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[Editor;s note -- Mataerial attacking the KLA has been widely circulating on the Internet, primarily from ostensibly progressive sources such as the Anti-Fascist Bulletin. These attacks--which portray the KLA as herion smugglers backed by the CIA--emerged at the same time as terror squads organized by Slobodan Milosevic and U.S. bombing began driving hundreds of thousands of people from Kosova--nearly all of them supporters of Kosova's independence. The most widely circulated--and apparently respectable-- piece was entitled Kosovo "Freedom Fighters" Financed by Organized Crime^Ô by Canadian professor Michel Chossudovsky (although his use of the Serbian spelling "Kosovo" instead of the Albanian "Kosova" clearly indicated his political starting point). What follows are two pieces dissecting the two sources of attacks on the KLA.]
Stalinism vs. the KLA
By Roger Collins
[Given a fat packet of anti-KLA material--and the task to respond to it--the veteran Red and Irish Republican Roger Collins sent along the following response. - editor]
11 May 1999
Dear Steve,
The trouble with the various Stalinist apologias for Serbian ethnic cleansing
is that they really don't need to be refuted. Let's consider yer man, Michel
Chossudovsky' his monster of an article is made up of equal parts disparate
facts, disinformation, insinuations, out-right lies and national chauvinist
ravings. Then the whole unlovely mess is stitched into a pattern of
conspiracy theory, worthy of the LaRouchite press, or an X Files episode.
I do love the wee man's notion of evidence the CIA cooperated with drug dealers in Vietnam and Central America, therefore the Kosova Liberation Army is involved in drug dealing. In place of evidence, Professor C. supplies us with dubious rumors and citations of secret reports by shadowy espionage agencies.
To give his farrango of nonsense a veneer of respectability, a copious supply of footnotes is appended. If we look at these citations, we find that bulk of them come from outfits like Geopolitical Drug Watch, Truth in Media and Covert Action Quarterly. Other "devastating proof" is supplied by reporters from the "main stream media" who cite unnamed espionage agents as their source. Professor C. even cites himself, twice, as a scholarly source in support of his own irresponsible accusations...what modesty!
What is the thrust of Professor C.'s article? Very simple really, the good professor asserts that the struggle of the Kosovar Albanians is illegitimate because: 1) they are led by drug smugglers and criminals; and 2) the USA and NATO support them (even if they state otherwise).
Even assuming Professor C.'s accusations were true (and I make no such assumption ) a Marxist would still be faced with task of explaining of how come a population of folks like us --a population of two million workers, small farmers and professionals-- came to look to the drug Mafia and Western Imperialism for political leadership? What is there about Yugoslavian socialism ( Serbian socialism if you prefer) that would lead workers to look to "drug barons" and imperialists as a lesser evil?
In the last weeks, SeeingRed has carried numerous
articles fully exposing the reality of national oppression in the former
Yugoslavian Federal Socialist Republic. The most important of these were Tony
Thomas's Tito's Stalinist National Policy, Maurice Williams' Roots of the
Fight for Kosovo's Independence and Michael Karadjis' What is the KLA? All
provide excellent background material on life under Tito and his successors.
Here's my own brief attempt:
The reality of the former Yugoslavia was shaped both by its origin as the product of a workers' and farmers' revolutionary struggle and by the Stalinist policies of the leaders of that struggle. To "cut to the chase", the Yugoslav revolution led to the creation of a federation of socialist republics, a multi -national state in which the various nationalities enjoyed equality. The rub was that some nationalities were a lot less equal than others. To begin with, the Swabian ( German speaking ) nationality was extirpated from the republic and the Albanian national minority was denied equality for decades.
As a result of mass resistance (protests and strikes ) the Albanians of Kosova were able to win the right to education in their own language and, by the early '80's, autonomy local self rule, with a legislature, courts, police and legal system under local control. As the Yugoslavian economy went into decline in the late 80's and the League of Yugoslav Communists split along ethnic lines, there was a growth of Serbian chauvinism against the people of Kosova. The current President of Serbia, Milisovic, rode that tide of chauvinism into power.
I think it was in 1987 that Milisovic began an agitation against Kosova autonomy, claiming that the Albanians were "ethnically cleansing" the province of Serbs. In 1989 Kosova autonomy was ended and this was followed by massive firings of all Albanians who would not sign a loyalty oath to Serbia.
For the last decade, "Serbian socialism" has meant nothing but mass unemployment and the elimination of all democratic rights for the ethnic Albanian population of Kosova. The dynamic of the Serbian chauvinist campaign should be clear to any U.S. resident who has witnessed the rise of the "English Only" movement, the passage of referenda banning affirmative action, and the development of the proto-fascist Patrick Buchanan and his "culture war."
Oh, and what about the alleged US arms aid to the KLA? Let's face it -- this aid is just about non-existent, at least if the eyewitness accounts by scores of reporters from many nations and many viewpoints are to be believed. (Of course perhaps they are--including the Moslems and Hindis and Christians--all secret collaborators in the international Jewish conspiracy.)
The Kosova Liberation Army finds its main source of arms in Albania. The main surge of KLA actions came after the workers and farmers' uprising in Albania that brought down the government of Breshnia. The oppressed Albanian populace of Kosova learned by example and weapons became available with the widespread collapse of the Albanian police and military.
Both the USA and their NATO allies have repeatedly stated their opposition to Kosova independence, on the grounds that this would send "the wrong message" to the Kurds, Basques, Bretons, and, presumably the Scots, Welsh and Irish as well. NATO is no friend of national self determination, even in Kosovo.
