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March 20, 2000
This month marks the first anniversary of the Balkan War, when the most powerful imperialist alliance in history launched an aerial onslaught on the remains of Yugoslavia, a devastating bombardment that lasted for nearly three months. Initiated using the pretext of the national oppression of the Kosovar Albanians, this war was to be the biggest triumph for imperialism since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, speeding up Western expansion into the East and stripping Russia entirely of its old sphere of influence, enforcing US hegemony in the region, and providing new legitimacy for NATO by giving it the mandate to launch future wars against anything that might oppose Western interests.
The reactionary Milosevic regime intentionally stirred up Serbian nationalism to gain support for a project of capitalist restoration, which they presided over, as well as thoroughly reactionary wars across the Balkans which involved the support of quasi-fascist militia. His regime was once the friend of imperialism - Milosevic was once described at Dayton as the 'man we can do business with' by the American government. The calamity of the Balkans is a conspiracy organised by imperialism and counter-revolutionary regimes such as Milosevic's and its former Croatian counterpart led by Tudjman, none of which deserve support from genuine socialists and internationalists. Only the unity of all the Balkans peoples, fighting together against both foreign imperialism and their own reactionary bourgeoisie can provide a way out of this nightimare.
As Kosovo today slips further into chaos and thousands of non-Albanians flee a co-ordinated attempt at their expulsion, NATO's excuse for occupying Kosovo - to return stability to the province - has turned out to be a farce. But the humanitarian reasons now given for the war - to stop a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovar Albanians - are a revision of history in themselves. Bill Clinton said a day before the war was launched: "We act to prevent a wider war, to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe." Wesley Clark, the now departing Supreme Commander of NATO, more recently stated that the United States continues to have "vital interests in Europe. That's the reality. We learned that lesson after World War II."
The motivation for the war is the very reason why part of the purpose of the occupying troops today is to suppress Kosovan independence - for fear it could trigger instability in Europe, America's biggest and most important market. Tim Judas in the Guardian, two months before war began, speculated on what for imperialism would be the "the doomsday scenario, [that] the spread of the war to Macedonia will suck in Serbia and Albania, and then perhaps Bulgaria and NATO members Greece and Turkey." And it is for this that NATO will supposedly militarily 'come to the rescue' of a province engaged in a civil war that had claimed 2,000 lives before March 1999, and not a true genocide such as Rwanda in 1994 when a million were butchered - because Africa has little strategic importance. It is also for this imperialism cried crocodile tears for the Kosovar Albanians, and not the thousands of Kosovar Serbs, Gypsies, Montenegrins, Turks, Slavic Muslims and others facing the wrath of America's ally, the KLA.
Indeed, this is not the first time imperialism "befriended" an oppressed nationality to further its own interests, a tactic that enjoyed its heyday with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 when the Russians ostensibly came to the defence of the Serbs from Austro-Hungarian attack, and the British intervened under the pretext of German oppression of Belgium.
Yet the propaganda around the war was that it was a humanitarian campaign to halt a "genocide" against Kosovar Albanians, a "genocide" which NATO leaders speculated could have killed several thousands during the bombing. During the war, Geff Hoon, British Foreign Officer Minister, claimed: "According to the reports we have gathered, mostly from the refugees, it appears that around 10,000 people have been killed in more than 100 massacres." US Senator Joseph Biden (Democrat) claimed: "By the time the snows fall next winter, there will be genocide documented on a large scale in Kosovo." To this day, 9 months after NATO occupied Kosovo, 2,000 bodies have been produced. Amongst the most terrifying claims was that around 700 bodies were in the Trepca mining complex, of which not a single body was produced. As the propaganda used as a pretext for the war against Yugoslavia was revealed to have no factual basis, it led to bourgeois commentators like Andrew Alexander in his column in the Mail to ask the forbidden question: "Could it turn out to be, that we killed more innocent civilians than the Serbs did?"
Of course, there can be no excuse for an operation intended to forcibly expel the entire Albanian population from Kosovo, a programme long threatened by the fascists of the Radical Party in the coalition, or for the atrocities committed by the militia and army against innocent people in the process. Yet the Western propaganda machine lied about the extent of the ethnic cleansing to whip up support for the war amongst ordinary, working class people by portraying it as a Nazi-style genocide - of which no evidence has been found.
