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This talk (deliv­ered in July of 1999), sets forth back­ground to the wars in the for­mer Yugoslavia. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on the rela­tion­ship between the Mus­lim and Serb minori­ties in that unfor­tu­nate nation, and the devel­op­ment of the 1999 NATO cam­paign in Kosovo. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the oppres­sion of Serbs in the Ottoman empire, the lec­ture dis­cusses the priv­i­leged sta­tus of Slove­nia and Croa­tia dur­ing the Austro-Hungarian empire’s occu­pa­tion of what is now Yugoslavia. The divi­sions that stemmed from the two empires’ occu­pa­tion of the Balkans had much to do with set­ting the stage for the cur­rent conflicts.

The talk then out­lines the his­tory of Yugoslavia dur­ing World War II, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the Axis nations’ use of eth­nic Alba­ni­ans and Bosn­ian Mus­lims. Kosovo was granted nom­i­nal auton­omy dur­ing the Axis occu­pa­tion of the Balkans, and the Trepca min­ing com­plex (in Kosovo) pro­vided the Ger­mans with min­eral resources that were essen­tial to the Ger­man war effort. (The Trepca min­ing com­plex is the most valu­able piece of eco­nomic real estate in the for­mer Yugoslavia.)

Though largely ignored in most his­to­ries of World War II, Nazi Germany’s use of eth­nic Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions sig­nif­i­cantly affected the course of events dur­ing World War II in a num­ber of areas, the Balkans in par­tic­u­lar. The Nazis’formed and oper­ated Mus­lim Waf­fen SS divi­sions in the for­mer Yugoslavia. Uti­liz­ing the ver­sa­tile Haj Amin Al-Husseini (self-styled “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,” Nazi espi­onage agent, SS Major, Pales­tin­ian nation­al­ist leader), the Waf­fen SS suc­cess­fully recruited from among Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions in the Balkans, Mid­dle East and Soviet Union. In the for­mer Yugoslavia, the Nazis formed a Bosn­ian Mus­lim divi­sion, the 13th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion (named Han­jar or Handzar.) Recruit­ing for the divi­sion from among the ranks of the Young Mus­lims, was none other than Alija Izetbe­govic, the first Pres­i­dent of Bosnia.

Next, the lec­ture focuses on his res­ur­rec­tion of the Han­jar divi­sion after becom­ing Pres­i­dent of Bosnia! Trained by vet­er­ans of the Afghan con­flict and com­posed largely of eth­nic Alba­ni­ans, the new Han­jar divi­sion was explic­itly named after, and specif­i­cally and overtly pat­terned on, the 13th Waf­fen SS divi­sion of Izetbegovic’s youth. In addi­tion to serv­ing as a Prae­to­rian guard, admin­is­ter­ing to the per­sonal secu­rity of Izetbe­govic and other mem­bers of the lead­er­ship in Sara­jevo, Han­jar func­tions as a “spe­cial forces” divi­sion, back­ing up other units and work­ing closely with Muja­hadeen formations.

The dis­cus­sion high­lights obser­va­tions by UN per­son­nel serv­ing with peace­keep­ing forces in areas where the Han­jar oper­ated. Not­ing the large eth­nic Alban­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Han­jar, one observer expressed the fear in 1993 that the fight­ing might very well spread to Kosovo. (Sub­se­quent events have borne out his fears.) By 1995, ele­ments of Han­jar were infil­trat­ing into Kosovo, Alba­nia and Macedonia.

The lec­ture high­lights the Skan­der­beg Divi­sion, a Waf­fen SS divi­sion com­posed of eth­nic Alba­ni­ans, largely from Kosovo. Many mem­bers of the KLA are the sons and grand­sons of men who fought with the 21st Waf­fen SS or Skan­der­beg Divi­sion, and the KLA has sus­tained much of its fas­cist her­itage. Never much of a fight­ing unit, Skan­der­beg helped round up Kosovo’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, fought against the Yugosla­vian Par­ti­sans, and helped safe­guard the suc­cess­ful Ger­man retreat from Greece and Alba­nia. In light of the fact that Ger­man intel­li­gence actively sup­ported the KLA in the mid-to late 90’s, it is not irrel­e­vant to ask whether some of the Waf­fen SS con­nec­tions to the area may have fig­ured in the shap­ing of events there.

In this con­text, one should bear in mind that the Waf­fen SS has its own branch of the ODESSA net­work, abbre­vi­ated HIAG. (The ODESSA is the post-World II SS under­ground, inex­tri­ca­bly linked with U.S. and Ger­man intel­li­gence, as well as the deadly Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion.) In addi­tion to the 13th (Han­jar) and 21st (Skan­der­beg) Divi­sions, the Ger­mans also formed the 23rd (Kama) Divi­sion from Balkan Mus­lim populations.

Lec­ture High­lights Include: The KLA’s involve­ment in orga­nized crime activ­i­ties (drug smug­gling i par­tic­u­lar); col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ger­many and Croa­t­ian fas­cists, dat­ing from the time of World War II; West­ern de-stabilization efforts against Yugoslavia dur­ing the 1980’s; the func­tional auton­omy granted to eth­nic Alba­ni­ans in Kosovo under the Tito gov­ern­ment; the eth­nic Alba­ni­ans’ use of this auton­omy to oppress the Ser­bian minor­ity in the province; Milosevic’s rise in the Yugosla­vian Com­mu­nist party; Milosevic’s retrac­tion of Alban­ian auton­omy in Kosovo; a secret trip to Ger­many in the 1980’s by Franjo Tudj­man (pres­i­dent of Croa­tia), in order to lay the ground­work for Croa­t­ian seces­sion from Yugoslavia; a syn­op­tic his­tory of the Croa­t­ian fas­cist move­ment, its alliance with Ger­many, and its mur­der­ous per­se­cu­tion of Serbs dur­ing World War II; a 2 billion-dollar, interest-free loan to finance Croa­t­ian inde­pen­dence (arranged by the Amer­i­can branch of the Knights of Malta); the Vatican’s role in estab­lish­ing the myth of the Serbs as the last bas­tion of hard-line, Soviet-style com­mu­nism in Europe; Ger­man par­rot­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion of the Vat­i­can pro­pa­ganda line about Yugoslavia; Vat­i­can endorse­ment of Croa­t­ian and Sloven­ian inde­pen­dence from Yugoslavia; Croatia’s human rights abuses against Serbs liv­ing in Croa­tia (they were fired from gov­ern­ment jobs, denied employ­ment in the media, sub­jected to heavy tax­a­tion, forced to carry iden­tity cards iden­ti­fy­ing them as Serbs and, finally, eth­ni­cally cleansed); the Croa­t­ian clergy’s bless­ing of the eth­nic cleans­ing of 250,000 Serbs in 1991 and 92; the Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism and anti-democratic ori­en­ta­tion of Bosn­ian pres­i­dent Alija Izetbe­govic; the over­rid­ing and extreme bias against the Serbs in West­ern diplo­matic and mil­i­tary pol­icy; the exag­ger­a­tion and/or fab­ri­ca­tion of war crimes evi­dence against the Serbs dur­ing the var­i­ous Balkans wars; Germany’s arm­ing of the Croa­t­ian armed forces in the early 90’s; how Ger­many blud­geoned the rest of the Euro­pean Union into endors­ing the breakup of Yugoslavia (the EU ini­tially voted 11 to 1 in favor of main­tain­ing the unity of the Yugoslav Fed­er­a­tion.) (Recorded at Foothill Col­lege in July of 1999.)