Archive : ISG Pamphlets : War in the Balkans

Introduction

Today in the Balkans a number of different wars are being waged. There is the war between NATO and Serbia but also a war between the Milosevic regime and the ninety percent Albanian population of Kosova. There may even be the first signs of a war between the Serbian people and the Milosevic regime. We take different attitudes to these wars. In the case of the war between the butchers of NATO and the butchers of Belgrade we are for the defeat of NATO.

This does not mean we support Milosevic — far from it. We are for his defeat by the peoples of Kosova and the peoples of Serbia. But on a world historical scale, we understand that NATO is a vastly greater threat to the world working class — indeed to the continued existence of the human race — than even the most brutal of dictators of a small Balkan state. Milosevic’s crimes, which are undoubtedly enormous, are massively outweighed by those committed by the imperialist powers of NATO against the peoples of Africa, Asia and America and Europe — even if we exclude from the equation the vast numbers of atrocities carried out indirectly on behalf of western powers by brutal client dictatorships throughout the world.

We do not accept that the butchers of Vietnam, Ireland, India, Algeria, Nicaragua (to restrict ourselves to only a tiny sample of atrocities carried out by the main NATO powers) have any moral right to claim to be carrying out a ‘just’ war. If NATO was really concerned with justice then Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and large numbers of other western political and military leaders would have been sent to jail long ago for their crimes against humanity. Instead they have appointed General Wesley Clark — a man who defends the butchery of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by US troops at My Lai — as commander of NATO’s war against Serbia.

NATO leaders have suddenly discovered that Slobodan Milosevic is a brutal aggressor. We have said that loud and clear for many years, as can be see from the material on the war in Bosnia reproduced here We have shown how NATO leaders have frequently acted as Milosevic’s agents — by denying recognition to independent Slovenia and Croatia; by refusing to allow Croatia and then Bosnia to defend themselves against Serb attacks; by agreeing to the de facto partition of Bosnia.

They have consistently refused to accept that Kosovars who fled to the west were refugees: often even trying to deny they were from Kosova. The press printed lurid stories about Kosovars being scroungers or linked to a ‘mafia’. The tears now being shed for Kosovar refugees are crocodile tears for sure.

NATO has also discovered a sudden concern for Serbs forced to fight in Milosevic’s war machine. They are dropping leaflets encouraging Serbian soldiers to desert. Yet a few months ago any Serbian soldier trying to find asylum in the west would have been handed back to Belgrade. Deserters, after all, cannot be tolerated by any army or government. Try handing out leaflets on the streets of Britain encouraging soldiers to desert and see how long it takes to be arrested and charged with serious offences carrying a long prison sentence.

None of this comes as a surprise to us. For the war in Kosova is a direct result of the policies adopted by the NATO powers during all the previous wars in former Yugoslavia. Not one NATO power supported the right of Slovenia or Croatia to independence: every single one tried to preserve the Yugoslav federation. They refused to arm those facing ethnic cleansing by Serbian military and paramilitary forces in Croatia. They refused to arm those opposing Serbian and Croatian attempts to carve up multi-ethnic Bosnia. They even refused to recognise that Serbs and Croats in Bosnia supported the right to existence of an independent, multi-ethnic state: the war was dismissed as an ‘ethnic conflict’ based on supposedly ‘ancient hatreds’. The result was 100,000 dead in Croatia and 250,000 in Bosnia.

In fact, despite the war, NATO is still serving the interests of Great Serbian chauvinism: by insisting that Kosova must remain part of the Yugoslav federation and by demanding that the KLA disarm. Those were the demands made of the Kosovars at Rambouillet and they have been repeated on many occasions since. This is hardly surprising since, in the year before Rambouillet, western governments denounced the KLA as ‘terrorists’ and gave Milosevic the green light to launch military offensives against them. If Milosevic had been able to do this without creating unrest in the wider Balkan region then NATO would have been grateful to him for bringing about ‘stability’.

The indictment of Milosevic as a war criminal is a politically motivated manoeuvre, having little to do with ‘justice’. At Dayton he was feted as the guarantor of a solution: yet everyone knew he was responsible for brutal war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia. He was not indicted then because the west still saw him as part of the solution. The International War Crimes Tribunal has for months been demanding evidence against Milosevic. The imperialists no longer believe have deliberately with-held their evidence until now.

We are certainly in favour of Milosevic being put on trial for war crimes. That should be done by the people of Serbia, who are now suffering for Milosevic’s criminal acts. We hope that the current reports of desertions and anti-war demonstrations in Serbia are true: socialists should do everything within their power to help the Serbian people bring Milosevic to justice. If we are sceptical it is because the media seem able to report on anti-war demonstration in small Serbian towns but are unable to find space to mention anti-war demonstrations in Britain.

