The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.22           June 7, 1999 
 
 
U.S.-NATO Bombings Cut Off Water, Electricity
50,000 imperialist troops readied for Kosova invasion  

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
"Last night I was up reading with candles," said Bojan, 20, a university student in Novi Sad, in a May 25 telephone interview from Yugoslavia's third-largest city. "They've been bombing the power stations in the suburbs for the last two or three days. They stopped using the graphite bombs that cause temporary shortages and are using the real missiles targeting the transformers. Next on their list are probably our hydroelectric plants and other electricity generating factories."

In the latest escalation of the U.S.-NATO air raids against Yugoslavia, Washington and its imperialist allies are inflicting permanent damage to the country's power grid. Electricity cuts are now regular and widespread throughout Serbia, affecting everything from trams to bakeries to water pumps - coming on top of the systematic dismantling of industry and infrastructure that passed its 65th day as the Militant went to press. Millions are being deprived of access to drinking water at home.

"We've had no water for two days in my apartment," said Bojan, who asked that his last name not be used. "The pressure is too low because the pumps that run on electricity have gone silent. We now go to the fountain in the market to fill up bottles and buckets. You can see a big, beautiful line of hundreds of people. It's as if we were back 200 years ago."

At the same time, a spate of attacks on Kosova have resulted in the largest number of killings of Albanians by NATO bombs so far - nearly 200 in 10 days. The intensification of the NATO bombing has also spurred a new explosion of deportations and brutalization of Kosovar Albanians, carried out largely by nationalist Serb paramilitary troops in black masks. The exodus into Macedonia reached 10,000 per day May 25.

This turn of events is of Washington's making. It is consistently producing the opposite result from NATO's alleged goal of protecting Albanians from "ethnic cleansing." The Clinton administration is now utilizing it to justify a major new deployment of troops in areas surrounding Yugoslavia.

The same day that power cuts blackened most of Serbia and expulsions of Kosovar Albanians reached a new peak in the last month, NATO announced its decision to send 50,000 "peacekeeping" troops to Macedonia and Albania. This force - much larger than the 28,000 troops floated earlier - will be deployed in Kosova to enforce any deal the regime of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is forced to sign. It will also serve as the first detachment in preparation for a ground invasion if Belgrade does not concede.

This unrelenting, U.S.-engineered war is speeding up divisions among the NATO member states and solidifying Washington's collision course with workers states other than Yugoslavia - particularly China.

`Uncertainty is killing us'
"It's the uncertainty that's killing us," said Martina Vukasovic, a mathematics student at Belgrade University, in a May 25 interview. She was referring both to how erratic and unpredictable the power outages had become and to the prospects for ending the war. "Power comes for two to three hours, then no electricity for six hours, or more. You can't plan. The voltage is not stable either."

One of the computers at the office of the Students Union of Yugoslavia, which Vukasovic belongs to, was burned up, she said, "because the power is now switched on too strong some times, and the machine didn't have surge protection." The Students Union is the main student organization that emerged out of the four-month-long daily mobilizations for democratic rights two years ago.

The student marches, which often reached 20,000 per day, were part of a larger movement that forced the Milosevic regime to back off from annulling municipal election results that brought victories to an opposition coalition in 15 of Serbia's 19 largest cities. Within the working class, Nezavisnost (Independence), the trade union federation independent of government control, led in the 1996-97 mobilizations.

Many others reported similar hardships in everyday life. "You caught me at a bad time," said Branislav Canak, president of Nezavisnost, the evening of March 25. "Electricity just came on. I sat down to type some letters and send them off by e-mail a few minutes ago. We don't know how long we will have power this time."

In Belgrade, most shops were shut down May 24-25. Hospitals throughout the country had a hard time functioning. Bread lines have become common, as bakeries depend on electricity. Milk supplies have also dwindled for lack of refrigeration. In cities that have been hit the hardest by the bombing other food items are becoming scarce. "We now have shortages of milk, bread, sugar, and cooking oil," said Duci Petrovic, in a May 26 phone interview from Nis, Yugoslavia's second-largest city and among the country's major industrial centers.

