Telenor of Norway has won an auction for Serbia's biggest mobile operator Mobi 63 with a bid of 1.513 billion euros (1.93 billion dollars) in one of the Balkan country's largest privatisations. The Telenor Group saw off competition from Mobilkom Austria and Orascom Telecom of Egypt in the auction, which was televised live on state-run RTS television, for a 70-percent stake in Mobi 63.
With the winning bid, Telenor also secured a renewable 10-year operating licence to run Mobi 63, the company formerly named Mobtel which has an estimated two million subscribers.
"We are naturally excited at expanding our footprint and adding this new company to the Telenor Group," the Norwegian company's president and chief executive, Jon Frederik Baksaas, said in a statement received on Monday.
"Serbia has long been an interesting market for us. Telenor first entered the Balkan region more than 10 years ago and we currently have mobile operations in a number of neighbouring countries," said Baksaas.
"The acquisition of Mobi 63 will allow us to further our aim of creating a strong Telenor operational hub in this prioritised geographic area with long-term synergies across the companies," he added.
Telenor, Mobilkom and Orascom won the right to bid for Mobi 63 last week after the Serbian government eliminated seven other companies including France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, as well as firms from Abu Dhabi, Israel, Russia and two from Sweden.
The bidding on Monday began at 1.373 billion euros, which was the starting price based on Telenor's pre-auction offer. The amount prompted Orascom to immediately withdraw from the rest of the auction.
The Norwegian and Austrian companies continued to take part in the auction, and both remained in the bidding until it surpassed the sum of 1.513 billion euros, with both of them turning down the next offer of 1.533 billion euros.
The winning bid was then reverted to Telenor because the company had made the largest initial offer before the start of the auction.
The 1.513 billion-euro price-tag is one of the biggest sums paid for a Serbian company in a privatisation.
Mobi 63 was set up in 1994 by Bogoljub Karic, a tycoon who amassed his fortune during the era of late former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
But the Serbian government revoked its licence in December, citing allegedly illegal deals in the UN-run Serbian province of Kosovo. The company had since been run by the state operator Telekom Srbija.
The Austrian investment group Holdenhurst, which owns the remaining 30-percent stake in Mobi 63, could also sell its share.
Telenor -- with ownership interests in 12 mobile operators across Asia and Europe, including Hungary and Montenegro -- had 82.7 million subscribers at year-end 2005, according to the company's website.
Recently the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivaylo Kalfin stated that his country would not support unconditionally the EU integration of Macedonia. In the framework of the "historiography clash" between the two countries, this statement becomes extremely disturbing. Does Macedonia have to name its nation "western Bulgarians" and its language "Bulgarian" in order to join the EU? Why did Bulgaria wait for this moment to show its teeth... Neighbours often quarrel about the paternity of some of their "authentic" products like food, music, etc. For example, Greece and Turkey often had and have such petty quarrels.
When Greece won the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Number One" in 2005, its neighbour Turkey, which was absolutely delighted with the song otherwise, indulged itself in a rather sterile quarrel about the paternity of the "kemancha", which the Greek team played on stage. According to Turkey, the "kemancha" is an authentic instrument of the Turkish Anatolian Black Sea region. Again, while the "döner" is famous in Germany as "Turkish sandwich", France knows this meal as "Greek sandwich". It is literally forbidden to order a "Turkish coffee" in Greece, for there this coffee is called "kafes ellinikos".
The dispute between Macedonia and Bulgaria is not that petty, however. Indeed neither Greece nor Turkey would ever like to give up on the paternity of "kemancha", "döner" or "Turkish coffee". However, even if they did so, they would not have lost their entire national identity.
Macedonia - hostage of its EU aspirations
On 24th July, the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivaylo Kalfin stated that his country would not support unconditionally the EU integration of Macedonia. In the framework of the "historiography clash" between the two countries, Kalfin's statement becomes extremely disturbing.
Although Bulgaria was the first to recognise Macedonia after its independence in 1991, it did only recognise the Macedonian state, not the nation and its language. According to Sofia, Macedonia is no more than a geographical term, and the Macedonians are no more than "lost Bulgarians" through "historical accidents".
The chairman of the nationalist Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation- Bulgarian National Movement (IMRO-Bulgaria), Krasimir Karakachanov commented on Ivaylo Kalfin's statement quite explicitly: "For the last 15 years IMRO-Bulgaria has been saying that we must lend a hand to Macedonia but by helping it we must also help it part with its false past and not assist it to become a state based on anti-Bulgarian feelings. We can start by the fact that it falsifies and appropriates a big part of Bulgarian history and we can end by saying that it attacks Bulgaria every chance it gets and pretends to have some made-up minorities".
Krasimir Karakachanov was the first, who stressed that Bulgaria should put conditions to Macedonia, and only then support its accession to the EU. According to the IMRO-Bulgaria leader, one of those conditions must be the "re-writing of the Macedonian history".
Macedonian institutions and media vehemently reacted to this rather unexpected statement of the Bulgarian Minister. That Bulgaria will be an EU member in January 2007 makes out of this vague statement a serious "warning".
It seems that Macedonia will be the "hostage" of the neighbouring EU member-states in the future. While Greece disputes Macedonia's name, Bulgaria questions the authenticity of the Macedonian nation and language. Does Macedonia have to name its land "Skopje", its nation "western Bulgarians" and its language "Bulgarian" in order to join the EU?
Some EU member-states abuse their privileged position over their neighbours. And this politically short-sighted policy of blackmailing ruins the long-term peace strategy of the EU in the western Balkans.
Macedonia is the key to the pacification of the whole Balkan region. However Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, which respectively dispute the name, the nation, the language and the church of the country, do not help much their neighbour. Especially in a period when an independent Kosovo is in the making, it is very dangerous to insinuate that Macedonia is an "artificial creation of History". The large Albanian minority of Macedonia could get the "message".
Interesting timing
The statement of the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs happened to coincide with three major events in Macedonia:
- Just weeks before the general elections in Macedonia, Vlado Buckovski and Ljubco Georgievski, the two former prime ministers, proposed to celebrate the Ilinden Uprising together with Bulgaria. The nationality of those, who had participated in this famous Uprising of 1903, is now subject to a serious dispute between Macedonia and Bulgaria. This is what makes the two former premiers' proposal so special.
- Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation - Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) triumphed at the 5th July elections in Macedonia. VMRO-DPMNE is known for its pro-Bulgarian attitude.
- Ljubco Georgievski, former premier and current leader of VMRO-Narodna and one of the most fervent Macedonian nationalist, obtained the Bulgarian citizenship. This provoked a hot scandal in the Macedonian public opinion.
The outgoing Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski's proposal might be an electoral manoeuvre. Foreseeing the victory of the pro-Bulgarian VMRO-DPMNE, he might have tried to loosen his party's firm attitude towards Bulgaria at the very last minute.
Right after the victory of Nikola Gruevski's VMRO-DPMNE, the leader of the Bulgarian ultra-nationalist coalition ATAKA, Volen Siderov labelled the outcome of the Macedonian elections as a "victory against the foreign economic influence of Greece". According to Siderov, the Macedonian economic space should be taken by larger part of Bulgarian companies since that was historically justified.
When the main spokesman of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria, United Macedonian Organisation (OMO Ilinden-Pirin) was prohibited in February 2000 by the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, the then ruling party of Macedonia, VMRO-DPMNE remained stragely inert. The government was then accused of "unwillingness to protect its fellow-countrymen in Bulgaria" by the Macedonian mass media and the opposition. At that time, the leader of VMRO-DPMNE and prime minister was Ljubco Georgievski. And the opposition party was no other than Vlado Buckovski's Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia (SDSM).
Macedonia's future prime minister Nikola Gruevski has made public his party's mainly economic platform, "Renaissance in 100 steps". Gruevski's priority is the improvement of Macedonia's poor economic situation: fight against corruption and high rate of unemployment, increase of the foreign investment, etc.
Only the economic renaissance can stop the massive immigration to Bulgaria. It is known that tens of thousands of Macedonians have applied for Bulgarian citizenship, and at least 7000 of them have already been approved. As one young Macedonian farmer from Staro Konjarevo pointed out, "There's no money in being a patriot".
As the future member of the EU, Bulgaria is a "poisoned ivy" for the Macedonian youth. The Bulgarian officials are aware of that fact. And the statement of the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs probably signals that Bulgaria will use that trump card whenever it can. That is why a very tough test of regional diplomacy is waiting for the new Macedonian government.
Unless being an ominous Cassandra, one can predict that the current uneasy relations between Macedonia and Bulgaria hint at the creation of a new "high-tension power line" in the Balkans.
Oliver North explored the subject of self-defense in his July 23 column: " 'As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself from terrorist activities,' said President Bush. 'I fully support Israel's right to defend itself,' said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat. 'Israel must defend itself, and it had the right to do so,' said French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy." Apparently, the right to defend one's sovereignty applies to everyone except the Serbs. Where were these words and sentiments when NATO, led by former President Clinton, who -- in violation of international law, the NATO charter and without the approval of Congress -- bombed tiny, sovereign Yugoslavia that had no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), never attacked us and was never a threat to this country? While the Clinton administration supported the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Embassy in Vienna issued a passport to Osama bin Laden that enabled him to make three visits to Bosnia and Kosovo.
Because of Mr. Clinton's flawed Balkans policy (based on self-inflicted atrocities by Bosnian Muslim forces), Bosnia has become al Qaeda's corridor into Europe. This was evident as far back as 1992 when authors Yossef Bodansky and Vaughn S. Forrest wrote a report for the House Republican Research Committee on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare titled, "Iran's European Springboard?" That report said, "Thus, Tehran and its allies are using the violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a springboard for the launching of a jihad in Europe.... Bosnia-Herzegovina's Muslims have long been considered by the Islamist leadership in the Middle East to be ripe as a vehicle for the expansion of Islamic militancy into Europe."
A 1997 report for the Senate Republican Policy Committee titled, "Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base," identifies Bosnia as "a steppingstone" into Western Europe. These predictions have been borne out by reports the explosives in London subway bombings and Madrid train bombings have been traced back to the Balkans.
