By Sam Vaknin — Author of “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited“

   Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
The propensity to extrapolate from past events to future trends is especially unfortunate in the discipline of History. Thus, the existence hitherto of a thriving multicultural polity does not presage the preponderance of a functioning multiculturalism in its future.

On the very contrary: in an open, tolerant multicultural society, the traits, skills, and capacities of members of different collectives converge. This gives rise to a Narcissism of Small Differences http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismsmall.html: a hatred of the “nearly-we”, the resentment we harbor towards those who emulate us, adopt our values system, and imitate our traits and behavior patterns.

In heterogeneous societies, its components (religious communities; socio-economic classes; ethnic groups) strike implicit deals with each other. These deals adhere to an organizing or regulatory principle, the most common of which, at least since the late 19 century, is the State (most often, the Nation-State).

These implicit deals revolve around the allocation of resources, mainly of economic nature. They assume that the growth of the economy ought to be translated into individual prosperity, irrespective of the allegiance or affiliation of the individual.

There are two mechanisms that ensure such transmission of national wealth to the component-collectives and thence to the individuals they are comprised of:

(i) Allocative prosperity achieved through distributive justice http://samvak.tripod.com/justice.html (usually obtained via progressive taxation http://samvak.tripod.com/nm015.html and transfers). This depends on maintaining overall economic growth http://samvak.tripod.com/pp164.html. Only when the economy’s cake grows bigger can the poor and disenfranchised enjoy social mobility and join the middle-class.

(ii) Imported prosperity (export http://samvak.tripod.com/nm068.html proceeds, foreign direct investment http://samvak.tripod.com/foreigndirectinvestment-fdi.html (FDI), remittances, mercantilism, colonialism http://samvak.tripod.com/democracy.html ). In contemporary settings, these flows of foreign capital depend upon the country’s membership in various geopolitical and economic “clubs”.

When the political elite of the country fails to guarantee and engender individual prosperity either via economic growth (and, thus, allocative prosperity) or via imported prosperity, the organizing principle invariably comes under attack and very often mutates: empires disintegrate; uniform states go federated or confederated, etc. The process can be peaceful or fraught with conflict or bloodshed. It is commonly called: “history”.

TWO CASE STUDIES

The Case of the Balkans

I have a Roma (gypsy) cleaning lady. She cleans my house every fortnight. She is nice and well spoken. She values education and good manners. She is spotless, obsessively purgatory, 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 Volksdeutsch 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, an 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 which 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 a 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.

Minorities or Immigrants? The Kven and Sami Peoples of Norway

The phrase “minority rights” conjures abhorrent images of Palestinians tortured in Israeli prisons; Aegean Macedonians expelled from Greece or incarcerated on remote islands, there to perish; and Native-Americans confined to wasteland “reservations“, having been decimated for decades. But, the sad truth is that minorities are welcome nowhere and that every single nation harbors embarrassing skeletons in its historical closet.

Consider Norway, by far the least plausible candidate for the role of perpetrators of genocide, physical or cultural. This remote Scandinavian polity has repeatedly won every conceivable prize for upholding and cherishing human rights. Yet, it, too, has a dark chapter that ended only recently.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many Finns – destitute farmers and fishermen – emigrated from their homeland and from Sweden and settled in the inhospitable northern reaches of Norway. They joined the original inhabitants of that area, Finns known as Sami. The new arrivals came to be known as Kvener (in Norwegian), Kvenee (in their own Finnish dialect), or simply Kven, by everyone else.

Fully one quarter of the population in the north identified themselves as Kven in the census of 1875 – yet, it took their adopted country two centuries (and a parliamentary investigative committee) to recognize them a minority (in 1996) and to accept their right to use their language (in 2005) within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Yet, this may have been too little, too late. In the intervening period, the word “Kven” was used as a pejorative by the Kvens’ upstanding “ethnically pure” compatriots. Kven and Sami culture and languages were considered backward and inferior (with racist undertones). Across the border, in Sweden, Samis were compulsorily sterilized.

In Norway, the Kven and Sami were re-labeled “The Foreign Nations” (non-Nordic, of Mongol roots) and “The Original Immigrants” (a falsification of history, as the Norwegians were the immigrants, not the Sami).

