==> Having finally run wires down into my all-purpose disaster shelter
this past weekend, I spent a short while online in search of
overlooked gems. Here is something that none of the list's
NYT hounds noticed during the summer, apparently, presented in
his inimitable manner by the raging terror of psn-l.
My own $0.02 on this is that Rosenthal is right, but not entirely;
5 billion dollars is not much more than a maitre d's tip these days
and certainly not enough to justify the risk of another Balkan war.
Palestine was the main source of potash in the British Empire,
but that's not what put the blood and bone into Zionism.
The irredentist passions of individual Serbs for Kosovo may be
variable over time and circumstance but should never be totally
dismissed, as Rosenthal does in his preface.
valis
From: "Steve Rosenthal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 15:59:45 +0000
Subject: Ko$$$ovo
As the U.S. and NATO threaten to carry out air strikes in response to
recent Serbian massacres of Albanians in Kosovo, I am posting
excerpts from a New York Times article that appeared this past July.
The article shows literally what lies underneath the genocidal
warfare and ethnic cleansing Balkan politicians have unleashed during
the 1990s. While "experts" pontificate about ancient ethnic
enmities, this article reveals the capitalist interests that actually
promote the nationalist propaganda and disastrous wars.
The Trepca mining complex in Kosovo is worth at least $5 billion and
is "the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans." It's the
real prize in the fighting over Kosovo, along with 17 billion tons of
coal reserves.
The article below, even after editing, is a bit long, but it is well
worth reading. I learned more from it than from weeks of reports on
National Public Radio. The Albanian miners, whose parents defeated
an earlier generation of fascists in the 1940s, who marched
under the red flag against the fascist Milosevic, and who were later
fired and replaced by him, deserve a place in our memory for
upholding internationalist working class principles.
= = = = = = = =
July 8, 1998
Kosovo War's Glittering Prize Rests Underground
By CHRIS HEDGES
TARI TNG, Yugoslavia-The metal cage tumbled to the guts of the Stari
Tng mine, with its glittering veins of lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and
silver, its stagnant pools of water and muck, its steamy blasts, its
miles of dank, gloomy tunnels and its vast stretches of Stygian
darkness.
Half a mile underground, hissing rubber air hoses were looped along
tunnel walls and small lights hooked on the hard hats of miners bobbed
in the inky universe. Worm-like diesel loaders roared through the
corridors, laden with sparkling ore, and huge drills snarled and spat
at the rock.
"There is over 30 percent lead and zinc in the ore," said Novak
Bjelic, the mine's beefy director. "The war in Kosovo is about the
mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait-the heart of Kosovo. We
export to France, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, the Czech Republic,
Russia and Belgium. "We export to a firm in New York, but I would
prefer not to name it. And in addition to all this Kosovo has 17
billion tons of coal reserves. Naturally, the Albanians want all
this for themselves."
The sprawling state-owned Trepca mining complex, the most valuable
piece of real estate in the Balkans, is worth at least $5 billion and
has made millions of dollars for Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, according to his critics. Serbia and its junior partner,
Montenegro, are what remains of Yugoslavia.
In March 1989, Milosevic revoked the autonomous status given to the
ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the 2 million people in
Kosovo, and he has refused to return any kind of self-governance. He
is trying to crush a mounting armed resistance to his rule, and it
appears that the mines, at least for a while, will earn him even more
money.
The Stari Tng mine, with its warehouses, is ringed with smelting
plants, 17 metal treatment sites, freight yards, railroad lines, a
power plant and the country's largest battery plant.
"In the last three years we have mined 2,538,124 tons of lead and
zinc crude ore," said Bjelic, 58, "and produced 286,502 tons of
concentrated lead and zinc and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc,
cadmium, silver and gold."
When the Nazis seized this corner of the Balkans in 1941, they handed
over the hovels in Pristina, the provincial capital, to the Italian
fascists. But they kept the British-built Trepca mines for the
Reich, shipping out wagonloads of minerals for weapons and producing
the batteries that powered the U-boats. Submarine batteries, along
with ammunition, are still produced in the Trepca mines. The mining
history reaches back to the Romans, who hacked out silver from the
quarries.
In 1988, as Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, the fiercest resistance
to Milosevic's vision of a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia roared out of the
shafts of the four Trepca mines.
Angered by the growth of the Serbian nationalist movement led by
Milosevic, the ethnic Albanian miners, who made up 75 percent of the
23,000 employees, shut down the mines and organized a 30-mile-long
protest march to Pristina. They carried photos of the late communist
leader, Josip Broz Tito, and Yugoslav flags adorned with the
communist red star.
Milosevic promised the strikers that he would respect the province's
autonomy and remove nationalist Serbs from positions of power. The
miners returned to the shafts.
A year later the miners, realizing that they had been betrayed, began
a series of hunger strikes and occupied the mines. The mine protests
led to general strikes throughout Kosovo, making Trepca the nerve
center of the resistance movement.
Serbian special policemen eventually seized the mine, carrying
weakened miners out on stretchers. When the province's autonomy was
revoked, a state of emergency was declared. The ethnic Albanian
miners were replaced with Poles, Czechs and-later-Muslim prisoners of
war captured by the Serbs in Bosnia.
These days, no more than 15 percent of the current 15,000 mine
workers are of Albanian origin, the government says, and most ethnic
Albanians insist that the figures vastly overestimate their numbers.
Branimir Dimitrijevic, one of the mine's managers, waded through a
corridor filled with water, slime and mud that reached up and wrapped
itself around his black rubber boots. A huge Swedish iron-cutting
machine, one of four in the mine, whirled and belched like some
deep-sea monster. Spotlights mounted on its cab lit up a vein of ore,
and as the minerals oxidized, creating a suffocating heat, the miners
were left gulping for air.
The workers, bare-chested and blackened with grime in the vast sweat
house, stood aside when a trolley loaded with chunks of rock rumbled
down a tunnel on the iron tracks.
"We will never give up Trepca!" he shouted over the drilling. "Serbs
will fight to defend the mine. It is ours. We know how to make war if
this is what the Albanians want.
