un po’ di storia
Jugoslavia, una distruzione programmata
L’analisi di Michel Chossudovsky é stata la prima e più dettagliata (e informata) relazione sulla frantumazione della Jugoslavia con mezzi finanziari.
“The Shape of Things to Come
Multiethnic, socialist Yugoslavia was once a regional industrial power and economic success. In the two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years (11). But after a decade of Western economic ministrations and five years of disintegration, war, boycott, and embargo, the economies of the former Yugoslavia are prostrate, their industrial sectors dismantled.
Yugoslavia's implosion was partially due to US machinations. Despite Belgrade's non-alignment and its extensive trading relations with the European Community and the US, the Reagan administration targeted the Yugoslav economy in a "Secret Sensitive" 1984 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133), "Us Policy towards Yugoslavia." A censored version declassified in 1990 elaborated on NSDD 64 on Eastern Europe, issued in 1982. The latter advocated "expanded efforts to promote a 'quiet revolution' to overthrow Communist governments and parties," while reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented economy (12).
The US had earlier joined Belgrade's other international creditors in imposing a first round of macroeconomics reform in 1980, shortly before the death of Marshall Tito. That initial round of restructuring set the pattern. Throughout the 1980s, the IMF and World Bank periodically prescribed further doses of their bitter economic medicine as the Yugoslav economy slowly lapsed into a coma.
From the beginning, successive IMF sponsored programs hastened the disintegration of the Yugoslav industrial sector industrial production declined to a negative 10 percent growth rate by 1990 (13) and the piecemeal dismantling of its welfare state, with all the predictable social consequences. Debt restructuring agreements, meanwhile, increased foreign debt, and a mandated currency devaluation also hit hard at Yugoslavs' standard of living.
Mr. Markovic goes to Washington
In autumn 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslav federal Premier Ante Markovic met in Washington with President George Bush to cap negotiations for a new financial aid package. In return for assistance, Yugoslavia agreed to even more sweeping economic reforms, including a new devalued currency, another wage freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, and the elimination of socially owned, worker- managed companies (14). The Belgrade nomenclature, with the assistance of Western advisers, had laid the groundwork for Markovic's mission by implementing beforehand many of the required reforms, including a major liberalization of foreign investment legislation.
"Shock therapy" began in January 1990. Although inflation had eaten away at earnings, the IMF ordered that wages be frozen at their mid November 1989 levels. Prices continued to rise unabated, and real wages collapsed by 41 percent in the first six months of 1990 (15).
The IMF also effectively controlled the Yugoslav central bank. Its tight money , policy further crippled the country's ability to finance its economic and social programs. State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics and provinces went instead to service Belgrade's debt with the Paris and London clubs. The republics were largely left to their own devices.
In one fell swoop, the reformers engineered the final collapse of Yiugoslavia's federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics.
The IMF-induced budgetary crisis created an economic fait accompli that paved the way for Croatia's and Slovenia's formal secession in June 1991.
Crashed by the Invisible Hand
The reforms demanded by Belgrade's creditors also struck at the heart of Yugoslavia's system of socially-owned and worker-managed enterprises. As one observer noted,
The objective was to subject the Yugoslav economy to massive privatization and the dismantling of the public sector. The Communist Party bureaucracy, most notably its military and intelligence sector, was canvassed specifically and offered political and economic backing on the condition that wholesale scuttling of social protections for Yugoslavia's workforce was imposed." (16)
It was an offer that a desperate Yugoslavia could not refuse. Advised by Western lawyers and consultants, Markovic's government passed financial legislation that forced "insolvent" businesses into bankruptcy or liquidation. Under the new law, if a business was unable to pay its bills for 30 days running, or for 30 days within a 45-day period, the government would launch bankruptcy proceedings within the next 15 days.
The assault on the socialist economy also included a new banking law designed to trigger the liquidation of the socially-owned 3Associated Banks." Within two years, more than half the country's banks had vanished, to be replaced by newly-formed "independent profit-oriented institutions."
These changes in the legal framework, combined with the IMF's tight money policy toward industry and the opening of the economy to foreign competition, accelerated industrial decline.
