An Introduction, Pt. II: A Disconnect

Disclaimer – This is neither a justification nor an excuse for current attitudes and actions; it is a very simplistic, watered down mechanism in which to understand the region, its history, and its attitudes.  It’s the International Relations in me that can’t help but write this one.

The Balkans is “not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.”  Any student of European history knows this quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck made to the Reichstag.  A couple years later, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he said, “Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal…  A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all…  I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where… Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off.”  On June 28, 1914, thirty-six years after Bismarck’s prediction and sixteen years after his death, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignored threats against his life and visited Sarajevo.  He was met by Black Hand member, Gavrilo Princip.

The rest is history.

The Western world views this region both romantically and dismissively.  These views have held the region hostage for centuries.  On one hand it falls in love with the concept - not reality - of Ancient Greece, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire, the exotic nature that is the crossroads between Eastern mysticism and Western Enlightenment.  On the other hand is held a centuries’ old notion that Southeastern Europe is not a part of Europe or a European concern.  What happens in the Balkans is the Balkans’ problem.  The weakness, the instability, the territorial infighting; it is never worth the bones of their soldiers or the time for serious policy analysis.

Southeastern Europe is less than two hundred years removed from its Ottoman yoke.  Under Ottoman rule, the region was known as Rumelia, meaning “Land of the Romans.”  Although the region was ethnically heterogeneous, ethnicity was not the driving force behind how the empire’s subjects were governed.  Everyday identity was governed by religion.  Religion separated whether one was allowed to ride a horse.  Religion governed what taxes one paid, where one could live, what occupation one could pursue, and what type of education one could be given.  Populations moved through the land not as Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, etc but as Roum (Romans, Orthodox Christians).

The wars for independence were just the opening battles of a much larger war, one that is ongoing to this very day.  As new nations formed from the wastes of Ottoman Europe, the war to establish - and project - a new national identity, to claim ancestral lands, and to seek recognition and legitimacy from major powers began.  Borders diminished and swelled, nations and kingdoms were formed and dissolved.  Religious classifications and identifications evaporated while national identities burgeoned.  Rumelia, with an ethnically heterogeneous population, descended into chaos as populations sought to make desired land ethnically homogeneous to further territorial ambitions.  19^th century Rumelia saw massacre after massacre by all sides, be it Roum or Turk, Christian or Muslim, to achieve homogeny or revenge, in the hopes of solidifying claims to villages, cities, and ports.  Alliances were made to curb the territorial ambitions of another; backroom deals made on how to divvy the spoils.  The 20^th century was no better.  Before World War I came the Balkan Wars.  After came a disastrous military campaign by the Greeks in order to claim more land from a dissolved Ottoman Empire; its consequences, from the burning of Smyrna to the “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations,” are ingrained into their culture, memory and written history. 

World War II.  Churchill’s Iron Curtain.  The Greek Civil War.  Further population exchanges.  The Turkish invasion of Cyprus.  The dissolution of the Soviet Bloc.  The dissolution of Yugoslavia.  The repression or total denial of minority groups in the Balkans.  The Bosnian War.  The genocide in Kosovo.  Today.

So what is the point?

We cannot hope to understand the Balkans if we cannot be troubled to take it seriously.  We cannot condemn Balkan nations for erecting fences and shutting its borders through only Western eyes.  Stability has never come cheap here and has far too many times been paid for in far too much blood.  People and their respective governments see another descent into instability.  People and their respective governments see another descent into Muslim rule.  People and their respective governments see their borders and lands being carved up.  People and their respective governments are still fighting this very day to have their identity recognized by the outside world.   Time and time again it never makes complete sense to the Western world.  I have encountered more than one volunteer that has metaphorically lifted one refugee with his right hand while he damned a Balkan nation with his left.  I have talked to more than one volunteer that has summarily rejected the very real fears and insecurities that dwell within a number for Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Serbians, Hungarians, Romanians, etc as mere childishness.  I have read more than one article dismissing the needs of Greeks while asserting that the refugee crisis is the only concern here.  All of these were from Westerns, whether they be American, British, or German.

