Whatever Happened to Yugoslavia?

By Kathryn Albrecht

Part II

October 1999

This is a war story, with its share of valor and untimely death, futility and improbable aspirations. But rather than fully recount the concurrent civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia, Part II of this series examines America's and other Western powers' involvement there from 1991 through 1995. It is cliche that truth is the first casualty of war. In the midst of the United States' ongoing military engagement in Yugoslavia, let us attempt to reclaim the truth that has been lost.

How could so much strife and chaos engulf so many former countrymen -- longtime neighbors, co-workers, in-laws? Yugoslavs were a tightly knit nation for 46 years -- ethnic groups of farmers and city folk whose forebears lived side by side for several centuries. Part I of "Whatever Happened to Yugoslavia" examined the Western economic pressures brought to bear on that maverick socialist federation, which had shown little inclination after the Cold War, of imitating other Communist countries' break-ups. But south Slavic unity was ultimately shattered, and this war story resumes as Yugoslavia's second, third, and fourth republics break away.


The disintegration of the federation vies for most-reported news story of the 1990s; scarcely a day passed void of newsprint angst over Yugoslavia's problems. So why is it so difficult to recall the Bosnian and Croatian wars with acuity? Was it one war or two? It was all so complex. Yet Americans were critically involved, and over 10,000 of us are still there in uniform, providing "stability" to partitioned Bosnia. Will Kosovo mirror Bosnia? Revisiting these wars casts light on America's and NATO's new commitments in Kosovo, where bombs rained for eleven weeks last spring.

What is easy to recall is the common thread running through that decade's mainstream reportage of Yugoslavia's travail: fear and loathing of President Slobodan Milosevic. What was not commonly reported here is that, by the time the UN, the U.S., and NATO decided to intervene militarily in Bosnia, and more subtly in Croatia, Slobodan and his boys had packed up and gone home to Serbia, where they remained. So if the Bosnian and Croatian wars were not truly about Milosevic, what were they about?

Here is a thumbnail sketch: Croatia's independence in 1991 is met with dismay by her Serb minority. They fight for separate independence from what appears to be a neofascist Croatia for four years, with early assistance of federal and renegade forces. Neighboring Bosnia declares independence from Yugoslavia in 1992. Her Serb minority is fearfully unhappy about disunion and takes up arms. Moderate Muslims cannot support the Islamic fundamentalist the U.S. picks for president; they form a parallel government in dissent. Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, falls under the three-year seige of Bosnian Serb irregulars, who inherited arms from the retreating federals. To cut off any support to Serb rebels in the warring states, rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) is embargoed by the UN. Croatia senses a rare opportunity to seize Bosnian territory and aligns itself with the Bosnian Serbs and moderate Muslim dissidents.

Bosnian Serbs attempt to clear a narrow, 300-kilometer-long corridor through mountains, connecting the two historic Serb sectors. This results in charges of "ethnic cleansing" -- driving Muslim villagers and their defenders out of the corridor. The United States cajoles "our" Croat and Bosnian governments into forming an alliance. The new "allies" are rewarded thusly: Croatia is assisted by U.S. forces in "cleansing" itself entirely of the Serb minority fighting for their independence. And a U.S.-NATO air war greatly intensifies over Bosnia. With Bosnian Serbs and moderate Muslims exhausted and near defeat, Clinton calls all factions to the table in Dayton, Ohio, of all places. Slobodan Milosevic, who washed his hands of the whole mess years before, acts as peace broker but fails to get sanctions lifted. Bosnia is divided, not quite equally, in two. Its Serbs get the short end. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization stations 34,000 "stabilization" troops there in 1996. NATO is still policing Bosnia today.

That's the short of it. However, this neat summary overlooks some information extremely pertinent to citizens of an informed democracy. Or have Americans been disinformed? Keep this thumbnail chronology in mind as we examine some lesser known details of Western intervention in the Balkan wars.

UPSETTING APPLE CARTS

We begin with the simple secession, by referendum, of Macedonia in the autumn of 1991. She was legally independent by January, peacefully let go by Milosevic because of several factors. Macedonia is small, landlocked, relatively poor, and nonstrategic. Her communist/socialist governance had been retained in the U.S.-mandated elections the previous year. Relations between Belgrade and this southernmost state were noncombative. So roads, rail, and the border with Serbia remained open and unmilitarized after independence. For a year, that is, until 1,000 UN peacekeepers suddenly came to Macedonia to "guard" her borders with Serbia. Uninvited and unnecessary, they remained ("Eastern Europe," Lonely Planet Guidebooks, 1999).

