Values vs dollars
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talkpoliticsG'day, comrades & comradesses! First off, congrats to everyone around who uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Today is the day of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a celebration of Slavonic culture around the world, as previously mentioned here.
And while we're about Slavonic cultures, and because it's neo-colonialism month, here's the story of modern Serbia. A country still balancing between East and West. Both of these trying to lure countries like Serbia into their orbit of influence, the West offering a future of shared cultural values (whatever that's supposed to mean), while the East offering... well, mostly cash.
This story has it all: spies, suspicious billions, and the damages that intransparent governing tends to bring. There's one Mohammed Dahlan, at first considered the primary successor of Yasser Arafat as the leader of the Palestinians, and then becoming an agent for Israel, who travels to Belgrade to pursue a business career. There's also the EU losing in the race with third parties over Serbia's heart and mind.
This story first surfaced in December 2013 when two things happened. First, the EU voted for starting accession negotiations with Serbia, and then the heir-apparent of Abu Dhabi, prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nakhian announced an ambitious construction project in Belgrade, which was to turn the city into "a global tourism hub", and make it "the Dubai of the Balkans".
A month later, Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic called snap parliamentary elections, and the CEO of UAE-based company Eagle Hills, and builder of the world's tallest building, Mohammed al Abbar presented the "Belgrade on Water", or the "Belgrade Waterfront" project. Back then, the businessman said the company would be investing somewhere between 2.5 and 2.8 billion euro in that project.
The chairman of Nikolic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Alexander Vucic shaped his election campaign around his ability to bring billions of euros of investments from the UAE. And the Belgrade Waterfront played a key role in this. Vucic called the project "a restart of the Serbian economy, and revival of the capital city" which was to erase the traces of NATO's devastation, and he raised the evaluation of the investment to 3.5 billion euro. This was roughly 6 times Belgrade's yearly budget, which in 2014 equaled 650 million euro.
At that time it was normal to think that the project was merely some election rhetoric, because it was de facto copying Europolis, which Milosevic's socialists had previously used to win the election in 1996. Moreover, the snap election happened in March, along with the regular mayoral election in Belgrade. About the same time last year Vucic was already prime minister, his main advisor Sinisa Mali became the capital's mayor, and Belgrade on Water was first presented to the public at the prestigious annual real estate expo in Cannes.
The story goes like this. Eagle Hills is planning to raze the entire 177 hectares of land in the Savski Venac (Sava's Crown) bank of the Sava river, just a kilometer away from the city center. A 1-million sq m built-up area is supposed to be raised there, with 750 thousand sq m of office area, more than 62 thousand sq m of kindergartens, schools, cultural, social and health-care institutions, and about 242 thousand sq m of green areas. The pearl in the crown of this project should be a 220 m high skyscraper, a new opera and a huge trade center - of course, the biggest on the Balkans.
The project was supposed to be the symbol of Belgrade's revival, even if that'd mean taking a dump on every last bit of democratic principles and laws of the land. For instance, the current city plan of Belgrade, adopted in 2003, explicitly forbids the raising of skyscrapers in that area. That ruling was revoked behind closed doors without any debate by the city council. Without any prior warning, let alone public discussion. It's the violation of all sorts of rules for the sake of giving the green light to this project that casts a shadow over the otherwise ambitious plan. Which leaves the bitter impression of stomping upon the primacy of law for the sake of private interests.
The authorities are not only refusing to subject the project to public review, they also did their best to block any attempts to publish any details about it, before the Serbian parliament voted last month for a special law which was to legitimize its implementation. The law was approved after 13 hours of debates, all the while the prime minister Vucic and most of the cabinet's ministers looking very closely at the proceedings. That bill is extremely important for the government, because it removes the two main obstacles to the rivers of cash: signing a contract directly with Eagle Hills without any due audition (as is the law), and the seamless nationalization of a vast number of private properties along the Savski Venac. The latter became possible, because Belgrade on Water was conveniently declared a "project of particular public interest".
