[NYC-L] A Community in remission or do I smell submission?

[Isa Blumi]

Recent exchanges between an unidentified "journalist"
and a US State Department (USSD) spokesperson at the
daily press briefings were interesting on a number of
levels.

The charge that the US govt. neglects to acknowledge
that Kosova is a creation of Hitler dominated the
exchange. The context of the assertions was an
explaination of the US position on the up-coming
discussions on Kosova's final status. While those of
us who read the transcripts may have been annoyed
and/or bemused, it should not so easily be dismissed. 

I am concerned that the nonsense uttered in public is
a damming indictment of our community/communities'
utter failure to learn from our past Public relations
disasters. While we have heard versions of this line
of argument before--Albanians in Kosova are either
Albanized Serbs or were imported from Albania to
change the region's population--that such arguments
have been progressivly reduced to sheer ahistorical
nonsense troubles me. Our adversaries no longer use
history to make historical arguments, largely because
their audience no longer knows the history of the
region.

In the past, propaganda from Athens/Belgrade and
respective diasporas actually used sophisticated
historical arguments to make their claims. For a while
it was argued that the Ottoman Empire was responsible
for the population distribution of the contested
regions of the Balkans. For instance, Serbs, trying to
explain the vast territorial coverage of Albanian
communities suggested the it was Ottoman policy since
the 18th century to colonize the Balkans with
Albanians. Setting aside the statistical,
archeological and ethnographic inconsistancies in
these arguments, they nevertheless reveal something
about the level of sophistication of the targeted
audience. Serbs and Greeks today think much
differently of their audience.

By evoking the Ottoman Empire, propagandists and
lobbyists once had to convince an audience far more
familiar with the region's past. It must be disturbing
to all of us that the arguments have evolved towards
the ahistorical, and more importantly, the time line
has been moved forward. We are no longer talking about
Medieval times, or the role of the Ottoman Empire, but
World War II (or worse still, the 1990s). 

One can see a progression here that probably reflects
the accurate perception that the audience is becoming
less and less knowledgeable of the region's past and
more and more vulnerable to the use of key phrases
(Islamic Fundamentalism, Fascist policies,
narco-terrorism, ethnic-cleansing) or the evocation of
assertions that are simply ahistorical. First it was
the Austrians and Bulgarians, during their Occupation
in World War I that populated Macedonia/Kosova with
Albanians. Later, as knowledge (interest) of the first
world war faded, the timeline for Albanian invasion of
Kosova moved to World War II. It was the Italians and
now Hitler who colonized Kosova with Albanians.

For this unidentified journalist to even suggest that
Kosova is a creation of Hitler, and not be immediately
laughed out of the press room is scary business. This
all suggests Serbs/Greeks know their audience and they
know this audience is getting less and less
information about the region's past and are
vulnerable. We must be terrified by the fact that the
USSD's spokesperson was utterly incapable of answering
the questions/statements made by the unidentified
journalist in the press corps. (how such a hack ever
got a press pass is another question that needs to be
answered). Unfortunately, by failing to responding to
the sheer nonesense of the questions/statements being
stated in this public forum, the transcripts will
forever give credence to the claim that Hitler did
indeed create Kosova. 

The response from our communities should have been
immediate. We should have had pressured the USSD to
make a public statement, for the record, that
immediately discounts the premise of the question.
USSD spokespersons always do this, clarifying a point
from an earlier misstatement. "The State Department
and the Bush administration does not accept the
premise of the question asked the other day..." For
the USSD spokesperson to at least on two seperate
confrontations, fail to call out the inaccurate
premise of the question has caused great damage, not
only now but in the future. The notion of Hitler's
role is now on the table, in the minds of many
involved in deciding Kosova's future.

That the Serbs have identified a progressively
vulnerable State department who know next to nothing
about the region's history should have sent alarm
bells throughout our communities around the world. 

I am not sure there has been much a of response other
than people sending each other copies of the
transcripts...and my concern here is that we are all
focusing on the Serb/Greek journalist rather than on
what the shameful/inept performance on the part of the
USSD spokesperson suggests. The US State Departmet is
simply not educated about the region. They are not
armed with a vocabulary to respond to such tactics.

This all suggests that Albanian Americans have failed
in the strategically most important component of the
struggle with Greece/Serbia.

