25 Years Later: Reflecting on NATO's War against Yugoslavia

Interview with Nebojša Malić

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In this compelling episode of On the Barricades, host Boyan Stanislavski engages with the insightful Nebojša Malić to unravel the tangled web of Balkan history, focusing on the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia. Their conversation reveals the profound and often overlooked consequences of foreign interference in the region, providing a detailed examination of the historical context and geopolitical manipulations that continue to shape the Balkans. As Nebojša shares his personal experiences and expert analyses, listeners are offered a rare glimpse into the complexities of Balkan politics and the enduring impact of Western policies on local populations.

Diving deep into themes of propaganda, ethnic tensions, and the rewriting of history, this episode not only enlightens but challenges the audience to reconsider commonly accepted narratives about the NATO bombardment and its long-term effects on the Balkans. Nebojsa's narrative, rich with historical insights and poignant personal anecdotes, paints a vivid picture of the struggles and resilience of the Balkan peoples. Whether you're a history aficionado or a newcomer to the topic, this episode of "On the Barricades" promises to engage, educate, and provoke thought, making it a must-listen for anyone eager to understand the real consequences of geopolitical strategies and the power of historical narratives.

1. **Personal Experiences during NATO Bombardment**: - **(0:28 - 1:25)** Nebojša discusses where he was and his initial reactions when the NATO bombardment began. He reflects on the shock and the betrayal felt when friends and acquaintances in the U.S. drastically changed their views towards him upon the onset of the bombing.

2. **Impact of Historical Misrepresentations**: - **(1:25 - 4:54)** The conversation delves into how historical narratives, especially related to WWII, were reshaped in Western contexts to support interventionist policies. Nebojša explains how these revised histories influenced his understanding of media and propaganda.

3. **Experiences with Propaganda and Xenophobia in Academia**: - **(5:01 - 6:35)** Nebojša shares his observations on the strength and impact of American propaganda leading up to the NATO intervention. He highlights the personal discrimination he faced due to his ethnicity, contradicting the expected progressive stance of academic circles in the U.S.

4. **Analysis of Serbian and Yugoslav History**: - **(30:38 - 33:37)** An extensive discussion on the manipulation of Serbian history and the imposition of narratives by external powers throughout the centuries. This segment provides insights into the longstanding geopolitical strategies at play in the Balkans.

5. **Modern Implications of Historical Policies**: - **(53:40 - 55:57)** Nebojša explains how historical interventions and policies continue to affect the political and social dynamics in the Balkans. He discusses the enduring impact of past conflicts on contemporary issues in Kosovo and Serbia.

6. **Failures and Realities of NATO's Military Objectives**: - **(1:10:45 - 1:21:18)** A critical evaluation of NATO's military strategies and their failure to achieve intended goals during the Kosovo War. Nebojša details the realization within NATO of their limitations and the strategic retreat that followed.

7. **Future of Balkan Politics and Ethnic Relations**: - **(1:21:21 - 1:21:54)** The discussion concludes with Nebojša pondering the future interactions among Balkan nations and the potential reevaluation of alliances as global power dynamics shift.

Boyan Stanislavski

Hello and welcome "On the Barricades", my name is Boyan Stanislavski and this is another edition of our show. Today, our special guest is Nebojša Malić, hello and welcome to the show once again.

Nebojša Malić

Thank you for having me.

Boyan Stanislavski

All right, and thank you for taking the time to be with us today. I invited you because I'd like to continue, as we actually discussed that on camera during our previous conversation, I'd like to continue our discussion on Serbia, but I'd like to give a bit more of a historical context. And provided that it's the 12th of April, just a couple of weeks ago, we had this tragic anniversary of the NATO bombardment, NATO war, that's what we should call it, NATO war against Yugoslavia.

And I'd like to begin by asking you, if you allow, a kind of personal question. Where were you when this imperialist adventure started? How old were you?

How did you perceive it? And yeah, if you could give us this information.

Nebojša Malić

Well, I'd just turned 22 and I was in the heartland of America, at university, where I studied.

Boyan Stanislavski

In the belly of the beast.

Nebojša Malić

Right. And, you know, I'd sort of been, you know, writing for the college newspaper, finishing up my degree in history and political science and, you know, sort of observing the events around and Clinton's bombing of, like, Al-Qaeda was starting to become a thing and, there were rumors of another Iraq war and the next thing you know, there's this whole thing coming back to my former country, Yugoslavia, what was left of it.

And it turned out to be a major, well, the movie that created the meme red pill moment would come out later that year. But it was what would later be recognized as a red pill moment for me that I realized that objective reality is different from what people around me were trying to present. Because the moment the first bombs fell on Serbia, and this was a six hour, seven hour time difference in the Midwest.

But the moment this happened, all of these people completely changed. All of their values that they talked about, all of their principles just went out the window. And, you know, people I thought were my friends would look at me as if I ate babies for breakfast because, oh my God, I'm an ethnic Serb. I was like, you've spent the past couple of years here with me. You know me. What's wrong?

What happened? And all of this talk about, you know, oh, well, we need to practice rigorous academic discipline and show consideration for both sides and blah, blah, blah, because you just completely got thrown overboard in favor of just your most basic emotional appeal to raw propaganda. These were people I thought were scholars and they got taken in by the most pedestrian propaganda aired on CNN or other networks.

And they were all airing the same thing, as it turned out later, because they had government handlers in their newsrooms. And so it was it was a major shift for me because I had spent the previous three and a half years basically slowly getting converted into a modern Western liberal Democrat. And because of my previous experiences in Bosnia, I was sort of predisposed to accept that programming.

And then overnight, just everything changed. And arguably, the so-called Kosovo war made me who I am. And so insofar as it started me on this on this trajectory, some of my first published essays in English outside of like the college newspaper circuit were essentially commentary on the propaganda that we saw both during the war and afterwards. And that's why I started writing opinion pieces and media analysis and ended up becoming, you know, a year and a half later, the Balkans columnist for antiwar.com, an amazing, amazing website that was actually started a few years prior to protest US involvement in Bosnia. And unfortunately, several people in that crew have since passed away, but they're still around with younger generations taken over and they're going strong just as much. So I'm really proud of being their columnist for 15 years.

Boyan Stanislavski

Well, that's great. I congratulate you on this anniversary.

Nebojša Malić

But that's how I started. Yeah.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right. So you described the moments after the invasion had started, and I was thinking also, if you could tell us what were your interactions like in the United States during the buildup to the war? Because there's been a lot of propaganda and, you know, I've I've experienced it myself back then.

I was 19 and, you know, I was already shocked by the by the force and the strength and the efficiency of the American propaganda, because I've seen people around me, you know, older than me, intelligent people interested in in politics and well, not maybe not necessarily in politics per se, but in the public cause and interested in the world around them. And I'm talking about people educated, people speaking a few languages, people who had traveled through the world, have seen, you know, a lot of it and experienced and had a lot of, you know, diverse experience, social, cultural and in many other aspects. Yet they would be just, you know totally controlled in a way by the narrative that was created. So we were super strong. It was very efficient. It was, of course, very one sided and sophisticated crafted.

But what you're saying is that people would reject you just because of your ethnicity, just because of, you know, where you were born. This is something shocking when it comes to American academia, because American academia should be the area, which is free of racism, xenophobia, which is very progressive acceptance, you know, tolerance and so on and so forth.

Nebojša Malić

Unless you're a designated villain, in which case you're obviously, you know, everything is allowed. This is one of the reasons this whole new wokeism seems to work, because it provides an officially designated target for one's emotions, which are banned towards everyone else. I'm not going to paint myself as a victim.

I wasn't a victim then and I'm not a victim now. But it was definitely a change of attitude on part of a lot of people that I thought I knew that struck me and sort of forced me to question my prior assumptions. And again, started me on the whole process, the up to that point, I would like to say that I hadn't noticed the propaganda being that strong. Not even in the US? Well, so we were in the Midwest. Obviously, people there didn't tend to be very, very political.

It was a different time in human history when politics wasn't truly embedded in everything. It was starting slowly towards, you know, that trajectory again. But it hadn't quite. You could live in Iowa and work in academia or farming or whatever and not necessarily care what was going on in the White House. I remember people being appalled at the whole Bill Clinton scandal. The sex scandal had just happened.

