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  Issue No 21 Official Organ of LaborNet 09 July 1999  

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Guest Report

John Passant on Poetry and War


We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men
T S Eliot could well have been writing the anthem for bang and whimper men Blair and Clinton as they turn Yugoslavia into a wasteland.

Wimper

NATO's humanitarian justifications for the war against Serbia are lies.

The aerial bombing created what it was supposedly intended to stop - the dispossession of the Albanian Kosovars. Milosevic drove hundreds of thousands from their homes only after NATO began its attacks.

His troops killed, tortured and raped thousands only after the humanitarians in the West unleashed wave after wave of bombs on civilian Serbs, also killing thousands of innocents.

11 weeks of sustained bombing have destroyed Kosovo and Serbia physically and economically.

NATO targeted civilian infrastructure targets in Serbia like water, communications and electricity. Lloyd's List, an insurance newspaper, reported recently that reserves in Belgrade were down to 12.5 percent and that the city's power grid was "almost beyond repair".

The Government in Yugoslavia says that 54 road and rail bridges have been damaged as well as five civilian airports, 20 hospitals, 30 health centres, 190 educational institutions and 12 railway lines.

500,000 workers have lost their jobs because of the bombing.

The bombing has produced an environmental disaster across Europe. By bombing so-called military targets like chemical and oil facilities, NATO has released vast amounts of pollutants, including deadly dioxins, into the air. The effects of depleted uranium from US shells are unknown.

The economy is in ruins. Yugoslav economists have estimated it will cost around $100bn to restore Yugoslavia to its pre-war position.

Economic sanctions, already in place for 7 years against Yugoslavia, will continue. Such sanctions are designed to kill people. For example the West's blockade of Iraq is killing 4000 people a month. Will the same happen in Serbia?

Blair and Clinton have said they will not provide aid to the Serbs until they overthrow Milosevic.

Given the destruction wreaked on Serbia, it is possible the lack of Western aid coupled with sanctions could do the same to the Serbian people. However in all probability the Russians will act as sanctions busters for the Serbs.

Without aid, the Serbian civilian infrastructure cannot be re-built. People will be denied basic services at levels necessary for normal living.

To imagine now that the Serbian people - bitter yes, but economically very weak and not organised at all - are in the position to overthrow Milosevic is madness. The Opposition is divided.

Indeed in 1996 when a mass movement did develop that was capable of getting rid of Milosevic the West did all it could to emasculate it.

It may be that what Clinton wants is not a mass movement but some sort of military coup against Milosevic. The danger here is that a military coup may produce a leader more reactionary and nationalistic than the present one.

So why did NATO attack Serbia, if not for humanitarian reasons? Henry Kissinger let the truth out when he said he only supported bombing Serbia because NATO's "credibility" was at stake.

Last year US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said the US wanted NATO to be able to conduct operations "from the Middle East to central Africa".

NATO has become the policeman for the US in the area.

As the UK paper The Financial Times said: "The alliance set an important precedent by launching a military operation against a sovereign government in defence of that nation's own citizens. It did so without the authorisation of the UN Security Council and thus it greatly extended the legal justification for military action."

NATO, not the UN, is now the bother boy for the United States. From the US point of view NATO is much more pliant and reliable than the UN.

The war was also designed to sideline Russia. However the march of Russian troops into Pristina shows that the strategy may not be working. All NATO's actions seem to have done is strengthen the hawks in Russia and made the situation in the Balkans much more dangerous as a result.

It is not only the Russians who fear NATO dominance. Other countries, especially China, are drawing the conclusion that they will have to increase their arms spending to respond to and protect themselves from NATO's belligerence. If Serbia one day, why not them the next?

The peace settlement itself shows that the bombing was unnecessary. This deal could have been offered to Milosevic in March and he would probably have accepted. This is because the present deal, from Milosevic's point of view, is better than the Rambouillet Agreement offered in February.

That Agreement would have imposed Western troops throughout all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. This demand would have destroyed Serbian sovereignty over Serbia itself. The new agreement is only about troops in Kosovo.