Next arose the problem of American diplomats upsetting the apple cart of an early, painstakingly negotiated peace accord, mediated by the European Community (EC), between the Bosnian belligerents. On the eve of a dreaded civil war, in Lisbon in March 1992, all parties signed an accord which would have preserved Bosnia as a union of several autonomous provinces, partitioned along ethnic lines (Facts on File, 4/92, p. 252). But the United States co-opted one of the signatories, Alija Izetbegovic, a former Nazi collaborator. This man was thrice imprisoned between 1946 and 1983 for "inciting racial hatred" and for advocating an "ethnically pure Bosnia" (NATO in the Balkans, Wilson, 1998). Nonetheless, the Americans promised Izetbegovic supreme presidential power in Bosnia, with American military support, if he withdrew his signature from the accord. Izetbegovic did just that. The Lisbon Accord dissolved and three and a half years of civil war ensued, claiming tens of thousands of lives.

Why did the U.S. not favor a multilateral, EC-brokered peace in Bosnia in 1992? A Pentagon policy document leaked to The New York Times that March casts some light. "We seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements." What a shame! General Charles Boyd, deputy chief of the U.S. European Command during those years, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine (9/95) that the moderate Muslim co-signatory at Lisbon, opposition leader Fikret Abdic, led "one of the few examples of successful multi-ethnic cooperation in the Balkans." And Abdic and the Bosnian Serbs had agreed that peace was possible.

BAD PRESS

Another factor swaying the course of history, of which the American public is largely unaware, is the work of East Coast public relations firms in shaping our perception of Yugoslavia's troubles. With dollars pouring into the seceding republics as promised reward for throwing off "communist oppression" via "free" elections, Croatia, Bosnia, and the Serbian province of Kosovo hired American spin doctors. (Kosovo had held an irregular election for a government in exile.) Hill & Knowlton, Waterman & Associates, and Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs are being retained by their client states at sums upwards of $10,000 per month. The object? Sway American public opinion, influence the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, and appeal to international human rights groups. James Harff, director of Ruder Finn, in an interview in The Spectator (2/12/93), revealed that his firm's efforts to vilify the Serbs were aimed at "persuading and convincing the UN to take proper measures." (Voilà -- sanctions!) Distorted and falsified "news" is systematically fed by these companies, via press release, to hundreds of journalists, humanitarian organizations, politicians, and academics. Many distortions and falsehoods reportedly originate at the State Department, the CIA, or the Pentagon.

Harff was interviewed by Jacques Merlino on French TV2 in April 1993. When asked what is Ruder Finn's most gratifying PR campaign involving Yugoslavia, Harff replied, "In July 1992, we outwitted three big Jewish organizations -- the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress ... We suggested they publish an advertisement [alleging Serb atrocities] in The New York Times ... That was a tremendous coup! We could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind ... Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with use of words with high emotional content such as 'ethnic cleansing,' 'concentration camps,' etc."

When Merlino pointed out that no actual evidence had been found to confirm the existence of Serb concentration camps, James Harff replied, "Our work is not to verify information; our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to our clients. We are not paid to moralize." A letter from the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society in Belgrade to the American Jewish Committee at that time warned: "Anti-Serb propaganda is a twin sister of anti-Semitism."

The complicity of the U.S. mainstream media in distorting public opinion and blaring sensational reports without checking facts is best illustrated in the reporting from rural Muslim villages in Bosnian Serb-held areas throughout 1992. One purported "death camp" at Trnopolje was visited that August by Paddy Ashdown, a British Liberal leader. He reported in both The Independent and The Guardian that this camp was actually an unfenced refugee center on school grounds, where Bosnian Muslims were being protected by their Serb neighbors and the Red Cross. A photo splashed around the world showed an emaciated "Islamic" behind barbed wire at Trnopolje. In fact, the photo was proved to be doctored; the barbed wire was faked. The man was actually a tubercular Serb looter in prison elsewhere (Foreign Policy Journal, 9/94).

This calls into question the charges that up to 50,000 Muslim women had been raped by Serb militias, reported in Newsweek (1/4/93). Ms. magazine also ran a cover story. The rumor was based on an EC inquiry estimating that 20,000 women had been violated. No coverage, however, was given to the fact that the one dissenting member on the investigative team, Simone Veil, president of the European Parliament, protested that this estimate was based on interviews with only two women. The panel's statistical extrapolation was untenable. French television reporter Jerome Bony traveled to Tuzla, Bosnia, to investigate. He found only four individuals who would admit to being raped or witnessing rape. Helsinki Watch firmly refutes the charge that rape was de rigueur in this war.

