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The War on Yugoslavia, 10 Years Later
It has been 10 years since the U.S.-led war on Yugoslavia. For many leading Democrats, including some in top positions in the Obama administration, it was a "good" war, in contrast to the Bush administration's "bad" war on Iraq. And though the suffering and instability unleashed by the 1999 NATO military campaign wasn't as horrific as the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years later, the war was nevertheless unnecessary and illegal, and its political consequences are far from settled.
Unless there's a willingness to critically re-examine the war, the threat of another war in the name of liberal internationalism looms large.
Crisis Could Have Been Prevented
Throughout most of the 1990s, the oppressed ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo waged their struggle almost exclusively nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions. The Kosovar Albanians even set up a democratically elected parallel government to provide schooling and social services, and to press their cause to the outside world. Indeed, it was one of the most widespread, comprehensive, and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi's struggle for Indian independence. This was the time for Western powers to have engaged in preventative diplomacy. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosovars' nonviolent movement and resisted consistent pleas by the moderate Kosovar Albanian leadership to take action. It was only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in 1998 that the international media, the Clinton administration and other Western governments finally took notice.
By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave Serbia's autocratic president Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery than before. The delay allowed the Kosovar movement to be taken over by armed ultra‑nationalists, who have since proven to be far less willing to compromise or guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority. Indeed, the KLA murdered Serb officials and ethnic Albanian moderates, destroyed Serbian villages, and attacked other minority communities, while some among its leadership called for ethnic cleansing in the other direction to create a pure Albanian state. Despite such practices, as well as ties to the international heroin trade, it was KLA's leadership which came to dominate the subsequent autonomous and now independent Republic of Kosovo.
It's a tragedy that the West squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. The United States rejected calls for expanding missions set up by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, or to bring Kosovo constituencies together for negotiations. Waiting for a full-scale armed insurrection to break out before acting has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad message: Nonviolent methods will fail and, in order to get the West to pay attention to your plight, you need to take up arms.
When Western powers finally began to take decisive action on the long-simmering crisis in the fall of 1998, a ceasefire was arranged where the OSCE sent in unarmed monitors. While the ceasefire didn't hold, violence did decrease dramatically in areas where they were stationed. Indeed, the OSCE monitors could have done a lot more, but they were given little support. They were largely untrained, they were too few in number and NATO refused to supply them with helicopters, night-vision binoculars or other basic equipment that could have made them more effective.
Ceasefire violations by the Yugoslav army, Serbian militias, and KLA guerrillas increased in the early months of 1999, including a number of atrocities against ethnic Albanians by Serbian units, with apparent acquiescence of government forces. Western diplomatic efforts accelerated, producing the proposal put forward at the Chateau Rambouillet in France, which called for the withdrawal of Serbian forces and the restoration of Kosovo's autonomous status within a greater Serbia. Such a political settlement was quite reasonable, and the Serbs appeared willing to such seriously consider such an agreement. But it was sabotaged by NATO's insistence that they be allowed to send in a large armed occupation force into Kosovo, along with rights to move freely without permission throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and other measures that infringed on the country's sovereignty. Another problem was that it was presented essentially as a final document, without much room for negotiations. One of the fundamental principles of international conflict resolution is that all interested parties are part of the peace process. Some outside pressure may be necessary - particularly against the stronger party - to secure an agreement, but it can't be presented as a fait accompli. This "sign this or we'll bomb you" attitude also doomed the diplomatic initiative to failure. Few national leaders, particularly a nationalist demagogue like Milosevic, would sign an agreement under such terms, which amount to a treaty of surrender: Allowing foreign forces free reign of your territory and issuing such a proposal as an ultimatum.
Smarter and earlier diplomacy could have prevented the war.
The Bombing Campaign
Many liberals who had opposed U.S. military intervention elsewhere recognized the severity of the ongoing oppression of the Kosovar Albanians and the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism, and therefore initially supported the war. Had such military intervention led to an immediate withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and Serbian militias, one could perhaps make a case that, despite the war's illegality, there was a moral imperative for military action in order to prevent far greater violence. But, as many experts of the region predicted, this wasn't the case.
The bombing campaign, which began March 24, 1999, clearly made things worse for the Kosovar Albanians. Not only were scores of ethnic Albanians accidentally killed by NATO bombing raids, but the Serbs - unable to respond to NATO air attacks - turned their wrath against the most vulnerable segments of the population: the very Kosovar Albanians NATO claimed it would be defending. While the Serbs may have indeed been planning some sort of large-scale forced removal of the population in areas of KLA infiltration, both the scale and savagery of the Serbian repression that resulted was undoubtedly a direct consequence of NATO actions. Subsequent U.S. claims that the bombing was in response to ethnic cleansing turns the reality on its head.
By forcing the evacuation of the OSCE monitors, which - despite their limitations - were playing something of a deterrent role against the worst Serbian atrocities, NATO gave the Serbs the opportunity to increase their repression. By bombing Yugoslavia, they gave the Serbs nothing to lose. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were forced from their homes into makeshift refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia.
As the bombing continued, the numbers of Serbian troops in Kosovo increased and the repression of Kosovar Albanians dramatically escalated. Those doing the killing in Kosovo were primarily small paramilitary groups, death squads, and police units that couldn't have effectively been challenged by high-altitude bombing, and weren't affected by the destruction of bridges or factories hundreds of miles to the north. If protecting the lives of Kosovar Albanians was really the motivation for the U.S.-led war, President Bill Clinton would have sent in Marine and Special Forces units to battle the Serbian militias directly instead of relying exclusively on air power.
The war against Yugoslavia was illegal. Any such use of force is a violation of the UN Charter unless in self-defense against an armed attack or authorized by the United Nations as an act of collective security. Kosovo was internationally recognized as part of Serbia; it was, legally speaking, an internal conflict. In addition, the democratically elected president of the self-proclaimed, if unrecognized, Kosovar Albanian Republic, Ibrahim Rugova, didn't request such intervention. Indeed, he opposed it.
