The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.16           April 26, 1999 
 
 
NATO: Bombing Will Last Weeks  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Washington has escalated its pounding of Yugoslavia, killing a growing number of civilians and destroying factories, refineries, and other parts of the country's infrastructure. On April 14 NATO pilots bombed a convoy of Albanians in rural Kosova, killing at least 64 people and wounding 20. U.S. officials claim they only targeted military vehicles, though television footage clearly showed bodies of civilians.

NATO officials said the U.S.-led military alliance will bomb Yugoslavia for "many more weeks." Their goal is to pressure Belgrade into accepting a partition of Kosova with an imperialist occupation army. The Clinton administration announced plans to call up several thousand military reservists. The U.S. rulers are also trying to ratchet up a flag-waving war atmosphere at home. The Associated Press reported April 14 that the FBI issued warnings of "possible Serb-led terrorist attacks" in the United States, supposedly based on death threats received by unnamed churches.

Meanwhile, the conflict is threatening to spread into neighboring Albania. NATO officials said Yugoslav forces crossed the border into the village of Kamenica April 13 and fired mortars and automatic weapons, driving off most residents. Belgrade denied its forces entered Albania. The area had been a base for attacks on the Yugoslav army by the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK), which has been waging a guerrilla war for independence in Kosova.

The Clinton administration, which has repeatedly stated its opposition to Kosova's independence, has used Belgrade's attempts to crush the Albanian struggle for self-determination as a pretext to launch its military operation. The U.S. rulers aim to use the NATO bombing campaign to boost their dominance in Europe and prepare the groundwork for overturning noncapitalist social relations in Yugoslavia.

Washington hopes the relentless military barrage will force the regime of Slobodan Milosevic to accept a deal to pull the Yugoslav army out of most of Kosova, paving the way for NATO troops to enforce its partition. U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright hinted that some Serb forces might be permitted to remain in Kosova as part of a "peace" agreement. "We are not stating specifically what the numbers are," Albright told reporters in Brussels April 11. "We have to be flexible and realistic as we look at the future."

Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful, suggested adopting a resolution urging the use of "all means necessary" against Yugoslavia, implying ground troops. That is not the majority view in Washington at this point, though.

Other U.S. government officials are pressing for partitioning the Yugoslav province. "A partition plan for Kosovo would avoid a more costly alternative - thousands of American lives lost in a Balkan ground war that could last for years," wrote Democratic Congressman Rod Blagojevich in the April 13 Washington Post.

`Take bombing campaign to next level'
In his April 13 statement from the Oval Office, U.S. president William Clinton announced an expansion of the air war against Yugoslavia. Washington is adding 300 more warplanes for the bombing campaign, hiking the military operation to more than 1,000 aircraft. Pentagon officials said they are considering launching strikes from air bases in other NATO countries including Hungary, the Czech Republic, Germany, and France.

A NATO missile slammed into a passenger train 180 miles south of Belgrade April 12, killing 10 people and injuring 16. After seeing the first missile strike the train, the pilot of the plane circled back and bombed it a second time.

Four days earlier, NATO warplanes bombed the Zastava car factory in Kragujevac after workers announced they would form a "human shield" to protect the plant. Some 124 workers were injured and 20 seriously wounded. Zastava is the largest auto- manufacturing plant in Yugoslavia with 38,000 workers.

Responding to the bombings, a woman who lives on the outskirts of Belgrade told the Financial Times of London, "All men here are praying for NATO to come on the ground so we can fight and inflict great losses on them. It will be worse than Vietnam for them. There is a big anger now, a lot of hatred."

One member of her family stressed that they have no animosity toward the Kosovar Albanians and share their neighbor's cellar with an Albanian family that lives on the same street.

More than 500,000 Albanians have been driven out of Kosova as result of Belgrade's assault on the Albanian independence movement and the NATO bombing. Albanians made up 90 percent of the province's 1.8 million people before the crisis erupted.

