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L-I: INTERVIEW - KOSOVO BEFORE 1989: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Kosovo Before 1989 -
What really happened
Petar Makara and Tika Jankovic
Interviewer: Jared Israel (3-6-00)
With the continuing US-and-German-led attack on Yugoslavia, the question of
what happened in Kosovo before 1989 has taken on immense importance. In this
interview we discuss things well-known to people from Yugoslavia but little
discussed in the outside world.
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Jared: Tika, Petar, why don't you introduce yourselves.
Tika: I'm Tika Jankovic, an electrical engineer.
Petar: Petar Makara. Computer scientist. I was trained as an electrical
engineer.
Jared: I'm surrounded by engineers. Ok. So you're both from Yugoslavia, from
the Republic of Serbia; you both work in the US, now. Tika I understand that
you worked for quite awhile in Kosovo?
Tika: Yes, for the Serbian Electrical Power Plants Association.
Jared: I'm hoping you guys can clarify some things for people here, questions
that aren't usually discussed in polite company about the relations between
Serbs and Albanians. How did things get to the present nightmare? The West,
of course, claims the Serbian government took away the Albanians' rights in
1989 and that this started an Albanian protest movement.
Petar: That movement had nothing to do with oppression. No rights were taken
away. It was an organized, sustained attempt to break away part of the
country.
Jared: There was no issue of Serbia suppressing the Albanians' cultural
rights?
Petar: The change instituted in 1989 had nothing to do with cultural
autonomy. It was a long-overdue correction to a crazy and unjust political
situation which gave Kosovo power over the Serbian state as a whole.
The secessionists wanted Kosovo to become a full Republic because under the
Yugoslav constitution of 1974 there was an ambiguous phrasing which could be
interpreted to allow a Republic to secede. In any event, if you were not a
Republic, you definitely could not secede. So therefore, the Albanian
secessionists of course wanted to achieve Republican status. But the 1989
changes went in exactly the opposite direction, and this infuriated them. The
West, the US and Germany, encouraged them to rebel. The Western media
completely distorted the situation; the truth simply was not told.
Jared: Some people would answer you by saying, if that's true, why wasn't
there trouble before 1989?
Tika: There was trouble before 1989. There was a lot of trouble but it was
the Serbs who suffered, so nobody talked about it.
Jared: Actually during the '80's the NY Times did talk about Albanian terror
against Kosovo Serbs. We have some of that posted on Emperors-Clothes. But
can you give us some evidence?
Tika: Evidence of my own eyes. The secessionists were not only terrorizing
Serbs, they were actively sabotaging the economy in Kosovo.
Jared: You heard this?
Tika: I saw this. From 1972 to 1984 part of my job was to visit electrical
power plants to maintain communication and data equipment and transmission
links.
One of the worst places was the power station in the Kosovo town of Obilich.
There were constant problems. A coal burning plant should have downtime of no
more than 7-8% for routine maintenance jobs. That's about 1 month out of the
year. This particular plant had downtime of over 50%. That's about half the
year.
And even during the rest of the time, this plant was running at 350 MW when
it had a capacity of 700 MW (700,000 kilowatts.) One or more of the three
generators was always down due to sabotage by the Albanian personnel.
Jared: Do you recall examples?
Tika: One time they sabotaged the water storage. There is a huge artificial
lake at the plant. It is used to cool the generators. One time I had to go
there because a dead bull had been put in the lake blocking the grids that
prevent large objects from getting into the water tunnel that leads to the
generators. This reduced the flow of water, causing the generators to
overheat.
Jared: This was done by Kosovo Albanians?
Tika: It happened only in Kosovo. Nowhere else in Serbia. And the Albanian
personnel made no secret of their animosity to the Serbian State, which owned
the plant. Everyone in the plant knew who had done it. But the local
authorities, who were sympathetic to the secessionists or intimidated, did
nothing.
Another time they raised the crane that was used to transfer heavy objects
around the plant. They shoved it into the transmission lines causing short
circuits and disruption of transmission.