The mandate of the “Finn Fund“, established in the 19th century by the National Assembly, called on it to “civilize” the Kven and the Sami. Even after World War II, as Norway sought to “modernize” itself, Kven and Sami civilizations were cast as outdated and primitive.

Consequently, many Kvens now claim counterfactually to be Norwegians (or merely Norwegian Finns) and consider the Kven language to be a dialect of Finnish.

Inevitably, in a nationalistic backlash, some Kven now insist that they are the aborigines of northern Europe and that once, in the 11th century, they ran an empire that covered most of northern Scandinavia. Groups of opportunistic Swedish Finns support these theories in an attempt to leverage the ILO 169 Convention about the Rights of Indigenous People and apply it to Sweden’s Kvens.

Be that as it may, the truth is that Norway had made it exceedingly difficult for Kvens (and other Finns, such as the Sami people) to obtain citizenship or maintain it and literally impossible to buy real estate – unless they agreed to change their names, give up their language and culture and, later, move away from sensitive border areas (they were considered pro-Russian, then pro-German and, therefore, a security risk). Additionally, lands in the public domain (in truth, owned by the Sami and Kven) were declared to be state property and confiscated without compensation.

This discriminatory policy was known as fornorskningspolitikken (Norwegianization).

Thus, for instance, well into the 1950s, it was forbidden to teach the Sami language in schools (with a few exceptions in the 1930s and 1940s). The very existence of the Sami nation (as a minority) was acknowledged only in 1989, after massive demonstrations in 1979 (ostensibly against the construction of an environmentally-disruptive dam, but actually to air Sami grievances).

Only in the 1990s were some of the wrongs righted: the Sami language was declared a “national treasure” (and a second official language in Norway), a Sami parliament was established, and lands appropriated by the state were returned to the Sami people.

The Kven are envious of the Samis’ achievements. Well into the 1990s, they were still being labeled “immigrants” (and not a minority) by the Norwegian state.

In 1987, they established The Norwegian Kven Organization. Its aims are both political and cultural: the ultimate compilation of a government report about the Kven population; liaising with the Norwegian media; to push for the establishment of a State Secretary for Kven issues; to further the knowledge of the Kven language, from the kindergarten level onwards, using the proceeds of a Kven culture fund and income from museums and culture centers. The Kven also demand bilingual signage and place names.

Yet, only after Norway ratified, in 1999, the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, did it reluctantly alter the Kvens’ status and accept that they are a “national minority“: a minority with a historical presence (longer than 100 years) in a given territory. Now, only Norway and Canada maintain a three-tiered hierarchy of “nations“: indigenous, minority, and immigrants.

Even so, Norway is light years ahead of countries such as Israel and Greece who completely deny the existence of their minorities. Israel has insisted until quite recently that the Palestinian “nation” is an invention and the Greeks refuse to accept the existence of Macedonians on Greek soil.
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Read More

•    The Narcissism of Differences Big and Small http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismsmall.html

•    A Dialog about Anti-Semitism http://samvak.tripod.com/jews.html

•    The Merits of Stereotypes http://samvak.tripod.com/stereotype.html

•    Herzl’s Butlers http://samvak.tripod.com/pp27.html

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By: Risto Karajkov
World Politics Review, 14 May 2009

SKOPJE, Macedonia — On May 1, the European Union celebrated the fifth anniversary of its “big bang,” the massive wave of enlargement in 2004 that saw it accept 10 new members — eight former communist countries from Eastern Europe, plus Malta and Cyprus. When Romania and Bulgaria joined two and a half years later, in 2007, the EU counted 27 member states, almost half a billion people and 30 percent of the world’s GDP.

In the years since, the EU’s enlargement policy has been considered an unequivocal success. It has brought jobs and growth to the new member states, and provided new markets for the old ones. It has spread stability and democracy, while creating an unprecedented area of free movement of people, capital, and ideas on the European mainland.

For the troubled Balkans, the EU enlargement policy has also been considered the principal instrument for maintaining stability and keeping the countries of the region on course for democratic reform. If these countries have made efforts to keep nationalists at bay, it has been in large part due to the endlessly repeated promise that one day, they, too, would join the club.

