[Not much is written these days, in the mainstream media, at least, about Lord Paddy Ashdown, the viceroy of Bosnia. His light operatic reign over this Balkan outpost of Western Imperialism, with all its anti-popular fiats invalidating democratic elections, and all its extorted confessions to Western marketed war crimes, would be comic if it weren't so unspeakably barbaric.
BiH, which was sold back in the mid-90s as the last hope against a new '(Muslim) Holocaust' in Europe, against a 'neo-Stalinist genocide' of yet another tiny, defenseless ethnic or national or religious minority by the reincarnated Nazi legions of an expansionist Serbia (where, in fact, during the Bosnian war {1992-95} and before the NATO terror bombing of 1999, there were more Muslims pursuing their happiness than in BiH); as well as the besieged European 'homeland' of an Islamic multi-culturalism (an oxymoron, as BiH's late and unmourned, self-appointed leader, Alija Izedbegovic, demonstrated in a pre-Khomenei jihadist tract, writing that an Islamic state, the sole salvation for Muslims, cannot coexist with any other, esp a secular, culture or social order.),--post-Dayton Bosnia has become, primarily through the un-good offices of Lord A, an authoritarian Principality of the Western Raj--like Monaco without the beautiful sea view, the 'beautiful people', and where all the beautiful cars are hot and the Afghan/Albanian heroin and EEuropean sex-toys are a whole lot cheaper.
And with its hosting of the gargantuan and grotesque military presence of the world's leading terrorist organizations, NATO and its litter of suckling multinational PMC {Private Military Contractors}, the colonial outpost ruled by Sir Paddy has become a principal way-station in the supply routes that bring arms and air support to the expeditionary and occupation forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, and illegal drugs and various other humanoid party favors to Europe and the West.
Bosnia under the still-born Dayton Accords has become very much like Rwanda under the US/UK/Israeli supported dictatorship of the murderous Paul Kagame, with his genocidal prospecting for coltan and other minerals in Eastern Congo leaving literally millions of dead in his ‘made-in-USA’ sluice box. So, as little is written about the monster Kagame (in English, at any rate), as is written about the delusional petty tyrant Ashdown.
Hence, this piece by my great, good friend, fox-hole buddy in the war to 'Free Slobo' and save Balkan history, and fellow 'serBo-positif', Ian Johnson (chair of the CDSM, Britain), is most welcome, indeed. Like throwing open a great window in some Whitehall manse, Ian's article clears out much of the foul flatulence that has consistently seeped from the diseased beasts that the US and Israel have rendered the Bushian lap dog Blair and all mainstream British geopolitics.
Thanks again, Ian. Good on ya! --mc]
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ASHDOWN, MI6 & THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL.
Lord ‘Paddy’ Ashdown was born in New Delhi in 1941 and came to Britain when his family returned in 1945. He undertook Special Forces Training before becoming a commander in the Special Boat Service (SBS), (part of the UK Special Forces with the SAS), which saw him working in the Far East and Belfast.
He joined the Foreign Office in 1972 and later stood as a Liberal Party candidate in 1979 before eventually evolving into the leader of the Liberal Democrats in 1988.
A year later he was appointed to the Privy Council. This is an unelected body of establishment figures who are tasked with ruling the country in times of ‘crisis’ when Parliament is dissolved. It is in fact a dictatorship in waiting.
Ashdown was knighted in 2000 and made a peer of the realm in 2001 in recognition of his ‘services’ to Britain’s ruling elite.
With a family history steeped in experience of colonial rule, primarily in India, it is little wonder that Lord Ashdown took to his post of Office of the High Representative (OHR), of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) with relish. A man with such a history would never see the irony of a non-elected person, such as himself, dismissing democratically elected members of parliament as happened in his purges on the Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) in B&H last year. RS president Dragan Cavic called the purges "an absolutely needless exercise in brutality, interventionism, imperialism and supremacy."
Nor is it surprising that such dictatorial behaviour would be endorsed by the United States. A US State Department press release dated 30th June 2004 commented;
"The United States strongly supports High Representative Paddy Ashdown’s actions June 30 against officials in the Republika Srpska and the Serbian Democratic Party. As NATO made clear in its June 28 Istanbul summit communiqué, obstructionist elements (meaning the democratically elected officials IJ) in the Republika Srpska bear primary responsibility for failure to cooperate fully with the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), a fundamental requirement for Bosnia and Herzegovina to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace".
The words ‘Nato’ and ‘peace’ in the same sentence is another irony that Lord Ashdown would fail to see. Moreover the US State Department’s emphasis on co-operation with the ICTY is an indication of the true aims and intentions of the OHR.
