[R-G] U.S./NATO want to carve out Kosovo from Serbia

[Anthony Fenton]

U.S./NATO want to carve out Kosovo from Serbia
By John Catalinotto
Published Dec 20, 2007 4:58 PM
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/kosovo-1227/

The ultra-right-wing forces now running Serbia’s Kosovo province plan  
to announce its secession from Serbia in 2008. The U.S. and most NATO  
powers support this reactionary move, continuing their strategy of  
“divide and conquer” in the Balkans. This strategy has pulled  
Yugoslavia into pieces, leaving the region unstable, divided and now  
facing new internecine wars.

Employed throughout the 1990s, this strategy succeeded in separating  
once socialist and united Yugoslavia into a half-dozen capitalist  
mini-states. It is an error to call these states “independent.” They  
are weak neo-colonies dominated by the West, pillaged mainly by U.S.,  
Italian, and German-based corporations and banks, and dependent on  
imperialism.

Now Serbia, once the strongest and most multinational republic in the  
Yugoslav Federation, is itself threatened by the same reactionary  
forces that tore apart Yugoslavia.

Who rules Kosovo now? The same people who led the armed gang called  
UCK by its Albanian initials against Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Former  
General Hashim Thaci, a UCK head, has been Kosovo’s president since  
an election in November. This grouping has ultra-right-wing politics  
appealing to the most reactionary and chauvinist aspects of Kosovar- 
Albanian nationalism.

Though armed by the U.S. and Germany, the UCK was unable to win  
serious firefights in Kosovo until the Pentagon stepped in. The U.S.  
military used its overwhelming air power to carry out a murderous 78- 
day bombing attack on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. U.S. and NATO  
bombs and rockets destroyed much of the industrial infrastructure in  
Serbia, also bombing bridges, schools and 147 hospitals.

Under the pressure of this bombing and the threat of an even bloodier  
invasion, the Yugoslav government agreed in June 1999 to let NATO  
forces occupy Kosovo. With NATO backing, the UCK set up a corrupt,  
rightist regime that proceeded in the following eight years to  
persecute and drive out of the province many of the remaining people  
of Serb, Jewish, Roma, Egyptian and other nationalities, including  
the pro-Yugoslav-oriented Albanians. Most of these refugees found a  
new home inside non-occupied Serbia or Montenegro.

According to the agreement that ended the bombing, the U.N. Security  
Council adopted Resolution 1244, which reaffirmed “the commitment of  
all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of  
Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the successor state. That means that  
Washington, Berlin, etc., will break international treaties and  
international law when they recognize Kosovo’s secession.

No liberation, no independence

UCK means “Kosovo Liberation Army,” yet no one was liberated when it  
came to power. Even Albanian Kosovars who opposed the UCK had to flee  
the province. Under UCK rule, Kosovo became a center for trafficking  
in illegal drugs and enslaving women and children through  
prostitution rings—and a corrupt regime that made the UCK-run  
enterprises look like minor-league versions of Halliburton and  
Blackwater.

The Thaci regime is expected to declare “independence” for Kosovo  
early in 2008. The new entity, however, would be even more dependent  
on NATO and on Western imperialism than the other new Balkan  
republics. Its main role will be as a NATO cats-paw in the Balkans  
and as a transit space for oil and gas pipelines that avoid Russian  
territory on their way west.

The imperialists already control most of Serbia’s—including Kosovo’s— 
profitable industries and commerce. This includes Kosovo’s valuable  
Trepca mines. But a weak and separate Kosovo with a completely  
dependent regime is a reliable military base where NATO troops can  
remain indefinitely.

Soon after NATO troops occupied Kosovo in 1999, the U.S. built a  
major military base there called Camp Bondsteel. There are still  
7,000 U.S. troops stationed there among the 16,000 NATO troops still  
in Kosovo. And now the European Union has decided to send 1,600 more  
to be there when the Kosovo regime announces it will separate.

As war opponent Michel Collon pointed out before 1999 in his book  
“Liar’s Poker,” by controlling Kosovo the U.S. gains control over a  
route for oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia and the Caucasus to  
Europe that avoids Russian territory.

