Written by: Adri Nurellari
After the meeting of the so-called "peace board", a map has been released to the public that envisages the division of the Gaza Strip into 5 sectors controlled by different Muslim-majority countries (in addition to Albania and Kosovo, there are 3 non-recognizing states: Kazakhstan, Morocco and Indonesia). For the first time, Albanians risk being directly involved in a concrete role in an intense conflict in the heart of the Middle East, in a territory where terrorist actors experienced in urban warfare such as Hamas remain an everyday reality. While the plan is presented as a "demek" stabilizing force, the involvement of two Albanian countries in one of the most dangerous conflicts in the world raises serious questions about the human, diplomatic, moral and economic cost.
What is happening is simply not diplomacy, but a delegation of risk where the big ones draw while the small ones patrol. For the big powers, this is the ideal formula for peacekeeping with expendable troops that do not cause electoral costs at home, as happened in Lebanon or Somalia. After the attack of October 23, 1983 in Beirut, where 241 American marines were killed, the US practically withdrew from Lebanon within a few months. And after the battle of October 3–4, 1993 in Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down) where 18 soldiers were killed, Washington terminated the mission in Somalia and became much more hesitant towards ground interventions in conflicts within Muslim countries. And what is being suggested is nothing new but simply the recycling of a classic imperialist recipe long used by the English, who even today send Gurkha troops from Nepal to the front lines, or by the French with the Foreign Legion.
In the calculations of the American administration (especially around the current president's circle), countries like Albania and Kosovo are seen as politically obedient Muslims to the West who have no regional agenda in the Middle East and also do not have the capacity to challenge American-Israeli decision-making. In other words, they are buffer troops of pro-Western Muslims who must maintain order so that the local population does not perceive it as a Jewish or American occupation. The idea of a "peace corporation" without a legitimate UN mandate and local participation is essentially brutal and is called "outsourcing of risk."
Personally, I do not understand the enthusiasm of Albanians posting the map in question on social networks, because this involvement is extremely dangerous and harmful to us. If two Albanian contingents enter Gaza and exclusively control entire sectors, they automatically become a legitimate target of attack for Hamas as a symbol of "Islamic betrayal" in their radical narrative against the "infidel servants of the West". So cannon fodder in a conflict that has no strategic connection to our interests and has nothing to do with our obligation under Article 5 of NATO. This mechanism of "collective security" applies to member countries at home and certainly not to their adventures abroad. Even more so when it is known that the sectarian war within the Muslim world has been the bloodiest in the world in recent decades.
The main risk is that without a Security Council Resolution and without local invitation and participation, the troops will not be perceived as peacekeepers, but as a camouflaged extension of an occupation architecture. This will strip the contingents of international moral and legal protection and expose them directly to attacks, without real accountability mechanisms for those who actually designed the mission hundreds of kilometers away.
This non-transparent commitment perhaps explains the intensification of the Rama government's relations with the Netanyahu administration and the parallel rapprochement with the Israeli military industry giant Elbit Systems. Because when you offer troops "as if they were family property" for a controversial experimental security project, you automatically enter Israel's political and industrial chain.
In this game, Albania gains nothing but coffins and distancing itself from the EU, which, with some peripheral exceptions, has rejected the “peace board.” Strategically, Albania gains neither diplomatic influence nor economic benefit, but only exposure to international terrorism, potential internal radicalization, and a dangerous precedent for Albanian troops to be used as Muslim colonial police.
This is like returning us to the former historical role of “Arnauts as the peripheral soldiers of the Ottoman Empire”. The facts show that in the Ottoman Empire, the peoples of the peripheries, especially ours, were widely used in the Janissary corps as gendarmes in border regions or in punitive or conquest campaigns, while strategic decisions were made in Istanbul. Prominent historians such as Noel Malcolm and Mark Mazower describe this model as a center-periphery relationship where the center gains power, the periphery sheds blood.
Therefore, before exulting over the fact that we will be "entrusted with such important tasks", we must clarify once and for all why we have been chosen. In short, Albanian because Albanians are perceived as Muslim in demographics, Western in political orientation, weak in geopolitical weight and incapable of saying "no" (because the ruling elites have personal benefits from servility to Trump). The fact that Donald Trump packaged the September 2020 Washington Agreement between Hoti and Vučić, in the same political framework as the Abrahamic Accords is proof that he reads and categorizes us more as part of the Islamic axis than as European actors.
If we get into this mess, it seems that we will be guarding roads that are not ours or those of our allies, defending decisions that we did not make or have no influence on, sacrificing troops for a dubious operation that does not concern us, and damaging relations with European partners who have openly expressed reservations. Meanwhile, the real decision-making actors will negotiate from a distance, using us as chess pieces, as the Sublime Porte once did.
This pile of arguments against our engagement in Gaza actually highlights the real reason for this haste. We are not dealing with state interests, but personal troubles. When investigations and files from SPAK, which is supported by the Americans, weigh on the dome, foreign policy becomes a bargaining chip and state troops are treated as negotiating capital to pull the plug on support. After all, the "evil mouths" say that even Netanyahu himself, investigated for corruption affairs, has a political interest in dragging out the war as long as possible. In this logic, Gaza is not a peace mission, it is a life jacket for personal survival. But serious states do not engage in diplomacy to wash away criminal troubles, and dignified nations do not sacrifice their sons to prolong someone's political life.
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