Day: April 3, 2024

NPR News: 04-02-2024 11PM EDT

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

French Foreign Minister Slams Azerbaijani Claims on Armenian Territory  Armenian News by MassisPost

Crossing borders has become safer for Albanians, but many still are haunted by the new, less visible, frontiers of a capitalist and racist Europe.

By Fabio Bego

From January 1 this year, Kosovo citizens were finally able to travel in the passport-free Schengen zone without going through bureaucratic procedures in foreign embassies. They were the last people in the Balkans to obtain this right and were preceded by Albanians who attained it in 2010. Analysis of Albanian illegal border crossings during the communist era and in its aftermath shows that the abolition of visas was the outcome of a long-term struggle against biased surveillance and profiling systems that still affect people’s lives.

Turning the frontier into a ‘death zone’

Illegal border crossings in Albania started after World War I when frontiers separating the country from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – later Yugoslavia – and Greece were fixed by the Great Powers. Those left on the Albanian side were separated from traditional mobility circuits and were exposed to famine and violence. Illegal border crossings became a necessity. After the end of World War II, the break in Albanian-Yugoslav relations in 1948 and civil war in Greece turned the borderlands into one of the most dangerous places in the Balkans. Borders and borderlands were strictly controlled by the Albanian army, initially as a means to prevent attacks from the outside. From the 1970s on, they mostly served to prevent Albanians from escaping.

The communist government created the Border Forces in 1945. An area known as “the border belt” (brezi kufitar), was instituted along the frontier to prevent the free circulation of non-local inhabitants. Soldiers moved on foot, motorbikes, and boats, according to the terrain. Their work was facilitated by tools and technologies such as the “soft belt” (brezi i bute) – a strip of rammed earth that preserved tracks – and the “electric-signalling obstacle”, also known as klon. The klon was a fence installed hundreds of metres before the frontier. It emitted a signal when someone touched or cut its wires. The space between the klon and the frontier was a death zone. Even if trespassers dodged the guards, they could eventually be captured by frontier dogs. The most effective means to stop illegal migration was the bullets of the AK 56 machine gun, the frontier soldiers’ standard weapon.

Authorities believed defence of the border started in the hinterland. The government adopted harsh laws to dissuade people from trying to escape. According to the penal code, any illegal crossing from inside out was an act of betrayal. The punishment ranged from ten years to death. Trespassers were referred to as “enemies”, “agents” or “bandits”.  The local population was mobilised to help the authorities. They were asked to report suspicious persons and form “voluntary forces” in order to chase those who tried to cross the borders. The Ministry of Interior monitored persons with “liberal” tendencies and “bad” biographies who were thought to be likely to escape.

The defence of the border was incentivized by the cult of the frontier, an essential communist-era nationalist myth. Borders were sanctified by the blood of soldiers who were killed in combat against foreign armies and political dissidents. Several monuments commemorating their sacrifice were built in the borderlands, and columns marking the boundaries of the state became a central element of the border mystique. They were called “the pyramids”. The border became a popular theme in art and culture. In November 1961, an art exhibition was inaugurated in Tirana to celebrate the heroism of frontier guards who were compared to national figures the size of Skanderbeg. Ironically, the author of some of the works, Zoi Shyti, crossed the borders himself illegally a few years later.

The ‘art of illegal border crossing’

The strict measures adopted for guarding the borders did not stop people from trying to cross them. The “art of border surveillance” (Jorgo Qirici, Ruajtja dhe mbrojtja e kufirit shqiptar, 2017) was countered by the art of border crossing. In September 1956, 56 people from the village of Germenji crossed into Greece and took with them a flock of 900 cattle and 40 burden animals loaded with material. Attempts to flee the country increased in the late-1960s, especially among the younger generations. People studied the terrain, sought the support of local populations and attempted to pass the klon with various tools, such as ladders. Some people used cars to pass through the checkpoints at high speed; others hid inside trucks and boats.

