Global Accumulation of Capital and Complex Disasters the Case of South-Eastern Europe

Vera Vratusa (-Zunjic)

FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, Department of Sociology

Cika Ljubina 18-20, 11OOO Beograd, Yugoslavia

GLOBAL ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL AND COMPLEX DISASTERS –THE CASE OF SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Summary

Focusing on  the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia, the paper examines the extent to which global profit-seeking by  transnational capital can be considered as a factor  in the aetiology of social crises and complex disasters in South-Eastern Europe. 

The main finding of the paper is that there is a strong positive correlation between the  interest of oligopolistic corporate and financial capital concentrated in  NATO member states  on the one hand and  the break-up of former Yugoslavia on the other.  The interests of the NATO States to control material and human resources along the corridor leading to the Middle Eastern, Russian and Central Asian raw materials, cheap labour force, market outlets and industrial waste dumping grounds  provided the impetus for  the violent break-up of  former Yugoslavia with all its catastrophic attendant consequences (e.g. sharp fall in production,   upsurge in unemployment, poverty, disease, increase in death rate, long-term pollution of air, ground and water of the  entire Balkan region after the NATO bombing).

The paper also demonstrates how transnational corporate interests and NATO Member States leaders used various pressure mechanisms (e.g. economic blockade, debt interest elevation, "liberalisation" of neighbourhood economics, exploitation of compradore, separatist, terrorist and illicit drug-traffickers, cluster bombs and depleted uranium coated shells, to achieve their war objectives and at the same time precipitate a complex disaster situation  with ramifications beyond the initial target group,  beyond former Yugoslavia and beyond the present generations.

Goals, theoretical and methodological framework of the study

The principal goal of the study is to examine the main social factors in the aetiology, functioning and consequences of complex disasters in general, and the decade long and still ongoing war in the Balkans or South-Eastern Europe, as the most catastrophic form of complex disaster, in particular. 

The key concept of disaster is used here in the meaning of the situation of mass emergency depriving a great number of people and entire communities of the essential needs of life and of life itself. The addition of the adjective complex points out to the simultaneous appearance of multiple aspects of this deprivation, affecting diverse spheres of social and individual existence. The adjective “complex” also suggests that multidimensional deprivation is provoked not only by natural causes, like in the case of hailing, avalanche, floods, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, but that they are produced as well, or even primarily, by socially structured forces. It must be reminded, however, that the distinction between social and natural causes of disasters is ever harder to make due to expansion of the so-called second nature transformed by human intervention. 

In order to better understand and explain the complex disaster phenomenon and the war in South-Eastern Europe, the theoretical perspective of totality is adopted. Since ancient times, theoreticians have elaborated this perspective in two main directions, depending on the positivist or critical way they interpreted the totality or the comprehensive whole of reality. In the case of positivist interpretation, the totality is envisaged as abstract, timeless and essentially unchanging, including numerous variants of Hegelian dialectics of the self-identical whole of absolute idea, coming to self-consciousness by passing through the consecutive phases of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The advocates of the positivist functionalist variant of the totality perspective in social sciences focus primarily on the situations of stable equilibrium of the social system and external sources of its disequilibration. In the case of critical  interpretation, including here numerous variants of historical and dialectical materialism, the totality is conceived as a concrete unity of historically specific contradictions, simultaneously determined by the given state of the development of material forces of production and corresponding relations of production, and determining objectively possible qualitative transformation of this real world whole. The partisans of the critical variant of the totality perspective in social sciences concentrate on the internal sources of potentially transformative situations of strife and disequilibrium.

There exists, however, the least common denominator shared by proponents of both versions of the totality perspective. It consists, first of all, of  the tenet that the whole exerts the determining domination over its component parts as they interact through time between  themselves and with the rest of the comprehensive systems of lower or higher complexity to which they belong, bringing about often unexpected coincidence of different longitudinal and contemporary causal chains. The second idea is that all aspects of examined phenomena should be taken into account in order to avoid reductionist explanations. 

The application of the critical variant of the totality perspective to the study of the phenomenon of war through history, revealed so far that it is an intrinsic potentiality of all class societies. One of its main functions is to achieve the maintenance of a historically given dominant class in a ruling social position. Specific for war since the prolonged fifteenth century and the advent of capitalist mode of production,  is its use for a speeded up destruction of pre-capitalist and non-capitalist social relationships. In this prolonged process of the so called primary accumulation of capital, war has the function to separate producers from the means of production and their commodification, as the necessary social condition for the expanded reproduction of capital accumulation on the world scale. Such reproduction is permeated by intrinsic contradiction between social production and private appropriation,  leading to cyclical crises (Vratusa(-Zunjic), Vera, 1995a).

The main hypothesis of this study is that the main social factors of the ongoing war complex disaster in the Balkans are imbedded in the antagonistic process of profit seeking by financial capital. It attempts to overcome the actual hyper-accumulation of the capital systemic crisis through the violent elimination of the elements of collective ownership,  social production relationships and restoration of predominantly private ones. 

Global social context of the war complex disaster in South-Eastern Europe

Comprehensive examination of the historic genesis and factors of the present war complex disaster situation in South Eastern Europe, due to space limitation, will not go further back in this paper than the brief reconstruction of  two pivotal dimensions of the entire post World War II social context: hyper-accumulation of the capital systemic crisis and the fall of the  Berlin wall as a crucial turning point.

Post World War II Accumulation of Capital Systemic Crisis and neoliberal reaction of financial capital

Due to inherent contradiction between potentially unlimited possibilities of use values’ social production, and social limits imposed on it by private appropriation of its results in the capitalist mode of expanded commodity reproduction, at the end of sixties began the new medium term downward trend in the profit rate. At that time were being exhausted impulses created in the preceeding period for the upward trend in the profit rate. These stimuli included the Second World War destruction of “surplus” capital and workers.

 Representatives of the supranational and transnational corporate and financial capital have found the temporary instrument for “externalisation” of the systemic crisis’ costs at the expense of the direct producers,  through neo-liberal dismantling of the post World War II welfare national state reconstruction and development of redistributive interventionism in the West, and a centrally planned command economy with a dense net of state budget financed social services in the East. Both right and left parties that came to power in the West since the eighties promising tax cuts, and in the East since the nineties promising inflow of fresh capital, systematically applied the neoliberal economic policies demanded by the owners and managers of majority share packages in  trans-national industrial corporations, financial institutions and mass media establishments  (hereinafter TNC and financial oligarchy). They privatised public enterprises and service, pension, health and education funds, that deprived at least 80% of population from the results of their decades’ long work (Vratusa, Vera, 2001)

TNC and financial oligarchy concentrated in former colonial and present neo-colonial Western powers, already in 1971 transformed the  international monetary and financial system of fixed currency exchange rates based on gold-reserve  US dollar and low interest rates on long term predominantly public credits. Fluctuating exchange rates were introduced and since 1980 sharply increased interest rates on predominantly private shorter term credits, derived from recycling of OPEC “petro-dollars” that Arab ruling classes deposited in Western banks. “Seven sisters” or seven largest transnational oil companies contributed to the deepening of economic recession through their speculative rising of oil prices. In this unfavourable economic situation, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), transnational financial institutions in whose paid-in capital the US Treasury has the largest share, conditioned the extension of new credits to already indebted countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa and increasingly of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, by implementation of imposed macro-economic “structural adjustment programs”. Beside forced privatisation of public enterprises, infrastructure and services, freezing of state budgets, wages and extreme reduction of social subsidies, debtor countries are forced by official and commercial creditors to lift tariff protection of domestic industry and other strategic assets and deregulate capital flows. At the same time TNC and financial capital retained protectionist measures in the creditor countries, in which their headquarters are seated, from industrial imports from debtor countries. They also retained strong financial and other support from their own governments, contrary to neo-liberal recipes they were imposing to governments of weaker states. In fact, economic history of all contemporary industrially most developed countries, confirm that a favourable regulatory environment provided by the national state, including trade barriers, where  crucial for protection of infant industry from cheaper imports in the early phase of industrialization (Chomsky, Noam, 1998).

These IMF and WB imposed “economic reforms” led in many former planned economies, to wrecking of national banking system, to collapse of the economy and to acquisition of public assets by the Mafiosi, a new property owning class committed to the “free market”. Foreign investors and creditors contributed to the criminalisation and corruption of recipient state’s institutions by bribing state officials to lobby for them during selling and concession giving tenders. They often condition new financial injections into debtor countries by appointment of former IMF  and WB officials to cabinet posts. Government officials that are accountable more to foreign investors than to local institutions of electoral democracy, formulate and execute institutional and legal reforms within deadlines set by the loan arrangements with IMF. Local parliaments just rubber stamp the laws drafted with the “financial and technical assistance” of the institutions like “The Centre for International Private Enterprise” (CIPE) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) (Chossudovsky, M., 2001a; Poznañski, Kazimierz, 2000). 

