On 24 March 1999, the NATO imperialists led by the then U.S Democratic President Bill Clinton unleased a wave of terror from the air against the sovereign state of Yugoslavia, particulary against Serbia. The bombing of Serbia was the biggest military assault in Europe since the Second World War. The official reason claimed by the NATO imperialists was that the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was "committing genocide" against the Albanian majority in Kosovo-Metohija (a region of Serbia). The Serb-dominated Yugoslav Army (Vojska Jugoslavije) or Serbian Army (Srpska Vojska) had been mobilized in a counter-insurgency war against an Albanian right-wing extremist Mujahideen guerilla group known as the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) or in Albanian UCK (Ushtria Cirimtare e Kosoves), which was attempting to break Kosovo away from Yugoslavia and unite it with Albania in their first phase of creating "Greater Albania". Naturally as the KLA Mujahideen reactionaries were armed and trained by the imperialists, they were granted the title "freedom fighters" by the imperialist press. As a result, NATO came to the aid of their KLA butchers by bombing Serbia back into the stone age for three months, resulting in the deaths of over 5,000 Yugoslav people, with Milosevic still secure in power. The U.S-led NATO massacre and later colonial occupation of Yugoslavia was hailed as "defending human rights", while the entire Serbian people were vilified and dehumanized, much like the Japanese people during World War II.
In the mid 1990's the KLA began to emerge in Kosovo. They conducted their first terror attacks in April of 1996 against Serbian civilian targets. The following year the KLA hit the jackpot as Yugoslavia's neighbor Albania descended into chaos, as the ultra-corrupt capitalist regime of Sali Berisha collapsed, and military stockpiles were looted by criminal gangs, thus the Albanian crime bosses allying with the Kosovar mullahs and establishing the KLA as an effective Mujahideen with a growing arscenal for their separatist jihad. With their mafia, the KLA also used drug and human trafficking in order to buy arms. But, there were also many ethnic Albanians whom were won over to the KLA as a result of the Serb chauvinist policies of Slobodan Milosevic. The terrorism of the KLA knew no bounds, systematic killings of non-Albanian Muslims (Serbians, Gypsies, Jews, anti-racist Albanians whom were accused of collaboration, and any other minority) under the cloak of "national liberation" were mercilessly carried out. The KLA's terror tactics including placing bombs in residential areas, cafes, restaurants; kidnappings, mass shootings, and summary executions of civilians. The KLA also had prison camps where many whom were kidnapped were taken to, then ruthlessly tortured, women were raped, before being shot. One of these was the prison in the village of Lapusnik in Kosovo, which survivors described the appalling conditions of this KLA camp, with cases of gross overcrowdings, and others were left chained to the wall medeival style. The KLA would also beat inmates unconscious for fun, and those whom were injured by the maltreatment were refused any medical attention at all.
In mid 1998, Clinton's crony Richard Holbrooke made his way to Kosovo, and had his picture taken with the KLA Mujahideen. This confirmed to all those supporting the KLA, that the U.S imperialists and their NATO lackeys were and had been covertly arming and training these Islamic fundamentalist psychotics with arms, explosives, money, and insurgent tactics to terrorize the Yugoslav people. Afterwards when U.S Special Envoy to Kosovo, Robert Gelbard met with political leaders of the KLA, and then returned to the USA denouncing the KLA as a terrorist organization. He publicly stated in a press conference "The UCK is, without any question, a terrorist group....I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists." For his denouncing the USA's new "freedom fighters", the Clinton administration removed Gelbard as their ambassabor. Now that the word was out that the KLA were pawns of the imperialists, as well as the democrats holding office in the USA; the KLA would win the support not just from the conservatives, but also from the liberals and much of the left, all of whom would cry for "Poor Little Kosovo" and call for imperialist military action.
In 1998, the Yugoslav Army began their counter-insurgency operation against Clinton's KLA "freedom fighters". At this point the U.S imperialists had stopped using Milosevic as a bargaining tool for "peace" in the Balkans, eventhough Milosevic had long been on the imperialists' "bad guy" list, as he had always sought an independent economic and political program that made imperialist colonial occupation of Yugoslavia difficult, which included appealing to Greater Serbia mentality. The opportunity for the USA to install a puppet regime in Serbia came in 1999 for a fourth episode in the Balkan Wars between the Serbian Army and ethnic Albanian KLA gangsters in the Kosovo War. The KLA had been placing bombs in non-Albanian civilian infrastructure, ambushing and killing Serb police on patrol and bombing police stations for the puropose of seccession from Yugoslavia. By 1999, the Yugoslav Army had practically eradicated the KLA from Kosovo. After two years of fighting in the Serbian province, on 18 March 1999 the Albanian Islamists signed the U.N brokered Rambouillet "peace deal" (in reality a declaration of war) issued by NATO calling for the autonomy of Kosovo, the withdrawal of all Yugoslav forces, the occupation of 30,000 NATO troops with unrestricted access, along with granting the occupiers immunity from Yugoslav law even if a crimes was committed (Appendix B, Section 7). The alternative was NATO airstrikes. The message was clear: 'you can be occupied peacefully or forcefully'. Slobodan Milosevic rightly refused to sign this "peace deal", because he refused to have NATO violating Yugoslavia's sovereignty. There is no nation or state in their right minds that would sign such a "peace deal" in complete violation of its sovereignty and independence. The U.S imperialists had already been leading other U.N and NATO occupational forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.
