By Owen Jones
March 20, 2000
This month marks the first anniversary of the Balkan War, when the most powerfulimperialist alliance in history launched an aerial onslaught on the remains of Yugoslavia,a devastating bombardment that lasted for nearly three months. Initiated using the pretextof the national oppression of the Kosovar Albanians, this war was to be the biggesttriumph for imperialism since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, speeding up Westernexpansion into the East and stripping Russia entirely of its old sphere of influence,enforcing US hegemony in the region, and providing new legitimacy for NATO by giving itthe mandate to launch future wars against anything that might oppose Western interests.
The reactionary Milosevic regime intentionally stirred up Serbian nationalism to gainsupport for a project of capitalist restoration, which they presided over, as well asthoroughly reactionary wars across the Balkans which involved the support of quasi-fascistmilitia. His regime was once the friend of imperialism - Milosevicwas once described at Dayton as the 'man we can do business with' by theAmerican government. The calamity of the Balkans is a conspiracy organisedby imperialism and counter-revolutionary regimes such as Milosevic's and its formerCroatian counterpart led by Tudjman, none of which deserve support from genuine socialistsand internationalists. Only the unity of all the Balkans peoples, fighting together against both foreign imperialism and their own reactionary bourgeoisie can provide a way out of this nightimare.
As Kosovo today slips further into chaos and thousands of non-Albanians flee aco-ordinated attempt at their expulsion, NATO's excuse for occupying Kosovo - to returnstability to the province - has turned out to be a farce. But the humanitarian reasons nowgiven for the war - to stop a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovar Albanians - area revision of history in themselves. Bill Clinton said a day before the war was launched:"We act to prevent a wider war, to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe."Wesley Clark, the now departing Supreme Commander of NATO, more recently stated that theUnited States continues to have "vital interests in Europe. That's the reality. Welearned that lesson after World War II."
The motivation for the war is the very reason why part of the purpose of the occupyingtroops today is to suppress Kosovan independence - for fear it could trigger instabilityin Europe, America's biggest and most important market. Tim Judas in the Guardian, twomonths before war began, speculated on what for imperialism would be the "thedoomsday scenario, [that] the spread of the war to Macedonia will suck in Serbia andAlbania, and then perhaps Bulgaria and NATO members Greece and Turkey." And it is forthis that NATO will supposedly militarily 'come to the rescue' of a province engaged in acivil war that had claimed 2,000 lives before March 1999, and not a true genocide such asRwanda in 1994 when a million were butchered - because Africa has little strategicimportance. It is also for this imperialism cried crocodile tears for the KosovarAlbanians, and not the thousands of Kosovar Serbs, Gypsies, Montenegrins, Turks, SlavicMuslims and others facing the wrath of America's ally, the KLA.
Indeed, this is not the first time imperialism "befriended" an oppressednationality to further its own interests, a tactic that enjoyed its heyday with theoutbreak of World War I in 1914 when the Russians ostensibly came to the defence of theSerbs from Austro-Hungarian attack, and the British intervened under the pretext of Germanoppression of Belgium.
Yet the propaganda around the war was that it was a humanitarian campaign to halt a"genocide" against Kosovar Albanians, a "genocide" which NATO leadersspeculated could have killed several thousands during the bombing. During the war, GeffHoon, British Foreign Officer Minister, claimed: "According to the reports we havegathered, mostly from the refugees, it appears that around 10,000 people have been killedin more than 100 massacres." US Senator Joseph Biden (Democrat) claimed: "By thetime the snows fall next winter, there will be genocide documented on a large scale inKosovo." To this day, 9 months after NATO occupied Kosovo, 2,000 bodies have beenproduced. Amongst the most terrifying claims was that around 700 bodies were in the Trepcamining complex, of which not a single body was produced. As the propaganda used as apretext for the war against Yugoslavia was revealed to have no factual basis, it led tobourgeois commentators like Andrew Alexander in his column in the Mail to ask theforbidden question: "Could it turn out to be, that we killed more innocent civiliansthan the Serbs did?"
Of course, there can be no excuse for an operation intended to forcibly expel theentire Albanian population from Kosovo, a programme long threatened by the fascists of theRadical Party in the coalition, or for the atrocities committed by the militia and armyagainst innocent people in the process. Yet the Western propaganda machine lied about theextent of the ethnic cleansing to whip up support for the war amongst ordinary, workingclass people by portraying it as a Nazi-style genocide - of which no evidence has beenfound.
