I have made a number of criticisms of the imperialist nature of the intervention by the NATO powers. But I maintain that the Serb regime is fascist and the danger of fascism is high, especially in the former socialist countries, and I maintain that the logic of the international united front against fascism of 1935 remains important. That includes the possibility that certain imperialist states can play a progressive part and should be pressed to do so, while criticising their reactionary role.
Public opinion seems to be stronger in Europe than in the USA, that this behaviour towards the Kosovo Albanians is completely unacceptable.
It would have been less imperialist not to have relied exclusively on superiority of air power, to have parachuted in armed forces to command strategic points on the border between Kosovo and Serbia, and to have armed the KLA further, on condition that they respected human rights.
Yoshie however has IMO conscientiously and in a reasoned way promoted a pacifist line of appeasement of social fascism. Other posts that argue just for humantarian intervention seem to me to be patronising. The people of the former Yugoslavia have the ability to solve their differences so long as gross aggression based on having inherited the power of the Yugoslav armed forces, does not prevail.
Yoshie recycled a post from NYT of 1987 justifying the removal of the right of the people of Kosovo to self determination. It is a racist article justifying fascist repression of a minority. It is indeed pro-Serb propaganda.
>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.
Typical Serb nationalist use of sentimental moral authority to prepare the ground for oppression of a minority.
>>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.
The term "the various Slavic populations" disguises the fact of the existence of a larger oppressor nation, the Serbs, and a smaller oppressed nation, the Albanians. While it is true there are three Serbian provinces - Serbia, Voivoidina, and Monetnegro, when it comes to the federal army, which is what really matters, there is one single federal army dominated by Serbs.
>>
>>A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks,
>>killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
Sensational incident put early in the article for dramatic effect. Perhaps he had been beaten up.
>>
>>The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian
>>cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
This wicked bit of information is entirely explicable. Whether the vital Federal Army could be used by the Serbs to oppress the other nations depended on whether the other nations and nationalities could communicate among themselves and ensure that the army would not be used against their own people. The fact that cells were emerging was a sign that national oppression and friction was growing. And in this case it cannot be blamed on the European Union since Kosovo is too poor to attract the attention that Croatia and Slovenia got.
>>
>>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.
Including Serb politicians to Albanian politicians? If so that is still not a reason to withdraw the right to self-determination, but rather to improve political work on a voluntary basis to argue that the population should freely decide against secession. Meanwhile to strengthen democratic rights and the rule of law.
>>
>>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.
This is indeed regurgitation of unverified Serb nationalist propaganda.
>>
>>Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia
>>and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and
>>Croats.
The racist implication of this is that they should not breed so fast!
>>Radicals' Goals
Insinuation that radicalism is wrong.
>>
>>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.
The right to self-determination would certainly include these possibilities.
After all the former Soviet Union split up, and just had a looser CIS. That is a safer framework for coming together again than any one group trying to impose unity by force. Look at the lesson of Chechnya in the Russian Federation itself.
>>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.
Is that meant to be shocking?
>>There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana
>>is giving them material assistance.
Yes it acted with great restraint. But the mention of hard line (1987) is to insinuate another reason to prejudice the reader to understand why the autonomy of Kosovo had to be withdrawn.
>>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,
Figures please in responsible article in a supposedly responsible journal. I wonder if they were fleeing at the rate that Yoshie knows Albanians are now fleeing Kosovo, but which she chooses to distract attention from by posting this 1987 article.
>>Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
>>Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially
>>strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians
What was the cause of that bloodshed? Why should there be bloodshed at all if the province was self-governing?
>>in Pristina in
>>1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'
>>' in all but name.
What would be wrong in it becoming a Republic of Kosovo if it wanted to? What would be wrong if Scotland became the Republic of Scotland it they want to?
The issue of the security of the minority is a matter of human rights, not to take away the right to determination of the majority.
>>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,
Note how it is the Yugoslavs as a whole who do the blaming. The Serb nationalists have disappeared from the dramatis personae.
>>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.
Why is it a "problem" in marxist terms if the population of a geographically compact area want to exercise a right to self-determination?
>>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.
Then the position of the Albanian minorities in those provinces has to be dealt with in terms of human rights. It cannot be a reason for removing the right to self-determination of the people of Kosovo.
In fact the background for this was the increasing apartheid whereby Serbs had separate schools for their children in Kosovo instead of learning the Albanian language.
>>''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.