As recently as last November, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said that 2009 could potentially be a great year for the countries in the Western Balkans. Croatia was expected to complete negotiations, which meant formally joining the Union in 2010. Macedonia was supposed to get a date for the start of talks, advancing it to a higher level in the accession process. Serbia was to get candidate status, the level preceding the start of the negotiations phase.

Enter the global economic crisis. Five years after the “big bang,” the prospects for the enlargement process have never seemed gloomier, with some of the major EU member states expressing clear reservations about new accessions. In late March, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested “a consolidation phase” for enlargement, following Croatia’s formal accession. Similarly, France has been insisting that no new accessions take place until the Lisbon Treaty — the new EU constitution which should make decision-making in the Union more effective — has been ratified.

More concretely, Germany asked the European Commission (EC) — currently the EU executive — to delay its opinion on Montenegro’s membership application, which the government in Podgorica submitted in December 2008.

Meanwhile, Croatia whose accession seemed a foregone conclusion, has found itself blocked by neighboring Slovenia over a territorial dispute. (See Phil Cain’s WPR Briefing.) As an EU member state, Slovenia can exercise what amounts to a veto on new accessions. While neither the other EU member states nor the EC approve, there is little they can do outside of grumbling and trying to mediate the dispute. Croatia, which could have entered by next year, might now have to wait until 2012, and even that depends on resolving the dispute with Slovenia.

Most of the recent reservations regarding enlargement have to do with the economic crisis. As rich European countries shed jobs and their economies plunge, fears and animosity toward migrants — including workers from new member states — rise. That, in turn, puts pressure on politicians to respond to such fears, especially when elections are near, as they are in Germany, as well as in the European Union itself (the campaign for the EU parliament officially begins next month). Some experts explain recent German moves vis-à-vis enlargement in this light.

Fears and Animosity Toward Migrants, European Immigration, Migrants, Immigration, Economic Recession, Macedonia, Serbia, NATO, Serbs in Kosovo, Croats, Bosnia, Dayton Peace Deal,

That puts member states at odds with the EC, which has been tirelessly repeating to Western Balkan countries that progress on enlargement is entirely up to them, depending only on how well they do with reforms designed to harmonize national governance and policy with EU standards.

Voices have been raised against the anti-enlargement bandwagon. Enlargement Commissioner Rehn recently exhorted the European Parliament not to “make enlargement the scapegoat of economic recession.” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who in the past has played an active role in the Balkan crises, has also argued that the Western Balkan countries should “not be punished” in order to please the voters in some countries.

But given member states’ behavior, that now looks increasingly like empty talk.

Another casualty of the economic crisis may be the eagerly awaited visa liberalization that the Western Balkans, including Macedonia and Serbia, had been hoping would take place in 2009. With actual membership a distant prospect, the dropping of visas is the next best thing, and the Balkans has been desperate for it for quite some time. The EC is expected to recommend it over the next couple of months, after which the interior ministers of the EU member states could make a final decision towards the end of the year. But even on this count, the commission had to go against the will of some member states. Diplomatic activity is under way, and the final outcome is still not known.

The prospect of enlargement has played a stabilizing role in the Balkans, making its sudden removal a cause for concern. The timing is particularly unfavorable too. In Macedonia, nationalism is on the rise, in part due to obstacles to international integration, such as the Greek veto on entry to NATO last year. Serbs in Kosovo are increasingly anxious, Croats are increasingly embittered and Bosnia is, by many accounts, in the worst shape it has been in since the Dayton peace deal that ended the war in 1995.

The economic crisis threatens to push the Balkans into recession, but economies can rebound. And besides, poorly performing economies are business as usual in the region. Should the crisis also kill the region’s shiniest political hope, it could have a far deeper and more lasting impact.

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The European Commission (EC) annual reports on would-be members brought a mixture of hope and bitterness in the Balkans, after being published early last month. Brussels regularly assesses the progress of aspirant countries in meeting the conditions for membership and hands out the carrot or the stick accordingly. Countries are commended for progress and promoted in the process, or criticized for lack of reforms and passed for rewards.