What brought about this Rambouillet "peace deal" was the so-called "Racak Massacre" which was made public by the head of the Kosovo Verification Mission William Walker, on behalf of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). Walker had declared that on 16 January 1999 forty five ethnic Albanians had been massacred by Serbian police. Western cameras portrayed Walker's accusation as fact when the bodies were "discovered". However, the bodies were later proven to be KLA guerillas put in civilian clothing for the purpose of further demonization of the Serbians, i.e there was in reality no massacre in Racak. The guerillas' deaths were the result of a battle that had taken place in Racak between Serb police and the KLA gangsters. Where the bodies were found, there was almost no cartridges, and very little blood in the ditch where the bodies were located. Racak was a KLA stronghold, and most of the inhabitant had fled before the fighting. The bodies in the ditch were 44 men and 1 woman most with gunpower residue on the hands, what else could they be if not KLA terrorists? At the request of the Yugoslav government, Belarusian and Finnish forensic experts conducted independent autopsies on the Racak bodies, both concluded that the wounds were inflicted from a distance and not up close and riddled in "execution style" as Walker put it. When Walker charged the Yugoslav government with "genocide" at Racak, in which case Slobodan Milosevic naturally responded with outrage, and expelled Walker from Yugoslavia.
With the Racak "massacre" and the Yugoslavs' refusal to sign NATO's phony "peace deal", the imperialists came to their decision. On 24 March 1999, Bill Clinton ordered the massive ruthless bombardment of Yugoslavia for "human rights" as Clinton and his NATO stooges repeated like a broken record. For 3 months Serbia especially endured wave after wave of cowardly NATO airstrikes. The imperialists bombing ended on 10 June 1999, leaving over 5,000 Yugoslavians dead in what was called "humanitarian bombing". In fact the Serbian people as a whole lost their qualifications as human beings in the eyes of the western conservatives and liberals, much like the Japanese people during and after World War II. Incidents such as the NATO attack on the passenger in Grdelica which killed at least 14 civilians, or the attack on the Serbian TV station killing 20 employees. Schools, hospitals, factories, plants, and residential areas where no military forces were present, were also common NATO targets. Ethnic Albanians were not spared either, and fled in much larger numbers than before the bombing. In Djakovica an Albanian refugee convoy was hit four times by NATO, leaving at least 75 dead and scores of other wounded. The NATO imperialists at first claimed it was a Serbian military convoy. When it was revealed to by an Albanian refugee convoy, the imperialists then blamed the Serbs for the attack, until the bomb remains that were recovered contained U.S and British air force markings. Another case was the NATO attack on 2 Albanian refugee convoys in the town of Korisa, near the city of Prizren. Over 100 ethnic Albanians were killed, and many injured.
The U.S and western liberals cheered and applauded such incidents of Serbian civilians being bombed, and in the case of the Albanians gave a simple "we're sorry". And yet the main excuse used by NATO to attack Yugoslavia was that the Serbians were slaughtering ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, and any other people of non-Slavic background. This is a big lie, considering minorities in Yugoslavia enjoyed more rights then minorities in the USA. The USA, U.N and NATO have supported many regimes in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East who have done 10 times worst to their citizens than NATO is accusing Serbia of. Since when does the USA, U.K, and NATO members care about ethnic minorities? In the USA minorities are thrown into impoverished slums and are subjected to constant police harassment. In 1998, the U.K and NATO countries deported several hundred thousand immigrants back to their countries. And these are the "defenders of human rights"?
Clinton's mullahs and crime bosses were fighting to break Kosovo away from Yugoslavia to unite it with Albanian, thus allowing further imperialist colonial occupations in the Balkans. The KLA believes the region of Kosovo belongs to Albania. Kosovo ("Kosova" to the KLA) has been a part of Serbia for centuries. It is rightfully Serbian terriroty. But the KLA ambitions don't stop there. This Mujahideen also claims that Western Macedonia ("Ilirida" to the KLA), Southeastern Montenegro ("Mali i Zi" to the KLA), the Presevo , Medvedja, and Bujanovac ("Presheva", "Medvexh", "Bujanovc" to the KLA) regions of Southern Serbia just north of Kosovo, and the Epirus region in Northern Greece ("Chameria" to the KLA) belongs to Albania. By means of terror and fascistic methods the KLA seeks to unite these regions with Albania, virtually establishing an ethnically pure Greater Albania. These were the same goals and tactics of the Albanian Fascist Party (also known as Balli Kombetar) and the SS Skanderbeg Division (Albanian volunteers for the Nazis) named after the Albanian national hero Iskander Beg who drove the Turks from Albania in the 15th century. During World War II when the Nazi, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian fascist armies invaded the Balkans and carved up Yugoslavia for their own interests, a Greater Albania was established and ruled by Albanian Fascists. The KLA is a revival of the Albanian Fascist Party right down to the clenched fist to the forehead salute. When the Kosovo war ended, NATO's KLA extended their jihad into southern Serbia, and Macedonia. The people of northern Greece and Montenegro currently face this threat. In fact in early September of 2006 just a few months after Montenegro's independence from the union with Serbia, 20 Albanian extremists were arrested for detailed plans of terrorist attacks and intimidation of non-Albanians. Montenegrin police also seized a cache of weapons containing assault rifles, grenades, explosives, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and anti-tank rockets. Montenegro appears to be the next target for another KLA style jihad.
