BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
After a week of relentless bombing, Washington and other
NATO powers have escalated their military assault on
Yugoslavia. At the same time, the regime in Belgrade has
intensified its "ethnic cleansing" campaign against the
Albanian majority in Kosova, driving tens of thousands of
farmers and workers from their homes and setting the stage
for the possible partition of Kosova, an outcome that would
not displease the U.S. government.
U.S. and British capitalist politicians are increasingly debating proposals to send ground troops into Kosova. Despite claiming to protect the Albanian population, Washington shares Belgrade's opposition to the independence of Kosova and continues to seek to strike a deal with the regime of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic that could weaken and defeat the struggle for national self-determination there. The U.S. rulers' ultimate goal is to overthrow the workers state in Yugoslavia as a whole and restore capitalism throughout the region.
Military escalation
The U.S.-led military forces have been raining cruise
missiles daily on sites throughout Yugoslavia since March 24.
U.S. officials said they have expanded their scope of attack
from the Serbian regime's air defense facilities to military
targets closer to Serbian ground forces - including
threatening to bomb targets in downtown Belgrade. They have
begun deploying warplanes that can target tanks and field
artillery.
U.S. and British commanders are adding more warplanes to their assault force, including B-18 bombers with antitank cluster bombs. The NATO force has 400 aircraft, half of which are U.S. warplanes, and the rest from the United Kingdom, France, and 10 other countries. It includes a fleet of four warships and three submarines in the Adriatic Sea. German warplanes are taking part in the bombardment - the first battle deployment of German troops since World War II.
Almost 10,000 heavily equipped U.S. troops are stationed in Bosnia. A force of 12,000 British, German, French, and U.S. troops is based in Macedonia. And some 2,200 U.S. Marines are in the Adriatic.
Meanwhile, the Milosevic regime, which presides over the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia and Montenegro, has stepped up its campaign of terror against Albanians in Kosova, who make up 90 percent of the territory's 2 million inhabitants. Serbian army troops and paramilitary units have torched homes and driven tens of thousands from their towns. Albanians fleeing their homes have begun pouring across the borders into neighboring countries.
Tens of thousands of Kosovar Albanians have crossed into Albania. Others have sought refuge in neighboring Macedonia or Montenegro.
To cover up its brutal assault, Belgrade proclaims it is fighting Albanian "terrorists" in the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK), who are supposedly directed and financed by the CIA. In reality, the UCK comes out of the struggle for self- determination of the Albanian majority and enjoys mass support.
Governments in Italy, Greece, and elsewhere in the region have not responded by welcoming the fleeing Kosovar Albanians into their countries. Instead, Italian officials have expressed "alarm" at a possible influx of Albanian workers and farmers, and have sent two Italian navy ships with supplies to Albania, to try to stem a flow of refugees to Italy. In a March 30 op-ed piece, senior New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demanded that, as part of a deal with the Milosevic regime, "the Serbs will have to permit the return of all the refugees."
Promoters of the NATO bombing campaign have seized on Belgrade's "ethnic cleansing" drive in Kosova. "The New Adolf Hitler?" was a typical headline in Time magazine, which juxtaposed a picture of Milosevic with one of the Nazi leader. President William Clinton and other U.S. officials have accused Milosevic of "genocide." British defense secretary George Robertson renewed his call for a "war crimes" trial against Serbian leaders March 28, saying "evidence" was being assembled for such a trial.
The U.S. big-business media has also tried to spur a patriotic fervor around the March 27 downing of a U.S. stealth fighter north of Belgrade and the "daring rescue" of its pilot.
The Serbian media reported that dozens of people have been killed in NATO raids. It also said on March 29 that Serbian forces shot down a second NATO warplane, a report Pentagon officials denied.
Jubilant villagers danced on the wreckage of the U.S. stealth warplane. Asked about NATO, a local resident said, "What can I feel except hatred? Why are they bombing us?" As he spoke, air raid alerts sounded in several Serbian towns including Belgrade.
In downtown Belgrade, after four nights of cruise missile attacks near the city, 10,000 people turned out March 28 for an impromptu "music against the bombs" rock concert held to protest the NATO bombings.
