By reading Chirol’s recent travelogue posts (which I am personally loving), one would think that the Balkan people who hate America the most are the Serbs.
First, the Albanian view:
The waiter asked where I’m from in decent English.“America”Â? I answer.
“Which state you from?”Â?
“Georgia”Â? I respond
“How many you have, 51?”Â?
“No”Â? I say “there are 50. 48 are together and then you have Alaska and Hawaii. That’s 50”Â?
“No, Kosovo is 51”Â? he says with a smile. He’s Albanian.
Next, the Serbian view:
The shopkeeper was a balding 58 year old slavic Macedonian. He continued with pictures of his son’s wedding when a friend of his walked in. I said hello. They exchanged a few words and I managed to understand he was explaining I was an American visitor. The entering man’s face changed completely. He began what was clearly not a positive rant waving his arms around. The shop owner laughed. “He is Serbian. He hate your country. You help the muslims.”Â?
Yet in today’s breaking story about the Fort Dix plot, four of the six suspects arrested were Albanians.
The suspects include three brothers who are ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia: Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, who were living illegally in the United States and working together in a roofing business in Cherry Hill.The others charged in the case were legal residents: Turkish national Serdar Tatar of Philadelphia, Jordanian-born Mohamad Shnewer of Cherry Hill and Agron Abdullahu, [an Albanian from the former Yugoslavia] and lived in Buena Vista Township, N.J. Shnewer worked as a cab driver, while the other two worked in a convenience store and a supermarket.
So who hates us in the Balkans, the Orthodox Serbs or the Albanian Muslims? As the Star Ledger reports, more than 4,000 Albanian Kosovars fleeing from ethnic persecution in their homeland came to the US in 1999. Where did they stay? Fort Dix. And among them was then 17-year old Agron Abdullahu, who came to the US with his family. Yet all the work by government and social service agencies, religious organizations and refugee groups to acclimate them to a new language and culture and ease them into a new life. And this is the result.
Most Albanians are horrified and stunned by the news. As the head of the Albanic-Islamic Cultural Center in Staten Island said:
“It’s unbelievable. ... As an Albanian, as a Muslim, this is against all what we believe in. This is against all humanity. We Albanians owe to this country a lot, more than everybody else. They have helped us during the war. They are still helping us. You could not explain it, why this could happen.”
For all the explanations of root-causes of terrorism being attributed to US foreign policy, poverty, clashes of civilizations, and whatever else, I couldn’t help but thinking about Robert Kaplan’s opening paragraph from the essay The Coming Anarchy regarding the chaos in Sierra Leone:
“In forty-five years I have never seen things so bad. We did not manage ourselves well after the British departed. But what we have now is something worse—the revenge of the poor, of the social failures, of the people least able to bring up children in a modern society.” Then he referred to the recent coup in the West African country Sierra Leone. “The boys who took power in Sierra Leone come from houses like this.” The Minister jabbed his finger at a corrugated metal shack teeming with children. “In three months these boys confiscated all the official Mercedes, Volvos, and BMWs and willfully wrecked them on the road.” The Minister mentioned one of the coup’s leaders, Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa, who shot the people who had paid for his schooling, “in order to erase the humiliation and mitigate the power his middle-class sponsors held over him.”
This, combined with today’s Fort Dix scare, shows that as America endeavors to save the world from itself, even the best results from the best intentions can result in further terror.
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COMMENTS / 11 COMMENTS
davesgonechina added these pithy words on 09 May 07 at 9:24 amFor what its worth, when I went through Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia in 2005, no one gave me crap about being an American. In fact, the one thing everybody told me in each country was that they still resented each other (a Croat doctor told me that the cable cars in Belgrade were a death trap and the entire city was disintegrating, for example) and everybody missed Tito and the old Yugoslavia. And no lost love for Slobo.
I tend to think that Thomas Friedman, much as I loathe him, had a point when he talked about super-empowered individuals. Except anybody can be one. The world is now a place where any one person, should they so choose, can inflict great damage, thanks to technology and globalization.
I’d think of Agron as being like the VA Tech shooter or the Columbine kids; a single individual whose anger over some perceived unfairness led him to violent extremes. It’s one thing to protect yourself, it’s quite another to think you can cleanse the world of such tragedies.
Liborale added these pithy words on 09 May 07 at 2:17 pmIf any people have a reason to hate the USA its the Serbs as the US and its NATO allies bombed Serbia and aided the Kosovar Albanians to effectively secede from a sovereign country. Which is not to say that Serbia (Yugoslavia) under Milosevich did not deserve it.
Davesgonechina,
Unlike the VA Tech shooter, Agron was part of an organized group, and like so many similar terrorist groups around the world today, the common link may turn out to be an international islamist ideology which is anti-West and anti-USA.
jon added these pithy words on 09 May 07 at 3:40 pmFrom what I’ve read, these guys sound less capable and sane than the VA Tech shooter. The difference is that these guys were social enough to connect with others having the same feelings.
