Social Workers and Imperialism

SOCIAL WORK AND IMPERIALISM*
By: James A. Lucas 7/29/05

Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you about Social Workers and Imperialism. Right now our nation is engaged in a bloody struggle in Iraq which sadly is reminiscent of the Vietnam War of over thirty years ago. Many of us are calling for the end of the occupation. As long as the U.S. can continue to occupy a nation that it illegally invaded, other nations will not be safe from similar invasions by the U.S.

Social Workers are needed in this struggle. The goals and philosophy of social work are possibly more attuned than those of any other profession to the gamut of human suffering caused by war policies at home and abroad. We are uniquely qualified to speak with conviction about the suffering of all members of the human family.

A high percentage of social work’s clients are among those most likely to be in military service and to risk their lives. We must demonstrate that Americans are not sheep willing to be led to slaughter. There have also been casualties from other nations.

Over 1700 Americans have died and over 10,000 have been wounded along with over 100,000 Iraqis who have died and a much larger number who have been injured. There have also been casualties from other nations. (1)

The Iraqi people and other peoples are not the only ones harmed by our government. We Americans are harmed too. Financial resources that could be used for humanitarian causes within our county are instead diverted to military purposes and other activities that mostly benefit a privileged wealthy elite. (2)

The attack against Iraq is mainly an imperialist war by the U.S. to gain control of that nation’s oil and to exploit its labor force. That is imperialism - to control another nations resources both natural and human. Other nations, which in the future may incur the wrath of our government, are likely to meet a similar fate. We have entered into a state of perpetual war and we are being told that we are in a struggle with terrorism that will never end. This means that future generations will be asked to sacrifice their lives on the altar of imperialism. We need people from all walks of life to oppose not only that war but also the mindset that supports such acts of imperialism.

The American psyche has been traumatized by the horrendous attacks of September 11, 2001 that killed over 3,000 people. Our government’s reaction to that day unfortunately mainly seems to be to respond with acts of terrorism such as our attack against Iraq. The memory of those tragedies is being used to scare the American people into accepting a harsher form of imperialism and the curtailment of civil liberties at home and abroad.

Acts of terrorism toward the U.S. are mainly the result of a deep resentment throughout the world toward our nation because of its bullying and unilateral policies which have been building for many years, regardless of which of the two major political parties has been in power.

But even if we are not able to end the occupation of Iraq immediately perhaps we can eventually avoid future wars. In about the last 15 years our nation has been conned by our government into two wars against Iraq along with wars against Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, We will also fall prey to facile reasons for going to war in the future unless we understand how we are lied to and what the real reasons are for those wars.

What is the history of U.S. imperialism you may ask? It is a history of deaths of millions of people in other nations at the hands of the U.S. or its surrogates. We have been responsible for many September 11th tragedies around the world. Our history of imperialism goes back about a century. For example according to Zoltan Grossman writes that there have been about 180 landings by U.S. marines. (3)

It is useful to describe some of these interventions in other countries. Many of our early intrusions were small ones. A big one, however was in the Philippines where from 1899 to1902 some “200,000 Filipinos perished and tens of thousands of others were wounded or tortured by U.S. forces in a successful effort to crush Filipino independence. (4)

In Central America in the last three decades there have been a series of tragedies aided and abetted by our leaders.

In El Salvador in 1992 a 10 year civil war came to an end after the U.S. had spent a million dollars a day to support the government in its efforts to crush a movement to bring social justice to the people in that nation of about 8 million people. The UN Truth Commission of 1993 said that 63,000 Salvadorans were killed during that time. (5)

In Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz who was elected President in 1950 pushed agrarian reform. The United Fruit Co. protested when unused portions of its vast holdings were expropriated and distributed to landless peasants. In 1954 a CIA-orchestrated coup put him out of office. (6)

In the 1980s things really got hot in Guatemala. Historian Chalmers Johnson writes about how the “CIA – and the Pentagon supported genocide against Mayan peasants. A 1999 a report on the Guatemalan civil war from the U.N. – sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification made clear that ‘the American training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques’ was a key factor ‘ in the genocide…. Entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and these inhabitants were slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection.’

According to the Commission between 1981 and 1983 the military governments of Guatemala – financed and supported by the U.S. government – destroyed some four hundred Mayan villages in a campaign of genocide in which approximately two hundred thousand peasants were killed “ (7)

Honduras was a staging ground in the early 1980s for the Contras who were trying to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. John D. Negroponte, now the U.S. National Intelligence Director,.was our embassador when our military aid to Honduras rose from $4 million to $77.4 million per year.

Also during that time many people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by Battalion 316, a part of the Honduran government. Negroponte denies having had any knowledge of these atrocities during his tenure. However, his predecessor in that position, Jack R. Binns, had reported in 1981 that he was “deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations.” (8)
In the Nicaraguan civil war that ended in 1989, 40,000 people (nls) were killed. The U.S. supported the victorious government regime by providing covert military aid to the Contras (anti-communist guerillas) starting in November, 1981. But when Congress discovered that the CIA had supervised acts of sabotage in Nicaragua without notifying Congress, it passed in 1983 the Boland Amendment which prohibited the CIA, Defense Department, and any other government agency from providing any further covert military assistance. But ways were found to get around this prohibition.The National Security Council which was not explicitly covered by the law, raised private and foreign funds for the Contras. In addition arms were sold to Iran and the proceeds were diverted from those sales to the Contras engaged in the insurgency against the Sandinista government. Both the sale of weapons and the funding of the Contras violated stated administration policy as well as legislation passed Congress, which had blocked further Contra funding. (9)

In the Caribbean the U.S. invaded Panama, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba in about the last 45 years. I would like to provide information on two of those invasions.

In Panama in December, 1989 U.S. troops invaded that country to “arrest” Manuel Noriega, slaughtering 2,000 to 4,000 innocent civilians in the process. For a number of years before this he had worked for the CIA, but he fell out of favor partially because he was not an opponent of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. (10)

In Haiti the U.S. supported for many years the regime of Francois Papa Doc Duvalier which it considered to be a bulwark against communism. He was supported by the U.S.- trained Haiti counter-insurgency forces, although most military aid was channeled through Israel. In early 1990s an ex priest, Aristide, got over 60 % of the vote for President, but his talk of helping the poor caused the U.S. to depose him. (11) Later, the U.S. reinstalled him and very recently they helped depose him again. He is now in South Africa

Now we move to one of the South American nations. The CIA intervened in Chile’s 1958 and 1964 elections. In 1970 a socialist candidate, Salvador Allende was elected president. The CIA wanted to prevent his inauguration with a military coup, but the Chilean army’s chief of staff, General Rene Schneider opposed this. The CIA planned, along with some people in the Chilean military, to assassinate Schneider but this failed and Allende took office. President Nixon ordered the CIA to create a coup climate; “make the economy scream,” he said.

What followed were guerilla warfare, arson, bombing, sabotage and terror. ITT and other U.S. corporations with Chilean holdings sponsored demonstrations and strikes. Finally, on September 11, 1973 Allende was assassinated, although some say he committed suicide.

At that time Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State, said the following regarding Chile: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.” (12)

General Pinochet became head of a ruling military junta in Chile and a reign of terror existed over the years under Pinochet.

Now let us consider theAsian part of the world, ssspecifically the countries of the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I discussed the Philippines earlier.

In 1965, in Indonesia, a coup replaced their leader. In the process 500,000 to 1 million people died. The U.S. played a role in the change of that government. Robert Martens a former officer in the U.S. embassy in Indonesia described how U.S. diplomats and CIA officers provided up to 5, 000 names to Indonesian Army death squads in 1965 and checked them off as they were killed or captured. Martens said “ I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.” (13)

In 1975, Indonesia, with U.S. encouragement, invaded Portuguese East Timor and killed 200,000 of its population of about 700,000. The U.S. had supplied Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed. Daniel Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the UN. at the time, said that the U.S. wanted “things to turn out as they did.” Fourteen years later Indonesian soldiers again invaded E. Timor. (14)

The next nation to consider is Korea. John H. Kim who is a U.S. Army veteran and the Chair of the Korea Committee of Veterans for Peace stated in an article that during the Korean War of the early 1950s that “the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy were directly involved in the killing of about three million civilians – both South and North Koreans – at many locations throughout Korea…It is reported that the U.S. dropped some 650,000 tons of bombs, including 43,000 tons of napalm bombs, during the Korean War.” About 50,000 Americans lost their lives. For more details the reader is referred to an article by Brian Wilson. (15)

In Vietnam, under an agreement several decades ago, there was supposed to be an election for a unified North and South Vietnam. The U.S. opposed this and supported the Diem government in South Vietnam. In August, 1964 the CIA and others helped fabricate a phony Vietnamese attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin and this was used as a pretext for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (16)

During that war there was Operation Phoenix which was an American assassination operation used to terrorize the South Vietnamese people, there occurred also the famous My Lai Massacre in 1968. About 50,000 Americans and 2 to 3 million Vietnamese died during the war.

Cambodia is located next to Vietnam. It’s leader, Prince Sihanouk, tried to avoid involvement in the Vietnam War and to avoid joining the crusade against communism. He alleged that there were two assassination attempts against him by the CIA. The Vietnam War spilled over into Cambodia and he denounced these incursions. Soon he was deposed by a CIA puppet.

