Why Milosevic is prolonging AFTER A YEAR of war in ex-Yugoslavia, the siege of Sarajevo and the onslaughtagainst many Bosnian towns and villages shows no sign of ending.
In Bosnia alone two million people have been iriven from their homes, and 700,000 Bosnian refugees have crossed into Croatia.
For the first time since world war two, there are concentration camps in Europe, and perhaps as many as 30,000 people have been killed.
Much of the press and TV reporting of the crisis has been vivid and highly accurate, especially that of the Guardian's Maggie O'Kane.
But many of the explanations in the West reek of racism; we are led to believe that irrational 'ethnic hatred', primitive survival of the Middle Ages, is all that can be expected from the backward" south and east of Vienna.
And, regretfully, only slightly more sophisticated versions of this have been common on the left, where 'ethnic hatred' gets replaced by a uniform 'reactionary nationalism'. All such an explanations ignore the real history of what has happened.
During the last years of Yugoslavia in the 1980s big tensions developed between the various republics, not identical to ethnic groupings, over the allocation of econoure resources.
Serbian nationalist offensive
But it was not inevitable that these should turn into massive ethnic clashes, let alone civil war.
That was determined by the political developments inside Serbia. The Serbian wing of the Yugoslav League of Communists, led by Slobodan Milosevic, transformed itself into the 'Socialist party, and decided on a very precise programme for keeping itself in power: the regeneration of Great Serb nationalism.
The turning point in this process was not the declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, but the military-police offensive by Milosevic against the ethnic Albanian population of the Serbia province of Kosovo.
The start of the civil war in was not some unexplained outbreak of ethnic hostilities, but the declaration of independence by Croatia and Slovenia, and the consequent military attack by Serbia.
After deciding, mainly for geographical reasons, that it was impossible militarily to subdue Slovenia, the Yugoslav army, together with Serb irregulars, set about trying to conquer as much of Croatia as possible.
Once Croatian areas had been conquered, the process of 'ethnic cleansing' began. It reached its apex after the six-month seige of the Croatian town of Vukovar, when hundreds of Croats were slaughtered once the town had been overrun.
The attack on Bosnia was a logical consequence of the Greater Serbia project. This was a particular tragedy in a republic in which Serbs, Croats and Muslims had lived together in peace for decades In the face of these developments, there is only one sensible reaction for socialists - a defencist attitude towards Croatia and Bosnia.
The socialist programme is for federation; we have no fetish of national borders. But federation cannot be imposed by force. Croatia and Bosnia have the right to self determination, and that means the right to independence and territorial integrity.
Ex-stalinist fuels nationalism
Republican elections in early 1991 brought ex-Communist bureaucrat Franjo Tudjman to power in Croatia. Tudjman is of course a reactionary nationalist, but not, as some simplesouls on the British left have suggested, a 'fascist.
Among the defenders of Croatia were certainly some semi-fascist Ustache elements, especially from the exile Croat population in the US, Canada and Australia, who flocked back to fight.
But they were a small minority among the fighters, who included ethnic Serbs.
Croatia's defensive campaign however involved many features which were indefensible, and indeed opposed by the small left wing in Croatia.
These included in many areas a 'tit-for-tat' attack on the Serbian minority in Croatia and an attempt to Window in the crisis? Victim of Greater Serbia drive Serbs out of Croatian-held areas. Milosevic's ethnic cleansing gave rise to its mirror-image in the attempt to create an ethnically-pure Croatia.
Undoubtedly in this process many atrocities were committed against ethnic Serbs, although of course nothing on the scale of the wholesale massacres carried out by the Yugoslav army and Serbian 'chetnik' fighters.
Croatia's attitude during the Serbian assault on Bosnia-Herzegovina has been determined by narrow nationalism. l'hus, although a formal ally of Bosnia Tudiman sanctioned the creation of 'Herceg-Bosna', the de facto linking up of Croat areas in Bosnia and their incorporation into Croatian territory.
Carve-up
As a result, Croatia made itself complicit in the carve-up of Bosnia, breaking the tenuous Croat-Bosnian alliance against the Serbian assault.
What has been the attitude of the West to all this? As usual in such conflicts there is a big gap between the rhetoric of the imperialist powers and their realpolitik actions.
Germany from the beginning has been a strong defender of Croat and Slovenian independence, believing that its economic interests lie in integrating these areas into its sphere of economic influence. These calculations of course have nothing to do with any principled positions on the right to national self-determination.
Under the pressure of public opinion, and exile communities, Bush and Major have adopted harsh positions against the atrocities of the Milosevic regime. But theirrefusal to do anything effectiveabout the Serb assault stems from a practical calculation of their own interests.
Western interests
Not only are key strategic western interests absent, unlike the situation in oil-rich Kuwait, but the western powers probably feel that eventual stability depends on placating Serbia, the most powerful state in the region. Britain's role has been particularly cynical, through the agency of the indescribable Lady Chalker, who has emerged at the forefront of those wanting to ensure that Bosnian refugees never make it into western Europe.
A consistent socialist position on the crisis must start from the understanding that the war was unleashed by the attempt to whip up Great Serb nationalism to keep the degenerate ex-Communist bureaucrats around Milosevic in power; and that Croatia and Bosnia have the right to national self-determination.
Self-defence
This logically entails the right of the Bosnians to defend themselves - against the Serb onslaught and Croat encroachment-and their right to have the arms to carry out that self-defence.
The UN relief operation into Sarajevo cannot be opposed; indeed it should be vigorously supportec But the oll for all-out military intervention by the West is a ther matter. Imperialist troops will not proceed a rding to the principles of self-determination, but rding the immediate needs of the West, which wa volve supporting all the most reactionary forces in each region and installing them in power in the different republics In any case, in the real world, there are no western troops coming to the rescue to the besieged Bosnians. The London conference was a cosmetic operation which will change nothing on the ground.
The key to the situation is bringing down Milosevic's regime, and building the political forces, of the peace movement and the left, which can end the war.
in fact a powerful opposition exists in Serbia. Indeed it is probable that the reason for the prolongation of the war, in a situation in which the Serbs have already made 99 per cent of the territorial gains they can hold, is Milosevic's desire to maintain the seige and emergency atmosphere in Belgrade, to play the Great Serb nationalist card for as long as possible.
Milosevic's regime is indeed unpopular in Serbia, and in time it will go. Meanwhile the luckless people of Bosnia are being forced to pay the price for keeping his degenerate bureaucratic regime in power.
No. 27 12 Sept, 1992