Bosnia - 5 years of International Workers’ Aid
A balance sheet of solidarity
When I heard the first Workers Aid for Kosova convoy ‘reached the town of Mitrovica in Kosova earlier this autumn I got a tremendous buzz There is now a campaign running internationally, very well supported in Tuzla by ‘the unions and the municipality, to run further convoys to the workers and refugees in Mitrovica. If anything demonstrates the achievements of IWA and the other groups involved running aid to the workers of Tuzla it is that the workers of Tuzla are now taking the initiative to help their colleagues in Kosova
In celebrating of International Workers’ Aid ’s (IWA) 5th birthday, I want to attempt to draw a short balance sheet of the campaign. It is crucial to ask why our efforts in supporting the multi-ethnic forces in Bosnia attracted as little support as it did and why the groups which did support this political line were so apathetic, ineffective and unable to collaborate. on a day to day basis. This balance sheet is critical if we are to learn anything from this campaign and deepen our understanding of internationalism.
If the war in Bosnia was a test for the left most of it failed. Some assumed that they were duty bound to take the opposite side to the Yanks and therefore ended up as apologists for the ultra-nationalists Milosevic and Karadic Others had a sort of mirror image analysis where they felt obliged to concoct American imperialist plots to support Serb nationalism when at the same time US forces were dropping ( OK a very limited number of) bombs on the Bosnian Serb Army. Reality in the Bosnian War was not volunteering to got easily shoehorned into any simple imperialist v anti-imperialist or fascist v anti-fascist scenario.
Much of the left did basically agree with the analysis and efforts of IWA but basically sat on their hands and did little beyond make occasion literary interventions It actually demanded a high level of co-operation, flexibility, trust and discipline to make IWA work. The nature of our activities meant that there was a lot of resources and comrades lives at stake, riot just squabbling over what goes in the next leaflet or what slogan we have on the banner
For any of the left, I believe, there was simply a fear of working with a popular cause in a principled way and having to take real responsibility for things. Its a damned site easier to play with slogans such as `arm the Bosnian resistance’ than ensure the ‘rolling-convoy’ had, spare-parts and diesel to drive flour up to Tuzla every ten days.
The failure of the British left to work together in one campaign led to two, almost identical, campaigns, both driving essentially the same goods to the same bloody city... I mean OK there were political differences, a few shibboleths and different conceptions of democracy and how to organise but if we can’t over come these and behave sensibly well. as Dr Martin Luther King succinctly put it, ‘If we can’t hang together as brothers, we will surely hang separately as fools.’
A little anecdote might help to illustrate the problem.- I was in Swansea doing an IWA tour in February 1994 just before I left these lovely isles for ever. I drove with Brendan Young up the valley to Tower colliery to a lodge meeting. First we visited the lodge treasurer and showed him the video, then we went to the lodge meeting where we were very well received and a large donation was agreed. Unfortunately it got sent to Workers Aid for Bosnia by mistake! If Branch secretary Tyrone O’Sullivan could get confused what about the average worker?
When the first IWA convoy got to Tuzla on November 7 1993 we brought about 18 tonnes of aid. This was a bit of a drop in the ocean for a town of 140,000 inhabitants plus 70,000 refugees We did bring a lot of encouragement and hope though and hopefully helped the multi-ethnic, non-nationalist forces who still run Tuzla and seem to be getting stronger in both parts of Bosnia. It was significant that the small Bosnian delegation at the Fourth International Youth Summer Cap in Denmark this year came from Banja Luka as well as Tuzla. This and the involvement of Tuzla unions in the convoys to Kosova are maybe little legacies of the work of IWA and others in the region
Eastern Europe is for sure more full of dangers than opportunities for the loft but we must continue to support and develop a dialogue with socialist and democratic forces in the region. It’ll maybe be a generation before socialism comes back on the agenda in the old Eastern European states but we have to show there is an alternative to neo—liberal sin and nationalist demagogy.