kosovo

The British far left and Nato’s imperial occupation of Kosova

Patrick Scott

At the most basic and elementary level the left or to be more precise those sections of the left who have not capitulated to the pressure of British Imperialism have mobilised around the single demand of opposition to the Nato bombings.

Accordingly the Committee for Peace in the Balkans which is led by Tony Benn and other left Labour MPs became the main national body campaigning against the bombings. Rightly or wrongly the Committee as a single-issue campaign has effectively abstained on a position for or against Kosovar self-determination.

Like any Imperialist military campaign the bombings have exposed a new layer of capitulationists and outright careerists in Britain and elsewhere. Ken Livingstone in Britain and the leadership of the German Green Party are two clear examples.

In both cases their rightward march to the Nato tune reflects political pressures to remain or become well-oiled cogs in the machinery of bourgeois government.

In Germany the Greens are now part of the political mainstream as junior partners in the SPD-led government and clearly wish to remain there. In Britain many may have been surprised by Livingstone’s attempt to use the bombings as a pretext to attempt to finally climb aboard the New Labour bandwagon (though whether Blair will allow him on is another matter).

However even before the bombings Livingstone was on record as describing himself as being in 90% agreement with Tony Blair, the bombings were to clearly form part of that 90%.

Many of the arguments used to justify intervention into the Balkans have clearly racist overtones. Namely that the various ethnic groups in the region (like the Protestants and Catholics in the six counties) have an irrational hatred of each other therefore it is the job of Nato to impose order.

On the same basis one could argue that World Wars I and II happened because of the irrational hatred that the various national groups within Europe had for each other, such an argument is clearly preposterous.

There is nothing natural or inevitable about ethnic hatred either in the Balkans or anywhere else. The experience of class struggle in the 20^th Century should demonstrate that in periods of extreme economic and social crisis where the left cannot provide a coherent alternative then the political initiative almost inevitably falls to the right, and with the right comes xenophobia and racism in all its forms.

Nato bombings of Yugoslavia

Campaign Against Depleted Uranium

C/o Greater Manchester and District CND

6 Mount Street

Manchester M2 5NS

Tel 0161 834 8301

Fax 0161 834 8187

Email gmdcnd@gn.apc.org

Workers Aid for Kosova

Unit 26

41 Old Birley Street

Manchester M15 5RF

Tel 0161 232 9998

Fax 0161 2329551

Email workersaid@yahoo.com

Whilst nationalist tensions began to re-emerge significantly within Yugoslavia in the 1980s of which the abolition of Kosovar autonomy by Serbia was a major aspect Yugoslavia still arguably remained a viable entity as a state. However the watershed was very probably the imposition of an IMF austerity package by the federal government in 1990.

This package led to a drastic decline in real incomes and the absence of any coherent opposition from the left, indeed the absence of any real left meant that the political initiative drained away from the federal government towards the nationalist demagogues namely Milosevic in Serbia and Tudjman in Croatia.

In other words the primary source of the break-up of Yugoslavia lies not within Yugoslavia itself but in the US led economic neo-liberal offensive to open up the post-capitalist economies of the former Eastern bloc to the rigours of the global capitalist economy. This is more than simply a question of restoring capitalism to these societies.

It is about restoring capitalism not on a Keynesian welfarist model but on the basis of total economic deregulation Chilean style. As the example of the former USSR has demonstrated, things do not get worse before they get better, they get worse before they get even worse.

The irony is that whilst there are those on the left in the Nato countries who have fallen in behind their respective ruling classes there has been a minority but not insignificant trend within bourgeois opinion that has opposed the Nato campaign.

Even within the two central protagonists -- Britain and the US -- politicians such as Tory MP Alan Clarke and Republican Senator Pat Buchanan have opposed the bombings from a bourgeois isolationist perspective, neither of the two could be described as representing liberal bourgeois opinion by any stretch of the imagination.

On the left an equally curious irony is the sudden friendship that Stalinists throughout the world have developed for Yugoslavia. The irony being that at Yalta in 1945 Stalin agreed with Churchill and Roosevelt that Yugoslavia would fall within the Western sphere as part of the post-war carve up of Europe.

The subsequent seizure of state power and overthrow of capitalist property relations by the Yugoslav Communist Party under Tito took place in direct violation of Stalin’s orders and was a major factor in the Tito-Stalin split. One could therefore tenuously argue that in attempting to subjugate Yugoslavia that the Nato powers are merely carrying out the posthumous wishes of Joseph Stalin!

It is a common misconception that the Rambouillet accords were concerned solely with restoration of autonomy to Kosova within Serbia.

In fact the central sticking point was US insistence that any peacekeeping force inside Kosova had to be a Nato force. That is not a UN or other force acceptable to all sides but a Nato and therefore US led force.

