“So like Kosovo, yeah… what was that all about??”

I want to write about the issue of the Kosovo war. This was another case of the US and UK bombing a country. It was ostensibly a “humanitarian intervention” to stop some people from killing some other people. There was certainly a lot of chaos going on in Kosovo, different ethnic groups having turned against one another.

Left wing critique of the war says that actually the real purpose was to promote the strategic geopolitical interests of the NATO countries in the Balkan region. In particulary, Chomsky claims that the bombing actually made things worse – in fact that the violence between ethnic groups which the bombing was officially supposed to be stopping actually began only after the bombing had started and that this violence was caused *by* the bombing! 

I actually know very little about the whole situation and would like to try to make sense of it all.

A little background:

Kosovo was a part of what used to be the nation of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was part of the “communist” world, during the Cold War era. While most of Central and Eastern Europe were considered “satellites” of the USSR, Yugoslavia retained a large degree of independence, under the rule of General Tito, who I believe was the founder of the nation. [Is that right? Hold on, when was Yugoslavia set up? Did it not emerge through a treaty, after the end of World War II?]

Yugoslavia contained various different ethnic groups. These people had different cultures and languages, and identities and I guess slightly different appearances. I have heard that they all got on pretty well during the Tito era, but when Soviet “communism” collapsed and the USSR and Yugoslavia began to fall apart, the different groups started to feel more at odds with one another. Neighbours and friends became enemies.

There is an important element which is invariably left out of the official story. This is the role the IMF played in bringing about this big falling out between ethnic groups which led to ethnic cleansing and civil war.

The International Monetary Fund was given a role of redesigning the economies of the fragmented states of the former Yugoslavia. I’m not sure how it came to have this power, but the usual mechanism is that a country becomes desperate for cash and needs to borrow from the IMF, which then attaches stringent conditions including lightning speed extensive privatisation, the rolling back of welfare states, cuts in health and education, and so on – the full package of neo-liberal reforms. This then devastates the economy, with the resulting civil strife and chaos which then inevitably ensues.

The different ethnic groups in the region were Albanians, Serbs, Slavs, and Kosovars. Is that right? I’ve probably got that slightly wrong. I don’t particularly know who’s who. There had already been trouble in the part of the former Yugoslavia known as Bosnia. US and UK forces had been involved there. I believe bombs were dropped. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Now there was some guy called “Slobodan Milosevic” who was in charge of Kosovo. I believe he was not a particularly savoury character.

When I was a student, the Kosovo war / US/UK bombing had quite recently taken place. Various debates had raged about whether the US / UK bombing was an enlightened course of action or something to be bitterly condemned.

The NewLabour MP Keith Vaz came to my university in my first year there and talked about various matters to a society of students who were interested in political affairs. During the questions at the end, my question to Mr Vaz was “So like Kosovo yeah, what was that all about”. I think I added the deliberate unarticulateness in order to emphasise my confusion. Almost as if to say I don’t really understand but all these clever looking pretentious establishment stooges around me don’t really have a fucking clue either, they just pretend they do.

Keith Vaz’s response was somewhat impatient and exasperated, something like “Oh for goodness sake” (sounding fed up of having to defend the government’s record in the Balkans yet again), “Milosevic… this is a BRUTAL DICTATOR we’re talking about… something had to be done… blah blah blah, bolloxy wanky knob.” And so on… “blah blah blah humanitarian intervention”.

“But we used cluster bombs and depleted uranium!” I interjected, rather exasperated myself.

“Well yes, but war is a nasty business” he told me.

I had by this point come to the conclusion that the use of these two types of weapon completely undermined any pretence at a ‘humanitarian intervention’ because of the catastrophic effect they will continue to wreak upon the innocent civilians of Kosovo for hundreds of years to come (and likewise now in Iraq and Afghanistan).

I went on to ask why we were not trying to stop Turkey from continuing its brutal repression of the people of Kurdistan. Vaz said that they were trying and we were doing what we can. But I didn’t see us bombing Turkey! No, because Turkey is an important NATO ally. It’s only the weak and unuseful (to us) countries which have the dubious honour of being bombed by us. Sorry, I’m not convinced by the humanitarian intervention line. Ever. Even if one was necessary. I wouldn’t trust our governments further than I could throw them to intervene in any way other than inhumanely.

But this little interaction with a junior government minister got me wondering. I wondered if he was actually a liar. Or simply just naive?

Vaz got a rather bloody nose a few months later on, got involved in some quite big scandal which got him in a lot of trouble. Nothing to do with Kosovo or anything but showed him up to be less than honest. No doubt he’s naive too. Politicians generally don’t understand quite how much blood you get on your hands by leading a powerful country until they’re up there at the top. People go into politics thinking they’re going to abide by the high standards the rest of society has for treating other human beings well…

But I digress.

I want to confirm my theory, that the humanitarian intervention was a complete lie on the part of NATO, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, with convincing evidence.

I want to understand the dynamics of what went on in Kosovo and how things were affected by the NATO bombing campaigns. Civilian casualties… destruction of infrastructure, etc.

I want to know what the real genuine rationale for the bombing was.

And I want to know what’s happening in Kosovo (and Bosnia) now, and if they are being transformed into extreme free-market fundamentalist states with privileged access to resources for US and UK corporations, as has apparently been happening in Iraq.

I’d like to know more about the collapse of the society beforehand, and what were the political and (more importantly in my opinion) economic causes of this falling apart.

So, more questions than answers, for now…