Serbians count cost of NATO’s blitz
Serbia is now the poorest country in Europe. 500,000 landmines and 10,000 unexploded bombs have still to be cleared. This is addition to the still unknown damage to health and the environment from depleted uranium.
In fact both Nato and the Milosevic regime either ignore or underestimate the real consequences of the war in the Balkans on the environment and the health of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people living in the Balkans.
For example, eight tons of highly toxic mercury has gone into the Danube, but little has been done to warn people of the dangers this poses.
44 per cent of Serbia’s industrial capacity has been lost as a result of Nato’s deliberate targeting of the civilian infrastructure. Serbia’s poverty, along with economic sanctions, restricts its ability to clear the Danube of bridges destroyed by Nato. This threatens to cause a huge build up of ice when winter arrives. Not only Serbia but Hungary and Croatia will be at risk of large scale flooding.
Millions of Serbs will face the coming winter with totally inadequate heating. A European Union plan to supply heating oil to the opposition-held cities of Nis and Pirot has been abandoned. No opposition politician turned up to the recent EU meeting in Luxembourg, even though the EU was prepared to supply transport from Serbia, thereby breaking its own economic blockade.
This was hardly surprising, since the EU demanded that, in return for oil, opposition leaders must publicly commit themselves to the extradition of Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. In any case the EU was only offering about £3.2million of oil – about half the amount spent on bombing a single bridge over the Danube.
Even this very limited offer was unacceptable to the United States, which is opposed to any lifting of sanctions. At the same time the US has demanded that European members of Nato must shoulder more of the burden of running the alliance – while opposing any moves by the European states that could lead to them acting independently of Nato.
Although protests against Milosevic continue in Serbia, the regime is not seriously threatened. Vuk Draskovic, leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), has joined opposition protests after a supposed attempt to kill him in a road crash.
In fact even some of the opposition are rather sceptical about whether or not there was an assassination attempt.
Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic Party appears to accept Draskovic’s version of events – but only in order to claim that he too has been the target of assassination attempts.
The weakness of the opposition is not simply the intense personal rivalry between Draskovic and Djindjic. It cannot agree on any political and economic programme, let alone one that could win support among decisive sections of the working class.
It is hampered by its own nationalist past. Draskovic was a member of Milosevic’s government until he was sacked during the war. Djindjic supported Radovan Karadzic when Milosevic decided to abandon the Bosnian Serbs. As late as January of this year Djindjic denounced the opening of an American government office in Prishtina as an attack on Yugoslav sovereignty.
The opposition is torn between denouncing Milosevic for being a nationalist and for not being nationalist enough. In addition it cannot openly appear to be siding with western forces responsible for the destruction of Serbia. Hence the decision to boycott the Luxembourg EU meeting.
It also cannot rely on much support from the military – many of whom are rather fearful that the overthrow of Milosevic would see them too facing extradition to The Hague.
In Kosova, Serbs and Roma continue to be threatened by sections of the Albanian majority. Some of the attacks are clearly carried out by former soldiers of the Kosova Liberation Army, despite public statements by KLA leaders opposing such attacks.
Attacks have also taken place on United Nations officials, including the murder of a Bulgarian official because he spoke Serbian and of a Serb interpreter.
Clashes have also taken place between former KLA units and Nato troops, in particular in the divided town of Mitrovica. These clashes express very contradictory developments.
On the one hand they demonstrate an awareness that Nato is not going to act in the interests of the Kosovars. This was made clear recently by US deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott who reiterated US opposition to an independent Kosova, insisting that it must remain part of Yugoslavia.
The de facto division of Mitrovica is clearly perceived as not being in the interests of Kosova. This is given added weight because the important industrial complex of Trepka lies in the Serb areas to the north of the city. Kosovar miners are campaigning to take back control of their mines, which are at present occupied by NATO troops.
Attempts to reunify the city and bring Trepka under Kosovar control, in the face of Nato opposition, are positive and should be supported.
On the other hand the clashes also reveal hostility to the remaining Serb population, which is a totally negative factor. Socialists have to argue against attempts to drive out, let alone murder, the Serb and Roma populations.
However, we should also not lose a sense of proportion. We have to recognise that Albanian hostility to Serbs and Roma is largely the result of ten years of brutal oppression of the Albanian Kosovars by the Milosevic regime. Many of those on the British Left who rightly denounce attacks on Serbs were remarkably silent about Milosevic’s treatment of the Albanian population.
Equally, while socialists should support an end to sanctions against Serbia and participate in campaigns to bring relief to the millions of Serbs threatened with starvation this winter we should not ignore the crimes of Milosevic.
Certainly Nato has inflicted tremendous damage on the health service in Serbia. We support the campaign for medical aid to Yugoslavia. But we also recognise that the Milosevic regime was prepared to inflict similar hardships on the peoples of former Yugoslavia.
When the Serbian army withdrew from Croatia, for example, it took with it every piece of medical equipment it could carry.
Although the opposition in Serbia remains weak, the situation in Croatia is much more positive. There is a real chance that opposition parties will win the forthcoming elections.
And in early October Dinko Sakic, the former commander of the Second World War murder camp at Jasenovac, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. The successful conviction of this mass murderer took place despite attempts by Croatian President Tudjman to play down the brutality of Jasenovac.
Serbs, Jews and Croats all gave evidence at his trial.
Tudjman may not have been happy about the outcome but the fact that the trial took place, let alone the verdict and sentence, suggests that those who insist that Tudjman is ‘the most right wing ruler in Europe since Franco’ are very wide of the mark. Such a trial would have been inconceivable in Franco’s Spain.