Pogrom in Kosovo: Corporate Media vs. Reality

With the recent fifth anniversary of the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, we were once again reminded of the success of this most worthy example of U.S. “humanitarian intervention.” Any quasi-attentive POL student has surely come across the myths of a moral and successful NATO intervention, a now-peaceful Kosovo flourishing with multi-ethnicity and security, and a benevolent and capable KFOR. There is this mythology that is ever-so-cherished in the West, and then there is the real world.

In the four days following Wednesday, March 17, Kosovo has been a war zone. Ethnic Albanians rampaged throughout Kosovo, killing 30, injuring over 800, destroying 100’s of Serbian homes and KFOR/UMNIK vehicles, burning 30 Orthodox Christian churches (most of them older than America) and forcing all non-Albanians to run for their lives out of the province. Some 51,000 men took part in the orchestrated three-day campaign; some of them part of the UN-funded “Kosovo Protection Corps,” which consists primarily of former KLA terrorists. NATO troops, being overwhelmingly outnumbered, did nothing to stop the Albanian rampage.

The way the Western media covered the Pogrom is indeed a case study in bias. Edward Herman’s concepts of “worthy victims” and “unworthy victims” apply perfectly, as violence perpetrated by Albanians, the “worthy victims” on whose behalf the U.S. intervened, is not as interesting as comparable and less intense violence by Serbs (the “unworthy victims”). To put things in perspective, the incident at Rachak preceding the NATO bombing of 1999 was labeled a “massacre,” “attempted genocide,” and “ethnic cleansing.” It was trumpeted as “undeniable proof” of Serbian genocidal aggression and a clear cause for the U.S. to bomb a country into submission. Conversely, the incidents during the recent pogrom by the Albanians, almost three times as fatal and overwhelmingly more destructive than Rachak, are labeled as “clashes,” “protests,” and “inter-ethnic violence.” The casualties of these incidents are not worthy of U.S. moral outrage, and not only does no-one suggest military intervention, but UN officials barely manage to condemn the attacks as what they are: ethnic cleansing. At the heart of the Albanian attack UNMIK spokesman Derek Chappell stated: "This is a very large, comprehensive uprising… We are getting reports in all the time, from all over Kosovo. Wherever there is a Serbian population there is Albanian action against them… These are well organized extremists leading these attacks..."

The Kosovo human rights Ombudsman, Marek Nowicki added that "there exists the intent to cleanse this land from the presence of all Serbs."

These testimonies did not prevent the NYT, LA Times, Washington Post, and the Boston Globe from referring to these attacks as “clashes.” Not one of them decided to mention that the number of places where actual “clashes” occurred was exactly one: Kosovska Mitrovica, where the divided Serbian population organized a resistance that was nevertheless overwhelmed. All the other Serbian enclaves, villages and cities in Kosovo were completely defenseless in the face of the armed and coordinated campaign of violence. The BBC didn’t let that fact get in the way: its main report on Kosovo, around 2300 GMT on March 17, called the situation "inter-ethnic clashes" and "protests" by Albanians. One might wonder how comfortable the U.S. would be in labeling comparable Palestinian terrorist attacks as “inter-ethnic clashes.” As for marking the perpetrators “protestors” and “demonstrators,” Nebojsa Malic of Balkan Express asks a good question: “what exactly are they protesting or demonstrating against – the existence of the Serbs?”

Many commentators chose to interpret the cleansing as the Serbs’ fault. The NYT contributed to blaming the “unworthy victims” by explaining that “the violence reflected a growing impatience among Kosovo’s Albanian majority about the future of the province.” The suggestion was that the Serbs are responsible for the culmination of this “impatience.” On the other hand, the suggestion that KFOR and UNMIK are to blame, given the fact that Albanian mobs attacked KFOR and UNMIK personnel never seemed to cross anyone’s mind, despite the identical logic behind the two suggestions. Another interesting example is David Phillips of the Council on Foreign Relations. He ran an op-ed in the L.A. Times in which he explained that he saw the Pogrom as an example of “mutual recrimination” which was a result of U.S. failure to “remove an issue that fuels Serbian nationalism.” Albanian nationalism is apparently, not as relevant in Phillips’ eyes to driving Albanians to committing bloodshed.

When it comes to destruction of property, the NYT failed to list a single specific Orthodox church (or its location) of the roughly thirty Orthodox churches destroyed in the Albanian pogrom in Kosovo. But, fear not: NYT detailed the two Islamic mosques burned by Serbs in Nis and Belgrade in response to the pogrom. Unfortunately, they didn’t mention that they were a response to the Albanian violence, hence leaving the right impression – the former U.S. allies are not to blame for starting anything. In the same spirit, the NYT did not point out that, unlike the Kosovo government, the Serbian government attempted to prevent the burnings and have pledged to renew the damage. Not fit to print?

