Report from war zone
Yugoslavs resist in ingenious ways
By Sara
Flounders
In the few days I spent in Yugoslavia as part of the
International Action Center delegation headed by Ramsey Clark,
I asked myself again and again, "How is Yugoslavia able to
continue to resist the demands of NATO occupation?"
The defiance we saw is not reported in the corporate media.
They fashion every piece of news to sow demoralization and
defeat.
The Pentagon is dumbfounded. The threat of war was intended
to force the Yugoslav government to sign the Rambouillet
Accords, which would have amounted to total surrender. The NATO
generals thought that no small nation would dare to resist the
armada of battleships or the thousands of bombers and cruise
missiles.
But more than 60 days of bombings has not broken the
determination of the population.
Teaching children not to fear
Despite the signs of destruction that we saw everywhere,
people were not cowering. Again and again parents we talked to
expressed deep concern over keeping their children safe, but
they were equally concerned that the children not be
traumatized by fear.
Many parents don't take their children to air-raid shelters
unless it is a clear night and heavy bombing is expected.
Mothers described holding neighborhood barbecues in front of
bomb shelters. Young people play cards and games near the
entrance. Emergency kits are on hand with a flashlight and a
few basic supplies. Even when air-raid sirens sound there is
calm. Emergency brigades function around the clock.
Since the beginning of the bombing, daily concerts in the
center of Belgrade have been a sign of defiance by the young.
Target symbols are everywhere, from buttons and pins to
billboards, signs on cars and homes. Groups formed
spontaneously to organize sit-ins on bridges and in factories
threatened with NATO bombing. Keeping up the élan and
spirit after two months of destruction is much, much more
difficult than in the first days of the NATO onslaught. But
those early days set the tone.
Generations of resistance
In countless discussions people would refer to experiences
of parents or grandparents who resisted the German Nazi
occupation during World War II. The entire older generation
remembers the experience vividly. It is more than a glorious
page in their history. The whole population knows it is
possible to organize resistance to far more powerful forces of
occupation. The experience of resistance has shaped the
thinking of the military and the civilian planners.
Obviously the pressure of this war is enormous. But there is
an air of confidence and of grim defiance.
How to deal in an organized way with many of the most
immediate problems caused by the bombing has been thought
through. Yugoslavia is a small country in a region that has
been occupied time and again by larger outside powers over
hundreds of years.
Scientists, engineers and technicians find low-tech
alternatives for many immediate problems. After all three
bridges were bombed in Novi Sad, for example, a large floating
platform with engines on the back served as a ferry. It runs
every few minutes, allowing hundreds of people at a time to
cross the river.
Low-tech solutions
NATO spokesperson Jamie Shay brag ged that NATO had its hand
on Yugoslavia's light switch and could turn the power off at
will with its new graphite bombs. Electric wires short-circuit
when enveloped by fine threads of graphite. But Yugoslav
scientists and technicians are able to get the lights back on
in about two hours. They have developed an inexpensive chemical
that dissolves the graphite when sprayed on the coated
wires.
In every building plastic jugs of water are arrayed in long
lines. If the water pumps are out, as they often are, an
immediate supply for washing, drinking and flushing is on hand.
Forty percent of Belgrade has only sporadic water supplies.
Many goods and spare parts have been relocated to protect
basic supplies. Government ministries and vital services have
been evacuated from their offices.
The media here have reported the frustration of Pentagon
planners who found that many of their early attacks were
against empty buildings. Enraged by the participation of tens
of thousands of people in these evacuations and relocations,
the Pentagon is increasingly focusing on purely civilian
targets in an effort to terrorize the population.
Even before NATO began bombing, the population had survived
three years of strangling international sanctions imposed by
the UN Security Council and almost a decade of a harsh outer
wall of sanctions on investments, credits, loans and trade. The
dismemberment of the Yugoslav Socialist Federation followed by
years of war in Bosnia sent more than a million refugees of all
nationalities flooding into the small area of the remaining two
republics--Serbia and Montenegro.
War on civilians
The sheer volume of destruction that we filmed and
photographed made it clear that NATO's attacks on civilian
targets are not accidents or mistakes.
The bombing is designed to destroy the very fabric of a
modern industrialized society. It has focused on the civilian
infrastructure--communications, electricity, water, heat. We
traveled on back roads because major bridges and the
international highway grid have been destroyed.
Most of the major industrial plants have been bombed. NATO
generals brag that they have targeted auto plants, chemical
plants, electronics industries, oil refineries and fuel-storage
depots. NATO planners have focused on destroying Yugoslavia's
future ability to provide for its population. Fertilizer
plants, grain silos and flour mills have been systematically
destroyed.
But everywhere we went in the countryside we saw that the
fields had been planted.
Many bombings are clearly to instill terror, such as the
random missiles that slam into residential apartment blocks.
NATO is using anti-personnel weapons banned by all
international conventions and laws, such as cluster bombs. We
visited a hospital and a marketplace in Nis that were struck at
noon on a busy shopping day with cluster bombs. Unexploded
cluster bombs that had bored into the soft earth were clearly
marked with signs and flags.
This is the kind of terror tactic that the fascist armies of
occupation used in World War II. It may have the same
result--radicalizing the people and stiffening their
resolve.
Before the NATO bombing the bourgeois opposition in
Yugoslavia was a formidable force. Many illusions about
"democratic values" in the U.S. and Western Europe permeated
the whole society. Western culture and music were popular.
Now the ugly reality of imperialist conquest is awakening
millions across Eastern Europe and Russia.
Into the quagmire
Unable to break the resistance through this murderous
bombing, NATO is stepping deeper and deeper into the quagmire.
Plans for a full invasion are unfolding. Ground troops are
being put in place. Will this wild scheme succeed?
Yugoslavia has modeled its military strategy over the past
50 years on the experience of its Partisan resistance army. The
army is able to dissolve into a guerrilla or partisan force if
its heavier equipment is destroyed. The mountainous and heavily
forested terrain that covers much of Yugoslavia is particularly
conducive to this form of resistance.
Yugoslavia obviously does not have the military or
industrial capacity to frontally defeat the NATO bombardment or
the ground troops being readied as an invasion force. Continued
resistance is possible only by drawing on the creative ability
of the masses of people. This heroic resistance deserves
unstinting support.
Mass opposition to the brutal bombing campaign is mounting.
The wildest war propaganda is used to justify this war on a
whole population. It is essential to challenge the demonization
of the Serbian people. The obligation of all those who oppose
U.S. militarism is to stand in solidarity with the struggling
people of Yugoslavia.
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