And it was a thing. And this was like the late '98, early '99. And the impeachment inquiry and everything and people, you know, you had people going, well, you know, it's immoral what he did. And it's even more immoral that he lied about it under oath. And you had the other group going, well, yeah, but, you know, who among us wouldn't lie about this type of thing? And it was really interesting for me because it showcased the fissure in the Americans understanding of what was good, true, moral and the weaponization of it in politics. But this was the political issue that people were worried fussing over. It was an internal thing. They weren't really concerned about external terrorism.

The whole Kosovo issue wasn't a populist thing. It became it basically when Bill Clinton sat down and gave that speech blaming the Serbs for both world wars and the Holocaust and everything else under the Sun. That came as a complete shock to everybody. And if anything, the American public had been primed throughout the 90s through pop culture to believe this narrative of World War II, that it was fought to prevent or stop the Holocaust. And I was always baffled by this, like, why are they saying something that is so manifestly not true? Because it wasn't, I mean...

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, I know it's very difficult in America and in many countries in the West to accept that the Holocaust was a tragic event, but the whole World War II was not only about Holocaust.

Nebojša Malić

I mean, well, it wasn't right. But it wasn't like fighting to stop it or prevent it or end it was not really in anybody's. It wasn't revealed until the war was over. That's the whole point. American soldiers who discovered Dachau had no idea it existed. I mean, the Soviets knew about the existence of Auschwitz because their prisoners ended up, you know, getting killed there.

Boyan Stanislavski

And because of Mark Edelman. And… right.

Nebojša Malić

Right. And so. But again, like the whole narrative that World War Two was about the Holocaust was just invented out of whole cloth in the 90s. And I was baffled at the time as to why. And then in retrospect, seeing how that was used as justification for Kosovo and this whole ideology of liberal interventionism, it was basically historical retcon to create a pretext for perpetual war. And what Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan called benevolent global hegemony.

And you basically had the neocons and neolibs united in this cause of American empire, which made it a sort of a super partisan issue that a lot of people didn't understand. I mean, at the time, you know, the U.S. Congress, you had Republican Congress and they basically refused to refuse to give Clinton approval for the war. And he went and did it anyway because it was one of those, well, OK, Congress is opposed.

Whatever. We're just doing it through NATO. We didn't get UN permission, whatever. We're just doing it through NATO. And it happened and everybody was powerless to stop it. And this is what how the American empire ended up, you know, getting getting created basically.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah. And many, many dangerous precedents were created at that time. Like, for example, the involvement of the German army advocated by Joschka Fischer, former anarchist Maoist or something like that.

You know, this is this is pretty comical. But, you know, let's focus a little bit on the question of why, because you mentioned it a few minutes ago saying that in the 90s, the Americans started developing narratives or creating narratives, crafting narratives in order to to to get to the to the second stage of exercising their imperialism or the new stage, maybe they were the unipolar moment was getting momentum. And I wonder to what extent the decision to attack Yugoslavia was part of this general exercise of flexing the muscles of the empire, checking how far can we go, creating precedents like NATO involvement, direct involvement in in a war like that, and perhaps testing the reaction of the public's all around the world.

What do you think was in play here? I suppose many of those things. But what was what was the main part, what carried most of the weight in terms of political calculations and in terms of strategic planning, maybe? And what was just the decorum, according to your observations, you know, now, in retrospect, and also back then when you were in the United States, sort of trying to probably figure it out from within?

Nebojša Malić

Well, I didn't quite understand it at the time myself. I had been working on Richard Holbrook's memoirs, reading through them and trying to understand his position on Bosnia because he had just published those in 98 and was explaining basically that the conclusion of it was that the whole peace process in Dayton wasn't necessarily about, you know, helping out the Bosnian Muslims or any of that, any of those humanitarian considerations, but about reasserting U.S. power in Europe and essentially putting the EU in its place because there was this fear in Washington that it might lose, that the EU might sort of become a separate and possibly a rival political actor and thereby deprive the Americans of their vassalage.

And in retrospect, it became obvious from Holbrook's own words that essentially the Bosnian War, the U.S. role in the Bosnian War was the least bit about the locals and primarily about reasserting U.S. power in Europe and sort of this endless imperial prerogative.

Boyan Stanislavski

Let me interrupt you here and just mark for our viewers that if you allow, we're going to record another segment, not today, but later on, about the American involvement in the first Yugoslav war or the one in Bosnia, because this is something no one's talking about really. That's another question. I mean, no one's even imagining that American involvement could have actually, well, caused a lot of processes and phenomenon there. But anyway, please continue your time.

Nebojša Malić

I'll happily explain that, too. But about the Kosovo thing, you know, some years afterwards, I think it was 2003 or 2004, there was a gentleman by the name of John Norris who worked for the International Crisis Group that I interned with at one point. And I didn't I don't I never met him, but I knew I found out about his book and it turned out that the prologue to it, the introduction was written by none other than Strobe Talbott, who was Bill Clinton's point man on Russia policy. Big, big shot at the State Department. So don't take it from me. Take it from these guys.

Basically, Norris's book is called Collision Course, and it frames the Kosovo War as a conflict between U.S. and Russia. Wait a second, Russia? No. So what Talbott's introduction basically go over is that the war was essentially intended to crush Serbia as an independent country, Yugoslavia at that point, as an independent country because it was resisting the, I don't recall the exact phrase, but it was like trends of transition or something like that. It was basically Yugoslavia refused to go along with what was imposed to the rest of Eastern Europe from...

Boyan Stanislavski

You mean switching the camps, basically from the Soviet camp to the imperial American camp.

Nebojša Malić

Right. It wasn't even in the Soviet camp. It was an it was an unaligned government throughout the Cold War that the West actually approved of because it gave them a convenient cut out and they were backing it with credits and everything. And once the Soviet Union, you know, once communism started collapsing, it was discarded because it was no longer useful, which is a lesson for everybody else who thinks they can work with the empire. But basically what they were saying is that the plight of the Kosovo Albanians was just a useful pretext. As if this Russia had all the natural resources. The idea was to...

Boyan Stanislavski

Now, I'm sorry, I have to ask you to repeat the last 10 seconds because you froze and your voice started cracking.

Nebojša Malić

Sure. So what Talbott and Norris explained in the book is that the true purpose of the Kosovo war was to essentially crush Yugoslavia as an independent entity because it was resisting the trends of transition that would have that were considered inevitable, sort of a end of history type event in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, because Yugoslavia used to be non-aligned and we used to be propped up by the West with credits as a sort of an independent, non-Soviet socialist country. But that outlived its usefulness in 1989 when communism started crumbling.

Which is an object lesson for people who think they can work with the empire today. But the idea was that, again, this is Norris and Talbott explaining it. They were supposed to send a message to Russia that any sort of deviation from the imposed path of transition, which essentially meant predatory capitalism and wholesale looting of the country's natural resources, just as had been implemented everywhere else in Eastern Europe, was the only allowed path. That was the only way to go. And so Serbia, Yugoslavia at the time, Serbia, Montenegro had to be crushed because it dared to resist, because it dared pretend it had sovereignty and rights. And the plight of ethnic Albanians was just a useful pretext for this to happen.

Now, ironically, the war ended up achieving the completely opposite objective, because that's what actually triggered the Russians into reexamining their priors, realizing that, wait a second, we were promised, we were sold a bag of goods, a bill of goods, and a cat in a bag. And they actually started on a completely different course themselves. You know, Vladimir Putin ended up becoming prime minister.

He ended up becoming president at the end of that year. And the rest is, as they say, history. But the objective of the American empire was basically to expand its imperial prerogative, bypass the UN, empower NATO, and then finish the job in the Balkans and impose this model of post-communist transition on everybody else.

And in that respect, the war was a complete and total failure. I just wrote a piece that was published in Serbia a couple of weeks back on the anniversary in which I argued that one of the most misguided sentiments in Serbia today, 25 years after the fact, is that Yugoslavia lost that war.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, it was defeated.