THE OHR
The OHR receives the bulk of its funding from three main sources; the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom. As well as providing funding through its membership of the European Union the UK contributes a further twenty- percent of the cost, revealing the fact that Britain is heavily involved with the operation of the OHR and in Ashdown they have appointed a man with all the necessary anti-democratic credentials.
When Ashdown took up his duties as High Representative in May 2002 he immediately ‘streamlined’ the co-ordinating structures and established a Board of Principals, which included himself, various European Union bodies, the World Bank and the IMF. The make up of this body clearly illustrates the direction the foreign powers demanded B&H take, regardless of the wishes of its people.
At a time when industrial production in Bosnia has fallen by 40%, unemployment is at record levels, and state industries are sold off for a fraction of their true value, it is informative indeed to realise that against this background there is one overriding topic that dominates the meetings of Ashdown’s ‘Peace Implementation Council Steering Body’.
Here is Ashdown speaking in 2004:
"In one crucial respect, however, progress has been completely unsatisfactory. This is the failure of Republika Srpska (RS) to co-operate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This failure has become a fundamental obstacle to BiH’s continuing progress towards Euro-Atlantic structures."
And here are extracts from the minutes of his Steering Body’s subsequent meetings.
"The Steering Board reminded the BiH authorities that inadequate cooperation with the ICTY is now the major obstacle standing in the way of BiH’s progress towards the European Union and Nato. There must be a process of full ICTY cooperation leading to the transfer of indictees at large, including Karadzic and Mladic. Failure to complete the process would have, among other consequences, the effect of blocking BiH’s future in Euro-Atlantic institutions." (February 2005).
"The Steering Board welcomed the transfer by the RS authorities of seven ICTY indictees. What has occurred in recent weeks is the start of a process that must be completed if BiH is to move decisively along the road to Euro-Atlantic integration. The Steering Board therefore calls on the authorities – especially the RS authorities – energetically to continue this process until all remaining indictees, including Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, are transferred to The Hague." (April 2005).
"The Steering Board stressed the determination of the International Community that the perpetrators of war crimes will face justice. It is, and will remain, a firm condition for BiH’s integration in Euro-Atlantic structures. The Steering Board made clear that Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic must be apprehended." (June 2005).
The obsession with integrating B&H into ‘Euro-Atlantic institutions’ seems to overlook the fact that until the Western powers destroyed it, B&H was indeed integrated into a larger federation, it was called Yugoslavia!
Moreover the fetish for sending the leaders who defied Nato to the ICTY would seem to confirm that the Western intention is to destroy completely a leaderless Republika Srpska.
The Office of the High Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina was created ostensiously to oversee the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 which were meant to ‘stabilise’ that part of the former Yugoslavia by co-ordinating the implementation of the civilian aspects of the peace agreement. Yet the influential Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily – (Volume XXII, No. 168 - Wednesday, October 20, 2004) commented:
"Ashdown has seen it as a mission not to implement the 1995 Dayton Accords — for which his post was created by the international community — but rather to transform Bosnia & Herzegovina into a unitary state, ending the Dayton-stipulated format of two substates within a federation. Essentially, Ashdown, according to the sources, intends to see Republika Srpska "disappear".
Significantly, Republica Srpska is the only part of Bosnia-Herzegovina where the rule of law applies, and where there is productivity, ethnic and religious tolerance."
Ashdown is renowned for his anti-Serb bias as the following illustration demonstrates:
"Sources within the "Office of the High Representative" — the internationally-imposed leadership of Bosnia-Herzegovina — in Sarajevo told GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs that they expected "High Representative" Paddy Ashdown to use the Serbian historic day of June 28, 2004, which commemorates the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, as a symbolic day to impose "more punishment" on the Bosnian Serb community.
The principal instrument which Ashdown has used to constrain the Bosnian Serbs has been his Srebrenica Commission, which has been used to override all international assessments of the 1995 (and earlier) fighting in and around the town of Srebrenica.
On April 20, 2004, Ashdown summarily dismissed the Republika Srpska official, Dejan Miletic, who had been in charge of investigating war crimes, and then ordered the Bosnian Serb leadership to make a statement — totally dictated by Ashdown’s Office of the High Representative — accepting the Ashdown and Islamist version of what happened in the Srebrenica fighting, despite the fact that Ashdown’s repeated statements consistently flew in the face of independent forensic investigation of the affair. Indeed, as GIS has noted in the past, Ashdown had refused even to speak with the forensic scientists who had, independently, developed the intelligence of what really happened in Srebrenica.