The war was also illegal under U.S. law. The Constitution places war-making authority under the responsibility of Congress. While it's widely recognized that the president, as commander-in-chief, has latitude in short-term emergencies, the 1973 War Powers Act prevents the executive branch from waging war without the express consent of Congress beyond a 60-day period. Only rarely has Congress formally declared war, but it has passed resolutions supporting the use of force, as with the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution concerning Vietnam, the January 1991 approval of the use of force to remove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait, and the October 2002 authorization for the invasion of Iraq. Clinton, however, received no such congressional approval. That he got away with such a blatant abuse of executive authority marked a dangerous precedent in war-making authority in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The 11-week bombing campaign resulted in the widespread destruction of Yugoslavia's civilian infrastructure, the killing of many hundreds of civilians, and - as a result of bombing chemical factories, the use of depleted uranium ammunition and more - caused serious environmental damage. Far more Yugoslav civilians died from NATO bombing than did Kosovar Albanian civilians from Serb forces prior to the onset of the bombing. A number of human rights groups that condemned Serbian actions in Kosovo also criticized NATO attacks that, in addition to the more immediate civilian casualties, endangered the health and safety of millions of people by disrupting water supplies, sewage treatment, and medical services.
U.S. Motivations
There are serious questions regarding what actually prompted the United States and NATO to make war on Yugoslavia. While the Serbian nationalism espoused by Milosevic had fascistic elements, and his government and allied militias certainly engaged in serious war crimes throughout the Balkans that decade, comparisons to Hitler were hyperbolic, certainly in terms of the ability to threaten any nation beyond the borders of the old Yugoslavia.
As today, there was civil strife in a number of African countries during this period, resulting in far more deaths and refugees than Serbia's repression in Kosovo. As a result, some have questioned U.S. double standards towards intervention such as why the United States didn't intervene in far more serious humanitarian crises, particularly in Rwanda in 1994, where there clearly was an actual genocide in progress.
But a more salient question is why the United States has never been held accountable for when it has intervened - in support of the oppressors. In recent decades, the U.S. government provided military, economic, and diplomatic support of Indonesia's slaughter of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese, and of Guatemala's slaughter of many tens of thousands of its indigenous people.
While Clinton tried to justify the war by declaring that repression and ethnic cleansing must not be allowed to happen "on NATO's doorstep," he was not only quite willing to allow for comparable repression to take place within NATO itself, but actively supported it: During the 1990s, Turkey's denial of the Kurds' linguistic and cultural rights, rejection of their demands of autonomy, destruction of thousands of villages, killing of thousands of civilians and forced removal of hundreds of thousands bore striking resemblance to Serbia's repression in Kosovo. Yet the Clinton administration, with bipartisan congressional support, continued to arm the Turkish military and defended its repression.
Such questions necessarily raise uncharitable speculation about what might have actually motivated the United States to lead such a military action. For some advocates of U.S. military intervention, there was no doubt some genuine humanitarian concern, which - unlike many other cases around the world - support for those being oppressed didn't conflict with overriding U.S. strategic or economic prerogatives. There may have been other forces at work, however, which saw the use of force as advantageous for other reasons than a sincere, if misplaced, hope of assuaging a humanitarian crisis.
For example, the war created a raison d'être for the continued existence of NATO in a post-Cold War world, as it desperately tried to justify its continued existence and desire for expansion (This resulted in a kind of circular logic however: NATO was still needed to fight in wars like Yugoslavia, yet the war needed to be continued in order to preserve NATO's credibility.).
The war also benefitted influential weapons manufacturers, leading to an increase in U.S. military spending by more than $13 billion, largely for weapons systems that most strategic analysts and even the Pentagon said weren't needed. This came on top of an increase in military spending passed before the onset of the war (By contrast, aid from the United States to help with the refugee crisis was very limited, and efforts by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees were severely hampered by lack of funds, in large part a result of the refusal by the United States to pay more than $1 billion in dues it then owed to the UN, equivalent to approximately one week of bombing.).
Whatever its actual motivations, why would the United States lead NATO into a long, drawn-out war with no guarantee of fulfilling its objectives, given the real political risks involved? Much of the problem may have been that of arrogance. There's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration falsely assumed the threat of bombing would lead to a last-minute capitulation by Milosevic, but, having made the threat, felt obligated to follow through.
Even after the bombing began and Finnish and Russian mediators began working on a ceasefire agreement, greater U.S. flexibility regarding Serbian concerns could have brought the war to an end much sooner. What a number of NATO members suggested, but the Clinton administration refused to consider, was to agree that the postwar peacekeeping force in Kosovo be placed under the control of the UN or the OSCE. Instead, the United States insisted that peacekeeping should be a NATO operation.
This effectively would have forced the nationalistic Serbs into accepting demands that a part of their country effectively be placed under occupation by the same military alliance that attacked them. As a result, despite suffering ongoing death and destruction, the Serbs continued fighting. The Clinton administration, meanwhile, seemed more intent on dominating the postwar order politically and militarily than agreeing to a ceasefire which could have prevented further bloodshed and allowed refugees to return sooner.
Eventually, a compromise was reached whereby the peacekeeping troops sent into Kosovo following a Serb withdrawal would primarily consist of NATO forces, but under UN command.
Perhaps the greatest myth of the war was that the Serbs surrendered and NATO won. In reality, not only was there a compromise on the makeup of postwar peacekeeping forces, but the final peace agreement also omitted the most objectionable sections of the Rambouillet proposal and more closely resembled the counter-proposal put forward by the Serbian parliament prior to the bombing. In other words, rather than being a NATO victory as it has been repeatedly portrayed by Washington and much of the American media, it was at best a draw.
