By GENC POLLO[1]

Ten days ago, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, standing on the side of visiting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told the media that he was against the bilateralization of the European Union enlargement process. 

The chancellor was apparently referring to the non-signing by the ambassador of Greece to the EU of a circular letter authorizing the European Commission to open negotiations with Albania for some clusters and chapters of the membership draft/treaty. Since this step requires unanimity from all the member states, the Commission cannot act. As it is known, the Beleri case has triggered Athens to harden its stance. 

1-Identity vetoes

Chancellor Scholz is right. The EU member states have often abused their veto in Brussels as they dealt with issues with neighbouring countries. Greece started this game in the early 90s when an adventurous foreign minister declared Macedonia an “enemy” that was stealing the Greek name, history and culture. Although in private conversations politicians and friends of mine admitted this approach was useless, the Greek public opinion was enthralled making it difficult to compromise and reach an agreement (it happened only in 2018). So with this issue, for a quarter of a century, Greece blocked the path of membership of (North) Macedonia into NATO and the EU.

Bulgaria, in various intervals, did the same to Macedonia. Sometimes with the claim that the Macedonians denied that they were Bulgarians and later with the contradictory claim that they didn’t recognise the Bulgarian minority. A few years ago, this issue was resurrected by a populist-nationalist president incensing public opinion and most parliamentary parties had to follow willy-nilly. 

Wise personalities who considered this extremism absurd were not listened to anymore. Also Skopje did not remain idle, provoking Greece by erecting neo-Hellenistic statues and Bulgaria by rebroadcasting the films of the Yugoslav era that shows Bulgarians as barbaric Mongols.

But, at the end of the day, there remains a veto with negative consequences for the region and Europe and motivated by identity and historical-cultural issues that are incomprehensible outside the region.

 2- Material vetoes

But the bilateral veto is a European sport for other EU countries as well. Except state motives are more concrete and material. For example, Slovenia blocked Croatia’s membership for several years because they wanted a favorable agreement on the maritime border in the Piran Bay. Slovenia relented when Croatia accepted international arbitration on the matter.

Likewise, the Czech Republic in 2014 threatened to veto Albania’s candidate status if Tirana didn’t withdraw from the international arbitration on the dispute with CEZ (a Czech state-owned power distribution operator that bought the Albanian counterpart and had issues) and did not accept their terms. Although in the arbitration the chances of winning were high, the Rama government caved in. 

A year later, the Supreme State Audit Office found that this agreement was illegal, it cost the state 479 million euro in damages and filed a criminal complaint against the minister in charge (of course nothing happened). A bizarre aspect of this agreement was the obligation of the Albanian side to under no circumstances file criminal charges against the Czech personnel of CEZ Albania: neither for corruption nor for anything else. This type of amnesty is not only immoral but also clearly unconstitutional. For the sake of the “European cause”, the Rama government did not mind the tax money wasted or the constitutionality.  

The reasons for the veto in the above and other similar cases can be fair or unfair, reasonable or exaggerated, ethical or selfish. Be that as it may, the use of the European veto for issues unrelated to the EU membership integration process is unfair, exaggerated and selfish. Therefore Mr. Scholz and many like him are right when they speak out against “bilateralization”

 3-Is the Beleri case a genuine Albanian-Greek bilateral issue?

If we refer to the typology of the above cases Athens’ motivations seem different 

– it is not claiming that Albania is appropriating its history (in fact, the mother of Alexander the Great of Macedonia was a princess from the Molossian tribe, cousins with the Illyrians, but we have not officially claimed that great conqueror was (half) Albanian);

– it is not pretending that we are Greeks and that Albanian is a dialect of Greek (we live in the time of a Facebook infatuation about the Pelasgians a common linguistic roof, but fortunately this has not yet become an argument for diplomacy);

– it is not claiming to make the issue of the maritime border with Albania a precondition in the European Union process (this has been a strictly bilateral process that for 15 years has gone through agreements, their cancellations, fruitless negotiations and agreement on international arbitration);

– is not insisting that our state pay compensation for such a Greek company (it would not be surprising, but this is not the case).

Beyond these typical bilateral cases, one should be noted that Athens is not using its veto with regard to the Greek minority, which theoretically would have a legal basis (the Copenhagen criteria, which must be met by the candidate states for the EU, speak expressly about the rights of minorities) while for instance Budapest signals that it may vote against the opening of Ukraine’s EU membership negotiations precisely because of the situation of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia.

As I have argued in previous articles, Beleri is a clear case of violation of the rule of law, of democracy and of civil/political rights; Fredi Beleri himself is a political prisoner, the first political prisoner in the 21st century in Albania and therefore a dangerous precedent (looking at the developments of the last month, it should be noted with sadness that he is no longer the only political prisoner).

Beleri’s only formal connection with Greece is his double Albanian and Greek citizenship. But Beleri’s opponent in the municipal race was also a dual citizen of the two countries.

4-Rehabilitation of the veto 

By raising the Beleri issue in Brussels, Athens has not raised a bilateral Greek-Albanian issue but an absolutely internal, serious and important issue of the Albanian state. Greece is a small country in the EU where the influence is seen in proportion to the size of each member state. The Greek veto, due to the past experience with Skopje, can be seen with suspicion in Brussels as the shepherd who falsely cried wolf. But Greece’s intervention seems to fill the vacuum created by the inertia, silence and even blindness of the European Commission. Precisely the Commission, this primary body of the European Union with the functional task of verifying the Copenhagen Criteria in candidate countries such as Albania, was silent until November about Beleri while condemning arbitrary arrests in Azerbaijan and elsewhere. The Commission’s “Albania 2023” report, published this month, presents the Beleri case briefly and formally correctly, but surprisingly not in the chapter on democracy and fundamental rights, but in the one on relations with neighbours (for the sake of truth, we need to say that for the first time in this decade the report has two or three timid paragraphs describing the violation of the parliamentary rights of the opposition; this is a welcome development, although ten years late). 

This attitude of the European Commission may have several reasons. But the most obvious is the need to present as a success story the justice reform in Albania where the Commission invested considerable political and financial capital; with the best intention of course. Although various diplomats privately admit that the reform turned out to be very problematic, the bureaucrats of the Commission don’t have the institutional interest and moral courage to assert that the post-reform judicial bodies produce political prisoners; which the old justice, despite its sins and weaknesses, did not do since 2000. In order to complete the EU framework with positive notes, it is necessary to say that the European Parliament and the main political party there have taken a clear and proper stance on the Beleri case.

We can also talk about the silence of two European organizations with a focus on fundamental rights and which have offices in Tirana: the Council of Europe and the OSCE have not expressed themselves and this raises questions and invites a debate about their usefulness. It should be added here that the Congress of Local Authorities (within CoE)  has denounced Beleri’s arrest and ODIHR (within OSCE) mentions his case in the May 2023 local elections report. 

In this context, it is worth considering what could happen in the hypothetical scenario where the Greek government would have taken no interest in Fredi Beleri’s case. The burden of denouncing and fighting this neo-precedent of political imprisonment would remain mainly with the opposition, which is currently like a lone fireman in front of fires in every neighborhood of the city.

The EU and the US, in addition to the above inhibitions, are absorbed by crises, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as well as other challenges. As a result, they see the Balkans more in the geopolitical prism and less in the democratic one. Therefore it seems to me, even though I am allergic to bilateral vetoes, that the Greek intervention in Brussels on the Beleri issue could have positive consequences as it could force cynical bureaucrats to open their eyes. 

And to close with a non-ironic contextualization of an evolution: the prime minister, who in 2014 sacrificed hundreds of million euro of tax money and breached the constitution to get the EU candidate status, was not surprised by the loss of hundreds of millions of euros from the state budget and the violation of the constitution, ten years later he says to hell with EU membership if I can’t grab Himara’ coastal land plots for my “businesspeople”.

This article was written on November 27, 2023.

[1] Genc Pollo is an Albanian former cabinet minister and MP.

The post The dilemma over the criticism of the Greek veto appeared first on Tirana Observatory.

Paris Peace Research Institute, France; *Institute of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Lille, France

Published here by courtesy from the Authors and Francis & Taylor, Inc. First published in: Third World Quarterly, vol. 38 (4), 2017, pp. 1012–1042. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2016.1191345. [Routledge Journals, ISSN 0143-6597].

Abstract

In this article, we explore various forms of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy making, truth claims and expert accounts in which different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars, both old (1912-1913) and new (1991-1999), have been most evident. We argue that the ways in which these perspectives are rooted in different temporalities and historicizations have resulted in the construction of commonplace and time-worn representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives that have led to the sensationalism of media industry and the essentialization of collective memory. Taken together as a common feature of contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant international opinion, politics and scholarship, these narrative patterns show that historical knowledge is conveyed in ways that make present and represent the accounts of another past and the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public hegemonic representations. The aim is to show how certain moments of rupture are historicized, and subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe.

Introduction

The main aim of this article is to approach the dominant narratives of Balkan wars, from the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars to the Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s, with a critical awareness that can provide a new perspective on the narrative legacies that have plagued Southeast Europe in international representations.[1] Our primary concern is a politics of knowledge that moves beyond narratives of Balkan wars and focuses on the social construction of objective history and the international hegemonic representations of Southeast Europe.

The focus of our analysis is on the knowledge produced about the Balkan wars from the 1910s to the 1990s and the concrete relations between those forms of knowledge and political practices in relation to Southeast Europe as a whole. The sociology of knowledge is not a usual complement to political science and international relations theory. Yet it is clear that particular types of knowledge about the Balkan wars, as argued in the case of the Yugoslavian conflicts,[2] had a decisive and independent influence on the outcomes of the wars as well as on the international representations of Southeast Europe. The task of any sociology of knowledge is not to deny the possibility of absolute truth, but as Karl Mannheim insisted, to increase the possibility of objectivity in the pursuit of knowledge. The problem is not how we might arrive at a “non-perspectivistic picture” of the events, the nature of war and violence, or the ethnicities and religiosities in Southeast Europe, “but how, by juxtaposing the various points of view, each perspective may be recognized as such and thereby a new level of objectivity attained”.[3]

The past decades have seen a growing interest in the role that the media can play as agents of peacemaking and peacebuilding in their own right and a small but significant group of people have championed the development of peace journalism. At the same time, war propaganda is a popular research topic within the field of communication studies and receives considerable attention from historians, linguists, political scientists, sociologists and other academics.[4] From the dawn of the era of the mass media to more recent views on the propaganda model for the manufacture of public consent,[5] commentators have pointed out the way the media can be manipulated to create support for genocidal regimes and questionable foreign policies. In addition, we argue that the complex relationship between the media and violent conflict may lead to a certain construction of hegemonic international representations.

In these lines, by taking issue with different narratives of Balkan wars that overstate facts in a quest for sensational stories and essentialist memories, we aim to show the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public representations. Media events are conceptualized as collective actions in which otherwise isolated individuals and fragmented groups of people are briefly integrated into an “imagined community” by focusing their attention on one particular event.[6] The body of literature on media events concentrates on those events that express a strong symbolic meaning, which is uniformly shared across a wide variety of social actors, such as the media, the audience, public organizations and political representatives. In this sense, these events hold several properties of contemporary public rituals in the Durkheimian sense of the term.[7] By drawing on certain themes and images, they cyclically perform a sense of collective identity, shared membership and moral beliefs. Periodically celebrating one’s solidarity towards vulnerable others by performing suffering in the media, or one’s distance from violent others by overstating facts in the narratives, links are re-tied between otherwise merely individual members of a formal rather than an experienced international community.

In many instances, social actors may concentrate their attention to the same event or crisis like a Balkan war, but without necessarily sharing an interpretative framework. In other words, whether the interpretations of the events by different international actors are relatively uniform needs to be researched as a dependent variable, rather than posited as an a priori characteristic of media events.[8] Hence, not only should we examine the consensual nature of media events, but in the case of the Balkan wars we should also examine how and why they developed into full-fledged media events in the first place. We suggest that narratives of Balkan wars might have served as triggers for a moral “cosmopolitan vision”,[9] which tells us about much more than the cause of dramatic disasters that it attempts to communicate. The narratives may tell us something about the ways in which international actors imagine the world outside themselves, rather than a knowledge about events. The distinction between imagination and knowledge is important for understanding the distortion of representations, as it may uncover ultimately a “soft power of war” that contributes to elaborating a new doctrine of international community, turning international actors into the “ironic spectators” of other people’s wars.[10]

To this aim, we pay special attention how temporality and historicity are conveyed in ways that make present and represent the narratives of another past and how historical knowledge is produced in the narrative contexts of the Balkan wars, the result of which has been to inform public representations of Southeast Europe in international society. This perspective can contribute to the growing interest in different forms of historicization by exploring the ways in which the past is represented, interpreted and manipulated to explain and justify political interests in the present.

The object of modern historiography is defined as the separation of the “space of experience” (Erfahrungsraum) from the “horizon of expectation” (Erwartungshorizont), in other words as a fundamental rupture between past and future.[11] By contrast, in the case of the Balkan wars, narratives of the past are often used as an alternative to history. In this context as in others, collective memory tends to bridge past and future, creating a usable past for a changing present, which brings to light how the past is imagined and represented in temporal terms. Ultimately, this convergence between temporality and historicity recast war and violence in many accounts of the troubles in Southeast Europe as “secretions of history” so as to explain moments of great ruptures, liberation, nation-building, dissolution and the like. These accounts are appropriated to construct an almost coherent framework for the discovery of sensational events that has been “used to demarcate historical periods”,[12] and to ascertain whether the advances of modernity were stopped in their tracks. In this process, the overdetermined Balkan imageries of socioeconomic and civilizational backwardness, ethno-religious hatred and ferocious aggressiveness worked in reference to beliefs and representations from the past and with exemplary temporal excursions that make it vital for imagining Southeast Europe as a Balkan other in Europe.

In the following sections, after a brief contextualization of the Balkan wars and Southeast Europe, we explore various narrative legacies in order to better understand the importance of discourse exerted by various ideological and political interests on the construction of the hegemonic international representations of the region. The various narratives of Balkan wars are discussed in terms of sensationalist stories that claim to discover an explanatory model in a so-called immutable “Balkan nature” that is supposed to remain prone to inter-ethnic genocidal wars, and in terms of essentialist assumptions that have distorted, reified and essentialized as immutable the past and the present reality of Southeast Europe. Whether these narrative factors may operate alone or in consort, their anachronistic arguments can be taken together as a whole from the standpoint of their common feature to act as a discursive instrumentality of vested interests and potentially hidden agendas that affect contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant media industry and international politics on Southeast Europe.

Imagined Balkan wars

International representations related to the southeastern part of Europe, or the Balkans, are impregnated by the very use of the terms to designate the region. Both types of designation, coming from either geographical or historical classifications, “Southeast Europe” and “the Balkans”, have been misused and both have had their pejorative component at one time or another. Even the term “Southeast Europe” might have acquired negative connotations in the past with long lasting effects.[13] The labels used in political discourses to denote the southeastern part of Europe have changed over time, and each new label was a kind of euphemism for the previous term, aimed at eliminating the ideological consequences of stereotypization in international representations.[14] However, the problem lies not in the labels but in the discursive practice of the terms.

In this article, we use “Southeast Europe”as a term much more appropriate than “the Balkans”. Indeed, as a political term, “Southeast Europe” must implicitly imply that the southeastern part of Europe is normally an integral part of European history and politics. Accordingly, the problems that have arisen in this part of Europe are European problems and so the solutions to those problems must be European solutions. Arguably, it may well be the case that Southeast Europe, as shown in the case of Albania,[15] instead of being seen as an exception or an unusual and extreme form of quasi-European society, now represents the European norm and needs to be integrated theoretically into how Europe is seen and sees itself. Normally, Southeast Europe is often redefined in these terms, taking as a starting point the cultural and social threads that allow seeing this borderland space as a coherent complex whole of creative history.[16] Yet, in the historical and literary imagination, the region looms large as a somewhat frightening and ill-defined space that is “consumed by war” from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the breakup of Yugoslavia.[17]

War and violence in Southeast Europe have become an essential resource and enduring topic of West European concern, both politically and academically. Yet, the scholarly literature on the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 has remained incomplete and episodic for a number of reasons, which are interesting to mention briefly in order to better understand some of the distortions that may have fueled the construction of certain international representations of the region rather than others. Often considered to be part of the so-called “Eastern Question”,[18] Balkan issues are discussed in European history in the context of the diplomatic and political problems posed by the increasingly weakened Ottoman Empire. Normally, the Balkan wars are discussed in works of a certain broad-ranging historiography of the region,[19] even though many of such works in local historiography were appropriated by nationalist political forces and used to serve their interests, thus providing a nationalistic bias on facts and events. Often a selective and partial usage of archival sources was also exacerbated by the fact that they were difficult to access in their entirety due to language barriers. In other cases, the Balkan Wars were eclipsed by a focus on the First World War. Later, with the exception of a few publications by local scholars,[20] many others appear to have glossed over the Balkan wars as a result of focusing on the ideological division between East and West and the realpolitik of the Cold War.

At the same time, even if it is possible to have a picture of events during the old Balkan Wars based on the early narratives of different fact-finding missions and individual reports,[21] it is difficult to make generalizations about the nature of these wars. Much of the discussions revolving around the Balkan wars, as shown in more detail elsewhere,[22] suggest they were something more than liberationist movements in the case of the first war (October 1912 – May 1913), and more than a competition over the creation of national, homogenous, bounded territories in the case of the second war (June – July 1913).[23]

In spite of what the boom of publications in the aftermath of the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s seem to indicate, there must have been again more going on than the supposed unleashing of primordial ethno-religious hatred, easily attributed to old hostilities that are claimed to repeat always themselves in the region. Everything seems to indicate that there may be more than this dynamic and disputed process in a making and remaking of the facts of Balkan wars and the resulting international representations of Southeast Europe over time. As this paper will aim to suggest, the interest of the Balkan wars to raise understanding of the international representations of the region can bring our attention to this imagined geopolitical space, which seems to be constructed and organized according to broader political and ideological conditions.

The publication of Imagining the Balkans established “Balkanism” as an important concept,[24] which is productively considered in debates on the problematization of the historical relationships between West and Southeast Europe as well as that of the West European discourses through which Southeast European societies are “Balkanized”. Since then, a series of perceptive and critical interdisciplinary works intended for a specialist readership have demonstrated the growth of a theoretically sophisticated and politically aware scholarship in the field of Southeast European studies.[25] Some of these works relate directly to the issues of the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars.[26] Triggered by the Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s and their aftermath, those works drew attention to the existence of a Western culturalist and colonial view of Southeast Europe. Since the late 1990s, this view has become one of the most debated topics in historiography and public discussions. Over the past decades, an enormous amount of scholarship has been devoted to understanding the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia,[27] and the role of international politics,[28] including the implications that various legal, diplomatic, political and military international interventions in Kosovo,[29] might have had both for international society,[30] and for international relations theory.[31] Most of the works have aimed to expose the hidden internal assumptions and contradictions in previous publications and subvert their influence on our understanding of the region and its wars.[32]

These critical studies are often concerned with the discursive mechanisms through which the Balkans, or Southeast Europe, has been transformed into an “internal other” within the West European imagination, and the manner in which this otherness has been internalized on the part of Southeast European societies themselves. The interesting result is that these studies are emerging as a sort of subaltern, hybrid field of post-colonial and post-socialist studies,[33] aimed at uncovering “entangled histories”[34], and “alternative modernities”,[35] in Southeast Europe. In the growing field of critical Southeast European studies, the knowledge produced about the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 and the Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s focus in particular on nationalism and the state-building process in Southeast European countries, but also on the international representation of Southeast Europe.

Already, a number of efforts have convincingly demonstrated that the stereotypes and prejudices drawn on to construct the Balkan image of Southeast Europe in hegemonic international representations unabatedly fly in the face of ample empirical evidence. For instance, international representations of the Balkan wars might have changed and the meanings of violence shifted consistently.[36] Nationalism might have also been largely limited by the oscillations between the aggressive behavior of military and political elites and the apathy, even hostility, of the peasantry majority toward war.[37] Moreover, information communicated by the various forms of media about events and politics might have been non-stereotypic, ambivalent and in some cases even positive.[38] In yet other cases, it seems that the humanity of Southeast European peoples at war might have not been given the attention that it deserved.[39] Such studies have conclusively challenged the reified validity claims of ruthless violence, war atrocities, aggressive nationalism and dirty politics of the Balkan wars, or the “inhumanity” of Southeast European peoples, during both the 1910s and the 1990s.[40]

Clearly, the extant scholarship on Balkanism has already deconstructed the confinement of Southeast Europe to the margins of Europe. In this analysis, therefore, we cannot merely catalogue or seek a more correct or more balanced reading of the historical narratives related to the Balkan wars. The drive towards maintaining Southeast Europe as an “internal other” of Western Europe in public and hegemonic international representations is a topic that intersects with attitudes and interests that are based in the narrative legacies of sensationalist stories and essentialist assumptions. By focusing on their important overlapping attributes, we can see that the narratives reveal different aspects of a single biased idea of permanence that is generated because of and underpinned by ethnocentrism. Such a discursive formation combines anachronistic and ethnocentric ideas with a clear political project of post-colonial and post-socialist management. In this sense, the anachronistic and ethnocentric discourse of all these narratives, which we explore in the following sections, is important not only in describing the Balkan other but also because it justifies particular international attitudes and practices towards them.