From 1989 through September 1990, more than a thousand companies went into bankruptcy. By 1990, the annual GDP growth rate had collapsed to a negative 7.5 percent. In 1991, GDP declined by a further 15 percent, while industrial output shrank by 21 percent (l7)
The IMF package unquestionably precipitated the collapse of much of Yugoslavia's well-developed heavy industry. Other socially-owned enterprises survived only by not paying workers. More than half a million workers still on company payrolls did not get regular paychecks in late 1990. They were the lucky ones. Some 600,000 Yugoslavs had already lost their jobs by September 1990, and that was only the beginning. According to the World Bank, another 2,435 industrial enterprises, including some of the country's largest, were slated for liquidation. Their 1.3 million workers half the remaining industrial workforce were "redundant."(18)
As 1991 dawned, real wages were in free fall, social programs had collapsed, and unemployment ran rampant. The dismantling of the industrial economy was breathtaking in its magnitude and brutality. Its social and political impact, while not as easily quantified, was tremendous. "The pips are squeaking," as London's Financial Times put it.(19)
Less archly, Yugoslav President Borisav Jovic warned that the reforms were "having a markedly unfavorable impact on the overall situation in society.... Citizens have lost faith in the state and its institutions.... The further deepening of the economic crisis and the growth of social tensions has had a vital impact on the deterioration of the political-security situation."(20)
The Political Economy of Disintegration
Some Yugoslavs joined together in a doomed battle to prevent the destruction of their economy and polity. As one observer found, "worker resistance crossed ethnic lines, as Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Slovenians mobilized ... shoulder to shoulder with their fellow workers."(21) But the economic struggle also heightened already tense relations among the republics and between the republics and Belgrade.
Serbia rejected the austerity plan outright, and some 650,000 Serbian workers struck against the federal government to force wage hikes.(22) The other republics followed different and sometimes self-contradictory paths.
In relatively wealthy Slovenia, for instance, secessionist leaders such as Social Democratie party chair Joze Pucnik supported the reforms: "From an economic standpoint, I can only agree with socially harmful measures in our society, such as rising unemployment or cutting workers' rights, because they are necessary to advance the economic reform process."(23)
But at the same time, Slovenia joined other republics in challenging the federal government's efforts to restrict their economic autonomy. Both Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic joined Slovene leaders in railing against Yugoslavia's attempts to impose harsh reforms.(24)
In the multiparty elections in 1990, economic policy was at the center of the political debate as separatist coalitions ousted the Communists in Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia. Just as economic collapse spurred the drift toward separation, separation in turn exacerbated the economic crisis. Cooperation among the republics virtually ceased. And with the republics at one anothers' throats, both the economy and the nation itself embarked on a vicious downward spiral.
The process sped along as the republican leadership, deliberately fostered social and economic divisions to strengthen their own hands: "The republican oligarchies, who all had visions of a 'national renaissance' of their own, instead of choosing between a genuine Yugoslav market and hyperinflation, opted for war which would disguise the real causes of the economic catastrophe ."(25)
The simultaneous appearance of militias loyal to secessionist leaders only hastened the descent into chaos. These militias, with their escalating atrocities, not only split the population along ethnic lines, they also fragmented the workers' movement.(26)
Western Help
The austerity measures had laid the basis for the recolonization of the Balkans. Whether that required the breakup of Yugoslavia was subject to debate among the Western powers, with Germany leading the push for secession and the US, fearful of opening a nationalist Pandora's box, originally arguing for Yugoslavia's preservation.
Following Franjo Tudjman's and the rightist Democratic Union's decisive victory in Croatia in May 1990, German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in almost daily contact with his counterpart in Zagreb, gave his goahead for Croatian secession.(27) Germany did not passively support secession; it "forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. Germany sought a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mittel Europa."(28)
Washington, on the other hand, favored 3a loose unity while encouraging democratic development ... [Secretary of State] Baker told Tudjman and [Slovenia's President] Milan Kucan that the United States would not encourage or support unilateral secession ... but if they had to leave, he urged them to leave by a negotiated agreement. (29)
Instead, Slovenia, Croatia, and finally, Bosnia fought bloody civil wars against "rump" Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) or Serbian nationalists or both. But now, the US has belatedly taken an active diplomatic role in Bosnia, strengthened its relations with Croatia and Macedonia, and positioned itself to play a leading role in the region's economic and political future.”
v.anche Nick Beams
v.anche Sea n Gervasi, 92
v.anche:
“Il biennio 1989-90 è stato fatale. La produzione industriale precipita a un -10% annuo, -3% nel settore agricolo. Migliaia sono le fabbriche che chiudono. I disoccupati salgono a un milione e mezzo, il 25% della popolazione attiva. L'inflazione pari al 100% nel 1980, sale al 1200% nel 1989 e al 2000% nel '90. È lo sfascio. In più la crisi del Golfo dell'agosto 1990 aggrava ulteriormente la situazione togliendo le forniture petrolifere che la Jugoslavia riceveva proprio dall'Iraq e dal Kuwait.
