By Fred Weston
January 25, 2000
During the NATO bombings in Serbia and Kosovo the propaganda machine of the media inthe West, with a few noble exceptions, obediently put forward the line that it wasnecessary to concentrate the armed might of the nineteen most powerful nations of theworld, in order to stop the "ethnic cleansing" of the Kosovar Albanians. All thenews was aimed at justifying everything NATO was doing.
At the time we published a series of articles explaining the real reasons for thebombing: to impose the strategic interests of Western imperialism on the Balkans. When wewrote these articles we were "going against the stream", especially in countrieslike Britain where the barrage of propaganda was enormous. Many honest workers and youthmay have been taken in by this propaganda and may even object to us calling it"propaganda", but propaganda it was, nevertheless.
On 16th January ITV (a British TV channel) broadcast a documentary by Jonathan Dimblebywhich confirms everything we said throughout the bombing campaign. It is a pity it wasshown late on a Sunday evening, so we think it worthwhile to highlight the mostsignificant parts of the programme and to quote at length from Dimbleby himself.
His mission was to "find out if there really was a victory in Kosovo, whether gooddid triumph over evil." Dimbleby shows how, in reality, the bombing destroyed thebasic infrastructures that make for a civilised existence, both for the Albanians and theSerbs.
He describes K-for (the UN troops) as the "military wing of a colonial governor,better known as the Security Council of the United Nations," and shows how it is onlythe presence of 50,000 NATO and UN troops from 23 different countries that is preventing anew explosion of violence.
NATO lies exposed
The most interesting parts of the documentary are those where Dimbleby exposes the liesof NATO. We all remember how we were led to believe that possibly hundreds of thousands ofKosovar Albanians had been massacred by the Serb forces. In one scene we see corpses ofthose killed being dug out, and Dimbleby's comment is, "In the early days of the war,as if to justify the bombing of Belgrade, NATO fuelled speculation that the massacres inKosovo had been apocalyptic in scale. But the evidence so far, with just over 2000 bodiesrecovered, suggests that the final toll will be far lower than some of the wilder claimsfostered by war time propaganda."
Of course even the killing of one innocent civilian is unjustified, but as he pointsout, "by comparison with atrocities committed elsewhere in the world, the Kosovokillings, though dreadful, were clearly on a modest scale, and, for me at least, a dubiouspretext for turning most of this region into rubble." As he points out the messagethat had to be got across was: "Something must be done. Do it now!"
The Rambouillet provocation
He explains how the so-called Rambouillet Accords were worded in such a way that nocountry could have accepted them. He says that at Rambouillet, NATO delivered a "takeit or leave it ultimatum" which involved autonomy for Kosovo and a referendum threeyears later on self-determination, a chance for the Albanians of Kosovo to achieveoutright independence.
But, he adds, "Any lingering chance of a deal finally collapsed when the alliesinserted a last minute clause into the Rambouillet Accords giving NATO freedom of movementnot only in Kosovo but throughout Serbia, and complete immunity from all Yugoslav law.Serbia rejected NATO's ultimatum as a gross violation of national sovereignty, well awarethat this would mean war."
And what about the argument, pushed so vehemently by NATO spokespersons at the time,that it was all necessary to save lives? Dimbleby explains that, "NATO had no mandatefrom the UN, a violation of international law, which the allies justified by claiming thatthe purpose of the campaign was to avert a humanitarian disaster. But so far from beingaverted, the disaster was compounded. As NATO intensified its onslaught against Serbia,Milosevic accelerated the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. This was the very opposite of whatthe bombing was supposed to achieve... NATO had expected Milosevic to crumble under theaerial onslaught. He didn't."
Dimbleby admits what we pointed out at the time. It was only thanks to the Russianintervention that a deal was brokered. He also shows that the withdrawal of Serb troops"was very far from that rabble which NATO spin doctors had predicted." He alsoexplains that Milosevic withdrew his troops only after having "extracted tworemarkable concessions": NATO no longer insisted on the right to enter Serbia"at will", but it also revoked the promise of a referendum on independence andconfirmed that Kosovo would remain a" constituent part of the Federal Republic ofYugoslavia".