Some North Vietnamese troops were driven by bombing by the U.S. into Cambodia.

From 1969 to 1975 the U.S. bombing killed 600,000 Cambodians and created a famine. Eventually the Khmer Rouge took power, executing between 100,000 and 350,000 people. Other estimates of 1 million deaths included those due to famine. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia later in 1979 the CIA was still supporting the Khmer Rouge. Over the years we have repeatedly heard about the Khmer Rough’s role but not that of the U.S. (17)

Laos is also adjacent to Vietnam. A civil war started back in the 1950s when the U.S. recruited a force of 40,000 Laotians to oppose the Pathet Lao, a leftist political party. In 1975 that party took power.

From 1965 to 1973 the U.S. dropped over two million tons of bombs on Laos – more than was dropped in WWII by both sides. Over a quarter of the population became refugees. This was called a secret war, since it occurred at the same time as the Vietnam War and got little press. Hundreds of thousands were killed. (18)

Next I will discuss Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afganistán.

In 1951 the prime minister of Iran, Mossadegh, nationalized Iran’s oil. In 1953 he was overthrown with considerable assistance from the CIA and the Shah returned from exile. The Shah created SAVAK, a CIA trained security force which tortured and murdered thousands of his opponents. (19)

In 1976 Amnesty International concluded that this security force, had the worst human rights record on the planet and that its torture techniques were “beyond belief.” The Shah was overthrown in 1979. (20)

The intrusions I have mentioned so far are those that occurred before the end of the Cold War about 15 years ago. It seemed then that the fear of communism would no longer scare Americans into supporting a large military establishment and that it was the right time for a peace dividend which would have consisted of using the money spent on military contractors for social programs.

I was a member of the Peace and Social Justice Committee of Ohio NASW at that time which formulated a position on peace and economic conversion, which was adopted by an NASW Delegate Assembly. But our weapons manufacturers rose to the challenge and met the threat that peace posed to their profits by supporting several wars since that time.

The U.S. supported Iraq in its War with Iran for most of the 1980s. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam Hussein before he invaded that the U.S. had no interest in the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. The stage was set. Saddam had been lured into invading Iraq. The daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. falsely testified before Congress that Iraqi troops were pulling the plugs on incubators in Iraqi hospitals. (22) This help to incite a lust for war by the U.S.

The U.S., no longer encumbered by the Soviet Union which had just fallen apart, arranged for sanctions to be put into effect against Iraq, and in early 1991 launched an aerial attack on Iraq followed by a land invasion of Kuwait. (21) The elder Bush decided against conducting a land war against Iraq for reasons he gave in his book. In effect, he predicted the morass that exists in Iraq today. It is not known if his son read his book.

About 200,000 Iraqis died as a result of U.S. violations of international law. Iraqi troops during that war, more appropriately called a slaughter, were mercilessly killed on the Highway of Death and about 400 tons of depleted uranium were left in that nation by the U.S. Less than 200 Americans died. American support was strong for that war. (23)

Sanctions were in effect on Iraq for over a decade and caused about a million Iraqi deaths. This fact, unfortunately, seems to evoke little empathy among Americans - an apparent ignorance and callousness cast in the same mold as the support that was given for slavery and the extermination of native Americans.

Being naïve again, as I had been at the end of the cold war about what could be accomplished, I participated at that time in a local organization in Dayton called the Committee to Save the Iraqi People to make people aware of the genocide being committed against the Iraqi people.

Leslie Stahl, in the mid 1990s, on TV asked Madeline Albright, secretary of state under Clinton, and then U.S. ambassador to the UN about Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And – you know, is the price worth it?” Albright then replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” This comment caused no groundswell of disgust in the American public. (24)

Yugoslavia was a socialist federation of several republics which had been supported by the U.S. to some extent during the Cold War because that nation refused to be closely allied to the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, its usefulness to the U.S. ended. So the U.S and Germany worked to convert its socialist economy to a capitalist one by a process primarily of dividing and conquering. From the early 1990s until now it has reduced Yugoslavia to several independent nations whose lowered income, along with CIA connivance, has made it a pawn in the hands of capitalism. (25)

In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. According to official stories the U.S. gave aid to the Afghan opposition only after the invasion. Later Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, revealed the full truth. According to him the U.S. began aiding the Islamic fundamentalist Moujahedeen six months before the Soviets made their move against Afghanistan. He told President Carter that “this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” Brzezinski defended this decision. “Regret what?” he said. “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” (26)

What were the consequences of that American-supported war in Afghanistan? According to Chalmers Johnson, they are the defeat of a government that was trying to bring Afghanistan into the 20th Century, breathtaking carnage; Moujahedeen torture, half the population either dead, disabled or refugees; and the spawning of thousands of Islamic terrorists who have unleashed atrocities in numerous countries. (27)

The CIA spent 5 to 6 billion dollars on its operation in Afghanistan in order to bleed the Soviet Union. When that 10-year war ended a million people were dead and “Afghan heroin had captured 60% of the U.S. market. (28)

This brings up to our latest war, the current one against Iraq. Just as the end of the Cold war emboldened the U.S. to attack Iraq in 1991 so the attacks of September11, 2001 encouraged the U.S. to launch the current war against Iraq. While in some other wars we learned much later about the lies that were used to deceive us, some of the lies that were used to get us into this war became well- known almost as soon as they were uttered. There were no weapons of mass destruction, we were not trying to promote democracy, we were not trying to save the Iraqi people from a ruthless dictator, etc.

This short and incomplete history of U.S. imperialism can perhaps best be expressed by the words used in 1933 by Lt. General Smedley Butler who won two Congressional Medals of Honor. He said the following “I spent thirty years and four months in active military service….And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle-man for big business, for Wall Street, and the bankers….Thus, I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba decent places for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street….In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
(29)

But my main point at this juncture is that the history of U.S. terrorism against the rest of the world has been the most significant cause of terrorism against the U.S. If this cycle of terror is to end it will be necessary for the U.S., which has the strongest military establishment and economic reach in the history of the world, to take the lead in reversing this downward spiral.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 have caused our president and our leaders to take certain security measures, including the passage of the Patriot Act. On this matter of civil rights I have not devoted much time in my talk, not because it is not important, but because I wanted to discuss the factors which have been leading many people around the world to look with disgust at the U.S. or, as some people have said, to “hate Americans.” It was not easy for me to ignore the issue of civil rights, since I believe that, if this trend is not reversed we will have lost our freedoms and our republic.

What is the U.S. doing now to create such resentment around the world? We can start with our legal relationships with the rest of the world

Following are some of the treaties that the U.S. will not ratify and conventions from which we have withdrawn. In doing this I am not laying responsibility for this obstinacy, or the whole sordid story I have related here today, solely at the hands of the current administration. I am referring here to The Landmines Treaty, the Treaty On Discrimination Against Women; the Kyoto Treaty, (30) the Biological Weapons Treaty; the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the International Conference on Racism.

In addition the U.S. was ousted from the UN Human Rights Commission, backed out of UNESCO, has refused at times to pay its current or back dues to the UN and avoided its legal obligation to respect the World Court’s decision on Nicaragua. (31)

The U.S. expresses outrage that other nations such as Iran or Korea may develop nuclear weapons. But the world has noticed that Iraq, a nation with no weapons of mass destruction, incurred our wrath anyway. Should we be surprised if some nations will try to get nukes in the belief that Iraq might have been able to keep the U.S. at bay if it really did have nukes?

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty calls for nuclear nations like the U.S. to work to eliminate its arsenals in return for other nations not developing nukes. Is the U.S. keeping its part of the bargain by reducing its nukes? The answer is “No.” In fact, the U.S. is actually increasing its threat level? We are withdrawing from many nuclear treaties, trying to develop bunker busters, star wars weapons, and we are talking of using nukes in a conventional war. (32)

We are not even- handed in trying to convince other nuclear nations not to join the nuclear club, since we refuse to even admit that Israel has at least 100 nukes. (33)

Hardly a day seems to goes by now without some news item appearing indicating that the U.S. is trying to dictate to some nation how to conduct its affairs or is actively trying to interfere in their internal processes. We are pretty much performing the same bully role that in the past has brought us to our current hazardous state. In effect we say that we are not subject to laws. We call it “leadership.”

Other nations feel threatened. The U.S. has been involved in recent attempts to overthrow Chavez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela. (34) We are pumping billions of dollars in military aid into Colombia, dishonestly claiming that our motive is to stop the production of drugs there, when our real reason is to be able to control future oil production in that country. It has been reported that secret U.S. operatives are in Iran are designating certain sites as appropriate for U.S. aerial attacks. (35) Also, it has been reported that our government may try to overthrow the Philippine government. (36)

Besides having agents of the CIA and other U.S. security agencies operating in many, many nations around the world we have over 700 military bases operating in over 100 nations and we have over 10 carrier fleets patrolling the world, and thousands of nuclear weapons on call to enforce our will if necessary. (37)

We refuse to close the School of the Americas at Ft.Benning, Georgia which trains military personnel from other nations in our hemisphere how to suppress popular and indigenous peoples movement seeking peace and justice. (38) Annual protests each November organized by the School of the Americas Watch continue outside Ft. Bragg, Georgia where the school is located. Many opponents of the school have served prison sentences for their convictions.

