GeopoliticalMonitor.com
July 21, 2008
1. Executive Summary
2. Background
The Yugoslav wars occurred between 1991 and 2001, and involved several conflicts leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created at the end of World War II, and consisted of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Kosovo.
3. Setting the Stage
A Political and Economic Crisis
In 1980, longtime dictator of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito died, leading to a leadership crisis.
By 1982, the Yugoslav debt had grown to 20 billion dollars, so the US Ambassador in Belgrade, Lawrence Eagleburger, created a group of individuals known as the “Friends of Yugoslavia” who organized a set of “rescue loans” by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.[1] However, that same year, the IMF and World Bank had created a new loan agreement, entitled Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), which gave the IFIs total control over a country's economic and even many political decisions. The effect of the SAPs was that they “wreaked economic and political havoc... The economic crisis threatened political stability ... it also threatened to aggravate simmering ethnic tensions.”[2]
In 1989, Slobodan Milosevic became President of Serbia, the largest and most powerful of all the Yugoslav republics. Also in 1989, Yugoslavia’s Premier traveled to the US to meet President George H.W. Bush in order to negotiate another financial aid package. In 1990, the World Bank/IMF program began, and the Yugoslav state’s expenditures went towards debt repayment. As a result, social programs were dismantled, the currency devalued, wages frozen, and prices rose. The “reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republic,” leading to Croatia and Slovenia’s succession in 1991.[3]
4. Beginning the Break-Up of Yugoslavia
In 1990, the US intelligence agencies released a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which predicted Yugoslavia would break apart, erupt in civil war, and placed blame on Serbian President Milosevic.[4]
Germany was the first to recognize the independent states of Slovenia and Croatia, pressuring its Western allies to follow suit.[5] This resulted in the Ten Day War in Slovenia, where the Yugoslav army moved against the Slovenian forces in late June of 1991. After the battle, the European Community recognized Slovenia on January 15, 1992, the UN did so on May 22, and Slovenia subsequently joined the EU in 2004.
In 1991, conflict broke out between Yugoslavia and Croatia, when it, too, declared independence. A ceasefire was reached in 1992. Yet, the Croats continued small military offensives until 1995, as well as participating in the war in Bosnia. In 1995, Operation Storm was undertaken by Croatia to try to retake the Krajina region. A Croatian general was recently put on trial at the Hague for war crimes during this battle, which was key to driving the Serbs out of Croatia and “cemented Croatian independence.” The US supported the operation and the CIA actively provided intelligence to Croat forces, leading to the displacement of between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs, largely through means of murder, plundering, burning villages and ethnic cleansing.[6] The Croatian Army was trained by US advisers, and the general on trial was even personally supported by the CIA.[7]
5. The Bosnian War
The US Urges Declaration of Independence
In 1992, the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina began, which lasted until 1995. In 1990, Alija Izetbegovic, a former Nazi collaborator and a fervent Muslim, was elected leader of Bosnia.[8] In 1992, the US Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Sr. administration was Lawrence Eagleburger, who warned Milosevic that his actions might “imperil relations with the US.”[9] This ocurred a year after Eagleburger sent an Ambassador, Warren Zimmerman, to Bosnia’s leader, Izetbegovic, to encourage him to withdraw from an agreement “that would have prevented the breakup of Yugoslavia.”[10]
Al-Qaeda and Bosnia
It is commonly assumed that after 1989, when the Afghan-Soviet war ended, and with the 1991 Gulf War, Al-Qaeda lost its ties to the US government. However, in 1991, Osama bin Laden supported the creation of an Al-Qaeda charity front in Croatia. The Brooklyn branch of the charity front, known as the Al-Kifah center, had extensive ties to the Croatian branch.[11] In 1990, the CIA granted visas to Egyptian jihadi leader, Omar Abdel Rahman, to come to Brooklyn and run the Al-Kifah center.[12] In 1992, a US Army official met with a senior official at Al-Kifah to “offer help with a covert operation to support the Muslims in Bosnia.”[13]
Western Intelligence Agencies Support Terrorists in Bosnia
Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, had run arms and cash to Bosnian Muslims.[14] In 2002, an official Dutch inquiry revealed that the intelligence agencies of Iran, Turkey and the US organized a vast arms smuggling operation into Bosnia, with financial backing of Saudi Arabia, to deliver the arms to radical Islamist groups. The Pentagon was intimately involved in this operation.[15]
Breaking the Cease-Fire to Break Yugoslavia
The leader of Croatia in 1988, Franjo Tudjman, reportedly met in secret with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, to formulate “a joint policy to break up Yugoslavia,” as Croatia and Slovenia would be brought into the “German economic zone.” US Army officers were dispatched to Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, and Macedonia as “advisers” and brought in US Special Forces to help.[16]
During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the US was training the Croatian and Bosnian armies and was organizing large arms shipments to the region. During the nine-month cease-fire, six US generals met with Bosnian army leaders to plan the Bosnian offensive that broke the cease-fire.[17]
After the signing of the Dayton Agreement in 1995, which marked the end of the Bosnian War, the IMF and World Bank came in with a new round of Structural Adjustment Programs, and the “newly sovereign states [had] fully collaborated with the creditors.”[18]
6. The Kosovo War
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Al-Qaeda