The destruction of most of the country's oil refineries and oil storage facilities has resulted in lack of gasoline. NATO warplanes are hitting such targets repeatedly. "Novi Sad is covered again with black smoke," said Vladimir, another university student, who lives less than a mile from Novi Sad's refinery that was bombed May 24 for the tenth time. "It burned for more than a day. There's nothing left there now."

This has affected public transportation. Bus service inside Belgrade has been cut to a third of its prewar level, while the popular tram lines are no longer dependable as power is cut off frequently. Bus lines to other cities are not running as often either. "Where they had 10 busses a day going to Nis or some other city, now there's only two," said Zorica Trifunovic May 25. So travel throughout the country is becoming more and more difficult. Most train lines are no longer running, as NATO has destroyed at least a dozen railways.

The spreading assaults have brought increasing weariness on the population. The music hubbubs against the NATO bombing on the main bridge in Belgrade, sponsored by the ruling parties, are taking place infrequently and in the early evening, not at night. And the antiwar rock concerts at Republic square at the city's center are no longer daily and are attended by smaller crowds, Trifunovic said.

Even some articles in the big-business press in the United States have begun to acknowledge to a degree the extent of the damage to working people. "Although NATO spokesmen deny it," said a front-page article in the May 26 International Herald Tribune, Washington is "using its air strikes to damage the Serbian economy.... Increasingly, the impact of NATO air strikes has put people out of work and inflicted hardships in the daily lives of more Serbs."

Unemployment, already at 70 percent a month ago, has spread through the overwhelming majority of the population. According to Nezavisnost, nearly half of Serbia's 3 million wage workers are now receiving no income whatsoever. "We are lucky, most workers have relatives in the countryside around here," said Christina Ranic, a member of the metal workers union in Kragujevac, an industrial center of 250,000 about 100 miles south of Belgrade.

Ranic worked in the huge Zastava car manufacturing complex there, which used to employ up to 38,000 workers 10 years ago. It has now been reduced to rubble by a series of NATO air raids that began April 9. Warehouses in the suburbs of Kragujevac were bombed again recently. "Listen to the air sirens and the planes," Ranic said, as she spoke to this reporter by phone May 26.

The human toll of the bombing has exceeded 1,400 civilians dead and 6,000 wounded, according to official estimates.

Attacks in Kosova kill Albanians
The increasingly indiscriminate bombing has inflicted greater casualties among Albanians in Kosova, who Washington claims it is trying to protect. On May 13, U.S. F-16 fighter jets destroyed the village of Korisa, near Prizren, killing more than 80 people and wounding dozens of others. Over the next week, NATO attacks on a prison in Istock, northern Kosova, left 100 people dead, most of them inmates and a good number Albanians, and 200 wounded.

On May 21, NATO bombed a military base in Kosare, at Kosova's border with Albania, killing seven and wounding 25. All of them were Albanians, part of a unit of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) that had taken over the abandoned facility six weeks earlier. The KLA is a guerrilla group in Kosova, which is now collaborating openly with Washington and NATO in the assault on Yugoslavia.

It is currently operating mostly out of Albania. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said the Atlantic military alliance was not aware that the KLA was operating from there, even though a Reuters reporter and television crew filed reports from the site on May 2.

Washington has tried to justify each one of these incidents - just as the earlier attacks on the central market in Nis and a hospital in Belgrade - as "mistakes." Their growing number, however, is convincing more and more people - in both Yugoslavia and Albania - that the real target of the U.S.-NATO assault is working people throughout the region. "I don't know why they are doing this," said Kliton Nenaj, a construction engineering student at the University of Tirana, Albania's capital, referring to the above three attacks in Kosova. "It doesn't compute with their statements of supporting the Albanian people."

"It's very puzzling to me that they are killing so many Albanians," said Martina Vukasovic, a vocal opponent of the expulsions of Kosovar Albanians and the repressive policies of Belgrade. "How can they claim they are protecting them?"

