The war, which is ferociously striking Kosovo and Serbia, is not a surprise. The decomposition of Yugoslavia foreseeable since the death of Tito in 1980, effective in 1991, left face to face the dominant classes of Croatia and Serbia. Like bloody hounds, Milosevic and Tudjman disputed the last pieces: Krajina, Slavonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serb bourgeoisie seeks to preserve the last pieces of its territory, the "Greater Serbia ": Kosovo, at the price of a planned ethnic cleaning. This policy is not the only fact of the Croatian and Serb armies. It was practised on broad scale by all the imperialist and colonial powers since the 19th century, on all the continents. Tomorrow, certainly, it will be the turn of the Hungarians in Vojvodina, of the "Moslems" of the sandjak of Novi Pazar, before it will touch Macedonia with its Albanians, or Albania with its Greeks. Balkans find their vocation of powder magazine. In all Europe, until its Asian periphery, giving itself to the happiness of liberal "capitalism" since the collapse of "Communism "(i.e. State capitalism) in 1989, it is hour of ethnic cleanings, wars of "national independence", i.e. of gangland killings between "greater" and "smaller" national bourgeoisies: from the Caucasus (Chechnya, Abkhazia, Dagestan, High Karabakh) to Moldavia (Transnestria), new capitalisms are "cleaning", with the kalachnikov and the Churches’ sprinkler. New balances of power is taking place, whose whole populations bear the brunt and pay the strong price in mountains of corpses, in famines, bringing them closer to the state of barbarity.
All these conflicts do not are local. The USA and the European powers, which compete to provide the weapons, carefully poked them. Russia, even reduced with the state of clochardized power, does not fail to sell its most "competitive" products: kalachnikovs or missiles. Piece after piece, NATO – or rather the United States – imposes the pax americana in Central and Eastern Europe, "released" from the Russian "Big Brother". Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary adhere to the largest Mafia of the world A the border of Serbia, the installation of great American military bases, initially in Hungary, then in Albania and Bulgaria, takes all its significance. From the Black Sea to the Adriatic, the way must be free to impose the New American World Order. From Central Asia, including Caucasus, to the Mediterranean must settle in full safety the pipelines of strategic oil. But more than all, in the possibility of a world war, the troops of NATO must pass freely, using bases, from Caspian and Black Sea to the Mediterranean, to maintain their "order".
Milosevic was the wrong to disturb that kind of "order", by sowing local conflicts, by multiplying the focus of destabilisation in Balkans, by the "ethnic cleanings". The cleaning in Kosovo – after the "good cleaning" in Bosnia, carried out jointly as well by the Serb as by the Croatian and Bosnian "Moslem" troops (both allies of the United States), and with the blessing of UNO – was the "bad" one. It is creating not only a huge masse of refugees to be dealt by the European allies of the USA, but could logically continue like policy of the bourgeoisies in other Balkan countries, from Central Asia to the Near East (Kurdish question).
If Milosevic is an experienced criminal, it is no more than his Croatian mate Tudjman, who knew quickly jump in the "good" Western camp. The pretext of intervention given by the USA, through their armed arm, NATO, is the "humanitarian interference", this disgusting ideology laboriously worked out by UNO (International Association of crime). The right of interference, it is the right to intervene militarily to defend the interests of the American Empire everywhere in the world. This "right", it is the absolute "Un-right": the military force crushing like a road roller all that obstructs the dominant world power, soldiers and civil population. Today in Serbia and in Kosovo, without distinction of nationality, the populations are victims of the "surgical strikes" of NATO. The Serb workers, who are the true enemies of the Milosevic’s Regime, perish in their factories "cleanly" destroyed by the missiles of the "Allied Force", before it will come a total blockade condemning them to famine, like the working population in Iraq. The Albanians, who were not yet driven out of Kosovo, can now appreciate the effects of the "Humanitarian Right", at the impact of the American and European missiles. Tomorrow, perhaps, they will be able to taste, when Kosovo will be the terrain of terrestrial fights, the effects of the anti-tank shells with plutonium (used at the time of the Gulf war against Iraqi tanks), with their radioactive fallout. Their territory, like Serbia, is already a field of experimentation for new weapons usable in a third world war.
The right of humanitarian interference is finishing where the interests of the capitalist "Empire of Good", and of its "collateral" agents NATO and UNO, are starting. Did they worry – before the war of the Gulf – when the Sadam Hussein’s Regime, allied to the West against Iran, tried out true chemical Hiroshima against Iraqi Kurds? Did they threaten of intervention their sure Turkish allied, when this last one is practising a true "cleaning" of the Kurdish population? Were they concerned with the Kampuchean population decimated by the genocide perpetrated by the Pol Pot’s dictatorship, a "good" allied of the USA and China vis-à-vis the prosovietic Vietnam? Do they worry about Tibetan people undergoing the oppression of the Peking’s Regime, whereas this last is for the moment an ally vis-à-vis the Japanese economic power? Didn't France, NATO’s member, encourage the horrible massacre in Rwanda, by arming the butchers’ clan, whom it had trained? And, in 1995, the sacking of Srbrenica, which let in mass graves 10.000 victims shot by the Serb land force, wasn't it done with the assistance of the UNO’s troops, who contributed to the "sorting" of the victims?
