Ariel Rusila's Conflicts [Ex-BalkanPerspective]

Competition – or development – of EU's eastern gas supply routes has intensified this year. Both EU/U.S. backed Nabucco and Russia's South Stream have made deals to guarantee realization of new pipelines until 2015. The EU’s new “southern corridor” - Nabucco as essential part of it - has been dubbed a version of U.S. “Silk Road Strategy” aimed to block Russia from gas fields around Caspian Sea and its connection to Iran. Russia on the other hand wants direct access to EU markets without transit via Ukraine. Until this summer the gas game has be seen as battle between Russia and West. Now the world economic crisis and current low price of gas have brought a new player to game in fuel sector - China. With its financial strength China has now had ability to intensify its offensive towards the Caspian Sea energy sources especially in Kazakhstan (especially oil) and Turkmenistan (especially gas). Will the outcome be, that both Russia and Western powers with their companies will ...

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. (Tacitus, ca. 56 – ca. 117 ) On 21 September 1980 Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, which was the beginning of an 8-year-long bloody war between the two countries. Ironically the International Day of Peace occurs annually on September 21 st . It is dedicated to peace, or specifically the absence of war, such as might be occasioned by a temporary ceasefire in a combat zone. Peace is a nice, positive word as well actions to develop it. While world is now celebrating International Peace Day it is good opportunity to look a bit deeper different aspects of peace, which from my point view can be a frozen conflict at worst and a quality peace at its best. Peace has many definitions. Most common maybe are that it is tranquility, stillness; freedom from contention, violence or war; treaty that ends a war. It is a term that most commonly refers to an absence o...

Promoting a culture of coexistence, a multi-ethnic society or at least ethnic tolerance is not an easy task, not even in Europe, not even with help of billions of aid or with “best” western practice. This can be seen especially in Balkans where regions supervised by foreign “expertise” have worst record while regions without these outside high-flown ideas perform relatively better. My examples for “worst practice” are Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, where international community has implemented its huge missions over ten years. Both cases have had modest development of civil society but in reality the progress of some original multi-ethnic ideas is going backwards. Bosnia-Herzegovina Bosnia-Herzegovina is an international creature established by Dayton Agreement on 1995 which split Bosnia into two semi-independent entities – the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation. Three ethnic groups – Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks – are trying to lead state together and separately. Entiti...

As one response to my earlier article " New Cannibalism in Europe too? " I got a quite good overall description about the problem published in Online Nursing Programs Net on 1st Sep 2009. As follow-up I would like to forward article " 10 Truly Shocking Facts about Organ Trafficking " as follows: Its rare to find a person who hasn’t heard of the urban legend recounting some poor guy duped into a situation that leaves him awakening in a tub of ice with a message indicating he must call 911 as one of his kidneys has been taken. While that particular story is not true, sadly it is based on some very real and shocking truths about organ trafficking. The unbalanced system of too many people in need of organ transplants and high levels of poverty worldwide have contributed to create a situation that leaves many desperate people willing to do anything to sell or receive illegal organs. Read below to learn ten shocking facts about organ trafficking. People seized against t...

This summer came 10 years since Nato stopped bombing Serbia. Agreement was made that Serb forces leave Kosovo and the province will be administrated de facto international protectorate by UN being however under sovereignty of Serbia (UNSC resolution 1244). So ten years has gone, the province declared independence and EU is now implementing its agenda after UN's modest try – or better say failure. As my picture about Kosovo is much more negative than high flown UN/EU reports a small update about Kosovo case is justified. From administrative point of view Kosovo is total mess-up. EU started its huge rule & law mission late 2008 under UN umbrella. Besides UN/UNMIK and EU/EULEX there is also other players twisting arms who is leading the international protectorate. There is European Union High Representative who simultaneously leads International Community Office wondering his role, same time Nato-troops (KFOR) tries to keep ethnic tensions moderate, OSCE do not know its role n...

The 29 July early parliamentary elections in Moldova swept Europe's last ruling Communist party from power by pro-EU opposition parties. With 98.3 percent of votes counted, the Communist Party won 48 seats in the 101-seat Moldovan parliament and the four opposition parties collected 53 seats. The former Soviet republic has been experiencing a political crisis since the April elections that turned into a week of violent demonstrations by young pro-opposition activists in the capital Chisinau, dubbed the “Twitter revolution” (More in my article “Twitter Revolution - Case Moldova” ) Wednesday's election is a repeat of the vote on April, however forced not by the protests, but the Communists' failure to muster the 61 votes needed to elect a president. The result then left the Communists one vote short and parliamentary deputies failed twice to elect a new head of state. After several months of deadlock, Moldova's long-time Communist leader Vladimir Vorinin was forced to d...