As we warned last June, the UN-style "outbreak of peace" in Kosovo did not mark the end of Western aggression against Yugoslavia’s peoples and workers; this is not only continuing but has actually become even more atrocious since it disguised itself in sheep’s clothing. The same thing happened in Iraq.
When we talk of a false peace, it is not only or even mainly because of the violence to which the Serbs, Roms and all of the other Yugoslavian nationalities are exposed every day under the criminally watchful eye of the UN forces. This is the most obvious but not the principal aspect of the problem. We refer to a false peace and the continuation of a real war because Western imperialism is proceeding with the pincer movement designed to suffocate the defensive outposts against it in Yugoslavia and, increasingly, throughout the Balkans.
It is a war against what remains of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslavian spirit, which is somehow beginning to re-emerge to some extent in all of the territories of the "ex-Republic". War is the support given by the West to the dirtiest members of the "opposition against Milosevic" who, in their pursuit of American dollars, are doing their utmost to further imperialist interests. War is the encouragement given to any nationality or even "local reality" in Yugoslavia in order to set it against Belgrade and ensure the even greater fragmentation of the country. War is the rekindling of Albanian irredentism for the purpose of further destabilising the area and binding it definitively to the West, and the results in terms of real independence and well-being can be plainly seen in "free" Albania itself – which has become nothing more than an annexe to Bari’s "Mediterranean Trade Fair". War is also call the Albanian population against itself to savage the remain… and thus commit suicide as an autonomous national entity. All of the rest makes up the active trimmings, beginning with the famous "humanitarian aid" contracted out to the oh-so-Christian and not-so-Christian lackeys of imperialism.
This cynical exercise of the power of dominion in the Balkans is also a means of continuing and advancing the still-incubating war of Western imperialism against Russia and China where, once again, the Western powers will find no lack of new "poor Kosovians"calling out for support and solidarity when the time comes to launch an all-out attack – from the "martyrs of Chechnya" to their Buddhist robed Tibetan counterparts.
Whoever fails to see this is either really blind or one of those "blind beggars" whose dark glasses serve to conceal eyes wide open for the main chance.
Who can reverse this trend?
The greatest responsibility lies with the workers here in the imperialist metropoli: they have the primary task of raising their voices against the bloodied poisons of imperialism. In the absence of this battle, any reaction to imperialist attacks in the countries under imperialist dominion or control will inevitably remain exposed to the risk of falling back on the "easiest and most immediate" line of resistance – such as that in Yugoslavia of defending Fort Milosevic on the basis of an illusory "Serbian pride" whose isolation condemns it to defeat, or the non-secondary defence of the poisoned fruit produced by imperialism and the spinelessness of our own, even "extreme", left-wings.
But we also call directly on the Balkan proletariat which, if it cannot itself surrogate the necessary help of its "lost fraternal chick" in the West, can at least send out a signal prompting it to do something now … and in earnest.
The Balkan proletariat – from the Croatians to the Greeks and even the Serbs themselves – has realised that this aggression concerns all of them as distinct fractions of a single class, and this awareness cannot be left to fade in vain.
It is the task of communists to work on the glimmerings of consciousness sparked off by a brutal and still ongoing attack; to struggle against today’s "peace" no less forcefully than against yesterday’s war; to fight without quarter against the principal enemy in our midst, categorically excluding any and every form of "left-wing" or other "arrangement" with the assassins of yesterday (and, albeit in other forms, also of today!); to make ceaseless efforts to establish ties with the Balkan proletariat, beginning with their immigrants here in the metropoli, in order to demonstrate to them in a concrete fashion that Yugoslavia is the world – a world of oppression from which we can escape only by taking up our own independent arms and using them against Milosevic and all of his kind.
It is only if we here in the metropoli show that we know how to free ourselves from the clutches of imperialism that we can expect – not "demand" – the Yugoslavian proletariat to feel that their sacrosanct struggle of defence against imperialism is not isolated, and that they can do without the encumbering protection of a Milosevic or whoever. Until this is done, they will continue to feel themselves alone in having to face the attack as a "people" and with whatever means they have at their disposal – including the Milosevic government. We know very well that this is a dead-end road, but we must also understand that it nevertheless remains a legitimate struggle and the only means by which the necessarily different pathway can be approached.