Decolonization was a goal of the Nonaligned Movement as a prerequisite for peaceful coexistence; the Movement supported liberation movements and organizations in Africa and Asia. Throughout its post-WWII existence, Yugoslavia provided all forms of aid and assistance to the “peoples who conduct just struggle for their national independence and liberation from imperialism, colonialism, and all other form of national oppression and submission.” A look at Yugoslavia’s support for decolonization and liberation movements in the Global South, with a particular focus on Palestine.

With Paul Stubbs and Žiga Smolič. Part 2 of 7.

Listen: “Nonaligned Movement: Liberation Movements” (Episode #107)

Bonus Extras: “Nonaligned Movement: Liberation Movements” (Episode #107)

Extended, ad-free version of “Nonaligned Movement: Liberation Movements” (Episode #107).

Transcript: “Nonaligned Movement: Liberation Movements” (Episode #107)

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PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok. 

Yugoblok is a member-supported global community, social network, and information hub for all who have feelings about Yugoslavia. You do, obviously, if you’re listening.

Yugoblok is both self-managed and nonaligned, a place where ex-Yugoslavs, post-Yugoslavs, yugodiasporans, yugophiles, and the yugocurious gather and keep the memory of the lost country alive, apart from any affiliations to outside powers. 

It’s podcasts (including an extended version of this episode), it’s articles, translations, newsletters, events, merch, and more—it’s all Yugoslavia, all the time. 

Visit Yugoblok.com to explore and join.

[JINGLE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, the Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your commander, Peter Korchnak.

One of the key early goals of nonalignment was decolonization. The drive to decolonize motivated the peoples of the Global South, which had recently emerged or wished to emerge from colonial rule, to band together and cooperate on the international level. 

The closing declaration of the first summit of the Nonaligned Movement, in 1961 in Belgrade, stated that decolonization was a prerequisite for peaceful coexistence, another major goal of the Movement. Unconditional support to decolonization and liberation movements and organizations in Africa and Asia was one of the main priorities of nonalignment. 

For Yugoslavia, itself emerging from the Soviet quasi-colonial rule, “the policy of nonalignment [was] the expression of historical continuity of the Yugoslav revolution,” as Tito stated in 1976. Decolonization was part of what Yugoslavia’s chief ideologue, Edvard Kardelj, called the “great world anti-imperialist revolution.” Yugoslavia went so far as to enshrine support for liberation movements in its constitutions, which mandated international aid to the “peoples who conduct just struggle for their national independence and liberation from imperialism, colonialism, and all other form of national oppression and submission.” 

And provide support Yugoslavia did.

PAUL STUBBS: Yugoslavia, although relatively poor, I mean relatively poor, but relatively rich by Global South standards, did offer tangible support to liberation movements. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Sociologist Paul Stubbs, editor of Socialist Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned Movement.

PAUL STUBBS: That support was very, very real. Angola, Mozambique, the struggle against apartheid, there was real, tangible support, including people.

PETER KORCHNAK: How did Yugoslavia support liberation movements in the Third World? What did that “tangible support” entail? And what were the outcomes of that support? That is, what did Yugoslavia accomplish by supporting decolonization and liberation movements?

In this, the second episode of our series on nonalignment, we’re going to look at Yugoslavia’s support for decolonization and liberation movements in the Global South.

As every episode in the series, this one comes with an ad-free, extended version, featuring extra interview footage, stories, analysis, and music. As always, these bonus extras are available exclusively to HERO members of Yugoblok. To get access and listen at Yugoblok or in your podcast listening app, go to yugoblok.com/join to sign up to be a HERO today. That’s yugoblok.com slash join.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: The roots of Yugoslavia’s nonaligned stance go all the way back to the People’s Liberation War, the Yugoslav communists’ resistance movement and socialist revolution during World War II. 

The narrative of the Partisan victory was one of the foundations of the regime’s legitimacy, cultivated and perpetuated throughout the country’s existence. The organization in charge of memory politics and culture within the country was SUBNOR, Savez udruženja boraca narodnooslobodilačkog rata Jugoslavije (Union of Associations of Fighters of People’s Liberation War), a federal-level umbrella organization with chapters on republican and lower levels. SUBNOR had more than a million members in the early 1950s, and its members were the communist elite: state officials, diplomats, heads of institutions and organizations, experts in all spheres. SUBNOR preserved, commemorated, and marketed the memory of the People’s Liberation War through books, pamphlets, films, exhibitions, commemorations, monuments, and museums. 

The ex-Partisans organized in SUBNOR were military and revolutionary heroes. Their revolutionary work continued after the war, including in developing and implementing the policies of nonalignment. Brotherhood and unity they had fought for extended abroad, to that of all nations.

Already in 1950, two years after the split with Stalin, Edvard Kardelj expressed the country’s support for “national-liberation, democratic, and progressive movements in all countries.” 

Identification between the People’s Liberation War and liberation struggles in the Global South was a persistent theme in the Yugoslav narratives at home. 

The struggle was real, the revolution permanent.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: There’s this idealistic approach of Yugoslavia, you know. Because we have to understand the political leadership of Yugoslavia at the time was, in most cases, all of them were involved in the National Liberation Movement in Yugoslavia, you know, during the Second World War,. So this was a strong and logical aspect of Yugoslavian political mindset that, of course, had to be implemented somewhere else. And I think this was one thing that was a very strong element. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Žiga Smolič is a PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana researching Yugoslav involvement in the Middle East in the 1960s and 70s, particularly in Palestine. Previously he had covered the Middle East at Radio Študent.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: Nonetheless, Yugoslavia always remained very pragmatic, you know. Those actions were always taken with a lot of caution, and they were thought through a lot. 