A third time, they disabled the electrical supply to the huge magnets that
pull metal objects out of the coal so they won't get into the furnace and
plug up the ash grids. This is to give an idea of the imaginative and
resourceful character of their sabotage. They were at war.
This electrical power plant is located about ten miles from the Belacevac
coal mines which supply the plant with coal. These acts of sabotage took
place right on the premises of the plant.
Jared: But that would damage power to the local Albanians.
Tika: That was the level of their destructiveness. They wanted to hurt the
economy.
Petar: Throughout these times 70% of the Kosovo provincial government's
budget came from outside Kosovo. 70%! And this was a state-dominated economy,
so do you realize what this meant? It meant that Kosovo was essentially a
free ride - the opposite of a colony, sucking vast resources from outside,
especially the rest of Serbia. But this was not enough; the secessionists
wanted to destroy Serbia. They had ruled it in World War II and they wanted
to rule again. So their strategy was: rule or ruin.
Jared: How did the authorities deal with the sabotage?
Tika: They did nothing. For example, in the three cases I mentioned, there
was no investigation, no arrest so of course no conviction.
Jared: Did these secessionists include all the Albanians?
Petar: No. There was a large hard core, and then there was different degrees
of sympathy among many Albanians. Others were loyal to the state. But this
movement was strong and determined and it had support from elements of the
power structure and increasingly from the outside, from the US, for its own
reasons. And it got worse in the second half of the 1980s when the Americans
began to support secession openly. This had a big effect. It gave the
secessionists 100 times more prestige.
Jared: And this was done before 1989? Before Milosevich supposedly suppressed
the Albanians?
Petar: Before and after. The situation was understood in US
military-intelligence circles quite early. The US Army puts out books on
various countries every year, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses in each
society. Looking for "cleavages." They pointed to Kosovo Albanians as one of
the biggest secessionist-minded populations in the world - and this was back
in 1982. And secession was openly encouraged by the US Senate as far back as
1987.
Jared: I'll post some quotes from that army book at the end of this interview
. (Note # 1.) I'll also post a very revealing letter written by [Congressman]
Joseph DioGuardi to the NY Times in 1987. He basically calls for secession,
right in the letter. Comes right out and says he doesn't want Albanians to be
part of such a terrible country, Yugoslavia. I'll post that too. (See note #2)
Tika: They wanted to damage everything "Serbian" so they did not care what
harm it did, even if Albanians suffered too. I guess they figured the
Albanians would get mad at the Serbian government, not at them. Or maybe they
didn't care about ordinary people. This sabotage was a big attack on the
economy of the state. And this wasn't starting in 1989. The terrorist
movement has been active since 1941 without stop.
Jared: I made that exact argument on an Internet discussion group the other
day .
Tika: About sabotage?
Jared: No about the fascist movement in Kosovo existing since 1941. Now
everyone will think I prompted you.
Tika: How can you prompt the truth?
Jared: OK. So getting back to sabotage, nothing was done?
Tika: It was tolerated.
Jared: Unbelievable. What about the power company management?
Tika: They did nothing. These acts were treated as non-events. And there was
more than just sabotage. A definite anti-Serbian component existed in
Yugoslavia. There were many unfair practices. For example, there was a
special tax. It was not publicly mentioned, but I found out about it later
>from former government people.
All companies in Serbia were required to take 10% of their wage fund and put
it in a Kosovo Development fund and this was in addition to very generous
funding from the state. So in effect, every Serbian worker was subsidizing
Kosovo, without being told - 10% of their money.
Worse, much of this money ended up in private hands in Kosovo. There is
evidence that some went to purchase the property of Serbs forced to leave
Kosovo due to terrorist harassment. The Serbs sold cheap; the property was
then resold to Albanians at high prices. The authorities in Kosovo did
nothing to stop this.
