Amidst the continuing vivisection of Macedonia, terror in Kosovo and political struggles in Yugoslavia, it was hard this week to remember an important anniversary. Yet it was exactly six years ago, on August 30, 1995, that NATO first entered the Balkans' wars as a combatant, opening the path to all subsequent interventions, occupations and "disarmament" missions in the region.
Following an explosion at the Sarajevo marketplace on August 28, blamed immediately on Bosnian Serb artillery, NATO unleashed Operation Deliberate Force – a coordinated attack on Bosnian Serbs by US aircraft and Anglo-French ground troops stationed near Sarajevo. The bombing lasted three weeks, and was accompanied by a massive offensive of Bosnian Muslim and Croatian armies, driving hundreds of thousands of Serbs from their homes in Western Bosnia. Richard Holbrooke, head US envoy in the Balkans, described it as "bombs for peace." One look at today's Bosnia ought to be enough to see that what Holbrooke called peace others rightfully call Hell.
With Deliberate Force ended the UN role of impartial peacekeepers, however flawed it may have been. Blue Helmets were replaced by NATO and other "regional organizations," responsible only to the self-appointed rulers of the world. The road went on to Kosovo 1999 (Operation Allied Force – not "Merciful Angel," as some mistakenly believe) and Macedonia 2001 (Operation Essential Harvest), each cementing the position of NATO and the US as the masters of the Balkans.
Nowhere is this more evident than in today's Macedonia. Two weeks ago, Imperial legates forced the Macedonian government to agree to rewrite their constitution, and institute a second official language and ethnic quotas, submitting thus to the worst kind of identity politics so beloved in the Empire itself.
This week, Macedonian pilgrims and refugees streamed back into the torched, looted and ethnically cleansed village of Leshok, to celebrate a major Orthodox Christian holiday. This is the same village where the rampaging UCK demolished a 13th Century Orthodox monastery just ten days ago. Yet NATO was displeased by the visit of ethnically cleansed Macedonians, fearing a "confrontation" with Albanians and wary of a "nationalist" presence among the pilgrims.
On the eve of NATO deployment, the UCK blew up a motel near Tetovo. They tied two security guards to the explosives, causing the blast to scatter their body parts among the ruins. This gruesome act of terror made no sense, until it emerged that the motel was located in the hometown of Macedonia's patriotic Interior Minister, Ljuben Boskovski, who has strongly opposed any concessions to the UCK. Having failed to kill Boskovski once, the UCK felt a need to send him another message.
NATO-occupied Kosovo is indeed a paragon of virtue in the Balkans. Ten days ago, an Albanian family was machine-gunned to death as it drove through the UCK heartland. Kosovo's occupation authorities, military and civilian, immediately condemned "acts of violence [that] threaten the progress toward self-government and a democratic future," while the Reuters report tried to fit the attack in the context of Albanian "revenge attacks" against Serbs for "repression" under Milosevic.
Just a few days later, it turned out that the father of the massacred family was a police officer in pre-1999 Kosovo, loyal to his country and not the UCK. Immediately, it was the victim's own fault that his family was massacred; it was due to his involvement in allegedly "terrible crimes" supposedly committed by Serbs, local Albanians told the London Sunday Times. Thousands routinely showed up to funerals of UCK members killed in battles with Serbian police and the Yugoslav Army. Few came to the funeral of the 50-year old Hamza Hajra and his family, who, in the words of a local Albanian, "deserved to die."
It seems almost surreal, but what has happened both in Kosovo and Macedonia can be directly traced to August 30, six years ago. Though there is ample evidence of covert US operations in Bosnia and Croatia as early as 1992, it was on this very day in 1995 when the line was clearly crossed -- and NATO entered the Bosnian War.
Despite serious warnings of long-term consequences and numerous voices of dissent, the Empire decided to set its boot on the Balkans and enter the same morass that has ruined the Romans, the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Germans, and perhaps even the Soviets to some extent.
However tempting, it would also be disingenuous to pin the blame for the bloodshed in former Yugoslavia on the Empire alone. The existing ethnic politics, religious fanaticism, old-fashioned greed and power-lust were more than enough to ignite conflicts. But without Imperial intervention, these conflicts would not have taken such a high toll in lives and property.
Before the Imperial intervention, formalized six years ago, liberty, progress and peace in the Balkans were already hard to attain. Until the Empire leaves -- one way or another -- they will remain impossible.
Nebojsha Malic
Antiwar.com
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