[ALBSA-Info] Peace Plan Will Likely Fail

[Kreshnik Bejko]

http://www.stratfor.com/europe/commentary/0108091845.htm

Macedonia Peace Plan Likely to Fail
1845 GMT, 010809

Summary

With 3,500 NATO troops ready to enter Macedonia, ethnic Albanians and 
Macedonia's majority parties have signed a peace deal intended to put an end 
to the fighting there. But the agreement and NATO's presence, if it comes, 
will do little to prevent violence. Well-armed and well-trained, the highly 
mobile National Liberation Army will frustrate Macedonian and NATO forces. A 
civil war is imminent. The only question is how long it will last.

Analysis

A Macedonian policeman died in a clash with ethnic Albanian guerrillas near 
Tetovo Aug. 9 just hours after European Union peace mediator Francois 
Leotard announced that ethnic Albanians and Macedonia's majority parties had 
initialed a peace deal. Moreover, the latest incident came just a day after 
a bloody clash where ethnic Albanian rebels loyal to the National Liberation 
Army (NLA) ambushed a convoy of Macedonians outside Skopje, killing 10 
soldiers.

NATO, with 3,500 troops ready to enter Macedonia expressly to disarm 
Albanian militants, is urging both sides to sign the formal, but nonbinding, 
peace agreement in a meeting reportedly scheduled for Aug. 13. But recent 
violence and regular interruptions of the peace process, ongoing in the 
Macedonian city of Ohrid, suggest the agreement, now in doubt, would do 
little to prevent an imminent civil war. The question is whether the 
conflict will be brief or protracted.

NATO's ambitious plan

NATO's presence in Macedonia, if it comes, won't be able to deter ethnic 
violence. Its plan for disarming ethnic Albanians cannot ensure peace 
because NATO cannot adequately confiscate weapons belonging to various 
factions of the National Liberation Army in the 30-day mission it has 
outlined.

Other NATO-led missions intended to disarm ethnic Albanian militants in 
Kosovo and Serbia have not deterred fighters from rearming. KFOR disarmed 
thousands of ethnic Albanians as part of a surrender of the Kosovo 
Liberation Army in September 1999. But the KLA rearmed, with U.N. consent, 
under the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). KFOR recently detained and disarmed 
hundreds of soldiers loyal to insurgents in Serbia's Presevo Valley, only to 
clear them of any human rights abuses and send them back to base camp, where 
they later established the Albanian National Army. Even if NATO could disarm 
rebels in Macedonia, resupplies would promptly return into northern 
Macedonia.

NATO's mission to disarm the NLA will not rid the country or the region of 
Albanian militants. There are about 5,000 soldiers serving under the KPC, 
many of whom operate in official and unofficial capacities as gunrunners in 
the Balkans, according to the Sunday London Times.

Rebel forces well-trained, well-armed and mobile

For Macedonian forces the challenge will be to engage in defensive and 
offensive campaigns simultaneously, something they are ill-equipped to do. 
The NLA uses a hit-and-run strategy that will exhaust Macedonia's army and 
allow the rebels to overtake a number of towns, creating a situation that 
ensures a protracted civil war.

What NATO and Macedonian forces will face is essentially the best guerrilla 
combat in the Balkans. The group comprises combat veterans with field 
experience in Serbia, Kosovo and Chechnya. Unit commanders who trained with 
U.S. Special Forces run combat drills in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia and 
recruit heavily from the KPC.

The Albanians' strengths in Macedonia are their mobility, reserve forces and 
weapons supplies. NLA units move about 250 soldiers at a time and fan out 
across a series of villages around strategic towns. The rebels' key staging 
areas are along the Tetovo-Jacince highway and the Tetovo-Skopje highway. As 
of Aug. 8, the NLA was shifting forces between dozens of villages along 
these two corridors.



The makeup of the region plays directly into the hands of the NLA. The 
small, predominantly ethnic Albanian villages surrounding Tetovo and 
Kumanovo number in the hundreds and in many cases have limited road access. 
The villages can easily be occupied and abandoned, one by one. This accounts 
for the rebels' rapid movement from town to town throughout the latest 
cease-fire period.

NLA reserve forces can be deployed quickly. Recruits are trained within 
miles of the front lines. The Skopje daily Dnevnik reports there are a 
series of NLA training camps in neighboring Albania and Kosovo. These camps 
form a crescent outside the northwestern border of Macedonia, from Kumanovo 
down to Debar, no more than 20 miles from the fighting.

The adjoining area of Macedonia has the highest density of ethnic Albanians 
in the country. There are about 4,000 ethnic Albanian fighters there, 
including KPC reservists and members of the Albanian National Army.

NLA rebels carry light, sophisticated weapons useful for rapid attack and 
urban combat. The Ministry of Information in Macedonia reports that captured 
soldiers are equipped with Kalishnikovs and 5.54 caliber rifles modified for 
maximum stopping power.

Rebels also have Russian Sam-7 missiles and U.S.-made Stingers, according to 
reports in the London's Sunday Times. Independent media reports also claim 
rebels possess third-generation night-vision goggles supplied by U.S. 
advisers.

Macedonian forces superior in number but tactically weak

The Macedonian army, though numerically superior with 18,000 troops and 
nearly 100,000 in reserve forces and paramilitaries, lacks conventional 
artillery, and its defensive armor consists primarily of Soviet T-55 battle 
tanks, according to Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy.

Moreover, Macedonia's offensive weapons are few. Ukraine had supplied 
ground-assault vehicles but recently stopped to comply with a U.S. request. 
Macedonia's equipment from Ukraine includes two Mi-25 helicopters, four 
Mi-24 helicopters and four Su-25 attack planes, according to reports from 
ITAR-TASS.

These aircraft form the core of Macedonia's assault capability, which has 
held off rebel advances from inside the Serbian border although Macedonia's 
limited air assault remains vulnerable to rebel missiles.

Finding Macedonia's defensive and offensive capabilities as meager, the 
highly mobile ethnic Albanians will exhaust Macedonia's resources largely by 
distributing fighters throughout the western and northern regions.

Rebel strategy will keep Macedonia's army on the run

The NLA will not focus on holding towns so much as keeping them under 
psychological influence. The rebels do not want villagers to flee lest they 
lose their protective shields.

Such a strategy will force Macedonia's army to secure towns through 
occupation. Ethnic Albanian militants will play cat-mouse throughout 
northwestern Macedonia, necessitating hundreds of permanent stations for 
army mop-up operations.

The NLA will also fight the war on psychological terms so ethnic Albanians 
turn against the Macedonian population. Forcing Macedonian soldiers to 
occupy ethnic Albanian towns will make them appear the aggressors and ethnic 
Albanians the victims.

Clearly, the NLA strategy for war in Macedonia will be catastrophic unless 
the ethnic Albanians can be contained at current positions. But containment 
requires genuine assistance from NATO to stop the flow of arms and recruits 
to the NLA.

Macedonia's forces are primarily suited to chasing the militants, and ethnic 
Albanians will certainly string them along to maximize the spread of the 
war. Unless NATO and Macedonian forces can find a way to cordon off Tetovo 
and Kumanovo within weeks, rebel forces will spark a protracted civil war



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