In regard to what's going on in Kosovo, perhaps the following
article I wrote last year may provide some background. I am posting
it in two parts. Written a few months ago, it naturally doesn't deal
with the latest events and threats of bombing, but its
characterization of what the big powers are up to is still valid.
--Joseph Green
Support the right to
self-determination of Kosovo!
(Communist Voice, vol. 4, #4, Dec. 8, 1998)
list of sections:
Part 1:
(Introduction)
The flareup of the war in Kosovo
The Serbian Justification
Notes
Part 2:
The Recent History of Kosovo
The Military Intervention of the Big Powers
The Right to Self-Determination
Notes
text:
The Yugoslav tragedy has taken a new turn this year. Serbian
police and troops have been trampling the population of the
province of Kosovo. Many villages have been destroyed by
artillery fire or been burned down; there have been a number
of massacres; and hundreds of thousands of Albanians have
either fled Kosovo or been left homeless. Kosovo is a small
territory of a little over 4,000 square miles, with a population of
approximately two million people, most of whom are Albanians. Having
never been first-class citizens in Serbia, they want Kosovo to be
independent of Serbia, while the Serbian government is determined
that Kosovo will be Serbian whether the population wants it or not.
The struggle in Kosovo thus centers on the right to national
self-determination. For over a century, since the formation
of the Albanian League of Prizren in 1878, Kosovo has been
one of the centers of the Albanian national movement. When
the country of Albania was formed in 1912-13, the imperialist
powers split off Kosovo from the rest of the areas of
predominantly Albanian population, and kept Kosovo out of
Albania. The Albanian Kosovars were a savagely persecuted
minority in the monarchist Yugoslavia that existed between
World War I and II; they were better-off but still
second-class citizens in the state-capitalist Yugoslavia that
existed after World War II, with Kosovo remaining far and
away the poorest and most backward area in Yugoslavia, and
falling further behind each year. After World War II, all the
main nationalities of Yugoslavia, with the exception of the
Albanians, formed republics that, while united together in
federal Yugoslavia, had, on paper at least, the right to
self- determination, that is, the right to leave Yugoslavia
if they so choose. Kosovo however did not become a republic,
and the Albanians were kept within the borders of Serbia. The
Albanian national question was a cancer that ate away at
Yugoslavia, and the stepped-up oppression of the Albanians by
the Milosevic government in Serbia scared a number of other
nationalities in Yugoslavia and contributed to the break up
of Yugoslavia. The only democratic solution to the national
question in Kosovo is that the Kosovan population itself
should decide whether to be part of Serbia, or to be an
independent country, or to seek to join some other country.
But the right to self-determination isn't just necessary in
order to help the Albanian Kosovars. It is also necessary in
the interest of the Serbian working class, youth, and
progressive activists.The oppression of Kosovo has been a
rope around the neck of the Serbian people. It was chauvinist
hysteria against the Albanians that allowed the Serbian
people to be enslaved to the aggressive and reactionary
regime of Slobodan Milosevic at the end of 1987, the regime
which still oppresses the Serbian working masses today.
Milosevic came to power as part of a crusade against the
Albanians, and he proceeded by early 1989 to strip Kosovo of
the autonomy that it had enjoyed for some time. He has
diverted the attention of the Serbian people away from the
deep-seated crisis of Serbian state-capitalism to military
adventures against Serbia's neighbors.
A number of imperialist powers have intervened in the Kosovo
crisis, mainly the United States and various Western European
powers, but also Russia. None of these powers support the
right to self-determination of the Kosovan people; the U.S.