The ongoing global financial and monetary crisis that is according to the relevant parameters going to be more disastrous than the one that started in the late 1920’s, confirms that neo-liberal reforms imposed by IMF and WB did not solve the systemic crisis of capital accumulation, manifested in the combination of excess output, unused capacity and  massive unemployment. On the contrary, they made it possible for the  “institutional investors” like privatised pension and social security funds privately holding great money reserves, to speculate on the electronically globalised stock exchange. From this resulted fictitious blowing up of the nominal value of extant financial claims several times above the present levels of the world’s combined domestic product estimated in terms of valuation of really produced and traded goods and services in the last decade of the XX century. (LaRouche, Jr., Lyndon, 2000). Financial-speculative “bubbling” and deliberate “financial manipulation” of market forces,  led to the 1997 depletion of hard currency reserves and to a plunge in Asia’s currency markets, followed by spectacular devaluation of currencies in Russia, Latin America and Turkey, but also in Australia, Canada, even Japan, and equally spectacular rise in dollar denominated debts. According to World Bank report, total debt of Latin American, African and Asian debtor countries in 1980 was $645 billion. After paying $1,613 billion of cumulative interest, the foreign debt of these countries grew to $4,137 billion by 1999. Following speculative assaults on national currencies, forced devaluations and unfavorable terms of trade, that provoked a fall in industrial production and bankruptcies in targeted economies, IMF “rescue” or bailout plans  enabled Western banks to take-over local financial systems and Western corporations to appropriate local productive assets at low prices. They demanded immediate disposal of bad bank loans and breaking up of prominent industrial complexes to be auctioned off at distress prices to foreign private speculating creditors. On top of cheap new acquisitions, creditors were reimbursed also through newly contracted credits. The money for them came from the treasuries of G17 countries and heightened public debt. The guarantors became the very same private banks who had precipitated the financial crisis and exacerbated it through speculation in the first place, but will benefit from the IMF imposed bail out program. The end result is “conquering” of the foreign countries without an invading army (Chossudovsky, Michel, 1999a). 

Due to continued speculative derivative trade on the major bourses, financial crisis in 2001 led to dramatic meltdown of “paper profits” on major world stock markets. This was accompanied by hyperinflationary rise in primary commodities’ prices, mass layoffs and to  impoverishment of population of disastrous proportions in both developing and developed countries. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall  as a crucial turning point.

The acceleration and expansion of the application of the major shift from Keynesian to Friedmanian economic policy reaction to accumulation of capital crisis  was made possible with the rise of Gorbachev to power in the Soviet Union. He was the first communist president who opted together with his cabinet not to claim the right and attempt to defend USSR,  the Organisation for Mutual Economic Co-operation of Eastern European “real socialist” countries, as these countries were named by their leaders during their Moscow 1976 Conference, and their Warsaw military pact,  from disintegration. The centrally planned class mode of production of use values was in crisis in these countries. Well developed infrastructure, industry and especially ramified social services sector, were becoming ever harder to maintain, because of the deepening stagnation. In the Eastern command economies, in contrast to the crisis in the West that manifests itself as hyper-production,  the crisis in the East manifested itself as insufficient  production of consumer goods. It is due to the bureaucratized system of production relations and high defence expenditures.

The tearing down of  the Berlin wall in 1989 symbolised to many the end of the Cold War, which itself started after the socialist October revolution and was intensified after the ending of the “hot”  Second World War. The hopefully announced and eagerly wished for dawning of the era of peace, unity of entire Europe and democratic participation of the world population in a sustainable development, did not materialise in the “post-Cold War World”. The TNC and financial oligarchy financially organised in IMF and militarily organised in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (hereinafter NATO), decided that extreme weakening of the rival Eastern super power offered favourable conditions to return to the classic strategies for the reversal of the declining manufacturing sector profit rate. There was no more deterrence to their option to triggering of an  imperialist war campaign in order to secure control of cheap raw materials, working force, market outlets and industrial waste dumping grounds. 

Their targets this time are not primarily material and human resources of the overseas colonies, but the ones much closer. They are located in the territories of former “real socialist” European countries that were largely inaccessible to financial capital behind the Iron Curtain until 1989. This time the TNC capital controlled by Vatican and reunited Germany, joined forces with the rest of the Western capital under the domination of the U.S. big capital while exercising “der Drang nach dem Osten”. This domination enables the USA military-industrial-financial complex to profit the most from aggression and joint rule in different parts of the world, exerted in alliance with militarily weaker Western European powers within NATO. Common interest in eastward expansion of allies having unequal power for the time being is stronger than disintegrative effects of their conflicting interests. One of the most important strategists of the U.S. foreign policy, Zbignieuw Brzezinski, summed up the essence of the conflict between EU and US oligarchy by asserting that it is imperative for the US to maintain its world dominance by preventing any unification of Eurasia (Brzezinski, Zbignieuw, 1997). 

Social factors of war complex disaster in Yugoslavia 

The totality perspective calls for the examination of the interaction of both internal and external social factors within this wider context of the latest cycle of the world-wide accumulation of capital crisis and disintegration of the Eastern Block, while attempting to answer why the rise in unemployment, fall in living standard and violent destruction of  life and property through armed conflict, acquired catastrophic proportions in the multiethnic and multiconfessional Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 

a) Internal factors

Among the internal factors, the most important were the unresolved contradictions inherent to Yugoslav hybrid planned and market “worker’s self-management” economy operating under a unique social ownership structure.  These factors are examined  in detail in other papers (Vratusa(-Zunjic) Vera, 1993; 1995b), so that here will be resumed just the most important findings relevant for the subject of this paper. Contradictions of the social property which is  neither state nor private, having elements of group co-operative ownership,  led to multidimensional crisis, sharpened by geographic concentration of specific ethnic groups in regions with different levels of historically inherited and attained industrial development. The crisis escalated into a civil war that acquired the form of ethnic and confessional  armed confrontation. This escalation was the result of the option of the most “entrepreneurial” technocrats and bureaucrats of the collective owners' class in all six Yugoslav Republics to re-privatise social ownership that was nationalised after the World War II, and to build internationally recognised nation states with violent means. The new-old ruling class set out to deprive the great majority of the social property’s “co-owners” of their at least formal constitutional right, still existing in 2002, to the control of the conditions of their reproduction. It hoped through such primary accumulation of big capital, to secure for itself  and for its descendants the safer self-reproduction source than it was in the past the mechanism of nomination to commanding positions in state economic, political and cultural apparatus, from the side of higher functionaries of the state-party nomenclature. The violent nature of this process can not be basically altered even through the “more just” but “snail-slow” method of privatisation through vouchers free distribution to all adult citizens. The voucher method could have allowed, however, if other protective measures were institutionalised, that greater part of national wealth remains in the hands of the national bourgeoisie. This is important since national bourgeoisie aspiring to creation of the national market basis for the accumulation of capital is systemically induced to implement some kind of social programs. 

A significant part of both technocratic and bureaucratic fraction of the former “nomenclature” as well as the nouveau riche new private businesspersons, are not developing into national bourgeoisie. They are predominantly oriented towards trade and speculative capital. They are ready to play in essence compradore role of mediation in the process of sell-off of national wealth and cheap local work forces’ and raw materials’ exploitation in the interests of multinational corporate and bank capital. The fact that compradore bourgeoisie facilitates transfer of national public wealth and resources to foreign investors, justifies Argentinean Nestor Gorojovsky in calling the “compradore” (Spanish: buying)  bourgeoisie, the “vendadore” (Spanish: selling) bourgeoisie.

b) External factors

Among the external factors, the most important is the already mentioned option of the ruling classes of the only military block remaining from the Cold War era, NATO, to seek the way out from the falling rates of profit crisis through implementation of overtly offensive strategy of expanding their sphere of resources’ control toward the European East. 

Within this wider context it must be explained why was Yugoslavia attacked the most violently of all former socialist European countries. The answer is contained in the fact that after the fall of the Berlin wall the ruling classes of the Western winners and losers of W.W.II reunited under the domination of USA in NATO, and did not need Yugoslavia  anymore  as the “window” of the West in the East. Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia comprising six federal units used to be the only country outside the big powers’ blocks in the South Eastern Europe. Federal Republic of Yugoslavia constituted in 1992 as the state of continuity of a founding member of UN and as a community-union of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro,  became also the only country in which a socialist party came to power after the historic turning point of the Berlin wall fall. It preserved the social ownership inherited from the self-management period a constitutional category on the same footing with the private, state and other forms of collective property. In spite of wide discrepancy between normatively proclaimed socialist principles of social justice and democracy and real tendency of oligarchic distribution of social wealth and power, the ruling Socialist Party’s legislation still guaranteed workers voice in the management of social enterprises. It also provided for preservation of certain advantages and empowerment of the employed in the process of “ownership transformation” or privatisation, much greater in comparison to legislation in former “real socialist” states of Europe.

The sovereign non-aligned Yugoslavia,  with a strong social sector, widespread social safety network and considerable rights of its citizens to participate in determination of the direction of their economy,  became an obstacle on the path of the eastward expansion of TNC and financial oligarchy’s hegemony for the third time just in the twenties century. The embroil of an authentic alternative model of social organisation of production had to be eliminated to make the way free for uniform imposition of the IMF neoliberal model. Expansionist forces had to conquer the control of Yugoslavia’s important geostrategic position of a natural and fertile Eurasian Land Bridge containing important water traffic arteries and mineral riches. 