Also, the US attorney on the case, Chris Christie, is a bit of a publicity hound. I would not be suprised if he made them seem more capable than they actually were. It isn’t like this was a plot that was averted late in the planning process or discovered just before execution. They knew who these guys were for 15 months. They were just trying to see if they could cast a wider net by leaving them in play.
von Kaufman-Turkestansky added these pithy words on 09 May 07 at 4:35 pmPeter Zeihan of Stratfor wrote an update that came out today called “Serbia’s Choice”. Zeihan says that the choice is basically for Serbia to swallow its wounded pride, accept humiliation for the 5th time in the last 15 years and try to move on; or try to resist and end in almost certain downfall. But he also notes this:
...But right from the beginning the writing was on the wall. NATO had, in essence, been lured into fighting the Kosovar Albanians’ war of independence for them. Thus, shy of a direct pullout of NATO forces that would leave Belgrade’s payback-desiring security forces responsible for Kosovo, there is nothing that can reverse the reality on the ground.Americans, by the way, can go to Serbia visa-free. I was recently in Belgrade with some US citizen pals, and I found that if there was any hostility to Americans or Canadians in that city, they certainly did a good job of hiding it. Not that I would rule out meeting individuals unhappy with the events of the last 15 years and possibly willing to act out at people from North America – I wasn’t there long enough to really say for sure. But still, I was impressed with Belgrade in many ways.
Brian added these pithy words on 09 May 07 at 4:50 pmMy first thought upon hearing that the would be terrorists were mostly Yugoslav was that they had to be Islamic radicals. How else can you explain why they would want to attack the country that saved their skins from the Serbs?
Most likely the 6 people involved didn’t give a fig for their national origins, they viewed themselves as part of the world wide Islamic community, and were motivated to attack because of the perceived American wrongs against that wider community.
Are we really surprised that these men acted the way they did? Their homelands were ruled by brutal dictatorships, and American society is so radically different they simply didn’t know what to make of it.
These men were obviously socially deficient in American society, they knew this and latched on to Islamic Imperialism as a justification their alienation. Sam Harris wrote in Letter to a Christian nation that all religions, in their most zealous form, essentially deranges a person. In this pathetic instance we clearly see the fruits thereof.
a517dogg added these pithy words on 09 May 07 at 5:10 pmAgree with Brian. These Fort Dix would-be attackers aren’t representative of Albanians anymore than they are of Muslims.
Rommel added these pithy words on 09 May 07 at 6:33 pmBrian,
Word. Also, you would probably be interested in Christopher Hitchens’ new book. Not my cup of tea, but a lot of his ideas on how religion can poison people and societies are valid. I particularly enjoyed the excerpts on Slate about Islam and Mormonism – the latter being hilarious at times.
Jon wrote:
From what I’ve read, these guys sound less capable and sane than the VA Tech shooter. The difference is that these guys were social enough to connect with others having the same feelings.Less capable, certainly but less sane? Doubtful. Group psychosis is a rare phenomenon and these guys don’t appear to be suffering from mental instability, other than a twisted ideology. The VA tech shooter was psychotic without a doubt and at the same time completely competent when it came to senseless killing. In fact I am reminded of the old joke where a man is having car trouble near a mental institute, and a mental patient outside by the gate is giving him good, competent advice on what the man should do. When the man thanks him and asks how such a clever guy ended up in a state hospital, the patient replies “I’m crazy, not stupid…”
lirelou added these pithy words on 10 May 07 at 12:31 amYes, well growing up in America didn’t stop Tim McVeigh from getting warped. And despite $22 billion in welfare and matching payments to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the ultra-nationalists were able to whip up a lot of anti-American sentiment during the carefully pre-fabricated “Vieques” crisis, and convicted terrorists can hide for years because they are viewed as heroes of “la patria”. Every group has their 10 % perfected idiots.
Michael added these pithy words on 10 May 07 at 12:41 amJust found this essay on John Scalzi’s weblog (writer of military science fiction, for those of you who aren’t sf fans).
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.html
One of the things that jumped out at me was the feeling described, by him or by one of the commentors, when having to ask for help with something. Or having that help offered without asking.
Most people don’t come out of an environment like that warped and evil. But is it so surprising that some do?*shrug* Just thought I’d add that to the debate.
solution added these pithy words on 10 May 07 at 10:14 amDumb americans need to stop taking Muslems. They will only hate the USA. Koreans too. However Chinese and many other immigrants fit in very well. I expect I will be called racist for this. But I stand by it. Koreans and muslems have many other countries to go to. They hate the USA and and americans.
ckrisz added these pithy words on 10 May 07 at 3:11 pmThe Albanians in this case are actually from Macedonia and are not Kosovar refugees.
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