The bombing of Yugoslavia obliterated its infrastructure, destroying everything from bridges to tobacco factories, television stations, houses and even schools. The war combined with the restoration of capitalism has transformed what was once the richest nation in Eastern Europe to the poorest in all Europe, replacing even Albania. Around 2,000 Yugoslav civilians were killed, an equal to those found murdered by the Yugoslav Army during the war, contrary to the propaganda of a new European Holocaust. The Serbian working class has been impoverished, as nearly half the population faces unemployment, and from March to May 1999 average wealth per capita sank from $1000 (or £640) to $450, putting it on near parallel with Burkino Faso.
Throughout the civil war in Kosovo, NATO backed a shadowy group known as the Kosovan Liberation Army, the KLA or 'UCK' as it is known by its Albanian acronym. Originally, it was formed from various Hoxhaite factions who worked underground in Kosovo fighting for self-determination and an Albanian republic within Yugoslavia. But it would be wrong to present the KLA as a leftist, national liberation army. The movement had been fused from two factions - one Hoxhaite, another composed of fascist-leaning supporters who glorified the Fascist occupation of Kosovo during the war in which Mussolini united Kosovo with Albania. The more reactionary wing were mainly composed of exiles in America, whilst the Hoxhaites (also reactionary!) were based in Europe. The rightwing faction became dominant, demonstrated by the use of black uniform and a salute that were both identical to those of the fascist collaborators during the war.
Indeed, the KLA began its reputation by attacking so-called Albanian "traitors" and "collaborators" with the Serbs; originally, it was Albanian dissidents who were fleeing from the once small underground sect with but a few dozen members. Their first infamous atrocities included attacks on Serbian refugees fleeing the Bosnian civil war, and bombs planted in cafes frequented by Serbs.
Their original backers were gangsters from Northern Albania who supplied them with arms, ensuring the KLA would fight for their interests. However, as their numbers were bloated by the Yugoslav security clampdown that began in February 1998, triggering civil war, American imperialism soon adopted the army. They encouraged arms to be sent to them from Albania, and exchanged intelligence with them. During the Rambouillet talks, the role of the KLA was to provoke Yugoslav forces into retaliation to build up support in the West for war. In the talks, the US ensured it could have the excuse for a bombing by threatening the KLA with breaking off support unless it signed the agreement. It then established a clause in the agreement that Yugoslavia nor any other regime with the smallest degree of sanity would agree with - the right of NATO troops to free movement in Yugoslavia - giving it the right to occupy the entire country at will.
As the war was launched, the bourgeois press enthusiastically termed the KLA as NATO's land army. Yet the KLA was not defending the Kosovar Albanian civilians, maintaining small border attacks on Yugoslav forces and merely fighting over small villages. Indeed, it violently purged the remains of its Hoxhaite wing and expelled dissident Albanians. For example, the editor of the KLA-backed newspaper "Voice of Kosovo" was murdered, an act originally blamed on the Milosevic regime but later discovered to have been the work of a KLA purge. The newspaper's motto changed from "Long Live Marxism-Leninism" to "NATO Thank You".
When Milosevic capitulated, the Yugoslav Army withdrew and NATO won occupation of Kosovo, and the KLA were immediately institutionalised by imperialism, remodelled as the armed Kosovo Protection Corps, whilst other sections existed underground. The supposed role of the KPC was for emergency disaster relief, but has been using its £30 million budget rather differently, as the Observer on the 12/03/00 reported: "instead, says the UN, it has been murdering and torturing people." And a secret report by the very organisation that funds it, the United Nations, declares it responsible for "criminal activities, killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal policing, abuse of authority, intimidation, breaches of political neutrality and hate-speech." Formally dissolved, the KLA were actually fused with the state machinery.
Far from inactive, the KLA began a mass ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian Kosovars. This was not just to include around 175,000 Kosovar Serbs, but thousands of Romas, Montenegrins, Turks, Slav Muslims, Jews, and so on, as well as dissident Albanians accused of "collaboration". A campaign of terror against the other Kosovars included murder, kidnap and torture, threats and intimidation. Hundreds of homes have been burned down. Serb refugee convoys were attacked on the way to Serbia-proper, such as on February 2nd when an elderly Serb man and woman died in one example. In Pristina, an original population of 40,000 Serbs dropped to a couple of hundred. Kosovo once contained nearly 200,000 Serbs; it is estimated around ninety percent fled the terror. The remaining gypsies, once numbering over 40,000, are confined to a single refugee camp, whilst when some fled to Italy they were turned away, whose cynical prime minister announced they had taken in enough refugees.
