|
|
|
La NATO bombarda la Jugoslavia
|
 COLONIZING BOSNIA By Michel Chossudovsky Department of Economics, University of Ottawa Ottawa, K1N6N5 Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415 Fax: 1-514-425-6224 E-Mail: chossudovsky@sprint.ca
The following text was written in the wake of the 1995
Dayton Agreement (Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996, No. 56
contains the complete article with footnotes; a more detailed
version is contained in "Globalisation of Poverty", chapter 13).
Macro-economic reforms imposed by Belgrade's external creditors
since the late 1980s had been carefully synchronised with NATO's
military and intelligence operations. Kosovo's fate had already
been decided. Resulting from the IMF's deadly economic medicine,
the entire Yugoslav economy had been spearheaded into bankruptcy.
The Rambouillet agreement largely replicates the model of
colonial administration and military occupation imposed on Bosnia
under the Dayton agreement.
In Kosovo, the economic reforms were conducive to the
concurrent impoverishment of both the Albanian and Serbian
populations contributing to fueling ethnic tensions. The
deliberate manipulation of market forces destroyed economic
activity and people's livelihood creating a situation of social
despair...
In parallel with the destruction of federal Yugoslavia,
similar macro-economic reforms under IMF auspices were imposed on
Albania with devastating economic and social consequences. The
plight of Albania culminating with the West's military
intervention in 1997 is analysed by the author in a separate
text.
* * *
As heavily-armed US and NATO troops enforce the peace in
Bosnia, the press and politicians alike portray Western
intervention in the former Yugoslavia as a noble, if agonizingly
belated, response to an outbreak of ethnic massacres and human
rights violations. In the wake of the November 1995 Dayton peace
accords, the West is eager to touch up its self-portrait as
savior of the Southern Slavs and get on with "the work of
rebuilding" the newly sovereign states.
But following a pattern set early on, Western public opinion
has been misled. The conventional wisdom holds that the plight of
the Balkans is the outcome of an "aggressive nationalism", the
inevitable result of deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions
rooted in history. Likewise, commentators cite "Balkans power-
plays" and the clash of political personalities to explain the
conflicts.
Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analyses are
the economic and social causes of the conflict. The deep-seated
economic crisis which preceded the civil war is long forgotten.
The strategic interests of Germany and the US in laying the
groundwork for the disintegration of Yugoslavia go unmentioned,
as does the role of external creditors and international
financial institutions. In the eyes of the global media, Western
powers bear no responsibility for the impoverishment and
destruction of a nation of 24 million people.
But through their domination of the global financial system,
the Western powers, in pursuit of national and collective
strategic interests, helped bring the Yugoslav economy to its
knees and stirred simmering ethnic and social conflicts. Now it
is the turn of Yugoslavia's war-ravaged successor states to feel
the tender mercies of the international financial community.
As the world focuses on troop movements and cease fires, the
international financial institutions are busily collecting former
Yugoslavia's external debt from its remnant states, while
transforming the Balkans into a safe-haven for free enterprise.
With a Bosnian peace settlement holding under NATO guns, the West
has unveiled a "reconstruction" program that strips that
brutalized country of sovereignty to a degree not seen in Europe
since the end of World War II. It consists largely of making
Bosnia a divided territory under NATO military occupation and
Western administration.
NEO-COLONIAL BOSNIA
Resting on the Dayton accords, which created a Bosnian
"constitution," the US and the European Union have installed a
full-fledged colonial administration in Bosnia. At its head is
their appointed High Representative, Carl Bildt, a former Swedish
prime minister and European Union representative in Bosnian peace
negotiations. Bildt has full executive powers in all civilian
matters, with the right to overrule the governments of both the
Bosnian Federation and the Republika Srpska. To make the point
crystal clear, the accords spell out that "The High
Representative is the final authority in theater regarding
interpretation of the agreements." He will work with IFOR's
Military High Command as well as creditors and donors.
The UN Security Council has also appointed a "commissioner"
under the High Representative to run an international civilian
police force. Irish police official Peter Fitzgerald, with
previous UN policing experience in Namibia, El Salvador, and
Cambodia, presides over some 1,700 policemen from 15 countries.
The police will be dispatched to Bosnia after a five-day training
program in Zagreb.
The new constitution hands the reins of economic policy over
to the Bretton Woods institutions and the London-based European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The IMF is
empowered to appoint the first governor of the Bosnian Central
Bank, who, like the High Representative, "shall not be a citizen
of Bosnia and Herzegovina or a neighbouring State."