Ramifications of the War
The war had serious consequences besides death and destruction in Serbia and Kosovo. One of the original justifications was to prevent a broader war, yet it was the bombing campaign that destabilized the region to a greater degree than Milosevic's campaign of repression. It emboldened ethnic Albanian chauvinists, not just in Kosovo where they have come to dominate, but in the neighboring country of Macedonia and its restive ethnic Albanian minority, which has twice taken up arms in the past 10 years against the Slavic majority.
At the NATO summit in April 1999, the member states approved a structure for "non-Article 5 crisis response," essentially a euphemism for war (Article 5 of the NATO charter provides for collective self-defense; non-Article 5 refers to an offensive military action like Yugoslavia.). According to the document, such an action could take place anywhere on the broad periphery of NATO's realm, such as North Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, essentially paving the way for NATO's ongoing war in Afghanistan. This expanded role for NATO wasn't approved by any of the respective countries' legislatures, raising serious questions about democratic civilian control over military alliances.
Furthermore, the U.S.-led NATO war on Yugoslavia helped undermine the United Nations Charter and thereby paved the way for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant violation of the international legal order by a major power since World War II.
The occupation by NATO troops of Serbia's autonomous Kosovo region, and the subsequent recognition of Kosovar independence by the United States and a number of Western European powers, helped provide Russia with an excuse to maintain its large military presence in Georgia's autonomous South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, and to recognize their unilateral declarations of independence. This, in turn, led to last summer's war between Russia and Georgia.
Indeed, much of the tense relations between the United States and Russia over the past decade can be traced to the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. Russia was quite critical of Serbian actions in Kosovo and supported the non-military aspects of the Rambouillet proposals, yet was deeply disturbed by this first military action waged by NATO. Indeed, the war resulted in unprecedented Russian anger towards the United States, less out of some vague sense of pan-Slavic solidarity, but more because it was seen as an act of aggression against a sovereign nation. The Russians had assumed NATO would dissolve at the end of the Cold War. Instead, not only has NATO expanded, it went to war over an internal dispute in a Slavic Eastern European country. This stoked the paranoid fear of many Russian nationalists that NATO may find an excuse to intervene in Russia itself. While in reality this is extremely unlikely, the history of invasions from the West no doubt strengthened the hold of Vladimir Putin and other semi-autocratic nationalists, setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament.
The war also had political repercussions here in the United States. On Capitol Hill, it created what became known as an "aviary conundrum," where traditional hawks became doves and doves became hawks. It provided a precedent of Democratic lawmakers supporting an illegal war and allowing for extraordinary executive power to wage war, with which the Bush administration was able to fully take advantage in leading the country into its debacle in Iraq.
The presence of large-scale human rights abuses, as was occurring in Kosovo under Serb rule, shouldn't force concerned citizens in the United States and other countries into the false choice of supporting war and doing nothing. This tragic conflict should further prove that, moral and legal arguments aside, military force is a very blunt and not very effective instrument to promote human rights, and that bloated military budgets and archaic military alliances aren't the way to bring peace and security. As long as such "conflict resolution" efforts are placed exclusively in the hands of governments, there will be a propensity towards war. Only when global civil society seizes the initiative and recognizes the power of strategic nonviolent action, and the necessity of preventative diplomacy, can there be hope that such conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
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Show AllThe West's slothful and ham handed entry into Kosovo was all too familiar to those whom followed the slow-motion disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. The warning signs were plentiful for those who bothered to pay attention since the late 80's. Instead, there was dithering until after plenty of mayhem and murder had been committed writ large and ubiquitous questioning regarding the "relevance" of NATO (among other things) had been played out. Now there is a fairly large nation in the Balkans, Serbia, with a communal sense that they've been screwed by the West (and in a sense, they have...but the Serbs "leaders" provided the lubricant and undid the zipper). This rage will more than likely come back to haunt the West for many years and in the most unexpected of ways.
Was Prof. Zunes arguing against the US bombing and invasion of Kosovo/Serbia? It sure was hard to tell. I know that this was written for a semi-scholarly periodical, but it sometimes seems that it is articles like this are why the US anti-imperialist left can never win an argument.
So let me provide some easy to understand facts that Zunes omitted or obfuscated:
1. Kosovo was the cultural heart of Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox faith where all its now-destroyed histroic churches and monasteries were located.
2. The Albanians were moving into the region as part of an Isreal-style planned-ethnic-domination of the region.
3. Most atrocities prior to the bombing were being comitted by Albanians.
4. Under the post-bombing occupation, NATO has been quietly looking the other way while the Albanians drove Serbians from their homes and burned down their churches.
5. Yugoslavia-wide, far more Serbians were ethnically cleansed from their homelands than any other group.
6. Zunes fals to mention the greatest prize of the bombing and invasion, the huge US base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, a strategically located staging area for the US military's reach easttward into the oil-rich near-Central Asian republics.
7. The Serbian atrocities in Bosnia are condemnable, and it is right that Milosevic and Karajic went to the Hague. But similar, perhaps worse atroctiies were comitted by the Croatians under Tudjman and by the Albanians and Muslim Bosnians - but these atrocities got a complete pass from the west.
8. The above facts seem to point to a systematic bias against Serbia by the west. Why could this be? Well in might be the usual reason. Serbia, unlike the other parts of former Yugoslavia, didn't buy-in to the neoliberal capitalist program being rammed through the rest of eastern Europe. They wanted to continue with the mixed-socialist system started by Tito. Of course, as proven over and over again around the world, embracing Capitalism forgives all sins - particularly genocidal atrocities, but adopt even the mildest form of socialism, and the US will level wildly exaggerated accusations against you, while completely forgiving the atrocities of your enemies.
