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Slobodan Milosevic died during his trial at
the UN's International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in
The Hague. He was 64. He stood accused of war crimes in Bosnia- Herzegovina,
Croatia and Kosovo.*
Yugoslavia was a federation comprising six Federal Republics: Slovenia,
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. There
were two Autonomous Provinces, Vojvodina (majority Hungarian population)
and Kosovo (80 per cent Albanian) - both within the Serb Republic.
There was a history of both Serb and Croatian nationalism prior and
during the world war two. This declined in the post-war period under
Tito (a Croat) to the extent that many people thought of themselves as
Yugoslav.
Milosevic came to prominence in the 1980s through the Communist Party
ranks in Serbia and learned his politics in the Belgrade bureaucracy in
the latter years of Tito's rule.
He was pivotal in the breakup of Yugoslavia, and carries the principal
responsibility for the carnage involved. He orchestrated the resurgence
of Greater Serbian nationalism that led to slaughter on a mass scale.
The internal social and economic crisis that brought down Stalinism in
the Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, existed in full force in
Yugoslavia. This caused tensions between the Republics and forced
Yugoslavia into damaging arrangements with the IMF. Milosevic dealt
with the crisis like many of his top functionaries by turning to nationalism.
After Tito's death in 1980, Yugoslavia could only be held together by a
guarantee against the rise of Serbia into the dominant position it held
in the pre-war period.
This meant strengthening, rather than weakening, the relatively
progressive 1974 constitution - which had devolved power and autonomy
to the constituent Republics.
Multinational state
It defined Yugoslavia as a multinational state in which no single
nationality could claim a majority. This was the basis on which the
Federation coexisted.
This coexistence, however, was soon to come under pressure from Serb
nationalism. In the spring of 1981, Kosovar Albanian demonstrators in Pristina,
campaigning for Kosovo to be promoted to the status of a Federal
Republic, were savagely attacked by Serbian police.
In 1987, Milosevic, now Serbian party boss and increasingly a
nationalist demagogue, addressed a rally of Serbs in Kosovo and made
his infamous "no one should dare to beat you" speech. He was
lauded by the Serbs and came away as de facto Serb president in
waiting.
Six months later Milosevic was indeed President of Serbia - and the
direction he was taking was unmistakable. In 1989 even the limited
autonomy enjoyed by Kosovo and Voijvodina as Autonomous Provinces was
abolished and they were annexed by Serbia.
The de facto absorption of Montenegro quickly followed. Milosevic had
torn up the 1974 constitution and sought to replace it with a highly
centralized state dominated by Serbia.
The consequences for the Federation were absolutely clear. The more
dominant Serbia became the less other nationalities were prepared to
stay within it.
Milosevic now launched his Greater Serbia project - the creation of a
common mono-ethnic state for all the Serbs, then spread across the
various Republics.
This concept was supported by all political parties in Serbia and could
only be achieved by the break-up of Yugoslavia and the annexation of at
least a third of Croatia and two thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina - with
the ethnic cleansing of non- Serbs from those territories.
Once Kosovo, Voijvodina and Montenegro were swallowed up, resistance to
the advance of Greater Serbia project fell to the newly elected
governments of Slovenia and Croatia. They tried to negotiate acceptable
terms to stay in the Federation; proposing that it take the form of
"a free union of democratic states" - proposals which were
supported by Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia.
Milosevic rejected this and all subsequent proposals along these lines.
In December 1990 Slovenia voted in a referendum to secede, though it
did not act at that stage. Slovenia was increasingly dragging Croatia
with it towards independence.
Franjo Tudjman was now President of Croatia. He was a Stalinist
bureaucrat turned Croatian nationalist, later to have war crimes on his
hands. In March 1991 the Serbs of the Krajina region of Croatia, in
what was claimed to be a spontaneous uprising, took over the region and
declared it an independent state. The uprising was led by Serb
nationalist strongman Milan Babic. They named it the Autonomous
Province of Krajina, later Republika Srpska Krajina.
The uprising had the full backing of Milosevic, and it was armed and
supported by the Yugoslav National Army (JNA). Federal authority was
collapsing and the JNA was already acting under Serbian control.
This was a body-blow to the unity of Yugoslavia and a massive challenge
to Croatia - which was split wide open. Tudjman had no army to resist
the JNA and sought to stabilize the situation by diplomacy.
In any case he had his own agenda for carving up the region (i.e.
Bosnia- Herzegovina) in favor of a Greater Croatia once he was pushed
towards independence. Milosevic and Tudjman concluded that Yugoslavia
was now effectively finished, and that three, or more, successor states
would eventually emerge. The issue now was how they would each carve
out their own ethnic states to the detriment of Bosnia.