The terror campaign was not aimed at those militia that had been responsible for atrocities against the Kosovar Albanian masses. They had been the first to flee. It was directed at ordinary working class and peasant Serbs, often elderly. For instance, in August 1999 13 Serbian farm labourers, including teenagers, were shot dead on the way to work in the fields. A sinister pattern has emerged of elderly Serbian couples, often over 80 years old, found in their homes with their throats slit. A typical example detailed by a bourgeois reporter more critical than most of NATO, Robert Fisk, in the 24/11/99 Independent stated: "An OSCE official reports that in Zupa, a 96-year-old Serb man was found bound and gagged with a gunshot wound to the head. In Kamenica, a Serb woman, 82, who had been ordered to leave her house was burnt to death in her home. Earlier, Serbs reported that a 90-year-old woman, Ljubica Vujovic, had been held down in her bathtub and drowned." A report in the Guardian, 24/8/99, showed the innocence of the victims: "'My son was kidnapped two months ago,' she said, tears streaming down her face. 'We are not to blame, neither are the Albanians; it is that fascist Milosevic in Belgrade.'" Indeed, such is the fanaticism of the KLA that recently a Bulgarian translator was shot after he responded to a question asking the time in Serbo-Croat.
NATO and sympathisers in the bourgeois press have tried to emphasise that what is occurring in Kosovo are spontaneous revenge attacks. This does not, for example, explain why the terror is not just directed at Serbians, and how hundreds of thousands could possibly have been purged across the province without any form of co-ordination. A 24/11/99 Independent article gave an example of the range of victims: "The 300-strong Croat community at Lecnice were preparing to celebrate their 700th anniversary in the province but left en masse last month for Dubrovnik. And this week, the president of the tiny Jewish community in Pristina, Cedra Prlincevic, left for Belgrade after denouncing "a pogrom against the non-Albanian population."
The Independent on 12/12/99 made it clear who was responsible: "Serbs who sought to live peacefully among their Albanian neighbours have almost all been driven out, either to Serbia or into a handful of heavily guarded enclaves, in what bears all the signs of a co-ordinated campaign: the officially disbanded but still well-armed Kosovo Liberation Army convinces few with its denials of responsibility." Indeed, there is a material basis for what is happening, not simply a matter of ideology, of reactionary extreme nationalism.
As I have said, the long-time backers of the KLA were gangsters in Northern Albania, bandit territory since capitalist restoration in the country caused chaos. They provided guns and funds. But this was not charity, they expected something in return. As 'Stratfor', a rightwing think-tank based in Texas in the US said on 17/3/00: "The KLA is indebted to Balkan drug organizations that helped funnel both cash and arms to the guerrillas before and after the conflict." When NATO occupied the province, with the aid of the KLA the gangsters moved in to Kosovo. The province has been flooded with posh limousines and sports cars without license plates, which it is estimated make up 20-25% of the total cars in Kosovo.
Indeed, many of the people orchestrating the terror were not in fact victims of terror, but petty-bourgeois criminal elements from Northern Albania setting up a base in Kosovo. For this, they intimidated non-Albanians into fleeing Kosovo and occupied their homes. Aided by the KLA, now institutionalised by imperialist troops, the gangsters are using Kosovo for such purposes as drug-running, mainly in heroine; and prostituting girls, either by kidnapping them off the streets, or importing them from other Eastern European countries for the fast developing Kosovan night clubs, often intended for NATO troops. The Independent reported at the end of the last year that: "Apart from smuggling drugs, arms and cigarettes into Kosovo, Albanian gangsters have taken to kidnapping young women for prostitution in western Europe. Mr Haxhiu said one had been snatched from outside the Grand Hotel in the heart of Pristina last week, while four UN policemen looked on."
