At 15:30 25/01/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Leo, you've said nothing about the ethnic cleansing going on *right now* in
>Kosovo, which was the subject of my last post. You've explained why Kosovo
>in 1999 desperately needed ground forces, rather than airstrikes, to stop
>the Serbian onslaught. But NATO has troops on the ground in Kosovo *now*,
>and they're doing nothing to stop the ongoing killing and expulsions of
>non-Albanians, which so far have killed about 2000 people, expelled 200,000,
>and are being directed by the ex-KLA.
>
>As a committed supporter of fighting ethnic violence, why haven't you called
>for a ground war against the KLA? Why haven't your comrades? It would do a
>lot to dispel this misguided notion that there's bias against Serbs among
>the interventionists.
As I read Leo's post (and he has made clear that he must limit his time on this debate) Leo was talking about bringing the ethnic cleansing
> in Kosova to an end as quickly as possible with the minimum of harm
The fact that it is still going on is hardly desirable and raises the question whether more could have been done to bring it to an end. I do not dispute that over the last 10 years a lot of Serbs left Kosovo, and more have done since the NATO occupation force moved in. But Leo's point, with which I agree, was to try to break the cycle of serial ethnic cleansing. The occupation force may have hopefully *largely* done this by preserving the domicile of the majority population.
Remember that I still maintain the equation of the balance sheet must be whether there is an increase or a decrease in the total number dead. Clinton did a lot of imperialist things but the calculation he referred to at one time was reasonable: 200,000 dead in Bosnia - if Kosovo and the rest of the former Yugoslavia could be stabilised with only 10,000 dead that might be a mark of success.
I agree with that. Remember as you quite legitimately draw attention to the continued deaths in Kosovo I am also drawing attention to the lack of deaths in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
I would also assert that in East Asia now where serial cleansing (by religion) is on fire, the calculation must also be done in tens of thousands, but if necessary it will have to be done in hundreds of thousands. Clearly it is impracticable to have occupation forces throughout the whole of Indonesia and the Philippines. One exists in East Timor. But do you imagine there are no atrocious retaliations in East Timor against the muslims or that there is not a net outflow of muslims from East Timor?
Remember there are more parallels than may at first appear. The Indonesian army reluctantly cooperated with the arrival of the occupation force in East Timor after Jakarta had been threatened with destruction of the financial infrastructure of its already severely weakened economy by IMF sanctions. The Serb regime reluctantly accepted the Kosovo occupation force after the Serbian economy was threatened with continued destruction of its *material* infrastructure. (Remember the aerial bombing appeared to have been useless against tanks. It was effective against bridges. Some of it was symbolic and psychological but in essence it was economic warfare pursued by other means.)
Seth alleges that NATO troops are doing nothing to stop the ongoing killings and expulsions of Serbs from Kosovo now. I doubt they are doing *nothing* because it would weaken their credibility to do absolutely nothing. Among other things the west's credibility with Serbs who want to join the great family of western civil society lubricated by the benign workings of western finance capital. Why should they do absolutely nothing?
Some of the departures of Serbs will not be expulsions but will be voluntary because of fear and the insecurity of discomfort of living among an unfriendly majority population. The problem for the regime is one of building confidence and limiting the number of terroristic attacks.
None of us really knows what is going on, but if Seth and others raise criticisms that NATO is not doing enough that might strengthen its resolve and be progressive. On the other hand NATO is likely to point to recent news reports in the last week that British soldiers in Kosovo have come under fire again, and that recent attacks have been attributed to Albanians. Why after all would Serbs want to attack British troops however treacherous they felt them to be? Now you could try to mount a campaign on the basis that such attacks have been totally fabricated by other forces of NATO, covertly manufacturing them, but the news media are notoriously lazy and are likely to accept the more probable explanation that it is Albanian militants or revenge seekers. Are you really sure enough of your facts to bring together a movement that can effectively campaign on such a basis?
