Sedatives from the West:

Over the past decade or so, non-governmental organizations have sprung up all over the Balkans – and indeed, all over the world. Allied with their institutional sponsors, NGO's become institutions themselves, adopting a vital role in political and economic developments. Avers Balkan expert and economist Dr. Sam Vaknin:

"…NGO's serve as long arms of their sponsoring states – gathering intelligence, burnishing their image, and promoting their interests. There is a revolving door between the staff of NGO's and government bureaucracies the world over.

…the encroachment on state sovereignty of international law – enshrined in numerous treaties and conventions – allows NGO's to get involved in hitherto strictly domestic affairs like corruption, civil rights, the composition of the media, the penal and civil codes, environmental policies, or the allocation of economic resources and of natural endowments, such as land and water. No field of government activity is now exempt from the glare of NGO's. They serve as self-appointed witnesses, judges, jury and executioner rolled into one."

This malevolent form of multi-tasking has reared its head, quite overtly in little Macedonia.

Political Interference: the Case of Macedonia

US-funded strong-arming in the Balkans has enabled locals swept up in their own idealism, righteousness and paranoia. On special occasions, candidates possessing these qualities are wheeled out. Such was the case in Macedonia, when the International Crisis Group's Edward Joseph sought to sway the 2002 elections with a thoroughly underwhelming corruption report.

This example of institutional manipulation is more notable for its motive than for its efficacy. While the chosen parties won, the machinations of the ICG and Friends had zero effect on the result. A periodic changing of the guard is a predictable and perhaps healthy feature of Macedonian politics. But it certainly doesn't require outside prompting. Despite being Balkan, the people aren't so stupid that they need to be told whom they are to like and dislike.

Nevertheless, in his last televised address to the Macedonians, Joseph implored the people not to vote for specific politicians. Now, having finally gone back to the most perfect country on earth, this captain of intervention continues to orate on the gripping issue of Macedonia today – though most people back here have always been just mildly bemused with his antics. However, there were some, like Dr. Vaknin, who reserved harsher criticism for the failed interventionist:

"…Joseph epitomizes everything that is rotten in American interventionism. The
likes of him – his brutish tactics, open bullying, score-settling, and
deep-set ignorance of local realities – made America hated throughout the
third and fourth worlds."

Macedonia – Land of the Lotus-Eaters

Despite the rhetoric about reforming undemocratic, lawless and corrupt countries, NGO interventionists actually enable and perpetuate these characteristics. After all, they don't work with saints. Promoting "opposition" candidates and political "dissidents" inevitably means helping longtime antagonists settle old scores. This Western fascination with Lilliputian squabbles explains why, when elected, the "opposition" never improves the lives of its citizens.

So why don't the Macedonians cry foul? The answer is simply because it is not in their interest. Macedonians have learned to live – and even profit – from NGO's. After almost 4 years of free money, they can't imagine life without it. Yet this dependence on NGO employment and dividends constitutes one of the biggest dangers to Macedonia's economy. Addiction to free money and organizations with no entrepreneurial future are endangering the very possibility of a free-market economy in Macedonia.

Some Hard Facts: the Kapital Report

A recent article in Kapital, Skopje's economic weekly, supports this thesis. According to Kapital, statistics show that "at least 30 million euros flow annually into non-governmental organizations in Macedonia" – of which there are over 4,000 currently registered.

While up to 10 million euros come from "domestic" organizations, the rest come from sometimes murky foreign sources. How is the money spent? Avers Kapital, "…only the people who are spending the money – who have no responsibility to account for it – know." Indeed, the NGO's have become a completely unaccountable industry:

"'…Some of the NGOs have no idea why they exist,' says law school professor Gyorgy Ivanov, who has been studying the development of Macedonian civic society for 15 years. 'For example, there is an ecological association whose members attend seminars 250 days a year, yet their offices have litter all around. Many of them are functioning as

parasites with the sole purpose of spending grants. NGO employees live the most comfortable lives and jobs in the NGO sector are the most enticing and most profitable.' This is the rule, not the exception, he adds.'"

Keeping it in the Family

If not directly involved in an NGO, most Macedonians have a friend, brother, mother or cousin involved with one. Typically, they start such organizations in order to hire their own people – as with state-owned companies in the old days of Socialism. And these are not only uneducated opportunists we're talking about; tragically, distinguished individuals like doctors, dentists, lawyers and professors often find that their NGO winnings often trump the compensation available from their own chosen professions.

Indeed, there's little incentive for Macedonians to expose NGO corruption, because they often profit from it. Even when the (foreign) chief of one well-known humanitarian organization absconded to Vietnam, allegedly with a suitcase containing $2 million in cash, there was no public outcry. His local underlings, of course, had also benefited from this "trickle-down" economics.

Unfortunately, NGO corruption is now discussed only when local adversaries

try to settle scores, curry favor and finish off enemies. By tantalizing provincial-minded locals with shimmering piles of cash, the West has merely perpetuated that most unattractive of Balkan qualities – begrudgery – while keeping the people too focused on illicit profiting to realize how much they are compromising themselves.