We’re talking somewhere in between the very idealistic and very pragmatical approach.

PETER KORCHNAK: The pragmatic aspect was visible in the timing of Yugoslavia’s support. Yugoslavia tended to ramp up asisstance to liberation movements before important meetings and particularly summits of the Nonaligned Movement, to bolster its credibility and leadership position within the movement. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: You have Yugoslavia foreign policy, that works in the principle of active, peaceful coexistence. It works in the path of the global peace. 

The only violent part of its foreign policy is the support of the national liberation movements and their armed resistance. In some matter, it remains the most progressive, the most extreme part of Yugoslav foreign policy. 

PETER KORCHNAK: After the war and especially after the split with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia actively developed a domestic military industry. This was part of its drive for independence; in case of a Soviet invasion, Yugoslavia wanted to have its own supply of weapons to defend itself without having to rely on foreign arms.

By the mid 1950s, Yugoslavia was producing large quantities of small arms, light weapons, artillery, anti-tank and aircraft guns, torpedo boats, minesweepers,

small submarines, landing craft, training airplanes, as well as all kinds of ammunition, explosives, and mines. Plus parts for tanks and fighter jets it purchased or licensed from abroad. There was also a network of research and development institutes and education and training facilities. 

Extra stocks and capacity became available for export once external threats eased when Stalin died, in 1953, and the Trieste crisis was resolved, in 1954.

Military aid was a means for Yugoslavia to make friends and to boost its standing in the Third World. For that reason, it doled out arms and military equipment without the political strings the major powers would attach to their assistance, which of course suited the recipient movements and countries just fine. Any liberation movement or government the Yugoslavs deemed progressive was eligible.

Yugoslavia also used arms deals to get rid of obsolete weapons. 

And when dealing with the newly decolonized countries’ governments and increasingly from the mid-1970s on, Yugoslavia used sales of arms and military equipment and the construction of military infrastructure projects to create markets for its industries and generate foreign currency.

However, even as it built up its domestic industry, Yugoslavia relied on US support for its military needs. In the 1950s, Western assistance was the only source of the Yugoslav army’s modernization. Meanwhile, the US would often complain about the Yugoslavs’ anti-Western rhetoric and their transfers of arms supplied as part of its aid. When Western aid waned at the end of the 1950s and relations with the Soviet Union improved, the Yugoslavs increasingly imported Soviet technology, particularly when it came to tanks, missiles, and fighter jets. Among other things, they were much cheaper than American weapons. 

[SOUNDBITE – “Improvisation” by U Tin]

It was in 1953 that Yugoslavia first became directly and tangibly involved in a nonaligned country to be. Burma, as it was called at the time, was a small, federal, diverse, agrarian country that took Yugoslavia’s independence and self-management as a model for building its own version of socialism.

For Yugoslavia Burma was a perfect inroad into Asia. Burma was fighting for its independence, both internally from various groups of insurgents, and externally, from foreign interventions and proxy conflicts, especially from India and China. To that end, it needed modern weapons that would be both affordable and come with no strings attached. Yugoslavia checked both boxes.

[SOUNDBITE]

The first arms trade agreement between the two countries was concluded in late 1953, with Yugoslavia supplying a wide range of light and heavy weapons, explosives, and ammunition, as well as military training both in Burma and in Yugoslavia’s civilian and military schools. Yugoslavia did so well it gradually squeezed other competitors out of the Burmese arms market. In 1955, the year of the Bandung Conference, Yugoslavia gifted Burma the full equipment for one army brigade. 

The bulk of Burma’s army’s weapons became Yugoslav. Burma’s purchases of weapons and military equipment from Yugoslavia in this period totaled more than 50 million in today’s dollars; Yugoslavia also committed to buying 50,000 tons of Burmese rice annually. 

Extensive bilateral military cooperation endured throughout the Cold War period, with Burma able to strengthen its regional posture and stabilize its sovereignty over much of its territory. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Burma today exists thanks to Yugoslavia.

[SOUNDBITE – “Lover Of Smiling Girls” by  Mandalay Sein Mottah] 

That was Mandalay Sein Mottah with “Lover Of Smiling Girls.” I played the track for you with the kind permission of the label Sublime Frequencies. 

And at the top you heard the late U Tin with “Improvisation,” courtesy of Rollers Recordings.

Buy their music on Bandcamp! The links are at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

Yugoslavia initiated a military cooperation with Egypt as well, sending first arms shipments in 1954. The same year it also started exporting weapons and equipment to Indonesia, and in 1957 to India as well.

Yugoslavia became to be seen as a partner, Tito became a world leader, and the superpowers took notice and became more involved in the Third World as well.

Now Burma had gained independence, from Britain, in 1948. So here Yugoslavia supported an independent, post-colonial government. 

[SOUNDBITE]

The first decolonization conflict in which Yugoslavia became directly involved was in Algeria, where War of Independence lasted from 1954 to 1962. Yugoslavia provided diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, training, materiel, and military support. 

Algeria set the model and pattern for Yugoslavia’s later engagements in the 1960s and 1970s. 

