Kevin Simpson: The Balkans at war

[Militant International Review, No. 49, Autumn 1992, p. 12-19]

Why has civil war exploded into life in a region where national and ethnic tensions had apparently been reduced for over forty years? Kevin Simpson examines the Balkan crisis.

Dubrovnik, Split, Sarajevo … names that before 1989 were only mentioned in the media as picturesque resorts, are now synonymous with blood on the streets, besieged cities, and destitute refugees. The third Balkan war is another example of Bush’s ‘new world order’. The difference is that this conflict strikes at the heart of the stability of Europe. It has. Already caused the biggest population movement in Europe since world war two. with tens of thousands killed and injured.

Will the civil war spread? How can a peaceful solution be found?

Why has this civil war developed? Will it spread? Will the west intervene militarily? How can a peaceful solution be found?

For centuries, the Balkans has been a region of periodic conflict, whose peoples have been subjugated and set against one another. The different social systems of feudalism, capitalism, and Stalinism all proved incapable of answering the national aspirations of the Balkan people.

Now the attempt to restore capitalism following the fall of Stalinism has catapulted the unresolved national tensions to the surface. The west promised the Balkan people democracy. Freedom of choice, and a decent standard of living. Instead, it brought them ‘a living hell.

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The main ethnic groups which made up what became known as Yugoslavia are Slavs. who trace their origins to Asian tribes. Originally only divided by time and geography. They soon fell under the influence of the huge empires in the region. The Balkans was a meeting point between the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Ottoman empires — the division between the two separating Croatia (under the influence of the former) from Serbia (under the influence of the latter).

It became the fracture line where east met west and also the division between the two wings of Christianity: Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox church. Muslims, who mainly lived in what became known as Bosnia-Hercegovina, were originally a religious sect who faced persecution from the Christian Orthodox church and converted to Islam, after being invaded by the Turks. The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires used the people of the Balkans to fight proxy battles for them, manipulating religious differences to deepen the division between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. Their leaders received limited concessions and material reward in return.

The beginning of the collapse of the feudal empires in the region, spurred on by the development of capitalism in western Europe, saw the setting up of independent Balkan states. The first being Serbia. However, capitalism was weak, developing late in the region, and unable to play an independent role, relying on foreign investment and technology. It was also tied to the remnants of feudalism. the landlords and their privileges. Firstly French, and then German, Russian and British imperialism, attempted to exploit the economic and strategic importance of the region.

Capitalism was unable to unify the Slav people

The earlier development of capitalism in north western Europe was progressive in that states were unified, opening the way for huge economic development and trade. In many causes, regional and ethnic conflicts were smoothed over and became part of history. But in its weak condition, capitalism was unable to play the role of unifying the Slav people on the basis of a peaceful solution to national and ethnic frictions. In each state, it was forced to viciously exploit the workers and peasants in order to survive on the world market. To divert the attention of the masses from the real causes of the problems they faced, nationalism was used – the reasons tor poverty and social crisis were to be found ‘across the border’, according to the capitalist class of each Balkan state. This friction often erupted into armed conflict, sometimes surreptitiously encouraged by western imperialism. The Balkan wars of 1912-1913 were an attempt by the different Balkan nations to conquer as much of the disintegrating Turkish Ottoman empire as possible. None of the contradictions were solved. As a result, the region was drawn into the first world war,

After the war, to ensure the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian empire, British and

French imperialism pushed for the formation of a new state, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats

and Slovenes, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. The allied powers were able to rest on the aspirations of the Balkan people who wanted self-determination, and the growing pan-Slavian sentiment.

In fact this new state was unstable from the beginning. representing a patchwork of ethnic and national groups. Autocratic rule was the norm. in the 1920s the Communist Party, trade unions. and even the opposition Croatian Peasants’ Party were banned. This was the type of ‘democracy capitalism provided. The Croats and Slovenes had been forced into an unequal unity with Serbia. Serbs predominated in the state machine. The tension reached such a level that Croatian members of parliament were shot during a debate in 1928. Brutal repression was used, and a dictatorship under the King was declared,

Under the influence of fascist Germany, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite pact. This alliance with Germany resulted in a mass uprising. Led by junior army officers. German occupation of Yugoslavia followed. To reinforce his control, Hitler blatantly used the friction between Serbs and Croats by announcing the setting up of an independent: Croat state. It was nothing more than a puppet fascist regime.

