Could you please address the issue of the alleged torching of Orthodox churches and of the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other minorities.

There is a question on the authenticity of the reporters on the Orthodox web sites. It is possible the reporters are Serb Nationalists covering their own depredations. It is also possible that bad things happen in a war, and that the Balkans are usually at war.

Michael Totten has already said that in the Balkans there are no innocents.

@ Anonymous First of all, excuse my bad English; I’m not a native speaker. It’s an interesting article but definitely a snap-shot. My native country is Bosnia and therefore I have no reason to protect the Kosovo-Albanian interests, but I’m familiar with the actual facts. Fact is - Balkan is the powder-keg of Europe. I’m afraid that all the peace agreements and state formations are not enduring. The animosity between Serbs and Albanians reach far back to the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and the victory for the Ottomans – the Serbs never got over the loss. But let’s cut it short. The repression of the Kosovo-Albanians has a long history, it started already in 1981. The student riot, they were fighting for equality with the other constituent states in former Yugoslavia, introduced segregation in almost all spheres of life and the impact on people was pervasive. Kosovo became the poorhouse of the region. In my opinion, it’s quite comprehensible that they wanted to separate from Serbia and given the fact that the community of states of Yugoslavia has fallen apart, it’s above all eligible. After more than 25 years of repression and suffering there is no or only little willingness to live together. Though I must say that the Serbs were not banished – ethnic cleansing happened in Bosnia but not in Kosovo. So why did the Serbs leave? I would say it was initiated from Belgrade, stoking fears among the population. Unfortunately, propaganda has become a vital and common tool, worldwide.

Michael, Your post puzzles me. You must be aware that Albania was an enthusiastic ally of the Nazis in WWII, and in fact formed a separate Albanian Army to assist with Operation Barbaroza. As noted by comenters above, you refer only to Catholic relations. The Croats (also generally pro-Nazi) have a Catholic base, but the Serbs are basically Orthodox Christian. And the Albanians, under their Nazi German mentors, committed many, many atrocities against the Serbs during WWII. The Serbs were a large majority in Kosovo prior to WWII, but were ethnically cleansed during that war by Albania with Nazi assistance. Please look into the Albanian/Orthodox relationship at present.

As for the Islam on the Balkan, it used to be liberal – until 1992. One can't help but notice that things are changing for the worse. Last year I went back home to Sarajevo, I was running a development project for one year, and I saw the changes on the Balkan. Here is an example: there are more than 100 mosques in Sarajevo, relicts from the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Unimposing historical buildings. The new built mosque has the size of 8000 square meters! It’s impressive. Before, you could hardly ever see covered women in public, now it seems to be very trendy wearing headscarves, even teen girls do it. You can also see women with a head- face cover and wearing black garments covering her down to the feet. Men with long beards. Well, someone wouldn’t consider it alarming because they are still a minority and Islamic clothing is nothing usual within the Arab communities in European major cities. Maybe you are right – but there is one thing which troubles me. 1) there is no Arab community on the Balkan 2) it’s the new state of mind. The Balkan war started 1992, the NATO bombing was in 1994. What happened during the two years? A massacre. The Catholics got support from Germany, the Orthodox from Russia and the Muslims got slapped with sanctions. The European foreign policy failed. That was an utterly devastating sign they sent to the Balkan Muslims. Isolation creates radicalism – it’s not a new perception. Today, the majority of the Balkan Muslims celebrate Ramadan, they fast and they pray – things they haven’t done before 1992. And these - still liberal - Muslims are facing a threat not from Islam per se, but from Wahhabism. By the way, Wahhabism is not only a problem on the Balkan; GB and France are struggling with that as well. And while the European politicians are busy negotiating with Iran, they ignore the religious alacrity in Europe.

>>Ask yourself, or whoever you want why is there a 90% Albanian majority in Kosovo today? The answer is simple they have ethnically cleansed the rest of Serbs and other minorities. Or maybe it was 75% in 1912 when Serbs brutally occupied it (this is missing from Serb history books; they call it 'liberation') and despite all the Albanians sent to Turkey and immigrants to Germany, Switzerland Albanians have more children. Kosovo was ALWAYS the poorest region, why would people with options stay there? People need to eat. Serbs are losing population each year thanks to abortions and Slobo's policies, albanians are not. Now they are 130,000 Serbs in Kosovo so it's impossible for "hundreds of thousands of them" to have been expelled when they were 200,000 to begin with. Many who raped, beat up and looted left with the Serb soldiers, others went north on in their cities, or others have had enough with wars and settled in Serbia. Confiscations of monasteries are impossible: there is an office that has returned 16,000 properties to its claimants, they even ordered the return of Serbian Church land seized by Slobodan. On damaged churches: whatever was done was not done because of religion, it was because of the radical views and spreading of hate from the Serbian Orthodox church agaist Albanians. Serbs also wiped out some 40% of houses, every mosque, every historical building, raped some 20,000 women and killed quite a few men. People were mad to say the least. (Serbs of course deny these things. They never happened, Serbs are good Christians after all)

Serbs and warmongers!!!

