(Militant International Review, No. 51, May-June 1993, 2-7)
Should the labour movement back military intervention? Or sanctions against Serbia? Peter Taaffe examines the Bosnian nightmare.
The Bosnian crisis is now at a turning point. The harrowing accounts of mutilated children in Srebrenica, the photographs of injured soldiers like scenes from the first world war, combined with the daily outpourings of TV, have meant that the clamour for action, that ’something must be done‘, has reached fever pitch.
Public opinion in Europe and the USA in particular is inflamed at the two years of vicious ethnic civil war. In this period 150,000 people have perished, thousands more have been maimed in body and mind.
The break up along national/ethnic lines of the old Yugoslavia has resulted in the greatest population displacement, of two to three million people, seen in Europe since 1945. On top of this has been vicious ‚ethnic cleansing‘. This is not restricted to the Serbs alone but also involves the Croats. And now the clashes between Muslims and Croats around the town of Vitez shows that all sides are capable of atrocities. An estimated 30,000 to 70,000 women have also been raped.
If nothing else Yugoslavia has demonstrated that Nazi-like actions do not arise from racial or national characteristics but that in the pores of all societies riven with class contradictions there are potentially fascist-like elements who are as every bit as bestial as their Nazi forebears. Strip away the veneer of capitalist civilisation, unleash the dogs of nationalism and ethnic conflict, and, as Bosnia demonstrates, free rein is given to the most degenerate elements in society.
Only a unified movement of workers, cutting across ethnic and national lines, could have prevented the horrors which have unfolded in Bosnia. The elements of such a movement did indeed exist in the first period of the Bosnian conflict. Muslim, Serbian and Croat workers instinctively came together. But this could only have been cemented with a powerful labour movement and a Marxist leadership.
An armed workers‘ defence force, with mixed membership of all the nationalities, would have been able to have protected all vulnerable ethnic communities, particularly in the rural areas. The absence of such a force has allowed the murder gangs, such as the notorious Serb militia ‚commander‘ Arkan and his Croat counterparts, to re-enforce murderous divisions within the Bosnian population.
It was against this background of the seeming complacency of all the main capitalist governments, including Major’s, that Thatcher dropped her bombshell in an emotional statement to BBC television. She demanded the lifting of the arms embargo to allow the Muslims to arm themselves and implied support for air strikes against the Serbs. Noticeably, however, she ruled out the deployment of ground troops.
A chorus of Tory backbenchers, sections of the capitalist press, and even several Labour MPs, came to her support. Prominent among the Labour supporters of Thatcher were, incredibly, those claiming to stand on the left, such as Tony Banks and Clare Short. Tribune, organ of Labour’s ’soft left‘, had been demanding similar action as that proposed by Thatcher for months previously.
There is no doubt that Thatcher did catch the popular mood.
There is, however, no doubt that Thatcher did catch the popular mood. The majority of the population would have had to have been blocks of stone to have sat in front of television screens for weeks and months and not react to the horror they witnessed.
In the first poll for The Daily Telegraph, 61% supported Thatcher’s statement. Yet as Denis Healey, Labour’s former shadow foreign secretary pointed out, it is sheer hypocrisy for Thatcher to now demand action against the Serbs: “She is as responsible as anyone for the mess there. She, right at the beginning of the troubles in Yugoslavia, pressed us to support Serbia against Croatia, which is what the Germans wanted us to do. Lord Carrington’s advice was that it would lead to the splitting of the country and a disaster. So she carries a large part of the guilt.“ (The Independent).
Those Labour lefts who have rushed into the arms of Thatcher on this issue forget that foreign policy is merely a continuation of home policy. No conscious worker would support the bosses at home. Why then offer support for the bosses representatives abroad? The Bosnian Muslims are so much small change for the various imperialist powers, including Britain. Their policies are calculated purely on the basis of what advantage will accrue to themselves, at the expense of their rivals.
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Yugoslavia has been a cockpit of the varices capitalist powers who have jostled to establish their own influence, prestige and future markets. German imperialism has attempted to establish a dominating presence and in the process has clashed with its erstwhile European allies, Britain and France. Emerging Russian capitalism, represented by Yeltsin, sees the Balkans as one of its spheres of influence and has backed its ‚brother Slavs‘, the Serbs.
The impression given is that the Bosnian people have always been at each other’s throats and always will be. Germany, Britain, France and the USA, if not yet Russia, are pictured as a ‚civilising influence‘ heroically struggling to contain inflamed national and ethnic tensions.