The partisans, with Tito and the Communist Party at their head, led an armed struggle for national liberation against the fascists. Their propaganda called for the defeat of the fascist foreign occupiers. an end to poverty. and land reform. Nearly two million perished in a vicious armed struggle. By the end of the war, 800,000 men and women, including Serbs and Croats, were partisans. They drove out the German army. In its wake, the partisans‘ liberation committees took power with enormous popular support.

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The regime Tito led was an image of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The Stalinist bureaucracy of Tito's Communist Party, formed from the officer corps of the partisans, had no alternative but to nationalise what remained of the economy because of the revolutionary pressure beneath them and the vacuum that existed in society.
The planned economy, despite the inefficiency and mismanagement of the bureaucracy, led to huge industrialisation, with an estimated five-fold increase in personal incomes. Up to 1983 electricity consumption per head of population rose twelve times. Increases in living standards saw a reduction in tension between national and ethnic groups. A contributory factor was the explosion in urban growth which drew together people from different national groups in towns and cities.
But how did the reality compare to Tito's propaganda as far as ethnic and national minorities were concerned? The hopes of the Yugoslav masses were high – the experience of fighting fascism had an effect in beginning to forge a Yugoslav national consciousness. But this was dependent on the new regime guaranteeing a decent standard of living and an end to the oppression of minorities.
Leon Trotsky explained in The Revolution Betrayed that demands for national and ethnic autonomy could come into conflict with the needs of a centralised planned economy in a socialist society. He outlined how this contradiction could begin to be resolved: "Only the actual participation of the interested masses in the administration of their own destinies can at each new stage draw the necessary lines between the legitimate demands of economic centralism and the living gravitations of national culture." (pp 170-171)
But genuine workers' participation is incompatible with the rule of a bureaucracy. Instead, the Yugoslav regime used reform and repression, in different quantities at different times, to keep the lid on national tensions.
Tito was forced into a delicate balancing act. Power was decentralised right down to local level in an attempt to stimulate economic growth and to appease the demands of the increasingly restive bureaucracies in each republic. But to remain in control, Tito, like so many others before him, used divide and rule. While formally conceding power to the republics, he played a potentially explosive ethnic chess game. He ensured that ethnic minorities took a high proportion of administrative posts in each republic: in Croatia and Kosovo, it was Serbs, while in Serbia, to a lesser extent, it was Croats and Hungarians.
Decentralisation resulted in a huge growth in the bureaucracy. The economic crisis was worsened by the country's isolation after the split between the Yugoslav and Soviet bureaucracy. Despite balancing between east and west, Tito's regime got the worst of both worlds – huge debts with western banks and unfavourable trade agreements with the Soviet Union. Controls on credit and foreign trade were lifted, while individual companies were allowed to set up their own banks and even print money. By the 1980s, in parts of the federation, joblessness had reached 80%, and inflation 200%.
Tito had been forced to make more concessions to the leaders of the republics than other Stalinist regimes in eastern Europe: partially because the memory of previous ethnic conflict was still fresh but also because no ethnic group had an overwhelming specific weight within the federation, Also Yugoslavia did not have the backing of the material resources and armed might of the Soviet Union. In the 1974 constitution the Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina were given status as a nation, while Kosovo and Vojvodina were elevated to autonomous republics. At the same time it was made illegal to tell jokes which were based on ethnic background. But such concessions did not pacify ordinary workers; they merely increased their anger because of raised, and then dashed, expectations. Moreover, each concession was balanced by rival legislation in an attempt to maintain ultimate central control.
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Unlike most of eastern Europe, the 1980s was a period of huge upheaval and struggle by the Yugoslav working class. In the initial stages protest had a strong nationalist content, representing a reaction by workers to their oppression by a corrupt and inefficient Serbian dominated federal bureaucracy. Workers felt their oppression as workers but also as members of a national minority, and expressed their opposition as such. Moreover, discontent was encouraged by the bureaucracy of each republic, within certain limits, as a lever against the central Yugoslavian bureaucracy.