Bill Clinton's KLA, in addition to foreign supplies also received many foreign volunteers. Among those was the infamous Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network, who would contribute his skills and fighters for another episode of jihad in the Balkans. Once again the CIA would arm and train Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda thugs as they fought their jihad against Yugoslavia. Osama Bin Laden, as one of the most dedicated leader to jihad and Islamic extremism, the KLA Mujahideen welcomed his al-Qaeda volunteers with open arms as they formed their units within the KLA. Nest to volunteers of al-Qaeda and other Islamists, the KLA thugs also received a large number of non-Muslim volunteers. The majority of these foreign non-Muslim mercenaries were American and German, but also mercenaries from various NATO countries. With these large numbers of foreign volunteers, the KLA's jihad (along with the 19 member NATO bombardment) against the Serbian nationalist regime was grossly compared by western liberals and patriotic chauvinists to the Spanish Civil War as "many nations fighting fascism". The KLA was a fascistic organization fighting against the corrupt chauvinist regime in Belgrade on behalf of the imperialists' colonial domination of the Balkans. The Spanish Civil War was an revolutionary workers struggle led by Communists against a fascist rebellion of Francisco Franco backed by Nazi Germany, Italy, USA, Great Britain, and the League of Nations den of thieves. Communists from all over the world volunteered to fight this imperialist sponsored fascism. Comparing the NATO/KLA terrorism to the Spanish Civil War is both absurd and disgusting.
NATO created many lies to get the whole world believing that Yugoslavia was the villain, i.e demonizing Milosevic and the Serbian people. The USA and NATO even went as low as comparing Slobodan Milosevic to Adolf Hitler (a common American tactic for demonizing their opponents), this was the ultimate tactic used by NATO to gain world support for their terror attacks against Yugoslavia and continues to use this tactic to demonize all nations in opposition to the "New World Order". Among those who were given Nazi labels were Libya's Col. Muammar Qadhafi and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini; also former U.S henchmen: Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Panama's Gen. Manuel Noriega. Milosevic was also known as "Europe's Last Dictator" (a title which was passed onto the Belarusian President Aleksandar Lukashenko in 2001, who holds it to this day). Confronted with the situation of the KLA's atrocities and the threat of the Serbian province being broken away from Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic was left with little choice bit to rid Serbia of this imperialist-sponsored terrorism by force of arms. Due to Milosevic's crackdown on NATO's KLA, the U.S imperialists saw their chance to topple the last remaining obstacle for full colonialization of the Balkans.
NATO's attack on Yugoslavia its for its own interests, not for the people of Yugoslavia. The naive liberals think that the U.S is only after oil. There is no doubt that oil has played a role in NATO's decision to bomb Yugoslavia. An independent Kosovo and a puppet regime in Serbia is essential in building oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea bringing oil and other natural gasses through Yugoslavia, and out throug the Adriatic Sea. But Kosovo itself is also rich in mineral resources such as iron, mercury, gold, silver, zinc, molybdenum, and other ores would benefit western corporations when privatization was to take full hold. The U.S and their allies would profit greatly, making endless amount of money through cheap labor, and slave wages for workers without social benefits. This was Hitler's plan for Yugoslavia when he bombed and invaded in 1941. In the six months prior to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, Bill Clinton attacked Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq. The other main reason for the imperialist attacks was to divert public attention from his sex scandal with white house intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton also needed to prove he was a stable president capable of carrying out America's mission of imperialist globalization in the face of his sex scandal with Monica enabling possible impeachment.
When the NATO bombings ended on 10 June 1999, the official NATO report was that no losses were inflicted against NATO and that the Serbian forces suffered heavily. However, according to Yugoslavian sources over 100 NATO aircraft were downed during the bombing, and over 400 NATO troops killed in combat. The Yugoslav forces had much strength, therefore the USA knew they would possibly overwhelmed in fighting Yugoslavia alone. To make sure that Yugoslavia would be overwhelmed, the USA called in the whole of NATO to take part in this "humanitarian" operation. In total it was 19 nations against one. And even with these odds, the Yugoslav Army made a 3 month heroic stand. It took 19 imperialist governments to force the Serbian military to back down. When Josip Broz Tito and his revolutionary Partisans were fighting the Nazis and their allies, they fought until the last drop of blood, and won. Milosevic on the other hand chose capitulation. Once the Yugoslav forces withdrew, the NATO troops invaded and continue to occupy Kosovo, and with them the KLA who then took their ethnic cleansing activities to a whole new level. The NATO imperialist occupiers were called KFOR (Kosovo Force), and their mission of "peace keeping" which involved providing cover for their KLA cutthroats. KFOR protection was only for the KLA Mujahideen. With the Serbian Army gone, the KLA had no opposition to their ethnic cleansing, and as a result of KFOR's backing 90% of Kosovo's non-Albanian population (especially Serbs and Gypsies) were forced at gun point to abandon their homes, or be killed. Over 200,000 non-Albanians left Kosovo. The few Serbs that remain live in extreme poverty and face almost daily harassments and intimidation by Albanian extremists. Neither the U.N or NATO have done a thing to protect the Serbs. With this KFOR, NATO has all but officially separated Kosovo from Serbia, but Belgrade has no authority over it and remains under U.N and NATO control.