Social instruments of eastward expansion of western capital 

The financial oligarchy organised around  NATO seeks to realise the main aims of its eastward expansion applying the age old imperial technique: divide et impera.  Unchallenged control of material and human resources of a given region by external powers is made easy after they succeed to intensify social conflicts between internal social groups. Formerly united and sovereign states thus become fractured into little dependent and destitute (neo)colonies that can not support themselves. Pre-existing co-operation in the region is destroyed, in order that the new “partnership” for “peace” and “stability” be imposed by the US dominated imperialist powers and in their interest, causing a complex disaster of catastrophic proportions in the entire region and beyond.

The main instruments employed during this protracted destructive process of external intervention and choosing sides in internal social crisis and conflicts, include economic, covert military, overt diplomatic, mass media, (il)legal and other forms of aggression. The instrument of overt military aggression is resorted to if the preceding means prove to be insufficient for the realisation of the financial oligarchy’s goals.

Economic instruments 

The TNC and financial oligarchy first resorted to various economic instruments of aggression against Yugoslavia, like in the case of attack on all weaker states. In this phase, the primary aim is to obtain their “opening” to foreign capital and adaptation of local social relations and institutions to the needs of  its accumulation. Concrete U.S. objectives towards Yugoslavia were stated in the 1984 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 133,  that mainly elaborated a two years older NSDD 64 on Eastern Europe directive,  calling for "expanded efforts to promote 'quiet revolution' to overthrow Communist governments and parties" while integrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a “market-oriented economy” (Gervasi, Sean, 1992-93: "Germany, US and the Yugoslav Crisis", Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter). 

The culmination of the macroeconomic reforms imposed by IMF from 1980 that exacerbated the stagnation crisis and instigated the fracturing of the Yugoslav Federation, was reached in 1989/1990, under the government of the Prime Minister Ante Markovic. The IMF experts urged his government to redirect all federal state revenues to meet the demands of creditors for payment of much increased debt interest rates.  Conditions for reprogramming of the debt included a currency devaluation, wage freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, liberalisation of foreign investment and trade. Simultaneously, the World Bank strongly suggested the passing of the bankruptcy law that provoked the closing down of more than 1000 socially owned industrial companies and a half of the socially owned banking sector in a matter of months,  leaving some 600,000 people without a job and threatening another million workers to be declared “redundant”. These “shock therapy” measures produced 21% fall in industrial production and 41% fall in real wages (World Bank, 1991).

The final blow to the Yugoslav Federation was exerted through the clause of the November 1990 U.S. Foreign Appropriations Bill that stipulated the ending of all loans, trade and aid to the Yugoslav Federation within six months of the passage of the legislation. Funding would not resume to the region until and unless each of six constituent Republics held separate, independent elections, the results of which the State Department would have approved as congruent with U.S. national interests (Chossudovsky, M., 1996). This directive sharpened the federal budgetary crisis and contributed to the dismantling of the federal financial and fiscal structures. It contributed as well to the relinquishing of the system of socially owned self-managed enterprises in Yugoslavia, accelerating the process of capitalism’s restoration. At the time,  there was still peace in Yugoslavia. Within six months after the passing of this bill, both Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally declared their independence and violently seceded from the Yugoslav Federation. This was the beginning of  the bloody civil war. 

The external co-instigators of the civil war in SFRY punished just one internal participant in it by  imposing a strangulating monetary and economic blockade beginning in November 1991 (Mauthner, R., Silber, R., 1991) just on Serbia and Montenegro  (until the new government of the second Republic that remained within FRY began to implement separatist policies as well), implicating that Serbia was the only guilty party for the war. The TNC and financial oligarchy froze the foreign assets, restricted payment operations and forbade the extension of new credits, investments and trade to one more supposedly “rogue” state whose government allegedly is violating “human rights and freedoms”. Western neoliberal advocates of “open markets” and self-proclaimed defenders of “human rights”, thus violated again the basic human right to survival by imposing the blockade. 

The monetary and trade blockade caused drastic reduction of industrial production and further exacerbated ethnic tensions, since the unemployed youth were recruited by extremist militants on all sides. The monetary blockade also provoked the criminalisation of the entire state apparatuses and growth of black and grey economy, corruption, smuggling and general anomie. Taking convertible currency, gold, and other forms of money capital out of the country became the only way of doing business transactions possible, since domestic banks were deprived of the possibility to extend internationally valid guarantees. The very same banks that were implementing the monetary blockade were the banks into which private business persons or state officials transferred domestic capital. They often continued to do business outside the country with the country of origin through earlier forged business connections, usurping the money that did not belong to them. Many went bankrupt, leaving the usurped capital for ever out of the domestic economy. After it has lost foreign markets, the more and more exhausted economy remained exposed to the lack of liquidity and rising inflation blows. 

A criminalised state which did not efficiently fight crime, collect income and custom taxes, became ever less able to pay for the army, police, health, education and other budget social services. Society became divided in tiny part of criminalised businesspersons, economically ruined stratum of highly educated professionals who did not play any more the role of the stabilising mediating stratum,  and the majority finding itself on or below the poverty line. 

If and when the embargoed society succumbs to economic pressure and becomes “co-operative” in order to get the “approval” and “help” from the perpetrators of the embargo, it is under degrading and unfavourable conditions. In the case of Yugoslavia, US Secretary of State Colin Powel demanded transfer of the former head of State to the jurisdiction of the NATO-sponsored ICTY Tribunal,  placing it above the jurisdiction of Yugoslavia’s national legal system, as condition for the US administration’s support for the international donors’ conference (International Herald Tribune, April 4). US $ 1.3 billion “donation” consists mainly of new loans for the repayment of the old external debt that grew from $4.7 billion in 1991 to some $12 billion in 2000 on the basis of compound interest rates during nine years of sanctions (Chossudovsky, Michael, 2001a). The Prime Minister of Serbia Zoran Djindjic executed the abduction and extradition of former president Milosevic, braking constitutional, democratic and moral principles in order to secure donation conference and demonstrate readiness “to promote Western course despite the NATO bombing”. He declared to German Der Spiegel  (edition of July 16 2001),  that he was “shocked” with the “farce” of “western aid” when he was informed that out of the 300 million Euros instalment for the 3 billion DM promised by EU while he was in opposition in return for Milosevic’s fall, 225 million would be held back to service the debt incurred by Tito government. 

Society ends up in a debt slavery repaying the credits derived in great part from the capital taken out of the country and deposited in foreign banks during the blockade.

It is important to  notice that governments which are “co-operative” from the beginning and succumb to economic dictates of TNC capital before the drastic aggression instruments of embargo and bombing are implemented like in Bulgaria, do not avoid exploitation of local resources, disenfranchisement of the population and catastrophic worsening of its living standard.

Covert military actions in combination with overt diplomatic instruments 

Countries whose governments attempt to uphold their state sovereignty and to retain control over national market and resources are often undermined in their efforts. In the case of Yugoslavia, the economic instruments of aggression were accompanied by U.S., German and other NATO member states’ intelligence agencies’ covert manufacturing, financial support, arming and training of local terrorist groups willing to cooperate with NATO against such governments. Covert military activity has become already routine  in strategically important regions all over the globe, like Indochina, Central America, Caribbean, Middle East, Central Asia. Local groups that are expected to become compliant clients of their patrons, are financed mainly through the laundering and recycling of billions of dirty money collected by narcotic, women and other illicit traders and organised crime syndicates. This is done through the extension of fat commissions by the anonymous shell companies to the most respected banks in the international banking system (McCoy,  Alfred W., 1991) 

It is important to notice that NATO member states’ intelligence and other agencies are co-operating in the exercise of these covert forms of aggression for the common interests of the TNC and financial oligarchy which has permanent residence in these states. The official diplomacy of these countries regularly denies any links to organised crime through covert activities of respective intelligence agencies.

Review of covert and diplomatic activities in (former) Yugoslavia

The geographically and chronologically ordered review of the covert military and overt diplomatic activities of NATO member states’ governmental and non-governmental agencies on the territory of former Yugoslavia since the 1970s,  confirms the thesis that besides common interest in “imperialist condominium”(Johnstone, Diana, 1998), their respective national interests for extension of their own spheres of interest are mutually competitive.

Croatia 

In line with Germany's “Lebensraum” expansion plans in “Mitteleuropa” and the Balkans and the revengeful revision of the results of the Second World War, the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) began its clandestine work already in the seventies and intensified it in the eighties. It first helped  the covert arming and afterwards contributed to an official recognition of the two north-western, predominantly catholic Republics. The weapons came from former East Germany’s stocks through Hungary after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. This was done in a shady cooperation with the Second World War fascist and nazi emigrants and arms and other illicit traders (Bodansky, Yossef, 1995). 

The arming of separatists had the most disastrous consequences in Croatia with high concentration of Serb population in the Vojna Krajina and Slavonija region. Tudjman’s Croat Democratic Union dominated the Croatian government elected in 1990 and claimed almost without any qualification the continuity with the Independent State of Croatia. It was the Hitler’s Third Reich puppet creation that included entire Bosnia and Herzegovina, hereinafter B&H), within which were executed hundreds of thousands of Serbs and dissenting affiliates of other ethnic groups during the Second World War. Proclamation of the new 1990 Croat Constitution that denied the Serbs the status of constitutive nation and a wave of violent attacks on their life, dignity and property in Croatia, aroused their fears that history was repeating itself (Collon, Michel, 1997). 