NATO itself has essentially established a colonial protectorate in Kosovo. This is not simply a view restricted to the Left; for instance, the prominent bourgeois commentator Jonathon Dimbleby described KFOR, the occupying troops in Kosovo, as the "military wing of a colonial governor, better known as the Security Council of the United Nations." The bombing has smashed Kosovo's basic infrastructure, for Albanian and for Serb; water and electricity supply are at best unreliable, and there is no basic hallmarks of civilisation such as a post service. The administrative situation in Kosovo could be described as a ruling triumverate of imperialist troops, the KLA and gangsters from Northern Albania. The situation is such that Kosovo was more democratic under the deformed bourgeois democracy of Serbian rule even back in 1998 than it is today, there being no elections for any positions, which are taken by obscenely overpaid UN bureaucrats. The police recruited from mainly Western countries act in a particularly colonial way, having no real concern for the people of Kosovo, as the Independent reported in December: "Their commitment is also in question according to one aid worker, an Albanian policemen he knew found himself trailing his foreign superiors from one coffee bar to another. 'Many of the international police see no point in risking their skin,' he said. 'All they want to do is bank their bonuses and get home in one piece.'"
The remaining Serbian population have been confined to small ghettos, the last vestiges of a people that have lived in Kosovo for thousands of years. Supposedly under the protection of occupying troops, merely walking in the streets puts their lives in danger from KLA attack. Serbs are too afraid to use hospitals or educational facilities, where doctors and teachers are nearly entirely Albanian. The Independent reported on December 12th last year: "The Mitrovica administrator would have been horrified to hear the UN official who admitted that attempts to keep Pristina University open to all groups had failed. Since it was now entirely Albanian, Unmik was considering whether to turn the mining and metallurgical faculty, on the Serbian side of Mitrovica, into a separate university for Serbs. 'Apartheid?' responded the official. 'Call it that if you want to.'"
The dwindling Serbian population has been confined to exile from a society where an organisation bent on their destruction has been institutionalised. The description of the function of occupying troops as to maintain a multicultural society in Kosovo is nothing but an insulting 'joke'. How can this be when in only nine months the vast majority of non-Albanians have fled under the noses of troops numbering tens of thousands, and the KLA, guilty of orchestrating this concerted attempt at mass expulsion, has been given the reigns of power alongside them? There can be no apologia for the regime of Milosevic, which includes a fascist component represented by the Radical Party, but it is worth noting that, in sharp contrast to Kosovo under NATO and the KLA, Serbia remains one of the most multicultural countries in Europe, where over one third are not of Serbian ethnic origin.
Yet a new storm is brewing in the Balkans, a fast approaching explosion that remains the as yet unborn child of the Balkan War. Those who today are the allies of imperialism can be transformed overnight into its deadliest enemies. For instance, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, one of the most reactionary and backward of its kind on the planet, owes its very existence in power to US imperialist backing of Islamic fundamentalist rebels against Soviet troops. The collapse of Stalinism meant America no longer needed Islamic fundamentalism, especially when it found it could no longer control such movements which developed an independent nationalist, anti-American character. American bombing of Afghanistan and its refusal to accept the Taliban regime shows just how much former allies have become rivals.
The same can be applied to the KLA. American imperialism had a use for it, as part of its strategy of breaking up the Balkans to create small states that cannot exist without dependence on foreign powers. The KLA in turn had a use for imperialism, putting its faith in America to help create an ethnically pure "Greater Albania", the original name of the state created by Fascist invasion in the 1940s. Because of this, a new Albanian guerrilla war has begun in the Balkans, in an area of Southern Serbia with a majority population of around 70,000 Albanians. The KLA, now using the pseudonym 'UCPMB' in the area, named after three Albanian villages in the region, which itself has recruited around 80 men, began operations to provoke Yugoslav forces into a reaction, with the idea that imperialist forces would immediately come to the Albanians' aid.
But the KLA forget that imperialism intervened in the first place to prevent what would be a catastrophe for its interests - a wider war that would destabilise a continent that represents the most important market of America, as well as the nightmare scenario of NATO members Greece and Turkey going to war with one another. It is to prevent this danger that imperialism will not tolerate an independent Kosovo and its unification with Albania. As the Observer of the 19/3/00 stated: "[US military officials] say they must be stopped now if bloodshed across the entire region is to be averted - not least in Macedonia, where conflict could easily trigger a much wider conflagration." A military victory was also guided by other interests, such as the diminishing of Russian power and the seizure of its former sphere of influence, which is why the Guardian editorial on 4/4/99 stated: "To lose would be to validate and entrench Milosovic, dangerously strengthening militant Slav nationalism in both Serbia and Russia." The war drew Balkan states further under the wings of the West, adding states to NATO and speeding up the admittance of other states both to it and the EU, whilst funds were driven into the countries for neo-liberal economic policies.