It also highlighted the limits of Yugoslavia’s internationalism. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: This pattern of supporting the national liberation movements starts with the Algerian Revolution in the late 50s, and in just a few years, becomes, in some matter, institutionalized, you know, it becomes a becomes a part of Yugoslav foreign policy. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Žiga Smolič again. 

PAUL STUBBS: The Algerian case is perhaps the best documented and the clearest were, you know, training soldiers, providing arms, building hospitals, treating wounded veterans […] 

PETER KORCHNAK: Paul Stubbs. 

The Algerians, too, recognized they couldn’t rid themselves of the French colonial rule alone, so they set out to look for allies and supporters. Yugoslavia was there for them. 

In Algeria the Yugoslavs found a great parallel with their own People’s Liberation War. And their support for Algeria’s liberation struggle strengthened Yugoslavia’s anticolonial credentials. 

Political diplomatic support at the highest, state level was muted and cautious at first, as Yugoslavia wanted to avoid upsetting and getting into a conflict with France. 

Tito and his diplomats started to systematically support the Algerians in 1957. They campaigned for Algerian independence in the United Nations, and made early regular financial donations within the UN framework. In 1960, the Front de Liberation National, or the National Liberation Front, the main resistance group in Algeria, opened a representation bureau in Belgrade. In 1961, at the first Nonaligned Movement summit, Yugoslavia became the first European country to recognize the FLN as the de iure government of Algeria. 

[SOUNDBITE]

Support was organized under the auspices of quasi non-governmental, socio-political organizations within Yugoslavia. This offered a way to formally keep the assistance at an arms length from the communist party and the state, and to maintain the appearance of neutrality and non-interference in France’s affairs. 

At the top was the Socijalistički savez radnog naroda Jugoslavije, the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia. This was a classic popular front organization tasked with cultivating support for the regime within the country. It was financed by the state and aligned with the League of Comunists of Yugoslavia, but nominally acted as non-partisan and non-ideological. In other words, a perfect cover.

In 1959, the Alliance established the Committee for Helping Algeria, with additional members coming from other mass volunteer groups, including the trade unions, Partisan veterans, and youth associations. These organizations were the main actors in coordinating and executing activities supporting various anticolonial movements throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

The Committee’s main activity was to coordinate and manage medical and other humanitarian assistance to Algeria as well as to Algerian refugees in Tunisia and Morocco. The first Yugoslav humanitarian deliveries were shipments of food, clothing, hygiene supplies, medicines and medical equipment. The Yugoslav Red Cross implemented the assistance on the ground. 

The first major medical mission to Algeria took place in August 1962, when Yugoslavia sent two teams of surgeons to an hospital in Algiers to both provide services and train the locals. Multiple missions followed. The Yugoslavs also established a rehabilitation center and a prosthetics workshop; in addition, the Yugoslav Red Cross opened a field hospital in Tunisia.

The Yugoslavs also helped care for wounded and disabled Algerian fighters and veterans, in Algeria, Tunisia, and, significantly, in Yugoslavia proper. Between 1959 and 1963, some 300 Algerian fighters were hospitalised in Yugoslav civilian and military hospitals. The Red Cross transported the wounded fighters to Yugoslavia, organized medical care for them there, and also provided them with accommodations, allowance money, goodies like cigarettes and hygiene kits, language courses, as well as official entertainment like movies. Recuperating Algerians also enjoyed unofficial but tolerated, more clandestine R&R activities like alcohol consumption and visits by prostitutes. 

The Algerians’ arrivals were major media events and they received a lot of attention during their stay: they were guests at film screenings, public lectures, and art exhibitions organized in support of Algerian liberation. All of this helped to cultivate the public’s sympathy and support for the Algerians and to educate them about the fight and Yugoslavia’s own support for it and other anticolonial movements. 

A unique form of support Yugoslavia provided was in the person of Stefan Labudović, Tito’s cameraman. The Yugoslavs sent him to Algeria not only to document the revolution for the domestic audiences—he made 27 films about it—but also to train Algerian filmmakers.

In the military realm, the Savezni sekretarijat za narodnu odbranu, the Federal Secretariat for Peoples’ Defense, was the main body distributing weapons, equipment, and training, through affiliated companies. The company Jugoimport, which still exists in Serbia, by the way, provided the logistics of arms transfers, first large quantities of light infantry weapons but beginning in 1961, heavier weapons as well, including antiaircraft guns and mountain guns nicknamed Tito’s Guns. Yugoslavia also sent dozens of trucks and all-terrain vehicles made in Maribor and Kragujevac. And yes, France would occasionally manage to intercept Yugoslav ships delivering these goods.

Domestically, the former Partisans saw themselves in the mujahideens’ fighting for liberation, independence, and a new political order. They both fought more powerful and better organized enemies and faced the same challenges, shortages of weapons and medicines, medical care for the wounded, training of personnel, and so forth.

Yugoslavia’s leaders involved the whole society in supporting the Algerians. Films, books, exhibitions, articles, and media reports spread the story of the Algerian liberation struggle to justify Yugoslavia’s support for it. Identification with and support for the Algerian struggle was widespread in Yugoslavia on the popular level.

Most of the funding came from the state institutions, with important additions from the nongovernmental sector. For example, in 1960 and 1961, the Union of the Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia organised a massive fundraising campaign for Algeria. Over 6,000 schools and half a million children participated in the fundraising campaign under the slogan, “Children of Yugoslavia for the Children of Algeria.” The money was used to build ten prefab schools in Tunisia and Morocco and distribute 10,000 packages containing clothes, food, toys, blankets, and school materials for refugee children.