European Community (EC) mediator Lord Carrington reported "When I
first talked to Presidents Milosevic and Tudjman, it was quite clear
that both of them had a solution which was mutually satisfactory, which
was that they were going to carve up Bosnia between them".
In April Milosevic recognized the Krajina as a separate state.
Ultra-nationalist Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, called for
"an armed force of the Serbian People to be set up throughout the
Serbs lands of Yugoslavia". He now articulated the Greater Serbian
project even more clearly than his mentor Milosevic. Serbian forces
were now occupying a quarter of Croatia, and expanding. It was
undeclared war, although Tudjman was reluctant to recognize such
reality given the military imbalance he faced. On May 3, he belatedly
concluded that war was probably unavoidable.
On May 25, Slovenia and Croatia simultaneously declared independence.
The EC opposed the declaration - which was Western policy at that
stage. Two days later the JNA invaded Slovenia to prevent the
implementation of the declaration.
The JNA were forced to abandon the invasion after 10 days by both
international pressure and surprisingly strong Slovenian resistance.
Ultimately Slovenia could not have defended itself, but Milosevic had
limited interest in Slovenia since it had a negligible Serb population.
Ethnic cleansing
In August, Serb forces carried out the first ethnic cleansing of the
war in the Krajina village of Kijevo - a pocket of Croat population
surrounded by Serb-held territory. Soon after Babic announced that the
Krajina Serb paramilitary forces had fused with the JNA.
In early September, the Croatian city of Vukovar (43 per cent Croat and
37 per cent Serb) was shelled by Serbian irregulars with heavy weapons
supplied by the JNA. Tudjman responded by laying siege to JNA barracks
across Croatia. On September 19, an JNA force, with tanks and heavy
weapons, left Belgrade. Within days Vukovar was under siege.
On October 1, the JNA laid siege to the Croatian port of Dubrovnik - 82
per cent Croat and just 6 per cent Serb. Vukovar fell a month later. It
was reduced to rubble after weeks of hand-to-hand fighting. Over 500
Croats were killed and nearly 2,000 wounded.
In November, the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadzic, voted to
secede from Bosnia and found their own state. Serb deputies had already
walked out of the Bosnian Parliament and formed their own. Bosnia was
now split apart in the way Croatia had been.
By the end of November, Serb forces had achieved most of their
objectives. Milosevic now advocated a cease-fire and UN intervention,
which would freeze current battle lines to his advantage. Borisav
Jovic, Krajina Serb Interior Minister, put it this way: "At this
point the war in Croatia was under control in the sense that all the
Serb territories were under our control, all, that is except central
Slavonia. Slobodan and I decided now was the time to get the UN troops
into Croatia to protect the Serbs there. We saw the danger, when
Croatia would be recognized, which we realized would happen; the JNA
would be regarded as a foreign army invading another country. So we had
better get the UN troops in early to protect the Serbs".
Croatia had lost a third of its territory to Serbian forces. There were
thousands of dead and half a million Croatian refugees. Early in
December, Tudjman visited Bonn to seek EC recognition. A week later
Germany announced that if the EC did not recognize Croatia and Slovenia
it would do so unilaterally.
Two weeks later Bosnia- Herzegovina and Macedonia decided to seek
independence. The only other choice was being a part of Greater Serbia.
On January 17 1992, the EC agreed to recognize Croatia and Slovenia but
not Bosnia-Herzegovina or Macedonia.
Assault on Bosnia
On March 1 the assault on Bosnia started when Serb paramilitaries
erected barricades in Sarajavo, dividing the city. Bosnia was torn
apart by Serbian and Croatian forces for three years. Cities were
bombed to rubble and their inhabitants starved out. Europe saw its
first genocide, since world war two. Bosnian Muslims faced massacre,
rape, and terror. In Srebrenica 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed
in the course of a few days. Thousands of Bosnian women were raped as
part of a policy of terror. Three quarters of Bosnia’s territory was
occupied by either Serbian or Croatian forces.
There are many legitimate criticisms of the Bosnian regime. But it is
preposterous to suggest it was no different to those of Milosevic or
Tudjman. Bosnia was by far the most multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
Yugoslav Republic. Bosnia fought a war of survival in defense of a
multiethnic society.
That multi-ethnicity mostly survived throughout the war. There were
Serbs and Croats at every level of the Bosnian state and military. 10
per cent of the army were Serb or Croat, and there were 50,000 Serbs
and 30,000 Croats in Bosnian Sarajavo throughout the siege.
The war ended in 1995 after Bosnia had at last turned the tide on the
battlefield and began take back parts of its territory. Suddenly
Milosevic, the architect of the conflict, became the West's negotiating
partner in Dayton Peace Treaty - which he signed on behalf of the
Bosnian Serbs who he had drawn into the conflict. A divided Bosnia was
turned into a UN protectorate and left to pick up the pieces.
