Conclusion

D o Bukoshi, Susak, and Djordjevich occupy a place in the annals

of exile politics next to the likes of Mazzini, Lenin, and
Herzen? Certainly they belong to a determined tradition of di-
aspora activism, one that has unjustly become faded in the historical record.
The concept of diaspora was born in antiquity, and ever since geographi-
cally dispersed peoples have united, dreamed, and mobilized. Long-distance
nationalism can be traced back to the early days of the nation-state, a rela-
tionship so symbiotic that one of its nineteenth-century critics would call
exile "the nursery of nationality."' The political impact of its multifarious
incarnations, not always labeled diaspora, shaped contemporary Europe as
well as North America. By no means limited to Europeans or to Jews, dur-
ing the last decade the Chechen, Tamil, Armenian, Indian, and Chinese di-
asporas, among many others, have mounted vigorous campaigns in their
peoples' names.
Though not new, the nature of diaspora engagement in home affairs, and
in those of their adopted countries, has changed radically since transatlantic
ships transported Albanian tutors to the Massachusetts konaks. The im-
ported instructors from Europe's exiled Albanian communities taught the
forefathers of the gastarbeiter how to read, availing them of the indispensble
vehicle of modem nationalism, a technology called print media. This en-
abled the first Albanian Americans to participate, albeit belatedly, in Europe's
national revolutions. More recently, just over the past decades, diasporas and
their relationship to their homelands have again been dramatically trans-
formed by state-of-the-art technological advances in communications and
transportation. The facsimile and e-mail, the cell phone and the Internet,
compress the time and space between those living in the heimat and those
displaced from it. Diasporas have come a long way since the 1970s, when Ay-
atullah Khomeini's taped sermons circulated in the bazaars of Isfahan and
Tehran. In the Balkans, satellite communications had an enormous impact
en marshaling diaspora cohesion and defining the cause. Whether it was
Lukoshi or Milosevic, he who ruled the satellite programming commanded
the loyalty of the greater diaspora. Literacy was no longer a requirement.
The speed and affordability of air travel has also shrunk the size of the
world. There is a fluidness of exchange between diaspora and home county

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 Conclusion 263

that blurs their dichotomy. Simply put, as the planet gets smaller, the dis-
tance and barriers between diaspora and homeland break down. Rather than
two worlds there is one: a transnational community inhabited by all the na-
tion's members, regardless of their addresses. Globalization has turned the
world into a single integrated economy in which the exchange of goods and
services, capital flows, as well as ideas, information, and images pay no heed
to the frontiers of state.
The explosion of transnational phenomena, from websites to multina-
tional corporations, facilitates the business of diasporas. Many of the strate-
gies employed by the Balkan diasporas in the 1990s would have been un-
thinkable only a decade earlier. When Susak sent out his famous letter
beseeching the diaspora to arm Croatia, he used a couple of fax machines im-
ported from Canada, technology nonexistent in Yugoslavia only a couple of
years earlier. In a few short hours his office had blanketed the world's Croat
community centers, sports clubs, Catholic churches, newspapers, radio sta-
tions, and folk dancing societies. The Kosovar Albanians' Three Percent
Fund relied on the latest telecommunications and Internet services to push
its fund-raising appeals, transnational banking networks to collect donations,
and international businesses to deliver the money in Kosovo. On their cell
phones, the KLA's arms suppliers manning the money fronts in Germany,
Switzerland, and the United States stayed in instantaneous contact with the
guerrilla commanders in the frontline trenches. Direct Mail replaced requi-
sition forms. While NATO allies directed the air war over the trenches from
war rooms in Brussels and Washington, the Kosovar exiles supplied the
ground troops from Stuttgart and Geneva. In the Balkans, as in the Middle
East and elsewhere, regional ethnic struggles are now global conflicts, unin-
telligible without examining their interconnected, cross-border components.
Another factor empowering today's transnational communities is the
mind-boggling movement of peoples around the globe. The sheer numbers
surging across national frontiers provides raw material for enriching diaspo-
ras or inventing them anew. These migrations and the modern-day migrant
tend to look different from the Cold War variety. Though millions still flee
from war, famine, poverty, and natural catastrophe, the Babylonian exile of
the postwar era is a dying breed. Many more people than in the past elect to
reside outside the country where they were born, while rl!fusing to leave it
behind entirely. Globalization's multinational jet-set follows the flow of cap-
ital, bringing their cultural identities with them. In Europe the two hundred
million working members of the European Union may take advantage of a
single job market that stretches from Stockholm to Athens. They do so as
Irish, Portuguese, or whatever nationality, confident of their purpose and
place in the transnational world.
In the Balkan diasporas, the category of political exile has lost its mean-