Excellent and accurate points.
v.purto
Very well said indeed.
Then note this twisted logic presented by Mr. Zunes: "This stoked the paranoid fear of many Russian nationalists that NATO may find an excuse to intervene in Russia itself. While in reality this is extremely unlikely, the history of invasions from the West no doubt strengthened the hold of Vladimir Putin and other semi-autocratic nationalists, setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament."
By paranoid fear Prof. Zunes means of course Russian "imagination" of colored revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere; missles sites in Czech Republic and Poland; EU membership of such unrepented fascist states as Estonia, Latvia and waiting in wings Ukraine, complete with celebration their respectfull SS veterans.
That all and much more Prof. Zunes qualifies as paranoia and reason for "setting back reform efforts, political liberalization, and disarmament".
Prof. Zunes doesn't understand that those very reforms brought Russia, Eastern Europe and the US itself to such a ruin that at the not that distant future such semi-autocratic leaders as G.W. Bush and V.V. Putin will look like Santa Clauses by comparison.
Do we have any hope for the nice future when such people like Prof. Zunes goes for Royal Opposition? Alas, we have no hope as long as we unmask zunes for what they are - self-duped dupers.
"Prof. Zunes doesn't understand that those very reforms brought Russia, Eastern Europe and the US itself to such a ruin that at the not that distant future such semi-autocratic leaders as G.W. Bush and V.V. Putin will look like Santa Clauses by comparison."
You mean autocratic leaders such as Ceausescu? Honecker? Gustav Husak? Brezhnev? Oh wait.
Sioux Rose
LEFTIST: Thank you for the data. I find this issue utterly complex, or maybe it's that I have read perspectives that seem to take "opposing sides" for their reference basis and this confuses my command of "the facts."
That is "data"?
Leftist gave opinion, opinion that reads as if it was written by a Serb propagandist. Opinion that he did not back up with any actual "data".
Hello?
Try to understand the difference between a fact and an opinion. If I state that the population of the U.S. is 500 million, that's not an *opinion*, it's a *fact*. It also happens to be wrong, but that doesn't make it an opinion.
By pretending that facts are opinions, you make it sound as if everything is subject to interpretation and it's just a matter of point of view. Dead people are dead, my friend, and no amount of interpretation or differing "opinion" will change that. (Sorry, Elvis lovers.)
Either Kosovo was the cultural heart of Serbia or it wasn't. Either ethnic Albanians were moving to Kosovo in order to expropriate it, or they weren't.
Maybe you should do some research and actually find out. I can't see how your ad hominem attacks on Leftist help to clear up the matter in any way. But I'll bet you feel better now that you showed that Leftist what's what!
"It sure was hard to tell. I know that this was written for a semi-scholarly periodical, but it sometimes seems that it is articles like this are why the US anti-imperialist left can never win an argument."
Posts like yours are why the anti imperialist left can never win an argument. While the US / West (evil), anyone the US / West supports (evil), anyone against US / West (good) view might be appealing to the anti-imperialist left, it isn't convincing to anyone else.
1. True, until 14th and 15th centuries when Serbs were defeated by Ottoman empire and massively headed for northern/western regions ever since.
2. Ethnic Albanians (Illirians) were, with ethnic Greeks, region's indigenous population since times immemorial. Slavs, Serbs among others, came from the steppes east of the Black Sea in 8th and 9th centuries. Albanians (Illirians) were pushed into the mountains, while Serbs occupied fertile land, mines, roads and harbors.
3. Show us documents. The statement is a propaganda catapult.
4. Absolutely true. UN forces were historically, and still are, instrumental to the policy of western powers - GB, France, and USA.
5. Wrong. Muslims suffered the most, they were the only ones to have been ethnically cleansed, while most of the Croats and Serbs were displaced through the so-called "humane exchange" program, based on agreement between Milosevic and then-president of Croatia, Tudjman.
6. Agreed. US occupation of Kosovo is another bead in the necklace tightening around Russia.
7. Good old "balance of crime" smoke. Milosevic worked on the Greater Serbia project, conceived long ago after the dissolution of Ottoman empire.
8. No facts in your post. "Bias against Serbia by the west" is in the swing opposite to the one you suggest: Serbia was a traditional ally of GB and France through both WWI and WWII. Serbia was, and still is, a local hegemon. Balkan wars 1991-1999 were wars of aggression by the said hegemon.
Radovan Karadjic, the then leader of Bosnian ethnic Serbs, stated in March '91 in Bosnian Parliament, into the cameras (you can find the clip on the Web): "Either it will be the way we (Serbs) ask, or one nation will be exterminated (Muslims)". The war in Bosnia broke out in April, but Milosevic and Karadjic previously secured UN embargo on arms in Bosnia - Muslims entered the "war" with their hands tied.
That Serbia, unlike other federal republics of Yugoslavia, was pro-socialist is just another cunning manipulation by Yugoslav Army and Milosevic, who was a national-socialist in the spirit of Hitler's national-socialism. In a word, he was a nazi.
This supposed success is what inspired Bush to nation build in Iraq. Let's stop being the world cop and get our own house in order.
I usually find Steven Zunes' analysis to be very good. So, I am surprised that he didn't mention possibly one of the US's main goals of the bombing: to punish Yugoslavia for not embracing capitalism and let themselves be privatized like the rest of the former Soviet Union.
From my archives:
Published on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
The Spoils of Another War
Five Years after Nato's Attack on Yugoslavia, its Administration in Kosovo is pushing through Mass Privatization
by Neil Clark
'Wars, conflict - it's all business," sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin's 1947 film of the same name. Many will not need to be convinced of the link between US corporations now busily helping themselves to Iraqi state assets and the military machine that prised Iraq open for global business. But what is less widely known is that a similar process is already well under way in a part of the world where B52s were not so long ago dropping bombs in another "liberation" mission.
