Another nation voted not like Washington and Brussels wished and the fact that this nation is Kosovo Albanians makes it twice as sensational. Having won in Kosovo, Albin Kurti embodies a dangerous villain, which the West has reared but can control no longer.
The people of this small European country did not fear neither European Union’s sanctions, nor U.S. threats and voted for the party of avid patriots called Self-Determination. The world of liberal globalism has cracked yet another time. There is a but, however. And more than one, unfortunately.
Not accepting election outcomes is twice as pleasant when an unwanted person wins. Albin Kurti, the Self-Determination leader and the current head of the separatist Albanian government, is such a person, an accomplice of terrorists and a radical Albanian nationalist, whose policies might lead to an outbreak of new wars and ethnic crackdowns in the Balkans.
Kurti might not seem that bad on the outside: compared to many previous leaders of Kosovo Albanians, he might even appear warm and fuzzy, as many previous leaders had so much blood on their hands having killed both Serbs and Albanians (during the war they did not spare those sympathizing with Serbs either).
Kurti was not accused of setting up concentration camps, mass murders, trading of human organs and even banditism, which was usual for that environment. For example, Hashim Thaçi, known as ‘the Snake’, faced all those accusations. In Kosovo, he was the prime minister, the president, he proclaimed secession from Serbia, made friends with most influential people of the world and could have claimed to be the father of the Kosovar nation, but now he is being held in detention in the Hague facing charges as an organizer and perpetrator of war crimes.
All Serbs know the Snake is a villain, but when he was president and prime minister, his policy towards Serbs and Serbia was much more peaceful than Kurti’s.
During the war, Kurti was a student activist spreading protests across Kosovo as a virus. This seemed not enough for him and he went cahoots with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters, which waged terror war in the territory, got 15 years in Yugoslavian prison, was declared a political prisoner in the West and released only after the fighting ended as a favourite of the European elite whom evil Serbs had tormented but failed to get rid of.
This suggests that Kurti’s anti-Serbian radicalism originated from a trauma and personal claims to Serbia. However, all Albanian leaders had lots of claims to Serbia: an ethnic conflict is always a traumatising experience. Rather, the problem might be that Kurti’s trauma was not that deep.
During the time, which had passed since the actual secession of Kosovo from Serbia, KLA gunmen grew older and wealthier with U.S. and EU’s financing. They like the new life: ceremonies, summits, having coffee with presidents at palaces. While having the coffee, many must also like remembering sitting in trenches and attacking the Yugoslavian police at night: many of them can go nostalgic about the past. But they hardly wanted to repeat all this for themselves and the source of their well-being, the State of Kosovo.
There were not fewer fans of pampered lifestyles among the KLA leadership than the dogs of war, but the real dogs of war did not survive to our days. Now there is Kurti instead of them. He has not seen war and this is why he is not afraid of war. He is instigating things where his predecessors tried to be careful and in Serbs he does not see an undefeated enemy to take mercy on, rather an eternal foe.
The albanisation of Ibarski Kolašin (North Kosovo populated by Serbs) and further absorption of Serbia, which still locates some municipalities with an Albanian majority, is not even the most ambitious programme. Kurti has even broader thinking, his aim is Greater Albania, an imaginary state, which will include not only the lands of Serbia and Albania, but also Greece, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
When U.S. and EU permitted the Kosovar separatists led by Thaçi to have their own country in the Serbian province, they strictly banned them from even using Albanian national symbols, let alone from talking of Greater Albania. According to NATO’s plans, Kosovo should have become a supranational multi-cultural state. It was ridiculous, yet important, to speak about this with those gunmen and the KLA: the West had its own experts on the Balkans who understood the dangers of indulging the Panalbanian prospect.
Albin Kurti is embodying the Panalbanian prospect with its entire aggression and opportunism. Even EU officials are not that silly and short-sighted not to understand the risks and the scale of a possible manslaughter, in which the Balkans might be involved still remaining Europe’s ‘powder keg’, in case of attempts to realize this prospect.
So, they wanted to get a handle on Kurti, they tried to threaten and exert pressure. The relation of the EU leadership with Kosovo in the recent six months resemble its relations with Georgia. The purpose is similar: to change government, as Kurti is taking too many liberties.
The West expects that Kosovars will come to terms with Serbs and Serbia to admit all of them to NATO, but they want Greater Albania instead.
EU – Kosovo funding programmes were closed last summer. European officials are boycotting Kurti’s government members and criticising ‘Albanian radicals’ in the media. In fact, the West has imposed sanctions on Kosovars. The outcomes are grim: PM’s party scored 50 per cent, this time, it got 42 per cent, but it remains the top choice anyway having the first right to form the government. Despite the critical dependency of Kosovo on the West, it only churned 8 per cent from the Albanian radicals.
A limited intervention from U.S. did not have an impact on Kurti and his positions. Earlier, Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Richard Grenell stated that ‘the whole international community’ is united against Kosovo’s PM.
Grenell knows what he is talking about: during Trump’s first presidency he was the special envoy in the Balkans being that magic person who managed to have Albanians offer some trade-offs for Serbs. Kurti, the opposition politician at the time, used these trade-offs to promote the idea of ‘national treason’ and took the power. Five months later, through joint efforts of the West and the old Albanian elite, they managed to have him resigned, however, he has won the second election in a row since then.
Such cases of U.S. foreign policy impotence are a good illustration of the futility of the programmes of USAID and various charitable funds, through which U.S. has spread its influence globally and in Kosovo, in particular.
They reared dangerous golems with billions of American dollars, which relied on their own convoluted minds thereafter. Afghan mujahideen rebels, Albanian separatists, Ukrainian nationalists: there are thousands of them.
Trump closed USAID exactly due to inefficient spending, corruption and ‘rearing’ uncontrollable monsters. Well, one would not want it to be replaced by something rational, successful and failsafe, if this is about promoting Washington’s interests around the globe. Washington has not just terrible counterparties. Its interests might be even worse, too.