According to Jorgo Qirici, between 1966 and 1975, 526 persons tried to cross the borders. Only 166 were captured. One of those who escaped was Demir with whom I spoke in Tirana. Born and raised in the capital, his family came from Steblevë, a village on the border with North Macedonia. When he finished high school, Demir was denied the right to go to university to study architecture because his family were known to the regime as former supporters of king Zog, and the party gave priority access to higher education to students from working class families with “clean” biographies. Instead, the state sent Demir to work in an electric plant at Vau i Dejës. His disappointment convinced him to go to Yugoslavia and find his aunt who lived in Skopje. “All day and all night I thought about leaving,” he told me. The wedding of a relative gave Demir the chance to go to Stebleve and get closer to the border.

Ideas and plans of escaping often stemmed from conversations with friends. People talked about politics, anti-conformist music, films and other “subversive” topics. The fear of being snitched was big, but, according to Demir, people would have gone crazy if they’d kept everything inside. He confessed his intentions to a friend who gave Demir the names of his relatives in the town of Dibra, just across the border. Demir went to Steblevë at the end of September. On the 27^th, he left the wedding, and followed his cousin who grazed sheep near the frontier. Demir could spot the “soft belt”. It was a rainy day. The sheep had gathered because it was cool. Demir waited for the right moment and crossed the frontier.

After spending the night near the border, Demir ate some apples and started marching towards Dibra, 25 kilometres away. He found the house of his friend’s relatives and told them that he wanted to go to Skopje. They offered him shelter for the night. Demir slept until the afternoon, unaware that those he trusted were in fact “digging his grave”. The next day, they took him to the Yugoslav police. Demir explained that he was politically persecuted and that he had come to Yugoslavia to stay with his aunt and to study. He was sent to a re-educational camp in Idrizova, near Skopje, where stayed for four months and was not allowed to contact his aunt.

One day, the police told him that his request to study had been accepted and that they would bring him to Belgrade. It was a vicious lie. Instead, they sent him to the frontier post of Qaf Thanë. “This was the end of my life,” Demir bitterly told me. The Albanian border guards brutally beat him. The torture continued in the prison of Tirana where the investigator, a sadist, Isa Halilaj, hit him with a metal stick. When he was brought to the tribunal, he was so emaciated that his mother could not recognize him. The court gave him ten years. He spent four years in a prison camp in southern Albania and six years in the infamous prison of Spaç where he worked in mines.

But prison and death sentences did not stop Albanians from planning to escape. Archival documents show that many people convicted for border crossing tried again when they had an opportunity. In the 1980s, the regime began crumbling. The economy was in decay. A report from 1981 states that the majority of the persons who had tried to escape were from the “poor” classes, indicating the structural failure of the socialist state.

Albanians lose patience as communism collapses in Europe

Petro was in his early twenties when he decided to escape. He could not stand living in a state that offered him little prospect of self-accomplishment, and where party sycophants told him how to cut his hair. Many people of his generation felt that they were wasting their lives in Albania. The pressure to leave was summarised in the expression “o burra te çlirohemi!” (“Men, let’s free ourselves!”) Petro went to the borderlands in October 1988 when a friend invited him to a wedding in Zagrad, in the region of Dibra. Inebriated by the drums and the plum raki, Petro observed the mountains that separated Albania from Yugoslavia.

The border was very close; why not go to the other side? Petro asked someone from the village to bring him to the border. The man said “Yes” but asked: “What are you going to do on the other side?” “I don’t know,” Petro said. “Maybe the Serbs will arrest me. But I can’t stay here. I just want to leave.” Petro returned to Zagrad in February 1989, determined to escape. He had brought with him a little pig as a gift for his friends in the village. But just the day before escaping, the terrifying noise of the machine gun filled the space between the mountains. Two people were killed and one was wounded. Controls were temporarily reinforced and Petro had to go back.

