There is life on Mars…
Who is Albin Kurti? Well, he’s best known as the leader of the Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) movement turned-political-party. The movement that he’s a part of has been very creative in their public demonstrations and graffiti art around Kosovo. And they seem like very bright people. Unlike other political parties here, they have a spark that many people are attracted to. It’s largely made up of young people, who have lots of energy and who want to build a country (or unite with another country to build a bigger country) that will best serve their interests. They also have a highly nationalistic following. I can’t quite vouch for what they stand and don’t stand for, so go ahead and watch the video.
On to the speech…
Albin Kurti delivered a speech in Vienna titled “International Protectorate” where he explained Kosovo’s current state of affairs. Kosovo is not completely a sovereign state because there are these international power structures that still hold the final say in various matters, and these int’l structures sit above the law (even though they implement programs that enforce the rule of law, they are themselves above the law–think about that one, “humanitarian democratic state-building being implemented by people who need not follow the policies that they are implementing”. It almost sounds like a kind of benevolent dictatorship in a certain way… or a benevolent dictocracy. Put that in your pipe and smoke it).
Peace is an industry, as Kurti suggests. What has been happening in Kosovo since the 1999 war is conflict management, not conflict resolution (even though that would be cheaper). He appears to be suggesting that the conflict here is being managed, or maintained (and dormant), so that it could be utilized at a later date for whatever reasons. And so an entire industry has mushroomed here to help manage chaos–not resolve the conflict. And they call it Peace, as if peace was simply the absence of war.
Kurti also makes some important critiques of neoliberalism. Here’s an excerpt: “International Protectorates generally push for privatization, treating national wealth and public goods as a burden from which we natives must relieve ourselves. Privatization is represented as the only economic idea even though it rather shows the lack of ideas. With privatization promoted as the self-evident truth, what happens is the privatization of profit and nationalization of losses. It doesn’t bring real liberalization, but rather shifts public monopolies into private ones.”
So that’s just a taster. Below are more excerpts from his speech, almost a transcription but not 100% verbatim.
Albin Kurti’s speech in tid bits
There is life on Mars…United Nations Security Council lives on Mars… Seen from Mars, life unfolds through different crises… From Mars one cannot see what is so obvious from Earth. That the real link between these crises is that they are struggles of people for Justice, Freedom, and Equality.
It seems that all is done for the sake of Peace… People who just came out of war need the international protectorate before the Peace… It is not a building… It does not come with engineers or architects of peace. It’s analysis is undertaken beforehand… There is no such thing as Peace-building… There is no such thing as Peace-creation.
Peace in an international protectorate is an industry.
Peace is not something you do once and for all or once in a lifetime. Peace is an everyday product, a repetition.
When peace is the keyword, then war is what is really on people’s minds. Not so much the previous war, but the future one.
International Protectorate… cares about how everything can get worse, not on how things can get better.
Int’l Protectorate names stability as progress… It is the crisis that is kept stable.
Int’l Protectorate in Kosova describes itself as a crisis management operation.
Shouldn’t the crises be eliminated and the conflict resolved? Rather than simply managed?
The shift away from the terminology of conflict or crisis resolution to conflict management, signals that the crisis is here to stay. It merely has to be managed.
The aim of the International Protectorate is not an exit of the crisis but the prevention of the explosion of crisis.
This has held us on the brink of explosion of crisis.
The intense focus on preventing a recurrence of conflict keeps the conflict alive and nurtures the possibility of an explosive recurrence.
Int’l Protectorate pours billions of euros into countries they protect. Stability is a very expensive thing. More effort is needed to maintain the status quo than to make progress. Staying still requires more money than moving forward.
Int’l Protectorate fears that whatever locals do can turn bad. So it brings a lot of money so locals don’t do anything. Locals are paid to remain passive.
History exposes int’l protectorate to their absent history.
It empties the country of past, future and even present. Since the Int’l Protectorate freezes people in a constant dangerous near future. So dangerous that near future stands in opposition to future.
An Int’l Protectorate is a doubly undemocratic kind of governance: 1) undemocratic in itself, because it is run from top-down command and has no internal democracy, 2) it is undemocratic for the country it protects. Local institutions are subordinated to the international ones in an absolutely way.
The Int’l Protectorate propagates the rule of law. But it is the international officials who are themselves above the law. And this renders them into rulers of law. Therefore the law does not unite people because they are all under it, but divides people into those who are above it and those who are below it.
At the domestic level… local politicians are obedient and servile; they are prudent and soft with the internationals knowing that it is not the people’s vote that matters to the executive power of the internationals. For local politicians, the only way to advance is through submissiveness.
International bureaucrats tolerate local corruption, in exchange for this they get paid back with local politicians servitude.
6-digit corruption is local.
7-digit corruption signals a local-international partnership.
8-digit corruption is an international affair.
The International Prot ends up protecting the elites from the people rather than the other way around.
Instead of working for the rights of the people, they talk about the needs of the communities. Instead of fighting for Justice, Freedom, and Equality, they encourage advocacy and lobbying.