It is true, as Trotsky pointed out in the 1930s, that the Balkans, prior to the first world war and subsequently, were a byword for one nationality being at the throat of another. This is one of the reasons why the pre-first world war Social Democracy put forward the idea of a federation of the Balkans. Trotsky pointed out in the inter-war period that such a concept retained its validity although it could not be realised except on a socialist basis. Balkan Stalinism, which reflected the national interests of each separate bureaucracy, was incapable of cementing such a union of the peoples of the Balkan states.
Yet Yugoslavia under Tito, while not overcoming national and ethnic divisions, contained them for a period. This was possible because the planned economy opened up a greater scope for the development of the productive forces and thereby of the living standards of the mass of the people. To some extent, national and ethnic divisions softened.
On the other hand, the ruthless repression by Tito’s Stalinist regime of the slightest national ‚deviation‘, was bound to stoke up national resentment. A planned economy, combined with workers‘ democracy, could have created the conditions for an integrated plan for the benefit of all the peoples and the full satisfaction of the national rights of the different nationalities. A balance between the needs of an integrated plan across national or ethnic boundaries, and the rights of the different nationalities, could only be established on the basis of open, free, democratic discussion and debate. Control and management of industry and society would be vested in the workers and their organs of power, democratically elected committees. On this basis a real commingling of the population of Yugoslavia would have ensued. A similar process would have unfolded in the other Balkan states, leading to the establishment of a democratic socialist Balkan federation.
Under Tito’s Stalinism the trappings of a ‚federation‘ existed, with careful checks and balances, on paper. However this concealed the fact that the Serb bureaucracy dominated the ‚federation‘. Tito, himself a Croat, was the glue which kept it together. His regime, in the first period, played a relatively progressive role in developing production, industry, and to some extent the living standards of the masses, despite a one-party totalitarian rule.
However, this process had reached its limits even before his death. Society and industry began to stagnate, which would only have been avoided through the establishment of workers‘ democracy. All the national tensions which now have exploded began to come to the surface.
Under collapsing Stalinism, rival national bureaucracies began to develop. Leaning on the discontent of the masses at economic stagnation and a drop in living standards, they articulated the resentment against the dominant Serb bureaucracy. Opposition came alike from the most backward regions such as Kosovo, with an average income of one-sixth of that of Serbia, as well as the more economically developed republics such as Slovenia and Croatia.
The national bureaucracies deliberately fanned the flames of national and ethnic divisions in order to secure their positions. Not the least in their calculations was that this could cut across the huge workers opposition that was developing on social issues, mass unemployment, rising inflation etc.
Contained in this movement at the outset, as with the movements in East Germany and the Soviet Union in 1989, were the elements of a political revolution against the bureaucracy. However, the absence of the ’subjective factor‘, a conscious Marxist organisation capable of providing the necessary leadership to such a movement, left this movement directionless. As a consequence the bureaucracy, in common with its counterparts in the rest of the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, moved in the direction of the capitalist market. Behind the national conflict which then followed is the attempt of an emerging capitalist class in the various states which once made up Yugoslavia to establish for itself a favourable place in the sun.
They are as impervious as the imperialist powers to the suffering and the fate of their own peoples. Only the working class in the first instance, particularly in the urban areas like Sarajevo, attempted to cut across ethnic and national divisions. The reactionary nationalist gangs, some with semi-fascist and outright fascist features, who have undoubtedly resorted to atrocities to reinforce ethnic divisions, would have been rendered completely impotent by a united workers‘ movement on an all-Bosnian scale. Such a movement however, would have posed as much a danger to the emerging rival national capitalists as to the imperialist powers themselves.
The imperialist powers and the former Stalinists are responsible for the present bloodbath in Bosnia.
Imperialism egged on one side against another, often switching sides. At one moment various powers like the US supported the Serbs, then condemned them as ‚war-criminals‘. They and the former Stalinists are responsible for the present bloodbath in Bosnia. The overcoming of national divisions was not possible on the basis of Stalinism. The situation is however even more intractable on the basis of capitalism.
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The satisfaction of the legitimate national rights of the different peoples of Bosnia is the last concern of Milošević, the Serbian leader, Tudjman, the Croatian leader, or even Izetbegović, the leader of the largest ethnic group in Bosnia, the Muslims. In anticipation of a looming conflict in Bosnia, the representatives of Tudjman and Milošević, met and drew up a secret agreement to carve up Bosnia between themselves.