As communist Europe was collapsing, so was the patience of young Albanians who were more willing to risk their lives at the borders. Petro tried to escape several other times. In 1990, he heard that there was a breach in the frontier with Greece near Korçë. He went there but found a horrible situation: “People were getting killed every day. Frontier dogs were eating people.” He wisely decided not to take the risk. The days of the communist regime were almost over, but the army still used all its might to prevent people from crossing the borders. In March 1990, the commander of the border forces ordered soldiers to continue using machine guns and bombs to stop trespassers.

The communist regime fell in December 1990 and illegal border crossing was no longer considered treason. This change encouraged more people to take their chances and leave. In January 1991, Petro received a tip: the border could be crossed near Gjirokaster. He went there with two friends and the group kept growing as they met other people on the way to the border. Two people offered to bring them to the frontier, and Petro’s friend gave them his watch to complete the transaction. This is how the business of illegal migration started in Albania. When they arrived in the village of Jorgucat, the group counted around 100 persons, including many women and children. Some went ahead to check if it was safe to go on. The border was guarded, but the klon had been damaged. This section of the frontier had two belts of klon. Soon after they passed the first, bullets were fired over their heads. The group laid down. Two soldiers and one officer approached them. The officer grinded his teeth and threatened to kill them, but then asked for money. The group did not have any money so they gave them their rings and watches, and the officer let them pass.

After 36 hours of walking, what was left of the group entered Greek territory and reached the paved road. Petro was impressed by his first contact with a world that seemed to be more civilized than the one that he had left behind. The group was stopped by Greek soldiers. After the Albanian soldiers had stripped them of their belongings, the Greeks stripped them of their identities. All their documents were sequestered. They asked for their names. Those with Christian names were sent to the camp of Amyntaio; those with Muslim names went to the camp in Kozani. Greek authorities treated the Christian Albanians well but behaved very badly towards the Muslims.  Petro has good memories of the Greek people that helped him, but the violence of the Greek police towards Albanians who had committed crimes, was no different from the violence of Albanian border guards towards those who tried to escape. Petro also criticises the Greek government because they did not give him back his passport and did not grant him papers. For years, he was forced to cross the border illegally to visit his family in Albania and go back to Greece where he worked. In the early 1990s, illegal border crossing became routine for him and many other Albanians.

Borders are not just about territory

After December 1990, the experience of border crossing took on different meanings for Albanians. The rhetoric of the border between “socialism” and “capitalism” had just ended. But Albanians started to deal with more primitive and ubiquitous concepts of borders for which there were no clear territorial boundaries. The border was virtually everywhere they could be heard or seen. It was in their clothes, in their “rowdy” appearance, in their accents, in their ethics and customs, in their tired and prematurely aged faces, in their poverty, in their language, in the shame of their failed state and politicians, in their innermost being of undesired humans. The communist dictatorship judged people by their biographies. The capitalist states took a more radical approach: people were not simply judged according to their own or their family’s deeds, but according to the features of their nations, races and religious groups.

The doors of the world were finally open for Albanians because they had brought them down at the cost of their own lives. But, as the past precedes the future, guards with dogs and guns will continue to chase them everywhere they go.

• About the author: Fabio Bego is a scholar of nationalism, socialism and colonial ideologies. 
• Source: This article was published by BIRN. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.

Traditionally, hardliners have made the absurd claim that all or most criticisms of Israeli policy in the Middle East are antisemitic, a vile accusation designed to shield the Israeli government from any criticisms at all. Yet even democratic governments—because they spend other people’s tax money and often seemingly care little about foreign non-voters’ (and sometimes even voters’) lives—often have incentives to take morally and financially challenged actions. In the Gaza War, the Israeli government is making costly decisions in terms of both lives and money; it is thus taking actions which likely will damage the security and prosperity of its own people. Is it antisemitic to warn against such actions? The answer seems to be no.

