Jeremy's travels: I'M WITH STUPID ...and other insights from Macedonia

First, and most importantly: if I wrote my name in Albanian, I would spell it “Xheremi.” How cool is that?

I thought that for this week, instead of (or, more accurately, in addition to) just making fun of the places to which I’m traveling, I would provide a more substantive update on the situation here, the research I’m doing, and some of the more sensational things to come out of the mouths of my interviewees.

To set the context: the current governing coalition in Macedonia consists of 2 parties, the ethnic Macedonian “Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party of Macedonian National Unity” – which should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest party name, and which will henceforth be referred to by the Macedonian abbreviation of its abbreviation, VMRO – and the ethnic Albanian “Democratic Union for Integration” (DUI). VMRO was the closest thing Macedonia had to a Communist dissident movement. Today, it is a conservative nationalist party with close ties to the church. One American professor I talked to here called VMRO “crude and stupid,” and said it is made up of a bunch of “fascists” who are “turning this place into a police state.” DUI is an outgrowth of the National Liberation Army, which took up arms against the Macedonian state in 2001 on behalf of the country’s Albanians. It itself is in large part an outgrowth of the Kosovo Liberation Army (they have the same acronym in Albanian), though everyone here seems to have their own story on the real origin of the insurgency. Seems like a governmental odd couple? Well, yeah, it is – but then again, is anything normal here?

In 2006, VMRO formed a coalition with the other major Albanian party, the Democratic Party of the Albanians, despite DUI winning more seats than DPA. DUI threw a tantrum, saying that whichever Albanian party wins the most seats should be in the coalition, regardless of the biggest party’s preferences. This complaint reveals a prominent strain of thought in the Albanian community here: it is as if there are two political systems – one Macedonian, one Albanian. Each chooses their leader, and then the two must work together, even if they despise each other.

And VMRO and DUI pretty much despise each other. I met with an MP from DUI last week, who complained about VMRO’s growing uber-nationalist moves. If VMRO doesn’t start being more conciliatory, the MP said, DUI will need a new platform. The MP stopped there. “You mean, a more nationalist platform?” I enquired. “Well, I don’t know,” was the response. “But if VMRO continues to be inflexible, then it will be unacceptable for us to continue being flexible.” Read: things are tense, and about to get more so.

To be fair to DUI, VMRO has been partaking in its fair share of absurdity and provocation. For example, an architectural hodge-podge built in honor of Mother Teresa (see pic below) displays a Macedonian flag prominently, emphasizing her citizenship; a big cross, emphasizing her religion; and many mentions of her origins in Skopje, emphasizing where she is from, geographically. And yet there is no mention of her being Albanian. As one political analyst pointed out to me, the government lost a great chance to do something powerful – the Albanian community cares a lot about symbols, and VMRO threw out a chance for a big symbolic gesture of inclusion to the Albanian community.

Overall, it seems as if the leaders of the two communities, in an effort to prevent their being out-maneuvered by the other, have also made sure that the other does not out-stupid them either. Every provocative move by one is taken as a cue to return the “favor” in kind.

Not that ideology really matters. In a country with around 35% unemployment and in which the state controls many resources, political activism is job-seeking. Multiple people to whom I’ve talked, completely independently of one another, have described people’s view of political parties using the same two words: “employment bureaus.” The economic crisis has hit – though as one Albanian said to me, “We’ve had so many crises here over the last 20 years, what’s one more?” – and parties are often considered the best possibility for finding a job. Yet the Law on Civil Servants makes firing past parties’ employees difficult, so basically the bureaucracy keeps expanding, while the EU demands the opposite.

Speaking of the EU, it seems to me that just about everyone I meet here either works in or has worked in EU integration. Joining the EU, and perhaps NATO, is seen as the best – perhaps last – hope for this country. As one employee of a prominent NGO told me, “The only time I was optimistic was when I was working in EU integration.” So when Greece vetoed Macedonia’s entry into NATO at the infamous Bucharest Summit, people here really started to lose hope. “What have we gotten from democracy?” that NGO worker asked rhetorically. “With a Yugoslav passport, we could go anywhere without a visa” – everyone here talks about the visa issue – “but now we are a landlocked country that no one cares about, and we’re even more locked in because we need a visa to go almost anywhere.” The reaction, naturally and unfortunately, is nationalist defensiveness. Hence VMRO’s success. People see how destructive the party is, but in their indignation I guess they don’t care. “A bent head cannot be cut by a sword,” goes a Macedonian proverb I heard, referring to many Macedonians’ acquiescent attitude towards the authorities. So VMRO goes on planning a multimillion dollar 30 meter-tall statue of Alexander the Great that will achieve only the laudable aims of wasting money and pissing off Greece.

