fortnight. She is nice and well spoken. She values education and good
manners. She is spotless, obsessively purgatory, and compulsively tidy.
And she hates "shiptars" (the derogatory name assigned to Macedonian
Albanians). They are dirty, she says, and criminal and they have too
many children. They don't respect their women. She is afraid of them.
Her eyes glow with the gratification of the underdog turned top dog, if
only verbally, if only for a while, if only while cleansing my house.
This is the way it is, a chain of abuse, a torrent of prejudice, an
iron curtain of malice and stereotyping. Czechs portray "their" gypsies
with the same lingual brushstrokes, the same venomous palette, a
canvass of derision and atavistic, reflexive hatred.
In the Balkans reigns supreme the Law of the MinMaj. It is simple and
it was invariably manifested throughout history. It is this: "Wars
erupt whenever and wherever a country has a minority of the same
ethnicity as the majority in its neighbouring country."
Consider Israel - surrounded by Arab countries, it has an Arab minority
of its own, having expelled (ethnically cleansed) hundreds of thousands
more. It has fought 6 wars with its neighbours and (good intentions
notwithstanding) looks set to fight more. It is subjugated to the Law
of the MinMaj, enslaved by its steady and nefarious domination.
Or take Nazi Germany. World War Two was the ultimate manifestation of
the MinMaj Law. German minorities throughout Europe were either used by
Germany - or actively collaborated with it - to justify one Anschluss
after another. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Russia - a
parade of Big Brotherly intervention by Germany on behalf of allegedly
suppressed kinfolk. Lebensraum and Volkdeutsch were twin pillars of
Nazi ideology.
And, of course, there is Yugoslavia, its charred remnants agonizingly
writhing in a post Kosovo world. Serbia fought Croatia and Bosnia and
Kosovo to protect besieged and hysterical local Serbs. Croats fought
Serbs and Bosnians to defend dilapidated Croat settlements. Albanians
fought the Serbs through the good services of Kosovars in order to
protect Kosovars. And the fighting is still on. This dismembered
organism, once a flourishing country, dazed and scorched, still
attempts to blindly strike its former members, inebriated by its own
blood. Such is the power of the MinMaj.
There are three ways out from the blind alley to which the MinMaj Rule
inevitably and invariably leads its adherents. One exit is through
ethnic cleansing, the other via self-determination, the third is in
establishing a community, a majority of minorities.
Ethnic cleansing is the safest route. It is final, irreversible, just,
fast, easy to carry out and preventive as much as curative. It need not
be strewn with mass graves and smouldering villages. It can be done
peacefully, by consent or with the use of minimal force. It can be part
of a unilateral transfer or of a bilateral exchange of population.
There are many precedents - Germans in the Ukraine and in
Czechoslovakia, Turks in Bulgaria, Jews in the Arab countries. None of
them left willingly or voluntarily. All were the victims of
pathological nostalgia, deep, disconsolate grieving and the
post-traumatic shock of being uprooted and objectified. But they
emigrated, throngs of millions of people, planeloads, trainloads,
cartloads and carloads of them and they reached their destinations
alive and able to start all over again - which is more than can be said
about thousands of Kosovar Albanians. Ethnic cleansing has many faces,
brutality is not its integrated feature.
The Wilsonian ideal of self-determination is rarely feasible or
possible - though, when it is, it is far superior to any other
resolution of intractable ethnic conflicts. It does tend to produce
political and economic stillborns, though. Ultimately, these offspring
of noble principle merge again with their erstwhile foes within customs
unions, free trade agreements, currency unions. They are subsumed in
other economic, political, or military alliances and gladly surrender
part of that elusive golden braid, their sovereignty. Thus, becoming an
independent political entity is, to most, a rite of passage,
adolescence, heralding the onset of political adulthood and
geopolitical and economic maturity.
The USA and, to a lesser degree, the UK, France and Germany are fine
examples of the third way. A majority of minorities united by common
rules, beliefs and aspirations. Those are tension filled structures
sustained by greed or vision or fear or hope and sometimes by the very
tensions that they generate. No longer utopian, it is a realistic model
to emulate.