That formulation naturally causes a lot of confusion, because all properties within the future closed complex are to be exclusively owned by the investor, or by clients thereof - and obviously not by the City of Belgrade. So far, the authorities are responding to this accusation with some vague interpretations of the new law, citing the project's status of "special public interest", because it's somehow "helping Serbia's development". The prime minister Vucic has said that the construction itself would create "200 thousand jobs" (omitting that those would then evaporate, as soon as the project is completed). The opponents of this undertaking are saying that the new law deprives Belgrade of its Sava's Crown, which is a region of specific traditions, culture, and public significance (as stipulated in the city plan from 2003.
But the bigger problem so far has been the complete lack of transparency. Only after the law was voted and passed, it became known that the promises for a multi-billion investment had been grossly exaggerated. In fact, Eagle Hills will first invest 300 million euro, half of it coming from own capital, the rest to be guaratenteed through loans from UAE banks. The remaining funds would possibly come only later. Moreover, Belgrade will be leasing the land for a period of 99 years, thus acquiring 32% of the joint venture. All of this has reinforced the impression that the authorities are treating the citizens not as participants in governing, but as feudal peasants who can be tossed some bread and water, and be ignored.
The state shield protecting the private interest from the public is undemocratic but sadly a norm now. In March 2013 the governments of Serbia and UAE signed an agreement wrapping up the whole affair. It guaranteed that details of the investments from the UAE in Serbia would not be disseminated to the public, regardless of the public interest. The agreement also included clauses that gave the private interest of the investor primacy over any existing Serbian legislation. For example, any investment coming from the UAE would be considered of priority related to any local deals that have been legalized in the past. And surely, the new deals didn't come late. In August 2013 the Abu Dhabi based air carrier Etihad Airways became a strategic partner to its Serbian counterpart JAT, acquiring 49% of it in exchange for a 40 million euro loan. At the same time, UAE granted Serbia a 400 million dollar loan, just shortly after the EU partners had refused to do the same. In March 2014, the ministry of finance of Abu Dhabi granted Serbia a low-interest loan of 1 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, Emirates Advanced Research and Technology Holding (EARTH) invested 200 million dollars in Serbian arms producer Yugoimport SDPR. The deal was for the Serbian missile system ALAS. It's got a 60 km radius, and according to the website of the producer "is capable of destroying any tank currently existing in the world". Not only that, but Serbia and Abu Dhabi have established a partnership between their military intelligence services, their military police and the special forces, and also in the area of communication technologies and cyber defense. Most analysts agree that UAE's investments in Serbia and particularly their interest in Serbia's arms industry is part of a political game, and indicator of UAE's ambition to assume the role of a major regional player in the Middle East.
In 2013, the UAE became very active in their attempts to supply arms to their friends in the region. And Serbia has a very well developed arms industry, a huge excess of military equipment, and very "flexible" rules in arms exportation. There's obviously a promising market niche in the Middle East, and UAE are hasting to occupy it. On the other hand, the pouring of UAE money into Serbia is also a question of geopolitics, and part of Abu Dhabi's ambitions to curb the spreading of Turkish influence across the West Balkans (through Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia).
There are claims that all of this is probably being done by advice from the US and Israel. And this geostrategic partnership between UAE and Serbia could also coincide with the West's interest to not allow Serbia to become too close to Putin's Russia (a proneness that the Serbs have always had, for cultural and historical reasons).
But sure, the theories about the true reason for this sudden and seemingly unexpected marriage between Serbia and UAE could go on all day, as well as the classical Serbian approach to such processes. It could well be summed up by a grafitti that could be seen at the central railway station in Belgrade, which showed Sava's Crown, the caption saying, "O, beautiful Belgrade ladies, why did you abandon us and joined the Arabs? Yours, the Greeks".
Whatever the reason for the sudden friendship between these two, there's an even more unexpected person behind it all: Mohammed Dahlan. Serbian president Nikolic called him "Abu Dhabi's good guy", when in April 2013 he handed him the Serbian Flag Medal of Honor, for "his contribution to the peaceful cooperation and friendly relations between our two countries".
