Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
But it is not just US machinations that account for the recent Balkan
Wars. Internally, the Yugoslav state bureaucracy, led by the
Yugoslav League of Communists, held power in the post World War
II period through a one-party government and a state-owned market
economy. Staking out a position of neutrality between East and
West in the Cold War and introducing profit-oriented worker-
managed firms (with workers' power strictly circumscribed by the
League of Communists), the economy grew phenomenally in the
1950s and 1960s and old ethnic rivalries faded in the general
prosperity. By the mid-1960s, however, as the linking of the
Yugoslav market to the global market created economic imbalances
and competitive pressures, continued Yugoslav prosperity began to
depend on an influx of foreign capital, which Western banks were
happy to provide.
As the war between Croats and Serbs spilled over into Bosnia, the
Europe Community proposed an ethnic cantonization of Bosnia.
Hundreds of thousands of Croats, Serbs, and Muslims living in
Bosnia, one-third of whose families were mixed, protested this
ethnic partition of their homeland by the Western powers and local
fascists. The independent trade union movement continued to resist,
holding out for a multi-ethnic socialist democracy. But the US
encouraged the Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to declare Bosnia
independent in March 1992, scuttling a peace agreement
Izetbegovic had already agreed to that was little different from the
one eventually signed at Dayton fours years later, after all the
carnage, atrocities, and ethnic cleansing by militias on all sides. By
encouraging the Bosnian war, the ethnic cleansing, the post-war
ethnic apartheid that is called peace, and by topping it off with
bombing strikes leading to the UN occupation based on US/NATO
military logistical support, the US achieved its purpose of making
its military capacity indispensable in the region. (7)
That same month, March 1998, Milosevic and the elected leader of
the Albanian shadow government, Ibrahim Rugova, declared their
support for a peace plan proposed by the European Union and
Russia that would have provided for autonomy for Kosovo. But the
KLA and the US refused to agree, as NATO prepared its bombing
plans. On October 13, Milosevic agreed to a cease fire which
provided for Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) observers. But the US obstructed implementation, holding
up funding and the observers until it placed William Walker, a
veteran of covert operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in charge
of the OSCE monitoring force. The KLA, probably with US
encouragement, ignored the cease-fire while Serbia observed it,
according to the European Union's report on the situation in
December. But the US pushed for bombing Yugoslavia on the
grounds that its counter-insurgency against the KLA was in fact
ethnic cleansing. At the insistence of the German and French
governments, there was one more round of negotiations at
Rambouillet instead of a fall bombing campaign.
How long can US/NATO occupy the Balkans before the people
there wise up to the fact that they have been used as pawns by the
great powers intervening, as well as by the lesser indigenous powers
Milosevic in Serbia, Tudjman in Croatia, Izetbegovic in Bosnia,
and, yes, Rugova (14) and the pro-NATO wing of the KLA, in their
ethnic cleansing strategies to consolidate their own bureaucratic
power in an economy ravaged by Western indebtedness, structural
adjustment, and war?
It is here where one would hope that the Greens-with their roots in
the anti-nationalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-bloc movements of the
post-war European New Left-would play a major role working in
solidarity with the democratic, anti-nationalist movements of the
Balkans, most notably the independent trade unions that are still
functioning in opposition to both Western imperialism and Balkan
nationalism, as well as the smaller women's, peace, and ecological
and Green movements that share these goals. (15) But while most
Green parties around the world condemned US/NATO aggression in
the Balkans, why did the Green parties in governing coalitions in
NATO countries, namely, German, France, and Italy, go along with
NATO?
The German Party was the most involved, with its leading realo,
Joschka Fischer, holding the position of Foreign Minister in the
German government. For all of Fischer's legitimate outrage
expressed at the atrocities and ethnic cleansing committed by Serb
forces under Milosevic's watch in Bosnia and Kosovo, it must also
be clear to him that Croatia's Tudjman, Bosnia's Izetbegovic, the
KLA nationalists, and, above all, US-led NATO, which has
encouraged all these forces, including Milosevic's Serbia, in their
ethnic wars, are all partners in these crimes.
So why did Fischer, and these other Greens, line up with the NATO
war criminals? One can only conclude that these Greens put power
before principles, that they wanted to stay in their respective "Red-
Green" coalitions at all costs. For the German Greens, the Red-
Green coalitions at all levels mean jobs. In the Green party of
Fischer's home state of Hesse, by 1989, 80% of the Green Party
members had jobs as public officials, party officials, or their staffs.
(16) These Greens have let themselves be used by the US to put a
humanitarian gloss on its Machiavellian policy of global
domination.
Notes
1. Wall Street Journal, June 22, 1998; New York Times, July 8,
1998.
3. This article can only touch on the evidence for this contention.
Peter Gowan makes a fuller case in "The NATO Powers and the
Balkan Tragedy," New Left Review, March/April 1999; "The
Twilight of the European Project," CounterPunch, June 15-30,
1999; and the forthcoming The Global Gamble: Washington's
Faustian Bid for World Dominance (London: Verso, 1999).
10. Michael Karadjis, "What Is the KLA?" Green Left Weekly, April
21, 1999.
11. New York Times, April 1, 1999; Washington Post, April 1, 1999.
12. Vojislav Seselj's Serb Radical Party has said for years right in its
program that the Albanian "immigrants and their descendants" must
be removed from Kosovo
(www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/srpclean21.htm). The Radical
Party was a ruling coalition partner in Yugoslavia until Milosevic
and the Serb Parliament signed the Kosovo peace agreement in June
1999. The programs of the Western-supported opposition parties are
more subtle but nonetheless also support Greater Serbia nationalism
and the ethnic cleansing and border redrawing that implies. These
include Zoran Djindjic's Democratic Party
(www.dssrbije.org/yu/english/index.html) and the Serb Renewal
Movement (www.spo.org.yu) of Vuk Draskovic, an outspoken
Greater Serbian nationalist who supported the revocation of Kosovo
autonomy in 1989 and advocated the "peaceful transfer of
populations" (i.e., ethnic cleansing) in Croatia and Bosnia in the
early 1990s. As for Djindjic, he was a close ally Bosnia Serb militia
leader Radovan Karadzic during the Bosnia war.
13. See two media advisories by Seth Ackerman, media analyst for
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR): "Forgotten Coverage of
Rambouillet Negotiations," May 14, 1999, and "What Reporters
Knew About Kosovo Talks But Didn't Tell. Was Rambouillet
Another Tonkin Gulf?', June 2, 1999, both available at
http://www.fair.or g/press-releases/kosovo-solution.html.
16. Margit Mayer and John Ely, "Success and Dilemmas of Green
Party Politics," in Margit Mayer and John Ely (eds.), The German
Greens: Paradox Between Movement and Party (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1998).
Thanks for your concern about us. The bombing is continuing and increasing its
destructive effects. This is the 12th day that buildings in central Belgrade are
smashed, the headquarters of security forces, some barracks, factory plants, fuel
stores, some bridges nearby etc. We understand (hear but do not have any
official news) that pictures of the Kosovo civilian exodus are horrible, favoring
the need for NATO intervention to stop ethnic cleansing (as if there was not
recent experience in Croatia and Bosnia), but for us it is strengthening the false
NATO—Milosevic dilemma/confrontation. As people in Yugoslavia do not see
these pictures, it makes life horrible to anyone who concerns himself in the
"democratic force" of Serbia, being exposed to various dangers and threats.
The proclaimed state of war forbids all free media. The rest is vulgar
propaganda that increases the number of Internet learners and short wave radio
listeners (Radio Free Europe in Serbian and BBC in English). But that is just a
drop in a sea of ignorance, irrationality and disorientation. The human suffering
in Kosovo is coupled with a growing frustration of democratic forces in
Belgrade, helpless and in great danger for showing any meaningful sign of
resistance. Our paper Republika came out today from the printers; it will reach
only subscribers by post (if post works) as there is no public sale; it is on the
Internet (only in Serbian) but very few people here have access to computers.
We see the only way out as immediately stopping the military action on all
sides and preparing for the international conference staged by EU or UN;
preceded by a serious analysis and debate about the last 10 years of war and its
genesis; trying to answer the questions of how the concept of territoriality is
misused, what is definition of ethnicity, where is the place of multiculturalism
etc. Could the concept of ethnic territories be a basis for peace implementation
in the Balkans?
Sincerely,
Sonja & Milan Prodanovic, Ecourban workshop,
Beograd, Serbia, Yugoslavia
ecourban@eunet.yu
Ecological Catastrophe Hits Yugoslavia
by Mitchel Cohen, Red Balloon Collective,
& Brooklyn Greens, Green Party of New York
"We must do more to reach out to our children and teach them to express their
anger and to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons."
—President William Jefferson Clinton, leading by example at Columbine High
Sshool, Colorado, while directing NATO forces to bomb Belgrade.
Early in April, a leader of the Yugoslavian Green Party warned that NATO
missiles were beginning to contaminate the water supply for much of Eastern
Europe. "I warn you that Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground
waters in Europe and that the contamination will be felt in the whole
surrounding area all the way to the Black Sea," Branka Jovanovic reported from
Belgrade.
On the first day of the NATO air strikes, March 24, the municipality of Grocka
was hit where the Vinca nuclear reactor is situated. The site contains a great
stockpile of nuclear waste. No US media reported this.
The municipality of Pancevo was hit, in which the petrochemical factory and a
factory for the production of artificial fertilizers are situated. They were
bombed again numerous times during April and May.
The municipality of Baric was also hit. Baric houses a large complex for the
production of chloride, using Bhopal technology. "It is not necessary for me to
explain what the blowing up of one of such factories would represent,"
Jovanovic says. "Not only Belgrade, which is situated at a distance of 10
kilometers, but the rest of Europe would be endangered."