In 1996, the Albanian Mafia, in collaboration with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a militant guerilla organization, took control over the enormous Balkan heroin trafficking routes. The KLA was linked to former Afghan Mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden.[19]
US Support for KLA-Al-Qaeda Terrorists
In 1997, the KLA began fighting against Serbian forces,[20] and in 1998, the US State Department removed the KLA from its list of terrorist organizations.[21] Before and after 1998, the KLA was receiving arms, training and support from the US and NATO, and Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was close with KLA leader Hashim Thaci.[22] Madeline Albright, who played a criminal role during the Rwandan genocide,[23] chose Hashim Thaci to play an important part “on Washington’s behalf” at the failed Rambouillet negotiations in 1998.[24]
Western Intelligence and the KLA
Both the CIA and German intelligence, the BND, supported the KLA terrorists in Yugoslavia prior to and after the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The BND had KLA contacts since the early 1990s, when it was establishing its Al-Qaeda contacts.[25] KLA members were trained by Osama bin Laden at training camps in Afghanistan. Even the UN stated that much of the violence came from KLA members, “especially those allied with Hashim Thaci.”[26]
Others that engaged in arming and training the KLA included the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), British Secret Service (MI6), the British Special Forces (SAS), and “three British and American private security companies.”[27]
NATO’s Bombing of Serbia
The March 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo was justified on the pretense of putting an end to Serbian oppression of Kosovo Albanians, which was termed genocide. The Clinton Administration made claims that at least 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing and “may have been killed” by the Serbs.[28] Bill Clinton personally compared events in Kosovo to the Holocaust.[29] The US State Department had stated that up to 500,000 Albanians were feared dead.[30] Eventually, the official estimate was reduced to 10,000, however, after exhaustive investigations, it was revealed that the death of less than 2,500 Albanians could be attributed to the Serbs.[31] During the NATO bombing campaign, between 400 and 1,500 Serb civilians were killed, and NATO committed war crimes, including the bombing of a Serb TV station and a hospital.[32]
7. The Trial of Milosevic
A Political Show Trial
At Milosevic’s trial at the Hague, he was refused the right to defend himself, with the Tribunal claiming he was medically unfit to do so. Former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, denied this, stating that the trial’s transcripts showed Milosevic was “destroying” the claims of the prosecution, that it was just a political trial, and that, “His guilt is essential if the Germans and the Americans who played such a critical role in causing much of the bloodshed and the violence in the Balkans are to be let off the hook.”[33]
At the Tribunal, a Russian General told the court he heard US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, “encouraging [KLA leader] Hashim Thaci to incite a rebellion in Kosovo.”[34]
The Death of Milosevic
In 2006, Milosevic died while in his jail cell. His lawyer said Milosevic told him he thought he was being poisoned in his cell,[35] and Milosevic had written a letter to the Russian government explaining that he was being poisoned with an extremely strong drug used to treat tuberculosis and leprosy.[36] The drug, rifampicin, was found to be in Milosevic’s bloodstream two months before his death, yet the Tribunal kept the results secret.[37] The official line, however, is that he died of a heart attack.
8. Kosovo Declares Independence
Terrorists Take Control
In February of 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, which was quickly recognized by the EU and US. The Kosovo Prime Minister is Hashim Thaci, former KLA terrorist involved in drug running and other criminal atrocities. In 2000, Madeline Albright had “ordered” the Hague Chief Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, to remove Thaci from the list of war crime suspects.[38] Carla del Ponte later spoke out, denouncing the crimes of the KLA and its leaders, which were not made public, because “had the crimes of the Albanians been known about, no one would acknowledge Kosovo’s independence.”[39]
9. The Real Reason for Dismantling Yugoslavia
In 2000, the US State Department, in cooperation with the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, held a conference on Euro-Atlantic integration in Slovakia. Among the participants were many heads of state, foreign affairs officials and ambassadors of various European states as well as UN and NATO officials.[40] A letter of correspondence between a German politician present at the meeting and the German Chancellor, revealed the true nature of NATO’s campaign in Kosovo. The conference demanded a speedy declaration of independence for Kosovo, and that the war in Yugoslavia was waged in order to enlarge NATO, Serbia was to be excluded permanently from European development to justify a US military presence in the region, and expansion was ultimately designed to contain Russia.[41] In effect, the motivations behind the dismantling of Yugoslavia were not about self determination or preventing genocide, but were imperialistic in nature, and criminal in execution.
10. Endnotes
[1] Louis Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Duke University Press, 2002: Page 28
[2-3] Michel Chossudovsky, Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina. Global Research: February 19, 2002: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=370
[4] David Binder, Yugoslavia Seen Breaking Up Soon. The New York Times: November 28, 1990
[5] Michel Chossudovsky, Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina. Global Research: February 19, 2002: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=370
[6] Ian Traynor, Croat general on trial for war crimes. The Guardian: March 12, 2008: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/12/warcrimes.balkans
[7] Adam LeBor, Croat general Ante Gotovina stands trial for war crimes. The Times Online: March 11, 2008: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3522828.ece
[8] David Binder, Alija Izetbegovic, Muslim Who Led Bosnia, Dies at 78. New York Times: October 20, 2003.
