Morality? Don't make
me laugh
John Pilger sees only one Balkan winner:
the arms trade
Tuesday April 20, 1999
'The struggle of people against power,' wrote
Milan Kundera, 'is the struggle of memory against
forgetting.' The idea that the Nato bombing has to
do with 'moral purpose' (Blair) and 'principles of
humanity we hold sacred' (Clinton) insults both
memory and intelligence. The American attack
on Yugoslavia began more than a decade ago
when the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund set about destroying the
multi-ethnic federation with lethal doses of debt,
'market reforms' and imposed poverty.
Millions of jobs were eliminated; in 1989 alone,
600,000 workers, almost a quarter of the
workforce, were sacked without severance pay.
But the most critical 'reform' was the ending of
economic support to the six constituent republics
and their recolonisation by Western capital.
Germany led the way, supporting the breakaway
of Croatia, its new economic colony, with the
European Community giving silent approval. The
torch of fratricide had been lit and the rise of an
opportunist like Milosevic was inevitable.
In spite of his part in the blood-Ietting of Bosnia,
Milosevic, the 'reformer', became a favourite
among senior figures in the US State Department.
And in return for his co-operation in the American
partition of Bosnia at Dayton in 1995, he was
assured that the troublesome province of Kosovo
was his to keep. 'President Milosevic,' said
Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy, 'is a man we
can do business with, a man who recognises the
realities of life in former Yugoslavia.' The
Kosovo Liberation Army was dismissed by
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as 'no
more than terrorists'. Last October, the
Americans drafted a 'peace plan' for Kosovo that
that was pro-Serbia, giving the Kosovans far less
autonomy and freedom than they had under the
old Yugoslav federation.
But this deal included, crucially for the
Americans, a Nato military presence. When
Milosevic objected to having foreign troops on his
soil, he was swiftly transformed, like Saddam
Hussein, from client to demon. He was now seen
as a threat to Washington's post-cold war strategy
for the Balkans and eastern Europe. With Nato
replacing the United Nations as an instrument of
American global control, its 'Membership Action
Plan' includes linking Albania, Macedonia,
Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. Like Poland,
Hungary and the Czech Republic before them,
these impoverished countries will be required to
take part in a £22 billion weapons' buildup. The
beneficiaries will be the world's dominant arms
industries of the US and Britain - the contract for
fighter aircraft alone is worth pounds 10 biIIion.
Like the 1991 'moral crusade' in the Gulf, which
slaughtered more than 200,000 people, including
the very minorities the West claimed to be
protecting, the terror bombing of Serbia and
Kosovo provides a valuable laboratory for the
Anglo-American arms business. Mostly
unreported, the Americans are using a refined
version of the depleted uranium missile they
tested in southern Iraq, where leukaemia among
children and birth deformities have risen to match
the levels after Hiroshima. The RAF is using the
BL755 'multi-purpose' cluster bomb, which is not
really a bomb at all but an air-dropped land-mine:
readers will recall the Blair government's 'ban' on
land-mines. Dropped from the air, the BL755
explodes into dozens of little mines, shaped liked
spiders. These are scattered over a wide area and
kill and maim people who step on them, children
especially.
Britain's new military-industrial-arms trade, which
Margaret Thatcher built and the taxpayer
subsidises through 'soft loans' to dictatorships, is
central to the 'Blair project'. Each time New
Labour has sought to bring big business into the
fold, arms companies or their representatives
have been at the head of the queue. A New
Labour backer is Raytheon, manufacturer of the
Patriot missile and currently under contract to the
Ministry of Defence to build tanks. More arms
contracts have been approved by the Blair
government than by the Tories; and two-thirds of
arms exports go to regimes with appalling human
rights records - such as the dictatorship in Jakarta,
which is currently deploying death squads in East
Timor.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that
British-supplied small arms have caused in East
Timor the equivalent of the Dunblane massacre
many times over. Last year, the Defence
Secretary, George Robertson, intervened in a
Courtaulds Aerospace deal for armoured
vehicles, headed for Indonesia's Kopassus special
forces whose commander, General Prabowo, he
described (in a letter to Robin Cook) as 'an
enlightened officer, keen [on] human rights'.
Kopassus is the Waffen SS-style force that
spearheaded the invasion of East Timor,
murdered five journalists and is responsible for
the worst atrocities in the illegally occupied
territory. When Prabowo's father-in-law, the
tyrant Suharto, was toppled from his throne last
year, the general was also sacked.
The parallels with Kosovo and East Timor are
striking. However, no bombs will fall on Jakarta.
They might hit the local offices of British
Aerospace (supplier of machine guns and Hawk
fighter bombers) and the Defence Export Sales
Organisation, the Blair government's official
merchants of death who, as Thatcher used to say,
'are batting for Britain'.
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