Il governo centrale di Belgrado ha tentato di correre ai ripari con una serie di misure tanto gravi, impopolari, penalizzanti il mondo del lavoro e l'autonomia della varie repubbliche, quanto inefficaci. In primo luogo ha liberalizzato gli investimenti esteri cercando di dare vita a una serie di joint ventures con l'obiettivo dichiarato di facilitare l'ingresso ai capitali finanziari e alla tecnologia stranieri. La manovra non è riuscita, non tanto perché la Jugoslavia, soprattutto le repubbliche del nord come la Slovenia e la Croazia, non fosse appetibile per le mire del marco e della strapotenza produttiva della Germania, ma perché le vicende internazionali (riunificazione tra le due Germanie e guerra del Golfo) e la scarsa affidabilità del traballante regime politico, avevano dirottato altrove gli investimenti europei e tedeschi in particolare.
In secondo luogo si è tentato di concedere alle imprese una maggiore autonomia gestionale rispetto al Piano, autonomia finanziaria, manageriale, di reperimento delle materie prime e commerciale, come se la causa prima della profondissima crisi economica risiedesse nel Piano e nelle sue reali o presunte soffocanti negatività, e non nelle difficoltà di valorizzazione del capitale indigeno alle prese con problemi di competitività sul mercato internazionale.
Anche questa misura, peraltro tardiva, ha lasciato le cose esattamente come stavano per quanto riguardava la struttura economica e i suoi problemi, modificando soltanto esasperandola, la concorrenza interna tra capitali, settori produttivi, nomenklature e repubbliche.
La terza misura, di ordine finanziario, consisteva in un congruo aumento delle tasse e dei "contributi" che tutte le repubbliche dovevano versare al centro per risanare la finanza pubblica, per pagare il servizio sul debito contratto con gli organismi finanziari internazionali, e quale contributo delle repubbliche più ricche in favore dello sviluppo di quelle più povere.
L'ultima misura, quella più carognesca, riguardava il congelamento dei salari "sine die" oltretutto, in un momento in cui il 25% della popolazione attiva era disoccupata, lo stato sociale in smantellamento e quello assistenziale ormai assente da anni.
Le quattro misure, calate una dietro l'altra nello spazio di pochi mesi, tra la fine del 1989 e gli inizi del 1990, non solo non hanno, come abbiamo visto, sortito effetti positivi per l'economia nazionale in vertiginosa e inarrestabile discesa verso il collasso totale, ma si sono incaricate di esasperare le tensioni sociali e inter repubblicane. Contro il blocco dei salari, centinaia di migliaia di lavoratori sono scesi nelle piazza su tutto il territorio nazionale. Nel solo 1989 si sono registrati 1700 scioperi nel settore industriale. Nelle zone più depresse, come il Kossovo, la Macedonia e l'Erzegovina, disoccupati e agricoltori hanno inscenato violente manifestazioni che hanno costretto il governo centrale di Belgrado a intervenire con la forza pubblica e l'esercito.
Mentre la profondità della crisi, l'esasperazione della concorrenza tra le repubbliche più ricche e quelle più povere, l'aumento dei contributi da pagare a Belgrado e gli interessi crescenti da pagare sul debito estero hanno incominciato a innescare quel processo di centrifugazione degli interessi periferici rispetto al centro che di li a pochi mesi, grazie anche al concorso di fattori esterni, si è trasformato in vera e propria secessione.
È avvenuto cioè, che vecchi rancori, non del tutto sopiti tra serbi e croati, tra le repubbliche più ricche del nord e quelle più povere del sud, tra tutte le repubbliche e la Serbia, nella crisi economica hanno trovato un fertile terreno di coltura.