Croatia had much to be content with this year. It got a clear sign it can complete the negotiations for membership by the end of 2009, which theoretically can make it an EU member by 2011. There was a last minute chill with the high profile assassination of a journalist, Ivo Pukanic, founder of weekly Nacional, in the capital Zagreb just days before the reports were published, but the damage was controlled after all.

Serbia was waved a big carrot, but it can only taste it next year if continues to behave. In the words of Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, Belgrade could get the status of a candidate country by end 2009, in a ‘best case scenario”. This year Serbia did very good. It arrested a war criminal-turned — spiritual healer, Radovan Karadzic; voted democrats as opposed to hard -core radicals, and essentially behaved when Kosovo declared independence.

It is Macedonia — EU candidate country since 2005 – who got a serious rebuke by the Commission. Brussels told her bluntly — and it rarely uses direct language – that it does not meet the political criteria for membership. Thus the country did not get the date for start of membership negotiations it hoped for. Skopje made a lot of progress in the economy lately, but failed miserably in the early elections in July. They were sham, marred by violence and irregularities. It may well be just the action of a few political scoundrels and not reflect the overall political culture (does it not really?), but political leaders should get it in their heads that this is just not acceptable.

Bosnia started the year well and made a step closer to the EU by signing a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with Brussels, but the car went downhill since. Rising nationalism has again been threatening to disrupt its fragile fabric. Senior statesmen have warned recently that Bosnia is at risk. The West needs to watch over. Speeding up its accession process could help, but that also needs firm political will in Brussels, not just reforms and progress on the part of the candidate. Such will is not visible at present.

Albania and newly founded Montenegro – declared independence in 2006- received moderate commendation for their efforts. Brussels said the implementation of their SAA’s went smoothly. The next step for them would be to obtain candidate status, but that carrot is not yet at reach.

Finally there is Kosovo, which is quite new to the race. It is too early to tell. Pristina only declared (a highly contested) independence earlier this year. It will take her some time.

It is often said every country runs the race alone. Alas, that’s way too simple. There is a dispute of how many runners there actually are in the case of Serbia and Kosovo, and the referee, who watches the finish line, is also not sure. They are bound to trip over.

Commissioner Rehn said recently that 2009 could be an important year for the Balkans, provided optimistic predictions come true. It would be about time. Croatia aside, all the others are in a race with a finish line nowhere in sight.

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By Risto Karajkov, Osservatorio sui Balcani, Rovereto, Italy, July 3, 2008

The Balkans is safer than thought. This is the basic message from a recently published report, “Crime and Its Impact on the Balkans,” by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The report, which was launched last week, made global headlines as some of its arguments run counter to common wisdom–that the Balkans is a gloomy and risky place.

With detailed, comprehensive statistics, the report concludes that the Balkans, contrary to widespread opinion, does not have a problem with conventional crime: “South East Europe does not, in fact, suffer from high rates of crime, at least in terms of the range of offences commonly referred to as ‘conventional crime’: murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, theft, and the like. In fact, most of the region is safer than West Europe in this respect.” The report notes, “This key fact is often omitted from discussions on crime in the region.”

The report focuses on the so-called Western Balkan countries (former Yugoslavia minus Slovenia plus Albania), Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova, but its comparisons include Central and Western European countries, and other parts of the world.

In 130 pages of in-depth analysis, the report gives a full account of all crime-related issues that concern the Balkans, from conventional to organized crime and corruption. It discusses both the socioeconomic and political preconditions of crime, and, in turn, the possible impact crime has on the region’s development.

The report first analyzes the social conditions in the Balkans and notes, “The social conditions in South East Europe are not the sort generally associated with high crime regions. In essence the Balkans does not represent a favourable environment for crime.” The report reaches these conclusions because of a set of factors that include the region’s demographic makeup–aging population, low fertility rates (with the exception of Kosovo), combined with strong outward migration, again mostly involving young people. The report considers the additional factors of income and education levels. Incomes are small but the number of people in abject poverty is limited. The region’s communist legacy has left a low, although now widening, income inequality, which is “regarded as the most robust quantitative correlate of crime rates.” Education levels are relatively high (by global standards).