I suppose all I am saying is that we can reject the fear but first we must understand it.  Everyone shouldn’t lose here and no one should be discounted.

An Introduction

It is best to begin with a disclosure about my thoughts at present.  I took on this three month journey because I am in a position to do so.  I took this on with an understanding that although I consider myself a “global” citizen, I am a guest here in Greece and the European Union (EU).  I am heavily interested and involved in my own ancestry.  I am the great grandchild of people whom I’ve mostly never met except through the stories of the living and names on monuments and walls.  I studied the political history of Southeastern Europe in Thessaloniki, Greece for the better part of three years.  I cannot help but compare the mass migration of people to the United States (US) in the early 20^th century to what is happening right now; hundreds of thousands fleeing war, poverty, and famine for a chance at a better life, met by a divided populace on whether those fleeing are welcome.  I cannot help but remember my distant family is one of many who fled a war and poverty-stricken Europe.  I took on this mission in my life because we as a whole are sometimes so far removed from the past that we blindly ignore its lessons.  We shrug collectively and indifferently, offering little other than saying, “This is different,” or some rhetorical platitude.  I cringed in horror the moment news broke out about Donald Trump’s (the current US Republican Presidential candidate frontrunner, mind you) comments on creating a national database for Muslims living inside the US and issuing them special identity cards.  It wasn’t so much that Mr. Trump said it.  It is how a large portion of the population agreed with him.  I cringed in horror, and still do, that we found/find it acceptable to even be having this conversation in any serious way.

This is not my America.

For weeks I have contemplated about what this blog will look like.  Will I make this solely about my volunteering and read like a travel book, perhaps in the vein of Robert Kaplan or Rebecca West?  Will I place American politics aside while focusing primarily on EU/Southeastern Europe?  How much of myself am I willing to put in these stories?  Where, if at all, does this story end?

Perhaps the best answer I’ve given myself is that I must be willing to challenge everything and to not be afraid to offer my voice to that challenge.  This crisis changes every day and I knew from the beginning I must be flexible to adapt to the needs on the ground.  So, at the end of the day, this blog will become an amalgamation of all these questions and challenges.  What I do know is that this post will likely be the last in awhile where I use the pronoun “I” so extensively because this isn’t about me.  We are these refugees, we are these immigrants, we are these people.  And the moment we deny that is the moment we spit on those who have come before us and deny the very freedoms and liberties we cherish.

That said Greece is fighting an unwinnable war on all fronts.  A country ravaged by austerity measures forcibly put in place due to decades worth of fiscal irresponsibility is now condemned for not having the money and resources to protect the EU’s southeastern border.  A country struggling to provide services to its own citizens is now condemned for struggling to maintain a minimum level of comfort and aid to hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed the seas.  The EU, likely still bitter over the years of fighting over austerity measures for bailouts, has opted for the same coercive, forceful tactic of threatening Greece, most recently with a temporary exit from Schengen Agreement if it could not control its borders (with the money and resources it doesn’t have).  Greece is bordered by no true allies currently in this crisis.  Macedonia (FYROM) has virtually shut down its border for everyone but a few Syrians.  Bulgaria has constructed kilometers worth of razor wire fences across its border.  The route to Northern Europe has been effectively dammed and Greece is the reservoir.  Meetings meant to discuss what to do about the crisis have excluded Greece from the table.  The EU has opted rather to invest in – or bribe – Turkey in the hopes that the Turkish government would be able or willing to stem the flow coming from their own borders.  People are still coming.

Greece is by no means blameless. Hard to stomach reforms to put Greece back in line with eurozone requirements has made the country stubbornly combative towards the EU.  The Greek government has been offered border assistance which had been denied on the grounds that it infringed on what Greek sovereignty still exists.  Greece has not been too willing to find common ground with the EU’s other member states by resorting to its own rhetoric and victimization.

The undeniable fact is that Greece, right now, is becoming the “permanent warehouse of refugee souls” that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras warned about this week.  The undeniable fact is that this crisis isn’t going away anytime soon.  The undeniable fact is that this cannot be Greece’s burden to shoulder alone.

So I am here, ready to extend my hand.