Macedonia
and the Western press
PressInfo #
121
May
21, 2001
By Jan Oberg, TFF
director
PressInfo 118
offers an independent analysis of 11 reasons why
Macedonia is at the brink of war. Number
119 deals with the way the United Nations was forced
out of Macedonia and not employed in Kosovo at the time
when it could have made a difference. In short, there was
a hidden agenda. PressInfo
120 deals with how Macedonia is also responsible, and
not only a victim, in the process towards its fatal
crisis now.
This one deals with insufficient, or deceptive, media
coverage, and with Western democracies.
Where is the free
press?
We have explained that the 43,000 NATO/KFOR
"peace"-keepers can not control or seal off the border
around the territory it has occupied and is tasked with
stabilising and controlling. Has it turned the blind eye
to Albanian military activity all the time? This mission
is much larger than the UN ever was in former Yugoslav
territories and much more heavily armed.
Very few journalists have investigated the good story:
how is it possible for KLA which was officially dissolved
in September 1999 to keep on fighting (or be the root of
fighting) inside both Serbia and Macedonia. Who helped
them to do that?
If a UN mission had failed to the same extent,
hundreds of journalists, experts and commentators would
have renewed the anti-UN chorus of the 1990s: the UN is
incompetent, bureaucratic, too expensive and inefficient,
it's too weak. There is no peace to keep! We need more
muscle!
Now it is NATO, private American mercenaries, CIA in
bed with more or less criminal, hardline elements in the
Balkans and no similar (anti-NATO) chorus is heard. One
may wonder: who controls the free press?
Will future historians - - like Chalmers Johnson today
in "Blowback" - - reveal to us that journalists, NGOs,
clergy and Peace Corps volunteers have functioned as
cover for CIA and possibly other intelligence agencies
and their cloak-and-dagger covert operations, that
citizens around the world are targets of psychological
warfare?
If you think this is to carry it too far, this is what
a former CIA analyst, Melvin Goodman, says in a recent
study from the Center for International Policy in
Washington:
"The report of the (US) Council of Foreign
Relations in 1996 took a step backward with its
implicit endorsement of expanded use of CIA cover to
include journalists, clergy, and Peace Corps
volunteers. This suggested misuse of the Peace Corps
would destroy its integrity as a "non political"
humanitarian organization, and would greatly increase
the danger to its volunteers. The House Intelligence
Committee, in its 1996 report, also recommended that
the clandestine services apply journalistic cover to
their operators abroad.
There is no justification for the use of spies
posing as reporters or the employment of bona fide
reporters for intelligence missions, practices that
developed during the Cold War. Both practices should
be banned. The press has constitutional protection
because it is the chronicler of and check on the
government, not its instrument. Unfortunately, recent
CIA directors have insisted that the Agency have the
option of using journalists in sensitive clandestine
operations."
Ed. Craig Eisendrath, National Insecurity. U.S.
Intelligence After the Cold War, Temple University
Press, Philadelphia 2000, p36.
Given their history and purposes, there is no reason
to be surprised at the presence of CIA and similar
agencies in a place like the Balkans. You may have
wondered why your media does not cover their role or
other darker aspects such as those you find in some TFF
PressInfos (and the critical, dissident press). One
reason may be that there is a
politico-military-media-intelligence complex that does
not see it fit to tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth.
Media manipulation and psychological warfare is
nothing new as we know from the writings of intellectuals
such as Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, William Blum, and
John Pilger to mention a few. It does not prevent the
United States and other Western nations from teaching the
virtues of the free press wherever they can.
Peace-prevention is linked to
debate-prevention
The same governments and leaders who now condemn the
Albanian extremist activities have armed these forces and
supported them, and do so today. One of the closest
allies of UNMIK and KFOR in Kosovo is (former KLA)
commander Agim Ceku. He had a leading position at the
time in the Croatian Army when it drove out some 200.000
legitimate citizens from Croatia of Serb origin, in
Operation Storm and Flash in 1995. Allegedly, he is under
investigation by the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague;
but it would be an utter embarrassment to NATO/KFOR and
the UN - - whose partner he is - - should he (and some of
his colleagues) be brought to the Tribunal. That would
shed light on Western-supported ethnic cleansing in
Croatia and on the question as to why at least 200.000
non-Albanians have left Kosovo since NATO and the UN
arrived.
If a major war breaks out in Macedonia, some of the
weapons the parties will use to fight each other come
from the same supplier; and the parties will be assisted
by the same "advisers" and mercenaries (see PressInfo
118).
The same politicians who now rush to Skopje are those
who were absolutely central in creating the havoc in the
first place: then NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana
who is now the "Foreign Minister" of the EU, Lord
Robertson who was then British Secretary of Defence, now
NATO Secretary-General. The new Head of Mission of UNMIK
is former Danish defence minister Hans Haekkerup who was
responsible for Danish F16 participation in the actual
bombing of Yugoslavia. Their moral capital and legitimacy
in this situation and their competence in
conflict-management in general should not be beyond
scrutiny, debate and critical evaluation in a free
press.
One highly relevant word for Western policies outlined
here is peace-prevention. (See TFF report 62 in Publications
or go to our
online site). Either there is a hidden agenda for the
destruction of Macedonia too or the official plan to
provide stability and peace in Yugoslavia and Macedonia
is yet another conflict-management failure of Himalayan
proportions.
Those who want to look into the matter might find that
the policies of EU and NATO countries, particularly as
they relate to Kosovo and the policies of the missions
there, make up the most important factor of instability
in today's Balkans.
Macedonia's ability to survive the consequences of ten
years of conflict-mismanagement in the Balkans has been
impressive, but it is coming to an end. It should come as
a surprise to no one. There has been no lack of early
warnings from experts such as Misha Glenny, international
government mission heads in the region and independent
expert teams such as that of TFF.
Unfortunately, top politicians in the US and Europe
lack every willingness to listen. They do not learn
lessons, they teach them. They have too little humility
and too much missionary zeal. They see others as standing
on the lower rungs of the civilisational ladder,
themselves (on its top) as chosen to civilise the
savages. Or to make others their disciples. It's the
classical colonial mind-set: the noble white man's
shouldering his burden while regretting that now and then
he needs to use the sword to make them understand his
altruism and fundamental goodness.
The importance of independent research and media work
grows by the day.
You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or
re-post this item, but please retain the source.
Continued in PressInfo
122
This is what TFF wrote about
preventing war in Macedonia
Your ideas for peace in
Macedonia wanted (1999)
A bouquet of oeace ideas to
Macedonia...and Kosovo (1999)
© TFF 2001
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