The Balkans have been the background of wars almost as long as history is written. Perhaps because of the mountainous terrain, perhaps because of its location on the route from Asia to Europe, perhaps because of the fierceness of its inhabitants, perhaps because of all these, but wars between the different peoples, Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Montenegrins, and some more, have been plenty, and cruel on all sides. And no group would leave unused a good opportunity to get back at one of the others, and there is always a previous war to refer to.
A recent good opportunity for the Albanians was the death of the Yugoslav leader Tito, and his succession by the Serbian nationalist Milosevic. In the Serbian region of Kosovo, the Albanians had come into the majority though being Serbian for hundreds of years, because its mountainous and economically poor background made it not very popular for Serbs, and Albanians have a much higher birth rate.
The Albanians wanted Kosovo, and gained some sympathy for this goal because the opposition was Serbian, and the Serbs are a Slavonic people, that are not very popular in the Western world. But the West was reluctant to support an Albanian uprising, because of the precedent it would set for other peoples that were in the minority, but had localized majorities, as is the case all over the world. It would reek of ethnically determined boundaries, which is bad news for many a present state.
So when Albanians leaders contacted the United States, they were told by people high in the government (secretary of state Madeline Albright has been mentioned in this context) that it was only possible to get support of there would be a sufficient number of victims, and the specific number of three thousand was apparently mentioned. Supported by this knowledge, the Albanians undertook attacks on targets that they were sure would lead to tough reactions: hit and run attacks on Serbian police and paramilitary troops near Albanians villages. The counteractions of the Serbs and the Albanian victims, many of them civilian, were highlighted in the Western media.
This highlighting was greatly helped by the tales of the Albanian victims. The stories were quit harrowing, much more than the concrete evidence in many a case. In the case of one of the most important incidents it later turned out that considerable manipulation by the Albanians and American officials of the United Nations had taken place.
The role of media manipulation by the Albanian civilians became apparent after the war on Serbia had been started. Albanians started to flea Kosovo, partly because they feared the Serbs, partly because they were told it would help their case: the more fleeing Albanians, the worse one would think of the Serbs. One of the most highlighted happenings in this period was the bombing by airplanes of a convoy of Albanians, using tractors and similar farm equipment. Western reporters soon located the victims, who told harrowing stories in television interviews, swore that it were Serbian planes, described their colour as green, and told they had seen the Serbian markings.
A day or two later the truth emerged. The convoy had been inadvertently hit by American F-16’s, flying at 5000 feet, making it difficult for the pilot to distinguish between military and civilian vehicles. At this height, an F-16 is hardly more then a spot in the sky, and noticing a colour would be a marvel of observation. Besides that, the colour of the F-16’s wasn’t green. Detecting any kind of marking would be completely impossible, and it would certainly not have been Serbian. So the Albanians were lying through their teeth, with only one sensible reason: to slander the Serbs. There is absolutely no reason to suppose this reason will not have played an important role in most or all of the other Albanian stories, stories that could not be as easily checked as the convoy story could.
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