At the time of the signing of EU Maastricht agreement in December 1991, Germany’s Foreign Minister Genscher pressured Western allies to recognise Slovenia and Croatia, even though they did not fulfil the conditions  previously set by EC (guarantee of minority rights and special status to certain regions; no unilateral change of borders; negotiated general settlement (“Treaty Provisions for the Convention”, 1991). Thus, the EU and the US leaders soon afterwards, legitimised the violent separatism and recognised the right to self determination to particular federal Republics of Yugoslavia within their internal administrative borders. They consequently reduced the right to self determination to Serbs, who lived the most dispersed of all constitutive peoples of Yugoslavia in several federal units. EU and US leaders consequently trampled the principle of non-violability of internationally recognised borders of Yugoslavia and opened the Pandora’s box of the war complex disaster in South-eastern Europe and beyond. Leadership of weakened Russia has allowed it to happen, even though Russia is threatened as well by violent separatism supported from outside. 

Driven by the U.S. own “sphere of  influence” expansion plans, CIA joined BND since the beginning of the nineties in the creation, financing, arming and training of the local separatist and terrorist proxy armies to be used for creation of  the neo-colonial protectorates on the territory of the former Yugoslav Federation torn apart. 

The U.S. innovation is the execution of this covert operations through the mediation of the former US Army personnel organised in a Rent-a-Soldier private company Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), headed by former US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Carl E. Vuono and headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia (http://www.mpri.com). It operates in the shadow of the US government, especially its intelligence and military branches, but these links can conveniently be denied. Its first engagement  by the State Department or at least with its tacit approval, was training of Croat army and foreign mercenaries for covert military preparation of August 1995 “Operation Storm”. It was operation of ethnic cleansing of Serb population from their centuries-old homesteads in UN protected Krajina and Slavonia zones in Croatia. It was the biggest single act of forced expulsion after the Second World War. Somewhat unexpectedly even Richard Holbrooke confirmed the existence of US involvement in “Operation Storm” by quoting another American diplomat, Robert Frasure, who was killed in a car accident, as having said in connection to this operation: “Dick, we hired these guys to be our junk yard dogs”. (Holbrooke, John, 1998p.72; for details see Raimundo, Justin, 2001) 

Bosnia and Herzegovina 

 Belatedly Western European media admit (for example “Allies and Lies: Correspondent, Sunday, BBC News 2/ 24th June 2001) that the Bosnian Muslim army was covertly supplied with arms by the US during the 1990s. The reason for this revelation is dissatisfaction of EU allies with the fact that US manipulated NATO to allow US to conduct its own unilateral policy in the Balkans.

The US military-industrial establishment in the beginning armed covertly the military formations of the Muslim  president of multiconfessional B&H Alija Izetbegovic. He declared in his February 1991 speech in the Parliament that  “For independent B&H I would sacrifice peace,  but for that peace in B&H I would not sacrifice its sovereignty”, (Kovacevic}, Slobodanka, Dajic, Putnik, 1994: 33). This was contrary to the will of one constitutive people expressed in the referendum to remain within Yugoslavia. With the support of US authorities,  Alija Izetbegovic vetoed the Jose Cutillero Plan of 1992 and the Vance-Owen Plan of 1993, as Owen describes in his memoirs. Such policy had as an  effect civil war and ethnic cleansing. This is exactly what western leaders proclaimed that they wanted to stop by bombing of regions inhabited mainly by Serbs,  after extremist Muslims staged a massacre at the Marcala marketplace and blamed it on Serbs. The fact that UN investigators could not confirm this accusation, stressing that the mortar shell could not have come from the Serb positions, was supressed at the time. In this way Izetbegovic succeeded to realise his strategic political objective outlined already in 1992: “To get the West to defeat the Serbs and establish a Muslim dominated state for him” (Bodansky, Yossef, 1995). 

Unreadiness of Serbs to live in such a state becomes easier to understand when one takes into consideration that Izetbegovic affirmed intolerantly in his Islamic Declaration that  "there can be no coexistence between Islam religion and non-Muslim social and political institutions" in countries in which Muslims represent the majority of the population. After the phase of Islamic renaissance this assertion implies the waging of holly war (dzihad) against those who do  not  believe in Allah as the one and only god, in the phase of political revolution and power conquering, with the aim of creating "great Islamic federation from Maroco to Indonesia" where the Kur'an  would be the supreme law (Izetbegovi}, (1970)1990: 22,37,43,46; Jevtic, Miroljub, 1993: 107-114, 216-220).

Izetbegovic’s violent intolerance was experienced also by the supporters of a moderate secular Muslim leader Fikret Abdic from Cazinska Krajina in Western Bosnia. Standing for strong multi-ethnic unity and economic integration, he had outpolled Izetbegovic in national elections for the Bosnian collective presidency, but was pushed out and militarily attacked by radicalised Islamists led by Izetbegovic (Lewis, Paul: 1993). 

In order to understand why the US administration supported Izetbegovic, it is necessary to take into consideration also Islamic countries as an important external covert/overt factor in B&H war disaster. Lawrence Eagleburger, at the time Acting Secretary of State, explicitly stated in a MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour interview on 6 October 1992,  that the US government’s pro-Muslim position in Bosnia is a counter-effect to the Muslim World’s perception of an anti-Muslim position regarding Iraq, since in this Muslim country, sanctions and war kill 300 Iraqis every day, half children under 5 years old. Some authors go further and claim that US design is to make the Islamic world part of “the third American empire” (Heilbrunn, Jacob, Lind, Michael, 1996).  

No matter whether leaders of Islamic countries are in strained relations with the West like in the case of Iran or in  alliance with it like the cases of Osama Bin Laden in the past and the ruling regimes in Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the present,  almost all (except in Iraq and Libya), support extremist Muslims in B&H and in K&M. In a shady cooperation with the criminal syndicates interested in a safe passage of drug shipments into Western European markets, they provide money, weapons, mercenaries and instructors (ANA, Athens, 28 January 1997; Daily News, Ankara, 29 January 1997; Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 13, 1998, Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April 1999).

Kosovo and Metohija

After B&H with relative Muslim majority population, the US clandestine arming and training operations turned toward Serbian Autonomous Province Kosovo and Metohija (hereinafter K&M) with absolute local majority of ethnic Albanian population of predominantly Muslim confession. Upheld by the activity of the Albanian lobby in the Congress, U.S. administration also gave tacit support to the renovated XIX century project of the “Prizren League”  of  “Greater Albania”. Already in 1982 the New York Times summarised the program of Albanian secessionists in this Province of Serbia: ‘…first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania.’ (Binder, David, 1982:). 

When in 1997 a peaceful solution of the conflict between the moderate Kosovo-Albanians and the Serbian government concerning the autonomy  seemed possible, German and American secret services stepped up their activities of helping the organisation, arming and training of “Kosovo Liberation Army” (hereinafter KLA). US State Department was informed several months before the bombing in December 21 1998 by U.S. element of the EUR/SCE (202-647-4850) Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission that “... KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA... [T]he KLA  harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six  villages in the Stimlje region are "ready to flee” (quoted in Chossudovsky, M., 1999b).

What is the reason for U.S. and other NATO countries’ covert support to Albanian extremists to create an ethnically clean Greater Albania, that according to some recently published maps  should encompass besides Albania, Serbia’s province K&M and parts of southern Serbia, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece , even though this would have predictably complex disaster consequences? The answer to this question is similar in all dependent South-eastern European protectorates: the profit interest, sometimes mutually conflicting,  of American-British  and Continental European TNC and financial oligarchy. The Greater Albania is meant to be used as their source of oil and minerals ,  as part of a Trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline corridor to the oil-rich Caspian Sea basin , as an illicit trade cross-roads , and as a military base  for the AMBO pipeline, highway, railway, electricity and telecommunications “corridor 8 protection”  and further eastward expansion.

Social and economic disaster in Albania caused by implementation of the IMF and WB free market reforms after the Democratic Party of Sali Berisha with the stronghold in Northern Albania and associated with the Guegue “families” or “fares” came to power at the beginning of 1992,  created favourable conditions for arms to be smuggled mainly from Albania to K&M.  This was done through the ruling Party’s “Shqiponja” company and the state security police. Triangular illicit and often direct barter trading in oil, drugs and arms thrives despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-FYR MACEDONIA border with an overt mandate to enforce the arms’ embargo. Laundering of drug money of Albanian and Italian Mafia through the shady privatisation and investment funds or banking pyramid schemes like large VEFA Holdings, prospered with at least tacit support of Western banking interests (Barry, James,1994; Gumbel, Andrew, 1997: “The Gangster Regime We Fund”, The Independent, February 14). 

The training of terrorists presented as "freedom fighters" is still mainly provided by MPRI. Agim Ceku, a Croatian general of Albanian descent, after “Operation storm” in Croatia was sent to K&M, to become the chief-of-staff of the KLA in May 1999, and finally a head of supposedly disarmed and civilian Kosovo Protection Corps. He was given an UN passport giving him diplomatic immunity, in spite of the fact that he became "an alleged war criminal" according to the files of the Hague Tribunal(Chossudovsky, Michel, 2001b). 