Sensationalist stories

The Balkan wars were amongst the first military conflicts reported on high scale by the press. From October 1912 until November 1913, like many war correspondents of major European papers, Leon Trotsky was sent to Southeast Europe to cover the events. His articles and correspondences were published in 1926 as the sixth volume of his uncompleted Works, under the title “The Balkans and the Balkan War”,[41] which was also translated into English in 1980 under the caption of War Correspondence.[42] While the analytical pieces and impressionistic dispatches or the interviews and political portraits are interesting, apart from being a testimony to the rhetorical and polemical brilliance of such a major figure as Trotsky, their cognitive significance is no more informative than the dispatches of dozens of others war correspondents.[43]

Trotsky exposed the horrors of war and the atrocities “that must evoke shudders and nausea in every cultured person, in everyone capable of feeling and thinking”.[44] He further detailed the atrocities, but he did not see the heat of war. As a rule, journalists were not allowed on the front line and he had to form his “picture of the life and death of the army on the battlefields through interrogating participants, with the bias this inevitably implies”.[45] Actually, some of his informers were casual acquaintances, but most often, they came from his own social-democratic circles to whose accounts he gave greater credence.[46] As a result, like in many other cases, one suspects that “there is a certain degree of voyeurism about violence, garnished with a puritan moralizing and hectoring”.[47]

In August 1913, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace created an International Commission of Inquiry that was sent to Southeast Europe,[48] with a main explicit objective to investigate allegations and collect evidence for “the causes and conduct of the Balkan wars”.[49] Predictably, the Carnegie Inquiry mobilized all possible means of attracting public attention. Several press communiqués were given, the press was kept informed of the progress of the Commission whose departure from Paris was released with great publicity, and almost twenty thousand copies were distributed of the Report published in May and June 1914 in both English and French.[50] Again, the Carnegie Report is often taken to offer a detailed and well-documented description of what happened in the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars.

However, the Carnegie Inquiry was based on problematic fieldwork. Time for preparation had been short and the commission immediately encountered problems and was stopped and delayed several times.[51] Thus, Serbian officials protested that one of members was anti-Serbian and pro-Bulgarian and expelled them all, while Greeks officials allowed them to stay but offered them no assistance and again they formally declined to receive one of them, who was also expelled from the hotel.[52] Another member arrived after the group had left, and instead of sending a telegram to ask where they were, he gave up and retraced his steps.[53] Due to various issues and to great disappointment, the commission was reduced to four members on the ground and only two of them could understand some Slavic languages.[54] There was even a question whether the commission should persist in the inquiry at all. It was decided to continue the work but to separate. When the members met in Sofia, their reception could not have been more useful than in Serbia and Greece, since Bulgarian officials prepared all documents and witness testimony for them.[55]

In addition, the Report required considerable rewriting and editing. Many of the chapters were problematic in multiple ways, especially as it was deeply unwise for the member who had done the least field research to end up with most of the writing. Most of the members never concealed their openly pro-Bulgarian positions or anti-Serbian and anti-Greek opinions, which obviously limited the credibility of their writing and the facts they reported or even discredited the content of some aspects of the Report and allowed government officials of participating countries to use their unsubstantiated comments and one-sided opinions to protest.[56] Finally, the Report was neither adequately substantiated nor impartial and it cannot be reasonably considered a credible and valuable source on the Balkan wars.

In all these early accounts, violence was “the leitmotif of the Balkans wars” and one hundred years ago, there was clearly a thoroughly negative estimation of Southeast Europe.[57] Inflated assessments of violence perpetrated in these wars as non-civilized and non-European atrocities and genocide spurred a display of the “combats of extermination marked by inhuman rage” in Southeast Europe.[58] The blame was then translated in various accounts of the time as a narrative of civilization. About the region, it was stated that “a large section of the population is undoubtedly semi-barbarous”,[59] and must “be reclaimed from their semi-civilization”.[60] Also that “the effect of this deplorable exhibition on the moral relations between the Western and the Near-Eastern peoples has been lamentable and will be lasting”.[61] A single phrase in an acclaimed travel book illustrates the Western stereotype that developed of the timeless image of the Southeast European propensity for war and extreme violence: “Violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans”,[62] from which it can be inferred that Southeast Europe had to aspire to and attain Western “standards of civilization”,[63] to enjoy equal status in the European society of states.

In the 1990s, during the troubles in Yugoslavia, there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in the old Balkan wars. In particular, the 1913 Carnegie Inquiry suddenly re-emerged to become the single most often-cited source, which was mistaken “naively as a historical source”,[64] on wars in Southeast Europe.[65] Similarly, The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky was reprinted in 1993 to great acclaim as a rare primary source on Southeast Europe, at the height of the wars for the Yugoslav succession, in order to find confirmation of often completely opposing political preferences or prejudices.[66]

To explain the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, many commentators repeatedly overemphasized parallels between the barbarisms of the 1912-1913 Balkan wars and the so-called “Other Balkan Wars”.[67] The violence reported in 1913 re-emerged as a compelling factor in arguments in many books and reports, inspiring a sort of selective “memory boom”,[68] and parading uncritically the brutalities of past Balkan wars before a watching world. From the 1910s to the 1990s, one after another self-styled authoritative reports illustrated how the narratives of violence in the region became part of history,[69] thus paving the way once again for important political and ideological implications resulting in the otherization of Southeast Europe. Actually, after Yugoslavia crumbled in the 1990s, the casual reader of the international press, as represented for instance by the journalism of the North American and West European diplomatic and political establishment, was left in little doubt that ethno-religious hatred, wars, violence and atrocities in Southeast Europe were endemic and primordial.[70] Most of these accounts have continually renewed the message of the early twentieth century, according to which Southeast European peoples live in another time and a barbaric land, making it necessary to contain them and fence them off from the rest of Western Europe.

To a certain extent, the press initiated the inquiries, but despite the proliferation of media accounts, the information reported by the press appeared fragmentary, distorted and contradictory. From the 1910s to the 1990s, the vast majority of the narratives of Balkan wars were produced, not by academic scholars in the strictest sense of the term, but by a freelance, extra-academic or pseudo-academic cottage industry. Many journalists, travelers and correspondents suddenly became Balkan “experts” because they had the tendency to generalize from the particular, in other words to present their stories as representative of the grand scheme of things. Actually, they simply fly over the war zones for a few days or weeks, drawing on old stories, to compile and report the same stories. They come prepared to “witness rather than to analyze”.[71] The very nature of their trade in search of sensations means that such narrators do not focus on a subject until it becomes a hot topic.

With the publication of A Witness to Genocide, the highbrow international press found evidence for the “horrors of ethnic cleansing” and “the virus of aggressive nationalism” in Balkan social life and reported that “long-suppressed forces have been unleashed once more in the present”.[72] Indeed, according to some other commentator, this “mad war” could only be grasped if one turned back the clock and keep on going towards the past, as if what had happened in the past causally determined or inescapably motivated people in the present to kill and “die for what their great-grandparents once did”.[73] Thus, in various sensational narratives, we were told how the “fragile peace shatters as Balkan hatred overflows” in the perpetual struggle of “rival ethnic groups” killing each other “for imagined national spaces”.[74] In these narratives, Benedict Anderson’s persuasive argument is conspicuous by its absence, namely that this ethnic animosity is also the defining characteristic of other wars that have shaped the modern European nations.[75] Instead, in this narrative of the unreal, the ghosts of ethnic feuding revive exclusively in Southeast Europe, the characteristics of which are presented and generalized unceremoniously: “The Serbs hate the Albanians, who are not very keen on the Macedonians, who in turn have a mighty grudge against the Bulgarians, who are not very fond of the Turks, who are not exactly enamoured of the Greeks”.[76]

The work of this group of self-styled Balkan specialists and “parachute journalists” targets mainly a non-specialist, non-academic audience, and purports to explain and unravel the intricacies of Southeast European history and politics for lay readers. Many books published in this genre on Southeast Europe have achieved commercial success.[77] These accounts may vary notoriously in quality and utility, but they all convey a very distinct and clearly defined perception of the region in international representations. In these representations, Southeast Europe is nevertheless imagined as a loosely defined but contentious, dangerous, and violence-prone area, given that Balkan war has long been reified as the exception to the international norm and continues to be such.

Many of these writings consciously or unconsciously perpetuated the idea that at the end just as at the beginning of the twentieth century the Southeast European peoples were geographically very close to mainstream Europe and yet culturally very distant, relegated to the “margins of Europe”,[78] to recall a phrase coined for Greece.[79] As has been shown elsewhere in the case of writings on Albania in the early twentieth century, especially by Austrian and German travelers,[80] the impression was always given that people’s life in the region was one of barbarism and nothing else. The aim of these writings, typical of the travelogue genre, was not to provide information or conduct scholarly work, but to make sensational discoveries to satisfy the author’s insatiable desire to acquire some sense of prestige, not unlike what is known today as network ratings.

Similarly, by the end of the twentieth century, regardless of the fact that the target of the narratives was initially the area of the conflicts following the dissolution of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the association of the extraordinary characteristics of the Yugoslav situation with the situation of the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913 has taken a high degree of significance in international public opinion, especially when it is extended to apply to Southeast Europe as a whole, completely without justification. Thus, the high-flown rhetoric of sensationalist media coverage, countless policy-driven surveys and seller’s case studies hawked the whole of Southeast Europe to the political class and to the general public who imagined it as “Balkan”.[81]

Even nowadays, the quest for sensations in Southeast Europe is still alive. When the so-called Western Balkans are at peace, we are reminded that some of its inhabitants go abroad to look for war: “Orthodox Christian Serbs are joining pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine while Catholic Croats fight on Ukraine’s side. Muslim Albanians, Bosniaks and Muslims from Sandzak have also gone to fight in Iraq and Syria… For Serbs and Croats, this war is a replay of their own conflict in the 1990s as much as an adventure or crusade”.[82] What is a striking conclusion, however, is “the degree to which, apart from their religions, most Balkan fighters are so broadly united against liberalism and the West”.[83] Oddly enough, not only the empirical evidence on religious everyday life, which is provided elsewhere for current Albania and other Southeast European contexts, including Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia,[84] but even their own raw data offer no deterrent to the purveyors of such views. In fact, if we look at the number they themselves provide of jihadists as a percentage of each country, “Kosovo comes 14th between Germany and Spain, Bosnia is 11th and Albania 20th, [whereas] the top nine countries are West European”.[85]

Similarly, the confrontation between Serbian fans and Albanian players during the last year’s football match between Serbian and Albanian national teams, in the context of qualifying competition for UEFA Euro 2016, is tagged with “Belgrade chaos fed off centuries of rivalry between Serbia and Albania”.[86] In this way, international highbrow press encouraged everyone to know that in the Balkans “mingling football hooliganism with ultra-nationalist politics” is business carried on as usual, whereas the last event should be seen simply as “the latest skirmish in the Serbian-Albanian territorial struggle”.[87] A single stock phrase provided proof to the readers: “in the Balkans, more than anywhere else, football is the continuation of war by other means”.[88] Many observers endorsed clearly the difficulties of defining the match by emphatic affirmations of “Serbia-Albania brawl impossible to believe”, as “in years of covering football at home and abroad, nothing had come close to this”.[89]

By all accounts, the timeless Orientalizing and Balkanizing images from selected and reported narratives interwove the past and the present by singling out specific acts of war and violence. The result is the erasure of any sense of historical distance from more recent events, and hence any sense that the present can be different from the past. In this way, Southeast European populations are doomed forever by history. These narratives have enabled the construction of a primordial, timeless and unchanging ethno-religious hatred that is, paradoxically, connected in a clear and immediate way to the ever-changing present. We suggest that this construction, made sensational by the political and media discourses, underlies the association of the label “Balkan” with Balkanization and the representation of a complicated and irresolvable political situation that is often assumed to be based on complex and variegated division, fratricidal hatred and longstanding ethnic and religious grievances.

Essentialist assumptions

Sensationalist non-academic writings might have developed complex relations with reputedly more serious accounts, to the extent that at times the authors of these two types of literature have seemed to call for mutual consideration. This, of course, undermined the validity of the scholarly research, in respect of objectivity and quality of analysis. The result easily seems as though academic writers were simply not concerned about understanding the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s. The excessive consideration of past wars, stretching back centuries while looking to the past to find answers to problems of the present, seems to have engendered a quest for a cultural inventory of collective memories. Indeed, much of the scholarly research seemed to hold the view that from a historical perspective “the Balkan proclivity for ethno-religiously based violence [as] an explosion of intercommunal hatred and savagery was not at all surprising”.[90] Many believed that “there is no ideology in the Balkans [that] matches nationalism’s profound effect upon individuals and groups”, simply because “this accursed land was always prone to tectonic collisions, and those who have reignited the ethnoreligious hatreds have hurled entire nations into the inferno”.[91] Similarly, others have observed more specifically how the “struggle between Serbs and non-Serbs lies at the heart of the instability for which Yugoslavia was famous”.[92]

Once released, this cultural inventory seems to have inspired and encouraged the need to develop an ethno-culturalist approach, which often lapses into primordial essentialism. Remarkably, such an approach is adopted by both Western and local researchers on Southeast Europe. As shown elsewhere in more detail regarding either German-speaking Albanologie,[93] or native Albanian studies,[94] a strong tradition of scholarship has aimed to emphasize the essential and immutable character of a people’s culture and history. In particular, most local scholarship and politics in Southeast European countries have contributed, albeit inadvertently, to such an outré reading of events because their frameworks for thought remain narrowly nationalistic.

This may also explain why most local scholars regarded the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 as liberationist wars of independence against the Ottoman Empire, the ultimate result of which was the creation of national, homogenous, bounded territories of the Southeast European states at the price of much suffering, which is still blamed on mutual perfidy and atrocities.[95] Ottoman historiography also regarded the disaster of the Balkan wars as the point at which Ottomanism ended, and much intellectual self-examination and reassessment of the world prompted the “search for a nation’s soul”, which made of Turkism the dominant national ideology in modern Turkey.[96]

The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s also attracted much scientific and extra-scientific attention, especially within the “scholarship” that promoted a parochial understanding of the role of the social sciences as nationally constitutive. Many recent accounts are held captive by their authors’ national affiliations or personal convictions. Some betray their predilection for predictions that are avidly consumed by US-American policy-makers,[97] or their eyewitness accounts are colored by their own liberal humanitarian positions.[98] However understandable or even commendable their predispositions may be, scholarly objectivity in these instances has made no progress and can be considered to be biased, instant history, superfluous and dictated by immediate conditions.[99]

To varying degrees, this is the case when some render their genesis of Yugoslavia with a Croatian slant,[100] or they are likely to see the conflict as a Serbian aggression, sometimes even refined by rational choice as an explanation of Serbian behavior and Serbian national character.[101] Others make no bones about their Serbian loyalties,[102] especially when they stress the global dimensions of the conflicts and the role of the international community, basically regarded as an international conspiracy against the Serbian people.[103] Some of these accounts may even supersede spontaneous bias and prejudice. While supposedly dispassionate and grounded in the rhetoric of social science, objectivity and neutrality, many academic analyses are often denounced as blatant cases of abuse of the social scientific approach.

A case in point is provided in the forceful debate published in successive issues of Anthropological Theory, following the publication of an analysis of conceptual practices of power related to “Anthropology and Genocide in the Balkans”,[104] which offered a critique of moral and historical relativism in the social analysis of Yugoslav conflicts.[105] From an anthropological perspective, cultural relativism argues against cultural superiority and for cultural toleration, but anthropologists are very critical of the ways in which cultural analysis can lead to a kind of moral relativism which argues that moral judgments or affirmations of universal cultural values are not possible. In particular, some narrative accounts of the Yugoslavian conflicts are seen as examples of the relationship between this kind of relativistic thinking as an independent cultural force and a certain political ideology that affected the interpretation of concrete historical events in former Yugoslavia as well as some concrete international policies of western political elites. The interpretive strategy of these accounts, while seemingly grounded in a welter of rhetorical commitments to the Weberian tradition of Verstehen and Wertfreiheit, are not especially detached or value-free in relation to the actual conflicts. Relativism, for all of its pretensions, is not value-free, nor is any social-scientific knowledge, which remains “always for someone and for some purpose”,[106] and always laden with political positions and consequences.[107]

Researchers are often in the grip of ideologies that seek to establish identity boundaries and cultural hegemony, by glorifying the past as a means to gain ascendancy and legitimacy in the present. In pursuing this ideological path, they often use and misuse collective memories of the past that promote the grand narrative of the nationalist interests. Quite often, they do not concern themselves with people’s ways of life or with what was happening before and after historically traumatic events. Rather, their discourse seems to be born of cultural insecurity, in which conflicting national claims to moral superiority and contingent victimizations are used to promote aggressively several rationalizations of the root causes of the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 or the Yugoslav crisis in the 1990s.

So far, a critical interrogation of the trend towards relativism and equivocation is all the more important since the hallmark of the Balkan wars is the prominence of equivocal or relativist positions and reinterpretations. Such a trend also persisted between 2012 and 2013 with a proliferation of celebrations and exhibitions to commemorate the centenary of the 1912-1913 Balkan wars in all participant countries, which also included many reprints and new publications, especially memoirs and other witness accounts, interviews with historians, literary scholars and politicians. The press and the web are particularly rich sources of activities, where one can gauge the reactions to the Balkan wars, ranging from openly and fiery nationalistic apologies to confrontations critical of any display of extreme nationalism. Many national and international conferences and other academic competitions on the topic were also organized all over Europe and North America. Again, in these conferences, we frequently came across quite diverse and conflicting yet firmly held views, all of which were put forward as “truths” regarding historical facts, events, attitudes, and their lasting significance for the region.[108] This shows that the Balkan wars continue to divide many of the peoples, the scholars and the states of the region and beyond. Indeed, when one recalls these or other facts, events and attitudes, this does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of the Balkan wars, but rather reveals the conviction that the holders of these views have in the validity of their own truth claims.

Throughout the discourse on the Balkan wars, whether in the 1910s or in the 1990s, relativist positions usually took the form of moral equivalence, arguing that “all sides are equally guilty” for committing war crimes, atrocities and genocide. The distinction between aggressors and victims was blurred and everyone became a member of a warring faction filled with ancient hatreds. The Bosnian war especially “became a strange beast: a perpetratorless crime in which all were victims and all more or less equally guilty”.[109] The alleged equivalence of sides made the moral analysis of Balkan wars problematic. The attempt to make moral judgments or definite conclusions about the “truth” was lost in the privileging of interpretations that favor the use of morally neutral, relativistic categories in order to create the perception of equality of guilt and the assignment of equal responsibility for collective violence and mass killing.

Much of such relativist discourse was grounded in a more general negativity towards Balkan nationalism, thus assuming a particular brand of nationalism that is always seen as the underlying cause of the Balkan wars. In many accounts, a common point of departure for analysis “seems to rely on an undeviating causal chain: people in the Balkans are nationalists, [which] generates mutual hatred, which under particular circumstances might lead to bloodshed”.[110] In this case, Balkan nationalism was seen as a “virus” and very little attempt was made to come to terms with new political realities in Southeast Europe. As the language used by both policy and opinion makers is not neutral, the result was highly relativistic. Indeed, “labelling nationalism as a pathology places it beyond human control [and] avoids the issue of culpability by seeing all parties as equally infected” and therefore equally responsible.[111] This rhetoric is both ahistorical and atheoretical. It does not distinguish among nationalisms representing different ideological developments with different political consequences, but glosses over a failure to come to terms with the complexities of different political and instrumental ideologies.

This style of relativistic discourse was evident across a broad range of ideological positions within West European and international press, scholarship and politics, which have done much to reduce Southeast European collective memories and temporalities to an immutable core. Essentialist views have been also purveyed in some of the many publications on the Balkan wars by international scholars, who have reflected the atmosphere of the time in the titles of their books, by using “historically pregnant names”.[112] They have included such expressions as Balkan babel, Balkan inferno, Balkan ghosts, broken bonds, Balkan tragedy, death, chaos, horrors, slaughterhouse, or “Third” and “Other” Balkan Wars.[113]

So far, it cannot be coincidental that the international response to the Bosnian crisis “produced constellations remarkably reminiscent of the alignments of the Great War: with the former Central Powers backing Croatia and the former Entente Powers indulging Serbia”.[114] The conflict over Kosovo dramatized this issue in even more subtle ways. However, the marked differences dictated both by national contexts and by national agendas were somehow levelled by the unprecedented situation of crisis where the member states of the European Union were drawn, directly or indirectly, into a major war on the same side over an issue that united their interests. In these conditions, it is hardly surprising that during the military campaign there was a degree of synchronization in the focus of public attention mediated through the press, as a comparison between the French, German and British establishment press clearly showed.[115]

The German Defense Minister, for instance, speaks of a Serbian “policy of genocide”,[116] while the German Foreign Minister speaks of a European standard, against which the actions of Serbian leadership must be measured: “a throwback to the Europe of the 1930s” that “is not ours”, thus stressing the need to present the war as a moral imperative in Germany.[117] The German press was sensitive to the complexities of Serbian culture and politics, while emphasized a deep-seated cultural issue.[118] This was related to the mystifications in the Serbian intellectual discourses of the symbolic importance of the Kosovo myth that plays an instrumental role in the Serbian national myth, especially for speaking out Serbian victimization and asserting that there is a world conspiracy against the Serbian people.[119] Even before the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s started, the Serbs actually believed in that myth. However, the instrumentality of the myth during the Kosovo campaign made it possible for Serbian political leadership to hope strengthening power by NATO air strikes and expect see Kosovo partitioned,[120] which is something that had been already recommended by the notorious memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences in 1986 and many Serbian intellectuals afterwards.[121] Similarly, while the British media take the straight line of treating the Serbian regime as an enemy that needs to be defeated, the message was relayed that this was a fight against evil. Even though the tone was generally dispassionate and pragmatic with only occasional lapses into emotive language,[122] mainly when referring to the plight of Kosovo Albanians,[123] the long-term historical origins of the conflicts in Southeast Europe were often detailed in an analysis that drew inspiration from a “clash of civilizations”.[124]

By contrast, one of the features of the French coverage of the war was a willingness to consider the Serbian case with more sympathy and some support or at least with a refusal to demonize the Serbs as a group. Often French intellectual and political elites consider what they perceive as lies and exaggerations in the western account of the war.[125] French commentators continually stress a process of demonization in other national press coverage. They note in the German political press a tendency to use the vocabulary of the Third Reich such as concentration camp, genocide or Völkermord, and to directly compare the events in the Balkans to the Nazi ethnic cleansing.[126] This is understood as a “diabolisation necessaire” to pull the Germans into the war. While political perceptions are reported in the German press together with other factors such as cultural and historical issues related to France’s historical support for the Serbs, French journalists stress the long tradition of Franco-Serbian friendship in a constant call for a negotiated settlement and diplomatic initiatives.[127]

Similarly, British politicians and press are also shown in French press to be engaged in the elaboration of a discourse that demonized Serbian political leadership and distorted the information into a propaganda machine.[128] French journalists had been very circumspect in the reporting of alleged atrocities. The stories of Albanians used as human shields were mainly reported in French press as unverified, with extensive use of inverted commas, the conditional and the subjunctive, all stylistic devices to indicate that the writer cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information being given.[129] As a corollary, there is an underlying criticism that the full debate was not being heard in the UK, while the war was purposely portrayed to the British public as a fight against evil and for morality and human rights.[130]

One cannot understand such trends solely by examining the objective facts of history. A critical interrogation and concrete sociological analysis are demanded, which must also examine the cultural system of the West European-styled international society that frames hegemonic representations and political policies. As we show in more detail elsewhere,[131] this is important because these accounts defined the cognitive frames and terms of discourse with which several scholars and observers framed their own essentialist beliefs and relativist interpretations of the Balkan wars into public and hegemonic representations of Southeast Europe in international society.