The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year's invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors.
The secret annexe B of the Rambouillet accord - which provided for the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia - was, as the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to the defence select committee, deliberately inserted to provoke rejection by Belgrade.
But equally revealing about the west's wider motives is chapter four, which dealt exclusively with the Kosovan economy. Article I (1) called for a "free-market economy", and article II (1) for privatisation of all government-owned assets. At the time, the rump Yugoslavia - then not a member of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - was the last economy in central-southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. "Socially owned enterprises", the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated.
Yugoslavia had publicly owned petroleum, mining, car and tobacco industries, and 75% of industry was state or socially owned. In 1997, a privatisation law had stipulated that in sell-offs, at least 60% of shares had to be allocated to a company's workers.
The high priests of neo-liberalism were not happy. At the Davos summit early in 1999, Tony Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embark on a programme of "economic reform" - new-world-order speak for selling state assets and running the economy in the interests of multinationals.
In the 1999 Nato bombing campaign, it was state-owned companies - rather than military sites - that were specifically targeted by the world's richest nations. Nato only destroyed 14 tanks, but 372 industrial facilities were hit - including the Zastava car plant at Kragujevac, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed.
After the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, the west got the "fast-track" reforming government in Belgrade it had long desired. One of the first steps of the new administration was to repeal the 1997 privatisation law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors - with just 15% reserved for workers. The government then signed up to the World Bank's programmes - effectively ending the country's financial independence.
Meanwhile, as the New York Times had crowed, "a war's glittering prize" awaited the conquerors. Kosovo has the second largest coal reserves in Europe, and enormous deposits of lignite, lead, zinc, gold, silver and petroleum.
The jewel is the enormous Trepca mine complex, whose 1997 value was estimated at $5bn. In an extraordinary smash and grab raid soon after the war, the complex was seized from its workers and managers by more than 2,900 Nato troops, who used teargas and rubber bullets.
Five years on from the Nato attack, the Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA), the body that operates under the jurisdiction of the UN Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) - is "pleased to announce" the programme to privatise the first 500 or so socially owned enterprises (SOEs) under its control. The closing date for bids passed last week: 10 businesses went under the hammer, including printing houses, a shopping mall, an agrobusiness and a soft-drinks factory. The Ferronikeli mining and metal-processing complex, with an annual capacity of 12,000 tonnes of nickel production, is being sold separately, with bids due by November 17.
To make the SOEs more attractive to foreign investors, Unmik has altered the way land is owned in Kosovo, allowing the KTA to sell 99-year leases with the businesses, which can be transferred or used as loans or security. Even Belgrade's pro-western government has called this a "robbery of state-owned land". For western companies waiting to swoop, there will be rich pickings indeed in what the KTA assures us is a "very investor-friendly" environment. But there is little talk of the rights of the moral owners of the enterprises - the workers, managers and citizens of the former Yugoslavia, whose property was effectively seized in the name of the "international community" and "economic reform".
As the corporate takeover of the ruins of Baghdad and Pristina proceeds apace, neither the "liberation" of Iraq nor the "humanitarian" bombing of Yugoslavia has proved Chaplin's cynical anti-hero to be wrong.
• Neil Clark is a writer and broadcaster specialising in Balkan affairs
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Thank you for that post.
A postscript:
A more honest appraisal of the bombing of Yugoslavia would be a very brutal example of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine."
Sioux Rose
TOM: That's what I was thinking, too. The Chicago School is the financial equivalent of inviting into a sick nation the doctor who spreads the blankets coated in Smallpox over the already suffering. Yet he moves from nation to nation, as the media doesn't seem to connect the dots; or the leaders forced to deal with this "doctor" see no other recourse, the World Bank and the "lenders" have him by the balls. I had no idea Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, and Gorbachev had to deal with these SICK dealmakers... and the disease is still spreading, now so swollen from feasting on so much prey it devours the very belly of the US body politic. We know the cure... but who can take on this doctor of death who promises life, libery and prosperity while delivering their antitheses. Orwell has met Lucifer in modern day international politics it would seem.
You are to be commended for writing and Common Dreams for publishing an article on such an “old” issue because the parallels between Washington’s Kosovo policy a decade ago and U.S. policy toward the rest of the Muslim world are sobering.
The Palestinian predicament is perhaps the most obvious: that desperate group of the dispossessed gets absolutely no attention except when it turns to violence. Americans remains utterly tuned out, unfortunately, although the recent excesses of both Israel and its U.S. lobby may slowly be awakening the tone-deaf.
This is also the story of Lebanon, whether the reference is to Palestinian refugees or Hezbollah’s representation of South Lebanon’s poor Shi’a. I doubt we have heard the last from the former, of whom several hundred thousand remain, despite Sharon’s vicious little 20-year-war. As for Hezbollah, after Sharon’s 1982 invasion provoked Hezbollah’s formation and Israel’s 2006 invasion consolidated its image, Hezbollah’s political position continues to improve. But these, like Kosovo, are issues Americans are content to ignore.
South Asia is another matter. Surely everyone must by now be aware that the Afghan Taliban took control in the 1990s after the U.S. walked away, leaving post-Soviet Afghanistan in chaos. And surely everyone must by now be aware we are losing the resultant war. Not only are we losing in Afghanistan, now we are beginning to pay the price for ignoring the plight of marginalized Pushtuns in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The problem of insurgencies being provoked by the failure of “the system” to permit participation by the marginalized applies to non-Muslim regions, as well, of course. The inability of Colombia’s impoverished peasants to get any respect or fair treatment from rich cattle barons until the FARC arose to lead them in rebellion is the classic example.
An underlying theme in all of these disputes is that the oppressed are ignored as long as they “know their place,” which enrages and radicalizes. Then Americans interfere in, to be polite, “ignorance,” claiming they offer peace but siding with the oppressors and innocently asking “why they hate us.”