The Serbian people must bleed for "human rights"
As NATO warplanes were reducing what remained of Yugoslavia to rubble, a bizzare cry was heard in the imperialist countries, and most of the capitalist world. The international anti-war protests against Clinton's war were reduced to only Communists, Anarchists, various radical left-wing groups such as International Action Center, and the Serbian communities. The majority of the "anti-war" groups, including "human rights" groups such as AI (Amnesty International), HRW (Human Rights Watch), and ISHR (International Society for Human Rights) all hailed Clinton's bombing of Serbia as "defending human rights". Liberals, pacifists, social-democrats, feminists, and other "anti-war" bourgeois groups also took up the "human rights" call defending Clinton's NATO terror bombing. Clinton's presidency has united all forces of the bourgeoisie, as opposed to republican leadership that divides it between liberal and conservative. But the question remains: how did all these historically "peace activists" come to embrace Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia?
The NATO governments during the imperialist bombing of Serbia were mostly led by center-right liberal democrats, and center-left social democrats which included a number of ex-Stalinists; as well as a few conservative Christian democrats. Many of these heads at one point or another took at stand against imperialist wars, and have championed human rights. Bill Clinton had been a strong voice against the Vietnam War, defied the Draft, and organized the Moratoruim to End the War in Vietnam demonstration in Oxford, England on 15 October 1969. But in 1999 Bill Clinton was leading the NATO campaign of terror against the Yugoslav people as head of the U.S government and Democratic Party who started the Vietnam War. The then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green Party had been a student radical in West Germany in the 1960's as part of the student movement 68er-Bewegung (Movement of '68). He denounced the Vietnam War as American aggression and participated in protests; along with condemning the USA for its civil rights violations, and even called for the dissolution of NATO and an end to the U.S, British, and French imperialist occupations of Germany. Gerhard Schroeder, the then German Chancellor also participated in the student protests of 1968. In the late 1970s he organized protests against the United States and the deployment of NATO missiles in West Germany. In 1999 Gerhard Schroeder and Joschka Fischer would send the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and the Bundeswehr (German Army) into Kosovo in Germany's first real combat mission since World War II led by the USA. The French President Jacques Chirac and Bernard Kouchner, former head of the UNMIK; and Massimo D'Alema, former Prime Minister of Italy had all been Communist Party members in France and Italy. Both men would eventually defect to serving their own bourgeoisie. Bernard Kouchner was expelled from the French Communist Party in 1966, and in 1971 co-founded the NGO Doctors Without Borders and became an advocate for imperialist action. Massimo D'Alema in 1991 participated in disbanding the Italian Communist Party and creating the bourgeois social-democratic Democrats of the Left. These men after their defections were determined to prove to the French and Italian ruling classes that they were capable of honoring and serving the interests of their imperialist governments. Kouchner repeatedly called for the NATO air war against Serbia; Chirac and D'Alema ordered the French and Italian militaries into combat.
Before the NATO attacks took place, NATO had just signed on three new members. These new members were the first of the former Warsaw Pact members to become members of the imperialist NATO: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic (former Czechoslovakia). The then Czech President Vaclav Havel has been a U.S stooge since his days as a counter-revolutionary dissident of the reactionary Charter 77 and later Civic Forum. A self proclaimed "human rights activist" with a hippie image, Havel was the CIA's man in Czechoslovak workers state, thus the leader of the Velvet counter-revolution that destroyed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and restored capitalism. As president, Vaclav Havel was (and still is) a staunch supporter and advocate of U.S foreign policy. Vaclav Havel in his interview for the French newspaper Le Monde on 29 April 1999 stated clearly, "I believe that during intervention of NATO in Kosovo one consideration no one doubts: the reason for the air attacks, the bombing is not a material interest. The reason is purely humanitarian." Jerzy Buzek, Poland's former Prime Minister had been active in the counter-revolution in the Polish workers state as a top member on the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) "Trade Union" of another internationally popular "human rights activist" Lech Walesa. Vikor Orban, the ex-Prime Minister of Hungary had been a top member of the Alliance of Free Democrats during the counter-revolution in the Hungarian workers state collaborating with the self proclaimed "human rights activist" Arpad Goencz, and advocated a U.S free market system. Orban resorted to the same lies spewed by the Hungarian Fascist dictator Miklos Horthy about ethnic Hungarians in Serbia being oppressed in Vojvodina, and the need for Hungarian military intervention in Kosovo. Orban openly called for NATO to bomb the bridges of Novi Sad, Vojvodina stating falsely, "Over 300,000 ethnic Hungarians live in a country whose government systematically exterminated national minorities". Ironically, while these three government cry crocodile tears about "human rights abuses" by Serb forces against minorities, one should observe the systems of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic where minorities and foreigners suffer from joint fascist skinhead-police harassment and beatings; in some cases murder. Havel's judges and police have constantly pardoned skinheads for violence against Gypsies in the Czech Republic. Goencz's police have been reported to aid fascist skinhead violence towards non-Hungarians. The Polish Solidarnosc government remains passive towards hate crimes against Jews, Gypsies, Africans, and Asians, in which such crimes are rarely investigated and fascist perpetrators get a mere slap on the wrist. Nonetheless, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary became full NATO members on 24 May 1999; just like little suburban wannabes trying to join a badass street gang. To prove their worth, all three committed their militaries to the NATO colonization.