Essentialist beliefs and relativistic interpretations worked not so much because they were the dominant element of discourse on the Balkan wars. Rather, their transformation into international hegemonic representations was possible precisely because these beliefs and interpretations were largely grounded in the rhetorical commitment to the supposed social-scientific and balanced interpretation of historical events. By drawing on the rhetoric of objectivity, they appeared reasonable and plausible regardless of their empirical validity. In this way, they attained a representational status and exerted their public effect in international society not simply as a reflex of the social positions of the intellectuals who produced them. Once created as hegemonic representations, they became active and independent cultural forces that served as important frames of reference and typifications to guide the formation of subsequent ideas and political practices in other sectors.[132] Indeed, these representations guided much of West European understanding of the Yugoslav conflicts and legitimated the international political choices of inaction, indifference and non-intervention to prevent genocide in Southeast Europe.[133]

More specifically, the reduction of collective memory to an essentialist core and the elevation of nationalism to the status of a mystical causal agent make it difficult to break free from the conceptual framework of primordial, timeless and unchanging ethno-religious hatred, violence and atrocities. The relativism of this conceptual framework “distracts the reader from examining relevant evidence”,[134] which may warrant different, more critical and more politically informed interrogations. This is even more the case when this unsound and hazardous conceptual framework is often taken at face value to fuel public international representations of Southeast Europe without a proper problematization. The same essentialist approach, which intersects with both social and political analyses of wars, is often reproduced in academic writings on international relations to claim that war in Southeast Europe has an essentially different and culturally distinct character.

In this respect, these accounts should and must be considered in regard to their moral and ethical implications, which were unspoken and masked, but nonetheless crucial to political outcomes. As shown in relation to the Kosovo conflict,[135] the international representations worked out by similar essentialist and relativist accounts may still affect significantly the attitude of the international community and its actual involvement in the current international affairs towards the region. These representations create imagined boundaries that prevent a free movement of ideas and people between the West and the Southeast of Europe, reaffirming the scenario of a “cordon sanitaire” that amounts to saying: “Since these countries are still trying to solve their old problems, well, we can just wait and see before addressing the issue of their integration”.[136]

The essentialist and relativist assumptions then inform international attitudes towards Southeast Europe that result in acts of security containment. This is, for instance, what makes it necessary for Western Europe, in its quest for security and containment, to adopt a selective stance in the endless process of “differentiated integration”,[137] of the so-called “Western Balkans”.[138] As long as this attitude is comforting to those in Western Europe, it will continue to support the Balkan image of Southeast Europe in international representation as inherently prone to war and justify an international politics of further containment and otherization.

Anachronistic discourses

The accumulated narrative associated the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 with the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s as “meaningful coincidences” in a kind of synchronicity, despite the events having occurred in different temporal contexts and with no apparent causal relationship. As in cases of extrasensory perception, rather than a question of cause and effect, it is a question of thinking all of the events together in time, in a kind of simultaneity, about which psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung coined the term synchronicity “to designate a hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation”.[139] This kind of synchronicity is a psychic factor that is independent of space and time and gives rise to relationships that cannot be explained by conventional efficient causality.[140]

Remarkably, Balkan wars and Yugoslav conflicts are also thought to be connected by a certain meaning, as meaningful coincidences, with the cause and effect supposed to occur simultaneously at the same time. It can be inferred that the authors of the accumulated narrative of Balkan wars are simply dealing with a paranormal reality. Obviously, this is quite absurd and no one would argue about that. Rather, the synchronicity behind all these narratives shows a cognitive bias of inductive inference or a form of selection bias towards searching for and interpreting information in a way that confirms their own preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations that contradict changing realities across temporal contexts.

In so doing, they might have created what Johannes Fabian called an “allochronic discourse” on other people in another time, as “a discourse whose referent has been removed from the present of the speaking/writing object”.[141] Similarly, the Balkan narrative is simply a kind of anachronistic discourse in which the temporal context of the discourse has been removed and the referent of the discourse has been alienated or otherized. Consequently, in most types of narrative on later politics and wars in Southeast Europe, the early Balkan wars are invoked and used discursively as if they had not taken place in a completely different time and context. Selected events of the past are represented as if they were of the present time, based on the assumption that Southeast European societies do not change.

Anachronism points a quite scandalous chronic phenomenon that could explain why in the West European perspective, Southeast Europeans or the “Balkan other”, like any other “non-European”, never occupy the same historical time even when they are contemporary to West European observers. This created a certain stereotype of “a land of the living past”,[142] which promoted a new figure of Southeast Europe and Southeast European peoples in West European imaginations that illuminates the simultaneous acts of exclusion and inclusion in the history of European ideas. It is a mixture of the exoticism and “Balkanism”,[143] of a “terra incognita”,[144] in the “margins of Europe”,[145] which contributes to the logic of many “nesting orientalisms”,[146], partaking of “the Orient within”,[147] and signifying the potential of being an “exotic other and stigmatized brother” at the same time.[148] As a result, whether the accounts of the Balkan wars are sensationalist stories or essentialist assumptions, they are similar in that they originate from a common construction that is a pure act of ethnocentrism. The accounts simply aim to identify continuous exoticized patterns of conflict. As such, they are not unlike what Edmund Leach once unforgettably denounced as “the butterfly collecting” of older forms of anthropology.[149]

The discussion on this topic, which acquired a wider audience especially after the publication of Orientalism,[150] has traced the West–East temporal spatialization and mental mapping of cultural differences to their intellectual roots in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.[151] Since the 1950s, however, as shown in more detail elsewhere,[152] Lévi-Strauss in his Tristes Tropiques had already deplored similar stances in travel writing and anthropology.[153] To borrow his terms, the literature on Southeast Europe would represent another instance of the same mistake of an entire profession or an entire civilization in believing that men are not always men, and that some are more deserving of interest and attention, merely because in the midst of an otherwise relatively homogenous Europe they seem to astonish us by the apparent strangeness of their customs, attitudes and behaviour.

The prevailing socio-political conditions of early state-building and the alternating episodes of regional and international politics notwithstanding, war has remained a sure indicator of a Balkan predisposition towards destructive violence and the primary reading path to an abnormal history of an indisputably non-modern, uncivilized Balkans.[154] Remarkably, wars in Southeast Europe were exploited from the early to the late twentieth century in very similar ways. In the context of Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s, adventurous fact-finders rediscovered the Balkans as a “new exotic land”.[155] Various narratives established a continuity with the past, even though particular events are paradoxically products of changing circumstances. Massacres, the destruction of villages and cities, the plight of refugees, and ethnic cleansing produce the same effects. They are always selected as instances from the past to give rise to subsequent historicizations.[156]

Most of the commentators aimed at predicting the course of conflict and attempted to “see the end in every beginning”.[157] By looking to discover a past that could explain the present, the Balkan wars and their causes were ahistoricized and atemporalized. They are seen as applying to all times, on the invalid assumption that the historical and temporal contexts in which the events are placed will not change. As indicated elsewhere,[158] this interpretation of events may have prevented the arising of conditions under which a critical theoretical narrative and alternative representation of war in Southeast Europe could be constructed and developed.

Arguably, the ahistoricizations and atemporalizations of the Balkan wars and their circumstances are examples of a vision in which temporal journeys into an imagined past fuse to construct an imagined present. They will persist through time imbued with a particular intentional meaning, not about wars in general, but about the influential idea of violence as a significant occurrence that is urged to be recognized as the defining cultural characteristics of Southeast European peoples and societies. Quite often, banal narratives and competing representations of the Balkan wars have cherry-picked and interpreted historical facts to create a new body of putative facts that construct international hegemonic representations, which often tend to cast Southeastern Europe remote from the rest of Europe, especially as a place of immemorial ethno-religious hatred, nationalist watersheds, ethnic tribalism, barbaric brutality and civilizational incompetence.

However, this constant characterization in terms of civilizations places Southeast and Western Europe at odds with each other and must not be taken at face value. We also need to consider the creative and constructed aspect of politics and the role it plays in this representation. Indeed, the development of hegemonic international representations is much more complex than a series of spurious, impressionistic, anachronistic, ethnocentric and xenophobic utterances, or even more complex than a mere linear process of intentional manipulation of human minds designed to prompt certain reactions. As shown in the case of various international interventions in Kosovo,[159] more than conflict resolutions, such representations serve the purpose and vested interests of control and domination, which are not necessarily named and personalized or made explicit. This is even more apparent when the goal is to redefine a geopolitical location in the hierarchy of relations within the Western order of things in international affairs.

Conclusion

By all accounts, the reading of the narrative legacies of the Balkan wars, and the rationale applied by the professional communities and the “expert milieu” of scholars and observers, requires a closer sociological analysis of the social actors who participate in this process. Different factors influence any narrative legacy and all play a role in the selection process of narrative media production. What is selected, presented and represented as significant narrative depends on factors such as the personal and professional background of scholars and observers, the media routines, the organizational framework, and the societal, political and ideological context. The exploration of the precise channels through which narratives of the Balkan wars circulated, the uses made of these writings, how they affected state policies and how these policies were elaborated by specified decision-making elites, is an issue in its own right. Even though any given study cannot address at once all levels of this “hierarchy of influences”,[160] an awareness of these multiple perspectives helps keep our thinking open. In particular, by juxtaposing various form of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy making, truth claims and expert accounts, we tried to consider and recognize the different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars against a background of the ideologies of history and politics. If this sociological approach to knowledge may allow attaining a new level of objectivity,[161] we may conclude that the circulation of ideas and practices, their reception and their use, in this case as in others, are contingent upon different political situations and experiences, with systematic implications for foreign policy and public debates, including the scholarly theorizing on the meaning of war and international affairs.

The pervasive discourses on the Balkan wars may appear unusual and difficult to grasp, if one employs traditional categories that are developed in sensationalist and essentialist accounts of media industry and pseudo-academism. However, an analysis of the narrative legacies, when linked to a careful examination of the historical contextualization of different accounts from an ideological perspective, can result in a more critical understanding of the hegemonic role of anachronistic and ethnocentric politics of international beliefs and representations of Southeast Europe. In attempting to analyze the history and the politics of the Balkan wars, the aim of this article was to frame the argument in such a way as to focus on a critical reassessment of narrative legacies and move away from the close association of Balkan wars with the essentialization of Southeast Europe. The concluding argument is that the discursive practices of different narratives have constructed a distorted representation of Southeast Europe in international society, which may have resulted in a potential underestimation of the pressing problems at both regional and global levels, whereas Southeast Europe must be considered an integral part of European history and politics.

In methodological terms, we undertook a comparative analysis of ideas rather than a search for an extended positive proof. We adopted a critical approach to ideological conceptions of history and politics by focusing on the political processes and power relations that define narratives of wars and their place in social relations. The aim of this article was not to write a history of Balkan wars, but rather to examine how various narrative legacies and the political implications of those discursive practices have defined the West European imagination of Southeast Europe. While this approach might not have resulted in an exhaustive treatment and certainly a number of questions remain open, it is hoped that the discussion herein will provoke at the very least a non-stereotyped debate on the effects of narratives and representations and will result in further, deeper inquiries in this direction.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at a series of international conferences: The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: A Conference to Mark the 100th Anniversary, organized by the Faculty of History, University of Oxford (U.K.), 17-18 October 2012; From Balkan Wars to Balkan Peace Project: The EU Integration, organized in Tirana (Albania) by the Center for Strategic Research, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 16 May 2012; The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: An International Academic Conference, organized in Tirana (Albania) by the Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung, Regensburg (Germany), 10-11 June 2013. We have benefitted greatly from the comments, encouragements, discussions, and presentations of all participants, as well as from numerous friends and colleagues who read parts of this paper at various stages and helped to improve our argument: Nicholas Onuf, Sabrina Ramet, Mark Almond, Robert Evans, Tom Buchanan, James Pettifer, Maria Todorova, Bernd Fischer, Conrad Clewing, Leen d’Haenens, Thomas Lindemann, Chris Wright. We are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and recommendations.

Notes on Contributors

Albert Doja is a University full Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Lille, France, and an Ordinary full Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Albania, holding the first Chair of anthropology. He was awarded with distinction a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology in 1993 from the Paris School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) and a Professorial accreditation (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) in sociology and anthropology in 2004 from Paris Descartes University, Sorbonne, qualifying for full University Professorship within the French academic system. He has been an Honorary Fellow of the Department of Anthropology at University College London, on secondment (temporary assignment) to the United Nations Development Programme as the founding Vice-Chancellor of the new University of Durres in Albania, and he has held several academic positions in France, Britain, Ireland and Albania, lectured in social anthropology and conducted extensive fieldwork research in many other countries. He is on the editorial board of international academic journals and he has so far published a couple of books and many original articles in international peer-reviewed journals (http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5378-8362, https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/rid/C-1637-2008). Special interests include politics of knowledge, power and ideology; political anthropology of symbolism and religion, intercultural communication, interethnic relations and international migrations; ethnicity and nationalism; cultural heritage and social transformations; international politics of hegemonic representations; comparative politics of identity transformations; instrumental politics of civic ideas and ethnic motivations; comparative politics of European identity and European integration; identity structures, discourses, practices, and processes; political technologies of the self, personhood, gender construction, kinship, and reproduction activism; anthropology of politics and history; political-anthropological theory, structural analysis, post-structuralism and neo-structuralism. (https://pro.univ-lille.fr/en/albert-doja/)

Enika Abazi obtained her Ph.D. in International Relations from Bilkent University in 2005. She is now the Director of the Paris Peace Research Institute and an adjunct professor of International Studies at the University of Lille (France), while being a tenured Associate Professor of International Relations at the European University Tirana (Albania). She held visiting positions at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences and the Doctoral College, University of Lille; and at the Institute of Political Studies, Sciences Po, Rennes (France). She has been a former research fellow of the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (Denmark) and principal investigator in many research projects at several European research institutions, including Lille Center for sociological and economic research (Clersé, France), Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF, Switzerland), Hellenic Foundation of European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP, Greece), Women in Security Studies (WIIS, US), Center for Strategic Research (SAM, Turkey), Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA, Turkey) and Turkish Asian Centre for Strategic Studies (TASAM, Turkey), Albanian Institute of International Studies (AIIS, Albania). She has significant experience in the management of higher education, serving on secondment (temporary assignment) to UNDP as a founding Dean at the University of Durres and later as a Deputy Rector of Research and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the European University Tirana (Albania). She also dealt with issues of Albanian membership to WTO and EU while being from 1991 to 1997 the head of Multilateral and Bilateral Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Economic Affairs (Albania). Her research interests cover a broad range of topics across international relations, sociology and history, especially on narratives and international representations of war, conflicts and interventions after the Cold War, European integration and politics in Southeast Europe, security challenges and defense reforms, transformation of social sciences and societal crises in post-communist countries, etc. She has presented her work in several international symposia and conferences and she has so far published a couple of books, many book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed and indexed academic journals (http://www.researcherid.com/rid/P-3083-2015). She has developed a series of courses taught in English, French and Albanian, such as Peace and War in the Balkans, Geopolitics of International Trade, Theories of European Integration, Ethnic Conflicts, Diplomatic History, International Law in IR, Contemporary Debates in International Relations Theories, etc.

[1]  Prof. Enika Abazi is senior  Researcher at Paris Peace Research Institute, France.

and senior Associate Researcher at the Albanian Institute for International Studies( AIIS) Tirana Albania.

 Albert Doja is professor at the Institute of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Lille, France. Professor Doja also is member of Editorial team of Tirana Observatory, The Albanian Journal of International  Relations published by  the Albanian Institute for International Studies, (AIIS)

Notes

[1] The meaning and role of international representations as a cultural system of international society is examined in full detail elsewhere: Abazi and Doja, “International Representations”.

[2] Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”, p. 8.

[3] Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia p. 266.

[4] Connelly and Welch, War and the mediad’; Baines and O’Shaughnessy, Propaganda; D’Almeida, histoire mondiale de la propagande; Welch, Propaganda, power and persuasion.

[5] Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing consentday.

[6] Dayan and Katz, Media events.

[7] Durkheim, Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse.

[8] Couldry, Hepp and Krotz, Media events in a global age.

[9] Beck, Kosmopolitische Blick.

[10] Chouliaraki, The soft power of war; Chouliaraki, The ironic spectator.

[11] Koselleck, The practice of conceptual history.

[12] Stewart, “Dreams of Treasure”, p. 481.

[13] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, p. 28.

[14] Petrovic, Long Way Home, p. 29.

[15] Abazi, “Albania in Europe”, pp. 229-235.

[16] Wachtel, The Balkans in world history.

[17] Hall, Consumed by war; Hall, War in the Balkans.

[18] Anderson, The Eastern Question; Macfie, The Eastern Question.

[19] Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453; Hösch, The Balkans; Jelavich, History of the Balkans; Castellan, Histoire des Balkans; Mazower, The Balkans; Hall, The Modern Balkans; Lampe, Balkans into Southeastern Europe.

[20] Sipcanov, Correspondants de Guerre; Kiraly and Djordjevich, East Central European Society and the Balkan Wars; Damianova, “La Fédération Contre l’Alliance Militaire”.

[21] Berri, Assedio di Scutari; Durham, The Struggle for Scutary; Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report; Tucović, Srbija i Arbanija; Trotsky, The Balkan Wars; Hanotaux, La Guerre des Balkans et l’Europe; Young, Nationalism and War in the Near East.

[22] Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[23] With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the coalition of national forces in the first Balkan war, for instance, a series of transformations were initiated in international politics, marked by the end of empires, the building of nation-states, the spread of communist ideas and the shaking of the old international order, even though these transformations are often attributed incorrectly to World War One.

[24] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans.

[25] Almond, Europe’s Backyard War; Mestrovic, The balkanization of the West; Mestrovic, Genocide after emotion; Cushman and Mestrovic, This time we knew; Campbell, National Deconstruction; Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania; Bjelić and Savić, Balkan as Metaphor; Hatzopoulos, “All That Is, Is Nationalist”; Gagnon, The myth of ethnic war; Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”; Hammond, “Uses of Balkanism”; Garde, Le discours balkanique; Green, Notes from the Balkans; Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse analysis and the Bosnian war.

[26] Hansen, “Past as Preface”; Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912–1913; Farrar, “Aggression versus Apathy”; Kolev and Koulouri, The Balkan Wars; Kévonian, “Enquête, Délit, Preuve”; Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”; Michail, “Western Attitudes”; Simić, “Balkans and Balkanisation”; Todorova, “War and Memory”ibid.; Trix, “Peace-mongering”; Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[27] Naimark and Case, Yugoslavia and its historians; Cohen and Dragović-Soso, State collapse in South-Eastern Europe; Biondich, The Balkans; Vujačić, Nationalism, myth, and the state.

[28] Terrett, The dissolution of Yugoslavia; Glaurdić, The hour of Europe.

[29] Doja, “aDémocratie et stabilité dans le Sud-Est Européen: facteurs humains, culturels et sociaux”; Abazi, Intrastate Conflicts, International Interventions and their Implications on Security Issues, Case of Kosovo; Abazi, “Kosovo, War, Peace and Intervention in a Nutshell”; Abazi, “Kosovo Conflict and the Post-Cold War Order: Russia and Turkey Policies”; Abazi, “The Role of International Community”; Abazi, “A New Power Play in the Balkans”; Abazi, “Çështja e Kosovës”.

[30] Bellamy, Kosovo and international society.

[31] Abazi, Ethno-national Conflict and International Relations: The Case of Kosovo conflict.

[32] Stokes, Lampe, Dennison and Mostov, “Instant History”; Fleming, “Balkan Historiography”; Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia; Djokić and Ker-Lindsay, New Perspectives on Yugoslavia; Njaradi, “Balkan Studies”; Ingrao and Emmert, Confronting the Yugoslav controversies; Bieber, Galijaš and Archer, Debating the end of Yugoslavia.

[33] Fleming, “Balkan Historiography”, p. 1227.

[34] Daskalov and Marinov, Entangled Histories I; Daskalov and Mishkova, Entangled Histories II; Daskalov and Vezenkov, Entangled Histories III.

[35] Mishkova, Trencsenyi and Jalava, Regimes of Historicity.

[36] Michail, “Western Attitudes”.

[37] Roudometof, “Social Origins of Balkan Politics”; Farrar, “Aggression versus Apathy”; Hatzopoulos, “All That Is, Is Nationalist”.

[38] Dorn-Sezgin, “Between Cross and Crescent”.

[39] Kolev and Koulouri, The Balkan Wars; O’Loughlin, “Inter-Ethnic Friendships”; Dimitrova, “Balkan War Evidences”.

[40] Campbell, National Deconstruction.

[41] See: Balkany i balkanskaia voina, http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotm083.htm (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[42] Trotsky, The Balkan Wars.

[43] Todorova, “War and Memory”, p. 8.

[44] Trotsky, The Balkan Wars, pp. 282-283.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Todorova, “War and Memory”, p. 19.