[SOUNDBITE]

But Yugoslavia ran into limits in terms of its resources. Medical staff were needed at home where there was a general shortage of them. Particularly after Algeria gained independence, medical and other assistance therefore became commercialized. Aid and supplies went from being donated to being sold; humanitarian aid was gradually transformed into development assistance. Support in medical fields gave way to assistance in agriculture, administration, construction, and various industries, where Yugoslavia could sell the Algerians its exports.

In turn, medical experts from the Eastern Bloc countries replaced Yugoslav medical professionals. Yugoslavia’s dependence on Soviet tech became an obstacle for its military aid. Shortages of hard currency were limiting as well. The organizations charged with providing assistance not only lacked a permanent source of financial support, that backing was often inadequate. 

And so Yugoslavia ended up losing the influence it had worked so hard to achieve. 

[SOUNDBITE – “Habit En Ich” by Rachid & Fethi]

That was Rachid & Fethi with “Habit En Ich”, again courtesy of Sublime Frequencies. Buy their music on Bandcamp, it’s quite a collection of period world music.

PETER KORCHNAK: From 1960 to 1972, Yugoslavia established commercial military relations with a number of existing and future Asian and African countries. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: We can follow these conversations, you know, with with some Yugoslavia generals and the foreign ministry in the mid-60s, you know, when they think, like, how much support should we give like, should we focus just on the few national regulation movements or should we like, involve more of them, you know? 

In the mid-60s, 1960s Yugoslavia is actively supporting more than 20 different national liberation movements, you know, across Africa and Asia. 

PETER KORCHNAK: More than 40 percent of its arms sales went to Indonesia, where Yugoslavia was the second largest supplier after the Soviet Union. 

1967 and 1968 were watershed years. The Six Day War, the escalation of U.S. intervention in Vietnam, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Biafran War in Nigeria, the launch of the Brezhnev Doctrine, justifying foreign interventions to defend socialism, and other events showed Yugoslavia that it was more important than ever for the nonaligned to stick together and strengthen their cooperation. 

As the Nonaligned Movement sputtered after the 1964 Cairo Summit, Yugoslavia stepped up its assistance to fellow nonaligned countries as part of the effort to bolster solidarity within and revive the Nonaligned Movement. It used aid not just to remain relevant in the Global South but also to buy influence to keep the Nonaligned Movement going. 

[SOUNDBITE]

It was the the Six Day War in June 1967 that boosted Yugoslavia’s activity in the Middle East. Among other things, Yugoslavia began supporting the national liberation movement in Palestine.

Palestine was a former Ottoman territory placed in 1922 under British administration. A quarter century of violent clashes and terrorist attacks ensued between Arabs who demanded independence and Jews who moved here in large numbers particularly during World War II. In 1947, the UK turned the Palestine problem over to the UN.

As a member of the UN Special Committee on Palestine, Yugoslavia was in favor of creating a Jewish-Arab federation. But the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish. The latter proclaimed independence as Israel in 1948 and immediately fought the neighboring Arab states in the so-called First Arab-Israeli War. Victorious Israel expanded its territory over most of what was to be Palestine. Jordan and Egypt controlled the rest of the territory. Meanwhile, over half of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled.

PAUL STUBBS: At first, Yugoslavia was very pro-Israel, because Israel was itself born out of reaction to British colonialism. And the kibbutz experiments were of real interest to different kinds of socialists throughout the world. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: Israel was the second strongest economic partner of Yugoslavia in the Middle East, in the region.

PAUL STUBBS: Then Tito meets Nasser and there’s a better understanding of what’s going on, the importance of Pan-Arabism, the difficulties faced by the Palestinians. And actually the Yugoslavs, in the first phase of positive support for the Palestinians, are really important in getting Palestinians recognized within like the Arab League, within the United Nations, and so on. And then later, the Yugoslavs are reluctant  to do very much without waiting to see what the Arab, other Arab countries want to be done. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1956, the UK, France, and Israel invaded Egypt in order to gain control over the Suez Canal, which the Egyptians had nationalized. Israel briefly occupied Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, both under Egypt’s control.

In what came to be known as the Suez Crisis, Yugoslavia supported Egypt, which provided one of the touchpoints in the creation of the Nonaligned Movement as it led to the development of relations between Tito and Nasser. For a decade after, Yugoslavia participated in the UN peacekeeping missions in the Sinai Peninsula.

1964 saw the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, a coalition of Palestinian nationalist organizations, at the behest of Egypt’s president Nasser. In its first three decades the PLO sought to establish the state of Palestine and destroy the state of Israel, mostly by way of guerilla war. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: This was not the same PLO that you may recall a few years afterwards. This was still just a more of a construct the initiative of Jamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian President, to create some kind of political representative body of the Palestinians that would, of course, represent the Palestinian will and interests. But it worked more as some kind of a puppet of Arab states, specifically Egypt. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Having seen it support other liberation movements, the PLO repeatedly asked Yugoslavia for help.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: So this was something that was off the Yugoslav political radar. Fascinatingly enough, they were not even aware of the real name of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This was something quite amusing to see that they even spelled the name wrongly, and it was like a Front of Liberation of Palestine or something like this, but it says a lot you know that Yugoslavia didn’t understood this project as something serious. And of course, it also rejected most of the requests that came from the PLO in 1964, 65, 66. 

Yugoslavia was aware that it was just too complicated sphere to get involved with.

