Ukraine and the Middle East, being the two big geopolitical hotspots, are crucially influencing stability in Balkans and overall position of Serbia. Our energy safety, export, investment, existence of the maneuvering space in foreign policy will depend on development of the crisis in Ukraine.
Positioning of Turkey, which is important for Balkans, the issue of radicalization of Balkan Muhammadans and the issue which scares the most, possibility of launching huge migration waves toward the Europe, depend on the development of situation in the Middle East. The blackest prognosis is that Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece are facing the destiny of an anteroom for Middle East and middle Asian emigrants, says director of the Center for Strategic Alternatives Dusan Prorokovic to Danas.
Are the arrests of Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija and stories about Serbs on Ukrainian battlefields coincidently matching in time?
I wouldn’t bring into relation those two things. Volunteers in Ukraine are people who have self-initiatively organized themselves and departed. There is no serious organization behind it. After the war in Ukraine is over, their engagement will be over, too. However, recruiting of young Muslims, Europe-wide, for participation in Middle East paramilitary formations is a serious and long-term project. We’ve been observing passively what was ongoing, with regard to this issue, in France, Denmark, Germany…No actions were taken, until a ‘bear didn’t come to dance in front of our door’.
Will rigorous laws be able to settle problems with regard to Serbian citizens fighting in foreign wars?
For ten years now our citizens are joining Blackwaters and other private armies, they are fighting from Afghanistan to Iraq, and no one is addressing that issue. The dust was raised only in case of twenty volunteers in Ukraine. That is telling us that laws have been adopted only after the pressure was excreted from the outside and that they won’t be implemented with much of enthusiasm. Some of those individuals are departing to wars for the sake of money, however majority of them are motivated with other things. An eighteen-year-old youngster from Novi Pazar, student of the generation who was killed recently in Syria, was not motivated by the self-interest. Unfortunately, nothing can be done in Kosovo any more with regard to this issue. That problem is in hands of more powerful players. It has its geopolitical dimension and overcomes the capacities of today’s Serbia. I would dedicate much more attention to Muslim factor in Raska region and, if possible, in B&H, where things are a bit different and where something can be done.
How do you look at the growth of the anti-American mood amongst Kosovo Albanians, even though the US is their main ‘friend and protectionist’?
I wouldn’t call it anti-Americanism, although it has and a bit of that, I would rather call it anti-Westernism. That is the trend all over the world, and what is a paradox is that it has been inspired by the Americans, themselves. The role of American infantry in Euro-Asia is meant for Radical Islam. Al-Nusra, Caucasus Emirate, Muslim Brotherhood and ISIL will be used for destabilization of the territory which used to be called by Anglo-Saxons – The Land of Rome. That would lead to extension of the American domination throughout the next century. Albanian Muslims are part of that equation. Unstable Balkans can become one of the geopolitical hotspots, which would prevent connection of the EU and Euro-Asian alliance and creation of the big continental economic block ‘from Lisbon to Vladivostok’. Radicalization of Albanians presents no threat to American interests at all, instead it is a threat to European states’ interests, and partially to Russia.
Russia more important than Kosovo
How do you comment assessments of diplomats in the West that public in Serbia would react more stormy on sanctions against Russia than on ‘handing over Kosovo’?
That seems to be logical. Serbs said in elections 2008 that they don’t have the power to fight for Kosovo. For the sake of truth, most of them are not ready to cross the final line with regard to formal recognition, however they are supportive to some kind of arrangement with Albanians. People have found very convenient Tadic’s parole ‘Both, Kosovo and EU’, since it helped them to appease their conscience. That’s why we have now this dismantling of Serbian institutions in Kosovo, recognition of Pristina’s institutions, creation of Kosovo Albanians’ army. On the other side, crisis in Ukraine will change the Europe. That denouement is seen here as the new opportunity and that’s the reason for having a biased atmosphere, since connections between Serbs and Russians are unbreakable.