The bombing of Yugoslavia obliterated its infrastructure, destroying everything frombridges to tobacco factories, television stations, houses and even schools. The warcombined with the restoration of capitalism has transformed what was once the richestnation in Eastern Europe to the poorest in all Europe, replacing even Albania. Around2,000 Yugoslav civilians were killed, an equal to those found murdered by the YugoslavArmy during the war, contrary to the propaganda of a new European Holocaust. The Serbianworking class has been impoverished, as nearly half the population faces unemployment, andfrom March to May 1999 average wealth per capita sank from $1000 (or £640) to $450,putting it on near parallel with Burkino Faso.
Throughout the civil war in Kosovo, NATO backed a shadowy group known as the KosovanLiberation Army, the KLA or 'UCK' as it is known by its Albanian acronym. Originally, itwas formed from various Hoxhaite factions who worked underground in Kosovo fighting forself-determination and an Albanian republic within Yugoslavia. But it would be wrong topresent the KLA as a leftist, national liberation army. The movement had been fused fromtwo factions - one Hoxhaite, another composed of fascist-leaning supporters who glorifiedthe Fascist occupation of Kosovo during the war in which Mussolini united Kosovo withAlbania. The more reactionary wing were mainly composed of exiles in America, whilst theHoxhaites (also reactionary!) were based in Europe. The rightwing faction became dominant,demonstrated by the use of black uniform and a salute that were both identical to those ofthe fascist collaborators during the war.
Indeed, the KLA began its reputation by attacking so-called Albanian"traitors" and "collaborators" with the Serbs; originally, it wasAlbanian dissidents who were fleeing from the once small underground sect with but a fewdozen members. Their first infamous atrocities included attacks on Serbian refugeesfleeing the Bosnian civil war, and bombs planted in cafes frequented by Serbs.
Their original backers were gangsters from Northern Albania who supplied them witharms, ensuring the KLA would fight for their interests. However, as their numbers werebloated by the Yugoslav security clampdown that began in February 1998, triggering civilwar, American imperialism soon adopted the army. They encouraged arms to be sent to themfrom Albania, and exchanged intelligence with them. During the Rambouillet talks, the roleof the KLA was to provoke Yugoslav forces into retaliation to build up support in the Westfor war. In the talks, the US ensured it could have the excuse for a bombing bythreatening the KLA with breaking off support unless it signed the agreement. It thenestablished a clause in the agreement that Yugoslavia nor any other regime with thesmallest degree of sanity would agree with - the right of NATO troops to free movement inYugoslavia - giving it the right to occupy the entire country at will.
As the war was launched, the bourgeois press enthusiastically termed the KLA as NATO'sland army. Yet the KLA was not defending the Kosovar Albanian civilians, maintaining smallborder attacks on Yugoslav forces and merely fighting over small villages. Indeed, itviolently purged the remains of its Hoxhaite wing and expelled dissident Albanians. Forexample, the editor of the KLA-backed newspaper "Voice of Kosovo" was murdered,an act originally blamed on the Milosevic regime but later discovered to have been thework of a KLA purge. The newspaper's motto changed from "Long LiveMarxism-Leninism" to "NATO Thank You".
When Milosevic capitulated, the Yugoslav Army withdrew and NATO won occupation ofKosovo, and the KLA were immediately institutionalised by imperialism, remodelled as thearmed Kosovo Protection Corps, whilst other sections existed underground. The supposedrole of the KPC was for emergency disaster relief, but has been using its £30 millionbudget rather differently, as the Observer on the 12/03/00 reported: "instead, saysthe UN, it has been murdering and torturing people." And a secret report by the veryorganisation that funds it, the United Nations, declares it responsible for "criminalactivities, killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal policing, abuse of authority,intimidation, breaches of political neutrality and hate-speech." Formally dissolved,the KLA were actually fused with the state machinery.
Far from inactive, the KLA began a mass ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian Kosovars.This was not just to include around 175,000 Kosovar Serbs, but thousands of Romas,Montenegrins, Turks, Slav Muslims, Jews, and so on, as well as dissident Albanians accusedof "collaboration". A campaign of terror against the other Kosovars includedmurder, kidnap and torture, threats and intimidation. Hundreds of homes have been burneddown. Serb refugee convoys were attacked on the way to Serbia-proper, such as on February2nd when an elderly Serb man and woman died in one example. In Pristina, an originalpopulation of 40,000 Serbs dropped to a couple of hundred. Kosovo once contained nearly200,000 Serbs; it is estimated around ninety percent fled the terror. The remaininggypsies, once numbering over 40,000, are confined to a single refugee camp, whilst whensome fled to Italy they were turned away, whose cynical prime minister announced they hadtaken in enough refugees.