They had only recently been at each others‘ throats in the Serb-Croat war. Yet they could calmly sit down to determine which parts of Bosnia were to be incorporated into a ‚Greater Serbia‘, and which parts into a ‚Greater Croatia‘. The Muslims were to be left with a minority of territory, largely land-locked, and with the most uneconomic bits. This agreement between Milošević and Tudjman is the rock upon which has been dashed all the schemas to solve the Bosnian problem. The latest is the Vance-Owen plan. Their proposals suggest a new decentralised Bosnian state, with ten areas or ‚cantons‘, a patchwork quilt in which one nationality or another would predominate in designated areas with a minority in ‚mixed‘ areas.
United Nations troops, estimated at between 50,000 and 75,000, would be needed to police ‚corridors‘ from Serbian-held territory to Serbia itself, with the same in relation to Croatian areas. This new decentralised Bosnian state, it is envisaged by Owen and Vance, would allow autonomy to the different ‚cantons‘, but forbid them to conduct foreign policy or make alliances abroad. This was perceived by Owen and Vance as a means of preventing the Serbian areas in Bosnia linking up later on with Serbia itself in a Greater Serbia, and likewise for the Croatian areas.
By the same token, Milošević and the Bosnian Serb leader Karadžić, whilst making suitable approving noises, in practice rejected the plan. The same applied to Croatia although they were more satisfied with the Vance-Owen proposals as they have established a mini-state in any case, Herzeg-Bosnia, in western Bosnia. The recent military action of the Serbs in Srebrenica is designed to take control of territory in defiance of the Vance-Owen plan, which will allow a linking up with Serbia in a de facto Greater Serbia.
Sanctions, the dropping of food to besieged Muslim areas, and now the threat of air strikes, have found the Serbs unmoved. They intend to continue military activity in Bosnia until they have achieved their strategic aims.
On the other hand imperialism is now terrified that if the Serbs achieve their aims, they will then be encouraged to pursue similar methods in Kosovo, Macedonia, and in Vojvodina. This in turn could be the trigger for a new Balkan war. All the horrors witnessed in Bosnia would be repeated, the only difference being that it would be on a much larger scale. In desperation to be seen to be ‚doing something‘, the US, Britain and the other powers could take some kind of military action. This could already have taken place as we go to print.
But the opponents of Thatcher, and others who are demanding action such as air strikes, are far more realistic in describing the difficulties facing the capitalist powers in launching effective military action against the Serbs.
Such measures failed to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait. In the more mountainous terrain of Bosnia they would be completely ineffective. Huge ‚collateral‘ damage – in plain words, massive civilian deaths, this time of Serbs – would inevitably result from an air bombardment. In the war against Iraq all the paraphernalia of ’smart bombs‘, laser guided missiles which could allegedly be guided down air vents, did not prevent 200,000 Iraqis, many of them civilians, perishing under the ferocious allied air bombardment.
For air strikes to be effective ground troops on a massive scale would have to be deployed. But Thatcher, and not the least Colin Powell, the US chief of staff, oppose the use of ground troops. The psyche of the American people is still weighed down by Vietnam. Limited police operations along the lines of Panama or Grenada could be tolerated. Even the temporary incursion into Somalia allegedly for ‚humanitarian‘ purposes (the real purpose of the intervention was the fear of Somalia falling into the grip of Islamic fundamentalism and its effect on the Gulf states) was for a limited duration.
While there is big public support in the US for some kind of action to be taken against Serbia, this would turn into its opposite once the body bags began to come home following large-scale military intervention. The same applies to the European powers. For historical reasons neither German nor Italian capitalism would be able to send big forces. The memory remains of German and Italian troops being deployed against Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia during world war two. Britain and France however, already stretched financially and militarily, would find it impossible to sustain the main brunt of any military intervention.
What is more, if over 20 German and Italian divisions were incapable of defeating Tito’s guerillas, that task would be no easier for European or US troops today. Conor Cruise O’Brien, writing in The Guardian, warned in February “if the security council approves Vance-Owen Mark II, I have no doubt that we are headed towards a new Vietnam, this time with British participation“.
At the same time a head-on collision with Russia would more than likely follow a military intervention. The UN security council resolution to step up sanctions against Serbia for the attacks on Srebrenica in April found the Russian delegate abstaining. The Serbian leadership has openly appealed to their Slav ‚brothers‘ in Russia. The growing nationalist opposition within Russia towards Yeltsin (if he manages to retain control after the 25 April referendum) has compelled Yeltsin to tread a very uneasy path between supporting in words the Milošević regime and at the same time attempting to keep ‚on side‘ with the imperialist powers, for their financial and other support.
