The Balkans continues to fracture
by Paul Mitchell (WSWS)
Part 1:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/bal1-s29_prn.shtml
Part 2:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/oct2004/balk-o01_prn.shtml
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkans
The Balkans continues to fracture
---
Part 1 - 29 September 2004
---
The Balkans region continues to fracture as a result of the inability
of the western powers to solve the political and economic crisis in the
region. Instead they have produced a humanitarian disaster and
cultivated inter-ethnic conflict that threatens to destabilise the
entire region once again.
The US-backed Radio Free Europe has warned that more observers are now
saying that Kosovo, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and maybe some of
their neighbours could become failed states or “black holes”.
However, this disaster is treated as though there is no connection to
the support given by US and European powers to separatists and
capitalist free market advocates in the break up of the former
Yugoslavia.
Instead of the promised prosperity and freedom, the region is at the
mercy of the banks and financial institutions of the major imperialist
powers and is run in an essentially colonialist manner. Where matters
are not decided openly by western-imposed proconsuls, the threat of
exclusion from the European Union (EU) and NATO are wielded to ensure
governments implement policies of privatisation and welfare reforms
with sufficient rigour.
The social crisis in the region has intensified. Unemployment is 40 to
70 percent and wages average just $100 to $200 a month.
The leaders the west actively promoted as “saviours” of the Balkans and
who are responsible for these policies have become widely mistrusted
amongst the Balkan people. This has resulted in election participation
reaching an all-time low. But the loss of political confidence in the
revolutionary capacities of the working class and the prospects of
socialist revolution has opened the way for a growth of nationalist and
separatist forces.
The largest entity arising from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia
is the formation of the union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2002, which
was masterminded by the European Union. The new union has not resolved
the critical issues in the relationship between the two states. All of
the attributes of independence that the west allowed Montenegro to
develop over the previous decade were retained as was the hope of full
independence—kept alive by the clause stating that membership of the
union can be reconsidered in 2006.
The resulting impasse has caused the EU to signal another policy change
and propose a twin-track approach for the two republics that involves
the economies of Serbia and Montenegro being integrated separately into
the EU.
Demands for self-determination and greater autonomy for Montenegro were
initially encouraged by the western powers in order to undermine the
Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic. The Montenegrin government
assumed more federal responsibilities such as foreign trade and customs
and by 1998 it had taken full control of tax policy, monetary and
foreign policy. The German mark was introduced as a parallel currency
to the Yugoslav dinar and then the euro. The republic was afforded
international recognition normally reserved for sovereign states—with a
seat at international and regional institutions.
Following the putsch that removed the Milosevic government, the western
powers were no longer so willing to tolerate demands for Montenegrin
independence as a political counterweight to Belgrade’s new pro-western
regime. In 2001, the EU warned the Montenegrin government to abandon
its plans for a referendum on independence, saying that it would deepen
divisions within Montenegro where even today polls indicate only
slightly more than half the people support independence. The calls for
a referendum also threaten the unresolved status of Kosovo and increase
separatist pressure on the Serbian Republika Srpska in neighbouring
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Twin-Track Approach
The new twin-track approach was first aired publicly in early September
at a meeting of foreign ministers of the 25 EU member countries. On
September 10 the Montenegrin paper Vijesti published a leaked memo
written in July purporting to come from EU external affairs spokesman
Chris Patten. It was addressed to EU Foreign and Security Policy Chief
Javier Solana and the chair of the EU Ministerial Council and Dutch
foreign minister Bernard Bot.
In the memo Patten suggests a “significant change to our current
policy” because there has been no progress towards a common economic
market or harmonisation of the two economic systems in Serbia and
Montenegro after two year’s of discussions and that there was no
prospect of it happening. Patten explains that the application for
membership in the World Trade Organisation has been “totally blocked”
and that there are “serious doubts” whether direct elections for the
union’s federal assembly will take place in March 2005 as planned
making it “totally dysfunctional”.
Patten continues, “Pro-European reformists have nothing to show to
their voters, which perhaps is linked to the unpleasantly high score of
45 percent of the vote for [Serbian Radical Party member Tomislav]
Nikolic in the recent presidential election [in Serbia]. Fortunately,
[the Democratic Party’s] Boris Tadic managed to win in the end.
However, the current minority government is unstable and may not last
for much longer”.
The new EU policy has allowed both supporters of Montenegrin
independence and supporters of union with Serbia to claim victory for
their causes.
The ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and his
Democratic Party of Socialists is pressing for Montenegrin independence
and wants a referendum. Montenegro’s President Filip Vujanovic said,
“The Belgrade Agreement represented an attempt to establish new
relations through the model of a two-member state union. It was a model
that had never existed before, in theory or in practice.” He continued
“Montenegro sees itself as a hostage of the state union ... that only
incurs inappropriate expenses” and warned, “If Serbia insists on the
preservation of the union, a citizens’ referendum will have to take the
final decision.”
The opposition is mainly composed of parties that support the union and
have 40 percent of the seats in Montenegro’s assembly. They believe
they will win direct elections for the union’s federal assembly next
March, as independence supporters will probably boycott them.
Polls suggest that the joint state has strong support from pro-Serbian
Montenegrins, but is not popular in Serbia. In Serbia most parties have
supported the union on orders from the EU, but in recent months the
small G17 Plus party has campaigned for Serbia and Montenegro to become
independent of each other. At the core of G17 Plus is a group of 17
free market economists who functioned as a pressure group before they
formed a political party in 2003. The leader of G17 Plus is Miroljub
Labus. He is also deputy prime minister of the Serbian government and
minister for economic relations with abroad in Prime Minister Vojislav
Kostunica’s coalition government. Labus said the twin-track policy
“does not represent defeat for the European idea in the western Balkans
but, on the contrary, it means abandoning the idea of the planned
economy on which Yugoslav unity was once based.”
A sign of the reactionary character of the Kostunica government and the
influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church is the banning of English
lessons in schools by Education Minister Ljiljana Colic. Colic, a
founding member of Kostunica’s DSS, also wanted to ban Darwin’s theory
of evolution because it was “full of voids”, but reversed her decision
after a public outcry. She has since resigned.
Within Serbia, elections are characterised by huge abstentions.
However, several factors have combined to made Vojislav Seselj’s
extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) the largest party in
the country. There have been years of economic hardship made worse by
NATO’s bombing in 1999. In the course of 35,000 sorties, several
thousand people were killed and a vast portion of the industrial and
social infrastructure of the country shattered, leaving several hundred
thousand workers without jobs.
During the Balkan conflict, the western powers denied that the Serbs
had a legitimate reason to be dissatisfied with the consequences of the
sudden dissolution of Yugoslavia and the danger facing the Serbian
community living in different parts of the old Federation. A
disproportionate number of Serbs have since been indicted at The Hague
war crimes tribunal—a fact that Seselj skilfully exploited by giving
himself up voluntarily to the tribunal for war crime charges laid
against him.
It is a situation that prompted regional analyst Ines Sabalic to
remark, “Serbia is almost in a Weimar situation.”
Not only did the SRS’s Nikolic come close to beating Tadic and the
Democratic Party in the Serbian presidential elections in June (in a
turnout of just 48.5 percent) but in the first round of municipal
council elections on September 19 the SRS and Democratic Party were
equally split with no clear majority in any electorate. The second
round of voting is on October 3.
In the same municipal elections Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia
(DSS) slumped to fourth place. For a period Kostunica could sideline
the SRS by presenting himself as the saviour of the Serb nation and a
dedicated nationalist who was opposed to the break-up of the former
Yugoslavia. However, his nationalist rhetoric could not hide the full
consequences of the western dictated economic programme he has
championed and the catastrophic results it has had for the broad mass
of the Serbian population.
---
Part 2 - 1 October 2004
---
Kosovo’s status
An important consideration in European Union external affairs spokesman
Chris Patten’s letter was the unresolved status of Kosovo. By
accelerating Montenegro’s progress towards EU accession but postponing
the question of a referendum on independence, he hopes this “would not
interfere with the international community’s timeline for the solution
to Kosovo’s final status”.
Kosovo is marked by a 50 percent unemployment rate that government
officials admit may be as high as 70 percent since many do not
register. There is an escalating social crisis, as emigration is cut
off and funds from abroad decline. The United Nations Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK) has just announced the sale of 500 socially owned enterprises,
which will lead to large-scale job losses.
Officially, Kosovo is part of Serbia and Montenegro, but the region is
administered by UNMIK “pending a final settlement” of its status. This
“final status” is framed as an attempt to appease both the
pro-imperialist ethnic Albanian forces that supported the United States
and European powers in their efforts to dismantle Yugoslavia, and the
pro-western regime that was subsequently installed in Belgrade.
According to Security Council Resolution 1244 the settlement involves
“substantive autonomy,” but also a commitment to “the sovereign and
territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia [now Serbia
and Montenegro].”