FYR Macedonia

The German dominated EU attempted to counteract the striving of U.S. and British oil giants and military-industrial complex to  influence the countries surrounding the AMBO pipeline corridor, through the policy of "NATO enlargement". EU (except Britain) started its own push at “enlargement” through planning the signing of “stabilisation and association agreement" (SAA) with FYR Macedonia. The assaults of Albanian terrorists in FYR Macedonia gained momentum just a few weeks before the signing of this agreement in mid March, simultaneously as Robert Frowick, "a former US diplomat", was appointed to head the OSCE mission in FYR Macedonia. He initiated a “dialogue” with NLA rebel leader Ali Ahmeti and brokered an agreement with the leaders of the Albanian parties, which formed part of the government coalition, demanding ultimately constitutional changes and incorporation of NLA into civilian politics. The ensuing blockade of FYR Macedonian government and deterioration of security situation provided again an excuse for increased US military interference and contributed to weakening  of FYR Macedonia’s ties to EU. Michael Chossudovsky asserts that “Washington's design is to open up the entire corridor to US multinationals in a region situated in the European Union's "economic backyard", where the power of the Deutsche mark tends to dominate over that of the US dollar... And behind this process is the quest by Wall Street's financial establishment --in alliance with the defense and oil giants-- to destabilise and discredit the Deutsche mark (and the Euro) with a view to imposing the US dollar as the sole currency for the region. Control over "money creation"  --imposing the rule of the US Federal Reserve system throughout the World-- has become a central feature of US expansionism.” (Chossudovsky, Michel, 2001c)

It is amply documented that US military advisers in cooperation with former British SAS and Parachute Regiment officers are covertly training, supplying with sophisticated arms and logistically supporting the National Liberation Army (NLA).  This is just another derivative of KLA, with at least 20% common fighters employed this time for subversion and break up of FYR Macedonia. The “rescue” of the heavily armed NLA by American 3/502nd Airborne Battalion at Aracinovo, a town near the capital city of Skoplje is explained by the need to save 17 “instructors”, former US officers including retired four-star generals,  among the withdrawing terrorists (Raimondo, Justin, 2001). The fact that German troops stationed in FYR Macedonia in the Tetovo region were in mid March 2001 targeted by the NLA, suggests that Germany's BND is not any more collaborating with the CIA in overseeing and financing of KLA and the like terrorist groups in the Southern Balkans. 

Americans are simultaneously supplying the FYR Macedonian government troops as well, in accordance with the overt State Department policy to preserve FYR Macedonia. Until recently its leaders were praised for having incorporated Albanian parties in the government and for full cooperation with NATO troops. Presently representatives of FYR Macedonian government are complaining that US, EU, NATO and UN envoys forced it to accept under military pressure of armed terrorists coming from Kosovo Protection Corps , constitutional “reforms” allowing de facto partition of FYR Macedonia. This kind of double covert/overt policy risks to get out of control if the local U.S. proxy terrorist and drug trafficking forces one day turn against their NATO financiers and tutors, like Osama Bin Laden's terrorists.  

Indicator that among American officials there exists the awareness of this danger is the fact that KLA /NLA terrorism and drug dealings are from time to time admitted even by U.S. special envoys like Robert Gelbard and Christopher Hill (Smucker, Philip, Butcher, Tim, 1999). The authors explicitly stating that the West must  “contain the monster of its own making", go even further (Rory Carroll, 2001).

Mass media in combination with (il)legal instruments

An indispensable ingredient for the realisation of the TNC and financial oligarchy’s  strategic aims in any region of the world, South-Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia included, is the preparation of public opinion to accept, first, the IMF and WB “free market” model of social reproduction regulation as a cure for all social ills, and, second, NATO illegal and immoral aggression on allegedly “rogue” states as legal, ethically motivated and unavoidable. These two functions in the targeted region are performed by many small locally recruited and  foreign financed mass media companies. Such indoctrinating shaping of the Western public opinion in accordance with the prevalent “spirit of the time”, is the task of the world’s biggest media companies like NBC, owned and thus dominated by interests of large military contractors like General Electric. 

Experts for propaganda warfare in the mass media are targeting the subconsciousness of the viewers, in order to distract their attention from real sources of problems to amusement or demonised sacrificial lambs. Almost imperceptibly they inculcate the doctrinal system, values and perception of the world reflecting interests of the capital, while the will of direct producers to resist to its absolute control is subverted. 

The powerful western mass media companies are interested the most to get the control over local electronic media, since the impoverished people, who do not have money to buy nor time to read analytical newspapers, are being exposed to just one source of (dis)information. Foreign financed domestic electronic media incessantly repeated the suggestion that fresh capital would flow into the country the minute the “non-cooperative” and “undemocratic” government was toppled. In situation of unemployment and of poverty of catastrophic proportions, as well as of arrogant and immodest behaviour of careerists and profiteers  who opportunistically joined the ruling parties in order to augment and preserve their fortunes , this campaign succeeded to mobilise the destitute population to demand through mass demonstrations “changes” in order to live again “normally” without sanctions and bombs. 

The carefully prepared mass media election campaigns accusing in advance the incumbent government for fraud, and the subsequent “live” broadcasting of setting fire to the national Television building and Parliament, conveniently burning the election documentation and making it impossible to check whether the new president really passed the required 50% of votes in the first round of September 27 2000 Yugoslav presidential election,  played an important role in the transformation of external interference  into internal affairs, into domestic policy. Months after committed adherents of the new ruling parties were placed into ruling positions in all state controlled institutions, both local and foreign media  continue accusation against the previous government as the sole cause of the disastrous state of the economy. They avoid to publicise or downplay the fact that previous government mobilised domestic resources and organised successful rebuilding and reconstruction of more than 50 bridges,  started a program to build 100,000 apartments for young couples, stimulated industrial and agricultural production and export, as well as kept the prices of basic consumer goods low in accordance with the low buying power of the population. After October 5 2000, however, a 10% fall in industrial production and even greater fall in export occurred, with simultaneous enormous rise of all prices, in spite of better conditions in the surrounding. One of the most important tasks of both local and global mass media at the moment is to deflect public attention from the ongoing process of privatisation at rock bottom prices and attack of capital on the social rights of labor.

Not a less important task from the point of view of capital is the mass media preparation of the military intervention and its protracted legitimisation, as its complex disaster consequences can not be any more covered up. In the case of Yugoslavia, IMF and NATO mass media propagandists did not shun from inventing stories of “genocide” and “humanitarian catastrophe” and falsely claimed  that ethnic cleansing, human rights violations and atrocities were executed almost exclusively by just one side, the Serb side in the armed conflict. They demonised entire people as authoritarian, aggressive, chauvinistic, barbaric, genocidal and their elected president as a “new Hitler”. On the other hand they idealised affiliates of Slovenian, Croat, Muslim and Albanian military formations, covertly armed by NATO contrary to arms embargo, as democratically oriented, defensive and civilised national freedom movements struggling for the rights of respective ethnic groups. The fact that foreign affairs and judiciary government officials of NATO member states very well knew that affiliates of particular ethnic group were not being maligned and persecuted because of their ethnic belonging, was kept out from the main stream media . 

NATO bombardments of  territories with greatest concentration of Serb population were always preceded by the preparation of public opinion through the “news” on “massacres” that were ascribed to Serbs. According to March 30 1999 S.F. Cronicle, demonisation was necessary “to maintain the air attacks”.  Srebrenica, a UN “safety zone” used, like other areas that should have been demilitarised,  by Muslim military formations to raid surrounding Serb villages (Woodward, Susan, 1995: p.320-321), and Racak, a village in which chief of OSCE observer mission William Walker abused it to stage-manage the presentation of KLA soldiers killed in a battle as massacred civilians (see below), to mention just the two most publicised events, were transformed  by NATO media propagandists into proof of the cnal character of solely Serb military formations. NATO media apologists took upon themselves simultaneously the roles of army general, police investigator, prosecutor, jury and the judge, energetically demanding both armed and legal punishment of the demonised side in the conflict. 

Overtaking of the legal system’s functions by mass media and their working in concert by emerging (il)legal institutions of the “new world order” of financial oligarchy, is the most expressed in the campaign of demonisation and legitimisation by NATO apologists. It is conveniently being restarted simultaneously with the June 28th (St. Vitus Day, sacred symbol of the resistance to foreign occupation) illegal  abduction from a Belgrade court investigation prison and extradition of Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (hereinafter ICTY). 

The ICTY tribunal had been founded and financed by NATO member states, mainly US , as admitted by NATO spokesperson on the May 17 1999 news conference. The majority of the judges come from U.S. and other countries who bombed Serbia, hearsay evidence is permitted and prosecution witnesses may testify anonymously. When asked whether NATO could be tried by ICTY for launching the bombing campaign without authorisation by the UN Security Council and targeting civilians  with forbidden cluster bombs and depleted uranium encased projectiles, he declared that this court had the jurisdiction to try just the citizens of former Yugoslavia. At the same time, U.S. administration adamantly opposes U.S. membership in the permanent International Criminal Court because it would have authority to exercise jurisdiction over U.S. citizens without the consent of the U.S. government. 