"Peace" and "friendship" are probably the last words that any of Dahlan's Palestinian compatriots would come up with upon invoking his name. Between 1981 and 1986, Dahlan was arrested 11 times in Israel for his participation in the Palestinian insurgency. From 1994 to 2007 he led an armed militia of about 20,000 Fatah fighters in the Gaza strip. His people had been trained by the CIA, and are alleged to have tortured and murdered Hamas opponents. Their authoritarianism and corruption are so extreme that until the ceding of political power in Gaza from Israel to the Palestinians, the whole territory was being called "Dahlanistan". Although he was found to have been involved in a number of financial frauds and schemes, including illicit arms trade with Gaddafi's regime, Dahlan was considered Yasser Arafat's right hand, and his natural successor as leader of the Palestinian resistance. Still, many of his compatriots believed him to be a collaborator, or even spy for the US and Israel. Fatah did elect its president Mahmoud Abbas, and Dahlan was promptly expelled from Palestine in 2011. He first became security advisor to Abu Dhabi's heir apparent, prince Mohammed, and then obtained Montenegrin citizenship (weird, huh?)
Today, 54 year old Dahlan lives in the former house of former Serbian president Boris Tadic in a luxurious Belgrade neighborhood, inhabited by lots of foreign diplomats. Apart from that medal of honor, he also got a Serbian citizenship in 2013, along with his wife, his four children, his mother-in-law, and five other Palestinians.
It's hard to figure out whether Dahlan is planning a triumphant return to Palestine while comfortably living in Serbia, or he's merely acting as a mediator in some shady multi-million deals between his new country of residence and his latest employer. Until that question is clarified, the Serbians have a very tough discussion ahead of them. People seem to be split and polarized on the question of that project. On the one side, there are the democratic values, the principles of transparency and accountability, and the primacy of law that the EU is preaching so hard about. The problem is, Brussels is not prone to pouring vast resources into muddy waters - not before said waters have been cleared. On the other hand, there are the well visible billions coming from the UAE. But their showcase is shady "business" figures like Dahlan. We've yet to see if the Serbian public would succumb to the temptation of becoming a new Dahlanistan.
And while we're about Slavonic cultures, and because it's neo-colonialism month, here's the story of modern Serbia. A country still balancing between East and West. Both of these trying to lure countries like Serbia into their orbit of influence, the West offering a future of shared cultural values (whatever that's supposed to mean), while the East offering... well, mostly cash.
This story has it all: spies, suspicious billions, and the damages that intransparent governing tends to bring. There's one Mohammed Dahlan, at first considered the primary successor of Yasser Arafat as the leader of the Palestinians, and then becoming an agent for Israel, who travels to Belgrade to pursue a business career. There's also the EU losing in the race with third parties over Serbia's heart and mind.
This story first surfaced in December 2013 when two things happened. First, the EU voted for starting accession negotiations with Serbia, and then the heir-apparent of Abu Dhabi, prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nakhian announced an ambitious construction project in Belgrade, which was to turn the city into "a global tourism hub", and make it "the Dubai of the Balkans".
A month later, Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic called snap parliamentary elections, and the CEO of UAE-based company Eagle Hills, and builder of the world's tallest building, Mohammed al Abbar presented the "Belgrade on Water", or the "Belgrade Waterfront" project. Back then, the businessman said the company would be investing somewhere between 2.5 and 2.8 billion euro in that project.
The chairman of Nikolic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Alexander Vucic shaped his election campaign around his ability to bring billions of euros of investments from the UAE. And the Belgrade Waterfront played a key role in this. Vucic called the project "a restart of the Serbian economy, and revival of the capital city" which was to erase the traces of NATO's devastation, and he raised the evaluation of the investment to 3.5 billion euro. This was roughly 6 times Belgrade's yearly budget, which in 2014 equaled 650 million euro.
At that time it was normal to think that the project was merely some election rhetoric, because it was de facto copying Europolis, which Milosevic's socialists had previously used to win the election in 1996. Moreover, the snap election happened in March, along with the regular mayoral election in Belgrade. About the same time last year Vucic was already prime minister, his main advisor Sinisa Mali became the capital's mayor, and Belgrade on Water was first presented to the public at the prestigious annual real estate expo in Cannes.
The story goes like this. Eagle Hills is planning to raze the entire 177 hectares of land in the Savski Venac (Sava's Crown) bank of the Sava river, just a kilometer away from the city center. A 1-million sq m built-up area is supposed to be raised there, with 750 thousand sq m of office area, more than 62 thousand sq m of kindergartens, schools, cultural, social and health-care institutions, and about 242 thousand sq m of green areas. The pearl in the crown of this project should be a 220 m high skyscraper, a new opera and a huge trade center - of course, the biggest on the Balkans.
