Distant Voices (29 page)

The West's role in Yugoslavia's suffering is not confined to Germany's
fait accompli.
The fact that the Bush administration waged economic warfare against Yugoslavia has received little attention, yet the effect on ethnic tensions has been devastating. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell,
pressure was applied by Washington to all the former communist states to follow the ‘market' model. The usual ‘market reforms' were demanded, notably privatisation and conditions amenable to Western ‘investment'.

Having already embraced something of a ‘mixed economy' and being dependent on Western capital transfers, trade and tourism, Yugoslavia had already fallen victim to a ‘market' recession long before the rest of Europe. Throughout the 1980s, discontent had risen among working people, while those willing to exploit ethnic tensions waited for their opportunity. In 1989, the new federal prime minister, Ante Marcovic, went to Washington and requested $1 billion in loans from the US and $3 billion from the World Bank. When told of the scale of austerity his country would have to accept, he warned that unemployment would increase to 20 per cent and ‘there is the threat of increased ethnic and political tensions . . .'
⁵²
The moment the Marcovic Government devalued the currency and began to close ‘unprofitable' state enterprises and cut public services, 650,000 Serbian workers went on strike and the plan collapsed.
⁵³
Yugoslavia was now on its own, denied a fraction of the aid Washington gave to ideologically friendly Poland.

However, ‘economic reforms' had begun to take hold in separatist republics, as the Germans encouraged Croatia and Slovenia to join the great ‘European market' and to ‘disassociate' themselves from Yugoslavia. The federation, noted Gervasi, had ‘walked a tightrope through the 1980s until economic and political crisis, particularly the fall in the standard of living, broke its balance. As rival ethnic groups shook the rope and the state teetered, EC intervention helped push [it] into the abyss . . .'
⁵⁴

When the Western allies recognised Bosnia in 1992, there was no acknowledgement that Bosnia's pluralism did not spring from some imagined independent state but from a federal unit that was an integral part of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia.
⁵⁵
Moreover, the date chosen for recognition was the anniversary of the Nazi bombing of Serbia – a day when Serbs renew their cherished self-image of heroic resistance
against impossible odds. In Serb nationalist eyes, here was the West partitioning their homeland, having not long celebrated the end of the partition of Germany. And now here was the
Luftwaffe
choosing the skies over Bosnia for its first military operation since the Second World War. With such disregard for national sensitivity, the West has smoothed the way for rabid nationalism to exploit a past shared by decent people and for the Serbian peace movement to be condemned as ‘unpatriotic'.

In Russia, with its close ties to Serbia, the spectacle of NATO forces, with German participation, bombing Serbian targets, killing and maiming Serbian women and children, might well have the kind of reaction that not even Boris Yeltsin, the West's man, could stop. The First World War began, after all, in Sarajevo.

Even belated attempts by the EC to deter the extremists promoting ‘Greater Serbia' have been botched; the policing of sanctions was considered farcical until recently. And if sanctions are applied to Serbia, why are they not also applied to Croatia? Ask any British soldier who has to carry the incinerated corpses of the victims of Croatian fascism. That the multi-ethnic Bosnians, especially those in the towns who have demonstrated no desire to attack anybody, should have been denied the means of defending themselves is absurd, and wrong. They stand defenceless not only against Serbs, whose arms supplies are assured, but against Croats, who through extensive
émigré
connections and powerful foreign friends, continue to move large shipments of weapons from Austria, Slovenia and Hungary.
⁵⁶

Just as I believe the Cambodian people should have arms in order to resist the Khmer Rouge, so the Bosnians should have arms to resist those who would visit a version of ‘Year Zero' upon them; and they are up against fascism on two fronts. Breaking the Bosnian sieges with massive humanitarian aid is essential; the use of force worse than useless. One turkey shooter could ignite the rest of the Balkan tinderbox. The painful moral and practical dilemmas faced in the region, scarred by the legacies of competing empires, are not
solved by Western so-called statesmen, offering ‘peace plans' that further provoke and divide, and who seldom see the results of their culpability.