Nebojša Malić

Simply because NATO troops marched into Kosovo and occupied it and then, you know, eventually enabled the ethnic Albanians to declare independence. But the actual armistice that was signed was not a surrender. It was not a capitulation. It was a step down, a significant step down from NATO's demands at the start of the conflict. It was a compromise. It involved the UN again. It did not allow NATO to do what it wanted to do. And what ended up happening was, again, shocker, that the US and its vassals cheated through the actual deal out the window and did whatever they wanted in the first place. And it wouldn't have perhaps turned out that way had they not also carried out a color revolution in Belgrade in 2000 and installed a government that was amenable to their demands.

Boyan Stanislavski

But that's so it seems like they had a whole set of strategic plans with regards to Serbia, Yugoslavia and so on.

Nebojša Malić

Right. Well, they activated the regime change operation after the war failed to achieve its objectives. But their propaganda and spin about, oh, air power won a decisive victory is what ended up being used a couple of years later in Iraq.

Kate Hudson, the British historian, actually wrote a piece in The Guardian, which I'm shocked that, you know, in retrospect, knowing what The Guardian is today, that back then it was critical of the Iraq war. And she called it a pattern of aggression. And she compared the coastal war to the invasion of Iraq, which was likewise completely unprovoked, based on lies, not grounded in international law at all. Enacted on a on a whim, essentially, of George W. Bush. But again, this was the Neocon wing of the of the American empire, the coastal war was done by the Neoliberal wing. But what's the difference? As I once put it, it doesn't you know, if you get bombed by people, if your bombing is supported by people in neckties or people in tie-dyes, you're still dead. So partisanship in this case doesn't even...

Boyan Stanislavski

Even if the bombs are painted in rainbow and it says BLM or something, you still die. That's true.

Nebojša Malić

That meme actually originates from the Kosovo war. But again, so that, you know, by all of these objective metrics, the NATO war was actually a failure. It's just that the propaganda retconned it into a great success because, well, that's how the empire operated.

Boyan Stanislavski

And before we get to trying to break down what failed and to what extent they failed and what did they manage to achieve afterwards by not adhering to the agreement and so on, so forth. I have one more question with regards to the origins of that war, because you've already said that, first of all, Yugoslavia was standing out as a country that did not allow rampant neoliberalism and all the elements of the transition or post transition, if you like, that were imposed or accepted happily by, you know, demoralized late communist nomenklatura, if you like. And so that's, that's one thing.

Second thing is that they wanted to make sure that they teach European Union a lesson that, you know, we are the guys here and you can, of course, you know, wave your blue banner with the golden stars and so on, so forth. And you can do all kinds of grandstanding. But when it comes to strategic decision and strategic configuration, if you like, of Europe, then we have the final say.

It was also waving the finger at Russia or kind of testing out how far they can go and if Russia would even react to anything like which they did, by the way, with this airport thing. We're going to talk about it later, maybe. But I also read Serbian analysis where, you know, many people said that it was also part of the problem from the point of from the standpoint of American imperialist policies in general was the fact that after the Dayton agreement came to some kind of official conclusion, then Slobodan Milošević, you know, the leader of Yugoslavia, he was praised at the time, you know, that, oh, he's he's fantastic. He's going to be the guarantor of peace and stability. He's a fantastic leader with so much capability, with so many capabilities.

And we can only trust him to continue the cause of civilization and so on, so forth. And they kind of made him they kind of convinced him that, yeah, OK, so he is the leader. And he thought it's real that he can rule there and that and this is something that, you know, they were they also wanted to demonstrate that, no, like we are appointing you. We are blessing you. We are putting you there and you do what we say. You don't dance to your own melodies.

You don't rule the way you feel it should be in the country that you're a president of or prime minister of or whatever your position is. And, you know, many claim that well, maybe not many, but some people that I I've come across their analysis claim that this was also one of the things that triggered it, that, you know, they were not they couldn't allow someone like Slobodan Milošević, whom they despised from the beginning anyway. I mean, again, those are claims that I read to to sort of try and play any kind of independent game, even in a country that is so remote and they don't care about so much. What do you think of that?

Nebojša Malić

I think that analysis is is not necessarily correct because it's missing a key piece of the puzzle. Milošević was in Dayton. They arranged for him to be in Dayton. This is late 1995, end of the Bosnian war. They wanted him there. They arranged everything by having the international tribunal that they set up and funded indict Bosnian Serb leaders so they wouldn't be at peace talks.

They bombed the Bosnian Serbs to pressure the Serbian church to pressure Milošević into agreeing to be to negotiate on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs. If the whole scheme again, Holbrook's memoirs, the man admits it. The whole scheme intended to bring Milosevic to the US for talks because the Americans thought they could deal with him.

Nebojša Malić

And it turned out to be not so great of an idea because even though he was amenable to a deal. He drove a hard bargain and they had they actually had problems with the Bosnian Muslims who felt entitled to their assistance and regarded themselves as the righteous victims and expected the world from the world. And actually, a lot of the Holbrook's memoirs dealing with Dayton actually talk about this and the frustration and that Bill Clinton had to personally intervene and threatened to withdraw US support and basically turn the propaganda around 180.

And the Muslims initially didn't believe this. And there was a lot of implied threats there that he didn't go into. But it was clear at the end that it was one of those we made you. We will unmake you just do as we tell you, because he needed an election to win. And the idea is, well, maybe after the election, we'll see if we're going to continue this project. And then some terrorists turned up in Bosnia and got really awkward.

And so Project Bosnia was sort of put on ice. But there was a specific episode of Dayton which was actually explained in the memoirs of then President Montenegro, Momir Bulatović, in which he said that, you know, they were sitting down with the Americans at this table and Milošević asked, well, tell us what we need to do. So, you know, how how do you expect me to.

To obey you if you won't tell me what is asked of me. And Warren Christopher, the secretary of state at the time, laughed and said, oh, you don't understand because Milošević basically slid a sheet of paper on the table and said, write down your demands. And Christopher pushed back the sheet of paper and said, you don't understand.

And I'm paraphrasing. There is no set of specific set of demands. You are just expected to always do what you're told. So he knew this. Milošević knew this. All this talk about key factor of peace in the region, which was for internal consumption. He knew precisely who he was dealing with. And which is which is why when you look at his policies in the 899, you will see a much harder line towards the West than he took in 95, 96, because he knew exactly what they were going for and he and and how they were going to do it. And he was like, well, I'm not, you know, I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.

So I might as well go out fighting. Which is how he ended up going out after he was hauled off illegally to the to the crimes tribunal and died under mysterious circumstances in his cell. His whole defense process is books need to be written about this and have been. But again, I think the Serbian analysis of this that blames him is doing both him and the Serbs a disfavor because he knew perfectly well what the West was based on his and they would be better served looking into those documents as well.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right. I wasn't trying to say that they are blaming him for that. It is rather what I was trying to say. Maybe I explained it a bit clumsily, but what I was trying to say is that those analysis that I came across, they say that there was this kind of misunderstanding precisely around the kind of piece of paper that they were pushing back and forth that he said, like, I want to rule here. And they said, no, you're not going to rule here because we put you there.

Nebojša Malić

Well, again, the whole thing was that, you know, Milošević said, well, we're a sovereign country. We have rights. And again, going back to Talbott and Norris, they're like, no, you don't understand. You must obey unconditionally. And we're going to use you to make a point to the Russians because Russians, Russia is our keeping Russia conquered as our objective. And so it doesn't really rob Serbia of any agency here to say that the West, the US, the American empire decided to bomb Serbia, Yugoslavia, using the alleged plight of Kosovo Albanians as a pretext is a geopolitical objective that had nothing to do with anything Serbia actually said or did. As Madeleine Albright reportedly said, Serbs need to be bombed and they will get bombed.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right. So let's talk a little bit about the plight, alleged plight or real plight to the extent that both of those adjectives make sense here. Of Kosovo Albanians, because this is, you know, the fundamental part of the mythology surrounding the war, that there was this holocaust carried out by the Serbs, you know, on the poor Albanians that were that were there, you know, subjected to this horrible terrorism from the side of the Serbs.

Well, it was pretty much the other way around. I mean, if we're talking about terrorism, then it was coming out. We're stemming out from the Albanian side there.