The primary dictionary definition of a Semite is a person who speaks any one of the Semitic languages—for example, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Hebrew, or other Canaanite languages. The common usage of “antisemitic” means being prejudiced against Jews. Yet Judaism is a religion with adherents all over the world; Zionism is a political movement supporting the creation and maintenance of the state of Israel in Palestine; and Israel is a country of 80 percent Jews and 20 percent Arabs. When talking of public policy, however, “Israel” usually refers to the Israeli government. Finally, more Jews live outside of Israel than within it, and some in the diaspora don’t support Zionism. Therefore, it is absurd to equate any criticism of the Israeli government with maligning the Jewish religion or Jews no matter where they live.

In fact, recently, some American Jewish politicians and media figures have criticized the Israeli government’s actions in the Gaza War—for example, the normally pro-Israeli Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Peter Beinart, a professor and editor at large of Jewish Currents. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Beinart reported that in 2002, Democrats supported Israel over Palestinians by 34 percentage points, but, in early 2023, that had flipped with Palestinians being favored by 11 points; in November 2023, among Democrats under 35, Palestinians were favored by 58 points.

Unfortunately, some of this shift in legitimate public criticism of the Israeli government has spilled over into illegitimate antisemitic actions on college campuses. Beinart noted that this unwarranted misdirection of hostility against external actors toward domestic U.S. citizens perceived to be linked to the foreign entities is an ugly American tradition—for example, hostility to German Americans during World War I, violence against American Muslims after the 9/11 attacks, and assaults on Asian Americans during the Covid pandemic. Beinart further cited research by political scientist Ayal Feinberg, who discovered that antisemitic incidents in the United States tick upward when the Israeli government takes major military actions. That finding is especially ironic since the Israeli government claims to protect Jews worldwide.

It is also ironic that a food-fight involving the right criticizing the left for antisemitism on college campuses has erupted at the same time that the gentile Donald Trump, former president and 2024 presidential candidate, has been criticized by many Jews for his attempt to define what it is to be a good Jew, saying that Jews who vote Democratic hate Israel and their own religion.

It is not antisemitic to critique the Israeli government for its slumber even when it was warned a year prior about a planned Hamas attack; for telling Qatar to keep funding Hamas three weeks before the attack in order to prevent Palestinian unity and a two-state solution; and for falling into Hamas’s trap by conducting an over-the-top of military response to the group’s heinous terrorist attack on October 7—thus raising overwhelming international condemnation of the Israeli government’s killing of more than 31,000 Gazans to date, with the prospect of tens of thousands more dying of famine.

Under international law, war crimes are not justified in response to war crimes. Some commentators claim that Israel is being held to a higher standard than applies to the conduct of other, bloodier civil wars—for example that in Sudan—and that that double standard amounts to antisemitism. But Israel is a developed democracy that is a U.S. ally; Sudan is none of these.

The American commentator David Brooks recently listed several options instead of the Israeli government’s massive invasion and flattening of Gaza from the air by using huge bombs in urban areas: 1) fighting Hamas with a lighter, more surgical strategy, 2) using targeted assassinations of Hamas’s leaders (a counterterrorism strategy), or 3) conducting a long-term counterinsurgency strategy. He found all of the options wanting, asserting that the only way to peace is through defeating Hamas completely by continuing the Israeli government’s pounding of Gaza into dust.

Yet from the beginning, most military analysts, few of them likely actual antisemites, thought eliminating Hamas was an Israeli pipe dream. In addition to grossly underestimating the threat from Hamas and approving Qatar’s continued outside funding of the group before the attack, the Israeli government disregarded President Joe Biden’s entreaties to avoid making the same mistakes of overreaction that the United States did after 9/11. The Israeli government did not listen. Instead of using the more rational retaliation of surgically targeting Hamas’s leaders over time, it began to whale away at Gaza, killing and starving civilians, and inflaming future generations to join groups that will likely become Hamas on steroids.

Even this more targeted response should have been a stopgap measure until a one-state or two-state solution to peace could have been achieved—because experts know that you cannot kill your way out of an insurgency. Instead, to eliminate the insurgency, the underlying cause needs to be removed. Even if the Israeli government turns the rest of Gaza into rubble, it is ensured to be ensnared in a counterinsurgency quagmire for many years—similar to that experienced by the United States in Iraq.

