O Balkan Pioneers: Anatomy of an Escape Route
by Antidote’s Ed Sutton
Q.
Perhaps twenty years old, probably younger. Kabul, Afghanistan.
At the transit point in Adaševci, buses arrive in clusters from points further south in Serbia: the border camps of Preševo (on the Serbian-Macedonian border) and Dimitrovgrad (Serbian-Bulgarian), or from Belgrade. In Adaševci, there is a wait—sometimes several hours, sometimes half a day—for the arrival of a Croatia-bound train in the nearby city of Šid. When it comes, the buses deliver travelers to the train station there, from where they are taken to the Croatian border camp in Slavonski Brod.
During this wait, once the initial crush of arrival is over (travelers are often not let off the buses for the entire trip, even if the driver stops for a bathroom break himself; meanwhile volunteers meet the arriving buses immediately to distribute food and hygiene items and direct travelers to medical or internet services), everyone gets a little bored. Kids kick a football around on the asphalt: what was once a parking lot in front of what was once a roadside motel. People gather in clumps, smoke cigarettes and converse. They try to distract their babies from the strain of travel with song, laughter and dance. They drink cup after cup of blindingly sweet chai.
Q. noticed me chatting with a companion of his and approached cautiously with a couple other friends in tow. “You are speaking English,” he gently interrupts. “Do you have a phone my friend could use? To call his brother in France?” Continue reading O Balkan Pioneers: Anatomy of an Escape Route
issue of Green Anarchy, I found myself at a rare, uncharacteristic loss for words. Sure, I could regurgitate all the obvious critiques of monotheism, polytheism and religion in general, but it’s unlikely that I’d be introducing any new concepts to this rather boring and tedious discourse (Does any anarchist really need to be convinced that authoritarianism lies at the root of all religious paradigms?). I also (briefly) considered scrutinizing the reactionary, uncritical embracing of Neo-paganism and Eastern cosmological designs (what I call the “substitution faiths”) by so many self-professed anarchists, but again, I wasn’t able to muster up any sincere enthusiasm for such a dull, fruitless undertaking (After all, the elevation of mythological forms and structures to the level of eternal verities is appealing only to those who fear the swirling, magnificent mystery of chaos and seek to impose an illusory “order” on it; those who are afflicted with a pathological need for a “belief system” to quell their own nagging insecurities). 
