By Xhabir Deralla

The Balkans are not behind the world. They are where the world arrives too late.

What appears elsewhere as surprise often arrives here first: democratic erosion, institutional capture, propaganda ecosystems, influence operations, political radicalization, normalized corruption, and manufactured social, political, and ethnic divisions that often erupt into violence.

Attacks on parliament, recurring ethnic violence among youth, hooligan structures functioning as political militias, terror attacks with denied or obscured authorship, and persistent – sometimes disguised, sometimes open – hostility toward solidarity with Ukraine are all manifestations of a political culture shaped by fear, manipulation, and violence. That is the political and social landscape of everyday life in the Balkans, a place that often appears warm and welcoming to outsiders, while beneath the visible surface linger the shadows of past horrors, the pathologies of the present, and the uncertainties of the future.

All of this unfolds within an environment of state capture, tight partisan and oligarchic control over public resources, and the subordination of media, academia, and intellectual life to political power.

Too often explained away as “Balkan culture” or “unfinished transition,” the Balkans are in reality a region where authoritarian and revisionist forces thrive, and where aggression changes wardrobe before moving further West. Europe has recognized and consistently criticized Orbán’s Hungary, yet it often turns a blind eye to even harsher realities in the Balkans, appeasing authoritarian and corrupt power structures in the name of short-term stability.

In the Balkans, the future rarely arrives as prediction. It arrives as crisis.

In the past, this meant war, bloodshed, ethnic violence, and destruction. Today, it survives through captured institutions, permanent political tension, disinformation, intimidation, and normalization of democratic decay — always ready to escalate when it serves the interests of strongmen, their networks, and the systems built around them.

Journalists, analysts, activists, and independent voices across the region have warned about these processes for years. They document patterns, publish investigations, issue early warnings, and propose recommendations. Yet too often, those warnings are acknowledged only after the damage spreads beyond the Balkans and reaches the political centers of Europe and the democratic world. And that’s usually too late. In the meantime, much of what we write and speak about is dismissed.

If it’s written in the Balkans, it is not less true. It is written from experience the rest of the world has not faced yet.

About the author:
Xhabir Deralla is a journalist and analyst focused on democracy, disinformation, and hybrid warfare.

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