William Walker, the head of the "human rights" OSCE in Kosovo who fabricated the Racak "massacre", as well received praise by liberals. William Walker a crony of Ronald Reagan was U.S ambassabor to El Salvador during the Salvadorian civil war and worked closely with the death squad regime, and the CIA's Contra terrorists in Nicaragua. Walker and the Reagan administration attempted to cover up the massacre of the El Mozote village in El Salvador where U.S funded death squads murdered over 900 villagers in December of 1981, while upholding the Salvadorian death squad regime with a human rights image. Another example is Richard Holbrooke, Clinton's ambassabor to the United Nations. Holbrooke served as head of the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs during the Carter Administration had been in charge of U.S support for Gen. Mohamed Suharto, the Indonesian dictator, when he invaded East Timor and conducted an ethnic cleasning campaign which lasted until the late 1990's. To Richard Holbrooke and William Walker ethnic cleansing and mass murder obviously isn't a horrifying crime if the regime is a dear friend of the United States. The KFOR "humanitarian" mission was originally under the command of British General Mike Jackson. Mike Jackson, a captain in 1972 was second in command of the British Parachute Regiment in Derry, Northern Ireland when they massacred peaceful Irish protesters demanding independence and civil rights in what became known as Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972. Indeed, a very strange poster for human rights. Lastly, there was Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state and the U.S government's highest ranking woman in history made her very popular with the feminists. The feminists while focusing on the rapes committed by Serb irregulars on Albanian women, cheered the NATO bombing of Serbia and Madeleine Albright's involvement for pushing the women's issue in Kosovo. Naturally, these feminists were silent when Serbian women were raped by the KLA Mujahideen, or bombed by NATO.
Nevertheless, this created a pro-NATO coalition shouting support for the bombing of Yugoslavia. These pro-imperialist war rallies consisted of conservatives, liberals, feminists, social democrats, Christian democrats, Zionists, pacifists, bourgeois leftists, and even many western Muslims to join hands and cheer the NATO massacre of Serbia while wrapping themselves in the colors of patriotic chauvinism. The KLA were fondly dubbed "freedom fighters" by these people as well. Those who opposed the bombing were denounced as "traitors" and "lost" and were told to "wake up" by the pro-NATO left-right coalition, and were even told to go to Belgrade and Novi Sad where NATO could bomb the anti-NATO protesters "on the bridges." These pro-imperialist rallies went as far as demanding that NATO kill as many Serbs as possible, some of these even demanded the use of nuclear weapons on the Serbian people (see pro-NATO comments at http://www.alb-net.com/kcc/let-support.htm). Many of these people who sang the imperialist tune of "humanitarian bombing" had been staunch critics of U.S foreign policy in the past (Jesse Jackson, Vanessa Redgrave, George Michael, Susan Sontag, for example). Yet, now they actually believed that the U.S government was defending human rights. Who did/does the U.S government support when the Puerto Ricans, Kurds, Palestinians, Chechens, and peoples of Latin America, East Timor, and Northern Ireland when they fight for self-determination? And what of the Hutu extremist government of Rwanda in 1994 when they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis? Nothing, as they were left to be slaughtered by Hutu extremists, whom were stooges for French imperialism. The then Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene in compliance with the U.N ordered Belgian troops out of Rwanda after evacuating only the white people paving way for the onslaught and focibly leaving Tutsis behind to be slaughtered, was now sending Belgian troops to Yugoslavia in the name of "stopping genocide". These are questions and facts such people avoid to look at. Next to these naive liberals, lots of western Muslims now were actually convinced that the U.S imperialists cared and were struggling for the interests of the Balkan Muslims. Apparently, that was enough to forget Zionist oppression of Palestinians.
During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, many NATO targets including factories and plants. In Kragujevac on 10 April 1999, NATO bombed the Zastava car and small arms factory killing and injuring some 120 workers. These workers three years before were striking against the Milosevic's capitalist regime under slogans "We want jobs and bread" and "We are Zastava, the factoy belongs to us". In Cacak, NATO destroyed the Sloboda plant which produced domestic appliances and employed 5,000 workers. In Novi Sad, NATO bombed an oil refinery releasing a benzene cloud, and poluting the water supply. On 20 May, NATO cluster bombs destroyed the Dragisa Misovic hospital in Belgrade. In the mean time, Amnesty International later criticized NATO's "collateral damage" at the end of the bombings after months of cheering NATO. In Italy, the trade union bureaucrats of the CGIL-CISL-UIL had told the rail workers to stop their strike against against the Italian ruling class, and to embrace it for its participation in the "humanitarian bombing" of Serbia. At the same time Greek sailors on the destroyer Themistoklis declared their protest against the NATO bombings of their neighbors, and refusing to join the assault. They received strong international condemnation by the liberal led pro-NATO coalition, who had blamed all Serbs for the actions of the chauvinistic regime of Milosevic. The Serbian workers are not the enemies of the western workers. To the Clintonite liberals, they were obviously acceptable "collateral damage" as Jamie Shea put it for NATO's colonial mission under the cloak of "human rights".
