Socialist Action /April 1999
Under Cover of U.S./NATO Intervention, Serbs Intensify Attack on Kosovo
By GERRY FOLEY
In pursuance of its ambition to become the world's cop, Washington and
its NATO allies have initiated armed action against the rump Yugoslavia.
Reports indicate that bombs falling upon residential and industrial neighborhoods
have caused significant civilian casualties.
The Clinton administration claimed that its attack was undertaken in
order to halt Serb "ethnic cleansing" operations against the Albanian
people of Kosovo.
But following the first waves of air strikes, the Western press had to
report that there was no letup in the Yugoslav army's terrorism. The killing
of Kosovars has apparently escalated.
Thousands of Kosovars are streaming toward the borders. Many others are
virtually imprisoned in their homes, terrorized, but with no way out.
The few foreign observers left in the Kosovar capital of Pristina point
out that the Albanians are terrified that they will be the victims of all-out
terror at the hands of the Serb armed forces and paramilitary gangs now
that Yugoslav President Milosevic is using the excuse of the air attacks
to expel the foreign press and humanitarian workers.
The Kosovar Albanian newspapers have been shut down and their offices
and printing plants attacked. According to Astrit Dakli in the March 26
issue of the Italian left daily Il Manifesto, Kosovar Albanian journalists
are being killed.
The only force able to offer any protection to the Kosovar people remains
the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which the Western powers have consistently
said they were determined not to aid in any way. They have done everything
they were politically able to do to block its growth.
In fact, the Rambouillet peace treaty, which the U.S.-NATO is trying
to force the Yugoslav-Serbian government to sign, in fact calls for the
disarming and disbanding of the KLA. Under this agreement a NATO occupation
force would guarantee Serbian sovereignty over the Kosovar Albanian people.
The KLA leadership had to be bullied and blackmailed into signing the
Rambouillet treaty. The basic tactic of the Western powers was to say that
unless the Kosovar Albanian leadership accepted the deal, there was nothing
they could do to protect the Kosovar people against the Serbian genocide,
and in that event they would be responsible for the slaughter of their own
people.
Obviously, that put even the most militant leaders of the KLA in an impossible
position. They could not explain to a people under the gun of the Yugoslav
army and the Serbian fascist-like paramilitary gangs why they had to reject
the political demands of great powers that apparently had the military capacity
to stay the hands of the Serbian mass murderers without delay.
It is unclear how the KLA will respond to the pressures of the present
situation. The Albanian guerrillas may believe they are able to benefit
militarily to some extent from the NATO attacks, despite the intentions
of the big powers. In fact, the KLA may have calculated that it could sign
the Rambouillet treaty without consequences, since the Serbians would not
accept it, and then they could gain from NATO air strikes.
But those would be flawed assumptions at best. The war emergency created
by the NATO attacks have allowed Milosevic to rally a large segment of the
Serbian people behind his regime, while eliminating all independent voices.
In any case, the West will also try to use all the hopes these attacks
arouse in the Albanian people to put more pressure on the KLA, to blunt
its effectiveness, and ultimately to destroy it as a representative of the
aspirations of the oppressed Kosovar people.
The Kosovar Albanian moderates and Serbian liberals claim that the political
leadership of the KLA is "Marxist-Leninist." It is not clear what
that means. But there is obviously a radical element.
The journal Zeri i Kosoves, published in Switzerland, claims to
be an organ of the KLA and of the Kosovo People's Movement. In its March
11 on-line edition, it carried a statement from the Kosovo People's Movement
rejecting the Rambouillet treaty and expressing distrust of the West.
The Western media have more and more been pointing out the risky nature
of the NATO intervention and the limited effectiveness of bombing.
U.S. polls show that a majority of the people of the United States think
that Kosovo is not worth one American life. The U.S. Congress itself, and
therefore, the ruling class, is deeply divided over the intervention.
Thus, it seems unlikely that the imperialists really wanted to resort
to such a measure. They were offering Milosevic a relatively painless, not
to say inexpensive, solution to his problem of subduing the Kosovars.
The fact that Serbia's Russian allies were willing to participate in
the "peacekeeping" force in Kosovo is an indication of the fact
that the treaty was designed to protect Serbia's interests.
However, the ideological bases of Milosevic's rule made it impossible
for him to accept this solution. And the interest of the West then came
to be to prove that they had the right and the capability to intervene in
the East European countries wracked by the crisis of Stalinism.
Their objective in this regard is essentially political. The Balkans
no longer have much strategic importance for the West, and they have a very
limited economic interest.
Indeed, according to the March 26 issue of the Greek daily Elevtherotypia,
the Greek business community is weeping salt tears at the intervention,
because the United States-which had encouraged them to invest in the former
Yugoslavia-is now happily blowing up their capital.
Under the subhead, "They are also blowing up our [Greek-owned] telephone
communications network," the Athens daily lamented: "The privatization
of the Serbian telephone company and the sale of 49 percent of the stock
to the Greek OTE and the Italian STET has been characterized by the international
media as the first decisive step of the new Yugoslavia toward economic reform
and the adoption of a market economy."
The Western intervention in Yugoslavia has a far bigger target than Milosevic.
The imperialist great powers have historic stakes in the process of capitalist
restoration in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. They are inevitably
going to try to intervene militarily in this process. They have been getting
into position to do this for a long time, using Milosevic's wars and atrocities
as a justification.
This is why the Russian government is so upset about the attacks on Serbia.
Yeltsin is nothing if not a practical politician. He is not a pan-Slavic
romantic, even if there is no lack of such types in the fever swamps of
decaying Stalinism.
Of course, the process of capitalist restoration, with its results of
economic breakdown and increasing dependence on the capitalist centers makes
it virtually impossible for Yeltsin to respond militarily to the Western
threats.
But Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are becoming more and
explosive.
For example, Romania, bordering on Serbia, is facing a general strike
at the end of April and the possibility, according to the Romanian papers,
of a general mass explosion. In the days before the NATO intervention, hundreds
of thousands of Romanian workers rallied, shouting, "Down with the
government."
If NATO tries to intervene in explosions like that to "restore order"
and defend its stake in capitalist restoration, real regional wars are possible.
That could happen also if the West in drawn deeper into intervening in
the former Yugoslavia.
Therefore, socialists and anti-war activists have strong reasons to build
a movement for opposition to NATO intervention in the Balkans, despite NATO's
humanitarian pretenses and the fact that some people threatened by the Serbian
regime have been bullied or fooled into supporting its war moves.
Socialist Action /April 1999 |