I will comment on three matters brought up here. First, Albanians as a whole were never "part of the Orthodox world." Albanian Orthodox Christians live in central and southern Albania, not in Kosova or Macedonia or north Albania, which were Catholic before becoming Catholic and Muslim, except for brief periods of Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Serb domination. Second, Kosova has an Albanian majority of 90 percent now for the same reason it had one in 1912 when Serbia invaded; Serbs have not been a major element in Kosova since at least the 17th century, and were a minority before that as shown by contemporary historical and population record. There are still some 200,000 Serbs in Kosova, which everybody who goes there knows, along with members of other minorities. As to the inflated claims about destruction of Serbian religious properties, most Westerners never found out that more than half of the mosques and Sufi structures in Kosova were completely destroyed by the Serbs in 1998-99. Serb structures that came under later attack were mainly "political churches" built since the 1980s to symbolize Slav domination. Such retaliation was abominable but has ended, while Serb threats and aggression against Albanians continue.

Michael Totten & Other Viewers Pardon what in the preview of this post appears to be a bunched up post. If this post comes up as such, I'm at a loss of knowing why. Besides the Serbs, other non-Albanians in Kosovo have faced problems from Albanian nationalists. During WW II, Serbia wasn't recognized as a country by the Nazis, like the Nazi acting Ustasha regime in Croatia, which had the Jasenovac concentration camp. This contrasts sharply from what was going on in Serbia at the time. Nedic and Ljotic aren't to be confused with the majority of Serbs who either supported Mihailovic or the Partizans. Debunking the pro-Kosovo Independence Claims http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/52219 The Press and Kosovo http://www.counterpunch.org/averko03042008.html

Dobrica Cosic Former Serbian President “We lie to deceive ourselves, to console others; we lie for mercy, we lie to fight fear, to encourage ourselves, to hide our and somebody else’s misery. We lie for love and honesty. We lie because of freedom. Lying ie is the trait of our patriotism and the proof of our innate smartness. We lie creatively, imaginatively, inventively.” Six pivotal themes in Serbian propaganda are 1. Victimization, in which Serbs were constructed as collective victims first of the NDH, then of Tito’s Yugoslavia, and more specifically of Croats, Albanians, Bosnians, and other non-Serbs. 2. Dehumanization of designated ‘others’, in which Croats were depicted as ‘genocidal’ and as ‘Ustaše’, Bosnians were portrayed as ‘fanatical fundamentalists’, and Albanians were represented as not fully human. These processes of dehumanization effectively removed these designated ‘others’ from the moral field, sanctifying their murder or expulsion. 3. Belittlement, in which Serbia’s enemies were represented as beneath contempt. 4. Conspiracy, in which Croats, Slovenes, Albanians, the Vatican, Germany, Austria, and sometimes also the Bosnians as well as the U.S. and other foreign states, were seen as united in a conspiracy to break up the SFRY and hurt Serbia. In this way, the Belgrade regime’s obstinate disregard for the fundamental standards of international law was dressed up as heroic defiance of an anti-Serb conspiracy. 5. Entitlement, in which the Serbs were constructed as ‘entitled’ to create a Greater Serbian state to which parts of Croatia and Bosnia would be attached, under the motto,’ All Serbs should live in one state.’ 6. Superhuman powers and divine sanction. The Serbs were told that they were, in some sense, “super”. They were the best fighters on the planet, they could stand up to the entire world, and they were sanctioned by God himself, because of Tsar Lazar and the fact that Lazar had chosen the heavenly kingdom. Moreover, since Lazar had chosen the heavenly kingdom, the Serbs, encouraged to view themselves as Lazar’s heirs, were entitled to the earthly kingdom which Lazar had repudiated, as their patrimony. Serbian society began to stray down the path to war more or less unwittingly. Already in the years 1981—86, long before the other republics experienced anything like a ‘national awakening’, Serbia (and here one may include Kosovo too) was already sliding into a syndrome in which myths, threats, the allure of victory, and belligerent rhetoric filled the public discourse, giving Serbs a sense of common destiny but also separating them, psychologically, from the other peoples of socialist Yugoslavia. That this was an unhealthy state of collective mind is clear from the prominence of the themes of victimization, conspiracy, national entitlement, and divine sanction of the Serbian national project, as well as from the insistent campaigns of dehumanization, demonization, and belittlement of Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians, as well as other peoples and states, which began at this time. This syndrome, in an individual, would be considered psychotic; to the extent that it permeated much of Serbian society, perhaps especially in the countryside, one may speak of Serbia having been sucked into a kind of collective psychosis. And to the extent that Serbian war propaganda aimed at reinforcing and stimulating this state of mind, we may say that it aimed at inculcating and reinforcing neurotic and psychotic syndromes in Serbian society. This psychosis had its cultic saints – portraitsof Miloševiæ and Chetnik leader Draža Mihailoviæ were often displayed alongside those of saints canonized by the Church – had its bards (such as Simonida Stankoviæ and Ceca Ražnjatoviæ), and even had its official music – “turbo-folk”, a pop mixtureof folk-ethnic style with a rhythmic pounding beat. Moreover, this psychosis could even transport those infected to a state of consciousness which they mistook for a better world. Miloševi, for example, arriving dramatically at Kosovo polje in a helicopter on 28 June 1989, told those gathered for the six hundredth anniversary of Serbia’s mythic confrontation with its national destiny, that in that the - century battle, Serbia had defended not just herself but all of European culture and civilization. Fine oratory might even be called the elixir of national psychosis.

