Library:To kill a nation/Divide and conquer

Some people argue that nationalism, not class, has been the real motor force behind the Yugoslav conflict. This pre- sumes that class and ethnicity are mutually exclusive. In fact, ethnic enmity can be enlisted to serve class interests, as the CIA tried to do with indigenous peoples in Indochina and Nicaragua—and more recently in Bosnia and Kosovo. One of the great deceptions of Western policy, remarks Joan Phillips, is that "those who are mainly responsible for the bloodshed in Yugoslavia—not the Serbs, Croats or Muslims, but the Western powers—are depicted as saviors."

While pretending to work for harmony, US leaders have supported "self-determination" in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Vojvodina. "Self-determination" has meant the end of ethnic multiculturalism, the forced monopolization of territory by one or another national group, and the subverting of Yugoslav sovereignty. Legitimate measures of self-preservation taken by the FRY were now stigmatized as criminal actions. The Yugoslav army was no longer a legal instrument of national defense but an aggressor, a threat to the independence of "new nations."

When different national groups are living together with some measure of social and material security, they tend to get along. There is intermingling and even intermarriage. Misha Glenny, who ascribes the Yugoslav crisis almost entirely to ethnic enmi- ties, nonetheless admits that before May 1991, Croats and Serbs lived together in relative contentment, experiencing everyday friendships throughout regions that were subsequently "so dreadfully ravaged." While aware that Yugoslavia was entering troubled seas, nobody in their wildest fantasies predicted that towns would be leveled, and Croats and Serbs killing each other. In Bosnia, too, there were "a large number of Muslims, particu- larly intellectuals in Sarajevo, who refused to give up the Yugoslav idea. They believed genuinely and reasonably that the chaotic mix of Slays and non-Slays on the territory of what was Yugoslavia forced everybody to live together.`2

But as the economy gets caught in the ever-tightening downward debt spiral, with cutbacks and growing unemploy- ment, it becomes easier to induce internecine conflicts, as the different nationalities begin to compete more furiously than ever for a share of the shrinking pie. And once the bloodletting starts, the cycle of vengeance and retribution takes on a momentum of its own. In order to hasten the discombobulation of Yugoslavia, the Western powers provided the most retrograde, violent, separatist elements with every advantage in money, organization, propaganda, arms, hired thugs, and the full might of the US national security state at their backs. Once more the Balkans were to be balkanized.

Supposedly it was Serbian mass atrocities during 1991-95 that necessitated Western intervention. In fact the Western powers were deeply involved in inciting civil war and secession in the FRY before that time. One of the earliest and most active sponsor of secession was Germany, which first openly championed Yugoslavia's dismemberment in 1991, but was giving Slovenia and Croatia every encouragement long before then. Washing- ton's declared policy was to support Yugoslav unity while imposing privatization, IMF shock therapy, and debt payment, in effect, supporting Yugoslavia with words while undermining it with deeds. Concern was expressed by the Bush administration that Bonn "was getting out ahead of the US" with its support of Croatian secession, but the United States did little to deter Germany's efforts.3And by January 1992, the United States had become an active player in the breakup of Yugoslavia.

That Washington consciously intended to undermine the socialist government of Yugoslavia one way or another is not a matter of speculation but of public record. As early as 1984, the Reagan administration issued US National Security Decision Directive 133: "United States Policy towards Yugoslavia," labeled "secret sensitive." A censored version of this document was released years later. It followed closely the objectives laid out in an earlier directive aimed at Eastern Europe, one that called for a "quiet revolution" to overthrow Communist governments while "reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into the orbit of the World [capitalist] market."4The economic "reforms" adopted in Yugoslavia under pressure from the IMF and other foreign creditors required that all socially owned firms and all worker-managed production units be transformed into private capitalist enterprises.

Washington threatened to cut off aid if Yugoslavia did not hold elections in 1990, further stipulating that these elections were to be conducted only within the various republics and not at the federal level. US leaders—using the National Endowment for Democracy, various CIA fronts, and other agencies—fun- neled campaign money and advice to conservative separatist political groups, described in the US media as "pro-West" and the "democratic opposition." Greatly outspending their opponents, these parties gained an electoral edge in every republic save Serbia and Montenegro.

