(by Valeria Pace)
The Balkans "are again a fuse,
where a culture of violence and nationalism that finds its
highest point in the glorification of genocide continues to be
fomented," and where the situation "is even more complex than in
the 1990s," and for this reason Europe must commit itself "to
supporting the forces of change in the region." This is the
scenario that was presented at a conference organized by the
geopolitics club Trieste and the Veritas Cultural Center at the
University of Trieste by Francesco Ronchi, a professor of
international relations at Columbia University in New York and a
European civil servant, who has dealt with the issue as a person
in charge of activities in support of democracy in the Balkans
by the European Parliament and has recently written a book "The
Disappearance of the Balkans" published by Rubbettino. This
interpretation was echoed in the words of Laris Gaiser,
political adviser to the commander of the Kosovo Force from
October 2022 to October 2023, an "annus horribilis from the
point of view of the destabilization of Kosovo" culminating in
clashes in spring '23 in which 93 people were seriously injured,
including Italian soldiers engaged in the peacekeeping mission.
"The Italian mission," he recalled, "managed to prevent
three times new clashes that could have resulted in a civil war
with the capacity to destabilize the whole area. An area that
for Gaiser has now become very large: "The Balkans go from
Trieste to Mariupol," he repeated several times.So Gaiser
expressed the hope that "Italy will finally work on the Balkans
in the long term" since "the current government has said it
considers them a priority." From the Balkans also comes a link
to the conflict in Gaza and tensions in the Red Sea, pointed out
Federico Donelli, a lecturer in the Department of Political
Science at the University of Trieste. "The Houthi bombings imply
that commercial traffic is no longer flowing along the
Mediterranean, which risks shutting down the economy and puts
the Balkans at risk of spillover," Donelli explained.The
chaining of conflicts for the lecturer, is also demonstrated by
the new role Turkey, now heading the NATO Kfor mission, is
taking in the region."European countries have shown that they
cannot or will not take responsibility for ensuring security in
the Mediterranean and therefore Turkey is taking this role," he
pointed out.
A warning about the risks of 'Balkanization' that Europe runs
came from Paolo Rumiz, a writer and journalist from Trieste,
with particular reference to the suspension of Schengen, which
provides for "border controls" that "absolutely do not serve to
reject anyone" but "to re-accustom us to the idea of
nationhood." In closing, event organizer Father Luciano Larivera
pointed out with a quip ("If we forget about the Balkans, they
won't forget about us") that Europe "cannot put its head in the
sand" with respect to these tensions: "The Balkans are at home,
also because of migration flows and transnational crime and
because their complexity reminds us of that of the world in
which we are embedded: we are all connected," he concluded.
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