THE HANDSTAND
july 2005
It was Yugoslavia's Turn to be Destabilized....?
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 04:14:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: rainesco@earthlink.net
http://www.ied.info/books/ed/breakingfree.html#h13
The opening guns of financial warfare for the destabilization of the relatively prosperous Yugoslavia were the IMF's 1980-84 demands for currency devaluation and an increase in the Yugoslavian Central Bank's discount rate. That currency devaluation immediately increased the debt; the interest rate hike slowed the Yugoslav economy. The drop in living standards created by those structural adjustments led to economic and political turmoil.
Then the 1984 U.S. National Security Council Directive 133 (NSD-133) titled "United States Policy towards Yugoslavia" and labeled "SECRET SENSITIVE," contained the marching orders for the final fragmentation of that nation: Further IMF-imposed structural adjustments denied the Yugoslav government the right to credit (money creation) from its own central bank, thus losing them the ability to fund crucial economic and social programs (industry and health care). Those structural adjustment policies included imposing a freeze on all transfer payments from the central governments to the outlying provinces.
The results were planned and predictable: A growth rate of 7.1% from 1966 to 1979 "plummeted to 2.8% in the 1980-87 period, plunging to zero in 1987-88 and to a minus 10.6% in 1990." Another currency devaluation (30%) accelerated the 140% inflation to 937% in 1992 and 1,134% in 1993, with GDP dropping 50% in four years. Imported commodities flooded in to further disrupt domestic production and drain Yugoslavia's hard currency reserves. It was calculated that, under those policies, 1.9-million workers-out of a total workforce of 2.7-million-were headed for unemployment.30
Simultaneous with the denial of Yugoslavia's right to fund her outlying regions were offers to those provinces for funds and trade if they declared their independence. German foreign minister Hans Dietrich Genscher was in almost daily contact with his Croatian counterpart, promoting independence. The 1990-91 U.S. "Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill" (an annual event funding destabilizations) demanded separate elections in each of the six Yugoslav provinces with State Department approval of their conduct and outcome and, again, all aid to go to independent republics and none to the central government. A total embargo imposed in 1991 was still in effect in June 1999 during the final breakup of Yugoslavia. Independence meant funding and trade for the provinces while continued federation with Yugoslavia meant continued embargoes and no funds.
A country that had been peaceful and relatively prosperous since WWII, with 30% of the marriages interethnic, erupted into civil war and, with continued overt and covert support from Germany and America. Macedonia, Slovenia, and Croatia were torn away from the Yugoslav federation. The Serbian populations of the seceding provinces, who had forgiven the Western Christians for the slaughter of one-third of the Serbian men during Hitler's holocaust and formed the
multiethnic nation of Yugoslavia after WWII, were again facing second-class citizenship.