-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <[log in to unmask]>
To: Proyect's Marxism List <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: Jackie Eller <[log in to unmask]>; sam zahran
<[log in to unmask]>
Date: 06 April 1999 21:57
Subject: Background to Kosovo (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 1999 21:19:37 -0500
From: spectors <[log in to unmask]>
To: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Background to Kosovo
As always, I (we) start off with the comment that the
Yugoslav/Serb/Milosovic campaign in Kosovo is just another capitalist
government consolidating power while causing grave harm to hundreds of
thousands of people. Genocide is not an accurate term, but clearly there
have been numerous murders and outright banditry.
However, this extreme demonizing of the Serbs and treating the ethnic
Albanian leadership as if there were saints is also ridiculous. FAIR
(Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) a rather scrupulously careful media
watchdog group, found an article from the New York Times from 1987 which
offers some explanation as to why Milosovic revoked the autonomy of Kosovo
and tightened control. Among other things, the major ethnic Albanian
leadership had terrorized the minority Serbs, causing 20,000 Serbs to flee!
Whatever crimes the Serb leadership is guilty of, the ethnic Albanian
leadership can hardly be compared to the Jews or "gypsies" of Europe in the
1940s. There was plenty of ethnic cleansing to go around.
Following is the short introduction from FAIR, followed by the NYT article.
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FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
130 W. 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
Rescued from the Memory Hole: Background of Serb/Albanian Conflict
March 31, 1999
There is always intense pressure in wartime for media outlets to serve as
propagandists rather than journalists. While the role of the journalist is
to present the world in all its complexity, so that people can make up their
own minds, the propagandist simplifies the world in order to mobilize the
public behind a common goal.
One basic simplification is to interpret a conflict in terms of villains and
victims, with no qualification allowed for either role. Conflicts in the
real world rarely fall into such simple categories: Particularly in ethnic
conflicts, both sides usually have legitimate grievances that are often used
to justify a new round of abuses against the other side.
In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news outlets
usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the Kosovo Albanians' autonomy in
1989. This was a crucial decision, one of the major reasons for the rise of
the Kosovo Liberation Army. It also destabilized the Yugoslavian system and
contributed to the country's breakup.
Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted Kosovo's
autonomy. The attached article, from the New York Times in 1987, gives
important background to this decision. Although the article is easily found
in the Nexis database, little to none of this information has found its way
into contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the Times or anywhere else.
If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would likely
dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12 years ago, when
Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the New York Times would not
seem to have any particular interest in defending Serbs or attacking
Albanians.
It should be kept in mind that some of the charges in this article may be
exaggerated or politically motivated. Of course, the same is true of
atrocity reports that are being carried in the New York Times and other
papers today.
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The New York Times
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1;
"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict"
By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia
Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction
that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil
war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million
people, in World War II.
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the
various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society,
from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.
A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks,
killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells
in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
Vicious Insults
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and
regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have
exchanged vicious insults.
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down.
Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and
some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian
girls.
Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and
are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.
Radicals' Goals
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview,
is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro,
part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large
chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania
governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the
capital of neighboring Albania.
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is
giving them material assistance.
The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau
ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic
Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The
rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.
Worst Strife in Years
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly
since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an
''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo' ' in all but
name.
The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in
the last seven years.''
Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is
more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as
Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and
flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic
Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of
heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were
officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are
today.
Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with
its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some
ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo.
Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a
restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.
''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of
the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven
the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.
Attacks on Slavs
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic
Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic
Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them
characterized as severe.
In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian
origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that
Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists.
After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested,
and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers
to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the
foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which
consists of six republics and two provinces.
'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country
and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland.
Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an
interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like
divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of
Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told
the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to
subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal
organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in
the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian
subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers,
poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and
stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist
incidents in army units.''
Concerns Over Military
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had
slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech
struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their
mandatory year of military service.
Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of
the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula
suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.
He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing
their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the
Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to
quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army
leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the
first place, a political issue.
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the
autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil
service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately
feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.
Region's Slavs Lack Strength
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are
scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have
fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the
safety of the Slavic north.
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership
pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under
its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late
September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa
Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest.
Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on
Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with
speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us
Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician
would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's
epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian
politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters
appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the
Kosovo ethnic Albanians.
Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo
is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said
Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.
Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in
Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs
of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''
But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for
Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he
broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.
Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to
the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary
party congress before March to address the country's grave problems.
The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in
Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream.
Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company
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