Strikes became more prolonged and militant. In 1988, the trade unions called for a federal general strike to bring down the government. This was backed by the occupation of the federal parliament. The workers' calls for 'genuine self-management socialism' represented a step towards the ideas of political revolution; the need to drive out the bureaucracy and put in its place a regime of genuine workers' democracy and a planned economy based on the needs of society.
Significantly, strike waves stopped recognising the borders between the republics – in 1988 there were federal postal and telecommunications strikes as well as railway strikes involving Slovenian and Serbian workers. Wide layers could experience that they had more in common with fellow workers in different republics than they did with their own 'leaders'. If there had been a genuine revolutionary party that could explain that a political revolution to drive out the bureaucracy was necessary, then the working class could have taken power, thus laying the basis for solving the problems of the federation.
The lack of such an alternative destined the movement to setbacks and eventual defeat. The federal and Montenegrin governments resigned in 1989. They were replaced by new bureaucrats. While reforms were granted, these were whittled away, and with them workers' confidence and morale.
The 1980s represented a turning point for Yugoslavia: economic collapse and stagnation; the intensification of a struggle between the federal and republican bureaucracies; titanic struggles by the working class. Economic regression was exacerbated by increasingly contradictory social and economic policies, at federal and republican level, as different sections of the bureaucracy clashed in the face of the impasse of Yugoslav society.
The huge demonstrations etc. which heralded the collapse of Stalinism in 1989 in other eastern European countries were not repeated in Yugoslavia, where the movement was in retreat. Yet the same conditions were present: economic collapse and hatred of the bureaucracy. And the same lack of a strong revolutionary organisation meant no socialist alternative was put to Stalinism.
The disillusionment with Stalinism, which dirtied the name of socialism, along with the capitalist boom of the 1980s, saw illusions in the market grow. These were given force by Yugoslav guest-workers returning home from Germany and other western European countries. Counter-revolution began to take hold. But there were potentially broader foundations for counter-revolution in Yugoslavia. Economic collapse was greater and the working class had struggled for a decade without seemingly being able to fundamentally change the situation. Added to this were underlying, and unresolved,national and ethnic tensions.
Pro-capitalist tendencies within the bureaucracy had gradually gained the upper hand, at a different rate in different parts of the federation. They were greater in Slovenia and Croatia, because of higher living standards and economic development. and historic links with Germany and Austria. There was increasing opposition to funding the federal bureaucracy and the poorer republics. The demand for independence articulated by the new pro-capitalist governments of these two republics reflected this.
The attempt to restore the market in Yugoslavia resulted in all the contradictions of postwar capitalism being injected into the foundations of society. Trade between the republics collapsed as it did with the rest of eastern Europe and the then Soviet Union. Economic catastrophe loomed: confusion, fear and disappointment increased. In desperation the working class looked for an explanation of the problems they faced.
Running in tandem with this process was the increasing use of nationalist rhetoric by the republican governments, especially Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milošević, of Croatia and Serbia respectively. This was to divert the attention of the masses from their economic plight but was also a means by which these ex-Communists distanced themselves from the old Stalinist regime. With the collapse of Stalinism, the federal government increasingly played second fiddle to the republics. Serbia became the dominant force, backed by the Serbian dominated hierarchy of the Yugoslav army (JNA).
Tudjman and Milošević increasingly leant on reactionary nationalist paramilitary groups to consolidate their power In order not to lose support to their ultra-nationalist allies, they became prisoners of their own propaganda and were caught in an ever ascending spiral of nationalist demagoguery. Soon after his election, Tudjman sacked all Serbs employed by the state and replaced them with Croats. For the majority of Serbs. whose ethnic origins were previously of little importance, this became a burning issue. So did apparently small differences in the Serb and Croat languages: All street signs had names in Serbian Cyrillic lettering deleted from them, leaving only their equivalent in Croat Latin lettering.
The Serbian government responded by denouncing the Croatian government as a return to the fascist Ustashe regime. The forcible incorporation of Vojvodina and Kosovo into Serbia, together with the demand of the JNA that the federation should stay together, led to Croat fears of a 'Greater Serbia'.