It is only when ethnic cleansing is combined with self-determination
that a fracturing of the solutions occurs. Atrocities are the vile
daughters of ideals. Armed with stereotypes - those narcissistic
defence mechanisms that endow their propagators with a fleeting sense
of superiority - an ethnic group defines itself negatively, in
opposition to another. Self-determination is employed to facilitate
ethnic cleansing rather than to prevent it. Actually, it is the very
act of ethnic cleansing which validates the common identity, which
forms the myth and the ethos that is national history, which
perpetrates itself by conferring resilience upon the newly determined
and by offering a common cause and the means to feel efficient,
functional and victorious in carrying it out.
There are many variants of this malignant, brutal, condemnable,
criminal and inefficient form of ethnic cleansing. Bred by manic and
hysterical nationalists, fed by demagogues, nourished by the hitherto
deprived and humiliated - this cancerous mix of definition by negation
wears many guises. It is often clad in legal attire. Israel has a Law
of Return, which makes an instant citizen out of every spouse of every
Russian Jew while denying this privilege to Arabs born on its soil.
South Africa had apartheid. Nazi Germany had the Nuremberg Laws. The
Czech Republic had the infamous Benes Decrees. But ethnic cleansing can
be economic (ask the Chinese in Asia and the Indians in Africa). It can
be physical (Croatia, Kosovo). It has myriad facets.
The West is to blame for this confusion. By offering all three
solutions as mutually inclusive rather than mutually exclusive - it has
been responsible for a lot of strife and misery. But, to its credit, it
has learned its lesson. In Kosovo it defended the right of the indigent
and (not so indigent but) resident Albanians to live in peace and
plough their land in peace and bring forth children in peace and die in
peace. But it has not protected their right to self-determination. It
has not mixed the signals. As a result the message came through loud
and clear. And, for the first time in many years, people tuned in and
listened. And this, by far, is the most important achievement of
Operation Allied Force.
(Article written on July 4, 1999 and published July 12, 1999
in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issue 3)
Return
The Balkans between Omerta and Vendetta
On the Criminality of Transition
In a State Department briefing on Thursday, August 5th, 1999, the
spokesman of this venerable and ever-so-truthful organ of the American
administration, James Rubin, said:
"We have supported and continue to support the regime in Montenegro
that is a democratic regime that has pursued a democratic course. We do
believe that Milosevic's efforts to consolidate power have led to
repeated violations of the Yugoslav federal constitution, in particular
the rights and privileges of Montenegro.
In particular, Belgrade has sought to strip Montenegro's constitutional
rights and powers and has prevented Montenegro from playing its
constitutional role in the federal government. We continue to believe
that Montenegro's leaders have demonstrated a measured and rational
approach to political and economic reform, which we support. We commend
their efforts to work within the FRY for reforms that would bring
democracy and a better life to all Yugoslav citizens.
To achieve that objective, we've been providing them assistance, we've
been exempting them from the effect of certain policies that apply to
Belgrade and the people of Serbia. We worked very, very hard during the
war to avoid any unnecessary damage to facilities or people in
Montenegro as a result of the air war. So we have been showing, I
think, great efforts to try to build up the democratic efforts that
President Djukanovic has shown in Montenegro. We think that they should
continue to work within Yugoslavia to ensure their rights are
protected."
The war in Kosovo and the impending war in Montenegro and the wars that
were in Croatia and Bosnia - were all gangland warfare. These were
skirmishes between gangs of criminals, disguised as statesmen,
politicians, members of "parliaments" and businessmen. Some of them
were protecting their turf - others were trying to usurp it and they
all made a killing, often literally. It is the same the world over -
from Lebanon to Myanmar, from Sierra Leone to Nigeria and from Sarajevo
and its ephemeral Stability Pact to the killing fields of Pristina.
Crime gangs, Mafiosi, local versions of omertas and vendettas, black
hands and red rivulets of the cheapest liquid of them all: blood.
Shadowy dealings, drug trafficking, white slavery, smuggling and
forfeit goods are all intertwined with political power in the Balkans.