The terror campaign was not aimed at those militia that had been responsible foratrocities against the Kosovar Albanian masses. They had been the first to flee. It wasdirected at ordinary working class and peasant Serbs, often elderly. For instance, inAugust 1999 13 Serbian farm labourers, including teenagers, were shot dead on the way towork in the fields. A sinister pattern has emerged of elderly Serbian couples, often over80 years old, found in their homes with their throats slit. A typical example detailed bya bourgeois reporter more critical than most of NATO, Robert Fisk, in the 24/11/99Independent stated: "An OSCE official reports that in Zupa, a 96-year-old Serb manwas found bound and gagged with a gunshot wound to the head. In Kamenica, a Serb woman,82, who had been ordered to leave her house was burnt to death in her home. Earlier, Serbsreported that a 90-year-old woman, Ljubica Vujovic, had been held down in her bathtub anddrowned." A report in the Guardian, 24/8/99, showed the innocence of the victims:"'My son was kidnapped two months ago,' she said, tears streaming down her face. 'Weare not to blame, neither are the Albanians; it is that fascist Milosevic inBelgrade.'" Indeed, such is the fanaticism of the KLA that recently a Bulgariantranslator was shot after he responded to a question asking the time in Serbo-Croat.
NATO and sympathisers in the bourgeois press have tried to emphasise that what isoccurring in Kosovo are spontaneous revenge attacks. This does not, for example, explainwhy the terror is not just directed at Serbians, and how hundreds of thousands couldpossibly have been purged across the province without any form of co-ordination. A24/11/99 Independent article gave an example of the range of victims: "The 300-strongCroat community at Lecnice were preparing to celebrate their 700th anniversary in theprovince but left en masse last month for Dubrovnik. And this week, the president of thetiny Jewish community in Pristina, Cedra Prlincevic, left for Belgrade after denouncing"a pogrom against the non-Albanian population."
The Independent on 12/12/99 made it clear who was responsible: "Serbs who soughtto live peacefully among their Albanian neighbours have almost all been driven out, eitherto Serbia or into a handful of heavily guarded enclaves, in what bears all the signs of aco-ordinated campaign: the officially disbanded but still well-armed Kosovo LiberationArmy convinces few with its denials of responsibility." Indeed, there is a materialbasis for what is happening, not simply a matter of ideology, of reactionary extremenationalism.
As I have said, the long-time backers of the KLA were gangsters in Northern Albania,bandit territory since capitalist restoration in the country caused chaos. They providedguns and funds. But this was not charity, they expected something in return. As'Stratfor', a rightwing think-tank based in Texas in the US said on 17/3/00: "The KLAis indebted to Balkan drug organizations that helped funnel both cash and arms to theguerrillas before and after the conflict." When NATO occupied the province, with theaid of the KLA the gangsters moved in to Kosovo. The province has been flooded with poshlimousines and sports cars without license plates, which it is estimated make up 20-25% ofthe total cars in Kosovo.
Indeed, many of the people orchestrating the terror were not in fact victims of terror,but petty-bourgeois criminal elements from Northern Albania setting up a base in Kosovo.For this, they intimidated non-Albanians into fleeing Kosovo and occupied their homes.Aided by the KLA, now institutionalised by imperialist troops, the gangsters are usingKosovo for such purposes as drug-running, mainly in heroine; and prostituting girls,either by kidnapping them off the streets, or importing them from other Eastern Europeancountries for the fast developing Kosovan night clubs, often intended for NATO troops. TheIndependent reported at the end of the last year that: "Apart from smuggling drugs,arms and cigarettes into Kosovo, Albanian gangsters have taken to kidnapping young womenfor prostitution in western Europe. Mr Haxhiu said one had been snatched from outside theGrand Hotel in the heart of Pristina last week, while four UN policemen looked on."