After analyzing the standard indicators of conventional crime, such as murders and theft (especially auto theft), the report unequivocally concludes that the region is safer overall than Western Europe, “In terms of the standardized murder rates â?¦ most countries of the region fall at or below the European average. Moldova and Albania are exceptions, but even these two countries are safer than most of Eastern Europe.” For example, the West European average of murders per 100,000 people (2004 data) stands at 2.5, Macedonia at 2.3, Croatia at 1.8, Romania at 2.5, Bulgaria at 4.1, Albania at 5.7, and Moldova at 8.0. Russia has the worst statistics with an average of 19.9 murders per 100,000 people.

“Albania stands out as having a relatively high murder rate,” concedes the report, but “the number of murders committed in Albania in 2006 is only 5% of what it was after the collapse of government in 1997.”

In addition, the report notes the positive trend over the past decade of declining murder rates throughout the region: “Combining the data from Moldova, Albania, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Serbia, the number of murders in the region essentially halved between 1998 and 2006.”

In other forms of conventional crime, the report finds Western Europe “to have over twice the burglary, over four times as much assault, and 15 times as much robbery as South East Europe.” For example, in terms of vehicle thefts per 100,000 vehicles, the United Kingdom has the worst statistics with 1,330, Greece has 185, and Austria has 125, whereas Moldova has 184, Croatia has 166, Macedonia has 113, and Albania has 90. Bulgaria has the worst statistics in the region with 412 vehicle thefts per 100,000 vehicles, but the report notes Bulgaria’s declining trend.

With in-depth discussion and analysis for possible mistakes, the report concludes that these relatively positive numbers are not the result of government “adjustments” to look better before the international monitors: “The only conclusion that can be drawn is that South East Europe is one of the safer areas of the world, and that progress is being made in making the region even safer.”

The data on conventional crimes provides the good news; however, the report moves on to discuss the real issues in the region, and that is organized crime: “The issue that makes headlines in South East Europe is not conventional crime â?¦ but organized crime.” Here, the report notes two dimensions: “the role that groups from South East Europe have played in organized crime in West Europe” and “the impact that organized crime has had on the region itself.”

In the section on organized crime, the central issue is drug trafficking. A shorter section covers human trafficking and smuggling of migrants, but the report seems to consider these a much smaller threat, which is nevertheless declining.

The report provides details of the Balkans’ role as a major drug route from Asia to Western Europe: “The most valuable form of contraband crossing the region is heroin. South East Europe lies along the most convenient route (the so-called ‘Balkan route’) between the supplier of some 90% of the world’s heroin (Afghanistan) and its most lucrative consumer market (Western Europe). It is estimated that about 100 tons of heroin crosses South East Europe on its way to Western Europe, of which 85 tons eventually makes it to the consumer, a flow valued at US$25-30 billion. This is more than the GDPs of most of the countries of the region, and consequently this flow has great corrupting power.”

Although “the ‘Balkan route’ has been the continent’s primary heroin trafficking route for decades” the report notes, “the share of South East Europeans who consume opiates is half that of West Europe and one-sixth that of East Europe.” This, according to the authors, “suggests the flow has been conducted by highly organized groups determined to command the highest return for their product, rather than by a diffuse network of couriers who might ‘spill’ some of the heroin into their local communities.”

The report additionally notes that “the problem of South East Europe as a gateway for drugs to West Europe must be distinguished from the problem of South East Europeans dealing drugs in West European countries, although the two issues are obviously related.”

In discussing drug trafficking as the most serious form of organized crime concerning the Balkans, the report strongly emphasizes the role of “ethnic Albanians” in the drug trade: “Since the mid-1990s, ethnic Albanian traffickers have been said to control the trafficking of this commodity west into Europe. Past estimates suggested that ethnic Albanian traffickers controlled 70% or more of the heroin entering a number of key destination markets.” For example, the report notes, “About half the heroin seized by the Italian authorities in 2006 was taken from Albanian nationals.”

In trying to explain the “ethnic colour” of organized drug trafficking, the report uses numerous references from national sources in Western Europe, which have singled out Albanian ethnicity: “‘Ethnic Albanian Criminal Groups’ are the only national group discussed in the 2006 Europol publication ‘The Threat From Organized Crime.’”

The report suggests that “ethnic Albanian heroin trafficking is arguably the single most prominent organized crime problem in Europe today.”

