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Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe)
September 2, 2007

Lessons from Yugoslavia's experience
AFRICAN FOCUS
By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

-President Mugabe, President Vladmir Putin of Russia
and President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia were at
different times vilified and attempts were made to
encircle and isolate them for refusing to go along
with the Western agenda.

If we look at the former Yugoslavia, Russia and
Zimbabwe, we find more lessons for Zimbabwe in its
current economic struggle against remnants of
Rhodesian capital now allied to Western and South
African corporate interests.

But first, let us look at former Yugoslavia.

According to John Perkins's book, Confessions of an
Economic Hitman, at least five stages can be
identified in the process of Western imperialist
intervention - from the softest forms to the hardest
and harshest.

In the first stages, imperialism uses apparent
people-to-people forms of intervention which date back
to the days of missionary evangelism and charity.

In this phase one should expect missionaries, NGOs,
journalists, tourists, anthropologists and aid
officers. These forces present a deceptive and
"friendly" phase of imperialism and its societies,
often popularising certain products hitherto unknown
or unavailable in the targeted society: new gadgets,
clothes, food, and toys.

The second phase of intervention employs a more
strategic, more coherent and better organised approach
using consultants, academics, researchers and
technocrats who pose as independent purveyors of
expert advice and analysis.

This phase is more deliberate and focused because the
experts and consultants usually belong to prestigious
and powerful agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF,
the World Trade Organisation, the US National Security
Agency, the US Agency for International Development or
other institutions subcontracted by these powerful and
prestigious organisations.

The main objective at this level of intervention is to
sabotage and change a country's economic policies by
presenting quick fixes or ready-made blueprints and by
persuading the technocratic elites to adopt the
so-called expert advice.

The third level of intervention involves even more
aggressive agents: spies; promoters and peddlers of
various ideologies and fads; provocateurs; saboteurs;
and mercenaries whose main objective is to impose
interpretations of prevailing conditions which favour
the intervening forces.

In the case of Yugoslavia, these forces caused
secession by interpreting in ethnic and regional terms
the inability of the state to meet its financial
obligations.

The economic decline of Yugoslavia caused by the
adoption of SAP programmes was interpreted in such a
way that it appeared as if the dominant group, the
Serbs, were now discriminating against other
nationalities and regions on the basis of ethnicity.

Once the federal state was no longer able to meet its
financial obligations to member republics, it was now
viewed as a mere burden upon the people. Perkins calls
these spies, mercenaries and provocateurs "CIA
jackals".

The job of the "CIA jackals" is to get the population
of the targeted country to see themselves as victims
of the very government they elected. This is done by
ethnicising and even personalising structural economic
problems resulting from the external subversion of
policy.

If the first three steps fail to produce "regime
change", there is a fourth step. The fourth level
involves the use of paid assassins and special forces
to eliminate key leaders and key personnel within the
government.

If the four levels of intervention still fail to
produce the desired outcome, then the fifth and final
level may be reached. That is the level of outright
military intervention as happened in Yugoslavia (1999)
and Iraq (2003-2007).

In practice, however, two or more of the five levels
operate at the same time. The respective agents at
each level may co-operate with one another to fulfil
their particular objectives.

Both the economic reasons for the intervention and the
economic aspects of intervention will be obscured by a
huge cloud of human rights and governance issues which
are deliberately dramatised in the media in order to
hide the economic rationale.

Yugoslavia began in 1929 as a united kingdom. In
November 1945, it became a republic and on January 31
1946, it became a federal republic.

The United States and Europe targeted Yugoslavia long
before the collapse of the former Soviet Union in
1989.

US National Security Decision Directive 64 of 1982
targeted Yugoslavia as a key component of an Eastern
Europe which was due for regime change. Another US
National Security Decision Directive 133 of 1984
targeted Yugoslavia in particular. But neither the
people nor the government of Yugoslavia seem to have
known about such plans.

Why was Yugoslavia targeted for regime change? The
following are some of the reasons:

l Yugoslavia was a founder member of the Non-Aligned
Movement and a leader in charting alternative paths to
economic development in the South and East.

l Yugoslavia, like Cuba, was an enthusiastic supporter
of liberation movements in the South and, therefore, a
big contributor to the defeat of colonialism,
apartheid and imperialism. Yugoslavia's support of the
Zimbabwean liberation movement was well known.

l Yugoslavia was an emerging industrial power with
significant manufacturing capacity and some strategic
minerals such as oil, gas, coal, lead, nickel, gold,
copper and chrome.