So let's talk a little bit about that. What is true about certain deficits of human rights, if you like, or democracy, you know, where the Kosovo Albanians can be interpreted as victims or maybe economic mismanagement, you know, anything really. And what was the mythological propagandistic, completely blown out of proportion elements of this, probably culminating in this fairy tale of massacre in Racak, which pretty much never happened. That's the only problem with it, I guess. So, yeah, let's go and have you explain those nuances.

Nebojša Malić

Well, shall I take about 30 seconds to two minutes to get this sorted out? Um, we could, you know, if you start in 1998, you're doing it injustice because one of the big issues is how we get there.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right.

Nebojša Malić

If you start in like the 1400s, that's a bit, you know, that's also a bit too early. Let me be slightly swifter than Vladimir Putin and give a condensed history. So basically, the present day territory of Kosovo or province of Kosovo-Metohija was the heartland of Serbian medieval state.

That's why there's a lot of monasteries and churches that are to this day, or they're ruins in the territory. The Ottoman Turks invade in 1389 or 1371 first, you know, Battle of Maritsa, they crushed the armies and sort of established themselves in the Balkans. And then in 1389, they did this massive army, which clashes with the Serb-led coalition.

There was also people from Bosnia and elsewhere, mostly Orthodox Christians. And they, and they clash, these two armies clash in the field of Kosovo, which is outside of Pristina. Natural place for a fight in the middle of a major road up the, up the Balkans.

There is a massive fight. The Turkish Sultan is killed. So is the Serbian prince, the leader of this coalition. Historically, the Serbs mythologize it as this celestial defeat by which they confirm their covenant with God. From a historical perspective, it was at best a draw. The Turks didn't come back. They took another 70 years to come back. That's the big takeaway from this. And the Serbian principality continued to exist.

And then in mid 1400s, after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans sweep through the region again, take the last remnants of Serbian principality, push into Hungary and onwards and into Bosnia and onwards and so on. They change. Ottoman conquest alters the demographic, religious demographic of the entire region, obviously. And you have a lot of people converting to Islam to be part of this new ruling structure. And at some point, you've got Ottoman censuses of the area showing no Albanians whatsoever. None.

And then at some point, they start showing them in the area, in the present day Albania, in, you know, present day Kosovo. And the implication is that they came in from somewhere. And I've seen ethnic Albanian historians and demographers going, yeah, no, we're not from around here. We were brought in from the Caucasus or wherever. We're not local. And then you have this myth that they're actually ancient Illyrians who have been autochthonous to this area since.

Boyan Stanislavski

And the first dinosaur was Albanian. Yes, I know that.

Nebojša Malić

Which appears to have been concocted by Austro-Hungarian historians circa, you know, late 19th century for their own political purposes. And I'll get to that in a minute. But again, like the actual demographics shows that the Albanians came in from somewhere.

The vast majority of them took on Islam and they acted, there's documentary evidence of this, that they acted as Ottoman enforcers. They were sort of like these, they were the Balkans version of the Bedouin in Arab lands whose mission was to essentially raid and terrorize Christians and Jews into obedience. You know, whenever there would be a transgression perceived or real by a Christian against a Muslim, their village was terrorized by the Bedouin because of collective punishment in the Turkish millet system in which, you know, the communities policed each other.

But if you sinned upward, so to speak, then the collective punishment from above came down on everybody's head. This is what a lot of people in the West consider multiculturalism and diversity. Now, if that's what they envision as diversity, then their future is truly bleak. But anyway, so again, there's ample historical evidence that the Albanians acted as the Balkans Bedouin. And they had very peculiar customs, including blood vendettas that are not found elsewhere. And so fast forward to, you know, let's say 1690s, there was this massive war between then Austria, the Austrian Habsburg Empire, which had absorbed the remnants of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire that the Ottomans lost.

And the Austrians during that war pushed deep south into southern Serbia, into present day Kosovo. But they ended up losing a couple of battles and being pushed back. And even though the Grand Ottoman Army was completely drowned at Senta and they had to sign a fairly humiliating peace treaty. The border, as was set, basically left the ethnic Serbs who had joined with the Austrians hoping for their liberation back under Ottoman rule. And so a lot of them, not all, but a large number of them picks up and leaves, led by their patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, because there weren't any secular leaders. They were ruled by the Ottomans.

And they basically pick up and cross the Danube and the Sava into Austrian held lands and get settled along this military frontier that's created for the purpose, which ironically is how you end up with the Serbian Krajina, which the Croats, you know, 300 years later exterminate with US assistance. Because, you know, these Serbs are invaders and they basically finish what their ancestors started in World War II. That's a separate topic.

So again, you see this exodus and these lands getting at this point settled by Albanians as the Ottoman enforcers. Somebody needs to work the land. Somebody needs to run the cattle.

You can't just live off of brigandage, especially if there's nobody to prey upon. So they settled the Albanians there. And throughout the 19th century, because as I mentioned in the last show, the whole history of Serbian liberation movement starts off in 1804 with the first successful rebellion against the Ottomans. And throughout the 19th century drives this engine of Balkan liberation, you know, inspiring the Greeks and Bulgarians and the Iranians and everybody else. Oh, this is possible. We can get rid of the Turks.

Let's do this. The one group that isn't rebelling is the Albanians up until the 1870s, where they revolt, ironically, because of the Ottomans' reforms that prevented them from preying on Christians. And you also have Austrian influences in that region as well.

Congress of Berlin trying to stop Serbia and Montenegro from uniting and reversing Russian gains in the war against the Ottomans. And I'm speed running through this, so I'm leaving out a lot of details. The point is, you have the formation of this League of Prizren, Prizren being the ancient seat of the Serbian patriarchs, that basically campaigns for an Albanian province within the Ottoman Empire.

They're basically saying, we're your loyal servants. We need to be rewarded for this. Create this province for us, the Albanian Vilayet. And that never quite happens. The Ottomans are like, no. In 1912, the Balkans alliance, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Montenegro, with the blessing of the Russian emperor, declares war on the Ottoman Empire and score a chain of victories over the Turkish army that's supposed to outnumber and outgun them, but is very poorly led and poorly motivated and basically gets defeated in detail.

But the biggest battle of the Serbian front at Kumanovo ends up being purely accidental. The Serbs thought they were in contact with like one division. It turned out to be the whole bloody Ottoman army. And so they basically start bringing in troops as fast as they can. It's sort of a Balkans-Gettysburg in reverse. And they win. And at that point, the Austrians intervene and the Germans intervene and like, no, no, no, no. And the British intervene. And they're all saying the same thing.

Do not partition the Ottoman Empire. Stop this. Do not let Serbs get out to the sea. This is not allowed. And so they basically move to create the state of Albania, which is more or less in its present borders. Well, this completely upends the original plan for war spoils and ends up pitting Serbia and Bulgaria against each other, which was a particularly nefarious Austro-Hungarian plan and poison.

Boyan Stanislavski

A very successful one.

Nebojša Malić

And unfortunately, poisons the welfare of the next century that it's going to take us a long time to unpoison it. But this is sort of the bone of contention, the apple of discord from there onwards. And again, you've got the British and the French fleet and the Austrian army threatening to go to war if Albania does not become independent. And at that point, you essentially have Austrian historians and court grifters and novelists invent the Albanian flag or create an Albanian alphabet that has all these German umlauts. Basically, write this history out of whole cloth with the help of the Church of Rome.

You know, Skanderbeg becomes a national hero. His family's literally buried in a Serbian monastery. He started out as an ethnic Serb, nobody knew, could forcibly convert it to Islam and then rebelled against the Ottomans in the 1400s and ended up dead in Italy as a Catholic convert. I mean, a tragic hero, yes, but they consider him a father of their nation, which is absurd.

Boyan Stanislavski

Which is pure mythology. Yeah, I get that.

Nebojša Malić

And then there's this whole illurism, you know, neglecting the fact that the Austrians were pushing the Illyrian identity on present-day Croatians before Ante Starčević's anti-Serb Croatian identity ended up taking root. Again, like everybody's trying to reinvent themselves as Illyrians. And so here's the situation in 1912, right?

Okay, fine. Serbia manages to make a deal with Esad Pasha, one of the Albanian leaders, and basically ends up having friendly relations with him. And the Albanian irredentists in present-day Kosovo, which would end the partition between Serbia and Montenegro, like Montenegro got what is called Metohija and Serbia got the northern part, in the original partition of 1912 and 1913, the Albanian irredentists are not happy, but there's no recourse for them.

