Biden Would Like You to Forget His Enthusiastic Support for Ethnic
Cleansing, Mass Murder, Islamic Terrorists and War Criminals
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - January 26, 2021
With Friends Like These. Biden embraces Kosovo's former Prime Minister
Hashim Thaçi. Reports linked Thaçi to human organ smuggling and organized
crime. In 1997, Thaçi was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to ten years
in prison. In 2020, he had to cancel a trip to Washington because he was
indicted by the Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. [Source:
abc.net.au]
Part III in our Series on Joe Biden's foreign policy positions through the
years: The Balkans
In his 2008 memoir, Promises to Keep, then Democratic Party presidential
candidate Joe Biden touted his leadership on the Balkan conflict as one of
his two proudest moments in public life. He pushed a reluctant Clinton
administration to arm Bosnian Muslims in the early 1990s and to use air
power to suppress conflict in Serbia and Kosovo.[1]
Biden reiterated the same theme in a January 2020 interview with NBC,
telling Lester Holt: "Look, I'm the guy that started the effort to make sure
we took down the guy who was engaged in genocide in the Balkans: Slobodan
Milošević."[2]
But was there really a genocide in the Balkans led by Milošević and was
Biden's involvement in the conflict really something to be proud about?
Biden stands in front of a UN tank in Sarajevo in April 1993. [Source:
dailysabah.com]
Another War Supported by Liberals
The Balkan Wars are overshadowed by wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam as
examples of misguided military intervention-or are considered a positive
display of U.S. power.
The list of liberal luminaries who supported the Balkan wars included: Todd
Gitlin, Susan Sontag, Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, Bernie Sanders, Paul
Wellstone, Michael Waltzer, and Christopher Hitchens.
Biden wrote in Promises to Keep that Bosnia was for him a "crucible" which
changed his mind about the military. I came to the Senate trying to stop the
Vietnam War. Like a lot of my generation, when we thought [about the]
military, we thought [about] Dr. Strangelove-Slim Pickens riding on a
bomber, Generals using helicopters to go to lunch at the River Gauche. That
was the image, but if you ask me today to go back and pick the 20 brightest,
most informed individuals I've worked with in government, twelve would be
military.[3]
The shifting attitude that Biden personified was predicated in part on the
military's development of new technologies that ensured greater surgical
precision in bombing-at least in the popular impression-and which enabled
operations to be carried out without any U.S. casualties, coupled with the
framing of wars as necessary to halt ethnic cleansing and genocide.
After Vietnam, new technologies like drones enabled the U.S. to wage war
without casualties. [Source: dronecenter.bard.edu]
President Bill Clinton at the time was looking for a war that could redeem
the nation's honor and revitalize the legitimacy of U.S. military power
after Vietnam. According to a friend, Clinton would lament that "the
generation before him was able to serve in a war [World War II] with a
plainly noble purpose, and felt 'almost cheated' that 'when it was his turn
he didn't have the chance to be part of a moral cause.'"[4]
Bill Clinton visits the troops in Bosnia. [Source: youtube.com]
The moral cause that Clinton and Biden embraced, unfortunately, was a
pyrrhic one based on the delusion that the Bosnian Muslims-whom the U.S.
allied with-were striving for a multicultural society, and that the Serbs
were heirs to the Nazis.
CovertAction Magazine (see Diana Johnstone's article "Seeing Yugoslavia
Through a Dark Glass" in our CovertAction Quarterly back-issue) pointed out
at the time that the Balkan War was as atrocious as any war in U.S.
history-it was rooted in false pretexts, helped intensify ethnic cleansing,
and led to the breakup of the Yugoslav federation, which Biden later adopted
as a model for dividing Iraq along ethnic lines.
Senator Biden accompanied President Clinton and other officials assigned to
Bosnia in December 1997. [Source: wikipedia.org]
In a speech before the Senate on December 13, 1995, Biden denounced Serb
leaders Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić, along with Milošević, as war
criminals who he said were "no better than Himmler and Goebbels [infamous
Nazi leaders]."[5]
This latter assessment was contradicted by intelligence reports which
pointed to atrocities on all sides of the conflict and exoneration of
Milošević on charges of genocide before the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The worst act of ethnic cleansing in the war was carried out not by the
Serbs but by Croat forces allied with the United States in Operation Storm,
which was planned with the assistance of a U.S. mercenary company, Military
Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI).