Thaci we discussed elsewhere. Milosevic we discussed everywhere. But
Djukanovic is portrayed as different - more gentlemanly, "democratic",
a protector of civil rights.
Nothing can be further from the truth. The West - notably the USA - is
in the habit of creating pairs of villains and heroes, monsters and
saints where there are none. It provides for good soundbites, it raises
the fighting spirits at home and it focuses attention and energy on the
enemy. Very often, the spin-doctors are caught in their own whirlwind
and with them - if they happen to be American - the rest of the world.
Shrewd villagers such as all Balkan politicians are, have caught on to
this self-delusion. They pose as democrats, autocrats, strong men,
underdogs - anything to get Western aid and investment flowing. It is
currently very fashionable and expedient to be a democrat - so Mr.
Djukanovic is a democrat. And the West duly delivers the goods:
international recognition, money, and political support.
Milka Tadic is the Editor of the popular (and, as you will see,
independent) Montenegrin magazine "Monitor". This week, she wrote about
Djukanovich (in "Currency Wars", in IWPR number 63):
"Whenever Djukanovic, then Montenegro's Prime Minister, demanded
economic liberalization and more economic independence, Milosevic would
close the border and block trade between Serbia and Montenegro. In
retaliation, Djukanovic opened Montenegro's borders with Italy, to
cigarette smuggling, and with Albania, for oil imports. Djukanovic also
liberalized the import of foreign, second-hand cars - many of them
stolen vehicles from Western Europe that Montenegrins bought from the
Bosnian-Croat mafia, in border towns in Bosnia. Taxes from imported
cars, the smuggling of cigarettes and oil, provided Djukanovic with the
hard currency to replenish the republic's coffers and begin to chart an
independent course away from Belgrade. In economic terms, this tiny
republic was becoming less and less dependent on its partner in the
Yugoslav federation. ... As NATO launched its bombing campaign, the
Yugoslav Army took over control of the Montenegrin border crossings and
custom posts, banning even the entrance of humanitarian aid; speed
boats smuggling cigarettes between Montenegro and Italy could no longer
break the blockade; and the border with Albania was also closed.
Djukanovic was facing economic disaster and was only saved by the end
of the war, since when Montenegro has resumed its dubious trade with
its neighbours."
Hence the love affair with the West.
Human vice is the most certain thing after death and taxes, to
paraphrase Benjamin Franklin. The only variety of economic activity,
which will surely survive even a nuclear holocaust, is bound to be
crime. Prostitution, gambling, drugs and, in general, expressly illegal
activities generate c. 400 billion USD annually to their perpetrators,
thus making crime the third biggest industry on Earth (after the
medical and pharmaceutical industries).
Many of the so-called Economies in Transition and of HPICs (Highly
Indebted Poor Countries) do resemble post-nuclear-holocaust ashes. GDPs
in most of these economies either tumbled nominally or in real terms by
more than 60% in the space of less than a decade. The average monthly
salary is the equivalent of the average daily salary of the German
industrial worker. The GDP per capita - with very few notable
exceptions - is around 20% of the EU's average. These are the telltale
overt signs of a comprehensive collapse of the infrastructure and of
the export and internal markets. Mountains of internal debt, sky-high
interest rates, cronyism, other forms of corruption, environmental,
urban and rural dilapidation - characterize these economies.
Into this vacuum - the interregnum between centrally planned and free
market economies - crept crime. In most of these countries criminals
run at least half the economy, are part of the governing elites
(influencing them behind the scenes through money contributions,
outright bribes, or blackmail) and - through the mechanism of money
laundering - infiltrate slowly the legitimate economy.
What gives crime the edge, the competitive advantage versus the older,
ostensibly better established elites?
The free market does. Criminals are much better equipped to deal with
the onslaught of this new conceptual beast, the mechanism of the
market, than most other economic players in these tattered economies
are.