Probably the most colorful character I’ve met is a self-described “insane” foreign independent economic consultant named Sam who has lived in the region for decades. Though his completely freelance operation makes him a bit sketchy to me, his credibility was established about 20 minutes into our conversation, when the Minister of Health called his cell phone. Sam got irritated with the minister for trying to schedule a meeting at 9 am on a Saturday.

During his 1 hour, 45 minute giganto-lecture/tirade, in which he interrupted his talking at me to sip multiple huge cups of decaf, he criticized just about everybody. He thrashed the West’s (mis-)understanding of the Balkans, the commanders of the 2001 Albanian insurgents (“troglodytes”), Albanians in general (“they are intolerant of sharing space with others”), ethnic Macedonians (“self-destructive”), all of the country’s elites (“they can teach you nothing”), Macedonia as a whole (“it’s going backwards”), and by extension VMRO, as the party most responsible for sending Macedonia backwards.

His views can perhaps be summarized as follows: the Balkans is (or was) “the least nationalistic region” in the world. It was made up of multicultural societies, and the idea of “narod,” usually translated as “nation,” was not exclusivist. Then, a combination of Great Power imposition and misguided local intellectualism falsified history to create the idea of exclusivist, genetically borne nations. Albanians are the one exception to the multicultural rule, having lived in mostly homogeneous communities throughout history. Thus, when the wave of nationalism swept over the Balkans in the 1980s, Albanians were best equipped to ride it. At Macedonia’s independence in 1991, Albanians showed their unwillingness to participate in the state’s society by boycotting the referendum on statehood. Macedonians, “as usual, ten years behind,” were just getting going on the process of constructing their own pseudo-historical national narrative when the Albanians were most keen on self-exclusion – hence, discrimination against and exclusion of Albanians from the state’s institutions. By taking the Albanians’ bait, the Macedonians looked like the bad guys in 2001 and had to pay the price in the peace treaty. Now the two communities are entrenched in their suspicion of one another, and there are portents of another conflict, which he doubts Macedonia can survive.

On the potentially hopeful side, a new generation of Albanian politicians is arising that is exposed to the West and abhors violence. Yet this is only good news if Macedonians don’t “continue as they are now.” If they do, Albanians may decide they don’t want to be a part of the state, and they have the perfect crop of politicians to secede – nationalist moderates who can “explain their position to the West in the West’s terms.”

Sam’s financial independence allows him to maintain his political and ideological independence, which he does by operating under what he calls the “fuck-off principle.” He consults for free, but as soon as he finds out someone is corrupt, “I tell them to fuck off.”

Yet his outspokenness has its consequences. His apartment was burned two years ago. “It’s not a game,” he said. “It’s a minefield.”

I must add a word about what I’ve been hearing regarding the Greece-Macedonia name dispute. One jolly TV news anchor told me he’d be OK with calling this country “Northern Macedonia” as long as Greece calls its portion of the region “Southern Macedonia.” He added, “I don’t know whether I’m joking or not – it’s a stupid issue!”

“Stupid” seems to be the running theme around here. It is, unfortunately, an apt word to describe the way things have been handled by the region’s people, their elected and unelected leaders, and the international community.

I’ll conclude with a more nuanced metaphor. A man from the Skopje branch of the National Democratic Institute, one of the most influential NGOs here, asked me, “Do you like soccer?” Well, duh. “It’s like an ‘own goal,’ when you score on your own team. In Macedonia we are getting attacked from all sides, but on top of that, everything we do is committing an own goal against ourselves.”

Pictures: Skopje really started to get on my nerves, especially after my real estate agent – who got fired in part for finding my apartment outside the agency – stole my camera (or at least I’m like 90% sure). Luckily, that frustration coincided with my favorite holiday of the year, “Slavonic Enlighteners’ Day,” so I decided to take the opportunity to get out of the capital. I headed – new, cheaper camera in hand – for the town of Prilep near Treskavec Monastery, featured in “Before the Rain,” which is probably the most important Macedonian film. After seeing it I still have no idea what it’s about – all I got from it was “the circle is not round,” and I’m not even sure what that means – but the scenery is awesome:

Prilep

The center of Prilep, with Alexander the Great, symbol of nationalist lunacy in Greece and Macedonia – notice the map of Macedonia on the statue, which extends beyond this country’s borders. Exactly what Greece fears.