They have ethnic Albania, they have their statehood. Fine, what's the problem? Then you have the World War I happens, Austria-Hungary sees Serbia as a threat, invades to 1914, gets beaten back, comes back again, gets defeated again, finally brings in the Germans in 1915 in November and enlists Bulgarian help and finally manages to take the Serbian territory, but Serbia doesn't surrender.

Instead, its government and its army and a lot of its people pick up and cross Albania on foot in winter. A lot of them die, not just because of the elements, but because of Albanian brigands who start ambushing them. And Esad Pasha helps out. I mean, had it not been for him, it would have been much worse. But you had rival clans and rival tribes and people welching on the deal and essentially marauding and attacking these people, killing civilians, murdering women and children. It's a very bitter experience.

And in 1915, in the end of 1915, Kosovo is under occupation, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, German, and this condition lasts through 1918. So obviously, it's been the Serbs there are being ethnically cleansed and oppressed, and, you know, the central powers are committing unspeakable atrocities. There's forced conversions and so on and so forth. And obviously, the ethnic Albanians aren't harmed because they immediately joined the central powers in enforcing the occupation. Like, oh, well, you know, because Ottoman Turkey is part of the central powers. The good old times are back, right?

Even though the Turks aren't really in the Balkans, they've got their problems in the Middle East with the British and with the Russians. They're faring far worse against the Russians, but that's sort of a forgotten chapter of World War I. And so in 1918, when the Macedonian front is broken and when the Serb infantry outruns the French cavalry and, you know, almost rides to Vienna, you know, Bulgaria sues for peace, Austria-Hungary starts collapsing, Germany surrenders.

And here we have this Kingdom of Yugoslavia arising from the ruins because there's been a Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and all of a sudden, Russia is no longer a patron of Serbia and can't be relied on. So the new king is like, well, we need to seek allies elsewhere. We need some sort of major power to have our back. Otherwise, you know, there's the possibility of Austria-Hungary rising again. There's the possibility of the Turks doing something. We need to figure something out.

And there's problems with Italy because the Western allies promised it lands here. And these are lands where a lot of Slavs live. And in retrospect, and this is a complete tangent and deserves its own show, but in retrospect, Alexander of Yugoslavia made a horrible mistake and probably should have just, you know, created a united Serbia and left the Croats and Slovians to fend for themselves.

And events of the next hundred years will bear that out. But he couldn't. I don't think he could have really known the extent of that at the time. So I'll give him a moderate pass. Anyway, what happens is Yugoslavia is created, right? It's renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.

But in 1920, it's the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovians. And Alexander goes on a spree of not really a unitarian identity, but it's like, oh, no, we're all brothers now. It doesn't matter who speaks, you know, we all speak the same language and we're all the same people. We just have different names and different religions. Everything's fine. It's not fine.

It doesn't work out at all. But that state collapses within 20 years. The Germans invade, well, the Axis invades in 1941 after Yugoslavia refuses, joins the tripartite pact. And then there's a rebellion against it. Two days later, March 27th, 1941, Hitler goes into rage, orders Yugoslavia wiped off the map and you have this invasion. You've got the Italians, the Hungarians, the Germans.

I don't think the Romanians took part in it because they didn't get any territory. You've got Bulgarians and Italians invading from Albania, because at that time, Italy had launched a campaign in, they'd taken over Albania and then tried to invade Greece. And lost, like the Greeks, the Greek military ended up defeating the Italians, which was considered unmentionable, you know, how could this happen? And they did. And so Mussolini was in a pickle and Hitler's like, I gotta save you again, because he kept bailing out Mussolini in North Africa and the whole Italian thing was just a colossal embarrassment for the Axis. I shudder to think what would have happened if the Italians had been competent.

But anyway, so you've got this, you've got Hitler's operation for assisting Mussolini with Greece that the Yugoslav operation called Strafgericht or punishment gets tacked onto. And as a result, Yugoslavia is overrun in like two weeks. Because they already had agents on the ground, you essentially had Croatians who declared independent state within like four days of Germans invading and starting genocide Serbs right away.

Again, long story. Let's go back to the Albanians. Present day Kosovoans are partitioned. Between annexed to the Italian run Greater Albania. Part of it, I believe, is controlled by Bulgaria and part of it is controlled by the German occupied Reichskommissaria at Serbia. And again, unspeakable atrocities begin again. You've got ethnic Albanians working for the Axis. You know, the Italians aren't really keen on this, but, you know, they don't really, they're not really competent to stop it. As you've got widespread expulsions again, you've got ethnic Albanians setting up the second League of Prizren and announcing that every Serb who had moved in between World War One and present day is a colonizer that needs to be expelled.

And they do it and they kill a lot of people in the process. Eventually, they set up a Waffen-SS division called Skanderbeg that, again, engages in anti-partisan warfare, but it's mostly just marauding and killing civilians and looting villages because every time they actually run into actual resistance, they fold. And at the end of the war, 1944, the Red Army swoops in.

The Yugoslav partisans end up on top of the civil war there. And then now we have, at that point, we have a problem. And by we, I mean everybody, because the Yugoslav Communist Party in the 1920s and the 1930s wanted to destroy Yugoslavia and regarded it as worse than the Soviet Union, like the Imperial Russia.

To them, the Yugoslav royal dynasty was just as hated and they were willing to ally with the Nazis in order to get rid of it, literally. And their official program adopted at this Congress in Dresden in 1929 was to break up Yugoslavia into ethnic states. Well, here's a problem for them. They now control it. They're now physically in possession of Yugoslavia. Would you like to give up power? No. So they come up with a rationalization. Well, we're not going to break it up because it's better now because we run it.

We're going to basically declare everybody who was not a communist during the war to be evil. We're going to invent this history of Albanian communist resistance that starts in 1944. Shocker. And we're going to create this concept called brotherhood and unity in which everybody is fantastic so long as they do what they're told. Oh, and by the way, the Serbs who were expelled from Kosovo are banned from returning. And we're going to build fraternal relations with Albania and maybe unite with them in the same state.

Well, that falls through in 1948 during the Tito-Stalin split because Enver Hoxha, the communist dictator of Albania, who apparently the first thing he did was execute anybody who knew how to read and write. So he could start history from day zero and create this mythology of the Albanian nation because it was slightly crazy that way. He sides with Stalin at the time and then later splits off from the Soviet Union and declares his allegiance to Mao and then essentially says, everybody's wrong.

I'm the only one who's right. And start building bunkers everywhere. So he wasn't exactly right in the head. I think even the Albanians would agree with this. But in like from 45 to 48, you have this mass influx of ethnic Albanians and the Serbs aren't allowed to return. And so the demographic of the region changes completely.

So let's recap. You've got centuries of Ottoman occupation and several exoduses of the population because of the Turks. You have repression during World War I. You have repression during World War Two. And now you have the communists cementing that repression because it fits their ethnic engineering goals. And they set up in their post-war partition of Yugoslavia, which is eerily reminiscent of the Nazi one.

They set up these ethnic republics to recreate the Soviet Union, Lenin's nationalities policy and Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro as a separate identity from Serb. You have Macedonia today, North Macedonia, again, as a separate identity. And then you have Bosnia, obviously, in the middle as a sort of initially as a joint republic of multiple ethnicities. But then eventually they end up recognizing Bosnian Muslims as a separate ethnos. So the original Yugoslav coat of arms, just as an aside, had five torches. And there was even a little ditty about five torches glowing to show that in our country, there are five peoples. And then it got retconned into six torches when the Muslims got added in the 70s. But it has always been this way. It has never been different.

History begins today. And so Serbia ends up getting sub-partitioned with these two autonomous provinces, one in the north called Vojvodina, which is historically, I guess, was the name of the majority Serb region that wanted autonomy in the Habsburg Empire. And then you have Kosovo, and later we named Kosovo Metohija, which is essentially an ethnic Albanian preserve. They run everything. And they ran everything for decades. In 1961, the head of Tito's security service, Alexander Ralkovic, who had spent years fighting the ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo, is purged.

