Rwanda and Yugoslavia: Nations Killed and Re-victimized in the International Kangaroo Courts - Link Roundup

Left to right: Juvénal Habyarimana (Republic of Rwanda) and Slobodan Milošević (Yugoslavia and Serbia); photos taken some time during the 1980's. 

“What would happen if capitalism succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries. The working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.” [1] 
—J.V. Stalin, 1926 

Such are the prophetic words of Joseph Stalin; and indeed, that is what happened throughout much of the 1990's after the demise of the Soviet Union: a series of U.S. imperial aggressions which went unchecked, with little to no challenge, and with increasing brute force. The CIA-backed Mujahideen succeeded in overthrowing the progressive, Soviet-aligned People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan in 1992, which not only caused Afghanistan's living standards to drop rapidly and made the country a hotbed for warlords and terrorists, but also made it extremely vulnerable to direct U.S. military intervention -- which eventually did happen in 2001. We also had one of the most brutal massacres happen in Iraq along Highway 80 a.k.a. the "Highway of Death" during the Gulf War, which was then followed by sanctions which led to the deaths of around 500 000 Iraqi children within the decade; this, too, was a primer for the eventual 2003 U.S.-UK-led invasion. Rwanda and Yugoslavia were also included in the United States' list of victims during its post-Cold War rampage in the 1990's (and beyond).

In both cases, we saw the use of terrorists and paramilitaries as CIA-backed proxy forces as part of U.S.-led regime change projects, as well as demonizations campaigns against the constructed "other", namely: the Hutu majority in Rwanda, and the Serbs in [former] Yugoslavia. One of the most egregious parts of these demonization campaigns -- which were tantamount to slander and libel -- was the claim that the Hutus were "committing genocide" against the Tutsis in Rwanda, and that the Serbs were doing the same to ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia. It is from these wars that we saw the "humanitarian" veneer of imperialism known as the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) doctrine taking root. Hypocritical "humanitarian" pretexts aside, it should go without saying that the 'elephant in the room' in both wars is U.S. imperialism's scramble for more global spheres of influence and for total global domination. And to say that the post-Cold War years have been very unkind to Hutus and Serbs would be an understatement -- because in addition to being at the centre of vicious Western media propaganda campaigns and to having mass murders committed against them, their respective government representatives who were antagonized by NATO would also be humiliated (and unfairly prosecuted) in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Hague Tribunals. Also in both cases, the Western left were guilty of joining the chorus of voices calling for war, just as they had done when they cheered on the Mujahideen against Afghanistan, and when they cheered on the U.S.-backed terrorist forces against Libya and Syria in more recent years.

Robin Philpot has written extensively about Rwanda and the war crimes of the U.S.-backed, Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in his book, Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction. And Michael Parenti wrote about the destruction and dismantling of Yugoslavia in his book, To Kill a Nation: the Attack on Yugoslavia. Now, for those who are looking for some "quick" background reading, here is a list of online resources:

Rwanda
Yugoslavia

Christopher Black -- defense lawyer for Milosevic, and several Rwandan government officials targeted by the RPF -- talks briefly about Yugoslavia and Rwanda as they relate to the wider discussion around International Law and the ICC in these videos:

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NOTES:

1. Joseph V. Stalin, "The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I.," in J.V. Stalin Archive: Collected Works, Vol. 9, December 1926 - July, 1927. Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1926/11/22.htm?fbclid=IwAR0oOyUMEAY4vaZ1jCQWC0tVQOjlatudVZWp0IWva9Gz0KVpRQoKRw0jreU#1

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