The protection of the monasteries and the threat of violence

Last month Gerard Gallucci mentioned in his blog:

Now I understand that in the period before the ICJ decision in July, a senior official in the US Embassy in Pristina was telling certain Kosovo Albanian political leaders that if the Serbs did not end their obstinate rejection of Kosovo independence, the Albanians should teach them a lesson. The official reportedly said that only Decani should be spared.

This puts the decision to remove the KFOR protection from 4 monastries in a very special light. It becomes either a threat with violence or a preparation for violence. Quite a different reason than the trust in Kosovo's police - what KFOR spokesmen talk about. I wonder whether our European governments really understood what they consented to when they approved this. This talk about violence raises also the question whether the ICJ has been blackmailed with the threat that an undesirable verdict might result in more violence in Kosovo.

The US has a long history of supporting violence as a means to achieve its goals. It even supported death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s. Sometimes the dark forces of the CIA and the State Department even ignored their own government - as for example happened in the 1991 coup against Aristide in Haiti that was supported by CIA men while the Bush administration condemned it. Nowadays the government in the US seems a bit more enlightened, but many of the people who were involved in those events are still on the payroll of Uncle Sam.

US behavior around the march 2004 riots was and is quite suspicious. Compared with the other countries the US had very little trouble controlling the riots in its zone and it seemed to have good contacts with relevant Albanian leaders. After the riots none of the riot leaders was indicted or even pointed out. I can't believe that that was just because UNMIK was afraid for Kosovo's stability.

The US is threatening with violence in other ways too - for example when the US ambassador in Kosovo called the Serbs in North Kosovo terrorists. And the regular threats from Kosovo's Albanian leaders against the northern Serbs don't receive the strident international condemnation that they deserve.