One Western European member of the OHR staff said: "Ashdown isn’t going to let the facts get in the way of his story. It’s all about him, not about building the stable, multi-confessional state which the Dayton Accords specified." (‘Ashdown Expected to Escalate Attacks on Bosnian Serbs’ Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, June 28 2004 )
ASHDOWN TESTIFIES AT THE ICTY.
In March 2002 Paddy Ashdown appeared as an eager prosecution witness in the ‘trial’ against Slobodan Milosevic. At the ICTY Ashdown spoke of his four day visit to Kosovo in 1998 and claimed, as a neutral observer, to have been a personal witness to atrocities allegedly carried out by the Yugoslav Army, which he claimed, he witnessed from his vantage point above the village of Gegaj in Albania overlooking Kosovo.
Furthermore, Ashdown testified about his visit to Studencani where he met villagers who talked to him and verified Ashdown’s further claims regarding the actions of the Serbian police in that village.
As we shall see below, any truly legitimate court of law would have thrown Ashdown in prison on charges of perjury for such misleading testimony.
First, Ashdown omitted to mention that his frequent, expenses paid, trips to the Balkans were courtesy of George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the very same institute that provides funding and staff for the ICTY itself. The Open Society is a pro-free market institute operating throughout Eastern Europe with the intention of opening up new markets for western exploitation and privatisation.
Second, Ashdown’s visit to Studencani was not to meet the villagers but to meet the terrorist organisation, the KLA. Milosevic subsequently provided the ICTY with a video of Ashdown’s meeting in which Ashdown is heard assuring the KLA that he will ‘do his best’ to get assistance for them. This from a supposedly neutral observer?
(Interestingly, a year before Ashdown’s testimony Michael Levine, former U.S. counter-narcotic agent and one of its most decorated officers, stated the following:
"(T)he KLA, ..is tied in with every known Middle and Far Eastern drug cartel. Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to the KLA, and right to Albanian gangs in this country. My contacts within the DEA are, quite frankly, terrified, but there's not much they can say without risking their job. The Albanian mob is a scary operation. In fact, the Mafia relied on Albanian hit-men to carry out a lot of their contracts.... And now, according to my sources in drug enforcement, they are politically protected."
This then is the nature of the organisation that Ashdown pledged to ‘assist’.)
Third. After it was proved in court that Ashdown could not possibly have seen anything from the position he had previously claimed, above the Albanian village of Gegaj, he promptly supplied the court with grid co-ordinates different from his original testimony, and these new co-ordinates put him inside Kosovo and not in Albania which contradicted his March 2002 testimony. Morever, on the map the prosecution supplied to try and verify Ashdown’s testimony the village of Gegaj had been moved!
When challenged on this point the prosecution reluctantly admitted it may be a faulty map!
Is it any surprise then that this ‘trial of the century’ receives such little coverage in the western media, so shameful has it all become. And what does Ashdown’s discredited testimony say about the kind of character he really is?
Writer Paul Mitchell wrote, " Ashdown speaks at The Hague as an advocate of imperialist militarism in the Balkans and elsewhere. In 2000 he published an article in the Independent newspaper calling for a European rapid-reaction force. Ashdown argued: ‘ Yet today Europe undoubtedly is a power, even a superpower. It has the world’s second most powerful currency and arguably the world’s biggest single market. And so it has an economic space to protect and interests to pursue.’ These statements show Ashdown is well aware that self-interest and spheres of influence are the raison d’être of Western policy makers and that claims to a humanitarian impulse for Britain, the US and Europe in their conflict with Milosevic is rank nonsense." (wsws.org)
MI6
Given the above it came as no surprise when an article in the Birmingham Post in September this year, revealed that Ashdown had worked for M16, part of the British Intelligence Service.
Moreover it was revealing to study the recently published list of M16 agents, which appeared on the cryptome website, who were active in the Balkans during the 1990s and in some instances then moved on to work in The Hague. This would obviously suggest that there is a link between M16 and the ICTY, an association that many people have long suspected, and a link, it appears, that covers all levels of ICTY employees.
In his book ‘Web of Deceit’ author Mark Curtis exposed the unsavoury history that MI6 have in regard to the ‘assassination’ of Slobodan Milosevic. Assassination options put forward by MI6 included; an SAS bomb or sniper ambush, a road crash using strobe lighting, and in 1999, the use of Nato aircraft to target him during the bombing campaign. (Interestingly Curtis also exposes the links between MI6 and ‘Osama bin Laden’s supporters’).