In the US the news is well scrubbed so that no blood leaks: NATO bombers,
we're told, continue to hit and cripple Yugoslavia's oil refineries. Compare that
to the detailed story filed by Tom Walker, reporting from Belgrade for the
London Times on April 19:
"At least three missile strikes left large areas of the plant crippled
and oil and petrol from the damaged refinery area flowed into the
river, forming slicks up to 12 miles long. Temperatures in the
collapsing plant were said to have risen to more than 1,000 degrees
centigrade. Asked about the hazard from chemical smoke, NATO
said there was 'a lot more smoke coming from burning villages in
Kosovo.'"
"By burning down enormous quantities of naphtha and its derivatives, more
than a hundred highly toxic chemical compounds that pollute water, air and soil
are released" endangering the entire Balkan ecosystem, said New Green Party
scientist Luka Radoja. Dr. Radoja pointed out that the NATO bombing is
happening just as many crops vital for survival are supposed to be planted:
corn, sunflower, soy, sugar beets and vegetables. As a result, the planting of 2.5
million hectares of land has been halted. In Kosovo, tractors built to plow the
land were mostly used by farmers to tow their villages towards the border and,
hopefully, to safety.
"As an expert who has spent his entire work age on the fields of this up until
now ecologically pure part of Europe, I am a witness to the disappearing of the
most beautiful garden of Europe," Radoja said, sadly.
"This is our worst nightmare," said Miralem Dzindo. "By taking away our
fertilizer they stop us growing food, and then they try to poison us as well."
With the bombing of petrochemical facilities, NATO's air strikes have come
perilously close to hitting tanks containing tens of thousands of tons of
explosive chemicals. NATO missiles grazed one such tank containing 20,000
tons of liquid ammonia. "If that had gone up in flames much of Belgrade would
have been poisoned. The pollution in the Danube and in the atmosphere over
Belgrade knows no frontiers." Dzindo warned neighboring countries "the
poison clouds could soon be with them." (London Times, April 19, 1999)
In the days after a peace treaty was signed, NATO bombed the city of Pancevo
again. A number of civilians were killed. Thick black clouds of toxic smoke
billowed out over the region and were washed to the ground by heavy rains.
Farmers just north of Pancevo reported that their crops are completely ruined,
and that even walnuts and other fruit have been decimated overnight.
Acid rains in May in areas on the Yugoslav border were the direct consequence
of air pollution caused by fires set off by the bombings, the Romanian
environment ministry said. The resulting large-scale emissions of sulfur and
nitrogen oxides are responsible for causing the acid rain, which destroys
agriculture and forestry throughout the region.
"It will take at least two years to size up the full impact, especially on the
Danube and the Black Sea fauna and flora. We fear there may be long term
effects," the Romanian report continued. The Romanian government, which
officially backs the NATO campaign, only released the report when ecologists
and media accused officials of covering up the environmental consequences of
NATO's air strikes.
Bulgaria's asparagus crop, which it exports for much needed funds, has been
banned throughout Europe due to contamination.
"The noise starts around half an hour before the bombs fall as the
animals in Belgrade zoo pick up the sound of approaching planes
and missiles. It's one of the strangest and most disturbing concerts
you can hear anywhere.
"It builds up in intensity as the planes approach. Only they can hear
them, we can't, and when the bombs start falling it's like a choir of
the insane. Peacocks screaming, wolves howling, dogs barking,
chimpanzees rattling their cages.
"I have made a record every hour of each day of when the animals
start acting up. One day, when this craziness is over, I'd like to
check it with reliable data on when the planes were flying. Someone
could make a scientific study out of it.
"I had 1,000 eggs of rare and endangered species incubating, some
of them ready to hatch in a couple of days. They were all ruined.
That's 1,000 lives lost.
"The zoo's freezer defrosted and went off, making the meat in it
suitable only to scavengers like hyenas and vultures. Belgrade
people donated meat out of their home freezers when the power
went down, but most of it wasn't even fit for animals.
"The lack of water meant that some animals, particularly the hippos,
were literally swimming in their excrement.
The worst night the zoo can remember was when NATO hit an army
headquarters only 600 meters away, with a huge detonation. "The
next day we found that some of the animals had killed their young,"
Bojuvic said. "A female tiger killed 2 of her 4 three-day-old cubs,
and the other 2 were so badly injured we couldn't save them."
"She had been a terrific mother until then, raising several litters
without any problems. I can't say whether it was the detonation or
the awful smell that accompanied the bombing. I personally think it
was the detonation," he added.
On the same night, an eagle owl killed all of its five young, and ate
the smallest of them. "It wasn't because she was hungry. I can only
think it was fear."
The most disturbing case was of the huge Bengal tiger, which began
to chew his own paws. "He was practically raised in my office. He
trusted humans."
With over 1.5 billion pounds of depleted uranium; (DU, a by-product of the
uranium enrichment process for creating nuclear fuel) and marginalized
communities being increasingly uncooperative; the nuclear industry offered the
entire stockpile of DU to the weapons industry in the late 1970s if they could
find something to do with it. Companies like Nuclear Metals (now Starmet)
devised ways of converting the unusable uranium hexafluoride back into metal
alloy form, for use in weapons. Because DU is 1.7 times more dense than lead,
it is valuable for mechanical use (in counterweights, for instance) but the DoD
is especially fond of its superkiller qualities: because of its greater density,
bullets made with DU are known to slice through conventional armor "like a
hot knife through butter," according to Pentagon officials.
DU lived up to all of its promises the first time it was tested on a large scale.
During the Gulf Massacre, the US used over 14,000 M1A1 tank rounds and
940,000 30mm rounds from A-10 jets. The A-10 "Warthogs," responsible for
over a third of the Iraqi tanks destroyed, spread over 550,000 pounds of DU in
the region. Altogether, the Pentagon deposited over 650,000 pounds of DU
waste for the nuclear industry. However, while the M1A1 tanks deliver the
waste in large bundles of 8-10 pounds per round, the A-10 is by far the heavier
hitter for the nuclear industry and made a name for itself as a highly successful
waste transport vehicle.
Despite the controversy surrounding the issue, the mainstream media has been
numbingly silent—the New York Times has not mentioned DU since March 15.
One of the only sources published in the US since the war began is an already
much-quoted April 1 article by Kathleen Sullivan in the San Francisco
Examiner, in which she quotes DoD spokespeople and policy-makers from a
pro-DoD think tank. In a March 31 press conference, DoD spokesperson
Kenneth Bacon refused to answer any questions about whether DU rounds were
being used, saying such details were "verboten from this podium." Rest assured
the Pentagon is on top of its cost-benefit analysis, though: Sullivan cites the
pro-DoD Center for Defense Information's dismissal of health and
environmental impacts of DU, and their statement that everything in life is a
trade-off anyway.
The Pentagon's secrecy and cavalier attitude toward the use of DU weapons
should let the rest of the world in on the inside joke of "bombing out of
humanitarian concern." NATO announced early on that the A-10 would be a
central part of the second phase of the campaign, taking out Serbian tanks and
armored vehicles—the specialty mission DU rounds were designed for in the
first place. And reports from Russian sources on April 16, 1999 said that
"experts have detected enhanced radiation levels in the atmosphere and on the
ground" in areas of Kosovo.
The military use of DU only escalates the issue. Not only has the spread of
waste taken the literal form of all-out war, but, the costs are indiscriminate.
US/allied troops and Iraqis alike were exposed without being informed of
health risks of which the Pentagon was well aware.
Although the Pentagon knew of the dangers of DU from weapons research and
development, it allowed thousands of soldiers to enter destroyed Iraqi vehicles.
We can add to the list of affected people those veterans suffering from Gulf War
Syndrome (GWS). Despite the similarity of many of the symptoms of GWS to
radiation health effects and the clear evidence of exposure to soldiers, the DoD
has refused to investigate the matter. Like people living in reactor communities
who are told constantly that their plants are run safely and cleanly but who
nonetheless experience higher levels of disease and otherwise rare health
problems, these veterans are being denied the ability to even name an obvious
cause of their suffering. The emotional contamination of people's lives with
unacknowledged grief and pain has staggering personal and social costs as well.
Visitors to Iraq have witnessed the country's hospital wards full of children
suffering from those effects. They have also seen children playing in the
streets with DU bullet casings, which can still be found strewn about the
rubble and the environment—a sign of both the extent of contamination as
well as the extent to which it is seeping into the lives of people living in the
region. Even though Iraq has no resources to begin any kind of
environmental assessment or cleanup and the UN and US have barely
acknowledged the problem, it may be impossible to do at this point since so
much of the DU was burned away and released as mist. The soil, water and
air of Southern Iraq and Kuwait may by now be saturated with DU dust.
The following statement was adopted by the National Council of the Black
Radical Congress (BRC) on April 18, 1999. [Originally drafted by the
International Committee of the BRC].
For African Americans, the Latino community, and other peoples of color in the
USA the moral claims of the US in its intervention in Yugoslavia ring hollow.
The mass opposition of peoples of color in the USA to police killings, mass
imprisonment of youth and the militarization of the streets and communities
ensures that the opposition to militarism is deep in the oppressed communities
in the USA.
The shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York City and the killing of Tyisha
Miller in California brought home to the poor the coast to coast violence against
blacks and poor people. This police violence is supported by the campaign
against crime since black and brown peoples are supposed to be by nature
criminals. Low intensity warfare that had been experimented in Nicaragua and
El Salvador is now practiced on a daily basis in the poor communities by SWAT
teams. The most overt expression of this militarization of the communities is
the plan by the army to carry out exercises in the streets of Oakland, California.
The exercises are part of the long-range plan of the Pentagon to fight urban
guerrilla warfare in the USA. This leads us to the conclusion that a crucial way
to oppose this war is to intensify the opposition to police brutality and
militarism.
