New York Times:

1989 återkallade Belgrad Kosovos autonomi. Konflikten har dock rötter som går längre tillbaka i tiden. På adressen http://www.fair.org/memory-hole redovisas en tolv år gammal artikel från New York Times (den 1/11 -87).

Ur presentationen av artikeln:

"Particularly in ethnic conflicts, both sides usually have legitimate grievances that are often used to justify a new round of abuses against the other side.

In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news outlets usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the Kosovo Albanians' autonomy in 1989... media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted Kosovo's autonomy. The attached article, from the New York Times in 1987, gives important background to this decision. Although the article is easily found in the Nexis database, little to none of this information has found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the Times or anywhere else.

If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would likely dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12 years ago, when Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the New York Times would not seem to have any particular interest in defending Serbs or attacking Albanians."

New-York-Times-artikeln, skriven av David Binder, har rubriken: "In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict"

Några citat:

"Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction thatYugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of 'civil war' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.

The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians againstthe various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.

A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.

The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.

Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.

Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.

The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an 'ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.

Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania."

"The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million.
The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an 'ethnically pure' Albanian region, a 'Republic of Kosovo' in all but name.

The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to 'the worst in the last seven years.'"

'''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe."

"Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces."

"The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. 'Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for 'killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.'"

While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north."