Πομάκοι, Local development, Surveillance zone, Pomaks
Abstract
This paper analyses the socio-economic implications of the imposition of "zone under surveillance" status upon a twenty kilometre-wide area along the Northern borders of Greece, almost throughout the 20th century. This zone was delimited on the one hand with a border that was separating Greece from other countries. On the other hand it was delimited with a frontier that was separating the Greek people of this zone from the rest of the country. The paper focuses on one particular part of this zone, that in the prefecture of Xanthi, which is inhabited by Pomaks. The existence of such a state of affairs has created a lot of problems within the surveillance zone (a lack of investment, slow modernization of the economy, a tendency to become an almost self sufficient -subsistence economy- in order to face its isolation, and of course a tendency to become a ghetto). Two main arguments can be drawn. Firstly, while the surveillance zone policy was advanced for military and to a certain extent for political reasons -i.e. to isolate as well as to control the ethnic minorities, such as the Pomaks- its application had major repercussions on the economic development of the area. In a sense it is a typical case of the inadequacy of the Greek state to draw a consistent policy with clear cut aims and then to implement it which, not unusually again, had the adverse effects to the ones that it was introduced for. Secondly, while in the EU there is a tendency to dismantle the external borders of its member states, in Greece there are still frontiers within the country. In such a context the confinement of the surveillance zone in Greece sounds somewhat out of date.