LOWERING THE BOOM

Nonetheless, the severest of sanctions were brought down on a shrunken Yugoslavia to the east. In the spring of 1992, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 757, a sanctions vote rushed through by the U.S. delegation two days before an awaited UN report would certify that Belgrade was in full compliance with demands that all federal troops withdraw from Bosnia. The World Court had also just ruled that Yugoslavia was not the aggressor in the Bosnian conflict. Resolution 757 banned all exports and imports, including oil; froze all assets; banned all financial contacts and international travel; and suspended all scientific and cultural exchanges, including sports. Noncombatant Yugoslavia became the first country ever to be expelled from the United Nations. In late 1992, a full naval blockade shut down shipping on the Danube and the Adriatic Sea, affecting 74,000 vessels. A no-fly zone, along with the blockade, was enforced by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. These measures cost at least seven neighboring countries billions in lost trade. The West, in fact, now controlled all of Serbia's border crossings and communications, along with the airspace and waterways. In December, Yugoslavia received the dubious affront of being expelled from the International Monetary Fund, just in time for Christmas.

On the day sanctions were levied, George Bush declared a U.S. state of emergency. He announced, "The grave events in Serbia and Montenegro constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States." Our foreign policy was obviously going to hell in a handbasket, but how a penniless rump 4,000 miles away could possibly threaten our national security defies explanation. Serbias' per capita income had declined to $700 per year. Unemployment was 60%. Inflation was a phenomenal 363 quadrillion percent (that's 15 zeros). Once stewards of the finest health care system in southern Europe, Serbs now endured a 37% increase in infectious fatalities. Their caloric intake had fallen 28% (NATO in the Balkans, Becker, p.121).

Just how strategic the Balkans are to the U.S. military was revealed in a New York Times opinion piece (11/9/92). Former Air Force Chief-of-Staff Michael Dugan revealed the plan for U.S.-NATO expansion eastward toward the Caucasus and stated, "A win in the Balkans would establish U.S. leadership in the post-Cold War world in a way that Operation Desert Storm [the initial bombing of Iraq] never could." Soon Madeline Albright, then ambassador to the UN, visited wartorn Sarajevo and declared, "Your future and America's future are inseparable!"

COVERT OPS

In the second year of the Bosnian and Croatian civil wars, a unique and mysterious type of Pentagon contractor set up shop in the Balkans. Incorporated as "a private military company" in Virginia, Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) is a collection of former Pentagon top-brass, retired generals, mostly. A map on their Website shows Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Macedonia as their major foci. Throughout 1993, MPRI trained, outfitted, and heavily armed the nascent armies of Bosnia and Croatia. This was clandestine work; NATO would not enter its first-ever active combat (over Bosnia) for yet another year. Six MPRI retired brass, in violation of a UN ceasefire, planned and provided air cover for Izetbegovic's offensive against the liberal Muslim opposition in Bihac in 1994. This was reported by newspapers in Britain, France, and Germany but not in the U.S. MPRI then moved quietly across the border to again plan, prepare for, and provide the airstrikes in Croatia's massive ethnic cleansing of nearly 200,000 Serbs from Krajina in August 1995 (The Progressive, 8/26/99). MPRI's business in the Balkans had just begun. We will hear of them again in relation to the KLA and Kosovo in Parts III and IV of this series.

The Croatian war, itself costing 10,000 lives, gradually faded from the news. The Vance-Owen peace plan basically took hold there. But President Clinton opted against Vance-Owen for Bosnia and U.S. bombers pummeled Bosnian Serb positions 4,000 times in 1995 "to hasten peace." Finally, in November, with 150,000 NATO troops stationed throughout the Balkans, far outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's chartered boundaries of defense,the Dayton Accord partitioned Bosnia, rewrote its constitution in Ohio, and appointed foreign administrators. As Lonely Planet's 1999 guidebook on "Eastern Europe" so accurately describes, "Bosnia-Hercegovina is essentially ruled by the West."

Researcher Sara Flounders of the International Action Center, in "Bosnia Tragedy" (1995), claimed that: "U.S. involvement in the Balkans is not about helping any of the people in the region -- Muslims, Croats, Serbs, or Albanians. The only interest of the Pentagon is in creating weak, dependent puppet regimes in order to dominate the entire region economically and politically. Only the giant multinational corporations will benefit."

Is that sad prognosis true? There is more evidence to ponder. Part III of "Whatever Happened to Yugoslavia?" examines whether the new nations within old Bosnia are functional under the Dayton Accord. Why did massive aerial bombardment nearly devour spring last year in Europe? What are the roots of Kosovo's conflict and why did a massive Gandhian peace movement fail to deter another civil war? Stay tuned.


New Mexico librarian Kathryn Albrecht is an independent political researcher and analyst.


Updated 3/2003