The project was supposed to be the symbol of Belgrade's revival, even if that'd mean taking a dump on every last bit of democratic principles and laws of the land. For instance, the current city plan of Belgrade, adopted in 2003, explicitly forbids the raising of skyscrapers in that area. That ruling was revoked behind closed doors without any debate by the city council. Without any prior warning, let alone public discussion. It's the violation of all sorts of rules for the sake of giving the green light to this project that casts a shadow over the otherwise ambitious plan. Which leaves the bitter impression of stomping upon the primacy of law for the sake of private interests.
The authorities are not only refusing to subject the project to public review, they also did their best to block any attempts to publish any details about it, before the Serbian parliament voted last month for a special law which was to legitimize its implementation. The law was approved after 13 hours of debates, all the while the prime minister Vucic and most of the cabinet's ministers looking very closely at the proceedings. That bill is extremely important for the government, because it removes the two main obstacles to the rivers of cash: signing a contract directly with Eagle Hills without any due audition (as is the law), and the seamless nationalization of a vast number of private properties along the Savski Venac. The latter became possible, because Belgrade on Water was conveniently declared a "project of particular public interest".
That formulation naturally causes a lot of confusion, because all properties within the future closed complex are to be exclusively owned by the investor, or by clients thereof - and obviously not by the City of Belgrade. So far, the authorities are responding to this accusation with some vague interpretations of the new law, citing the project's status of "special public interest", because it's somehow "helping Serbia's development". The prime minister Vucic has said that the construction itself would create "200 thousand jobs" (omitting that those would then evaporate, as soon as the project is completed). The opponents of this undertaking are saying that the new law deprives Belgrade of its Sava's Crown, which is a region of specific traditions, culture, and public significance (as stipulated in the city plan from 2003.
But the bigger problem so far has been the complete lack of transparency. Only after the law was voted and passed, it became known that the promises for a multi-billion investment had been grossly exaggerated. In fact, Eagle Hills will first invest 300 million euro, half of it coming from own capital, the rest to be guaratenteed through loans from UAE banks. The remaining funds would possibly come only later. Moreover, Belgrade will be leasing the land for a period of 99 years, thus acquiring 32% of the joint venture. All of this has reinforced the impression that the authorities are treating the citizens not as participants in governing, but as feudal peasants who can be tossed some bread and water, and be ignored.
The state shield protecting the private interest from the public is undemocratic but sadly a norm now. In March 2013 the governments of Serbia and UAE signed an agreement wrapping up the whole affair. It guaranteed that details of the investments from the UAE in Serbia would not be disseminated to the public, regardless of the public interest. The agreement also included clauses that gave the private interest of the investor primacy over any existing Serbian legislation. For example, any investment coming from the UAE would be considered of priority related to any local deals that have been legalized in the past. And surely, the new deals didn't come late. In August 2013 the Abu Dhabi based air carrier Etihad Airways became a strategic partner to its Serbian counterpart JAT, acquiring 49% of it in exchange for a 40 million euro loan. At the same time, UAE granted Serbia a 400 million dollar loan, just shortly after the EU partners had refused to do the same. In March 2014, the ministry of finance of Abu Dhabi granted Serbia a low-interest loan of 1 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, Emirates Advanced Research and Technology Holding (EARTH) invested 200 million dollars in Serbian arms producer Yugoimport SDPR. The deal was for the Serbian missile system ALAS. It's got a 60 km radius, and according to the website of the producer "is capable of destroying any tank currently existing in the world". Not only that, but Serbia and Abu Dhabi have established a partnership between their military intelligence services, their military police and the special forces, and also in the area of communication technologies and cyber defense. Most analysts agree that UAE's investments in Serbia and particularly their interest in Serbia's arms industry is part of a political game, and indicator of UAE's ambition to assume the role of a major regional player in the Middle East.
In 2013, the UAE became very active in their attempts to supply arms to their friends in the region. And Serbia has a very well developed arms industry, a huge excess of military equipment, and very "flexible" rules in arms exportation. There's obviously a promising market niche in the Middle East, and UAE are hasting to occupy it. On the other hand, the pouring of UAE money into Serbia is also a question of geopolitics, and part of Abu Dhabi's ambitions to curb the spreading of Turkish influence across the West Balkans (through Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia).
