NATO's Reign of Terror in Kosovo

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, February 24, 2008

"The following text was written in the immediate wake of the 1999 NATO bombings of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Kosovo by NATO troops.

It is now well established that the war was waged on a fabricated humanitarian pretext and that extensive war crimes were committed by NATO and the US.

In a bitter irony, the so-called International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague is controlled by those who have committed extensive war crimes. It was not President Milosevic, who was poisoned in his prison cell, but NATO who started the war in Yugoslavia.

According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, the ultimate war crime consists in starting a war in the first place.....

According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, NATO heads of State and heads of government are responsible for the supreme crime: "the crime against peace."....

There is evidence that the US adminstration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia.

The decsion to destroy Yugoslavia as a country and carve it up into a number of small proxy states was taken by Reagan adminstration in the early 1980s.

A "Secret Sensitive" National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) entitled "US Policy towards Yugoslavia." sets the framework for the destabilization of Yugoslavia's model of market socialism and the establishment of a US sphere of influence in Southeastern Europe......

NSDD 133 set in motion a series of covert intelligence operations which consisted in creating and supporting secessionist paramilitary armies. These operations were combined with the destabilization of the Yugoslav economy, which ultimately led to the destruction of its industrial base, the demise of the workers' cooperative and the dramatic impoverishment of its population.

The record of US-NATO war crimes is important in assessing recent developments in Kosovo.

From the outset of their respective mandates in June 1999, both NATO and the UN Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK) have actively supported the KLA which from the outset of the NATO occupation has been involved in numerous atrocities. It is important to understand that these atrocities were ordered by the current and former prime ministers of the Kosovo "government".

Since 1999, State terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO's design. The present government of prime minister Hashim Thaci (a former KLA Commander), is an outgrowth of this reign of terror. It is not a government in the common sense of the word. It remains a terrorist organization linked to organised crime. It is instrument of the foreign occupation. "