The declaration of independence of Slovenia and Croatia was a blow against the prestige and potential resources of both the federal army and the Serbian ruling class. To stop the complete disintegration of the federation, they invaded Slovenia, but without points of support, were forced to withdraw to concentrate on the more easily defendable Croatian territory with its sizeable Serbian minority. Milošević and the Serbian paramilitaries whipped up fear among the Croatian minority Serb population. Serb paramilitaries were handed the JNA arsenals. Redivision was taken to its horrifying logical conclusion and the phrase 'ethnic cleansing' entered modern day vocabulary. 
With this background, the spread of civil war to the ethnically heterogenous Bosnia-Hercegovina was certain. But the demand by the EC powers that a referendum be held in order to 'legalise' the calls for independence, simply brought that forward. Despite the fact that the Muslims constituted the largest ethnic group in the republic, they were caught in a struggle between the Serb and Croat armies for increased influence and territory. Now the ethnic balance of regions in the republic has been changed, using terror and armed force, with the Muslims, who form 43% of the population, having 5% of the territory.
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The descent into civil war in the Balkans is a huge test for Marxism. Militant's aim is a society where there are no borders or barriers, with complete cultural freedom and no discrimination on the basis of race, religion or creed. 
The Bolsheviks' sensitive approach to the national question ensured their victory during the 1917 Russian revolution. The demand for the right of all oppressed nations to self-determination formed a vital part of their programme. It was designed to win the confidence of the masses of oppressed nations as a first step to convincing them of the idea of a voluntary federation of socialist states.
'An abstract presentation of the question of nationalism is of no use at all'
However, Lenin once said: "An abstract presentation of the question of nationalism in general is of no use at all." The concrete conditions of any situation must be taken into account, above all the level which national consciousness has reached. This is necessary to be able to formulate an approach which, while recognising the justifiable fears of a minority, acts as a bridge to unify workers in the struggle for socialism, whatever their ethnic or national background.
Before the referenda on independence in Slovenia and Croatia, the most conscious workers and youth could have been convinced by an explanation which supported the right to self-determination, but warned that independence on a capitalist basis would solve none of their problems. While defending the right to independence, if that was the wish of the majority, at that stage we argued for greater autonomy and the extension of democratic rights for national groupings in education, culture and so on. We warned that capitalist 'independence' would, in fact, lead to the subservience of Slovenia and Croatia to the western European economic giants, particularly Germany. The way forward was to drive out the bureaucracy through political revolution, and construct a new, voluntary, federation of workers' democracies with an integrated planned economy which reflected the needs of the working class of all national and ethnic groups.
But the overwhelming votes for independence, followed by the intervention of the Serb-dominated federal army, were concrete facts which could not be ignored. The situation was completely changed. No support could appear to be given to the attempt by the Yugoslav army to forcibly hold together the federation and Serbian domination of it. It was then necessary for Slovenian workers to be won to the idea of an independent workers' state in which the new capitalist class was driven from power, as a first step to a Balkan federation of workers' democracies. A similar approach was necessary for workers in Croatia, with one vitally important difference.
The only way to prevent the Serbian minority in Croatia from being won over to the ultra-right Serbian nationalists would have been to convince them they would not face discrimination in an independent workers' Croatia. This could only have been done by a mass movement to drive out the nationalist Tudjman government. To have successfully allayed the fears of the Serbian minority this would have had to have a programme which guaranteed the rights of the Serbian minority to speak their own language, practise their own culture freely, and ensured no discrimination in jobs or education on the basis of national background.
In Bosnia-Hercegovina, the government rested on the fears of the Muslims and Croats, and demanded independence from the Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. But self-determination for whom? Did Serbs and Croats living in the republic regard themselves as Bosnians? The civil war in Croatia had already begun to tear apart the different communities in Bosnia. Rather than protecting the Bosnian republic from Serbian aggression, the drive for independence by the Bosnian regime merely pushed the Serbian minority into the hands of Milošević and his even more reactionary henchman in the republic, Radovan Karadžić. It therefore guaranteed the dismemberment of the republic.