May 7, 1993

ON CHRISTMAS EVE
1992, BBC television news announced that America's ‘only purpose' in Somalia was to ensure that hungry people were fed. This was generally agreed throughout the media on both sides of the Atlantic. Congratulations were offered to President Bush for his ‘bold' decision to ‘send the cavalry to the rescue'.
Time
magazine published a two-page colour photograph showing Somali children reaching out to a marine for ‘the gift of hope'. A marine corporal was asked about the danger he faced. ‘In a way,' he said wistfully, ‘I'm sort of hoping for a little combat.'
⁵⁷

Within days of their arrival, two US helicopter gunships fired their missiles at three armed vehicles, killing all nine Somalis in them. The justification for this ‘little combat' was that the helicopters had been attacked. In fact, the Somalis were engaged in a private fight, and, according to witnesses, no one fired at the helicopters.

The nine dead equals the number of British soldiers killed by US aircraft during the Gulf War. The difference is that, while the British incident became a much-publicised scandal, the Somali incident barely rated a mention. Last week, on the eve of Bush's triumphant arrival in Somalia, US helicopters dropped leaflets warning people that if they were found merely carrying a weapon they would be shot. Many of the weapons were supplied originally by Washington; no irony was noted.

Operation Restore Hope, as this model of media manipulation is called, is not just a public relations stunt staged by a beaten and discredited president who, in the wake of his
‘bold' decision on Somalia, pardoned those who almost certainly would have blown the whistle on his role in the Iran-Contra crimes. Bush is not engaged in a humanitarian mission to restore hope to the starving. He has sent guns and bombs to skeletal children to restore order: the ‘new world order'. It took a lone letter writer to the
Guardian
, Andy Abel, to state the obvious, which professional commentators apparently could not. ‘We are invited', he wrote, ‘to believe that there is starvation in Somalia because armed gangs loot food stocks. There is looting because there is not enough food.'
⁵⁸

The severity of the drought in Somalia was known to the US and other Western governments as long ago as mid-1991, when satellite evidence left no doubt about what was coming. They, and the international organisations they effectively control, did nothing until, as with Ethiopia in the 1980s, disturbing television images exposed their culpable inaction. Until then, according to the Congressional watchdog, the General Accounting Office, the US government had allowed its client regime in Somalia, the murderous dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre, to steal American-donated food and divert it from the starving to the army and profiteers. Once Barre had fled Mogadishu, the US, according to the last American ambassador, ‘turned out the light, closed the door and forgot about Somalia'.
⁵⁹

Not quite. The Bush administration ran a ‘rat line' for the war criminals of Siad Barre's regime. According to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report, Washington dispensed tourist visas and easy passages to Canada for Somali officers who had trained at Fort Leavenworth in the mid-1980s, including one who allegedly ordered the execution of 120 villagers.

At the same time, Bush administration officials vigorously discouraged donors from helping Somalia, regardless of reports that up to 2,000 Somalis were dying every day. In 1992, Bush withheld American food aid for two straight months – right to August 13 when, as the underdog in a presidential election campaign, he mounted the podium at
the Republican Party convention and announced to his prime-time audience that ‘starvation in Somalia is a major human tragedy' and he, George Bush, would ensure that the US ‘overcame the obstacles' in getting food to ‘those who desperately need it'.
⁶⁰

Within weeks of a US food airlift getting underway, most of its cargo planes were grounded after the wing of one of them was hit by a bullet: a relatively minor occupational hazard that did not deter private donors. In any case, it was now September 18; the last phase of the presidential campaign was underway and, to no one's surprise, the ‘major human tragedy' in Somalia was no longer an issue. Somalis could go on starving until it was time to use them again.

