Directorate for State Security (Yugoslavia)

The State Security Service, also known by its original name as the Directorate for State Security, was the secret police organization of Communist Yugoslavia. It was at all times best known by the acronym UDBA, which is derived from the organization's original name in the Serbo-Croatian language: "Uprava državne bezbednosti" ("Directorate for State Security"). The acronyms SDB (Serbian) or SDS (Croatian) were used officially after the organization was renamed into "State Security Service". In its latter decades it was composed of eight semi-independent secret police organizations—one for each of the six Yugoslav federal republics and two for the autonomous provinces—coordinated by the central federal headquarters in the capital of Belgrade. Although it operated with more restraint than secret police agencies in the communist states of Eastern Europe, the UDBA was a feared tool of control. It is alleged that the UDBA was responsible for the "eliminations" of dozens of enemies of the state within Yugoslavia and internationally (estimates about 200 assassinations and kidnappings). Eliminations vary from those of World War II Ustaše Croat leaders Vjekoslav Luburić in Spain, to Croatian emigrant writer Bruno Bušić and Bosnian emigrant writer Dragiša Kašiković, although war criminals have to be distinguished from those assassinated only for dissent or political reasons. With the breakup of Yugoslavia, the breakaway republics went on to form their own secret police agencies, while the Serbian State Security Directorate kept its UDBA-like name.