The "right of humanitarian interference" succeeded as war alibi to the fight for "Freedom" against "Fascism", then against "Communism". The 700.000 Albanian Kosovars, driven out their houses, massacred by the Chetniks, now parked like animals in the humanitarian "camps" from Albania to Turkey, are certainly the pitiful victims of the Milosevic’s Regime, but as well as the Serb population. They are especially the victims of the ruling classes of the NATO’s countries, which knew in advance that they would be transformed into civil targets. They are the hostages of their expansion policy: to those the tents and meals are scarcely distributed. Like excluded people in the capitalist society, they are transformed into tramps, who are begging for the survival soup. In a perfectly cynical way, media campaigns are carried out, with a great success, in the countries of NATO, to encourage the population to massively pour gifts for the Kosovar refugees. Clearly the capitalists of all the European countries and the USA hope to pay minimum for the survival of the refugees. They do not interest the Empire of Good except that they are used as ideological alibi, and insofar as they do not become new immigrants of the Western countries, which would drive out them like stateless people.
The various canals of the media propaganda presented the war in Kosovo like a war of national liberation of 90 % of Kosovars oppressed by 10 % of Serbs. The Albanian population, in particular the working class, did not want a war of "national liberation". This one was provoked and organised by the United States, for the necessity of its military plans in Balkans. The USA provided weapons, uniforms, and material to the UCK’s guérilleros.UCK mobilise all young people arriving at the borders of Kosovo to send them on the front, whether they like it or not, while waiting for the landing of the "allied troops". Other people are fit for the camps of the Red Cross, in the most total destitution, or the deportation (Turkey, Norway, and Cuba on the American basis of Guantanamo).
This "war of liberation", approved by the European intellectuals in uniform of NATO, is a gigantic deception. The USA clearly meant that it would not be question of independent Kosovo. For them it is a question to installing their troops, with the assistance of the UCK’s soldiers, who are used as additional cannon fodder.
Never, such a conflict did not show as clearly as the "struggles of national liberation" are simple pawns in the hands of the great capitalist powers, whatever they are private or nationalised ("Liberal" or "Socialist"), only a preserve of fresh flesh for their military plans. The "self-determination of the people" used as front by NATO is nothing other than a passage to another form of constraint and terror, from the yoke of the Serb army to the military yoke of the NATO’s countries.
The conflict of Kosovo had only one "benefit", that to show what are able the Socialist governments which are majority in Europe. Jospin, Schröder, Blair, Dalema (former leader of the Italian Communist Party, now chief of the Italian government), with their Spanish Socialist comrade Solana at the head of NATO, are the chiefs of the allied air force which kill out of the workers in factories or working people constrained to endorse the uniform. They do it without least shame and show perfectly what they will be able tomorrow to do, if the workers of these countries endangered the capitalist system, of which they are the trusty servants.
That the former or the new Communist Parties, servants of Moscow, support the Milosevic’s Regime of oppression and terror, which cannot surprise. That they are also camouflaged themselves behind the humanitarian argument: stop all the bombardments of civilians in Serbia and Vojvodina, that is fair enough. Linked or not with the pro-Serb ultra-right (like Le Pen in France), they are hardly different from the pack of intellectuals in NATO’s uniform, calling for the systematic bombing of Serbia. All they form part of the long ideological chain which tries to convince the workers that it is necessary to choose a camp, and thus to let accept the idea that it will be necessary to die sooner or later for a "just" capitalist cause.
Pacifist networks were created, which invite to mobilisation to stop the bombings, ethnical massacres, and preach the conciliation and the return to civil peace. Humanitarian networks are set up to make collections for the Kosovar victims. As always, such networks, with "good intentions", "to stop the war", "to help the victims", convey the most infantile illusions. They want to let believe that calling for peace can "magically" stop the war; they call upon the reason of the capitalist States ("liberal" or "socialist") to stop a mechanics of insanity and terror. Such choruses of lamentations can only contribute to the general paralysis which now wraps the workers of the NATO’s countries: the conflict lets forget the need to defend his own class interests against capitalism and its crisis, unemployment and social misery.
As for humanitarian networks, even if their work is obviously appreciated on the spot by those who are destitute, they contribute – that they want it or not – to the conflict: on the one hand, there is the unilateral assistance brought by these organisations to Kosovars, often with the assistance of NATO, on the other hand, coming from Russia and "brothers countries", there is the exclusive assistance brought to the "Slavic and orthodoxe brothers". On the both sides, there is the implicit idea: "the enemies of our camp must die!" The humanitarian right is finishing where the military borders are starting.
The war in Serbia and in Kosovo will not stop as soon as. After weeks of bombing, there will be a land intervention of the NATO’s troops. Inevitably, Montenegro – remained "neutral" by the policy of its president – Albania and Macedonia will rock in the military conflict. The both last countries are already key bases of NATO. Even Hungary, now crucial for the offensive of NATO, and Bulgaria will not be outside of war.
The bombs of NATO caused the united front of the Serb population around Milosevic, in spite of the state of misery in which the Regime plunged the workers. The majority of the Macedonian and Bulgarian population give their support to Milosevic. The plans of NATO to lead a "short", "clean" and "surgical" war fall through. There is not any more solution but the military escalation. The prospect is not to peace plans, with signature of a new Dayton agreement.
Under these conditions, the "glorious" future traced by the European countries and the USA to set up a Marshall plan of rebuilding, after signing "peace", is another lie.
The populations of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, or of Balkans in general, do not have anything to wait but more misery, even a fall into barbarity with the systematic destruction of industrial infrastructures, transport, and supply. The workers, particularly, have all to lose with this conflict while choosing a camp on both sides of the military front.
The workers of the NATO’s countries, in particular in Europe, inevitably will be brought to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the war. Soldiers of Europe, Italy in particular, will be sent to fight and die for Kosovo. In the name of the interest of their "fatherland", the socialist and right wing governments will request even more sacrifices from their workers. Far from giving a solution to the crisis, the war will only exacerbate it. And in the place of a new Marshall rebuilding plan, it is economic and financial collapse that is to expect. The war will be a worsening factor in the current crisis of capitalism.
April 18, 1999.
Irreducible stateless people.