Kosovo secession linked to NATO expansion
By
Heather Cottin
Published Jan 30, 2008 9:47 PM
The U.S. calls it “Operation Status.” The United Nations calls it
“The Ahtisaari Plan.” It is the U.S./NATO
“independence” project for Kosovo, which has been a province of
Serbia since the 14th century. With NATO’s 17,000 troops backing it,
Kosovo’s government is set to secede on Feb. 6, declaring itself a
separate country.
Kosovo’s president is Hashim Thaci, who was the leader of the so-called
Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK for its Albanian initials), which U.S. diplomat
Robert Gelbard called “terrorist” in 1998, just before the U.S.
started funding the UCK to use it against Yugoslavia. Thaci, whose UCK code
name was “Snake,” and his UCK cronies are well funded by drug
running and the European sex trade.
In a series of wars and coercive diplomacy in the 1990s, the U.S. government
and the European NATO powers backed the secession of four republics of
Yugoslavia, a sovereign socialist state. It took another 78 days of NATO
bombing in 1999, aggression that President Bill Clinton described as
“humanitarian,” and a coup financed by the National Endowment for
Democracy and other imperialist agencies in 2000, to install a pro-western
regime in Serbia that was open to Western intervention and privatization.
State resources were privatized. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was almost
totally dismantled politically and economically.
But the U.S. then moved to break up the rest of Yugoslavia. Through lies and
raw military power, the U.S. supported a pro-imperialist group of
gangsters—the UCK—in the war against Yugoslavia, and this gang then
took over Kosovo.
Then the U.S. supported UCK moves to detach Kosovo, where the U.S. had built
the massive military base “Bondsteel.” Washington and its NATO
allies allowed this criminal element to drive over 200,000 Serbs, Roma people
and other minorities out of Kosovo, and terrorize the impoverished Albanian
population.
Wealth and poverty in Kosovo
Kosovo is sitting on fifteen billion tons of brown coal. Its mines contain 20
billion tons of lead and zinc and fifteen billion tons of nickel. EU and U.S.
corporations are going to buy Kosovo as soon as its status is settled as
“independent.” (Inter Press Service Italy, Jan. 15)
But in Stari Trg, the most profitable state-owned mine in former Yugoslavia,
inactive since 1999, rich with lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver,
unemployment is above 95 percent. With unemployment high, wages will be low,
and profits fabulous.
In Kosovo half of the population doesn’t get enough to eat. Unemployment
hovers near 60 percent (IHT Jan. 28). Kosovo Albanians in the U.S. or Europe
send home 450 million euros in remittances each year, half of Kosovo’s
entire budget. “I don’t know how we would survive without
this,” said economist Ibrahim Rexhepi. (Deutche Welle, Jan 27).
An Albanian living in New York told Workers World recently that he knows many
families in Kosovo and Albania that have had to sell their daughters to get the
remittances from their work in the sex trade. “Unemployment is so high
that most people are poor, and many bought into the Ponzi scheme in 1997 that
robbed most Albanians at home and in Kosovo of their entire life
savings.”
The U.N. Charter forbids the forced breakup of nations, and U.N. Security
Council resolution 1244 guarantees the territorial integrity of Serbia. Russian
President Vladimir Putin has said that Kosovo independence “is fraught
with serious damage for the whole system of international law, negative
consequences for the Balkans and the whole world and for the stability in other
regions.” (Interfax, Jan. 25)
The U.S. and its NATO partners are ignoring legalities. But they have to pay
attention to the possibility of Serbia making energy deals with Russia. The two
countries agreed to build a large gas storage facility in Serbia, while
Russia’s state-controlled oil concern Gazprom signed an agreement
granting Gazprom control of 51 percent of Serbia’s state-owned
oil-refining monopoly NIS. The Russians have commenced work on the South Stream
gas pipeline through Serbia to supply southern Europe.
The U.S. and the EU have been working feverishly on the rival Nabucco pipeline
to cut European dependence on Russian energy (Reuters, Jan 25).
Kosovo and NATO growth
The Kosovo crisis has prompted leading Serbian presidential candidate Tomislav
Nikolic, of the Radical Party, to suggest the creation of a Russian military
base in his country. (Itar-Tass, Jan. 25).
Why is Kosovo so crucial to NATO expansion?
The creation of Kosovo as an “independent” state would be a
precedent for other schemes U.S. imperialism could take advantage of to break
away areas of other sovereign nations, including China and Russia, applying the
old “divide and conquer” strategy perfected by British
imperialism.
The Russian and Chinese governments both have spoken out against the Ahtisaari
plan.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergy Lavrov said NATO’s buildup in
Eastern Europe and
the ex-Soviet republics are “a process of territorial encroachment
similar to what Napoleon and Hitler failed to achieve by cruder means.”
(Voice of Russia, June 28, 2007)
The planned NATO/U.S. plot to make Kosovo independent is a continuation of NATO
military expansionism to ensure U.S. economic control in Eastern Europe. NATO
is the military arm of international capital on five continents. Popular
opposition is rising in Serbia, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, the Czech Republic,
Poland, the Ukraine, Afghanistan and Africa.
But anywhere NATO tries to go, resistance grows. The secession of Kosovo may
still blowback to haunt the imperialists.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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