The IMF recently concluded a one-week mission to Serbia, during which it extended the second-tranche of a EUR 4.3-billion loan package to Serbia. However, it gave the government until late October to reign in public sector spending as a condition for disbursing the third-tranche of the agreement (worth EUR 1.4-billion) by the end of the year.

The tough negotiations come at a time when the incumbent government of Serbia is facing a 4% contraction in its economy and a determined workers movement that refuses to bear the burden of economic restructuring after years of corruption that has bound together key Serbian business and political interests in the squandering of public funds. 2009 is also the self-imposed deadline set by the government for completing the sell-off of all ’socially owned’ (i.e. formerly self-managed) companies in Serbia.

On March 24, 1999, NATO began an aerial bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  For 78 days, bombs rained down on military targets and civilian infrastructure under the guise of 'humanitarian intervention.'  Operation Allied Force precipitated the displacement of over one million people and directly resulted in the deaths of over 2000 civilians of a range nationalities (a number that gets much larger if we include indirect deaths as a result of the intervention and post-intervention period, as well as those killed in the resulting escalation of the military conflict between the Yugoslav army and the KLA).  Ten years later, Kosovo's 'independence' has resulted in a quasi-colonial entity of 'ethnic' enclaves and an all-pervasive security apparatus, a new client state for the Western powers that led the bombing campaign.  Meanwhile, Serbia and Montenegro remain stalled on a 'transition' to neo-liberal democracy marked by a brutal mass privatization, increasing poverty, and the rapid dispossession and continued marginalization of workers, students, refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), Roma communities, and others casualties of economic restructuring.

Global Balkans is a small network of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist activists of diverse backgrounds in the ex-Yugoslav diaspora and allies.  Many of us have witnessed and experienced first-hand the devastation that continues to be felt as a result of the events and ripple effects emanating from the NATO intervention of 1999.  We have talked to and continue to dialogue with everyday people from many communities throughout the former Yugoslav Balkan region whose lives have been deeply and permanently turned upside down by the upheaval of the NATO bombing, the wars of the 1990s, and the neoliberal transition of Yugoslavia's various successor states.

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