[ Ecco un OTTIMO articolo scritto dai compagni statunitensi, che fa "il
punto" sui pogrom in Kosmet evidenziando i risvolti strategici della
questione, le responsabilita' primarie dei paesi occidentali nel
fomentare la guerra fratricida, ed il carattere strategico della
disinformazione dei nostri mass media...
NB. Chi potesse tradurre l'articolo e' pregato di farcelo pervenire con
tempestivita'. ]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 1, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BEHIND THE TURMOIL IN KOSOVO
By John Catalinotto
and Heather Cottin
On March 18 the corporate media worldwide reported an outbreak of what
they love to call "ethnic violence" in the Balkans. Within a day, some
1,500 British, French, Italian, Danish and U.S. troops were on their
way to Serbia's occupied Kosovo province, with an additional 600 German
troops promised.
Like almost all events in the Balkans in the past 15 years, its meaning
is distorted by these media reports, which attribute every violent act
to "ancient ethnic animosities" that somehow can't be brought under
control without Western military intervention.
The truth is that for 45 years following World War II, the Socialist
Federation of Yugoslavia was able to achieve a working relationship
among its many nations, peoples, ethnic groups and religions. It also
coexisted peacefully with neighboring Albania, then also a socialist
country, despite sharp political differences with Albania's leaders.
It was NATO intervention, especially German- and U.S.-organized
subversion, that sharpened all national and religious differences and
led to the turmoil of 1991-1998. Finally came the U.S.-NATO 78-day
bombing of Yugoslavia, begun just five years ago on March 24, 1999. It
killed thousands of Yugoslavs, including ethnic Albanians and Serbs in
Kosovo.
EXPANSION INTO EASTERN EUROPE
U.S. imperialism used its European military organization, NATO, to
create a multinational cover for the 1999 war. NATO was crucial to U.S.
efforts to expand into Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
To provoke the war and the breakup of Yugoslavia, in the late 1990s
both Washington and Berlin backed the KLA, a right-wing extremist
grouping of ethnic Albanians. Before 1998 even U.S. officials described
the KLA as "terrorist." The KLA's political program included setting up
a "greater Albania" that included Kosovo and parts of Bulgaria, Serbia,
Montenegro and Greece.
The 1999 bombing ended when the Yugoslav government agreed to allow
NATO forces to occupy Kosovo. Kosovo legally remained part of Serbia,
however. Since then, the United Nations has given cover to the NATO
occupation, and 18,500 troops still remain. Some 40,000 were originally
deployed.
After the 1999 occupation, NATO troops in Kosovo allowed the KLA
reactionaries to drive some hundreds of thousands of people of Serb,
Jewish, Roma (Gypsy) and other nationalities out of Kosovo using arson,
killing and intimidation. Most of these refugees moved to Serbia. The
KLA reactionaries have also persecuted progressive Albanians.
"There are not many ethnic minorities left in Kosovo. 220,000 have fled
since 1999," UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond recently told a news
conference in Geneva. Since the start of the violence this month, over
4,000 Serbs have fled their homes. (Reuters, March 19)
THE MARCH 16 INCIDENT
On March 16, four young Albanian boys were swept into Kosovo's rushing
Ibar River. Only one of them survived.
The first story to emerge from this incident asserted that the children
had been chased into the river by Serbian youths and their dogs. But
Derek Chappell, a spokesperson in the United Nations occupation
authority (UNMIK), told media in Pristina on March 18 that this was
definitely not true, that the survivor of the drowning told his parents
that he and three friends entered the river alone and were immediately
caught up in the heavy current. Chappell said that organized forces
used the lie to spark virulent attacks upon ethnic Serbs in the region.
A reported 24 people were killed and 500 injured in the fighting,
mostly ethnic Serbs. Twenty-five Serbian Orthodox churches and
monasteries were burned, and some 400 houses torched. (ITAR-TASS, March
22)
Some UN and Western officials have been quoted as saying that the
incident was intended to provoke a battle to gain the separation of
Kosovo from Serbia. Such a separation would violate the 1999 agreement.
