Have you been wondering what the heck is going on in Belgrade that would cause Serbs to burn our embassy there this week? The mainstream media would have you think that this is very cool—-an ethnic group of people have gotten their independence and now have their own country. Others are predicting that President Bush, apparently egged on by his State Department, might have made the biggest mistake of his Presidency, and that says a lot.
We have just helped establish the first Muslim country in Europe—Kosovo. Never mind that the Christian population is scared to death.
In an opinion article in World Net Daily, James George Jatras spells out what we have done. One of the questions he raises is whether this effort by a major world power will give encouragement to other separatist movements demanding their own countries too when an ethnic population reaches a certain level. Our own Southwest perhaps?
At a special press briefing, outgoing Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns – who is often mentioned as a possible secretary of state under a Democratic administration – hailed support for Kosovo from the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Muslim governments. Happily claiming that a “vastly majority Muslim state” has been carved out of Serbia, a European Christian country, Burns said: “We think it is a very positive step that this Muslim state, Muslim majority state, has been created today.”
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Burns’ remarks reflect a desperate hope by the Bush administration that displays of American pro-Islamic favoritism in the Balkans and support for a Palestinian state (its domination by Hamas notwithstanding) will buy the good will of hostile devotees of the “religion of peace and tolerance.” Their gratitude is manifest in the jihad terror plot to attack Fort Dix, N.J., where four of the six defendants are Albanian Muslims from the Kosovo region. The offenders’ presence in the United States – three of them illegal aliens and one brought to the U.S. by the Clinton administration as a refugee, another example of “gratitude” – stems from the fact that a broadly based support network for the terrorist “Kosovo Liberation Army,” KLA, has been allowed to operate with impunity in the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania area, raising funds and collecting weapons, not to mention peddling influence with American politicians.
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Meanwhile, Christian Serbs in Kosovo are bracing for the worst. “We are all expecting something difficult and horrible,” said Bishop Artemije, pastor of Kosovo’s Orthodox Christians. “Our message to you, all Serbs in Kosovo, is to remain in your homes and around your monasteries, regardless of what God allows or our enemies do.”
In the US some of the thousands of Albanian refugees we brought to our country through the Refugee Resettlement Program are whooping it up in New York (NY received the largest number of Albanian refugees from Bill Clinton’s war).
Sunday, [Faruk] Krasniqi joined thousands of Albanians in New York City’s Times Square to celebrate Kosovo’s independence. His family also celebrated at their home on Syracuse’s North Side.
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“I was excited. I was going crazy,” said Krasniqi, who became a U.S. citizen two years ago. “I haven’t slept since Friday. I’ve been partying every single night.”
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Krasniqi’s family was among 100 Kosovars who were settled in Syracuse by refugee programs run by Catholic Charities and the Center for New Americans in 1999.
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Some of the Kosovars returned home after living here a few months. The Krasniqi family is among 50 or so ethnic Albanians who stayed behind, according to officials in the Syracuse school district’s Refugee Family Program.
I’ve wondered about the level of so-called “persecution” a refugee has experienced when they return home to their country after being resettled here. Taxpayers funded their trip, gave them food stamps, a subsidized apartment and an employment case worker and yet according to this article a bunch just went home.
Fadil [Faruk’s father a truck driver] bought two apartments, which he rents and uses when his family visits.
Maybe in light of their joy for their new Muslim country and the fact that they have zipped back and forth and purchased apartments they should just go home.
We’ve written about Albanian refugees on several previous occasions here.