In nearly 5 years of warfare in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia not a
single military action had taken place on the soil of Serbia. In all
three cases, war had been waged by forces receiving orders from
Belgrade, aided by irregulars trained and equipped by the JNA. As a
result quarter of a million died, mainly civilians, half a million
wounded, and three million made refugees. All ideas of "equal
responsibility" for this should be rejected. We should not equate
the aggressor with the victim.
Milosevic was the prime mover of these wars, Tudjman was a second
string dictator with regional ambitions and plenty of blood on his
hands. Izetbegovic was the leader of the principle victim of these
wars.
After the Bosnian war finished Milosevic was already developing another
- his ethnic war against the Kosovan Albanians. During the next four
years 350,000 ethnic Albanians were driven out of the country to become
refugees.
In 1998 the Kosovan Albanians mounted mass protests against Serbian
rule, police troops were sent in to suppress them. In 1999 an
escalating refugee crisis was used by NATO to launch an unprecedented
bombing campaign against Serbia, which went on for 78 days.
The US dominated Alliance had found a role for itself in the post
Soviet era, an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of it
weaponry, and as a means of extending its influence to the East.
In Britain a campaign was launched against the war in the form of The
Committee for Peace in the Balkans. The role of Milosevic remained
controversial The Committee itself was silent on his role. The SWP
strongly opposed the bombing but underplayed Milosevic's campaign
against Kosovo. Socialist Action (SA) was influential in the Committee
at the time, saw Milosevic as some kind of representative of actually
existing socialism and described Serbia as "the chief obstacle to
the capitalist break-up of Yugoslavia.
Such politics influenced the shape, and unfortunately the size, of the
anti-war mobilizations - since it gave them a strong pro-Serb flavor.
Most potential supporters of the movement beyond the ranks of the
organized left, started from strongly opposing the ethnic cleansing of
the Kosovo Albanians, and stayed away once they perceived the pro-Serb
bias of the movement - even those who did not see NATO as a solution.
The issue of independence for Kosovo, which we advocated as the only
lasting solution, was not taken up by the SWP. We argued that there
were two wars taking place: one waged by Milosevic against Kosova and
another against Serbia by NATO - and we were opposed to both. We called
for NATO out of the region and Serbia out of Kosovo. We were part of a
coordination within the Committee of those groups supporting this
position.
Many on the left (particularly SA but including Tony Benn and other
anti-war MPs) insisted that Yugoslavia had been broken up not by
Milosevic's project but by imperialist intervention. They pointed the
decision of Germany and the EC to recognize Slovenia and Croatia (the
richest Republics) as independent states. Once Slovenia and Croatia had
gained independence, they argued, it was "natural" for Serb
minorities within Croatia and Bosnia to "rebel" and the scene
was set
for war.
However, as explained above, German and EC recognition of Croatia and
Slovenia came almost a year after the start of war in the region. It
came a long time after the invasion of Slovenia and Croatia by Serbian
forces: i.e. well after the dye was cast on the unity of Yugoslavia.
Imperialism, particularly Germany, did seek to intervene, of course,
but this was not decisive.
The bombing of Serbia ended when a compromise was found acceptable to
both NATO and Milosevic. Key for Milosevic was that Kosovo remained
part of Serbia and that the multi-national force moving in to occupy
Kosovo was under UN (rather than NATO) control.
Previously unacceptable conditions, such as the right of NATO to access
to any part of Serbia were dropped. A similar deal could probably have
been struck with Milosevic without the bombing. The national rights of
the Kosovars were set aside in all this and remain unresolved. Yet
again the lesson has not been learned that the problem of the Balkans
cannot be resolved without the right of self-determination for all the
peoples of the region being respected.
Fittingly Milosevic's final undoing did not come at the hands of
imperialism. In October 2000 a mass uprising of Serbian workers, a
general strike, mass demonstrations and the storming of the parliament
over a disputed election result, drove him and his corrupt clique from
office. Six months later he was arrested and taken to The Hague.
The Hague Tribunal has been selective as to whom it pursues. Radovan
Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic never been brought to book
for Srebrenica.
Neither have the likes of Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright
and General Wesley Clark - who bombarded Serbia for 78 days killing
thousands of people - they also go unpunished. The use of depleted
uranium and cluster bombs, the targeting of a civilian passenger train,
the Chinese embassy and Radio Serbia - killing 16 media workers - seem
to be of no consequence in The Hague.
The imperialist war-mongers can rest a bit easier now. Milosevic's
attempt to bring them to Hague as witnesses to expose their crimes has
come to an end with his passing.
*Socialist Action gives no credibility to the
right of the Hague Tribunal or any other pro-imperialist body to carry
out a political trial. Those
who are charged with war crimes in Kosovo can only be brought to
justice by their victims – the people of Kosovo.
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