The most dangerous step the current administration has taken has been to espouse the concept of preventive war by which we assume the right to attack other nations if we think they may be capable at some time in the future of attacking us. (39) Every nation in the world has been put on notice, in effect, not to even think about attacking the U.S.

Such an idea may have some superficial plausibility, but the world has learned over the years that it is a prescription for disaster. It would be like a group of mutually antagonistic people all standing around with each person pointing a loaded gun ready to use it should anyone else display any aggressive intent.

In conclusion, let me say that our leaders need to know that its citizens will no longer be deceived by false reasons given for war, whether they be to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to end dictatorships, to promote humanitarian causes or for other reasons. Our leaders need to understand that they cannot continue to brainwash us into condoning this imperialistic approach. We’ve been down this road too often before. It has brought us to dead end.

But public dissent against such policies of our country is being discouraged, and that is why more people, including outspoken social workers are needed to help demonstrate that Americans are not sheep willing to be led to slaughter.

*Parts of this article were presented in a workshop at the Social Welfare Action Alliance’s Annual Convention in Toledo, Ohio on July 29, 2005.




CITATIONS

1. Occupation Watch: http://www.occupationwatch.org/

2, War Resisters League http://www.warresisters.org/
National Priorities Project: http://www.nationalpriorities.org/

3. Zoltan Grossman http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm
Michael Parenti Against Empire (San Francisco: City Light Books) 83

5. Virtual Truth Commission http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date5.htm

6. Virtual , http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date3.htm

7. Chalmers Johnson Blowback (New York Henry Holt & Co. LLC) 13-14

8 Michael Dobbs, Negroponte’s Time in Honduras at Issue,,, Washington Post, March 21, 2005
9. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair")

10. Mark Zepezauer, The CIA’s Greatest Hits, (Odonian Press 1998) 83

11. Zepezauer, Hits, 86

12.William Blum Killing Hope (Maine, Common Courage Press 1995) 209

13.Virtual, http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

14.Virtual, http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

15.S. Brian Wilson, Documenting U.S. War Crimes in North Korea (Veterans for Peace Newsletter) Spring, 2002) http://www.veteransforpeace.org/

16.Zepezauer, Hits, 24, 40

17.Zepezauer, Hits; 44
Virtual, http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

18.William Blum Rogue State (Maine, Common Cause Press) 136

19.Zoltan Grossman http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm
Virtual: http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date4.htm

20.Zepezauer, Hits, 10

21.Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time (New York, Thundermouth Press 1992) 23

22.Clark, This Time, 31-32

23.Clark, This Time, 52-54

24.William Blum Rogue State (Maine, Common Cause Press) 5-6

25. Sara Flounders “Bosnia Tragedy:The Unknown Role of the Pentagon” in NATO in the Balkans (New York: International Action Center) 47-75

26.Blum, Rogue, 5

27.Blum, Rogue, 4-5

28.Zepezauer, Hits, 76

29.Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire (New York Metropolitan Books 2004)

30.Johnson, Sorrows, 76

31.Johnson, Sorrows, 75

32.Johnson, Sorrows, 290

33.Peace Heroes, Israel and Nuclear Weapons: http://www.peaceheroes.com/MordecaiVanunu/israelnuclearweapons.htm

34. Sohan Sharma and Surinder Kumar, Colombia: A Proxy County for US Intervention in Venezuela, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SHA412A.html

35.Seymour Hersh The Coming Wars The New Yorker, January 7, 2005 http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/16/hersh.iran/

36.E. San Juan, US Designs on the Philippines (Asia Times, July 5, 2005)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GG06Ae02.html

37.Johnson, Sorrows, 154
38.School of the Americas Watch: http://www.soaw.org/new/
39.Johnson, Sorrows, 256

Dayton Peace Accords Revisited

Dayton Peace Accords Revisited
by James A. Lucas 9/4/05

November 21st of this year will be the10th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords which ended the war in Bosnia, one of 6 republics of Yugoslavia. That U.S.- brokered agreement has been praised because it stopped the killing in Bosnia. While that is true, less well known but vastly more important, is the fact that the U.S. was mainly responsible for starting that war. This connection is somewhat analogous to destroying Iraq and then seeking praise for plans to rebuild it. For that reason Dayton may want to reassess its link to the Dayton Peace Accords.

Some supporters of the Accords maintain that the war was due to ethnic differences between the Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. There has indeed been animosity between these groups for many years. But during the 45 years since the end of World War II, until Yugoslavia started to disintegrate in 1990, the various groups were able to live peacefully together. So why did Yugoslavia fall apart, and in particular, what caused the war in Bosnia? That is the question that the rest of this article will address. The secondary roles of other national and international entities will also be mentioned to a lesser extent.

The U.S. subverted the sovereignty of Yugoslavia primarily by using economic muscle and arm-twisting and by direct political and military machinations. Meddling by the U.S. in Yugoslavia led to 20,000 to 60,000 deaths in Bosnia,1 hundreds of thousands of wounded, millions of refugees and the other horrors and destruction that war brings.

Edicts against Yugoslavia and Bosnia
It is not necessary to resort to any conspiracy theory to show why Yugoslavia dissolved like cream in coffee. All that is needed, as a start, is to refer to public statements, especially when discussing the economic pressures that were foisted on Yugoslavia.

For two decades prior to1980 Yugoslavia was prospering with its annual GDP growth averaging 6.1 percent. Medical care was free, the literacy rate was about 91 percent and life expectancy was 72 years.2 In some ways life may have been better in Yugoslavia than in the U.S.

Then things started to fall apart in 1980 when Yugoslavia began to get into debt to international creditors shortly after the death of its leader, Marshall Tito. Whether the new leaders agreed to these loans due to bribes, threats or some other reasons is not known. To repay these debts Yugoslavia had to agree to debt restructuring agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which increased its foreign debt even more.3 Throughout the1980s, the IMF prescribed further doses of its bitter economic medicine periodically. Industrial production declined to a negative 10 percent growth rate by 1990.4 State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics and provinces went instead to service the debts of the Yugoslav Federation. The republics were mostly on their own.

The Reagan administration’s war on the poor was underway here at home at that time and it was decided to direct this campaign against human welfare also toward communist countries. In 1984 it specifically targeted the Yugoslav economy in a secret memo, NSDD 133, which 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.”5 Thus began Reagan’s secret plan for interventions to overthrow Communist states. This illustrates that the demise of communism was probably due to some extent to Western connivance and militarism.

In 1989 Ante Markovic, prime minister of Yugoslavia, in order to pay off the loans, launched a program of privatizing or shutting down state industry, cutting back on social programs and subsidies and freezing wages. These are the same types of actions that have been taken by the IMF and the World Bank against other nations in the last two or three decades as a part of the “developed” nations international war on the poor. The standard of living declined 18.1 percent between January and October 1990. This downturn raised unemployment to 20 percent and thus increased tensions between the republics. Markovic, visiting Washington, told President George H. Bush that rising tensions among nationalities would be a consequence of his austerity/privatization plan.6

Then the U.S. came down like a sledgehammer again on Yugoslavia when on November 5, 1990 Congress passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513. A section of this law, without previous warning, cut off all aid, credits and loans from the U.S. to Yugoslavia within 6 months. Also, the law demanded separate elections in each of the republics that made up Yugoslavia, requiring State Department approval of election procedures and results before aid to the separate republics would be resumed. In February 1991 the Council of Europe also demanded that Yugoslavia hold multi-party elections or face an economic blockade.7

Three weeks after the U.S. Congress passed this dictatorial law a CIA report leaked to the media predicted that Yugoslavia would disintegrate into civil war, possibly within the next year and thus essentially agreeing with the warning made earlier by Markovic.8 By 1991, the new government had acquired a debt of $31 billion. Unemployment was over a million and inflation was 200 percent.9

The Yugoslav federal government was unable to pay the enormous interest on its foreign debt or even to arrange the purchase of raw materials for its industry. Credit collapsed and recriminations broke out on all sides. At this time there was no civil war or any secession yet. By 1992 Serbs, wherever they lived in Yugoslavia, had become demonized by the international community because of their alleged human rights abuses. The European Community (EC) in1991 threatened a withdrawal of $1 billion in scheduled aid and a cut off of economic relations with Yugoslavia if it did not accept mediation for peaceful purposes. This meant that Yugoslavia was not being allowed the option of military force to maintain its national cohesion, a prerogative that virtually no other country would willingly relinquish.10

Delirious with power, since the U.S. was now the only remaining superpower, the Pentagon in 1992 proclaimed its imperial hegemony over the world in its “Defense Planning Guide.” According to the New York Times of May 8 1992, this document asserts that the only possible course for the U.S. to pursue is complete world domination, and it adds that no other country has the right to aspire to the role of leadership, even as a regional power.11

On May 30, 1992 the UN Security Council, in its not infrequent role as a puppet of the U.S., voted to impose a sanctions blockade on the remainder of the Yugoslav Federation - Serbia and Montenegro - even though the World Court ruled that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not the aggressor in the conflict in Bosnia. The purpose of the sanctions was to prevent the movement of arms from Serbia to Serbs in Bosnia.12 Also among the restrictions ordered by UN Resolution 757 was an international ban on all exports to and imports from Yugoslavia, an international ban on all foreign investment and commercial contacts with Yugoslavia and a freeze by all countries of Yugoslavia’s assets.13

On the same day that the blockade was imposed President George H. Bush declared a national state of emergency, saying that “the grave events in Serbia and Montenegro constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, economy and foreign policy of the U.S.”14 A gross exaggeration indeed, considering the relative economic and military might of the two nations. The search for a pretext to intervene was obvious.

