Is Serbia on the chopping block again?

By Michael Celik

Photo: Is Serbia on the chopping block again?

There is a saying in Canada that most reasonable people will agree with. It says: “Don’t blame the messenger (for bad news).”

When Canada Post, a Canadian Government corporation, listed Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina as a separate country, it must have been just delivering a message from the Canadian Government. The post office does not create foreign policy, it just obeys government orders. It had to be somebody else’s idea and not the devious intention of the post office administration. While, for the moment, that mysterious person remains unidentified, it would be helpful to draw lessons from the recent past.

In the late 90’s, people who tried to send letters to Yugoslavia through the US postal service were similarly told that Yugoslavia does not exist on their list and that mail must be addressed to either Serbia or Montenegro. This was at the time when the United States of America still had its functioning embassy in Belgrade and recognized the existence of that country under its official name; Yugoslavia. There was no doubt that the government of the United States of America pursued a sustained campaign to dismember Yugoslavia, suffocate it economically through sanctions and provide economic aid and recognition to those parts of the country which declared independence. That policy of course culminated in 1999 when Yugoslavia was subjected to nearly three months of savage bombing by US led NATO Alliance. At that time, Yugoslavia still had two republics in its federation, namely Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia’s most ancient part, Kosovo, was subsequently occupied by NATO troops and severed from the rest of Serbia.

The story about Yugoslavia’s dismemberment is too complex to be fully explained here but after Kosovo was forcibly detached from Serbia, foreign powers used diplomatic pressure to rename Yugoslavia into Serbia and Montenegro. This unitary state lived only briefly. The invention of Montenegro as a separate country of 600.000 people, mostly Serbs, made no sense to its inhabitants but was very useful to NATO hegemony in the region. It meant that Serbia would be a land locked country and would lose its navy. Serbia was surrounded by NATO member states or those aspiring to become members. Here, we also have multiple evidence of premeditated foreign intervention in the independence of Montenegro. Long before Montenegro had its manipulated and controlled referendum on independence, its passports were ordered printed in Switzerland. When some employees in that Swiss printing firm asked why printing does not wait until after the scheduled referendum in Montenegro, they were told that the printing of new Montenegro passports does not depend on the outcome of the referendum.

The question that arises from all these processes is simple. How can the US and Canadian post administrators and the management of a Swiss printing firm, know more about the fate of these newly democratized Balkan states, than the peoples living in them? If democracy ought to reflect the will of its people, how come fundamental decisions are all made abroad? It is no surprise that the CIA outfit The Freedom House, calls the failed state Ukraine a democracy and Russia and Belarus authoritarian states. It would appear that the criteria for such labeling are based on the degree of foreign control of any given state. Thus, nations which submit most to US domination are termed most democratic and those which respect the will of their populations are labeled authoritarian.

Will Serbia’s bread basket province of Vojvodina become independent? The answer is; watch the news and remember postal prophecy of earlier times. Serb protests in Canada have finally removed Vojvodina from the list of postal destinations but this will not change the ultimate goal of NATO ambitions. Many Serbs were naïve enough to believe that delivering Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague Tribunal will inaugurate a new era of friendly relations with the enemies of their country. In fact, designs on Serbia are continuing under new pretexts. While Kosovo, taken away from Serbia, had majority Albanian population, Vojvodina has a Serbian majority of over 65%. Normally, this would guarantee integrity of Vojvodina even apart from the rest of Serbia, but we do not live in normal times. There is no guarantee that the province would not further subdivide, as it was done under Hitler to make the Serbs subjects of neighbouring states which pick up the pieces. Vojvodina borders Romania, Hungary and Croatia, all NATO members. Cut off from the sea and besieged by NATO neighbours, Serbia’s sole link with the outside world and Russia is possible only via the Danube River. If Vojvodina secedes from Serbia, that link will also disappear and Serbia is destined to become what West Berlin used to be during the cold war.

If there is any analogy worthy our consideration in the dismembering of Yugoslavia and Serbia in particular, it is the Nazi and the Second World War analogy. As Yugoslavia’s largest ethnic group, the Serbs must be neutralized and deprived of independent livelihood if any foreign domination is to become effective. In order to advance its expansionist policies, NATO has revived and resuscitated old Nazi Balkan politics and hatreds against the Serbs. Shortly before the bombing of Yugoslavia was to commence, a NATO general was reminded of Germany’s quagmire in the Balkans where 48 German divisions were needed to pacify the region. His answer was that NATO will not make Hitler’s mistake.

Some truths remain immutable. The geography and physical features of land have not changed since the last world war. It is also clear that ambitions of today remain the same and that history is about to repeat itself. Many history books tell the same story: “Before Barbarossa could get under way in the spring the southern flank, which lay in the Balkans, had to be secured and built up.”* Just as sure as daybreak in Vladivostok announces daybreak in Moscow, so does an attack on Serbia announce an impending western attack on Russia. Russia is not the Soviet Union and needs to take into account that NATO is now in former Soviet republics, it is in Russia’s west as well as the south and it is constantly advancing, driven by oil stolen from Iraq and armed with bullets made of lead from the stolen Trepca mine in Kosovo. Russia is in mortal danger but Russia has been there before, she will need all the wisdom of her ancestors.