As to the question of what control, if any, do British intelligence have over the ICTY, it is worthwhile to consider the following: The ICTY is supposedly an international court that was established by the United Nations Security Council, however since this body has no legal authority to establish such a court it is in fact illegal. Moreover there are 191 Member States represented at the United Nations, yet the key personnel at the ICTY are exclusively British. The leading judge is British, the lead prosecution is British, the defence counsel imposed on Mr Milosevic against his will is British and the bulk of the 1300 staff working at the ‘tribunal’ are either British or American. Furthermore, when judge Richard May passed away, unlamented, he was replaced by yet another British judge, Bonomy, who we presume is trying desperately to avoid the same fate as his predecessor. Are we to assume therefore that there is no competent judiciary in the remaining 190 countries, or is it more the case of the necessity for political control of this ‘tribunal’?
Apart from the fact that Britain was one of the main aggressor nations against Yugoslavia and therefore has a vested interest in the outcome of the ‘trial’, the overwhelming exclusion of other nationalities from these positions can do nothing but confirm the allegations that this is a tightly controlled and illegitimate tribunal, and a politically motivated court that cannot risk the presence of even one objective voice.
When he appeared at The Hague in March 2002, Ashdown made the claim that the British Army would never engage in actions which targeted the civilian population, yet if we examine the kind of activities engaged in by the UKs Special Forces, the SAS and the SBS of which Ashdown was a commander, we come across a world of assassinations, provocation, double agents, murder and bombings. (See for instance globalresearch.ca and the investigative articles by Michael Keefer and the book ‘Web of Deceit’ by Mark Curtis).
Countering Ashdown’s assertion Mr Milosevic, in an attempt to expose Ashdown, highlighted the ‘extraordinary level of activity’ that Ashdown, a leader of a small opposition party in Britain, was engaged in. He further tried to raise the question about the events in Northern Ireland and particularly Bloody Sunday but was cut off by the judges and told he could not follow that line of questioning because it was ‘too political’.
BOSNIA
Bosnia is an ideal place for someone of Ashdown’s background as the Independent newspaper explained;
"In his current role Lord Ashdown’s power is absolute. He can pick up one of the telephones on his desk and sack any official in the country. He can freeze the bank accounts of anyone he deems objectionable. He can overturn the decisions of courts."
He can also change the constitution yet he is not even accountable to the people he governs.
In John Laughland’s May 2005 article ‘Bosnia Today’ he quotes lawyer Josip Muselimovic:
"Fundamental human rights and freedoms have been completely violated in Bosnia – by the High Representative. In no legal system in the world can there be power without legal checks. Yet there are no legal checks on the High Representative "
Yet Ashdown expresses a complete indifference to the reality of Bosnia today. In an interview with the International Herald Tribune in November 2005 he ludicrously commented:
"I don't know a country in the entire world that has made faster progress from war, let alone such a terrible war, to peace," Ashdown said. With over a million refugees having returned to their homes, and most towns substantially rebuilt, he added, Bosnia has made a speedier recovery than any country in Europe after World War II.
This is spin worthy of Tony Blair and his entourage. The fact is, as pointed out in ‘Bosnia Today’;
"Unlike Germany which achieved full effective sovereignty four years after the end of World War Two, many think that little Bosnia is still not fit for self-government ten years after the end of its civil war."
Ashdown’s term in office is scheduled to end shortly and his much vaunted ‘exit strategy’ is dealt with most effectively by Laughland in his article.
" Ashdown’s so-called ‘exit strategy’ is in fact simply an entry strategy – into the European Union. The dictatorial powers of the High Representative will be abolished only when Bosnia has signed an Association Agreement with Brussels. Power will simply be transferred from one undemocratic structure to another, and self-government will be returned to Bosnia only when it is no longer self-governing. When I put it to Lord Ashdown that the citizens of Bosnia had never formally expressed their desire to join the EU, he replied, ‘Referenda are very dangerous in this country – that is how the war started.’"
Ashdown’s legacy of his time in B&H can be summed up by quoting the following from Train of Abuses by Nebojsa Malic:
"Ashdown has always exhibited a petty tyrannical streak; the near-absolute power he enjoys now could be producing delusions of grandeur rivalling only those of the current Emperor. That he is driving Bosnia toward a new conflict, and destroying what little the Dayton peace accomplished, doesn't seem to bother him at all. But more disturbingly, it doesn't seem to concern his Imperial patrons, either."
Ian Johnson
November 2005.
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