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Title: Terrorists and Freedom Fighters

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Terrorists and Freedom Fighters


1st EDITION


Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.


Editing and Design:
Lidija Rangelovska


Lidija Rangelovska
A Narcissus Publications Imprint, Skopje 2002

First published by Central Europe Review
Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.


(c) 2002 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be
used or reproduced in any manner without written permission
from:
Lidija Rangelovska  - write to:
palma@unet.com.mk or to
vaknin@link.com.mk


Visit the Author Archive of Dr. Sam Vaknin in "Central Europe
Review":
http://www.ce-
review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html

Visit "Balkanlands - World in Conflict and Transition":
http://www.balkanlands.com


ISBN: 9989-929-29-7

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http://samvak.tripod.com/after.html
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Created by:	LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA





C O N T E N T S


I.	Terrorists and Freedom Fighters
II.	Macedonia to the Macedonians
III.	The Black Hand
IV.	The Insurgents and the Swastika
V.	KLA - The Army of Liberation
VI.	Appendix: Pathological Narcissism, Group Behaviour and
Terrorism
VII.	Appendix: The Crescent and the Cross
VIII.	The Author
IX.	About "After the Rain"




Terrorists and Freedom Fighters



"'Unbounded' morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even
in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of
diminishing returns applies to morality."

Thomas Sowell

There's a story about Robespierre that has the preeminent
rabble-rouser of the French Revolution leaping up from his chair
as soon as he saw a mob assembling outside.

"I must see which way the crowd is headed," he is reputed to
have said: "For I am their leader."
http://www.salon.com/tech/books/1999/11/04/new_optimism/

People who exercise violence in the pursuit of what they hold to
be just causes are alternately known as "terrorists" or "freedom
fighters".

They all share a few common characteristics:

1.	A hard core of idealists adopt a cause (in most cases, the
freedom of a group of people). They base their claims on
history - real or hastily concocted, on a common heritage,
on a language shared by the members of the group and, most
important, on hate and contempt directed at an "enemy". The
latter is, almost invariably, the physical or cultural
occupier of space the idealists claim as their own.

2.	The loyalties and alliances of these people shift
effortlessly as ever escalating means justify an ever
shrinking cause. The initial burst of grandiosity inherent
in every such undertaking gives way to cynical and bitter
pragmatism as both enemy and people tire of the conflict.

3.	An inevitable result of the realpolitik of terrorism is the
collaboration with the less savoury elements of society.
Relegated to the fringes by the inexorable march of common
sense, the freedom fighters naturally gravitate towards
like minded non-conformists and outcasts. The organization
is criminalized. Drug dealing, bank robbing and other
manner of organized and contumacious criminality become
integral extensions of the struggle. A criminal corporatism
emerges, structured but volatile and given to internecine
donnybrooks.

4.	Very often an un-holy co-dependence develops between the
organization and its prey. It is the interest of the
freedom fighters to have a contemptible and tyrannical
regime as their opponent. If not prone to suppression and
convulsive massacres by nature - acts of terror will
deliberately provoke even the most benign rule to abhorrent
ebullition.

5.	The terrorist organization will tend to emulate the very
characteristics of its enemy it fulminates against the
most. Thus, all such groups are rebarbatively
authoritarian, execrably violent, devoid of human empathy
or emotions, suppressive, ostentatious, trenchant and often
murderous.

6.	It is often the freedom fighters who compromise their
freedom and the freedom of their people in the most
egregious manner. This is usually done either by
collaborating with the derided enemy against another,
competing set of freedom fighters - or by inviting a
foreign power to arbiter. Thus, they often catalyse the
replacement of one regime of oppressive horror with
another, more terrible and entrenched.

7.	Most freedom fighters are assimilated and digested by the
very establishment they fought against or as the founders
of new, privileged nomenklaturas. It is then that their
true nature is exposed, mired in gulosity and
superciliousness as they become. Inveterate violators of
basic human rights, they often transform into the very
demons they helped to exorcise.

8.	Most freedom fighters are disgruntled members of the middle
classes or the intelligentsia. They bring to their affairs the
merciless ruthlessness of sheltered lives. Mistaking compassion
for weakness, they show none as they unscrupulously pursue their
self-aggrandizement, the ego trip of sending others to their
death. They are the stuff martyrs are made of. Borne on the
crests of circumstantial waves, they lever their unbalanced
personalities and project them to great effect. They are the
footnotes of history that assume the role of text. And they
rarely enjoy the unmitigated support of the very people they
proffer to liberate. Even the most harangued and subjugated
people find it hard to follow or accept the vicissitudinal
behaviour of their self-appointed liberators, their shifting
friendships and enmities and their pasilaly of violence.


In this series of articles, I will attempt to study four such
groups which operated in the tortured region of the Balkans. I
will start with the IMRO (VMRO) in Macedonia and Bulgaria,
proceed to Serbia and its union with death ("Union or Death",
aka the Black Hand), study the Ustasha in detail and end with
the current mutation of Balkan spasms, the KLA (UCK).


Macedonia to the Macedonians


"Two hundred and forty five bands were in the mountains. Serbian
and Bulgarian comitadjis, Greek andartes, Albanians and
Vlachs... all waging a terrorist war"

Leon Sciaky in "Farewell to Salonica: Portrait of an Era"

"(Goce Delcev died) cloak flung over his left shoulder, his
white fez, wrapped in a bluish scarf, pulled down and his gun
slung across his left elbow"

Mihail Chakov, who was nearby Delcev at the moment of his death,
quoted in "Balkan Ghosts" by Robert D. Kaplan

"I will try and tell this story coldly, calmly, dispassionately
... one must tone the horrors down, for in their nakedness, they
are unprintable..."

A.G. Hales reporting about the Illinden Uprising in the London
"Daily News" of October 21, 1903





"The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization directs its
eyes neither to the West, nor to the East,nor to anywhere else;
it relies primarily on its own powers, does not turn into
anybody's weapon, and will not allow anybody to use its name and
prestige for personal and other purposes. It has demonstrated
till now and will prove in the future that it establishes its
activities on the interests and works for the ideals of
struggling Macedonia and the Bulgarian race."

TODOR ALEXANDROV, The Leader of the IMRO from 1911 to 1924


The Treaty of Berlin killed Peter Lazov. A Turkish soldier first
gouged his eyes out, some say with a spoon, others insist it was
a knife. As the scream-imbued blood trickled down his face, the
Turk cut both his ears and the entirety of his nose with his
sword. Thus maimed and in debilitating agony, he was left to die
for a few days. When he failed to do so, the Turks disembowelled
him to death and decapitated the writhing rump.





The Ottomans granted independence to Bulgaria in the 1878 Treaty
of San Stefano unwillingly, following a terminal defeat at the
hands of a wrathful Russian army. The newly re-invented nation
incorporated a huge swathe of Macedonia, not including
Thessaloniki and the Chalcidice Peninsula. Another treaty
followed, in Berlin, restoring the "balance" by returning
Macedonia to Turkish rule. Turkey obligingly accepted a "one
country, two systems" approach by agreeing to a Christian
administration of the region and by permitting education in
foreign languages, by foreign powers in foreign-run and owned
schools. Then they set about a typical infandous Ottoman orgy of
shredded entrails, gang raped corpses of young girls and maiming
and decapitation. The horrors this time transcended anything
before. In Ohrid, they buried people in pigsty mud for "not
paying taxes". Joined by Turks who escaped the advancing Russian
armies in North Bulgaria and by Bosnian Moslems, who fled the
pincer movement of the forces of Austro-Hungary, they embarked
on the faithful recreation of a Bosch-like hell. Feeble attempts
at resistance (really, self defence) - such as the one organized
by Natanail, the Bishop of Ohrid - ended in the ever escalating
ferocity of the occupiers. A collaboration emerged between the
Church and the less than holy members of society. Natanail
himself provided "Chetis" (guerilla bands) with weapons and
supplies. In October 1878, an uprising took place in Kresna. It
was duly suppressed by the Turks, though with some difficulty.
It was not the first one, having been preceded by the Razlovci
uprising in 1876. But it was more well organized and explicit in
its goals.

But no one - with the exception of the Turks - was content with
the situation and even they were paranoid and anxious. The flip-
flop policies of the Great Powers turned Macedonia into the
focus of shattered national aspirations grounded in some
historical precedent of at least three nations: the Greeks, the
Bulgarians, and the Serbs. Each invoked ethnicity and history
and all conjured up the apparition of the defunct Treaty of San
Stefano. Serbia colluded with the Habsburgs: Bosnia to the
latter in return for a free hand in Macedonia to the former. The
wily Austro-Hungarians regarded the Serbs as cannon fodder in
the attrition war against the Russians and the Turks. In 1885,
Bulgaria was at last united - north and formerly Turk-occupied
south - under the Kremlin's pressure. The Turks switched sides
and allied with the Serbs against the spectre of a Great
Bulgaria. Again, the battleground was Macedonia and its
Bulgarian-leaning (and to many, pure Bulgarian) inhabitants.
Further confusion awaited. In 1897, following the Crete uprising
against the Ottoman rule and in favour of Greek enosis
(unification), Turkey (to prevent Bulgaria from joining its
Greek enemy) encouraged King Ferdinand to help the Serbs fight
the Greeks. Thus, the Balkanian kaleidoscope of loyalties,
alliances and everlasting friendship was tilted more savagely
than ever before by the paranoia and the whims of nationalism
gone berserk.





In this world of self reflecting looking glasses, in this bedlam
of geopolitics, in this seamless and fluid universe, devoid of
any certainty but the certainty of void, an anomie inside an
abnormality - a Macedonian self identity, tentative and merely
cultural at first, began to emerge. Voivode Gorgija Pulevski
published a poem "Macedonian Fairy" in 1878. The Young
Macedonian Literary Society was established in 1891 and started
publishing "Loza", its journal a year thereafter. Krste
Misirkov, Dimitrija Cupovski, the Vardar Society and the
Macedonian Club in Belgrade founded the Macedonian Scholarly-
Literary Society in 1902 (in Russia). Their "Macedonian National
Program" demanded a recognition of a Macedonian nation with its
own language and culture. They stopped short of insisting on an
independent state, settling instead for an autonomy and an
independent church. Misirkov went on to publish his seminal
work, "On Macedonian Matters" in 1903 in Sofia. It was a
scathing critique of the numbing and off-handed mind games
Macedonia was subjected to by the Big Powers. Misirkov believed
in culture as an identity preserving force. And the purveyors
and conveyors of culture were the teachers.

"So the teacher in Yugoslavia is often a hero and fanatic as
well as a servant of the mind; but as they walked along the
Belgrade streets it could easily be seen that none of them had
quite enough to eat or warm enough clothing or handsome lodgings
or all the books they needed" - wrote Dame Rebecca West in her
eternal "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" in 1940.

Goce Delcev (Gotse Deltchev) was a teacher. He was born in 1872
in Kukush (the Bulgarian name of the town), north of
Thessaloniki (Salonica, Solun, Saloniki). There is no doubt
about his cultural background (as opposed to his convictions
later in life) - it was Bulgarian to the core. He studied at a
Bulgarian gymnasium in Saloniki. He furthered his education at a
military academy in Sofia. He was a schoolteacher and a guerilla
fighter and in both capacities he operated in the areas that are
today North-Central Greece, Southwestern Bulgaria and the
Republic of Macedonia. He felt equally comfortable in all three
regions. He was shot to death by the Turks in Banitsa, then a
Bulgarian village, today, a Greek one. It was in a spring day in
May 1903.

The death of this sad but steely eyed, heavily moustached youth
was sufficient to ignite the Illinden uprising three months
later. It erupted on the feast of Saint Illiya (Sveti Ilija).
Peasants sold their sacrificial bulls - the fruits of months of
labour - and bought guns with the proceeds. It started rather
innocuously in the hotbed of ethnic unrest, Western Macedonia -
telegraph wires were cut, some tax registers incinerated. The
IMRO collaborated in this with the pro-Bulgarian organization
Vzhovits. In Krusevo (Krushevo) a republic was proclaimed,
replete with "Rules of the Macedonian Uprising Committee" (aka
the "Constitution of the Uprising").





This document dealt with the liberation of Macedonia and the
establishment of a Macedonian State. A special chapter was
dedicated to foreign affairs and neighbourly relationships. It
was all heart-achingly naive and it lasted 10 bloody days.
Crushed by 2000 trained soldiers and horse bound artillery, the
outnumbered 1200 rebels surrendered. Forty of them kissed each
other goodbye and blew their brains out. The usual raping and
blood thick massacres ensued. According to Turkish records,
these ill-planned and irresponsible moments of glory and freedom
cost the lives of 4,694 civilians, 994 "terrorists". The rape of
3,000 women was not documented. In Northwestern Macedonia, an
adolescent girl was raped by 50 soldiers and murdered
afterwards. In another village, they cut a girl's arm to secure
her bracelets. The more one is exposed to these atrocities, the
more one is prone to subscribe to the view that the Ottoman
Empire - its halting and half hearted efforts at reform
notwithstanding - was the single most important agent of
retardation and putrid stagnation in its colonies, a stifling
influence of traumatic proportions, the cause of mass mental
sickness amongst its subjects.

As is usually the case in the bloodied geopolitical sandbox
known as the Balkans, an international peacekeeping force
intervened. Yet it was - again, habitually - too late, too
little.





What made Delcev, rather his death, the trigger of such an
outpouring of emotions was the IMRO (VMRO in Macedonian and in
Bulgarian). The Illinden uprising was the funeral of a man who
was a hope. It was the ululating grieving of a collective
deprived of vengeance or recourse. It was a spasmodic breath
taken in the most suffocating of environments. This is not to
say that IMRO was monolithic or that Delcev was an Apostle (as
some of his hagiographers would have him). It was not and he was
far from it. But he and his two comrades, Jane (Yane) Sandanski
and Damyan (Dame) Gruev had a vision. They had a dream. The IMRO
is the story of a dream turned nightmare, of the absolute
corruption of absolute power and of the dangers of inviting the
fox to fight the wolf.

The original "Macedonian Revolutionary Organization" (MRO) was
established in Sofia. The distinction between being a Macedonian
and being a Macedonian-Bulgarian was not sharp, to use a polite
understatement. The Bulgarians "proper" regarded the Macedonians
as second class, primitive and uncultured Bulgarian relatives
who inhabit a part of Bulgaria to the east. The Macedonians
themselves were divided. Some wished to be incorporated in
Bulgaria, the civilized and advanced society and culture. Others
wanted an independent state - though they, too, believed that
the salvation of such an entity - both demographic and financial
- lies abroad, with the diaspora and benevolent foreign powers.
A third group (and Delcev was, for a time, among them) wanted a
federation of all states Balkan with an equal standing for a
Macedonian polity (autonomy).





The original MRO opted for the Bulgarian option and restricted
its aims to the liberation and immediate annexation of what they
solemnly considered to be a Turkish-occupied Bulgarian
territory. To distinguish themselves from this MRO, the 6
founders of the Macedonian version - all members of the
intelligentsia - added the word "Internal" to their name. Thus,
they became, in November 1893, IMRO.

A measure of the disputatiousness of all matters Balkanian can
be found in the widely and wildly differing versions about the
circumstances of the establishment of IMRO. Some say it was
established in Thessaloniki (this is the official version, thus
supporting its "Macedonian"-ness). Others - like Robert Kaplan -
say it was in Stip (Shtip) and the Encyclopaedia Britannica
claims it was in ... Resen (Resana).

Let it be clear: this author harbours no sympathy towards the
Ottoman Empire. The IMRO was fighting for lofty ideals
(Balkanian federation) and worthy goals (liberation from
asphyxiating Turkish rule). But to many outside observers (with
the exception of journalists like John Sonixen or John smith),
the IMRO was indistinguishable in its methods of operation from
the general landscape of mayhem, crime, disintegration of the
social fabric, collapse of authority, social anomie, terror and
banditry.





From Steven Sowards' "Twenty Five Lectures on Modern Balkan
History, The Balkans in an Age of Nationalism", 1996 available
HERE: http://www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect11.htm

"Meanwhile, the Tanzimat reforms remained unfulfilled under
Abdul Hamid's reactionary regime. How effective had all these
reforms been by the turn of the century? How bad was life for
Christian peasants in the Balkans? In a 1904 book called
'Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future', H. N. Brailsford, an
English relief worker, describes lawless conditions in
Macedonia, the central Balkan district  between Greece, Serbia,
Albania and Bulgaria. In the areas Brailsford knew, the
authorities had little power. He writes:

'An Albanian went by night into a Bulgarian village and fired
into the house of a man whom he regarded as an enemy. ... The
prefect...endeavored to arrest the murderer, but [his Albanian]
village took up his cause, and the gendarmes returned empty-
handed. The prefect ... marched upon the offending village at
the head of three hundred regular troops. ... The village did
not resist, but it still refused to give evidence against the
guilty man. The prefect returned to Ochrida with forty or fifty
prisoners, kept them in gaol for three or four days, and then
released them all. ... To punish a simple outbreak of private
passion in which no political element was involved [the prefect]
had to mobilize the whole armed force of his district, and even
then he failed.'





Robbers and brigands operated with impunity: 'Riding one day
upon the high-road ..., I came upon a brigand seated on a
boulder ... in the middle of the road, smoking his cigarette,
with his rifle across his knees, and calmly levying tribute from
all the passers-by."

Extortionists, not police, were in control: "A wise village ...
[has] its own resident brigands. ... They are known as rural
guards. They are necessary because the Christian population is
absolutely unarmed and defenceless. To a certain extent they
guarantee the village against robbers from outside, and in
return they carry on a licensed and modified robbery of their
own.'

Self-defense by Orthodox peasants was dangerous: 'The Government
makes its presence felt ... when a 'flying column' saunters out
to hunt an elusive rebel band, or ... to punish some flagrant
act of defiance ... The village may have ... resented the
violence of the tax-collector ... [or] harboured an armed band
of insurgents ... or ... killed a neighbouring civilian Turk who
had assaulted some girl of the place ... At the very least all
the men who can be caught will be mercilessly beaten, at the
worst the village will be burned and some of its inhabitants
massacred.'





It was not surprising that peasants hated their rulers. 'One
enters some hovel ... something ... stirs or groans in the
gloomiest corner on the floor beneath a filthy blanket. Is it
fever, one asks, or smallpox? ... the answer comes ..., 'He is
ill with fear.' ... Looking back ... , a procession of ruined
minds comes before the memory--an old priest lying beside a
burning house speechless with terror ... a woman who had barked
like a dog since the day her village was burned; a maiden who
became an imbecile because her mother buried her in a hole under
the floor to save her from the soldiers ... children who flee in
terror at the sight of a stranger, crying 'Turks! Turks!' These
are the human wreckage of the hurricane which usurps the
functions of a Government.'

Four things are worth noting in Brailsford's account as we
consider the prospects for a reform solution to Balkan problems.
First, revolutionary politics was not the foremost issue for the
Christian population: nationalism addressed the immediate
problems in their daily lives only indirectly, by promising a
potential better state.

Second, loyalties were still local and based on the family and
the village, not on abstract national allegiances. If criminal
abuses ended, the Ottoman state might yet have invented an
Ottoman "nationalism" to compete with Serbian, Greek, Romanian,
or Bulgarian nationalism.

Third, villagers did not cry out for new government departments
or services, but only for relief from corruption and crime. The
creation of new national institutions was not necessary, only
the reform of existing institutions.

Fourth, and on the other hand, mistrust and violence between the
two sides was habitual. So many decades of reform had failed by
this time. The situation was so hopeless and extreme that few
people on either side can have thought of reform as a realistic
option."

During the 1890s, IMRO's main sources of income were voluntary
(and later, less voluntary) taxation of the rural population,
bank robberies, train robberies (which won handsome world media
coverage) and kidnapping for ransom (like the kidnapping of the
American Protestant Missionary Ellen Stone - quite a mysterious
affair). The IMRO developed along predictable lines into an
authoritarian and secretive organization - a necessity if it
were to fight the Turks effectively. It had its own tribunals
which exercised - often fatal - authority over civilians who
were deemed collaborators with the Turkish enemy. It must be
emphasized that this was NOT unusual or unique at that time.
This was the modus operandi of all military-organized
ideological and political groups. And, taking everything into
account, the IMRO was fighting a just war against an abhorrent
enemy.