And of course everything changed when the broader situation, the regional situation changed in the Middle East, and this was, of course, the second Israeli-Arab War in 1967.

PETER KORCHNAK: Egypt and Israel clashed again over the control of the Straits of Tiran, and in June Israel attacked Egypt, wiping out its airforce and occupying Sinai, Gaza, and the West Bank. Israel also fought back attacks by Jordan and Syria. 

This Third Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Six Day War for its duration, marked a shift in Yugoslavia’s involvement in the region.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: What happened after 1967 after the Israeli aggression, you know, the collapse of the Arab armies, specifically Egypt, Yugoslavia got very involved.

Of course, first thing was cutting the diplomatic relations with Israel. And the second one was like, besides broader diplomatic help and adjusting the international help for the Arab states, was the direct humanitarian support for the defeated Arab states. This also involved the Palestinians directly. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Yugoslavia never did restore relations with Israel. 

Instead, Yugoslavia supplied anti-aircraft guns, armored vehicles, rocket launchers, ammunition, and explosives to Egypt and Syria, through donations, sales deals under favorable terms, and loans; later, anti-tank rockets and 120 T-55 tanks also went to the Middle East. 

Regarding Palestine, up until the Six Day Wwar, for Yugoslavia this was a mere refugee problem, and through the United Nations it contributed about $20,000 per year toward humanitarian aid.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: It takes a lot of time for Yugoslavia to start giving any significant support to the Palestinian revolution at the time after 1967. This was a huge discussions within Yugoslavia how to handle this and and why and how many resources to put into this. There was a lot of hesitations from the Yugoslavia entering this help.

When Fatah took over the PLO in 1968 there was a lot of requests from the PLO for the help, and Yugoslavia didn’t want to get involved.

PETER KORCHNAK: But then it did.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: So what followed was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, humanitarian mission[s] in Yugoslavia. 

And they were talking about the help for the Palestinians, and it’s so clear that they don’t want to start, they don’t want to get involved in this, but they have to. This is something that is very nicely articulated through the head of this commission—

PETER KORCHNAK: —the Commission for International Relations of the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia—

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: —Josip Djerdja, at the time, he said, “OK, it’s expected from us regarding our, you know, legacy, that we do something for those Palestinians, and we have to do it.” 

So it was the material help at [the] start, because it was the safest. So the first years, we follow just some medical material help. It also goes in the forms of building some small factories and so on, you know, financing to build some factories, some small portable surgery rooms, and so on. 

PETER KORCHNAK: As with prior liberation movements, Yugoslavia also provided humanitarian assistance, medical supplies, and the like. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: Hundreds and hundreds of Palestinian fighters were received in Yugoslavia, and they received free medical support in Yugoslav military or civil hospitals. 

They were even like organized Yugoslavia airplanes flying full of injured Palestinian fighters to Yugoslavia for free medical help. 

And in some bizarre cases, Yugoslavia paid more delicate for instance, some eye surgeries in Germany for those Palestinians. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Again, citizens of Yugoslavia were mobilized to help as well. Through the aforementioned web of nongovernmental organizations, the Yugoslavs organized among the citizenry collections and donations of food, clothing, and medical material for the victims of the Israeli aggression. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: The civil society got involved very strongly. And they gathered, I think it was like three and a half billion dinars at the time, just from the civil society and and workers and so on. And another, I think, four and a half billion dinars from the direct state support. 

PETER KORCHNAK: This amounted to a total of about 57 million in today’s dollars. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: So ships of material, of humanitarian aid were floating to the Arab states, specifically Egypt, also involving the Palestinian refugees. Because the June war in 1967 created I think it was additional 300,000 Palestinian refugees.

Another thing that is fascinating about this whole mission of gathering this money for the support of the Arab state was that they gathered too much money. They didn’t expect that society will gather so much money for the help of the Arab states. So they took a few of those billions on the side and they left it standing there for a while. And after two years, they decided that they will use this few billion dinars to create a specific fund. Its purpose, that will be just to help national liberation movements and progressive movements around the Global South. And it was called the Fond za pomoč žrtvama agresije i kolonialne dominacije, Fund for the Help to the Victims of Aggression and Colonial Domination. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In addition to this Fund in 1969 the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia also established the Coordination Committee for Aid to the People of Vietnam-Indochina.

The same year Tito met representatives of the PLO for the first time, in Algiers.

Yugoslavia supported the PLO in the international arenas, primarily the UN and the Nonaligned Movement, as well as through cooperations with Eastern Bloc countries. 

Yugoslav organizations established and cultivated contacts with the PLO, starting with the Socialist Alliance of the Working People, and the organizations of Partisan veterans, trade unions, and youth as well as the Red Cross and the Tanjug press agency.

In 1971, Yugoslavia’s support totalled about 50 million in today’s dollars, covering mainly medicines and treatment of wounded fighters in Yugoslavia. 

The same year, the PLO was finally allowed to open an information bureau in Belgrade. As with the Algerian FLN back in 1960—

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: It was not [an] embassy, far from that. But nonetheless, they had its own representative in Yugoslavia that got involved more, that were constantly meeting with the representative from the Socialist Alliance, trying to organize events, organize all the  student collaborations and so on. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1972, the PLO gained its first international recognition when it became an observer at a Nonaligned Foreign Ministers Conference. 