The Russian government, on the other hand, is the main power opposing  
Kosovo’s secession. Moscow supports Resolution 1244 and the  
territorial integrity of Serbia.

Media demonizes Serbs again

With Kosovo in the news again, the corporate media have again gone on  
a binge demonizing Serbs. They do this even though the current  
government in Belgrade had the full backing of U.S. secret services  
and nongovernmental organizations funded by billionaire George Soros  
when it overthrew the Socialist Party government led by Slobodan  
Milosevic in October 2000. Among such groups was the right-wing youth  
group “Otpor” or “Resistance,” which Washington later used to  
organize reactionary movements in Ukraine, Georgia, and now Venezuela.

Once having deposed Milosevic and the Socialists, the imperialists  
started pressuring the new Serbian regime—the one they had installed— 
to keep making further concessions to Western penetration. Separating  
Kosovo from Serbia would be a painful blow, especially because Serbia  
has historic monuments and churches in the northern part of the  
province. Since the start of the occupation in 1999, about 200  
medieval Serbian churches have been destroyed by the UCK under NATO  
watch. If the Kosovo regime makes a unilateral declaration of  
independence before the Jan. 20 presidential election in Serbia, it  
could provoke sharp political struggles in Serbia.

The media have been repeating all the same lies that they repeated in  
1999 to justify the “humanitarian” bombing of Yugoslavia. The main  
lie was that Serbia was committing “genocide” of the Albanian  
Kosovars. In 1999, U.S. and German government spokespeople claimed  
that Serbs had killed 100,000 Kosovar Albanians and buried them in  
mass graves.

Expecting to find bodies everywhere, a United Nations team searched  
occupied Kosovo all summer of 1999 and found a total of 2,108 bodies  
of all nationalities. Some were killed by NATO bombing and some in  
the war between the UCK and the Serbian police and military. No  
massacres. No genocide.

Puerto Rico, Ireland, Basque Country?

The U.S., Britain and France, along with Germany, are expected to  
give full diplomatic recognition to the Kosovo entity if Thaci  
declares “independence.” Some European Union members—Malta, Cyprus,  
Greece, Romania and Spain (in this case, because of its own  
oppression of the Basque Country)—have said they would not recognize it.

One might justifiably ask if Washington will also recognize the  
independence of Puerto Rico, if London will recognize the northern  
Irish counties’ right to join the rest of Ireland and if France (and  
Spain) will recognize self-determination for the Basque Country.  
There is little doubt the rulers in these capitals would answer, “No.”

There is a difference between the situations just described and that  
in Kosovo. In Kosovo there are, along with some smaller minority  
peoples, two major nationalities: Serb and Kosovar-Albanian. Each of  
these two nationalities is oppressed by imperialism, as are the other  
nationalities in the former Yugoslavia. The imperialists have been  
able to use the rightist UCK gang first against Yugoslavia and now  
Serbia, but neither nationality oppresses or exploits the other the  
way the imperialists in the U.S., Britain and France oppress and  
exploit the nationalities in their colonies.

When Tito’s partisan movement drove out the German occupiers in 1945  
and set up the Yugoslav Socialist Federation in the Balkans, the new  
socialist regime passed laws that both protected the interests of all  
the nationalities in Yugoslavia and tried to hold them together in  
one state. It succeeded for about 45 years despite historic  
differences among the nationalities. Then came the counterrevolution  
in the Eastern Bloc countries and a concerted attack by the  
imperialists on Yugoslavia.

To break up Yugoslavia, the imperialists have envenomed every  
difference among the nationalities by supporting the most reactionary  
parties and groupings in each of the six Yugoslav republics. This  
included financing those forces that collaborated with the Nazis  
during the German occupation in World War II. Imperialism has now  
imposed neo-liberal economic policies on the republics that promote  
competition and make cooperation impossible.

The only road to real independence from imperialism in the Balkans is  
to again take up the struggle for a united federation and join it to  
a struggle for socialism.

The writer helped organize the June 2000 Peoples Tribunal on  
Yugoslavia in New York and co-edited the book “Hidden Agenda: the  
U.S. NATO takeover of Yugoslavia” with International Action Center co- 
director Sara Flounders.
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