The bombing of Yugoslavia exposes the fact that organizations such as NATO
will carry out illegal acts. The aggression in the Balkans undermines
international law, undermines the United Nations as an organization dedicated
to world peace and brings to the fore the need for alternatives to the present
monopoly over force enjoyed by the USA. Since African Americans also feel
the brunt of this force in the form of police violence, it devolves to
organizations such as the BRC to lead the opposition to the military campaign
of NATO.
In a major sense the war in the Balkans calls on the BRC to bring forth the anti
imperialist radical traditions of dominated peoples. It is from within this
tradition that the BRC is calling on all progressive forces to condemn the
bombings in Yugoslavia, condemn the ethnic cleansing and brutality of
Slobodan Milosevic, and to raise their voices to call for a negotiated end to the
crisis in Kosovo before this conflagration explodes into the third world war.
The BRC calls for negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations.
Despite the fact that in the past 10 years the USA has manipulated the UN to do
its bidding (such as the bombing of Iraq), the UN remains an instrument for real
international deliberation.
The Crisis in Kosovo also reinforces the need for international bodies to try war
criminals. It is instructive that in 1998 it was the United States that opposed the
formation of a new international criminal court. After one month of
deliberations in 1998 more than 100 nations meeting in Rome, Italy voted in the
United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries for the
Establishment of an International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998. The statutes
of this new court argued that it is a crime, "if any military operations [are]
begun with the knowledge such an attack will cause loss of life and injury to
civilians."
Under the statutes of the international criminal court both the present leaders of
the USA and those of Yugoslavia would be deterred from military actions and
would be forced to seek political solutions to the ethnic and regional problems
that beset the peoples of the Balkans. NATO, by militarily intervening in this
region, has intensified ethnic antagonisms and postponed the possibilities for
democratic and progressive forces to intervene to move the various oppressed
peoples towards peaceful solutions to centuries of ethnic rivalry. Africans in the
USA and other peoples of color who have borne the brunt of militarism and
police brutality know that ethnic and racial chauvinism are tools to divide the
poor and oppressed.
The struggle for democracy in multi ethnic and multi racial societies is a totally
new terrain where the present leaders of the USA have no experience. It is with
this in mind, and with a clear knowledge of the history of US militarism in the
world as an imperial force, that the BRC opposes the military intervention in
the Balkans and calls for manifestations all over this country to articulate this
opposition. This opposition should ensure that there is information in every
church, mosque, temple, town hall, library, web site and community center on
the issues involved in the war and for people to move away from the war
propaganda being fostered by the media.
The best way to oppose this war is to intensify the opposition to police brutality
and militarism in the USA.
Below, the International Committee spells out the rationale for these demands.
The US media has been at the forefront of calling for the deployment of ground
troops by NATO to prevent genocide in Yugoslavia, especially Kosovo. There
are reports of brutal murders and of pogroms by the military and para military
police of Serbia. The issue is whether the question of genocide is being
manipulated and cheapened by the United States and NATO. The massive
outpouring of refugees from Kosovo is certainly to be opposed by all
progressive forces internationally, but the peoples of Latin America, Asia and
Africa have first hand knowledge of the forces who have carried out genocide
and who have not yet been condemned by any international body.
What is genocide?
The Rwanda genocide in 1994 is still a most burning question for Africans
everywhere because the authors of the 1994 genocide are still living in France
and other European capitals and there is no major international movement to
bring these genocidists to justice. Such an international push would call into
question the roles of France, the United States and Belgium before and during
the genocide. The present Secretary of State of the United States would be one
of the officials to be investigated for the role of the international community in
the period of the genocide in Rwanda.
The US has weakened the role of the UN as a genuine force for peace by
manipulating this body to bring untold suffering on the children of Iraq. Yet, the
UN is the only basis for ensuring world peace and stopping the slow but
inescapable path to massive war in the Balkans and beyond.
[…]
The Alternatives
The alternative to the present political and economic direction is not a simple
task but small steps must be taken to move the political culture away from the
celebration of warfare, violence and destruction. The first step must be an
intense campaign against the military operations in Yugoslavia. The BRC must
take a stand along with all other progressive forces to bring this opposition to
every section of the USA society. All representatives of the African American
community should be put on notice that the principal task of the moment is to
oppose police violence against the youths.
The alternative to the present political and economic system requires a long
struggle. It is a democratic struggle that seeks a new mode of politics and a new
mode of economic organization. The political experience of the oppressed in
this society places it in the central role in charting the alternatives to the present
barbarism of the capitalist system. The campaign must be linked to other
campaigns. While NATO is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Washington, the
Millions Campaign for Mumia should send a strong signal that the fighters for
social justice in the USA oppose militarism at home and abroad.
Editor's Note: The full Black Radical Congress statement includes five appendices. Due to
space limitations, Synthesis/Regeneration can only include the third appendix here, which
deals with the question of genocide. The other appendices include: 1. The Dismantling of
Nato; 2. The Struggle of Democratic and Non Violent Forces in Yugoslavia; 4. Revitalizing
the United Nations; and 5. Opposing Militarism in the USA.
Eight years later, we can see the United States at war in Yugoslavia,
supposedly to stop "ethnic cleansing"-the forced removal of a
population. The bombing and the forced expulsions are mutually
reinforcing forms of violence that simply feed off one another.
No doubt the US Army will justify the name of its attack helicopters
in the same way that schools justify their racist school mascots-as
historic symbols intended to "honor warriors." If that is the case,
then certainly other national minority groups can be similarly
honored by the armies that expelled them from their homelands.
What's going on here? Why would the US and NATO undertake a bombing
campaign which has achieved the opposite of its stated goals?
The Hidden History of the War
The most important facts for understanding the present situation have been
carefully concealed by politicians and the media.
Since the mid-1980s, Yugoslavia has been the scene of a powerful working
class movement which threatens to overthrow the International Monetary Fund
(IMF)-backed ex-Communist government.[1] (Kosovo is an "autonomous
region" and Serbia the largest of the six republics which formerly constituted
Yugoslavia.) Since 1987, Slobodan Milosevic has been the IMF's strongman in
Belgrade, trying to enforce IMF-imposed wage cuts and capitalist restructuring
against massive worker resistance, and organizing ethnic atrocities and civil
war in a desperate bid to forestall revolution.
In the face of widespread worker discontent about the lack of democracy and a
7-day student takeover of the University of Belgrade in June, 1968 (under the
slogan, "Down with the Red Bourgeoisie"), Yugoslavia borrowed heavily in the
1970s and built up a huge debt to the IMF, which in 1985 topped $20 billion.[2]
Payback began in 1980. From 1980-84 the standard of living in Yugoslavia fell
nearly 40%.[3] In 1984 strikes centered in the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia
broke out and spread to other republics.
As the working class movement grew, the Yugoslav ruling elite increasingly
faced a stark choice: either smash the growing movement or go under. Rather
than lose their grip on power, they decided to dismember the working class
movement by dismembering the country. The dissolution of the former
Yugoslavia in 1991 and the ethnic fighting and atrocities are parts of a carefully
orchestrated elite strategy to divide and destroy the working class movement.[9]
With "near monoply control" of TV, radio, and newspapers in Serbia, the
Communist government under Milosevic began an intensive propaganda
campaign to divide the working class into warring ethnic groups, claiming that
Serbs, the largest ethnic group in Yugoslavia, were under attack by Croats and
others in the republics beyond Serbia. In every republic, ethnic groups were
bombarded with propaganda to set them against each other.[11] Nationalist
paramilitary groups were organized to carry out "retaliatory" atrocities. Serb
nationalist thugs were armed in Croatia, while Croat officials armed their own
groups.[12] Nationalist parties representing various ethnic groups were
legalized and received increasing support.
To figure out the real goals of political leaders, sometimes it's necessary to look
not only at what they say but at what they do. What have the US and NATO
leaders actually done in Yugoslavia? Through the IMF they have imposed
repeated wage cuts, devaluations, and massive lay-offs. They supported a
"peace process" which has kept that country in a state of war for eight years.
[24] They brokered agreements producing massive dislocations of populations
and the fragmentation of Yugoslav society.[25] And now with their bombs they
are driving people into the arms of a hated politician whom people before the
bombing had been trying to overthrow.
Milosevic has been the US-IMF man all along. Bombing Kosovo and Serbia is
a last desperate bid by the elite to smash the revolutionary movement and keep
Milosevic in power. The targets of the bombs are the solidarity and self-
confidence of the working people of every ethnic group. They want to destroy
the working class movement and divide Yugoslavs into warring fractions. Their
goal is counterrevolution.
The world elite are willing to pay this price because they know that much more
is at stake than Yugoslavia alone. The last few months have seen neighboring
Romania, where workers overthrew a Communist dictator in 1989, shaken by
huge strikes and marches on Bucharest by miners and other workers.
Neighboring Albania has been virtually without a government since a popular
uprising in 1997. Russia, with its historic ties to the Serbs, is in the throes of
strikes and complete disillusionment with capitalist reforms. NATO air strikes
are no doubt intended to rally the people of these countries to their respective
elites and to tell them also, "Keep in line or you'll get the same."
Now when it seems at its moment of greatest power, the world elite is actually
very weak. It has no ability to inspire, only to compel. People are bound to elite
control not out of loyalty but because they see no alternative.
1. Yugoslavia was a one-party Communist state until 1990, when one-party rule
was replaced with political pluralism, and the Communist Party changed its
name to the Socialist Party.
4. The Guardian ran stories of these 48 hours of street protests on July 7 and
July 8, 1988 (the quotes are from The Guardian of July 8, p.11). According to
the story of July 7, the striking workers' banners proclaimed such things as, "We
want to be free in a socialist country," and "Down with the government." Both
slogans seemed to indicate workers' lack of enthusiasm for the capitalist
reforms then being imposed by the government.