The American approach to these rebellions in search of justice is to screw the lid of the pressure cooker tighter, in the name of “stability” but without turning down the “heat.” Denied civil services, economic development, and the option of effective peaceful political participation, enforcing short-term stability through military suppression of protest only gives the pressure of frustration more time to build. This in turn empowers extremism (Taliban reformers become Taliban oppressors and U.S. client regimes start bombing villages; FARC revolutionaries become FARC drug-dealers and cattle barons do the same). A cynic would accuse Washington politicians of adopting such a policy intentionally to exploit chaos (see Neil Clark’s informative comment #1); others may attribute it to ignorance. Either way, it is an increasingly dangerous and ineffective strategy: not only are the original socio-political issues not resolved but local politics become radicalized and Americans become the target.
Sioux Rose
WMILLS: Flawless analysis, the only thing I'd add is that you describe the symptoms, and the cause in all likelihood is to create more reasons FOR war. After all having shipped most of its industrial factories off-shore, what product does the US have to sell (apart from all the exotic non-entities Wall St churns out) other than war and its dazzling array of expensive weaponry? Often I think foreign policy is made by boys with men's bodies, boys who are mostly interested in playing with shiny toys that blow up... preferably other people and their children. The absence of anything remotely akin to a conscience or the merest concern for the humanity of those savaged by US foreign policy suggests stunted emotional growth in those who gravitate towards the military/foreign service.
Gen. Klaus Neumann, chairman of the Military Committee of NATO, wrote:
Milosevic told us: "I will solve the problem of Kosovo in the spring of 1999 once and for all." When we asked him how was he to do it, he replied: "The same way we did it in 1945, in Drenica." To which we said we didn't know what they had done to the Albanians in 1945, and asked him to kindly elaborate. "Quite simple, we summoned and executed them."
The quote could also be found in Margaret Thatcher's book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World and was used in the process in The Hague.
"Leftist April 7th, 2009 12:21 pm
Was Prof. Zunes arguing against the US bombing and invasion of Kosovo/Serbia? ...
So let me provide some easy to understand facts that Zunes omitted or obfuscated:
...
7. The Serbian atrocities in Bosnia are condemnable, and it is right that Milosevic and Karajic went to the Hague. ..."
FROM what I've read on this topic, I overall agree with Leftist's post, however I'm not sure about point 7, for what I've read is that Slobodan Milosevic was incorrectly accused for crimes he wasn't responsible for; that while Serbs had committed crimes he was being claimed to have been responsible or very responsible for, he apparently was not. And I don't recall more about Karajic other than having seen him referred to in a few articles I've read, but not much and nothing I rememember any details from.
I think John Pilger, the internationally renowned documentary filmmaker, etc., is certainly a top resource person for this topic, as are also some others, I think including some who've had articles at www.globalresearch.ca , where there's certainly plenty on the topic of Camp Bondsteel, which Leftist referred to at the end of his post I quoted from for this post.
Another I believe to be good Web resource is Scott Taylor's website, www.espritdecorps.ca . He is a former Canadian soldier and became a war correspondant, starting EDeCorps in 1988 or 1987. I don't know more about his work as a war correspondant than for what I've read and viewed, so far, on the wars in the Balkans and the 1999 war on Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Serbia, but what I've seen by him on this topic certainly seems to indicate he's another good resource provider. If he does as well as with respect to other wars, then it should be a very good resource site, and he has a Youtube.com channel with the username of EDCorps.
I was surprised by Stephen Zunes demonising the Serbs and particularly to the extent that he did with this new article of his. I'm surprised and disappointed, for I thought he was a respectable writer and therefore thinker. I [thought].
Sometimes I wonder why CD even has a discussion board if the site moderators are going to constantly remove posters and posts so often for no real reasons other than that they don't like the political content of what the opinions posted? I previously posted my opinion that this apologism for Stephen Zunes by himself for his role in helping justify Nato/ US aggression against Yugoslavia was rather lame. That was removed. Why?
People need to challenge Zunes on his continuing war provoking diatribes against the Serbs, where he asserts 'the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism'. In my post removed, I said that Zunes had helped prep the attack on Yugoslavia and consequently the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with his most substantial liberal interventionism full of such rhetoric.
I mentioned in that post that he should have been much more concerned back then about the much more real 'need to challenge US national ethno-fascism', when he wasn't concerned about that much at all. His rhetoric, which to this day, he continues to use, provided liberal justification for sitting back and not opposing Nato/ US interventionism, and in fact helped coddle consent with US militarism along for the American public.
If Zunes and Common Dreams cannot tolerate real discussion on the Left I suggest that you just remove your discussion boards altogether. Removing posts and banning posters from your site is a dishonest way of trying to channel debate. 'Nuff said. Continuing such will almost certainly rebound negatively against yourselves over time. So stop removing political opinions counter to your own, OK?
Your assertions that Zunes "helped justify Nato/US aggression against Yugoslavia", that he "helped prep the attack on Yugoslavia and consequently the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with his most substantial liberal interventionism", that he "wasn't concerned about US national ethno-fascism", and that he "helped coddle consent with US militarism" are all absurd and unfounded.
Zunes opposed the US war against Yugoslavia. Zunes has also very consistently opposed US militarism and "liberal interventionism" as well as opposed the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of his work is actually in direct opposition to the imperial policies and practices of the United States.
Please support your argument with citations of Zunes' words or actions.
For anyone interested, please read Zunes' article about the absurd vilification and groundless attacks such as this one that have been made against him:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/the-left-also-embraces-th_b_141845.html
If the link does not work, just Google "Zunes cooties" for the article.
Sioux Rose
LOGAN: Yes, this disappearing act has a note of Houdini to it. Another poster emailed me to alert me to several of mine disappearing. Poor me, I thought it was a symptom of menopause, some kind of short-term memory outage... "Gee, I could have sworn I answered that post, but hmm... nothing there. I must be mistaken."