Criminals, by the very nature of their vocation, were always private
entrepreneurs. They were never state owned or subjected to any kind of
central planning. Thus, they became the only group in society that was
not corrupted by these un-natural inventions. They invested their own
capital in small to medium size enterprises and ran them later as any
American manager would have done. To a large extent the criminals,
single handedly, created a private sector in these derelict economies.
Having established a private sector business, devoid of any involvement
of the state, the criminal-entrepreneurs proceeded to study the market.
Through primitive forms of market research (neighbourhood activists)
they were able to identify the needs of their prospective customers, to
monitor them in real time and to respond with agility to changes in the
patterns of supply and demand. Criminals are market-animals and they
are geared to respond to its gyrations and vicissitudes. Though they
were not likely to engage in conventional marketing and advertising,
they always stayed attuned to the market's vibrations and signals. They
changed their product mix and their pricing to fit fluctuations in
demand and supply.
Criminals have proven to be good organizers and managers. They have
very effective ways of enforcing discipline in the workplace, of
setting revenue targets, of maintaining a flexible hierarchy combined
with rigid obeisance - with very high upward mobility and a clear
career path. A complex system of incentives and disincentives drives
the workforce to dedication and industriousness. The criminal rings are
well run conglomerates and the more classic industries would have done
well to study their modes of organization and management. Everything -
from sales through territorially exclusive licences (franchises) to
effective "stock" options - has been invented in the international
crime organizations long before it acquired the respectability of the
corporate boardroom.
The criminal world has replicated those parts of the state, which were
rendered ineffective by unrealistic ideology or by pure corruption. The
court system makes a fine example. The criminals instituted their own
code of justice ("law") and their own court system. A unique - and
often irreversible - enforcement arm sees to it that respect towards
these indispensable institutions is maintained. Effective - often
interactive - legislation, an efficient court system, backed by ominous
and ruthless agents of enforcement - ensure the friction-free
functioning of the giant wheels of crime. Crime has replicated numerous
other state institutions. Small wonder that when the state
disintegrated - crime was able to replace it with little difficulty.
The same pattern is discernible in certain parts of the world where
terrorist organizations duplicate the state and overtake it, in time.
Schools, clinics, legal assistance, family support, taxation, the court
system, transportation and telecommunication services, banking and
industry - all have a criminal doppelganger.
To secure this remarkable achievement - the underworld had to procure
and then maintain - infrastructure and technologies. Indeed, criminals
are great at innovating and even more formidable at making use of
cutting edge technologies. There is not a single technological advance,
invention or discovery that criminals were not the first to utilize or
the first to contemplate and to grasp its full potential. There are
enormous industries of services rendered to the criminal in his
pursuits. Accountants and lawyers, forgers and cross border guides,
weapons experts and bankers, mechanics and hit-men - all stand at the
disposal of the average criminal. The choice is great and prices are
always negotiable. These auxiliary professionals are no different to
their legitimate counterparts, despite the difference in subject
matter. A body of expertise, know-how and acumen has accumulated over
centuries of crime and is handed down the generations in the criminal
universities known as jailhouses and penitentiaries. Roads less
travelled, countries more lenient, passports to be bought, sold, or
forged, how to manuals, classified ads, goods and services on offer and
demand - all feature in this mass media cum educational (mostly verbal)
bulletins. This is the real infrastructure of crime. As with more
mundane occupations, human capital is what counts.
Criminal activities are hugely profitable (though wealth accumulation
and capital distribution are grossly non-egalitarian). Money is stashed
away in banking havens and in more regular banks and financial
institutions all over the globe. Electronic Document Interchange and
electronic commerce transformed what used to be an inconveniently slow
and painfully transparent process - into a speed-of-light here-I-am,
here-I-am-gone type of operation. Money is easily movable and virtually
untraceable. Special experts take care of that: tax havens, off shore
banks, money transactions couriers with the right education and a free
spirit. This money, in due time and having cooled off - is reinvested
in legitimate activities. Crime is a major engine of economic growth in
some countries (where drugs are grown or traded, or in countries such
as Italy, in Russia and elsewhere in CEE). In many a place, criminals
are the only ones who have any liquidity at all. The other, more
visible, sectors of the economy are wallowing in the financial drought
of a demonetised economy. People and governments tend to lose both
their scruples and their sense of fine distinctions under these unhappy
circumstances. They welcome any kind of money to ensure their very
survival. This is where crime comes in. In Central and Eastern Europe
the process was code-named: "privatisation".