The spectre facing Kosovo is a new war - between imperialist troops and its former ally, the KLA. The same Observer article stated: "US troops should prepare for battle with the former soldiers of the Kosovan Liberation Army, officials in Washington are warning." As early as this spring such a war could commence, Pentagon commanders are said to have alerted the US military. Indeed, US imperialism again committed its deadly error - believing that such movements could be controlled when they have their own agenda. Maintaining nominal inclusion of Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia is also causing growing hostility between the two.
US troops are beginning to raid KLA military bases in a desperate attempt to prevent a fast approaching crisis, actions which only serve to increase KLA anger. Imperialism cannot win either way.
This guerrilla war has coincided with an upsurge of violence in Kosovska
Mitrovica. This is no accident. The town is the only multiethnic settlement
in Kosovo, despite the fact it is partitioned between a Serb north and
an Albanian south, separated by a bridge. Northern Mitrovica is one of
the last significant enclaves of Serbs in Kosovo, and many Serbian refugees
from other parts of the province reside there - having fled particularly
from southern Kosovo where nearly no Serbs are left. KLA operations are
centred here in Kosovo, intent on driving out the last Serb from the province,
partly due to a fear northern Kosovo could become part of Serbia in a partition.
The struggle for northern Mitrovica also has much to do with its wealth
of
mineral resources, as well as the location of major facilities such
as post and important transport links across the province.
In early February, violence broke out in which around 8 have died and dozens injured. Both Albanians and Serbs have homes and jobs on each side of the city, while KFOR refuses to allow them to cross the bridge. In such an atmosphere, with KFOR partitioning the city, the KLA began sniping operations at the French troops who are in charge there, who then killed a KLA soldier. The KLA led protests against the French troops, which were often met with water cannon and police attack. Mitrovica is another cause of serious confrontation between imperialist troops and the KLA, whose interests are increasingly diverging. The KLA and NATO once thought they could use one another to further their own interests, but now they are both hindering the aims of the other. A once solid relationship is increasingly decaying.
Mass demonstrations, attacks on Serbs and Albanians and shootings at KFOR have led to a mass crackdown on Mitrovica. KFOR claimed that both Albanian and Serb militia were to blame, and began house-to-house searches on both sides of the city to remove guns. Yet when the Kosovar Serbs are facing murder, intimidation, kidnap, torture and expulsion from the province, guns are what they see as their last protection. By removing the guns from the Serbs, their feeling of vulnerability is increased, and their only protection from a project of ethnic cleansing that has removed at least 300,000 Kosovars destroyed. The inevitable response was a demonstration by Serbs, and a threat from the Serb leaders to sever links with KFOR, reflecting the sense the Kosovar Serbs and other minorities have - that KFOR has sat back and allowed them to be expelled from Kosovo, perhaps as a price they considered worth paying if fighting that threatens occupying troops will end subsequently.
Indeed, whilst there has been repeated allegations that the Milosevic regime is behind the violence by American and KFOR leaders, there has been no direct allegation against the KLA when clearly their hand has been at work. Imperialism is desperately clinging on to its relationship with the KLA, which provides a sense of legitimacy for their colonial dictatorship, whilst at the same time facing the prospect of the KLA triggering a wider war. Yet the dilemma they face is between ending the alliance with the KLA and therefore losing any control over them, or tolerating their increasing operations and deflecting blame away from them. Both tactics will not stop the KLA attempting to fulfil their long-term goal - the construction of an ethnically pure Greater Albania, a project that would inevitably plunge the region into war, something not in the interests of imperialism. As the Guardian on 1/3/00 quoted: "[Kosovo Liberation Army] pressure on K-For is very strong. It is making veiled threats for another march on the north, and this time to force their way through. K-For is not prepared to stop them properly," said one senior UN official."
KFOR itself has refused a plan by UN bureaucrats to re-unite the city as part of a plan to end a crisis that is threatening foreign occupation of Kosovo, on the grounds weak support amongst ordinary people in the West - most of whom genuinely believed the propaganda of the war being a humanitarian intervention - would be lost if soldiers on foot patrol began to die. In the meantime, KFOR are willing to allow the Kosovar Serbs to flee and violence between the two sides to escalate.