[48] Founded in 1910 the Carnegie Endowment was a non-governmental organisation zealously engaged in the pacifist movement. Its objectives were the promotion of international public awareness, by providing evidence and information about the effects of war on civilian population, in order to support international laws and organizations for the arbitration and peaceful settlement of disputes among states. The best way to support these goals was to give compelling examples, by exposing the wrongdoings of secret diplomacy and power games leading to wars. This would induce sufficient indignation either to prompt humanitarian intervention or to encourage the creation of international legislation on the treatment of civilians in war and on the limitation of the political and socioeconomic implications of war.

[49] Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report.

[50] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 29; Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 158.

[51] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 9.

[52] Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 151.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 9.

[55] Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 152.

[56] Akhund, “The Two Carnegie Reports”, p. 21; Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 153.

[57] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, p. 121.

[58] Duggan, “European Diplomacy”, p. 633.

[59] “The Balkan War Enquiry”, The Economist 79 (18 July 1914), 106. The column must have been signed off by Editor Francis W. Hirst who had participated in the 1913 Carnegie inquiry on the Balkans Wars.

[60] Spencer, “The Balkan Question”, p. 581.

[61] Young, Nationalism and War in the Near East, pp. 378-379.

[62] West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, p. 375.

[63] Gong, The Standards of Civilization.

[64] Trix, “Peace-mongering”, p. 148.

[65] In the 1990s, a reprint of the 1913 Inquiry with a gratuitous caption, Carnegie Endowment, The Other Balkan Wars., and with a substantial introduction, Kennan, “The Balkan Crises 1913 and 1993”., left no room for doubt that conflict inherited from a distant tribal past prevailed in the same Balkan world. Later, a sequel tried to show the endurance of the pattern. Carnegie Endowment, Unfinished Peace. In a simple Google books search, just a single passage — “Houses and whole villages reduced to ashes, unarmed and innocent populations massacred… such were the means used by the Serbo-Montenegrin soldiery, with a view to the entire transformation of the ethnic character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians” Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report, p. 151. — is reproduced, sometimes verbatim in extenso, though more often truncated, in no fewer than 70 books and many thousands of press and journal articles, policy reports and other documents dealing with the wars of the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. See https://www.google.com/search?q=Carnegie+1914+homes+ashes&btnG=Chercher+des+livres&tbm=bks&tbo=1&hl=fr&gws_rd=ssl#newwindow=1&hl=fr&tbm=bks&q=houses+and+whole+villages+reduced+to+ashes%2C+unarmed+and+innocent+populations+massacred+with+a+view+to+the+entire+transformation+of+the+ethnic+character (Last accessed, 31/01/2024).

[66] Todorova, “War and Memory”, p. 8.

[67] Carnegie Endowment, The Other Balkan Wars.

[68] Winter, “The Generation of Memory”.

[69] Carnegie Endowment, Balkan Wars Report; Carnegie Endowment, The Other Balkan Wars; Carnegie Endowment, Unfinished Peace.

[70] Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; Kennan, “The Balkan Crises 1913 and 1993”; Cohen, Broken Bonds; Gutman, Witness to Genocide; Rieff, Slaughterhouse; Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia; Judah, The Serbs; Judah, Kosovo; Nation, War in the Balkans; Gallagher, The Balkans; Hislope, “From Expressive to Actionable Hatred”.

[71] Stokes, Lampe, Dennison and Mostov, “Instant History”, p. 141.

[72] Gutman, Witness to Genocide, p. 175.

[73] Lenard J. Cohen, “…And a mad, mad war” Washington Post, 15 December 1992, p. 23.

[74] P. Beaumont and N. Wood, “Fragile Peace Shatters as Balkan Hatred Overflows” The Observer, 11 March 2001.

[75] Anderson, Imagined communities.

[76] I. Traynor, “Ghosts of Ethnic Feuding Revive in the Balkans” The Guardian, 26 February 1990, p. 7.

[77] Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; Cohen, Broken Bonds; Gutman, Witness to Genocide; Rieff, Slaughterhouse; Judah, The Serbs; Judah, Kosovo.

[78] Herzfeld, Anthropology through the looking-glass.

[79] Recurrent efforts by academic circles and political elites to de-balkanize Greece have always been perceived as a major political and symbolic issue, but see “Generations of Pork: How Greece’s Political Elite Ruined the Country”, Der Spiegel Online, 05 May 2011, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/generations-of-pork-how-greece-s-political-elite-ruined-the-country-a-772176-druck.html (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[80] Doja, “The Beautiful Blue Danube and the Accursed Black Mountain Wreath: German and Austrian Kulturpolitik of Knowledge on Southeast Europe and Albania”; Doja, “From the German-speaking point of view”.

[81] Todorova, “Trap of Backwardness”, p. 153.

[82] “Balkan warriors abroad fight the good fight”, The Economist, 18 April 2015, print edition Europe, p. 25, http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21648697-western-balkans-peace-some-go-abroad-look-war-fight-good-fight (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[83] Ibid.

[84] Abazi, “Albaniens Weg zur Religiosität: Glaube im Wandel”; Doja, “The Everyday of Religion and Politics in the Balkans”.

[85] “Balkan warriors abroad fight the good fight”, The Economist, 18 April 2015, print edition Europe, p. 25, http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21648697-western-balkans-peace-some-go-abroad-look-war-fight-good-fight (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[86] “Belgrade chaos fed off centuries of rivalry between Serbia and Albania”, The Guardian, 15 October 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/15/belgrade-chao-centuries-rivalry-serbia-albania (Last accessed, 31/01/2024).

[87] Ibid.

[88] Ibid.

[89] “Serbia-Albania brawl impossible to believe… in years of covering football at home and abroad, NOTHING had come close to this”, Daily Mails, 15 October 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2793384/the-scale-albania-s-brawl-serbia-impossible-believe (Last accessed, 31/01/2024).

[90] Cohen, Broken Bonds, p. 270.

[91] Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno, p. 86.

[92] Ramet, Balkan Babel, p. 1.

[93] Doja, “The Beautiful Blue Danube and the Accursed Black Mountain Wreath: German and Austrian Kulturpolitik of Knowledge on Southeast Europe and Albania”; Doja, “From the German-speaking point of view”.

[94] Doja, “Évolution et folklorisation des traditions culturelles”; Doja, “From the native point of view”; Abazi and Doja, “From the communist point of view: Cultural hegemony and folkloric manipulation in Albanian studies under socialism”.

[95] e.g. Murzaku, Politika e Serbisë.

[96] Boyar, “The impact of the Balkan Wars”.

[97] e.g. Brown, Nationalism, democracy, and security in the Balkans.

[98] e.g. Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia.

[99] Veremis, “Scholarly Predilections on Balkan Affairs”.

[100] e.g. Banac, The national question in Yugoslavia.

[101] e.g. Mestrovic, Letica and Goreta, Habits of the Balkan heart.

[102] e.g. Dragnich, Yugoslavia’s disintegration.

[103] e.g. Hayden, Blueprints for a house divided; Hayden, From Yugoslavia to the Western Balkans.

[104] Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”.

[105] The debate followed in the issue 4(4) of Anthropological Theory (pp. 545-581).

[106] Cox, “Social Forces”, p. 128.

[107] It has been argued that the rhetorical strategies and discursive practices in these accounts are an intellectual reworking of several nationalist themes of the formal Serbian propaganda in order to convert them into respectable accounts that served to justify and legitimate Serbian military aggression and genocide in former Yugoslavia. “Such discourse imagines itself as critical of a ‘one-sided’ discourse and, in offering the ‘Serbian side of the story’, claims to establish balance in the debate. Balance is achieved, but often at the expense of making confusing analytical and empirical distinction by the misapplication and decontextualizing of theoretical concepts, or by stressing one set of facts over another. In this sense, [these accounts] might be seen as ‘relativistic performances’ which demonstrate their partisanship, not only by what they include but by what they exclude.” Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”, p. 21.

[108] The Oxford conference in October 2012 stressed, with few exceptions, the supposed neutrality of Britain and Western Europe before the outbreak of the Great War. Pettifer and Buchanan, War in the Balkans. Tirana conference in June 2013 that was sponsored by the Regensburg Institute showed ethnic atrocities perpetrated by Serbian armies against non-belligerent Albanians. Tirana conference in May 2012 that was sponsored by the Turkish Foreign Ministry saw the insinuation of a supposed Albanian allegiance to Ottomanism. Other cases in point are the massive proceedings of a commemorative conference held in the US with the sponsorship of Turkish agencies in which voice was frequently given to current Turkish views of Neo-Ottomanism, Yavuz and Blumi, War and Nationalism., or a special issue of the Turkish Foreign Ministry Journal of International Affairs that was aimed at “overcoming prejudices, building bridges and constructing a common future” between Turkey and the Balkans. Perceptions, no. 18 (2), 2013.

[109] Simms, Unfinest hour.

[110] Hatzopoulos, “All That Is, Is Nationalist”, p. 31.

[111] Lytle, “U.S. Policy”, p. 304.

[112] Campbell, National Deconstruction, p. 40.

[113] Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; Kennan, “The Balkan Crises 1913 and 1993”; Cohen, Broken Bonds; Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno; Garde, Vie et mort de la Yougoslavie; Woodward, Balkan tragedy; Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia; Ramet, Balkan Babel.

[114] Wheeler in Carter and Norris, The changing shape of the Balkans, p. 3.

[115] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”.

[116] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 March 1999.

[117] “Slobodan Milosevic représente l’Europe des années 30: Ce n’est pas la nôtre”, Le Monde, 24 April 1999.

[118] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”, p. 310.

[119] Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia; Bieber, “Nationalist mobilization and stories”; Gagnon, The myth of ethnic war.

[120] E.g. Die Zeit, 11 February 1999.

[121] Dragovic-Soso, Saviours of the nation.

[122] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”, p. 306.

[123] E.g. “Murder Drives out a Suffering People”, Financial Times, 5 April 1999; “Agony and Tears for Families in Exodus”, The Daily Telegraph, 5 May 1999; “Nightmare of a Ruined Land Lies in Wait”, The Independent, 7 May 1999; “The Hell of Tent Cities”, The Independent, 10 May 1999; “Kosovo’s Trail of Misery”, The Independent, 12 May 1999; “The Hard and Warped Face of Balkan Man”, The Daily Telegraph, 17 May 1999; “Kosovo Capital Faces New Wave of Serb Terror”, The Daily Telegraph, 26 May 1999; “Serbs Went on a Rampage of Violence”, The Independent, 3 June 1999.

[124] “Christendom’s ancient split filters today’s view of Kosovo”, Financial Times, 4 May 1999.

[125] Le Monde, 13 May 1999.

[126] Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”, p. 309.

[127] Ibid.

[128] «La Grande-Bretagne a, dès le début du conflit, été en pointe dans l’entreprise de la diabolisation de Slobodan Milosevic», in “M. Blair est déterminé à faire tomber M. Milosevic”, Le Monde, 22 April 1999: 3).

[129] “Kosovo: l’OTAN dénonce les «boucliers humains», mais sans «preuve formelle»”, Le Monde, 18 May 1999.

[130] For more details, see: Grundmann, Smith and Wright, “National Elites and Transnational Discourses”.

[131] Abazi and Doja, “International Representations”.

[132] Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[133] Cushman, “Anthropology and Genocide”, p. 11.

[134] Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia, p. 3.

[135] Abazi, “The Role of International Community”.

[136] «Les frontières de l’Europe», Entretien d’Europe n°27, http://www.robert-schuman.eu/fr/entretiens-d-europe/0027-les-frontieres-de-l-europe-dialogue-entre-michel-foucher-et-bronislaw-geremek (Last accessed 31/01/2024).

[137] Dyson and Sepos, Whose Europe?

[138] Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans; Braniff, Integrating the Balkans; Bechev, Constructing South East Europe; Sotiropoulos and Veremis, Southeastern Europe Doomed to Instability; Dzihic and Hamilton, Unfinished Business.

[139] Jung, Synchronicity, p. 8.

[140] Jung’s theory of synchronicity, the view that the structure of reality includes a principle of acausal connection which manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of meaningful coincidences in time, is the culmination of his lifelong engagement trying to justify the paranormal. Jung, On synchronicity and the paranormal.

[141] Fabian, Time and the Other, p. 143. In spite of the awkward term, many scholars have appropriated the notion of “allochronism”, even though often without adequate acknowledgement.

[142] Durham, High Albania.

[143] Todorova, Imagining the Balkans.

[144] Pandolfi, “Albania as terra incognita”.

[145] Herzfeld, Anthropology through the looking-glass.

[146] Bakic-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms”.

[147] Neuburger, The Orient within.

[148] (Buchowski 2006)

[149] Leach, Rethinking anthropology.

[150] Said, Orientalism.

[151] Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe.

[152] Doja, “From Neolithic Naturalness to Tristes Tropiques: the emergence of Lévi-Strauss’s new humanism”.

[153] Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques.

[154] Michail, “Western Attitudes”, p. 226.

[155] Skalnik, “West meets East”.

[156] Stewart, “Dreams of Treasure”, p. 489.

[157] White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representaion of Reality”, p. 24.

[158] Abazi, “Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913”.

[159] Doja, “aDémocratie et stabilité dans le Sud-Est Européen: facteurs humains, culturels et sociaux”; Abazi, Intrastate Conflicts, International Interventions and their Implications on Security Issues, Case of Kosovo; Abazi, “Kosovo, War, Peace and Intervention in a Nutshell”; Abazi, “Kosovo Conflict and the Post-Cold War Order: Russia and Turkey Policies”; Abazi, “The Role of International Community”; Abazi, “A New Power Play in the Balkans”; Abazi, “Çështja e Kosovës”.

[160] Shoemaker and Reese, Mediating the message.

[161] Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia p. 266.

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Fredi Bejleri’s case should be dealt with as a democracy issue, not as an ethnic minority one 

A wave of political commentary and debate has recently erupted in Albania, especially coming from sources that are always ready to declare Greece an enemy of Albania. Unfortunately, these pseudo-patriotic and pseudo-nationalist commentators often dominate the public opinion space. 

Always ready to make conspiracy theory links, some have gone so far as to link the visit of Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni to Albania and the return of the EU Ambassador Luigi Soreca to the fact that Albania’s justice reform needs defending from an aggressive Greece and Albania’s own political opposition. It’s a tragic comedy. 

The arrest of the Himara mayor Albanian opposition candidate, who also happens to be a member of the Greek minority in Albania, just two days before the election day, has had negative implications in Albania’s relations with Greece.

That candidate, Fredi Bejleri, who went on to win the local elections, has been charged with vote buying in a sting operation that raised many doubts: A person infiltrated by the police, according to the local media, offered cooperation to Mr. Bejleri or his electoral staff, to buy votes.

Vote-buying is actually a national sport in Albania and if all those who buy votes in political or local elections were arrested, all of the prisons in Albania might not be able to hold them, but maybe the prisons of Greece would not be enough either. Perhaps not even those in far-flung Turkey. 

Greece has requested the release of Bejleri to give him the opportunity to be sworn in as mayor. However, Albanian courts have repeatedly denied his requests to be released from detention while he awaits trial. 

Prime Minister Edi Rama has said that Albania is a democratic country with an independent judiciary, expressing irritation at the Greek pressure as Greek officials participated in a protest in Himara, including the mayors of Athens and other Greek cities.

The case is a test for the justice system in Albania. But, at a political level, this incident will have negative effects on the relations between the two countries. 

This week, for example, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis avoided having the Prime Minister of Albania at an informal dinner with the prime ministers of the Western Balkan Region to commemorate the Thessaloniki Summit 20 years ago, in which all of the region was promised eventual EU membership. The Greek government sent the invitation to the President of Albania instead, in what appeared to be seen in Tirana as a provocation since the President in Albania has an honorific role, not an executive one. Albania went unrepresented, as the head of state declined the invitation.

During the past 30 years, the relations between Albania and Greece have gone through several periods of crisis. Relations between the two countries take place in two spheres, parallel worlds. One is the “sphere/world of peace,” where political, economic and social relations take place, and the other is the “sphere/world of war,” where they are fought in the old trenches of nationalism and conspiracy.

The problem is that this is an important moment for Albania and its relations with a strategically important country like Greece are entering a crisis which is not good for either country, but especially for Albania.

What is happening with the case of Bejleri in Himara has nothing to do with the relations of Albanians as a people or the policies of the Albanian government toward the small Greek minority in Albania. In this context, it would have been good for Greece to raise its concerns as a member of the EU for negative developments related to elections and democracy and not be guided only by the fact that the opposition candidate is a member of its ethnic minority.The implications from the Himara incident will be political first, but economic implications are not excluded. Greece has been and continues to be a strategic economic partner for Albania in terms of trade and investments. It is not impossible that potential Greek investments would no longer feel welcome in Albania either.

Tirana Observatory

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According to literature, there is still a general opinion that Violent Extremism (VE) and terrorism are issues that concern men only. However, as the data show, about 550 Western women have travelled to ISIL / Da’esh-occupied territory and 17% of foreign European fighters/ warriors are women (Orav, A., Shreeves, R., Rad- Jankovic. A., 2018). Moreover, according to Europol, one in four people arrested in Europe for terrorist activities in 2016 was a woman (Orav, A., Shreeves, R., Radjenovic. A., 2018). Furthermore, recent studies highlight the fact that women’s involvement in extremist organizations and their role in conflicted countries or violent situations are often more complicated than assumed (Eggert, 2018), and that women at the same time “can be victims, violent actors or agents of positive change” (Dufour-Genneson, S. Alam, M., 2014).
This paper analyzes the factors that push Albanian women towards religious radicalization
and participation in foreign conflicts.

The paper challenges the existing gap in studies which have focused on men, given that the number has been higher and hence has missed the nuances from a gender perspective. The methodology uses first-hand testimonies, interviews and focus groups as well as a literature review to address specific factors at both the micro level: psycho-sociological and ideological factors; and the macro one: socio-economic, political, and specific cultural factors. Women may act as peace-builders, including through women’s organizations, using their influence in the families and communities to establish unique solutions to support prevention, de-radicalization, psycho-sociological support, and rehabilitation from radicalization and violent extremism (Dufour-Genneson, S. Alam, M., 2014). On the other hand, women are not only the victims of VE. They can also serve as mobilizers and supporters for terrorist organizations, recruiters, fundraisers, and even as doers of terrorist acts (Bhulai, R., Peters, A., Nemr, C., 2016).

Throughout the review of the existing literature on “push and pull factors of Albanian women in violent extremism,” it was noted that, as in men, there is no one specific factor for women and girls that affects the process of radicalization and/or their participation in terrorist groups or their travelling to the conflicted areas of Syria and Iraq (Jakupi, R., Kelmendi, V., 2017).

As field researchers in Albania, we reached the same agreement as well. Based on existing literature and analysis of information obtained from several state and non-state actors, one in-depth interview with a woman returned from Syria and Iraq and their families and relatives, as well as perceptions of respondents in the national survey, the push and pull factors are divided into two levels: macro and micro. Guided by the interaction of these factors and the complexity for addressing them, women’s influencing factors in violent extremism in the Albanian context are analyzed based on two main pillars:

1. Factors at the macro level comprise the political system, the good-governance, socio- economic and social elements, faith and religion, influence of social groups, violence against women, gender inequality, and marginalization. Addressing these factors requires appropriate policy direction from both central and local government institutions with particular focus also on the community’s behavior and resilience.
2. Factors at the micro level include psycho-sociological and ideological factors that can be addressed through individual work and support to the families of women belonging in these categories.

Findings on macro-level factors
Based on the academic agreement so far, the category of macro factors includes three main separate groups, such as socio-economic, political, and specific cultural factors. Within each of these factors, a wide range of conditions interact: Interactions under the socio-economic factors include high levels of social marginalization, poorly governed areas, human and women’s rights violations, and unmet social and economic needs.
In contrast, interactions under the political factors include involving high levels of corruption, impunity for elites and specific cultural factors in Albania (Vurmo, Gj., Sulstarova, E., 2018) including the influence of local religious clerics, and level of religious education. These factors, combined with other factors at the personal level (micro-level), can create the right “ground” to develop individuals/groups of vulnerable people who can be easily manipulated by extremist ideology (Vurmo, Gj., Sulstarova, E., 2018).

The analysis of these factors, as well as the identification of the most specific factors for women and girls, is essential in addressing and further drafting appropriate interventions for families, communities, or other groups/ or people who may be vulnerable to this phenomenon (Holmer, G., Bauman, P., 2018).
The surveyed population in this study was presented with several options, as to which are the most concerning issues for Albania (chart no.5). As noted, the three most problematic issues the respondents are most concerned about are youth unemployment, which holds the highest level at 63.9%¹(64.2% of male respondents and 63.6% of female respondents), followed by high levels of corruption with 53.7% of the general surveyed population (54.9% of male respondents and 52.5% of female respondents) and the inequality between rich and poor comprising 51.5% of the general surveyed population (54.5% of male respondents and 48.6% of female respondents).

From a gender perspective, there is no difference in responses among all male and female survey respondents. Variation can be seen as regards the high level of corruption, which is mostly listed as a problematic issue among respondents in urban areas (58.7%), compared with 47.6% of the respondents in rural areas. The perception of the presence of crime in the country is high (36.1%), as is the “decline in the moral values of the society” (33.4%). The data from the survey is also a reflection of the socio- economic situation of the Albanian population, especially of the Albanian youth. According to the latest data of the INSTAT, the unemployment rate in the 15-29 age group is 21.4% (21.2% males and 21.5% females) (De Bruijn, B., Filipi, Gj., Nesturi, M., Galanxhi, E., 2015). Although these figures rank Albania in the first place among the countries of the Western Balkans for a low unemployment rate among youth, still the unemployment figures remain twice as high as those of the states of the European Union (World Bank Group, 2019). According to another study, unemployment and lack of security have also pushed many young people into leaving Albania during 2018-2019, where 40% of youth claimed that they wanted to leave the country (Kamberi, G., Çela, A., 2019).
The financial situation and economic polarization play an essential role in the overall “well-being” of the population and in the context of violent extremism. As such, individuals radicalized into violent extremism over the last few years in the Western Balkans (including those who have become foreign fighters) have come mostly from the economic margins (Vlado Azinović, Kimberly Storr, 2017). Even though the financial situation cannot stand as a single factor influencing VE, when combined with other factors such as widespread corruption and lack of security and justice may be a factor exploited by VE groups, which may offer wages or services. It is not poverty however that elicits support for VE but rather the acute form of social exclusion by government and society (Vurmo, Gj., Sulstarova, E., 2018). The surveyed population states that it is difficult for them to make a living on their income. In percentage terms, the male and female respondents share more or less the same approach in terms of difficulty they have in making a living, where the highest percentage is present at the levels “coping on present income” and “difficult” as presented in chart no 6.