In March this year communal violence orchestrated by former Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) leaders resulted in the death of 19 people and
injury to hundreds more. More than 4,000 people—mainly Serbs—were
forced to flee. A leaked internal UN report said UNMIK was on “the
point of near collapse.”
There are conflicts amongst the imperialist powers on how to stabilise
this worsening situation, with some favouring greater autonomy for
Kosovo as demanded by Albanian nationalists and others considering
Serbian proposals for the “cantonisation” of northern Kosovo.
The UN envoy to the Balkans, Norwegian Kai Eide, recently called for
policy reversal in Kosovo and the start of talks on the final status of
Kosovo. On September 7, whilst Germany’s Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer was telling Germany’s diplomats that the current international
policy in Kosovo was working, German Defence Minister Peter Struck told
a parliamentary committee that it was time to reconsider this
policy—echoing statements by the opposition Free Democratic Party for
Kosovo to become a protectorate administered by the EU. Struck pointed
out that many troops involving much expense are needed to protect often
small and isolated settlements, and that “more consolidated” Serbian
enclaves should be considered.
The US and Britain have called for faster handover of some authorities
to ethnic Albanian institutions in Kosovo. US Ambassador to Serbia and
Montenegro Michael Polt has said that whilst the US agrees with Eide
that clarifying Kosova’s final status is vital, Washington’s official
policy remains the current “standards before status.”
New elections are scheduled for October 23 of this year and have become
the focus of intense conflict between ethnic Albanian forces pressing
for full independence and Serbian nationalists seeking to maintain
Kosovo’s existing status.
The Democratic Party of Kosova, a successor organisation to the pro-US
stooge KLA, runs Kosovo, under Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi. Its
Assembly—which, like the forthcoming elections is boycotted by the
Serbs—voted on July 8 to adopt several constitutional changes,
including the right to hold a referendum on independence.
The Albanian government supports these moves, with its president Alfred
Moisiu recently declaring his country’s interest in resolving Kosovo’s
final status.
The Presevo Valley and Macedonia
Albanian nationalists are pushing for the integration of ethnic
Albanian areas in the area of south Serbia known as the Presevo
Valley—where 60,000 Albanians outnumber around 30,000 Serbs. The region
was the scene of armed conflict in 2000 involving the Liberation Army
of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja (UCPBM)—a KLA offshoot.
In the Serbian municipal elections of September 19 the Albanian Party
for Democratic Action made a clean sweep in the Presevo Valley.
Speaking of the South Serbia Coordination Centre that acts as an
assembly for the area, DPA leader Ragmi Mustafa said, “Obviously the
coordination body doesn’t have the same authority as before and must be
transformed.” Earlier this year another DPA leader, Saip Kamberi,
stated that, “It is only natural that Albanians today say this region
should be united with Kosovo.”
In 2001, the Presevo Valley conflict was exported over the border into
Macedonia by a KLA-UCPMB offshoot, the Albanian National Liberation
Army (NLA), which also wanted incorporation into Kosovo.
On November 7 the Macedonian government will hold a referendum on its
plans to redraw the boundaries of some municipalities to make Albanians
within them a majority. The referendum threatens to upset relations
between ethnic Macedonians and the approximately 25 percent Albanian
minority, and endanger the 2001 Ohrid peace agreement. The Ohrid
agreement was signed by the previous Macedonian government headed by
President Ljubco Georgijevski of the Vmro-Dpmne party and the NLA.
The US turned against Giorgijevski’s coalition when it became obvious
it had no support in the country. Mass demonstrations and general
strikes met attempts to privatise state assets and cut welfare
provision. The western powers wanted a more compliant regime that would
integrate the NLA, which a mountain of evidence suggests was secretly
backed by Washington, into government structures, and to more
vigorously pursue privatisation strategies.
The country now has a government headed by President Branko
Crvenkovski’s Social Democratic Alliance in coalition with the Liberal
Democratic Party and the NLA’s successor organisation, the Democratic
Union of Integration.
Last year the EU took command of the NATO mission in Macedonia in
Operation Concordia. Though it was a relatively small operation
sponsored by Germany, France and Belgium, it was the first military
operation in EU history.
Bosnia Herzegovina
The EU is also planning to take command of the much larger and more
complex NATO operation in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH) involving 7,000 NATO
troops at the end of the year, although the US will maintain its base
at Tuzla.
The Office of the UN High Representative set up under the Dayton
Agreement to oversee BiH is being restructured and downsized, with UN
High Representative Paddy Ashdown saying “my own role as EU Special
Representative is growing.”