The descent into civil war was not predetermined, even after the lull following the movements of the 1980s. A decisive movement of the working class could have cut across the bloodshed. Based on democratically elected committees from all sections of the working class and committed to workers' unity, such a movement could have launched a massive campaign of propaganda, demonstrations and strike action in support for an end to the civil war. Guarantees for the rights of minorities would have to have been linked with the building of defence committees against the armed paramilitaries. In turn, these would only have had an attractive power if they had been linked to the struggle to overthrow the nationalist capitalist regimes in the different republics and the fight for a socialist society.
Opportunities for building such a movement have occurred. Following the declaration of Bosnian independence in February, workers and youth from all of Sarajevo's communities occupied the parliament to defend it against Serbian paramilitaries. In March 1991, an anti-Milošević student movement developed in Belgrade. One month later 700,000 textile workers took to the streets to demand better wages, the biggest movement of industrial workers since the war. But these movements were isolated and hamstrung by a leadership with nationalist tendencies.
In Bosnia, the instinctive reaction of people who had been living side by side for decades was at first for unity. As late as August of this year, in Trnopolje, an unprotected refugee camp attacked by Serb paramilitaries was defended by local Serbs. Sarajevo is still defended by an ethnically mixed population.
Yet this instinctive unity against the horrific prospect of bloody civil war, without a programme for socialism, could not put forward an explanation as to how to build a society where national conflict could be solved. In a situation where no alternative was offered, the intervention of even small groups of well-armed paramilitaries was enough to tear apart formerly united communities.
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A new Greater Serbia, with imperialist aspirations in the region, represents a threat to the stability of central and eastern Europe. This is why atrocities committed by the Serbian paramilitaries and soldiers are trumpeted from every newspaper while those perpetrated by the Croats are given scant coverage. The dictatorship of Milošević is attacked while the autocratic rule of Croatia's Tudjman is almost ignored.
For months a furious debate has taken place amongst the western imperialist powers about armed intervention in the Balkans. Military intervention is always a high risk strategy and is the last choice for imperialism. This debate has revealed the different tensions among the world's imperialist powers, increasingly obvious since the collapse of Stalinism. Yet their paralysis at finding a solution is reminiscent of a rabbit transfixed in the headlamps of a fast approaching car.
The immediate effects of this conflict for western European imperialism have been: an interruption in trade and possibilities of developing new markets in Slovenia and Croatia; the destabilisation caused by the biggest influx of refugees into western Europe since world war two; and most importantly, the danger of the conflict spreading to surrounding states with the possibility of regional. powers like Turkey and Greece being drawn in. As a defence analyst for the Institute for Public Policy Research argued recently: "It is about Europe's future security policy in eastern Europe and the Balkans … By not taking direct action of any kind … we are telling potential dictators to go ahead with ethnic cleansing and grabbing land."
US imperialism's concern was not as immediate as in the Gulf because the war is not on its doorstep and doesn't threaten western oil supplies. But from the beginning the US has been concerned at the long-term effect on the world balance of forces. Because of apparent inaction by the EC powers, the US felt forced to enter the debate. But the US bourgeois themselves are not united on a strategy, with the joint chief of staff, Colin Powell, recently coming out against any military intervention.
A long-term danger for imperialism worldwide is the creation of a new European diaspora – made up of Bosnia's Muslims. A new Muslim consciousness is being forged as a result of bitter resentment at their abandonment and the oppression they have faced. For Germany, with a large Turkish immigrant population, and Spain and France, with their big communities of north African Arabs who could be sympathetic to Bosnia's Muslims, this is a potential time-bomb The US representative at the UN suggested that peace-keeping measures be co-ordinated with the Bosnian government. Margaret Thatcher suggested supplying arms to Bosnian Muslims. These proposals represented a desire to try to draw the Bosnian Muslim leaders into the orbit of western imperialism.
The human tidal wave of refugees that has flooded into western Europe has posed the most immediate problem for EC governments, particularly those with, up to now, more liberal immigration policies. The preferred destination for most Yugoslav asylum seekers is Germany, where at least 200,000 have fled, many to live with relatives. Germany is seen as having the promise of high living standards and stability.
The reality is of a country whose social fabric is being undermined by the huge economic costs of reunification and the instability that has followed. On top of this is the economic crisis which has begun to drive down working class living standards, creating friction between them and refugees from all over eastern Europe. The economic cost to the German ruling class, and their fears for the future stability of their country, has led the government to propose a quota system so that all EC countries 'can bear the burden of the influx of Yugoslav refugees.