Moreover, to some extent, its war was effective and resulted in
reforms imposed on the Sublime Port (the Turkish authorities) by
the Great Powers of the day. We mentioned the peacekeeping force
which replaced the local gendarmerie. But reforms were also
enacted in education, religious rights and tolerance,
construction, farm policy and other areas. The intractable and
resource-consuming Macedonian question led directly to the
reform of Turkey itself by the Macedonia-born officer Ataturk.
And it facilitated the disintegration of the Ottoman empire -
thus, ironically, leading to the independence of almost everyone
except its originators.

The radicalization of IMRO and its transformation into the
infamous organization it has come to be known as, started after
the Second Balkan war (1913) and, more so, after the First World
War (1918). It was then that disillusionment with Big Power
politics replaced the naive trust in the inevitable triumph of a
just claim. The Macedonians were never worse off politically,
having contributed no less - if not more - than any other nation
to the re-distribution of the Ottoman Empire. The cynicism, the
hypocrisy, the off-handedness, the ignorance, the vile
interests, the ulterior motives - all conspired to transform the
IMRO from a goal-orientated association to a power hungry
mostrosity.

In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece - former bitter foes -
formed the Balkan League to confront an even more bitter foe,
the Ottoman Empire on the thin pretext of an Albanian uprising.
The brotherhood strained in the Treaty of London (May 1913)
promptly deteriorated into internecine warfare over the spoils
of a successful campaign - namely, over Macedonia. Serbs,
Greeks, Montenegrins and Romanians subdued Bulgaria sufficiently
to force it to sign a treaty in August 1913 in Bucharest.
"Aegean Macedonia" went to Greece and "Vardar Macedonia"
(today's Republic of Macedonia) went to Serbia. The smaller
"Pirin Macedonia" remained Bulgarian. The Bulgarian gamble in
World War I went well for a while, as it occupied all three
parts of Macedonia. But the ensuing defeat and dismemberment of
its allies, led to a re-definition of even "Pirin Macedonia" so
as to minimize Bulgaria's share.  Vardar Macedonia became part
of a new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later
renamed Yugoslavia).

These political Lego games led to enormous population shifts -
the politically correct term for refugees brutally deprived of
their land and livelihood. All of them were enshrined in solemn
treaties. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) led to the expulsion of
375,000 Turks from  Aegean Macedonia. 640,000 Greek refugees
from Turkey replaced them. Each of the actual occupiers and each
of the potential ones opened its own schools to indoctrinate the
future generations of the populace. Conflicts erupted over
ecclesiastical matters, the construction of railways and railway
stations. Guerilla fighters soon realized that being pawns on
this mad hatter's chessboard could be a profitable vocation. The
transformation from freedom fighters to mercenaries with no
agenda was swift. And pecuniary considerations bred even more
terror and terrorists where there were none before.

In the meantime, Serbia enacted a land reform legislation in
"Vardar Macedonia" - in effect, the confiscation of arable land
by thousands of Greek settlers, refugees from Turkey. Much of
the land thus "re-distributed" was owned by Turkish absentees,
now refugees themselves. But a lot of land was simply impounded
from its rightful, very much present and very Macedonian owners.
The Serb authorities coerced the population to speak the Serb
language, changed Macedonian names to Serb ones in brutally
carried campaigns and imposed a corrupt and incompetent
bureaucracy upon the suffering multitudes.





IMRO never gave up its proclaimed goal to liberate both occupied
parts of Macedonia - the Aegean and the Vardar ones. But, as
time passed and as the nature of its organization and operation
evolved, the perfunctoriness of its proclamations became more
and more evident. The old idealists - the intellectuals and
ideologues, the Goce Delcev types - were removed, died in
battle, or left this mutation of their dream. The IMRO insignia
- skull and crossbones - linked it firmly to the Italian
Balckshirts and the Nazi brown ones. The IMRO has developed into
a fascist organization. It traded opium. It hired out the
services of its skilled assassins (for 20 dollars a contract).
It recruited members among the Macedonian population in the
slums of Sofia. Finally, they openly collaborated with the
Fascists of Mussolini (who also supported them financially),
with the Ustashe (similarly supported by Italy) and with the
Nazis (under Ivan Mihailov, who became the nominal quisling
ruler of Vardar Macedonia). It was an IMRO man ("Vlado the
Chauffeur") who murdered King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934.

All this period, the IMRO continued to pursue its original
agenda. IMRO terrorists murdered staff and pupils in Yugoslav
schools in Aegean Macedonia. In between 1924-34, it killed 1,000
people. Tourists of the period describe the Yugoslav-Bulgarian
frontier as the most fortified in Europe with "entanglements,
block houses, redoubts and searchlight posts". Throughout the
twenties and the thirties, the IMRO maintained a presence in
Europe, publishing propaganda incessantly and explaining its
position eloquently (though not very convincingly).





It was not very well liked by both Bulgarians and Macedonians
who got increasingly agitated and exhausted by the extortion of
ever increasing taxes and by the seemingly endless violence. But
the IMRO was now a force to reckon with: organized, disciplined,
lethal. Its influence grew by the day and more than one
contemporary describes it as a "state within a state". In
Bulgaria it collaborated with Todor Alexandrov in the overthrow
and murder of the Prime Minister, Alexandur Stamboliyski (June
1923) and in the appointment of a right wing government headed
by Alexandur Tsankov.

Stamboliyski tried to appease Yugoslavia and, in the process,
sacrifice inconvenient elements, such as the IMRO, as
expediently as he could. He made too many powerful enemies too
fast: the army (by cutting their inflated budget), the
nationalists (by officially abandoning the goal of military
expansion), the professional officers (by making them
redundant), the Great Powers (by making THEM redundant as well)
and the opposition (by winning the elections handsomely despite
all the above). By signing the Treaty of Nis (allowing Serb
forces the right of hot pursuit within Bulgarian territory), he
in effect sealed his own death warrant. The IMRO teamed up with
the Military League (an organization of disgruntled officers,
both active duty and reserve) and with the tacit blessing of
Tsar Boris and the forming National Alliance (later renamed the
Democratic Alliance), they did away with the hated man.





Following the murder, the IMRO was given full control of the
region of Petric (Petrich). It used it as a launching pad of its
hit and run attacks against Yugoslavia with the full - though
clandestine - support of the Bulgarian Ministry of War and
Fascist Italy. From Pirin, they attacked Greece as well. These
were exactly the kind of international tensions the murdered
Prime Minister was keen to terminate and the IMRO no less keen
to foster. In the meanwhile, Alexandrov came to an end typical
of many a Bulgarian politician and was assassinated only a year
after the coup d'etat.

The decade that followed did not smile upon the IMRO. It
fragmented and its shreds fought each other in the streets of
Sofia, Chicago-style. By 1934, the IMRO was a full-fledged
extortionist mafia organization. They ran protection rackets
("protecting" small shop-owners against other gangs and
"insuring" them against their own violence). Hotels in Sofia
always had free rooms for the IMRO. The tobacco industry paid
the IMRO more than a million British pounds of that time in six
years of "taxation". Robberies and assassinations were daily
occurrences. So were street shoot-outs and outright confiscation
of goods. The IMRO had no support left anywhere.





In 1934, it was disbanded (together with other parties) by
Colonel Kimron Georgiev, the new Prime Minister of Bulgaria and
a senior figure in the Zveno association of disgruntled
citizenry. His rule was brief (ended the next year) but the IMRO
never recovered. It brought its own demise upon itself. Colonel
Velcev (Velchev), the perpetrator of the coup, was swept to
power on the promise to end all terrorist activities - a promise
which he kept.

The modern Republic of Macedonia is today ruled by a party
called VMRO-DPMNE. It is one of a few political parties to carry
this name and the biggest and weightiest amongst them by far. It
is founded on the vision and ideals of Goce Delcev and has
distanced itself from the "Terrorist-IMRO". The picture of
Delcev adorns every office in both Macedonia and Bulgaria and he
is the closest to a saint a secular regime can have. In 1923,
the Greeks transferred his bones to Bulgaria. Stalin, in a last
effort to placate Tito, ordered Bulgaria to transfer them to
Macedonia. Even in his death he knew no peace. Now he is buried
in his final resting place, in the tranquil inner yard of the
Church of Sveti Spas (Saint Saviour). A marble slab bearing a
simple inscription with his name under a tree, in a Macedonia
which now belongs to the Macedonians.






The Black Hand



"I live and shall die for federalism; it is the sole salvation
for the monarchy, if anything can save it."

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria


The IMRO was a populist organization established by
intellectuals (as such groups often do) but staffed by peasant,
lumpenproletariat and dwellers of the slums formed by Macedonian
refugees all over the Balkans and especially in Sofia. Its
members swore allegiance on a bible and a gun - two universally
potent symbols. The nationalist-terrorist movement which bore
the improbable by-name of "The Black Hand" was no such thing. It
was elitist - only members of the officer corps and government
officials could join. But the two shared an ethos and methods of
operation. The IMRO sought to liberate the parts of Macedonia
which were under Greek and Serb control - and the Black Hand
(official name: "Union or Death") sought to do the same for
Serbs under Ottoman or Habsburg rule. The Black Hand was the
precursor of the Great Serbia dream. But whereas the IMRO - at
least until 1913 - did not enjoy the support of the state and
its mechanisms, the Black Hand was, for a long time, the long
arm of the Serb government and the Serb state. To the generation
of post-Yugoslavia It is a familiar story. In human affairs, the
dream of a Greater Serbia is no less a recurrent nightmare than
the numerable German Reichs and Serbia erupted upon the world
stage no less frequently and regularly than its northern
equivalent.

Serbia, Montenegro and Russia fought a war against Turkey in an
effort to capitalize on a Serb peasants' revolt in Bosnia in
1875. The latter were mightily and rather inhumanly oppressed by
the local Moslem nobility (enmity has long roots in the
Balkans). It was a holy war for the protection of holy
(Orthodox) mother church. It was this conflict that led to the
Turkish capitulation embedded in the San Stefano Treaty of 1878.
It was not the first time that Balkan borders were re-drawn but,
with the creation of Bulgaria, extending all the way to lake
Ohrid, a few taboos were broken. A new state was created, Russia
was introduced as a major player and the Sick Man of Europe (the
Ottoman Empire) was in death throes. It also generated a new
problem, the Macedonian one. The treaty of Berlin sought to
restore the balance but to no avail. The inexorable germination
of the nationalistic ideal has commenced. When the Treaty placed
Bosnia-Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian administration and
allowed Habsburg garrisons to camp inside Serbia (effectively
severing it from Montenegro) - the seeds of discontent blossomed
into the evil flowers of violence.

No one cared what the local populace had to say. The Austrian
brought roads and railways and modern mining and forestry and
industry to this hitherto European backwater. Reversing the
Ottoman infliction was no mean feat. Yet, the Austrians chose to
rule by division, to motivate through hate and to buy the love
of their subjects rather than to earn it.





They befriended the Moslem landlords and pitted the Serbs
against each across a denominational divide. This volatile state
of affairs was only aggravated by the abolition in 1881 of the
Military Frontier, which brought hundreds of thousands of Serbs
into the remit of an increasingly and virulently nationalistic
Croatia. The Hungarians used this to their advantage by fanning
Croat-Serb hostility. After all, they had a historical account
to settle with the Serbs who quashed an Hungarian rebellion not
40 years before (in 1848-9) and were awarded with the half
autonomous Duchy of Vojvodina, an integral part of the Kingdom
of Hungary.

The Ausgleich of 1867 (which divided the loot between Austria
and Hungary) deprived Vojvodina of its autonomy. The Magyars
rushed back in with German and Austrian settlers and immediately
embarked upon a massive campaign of forced assimilation. Thus,
as Vojvodina prospered with roads and railways and large
commercial farms ("the breadbasket of the empire") - it became
more hate-riven and explosive. In the Balkans, affluence and
commerce seem only to encourage envy and belligerence and
neighbourly relations are no barrier to mutual slaughter.

A self-appointed "guardian of all Serbs", the Serbian state
willingly engaged in agitation and confronted both other
ethnicities and the Dual Monarchy in its quest to safeguard the
well-being, welfare, prosperity and equal treatment of the
Serbs, all noble goals, no doubt.





Yet instability is contagious, a lesson not learn by Serb
politicians. Even as the Bosnian uprising was in progress, King
Milan stuck an Austrian knife unto its back. He agreed to not
foment rebellion in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in return for a free
hand in Macedonia and some export concessions for some
agricultural produce. In 1885, he acted upon his grandiosity to
disastrous outcome. Four years later, he abdicated in disgrace.
Not till 1893 was order restored in the person of King Alexander
whose most important act was marrying his concubine, Draga Masin
in 1900. They were both massacred in June 1903 by disgruntled
officers in their own palace and that was the end of one dynasty
(the Obrenovic's) and the beginning of another (the
Karadjordjevic's). A young officer, a member of the general
staff of the army, by the name of Dragutin Dimitrijevic ("Apis"
- the "Holy Bull" was his endearing nickname, or, perhaps, the
bee, from the Latin root, as Petrovic, the attache to the Serbia
legation in London has it in "Black Hand Over Europe" by Heneri
Pozzi) planned it all in 1901. Remember this name, his role in
our history has only just begun.

As is usually the case, the honeymoon looked both passionate and
auspicious. The new King was of the reforming kind and keen on
economic progress and wealth formation. Regretfully, his
implementation fell short of his intentions. Serbian agriculture
lagged behind its more commercialized and industrialized
competitors, the population grew relentlessly and rural debts
buried the semi-feudal rustic peasantry under its increasing
burden.





It is against this background of mounting and mercurial
discontent that the "Black Hand" was formed. Attesting to the
spreading of the rot throughout the Karadjordjevicean state, was
its cancerous metastasis through all levels of the army and the
government. Apis the regicide was appointed chief of
intelligence of the general staff, no less. He later confessed
to planning the murders of King Nicholas of Montenegro, King
Constantine of Greece, the German Kaiser and King Ferdinand of
Bulgaria. How much of it was Balkan delusions and how much
reality is still open to debate - but the man relished death and
firmly believed in its transforming and catalysing powers. The
Black Hand became a state within a state (a feat later emulated
by the IMRO). Those bureaucrats and politicians not already
members of the shady outfit, obeyed its express or perceived
wishes out of terror, more imagined than exercised. The army was
entirely in thrall. The accelerated advance of Dimitrijevic
through the ranks serves proof of the growing influence of his
cankerous outfit. He became professor of tactics at the Military
Academy where he taught subversion and terror more than military
strategy. By 1913, he was chief of intelligence, as we mentioned
and by 1916 he was attained the rank of colonel at the age of
40.

Though formally established only in 1911- the Black Hand cast
its shadow long before. It engaged mostly in propaganda and in
the seeding of armed bands in Macedonia prior to the two Balkan
wars. Its biggest achievement was probably the inception of
numerous revolutionary cells among the Serbs of Bosnia.

The longer and more thorough the meddling, the more the languid
relationship between Austria and Serbia deteriorated. The former
imposed tariffs on the exports of the latter in an aptly named
"Pig War". As Serb subversion intensified in Bosnia, Austria
annexed it and Herzegovina outright discarding the pretence of
autonomy it has maintained. Stymied in one border - the Serbs
reverted to another. The Illinden uprising ignited Slav
imagination. Serbia has long hungered after its slice of a
dismembered Macedonia and Thrace in a banquet attended by both
Bulgaria and Greece. But the fresh atrocities - not devoid of
religious and ethnic dimensions - endowed the whole endeavour
with an aura of a holy war. This delirium was further stoked by
the apparent disintegration of the Ottoman Empire following the
revolution of the Young Turks in 1908. Yet, in its drang nach
suden, Serbia found itself once more entangled with the
Austrians who had their own designs on Macedonia and Novi Pazar.
The risk of losing Kosovo and Metohija was very real and the
conflict assumed the robes of a crusade, both cultural and
religious. To the Serbs the very maintenance of their self-
identity and civilization was at stake.

This was the background to the onslaught of the Balkan Wars.





Serbia collaborated with the more potent of its potential
enemies (Greece, Bulgaria) in the Balkan League. To cleanse the
Balkans of all Turks was the explicit goals of hush-hush
treaties and clandestine encounters. The hidden agenda bespoke
of Austria. The initial triumphs against the Turkish army
(reversing a trend three centuries old) lent an air of
inevitable invincibility and divine justice to the whole
endeavour. It is interesting to mention that it was little
Montenegro which was the first to declare war in almost all
Balkan conflicts. Whether as Serbian proxies or because of the
contentious nature of the Montenegrins remains unclear. Whatever
the case may be, a second war among the winners of the first
left Serbia with its agenda fulfilled and with its territory
almost doubled. It gained part of the Sandzak, all Kosovo and
Metohija and the bulk of Macedonia. Its tax paying population
increased by half as much in less than two years. Had it not
been for Austria's minacious insistence, Albania would have
never been born on Serb occupied territory. The creation of this
(artificial, so the Serbs felt) Albanian state deprived Serbia -
alone among the victors - from access to the sea. It had another
cause for paranoid delusions and deepening sense of
victimization at the hands of vast conspiracies. Relegated to
the geopolitical sidelines, denuded of their conquests, coerced
by a Big Power, the Serbs felt humiliated, stabbed in the back,
discriminated against, inferior and wrathful. Frustration breeds
aggression we are taught and this true lesson was never more
oft-repeated than in the Balkans.





The raging rivalry between an eastward-bound Austria and a
defiant Serbia was bound to boil over. The Black Hand was there
to provoke the parties into a final test of strengths and
willpower. Dame Rebecca West voices her doubts regarding the
true intent of the Black Handers in their involvement (which she
does not dispute) in the events that followed. Based on all
manner of circumstantial evidence and the testimonies of
mysterious friends of furtive conspirators she reaches the
conclusion that they did not believe in the conspiracy to which
they lent their support. The Black Hand went along with the
planning and execution of the assassination of Archduke, heir to
the throne Franz (Francis) Ferdinand in 1914, disbelieving all
the way both the skills and the commitment of the youthful would
be assassins.

Perhaps so. Yet there can be little doubt and, indeed, there is
no dispute that The Black Hand was introduced to a cabal of
plotters called "Mlada Bosna" (Young Bosnia), headed by one
Illich and that this introduction was effected by the 22 year
old influential Bosnian revolutionary Gacinovic (Gachinovich)
who lived in Lausanne in Switzerland. The Black Hander Ciganovic
(Tsiganovitch) made contact with one Gavrilo Princip and
Chabrinovich and together with another Bosnian, Tankosic
(Tankosich). The latter - a self proclaimed sharpshooter -
immediately set about testing the sniping skills of his co-
schemers in a secluded wood. With the mild exception of Princip,
they were no good.





Despite this disheartening display of incompetence (Princip
claimed at his trial to have aimed at a general sitting next to
the Archduke), the Black Hand equipped them with bombs (of the
wrong kind, points West correctly), pistols and suicidal Prussic
acid (which didn't work). They were smuggled to Sarajevo by two
collaborating border guards. As opposed to rumours, Gavrilo
Princip was not a member of the Black Hand, nor was the Black
Hand involved in his training. Moreover, the connection between
Mlada Bosna and Crna Ruka (Black Hand) was made only a short
time before the eventful June 28, 1914.

It was a challenge and on Serbia's national day at that. The
Austrians were elated having been handed the excuse to educate
Serbia and cut it to size. They issued an ultimatum and the rest
is the history of the first truly global conflict, the First
World War.

In 1917, in a surprising turn of events, Alexander, the
Commander in Chief of the Expatriate Serbian Army in collusion
with the Serb premier, Nikola Pasic, arrested Apis and 200 of
his collaborators, thus shattering the Black Hand irreversibly.
It is always surprising how really brittle and vulnerable these
apparently invincible organizations of terror are. The IMRO,
after having terrorized Bulgaria for decades and decimated its
political elite, was reduced to rubble, bloodlessly, in a matter
of a few weeks in 1934.