At its 1973 summit in Algiers, the Nonaligned Movement issued the Declaration on the Struggle for National Liberation, which among other things demanded Israel cease its occupation of Palestinian territories and condemned it for human rights violations. It also called for nonaligned countries to pledge their support for Palestine, and recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. 

In 1974 the UN General Assembly reaffirmed the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence, sovereignty, and return, and conferred on the PLO the status of observer. 

And in 1975, the Nonaligned Movement granted the PLO full membership, a full year before the Arab League did so.

The assistance ramped up throughout the 1970s.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: It’s pretty much hard to say, to conclude what was the actual support, because it was also in certain level quite fragmented. 

I can say just this that the support towards the PLO becomes much higher in the late 70s, especially in the early 80s. The PLO was the biggest receiver of Yugoslav help in this list of national liberation movements. 

We’re talking about millions of dollars. I recall it was more than a million dollar[s] in one year just donation in arms for the PLO.

PETER KORCHNAK: The support fluctuated over time, and was the most intense during the various crises. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: In case of PLO, you it’s very hard to separate all the ammunition and even more sophisticated arms, or just AK47s that the Arab states bought from Yugoslavia for the PLO. 

The support in arms. This was something that was very, very constantly present from the Palestinian side all the way from the beginning. And as the first Fatah representative came to Yugoslavia, this was the first issue, you know, we want help in arms. And Yugoslavia was rejecting this constantly for years because they knew that this is a more delicate and more specific case. 

And it’s funny to even observe the Yugoslav interpretations of why the Palestinian[s] wanted arms so badly. You know, helping arms and the idea that that representative from the Socialist Alliance had was that they want to do this for the publicity. Like this was the interpretation within Yugoslavia that Palestinians are asking for guns and arms so they can get the good publicity that Yugoslavia is giving them guns. 

PETER KORCHNAK: From the mid-1970s on—

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: The strategy changed, and we can follow, like quite a big shipments of lighter arms to the Palestinians at start, and afterwards, of course, we can even talk about some small range missiles and so on. 

And maybe a fun fact, when Tito and Yasser Arafat met for the first time. It was, it was Tito that suggested to Yasser Arafat that he needs to get a long range missiles, that this is the very good strategy that they can have to get the leverage for the good negotiations. So he said, “You need missiles that can reach Tel Aviv.” But the point was, Yugoslavia never sell [sic] them these missiles, you know. So to get the image, you know, you get the political advice, but nonetheless, you will not sell those missiles, because, of course, it would be a suicide to in the international relations to do it.

And then you have all the different social political groups within Yugoslavia that get involved in helping the national liberation movements. 

PETER KORCHNAK: For example, within the youth organization—

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: We have students preparing the events or collecting blood. Then you have, like, the Pioneers, you know, they get involved, they they pick old paper and they sell it, and then they send this money to some national liberation movement…

One of the events that has this tradition in Yugoslavia is— it was called [the] Week of Solidarity. So this is something that starts with Vietnam in the late 60s and continues, it develops a tradition. You always choose one or a few national liberation movements and then one week, the whole Yugoslavia talks about that. They taught about this in schools, they were raising money… So you combined all the actions of different social political organizations for this cause for one week. 

The whole society kind of gets involved. This is some kind of a revolutionary moment from the outside that kind of gets within the society, you know, and it works in the idea of self identity, you know, of the population, of remaining this some kind of a revolutionary approach. 

And there’s so much events about Palestinian question and Palestinian resistance all over Yugoslavia. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Solidarity events, workshops, and various gatherings were organized, collecting money, like in summer 1978 when 100,000 Slovenian Pioneers fundraised for their peers in Palestine, or humanitarian supplies, an effort coordinated by the Red Cross and the Alliance.

The most visible form of assistance within Yugoslavia was the hosting and sponsoring of Palestinian students at various universities. Mostly men and mostly in technical disciplines like engineering. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: This was the major factor that happened, was a vast amount of Palestinian students in Yugoslavia. This was a trend that we can follow, especially from the early 70s onwards, that Yugoslavia becomes a very popular destination for the Palestinian students to come. It had a renomé of good universities and beside that, it was also pretty much cheap to come here. Yugoslavia gave a lot of scholarships to the Palestinian students as well. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In the mid-1970s, Arab students were the most numerous among foreign students in Yugoslavia, and among them Palestinian students received the majority of scholarships.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: We have to get this image of Yugoslavia hosting at least 10,000, maybe even 15,000 Palestinian students in just what, like 15 years. So it was quite a big presence of the Palestinians in Yugoslavia, and a lot of them received Yugoslavia scholarships. 

You have a very active Palestinian student population Yugoslavia, collaborating with local students, organizing events…

PETER KORCHNAK: Palestinian military cadres were schooled in Yugoslavia as well, beginning in 1971.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: What gets much more obvious in the late 70s is the education of the higher ranking military personnel, Palestinian military personnel in Yugoslavia. And this was quite a big deal, you know, this was not small. We’re talking again hundreds of Palestinians that came to Yugoslavia and they received training as military generals or pilots or, I don’t know, people that got specific knowledge in how to handle, like, some heavy machinery or heavy arms and so on. All the stuff that Palestinian army didn’t need it, or actually didn’t had the basic ground to use it at the time. Just in the year 1980, 16 pilots came to study here in Yugoslavia for the additional training. And a lot of them were training on the on the airplanes MiG21. This was not something that Palestinian army could use at the time. 