ICTY’s founders and financiers have located it in the Hague, attempting to identify it in the mind of poorly informed public with the real UN International Court with the seat in the same city. The prosecutor of this NATO tribunal dismissed the evidence submitted for the indictments of  NATO leaders for war crimes as insufficient, but indicted the former elected president of the victimised people (together with four other top government officials) on 22 May 1999, while the NATO criminal bombing was still going on (http://www.un.org/icty/ indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm). The new prosecutor of the same court allowed herself in a newspaper interview to sentence Milosevic to the life imprisonment already, before evidence of his "crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war" had been even gathered and double checked. In the meantime, namely, appeared critical reports unmasking biased and manipulative news-making on Srebrenica and Racak events as half-truth at the least, and hoaxes at the most (Johnstone, Diana, 1999; Jatras, Stella L., 2000a). 

Even more significantly, the respective UN and  OSCE expert investigation  reports, whose publishing was deliberately postponed by influential NATO countries’ leaders (Technau, Claudius, Heine, Roland, 1999), did not confirm the a priori accusations contained in both the “news” of NATO propagandists and in the official ICTY indictment. Finnish forensic experts in a final report on the circumstances of the deaths of some 40 people in the village of Racak in Kosovo found no evidence of a massacre by Serb security forces (Deutsche Presse Agentur, January 17, 2001; Rainio, J., K. Lalu, A. Penttilä,2001: pp. 171-185; Dunjic, Dusan), contrary to the prosecutor’s first charge in the indictment. Other concrete charges for killing and deportation of civilians in the indictment all have happened after NATO bombardment began. NATO financed Tribunal attempts to justify NATO bombardment by the massive refugee outflux which NATO bombs and destruction produced, while about 100 small KLA, NATO or Albanian pirate-broadcasting radio stations spread fear and horror stories about people detained in Pristina  stadium. KLA terrorists through the authoritative clan leaders and under threat of penalty, told Albanians to leave blocks in which they lived together with Serbs, while gangs of escaped prisoners, deserters and Albanians from Albania looted homes just vacated. It must be born in mind that NATO officials  began to openly acknowledge that the KLA had been marking targets and working in close military co-ordination through radio contact with NATO during the bombing period, and that the intensity of Serb attacks had been closely related to presence of KLA in the vicinity (Pearl, Daniel and Block, Robert, 1999). 

After a year and a half of exhumations in K&M that were conducted by ICTY representatives without the presence of Yugoslav forensic experts and ended in November 2000, 2108 bodies were found. ICTY Prosecutor Carla del Ponte stated in a report that this number included Serbs, Albanians, and other non-Albanians. She also admitted that even after this extensive inquiry it was not yet established how these people were killed, who are the victims and who killed them? Bodies were exhumed out of 429 grave sites for the needs of the investigation. OEBS and KFOR have done 772 exhumations more. They started with those sites where the greatest number of bodies were expected to be found. However, Spanish police and forensic experts have not found proof of genocide in the North of Kosovo.  It is highly probable therefore that exhumed war victims include civilian and armed affiliates of all ethnic groups who violently lost their life since the intensification of terrorist activity of KLA in 1998, after the beginning of the bombing,  and importantly, after the deployment of UN/NATO KFOR troops  on 10 June 1999. UN envoy Bernard Kouchner, violating the mandate of UN resolution 1244/99   that explicitly guaranteed the territorial integrity of the FRY and provided for the disarmament of KLA, transformed the KLA into the Kosovo Defense Corps while some of their leaders who had been accused for war crimes were promoted into local administration and even judiciary positions. These measures encouraged and legalised crimes of Albanian terrorists not only against Serbs, but also against all loyal citizens of FR Yugoslavia including Albanians, Goranci, Muslims, Roma and other nationalities. In an interview given to Israel Jared, Cedda Prlincevic, the chief archivist of Kosovo, President of the Jewish Community in Pristina and an eye-witness, accused (http://www.emperors-clothes.com/ interviews/prlincevic.htm)  British KFOR (NATO) troops’ for complicity in the KLA eviction of non-Albanians and pro-Yugoslav Albanians from their homes in Pristina in July 1999. In another interview, a female refugee from Orahovac testified with regard to the responsibility of the Dutch and German contingent of KFOR (NATO) in Orahovac for doing nothing to stop KLA from bringing terror to the Serbian and Roma ("Gypsy") communities  and on KFOR troops’ connivance in the Albanian roadblocks preventing the Russian contingent from coming to Orahovac (http://www.emperors-clothes.com/misc/savethe-a.htm).  

Since the justification for the bombing published in the press were the reports on  100 000 “disappeared” and “maybe killed” male Albanians, the NATO sponsored Tribunal needs more “evidence” on just Albanian civilian victims in order to be able to sustain the indictment . They had to be “found” if not in reality, than in the mass media sensationalistic “news”. In these circumstances appeared the latest “news” on the alleged “Destruction of Evidence on Crimes against Kosovo Albanians”.  The public is again being prepared that NATO financed ICTY establishes the liability of Milosevic and other Serb and Yugoslav government officials for the war in K&M and entire former Yugoslavia and convicts them to long prison sentences. 

Arrogant breachment of the elementary judiciary norm that everybody is innocent until proven guilty, indicates that the norm breaker is powerful enough to impose the “might is right” law of the jungle. This deafening campaign of conviction before the trial by NATO apologists in the ICTY and the mass media attempts to hide the real functions of this political and mounted process of condemnation of the former head of state of the bombed debtor country by a Tribunal financed by the main creditor and aggressor countries: 1) vindicate NATO bombings;  2) impose the powerful victor’s twisted version of history through brainwashing propagandistic mass media warfare;3) criminalize the right of resistance to armed assault and presenting the self-defence as a genocide; 4) force the bombed people with the greatest number of killed and expulsed affiliates, to accept the collective guilt for “genocide” it did not commit and the amnesty for already sentenced KLA terrorists; 5)legalise unfavourable conditions for repayment of debt to the aggressor NATO countries, making the victimised people pay war reparations, even the costs of the air campaign against itself!

Gilles d'Aymery investigated the authors, ideology agenda, links and funding sources of the site (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/2249") where this report on alleged “destruction of evidence” was first posted. He came to the conclusion that at the centre of a vast circle of deceptive shaping and creating of the news are  “the same powerful people and organisations such as the Open Society Institute of the billionaire and - as always characterised - philanthropist, George Soros, the Ford Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, the National Endowment for Democracy and many more, financing and using a maze of well known NGO's such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Crisis Group, etc., as well as more obscure entities such as the "http://www.seep.ceu.hu/"__Southeast European Politics_ (SEEP), "http://www.seep.ceu.hu/ balkans/"__Balkan Academic News_ (BAN), "http://lgi.osi.hu /comir/"__Consortium of Minority Resources_ (COMIR), "http://www.minorityrights.org/"__Minority Rights Group International_ (MRG), "http://www.greekhelsinki. gr/bhr/english/organizations/ghm/index.html"__Greek Helsinki Monitor_ (GHM) and myriad others”. Even though most of them might be well intentioned,  Gilles underlines that “Not only do they shape and form opinion, they create the news, they pay for -- they literally buy -- the news to be shaped and created (remember the "suitcases" of cash being funnelled to the opposition -- DOS, Otpor, B92, etc. -- before the Yugoslav elections in October 2000?), to control how public opinion is shaped and created; a public who has little or no idea of how the news and their opinions are created, sculpted like a fake Rodin, and from where they really come. Total manipulation, total deception and total mind control.” (d'Aymery, Gilles, 2001).

Rambouillet “talks” -  deliberate triggering of the war complex disaster

After almost a decade of applying economic, covert activity and media instruments of European eastward imperialist expansion of TNC and financial capital’s interests,  only a pretext for the execution of pre-planned overt military intervention and subsequent military occupation and colonial administration by NATO member states’ TNC and financial oligarchy was needed. High state representatives of the only hegemonic world power after the Berlin wall fall, exerted deliberate effort to make the Rambouillet negotiations a failure. US led NATO powers in a sort of “hostage diplomacy” tried to force "agreement" on Yugoslav delegation, composed of affiliates of all ethnic groups living in the Serbian Province of Kosovo and Metohija, by holding it virtual prisoner in limited time and space. Representatives of NATO powers did not provide for direct contact and negotiation with the monoethnic Albanian delegation. According to the wishes of the NATO representatives in the Contact group, the civilian Kosovo Democratic League headed by moderate Ibrahim Rugova was bypassed, since a peaceful solution was not wanted.  For the head of Albanian delegation, the US-led NATO powers promoted Hashim Thaci who had been indicted as a terrorist for organising ambushes against Yugoslav police units and using civilian population as human shield. 