The same happened with the omnipotent and all-pervasive Black
Hand. It vanished in a whimper. In May 1917, Dragutin
Dimitrijevic (Apis) was executed together with 2 or 6 of his
Black Hand colleagues. Finally it was death, not union that
caught up with them. The trial was closed to the public, opaque
and hurried. The King apparently believed - or claimed he did -
that the prisoners conspired on his life. West testifies in her
great opus "Black Lamb Grey Falcon" that transcripts of the
trial were banned and that it was forbidden to mention the mere
historic fact either in speech or in print. The members of the
Black Hand lived secretly and dies mysteriously and
meaninglessly.

But the Black Hand - like the IMRO - was a child of the times.
The Balkans was perceived to be the gate to the crumbling
Ottoman Empire, The coveted prizes were not dirt poor Macedonia
or Albania. It was the stepping stone and the springboard that
they represented to much vaster territories, to the riches of
the orient, to the exotic realms of Asia. All Big Powers and
would be Big Powers engaged in the pugilistics of self-
positioning. The demise of the Ottomans was imminent and this
imminence exerted subtle but verifiable pressure on all the
participant in this grubby grabbing game. Additionally, in this
fin de siecle, all involved felt doomed. The rumblings of
counter-revolutionary Russia, the drang nach Osten of Austria -
all were attempts at self re-definition and self-preservation.





Perhaps this explains the outlandish and disproportionate
reaction of Austria to the needling of Bosnian terrorism.
assertive minorities constituted a direct threat to the very
cohesion of Empire. And Serbia blocked the hitherto unhindered
path to eastern territories - depriving Austria of lebensraum
and raison d'etre. Faced with a limiting event horizon, Austria
imploded like a black hole, unto itself.

The driving force behind it all was really Austria and its
growing existential angst. It struck a modus vivendi of mutual
paralysis in the Balkan with Russia as early as 1897. It lasted
ten years in which only Austria and Russia stood still but
history defied them both. To its horror, Austria discovered that
in its pursuit of glorious and condescending isolation, it was
left only with Germany as an ally, the very Germany whose
Weltpolitik put it on a clear collusion course with the moribund
Sublime Port. Russia, on the other hand, teamed up with a rising
power, with Britain, at least implicitly. The abrupt and
involuntary departure of the pliable and easily corruptible
Obrenovic's in Serbia bode ill to the checks and balances
Austria so cultivated in its relationship with the recalcitrant
Serbs. Karageorgevic was much less enamoured with Austrian
shenanigans. The final nail in the ever more crowded coffin of
Austrian foreign policy was hammered in in 1908 when the Young
Turks effectively re-opened the question of the administration
of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria.



These territories were always under Turkish sovereignty, the
Austrians "discovered" to growing alarm.  One solution was to
annex the administered units, as Austria's Minister of Foreign
affairs suggested. He further offered a trade-off: recognition
of Russia's rights of passage through the Dardanelles. The
Russians accepted only to be abandoned by the Austrians in the
crucial vote. Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina unilaterally -
but Russia was still prevented from crossing into the warm
waters, its ambition and obsession. Russia learned a lesson:
always back your client (Serbia), never back down.

Elsewhere, tensions between the Big Powers were growing and
eroded their capability to institute a system of efficacious
self-regulation. Armed conflict erupted between Germany and
France in Morocco more than once. Britain and Germany were
engaged in a naval arms race which depleted the coffers and the
social cohesion of both. Italy declared war on Turkey in 1911
and even invaded the Dardanelles. Serbia and Bulgaria struck a
bargain to expel the Ottomans from Europe (see above, the Balkan
Wars). Thus, with the field narrowing and getting more crowded,
an Austrian-Serb Armageddon was all but inevitable.

The irony of it all is that Austria presented the only viable
solution to the problem of multi-ethnicity and muti-culturalism.
The history of the Balkans in the 20th century can be
effectively summed up in terms of the contest between the Serb
and Hungarian model of co-existence and its Austrian anathema.





The Serbs and Hungarians aspired to ethnically and culturally
homogenous states and were willing to apply violence towards the
achievement of this goal either by forced assimilation of
minorities or by their expulsion or worse. The Austrians
proposed federalism. They envisaged a federation of politically,
culturally and religiously autonomous entities. This peaceful
vision constituted a direct threat on the likes of the Black
Hand. Peaceful, content citizens do not good rebels make. The
Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "Such is the logic of terrorism:
Its greatest enemies are the peacemakers".

The Black Hand did not operate in empty space and was not alone.
In 1908 Serbia formed "The National Defence". Its main function
was to agitate against the Austrians and to conduct propaganda
for the Serb cause. There were other organizations but all of
them were contemptuously labelled "intellectual" by Apis, who
craved violence.

Ironically, one of the original band of conspirators against
King Alexander in 1901-3 was Petar Zivkovic (Zhivkovitch). But
he soon separated himself from the Black Hand and joined the
White Hand, another group of officers, more moderate, though no
less authoritarian. Another King Alexander (who was also
murdered but in 1934), King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
(later renamed "Yugoslavia"), appointed him Commander of the
Palace Guards in 1921 and Prime Minister eight years thereafter.





Zivkovic lost no time in disbanding all political parties and
(elected) municipalities. He embarked upon an endless string of
show trials of opponents of his dictatorship, communists and
anti-monarchists. He introduced a one-party, government-
controlled electoral system.

Thus, in an ironic twist of history, the Black Hand came to its
own, after all. One of its former members a Prime Minister, a
dictator, under a king installed by its slaughterous coup. Black
Hand or White Hand - the means disputed, the ends were always in
consensus. A Great Serbia for the Great Serbian people.






The Insurgents and the Swastika



"Even going back ten years it was easy to see something gripping
Yugoslavia by the throat. But in the years since then the grip
has been tightened, and tightened in my opinion by the
dictatorship established by King Alexander Karageorgevitch.

This dictatorship, however much it may claim a temporary
success, must inevitably have the effect of poisoning all the
Yugoslav organism. Whether the poisoning is incurable or not is
the question for which I have sought an answer during two months
in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and central Europe."

"Black Hand over Europe" by Henri Pozzi, 1935


THE SIN

Yugoslavia was born in sin and in sin it perished. The King of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Alexander I, a freshly self-
proclaimed dictator, declared it on October 1929. It was a union
of East and West, the Orthodox and the Catholic, Ottoman
residues with Austro-Hungarian structures, the heart and the
mind. Inevitably, it stood no chance. The Croats and the
Slovenes - formerly fiery proponents of a Yugo (Southern) Slav
federation - were mortified to find themselves in a Serb-
dominated "Third World", Byzantine polity.





This was especially galling to the Croats who fiercely denied
both their geography and their race to cling to the delusion of
being a part of "Europe" rather than the "Balkans". To this very
day, they hold all things Eastern (Serbs, the Orthodox version
of Christianity, Belgrade, the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia) with
unmitigated contempt dipped in an all-pervasive feeling of
superiority. This is a well known defence mechanism in nations
peripheral. Many a suburban folk wish to belong to the city with
such heat and conviction, with such ridiculous emulation, that
they end up being caricatures of the original.

And what original! The bloated, bureaucracy-saddled, autocratic
and sadistic Habsburg empire. Hitler's Germany. Mussolini's
Italy. Unable to ignore the common ethnic roots of both Serbs
and Croats - one tribe, one language - the Croats chose to
believe in a vast conspiracy imposed upon the Serbs by corrupt
and manipulative rulers. The gullible and self-delusional
Cardinal Stepinac of Zagreb wrote just before the Second World
War erupted, in a curious reversal of pan-Serbist beliefs: "If
there were more freedom... Serbia would be Catholic in twenty
years. The most ideal thing would be for the Serbs to return to
the faith of their fathers. That is, to bow the head before
Christ's representative, the Holy Father. Then we could at last
breathe in this part of Europe, for Byzantium has played a
frightful role ... in connection with the Turks."





The same Turks that almost conquered Croatia and, met by fierce
and brave resistance of the latter, were confined to Bosnia for
200 years. The Croats came to regard themselves as the last line
of defence against an encroaching East - against the
manifestations and transmutations of Byzantium, of the Turks, of
a vile mix of Orthodoxy and Islam (though they collaborated with
their Moslem minority during the Ustashe regime). Besieged by
this siege mentality, the back to the literal wall, desperate
and phobic, the Croats developed the paranoia typical of all
small nations encircled by hostility and impending doom. It was
impossible to reconcile their centrifugal tendency in favour of
a weak central state in a federation of strong local entities -
with the Serb propensity to create a centralist and bureaucratic
court. When the Croat delegates of the Peasant Party withdrew
from the fragmented Constituent Assembly in 1920 - Serbia and
the Moslem members voted for the Vidovdan Constitution (June
1921) which was modelled on the pre-war Serbian one.

While a minority with limited popular appeal, the Ustashe did
not materialize ex nihilo. They were the logical and inescapable
conclusion of a long and convoluted historical process. They
were both its culmination and its mutation. And once formed,
they were never exorcised by the Croats, as the Germans
exorcised their Nazi demon. In this, again, the Croats, chose
the path of unrepentant Austria.





Croat fascism was not an isolated phenomenon. Fascism (and, less
so, Nazism) were viable ideological alternatives in the 1930s
and 1940s. Variants of fascist ideology sprang all over the
world, from Iraq and Egypt to Norway and Britain. Even the Jews
in Palestine had their own fascists (the Stern group). And while
Croat fascism (such as it was, "tainted" by Catholic religiosity
and pagan nationalism) lasted four tumultuous years - it
persisted for a quarter of a century in Romania ("infected" by
Orthodox clericalism and peasant lores). While both branches of
fascism - the Croat and the Romanian - shared a virulent type of
anti-Semitism and the constipated morality of the ascetic and
the fanatic - Codreanu's was more ambitious, aiming at a
wholesale reform of Romanian life and a re-definition of
Romanianism. The Iron Guard and the Legion (of the Archangel
Michael, no less) were, therefore and in their deranged way, a
force for reform founded on blood-thirsty romanticism and
masochistic sacrifices for the common good. Moreover, the Legion
was crushed in 1941 by a military dictatorship which had nothing
to do with fascism. It actually persecuted the fascists who
found refuge in Hitler's Germany.

Fascism in Hungary developed similarly. It was based on
reactionary ideologies pre-dating fascism by centuries. Miklos
Horty, the Austro-Hungarian Admiral was consumed by grandiose
fantasies of an Hungarian empire. He had very little in common
with the fascists of the "white terror" of 1919 in Budapest (an
anti-communist bloodshed).





He did his best to tame the Hungarian fascist government of
Gyula Gombos (1932). The untimely death of the latter brought
about the meteoric rise of Ferenc Szalasi and his brand of
blood-pure racism. But all these sub-species of fascism, the
Romanian, the Slovakian (Tiso) and the Hungarian (as opposed to
the Italian and the Bulgarian) were atavistic, pagan, primal and
romanticist - as was the Croat. These were natural - though
nefarious - reactions to dislocation, globalization, economic
crisis and cultural pluralism. A set of compensatory mechanisms
and reactions to impossible, humiliating and degrading
circumstances of wrathful helplessness and frustration. "Native
fascism" attributed a divine mission or divine plan to the
political unit of the nation, a part of a grand design. The
leader was the embodiment, the conveyor, the conduit, the
exclusive interpreter and the manifestation of this design (the
Fuhrerprinzip). Proof of the existence of such a transcendental
plan was the glorious past of the nation, its qualities and
conduct (hence the tedious moralizing and historical
nitpicking). The definition of the nation relied heavily of the
existence of a demonized and dehumanized enemy (Marxists, Jews,
Serbs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Hungarians in Romania, etc.). Means
justified the end and the end was stability and eternity ("the
thousand years Reich"). Thus, as opposed to the original
blueprint, these mutants of fascism were inert and aspired to a
state of rest, to an equilibrium after a spurt of cleansing and
restoration of the rightful balance.





When Serb domination (Serb ubiquitous military, Serbs in all
senior government positions even in Croatia) mushroomed into the
"Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes", it was only natural for
dissenting and dissident Croats to turn to their "roots". Unable
to differentiate themselves from the hated Serbs racially - they
appealed to religious heterogeneity. Immediately after the
political hybrid was formed, the Croats expressed their
discontent by handing election victories to the "Croatian
Peasant Party" headed by Radic. The latter was a dour and devout
anti-Yugoslav. He openly agitated for an independent - rustic
and pastoral - Croatia. But Radic was a pragmatist. He learned
his lesson when - having boycotted the Constituent Assembly in
Belgrade - he facilitated the imposition of a pro-Serb, pro-
central government constitution. Radic moderated his demands, if
not his rhetoric. The goal was now a federated Yugoslavia with
Croat autonomy within it. There is poetic justice in that his
death - at the hand of a Montenegrin deputy on the floor of the
Skupstina in 1928 - brought about the dictatorship that was to
give rise to Macek and the Sporazum (Croat autonomy). The irony
is that a peasant-favouring land reform was being seriously
implemented when a deadlock between peasant parties led to King
Alexander's fateful decision to abolish the parliamentary
system.





King Alexander I was a good and worthy man forced by
circumstances into the role of an abhorrent tyrant. He was a
great believer in the power of symbols and education. He changed
the name of his loose confederacy into a stricter "Yugoslavia".
In an attempt to defuse internal divisions, he appealed to
natural features (like rivers and mountains) as internal
borders. Croatia vanished as a political entity, replaced by
naturally-bounded districts and provinces. The majority of
Croats still believed in a federal solution, albeit less Serb-
biased. They believed in reform from the inside. The Ustashe and
Pavelic were always a minority, the Bolsheviks of Croatia. But
King Alexander's authoritarian rule was hard to ignore: the
torture of political opponents and their execution, the closure
of patriotic sports societies, the flagrant interference in the
work of the ostensibly independent judiciary, the censorship.
There was bad blood growing between the King and more of his
subjects by the day. The Croats were not the only "minority" to
be thus maltreated. The Serbs maintained an armed presence in
Macedonia, Kosovo, the Sandzak and even in Slovenia. They
deported thousands of "Turks" (actually, all manner of Muslims)
under the guise of a "re-patriation" scheme. They confiscated
land from religious institutions, from the deportees, from big
landowners, from the Magyars in Vojvodina and "re-distributed"
it to the Serbs. Ethnic homogenization (later to become known as
"ethnic cleansing") was common practise in that era. The Turks,
the Bulgars, the Germans, the Greeks were all busily purifying
the ethnic composition of their lands. But it made the King and
the Serbs no friends.

The Serbs seemed to have been bent on isolating themselves from
within and on transforming their Yugo Slav brethren into sworn
adversaries. This was true in the economic sphere as well as in
the political realm. Serbia declared a "Danubian orientation"
(in lieu of the "Adriatic orientation") which benefited the
economies of central and northern Serbia at the expense of
Croatia and Slovenia. While Serbia was being industrialized and
its agriculture reformed, Croatia and Slovenia did not share in
the spoils of war, the reparations that Yugoslavia received from
the Central Powers. Yugoslavia was protectionist which went
against the interest of its trading compatriots. When war
reparations ceased (1931) and Germany's economy evaporated,
Yugoslavia was hurled into the economic crisis the world has
been experiencing since 1929. The Nazi induced recovery of
Germany drew in Yugoslavia and its firms. It was granted
favourable export conditions by Hitler's Germany and many of its
companies participated in cartels established by German
corporate giants.

King Alexander I must have known he would be assassinated.
Someone tried to kill him as he was taking the oath to uphold
the constitution on June 28, 1921. For 8 long years he had to
endure a kaleidoscope of governments, a revolving door of
ministers, violence in the Assembly and ever-escalating Croat
demands for autonomy. After the hideous slaughter on the floor
of parliament, all its remaining Croat members withdrew.





They refused to go back and parliament had to be dissolved.
Alexander went further, taking advantage of the constitutional
crisis. He abolished the constitution of 1921, outlawed all
ethnically, religiously or nationally based political parties
(which basically meant most political parties, especially the
Croat ones), re-organized the state administration, standardized
the legal system, school syllabi and curricula and the national
holidays. He was moulding a nation single handedly, carving it
from the slab of mutual hatred and animosity. The Croats
regarded all this as yet another Serb ploy, proof of Serb power-
madness and insatiable desire to dominate. In an effort to
placate the bulk of his constituency, the peasantry, King
Alexander established rural credit unions and provided credit
lines to small farmers and rural processing plants. To no avail.
The insecurity of this hastily foisted regime was felt, its
hesitation, the cruelty that is the outcome of fear. The
scavengers were gathering.

It was this basic shakiness that led the King to look for
sustenance from neighbours. In rapid succession, he made his
state a friend of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania (the last
two in the frame of the Little Entente). Another Entente
followed (the Balkan one) with Greece, Turkey and Romania. The
King was frantically seeking to neutralize his enemies from
without while ignoring the dangers from within.





His death lurked in Zagreb but he was travelling to Marseilles
to meet it. A vicious secret police, a burgeoning military, a
new constitution to legalize his sanguinous regime conspired
with a global economic crisis to make him a hated figure, even
by Serb Democrats. Days before his death, he earnestly
considered to return to a parliamentary form of government. But
it was too late and too little for those who sought his end.

The Ustasha movement ("insurgence" or "insurrection", officially
the "Croatian Ustasha Movement") was a product of the personal
rebellion of Ante Pavelic and like-minded others. Born in
Bosnia, he was a member of the Croat minority there, in a Serb-
infused environment. He practised as a lawyer in Zagreb and
there joined the Nationalist Croatian Party of Rights. He
progressed rapidly and by 1920 (at the age of 31), he was
alderman of Zagreb City and County. He was a member of the
Skupstina when anti-Croat sentiment peaked with the triple
murder of the Croat deputies. When Alexander the King dissolved
parliament and assumed dictatorial powers, he moved (or fled) to
Italy, there to establish a Croat nationalist movement, the
Ustasha. Their motto was "Za Dom Spremny" ("Ready for Home" or
"Ready for the Fatherland"). Italy the fascist was a natural
choice - both because of its ideological affinity and because it
opposed Yugoslavia's gradual drift towards Germany. Italy was
worried about an ultimate anschluss ("unification or
incorporation") between the Reich and Austria - which will have
brought Hitler's Germany to Austria's doorstep.





Thus, the Ustasha established training centres (more like
refugee camps, as they included the family members of the would
be "warriors") in Italy and Hungary (later to be expelled from
the latter as a result of Yugoslav pressure). Having mainly
engaged in the dissemination of printed propaganda, they failed
at provoking a peasant rebellion in north Dalmatia (promised to
Italy by the Ustasha). But they did better at assassinating
their arch-foe, King Alexander  in 1934 (having failed earlier,
in 1933). In this the Ustasha was reputed to have collaborated
with the fascist IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organization) under Ivan Mihailov in Bulgaria. By joining forces
with the IMRO, the Ustasha has transformed itself into a link in
the chain of terrorist organizations that engulfed the world in
blood and flames prior to the onslaught of the greatest
terrorist of all, of Hitler. While some versions of the unholy
alliance between the Bulgarian-Macedonian outfit and the Croats
are unsubstantiated (to put it gently), it is clear that some
assistance was provided by both lower Italian ranks and the
IMRO. The actual murderer of the King was Mihailov's Macedonian
chauffeur, Vlado Georgiev-Kerin. The Ustasha was also known for
blowing trains and for attempting to do so on more than one
occasion both in Croatia and in Slovenia. King Alexander seemed
to have ordered the systematic annihilation of the Ustasha just
before his own untimely Ustasha-assisted annihilation. Lt.
Colonel Stevo Duitch "committed suicide" in Karlsbad and there
were attempts - some successful, some less - on Pavelic in
Munich, Percevic in Vienna, Servaci (Servatsi) in Fiume and
Percec in Budapest. It was made abundantly clear to the Ustasha
that it was an all-out war with no prisoners taken. The King had
to go.

