[ALBSA-Info] Macedonia Not Another Kosov

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Macedonia Not Another Kosovo

By GEORGE JAHN

  
ARACINOVO, Macedonia (AP) - It is a disturbingly familiar story: Police of 
the dominant Slav group descend on an ethnic Albanian community, beating the 
men and terrorizing the women and children. Fighting erupts, and villagers 
flee. 

This time it's in Macedonia - yet despite skirmishes between Macedonian 
troops and ethnic Albanians and concerns over ethnic hostility, the country 
is unlikely to become another Kosovo. 

More than two weeks after fighting started here, it remains localized to a 
small area near the Kosovo border. No one really knows what the battle is 
about, beyond vaguely stated demands from the rebels for more ethnic Albanian 
rights. 

But the overwhelming majority of ethnic Albanians here - 25 percent, or 
500,000, of Macedonia's 2 million people - don't see the need for a 
revolution of the kind sparked by repression in the Serbian province of 
Kosovo. 

Still, Macedonia is not without harrowing stories. 

``A soldier hit one man gathering firewood with a rifle butt,'' says Nurije 
Emini, an ethnic Albanian woman relating her version of what happened two 
weeks ago at Tanusevci - a village bordering Kosovo, where fighting has 
raised fears of another Balkan conflict. ``Children were slapped by police 
for no reason. Then, the gunfire began.'' 

Emini's story from her place of refuge in Aracinovo, 10 miles east of Skopje, 
the capital, must be taken seriously in a region where centuries-old 
Slav-Albanian rivalries have been accompanied by bouts of bloodshed that 
culminated in the Kosovo war. 

However, most Slavic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians describe relations as 
tolerable. Even ethnic Albanians with grudges say their lot in Macedonia 
cannot be compared to the brutal oppression their Kosovo kin suffered under 
Serb domination. 

``Everyone I know is not for war but for peace,'' says Abdil Haruni, a 
teacher who was among the 70 villagers who piled into a neighbor's truck and 
fled gunfire approaching Lukane, just northwest of Tanusevci this week. ``Let 
the politicians work out their differences at the negotiating table. They're 
not worth dying for.'' 

Dusko Stojanovski speaks fluent Albanian, like many Slavs in the ethnically 
mixed town of Tearce, 15 miles west of Skopje. The 27-year-old steel worker 
grins when asked about interethnic relations, saying: ``It's not an issue - 
work, family, making a living, these are the issues.'' 

There are barriers for some. Bekhim and Maja - he Albanian, she Slav - have 
met once a week in a friend's apartment for six years, in a clandestine 
relationship neither wants made public. 

``She'd be ostracized,'' Bekhim says. 

``I'd be walking around with a stigma,'' says Maja. 

Still, Macedonia's relatively good ethnic climate reflects a comparatively 
unburdened history, and recent government concessions on key Albanian demands 
of language, education and other rights. 

The lid was kept on ethnic animosities by Turkish domination that lasted 
until the early 20th century. Albanians and Macedonians together fought to 
establish a free Macedonia in 1903, and Macedonia's Albanians helped their 
Slav neighbors during World War II. 

Ethnic wars erupted elsewhere as Yugoslavia started to disintegrate in the 
early 1990s, but Macedonia was the only republic to leave the federation 
peacefully. Only in the mid-1990s did Kosovo's struggle for more Albanian 
rights reach Macedonia. 

Five ethnic Albanians and a few police have been killed since then, but the 
violence has been sporadic and localized. And the government has opened its 
ranks to moderate ethnic Albanians - the justice minister is one, along with 
the deputy police and defense ministers. 

International backing of Macedonia's government also has helped contain the 
crisis. 

World sympathies were with Kosovo's Albanian rebels, but the United States 
and other world powers have expressed strong support for authorities here. 
And NATO, which sat on the sidelines for months before getting involved in 
the Kosovo conflict in 1999, is blocking movements of fighters and supplies 
by stepping up controls to the border with Macedonia. 

Despite Emini's story of brutality, there have been no reports of the 
so-called ``ethnic cleansing'' that accompanied fighting in Kosovo and other 
Balkan wars. 

More than 1,000 people have left the border region, but those interviewed say 
they fled from fear of fighting, not atrocities. Some say they had been back 
several times to check on property without problems. 

``We cannot speak of an emergency situation like we had in Kosovo'' says 
Brita Helleland of the U.N. refugee agency.