Russia and China: NATO's good cops
Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia is a further example of the tragedy of the fall of the Soviet Union. Had NATO attacked Yugoslavia less than 25 years prior, the Red Army would've been mobilized in defense of Yugoslavia, in spite of the fact that it was outside the Warsaw Pact alliance. Now that the USSR no longer exists, the USA saw that there was nobody that was going to come to Yugoslavia's aid and stand in the way of their imperialist campaign. It was not just for Yugoslavia, but for the deformed workers states and beyond as well, the Soviet Union took the roll of a sheild in protecting these countries from a U.S-led attack. The USSR prevented the U.S rulers from once again using nuclear weapons on Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese people as they had on Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan after the Second World War when it was already ultimately defeated. The Soviets also prevented a U.S attack on Cuba, which now has also become vulnerable to a potential U.S attack. All that changed when capitalist counter-revolution swept through the USSR and Eastern Europe. Although Russia's capitalist rulers tend to object to U.S imperialism, they are by no means defenders of those being threatened by the U.S rulers; Yugoslavia was no exception.
Capitalist Russia was one of the two countries that strongly denounced the NATO imperialist bombing of Serbia. On 10 April 1999, the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin openly warned the West, "I told NATO, the Americans, the Germans: Don't push us towards military action. Otherwise, there will be a European war and possibly world war." Yeltsin's warns of certain Russian retaliation should NATO resort to ground warfare against the Serbs was supported by his Prime Minister Yegveny Primakov and his Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Yeltsin's position was received with great enthusiasm in Russia, and in the West concerned many while others remained skeptical. In Russia, the U.S-led massacre of Serbia was unpopular and resulted is mass demonstrations from the left and the right. Much of the Russian leftists joined the right-wingers in calling on their imperialist government to take military action in Kosovo on behalf of the Serbs against NATO in the name of pan-Slavic and pan-orthodox chauvinism. Yeltsin's denounciation of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was that of total hypocrisy after his bloodbath in Chechnya several years before. Capitalist Russia's goal in the Balkans was no different from that of their western capitalist rivals: to secure their position as a dominating power getting their cut of the pie under the pretense of helping the Serbian people, together with the West's pretense of helping the Albanian people. In the end, Yeltsin, Primakov, and Ivanov didn't even lift a finger to defend Yugoslavia from NATO. All that came from them was hot air, resulting in Yeltsin sending his crony Viktor Chernomirdyn as Russia's envoy to the Balkans to negotiate with NATO. Russia then linked with the NATO imperialist occupation of Kosovo in June 1999, playing the good cop in KFOR while the others played the bad cop. Boris Yeltsin who led the counter-revolution that destroyed the Soviet Union and restored capitalism in Russia with the aid of the U.S rulers, surely wouldn't stand in the way of a U.S imperialist conquest.
On 7 May 1999, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed by U.S/NATO, resulting in the deaths of three Chinese journalist and injuring more than 20 others. The attack outraged public opinion in China, and among the Chinese student communities in Europe. The U.S embassy in Beijing was egged and desecrated despite police protection. The U.S imperialists apologized claiming falsely that they had followed an outdated map of Belgrade. However, according to the newspapers The Observer (U.K) and Politiken (Denmark) the U.S/NATO purposely bombed the Chinese embassy due to communication links between the Chinese and the Serbian Army. This was later confirmed by the then CIA director George Tenet, that the Chinese embassy bombing was organized and planned by the imperialists. China had a very good reason to send in the People's Liberation Army in defense of the Serbian working class against NATO and Milosevic's capitalist government, but the chairman Jiang Zemin chose to remain on good terms with the U.S imperialists in spite of the attack. After the embassy bombing, Jiang Zemin took up a strong stance in denouncing the U.S and NATO at home, but just as Boris Yeltsin's threats, this amounted to useless hot air. And like Yeltsin, Zemin felt it was more profitable to remain on Clinton's good side than defend Yugoslavia. By November of 1999, China and the USA were once again as Zemin put it that February "partners in the world". China, where capitalism was overthrown by the workers revolution led by Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. After Mao's death, the Chinese liberal Stalinists of Deng Xiaoping who began selling out the workers of China to the imperialists with market reforms allowing privatization and western investments which continues to this day. Despite this, the U.S imperialists maintain pressure on China including military encirclement from Central Asia to Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, and targeting China for a potential nuclear attack according to Bush's "Nuclear Posture Review" for the "war on terror". With imperialist penetration of China adds to the possibility of the U.S backing internal reactionary elements such as Tibetan feudalists, Uyghur Mujahideen in the Muslim populated Xinjiang province similar to what Yugoslavia faced in Kosovo, or other internal counter-revolutionary elements.