Even more dire is the fact that some members of Congress support ceding Serbia's Jerusalem to the rule of indicted Muslim war criminals, thereby creating another mini-Afghanistan in the heart of the Balkans. An independent Albanian Kosovo would guarantee the eradication of Serbia culture, language and religion there. What else can be expected, given the track record of destruction and desecration of Serbian churches and the beatings, murder and ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Roma and other non-Muslims since 1999, all under the watchful and impotent eye of U.N. administrators? The real tragedy is that the Serbs were once the majority in Kosovo until ethnically cleansed by Adolf Hitler's Nazis, then by communist dictator Josip Broz Tito. The latter, in his hatred for the Serbs, encouraged Muslim Albanians to cross illegally into Christian Kosovo as easily as illegals today -- including possible terrorists -- cross our borders from Canada and Mexico. Former UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, Canadian Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie summed it up best when he said,"The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early 1990s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars, combined with those of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world."
The bottom line is that independence for Kosovo is not just a Serbian issue; it is a decision that would be not only detrimental to the area's security but also set a precedent that an ethnic group that attains majority status in a geographical region of a sovereign country has the right to declare independence -- a precedent that would not be in the best interest of the United States and other countries with growing ethnic minorities.
After September 11, 2001, President Bush declared we would do whatever it takes to defend this country against [Muslim] terrorists. The president has now taken his "war on terror," worldwide. And just as Israel, like any other nation, has the right to defend its sovereignty, the Serbian people should have had the right to defend their sovereignty against the same Muslim terrorists who threaten the world today. Unfortunately, that right was denied to them and we are witnessing the consequences today.
For the sake of reason, we must all encourage our representatives to say "No to Kosovo Independence." For granting that independence would open a Pandora's Box of breakaway states and establish another rogue nation.
Europe's one time wasteland, devastated by war, ideology and ethnic hatred, is staging one helluva comeback.
By Ginanne Brownell Newsweek International
August 7, 2006 issue - Elvir Causevic left sarajevo in 1990, just before the war engulfed Bosnia and smashed it to smithereens. Now 33 and educated in America, a member of Yale University's research staff, he recently moved back —and continues to be amazed at the town's transformation. The city he had seen so often on TV during the dark years was devastated, full of scarred and burned-out buildings, bereft of its once vibrant cosmopolitanism. But no more. Sarajevo today is the very image of a thriving European capital, chockablock with chic restaurants and upscale art galleries. Cranes punctuate the skyline, erecting offices and putting a new face on, among many other things, Bosnia's postmodern Parliament, ruined during the war. Strolling the cobbled streets of the capital's ancient Old Town—a twisty maze of bars and tourist shops selling everything from Turkish coffee sets to T shirts reading i'm muslim, don't panic—Causevic is positively boosterish. "Now is the time for this country," he exults. His plan: to set up branches of his New York medical-instruments company in Sarajevo and Tuzla—a great investment, he thinks, because of Bosnia's strong engineering tradition and still inexpensive work force. He's already hired 12 employees and expects to grow to 100 within a couple years. "I see a real enthusiasm here," he concludes, reflecting national optimism.
It's hard to believe this is Bosnia—the place that introduced the world to the term "ethnic cleansing." A decade after its brutal war ended, the country is finally emerging from the wilderness. A recent World Bank report touts it as "a post-conflict success story." And it certainly looks that way. "Our economy used to be entirely dependent on international aid," Prime Minister Adnan Terzic tells NEWSWEEK. But these days, he enthuses (somewhat nerdily), the signs all point to "serious sustainability." Bosnia's GDP has tripled in the last decade. Exports, including steel and timber, are up by 50 percent. The government has successfully privatized banks. Foreign direct investment has tripled since 1999 to €750 million in 2004—and the trend is fast accelerating upward. Unlike neighboring Croatia and Serbia, also part of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has practically no external debt. At 2 percent, inflation is lower than Britain's. "I think boardrooms would be well advised to have a look at Bosnia," says Dirk Reinermann, the World Bank's country director.
It's been a long time since boardrooms bothered with Bosnia, a country roughly the size of Denmark with a population of 4 million. The fighting that raged from 1992 to 1995 killed 200,000 people, made refugees of 2 million more and destroyed almost 90 percent of the country's infrastructure. War damage totaled more than $60 billion—a magnitude of collapse not seen in Europe since World War II. Bosnia's three main ethnic groups (Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians, more commonly known as Bosniaks) turned on each other savagely, despite decades of intermarriage and living peaceably together. Rape, torture, mass killings—Bosnia was a Balkan slaughterhouse, ending only with the U.S.- brokered 1995 Dayton peace accords. That agreement became the country's constitution and set up two quasi-autonomous "entities"—the Republika Srpska (usually referred to as the RS) and the Federation, a shaky alliance between Bosnia's Croats and Muslims. A weak national government is overseen by a U.N.-appointed High Representative.
As those awkward arrangements suggest, Bosnia's troubles are hardly over. In the central and southeastern parts of the country, Muslim schoolchildren are segregated from Catholic kids in 52 schools. (When administrators in one such district tried to integrate a school playground, they received so many threatening phone calls that they scrapped the plan.) In the RS, whose population is 90 percent Serb, there have been rumblings of holding a referendum on independence. (With United Nations negotiations underway in Vienna on Kosovo's independence, this isn't an entirely idle threat.) Even beer drinking can still become political. In north-central Vitez, whether you order a pint of Bosnian-brewed Sarajevska or a Croatian Karlovacko depends on which part of town you live in. With 20 percent of the country's population living below the poverty line, those in rural areas barely scrape out a living. Drug trafficking, organized crime and illegal logging are epidemic. Membership in NATO will remain a pipe dream until war criminals Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic, who may be hiding in the RS, are arrested.
Nonetheless, by the end of the year, Bosnia is expected to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement, a big step toward EU eligibility. For most of the past decade, each of its factions had their own courts, customs and tax services; now the federal government has taken control. Three years ago, according to a Western diplomat, "Serbs would have laughed you out of the room if you told them they'd be serving in an integrated army." Today, they're doing just that. In June, Bosnia was awarded control of its airspace for the first time in more than a decade.
The picture is harsher outside the capital. Along the road from Sarajevo to Zenica (a new four-lane highway is slowly being built) the scars of war are still evident: carcasses of burned houses, villages that feel far emptier than they should. Yet the signs of progress are obvious here too. The vast majority of Bosnia's battered towns and villages have been rebuilt; according to government figures, 98 percent of properties illegally seized during the fighting have been returned to their rightful owners or their surviving kin. The ethnic mix of some places has changed. Many Serbs, Croats or Muslims have sold houses in areas where they might feel uncomfortable and bought another where they are in the ethnic majority. But others have returned to places they were driven from, if only because they are their homes.
Visit the Bosniak village of Ahmici, reduced to rubble by Croat forces in April 1993. The local mosque's white minaret, toppled during a massacre that claimed 118 lives, is back. A high-tech stereo blasts the call to prayer five times daily. A second mosque, up the hill from the outdoor basketball court, is being built. Its skeletal bricked interior is a Sunday-evening hangout for preteen girls, some wearing fashionable head scarves and flirting with boys. Along the curving, pine-forested roads of the RS, where signs are infrequent and marked only in Cyrillic, minarets and Catholic crosses can be glimpsed rising in the distance.
If any place testifies to how far Bosnia has come, it is the northern town of Brcko, hard on the Serbian and Croatian borders. This heavily contested bit of territory was the "bridge" linking the western reaches of the RS to the east and Serbia proper. To this day, Brcko is administered separately from the other Bosnian entities, with an American supervisor appointed by the U.N. The region experienced some of the most intense fighting of the war—and some of its fiercest ethnic hatred. Yet former Army barracks have been transformed into a grassy quad of brightly painted government buildings. Citizens have moved forward, together. Unlike much of the rest of the country, schools in Brcko are mixed. So are the police force and the District Assembly. "Most people here wanted to live again in a multiethnic society, so we all fought really hard to make Brcko work," says Ivan Krndelj, the Croat deputy speaker of the Assembly.
You readily see that at Zitopromet, a food-processing firm with an ethnically mixed staff who work together in two shifts baking 10,000 loaves of bread and pastries a day. In offices fragrant with the smell of croissants, the company's Bosniak director, Bahrija Agic, says he was surprised how quickly people came together. "In the beginning, two employees left, saying they had problems working for a Muslim manager," he told NEWSWEEK. "But there just aren't tensions like that anymore."
More and more, that describes the atmosphere across Bosnia. British Brig. Nigel Alwyn-Foster, deputy commander of the 6,200 troops of the European Union Force that took over from NATO in 2004, describes his theater of operations as "calm and stable." The garrison atmosphere of the immediate postwar years has disappeared. Bases have shut down and many EUFOR troops are living in local accommodations among the people. In leafy Bihac, to the west, Canadian M/Cpl. Tom Robinson is on his third tour of Bosnia. He's amazed by how much has changed. "In 1996 Bihac was a ghost town," he says, strolling past a new multiplex cinema showing the latest Hollywood flicks. "My time here has gone from being like a parent saying 'No, you can't do that' to being like an older sibling standing on the sidelines offering advice when asked." The city, which saw heavy fighting, has a trendy new mall with clothing shops like Stefanel. Its border crossing with Croatia is a modern complex equipped with the latest EU customs technology.
That's a metaphor. Bosnia is clearly prepping for EU membership. The country's newest high representative, German diplomat Christian Schwarz-Schilling, recently announced that he would also be the last. Next summer, he will relinquish his role as Bosnia's de facto head of state and become the mere "EU representative" to Bosnia—a job that's essentially monitoring Bosnia's progress toward joining Europe and that returns full responsibility for the country's affairs to the central Bosnian government. "This is a serious change of the political agenda," says Schwarz-Schilling.
There are other signs of political maturation. In April, the Bosnian Parliament, usually split ethnically, rejected reforms to the Constitution that would have strengthened the central government. The good news is that the measure lost by only two votes. Says NATO's senior officer in Bosnia, U.S. Brig. Gen. Louis Weber: the fact that parties sat down together to reach consensus is huge. "In every sphere you want to measure Bosnia, from the military to the social to the political, it is on a positive slope."
Perhaps most noteworthy is the way Bosnians—Muslim, Croat and Serb—are slowly coming to terms with the past. This spring, a Sarajevan movie named "Grbavica" won top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. Directed by Jasmila Zbanic, it portrays a Bosniak woman, raped by Serb soldiers, who is forced to tell her daughter how she was conceived. The movie has helped drive forward legislation for things like compensation and health care for civilian victims of war. Pirated copies have been selling like hot cakes in the RS capital, Banja Luka. In June, after a tip-off by locals in the Serbian village of Serovici about a nearby mass grave containing the remains of 35 men—probably Muslims killed during the infamous massacre at Srebrenica—the RS and Federation officials have been working together to solve the crime. That wouldn't have happened just a short time ago, says Tuzla prosecutor Emir Ibrahimovic, watching as pathologists carefully unearthed clothed skeletons from the sodden dirt. "These days, we're seeing lots of cooperation."
The chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia yesterday voiced admiration for and fascination with her most formidable opponent, Slobodan Milosevic.
Carla Del Ponte, whose mission is to bring the worst criminals from the Yugoslav wars to justice and who spent more than four years trying Milosevic, paid tribute to the late Serbian leader, declaring him superior to the dozens of other suspects who have been in the dock at the tribunal in The Hague. "The way he questioned certain witnesses was fascinating," she told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "He really knew how to deal with people. I admired that. He was the only accused who mounted his own defence alone ... Milosevic always spoke out. He had been the president of Yugoslavia. He was head and shoulders above the rest."
Milosevic died in custody in his cell outside The Hague earlier this year, almost five years after being flown there following his overthrow in Belgrade.
The death was a major blow to the tribunal, as it deprived the former Yugoslavia of a verdict in the biggest and longest trial before the court. The death spawned multiple conspiracy theories and also triggered strong criticism of the manner in which the tribunal operates.
In contrast to her admiration for Milosevic, Ms Del Ponte rounded on his successor, Vojislav Kostunica, whom she accused of having protected another key genocide suspect, General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander still on the run more than 10 years after being indicted for genocide in Bosnia. "Kostunica knows exactly where Mladic was until February this year. Kostunica knows that he even protected Mladic until 2002 ... until recently he didn't want to have him arrested. He was sure that [Mladic] could be persuaded to give himself up."
At Ms Del Ponte's recommendation, the EU has frozen integration talks with Serbia because of its failure to capture Mladic. "We're concentrating now on Mladic because we know where he is," she said. "And we know that Belgrade can deliver him to us."
Letter dated 24 July 2006 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council - Monthly report of the Kosovo Force (KFOR), covering the period 1 to 31 May 2006 (S/2006/574)
Pursuant to Security Council resolution 1244 (1999), I have the honour to transmit the attached report on the international security presence in Kosovo covering the period from 1 to 31 May 2006 (see annex). I should be grateful if you would bring the present letter and its annex to the attention of the members of the Security Council.
(Signed) Kofi A. Annan
Annex
Monthly report to the United Nations on the operations of the Kosovo Force
1. This report covers the period from 1 to 31 May 2006.
2. As at 31 May 2006, the total number of troops in theatre was 16,130, which included 2,708 troops from non-NATO countries.
3. There was no change to the status of partner/non-NATO country contributions.
Security
4. The overall security situation remains calm but tense. On the political front, three more rounds of direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina were held successively on 4, 23 and 31 May 2006 in Vienna. On 4 May, the parties discussed again issues related to decentralization, including the definition of criteria to establish the municipal borders, the formation of new municipalities with a Serb majority, and the resolution of the Mitrovica issue. The talks were difficult owing to the unwillingness of either side to compromise. At the meeting on 23 May, discussions focused on the protection of religious sites and cultural heritage in Kosovo. In a constructive atmosphere, the parties agreed on the need for a continued international military presence to protect the sites and on the legal status of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Despite some convergence on a number of practical issues, the parties remain diametrically opposed on substantive issues. On 31 May, the negotiating parties discussed economic issues, including external debt and property. Belgrade challenged and requested the immediate halting of the ongoing privatization process in Kosovo, whereas Pristina focused on the issue of payment of war damages and external debt repayment.
5. During the month of May, no significant inter-ethnic incidents were reported.
6. No significant incidents against KFOR were recorded.
7. A total of 350 incidents related to unexploded ordnance, illegal weapons possession, weapon and ammunition findings, drugs, human trafficking and counterfeit currency were reported during the past month, compared to 409 incidents in the previous month. Weapons seizures made up the vast majority of incidents during this month, whereas the number of reported incidents of unexploded ordnance decreased. Smuggling activities will continue to be one of the highest threats to a safe and secure environment and KFOR troops in Kosovo. Confrontations could occur if KFOR troops cross paths with smugglers. Most of the Kosovo border is affected by smuggling activity; however, most of the smuggling is concentrated in the eastern area, on the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.(a) Despite the frequent seizures of illegal weapons, there is no proof that the weapons were intended for extremist or criminal groups. Most of the weapons found are probably intended for hunting or personal protection. Drug trafficking is still considered to be one of the most profitable criminal businesses for local organized crime groups. The limited number of reported smuggling-related incidents is assessed to be the result of efforts made by KFOR and UNMIK to fight illegal trafficking along the borders. However, this can also be an indicator that the smugglers are finding new ways to avoid detection by UNMIK and KFOR. As the weather conditions improve, no significant increase in reported criminal acts is expected. The criminal threat to KFOR is assessed as low.
8. KFOR continues operations to prevent ethnic violence and protect patrimonial sites and remains vigilant to deter possible threats directed against international organizations and military bases. The Force continues to improve its crowd and riot control capabilities in order to be better prepared to counter any resurgence in violence.
Compliance by the Federal Army of Serbia and Montenegro and the Ministry of Internal Affairs Special Police
9. There is nothing to report.
Kosovo Protection Corps
10. Ten cases of non-compliance have been opened.
11. The KFOR Inspectorate for the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) ensures compliance through the day-to-day supervision of KPC using unannounced roll calls and inspections. During May the consolidation of the KFOR Kosovo-wide assessment reflecting KPC fulfilment of Standard 8 Goals was finalized. Parts of the KFOR assessment were presented at the public standards meeting and in the KPC Development Group on 31 May 2006. Furthermore, KFOR headquarters and each Multinational Task Force has finalized the additional training programme for KPC in support of the directive of the Joint Force Command.
12. The current active personnel establishment is 3,038. There are 203 (6.69%) active ethnic minority members (178 male, 25 female): 34 Ashkall, 4 Roma, 11 Egyptian, 17 Croat, 32 Bosniac, 14 Muslims, 36 Turk, 2 Goran and 53 Serbs. The total number of ethnic minorities decreased by four from last month. The recruitment of minorities remains a KPC priority. Currently, the percentage of minorities within KPC still remains short of the goal of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and there are 22 open slots left in the active personnel establishment list. The reserve list includes 2,000 positions, 1,883 filled, of which the ethnic minority number is 50 (2.65%). Multinational Task Forces and KFOR Inspectorate headquarters carried out 46 roll calls; 1,027 (69.8%) of 1,470 checked KPC members were on duty in their barracks and 212 (14.4 per cent) were on duty elsewhere. The total of 1,239 active duty strength (duty in barracks and duty elsewhere) shows that an average of 84.2 per cent of KPC personnel attended work schedules. Roll calls show a slight decrease in the number of personnel reported absent without permission.
13. KPC conducted 12 training courses with 171 attendees.
14. Nine ceremonies were held during May 2006. A total of 711 KPC members and approximately 3,500 civilians were involved.
Conclusion
15. The overall situation in Kosovo will remain tense because of the ongoing status talks, particularly the start of the high-level discussions between Belgrade and Pristina on the future status of Kosovo, as well as the potential increase in interethnic tension as weather conditions improve. The threat level against UNMIK and other international community facilities remains medium, and the threat level against KFOR is low.
Note
(a) Turkey recognizes the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with its constitutional name.
Serbia plans $800m Gazprom gas project Published: 28 July 2006
BELGRADE: Serbia will build a 400km cross-country gas pipeline together with Russia's Gazprom, a project worth more than $800 million, the government said yesterday.
The deal between Serbia, its gas monopoly Srbijagas and Russia's Gazprom-Gazexport would make Serbia "one of the key regional participants in gas transport," the government said in a statement after its weekly session. A source in the government said a memorandum of understanding was due to be signed within weeks, after ministers return from their summer holiday. Sources familiar with the plan said the pipeline in Serbia would ultimately be linked to the Bluestream pipeline - running from Russia to Turkey under Black Sea.
"The Serbian pipeline is to be built south of the Sava and the Danube rivers. Pipes should run from Dimitrovgrad to Nis and on towards Croatia and Bosnia," a source in the government said.
"The pipes will have a capacity of 20 billion cubic metres." Another source familiar with the plan said the deal would help Serbia repay a debt to Kuwait.
"Gazprom has agreed to take over Serbia's $370m debt to Kuwait," the source said. "Serbia would start repaying the debt to Gazprom once the gas starts flowing, getting 25 per cent of transit fees and spending it on debt servicing. That means there will be no threat to the liquidity of the budget," the source added. "But it also sends a signal to the authorities that Gazprom wants control of Srbijagas once it is ripe for sale," he said.
BELGRADE, Serbia-Serbia's ultranationalists warned Thursday that they will "fight for Kosovo" in case the contested province gains independence at ongoing U.N.-brokered talks.
Tomislav Nikolic, the leader of the increasingly popular Serbian Radical Party, said that no leader in Serbia will accept Kosovo's independence. "The whole world must know that," Nikolic declared. "Serbia will fight for Kosovo." He did not elaborate.
Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Kosovo is formally part of Serbia, but the province has been run by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO air war forced Belgrade to stop attacks against ethnic Albanian separatists and pull out of the region.
The talks to decide Kosovo's future status started early this year. Most analysts have predicted that Kosovo might gain some form of independence, despite Serbia's opposition.
Nikolic acknowledged that "if they want to take away Kosovo ... from us," Belgrade cannot prevent that. He added that "Serbia will be peaceful and stable as long as the talks are going on," but could explode in unrest in case of Kosovo independence.
Serbia's President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica took part early this week in a face-to-face meeting with ethnic Albanian leaders in Vienna, Austria, as part of U.N.-brokered negotiations.
Both face a mounting challenge from the Radicals, who ruled together with late ex-nationalist leader, Slobodan Milosevic, in the next election in Serbia in 2007.
Also this week, the U.S. envoy for Kosovo talks, Frank Wisner, urged both Serbia and the ethnic Albanians to be more flexible and work together to find a compromise on Kosovo.
Carlos Westendorp: working for a transatlantic balance
Spanish ambassador to the United States and a staunch socialist, Carlos Westendrop has an innate understanding of diplomacy. Here he gives us an insight into transatlantic relations and the situation in the Balkans
Carlos Westendorp, transatlantic man (Domenec Ruiz Devesa) Carlos Westendorp, ambassador and former Spanish minister of foreign affairs, greets me and invites me to follow him into his spacious office on Pennsylvania Avenue, not far from the White House. Though he is a seasoned diplomat, Mr. Westendorp does not value protocol very highly. Quite contrary to my expectations of a diplomat, he seemed open and welcoming - the type of person who likes to go straight to the point. The simplicity and humanity of the Spanish ambassador does not correspond to the cliché of the strained, aristocratic diplomat.