Ashdown admitted, “The international community does not have an exit
strategy here,” but “it has an entry strategy for BiH to join Europe.
And we will stay until the job is done.”
BiH remains divided into the virtually independently operating
Republika Srpska and Croat-Muslim Federation, both of which have
Assemblies run by the same nationalist parties that came to power
during the 1992-95 war. Local elections that are taking place on
October 2 seem certain to reinforce that division.
Ashdown exerts all real power in the country and recently fired 60 Serb
officials, including the interior minister and parliament speaker, whom
he accused of helping war crimes fugitives, Bosnian Serb leaders
Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
The UN recently said that nearly half of the 2.2 million refugees from
Bosnia had returned, but Udo Janz, the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees representative in Bosnia added, “The situation remains
volatile in many parts of the country” and 500,000 people had decided
to permanently settle elsewhere.
Earlier this month there were riots in Konjevic Polje between Serbs and
Muslims. Political analyst Tanja Topic told the Centre for Peace in the
Balkans that war could break out again at “any time” and that “in
post-war Bosnia neither local politicians, nor the international
community succeeded in politically stabilising the country.”
This view was shared by political and military analyst Gostimir
Popovic, who said, “The current peace in Bosnia and the region is not
permanent. This territory is still referred to as a ‘powder keg’ and
very little is needed for new conflicts to emerge.”
Hungarian intervention
Ethnic tensions have also risen in the Vojvodina province of Serbia,
which has a Hungarian-speaking minority. The province is also the home
to about 220,000 Serb refugees expelled from Croatia and Kosovo. During
the 1990s there was relative ethnic peace, but ethnic Hungarian parties
aided by Hungary have raised the temperature there, blaming refugees
influenced by the SRS. In early August, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Lszl
Kovcs complained of “atrocities” being committed against 300,000 ethnic
Hungarians, and Interior Minister Mnika Lamperth said, “Hungary is very
concerned about the increasing reports of atrocities including physical
attacks and abuses, against the ethnic kin.”
Jzsef Kasza, leader of the Vojvodina Alliance of Hungarians (VMSZ), has
said repeatedly the attacks were reminiscent of the ways the wars in
Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo started.
The “atrocities” cited relate to 67 incidents including graffiti and
defacing tombstones linked to the SRS reported by the Serbian Interior
Ministry. The Hungarian government claims the number of incidents is
closer to 300 and called for the “internationalization” of the issue.
It has suggested sanctions be imposed and a “solution to the minority
issue” before Serbia and Montenegro is admitted to EU.
The two major Hungarian-American Lobby groups, the Hungarian-American
Coalition and the Centre for Hungarian-American Congressional
Relations, are trying to focus US policymakers on the issue. The
Hungarian-born US Congressman Tom Lantos has written to Serbian Prime
Minister Kostunica, and 13 Congressmen signed another letter.
Although Hungary’s President Ferenc Madl later said the incidents were
“the effects of the recent [Balkan] wars and the difficult economic
situation” and Kroly Pl, deputy chairman of the VMSZ, blamed the
attacks on the economy’s collapse and lack of opportunities for the
young in particular, the Hungarian bourgeoisie still appeal to a
diaspora of Hungarian speakers in neighbouring countries.
The previous Fidesz party administration introduced a Status Law in
January 2002 that it saw not simply as a benefits package covering
employment, health and education, but “a means of supporting
self-organisation by Hungarians outside Hungary.”
The Hungarian Socialist Party-Alliance of Free Democrats coalition
replaced the Fidesz government in 2002 and has continued its policies
in all essential aspects.
Prime Minister Pter Medgyessy said, “Hungary’s political parties may
debate many issues, but they have all agreed that they bear
responsibility for the cause of Hungarians beyond the country’s borders
and that everything possible must be done in the interest of the
Hungarian nation, in terms of national identity and consciousness.”
His government is considering a referendum in support of granting dual
citizenship to Hungarian speakers in neighbouring countries, but is
wary that this would encourage emigration from poorer areas into
Hungary itself
The situation in the Balkans is a bitter indictment of the western
powers’ intervention. Poverty, corruption and ethnic separation have
become endemic in the Balkan region as a result of the attempt to
dismantle the former Yugoslavia.
That intervention was carried out under the cloak of humanitarianism,
but signalled the legitimisation of the naked use of overwhelming
military power against small countries in pursuit of strategic of “Big
Power” interests, the cynical violation of the principle of national
sovereignty, the de facto reestablishment of colonialist forms of
subjugation, and the revival of inter-imperialist antagonisms that
carry within them the seeds of a new war.