5. These events are described in The Guardian, October 10, 1988 p. 24, and
October 11, 1988, p. 10. "Titograd" has since reverted to its ancient name,
"Podgorica."
9. Laura Silber and Allan Little draw a similar conclusion, though they attribute
the dismemberment of the country to a different rationale: "This book shows
that Yugoslavia did not die a natural death. Rather, it was deliberately killed off
by men who had nothing to gain and everything to lose from a peaceful
transition from state socialism and one-party rule to free-market democracy....
[D]espite the appearance of chaos, the wars have been prosecuted with
terrifying rationality by protagonists playing long-term power games."
Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), pp. 25, 27.
The argument of their book, however, begs the question of the key reason for
the conflict: as a succession of Yugoslav leaders learned to their grief, "peaceful
transition...to free-market democracy [sic]" was impossible, not because of the
ambitions of individual leaders, but because massive workers' resistance to
capitalist restructuring blocked the way. According to a British diplomat on the
scene in April, 1991, "while the mounting industrial unrest in Serbia, the
biggest of the republics, poses a threat to Mr Milosevic, any serious economic
restructuring there would be a greater risk." (The Guardian, April 26, 1991, p.
32.) Milosevic and other ex-Communist leaders obviously preferred ethnic
conflict, which strengthened their hand, to class war, which threatened to pull
them under. Silber, the Balkans Correspondent for the London Financial Times,
and Little, a BBC reporter, avoid dealing with this central contradiction in their
argument by not dealing with the working class in their book at all, except in
the guise of nationalist mobs.
18. Guardian, August 13, 1991, I, p. 2. Milosevic paid for his wars on Croatia
and Bosnia by printing money, unleashing a hyperinflation which "won for his
country the world record inflation rate-313 million percent per month-
surpassing previous record holders Weimar Germany and Hungary in 1946."
Silber and Little, p. 385.
24. The peace agreements, which legitimized ethnic cleansing and strengthened
the initiators of ethnic fighting, further destabilized Yugoslavia. "The US, like
the European Union before it, recognized Milosevic as key to finding a
solution, and turned a blind eye to his complicity in the crimes that were
committed in the prosecution of Serbian war aims....The settlement had the
effect of strengthening the hand-in their respective states-of the two men
[Milosevic and Tudjman] on whose shoulders the lion's share of the
responsibility for Yugoslavia's tragedy lies." Silber and Little, pp. 389.
25. For example, the US "tacitly encouraged" the ethnic cleansing of 480,000
Serbs from Krajina in Croatia. Silber and Little contend, "[The US-sponsored
Dayton agreement] represented the pursuit of peace through ethnic cleansing."
Silber and Little, pp. 383-384.
Reprinted from New Democracy, May-June 1999. For free copy, send your postal address
to Newdem@aol.com or write New Democracy, P.O. Box 427, Boston, MA 02130.
Homepage: http://users.aol.com/newdem/
Many of us wonder what sense Green politics makes if we cannot only not
prevent participation in a military attack—especially one which is controversial
under international law-but even tolerate and actively bear responsibility for it.
The first red-green coalition, of all things, decides in favor of participation of
the Bundeswehr [the German armed forces] in combat missions by the much-
criticized NATO, without any decision of the UN Security Council. All critical
questions are justifiable and must be raised by everybody in the government
and the parliamentary group and by party members each considering his/her
specific role and function: questions of moral legitimacy, of legality under
international law, of military and political efficiency, of precedence and long-
term political effect, of a lack of will for early conflict diagnosis and civil
conflict resolution. Perhaps an account of some background information will
helps to make the answer easier.
Ruling or Opposing?
The Alliance 90/ The Greens were the only party which, since the beginning of
the nineties has consistently pointed to the dangerous situation in Kosovo. Our
reminders to take this conflict seriously were not heard. After the community of
nations had, in our view, pursued completely misguided policies in the
Yugoslavia conflict for 10 years, we were, as a ruling party, stuck with the
results. Even if we bear no responsibility for this, we still cannot duck
responsibility for this legacy. We are not living in the world of our
programmatic visions, our alternative designs, but in a reality which cannot
simply be reinterpreted according to our wishes. While as an opposition party
we had to do nothing but state our opinion openly and bluntly, and theoretically
develop half-way conclusive alternative strategies in order to gain a public
presence, we must now, as a ruling party, try to implement our political
positions in practice within the complex interchange of international relations.
Unlike in domestic policy, we are dealing here not only with a coalition partner
and an opposition, but with the various conflicting interests of nation-states,
alliances and international organizations. Where the programmatic work during
the opposition period conveyed a feeling of sovereignty over the subject of our
work, the real world of national foreign policy confronts us with the simple
truth that the Greens are not a great power. There are many other protagonists
who also represent legitimate interests, and who are stronger.
In addition, we have quickly experienced the fact that there is no such thing as
an independent German foreign policy. The Federal Republic acts almost
exclusively as a member of an alliance or an international organization. It tries
to contribute to the formulation of policy. However, it can never determine it
alone, and must largely subject itself to treaties or, in accordance with the
solidarity principle, to the results of the common formulation of opinion. On the
one hand, this corresponds to our own programmatic position of "self-
attachment" and "self-restraint;" on the other hand, however, it blocks the way
to a purely Green politics. This would be possible only at the price of complete
unilateralism, of "going it alone," which would, moreover, be ineffective
because of the self-isolation which would immediately follow. The sequence of
decisions which led to the combat mission can only be understood in the
context of this principle of multilateralism, to which there is no alternative for
German foreign policy.
Even during the period of transition from the old to the new Government, we
were already confronted with the most difficult question which politics can
address, that of war and peace, of life and death. This question confronted us
even more strongly than it had during the opposition period, where we had for
years struggled with the conflict of basic values, between pacifism and human
rights, antimilitarism and antifascism, for or against intervening. Now, the
debate no longer had only a philosophical character; it was a question for
practical German government policy.
The Kosovo Conflict, the "Act. Ord." Decision and International Law
The conflict in Kosovo got dramatically more critical after the beginning of
1998. In the fall, as fears rose that the Yugoslav leadership was planning a
policy of expulsion and extermination of the Albanian Kosovar population, as it
had with the ethnic cleansings in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that because of the
coming onset of winter an enormous catastrophe was in the offing, the
international community of nations felt forced to intervene. The Security
Council and General Assembly of the UN condemned the operations in Kosovo
in strong terms. At the instigation of the USA, NATO planned to threaten the
Serbian leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with air strikes, in
case the atrocities were not stopped. In a complicated constitutional situation,
the German political structure had to decide during the transition from the old
to the new Federal Government whether it wanted to support this policy of
threats. On October 16, 1998, the German Bundestag decided with a large
majority to support the threat of air strikes as a form of political pressure. With
this threat looming in the background, Holbrooke was able to squeeze an
armistice in Kosovo out of Miloševic. The threat of air strikes remained in
effect as an "Act. Ord." (Activation Orders).
The justification under international law for the threat of force was extremely
controversial. While Joschka Fischer, as the designated foreign minister, in his
Bundestag speech took the view that it would be sufficient, if NATO acted on
the basis of UN resolutions with the goal of enforcing these resolutions, I in my
speech, as a representative of the critical side, stressed the international-legal
concerns regarding an operation which was not explicitly approved by the
Security Council. It should be noted that at that time, a combat mission even
with a UN mandate went far beyond the parameters of the Green programmatic
framework.
Particularly with respect to the Security Council (SC) the formal validity of
international law and the political drive toward change are in a state of tension
to one another which makes further development necessary. NATO policy faced
the veto threats of Russia and China. In October, the Americans did not want to
allow the SC to cause the failure of the air strike threat. Under these
circumstances, the Russians preferred to see the SC circumvented than to see
NATO act despite a veto. In this connection, for us Greens and likewise for
numerous countries, the question arises in the context of the UN reform
discussion of whether the veto should not be completely abolished. However,
this regularly fails because of the veto of the veto powers.
It must remain green policy to fortify UN structures and competence, all the
way to a UN monopoly on the use of force. But Greens should not define the
monopoly on the use of force in the sense of the status quo, with veto power for
countries which they otherwise massively criticize because of lack of
qualification in human rights questions. The Bundestag [the lower house of the
German parliament] vote of October 16th, 1998 is to this day the valid basis for
German participation in the air-raids now being carried out. At that time,
everybody making the decision knew or had to know that the political threat
would have to be followed by action if the Serbian side did not give way. Given
the long-standing intensive party discussions about armed forces use,
Bundeswehr participation, the security architecture in Europe and the confused
constellation in the Balkans, everyone must have been aware of the
ramifications of his/ her decision.
The supporters of the decision acted with the will and the idea of definitively
putting an end to the bloodshed in the Balkans with the voicing of a threat.
Nobody supported an aggressive intent against the Serbian people or acted with
a motivation which we in the past would have described as imperialism.
Nobody represents the interests of the armament industry, nobody wants an
offensive NATO strategy. Those Green representatives who abstained from the
vote did not, despite their major concerns in terms of international law, want to
bring the structure of threats which had already been set up crumbling down as
a result of their "no" vote, and thus play into Miloševic's hands. The chances of
checking the Serbian aggression against the Kosovar population by non-
military means was already too low at this time. Therefore, the position of those
who voted "no" was stated very much in terms of principle—for lack of viable
alternatives.
Since then, some decisive things have happened which made the toleration or
active support of air strikes unavoidable for the Green parliamentary group and
for Green members of the government.