One effect of the sanctions was that state companies could no longer be competitive on the world market, and therefore multinational corporations could buy them at low prices. Less than a month after the UN resolution was passed hundreds of thousands of workers had their wages reduced or received no wages.15 The U.S. Sixth Fleet enforced the blockade starting in 1992 and by 1996 74,000 ships had been halted.16 On June 25, 1991 Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia and by mid-1992 Yugoslavia was reduced to Serbia and Montenegro

By October 1993 medical care had deteriorated and the effects were devastating. 90 percent of the country’s domestic drug production stopped. A six-year-old boy had leukemia but free medicines were no longer available. The first of 8 necessary treatments cost $812, more than twice the combined monthly salaries of his parents. Hospitals had to give unscreened blood transfusions. Medications for psychiatric patients ran out.

The average daily intake of calories had fallen by 28 percent compared to 1990 and 1.5 million people were classified as undernourished. The death rate in the capital, Belgrade, increased from 79 to 977 per 100,000 in the same period.17 Two months later over 60 percent of the country’s work force was unemployed and the average monthly income had dropped from $500 to $15.18
In September 1994, the UN blockade - which had previously covered Serbia and Montenegro - was extended to cover only that part of Bosnia under Bosnian Serb control. According to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, Yugoslavia in 1994 had over 3.7 million refugees, the largest refugee population in the world. 44 percent were Muslim, 36 percent were Serbs and 20 percent were Croats.19

U.S. Intervention in Bosnia
The first indication that U.S. policy would soon be implemented by concrete military intervention in Bosnia was when George Kenney of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Michael J. Dugan, a retired AF general and former Air Force Chief of Staff, outlined a blueprint in 1992 for what they called “Operation Balkan Storm.” They said “a win in the Balkans would establish U.S. leadership in the post-Cold War world in a way that operation Desert Storm never could.”20

Outside military intervention in Bosnia started in 1992 when NATO, a surrogate of the U.S., sent a group of about 100 personnel to Bosnia where they established a military headquarters at Kiseljak, close to Sarajevo. A NATO diplomat at the time said in the Intelligence Digest of October 16, 1992 that this operation was “a very cautious first step and we are definitely not making much noise about it. But it could be the start of something bigger….You could argue that NATO now has a foot in the door.”21

According to Warren Zimmerman, the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia during the Reagan and Bush administrations, NATO domination of Bosnia was essential. At stake, he said in 1995, is NATO’s capability of “expanding“ into Eastern Europe. If a NATO occupation of Bosnia fails, according to Zimmerman, “not only will NATO’s expansion look ludicrous but serious roles for NATO anywhere else will be hard to imagine.”22

The U.S. also offered advice to the Bosnian military. On April 30, 1994 the Washington Post reported that General John Shalikashvili, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Sarajevo to meet with Bosnian military leaders. Ret. U.S. Army Gen. Williams E. Odom, a long time Pentagon insider, was the head of the U.S. government’s biggest spy agency - the ultra-secret National Security Agency during the Reagan Administration. In an opinion-page piece in the New York Times in 1995, Odom indicated that the occupation of Bosnia was part of a plan for military and political domination of Europe and the former Soviet Union through NATO.23

The Bosnian Army was also being helped by other U.S. military advisors, including Gen. John Sewall and Gen. John Galvin, the former NATO Supreme Commander, according to Foreign Affairs of September, October 1995. The entire Bosnian army wore U.S. military uniforms provided by U.S. military contractors.24

A UN Security Council Resolution adopted on September 25, 1991 imposed a complete embargo on deliveries of weapons and military equipment to all parts of the former Yugoslavia.25 This was an attempt to prevent a bonfire from becoming a forest fire. But since the U.S. wanted the Serbs to lose, it decided in November 1994 to pour gasoline on the fire by unilaterally ending its support of the UN Security Council’s arms embargo.26

The New York Times of June 24, 1994 described the new supplies, including heavy weapons, flooding into Bosnia since the U.S. organized the Croatian-Bosnian alliance.”27 General Charles Boyd said that the arms embargo for the region was almost nonexistent and that the U.S. insures a regular flow of arms to the Bosnian Army.28 The Pentagon sent in Special Forces to train the Bosnian military. Also, the U.S. actively participated in the war during 1992-95 as the guiding component of NATO, increasingly using air power against Bosnian and Croatian Serbs as well as against anti-Izetbegovic Muslim forces.

Complex War in Bosnia
The war in Bosnia was complex. There were several opposing Muslim groups and the U.S. chose to support the faction led by Aleja Izetbegovic. Mainly it was the Croats and Muslims, supported by the U.S., against the Serbs. But at times the fight was between Croats and Muslims.

The Bosnian War was even more complicated than that. The most popular Muslim leader was Fikret Abdic who opposed the breakup of Yugoslavia. Izetbegovic, supported by the U.S., forced Abdic out of the Bosnian Government. In the spring of 1995 he was sent into exile. He then led an army allied with the Bosnian Serbs and they opposed the Izetbegovic forces.29 Ret. U.S. Air Force General Charles G. Boyd, deputy commander in chief of the U.S. European Command from 1992 to 1995 wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1995 that Abdic’s government in Bihac was “one of the few examples of successful multi-ethnic cooperation in the Balkans” Abdic was a member of the Bosnian collective presidency, He outpolled Izetbegovic in national elections and had been expelled from the government when Sarajevo (Izetbegovic’s headquarters) rejected an internationally brokered peace agreement.”30

The elected Bosnian Muslim government in Tuzla in 1994 claimed that the U.S. supervised rewrite of the Bosnian constitution gave power only to the right wing forces of Izetbegovic’s Party for Democratic Action and Franjo Tudjman’s Democratic Union. A Bosnian Muslim group in the northwest Bihac area led by Abdic in 1994 declared its autonomy from the U.S.- backed government based in Sarajevo. In retaliation, the Izetbegovic government launched a military attack against these Muslim forces that wanted peace with their Serbian and Croatian neighbors. The U.S organized this attack on an elected Muslim Bosnian government. As reported in November 1994 in Britain in such newspapers as the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent, as well as in newspapers in France and Germany, six U.S. generals took part in planning the offensive in June of that year, an attack that violated the cease-fire.

The Izetbegovic government’s U.S.- backed offensive in 1994 was at first successful in the Bihac region. But the Bosnian Serbs, in alliance with Serbs in Croatia and Bosnian Muslim forces led by Abdic, reorganized and began a counterattack. U.S. bombers under NATO command then came to Izetbegovic’s defense.31

In April 1994 the Washington Post cited two senior UN officials, a general and a civilian, who blamed the U.S. ”for the continuation of the war in Bosnia, because it has given the Muslim-led Bosnian government the false impression that Washington’s military support was on the way.”32

Demonization of the Serbs
The U.S. opposed the Serbs in Bosnia who became known as fascists and supported the Croats and the Muslims. A considerable portion of world public opinion believed the accusations that the Serbs had committed human rights violations in Bosnia’s civil war. Serbs were charged with operating concentration camps similar to those of the Germans in WWII, engaging in mass rapes of Muslim women, violating “safe areas” during the war, deliberately attacking civilians in Sarajevo and conducting mass murder in Srebrenica. Some have claimed that similar charges against Muslims and Croats have been ignored by the world community, but that subject will not be addressed to any great degree here. So, in general, only charges against the Serbs will be examined below.

Concentration camps
Remember how a public relations firm incited a furor in 1991 in the U.S. by fabricating a story about Iraqi soldiers killing babies in 1991? According to the story they killed newborns by pulling the plugs on incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals. Something similar happened in Bosnia. In 1993 a representative of a public relations firm was interviewed on French TV. He bragged about his service to governments in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and how he used a file of 200 key people to create public opinion. “Speed is vital…it is the first assertion that really counts. All denials are entirely ineffective.” He said that after Newsday in June 1992 came out with an article on Serb camps. “…We outwitted three big Jewish organizations. In August, we suggested that they publish an advertisement in the New York Times and organize demonstrations outside the UN.”

“When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind…Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content such as “ethnic cleansing”, “concentration camps” etc., which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”33

Rape
The Serbs also were accused of systematic rape as a part of an organized Serb governmental policy. In 1992 and 1993 three news reports claimed that members of the Bosnian Serb army raped 20,000 to 100,000 Muslim women. Ms. magazine ran a story that accused Bosnian Serb forces of raping in order to produce pornographic films. But according to findings by Helsinki Watch and Human Rights Watch no such films were ever found.34

In January 1993 a report authorized by the European Community estimated that 20,000 Muslim women had been raped as part of a Serb strategy of conquest, but a dissenting member of the investigative team said that the estimate of 20,000 victims was based on actual interviews with only four victims - two women and two men. The report had been based on information from the Croatian Ministry of Health. 35

Among other reports, Newsweek reported on up to 50,000 women having been raped in Bosnia. A contributor to the article said that figure was an extrapolation on interviews with 28 women - multiplying each rape by a factor that takes into account historical underreporting of rape.36

Rape in war is not uncommon and charges of it are a part of war propaganda, and the potential for it exists in most armies. Determining the accuracy of reports is not always easy.