The Atlantic air
Once my interviewee is comfortably seated in his armchair, I begin the discussion with the thorny issue of Iraq and the ambassador's influence on transatlantic relations. But it was impossible to unnerve this grandson of a Dutch engineer who immigrated to Spain to work in the railroad company. "Transatlantic relations emerged from a common fight against the Soviet Union and some claim they have weakened since the end of the Cold War. But such an interpretation does not hold true. Our leaders have continued to work together to tackle present day issues of great importance. Unfortunately, the conflict in Iraq had led to a cooling of relations between the United States and much of Europe. Though the president of the United States does not offer any concessions in the Middle East, we have to overcome our differences to find a solution to the extremely violent crisis that threatens the region,' explains Westendorp with a conciliatory tone rendered smooth by years of service.
Taking his time to answer my questions with great care, Westendorp shows that he does not want to rush me through the interview. When I ask him whether he believes NATO or the UE should be instrumental in bringing Europe and the United States together, he answers categorically: "The EU must develop a strong foreign policy if it wishes to relate to the US on equal terms." It is also essential to "Radically reform NATO, to redefine its mission and to work towards establishing an efficient European Defence and Security Identity." As a staunch supporter of the European idea, Westendorp is convinced that if "The member states of the EU at last managed to speak with one voice, they would be able to stand up to the US and improve the balance of power within the organisation." Westendorp insists that decisions must be taken unanimously within NATO and that the US pre-eminence is only relative.
What did he think of the recent proposition by José-Maria Aznar and the Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio to create and promote a transatlantic market? "I sometimes have the impression that certain demagogues, and I include Aznar and Palacio in this list, are only just discovering the Mediterranean basin," he says with a hint of irony in his voice. "But the idea is excellent," he continues. "Not that it is a new idea - it has been a possibility since at least 1995. The major obstacle to the realisation of this project is that a number of sectors in America continue to be protected, this is not the case in Europe, aside from agriculture of course."
Kosovo´s future
The discussion moved to the Balkans, an area where Westendorp has a great deal of expertise, having been the International High Commissioner in Bosnia before he became the Spanish ambassador in America.
"We have not lost hope in the Balkans, on the contrary" he remarks with optimism. "Today Bosnia is peaceful, even if it is the case that there are still international troops stationed in the country. That said, it is evident that the wounds left by the war will not vanish overnight. Nevertheless, the major problem the country must face is an economic crisis" Westendorp analyses. He then explains to me that he had been in charge of conceiving of the national symbols, like the flag and national hymn. "The country suffers badly from the absence of an enterprise culture. It is not the role of the United Nations to help develop this sector," he concludes ironically. He also worries that to hold the Serbs at arms length from the Kosovan negotiating process would risk destabilising the entire region. Westendorp has his own perspective on the question. "I would just like to show that the independence of Kosovo would not, by any stretch of the imagination be a miracle cure for the region."
The European constitution and the alliance of civilisations
Westendorp proudly shows me the cover of a recent Newsweek, which shows a picture of José Luis Zapatero with the title "Making Socialism Work". "I have put it on display in my office in such a position that I can be sure all my North American colleagues will be able to see" he tells me. Without Zapatero in power, there is a strong chance that the Spanish would not have voted massively in favour of the European Constitution. His influence has also been decisive in the creation of the Alliance of Civilisations. In terms of the Constitution Westendorp says: "Even if Europe has not stopped evolving, we would have liked to see it ratified. It would nevertheless have been difficult to have adopted all the measures in the constitution, especially if we think of the European social model and all the concessions that member states would have to make. Spain, for instance, would have had to renounce the power it had had conferred on it by the treaty of Nice in the European Council. There will now not be any major changes to the constitution until after the French presidential elections in 2007. It would be thus be premature to launch the debate again at this present moment," he concludes.
Iran: "It is time for diplomacy"
I began to ask Westendorp about Iran. He responded immediately: "We will not necessarily be able to indefinitely avoid the recourse to force, because there is nobody who wants Iran to develop a military nuclear program. But we are not yet at this point. For the moment we must try to find a diplomatic answer to the crisis. We cannot affirm with certainty that Iran is looking to enrich uranium for military purposes." With these words the ambassador finishes the interview. He will shortly fly to Boston, where he will give a series of lectures on transatlantic relations.
Whenever the United States needs assistance in establishing full military control over the oil-rich Middle East, it can always depend on Israel, its faithful attack dog. The United States desperately wants to control Iran. Iran is rich in oil and lies directly between the permanent US military bases and huge fortified US embassy now under construction in Iraq and the US and NATO bases in Afghanistan. Also, unlike Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Iran has a government which does not follow Washington's orders. Under the previous despotic police state of the Shah, Iran did follow US desires and privatized the oil resources, allowing American and British oil companies to make huge profits. However, the Shah was overthrown in 1953 and Mossadegh nationalized the oil. This is an intolerable act to the US government, so strongly influenced by the political power of some of the richest corporations on Earth. The CIA organized a coup which overthrew Mossadegh and brought the Shah back to power. Naturally, the oil was once again privatized. Unfortunately for the oil companies, the Shah was overthrown again by a growing fundamentalist Islamic movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Once again the oil was nationalized and relations between the US and Iran have been hostile ever since that time.
One should analyze why the nationalization of oil is so important to the United States and to the large oil companies. When John D. Rockefeller built his empire on oil, he realized that the most profit could be made by having a vertical monopoly. That is, the oil companies should own all the operations from the oil rigs through the refineries to the distribution and sales operations. When oil is nationalized it eliminates one of these profit-making steps and foreign governments profit from the sale of their oil. If it is a country like Saudi Arabia, which spends these profits on supporting the US stock and bond markets and helping to finance the growing US deficits caused by wars and military spending, there is little US protest. On the contrary, if the country is Venezuela and utilizes the sale of its nationalized oil to benefit Venezuela's poor people by bringing them medical care, building schools, providing clean drinking water and sanitation and elevating their standard of living, the US government grows very upset, the CIA plans coups against Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and a torrent of derogatory corporate propaganda is launched against him. He becomes a communist, another of those corporate bogeymen like terrorists.
Air America commentator Randi Rhodes believes that the reason for the Iraq war was that Saddam Hussein intended to trade oil for Euros instead of the dollar and also that the large oil companies wanted to keep Iraqi oil off the market for a time to substantially increase its price. I don't disagree with this theory, but when this oil is eventually sold, companies like Exxon-Mobil, Shell, British Petroleum, Chevron and others want ownership and a vertical monopoly to increase their profits. They hate nationalized oil with a passion.
The hostility toward Iran has nothing to do with its fundamentalist Islamic leadership. The CIA used fundamentalist Islamic groups like Al-Oaeda to drive the Soviet Union from Afghanistan and to fight the Serbs in Bosnia. The US also is very friendly toward an exceedingly fundamentalist, undemocratic regime in Saudi Arabia. The most ridiculous thing in the world is when George W. Bush talks about bringing democracy to the Middle East. He even lectured Vladimir Putin about Russia becoming democratic like Iraq. Notice that when a group which is a hindrance to US and Israeli influence comes to power in democratic elections, as Hamas and Hezbollah did, all this talk about democracy flies out the window.
In the spring of 2006, columnist Seymour Hersch revealed US plans for an attack on Iran. However, the weapons of mass destruction excuse used for the Iraq invasion was not so easily accepted by European governments, Russia and China in relation to Iran. One can easily see the double standard in allowing the despotic regime in Pakistan, which came to power in a coup, to possess nuclear weapons, while complaining and threatening sanctions and war over any nuclear development by Iran. Of course, Pakistan follows orders from Washington, DC and Iran does not. It makes a world of difference.
Israel has now massively bombed the cities of Lebanon, supposedly over the capture of two Israeli soldiers. The problem is that these captures have occurred many times in the past and have simply resulted in prisoner exchanges with Hezbollah. What was different this time? It is obvious that this operation had been planned long in advance by Israel. History if full of examples of nations using either fabricated incidents or actual minor hostilities for the start of wars planned for completely different reasons than the stated ones. Now, all the American news channels, especially Fox, are blaming Hezbollah for the destruction of Lebanon and always state that Syria and particularly Iran are backing Hezbollah. Notice that after all the death and destruction in Lebanon, this provides an additional excuse for either Israel or the US or both to attack Iran and Syria besides the supposed nuclear program in Iran. Nothing is mentioned about the large shipments of American weapons to Israel and Turkey, only the aid to Hezbollah from Iran. In fact, the United States has been recently shipping large numbers of bunker-busting bombs to Israel, undoubtedly those with depleted uranium warheads, which will add to the devastation of the region. This could escalate to a situation where just before the congressional elections in November, George W. Bush launches a war against Iran and depends on American patriotism to get his Republican cronies reelected and improve his poll ratings. I hope I am completely wrong because Iran has some advanced weapons and could probably sink American warships. If that happened, would the United States use nuclear weapons? It is a very frightening scenario.
It is exceedingly ironic and sad that Israel is using two techniques that the Nazis used against them and other occupied people in World War II. One of these war crimes is bombing civilian infrastructure and denying water, electricity, medical care and sanitation to people. The other crime that was practiced by the Nazis and now by Israel is collective punishment. All Lebanese are paying dearly for the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. When two Czech exiles executed the Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich, also called "Hangman Heydrich," the whole village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia was obliterated from the face of the Earth by the Nazis. It seems Israelis do not learn any more lessons from their own history than do Americans. Of course, Israel denies it is attacking civilians, just as the United States denied using white phosphorus on Fallujah and bombing the city into rubble or torturing prisoners at Guantanamo. These criminals and their lackeys in the corporate media lie like they breath.
The United States is so powerful over Israel that it could end this slaughter in Lebanon with a phone call. Israel is accomplishing aims which are in accordance with the objectives of the administration of George W. Bush. Notice how Condoleeza Rice is proceeding at such a leisurely pace to the Middle East. Does anyone remember the last time something like this happened? When Israel invaded the refugee camps on the West Bank like Jenin and was conducting a mass slaughter of Palestinians and bulldozing houses, Colin Powell stalled and stalled on his way to the area in order that Israel be allowed to accomplish all its murderous objectives. I doubt if any Americans remember this bit of history. As Gore Vidal states: "It is the United States of Amnesia."