Serb refugees flee Operation Storm. [Source: thesrpskatimes.com]
MPRI helped the Croat army to implement an "air, land and battle doctrine"
and provided real time-coded and pictorial information from U.S.
reconnaissance satellites over Krajina to Croat commanders. It also trained
units directly implicated in war crimes.[6]
Croatian Brigadier General Krešimir Ćosić and Lieutenant General Wesley
Clark planning Operation Storm. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Serb victims later sued MPRI for complicity in genocide, stating that the
company was aware of the pro-Nazi sentiments of Croat leader Franjo Tudjman
and his henchmen and that "there could be no doubt of what the training and
armaments that MPRI was going to provide."[7]
Bill Clinton and Franjo Tudjman in Zagreb in 1996. [Source: sbperiskop.net]
The other main U.S. allies were the Bosnian Muslims, whose soldiers were
known for chopping off the heads of Serb fighters that they had killed.[8]
Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegović had been arrested for his activities
in World War II when he allegedly recruited young Muslims for a military
unit organized by the SS Gestapo. A manifesto that he wrote called for
"Islamic renewal" and declared: "There can be no peace or coexistence
between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political
institutions.. the state should be an expression of religion and should
support its moral concepts."[9]
Then Senator Biden speaks with Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo on April 9,
1993. [Source: aljazeera.com]
The Muslim fighting regiments backed by the U.S. were bolstered by 4,000
Arab jihadist fighters from Afghanistan, Algeria and other Islamic
countries.[10]
Some were recruited through the Al-Kiffah Islamic center in Brooklyn, New
York, which was managed by Omar Abdel-Rahman, the infamous "Blind Sheikh"
who played a key role in the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center.
Two of the participants in fighting against the Serbs, Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Khalid al-Mindhar, became 9/11 hijackers, according to the 9/11 Commission
report.[11]
Khalid al-Mindhar [Source: wikepedia.org]
Nawaf al-Hazmi [Source: wikipedia.org]
Despite being blamed by Biden and others for starting the war, the Serbs
were the main group that was trying to keep Yugoslavia together as a nation.
They further supported two diplomatic settlements (the 1992 Lisbon Plan and
1993 Vance-Owen Plan), which were rejected by the U.S.[12]
Milošević, featured above, supported the Lisbon and Vance-Owen plans, which
Biden, following the lead of the Clinton administration, rejected. [Source:
theguardian.com]
Origins of the War and U.S. Motives
Yugoslavia had first begun to unravel after the death of Socialist Marshal
Josep Broz Tito, who ruled it from 1953 to 1980; a golden era in which
quality-of-life indicators were high. While joining with the non-aligned
movement, Yugoslavia's annual GDP growth averaged 6.1% under Tito, medical
care was free, the literacy rate was about 91% and life expectancy was 72
years.[13]
After Tito's death, cconomic austerity and privatization imposed by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) enhanced social inequality and led to a
collapse in industrial productivity and living standards, creating the
conditions which exacerbated ethnic rivalries, and resulted in national
disintegration and war.[14] By 1990, independence movements arose in the
provinces of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosnia),
which the U.S. and others particularly Germany were intent on exploiting for
their advantage.[15]
Tito [Source: youngpioneerstour.com]
During the 1980s, the Reagan administration targeted the Yugoslav economy in
a secret memo, NSDD 133, which advocated expanded efforts to promote a
"quiet revolution to overthrow Communist governments and parties" while
"reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented
economy."[16]
While the war formally started in June 1991, after Slovenia and Croatia
announced their independence, this strategy was continued through the
Clinton era when the United States supported the secessionist movements and
imposed sanctions combined with a devastating economic blockade on
Yugoslavia-even though the World Court ruled that Serbia was not the
aggressor in Bosnia.[17]
The Yugoslav army, dominated by Serbs, tried to put down the secessionist
rebellions and occupied Croatia. The fledgling Croat army struck back by
driving out two-thirds of the Serbs from the capital of Zagreb and torturing
and raping Serbs in cities like Vukovar.[18]
The Balkans [Source: wikipedia.org]
On October 14, 1991, Muslim and Croat legislators in Bosnia announced their
secession from Yugoslavia. Radovan Karadžić, a psychiatrist who considered
himself the greatest Serb leader since Karadjordje (AKA "Black George"), who
had led a Serb uprising against the Ottoman Turks in 1804, subsequently
declared an independent Serb Republic of Srpska.[19]
The Bosnian Muslim army-which fought primarily against the Serbs-was helped
by U.S. Special Forces advisers, and wore U.S. military uniforms supplied by
U.S. military contractors.[20]
U.S. Special Forces also trained the Albanian-dominated Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) in the effort to unseat Milošević, who was considered a relic of
a bygone era as the last socialist leader in Europe.