The US is most concerned at the potential involvement of Turkey and Iran. Iran's attempted acquisition of nuclear submarines from Russia and its occupation of three islands in the mouth of the Gulf, has heightened fears of its role as a regional power. US imperialism is attempting to play Turkey off against Iran without letting either gain the upper hand.
France was the first EC country to raise the idea of military intervention, to promote its interests in the region and bolster its authority as a world power against an increasingly assertive German imperialism. Other EC countries raised the possibility of using the Western European Union (WEU) for military intervention. The US was completely against this attempt by the EC powers to establish prestige for their own independent armed forces.
The imperialist powers fear becoming involved in a Beirut-type situation. At the moment, a full-scale intervention is the least likely possibility, but this is the only measure imperialism could take to impose its will upon the Serbian paramilitaries. Opponents of military intervention cite the example of Tito's partisans who tied up twelve German army divisions through guerilla attacks during the war. To prevent such an eventuality, air strikes and up to 200,000 ground troops would be required. The logistics of such an operation are staggering: 2,000 tons of provisions daily along miles of supply lines, through mountainous terrain. It could also mean all-out war against Serbia and eventually, armed opposition from both Croat and Muslim paramilitaries.
Those who favour full-scale military intervention question local support for Serbian paramilitaries. They doubt the morale of the Yugoslav troops and the cohesiveness of the Serbian regime. One report spoke of only a 30% response to the last army call-up in Serbia. But low morale and splits in the Serbian regime could turn into their opposites as a result of western intervention, as memories of previous foreign invasions are invoked.
Whether imperialism steps up its military commitments depends on developments in the region. The decision to allow UN troops to be lightly armed and return fire opens up the possibility of the west being drawn into all-out armed conflict without having made the conscious decision to do so. What is clear is that the UN peacekeeping force has tailed miserably so far. In effect it is being used to police and legitimise a redivided Balkans.
One factor in determining future developments is the power struggle within the Serbian ruling class. Portrayed as a clash between Milan Panić, the prime minister of the so-called Yugoslav federation, and Serbian president, Slobodan Milošević, it is in fact a struggle between two trends within the new Serbian ruling class. Milošević represents a more nationalist section which is not prepared to allow anything to bar it from building a Greater Serbia. Milan Panić, a millionaire businessman wanted in the US for fraud, was regarded as a joke at first. Despite his maverick nature, he represents those who fear that continued isolation from the west will lose them everything.
Whatever Panić's conciliatory attitude, both wings want as much territory, and therefore influence, as they can get. Both are prepared to make concessions in Serbian occupied territory in Croatia to come to an agreement with Tudjman about the final carving-up of Bosnia-Hercegovina, as the federal army's recent agreement to withdraw from the Prevlaka peninsula in Croatia shows. But Milošević is more tied to the reactionary paramilitaries who have their base in the Serbian enclaves in Croatia, limiting his ability to make concessions.
It is not clear who will be victorious. There is no doubt that Milošević still retains influence within the state apparatus – in February and May there were extensive purges of the military. The important point is not that Milošević was able to carry out these purges but that they were necessary in the first place. At the moment, Panić, resting on ordinary Serbs' discontent with the hardships of war, is reported to have 70% support in public opinion polls. However, it is unlikely that he would encourage a movement to drive out Milošević at the moment. He fears the anger of the working class more than he does the danger of Milošević's policies. If Panić was to win the upper hand, then it would increase the likelihood of Serbia agreeing to a short-term ceasefire in Bosnia. But it would not provide a long-term solution and there is no guarantee that Panić could make the ceasefire stick with the Serbian paramilitaries.
A recent CIA secret report estimates that between 30,000 and 217,000 people could die in Bosnia this winter through lack of supplies. This prompted the announcement that US imperialism wanted a no-flight zone over Bosnia. This reflects the US's fear of the effects of mass starvation on world public opinion and on the region. Such a move would probably reduce fighting in the short term.