NATO itself has essentially established a colonial protectorate in Kosovo. This is notsimply a view restricted to the Left; for instance, the prominent bourgeois commentatorJonathon Dimbleby described KFOR, the occupying troops in Kosovo, as the "militarywing of a colonial governor, better known as the Security Council of the UnitedNations." The bombing has smashed Kosovo's basic infrastructure, for Albanian and forSerb; water and electricity supply are at best unreliable, and there is no basic hallmarksof civilisation such as a post service. The administrative situation in Kosovo could bedescribed as a ruling triumverate of imperialist troops, the KLA and gangsters fromNorthern Albania. The situation is such that Kosovo was more democratic under the deformedbourgeois democracy of Serbian rule even back in 1998 than it is today, there being noelections for any positions, which are taken by obscenely overpaid UN bureaucrats. Thepolice recruited from mainly Western countries act in a particularly colonial way, havingno real concern for the people of Kosovo, as the Independent reported in December:"Their commitment is also in question according to one aid worker, an Albanianpolicemen he knew found himself trailing his foreign superiors from one coffee bar toanother. 'Many of the international police see no point in risking their skin,' he said.'All they want to do is bank their bonuses and get home in one piece.'"
The remaining Serbian population have been confined to small ghettos, the last vestigesof a people that have lived in Kosovo for thousands of years. Supposedly under theprotection of occupying troops, merely walking in the streets puts their lives in dangerfrom KLA attack. Serbs are too afraid to use hospitals or educational facilities, wheredoctors and teachers are nearly entirely Albanian. The Independent reported on December12th last year: "The Mitrovica administrator would have been horrified to hear the UNofficial who admitted that attempts to keep Pristina University open to all groups hadfailed. Since it was now entirely Albanian, Unmik was considering whether to turn themining and metallurgical faculty, on the Serbian side of Mitrovica, into a separateuniversity for Serbs. 'Apartheid?' responded the official. 'Call it that if you wantto.'"
The dwindling Serbian population has been confined to exile from a society where anorganisation bent on their destruction has been institutionalised. The description of thefunction of occupying troops as to maintain a multicultural society in Kosovo is nothingbut an insulting 'joke'. How can this be when in only nine months the vast majority ofnon-Albanians have fled under the noses of troops numbering tens of thousands, and theKLA, guilty of orchestrating this concerted attempt at mass expulsion, has been given thereigns of power alongside them? There can be no apologia for the regime of Milosevic,which includes a fascist component represented by the Radical Party, but it is worthnoting that, in sharp contrast to Kosovo under NATO and the KLA, Serbia remains one of themost multicultural countries in Europe, where over one third are not of Serbian ethnicorigin.
Yet a new storm is brewing in the Balkans, a fast approaching explosion that remainsthe as yet unborn child of the Balkan War. Those who today are the allies of imperialismcan be transformed overnight into its deadliest enemies. For instance, the Taliban regimein Afghanistan, one of the most reactionary and backward of its kind on the planet, owesits very existence in power to US imperialist backing of Islamic fundamentalist rebelsagainst Soviet troops. The collapse of Stalinism meant America no longer needed Islamicfundamentalism, especially when it found it could no longer control such movements whichdeveloped an independent nationalist, anti-American character. American bombing ofAfghanistan and its refusal to accept the Taliban regime shows just how much former allieshave become rivals.
The same can be applied to the KLA. American imperialism had a use for it, as part ofits strategy of breaking up the Balkans to create small states that cannot exist withoutdependence on foreign powers. The KLA in turn had a use for imperialism, putting its faithin America to help create an ethnically pure "Greater Albania", the originalname of the state created by Fascist invasion in the 1940s. Because of this, a newAlbanian guerrilla war has begun in the Balkans, in an area of Southern Serbia with amajority population of around 70,000 Albanians. The KLA, now using the pseudonym 'UCPMB'in the area, named after three Albanian villages in the region, which itself has recruitedaround 80 men, began operations to provoke Yugoslav forces into a reaction, with the ideathat imperialist forces would immediately come to the Albanians' aid.
But the KLA forget that imperialism intervened in the first place to prevent what wouldbe a catastrophe for its interests - a wider war that would destabilise a continent thatrepresents the most important market of America, as well as the nightmare scenario of NATOmembers Greece and Turkey going to war with one another. It is to prevent this danger thatimperialism will not tolerate an independent Kosovo and its unification with Albania. Asthe Observer of the 19/3/00 stated: "[US military officials] say they must be stoppednow if bloodshed across the entire region is to be averted - not least in Macedonia, whereconflict could easily trigger a much wider conflagration." A military victory wasalso guided by other interests, such as the diminishing of Russian power and the seizureof its former sphere of influence, which is why the Guardian editorial on 4/4/99 stated:"To lose would be to validate and entrench Milosovic, dangerously strengtheningmilitant Slav nationalism in both Serbia and Russia." The war drew Balkan statesfurther under the wings of the West, adding states to NATO and speeding up the admittanceof other states both to it and the EU, whilst funds were driven into the countries forneo-liberal economic policies.