Plenty of anti-Serb sentiment expressed here. serbia minus Kosovo is more multi-ethnically tolerant than Kosovo. This explains why the latter is understandably not trusted to completely govern the south serb province. As for "lies," there was a good deal of lying for the Albanian nationalist cause. Here's one of several examples: http://www.aeronautics.ru/nws001/cbc01.htm Another having to do with trumped up casualty figures to encourage foreign intervention.

Serbs have a way of falsifying history and ignoring what they have done to others too. For example, if you ask them, the Kosovo Battle is the epic battle where their knights chose death over the Turk yolke despite enormous odds and Kosovo is theirs for ever because of that. Well, Lazar and many of his knights actually surrendered, and most others run away:

"The fact that Lazar and a good number of his knights surrendered in a vain attempt to save their lives did not excuse Vuk's failure to continue fighting...Vuk's treason was the direct result of a propaganda campaign initiated by Milica's supporter's as part of her quarrel with the prince."

Passage from "The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution, and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond" pp. 29 By Andre Gerolymatos

After the surrender, Lazar's daughter was married to the Turkish Sultan and Serbs helped them fight against Albania's Scanderbeg, Hungarians; Serbs lead siege of Constantinople and along with the Turks Serbs won the battle of Nicopolis against Balkans Christians. Many other battles from "heroic" Serb vassals space does not permit to enter here. Their entire history is essentially based on that lie, that Serbs fought bravely and Lazar choose the "eternal Kingdom" versus the earthy one. Well, Lazar surrendered like a coward to save his own skin, and Andre Gerolymatos is a very well respected Greek scholar and professor.

Since when is a relationship to Israel a measure of your value? the issue of Kosovo is not whether it is Islamist- the issue is if it is a conduit for Islamists due to its Islamic identity. Then there is the far more important question of Kosovar mafia, and nationalism, which has brutal consequences for Macedonia and Yugoslavia. How can I tell your article from hack work?

Serbs are the monsters of Europe. Murdered quarter million, ethnically cleansed 5 million of Croat Catholics, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar Albanians of Muslim and Catholic Creed. Serb Orthodox Church in Bosnia and Croatia penned projects how to massmurder hundreds of thousands Croats. Just take a look at the history of Karadzic hiding in Orthodox Churches. Cheers from a Croat who truly loves Kosovar Albanians who die for their nation but never their religion. I envy you people. You sacrificed your lives for Croatian independence, and I want to congratulate for your Kosovo independence! Long live Croatia! Long Live Kosovo!

Karadzic is a only a product created from the inspirational manifestos of how to annihilate nonSerbs in Yugoslavia. "Fina Solution on how to annihilate Albanians" written by Cubrilovic, an authentic inspiration by other monstrous mindss is one of the best examples.

To the last comment. Serbian propaganda embedded through written memos how to exterminate the Albanians such as the the on of Cubrilovic's "Final Solution on Annihilation of Albanians in Yugoslavia" is another proof.

Why don't you mention that the Saudis are opening up Mosques across the country or that 4 of the Dix Hills military terror plotters came from Kosovo? Kosovo will be just like all the other Islamic states. Non-Muslims will be persecuted there, no matter what kind of spin you want to put on the country. "Moderate" Islam is not coming to the rescue.