It was a strange movement, the Ustashe. Claiming the continuous
"rights of state" of the Great Croatian Kingdom under Peter
Kresimir and Zvonimir in the 11th century - they nonetheless
gave up Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Italy and, later,
accepted a German occupation of eastern Croatia. Composed of
frugal ascetics and avaricious operators, merciless romanticists
and hard nosed pragmatists, murderous sadists and refined
intellectuals, nationalist Croats and Serb-haters who had no
coherent national agenda bar the mass slaughter of the Serbs.
Thus, it was a social movement of the dispossessed, a cesspool
of discontent and rage, of aggression too long suppressed but
never sublimated, of justified social and political grievances
irradiated by racism, national chauvinism, militarism and
sadism. A grassroots reaction turned cancerous, led by a second
hand, third rate Hitler-clone. A terrorist organization
displaying the trappings of a state in the making. This is not
to say that it lacked popular support. Tensions ran so high
between Serbs and Croats that daily brawls broke in pubs and
restaurants, trains and public places between Serb soldiers and
Croat citizens in Croatia. The Ustashe fed on real friction,
were charged by escalating tensions, mushroomed on growing
violence.

Prince Paul, who acted as regent for 12 years old Peter II,
permitted the operation of political parties but did not
reinstate parliament. All this time, a Yugoslav opposition of
democratic forces included Croat as well as Serb intellectuals
and wannabe politicians. Vladko Macek himself - later, the
epitome of Croat separatism and the most successful promoter of
this cause - was a member. In the 1938 elections, his party -
the Peasant Party - won an astounding 80% of the votes in
Croatia.





The regent, now much humbled by years of strife and paralysis -
bowed to popular opinion so eloquently and convincingly
expressed. He backed negotiations with Macek which led to a
declaration of Croat independence in everything but name. The
Sporazum of August 1939, a few days before the outbreak of World
War II, granted Croatia self-government except in matters of
national defence and foreign affairs. The Serbs were now
disgruntled. The Serb Democrats felt abandoned and betrayed by
Macek and his Faustian deal with the dictatorship. All other
Serbs felt humiliated by what they regarded as a capitulation to
irredentism, bound to have a disintegrative domino effect on the
rest of Serbia's possessions. It is a surrealistic thing, to
read the transcripts of these vehement and sincere arguments
just four days before the world as all the conversants knew it,
came to a shrieking end.

When German planes were pulverizing Warsaw, Yugoslavia declared
its mock-neutrality. Everybody knew that Paul was pro-German.
Even King Alexander before him signed a few secret pacts with
the rising, ignore at your peril, Central European force. The
Austrian national socialists who were implicated in the murder
of the Austrian prime minister, Dolfus, in July 1934, escaped to
Yugoslavia and resided openly (though disarmed by the Yugoslav
police) in army barracks in Varadzin. In 1935, a fascist
movement was established in Serbia ("Zbor"). Fascism and Nazism
were not without their attractions to Serbs and Croats alike.





This is the great theatre of the absurd called the Balkans.
Pavelic and the Ustasha were actually closer in geopolitical
orientation to the Yugoslav monarchy (until Paul was deposed by
the Yugoslav army) - than to Mussolini's fascist Italy. They
were worried by the latter's tendency to block German designs on
Austria. In a region known for its indefinite historical memory
and lack of statute of limitations, they recalled how the
Italians treated Montenegrin refugees in 1923 (returning them to
Yugoslavia in cattle cars). They wondered if the precedent might
be repeated, this time with Croat passengers. The Italians did,
after all, arrest "Longin" (Kvaternik), Jelic and others in
Torino following the assassination of the King. In the paranoid
twilight zone of European Big Power sponsored terrorism, these
half hearted actions and dim memories were enough to cast a pall
of suspicion and of guilt over the Italian regime. Mussolini
called Pavelic his "Balkan Pawn" but in that he was mistaken.
There are good reasons to believe that he was shocked by the
murder of King Alexander. In any event, the free movement of
Pavelic and the Ustasha was afterwards severely restricted.

On March 1941, the Crown Council of Yugoslavia decided to accede
to the Tripartite Pact of the Axis, though in a watered down
form. Yugoslavia maintained the prerogative to refuse the right
of passage in its territory to foreign powers.





Yet, no one believed this would be the case if confronted with
such a predicament. This decision - to give up Yugoslavia's main
asset and only protection - its neutrality - was taken under
pressure from the Croats in power at the time. The Pact was
already joined by Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Two days after
the Yugoslav Prime Minister (Dragisa Cvetkovic) and his foreign
minister signed the Pact in Vienna - they were deposed together
with the Regent Paul. The precocious Peter was made King of
Yugoslavia by the rebellious officers, headed by General Dusan
Simovic. The generals now in charge reverted to Yugoslavia's
neutrality and refused to join the British-Greek naval treaty,
for example. But what appeared to be spontaneous demonstrations
in favour of the conspirators and against the Tripartite Pact
erupted all over Serbia. It was a challenge to Germany which it
could not ignore. The Supreme Command of the Wehrmact (OKW)
issued "Undertaking 25" (against Yugoslavia) and "Case Marita"
(against Greece). The Yugoslavs mobilized (albeit with a
surprising procrastination), the Germans invaded (on April 6,
1941) and, within 10 days it was all over. The Croats did their
best to assist the new forces of occupation, disrupting and
sabotaging the best they could army operations as well as
civilian defence. It was clear that many of them (though by no
means the majority) regarded the Serbs as the real occupiers and
the Germans as long awaited liberators.





On April 10, 1941, six days into the invasion, the Germans
declared the Independent State of Croatia (NDH, after the
initials of its name in Croatian - Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska).
Vladimir Mecak, leader of the Peasant Party and Deputy Prime
Minister of Yugoslavia called on the people to collaborate with
the new government. Overnight, a fringe terrorist organization,
(erroneously) considered to be more a puppet of Italy that a
true expression of Croat nationalism, found itself at the helm
of government in circumstances complicated by internecine
rivalries, inter-ethnic tensions, an history of hate and mutual
resentment, a paranoia stoked by sporadic violence. The Serbs
were evidently a fifth column and so were the Jews. Indeed,
Croatia's Serbs wasted no time in joining resistance movements
against the Nazis and the NDH. Anyhow, the vacuum created by
Macek's surprising passivity and by the Church's abstention -
was filled by the Ustashe. The new state included a part of
Dalmatia (the rest went to Italy), the region of Srem and the
entirety of Bosnia Herzegovina. It was the closest Croatia ever
got to re-creating Great Croatia of a millennium ago. Fearful of
Croat encroachment, the Slovenes hurried to discuss the
declaration of their own state modelled after the NDH - only to
discover that their country was split between Italy and
Germany.  In Zagreb, the enthusiasm was great. The 200 nor so
returning Ustashe were greeted back even by their political
rivals. People thronged the streets, throwing flowers and rice
at the advancing former terrorist and German convoys.





The NDH existed for four years. It had 7 governments - only 5 of
which were headed by Ante Pavelic. As opposed to popular
opinion, the Ustashe were not a puppet regime, far from it. Both
the Italians and the Germans express their continued frustration
at being unable to control and manipulate the Ustashe. Despite
their military presence and economic support - both Axis powers
lacked real leverage over the ever more frantic activities of
the Ustashe. Even when it was clear that the Croat NDH - in its
genocidal activities - is alienating the Serbs and adding to the
ranks of resistance movements throughout Yugoslavia, there was
precious little the Germans or Italians could do. They held
polite and less polite talks with the top echelons of their own
creation but like the fabled Dr. Frankenstein found that the NDH
had a life very much of its own and an agenda it pursued with
vigour and conviction.

It is impossible - nor is it desirable - to avoid the issue of
the mass killings of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Some Croats claim
that "only" 60-70,000 were killed in Jasenovac and other camps.
The very use of the word "only" in this context ought to send a
frisson of repulsion down the spines of civilized men. The
Serbs, Jewish scholars and many international scholars claim the
number was between 300-600,000 people. The reason for the
disparity in numbers is that - despite their "German"
pretensions, the Croats acted like the least of the barbarous
Balkanians in their mass slaughters. This was no industrial
affairs, replete with bureaucracy and statistics. The massacres
were atavistic, primitive, the call of blood and guts and
scattered brains. It was an orgy, not an operation.

There is nothing much to tell about the NDH. The regime was busy
enacting laws against deadly sins and minor vices (such as
pornography). The collaboration with the Catholic Church
proceeded smoothly. Laws were passed against the Jews. The NDH
army fought the partisans and the Allied Forces. When it tried
to surrender to the British army in 1945 - it refused to accept
their capitulation and turned them over to the partisans. In a
series of death marches army soldiers and civilian collaborators
with the Ustashe were deliberately exterminated. The Balkans
knows no mercy. Victims become butchers and butchers victims in
nauseating turns. By 1944, the NDH lost half its territory
either to the Germans or to the partisans. The rump state
survived somehow, its leaders deserting in droves. Pavelic
himself escaped to Austria, from there to Italy and Argentina.
He survived an attempt on his life in 1957 and then fled to
Paraguay and Spain where he died in 1959.

THE DEAD

"After all, if the Croat state wishes to be strong, a nationally
intolerant policy must be pursued for fifty years, because too
much tolerance on such issues can only do harm."

Adolf Hitler to Ante Pavelic in their meeting, June 6, 1941





"For the rest - Serbs, Jews and Gypsies - we have three million
bullets. We shall kill one third of all Serbs. We shall deport
another third, and the rest of them will be forced to become
Roman Catholic."

Mile Budak, Minister of Education of Croatia, July 22, 1941

"There are limits even to love... (It is) stupid and unworthy of
Christ's disciples to think that the struggle against evil could
be waged in a noble way and with gloves on."

Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Saric, 1941

"Croats no longer think that German troops are present merely to
provide peace and security, but that they are here to support
the Ustasha regime [...] The Ustashas promote the impression
that they act not only in agreement with German instances, but
actually on their orders. [...] There is here today a deep
mistrust of Germany, because it is supporting a regime that has
no moral or political right to exist, which is regarded as the
greatest calamity that could have happened to the Croat people.
That regime is based entirely on the recognition by the Axis
powers, it has no popular roots, and depends on the bayonets of
robbers who do more evil in a day than the Serbian regime had
done in twenty years."

Captain Haffner to General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau,
Plenipotentiary of the Wehrmacht in Zagreb, Croatia, 1941





"Our troops have to be mute witnesses of such events; it does
not reflect well on their otherwise high reputation... I am
frequently told that German occupation troops would finally have
to intervene against Ustasha crimes. This may happen eventually.
Right now, with the available forces, I could not ask for such
action Ad hoc intervention in individual cases could make the
German Army look responsible for countless crimes which it could
not prevent in the past."

General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau to the OKW, July 10, 1941

"The horrors that the Ustashi have committed over the Serbian
small girls is beyond all words. There are hundreds of
photographs confirming these deeds because those of them who
have survived the torture: bayonet stabs, pulling of tongues and
teeth, nails and breast tips - all this after they were raped.
Survivors were taken in by our officers and transported to
Italian hospitals where these documents and facts were
gathered."

Commander of the Italian Sassari Division in Croatia, 1941





"Increased activity of the bands is chiefly due to atrocities
carried out by Ustasha units in Croatia against the Orthodox
population. The Ustashas committed their deeds in a bestial
manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially
against helpless old people, women and children. The number of
the Orthodox that the Croats have massacred and sadistically
tortured to death is about three hundred thousand."

Report to Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler from the Geheime
Staatspolizei - GESTAPO - dated February 17, 1942

"From the founding [of the NDH] until now the persecution of
Serbs has not stopped, and even cautious estimates indicate that
at least several hundred thousand people have been killed. The
irresponsible elements have committed such atrocities that could
be expected only from a rabid Bolshevik horde."

German foreign ministry plenipotentiary representative in
Belgrade Felix Benzler to Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of
Foreign Affairs of the Reich

" (In Croatia under the Ustasha) ...over half a million [Serbs]
were murdered, about a quarter of a million were expelled from
the country, and another quarter of a million were forced to
convert to Catholicism."

Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust





(All quotes from "The Real Genocide in Yugoslavia: Independent
Croatia of 1941 Revisited"
by: Srdja Trifkovic, published in: www.rockfordinstitute.org and
in: www.antiwar.com )






KLA - The Army of Liberation



"(There is a growing tendency among foreign observers) to
identify the criminal with the honest, the vandal with the
civilized, the mafiosi with the nation.''

Former Albanian President Sali Berisha

"They were terrorists in 1998 and now, because of politics,
they're freedom fighters"

Jerry Seper, quoting an anonymous "top drug official" who refers
to a 1998 State Department report, in the article "KLA Finances
War with Heroin Sales", Washington Times, May 3, 1999

"The Albanian villages are much better, much richer than the
Serbian ones. The Serbs, even the rich ones, don't build fine
houses in villages where there are Albanians. If a Serb has a
two-story house he refrains from painting it so that it shan't
look better than the Albanian houses."

Leon Trotsky, War Correspondent for "Pravda", reporting from the
Balkan Wars, 1912-3

"When spring comes, we will manure the plains of Kosovo with the
bones of Serbs, for we, Albanians, have suffered too much to
forget."

Isa Boletini, leaving the Ambassadors Conference in London, 1913





"Instead of using their authority and impartiality to restrain
terrorist gangs of Albanian extremists, we face the situation in
which the terrorism is taking place under their auspices, and
even being financed by United Nations means"

Milosevic, March 2000

"Getting history wrong is an essential part of being a nation."

Ernest Renan, French historian

"We spent the 1990's worrying about a Greater Serbia. That's
finished. We are going to spend time well into the next century
worrying about a Greater Albania."

Christopher Hill, Ambassador to Macedonia, 1999

"There is no excuse for that, even if the Serbs in Kosovo are
very angry. I accept responsibility. One of the most important
tasks of a democracy is to protect its minorities."

Milosevic to Ambassador Hill who reported to him about
atrocities in Kosovo

"I am like a candle. I am melting away slowly, but I light the
way for others."

Adem Demaci, political representative of the KLA





BEFORE

The founding fathers of the KLA were Ibrahim Rugova, the
pacifist president of the self-proclaimed "Kosovo Republic",
established in 1991 - and Slobodan Milosevic, his belligerent
Yugoslav counterpart. The abysmal failure of the Gandhiesque
policies of the former to shelter his people from the
recrudescently violent actions of the latter - revived the
fledging KLA outfit. Contrary to typically shallow information
in the media, the KLA has been known to have operated in Kosovo
as early as the attack on policemen in Glogovac in May 1993. Its
epiphany, in the form of magnificently uniformed fighters,
occurred only on November 28, 1997 (in the funeral of a teacher,
a victim of Serb zealousness) - but it existed long before.
Perhaps as long as the People's Movement of Kosovo, founded in
1982.

The historical and cultural roots of the conflict in Kosovo were
described elsewhere ("The Bad Blood of Kosovo"). Reading that
article is essential as this one assumes prior acquaintance with
it.

Kosovo is a land of great mineral wealth and commensurate
agricultural poverty. It has always languished with decrepit
infrastructure and irrelevant industry.  Kosovo's mineral riches
were looted by Yugoslavia for decades and both Macedonia and
Kosovo were the poor relatives in the Yugoslav Federation.





In Kosovo, more than 31% of all those over 10 years of age were
illiterate (in 1979) and its per capita income was less than 30%
of the national average. Infant mortality was 6 times that in
Slovenia. Kosovo was an African enclave in an otherwise Europe-
aspiring country. Caught in the pernicious spiral of declining
commodity prices, Kosovo relied on transfers from Yugoslavia and
from abroad for more than 90% of its income. Inevitably,
unemployment tripled from 19% in 1971 to 57% in 1989.

As a result, the Federal government had to quell 3-months long,
paralysing riots in 1981. Riots were nothing new to Kosovo - the
demonstrations of 1968 were arguably worse (and led to
constitutional changes granting autonomy to Kosovo in 1974). But
this time, the authorities, reacted with tanks in scenes
reminiscent of China's Tiananmen Square 8 years later. The
hotbed of hotheads was, as usual, the University in Pristina.
Students there were more concerned with pedestrian issues such
the quality of their food and the lack of facilities than with
any eternal revolutionary or national truths. These mundane
protests were hijacked by comrades with higher class
consciousness and loftier motives of self-determination. Such
hijacking, though, would have petered out had the cesspool of
rage and indignation not been festering so ebulliently. Serb
insensitivity backed by indiscriminate brutality led to
escalation. As the years passed, calls for the restoration of
the 1974 constitution (under which Kosovo was granted political,
financial, legal and cultural autonomy and institutions) -
merged into a sonorous agenda of "Great Albania" and a "Kosovo
Republic". The Kosovar crowd was never above beatings, looting
and burning. The hate was strong.

Yugoslavia's ruling party - the League of Communists - was in
the throes of its own transformation. With Tito's demise and the
implosion of the Soviet Bloc, the Communists lacked both compass
and leader. His natural successors were purged by Tito in the
1960s and 1970s. The party wasn't sure whether to turn to
Gorbachev's East or to America's West. The Communists panicked
and embarked on a rampage of imprisonment, unjust dismissals of
Albanians (mainly of teachers, journalists, policemen and
judges) and the occasional torture or murder. Serb intellectuals
regarded this as no more than the rectification of Tito's anti-
Serb policies. Serbia was the only Republic within the
Federation, who was dismembered into autonomous regions (Kosovo
and Vojvodina). "Getting back at Tito" was a strong motive,
commensurate with Serb "the world is against us" paranoia and
siege mentality. Milosevic, visibly ill at ease, surfed this
tide of religion-tinged nationalism straight into Kosovo, the
historical heartland of Serb-ism.

Oppression breeds resistance and Serb oppression served only to
streamline the stochastic nationalist movement into a
compartmentalized, though factious, underground organization
with roots wherever Albanians resided: Germany, Switzerland, the
USA, Canada and Australia. The ideology was an improbable mix of
Stalinism (Enver Hoxha-inspired), Maoism and Albanian
chauvinism. This was before Albania opened up to reveal its
decrepitude and desolation to its Kosovar visitors. All
delusions of an Albania-backed armed rebellion evaporated in the
languor of Albania proper. Thus, the activities of the
Nationalists were more innocuous than their concocted doctrines.





They defaced government buildings, shattered gravestones in Serb
cemeteries and overturned heroic monuments. The distribution of
subversive (and fairly bromide) "literature" was rarely
accompanied by acts of terror, either in Kosovo or in Europe.

Nationalism is refuge from uncertainty. As the old Yugoslavia
was crumbling, each of its constituents developed its own brand
of escapism, replete with revenant nationalist leaders, mostly
fictional "history", a newly discovered language and a pledge to
fate to reconstitute a lost empire at its apex. Thus, Kosovar
nationalism was qualitatively the kin and kith of the Serb or
Croat sub-species. Paradoxically, though rather predictably,
they fed on each other. Milosevic was as much a creation of
Kosovar nationalism as Thaci was the outcome of Milosevic's
policies. The KLA's Stalinist-Maoist inspiration was in
emulation of the paranoid and omphaloskeptic regime in Albania -
but it owed its existence to Belgrade's intransigence. The love-
hate relationship between the Kosovars and the Albanians is
explored elsewhere ("The Myths of Great Albania -Part I"). The
Serbs, in other words, were as terrified of Kosovar irredentism
as the Kosovars were of Serb dominion. Their ever more pressing
and menacing appeals to Belgrade gave the regime the pretext it
needed to intervene and Milosevic the context he sought in which
to flourish.





In February 1989, armed with a new constitution which abolished
Kosovo's autonomy (and, a year later, its stunned government),
Milosevic quelled a miners' hunger strike and proceeded to
institute measures of discrimination against the Albanians in
the province. Discrimination was nothing new to Kosovo. The
Albanians themselves initiated such anti-Serb measures following
their new gained constitutional autonomy in 1974. Now the tide
has turned and thousands of Albanians who refused to sign new-
fangled "loyalty vows" were summarily sacked and lost their
pension rights (the most sacred possession of "Homo
Socialismus"). Albanian media were shuttered and schools vacated
when teacher after teacher refused to abide by the Serb
curriculum. After a while, The Serbs re-opened primary schools
and re-hired Albanian teachers, allowing them to teach in
Albanian. But secondary schools and universities remained
closed.