So many words from our language (like freedom as in "free" speech) have been inverted in these Orwellian times. Who'd a thunk even the most progressive website would play games of hide and seek.
Aloha Sioux Rose...
I will be doing some what of a disappearing act myself now that spring has returned and there is so much gardening and bicycling and sailing to be gettin goin on...
Thank you for your kind and wise words in this forum...
It is good to know that some of us get more imaginative and playful with age...
Paz, Luz, Y Amor
Yup. Few escape the blunderbuss as one oft-banned poster, who must constantly return under a new nick, put it.
-USAn
Webwalk writes and calls my opinions of Zunes 'all absurd and unfounded'. Here is the central part of what he has to say about that...
'Zunes opposed the US war against Yugoslavia. Zunes has also very consistently opposed US militarism and "liberal interventionism" as well as opposed the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of his work is actually in direct opposition to the imperial policies and practices of the United States.'
That's interesting, Webwalk? Here is what Stephen Zunes in his article I have commented on has to directly say about that though, and he contradicts you!
Says Zunes...
'Many liberals who had opposed U.S. military intervention elsewhere recognized the severity of the ongoing oppression of the Kosovar Albanians and the need to challenge Serbian ethno-fascism, and therefore initially supported the war.'
Like what he is actually saying is that he and many other liberals SUPPORTED this military intervention. Is this what you call it about Zunes being 'very consistently opposed (to) US militarism', as you put it? I don't call that opposition at all.
In fact, these liberals and Zunes were propagandizing that something be done (intervention by the US government), and when it finally was done they chicken heartedly stayed mum. They did not protest in the streets, but rather pretty much stayed at home while Yugoslavia was being bombed by their own country's government.
Oh sure, Zunes tells us, that the 'intervention' was not done as he would have directed it if he were President. What else could one expect for him, the liberal Professor, to say at this time?
The consequences of all his talk out against the big, bad Serbs back then are now all too clear. The US government went from knocking over the Yugoslav 'domino', to toppling Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan as well. They did it with his , as he calls it, 'initial support'. Nothing 'absurd and unfounded' about what I said about Zunes at all, and his own words show that, Webwalk.
Oh, and BTW, the fact that you use the arguments deleted with my first post show me that you are probably the same one, who disagreeing with my arguments, simply deleted them offline. Shame on you!
Again, your assertion is absurd.
You quote Zunes from this current article, where he notes that many liberals initially supported the attack on Yugoslavia. From this you weave an entire fabric, insisting this means Zunes supported the war - but you do not provide any actual evidence from the time that he in fact did so. HE DID NOT.
Show us your evidence that Zunes supported the war.
Here is the evidence that he OPPOSED that war:
http://67.199.81.153/Articles/PeaceReview1999NATOsRushtoWar.pdf
If the link does not work, go to Zunes' site,
http://67.199.81.153/index.html
go to "recent publications" and click on "NATO's rush to war in Yugoslavia". In this article from 1999 Zunes does state that wars of "liberal interventionism" can be effective in certain narrow cases at stopping greater violence, but he specifically denounces the war against Yugoslavia.
Oh BTW, regarding your assertion that somehow i deleted your previous post - absolutely correct, you have exposed me, i am the wizard behind the curtain, everyone now knows that i secretly run Common Dreams and delete posts i disagree with. Brilliant detective work.
Perhaps you can explain, though, how i "deleted them offline" since i'm just a regular reader and poster here at CD. In fact, i did not "use the arguments deleted with your first post", i simply exactly quoted your second post.
Poor innocent Kosovars, Adolph Milosevich, Nazis, Nazis, Nazis, ethnic cleansing, acid mines, rape camps, Racak massacre, concentration camps, etc., etc., etc., and the Clinton/Gore humanitarian intervention invention convention was an example of practically every sleight of hand trick in the book sucker born every minute exercise all rolled into one.
This precursor to Afghanistan and Iraq was sold very well by the world wide media.
The saving of NATO, after never having to fire a shot (or say they are sorry) was accomplished. Now their paramount duty is to keep a watchful eye(s) on the heroin, guns and slaves moving along nicely. The Trepca mines? Well, never mind about that.
Here are the stars of the show..
http://www.mbruce.addr.com/clark.jpg
From left to right... Hashim (I'll sell you a kidney cheap) Thaci, Bernard (I'm bigger than I look) Kouchner, General Michael (I'll not start WWIII for the likes of you) Jackson, Agim (the snake) Ceku and last but not least General Wesley (just found out I'm Jewish) Clark.
Webwalk, sorry that I wrongly suggested you might have been the moderator who removed my first comments, and after rereading I do see that you had replied only to my second set of remarks and not my first ones as I had thought.
I have read Zunes 1999 essay, Nato's Rush to War' before and read it once again since you insisted I do so. You are wrong here though, since Zunes does not really oppose US intervention as you say he does, and instead says that it was completely legitimate to intervene in Yugoslavia. I disagree with that. He goes on to merely say that he does not like how that intervention was done though by Clinton.
Well what did he expect though? Did he think that Slick Willy's US government would actually carry on like a group of pacifists with the trillion dollar funded Pentagon at hand? I found his arguments to be disingenuous and not convincingly antiwar at all. And nothing has changed in my opinion of Zunes record since then, as he repeats his same politically mistaken analyses over and over again in multiple contexts.
The idea that the US government has a legitimate right to go and intervene in other peoples' affairs makes Zunes a very dangerous apologist for just exactly that. It is in fact a reactionary POV. It is reactionary when American liberals push for their government, AS IT IS, to meddle more around the world! It is the complete opposite approach to what is needed by and from the Left.
