(more links at bottom in: italiano, francais, english)
Sunday Mail (Harare)
September 2, 2007
LESSONS FROM YUGOSLAVIA'S EXPERIENCE
AFRICAN FOCUS
By Dr Tafataona Mahoso
If we look at 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:
* 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.
* 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.
* 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
* 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.
* 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.
* 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 globe-trotting minority around the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) which is, in fact, the assembly of Lovemore Madhuku and his one-man constitution.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Sulla situazione nello Zimbabwe si veda anche:
Zimbabwe: lo ZANU-PF lotta ancora
Stephen Gowans, 20-03-2007
Su una cosa concordano sostenitori e oppositori del governo Mugabe: è in atto un tentativo di cacciare il presidente, illegalmente ed incostituzionalmente se si riconosce che il piano non è limitato alla vittoria elettorale...
Zimbabwe : l'origine du problème des terres
Thotep
Kenneth Kaunda, ancien Président de Zambie, rappelle certaines responsabilités, trop souvent oubliées, de la Grande Bretagne dans la situation actuelle au Zimbabwe. Kenneth Kaunda était présent lors de la rencontre de Lancaster House sur invitation de la "dame de fer", Margaret Thatcher...
Black activists speak on Zimbabwe crisis
By Monica Moorehead, Apr 12, 2007 12:13 AM
The Brooklyn-based December 12 International Secretariat held an emergency community forum in Harlem on April 5 on the current and ongoing crisis that the Robert Mugabe-led government in Zimbabwe faces from U.S.-British imperialist threats...
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/zimbabwe-0419/
Harlem march says: 'Hands off Zimbabwe!'
Published Apr 22, 2007 11:13 PM
“Mugabe is right!” and “Bush and Blair are wrong!” were two slogans chanted repeatedly during a march in Harlem, N.Y., on April 14 to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the liberation of the southern Africa country of Zimbabwe from British colonialism in 1980...
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/zimbabwe-0426/
Cuba deplora il blocco anglo-americano allo Zimbabwe
Prensa Latina, 12.9.2007 - Cuba ha ribadito oggi il suo rifiuto al blocco imposto dalle potenze occidentali allo Zimbabwe, e ha detto che questa politica viola il diritto internazionale e la Carta delle Nazioni Unite. Riaffermiamo il nostro totale e inequivocabile rifiuto verso il blocco e il ricatto contro lo Zimbabwe, ha detto questo mercoledì il Ministro cubano degli Esteri, Felipe Pérez Roque, durante un incontro con il Vice-Presidente del paese africano, Joyce Tourai Ropa Mujuru.