When I see the world being driven to the precipice of disaster by the greed of a very few oil barons and their responsibility for the pictures of wounded and burned children and a thousand other crimes, I am furious, but also despondent. I realize most people don't understand the world as I do and are completely deceived by corporate propaganda and the attractive news models who tell lie after lie with a smiling face. I wonder if these corporate whores ever think what repeating everything put in front of them is costing their children. Probably not-that requires intelligence. I am also depressed by the lack of outrage among people who are dissidents in this nation. It is as if the CIA sprayed a vast cloud of valium all over the country.
There should be hundreds of thousands of people in the streets protesting these Israeli atrocities and there aren't. The corporate propagandists have turned reality upside down. By their arguments, it is not the United States, Britain and Israel who are the imperialists, but Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. Those fighting imperialism have been transformed into imperialists. I would like to think it is just the heat, but I am afraid Zionist propaganda has had an effect. I would change some of the words of the Communist Manifesto to "Working people of the world unite. Before we allow ourselves and the environment to be destroyed and commit an unpardonable sin against future generations."
Serbia: Between Empire of Heaven and Empire of Earth Again
by: Can Karpat
Tomorrow the Kosovo final status talks enter a brand new phase. For the first time since the war, the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia meet in order to present their positions on status of Serbia's breakaway province. There is no reason to believe that while seven purely technical rounds have failed, these new highly political rounds would succeed. Does it mean that the international community has switched to the Plan-B, namely the "Diktat solution"? Is this the beginning of the end for Serbia... Serbia's choice
"The Downfall of the Serbian Empire" is one of the best known Serbian epic songs, which tells the choice of Knez Lazar on the eve of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. "Lazar, glorious Emperor, which is the empire of your choice? Is it the empire of heaven? Is it the empire of the earth?" If Lazar chose the empire of the earth, the Ottoman army would all perish. However, the empire of the earth would be nothing but temporal. If Lazar chose the empire of heaven, he and his men would all die, but ensured their place in heaven. "And the emperor chose the empire of heaven above the empire of the earth". Because the empire of the earth is eternal.
For centuries long this song on Lazar's choice had been a sweet consolation for the Serbs, who had been defeated by the Turks in the Battle of Kosovo. It comforted the Serbian psyche: They were not defeated; they chose to be defeated, for no less than a secure place in heaven.
The Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica should better prepare himself for such a fatidic choice today. When Kosovo will be a lost cause for Serbia, Prime Minister should be able to tell his people that heaven is waiting for them to sooth their wounded pride. This time heaven may not be that spiritual, however, as it was in case of Prince Lazar. EU membership would be Serbia's earthly compensation.
Today the Kosovo final status talks enter a new top-level phase. Kosovo Albanian and Serbian high-level leaders are to meet face-to-face in order to present their positions on the future of Serbia's breakaway province.
The Serbian President Boris Tadic will sit opposite Fatmir Sejdiu, the President of the province that still, though de facto, belongs to Serbia. And Vojislav Kostunica will sit in front of his counterpart Agim Ceku, whom Serbia has been accusing of serious war crimes for years.
One must not be a clairvoyant to guess the outcome of this new second phase: dialogue of the deaf and failure.
The beginning of the end
There is no reason to believe that while seven purely technical rounds have failed, these new highly political rounds would succeed. From now on, the two sides will discuss the future status of Kosovo, and not the peripheral issues like decentralization, the economy or protection of the Serbian cultural heritage and religious sites in the province.
Not even the question of the protection of the Serbian culture in Kosovo, definitely one of the softest issues on the agenda, could be resolved during the seven rounds of talks.
Even the Special Envoy for the Kosovo Future Status Process Martti Ahtisaari stated that he did not expect the talks to generate any concrete results and added that this would likely have to wait until after the next UN General Assembly session in September.
Thus Martti Ahtisaari confirmed the general belief that the talks are only a necessary transition period, which will serve as a confirmation of the failed status talks. As soon as the failure of the second phase of the talks is totally confirmed, the Kosovo case will be transferred to the UN Security Council (UNSC), which will probably impose its decision as an "international Diktat" to the two sides.
The attitude of Russia and China, the two permanent members of the UNSC, will be decisive since all the others are in favour of some form of independence for Kosovo. However, as long as Russia is concerned, the international community receives highly contradictory signals from Moscow.
Until very recently Russia has totally backed the Serbian cause. However, now, Moscow is keen to change its policy on Kosovo in light of the precedent it would set for other regions like, not unexpectedly, Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Moldova's breakaway region of Transdnestria.
The USA and Great Britain insist that a comparison cannot be drawn between Kosovo and Georgia and Moldova. However, sooner or later they will have to assure Russia's vote in the UNSC. And the price of the Russian vote is now well known. Since according to the Western powers Kosovo's independence will be the key to the total pacification of the Balkans, it would be not a big surprise if, at the end of the day, Russia gets at least some kind of assurance for a similar deal for South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdnestria.
The elections of the year
Meanwhile party leaders in Serbia are discussing possible dates for the next general elections. While Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) prefers elections left to next spring, Boris Tadic's Democratic Party (DS) prefers this autumn. In any case, the elections will be held probably before the Kosovo issue is resolved.
Vojislav Kostunica's minority government is losing blood every day, namely its working majority in Parliament. On the one hand, since the death of their leader, Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) has threatened to withdraw their support from the government if any other forcible extraditions take place. On the other hand, the Europhile-technocrat liberal party G 17 Plus warns the government that they will pull out of the coalition by October if pre-accession talks with the EU are not resumed.
Serbia goes through an extremely difficult year. On 3rd May the EU suspended pre-accession talks with Serbia after Belgrade failed to deliver General Ratko Mladic to The Hague. On 21st Montenegro seceded from its state union with Serbia and became independent. The Presevo Valley, Sandzak and Vojvodina may be the next regions, which would bedevil the political atmosphere in Serbia. And of course, Kosovo.
Unsurprisingly the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) exploits this situation to the extreme. No less than 37 percent of the Serbian people support this party at the public surveys. A particularly sad picture since nothing but the mentality of SRS and alike were responsible for this desperate no-way-back situation in Kosovo in the first place.
Very hard times are waiting for moderate nationalist Vojislav Kostunica. How will he persuade his voters that he is the reasonable Prince Lazar, and not the treacherous Vuk Brankovic, whose betrayal, so the Serbs like to believe, supposedly condemned the Serbian kingdom to defeat before the Turks in 1389? How will the new epic song look like?
In his open letter on 13th July, Vojislav Kostunica himself made this point clear: "Can such a country, by any measure a democratic one, survive the forcible taking of 15 percent of its territory? What democratically elected government could explain to its voters after such an act that they should continue to believe in the principles of tolerance, liberalism and the sacrosanct will of the people - the values of enlightened Western civilization, in the name of which they toppled an evil, authoritarian regime?"
Unlike DS, DSS and other pro-Western parties, SRS is able to give its supporters very simple and clear messages. And in times of political suffocation people, who lost their confidence even in themselves, often prefer this kind of simple and clear messages. Sad but history can testify to this.
The general elections in Serbia will be by far the most important elections in the Balkans this year. If the two major Serbian parties DS and DSS cannot find a common ground to cooperate, not only Serbia would stray from the path that leads towards democracy, but the Western powers would also have to deal henceforth with negotiators that they never dreamt of in their worst nightmares at the status talks in Vienna.
Russia and Croatia have signed an agreement to settle Russia's Soviet-era debt to Croatia totaling $185.7 million, as part of debt payments to the former Yugoslavia, diplomats said Monday.
The deal was signed by Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak and Croatian Finance Minister Ivan Suker, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
In September 2003, Russia, which took on the Soviet Union's entire foreign debt, signed a multilateral memorandum with the five successor countries of the former Yugoslavia on Soviet-era debt totaling 1.292 billion clearing dollars, and agreed on a clearing dollar rate of $0.625, giving the debt a total value of $800 mln.
Apart from the $185.7-mln debt to Croatia, the sum included 200.3 mln ($125.2 mln) owed to Bosnia and Herzegovina, 96.9 mln ($60.6 mln) to Macedonia, 490.9 mln ($306.8 mln) to Serbia and Montenegro, and 206.7 mln ($129.2 mln) to Slovenia.
The debt to Serbia and Montenegro will be exchanged for equipment for hydro- and thermo-power plants, and gas and oil pipelines.
Kosovo 2006: The Making of a Compromise A clear and concise multimedia presentation of facts and arguments calling for a compromise and balanced solution on the future status of Kosovo, aimed at international mediators, negotiation experts and interested institutions.
"About 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin were sent from the United Kingdom at the behest of Bill Clinton to train for warfare in Bosnia and later Kosovo. Fundamental jihadists in Pakistan did the training! Christian Orthodox Serbs were the purported boogiemen; more Islamic states were the promise. The dismantling of Yugoslavia's socialist federation was the objective, and western investors would eventually be the winners." Holy Terrors, Part I
The London bombings rocked western Europe and the world a year ago last Friday. Three suspected bombers were young Brits of Pakistani descent and one was Jamaican-born. They did not live to tell their tales, but what they all had in common was having trained in jihadist, or "holy warrior", camps inside Pakistan.
The 21-year-old who detonated himself on the subway near Aldgate worked in his family's fish 'n chips shop, played cricket and was studying sports medicine - plus he had just returned from Pakistan. The 19-year-old who "planted" himself on the double-decker bus was a former street-tough who turned devoutly religious after visiting Pakistan in 2004. The Jamaican was a member of the secretive JUF, a Pakistani jihad group thought to recruit blacks from the Americas by infiltrating security forces in Canada, the United States and Caribbean states.
But why Pakistan? Why such violent means and ends? The roots of these tragedies lie, oddly, in the U.S. Balkan interventions of the 1990s. About 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin were sent from the United Kingdom at the behest of Bill Clinton to train for warfare in Bosnia and later Kosovo. Fundamental jihadists in Pakistan did the training! Christian Orthodox Serbs were the purported boogiemen; more Islamic states were the promise. The dismantling of Yugoslavia's socialist federation was the objective, and western investors would eventually be the winners.
Among British youth thus radicalized in Pakistan was Omar Sheikh, mastermind of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl's murder there in 2002. After Bosnia, Sheikh (a former student at the London School of Economics) wreaked havoc in India and Afghanistan before opening al-Qaeda's office in Lahore, Pakistan in 2000. At the time of his death, Pearl was there investigating the link between Richard Reid (of Caribbean descent), the hapless "jet shoe bomber" of 2001, and his handlers in Karachi and Lahore. That link was likely the shadowy JUF.