1. Throughout the winter, the KLA had violated the armistice, systematically
provoking the Serbian regime, which did not abide by the armistice completely
either, by means of selective murders. The Serbs reacted with inconceivable
brutality. The aim of the KLA was to provoke TV pictures which would lead
NATO to intervene on the Kosovar side due to the indignation of the population
in the western world. In the CNN war, NATO was to become the KLA's air
force. This bet did not pan out. The West distanced itself from the KLA. The
OSCE observers took a neutral attitude. The massacre at Radçak then occurred
anyway. The butchering of civilians by the Serbs required a clear reaction from
the West. All analyses came to the same conclusion: were there no reaction, the
Serbs would think they had free rein to pursue their policy of expulsion and
extermination. The armistice was for all practical purposes dead. It was
foreseeable that further massacres would follow. It was also foreseeable that in
the face of the TV pictures, the call that the political leadership ultimately "do
something," that it "must act" these terms are synonymous with military
intervention would also became louder. It had to be expected, that the political
leadership would not be able to resist the CNN pictures for long. The Red-
Green Government would have been accused of failure, cowardice and
immorality from all sides. Better an instant reaction and not only for this
reason.
The Green ideal that even the most difficult conflicts can
be solved through negotiations and in a peaceful way
rebounded off the character of Miloševic.
2. Two options were available for the West. The Americans wanted to start
bombing the People's Republic of Yugoslavia [sic] immediately on the basis of
the still-valid "Act. Ord." In this, they expected the participation of the other
NATO states, including Germany. No political aim was recognizable apart from
that of punishment. The second option, which was the one in fact accepted, had
arisen in the upper echelons of the German Foreign Office (AA): At a peace
conference, under pressure of the international community, a truce was first to
be achieved, then the final status of Kosovo as autonomous region within the
Federal Republic Yugoslavia enforced, and, as a third step, a broadly inclusive
Balkan conference was planned.
It was the Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and the officials of the AA,
who, with great personal dedication, persuaded the other foreign ministers to
organize the Rambouillet negotiating process instead of going for quick
bombing! For practical and diplomatic reasons, this initiative was not, however,
identified as a German and Green one. Rather, the leadership was passed to the
hands of the French and British foreign ministers. The steering of the political
negotiating process, which had, due to the dominance of military means in the
discussion shifted to NATO, was returned to the Yugoslavia Contact Group, to
no inconsiderable degree due to our initiative. This body includes Russia. We
favored this path due to our firm conviction that only the participation of Russia
could lead to a negotiated peace. As representatives of the EU in the negotiating
troika and despite our EU presidency and Germany's membership in the
Contact Group, we yielded to the Austrian Petritsch, who had not only done
good work, but in addition came from a non-Nato country. This was Green
peace policy in action, which, however, did not display itself in public for
reasons of efficiency.
3. During the negotiation process, it became clear that the Serbian side
absolutely was not interested in a peaceful solution. The Green ideal that even
the most difficult conflicts can be solved through negotiations and in a peaceful
way rebounded off the character of Miloševic. He emphasized to several
conversation partners that he was the stronger in this conflict because he was
willing to wade through blood, while the west had to take the sensibilities of the
civilized world into consideration. He not only refused to sign that part of the
treaty which provided for a military peacekeeping under NATO leadership
(NATO plus others), without which the Albanians would never have accepted
the text; he also, after he had indicated willingness to sign the political part of
the treaty want, called important passages into question shortly before the
conclusion of negotiations and later explained in writing that anyone who
wanted to interfere from the outside was a "gangster," and that, moreover, there
had actually been no negotiations and no draft treaty at all, because Serbs and
Albanians had not met directly.
4. During the transition period from the Kohl to the Schröder government,
Miloševic clearly "played the Green card." He calculated that because of
government participation by the pacifist Greens, Germany would never approve
of armed action. Through this, NATO would be so weakened that he would
have a free hand for his policy of expulsion and destruction in Kosovo. This
calculation was foiled by the decision of October 16, 1998. Nonetheless, shortly
before end of the negotiations in Rambouillet a high Yugoslav official sought
me out to split the western alliance by way of the Greens. On the basis of my
pacifist positions, he tried to get me to terminate the coalitional consensus. With
reference to the war crimes of the Nazis in Serbia, he demanded that Germany
break out of the western alliance. At the same time, he emphasized the
legitimacy and legality of Serb policy in Kosovo, using the rhetorical constructs
also used by Miloševic.
5. After Rambouillet had failed, an arrangement came into effect which had
been established between the western partners as a prerequisite for negotiations.
Our goal had been to reestablish the contact group as the controlling authority,
and to obtain a negotiated peace. Only on this basis could the Russians, who
had been alienated by the "Act. Ord." as well as by the bombing of Iraq, be won
over to cooperation. On the other hand, we could not do without the Americans.
They, however, were ready to give up their approach toward direct air strikes in
favor of the negotiating approach only under the condition that, first, the
negotiating packet included a firm non-negotiable core, and that second, the
other western partners confirm that the "Act. Ord." retain its validity, and enter
into effect immediately if the negotiating process should fail. We had had to
make this concession to get the Rambouillet process moving in the first place.
The price now had to be paid.
Conclusions
The air strikes had become inevitable, because the Bundestag had approved
them as a possibility, because all other alternatives had in fact been exhausted,
and because the Western camp had agreed upon the Act. Ord., which, after the
failure of the negotiations, now had to be implemented. The justification under
international law remains at least controversial. The Serbian terror regime in
Kosovo definitely does not meet the standards of international law. We Greens
have been forced to witness our pacifism being systematically factored into the
calculations of a criminal and of state terrorists. They wanted to use us against
our actual will, in fact, to turn us into collaborators by using our refusal to
resort to force of arms as a strategic element of their policy of eradication. If,
however, criminal forces consciously try to play our love of peace off against
our humanity, the point will eventually be reached for us political pacifists
when our love of peace will have exhausted itself.
Note: This March 26, 1999 statement was translated by Phil Hill, a member of
Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and The Greens/Green Party USA living in Berlin,
Germany.
During your speech I began feeling uneasy, and this feeling increased when my
Swedish colleague from the conservative Liberal Party came over to me and
congratulated me: "Excellent! With Greens like Joschka Fischer even I could be
a Green!" The Swedish Liberals have long stood against the Swedish politics of
peace and neutrality and in favor of a militarization of the European Union.
Back in Sweden I realized that this was not the only conservative politician who
was fond of your speech. Carl Bildt too, our former Prime Minister and head of
the Swedish Conservatives, the sister party of the Christian Democratic Union
and a great admirer of Helmut Kohl, praised your speech publicly. His party is
considering the development of a federal European Union as a means to
decrease the Swedish welfare state and as a guarantee against red-green
political "adventures."
After all these comments I took my copy of the minutes and looked carefully at
your text. Joschka, I am still irritated. I have to ask you, is there anything in
your text which could not have been said by Helmut Kohl as well? You are
proposing the integration of the West European Union (WEU) into the EU. You
must know that not only the Green Group in the European Parliament but the
Green Federation of some 30 green parties from all over Europe are speaking
out against any form of militarization. You address the EU as a "strong and
decisive global player" and state that the EU has to "bring forward its
importance on the global scene." What do you mean by this? These are the
same words I am used to hearing from my colleagues in the Foreign Affairs
Committee in the European Parliament, when they speak out for the new super
power EU to defend the European economic and strategic privileges against the
poor of this world, towards Africa, Asia and Latin America.
And what about the EU-police? You said, "we have to continue to intensify the
cross-border cooperation of the police and to strengthen the operational
capacities of Europol." You are even in favor of it becoming "the next step to
giving the European police institutions a European-wide power to operate."
What do you want, an EU-FBI, an EU-CIA, an EU-KGB? You should know
that in addition to the Green Group in the European Parliament, the Green
Federation is very critical of such a centralized police power structure.
You want to abolish the last pieces remaining of self-determination in the small
EU member states—their veto power has to be abolished, [decisions will be
made] only by majority votes in the EU Council of Ministers. You are aware
that this would only apply to the smaller member states. As a result of their
dominating position, Germany and France will always maintain de facto veto
power. The smaller ones have to obey. The German social-democratic Friedrich
Ebert Foundation proposed some days ago that Germany's vote in the EU
Council of Ministers and in the EP should be increased. In federal states like the
US there is proportional representation only in one chamber; in other federal
structures all states have the same voting power.
In the Mega-EU, which is growing and growing, this will all be different. The
big states will control both chambers. Why this irrational attitude against this
little bit of remaining self-determination for the small EU member states?
Haven't we, you and I, fought together for the self-determination of Algeria,
Vietnam and other colonized peoples? I don't think that a hundred percent self-
determination is either possible or desirable. But: Is it asking too much to have
a little bit of self-determination for the Swedish, Danish and other smaller
nations in the EU? What sort of internationalism is it which degrades my
country, marginalizing it into a sub-province of a German-French Empire?
Joschka, aren't you disturbed by the perspective that one day the young
generation of my country could be forced to organize—in the same way as the
German Greens in the '70s or the Kosovo freedom fighters of today—desperate
protest activities against the EU military super-state? Would they then be at risk
from the "increased operational capacities of Europol" and would not "the
European-wide operational capacities of European police institutions" be
mobilized against them because their activities made them "enemies of the
state"?
I have discussed your Strasbourg speech with many German Greens. They have
defended you loyally. Realos, as well as, Fundis. A Green German MEP said:
"Certainly it was not a green speech, it was a state speech, he had to do it." On
January 25 & 26 I was part of the EP Foreign Affairs Committee in Bonn to
meet our equivalents in the Bundestag. The German green members there tried
to calm me down. "Joschka was obliged to speak like that, he had to calm down
fears of our neighbors, for example the US," they said. Others stated that you
had to pay a price for the victory of Jürgen Trittin in the nuclear field. [Trittin
had strongly opposed nuclear power plants and made that a condition for a
green-social democratic alliance.—ed.] As I write, this explanation is becoming
increasingly doubtful. [Only] when you succeed with the end of the nuclear
society in Germany, [can we say that] this is the price of a verbal adjustment to
the dominant security liturgy of the power elites.