Copyright 1998-2004
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
by Paul Mitchell (WSWS)
Part 1:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/bal1-s29_prn.shtml
Part 2:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/oct2004/balk-o01_prn.shtml
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkans
The Balkans continues to fracture
---
Part 1 - 29 September 2004
---
The Balkans region continues to fracture as a result of the inability
of the western powers to solve the political and economic crisis in the
region. Instead they have produced a humanitarian disaster and
cultivated inter-ethnic conflict that threatens to destabilise the
entire region once again.
The US-backed Radio Free Europe has warned that more observers are now
saying that Kosovo, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and maybe some of
their neighbours could become failed states or “black holes”.
However, this disaster is treated as though there is no connection to
the support given by US and European powers to separatists and
capitalist free market advocates in the break up of the former
Yugoslavia.
Instead of the promised prosperity and freedom, the region is at the
mercy of the banks and financial institutions of the major imperialist
powers and is run in an essentially colonialist manner. Where matters
are not decided openly by western-imposed proconsuls, the threat of
exclusion from the European Union (EU) and NATO are wielded to ensure
governments implement policies of privatisation and welfare reforms
with sufficient rigour.
The social crisis in the region has intensified. Unemployment is 40 to
70 percent and wages average just $100 to $200 a month.
The leaders the west actively promoted as “saviours” of the Balkans and
who are responsible for these policies have become widely mistrusted
amongst the Balkan people. This has resulted in election participation
reaching an all-time low. But the loss of political confidence in the
revolutionary capacities of the working class and the prospects of
socialist revolution has opened the way for a growth of nationalist and
separatist forces.
The largest entity arising from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia
is the formation of the union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2002, which
was masterminded by the European Union. The new union has not resolved
the critical issues in the relationship between the two states. All of
the attributes of independence that the west allowed Montenegro to
develop over the previous decade were retained as was the hope of full
independence—kept alive by the clause stating that membership of the
union can be reconsidered in 2006.
The resulting impasse has caused the EU to signal another policy change
and propose a twin-track approach for the two republics that involves
the economies of Serbia and Montenegro being integrated separately into
the EU.
Demands for self-determination and greater autonomy for Montenegro were
initially encouraged by the western powers in order to undermine the
Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic. The Montenegrin government
assumed more federal responsibilities such as foreign trade and customs
and by 1998 it had taken full control of tax policy, monetary and
foreign policy. The German mark was introduced as a parallel currency
to the Yugoslav dinar and then the euro. The republic was afforded
international recognition normally reserved for sovereign states—with a
seat at international and regional institutions.
Following the putsch that removed the Milosevic government, the western
powers were no longer so willing to tolerate demands for Montenegrin
independence as a political counterweight to Belgrade’s new pro-western
regime. In 2001, the EU warned the Montenegrin government to abandon
its plans for a referendum on independence, saying that it would deepen
divisions within Montenegro where even today polls indicate only
slightly more than half the people support independence. The calls for
a referendum also threaten the unresolved status of Kosovo and increase
separatist pressure on the Serbian Republika Srpska in neighbouring
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Twin-Track Approach
The new twin-track approach was first aired publicly in early September
at a meeting of foreign ministers of the 25 EU member countries. On
September 10 the Montenegrin paper Vijesti published a leaked memo
written in July purporting to come from EU external affairs spokesman
Chris Patten. It was addressed to EU Foreign and Security Policy Chief
Javier Solana and the chair of the EU Ministerial Council and Dutch
foreign minister Bernard Bot.
In the memo Patten suggests a “significant change to our current
policy” because there has been no progress towards a common economic
market or harmonisation of the two economic systems in Serbia and
Montenegro after two year’s of discussions and that there was no
prospect of it happening. Patten explains that the application for
membership in the World Trade Organisation has been “totally blocked”
and that there are “serious doubts” whether direct elections for the
union’s federal assembly will take place in March 2005 as planned
making it “totally dysfunctional”.
Patten continues, “Pro-European reformists have nothing to show to
their voters, which perhaps is linked to the unpleasantly high score of
45 percent of the vote for [Serbian Radical Party member Tomislav]
Nikolic in the recent presidential election [in Serbia]. Fortunately,
[the Democratic Party’s] Boris Tadic managed to win in the end.
However, the current minority government is unstable and may not last
for much longer”.
The new EU policy has allowed both supporters of Montenegrin
independence and supporters of union with Serbia to claim victory for
their causes.
The ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and his
Democratic Party of Socialists is pressing for Montenegrin independence
and wants a referendum. Montenegro’s President Filip Vujanovic said,
“The Belgrade Agreement represented an attempt to establish new
relations through the model of a two-member state union. It was a model
that had never existed before, in theory or in practice.” He continued
“Montenegro sees itself as a hostage of the state union ... that only
incurs inappropriate expenses” and warned, “If Serbia insists on the
preservation of the union, a citizens’ referendum will have to take the
final decision.”
The opposition is mainly composed of parties that support the union and
have 40 percent of the seats in Montenegro’s assembly. They believe
they will win direct elections for the union’s federal assembly next
March, as independence supporters will probably boycott them.
Polls suggest that the joint state has strong support from pro-Serbian
Montenegrins, but is not popular in Serbia. In Serbia most parties have
supported the union on orders from the EU, but in recent months the
small G17 Plus party has campaigned for Serbia and Montenegro to become
independent of each other. At the core of G17 Plus is a group of 17
free market economists who functioned as a pressure group before they
formed a political party in 2003. The leader of G17 Plus is Miroljub
Labus. He is also deputy prime minister of the Serbian government and
minister for economic relations with abroad in Prime Minister Vojislav
Kostunica’s coalition government. Labus said the twin-track policy
“does not represent defeat for the European idea in the western Balkans
but, on the contrary, it means abandoning the idea of the planned
economy on which Yugoslav unity was once based.”
A sign of the reactionary character of the Kostunica government and the
influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church is the banning of English
lessons in schools by Education Minister Ljiljana Colic. Colic, a
founding member of Kostunica’s DSS, also wanted to ban Darwin’s theory
of evolution because it was “full of voids”, but reversed her decision
after a public outcry. She has since resigned.
Within Serbia, elections are characterised by huge abstentions.
However, several factors have combined to made Vojislav Seselj’s
extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) the largest party in
the country. There have been years of economic hardship made worse by
NATO’s bombing in 1999. In the course of 35,000 sorties, several
thousand people were killed and a vast portion of the industrial and
social infrastructure of the country shattered, leaving several hundred
thousand workers without jobs.
During the Balkan conflict, the western powers denied that the Serbs
had a legitimate reason to be dissatisfied with the consequences of the
sudden dissolution of Yugoslavia and the danger facing the Serbian
community living in different parts of the old Federation. A
disproportionate number of Serbs have since been indicted at The Hague
war crimes tribunal—a fact that Seselj skilfully exploited by giving
himself up voluntarily to the tribunal for war crime charges laid
against him.
It is a situation that prompted regional analyst Ines Sabalic to
remark, “Serbia is almost in a Weimar situation.”
Not only did the SRS’s Nikolic come close to beating Tadic and the
Democratic Party in the Serbian presidential elections in June (in a
turnout of just 48.5 percent) but in the first round of municipal
council elections on September 19 the SRS and Democratic Party were
equally split with no clear majority in any electorate. The second
round of voting is on October 3.
In the same municipal elections Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia
(DSS) slumped to fourth place. For a period Kostunica could sideline
the SRS by presenting himself as the saviour of the Serb nation and a
dedicated nationalist who was opposed to the break-up of the former
Yugoslavia. However, his nationalist rhetoric could not hide the full
consequences of the western dictated economic programme he has
championed and the catastrophic results it has had for the broad mass
of the Serbian population.
---
Part 2 - 1 October 2004
---
Kosovo’s status
An important consideration in European Union external affairs spokesman
Chris Patten’s letter was the unresolved status of Kosovo. By
accelerating Montenegro’s progress towards EU accession but postponing
the question of a referendum on independence, he hopes this “would not
interfere with the international community’s timeline for the solution
to Kosovo’s final status”.
Kosovo is marked by a 50 percent unemployment rate that government
officials admit may be as high as 70 percent since many do not
register. There is an escalating social crisis, as emigration is cut
off and funds from abroad decline. The United Nations Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK) has just announced the sale of 500 socially owned enterprises,
which will lead to large-scale job losses.
Officially, Kosovo is part of Serbia and Montenegro, but the region is
administered by UNMIK “pending a final settlement” of its status. This
“final status” is framed as an attempt to appease both the
pro-imperialist ethnic Albanian forces that supported the United States
and European powers in their efforts to dismantle Yugoslavia, and the
pro-western regime that was subsequently installed in Belgrade.
According to Security Council Resolution 1244 the settlement involves
“substantive autonomy,” but also a commitment to “the sovereign and
territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia [now Serbia
and Montenegro].”
