Former Yugoslavia Biological Overview

This page is part of the Former Yugoslavia Profile.

On 17 June 1925, Yugoslavia signed the Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical weapons. ¹ This treaty, which Yugoslavia ratified on 12 April 1929, also included prohibitions on the use of bacteriological warfare. Yugoslavia ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWTC) on 25 October 1973. ² Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 the various successor states independently acceded to the Convention: Slovenia on 7 April 1992, Croatia on 28 April 1993, Bosnia Herzegovina on 15 August 1994, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on 24 December 1996. Although a chemical warfare (CW) program was publicly revealed in 1993, no allegations of biological warfare related research or production activity have been leveled at Yugoslavia. As far as is publicly known, Yugoslavia and its successor states have fully adhered to the biological warfare provisions of both treaties.

As was typical of modern military forces, the Yugoslavian Army (VJ—Vojska Jugoslavije) established, and its successor, the Serbian Army (VS – Vojska Srbije) maintained, a branch (ABHO – atomsko-biolosko-hemijske odbrane) responsible for detecting and defending against the consequences of biological warfare and other WMD attacks. ³ As part of a wider set of military reforms in the mid-2000s the importance of NBC defense was downgraded. This resulted in the ABHO’s elimination and the re-designation of the 246th NBC Defense Battalion as a general purpose service directly under the Land Forces Command. ⁴ The NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) Defense Training Center in the town of Krusevac was re-assigned to the Training Command. ⁵ The other Yugoslavian successor states maintain NBC Defense capabilities and participate in NATO training exercises and operations to varying degrees. ⁶

The Serbian Army is provided with a full range of individual and collective protective equipment intended to enable its continued operations in the event of a biological attack, much of it based on Soviet designs, some of it of local manufacture. Most of the other Yugoslavian successor states are similarly equipped. The Trayal Corporation based in Krusevac produces NBC protective equipment for individuals including masks, filter cartridges, gloves, and protective suits. It also produces filter equipment for military vehicles. ⁷

The Military Medical Academy (VMA – Vojnomedicinska akademija) located in Belgrade, which in the past was associated with the Yugoslavian CW program, maintained a Department of Biological Warfare Defense within the Institute for Epidemiology into the early 2000s. This department is no longer listed on the VMA website and may have been disbanded. ⁸ There are no indications of research into offensive BW applications.

Diseases endemic to the former Yugoslavia’s territory include anthrax, which produces sporadic outbreaks in herd animals; Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever concentrated in Kosovo; cholera; tularemia, which produced a small epidemic in the period 1998 to 2000; and typhus. ⁹ In August 1967 there was an outbreak of a hemorrhagic fever in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany. The causative agent was identified as an RNA filovirus and given the name Marburg. These cases were tracked to infected monkeys imported from Africa, and there were no subsequent cases. In March and April 1972, Yugoslavia successfully contained Europe’s last outbreak of smallpox. ¹⁰ Although it is conceivable that samples of these disease agents might have been retained by Yugoslavian medical authorities for future use by military programs engaged in defensive or offensive research there is no evidence pointing to such a development.

On the basis of available information it appears extremely unlikely that Yugoslavia or any of its successor states have pursued the development of an offensive biological warfare program. Neither the prolonged hostilities of the 1990s nor the removal of the Milosevic regime in 2000 produced any revelations in this area. As is the case with all countries capable of undertaking basic research into microorganisms and the production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines, there is a latent capability that would allow a biological weapons program to be initiated in the event that a political decision was made to do so.