And ethnic Albanians have total control for 20 years. In 1981, after Tito's death, they start riots demanding that they be recognized as a republic. Because in 1974, as Tito was getting old and senile, his aides set up this confederate constitution, essentially, in which republics have the right of secession. They were basically planning for Yugoslavia's breakup. It was built into the constitution. Again, different topic for a different time. And so I know I'm rattling off all of these names and dates, but believe me.

Boyan Stanislavski

No, no, but it's all very interesting. And I'm sure that people interested in this are following you very closely. So please go ahead. And it's fascinating.

Nebojša Malić

So 1981, you have these Albanian demonstrations demanding that they be recognized as a republic. They boycott the census. They start boycotting state institutions. It's just one of those, we're unhappy with Yugoslavia. We want to separate and join Albania. Which, by the way, at that point, is this isolated, not even Maoist, post-Maoist autarky that has completely walled itself off from the world.

But there's a flow of illegal immigration across the border into Yugoslavia because people fleeing Hoxha are finding refuge in Kosovo, where Yugoslavia built them universities, schools, TV programming in Albanian language. You could live your entire life in Kosovo and not speak a word of Serbian or Serbo-Croatian, it was called at the time. Everything was, you know, it's an Albanian state within a state.

And they weren't happy with it. They wanted more. Even though, like, an ethnic Albanian was literally president of Yugoslavia. After Tito's death, they had this rotating presidency. And each, you know, republican province would nominate, would put forth one of their candidates. And they would technically run the country as the titular president.

And an ethnic Albanian was one of them. In fact, I believe at one point, the head of the Kosovo Communist Party, Fadi Hoxha, wasn't even a Yugoslav citizen. I could be wrong. But I know there was a scandal that, you know, one of the ethnic Albanians wasn't even a proper Yugoslavian citizen, he was an Albanian citizen. And it was fine, brotherly people, everything's cozy. Well, throughout the 80s, you have this massive, massive push that even the American media at the time were like, this isn't right.

They were documenting these repressive measures that came into the forefront because they've been going on for decades. You'd have brigandage, you'd have people terrorizing villagers into selling their property and moving. And so you've got this percentage of Serbs and Montenegrins drastically dropping. 1980s, this ramps up and you have ethnic Albanian soldiers shooting up barracks as, you know, as a sort of terrorist attack on behalf of unifying all Albanians.

Boyan Stanislavski

So this is pretty much when the modern Albanian terror begins?

Nebojša Malić

Yes. And in 1987, there is a major event. Now, I'm leaving out a lot because there's a lot to unpack. But you have incidents of, you know, children claiming they were poisoned in school, but only Albanian children. So somehow this is a poison that affects only Albanians. You had people saying, you know, we're going to leave our state jobs because we're being oppressed and set up separate private parallel institutions, you know, schools, hospitals, everything.

Sort of a, I don't want to call it self-segregation, but it's one of those, you know, the system is racist and oppressive and we need to build our own system. Which, you know, in a circumstance where one of your people is president is preposterous. And in 1987, during one of these counter protests of Serbs complaining about, you know, complaining to the federal government about being abused, Slobodan Milosevic, who's a junior executive in Yugoslav, in Serbian Communist Party, is sent to calm this down.

I believe it was a minor strike or something. And he comes in and the police starts clubbing people left and right. And he says, stop, you know, nobody's allowed to beat you. And he becomes a folk hero.

Boyan Stanislavski

Famous phrase, by the way.

Nebojša Malić

Right. And so he becomes a folk hero overnight. And all of a sudden he's like, wait a second, why is this happening? Why are we, you know, why are Serbs basically underprivileged, for lack of a better word? You know, why are we not equal? What's going on? And he didn't realize, and I don't think he ever realized that this was by design.

Boyan Stanislavski

Mhm.

Nebojša Malić

But he starts reforms and he launches this constitutional amendment procedure by which he stops the provinces from having veto over the Serbian government decisions. He says, brings it in line with every other republic because no other republic had provinces, especially not provinces that could veto their decisions. Ethnic Albanians literally for 50 years had a veto over Serbian affairs.

That's how oppressed they were. And this obviously escalates the Albanian separatist movement because all of a sudden they're like, oh, no, you know, America, please help because they have ethnic activists in the States that are lobbying, running the lobbying campaign, you know, captive nations and all this Cold War crap. And essentially their tactic at the time is passive resistance in the sense that they're essentially not engaging with the Serbian state. They're boycotting the census. They're not showing up for school.

They're not doing any of the things that in a communist or socialist country or even a liberal capitalist country you need to do in order to be part of a society. They set up a parallel society. Well, the Serbian government is mostly content to tolerate this because they're like, what are we going to do, arrest them? Deport them? No. Plenty of them are loyal to the state.

We'll just carry on and hope they see reason. And, you know, in 91, they hold a sham referendum and declare independence and nobody cares. The West doesn't care.

Nobody gives a damn because the Western line at the time is that republic borders are sacred, which would mean Serbian borders are sacred because that's how they want to create separate Slovenia, Bosnia, and so on. And fast forward to 1996, the Dayton Agreement happens. The war in Bosnia is over, recognized the Bosnian borders are sacrosanct, republic borders are sacrosanct.

Albanians are going, especially their activists in the U.S., going, well, wait, wait, where are we in this story? What's going on here? We were promised an ethnic Albanian nation that if you look at their maps, they would require parts of present-day Montenegro, North Macedonia, Greece, you know, more chunks of Serbia. They want this stuff. They dream of this stuff. A lot of them, some of them.

Boyan Stanislavski

And who represents them, more or less, like, in a sense, not necessarily names, but... Kurti?

Nebojša Malić

Currently, the prime minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, is actually the leader of a party that campaigned on this and was actually endorsed by William Walker, the architect of the whole Račak myth. But there's less enthusiasm for it in Albania proper, ironically, because the key issue here is who would run this greater of natural, ethnic, whatever they call it, Albania. And obviously, the people in Albania, such as Edi Rama, are like, well, obviously, we would because we're Albania and we would annex you. And Kurti is going, no, no, no, you don't understand. We're bigger, we're better Albanians than you. And clearly, we need to be in charge of this. So there's a bit of an intra-Albanian conflict going on here, too. But let me just talk to you...

Boyan Stanislavski

Talk to me about supremacy here...

Nebojša Malić

Correct. Let me just bridge this here. So basically, '97, the Albanian government collapses as total anarchy and the arsenals of the military are raided. And all of a sudden, there's guns everywhere. And a lot...

Boyan Stanislavski

Again, we're talking which year?

Nebojša Malić

This is 1997.

Boyan Stanislavski

1997.

Nebojša Malić

Year after. So Bosnia peace gets enacted in like late 1995.

Boyan Stanislavski

Because in 1997, they also had a kind of revolt in Albania where they also, by the way, ransacked some military barracks.

Nebojša Malić

That's what I'm talking about.

Boyan Stanislavski

Ah, that's what you're talking about, right, okay!

Nebojša Malić

The Albanian arsenals get raided. Kosovo is at that time administered under the new Serbian constitution. In fact, quite a few of the refugees from Krajina and Bosnia ended up there, distributed throughout Serbia, obviously. But there is a very meager attempt by the Serbian government to sort of strategically resettle these refugees in demographically key areas. Everybody does it in the Balkans.

They just pretend they don't. And obviously, this further fuels Albanian separatism, not that it needed any further motivation. And so again, in 1997, when you have this Albanian anarchy and all these guns, the German intelligence ends up backing a militant faction of Albanian separatism in Kosovo called the Kosovo Liberation Army. At that point, led by a man named Adem Yashari.

Boyan Stanislavski

And when was it formed?

Nebojša Malić

I want to say '96, '97.

Boyan Stanislavski

OK, so around that time.

Nebojša Malić

Basically, the Albanian anarchy helps the KLA immensely. And they start attacking and it starts out as basic brigandage.

You attack villages, you kill postal carriers, you kill police officers, you attack first ambulances, you attack ethnic Serbs. And they seem to have, in retrospect, a bigger hate on for ethnic Albanians who were not part of the parallel society. So they basically first started with what they call collaborators.

And the purpose of it was to intimidate and terrorize the population into backing them. And then the next phase was going to be fighting the actual Serbian government. Well, Yashari ends up getting surrounded with his fighters and killed in 98.

