http://english.alarabiya.net/views/2012/02/18/195335.html
There is not a region in the world that has been repeatedly disintegrated like the Balkans was and that is why it there was no better term to coin in reference to dividing a previously unified territory into small states than Balkanization. While the earliest conflicts in the Balkan Peninsula were directly related to the fall of empires like the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, and the Russian and whose vast stretches of land had to start redefining their borders and creating of themselves independent entities, the most recent ones, commonly known as the Yugoslav Wars, were basically triggered by ethnic tensions and the desire of each group to become dominant in the place where it boosts a majority while getting rid of what it viewed as the disruptive minority. Dreams of creating a Greater Serbia serve as the best example not only in terms of emphasis on a nationalist ideology that works towards unifying all Serbs but also as far as the justification of annexing neighboring territories inhabited by Serbs and carrying out a genocide campaign against their non-Serbian citizens are concerned.
The failure of the Greater Serbia project did not, however, prevent the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation not because of the validity of the ethnic purity theory but rather owing to the extremely fragile foundations upon which the union was initially based. From day one of its inception, Yugoslavia was obviously a patchwork of ethnicities, languages, and religious beliefs that was trying and constantly failing to present itself as the ideal model of every word with the prefix “multi.” Sharing the same colonial history is never enough for states to unite or else we would have seen a Latin American republic all the way from Mexico and the Hispanic Caribbean to Patagonia with the exception of Brazil. Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina did not have more in common than did Lithuania, Kazakhstan, and Russia and there was no reason why Yugoslavia wouldn’t follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union. The Balkans carried within it the seeds of its Balkanization, yet I do not see how this can applied to a country that has been politically and geographically unified for thousands of years or how any group of perverted fanatics would dare to even give it a shot.
A couple of weeks ago, dozens of Muslim youth from a village in western Alexandria gathered in front of a Christian man’s house and asked him and his family to leave immediately citing rumors about a video that his son had been circulating among villagers and which contained sexual scenes between him and a Muslim girl from the village. Despite the fact that none of the eye witnesses had actually seen the video and that the police were not able to find any such thing with the boy, the group of angry Muslims, led by a preacher, grew into thousands from the village and the neighboring villages, all demanding the banishment of the Christian family while shouting religious slogans and brandishing guns, knives, and Molotov cocktails. After failing to break into the house, the crowds vented their anger on a couple of stores owned by members of the family and which they looted and completely destroyed then went on to attack and set fire to the houses and stores of other Christian villagers while another group made sure the fire engines, which had already arrived very late, from accessing and salvaging the remains of the buildings consumed by the flames.
After enough damage was done, the governor of Alexandria, the head of Alexandria’s security bureau, the leader of the Salafi movement in the area, and a couple of Islamist MPs headed to the village where they held a so-called reconciliatory session, which I naively assumed only existed in the pre-state era when the chieftain of the tribe was the only source of legislation. In this session, they all agreed that banishing the boy and his family was the only way to “quench Muslim wrath” and “restore calm” in the village. Yet turns out the wrath was too forceful and the calm more far-fetched than expected. Finding the “verdict” too lenient to be fair, more angry Muslims took to the streets again calling for the banishment of all Christian villagers and attacking a few other houses under the nose of security forces which only interfered to secure the remaining Christian houses hours later. Another of those sessions was convened and this time the expulsion of eight Christian families and the formation of a Muslim committee to sell their property looked like the best solution not only for the enraged villagers, but also for security forces that did not seem to mind this new approach to imposing law and order.
As strange and unnatural as this might sound, I have to admit that I find the afore-mentioned incident more disturbing than attacks on churches and clashes over conversion even though the latter proved to be bloodier. I find it hard to view this incident as an accidental fight that erupted between a few people and was fuelled by the exaggerated sectarian zeal members of both groups display or as one of those childish, albeit sometimes deadly, muscle-flexing feats the majority likes to perform every now and then to intimidate the minority. I rather see this as the start of an organized campaign to divide the country along sectarian lines so that Muslim-only areas would be separated from their Christian-only counterparts and with a little bit of luck the second might as well be “advised” to look for another country altogether. Did I mention that the banished Christian families were warned that should they at any time decide to go back to the village, they would be doing so “at their own risk” and no one would be “responsible for their safety”?
Is it possible to imagine what could possibly happen if these families refuse to leave their homes and stick to all the rights they are allegedly entitled to by virtue of being full-fledged Egyptian citizens? I am assuming that forced evacuation would be the most peaceful reaction on the part of Muslim villagers, yet anyone slightly aware of the reality of the Egyptian society and the increasingly belligerent disposition of its Islamist factions would realize that even such a flagrant violation of the basic principles of citizenship is too rosy to be feasible. The now-fashionable use of weapons in the most trivial of squabbles and the apparent apathy of the police and the army towards such clashes, basically owing to lack of impartiality on their side and their inability to prioritize their national duties over their personal prejudices, constitute the perfect ingredients in the sectarian division recipe. Christians in this case will be divided into two groups: one that resists and this will have to bear with the consequences which we all know will never be in their favor and another that will get scared and run for its life. The two scenarios will eventually intersect as they both yield the same desired result: getting rid of religious minorities and declaring Egypt 100 percent Muslim.
I am not in any way suggesting that this plan would work and comparing Egypt to the Balkans does not in any way mean that the Christians of Egypt are in as precarious a situation as had been the Bosnians of Yugoslavia not because the extermination of the latter was any less tragic than the expulsion of the former, but rather because no debate along the lines of whether Croats are better off living in Croatia can possibly ensue about where Egyptian Christians belong. Needless to say, Egypt, the world’s oldest nation, is not a frail union between Serbia and Montenegro and no Slobodan Milošević will ever have the power to tamper with its historic unity.
The question is: Do we have to wait for another Srebrenica to wake up to this fact?
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