So this was, this was all faced, you know, towards the building the future Palestinian state. This was all after ‘74 and Yugoslavia got involved pretty heavily into this. A lot of this military training was given for free, a lot of it was paid by at the time, at certain time, from Libya, Gaddafi, paid a lot of those trainings. 

PETER KORCHNAK: One thing that struck me in reading about Yugoslavia’s support for Palestine was cases of Yugoslav citizens engaging in active combat. 

That story is in the extended episode, available to HERO members of Yugoblok. To get access and listen, go to Yugoblok.com/Join and become a member today.

PETER KORCHNAK: Palestine’s fight for independence of course isn’t over. In “نشيد الأرض” (Anthem of the Land), Palestinian singer Nai Barghouti exhorts her compatriots to keep fighting. 

“O my people, resist and don’t despair / Don’t accept the darkness of oblivion / Your patience will bear fruit / Humiliation will be overcome. I am playing this song with kind permission. Follow Nai Barghouti on social media and buy her music!

[SOUNDBITE – “نشيد الأرض” (Anthem of the Land) by Nai Barghouti]

PETER KORCHNAK: In the early 1970s, the Yugoslav military transfers to the Global South increased, with most military aid going to movements fighting against Portugal. The largest recipient of this aid was the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, the MPLA, followed by similar parties in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. 

As in Algeria, the Yugoslavs saw the Angolans’ struggle for independence as resembling their own back in World War II. Plus Angola was strategically important. In 1970, Tito went on a monthlong Galeb tour of Africa to lobby for a nonaligned summit, meeting with liberation movement leaders and promising them further military, material, and political support.

Yugoslavia had symbolically supported the movement since 1961, but then stepped up its support from 1968 to independence in 1975, donating money, weapons, and military material worth about 12 million in today’s dollars, including light infantry weapons, vehicles, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, and communication equipment. Yugoslavia sent first arms shipments to Angola in 1968 and stepped up support over the next two years, with more arms and training of medical and military personnel. Angolan military cadres received scholarships and stipends to study and train in Yugoslavia. And Yugoslavia sponsored the MPLA’s information bureau in Belgrade.

But again, within a few years, Yugoslavia ran into its own budgetary and political constraints and decreased assistance dramatically. Support ramped up again in the runup to the 1973 summit in Algiers, but fell off again in a couple of years. 

Cuba, as well as the Soviets and the Chinese, intervened in Angola in 1975, dislodging the Yugoslavs and disrupting one of the most expansive military solidarity efforts. By 1976, Yugoslavia’s influence in Angola was pretty much over. 

The pattern repeated itself in other countries where Yugoslavia supported independence movements, including the Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, and Zimbabwe; later also in Ethiopia.

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: There were other causes for the decrease in Yugoslavia’s involvement and influence in the Global South by the end of the 1970s.

First, a generational change. The old Partisan were retiring and dying out and getting replaced by people with no memory of the People’s Liberation War or connections with the liberation movements in the Global South. Kardelj died in 1979, Tito in 1980.

Yugoslavia itself was beginning to fall apart, some argue as early as following the adoption the 1974 constitution. Political and ideological motivations behind Yugoslavia’s internationalism were receding and by the end of the 1970s economic factors were increasing in importance. Idealism gave way to pragmatism. Arms transfers now included considerations of economic development. The trend intensified in the 1980s after Tito’s death and as the economic crisis in Yugoslavia deepened.

By the mid-1970s, China, the Soviet Union, other socialist countries, as well as Western socialist parties outmatched Yugoslavia in military and other donations to liberation movements. 

For a while, Yugoslavia focused its attention on Ethiopia, where Tito and Emperor Selassie enjoyed long-term good relations. From 1974 to 1976, Yugoslavia sent about $30 million in today’s dollars to Ethiopia in economic, humanitarian, and military aid, plus additional 10 million dollars in loans for the purchase of Yugoslav arms. 

When the Yugoslavs wanted to send 145 M-47 Patton tanks to Ethiopia, the US intervened as the 1951 Mutual Defense Aid Program prohibited weapons transfers to third parties. This and other Yugoslav limitations led to Ethiopia turning to the Soviet Union for aid. Similar to Angola, Yugoslavia’s influence in Ethiopia decreased dramatically in favor of the Soviets and its proxies, especially Cuba. Yugoslavia’s competition with Cuba also affected relations in the Nonaligned Movement, with the conflict culminating at the 6th conference in Havana in 1979.

Another factor in Yugoslavia’s diminishing influence in the Global South was a matter of simple math. As countries became independent, liberation movements decreased in number. If Yugoslavia sent aid to national liberation movements in the form of donations, once the recipients became independent, sovereign countries, things switched over to commercial export agreements, that is arms sales. The change altered the nature of these relationships. 

Plus, if liberation movements needed equipment for guerrilla warfare, independent states needed weapons for standing armies; Yugoslavia’s stocks simply could not adjust to this shift. The Soviets and the Chinese could, as did the activist Cubans to some degree. 

Even after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and most nonaligned countries condemned the aggression, Yugoslavia could not recover its lost influence in Angola, Ethiopia, and elsewhere, particularly because its domestic calculations, both political and economic, changed drastically. 

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: Nonaligned countries continued to express and provide support for the Palestinians. Here’s India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi at the New Delhi summit of the Nonaligned Movement in 1983.

[SOUNDBITE] 

Good question, just as pressing 42 years later.

In the early 1980s, Yugoslavia sold arms to just a handful of countries, with Indonesia being the largest, followed by Iraq and Libya, both oil-exporting countries. 

