NEITHER ORDER NOR PEACE/ What NATO brought to the Balkans
Tens of thousands protest NATO in BelgradeBy John Catalinotto Cesena, Italy
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--would 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.
Subhead: 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.
Subhead: 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. Here in Cesena near the NATO military base at Pisignano, Italian anti-imperialists from all over the country protested on March 24, demanding that the base be closed and that there never again be a NATO war.
posted: 3/31/01
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