These acts of persecution did not meet with universal
disapproval. Greece, for instance, regarded the Albanians as
natural allies of the Turks and, bonded by common enmity, of the
Macedonians and Bulgarians. Itself comprised of lands claimed by
Albania, Greece favoured a harsh and final resolution of the
Albanian question. There can be little doubt that Macedonia -
feeling besieged by its Albanian minority - regarded Milosevic
as the perfect antidote. Macedonia actively assisted Yugoslavia
to break the embargo imposed on it by the Western powers.
Milosevic was not, therefore, a pariah, as retroactive history
would have it. Rather, he was the only obstacle to a "Great
Albania".

Within less than a year, in 1990, the Democratic League of
Kosovo (LDK) was able to claim a membership of 700,000 members.
Hashim Thaci ("Snake"), Sulejman Selimi ("Sultan") and other
leaders of the KLA were then 20 years of age. Years of Swiss
education notwithstanding, they witnessed first hand Kosovo's
tumultuous transformation into the engine of disintegration of
the Yugoslav Federation. It was a valuable lesson in the
dialectic of history, later to be applied brilliantly.

The leader of the LDK, the forever silk scarfed and mellifluous
Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, compared himself openly and blushlessly to
Vaclav Havel and the Kosovar struggle to the Velvet Revolution.
This turgid and risible analogy deteriorated further as the
Kosovar Velvet was stained by the blood of innocents. Dr. Rugova
was an unfazed dreamer in a land of harsh nightmares. The
Sorbonne was never a good preparatory school to the academy of
Balkan reality. Rugova's ideals were good and noble - Gandhi-
like passive resistance, market economics, constructive (though
uncompromising and limited to the authorities) dialogue with the
enemy. They might still prevail. And during the early 1990s he
was all the rage and the darling of the West. But he failed to
translate his convictions into tangible achievements. His
biggest failure might have been his inability to ally himself
with a "Big Power" - as did the Croats, the Slovenes and the
Bosnians. This became painfully evident with the signature of
the Dayton Accord in 1995 which almost completely ignored Kosovo
and the Kosovars.





True, the West conditioned the total removal of sanctions
against Yugoslavia on its humane treatment of its Albanian
citizens and encouraged the Albanians, though circumspectly, to
stand for their rights. But there was no explicit support even
for the re-instatement of Kosovo's 1974 status, let alone for
the Albanians' dreams of statehood. In the absence of such
support - financial and diplomatic - Kosovo remained an internal
problem of Yugoslavia, a renegade province, a colony of terror
and drug trafficking. The Kosovars felt betrayed as they have
after the Congress of Berlin and the Balkan Wars. Perhaps
securing such a sponsor was a lost cause to start with (though
the KLA succeeded where Rugova failed) - but then Rugova misled
his people into sanguinous devastation by declaring the "Kosovo
Republic" prematurely. His choice of pacifism may have been
dictated by the sobering sights from the killing fields of
Bosnia - and proved his pragmatism. But his decision to declare
a "Republic" was pre-mature, self-aggrandizing and in vacuo. The
emergence of a political alternative - tough, realistic,
methodical and structured - was not only a question of time but
a welcome development. There is no desolation like the one
inflicted by sincere idealists.





In 1991, Rugova set about organizing a Republic from a shabby
office building and the opposite "Cafe Mimoza". His government
constructed makeshift schools and hospitals, parallel networks
of services staffed by the Serb-dispossessed, capitalizing on a
sweeping wave of volunteerism. Albania recognized this nascent
state immediately and international negotiators (such as Lord
Owen and Cyrus Vance) conferred with its self-important
figurehead (for instance, in September 1992). Successive
American administrations funnelled money into the province and
warnings against "ethnic cleansing" were flung at Yugoslavia as
early as 1993. Internally, Serb extremists in both Belgrade and
Pristina prevented Serb moderates (like then Yugoslav Prime
Minister Milan Panic) from re-opening the schools of Kosovo and
reducing the massive, Northern-Ireland-like Serb military
presence in it. An agreement signed in 1997 by both Rugova and
Milosevic to abolish the parallel Albanian education system and
re-open all the educational facilities in Kosovo was thus
frustrated. Kosovo fractured along ethnic lines with complete
segregation of the Serbs and the Albanians. To avoid contact
with the Serbs was an unwritten rule, breached only by prominent
intellectuals. The "Kosovo Republic" was far from advocating
ethnic cleansing or even outright independence (there were
powerful voices in favour of a federal solution within
Yugoslavia) - but not far from re-inventing an inverted version
of apartheid.





It faced the ubiquitous problem of all the other republics of
former Yugoslavia - not one of them was ethnically "pure". To
achieve a tolerable level of homogeneity, they had to resort to
force. Rugova advocated the measured application of the
insidious powers of discrimination and segregation. But, once
the theme was set, variations were bound to arise.

Though dominant for some years, Rugova and the LDK did not
monopolize the Kosovar political landscape. Following a poll in
1998, boycotted by all other political parties, which resulted
in the re-election of Rugova as president - the disenchanted and
disillusioned had plenty of choice. Some joined the KLA, many
more joined Rexhep Qosaj's (Qosje) United Democratic Movement
(LBD). The political scene in Kosovo in the 1980s and early
1990s was vibrant and kaleidoscopic. Adem Demaci - the Marxist
ideologue of the KLA, a long time political prisoner and the
founder of the "revolutionary Movement for the Merger of
Albanians" in 1964 - established the Parliamentary Party of
Kosovo (PPK) before he handed it over to Bajram Kosumi, a
dissident and another venerable political prisoner. The PPK was
co-founded by Veton Surroi, the English-speaking, US-educated,
son of a Yugoslav diplomat and editor of Koha Ditore, the
Albanian language daily. The Albanians are not a devout lot, but
even Islam had its political manifestations in Kosovo.





The 1981 demonstrations gave rise to the Popular Movement for
Kosovo (LPK). Apparently, it gave rise to the KLA, probably in
1993, possibly in Pristina. Whatever the circumstances, the KLA
congregated in Decani, the region surrounding Pristina. Two
years after the Golgovac attack - it tackled a Serb border
patrol (April) and a Serb Police Station (August) in 1995. Light
weapons and a crude bomb were used. The Serbs were not impressed
- but they were provoked into an escalating series of ever more
hideous massacres of Albanian villagers (the turning point might
have been the slaughter by the Serbs of the Jashari clan in
Prekaz). Machiavellian analysts ascribe to the KLA a devilish
plot to provoke the Serbs into the ethnic cleansing that finally
introduced the West to tortured Kosovo. The author of this
article, aware of the Balkan's lack of propensity for long term
planning and predilection for self-defeating vengeance -
believes that, to the KLA, it was all a serendipitous turn of
events. Whatever the case may be, the KLA became sufficiently
self-assured and popular to advertise itself on the BBC as
responsible for some of the clashes - a rite of passage common
to all self-respecting freedom fighters.





The selection of targets by the KLA is very telling. At first it
concentrated its fiery intentions only upon military and law and
order personnel. Its reluctance to effect civilians was
meritorious. A subtle shift occurred when the Serbs began to re-
populate Kosovo with Serbs displaced from the Krajina region.
Alarmed by the intent - if not by the execution (only 10,000
Serbs or so were settled in Kosovo) - the KLA reacted with a
major drive to arm itself and by attacking Serb settlements in
Klina, Decani and Djakovica and a refugee camp in Baboloc. The
KLA attacks were militarily sophisticated and co-ordinated. Serb
policemen were ambushed on the road between Glogovac and Srbica.
The Serb counter-offensive resulted in dozens of Albanian
victims - civilians, men, women and children (the "Drenica
Massacre"). The KLA tried to defend villages aligned along a
Pec-Djakovica line and thus disrupt the communications and
logistics of Serb Military Police and Special (Ministry of
Interior) Police units. The main arena of fighting was a
recurrent one - in the 1920s, Albanian guerillas, based in the
hills, attacked the Serbs in Drenica.





What finally transformed the KLA from a wannabe IRA into the
fighting force that it has become was the disintegration of
Albania. History is the annals of irony. The break-up of the
KLA'a role model - led to the resurgence of its intellectual
progeny. The KLA absorbed thousands of weapons from the looted
armouries of the Albanian military and police. Angry mobs
attacked these ordnances following the collapse of pyramid
investment schemes that robbed one third of the population of
all their savings. The arms ended up in the trigger-happy hands
of drug lords, mafiosi, pimps, smugglers and freedom fighters
from Tetovo in Macedonia to Durres in Albania and from Pristina
in Kosovo to the Sandzak in Serbia. The KLA was so ill-equipped
to cope with this fortuitous cornucopia - that it began to trade
weapons, a gainful avocation it found hard to dislodge ever
since. The convulsive dissolution of Albania led to changes in
high places. Sali Berisha was deposed and replaced by Rexhep
Mejdani, an even more sympathetic ear to separatist demands.
Berisha himself later allowed the KLA to use his property
(around Tropoja) as staging grounds and supported the cause
(though not the "Marxist-Leninist" KLA or its self-appointed
government) unequivocally.





At a certain stage, he even accused Fatos Nano, his rival and
the Prime Minister of Albania of being the enemy of the Albanian
people for not displaying the same unmitigated loyalty to the
idea of an independent Kosovo, under Rugova and Bujar Bukoshi,
Rugova's money man (and Prime Minister in exile). The KLA was
able to expand its presence in Albania, mainly in its training
and operations centres near Kukes, Ljabinot (near Tirana) and
Bajram Curi. Albania had a growing say in the affairs of the KLA
as it recomposed itself - it was instrumental in summoning the
KLA to Rambouillet, for instance.

This armed revelry coupled with the rising fortunes of
separatism, led Robert Gelbard, the senior US envoy to the
Balkan to label the KLA - "a terrorist organization". The Serbs
took this to mean a licence to kill, which they exercised
dutifully in Drenica. Promptly, the USA changed course and the
indomitable Madeleine Albright switched parties, saying: "We are
not going to stand by and watch the Serbian authorities do in
Kosovo what they can no longer get away with in Bosnia".





This stern consistency was followed by a tightening of the
embargo against Yugoslavia and by a threat of unilateral action.
For the first time in history, the Kosovars finally had a
sponsor - and what a sponsor! The mightiest of all. As for
Milosevic, he felt nauseatingly betrayed. Not only was he not
rewarded for his role as the Dayton peacemaker - he was faced
with new sanctions, an ultimatum and a direct threat on the very
perpetuation of his regime.

The KLA mushroomed not because it attacked Serbs (very
sporadically and to a minuscule effect). It ballooned because it
delivered where Rugova didn't even promise. It delivered an
alliance with the USA against the hated Serbs. It delivered
weapons. It delivered hope and a plan. It delivered vengeance,
the self-expression of the downtrodden. It was joined by near
and far and, by its own reckoning, its ranks swelled to 50,000
warriors. More objective experts put the figure of active
fighters at one fourth this number. Still, it is an impressive
number in a population of 1.7 million Albanians. During the war,
it was joined by 400 overweight suburbanites from North America,
Albanian volunteers within an "Atlantic Brigade". It also
absorbed Albanians with rich military experience from Serbia and
Croatia as well as foreign mercenaries and possibly "Afghanis"
(the devout Moslem veterans of the wars in Afghanistan, Lebanon
and Bosnia).





The influx of volunteers put pressure on the leadership - both
organizational and pecuniary. The KLA - an entrepreneurial start
up of insurgency - had matured into a national brand of
guerilla. It revamped itself, creating directorates, offices and
officers, codes and procedures, a radio station and a news
agency, an electronic communications interception unit, a word
of mouth messenger service and a general military staff, headed
since February 1999 by "Sultan" and divided to seven operational
zones. In short, it reacted to changing fortunes by creating a
bureaucracy. Concurrently, it armed itself to its teeth with
more sophisticated weapons than ever before (though it was still
short of medical supplies, ammunition and communications
equipment). The KLA now had  shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket
launchers (like the German "Armburst"), mortars, recoilless
rifles, anti-aircraft machine-guns and automatic assault rifles.
Some of the weapons were even bought from Serb army officers or
imported through Hungary. All this required a financial phase
transition. That the KLA has benefited, directly and knowingly,
from money tainted by drug trafficking and smuggling of both
goods and people across borders - can be in little doubt. But I
find the proposition that the KLA itself has traded in drugs
unlikely. The long-established Albanian clans which control the
"Balkan Route" - the same clans that faced down the fearsome
Turkish gangs on their own turf - would have never let an
upstart such as the KLA take over any of their territory and its
incumbent profits.





The KLA might have traded weapons. It might have dabbled in
smuggling. It might have received donations from drug lords. In
this, it is no different from all major modern guerilla
movements. But it did not peddle drugs - not because of moral
scruples but because of the lethal competition it would have
encountered. That the KLA had to resort to such condemnable
methods of financing is not surprising. Rugova refused to share
with it the funds abroad managed by Bujar Bukoshi on behalf of
the "Kosovar People". It had no other means of income and, as
opposed to Rugova, it could act only clandestinely and
surreptitiously. The West was no great help either - contrary to
the myth spun by the Serbs.

Another source of income was the 3% "War Tax" levied on 500,000
Kosovar Albanians and their businesses in the diaspora (though
most of it ended up under Bukoshi's and Rugova's control).
Officially collected by the People's Movement of Kosovo, the
ultimate use of the proceeds was the sustenance of the shadow
republic. The KLA made use of the voluntary and not so voluntary
donations to the Swiss-based fund "Homeland Calls" (or
"Motherland is Calling").





The USA - the pragmatic superpower that it is - began to divert
its attention from the bumbling and hapless Rugova to the
emerging KLA. The likes of Gelbard and, his senior, Richard
Holbrooke, held talks with its youthful political director,
Hashim Thaci - suave, togged up and earnest, he was just what
the doctor ordered. To discern that a showdown in Kosovo was
near required no prophetic powers. The KLA might come handy to
espy the land and to divert the Serb forces should the need
arise.

"The Clinton administration has diligently put everything in
place for intervention. In fact, by mid-July US-NATO planners
had completed contingency plans for intervention, including air
strikes and the deployment of ground troops. All that was
missing was a sufficiently brutal or tragic event to trigger the
process. As a senior Defence Department official told reporters
on July 15, 'If some levels of atrocities were reached that
would be intolerable, that would probably be a trigger.'" -
wrote Gary Dempsey from the Cato Institute in October 1998. The
author of this article published another one in the "Middle East
Times" in August 1998 in which the Kosovo conflict was
delineated in reasonably accurate detail ("The Plight of the
Kosovar"). The article was written in April 1998 - by which time
the outline of things to come was plain.





All along, the KLA prepared itself to be a provisional
government in-waiting. It occupied regions of Kosovo,
established roadblocks, administration, welfare offices. Its
members operated nocturnally. The Serb reaction got ever harsher
until finally it threatened not only to wipe the KLA out of
existence but also to depopulate the parts of the province
controlled by it. In September 1998, NATO threatened air strikes
against Serbia, following reports of a massacre of women and
children in the village of Gornje Obrinje. This led to the
October 20th agreement with Belgrade, which postulated a
reduction in the levels of Yugoslav troops in the province.

The KLA was all but ignored in these events. Rugova was not. He
was often consulted by the American negotiators and treated like
a head of state. The message was deafeningly clear: the KLA was
a pawn on the chessboard of war. It had no place where the
civilized and the responsible tread. It had no raison d'etre in
peacetime. It reacted by hitting a number of "Serb
collaborators" (mostly of Gorani extract - Muslim Slavs who
speak a dialect of Albanian). One of the disposed was Enver
Maloku, Rugova's close associate.





On January 15, 1999, in the village of Racak, someone murdered
scores of people and dumped them by the roadside. The KLA blamed
the Serbs. The Serbs blamed the KLA and William Walker, the head
of the OSCE observer team. The media reports were inconclusive.
While everyone was fighting over the smouldering bodies, NATO
was preparing to attack and Walker withdrew his observer team
from Kosovo into an increasingly reluctant and enraged
Macedonia. Faced with sovereignty-infringing and regime-
destabilizing demands at Rambouillet, the Serbs declined. Under
pressure and after days of consultations, the Albanian
delegation accepted the dictated draft agreement hesitatingly.
In the absence of the predicted Serb capitulation, "Operation
Allied Forces" commenced.

Rambouillet was a turning point for the KLA. Evidently on the
verge of war, the USA reverted to its preferences of yore. The
KLA, a more useful ally on the ground in battle, took over from
the LDK as the US favourite. At the behest of the United States,
KLA representatives not only were present, but headed the
Kosovar negotiating team. Thaci took some convincing and
shuttling between Rambouillet, Switzerland and Kosovo - but
finally, in March, he accepted the terms of the agreement with a
sombre Rugova in tow. These public acts of statesmanship:
negotiating, bargaining and, finally, accepting graciously -
cemented the role and image of the KLA as not only a military
outfit but also a political organization with the talent and
wherewithal to lead the Kosovars. Rugova's position was never
more negligible and marginal.

AFTER

"The KLA will transform in many directions, not just a military
guard. One part will become part of the police, one part will
become civil administration, one part will become the Army of
Kosovo, as a defence force. Finally, a part will form a
political party."

Agim Ceku, KLA CDR

The Western media hit a nadir of bias and unprofessional
sycophancy during the Kosovo crisis. It, therefore, remains
unclear who pulled whose strings. The KLA was seen to be more
adept at spin doctoring than hubris-infested NATO. It started
the war as an outcast and ended it as an ally of NATO on the
ground and the real government of a future Kosovo. It
capitalized ingeniously on Rugova's mysterious disappearance and
then on his, even less comprehensible, refusal to visit the
refugee camps and to return to liberated Kosovo. It interfaced
marvellously with both youthful prime ministers - Albania's
Pandeli Majko and Macedonia's Ljubco Georgievski. This new-found
camaraderie ended in a summit with the latter, organized by
Arben Xhaferi (Dzaferi), an influential Albanian coalition
partner in Macedonia (and, many say, Thaci's business partner in
Kosovo). Georgievski, who did more for Macedonia's regional
integration and amicable relationships with its neighbours than
all the previous governments of Macedonia combined - did not
hesitate to shake the hand of the political leader of an
organization still decried by his own Interior Ministry as
"terrorist".





It was a gamble - bold and, in hindsight, farsighted - but
still, a gamble. Rugova himself was not accorded such an honour
when he finally passed through Macedonia, on his way to his
demolished homeland.

During the war, the KLA absorbed new recruits from Macedonia
(many Macedonian Albanians died in battle in the fields of
Kosovo), from Germany, Switzerland, the USA, Australia and some
Moslem countries. In other words, it was internationalized. It
was equipped (though only niggardly) by the West. And it coped
with the double task of diplomacy (Thaci's famous televised
discussions with Madeleine Albright, for instance) and political
organization. It was engaged in field guerilla warfare and
reconnaissance without the proper training for either. Add to
this tactical military co-ordination and the need to integrate a
second, Rugova and Berisha sponsored Armed Forces of the
Republic of Kosovo (FARK) and the KLA seems to have been taxed
to its breaking point. Cracks began to appear and it was
downhill ever since. Never before was such an enormous political
capital wasted so thoroughly in so short a time by so few.

One must not forget that victory was not assured until the last
moment. The West's reluctance to commit ground troops to the
escalating conflict - as mass expulsions cum sporadic massacres
of the indigenous population by the Serbs were taking place -
was considered by many KLA fighters to have been a violation of
a "Besa" (the sacred Albanian vow) given to them by NATO.





Opinions regarding the grand strategy of conducting the war
differed strongly. The agreement with Milosevic that ended the
war did not mention any transition period at the end of which
the Kosovars will decide their fate in a referendum. It felt
like betrayal. At the beginning, there was strong, grassroots
resistance to disarmament. Many Kosovars felt that the advantage
obtained should be pressed to the point of independence or at
least, a transition period.

Then, when the dust settled, the spoils of war served to widen
the rifts. Internecine fighting erupted and is still afoot. The
occasional murder served to delineate the territories of each
commander and faction within the strained KLA. Everything was
and is subject to fluid arrangements of power and profit sharing
- from soft drink licences, through cigarette smuggling and
weapons dealing and down to the allocation of funds (some of
them still of dubious sources). The situation was further
compounded by the invasion of criminal elements from Albania
proper. The Kosovar crime clans were effected by the war (though
their activities never really ceased) and into the vacuum gushed
Albanian organized and ruthless crime.

