The bombing has stopped, but the fighting in Kosovo is far from over. The whole region is under the military control of NATO-dominated K-For troops whilst the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UN Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK) takes over in the civil arena. Kosovan Liberation Army forces are terrorising the 20% non-Albanian minority as UNMIK struggles to set up a new police force and impose their version of so-called multi-ethnic democracy. 90% of the 850,000 refugees and 'internally displaced persons' have now been returned but this is to an uncertain future in an occupied area ravaged by the war - facing burnt-out houses, mines and unexploded bombs, and uranium shells which could cause deaths from cancers and birth defects over years to come. Serbians and gypsies have left the region in fear of further KLA killings, including those who are refugees from the Krajina in Bosnia. In August, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 170, 000 Serbs out of around 200,000 had left Kosovo since K-For arrived and said that only 2,000 of the 40,000 Serbs in the capital Pristina remained, those people being subject to a kind of 'three strikes' activity - first a letter telling them to leave, then a visit, then assault. Meanwhile, the European Commission, together with the World Bank and IMF are working out their economic rebuilding program, with $2b promised for this purpose at a 'donor' conference which took place at the end of July in Brussels, to be finalised in October. Free market principles are enshrined in these agreements.
So what does all this say for anarchist politics and our response to the war, when the result is a class solidarity and internationalism at such an all-time low amongst the working classes in Yugoslavia, and between them and the working classes of the Western countries. If this war has proved one thing, it is the bankruptcy of the politics of self-determination which in some cases have resulted in total confusion within our movement. Whilst members of the International of Anarchist Federations like the Anarchist Federations in France and Italy took an encouraging 'no war but the class war' position like ourselves, the French group Alternative Libertaire found itself split over the war and the intervention of NATO. Initially the group issued a statement opposing Milosevic, ethnic cleansing, Serbian expansionism and supporting the refugees, but then went on to support self-determination for Kosova and for the intervention of United Nations armed forces! Worse still it developed a schism with one faction calling for the arming of the Kosovars and some even going as far as critical support for the NATO intervention - no to aerial bombardment but in favour of ground intervention.
In Britain, whilst Solidarity Federation and ourselves have maintained class based principles (and Class War have remained silent, at least in their Summer edition), other anarchists seem to have fallen into the same trap as Alternative Libertaire. In issue 217 of Black Flag a section entitled "No Easy Answers -Looking at the Balkans War" had as its core article a piece by a member of Workers Aid which stated that "The Kosova Albanians have the right to call for NATO action". What sort of message can this give to our comrades in Yugoslavia opposing the war? Workers Aid, in both their Workers Aid for Bosnia and subsequent Workers Aid for Kosova guises have always been clear about "taking sides", with a twisted notion of class solidarity which in practice only means calling for workers in Britain to support the Kosovar Albanians, whilst Serbian workers for the most part are lumped in with their "fascist" government. Industrial Worker, paper of the anarchist influenced union Industrial Workers of the World(IWW) in the USA, suggested in May that as they were not opposed to all war (having opposed World War One, but supported the united front against Franco), this was why they could not justify producing a statement against NATO airstrikes, unless they could also "act based on the needs of those most directly effected" or "first demonstrate that we are also opposing the atrocities that are being perpetrated by the Serb army". This bizarre position completely ignores the fact there was a revolution going in 30's Spain worthy of support by other revolutionaries, whilst there is not even a sniff of socialism, never mind anarchism, in present day Kosovo. The IWW seems to have been taken in by the crude anti-fascist ideology which has been used so effectively to justify the fighting by all sides.
Why all this confusion? Self-determination seems to be a problem for some anarchists because we are for autonomy, against all states and authority. This appears to lead them to support, even if critically, national liberation struggles, especially when it's a clear case of British or Western imperialism. The problem with the Balkans situation, if you use the anti-imperialist logic, is its two-tiered imperialism. NATO member states against a weaker 'European' state, then the Serbian government against the region of Kosovo. Who can you support in this case when you are against both NATO and Serbia, yet NATO is against Serbia? Of course, support the weakest, support the Kosovan Albanians against the imperialism of both, for the self-determination of the Kosovars. Then blame NATO for denying self-determination, even though the reality is now, and always looked like it would be, a nationalist purge by the proponents of a 'greater Albania'. Class analysis is thrown out the window.
The demonstrations in Britain were important and necessary, but we were weakened by the confusions of the proponents of self-determination. Had we been larger we could have completely drowned out the reactionary voice of pro-Serbian bigotry that led so many people to avoid demonstrations altogether. We could have had the strength for some serious direct action at air bases. As has been said in No War But The Class War circles, libertarians should never take sides in capitalist war, only make sides in the class war. Making sides means keeping to our principles, showing in our publications to the working classes at home and abroad what we stand for, giving strength to our comrades in the war-torn regions (like those Kosovan revolutionaries who might dare to question the might of the KLA, and those opposing any kind of Serbian patriotism), creating doubt in the minds of the 'must do something' public in Britain who supported NATO, creating a climate where soldiers will refuse to fight for their governments now and in the future. Perhaps even convince them what we know, that capitalism needs war to survive, and there will be no end to it until we have a social revolution. We have tried to do this, and we have mostly failed, but this is no excuse to abandon anarchism in favour of liberalism. Our comrades in Yugoslavia, small in numbers as we are here, did not need to see anarchist principles crumble as they have in this war. The position of 'no war but the class war' is not a cop-out, it is a long term and short term principle which denies the false choice between 'evils'. To make it a reality we need to be even more active in encouraging internationalism in the working class to the extent that ordinary people feel confident, organised and supported enough to resist their war-mongering governments and national liberation movements.