In fact, the difficulties in affording life are closely related to the employment rate and monthly income. Among the survey respondents, there is a high difference between women who do not have any income (31.6% of respondents) and male respondents (16.6%). There is little difference in revenue for the category of women and men who earn 23,000 Albanian Lek (ALL) (21.4% – women and 20.6% – men). Reversely, this difference increases for women and men who earn over 50,000 ALL per month; thus, there is a gender pay gap with a higher percentage of men who make over 50,000 ALL compared to women.
The survey, the focus group discussion, and the interviews noted the difficult economic situation (intertwined with other factors further discussed in this study) as one of the reasons why Albanian women (mainly from rural areas) have travelled to warring areas or the Islamic State. One example is the case of 16-year-old Besa², who was married at the age of 14 and faced a challenging economic and social situation.³ After her husband left, her financial condition worsened. She lived in a mosque for a certain period because she alone could not afford to pay the rent of the house until she joined her husband abroad.⁴ However, the poor economic conditions of people who travelled to Syria or Iraq are not the only factor. There are also other cases where most FTF families have had average living standards⁵, owned small businesses, and were not to be considered poor since they could cover the travelling expenses by themselves⁶. These cases were reported from interviews with the returned woman and relatives of other returnees. One of the testimonies shows that the people who are currently in the war camps (including women) were, on their arrival to Syria/Iraq, initially treated well. Their minimum living conditions were met, and the daily budget spent on a family reached hundreds of dollars a day. ⁷ It is precisely this misinformation that “seduces” unemployed people, those with economic difficulties and from deep rural areas. However, other testimonies were taken by other families who still communicate with their family members who are in the Al-Hol camps. They claim that their situation is miserable, as the interviewee says: “Recently they desperately want to return, the situation is terrible and they are starving…” claiming that they are continually asking for financial help.⁸
On the other hand, difficult economic situations are related to the low employment rates of the population; however, it is difficult to say that unemployment is the only factor influencing Albanians to travel to Syria and Iraq. In the context of radicalization and violent extremism, unemployment constitutes an essential resource to individuals or extremist groups in radicalizing individuals (men and women) by promising a solution to their poverty and offering more lucrative economic opportunities through illegal ways.
Civil society representatives in the focus group discussions state that people, particularly those from rural areas, have been more “attractive” for the recruiters given their difficult economic situations. The high level of corruption is more evident in rural areas, combined with a lack of proper religious education too.⁹ Endemic corruption is part of the multi-faced set of drivers of violent extremism. Evidence from Transparency International suggests that the lowest-scoring countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) are often those experiencing conflict or war (UNDP, 2018). On the same note, the UN Secretary General’s Plan of Action on Preventing Violent Extremism suggests that countries that fail to control corruption (amongst other indicators like poverty, unemployment, and diversity management in accordance with human rights obligations) tend to witness a more significant number of incidents linked to violent extremism (UNDP, 2018). Survey respondents list corruption as one of the three problematic issues that most concern them (see graph. no.5).
The same concern among the Albanian population is visible in the opinion poll, “Trust in Governance 2019.” Most Albanian citizens perceive petty corruption (87.5%) and grand corruption (85.2%) as a widespread or very widespread phenomenon in Albanian society. Furthermore, the same opinion poll in 2019 reveals that 15% of the Albanian population has personally witnessed government corruption at the central level and 25.2% at the local level (Vrugtman L, Bino, B, 2020).
Chart no. 7 provides an overview of the perceptions of respondents on the main reasons why people (both women and men) have left Albania to join warring countries such as Syria and Iraq. What is noticeable is the high percentage of respondents who think that one of the main reasons is “financial benefits” (62.5% female respondents and 59.7% male respondents). This percentage is followed by a “lack of economic opportunities” (58.0% of female respondents and 63.8% of male respondents) and then “for ideological and religious faith” (53.3% of female respondents and 54.7% of male respondents).

In the meantime, based on the perceptions from the general survey’s population, the factors that lead women in Albania to travel to warring countries of Syria and Iraq are reported as follows (Chart no.8). The highest percentage stands for “to join the husband” from both male and female respondents (59.1% female respondents and 59.7% male respondents). Also, other reasons are highly considered by the respondents, such as “lack of economic opportunities” (51.6% female respondents and 53.7% male respondents) and “financial benefits” (44.6% female respondents and 44.7% male respondents).

The dominance of these factors, particularly of the fact that the Albanian women have flown to war zones to join their husbands, is also underlined by civil society representatives engaged in preventing violent extremism in Albania, who from their experience (albeit based on little information they possess given their limited engagement at concretely working with returnees, women and their families) show that most Albanian women have not played an active role in the Islamic state.¹⁰ Still, they have travelled there to have a better life and to escape from extreme poverty. Many of them think that in these warring countries, they will find the house they did not have and the rights they believe they have been denied regarding lack of job opportunities and lack of equal earnings (Ramkaj, 2019). Also, they believe they will be able to provide a good living for their children, as is the case of the woman named Moza,¹¹ who followed her husband due to the lack of income in raising their three children. ¹²

The information from experts on VE in Albania shows that “Albanian girls and women, once in Syria, have been isolated at home, under constant pressure from other women with foreign citizenship. There were many non-Albanian women engaged in the fighting areas. Their contacts with the family were rare due to field engagement. The children did not receive normal education but only manipulative instructions in selected centres from the organizations they had joined” (Gjinishi, 2020).
Although women constitute the main priorities of some policies in Albania (INSTAT, 2020), the context given above shows once again that women’s economic empowerment, labor market engagement, labor force participation, and unpaid work in the family, particularly in rural/ remote areas, as well as the position of youth and especially girls in the labor market, continues to remain a challenge in the Albanian society. This is also highlighted in the “Gender Equality Index Report for Albania” (2020). The interaction and amelioration of these factors, under the perspective of violent extremism, are essential for building women’s resilience and increasing their role in peace-building and prevention of VE (Coutur, 2014).

Gender Inequality and Patriarchy as a Cultural Factor

The principles of gender equality and non-discrimination are fundamental principles of the International Law on Human Rights. Promoting gender equality is a priority of all Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) member states, which have taken the commitment to promote gender equality as an integral part of their policy (OSCE, 2000). Although the literature so far suggests that women are led into VE by the same group of socio-economic and political factors, other existing literature sheds light on specific factors that influence women’s engagement in VE, such as gender inequality, gender-based discrimination, and lack of economic and educational opportunities (Orav, A., Shreeves, R., Radjenovic. A., 2018).
Apart from the traditional factors leading to the VE, the analysis and the strong link between gender inequality and violent extremism have been addressed by Valerie Hudson and her co-authors in “Sex and World Peace.” They state that the best predictor of peace in a nation is not its level of democracy or wealth but rather the level of physical security enjoyed by its women (Hudson, Valerie M., 2012). Historically, women have been included in the category of marginalized groups in terms of access to the labor market, low opportunities for education, and low levels of participation in decision-making. The experience of living in a society that denies women’s full civil rights and economic opportunities can make some women perceive involvement in terrorism as a way to gain freedom, emancipation, respect, and equality (Orav, A., Shreeves, R., Radjenovic. A., 2018). Violation of these rights can deepen feelings of alienation, isolation, and exclusion that may make individuals more sensitive to radicalism (Orav, A., Shreeves, R., Radjenovic. A., 2018).
In the Albanian context, the General Gender-Equality Index for 2017 marked 60.4 points, demonstrating a significant gender gap of 7 points below the EU-28 average (67.4), except for the area of governance, where Albania has a higher level of gender equality than other European Union countries. The most significant shortcomings in the gender gap in Albania are encountered in the fields of knowledge, money, and time spent doing unpaid labor (INSTAT, 2020).
Gender inequality is noted to be at high levels even among respondents of this study, where 47.3% of men and 70.4% of women claim that there is noticeable inequality between men and women in Albanian society (chart no 9).

Higher levels of gender inequality, especially in terms of education, are more visible in rural areas of the country. In these areas, the number of men with secondary or higher education is higher than the number of women with secondary or higher education which is due to fewer possibilities for proper education, low rates of attendance at high school, and lower enrollment rates in vocational schools. Quality assessments (Housing and Population Census, and PISA study) raise concerns about the deterioration of the education system in rural areas. Some of the causes of this difficult situation are insufficient investments in infrastructure and human resources, high distance from residential areas, and vocational training institutions. Also, very few women participate in training programs, due to insufficient time and how training programs are organized (Zhllima, E., Merkaj, E., Tahsini, I., Imami, D., Çela, E., 2016).
From a geographical point of view, there is no specific cause or group of reasons that affect women differently in different parts of the Balkans and European countries. However, some of the instigators and tendencies of radicalism and women’s participation in terrorist/radical organizations are exposed differently in the Balkans, compared to other European countries such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom (Kelmendi, 2018).
This is due to the more significant challenges faced by women in the Balkans in terms of domestic violence, high levels of discrimination in socio-economic issues, and the dominance of patriarchal societies (Kelmendi, 2018). In the Albanian context, it is still challenging to address domestic violence, protect victims of domestic violence, guarantee gender equality and gender equity, and provide minimum health and social services, especially at the local level (EC Albanian 2019 report, 2019). For example, in the first two months of 2020 in Albania, five women were assassinated by their husbands. (Tushi, 2020). According to data provided by INSTAT and the survey on violence against women and girls in 2018 (INSTAT, 2019), it turns out that 1 in 2 women (52.9%) between the ages of 18-74 have experienced one or more than five kinds of violence (intimate partner violence, violent encounters, non-partner violence, sexual harassment and/or intimidation) during their lifetime (INSTAT, 2019).

Moreover, according to the same study, traditional patriarchal attitudes remain prevalent throughout Albania thus contributing to gender inequalities in all spheres of social and economic life, as well as the prevalence of violence against women.¹³ We also notice the “legitimacy” of violence against women among the respondents in the study, as shown from chart no.10, where 7.6% of men and 3.5% of women agree with the fact that violence against women is justifiable in certain circumstances.

Patriarchal norms, the dominance of the male figure in the Albanian family, and “power” over women are noted by participants in the target group discussions to be among the most significant factors as to why Albanian women have travelled to war areas in Syria 14 and Iraq. From the data of this study, there is only one case identified of a woman being raped by her husband and forced to accompany him to Syria. In contrast, most of the interviews taken from relatives of women and men still in war zones do not support the hypothesis that these women have been forced to follow their husbands. Instead, they have voluntarily (for a better life)¹⁵ joined their husbands to be near them (even when asked to do otherwise), and this shows once again the deep roots of patriarchal norms within the Albanian family, mainly in rural areas¹⁶ based on the “family code” (Kuko, 2020).
However, even in one case where the mother refused to join her son who had already left for war, the decision of the head of the family (father) was dominant, forcing his wife and his two other daughters and son to go to war. This example clearly shows that the man’s role as the head of the family enforces the patriarchal factor of society. ¹⁷
The “patriarchal” factor is also supported by the interviewees and participants in the discussion meetings from different areas of Albania. According to them, “Albanian women have travelled to warring zones because they did not want to oppose their husbands. Whether ideologically convinced or not, the women obeyed their husbands. Still, they did not travel there to fight”. ¹⁸ Such statements confirm the patriarchal context that prevails in the family structure in Albania. This context is also present and rich in evidence from women who returned to other Balkan countries where patriarchal norms (especially those within the Muslim community) have played a significant role in their participation in conflicted areas in Syria and Iraq (Kelmendi, 2018).
In this patriarchal context, the majority of Albanian women who have travelled to the Islamic State have also “legitimized” the reasons why their husbands left “to earn money and provide the family with a better income for a better life.” The statement “A husband’s primary task is to be the breadwinner” is also supported at high levels by 48.2% of men and 45.7% of women surveyed.¹⁹ Given the social and economic differentiation between men and women and the “duties” that women exercise in a patriarchal context, most women remained without any financial or family support after their husbands fled to the war zones. Some of these women were supported by their parents; while others were to remain with their husband’s families, with their in-laws, and some women were left without any support at all. In this situation, the only solution for them was to join their husbands wherever they were. ²⁰ This situation is criticized by various civil society actors in the country who emphasize the need to focus on the role of women and girls, especially in rural areas. The CSO representatives suggest that more efforts should be made to educate the younger generation on gender equality to break gender stereotypes.
Furthermore, they deem it important to boost economic empowerment and vocational education for women and girls. “Such interventions will help prevent cases such that of the girl from a low-income family, who was married at the age of 14 and at the age of 16 she left for Syria with her child to join her husband, who died there. The misfortune of this girl seems never to end as she was forced to remarry and give birth to another child” ²¹.
Another case of a woman who testified that she did not want to stay there shows that she simply joined her husband after he had assured her that they could have a better life in Syria because the situation would soon get normal.²²

Factor Analysis at the Micro-Level
The individual factors and nuclear family

The analysis of the micro-level factors influencing the decision of Albanian women to join the Islamic State is based mainly on the testimonies of relatives of women who have gone to Syria and Iraq. Also, it is based on the testimony of the returned woman and other evidence gained from civil society representatives and state institutions in Albania. Analysis at the micro-level is vital to understand factors that involve, as described by Dr. Alex P. Schmid: identity problems, failed integration, feelings of alienation, marginalization, discrimination, relative deprivation, humiliation (direct or by proxy), stigmatization, and rejection, often combined with moral outrage and feelings of (vicarious) revenge (Schmid, 2013).
In this category of micro factors, we find out that Albanian women are driven by individual motives, mainly related to the perspective/structure of their marriage, which is again closely associated with patriarchal norms. Almost all the evidence in this study sees the women as “victims” of their husbands and their aggravated financial situation. They are unable to raise and educate their children on their own. Some of them were even lied to by their husbands over the real situation in Syria, as the woman returnee Mira (not her real name) testifies: “My husband left 3-4 months before us. He asked me to go there, telling me that the situation was normal. I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving; even the kids didn’t know. They thought they were flying to England.” ²³ The same testimony comes from relatives of another case who emphasize that “the woman didn’t even have a say in her husband’s decision to leave for Syria, but simply went after him. She respected his decision because that is how it should be.” ²⁴
In this analysis of the personal motives that led Albanian women to fly to war countries, a crucial role is played by the close family (parents, in-laws, sisters, and brothers) and the interaction of family members. From the information obtained from the interviews with the relatives and acquaintances of people who fled to Syria and Iraq, almost none of the parents, sisters, or brothers were aware of the fact that the sons of the family at first and their wives were planning to leave to join the Islamic State. This is the case of a woman named Mira, whose family supposed that she went with her children to England to join her husband. It was her brother who, on occasion, noticed that her sister was not in England, one day when she wrongly had left the computer’s location on. Testimonials show that the moment when the parents have understood where their children are has been shocking. The case of woman returnee Mira can be considered a positive one, given the fact that her family managed to bring her and her two children back. However, this is not the case for other parents looking for help from the state institutions to turn back home their children.
Despite being unaware of this phenomenon, the traditional and patriarchal form of the family organization is still visible. In such families, the men of the family are supposed to be the ones who should take care not only of their wives and children but also, in some cases, even increasing the responsibility and pressure of young men to take care of their parents as well. With this mindset, men who have left for war countries have easily been able to lie to their families by making them believe that they are immigrating to Western European countries, such as England, Greece, and Germany, or to study in the Middle East. The control of radicalization as a process and the role of the nuclear family in preventing this phenomenon are issues that have also recently begun to come to the attention of actors dealing with violent extremism. However, so far in Albania, there is no evidence of cases of families that prevent the travelling of their children to Syria/Iraq.
From our observations for this study, people (men and women) come from families with traditional backgrounds of the Albanian family, respecting and considering the role of the husband as a pillar of the family. In contrast, the respondents in the study emphasize that the structure of the Albanian family has changed since the ‘90s. It faces more issues that affect its “sustainability” due to the socio-economic problems, especially in rural areas, the perceived reduction of moral values in society by young people, and the complete lack of care for their old parents (Ramkaj, 2019). The decrease in moral values in the community is also listed as one of the issues that concern the most 32.1% of male respondents and 24.6% of female respondents in the survey of the presented study (see graph no.5 above).

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1 This is the average value

2 Not her real name.
3 Participants in this focus group discussion included representatives from the municipality of Pogradec, teachers, high school students, representatives of healthcare institutions, journalists, and religious community representatives (Pogradec, January 19, 2020).
4 Interview with the grandmother of the man foreign fighter W, (January 16, 2020).

5 Interview with the friend of a woman Mira, (January 5, 2020).
6 Interview with the sister and daughter of the family of fighter Y, (November 8, 2019).
7 Interview with the sister and the daughter of the dead fighter, (November 8, 2019).
8 Interview with the sister-in-law of the foreign fighter Z, (November 1, 2019).
9 Participants in this focus group include local actors in Vlora municipality such as: high school representatives, teachers, students, CSOs, representatives from shelters, youth groups, members of the Security Council. (Vlora, January 24, 2020).

10 Focus group “PVE Forum” discussion meeting, Tirana, (February 20, 2020),
11 Not her real name
12 Testimony of Y woman mother-in-law who died in Syria, (January 12, 2019).

13 Participants in this focus group included local actors in Tirana municipality such as teachers, social workers, psychologists, lawyers, and members of the National Forum of CSOs in PVE in Albania. (Tirana, February 20, 2020).
14 Participants in this focus group included local actors in Tirana municipality such as teachers, social workers, psychologists, lawyers, and members of the National Forum of CSOs in PVE in Albania. (Tirana, February 20, 2020) Ibid.
15 Interview with the friend of the returned woman X. (January 5, 2020).

16 Ibid.
17 Interview with the sister of the Y fighter who is currently in Syria and at the same time the daughter of the family (who is there to stay close to the Y fighter), (November 8, 2019).
18 Participants in this focus group include local actors in Vlora municipality such as high school representatives, teachers, students, CSOs, representatives from shelters, youth groups, and members of the Security Council. (Vlora, January 24, 2020).
19 Nationwide survey for this study, WCDCA, 2020.
20 Testimonies from relatives of women who are currently in camps in Syria and Iraq.

21 Participants in this focus group discussion include representants from the municipality of Pogradec, teachers, high school students, representatives of healthcare institutions, journalists, and religious community representatives, (Pogradec, January 19, 2020)
22 Interview with woman returnee Mira, (October 28, 2020).
23 Interview with woman returnee Mira. This is not her real name, (October 28, 2020).
24 Testimony of members of the family of the returned woman Mira, (December 1, 2019).

The post Understanding Drivers of Violent Extremism: Role of Women appeared first on Tirana Observatory.

Old rivalries come to light

It is estimated that two billion barrels of oil and four trillion cubic meters of natural gas are found in the seabed of Eastern Mediterranean. Such a discovery rekindled old rivalries and set the stage for a geopolitical clash.

In January 2019, Israel, Egypt, Italy, Greece and Jordan created a consortium to look for oil and gas in the region, but Turkey was not included. So Turkey decided to send its own drilling ship to the Mediterranean in May 2019, and began seismic surveys and exploration drilling along the north coast of Cyprus. Turkey calls this deal void and null, saying that this area lies within its continental shelf.

Unilaterally, Turkey decided to claim its stake via diplomatic means, using other mechanisms, and in November 2019, signed a maritime agreement with Libya. Through this agreement both countries expanded their Exclusive Economic Zone, and Turkey gained exclusive rights to fish, drill and carry out economic activities. According to Turkey, this deal ensured that there will not be any Eastern Mediterranean energy settlement, without Ankara taking place at the negotiating table.

Unilaterally, Greece and Cyprus also claims that the north of Cyprus (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) is part of Republic of Cyprus, and that this area is above its continental shelf so they have the rights to any potential to oil and gas and drilling activities.

The oil issue gave rise to other problems in the region like the status of the islands that should remain demilitarized. These maritime issues are unique for this geography of the region, as there are many Greek islands very close to Turkish mainland. From the security standpoint, Turkey is very concerned. Turkish provocation goes on with the exploration in these waters. Greek provocation goes on with the sending of troupes in the island of Kastellorizo – only two kilometres away from the Turkish southern coast.

In this hot geopolitical climate, Greece declares that it will extend its territorial waters from 6 to 12 miles, citing that this is in line with international sea conventions, while Turkey argues that the special geographical properties of the Aegean Sea make the application of 12 miles rule problematic.[1]

This move affects also the territorial waters between Greece and Albania in the Ionian Sea. Greek PM Mitsotakis said Greece would exercise an “inalienable sovereign right” in line with Article 3 of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and could in the future extend its territorial waters in other maritime areas, in accordance with the Convention on the Law of the Sea”. [2]

Regarding Greek extension to the Aegean, Turkey has warned that a similar move by Greece to the east would be a “casus belli” – a cause for war, as it considers a territorial grab. On another part of the Mediterranean, Albania reacts softly as small and weak states usually do – trying to be peaceful. Albanian PM Edi Rama declared that Greece has the right to so, based on an international convention of 1982.[3] Ksenofon Krisafi underlined: “It is absurd . . . to believe that Greece will expand the range of its territorial waters from the coast of Corfu to Saranda to 12 nautical miles. First, there is not enough space for this width. Second, under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, Albania has this right to the same degree”.[4] But in this case it is not simply logic and convention; it is more a geopolitical power play.

In this theatre, Turkey aims to consolidate its profile as a regional power, Greece aims to establish its status as a state that can be imposed and is part of strong alliances, while Albania is trying to play a kind of diplomacy of appeasement.   