Even massive air bombardment would not inflict serious military damage on the Serbian forces in Bosnia. Under Tito massive underground bunkers were built, capable of holding 600 tanks. Nor will any decision in London or Washington to supply the Muslims with increased arms solve the problem. On the contrary it will inflame, aggravate and widen the conflict, with Russia compelled to supply the Serbs with the most up-to-date weapons. Stepped up sanctions will do nothing to crack the resolve of the Serbian regime to secure its strategic ends in Bosnia. Sanctions did not work in Rhodesia or against Iraq and nor will they succeed in bringing Serbia to its knees. Owen was brutally realistic on this when he stated on British TV that by themselves sanctions were ‚ineffective‘.
In all this the complete paralysis of the UN is clearly evident. It can act as an agency of humanitarian aid and can sometimes act as a buffer between two forces who agree to this role being ascribed to it. But it cannot overcome fundamental differences between two mutually antagonistic powers. The experience of the UN in Cyprus, the Lebanon and now the Bosnian tragedy, demonstrates this clearly.
* * *
It is undoubtedly in the interests of imperialism to seek to contain the Bosnian conflict. But it is not certain that they will be able to succeed in this. Despite the crocodile tears presently wept over the fate of the Bosnian Muslims, the conclusion that imperialism appears to have drawn is to allow the three-sided division of Bosnia to go ahead. This is why they have acquiesced to the Serbs taking Srebrenica. Despite assurances a few months earlier by the commander of the UN forces in Bosnia, General Morrillon, in April they in effect negotiated the surrender of the town. This could be quickly followed by Serbian forces taking the southern Muslim enclaves of Goražde and Žepa. This would effectively secure the strategic aims of the Serbs in Bosnia. Then they would be quite happy to negotiate, on the basis of established ‚facts‘, some kind of peace deal.
In all this the complete paralysis of the UN is clearly evident.
The losers in all this will be the Muslims who could now become the Palestinians of the Balkans, a constant running sore guaranteeing ethnic and national conflict for generations to come. Yet all the nationalities which made up the former Yugoslavia, not least the Serbs themselves, have paid a terrible price for the present conflict.
The Serbian economy has lost an annual ｣10bn, industrial production has dropped by at least 40% and it faces hyper-inflation with prices rising at 250% per month. More than 800,000 workers have been sent on compulsory ‚holidays‘ as state enterprises have cut production, and 65% of the workforce is either laid off or unemployed: 70% of Serbia’s 9.8m inhabitants are earning less than $370 a year. But sanctions have produced a ’siege mentality with support temporarily consolidating behind the Milošević regime. His victory over Panić in last year’s elections, although secured with a heavy dose of electoral fraud, undoubtedly reflected this mood.
Even relatively prosperous Slovenia has faced a drop in living standards, a plummeting of industrial output by 10% in 1991, and unemployment of 11.5%. GNP declined by a massive 9% in 1991. At the same time the flames of national and ethnic tensions are being whipped up by ultranationalists such as the Slovene National Party which captured 9.8% of the vote in last years election. They call for the expulsion of the 100,000 ‚guest workers‘, that is, the refugees from the Bosnian nightmare.
It is the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, whose markets represented an outlet for Slovene goods, which has contributed to the problems of the region. Neither German, Italian nor Austrian capitalism, which have intervened in Slovenia, have been able to plug the gap left by the markets which have been lost. But it is in Montenegro and Kosovo where the heaviest price has been paid (apart from Bosnia-Herzegovina itself) and which represents potential new flashpoints in the Balkan tragedy. Kosovo is very near to an explosion. The ethnic Albanians, who account for 90% of the Kosovo population, have seen the treatment meted out to their co-religionists in Bosnia. Their province, which was granted autonomy under Tito, saw this eliminated by Milošević in 1991. This led to the formation of a ‚parallel state‘ and a declaration of ‚independence‘.
The Serb regime has attempted to eliminate all manifestations of Albanian culture. More than 85% of the Albanian Kosovars have lost their jobs and have been forced to rely on community help, family solidarity, and the fertile land which provides 70% of their food. At the same time the remittances of the 250,000 Kosovars working mainly in Germany and Switzerland has acted as a safety net.
The elections called by the Serb regime were boycotted by the majority. Consequently, ‚commander‘ Arkan, notorious for ‚ethnic cleansing‘ in Bosnia, was ‚elected‘ to the Belgrade parliament from the region. The fact that this persecutor of the Muslims of Bosnia is now installed in the Serbian parliament is taken as a signal to the Kosovars of the treatment they can expect to face once the Bosnian conflict ended.
