From
the Kosovo Protection Corps in the Balkans to the White Helmets of
Syria, a group of well-connected people with the fundings of
governments and elite billionaires have sought to wage a war on
public opinion and have recently exploited Jo Cox’s death to do so.
by
Vanessa Beeley and Whitney Webb
Part
2 - Perfecting the blueprint for “humanitarian” regime change:
from the Balkans to Syria
It all
began in the Balkans. The blueprint for the Syrian regime change,
multi-spectrum war, and the roadmap for partitioning a sovereign
nation along sectarian lines, was inaugurated in what was once known
as Yugoslavia.
Corporate
media in the West, during the conflict and after, have diligently
followed the NATO script, namely that the Bosnian Serbs were
“motivated by a hatred of Muslims.” It was largely ignored that
the Serbs wanted to protect the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia
and that, in Bosnia, they opposed the concept of an Islamic
fundamentalist government, which the authorities of Alija Izetbegovic
were attempting to introduce.
The fact
that many Bosnian Muslims — including Fikret Abdic, who was
actually the true winner of the 1990 elections for the presidency of
Bosnia and Herzegovina — were in agreement with the Bosnian Serbs
over those two key issues was largely disregarded.
While
Western media labelled the Bosnian Serbs as “the new Nazis,”
NATO-friendly Bosnian Muslims were euphemistically labelled “rebels,”
and, in Kosovo, the NATO-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an
organized crime group with Islamic fundamentalist leanings and
connections, was labelled as “moderate” and “democrats.”
Dr.
Marcus Papadopoulos, an expert on former Yugoslavia and a frequent
traveller to the region, told Mint Press News: “Yugoslavia and
the Serbs were the first victims of the American-led unipolar world
that emerged in 1991. Because it was in Yugoslavia — namely,
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo — where the U.S. and its
principal ally, Britain, together with Germany, destroyed the
sanctity of internationally recognized borders; disregarded the
authority of the United Nations Security Council; dealt irrevocable
damage to the United Nations Charter by having undermined legitimate
state authorities and having supported, with arms, training, money,
logistics and intelligence information, armed secessionist movements
(which comprised fascist, Islamist and organised crime groups);
facilitated the arrival of Mujahideen and jihadist fighters to the
region; employed their respective media outlets to demonize the
people standing in the way of their objectives — the Serbs —
accusing them of mass murder and genocide, thus justifying the West’s
policy in the Balkans; and then directly intervened with military
force to guarantee the accomplishment of their objectives. In short,
Yugoslavia was the template for Iraq, Libya and Syria.”
Acclaimed
historian Mark Curtis has written extensively about the British
government’s collaboration with the “pro-Jihadist forces in
Kosovo” under the leadership of Iraq war-hawk, Tony Blair. In
his book Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam,
Curtis concludes: “[T]he NATO bombing that began in March 1999
had the effect of deepening, not preventing, the humanitarian
disaster that Milosevic’s forces inflicted on Kosovo.”
Author
and academic John Laughland wrote a book detailing the travesty of
justice that was the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, entitled: Travesty:
The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International
Justice. In an opinion piece written for The Guardian in 2008, under
the title “Lies of the Vigilantes,” Laughland wrote: “Slobodan
Milosevic was posthumously exonerated on Monday when the
international court of justice ruled that Serbia was not responsible
for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica […] The new ICC, created by
Britain, also seems to operate on the basis that white men do not
commit war crimes: its prosecutors are currently investigating two
local wars in Africa while turning a blind eye to Iraq. Only when
that hideous strength which flows from the hypocrisy of
interventionism is sapped, will the world stand any chance of
returning to lawfulness and peace.”
Dr.
Papadopoulos also spoke to Mint Press News about the role played by
Bernard Kouchner, high-profile founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres
(MSF, or Doctors Without Borders), and former French Foreign
Minister, in Kosovo: “Like Paddy Ashdown in Bosnia, Bernard
Kouchner acted like a colonial-style governor in Kosovo. Mr. Kouchner
played a lead role in the Western colonization of the Serbian
province by, for instance, dismantling the Yugoslav civil service
there and replacing it with a pro-U.S., pro-NATO and pro-EU one, and
ensuring that NATO would have supervisory offices in key institutions
in Kosovo.”