Corruption, which is a major issue in the Balkans, is not a focus of the report, but it does observe that “while conventional crime levels are low and organised crime appears to be in decline, [the] one area of criminal activity that is especially problematic in the Balkans [is] corruption and economic crime.”

The report refers to studies from Transparency International to illustrate the scope of corruption in the region: “Large shares of the population continue to report paying bribes. Albania had the highest rate of annual bribe paying (66%) of the 57 countries polled in the 2006 TI Global Corruption Barometer, and the South East European average was 4.5 times as high as the West European average.”

By offering detailed statistics and a realistic approach in analyzing the Balkan crime problem, the report is timely and relevant. It disproves some previous partial or incomplete research and statistics, which feed the stereotype that the Balkans is simply dangerous. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the state of crime in the region. The problem is organized crime and corruption. Conventional crime, although much higher than before the beginning of transition, is still low.

From Osservatorio sui Balcani.

I. Introduction

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo became a new state by seceding from Serbia. It was the second time in less than a decade that Kosovo declared its independence.

Pundits warned against this precedent-setting event and foresaw a disintegration of sovereign states from Belgium to Macedonia, whose restive western part is populated by Albanians. In 2001, Macedonia faced the prospect of a civil war. It capitulated and signed the Ohrid Framework Agreement.

Yet, the truth is that there is nothing new about Kosovo’s independence. Macedonians need not worry, it would seem. While, under international law, Albanians in its western parts can claim to be insurgents (as they have done in 2001 and, possibly, twice before), they cannot aspire to be a National Liberation Movement and, if they secede, they are very unlikely to be recognized.

To start with, there are considerable and substantive differences between Kosovo’s KLA and its counterpart, Macedonia’s NLA. Yugoslavia regarded the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK, in its Albanian acronym) as a terrorist organization. Not so the rest of the world. It was widely held to be a national liberation movement, or, at the very least, a group of insurgents.

Between 1996-9, the KLA maintained a hierarchical operational structure that wielded control and authority over the Albanians in large swathes of Kosovo. Consequently, it acquired some standing as an international subject under international law.

Thus, what started off as a series of internal skirmishes and clashes in 1993-5 was upgraded in 1999 into an international conflict, with both parties entitled to all the rights and obligations of ius in bello (the law of war).

II. Insurgents in International Law

Traditionally, the international community has been reluctant to treat civil strife the same way it does international armed conflict. No one thinks that encouraging an endless succession of tribal or ethnic secessions is a good idea. In their home territories, insurgents are initially invariably labeled as and treated by the “lawful” government as criminals or terrorists.

Paradoxically, though, the longer and more all-pervasive the conflict and the tighter the control of the rebels on people residing in the territories in which the insurgents habitually operate, the better their chances to acquire some international recognition and standing.

Thus, international law actually eggs on rebels to prolong and escalate conflicts rather than resolve them peacefully.

By definition, insurgents are temporary, transient, or provisional international subjects. As Antonio Cassese puts it (in his tome, “International Law”, published by Oxford University Press in 2001):

“…(I)nsurgents are quelled by the government, and disappear; or they seize power, and install themselves in the place of the government; or they secede and join another State, or become a new international subject.”

In other words, being an intermediate phenomenon, rebels can never claim sovereign rights over territory. Sovereign states can contract with insurrectionary parties and demand that they afford protection and succor to foreigners within the territories affected by their activities. However, this is not a symmetrical relationship. The rebellious party cannot make any reciprocal demands on states. Still, once entered into, agreements can be enforced, using all lawful sanctions

Third party states are allowed to provide assistance – even of a military nature – to governments, but not to insurgents (with the exception of humanitarian aid). Not so when it comes to national liberation movements.

III. National Liberation Movements in International Law

According to the First Geneva Protocol of 1977 and subsequent conventions, what is the difference between a group of “freedom fighters” and a national liberation movement?

A National Liberation Movement represents a collective – nation, or people – in its fight to liberate itself from foreign or colonial domination or from an inequitable (for example: racist) regime.

National Liberation Movements maintain an organizational structure although they may or may not be in control of a territory (many operate in exile) but they must aspire to gain domination of the land and the oppressed population thereon.

They uphold the principle of self-determination and are, thus, instantaneously deemed to be internationally legitimate.