"Why don't you mention that the Saudis are opening up Mosques across the country" Yes, they are, but they are also opening Mosques in London, New York, and pretty much everywhere they can afford. As fellow anti-Jihadist Patrick Poole pointed out, "radical Islamists have no more taken over Kosova than they have Kansas City.". So what is your point, ultimately? Are you implying that because Saudis are building Mosques in Kosovo, Albanians are therefore a race of Islamofascist Barbarians? "4 of the Dix Hills military terror plotters came from Kosovo?" Once again, this says NOTHING about Albanians as a group. As another fellow anti-Jihadist Ray Robison pointed out, "The reasons why three Albanian men from Jersey became jihadists have nothing to do with Kosovo or Albania and everything to do with Islamic extremism". Yes, it is about Islam's fanatical nature, but it says nothing about Albanians as a people. "Kosovo will be just like all the other Islamic states." It might, but it's current direction is towards the west, and not the dark ages of Islam. The presence of Islamic fundamentalists among Albanians is indeed worrisome, and they are actually a bigger threat to the Albanian nation, culture and heritate than all the intellectually dishonest Serbian propagandists and their sympathizers(Yes, you too, mr. Anonymous) combined, and should not be taken lightly, but to compare Kosovo with places like Pakistan is a major overstatement. "Non-Muslims will be persecuted there, no matter what kind of spin you want to put on the country." Nevermind the fact that today most Albanians are ATHEISTS, Albanian Muslim since the Ottoman Turks brought Islam to Kosovo never persecuted their Christian compatriots. Albanians for the most part are Albanian first before they independence of Kosovo was universally supported by ALL Albanians regardless of creed. "'Moderate' Islam is not coming to the rescue." Yes, the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is universal, and there is no such thing is as "moderate Islam", only a difference of degree of adherence, but the Albanian population is largely secular and far from being Islamic, so your point is senseless in this regard.

"You're a liar in almost everything you say in this article." Unfortunately, you failed to point out any "lies" in his article. Only once again showing that you, like most Albanophobes, are not being objective when it comes to the issue of Kosovo. "Not sure what is driving you to write such drivel or if you are seriously this misguided." Does the fact that unlike you, Totten refuses to see this as an issue of those "Brave-Civilized-Western-Godly-Christian-Serbs" vs. "Bloodthirsty-Genocidal-Islamofascist-Nazi-Albanians"(The way most Albanophobes want to see it) makes him "misguided"? Apparently, if we are to believe the Albanophobes, the answer is "yes". "I was in Kosovo only last summer and saw it from a very different light." So according to the logic of the Albanophobes, if someone visits Kosovo/Albania, and does not return with the impression that Albanians are a race of Islamofascist barbarians whose very existence is a mortal threat not only to Serbia, but to ALL of Western Civilization, one must be "misguided". *sigh* "The only reason they act like such liberal Muslims is because the generation living in Kosovo grew up under a communist regime that didn't allow any form of religious fundamentalism, they didn't allow them to even practice Islam openly so they forgot about their religious past" True. Not to mention the fact that Albanians for the most part put their national identity first before any religious identity. As 19th century Albanian poet once wrote in his poem: "Awaken, Albania, wake from your slumber, Let us all, as brothers, swear a common oath And not look to church or mosque, The faith of the Albanian is Albanianism!" "now that the door is open once again and the Wahabis have far more influence in the society than you give them credit for, in a single generation or two they will be just as radical as any other Muslim country." One can hardly predict how things will be next year, nevermind in a "generation or two". Unfortunately, the Wahhabis are trying to gain influence EVERYWHERE, but fortunately, as I pointed out in my previous post here a point made by fellow anti-Jihadist Patrick Poole, ""radical Islamists have no more taken over Kosova than they have Kansas City." "What happened after only a few generations in Iran under the Shaw," The Wahhabis had NOTHING to do with the radicalization of the Iranian population that brought the 1979 Revolution. You of course, neglect to mention that now after a generation under Islamic rule more and more people become hostile to the Islamic regime of Iran, as well as that the vast majority of Iranian exiles hate it with passion. "what happened in only a few generations in Turkey after Ataturk...." Turkey, last time I checked, despite a creeping worrisome Islamization, is still an electoral SECULAR democracy. For anyone interested, should read the following blog, which debunks much of the misinformation about Albanians perpetrated by Serbian propagandists and their sympathizers: http://albanianrealitycheck.blogspot.com/