What a disgracefully racist remark from someone who is meant to represent Yugoslavia as a whole, above nationalties, but who is clearly speaking as a Serb nationalist. No wonder the party disintegrated.
>>Attacks on Slavs
>>
>>Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic
>>Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months.
What irresponsibility in an article, if such a subject is handled, not to document incidents impartially and give some context.
>>In the last two years, 320
>>ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half
>>of them
>>characterized as severe.
Perhaps they were demanding independence or road signs in Albanian, like Welsh people demand roadsigns in Welsh or burn down holiday cottages owned by Englishmen. That is not a reason to refuse autonomy to Wales.
>>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.
One occasion. Were there not incendiary remarks on the other side? And on this matter the party did take disciplinary action.
>>As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police
>>officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
As a precaution against what? Against Kosovo becoming independent?
>>Officials in Belgrade
would those officials by any chance by free of Serb racist prejudices?
>>view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling
>>the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal
>>Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.
Experiment? It was based on a marxist policy of the self-determination of nations and their voluntary collaboration in a nation. What undermined Yugoslavia was the substitution of this with bourgeois nationalism.
>>'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.
What a formula for undermining self-determination!
>>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.''
Well at least his Serb identity is openly stated. But why should a voluntary confederation be "against us". The settlement in the former Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union is much safer for laying the possibility of future collaboration again on voluntary basis than trying to force unity by the more powerful section imposing unity on the less powerful.
>>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.
This is using the name of the "federal" government to advance a sectional Serbian nationalist interest, to suppress the attempts of the individual nationalities in the army from organising to ensure that the powerful federal armed forces were not used by the Serbs against them.
>>''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.
What is wrong with democratic groups in a people's army?
>>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.''
Highly partisan Serbian nationalist propaganda, without numbers and references, or comparisons with other areas. A recipe for anecdotal rumour mongering. What the reader should be informed about is the arrangements for the federal army to be a democratic citizens army and in what ways this needed review.
>>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.
The author has to milk this story twice about a young concept who was presumably mentally deranged at the time. We do not know. Perhaps he was drunk. Perhaps he had been raped.
The tear-jerking reference to fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start military service is more propaganda.
>>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.
What a shameless racist way of describing the situation! By a federal servant. These people are time bombs who breed too much. They probably smell too.
>>He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for
>>assessing their behavior.''
What is this superior innuendo from someone who is meant to be the federal secretary of defence?
>>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.
So they should. That is why a marxist policy on the self-determination of nations should be upheld.
>>Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the
>>autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil
>>service, schools and factories.
If that were so, would it be surprising if they make up 85% of the population? And if it is so, is that a reason, as Yoshie appears to think, why it was reasonable to withdraw their autonomy in 1989?
>>Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately
>>feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian
>>authorities.
Especially no doubt if they are racist in their attitudes.
>>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.
"fled"? They were raped, and shot to encourage this exodus. But now we get the numbers. 20,000 in seven years is not very much. Yoshie remember, is posting this article for our reference at a time when Serb fascism is managing to make Albanians flee at the rate of 20,000 a day! What apologetics!
>>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 a minority were openly racist.
>>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.
So Milosevic is the bad guy, but the whole article up to this point has made it clear there is a "Kosovo problem". The chauvinism is not confined to Milosevic and his supporters. That is most important to understand. It has become endemic.
>>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.
alarm
Kosovo is a problem
a powder keg
It is not said that this Slovene might attribute the explosive nature of the situation more to Serb nationalists than to the Kosov Albanians.
>>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.
This is the devious way the article prepares for the thrust: the solution is to be the removal of autonomy.
>>Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments
>>to the constitution.
In abstract. The people doing it are not named.
>>The League of Communists is planning an
>>extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave
>>problems.
So far there is no evidence that there is anything grave except the failure
to recognise Kosovo's right to self-determination up to and including independence.
>>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.
By force or hypocrisy.
This article is reminiscent of the bleeding heart hypocritical articles that commented endlessly from a white perspective on the problems of apartheid South Africa.
The apartheid logic of this Serb nationalism has now become fully apparent.
>>Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company
At the time a very cleverly placed article designed to neutralise any US opposition to the coup that was being planned.
In reproducing it twice, we should thank Yoshie for demonstrating her zeal in being ready to apologise for social fascism. I see she is just hinting that she might unsub because it is all unfair. I think she should face up to her systematic reproduction of Serbian nationalist propaganda.
Chris Burford
London