It gets stranger: Omar Sheikh wired Mohammed Atta the $100,000 which financed 9/11, documented by the FBI's financial crimes unit. But the 9/11 Commission of 2004 refused to question Sheikh, imprisoned in Pakistan for Pearl's murder. In fact, the Commission finally declared, "The U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance." I find that statement breathtakingly disingenuous!
... to be continued August 10
Sources for this article include the Madras-based Observer Research Foundation, its convener and distinguished fellow, B. Raman, director of Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and a retired cabinet secretary of India. Also, The Guardian Weekly, UK. Kathryn Albrecht of San Antonio has worked in libraries for over twenty years. Her opinions do not necessarily represent the Mountain Mail.
The head of the international police in Kosovo, Kai Vittrup, confirmed in an interview for Danish television's channel one that the Kosovo Albanian mafia is threatening him with death and that as a result his security has been reinforced. "One gets used to threats and if I was afraid of them, I would not still be in Kosovo. A threat against me represents a general threat to UN staff, and we are conducting an investigation and undertaking increased security measures as a result," he said. "My wife has left Kosovo and we made the decision together. No threat can be allowed to lead to a situation where the police chief leaves Kosovo," added Vittrup.
The UNMIK police chief pointed out that the types of crime in Kosovo are diverse - from classic forms such as looting and disregard for the law, including murder, to organized smuggling of drugs and arms. "What we have is a mafia run by families according to the clan system. It's a very closed system that's difficult to reveal but there has been progress," said Vittrup.
COMMENTATOR: Ljubisa Georgievski was born 1937 in Bitola, Republic of Macedonia. He is a theatre and film director, screenwriter, essayist, theatre theoretitian, journalist. He was ambassador to Bulgaria between 2000 and 2004 and is currently the head of VMRO-DPMNE's commission on foreign affairs. REPORTER: Recently, there were problems in Bulgaria with the registration of UMO Ilinden PIRIN (The United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden-Party for Economic Development and Integration of the Population. The Bulgarian transliteration spells out as PIRIN), the party of ethnic Macedonians. Some Bulgarian-Macedonians claim they can't openly declare themselves Macedonian. Macedonia also has Bulgarians who cannot declare themselves Bulgarian. What do you think of all this?
GEORGIJEVSKI: I think Bulgarians are not (that well) culturally and politically organised in Macedonia.
There was an attempt (to organise the pro-Bulgarian RATKO) six years ago.
Yes, but it didn't happen. There wouldn't be any problem to do that now - Macedonian ethnic freedoms are exemplary. The two governments say that there are some 5000 (Bulgarians in Macedonia and Macedonians in Bulgaria) on each side. I know that there was an argument going on in Strasbourg (about the prohibition to register the then OMO Ilinden Pirin) while I was an ambassador. (The argument was decided in favour of Macedonians) and now they will participate in elections. I think that this was their purpose - to win at local elections.
In Pirin Macedonia.
Yes. They could probably have a couple of mayors.
How do you see relations between the two countries developing from now on?
Some 10 to 20 years ago, cultural relations in the whole of the Balkans were catastrophic, but things are improving. A book of Macedonian poetry and anthologies of Macedonian prose and drama were recently published in Bulgaria. So we are not China and Japan to each other any more. Unfortunately, economic relations are still catastrophic, even if there is good political will on both sides. But the problem, I think, is that our economies are too alike and don't complement each other. (As to nationalism), the closer Bulgaria gets to Europe, the less prominent nationalism will be. This is valid for Macedonia, too. We are now in a process of reconciliation with Albanians. As to Bulgarians, we don't have any pronounced nationalist sentiments. There is no person who would have a problem saying that he or she is Bulgarian in Macedonian.
Some weeks ago Macedonia arrested Bulgarian journalist Yovo Stefanovski - one of those involved in the failed RATKO.
I was in Sofia back then (when RATKO was being established) and I don't have detailed information about this - I was informing myself from Macedonian and Bulgarian newspapers.
What do you think of Albanian nationalism in Macedonia? I know the story of an Albanian who, when asked about the reasons for the 2001 war, started talking about human rights. Only when prompted to cut to the point, he pointed to a spot in the distance and said: "Do you see (the village of) Grupchin over there? This is where the Bulgarian-Albanian border has to be". Do sentiments like this still run underground in Macedonia?
The phenomenon of Albanian nationalism was more pronounced amid politicians than the masses. The masses don't want war. Even while the conflict went on, there was no crisis point. This is a sign that multi-ethnic sentiments are already inbuilt in Macedonia, which has always been multiethnic. Branislav Sarkanjac, a professor in philosophy, wrote this book Komsi kapicik. It's a Turkish name and it means a small door. In earlier times, each house in Macedonia was separated from the other with a wall that had a door in it - kapicik. If they went through this door, the comitadji (revolutionaries) could walk the whole city without ever stepping on the street. In Macedonia, these doors were often between two religions, too. Komsi kapicik is the traditional Macedonian logic of co-existence. And it would last another 2000 years if politicians don't set it afire (laughs).
Will the European Union and NATO cure Balkan nationalisms?
They should be careful not to import it because the Europeisation of the Balkans is possible only if Europe doesn't Balkanise.
We see it happen in Kosovo.
We see it in Holland, what Kosovo? It happens in the centre of Paris, too. But the problem is hidden - no diplomat will tell you that. And this is exactly why Europe is closing its doors at the moment, right in front of our nose and the nose of Croatia. Some say that this is a measure to protect Europe from immigration or protect the European labour market, but the essence of things is that Europe wants at least 10 years to strangle the vital Balkan nationalisms. In 10 to 15 years, I don't think they will be that virulent as to infect Europe.
Should NATO should hurry to accept Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, for the sake of security?
NATO is a different thing. NATO should hurry to include these countries within the next two, three years because of the economical development of the Western Balkans. Only then can the Balkans start to speak of fading nationalism.
We are hearing voices that Macedonia should be first to recognise Kosovo's independence.
It is normal that the neighbours are first to recognise a new country. It was the same with Macedonia - Bulgaria was first to recognise us. Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, I think, would be first to recognise Kosovo - after the Serbian "amen". Kosovo can become a country only after the Serbian amen. It is either war or an amen. But the amen will be given - these are the realities of Kosovo. So Kosovo is no problem for us. It would be a problem if it becomes a grey criminal zone. So, from this point of view, it is better for us to have Kosovo take over the responsibilities of a state and evade that.
Macedonians who want Bulgarian citizenship have to go through a very long procedure.
And it will become even longer because of Europe. There are Bulgarian citizens who want Macedonian citizenship, too, but the figure is manifold on the side of Bulgaria. Three years ago (Bulgarian political scientist Ivan) Krustev came out with five or seven examples of Macedonian-Albanians who took Bulgarian passports and signed themselves up as Bulgarian. He said that a Schengen passport is more important than national feelings and made me laugh a lot. We, frustrated Balkan people, think that national feelings are much more important.
National sentiment is a mobile thing. Today you feel a Turk, tomorrow you feel whatever you want. It is not the 19th century. We have an agreement about double citizenship with Serbia, Albania and the US as well. So what if a Macedonian takes an American passport? He will become a national traitor? The young generation laughs at this stupidity. Nationalisms are funny. There is no nationalism that is less funny or less tragic - tragic in its effects on others and funny in its effect on you. And in the past 200 years, it is like we had this clown in the Balkans, who would take the knife and slaughter serious people. It's just terrible, terrible and funny. People work their land, do business, theatre, write books, and a funny guy comes and slaughters them - it is frightful. This is the Balkans.
-----
Steps have been taken to take the RATKO case to the International Court in the Hague, IMRO-BNM (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation - Bulgarian National Movement) leader Krasimir Karakachanov told The Sofia Echo. On June 13 2006, Bulgarian journalist Yovo Stefanovski and Macedonian citizen Alexander Markoski were charged to six months in jail for causing provocations and are now in custody pending appeal. According to Bulgarian-Macedonian sources, it was Macedonians who had thrown smoke bombs in the building where RATKO was being established, trying to provoke unrest.
The IMRO-BNM recognises the right of 5000 people in Bulgaria to call themselves Macedonian.
When asked what language they speak, 70 per cent of Bulgarian-Macedonians say that they speak Bulgarian, diplomatic sources told The Sofia Echo.
The IMRO-BNM says that OMO Ilinden PIRIN is paid for by Skopje, and says that RATKO was not paid for by Bulgaria.
The 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries have witnessed the most spectacular population growth in human history, most of it in Third World countries. The world's population, estimated at 6.4 billion in 2006, grows by more than 70 million people per year. In sixty years, Brazil's population has increased by 318 per cent; Ethiopia's by 503 per cent. There are now 73 million people in Ethiopia - more than the population of Britain or France. At the same time, many of the most economically successful countries, both in the East and in the West, have problems with ageing or declining populations. At its peak around 1910, one-quarter of the world's population lived in Europe or North America. Today the percentage has probably declined to about one-eighth. South Korea's birthrate has dropped to the point where the average Korean woman is expected to have only one child throughout her life. The U.S. still has a birthrate of more than two, while the U.K. saw births inch up from 1.63 to 1.74 and Germany from 1.34 to 1.37 in the same period. The low birthrate problem in Asia is rooted in women's rising social and economic standing. Japan's birthrate was 1.28, comparable to Taiwan's 1.22, and Hong Kong's 0.94.
"Europe and Japan are now facing a population problem that is unprecedented in human history," said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau. Countries have lost people because of wars, disease and natural disasters but never because women stopped having enough children. Japan announced that its population had shrunk in 2005 for the first time, and that it was now the world's most elderly nation. Italy was second. On average, women must have 2.1 children in their lifetimes for a society to replenish itself, accounting for infant mortality and other factors. Only one country in Europe - Muslim Albania - has a fertility rate above 2. Russia's fertility rate is 1.28.
Writer Spengler in the Asia Times Online commented that demography is destiny: "Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death." "The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe's population will relive - in slow motion - that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050."
It's numbers like these that have prompted Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to state that "it's demography, and not democracy, that will be the critical factor shaping growth and security in the 21st century. High rates of births are contributing to the booming populations which are dragging down developing nations. Meanwhile falling birth rates are sapping the growth of developed nations." "Although migration is one option developed countries are looking at to keep their economies vibrant," Lee said, "it might not solve all their troubles and might even breed social tensions." According to him, governments may not be able to afford to keep out of personal issues like sex, marriage and procreation much longer.