Instead of protest and demonstrations, where dissatisfied people get together in a public sphere; they promote campaigns with billboards, TV ads in a public virtual sphere which people watch alone.
Int’l Protectorate suggests that the country needs civil society. But this is not contrasted with military society, but to society as such.
Civil society does not mean that a military society needs to become civil, but that society needs to become civilized. Consequently civil society destroys society. Society is there, civil society arrives. Society is an organic totality. Civil society is an aggregate of implanted units. Society arrives from below, civil society lands from above. The forging of civil society is done at the expense of civil society. International locals are the key ingredient to civil society.
The money spent in a country goes mostly to the upper class, which are already well-off: through rent-paying, restaurant visits, touristic activities, and they get the best jobs because generally they speak English.
Internationals write in their reports that the situation in Kosova is “calm but tense”. Calm means “better than in Afghanistan” and tense means “we have to stay here.”
A country with an Int’l Protectorate is the opposite of Greece. In Greece you have a normal country with abnormal situation. And in Kosova, which is under Int’l Prot, you have an abnormal country yet with a normal situation.
Int’l bureaucrats “always worried but never care.” With their double salary, low-cost expenses, no taxes, no accountability to the locals, and rapid career advancement.
In Kosova the monthly salary of the top int’l diplomats is over 30,000 euros, which is equal to 120 local average salaries of those who are lucky enough to have a job, or 360 pensions of the elderly.
In Kosova the shift from occupation under Serbia to a country under international protectorate seems like a shift from political prison to humanitarian hospital. The guards have been replaced by nurses. Yet self-determination is still denied. In prison, capabilities were suspended due to lack of rights. In the hospital our rights are suspended due to lack of capabilities. In prison, one is ill-treated, beaten, tortured, hated, but nevertheless retains political subjectivity. In hospital, there is no more torture or physical ill-treatment, but also there is no political subjectivity. The doctors and nurses decide. They generally say that the condition of the patient is calm but tense.
With an int’l protectorate you are not in transition since you are always in transition.
Asked to move abruptly from socialism to neoliberalism…
What we have instead is a country in transit and of transit. A transit country rather than a society in transition.
Manuel de Landa juxtaposes nation-states with metropolises. The state of a nation has to do with its control over its territory and borders. A metropolis has to do with the control of flux and traffic. Nation-states have armies, a metropolis has police. Nation-states are the majority of Western states, metropolis is a city like Amsterdam, New York, or Hong Kong, like an airport terminal where everyone comes and no one stays.
A transit country under international protectorate is such a country without state sovereignty, without economic production, without border control for the territory. We have transport lines without destinations, traffic on endless smooth asphalt, in transit countries there is no accumulation of capital, but only the circulation of capital. Capital arrives in order not to stay. Int’l Prot promises market economy, but what you get is market without economy. The only factories that work well are the Universities that produce armies of unemployed with diplomas. Int’l Prot generally push for privatization, treating national wealth and public goods as a burden from which we natives must relieve ourselves. Privatization is represented as the only economic idea even though it rather shows the lack of ideas. With privatization promoted as the self-evident truth, what happens is the privatization of profit and nationalization of losses. It doesn’t bring real liberalization, but rather shifts public monopolies into private ones.
Like from the viewpoint of Mars, there are no people in the view of the international protectorate. Conflicts are viewed only through the lens of ethnicity. What in modernity were tribes, in postmodernity are ethnicities.
It proclaims that it wants to build multi-ethnicity and multi-cultural society while starting from ethnic affiliation. From differentiating between ethnicities, it ignores what is in common among the people, what is universal among the people. Their need for freedom, dignity, healthcare, social insurance and education.
Universality would have brought about a multiethnic and multicultural society. By aiming for multiethnicity, one moves toward the solidification of ethnic particularities.
If we want a multicultural society, we shall accomplish it by not setting it as a goal, but rather expecting it as a natural consequence of universality as initial point. So we start with what is common among the people and that’s how we reach multicultural society, not by starting with what the differences are.
Int’l Protectorates promote diversity at the cost of solidarity, and difference at the cost of universality. Int’l protectorates do not see human beings, citizens, pupils, students, but only different ethnic communities.
We are at the major juncture in what in the parlance in the global policy-making is called global governance. The term global governance captures very well the view from Mars. It embodies the cosmic view of earth, of crises to be managed, of democracy and markets to be installed, and civil societies to be implanted by a global peace industry.
Global governance is busy reshaping societies and institutions
Int’l Protectorate in expression of global governance needs to constantly criticize its own creation. The new political system, the local political elite, the local administration, the local corruption. By constantly denouncing its own creation, the Int’l Protectorate is exposing its own failures. Out of this downward spiral of delegitimation, a void is created, a vital space is opened to allow new politics to arise, a new political movement out of the negation of the deterioration of the status quo. From stability of crisis we move to the crisis of stability.
Real changes come from below. But what makes them more than possible are organizations that act, and actions that imply organization.