I do indeed think there is more that NATO could have done to reduce the terror against and departure of the Serb minority, as Seth noted:
>Then there's Chris Burford's suggestion that NATO "should have been aiding
>the KLA from the beginning in return for assurances that the KLA would avoid
>anti-democratic excesses. Only the KLA had the armed force on the ground
>among the Albanian population to have imposed effective state control over
>the Albanian population to stop these retaliatory murders."
>
>Chris perhaps does not understand that the "retaliatory murders" are being
>committed by a segment of the "Albanian population" called the KLA.
>
>And what's with "retaliatory murders"? Every murder in Kosovo has been a
>"retaliatory murder," according to the perpetrators.
Yes it is a cycle of retaliation. Like there is a cycle of abuse in personal lives. The question is how to damp down the speed of that cycle and to reduce it from a chain reaction to a mere psychological trauma.
Seth politely queries whether I understand that retaliatory murders are being committed by a segment of the Albanian population (in inverted commas - ?) called the KLA.
Well I do. Some retaliation may be done just on a personal basis - a father in law who hears his daughter in law had been raped, whose son is still missing and who is sleeping too badly despite or because of drinking too much alcohol, despite the religious injunctions that were better respected in his grandfather's day etc etc.... He works out a plan with another embittered male neighbour one night over another bottle of alcohol just to prove that they can still do something manly in the shitty mess that liberated Kosovo actually appears to be, and decide to make their Serb neighbours over the hill a little uncomfortable. Ha Ha Ho Ho. Not necessarily to kill them but of course if they retaliate they would deserve what comes to them. So this little expedition will of course be an armed one. At least they are going to do somethings
Other perpetrators will yes, be done by small bands of former KLA activists, perhaps the successors to the right wing bands that started the KLA, rather than the left wing groups who had conscientiously read all of Enver Hoxha's works at Pristina University in the 70's. Indeed the two groups may be the same. Remember that the crime wave in South Africa at the time of the fall of apartheid was credibly linked to the demobilisation of large bodies of demoralised armed men.
Because the retaliation is almost certainly being done by at least some elements of the KLA is **precisely** why the KLA should have been not just allowed but invited to take the responsibility for state power in Kosovo, and be answerable for law and order (in return for cash of course). Only members of the KLA could know how to track down other members of the KLA who are still killing Serbs. Only they could have a quiet word in the ear of the perpetrators with or without pointing a gun at their head as well.
Shocking but what other solution is there? Unless you are an idealist or an anarchist you have to address the question that there are still bodies of armed men who may at some stage point guns at other people. The task of stopping the cycle of retaliatory murders is one of damping down the ferocity and arbitrary nature of this process, but it is not possible to deny it exists. Put the bodies of armed men in uniform and pay them.
The reason why NATO did not coordinate its military strategy with KLA ground troops but preferred high level bombing was because its reasons were fundamentally imperialist and not fundamentally democratic. They wanted to control the total geo-political solution in the Balkans and did not want to be dependent on a maverick body with both strong leftist and rightist tendencies. Had they done so they could have won mass Albanian support for a policy of democratic reconstruction in which peaceful stabilisation of the economy with other minorities in Kosovo would have been part of the agenda. BUT they would have risked popular assemblies rapidly becoming more radical and more critical of their own actions and the policy of total dependence on hand outs from international finance capital instead of finding creative local solutions. That is the contradiction that the NATO occupying force had to put the lid on.
So I agree continued opposition to the oppression of Serbs in Kosovo is just and progressive. However I submit it will be more effective if it is in the form of criticism of the imperialist features of the NATO intervention, rather than in the form of a left anarchist position that every NATO action including the protection of the majority population, is reactionary.
The question boils down to how to win and keep a hearing from a wider constituency than a particuar left wing e-mail list.
I submit that the perspective I have given is both principled strategically and is tactically relevant to the actual concrete situation, in so far as we know what is going on. It is also realistic in terms of what we know of social psychology.
Chris Burford
London