Safe Areas
Serbs were condemned for violations of “safe areas” which were six Bosnian government towns surrounded by Serb held territory. They were, in reality, staging areas for U.S. backed Bosnian army offensives against the Bosnian Serb forces. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros–Ghali confirmed this in a report to the UN Security Council on May 30, 1995 in which he said that “The Bosnian Serb Forces reaction to offensives launched by the [U.S. backed Bosnian] government arms from safe areas have generally been to respond against military targets within those areas.”37

Sarajevo
In 1992 in Sarajevo, Bosnia an explosion occurred killing 14 people who were in a food line. Several weeks later an investigation showed the impossibility of a mortar shell causing such an explosion.38

On Feb 5, 1994 an open-air market in Sarajevo was attacked and 68 people died. It was called a Serb atrocity. A UN analysis of the crater showed, however that the Izetbegovic forces were responsible for the explosion. Later, the UN released a crater analysis of another shell that exploded and found the same result.

The following year there was another market place explosion in Sarajevo that killed 37 people. This was the pretext for 4,000 U.S.- NATO air sorties to be carried out. David Binder in the New York Times quotes four different military sources disputing the immediate UN report that blamed the Bosnian Serbs for the explosion. A Russian artillery officer went on tv in Sarajevo and said that the probability of hitting a street less than thirty feet wide from Serb artillery positions one to two miles away was one in one million.

A Canadian specialist told Binder that the fuse of the mortar shell recovered from the marketplace crater ”had not come from a mortar tube at all.“ Two anonymous U.S. officials said that based on the trajectory, the shallowness of the crater, and the absence of any high-pitched whistle, the shell was either fired from very close range or dropped from a nearby roof into the crowd.39

In the winter of 1993-94, Croat forces shelled the Bosnian city of Mostar far more heavily than the capital Sarajevo was shelled by the Serbs, but the latter received much more publicity.40

Srebrenica
A slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs was alleged to have occurred between July 14 and July 17, 1995 in or near the town of Srebrenica. On November 5, 2003 the Bosnian Serb government, while not stating the number who died, admitted responsibility for this massacre.
Skepticism about that admission is well warranted, however since that government is subject to great pressure from the U.S. installed colonial administration over Bosnia. Milosevic in his current war crimes trial is being accused of being responsible for this slaughter, sometimes referred to as genocide.41,42 However, Milosevic was the leader of the Yugoslavian government and not the Bosnian Serbs.


Krajina
Serbs were also the victims of a mass killing. In early August 1995 in Croatia, the Croats caused between 200,000 and 700,000 new refugees, virtually the entire population of Krajina, by expelling Serbs from Croatia. The toll of civilian dead and missing among Serbs in Krajina was over 2,500.43 Warren Christopher, Secretary of State, said that the crushing military offensive was “to our advantage.” The preparation of the Croatian forces for the onslaught was a classic CIA operation according to the London Independent.43a The London Times said the region was teeming with former U.S. generals.43b

The Clinton administration's support for the invasion was an important factor in creating this nightmare. The previous month, Warren Christopher and German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel met with Croatian diplomat Miomir Zuzul in London. During this meeting, Christopher gave his approval for Croatian military action against Serbs in Bosnia and Krajina. Two days later, the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, also approved Croatia's invasion plan. Stipe Mesic, a prominent Croatian politician, stated that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman "received the go-ahead from the U.S. Croatian assembly deputy Mate Mestrovic also claimed that the "United States gave us the green light to do whatever had to be done."44

CIA intervention
Five British papers in 1994 were quoted as showing U.S. involvement in Bosnia including that of the CIA. Media in France, Germany and Italy also carried exposes of large scale CIA involvement in the widening war in Bosnia. Coverage included information on tactical operation, sharing satellite information and controlling local air traffic. Units of both the Croatian and Bosnian armies were reportedly trained in the U.S. and within that region. U.S. forces based in Bosnia provided assistance in building airstrips and organizing large weapons shipments through Croatia to the Bosnian forces.45

Earlier Peace Plans Proposed
Prior to the Dayton Peace Accords the U.S. refused to accept two peace plans which were reportedly very similar to the one adopted at Dayton. Many lives would have been saved if one of these plans had been adopted.

On March 18-19, 1992 in an attempt to prevent civil war in Bosnia, the Cutileiro Plan was signed by Izetbegovic, but almost immediately he reversed himself and rejected it after the U.S. sabotaged the plan by saying that it was prepared to recognize Bosnia as an independent country. On March 22nd the civil war widened to Bosnia. On April 6, 1992 the U.S. and the European Community recognized the Izetbegovic government as the legitimate government of Bosnia. A civil war lasting three years followed.46

The second plan was the Vance-Owen plan signed in May 1993. Owen has publicly stated that Washington undermined the agreement after it was negotiated.47 In this context it is helpful to recall the words of the U.S. Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guide mentioned earlier: “We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO.”

Dayton Peace Accords
Prior to the signing of the accords, in August and September 1995 NATO launched a massive air war against the positions of the Bosnian Serbs who, for the first time in the war, suffered major defeats and territorial losses.48 The accords were signed in late November 1995. The major outcome was that Bosnia was divided into two parts, one Muslim-Croatian and the other Serbian.

Almost immediately after the signing Presidential Determination 96-7 was signed by President Clinton, suspending the sanctions enacted earlier by the U.S. Treasury. However Yugoslav assets “previously blocked remain blocked.” The national “emergency” declared in Executive Order 12808, it said, shall remain in effect.” Even though the U.S. got the agreement it wanted it still kept one foot on its prostrate victim’s neck. The Bosnian government estimated that reconstruction costs would reach $47 billion and it is inconceivable that it can raise that sum in the foreseeable future.49

Democracy
Besides the claim that the Dayton Peace Accords stopped the killing, it is also maintained that it lays out a path to democracy in Bosnia. This is not the reality of the situation.

Actually, Bosnia is subservient under a colonial arrangement, since a High Representative has full executive powers in all civilian affairs. The IMF is empowered to appoint and run the Bosnian Central Bank in this artificially fabricated state. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development directs the restructuring of the public sector and it sells off assets of the state and society. Newsweek accurately described the Dayton Accords as “less a peace agreement than a declaration of surrender” and that U.S. - led NATO forces “will have nearly colonial powers.”50

In 1998 NATO intervened in municipal elections and threatened to destroy any radio or television station or newspaper that criticizes NATO’s presence in Bosnia. NATO commanders have overruled decisions by Serbia’s High Court and have overturned the very parliament whose election they presided over. General Wesley Clark announced that NATO troops would use lethal force against Serbians who throw stones at the occupying troops.51

Carlos Westendorp, former High Representative, exercised his powers in1999 by removing from office Nicolas Poplasen, the newly elected president from the Republika Srpska. Poplasen’s support for the absorption by Serbia of this Serbian part of Bosnia placed him in Westendorp’s crosshairs. “Westendorp once told a Bosnian periodical that if Bosnia’s elected officials cannot “agree about some decisions, for example the passports, the license plates, the flags…I will stop this process of indefinite discussions.52

David Chandler, author of “Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton,” on October 20, 2004 wrote that “the international powers of the administration, under the Office of the High Representative, have been vastly increased…As far the engagement of the people of Bosnia or the elected representatives is concerned, little has changed in the ten years since the Dayton agreement was signed. The Bosnian public has been excluded from the transition process…”53

Conclusions
Our government has engaged in so many wars in the last 10 years it is hard for Americans to devote enough time to understanding what caused all of them. Hopefully, this account, while it does not cover all the factors pertaining to the disintegration of Yugoslavia, will partially fill that gap. The pattern used to destabilize Yugoslavia has been used before and will be used again unless we learn about the various ways we are sucked into supporting wars.

The war in Bosnia is yet another example of the futility of war as a way of solving problems. Additionally, it illustrates how conflict and war escalate and that there is a need for peaceful ways to solve disagreements. This war also shows how the sources of conflict are often simmering and escalating out of public view long before they erupt onto public consciousness. This is particularly true in view of the expanding imperialist reach of our corporate-controlled government.

While no American blood was spilled during the Bosnian War, the degradation and trauma heaped upon the people of Bosnia and Yugoslavia should be remembered, especially the next the time someone asks, after a new terrorist attack against us, “Why do they hate us?”


END NOTES

NOTE: This article is based on essays in the book “NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition” and on other sources. The editor of the book is Sarah Flounders and it was published in 1998 by the International Action Center.