But contrary to media-fostered popular images - crime was but
one thread in the emerging tapestry of the new Kosovo.

Other, no less critical issues were and are demilitarization and
self-government.

Albanians and Serbs have more in common than they care to admit.
Scattered among various political entities, both nations came up
with a grandiose game plan - Milosevic's "Great Serbia" and the
KLA's "Great Albania". The idea, in both cases, was to create an
ethnically homogeneous state by shifting existing borders,
incorporating hitherto excluded parts of the nation and
excluding hitherto included minorities. Whereas Milosevic had at
his disposal the might of the Yugoslav army (or, so he thought)
- the Albanians had only impoverished and decomposing Albania to
back them. Still, the emotional bond that formed, fostered by a
common vision and shared hope - is intact. Albanian flags fly
over Albanian municipalities in Kosovo and in Macedonia.

The possession of weapons and self-government have always been
emblematic of the anticipated statehood of Kosovo. Being
disarmed and deprived of self-governance was, to the Albanians,
a humiliating and enraging experience, evocative of earlier,
Serb-inflicted, injuries. Moreover, it was indicative of the
perplexed muddle the West is mired in - officially, Kosovo is
part of Yugoslavia. But it is also occupied by foreign forces
and has its own customs, currency, bank licensing, entry visas
and other insignia of sovereignty (shortly, even an internet
domain, KO).





This quandary is a typically anodyne European compromise which
is bound to ferment into atrabilious discourse and worse. The
Kosovars - understandably - will never accept Serb sovereignty
or even Serb propinquity willingly. Ignoring the inevitable,
tergiversating and equivocating have too often characterized the
policies of the Big Powers - the kind of behaviour that turned
the Balkan into the morass that it is today.

It is, therefore, inconceivable that the KLA has disbanded and
disarmed or transformed itself into the ill-conceived and ill-
defined "Kosovo Protection Corps" (headed by former KLA
commander and decorated Croat Lieutenant General, Agim Ceku and
charged with fire fighting, rescue missions and the like).
Thousands of KLA members found jobs (or scholarships, or seed
money) through the International Organization for Migration
(IOM). But, in all likelihood, the KLA still maintains
clandestine arms depots (intermittently raided by KFOR), strewn
throughout Kosovo and beyond. Its chain of command,
organizational structure, directorates, operational and assembly
zones and general staff are all viable. I have no doubt - though
little proof - that it still trains and prepares for war. It
would be mad not to in this state of utter mayhem. The emergence
of the "Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac" (all
towns beyond Kosovo's borders, in Serbia, but with an Albanian
majority) is a harbinger.





Its soldiers even wear badges in the red, black and yellow KLA
colours. The enemies are numerous: the Serbs (should Kosovo ever
be returned to them), NATO and KFOR (should they be charged with
the task of reintegrating Serbia), perhaps more moderate
Albanians with lesser national zeal or Serb-collaborators (like
Zemail Mustafi, the Albanian vice president of the Bujanovac
branch of President Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist Party,
who was assassinated three months ago). Moreover, the very
borders of Kosovo are in dispute. The territory known to its
inhabitants as "Eastern Kosovo" now comprises 70,000 Albanians,
captives in a hostile Serbia. Yet, "Eastern Kosovo" was never
part of the administrative province of Kosovo. The war is far
from over.

In the meantime, life is gradually returning to normal in Kosovo
itself. Former KLA fighters engage in all manner of odd jobs -
from shovelling snow in winter to burning bushes in summer. Even
the impossible Joint Administrative Council (Serbs, Albanians
and peacekeepers) with its 19 departments, convenes from time to
time. The periodic resignation of the overweening Bernard
Kouchner aside, things are going well. A bank has been
established, another one is on its way. Electricity is being
gradually restored and so are medical services and internet
connections. Downtown Pristina is reconstructed by Albanians
from Switzerland.





Such normalization can prove lethal to an organization like the
KLA, founded on strife and crisis as it is. If it does not
transform itself into a political organization in a convincing
manner - it might lose its members to the more alluring pastures
of statecraft. The local and general elections so laboriously
(and expensively) organized in Kosovo are the KLA's first real
chance at transformation. It failed at its initial effort to
establish a government (together with Qosaj's Democratic Union
Movement, an umbrella organization of parties in opposition to
Rugova and with Hashim Thaci as its Prime Minister). Overruled
by UNMIK (United Nations Mission In Kosovo), opposed by
Berisha's Democratic Party, recognized only by Albania and the
main Albanian party in Macedonia and bereft of finances, it was
unable to imbue structure with content and provide the public
goods a government is all about. The KLA was so starved for cash
that it was unable even to pay the salaries of its own
personnel. Many criminals caught in the act claimed to be KLA
members in dire financial straits. Ineptitude and insolvency led
to a dramatic resurgence in the popularity of the hitherto
discarded Rugova. The KLA then failed to infiltrate existing
structures of governance erected by the West (like the Executive
Council) - or to duplicate them. Thaci's quest to become deputy-
Kouchner was brusquely rebuffed. The ballot box seems now to be
the KLA's only exit strategy. The risk is that electoral loss
will lead to alienation and thuggery if not to outright
criminality. It is a fine balancing act between the virtuous
ideals of democracy and the harsh constraints of realpolitik.





At this stage and with elections looming, Hashim Thaci sounds
conciliatory tones. He is talking about a common (Albanian and
Serb) resolution of the division of Mitrovica and the problem of
missing persons. But even he knows that multi-ethnicity is dead
and that the best that can be hoped for is tolerant co-
existence. His words are, therefore, intended to curry favour
with the West out of the misguided and naive belief that the key
to Kosovo's future lies there rather than in the will of the
Kosovar people. Western aid is habit forming and creates
dependence and the KLA consumed a lot of it. Politically, the
KLA has not yet pupated. Recently, it has embarked on a spate of
coalition-forming, initially with Bardhyl Mahmuti of the
Democratic Progressive Party of Kosovo (PPDK) - the former KLA
representative in Western Europe. It seeks to marry its
dwindling funds and seat at the West's banquet with the
reputation and clout of the PPDK's local dignitaries.

This coveted and negotiable access to Western structures of
government bears some elaboration. Kosovar parties and
individuals present at the Rambouillet talks were entitled,
according to the Rambouillet Agreement and UN General Resolution
1244, to serve, together with UNMIK delegates, on a Kosovo
Transitional Council (KTC).

Thus, when KTC was formed in the wake of Operation Allied Force,
it was made of Rugova's LDK, Thaci's KLA, and Rexhep Qosaj's
(Qosje) Democratic Union League. There was a token Serb and two
independents - the aforementioned Veton Surroi and Blerim Shala,
editor-in-chief of the Pristina weekly Zeri.

Many newly-formed political parties, such as Mahmuti's were left
out of the KTC and the Executive Council (which is made of one
representative of each of the four largest Kosovar political
parties plus four representatives from UNMIK). This - a seat at
the cherished table - seems to be the only tangible asset of the
KLA. But it came at a dear price. The Executive Council
virtually paralysed Thaci's self-proclaimed and self-appointed
government, absorbing many of its ministers and officials with
lucrative offers of salaries and budgets. Thaci himself had to
give up a part of the plethora of his self-bestowed titles. This
move again proves Thaci's simplistic perception that to win
elections in Kosovo one needs to be seen to be a friend of the
West. I have no doubt that this photo-opportunity brand of
politics will backfire. The KLA's popularity among the potential
electorate is at a nadir and it is being accused of venality,
incompetence and outright crime. A lasting transformation of
such an image cannot be attained by terpsichorean supineness. To
regain its position, the KLA must regenerate itself and revert
to its grassroots. It must dedicate equal time to diplomacy and
to politics. It must identify its true constituency - and it is
by no means UNMIK. Above all, it must hone its skills of
collaboration and compromise. Politics - as opposed to warfare -
are never a zero sum game. The operative principle is "live and
let live" rather than "shoot first or die". A mental
transformation is required, an adjustment of codes of conduct
and principles of thought. Should the KLA find in itself the
flexibility and intellectual resources - rare commodities in
ideological movements - needed to achieve this transition, it
might still compose the first government of an independent
Kosovo. If it were to remain intransigent and peevish - it is
likely to end up being barely a bloody footnote in history.

Narcissists, Group Behaviour,

and Terrorism

Interview with Sam Vaknin

Published in "The Idler"





Sam Vaknin is the author of 'Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited', owner of the Narcissistic Abuse Study List, and
webmaster of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder Topic in
Suite101. He is also an economic and political analyst for
United Press International (UPI).



1. What is pathological narcissism?



All of us have narcissistic TRAITS. Some of us even develop a
narcissistic PERSONALITY.  Moreover, narcissism is a SPECTRUM of
behaviours - from the healthy to the utterly pathological (known
as the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD).







The DSM IV uses this language:



"An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or
behaviour), need for admiration or adulation and lack of
empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in
various contexts."



Here are the 9 criteria. Having 5 of these 9 "qualifies" you as
a narcissist...

1.	Feels grandiose and self-importance (e.g., exaggerates
achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to
be recognized as superior without commensurate
achievements)

2.	Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame,
fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the
cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance
(the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-
conquering love or passion

3.	Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being
special, can only be understood by, should only be treated
by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-
status people (or institutions)

4.	Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and
affirmation - or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to
be notorious (narcissistic supply).

5.	Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and
favourable priority treatment. Demands automatic and full
compliance with his or her expectations

6.	Is "interpersonally exploitative", i.e., uses others
to achieve his or her own ends

7.	Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify
with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others

8.	Constantly envious of others or believes that they
feel the same about him or her

9.	Arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes coupled with
rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted.

The language in the criteria above is based on or summarized
from:

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and
statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition (DSM IV).
Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

Sam Vaknin. (1999, 2001). Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited, second, revised printing Prague and Skopje: Narcissus
Publications. ("Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
http://samvak.tripod.com/faq1.html)

More Data About Pathological Narcissists

o	Most narcissists (75%) are men.

o	NPD (=the Narcissistic Personality Disorder) is one of a
"family" of personality disorders (formerly known as "Cluster
B"). Other members: Borderline PD, Antisocial PD and Histrionic
PD.

o	NPD is often diagnosed with other mental health disorders
("co-morbidity") - or with substance abuse, or impulsive and
reckless behaviours ("dual diagnosis").

o	NPD is new (1980) mental health category in the Diagnostic and
Statistics Manual (DSM).

o	There is only scant research regarding narcissism. But what
there is has not demonstrated any ethnic, social, cultural,
economic, genetic, or professional predilection to NPD.

o	It is estimated that 0.7-1% of the general population suffer
from NPD.

o	Pathological narcissism was first described in detail by
Freud. Other major contributors are: Klein, Horney, Kohut,
Kernberg, Millon, Roningstam, Gunderson, Hare.

o	The onset of narcissism is in infancy, childhood and early
adolescence. It is commonly attributed to childhood abuse and
trauma inflicted by parents, authority figures, or even peers.

o	There is a whole range of narcissistic reactions - from the
mild, reactive and transient to the permanent personality
disorder.

o	Narcissists are either "Cerebral" (derive their narcissistic
supply from their intelligence or academic achievements) - or
"Somatic" (derive their narcissistic supply from their physique,
exercise, physical or sexual prowess and "conquests").

o	Narcissists are either "Classic" - see definition below - or
they are "Compensatory", or "Inverted" - see definitions here:
"The Inverted Narcissist".

o	NPD is treated in talk therapy (psychodynamic or cognitive-
behavioural). The prognosis for an adult narcissist is poor,
though his adaptation to life and to others can improve with
treatment. Medication is applied to side-effects and behaviours
(such as mood or affect disorders and obsession-compulsion) -
usually with some success.

2. Human collectives (nations, professions, ethnic groups) and
narcissism - stereotyping or racism?

Having lived in 12 countries in 3 continents now, I firmly
believe in "mass psychopathology", or in ethnopsychology. The
members of a group - if sufficiently cohesive - tend to react
similarly to circumstances. By "cohesive" I mean, if they share
the same mental world ("Weltanschauung") - possibly the same
history, the same language or dialect, the same hopes, folklore,
fears, and aspirations ("agenda"), the same enemies and so on.

Thus, if recurrently traumatized or abused by external or
internal forces, a group of people may develop the mass
equivalent of pathological narcissism as a defence or
compensatory mechanism. By "abuse" and "trauma" I mean any
event, or series of events, or circumstances, which threaten the
self identity, self image, sense of self worth, and self esteem
of the collective consistently and constantly - though often
arbitrarily and unpredictably. Human collectives go through
formation, individuation, separation - all the phases in
individual psychological development. A disturbance in the
natural and unhindered progression of these phases is likely to
result in psychopathology of all the members of the collective.
Being subjugated to another nation, being exiled, enduring
genocide, being destitute, being defeated in warfare - are all
traumatic experiences with far reaching consequences.





The members of the collective form a "condensate" (in physical
terms) - a material in which all the atoms vibrate with the same
frequency. Under normal circumstances, group behaviour resembles
diffuse light. Subject to trauma and abuse - it forms a
malignant laser - a strong, same wavelength, potentially
destructive beam. The group becomes abusive to others,
exploitative, detached from reality, bathed in grandiose
fantasies, xenophobic, lacking empathy, prone to uncontrolled
rages, over-sensitive, convinced of its superiority and
entitlement. Force and coercion are often required to
disabuse such a group of its delusions. But, this of course,
only cements its narcissism and justifies its distorted
perception of the world.

Consider the case of the Jews.

The Jews have been subjected to the kind of trauma and abuse I
mentioned earlier on an unprecedented and never repeated scale.
Their formal scriptures, lore, and ethos are imbued with
grandiose fantasies and a towering sense of superiority and
"mission". Yet, the inevitable contempt for their inferiors is
tampered by the all-pervasive pragmatism the Jews had to develop
in order to survive. Narcissists are not pragmatic. They live in
a Universe of their own making. They see no need to get along
with others. Jews are not like that. Their creed is a practical
survival guide which obliges them to accommodate others, to
empathize with their needs and desires, to compromise, to admit
errors, to share credit, to collaborate, and so on.





Israelis, on the other hand, are "unshackled" Jews. They believe
themselves to be the mirror image of the diaspora Jew. They are
physical ("somatic"), strong, productive, independent, in
control. They, in short, are less bound by the need to
perilously co-exist with baleful, predatory, majorities. They
can allow themselves a full, unmitigated, expression of whatever
defence mechanisms they evolved in response to millennia of
virulent hatred and murderous persecutions. Being an Israeli, I
gained privileged insight into this fascinating transformation
from tortured slave to vengeful master.

3. Narcissism and Leadership

Are all politicians narcissists? The answer, surprisingly, is:
not universally. The preponderance of narcissistic traits and
personalities in politics is much less than in show business,
for instance. Moreover, while show business is concerned
essentially (and almost exclusively) with the securing of
narcissistic supply - politics is a much more complex and multi-
faceted activity. Rather, it is a spectrum. At the one end, we
find the "actors" - politicians who regard politics as their
venue and their conduit, an extended theatre with their
constituency as an audience. At the other extreme, we find self-
effacing and schizoid (crowd-hating) technocrats. Most
politicians are in the middle: somewhat self-enamoured,
opportunistic and seeking modest doses of narcissistic supply -
but mostly concerned with perks, self-preservation and the
exercise of power.





Most narcissists are opportunistic and ruthless operators. But
not all opportunistic and ruthless operators are narcissists. I
am strongly opposed to remote diagnosis. I think it is a bad
habit, exercised by charlatans and dilettantes (even if their
names are followed by a Psy.D.). Please do not forget that only
a qualified mental health diagnostician can determine whether
someone suffers from NPD and this, following lengthy tests and
personal interviews.

IF the politician in question is ALSO a narcissist (=suffers
from NPD), then, yes, he would do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to
remain in power, or, while, in power, to secure his narcissistic
supply. A common error is to think that "narcissistic supply"
consists only of admiration, adulation and positive feedback.
Actually, being feared, or derided is also narcissistic supply.
The main element is ATTENTION. So, the narcissistic politician
cultivates sources of narcissistic supply (both primary and
secondary) and refrains from nothing while doing so.

Often, politicians are nothing but a loyal reflection of their
milieu, their culture, their society and their times (zeitgeist
and leitkultur). This is the thesis of Daniel Goldhagen in
"Hitler's Willing Executioners".

More about Narcissists in positions of authority:

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq11.html

http://samvak.tripod.com/msla7.html


4. Political and economic circumstances and emerging
narcissistic group behaviours

Pathological narcissism is the result of individual upbringing
(see: "The Narcissist's Mother"  and "Narcissists and Schizoids"
) and, in this sense, it is universal and cuts across time and
space. Yet, the very process of socialization and education is
heavily constrained by the prevailing culture and influenced by
it. Thus, culture, mores, history, myths, ethos, and even
government policy (such as the "one child policy" in China) do
create the conditions for pathologies of the personality.

The ethnopsychologist George Devereux ("Basic Problems of
Ethnopsychiatry", University of Chicago Press, 1980) suggested
to divide the unconscious into the id (the part that was always
instinctual and unconscious) and the "ethnic unconscious"
(repressed material that was once conscious). The latter
includes all our defence mechanisms and most of the superego.
Culture dictates what is to be repressed. Mental illness is
either idiosyncratic (cultural directives are not followed and
the individual is unique and schizophrenic) - or conformist,
abiding by the cultural dictates of what is allowed and
disallowed.

Our culture, according to Christopher Lasch teaches us to
withdraw into ourselves when we are confronted with stressful
situations. It is a vicious circle. One of the main stressors of
modern society is alienation and a pervasive sense of isolation.
The solution our culture offers us - to further withdraw - only
exacerbates the problem.

Richard Sennett expounded on this theme in "The Fall of Public
Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism" (Vintage Books,
1978). One of the chapters in Devereux's aforementioned tome is
entitled "Schizophrenia: An Ethnic Psychosis, or Schizophrenia
without Tears". To him, the whole USA is afflicted by what came
later to be called a "schizoid disorder". C. Fred Alford (in
"Narcissism: Socrates, the Frankfurt School, and Psychoanalytic
Theory", Yale University Press, 1988) enumerates the symptoms:

"...withdrawal, emotional aloofness, hyporeactivity

(emotional flatness), sex without emotional involvement,

segmentation and partial involvement (lack of interest and

commitment to things outside oneself), fixation on oral-

stage issues, regression, infantilism and depersonalization.

These, of course, are many of the same designations that

Lasch employs to describe the culture of narcissism. Thus,

it appears, that it is not misleading to equate narcissism

with schizoid disorder." (page 19).



Consider the Balkan region, for instance:



http://samvak.tripod.com/pp25.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/pp29.html






5. Christopher Lasch, American "culture of narcissism" and the
long term effects of the September 11 atrocities

Lasch and his work are increasingly relevant in post September
America. This is partly because the likes of bin Laden hurl at
America primitive and coarse versions of Lasch's critique. They
accuse America of being a failed civilization, not merely of
meddling ignorantly and sacriligeously in the affairs of Islam
(and the rest of the world). They fervently believe that America
exports this contagious failure to other cultures and societies
(through its idolatrous mass media and inferior culture
industries) and thus "infects" them with the virus of its own
terminal decline. It is important to understand the left wing
roots of this cancerous rendition of social criticism.

Lasch wrote:

"The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He
seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a
meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past,
he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially
relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial
and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of
group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors
conferred by a paternalistic state.





His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical,
even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no
sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval
and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it
unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he
repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an
earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their
limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation
and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He
praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief
that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that
his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and
provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive
individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but
demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of
restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."

(Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in
an age of Diminishing Expectations, 1979)

There is no single Lasch. This chronicler of culture, did so
mainly by chronicling his inner turmoil, conflicting ideas and
ideologies, emotional upheavals, and intellectual vicissitudes.
In this sense, of (courageous) self-documentation, Mr. Lasch
epitomized Narcissism, was the quintessential Narcissist, the
better positioned to criticize the phenomenon.