It wouldn't be the first time an incident was fabricated to justify
fighting. In January 1999, the KLA and U.S. official William Walker
claimed that the death of a group of KLA fighters in the Kosovo village
of Racak was instead a massacre of civilians. The "Racak Massacre" was
used to justify the NATO war on Yugoslavia, which the U.S. and Germany
alleged was a "humanitarian" intervention.
This year, the Finnish pathologist Helena Ranta, who led forensic
investigations into the Racak case, told the Berliner Zeitung of Jan.
17 that Serb security troops were also killed and that there was no
proof that the dead bodies she examined were civilians or had been
executed.
PROTEST IN BELGRADE TARGETS U.S.
On March 18, some 10,000 people marched in downtown Belgrade in
solidarity with the beleaguered ethnic Serb community of Kosovo.
Vladimir Krsljanin, an aide to former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, told Workers World from Belgrade that 2,000 of the
demonstrators surrounded the U.S. Embassy until 2 a.m. The embassy has
been closed since then.
Krsljanin said that 200 rowdy or provocative elements carried out an
arson attack on a mosque in Belgrade. The police didn't try to stop
them, he added, but they protected the U.S. Embassy. Most demonstrators
rightly saw the U.S. as responsible for the deterioration of life in
the Balkans and the threat to Serbia.
In Kosovo since 1999, thousands of Albanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and
others have been laid off from factories and mines that the government
of Yugoslavia formerly operated. In addition, state-supported free
medical care and most government support for education was terminated
in Kosovo.
NATO had allowed the paramilitary KLA forces to seize control of Kosovo
in 1999. In the past two years these same CIA-trained operatives have
helped set up paramilitaries to attack neighboring Macedonia.
The first result of this latest provocation will be to draw more forces
into the region to beef up the imperialist NATO alliance in Eastern
Europe.
In most of the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, from
Poland to Turkmenistan, from Uzbekistan to Hungary, NATO is now
protecting Western imperialist corporations and advancing the fortunes
of Western military industries, especially those of the United States.
In the Balkans, imperialist intervention has brought not "humanitarian
relief" but increased turmoil to the region.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@.... Subscribe
wwnews-on@.... Unsubscribe wwnews-off@.... Support
the
voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
punto" sui pogrom in Kosmet evidenziando i risvolti strategici della
questione, le responsabilita' primarie dei paesi occidentali nel
fomentare la guerra fratricida, ed il carattere strategico della
disinformazione dei nostri mass media...
NB. Chi potesse tradurre l'articolo e' pregato di farcelo pervenire con
tempestivita'. ]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 1, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
BEHIND THE TURMOIL IN KOSOVO
By John Catalinotto
and Heather Cottin
On March 18 the corporate media worldwide reported an outbreak of what
they love to call "ethnic violence" in the Balkans. Within a day, some
1,500 British, French, Italian, Danish and U.S. troops were on their
way to Serbia's occupied Kosovo province, with an additional 600 German
troops promised.
Like almost all events in the Balkans in the past 15 years, its meaning
is distorted by these media reports, which attribute every violent act
to "ancient ethnic animosities" that somehow can't be brought under
control without Western military intervention.
The truth is that for 45 years following World War II, the Socialist
Federation of Yugoslavia was able to achieve a working relationship
among its many nations, peoples, ethnic groups and religions. It also
coexisted peacefully with neighboring Albania, then also a socialist
country, despite sharp political differences with Albania's leaders.
It was NATO intervention, especially German- and U.S.-organized
subversion, that sharpened all national and religious differences and
led to the turmoil of 1991-1998. Finally came the U.S.-NATO 78-day
bombing of Yugoslavia, begun just five years ago on March 24, 1999. It
killed thousands of Yugoslavs, including ethnic Albanians and Serbs in
Kosovo.
EXPANSION INTO EASTERN EUROPE
U.S. imperialism used its European military organization, NATO, to
create a multinational cover for the 1999 war. NATO was crucial to U.S.
efforts to expand into Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
To provoke the war and the breakup of Yugoslavia, in the late 1990s
both Washington and Berlin backed the KLA, a right-wing extremist
grouping of ethnic Albanians. Before 1998 even U.S. officials described
the KLA as "terrorist." The KLA's political program included setting up
a "greater Albania" that included Kosovo and parts of Bulgaria, Serbia,
Montenegro and Greece.