The new geopolitical game

While Turkey and Greece are on the brink of war in the Eastern Mediterranean, Albanian government seems confused and uninformed, as it finds itself in “unchartered waters”. Turkey and Greece will try to reach two major goals: exploit the energy resources for their economic benefits, and showing their respective power. Albania will need to clarify its strategy. Reference to conventions and creation of skilful negotiating team are not sufficient elements to efficiently get involved as an active player in the current complicated international environment, because the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean is being deeply transformed.

The Eastern Mediterranean security environment today is defined by energy discoveries, new (im)balances of power, and increased interest in the area from external powers. [5]  

First, the discovery of energy resources is among the main drivers of the changing geopolitical and security dynamics in the region, which has prompted the reconfiguration of the strategic calculations of countries such as Turkey and Greece, but also the involvement of other players such as France, Italy, Egypt, Libya and Israel.

A country like Albania must understand that oil is a weapon in foreign policy to impose objectives to others. Beyond conventions, the geo-economic importance of the Economic Exclusive Zones, the geographical position and the sound alliances should be considered on the basis of circumstances, as the Mediterranean area is creating ongoing uncertainty, which is affecting interstate relations in different ways.

Second, in the Mediterranean there is a new balance of power. As stated above, old rivalries have come up, as Turkey is facing a bloc of countries such as Cyprus, Greece, Israel and Egypt. Like never before, such escalation is spiralling into a multinational conflict. France has joined this anti-Turkish block, as it dispatched warships to the contested waters. Another area in the Mediterranean where the rivals are colliding is Libya: France and Egypt are already in open conflict with Turkey. Observers fear that any further escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean could set off a Euro-Middle Eastern maelstrom.[6]

The Albanian policymakers must be aware that the Mediterranean is no longer an area controlled by the West. Over the Obama years, the US significantly retreated from the Middle East, and president Trump has frequently declared that US is going to focus more on home affairs – despite a commitment to enhance military power. American retreat made way for the Russian penetration in the region. After intervening successfully in the Syrian civil war, Russian eastern Mediterranean naval presence is growing. In addition, Turkey has not been deterred from pursuing its own goals and claims.

Third, there is an increased interest in the area from external powers. Apart from US and Russia, the European Union is highly interested in Eastern Mediterranean developments particularly regarding the energy domain. France and Italy have been trying to get more involved in the region’s affairs. China, too, has recently developed a keen interest in the Eastern Mediterranean within the framework of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The antagonism among those rivals and the resulting geopolitical bargaining will have a significant impact on national foreign policies in the Eastern Mediterranean.

European Union deserves special attention in this context. Germany has appealed for de-escalation of tension in the eastern Mediterranean between NATO allies Greece and Turkey, warning that “a spark could lead to a disaster”.[7] From all geopolitical actors, Germany would be the most impartial mediator. It is very likely that Germany will fill America’s vacuum. Security in the Mediterranean directly affects the European security architecture. It is in the EU’s interest to guarantee co-operation between Turkey and Greece. This may also include the problem arising from the flow of migrant through Turkey towards European capitals. So, at a time of declining American commitment to the management and resolution of regional security crises in the region, it would benefit the European Union to play such a role.

Albania in two geopolitical scenarios: “World of Regions” and “G-Subzero”

To have a clearer geopolitical picture of this conflict, we can refer to the scenarios predicted by Ian Bremmer. In Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, Ian Bremmer predicts five scenarios for the future international relations: G2—a U.S.-Chinese partnership; Concert—a G 20 that actually works; Cold War 2.0—or something worse; a World of Regions—to each his own; and Scenario X—the G-subzero.[8]

The Greek – Turkish conflict is being played in the theatre of “world of regions”. The European Union seems unable to resolve such a crisis as it is challenged by Turkey. The US is being withdrawn from the region and for many security problems declares that these are European problems. In this leaderless world, “there is growing power vacuum in international politics as no country or group of countries has the political and economic leverage to drive an international agenda or provide global public goods”.[9] It is very likely that in this scenario the pivot states will be even more successful. The lack of multilateral agreements will enable them to seize opportunities to conclude bilateral agreements with other countries.

An essential feature of this system is unilateralism, which essentially means unilateral action without reference to conventions or without respect for multinational institutions. In the geopolitical game of the Eastern Mediterranean, the dominant power is Turkey. Greece, on the other hand, in a defensive position, also tends to impose itself, as it makes alliances with other powers such as France and Italy. In this fragmented environment, important institutions are not intervening to resolve the crisis.

According to Bremmer, emerging states like Turkey are certainly poised to take advantage of new opportunities to play a more prominent diplomatic role in this new order. Turkey – as a regional heavyweight – will try to benefit, as few international rules and regulations are enforceable. Being at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union make Turkey the very model of a pivot state.[10]

There are also factors contributing to Greece being a pivot state, as it has alternatives. The overarching strategic goal of the Greek foreign policy is to minimize the risks and maximize the opportunities arising from its geopolitical position. [11]  Greece is building various alliances to find its place in this new order: member of NATO and EU, good relations with Russia, cooperation with China etc. These are advantages that render Greece a pivotal state in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In the perspective of this possible conflict, Albania – lacking many of the advantages enjoyed by a pivot state – faces two major challenges.

First, Albania should clarify its position toward the Greece-Turkey clash. It has not done so, because it has to take a stand on Northern Cyprus, revise cooperation with Turkey and Greece (currently both strategic regional partners of Albania[12]), or even define its role within the European Union. But Albania tends to hide behind multilateralism. This approach cannot last for long. The second, and even more important, challenge is the imposing capability on Greece in resolving the stalemate. Albania refers to conventions and relies on international institutions, but in the “world of regions” such initiatives are half-baked.

Moreover, in the “world of regions”, a more powerful state – in this case Greece in relation to Albania – may not act in accordance to international rules. Non-implementation of international law is a widespread phenomenon nowadays. (This is clearly evidenced in the Eastern Mediterranean – by both Greece and Turkey.) And in the event of the failure of multilateralism, further deterioration of the “world of regions” might lead to the fifth Bremmer scenario: a very different kind of fragmentation of the international order plagued by anarchy: G-sub-zero world. This scenario has a lower probability to materialize, but Albania seems completely unprepared to face it. 

BLENDI LAMI is a lecturer at the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations, European University of Tirana. His research interests include foreign policy, geopolitics and security. In pursuing these interests, he has been involved in several research projects, has published numerous articles and has participated in many scientific conferences in Albania and abroad.

[1]https://www.trtworld.com/video/social-videos/the-turkey-greece-mediterranean-dispute explained/5f5790263e5d6b001712b13c

[2] https://www.ekathimerini.com/256247/article/ekathimerini/news/greece-to-extend-territorial-waters-in-ionian-sea-to-12-miles-says-pm

[3]https://euronews.al/en/albania/2020/08/31/albanian-president-asks-government-for-more-information-on-greek-pm-declaration-regarding-maritime-border

[4] https://balkaneu.com/albania-there-is-no-need-to-worry-for-the-12-mile-extension-in-the-ionian-according-to-professor-krisafi/

[5] Zenonas Tziarras, 2019, The new geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean trilateral partnerships and regional security.  Peace Research institute Oslo.

[6] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/18/eastern-mediterranean-greece-turkey-warship-geopolitical-showdown/

[7]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/german-fm-spark-lead-disaster-east-mediterranean-200825141815909.html

[8] Ian Bremmer. Every nation for itself: winners and losers in a G-zero world (New York: Penguin Group, 2012)

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] https://gkoumoutsakos.gr/en/greece-s-geopolitical-added-value-as-a-basis-for-its-foreign-policy-a-strategic-and-institutional-overview/

[12]https://www.trt.net.tr/shqip/ballkani/2019/01/18/rama-kerkon-thellimin-e-bashkepunimit-ne-trekendeshin-e-partneritetit-turqi-greqi-itali-1128259

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Although intrinsically linked as neighbor countries, Turkey-Greece state relations in the last decades have been difficult and tense. The dangerous escalation in recent days with potentially serious consequences for the region and beyond, undoubtedly carries old historical credits, but it is also mixed with elements of today’s real-politics, mainly based on economic interests.

A few years ago, both countries survived the overwhelming effects of the global economic crisis which started in 2007-2008. Greece, which almost a decade ago was on the verge of bankruptcy as a state, climbed out of the abyss in a very damaged situation.

Tourism alone, eventhough the main engine of the economy, can not help in a rapid recovery of the economy. Moreover, for 1 or more years due to the pandemic, this sector will not be able to give its maximum. On the other hand, Turkey did not follow the same percussion.

However as an integrated economy with the global one, it is strongly suffering the consequences of the economic crisis, which is now being aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is therefore understandable that both countries are very eager to utilize their natural resources.

In recent years, the world’s largest companies have drilled into the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean, revealing the existence of extraordinary reserves of oil and natural gas, worth trillions of dollars. The great economic potential of these resources is very obvious, and clalss for a comaprions with the the rich Gulf states and their permanent conflicts.

In this context, in recent years, the alliances between states have intensified as well as the signing of agreements on the division of Exclusive Economic Zones. But many of these agreements are overlapping with similar agreements, increasing the possibility of strong clashes.

What is quite obvious in this situation is the almost total domination of the national and geopolitical interests of different states and the lack of international institutions, which could play the role of a referee.

The EU, NATO or even the UN are generally remaining silent as two regional powers, both members of the world’s largest military alliance, are “fighting” with each other.

Key actors in global politics, the US, Germany or France, are acting separately, supporting either Turkey or Greece, without a prior coordination between them that would try to guarantee what should be in the best interest of the region, Europe and beyond: reducing tensions and securign dialogue and consensus between the conflicting parties to establish the basic principles, that might help to find a solution for every disagreement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been frequently accused by the Western media, especially after the ruling on Hagia Sophia, of strengthening nationalist sentiments in order to stay in power as long as possible, through the demand for the revision of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty between Turkey and Greece, which delineated the boundaries between the 2 countries.

In fact, Turkey’s complaints against this treaty are old and have dominated most of Turkey’s ruling elite. The Turkish army, landing in 1974 on the Turkish-occupied northern part of the island of Cyprus was largely driven by dissatisfaction with the partition of thousands of Aegean islands, by this treaty.

President Erdogan and his cabinet brought this debate back to the forefront in the autumn of 2016, calling for its revision under international law. In fact, his political vision was based on the slogan, “Turkey achieves its goals in 2023”. Since then the Greek neighbors were very shocked and have ensued with a deep internal political debate on the issue.

Soundign the loud alarm that “Turkey will take our Aegean islands”, Athens is centering on an aggressive foreign policy focused on resolving border problems with its neighbors, leaving the dispute with turkey top be resolved afterwards. In this context we had the new negotiations on the maritime border with Albania, which marked a significant progress during the 2018 bilateral negotiations. Presntly they are frozen for an indefinite period with the new government of Prime Minister Mitsotakis.

Recently, Greece signed an agreement with Egypt on the allocation of exclusive economic zones, for which former Minister Kotzias has been highly critical, stressing that it will weaken Athens’ position in future negotiations with both Tirana and Ankara.

This is because the Egypt-Cyprus agreement was possible according to the principle of “middle border”, while the agreement with Greece was focused on the length of the coastline. In his pro-revision arguments, Erdogan says the Lausanne Treaty was signed by other countries rather than Turkey and Greece such as France, Britain, Italy and is binding to international politics as it was with the end of the Hong Kong return agreement to the Republic of China.

So he is pushing for a “big agreement” like the one the US is trying to reach in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians. He also mentioned the gradual suppression of the rights of the Turkish minority in eastern Greece, in the region of Western Thrace.

Above all, the Turkish governemnt has highlighted the militarization of the islands of Mytilene, Lemnos, Chios, Kos and Rhodes, which according to the treaty were to be demilitarized, but Greece has put there military bases, violating according to the Turks, international conventions.

Of course, the block review of the treaty can hardly happen, as this could set precedents for the reopening of many similar issues. However, President Erdogan, as a good player already tested in the geo-political arena, is pushing its claims, aiming to get the most out of it.

And the maximum gain can be a proportionate approach to the underwater oil and gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean, so that Turkish and Greeks, can enjoy the well-being guaranteed by the area’s vast natural resources.

The Turkish president himself has referred to several cases of the “win-win” approach, so reaching an agreement where everyone is a winner and there must be no loser.

Since this pragmatic concept is an endemic feature of Anglo-Saxon diplomacy, it is likely that the approach proposed by Turkey will be embraced by the great powers, which are currently shifting to this crisis.

However, will Albania know how to properly master the lessons of this standoff? How should it behave in the next rounds of negotiations with Athens on the maritime border?

I consider that in the first place the basis should be the decision of Constitutional Court of Albania, of April 15, 2010, which declared the agreement of 2009  incompatible with Articles 3, 4, 7 and 92 point “ë” of the Constitution.

That agreement had major problems, as the Albanian delegation did not consider the insituion of the President of the Republic during the negotiations, had serious problems with the content, did not apply the basic principles of international law on the division of maritime space between the two countries in order to achieve a fair and honest result, and did not consider the islands between as a special circumstance in the de-limitation of maritime spaces.

Secondly, Tirana considers Greece as a strategic partner of Albania, considering also the Greek vote on the process of European integration. But the fact is that much deends on the ntinalsim dispalyed in Greece, which rises and falls according to the left or right parties that govern the country.

There are many cases of clashes between the two countries, regarding the Greek minority in Albania. And very often even the smallest or most insignificant incident has been treated with very dramatic tones in Athens.

Thirdly, despite the fact that we are a much smaller and powerless country compared to Turkey, we must not forget that dignity and national interest go hand in hand in international relations.

As proven by the albanian forieng policy actors a few years ago in the negotiations with Greece, Tirana should not have any complex to raise for discussion many problems, the solution of which depends from Greeks, such as schools for Albanian emigrants there, or the issue of confiscated property to the Albanians of Cameria, treated as a human rights issue, and not as a territorial claim.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, we should not forget that Turkey is also a strategic partner of our country, which in the last 3 decades has given comprehensive assistance to the country, and especially for the modernization of the Albanian army, preparing it to become part of NATO. On the other side the de-jure paradoxical uholding of the Law of War, and the non-recognition of the Republic of Kosovo are a key issues that juxtapose our national interests to the relation with Greece.

Last but not least, our Foreign Ministry should engage its best experts to thoroughly analyze Greece’s recent agreements with Egypt or other countries, seeking reciprocity and a fair demarcation of maritime borders.

This is not just about dignity but above all about practical interests, which simply mean significant economic interests. It is not a coincidence that it is exactly in these disputed waters between the 2 countries, that British and American companies are continuing the search and  so far have confirmed the discovery of at least 3 oil fields, in the south part of the Ionian Sea.

The diplomatic “war” that precedes such agreements is not simply an attempt by the next government here or there. It is of major importance, as it will determine the fate of entire generations in the coming decades.

But unfortunately this important public discussion for Albania in the public opinion is treated as the usual Turkish-Greek conflict. As of May 2017, the Greek government has conceded marine quadrants for oil and gas drilling. And among the areas granted by concession was “Joni 2”, the square that lies north of the island of Corfu, part of which overlaps in the disputed area between Albania and Greece.

This area was given to the consortium “Total France”, “Elpe” and the Italians of “Edison”, and the first drilling was carried out in 2018, just at the time when negotiations were continuing on the issue of the maritime border.

Meanwhile in December 2018, Greece announced it would invest 500m EUR to explore for oil in the Ionian Sea. Drilling is currently being carried out by Hellenic Hydrocarbon Resources (HHRM), to a depth of 3,000 meters.

The oil and natural gas that will be exploited in the areas in question are expected to bring profits of up to $ 3.5 trillion in the next 2 decades, where about $ 600 billion will benefit Greece.

Unlike Ankara, which rightly defends its interests to the end, the Albanian government has not created a national consensus over these drillings in the Ionian Sea. A few years ago, our authorities confirmed that Albania owns 13 blocks for oil and gas exploration on land and at sea.

Among them is the ‘Joni 5’ block, where the oil-bearing area coincides with most of the Ionian Sea, in the south of the country on the border with Greece. The map made in the late 1980s, determines that the area in question starts from the corner of the Karaburun Peninsula, and ends at the southernmost tip of Albania. Tirana seems to be working silently to reach a new agreement with Athens.

Machiavelli quotes “Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we have to choose between them, it is much safer to be afraid than to love”. I think that official Tirana should turn fear into hope in order to maximize its success chances for the mid term future.

Dr. Arben Ramkaj is the President of the Interreligous Cooperation Center Elbasan and an expert on geopolitics and international relations.

The post The standoff between Greece and Turkey and the implications for Albania appeared first on Tirana Observatory.

Europe has become the key battleground between the democratic “West” and the authoritarian “East.” Having triumphed in three European wars, two hot and one cold, the United States now faces a much more complex and prolonged conflict over the future of the old continent with its two chief global adversaries – Russia and China. Both are expansionist powers that threaten Western interests and both have focused their attention on subordinating Europe. Their ambitions highlight the need for maintaining a strong trans-Atlantic alliance.

While President Donald Trump has periodically downplayed the importance of NATO, without Allied solidarity in a range of contests, including military capabilities, cyberspace proficiency, economic development, and democracy protection, America will be increasingly exposed to hostile actions by Beijing and Moscow. If Europe becomes entrapped by China and divided by Russia than the U.S. will find itself increasingly isolated and vulnerable.

Russia’s Offensive

Moscow views NATO as a military and political threat that challenges its aspirations to dominate Europe’s east. It also perceives the EU as a key adversary in its broader pan-European ambitions. The EU’s standards of legality, transparency, and competition challenge Russia’s business model. Its political and human rights stipulations undermine the autocratic governance model preferred by Moscow among its neighbors, as it is easier to manipulate such alliances than dealing with democracies that regularly change governments. Hence Brexit and other challenges to the EU are welcomed in Moscow, as they divide the Union, encourage bilateral deals with Russia, limit further enlargement, and may curtail aspirations for EU membership among states adjacent to Russia. The Kremlin also seeks to drive a wedge between the “Anglo-Saxon” countries (the U.S., UK, and Canada) and continental Europe.

Both NATO and the EU are subject to intensive disinformation offensives emanating largely from Russian sources. NATO is depicted as an aggressive organization controlled by Washington and intended to spread American hegemony over Europe and threaten Russia’s state interests. With regard to the EU, Kremlin propaganda outlets and disinformation warfare tools focus on several themes: the allegedly degenerate nature of European liberalism; Western anti-religious and militant secularist campaigns; lack of sovereign state decision making; democratic paralysis and political chaos; recurring financial crises in the Eurozone; failed multiculturalism; uncontrolled immigration; the mishandling of the pandemic and slow economic recovery; and the looming disintegration of the Union after “Brexit.” These themes help Moscow stimulate and influence a “fifth column” of movements and parties in various parts of Europe.

Kremlin propaganda offensives include both psychological and policy components. The objective is not simply to divide Western societies, many of which are already politically polarized, or even to cultivate pro-Russian states. Its primary strategic goals are to paralyze democratic systems, fracture international institutions, and incapacitate national decision making particularly in countries that may challenge Russia’s neo-imperial aspirations.

While Soviet communism had a unitary ideological message in the global competition between two distinct socio-economic systems, Moscow’s contemporary narratives are “multi-ideological.” Its messages lack a singular precept or core value but are tailored and adapted for maximum impact among a diversity of targeted audiences. These propaganda narratives include at least three major message clusters – traditionalist, progressivist, and sovereigntist. The “traditionalist“ narrative is constructed to appeal to anti-liberal, Euro-skeptic, social conservative, and conventional religious constituencies in which Russia poses as the defender of traditional values. Conversely, EU and U.S. leaders and institutions are depicted as immoral, deviant, decadent, atheistic, and libertarian.

In this propaganda vortex, the principles of NATO and EU integration are condemned as being in direct confrontation with traditional social, familial, and religious values. Whereas the Soviet Union proclaimed itself as a revolutionary social force, Russia now poses to conservatives as a counter-revolutionary power that cherishes stability, continuity, faith, and tradition. Paradoxically, fundamentalist traditionalism in a multi-cultural context can also be presented as revolutionary by appealing to disaffected nationalist youth as well as to the conservative older generation seeking to restore an idealized bygone era.

A second Kremlin-generated narrative can be designated as “progressivist.” It is a more direct successor to Soviet propaganda and crafted to appeal to Western radical leftist, militant pacifist, anti-globalist, anti-militarist, anti-capitalist, anarcho-nihilist, and radical environmentalist movements. It depicts Russia as an inheritor of the USSR, a staunch bastion of anti-imperialism and an internationalist vanguard against American global hegemony and corporatist capitalism.

A third distinct Kremlin narrative bundle is the “sovereigntist.” It often overlaps with the traditionalist agitprop but focuses on the promotion of ethnic nationalism, regionalist separatism, xenophobic racism, protectionist nativism, and absolutist state sovereignty. Propaganda campaigns along the sovereigntist front are designed to fracture Western democracies by promoting domestic secessionist movements and inter-ethnic or inter-regional rivalries, while urging the dismantling of multi-national institutions such as NATO and the EU that supposedly threaten state independence.

The three major narratives are not simply fashioned to passively appeal to Western citizens. The main purpose is to agitate and marshal people to act upon their perceptions and convictions. Agitprop can influence party preferences, voting patterns, and policy choices. It may mobilize the young to engage in protest actions, join militant political organizations, or actively support single-issue causes. Propaganda of the word is combined with propaganda of the deed.

Kremlin-linked oligarchs fund organizations and campaigns in Western societies that reinforce Moscow’s three clusters of narratives. In the traditionalist package, a number of ultra-rightists and populist parties have reportedly received loans, PR assistance, and campaign funds from Russian sources. In return, party leaders applaud Russia’s foreign policy and heap praise on Vladimir Putin as a strong and effective leader. Connections are also pursued with conservative church organizations, including evangelical groups in the United States that believe and preach that Russia is a staunchly religious and family-oriented country.