"Narcissism" is a relatively well-defined psychological term. I
expound upon it elsewhere ("Malignant self Love - Narcissism Re-
Visited"). The Narcissistic Personality Disorder - the acute
form of pathological Narcissism - is the name given to a group
of 9 symptoms (see: DSM-4). They include: a grandiose Self
(illusions of grandeur coupled with an inflated, unrealistic
sense of the Self), inability to empathize with the Other, the
tendency to exploit and manipulate others, idealization of other
people (in cycles of idealization and devaluation), rage attacks
and so on. Narcissism, therefore, has a clear clinical
definition, etiology and prognosis.

The use that Lasch makes of this word has nothing to do with its
usage in psychopathology. True, Lasch did his best to sound
"medicinal". He spoke of "(national) malaise" and accused the
American society of lack of self-awareness. But choice of words
does not a coherence make.

"The Culture of Narcissism - American Life in an Age of
Diminishing Expectations" was published in the last year of the
unhappy presidency of Jimmy Carter (1979). The latter endorsed
the book publicly (in his famous "national malaise" speech).

The main thesis of the book is that the Americans have created a
self-absorbed (though not self aware), greedy and frivolous
society which depended on consumerism, demographic studies,
opinion polls and Government to know and to define itself. What
is the solution?

Lasch proposed a "return to basics": self-reliance, the family,
nature, the community, and the Protestant work ethic. To those
who adhere, he promised an elimination of their feelings of
alienation and despair.

But the clinical term "Narcissism" was abused by Lasch in his
books. It joined other words mistreated by this social preacher.
The respect that this man gained in his lifetime (as a social
scientist and historian of culture) makes one wonder whether he
was right in criticizing the shallowness and lack of
intellectual rigor of American society and of its elites.

There is a detailed analysis here, in a reaction I wrote to
Roger Kimball's "Christopher Lasch vs. the elites""New
Criterion", Vol. 13, p.9 (04-01-1995):

http://samvak.tripod.com/lasch.html


6. Are all terrorists and serial killers narcissists?

Terrorists can be phenomenologically described as narcissists in
a constant state of deficient narcissistic supply. The
"grandiosity gap" - the painful and narcissistically injurious
gap between their grandiose fantasies and their dreary and
humiliating reality - becomes emotionally insupportable. They
decompensate and act out. They bring "down to their level" (by
destroying it) the object of their pathological envy, the cause
of their seething frustration, the symbol of their dull
achievements, always incommensurate with their inflated self-
image.

They seek omnipotence through murder, control (not least self
control) through violence, prestige, fame and celebrity by
defying figures of authorities, challenging them, and humbling
them. Unbeknownst to them, they seek self punishment. They are
at heart suicidal. They aim to cast themselves as victims by
forcing others to punish them. This is called "projective
identification". They attribute evil and corruption to their
enemies and foes. These forms of paranoia are called projection
and splitting. These are all primitive, infantile, and often
persecutory, defense mechanisms.

When coupled with narcissism - the inability to empathize, the
exploitativeness, the sense of entitlement, the rages, the
dehumanization and devaluation of others - this mindset yields
abysmal contempt. The overriding emotion of terrorists and
serial killers, the amalgam and culmination of their tortured
psyche - is deep seated disdain for everything human, the flip
side of envy. It is cognitive dissonance gone amok. On the one
hand the terrorist derides as "false", "meaningless",
"dangerous", and "corrupt" common values, institutions, human
intercourse, and society. On the other hand, he devotes his
entire life (and often risks it) to the elimination and
pulverization of these "insignificant" entities. To justify this
apparent contradiction, the terrorists casts himself as an
altruistic saviour of a group of people "endangered" by his
foes. He is always self-appointed and self-proclaimed, rarely
elected. The serial killer rationalizes and intellectualizes his
murders similarly, by purporting to "liberate" or "deliver" his
victims from a fate worse than death.





The global reach, the secrecy, the impotence and growing panic
of his victims, of the public, and of his pursuers, the damage
he wreaks - all serve as external ego functions. The terrorist
and serial killer regulate their sense of self esteem and self
worth by feeding slavishly on the reactions to their heinous
deeds. Their cosmic significance is daily enhanced by newspaper
headlines, ever increasing bounties, admiring imitators,
successful acts of blackmail, the strength and size of their
opponents, and the devastation of human life and property.
Appeasement works only to aggravate their drives and strengthen
their appetites by emboldening them and by raising the threshold
of excitation and "narcissistic supply". Terrorists and killers
are addicted to this drug of being acknowledged and reflected.
They derive their sense of existence, parasitically, from the
reactions of their (often captive) audience.

APPENDIX - Responses in a correspondence following the
publication of this interview

Zionism has always regarded itself as both a (19th

century) national movement AND a (colonial) civilizing

force:



See - Herzl's Butlers -



http://samvak.tripod.com/pp27.html





 The Holocaust was a massive trauma NOT because of its
dimensions - but because GERMANS, the epitome of Western
civilization, have turned on the Jews, the self-proclaimed
missionaries of Western civilization in the Levant and Arabia.
It was the betrayal that mattered. Rejected by East (as colonial
stooges) and West (as agents of racial contamination) alike -
the Jews resorted to a series of narcissistic defences reified
by the State of Israel. The long term occupation of territories
(metaphorical or physical) is a classic narcissistic trait (of
"annexation" of the other). The Six Days War was a war of self
defence - but the swift victory only exacerbated the
narcissistic defences. Mastery over the Palestinians became an
important component in the psychological makeup of the nation
(especially the more rightwing and religious elements) because
it constitutes "Narcissistic Supply".

Bin Laden (and by extension Islamic fundamentalism) is

the narcissistic complement of the State of Israel. His

narcissistic defences are fuelled by unrequited humiliation
(Millon's "compensatory narcissism"). The humiliation is the
outcome of a grandiosity gap between reality and grandiose
fantasies, between actual inferiority and a delusional sense of
superiority (and cosmic mission), between his sense of
entitlement and his incommensurate achievements, skills, and
accomplishments.







When narcissists are faced with the disintegration of their
narcissistic "infrastructure" (their False Self) - they

decompensate. I have outlined the possible

psychodynamic reactions here:



http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/npd/87772


Narcissism is always concomitant with the "civilizing"

components of colonialism ("White Man's Burden") -

though not with the mercantilist elements.


"Pathological narcissism is a well defined (and
phenomenological) mental health theoretical construct.  No
doubt, narcissists engage in anti-Other discourse and other
virulent and pernicious narratives. But the existence of such a
discourse is not a DETERMINANT of pathological narcissism -
merely its manifestation.


What GIVES RISE to the grandiosity gap IS socio- economic
reality. The gap is between the REAL and the IDEAL, between the
ACTUAL and the (self- DELUSIONAL and FANTASIZED. Socio-economic
factors breed narcissistic injury and narcissistic rage.



 Return





The Crescent and the Cross

Introduction

"There are two maxims for historians which so harmonise with
what I know of history that I would like to claim them as my
own, though they really belong to nineteenth-century
historiography: first, that governments try to press upon the
historian the key to all the drawers but one, and are anxious to
spread the belief that this single one contains no secret of
importance; secondly, that if the historian can only find the
thing which the government does not want him to know, he will
lay his hand upon something that is likely to be significant."

Herbert Butterfield, "History and Human Relations", London,
1951, p. 186


The Balkans as a region is a relatively novel way of looking at
the discrete nation-states that emerged from the carcasses of
the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires and fought over their spoils.





This sempiternal fight is a determinant of Balkan identity. The
nations of the Balkan are defined more by ornery opposition than
by cohesive identities. They derive sustenance and political-
historical coherence from conflict. It is their afflatus. The
more complex the axes of self-definition, the more multifaceted
and intractable the conflicts. Rabid nationalism against utopian
regionalism, fascism (really, opportunism) versus liberalism,
religion-tinted traditionalism (the local moribund edition of
conservatism) versus "Western" modernity.

Who wins is of crucial importance to world peace.

The Balkan is a relatively new political entity. Formerly
divided between the decrepit Ottoman Empire and the imploding
Austro-Hungarian one - the countries of the Balkans emerged as
unique polities only during the 19th century. This was to be
expected as a wave of nationalism swept Europe and led to the
formation of the modern, bureaucratic state as we know it.

Even so, the discrete entities that struggled to the surface of
statehood did not feel that they shared a regional destiny or
identity. All they did was fight ferociously, ruthlessly and
mercilessly over the corrupted remnants of the Sick Men of
Europe (the above mentioned two residual empires). In this, they
proved themselves to be the proper heirs of their former
masters: murderous, suborned, Byzantine and nearsighted.





In an effort to justify their misdeeds and deeds, the various
nations - true and concocted - conjured up histories, languages,
cultures and documents, some real, mostly false. They staked
claims to the same territories, donned common heritage where
there was none, spoke languages artificially constructed and
lauded a culture hastily assembled by "historians" and
"philologists".

These were the roots of the great evil - the overlapping claims,
the resulting intolerance, the mortal, existential fear stoked
by the kaleidoscopic conduct of the Big Powers. To recognize the
existence of the Macedonian identity - was to threaten the Greek
or Bulgarian ones. To accept the antiquity of the Albanians was
to dismantle Macedonia, Serbia and Greece. To countenance
Bulgarian demands was to inhumanly penalize its Turk citizens.
It was a zero-sum game played viciously by everyone involved.
The prize was mere existence - the losers annihilated.

It very nearly came to that during the two Balkan Wars of 1912
and 1913.

Allies shifted their allegiance in accordance with the shifting
fortunes of a most bewildering battlefield. When the dust
settled, two treaties later, Macedonia was dismembered by its
neighbours, Bulgaria bitterly contemplated the sour fruits of
its delusional aggression and Serbia and Austro-Hungary
rejoiced. Thus were the seeds of World War I sown.





The Yugoslav war of succession (or civil war) was a continuation
of this mayhem by other means. Yugoslavia was born in sin, in
the dictatorship of King Alexander I (later slain in France in
1934). It faced agitation, separatism and discontent from its
inception. It was falling apart when the second world
conflagration erupted. It took a second dictatorship - Tito's -
to hold it together for another 40 years.

The Balkan as a whole - from Hungary, through Romania and down
to Bulgaria - was prone to authoritarianism and an atavistic,
bloody form of racist, "peasant or native fascism". A primitive
region of destitute farmers and vile politicians, it was exposed
to world gaze by the collapse of communism. There are
encouraging signs of awakening, of change and adaptation. There
are dark omens of reactionary forces, of violence and wrath. It
is a battle fought in the unconscious of humanity itself. It is
a tug of war between memories and primordial drives repressed
and the vitality of those still close to nature.

The outcome of this fight is crucial to the world. Both world
wars started in central eastern and south-eastern Europe.
Globalization is no guarantee against a third one. The world was
more globalized than it is today at the beginning of the century
- but it took only one shot in Sarajevo to make this the most
sanguineous century of all.





An added problem is the simple-mindedness, abrasiveness and
sheer historical ignorance of America, the current superpower. A
nation of soundbites and black or white stereotypes, it is ill-
suited to deal with the nuanced, multilayered and interactive
mayhem that is the Balkan. A mentality of western movies - good
guys, bad guys, shoot'em up - is hardly conducive to a Balkan
resolution. The intricate and drawn out process required taxes
American impatience and bullying tendencies to their explosive
limits.

In the camp of the good guys, the Anglo-Saxons place Romania,
Greece, Montenegro and Slovenia (with Macedonia, Croatia,
Albania and Bulgaria wandering in and out). Serbia is the
epitome of evil. Milosevic is Hitler. Such uni-dimensional
thinking sends a frisson of rubicund belligerence down American
spines.

It tends to ignore reality, though. Montenegro is playing the
liberal card deftly, no doubt - but it is also a haven of
smuggling and worse. Slovenia is the civilized facade that it so
tediously presents to the world - but it also happened to have
harboured one of the vilest fascist movements, comparable to the
Ustasha - the Domobranci. It shares with Croatia the
narcissistic grandiose fantasy that it is not a part of the
Balkan - but rather an outpost of Europe - and the disdain for
its impoverished neighbours that comes with it.





In this sense, it is more "Balkanian" than many of them. Greece
is now an economically stable and mildly democratic country -
but it used to be a dictatorship and it still is a banana
republic in more than one respect. The Albanians - ferociously
suppressed by the Serbs and (justly) succoured by the West - are
industrious and shrewd people. But - fervent protestations to
the contrary aside - they do seem to be intent on dismantling
and recombining both Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Macedonia, perhaps
at a terrible cost to all involved. Together with the Turks, the
Serbs and the Bulgarians, the Albanians are the undisputed crime
lords of the Balkan (and beyond - witness their incarceration
rates in Switzerland).

This is the Balkan - a florilegium of contradictions within
contraventions, the mawkish and the jaded, the charitable  and
the deleterious, the feckless and the bumptious, evanescent and
exotic, a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

In this article, I will attempt to study two axes of friction:
Islam versus Christianity and fascism and nationalism versus
liberalism. It is hard to do justice to these topics in the
Procrustean bed of weekly columns - I, therefore, beg the
forgiveness of scholars and the understanding of frustrated
readers.





A First Encounter



"In accordance with this [right to act], whenever some one of
the infidel parents or some other should oppose the giving up of
his son for the Janiccaries, he is immediately hanged from his
doorsill, his blood being deemed unworthy."

Turkish firman, 1601

"...The Turks have built several fortresses in my kingdom and
are very kind to the country folk. They promise freedom to every
peasant who converts to Islam."

Bosnian King Stefan Tomasevic to Pope Pius II

"...The Porte treated him (the patriarch) as part of the Ottoman
political apparatus. As a result, he had certain legally
protected privileges. The Patriarch travelled in 'great
splendour' and police protection was provided by the
Janiccaries. His horse and saddle were fittingly embroidered,
and at the saddle hung a small sword as a symbol of the powers
bestowed on him by the Sultan."

Dusan Kasic, "The Serbian Church under the Turks", Belgrade,
1969






Within the space of 500 years, southeast Europe has undergone
two paradigmatic shifts. First, from Christian independence to
Islamic subjugation (a gradual process which consumed two
centuries) and then, in the 19th century, from self-
determination through religious affiliation to nationalism. The
Christians of the Balkan were easy prey. They were dispirited
peasantry, fragmented, prone to internecine backstabbing and
oppressive regimes. The new Ottoman rulers treated both people
and land as their property. They enslaved some of their
prisoners of war (under the infamous "pencik" clause), exiled
thousands and confiscated their lands and liquidated the secular
political elites in Thrace, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania. The
resulting vacuum of leadership was filled by the Church. Thus,
paradoxically, it was Islam and its excesses that made the
Church the undisputed shepherd of the peoples of the Balkan, a
position it did not enjoy before. The new rulers did not
encourage conversions to their faith for fear of reducing their
tax base - non-Moslem "zimmis" (the Qur'an's "People of the
Book") paid special (and heavy) taxes to the treasury and often
had to bribe corrupt officials to survive.





Still, compared to other Ottoman exploits (in Anatolia, for
instance), the conquest of the Balkan was a benign affair.
Cities remained intact, the lands were not depopulated and the
indiscriminately ferocious nomadic tribesmen that usually
accompanied the Turkish forces largely stayed at home. The
Ottoman bureaucracy took over most aspects of daily life soon
after the military victories, bringing with it the leaden
stability that was its hallmark. Indeed, populations were
dislocated and re-settled as a matter of policy called "sorgun".
Yet such measures were intended mainly to quell plangent
rebelliousness and were applied mainly to the urban minority
(for instance, in Constantinople).

The Church was an accomplice of the Turkish occupiers. It was a
part of the Ottoman system of governance and enjoyed both its
protection and its funding. It was leveraged by the Turk sultans
in their quest to pacify their subjects. Mehmet II bestowed upon
the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, its bishops and clergy great
powers. The trade off was made explicit in Mehmet's edicts: the
Church accepted the earthly sovereignty of the sultan - and he,
in turn, granted them tolerance, protection and even friendship.
The Ottoman religious-legal code, the Seriat, recognized the
Christian's right to form their own religiously self-governing
communities.





These communities were not confined to the orderly provision of
worship services. They managed communal property as well.
Mehmet's benevolence towards the indigents was so legendary that
people wrongly attributed to him the official declaration of a
"Millet i Rum" (Roman, or Greek, nation) and the appointment of
Gennadios as patriarch of the Orthodox Church (which only an
episcopal synod could do).

The Ottoman Empire was an amazing hybrid. As opposed to popular
opinion it was not a religious entity. The ruling elite included
members of all religions. Thus, one could find Christian "askeri
" (military or civil officials) and Muslim "reaya" ("flock" of
taxpayers). It is true that Christians paid the arbitrarily set
"harac" (or, less commonly, "cizye") in lieu of military
service. Even the clergy were not exempt (they even assisted in
tax collection). But both Christians and Muslims paid the land
tax, for instance. And, as the fairness, transparency and
predictability of the local taxmen deteriorated - both Muslims
and Christians complained.

The main problem of the Ottoman Empire was devolution - not
centralization. Local governors and tax collectors had too much
power and the sultan was too remote and disinterested or too
weak and ineffective. The population tried to get Istanbul MORE
involved - not less so.





The population was financially fleeced as much by the Orthodox
Church as it was by the sultan. A special church-tax was levied
on the Christian reaya and its proceeds served to secure the
lavish lifestyles of the bishops and the patriarch. In true mob
style, church functionaries divided the loot with Ottoman
officials in an arrangement known as "peskes". Foreign powers
contributed to the war chests of various candidates, thus
mobilizing them to support pro-Catholic or pro-Protestant
political stances and demands. The church was a thoroughly
corrupt, usurious and politicized body which contributed greatly
to the ever increasing misery of its flock. It was a
collaborator in the worst sense of the word.

But the behaviour of the church was one part of the common
betrayal by the elite of the Balkan lands. Christian landowners
volunteered to serve in the Ottoman cavalry ("sipahis") in order
to preserve their ownership. The Ottoman rulers conveniently
ignored the laws prohibiting "zimmis" to carry weapons. Until
1500, the "sipahis" constituted the bulk of the Ottoman forces
in the Balkan and their mass conversion to Islam was a natural
continuation of their complicity. Other Christians guarded
bridges or mountain passes for a tax exemption ("derbentci").
Local, Turkish-trained militias ("armatoles") fought mountain-
based robber gangs (Serbian "hayduks", Bulgarian "haiduts",
Greek "klephts"). The robbers attacked Turkish caravans with the
same frequency and zeal that they sacked Christian settlements.
The "armatoles" resisted them by day and joined them by night.
But it was perfectly acceptable to join Turkish initiatives such
as this.

The Balkan remained overwhelmingly Christian throughout the
Ottoman period. Muslim life was an urban phenomenon both for
reasons of safety and because only the cities provided basic
amenities. Even in the cities, though, the communities lived
segregated in "mahalles" (quarters). Everyone collaborated in
public life but the "mahalles" were self-sufficient affairs with
the gamut of services - from hot baths to prayer services -
available "in-quarter". Gradually, the major cities, situated
along the trade routes, became Moslem. Skopje, Sarajevo and
Sofia all had sizeable Moslem minorities.

Thus, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the picture
that emerges is one of an uneasy co-habitation in the cities and
a Christian rural landscape. The elites of the Balkan - church,
noblemen, warriors - all defected and collaborated with the
former "enemy". The local populace was the victim of usurious
taxes, coercively applied. The central administration shared the
loot with its local representatives and with the indigenous
elites - the church and the feudal landed gentry. It was a cosy
and pragmatic arrangement that lasted for centuries.

Yet, the seeds of Ottoman bestiality and future rebellion were
sown from the very inception of this empire-extending conquest.
The "devsirme" tax was an example of the fragility of the
Turkish veneer of humanity and enlightened rule. Christian sons
were kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam and trained as
fighters in the fearsome Janiccary Corps (the palace Guards).
They were never to see their families and friends again.





Exemptions from this barbarous practice were offered only to
select communities which somehow contributed to Ottoman rule in
the Balkan. Christian women were often abducted by local Ottoman
dignitaries. and the custom of the "kepin", allowed Moslems to
"buy" a Christian daughter off her husband on a "temporary"
basis. The results of such a union were raised as Moslems.