Marching down the capital's main boulevard, dozens of antiwar demonstrators carried an enormous white sheet with a bull's-eye, a logo that many Belgrade residents have begun to wear in protest against the imperialist bombing campaign. They carried a banner calling NATO the "New American Terrorist Organization."
The assault has produced contradictory reactions. It has rallied many in Serbia around opposing the invading bombers. But Milosevic, who poses as a defender of Serbia against foreign attackers, has been strengthened, winning support even from many who two years ago protested in the streets against him. As a result, the Milosevic regime has been able to whip up prejudices against the Albanian population, who face second-class status in Kosova.
"I hate Clinton for what he has done," said Radan, a Belgrade taxi driver. "I don't like Milosevic very much either, but when it comes to Kosovo, we Serbs are united."
"Analysts in Belgrade say the situation is so volatile that it is hard to predict the course of events even a few days ahead," the Financial Times reported March 26. Groups of youth trashed the American Center, British Council, Gothe Institute, and French Cultural Center in Belgrade. In Banja Luka, Bosnia, the British mission was burned to the ground. British, German, and U.S. missions were attacked March 25 by pro-Serbian demonstrators in Skopje, Macedonia's capital.
Tensions have grown in Macedonia, where a large Albanian minority lives and where thousands of Albanians fleeing Kosova have sought refuge. Many Albanians there support NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia, believing it will protect them.
While sentiment against the 12,000 NATO troops stationed there has surged among Macedonians, the pro-imperialist government in Skopje has asked urgently to be admitted to the NATO military alliance. Similarly, the crisis in Kosova is creating further rifts between officials of Montenegro and Serbia, which comprise the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia.
The first day of the bombing, the pro-imperialist government of Montenegro declared it would not recognize the Milosevic regime's declaration of an "imminent state of war." It has taken other steps that have led the pro-Milosevic forces to accuse it of secession. Anti-NATO and pro-Serbian demonstrations have also taken place in Bulgaria and Greece. In Tirana, Albania, 8,000 demonstrators backed by the ruling party came out March 28 in support of the Kosova Albanians and of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Assault sparks anger in Russia
The Russian government has condemned the NATO assault on
Yugoslavia, with which it has close ties. Moscow is alarmed
at the threat of a widening Balkan war and the fact that the
U.S.-led intervention against Yugoslavia is ultimately also
aimed at the Russian workers state. Russian prime minister
Yevgeny Primakov flew to Belgrade March 29 to seek
negotiations between the Milosevic government and officials
from the NATO powers.
The bombing of Yugoslavia has sparked widespread anger in Russia, deepening suspicions about NATO's eastward expansion, which is part of the imperialist military encirclement of Russia. "NATO's action is a dress rehearsal. First they bomb Serbia and then they will move on elsewhere," said Olga Ivashova, a pensioner in Moscow interviewed by the Financial Times of London.
At the same time, ultrarightist nationalist organizations in Russia have begun signing up volunteers to fight in Yugoslavia. One of them, fascist-minded Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said his party had assembled hundreds of volunteers to fight for the Serbian army.
The deepening military intervention of imperialist powers in the Balkans has sparked debate on foreign policy in all these countries. For Bonn, the first combat mission by German forces since 1945 registers a qualitative step by that imperialist power to use military might abroad. It has been pushed by German chancellor Gerhard Schroder's Social Democrats and supported by the majority of the Green party, partners in a governing coalition.
In Italy, Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, a leader of the former Communist Party, supports the NATO air strikes. Italy has 11 NATO bases that are the launching pads for most of the air strikes against Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, D'Alema's call, during a pause in the bombing March 25, for reopening negotiations drew an immediate rebuke from fellow imperialists in London and Washington, who have also put heavy pressure on the Greek government for similarly wavering.
Debate on ground troops
The accelerating conflict in Yugoslavia has sparked a
public debate on sending NATO ground troops into combat
there. The official position of the Clinton administration
was reiterated March 28 by Vice President Albert Gore: "We
are not going to put any ground troops into a combat
situation." U.S. officials have called for sending in troops
to establish a NATO occupation force in Kosova only after
dictating a "peace" accord to the two sides.
