The bombardment decided on by the new lords of war and money and led by the forces of NATO is not aimed at protecting the rights of the Kosovar people, denied by the chauvinist Great Serbia policy of the Milosevic government, but to further advance the goal of putting an end to the borders that previously existed, in the terrain of national states as in the international community.
With this action, the North American financial oligarchy, very sensitive to the investment of capital in the military industry, brings to knees not simply the people and governments of the Balkans, but all the governments of Western Europe. There exists an inexorable relation between the emergence of the euro and the European Union and the North American action to place the various European governments in the position of pawns.
The Clinton government, but above all the financial oligarchy, dictates a message to the world: there is no problem, large or small, that is not under the aegis of the United States. At the same time a warning to Europe: any process of transnational unity must be subordinate to North American foreign policy. In this sense, the principal losers in this war are France and Germany; placing in crisis, before its birth, the possibility of an economic bloc that can compete with the United States.
The pain and oppression of the Kosovar people represents no more than an excuse for the lords of money and war. The hypocritical stance is evident in the manner in which the Kosovar people's desires for independence were denied at the Rambouillet conference, violating their elemental right of self-determination guaranteed by the charter of the United Nations.
The bombing has not signified an improvement in the lives of the inhabitants of Kosovo or a curtailment of the ideology of Great Serbia; on the contrary, there are now hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees, and the sentiments of ethnic purity in the rest of Yugoslavia have been inflamed as never before.
The idea expressed by this cynicism disguised as humanitarianism which can be rendered: Sometimes you have to make war to prevent war has been proven completely false in the Balkans. Actually, it is necessary to make war because it is great business; it is simply necessary to watch the recent reactions of the various stock markets. The suffering of the Kosovar people is worth several more points in the speculative indices.
The Zapatista National Liberation Front utterly repudiates the war of Clinton and his European peons, Jospin, Blair, Schroeder, Aznar, etc., who permit themselves to be used to consolidate United States world hegemony, who have demonstrated the profound contempt they feel for the international community and the national states of the world. Bombardment of a civil population has never served a noble end.
At the same time we demand that the self-determination rights of the people of Kosovo be guaranteed. The Kosovars of Albanian origin represent 80 percent of the population. After the death of Marshall Tito, the Milosevic regime revived the ultra-nationalist ideology that oppresses ethnic minorities, eliminated Kosovo's autonomy statute, impeded the use of the Albanian tongue and repressed the traditions, culture and form of social organization of the majority of the people of Kosovo. The criminal bombardment cannot make us blind. Milosevic is a dictator. We can and should oppose the bombardments as well as the tyrannical and oppressive politics of Milosevic.
Under the same logic of defending the the right to autonomy and respect between majorities and minorities that share the same territory, the FZLN denounces the actions of terrorist groups supported by the international oligarchies intent on crushing the rights of the Serb minority in Kosovo, and supporting the war and the NATO bombardment.
The only exit that the FZLN proposes as ethically and humanly correct is the nonintervention of external powers in the conflict. The ethnicities which share the same territory in Kosovo are the only ones who, by means of dialogue, can and should protect their rights of self-determination and forms of coexistence.
No to the bombardment of Serbia! Yes to self-determination for the Kosovar people!
No to NATO! No to Milosevic!
Zapatista National Liberation Front