This article was also published in The American Conservative 

The United States is waging an illegal war in Yemen, where major shipping routes along the country’s coastlines have been disrupted by ongoing violence in the region.

Despite widespread understanding in Washington that U.S. military operations in Yemen violate U.S. law, U.S. officials continue to insist that they must continue their military campaign, which they say is necessary to saving time and money on commercial shipping through the Middle East.

“The U.S. economy relies on open sea lanes,” U.S. General Michael Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said at a March 7 Senate hearing, after being asked about the growing U.S. military presence in the Red Sea. “By our national security strategy, we will not allow a state or non-state actor to affect the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al Mandeb, or the Suez Canal.”

Since January 11, the United States has been directing airstrikes and other military operations in Yemen. U.S. military forces have been targeting the Houthis, a militant group that has been launching missiles and other attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea, Bab al Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden.

For months, the Houthis’ attacks have disrupted commercial shipping. The Houthis have insisted that they will continue their attacks until Israel ends it military offensive in Gaza.

Although some of the Houthis’ attacks have caused casualties, the major concern in Washington has been the implications for the global economy. As U.S. officials have repeatedly noted, as much as 15 percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, including 12 percent of the sea-based oil trade.

“The reason it’s so important there is this,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained earlier this year. “15 percent of commercial traffic is going through that strait every single day.” That includes “30 percent of the world’s container ships.”

Of particular concern to U.S. officials is the Bab al Mandeb, a narrow strait along the southwestern coast of Yemen that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. An estimated 8.8 million barrels of oil are shipped through the strait every day, making it one of the world’s “strategic chokepoints,” as Gen. Kurilla described it.

Although the White House has insisted that President Biden has the legal authority to take military action against the Houthis, several members of Congress have refuted its claims. At a Senate hearing in February, several senators called attention to the War Powers Resolution, which establishes that the president cannot continue hostilities for longer than 60 days without approval from Congress.

Regardless, Congress has failed to act, even now that the deadline has passed. March 12, the day that the White House was required to cease its military operations, “came, and went, in public silence,” as the Associated Press reported.

Even as the Biden administration and Congress move forward with an illegal war, there are alternatives to addressing the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping.

As some U.S. officials have acknowledged, the ideal and perhaps most obvious alternative would be to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. After all, the Houthis continue to insist that they will not end their attacks until Israel ends its siege of Gaza.

“I am very keen to see that there is a ceasefire in Gaza,” U.S. Special Envoy to Yemen Timothy Lenderking said during a March 29 appearance on Washington Journal. “I do believe that we can use that moment to de-escalate some of these other crises, including the Red Sea. We must get to that moment.”

Absent a ceasefire, however, it remains possible for commercial ships to circumvent the Middle East. Data compiled by the International Monetary Fund indicates that maritime trade is being redirected around Africa. In other words, commercial ships are taking advantage of other options for reaching their destinations.

The Biden administration has opposed both approaches, however. Not only has the administration continued to support Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, despite its acknowledgment of the worsening “humanitarian catastrophe,” as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described it, but the administration remains unwilling to tolerate the longer shipping times that are associated with the route around Africa.

“If you’re talking oil that comes through, we’re seeing a diversion of that,” Gen. Kurilla said at the March 7 Senate hearing. “It goes around the Cape of Good Hope. What that’s going to do is bring products late to market and price increases as well.”

Indeed, the priority of U.S. officials is to keep the Red Sea open for shipping. Their determination to maintain faster shipping is leading them to move forward with a war in Yemen that they know is illegal, even as they come to recognize more sensible options.

The first step in getting to a “just settlement” in Yemen “is the ceasefire in Gaza,” Lenderking said. “I think we can use that diplomatically to de-escalate the situation in the Red Sea.”

This article was published at FPIF

«Мы заплатили очень высокую цену»: что заявил Путин о теракте в «Крокусе» – Google Search https://t.co/0ML6boudoR pic.twitter.com/o0JTvxeyab

— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) April 2, 2024