A key purpose underlying U.S. military intervention in the Balkans was to
justify the existence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
following the end of the Cold War and to begin to facilitate its expansion
into Eastern Europe, for which Biden was a strong proponent.[21]
First Lady Hillary Clinton meets U.S. troops at Tuzla Air Base on March 25,
1996. [Source: nbcnews.com]
In 1999, at the time of the Kosovo war, President Bill Clinton began
promoting the Southeast European Trade Initiative, which eliminated tariffs
on a host of imports from the Balkans, with the exception of Serbia under
Milošević who was resistant.[22]
The U.S. succeeded further in expanding its network of overseas military
bases with the construction of Camp Bondsteel on 775 expropriated acres of
rolling countryside near the Macedonian border as a spoil of victory.
Aerial photo of Camp Bondsteel. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Biden wrote in his memoir that Camp Bondsteel provided a "strong statement
of U.S. intentions" in the war.[23] A roadway next to the base
characteristically was named after Joe's son, Beau Biden, who served as a
legal adviser in Kosovo.[24]
Biden family walks on road near Camp Bondsteel named after Beau Biden in
2016. [Source: balkaninsight.com]
In the Shadow of Averell Harriman
As we know, Biden started his Senate career promoting troop withdrawals from
Vietnam but, by the 1990s, he had transformed himself into a strong
proponent of socalled "humanitarian intervention."
Richard C. Holbrooke recalled that, when he was nominated as assistant
secretary of state for Europe in late 1994, Biden "in no uncertain terms
made it clear to me that the policy on Bosnia had to change and he would
make sure it did. He believed in action, and history proved him right."
Biden's interest in Yugoslavia dates back to the late 1970s when he
accompanied W. Averell Harriman and his wife Pamela on a trip to Yugoslavia
to attend the funeral of Eduard Kardelj, Tito's intellectual mentor.
A son of one of the original robber barons who founded the legendary Wall
Street firm, Brown Brothers & Co., Harriman served as U.S. ambassador to the
Soviet Union 1943-1946, Secretary of Commerce 1946-1948, Governor of New
York 1955-1958 and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs under John
F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.[25]
Biden wrote in his memoir that he had been "adopted by Harriman" when he got
to the Senate in 1972 as a "thirty-year old kid."[26]
W. Averell Harriman, Biden's political mentor. [Source: wikipedia.org]
During their visit, Harriman predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse
and told Joe that he should "get to know Yugoslavia" because it was an "area
we could bring into the 21st century as an ally."[27]
Two decades later, as a now-prominent member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Biden helped see to it that Harriman's ambition was fulfilled.
Biden wrote in his memoir that his interest in Yugoslavia was rekindled in
1991 when he was visited in his office on K Street by a Croatian Roman
Catholic monk who recounted to him how the Serbs had desecrated the Catholic
shrine in Medjugorje in southern Bosnia, which was known as the Lourdes of
Bosnia.[28]
The Lourdes of Bosnia. [Source: blueskytraveler.com]
The monk asked him "why, as a staunch supporter of Israel, he wasn't paying
attention while Catholics were being killed [by the Serbs]."[29]
At the time, Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's
Subcommittee on European Affairs. He decided to sponsor hearings on the
breakup of Yugoslavia with the purpose of arousing public indignation at
Serb atrocities.
When Milošević's ambassador, a "well-tailored and obsequious fellow," showed
up in Biden's office, suggesting that Biden had it wrong, that the Serbs
were the "good guys" who patterned themselves "after you," and that the
Muslims in Bosnia would make an Islamic state, he invited Biden to meet with
Milošević.[30]
Biden took the ambassador up on his offer in April 1993 and traveled to
Sarajevo. Rather than hearing out his perspective, however, he confronted
Milošević-whom he compared to a mob boss-telling him to his face that he was
a "damned war criminal who should be tried as one."
Senator Biden leans on a table and shakes his fist at Serbian president
Slobodan Milošević (left) during a meeting at the presidential palace in
Belgrade on April 8, 1993. Biden later said that he called Milošević "a damn
war crimial." [Source: cameronsettles.medium.com]
Biden later told Congress that he had emerged from the meeting convinced
that Milošević was a "man with an agenda that was anathema to our interests
and was literally genocidal."
