The Balkans : A (compound) fracture

Alexis Gilles Et Troude

Description

BALKANS: THE FRACTURE
THE EUROPEAN BASIS FOR DJIHAD

Seventeen years after NATO intervened in Kosovo, the Balkans in their turn are hit by the three phenomena which are shaking up the whole Europe: first, the Islamic terrorism which is rushing from the Near East, secondly, the mass immigration originated from the Middle East and Africa, thirdly, the bursting process of Nations-States which is going on. The Islamic Daesh already holds a bastion on the European ground in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where 600 terrorists make up a “sleeping network” which is ready to strike at every point of Western Europe. These guys are easily filtering into the broad flow of migrants who take the traditional Balkans track coming from Turkey towards Western Europe. Besides, the bursting process of Nations-States, which began in former Yugoslavia during the nineties, was intensified with the self-proclaimed independence of Montenegro in 2006 and of Kosovo in 2008, which look like very flimsy new states, the future of which seems very gloomy. As a matter of fact, the Balkans became the favorite ground for the “Big Game” of the Great Powers. South-Eastern Europe, which is situated between the Euro-Atlantic integration and the Russian and Chinese and Turkish expansionism, is engaged in reliving the Cold War fractures. The authors, who are specialists of the Balkans area, are trying to give a rational look on the ties between these three phenomena which apparently look like independent, but after all, are intermingled.

Sujets

• Essais littéraires
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: Edilivre
• Date de parution: 20 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782414263288
• Langue: Français

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Couverture
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ISBN numérique : 978-2-414-26329-5
 
© Edilivre, 2020
Exergue
 
 
Translated and Adapted from the French by Mick Collins, Blogger and Chief, Cirque Minime
 