1. New York Times, April 23, 1995
2. Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Yugoslavia, Colonizing Bosnia,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 82
3. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 83
4. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 83
5. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 82
6. Richard Becker, “The Role of Sanctions in the Destruction of Yugoslavia,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 111.
7. Sarah Flounders, “Bosnia Tragedy: The Unknown Role of the Pentagon.” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 49
8. Flounders, Bosnia, 51
9. Sam Marcy, “How Imperialism Broke up the Yugoslav Socialist Federation,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 101
10.Becker, Sanctions, 112
11.Sarah Flounders, “Introduction,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 3
12. Flounders, Bosnia, 69-70
13. Becker, Sanctions, 117
14. Becker, Sanctions, 117
15. Becker, Sanctions, 119
16. Becker, Sanctions, 123
17. Becker, Sanctions, 120-121
18. Becker, Sanctions, 122
19.Flounders, Bosnia, 47
20. Gary Wilson, “The Dayton Accords Reshape Europe,”in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 147
21. Sean Gervasi, “Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 24
22. Wilson, Dayton, 147
23. Wilson, Dayton, 144
24. Wilson, Dayton, 155
25. http://www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/SERBSANC.HTM
26. Flounders, Bosnia, 69
27. Flounders, Bosnia, 62
28. Wilson, Dayton, 155
29. Wilson, Dayton, 151
30. Flounders, Bosnia, 60
31. Flounders, Bosnia, 59
32. Flounders, Bosnia, 61
33. Flounders, Bosnia, 55
34. Flounders, Bosnia, 56
35. Flounders, Bosnia, 57
36. Flounders, Bosnia, 57
37. Flounders, Bosnia, 65
38. Becker, Sanctions, 118
39. Flounders, Bosnia, 63-66
40. Becker, Sanctions, 122
41. http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=926596
42. http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Sreb2.htm
43. Nikolai Paskhin, “Serbia, Croatia Mark 10th Anniversary of Krajina Serb Expulsion,” August 9, 2005, RIA Novosti (Moscow)
43a.Independent, August 6, 1995
43b.Times, August 5, 1995
44. http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/elich/krajina.html
45. Flounders, Bosnia, 60-61
46. Becker, Sanctions, 116
47. Flounders, Introduction, 5
48. Becker, Sanctions, 124
49. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 89
50. Flounders, Introduction, 5
51. Flounders, Introduction, 6
52. http://www.isreview.org/issues/08/bosnia.shtml
53. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmfaff/87/4101207.htm










































Dayton Peace Accords Revisited
by James A. Lucas 9/4/05
November 21st of this year will be the10th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords which ended the war in Bosnia, one of 6 republics of Yugoslavia. That U.S.- brokered agreement has been praised because it stopped the killing in Bosnia. While that is true, less well known but vastly more important, is the fact that the U.S. was mainly responsible for starting that war. This connection is somewhat analogous to destroying Iraq and then seeking praise for plans to rebuild it. For that reason Dayton may want to reassess its link to the Dayton Peace Accords.

Some supporters of the Accords maintain that the war was due to ethnic differences between the Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. There has indeed been animosity between these groups for many years. But during the 45 years since the end of World War II, until Yugoslavia started to disintegrate in 1990, the various groups were able to live peacefully together. So why did Yugoslavia fall apart, and in particular, what caused the war in Bosnia? That is the question that the rest of this article will address. The secondary roles of other national and international entities will also be mentioned to a lesser extent.

The U.S. subverted the sovereignty of Yugoslavia primarily by using economic muscle and arm-twisting and by direct political and military machinations. Meddling by the U.S. in Yugoslavia led to 20,000 to 60,000 deaths in Bosnia,1 hundreds of thousands of wounded, millions of refugees and the other horrors and destruction that war brings.

Edicts against Yugoslavia and Bosnia
It is not necessary to resort to any conspiracy theory to show why Yugoslavia dissolved like cream in coffee. All that is needed, as a start, is to refer to public statements, especially when discussing the economic pressures that were foisted on Yugoslavia.

For two decades prior to1980 Yugoslavia was prospering with its annual GDP growth averaging 6.1 percent. Medical care was free, the literacy rate was about 91 percent and life expectancy was 72 years.2 In some ways life may have been better in Yugoslavia than in the U.S.

Then things started to fall apart in 1980 when Yugoslavia began to get into debt to international creditors shortly after the death of its leader, Marshall Tito. Whether the new leaders agreed to these loans due to bribes, threats or some other reasons is not known. To repay these debts Yugoslavia had to agree to debt restructuring agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which increased its foreign debt even more.3 Throughout the1980s, the IMF prescribed further doses of its bitter economic medicine periodically. Industrial production declined to a negative 10 percent growth rate by 1990.4 State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics and provinces went instead to service the debts of the Yugoslav Federation. The republics were mostly on their own.

The Reagan administration’s war on the poor was underway here at home at that time and it was decided to direct this campaign against human welfare also toward communist countries. In 1984 it specifically targeted the Yugoslav economy in a secret memo, NSDD 133, which 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.”5 Thus began Reagan’s secret plan for interventions to overthrow Communist states. This illustrates that the demise of communism was probably due to some extent to Western connivance and militarism.

In 1989 Ante Markovic, prime minister of Yugoslavia, in order to pay off the loans, launched a program of privatizing or shutting down state industry, cutting back on social programs and subsidies and freezing wages. These are the same types of actions that have been taken by the IMF and the World Bank against other nations in the last two or three decades as a part of the “developed” nations international war on the poor. The standard of living declined 18.1 percent between January and October 1990. This downturn raised unemployment to 20 percent and thus increased tensions between the republics. Markovic, visiting Washington, told President George H. Bush that rising tensions among nationalities would be a consequence of his austerity/privatization plan.6

Then the U.S. came down like a sledgehammer again on Yugoslavia when on November 5, 1990 Congress passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513. A section of this law, without previous warning, cut off all aid, credits and loans from the U.S. to Yugoslavia within 6 months. Also, the law demanded separate elections in each of the republics that made up Yugoslavia, requiring State Department approval of election procedures and results before aid to the separate republics would be resumed. In February 1991 the Council of Europe also demanded that Yugoslavia hold multi-party elections or face an economic blockade.7

Three weeks after the U.S. Congress passed this dictatorial law a CIA report leaked to the media predicted that Yugoslavia would disintegrate into civil war, possibly within the next year and thus essentially agreeing with the warning made earlier by Markovic.8 By 1991, the new government had acquired a debt of $31 billion. Unemployment was over a million and inflation was 200 percent.9

The Yugoslav federal government was unable to pay the enormous interest on its foreign debt or even to arrange the purchase of raw materials for its industry. Credit collapsed and recriminations broke out on all sides. At this time there was no civil war or any secession yet. By 1992 Serbs, wherever they lived in Yugoslavia, had become demonized by the international community because of their alleged human rights abuses. The European Community (EC) in1991 threatened a withdrawal of $1 billion in scheduled aid and a cut off of economic relations with Yugoslavia if it did not accept mediation for peaceful purposes. This meant that Yugoslavia was not being allowed the option of military force to maintain its national cohesion, a prerogative that virtually no other country would willingly relinquish.10

Delirious with power, since the U.S. was now the only remaining superpower, the Pentagon in 1992 proclaimed its imperial hegemony over the world in its “Defense Planning Guide.” According to the New York Times of May 8 1992, this document asserts that the only possible course for the U.S. to pursue is complete world domination, and it adds that no other country has the right to aspire to the role of leadership, even as a regional power.11

On May 30, 1992 the UN Security Council, in its not infrequent role as a puppet of the U.S., voted to impose a sanctions blockade on the remainder of the Yugoslav Federation - Serbia and Montenegro - even though the World Court ruled that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not the aggressor in the conflict in Bosnia. The purpose of the sanctions was to prevent the movement of arms from Serbia to Serbs in Bosnia.12 Also among the restrictions ordered by UN Resolution 757 was an international ban on all exports to and imports from Yugoslavia, an international ban on all foreign investment and commercial contacts with Yugoslavia and a freeze by all countries of Yugoslavia’s assets.13

On the same day that the blockade was imposed President George H. Bush declared a national state of emergency, saying that “the grave events in Serbia and Montenegro constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, economy and foreign policy of the U.S.”14 A gross exaggeration indeed, considering the relative economic and military might of the two nations. The search for a pretext to intervene was obvious.

One effect of the sanctions was that state companies could no longer be competitive on the world market, and therefore multinational corporations could buy them at low prices. Less than a month after the UN resolution was passed hundreds of thousands of workers had their wages reduced or received no wages.15 The U.S. Sixth Fleet enforced the blockade starting in 1992 and by 1996 74,000 ships had been halted.16 On June 25, 1991 Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia and by mid-1992 Yugoslavia was reduced to Serbia and Montenegro

By October 1993 medical care had deteriorated and the effects were devastating. 90 percent of the country’s domestic drug production stopped. A six-year-old boy had leukemia but free medicines were no longer available. The first of 8 necessary treatments cost $812, more than twice the combined monthly salaries of his parents. Hospitals had to give unscreened blood transfusions. Medications for psychiatric patients ran out.

