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| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
BEFORE and during the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, Western politicians insisted that they had no plans to redraw that country's borders.
While the Albanian-separatist Kosovo Liberation Army made no secret of its intention of detaching Kosovo from the rest of Serbia and making it a constituent part of a greater Albania, NATO insisted that this scenario formed no part of its own plans.
But this week's decision by NATO and the European Union to legitimise an organisation that they saw clearly as a terrorist group, funded by drug trafficking, one year ago exposes the deceit of the Western powers.
Transforming the KLA into the Kosovo Protection Force is an act of consummate cynicism, which legitimises its armed status.
Given the role of the KLA - long before any bombing of Kosovo or involvement of the Yugoslav National Army - in terrorising Serbs, gypsies, other ethnic minorities and even non-KLA Albanians, the NATO-EU decision has serious ramifications.
First of all, it undermines the UN security council which called for KLA demilitarisation rather than its makeover into an armed auxiliary of NATO.
Second, it undermines any prospect of the return of Serbs, gypsies and other minorities, particularly in light of US General Wesley Clark's declaration - again without UN authorisation - that Yugoslav troops will be banned indefinitely from taking up position within their own state borders, ie in Kosovo.
Third, it puts into stark relief the comparison between Western imperialism's dictatorial behaviour toward an army that has never been deployed outside its own state borders and its cosy co-operation with another that has invaded, occupied and terrorised a neighbouring territory.
Western imperialism was determined to smash the national independence of Yugoslavia and is equally determined to preserve the Jakarta regime with which it colludes in the Pacific, despite its genocidal record in East Timor.
Imperialism's basic interests there are its links with the Indonesian armed forces, its sales of military hardware, its use of profitable cheap labour to undermine wage levels at home and its grasp on East Timor's oil and gas deposits which it negotiated with the occupying regime in the Timor Gap treaty.
Jakarta's willingness - whether the government is headed by military dictator Suharto or his chosen successor Habibie - to accept its junior role in the US global strategy, while being a big fish in its own region, means that it is seen as no threat to Washington and its allies.
On the other hand, Belgrade's refusal to apply to join either NATO or the European Union was too dangerous a statement of independence.
Oil transnational corporations' plans to bring a pipeline from Azerbaijan to western Europe demanded a compliant Balkans region as the backdrop to this project.
The interests of the oil transnationals lie at the root of the different treatment of Yugoslavia and Indonesia by the imperialist states in which their company headquarters are based.