GREGORY ELICH: YUGOSLAVIA’S REAL WAR CRIMINALS ARE NOT ON TRIAL
The blare of media fanfare exhorts us to celebrate the abduction and imprisonment of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Though widely touted as a victory in the American crusade for human rights, the arrest of Milosevic fits a quite different pattern when seen in the context of the history of post World War II history.
Whether waving the banner of freedom or waving the banner of human rights, Western leaders have consistently sought to obscure both their motivations and the often-dreadful consequences of their actions.
Freedom was never a concern. Nor were human rights, but such rhetorical justifications helped to engage domestic public support for international adventures designed to serve corporate interests. The lure of profit always takes precedence over the lives of millions.
Every year, 40 million people die needlessly of hunger, victims of a global capitalist system that cherishes wealth, but human lives not at all. In terms of death, this silent holocaust is the equivalent of a Second World War – in which 55 million died – taking place every year and a half. Yet a drop in the Stock Market evokes more concern.
Such a system is monstrous. One can gauge Western commitment to human rights and justice by examining the record of these self-appointed judges. History is replete with examples, so a few cases will have to serve as a synecdoche.
In August 1995, Croatian troops invaded Serbian Krajina. Within days, virtually the entire Serbian population, over 200,000 people, was driven from their homes.
U.S. NATO warplanes spearheaded the assault, bombing Serbian radar and anti-aircraft sites. American EA-6B Electronic Warfare aircraft jammed Serb military communications. Croatian troops, trained and supplied with weapons and satellite reconnaissance by the U.S., rampaged through the Krajina, burning down homes and slaughtering thousands who couldn’t escape in time.
It was the single greatest refugee crisis of the 1991-95 Balkan civil war, and it was U.S. officials who gave the go-ahead to the Croatian government. Serbian Krajina was closely associated with Yugoslavia, the last remaining socialist-led government in Europe, and decidedly outside the orbit of Western control.
In March 1998, the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was a small force with about 300 members. Turing a blind eye to the KLA’s policy of murder and intimidation, the U.S., Germany and Great Britain sent arms shipments and provided training to the KLA, building it up into a major guerrilla army with as many as 30,000 members.
Western intervention turned a small conflict into a major crisis. As a pretext, NATO relied on the crisis it had created in order to justify waging a war of aggression against Yugoslavia.
Foremost among crimes against humanity is the crime against peace, and for this crime NATO and Western leaders clearly bear guilt. Every town and city in Yugoslavia was the target of their bombs.
My travels throughout Yugoslavia shortly after the war confirmed that NATO deliberately targeted civilians. Entire residential areas were wiped out. Factories, schools, hospitals, bridges, apartment buildings, houses, offices and a passenger train were destroyed. Cluster bombs, anti-personnel in nature, were dropped on residential areas, tearing human beings to pieces. Over 2,000 civilians were killed and over 10,000 wounded by NATO.
Western leaders could not sell the war to their publics by revealing that it was intended to create a market friendly to Western corporate interests, so they concocted the lie of concern for Albanian human rights.
When NATO bombs started falling, Serbian extremists became enraged, blaming Albanians for the bombs. Right-wing paramilitary squads formed, venting their rage on Albanian civilians in mainly border areas of Kosovo. Rogue police and criminal gangs, both Serbian and Albanian, took advantage of the chaos to loot homes and drive away occupants.
Yugoslav security forces, the target of NATO bombs, struggled to stabilize the situation. By the third week of the war, they were escorting Albanian refugees back to their homes, and within two months order had been restored to most of Kosovo. Yugoslav security forces fought against the terrorism of both the KLA and Serbian paramilitaries, and by the end of the war had arrested over 800 Serbian extremists for crimes against Albanian civilians.
President Milosevic’s position was consistent. He advocated ethnic equality. His delegation at Rambouillet peace talks consisted of members of every ethnic group in Kosovo, including Albanian. Serbs were a minority in the Yugoslav delegation.
At the talks, the Yugoslav delegation offered wide-ranging autonomy for Kosovo. Repeatedly, Milosevic stated his commitment to a multi-ethnic society.
His words from a 1992 speech are typical: “We know that there are many Albanians in Kosovo who do not approve of the separatist policy of their nationalist leaders. They are under pressure, intimidated, and blackmailed, but we shall not respond with the like. We must respond by offering our hand, living with them in equality, and not permitting that a single Albanian child, woman, or man be discriminated against in Kosovo in any way. We must, for the sake of all Serbian citizens, insist on the policy of brotherhood, unity, and ethnic equality in Kosovo. We shall persevere on this policy.”
A monumental propaganda campaign has succeeded in achieving one of the most astounding smear campaigns in history, painting a democrat devoted to socialist ideals as a racist hate-monger.
Milosevic’s offense was his opposition to privatization and foreign control of the Yugoslav economy. The U.S.-organized Balkan Stability Pact called for a region under the sway of the free market model. Yugoslavia, strategically positioned along the Danube and astride a major highway transportation route, stood in the way of the effort to place the Balkans under complete and total Western economic domination.
The common thread running through these examples is not a zeal for justice and human rights by the West, but a vindictive urge to seek the imprisonment or murder of its opponents. Nothing can stand in the way of corporate profits. As one man in Yugoslavia told me, “I think our President Milosevic is more of a problem for imperialism than for us.”
Who can believe that Milosevic could possibly receive a fair trial at the hands of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)? He wasn’t even allowed to speak at his arraignment without having his microphone twice switched off.
During NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, the Tribunal hastily composed its indictment of Milosevic and four other Yugoslav leaders in order to bolster sagging public support for the war.
Created and funded by the same Western powers that carried out NATO’s war, the ICTY serves its master. The trial is widely, and rightly, seen as setting an important precedent. No longer would international law be an impediment to action.
Already the war established that Western powers could wage war without authorization by the United Nations. The trial will establish their right to seize anyone without regard to borders or legal niceties. Anyone resisting Western demands would be threatened with abduction and imprisonment.
It will be yet another tool for imposing Western domination over other nations, and make no mistake, it will be used. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic will be a show trial with a preordained verdict.
The real war criminals are not on trial. They act as judge and jury. We are witnessing the outrageous spectacle of criminals judging their victims.
President Milosevic’s only crime was that he had the courage to stand up to NATO despite overwhelming odds, to patriotically defend his country against aggression.
Shortly after the war, I was a member of a delegation that interviewed Albanian refugees who fled to Belgrade. Among those we interviewed was Fatmir Seholi, Chief Editor at Radio Television Pristina until NATO troops entered Kosovo and expelled him from the province. Unlike those in the West deluded by propaganda, he knew a real war criminal when he saw one.
“Every NATO bombing was a big problem,” he told us. “There was no purpose relating to the Serbian nation or the Albanian nation. Whether that was their purpose or not, people were killed. The man who could command NATO to bomb people is not human. He is an animal. After the bombing at Djakovica, I saw decapitated bodies. I have pictures of that. It is horrible, terrible. I saw people without arms, without feet.”
Seholi demanded, “Who is Clinton to accuse another? I would like to say to Hillary Clinton that her husband is an immoral person. That man ruined our state for no reason. What would he say if someone bombed the United States, bombed the White House, or killed or raped his daughter? Who is the evil man here? Milosevic, who is protecting the territory of Yugoslavia and protecting the people of Kosovo, or Clinton, who bombs us?”