I have no desire to support Milosevic, and in fact I dearly hope (knowing it's not very likely) that a mass movement will arise soon to replace his regime with one that will lead Yugoslavia into a better and socialist future. However, from here (Columbus, Ohio, of all places!), I can do very little about the fact that he is the head of the state as of now.
But if you think it is because of Milosevic's personal political character or actions that Yugoslavia has become the target of imperialism, you are sadly mistaken. It really doesn't matter if you are Ho Chi Minh, Salvador Allende, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, or whatever, in the eyes of the empire _if and when_ the said empire finds you and your country to be standing (in some manner) in their way (of capitalist penetration and imperial political control). Then and only then intensive demonization begins. The only differences are as follows: (1) this time, much of the left has also bought into it; and (2) if Milosevic were actually a socialist, probably he would be more strongly attacked and might be already dead by now.
Below I attach Jay Moore's comments on the events leading up to the revoking of autonomy of Kosovo, as well as the NYT article from 1987 that I already posted here once. Yoshie
*****
>In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news outlets
>usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the Kosovo Albanians' autonomy
>in 1989. This was a crucial decision, one of the major reasons that the
>Kosovo Liberation Army was formed. It also destabilized the Yugoslavian
>system and contributed to the country's breakup.
>
>Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted Kosovo's
>autonomy. The attached article, from the New York Times in 1987, gives
>important background to this decision. Although the article is easily
>found in the Nexis database, little to none of this information has
>found its way into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the Times or
>anywhere else.
>
>If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would likely
>dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12 years ago,
>when Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the New York Times
>would not seem to have any particular interest in defending Serbs or
>attacking Albanians.
>
>It should be kept in mind that some of the charges in this article may
>be exaggerated or politically motivated. Of course, the same is true
>of atrocity reports that are being carried in the New York Times and
>other papers today.
>
>*****************
>The New York Times
>November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
>Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1;
>
>"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil
>Conflict"
>
>By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
>
>BELGRADE, Yugoslavia
>
>Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic
>friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility
>of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7
>million people, in World
>War II.
>
>The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against
>the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of
>society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.
>
>A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks,
>killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
>
>The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian
>cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
>
>Vicious Insults
>
>Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and
>regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have
>exchanged vicious insults.
>
>Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn
>down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been
>knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders
>to rape Serbian
>girls.
>
>Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia
>and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and
>Croats.
>
>Radicals' Goals
>
>The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an
>interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia,
>southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania
>itself.'' That includes large chunks of
>the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.
>
>Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania
>governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the
>capital of neighboring Albania.
>
>There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana
>is giving them material assistance.
>
>The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau
>ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic
>Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The
>rest are Serbians
>and Montenegrins.
>
>Worst Strife in Years
>
>As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
>Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially
>strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in
>1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'
>' in all but
>name.
>
>The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the
>worst in the last seven years.''
>
>Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the
>matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and
>religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law,
>politics, families and
>flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic
>Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of
>heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were
>officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are
>today.
>
>Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems
>with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs
>and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond
>Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8
>million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.
>
>''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member
>of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had
>driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.
>
>Attacks on Slavs
>
>Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic
>Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320
>ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half
>of them
>characterized as severe.
>
>In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic
>Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren
>last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic
>Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian
>women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the
>Communist Party.
>
>As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police
>officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
>
>Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling
>the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal
>Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.
>
>'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia
>
>High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their
>country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern
>Ireland.
>
>Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an
>interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south,
>like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of
>Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
>
>The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula,
>told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic
>Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total
>of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality
>were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula
>said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing
>officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into
>weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing
>flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''
>
>Concerns Over Military
>
>Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had
>slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech
>struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start
>their mandatory year of military service.
>
>Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter
>of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral
>Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.
>
>He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for
>assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said
>they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in
>Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They
>reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become
>involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.
>
>Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the
>autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil
>service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately
>feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian
>authorities.
>
>Region's Slavs Lack Strength
>
>While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they
>are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them
>have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for
>the safety of the Slavic north.
>
>Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership
>pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy
>under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
>
>But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late
>September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed
>Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the
>country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an
>appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted
>the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for
>''the policy of the hard hand.''
>
>''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us
>Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav
>politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four
>decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the
>state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr.
>Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a
>strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.
>
>Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt
>Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all
>sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.
>
>Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview
>in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and
>Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''
>
>But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for
>Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did
>when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.
>
>Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments
>to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an
>extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave
>problems.
>
>The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in
>Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's
>mainstream.
>
>Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company
>
********** Jay Moore http://www.neravt.com/left/