In its progressivist agitprop, Russian sources have funded or given publicity to ultra-leftist parties and movements that can help challenge the policies of Western governments. They primarily target the younger generation who are more inclined to participate in anti-government protest actions or they seek to maneuver green movements and other causes to promote Kremlin interests. Sovereigntist agitprop has benefited from a bonanza of ethno-nationalist, separatist, and pro-sovereignty movements in Europe. “Brexit” provided a valuable opportunity to support ruptures in the EU and even the potential breakup of the United Kingdom. Regardless of their merits, Scottish and Catalan independence have either been encouraged or discredited by Russian propaganda activists with the aim of disrupting the domestic cohesion of Western countries.

Various liberation movements in Western states, including marginal separatists from Texas and California, have been invited to conferences in Moscow. Such gatherings also enable Russian officials to showcase and legitimize separatist groups in Georgia, Ukraine, and other neighboring states, while excluding autonomist, regionalist, and separatist organizations active in the Russian Federation. Moscow has also encouraged ethnic, racial, and religious disputes and fueled other socially divisive issues in the U.S. The eclectic nature of Putinist agitprop not only broadens its appeal but it also ensures that countering Moscow’s disinformation is more challenging than in Soviet times.

China’s Offensive

Although Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains the major near-term menace to Europe and trans-Atlanticism, China presents a more pernicious long-term threat. Russia is a revisionist aggressor focused on dividing and weakening the trans-Atlantic world, but its capabilities are declining and its internal contradictions escalating. China is a steadily advancing global competitor with a large economy and a more durable strategy to subvert Europe and surpass America.

Unlike Russia’s failing Eurasian Economic Union enforced over a handful of poor neighbors, China’s pan-continental ambitions are backed by substantial resources. Its expanding global role is not dependent on military power but on economic penetration that is leveraged for geopolitical advantage. It is steadily displacing the U.S. as the leading trading partner in a number of markets. Beijing is also intent on becoming a leader in advanced technology and higher-end industry. The Chinese regime has no design to impose its system of government on targeted states but to change global standards for trade and investment that will favor Beijing over its competitors. China’s global ambitions are encapsulated in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), involving more than 20 countries and aimed at developing land and sea corridors linking China with Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

In exchange for economic investments, Beijing extracts diplomatic support for its policies and neutralizes criticisms of its abysmal human rights record. Beijing offers to boost poor economies but its investments entrap governments in perpetual debt. Similarly to Russia, China also blackmails or bribes vulnerable politicians and businessmen to favor Chinese geopolitical interests, conducts cyber penetration of Western institutions and companies, and is ramping up its disinformation warfare campaign against the U.S. and other democracies. China’s spying networks are also expanding and in particular penetrate the business sectors of Western states to capture industrial secrets.

Beijing has steadily increased its investments in many BRI countries and seeks to set global regulatory standards that will bestow advantages to Chinese enterprises and undermine the principles of free trade. Beijing has selected investment targets that are viewed as politically profitable inroads into the EU and has bought or invested in assets amounting to over $300 billion over the past decade. State-owned Chinese companies have purchased cargo terminals in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic rim and control about a tenth of European port capacity. China is also financing the building of roads and railways throughout South East Europe. This forms part of Beijing’s plans to link China with Europe by sea, road, rail, and pipeline, and also a means to exert political influence.

In 2012, China initiated the its “17+1” project with 17 countries from Central-East Europe (CEE). In exchange for economic investments, Beijing seeks diplomatic support for its policies or to neutralize criticisms in international institutions. Its acquisition of the Greek port of Piraeus help ensure that Athens dilutes EU condemnations of China’s human rights record and its ambitions in the South China Sea. This formula is repeated across Europe with Beijing aiming to divide Europe from the U.S. and prevent the emergence of an anti-China front.

Beijing’s offers to boost local economies are difficult to resist, particularly by relatively poor countries along the BRI route in search of capital. China’s geo-economic strategy offers substantial financing but without the regulatory and legal standards on which Western institutions insist. Western states need to implement policies that can contain Chinese influence but without damaging the economic development of BRI countries. They must boost Western competitiveness in foreign markets while ensuring that China’s investments adhere to international standards and do not push governments into becoming permanent debtors.

Post-Pandemic Struggle

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be a strategic setback for China, particularly in its efforts to make further European inroads. The Chinese Communist Party suppressed early warnings about the virus amidst widespread concern that Beijing’s pressure compromised the World Health Organization’s response at a time when multilateral cooperation was desperately needed. China will also struggle to recover its high levels of economic growth while the world remains in a deep recession. The country is reliant on global demand for goods and a protracted recession will highlight its vulnerabilities. If the crisis continues over a year and the virus returns to China, this could even destabilize the communist regime.

NATO remains the primary trans-Atlantic pillar that counters Europe’s potential subordination to Russian or Chinese interests. It has acted in unison to fortify its eastern flank and has developed a broad arsenal of deterrents and not only in the military arena. It has established several Centers of Excellence in Europe that rigorously monitor and analyze a range of threats – from terrorism to cyber and disinformation. Such work is indispensable for responding to the eclectic forms of contemporary warfare. NATO is the key institution that upholds American geopolitical influence throughout Europe and projects these to nearby regions while adapting to counteract new threats.

Where economics undergirds security, Western allies must re-evaluate their economic links with Beijing in order to protect their national and collective interests. In the wake of the pandemic, several American and European companies are likely to vacate Chins and seek more reliable partners closer to home. Growing suspicion over China’s economic and political objectives should also impact on Beijing’s BRI initiative. The EU must become more effective in screening foreign investment, having already declared China a “systemic rival” and “strategic competitor,” and boost Western investments in struggling economies. Given the escalating global crises in the wake of the pandemic, a rudderless Western alliance will become much more vulnerable to both Russian and Chinese subversion. This could weaken trans-Atlantic unity, provoke renewed conflicts in Europe, embolden Beijing’s and Moscow’s ambitions in other critical regions, and endanger American security.

However, the strategic tables can be turned on the West’s two major adversaries if there is vision and determination in the White House, particularly as both Russia and China have their own deep-rooted frailties. In the case of Moscow, a strategy must be developed to divert its attention away from external offense to internal defense. Russia has numerous economic, social, political, cyber, ethnic, religious, and regional vulnerabilities that have been starkly revealed by the recent collapse of oil prices and the spreading pandemic. China could also undergo economic contraction and a potential loss of markets across Europe and Eurasia as a consequence of the pandemic. This can generate social and political struggles that preoccupy the ruling Communist Party. Washington must also devise ways of driving wedges between Moscow and Beijing, as their looming competition over Central Asia and Russia’s East Asian provinces can seriously damage their strategic partnership against the West.

Janusz Bugajski is a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington DC. His recent book, co-authored with Margarita Assenova, is entitled Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks, Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC.

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During the first Balkan war, Austria-Hungary conducted large-scale humanitarian actions in Albania, an important and so far unresearched element in the relations of the two countries.[1] The Albanian-inhabited areas had received support previously as well; however, the organization of modern state humanitarian actions in this form was a new phenomenon. The change was brought about by the necessities created by the war: during the months it took the Ottoman Empire to fall apart, the position of Albania was rather uncertain, which, from the point-of-view of international law, made it impossible to maintain those Austrian-Hungarian financial channels through which the various Albanian organizations and social groups had received regular funds. The war technically also made local disbursement of subventions virtually impossible, just as the people were increasingly in need of money and help. Due to the war a significant part of the Kosovo and [North] Macedonia Albanians became destitute. Large groups (tens of thousands) headed for the Adriatic and tried to survive the conflict there. The war spared parts of the Albanian coastline but this area also witnessed enormous casualties. For example, the livestock of the North Albanian mountain tribes had largely perished, which, in the long run, undermined the economic foundations of tribal life. The war and the refugees created a catastrophe that called for humanitarian action.

            Thanks to the reports[2] of the journalists and war correspondents, the international public could keep track of how the situation of the local population deteriorated. Since late autumn of 1912 the public of the two Adriatic great powers had viewed the Albanian events with increasing concern. Political journalists more and more often raised the issue of launching humanitarian actions, partly to aid those living in areas devastated by the war and partly because of the rivalry between the two great powers. However, the war situation changing on a daily basis and the internal conflicts of the international diplomacy failed to allow a substantive discussion of the issue either in Vienna or in Rome. It was not before the spring of 1913 that the largest scale humanitarian action took place in Shkodër.

The fortified town was the biggest fortress of the empire. Following the general collapse of the Ottoman military in early November, 1912, it was only Shkodër, besides Ioannina and Edirne that still offered resistance against the power of the Balkan allies. The occupation of Shkodër proved to be essential both economically and politically for Montenegro, therefore the little Slavic state was determined to secure the town.

            Montenegrin forces cut off Shkodër at the end of October[3]. The besieged settlement provided shelter for a throng of people: besides a population of 35 000[4], as many military personnel and thousands of refugees were forced to stay within the town walls. Virtually there was no safe place to be found in the town as the Montenegrin and Serbian artillery bombarded not only the fortress but also the civilian quarters. Even the buildings of the Christians (e.g. hospitals) were not spared in the bombardment. Due to the relative safety of the foreign consulates, hundreds of civilians took shelter in such buildings which were then decorated with huge national banners of the great powers. In spite of the efforts, from mid-January on, the consulates also became exposed to bombardment. The town ran out of food and fuel already before the middle of winter. Ironically enough, Leo Krajewski, the Shkodër consul of France, who strongly supported the Serbian and Montenegrin ambitions during the London negotiations, became homeless during the siege as his home was bombarded to pieces; what is more he also ran out of food and fuel. He was provisioned by the military commander of the town and his fellow consuls. The personnel of the foreign consulates with the exception of the Italians and Austro-Hungarians were finally evacuated from the town in early March.[5]

            Meanwhile the siege was becoming harsher: in February, 1914, it transpired to the King of Montenegro, that he will not be able to come in possession the desired town in the London great power negotiations. That is, if he wished to secure Shkodër, he had no other choice than to storm it[6]. As it turned out, the King had not been mistaken: political considerations in the London conference on 22 March, 1913 prompted the decision makers to grant Shkodër to Albania in return for the towns of Peja, Gjakova, Prizren (the present day West Kosovo towns) which were granted to Serbia. Under the terms of the agreement the allied forces had to withdraw from Northern Albania and had to lift the siege of Shkodër[7]. The great powers informed Cetinje and Beograd about the March 22 London agreement in a number of joint statements, the last of which dated on 14th April[8]. However, the military actions of the Allies proved to be more difficult to stop at that point.

            Following March 22, the Austro-Hungarian diplomacy repeatedly called attention to the fact that the population and defenders of the town (not to mention the attackers) suffered and lost their lives in an utterly pointless struggle.[9] The temporization also failed to put an end to the countryside massacres against the Albanians. Vienna considered it the joint responsibility of the great powers to execute the decisions made at the conference[10]. As the participants ignored the objections of the Ballhausplatz, Berchtold adopted a harder policy. After King Nikita had ignored the March 28 collective démarche of the great powers[11], Mensdorff, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in London, attempted to arrange a European mandate for Austria-Hungary and Italy to execute the decree (that is, military measures against Montenegro). However, the idea was not supported by either Berlin or Rome. On March 26, the idea came up that the great powers should make a joint navy fleet demonstration before the Montenegrin coasts. Sasonoff, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs believed at that point that there might have been other possibilities to settle the issue diplomatically with King Nikita, but the fact that Montenegro continued to ignore the joint decree of the six great powers posed a growing concern for the head of the Russian diplomacy as well. When the French indicated that their battleships are ready to demonstrate the Russian presence as well, a five-Power fleet began to gather on the Adriatic Sea.

            The slow pace of the gathering and the lax blockade in front of Bar had been found unsatisfactory by the Monarchy in mid-April. Although the threat of military intervention caused the Serbian troops to leave Shkodër, King Nikita declined to abandon the siege. The King considered the naval demonstration as the open breach of the great powers’ neutrality[12]. The solution was further hindered by the Consulta, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which endeavoured to internationalize the question (Italian and Montenegrin dynasties were related!), in order to prevent Vienna from acting independently. What is more, Imperiali, the Italian ambassador in London having discussed his idea with Berlin suggested financial compensation for Montenegro.

            The open resistance of Montenegro and the April 23-24 agreement with Esad Pasha Toptani about the surrender of Shkodër finally infuriated Berchtold Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister to such an extent that he announced preparations for a military landing operation in Montenegro. The Ballhausplatz was determined to make further unilateral military arrangements: in the first days of May partial mobilization was ordered in Bosnia-Herzegovina[13]. To take such unilateral measures, however, Austro-Hungary needed the benevolent support of Rome which the Consulta would have granted on unfulfillable terms only.[14] The unilateral intervention never took place: Grey, the English Foreign Minister confirmed in Cetinje the imminence of an Austro-Hungarian invasion, while the Tsar government promised financial compensation to King Nikita in return for Shkodër[15].

            King Nikita had understood the gravity of his position and on May 4 informed the participants of the London conference that he was ready to submit to the decisions of the great powers and would disclaim possession of Shkodër. The next day, after setting the bazaar on fire and robbing all the merchants, the majority of the Montenegrin troops started to pull out of the town. Finally on May 14 an international naval force of hundreds of troops marched in Shkodër led by Admiral Sir Cecil Burney. Burney soon established the Council of Admirals which was to control the town and its immediate area. This council was the first international governing body in the history of the independent Albania[16]. On May 26, 1913 the great powers in London confirmed in a new resolution the Albanian-Montenegrin and the Albanian-Serbian borders[17]. On August 29, 1913, it was guaranteed in writing that Montenegro shall receive a loan of 30 million francs for Shkodër and that Serbia shall be granted the right to unlimited rail transport to a Montenegrin coastal town that was to be determined later on by the great powers[18].

While the future of the town appeared to be decided in London, in Vienna a decision was made to organize a humanitarian action in Shkodër. The action sought to secure food, fuel and medical provision in an evacuation scenario for the civil population that had been suffering for months. As the town traditionally had been the citadel of Austro-Hungarian advocacy and lobbying and one of the centres of the Catholic cult protectorate, failing to help would have resulted in a serious loss of prestige for Vienna among the Albanian locals.

            The Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested King Nikita to permit a humanitarian action, then contacted the joint Ministry of War as well as the Vienna and Budapest governments to arrange the practical details of organization[19]. The Minister of Foreign Affairs wished to avoid giving any political character to the action: according to his intentions the all food, equipment and medical personnel collected by the Austrian Ministry of the Interior was to be shipped from Trieste to Shëngjin in commercial vessels. To avoid any misunderstandings, he informed as to his intentions Mérey Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Rome, and via the ambassador he suggested to San Giuliano, Minister of Foreign Affairs to organize a similar Italian action[20]. A few days later Mérey responded in a telegram that the Consulta would be considering the proposal[21].

Berchtold did not mean to lose time due to red tape, therefore, in order to speed up the action, on March 22, 1913, he requested help immediately from the emperor. In his letter he shortly called Franz Joseph’s attention to the grave situation of Shkodër’s population and to the importance of the rapid humanitarian action. He needed the emperor’s patronage because he was planning to acquire the medical equipment, tents and blankets from the supplies of the Trieste garrison. He also requested a medic team, their being equipped with handguns with a view to the war situation and the appointment of a reliable officer to be in command of the action[22].    

Franz Joseph made the necessary arrangements that very day, so in the evening a letter could be sent to the naval department of the joint Ministry of War appointing as commander of the action Captain Ilija Živković, (in the sources: Elias Duschan Zsivkovics von Torontál-Sziget) a Serb nationality living in Hungary[23], who had already received his letter of command in Trieste. Živković seemed the perfect choice, as due to his mother tongue was able to communicate with the Montenegrin-Serbian command that led the siege, he had served for years in the Macedonian international gendarmerie, and had proven his loyalty to the Monarchy on a number of occasions.[24] The action was organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, besides the Ballhausplatz, the commander’s reports were received by the joint Ministry of War, the general staff[25] and the military chanceries of Franz Joseph and Franz Ferdinand as well. The reports sent to the military authorities contained a great deal more than just information on the humanitarian aid: Živković reported everything of military significance[26].

After winning Franz Joseph’s patronage, in the evening of March 22, the organizers informed the Trieste authorities about the action via telephone. The town management set up a crisis committee comprising experts from the naval authorities, the military and the Austrian Lloyd. The participants made a list of all they could offer for humanitarian purposes and organized the loading of food and equipment on vessels. On March 24, the governor of Trieste was pleased to announce that the Lloyd steamboat standing by, the Metcovich, did not suffice to carry all provisions, therefore the corporation provided another boat for the action. The name of this second boat was Albanien, in style.

            According to the report the governor sent to Berchtold and to Austrian Prime Minister Karl von Stürgkh, the Metcovich (under Georg Lucich’s command) transported a cargo of 1180 tons: 1200 q of rice, 800 q of flour, 30 q of salt, 7 q of tea, 80 q of green beans, 60 q of green peas, 15 q of fat, 160 crates of paraffin, 240 cans of sterilized milk, furthermore salt and preservatives. This food was provided by Lloyd from its stocks. The Albanien was to ship the rest of the food on a scheduled route: 800 q of rice, 700 q of flour, 60 q of green beans and 20 q of sugar. Besides, the Metcovich carried 4 camp stoves (to provide for 500 people altogether), 2200 plates and 500 spoons.

            A number of officers from the garrison were ordered under the command of Captain Živković (Captain Peter Altenburger; Rittmeisters Oskar Wawra, Friedrich Rechl and Karl Edler von Naswetter; engineer officer Julius Kromus; Lieutenant Karl Steiner, Julius Ledinegg and reservist Captain Heinrich Hoflehner)[27], and several volunteers also joined him (bakers, butchers and a war correspondent called Hermenegild Wagner, incognito[28]). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was also represented in the mission by Vice-consul Thautz[29]. The remaining military personnel (15 people with the medics among them) reported for duty in Pula. Besides the civil physicians (Guido von Beden, Albert Marconi, Paul Cagliari) five female[30] and three male nurses constituted the medical personnel. The little fleet also received in Pula 3.000 military blankets, 33 tents, medicine, bandages, 500 portions of tinned food, etc. The “Fratelli Cosulich”, a local company offered another 750 blankets[31]. The medical equipment altogether sufficed to tend to a thousand people. To cover the expenses of the action, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs authorised the commanders of the fleet to withdraw 20.000 francs in gold in Trieste from the local branch of the Austro-Hungarian Bank. Smaller private offerings were also available. Governor Hohenlohe estimated the total expenses of the action at 190-200.000 crowns[32].

            The Metkovich set sail for Shëngjin through Pula and Kotor in the evening of March 24, although the Austro-Hungarian envoy in Cetinje indicated that the military maneouvres may make it necessary that the shipment be transported in an Austro-Hungarian ironclad from the Buna estuary to Shkodër[33]. Giesl, the Montenegrin Austro-Hungarian envoy notified the Cetinje authorities about the expedition on March 25.[34]

Meanwhile, the Consulta, also in the course of a few days, organized their own aid shipment. On March 26, 1913, part of the shipment was already on the Albanian coast, while the rest was being shipped from Brindisi. Regarding that pushing the shipment through the Serbian-Montenegrin military blockade threatened to be rather complicated, Berchtold suggested his Italian colleague that the ships of the two powers form a joint convoy and attempt to reach Shkodër together[35]. Italy, in a similar fashion, also wished to avoid attributing a political character to the aid shipment. The aid was carried by the steamboat of Puglia (Flaviogioia). The ever-cautious Italians also prepared three river boats (Jolanda, Mafalda, Peuceta), to cover the distance between the coast and the city. The shipment, as in the case of the Monarchy, was escorted by plainclothes soldiers and physicians[36]. When the Montenegrin troops refused to let them through the blockade they cruised from Shëngjin to Kotor and joined the Živković fleet[37], as Giesl had, by that time, won permission to pass from the Montenegrin authorities in Cetinje[38].

The Italian ships arrived in Kotor in early April. According to Živković’s report[39], they primarily brought medical equipment, a complete camp hospital among other things. IN spite of this, the Austro-Hungarian officer believed that the aid shipment of the Monarchy had been better prepared and equipped. Živković acquired information on the spot and in accordance with the needs of the participants of the expedition, he placed some further orders: he requested Vienna to provide 250 litres of mineral water, 15.000 portions of biscuit, shoes, boots, 40 lamps for the 40 tents of the crew, 2800 litres of paraffin and 3 m³ of firewood[40]. He also held it necessary to send a medical personnel of 15 people, whom he needed for the vaccinations.

Despite the received permit, the boats were forced to anchor in Kotor, since the Montenegrin military denied them free passage on the spot. In mid-April Živković still did not know when exactly he would be able to move on from Kotor. It would have been important to know, as the bakers intended to make 24.000 portions of bread immediately before departure. The officer also communicated in one of his letters that the North Albanian refugees in Kotor requested permission to return home with the aid shipment.[41]

In the meantime, the joint fleet of the Adriatic powers increased by one ship, when another Italian boat set sail with an aid shipment. The Citta di Messina delivered food and some medical equipment and Italy sent it as a hospital boat to the Albanian coasts[42].

            The fleet put out only following the fall of the town on April 24. While the Montenegrin troops marching in Shkodër had hardly any food and equipment for themselves, the besieged town’s population faced such hardships that in order to be able to keep the town King Nikita sent messages to Vienna and Rome requesting rapid aid for the inhabitants[43]. Regarding the fact that it was the very Montenegrin military that prevented the shipment from passing, the two Adriatic power requested a written declaration from the King. In it Nikita had to state that he requested the aid actions from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and that he would grant that the shipments reach their destination. The King accepted these terms[44].

            The Austro-Hungarian and Italian units of the great power fleet were also informed about the arrival of the flotilla. Based on his on-the-spot experience Austro-Hungarian Admiral Njegovan sent a telegram to the joint Ministry of War proposing not to charge the Montenegrin army with the distribution of the shipment, because they were likely to use the foodstuff and the medical equipment for their own purposes[45]. The Ballhausplatz took his advice and after a short negotiation with the Italian Ministry they agreed that the distribution be supervised by the two consul-generals in Shkodër. The orders of the consul-generals were synchronised accordingly.[46] When the issue of distribution had been clarified, new shipments were launched to Albania from Dubrovnik (Lokrum 15.116 kg f foodstuff) and from Trieste (Brioni 5.998 kg of foodstuff and Dubrovnik 20.397 kg of foodstuff).

