It is for some time now that the International Crisis Group has featured prominently in agency reports and newspaper articles, especially when dealing with the Balkans. If just one “expert” is quoted in any report, odds are it will be someone from the ICG. With more than one, it is guaranteed. But why?
Chris Deliso has done some great work on exposing the ICG-IWPR axis in Macedonia, which he called “the barking dogs of intervention” back in 2002. IWPR’s agenda is not a mystery, and neither is ICG’s, as it should be apparent from their reports. From denying the existence of Islamic terrorism in the Balkans to advocating the separation of Kosovo and Montenegro, occupation of Serbia and forcible unitarization of Bosnia, the ICG has been an extremist voice of Imperial intervention, saying things the regime in Washington (whoever runs it) could not say in public. Their board is a veritable Who’s Who of Imperial policy, including some “luminaries” of the previous decade’s Balkans cataclysm. This explains why, while technically just a minor NGO, staffed by second-hand analysts and advocacy journalists, ICG gets mention in the press all the time: it represents the Voice of Authority (i.e. the foreign policy-makers), always dear to the presstitutes. Better yet, because they are not the government, they – and the presstitutes – can pretend there is no agenda behind their rhetoric other than “peace” and “stability.” But every time you see an ICG “expert” (who is nothing of the sort) quoted in a media report of any kind, remember – this is a conduit of Empire, no more, no less.
ICG’s latest report on Serbia exposes their agenda pretty clearly. They claim “Serbia increasingly resembles the Milosevic-era without Milosevic,” and that the “international community” should re-evaluate its policies towards Serbia, insisting on more blackmail (“conditionality”) and using the “greater leverage” of the current bad economic conditions.
They even advocate the EU appointing “a senior diplomatic Special Representative in Belgrade” – a title usually given to Balkans viceroys in Bosnia and Kosovo – and demand of Serbia to protect “human rights activists” (usually Imperial mercenaries whipping up ethnic and religious intolerance) and “national minorities in Vojvodina, Sandzak and Kosovo,” to “prevent radical right-wing forces from attempting ethnic cleansing.”
The sheer nerve of these people is incredible.