The spectre facing Kosovo is a new war - between imperialist troops and its formerally, the KLA. The same Observer article stated: "US troops should prepare for battlewith the former soldiers of the Kosovan Liberation Army, officials in Washington arewarning." As early as this spring such a war could commence, Pentagon commanders aresaid to have alerted the US military. Indeed, US imperialism again committed its deadlyerror - believing that such movements could be controlled when they have their own agenda.Maintaining nominal inclusion of Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia is also causing growinghostility between the two.
US troops are beginning to raid KLA military bases in a desperate attempt to prevent afast approaching crisis, actions which only serve to increase KLA anger. Imperialismcannot win either way.
This guerrilla war has coincided with an upsurge of violence in Kosovska Mitrovica.This is no accident. The town is the only multiethnic settlement in Kosovo, despite thefact it is partitioned between a Serb north and an Albanian south, separated by a bridge.Northern Mitrovica is one of the last significant enclaves of Serbs in Kosovo, and manySerbian refugees from other parts of the province reside there - having fled particularlyfrom southern Kosovo where nearly no Serbs are left. KLA operations are centred here inKosovo, intent on driving out the last Serb from the province, partly due to a fearnorthern Kosovo could become part of Serbia in a partition. The struggle fornorthern Mitrovica also has much to do with its wealth of
mineral resources, as well as the location of major facilities such as post and importanttransport links across the province.
In early February, violence broke out in which around 8 have died and dozens injured.Both Albanians and Serbs have homes and jobs on each side of the city, while KFOR refusesto allow them to cross the bridge. In such an atmosphere, with KFOR partitioning the city,the KLA began sniping operations at the French troops who are in charge there, who thenkilled a KLA soldier. The KLA led protests against the French troops, which were often metwith water cannon and police attack. Mitrovica is another cause of serious confrontationbetween imperialist troops and the KLA, whose interests are increasingly diverging. TheKLA and NATO once thought they could use one another to further their own interests, butnow they are both hindering the aims of the other. A once solid relationship isincreasingly decaying.
Mass demonstrations, attacks on Serbs and Albanians and shootings at KFOR have led to amass crackdown on Mitrovica. KFOR claimed that both Albanian and Serb militia were toblame, and began house-to-house searches on both sides of the city to remove guns. Yetwhen the Kosovar Serbs are facing murder, intimidation, kidnap, torture and expulsion fromthe province, guns are what they see as their last protection. By removing the guns fromthe Serbs, their feeling of vulnerability is increased, and their only protection from aproject of ethnic cleansing that has removed at least 300,000 Kosovars destroyed. Theinevitable response was a demonstration by Serbs, and a threat from the Serb leaders tosever links with KFOR, reflecting the sense the Kosovar Serbs and other minorities have -that KFOR has sat back and allowed them to be expelled from Kosovo, perhaps as a pricethey considered worth paying if fighting that threatens occupying troops will endsubsequently.
Indeed, whilst there has been repeated allegations that the Milosevic regime is behindthe violence by American and KFOR leaders, there has been no direct allegation against theKLA when clearly their hand has been at work. Imperialism is desperately clinging on toits relationship with the KLA, which provides a sense of legitimacy for their colonialdictatorship, whilst at the same time facing the prospect of the KLA triggering a widerwar. Yet the dilemma they face is between ending the alliance with the KLA and thereforelosing any control over them, or tolerating their increasing operations and deflectingblame away from them. Both tactics will not stop the KLA attempting to fulfil theirlong-term goal - the construction of an ethnically pure Greater Albania, a project thatwould inevitably plunge the region into war, something not in the interests ofimperialism. As the Guardian on 1/3/00 quoted: "[Kosovo Liberation Army] pressure onK-For is very strong. It is making veiled threats for another march on the north, and thistime to force their way through. K-For is not prepared to stop them properly," saidone senior UN official."
KFOR itself has refused a plan by UN bureaucrats to re-unite the city as part of a planto end a crisis that is threatening foreign occupation of Kosovo, on the grounds weaksupport amongst ordinary people in the West - most of whom genuinely believed thepropaganda of the war being a humanitarian intervention - would be lost if soldiers onfoot patrol began to die. In the meantime, KFOR are willing to allow the Kosovar Serbs toflee and violence between the two sides to escalate.