I am full of hope that you—after having calmed down the power elites enough
—will address a calming word to us Greens and internationalists so that we can
be sure that a Green Foreign Affairs Minister means something other than a
continuation of CDU politics. In the past we Greens had followed the direction:
"Think globally, act locally." Let's hope that this will never be replaced by,
"Think Eurocentrically, act militarily."
Note: written 1-1/2 months before NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, this letter
was translated from Die Tageszeitung (TAZ), of February 5, 1999.
April 9, 1999
An Open Letter to Joschka Fischer
and Our Sisters and Brothers
in Alliance 90/The Greens
But now, we have grave concerns about the support that the Red-Green
coalition, Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, and the majority of Green
members of the Bundestag have given to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
The very credibility of Green politics around the world may become a casualty
of NATO's war if the German Greens continue to participate in it.
We agree that the repression, violence, and ethnic cleansing of the Milosevic
regime against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo is horrific and must be opposed. But
NATO's bombing campaign has only made the situation worse. The Serb-led
Yugoslav army and paramilitaries are acting with impunity in Kosovo since the
OSCE monitors and independent press left Kosovo when NATO began
bombing. Now hundreds of thousands of Albanians are fleeing the violence in
Kosovo, as the Pentagon and CIA predicted. The US, at least, apparently knew
that NATO bombing would be a disaster for the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
When the bombing campaign began, the US leadership told us its purpose was
to save the Kosovo Albanians. Now, having utterly failed to meet that objective,
we are told that we are at war "to save US and NATO credibility" and "to
punish Milosevic." But the NATO bombing has only rallied Serbs behind
Milosevic and crushed the political space for an anti-nationalist democratic
alternative. While NATO bombing strengthens Milosevic, it hurts all Yugoslav
people and creates resentments that will make a just political resolution of all
issues in the Balkans all the more difficult.
That German Green leaders would support a US-led NATO military offensive
in a non-NATO country is inexplicable to us because it encourages the US to
act as a "rogue superpower" and to pursue its objective of extending NATO into
the future indefinitely as its military enforcer throughout Europe and the Middle
East. With roots in the anti-missile movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s
and their call for a Europe without military blocs, East or West, German Greens
projected a hopeful vision for a post-Cold War world at peace. Now the US and
NATO are using the Yugoslav war to transform NATO from a supposedly
defensive alliance into an explicitly interventionist force.
We are distressed that German Green leadership could believe that an alliance
with the US political and military leadership could help make Yugoslavia
adhere to human rights standards. US leaders will try to impose a result that is
in their own geopolitical and economic interests, not in the interests of Kosovo
Albanians or any other Balkan people. As Clinton said here in a speech the day
before the bombing began, "If we are going to have a strong economic
relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to
be a key....That's what this Kosovo thing is all about."
Clinton was seeking to expand US military spending by $112 billion over the
next five years, which means under laws now governing the federal budget that
this military money will come from still more cuts in education, housing,
welfare, health care, and environment. Now, as a result of NATO's war, US
militarists expect to get even higher increases in US military spending locked
into the federal budget for years to come.
How can Greens in the US credibly build an opposition and alternative to this
militaristic austerity program when German Greens have gone to war in
alliance with Clinton?
No quick military solution exists to stop the ethnic cleansing now going on in
Kosovo. The bombing has not stopped it, as NATO's military strategists knew
from the start. A massive gound force might be able to drive the Yugoslav army
from Kosovo, but such a full-scale ground war could cause so much more death
and destruction that it might be a cure worse than the cause.
We are doing all we can to stop the NATO bombing campaign because it is only
making matters worse. We call for an immediate cease fire by all sides (NATO,
KLA, and Yugoslav forces), a re-start of negotiations, and agreement on a UN
peace-keeping operation. We demand the replacement of NATO and its
diplomacy by military dictate with a UN mandate to end the violence and
facilitate a political resolution in cooperation with the OSCE and EU. To
enforce a cease-fire and a negotiated settlement, we call for a UN-mandated
peace-keeping force that excludes NATO countries that waged war in
Yugoslavia, removes the Yugoslav army and Serb paramilitaries that have
terrorized and forcibly removed the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, and disarms
the KLA. The details of this process must be worked out through the
UN/OSCE/EU, not NATO, but we demand that the US, Germany, and other
wealthy countries now use the carrot of economic aid instead of the stick of
military force to encourage a negotiated settlement.
While ending the bloodletting in Kosovo and Yugoslavia must be the immediate
aim, the resolution of the Kosovo issue requires a comprehensive regional
peace treaty that offers economic reconstruction to all who sign it. It must aim
to stabilize the region economically with a program of economic assistance to
overcome the uneven development of the regions that has fueled recent Balkan
conflicts. Militarily it must be part of a new post-NATO, European-based
cooperative security framework that removes the meddling military forces of
the US from Europe. We must undermine the delusion that the US is the
"indispensable nation" that should unilaterally police the world, in the phrase
coined by Secretary of State Albright that is now fashionable among the ruling
elites of the US. This imperious arrogance of US elites is as dangerous to world
peace as the bloody Greater Serbian nationalism of Milosevic is to peace in the
Balkans.
We call on Foreign Minister Fischer and other Greens in the Bundestag to push
for an end to Germany's support for NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and to
support a legitamate international peace-making process. If this causes a break
in the Red-Green coalition, so be it. We see no benefit to Greens being junior
partners in a governing coalition if they are reduced to pawns in a US-led
NATO policy that contradicts fundamental Green principles. Let other parties
take responsibility for the military disaster unfolding in the Balkans. It will do
more good for the cause of peace and human rights if the Greens maintain the
integrity and credibility of our principles.
1. There is much discussion within the European Green Parties - as in the whole
European society - concerning the NATO bombing in Serbia and Kosovo.
The German Green Party and the French Greens came out in support of the
NATO intervention. However, the overwhelming majority of the 30 Member
Parties of the European Federation are opposing the NATO strikes and are
calling for an immediate stop of the bombings.
2. This doesn't mean that they do not severely criticize the brutal repression and
the violence of the Serbian army and the special police forces and ethnic
cleansing policy of Slobodan Milosevic. But in addition, we do not see how a
military intervention could solve the crisis in the Balkan region, a view which is
consistent with our Guiding Principles which advocate conflict prevention and
political negotiation under the control of the UN.
3. This is proved by the results of more than 30 days of NATO bombings: None
of the goals of the NATO intervention has been reached. On the pretext of the
NATO strikes, Slobodan Milosevic sped up the brutal expulsion of the Albanian
population from Kosovo. Opposition forces in Serbia are silenced and the
support for Milosevic among the Serbian population is more widespread than
before. The strikes against the civilian infrastructure in Serbia have severely
damaged the economy, something that will be a huge burden for the future.
Bombings of the chemical plants and the oil industry have caused severe
ecological damage. And the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Kosovo
will be a serious health problem when the Albanian refugees are allowed to
come back.
4. One of the most important goals of Green security policy is the creation of a
Pan- European security system which includes all European countries. This
goal will be very difficult to realize following the NATO Intervention. New
tensions are building in Eastern Europe and in Russia, nationalist forces and the
old communist parties are getting more and more support. The danger of a new
split in Europe is highly visible.
6. After more than 30 days of NATO bombing we are fully convinced that
"more of the same", more bombing and as logical next step in military thinking,
the intervention with combat ground troops, will neither solve the humanitarian
problems of refugees nor bring a political solution to the Balkan crisis. To give
negotiations and a political solution a chance, we call for a stop of the NATO
intervention.
We will continue our dialogue with the remaining Serbian opposition, support
their struggle for democracy and help them to spread their views to the
European public opinion.
2. Pacifism and non violence are fundamental principals of the national and
international Green movements and by no means are subject to negotiation or
agreements.
3. The Green Youth Movement of Mexico manifests its surprise towards some
Greens in Europe concerning their support towards NATO.
4. We reject the arms race and the international trade of weapons, fundamental
elements of war.
[Greens across the U.S. circulated the following petition, drafted by Roger Naimon of the
Preamble Center in Washington, in conjunction with Mitchel Cohen of the Greens/Green
Party USA. It was signed by hundreds of Jews, whose names appear below.
The "Appeal" was circulated to the German Green Party immediately prior to the Second
Extraordinary Assembly of Federal Delegates of May 13, 1999, in Bielefeld.]
We are Jewish Americans who are deeply concerned that the memory and tragedy of the
Holocaust is being invoked in order to justify an unjust bombing campaign against the
civilian population of Yugoslavia. Many of us have friends who lost family members in the
Holocaust, or have lost relatives ourselves. We are deeply aware of our own history and the
need for the world community to intervene in situations where there is a threat of genocide,
in order to prevent it. However, this is clearly not what is happening in Yugoslavia today.
Many supporters of the bombing have drawn analogies to the Holocaust, arguing that the
world cannot simply stand by in the face of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. But the bombing
has greatly worsened the situation of the Kosovar Albanians, as is now universally
recognized. It has also destroyed the pro-democracy movement within Yugoslavia, and is
destabilizing neighboring countries.
We urge you to reject these false and exaggerated analogies to the Holocaust and World
War II, which are being used to garner support for a bombing campaign that is intensifying
the suffering of all nationalities in Yugoslavia. We appeal to the Green Party of Germany to
oppose this war, and to support a negotiated solution of the conflict.
Michael Ratner
Center for Constitutional Rights
Vivian Stromberg
Executive Director, MADRE
Marcus Raskin
Co-founder, Institute for Policy Studies
Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor of Linguistics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Edward S. Herman
Professor Emeritus, Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania
Elaine Bernard
Director, Harvard University Trade Union Program,
Cambridge, Mass.