There seems to be little immediate prospect that the NATO bombing campaign will force Belgrade's armed forces to surrender. This has sparked nervous headlines like the one in the March 29 International Herald Tribune, "What if Bombs Fail to Stop Milosevic? NATO Weighing Possibility of Sending In Ground Troops."
U.S. senator John McCain, expressing a minority view, argued for deploying ground troops. "We're in it and we have to win it," McCain stated March 28 on the national television program "This Week." "That means we have to exercise every option."
"I don't know if we can do it without ground troops," said Gen. Michael Ryan, U.S. Air Force chief of staff. Echoing this view, a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote March 29, "The limits of air power grow more apparent each day, and the enduring need for old-fashioned land power becomes more evident."
U.S. generals have stated that a ground invasion of Yugoslavia would require as many as 200,000 soldiers, and that such a force would take months to put in place. Nonetheless, the Washington Post reported, "Officials said the very fact that a ground war was under consideration is a measure of the seriousness of the difficulties now facing the commanders" of the bombing campaign.
Washington seeks deal with Belgrade
Despite its feigned concern for the Albanians in Kosova,
Washington not only opposes their demand for independence but
for years has tried to reach an agreement with the Milosevic
regime that would undermine, corrupt, and defeat the Albanian
struggle for self-determination in Kosova.
At the talks held in Rambouillet, France, in mid-March, U.S. officials succeeded in excluding from the Albanian negotiating team anyone who did not go along with their dictates. The remaining Albanian delegates signed a U.S.- sponsored proposal that calls for deploying a 28,000-member NATO military force in Kosova for three years.
In carrying out its terror campaign to drive Albanians out of big parts of Kosova, the regime in Belgrade is preparing the way for the partition of the province, a goal that may coincide with the interests of the imperialist powers.
"We do not support independence" for Kosova, U.S. defense secretary William Cohen repeated for the nth time March 28.
Likewise, an editorial in the Economist magazine declared that the Albanians in Kosova "should be told that the West is not intervening to give them independence, even though events, if they spin out of control, may well lead ultimately to secession.
In time, NATO may have to declare Kosovo, or at least a large part of it, an area into which the Serb authorities should not venture on pain of retribution, much as parts of Iraq have been declared off-limits to those who do [Iraqi president] Saddam [Hussein's] bidding."
In a March 30 column headlined "Bomb, Talk, Deal," New York Times writer Friedman presented a similar position. "Our strategic interest is that Kosovo not be independent," he wrote, "because it would send an unrealistic message to Basques, Kurds, and other aggrieved ethnic groups." Friedman argued that the U.S.-led forces should "punish" Yugoslavia and force the Milosevic government to the negotiations table to cut a deal, granting Albanians a limited degree of autonomy and allowing an imperialist occupation force.
Several current and former U.S. military commanders were quoted in the March 30 Times calling for NATO forces to partition Kosova, allowing the Serbian regime to control part of the region, while creating "safe havens" for Albanians, enforced by a ground force of 30,000 to 40,000 NATO troops. Various commentators have advocated setting up what they term a "protectorate."
Washington followed a similar course in Bosnia in the mid- 1990s. The 1995 NATO bombing and subsequent occupation of Bosnia by imperialist troops followed years of negotiations with the rival gangs in power in the republics of the formerly federated Yugoslavia.
The deals that were struck sought to undermine the foothold that Washington's European competitors had attempted to establish in Yugoslavia. At the same time, the U.S. rulers fueled the war and were complicit with the regimes in Belgrade, Zagreb, and other rival bureaucracies that continued the slaughter and brutal national oppression to maintain their privileges and parasitic way of life.
The problem for Washington and other imperialist powers is that their real target is not the Milosevic regime but the working people of Yugoslavia. It will take bloody class conflict to try to defeat them. Those battles remain ahead, but the U.S. rulers are getting a taste of the uncontrollable forces they have already set in motion throughout the region.