The ethnic war in former Yugoslavia was one of the darkest moments in the recent history of Europe. At the beginning of the 90's internal tensions in the federation broke up leading to the secession of Eslovenia and Croatia, whih was interpreted by Serbia as an act of war.

But the problem is the story told by the media only mentions ethnic cleansing as if Yugoslavians had turn ethnic monsters overnight and this is far from true. What the media did not say about the war was that the International Monetary Fund triggered the collapse of the federation with the imposition of packages of structural adjustment and austerity measures that destroyed Yugoslavia's welfare state in less than 10 years. Why would the IMF want to do such a thing?

As part of the IMF's strategy of furthering capitalism in the world, Yugoslavia was strategically important to undermine the power and influence of an already collapsing Soviet Union. Former Yugoslavia enjoyed a relatievely prosperous economy and heavily social, welfare state. But the oil crisis of the 70's deeply affected the nation's economy. And there appeared the IMF with a debt and a pack of austerity measures. After 10 years of their implementation, Belgrade's central government was unable to transfer money to the republics as state revenues were mainly directed at repaying the debt.

Being left of their own, impoverished and without resources, the republics began to fight for their own survival, and ethnic hatred began to appear as none of the republics wanted to foot the bill of the IMF. The rest is history, unfortunately.