NGO's and Economic Decision-Making

As in the political sector, NGO's are now instrumental to high-level Macedonian economic decision-making. For example, George Soros' Open Society Institute has become like a Vice-Ministry for Finance, present at major meetings, representing large donors, and channeling large amounts of money throughout Macedonia. Soros country chief Vladimir Milchin is so powerful that he's treated more like a don than a bureaucrat.

Indeed, the largest NGO's interact informally with all of the key economic players – the European Union, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Bank and IMF. Economic coercion is the rule, not the exception. Last summer, politically-active NGO's influenced the IMF's decision not to reach a standby agreement with the Macedonian government. Political and economic interests coalesced, and as so often happens, proved indistinguishable.

Macedonia's Great Loss

Unfortunately, the current situation is ruining Macedonia's tentative steps towards a free market economy. Small entrepreneurs and investors are discouraged from risking their assets on a small and unpromising market. The Kapital report quotes one official who pinpoints how the NGO's continue to provide an easy way out for fearful would-be businessmen:

"…Nafi Saracin of the European Commission said people in Macedonia are more inclined to start their own NGO rather than invest in a new or established company for the simple reason that it is the easiest way to make money.

"At the moment, the NGO sector provides the safest … flow of money and labor force recruitment," says Saracin. "Moreover, the procedure of registering an NGO is much simpler than the procedure of registering a company."

Harming the Economy

While generally timid and a little bit lazy, Macedonians are clever and creative – especially with "misappropriating" resources. The Kapital report details a "diverse" range of tactics, including the "manipulation of remuneration and the double funding of projects" and the submission of fake invoices.

There's something very sad about this. Such behavior shows that the people don't aspire to be better than the politicians they claim to despise. It also shows that they'd rather spend their time and creativity on methods of self-enrichment that are ultimately mean, petty and unsustainable. Scheming about how to recover expenses that never existed, to chronicle conferences that were never held, to hire teachers who never graduated requires the mental agility of a lab rat. While the immediate cash reward may seem the perfect justification, such behavior merely shows a lack of self-respect and lack of interest in the country's long-term economic future.

Critics might argue that NGO's (corrupt and non-corrupt alike) are useful, in that they pump money into the consumer economy. There are two problems with this, however.

First of all, most NGO's don't produce or create anything. Here, the "conflict resolution" and ethnic harmony types are absolutely the worst. They offer a wealth of free advice and good intentions, but nothing sustainable. For all of the simulated seminars, conferences and publications generated over the past four years, ethnic relations haven't improved. That was never the point, however; interventionist hacks are happy enough to own two SUV's, live in the leafy part of Skopje and in rapturous tones sing of planting trees in the countryside.

Economically speaking, NGO's do not create wealth. Nobody invests in them. They are alien to the real small entrepreneurs who have traditionally built free market economies by going out and risking their assets. NGO's do not promote competition; rather, they promote and perpetuate systems of patronage. Fundamentally, they are destructive insofar as they prolong the old scourge of socialism, with all of its stasis and nepotism.

Further, the riches of non-governmental largesse are ephemeral, and therefore dangerous. In most cases, they have been wasted on creature comforts and conspicuous consumption. Yet someday the West will turn off the funding faucet for good. Macedonians surely know this will happen, and sooner rather than later; however, they prefer to milk the system for as long as possible and "live for the moment." Someday, the NGO's will become unsustainable, and only those who were able to illicitly transfer assets into "private enterprises" beforehand will thrive.

Plenty of Blame for All

Non-governmental organizations are not inherently evil, of course. As Dr. Vaknin reminds, organizations like Medecins san Frontieres perform some beneficial services.

However, in Macedonia the NGO sector has had a largely negative effect. By parking a Trojan horse loaded with free lucre outside the city gates, the West has retarded the growth of the Macedonian economy and kept the people mired in a destructive cycle of petty antagonism, vendetta and nepotism. In short, it has perpetuated all of the worst qualities of the former socialist system.

Now, the state's latest idea is to resurrect the dream of agrarian Macedonia – by offering free arable land in the villages to anyone willing to move from the city and become a peasant serf. Such a bizarre, doomed plan only reaffirms the utter paucity of creative thought prevailing in the soporific haze of post-war, civil-society Macedonia.

Of course, the Macedonians weren't coerced. They gladly fought for the free funds, and devised novel schemes for stealing and cheating their neighbors – in the process robbing themselves of their pride and the right to say, "we did this for ourselves." But what does pride matter in an utterly demoralized, thwarted country like Macedonia, anyway?

It is clear that the rule of the NGO's in Macedonia is waning. With the death of this lucrative sector, the cash propping up an unhealthy percentage of the population will also disappear. Outside observers have long wondered at how a country with a 40 percent (official) unemployment rate can survive. We're about to find out.

How NGO's Damage Macedonia's Free Market Economy