As this article is being written we are close to three weeks of NATO bombardment all over Yugoslavia in the name of humanitarian intervention and the "ethical foreign policy" of the British government. Since then, the Serbian leadership under Slobodan Milosevic has continued its military operations in Kosovo driving out 100,000's of Kosovar Albanians across the borders of Montenegro, Macedonia & Albania. People are leaving the war zone towards Serbia too. A few of these displaced people are ending up as refugees in NATO countries but the great majority are still suffering in camps in the countries they have fled to. The ones grudgingly accepted by NATO are being kept in prison-like conditions out of touch with family and friends elsewhere. NATO command is insisting on its mission to "attack, pull apart, systematically and progressively degrade Yugoslavia [until] President Milosevic meets and honours international community demands".
Propaganda
In Britain, we have been subjected to a barrage of propaganda, vilifying Milosevic as a new genocidal Hitler, and claiming moral justification of whatever action NATO sees fit. We are hearing warnings of world war from the Russian government, and the American CIA's calling for arming of the Kosovan Liberation Army (KLA or UCK). We have heard the call for ground troops, and about the illegality of NATO action under international law and its side-stepping of the United Nations. Aid of a few million pounds is being collected in Britain while £100's of millions are being spent on the NATO war effort, not to mention billions already spent on high-tech weapons and planes.
Balance
The government in Serbia (part of the remaining Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) is engaged in a nationalist adventure in Kosovo, one of the poorest regions of the FRY. The area has seen great changes over the centuries, but especially this century, where the relative size of Serbian and Albanian influence has swung back and forth before, during and after the two world wars, dependant on external forces. Milosevic rose to his present position of power partly due to a promise to end the partial autonomy of Kosovo, which he did in 1989. The Kosovar Albanians, a 90% majority in the province, have since experienced a systematic repression. As a result, the region has been as precariously balanced as Bosnia, and there has been an upsurge in nationalist movements, though until now this has not resulted in major warfare.
Albania
Leading up to the present conflict, the West opposed Milosevic's plans but at the same time had neither encouraged the nationalist movements (branding the KLA terrorist), nor supported an independent Kosovo. People in neighbouring Albania have for the last few years been suffering from the aftermath of a government corruption catastrophe caused by their Democratic Party and Mafia. At the same time NATO was using the area as a base for operations since the first break up of Yugoslavia. Many workers lost everything in the financial collapse caused by investment practices allowed by the new free market, which had been propped up by aid from the European Union, resulting in countrywide insurrection. Elsewhere in the region, in Macedonia which also borders Albania, Kosovo and Greece, tensions continue due to claims on its northern territory by Bulgaria. Hungary, to the North of Serbia, has recently become a NATO member. These factors may have great repercussions which NATO will surely have anticipated in its bid to control the long-term prospects of an unstable region.
Air-strikes
As Milosevic stepped up the military action in Kosovo, both the UN and NATO warned of possible military action. In the end NATO has decided to go it alone and launched air-strikes on the whole of Yugoslavia starting on March 24th, straight after 1400 monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were withdrawn. Milosevic declared a state of war. People are now dying daily from NATO bombs, Serbian and KLA forces in Kosovo, and in the squalid refugee camps.
Nationalism
What can anarchists say about what is happening, and more importantly, what can we do? First of all we have to oppose the war-mongering of all sides, whether NATO, Serbia, or the KLA, and to do this we also need to distinguish and understand the types of nationalism involved.
Milosevic's nationalism is/was one of a desire for a Greater Serbia, where Kosovo and preferably Montenegro are firmly under his control. But Serbia can in no way be compared to Germany in the second World War, nor Milosevic as a new Hitler. Germany was the second most powerful country in the world at the time, whereas Serbia is economically quite poor, especially compared to other European countries. Neither can the fascism under Hitler be usefully compared with the Milosevic regime, even if the government itself is not uniform and some like vice-president Seselj might politically be fascist. A swing to the right could well be the result of NATO's attacks, but the ludicrousness of the 'fascist' analogy is shown by the CIA's condemning of Serbia's intended court martial of captured US soldiers as "a Stalinist show-trial". Serbia both fought the Nazis and to some extent resisted Stalinism, but what better for NATO to make out Milosevic as a Hitler and a Stalin all rolled into one. Not only that but genocide - in Hitler's case a systematic attempt to eradicate the Jews from the face of the earth - was part of the Nazi's explicit plan. To use this word for any and all mass deaths in war, even the atrocities of Bosnia or Rwanda, irrespective of the motivation of the perpetrators, is to belittle the holocaust and its death camps. Equating Serbs with pre-WWII Germans is an attempt to make ordinary people into legitimate targets for 'democratic' NATO. All of the terms fascist, genocide or even ethnic cleaning (which is used interchangeably with genocide by the likes of Robin Cook) are just propaganda words being used to over-simplify the situation and characterise NATO's enemy as 'evil' so we don't have to question why 'we' are in this war.
Chewing gum
On the other hand, is NATO being imperialist; another kind of nationalism? We are hearing this term used by the left and some anarchists but this is probably not very useful either. Imperialism implies a desire for state power in the region, when this situation is really more about imposition of economic dependency. In so much as the USA dominates NATO and the UN, in addition to a military show of force that can boast to be able to wage war in Iraq and Yugoslavia simultaneously ("We can walk and chew gum" in the words of a NATO spokesman), we are really seeing just another extension of capitalist globalisation, something which has come to supersede the imperialist and colonialist aspirations of individual Western states in the latter part of this century. Already the International Monetary Fund is able to hold Russia to ransom enough for it be careful about how far it's government will go against NATO, and it seems likely that the IMF and World Bank will have a similar role to play in the Balkans when the military intervention has subsided. Other anarchists have already made the connection to the USA/EU trade wars (e.g. over bananas, presided over by the World Trade Organisation), and it seems clear that the US and Germany will soon be fighting with each other over the terms of IMF involvement when the war is over. On the other hand, the US must also be hoping that its dominance in NATO will help it put the EU in line with its economic policy.