Jared: In that 1987 letter from DioGuardi he complained about a law which put
a stop to that practice. He considered this law to be discrimination.
Petar: Perhaps he thought Albanians' had the right to steal Serbian houses.
Jared: It sounds like a nightmare.
Tika: It was racism. And nobody was supposed to talk about it because, you
see, there couldn't be racism in Yugoslavia.
Jared: In the U.S. racism is based on color.
Tika: Not in the Balkans. With the Roma people ["Gypsies"] they are darker
skinned, and the racists hate them, but the Serbs have white backsides, just
like Albanians and Croatians, two groups which have the worst prejudice.
Let me tell you some examples. Take the University of Pristina in Kosovo.
This was mainly Albanian. It enjoyed privileges not given to Belgrade
University. For instance the Electrical Engineering Department in Pristina
had up-to-date lab equipment, but in Belgrade they were equipped with
equipment that came from World War II reparations. Ancient stuff. I used to
work with Hungarian generators built in 1939. I saw this equipment there when
I was a student in the early 50s. Later I taught in Belgrade University in
the 70s and there it was still - the same equipment.
Petar: I used those same Hungarian generators!
Jared: It sounds like discrimination in the US. You have a white school
district with new books and lab equipment; the black school district has old
books or half the books have fallen apart.
Tika: We saw this in Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches. We followed the Civil
Rights movement and we saw the mirror of our position. The Albanian
secessionists were like American whites who hated Black people.
The goal was political: the overall Yugoslav government included an anti-Serb
bias and the Albanians were seen as the most reliably anti-Serbian force; so
therefore the government simply transferred wealth from Serbia proper into
Kosovo province to strengthen the hand of this anti-Serbian power.
Jared: You know, the weird thing is, I was just talking to a woman from
Vojvodina, in the north, the other end of Serbia, and she said everyone got
along perfectly well, there was no tension. There were Hungarians, Roma
people, Serbs, Croatians; they all hung out together.
Petar: They still do. Yugoslavia had the most extremely tolerant nationality
policy in the world. But the place where all the nationalities mainly existed
in Yugoslavia was the Serb Republic. Slovenia and Croatia, except the Krajina
section, were mainly one ethnic group. But Serbia was a tower of Babel. My
wife is a linguist and she was amazed when she visited my hometown and saw
the building signs in seven, eight languages. And these were not world-wide
languages, English or French, these were small local languages. Hungarians,
for instance, have schools and all aspects of the legal system available in
Hungarian; schools right through to the doctoral level. Where else is that
true? And all financed 100% by the state.
Serbs in inner Serbia could go along and not necessarily experience racism.
But in areas like Kosovo or the Krajina, in the Croatian Republic, it was a
different matter.
Jared: Brotherhood plus anti-Serb racism? It sounds schizophrenic.
Petar: It was. There were many good things about Yugoslavia, but also there
was this injustice and a dark past. In World War II horrible racist crimes
were committed. The US and the Vatican helped to sneak many of the worst
culprits out of Yugoslavia to South America or the US or Canada. In
Yugoslavia itself, many who were involved remained, but these crimes were not
discussed.
Tika: A big part of the populations of Kosovo, Croatia, what is now Bosnia
took part in genocide against Serbs, Roma and Jews during World War II. Over
a million people were slaughtered.
Petar: In the Independent State of Croatia, whole villages of Serbs were
wiped out and the bodies pushed into mountain cervices. One of President
Tito's first acts after the war was to order that these crevices be sealed in
concrete. The people could not even mourn their dead. And this was done under
the formula of brotherhood and unity - in other words this brotherhood and
unity between Croats and Serbs was so sacred that they were ordering Serbs
not to talk about what had been done to them. Obviously in Serbian families
they could among themselves say what they went through but for many decades
this was not to be a common conversation between common people. It wasn't a
complete secret because there were some books about it but they didn't go too
much into the numbers of people killed.