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264 Conclusion
ing. Men such as Michael Djordjevich or the Atlantic Brigade's Fadil Idrizi
could resettle in their lands of birth now that pluralist democracies have
begun to take root there. But they live in America, as respected Americans,
and engage in the affairs of their mother countries as Serbs and Albanians,
keeping a foot in both worlds. The emigres note with a chuckle that when
they travel from North America to the homeland they speak English with
one another at the airport and as they board the flight. Somewhere over the
Atlantic an unconscious shift occurs, and by the time the plane lands in Bel-
grade or Sarajevo everyone is chatting away in Serbian and Bosnian. Sip-
ping their morning coffee in Chicago, emigres can follow their favorite
homeland soccer team on its web page; when visiting the Old World, the
box score of the previous evening's Cubs or White Sox game is only as far
away as the next Internet cafe. The same applies to their chosen pop groups,
religious interests, and political affiliates. These hybrid, transnational iden-
tities are accepted on both sides of the Atlantic in an unprecedented way.
This Croatian president Franjo Tudjman learned only when his "exiled
Croatia" declined to return to liberated Croatia by the tens of thousands.
Today these peoples' identities straddle the two societies as does their sense
of responsibility. In the absence of conflict, diaspora activists will need to re-
define these responsibilities, which will now be all the greater given the vast
opportunities the new epoch offers.
These opportunities are loaded with both promise and disquiet. Despite
the worldly pretensions of transnationalism, it has failed to eradicate some
fundamental ingredients that can make diasporas obstructive players in
world affairs. On the one hand, the centrifugal forces of globalization erode
the cornerstones of the classic nation-state: its cherished sovereignty, solid
national borders, the requirement of undivided loyalty, and exclusive politi-
cal participation. Logically it would seem that as the traditional nation-state
wanes in significance, so, too, should old-fashioned patriotism and national-
ist passions lose their appeal. Yet, contrary to reason, this is not the case. In
the transnational world, devotion to patria (one or more) remains a vital
symptom of our age. One explanation suggests that the anonymity and ho-
mogenizing effects of globalization have driven its frightened children back
into the embrace of the nation to find meaning and security.
Nor have the exigencies of transnational life entirely closed the gap be-
tween diaspora and homeland. As sophisticated as communications have be-
come, diaspora communities inevitably become detached from the mun-
dane developments in the homeland. Without the accumulation of the
countless minor details of everyday life, the emigres' idea of the homeland
becomes disembodied and reconstructed by memory and imagination.
Their view tends to move apart from that of the homelanders, however
closely the emigres try to stay in touch. Theoretically satellite television