The average daily intake of calories had fallen by 28 percent compared to 1990 and 1.5 million people were classified as undernourished. The death rate in the capital, Belgrade, increased from 79 to 977 per 100,000 in the same period.17 Two months later over 60 percent of the country’s work force was unemployed and the average monthly income had dropped from $500 to $15.18
In September 1994, the UN blockade - which had previously covered Serbia and Montenegro - was extended to cover only that part of Bosnia under Bosnian Serb control. According to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, Yugoslavia in 1994 had over 3.7 million refugees, the largest refugee population in the world. 44 percent were Muslim, 36 percent were Serbs and 20 percent were Croats.19

U.S. Intervention in Bosnia
The first indication that U.S. policy would soon be implemented by concrete military intervention in Bosnia was when George Kenney of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Michael J. Dugan, a retired AF general and former Air Force Chief of Staff, outlined a blueprint in 1992 for what they called “Operation Balkan Storm.” They said “a win in the Balkans would establish U.S. leadership in the post-Cold War world in a way that operation Desert Storm never could.”20

Outside military intervention in Bosnia started in 1992 when NATO, a surrogate of the U.S., sent a group of about 100 personnel to Bosnia where they established a military headquarters at Kiseljak, close to Sarajevo. A NATO diplomat at the time said in the Intelligence Digest of October 16, 1992 that this operation was “a very cautious first step and we are definitely not making much noise about it. But it could be the start of something bigger….You could argue that NATO now has a foot in the door.”21

According to Warren Zimmerman, the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia during the Reagan and Bush administrations, NATO domination of Bosnia was essential. At stake, he said in 1995, is NATO’s capability of “expanding“ into Eastern Europe. If a NATO occupation of Bosnia fails, according to Zimmerman, “not only will NATO’s expansion look ludicrous but serious roles for NATO anywhere else will be hard to imagine.”22

The U.S. also offered advice to the Bosnian military. On April 30, 1994 the Washington Post reported that General John Shalikashvili, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Sarajevo to meet with Bosnian military leaders. Ret. U.S. Army Gen. Williams E. Odom, a long time Pentagon insider, was the head of the U.S. government’s biggest spy agency - the ultra-secret National Security Agency during the Reagan Administration. In an opinion-page piece in the New York Times in 1995, Odom indicated that the occupation of Bosnia was part of a plan for military and political domination of Europe and the former Soviet Union through NATO.23

The Bosnian Army was also being helped by other U.S. military advisors, including Gen. John Sewall and Gen. John Galvin, the former NATO Supreme Commander, according to Foreign Affairs of September, October 1995. The entire Bosnian army wore U.S. military uniforms provided by U.S. military contractors.24

A UN Security Council Resolution adopted on September 25, 1991 imposed a complete embargo on deliveries of weapons and military equipment to all parts of the former Yugoslavia.25 This was an attempt to prevent a bonfire from becoming a forest fire. But since the U.S. wanted the Serbs to lose, it decided in November 1994 to pour gasoline on the fire by unilaterally ending its support of the UN Security Council’s arms embargo.26

The New York Times of June 24, 1994 described the new supplies, including heavy weapons, flooding into Bosnia since the U.S. organized the Croatian-Bosnian alliance.”27 General Charles Boyd said that the arms embargo for the region was almost nonexistent and that the U.S. insures a regular flow of arms to the Bosnian Army.28 The Pentagon sent in Special Forces to train the Bosnian military. Also, the U.S. actively participated in the war during 1992-95 as the guiding component of NATO, increasingly using air power against Bosnian and Croatian Serbs as well as against anti-Izetbegovic Muslim forces.

Complex War in Bosnia
The war in Bosnia was complex. There were several opposing Muslim groups and the U.S. chose to support the faction led by Aleja Izetbegovic. Mainly it was the Croats and Muslims, supported by the U.S., against the Serbs. But at times the fight was between Croats and Muslims.

The Bosnian War was even more complicated than that. The most popular Muslim leader was Fikret Abdic who opposed the breakup of Yugoslavia. Izetbegovic, supported by the U.S., forced Abdic out of the Bosnian Government. In the spring of 1995 he was sent into exile. He then led an army allied with the Bosnian Serbs and they opposed the Izetbegovic forces.29 Ret. U.S. Air Force General Charles G. Boyd, deputy commander in chief of the U.S. European Command from 1992 to 1995 wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1995 that Abdic’s government in Bihac was “one of the few examples of successful multi-ethnic cooperation in the Balkans” Abdic was a member of the Bosnian collective presidency, He outpolled Izetbegovic in national elections and had been expelled from the government when Sarajevo (Izetbegovic’s headquarters) rejected an internationally brokered peace agreement.”30

The elected Bosnian Muslim government in Tuzla in 1994 claimed that the U.S. supervised rewrite of the Bosnian constitution gave power only to the right wing forces of Izetbegovic’s Party for Democratic Action and Franjo Tudjman’s Democratic Union. A Bosnian Muslim group in the northwest Bihac area led by Abdic in 1994 declared its autonomy from the U.S.- backed government based in Sarajevo. In retaliation, the Izetbegovic government launched a military attack against these Muslim forces that wanted peace with their Serbian and Croatian neighbors. The U.S organized this attack on an elected Muslim Bosnian government. As reported in November 1994 in Britain in such newspapers as the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent, as well as in newspapers in France and Germany, six U.S. generals took part in planning the offensive in June of that year, an attack that violated the cease-fire.

The Izetbegovic government’s U.S.- backed offensive in 1994 was at first successful in the Bihac region. But the Bosnian Serbs, in alliance with Serbs in Croatia and Bosnian Muslim forces led by Abdic, reorganized and began a counterattack. U.S. bombers under NATO command then came to Izetbegovic’s defense.31

In April 1994 the Washington Post cited two senior UN officials, a general and a civilian, who blamed the U.S. ”for the continuation of the war in Bosnia, because it has given the Muslim-led Bosnian government the false impression that Washington’s military support was on the way.”32

Demonization of the Serbs
The U.S. opposed the Serbs in Bosnia who became known as fascists and supported the Croats and the Muslims. A considerable portion of world public opinion believed the accusations that the Serbs had committed human rights violations in Bosnia’s civil war. Serbs were charged with operating concentration camps similar to those of the Germans in WWII, engaging in mass rapes of Muslim women, violating “safe areas” during the war, deliberately attacking civilians in Sarajevo and conducting mass murder in Srebrenica. Some have claimed that similar charges against Muslims and Croats have been ignored by the world community, but that subject will not be addressed to any great degree here. So, in general, only charges against the Serbs will be examined below.

Concentration camps
Remember how a public relations firm incited a furor in 1991 in the U.S. by fabricating a story about Iraqi soldiers killing babies in 1991? According to the story they killed newborns by pulling the plugs on incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals. Something similar happened in Bosnia. In 1993 a representative of a public relations firm was interviewed on French TV. He bragged about his service to governments in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and how he used a file of 200 key people to create public opinion. “Speed is vital…it is the first assertion that really counts. All denials are entirely ineffective.” He said that after Newsday in June 1992 came out with an article on Serb camps. “…We outwitted three big Jewish organizations. In August, we suggested that they publish an advertisement in the New York Times and organize demonstrations outside the UN.”

“When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind…Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content such as “ethnic cleansing”, “concentration camps” etc., which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”33

Rape
The Serbs also were accused of systematic rape as a part of an organized Serb governmental policy. In 1992 and 1993 three news reports claimed that members of the Bosnian Serb army raped 20,000 to 100,000 Muslim women. Ms. magazine ran a story that accused Bosnian Serb forces of raping in order to produce pornographic films. But according to findings by Helsinki Watch and Human Rights Watch no such films were ever found.34

In January 1993 a report authorized by the European Community estimated that 20,000 Muslim women had been raped as part of a Serb strategy of conquest, but a dissenting member of the investigative team said that the estimate of 20,000 victims was based on actual interviews with only four victims - two women and two men. The report had been based on information from the Croatian Ministry of Health. 35

Among other reports, Newsweek reported on up to 50,000 women having been raped in Bosnia. A contributor to the article said that figure was an extrapolation on interviews with 28 women - multiplying each rape by a factor that takes into account historical underreporting of rape.36

Rape in war is not uncommon and charges of it are a part of war propaganda, and the potential for it exists in most armies. Determining the accuracy of reports is not always easy.

Safe Areas
Serbs were condemned for violations of “safe areas” which were six Bosnian government towns surrounded by Serb held territory. They were, in reality, staging areas for U.S. backed Bosnian army offensives against the Bosnian Serb forces. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros–Ghali confirmed this in a report to the UN Security Council on May 30, 1995 in which he said that “The Bosnian Serb Forces reaction to offensives launched by the [U.S. backed Bosnian] government arms from safe areas have generally been to respond against military targets within those areas.”37

Sarajevo
In 1992 in Sarajevo, Bosnia an explosion occurred killing 14 people who were in a food line. Several weeks later an investigation showed the impossibility of a mortar shell causing such an explosion.38

On Feb 5, 1994 an open-air market in Sarajevo was attacked and 68 people died. It was called a Serb atrocity. A UN analysis of the crater showed, however that the Izetbegovic forces were responsible for the explosion. Later, the UN released a crater analysis of another shell that exploded and found the same result.

The following year there was another market place explosion in Sarajevo that killed 37 people. This was the pretext for 4,000 U.S.- NATO air sorties to be carried out. David Binder in the New York Times quotes four different military sources disputing the immediate UN report that blamed the Bosnian Serbs for the explosion. A Russian artillery officer went on tv in Sarajevo and said that the probability of hitting a street less than thirty feet wide from Serb artillery positions one to two miles away was one in one million.