As economic conditions in the PRY went from bad to worse, the government of the Slovene Republic opted for "disassocia- tion" and a looser confederation. In 1989, Slovenia dosed its borders and prohibited demonstrations by any of its citizens who opposed the drift toward secession.'

Other US moves to fragment Yugoslavia came when the Bush administration pressured Congress into passing the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. This law provided aid only to the separate republics, not to the Yugoslav govern- ment, further weakening federal ties. Arms shipments and military advisers poured into the secessionist republics of Slo- venia and Croatia, particularly from Germany and Austria.

FREE TEXAS! FREE CORSICA! Visiting Belgrade after the bombings of 1999, I saw graffiti all over the city denouncing NATO, the United States, and Bill Clinton in the most bitter terms. "NATO" was repeatedly represented with the "N" in the form of a swastika. More than once I saw "Free Texas" sprayed across walls. As one citizen explained, Texas is heavily populated by Mexicans or persons of Mexican descent, many of whom suffer more serious cultural discrimination and economic adversity than did Kosovo Albanians. Should not Yugoslavia and other nations do whatever they can to make Texas into a separate polity for oppressed Mexicans? The same logic applied to the "Free Corsica" graffiti sprayed across the French cultural center, gutted during the NATO bombings, along with the US and British cultural centers, by outraged Yugoslavs.

German instructors even engaged in combat against the Yugoslav People's Army.

Also in 1991, the European Community, with US involve- ment, organized a conference on Yugoslavia that called for "sovereign and independent republics." In a final insult, Yugo- slavia was banned from further meetings of the conference, and denied any say in its own fate, in what amounted to a repudiation of its sovereignty by the Western powers. So, for a number of years before hostilities broke out between various national groups in Yugoslavia, measures were being taken by the major powers and financial interests to undermine the Belgrade government and the national economy. An IMF- imposed austerity brought sharply declining living standards, which in turn corroded the rights and securities that people had come to rely upon. As the economy reeled from the neoliberal shock therapy, revenues to the central government declined, while tax burdens rose.

The more prosperous republics of Croatia and Slovenia increasingly resisted having to subsidize the poorer ones. As the federal government grew weaker, centrifugal forces grew bolder. That same year, in June, both Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence (Croatia one day ahead of Slove- nia). The German government, along with the Vatican, hastened to recognize both of these breakaway republics as nation-states.

The self-declared Serbian Autonomous District of Krajina announced its intent to remain in the FRY. If Croatia was seceding from Yugoslavia, then Krajina would secede from Croatia." (This suggests a parallel to the US Civil War. When Virginia seceded from the United States, the northwestern region of that state seceded from Virginia to form West Virginia, in a successful effort to remain a loyal part of the Union.) Serbs in Bosnia also voted overwhelmingly in a refer- endum of their own to remain part of the FRY—only to be ignored by the West. Clearly, the "right to self-determination" did not apply to the Serbs. The separatist movements in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia revived Serbian nationalists' dream of a nation-state, as promoted by those who believed that self-determination belongs to ethnic nationalities not to republics or federations." Many Serbs however continued to identify themselves as Yugoslays.

In Slovenia, with its relatively homogeneous population and westerly location, secession brought only a brief armed conflict, the "ten-day war" between Slovene militia and the Yugoslav army. The quick independence won by Slovenia, however, was the opening wedge in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, greatly encouraging nationalists in Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia to follow suit.

Secession for Croatia proved more difficult. Fighting between Croats and the large Serbian population that had lived in Croatia for centuries reached intensive levels and lasted several years. In early August 1995, Croatian forces launched the bloodiest offensive of the war, breaking the Serbian defenses in Krajina, killing thousands of Serb civilians, and sending 225,000 fleeing for their lives. This operation had the active participation of the Western powers. The previous month, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher gave a nod to Croatian military action against Serbs in Krajina and Bosnia. Two days later, US Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith also approved the invasion plan. US-NATO planes destroyed Serbian radar and anti-aircraft defenses, and jammed Serbian military com- munications, leaving the skies open for the Western trained and funded Croatian air force to bomb Serbian defenses and strafe refugee columns. Trapped Serbian civilians, pouring into Bosnia, were massacred by Croatian and Muslim artillery.'° According to the London Independent: "The rearming and training of Croatian forces in preparation for the present offensive are part of a classic CIA operation: probably the most ambitious operation of its kind since the end of the Vietnam war.""