Biden said that "once firmly established as the unchallenged boss of
Serbia," Milošević had "cynically provoked successive crises in Slovenia,
Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo in order to hold onto power by
distracting public attention from his corrupt mismanagement of the Serbian
economy and state."
In another speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 1993,
Biden specified that the conflict in the Balkans was initiated by "Serb
expansionism and aggressionism" and "fascist thuggery on the march" and was
"no more a civil war than Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria had civil
wars" in the 1930s.[31]
Biden's interpretation ignores the fact that Milošević had worked to try to
preserve the Yugoslav federation along with a Titoist policy of
non-alignment with the U.S. and West.
In his memoir, Biden described a British helicopter pilot in Bosnia who told
him "they're all bad, they're all bad," as "pernicious, like Stock character
in a Noel Coward play, a lethal mix of self-importance and willful
ignorance."[32]
Biden claimed that the indifference to Serb atrocities in the U.S. was the
result of the prejudice against Muslims, stating in one emotional address
before the Senate that "if these were not Muslims [being victimized], the
world would have reacted, just as if it were not Jews in the 1930s."
These comments display how Biden advanced the case for war by exploiting
liberal guilt over the mistreatment of minority groups and abandonment of
the Jews during the Holocaust.
Biden wrote that in "the 23 years I have been here [Senate Foreign Relations
Committee], there is not another issue that has more upset me, angered me,
frustrated me, and occasionally made me feel a sense of shame about what the
West, what the democratic powers of the world are allowing to happen. I'm
tired of all this."
This was another example of clever political strategizing as Biden
effectively cast himself as an anti-establishment crusader morally repulsed
by the powers that be and their refusal to stand up for the world's
oppressed-all while he was lobbying for war.
"Lift and Strike" and the Road to Dayton
In 1992, Biden sponsored a law authorizing assistance to Bosnia through a
drawdown of up to $50 million in Defense Department stocks of military
weapons and equipment.
Upon returning from his 1993 trip to Sarajevo-which he described as
resembling "Dresden [in World War II] with graffiti"[33]-Biden issued a
36-page report laying out eight policy proposals to deal with Milošević,
including airstrikes on Serb artillery.
Biden subsequently co-sponsored a "lift and strike" proposal with Senate
majority leader Bob Dole (R-KS) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) that would lift an
arms embargo, which Biden likened to "an act of moral rape," followed by air
strikes.
The Clinton administration worked around the arms embargo by establishing an
illegal arms pipeline to the Bosnian Muslims and Croats through Iran, which
became an open secret.[34]
On August 28, 1995, Clinton ordered bombing strikes over Bosnia under
Operation Deliberate Force, which garnered almost zero public opposition.
The tide of opinion had shifted when the Bosnian Serbs overran the eastern
mountain town of Srebrenica on July 14th and massacred Muslims.
In a preview of the tactics used to sell war in Iraq in 2003, U.S.
Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright gave a dramatic performance at the
UN where she showed satellite photos of alleged mass graves at
Srebrenica-though the photos did not show any actual dead bodies and
Albright never made them available for public examination.
Madeleine Albright testifies at the UN about Bosnian Serb atrocities at
Srebrenica. Albright played the role in the Bosnian War that Colin Powell
did for Iraq in 2003. [Source: nytimes.com]
Satellite images of alleged mass graves. Proof though has never been
conclusive and the images at the time were not made available for public
examination. [Source: nsarchive2.gwu.edu]
Biden contributed to the drumbeat for war by publicly denouncing the
Srebrenica atrocities, writing in his memoir that the day of Srebrenica was
his "saddest day in the Senate."
Biden expressed further indignation at the Serbs alleged shelling of
Sarajevo's Markale Market Square in two separate incidents on February 5,
1994, and August 28, 1995, just two days before Operation Deliberate Force
was launched.
Independent investigators arrived at the conclusion that the Bosnian army
carried out the shelling and tried to blame the Serbs in order to show them
in a bad light and "tilt international support in their favor," in the words
of a British Lieutenant General.[35]
Operation Deliberate Force resulted in the deaths of more than 200 Bosnian
Serbs, including 10 civilians at a hospital in the Sarajevo suburb of
Blazuj.[36]
Admiral Leighton W. Smith, Commander of Allied Forces Southern Europe,
provides an update on Operation Deliberate Force, NATO's first air campaign.
