“Europe should wake up. If they remain silent it will be destroyed from within. It is almost already destroyed. If Europe does not wake up and prosecute these people… these people are not only Hamas. These people are against freedom, against democracy, against secularism, they are against the basic principles of the country they live in.” – A Gazan living in Belgium, Channel 12 News, July 2026.
The ongoing war in the Middle East has revealed how the process of globalization has contributed to the weaponization of interdependence.
Globalization, a process that intensified in the 1990s, was expected to bring the world closer than ever. One of its significant consequences was the interdependence among state actors and non-state actors based on the expectation that such interdependence—financially, socially, and politically—would raise the costs of conflict, thereby necessitating cooperation over conflict and concord over discord. But recent events have put a spotlight on the vulnerabilities of such interdependence.
For the second time in a generation, official development assistance — as conventionally measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — is collapsing.
In the 1990s, ideologically driven development assistance declined after the end of the Cold War. In the 2020s, the major donors have shown a preference for hard power over soft power channelling more funds into defense, at the direct expense of foreign aid. Spending on immigration from conflict-torn states has also drawn funds away from traditional aid budgets.
Sovereign nations face an imperialism that, cornered by its own contradictions, is forging ahead through neocolonialism, armed dispossession, and media manipulation. It is crucial to maintain analytical acuity, organize a response, and not yield an inch in the ideological struggle against oligarchic barbarity.
Trump was an idiot for starting the war, but it is the US military that lost it.
It makes my skin crawl whenever I hear someone recite the mantra – “the US has the greatest military in the history of the world”.
In a new book, Aliza Marcus examines the tumultuous recent history of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
On Aug. 10, the Turkish parliament passed an historic law establishing a legal framework to disband the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the militant organization that has waged armed struggle since its establishment in 1978. This has raised hopes that the decades-long conflict that has taken almost 50,000 lives will finally be resolved through political means rather than violent ones. Although promising, such an outcome is hardly guaranteed, as is clear from the wreckage of past attempts.
The Germans have just caught another alleged member of the group that bombed the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022. Volodymyr Zhuravlev, a deep-sea diver, was detained last week in the Croatian coastal city of Pula. In a fantastical turn of events, he had reportedly been acting as a consultant on the set of director Doug Liman’s next movie, Snake Island, about the team of Ukrainian divers that allegedly carried out the Nord Stream operation.
Why should Egypt be searching for a formula that would facilitate Hamas’s return to Palestinian politics? Should Egypt and the rest of the international community not instead be demanding that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad surrender their weapons, dismantle their military structures, and disappear from Palestinian political life?
Key Takeaways:
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci expects full acquittal on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, with a verdict scheduled for September 16 at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.
Thaci and three other former KLA leaders deny individual and command responsibility for alleged crimes, including 102 murders, at detention facilities during and after the 1998–99 Kosovo War.
In a recent interview, Thaci criticized the prosecution’s evidence, the origins of the Dick Marty report that led to the court’s creation, and the denial of bail, while defending his earlier support for establishing the Specialist Chambers.
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci said in an interview broadcast on Thursday evening that he anticipated being acquitted of all charges in the war crimes and crimes against humanity case against him and three other former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA leaders at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.
The verdict in the case against Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi is expected on September 16.
“I expect to be acquitted of every charge. I have nothing to add to the arguments of the defence team or to my final statement in the courtroom,” Thaci said in the written interview with the Pristina-based broadcaster RTV Dukagjini.
The four men are accused of individual and command responsibility for crimes committed against prisoners held at KLA detention facilities in Kosovo and in neighbouring Albania, including 102 murders. The crimes were allegedly committed during and just after the Kosovo War in 1998 and 1999.
All four defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Thaci said he did not regret supporting the creation of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers when he was in office, but said he had not expected the decision by Kosovo’s elected representatives to be “misused so brutally”.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was created specifically to try former members of the KLA. It is located in The Hague and staffed by international judges and prosecutors due to doubts about the Kosovo justice system’s ability to try former KLA fighters, many of whom are considered heroes in Kosovo.
In the interview, Thaci spoke about a 2010 report by former Swiss Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, which alleged serious crimes including organ-trafficking by KLA-linked figures. The report ultimately led to the establishment of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. Thaci claimed that its allegations were developed with the involvement of officials at the Council of Europe from Serbia and Russia – both of which oppose Kosovo’s independence.
“The freedom and the construction of Kosovo’s independence were unswallowable for Serbia and Russia. After failing to delegitimise it at the International Court of Justice [which ruled that Kosovo’s independence declaration did not violate international law], they turned to the Council of Europe. The aim was clear: to discredit the state of Kosovo,” he said.
Thaci also criticised the prosecution’s treatment of defence witnesses and evidence in his trial.
He accused prosecutors of giving greater weight to what he described as “fabricated testimony” originating from the time when Slobodan Milosevic was in power in Belgrade, and dismissing testimony from senior Western and international officials who were “the eyes and ears” in Kosovo.
“The prosecution is elevating evidence fabricated during the era of the Milosevic regime, and ignoring the testimony of senior officials from the US, NATO, Britain, the UN, the OSCE and other international institutions,” he said.
Thaci noted that the appearance of such international figures as defence witnesses demonstrated their concern about the proceedings.
“It is not easy for these personalities to sit in such a courtroom. I understood that they were seeing that something wrong was happening in this process. They felt a moral obligation to tell the truth,” he said.
Thaci declined to comment on the current Kosovo government’s approach to the Specialist Chambers.
Asked whether his rights had been violated during the proceedings, he replied that he considered the “process as a whole” to have involved violations.
He also criticised the decision not to release him on bail, saying that the arguments used against his release were based on “prejudices and hypotheses”. Thaci said several NATO member states had offered guarantees on his behalf and that he remained grateful to them.
During the trial, the prosecution attempted to prove that, as members of the KLA General Staff, they were responsible for lower-ranking fighters who committed crimes. The defence argued that the KLA did not have a proper army command structure, so the defendants did not have real authority over lower-ranking KLA fighters.
Thaci resigned as Kosovo’s president in November 2020 to face the charges and together with the other three men was sent to detention in The Hague, where they have been ever since. The trial started in April 2023.
During the trial, KLA veterans and their supporters have staged protests in Pristina, Tirana, Skopje, Strasbourg and The Hague, accusing the Specialist Chambers of bias.
In 2024, Thaci was also charged with obstruction of justice, alongside four others, including former Kosovo Justice Minister Hajredin Kuci. The trial for this case started in February, days after proceedings in the war crimes and crimes against humanity trial ended. Thaci and the four others accused of obstruction of justice – Kuci, Isni Kilaj, Bashkim Smakaj and Fadil Fazliu – have denied wrongdoing.
La rupture entre la Russie et l’Europe ne peut pas être comprise seulement comme une fracture géopolitique.
Elle repose sur une divergence plus ancienne entre l’Orient orthodoxe, héritier de Byzance, et l’Occident latin, recomposé après l’effondrement du monde romain occidental au Ve siècle. Les lignes de front actuelles, les sanctions, l’élargissement de l’OTAN, la dépendance énergétique et l’alignement transatlantique ne suffisent pas à expliquer la profondeur de l’antagonisme, ni pourquoi la négociation seule peine à le surmonter. Tant que cette faille ne sera pas véritablement pensée, aucune architecture diplomatique ne pourra fonder durablement la paix européenne.