In 1992, Yugoslavia's southernmost republic, Macedonia, with a population of 1.5 million Slays and a large Albanian minority, and with an economy relatively less developed than that of its sister republics and no army to speak of, declared its independence. Spurred by US support, its independence may be something less than complete, given the US troop occupation that Macedonia has had to accept.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, fighting erupted between Serbs, Mus- lims, and Croats, after the latter two groups voted to secede from Yugoslavia. No single nationality in Bosnia had a majority. The Muslims composed 41 per cent of the population, the Serbs 32 per cent, and the Croats 17 per cent. And there were some 326,000 Bosnian citizens, many of them offspring of mixed marriages, who continued to identify themselves only as Yugo- slays rather than as members of a distinct ethnic or religious cohort. It seemed that a majority of Bosnia's own population did not support a breakaway republic.

Still the United States and Germany gave vital material aid to separatist forces in Croatia and Bosnia. An officer in the Yugoslav army is quoted as saying, "The Groat weaponry was invariably superior to ours. They had extraordinary German guns for their snipers which kept us almost permanently at bay."" CIA personnel and retired US military officers, under contract to the Pentagon, trained and guided Muslim armed

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units. It is a matter of public record that the CIA fueled the Bosnian conflict. Consider these headlines: the Manchester Guardian, November 17 1994: "CIA Agents Training Bosnian Army", the London Observer, November 20 1994: "America's Secret Bosnia Agenda", the European, November 25 1994: "How The CIA Helps Bosnia Fight Back." Several years later, the Los Angeles Times reported that "the CIA station in Bosnia is now reputed to be one of the largest in the region." 4

Charles Boyd, former deputy commander of the US Euro- pean command, commented: "The popular image of this war [in Croatia] is one of unrelenting Serb expansion. Much of what the Croatians call 'the occupied territories' is land that has been held by Serbs for more than three centuries. The same is true of most Serb land in Bosnia—what the Western media fre- quently refer to as the 70 per cent of Bosnia seized by rebel Serbs. In short the Serbs were not trying to conquer new territory, but merely to hold onto what was already

As a result of the war, Serbian land holdings in Bosnia were reduced from 65 to 43 per cent.'6Boyd also faulted the US policy of covertly approving Muslim offensives that destroyed the very ceasefire Washington ostensibly supported. While US leaders claimed they wanted peace, Boyd concludes, they "encouraged a deepening of the war."

A ceasefire, the "Dayton accords," was brokered by the Western powers in November 1995, with terms that insured Western suzerainty over a thoroughly partitioned Bosnia-Her- zegovina. The larger portion became the Bosnian Federation (Muslim-Croat) and a smaller territory became Republika Srpska, into which Bosnian Serbs were corralled, those who had not fled to Serbia. All this time, US leaders acted as if any attempt by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to resist secession was a violation of national self-determination and international law.

Under the FRY constitution, the will of a republican majority could not override the equally valid will of a constituent nationality. In other words, the Croatian vote for independence could not negate the rights of the Krajina Serbs within Croatia. The latter had overwhelmingly rejected separatism in a refer- endum of their own. According to FRY constitutional principles, Croatian independence should have been conditional upon a successful resolution of Krajina's competing claim. The same rule applied to Bosnia. All this was completely ignored by Western leaders and their media acolytes, who assumed that while it was outrageous that Muslims and Croats should accept a minority position within Yugoslavia, it was perfectly all right for Serbs to accept a far less secure minority position within Croatia and Bosnia.

When the FRY sent aid to the embattled Bosnian Serbs, this was seen as a sign of aggrandizement on behalf of a "Greater Serbia." But when Croatia sent its armed forces into Bosnia- Herzegovina "to carve out an ethnically pure Croatian territory known as 'Herceg-Bosna," it was punished with nothing more than "half-hearted reprimands.""' The same double standard would later be applied respectively to Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo.