Under the IMF regency, the Central Bank will not be allowed
to function as a Central Bank: "For the first six years . . . it
may not extend credit by creating money, operating in this
respect as a currency board." Neither will Bosnia be allowed to
have its own currency (issuing paper money only when there is
full foreign exchange backing), nor permitted to mobilize its
internal resources. Its ability to self-finance its
reconstruction through an independent monetary policy is blunted
from the outset.
While the Central Bank is in IMF custody, the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) heads the Commission on
Public Corporations, which supervises operations of all public
sector corporations, including energy, water, postal services,
telecommunications, and transportation. The EBRD president
appoints the commission's chair and will direct public sector
restructuring, meaning primarily the sell-off of state and
socially-owned assets and the procurement of long term investment
funds. Western creditors explicitly created the EBRD "to give a
distinctively political dimension to lending."
As the West trumpets its support for democracy, actual
political power rests in the hands of a parallel Bosnian "state"
whose executive positions are held by non-citizens. Western
creditors have embedded their interests in a constitution hastily
written on their behalf. They have done so without a
constitutional assembly, without consultations with Bosnian
citizens' organizations and without providing a means of amending
this "constitution." Their plans to rebuild Bosnia appear more
suited to sating creditors than satisfying even the elementary
needs of Bosnians.
And why not? The neo-colonization of Bosnia is the logical
culmination of long Western efforts to undo Yugoslavia's
experiment in market socialism and workers' self-management and
impose in its place the diktat of the free market.
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
Multi-ethnic, socialist Yugoslavia was once a regional
industrial power and economic success. In the two decades prior
to 1980, annual GDP growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was
free, the literacy rate was of the order of 91 percent, and the
life expectancy was 72 years. But after a decade of Western
economic ministrations and five years of disintegration, war,
boycott, and embargo, the economies of the former Yugoslavia are
prostrate, their industrial sectors dismantled.
Yugoslavia's implosion was in part due to US machinations.
Despite Belgrade's non-alignment and its extensive trading
relations with the European Community and the US, the Reagan
administration targeted the Yugoslav economy in a "Secret
Sensitive" 1984 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133),
"United States Policy toward Yugoslavia." A censored version
declassified in 1990 largely elaborated on NSDD 54 on Eastern
Europe, issued in 1982. The latter advocated "expanded efforts to
promote a `quiet revolution' to overthrow Communist governments
and parties" while reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe
into a market-oriented economy.
The US had earlier joined Belgrade's other international
creditors in imposing a first round of macroeconomic reform in
1980, shortly before the death of Marshall Tito. Successive IMF-
sponsored programs since then continued the disintegration of the
industrial sector and the piecemeal dismantling of the Yugoslav
welfare state. Debt restructuring agreements increased foreign
debt, and a mandated currency devaluation also hit hard at
Yugoslavs' standard of living.
This initial round of restructuring set the pattern.
Throughout the 1980s, the IMF prescribed further doses of its
bitter economic medicine periodically as the Yugoslav economy
slowly lapsed into a coma. Industrial production declined to a
negative 10 percent growth rate by 1990 -- with all its
predictable social consequences.
Mr. MARKOVIC GOES TO WASHINGTON
In autumn 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Yugoslav federal Premier Ante Markovic met in Washington with
President George Bush to cap negotiations for a new financial aid
package. In return for assistance, Yugoslavia agreed to even more
sweeping economic reforms, including a new devalued currency,
another wage freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, and the
elimination of socially-owned, worker-managed companies. The
Belgrade nomenklatura, with the assistance of Western advisers,
had laid the groundwork for the prime minister's mission by
implementing beforehand many of the required reforms, including a
major liberalization of foreign investment legislation.
"Shock therapy" began in January 1990. Although inflation
had eaten away at earnings, the IMF ordered that wages be frozen
at their mid-November 1989 level. Prices continued to rise
unabated, and real wages collapsed by 41 percent in the first six
months of 1990.
The IMF also effectively controlled the Yugoslav central
bank. Its tight money policy further crippled federal
Yugoslavia's ability to finance its economic and social programs.
State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the
republics and provinces went instead to service Belgrade's debt
with the Paris and London clubs. The republics were largely left
to their own devices.
