Reply to Yoshie Furuhashi, at [EMAIL PROTECTED], who wrote on the
25/9/2000 20:10:
> Nobody here has said any such thing. Behind the discontent of
> Albanians in Kosovo, there had been their poverty and
> under-development.
The reason Kosovo is impoverished and underdeveloped is because it was an
oppressed nation. You fail to see the forest for the trees. In the post-war
period, Kosovo suffered the lowest growth rate in Yugoslavia. Kosovar Serbs
were in terms of per capita measurements a privileged nation compared to
Albanians.
The reason for the frustration of blacks in ghettos in America and Britain
is their poverty, underdevelopment and persecution. Often, in the most
extreme examples, this turns into hatred for whites, and a hatred that is
thoroughly understandable even if not supportable. Similarly Catholics, or
the Irish, of Northeast Ireland, often detest the British. You completely
fail to understand the psychology of the oppressed.
The Kosovar Albanians faced mass sackings from their jobs beginning in
1989, particular the Trepca miners who staged the last demonstration in
defence of Yugoslavia. They had police kicking them randomly under the
streets. They were deprived of education and health care. They were under
martial law for years and virtual military occupation. The Kosovar Albanian
bureaucrat leaders were actually allies of Milosevic until he arrested them
all and shut down Kosovar autonomy. And, finally, there was an attempt at
their complete expulsion from Kosovar soil, something that should not be
treated as shocking since every Chetnik from Draskovic to Sesijl detailed
plans to this effect long before 1998. Indeed plans were propagated under
the Yugoslav monarchy - and the position of Serbian Marxists, who were the
only section of the Second International other than the Bolsheviks to vote
against the war, was that Kosovo was an oppressed nation.
> Albanian nationalist ideologues in Kosovo (be
> they the KLA or Rugova's Republic of Kosovo or previous generations
> of nationalists), however, have consistently advocated the course of
> action not in the interest of the Albanian masses.
I would argue that this is the case with the KLA who are and were an
imperialist proxy army. And Rugova was a bourgeois pacifist and thereby
completely useless as well. Unfortunately nationalist leaders are usually
crap, and although we defend oppressed nations we are in conflict with all
nationalist leaderships as Marxists and internationalists. The IRA's tactics
of individual terrorism have not made the reunification of Ireland and the
removal of British occupation in the Northeast any closer. Nationalist
leaders are never "interests of the masses". We support the right to
self-determination as we support the right to divorce but we don't support
secession as we don't support marriage break-ups. If there is an attempt to
suppress the right to self-determination, then we defend that right and even
the arming of the entire people to ensure that right is defended. And
frankly Serbia will never be free until Kosovo is. But separation should be
regarded as temporary. Yet what is the point of maintain via violent
coercion in a country a people who demand their right to form a nation? The
only result will be to make Serbian and Albanian workers despise each other
more and more by the day.
"Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started A War" (Julie A. Mertus, 1999,
University of California Press) investigates fully how the Milosevic regime
stirred up nationalism to gain popular legitimacy for the restoration of
capitalism and the conversion of the bureaucracy from a privileged caste to
the new bourgeoisie. Whipping up chauvinism was the only way to get the
mighty Serbian working class to heel. It reveals via first hand accounts how
the Kosovar Albanians suffered sickening national oppression you or I will
never have to face. It also exposes many myths still circulated today about
the 1981 uprising.
Thank you very much for you extremely kind offer to send me the book you
refer to, but I have a lot of available material and would feel slightly
guilty about taking a book from you like that.
All the best
Owen
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