[Source: nato.int]
It was followed up by the signing of the Dayton Accords-a neocolonial
agreement which legitimized the occupation of Bosnia by 60,000 NATO troops,
20,000 of them from the U.S., and drafting of a new constitution granting
full executive powers in all matters to a Swedish official, Carl Bildt,
appointed by the UN Security Council, who could overrule the prime ministers
and appointed ministers.
Negotiations at Dayton, Ohio, which led to a neocolonial arrangement.
Milošević is on the right, Tudjman in the center, and Izetbegović on the
left. [Source: dw.com]
Saving or Costing Lives?
Biden told the Baltimore Sun that if the "lift and strike" proposal had been
adopted earlier, genocide could have been averted.
The Bosnian Serbs had committed the "largest mass murder [at Srebrenica] in
Europe since the days of Adolf Hitler," which Biden said he had warned about
in 1993 when he wrote "if the West does not act, the eastern town of
Srebrenica would become "'the Guernica of our time.'"[37]
The latter analogy was misleading because the killing at Srebrenica was not
one-sided like Guernica, which was bombed by the Nazis during the Spanish
Civil War.
The massacre of Muslims by Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica-whose numbers remain
in dispute-was preceded by large-scale killing of Serbs by Muslim regiments
under the command of Naser Orić, who bragged about killing 114 Serbs in one
single incident.[38]
Naser Oric, a U.S. supported warlord who bragged about massacres committed
near Srebrenica. [Source: serbiamonitor.com]
Curiously, few human remains were ever found near Srebrenica's killing
fields. Autopsy reports also revealed that many of the Muslims died from
battle-related wounds.[39]
In pressing for military intervention, Biden consistently played up Serb
atrocities, claiming before the Senate and again in his memoirs that the
Serbs ran torture, death and rape camps[40]- allegations that are difficult
to corroborate, and which President Izetbegovic admitted before his death
were designed to trigger a bombing campaign by western powers.[41]
This image of Fikret Alic was disseminated in the media in August 1992 as
supposed proof of Nazi-style concentration camps run by Bosnian Serbs. TIME
Magazine's caption for this cover read: "Muslim prisoners in a Serbian
detention camp." [Source: time.com] Media coverage of Bosnian camps fueled
the rapid escalation of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However independent
investigations found that the photo was misleading and that there was no
barbed wire fence surrounding the refugee camp where Alic was based; rather
the barbed wire separated the photographer from the refugees who were not
enclosed. "The barbed wire was only around a small compound next to the
camp, which had been erected before the war to protect agricultural products
and machinery from thieves." See Thomas Deichmann's article "Misinformation:
TV Coverage of a Bosnian Camp" in our CovertAction Quarterly back-issue,
number 65. [Source: CovertActionMagazine.com]
In the 2008 vice-presidential debate with Sarah Palin, Biden claimed that
his recommendations on Bosnia "saved tens of thousands of lives."
In fact, it could be argued that they cost tens of thousands of lives.
The terms of the Dayton agreement that ended the conflict were more
favorable to the Bosnian Serbs than the 1993 Vance-Owen Plan, which
Milošević, had agreed to, but Biden, following the lead of the Clinton
administration, rejected.[42]
Lord Owen, left, and Cyrus Vance, right, with plan to end Bosnian conflict.
[Source: news.bbc.co.uk]
Biden called the Vance-Owen plan "profoundly flawed" in its "approach of
creating separate ethnic enclaves," and told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee that it would "incite violence, rather than discouraging it."[43]
However, if Vance-Owen had been signed, the war would have ended two years
earlier than it did and much bloodshed would have been avoided.
Biden and the Kosovo War
In 2016, during meetings with Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić, Biden
offered condolences for the victims of the bombing in Kosovo, which included
between 500 and 2,000 civilians.[44] The bombing had intensified the level
of ethnic cleansing and left carcinogens in the air and radioactive waste
from the use of depleted uranium.[45]
A man leads his daughter away from destroyed buildings after NATO air
strikes hammered the center of Pristina, the Kosovo capital, during the 1999
bombing campaign. [Source: commondreams.org]
Seventeen years earlier, Biden had told CNN that Clinton's authorization of
the bombing was "absolutely correct," warning of the consequences of
inaction: "[Yugoslav president Slobodan] Milošević will engage in ethnic
cleansing. The number of refugees will be in the magnitude of tens of
thousands. The region will be destabilized. And our interests will be badly
hurt," Biden said.