And the KLA seems to be defeated for a moment. The Americans at this point step in. And Holbrooke and present day ambassador in Serbia, Christopher Hill, end up going to Albania, where the KLA is now in exile, sitting down with these KLA leaders such as Hashim Thaçi and revoking their designation as a terrorist organization because they were designated as a terrorist organization. They were doing terrorism. And the State Department's like, yeah, these guys are terrorists. Except that designation is lifted when Holbrooke and Hill make their visit, sit down on the floor and break bread with these guys and say, we've got your back.

And in late '98, they want to bomb Serbia to help the KLA. They're like, oh, you're violating the KLA's human rights. A terrorist organization. And this is what but they can't really. They can't do it because they don't have a pretext. They did the UN resolutions don't work. There's the impeachment scandal. The timing isn't right. The narrative isn't right.

So what they do is they threaten the bombing, just like they did in Bosnia. And they basically demand for the Serbs to accept this observer mission from the OSCE. Shades of Donbass here foreshadowing.

And they're like, we're going to send a verification mission to verify the ceasefire. And you have to do this, this and this and this and this, you know, put the military back in the barracks, stand down to police, blah, blah, blah. What does the KLA have to do? Nothing. They didn't sign anything. Oh, so it's a one-sided ceasefire. Milošević accepts it anyway, because he doesn't want he doesn't want a war. It's like, all right, fine. International observers.

Boyan Stanislavski

Do you think he's already aware that they are?

Nebojša Malić

He's obviously preparing for the eventuality, but he's hoping that he can avoid it. And at that point, you have this verification mission led by a former US military intelligence operative who's got death squad experience in Latin America. And he's liaising with the KLA.

And you've got testimonials of people who participated in it going, oh, yeah, no, we were working with the KLA all along. We're setting up satellite radios and targeting partnerships. And we were just preparing the ground for a war. They were essentially an advanced NATO scouting party under the guise of an international peace mission. And in January, I want to say it was in January. Yeah.

In January of 1999, you have Račak, which is a village in Kosovo where the KLA was holed up. One of their groups that had just attacked some Serbian police and, of course, the police intervention group follows them and tracks them down to this village. And there's a firefight and the Albanians are killed. The KLA are killed. And perhaps in a rookie mistake, the Serbian police fail to secure the crime scene. They leave.

And the KLA and the Kosovo verification mission walker come in, stage a massacre, basically dress these people in civilian clothing, which has no bullet holes, no blood, no nothing. The Finnish DOSC pathologists, the forensic pathologists, come in and say, these are combatants. There's gunpowder on their hands.

These are all men of a certain age. The clothing doesn't match. The fibers don't match. They were killed in battle. You cleaned up the crime scene. What happened? And Helena Ranta, I'm mispronouncing her name, probably the head of this mission, later says that Walker was chucking pencils at me, going, write what I tell you. Basically, he bullies her into writing this report. And it's a very tortured report, if you read it, that said, well, you know, we're not saying that this didn't not happen. And she leaves it completely open for interpretation. And Walker, of course, immediately goes out to the press and says, Serbs are genocidal workers. I'm paraphrasing.

You know, this was a massacre, NATO must intervene immediately... Armed with this pretext, NATO then moves to this conference in Rambouillet, which is a French castle. And presents Serbia with an ultimatum. And Serbia, Yugoslavia, sends the delegation in which there were ethnic Albanians. And the U.S. is simply not interested because they bring in the KLA and sit down with the KLA as a negotiating partner. They literally recognize the KLA as a legitimate party in the conflict. And their ultimatum is, OK, all of Yugoslav troops and police and everything leaves. NATO takes over Kosovo.

NATO has the right to use the entire territory of Yugoslavia for whatever it wants. And three years after we occupy Kosovo, we will call an independence referendum. That is blatantly obvious how it's going to end. And Belgrade says no. Because the ultimatum was designed to be rejected. And that's essentially when the war starts.

And NATO's original objective was to enforce the Rambouillet agreement. And so now we've sort of run you through history. If I may just recap really quickly, the one common thread here that even some Westerners who lived among the ethnic Albanians have observed is that these poor unfortunate people have essentially hitched their horse to every single conqueror's wagon throughout history.

First the Ottomans, then the Austrians and the Germans, then the Italians and the Nazis, then the communists, and now NATO. And they have not been any happier as a result. Yes, in a sense, you can argue that they've essentially managed to ethnically cleanse the Serbs from the territory they claim. Temporarily at this point. But no king rules forever. And I'm sure that plenty of people in Kosovo are, you know, are replaying those scenes from Afghanistan and going, could this be us? You know, the scenes of Afghans clutching desperately onto the wheels of American planes as they leave without them.

Boyan Stanislavski

So you think it's entirely possible that people are actually reviewing such scenarios in their heads in Kosovo?

Nebojša Malić

I really, I mean, I know at least a handful of people who are aware of it. I'm hoping more people are thinking about it because they need to think what's going to happen tomorrow. Not literally tomorrow, but the metaphorical tomorrow when the American empire is no longer around to be their enforcer.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right, so let's speak briefly. And I'm really very grateful for everything, for all the insights and for all the points you made here. And I'm sure it exhausted you a little bit already because we're speaking over one hour now.

But I want to get to the question that you signaled before, which is, OK, so they had the war and we're not going to go into the war pornography story, like who bombed what, you know, and what was destroyed and how many people have died. These are statistics that anyone can look up. But what I want to get to is the question, OK, so they launched the war because of this nonsensical, absolutely abhorring ultimatum. No one would have ever accepted that, you know. So they launched the war and then there is this compromise. So when did they get to...

What was the moment that convinced them that they cannot just enforce things, that they will have to talk and that they will have to strike some kind of compromise? What was the thing during the war or right after the war that kind of convinced them that they cannot have the fully imperialist rampage they've perhaps conceptualized?

Nebojša Malić

Well, there were recently some British secret documents declassified and leaked that revealed that already, like as of early April, so two weeks into the conflict, Tony Blair's government was panicking that NATO was losing the war. Like from the very start, it wasn't going well. And I'm not going to say they knew they weren't really harming the Yugoslav army because they were shocked to find out that they hadn't done much damage to it only afterwards.

I think it was a combination of they realized that this policy was antagonizing Russia and was causing... Because again, when you look at their actual mission that Talbott and Norris later admitted, if their objective was to terrorize Russia into obedience, it was failing already. And it was in fact, inspiring Russians to push back.

And so the idea is let's finish this as fast as possible. War isn't working. It's not toppling Milošević. It's causing people to rally around the flag. We need plan B. And they tried multiple things. They tried, first of all, there was a case of three American soldiers getting captured because they crossed the border from... They were deployed in present day North Macedonia as a peacekeeping force and obviously it wasn't peacekeeping. And they crossed the border and got captured. And then they were sent back. There was a whole Jesse Jackson mercy mission, whatever. It was very embarrassing. There was one of their top tech planes got shot down within days of the bombing.

Boyan Stanislavski

Yeah, the F.

Nebojša Malić

Right, the stealth fighter. Two of them actually got totaled. They landed, but they were so damaged that they couldn't be repaired later. So the actual loss is three. But the pieces of the one that was shot down over Serbia are still in the military museum here at the fortress. And things weren't going well. They tried to land assault. The KLA with US air supports tried to force the border to sort of open a corridor which they could cross into Kosovo. At this border post called Košare. And it failed miserably.

There were very heavy casualties on the Serbian side, but there were tenfold casualties on the Albanian side. And there was even an episode and I can't vouch for its veracity at this point. But one of the stories that the survivors of this battle tell is that the Albanians actually pushed them off the top of this hill. And they withdrew into the valley. And they were trying to figure out what to do. Whereupon a strategic airstrike dropped on that position that was called in earlier.

Because the KLA was liaising with the Americans. And they called in some B-52s to carpet bomb the area. Well, they did, but they hit friendlies. Essentially, that's what broke the KLA attack. It was the B-52s that hit them. Now, this could be apocryphal. This could be anecdotal. But that's one of the stories I've heard. And so the final result of this battle was a total KLA defeat. They never managed to cross the border in security. And so they were trying all sorts of other options. The Americans sent Apache attack helicopters that were supposed to go in low and kill Serbian armor on the ground.

