The Triple Burden

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Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 08:42:23 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: The Triple Burden

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Zidas Daskalovski <[email protected]>

The Triple Burden


 
While the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo crisis have
sparked contradictory reactions in the European intellectual circles
few have been able to clearly identify the "triple burden'' the
situation caries, a problem which I will elaborate briefly. The crisis
is most frequently viewed in very simplistic terms and characterised
as: the fight between the good NATO against the evil Serbia, or the
battle for the lives of the Kosovo refugees against the Milosevic's
genocide. To do justice to a handful of authors, like Chomsky, Zizek
or Buden, I admit that this oversimplification has been widely
criticised, but none of the analysts, or none that I am aware of, has
presented a view on the issue that is completely intellectual, that is
critical. Thus, I present to you my story of " why I am against" or,
the "three 'barbarians' and the not so innocent victims."

On the NATO bombings:
The bombings have certainly not "prevented the humanitarian
catastrophe developing in Kosovo". If the NATO alliance was serious
and honest about the intervention in Kosovo it would have used ground
troops to defeat Milosevic. As it is, the operation "allied forces" is
literary directly destroying one country- Yugoslavia, one nation
(creating a mass exodus of the Albanians from Kosovo), and indirectly
hampering and destabilising another nation-Macedonia. The logic of
NATO officials that "the ethnic cleansing was already underway so the
bombings could not have influenced it" is obviously flawed, first of
all: it did not take a genius to figure out what would have
Milosevic's reaction been in case of a bombardment of Serbia; and
secondly, now that Milosevic is doing what he is doing (cleansing)
continuos bombing does not, and can not stop him- as the spokesmen at
the NATO conference stated today "you don't need much to ethnically
cleanse a region, just a band of paramilitaries with a Kalasnikov"[I
am paraphrasing]. Of course, since an American live is worth so much
more then a life of any other human being in the world (and definitely
more then the lives of the Kosovo Albanians, or for that matter
Yugoslav civilians who are also suffering) the option of sending
ground troops can not be considered, or it should wait until the
moment when Milosevic's troops are so badly damaged that the NATO
ground action will not be seriously threatened.

Serbia's Regime:
No need to waste words, enough have been said on this matter.

KLA:
Although it appears that majority of Albanians (in Albania, Kosovo,
Macedonia, US, Switzerland, and so on) support this 'national
liberation' army, one should not overlook the fact that exactly the
appearance of KLA led to a direct armed confrontation with the Serbian
regime nor one should overlook the fact that KLA or UCK as they call
themselves employed typical terrorist guerrilla warfare (at first
killing 'loyal' Albanians, then 'embushing' Serbian police units and
finally openly fighting any of the Serbian/Yugoslavian forces, even
Kosovo Serb citizens). Until the emergence of KLA, Kosovo Albanians
pretended to be independent, (Rugova and the parallel society)
suffered gross human rights violations under the Serbian regime, but,
and this is important if not crucial, were not caught in a violent
conflict. As one could have expected, the Serbian police brutally
responded to the actions of KLA, killing innocent civilians and making
populations of whole villages flee. For the sake of saving lives of
civilians one should have condemned not endorsed KLA. True, the
Serbian regime never offered the Kosovo Albanians anything resembling
democracy or autonomy, but to support KLA and a dangerous military
conflict, to me seems not only illiberal in nature, but also quite
inhumane.

This is the triple burden I was talking about; a true intellectual,
indeed a genuinely concerned human being, should condemn all three
sides in the conflict, NATO, Serbia and KLA. One does not have to take
a stand for either of the sides in this conflict in order to be right,
instead one should oppose all the three and favour a peaceful approach
to the resolution of the crisis.(for example, many Balkan analysts
claimed, and many still think that this is an option now, if the US
involved Russia in the peaceful negotiating process- as additional
troops to the NATO observers in Kosovo- Milosevic would have
compromised) 

2. The not so innocent victims
Seeing Kosovo Albanians get on the buses that take them to some of the
numerous refugee camps in Macedonia or Albania, and still chant 'NATO,
NATO', and show the victory sign, and hearing them speak how NATO air
strikes are 'good and they should continue' despite their own and the
nation's tragedy, it is somehow morbid. Although it is fairly obvious
that the bombardments have only worsened the situation no Albanian has
criticised the KLA, or the NATO attacks. In fact the Albanians have
more or less behaved as a tribe- having uniform views (we do not
accept Serbian proposals for autonomy, even if we have to live
underground-Rugova's period- or we have to fight and get killed in
mass numbers-UCK and post Rambuille period) on an issue of the status
of Kosovo. The determinacy of the Kosovo Albanians to have independent
Kosovo at any cost, and the support for KLA from fractions of the
Kosovo Albanians definitely puts them in the category of the not so
innocent victims.

The other not-so-innocent victims are of course the Serbian People. As
one might remember during the war in Croatia a fraction of the Serbian
people have laid bouquets of flowers in front of the rolling YNA tanks
on their way to Vukovar. A bit bigger fraction of the Serbs has
persistently voted for the Milosevic's party, the Serbian Socialists
or for the ultranationalist Seselj. Finally a relatively small
fraction of the Serbian people has participated in the wars fought in
Croatia, Bosnia, and now Kosovo, either as regular soldiers, police
units, or paramilitaries. This is not to say that I believe in notions
such as a collective guilt, this is only to illustrate that some of
the policies pursued by the Slobodan Milosevic have been directly, or
indirectly supported by significant number of Serbian people. This
fact is indeed troubling, for besides the 'not so innocent citizens'
Serbia had(has?) a vibrant democratic opposition, sense of civic
society and intellectual potential.(one just needs to remember the
events in the winter of 1996/7 to acknowledge this)


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