Historian Niall Ferguson reveals how Islam is winning the numbers game. "If fertility persisted at such low levels, within 50 years Spain's population would decline by 3-4 million, Italy's by a fifth. Not even two World Wars had inflicted such an absolute decline in population." "In 1950 there had been three times as many people in Britain as in Iran. By 1995 the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain. By 2050, the population of Iran could be more than 50 per cent larger. At the time of writing, the annual rate of population growth is more than seven times higher in Iran than in Britain."
Even in developing countries such as fast-evolving China, population growth is falling, and in the Indian subcontinent, Muslims have higher growth rates than Hindus or other non-Muslims. We thus have a situation with an explosive population growth in failed countries, while many of the most economically and technologically advanced nations, Eastern and Western, have stagnating populations. This strange and possibly unprecedented situation, which could perhaps be labelled "survival of the least fit", will have dramatic consequences for the world. It is already producing the largest migration waves in history, threatening to swamp islands of prosperity in a sea of poverty.
Lenin stated that "Marxism is based on internationalism or it is nothing." "The emancipation of the workers is not a local, nor a national, but an international problem," wrote Marx. Karl Marx has defined the essence of Socialism as abolishing private property. Let's assume for a moment that a country can be treated as the "property" of its citizens. Its inhabitants are responsible for creating its infrastructure. They have built its roads and communications, its schools, universities and medical facilities. They have created its political institutions and instilled in its people the mental capacities needed for upholding them. Is it then wrong for the citizens of this country to want to enjoy the benefits of what they have themselves created?
According to Marxist logic, yes.
Imagine you have two such houses next to each other. In House A, the inhabitants have over a period of generations created a tidy and functioning household. They have limited their number of children because they wanted to give all of them a proper education. In House B, the inhabitants live in a dysfunctional household with too many children who have received little higher education. One day they decide to move to their neighbors'. Many of the inhabitants of House A are protesting, but some of them think this might be a good idea. There is room for more people in House A, they say. In addition to this, Amnesty International, the United Nations and others claim that it is "racist" and "against international law" for the inhabitants of House A to expel the intruders. Pretty soon, House A has been turned into an overpopulated and dysfunctional household just like House B.
This is what is happening to the West today. Europe could become a failed continent itself, importing the problems of Africa and the Islamic world. The notion that everybody should be free to move anywhere they want to, and that preventing them from moving into your home is "racism, xenophobia and bigotry," is the Communism of the 21st century. And it will probably have the same effect, only on an even large scale.
Communism creates poverty because when people don't own property, they cannot plan for the future. If you and your children cannot enjoy the fruits of your efforts and work, but have to watch others take it away, you will no longer bother to go the extra mile or mobilize your full creativity to generate improvements.
Unrestricted immigration from failed states will eventually destroy global centres of excellence, the same way Communism did. This is definitely bad for the people who will lose what were once functioning countries, but in the long run bad for everybody else, too. It will deprive the inhabitants of Third World countries of the incentives needed to change their own nations if they can simply move somewhere else and refrain from confronting the reasons for their failures.
Many pro-immigrationists use slogans such as "No human is illegal" to argue that immigrants who have entered a country illegally should be allowed to stay. But countries which don't differentiate between citizens and non-citizens cannot long survive. A favorite quotation in the US is from the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus; a sonnet written in 1883 that is now engraved on a wall in the base of the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
It's a great poem, but it's just that, a poem. The global population today is 6.5 billion, and will rise to 8, 9 or even 10 billion in the near future. The "poor and wretched" of the earth make up literally billions of people. Should they all move to the USA? How many people can Americans take in before their country falls apart? If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act from 2006 will allow an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years. Can any nation possibly assimilate such a large number of people in such as short period of time?
The mantra that "diversity is enriching" does not have any real basis in facts. The logic behind this line of thinking is that receiving impulses and ideas from as many different cultures as possible is to your advantage. First of all, not all "cultural impulses" are equally beneficial, as can be witnessed by the rise in honor killings in the West because of Muslim immigration. And second of all: Why should this be an argument in favor of immigration? We have the Internet, global television and travel around the world much more frequently than ever before. We probably receive more information and "cultural impulses" than we are able to digest.
There are more than 20 member countries in the Arab League. Does "cultural diversity" increase globally if, say, Denmark becomes Arabized due to immigration? You would then get just another Arab country, while the only Denmark in existence would be erased. If "cultural diversity" is our yardstick, today's Muslim immigration to Europe is a disaster. We are replacing unique cultures developed over centuries with burkas and sharia.
Moreover, many politicians and intellectuals fail to appreciate just how much communication technology has changed the rules of the game. When people praise immigration that took place a hundred or two hundred years ago, they are talking about a world that no longer exists, like generals planning for the last war. Modern technology means that immigrants can live in Western countries as if they never left home, visit their original homeland frequently, watch satellite TV in the language of their parents instead of the language of their adopted country, and stay in touch with their relatives back home through the Internet.
Globalization has made it easier than ever not just to move physically to the other side of the world, but also to live one place physically and on the other side of the world mentally. The full implications of this technological revolution are too complicated to be properly predicted or understood by any one individual, but they are bound to have far-reaching and sometimes unsettling consequences for the nations involved, especially if combined with a deliberate, open-border ideology.
Observer Mac Johnson points out that in the past, admission into America was regarded as a very rare and generous gift. Today, admission into the US or any Western democracy "is regarded by many as something between a civil right and an entitlement. Indeed, many seem to believe that the host population should be grateful to them for having arrived. Many immigrants, therefore, arrive as colonists, wishing only to set up a slightly wealthier version of their homeland." He also points out that until the mid-20th Century, immigration to America occurred from a very restricted pool of nations. "For all our celebration of the great melting pot, America was mostly melting European peoples in that pot." "These peoples shared a great deal of cultural inheritance before ever setting foot in America."
Besides, it is not clear whether experiences from the USA, Canada or Australia can easily be transferred to Europe. The colonization of and immigration to these countries was indeed violent and unacceptable by today's moral standards. To put it in a brutal way: A country can only become a "successful immigration society" if the indigenous population has been marginalized. In the USA today, only about 3% of the population is made up of Native Americans; the rest are all descendants of immigrants.
It is wrong to compare Europeans with European Americans, Europeans should rather be compared with Native Americans. Europeans are our own Indians. When Europeans dig in the earth to uncover archaeological finds, we are finding traces of our own ancestors. All our folklore, culture and history are intimately tied to the land. Which is why the current immigration could lead to a string of civil wars, as the indigenous Europeans will not in the long run put up with being displaced in their own countries.
British commentator Anthony Browne, author of the book "Do We Need Mass Immigration?," points out that the migration waves we are witnessing now are unique. "What is happening now is the result of sustained migration pressure the likes of which the world has never seen before." "The revolution in "human rights" means that as soon as anyone gets past passport control they are pretty much guaranteed to stay. 47,000 illegal immigrants were detected in 2000, but just 6,000 were sent home." "A hundred years ago, most people in the west rarely moved even to the next village; now whole villages from Bangladesh are relocating to northern England."
He quotes the then president of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, who in 2000 was asked by the Los Angeles Times how the country was going to feed, clothe, house and employ the expected doubling of her population by 2050. She replied: "We'll send them to America. Globalisation will take that problem away, as you free up all factors of production, also labour. There'll be free movement, country to country. Globalisation in its purest form should not have any boundaries, so small countries with big populations should be able to send population to countries with big boundaries and small populations."
Browne also confronts the assertion that "mass immigration is normal, irreversible and beneficial to host societies" as a "damaging illusion. Rather, the current experience of developed western countries, faced with huge inflows of people [.] is unprecedented and damaging. The process can and should be stopped, in the interests of the rich diversity of nations it will otherwise crush." "In 1924, the US government passed legislation that effectively closed the door on European immigration, opening the door to immigration from poor countries with new legislation only in 1965. Australia has shown in recent years that tough policies can reduce illegal immigration to virtually zero." "Pro-immigration campaigners who tell the people of Europe that 'mass immigration cannot be stopped' are adopting the policies of despots through history of quelling opposition by telling opponents that resistance is futile. All that is needed is political will."
American military historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson talks about how mass immigration is the product of a de facto alliance between the Libertarian Right and the Multicultural Left. The economic Libertarians can be represented by Swedish writer Johan Norberg, author of the book In Defence of Global Capitalism. Norberg can have valuable insights into the flaws of the Scandinavian welfare state model. However, his commitment to a "free market, open border" ideology blinds him to the threat posed by Muslim immigration, an ideological blind spot that is almost as big as the ones we find in Marxists. According to him, "at the moment there is a problem. The right supports one part of globalisation - the free movement of capital and goods - while the left tends to support another part, the free movement of people."
Norberg believes immigration is already so extensive it would be unwise to halt it. Pointing out there were 15 million Muslims in Europe, he noted in a 2003 article: "If we close the borders, if we alienate this substantial minority, we risk creating resentment between ethnic and religious groups, and only the fundamentalists would gain." "If people were allowed to cross borders at will, they would take their ideas and their labour and skills with them. This is all part of free trade, and it's a paradox that many liberals don't see this."
Japan has a declining and ageing population, Yemen and Pakistan have booming populations. Does anybody seriously believe that it would be "good" for the Japanese to open their doors to millions of Muslims from Yemen? "Do you have any education?" "Yes, I know the Koran by heart and can say 'Death to the infidels!' in ten different ways." "Splendid, just what we need here in Japan. Can you start tomorrow on developing a new line of plasma TV screens for SONY?"
When it comes to stagnating populations and Muslim immigration, the problems are not nearly as damaging as the cure.
Among political right-wingers, there is frequently a belief that what is good for business interests is good for the country. The problem is, this isn't always true. There is sometimes a gap between the short-term interests of Big Business for cheap labor from Third World countries, and the long-term interests of the country as a whole. You cannot compete with cheap commodities from Third World countries unless you lower the general wages to Third World levels.
A few decades ago, Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew realized that Singapore could never win the worldwide competition to offer cheap labor. He decided instead that the country was to become a high value-added producer. To Lee, that meant wages had to be high enough to encourage Singapore's businessmen to invest in labor-saving technology. To raise Singapore's salaries he had to make sure that local wages wouldn't be undercut by migrants. Yes, you could pay an unskilled Bangladeshi $400 dollars a month. But in that case you had to pay the state another $400 a month.
In Europe, the one nation that has proved to be most successful in technology, "Nokia nation" Finland, is also perhaps the one country within the EU that has accepted the least amount of immigration. Today, this small Nordic nation boasts a thriving hi-tech economy ranked the most competitive in the world and the best educated citizenry of all the industrialized countries. Neighboring Sweden, in contrast, with the largest per capita immigration in Europe, is in serious economic decline, and the only thing growing seems to be the crime rates.