In March this year communal violence orchestrated by former Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) leaders resulted in the death of 19 people and
injury to hundreds more. More than 4,000 people—mainly Serbs—were
forced to flee. A leaked internal UN report said UNMIK was on “the
point of near collapse.”
There are conflicts amongst the imperialist powers on how to stabilise
this worsening situation, with some favouring greater autonomy for
Kosovo as demanded by Albanian nationalists and others considering
Serbian proposals for the “cantonisation” of northern Kosovo.
The UN envoy to the Balkans, Norwegian Kai Eide, recently called for
policy reversal in Kosovo and the start of talks on the final status of
Kosovo. On September 7, whilst Germany’s Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer was telling Germany’s diplomats that the current international
policy in Kosovo was working, German Defence Minister Peter Struck told
a parliamentary committee that it was time to reconsider this
policy—echoing statements by the opposition Free Democratic Party for
Kosovo to become a protectorate administered by the EU. Struck pointed
out that many troops involving much expense are needed to protect often
small and isolated settlements, and that “more consolidated” Serbian
enclaves should be considered.
The US and Britain have called for faster handover of some authorities
to ethnic Albanian institutions in Kosovo. US Ambassador to Serbia and
Montenegro Michael Polt has said that whilst the US agrees with Eide
that clarifying Kosova’s final status is vital, Washington’s official
policy remains the current “standards before status.”
New elections are scheduled for October 23 of this year and have become
the focus of intense conflict between ethnic Albanian forces pressing
for full independence and Serbian nationalists seeking to maintain
Kosovo’s existing status.
The Democratic Party of Kosova, a successor organisation to the pro-US
stooge KLA, runs Kosovo, under Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi. Its
Assembly—which, like the forthcoming elections is boycotted by the
Serbs—voted on July 8 to adopt several constitutional changes,
including the right to hold a referendum on independence.
The Albanian government supports these moves, with its president Alfred
Moisiu recently declaring his country’s interest in resolving Kosovo’s
final status.
The Presevo Valley and Macedonia
Albanian nationalists are pushing for the integration of ethnic
Albanian areas in the area of south Serbia known as the Presevo
Valley—where 60,000 Albanians outnumber around 30,000 Serbs. The region
was the scene of armed conflict in 2000 involving the Liberation Army
of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja (UCPBM)—a KLA offshoot.
In the Serbian municipal elections of September 19 the Albanian Party
for Democratic Action made a clean sweep in the Presevo Valley.
Speaking of the South Serbia Coordination Centre that acts as an
assembly for the area, DPA leader Ragmi Mustafa said, “Obviously the
coordination body doesn’t have the same authority as before and must be
transformed.” Earlier this year another DPA leader, Saip Kamberi,
stated that, “It is only natural that Albanians today say this region
should be united with Kosovo.”
In 2001, the Presevo Valley conflict was exported over the border into
Macedonia by a KLA-UCPMB offshoot, the Albanian National Liberation
Army (NLA), which also wanted incorporation into Kosovo.
On November 7 the Macedonian government will hold a referendum on its
plans to redraw the boundaries of some municipalities to make Albanians
within them a majority. The referendum threatens to upset relations
between ethnic Macedonians and the approximately 25 percent Albanian
minority, and endanger the 2001 Ohrid peace agreement. The Ohrid
agreement was signed by the previous Macedonian government headed by
President Ljubco Georgijevski of the Vmro-Dpmne party and the NLA.
The US turned against Giorgijevski’s coalition when it became obvious
it had no support in the country. Mass demonstrations and general
strikes met attempts to privatise state assets and cut welfare
provision. The western powers wanted a more compliant regime that would
integrate the NLA, which a mountain of evidence suggests was secretly
backed by Washington, into government structures, and to more
vigorously pursue privatisation strategies.
The country now has a government headed by President Branko
Crvenkovski’s Social Democratic Alliance in coalition with the Liberal
Democratic Party and the NLA’s successor organisation, the Democratic
Union of Integration.
Last year the EU took command of the NATO mission in Macedonia in
Operation Concordia. Though it was a relatively small operation
sponsored by Germany, France and Belgium, it was the first military
operation in EU history.
Bosnia Herzegovina
The EU is also planning to take command of the much larger and more
complex NATO operation in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH) involving 7,000 NATO
troops at the end of the year, although the US will maintain its base
at Tuzla.
The Office of the UN High Representative set up under the Dayton
Agreement to oversee BiH is being restructured and downsized, with UN
High Representative Paddy Ashdown saying “my own role as EU Special
Representative is growing.”