There is more progressive hostility to foreign occupation than the KLA. The Trepca miners of Kosovo led the last Titoist demonstration in the history of Yugoslavia in 1989, calling for the re-instatement of Kosovan autonomy, support for the 1974 Titoist Constitution which guaranteed it, and involved Yugoslav and Albanian flags being waved together. They faced a brutal crackdown by the now ruling counter-revolutionary regime of Slobodan Milosevic, and many had their jobs taken away. When the regime proposed the privatisation of the mines, there were more protests. Indeed, how precious the Trepca mining complex is cannot be emphasised, once the biggest export earner of the entire former Yugoslavia.
French troops are refusing to allow the Albanian miners back to work, causing the workers to issue a call for international solidarity in which they call for workers' democratic control of the mines based on social ownership as once existed in Yugoslavia, and in which they threaten a hunger strike unless they are allowed to work. How progressive their demands is clearly demonstrated when they declare: "Our campaign to demand the rights of miners and other workers is not just for Albanians but for all Trepca employees with the exception of those who have committed war crimes." At present, the bourgeoisie of several countries are claiming ownership of the mines, from Yugoslavia, France and Greece.
This struggle is possibly the most important working class fight outside of Russia, being against imperialist troops and foreign companies, as well as fighting for social ownership of the mines. This is something all socialists should wholly endorse, a shining light in what is otherwise a catastrophe taking place in Kosovo. Meanwhile, there has been speculation that the Milosevic regime wants to partition the north of Kosovo on behalf of the Yugoslav bourgeoisie to regain the jewel in the crown of Kosovo - something the workers' movement should never support.
It is not only Kosovo where a new storm in the Balkans is developing. A crisis is growing in Montenegro, one that could spark a new civil war. The Montenegrin regime is essentially a Western proxy, committed to a much faster restoration of capitalism than that in Belgrade. In a dangerous struggle with the Belgrade regime, the government in Montenegro has been threatening to declare independence, a move that would not only incur the wrath of Serbia but also of those within the country who wish to remain part of the federation. At present, those pro- and anti-Yugoslav evenly split, both views attracting around the half the population. Yet American imperialism has entirely mobilised behind this regime, and has promised Montenegro it will militarily aid it in a war with Serbia; imperialism is stoking the flames of war.
The opposition in Serbia, certainly supported by the West, who provide supplies only to opposition-controlled Serbian cities in a bid to bribe the population into removing Milosevic, threaten a new Yugoslav civil war. According to Stratfor on the 13/09/99: "Djindjic [Yugoslav opposition leader] was unable to turn the popular anti-Milosevic sentiment into a unified pro-democracy front and is now fanning the flames of a potential civil war to invigorate Alliance for Change."
The intervention of imperialism appears to have backfired somewhat on the question of the Balkans. The West was terrified of a wider war in Europe that might blow NATO apart, yet their bombing ironically stirred up the forces that could trigger such a prospect. Their policy throughout the 1990s of breaking Yugoslavia into small states dependent on imperialist support for a viable existence risks causing an explosion in the Balkans.
Montenegro is falling ever closer to a civil war involving Serbia. Kosovo is heating up once again. Albania itself is falling into chaos; Stratfor 27/10/00 suggested: "It is likely this feuding [in Albania] will escalate to a clash threatening to envelop Kosovo, and forcing NATO to become involved in yet another foreign ethnic conflict." The KLA threatens to cause a new civil war in Macedonia to break off the western predominantly Albanian part, a war which could have tremendous repercussions, involving Serbia, Albania and possibly Greece and Turkey. Imperialism has planted the seeds of a new European war through its cravings of markets and capital.
The only thing that can stave off an approaching catastrophe is working class unity between all the Balkans people, and the creation of a Socialist Federation in the region. The masses must break with the nationalism stirred up by former Stalinist bureaucrats to gain popular legitimacy for the purpose of restoring capitalism, and realise their common enemies are their ruling classes and imperialism. Sentiments as expressed by the Trepca miners are progressive demands that the working classes of every Balkan nation could begin to take up. Unless this happens, the people of the Balkans are going to suffer a lot more in the months and years ahead.