Unlike NATO, Socialist Outlook has a long track record of supporting the right of the Albanians of Kosova to self-determination. In fact, as supporters of the Fourth International, we can claim support for the Kosovars at least as far back as 1981. The fact that NATO is currently waging war against Serbia and that many Kosovars support the NATO bombing campaign does not change our attitude to the entirely just struggle of the Kosovar people for self-determination. We are for their victory against Milosevic and we are opposed to all attempts by Serbia or NATO to deny their legitimate national rights. We are for the right of the Kosovars to defend themselves against Serbian attacks: they have the right to get weapons from whatever source they choose — so long as there are no strings attached. Tito, after all, accepted weapons from the United States after the split with Stalin in 1948.

We are totally opposed to NATO demands that the KLA should disarm once NATO has established its ‘protectorate’. There can be no real self-determination under a NATO occupation. At the moment many Kosovars welcome a NATO protectorate as it would seem to guarantee them the right to life. We fully understand that, even though we believe they are completely misguided. The Kosovars will very soon come to understand that any hope of achieving self-determination under NATO domination is an illusion. Their ‘liberators’ will rapidly become their oppressors. Self-determination requires that the Kosovars are able to defend themselves against all potential aggressors.

It also requires their right to establish a forum — a Constituent Assembly — in which different points of view about the future of Kosova can be openly debated. Yet NATO — in cahoots with a section of the KLA leadership — is opposed to the establishment of a Constituent Assembly. NATO insists, whatever the people of Kosova might decide, that there must be a capitalist economy. That is the opposite of self-determination.

Socialist Outlook supports the right of all the peoples of the Balkans to self-determination, including the right to independence. That does not mean, however, that we necessarily favour independence. Indeed, we support the aim of former KLA leader Adem Demaqi who advocates building a new Balkan federation, as it is only through the unity of the Balkan peoples that they will be able to resist political and economic domination by imperialism. Demaqi is absolutely right to insist that the working class of Serbia will prove better allies of the Kosovars than NATO. He is right to draw a distinction between being anti-Milosevic and anti-nationalist. Unfortunately many of those who have participated in the past in big anti-Milosevic demonstrations are far from being anti-nationalist. In many respects the Serbian opposition leaders have been even more nationalist than Milosevic.

For the moment the removal of Demaqi from the Kosovar leadership has allowed a new leadership, much more open to western pressure, to emerge. We have to debate Demaqi’s ideas in the anti-war movement and amongst Kosovar exiles, however difficult that may be at present. We have to stress the need for dialogue with non-nationalist Serbs. We must oppose any attempt to silence him and ensure his ideas are known.

We are opposed to any notions of building ethnically pure states. In the Balkans that can only be realised through the expulsion of huge numbers of people. We insist on the right of all those driven from their homes to be able to return. We insist on the guaranteeing to all minority peoples not only rights as individuals but also collective, national rights. While we certainly support the right of the majority Albanian people of Kosova to independence if that is what they want, any Serbs who choose to remain must also be guaranteed respect for their national rights.

That is why we supported the struggle in Bosnia to preserve a multi-ethnic state against Serb and Croat attempts to carve up Bosnia between them. We supported forces such as the Serb and Croat Civic Councils which represented all those Serbs and Croats wanting to maintain multi-ethnic Bosnia. Through International Workers Aid, the Fourth International tried to develop contacts with forces throughout former Yugoslavia in a common struggle against ethnic cleansing. We worked particularly closely with working class communities in both Bosnia and Croatia and attempted to develop relations with independent trade unions in Serbia. Since the end of the war in Bosnia the miners of Tuzla, in conjunction with Workers Aid, have given political, moral and material support to the working class of Kosova. The task for socialists is to develop and expand those links and increase political and practical co-operation throughout the Balkans.

There is one remarkable fact that has never been mentioned in any coverage of the war in the Balkans: virtually every single organisation on the British left with a record of supporting Kosovar national rights since 1989 or earlier does not support NATO’s war. The sole exception is the Marxist Party of Vanessa Redgrave — followers of the late, and extremely unlamented Gerry Healy, the most degenerate sectarian thug ever produced by the British left. Even the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which refuses to support anti-NATO demands and build the anti-war movement, doesn’t actually support the NATO intervention.

By contrast, outside the Kosovar community, there are only a few individuals with a record of support for Kosova who now support NATO bombing. Most of those who support NATO have either no record whatsoever of supporting Kosovars — or have frequently acted against the struggle for self-determination.

Indeed, NATO and its champions in the media have had so little regard for the Kosovars up till now that they consistently use the Serb spelling Kosovo, rather than the Albanian Kosova. On occasions they have even used Kosovo-Metohija, a concept deeply offensive to Albanians. (Metoh is a Greek word meaning ‘church’. By implication Metohija means ‘land belonging to the Serbian Orthodox church’, hence Albanian hostility).

It is unfortunately true, as we show elsewhere, that sections of the anti-war movement either do not support the struggle of the Kosovars against Milosevic or see it as a totally secondary issue, subordinate to building the campaign against the war. Those who subordinate defence of the Kosovars to anti-NATO slogans are actually hindering the building of a mass anti-war movement. The vast majority of those who support NATO do so because they understand that the Kosovars were being brutally oppressed by Milosevic. Our task is to convince them that NATO doesn’t care a damn about the Kosovars but we can only do this by showing that we oppose ‘ethnic cleansing’; that we do support the struggle of the Kosovars for self-determination; that we do support the right of the Kosovars to defend themselves against Serbian attacks. Unless the anti-war movement does this clearly and publicly then the warmongers in Westminster will continue to be able to attack the movement as supporting Milosevic.

