Socialist Action /July 2001
US Blacklists Ethnic Albanians
The U.S. has blacklisted a series of ethnic Albanian
nationalist organizations and leaders, the German international radio service,
Deutsche Welle, reported on June 28. The report was immediately picked up
by the Belgrade daily Politika as well as by the Macedonian daily
papers.
From the accounts, it seems that the so-called
Prevention of Terrorism Act was invoked, as the U.S. government had threatened
to do several times against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the
Kosovo conflict, in particular at the time of the Rambouillet negotiations
in bulldozing the KLA representative, Ibrahim Thaci, into accepting the
Rambouillet Treaty.
But according to Politika and and the Macedonian
daily Dnevnik, the Albanian nationalist organizations and individuals
were blacklisted explicitly because they were considered to be acting contrary
to U.S. policy, i.e, "obstructing implementation of the Dayton Treaty
[which concluded the Bosnian war] and UN Security Council Resolution 1244
[the basis for UN intervention in Kosovo, which insists that Kosovo is to
remain part of Serbia] ... and undermining the stability of the region."
The penalties imposed on the blacklisted individuals
corresponded to those included in the anti-terrorism act passed under the
Clinton administration; that is, they forbid U.S. citizens to provide financial
support for named organizations and they ban named members of these organizations
from entering the United States.
The Kosovo Albanian press service close to the
former KLA, Kosovapress, took up the reports in its June 29 dispatches.
But it seemed not to want to believe them, although it did not discount
them. Ethnic Albanian leaders quoted in the Macedonian press also did not
seem to want to believe the story, but they did not refute it either. Some
reactions indicated that they did believe it and were angry.
It is likely that the Albanian organizations that
think they have at least a tactical alliance with imperialism would want
to try to negotiate privately before they respond with the Western officials
who have been cultivating them. Nonetheless, the July 3 issue of Dnevnik
reported that the European Union and member governments were taking measures
following the lines of the U.S. decision.
In a June 29 dispatch, Kosovapress quoted Kastriot
Haxhirexha, a leader of the Albanian National Democratic Party in Macedonia,
as saying that a blacklist should include "the names of those persons
who have undertaken campaigns against the civilian population, in which
dozens of innocent Albanian civilians have been killed, including many women
and children, campaigns that have burned whole villages, that have physically
abused dozens of innocent Albanians."
According to the June 29 Politika, the U.S.
blacklist included the Albanian guerrillas in the Presevo Valley, the National
Liberation Army in Macedonia, the Political Council of Presevo, Bujanoc,
and Medvedje, an allegedly reconstituted KLA, several officers of the Kosovo
Defense Force (the legal force constituted by the UN occupation government
in Kosovo, which included many former KLA members), some leaders of the
Albanian parliamentary parties in Macedonia, the National Liberation Movement
of Kosovo [LKCK] and the Peoples Liberation Movement of Kosovo (LPCK).
The last two movements have a program of Pan-Albanian
unity and were the initiators of the KLA. The reported reference to a reconstituted
KLA seems to be the first in the media to refer to such a thing. But it
is possible that there has been an attempt to reform the KLA as an underground
organization in imperialist-occupied Kosovo.
Early in the formation of the Kosovo Defense Force,
many former members of the KLA resigned from it, saying that it did not
correspond to the aspirations that led them to take up arms in the name
of the national rights of their people. The imperialist occupation forces
have been continually finding arms caches that they claim belong to Albanian
nationalists.
The conflict between the imperialist plans for
the Balkans and the aspirations of the oppressed Albanian populations forcibly
incorporated into a number of states in the region is clearly becoming more
acute.
So far the imperialists have been able to maneuver
and pull the wool at least part way over the eyes of most of the Albanian
leaders. But they cannot conceal their real policy forever or fail to follow
its logic. Nor can the U.S. government long conceal the essential politically
repressive objective of its so-called anti-terrorism act.
Socialist Action /July 2001 |