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in order to eliminate the PLO, which then relocated to Tunisia. After the Battle of Beirut, a series of protests took place across Yugoslavia. The Union of the Socialist Youth organized the biggest one in the capital. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: You had the biggest protest for Palestine in history of this place. It was, I think, that it was 70,000 people that gathered in Belgrade to protest in support of Lebanese and Palestinians. 

PETER KORCHNAK: The demo was the last hurrah of Yugoslavia’s support for Palestine. The economic crisis intensified as the 1980s progressed, as did issues within the Nonaligned Movement. After 1983, Yugoslav aid to the Palestinian uprising gradually decreased, though on the political level Yugoslavia supported the Palestinians until its dissolution. Meanwhile, the Yugoslav Security Service agency, the UDBA, established contacts with its Israeli counterpart Mossad.

In 1987, people in the occupied Palestinian territories launched the Intifada, a mass uprising against the Israeli occupation. In 1988, the PLO proclaimed the State of Palestine, which includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. By the end of the year, 78 countries, including Yugoslavia recognized the Palestinian state.

It was not just Palestine where Yugoslavia’s support declined. By the mid-1980s, Yugoslav arms exports to the Global South declined sharply, as recipient countries faced the same oil-shock-dependent economic woes as Yugoslavia and were having difficulty making payments and would often cancel orders and projects. Cheaper weapons from other socialist countries overwhelmed the market. And sales of weapons to oppresive regimes in Africa that were starving their own populations became an object of criticism within Yugoslavia. As one official said, “By this time, the ‘love’ has faded.”

Then, of course, Yugoslavia ceased to exist and with it the institutions and organizations that facilitated the assistance. 

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: After the hiatus of the early 1990s wars of dissolution, Yugoslavia’s successor countries resumed their arms sales to the Third World. 

According to Milorad Lazić, “Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia are still making significant profits from selling their arms to countries in the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia. Weapons from the stockpiles of the former [Yugoslav army] and some new weapons produced in these countries have found their way to regular armies and various paramilitary and extremist groups around the world.” End quote. In some cases these deliveries break UN sanctions, as when Orao from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Jugoimport from Serbia sold aircraft parts to Iraq. 

As of this year, 146 of the 193 UN member states have recognized the State of Palestine. Of Yugoslavia’s successor countries, Serbia inherited Yugoslavia’s recognition. In the current war, Serbia condemned Hamas but it also expressed the intent to remain friendly with both Palestine and Israel. On the one hand, Serbia sent 900 tons worth about 3 million euros of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

On the other, in 2024 Serbia exported over 42 million euros worth of arms and ammunitions to Israel, or 30 times more than in the previous year. Serbia also bought from Israel advanced artillery and drone systems worth $335 million dollars.

Bosnia and Herzegovina recognized Palestine in 1992, Montenegro did so in 2006, and Slovenia in 2024. 

[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening and fighting. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. And while you’re there, join Yugoblok as a member and take part in a growing community of yugodiasporans and others, plus enjoy an extended version of this episode, featuring more stories, analysis, quotes, and music.  

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić. 

Interlude music courtesy of Sticky Keys. Additional music used with eternal gratitude courtesy of Nai Barghouti, Rollers Recordings, and Sublime Frequencies.

Buy their music! All links are at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

I am Peter Korchňak. 

الى اللقاء (Iiilaa alliqa)!

[SOUNDBITE] 

Additional Sources

• Čavoški, Jovan. “Arming Nonalignment: Yugoslavia’s Relations with Burma and the Cold War in Asia (1950–1955).” Cold War International History Project Working Paper #61. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010
• Đureinović, Jelena. “The Partisan Resistance Goes Global: Yugoslav Veterans and Decolonisation.” In: Hašimbegović, Elma, Nicolas Moll, and Ivo Pejaković. Wer Ist Walter? International Perspectives on Resistance in Europe During World War II. Sarajevo: Historijski muzej Bosne i Hercegovine, 2024, pp. 403–422
• Frantzman, Seth J. and Jovan Ćulibrk. “Strange Bedfellows: The Bosnians and Yugoslav Volunteers in the 1948 War in Israel/Palestine.” Istorija 20. veka, 1 (2009): 189-200
• Lazic, Milorad. “Arsenal of the Global South: Yugoslavia’s Military Aid to Nonaligned Countries and Liberation Movements.” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 49 No. 3 (2021): 428–445
• Lazic, Milorad. “Comrades in Arms: Yugoslav Military Aid to Liberation Movements of Angola and Mozambique, 1961–1976.” In: Dallywater, Lena, Chris Saunders, and Helder Adegar Fonseca, eds. Southern African Liberation Movements and the Global Cold War ‘East’ Transnational Activism 1960–1990. Berlin de Gruyter, 2019, pp. 151–179
• Smolič, Žiga. “Jugoslavija i Palestinska Revolucija.” In: Kamberović, Husnija, ed. Reprezentacije nasilja u Jugoistočnoj Evropi 20. stoljeća: zbornik radova. Sarajevo: Udruženje za modernu historiju/Udruga za modernu povijest, 2022, pp. 241-262
• Stubbs, Paul, ed. Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023
• Tot, Dora. “Translating Humanitarian Aid into Technical Cooperation: Yugoslavia’s Medical Assistance to the Algerian National Liberation Movement (1958–1965).” The International History Review, Vol. 46 No. 6 (2024): 769–784