Le borghesie di stato repubblicane, con maggior intensità quelle del nord, con qualche titubanza quelle del sud, hanno incominciato a pensare che, uscire dalla federazione jugoslava, tagliare il cordone ombelicale con Belgrado, non solo faceva risparmiare a loro notevoli quantità di capitale finanziario che si sarebbe potuto investire produttivamente invece che scomparire nelle casse del governo federale, ma sarebbe stata la condizione per uscire definitivamente dalle gabbie della economia di piano e il mezzo più celere per agganciarsi alle economie dell'Europa occidentale. Ovvero per le nomenklature di Lubiana, Zagabria o Sarajevo, la secessione da Belgrado, dalla decennale serbo centrica amministrazione della Jugoslavia, significava la privatizzazione dei mezzi di produzione, la individualizzazione dei profitti, e la possibilità di trasformare il proprio proletariato in una più efficace fonte di creazione di plus valore grazie all'afflusso di capitali stranieri e di tecnologia occidentali.
Solo a questo stadio dell'evolversi degli avvenimenti, quando i parlamenti repubblicani in rapida successione, uno dietro l'altro, hanno votato lo scioglimento del partito unico, le libere elezioni e con i nuovi governi le secessioni l'essere croato, sloveno o bosniaco mussulmano, è diventato lo strumento ideologicamente più adatto per giustificare la separazione degli interessi delle varie borghesia repubblicane rispetto al governo centrale, all'essere serbo.”
Kosovo:
Non é molto noto un piccolo particolare della guerra in Jugoslavia: il ‘Fronte di Liberazione del Kosovo’, quello che gli USA e la Nato hanno appoggiato e che ha preso il potere, nasce come cambiamento di nome del braccio armato della più grossa banda di narcotrafficanti della regione.
È il primo caso di un governo che nasce già come narco-stato (con l’appoggio diretto della Nato perdipiù).
fonte: v. Chossudovsky citato, v. sotto.
UCK in quotations
"Ten years ago we were arming and equipping the worst elements of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan - drug traffickers, arms smugglers, anti-American terrorists…Now we're doing the same thing with the KLA, which is tied in with every known middle and far eastern drug cartel. Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to the KLA, and right to Albanian gangs in this country."
former DEA agent and author Michael Levine
Quoted in the New American Magazine, May 24, 1999
"[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values."
Senator Jo. Lieberman, quoted in the 'Washington Post', 28 April 1999
"American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia".
Tom Walker and Aiden Laverty, ‘CIA Aided Kosovo Guerrilla Army’, Sunday Times, 12 March 2000
http://www.kosovo.net/kla2.html
See the articles below
Insight, Al-Qaeda Links in the Balkans, July 1, 02
Insight, Heroin and Sex Trade Fuel Albanian Nationalism, Aug. 13, 01
KLA circles in Kosovo a stronghold of Islamic Terrorism in Europe
Excerpt from the book Osama Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (Rocklin CA: Prima Publishing Co., 1999, ISBN 0-7615-1968-8)
p. 399
The mujahideen established close relations with the key clans from the Drenica area in central Kosovo, the birthplace of the UCK, including Suleyman Selimi, "the Sultan," who comes from this area and is commander in chief of the UCK forces inside Kosovo. In these operations the mujahideen have already demonstrated their fearlessness and all-out commitment to the Muslim population. An example of this was the last stand of a mujahideen battalion of some fifty fighters under the command of Sheikh Muhammad al-Adalbi (also known as Abu-al-Abbas} north of the village of Meja. The battalion "was completely martyred following a ferocious battle with Serbian forces deep inside Kosovo" in which the Saudi and Egyptian mujahideen held the line, enabling the UCK to evacuate the Albanian civilians, destroy the local villages in an orderly scorched-earth withdrawal, and then reach Albanian sanctuary. The UCK destroyed the villages to alienate and radicalize the population so that they would fight the Serbs and to coerce the civilians to escape into exile so that there can be no normalization and Kosovo Albanian population under the control of the Serbs. This is a classic "revolutionary" strategy that has been implemented in several previous Islamic Liberation struggles such as those in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Bosnia. A NATO spokesman attributed the emptying and destruction of Meja and surrounding villages to "Serbian ethnic cleansing."
With the Serb forces and NATO bombing eliminating the UCK's ability to operate inside Kosovo, the Islamists are also preparing for what they see as the fateful phase of fighting: when they wrest Kosovo from hostile non-Muslim hands, either Serb or NATO's...
Kosovo Liberation Army, UCK
Federation of American Scientists (FAS) - Short info on KLA
Structure and Strategy of the KLA, Human Rights Watch
The Kosovo Liberation Army - Tim Judah
Origins - War and Post War History
citato in Kosovo Net
da ‘Limes”, 2012
venerdì 14 dicembre 2012