Neither order nor peace
What NATO brought to the Balkans
By John Catalinotto
Rome
Two years after Washington and its NATO allies launched a
destructive 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, and
21 months after they began occupying the part of Serbia
called Kosovo, the U.S.-NATO occupation has proven it is
completely bankrupt.
They claimed the brutal bombing war was a humanitarian
intervention. That it would stop killings, bring peace,
restore order and--if the Milosevic government were
ousted--open the door to economic growth. But it has brought
only chaos and the threat of new wars to the
Balkans.
The growing crisis has also increased tensions within the
NATO alliance. The European powers have been critical of the
U.S. policy of arming and giving a green light to aggression
by the reactionary KLA forces, which have been trying to
break Kosovo away from Yugoslavia and create a "greater
Albania." They fear this policy is destabilizing the entire
area.
In the last months before the bombing started in 1999,
the U.S. military had trained and armed the KLA. Washington
has continued to back the KLA in Kosovo, allowing it to use
terror and murder to drive out 250,000 Serbs and another
100,000 Roma and other nationalities, including anti-fascist
Albanians.
The U.S. also encouraged KLA forces--under a new name--to
cross the Kosovo border into Serbia proper and attack Serbs
in the Presevo region. These attacks continued to apply
pressure on the Slobodan Milosevic government before it was
overthrown last Oct. 5 by a pro-imperialist coup. They later
kept the pressure on the current Kostunica government to
continually make concessions to NATO.
Within Yugoslavia, growing disillusionment with the new
regime that replaced the government of Milosevic and anger at
the decline in the standard of living has revived a movement
of resistance to NATO. On the March 24 anniversary of the
start of NATO's bombing, Milosevic addressed a crowd of tens
of thousands of people in Belgrade demonstrating against NATO
in a strong sign of this growing resistance.
War in Macedonia
The latest flash point is in Macedonia, a former republic
of Yugoslavia that now has a pro-West government and has long
been occupied by U.S. troops. Its population of 2 million is
about one-third ethnic Albanians.
The reactionary KLA was never disarmed by the NATO forces
in Kosovo, as required by the treaty that allowed the
occupation. Now it has launched attacks against Macedonia. On
the weekend of March 24, the Macedonian army--only 17,000
strong--launched retaliatory blows against the KLA.
Newspapers in Europe began to write about "the fourth Balkans
war."
The war in Kosovo had followed a similar pattern. Armed
by German and U.S. imperialism, the KLA attacked Yugoslav
forces throughout 1998. When the Yugoslav army responded,
Washington and the other NATO powers claimed that Belgrade
was committing a crime against humanity. They demonized the
Serbs, especially the Milosevic leadership, and used this
"Big Lie" to justify their attack on Yugoslavia.
For the last few weeks the KLA have been shooting at
Macedonian police and military troops. When the Macedonians
respond, the KLA propaganda machine charges them with using
brutal methods. The KLA leaders apparently believe that in a
showdown NATO will take their side, as happened in
Kosovo.
In 1999, the U.S. and the other NATO countries' strategy
was to move toward military intervention against Yugoslavia
and break it up into small countries that could not defend
themselves. The KLA was a useful tool for carrying through
this strategy.
In the current fighting in Macedonia, both the U.S. and
the European Union have criticized the KLA. But neither has
taken definite steps to disarm this reactionary group, which
many observers charge with running the drug and prostitution
industries in the region.
Indeed, both the pro-KLA U.S. General Wesley Clark--who
headed the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia--and EU
leaders like Javier Solana have demanded that the Macedonian
government make concessions to the ethnic Albanian community
within Macedonia while negotiating with the KLA.
While it is hard to determine at this time if the U.S. is
encouraging the KLA or merely refusing to take steps to stop
it, the Macedonian fighting is more of a problem for the
European NATO countries than for Washington. The European
NATO powers are thrown back into the wartime situation of
dependency on U.S. military might to get out of a
crisis.
Whatever the conscious strategy, it is apparent that
neither the U.S. nor its allies can bring peace and
prosperity to the region. They can only plunge it into
another war.
Resistance to U.S.-NATO occupation
grows
The NATO occupation was the focus of a series of
international anti-war conferences held in Athens, Berlin and
Belgrade on the anniversary of the attack on
Yugoslavia.
In Belgrade, 30 people from 17 countries and 100 people
from Yugoslavia took part in the Belgrade Forum on March
22-23. They also took part in a mass anti-NATO protest
demonstration on March 24.
Italian journalist Fulvio Grimaldi, who attended the
Belgrade Forum, told Workers World that "there were tens of
thousands on the demonstration organized by the Socialist
Party of Serbia. Many were young people, which is a new
development. Last fall the pro-SPS people were mainly older,
including former partisans. A new layer of the population is
coming into activity." Grimaldi is a senatorial candidate of
the Italian Communist Refoundation Party in the upcoming May
13 national elections.
The Belgrade Forum's closing appeal reviewed the crimes
of the U.S. and NATO against Yugoslavia and against peace,
and demanded an end to the occupation and reparations for
damages. It also ended with the following program of
action:
"Raise public awareness in our respective countries on
the truth about NATO aggression.
"Demand the abolition of the illegal International
Criminal Tribunal for the Federation of Yugoslavia, also
called The Hague Tribunal. Defend the former president of the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia--Slobodan Milosevic--as well
as Dragoljub Milanovic, former Director General of
Radio-Television Serbia, and all victims of political
oppression.
"Raise the issue of the responsibility of Carla Del
Ponte, [British commander] Michael Jackson, Bernard Kouchner
and others for consolidating the Albanian terrorist
groups.
"Insist on NATO-member countries paying compensation for
the damages done during the aggression."
In Berlin, a group that had held popular anti-NATO
tribunals--like ones held in the U.S. by the International
Action Center--hosted the founding meeting of the European
Peace Convention on March 23-24. This too had Yugoslavia as
its main theme. Some 200 people from both NATO countries and
the formerly socialist countries met and again condemned the
imperialist criminals who launched the war.
NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia and its consequences
remain the major war-and-peace issue within the European
anti-war and anti-imperialist movement.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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