.

In retrospect, the war on Yugoslavia was a “dress rehearsal” for subsequent US-NATO sponsored “humanitarian wars” including Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (2011), Ukraine (2014), Yemen (2015).

Who are the war criminals? In a bitter irony, the so-called International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague is controlled by those who have committed extensive war crimes.

According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, the ultimate war crime consists in starting a war. According to William Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal:

“The [1999] bombing war violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities” against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.”

According to Nuremberg jurisprudence, NATO heads of State and heads of government are responsible for the supreme crime: “the crime against peace.”

Reagan’s NSDD 133 (1984) “Secret and Sensitive”

There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia. (See Chapter I )

The decision to destroy Yugoslavia as a country and carve it up into a number of small proxy states was taken by the Reagan adminstration in the early 1980s.

A “Secret Sensitive” National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) entitled “US Policy towards Yugoslavia.”  (Declassified) set the foreign policy framework for the destabilization of Yugoslavia’s model of market socialism and the establishment of a US sphere of influence in Southeastern Europe.

Yugoslavia in the wake of World War II was in many regards “an economic success story” of market socialism. In the two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the rate of literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years.

While NSDD 133 was in itself a somewhat innocous document, it provided legitimacy to the imposition of “free market reforms”. A series of covert intelligence operations were also implemented, which consisted in creating and supporting secessionist paramilitary armies, first in Bosnia then in Kosovo.

These covert operations were combined with the destabilization of the Yugoslav economy discussed in Chapter I below. The application of strong economic medicine under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank ultimately led to the destruction of Yugoslavia’s industrial base, the demise of the workers’ cooperatives and the dramatic impoverishment of its population.

Kosovo “Independence”

The record of US-NATO war crimes is important in assessing recent developments in Kosovo.

From the outset of their respective mandates in June 1999, both NATO and the UN Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK)  have actively supported the KLA, which has committed numerous atrocities.

Since 1999, State terrorism in Kosovo has become an integral part of NATO’s design.

The destruction of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is characterised by three interrelated processes:

1) the destabilization of  Yugoslavia’s national economy which started in the early 1980s,

2) the covert support to armed insurgencies in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia,

3) the 1999 NATO bombing campaign.

This E-book is a retrospect. It takes the reader back in history. Several of the texts were written at the height of 1999  bombing campaign or shortly thereafter.

In Chapter 1 which was written in 1995 (subsequently updated),  we review the destruction and partition of the federal Republic of Yugoslavia including the engineered bankruptcy imposed by the World Bank, which led to the demise of Yugoslavia’s industrial sector in the late 1980s.

On January 1, 1990, the IMF  launched its “shock treatment” economic package which required the suspension of transfer payments from Belgrade to the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces.  In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the collapse of Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions.

Chapter II, focuses on the role of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The ties of the KLA to organized crime were not only known, they were actively fostered by the US and NATO.

Chapter III  examines the issue of war crimes resulting from NATO’s March-June 1999 “humanitarian bombings” largely directed against civilians. Up to thirty percent of those killed in the bombings were children.  In addition to the use of cluster bombs, the Alliance used toxic radioactive shells and missiles containing depleted uranium.

Chapter IV reviews “NATO’s Reign of Terror” in Kosovo in the wake of the 1999 war. The massacres directed against Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Roma and other ethnic groups were conducted on the instructions of the military command of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). 

Chapter V focusses on the installation of a de facto “Mafia State” in Kosovo.

Chapter VI analyses the environmental catastrophe resulting from US-NATO bombings of the Pancevo chemical weapons plant close to Belgrade.

Chapter VII focusses on the spread of radioactive dust from the use of Depleted Uranium ammunition during the 78 days bombing raids.  These bombing raids resulted in a significant incidence of cancer particularly among children.