A Canadian specialist told Binder that the fuse of the mortar shell recovered from the marketplace crater ”had not come from a mortar tube at all.“ Two anonymous U.S. officials said that based on the trajectory, the shallowness of the crater, and the absence of any high-pitched whistle, the shell was either fired from very close range or dropped from a nearby roof into the crowd.39

In the winter of 1993-94, Croat forces shelled the Bosnian city of Mostar far more heavily than the capital Sarajevo was shelled by the Serbs, but the latter received much more publicity.40

Srebrenica
A slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs was alleged to have occurred between July 14 and July 17, 1995 in or near the town of Srebrenica. On November 5, 2003 the Bosnian Serb government, while not stating the number who died, admitted responsibility for this massacre.
Skepticism about that admission is well warranted, however since that government is subject to great pressure from the U.S. installed colonial administration over Bosnia. Milosevic in his current war crimes trial is being accused of being responsible for this slaughter, sometimes referred to as genocide.41,42 However, Milosevic was the leader of the Yugoslavian government and not the Bosnian Serbs.


Krajina
Serbs were also the victims of a mass killing. In early August 1995 in Croatia, the Croats caused between 200,000 and 700,000 new refugees, virtually the entire population of Krajina, by expelling Serbs from Croatia. The toll of civilian dead and missing among Serbs in Krajina was over 2,500.43 Warren Christopher, Secretary of State, said that the crushing military offensive was “to our advantage.” The preparation of the Croatian forces for the onslaught was a classic CIA operation according to the London Independent.43a The London Times said the region was teeming with former U.S. generals.43b

The Clinton administration's support for the invasion was an important factor in creating this nightmare. The previous month, Warren Christopher and German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel met with Croatian diplomat Miomir Zuzul in London. During this meeting, Christopher gave his approval for Croatian military action against Serbs in Bosnia and Krajina. Two days later, the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, also approved Croatia's invasion plan. Stipe Mesic, a prominent Croatian politician, stated that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman "received the go-ahead from the U.S. Croatian assembly deputy Mate Mestrovic also claimed that the "United States gave us the green light to do whatever had to be done."44

CIA intervention
Five British papers in 1994 were quoted as showing U.S. involvement in Bosnia including that of the CIA. Media in France, Germany and Italy also carried exposes of large scale CIA involvement in the widening war in Bosnia. Coverage included information on tactical operation, sharing satellite information and controlling local air traffic. Units of both the Croatian and Bosnian armies were reportedly trained in the U.S. and within that region. U.S. forces based in Bosnia provided assistance in building airstrips and organizing large weapons shipments through Croatia to the Bosnian forces.45

Earlier Peace Plans Proposed
Prior to the Dayton Peace Accords the U.S. refused to accept two peace plans which were reportedly very similar to the one adopted at Dayton. Many lives would have been saved if one of these plans had been adopted.

On March 18-19, 1992 in an attempt to prevent civil war in Bosnia, the Cutileiro Plan was signed by Izetbegovic, but almost immediately he reversed himself and rejected it after the U.S. sabotaged the plan by saying that it was prepared to recognize Bosnia as an independent country. On March 22nd the civil war widened to Bosnia. On April 6, 1992 the U.S. and the European Community recognized the Izetbegovic government as the legitimate government of Bosnia. A civil war lasting three years followed.46

The second plan was the Vance-Owen plan signed in May 1993. Owen has publicly stated that Washington undermined the agreement after it was negotiated.47 In this context it is helpful to recall the words of the U.S. Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guide mentioned earlier: “We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO.”

Dayton Peace Accords
Prior to the signing of the accords, in August and September 1995 NATO launched a massive air war against the positions of the Bosnian Serbs who, for the first time in the war, suffered major defeats and territorial losses.48 The accords were signed in late November 1995. The major outcome was that Bosnia was divided into two parts, one Muslim-Croatian and the other Serbian.

Almost immediately after the signing Presidential Determination 96-7 was signed by President Clinton, suspending the sanctions enacted earlier by the U.S. Treasury. However Yugoslav assets “previously blocked remain blocked.” The national “emergency” declared in Executive Order 12808, it said, shall remain in effect.” Even though the U.S. got the agreement it wanted it still kept one foot on its prostrate victim’s neck. The Bosnian government estimated that reconstruction costs would reach $47 billion and it is inconceivable that it can raise that sum in the foreseeable future.49

Democracy
Besides the claim that the Dayton Peace Accords stopped the killing, it is also maintained that it lays out a path to democracy in Bosnia. This is not the reality of the situation.

Actually, Bosnia is subservient under a colonial arrangement, since a High Representative has full executive powers in all civilian affairs. The IMF is empowered to appoint and run the Bosnian Central Bank in this artificially fabricated state. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development directs the restructuring of the public sector and it sells off assets of the state and society. Newsweek accurately described the Dayton Accords as “less a peace agreement than a declaration of surrender” and that U.S. - led NATO forces “will have nearly colonial powers.”50

In 1998 NATO intervened in municipal elections and threatened to destroy any radio or television station or newspaper that criticizes NATO’s presence in Bosnia. NATO commanders have overruled decisions by Serbia’s High Court and have overturned the very parliament whose election they presided over. General Wesley Clark announced that NATO troops would use lethal force against Serbians who throw stones at the occupying troops.51

Carlos Westendorp, former High Representative, exercised his powers in1999 by removing from office Nicolas Poplasen, the newly elected president from the Republika Srpska. Poplasen’s support for the absorption by Serbia of this Serbian part of Bosnia placed him in Westendorp’s crosshairs. “Westendorp once told a Bosnian periodical that if Bosnia’s elected officials cannot “agree about some decisions, for example the passports, the license plates, the flags…I will stop this process of indefinite discussions.52

David Chandler, author of “Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton,” on October 20, 2004 wrote that “the international powers of the administration, under the Office of the High Representative, have been vastly increased…As far the engagement of the people of Bosnia or the elected representatives is concerned, little has changed in the ten years since the Dayton agreement was signed. The Bosnian public has been excluded from the transition process…”53

Conclusions
Our government has engaged in so many wars in the last 10 years it is hard for Americans to devote enough time to understanding what caused all of them. Hopefully, this account, while it does not cover all the factors pertaining to the disintegration of Yugoslavia, will partially fill that gap. The pattern used to destabilize Yugoslavia has been used before and will be used again unless we learn about the various ways we are sucked into supporting wars.

The war in Bosnia is yet another example of the futility of war as a way of solving problems. Additionally, it illustrates how conflict and war escalate and that there is a need for peaceful ways to solve disagreements. This war also shows how the sources of conflict are often simmering and escalating out of public view long before they erupt onto public consciousness. This is particularly true in view of the expanding imperialist reach of our corporate-controlled government.

While no American blood was spilled during the Bosnian War, the degradation and trauma heaped upon the people of Bosnia and Yugoslavia should be remembered, especially the next the time someone asks, after a new terrorist attack against us, “Why do they hate us?”


END NOTES

NOTE: This article is based on essays in the book “NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition” and on other sources. The editor of the book is Sarah Flounders and it was published in 1998 by the International Action Center.

1. New York Times, April 23, 1995
2. Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Yugoslavia, Colonizing Bosnia,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 82
3. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 83
4. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 83
5. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 82
6. Richard Becker, “The Role of Sanctions in the Destruction of Yugoslavia,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 111.
7. Sarah Flounders, “Bosnia Tragedy: The Unknown Role of the Pentagon.” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 49
8. Flounders, Bosnia, 51
9. Sam Marcy, “How Imperialism Broke up the Yugoslav Socialist Federation,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 101
10.Becker, Sanctions, 112
11.Sarah Flounders, “Introduction,” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 3
12. Flounders, Bosnia, 69-70
13. Becker, Sanctions, 117
14. Becker, Sanctions, 117
15. Becker, Sanctions, 119
16. Becker, Sanctions, 123
17. Becker, Sanctions, 120-121
18. Becker, Sanctions, 122
19.Flounders, Bosnia, 47
20. Gary Wilson, “The Dayton Accords Reshape Europe,”in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 147
21. Sean Gervasi, “Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?” in NATO in the Balkans, ed. Sarah Flounders (New York: International Action Center, 1998), 24
22. Wilson, Dayton, 147
23. Wilson, Dayton, 144
24. Wilson, Dayton, 155
25. http://www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/SERBSANC.HTM
26. Flounders, Bosnia, 69
27. Flounders, Bosnia, 62
28. Wilson, Dayton, 155
29. Wilson, Dayton, 151
30. Flounders, Bosnia, 60
31. Flounders, Bosnia, 59
32. Flounders, Bosnia, 61
33. Flounders, Bosnia, 55
34. Flounders, Bosnia, 56
35. Flounders, Bosnia, 57
36. Flounders, Bosnia, 57
37. Flounders, Bosnia, 65
38. Becker, Sanctions, 118
39. Flounders, Bosnia, 63-66
40. Becker, Sanctions, 122
41. http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=926596
42. http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Sreb2.htm
43. Nikolai Paskhin, “Serbia, Croatia Mark 10th Anniversary of Krajina Serb Expulsion,” August 9, 2005, RIA Novosti (Moscow)
43a.Independent, August 6, 1995
43b.Times, August 5, 1995
44. http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/elich/krajina.html
45. Flounders, Bosnia, 60-61
46. Becker, Sanctions, 116
47. Flounders, Introduction, 5
48. Becker, Sanctions, 124
49. Chossudovsky, Dismantling, 89
50. Flounders, Introduction, 5
51. Flounders, Introduction, 6
52. http://www.isreview.org/issues/08/bosnia.shtml
53. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmfaff/87/4101207.htm