 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
 |
 |
|
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
|
|
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Focus Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters "Nous sommes tous des Kosovars"
By Hosny Abdel-RehimNATO's current bombing of Yugoslavia -- in which France is a major participant -- is often compared, implicitly or explicitly, to the 1991 "allied" assault on Iraq, in which the North arrogated to itself what it saw as the role of global policeman. But whereas France's support of and participation in the Gulf War drew the unanimous condemnation of the French Left, who were then in opposition, the Jospin government's support for NATO intervention in the Kosovo conflict has provoked a debate which shows no sign of reaching any resolution. Positions both pro and anti cut across traditional party lines and have created deep divisions. Yet an anti-war demonstration called shortly after the NATO air war began by several leftist groups, among them the Communist Party, was characterised by contradictory slogans, ranging from the traditionally anti-American and anti-imperialist tags to European and Serb nationalist propaganda proposed by a number of far right groups. The Greens, despite their pacifist culture, did not participate in this march. Meanwhile, in the pages of the newspapers, the gaps between the various representatives of the left both within and outside the government have widened, as the heritage of opposition to the US has come increasingly into conflict with so-called "humanitarian" considerations.
Minister of the Interior Jean-Pierre Chevenement, one of the leading figures in the governing coalition, recently distributed to his colleagues a text by Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, in which the German poet meditates on the limits of responsibility. This gesture was taken as an allusion to the responsibility of Europe -- and with it, France -- in the massacre which is taking place just beyond their borders. Meanwhile, for former revolutionary Regis Debray, the Yugoslav crises are simply the result of a German conspiracy to expand its influence in the region via Croatia; everything that is being played out in the Balkans is thus, once again, merely a game of poker between the major powers.
In the face of this argument, it was left to the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, founder of the Kosovo Committee, to formulate a reply of sorts. Finkielkraut claimed that for Debray, the people of the Balkans in general, and of Kosovo in particular, are nothing but geopolitical pawns, even though the Kosovars themselves have expressly stated that they wish to become independent of Belgrade.
Another May 68 radical, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who now leads the Green list for June's European elections, shares Finkielkraut's position regarding the massacres and the necessity of putting an end to them by deploying land troops as quickly as possible. Christophe Aquiton, for his part, has proposed that the resistance fighters of Kosovo should be armed, so that they can have a reasonable chance against the Serbs. But even such a radical solution raises as many questions as it answers.
Thus the Greens, despite their well-known anti-war rhetoric, find themselves closely aligned on Cohn-Bendit's position, to the point that some of their enemies in the Communist Party have taken to calling them the "greens in khaki".
Within the Communist Party itself, the historical animosity towards the United States is represented by their leadership, whose anti-NATO rhetoric does not seem to have changed much since the Cold War. However, the communist candidates in the forthcoming elections have made such contradictory statements, that one communist deputy openly attacked the Party's policy as "unclear" and "unfounded", asking whether they would have attacked the United States in the same way when it was bombing Nazi Germany. The unspoken supposition -- that Milosevic is no different from Hitler -- slipped past in an embarrassed silence.
Among the many ghosts which haunt the flimsy rhetoric of recent debates -- a visceral anti-Americanism, echoes of anti-Vietnam War activism, disoriented pacifists and those infamous "humanitarian" considerations -- the most powerful would seem to be the ghost of the Holocaust. Those politicians and intellectuals who have expressed the most forthright solidarity with the fate of the Kosovars are also those who, as Jews, have been most conscious of the ravages of anti-Semitism in the 1930s and 1940s: Cohn-Bendit, Finkielkraut and others such as Daniel Bensaid.
Thus, the old divisions between the right and the left are being re-organised once again in hurried response to new realities. In particular, the recent events in Kosovo have revealed the weakness of old coalitions based on a simple opposition to international imperialism -- namely, the United States, -- even as they have shown that America has not yet given up its pretentions to police the world.