Furthermore under the Rambouillet accords Nato was to be allowed unrestricted access within Yugoslavia itself. Russia was in favour of restoring Kosovar autonomy and might have been able to put enough pressure on Milosevic to sign the accords had it not been for US intransigence concerning Nato.

The US stance has to be seen in the context of the eastwards expansion of Nato into the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in order to isolate Russia further.

Clearly the US had come to perceive Milosevic as a Russian ally and on that basis Kosova had become a convenient excuse for the Nato bombing campaign.

Today the economic infrastructure of Yugoslavia has been all but destroyed. Furthermore, as in Iraq, depleted uranium shells have been used against targets in both Serbia and Kosova and the subsequent radioactive poisoning will in due cause lead to increased causes of cancer and to physical and other genetic deformities in future generations.

Military intervention to remove a despotic regime should not be opposed in principle by the left. For example the Vietnamese intervention in 1979 to overthrow the bureaucratic ultra-leftist regime of the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea was an action that had to be critically supported.

The Khmer Rouge was following a near genocidal policy towards its own people and from the perspective of the defence of the Indo-chinese revolution against Imperialism the Vietnamese intervention was justified and undoubtedly saved many innocent lives.

Despite their human rights rhetoric the predictable response of the US and other Imperialist powers at the time was one of opposition to Vietnam and support for the Khmer Rouge.

However any military intervention by an Imperialist power has to be opposed in principle, no Imperialist power in history has ever waged a military campaign for humanitarian reasons even though things may appear that way on the surface.

To support any Imperialist military campaign however ostensibly humanitarian the objectives can be likened to selling one’s soul to the devil. Whatever the short term gains the final price to pay is one of eternal servitude and damnation. The existence of highly militarised client states such as Israel and Turkey form an integral part of US global military hegemony, in fact the militarised nature of both states rests largely on the subjugation of oppressed peoples namely the Palestinians and Kurds.

On that basis it is inconceivable that the US, Britain and other Nato powers (Turkey is actually a Nato member) were motivated in any sense by any real concern for the Kosovar Albanians.

Support for Kosovar self determination (i.e. the right to independence or union with Albania) is not an optional extra for the left, it should have been and has to be an integral part of any anti-Nato campaign. The US has so far consistently opposed this demand on the grounds that Kosovar independence could lead to union with Albania and a Greater Albania is regarded as inimical to US interests in the region. This was also the rationale behind the US insisting that the KLA had to be disarmed as part of the Rambouillet accords.

To support Kosovar self-determination means to oppose Nato and the US as much as it means to oppose Milosevic. Whatever Bill Clinton and Slobodan Milosevic disagree on they both agree that the Kosovars must not be allowed to determine their own future, the problem became who would decide their future, Serbia or the US via the intermediary of Nato.

Already in Kosova the KLA is being disarmed because an armed KLA could be a future enemy. If Milosevic were to fall and a regime acceptable to the US were to take power then Nato may decide to hand Kosova back to Serbia. Such a scenario is not unlikely but in that scenario the Kosovar people would be united in their opposition to forced re integration with Serbia, an armed KLA in such a situation would make that a nightmare scenario for both Nato and Yugoslavia.

As a central figure in the Committee for Peace in the Balkans Tony Been has stated his opposition to Kosovar self determination and other anti war Labour MPs either share his view or have chosen to remain silent on the issue.

The largest British revolutionary organisation the SWP has in classical third campist style taken a ‘plague on both your houses’ position in relation to Serbia and Kosova, the reality is that the SWP’s position represents a political accommodation to pressure from their right.

The apparent rationale for the position defended by Tony Benn et al is based on the highly spurious grounds that Kosovar independence might lead to the formation of an Islamic fundamentalist regime on European soil. Tony Benn et al are in fact merely tailing after bourgeois isolationists such as Alan Clarke.

On the floor of the House of Commons Alan Clarke stated his opposition to the Nato bombings on the grounds that the Serbs were "a proud and Christian people who had done nothing to harm British interests".

The point is that if for the sake of argument the Serbs were Muslim and the Kosovar Albanians Christian then there would be greater support on the left for Kosovar self determination than currently exists. Or to put it less discreetly those on the left who oppose Kosovar self-determination are being xenophobic at best and racist at worst.

Within the Nato countries it is now imperative to fight for unconditional economic aid to Yugoslavia and Kosova in order to rebuild their economic infrastructure. It is also equally imperative to fight for unconditional military aid to the Kosovar people and to oppose the disarming of the KLA.

Whilst it is inconceivable that such demands will be realised the struggle for these demands is the necessary precondition for building genuinely Internationalist movements that can oppose the very basis of a reactionary alliance such as Nato. However to go beyond propaganda work it is perhaps even more imperative for the left and the workers movement generally to begin to organise practical aid to the people of the Balkans.

To that purpose the positive work of campaigns such as Workers Aid for Kosova has to be built on and developed. This may turn out to be the only real basis on which concrete solidarity can be built between the working class in the West and in the Balkans.