Above all, Yugoslavia was the buffer zone between
Western Europe and the Eastern republics of the Soviet
Union which the West sought to remove from the former
in order to have access to even greater reserves of
oil and gas in that region.

> From 1980 the new leaders of Yugoslavia made the
mistake of accepting loans from international
financial institutions. These loans provided the
opportunity for level two manipulations which led to
the country's adoption of IMF-World Bank structural
adjustment programmes which, in turn, diminished the
powers of the federal state over the economy.

The IMF used the shock therapy to take control of
Yugoslavia's central bank and to cripple the fiscal
structure of the country.

By September 25 1991, the EC and the US had succeeded
in getting the UN Security Council to agree to
sanctions against Yugoslavia. On November 8 1991, the
EC suspended the Trade and Co-operation Agreement with
Yugoslavia. On January 10 1992, the same EC exempted
Montenegro from the same sanctions imposed in November
1991. The purpose was to give incentives to Montenegro
to abandon Serbia.

On January 15 1992, the European Community began to
recognise some of the former republics in the Yugoslav
Federation as separate and sovereign states, thereby
hastening secession.

After the successful secession of Croatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Slovenia, the
remaining republics of former Yugoslavia were just
Serbia and Montenegro. They proclaimed a new Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia on April 17 1992.

> From then on, the US and EC regime change campaign
focused on those two, using allegations of human
rights abuses, war crimes and ethnic cleansing to
characterise any efforts by federal forces or their
successor forces to prevent treason and secession or
to maintain law and order.

By the late 1990s, the US and the EC had successfully
cornered Yugoslavia. They supported the terrorist
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and condemned Serbia's
response as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Kosovo was
and still in an integral part of Serbia.

The standoff over Kosovo was then used by the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) to wage an air war
against Yugoslavia for the whole month of April 1999.
This still failed to overthrow the government of
President Slobodan Milosevic. The government survived
until the externally rigged elections of September
2000.

Lessons

l In Russia, Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe, imperialism
chose a high pedestal for its neoliberal propaganda,
manipulation and sabotage. Regime change was dressed
up in the high moral garb of human rights, good
governance, transparency, accountability and
democracy.

l On close inspection, however, the same donors and
their experts are the ones who embedded corrupt
practices within the reform structure, corrupting
policy; overlooking double standards and conflicts of
interest among the same donors and their small class
of collaborators; and denying the fact that neoliberal
reform had created a small dollarised elite while
pushing the majority of the people into poverty.

l In all the three countries, the Western powers,
their media and aid agencies began to define and
promote the interests of the corrupt and dollarised
minority as if they were the interests of the entire
nation and country.

In the case of Zimbabwe, for instance, the BBC, CNN,
SWRadio, Voice of America and the local minority Press
used the term "the people" and "civil society" to mean
only that sponsored, dollarised and often
glob-trotting minority around the Movement for
Demo-cratic Change (MDC) and the National
Constitutional Assembly (NCA) which is, in fact, the
assembly of Lovemore Madhuku and his one-man
constitution.

l In the case of Yugoslavia, the Western powers went
as far as waging a bombing campaign against Serbia in
order to effect regime change because Yugoslavia's
neighbours had agreed to sell out and to collaborate
with the external forces.

Russia was too strong militarily to be so intimidated.
Zimbabwe has been spared because its neighbours have
refused to sell out and because its military is much
too complex and united.

l In all three countries, the Western power sought to
co-opt and prop up "national leaders" if they proved
to be co-opted; or to demonise, and destroy them if
they proved to be too strong and too principled.

Therefore President Mugabe, President Vladmir Putin of
Russia and President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia
were at different times vilified and attempts were
made to encircle and isolate them for refusing to go
along with the Western agenda.

l The ultimate lesson for Zimbabwe is that it can
defeat Western imperialism by continuing to do the
following:

- Keeping the neoliberal dollarised minority of
technocrats and speculators under check.

- Articulating and defending the interests of the vast
majority above those of the purchased and dollarised
minority.

- Keeping Zimbabwe's neighbours well informed about
Zimbabwe's intentions.

- Maintaining a strong and disciplined defence and
security machine capable of securing and defending all
the land, gold, platinum, diamonds, coal, uranium,
copper, chrome, tin and emeralds with which this
country is so richly endowed.

- Keeping all the citizens of Zimbabwe united.

- Refusing to give up assets which are worth thousands
of years in exchange for perishable groceries,
perfumes, and wigs and per diems in dollars and
pounds.