NATO representatives in the Contact Group did not even take into serious consideration the Yugoslav "Joint proposal of the AGREEMENT on the political framework of self-governance in Kosovo and Metohia of 20 November 1998", that provided to Yugoslav citizens of Albanian descent  not only full individual rights but also minority rights much more extensive than those that most of the NATO governments provide to their own national minorities and/or ethnic groups (http://www.ius.bg.ac.yu/apel/ agreement.htm). The Contact Group elaborated a "Draft interim Kosovo Agreement (January 27, 1999), granting Kosovo all attributes of a sovereign State, notably by providing for "Kosovo's international borders" and thus destroying sovereignty of Serbia and dispossessing it from its historic and cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija. As if this was not enough, NATO representatives included at the last moment a secret Military Appendix that gave NATO the right to occupy entire Yugoslavia and exonerated its troops in advance from all responsibility for eventual damages  done. This “agreement”, unacceptable to any sovereign country, was presented as an ultimatum,  violating the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which forbids coercion and force to compel any state to sign a treaty or agreement. NATO representatives tutored Albanian delegation to accept the proposal, making sure that it will be refused by Yugoslav delegation. On the basis of these facts, less than a weak before the bombing began Dr Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, predicted: "The military provisions in the Kosovo Agreement on the table in Paris have nothing to do with peacekeeping. Neither the civilian nor the military provisions will help bring about peace among Serbs and Albanians. It will further antagonise the 10 million citizens of Yugoslavia and the international community. There is simply nothing in it for the Yugoslavs and that's why I am deeply  afraid that we are likely to see something very bad happen very soon. This whole affair has nothing to do with violence prevention, the appropriate term would be: peace-prevention.” (Oberg, Jan, 1999: “Read the Civilian Kosovo Agreement! Read the Military Terms of Kosovo "Peace Agreement!" , Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF), Lund, Sweden, PressInfo # 58, 18/03/, http://www.tff@transnational.org). 

Overt military aggression and complex disaster consequences

After almost a decade of “peace-prevention”, use of economic, covert activity and media instruments of aggression, overt and direct military aggression is resorted to since these instruments did not obtain wished results soon enough. After a disastrous destruction of the economy and social fabric,  no serious resistance was expected. Attempting to avoid casualties among NATO soldiers, high tech bombing from high altitudes was chosen as the most efficient military tactics against civilians and anachronistically equipped military adversary. Another important reason for the bombing was to intimidate all other people to think twice before resisting NATO imperialism in order not to be bombed by superior military equipment. This same equipment is also tested in vivo through the bombing and thus served as a huge advertisement for prospective buyers of  NATO member countries’ war industry production.  

NATO’s ruthless bombing of FR Yugoslavia with radiation and other forbidden weapons differed from such earlier bombings of Iraq and Republika Srpska in B&H through the fact that it did not have the approval of the UN Security Council. It violated the main tenets of international law: the Charter of UN, NATO’s own charter, the Helsinki Accords Final Act of 1975 and many other international and national laws. Mark Littman and Heinz Loqai compiled the newest lists of documents demonstrating that there was no justification for NATO military intervention, since it was unlawful, and possibilities of a peaceful settlement had not been exhausted. In these circumstances the use of force not only was not necessary to avert what would otherwise have been a humanitarian catastrophe; on the contrary,  bombardment predictably and as predicted by NATO officials themselves, provoked one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in Europe since the end of World Wear II (Littman, Mark, 2000; Loquai, Heinz, 2000).

Documented details on the way the NATO bombing campaign was carried out and on its complex disaster impacts are published in electronic form in a number of earlier texts (Vratusa, V., 1999: 2000 March; 2000 June; 2000 December; 2001 March; 2001 June). 

In this paper, therefore, I will briefly resume just the findings relevant for further discussion. 

Direct civilian casualties of 78 days and nights of bombing with 23,000 tons of explosives, including forbidden cassette bombs and those "enriched" with depleted uranium(out of around 2000 killed, one third were children and one twelfth refugees), were greater than the combined civilian and armed casualties of the conflict between the KLA terrorist troops and the Yugoslav government forces during the entire period preceding the bombing.

The intensive, indiscriminate and deliberate (Luis Morales, Jose, 1999) bombing of civilian targets with no military structures  (e.g. residential houses,  columns of refugees, market places, schools including nurseries and pre-primary day care centres, hospitals and health care institutions, churches, monasteries, museums, public monuments and 13th-14th century historical landmarks on the UNESCO World Heritage list, TV broadcast and telecommunications facilities, electrical power stations, industrial plants producing consumer goods, drinking water facilities, road and railway networks, bridges) was done in flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention and other international laws and was euphemistically and cynically labelled “Merciful Angel”. It killed more than thousand Yugoslav citizens, mostly Serb civilians, but also affiliates of other ethnic groups living in FR Yugoslavia, like Albanians. This fact tragically reveals falseness of the NATO member governments’ proclaimed aim of humanitarian protection of their chosen ethnically specific protégées. 

According to the assessments of the IMF, the 1999 bombing inflicted 40 billion US$ direct material damage. Indirect damage was at least three times higher  - while the human losses including 200% increase in cancer incidence and long standing radiation and contamination of the soil, water and air, is almost impossible to quantify (Chossudovsky, Michel, 2000). Dr Siegwart-Horst Gunther, president of the Yellow Cross, established after years of investigation in Iraq that contact with the depleted uranium ammunition leads to 1) a breakdown of the immune system with a sharp rise in infectious diseases (2) widespread herpes or shingles, even in infants. (3) Symptoms similar to Aids, even in infants (4) kidney and liver disorders resulting in a previously unknown illness, which has now been named Morbus Gunther. (5) Leukaemia, aplastic anemia (bone marrow disorders) or cancer. (6) Genetic deformities, which also occur in animals and (7) miscarriages or premature birth in pregnant women (Gunther, Siegwart-Horst , 1999).  

There are indications that Nato’s use of depleted uranium, highly toxic to humans, both chemically as a heavy metal and radiologically as an alpha particle emitter, for the coating of projectiles, have not been motivated only by the exceptional metal piercing capabilities of this redioactive byproduct of nuclear energy production. Another motive is the nuclear industry interest to avoid its costly storage by using the territory bombarded with DU coated projectiles as the dumping ground .

The use of the radioactive projectiles and targeting of petrochemical plants, pharmaceutical complexes and warehouses storing toxic raw materials provoked escalation of the war complex disaster situation into a protracted and long-term human and environmental catastrophe, since contamination affected entire South-eastern European region and beyond. 

The bombing campaign caused a disastrous deterioration in the economic and social situation of all surviving ethnic groups' affiliates in FRYugoslavia. It led to a further decrease of the per capita income below 900 US$ per year,  pushed around two million people below the poverty line, increasing the stock of 700,000 “old” refugees from Croatia & B&H by 260,000 “new” refugees from K&M, and the number of unemployed by another 200, 000. 

Contrary to the accusation raised against its majority ethnic group, the Serbs,  for violating human rights of minority ethnic groups and their ethnic cleansing, Serbia and FRYugoslavia remained the most multi-ethnic society in the region, constitutionally defined as the state of its citizens having equal rights irrespective of their ethnic, religious or racial affiliation, and a safe haven for around one million refugees of all affiliations, including Albanians, Muslims and Croats, throughout a decade of bloody civil war. 

The bombing campaign influenced the deterioration of social conditions of working people in NATO member states as well since billions of dollars of taxpayers money (each cruise missile costs $1 million) was diverted from housing,  health care, education and other social programs to the benefit of the biggest military contractors.  Besides the bombed population, thousands of NATO soldiers were poisoned with radioactive depleted uranium and other toxic cancerogenous and mutagenous substances as well, adversely influencing the appearance of different kinds of deformities even in their offspring (Gunther, Siegwart-Horst, 1999).  

Institutionalisation of  (neo)colonial complex disaster, economic turmoil, and social devastation

The “Dayton Agreement” drafted by Western experts and imposed in 1995 on Serbs, Croats and Muslims of B&H, presents the blueprint for the institutionalisation of new protectorates or colonies of competing Anglo-American and Continental European TNC and financial oligarchy in post- Cold War Euro-Asia. It contains in the Appendix the Constitution that among other things specifically stipulates that the governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia-Herzegovna  will be appointed by the IMF and the governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia-Herzegovina shall not be a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovnia or a neighbouring country. In article VII it is explicitly forbidden for the Bank of B&H to accord credits through money creation. Local government without fiscal revenues, possibility to control money creation and  borrow from the national Central Bank as a “lender of last resort”, was disabled to conduct a stable and sovereign economic investment and development policy, while individual local banks become dependent exclusively on the credit lines from foreign banks. 

It is important to stress that these new credits from western banks are in great part accorded on the basis of deposits made in them by the people who enriched themselves as war profiteers connected with smuggling Mafia. Deposits including received commissions from sales, are borrowed back by the governors of the country in the form of credits. 

The central government’s economic responsibility is  reduced to (decimated) foreign trade, reception of new credits and returning of interests on external debt. Internal debt to citizens is neglected and rise and fall of  interest rates is determined by foreign monetary authorities in accordance with their own perceived benefit. The local government’s monetary policy is restricted through supervision  of the IMF controlled Currency Board to overseeing the limitation of the monetary mass that circulate within the country to the volume of available foreign currency used as legal tender (Deutche Mark and soon Euro, or $US), dependent on (declining) good will of foreign creditors. This amounts to colonial control of national currency and economy. The entire economic policy of the “host” country is thus subordinated to foreign financial interests. This is in full accordance with the maxim of Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1734-1812), founder of one of the most powerful banking houses: "Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws". 