Some 300,000 Kosovar residents have been displaced to Albania and another 250,000 in Macedonia. Many are crammed into refugee camps run by NATO. Other governments in Europe have put sharp limits on the number of Kosovars they will accept.

Washington had planned to send 20,000 Albanians to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba, pointedly noting that as they would not be on U.S. soil they could not apply for asylum in the United States. After an international outcry over the subhuman conditions they would face, U.S. officials dropped the plan. The Cuban government offered to provide assistance to those forced to flee Kosova, while condemning the air strikes against Yugoslavia.

Rebels recruit from refugees
The UCK is carrying out a recruitment drive among the tens of thousands of people who have poured over the border into Albania. They operate numerous bases in the mountains, including a training base in Krume, Albania, 12 miles north of the refugee camp in Kukes. Scores of Albanian immigrants are traveling from Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, and other countries to join with the rebels.

In mid-April some 100 UCK fighters captured the Kosova towns of Koshare and Batusha. "We took the Serbs by surprise," one combatant told the Wall Street Journal. The owner of a pizzeria in Germany, he arrived in Albania two weeks earlier to join the UCK. He said he participated in the Koshare battle after a week of training in a UCK camp in Albania.

NATO has stressed its refusal to give any assistance to the Kosova independence fighters. According to the April 13 Washington Post, Albright told UCK spokesman Jakup Krasniqi that Washington maintains support for the UN arms embargo on Yugoslavia, including against the UCK. In his meeting with Albright, Krasniqi had requested some antitank weapons.

At the "peace" talks in Rambouillet, France, in February, Albright had pressured the UCK delegation to reduce its military activities, while Belgrade continued its attempt to crush the rebels.

U.S. seeks Moscow's acquiescence
Tensions are rising in Moscow over the imperialist military assault. Washington is seeking to convince Moscow to accept an imperialist-led "peacekeeping" force in Kosova, which could include Russian troops. At an April 13 news conference in Oslo, Norway, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov spoke against an occupying army in Kosova without "the agreement of the leadership of Yugoslavia." Albright had attended the news conference and met with Ivanov to "reengaged" Moscow into pursuing a "diplomatic solution."

The U.S.-led war in the Balkans has raised hackles among politicians in Moscow, some of whom have called for sending arms, military advisers, and volunteer combatants to Yugoslavia.

Washington is on a collision course with the Russian workers state, marked by the expansion of the North Atlantic military alliance into Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. This opens the possibility of deploying imperialist troops on the borders of Russia.

Patrick Buchanan, the ultrarightist politician who is running for U.S. president, has been interviewed on television arguing that the bombardment of Yugoslavia pushes Moscow closer to Beijing, at a time when Washington should be dealing with "communist China." In a column published in the April 13 Washington Post he warned that the NATO assault "may have called into being a Moscow-Minsk-Beijing-Belgrade-Baghdad axis." Buchanan opposes the Clinton administration's actions not because he is against the use of U.S. military might, but as being the wrong war for Washington to fight and win today.

Government officials in Hungary, one of the newest NATO members, held up a convoy of 73 trucks delivering aid to Yugoslavia from Russia and Belarus April 11. In the end, Budapest allowed 68 to go through. Five trucks were turned back after Hungarian officials declared them military vehicles.

Around 300,000 Hungarians live in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, with some serving in the Yugoslav army. Several have been killed by NATO bombs since the air war began March 24. Hungarian foreign minister Janos Martonyi told NATO officials in early April that Budapest "has been placed in the agonizing position of going to war against fellow Hungarians," the Washington Post reported April 12. Despite pleas from Budapest to spare Vojvodina from bombing raids, the NATO military alliance has blasted the province since the first day of its military assault.

Meanwhile, the imperialist military deployment in the region is growing. London is preparing to send 2,500 soldiers to join the 12,000-strong NATO force in Macedonia and some 8,000 imperialist troops are getting ready for deployment in Albania. Washington has already taken control over some Albanian military facilities, including airfields and seaports.

 
 
 
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