"I now think the war will go on for a long time," said Dusan, a leader of the Students Union in Novi Sad, in a May 27 phone interview. "They are out to destroy the people. Put together the attacks on Albanians in Kosova, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the attacks on the power stations, and the indictment of Milosevic by the international court."

The international tribunal in The Hague had just decided to indict the Yugoslav president on "war crimes," which many opponents of his regime like Dusan resent, pointing out that it is only the people of Yugoslavia who can make such decisions. "We may even have to face a ground invasion," Dusan said, "something I didn't think would happen a few weeks ago."

New wave of expulsions, resistance
The intensification of the bombing has given additional cover to chauvinist Serb forces in Kosova to push more Albanians into Macedonia and Albania. Armesh Zhegrani, 23, was among the 10,000 who crossed the border into Macedonia May 25. He described how paramilitary troops with patches on their uniforms identifying them with Arkan - Zeljko Raznajtovic, a Serb nationalist infamous for similar operations in Bosnia - pushed him and thousands of others out of Pristina.

The number of Albanians deported to Macedonia has reached 240,000. More than 850,000 Kosovars have been expelled so far, half the Albanian population of the province. This ethnic cleansing is more and more carried out by paramilitary forces, since the conscript army is becoming less reliable for this task.

Demonstrations in southern Serbia by parents of soldiers in Kosova, and reservists who turned down military draft orders to return to Kosova, continued May 23-25. The first such protests erupted a week earlier, mostly by mothers of the soldiers demanding their sons be brought back alive, not in coffins.

"Yesterday in Krusevac, 2,500 reservists that returned from Kosovo protested when they received orders to return to the province," said a May 24 report by the Students Union of Yugoslavia, from their correspondent on the scene. When the reservists and their families marched to the district military headquarters, however, army officers, wary that the protests may spread, said the orders were for those who wanted to return to Kosova voluntarily. "Similar protests were held in Raska and Aleksandrovac."

Protests were also announced in nearby Prokupje, according to the same sources, after coffins with the bodies of 11 Serb soldiers arrived there May 24. The same day, hundreds of people gathered at the center of Krusevac again, demanding their sons be brought back from Kosova. Military authorities stated such actions won't be permitted in the future, but made no arrests there.

The police stopped reservists from Aleksandrovac, who refused to return to Kosova, from joining the demonstrators in Krusevac. "They were forced to return to Aleksandrovac where they held their own protest. More than 1,000 reservists and citizens took part," said the students' report.

The only place where authorities have arrested such protesters is in Cacak, western Serbia. Seven members of the Citizens Parliament who organized demonstrations were detained and tried, with six of them receiving fines ranging between $200 and $600. Cacak is a city where opposition parties hold an overwhelming majority in city hall. In Krusevac and Aleksandrovac, on the other hand, Milosevic has enjoyed widespread support in the past.

Dusan and Bojan in Novi Sad said these demonstrations did show the depth of opposition to the policies of the Milosevic regime. "But they can have no effect on the turn of events unless they spread in Belgrade and the other major cities," Dusan said.

Shifts on national self-determination
More young people and workers in Serbia are also concluding that support to the demands of Albanians for self-determination in Kosova is essential to forge the kind of unity among working people that can undercut both Washington and Belgrade's course.

"I am personally in favor of a referendum for self- determination in Kosova," Martina Vukasovic said. "This should have happened one, two years ago, or earlier. Autonomy is no longer enough to solve the problem."

Kosova, where the prewar population of 2.1 million was 90 percent Albanian, was an autonomous region of Serbia until 1989. The Milosevic regime revoked autonomy in response to strikes and demonstrations at the end of the 1980s, which were led by miners demanding an end to Belgrade's austerity measures and national rights for Albanians in Kosova. In the following years, the Albanian language was banned from state radio and TV programs.

The University of Pristina, where courses were taught both in Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, was closed to Albanians. Most industrial and other workers who refused to sign loyalty oaths to Serbia were fired from their jobs. In the fall of 1997, Belgrade began using special police forces and its military more and more to suppress student and other protests in Kosova and to defeat the armed insurgency by the KLA.