Though less important from the point of view of international law, the instant recognition by other States that follows the establishment of a National Liberation Movement has enormous practical consequences: States are allowed to extend help, including economic and military assistance (short of armed troops) and are “duty-bound to refrain from assisting a State denying self-determination to a people or a group entitled to it” (Cassesse).

As opposed to mere insurgents, National Liberation Movements can claim and assume the right to self-determination; the rights and obligations of ius in bello (the legal principles pertaining to the conduct of hostilities); the rights and obligations pertaining to treaty making; diplomatic immunity.

Yet, even National Liberation Movements are not allowed to act as sovereigns. For instance, they cannot dispose of land or natural resources within the disputed territory. In this case, though, the “lawful” government or colonial power are similarly barred from such dispositions.

IV. Internal Armed Conflict in International Law

Rebels and insurgents are not lawful combatants (or belligerents). Rather, they are held to be simple criminals by their own State and by the majority of other States. They do not enjoy the status of prisoner of war when captured. Ironically, only the lawful government can upgrade the status of the insurrectionists from bandits to lawful combatants (“recognition of belligerency”).

How the government chooses to fight rebels and insurgents is, therefore, not regulated. As long as it refrains from intentionally harming civilians, it can do very much as it pleases.

But international law is in flux and, increasingly, civil strife is being “internationalized” and treated as a run-of-the-mill bilateral or even multilateral armed conflict. The doctrine of “human rights intervention” on behalf of an oppressed people has gained traction. Hence Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999.

Moreover, if a civil war expands and engulfs third party States and if the insurgents are well-organized, both as an armed force and as a civilian administration of the territory being fought over, it is today commonly accepted that the conflict should be regarded and treated as international.

As the Second Geneva Protocol of 1977 makes crystal clear, mere uprisings or riots (such as in Macedonia, 2001) are still not covered by the international rules of war, except for the general principles related to non-combatants and their protection (for instance, through Article 3 of the four 1949 Geneva Conventions) and customary law proscribing the use of chemical weapons, land and anti-personnel mines, booby traps, and such.

Both parties – the State and the insurrectionary group – are bound by these few rules. If they violate them, they may be committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

V. Secession in International Law

The new state of Kosovo has been immediately recognized by the USA, Germany, and other major European powers. The Canadian Supreme Court made clear in its ruling in the Quebec case in 1998 that the status of statehood is not conditioned upon such recognition, but that (p. 289):

“…(T)he viability of a would-be state in the international community depends, as a practical matter, upon recognition by other states.”

The constitutional law of some federal states provides for a mechanism of orderly secession. The constitutions of both the late USSR and SFRY (Yugoslavia, 1974) incorporated such provisions. In other cases – the USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom come to mind – the supreme echelons of the judicial system had to step in and rule regarding the right to secession, its procedures, and mechanisms.

Again, facts on the ground determine international legitimacy. As early as 1877, in the wake of the bloodiest secessionist war of all time, the American Civil War (1861-5), the Supreme Court of the USA wrote (in William vs. Bruffy):

“The validity of (the secessionists’) acts, both against the parent State and its citizens and subjects, depends entirely upon its ultimate success. If it fail (sic) to establish itself permanently, all such acts perish with it. If it succeed (sic), and become recognized, its acts from the commencement of its existence are upheld as those of an independent nation.”

In “The Creation of States in International Law” (Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 2006), James Crawford suggests that there is no internationally recognized right to secede and that secession is a “legally neutral act”. Not so. As Aleksandar Pavkovic observes in his book (with contributions by Peter Radan), “Creating New States – Theory and Practice of Secession” (Ashgate, 2007), the universal legal right to self-determination encompasses the universal legal right to secede.

The Albanians in Kosovo are a “people” according to the Decisions of the Badinter Commission. But, though, they occupy a well-defined and demarcated territory, their land is within the borders of an existing State. In this strict sense, their unilateral secession does set a precedent: it goes against the territorial definition of a people as embedded in the United Nations Charter and subsequent Conventions.

Still, the general drift of international law (for instance, as interpreted by Canada’s Supreme Court) is to allow that a State can be composed of several “peoples” and that its cultural-ethnic constituents have a right to self-determination. This seems to uphold the 19th century concept of a homogenous nation-state over the French model (of a civil State of all its citizens, regardless of ethnicity or religious creed).