[9] David Binder, Eagleburger Anguishes Over Yugoslav Upheaval. The New York Times: June 19, 1992: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE0DF113DF93AA25755C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
[10] History Commons, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Center for Cooperative Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_bosnia_and_herzegowina
[11] History Commons, Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1991: Al-Qaeda Begins Infiltrating Balkans Region Through Charity Front. The Center for Cooperative Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_bosnia_and_herzegowina
[12] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America. University of California Press: 2007, page 141
[13] Ibid, page 149
[14] Tim Judah, German spies accused of arming Bosnian Muslims. The Sunday Telegraph: April 20, 1997: http://www.serbianlinks.freehosting.net/german.htm
[15] Richard J. Aldrich, America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims. The Guardian: April 22, 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/22/warcrimes.comment
[16] Gary Wilson, New reports show secret U.S. role in Balkan war. Workers World News Service: 1996: http://www.workers.org/ww/1997/bosnia.html
[17] IAC, The CIA Role in Bosnia. International Action Center: http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/ciarole.htm
[18] Michel Chossudovsky, Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina. Global Research: February 19, 2002: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=370
[19] History Commons, Serbia and Montenegro: 1996-1999: Albanian Mafia and KLA Take Control of Balkan Heroin Trafficking Route. The Center for Cooperative Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_serbia_and_montenegro
[20] History Commons, Serbia and Montenegro: 1997: KLA Surfaces to Resist Serbian Persecution of Albanians. The Center for Cooperative Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_serbia_and_montenegro
[21] History Commons, Serbia and Montenegro: February 1998: State Department Removes KLA from Terrorism List. The Center for Cooperative Research: http://www.historycommons.org/topic.jsp?topic=country_serbia_and_montenegro
[22] Marcia Christoff Kurop, Al Qaeda's Balkan Links. The Wall Street Journal: November 1, 2001: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/561291/posts
[23] Andrew G. Marshall, The Rwandan Genocide. Geopolitical Monitor: February 21, 2008: http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/content/backgrounders/2008-02-21/rwandan-genocide/
[24] Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo: The US and the EU support a Political Process linked to Organized Crime. Global Research: February 12, 2008: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8055
[25] Global Research, German Intelligence and the CIA supported Al Qaeda sponsored Terrorists in Yugoslavia. Global Research: February 20, 2005: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=431
[26] Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo: The US and the EU support a Political Process linked to Organized Crime. Global Research: February 12, 2008: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8055
[27] Michel Chossudovsky, Osamagate. Global Research: October 9, 2001:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
[28] Tom Doggett, Cohen Fears 100,000 Kosovo Men Killed by Serbs. May 16, 1999: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/stories/cohen051699.htm
[29] Wolf Blitzer, et al., Clinton: Serbs must be stopped now. CNN: March 23, 1999: http://www.cnn.com/US/9903/23/u.s.kosovo.04/
[30] Steven Erlanger and Christopher S. Wren, Early Count Hints at Fewer Kosovo Deaths. The New York Times: November 11, 1999: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D00E1DC1E3AF932A25752C1A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
[31] Chris Marsden and Barry Grey, Investigations belie NATO claims of "ethnic genocide" in Kosovo. World Wide Socialist Website: November 9, 1999: http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/koso-n09.shtml
[32] Robert Fisk, Amnesty International: NATO Deliberately Attacked Civilians In Serbia. The Independent: June 7, 2000: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/060700-02.htm
[33] James Bissett, The Milosevic Trial at the Hague Tribunal: Interview with former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia. Global Research: September 30, 2004: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=591
[34] B92 Belgrade, US and NATO had Advanced Plans to Bomb Yugoslavia. Global Research: November 24, 2004: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=259
[35] Pierceland Herald, Milosevic feared he was being poisoned: lawyer. Global Research: March 11, 2006: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2087
[36] CRG, Was Milosovic Poisoned? Global Research: March 14, 2006: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2102
[37] Sara Flounders, Milosevic's Death: A Political Assassination blamed on the Victim. International Action Center: March 16, 2006: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2108
[38] Michel Chossudovsky, Kosovo: The US and the EU support a Political Process linked to Organized Crime. Global Research: February 12, 2008: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8055
[39] Elena Guskova, ”The Hunt: “Me and Military Criminals”. Global Research: June 22, 2008: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9418
[40] AEI, Is Euro-Atlantic Integration Still on Track? Participant List. American Enterprise Institute: April 28-30, 2000: http://www.aei.org/research/nai/events/pageID.440,projectID.11/default.asp
[41] Aleksandar Pavić, Correspondence between German Politicians Reveals the Hidden Agenda behind Kosovo's "Independence". Global Research: March 12, 2008: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8304