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 Conclusion 265

broadcasts should keep the diaspora updated on all aspects of life in the
homeland. But when state-run news agencies function as the mouthpiece of
regimes, the diaspora is inculcated with misinformation that further skews
its perspective. To compound this disjuncture, it lacks the corrective that is
provided by opposition media or home-grown independent culture-from
graffiti to pop music. Rather than a mirror of the homeland, the diaspora
becomes its alter ego.
Moreover, no number of visits or phone calls, Christmas presents or re-
mittance transfers, alleviates the nagging guilt of not being there, not en-
during the same hardships as close relatives and friends are subject to. Dias-
poras overcompensate for their physical absence, and for the hypocrisy of
being patriots who forfeit life in the patria. The men in the Atlantic Brigade
would die for Kosovo, but they were not prepared to live there. Nor have
the Balkan diasporas come to terms with the liberal requirement of sharing
the homeland's territory with other ethnic peoples, even if they somehow
manage to cohabit in Toronto and Frankfurt. Obviously they lack the daily
experience of shoulder-to-shoulder living with the other ethnic peoples in
the region. But there is more to it. These other peoples, by definition, do
not belong to their ethnic nation. Diasporas are ethnically homogeneous
entities, in a way that no country in the world is. A democratic state is the
sum of all its varied citizens; the diaspora is a selection from just one volk.
Lastly, for all its merits, transnationalism does not render diasporas one
iota more accountable for their projects than before. The means for diaspo-
ras to participate in the political, economic, and cultural life of the home
countries has never been greater. But emigres still do not live the conse-
quences of their undertakings, which are often motivated by high-minded
ideals rather than pragmatism. The Balkan diasporas sprang to the defense
of their nations in time of war, spending millions for arms, but have proved
frugal and uninspired when it comes to postwar economic initiatives and
building the institutions of their young democracies. 2 Too often their faulty
vision-{)r self-interest-cause them to act contrary to the interests of the
people they profess to love so deeply. Even in an age when dual nationality
is becoming more commonplace, most emigres do not vote, pay taxes, or
hold elected positions in the homeland; they act, but without the responsi-
bilities of citizenship or office.
In the West diasporas have taken full advantage of the forums of democ-
racy to promote homeland agendas. The political leverage that diasporas
wield in foreign policy, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Aus-
tralia, has soared. Changing attitudes about "ethnic politics" have opened
new vistas for diasporas to influence international policy toward their native
regions. One reason for this is that the old ideal of the ethnic melting pot no
longer demands that immigrants shed their Old World affinities in order to

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266 Conclusion
become "good citizens." Today's multicultural democracies allow ethnic
groups considerably more leeway to maintain their cultural traditions and to
pursue political agendas without raising suspicions of disloyalty. The official
multicultural policies of Canada and Australia, even more than those in the
United States, champion ethnic diversity and fund its expressions. When
Serbian Americans demonstrated in the nation's capital against the U.S.-led
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, screaming at the top of their lungs that
President Clinton was a Nazi and a murderer, no one batted an eye. Older
German and Japanese Americans must have shaken their heads in disbelief.
The "ethnic factor" has become so much a part of U.S. politics that every
candidate or elected politician has staff assigned to court America's diasporic
communities. They are a plentiful source of money and votes, and they offer
their resources to both major parties. This phenomenon is not entirely
novel. In the past, though, it was predominantly right-wing Republicans
who wooed the Eastern European emigres by playing up to their anticom-
munism. George Kennan noted the role that Serbian American and Croat-
ian American groups played in torpedoing his efforts to normalize relations
with Tito's Yugoslavia in the early 196os. But today these constituencies cut
across party lines, and they are solicited, engaged, and promised action on a
scale as never before. President Clinton's 1996 presidential reelection cam-
paign had a particularly active ethnic outreach office, whose director, coin-
cidentally, was Ilir Zherka, one of the Albanian Americans' top advocates.
Zherka pointedly reminded the president of the strong ethnic vote when the
White House grappled with the question of deploying air power against
MiloseviC's Yugoslavia in 1998 and 1999.
Diasporas are nothing without their institutions, and these, too, have ma-
tured since the end of the Cold War. Professional lobby groups such as the
Serbian Unity Congress and the Albanian American Civic League, to name
only two, boast canny insider knowledge of how Washington works. Back in
the 1950s or 196os the leaders of the old-school emigre organizations felt
flattered to have their pictures snapped next to a congressman in Washing-
ton. Today the lobby groups demand much more from the politicians whose
campaigns they help to fund. They expect a role as players in the foreign-
policy making process. The operations of the Balkan diasporas still pale in
comparison, for example, with those of]ewish or Cuban Americans. But the
Balkan groups, as well as other diasporas, emulate those lobbies and strive to
attain a fraction of their influence. (Waiting their turn, Cuban Americans
may have studied the Eastern European returnees as they entered the politi-
cal fray in their freshly post-communist countries.)
The verdict is mixed on whether the ethnicization of foreign policy con-
tributes to a more coherent international order. In Marketing the American
Creed AbroaJ,3 political scientist Yossi Shain argues that ethnic involvement