Couldn't all this have been averted?
It is on this question that Dimbleby makes the most significant statement of hisdocumentary: "It was a remarkable outcome, and it surely isn't unreasonable to askwhat might have happened if the same terms had been on offer before the war as after it.If NATO had not insisted on freedom of movement throughout Serbia, and if Milosevic hadbeen told that an autonomous Kosovo would remain within the Federal Republic ofYugoslavia, might we have avoided all that misery, bloodshed and destruction?"
And what about a "democratic" and "multiethnic Kosovo"? He asks thequestion if Kosovo is "free" and his answer is that it clearly is not. He visitsPristina and finds that ethnic cleansing of the Serb minority has taken place andcontinues to take place on a massive scale. He visits a hospital and finds that not onlyare the staff totally Albanian, but there are also no Serb patients to be found anywhere!The Serb population is too frightened of going to the hospital. They are terrified of KLAintimidation. In fact those among the staff who would be prepared to treat Serbs would berisking their lives at the hands of the KLA.
Now the Serbs are being "ethnically cleansed"
Dimbleby goes on to explain that, "Since the end of the war there has been ethniccleansing in Kosovo on a monstrous scale, an outrage which K-for failed to arrest, thatthe leaders of NATO's moral crusade have ignored, and from which the Western media, forthe most part, has averted its gaze." He points out that 150,000 Serbs, 75% of theoriginal population, have been "cleansed". The rest live in enclaves, in theory"protected" by K-for troops. As he says, K-for is, in reality, paralysed andcannot stop the rape, murder and pillage. One Serb woman is shown preparing to leave thehouse she had lived in for forty years, and she expresses her anger at the West: "Theworld doesn't care about us!"
The aim of the UN had been to create a local police force, made up of both Albaniansand Serbs, but that is impossible in the given conditions. At the same time, as a BritishArmy officer explains, the risk is that the Albanians begin to see NATO as the enemy! TheAlbanians want independence, but NATO is not going to let them have it, (as we explainedin several articles at the time).
A colonial dictatorship
So what is the real role of NATO in Kosovo? Dimbleby confirms what we alwaysmaintained, when he says that, "Instead of a government, there's K-for and the UN. Ineffect, a colonial dictatorship, an administration which is benevolent, but also investedwith absolute power..." On the "benevolence" of a force that killed some2,000 civilians we would have some doubts! But in the essentials what he says isabsolutely true: what we have in Kosovo is a dictatorship, a NATO protectorate, whose aimis to defend the strategic interests of western imperialism. It is not there to defend theinterests of the ordinary people, the Serb and Albanian workers and peasants.
The KLA have not disarmed. Only a tiny fraction of their arms have been handed in andNATO is powerless to find all the remaining armoury. The nationalists on both sides havecommitted terrible crimes against the peoples of Kosovo. This has created mutual hatred onboth sides.
At the end of the documentary Dimbleby seems to have no hope for Kosovo. He says,"For me there has been no victory of good over evil here, and so far there is verylittle to celebrate... Anyone who thinks that this venture represents the triumph of anethical foreign policy, or is the blueprint for a new world order should, I believe, thinkagain. As it is, we, that is the Western allies, are here for a very long time tocome."
Dimbleby has all the shortcomings of a liberal bourgeois news reporter. He cannot seethe underlying causes of the conflict. But he at least exposes a lot of the spin we had toendure during the bombing campaign. He points to the truth. Of course all this is shownlate on a Sunday evening months after the events. When it really counted, the evening newsbombarded us with propaganda, but at least we can use this documentary to show that theMarxists had the courage to tell the truth in the heat of the bombing campaign, when itreally counted.
We must also go beyond simply denouncing the lies of NATO. We must offer an alternativeto the peoples of the Balkans. That can only be achieved on the basis of a struggle tounite the workers of different nationalities in a common struggle against the realenemies, the capitalists, the Mafia and the ex-Stalinist bureaucrats, who are allresponsible, who have all played the nationalist card to divide the workers along ethniclines, in order to more easily remain in power. But for this we suggest you read, orre-read the material we published during the bombing campaign itself.