Perhaps the most irresponsible media contribution was the insistence on the “drowned Albanian boys” story as a cause of the violence. Fitim Veseli, a local Albanian boy, first came up with the tale. Without much inquiry, a Kosovo Albanian TV station ran the story: “Serbs chase a group of Albanian boys into the river Ibar the day before the attacks, where three of them drowned in the strong currents.” As it fits the U.S.’s “Serbian aggression” scheme, all western agencies and wire services accepted the account and repeated it incessantly, being sure to include it with every report of Serbs being killed or Orthodox Monasteries being burned. The Daily Telegraph had the audacity to use the phrase “retaliatory drownings” while the Washington Post described the boys as “martyrs” at the day of their funeral. In all, no-one seemed to doubt their deaths as a justification, let alone an explanation.

An honest U.S. media might have been skeptical of the many inconsistencies in the “drowned Albanian boys" story: some say it was a “gang” of Serbs, some say not; some say they had a dog, some say not; some even claim that the number of drowned boys was not even three but one or two. An honest media also might have reported that UNMIK’s press briefing from March 17 disproves the allegations. It states that Fitim Veseli did not mention any kind of Serbian attack to UMNIK whatsoever – he apparently only did so to the Albanian media. Another thing worthy of being mentioned might have been that the interviewed witnesses of the drowning, as well as Serbian villagers from their side of the river that ethnically divides Kosovska Mitrovica all agree in unanimity that the Albanian boys were playing on the Albanian side of the river. Given the ethnic cleansing of the years following the NATO bombing, there were exactly zero Serbs on the Albanian side. Excluding the possibility of Serbs walking on water to chase children with dogs, the Western press could have been a tad suspicious. Above all, an honest U.S. media would have emphasized the fact that the Albanian attacks were well-organized, coordinated, premeditated and planned, as the UN, UNMIK, and NATO have confirmed – the pogrom was intended well before any mention of the drownings.

Despite the way the “drowned Albanian boys” lie was repeated into becoming truth, the media also failed to mention the murdered Serbian teenager who was killed by Albanians in a drive-by shooting earlier that same week – he was an “unworthy victim.” In general, one does not hear much about the thousands of murdered or “disappeared” ethnic Serbs over the past five years in Kosovo – this does not fit in with the myth of triumphant U.S. military intervention. Neither does the amply documented claim that the KLA has connections with Islamic terrorists (including Al Qaeda), which might question the U.S.’s history of support for the extremist group.

Many have decided that violence like the recent pogrom can only be prevented by an independent Kosovo – precisely the goal of the terrorist separatists that perpetrated it. KLA leader Hashim Taqi, Albanian President Ibrahim Rugova and Prime Minister Rexhepi have all called for immediate independence. Richard Holbrook reluctantly joined them, telling the NYT that "This multi-ethnicity is not working as we thought it would." As perceptive as this is, one might ask what kind of U.S. policy would acquiesce to terrorist demands in Kosovo and deny them to terrorist separatists all over the world. We wouldn’t want to be hypocrites, now would we?

A rare example of calling things what they are came from the British Spectator. In their recent article titled “Kosovo Going to Hell,” Tony Blair is accused of neglecting the consequences of the NATO intervention in the Balkans (not exactly a frivolous accusation) because, as the author Tom Walker suggests, he is “too damn important to care” about Kosovo’s future. Walker also compares the war in Kosovo with the war in Iraq, a parallel that is becoming increasingly popular. The tragedy is not that the comparison is appropriate, but that the U.S. doesn’t seem to have too many Tom Walkers to point it out. When NATO expelled Serbian officials and law enforcement officers from Kosovo in June 1999, KFOR and UNMIK assumed full responsibility for the safety of all those in the province. Pretending that they have met this responsibility is to mock the 250,000 non-Albanians driven out of Kosovo in 1999 as well as the victims of the recent pogrom. If Kosovo is an example of the success of American interventionism, I fear to imagine what a failure would look like.

UPDATE on story - April 30, 2004 : The "Drown Albanian Boys" story has been officially disproven. The UN has concluded that there was no evidence for the story whatsoever. Last week's UNMIK report blamed the "reckless and sensationalist" media reporting for sparking the violence while international investigator and prosecuter Peter Tinsley stated that "No suspects have been identified notwithstanding the considerable thorough efforts made to date." He also said that "...neither has a dog been found." UN police chief Neeraj Singh said a post-mortem had concluded that the deaths appeared to be straightforward drowning with no signs of force or violence. The New York Times spared one hundred words for this development, while the Washington Post ignored it altogether.

Danilo may be reached via e-mail at dmandic@princeton.edu