To the Editor:

On Friday, the self-described “leftist” government of SYRIZA, having lost their junior coalition partner ANEL, was able to garner the necessary votes to pass the Tsipras-Zaev Agreement. FYROM will now be renamed the Republic of North Macedonia, paving the way for its entry into the EU and NATO.

Protests have gripped Athens and other parts of Greece. Nationalists proclaim that “Macedonia is Greek” while Fascists graffiti the meandros and white power cross. The members of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, who idolize Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, seem to have had no issue when Macedonia and Western Thrace were given to Bulgaria as a gift for their collaboration with the invasion and occupation of Greece during World War II.

The Macedonian question is more than just history and language. Anachronistic overtures highlight the deficiency of serious historical study of the region. Macedonia as a geographic region in Ottoman times incorporated parts of Greece, FYROM, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania. The Treaty of Bucharest (1913), which concluded the Second Balkan War, divided the entire region of Macedonia between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria.

Rather, it is FYROM’s geostrategic importance that is at the very heart of this agreement. US-EU-NATO plans for the region, measured in the blood of the Balkan’s peoples, are a continuation of the illegal imperialist wars that destroyed Yugoslavia and created small ethno-states and protectorates. Military bases like Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo are only the beginning.

This deal does nothing to solve the major issues facing not only the people of Greece but the peoples of the entire Balkans as highlighted by the Greek Communist Party (KKE). Perpetual war, militarism, and imperialist adventurism in the region only stoke nationalism, irredentism and fascism. It is time to say no to the plans of US-EU-NATO imperialism in the region.

Christopher J. Helali

Athens, Greece