How the legacy of the former U.S. Secretary of State is seen from the Balkans largely depends on whether one was there to trigger or receive the bloody disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
After becoming secretary of state, Albright quickly became the Clinton administration’s main hawk on Balkans. Her strong support for Western intervention in Kosovo was so evident that critics called it “Madeleine’s War.”
She supported the NATO’s 78-day bombardment on Serb-led Yugoslavia, which began exactly 23 years ago today. This stopped a brutal Serb crackdown on Kosovo Albanians. She was also the U.S Ambassador to the United Nations during President Bill Clinton’s first term. She urged for a tough international response to the almost 4-year-old Bosnian Serb bombardment of Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital.
Albright worked also to bring to justice all those responsible for war crimes in the Balkans. This included Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Serbia, and Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs.
Albright was also proclaimed a “Serb hater” in Serbia, and a hero for his actions in Kosovo and Bosnia.
According to the pro-government Vecernje Novosti newspaper, “She will be remembered as a ruthless women, one of loudest supporters of the bombing Yugoslavia’s independence from Kosovo”
Officials in Serbia remained silent about Albright’s passing, and did not offer condolences. A few dozen demonstrators from the right took part in a protest held in Belgrade on Thursday. This event is almost every year to mark the anniversary of NATO’s bombing. Some displayed banners reading: “Bye, Bye Madeleine.”
The reaction in Kosovo was the exact opposite.
While paying his respects before the bronze-colored monument to Albright, Albin Kurti, Kosovo Prime Minister, said, “It’s very difficult to find a perfect combination of politics diplomacy, history and history like in the unique figure Madam Secretary Madeleine Albright.”
Kurti stated to The Associated Press that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 to stop the Serbian genocide was a sign of Madeleine Albright. She will always be remembered and grateful to her.
Albright is a well-known American ambassador in Bosnia. He presented the U.N. Security Council in 1995 the first evidence of mass atrocities in Srebrenica during the final months of the brutal 1992-95 war.
After the massacre of their town by Bosnian Serb forces on July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims died in 10 days. To hide evidence, their bodies were dug into mass graves that had been made in a hurry. Later, the remains were removed with bulldozers and scattered around other burial grounds. More than a quarter century later, the remains of victims are still being identified.
Haris Silajdzic, former Bosnian Prime Minister, said that Albright, a Czechoslovakia-born Albright was a champion for justice because of her own experiences. Albright was born in Czechoslovakia and was a refugee from Nazi-, then Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe as a child. “She was aware that Bosnia has been subject to injustice, and she was seeking ways to rectify that.”
During the war, Sarajevo was under siege. She recalled former President John F. Kennedy’s speech in Berlin in 1963, and told a crowd of hundreds: “Jasam Sarajevka.” (“I am Sarajevan.”)
Albright’s legacy in her Czech Republic is celebrated, especially considering the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Alexandr Vondra, an ex-anti-communist dissident who is currently a Czech representative at the European Parliament, stated that “it’s a big loss.”
“Nobody in America did so much for us. He said, “Nato protects us from the arrogant expansionism Russian.”
Albright’s connections to the former Yugoslavia date back to her childhood.
Her birth in Prague on May 15, 1937 as Maria Jan Korbelova was quick after her parents moved to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia. Josef Korbel, her father, served as a press attache in the Czechoslovak Embassy.
At the end of 1938, he was recalled to Belgrade. The family returned to Yugoslavia in March 1939 shortly after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. They eventually settled in Britain.
Albright fondly remembered her time in Belgrade, and the speech she gave to the Serbs just two days after NATO’s intervention in Kosovo. This was 23 years ago.
She said, “As you see, I recall a little Serbian –albeit with a Czech accent — during my days in Belgrade when I was a child,” in the address. It is posted on the State Department’s website. “My father was a Czechoslovak diplomat there prior to the Second World War. My father fled to Yugoslavia in 1944 with his wife and child. We were welcomed into the world as friends in dire need.
Albright said, “Americans don’t hate Serbs.” She said, “Like me they remember that Fascism was an allies.” “Like you Americans, Americans desire peace with their neighbours and the rest of the world.”
Albright stated, “That’s why we couldn’t sit idly while security forces committed atrocities against ethnic Albanians of Kosovo.”
During the NATO bombing, Serbia’s state media did not relay the speech. In protest of her U.S-led intervention, one Belgrade Zoo python was named after her.