It is stunning after so many years of PR failures,
that we Albanians are still incapable of putting
together a decent lobby in DC/Brussels. I suspect the
problem continues to be individuals who, despite their
obvious inadequancies, refuse to hand over their
considerable PR resources to more capable people. We
have so many talented, educated, articulate (IN
ENGLISH!!!) young people who need to be organized and
employeed in a collective effort to address the
serious knowledge deficit. Instead, we waste our
limited resources on expensive and largely
counterproductive trophies.

That the LDK, PDK and God knows who else have hired
expensive DC lobbist does nothing for us. These firms
know even less than the young kids being placed at the
Kosova/Albania desks of the State Department. Do we
need any better proof of this than the last public
statements uttered in Rugova's name in the US press?
What garbage. If that is what hundreds of thousands of
dollars in consultant fees buys, we are in big
trouble. It is embarrassing and only undermines any
attempt by hard-working outfits like KAN in Prishtina
to actually do something productive locally. Kosova is
out of the mainstream media and not a topic of
discussion in the DC/London/Berlin think tank circuit
for the simple fact that we are wasting our time and
money on PR firms who know nothing about the region
and the audience who will make a difference. That the
fiasco of the UN administrated Kosovo has not been
exposed, that the mass graves, the foot-dragging and
the continued sabotage of Belgrade/Athens has not
become headline news is a damming indictment of our PR
failures. 

How can some PR firm, staffed by very expensive
Americans help Albanians fight their battle of
vocabulary insertion with Serbs/Greeks? The fact that
they have not identified the strategic opportunities
and brought the struggle to the strategic battlefields
of the State Department, seminar circuit or press
briefings is an outrage.

Why is there not someone in the press corp asking
leading questionse very day at the USSD press
briefings? Why has no one yet hired an articulate,
well-educated and tough Albanian-American to counter
the daily bombardment coming out of the mouth of this
unnamed Journalist? This guy frequents all the press
briefings, meets other journalists and is often at the
DC seminars that inform policy makers and their
staffs. He is putting words in peoples' mouths and is
giving them history lessons.

It is time to stop being impressed by our associations
with members of the Senate or House (keep the
autographed pictures on your walls if you must) and
get people who know how to talk about the history of
the region, its current problems and future to live
and breath DC. This small cadre must talk with
journalists at the USSD press briefings, attend the
public seminars/think tank discussions and for God's
sake, we need some people who will befriend the young
kids working at the State Department regional desks. 

It should be a scandal to all of us that the US has
abandoned the region to the EU and use the Albania and
Kosova desks as an opportunity to train
just-out-of-college kids whose ambitions are limited
to career advancement. Instead of bemoaning this fact,
however, we must see this as an opportunity. These
kids know nothing of Kosova/Albania and are ideal (and
therefore essential) targets for indoctrination. I use
these words for a reason because that is exactly what
the unnamed journalist at USSD press briefings is
doing. Our enemies are putting words in the mouths of
State Department staff where there are none to begin
with. It is a necessary investment to send bright,
educated young Albanians to operate in the young
professional circuit of DC. Making friends and
educating the ambitious hoards that go to work in DC
is essential for short term and long term success. The
fact that we waste millions on PR firms who are
staffed by these uninformed American-educated
lawyers/interns just makes things worse. Clearly, the
level of the propaganda coming from our
adversaries/enemies has been dumbed down because their
audience is dumber. This is what is dangerous.

It is clear little has changed among the American
Albanians since the 1990s in respect to propaganda.
There are still those patriarchs who refuse to cede
decision-making powers to those who are energetic and
educated to lead an effective campaign. Likewise,
there is a failure to understand that we are the only
ones who can introduce a lexicon that will be used in
discussions about Kosova/Albania. Hitler creating
Kosova is now in the back of peoples' minds when
Kosova comes up; doubt, confusion has set in. I
promise that the US Left, especially those who
w(h)orship Chomsky et al. will be using this argument
soon. It is our task to put in the mouths of the
audience a vocabulary that accurately challenges the
crap that comes from our enemy's mouths. Let us enable
that pathetic USSD to stand up to Serb/Greek
propagandist who feel they are at liberty to get even
more outrageously ahistorical. Who knows, maybe they
will be able to reduce the argument back to Albanians
live in trees and have tails. Let us raise the level
of the discussion, let us return history to the
equation. 

Respectfully,

Isa Blumi, PhD. 

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