Repeating the allegations doesn’t make them true
Chuck Sudetic, whom I know and respect, in his Washington Post op/ed Saturday repeats Dick Marty’s allegations about high-level criminal activity in Kosovo in 1999-2000, this time without the important reservation that no forensic investigation has been conducted and no claims of guilt or innocence can be made. This is pretty rich, coming from the co-author of Carla Del Ponte’s memoir. Carla was the Hague Tribunal prosecutor who failed herself to mount a serious investigation of these allegations but nevertheless saw fit to include them, briefly, in the memoir.
Marty’s report, Chuck says, does not attack Kosovo’s legitimacy, but as is now well known Marty himself took a strong stand against Kosovo independence, on legal grounds that have now been vitiated in their entirety by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. Are we to believe, as Chuck claims, that the Marty report “draws upon Albanian eyewitnesses and insiders as well as Western intelligence and police agencies, and not upon the Albanians’ foe, the government of Serbia”? There are clear signs in the Marty report of information coming from Serbia, whether directly or through those Western intelligence and police agencies.
I repeat what I have said previously: I do not know the truth or falsity of the allegations, precisely because no serious forensic investigation has been conducted. That is what is needed, complete with the latest scientific techniques as well as witness protection, which Chuck rightly calls for.
He is also correct in one other important respect: these allegations, even if true, are no grounds for calling into question Kosovo’s legitimacy as an independent state. Does anyone think Croatia less legitimate as a state because its former prime minister now stands accused of corruption? Or that Serbia should not be independent because it was led for many years by a president accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity? Those who have tried to open up this line of attack are doing their own cause a serious disservice, and making it difficult for both Pristina and Tirana to do what they should, namely cooperate fully with a serious investigation.
Chuck exaggerates American responsibility in this matter, referring repeatedly to the United States and its diplomats as if only what they say goes. But Washington and Brussels together can and should exert the pressure needed to get a serious investigation under way, with full cooperation from Pristina, Tirana and Belgrade.
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6 thoughts on “Repeating the allegations doesn’t make them true”
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You are right that there should be a serious and credible investigation into these charges. Until that happens, there will be a dark cloud over the Kosovo leadership. But even if there was no organ harvesting, there can be little doubt as to the reality of organized crime and corruption in Kosovo. Not the petty stuff some are always talking about with reference to the north but the sort that leads to concerns throughout Europe about Kosovo and Albanian mafias and the need to re-run elections. These clouds also hang and need a more active and prolonged effort by the EU to dispel.
Shortly after the fall of Milosevic, I made a similar remark to a newly installed deputy prime minister in Belgrade. He leaned over to me intently and said, “don’t kid yourself, all the bosses are still here in Belgrade.” Organized crime in the Balkans is not an ethnic trait.
Daniel Serwer
The Serbs have been much more effective at getting their side of the story out. I wonder how much of this is due to the English-language versions of their newspapers? A Google-News search invariably pulls up a B92 story whenever there’s bad news to report about Kosovo, but anything good is passed over in silence. (Even if a story appeared in the Serbian version – something as innocuous as a report on a folk-dance group for kids in Kosovo where the kids report how their perceptions of the other groups have changed.) For one who doesn’t read Albanian, it’s difficult to find anything positive about the country, and yet progress is being made – laws are being passed, schools and roads are being built, crooks are being caught … The Serbs have strong backers in Russia and the Feckless Five, while the Kosovars have the divided EU and what feels like an absent-minded America as supposed supporters. You can only hope that what isn’t killing them is making them stronger.
I take back the comment about B92 articles placement on Google News – there’s been a recent change. The paper’s ability to position multiple stories on the site had become a joke in the online discussion section.
Why, Amer, what exactly has changed? If you don’t mind sharing. 🙂
Until recently, B92 had multiple references to its English website every time you looked up “Kosovo” on the Google News site. In the past few days, there have been only a couple in the listing, and in fact, New Kosova Report has even showed up. (It’s apparently been undergoing a makeover.)