Ashdown admitted, “The international community does not have an exit
strategy here,” but “it has an entry strategy for BiH to join Europe.
And we will stay until the job is done.”
BiH remains divided into the virtually independently operating
Republika Srpska and Croat-Muslim Federation, both of which have
Assemblies run by the same nationalist parties that came to power
during the 1992-95 war. Local elections that are taking place on
October 2 seem certain to reinforce that division.
Ashdown exerts all real power in the country and recently fired 60 Serb
officials, including the interior minister and parliament speaker, whom
he accused of helping war crimes fugitives, Bosnian Serb leaders
Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
The UN recently said that nearly half of the 2.2 million refugees from
Bosnia had returned, but Udo Janz, the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees representative in Bosnia added, “The situation remains
volatile in many parts of the country” and 500,000 people had decided
to permanently settle elsewhere.
Earlier this month there were riots in Konjevic Polje between Serbs and
Muslims. Political analyst Tanja Topic told the Centre for Peace in the
Balkans that war could break out again at “any time” and that “in
post-war Bosnia neither local politicians, nor the international
community succeeded in politically stabilising the country.”
This view was shared by political and military analyst Gostimir
Popovic, who said, “The current peace in Bosnia and the region is not
permanent. This territory is still referred to as a ‘powder keg’ and
very little is needed for new conflicts to emerge.”
Hungarian intervention
Ethnic tensions have also risen in the Vojvodina province of Serbia,
which has a Hungarian-speaking minority. The province is also the home
to about 220,000 Serb refugees expelled from Croatia and Kosovo. During
the 1990s there was relative ethnic peace, but ethnic Hungarian parties
aided by Hungary have raised the temperature there, blaming refugees
influenced by the SRS. In early August, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Lszl
Kovcs complained of “atrocities” being committed against 300,000 ethnic
Hungarians, and Interior Minister Mnika Lamperth said, “Hungary is very
concerned about the increasing reports of atrocities including physical
attacks and abuses, against the ethnic kin.”
Jzsef Kasza, leader of the Vojvodina Alliance of Hungarians (VMSZ), has
said repeatedly the attacks were reminiscent of the ways the wars in
Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo started.
The “atrocities” cited relate to 67 incidents including graffiti and
defacing tombstones linked to the SRS reported by the Serbian Interior
Ministry. The Hungarian government claims the number of incidents is
closer to 300 and called for the “internationalization” of the issue.
It has suggested sanctions be imposed and a “solution to the minority
issue” before Serbia and Montenegro is admitted to EU.
The two major Hungarian-American Lobby groups, the Hungarian-American
Coalition and the Centre for Hungarian-American Congressional
Relations, are trying to focus US policymakers on the issue. The
Hungarian-born US Congressman Tom Lantos has written to Serbian Prime
Minister Kostunica, and 13 Congressmen signed another letter.
Although Hungary’s President Ferenc Madl later said the incidents were
“the effects of the recent [Balkan] wars and the difficult economic
situation” and Kroly Pl, deputy chairman of the VMSZ, blamed the
attacks on the economy’s collapse and lack of opportunities for the
young in particular, the Hungarian bourgeoisie still appeal to a
diaspora of Hungarian speakers in neighbouring countries.
The previous Fidesz party administration introduced a Status Law in
January 2002 that it saw not simply as a benefits package covering
employment, health and education, but “a means of supporting
self-organisation by Hungarians outside Hungary.”
The Hungarian Socialist Party-Alliance of Free Democrats coalition
replaced the Fidesz government in 2002 and has continued its policies
in all essential aspects.
Prime Minister Pter Medgyessy said, “Hungary’s political parties may
debate many issues, but they have all agreed that they bear
responsibility for the cause of Hungarians beyond the country’s borders
and that everything possible must be done in the interest of the
Hungarian nation, in terms of national identity and consciousness.”
His government is considering a referendum in support of granting dual
citizenship to Hungarian speakers in neighbouring countries, but is
wary that this would encourage emigration from poorer areas into
Hungary itself
The situation in the Balkans is a bitter indictment of the western
powers’ intervention. Poverty, corruption and ethnic separation have
become endemic in the Balkan region as a result of the attempt to
dismantle the former Yugoslavia.
That intervention was carried out under the cloak of humanitarianism,
but signalled the legitimisation of the naked use of overwhelming
military power against small countries in pursuit of strategic of “Big
Power” interests, the cynical violation of the principle of national
sovereignty, the de facto reestablishment of colonialist forms of
subjugation, and the revival of inter-imperialist antagonisms that
carry within them the seeds of a new war.
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