government, for instance, has repeatedly reiterated its
opposition to independence for Kosovo, whatever the Kosovan
population itself wants. They have not only threatened Serbia
with attack for trampling Kosovo, but they have also done
what they could to clip the wings of the Albanian Kosovars
who are resisting the Serbian offensives. A strong
distinction has to be made between the many individuals who
have sought to aid the peoples of the Balkans out of sympathy
and opposition to oppression, and the policies of the
imperialist governments. It is the governments of the
imperialist powers that are not interested in the welfare of
the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, but in pursuing their
own national interests and empire-building. Moreover, it is
the extreme truculence of the Serbian government, which has
in the last decade supported military action against
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and now Kosovo, and
which has recently threatened Macedonia, that has been the
main factor opening up the region to the foreign
intervention. Meanwhile the U.S.government and European Union
have posed as the saviors of the Albanians in Kosovo, as they
posed as saviors of the Bosnians, while enforcing solutions
that will settle nothing and simply leave outside powers as
arbiters of the situation. In Kosovo as in Bosnia, they have
threatened the victims of the aggression as well as the
aggressors, and the Dayton Accords legalized the
dismemberment of Bosnia. The Russian government has also
played a bad role, opposing the right to self- determination
of the Kosovans not only in order to maintain its traditional
alliances with the Serbian ruling class, but because it wants
to deny national rights to the peoples it oppresses, such as
the Chechens.
Not all the problems of the Kosovars come from Serbian
domination. National rights for Kosovo won't solve the
economic backwardness of the region and the exploitation of
the working masses. The working class is disorganized in
Kosovo, as elsewhere in the Balkans, and it will take much
time and effort to build up an effective class struggle for
its interests. As it does this, it will have to build up its
solidarity with the workers of minority nationalities in
Kosovo as well as the workers in other countries of the
Balkans. But this does not negate, but enhances, the
importance of a democratic solution to the national question.
It is only by championing the right to self-determination of
other nations, as well as of its own, and by defending the
rights of national minorities, that the workers of one
nationality gain the trust of workers of other nationalities.
Unity across national lines cannot be achieved by closing
one's eyes to national oppression, but only by fighting
against it. For socialists, upholding the right to
self-determination is of especial importance precisely
because it is the only way to build up the international
class solidarity and to contribute to rebuilding the
revolutionary proletarian movement in the Balkans. It is the
attempts to deny the right to self-determination that have
contributed to the breakup of Yugoslavia, that have inflamed
and embittered this process, and that have caused the bloody
tragedies and "ethnic cleansing" that have taken place. It is
only by upholding the right to self-determination (and the
rights of national minorities) that the working class can
forge a strong weapon against the chauvinism of all the local
bourgeoisies.
The flareup of the war in Kosovo
This year has seen the struggle in Kosovo escalate to a war. Up
to now, the majority of Albanians pursued their national
demands in a peaceful manner. The Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA, or UCK in Albanian), which has been organizing an armed
struggle to obtain independence, had only emerged in the last
few years, and was a tiny group. The mainstream Albanian
opposition, organized in an unofficial government, was led by
Ibrahim Rugova of the Democratic League of Kosovo, who stood
for nonviolence. (1)
But this year the Serbian government opened a military campaign
in the Drenica region of Kosovo. It aimed to annihilate the
KLA, and the method it used was to terrorize and attack the
civilian population as a whole. Villages were shelled, and
civilians massacred. Over 80 people died in March, and
thousands fled their homes. The result of the Drenica
massacre was that the Albanian population took to arms, and
the KLA began to grow like wildfire. The war in Kosovo was
on.
In the following months Serbian special police detachments, and
military units using tanks and artillery, attacked one
village after another, burned down villages after the
inhabitants fled, and instituted "ethnic cleansing" of
regions of Kosovo. There were hundreds of deaths and more and
more refugees. The Serbian government, seeing that the
overwhelming majority of the population wanted Kosovo out of
Serbia, waged war on the entire Albanian population.
The KLA blocked roads, liberated villages, and expanded its
control, at one point controlling close to one-half of
Kosovo. The Serbian military then intensified its operations
in Kosovo, making yet more extensive use of heavy weapons.
The number of civilian casualties skyrocketed, and hundreds
of thousands of people were left homeless, facing an
uncertain fate in winter. The KLA lost most of its
territorial gains, but the hatred for Serbian oppression and
the desire for independence was strengthened. The war is far
from over.
The Serbian Justification
The justification for all this by the Serbian government is
simple. The Milosevic government has repeatedly declared that
it will not allow Kosovo to leave Serbia under any
circumstances (or even to have the type autonomy that it had
achieved with the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974).Radio
Yugoslavia regards all Albanians who disagree as
"terrorists", whose main occupation in life is atrocities
against Serbians.