In a
recent article published at Global Research, Dr. Papadopoulos
highlights how in the summer of 1995, the Bosnian Serb army was
presented with an opportunity to conquer Srebrenica and thereby end
the massacres of Serb villagers in the area. According to Dr.
Papadopoulos, “it was a trap set by Bill Clinton and Bosnian
Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, who were both looking for
‘genocide’ so that NATO would have the justification to
extensively intervene in Bosnia.”
Dr.
Papadopoulos then describes how even Kouchner, the “colonial–style
governor” in Kosovo, admitted the lies that permeated Western
media accounts of events in Bosnia.
In 2003,
Kouchner interviewed Izetbegovic when the Bosnian Muslim leader was
on his deathbed. “They [the camps in Bosnia] were horrible
places, but people were not systematically exterminated. Did you know
that?” asked Kouchner. To which Izetbegovic replied, “Yes.
I thought that my revelations could precipitate bombings. Yes, I
tried, but the assertion was false. There were no extermination
camps…” (excerpted from Les Guerriers de la Paix: Du Kosovo a
l’Iraq, Editions Grasset, 2004; published in English as The
Warriors of Peace).
Even
now, after analyses and counter narratives abound to challenge the
NATO-aligned media versions of events in the former Yugoslavia, those
who question the “official” accounts are still attacked, maligned
and slandered as “genocide deniers.”
In Part
1 of this series, we outlined the role played by Mabel van Oranje in
manufacturing consent for the NATO bombing campaign in the Balkans
through her founding of the European Action Council for Peace in the
Balkans. That “council for peace,” with van Oranje at the helm,
went on to promote a bombing campaign that pounded Yugoslavia into
sectarian division and chaos, from which the region has never
recovered.
Another
intelligence cog in the Syrian-regime-change-war apparatus was also
present in Kosovo during the NATO intervention there. James Le
Mesurier, who would go on to found the White Helmets in Turkey in
2013, served as intelligence coordinator for Pristina City in Kosovo
soon after the NATO intervention that led to NATO being accused of
war crimes for its targeting of thousands of civilians and media.
Years
later, in 2015, Le Mesurier was interviewed for a Georgetown Security
Studies Review, a publication for the Center of Security Studies at
Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Services.
The review examined the Le Mesurier-proposed “framework for
demobilization and reconstruction in post-conflict Syria.” The
parallels with the Kosovo operation reviewed by Le Mesurier and
Georgetown Security are blatant: “These teams [White Helmets]
possess many of the factors that made past demobilization efforts
successful, such as the transition of the Kosovo Liberation Army to
the Kosovo Protection Corps.”
In
Syria, the Yugoslavia blueprint has since evolved, as the forces that
destroyed Yugoslavia seek to perfect their practice of rehabilitating
terrorists for the purpose of justifying foreign military
intervention. In Kosovo, the KLA, a terrorist group, was rebranded as
a “protection corps.” In Syria, the same “protection corps”
myth was incubated with immediate effect, working in lock-step with
the various terrorist and sectarian gangs that were armed, trained
and financed by the U.S/U.K.-led interventionist coalition.
The
Georgetown study argues that the White Helmets must be an integral
part of the transitional process in post-conflict Syria. Despite
claims of being an apolitical organization, the White Helmets would
be involved in an external “reconciliation” process managed by
NATO member-states, their allies in the Gulf, and Israel, per
Georgetown’s recommendations. Internal Syrian/Russian-led
reconciliation processes are not even acknowledged, despite their
many successes in achieving reintegration of many of the armed
factions back into the fabric of Syrian secular society.
The
study then claims that the Kosovo model shows that such proposed
reintegration programs can succeed if they are managed by groups like
the White Helmets and similar local actors aligned with the U.S
coalition policy of toppling the Syrian government. The lofty claims
of promoting “stability on multiple fronts” should ring hollow
considering the role of the NATO member-states in fomenting
instability and chaos in a recalcitrant sovereign nation to force
compliance with their supremacist geo-strategic objectives in the
region. Effectively, the White Helmets are the entry point of the
shadow-state wedge that has been plunged deep into the heart of
Syrian society and culture.
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