In one fell swoop, the reformers engineered the final
collapse of Yugoslavia's federal fiscal structure and mortally
wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the
financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the
reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic
factors as well as ethnic divisions and virtually ensured the de
facto secession of the republics. The IMF-induced budgetary
crisis created an economic fait accompli that paved the way for
Croatia's and Slovenia's formal secession in June 1991.
CRUSHED BY THE INVISIBLE HAND
The reforms demanded by Belgrade's creditors also struck at
the heart of Yugoslavia's system of socially-owned and worker-
managed enterprises. As one observer noted, "The objective was to
subject the Yugoslav economy to massive privatization and the
dismantling of the public sector. The Communist Party
bureaucracy, most notably its military and intelligence sector,
was canvassed specifically and offered political and economic
backing on the condition that wholesale scuttling of social
protections for Yugoslavia's workforce was imposed."
It was an offer that a desperate Yugoslavia could not
refuse. Advised by Western lawyers and consultants, Markovic's
government passed financial legislation that forced "insolvent"
businesses into bankruptcy or liquidation. Under the new law, if
a business were unable to pay its bills for 30 days running, or
for 30 days within a 45-day period, the government would launch
bankruptcy procedures within the next 15 days.
The assault on the socialist economy also included a new
banking law designed to trigger the liquidation of the socially
owned "Associated Banks." Within two years, more than half the
country's banks had vanished, to be replaced by newly-formed
"independent profit-oriented institutions."
These changes in the legal framework, combined with the
IMF's tight money policy toward industry and the opening of the
economy to foreign competition, accelerated industrial decline.
>From 1989 through September 1990, more than a thousand companies
went into bankruptcy. By 1990, the annual rate of growth of GDP
had collapsed to -7.5 percent. In 1991, GDP declined by a further
15 percent, while industrial output shrank by 21 percent.
The IMF package unquestionably precipitated the collapse of
much of Yugoslavia's well-developed heavy industry. Other
socially-owned enterprises survived only by not paying workers.
More than half a million workers still on company payrolls did
not get regular paychecks in late 1990. They were the lucky ones.
Some 600,000 Yugoslavs had already lost their jobs by September
1990, and that was only the beginning. According to the World
Bank, another 2,435 industrial enterprises, including some of the
country's largest, were slated for liquidation. Their 1.3 million
workers -- half the remaining industrial workforce -- were
"redundant."
As 1991 dawned, real wages were in free fall, social
programs had collapsed, and unemployment ran rampant. The
dismantling of the industrial economy was breath-taking in its
magnitude and brutality. Its social and political impact, while
not as easily quantified, was tremendous. "The pips are
squeaking," as London's patrician Financial Times put it.
Less archly, Yugoslav President Borisav Jovic warned that
the reforms were "having a markedly unfavourable impact on the
overall situation in society . . . Citizens have lost faith in
the state and its institutions . . . The further deepening of the
economic crisis and the growth of social tensions has had a vital
impact on the deterioration of the political-security situation."
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DISINTEGRATION
Some Yugoslavs joined together in a doomed battle to prevent
the destruction of their economy and polity. As one observer
found, "worker resistance crossed ethnic lines, as Serbs, Croats,
Bosnians and Slovenians mobilized . . . shoulder to shoulder with
their fellow workers." But the economic struggle also heightened
already tense relations among therepublics -- and between the
republics and Belgrade.
Serbia rejected the austerity plan outright, and some
650,000 Serbian workers struck against the federal government to
force wage hikes. The other republics followed different and
sometimes self-contradictory paths.
In relatively wealthy Slovenia, for instance, secessionist
leaders such as Social Democratic party chair Joze Pucnik
supported the reforms: "From an economic standpoint, I can only
agree with socially harmful measures in our society, such as
rising unemployment or cutting workers' rights, because they are
necessary to advance the economic reform process."
But at the same time, Slovenia joined other republics in
challenging the federal government's efforts to restrict their
economic autonomy. Both Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman and
Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic joined Slovene leaders in railing
against Yugoslavia's attempts to impose harsh reforms.
In the multi-party elections in 1990, economic policy was at
the center of the political debate as separatist coalitions
ousted the Communists in Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia. Just as
economic collapse spurred the drift toward separation, the
separation in turn exacerbated the economic crisis. Cooperation
among the republics virtually ceased. And with the republics at
each others' throats, both economy and the nation itself embarked
on a vicious downward spiral.
The process sped downward as the republican leaderships
deliberately fostered social and economic divisions to strengthen
their own hands: "The republican oligarchies, who all had visions
of a `national renaissance' of their own, instead of choosing
between a genuine Yugoslav market and hyperinflation, opted for
war which would disguise the real causes of the economic
catastrophe."
