The irony of the US Department of State and their “Sanctions Team”

The US Ambassador to Macedonia, Angela Aggeler, caused quite a storm the other week when she tweeted the following:

“Sanctions Team from Washington here to take a more aggressive look at past and current corrupt actors, and to consider all possible responses…..Macedonia’s justice sector needs more investigations, prosecutions to show that no one is above the law.”  (She did use the “N” word which is why I have slightly edited her Tweet.)

I guess since it is in capital letters – Sanctions Team – it must be a “thing.”  Though in this column I’m going to refer to them as Team Sanctions™.

One Macedonian then tweeted in response that the ambassador’s tweet was trending in Macedonia that day and noting that “Many citizens write on [the] ambassador’s tweet, saying you are our last hope…..Welcome for the Sanctions Team from Washington.  It was time!”

Macedonians!  Please do not put your hope in my government, or the US Ambassador in Macedonia representing my government, or Team Sanctions™.  The vast majority of them are not good people – they are scoundrels.

Moving on: let me unpack what the Ambassador is doing and why we are here in the first place.

First, it is Macedonians and Macedonian institutions who should be going after corruption in Macedonia.  Not foreigners.  The current Macedonian government does not, however, because it worships power, and because the US Ambassador, the US Department of State, and Team Sanctions™ have enabled them to be corrupt. 

How?  Let me posit a few ideas and let me start by rewinding the calendar to over two decades ago.

In 2001, and in the years after that, various individuals and institutions of the US Department of State, and various individuals and institutions within the European Union and its member states, and various individuals within the very institution of  NATO – all of these individuals and institutions said, quietly, and behind the scenes, “no,” when the governing authorities in Macedonia wanted to go after Ali Ahmeti and senior members of the so-called NLA (and then DUI) for the crimes they committed.   

As a result, Ali Ahmeti and his associates were never prosecuted.  Not only were they never prosecuted, but they went on to create and then build a political party, DUI, and today hold senior positions – and massive power – in the Macedonian government and over many aspects of Macedonian society – and Macedonia’s identity. 

The lesson learned here was two-fold: first, Ali Ahmeti and his associates bargained, rightly, that since they literally got away with murder, torture, trafficking in weapons, drugs, and women, that they would get away with any other crime in the future. And so they have continued to do so – engaging in corruption at every level.  The second lesson was that any trust Macedonians had, in the past, in the institutions of the law, the judiciary, etc. began to evaporate rapidly.  That trust has continued to evaporate.

All that pressure on Macedonian authorities and institutions to not go after Ahmeti and his senior leadership had the perverse effect of degrading Macedonia’s own institutions, primary among them the judiciary, and had the perverse effect of eroding trust by Macedonians in these and other institutions.  To let Ahmeti and his senior leadership not only go free, but become prosperous, powerful, and prideful, created incredible distrust among Macedonia’s citizens and gave license to others to abuse the system and become ever more corrupt.  Simultaneously, all this pressure by the US Department of State and EU/NATO institutions had the obscene effect of encouraging Ahmeti and his senior leadership to behave even more badly and commit more crimes, this time however, ensconced as so-called “politicians.”

And then we come to 2015/2016 a time of great upheaval in Macedonia.  Because the US Department of State and EU/NATO wanted Macedonia to reach a “deal” with Greece on the so-called “name issue,” they ignored all the corruption within SDS and DUI (now fully in charge in Macedonia) and by their senior leadership, focusing entirely on corruption by a few members of VMRO.  The same lessons from post-2001 were learned: members of SDS/DUI learned that they could get away with corruption as long as it served the purpose of meeting US/EU/NATO foreign policy goals for Macedonia, and the Macedonian public continued to lose faith in Macedonia’s rule law and judicial institutions and in the very idea of the rule of law itself.

Isn’t this ironic? Over the past 30 or so years, you have had – to take one example – USAID sending in experts and spending American taxpayer dollars to work with judicial institutions and individuals in Macedonia, training, educating, etc. with an end goal of these institutions and individuals becoming more competent, adhering more to the rule of law, being more impartial and clamping down on corruption.  On the other hand, and simultaneously, the US State Department has been doing the opposite – making its foreign policy for Macedonia their number one goal and, in essence, undermining the rule of law and Macedonia’s institutions. 

Granted, there has been some attempt to crack down on corruption in the current SDS/DUI government – think of Katica Janeva, the former chief special prosecutor, Boki 13, and a few senior members in the SDS – but many of crimes they have been charged with are low-level stuff.  They have not been charged with the much larger crimes of which they have been accused.  And which group of people has gotten away with no prosecutions and no charges?  Ali Ahmeti and his DUI.

We will see where all this leads in the coming weeks and months.  But the fact remains that the US Department of State, the EU, and NATO have all contributed to the lack of trust among Macedonians in the judiciary and rule of law and growing corruption.  All in the service of their foreign policy goals.