Tika: The Yugoslav state included many former fascists. A good example is
[late Croatian President Franjo] Tudjman. Tudjman was a Nazi who transformed
himself into a Communist General. He had this miraculous transformation along
with many like-minded Croatians when he realized that the Germans would lose
World War II. They loved Germany but they loved being on the victorious side
more. So, suddenly, these fascists became revolutionary socialists. Lovers of
brotherhood, though they had slit their brothers' throats a month before.
This trick was unfortunately successful in too many cases.
Serbs forgive and forget easily. It is a flaw in our character. We were
raised wrong for this world.
And there was also bias among many who had not been fascists. Tito himself
had a formula: a weak Serbia means a strong Yugoslvaia.
Petar: And you see we wanted this brotherhood and unity - we passionately
wanted it. I believed in it myself.
Jared: It's not such a bad thing to believe in.
Petar: Yes, but not if you allow yourself to be abused. We lied to ourselves
that this sacrifice of silence was needed for the greater good. The lesson
here is: you cannot have social equality if you sweep injustice and racism
under the rug. It must be exposed, discussed, resolved.
Tika: Almost a million died in the Jasenovac concentration camp alone. But
after the war this racist murder was never discussed. Nothing was done.
Nobody rustled the feathers, so dogs could sleep.
So when the Albanians committed all this terror during the 1970s the Serbs
were hushed up. There was no effort to bring the terrorists to justice. They
were protected by certain state authorities.
The Serbs driven from Kosovo were given strict orders by police in Serbia not
to tell anyone why they had left. And it was in this sense, of the Serbs
trying to bend over backwards to make brotherhood and unity work, that Serbs
cooperated in silence. This was told to me by friends who admitted finally
why they left Kosovo. They had been victims - but they were frightened and at
the same time ashamed, and they went along with the police orders.
Jared: Victims are often frightened and ashamed. They blame themselves.
Tika: So you must understand, when Milosevich came to the famous meeting near
Pristina in 1987 it was a revelation. Do you know about this?
Jared: The meeting where the Serbs were supposed to come and air their
grievances.
Tika: Yes, the Serbs had been protesting against Albanian terror and finally
the party leaders in Belgrade called this hearing in Kosovo. 1987. Over
10,000, maybe 15,000 showed up. This was not expected. The room was too
small. Most of the people were kept out. The police were abusive. The people
protested. The police attacked with much violence. So Milosevich came outside
and - well he didn't really make a speech, the way people say. He told the
police to stop. He said "Nobody should beat you."
Jared: Seems reasonable.
Tika: It stunned the nation. You see, Serbian officials were not supposed to
complain about mistreatment of Serbs. They were supposed to be good boys and
keep people in line and hush the angry ones. And this man said, "Nobody
should beat you." He was challenging the system.
Jared: On that Internet discussion list I mentioned earlier, some people were
supporting a group of Albanian miners. They claimed they were locked out of
the Trepca Mining complex in northern Kosovo for racial reasons by the
Serbian government in 1990. Do you have first hand information on this?
Tika: Not first hand but reliable second. I will try to get you more details,
but I know the situation. I was in the States then, but I visited Yugoslavia
twice a year.
During my visits, I talked with engineers. They told me of the continuing
sabotage by Albanians of electrical power plants in Kosovo.
I talked with engineers who had been involved in correcting damage caused by
the flooding of shafts in the Trepca mines and other sabotage. This was an
ongoing process before '89.
Jared: This gets back to the charge that Milosevich crushed the Albanians in
'89.
Tika: That's simply a big lie. Goebells technique. Almost funny. In 1989 the
change was to alter the rules so all Serbian citizens had the same
constitutional rights. Before this the Kosovo Provincial Assembly could veto
decisions by the Serb Republic's Parliament. Do you see what this meant?
Whatever the Serbian Republic decided, the Kosovo Province of Serbia could
veto the measure. The Parliament did not have the same right over decisions
made in Kosovo. Do you see how crazy this was? And we tolerated it! We let
the tail wag the dog. Like sleep walkers.