And then there were the mass conversions of Christians to Islam.
These conversions were very rarely the results of coercion or
barbarous conduct. On the contrary, by shrinking the tax base
and the recruitment pool, conversion were unwelcome and closely
scrutinized by the Turks. But to convert was such an
advantageous and appealing act that the movement bordered on
mass hysteria. Landowners converted to preserve their title to
the land. "Sipahis" converted to advance in the ranks of the
military. Christian officials converted to maintain their
officialdom. Ordinary folk converted to avoid onerous taxes.
Christian traders converted to Islam to be able to testify in
court in case of commercial litigation. Converted Moslems were
allowed to speak Arabic or their own language, rather than the
cumbersome and elaborate formal Turkish. Christians willingly
traded eternal salvation for  earthly benefits. And, of course,
death awaited those who recanted (like the Orthodox "New
Martyrs", who discovered their Christian origins, having been
raised as Moslems).





Perhaps this was because, in large swathes of the Balkan,
Christianity never really took hold. It was adopted by the
peasant as a folk religion - as was Islam later. In Bosnia, for
instance, Muslims and Christians were virtually
indistinguishable. They prayed in each other's shrines,
celebrated each other's holidays and adopted the same customs.
Muslim mysticism (the Sufi orders) appealed to many
sophisticated urban Christians. Heretic cults (like the
Bogomils) converted en masse. Intermarriage flourished, mainly
between Muslim men (who could not afford the dowry payable to a
Muslim woman) and Christian women (who had to pay a dowry to her
Muslim husband's family). Marrying a Christian woman was a
lucrative business proposition.

And, then, of course, there was the Moslem birth rate. With four
women and a pecuniary preference for large families - Moslem
out-bred Christians at all times. This trend is most pronounced
today but it was always a prominent demographic fact.

But the success of Islam to conquer the Balkan, rule it, convert
its population and prevail in it - had to do more with the fatal
flaws of Balkan Christianity than with the appeal and resilience
of Islam and its Ottoman rendition. In the next chapter I will
attempt to ponder the complex interaction between Catholicism
and Orthodox Christianity as it was manifested in Croatia and
Bosnia, the border lands between the Habsburg and the Ottoman
empires and between "Rome" and "Byzantium". I will then explore
the variance in the Ottoman attitudes towards various Christian
communities and the reasons underlying this diversity of
treatment modalities.



The Communities of God



"From the beginning, people of different languages and religions
were permitted to live in Christian lands and cities, namely
Jews, Armenians, Ismaelites, Agarenes and others such as these,
except that they do not mix with Christians, but rather live
separately. For this reason, places have been designated for
these according to ethnic group, either within the city or
without, so that they may be restricted to these and not extend
their dwelling beyond them."

Bishop Demetrios Khomatianos of Ohrid, late 12th century and
early 13th century AD

"The Latins still have not been anathematized, nor has a great
ecumenical council acted against them....And even to this day
this continues, although it is said that they still wait for the
repentance of the great Roman Church."





"...do not overlook us, singing with deaf ears, but give us your
understanding, according to sacred precepts, as you yourself
inspired the apostles....You see, Lord, the battle of many years
of your churches. Grant us humility, quiet the storm, so that we
may know in each other your mercy, and we may not forget before
the end the mystery of your love....May we coexist in unity with
each other, and become wise also, so that we may live in you and
in your eternal creator the Father and in his only-begotten
Word. You are life, love, peace, truth, and sanctity...."

East European Studies Occasional Paper, Number 47, "Christianity
and Islam in Southeastern Europe - Slavic Orthodox Attitudes
toward Other Religions", Eve Levin, January 1997

"...you faced the serpent and the enemy of God's churches,
having judged that it would have been unbearable for your heart
to see the Christians of your fatherland overwhelmed by the
Moslems (izmailteni); if you could not accomplish this, you
would leave the glory of your kingdom on earth to perish, and
having become purple with your blood, you would join the
soldiers of the heavenly kingdom. In this way, your two wishes
were fulfilled. You killed the serpent, and you received from
God the wreath of martyrdom."

Mateja Matejic and Dragan Milivojevic, "An Anthology of Medieval
Serbian Literature in English", Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1978





Any effort to understand the modern quagmire that is the Balkan
must address religion and religious animosities and grievances.
Yet, the surprising conclusion of such a study is bound to be
that the role of inter-faith hatred and conflict has been
greatly exaggerated. The Balkan was characterized more by
religious tolerance than by religious persecution. It was a
model of successful co-habitation and co-existence even of the
bitterest enemies of the most disparate backgrounds. Only the
rise of the modern nation-state exacerbated long-standing and
hitherto dormant tensions. Actually, the modern state was
established on a foundation of artificially fanned antagonism
and xenophobia.

Religions in the Balkan were never monolithic enterprises.
Competing influences, paranoia, xenophobia and adverse
circumstances all conspired to fracture the religious landscape.
Thus, for instance, though officially owing allegiance to the
patriarch in Constantinople and the Orthodox "oikumene", both
Serb and Bulgarian churches collaborated with the rulers of the
day against perceived Byzantine (Greek and Russian) political
encroachment in religious guise. The southern Slav churches
rejected both the theology and the secular teachings of the
"Hellenics" and the "Romanians" (Romans). In turn, the Greek
church held the Slav church in disregard and treated the
peasants of Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania to savage
rounds of tax collection. The Orthodox, as have all religions,
berated other confessions and denominations. But Orthodoxy was
always benign - no "jihad", no bloodshed, no forced conversions
and no mass expulsions - perhaps with the exception of the
forcible treatment of the Bogomils.

It was all about power and money, of course. Bishops and
archbishops did not hesitate to co-opt the Ottoman
administration against their adversaries. They had their rivals
arrested by the Turks or ex-communicated them. Such squabbles
were common. But they never amounted to more than a Balkanian
comedia del-arte. Even the Jews - persecuted all over western
Europe - were tolerated and attained prominence and influence in
the Balkan. One Bulgarian Tsar divorced his wife to marry a
Jewess. Southern Orthodox Christianity (as opposed to the
virulent and vituperative Byzantine species) has always been
pragmatic. The minorities (Jews, Armenians, Vlachs) were the
economic and financial backbone of their societies. And the
Balkan was always a hodge-podge of ethnicities, cultures and
religions. Shifting political fortunes ensured a policy of
"hedging one's bets".

The two great competitors of Orthodox Christianity in the tight
market of souls were Catholicism and Islam. The former co-
sponsored with the Orthodox Church the educational efforts of
Cyril and Methodius. Even before the traumatic schism of 1054,
Catholics and nascent Orthodox were battling over (lucrative)
religious turf in Bulgaria.





The schism was a telling affair. Ostensibly, it revolved around
obscure theological issues (who begat the Holy Spirit - the
Father alone or jointly with the Son as well as which type of
bread should be used in the Eucharist). But really it was a
clash of authorities and interests - the Pope versus the
patriarch of Constantinople, the Romans versus the Greeks and
Slavs. Matters of jurisdiction coalesced with political meddling
in a confluence of ill-will that has simmered for at least two
centuries. The southern (Slav) Orthodox churches contributed to
the debate and supported the Greek position. Sects such as the
Hesychasts were more Byzantine than the Greeks and denounced
wavering Orthodox clergy. Many a south Orthodox pilloried the
Catholic stance as an heresy of Armenian or Apollinarian or
Arian origin - thus displaying their ignorance of the subtler
points of the theological debate. They also got wrong the Greek
argumentation regarding the bread of the Eucharist and the
history of the schism. But zeal compensated for ignorance, as is
often the case in the Balkan.





What started as a debate - however fervent - about abstract
theology became an all out argument about derided customs and
ceremonies. Diet, dates and divine practices all starred in
these grotesque exchanges. The Latin ate unclean beasts. They
used five fingers to cross themselves. They did not sing
Hallelujah. They allowed the consumption of dairy products in
Lent. The list was long and preposterous. The parties were
spoiling for a fight. As is so often the case in this accursed
swathe of the earth, identity and delusional superiority were
secured through opposition and self-worth was attained through
defiance. By relegating them to the role of malevolent heretics,
the Orthodox made the sins of the Catholics unforgivable, their
behaviour inexcusable, their fate sealed.

At the beginning, the attacks were directed at the "Latins" -
foreigners from Germany and France. Local Catholics were somehow
dissociated and absolved from the diabolical attributes of their
fellow-believers abroad. They used the same calendar as the
Orthodox (except for Lent) and similarly prayed in Church
Slavonic. The only visible difference was the recognition of
papal authority by the Catholics. Catholicism presented a
coherent and veteran alternative to Orthodoxy's inchoate
teachings. Secular authorities were ambiguous about how to treat
their Catholic subjects and did not hesitate to collaborate with
Catholic authorities against the Turks. Thus, to preserve itself
as a viable religious alternative, the Orthodox church had to
differentiate itself from the Holy See. Hence, the flaming
debates and pejorative harangues.

The second great threat was Islam. Still, it was a latecomer.
Catholicism and Orthodoxy have been foes since the ninth
century. Four hundreds years later, Byzantine wars against the
Moslems were a distant thunder and raised little curiosity and
interest in the Balkan. The Orthodox church was acquainted with
the tenets of Islamic faith but did not bother to codify its
knowledge or record it. Islam was, to it, despite its impeccable
monotheistic credentials, an exotic Oriental off-shoot of tribal
paganism.

Thus, the Turkish invasion and the hardships of daily life under
Ottoman rule found Orthodoxy unprepared. It reacted the way we
all react to fear of the unknown: superstitions, curses, name
calling. On the one hand, the Turkish enemy was dehumanized and
bedevilled. It was perceived to be God's punishment upon the
unfaithful and the sinful. On the other hand, in a curious
transformation or a cognitive dissonance, the Turks became a
divine instrument, the wrathful messengers of God.  The
Christians of the Balkan suffered from a post traumatic stress
syndrome. They went through the classical phases of grief. They
started by denying the defeat (in Kosovo, for instance) and they
proceeded through rage, sadness and acceptance.

All four phases co-existed in Balkan history. Denial by the many
who resorted to mysticism and delusional political thought. That
the Turks failed for centuries to subdue pockets of resistance
(for instance in Montenegro) served to rekindle these hopes and
delusions periodically. Thus, the Turks (and, by extension,
Islam) served as a politically cohering factor and provided a
cause to rally around.  Rage manifested through the acts against
the occupying Ottomans of individuals or rebellious groups.
Sadness was expressed in liturgy, in art and literature, in
music and in dance. Acceptance by conceiving of the Turks as the
very hand of God Himself. But, gradually, the Turks and their
rule came to be regarded as the work of the devil as it was
incurring the wrath of God.

But again, this negative and annihilating attitude was reserved
to outsiders and foreigners, the off-spring of Ishmael and of
Hagar, the Latins and the Turks. Moslem or Catholic neighbours
were rarely, if ever, the target of such vitriolic diatribes.
External enemies - be they Christian or Moslem - were always to
be cursed and resisted. Neighbours of the same ethnicity were
never to be punished or discriminated against for their religion
or convictions - though half-hearted condemnations did occur.
The geographical and ethnic community seems to have been a
critical determinant of identity even when confronted with an
enemy at the gates. Members of an ethnic community could share
the same religious faith as the invader or the heretic - yet
this detracted none from their allegiance and place in their
society as emanating from birth and long term residence. These
tolerance and acceptance prevailed even in the face of Ottoman
segregation of religious communities in ethnically-mixed
"millets". This principle was shattered finally by the advent of
the modern nation-state and its defining parameters (history and
language), real or (more often) invented.





One could sometimes find members of the same nuclear family -
but of different religious affiliation. Secular rulers and
artisans in guilds collaborated unhesitatingly with Jews, Turks
and Catholics. Conversions to and fro were common practice, as
ways to secure economic benefits. These phenomena were
especially prevalent in the border areas of Croatia and Bosnia.
But everyone, throughout the Balkan, shared the same rituals,
the way of life, the superstitions, the magic, the folklore, the
customs and the habits regardless of religious persuasion.

Where religions co-existed, they fused syncretically. Some Sufi
sects (mainly among the Janiccary) adopted Catholic rituals,
made the sign of the cross, drank alcohol and ate pork. The
followers of Bedreddin were Jews and Christians, as well as
Moslems. Everybody shared miraculous sites, icons, even prayers.
Orthodox Slavs pilgrims to the holy places in Palestine were
titled "Hadzi" and Moslems were especially keen on Easter eggs
and holy water as talismans of health. Calendars enumerated the
holidays of all religions, side by side. Muslim judges ("kadis")
married Muslim men to non-Muslim women and inter-marriage was
rife. They also married and divorced Catholic couples, in
contravention of the Catholic faith. Orthodox and Catholic
habitually intermarried and interbred.

That this background yielded Srebrenica and Sarajevo, Kosovo and
Krajina is astounding. It is the malignant growth of this
century. It is the subject of our next instalment.





T H E   A U T H O R





SHMUEL (SAM) VAKNIN



Curriculum Vitae

Click on blue text to access relevant web sites - thank you.

Born in 1961 in Qiryat-Yam, Israel.

Served in the Israeli Defence Force (1979-1982) in training and
education units.


Education

Graduated a few semesters in the Technion - Israel Institute of
Technology, Haifa.

Ph.D. in Philosophy (major : Philosophy of Physics) - Pacific
Western University, California.

Graduate of numerous courses in Finance Theory and International
Trading.

Certified E-Commerce Concepts Analyst.

Certified in Psychological Counselling Techniques.

Full proficiency in Hebrew and in English.






Business Experience

1980 to 1983

Founder and co-owner of a chain of computerized information
kiosks in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

1982 to 1985

Senior positions with the Nessim D. Gaon Group of Companies in
Geneva, Paris and New-York (NOGA and APROFIM SA):

- Chief Analyst of Edible Commodities in the Group's
Headquarters in Switzerland.
- Manager of the Research and Analysis Division
- Manager of the Data Processing Division
- Project Manager of The Nigerian Computerized Census
- Vice President in charge of RND and Advanced Technologies
- Vice President in charge of Sovereign Debt Financing

1985 to 1986

Represented Canadian Venture Capital Funds in Israel.

1986 to 1987

General Manager of IPE Ltd. in London. The firm financed
international multi-lateral countertrade and leasing
transactions.

1988 to 1990

Co-founder and Director of "Mikbats - Tesuah", a portfolio
management firm based in Tel-Aviv. Activities included large-
scale portfolio management, underwriting, forex trading and
general financial advisory services.

1990 to Present

Free-lance consultant to many of Israel's Blue-Chip firms,
mainly on issues related to the capital markets in Israel,
Canada, the UK and the USA.

Consultant to foreign RND ventures and to Governments on macro-
economic matters.

President of the Israel chapter of the Professors World Peace
Academy (PWPA) and (briefly) Israel representative of the
"Washington Times".

1993 to 1994

Co-owner and Director of many business enterprises:

- The Omega and Energy Air-Conditioning Concern
- AVP Financial Consultants
- Handiman Legal Services
   Total annual turnover of the group: 10 million USD.

Co-owner, Director and Finance Manager of COSTI Ltd. -  Israel's
largest computerized information vendor and developer. Raised
funds through a series of private placements locally, in the
USA, Canada and London.

1995 to 1996

Publisher and Editor of a Capital Markets Newsletter distributed
by subscription only to dozens of subscribers countrywide.

Managed the Internet and International News Department of an
Israeli mass media group, "Ha-Tikshoret and Namer".  Assistant
in the Law Faculty in Tel-Aviv University (to Prof. S.G.
Shoham).



1996 to 1999

Financial consultant to leading businesses in Macedonia, Russia
and the Czech Republic.

Collaborated with the Agency of  Transformation of Business with
Social Capital.

Economic commentator in "Nova Makedonija", "Dnevnik",
"Izvestia", "Argumenti i Fakti", "The Middle East Times",
"Makedonija Denes", "The New Presence", "Central Europe Review"
, InternetContent, United Press International (UPI), other
periodicals and in the economic programs on various channels of
Macedonian Television.

Chief Lecturer in courses organized by the Agency of
Transformation, by the Macedonian Stock Exchange and by the
Ministry of Trade.

1999 to 2001

Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia.

2001-

Business Correspondent for United Press International (UPI)

Web Activities

Author of extensive websites in Psychology ("Malignant Self
Love") - An Open Directory Cool Site

Philosophy ("Philosophical Musings")

Economics and Geopolitics ("After the Rain")

Owner of the Narcissistic Abuse Announcement and Study List and
the Narcissism Revisited mailing list (more than 3400 members)

Editor of mental health disorders and Central and Eastern Europe
categories in web directories (Open Directory, Suite 101, Search
Europe).

Weekly columnist in "The New Presence", United Press
International (UPI), InternetContent, ebookWeb.org and "Central
Europe Review".


Publications and Awards

"Managing Investment Portfolios in States of Uncertainty", Limon
Publishers, Tel-Aviv, 1988

"The Gambling Industry", Limon Publishers., Tel-Aviv, 1990

"Requesting my Loved One - Short Stories", Yedioth Aharonot,
Tel-Aviv, 1997

"The Macedonian Economy at a Crossroads - On the way to a
Healthier Economy" (with Nikola Gruevski), Skopje, 1998

"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited", Narcissus
Publications, Prague and Skopje, 1999, 2001

"The Exporters' Pocketbook", Ministry of Trade, Republic of
Macedonia, Skopje, 1999

"The Suffering of Being Kafka" (electronic book of Hebrew Short
Fiction)

"After the Rain - How the West Lost the East", Narcissus
Publications in association with Central Europe Review/CEENMI,
Prague and Skopje, 2000

Winner of numerous awards, among them the Israeli Education
Ministry Prize (Literature) 1997, The Rotary Club Award for
Social Studies (1976) and the Bilateral Relations Studies Award
of the American Embassy in Israel (1978).

Hundreds of professional articles in all fields of finances and
the economy and numerous articles dealing with geopolitical and
political economic issues published in both print and web
periodicals in many countries.

Many appearances in the electronic media on subjects in
philosophy and the sciences and concerning economic matters.


Contact Details:

palma@unet.com.mk

samvak@briefcase.com

My Web Sites:

Economy / Politics:

http://samvak.tripod.com/guide.html

Psychology:

http://samvak.tripod.com/index.html

Philosophy:

http://samvak.tripod.com/culture.html

Poetry:

http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html









After the Rain

How the West

Lost the East





The Book

This is a series of articles written and published in 1996-2000
in Macedonia, in Russia, in Egypt and in the Czech Republic.

How the West lost the East. The economics, the politics, the
geopolitics, the conspiracies, the corruption, the old and the
new, the plough and the internet - it is all here, in colourful
and provocative prose.

From "The Mind of Darkness":

"'The Balkans' - I say - 'is the unconscious of the world'.
People stop to digest this metaphor and then they nod
enthusiastically. It is here that the repressed memories of
history, its traumas and fears and images reside. It is here
that the psychodynamics of humanity - the tectonic clash between
Rome and Byzantium, West and East, Judeo-Christianity and Islam
- is still easily discernible. We are seated at a New Year's
dining table, loaded with a roasted pig and exotic salads. I,
the Jew, only half foreign to this cradle of Slavonics. Four
Serbs, five Macedonians. It is in the Balkans that all ethnic
distinctions fail and it is here that they prevail
anachronistically and atavistically. Contradiction and change
the only two fixtures of this tormented region. The women of the
Balkan - buried under provocative mask-like make up, retro
hairstyles and too narrow dresses. The men, clad in sepia
colours, old fashioned suits and turn of the century moustaches.
In the background there is the crying game that is Balkanian
music: liturgy and folk and elegy combined. The smells are heavy
with muskular perfumes. It is like time travel. It is like
revisiting one's childhood."



The Author

Sam Vaknin was born in Israel in 1961. A financial consultant
and columnist, he lived and published in 11 countries. An author
of short stories, the winner of many literary awards, an amateur
philosopher - he is a controversial figure. This is his tenth
book.




End of this Project Gutenberg EBook of Terrorists and Freedom Fighters
by Sam Vaknin.