Already the policy of driving the Kosovars out of the province into Albania has begun. If this is stepped up and becomes a programme of mass expulsions, or a reign of terror is unleashed against the Kosovars, neighbouring Albania could be drawn into a military clash. This could develop into a prolonged war, along the lines of that between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union. This would inevitably spill over into Macedonia, where 25% of the population is of ethnic Albanian origin. Macedonia is already a cauldron waiting to erupt. It has also experienced a 14% drop in production with unemployment rising to over 20% of the workforce. The very existence of a ‚Macedonian state‘ has been a bone of contention with Greece. Until recently it has stubbornly refused to refer to this state as ‚Macedonia‘, insisting that it be referred to as Skopje. It has taken its opposition to Macedonia to the extent of offering aid and succour to the Serbian regime: ‚the enemy of my enemy is my friend‘.
If war should break out between Albania and Serbia then Greece could be drawn in. This in turn could lead to the intervention of Turkey in support of its co-religionists in Albania and Macedonia. This could then lead to clashes between Greece and Turkey.
Nor is this the end of the matter. Serbia itself could be wracked by ethnic clashes, with one third of its population made up of Albanians, Hungarians and Muslims. In Vojvodina Serbian discrimination against the 400,000 Hungarian minority could also lead to a conflict with Hungary. Thus the seeds of a future bloody conflagration engulfing the Balkans as a whole could be in preparation in Bosnia at the present time.
* * *
This tragedy however is only ‚inevitable‘ given the incapacity of capitalism to solve the accumulated ethnic and national problems of the region. New Lebanons on a gigantic scale could engulf the area. But this is as nothing compared to the nationalist nightmare that could rip apart Russia and the states which made up the former USSR. The only way of avoiding this catastrophe is for the creation of powerful organisations of the working class, armed with a clear Marxist programme capable of showing a way out of this impasse.
Many workers in Britain and elsewhere, for entirely commendable reasons, see the need for action to be taken to prevent the slaughter of the Bosnian Muslims at the moment. Some even lean towards support for troops to be sent in or at least sanctions to be deployed against the Serbs. However we have demonstrated above that it is not just the Serbs but the Croat and Muslim incipient capitalist elements, together with imperialism, who bear the responsibility for this situation.
The analogy which has been drawn by some of Labour’s left with Spain in 1936 is entirely erroneous. That was a civil war involving the overwhelming majority of the working class who attempted to make a revolution on the one side, pitted against the Franco fascists and their Italian and German cohorts. There, the call for workers‘ sanctions – boycott of goods, for dockers to refuse to load arms etc. – against Franco’s fascist forces was entirely legitimate. This was an expression of international working class solidarity. Equally the demand for material aid including arms for the workers of Spain was entirely justified. So also in the case of fascist Italy’s intervention against Abyssinia in the 1930s, the call for a workers‘ boycott of Italian goods was justified. The call for sanctions against Serbia in this instance, however, would be entirely inappropriate for the labour movement in Britain or elsewhere. Serbian workers would see this as British workers supporting British bosses to attack Serbia. It would only cement the support of the besieged population of Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia behind the Milošević regime.
The call for sanctions against Serbia in this instance, would be entirely inappropriate for the labour movement.
The leadership of the labour movement in Britain, as with their counterparts internationally, completely failed at the beginning of this tragedy to put forward a socialist and class solution. A call for the formation of a party of the working class across national and ethnic lines, backed up with material support to organise trade unions, would have found an echo. Now the workers of the region will pay a terrible price for the absence of socialist and Marxist ideas and solutions.
Nevertheless an inevitable recoil will take place at a certain stage in opposition to the national and ethnic madness which has gripped the area. Paradoxically it is recent events in the Lebanon which could be a hopeful pointer to the future of the workers of the Balkan region.
Lebanon, and particularly Beirut, have in the past been a byword for. murderous religious and national conflict. Last year however, in the teeth of a devastating economic crisis, Muslim and Christian militiamen threw down their arms, came together and participated in a massive general strike. If a conscious Marxist leadership with mass influence had existed this could have provided a lasting solution for the area. It could have become the starting point for completely transforming not just the situation in the Lebanon, but created a mood for class unity and independent class action throughout the Middle East.
One thing is certain. Capitalism can offer no future other than economic crisis, mass unemployment, huge social deprivation, and murderous religious, ethnic and nationalist conflict to the peoples of Bosnia, the other states of the former Yugoslavia and the Balkan region as a whole. Salvation for them lies along the road of independent class action culminating in a socialist Balkan federation, with full guaranteed cultural and other rights for all minorities, as a step towards a socialist united states of Europe.
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