More than 1,000 NATO troops were deployed to the region starting March 18, adding to the 18,000 already there. Among the first to arrive was a battalion of some 500 French troops along with about 150 each from the United Kingdom and Germany.

In the guise of “peacekeepers,” the occupation troops in Kosova, like those in Bosnia, are part of the efforts by Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, and other imperialist powers to undermine and carve up the Yugoslav workers state. They have maintained their foothold in the region by fostering divisions between Kosovar Serbs and Albanians over the past five years.

The assaults on Serb homes began shortly after reports that two Albanian youths had drowned in a nearby river. A third boy who survived said the three of them had been chased by Serbs with dogs.Crowds of Kosovar Albanians reportedly attacked Serb communities. Thirty-one people were killed and around 500 injured, according to the London-based Guardian. An estimated 400 Serb homes were destroyed along with 30 churches, and at least 3,600 Serbs were driven from Kosova.

The widespread character of the social eruption and fierce clashes with United Nations “peacekeepers” indicate that the events are rooted in the conditions fostered by the imperialist occupation of the province. “We condemn the acts of violence, as well as the slow pace of the UN mission towards a resolution of Kosova’s final status,” Arsmin Barjrami told the New York Times. Barjrami is a leader of the Democratic Party of Kosova, the second-largest of Albanian political parties in the province that are pressing for independence.

In Belgrade, the capital of Serbia to the north, crowds burned a 17th century mosque. A mosque in the city of Nis was also set on fire.

Almost five years after Kosova was placed under UN control, in a settlement imposed through a 78-day NATO-led bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, there is still no timetable for withdrawal of the occupation forces or resolving the aspirations of the province’s Albanian majority for self-determination.

The occupation regime in Kosova is headed by UN-appointed governor Harri Holkeri. Following the latest outbreak, angry Serbs in Kosova have demanded that Holkeri, a former prime minister of Finland, be removed because of his regime’s failure to protect the population.

In Bratislava, NATO chief Jaap De Hoop Scheffer of the Netherlands responded to criticism of the NATO troops’ failure to prevent the attacks on Serbs in Kosova, saying, “KFOR can’t guard every individual citizen, every house or farm.” He said, “Things are going the wrong way,” and that it looked as though the military force “is there to stay.” KFOR is the acronym for the NATO occupation force.

In a speech later that day to a conference of East European officials, Scheffer issued the “stiffest warning yet to Kosovo Albanian leaders,” the Guardian reported. “Those who think they can achieve political ends through violence will be severely disappointed,” said Scheffer, as head of the nearly 20,000-troop occupation force.

NATO troops have been conducting more aggressive operations in Kosova in the days since Scheffer’s speech. In Mitrovica, for example, French troops raided an apartment and killed an Albanian man whom they accused of being a sniper. “My soldiers will immediately and forcefully stop anyone who violates the rule of law,” said Brig. Gen. Richard Erlandson, a U.S. commander of NATO forces in Kosova.

In village after village throughout Kosova, as Serbs were being driven from their homes and their churches burned, foreign “peacekeepers” mostly stood by and watched, claiming to be outnumbered.

“We felt there was nothing we could do but sit back and watch the destruction,” Angel Feliciano told the Times. Feliciano is a sergeant in a military police unit from Milledgeville, Georgia, operating in the Kosova village of Lipjan. He described how three armored personnel carriers with Finnish troops refused to take action when faced with a crowd of several hundred people threatening to burn a group of houses owned by Serbs.

Pedrog Antic, an electrician in the village of Svinjare, said UN police in armored cars drove alongside a group of young men as they set the homes of Serbs ablaze with Molotov cocktails and fired their guns.

Javier Solana, foreign policy head of the European Union, was confronted by an angry crowd of Serbs in Kosova on March 24 as he visited the region to mark the fifth anniversary of the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. He was NATO’s secretary-general at the time.

“I am appalled by the brutality of the actions,” Solana told residents of Polje. But an unidentified Serbian man said, “This is your Western politics,” as he pointed to burned houses in the distance, reported the BBC.

Solana’s entourage, which included the UN-appointed governor of the province, was turned back by a crowd of Serbs as they attempted to enter a block in the town to speak with those who had been displaced.

Solana also met with Albanian political leaders in Kosova’s capital, Pristina. He told them the occupation forces’ intelligence services had a “clear picture” of who had led the attacks on Serbs. “When we start arresting those responsible, do not jump up clamoring for their release,” Solana said, according to the Reuters news agency. UN police say they have arrested 200 people whom they accuse of being responsible for the attacks on Serbs.

Some 8,000 Albanians attended the March 22 burial of the two youths who had drowned in the nearby Ibar River. About 200 Serbs watched the ceremony from the other side of the river. During the attacks on Serbs a few days earlier, some Albanians had protected their Serbian neighbors, according to media reports.

Some 50,000 troops, mostly under NATO command, were deployed in Kosova in June 1999. The agreement was reached a day after the UN Security Council approved a resolution authorizing deployment of the occupation force by a vote of 14 to 0, with the Chinese government abstaining. After much fretting and bluster Berlin and Moscow backed the NATO terms.

Washington justified its massive bombing campaign against Yugoslavia by posing as a defender of Kosovars who were being driven out by right-wing Serbian nationalist paramilitary forces, often in collaboration with police and army units deployed by the regime in Belgrade.

The real objective of the U.S-led assault was to deepen the divisions and accelerate the break-up of the Yugoslav workers state, which was made easier by the reactionary policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy that headed the government.

While the massive 1999 bombing campaign was in full force, Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth Bacon warned, “I don’t think Kosova will be a very happy place for Serbs when NATO comes in.” Officials of the William Clinton administration and other imperialist governments at the same time made clear they were opposed to self-determination for the Kosovars.

The latest reinforcement of the NATO forces underscores the open-ended character of the imperialist occupation of the country.  
 
 
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