"This has been a disastrous policy," said Vladimir. "There is no other exit from this than the Albanians in Kosova having their own state now. This didn't have to happen. It was Milosevic who made it possible for Washington to attack us in this way. A federation of equals can only be voluntary."

"The killings and expulsions... paint a somber and painful picture of Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro, as if indicating that life together is no longer possible," said a May 20 open letter to Albanian friends, issued by Nezavisnost and more than a dozen other organizations. "We, however, believe that it is necessary and possible. The better future of citizens of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, of Serbs and Albanians, as citizens of one state or close neighbors [emphasis added], will not arrive by itself or over night. But it is something we can and must work on together."

According to a number of young people interviewed over the phone across Yugoslavia, opposition to "ethnic cleansing" among Serb soldiers is on the rise. "I had the opportunity to speak to a friend of mine who is in the army in Prizren," said Ivan, a student from Belgrade who lives in Montenegro now, and asked that only his first name be used. "He told me he wants to go home, just like most in his unit of about 110. They don't feel they are defending our country there. They've mostly been involved in battles with KLA units. They hate the ethnic cleansing going on all around them. They haven't decided to desert yet; that's not an easy matter in the middle of a war."

Most of the same people would turn around and fight if NATO launched a ground offensive, Ivan said. Almost everyone interviewed made the same point. "If the United States sends ground troops, this is no longer about Milosevic, it's about us," said Oliver Kokic, a part-time student in Belgrade who also works as a driver.

Debate among imperialist powers
This is exactly what the U.S. rulers are debating. With imperial arrogance, many bourgeois political figures exalt the virtues of the high-tech weaponry unleashed on the people of Yugoslavia and insist their "air campaign" will force Milosevic to eventually allow NATO troops into Kosova and withdraw most of his forces from the region. "Air power is very seductive to American leaders," said Richard Dunn, a retired U.S. army colonel who works at the Center for National Security Issues.

He was describing how the new B-2 stealth bombers take off from the Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri, fly all the way to Yugoslavia to drop their bombs, and return home after their deadly missions. "You do it nice and cleanly. Nobody gets their feet muddy. A pilot flies over at 15,000 feet, kills only those people that need to be killed, flies home and has a beer with a beautiful young lady."

Many U.S. politicians and pundits, however, are arguing that preparation for a ground assault on Yugoslavia is necessary now. The air raids have not cowed Belgrade so far. Other sanctions, like the oil embargo and the attempt to stop tankers from unloading petroleum in Yugoslav ports, have faltered.

Tankers from Russia and the Ukraine have been bringing enough oil through the Danube to keep limited supplies of fuel flowing. The governments of Bulgaria and Romania, which have cooperated with NATO in the use of their air space for attacks on Serbia, have refused to stop the ships.

So in order to maintain and strengthen its domination as the top military and economic power in Europe, Washington is pushing for the deployment of the "peacekeeping" force - a prelude to a NATO army of at least 150,000 to invade Yugoslavia if Belgrade doesn't obey U.S. wishes.

This course is exacerbating interimperialist competition and frictions. Bonn has said a ground invasion of Kosova "would be unthinkable." On May 25, the governments of Greece, Italy, and the Czech Republic renewed calls on Washington for a 48-hour pause in the NATO bombing to give incentive to Belgrade for a negotiated solution. The U.S. government has so far rejected all such proposals.

Collision course with China
The assault on Yugoslavia has also brought to the fore a sharpening confrontation between Washington and Beijing, especially in the wake of the May 7 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. On May 21, the Chinese government banned U.S. ships from docking in Hong Kong and other Chinese ports. In the United States, a congressional report was released May 26 accusing Beijing of widespread espionage to steal U.S. military secrets related to nuclear weapons.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao countered that the release of the 700-page report was meant to "disturb and destroy" Chinese-American relations and showed Washington was "clinging to the Cold War mentality."

 
 
 
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