There is more progressive hostility to foreign occupation than the KLA. The Trepcaminers of Kosovo led the last Titoist demonstration in the history of Yugoslavia in 1989,calling for the re-instatement of Kosovan autonomy, support for the 1974 TitoistConstitution which guaranteed it, and involved Yugoslav and Albanian flags being wavedtogether. They faced a brutal crackdown by the now ruling counter-revolutionary regime ofSlobodan Milosevic, and many had their jobs taken away. When the regime proposed theprivatisation of the mines, there were more protests. Indeed, how precious the Trepcamining complex is cannot be emphasised, once the biggest export earner of the entireformer Yugoslavia.
French troops are refusing to allow the Albanian miners back to work, causing theworkers to issue a call for international solidarity in which they call for workers'democratic control of the mines based on social ownership as once existed in Yugoslavia,and in which they threaten a hunger strike unless they are allowed to work. Howprogressive their demands is clearly demonstrated when they declare: "Our campaign todemand the rights of miners and other workers is not just for Albanians but for all Trepcaemployees with the exception of those who have committed war crimes." At present, thebourgeoisie of several countries are claiming ownership of the mines, from Yugoslavia,France and Greece.
This struggle is possibly the most important working class fight outside of Russia,being against imperialist troops and foreign companies, as well as fighting for socialownership of the mines. This is something all socialists should wholly endorse, a shininglight in what is otherwise a catastrophe taking place in Kosovo. Meanwhile, there has beenspeculation that the Milosevic regime wants to partition the north of Kosovo on behalf ofthe Yugoslav bourgeoisie to regain the jewel in the crown of Kosovo - something theworkers' movement should never support.
It is not only Kosovo where a new storm in the Balkans is developing. A crisis isgrowing in Montenegro, one that could spark a new civil war. The Montenegrin regime isessentially a Western proxy, committed to a much faster restoration of capitalism thanthat in Belgrade. In a dangerous struggle with the Belgrade regime, the government inMontenegro has been threatening to declare independence, a move that would not only incurthe wrath of Serbia but also of those within the country who wish to remain part of thefederation. At present, those pro- and anti-Yugoslav evenly split, both views attractingaround the half the population. Yet American imperialism has entirely mobilised behindthis regime, and has promised Montenegro it will militarily aid it in a war with Serbia;imperialism is stoking the flames of war.
The opposition in Serbia, certainly supported by the West, who provide supplies only toopposition-controlled Serbian cities in a bid to bribe the population into removingMilosevic, threaten a new Yugoslav civil war. According to Stratfor on the 13/09/99:"Djindjic [Yugoslav opposition leader] was unable to turn the popular anti-Milosevicsentiment into a unified pro-democracy front and is now fanning the flames of a potentialcivil war to invigorate Alliance for Change."
The intervention of imperialism appears to have backfired somewhat on the question ofthe Balkans. The West was terrified of a wider war in Europe that might blow NATO apart,yet their bombing ironically stirred up the forces that could trigger such a prospect.Their policy throughout the 1990s of breaking Yugoslavia into small states dependent onimperialist support for a viable existence risks causing an explosion in the Balkans.
Montenegro is falling ever closer to a civil war involving Serbia. Kosovo is heating uponce again. Albania itself is falling into chaos; Stratfor 27/10/00 suggested: "It islikely this feuding [in Albania] will escalate to a clash threatening to envelop Kosovo,and forcing NATO to become involved in yet another foreign ethnic conflict." The KLAthreatens to cause a new civil war in Macedonia to break off the western predominantlyAlbanian part, a war which could have tremendous repercussions, involving Serbia, Albaniaand possibly Greece and Turkey. Imperialism has planted the seeds of a new European warthrough its cravings of markets and capital.
The only thing that can stave off an approaching catastrophe is working class unitybetween all the Balkans people, and the creation of a Socialist Federation in the region.The masses must break with the nationalism stirred up by former Stalinist bureaucrats togain popular legitimacy for the purpose of restoring capitalism, and realise their commonenemies are their ruling classes and imperialism. Sentiments as expressed by the Trepcaminers are progressive demands that the working classes of every Balkan nation could beginto take up. Unless this happens, the people of the Balkans are going to suffer a lot morein the months and years ahead.