In Kosovo this happens every day, for no better reason than this troubled place has been an international protectorate for so long and is now subject to international supervision. The adjective “international” was transferred to all the foreigners who flocked to Kosovo to bring peace, democracy, development and the anonymous-letter-based pre-trial detention of innocent central bank governors (which is EULEX’s original contribution to European values).

We could leave it at that and conclude that in Kosovo ‘international’ has become a noun. But I am a member of the Society for the Protection of Precision in the Naming of Things, and will note that ‘international’ means involving or belonging to more than one country; existing, occurring, or carried on between nations; of interest or relevance to more than one country.

A quick sidenote: in this last sense ‘international’ reflects a judgment of value, especially when contrasted with ‘local’. 'Local' implies that a thing is relevant to a much smaller community, and is thus of lesser value. For example, if I were a singer, I would prefer to have an international reputation than a local one. Of course in 1999 ‘local’ was preferred to ‘national’ or ‘Kosovar’ only because it is status neutral, not because it can be derogatory. However the balance of power between Kosovars and foreigners underlined this meaning and objectively the use of this international-local dichotomy is neither very innocent nor very kind to Kosovars. I will leave the latter question to Kosovars, and will focus on the former one.

When an adjective morphs into a noun, the property it describes typically is the truest and most prominent one of the thing: its blueness, for instance, is the most visible characteristic of that color. So, if the internationals are called thus because they are part of a system of international supervision, is the internationality of this system its truest and most prominent property? I don’t think so: its ineffectiveness is.

Also, while the UN protectorate was certainly international, the current supervision is international in a much narrower sense: it represents only 26 states (the ISG ones) out of almost 200 and is de-facto led by the Quint states among which the US is absolutely predominant. So ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’, is a more precise description of what kind of supervision it is.

These people (my past incarnation included, of course) should instead be called the ‘ineffective aliens’, which has the double advantage of being accurate and of including a noun. And if I am right in believing that words are important, perhaps Kosovars' patience will run out faster. One can perhaps tolerate living under international supervision, but who would willingly accept to live under ineffective alien supervision? Especially when it supports an incompetent government (whose members could, according to the same method, be called the ‘incompetents’).

So I propose that to properly celebrate the declaration of independence, from 18 February all foreigners should be called ‘ineffective aliens’.

Even if my proposal is not accepted, I will still have proven that the foreigners who describe themselves and their peers as ‘internationals’ are pompous ignorants (sic!). This can be demonstrated empirically, if you dare have a coffee with them or care to observe how they presided over the destruction of public finances, an unemployment spike and the police’s use of disproportionate force on a crowd sitting on a street - with the indifferent smile of the foreigner visiting an exotic land.

The article was originally written in English.

Illustration: Syzygy Group

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