Were the secessions legal under international law, as the Western powers assumed? In fact, the recognition of Slovene, Croatian, and Bosnian independence by the Western powers "constituted an illegal intervention in Yugoslavia's internal affairs, to which Belgrade had every right to object," argue Robert Tucker and David Hendrickson. 19While championing the right of self-determination in the former Yugoslavia, the Western powers recognize no such right for populations within their own domains. Britain does not endorse the right of secession for Scotland, nor France for Corsica, nor Spain for Catalonia or the Basque region. The United States does not acknowledge the right of any state or other constituent political unit or ethnic community within its boundaries to secede from the Union or, for that matter, to override the supremacy of federal power in any way. This was made perfectly clear in 1861-65, when the Southern Confederacy's secession was forcibly repressed in one of the bloodiest wars of the nineteenth century.

The US government does not recognize an innate right of secession for Puerto Rico, an "island commonwealth" unat- tached to continental USA, with a distinct ethnic population of its own that speaks Spanish rather than English. Puerto Rico is a colonial possession acquired by a war of aggression against Spain over a century ago. If Puerto Rico eventually attains independence, it will come as a concession conferred by Wash- ington, not an inherent right exercised by the Puerto Ricans.

There is an argument made for secession as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: "a long train of abuses & usurpations" justify disassociation from an insufferable government. But as Tucker and Hendrickson point out, the Western interventionists have acknowledged the more or less equitable, peaceable, "almost idyllic" relations that obtained between Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims before hostilities. This undercuts the view that the Muslims had endured the kind of long-standing insufferable oppression that justifies recourse to revolution. While Western spokespersons maintained that Bosnian Muslims had every reason to fear living in a state (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) dominated by Serbs, they repeatedly assumed that Serbs had no reason to fear living in a state (an independent Bosnia) dominated by Muslims and Croats. "That assumption is fundamentally implausible; it is, nevertheless, the unspoken assumption of the American govern- ment's position and of the dominant consensus in the United States regarding the origins of the [Bosnian] war."²⁰

At the time of the Bosnian breakaway, all that remained of Yugoslavia—Montenegro and Serbia—proclaimed a new Federal Republic. Even this severely truncated nation proved too much for Western leaders to tolerate. In 1992, at the urging of the United States and other major powers, the UN Security Council imposed a universally binding blockade on all diplomatic, trade, scientific, cultural, and sports exchanges with Serbia and Monte- negro, the most sweeping sanctions ever imposed by that body. The new FRY was suspended from membership in the Confer- ence on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), and was, in effect, ejected from the United Nations when not allowed to occupy the seat of the former Federal Republic.

The sanctions impacted disastrously upon Yugoslavia's already depressed economy, bringing hyperinflation, unemploy- ment up to 70 per cent, malnourishment, and the virtual collapse of the health care system.2' Raw materials required for the production of medicines were not getting into the country, nor were finished medical products. Medicine was no longer available in local currency. Patients were being asked to buy their own medications on the black market in exchange for hard currency, something most could not afford to do. People began dying from curable diseases.

As in Iraq, so in Yugoslavia, international sanctions inflicted severe suffering upon innocents. John and Karl Mueller wrote in Foreign Affairs that economic sanctions may now well be considered the leading weapon of mass destruction, having possibly "contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all the weapons of mass destruction throughout history."22 The civilian population does not suffer accidental or collateral damage from sanctions; it is the prime target.

To conclude: when their life chances become increasingly less promising, ordinary people jostle for survival, with many turning into ethnic militants—and some even into ethnic killers. Yet nationality differences do not of themselves inexorably lead to armed conflict. Many countries have histories of internal ethnic, religious, or cultural clashes that have not devolved into all-out war and secession. In the case of Yugoslavia, underlying con- ditions must be taken into account. What outside interests were exercising what power on behalf of whose agenda? "Tensions along ethnic, racial, or historical fault lines," Susan Woodward concludes, "can lead to civil violence, but to explain the Yugoslav crisis as a result of ethnic hatred is to turn the story upside down and begin at its end."²³