Slobodan Milosevic: Kosovo and counter-revolution
The NATO attack on Yugoslavia wasn't about Slobodan Milosevic as the imperialist propaganda machine lied about. In fact in the late 1980's, the imperialists thought they had found a diamond in Milosevic. At this time Milosevic, an ex-banker had begun implementing market reforms along similar lines of Gorbachov's Glasnost and Perestroika. As Yugoslavia was fracturing along national lines, in the autonomous region of Kosovo unrest was rising between the Serbians and Albanians. Milosevic was sent by the then president of Yugoslavia Ivan Stambolic calm down the situation. As he met with a Chetnik minded mob, Milosevic then declared "No one should dare beat you again." Begining in 1988 through 1989 Slobodan Milosevic began a series of "anti-bureaucratic revolutions", in reality the start of counter-revolution in the Yugoslavian workers state. This stage of the counter-revolution stripped the Albanian leadership of Azem Vllasi in Kosovo through a series of Serb nationalist demonstrations in Pristina. Following Kosovo, Milosevic then took his protests to Vojvodina and toppled the leadership in what was known as the Yogurt Revolution involving Serbian nationalist throwing yogurt at the parliament in Novi Sad. In early 1989, Milosevic toppled the leadership of Montenegro just as he had in the autonomous regions, but Montenegro was actually a republic. A mistake of Tito was granting full autonomy to both Kosovo and Vojvodina, which are historically part of Serbia, and in a sense Milosevic attempted to correct this mistake but through counter-revolutionary tactics. Nevertheless, Milosevic's "anti-bureaucratic revolution" was hailed as a "fight for freedom" by the imperialist press, for they targeted separate branches of Yugoslavia's League of Communists. The result was fueling the nationalist mentality in the rest of the SFRJ, who then sided with their local counter-revolutionaries against what they saw as not Yugoslavia but "Serboslavia". In Kosovo thousands of Albanian miners went on strike against Milosevic's chauvinistic policies and in support of Azem Vllasi, who then called for Serbian and Albanian unity. As Slobodan Milosevic then gained control of the Yugoslav People's Army, it was turned into a Serbian army, that was then used to sweep away the last of the opposition in Kosovo. Vllasi was later arrested for "counter-revolutionary activities" under Milosevic's orders. From that point on, the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo would endure the Serb chauvinism that would later radicalize many Albanians into later joining NATO's KLA Mujahideen butchers. In 1990 Slobodan Milosevic reformed the Serbian branch of the League of Communists into a capitalist party: the Socialist Party of Serbia. Although a capitalist, Slobodan Milosevic was not a lackey of Washington whom they discarded like Gen. Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein. He was not even installed by a CIA covert action unlike the other reactionary post-Socialist Balkan leaders.
In the several years after the "anti-bureaucratic revolutions" George H.W. Bush attemped to seduce Milosevic into further promoting his market reforms in exchange for U.S aid and support for a united capitalist Yugoslavia. At this point Slobodan Milosevic was in the eyes of Bush and the NATO imperialists a Balkan Gorbachov, and later a Boris Yeltsin. In spite of Yugoslavia not being a Warsaw Pact country, the U.S imperialists were just as eager to see the Socialist economy crumble. However, Milosevic despite his flirtations with the imperialists had his own plan for Serbia that did not include being owned by the western imperialists. Milosevic's stance against the republics with large Serb populations seceeding from Yugoslavia made him fall out of favor with the western imperialists who were then an a mission to discredit and demonize what was left of Yugoslavia. As a result the U.S continued supporting the other secessionists in Yugoslavia. The Serbian reactionaries at the time were divided into two catagories. The first being Milosevic's clique advocating a Greater Serbia and extending Serb influence to those republics with large ethnic Serb populations. The second, pro-imperialist "human rights activists", nationalists opposed to Milosevic such as the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic who hailed the WWII Chetniks allied with U.S and British imperialism, along with maintaining links to the Serbian royal family. Others included Zoran Djindjic and Boris Tadic of the Democratic Party (Serbia), Vojislav Kostunica of the Democratic Party of Serbia, Miroljub Labus of G17 Plus, and others. Both sides had two things in common: Serbian nationalism and capitalist counter-revolution. The latter had failed miserably to win over the support of the Serb population, thus granting Milosevic power resulting with the isolation of Serbia and devastating economic sanctions against Serbia by the imperialists.
Throughout the wars that followed the counter-revolution in Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, despite his vilification by the imperialist media, would become a key negotiator in the Dayton "peace accords" for Bosnia made by the U.N imperialists in 1995, and enforced by NATO. Both in Croatia and Bosnia, Milosevic accepted imperialist "peace keeping" occupations of the U.N and later NATO, which only resulted in serving the imperialist goals of full colonial domination of the Balkans. By the time Kosovo was on Milosevic's agenda once again, he mobilized the Yugoslav Army to crush the growing KLA separatist jihad. In Kosovo, Milosevic had also repeated his use for Chetnik paramilitaries or irregulars that terrorized and committed atrocities against Albanian civilians. Incidents such as the town of Podujevo, where a Chetnik paramilitary group "scorpions" massacred 14 ethnic Albanians, half of them children. In the village of Rogove, 23 ethnic Albanian civilians were shot by Serb irregulars. Chetnik paramilitaries committed further similar atrocities throughout the Kosovo war. In the Yugoslav Army such atrocities were forbidden, although there were cases. But these individuals were were arrested and convicted immediately. Belgrade by this time had prosecuted and convicted 500 of their forces for atrocities against Albanian civilians. By this time the U.S imperialists and their NATO and U.N stooges had no more use for Milosevic. Milosevic was now the obstacle in the U.S imperialists' way for full control of the Balkans. The U.S-led terror bombing of Yugoslavia lasted three months, with Milosevic as the top villain. In June of 1999, Milosevic once again played his negotiator card allowing the imperialists to violate Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo, and the total withdrawal of all Yugoslav/Serb forces. This tactic resulted in Milosevic securing his own power in Belgrade.