Petar: This would be like Chicago being able to veto any measure passed by
the Illinois State Senate. It made Kosovo the dictator over Serbia.
Tika: It came from a constitutional change instituted in '74. It was
masterminded by Eduard Kardelj, a Slovenian close to President Tito. This was
of course an effort to put the anti-Serb forces within Serbia in a position
to dominate the Republic. This is what got changed in 1989. The extremely
generous autonomous institutions were not touched. Later the secessionists,
under Rugova, boycotted these institutions - schools and hospitals and so on
- but the Serbian government kept them going, for those who wanted to use
them.
The political change was met with fury by secessionist-minded Albanians. They
exacerbated their sabotage as a protest against the loss of veto power. The
Western media and politicians like [Senators] D'Amato and Dole made this a
pivotal point in attacking Serbia, presenting it as a loss of autonomy which
was a purposeful misinterpretation.
Jared: A lie?
Petar: A big lie.
They tolerated being part of Serbia only as long as they could mistreat the
Serbs and Roma and get huge financial rewards from Serbia and hold political
power over the state. Where else did a minority exercise power and privileges
like this? Only in places like South Africa, really.
Tika: The secessionists had made sure those who worked in the Trepca Mines
were their supporters. And these people continuously conducted sabotage for
many years to undermine Serbia. In 1989 these attacks increased. They did it
in two ways. They damaged equipment and facilities and they refused to work.
This was a conscious effort to punish Yugoslavia which derived much profit
>from the mines.
They went on strike repeatedly in this period so finally they were replaced
to get the mines working - a life or death matter for the Yugoslav economy
which was under draconian pressure from the International Monetary Fund at
the time. But when the government did send in loyal citizens to work in the
mines, the international press cried: RACISM. It was presented as oppression
of poor Albanian working class.
Jared: Apparently these highly oppressed workers have been paraded around for
the past ten years to influence well-meaning people, saying all they wanted
was Workers Control and Kosovo Autonomy.
Tika: All they wanted was to bring Serbia to its knees. There are strikes and
then there are strikes. These were not workers of sincere character. These
were pawns of a movement for Greater Albania. And they were abetted from
outside - from the US and Germany.
NOTES
1)The Army book in question is the part of the "Area handbook series." It's
called "YUGOSLAVIA, a country of study."
These country studies are thorough. This one, from 1982, has a 31 page
bibliography. In the forward, Dr. William Evans-Smith, Director, Foreign Area
Studies, The American University, Washington, DC, writes:
The study focuses on historical antecedents and on the cultural, political
and socioeconomic characteristics that contribute to cohesion and cleavage
within the society.
If one were of cynical bent one might say the US Army needs to understand the
divisions in possible targets for future operations.
But, back to the subject. Keep in mind that this was published in 1982 long
before the supposed start of the Albanian "protest" movement. Here is one
quote about Kosovo Albanians:
Yugoslavia's largest national minority was its Albanian community, in 1981
numbering some 1.6 million, nearly 7 percent of the population. Most
Albanians were concentrated in Kosovo where they constituted roughly 80
(eighty) percent of the population; another quarter million resided in
neighboring Macedonia and Montenegro. All told, an estimated one-third to
one-half of all Albanians lived in Yugoslavia - making them one of the
largest potentially irredentist communities in the world...
Some demonstrators [in the 1981 Albanian riots] suggested that the proposed
Kosovo republic ought to include Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro too.
Some extremists even voiced secessionist sentiments calling for a 'Greater
Albania.'
Note that in 1982 the Army recognized, at least for its own readers if not
the general public, that the demand for Greater Albania was extremist. This
was precisely what the US-backed KLA is openly pursuing today. And it is what
Ibrahim Rugova (the supposedly moderate figure) advocated in 1990.
The book is published by Headquarters, Department of the Army (DA Pam
550-99), Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. It is
available at libraries.
2) The letter from Joseph DioGuardi will be posted shortly.
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