama kekerasan" di Kosovo dan "meluncurkan apa yang tampaknya merupakan kampanye provokasi yang disengaja," yang menyebabkan pecahnya permusuhan dengan pasukan pemerintah Yugoslavia.[ 4]
Seorang anggota parlemen Inggris membandingkan KLA dengan "Nicaraguan Contras dan kelompok lain yang dipersenjatai oleh CIA." KLA dan Contras sama-sama dibiayai sebagian dari perdagangan narkoba dan melakukan tindakan teroris berulang kali.
Utusan khusus Clinton untuk Balkan, Robert Gelbard, mencap KLA sebagai organisasi teroris hanya beberapa bulan sebelum perang.[ 5]Kejahatan mereka termasuk menembak mati anak-anak Serbia, pemerkosaan terorganisir, dan meledakkan biara-biara Serbia.
James Bissett, duta besar Kanada untuk Yugoslavia untuk sebagian besar tahun 1990-an, mencatat bahwa CIA dan British Special Air Service (SAS) melatih KLA untuk "mendorong pemberontakan bersenjata di Kosovo," dengan teroris KLA dikirim ke Kosovo untuk membunuh walikota Serbia, menyergap polisi Serbia dan melakukan segalanya untuk menghasut pembunuhan dan kekacauan" dan, pada gilirannya, memprovokasi 6]
Selama 78 hari pengeboman AS-NATO yang menargetkan posisi Serbia dari 24 Maret hingga 9 Juni 1999, KLA memberikan intelijen penting menggunakan telepon satelit dan peralatan komunikasi lainnya yang disediakan secara diam-diam oleh CIA.[ 7]
Empat puluh delapan puluh sekolah dan 33 rumah sakit dihantam di bekas Yugoslavia dan Kosovo bersama dengan setidaknya empat belas biara bersejarah, dan antara 500 dan dua ribu warga sipil tewas.
Dengan bantuan KLA, pesawat tempur Amerika mengebom pabrik mobil Zastava, stasiun TV pemerintah Serbia, dan Kedutaan Besar Tiongkok di bagian yang menampung operasi intelijen, menewaskan empat orang, kemungkinan dalam upaya untuk mengintimidasi Tiongkok agar tidak menggunakan hak veto mereka atas Dewan Keamanan PBB (Penjelasan resmi AS adalah bahwa mereka menggunakan "peta lama" kota).[ 8]
Puing-puing dari pemboman AS-NATO di Kosovo pada musim semi 1999. [Sumber: theconversation.com]
Kapten Spanyol Martin de la Hoz, yang mengajukan protes dengan kepala NATO atas pemilihan target non-militer, menyimpulkan bahwa AS dan NATO "menghancurkan negara." Mereka "mengebomnya dengan senjata baru, gas saraf beracun, ranjau permukaan yang dijatuhkan dengan bom parasut yang mengandung uranium, napalm hitam, bahan kimia sterilisasi, penyemprotan untuk meracuni tanaman, dan senjata yang bahkan kita masih belum tahu apa-apa."[ 9]
Salah satu dari 35.000 bom curah yang dijatuhkan oleh jet tempur AS-NATO di atas Kosovo. Pengeboman itu seharusnya dilakukan untuk tujuan kemanusiaan tetapi memberdayakan elemen mafia kriminal seperti Thaçi, yang sekarang diadili atas kejahatan terhadap kemanusiaan. [Sumber: halotrust.org]
Ini merupakan kejahatan perang yang jelas di mana Clinton dan yang lainnya dalam pemerintahannya harus dituntut, bersama dengan Joe Biden yang membantu mengamankan AS. Dukungan Senat untuk perang—seperti yang dia lakukan dengan Irak.
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Jeremy Kuzmarov adalah Editor Pelaksana Majalah CovertAction. Dia adalah penulis empat buku tentang kebijakan luar negeri AS, termasuk Obama's Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) dan The Russians Are Coming, Again, dengan John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). Dia dapat dihubungi di: jkuzmarov2@gmail.com.
Catatan
Paul Lewis, "Laporan mengidentifikasi Hashim Thaci sebagai 'ikan besar' dalam kejahatan terorganisir," The Guardian, 24 Januari 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/24/hashim-thaci-kosovo-organised-crime; Jerry Seper, "KLA Membiayai Pertarungan dengan Penjualan Heroin: Grup Deputi tertinggi Thaçi, Xhavit Haliti, diduga merupakan tokoh besar di mafia Albania yang terlibat dalam perjudian, prostitusi, dan penyelundupan narkoba. Pangeran Dobrosh, bos narkotco-mafia Kosovo-Albania menyediakan senjata kepada KLA yang dibeli dari hasil heroin. "Rugova Bertemu dengan Bos Narkot Albania di Praha," https://balkania.tripod.com/resources/terrorism/kla-drugs.html#a25
Lihat David Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Intervensi Kemanusiaan dan Penghancuran Yugoslavia (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), 2; Paul Gigot, "Bagaimana Merpati Belajar Mencintai Pengebom B-2," The Wall Street Journal, 26 Maret 1999, A22.
Sheldon Drobny, "Malam Nazi Kosovo: Perspektif Sejarah," The Huffington Post, 25 Mei 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kosovos-nazi-past-histori_b_87845, kutipan Drobny dari esai Carl Savich tentang masa lalu Nazi Kosovo yang menegaskan bahwa, selama Wo…
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