Howard Zinn,
Historian, Author, "People's History of the United States"
Katha Pollitt
Columnist, The Nation, New York
Jeff Cohen
Author, founder of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
Rebecca Golden
Director, Ben & Jerry's Foundation
Simona Sharoni
Professor of Peace and Conflict Resolution, American University
David J Cohen
International Representative,
United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE)
James Weinstein
Editor, In These Times
Robert Weissman
Editor, Multinational Monitor
Seth Ackerman
Media Analyst, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Michael Albert
Z Magazine/Znet
Mark Weisbrot
Research Director, Preamble Center
Dean Baker
Senior Research Fellow, Preamble Center
Robert Naiman
Research Associate, Preamble Center
Scott Nova
Director, Citizens Trade Campaign
Jared Bernstein
Economist, Economic Policy Institute
Washington, DC
Ken Silverstein
Journalist
Jaron Bourke
Policy activist, Washington, DC
Norman Finkelstein
Hunter College
Joel Beinin
Professor of Middle East History
Stanford University
Michael Brun
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joshua Karliner
Transnational Resource & Action Center, San Francisco
Mark Solomon
Prof. Emeritus of History
Simmons College, Boston
Peter Dorman
Faculty of Political Economy
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, Washington
Don Barry
past Harlan J. Smith Fellow of Astrophysics
The University of Texas at Austin
Michael Eisenscher
Lead Organizer, Project for Labor Renewal, Berkeley, California
Jacqueline Cabasso
Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation
Andrew Lichterman
Attorney, Western States Legal Foundation
Jay Levin
Founder L.A Weekly newspaper
Glenn Rubenstein
Park Slope Greens, Green Party of New York
Diane Swords
Jewish Peace Fellowship of Central New York
Alan Stoleroff
Department of Sociology
Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e Empresa, Lisbon
Luca Zampieri
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Steve Welzer
Green Party of New Jersey
Carl Lesnor
Manhattan Greens, Green Party of New York
Alan Schrift
Professor of Philosophy, Grinnell College
Brian Tokar
Institute for Social Ecology,
Plainfield, Vermont
Rich Plevin
Economic Justice Now, Oakland, California
Dennis Fischman
Former President, Temple B'nai Brith, Somerville, Massachusetts
Raven B. Earlygrow
Former Mayor, City of Point Arena, California
Andy Mager
Jewish Peace Fellowship, Syracuse chapter
Saul Bitran
First violinist, Cuarteto Latinoamericano,
Boca Raton, Florida
Erick Brownstein
Rainforest Action Network, San Francisco, California
Irene Harris
Former Publisher,Nassau Star (Long Beach, New York)
Tarzana, California
Tom Mayer
Professor, Department of Sociology,
University of Colorado
Paul Worthman
Director of Organizing & Research
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
Steve Rhodes
Paper Tiger TV, Berkeley, California
Ben Newman
Rabbinical Student
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College,
Wyncote, Pennsylvania
Craig Gordon
Social Studies and Media Studies Teacher
Oakland Education Association Site Representative
Fremont High School, Oakland, California
Nancy Rost
Journalist, Madison, Wisconsin
Ken Cornet
Green Party of Connecticut
Philip Y. Blue
Senior Law Librarian
New York State Supreme Court
New York, New York
Mahir Saul
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Illinois
Zoltan Grossman
Co-founder, Midwest Treaty Network (a Native American support group),
Madison, Wisconsin
Allan Solomonow
Regional Director, Peace Education Program
American Friends Service Committee,
San Francisco
Randy Baker
Co-Producer, "Fear and Favor in the Newsroom"
Naomi Steinberg
Student Rabbi, B'nai Ha-Aretz (Children of the Earth),
Redway, California
Julie Light
Editor, Corporate Watch,
San Francisco
Richard Schmitt
Department of Philosophy, Brown University
Paula Friedman
Editor/Publicist, Richmond, California
Derek Wright
United Faculty and Academic Staff, AFT Local 223, UW
Madison, Wisconsin
Frances Goldin,
Mayer Vishner,
Elizabeth Frankenberger
The Frances Goldin Literary Agency, New York
Bob Auerbach
National Committee, Greens / Green Party USA
Jewish Peace Fellowship
Greenback, Maryland
Boris Kogan
Professor of Computer Science, University of California,
Los Angeles
Roman Mordechai
System Analyst, Parallax Microsystems,
Cleveland, Ohio
Bert Garskof
Professor of Psychology, Quinnipiac College
Hamden, Connecticut
Jane Angus
Writer, Henderson, Nevada
Ashley Marcus
Student, University of Virginia
Brian Harvey
Lecturer, Computer Science Division,
University of California at Berkeley
Ruslan Karapatnitski
President, RIK Enterprises, Inc., Phoenix, AZ
Ross Bauer
Department of Music, University of California, Davis
Cory Campbell
Undergraduate, Reed College
Aletha Stahl
Department of Languages and Literatures, Earlham College,
Richmond, Indiana
David Applefield
Association Frank, Paris
Bruce Shapiro
Columnist, The Nation
Rebecca Welty
Graduate Student, Electrical Engineering,
University of California at San Diego
Ryan Titchenell
City Councilman, Trinidad, California
Samuel Farber
Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College
Kristin Weeks
Student, University of Virginia
Scott Rubel
Facilities department, Carnegie Observatories,
Pasadena, California
Judy Samuels
Africa-America Institute, New York
Phyllis Olin
President of the Board,
Western States Legal Foundation
John Burdick
Associate Professor of Anthropology,
Syracuse University
Zeljko Boskovic
Professor, Department of Linguistics,
University of Connecticut
Jorge Liderman
Professor of Music, UC Berkeley
Sergei Babko
Senior Process Engineer, MSE TA,Inc.,
Butte, Montana
Olga Babko
Graduate Student, Rutgers University
Jennifer Malvin
Piano Teacher, Los Angeles
Fred Shapiro
Associate Director, Yale University Law School Library
Bernie Tuchman
Dept. of Environmental Protection, New York, N.Y.
Judith Ward
Professor of History, New York, N.Y.
Don Obers
Social Worker, Patchogue, New York
David Comeaux
Green Party of New York, Rochester, NY
William Muraskin
Professor of Urban Studies, Queens College,
City University of New York
Albina Leibman-Klix
Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature and Philosophy
Binghamton University, New York
Jodie Evans
Director, We The People
Oakland California
Albert Febbo
Artist, Las Vegas, Nevada
David Atias
Genesee Valley/Rochester Greens, Green Party of New York State,
Green Party USA
Diana F. Cramer
Librarian, Onondaga County Public Library
Syracuse, New York
Laura A. Zimmerman
Student, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
Wyncote, Pennsylvania
Morten Krogh
Student, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Douglas Mattern
President, Association of World Citizens
San Francisco, California
Seth Kulick
Graduate Student, University of Pennsylvania
Naomi Smith,
Ellen Meltzer,
Miriam Chesman
New York City, New York
Ben Markeson
Orlando Coalition to Stop the War; Socialist Party U.S.A.
Orlando, Florida
Andrew Schneider
Wanaque, New Jersey
Herbert Brun
Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Illinois
Mark Epstein
Professor, Dept. of Modern Languages, College of New Jersey
Josh Raufman
President, Middlebury College Chapter of Hillel,
Member, Democratic Socialists of America
E.M. Daniel
Research Assistant/Graduate Student
San Francisco State University
Jack Kurzweil
Electrical Engineering Department
San Jose State University
Mark Jacobs
Director of WESPAC (Westchester People's Action Coalition)
New York
David Mladinov
Cultural Arts Director, Leventhal-Sidman JCC
Newton, Massachusetts
Dennis P. Geller
Congregation Kahal B'raira, Massachusetts
Abram Stern
Student, Cresskill, New Jersey
Robert Jensen
Associate Professor, Department of Journalism
University of Texas at Austin
Boris A.Kupershmidt
Professor of Mathematics
The University of Tennessee Space Institute
Dan Merkle
Attorney at Law, Seattle, Washington
Jonathan Rosen
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Tim Wise
Director, Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE)
Nashville, Tennessee
Christopher Bierman
English Language Institute
Wayne State University
Dan Brook
Instructor, University of California, Davis;
Member, Editorial Collective of Socialist Review Davis, California
Julie Brook
Editor, Davis, California
Michael N. Nagler
Professor emeritus of Classics & Comparative Literature
Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies,
UC Berkeley, Tomales, California
Stephen D. Shenfield
Watson Institute for International Studies
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Hank Bromley
Assistant Professor, Dept of Educational Leadership and Policy,
State University of New York at Buffalo
Dan Bahcall
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Member Princeton Jewish Center, Princeton, NJ
Bob Jiggins
Co-ordinator, Network for Peace in the Balkans
Mark Haim
Mid-Missouri PeaceWorks
David Gottfried
Westsiders Against the War, New York City
David N. Gibbs
Associate Professor of Political Science,
University of Arizona
Matthew Smith
UE Local 150 - No. Carolina Public Service Workers Union
Lisa Zimmerman
National Co-Coordinator, Nicaragua Network, Washington, DC
Dan Tenenbaum
Software design engineer, Writer
Seattle, WA
David Kaplowitz
Prison Radio, San Francisco
Barry Deutsch
Student, Portland State University
Gwynne Sigel
Member, Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations;
New Jewish Voice; Graduate student, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Daniel Ellsberg
Peace Activist, Author
Matthew Wright
Programmer/Analyst, U.C. Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio
Technology, Berkeley, Calif.
Daniel Weiskopf
Graduate Student, Department of Philosophy
Brown University
Snezana Landau, translator
Neil Landau, nuclear engineer
El Cerrito, Calif.