Nationalists
What about the nationalist movements in Kosovo then? As usual, the left in Britain is divided over this one. Some in the Labour Party left are anti-NATO and want a UN solution that restabilises Yugoslavia and do not want an independent Kosova. Some like the Socialist Party do support independence, though like their position towards the Six Counties they insist this must be a self-determined "socialist Kosova as part of a socialist confederation of Balkan states". Living Marxism are more pro-Serbia whilst some of the smaller sects like the Alliance for Workers Liberty are pro-national liberation even as far as calling for arming of the KLA (just like the CIA mentioned above!). The Socialist Workers Party are much more firmly anti-NATO whilst stating that the "KLA has fallen into the trap of calling for Western intervention" and criticises their "attacks on Serb civilians in Kosovo alongside Serbian forces". However they fall short of completely opposing Albanian nationalism. An internationalist approach must oppose all sides, call for the desertion of all troops against the war, and for the revolutionary overthrow of the Milosevic regime.
Hypocrisy
If it is necessary to make comparisons with other conflicts, it is to show up the hypocrisy of NATO. Apart from its history in Ireland, both North and South, Britain has its other well known example of supporting the Indonesian government against East Timor. The US together with many of the other NATO members has a long history of supporting either government against oppressed minorities (e.g. Israel against Palestinians, Turkey against Kurds) or rebels against government particularly in the interests of anti-communism (e.g. Mojahedin in Afghanistan, UNITA in Angola). The US has no end of interventions in Central and South America, Asia and Africa, always for their own interests, often anti-Communist, often for stated "humanitarian" reasons. Also we don't see NATO picking a fight with China over Tibet or Russia in Chechnya, other superpowers with equally nasty policies. Many of these conflicts continue to this day. We can be under no illusion that the present war is any different, and that the refugees mean nothing to NATO unless their plight is to prop up their illusion of humanitarian intervention against Milosevic.
Just war
We can point out that British aid organisations are raising just a drop in the ocean with their 'jumble sales' for Kosovo victims, when this could be paid for so many times over by the amount of military spending e.g. cruise missiles at a $1m each. Also their stance doesn't necessarily entail opposing the bombings, and leaders of the Christian ideals underpinning so many charities are happy to call the NATO action a "just war".
Action not words
There's a lot we can say, but what can we do? We must have an anti-war position in this conflict, anti-bombing, anti-ground troops (whether NATO or UN). Getting drawn into accepting any sort of statist military solution is to fuel the nationalism and the conflict, which is killing people on sides. We must recognise the difficulty of our comrades in Yugoslavia, as it will become more and more difficult and dangerous for them to oppose their government's war and oppose mass mobilisation (a real possibility if NATO sends in ground troops). The danger is to fall into the trap of seeing "the Serbs" as one entity when there are a whole range of opposition forces, from our anarchist comrades, to 'ethnic minorities' in Serbia itself, to 'pro-democracy' Western-looking middle classes, many of who opposed Milosevic over Bosnia (e.g. in the Zajedno alliance which organised mass demonstrations) and who now feel betrayed by the NATO bombing. We can exchange news and solidarity greetings such as is already happening between anarchists using electronic mail, and circulate this both to show there are people in Serbia that oppose the government and to find out the extent of the bombing which we are not seeing here. Just as we are not told about the million plus people that are dying in Iraq because of sanctions, we will need to know the effect of NATO's destruction of fuel and water supplies, since the government in Serbia will no doubt prioritise its military over the civilian population. We also need to tell them what they are not being told by their media about Kosovo and the border refugee camps, which is being tightly controlled (Serbian TV depicts the NATO logo as stealth bombers in the shape of a swastika!).
As one anarchist message from Belgrade said, "you are probably more informed about what is going on". We can also support comrades elsewhere in the region like the Zagreb Anarchist Movement in Croatia, who have relaunched their Zaginflatch newsletter and put it out on the internet in opposition of the bombing of Serbia. We must expose the hypocrisy of the British government's treatment of refugees (destined for open prisons if they come here), and its attitude to asylum-seekers in general. Perhaps a more difficult task is to be able to support anti-war activities in Kosovo itself against both Serbian and Kosovan Liberation Armies. If we cannot give direct help, we must show in Britain that we are against NATO, whilst at the same time not being confused with being pro-Serbian nationalists. This means organising and attending demonstrations with a clear "NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR" stance. Other protests in Europe have been much larger and have happened much sooner than those in Britain, as the US, Britain and France are the strongest supporters of the NATO war-mongering. Big public demonstrations are needed in the interests of internationalism and to try and reverse the propaganda war by our governments. This must happen quickly because it will become all the more difficult to counter a rising patriotism, if/when British troops start dying in any numbers.
"When the smoke from the bombs clears away, the social differences will be even bigger, the poverty even worse, the authorities even more harsh. And the matter of Kosovo WON'T be solved!", from an e-mail message by Mirko, human rights and peace activist, Pancevo, Zrenjanin (Vojvodina), FRY.
For further anarchist news and views on the war, including Zaginflatch newsletter and articles on the US/EU trade war connections such as "NATO goes bananas in the Balkans", visit the A-Infos on-line Anarchist News Service (and archive) web-site http://www.ainfos.ca