Because the jet started flying very, very high after the F-117 was shot down out of the envelope of Serbian radars and missiles. But the Apaches officially never saw battle. According to official reports, they hit power lines in northern Albania and just had a series of mechanical accidents. And it was all very tragic and very sad. And several crews were lost. And the decision was made not to send them into battle.

Now, this veteran Serbian military correspondent, who passed away a few years back, wrote a novel, this sort of fictional autobiography, in which he wrote, in which he claimed, again, artistic license, but it didn't seem like it was invented out of whole cloth. He wrote that on such and such a day, this group of Serbian jets that were fairly obsolete by NATO standards, flew really, really low, raided this airport outside of Tirana, blew up the Apache infrastructure that was deployed there and flew back. And that the next day, NATO savagely bombed this airport trying to avenge this particular embarrassment.

I don't know, again, we'll have to wait for decades for declassified documents to prove whether this is true or not. But this is, again, one of the stories that's being told. There's so many stories being told about the Ukraine war that I could just easily write as off as cope. But the bombing of the airport did happen, the one in Montenegro. So who knows, maybe there was a bombing of the airport in Tirana. This was before smartphones and internet journalism was in its very, very early stages.

So if you didn't see it on cable TV, it didn't happen. At least that's how CNN chose to interpret things. And so again, for whatever reason, NATO failed to achieve its military objectives. And they knew this, they were aware of this. And they didn't even know how bad it was on the ground until afterwards, in the sense of how little they had damaged the Yugoslav army. Western reporters who were in Kosovo, when the Yugoslav army went in to observe the Yugoslav withdrawal, where are all the destroyed tanks?

We're counting tanks and armored vehicles and none of them have been destroyed. What did we kill? And it turned out that they had been using the World War II American surplus that was sent to Yugoslavia during the break with Stalin in '48-'53 as military aid. They were using these to mask as decoys and masking them as T-55s and they were like M10 Hellcats or something. It was one of those mind-blowing what the hell just happened moments. You know, Shermans, and they were blowing up old American tech essentially, thinking that there was modern Yugoslav weapons.

But again, I think what really pushed them, and again, a lot of these documents are not yet made available, so I can only guess. But I think what eventually pushed them to this was that they wanted to cut their losses because the goal of their operation, which was repressing Russia, wasn't working. It was backfiring. And they wanted to stop it and they didn't really care much about ethnic Albanians to begin with, especially now. And they're like, okay, fine, we'll get the best deal we can get. And in fact, one of the Russian generals who was involved in this, and I'm not gonna bring up his name because I don't remember which one it was.

This is one of those, you learn so many things over 25 years, they all kind of smush in your head. But there was an interview he gave to a Serbian newspaper in which he basically said, I was part of the delegation that was talking to the Americans and we had actually negotiated some pretty decent terms for all of this. And then we got a phone call from Moscow that said, do whatever they tell you.

He was accusing the Yeltsin government of betrayal, whether Yeltsin himself or somebody else, I don't know. We know that the... Not a shocker, really. I mean, we know that the Yeltsin government was literally infested with Western agents. And so somebody made a call and said, just do what the Americans want, which is how the shape of this compromise ended up being what it is, as opposed to having like the Russian sector. And then you have the airport dash that somebody in the Russian command decides to make an end run around, not just NATO, but Yeltsin. Because this was the, they refused to accept the outcome of that phone call.

And again, there's a lot of history to be written about this and dug up about this. And a lot of people involved, they're not talking yet. But there was definitely some kind of power dynamic between NATO and Russia that we're not quite yet privy to that was going on behind the scenes. And if you look at Strobe Talbott's explanation, again, this is the guy who ran Bill Clinton's Russia policy. So he would know. Don't take my word for it.

If you take what he said, that the final objective of this was Russia and that Serbia and Yugoslavia and the ethnic Albanians were just means to an end, it makes perfect sense they chose to end it when they did. And it also makes perfect sense that they reneged on the agreement when they did. Because what happened in practice was as soon as NATO troops waltzed in, the KLA followed.

And they just went looting, burning, murdering, occupying everything in their path, destroying everything in remotely Serbian up until they hit the Ivar River in the north where Serbs had actually put together some kind of resistance which had created the de facto partition that is ongoing to this day and Kirki's attempts to crush the remnant of this community. And then in 2004, they launched this pogrom across the south of the province to eliminate the last enclaves there, which NATO watched for three days before the Americans said, okay, that's enough. And the moment the Americans said that's enough, the Albanians stopped, which should tell you exactly how that relationship works.

But, and I'm compressing 25 years of history and 250 years of history in an hour long show here. But again, the key dynamic here is that you've got the ethnic Albanians who have been hitching their car to every conqueror since. And you've got the Americans admitting essentially that they never cared about the ethnic Albanians except as a means to an end and will eventually discard them just like everybody else.

Just ask Ashraf Ghani or any of the Afghans who worked for the American Occupation Authority or South Vietnamese if you can find them mostly around the US running ethnic enclaves. This is one of those, you live here, these are your neighbors. You can either get along with your neighbors or you can try to make a pact with an imperial power to use you and hope that in the process you can take out your neighbors and get more territory. What is the more sustainable long-term strategy? I'm not appealing...

Boyan Stanislavski

That's a rhetorical question.

Nebojša Malić

Well, I mean, I'm not appealing to people's sense of decency because let's face it, it's 2024. We know a lot of people don't have any. I'm appealing to people's rational self-interest. We're witnessing a world change. 25 years after the globalist American empire arose on the ruins of Yugoslavia, we're witnessing the world change. And in this new world, however it might be, the people who hitched their cart to the American empire, horse, engine, steam, whatever, aren't exactly, shouldn't expect to remain in that position.

Boyan Stanislavski

Well, many of them keep being delusional about it, you know, and...

Nebojša Malić

Well, I'm sure that tomorrow they will start, you know, speaking Chinese or Russian and say that they've always been the biggest friends of China and remember how Emperor Hoxha was really friends with Mao back in the day and how we were... Communists just like the Soviet Union, we supported Stalin and, you know, we should be your enforcers in this area. Remember, we're not like those Serbs who are, you know, stubborn and independent-minded and won't serve you well and you should work with us instead.

That kind of thing. But again, you know, this is, you know, we keep talking about this as a regional problem, which it is to a certain extent, but it has also become a wider problem because of foreign meddling, whether it's Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German, American, you name it. They've been using these tensions and these rivalries and these territorial disputes to exert and create and enlarge their influence. And when they were gone, people living there were left to pick up the pieces, just like every other time everywhere else.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right, let's wrap it up here because we're running rapidly out of time. I know you told me before we began recording that you only have 90 minutes and it's been a fascinating discussion. You're a fascinating interlocutor and I'm sure, you know, when I'm expressing gratitude for your time here and for your analysis, of course, and for the insights and the points that you made during this discussion, it's not only mine, but it's also the one of our viewers and listeners.

So thank you, Nebojša, very, very much. And there are so many questions in my head and so many points that I'd like to make or perhaps comment on and then have your response to that. But that only means that we're going to have to record another segment together and I hope you are just as happy about it or at least half as happy about it as I am.

So we're going to be able then to discuss the outcome of that for the world and for the Balkans and for Serbia, of course, and for the nations of former Yugoslavia. But also, I think it would be very important for us to go over the Color Revolution that they staged and why they staged it is something you indicated at the beginning of our today's program. So plenty, plenty of stuff to discuss and plenty of parallels to make, I think, with other countries.

You mentioned Donbas and there are some elements, obviously, that should be compared here and the conclusions should be drawn upon that comparison. So once again, Nebojša, thank you. Thank you very much and I wish you the best of luck and take care and let's see each other sometime later when you have a bit of time again.

Nebojša Malić

Thank you. My pleasure to be back on the show.

Boyan Stanislavski

Right. Thank you so much. And to those of you out there who are watching the show and who like our productions, then please go ahead and not only subscribe to this channel, but also support us on Patreon, patreon.com/thebarricade. We don't monetize any of our materials here. Everything's for free. So to the extent that you feel you can support us either by one of donations or monthly subscriptions, please go ahead and do that. Thank you. Thank you. And see you sometime later.