Robert Plummer
Impact Sports, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jim Rissman
Beth Israel Synagogue
Verona, Wisconsin
Adam Kessel
Environmental Activist, Center for Neighborhood Technology
Chicago
Joe Mabel
Seattle Peace Heathens, Seattle, Washington
Stephen E. Berk
Professor of History, California State University, Long Beach
Ariel Reinheimer
Student, Brooklyn Law School
Executive Board member, New Party of Long Island, New York
Jesse Lemisch
John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University of New York
Naomi Weisstein
State University of New York at Buffalo
Moshe Broudo
Engineer, Canon Information Systems
Cupertino, Calif.
Esher Broudo
Homemaker, Cupertino, Calif.
Bruce E. Bernstein
President, New York Software Industry Association, Inc.
New York City
Julie Spriggs
Business Owner, New York City
Andrew Bateman,
President, Political Science Association,
Metropolitan State College of Denver, Colorado
Nathan Kauffman
Philosophy student, Millersville University,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Howard Schreiber
Filmmaker, Ashland, Oregon
Susan Nossal
Atmospheric Physicist, University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin
Sara Sutler-Cohen
Graduate Department of Sociology
Humboldt State University, Arcata, Calif.
Dana H. Brooks
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Northeastern University
Steering Committee Member, Workmen's Circle Shule,
Brookline, Massachusetts
Co-Chair, Visions of Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine,
Boston, Massachusetts
Sam Krasnow
Managment Consultant,
Cambridge, Mass.
Rumeli Snyder
Oakland, Calif.
Jerold M. Starr
Professor of Sociology West Virginia University
Director, Center for Social Studies Education,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Shelly A. Erickson
Undergraduate, Christopher Newport University
Newport News, Virginia
Wendy Linick
Senior Technical Writer, Nortel Networks
Los Angeles
Daniel Bowman
UCSC Student, Santa Cruz, Calif.
Eliza Sulzbacher
Student, Whitman College,
Walla Walla, Washington
Danny Fox
Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows
Sylvia Zisman
N.J. Hiroshima Day Remembrance Committee
Member, Council of Secular Jewish Organizations
Springfield, New Jersey
Matt Goldberg
Graduate student, JFK School of Government, Harvard Univ.
Somerville, Massachusetts
David Rabin
Radio Editor,
Member, Jews United for Justice
Washington, DC
Stephen R. Shalom
William Paterson University, New Jersey
Sarah Wiseman
Musician, Urbana, Illinois
Jon Nissenbaum
Department of Linguistics, MIT
Cambridge, MA
Martin Gorfinkel
Los Altos, Calif.
Lee Kershner
Las Cruces, NM
David Loeb
Guatemala News & Information Bureau
Dustin M. Wax
Graduate Student, New School for Social Research
Exhibition Assistant, The Jewish Museum, New York
Benjamin Davis
Teacher, Temple Israel of Hollywood Day School
Janet Weil
Teacher, Berkeley, Calif.
John Exdell
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy
Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas
Gregory Sechuga
Project Manager, Beacon Consulting Group,
Carmel, Indiana
Robin Cohen
Migrant Education, Monterey County, Calif.
Walter Miale
Green World Center
Richford, Vermont
Ronit Avni
Student, Vassar College
Larisa Goldmints
Graduate student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Carnegie Mellon University
Jon Ball
Northeastern Univ. Dept. of Mathematics,
Boston, Mass.
Joseph Levine
Professor of Philosophy
North Carolina State University
Jeff Grabelsky
Senior Extension Associate
Cornell University, NYSSILR
Lori Burton
State Coordinator
Pacific Green Party of Oregon
Corey Hale
President
Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance
Laura Bassler
University of St. Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota
Patrick A. Villano
San Francisco, Calif.
Jim Allwein
Student Activist, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Jean Mair
Bldg. Engineer, Lucent Technologies
Bell Labs INovations
Meredith Thomsen
University of California, Berkeley
Giso J Gorodish
Lynn Samuels
Gabriel Libhart
Student Activist, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Amelia Kraigher
Joan Phelan
Lincoln, Nebraska
Ronald Daniels
Australia
Karen G. Stone
Author, Albuquerque, NM
Jaime Bass
College of Communications
University of Texas at Austin
Joshua Miner
Phillipe Doan
Arlington, Texas
Sandra R. Gartin
Griselda Villarreal
California State University, Chico
Geneva Jacobs
Elise Hugus
Emergency Committee Against the War in Yugoslavia (ECAW)
Boston/Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Judy Beltrametti
Switzerland
Gary N. Barnett
Adjunct Professor of Geography
Western Connecticut State University
Edda L. Fields
University of Pennsylvania
Department of History
Sandy Dolan
Dept. of English
University of Akron, Ohio
Philip Sheaff
Keith Kinion
Iowa City, Iowa
Chris Dobbie
PK Choi
Faculty of Education
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Rebecca E. Karl
History Department & East Asian Studies
New York University
Mathieu Levi
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Ernest Goitein,
Bay Area Nuclear (BAN) Waste Coalition
San Francisco, Calif.
Dan Hamilton
Mount Vernon, Maine
Rachel E. Lee
University of Hartford, Connecticut
Micah Rose
St. Louis, Missouri
Marielle Heller
University of California, Los Angeles
Madeleine Shaw
United Kingdom
Lilli Rodeck
Denmark
Sondra Guttman
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Donna Barrington
Lehman College of the City University of New York
Bronx, New York
Miriam Bartha
Teaching Assistant, Women's Studies
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Abby Sher
President, Edgemar Development
Santa Monica, Calif.
Andrea Maroney
UC Davis, Calif.
Evan Haffner
Ph.D. Student in Comparative Literature
University of California, Berkeley
Judy Ancel
Institute for Labor Studies
University of Missouri, Kansas City
Alan Shapiro
Teacher, New York City
Larry Dansinger
Institute for Nonviolence Education, Research, and Training
Monroe, Maine
Eric Zlochevsky
Beverly Burk
New York City
Kenneth A. Falconer
Linda Stern
Massachusetts Bay Community College
Tony Poeck
UC Davis, Calif.
Marcus Matzke
Zivildienstleistender
Germany
David Beiles
Maya Conn
Assistant Director, Campuswide Stewardship Programs
UCLA
Matthew Weinstein
Shorefront Peace Committee
Brooklyn, New York
Manuel Bonduki
Ravi Nagraj
High School student
Brampton, Ontario, Canada Anastasia Birou
administrative employee of University of Macedonia,
Thessaloniki, Greece
Vladimir Ljubicic
Plant Protection Society of Yugoslavia
Joaquin Tagle
Santiago, Chile
Dusica Salai
Yugoslavia
Dejan Markovic
Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Sheila Robin
England
Art Hoffer
Francois Josserand
postgraduate student
London School of Economics and Political Science
United Kingdon
Rebecca Spencer
Worcester College, University of Oxford
United Kingdom
Lev Vicrope
Toronto, Canada
Lidija Tanusevska
Teaching Assistant
University of St. Cyryl and Methodious
Skopje, Macedonia
Robbie Shilliam
Sussex University, United Kingdom
Katie Cherrington
Auckland University, New Zealand
Ivana Prijic-Niseteo
Student Librarian, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Angela Kennedy
Smith College, Massachusetts
Darrell Silver
Paul Olson
Dept. of English
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Terry J. Allen
Journalist
Christopher A. Cajski
Stanford University
Jason Dennany
Shahrokh Yadegari
University of California, San Diego
David Getzin
Nathaniel Birr
Sandra Donellan
Antonis Polentas
Department of Langauge and Linguistics
University of Essex
Colchester, United Kingdom
Branka Nikolic
Vancouver, British Columbia
Bernard Genet
Economist, France
Andreas Kurtz
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Roger Coghill
Massachusetts
Robin Jacks
Women's Action Coalition, Memphis Tennessee
Lisa D. Rifkin
Theatre Artist, Teaching Artist
Lincoln Center Institue, Lincoln Center
New York City
Mitchel Cohen
Brooklyn Greens, Green Party of NY, Greens / Green Party USA
In the interview, Merlino asked Harff what his proudest public relations
endeavor was. Harff responded:
"To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side. This was a
sensitive matter, as the dossier was dangerous looked at from this
angle.[Croatian] President Tudjman was very careless in his book,
Wastelands of Historical Reality. Reading his writings one could
accuse him of anti-Semitism. [Among other anti-Semitic
statements, Tudjman claimed that "only" 900,000 Jews were killed
in the Holocaust, not six million—MC.] In Bosnia the situation was
no better: President Izetbegovic strongly supported the creation of a
fundamentalist Islamic state in his book, The Islamic Declaration.
"Besides, the Croation and Bosnian past was marked by real and
cruel anti-Semitism," Harff continued. "Tens of thousands of Jews
perished in Croation camps, so there was every reason for
intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile toward the
Croats and the Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude
and we succeeded masterfully.
"At the beginning of July 1992, New York Newsday came out with
the article on Serb camps. We jumped at the opportunity
immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations-the B'nai
B'rith Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee,
and the American Jewish Congress. In August, we suggested that
they publish an advertisement in the New York Times and organize
demonstrations outside the United Nations.
Merlino replied, "But between August 2nd and 5th, 1992, when you
did this, you had no proof that what you said was true. All you had
were two Newsday articles."
"Our work is not to verify information," said Harff. "We are not
equipped for that. Our work is to accelerate the circulation of
information favorable to us, to aim at judiciously chosen targets. We
did not confirm the existence of death camps in Bosnia, we just
made it widely known that Newsday affirmed it. ... We are
professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. We are not paid to
moralize."
—Jacques Merlino, "Les vérités yugoslaves ne sont pas toutes bonnes à dire"
[The truths from Yugoslavia are not easy to report], Paris: Editions Albin
Michel S.A., 1993. Quotations reported by Sara Flounders in "NATO in the
Balkans," 1998, International Action Center, New York.