I wrote: >>I don't know enough to cite detailed evidence, but I think your statement >>that the Kosova nationalist movement "was inspired by the desire to have a >>racially and religiously pure republic" is slander. What is your evidence >>for this? Louis posted this article: > >The New York Times >>November 10, 1987, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition >>SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk >>Pristina Journal; Blood Will Have Blood; It's the Code of the Clans >>By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times > An anecdote about 'blood feuds' is evidence? The article doesn't even quote anyone calling for racial (certainly not religious) purity. But if it is correct about the extent to which Albanians used to run the show one can certainly understand why they nearly all got pissed off about their lot in Milosovic's Yugoslavia. I had written: >There is no way the Kosovars and the other citizens >of the old Yugoslavia will ever dump reactionary nationalist leaders and >re-federate or cooperate in some other progressive form without >crystal-clear assurances of national rights, which include the right to >make the occasional 'wrong' decision. Yoshie replied: >What if the reactionary nationalist leaders made, in the name of >'self-determination,' the wrong decision whose effect would be the negation >of self-determination? Obviously, under the rule of the NATO ground troops >(or other 'peace-keeping' forces from foreign nations), ethnic Albanians >and other peoples in Kosovo will have no power of self-determination. What >they can and cannot do will be determined by foreign military powers. Yes, like the KLA is doing now. NATO/US is ultimately the greatest enemy of of Kosavar self-determination there is. The Albanians will be be abandoned, like the Kurds, or turned into a outright protectorate, as is being discussed now. I'm still expecting a deal with Milosovic - the US has made it clear the last thing they want is 'Kosovo for the Albanians'. But reactionary leaders and wrong decisions don't change the basic point, that support for Yuglosavia against imperialism should not imply acceptance of Milosovic's chauvinism and physical aggression towards Kosovars. This stance writes off millions of potential allies against both imperialism and the national chauvinism. Support for self-determination has to be unconditional or it means nothing, but that doesn't mean it has to be uncritical or imply political support for any current policy. I responded here on the issue of self-determination, but I am also struck at how much we all (myself included) get sucked into the line of both chauvinists and imperialism that this is all about national or ethnic tensions. It is ABC that social factors are the real underlying issue. Bill Burgess