Pavkovic contends that, according to principle 5 of the United Nations’ General Assembly’s Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance With the Charter of the United Nations, the right to territorial integrity overrides the right to self-determination.

Thus, if a State is made up of several “peoples”, its right to maintain itself intact and to avoid being dismembered or impaired is paramount and prevails over the right of its constituent peoples to secede. But, the right to territorial integrity is limited to States:

“(C)onducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples … and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed, or colour.”

The words “as to race, creed, or colour” in the text supra have been replaced with the words “of any kind” (in the 1995 Declaration on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations).

Yugoslavia under Milosevic failed this test in its treatment of the Albanian minority within its borders. They were relegated to second-class citizenship, derided, blatantly and discriminated against in every turn. Thus, according to principle 5, the Kosovars had a clear right to unilaterally secede.

As early as 1972, an International Commission of Jurists wrote in a report titled “The Events in East Pakistan, 1971″:

“(T)his principle (of territorial integrity) is subject to the requirement that the government does comply with the principle of equal rights and does represent the whole people without distinction. If one of the constituent peoples of a state is denied equal rights and is discriminated against … their full right of self-determination will revive.” (p. 46)

A quarter of a century later, Canada’s Supreme Court concurred (Quebec, 998): “(T)he international law right to self-determination only generates, at best, a right to external self-determination in situations … where a definable group is denied meaningful access to government to pursue their political, economic, social, and cultural development.”

In his seminal tome, “Self-Determination of Peoples: A Legal Appraisal” (Cambridge University Press, 19950, Antonio Cassese neatly sums up this exception to the right to territorial integrity enjoyed by
States:

“(W)hen the central authorities of a sovereign State persistently refuse to grant participatory rights to a religious or racial group, grossly and systematically trample upon their fundamental rights, and deny the possibility of reaching a peaceful settlement within the framework of the State structure … A racial or religious group may secede … once it is clear that all attempts to achieve internal self-determination have failed or are destined to fail.” (p. 119-120)

VI. The Cases of Kosovo and Western Macedonia

In former Yugoslavia (SFRY), Kosovo was an autonomous province within the Socialist Republic of Serbia. The Albanians in Yugoslavia were not recognized as a “people” (narod), merely as a “nationality” (narodnost).

In January 1990, the Constitutional Court of SFRY ruled illegal a unilateral secession from the Yugoslav Federation. The right to secede belonged to “the peoples of Yugoslavia and their socialist republics (and autonomous provinces)”. Kosovo was an autonomous province, but the Albanians were not a “people”. Indeed, in a later decision, dealing specifically with Kosovo’s first declaration of independence, the Constitutional Court
spoke:

“(O)nly peoples of Yugoslavia had the right of self-determination.”

Western Macedonia has always been an integral part of the Republic of Macedonia within the SFRY. It had never acquired the status of an autonomous province, let alone a Republic. Albanians in Macedonia are a minority. They are well-represented in government and law enforcement and have equal access to education and the institutions of the State. Their rights are guaranteed by multiple constitutional, legal, and international instruments. They have no leg to stand on if they choose to unilaterally secede from Macedonia (for instance, in order to join Kosovo).

The Albanians of western Macedonia may, however, successfully secede from Macedonia within the framework of a realignment of borders between Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, and, perhaps, Greece, and Bulgaria. While Macedonia is extremely unlikely to welcome such a move, it may be coerced into acquiescence by the international community. Macedonia was strong-armed into the Ohrid Framework Agreement in 2001. There is no guarantee that this scenario will not repeat itself.

Macedonia should urgently adopt steps to change the demographic composition of its western territories. This is not without precedent. Israel has done the same in its northern territory (the Galilee), Poland with its Ukrainian Borderlands, Germany in its east, the USA in its “wild” West.

Macedonia should offer economic incentives to anyone willing to relocate from the rest of its territory to its west: jobs, free land and agricultural inputs, subsidized credits, housing, infrastructure, and educational opportunities. The government should move many of its ministries, agencies, and facilities from Skopje to western Macedonia.

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