Socialist Action /August 2000
Eyewitness Report from Kosovo
By GERRY FOLEY
Kosovo today has a dreamlike quality. It is not
yet a nightmare, because the Kosovars have escaped the terror and destruction
inflicted on them by the degenerate Stalinist regime of the Serbian strongman
Slobodan Milosevic. They are relaxed and cautiously hopeful.
But the scene has an irrationality and unreality
reminiscent of dreaming, and a feeling that any minute the illusion will
be shattered.
The largely rural, small-scale economy has rebounded
with an impressive speed. Homes and villages that were mostly destroyed
by the Serbian regime's attempt to destroy the Albanian people have been
rebuilt.
With a modest injection of money from international
aid agencies and Albanians living abroad, the simple farming economy can
revive quickly. But its productivity was and remains low, and there is
no credit system or state subsidies to help the small farmers. Thus, the
rural economy, like the country in general, remains in limbo.
Some 80 percent of the population is unemployed.
Most of the economic activity is petty trading. A year after the war, the
basic infrastructure for a modern society remains in tatters, with a chronic
water shortage and frequent blackouts. The roads are very poor, almost impassable
in places, and they are choked with UN and KFOR traffic, mostly military.
Kosovo has no banking system. The currency is the
German Deutschmark. There is one small German bank that provides only minimal
services. Big money is handled by UNMIK (UN Mission to Kosovo).
For example, the union at the Trepca mines got
about $700,000 as a solidarity contribution from Italian unions to drain
the water from the mine. The union leaders in Mitrovica told me that they
had only been able to spend about 27 percent of the money. UNMIK is administering
the fund.
I asked them why they have handed it over to the
UN agency. They told me that there is no bank they can use and they could
not stash the money under somebody's mattress.
The nonferrous metals mines in the Trepca complex
in Mitrovica were the main mining enterprises in Kosovo before the war.
There are three mines in the area. Two are in the Serbian enclave, from
which almost all the Albanians have been driven. Only these two mines are
producing.
The Stary Trg mine in the predominantly Albanian
area remains flooded. With the pumps available the miners are only able
to drain out about 10 percent more water per month than flows in.
The independent miners union, the union that split
from the Serbian state federation of unions when Milosevic abolished Kosovar
autonomy in 1989, today has about 3000 members, of whom only a few hundred
are working, nearly all in maintenance. The union has no paid staff. Although
it played a major political role in leading the resistance to Milosevic
in the 1990s, it is now severely weakened and abjures taking any political
positions whatsoever, even for Kosovar independence.
On the other hand, the metalworkers union, with
about 10,000 members, 25 percent of whom are working, takes a strong position
for an independent Kosovo.
At the moment, however, social questions remain
largely in abeyance since the Kosovars are not being allowed by UNMIK to
decide anything or plan anything, and the imperialist administrators are
keeping their plans close to their chests.
The metalworkers union president explained to me
that most of his members were out of work because KFOR was occupying their
factories. I asked him if that was because the KFOR wanted to make sure
the factories were privatized. His answer was that the KFOR told him that
they needed these factories to house their troops. Obviously displeased,
he added that he had no way of determining the truth of the matter.
After going through the trauma of Serbian ethnic
cleansing, the prevailing feeling toward KFOR among the Albanian population
is admiration and great respect-particularly for Americans, who are considered
to be more favorable to Albanian national aspirations than the West Europeans
troops.
All over Kosovo, the Albanian flag flies alongside
the American one, even though the KFOR troops systematically try to take
down Albanian flags, since Security Council Resolution 1244, under which
UNMIK operates, recognizes Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
As an American, I was continually being offered
gifts of fruit and candy from small merchants and accorded very friendly
treatment by every Albanian I met. The stories spread by the Belgrade regime
and its apologists that the Kosovars fled U.S. bombing rather than Milosevic's
ethnic cleansing are simply not tenable.
Tragically, and in the context of the Milosevic
terror, the U.S. forces have been welcomed as liberators and benefactors.
This is a deadly illusion and it will eventually be burst. But it is not
possible to look objectively at the situation in Kosovo without recognizing
that it exists and why it exists.
The forces that led the Kosovar struggle, the conscious
political elements, are aware that the United States and its imperialist
partners have interests opposed to theirs and will have to be challenged
in some form in the future. But they still have to take account of the gratitude
the masses feel to NATO. So, I found that even the most radical critics
were generally cautious in what they said about UNMIK.
In fact, a veiled struggle between UNMIK and the
former KLA has been going on ever since the start of the NATO occupation,
at times involving very sharp denunciations by ex-KLA forces. The liberation
fighters set up governing bodies of their own that were not recognized
by UNMIK. But they seem now to have faded as a result of increasing UNMIK
pressure and lack of resources.
The leadership of the most radical nationalist
force, the LKCK, National Liberation Movement of Kosovo, told me that they
hoped that local elections scheduled for this fall would force UNMIK to
recognize Kosovar government bodies starting at the local level.
The LKCK is allied with the Kosovar People's Movement
and some smaller parties in the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, which
will run in the fall local elections.
The People's Movement newspaper, Zeri i Kosoves,
describes the elections as a contest between two blocs, one subordinate
to UNMIK, the other independent. It describes the Alliance as the independence
forces. The opposing bloc, favoring subordination to UNMIK, it says is made
of the Democratic Party of Hashim Thaci, the KLA leader who signed the Rambouillet
Treaty, and the conciliationist party of Ibrahim Rugova, long the favorite
of the Western imperialists.
When Thaci accepted the imperialist-dictated Rambouillet
Treaty he led a split from the People's Movement to form his own Democratic
Party. The LKCK leaders told me that Thaci had been tested three times,
including once at Rambouillet, and that he had failed the test every time.
They obviously expected him eventually to capitulate entirely.
But other political forces I talked to thought
that it is impossible that Thaci could block with Rugova, because he had
led a movement for armed struggle fiercely opposing Rugova's pacifism. Clearly
Thaci is in motion toward total capitulation but under pressure he may take
contradictory positions.
Among all the Kosovar political activists I talked
to, even the moderates of the Human Rights League, there was an obvious
underlying resentment of UNMIK. They perceive the UNMIK administration as
a horde of arrogant incompetents unable to respond to the country's problems
and preventing the Kosovars themselves from addressing them.
This perception seems bound to grow and spread
throughout the population as the country remains in suspended animation.
The impasse is total; the imperialists will not recognize Kosovar independence.
But only the Kosovars can run the country, and none of them dare say they
will accept the Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo included in Security Council
Resolution 1244.
There is a wing of the former KLA that is collapsing
under imperialist pressure. But among the population the aspiration for
independence is every bit as strong as the influence of NATO, to which it
is fundamentally opposed.
Moreover, this aspiration is more deeply rooted
in the experience of the Kosovar people and based on reality and not illusion.
It should prove more powerful in a relatively short time, if the international
situation of the Kosovar people is not too unfavorable.
However, there is no perspective for the Kosovars
achieving their national independence without the revival of an international
socialist movement that can offer real prospects for a collaborative international
economy and political order.
The political struggle in Kosovo can only be a
small part of this process. But it has been and probably will continue to
be an important test in particular for a new socialist movement in Eastern
Europe, where the old Stalinist parties, like Milosevic's Socialist Party,
are trying to hold onto power through fanning big nation chauvinism against
oppressed peoples.
Socialist Action /August 2000 |