* * *
Let's see what Lenin--as opposed to Stalin and his followers-- had to say on the question self-determination: "Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and, consequently, not only introduce the full equality of nations but also realize the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, i. e., the right to free political separation. Socialist parties which did not show by all their activity, both now, during the revolution, and after its victory, that they would liberate the enslaved nations and build up relations with them on the basis of a free union and free union is a false phrase without the right to secede these parties would be betraying socialism." (Questions of National Policy and Proletarian Internationalism, V. I. Lenin, Progress Publishers, 1975, pg. 110)
From the beginning, the Communist League of Yugoslavia carried out a consistent course of betraying socialism, precisely on the question of the rights of oppressed nations. It is in this sense that the Yugoslav state can be regarded as an anti-Leninist/anti-communist "prison house of nations" ... and the struggle of Kosovars for independence to be just.
* * *
What kind of task does the present situation imperialist attack and raging national chauvinism impose on Reds and revolutionary fighters in the remains of the Yugoslav republic? I think a two-fold task: to fight against the imperialist invaders and to oppose the national chauvinist campaign of the Yugoslav regime.
If we are politically serious, opposition to ethnic cleansing is absolutely necessary for the defense of what remains of Yugoslavia. If imperialist intervention is to be turned back, if a Balkan socialist federation is ever to be built, it can only be on a basis of a free union of equal nationalities. Politicians purporting to speak for the Serbian nation are organizing the burning of farms, pogroms and the mass deportation of Albanians from Kosova. The oppressed Albanian people will, in the future, only be able to trust those Serbian communists who have proved themselves defenders of the Albanian peoples' right to self determination, i.e. their right to secede.
What kind of task does the present situation impose on Reds in the USA? Obviously, to oppose the war of aggression, to do everything we can to bring about the defeat of our imperialist fatherland and by so doing, broaden the opening for exploited workers and farmers--and oppressed nationalities--fighting for a society free from violence, injustice and inequality. We have to remind everyone of the reality of the USA's role in world politics and to oppose the building of war hysteria against the toiling people of Yugoslavia, our brothers and sisters.
The USA, the self-declared "indispensable nation," and the preacher of human rights and democracy is the same nation/state that brought the world atomic war and the burning humans of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Washington's rulers--who pretend outrage over the crimes in Kosova--are those who brought genocide, yes, genocide, to the people of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and whose agents and clients wage genocide in East Timor, in Guatemala, in Mexico and whose aircraft now target the hospitals, churches and schools of Serbia--and, of course, Kosova.
The USA has nothing to say about human rights, to anyone, ever. Part of our task, as socialists, is to never allow the ruling class to ever get away with its attempts to seize the moral high ground. Again, the US ruling class has nothing to say about democracy, human rights, or justice, to anyone, ever!
That's what we have to take to the streets, not Stalinist conspiratorial garbage that turns us against the oppressed--and now bombed--people of Kosova.
Roger Collins
Washington Targets the KLA
By Steve Eckardt
[Editor's note: The following first appeared in a variety of U.S. alternative publications as a side-bar to an anti-war article entitled The Death Penalty. The entire article--written 28 May 1999--can be found here.]
May 21st was a Friday, a day for deeds that wouldn't make Sunday's papers.
It was also the day U.S./NATO war planes bombed a key base of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA). "[We acted] on the assumption that it was still in the hands of the Yugoslav Army," claimed NATO spokesman Jamie Shea.
But the base "was seized by the rebel [KLA] six weeks ago ...[and] has often been featured in reports by the international press, including television broadcasts and still photographs," as the 23 May New York Times carefully described the fact that even couch potatoes knew the base was in KLA hands.
But then the KLA has suffered far worse than bombing at the hands of Washington and its NATO vassal allies. After all, it was the U.S. ambassador's pointed public description of the KLA as "terrorists" which green-lighted Milosevic's first ethnic cleansing campaign last fall, a vicious campaign aimed at destroying the KLA^Òs popular base, a war which left hundreds dead and some 200,000 Kosovars homeless in the brutal mountain winter.
Then there was the full force of Washington's power -- blackmail, threats of mass violence, pay-offs, and psychological operations --brought against the KLA during the Rambouillet "peace" negotiations to surrender their arms and their aims ... and accept occupation by 28,000 NATO soldiers.
And the fearsome result -- the removal of the pioneer independence fighter Adem Demaqi who, as Australian journalist Michael Karadjis put it, "led the KLA politically until its leaders signed the Rambouillet agreement ... who had long proposed that an independent Kosova could, on the basis of self-determination, join with Serbia and Montenegro in a new, equal federation ...ideas [which] gained wide support from Serbian opposition elements in a wide-ranging "Serbian-Albanian" dialogue held in 1997...."
Here was someone--a popular leader advocating a new society of tolerance, equality and socialism--who stood as the key obstacle to U.S. plans for ethnic cleansing, war, and Western military occupation, a man Washington bent everything to remove.
On his way out Demaqi warned that the new KLA leadership imposed by Washington would try to "convince Albanians to accept capitulation by launching illusions and empty promises." In other words the fantasy that Washington was an ally here to help ... and probably make some people very, very rich. Illusions which pave the way for Washington's intentions: national catastrophe for Kosova, followed by military occupation.
Whether the U.S. can succeed in subverting the entire KLA into a tool is still up in the air, although reports from the region regarding KLA cheerleading for NATO bombing--and Demaqi's utter disappearance--are not promising.
In any case, analyzing this process has nothing to do with the repulsive slanders currently being circulated (especially on the Internet) by Stalinists bent on portraying the armed popular movement as nothing but "a herion mafia ...organized and armed by the CIA."
The veracity of these claims--long on historical examples on CIA/drug dealing/contra operations elsewhere, but entirely lacking any current evidence against the KLA (except the guilt-by-association smear that drug smuggling occurs in the region)--should be judged by the often-attendant claim that there are no hordes of refugees from Kosova, just some people hired to live in camps and pretend.