Moreover, most of the poor economies are also closed economies. They
are the economies of nations xenophobic, closed to the outside world,
with currency regulations, limitations on foreign ownership,
constrained (instead of free) trade. The vast majority of the populace
of these economic wretches has never been further than the neighbouring
city - let alone outside the borders of their countries. Freedom of
movement is still restricted. The only ones to have travelled freely -
mostly without the required travel documents - were the criminals.
Crime is international. It involves massive, intricate and
sophisticated operations of export and import, knowledge of languages,
extensive and frequent trips, an intimate acquaintance with world
prices, the international financial system, demand and supply in
various markets, frequent business negotiations with foreigners and so
on. This list would fit any modern businessman as well. Criminals are
international businessmen. Their connections abroad coupled with their
connections with the various elites inside their country and coupled
with their financial prowess - made them the first and only true
businessmen of the economies in transition. There simply was no one
else qualified to fulfil this role - and the criminals stepped in
willingly.
They planned and timed their moves as they always do: with shrewdness,
an uncanny knowledge of human psychology and relentless cruelty. There
was no one to oppose them - and so they won the day. It will take one
or more generations to get rid of them and to replace them by a more
civilized breed of entrepreneurs. But it will not happen overnight.
In the 19th century, the then expanding USA went through the same
process. Robber barons seized economic opportunities in the Wild East
and in the Wild West and really everywhere else. Morgan, Rockefeller,
Pullman, Vanderbilt - the most ennobled families of latter day America
originated with these rascals. But there is one important difference
between the USA at that time and Central and Eastern Europe today. A
civic culture with civic values and an aspiration to, ultimately,
create a civic society permeated the popular as well as the highbrow
culture of America. Criminality was regarded as a shameful
stepping-stone on the way to an orderly society of learned, civilized,
law-abiding citizens. This cannot be said about Russia, for instance.
The criminal there is, if anything, admired and emulated. The language
of business in countries in transition is suffused with the criminal
parlance of violence. The next generation is encouraged to behave
similarly because no clear (not to mention well embedded) alternative
is propounded. There is no - and never was - a civic tradition in these
countries, a Bill of Rights, a veritable Constitution, a modicum of
self rule, a true abolition of classes and nomenclatures. The future is
grim because the past was grim. Used to being governed by capricious,
paranoiac, criminal tyrants - these nations know no better. The current
criminal class seems to them to be a natural continuation and extension
of generations-long trends. That some criminals are members of the new
political, financial and industrial elites (and vice versa) - surprises
them not.
(Article written on August 11, 1999 and published August 23, 1999
in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issue 9)
Return
The Myth of Great Albania
Introduction
To the politicians of the Balkans - almost without exception corrupt
and despised by their own constituencies - the myth of Great Albania
comes handy. It keeps the phobic Macedonians, the disdainful Serbs and
the poor and crime ridden Albanians united and submissive - each group
for differing reasons.
To reiterate, it is the belief that people of Albanian extract,
wherever they may be, regard their domicile as part of a Great Albania
and undertake all efforts necessary to secure such an outcome. Thus, to
mention one example, Kosovo should be part of this Great Albania, so
the myth goes, because prior to 1912, when the Serbs occupied it,
Kosovo has administratively been part of an Ottoman mandated Albania.
Sali Berisha - a former Prime Minister of Albania - talks ominously
about an "Albanian Federation". The younger, allegedly more urbane
Pandeli Majko, the current Prime Minister of Albania, raises the idea
(?) of a uniform curriculum for all Albanian pupils and students,
wherever they may reside. Albanians in Macedonia make it a point to fly
Albanian flags conspicuously and of every occasion. This could have
well been a plausible scenario had it not been for two facts. First
that there is no such thing as homogeneous "Albanians" and second that
Great Albania is without historical precedent.