The simultaneous appearance of militias loyal to
secessionist leaders only hastened the descent into chaos. These
militias, with their escalating atrocities, not only split the
population along ethnic lines, they also fragmented the workers'
movement.
WESTERN HELP
The austerity measures had laid the basis for the
recolonization of the Balkans. Whether that required the breakup
of Yugoslavia was subject to debate among the Western powers,
with Germany leading the push for secession and the US, fearful
of opening a nationalist pandora's box, originally arguing for
Yugoslavia's preservation.
Following Franjo Tudjman's and the rightist Democratic
Union's decisive victory in Croatia in May 1990, German Foreign
Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, in almost daily contacts with
his counterpart in Zagreb, gave his go-ahead for Croatian
secession. Germany did not passively support secession; it
"forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its
Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. Germany sought
a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the
whole of Mitteleuropa."
Washington, on the other hand, favored "a loose unity while
encouraging democratic development . . . Secretary of State]
Baker told Tudjman and [Slovenia's President] Milan Kucan that
the United States would not encourage or support unilateral
secession . . . but if they had to leave, he urged them to leave
by a negotiated agreement."
Instead, Slovenia, Croatia, and finally, Bosnia fought
bloody civil wars against "rump" Yugoslavia (Serbia and
Montenegro) or Serbian nationalists or both. But now, the US has
belatedly taken an active diplomatic role in Bosnia, strengthened
its relations with Croatia, and Macedonia, and positioned itself
to play a leading role in the region's economic and political
future.
THE POST-WAR REGIME
Western creditors have now turned their attention to
Yugoslavia's successor states. As with the demise of Yugoslavia,
the economic aspects of post-war reconstruction remain largely
unheralded, but the prospects for rebuilding the newly
independent republics appear bleak. Yugoslavia's foreign debt has
been carefully divided and allocated to the successor republics,
which are now strangled in separate debt rescheduling and
structural adjustment agreements.
The consensus among donors and international agencies is
that past macroeconomic reforms adopted under IMF advice had not
quite met their goal and further shock therapy is required to
restore "economic health" in Yugoslavia's successor states.
Croatia and Macedonia have followed the IMF's direction. Both
have agreed to loan packages -- to pay off their shares of the
Yugoslav debt -- which require a consolidation of the process
begun with Ante Markovic's bankruptcy program. The too familiar
pattern of plant closings, induced bank failures, and
impoverishment continues apace.
And global capital applauds. Despite an emerging crisis in
social welfare and the decimation of his economy, Macedonian
Finance Minister Ljube Trpevski proudly informed the press that
"the World Bank and the IMF place Macedonia among the most
successful countries in regard to current transition reforms".
The head of the IMF mission to Macedonia, Paul Thomsen,
agreed. He avowed that "the results of the stabilization program
were impressive" and gave particular credit to "the efficient
wages policy" adopted by the Skopje government. Still, his
negotiators added, even more budget cutting will be necessary.
But Western intervention is making its most serious inroads
on national sovereignty in Bosnia. The neo-colonial
administration imposed by the Dayton accords, supported by NATO's
firepower, ensures that Bosnia's future will be determined in
Washington, Bonn, and Brussels - not Sarajevo.
RECONSTRUCTION COLONIAL STYLE
If Bosnia is ever to emerge from the ravages of war and neo-
colonialism, massive reconstruction will be essential. But
judging by recent Balkan history, Western assistance is more
likely to drag Bosnia into the Third World rather than lift it to
parity with its European neighbors.
The Bosnian government estimates that reconstruction costs
will reach $47 billion. Western donors have pledged $3 billion in
reconstruction loans, yet only $518 million dollars have so far
been granted. Part of this money is tagged to finance some of the
local civilian costs of IFOR's military deployment and part to
repay international creditors.
Fresh loans will pay back old debt. The Central Bank of the
Netherlands has generously provided "bridge financing" of $37
million to allow Bosnia to pay its arrears with the IMF, without
which the IMF will not lend it fresh money. But in a cruel and
absurd paradox, the sought-after loans from the IMF's newly
created "Emergency Window" for "post-conflict countries" will not
be used for post-war reconstruction. Instead, they will repay the
Dutch Central Bank, which had coughed up the money to settle IMF
arrears in the first place. Debt piles up, and little new money
goes for rebuilding Bosnia's war-torn economy.
