Re: [Marxism] Michael Parenti on demonizing Milosevic

["Michael Karadjis" <mkaradjis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Johannes Schneider wrote

> First, it was a war, what do you expect?

Quite. However, I'm not talking about the level of brutality. I was pointing
out that the war launched by Belgrade obviously had little to do with the
Krajina.
>
> What surprises me that even ten years later people in the US, Australia
> and Germany argue as if they were Serbs, Croats, Albanians etc and have to
> demonize the other side, while the 'own' side are the pure saints.

I am not sure how I demonise 'the other side' or make saints out of 'my
side'. I do not particularly have a 'side'. I have never suggested that
reactionary Croatian nationalism is not guilty of enormous crimes.

For that matter, I also have never denied that in their legitimate defence,
Bosnian Muslim and Kosovar Albanian forces committed atrocities against
Serbs and Croats, though in these cases I reject this as part of an 'all
sides are guilty' or '3 ethnic groups killing each other approach'. That
kind of intellectual laziness reminds me of the left liberal crap about
'extremists on both sides' in the palestinian conflict.

The argument however is political. The right of self-determination does not
exist just because we marxists think it sounds cool. It exists largely
because if the oppressed happen to feel that way about their oppression,
there is little positive that can be done to force them to change their
minds by using violence against them. I would have thought that was ABC.
That of course does not mean we necessarily advocate autonomy or
indepdendence or whatever, we may argue it is a bad idea in a certain
context, but they cannot be bombed into agreeing with you, that will
strengthen their desire for independence which we may in some cases happen
to believe is not a good idea.

Furthermore, we have also traditionally tried to distinguish oppressor and
oppressed, when these categories exist. The may or they may not. You for
example agree that the Kosovar Albanians were oppressed, and you support
their right to self determination, despite their appalling leadership, on
that basis, as I understand. The overwhelming domination of the state
apparatus, particularly the military, by Serbs, also in my opinion put Serb
nationalist forces in the position of oppressor generally in the decay of
Yugoslavia. The fact that the massively armed federal army intervened to
launch an all out attack on Croatia changed the nature of the war from one
between the Croatian state and the Serb nationalist militia. You may have
noticed that the war took place on Croatian soil. There was no massive
bombing of Serbia by Croat aircraft to try to carve out parts of serbia
based on tenuous Croat ethnic or historic claims, though there was this by
Croatia in Bosnia. And if this is wrong or unclear, I have no doubt about
its applicability to Bosnia and Kosova.

I mean really, yes if we were Croats we may have argued that indepdence was
not the best road, but having gone down that road, was the massive attack by
the JNA a useful way of convincing them of this (assuming that was their
aim, which of course it was not).
>
> > Furthermore, what few on the left seem to remember is that if the
Krajina
> > had a right to secede, with which I fully agree, then so did minorities
> > in Serbia who also held referendums.
>
> I expected that argument. So if you think the argument for
> self-determination until the end, you will break up bigger states into
> tiny small entities, which in the end will have even less power to resist
> the big imperialist powers.
> Think of Nigeria, e.g. . Split Nigeria into 300 seperate states? Would
> this be something progressive?

And I expected this argument. But that's evasive. Noone is saying we should
advocate splitting up anywhere. However, when a struggle erupts, you need to
relate to it in some way. You were the one who said the Serb minority in
Croatia had the same right to secede from Croatia as Croatia had from
Yugoslavia. I agreed, and simply pointed out the logic of that. Do you then
disagree? Do you think the Serbs had the right to leave Croatia, but the
Muslims, Albanians, Hungarians and Croats did not have the right to leave
Serbia?

Of course it is an entirely different matter whether or not you advocate it.
In my humble opinion, the best course would have been Yugoslaia converting
to a loose confederation, with extensive rights for minorities within each
federal unit. But that's only my opinion. As it happens, it was also the
position put by Slovenia and Croatia, who said they would only secede if a
confederation did not come to pass. In fact this was in the Croatian
referendum question. This course was absolutely rejected by all western
powers, especially the US, which insisted absolutely not only on unity but
on the current federal structure. Given Milosevic had already ripped up the
Yugoslav consititution some time before, it was in any case in vain.

This confederal idea with territorial autonomy for ethnic minorities in
areas they form a local majority was also the essence of the EU plan of
october 1991, which they put about a year too late, when they could see (if
the Left can't) that the massive war against Croatian towns and cities had
finally destroyed the old Yugoslavia, and they wanted to do whatever they
could to salavge some kind of unity. This plan was accepted by 5 republics
(even Montenegro), but not Serbia. This means that Tudjman accepted
geographical autonomy for the Serbs, but Milosevic was not willing to
consioder the same for the Albanians.

Therefore I think the best would have been a separation among republican
boundaries, with autonomy/extensive rights for minorities. It would have
been the least messy. But so what if I think that? What if the Croatian
Serbs don't agree with my wonderful opinion, because they don't believe its
possible with Tudjman? and what if Sanjak Muslims and presevo Albanians
don't agree, because they don't think it is possible with Milosevic? What
should we advocate? Bombing them into submission?

Frankly, the Krajina Serbs were the real pawns in this most cynical game
played by Milosevic and his henchmen. How anyone suympathising with the
Krajina Serbs could have anything remotely nice to say about the scummy mob
that ked them to oblivion is beyond me. While supporting their right to
secession, it should have been very strongly argued against. Krajina was a
sparsely populated wasteland which could not join Serbia because it was
separated from it by an entire republic. According to Borislav Jovic,
Milosevic's second in command at the time, Milo told Tudjman "Do what you
like with the Krajina Serbs. Impale them if you like. Our interest is not
with them, our interest is in Bosnia, we want 66 percent of Bosnia and we
will take it." For a period, Krajina was thus a convenient launching pad for
the Bosnian operation from the other side.

True or not, this was their fate. Once Milosevic had settled the division of
the region with Tudjman, with a geographically neat division of Bosnia,
enforced by the US Dayton plan, with the appropriate shifts of population,
he not only didn't raise a finger to help the Krajina serbs in late 1995, he
had not a shred of interest in some backwater in the wrong place. The
Serbian govt didn't even make much of an issue about it.

Yes, we know where Tudjman's forces got the arms and training from. But did
they need it? Given that the Krajina leaders had been bombing and besieging
the Muslim enclave of Bihac for 3 years, including with napalm and cluster
bombs, one might expect they could have put up a little defence in the only
region they had an ethnic claim. But given the fact that reports spoke of
how these gutless wonder Chetnik leaders ran away ahead of the ordinary
people, defence was obviously no longer the plan.

but whether my analysis here is right or not, and I'm damned sure it is,
there is no basis for saying, 'see, croatia had no right to independence in
1991 because look what they did in 1995'. That is the politics of evasion
widely applied on this issue, where Operation Storm is seen as something
coming out of nowhere, a sinsiter plot suspended in space and time. Reading
some accounts, you would think the war actually began with this monstrous
operation. The context of the expuslion of 150,000 Serbs from Krajina in
1995, and several tens of thousands from Western Slavonia a few months
earlier, was the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Croats in 1991. I
know that's an awfully unfashionable view around the left.
>



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