In addition under Rambouillet the occupation of Kosovo would have been under NATO control. The new agreement is more ambiguous. Although NATO has operational control under it, the UN (which NATO has sought to exclude) is to be the governing authority. Whether this occurs in practice is another matter.

Despite claims by Blair and Clinton to the contrary , the position in the Balkans is even more dangerous now than before NATO intervention.

The war in Yugoslavia has only begun.

Certainly the ethnic cleansing will not stop. With Serb Kosovars fleeing, one group of ethnic cleansers - the Serb military - is being replaced by another - the KLA, with NATO support.

Robert Fisk in the British newspaper the Independent reported that the head of NATO ground troops, Lieutenant-General Michael Jackson, wanted "the withdrawal of all Serb reservists in Kosovo between the ages of 18 and 55". Fisk says that this is "a step which would reduce the indigenous Serb population to tens of thousands of vulnerable old men, women and children".

The K L A has a new commander, Agim Cecu. He was a general in the Croatian army and ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs from Krajina. Why will he not try to force out any remaining Serbs from Kosovo?

NATO bombing has destabilised the Balkans. Rulers in countries nearby could move to dismember Serbia.

For example, it is possible the Albanian government could try to incorporate Kosovo into a Greater Albanian state. Montenegro and Macedonia would respond with war.

With Serbia weakened, Croatian leader and ethnic cleanser Franjo Tudjman could be tempted to seize some of its land.

The Bosnian Muslims lost territory during the war in Bosnia. Their leader, Alia Izetbegovic, could start a war in Bosnia to win back some of that territory.

Any spreading of the Balkans war would drag NATO members Greece and Turkey in on opposite sides.

The hawks in Russia could well then mobilise their army and intervene.

Kosovo, like Bosnia, will be divided.

NATO is an occupying force. However the Russians have forced themselves on NATO. Having a pro-Serb army involved in Kosovo will create chaos and threatens NATO's goal of a pro-western Albanian protectorate.

Because NATO is an occupying force, it will soon meet major problems.

For example NATO will have trouble with the Kosovars themselves. As the war progressed NATO, which at first described the Kosovo Liberation Army as terrorists (the same description Milosevic used to justify his campaign) began to work more closely with them.

In doing so, NATO raised the expectations of the KLA for independence. NATO will not deliver. Under the peace deal, Kosovo is to stay an autonomous province of Serbia.

NATO also wants to disarm the KLA. In the dangerous environment in Yugoslavia, some Albanian Kosovars have refused.

It is possible that the KLA will split between those who are pro-NATO and those who think they have been betrayed by Blair and Clinton over independence. This split could result in civil war. NATO's enemy then will not only be the Serbs but also one section of the KLA.

Destruction, death, war. Some victory for Blair and Clinton.

This is the way the New World Order ends This is the way the New World Order ends Not with a whimper but a bang.

John Passant John Passant is a Canberra-based writer. He apologises to TS Eliot for the use and abuse of some of his great lines.


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*   Issue 21 contents

In this issue
Features
*  Interview: The Future Is Now
Steve Klaasen is just 22. He works for a union. He explains why he is not an endangered species.
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*  Unions: Showdown at the Hyde Park Plaza
The ACTU's Organising guru looks at the lessons to be learned from the recent dispute.
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*  History: A Rich Vein in the Rock
Every mine, like a human being, has its life. Mount Morgan and Queenstown between 1880 and 1930.
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*  International: Jailed Unionist Freed
Global union voices delight at the release of Indonesian labour activist.
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*  Review: Ten (More) Steps to Revolution
Cultural theoritician Snag Cleaver puts the schooner glass to the Eighties.
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*  Labour Review: What's New at the Information Centre
Check out the latest issue of Labour Review, a resource for unions on industrial developments
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News
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»  A Holiday With a Social Consience
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»  East Timor: Emergency Public Meeting Called
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Columns
»  Guest Report
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»  Sport
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»  Trades Hall
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»  Piers Watch
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Letters to the editor
»  Conference to Heal Rifts in the Labour Movement
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»  Fabians Scour Poll Ashes
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»  Holiday Confusion
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