Legends of maps
Map n°1 : KOSOVO p. 25
– Energetic Cooridors (gas and petroleum) and for transportation
– Axis of the dynamic Albanese settlement
– Axis of the Albanese expansion
– Triangle Presevo/Medvedja/Bujanovac: 
– Irredentist albanophone cities
– NATO military zones in Kosovo
Map n°2 : BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA p. 55
– Inter-entities boundaries
– Highways
– Main roads
– Secondary roads
– Railways
– Airports
Map n° 3 : MONTENEGRO p. 72
– Towns
– International boundaries
– Montenegrin population
– Serbian population of Montenegro
– Bochniak population of Montenegro and Serbia
– Albanian population of Montenegro
– Axis of the Moslem geopolitical expansion
Sources:
– 2003
– Census
– Serbia-
– Montenegro
Map n° 4 : MACEDONIA p. 99
– Towns
– International boundaries
– Albanian population of Serbia
– Albanian population of Macedonia
– Albanian population of Kosovo
– Axes of the Albanian expansion
Map n° 5 : HUNGARY p. 125
– Towns
– International boundaries
– Hungarian population on the hungarian soil
– Hungarian population which constitutes the majority in the boarder-lands
Map n° 6 : ISLAMISM IN THE BALKANS p. 149
– Axes of the Albanian settlement
– Bosnia/Kosovo : two new Muslim states
– Irredentist movments : Sandjak and Voïvodina
– Unitary Moslem albano-bochniak dynamics
– Action zones of the Moslem Internationale
Map n° 7 : EUROPEAN CORRIDORS 8 and 10 p. 193
(no legends)
Introduction
F or two decades, the Balkans region has found itself, yet again, in the forefront of world events. On the ancient lands of Yugoslavia, we have witnessed a 20-year process of territorial disintegration: One secession after another: First Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, then Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, and eventually Montenegro in 2006 and Kosovo in 2008. And, despite multiple interventions by NATO, the UN, and the EU, this whole process of dismemberment is not yet finished: We are only in mid-course of a centrifugal movement that will soon see regions like the Voïvodine or Transylvania being detached, in one form or another, from Serbia and Rumania, respectively. We should also be very concerned about inter-ethnic break-ups in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Macedonia and in Montenegro. But this process is not exclusive to the Balkans. It impacts us in Europe directly because, after all, if these various movements are carried to term, the spillover will affect Spain, Belgium and France.
On 10 June 1999, NATO troops moved into the southern Serbian province of Kosovo after three months of intense bombardment. The official justification for this intervention was to put a stop, once and for all, to ‘all the ethnic cleansing’ going on and to protect an oppressed minority on the territory of Europe. The Kumanovo Accords 1 , signed by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the NATO generals, set in motion the largest military operation since the end of WWII. It was all meant to secure the future of multi-ethnicity, to create a model for a New State based on those sacrosanct values of Liberal Democracy and the market economy held so dear by Francis Fukuyama, and the Human Rights and the duty of Humanitarian intervention for which Bernard Kouchner had become the standard bearer.
Twelve years later, it was impossible not to see this operation, that was supposed to be highly moral, unlimited in scope, and serve as a model for the future, as a flagrant failure . The International Community, represented in the Balkans and the Caucasus by military forces of the UN and NATO, had failed in every area. Imposed from outside in the name of multi-culturalism, to develop a fraternal society, the NATO presence merely deepened the divide between ethnic groups and erected new walls to separate peoples, while promoting the creation of new regional languages and the splitting-up of autonomous churches, whether Orthodox (Montenegro) or Muslim (Serbia). Wanting to create an exogenous model of US-style Liberal Democracy (decentralization and con-federalization of government, protection of speech in minority languages, defense of ‘small is beautiful’), the International Community succeeded only in deepening the moat that separated disabused civilian populations from their respective governments. These States, after fifteen years of being force-marched toward Liberal Democracy, were still run by a nomemklatura trained and supported by the American Empire (abstention from voting at record levels, cronyism and corruption, embezzlement of international aid funds). The false hope of flowing financial abundance, stoked by leaders of the EU and a large number of NGOs, created the myth of a protective capitalism in a place where the populations had grown up under fifty years of manipulative communism. Independence in many Balkan countries was only a step toward Euro-Atlantic integration, considered by many the new Holy Grail.
The failure of the international system in the Balkans and the Caucasus was not a defeat for everyone. Behind the bankruptcy of the UN’s “nation-building” in Kosovo, the European protectorate in Bosnia, and the American pacification of Macedonia, the interests of the Great Powers were obviously in play. For ten years in the Balkans as in the Caucasus, we have witnessed a return to Kissinger’s beloved “great game,” which had been played for centuries in these regions and perhaps was ‘interrupted’, the historians might say, by the American-Soviet condominium from 1945 to 1991. It must not be forgotten that the term ‘ balkanization ’ describes the confrontation between Vienna and Istanbul in the 19 th century, when Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany, with France and Great Britain backing their play, manipulated nationalisms and cut up the borders in the name of the “ rights of the nationalities, ” each Great Power having his own protégé. The concept of a “ Humanitarian Corridor ” originated with Great Britain in Crimea in the middle of this 19 th century so ripe with political ideas.
Reverting, once again, to so-called Humanitarian norms, like the Defense of Minorities or the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), we are currently witnessing a vast war on a planetary scale over control of resources and territory among the US, Russia, China and other regional powers. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his 1997 The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Géostrategic Imperatives (Basic Books), clearly announced the arrival of this conflict after 1994: In order to insure the irrevocable victory of Liberal Democracy and the Market Economy, Russia must be weakened. The Clinton Administration’s policies would have had this happen by cutting up the “Eurasian Space” into three parts, so as to separate resource-rich Siberia from historic Russia, as well as to gain control over the regions of the Caucasus and Middle East. This “ Grand Design ” by Clinton’s people was executed throughout the 1990s by creating pockets of instability and lavishing support on those movements promoting Liberal Democracy. The neo-Conservatives, in order further to support the US’s Military-Industrial Complex, had adopted this ideology and, after 1999, significantly increased the number of US military bases in Saudi Arabia, the Balkans and Central Asia. This was the policy that led to the massive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Western Europe was already considered a “ NATO bridgehead ” and a loyal friend of American values, there remained only to bring about some reconciliation in the Middle East. That meant the line of US military bases would have to be moved: One of the largest US bases in Europe is no longer in Germany; it is Camp Bondsteel in the heart of Kosovo. These imperial policies were grounded in support for the “ Color Revolutions ” along the western and southern borders of Russia. It is known now, thanks to the work of Professor Viatcheslav Avioutskii, on the faculty of the Paris business school, the EDC, that between 2000 and 2004, the “Democratic Revolution” (aka the Bulldozer Rev.) in Belgrade, the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, and the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, were prepared by the US’s National Endowment for Democracy and Hungarian/American George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. These “Color Revolutions” helped bring “regime change” to certain countries that were key to American expansionism, but whose governments could no longer be counted on to support American Foreign Policies.
But the supporters of this politico-military strategy left out one basic consideration: Russia’s recent recovery . Only Emmanuel Todd 2 understood the capacities of a reawakened Russia, based on its resources and its well-educated elites (see, “ Après l’empire ”, Gallimard, 2002). Russia had first rebuilt its economy and its State infrastructures. Then it went on to develop its military technology (e.g., the second most powerful nuclear strike force in the world; the International Space Station [ISS] supplied by the Soyuz spacecraft that was still without competitors in 2014). And then this new, self-assured State established control over its “near abroad”: The principal countries in this new system of pro-Russian alliances are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Byelorussia. At the same time, Russian géostrategy is being based on control of oil and gas pipelines, vitally necessary to the breaking up of the encirclement of the country since the 1990s. The “ North Stream ” pipeline skirts the