And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:03:18 -0600
From: Zoltan Grossman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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To: Ishgooda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
League of Indigenous Sovereign Nations <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: US backed ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia
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Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right:
A Cartographer's View of the Yugoslav War
By Zoltan Grossman
The brutal ethnic cleansing underway in Kosovo
and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia seem on the
surface to be mutually contradictory forms of violence.
NATO claims the bombing is a "humanitarian intervention"
to prevent the sort of ethnic cleansing that has escalated
since the air strikes began, and claims that it favors a
multiethnic future for Kosovo and the rest of the Balkans.
Yet the recent history of the region shows that NATO has
not only failed to prevent ethnic cleansing and ethnic
partition, but has itself helped to recarve new ethnic
boundaries in the Balkans.
The map of the Balkans has changed several times in
this century as a result of war. Secessions from the
Ottoman Empire before World War I, and from the Austro-
Hungarian Empire during the war, led to the creation of
Yugoslavia in 1918. (Even the name "land of the South Slavs"
omitted Albanians.) During World War II, Axis powers redrew
the map to divide Yugoslavia along ethnic lines, at the same
time as they interned many Serbs and Jews in concentration
camps. Croatia seceded to become a German satellite state,
and annexed Bosnia. The Italian colony of Albania annexed
Kosovo. Hungary and Montenegro also annexed parts of Serbia.
Yugoslavia reassembled its constituent parts after 1945,
but never resolved the bitterness left by the war. As the
country has fallen apart in the 1990s, the map of the region
increasingly resembles the map of the early 1940s. Croatia
is again independent, and controls part of Bosnia. Ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo want independence, and Montenegro
may be next. In this process, Americans want to see
"white hats" and "black hats," but the reality we can only see
"gray hats," with ethnic cleansing affecting civilians of all
ethnic groups.
*In Croatia in 1991, secession from Yugoslavia ignited a
war with the Croatian Serb minority. A 1995 offensive by
the Croatian Army ethnically cleansed at least 100,000
Serbs from the Krajina region , where they had lived for
centuries. Washington not only failed to object to the violent
ethnic cleansing, but helped facilitate it. Retired U.S.
generals had trained the Croatians, and the U.S. Air Force
bombed a Serb airfield in Croatia on the eve of the offensive
into Krajina and western Bosnia. Many of the expelled Serbs
were resettled in Kosovo, exacerbating the ethnic tensions
that have now erupted into war.
*In Bosnia in 1995, the Croatian victory over the Serbs,
along with Serb cleansing of Muslim communities, helped
set the stage for the Dayton Accords. In Dayton, the U.S.
rubber-stamped the de facto ethic partition of the country,
dooming any hope for a multiethnic future that includes Muslims,
Croats and Serbs. Bosnia retains a fictive independence as a
NATO "protectorate," with Westerners at the helm of its
political and economic structures. But the two sections of
Bosnia now have two currencies, two political systems, and
two armies, linked to Croatia or Serbia. Croatian President
Franjo Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic
split Bosnia between them in 1995 much as Hitler and Stalin
divided Poland in 1939.
*Now in Yugoslavia in 1999, we are told that NATO bombers
are attacking Milosevic and "the Serbs." Yet the bombs have
fallen on neutral Montenegro, ethnic Albanian Kosovo, the
ethnically Hungarian northern region of Vojvodina, and
Serbian democratic opposition cities such as Nis. The war
may yet result in the ethnic partition of what remains of
Yugoslavia into two or three countries. In another scenario,
Milosevic may decide to give up Kosovo to NATO, in return
for taking full control over Montenegro, or even formally
annexing the Serb region of Bosnia.
Two wrongs don't make a right. NATO bombing and Serbian
ethnic cleansing are not proving to be in contradiction to
each other. As Commanding General Wesley Clark has said,
the Serbian offensive against Kosovo civilians was "entirely
predictable." The bombing did not prevent the cleansing, but
served as a catalyst for a self-fulfilling prophecy. The two
forms of violence are mutually reinforcing, and feed off of
each other in numerous ways. They may also result in the
same outcome: the redrawing of the map of Yugoslavia into
small and powerless ethnic enclaves.
Zoltan Grossman is a Wisconsin professional cartographer
and Ph.D. student in Geography, who writes on issues of
geopolitics and indigenous peoples.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Relevant links to sites opposing Milosevic's
ethnic cleansing, but supporting alternatives
such as the United Nations, the Serbian democratic
opposition, and Albanian civil leaders:
Institute for Public Accuracy-- a roster of leading
experts available to the media
( http://www.accuracy.org/press.htm )
Z Magazine-- commentary by prominent NATO critics,
like Noam Chomsky and Edward Said
( http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/kosovo.htm )
The Nation
( http://www.thenation.com/issue/990419/0419editors.shtml )
The Progressive
( http://www.progressive.org/latest.htm )
Common Dreams-- News and Views for Progressives
( http://www.commondreams.org )
War Resisters League
( http://www.nonviolence.org/wrl/ )
International Action Center
( http://www.iacenter.org )
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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