U.S. report predicted Yugoslavia's bloody demise
Declassified 1990 document tells of impending collapse, violence
By Dusan Stojanovic
The Associated Press
Originally published December 22, 2006, 11:34 AM EST
U.S. intelligence had predicted the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia in
the 1990s with pinpoint precision -- and also that the United States and its
European allies would stand by and watch it happen, according to a declassified
U.S. secret service report.
The report covering Yugoslavia from 1948 to 1990, compiled by the CIA and the
National Intelligence Council, bluntly states in 1990 -- a year before
Yugoslavia started to unravel along ethnic lines -- that the Balkan country
"will cease to function as a federal state within one year. It will probably
dissolve in two."
The ethnic clashes in the six-republic Yugoslavia, which started in Slovenia in
1991, spread to Croatia in 1992 and climaxed in Bosnia the same year, left at
least 200,000 people dead and millions displaced. A decade later, Yugoslavia
split up into six independent states.
"A full-scale, interrepublic war is unlikely, but serious intercommunal
conflicts will accompany the breakup and will continue afterward," said the
declassified document filed by the National Intelligence on October 18, 1990.
"The violence will be intractable and bitter."
"There is little the United States and its European allies can do to preserve
Yugoslav unity," it continues. "European powers will pay lipservice to the idea
of Yugoslav integrity while quietly accepting the dissolution of the
federation."
Marten van Heuven, a former National Intelligence officer for Europe, said in
an introduction to the 700-page document that: "In sum, the (U.S.) intelligence
community had plenty material in the fall of 1990 on which to base its
conclusions."
"The Washington policy world and the (U.S.) embassy in Belgrade shared an
awareness of what might happen, but there was no agreement on what to do about
it," van Heuven said. "The policy world hesitated."
Among U.S. State Department officials, the 1990s report on Yugoslavia "was
characterized as overblown and greeted with disdain," van Heuven said in his
introductory remarks.
"The message was unwelcome because it spelled trouble ahead for an
administration not ready to become involved in the Balkans," he said.
"Indeed, this would not happen in a decisive way until 1995," he said,
referring to the U.S.-sponsored Dayton peace accord between the leaders of
Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia that ended the Bosnian war.
The 1990's report also predicts "protracted armed uprising by Albanians in
Kosovo," Serbia's breakaway province which has been under U.N. administration
since the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia to stop former Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic's crackdown against Kosovo Albanian separatists.
Dusan Stojanovic, chief correspondent for The Associated Press in Belgrade, has
covered Yugoslavia and the Balkans for the AP since 1984.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-yugoslavia1222,0,3098841.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
