BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
The Clinton administration is preparing to possibly launch
a military attack on Yugoslavia. After meeting with Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic January 19, U.S. general Wesley
Clark, the supreme commander of NATO, said, "He is most
compliant when threatened directly with heavy military
pressure," the New York Times reported.
Following that meeting, the U.S.-dominated NATO command sent warships to the Adriatic Sea, off the coast of Yugoslavia, and put pilots on alert to be ready to bomb on 48 hours' notice, instead of 96 hours. The British government doubled its deployment of Harrier ground attack aircraft at the NATO air base in Italy from four to eight.
The pretext for these threats is the disintegration of an agreement signed by Milosevic and U.S. government representative Richard Holbrooke last October, under the threat of NATO air strikes. Hundreds of "peace monitors" have been deployed in Kosova under the banner of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as part of this agreement. The "observers," many of them retired cops and soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, are patrolling the streets of Kosova in their jeeps.
A French-led "extraction force" of 2,000 troops is based in neighboring Macedonia, supposedly to escort small numbers of the "observers" from Kosova if NATO decides to pull them out. "A bigger Nato force of up to 8,000 troops might be needed to extract all of them," such as if NATO planned an assault, London's Financial Times opined.
Pretext for NATO threats
The so-called monitors are headed by U.S. official William
Walker. Belgrade had rejected a request from the OSCE to allow
a commando unit from Poland to accompany Walker. On January 18,
the Belgrade government ordered Walker to leave the country,
two days after he described the killing of 45 Albanians in and
around Racak, Kosova, by Yugoslav government forces a "crime
very much against humanity" and called for an investigation by
the imperialist-crafted International War Crimes Tribunal.
Walker is a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador from 1988-93, appointed by the Reagan administration at a time when the Salvadoran government, which had close ties to Washington, was organizing death squads against workers and peasants.
Washington has seized on Walker's expulsion as a pretext for the latest round of threats. "The situation is as serious now -perhaps more serious - than it was in October," Holbrooke said on CNN January 18. Holbrooke reminded the CNN reporter the NATO military alliance at that time was "96 hours away from bombing."
Cranking up the pressure on Belgrade, Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor of the "war crimes tribunal," tried to enter the country January 18, supposedly to investigate the massacre in Racak. She was blocked by Yugoslav border guards from entering Kosova, a region in Yugoslavia where the oppressed Albanian majority is fighting for independence. Arbour announced in Skopje, Macedonia, that she would attempt another entry, setting the stage to provoke another confrontation.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council Beijing and Moscow prevented the organization from passing a resolution demanding that Belgrade allow Arbour to enter Kosova to "investigate war crimes." Both governments are opposed to the imperialist military intervention against Yugoslavia, which is also ultimately aimed against them.
While Washington had reduced the arsenal of some 300 warplanes it mobilized in the Balkans last October, the "activation order" authorizing military action "is in effect," said NATO commander Clark. "The alliance is prepared to take further measures if deemed necessary," he added.
Roots of struggle in Kosova
The U.S. government is using Belgrade's latest military
attacks on the Albanians' struggle for independence in Kosova
as a pretext to campaign for launching air strikes and a
military occupation of the province. When the Stalinist
bureaucracy that controlled Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in
the late 1980s, rival factions of the ruling stratum sought to
grab land and resources for themselves. In Serbia, the dominant
republic of what remains the Yugoslav federation today, the
Milosevic government whipped up Serb chauvinism to justify its
course, beginning with a campaign against the Albanians who
make up 90 percent of the population in Kosova, which was an
autonomous region. Belgrade revoked that autonomy and cracked
down on strikes and protests by workers and students there. As
this repression continued in recent years, the demand for
independence as the only road to self determination has grown.
Confrontations have escalated between the Yugoslav Army and the UCK, which is waging an armed struggle for independence. On January 18 Serbian tanks and artillery pounded the village of Racak, following the slaughter of 45 residents there the previous week. Also on January 18, UCK rebels ambushed a Serbian vehicle 25 miles north of Pristina, Kosova's capital. The next day UCK fighters killed one Serbian cop and wounded two others in another clash in Racak.
The U.S. rulers, who aim to use military force to reestablish capitalist property relations in the Yugoslav workers state, have waited as the regime of Milosevic does the imperialists' dirty work of inflicting punishing assaults on the Albanian toilers. Washington's aims are the same as in Bosnia, where it has headed an occupation force since 1995.
The NATO military alliance's "credibility is being tested right now," declared the editors of the Washington Post January 20. "Now is the time to take a stand. NATO must prepare to use force, ground troops as well as air power, to enforce a cease- fire and an interim political settlement."
Meanwhile, Washington has helped establish a "Balkan brigade" of 4,000 "peacekeeping" troops from Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.