Perhaps one might think that, after all, the war is on and
atrocities will take place on both sides, even if the Serbian
government is responsible for most of them. So the material
from Radio Yugoslavia (which posts transcripts of its
broadcasts on the Internet) might be thought to be simply the
typical war reportage of a bourgeois government. But the
truth is more sinister. The hysteria against "Albanian
terrorists" began decades ago, long before the armed struggle
had begun.
In 1981, Albanians in the then-autonomous province of Kosovo
demonstrated peacefully for Kosovo to have republican status
(which would have placed Kosovo outside Serbia but kept it
within the Yugoslavian federal union, although with the
right, on paper at least, to decide whether to leave
Yugoslavia). The demonstrations were repressed harshly,
martial law was declared, and there were many dead and
wounded. Subsequently, in Serbia proper, the nationalists
began to increase their ranting against the Albanian
nationality, and to win over various political figures, both
within the government and the opposition. Already by 1986-7
this campaign reached an astonishing height (and also was
carried on in the neighboring republic of Montenegro); it was
sponsored by the Serbian ruling party and regime after
Milosevic took power. Albanians were routinely described as
"separatist terrorist beasts", purveyors of "Stalinized
chauvinism", counter- revolutionaries, and depraved people
whose very birthrate was an anti-Serbian plot. The Albanians
were supposed to have driven hundreds of thousands of Serbs
and Montenegrins from Kosovo, and to be rapers of Serbian
women and murderers of Serbian men.
A single example may suffice to give one the flavor of this
campaign. The Serbian Association of University Teachers and
Researchers declared the following in an open letter in the
mid- 80s to the world entitled "The truth About Genocide in
Kosovo and Metohija": "Albanian terrorist beasts rampage
today in Kosovo and Metohija, attacking and destroying
everything that is Serbian. They break into Serbian homes and
terrorize the few unfortunate souls still remaining there. .
.. the Albanians terrorists are today attacking the Serb and
Montenegrin population in Kosovo and Metohija with all kinds
of modern weapons, and with the aid of infiltrated trained
terrorists from Albania and other countries, so that blood is
even shed, while Serb women and children are evacuated,
abandoning their homes to the devastating rage of Albanian
terrorists." (2)
This is not even a distortion: it is utter, racist fantasy.
Take the number of murders committed with all modern weapons
that were supposedly wielded by hate-filled terrorists. It
was pointed out in 1987 that "How many actual murders of
Slavs have been committed in Kosovo over the past five years?
The Yugoslav press has reported exactly one: the outcome of a
dispute among neighbours over land, of the kind that is
unfortunately still quite common in Yugoslavia.The judicial
investigation showed no indication that the crime had been
committed out of nationalistic hatred. The perpetrator was
speedily executed, to the great consternation of all those
Yugoslavs who have been actively campaigning against
capitalist punishment."(3)
Particularly prominent in the Serbian nationalist press were
tales of rapes of Serbian women by Albanian Kosovars. Young
women, old women, nuns, whoever, so long as they were Serbs,
they were all supposedly sought out and attacked. Day after
day new stories surfaced, and outrage grew. Yet
investigations and official statistics proved that the rate
of rapes in Kosovo was, if anything, substantially lower than
in Serbia proper, and that Serbian women weren't being
singled out. A Serbian woman was safer in Kosovo than on the
streets of Belgrade.(4)
A large number of Serbs did leave Kosovo, but not because of
any campaign to push Serbs out of Kosovo. Some Serbs may have
felt uncomfortable in Kosovo under an autonomous
administration, especially if they read the nationalist
publications about how their Albanian neighbors were beasts
and rapists. But mainly Serbs left Kosovo because of the low
standard of living there, much lower than elsewhere in Serbia
or Yugoslavia, just as people in other parts of Yugoslavia
migrated from one place to another in search of better
conditions. So Serbs tended to leave southern Serbia in
general, including not just Kosovo but areas under completely
Serbian administration. Many Albanians too migrated away from
Kosovo in order to find work elsewhere in Yugoslavia or even
in Germany or the United States, although they tended to
maintain their ties with Kosovo and send money back home
(similar to how Mexican toilers seek work in the U.S. in
order to keep their families afloat).