There are claims that all of this is probably being done by advice from the US and Israel. And this geostrategic partnership between UAE and Serbia could also coincide with the West's interest to not allow Serbia to become too close to Putin's Russia (a proneness that the Serbs have always had, for cultural and historical reasons).
But sure, the theories about the true reason for this sudden and seemingly unexpected marriage between Serbia and UAE could go on all day, as well as the classical Serbian approach to such processes. It could well be summed up by a grafitti that could be seen at the central railway station in Belgrade, which showed Sava's Crown, the caption saying, "O, beautiful Belgrade ladies, why did you abandon us and joined the Arabs? Yours, the Greeks".
Whatever the reason for the sudden friendship between these two, there's an even more unexpected person behind it all: Mohammed Dahlan. Serbian president Nikolic called him "Abu Dhabi's good guy", when in April 2013 he handed him the Serbian Flag Medal of Honor, for "his contribution to the peaceful cooperation and friendly relations between our two countries".
"Peace" and "friendship" are probably the last words that any of Dahlan's Palestinian compatriots would come up with upon invoking his name. Between 1981 and 1986, Dahlan was arrested 11 times in Israel for his participation in the Palestinian insurgency. From 1994 to 2007 he led an armed militia of about 20,000 Fatah fighters in the Gaza strip. His people had been trained by the CIA, and are alleged to have tortured and murdered Hamas opponents. Their authoritarianism and corruption are so extreme that until the ceding of political power in Gaza from Israel to the Palestinians, the whole territory was being called "Dahlanistan". Although he was found to have been involved in a number of financial frauds and schemes, including illicit arms trade with Gaddafi's regime, Dahlan was considered Yasser Arafat's right hand, and his natural successor as leader of the Palestinian resistance. Still, many of his compatriots believed him to be a collaborator, or even spy for the US and Israel. Fatah did elect its president Mahmoud Abbas, and Dahlan was promptly expelled from Palestine in 2011. He first became security advisor to Abu Dhabi's heir apparent, prince Mohammed, and then obtained Montenegrin citizenship (weird, huh?)
Today, 54 year old Dahlan lives in the former house of former Serbian president Boris Tadic in a luxurious Belgrade neighborhood, inhabited by lots of foreign diplomats. Apart from that medal of honor, he also got a Serbian citizenship in 2013, along with his wife, his four children, his mother-in-law, and five other Palestinians.
It's hard to figure out whether Dahlan is planning a triumphant return to Palestine while comfortably living in Serbia, or he's merely acting as a mediator in some shady multi-million deals between his new country of residence and his latest employer. Until that question is clarified, the Serbians have a very tough discussion ahead of them. People seem to be split and polarized on the question of that project. On the one side, there are the democratic values, the principles of transparency and accountability, and the primacy of law that the EU is preaching so hard about. The problem is, Brussels is not prone to pouring vast resources into muddy waters - not before said waters have been cleared. On the other hand, there are the well visible billions coming from the UAE. But their showcase is shady "business" figures like Dahlan. We've yet to see if the Serbian public would succumb to the temptation of becoming a new Dahlanistan.
(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 14:43 (UTC)intransparentI believe the word you are looking for is, opaque.
/vocabnerd
/nativespeakerprivilege
/offtopic
You couldn't write this story as a work of fiction and be convincing.
(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 17:45 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 18:05 (UTC)Me disappoint. <-- [correct the grammatical error if it so much fascinates you]
(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 18:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 18:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 20:30 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 20:34 (UTC)"a observation"
HA! Gotcha.
(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 20:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 25/5/15 00:51 (UTC)Always.
(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 18:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 17:47 (UTC)And happy May 24 to all Slavonic peoples, yours including! Must be awesome to have a holiday to celebrate your shared heritage.
(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 17:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 18:12 (UTC)Btw, another PR project of the Serbian government also deserves a whole article in its own worth. I'm talking of the FIAT factory (http://inserbia.info/today/2014/09/serbia-fiat-temporary-closes-factory/) that turned out to be a black hole where millions have sunken.
(no subject)
Date: 24/5/15 20:16 (UTC)