ASIA AND THE NATO BOMBING

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)'s bombing of Yugoslavia may encourage separatist movements in Asia to step up their campaign to internationalise their cause.

By Boonthan Sakanond

May 1999

Bangkok: Alarm is growing in many Asian capitals that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)'s attacks on Yugoslavia, in support of Kosovo Albanians, could send the wrong signal to separatist movements across the continent.

Many large as well as smaller Asian countries have at least one ethnic separatist conflict or another within their borders - and the precedent set by NATO could encourage many of them to step up their agitation in the hope of Western intervention.

With their long and unhappy history of Western colonisation, many Asian nations, already weakened by the economic crisis, are also apprehensive of a return to domination by the West, using domestic ethnic conflicts as an excuse.

China, India and Indonesia, three of Asia's largest and most populous nations, have already strongly condemned the NATO action as a violation of international law, since it was undertaken without authorisation by the United Nations Security Council.

The NATO alliance began bombarding targets in various parts of Yugoslavia on 24 March, claiming that military action was the only way to prevent the conflict between the Serbian government and Kosovo Albanian separatists from spilling over into the sensitive Balkan region in Europe.

Western leaders who are part of the NATO alliance also justified their action on 'humanitarian' grounds, pointing to the hundreds of Kosovo Albanian refugees being driven out of their homes by Serb security forces. 'I call once more for an immediate halt to the air strikes and a return to the search for a political solution to the Kosovo problem,' said Chinese President Jiang Zemin, on a tour of Europe when the attacks began.

The Chinese official media called the NATO action 'a dangerous precedent of naked aggression'. Apart from ire over unilateral NATO actions that undermine China's role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the Chinese are also clearly worried about the long-term implications for their internal ethnic problems.

A day after the attacks, an editorial in the Beijing-based People's Daily warned: 'There are many countries with problems involving ethnic minorities. If we encourage divisions, won't the world fall into chaos?'

Prominent ethnic conflicts inside China are those involving Tibetans and Muslim minorities demanding independence.

India, which has faced several major separatist movements in the past few decades, has expressed deep displeasure over the NATO attacks, too. The Indian government is afraid that the long-standing independence movement in Kashmir could flare up again in a bid by separatists to internationalise the issue.

Indonesia, in the throes of numerous ethnic and religious conflicts, has condemned the NATO action.

Significantly, the NATO action has also drawn opposition from Vietnam, which lost more than three million people during the 1960s and 1970s, when US troops intervened in a civil war for re-unification of north and south Vietnam.

Many international analysts have compared the possibility of NATO's action in Yugoslavia turning into another military quagmire for the US, like it did in Vietnam and from where it had to finally leave humiliated and defeated.

Among the Asian countries that have supported the NATO strikes on Yugoslavia are Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. Though Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is usually an outspoken critic of the West on the Kosovo issue and has in the past criticised Western intervention, he is believed to be supportive because the Kosovo Albanians are mainly Muslim.

Thailand and the Philippines have preferred to be neutral. However, the Thai foreign ministry did make a statement that 'a peaceful solution without the loss of life is the best option' and that it preferred a role for the UN rather than NATO in resolving the Kosovo conflict.

'The NATO action is a turning point for the world and an end to the post-Second World War consensus against the violation of the sovereignty of individual nations,' says an Asian diplomat based in Bangkok.

For many Asian observers, the issue is not simply the need to do something about the alleged crimes by Serb forces against the Albanians in Kosovo, as claimed by Western leaders. The real question, they say, is that NATO has set a dangerous precedent by intervening in what is essentially a civil war.

'The United Nations was born out of the need to prevent unilateral military actions around the world. But it has been rendered totally impotent by use of force by NATO, which is supposed to be only a regional defence organisation,' says a senior UN official here.

What has also not gone unnoticed here is the selectiveness of NATO's 'outrage' over treatment of minorities in Yugoslavia, whose post-communist government has been at loggerheads with the West since the country's break-up in the early 1990s.

Analysts say the most obvious examples of Western double standards on this issue are in Israel and Turkey - two close American allies - which have for decades been brutally suppressing independence movements of the Palestinian and Kurdish peoples. The 1975 invasion of East Timor and subsequent slaughter of local citizens by the staunchly pro-US Suharto government in Indonesia was not just tolerated, but actively supported by many Western nations.

'NATO is made up of countries like Britain, the US, Spain, Germany and Italy that have a long history of colonial rule over much of the world, and they have no right to militarily impose their views on other nations,' argues an Asian diplomat here. - Third World Network Features/IPS

About the writer: Boonthan Sakanond is a correspondent for Inter Press Service, with whose permission the above article is reprinted.

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