That is why a number of organisations on the left, including Socialist Outlook, have come together in a loose co-ordination to raise within the anti-war movement the need to defend the Kosovars and support their right to self-determination. We will continue to fight for the right to put forward our views within the campaign, including at demonstrations.

One of the reasons why we have been able to work together is that we understand there are a number of different wars going on. The debate about how to build the anti-war movement while opposing Milosevic’s oppression of the Kosovars reflects another debate on the left, many of who believe that the west deliberately set out to break-up Yugoslavia. The idea that imperialist intervention was responsible for the break-up of Yugoslavia simply does not equate with reality. Up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 — which happened much faster than any western politician or military planner expected — NATO had always favoured, for geo-strategic reasons, a united Yugoslavia independent of Moscow. In NATO thinking this denied the Soviet Union access to a warm water port on the Adriatic and could be depended on to oppose any attempt by Soviet tanks to invade western Europe via the Ljubljana Gap. The notion that the utterly reactionary counter-revolutionary Stalinist dictatorship of the USSR was likely to invade western Europe was, of course, absurd. Nevertheless it did inform NATO’s military planning. But by the time of the Soviet Union’s unexpected collapse in 1989 the disintegration of Yugoslavia was already reaching the final stages that would lead to war.

Nor was there any clear economic reason why various western powers should have favoured the break-up of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was far more integrated into the world market than any other state in eastern Europe — from the early 1950s onwards. All political currents with any influence in Yugoslavia — especially Slobodan Milosevic — were in favour of large scale privatisations. Privatisations had even occurred under Tito. The west supported the attempts by the last ever federal Prime Minister, Ante Markovic, to create a more market oriented economy which involved significant attacks on the working class. Imperialism did not need to break-up Yugoslavia to be able to further penetrate its economy: in fact the evidence shows that the break up has to some extent prevented imperialist investment. In Slovenia and Croatia attempts to create a new national consciousness have led to Slovene or Croatian nationalised industries. Although the Serbian Parliament has agreed to significant privatisations the imperialist embargo of Serbia has so far denied the opportunity to western capitalists to invest.

Nor is there any evidence that NATO is currently waging war in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosova for directly economic interests. NATO is of course an imperialist military alliance: its role is to defend the interests of capitalism. But that doesn’t mean that at every second of every day NATO is directly motivated by economic interests: political and military-strategic factors also have to be taken into account.

Many capitalists no doubt hope to make vast profits out of the huge reconstruction that will be necessary to rebuild the shattered economies of the Balkans. But that is not the same as a new ‘Marshall Plan’, about which there has been much talk. The Marshall Plan was an attempt to rebuild capitalism in the most advanced states of western Europe through American money. It was a response to the expansion of Soviet control over eastern Europe and a way of heading off working class struggles in the west. The Marshall Plan depended on a massive increase in state control over large sections of the economy and of welfare services. Capitalism today has a diametrically opposed agenda: privatisation and the destruction of large parts of the Welfare State. The Maastricht Treaty is not about allowing the USA to once again save European capitalism but about restructuring European capital to compete with the USA. European capitalism may be dependent on American military muscle but it has no intention of quietly accepting American economic domination. Behind the barely disguised disunity on military matters lie even greater economic hostilities likely to break out into open economic warfare once the war in the Balkans is ended.

There is, in fact, little reason to disbelieve claims that NATO went to war because it had to: its credibility was at stake. Certainly NATO had already decided by the time of Rambouillet that it was prepared to use military force against Serbia. There was absolutely zero chance that Milosevic was going to accept the right of NATO troops to move unhindered — and basically outside all legal control — throughout Kosova, let alone the whole of the territory of the FRY as was demanded of him. We should also remember, since it seems to have been forgotten in all the accounts of the war, that the Kosovar delegation also refused to sign the Rambouillet ‘accords’ at first and did so only after being bullied by Madeleine Albright.

All NATO’s previous threats meant that it had little option but to launch air strikes against Serbia. Clinton and Blair believed that Milosevic would back down very quickly, allowing NATO troops to enter Kosova in order to defuse a political situation that was threatening to destabilise a number of Balkan states. They made no preparations for the mass expulsions of Albanians that followed the launch of the bombing campaign (despite warnings from their own military experts) and had no preparations for the inevitable ground troops that would be necessary if they thought they were going to be faced with a long campaign. When Milosevic refused to come to heel they were forced to continue the bombing because NATO could hardly preserve its credibility if it failed to defeat one small tin-pot dictator. To save NATO’s face — and therefore its ability to act with impunity wherever and whenever it chooses — tens of thousands of people have been killed while about one million have been forced into squalid refugee camps in the poorest countries in Europe. That is the reality of NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ war.

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