May 15, 2008 Axel Krause
Little prepared me for this first contact with Greece gripped by fear, high tensions, anti-American feelings and, by almost any European standard, an underdeveloped economy. It was a hot August day in 1967. My wife and I had completed a tiring, seven-hour train ride from Athens to Salonika, the country’s ancient, second-largest city and the capital of northern Greece. Four months earlier, a group of senior Greek army officers, supported by Washington, seized power, eliminated civil rights, press freedom, amid crackdowns on all forms of opposition that included torture and forced exile. Infrastructure, notably roads, hotels, telecommunications of all kinds had remained primitive, tourism barely evolving, cash machines, bank credit and car-rental cards still virtually unknown.
One of my first calls was to the popular American Farm School, founded in 1904 by US missionaries on a barren 50-acre tract just outside the city, as a private, nonprofit educational institution for the development of rural Greece. “We can talk about anything, but not politics,” Bruce Landsdale, the widely-admired American head of the school, who speaks fluent Greek, told me, cautiously. “But someday, things will change – for much the better.” Today, a democratic republic is in place since 1974, and moderately prospering, thanks largely to annual, multi-billion-dollar - and continuing - European Union-funded development and strong, support by successive administrations in Washington, from US companies, banks and the influential, three million-strong Greek-US community in America. The visionary prediction of Landsdale, who ran the school for 35 years until his retirement in 1990, became a reality. Revitalization is visible, accessible even to the casual, foreign visitor, starting in once-shabby downtown Thessaloniki, as some one million inhabitants call their ancient city: the trendy,outdoor cafés on the waterfront, cool music playing, are jammed with young people; nearby shopping areas offer all you can find in Athens, including Internet centers; credit and banking cards are accepted even in remote neighborhoods; the city’s international airport, built for the 2004 Olympic Games is efficient and spacious; a métro system is under construction, as modern highways fan out in all directions, reflecting how the region is also expanding beyond its borders – north to Bulgaria, west to Albania and to its other neighbor with which it has a major, international conflict over the inclusion of Macedonia in its constitutional name – the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Known in the UN and elsewhere as FYROM, a transitional name, this small, landlocked Balkan country whose predominant language is close to Bulgarian, nevertheless attracts significant, growing Greek investments and cooperative ventures that include the American Farm School, as the Balkans develop, while actively seeking membership in the EU and NATO. So what does this contemporary version of the 19th century “Macedonian Question” have to do with US politics and Senator Barack Obama? Although France took much of the critical, well-publicized heat from the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, Greece, too, said firmly no to sending troops, along with Germany; and although as a NATO member since 1952, Athens approved sending Greek medical teams to Afghanistan, there is continuing, strong opposition to the Bush administration’s style and policies. This includes having been among the first to recognize FYROM, along with Britain, China and Russia, among others in the early 1990s, while soft-peddling the aggressive Greek push for finding a new name to distinguish it from the widely-recognized Greek origins of the ancient kingdom, founded near Salonika in 336 BC, and later absorbed by the Roman Empire. But not Obama, highly popular in northern Greece for his early opposition to the Iraq war, nor several other influential congressional allies on the Greek side of the question. Notably senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs, chaired by Obama, and Maine’s Republican senator, Olympia Snowe; she not only boasts Greek immigrant parents, but as a youngster attended a Greek Orthodox school and remains a member of the Holy Trinity Geek Orthodox Church in Lewiston. The bipartisan resolutions they helped draft, with over a hundred backers, accuse the FYROM government in Skopje, the capital, of being in direct “contradiction” with a UN agreement, that prohibits any form of “propaganda” against Greece’s historical or cultural heritage, citing as an example maps used in a military school showing a “Greater Macedonia” extending many miles south to Greece’s legendary Mount Olympus and east to Bulgaria’s Mount Pirin. The resolutions call for an end to such practices and for supporting a settlement with Greece by finding a “mutually-acceptable official name,” and which might be “Northern,” or “Upper” or “Slavic” Macedonia, suggestions repeatedly rejected by Skopje. Meantime, the conservative Greek government of Kostas Karamanlis remains determined to to vetoing FYROM’s bid for EU and NATO membership, until a solution is found, for as Greece’s embassy press counselor in Washington, Yiorgos Chouliaras, recently wrote in a piece for Indiana’s “The Journal Gazette”: A “country wishing to participate in an alliance with Greece, cannot at the same time refuse to adopt a clear stance against irredentism and publically encouraged territorial aspirations.” While a solution may be found at a NATO summit meeting July 9, countering accusations found on several web sites claim that Obama and his allies seek only, as one conservative columnist put it, “to destabilize this fragile state in a sensitive part of the Balkans, in order to pander to the nationalist hysteria of the Greek American lobby…let us hope that Barack Obama’s sponsorship of this resolution is simply a cynical ploy to win the Greek-American vote…” Among other Democrats, the Clintons are mentioned frequently with admiration, but particularly Bill, who on a presidential visit to Athens acknowledged the US role in supporting the military dictatorship, having, as he reportedly declared; “allowed its interests in pursuing the Cold War to prevail over its interests – I would say its obligation – to support democracy…” Nevertheless, Obama is the American leader most Greeks I encountered on a recent trip wanted to hear about and would support. “It isn’t just because he is black and opposes Bush policies that we like him so much,” said an international lawyer from Crete, “but because he represents change and hope, which inspires us.” Added a bank director in the western city of Kazani, “I feel Obama is by far the best choice for reforming the US banking system, given the current crisis, which also affects us, and in light of expectations that Republican John McCain won’t seriously reform banking regulation.” Meantime, students and faculty I encountered at the American Farm School, seemed, understandably, far more interested in their education and future careers at a time when in northern Greece, and surrounding countries, agriculture faces new, global changes and challenges.”Up to 18% of the Greek population is involved in agriculture, and that will come down to 4%, says Professor Vangelis Vergos, director of the lifelong learning program at Perrotis College, the newest, university-level addition to the farm school that from the beginning has functioned mainly as a co-educational vocational high school, operating on an annual budget of $11 million. “This is the niche market we are focusng on…teaching the importance of ecologically-minded, sustainable farming,” Vergos adds, which includes computerized, market-oriented approaches to farming and expanding into new, related areas, such as tourism, which still represents only 15% of Greece’s economy. Indeed, Perrotis College, still a small division, with 85 students,compared to 250 in the secondary school, is expanding internationally, with half the students from neighboring countries, including FYROM. “All the neighboring nationalities here get along well with ours, as Greece moves into the Balkans, something that should have happened a long time ago, but is possible now, with Bulgaria, Romania now in the EU, and maybe soon FYROM, or whatever we wind up calling the country,” says another faculty member, adding that an agreement with the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff permits validation of the school’s BSc degree, enabling graduates to continue their studies in the US. The major problem facing the school is finding a successor to the current, American president, William McGrew, who, formerly a diplomat and educator, several years ago came out of retirement to run the school until a successor could be found, hopefully an American. But so far the board trustees, despite searching, has not found a suitable US candidate. And have decided, in a break with tradition, that he or she can be Greek. Whatever solution is found, the school remains a symbol of the revitalization of northern Greece. And reflecting strong US support, Tom Niles, a former, long-serving career diplomat, and widely admired for his staunch backing while a very active US ambassador to Greece from 1993 to 1997, says:“I was, and am, a great believer in the American Farm School…and although relatively small amounts of public money from the USAID and the EU have been helpful, it is still a privately funded operation. And this, I believe, is one of its great strengths.” |
