Macedonia wins the first round

Albanian rebels have withdrawn from the mountains above Tetovo, Macedonia’s second city situated near the border with Kosovo, about 50 miles west of the capital, Skopje. British troops normally stationed in Kosovo have been transferred to the border zone to reinforce the Macedonian army there. The fighting is over for the time being. In the capital, the British foreign secretary Robin Cook has been trying, with other European Union ministers, to bring together representatives of the government and the three Albanian parties that represent the Macedonian opposition.
Ever since the break-up of the Yugoslavian federation at the beginning of the nineties, pundits have been muttering darkly about Macedonia being the crisis point that will plunge the Balkans into a war which will overshadow anything that has happened in Bosnia, Serbia or Croatia, inevitably drawing in Greece and Bulgaria too. Such a scenario could happen in spite of the large numbers of foreign soldiers posted there to keep the peace.
The problem derives principally from convictions among the 600,000 ethnic Albanians in Macedonia that they are not given equal rights with other citizens, a complaint that objective reporters regard as well-founded. These ethnic Albanians constitute more than a quarter of the population. They are concentrated on the western side of the country, where they form a majority, yet do not have any control over their own affairs, nor are they allowed to use their own language in schools and universities or for official business. They are, indeed, treated as second-class citizens. They hate us just because we are Albanians, one of the rebels said bitterly as the defeated guerrillas withdrew last week.

The historical perspective

All this area was overrun by the Turks in the fourteenth century, and remained under the sway of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years. After the Balkan wars of 1912-13, when the Turks lost most of their European possessions, the greater part of what is now Macedonia was given to Serbia, and the rest to Greece and Bulgaria. At the end of the first world war a new state of Yugoslavia was created to include Macedonia, and when Tito’s communists took over in 1945 Macedonia became a constituent republic.
With the collapse of communism in 1990, free elections were held, and a non-communist government was formed. But, although the parliament approved Macedonian sovereignty and independence, both Yugoslavia and Greece objected to Macedonia’s secession, the Greeks taking exception to Macedonia’s name, flag and currency which, they insisted, belonged to Greece alone. The peaceful withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from the country in 1992 was succeeded by Greece cancelling its objections on the condition that Macedonia should call itself The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Relations with Greece remained tense for a few years after Macedonia was admitted as a member of the United Nations in 1993, and the United Nations sent a thousand peacekeepers to man border posts with Greece and Albania. Throughout the Kosovo war from March to June 1999 Macedonia remained loyally on NATO’s side, uninvolved except as a sanctuary for some 300,000 Albanian Kosovars expelled by the Serbs. The refugees returned to Kosovo as soon as the bombing ended.

Intrusion from Kosovo

Macedonian political leaders had been aware for some months that confrontation with Albanian separatists was becoming inevitable, and had been working to stave it off. President Boris Trajkovski and the Prime Minister, Ljubco Georgievski, had persuaded Arben Xhafari, leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians, that talking was the only solution, and there were grounds for hoping, towards the end of February, that they would be successful. But the patience of the Albanians was exhausted, and conflict became inevitable.
The crisis began with incursions of Albanian militants from Kosovo, some of them from the Kosovo Liberation Army, later called the National Liberation Army, which had won its spurs in fighting the Serbs at the time of the NATO intervention in 1999. Insurgency soon spread to Tetovo, where rebel forces fought their way to the centre, evicting the few Macedonians unfortunate enough to be found there.
NATO do not have a remit to operate in Macedonia, and there had been speculation that the Macedonian government would call on either Serbia or Bulgaria, with whom relations have always been close, for military muscle, but it was not necessary. The Macedonian army showed surprising resourcefulness and resilience in halting, then defeating, the well-armed Albanian intruders who managed to penetrate to a point where they were threatening the capital, Skopje. The only help the Macedonians got was from a pair of German T-55 tanks from the 5,000-strong peacekeeping force which were brought up to repel invaders when German NATO troops were caught in crossfire.
By 21 March, with increasing talk of desertions among the Albanian forces, a withdrawal had begun. Macedonian artillery continued to shell Albanian positions in the mountains west of Tetovo, but it was clear that the Macedonians had resisted and broken the Albanian aggression. On 25 March the Macedonian forces launched an infantry assault in the mountains above Tetovo, described by one onlooker as the first attack made by a Macedonian army since the days of Alexander the Great in the third century BC. Fighting was fierce, but casualties fortunately few. Later that day the Albanians offered an unlimited cease-fire, in response to a Macedonian ultimatum to surrender, to allow talks on a peaceful solution to the conflict. These exchanges coincided with various British initiatives to help the Macedonian forces, and with NATO proposals to improve security on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo. President Vladimir Putin of Russia added his share by demanding that the international community should respond vigorously to Albanian insurgency. Macedonia must not face terrorism alone, the Russian foreign minister Ivan Ivanov said, the international community must help.
On 23 March the European Union summit meeting in Stockholm had asked President Trajkovski to persuade his generals to show restraint in their dealings with Albanian extremists, while assuring the president that the EU would stand by Macedonia. At the same time Ibrahim Rugova, a leader of the Albanian Kosovars, signed a statement urging Albanian extremists to lay down their arms

The war’s over – what now?