I recall that some U.S. ambassador supposedly found a mass grave (of Kosovars, I think), and that this find was the precipitating incident Clinton used for the illegal carpet bombing of Yugoslavia.
Much later, a Common Dreams article (sorry, can't recall which one) questioned whether there had actually been a mass grave found at all.
At the time, Clinton was promoting his "humanitarian intervention" concept. It seemed to be a way to wage wars again - something that both the Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington, D.C. like to do. (Oddly, GW Bush campaigned against humanitarian interventions before asserting the pResidency and going on a killing spree.) Clinton's rationale - to wage war to prevent people from being killed internally in a country - was a new twist on the old "Wilsonian idealism."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilsonian
Zunes outlines a fairly convincing narrative. However, it's still not clear why Clinton and Congress backed the attack. I recall stories of impending ethnic cleasing, and there was some sort of United Nations engagement, and all of that may have kept criticism at bay. However, the United States hasn't historically waged its interventions for humanitarian reasons. It's a weak argument, so looking for other explanations is natural.
My guess is that there probably were a number of "reasons" for Clinton's attack. Zunes notes the NATO pump up as one. Others have noted the building up of military bases near mineral resources near the former Soviet Union as another reason. Of course, there's the shock doctrine notion of remaking the old Soviet satellites into capitalist dreams by dissolving local industries and plundering the assets. Probably all of those reasons were true reasons why the attack was carried out. The false reason was humanitarian intervention. Zunes points to the indiscriminate killings and the bombing of infrastructure as indications that protecting the Kosovars wasn't the true objective.
I don't really know. I'm just recalling the details of the time, and some of it may be mixed with propaganda. Clearly, though, people were lulled into sleep under the right-wing Clinton Presidency.
Obama is also showing idealism as a rationale for war, and I think that's what Zunes is tacitly implying may be taking place. In Obama's case, he's continuing Bush's global war on terrorism without using that term. However, the objective may be the same as Clinton: get mineral reserves in the old Soviet empire's outliers and convert them to capitalist economies.
-TIA
Compare Zunes narrative about 'Serb fascism' with which he helped spread US war fever against Yugoslavia back then with today's BBC report (April 9, 2009)...
Horrors of KLA prison camps revealed
Michael Montgomery
BBC Radio 4, Crossing Continents
The man spoke plainly as he explained the horrors he lived through in a Kosovo Liberation Army prison camp 10 years ago. He told me about how he watched people beaten with steel pipes, cut with knives, left for days without food, and shot and killed.
Civilians were detained by the KLA and kept in prisons where some were killed
"What can you feel when you see those things?" he said. "It's something that is stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. You cannot do those things to people, not even to animals."
As the man talked, his mother paced nervously in the nearby kitchen. She was panicked and tears were streaming down her face.
"They'll kill him, they'll kill him," she moaned, clutching one of her grandchildren.
But her son persisted. We spent hours in the family's sitting room as our source detailed allegations of possible war crimes by KLA officers in a military camp in the Albanian border town of Kukes.
It was a crucial interview for a delicate story I have been investigating for years.
Mystery of the missing
Soon after the war ended in Kosovo, I started looking into the thousands of civilians who disappeared during and after the conflict. Many Albanian victims were dumped in wells or transported to mass graves as far away as Belgrade.
LISTEN TO THE FULL REPORT
BBC Radio 4: Crossing Continents
Listen on the BBC iPlayer or download the free podcast
Read more: Kosovo civilian abuses revealed
But others - mainly Serbs - simply vanished without a trace. There were no demands for ransom, no news of any kind.
I had met sources who spoke vaguely about secret camps in Albania where Kosovo Serbs, Albanians and Roma were interrogated, tortured and in most cases killed.
I met another source who agreed to share important details about KLA prison camps. This man cut a very different profile.
He had returned from a successful career abroad to join the KLA in its fight for Kosovo's independence from Serbia.
The man was still proud of the goals he fought for, but he had become haunted by the treatment of civilians he had seen at a KLA prison camp. More than that, he said he felt angry and betrayed by KLA commanders who tolerated and even ordered the abuses.
"It didn't seem strange at the time," he told me as he described seeing desperate civilians locked in a filthy agricultural shed.
Now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to innocent civilians were wrong
Former KLA Fighter
He said the civilians were Serbs and Roma seized by KLA soldiers and were being hidden away from Nato troops. The source believes the captives were sent across the border to Albania and killed.
"Now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to innocent civilians were wrong. But the people who did these things act as if nothing happened, and continue to hurt their own people, Albanians."
This man was one of eight former KLA fighters who revealed some of their darkest secrets from the war.
A soldier's story
Yet another source spoke of driving trucks packed with shackled prisoners - mainly Serbian civilians from Kosovo - to secret locations in Albania where they were eventually killed.
He recalled hearing two of the captives begging to be shot rather than tortured and "cut into pieces".
"I was sick. I was just waiting for it to end," the source told me. "It was hard. I thought we were fighting a war [of liberation] but this was something completely different."
A long silence over the atrocities has held strong throughout Kosovo
It has taken these men 10 years to speak to an outsider about the dark side of the war. They were breaking a code of silence that has held strong in Kosovo.
Very few Kosovo Albanians have publicly revealed crimes committed by their own side. And for good reason. Witnesses who have agreed to provide testimony for prosecutions of KLA commanders have faced intimidation and death threats.
Some have been killed, according to United Nations officials in Kosovo.
There is another reason. All the men we spoke with insisted they were Kosovan patriots and would take up arms again to defend the country's independence.
But that is precisely the point: independence - of a sort - arrived for Kosovo last year. Their wartime goal has been attained.
As one of the former KLA fighters told me: "Now is the time to be honest to ourselves and build a real state."
Not to mention (I mentioned it below) that Carla Del Ponte, the former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, now talks of Thaci and his organs for sale operation.