To the displeasure of U.S. officials and their U.N. and NATO allies, Serbs in northern Kosovo continue to resist the imperialist-sponsored Serbia partition plan.
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Around one thousand Serbs continued with their daily protests in the Serb enclave of Gračanica south of the Ibar River. In Mitrovica, thousands protested on March 26 in opposition to Kosovo’s alleged “independence,” while Serbian judicial workers gathered in front of the local courthouse to demand that they be allowed to return to their offices.
The workers, who were expelled from their offices in 1999 by newly arrived foreign occupation forces, forced their way into the courthouse on March 14. They broke through two gates at the entrance, tore off the sign marking the building as the U.N. Mission Municipal Court and raised the Serbian flag.
When police from the U.N. Mission in Kosovo and NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) stormed the building three days later and briefly put 53 workers under arrest, protests immediately erupted.
Protesters fought back with stones as the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets in the violent clashes that followed. At least three U.N. and NATO vehicles were set on fire. Over 130 people were wounded on both sides, and one police officer died. The relentless resistance forced U.N. police to withdraw from Mitrovica; they were only able to return two days later with assistance from KFOR.
Tensions have been high since Kosovo declared its “independence” from Serbia in February, an act which was supported by the NATO countries that currently occupy it—Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States.
Those countries led an illegal and widely devastating military campaign in 1999 to break up Yugoslavia. The province of Kosovo is only the latest target; it was preceded by Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.
Imperialist proclamations of “self-determination” for Kosovo are full of hypocrisy—the Serbian province has been under the thumb of NATO and the United Nations since 1999. Serbian Kosovars who never asked for nor agreed to this “independence” are enraged.
Mitrovica, as much of the northern region of Kosovo, is predominantly Serbian. Residents are vehemently opposed to the prospect of being thrown into a majority-Albanian and imperialist-occupied colonial entity.
Serbian protesters, aware of the imperialist character of Kosovo’s so-called independence, have targeted the U.S. embassy and U.S. corporate symbols such as McDonald’s in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital. While internal ethnic conflicts have exploded since the country’s socialist government was overthrown in 1989—conflicts heavily promoted by Germany, the U.S. and other Western powers—many see NATO intervention and occupation under a humanitarian-guise as a mere cover to the real intentions of imperialist powers: to impose their will on a strategically important region.
While the five occupying powers and their allies have enthusiastically supported Kosovo’s secession, they retain military and administrative control over the country, and have used this control to open the country’s markets, build military bases and repress local resistance to the occupiers and their local puppets.
Kosovo’s secession is illegal under international law, but the fact that Washington and NATO engineered and endorsed the move simply shows that the imperialists embrace or ignore international law at will—whichever option happens to benefit them in any given situation.
A nation can be truly independent only if it is free of imperialist dictates; a nation that sides with imperialism at the expense of another nation forgoes its own freedom.