For the moment, it seems that the immediate Albanian threat has been dealt with, but it will certainly return. The trouble is that there are about seven million Albanians in the area, half of them squeezed into Albania itself, – where conditions have been far from ideal ever since the pyramid-selling scandal of 1995 – two million in Kosovo, 600,000 in Macedonia and the rest in Serbia and Montenegro. Most of them are Muslim. It is difficult to say exactly what they want, or whether they themselves really know. The majority of those in Macedonia would probably settle for being treated decently, on the same basis as their Macedonian neighbours. But a very significant minority, mainly from Kosovo, seem to have convinced themselves that they need a Greater Albania, or at least a Greater Albania Movement. Others would like to see some form of self-government for Albanians within Macedonia, while yet others would prefer a division of Macedonia into separate states for Albanians and non-Albanians. Dissatisfaction among Kosovar Albanians has been fed by the realisation that their allies who won the war against Milosevic are not about to give them an immediate guarantee of independence from Serbia. With this realisation, the thought of seizing independence by military action is attractive, although probably not quite such a push-over as they thought a month or two ago. Nevertheless, the Albanians are ferocious fighters, especially in the mountain environment of western Macedonia, and, while the Macedonians may have won the first round, the Albanian rebels remain a serious threat.

A united Macedonia

I do not know anyone who thinks the Albanian fighters are going to go home to bed with a cup of cocoa, commented one diplomat, as the NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, arrived in Skopje with the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Both were full of praise for the Macedonian Army’s restraint in their operations, which were judged to be proportional to the threat from the ethnic Albanians. Lord Robertson was in no doubt about the options before the Macedonians: It is a united Macedonia or a Balkan bloodbath, he said.
Macedonia has never been united. Alexander the Great of Macedon tried to unite Greece with many countries, including Egypt, Babylonia and Persia, but his efforts met with a mixed response. Throughout history Macedonia has been a melting-pot for many other tribes, nations and peoples – Slavs, Illyrians, Thracians, Scythians, Bulgars and Byzantines, many of whom have left their mark and passed on, while under the Turks Sasi, Tartars, Circassians, Gypsies and Jews all settled and mixed with the local population. So promiscuous was the process that, in the nineteenth century, and up to this day, the very word Macedonia is, in French, the synonym for a mixture, as in macédoine de fruits for fruit salad.
While traces and influences of earlier settlers certainly persist, modern Macedonians are determined that their republic shall remain free and independent, Slav and Orthodox. They have endured 500 years of Turkish rule and another 50 years as a communist republic under Titoist Yugoslavia. Now, for the first time, they are in a position to govern themselves. They have already announced their intention of seeking membership of the European Union at the earliest possible moment, and will hope also to work closely with other Slav and Orthodox countries within Yugoslavia and the Balkans, if only to win support against future Albanian claims against their country.
The Macedonian economy was ruined by UN trade sanctions against Serbia, and by the Greek economic blockade. Both of those are now over, and Macedonians are trying to build a market economy and introduce privatisation. But they are still a long way behind: inflation is 3.5 per cent, and unemployment still about 30 per cent.

International support

It has been reassuring to see how much support Macedonia was given or promised by nations as different as Germany and Russia during the Albanian insurgency in March. There seemed to be a shared determination to see that this poor and weak little country should not be allowed to drift into the sort of free-for-all which seemed to consume former Yugoslavian countries a few years ago. Macedonia matters to Europe and to NATO, and both the EU and NATO should ensure that the Macedonians realise that they are not without friends. They should also ensure that other nations, including Albania, should understand that Greater Albania is not part of NATO’s Balkan policy any more than Greater Serbia was. That does not mean that Macedonia should be allowed to mistreat its ethnic Albanians. The only way that Macedonians can live in peace is by giving their Albanians a fair deal, treating them as equal citizens, allowing them the free and unlimited use of their own language, religion and customs, at home as well as in school, and ensuring that no ethnic Albanian should ever be able to make the accusation that he or she is being treated as a second class citizen. Only by doing so will peace return, and remain.