No doubt Serbs in Kosovo had some grievances against the
provincial government. Some likely had burning indignation
over the curbing of some of the special privileges that Serbs
had enjoyed in Kosovo earlier, similar to the indignation
about the supposed "reverse discrimination" against whites in
the US. But there may well have been legitimate grievances
too. Throughout Yugoslavia, in every republic, province,
city, or industry, the people had grievances against the
heavy-handed, bungling, oppressive bureaucracy, and Kosovo's
autonomous status didn't change the nature of the
state-capitalist bureaucracy, built along the same lines as
the bureaucracy elsewhere in Serbia. But the anti-Albanian
campaign had nothing to do with correcting bureaucratic
errors; quite the contrary, it was used by the bureaucracy of
Serbia proper to divert the popular anger away itself and
towards suitable ethnic scapegoats.
The demonization of the Albanians led to measures being taken
against them. The result has been described as follows:
". . . By 1987 Kosovo had become--in violation of both the
letter and the spirit of the [Yugoslav] constitution--a legal
zone sui generis [unique unto itself--JG]. Factories started
to be built in Kosovo for Serbs only, Albanian families were
evicted from Serb villages, sale of Serb-owned land to
Albanians were prohibited, rape declared a political
crime.Albanians were heavily sentenced for minor and
frequently invented misdemeanors. . . .Racial slurs in the
media were tolerated. This anti-Albanian campaign in Serbia
in turn encouraged the leadership of Macedonia [a neighboring
Yugoslav Republic--JG] to begin a policy of
(unconstitutionally) restricting educational opportunities
for Albanian children, limiting welfare benefits, at times
even destroying Albanian houses, and generally discriminating
against this part of the republic's population."(5)
It is this racist propaganda against the Albanians that the
Serbian government is continuing today, and that underpins
its war on Kosovo. It should also be noted that the
demonization of the Albanians in the 80s served as a model
for the demonization of others nationalities and thus
facilitated the bloody wars in Croatia and
Bosnia-Hercegovina. (to be continued)
Notes:
(1) Rugova had won elections organized by the Albanian
Kosovars outside the bounds of Serbian legality. However,
it's not clear how much support he still commands after the
events of this year.
(2) Thompson, Mark, "A Paper House: The Ending of
Yugoslavia", p. 130.
(3) This is from a reply in July 1987 by Branka Magas to
nationalist critics in Belgrade. It is reproduced in her book
"The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-up",
1980-92, pp.61- 2, which also includes the full exchange.
Another writer claims that official Yugoslav statistics for the
number of murders from March 1981 to October 1987 in Kosovo,
a seven year period, show that there were two murders of
Serbs/Montenegrins by Albanians in 1981 and none thereafter.
There were three Albanians murdered by Serb/Montenegrins in
this seven- year period. This counts only the Albanians
killed by ordinary criminals, not the far, far larger number
of Albanians killed by the Yugoslav security forces in
suppressing the 1981 demonstrations alone. These figures are
given in Arshi Pipa's book "Albanian Stalinism:
Ideo-Political Aspects", p. 254, footnote 24. Pipa gets them
from an article published in the late 80s in Zagreb by Darko
Hudelist, who interviewed the leader of the Department of
Internal Affairs in Kosovo.
(4) The hysteria about rape was so loud that many sources
feel compelled to discuss and refute it.For example, one
writer points out that "The only serious study of this issue
was carried out by an independent committee of Serbian
lawyers and human rights experts in 1990. Analysing all the
statistics on rape and attempted rape for the 1980s, they
found first of all that the frequency of this crime was
significantly lower in Kosovo than in other parts of
Yugoslavia: while inner Serbia, on average, had 2.43 cases
per year for every 10,000 men in the population, the figure
in Kosovo was 0.96. They also found that in the great
majority of cases in Kosovo (71 per cent) the assailant and
the victim were of the same nationality. Altogether the
number of cases where an Albanian committed or attempted the
rape of a Serbian woman was just over thirty-one in the whole
period from 1982 to 1989: an average of fewer than five per
year." (Malcolm, Noel, "Kosovo: A Short History", p. 339) Of
course, official rape figures may underestimate the problem,
but these figures nevertheless refute the nationalist hysteria.
Moreover, since the figures are for the same country during the same
time period, it can be expected that the comparison between different
areas might well be accurate.
(5) Branka Magas, "The Destruction of Yugoslavia," p. 196