Foreign corporate capital is oriented on buying of the most profitable public enterprises,  devalued by a decade of previously imposed sanctions and armed conflicts, at the “rock bottom” prices (Pickering, Thomas, 2000), on repatriating locally generated profits to the safety of investors’ own country. They are de-industrialising local economy through  closing down that part of local production which used to provide self-sufficiency (especially in the field of military equipment) or would compete on the local market with production of investors’ branches in the countries with still lower labour costs, where minimum guaranteed incomes were under $50 a month. The use of acquired and closed down industrial property is often changed in search of bigger profits through real estate speculation or establishing of wholesale trade. Thousands of workers dismissed from their jobs were thrown out on the street, and still are not absorbed through opening of new work places, since the new foreign owners are not interested in realising such programs. Foreign creditors and new institutional investors are more interested in quick gain through repayment of high interest rates and speculations on the world exchanges of stocks and derivatives. All these interests widely diverge from the economic interests of the host country’s population. They are realised and their dominance maintained through the colonial administration and occupation military force,  which initially had over 70,000 troops in B&H.

 According to Schiller Institute’s researchers, IMF, WB, EU and other transnational bureaucrats headed by the High UN representative for civil reconstruction, in fact sabotaged the reconstruction of Bosnia. Invested at the top with veto legislative powers in the proclaimed aim to fight rampant corruption, they oriented 2/3 of the money from “donation conferences”,  which slowly simmered  just in a fraction of a promised sum and mostly in a form of new credits, towards paying of the interests on the B&H part of the former Yugoslavia’s external debt and on new  external credits, while the largest part of the remaining third was used for hiring of Western administrators, consulting firms and NGOs. A small amount which was actually invested in reconstruction, went mostly on short term credits for small projects in services and light industry private sector that created few new jobs. Explanation for this policy the authors found in the interest of British and American financial capital to divide Europe and prevent its industrial integration in order to be able to continue to control it (Cheminade, J., Komp, L., Fimmen, E., 1999).

The Central Bank in Montenegro is like the Central Bank in B&H illustrative for the derogation of national economic sovereignty and complete monetary control of local finances by foreign bank authorities.  The economy of Montenegro, like the economy of B&H and other countries of South_Eastern Europe, is envisaged to become a dependent service zone and supplementary economic space for imperialist countries. The only difference Between B&H and Montenegro is the fact that Montenegrin government consented to this indirect foreign control before the bombing and direct military occupation. It made up its mind in February 1999, after it was shown a multi-million dollar computer simulation named “Synthetic Environments for National Security Estimates (SENSE)”. It is developed by the Institute for Defense Analysis from Washington at the request of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, for the purpose of “show[ing]leaders in the former East bloc the economic impact of their decisions.” It “allow[s] participants to influence the economic growth and development of a fictitious country Acrona, neighbouring Colonia, through interactive decisions,” in the process “teach[ing] the principles of political, economic and military interrelationships.” The Montenegrin leadership thus learned the lesson that if their proposed course of action would be in any way inconsistent with the interests of NATO , the consequence would be disastrous (Priest, Dana, 2000; Dinmore, Guy, 1999; http://www.eucom.mil/exercises/99/ sense/index.htm, cited in Dajkovic, Alex, 2001).

Themes for discussion and further research

The aim of this paper will be fulfilled if it succeeded to stimulate further already existing public and professional interest in finding out the complex internal and external social factors of social crisis and their catastrophic complex disaster effects,  in the context of the contemporary process of the TNC and financial oligarchy’s attempt at world-wide imposition of neoliberal conception and strategy of globalisation. This research has amply documented  main aims and means of realisation of such strategy  - the “free flow” of capital, labour and merchandises on the global free market, realised through economic, covert military, overt diplomatic, mass media, (il)legal and finally overt military “opening” and “privatisation” of debtor societies. 

Privatisation wherever it was implemented, worsened working conditions, intolerably reduced rights of workers and their trade unions through  “flexibilization” of labour, decimation of redistributive social programs, drastically lowered standard of living and life expectancy. On the other hand, unemployment and competition of cheap but generally well trained and educated labour on the glutted and “flexibilised” increasingly global labour market increased,  like the prices of basic foods and services, criminality and corruption, feelings of anxiety, insecurity, apathy and pessimistic world outlook (see the contributions of I. Angelov, A. Barton, V. Ivanova, A. Markovskaya, J.Plusnin and B. Peper to ESA 2001 D&SCRN Session III: “Global economics, transitional economies, social crises and complex disasters”). Even George Soros, a billionaire who appropriated his wealth through  financial speculation, admits that "extending the market mechanism to all domains has the potential of destroying society" (statement quoted in International Herald Tribune, Paris, April 4, 2001).

The experience of protracted calamities of deep economic, social, political, cultural and moral crisis and armed conflict  in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, imposed the theme of war as the most calamitous manifestation of  a complex disaster situation to both the lay public and the scientific community throughout the world.  It  was to be expected that such debate and research agenda imposition would be present the most among social scientists and the people at large living in countries the most affected by crisis and (war) complex disaster situations in the post-Cold War era. This expectation tends to be corroborated by the fact that five out of seven panellists participating in the Session on complex disasters within context of globalisation and social crisis at the ESA 2001 Conference,  came from Eastern and South-Eastern part of Europe, in which war complex disaster symptoms with devastating social impact have been currently the most concentrated. The fact that the remaining two panellists coming from US and Western Europe have  chosen the same research field, suggests that actually there is no social crisis-free region in the entire world, which finds itself in the process of conflict ridden transition/transformation. A prudent remark must be added, that so small a sample of ESA Conference participants is not sufficient for a statistically valid conclusion. It presents, however, a sufficient empirical basis for the supposition that  a probable common motive of this particular group of panellists to study, explain and understand social crisis and complex disaster’s/ catastrophe’s/ uncertainty's determining factors and consequences in all spheres of individual and social existence, is to draw from this research possible practical lessons. They might concern suggestions of social action strategies that should be implemented in order to alleviate most nefarious present effects of the eastward trans-Atlantic globalist expansion of TNC and financial capital, and to attempt to prevent their escalation into the terminal nuclear disaster.

Space limit forces me to leave this implicit or explicit practical motive of social crisis and complex disaster research for some future discussion.  Here I would just like to summarise the proposition, drawn from data presented in this paper, for the debate and further research:  if present trends of privatization and deregulation continue unabated, the war complex disaster will be most probably institutionalised in Yugoslavia and surrounding Balkan countries, through the restoration of (neo)colonially dependent peripheral capitalism and criminalised authoritarian governments. 

Some chances for the elevation to the level of the semi-peripheral capitalism exist provided that sufficiently strong patriotic social movements in local communities are formed, ready to defend the sovereignty over national resources and promote regional cooperation of neighbouring states having mutually complementing economies. NATO “Partnership for stability” in South-eastern Europe, being imposed by TNC capital and financial oligarchy in its quest for control of row materials, labour force, market outlets and industrial waste dumping grounds, in fact causes destabilisation of the region, inciting war complex disaster situation. It would have to be substituted by united democratic front oriented toward a sustainable, sovereign, integrative and self-reliant development of national and regional natural and human resources through democratic social participation of Balkan people in managing their lives. 

For its realisation it would be necessary to accomplish regional cooperation  in provision of 1) the banning of depleted uranium weapons and making the Balkans nuclear free zone; 2) reparations from NATO for environmental radiological and chemical contamination 3) writing off of cumulative interest rates on old external debt and Central Bank creation of long term credits at simple interest rate for investment in infrastructure, agriculture and industry, non-profit housing and in public social services for the common good. 

The present trend of atheir liccelerated deregulation and privatisation or sell off of public patrimony and strategic energy, mineral, water and banking systems to TNC and financial oligarchy, should be stopped and reversed, in order to enable their use for common good . 

The internal and external obstacles impeding the implementation of the autochtone development strategy of national and regional economic, political, military and cultural independence, integration and self-relying government of, by and for the Balkan peoples,  instead of the rule of, by and for the interest of financial oligarchy, would have to be overcome.

It must always be emphasised that the mobilisation of all available material and human resources for the realisation of national sovereignty and self-determination  lose their emancipatory character as soon as they begin to suffocate the movement for the social liberation and abolishment of domination and dependence of individuals within national and regional borders. Redirection of the social discontent of exploited and atomised direct producers through populist manipulation of their ethnic and religious feelings and (mis)use of the church, surrender the legitimisation, social integration and mobilisation tool in the hands of the new pretenders to national state leadership and control.  

The realisation possibilities of theoretically more “desirable” society options that could be imagined as helpful for avoiding of the war complex disaster escalation into nuclear catastrophe, structurally are limited by the inherited and actual constellation of social forces on the national and global plane. It can be modified only through social emancipation of the economically exploited and politically repressed majority of humanity, when it renews hope and faith in the possibility of betterment of the life situation through cognition led self-conscious and self-organised individual and collective action.

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