The U.S. government has found it useful today to advance its aims by drawing the Yugoslav armed forces into the dirty work of policing the border zone from which it had previously excluded Belgrade's forces. From the beginning, the NATO occupation forces have fomented conflicts between Serbs, Albanians, and other national groupings in the Balkans as a divide-and-rule tactic.

From the early 1990s, Washington and other imperialist powers seized on the violence unleashed against working people by warring gangs of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Yugoslav workers state as a pretext to intervene militarily in the Balkans. The brutal U.S.-led bombing campaign in 1999 targeted the industrial working class in Serbia, ravaging basic industries and causing havoc among millions of working people.

The real purpose of the NATO military occupation is to advance toward the long-term goal of reimposing capitalism in Yugoslavia. They have learned since the fall of the Stalinist regimes that this goal cannot be achieved short of military confrontations with the workers and farmers of Yugoslavia and throughout the region.

The social gains won by working people there through a powerful socialist revolution in the 1940s--including the nationalized property and other social relations that still predominate, however frayed--can only be reversed by violent means. The decisive battles remain ahead. Today the imperialist governments and their occupation forces are seeking every means possible to try to break the solidarity and fighting capacity of the toilers. Their efforts have so far not met with success.

Washington is threatened by any independent actions of working people to take more control over their lives--from the actions of workers in Serbia to expand their rights following their ousting of the Milosevic regime, to the struggles for self-determination by the Albanian people in Kosova and Macedonia. Those struggles strengthen the working class and deserve the support of working people worldwide.The most important aid we can give is to demand the immediate withdrawal of U.S. and all other occupation troops from Yugoslavia.
 
 
Related article:
U.S. forces move against Albanian rebels  
 
 
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