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But there are more dominoes waiting to fall, Kosovo could be the next candidate to be consumed by civil war. Made up of 90% ethnic Albanians, the republic has suffered most from Serbian oppression. Virtually under military occupation, over 100,000 Albanians have been dismissed from their public sector jobs. An underground Albanian government has been elected. An uprising in Kosovo would have implications for neighbouring Albania which wants unification with Kosovo. If an intense struggle developed this demand could gain mass support in Kosovo.
Fighting there could easily spread to neighbouring Macedonia which has an Albanian minority in the west. Macedonia is far from stable – the government still awaits recognition and desperately needed aid from the EC. This has been blocked by Greece which says Macedonian independence will lead to claims on its territory, which contains a Macedonian minority. Macedonia's economic crisis, worsened by lack of recognition, has already led to the fall of one government and could lead to a much more nationalist administration that did make claims on Greek territory. Turkey, seeing the opportunity to strengthen its position in the region, has supported Macedonian attempts to have its independence recognised.
Even without the spread of civil war, borders are in the process of being redrawn. Croatian and Serbian republics have been announced within Bosnia. It is likely that this republic's effective cantonisation will be completed shortly, leaving a city-state of Bosnia, in Sarajevo. As this process reaches its conclusion, it is possible that non-Muslims will leave or be driven out of Sarajevo. It is also likely that the semi-truce between Croatia and the Bosnian government will break down, especially after the former have reached agreement with the Serb government on how to divide Bosnia, leading to a flare-up of Muslim-Croat conflict.
Intra-ethnic strife is also a possibility especially if the Croatian and Serbian governments agree to limit the independence of Serb enclaves in Croatia. There are already strains between Milošević and the leadership of the Serb republic of Krajina, an enclave in western Croatia. And in August, Nikola Kraljević, a commander of the HOS (the neo-fascist Croatian paramilitary group), was shot dead in Bosnia by Croatian soldiers.
The longer-term economic prospects for all the republics, bad before, are now dire. The different republics started off in a worse position than their eastern European counterparts, because of the integrated nature of the federal economy. The collapse of markets in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union crippled the republics even further. The development of civil war has meant what inter-republic trade there was, came to a standstill.
War has brought hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and shortages. Serbia may see 100,000% inflation by the end of the year. Output is 30% down on last year, while unemployment is over 25%. On top of this the burden of housing and feeding hundreds of thousands of Serbian refugees is being carried by the working class. Croatia's war effort has cost $18bn, with one third of its industry destroyed. As a result output will be down by 30% this year. Even Slovenia, which has not been directly involved in the war, has inflation of 30%.
The regimes in the different republics will become increasingly autocratic, in order to remain in power, in the face of anti-war movements and struggles for better living standards. The possibility of dictatorships similar to those in the interwar period will be present in the future.
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A solution to the Balkan crisis can only be found by the working class of the region. The collapse of the federation has unfortunately effectively split the trade unions along republican lines. There are some independent trade unions such as the fiercely anti-Milošević journalists' union, Nezavisnost. And one million workdays have been lost through strike action in Slovenia, which has seen the beginnings of workers' struggle.
Eventually, sickened by the carnage and by the devastation of living standards, whilst the new profiteers get rich, workers will move into conflict with their ruling classes. If an end to sectarian conflict is to be achieved then from the beginning these movements will have to have a sensitive approach to the national question. The experience of the struggle will raise workers' consciousness as to the need for unity. But it will require the conscious intervention of a revolutionary organisation which is sensitive to the historical experience of oppressed national minorities, and takes this into account not only when formulating its demands but in its day-to-day activity, to begin to lay the basis to end national conflict.
Guarantees against discrimination of all national or ethnic minorities will have to be the norm. The right of all refugees to return to their republics will have to be fought for. To drive out the paramilitaries, anti-sectarian committees of self-defence will have to be set-up, democratically elected and under the control of the working class.
This will be the foundation of a struggle to defeat capitalism in the Balkans. A Balkan federation of workers' democracies based on a democratic planned economy would lay the basis for ending the bloodshed that has engulfed the region for two years. This would be a fitting revenge for the false ideologies which have imprisoned the Balkan peoples over the last century.