Ethnically homogeneous nations enjoy a "trust bonus" which reduces the amount of conflict. There is little evidence that any theoretical "diversity" bonus from immigration will cancel out the loss of this "trust bonus." South Korea and Japan are among the world leaders in technology. They are both ethnically homogeneous nations. Even China, which does have significant ethnic minorities, could soon be more ethnically homogeneous than many so-called Western nations. There will be no lack of "diversity" in the 21st century, but there could be a lack of functioning, coherent nation states. Maybe the West will "celebrate diversity" until our countries fall apart, and global leadership will be transferred to East Asia.
Yes, it is true that the ability to attract ambitious and talented scientists from other countries has benefited the USA in the past, and given it an edge over Europe. However, it is not without dangers to "celebrate diversity" in a country as diverse as the US. Americans should try celebrating what binds them together instead, or they may wake up one day and discover that they don't really have a lot in common. What then for the United States?
Anthony Browne notes that Britain "became the largest economic power in the world in the nineteenth century, in the almost complete absence of immigration to these isles. Japan became the world's second largest economy after the second world war in the almost total absence of immigration." "Britain can never compete on the basis of low wages with low cost countries such as China for the simple reason that the cost of living is so much higher, and it is a mistake to try. Although cheap labour immigration may have staved off the demise of those industries for a short while, it also compromised them by encouraging them to go down the cheap labour route, and discouraging them from going up the high productivity/value added route."
The revered former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, stated in a testimony given to the U.S. Senate: "Although discovery of new technologies is to some degree a matter of luck, we know that human activities do respond to economic incentives. A relative shortage of workers should increase the incentives for developing labor-saving technologies and may actually spur technological development."
Robert Rowthorn, academic economist, criticizes the claim, frequently repeated by Tony Blair's Labour government since it took office in 1997, that "if we don't have immigration, we won't have economic growth." According to Rowthorn, "if you repeat something often enough, you can perhaps make people believe it." There is no evidence "that large-scale immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the benefits are either close to zero, or negative" as unskilled migrants and their families often are net consumers of taxes.
"Immigration can't solve the pensions crisis, nor solve the problem of an ageing population, as its advocates so often claim. It can, at most, delay the day of reckoning, because, of course, immigrants themselves grow old, and they need pensions." "The injection of large numbers of unskilled workers into the economy does not benefit the bulk of the population to any great extent. It benefits the nanny-and housecleaner-using classes; it benefits employers who want to pay low wages; but it does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons." "While Britain has always had immigration, the recent influx is totally without precedent in modern times. Relative to population, the scale of immigration is now much greater than during any period since the Anglo-Saxon and Danish invasions over a thousand years ago."
Rowthorn also points out, correctly, that "refugees and others granted special leave to remain under the asylum rules account for only 10 per cent of immigration to Britain. Most permanent immigration consists of people who are economic migrants together with their dependants." Most of them aren't people fleeing persecution.
People smuggling has become one of the world's biggest and most lucrative businesses, with professional smugglers who demand high payments. In one case in Norway, a boy around eight years old said his mother and siblings in Kosovo were dead. An investigation into his case, however, found his parents and siblings living in Greece. Fully 94 per cent of would-be refugees arriving in Norway lack valid identification papers. In the last four years, 50 per cent of those who have been refused asylum in Sweden have gone underground and have simply vanished. And of the half who have actually been sent home, a full 20 per cent have come straight back to Sweden to try their luck again.
In Iran, the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign bragged that it was targeting potential suicide bombers in Britain because of the relative ease with which UK passport-holders could enter Israel. "Do you think getting hold of a British passport for an Iranian citizen is hard? Tens of passports are issued for Iranian asylum seekers in Britain every day. There are hundreds of other ways available to us, such as illegal entry [into Britain], fake passports, etc." One gang is estimated to have smuggled 100,000 illegal immigrants, mainly Turkish Kurds, into Britain. These economic migrants paid between £3,000 and £5,000 to be transported via an elaborate and dangerous route.
"We were just tired of living in the forest," explained a young man from Guinea-Bissau. "There was nothing to eat, there was nothing to drink." In mid-September, Africans began assaulting the frontier of Spain's small enclaves in Africa en masse. Deploying crude ladders made of branches, they used their weight to bring the fences down in places. As one of them put it, "We go in a group and all jump at once. We know that some will get through, that others will be injured and others may die, but we have to get through, whatever the cost."
Rickard Sandell of the Royal Elcano Institute in Madrid predicted that the migration now underway could signal the prospect of an African "mass exodus" and armed conflict. What one sees today "is only the beginning of an immigration phenomenon that could evolve into one of the largest in history. the mass assault on Spain's African border may just be a first warning of what to expect of the future." With its shores only about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the African coast, Spain is in the frontline of the fight against illegal immigration.
José Zapatero, Spain's Prime Minister, said during a visit to the Canary Islands that his country would "spare no resources" to curb illegal immigration from Africa. However, his Socialist government launched an amnesty for more than 600,000 illegal immigrants the year before, thus greatly encouraging more illegal immigration. Moreover, due to the borderless nature of modern Europe caused by the European Union, once you get into Spain or any other EU country, you are free to move on to others.
The so-called Schengen Agreement, signed by a total of 26 countries, means that border posts and checks have been removed between European countries and common external border controls established. These are not always working very well. Roger Scruton points out that the pre-political loyalty for most people in Europe is with their nation states and not with "Europe." However, not all countries care too much about upholding the borders of other nations. There have been reports of Italian police, for instance, releasing illegal immigrants on the border, free to go further north. Not their country, not their problem. So much for a "common European identity."
At the time of the greatest population explosion in the history of the human race on its mainly Muslim southern borders, and when half of all Arab youths express a desire to move to the West, European authorities decide that it's a brilliant idea to remove as many border controls as possible. And EU bureaucrats are quietly working to extend the "four freedoms of the EU," including the free movement of people between countries, to include the Arab world.
Just like a scene from The Camp of the Saints, the controversial book by Jean Raspail, thousands of African immigrants have come ashore the Mediterranean island of Malta the past four years, most often making the crossing from Libya in open fishing boats, heading for the European mainland. And the tiny island of Malta feels overwhelmed. "We don't want a multicultural society," said Martin Degiorgio, a leader of an anti-immigration group. "Haven't you seen the problems it has brought to France and Britain?" Scicluna, the government adviser, said that it was "utterly unrealistic to think you can pull up the drawbridge" and that the country needed time to adjust to immigration. "We've got to live with it. We've got to adapt to it. We have got to make it work," he said.
Europe has lost, or even deliberately vacated, control of its borders, a situation that cannot be allowed to continue. Dr. Daniel Pipes has taken note of this issue, too: "The illegal immigration of non-Western peoples, I predict, will become an all-consuming issue in every Western country." "Thus begins the first chapter of what promises to be a long and terrible story." A bleak outlook, perhaps, but not unwarranted. Massive movements of people have in the past almost always triggered wars. There is little reason to expect our countries to be an exception. Tensions in Europe are already mounting due to immigration.
It is a matter of national security. According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, suspected or convicted foreign-born terrorists have routinely exploited federal immigration laws to enter or remain in the United States illegally. The always excellent African-American intellectual Thomas Sowell puts it this way: "We continue to hear about the 'need' for immigrants to do jobs that Americans will not do - even though these are all jobs that Americans have done for generations before mass illegal immigration became a way of life. Bombings in London, Madrid and the 9/11 terrorist attacks here are all part of the high price being paid today for decades of importing human time bombs from the Arab world. That in turn has been the fruit of an unwillingness to filter out people according to the countries they come from. [.] Europeans and Americans have for decades been playing Russian roulette with their loose immigration policies. The intelligentsia have told us that it would be wrong, and even racist, to set limits based on where the immigrants come from. There are thousands of Americans who might still be alive if we had banned immigration from Saudi Arabia - and perhaps that might be more important than the rhetoric of the intelligentsia."
Nearly 200 million people in 2006 lived outside their country of origin. That is a number similar to the entire planet's population during what we in Western history call the Migration Period, which triggered the downfall of the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries. The similarities have not gone unnoticed by everybody.
Rear Admiral Chris Parry, one of Britain's most senior military strategists, has warned that Western civilization faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman Empire. "Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned. [the process] acts as a sort of reverse colonisation, where groups of people are self-contained, going back and forth between their countries, exploiting sophisticated networks and using instant communication on phones and the internet." Third World instability could lick at the edges of the West as pirates attack holidaymakers from fast boats. "At some time in the next 10 years it may not be safe to sail a yacht between Gibraltar and Malta." The effects will be magnified as borders become more porous and some areas sink beyond effective government control. Parry expected the world population to grow to about 8.4 billion in 2035, with some giant metropolises becoming ungovernable. The subsequent mass population movements, Parry argued, could lead to the "Rome scenario."
It is strange that those who call for stricter limitations on immigration in general and for an end to Muslim immigration are denounced as "anti-democratic forces" when it is the other way around. No nation, regardless of political system, can survive if it does not uphold its territorial integrity. Democracy has proved to be a superior system in promoting economic progress through liberty. But will democracy also prove strong enough to survive when faced with uncontrolled mass-immigration from failed states?
This is a powerful dilemma for democratic states in the 21st century, one that is not exclusive to Western nations. India, too, has big problems with millions of people crossing into the country illegally from Islamic Bangladesh, which is why the Indians want to build a border fence. Democratic states will either be strict enough to control their own borders, or they will cease to be democratic, perhaps cease to exist at all.
It is sometimes said that trends start in California, and spread to the rest of the world from there. But maybe trends in the 21st century start in Israel. The "trend" of Islamic suicide bombings has to a great extent been pioneered in Israel. Maybe some of the Israeli countermeasures, such as building a security fence to protect yourself against Islamic terrorism and from being demographically overwhelmed by Muslim immigration, will become trendy, too.
In the middle of the massive waves of migration in the 21st century it is suicidal to cling on to ideas of a "borderless world." Yet in the West, there seems to be an alliance between the anti-national forces of the political Left and the Libertarian ideals and short-term desire for cheap labor of the political Right, who denounce their critics as "racists." Perhaps we can call it an Alliance of Utopias. What these Western Utopians don't understand is that there is another, competing Utopia of a borderless world: The Islamic Caliphate. As long as the Islamic world can dump their excess population in infidel countries and Muslims make up a majority - some say 70% - of the world's refugees, any policies of not maintaining our borders will only pave the way for the Islamization of our lands. And it will happen with the blessing of many of our intellectuals, both right-wing and left-wing.