NATO's "Bulldozer Revolution": Milosevic Gone
In late 2000, Washington had finally decided to rid Belgrade of Milosevic. On 5 October 2000, a series of popular protests numbering several hundred thousand from all over Serbia had overthrown Slobodan Milosevic that day. These protests were dubbed the "Bulldozer Revolution" in homage to Ljubisav Djokic, a bulldozer operator who drove his bulldozer into Milosevic's media machine RTS (Radio Television of Serbia). The imperialist media portrayed it as a revolution, in reality it was merely a coup d'etat that transfered power from one group of mafia to others as head of the Serbian ruling class. The coup was covertly supported from Budapest, Hungary by the CIA and installed a puppet government led by Zoran Djindjic, and Vojislav Kostunica of the counter-revolutionary "Democratic" Opposition of Serbia. The U.S put some $70m into their anti-Milosevic stooges, particularly it's youth movement Otpor (Resistance), which had gotten a certain amount of the funds from the imperialists in Budapest. The pro-imperialist Otpor symbolized their protests with a white or black clenched fist, and chants of "Gotov Je!" (He's Finished!). Otpor, begining with a lecture in Budapest of that year from U.S Army Col. Robert Helvey and ending up in Stockholm, Sweden to accept a "Free Your Mind" award from MTV Europe. This coup was to be the first of the so-called "Color Revolutions" (U.S-backed political coups) that would occur in the early 21st century in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In 2001 a similar coup attempt by the U.S against the Belarusian strongman Aleksandar Lukashenko failed miserably. Chetnik patriotic songs were heard up and down Belgrade in honor to the Western puppet opposition. The Serbian people would now find themselves in an even worse economic disaster from that of the Milosevic regime. Medicine, pensions, and all social programs were privatized and are now available to only those who can afford them. Vojislav Kostunica took over as Yugoslav President, while Zoran Djindjic took the role as Serbian Prime Minister until his assassination in 2003. The same year when they decided to abandon the name Yugoslavia and today refer to the union as Serbia & Montenegro. In 2006 there was national referendum on whether or not Montenegro will remain in the union with Serbia, or become an independent state. Many Montenegrins worry about this due to possible Albanian insurgency. Nonetheless, Montenegro voted for independence and being the only Yugoslav republic not to break off by imperialist covert action.
Om 31 March 2001, Slobodan Milosevic was abducted illegally from his home in the Dedinje neighborhood of Belgrade after a three day stand off between Milosevic's forces and Kostunica's forces. Milosevic was sent to the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) in The Hague, Netherlands to be tried for charges of "war crimes" committed in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The U.N kangaroo court would spend the next five years on Milosevic's trial until 11 March 2006 when he died of an apparent heart attack. Milosevic's death has aroused controversy among U.N personell claiming he committed suicide or he refused to take proper care of himself; as well as his supporters claiming he was given the wrong medication and claiming he was murdered. Regardless, the U.N kangaroo court failed to convict him. But even with Milosevic gone, the Kosovo question remains. The U.S puppet leaders of Serbia Vojislav Kostunica and now Boris Tadic remain opposed to an independent Kosovo, and argue that this will only inflame Serbian nationalism and further instability. But the U.S imperialists seem determined to break Kosovo from Serbia, despite the great concern of their stooges in Belgrade.
As the free market reforms were put underway, the social gains Serbia enjoyed would be buried in its grave by privatization. As a result economic "aid" from the west, as well as their investments commence. As of today employment in Serbia is is high as 30%, with millions living below the poverty line and the average worker is paid some $90 a month, in Southern Serbia it gets as low as $20 a month. In late June of 2003 over 10,000 workers went on strike in Belgrade against the U.S puppet "democratic" regime's layoffs, corruption, and the rising poverty; and demanding bread, jobs, higher wages, and trade union rights. As of then over a million workers were unemployed, 100,000 have been laid off, and over 200,000 had not received their salaries in months. The mafia-style practices of privatization of Milosevic, was handed down the the U.S puppets. Today Serbia remains as just another puppet of the West, and serving its interests with the exploitation of the Serbian working-class. The only hope to end this poverty if for the former Yugoslavian nations to re-embrace socialism through revolution, establish a planned and collectivized economy with nationalization, and live as brother and sister as they did under Tito.
Josip Broz Tito mobilized the working class of Yugoslavia into the Partisan guerillas and successfully liberated the country from the fascist occupiers and their stooges. Yugoslavia was re-established as the SFRY -Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ-Socijalisticka Federativna Republika Jugoslavija) after the Second World War. Kosovo itself was given to Yugoslavia at this time by Albanian revolutionary Enver Hoxha, and Vojvodina was given back by the new Hungarian workers state. Although Socialist, Yugoslavia would end up outside the Soviet bloc due to disaggreement between Tito and Stalin. Despite this, Yugoslavia would maintain Socialism, which was also weakened by Gorbachov's Glasnost and Perestroika. Yugoslavia split in the early 1990's in a similar way like the USSR, and capitalist governments emerged thoughout the region. Throughout the Cold War everyone expected World War III between the U.S led NATO forces and the Soviet led Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. After the capitalist counter-revolution in Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist. But who would've ever thought that NATO would one day wage an imperialist war not against an opponent alliance, but against but against a single sovereign nation: Serbia/Yugoslavia?
http://www.realitymacedonia.org/ http://www.serbia-info.com/news/kosovo/terrorism/
Belgrade Poster
RESISTANCE TO RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE TO IMPERIALISM!
Ribbentrop