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden coordinated
hearings in the Spring and fall of 1999 that gave a platform for hawks like
Robert Kagan, then a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot
Cohen, director of the Johns Hopkins School of Strategic Studies, Senator
Robert Dole (R-KS), who had strong ties with the Croat lobby, and Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright.
Sens. Joe Biden (right) and Jesse Helms, the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, chat with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on
Capitol Hill in Washington on October 7, 1999. [Source: foreignpolicy.com]
With Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Biden sponsored a Senate resolution
authorizing President Clinton to use "all necessary force," including ground
troops, to win the war in Kosovo.
Clinton had not asked for such authority and believed the war could have
been won without ground forces.[46]
Biden's aim in supporting intervention was to protect the Albanian minority
in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing directed by the Serbs.
In attempting to fulfill Averell Harriman's old ambition, Biden further
advocated for regime change in Serbia, which was achieved when Milošević
resigned on October 7, 2000, after a "color revolution" supported through
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and was put on trial at The
Hague.
Protesters funded by U.S. agencies storm the Serbian parliament in a "color
revolution" designed to oust Milošević. [Source: gregoryelich.org]
Biden had called the Serbs "illiterates and "degenerates" on CNN.[47]
KLA rebels pose with body of dead Serb who had disappeared in the town of
Peć. [Source: dengalnaserben.weebly.com]
He exaggerated the level of Serb atrocities and overlooked the fact that the
Albanian-led Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had been branded as a terrorist
organization by the U.S. State Department mere months before the war
started.[48]
The KLA's ambition was to rule Kosovo and establish a federation with
neighboring Albania while expelling the Serb minority which had been
dominant in Kosovo.[49]
Kosovo had sentimental value to the Serbs as the site of a famous 14th
century battle where they were defeated by the Ottoman Turks.
U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke poses with KLA fighter. [Source:
Kosovo.net]
In 2010, now Vice President Biden referred to KLA leader Hashim Thaçi as the
"George Washington of Kosovo," and later said that he had "showed great
courage" in "bringing democracy to Kosovo."
In June 2020, Thaçi had to cancel a trip to Washington, however, because he
had been indicted by the ICTY in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against
humanity-crimes rangin from murder, enforced disappearances and torture.[50]
Joe Biden, center, and Hashim Thaçi, left. [Source: wikimedia.org]
Previous reports had linked Thaçi to organized crime and to a human organ
smuggling operation involving the selling of Serb organs that were extracted
during violent interrogations.[51]
Biden with the "George Washington" of Kosovo who now sits in a jail cell in
The Hague. [Source: twitter.com]
Wanted poster for Thaçi issued by Serbian police in 1998 for his role in KLA
and other terrorist activities including attacks on the Serb police.
[Source: wikipedia.org]
When Biden visited Kosovo's capital of Pristina during his Vice Presidency,
he was greeted enthusiastically by waving crowds.[52]
However, Kosovo experienced significant problems following the U.S.-NATO
bombing, including huge unemployment and staggering political corruption
which resulted in Kosovo emerging at the center of the international drug
trade and prostitution rings in Europe.
Many of Kosovo's resources were privatized and sold to Western multinational
corporations and thousands of Serbs and ethnic Roma were driven out. The
police service trained by the U.S. was "dominated by fear, corruption and
incompetence."
The country had the feeling of being a colony ruled by viceroys appointed by
the U.S. and NATO and dominated by a giant U.S. military base, Camp
Bondsteel, which housed Kosovo's main prison.[53]
Joe Biden visiting Camp Bondsteel, May 2009. [Source: wikipedia.org]
In December 2004, plans went forward for the construction of a $1.2 billion
Trans-Balkan pipeline south of Camp Bondsteel financed by the Overseas
Private Investment Corporation.
Kosovo motorway built by Bechtel which was completed in 2019. [Source:
bechtel.com]
Christopher Dell [Source: wikipedia.org]
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Dell also helped Bechtel-whom he went on to work
for and provided over $400,000 to Democratic Party candidates in the
1990s-secure a $600 million highway building contract.[54]
Biden's connection to Bechtel went through his chief of staff Bernard Toon,
who became a lobbyist for them.[55]
The oil pipeline and Bechtel construction projects, along with the granting
of exploration rights to a consortium of U.S., French and Swedish investors
for the lucrative Trepča mining complex, pointed to another hidden motive
for the Kosovo war beyond the so-called promotion of "human rights."
Trepča mining complex. [Source: intellinews.com]
The questions for us today include: What new Kosovos and Bosnias will take
root under a Biden presidency, and will liberals oppose these wars?