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 Conclusion 267

in U.S. foreign affairs provides disenfranchised groups with an entry ticket

into American society and politics. Their input legitimately reflects Amer-
ica's ethnic mosaic and offers a useful corrective to foreign policy-as-usual
conducted by U.S. elites. He maintains that to win a voice in U.S. foreign
affairs, diaspora groups must demonstrate a convincing commitment to
democratic values, and to exporting them abroad. These ethnic activists be-
come emissaries of American values and "the moral conscience of new de-
mocracies or newly established states in their homelands." As the selfless ad-
vocates of democracy and human rights, diaspora activists will nudge the
United States to adhere to these noble principles, even when doing so con-
tradicts Washington's short-term geostrategic interests.
If only it were so. During the 1990s the Balkans' diasporic groups-from
the churches to PACs-lobbied blindly in the name of their people's na-
tional aspirations. They invoked democracy and human rights primarily as a
strategic ploy to gain purchase and win concessions. Much to their discredit,
the diasporas often promoted agendas even more nationalistic than those
backed by the majority in the homeland. They failed dismally to act as the
"moral conscience" of their young democracies, as indeed they should have
after decades in Western societies. Dissenters found themselves branded as
"traitors" and effectively excluded from the groups that claimed to speak on
their behalf. One of the greatest disappointments was the Kosovar Albani-
ans, whose legitimate grievances over human rights violations attracted
broad sympathy and ultimately prompted NATO's intervention. But the
moment they gained the upper hand in Kosovo, the Albanians turned on the
newly defenseless Kosovar Serbs with repellent fury. Even the Bronx's At-
lantic Brigade partook in torching the homes of resident non-Albanians as
they marched victoriously toward the capital.4
The project remains of turning the considerable resources and energies
of southeastern Europe's diasporas into constructive forces that foster de-
mocracy, prosperity, and stability in the Balkans. It is not utopian. The dias-
poras could start with the reform of their own organizations, remaking
them as accountable, democratic institutions with less parochial visions.
The diaspora-host country relationship must also be a two-way street. U.S.
policy makers have had some success winning over diaspora representatives
on select issues and using them to send pointed messages to leaders in the
homeland. It took some arm-twisting, for example, to get the Albanian
Americans to explicitly disavow the goal of a Greater Albania. But they did,
for the most part, and the diaspora organizations helped to turn around
opinion in the region. The financial resources of diasporas can also be put to
much better use. From the United States alone, $30 billion every year is
transferred from immigrant workers to homeland relatives. 5 These transfers
keep families alive and prop up depressed regions around the world, as they

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268 Conclusion
do in the Balkans. Economists estimate that $375-$425 million a year in re-
mittances entered Kosovo in the late 1990s. 6 But all too rare are examples of
serious investment with long-term vision focused on stimulating productive
economic activity in the region. Further, the fraud and manipulation of di-
aspora donations during the 1990s has left many interested parties under-
standably gun-shy about new financing schemes.
The tragedy of September n, 2001, and the unnerving revelations about
the breadth of the AI Qaeda organization, brought into stark relief the sinis-
ter potential of international networks, transnational undergrounds, and the
abuse of democracy's freedoms. It is questionable indeed whether this new
light will illuminate or distort the process of understanding our increasingly
transnational societies. One hopes that the discourse will not revert to the
invidious categories of the not-so-distant past when carriers of dual alle-
giances bore the stigma of "the enemy within." The challenge of extracting
the tremendous potential from diasporas lies before us.

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