Well since I've promised to say nothing
demonizing about that nice charmer in Belgrade
who undoubtedly cries at the opera, allow me to
annoy a bunch of people on this list on another front...
Louis Proyect has put together an account of
the Albanians in Kosovo-Methohija that blames them
for their troubles. They are backward, tribal, patriarchal,
male chauvinists who are into blood feuds (and others
have added that they only like to study about Albanian
culture and literature rather than anything useful), and who
have too high a birth rate.
History starts now in World War II when they were allied
to the Italian fascists and reportedly didn't even help Enver
Hoxha, much less Tito's folks. The UCK/KLA has people
descended from fighters in the Skanderberg Division (as
well as former Maoists) and are thus "politically incoherent."
So, I guess they deserve all that is happening to them, if
anything is.
Suppose such an account were to be made by an
Afrikaaner in South Africa about local blacks to justify
apartheid. After all, after 1990, the locally majority Albanians
were removed from positions of authority, not just from all
those classes on Albanian culture at the too-large University
of Pristina.
So, how does one justify domination of a majority by a
minority? Well, one suggests that they are a majority because
they have a high birth rate. That follows from their being a
bunch of tribal male chauvinists who have blood feuds. Could
not an Afrikaaner have said all this about South African blacks?
Of course there are differences. There is no significant
racial difference between the Serbs and the Albanians in
contrast to the situation in South Africa. In South Africa, where
most of the blacks were converted to Protestant Christianity of
one form or another (albeit with some remnant tribal religious
elements in some cases), religion is not a source of difference
or conflict, in contrast with Yugoslavia. Of course the Afrikaaners
had no "homeland" they could return to, having been in place
for 300 years with their own locally evolved language and culture.
Of course the Serbs claim Kosmet as their "cradle," but they
have Serbia Proper to go to, just as the Albanians have Albania
to go to. It is also true that there were no laws against marriages
between the groups or overtly imposed segregation (yes, just for
the record, I do think the whites in South Africa were more
oppressive of the blacks than the Serbs have been of the
Albanians in Kosmet, bottom line).
Naturally Louis will argue that I have completely goofed this
up by not possessing a proper class analysis. In South Africa
presumably the ANC was socialist. After all, look at all the
companies they have nationalized since coming to power.
Clearly international capital had good reason to fear them....
Now presumably the Albanians are a cat's paw for
international capital against the virtuous vanguard of socialism
hanging out in Belgrade. The case does get stronger when one
looks at the demands for capitalism in Kosmet in the Rambo
Accord. But things are kind of messy. Not only do we have
the remnant Maoism of parts of the UCK/KLA, but we have
the fact that Albanian Kosovars are the poorest people in all
the former Yugoslavia. If they are not proletariat, then what are
they, lumpenproletariat? Or just undeserving peasantry?
This starting in World War II is also just as potched as
starting in 1989. After all, between 1878 and 1912, there was
a Serbia that did just fine without possessing Kosovo-Metohija.
That zone was still a part of the Ottoman Empire and had a
population even then in which the Serbs were a minority. Serbia
seized the province in 1912, against the wishes of several of
the neighboring countries and only thanks to the strong backing
of tsarist Russia. The period from then until World War II was
one of Serbian royalist rule and domination that at times was dictatorship
and never was remotely socialist or progressive.
The reaction to coming under Albanian fascist rule in WW II must
be seen in the light of that.
No, none of this is particularly simple. But I do not think that
people are going to be convinced to oppose a ground invasion
by presenting one-sided histories of what has happened there,
especially the stuff that is essentially ethnic slander that would
be thrown off these lists if it were applied to Indians or blacks.
Barkley Rosser
