19.03.1998

Crackdown in Kosovo

The Balkans are facing renewed crisis. Fears that the recent violent crack-down by Serbian paramilitary police against separatist forces in Kosovo could lead to a new conflagration has led to the ‘diplomatic’ intervention of the imperialist Contact Group comprising the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

The last two weeks has seen up to 100 Albanians killed in a terror campaign conducted by the Serbian state. Although a unitary part of Serbia, Kosovo is 90 per cent Albanian. Albanian political forces in the province now call for independence, either through military means as practiced by the Kosovo Liberation Army, or through peaceful negotiation, as argued by the so-called unofficial Kosovar president Ibrahim Rugova.

While the US emissary of the Contact Group, Robert Gelbard, has been trying to ease the hand of Serbia, he has made it clear to the Kosovar Albanians that independence will not be tolerated by imperialism. The United Nations, Nato and the European Union, backed up by the implicit threat of military force, are proposing a formula of “neither the status quo nor independence” to stabilise the region in the interests of their new world order. A return to Kosovo’s provincial autonomy is being urged.

During the reactionary meltdown of Yugoslavia in 1989-91, Slobodan Milosevic whipped up anti-Albanian sentiment to strengthen Serb nationalism. Serbia stripped the Kosovo region of the autonomy it had under the old Yugoslav constitution. That strategy is now coming home to roost. The recent crack down has produced new instability in a region wracked by war and ultra-nationalism for most of the decade.

Sitting in the middle of the Balkan peninsula, an unstable Kosovo threatens to draw not only Serbia, but Albania, Macedonia, Greece and maybe Turkey and Bulgaria into war. There have been solidarity demonstrations with Kosovo in Macedonia and Albania. The conflicting interests of different Albanian clans is being dragged into the crisis.

Imperialism has renewed sanctions against Serbia. These include military measures which are clearly flouted and economic ones which are difficult to enforce. Serbia has until March 22 to open dialogue with the separatists or face tighter sanctions.

During the cold war stalemate, imperialism maintained a doctrine of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. Although this was regularly flouted, sometimes overtly, always covertly, the pretence remained. The ‘new world order’ has seen an end to all that. Imperialism, with the United States acting as world RoboCop, feels it not only can, but has the obligation to interfere where it likes in an unprecedented manner.

The pattern is clear. Certain countries are treated as rogue states, and backed up by a media offensive, opinion is tuned to accept open imperialist bullying. Whereas western interference once would have outraged liberal opinion in the west, these liberals are now more likely to criticise imperialism for not acting swiftly enough. For communists, this intensifies our duty to point out that our main enemy is at home.

Yet Serbia has no right to be defended by any working class forces. Along with Croatia and Bosnia, Serbia has attempted to carve itself out the largest internal market it can in order to constitute bourgeois ‘normality’ under the rubric of ‘its’ nation. This led to the bloody internecine slaughter of the Bosnian war.

The working class must stand for the right of Kosovo to self-determination. The Contact Group representing various imperialist interests has no progressive role to play here. We must also fight against the vicious Serbian attempt to assert its reactionary hegemony. The way forward is for the working class to constitute itself in the region as champion of the democratic right of national self-determination, intransigent fighters against nationalism and imperialism. This is how to win the unity of the working class. Given the violent suppression of what appears to be a majority political movement for independence, communists should support this demand.

Martin Blum