When the time came, just before Christmas, the media images of Operation Restore Hope were almost perfect. The marines were greeted by massed television cameras and satellite dishes and looked every bit like the cavalry coming to the rescue. They were, as one American TV commentator put it, ‘a sight for sore eyes back home'. This was also true in this country, notably among liberal opinion. The American intervention, argued an editorial in the
New Statesman
, had ‘proved remarkably successful . . . for once, the US did not permit either free-market prejudices or “strategic” interests to determine its foreign policy.'
⁶¹
Thus, the ‘good guys' and their ‘new world order' were back on the road to redemption, regardless of the historical truth of every American intervention in the developing world this century.

In Somalia, the marines and the media have no ideal enemy. Like the British in pith helmets, they are facing amorphous ‘gangs' of natives led by ‘warlords'. On the television screen, Somalis are dehumanised. There are no good Somalis, no wise Somalis, no professional and organised Somalis. There are only those ‘warlords' and their ‘gunmen' and their pathetic victims.

There have been few serious attempts to explain that the divisions and hatred between Somalis are largely the product of European colonialism and of the Cold War battlefield imposed on Somalia by the superpowers. Somalis share a
common language and religion and have much more in common than most peoples of Africa. In the nineteenth century, they were divided between British Somaliland, Italian Somalia, French Djibouti and Ethiopian Ogaden. Others were incorporated into the British colony of Kenya. Tens of thousands of people were handed from one power to another. ‘They may be made', wrote a British colonial official, ‘to hate each other and thereby good governance is ensured.'
⁶²
Siad Barre was the beneficiary of this, playing one group against another with the backing first of the Soviet Union, then of the United States, which flooded the country with modern weapons.

Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, formerly of the human rights organisation Africa Watch, wrote recently in the
Guardian
: ‘US military intervention in Somalia has followed a gross misrepresentation of the situation in the country.' They reported that ‘three-quarters of the country is relatively peaceful, with civil structures in place', and the famine confined to scattered rural pockets. ‘Most of the food is not looted,' they wrote. ‘Save the Children Fund has distributed 4,000 tons in Mogadishu without losing a single bag. Other agencies that work closely with Somalia suffer rates of 2–10 per cent, because they consult closely with Somali elders and humanitarian workers.'
⁶³

Omaar and de Waal wrote that where there was a major problem with starvation is Bardera, which the forces of General Mohammed Siad Hersi Morgan controlled. Morgan is the son-in-law of Siad Barre. His forces are armed and trained by Kenya, another US client. Had Bush been serious about getting supplies through, he had only to intervene with Daniel Arap Moi in Nairobi. ‘There has been nothing in the way of attempts to negotiate settlements in comparison with, say, Yugoslavia,' wrote Omaar and de Waal. ‘The one serious attempt – by the former UN special envoy Mohammed Sahnoun – was meeting with remarkable success. Sahnoun was forced to resign in October because of his outspoken criticism of the UN's dismal failure in Somalia.'
⁶⁴

As for Operation Restore Hope, reported Mark Hubard
in the
Guardian
, no American food has arrived ‘to date' and ORH ‘is a farce which has cost the American taxpayer $400 million', and requires ‘media complicity' in order to ‘replace the Somali nightmare with a new array of fantasies to keep reality at bay'.
⁶⁵

Last week the Economic Commission on Africa reported on the reality. The growing impoverishment of Africans was of only ‘marginal interest' to the West, said the report; and African countries still gave more hard currency to the West, in debt service, than they received in aid.
⁶⁶

In the meantime, the stated justification for the United States remaining in Somalia is the pursuit of General Mohammed Farah Aidid, the ‘warlord' elevated to international demon status. (Previous such demons include Noriega, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.) ‘A man may smile and be a villain,' offered the
Observer
, in a profile of Aidid. ‘Soft-spoken, courteous, balding, with greying hair and a pot belly, Aidid looks and sounds more like a successful businessman than the man the United Nations accuses of crimes against humanity.' According to the
Observer
, this demon ‘is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, through murder or as a result of the famine he helped to create'.
⁶⁷