BBC: Close your eyes and try to imagine the scenes of jubilation across Africa if a team from the continent were to win the 2010 World Cup.

A celebration like no other, one billion people reveling in one of the greatest sporting and cultural achievements.

For the first time in its 80-year history, football’s blue riband competition is coming to the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped land.

How better to mark the occasion than with a first African champion?

“Winning the World Cup would be one of the proudest moments in the history of that country and our continent as a whole,” former South Africa striker Shaun Bartlett told BBC Sport.

“Every African nation has its internal problems but football can do wonders for people and nations, which is a huge incentive.”

Nobody is saying it is going to happen but the groundswell of opinion suggests South Africa 2010 is the best opportunity yet. [ READ MORE ]

The Genius of Pele

The 2010 Draw:

Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France

Group B: Argentina, Nigeria, Korea Republic, Greece

Group C: England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia

Group D: Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana

Group E: Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon

Group F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia

Group G: Brazil, Korea DPR, Côte d’Ivoire, Portugal

Group H: Spain, Switzerland, Honduras, Chile

[ READ MORE ]

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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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   Courtesy: George Danby

   Courtesy: Bok-Bluster

   Courtesy: Gado [ENLARGE]

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.