The 1999 bombing ended when the Yugoslav government agreed to allow
NATO forces to occupy Kosovo. Kosovo legally remained part of Serbia,
however. Since then, the United Nations has given cover to the NATO
occupation, and 18,500 troops still remain. Some 40,000 were originally
deployed.
After the 1999 occupation, NATO troops in Kosovo allowed the KLA
reactionaries to drive some hundreds of thousands of people of Serb,
Jewish, Roma (Gypsy) and other nationalities out of Kosovo using arson,
killing and intimidation. Most of these refugees moved to Serbia. The
KLA reactionaries have also persecuted progressive Albanians.
"There are not many ethnic minorities left in Kosovo. 220,000 have fled
since 1999," UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond recently told a news
conference in Geneva. Since the start of the violence this month, over
4,000 Serbs have fled their homes. (Reuters, March 19)
THE MARCH 16 INCIDENT
On March 16, four young Albanian boys were swept into Kosovo's rushing
Ibar River. Only one of them survived.
The first story to emerge from this incident asserted that the children
had been chased into the river by Serbian youths and their dogs. But
Derek Chappell, a spokesperson in the United Nations occupation
authority (UNMIK), told media in Pristina on March 18 that this was
definitely not true, that the survivor of the drowning told his parents
that he and three friends entered the river alone and were immediately
caught up in the heavy current. Chappell said that organized forces
used the lie to spark virulent attacks upon ethnic Serbs in the region.
A reported 24 people were killed and 500 injured in the fighting,
mostly ethnic Serbs. Twenty-five Serbian Orthodox churches and
monasteries were burned, and some 400 houses torched. (ITAR-TASS, March
22)
Some UN and Western officials have been quoted as saying that the
incident was intended to provoke a battle to gain the separation of
Kosovo from Serbia. Such a separation would violate the 1999 agreement.
It wouldn't be the first time an incident was fabricated to justify
fighting. In January 1999, the KLA and U.S. official William Walker
claimed that the death of a group of KLA fighters in the Kosovo village
of Racak was instead a massacre of civilians. The "Racak Massacre" was
used to justify the NATO war on Yugoslavia, which the U.S. and Germany
alleged was a "humanitarian" intervention.
This year, the Finnish pathologist Helena Ranta, who led forensic
investigations into the Racak case, told the Berliner Zeitung of Jan.
17 that Serb security troops were also killed and that there was no
proof that the dead bodies she examined were civilians or had been
executed.
PROTEST IN BELGRADE TARGETS U.S.
On March 18, some 10,000 people marched in downtown Belgrade in
solidarity with the beleaguered ethnic Serb community of Kosovo.
Vladimir Krsljanin, an aide to former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, told Workers World from Belgrade that 2,000 of the
demonstrators surrounded the U.S. Embassy until 2 a.m. The embassy has
been closed since then.
Krsljanin said that 200 rowdy or provocative elements carried out an
arson attack on a mosque in Belgrade. The police didn't try to stop
them, he added, but they protected the U.S. Embassy. Most demonstrators
rightly saw the U.S. as responsible for the deterioration of life in
the Balkans and the threat to Serbia.
In Kosovo since 1999, thousands of Albanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and
others have been laid off from factories and mines that the government
of Yugoslavia formerly operated. In addition, state-supported free
medical care and most government support for education was terminated
in Kosovo.
NATO had allowed the paramilitary KLA forces to seize control of Kosovo
in 1999. In the past two years these same CIA-trained operatives have
helped set up paramilitaries to attack neighboring Macedonia.
The first result of this latest provocation will be to draw more forces
into the region to beef up the imperialist NATO alliance in Eastern
Europe.
In most of the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, from
Poland to Turkmenistan, from Uzbekistan to Hungary, NATO is now
protecting Western imperialist corporations and advancing the fortunes
of Western military industries, especially those of the United States.
In the Balkans, imperialist intervention has brought not "humanitarian
relief" but increased turmoil to the region.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@.... Subscribe
wwnews-on@.... Unsubscribe wwnews-off@.... Support
the
voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)