Despite his promises, however, King Nikita still would not let the shipments pass through the blockade. His ulterior motive supposedly was to secure the provisions for his army indeed.[47] A further motive could be his resentment against the great powers for still demanding that he hand over Shkodër occupied at great casualties to the autonomous Albania. The Montenegrin troops therefore still refused to let through the humanitarian expedition about which Admiral Burney also sent reports to London[48]. What finally allowed the flotilla to put out from Kotor was that Montenegro, bowing to the great international pressure, announced its withdrawal from the previously occupied territories (May 4.) and handed over the town to the great power fleet.[49]

Upon receiving the news Živković ordered the bakers to make bread and requested permission to take 5.000 portions of meat, rice and coffee from the army warehouses.[50] When the provisions were acquired, the Metcovich and the Citta di Messina put out to the Buna delta. The first smaller shipments to reach the town were delivered on May 8, by the river steamboat Skutari operating under Austro-Hungarian flags. As the Montenegrin army still had not left the town and the international naval troops were yet to march in, Austro-Hungarian consul-general Zambaur could only start the rationing with great difficulties.[51]  

The first major Austro-Hungarian and Italian shipment reached the town on May 10. The cargo of the Metcovich and the Citta di Messina was loaded on river boats at the Buna delta and the two ships returned to Kotor for the next shipment. The Austro-Hungarian – and presumably the Italian – boats navigating upstream on the Buna were welcomed by a throng of Albanians on the banks cheering (“Hurra Austria!”) and firing salute.[52] The town bazaar had been destroyed on the previous day (May 9) by the Montenegrin troops 3000 of which were still stationed in Shkodër. As the international naval force still had not arrived, the bulk of the shipment remained on the boats. The Shkodër consul-general proposed that the distribution be supervised by a committee comprising the two consul-generals and local Muslim and Catholic Albanians.[53]

            Following the marching in of the international naval force on May 14-15, steps could be taken to organise the distribution of the provisions. It was high time indeed, as the news of the navy’s arrival brought thousands of malissors into the town.[54] The consulates of the two Adriatic power, led by consul-generals Zambaur and Mancinelli, made arrangements for the shipments to be placed in and distributed from the local Italian school that had been spared by the bombardment. For the duration of the action, the Italian flag was lowered and replaced by Italian and Austro-Hungarian coats-of-arms. The distribution committee was also set up comprising 2 Italian and 2 Austro-Hungarian medical officers and 3 Muslim and 3 Catholic Albanian respectabilities. On May 18 Zambaur could report the setup of a temporary tent camp where till that time food had been cooked for 1000 people and 12.700 portions of bread had been distributed. Zambaur also observed that the correspondents and journalists who arrived with the aid shipments, like Wagner from the Reichpost, leave no stones unturned in order to be able to inform their national public about chance conflicts between the Austro-Hungarians and the Italians. And Wagner’s well-known anti-Italianism did not prove to be helpful in performing the humanitarian action.[55] On May 20, Zambaur had no choice but to refute sentence by sentence one of Wagner’s articles published in Reichpost.[56]

            In the local Italian and Austro-Hungarian funded hospitals the medical team also commenced its operations[57]. The physicians had already finished sanitary tasks by May 26. As their mission ran rather high expenses, they were soon ordered to leave for home.[58] For the hospital work, such as giving vaccinations, more physicians were needed. At Zambaur’s request Austro-Hungarian Minister of War, Krobatin appointed three high-ranking medical officers (colonel Leopold Terenkoczy and general staff physicians Bertold Reder and Thaddäus Majewski), and planned to send them off from Vienna on June 5. Their expenses were covered by the Ministry of War (equipment: 500 crowns; daily fee: 40 crowns[59]). As these officers were Živković’s senior, they were formally subordinate to Admiral Njegovan, the Austro-Hungarian member of the Shkodër Council of Admirals.[60] A telegram of June 1, however, illustrates the confusion on the spot: in it Zambaur and Njegovan requested the Vienna authorities not to send off the three physicians. In fact, as the work to be done was becoming less, they also proposed to order home two physicians (Beden, Cagliari), two medics and the five nurses from Trieste.[61] Accordingly, the three physicians did not set out, and the abovementioned staff were ordered to return home.[62] There was, however, another reason for ordering the latter to return: in a confidential report Zambaur informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs[63] that the team led by Beden failed to meet the requirements of the expedition. They perceived the action as a field trip and they spent most of their time exploring the land around Shkodër engaged in deep conversation (similar problems arose with one of the Italian physicians). The medical work was largely performed by the staff of the local hospitals.

Zambaur consul-general made calculations about the expenses of the expedition on May 26, which was necessary as out of the 20.000 francs withdrawn in Trieste only few thousand remained and that much was also quickly running out. What is more, the civil and the military payments had to be accounted separately: the former to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the latter to the Ministry of War. The salary of the civilians was determined on the spot by the medical leader of the expedition, Guido Beden. The physicians, received as much as the officers, that is 40 crowns daily, the nurses received 12-15 crowns every day (Mazzorana head nurse was given 15, the others 12-12 crowns each).[64] According to the finalised data the civil participants cost the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 13.360 crowns. Relevant documentation shows that the two physicians received 3.200 crowns salary, Mazzorana head nurse 1.200 crowns, the other four nurses 3.840 crowns. The two medics were given 1.920 crowns.[65]

            On June 25 Živković announced that the humanitarian action had been completed and also informed the Council of Admirals about the accomplishment. The Council thanked for the help on behalf of the local Albanian society.[66] The soldiers started to dismantle the temporary tent encampment. As Živković presented 11 tents, 560 blankets and 552 covers to the most destitute Albanian families he requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to arrange with the Ministry of War that he would neither have to ask these items back nor have to account for them with the military authorities. On the one hand, this arrangement could abolish the threat of an endemic, while on the other hand it could help the Monarchy avoid a great loss of prestige.[67] The Ballhausplatz readily granted the request.[68] Živković and his last 14 men finally left Shkodër on July 16. The Ministry of War decided to leave the distributed equipment with the Albanians and that the rest be collected and placed within the military equipment of the Austro-Hungarian troops serving in the town (29 tents, 2.440 blankets and 248 covers).[69]

Although the civilian participants performed their tasks with moderate success, the military leaders were basically satisfied with the army’s performance and commitment. The leader and the provisions officer of the action that is Živkovićot and Lieutenant Steiner were nominated for military award in November 1913.[70] According to the proposal Živković proved worthy of trust, gave excellent performance and as the leader of the action he greatly increased the local prestige of the Monarchy. Steiner received the award for his outstanding working capacity and his resourcefulness.

It was, however, not the last occasion that Živković visited Albania. As a member of the military taking over from the Austro-Hungarian naval troops, he returned to Shkodër as early as late summer or early autumn. In June-July 1914, he decided to invent occupations for the young Albanians wandering aimlessly in the streets. With his senoirs’ permission he collected the boys between the age of 14-20 and held physical education sessions for them. His personal file proves that Živković was a great sports fan[71]. The reason why the Monarchy granted him consent to teach modern European sports and fashionable competitive games to the Albanians was that in the long run Austro-Hungary had been planning to train an armed corps of Albanians. Sport thus served as preparatory means for the subsequent military training.[72] During this period Živković and some of his Austro-Hungarian comrades taught the Albanian youth how to play football and many other sports. As far as I know, this was the time when the first unofficial football matches were played in Albania.[73]

The leaders of Shkodër made steps as early as November 1913 to set a memorial in honour of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian humanitarian expeditions, and their proposal won the support of the Trieste Chamber of Industry and Commerce (Consortio industriale Triestino) as well in the winter of 1914-15. The idea of a memorial plaque also met the approval of the two great powers, and they started corresponding regarding the issue in winter, 1914. The text of the plaque had eventually been finalised by February 21 and paid tribute to the joint humanitarian action in three languages: German on the left (“Zur Erinnerung an die Hilfsexpedition Österreich-Ungarns und Italiens für Skutari, 8. Mai bis 29. Juni 1913.”), Albanian in the middle (“N’Pomêne t’Derguëmit t’Ndimës Austro-Ungareze-Italiane per Shkoder prej 8 Majit deri me 29 t’Qershorit 1913.”) and Italian on the right (“A ricordo della Missione di soccorso italo-austro-ungarico per Scutari dall’8 maggio – 29 giugno 1913”).[74] The two Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Trieste Chamber of Industry and Commerce offered to cover the expenses. The plaque had been completed by March 1914, and was ready to be transported to Shkodër. For reasons still unclear, the delivery never took place. Finally it was Italy’s declaration of war on 23 May, 1915 that prevented Rome and Vienna from setting a joint memorial to the humanitarian action.[75]

[1] Not only the relevant monographs and study books, but also the Austro-Hungarian and Albanian source publications have so far neglected to research the humanitarian action. Relevant works have put emphasis on the history of relations between the great powers and on Albania-related political issues in general (borders, principal, statute, capitol etc.).

[2] Ernst Jaeckh, Im türkischen Kriegslager durch Albanien. Heilbronn 1912.

[3] Mitar Durišić, Operations of the Montenegrin Army during the First Balkan War, in: Béla K. Király / Dimitrije Djordjevic (Eds.), East Central European Society and the Balkan Wars. New York 1987, 133.

[4] The population of the town in 1907 according to Ippen: 22.000 Muslims, 12.000 Catholics, 1000 Orthodox volt. Theodor Ippen, Skutari und die nordalbanische Küstenebene. Sarajevo 1907, 38.

[5] The most detailed accounts of the siege were given by a Jesuit monk, Carlo Villavicenzo and Hortense Zambaur, the spouse of the Austro-Hungarian consul. Carlo Villavicenzo, Im belagerten Skutari. Nach den Aufzeichnungen der Skutariner Jesuiten. Wien 1913, 7-21, 25, 47, 52; Hortense Zambaur, Die Belagerung von Skutari (10. Oktober 1912 bis 22. April 1913). Ein Tagebuch. Wien 1914, 10-20, 36, 49, 78, 96, 112.

[6] Durišić, Operations, 135.

[7] Ludwig Bittner et al. Österreich–Ungarns Außenpolitik von der bosnischen Krise 1908 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1914. Bd 5, Wien–Leipzig 1930, Mensdorff’s telegram, London, 22.3.1913, No.6261, 1032.

[8] Srbik et al, Österreich–Ungarns Außenpolitik, Bd.6, 1930, Mensdorff ’s telegram, London, 14.4.1913, No.6620, 146-147.

[9] Uo. Bd.5, 1930, Berchtold’s telegram to Gies, 18.3.1913, No.6197, 993.

[10] Joseph Swire, Albania – The Rise of Kingdom. London 1929/New Jork 1971, 139.

[11] Srbik et al, Österreich–Ungarns Außenpolitik, Bd.5, 1930, Giesl ’s telegram, 28.3.1913, No.6345, 1085.

[12] Wladimir Giesl, Zwei Jahrzehnte im Nahen Osten. Aufzeichnungen des Generals der Kavallerie Baron Wladimir Giesl. Ed. Generalmajor Ritter von STEINITZ. Berlin 1927, 242.

[13] „If the Monarchy see the time fit, it will execute without delay the European resolutions even on its own.” Srbik et al, Österreich–Ungarns Außenpolitik, Bd.6, 1930, Berchtold’s telegramme circulaire to Mensdorf in London, to Mérey in Rome and to Szögyén in Berlin, 2.4.1913, No.6418, 13. and Berchtold’s telegramme circulaire to the Austro-Hungarian ambassadors and to Giesl in Cetinje, 27.4.1913, No.6790, 263-266; Francis Roy Bridge, From Sadowa to Sarajewo. The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary 1860–1914. London 1972, 352.

[14] 1. Until such time as there is still hope to negotiate with Montenegro, military intervention shall be postponed; 2. a Serbian military reaction and the joint answer to that shall be considered; 3. the attack shall be limited to Montenegrin territories; 4. the Rome-Vienna relations shall remain synchronised following the action; 5. the Adriatic powers shall also synchronise their policy with regards to the southern border issue. Robert Kritt, Die Londoner Botschafter Konferenz 1912–1913. Phil. Diss., Wien 1960, 123.

[15] Katrin Boeck, Von den Balkankriegen zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Kleinstaatenpolitik und ethnische Selbstbestimmung auf dem Balkan. München 1996, 47.

[16] Srbik et al, Österreich–Ungarns Außenpolitik, Bd.6, 1930, Giesl ’s telegram, 3.5.1913, No.6873, 338-339.

[17] Id. Mensdorff’s telegram, 26.5.1913, No.7171, 531.

[18] Boeck, Von den Balkankriegen, 47.

[19] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11 (Hilsaktion für Skutari), Berchtold’s draft letters to Hungarian Prime Minister László Lukács, 19.3.1913, No.2171, and 22.3.1913, No. 2303.

[20] Id. Berchtold’s draft letter to Mérey in Rome, 22.3.1913, No.2309.

[21] Id. Mérey’s telegram, 23.3.1913, No.3530.

[22] Id. Berchtold’s letter to Franz Joseph, 23.3.1913, No. n/a.

[23] Lieutenant (Dušan Alexander) Ilija Živković von Torontál-Sziget (1870-?) was a son of an army officer. Following his studies in the military institutes of Košice, Székesfehérvár, and Wienerneustadt, he joined the joint army in 1893 (IR. Nr. 46). After his compulsory service he was promoted to company officer in 1902. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1907.  According to his qualification sheet he spoke many languages and was an outstanding, hard-working and sports-loving officer, able to maintain excellent relationship with his subordinates. During the action he served in the 32nd Infantry Regiment. KA 1. Personalevidenzen Qualifikationslisten, Kt. 3937, Hauptmann Elias Zsivkovics von Torontál-Sziget.

[24] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Trieste Governor Hohenlohe’s report to Berchtold, 24.3.1913, Pr. 1838/64, 3.

[25] Photographs of the expedition have been found among the files of the general staff. KA Zentralstellen, Generalstab, Evidenzbureau, AOK-Evidenzbureau, Kt. 3683.

[26] Lásd. KA MKSM, Kt. 15/1/21-18/1 (1913), 18-1/3-90 de 1913, Živković’s telegram to the Ministry of War, 15.5.1913, Präs.Nr. 8061 de 1913.

[27] KA MKSM, Kt. 13/3/41-13/4 (1913), 13-4/101 de 1913,  proposal of the joint Minister of War, Präs., 8.11.1913, No.3.325.

[28] The journalist was delegated by the Reichspost and joined the expedition on April 20, in Kotor. ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Berchtold’s note, 20.4.1913, No. n/a.

[29] Id. Rappaport’s draft letter to Thautz, 29.3.1913, No.205.

[30] The five female nurses: Pia Mazzorana, Elise Visentini, Augusta Brunner, Bice Kurschen, Anna Gollner. ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Guido Beden’s report to Zambaur, 21.5.1913, No.22.

[31] Id. Hohenlohe’s report to Berchtold, 24.3.1913, Prl 1838/64, 3.

[32] One subscriber of the Pester Lloyd, a certain  Dezső Hervey A. Md, for example, offered the sum of 1000 crowns for the mission. ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, the Pester Lloyd’s letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 29.3.1913, No. n/a. As the Ministry did not use the whole sum for the mission, Doctor Hervey requested that the rest of the amount be sent back to him. Id. Hervey’s letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 3.5.1913, No.299.

[33] KA MKSM, Kt. 13/3/41-13/4 (1913), 13-4/101 de 1913, proposal of the joint Minister of War, Präs., 8.11.1913, No.13.325, 4.

[34] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Giesl’s telegram, 24.3.1913, No.3639.

[35] Srbik et al, Österreich–Ungarns Außenpolitik, Bd.5, 1930, Giesl’s telegram, 25.3.1913, No.6299, 1056.

[36] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Mérey’s telegram, 26.3.1913, No.3827. and Berchtold’s telegram to Mérey, 26.3.1913, No.309.

[37] Id. Strautz’s telegram, 28.3.1913, No.4374.

[38] Id. Mérey’s telegram, 27.3.1913, No.4197. and Strautz’s telegram, 28.3.1913, No.4374; KA MKSM, Kt. 66/10-70/1/120 (1913), 69-5/6 de 1913, Živković’s telegram, 29.3.1913, Präs.Nr.4977.

[39] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Giesl’s telegram, 25.3.1913, No.3792. geheim.

[40] KA MKFF, Kt. 203, report to Franz Ferdinand [by Bardolff?, Ulmansky?], 2.4.1913, No. n/a.

[41] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, copy of Živković’s report to the Ministry of War, 15.4.1913, K.M.Präs.No.6417.

[42] Ibid.

[43] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Mérey’s handwritten letter to Berchtold, 17.4.1913, No.25B.

[44] Id. Berchtold’s telegram to Mérey, 25.4.1913, No.415.

[45] Id. Giesl’s telegram, 26.4.1913, No.4223.

[46] „Entsendung Lebensmittel Skutari erscheint nach Anschauung der Admirale nicht rätlich, da deren Verwendung durch Montenegriner für einige Truppen und Zwecke höchst wahrscheinlich ist.” ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, report from the Austro-Hungarian unit of the great power fleet to the joint Ministry of War, 27.4.1913, No. n/a.

[47] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Berchtold’s telegram to Giesl (No. 119.), to Mérey in Rome (No. 415.) and to the joint Ministry of War (No. 1908.), 26.4.1913; and Mérey’s telegram, 29.4.1913, No.4751.

[48] Id. Giesl’s telegram, 2.5.1913, No.655.

[49] Id. report from the Austro-Hungarian unit of the great power fleet to the joint Ministry of War, 2.5.1913, No. n/a.

[50] KA MKSM, Kt. 15/1/21-18/1 (1913), 18-1/3-80 de 1913, report from the Austro-Hungarian unit of the great power fleet to the joint Ministry of War, 6.5.1913, Nr.2177 and ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Giesl’s telegram, 7.5.1913, No.1778.

[51] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, report from the Austro-Hungarian unit of the great power fleet to the joint Ministry of War, 8.5.1913, No.2031.

[52] Id. Zambaur’s telegram, 8.5.1913, No.2092.

[53] Id. Živković’s telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10.5.1913, No. n/a.

[54] Id. Zambaur’s telegram, 10.5.1913, No.2446.

[55] KA MKSM, Kt. 15/1/21-18/1 (1913), 18-1/3-90 de 1913, Živković’s telegram to the Ministry of War, 15.5.1913, Präs.Nr. 8061 de 1913.

[56] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Zambaur’s report to Berchtold, 18.5.1913, No.17.

[57] ÖHHStA PA, XII/430, Varia, Zambaur’s telegram, 20.5.1913, No.235.

[58] The hospital of the Zagreb Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Shkodër operated at the expense of the Austro-Hungarian cult protectorate. Engelbert Deusch, Das k.(u.)k. Kultusprotektorat im albanischen Siedlungsgebiet. Wien-Köln-Weimar 2009, 621-623.

[59] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Zambaur’s report to Berchtold, 26.5.1913, No.22.

[60] This was the sum of the daily fee of the officers participating in the mission. Id. Guido Beden’s report to Zambaur, 21.5.1913, No.22.

[61] Id. Krobatin’s letter to Berchtold, 29.5.1913, No.8594.

[62] Id. Zambaur’s telegram, 1.6.1913, No.216.

[63] Id. letter of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Trieste Governorate, 2.6.1913, No.4154.

[64] „Ich kann nicht umhin, Euer exzellenz ergebenst zu melden, dass die Tätigkeit der sanitären Hilfsexpedition im Allgemeinen, als insbesondere jene des Leiters Dr. Beden in keiner Weise den Ansprüchen entsprach, die an eine humanitäre Mission in ernsten Zeiten gestellt werden müsste. Dr. Beden betrachtete seine Entsendung nach Skutari als einen Vergnügungsausflug, und beschränkte sich darauf, mit den Wärterinnen die Umgebung zu besuchen, die Arbeit auf Dr. Selem und Dr. Marconi abwälzend.” ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Zambaur’s report to Berchtold, 16.6.1913, No.37.

[65] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Guido Beden’s report to Zambaur, 21.5.1913, No.22.

[66] Id. Zambaur’s report to Berchtold, 16.6.1913, No.37.

[67] ÖHHStA PA, XII/430/12 (Internationale Administration von Skutari 1913), Njegovan’s report to the Ministry of War, 25.6.1913, Res.Nr. 1169/m.

[68] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429/11, Zambaur’s telegram, 29.6.1913, No.1864.

[69] Id. Zambaur’s telegram, 3.7.1913, No.414.

[70] Id.  Zambaur’s telegrams, 16.7.1913, No.3413. and No. 3412, and 7.8.1913, No.1471.

[71] KA MKSM, Kt. 13/3/41-13/4 (1913), 13-4/101 de 1913, proposal of the Minister of War, Präs., 8.11.1913, No.13.325.

[72] KA 1. Personalevidenzen Qualifikationslisten, Kt. 3937, Hauptmann Elias Zsivkovics von Torontál-Sziget.

[73] ÖHHStA PA, XIV/60/20 (Verhandlung zwecks Organisierung einer albanesischen Wehrmacht, 1914. II-VII), register of the Ministry of War to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 17.7.1914, Präs.No. 2837.

[74] If archive hints can be credited, then we may safely say the general staff of other great powers also took a fancy for the football, and they started to train their own Albanian teams, which probably played matches with each other. KA MKSM, Kt. 30-43 (1914), 33-1/14 de 1914, extract from a file of the Ministry of War (die militärsportliche Erziehung der albanischen Jugend), 8.7.1914, Präs.Nr.2837.

[75] ÖHHStA PA, XII/429, Juli 1915, the Skutar consul-generale’s letter to the Triest Chamber of Industry and Commerce. 21.2.1914, No.441/1.

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