While rebuilding is sacrificed on the altar of debt
repayment, Western governments and corporations show greater
interest in gaining access to strategic natural resources. With
the discovery of energy reserves in the region, the partition of
Bosnia between the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the
Bosnian-Serb Republika Srpska under the Dayton accords has taken
on new strategic importance. Documents in the hands of Croatia
and the Bosnian Serbs indicate that coal and oil deposits have
been identified on the eastern slope of the Dinarides Thrust,
retaken from rebel Krajina Serbs by the US-backed Croatian army
in the final offensives before the Dayton accords. Bosnian
officials report that Chicago-based Amoco was among several
foreign firms that subsequently initiated exploratory surveys in
Bosnia.
"Substantial" petroleum fields also lie in the Serb-held
part of Croatia just across the Sava river from Tuzla, the
headquarters for the US military zone. Exploration operations
went on during the war, but the World Bank and the multinationals
which conducted the operations kept local governments in the
dark, presumably to prevent them from acting to grab potentially
valuable areas.
With their attention devoted to debt repayment and potential
energy bonanzas, the Western powers have shown little interest in
rectifying the crimes committed under the rubric of ethnic
cleansing. The 70,000 NATO troops on hand to "enforce the peace"
will accordingly devote their efforts to administering the
partition of Bosnia in accordance with Western economic interests
rather than restoring the status quo ante.
While local leaders and Western interests share the spoils
of the former Yugoslav economy, they have entrenched socio-ethnic
divisions in the very structure of partition. This permanent
fragmentation of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines serves to thwart a
united resistance of Yugoslavs of all ethnic origins against the
recolonization of their homeland.
But what's new? As one observer caustically noted, all of
the leaders of Yugoslavia's successor states have worked closely
with the West: "All the current leaders of the former Yugoslav
republics were Communist Party functionaires and each in turn
vied to meet the demands of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, the better to qualify for investment loans and
substantial perks for the leadership."
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Western-backed neoliberal macroeconomic restructuring helped
destroy Yugoslavia. Yet, since the onset of war in 1991, the
global media has carefully overlooked or denied its central role.
Instead, it has joined the chorus singing praises of the free
market as the basis for rebuilding a war-shattered economy. The
social and political impact of economic restructuring in
Yugoslavia has been carefully erased from our collective
understanding. Opinion-makers instead dogmatically present
cultural, ethnic, and religious divisions as the sole cause of
the crisis. In reality, they are the consequence of a much deeper
process of economic and political fracturing.
This false consciousness not only masks the truth, it also
prevents us from acknowledging precise historical occurrences.
Ultimately it distorts the true sources of social conflict.
When applied to the former Yugoslavia, it obscures the historical
foundations of South Slavic unity, solidarity and identity. But
this false consciousness lives worldwide, where the only possible
world is one of shuttered factories, jobless workers, and gutted
social programs, and "bitter economic medicine" is the only
prescription.
At stake in the Balkans are the lives of millions of people.
Macroeconomic reform there has destroyed livelihoods and made a
joke of the right to work. It has put basic needs such as food
and shelter beyond the reach of many. It has degraded culture and
national identity. In the name of global capital, borders have
been redrawn, legal codes rewritten, industries destroyed,
financial and banking systems dismantled, social programs
eliminated. No alternative to global capital, be it market
socialism or "national" capitalism, will be allowed to exist.
But what happened to Yugoslavia -- and now continues in its
weak successor states -- should resonate beyond the Balkans.
Yugoslavia is a mirror for similar economic restructuring
programs in not only the developing world but also in the US,
Canada and Western Europe.
The Yugoslav reforms are the cruel reflection of a
destructive economic model pushed to the extreme.
* * *
Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, 1996.
To reproduce this text, contact the author at:
chossudovsky@sprint.ca
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the
University of Ottawa and author of The Globalisation of
Poverty, Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World
Network, Penang and Zed Books, London, 1997.
Recent articles by Chossudovsky on the global economic crisis at:
http://wwwdb.ix.de/tp/english/special/eco/6373/1.html
http://www.transnational.org/features/chossu_worldbank.html
http://www.transnational.org/features/g7solution.html
http://www.twnside.org.sg/souths/twn/title/scam-cn.htm
http://www.interlog.com/~cjazz/chossd.htm
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco/
http://heise.xlink.de/tp/english/special/eco/6099/1.html#anchor1
|
|
|
