[ALBSA-Info] ANALYSIS-Macedonia not at war yet, but all the ingredients

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

ANALYSIS-Macedonia not at war yet, but all the ingredients

By Douglas Hamilton

TETOVO, Macedonia, March 18 (Reuters) - This is not yet Sarajevo, nor Mostar, 
nor even Malisevo. 

The week's fighting around Macedonia's second city has had none of the 
ferocity of the past decade's epic Balkan struggles for survival in Bosnia, 
nor the ruthlessness of Kosovo's village-flattening anti-insurgency sweeps. 

The hospitals are not full, the people are not hiding in cellars. There are 
no overflowing graveyards, no "biblical" refugee exodus, no torched homes, no 
massacres, no fire of international outrage, no hapless U.N. troops. 

If this is what the self-styled National Liberation Army of Macedonia's large 
ethnic Albanian minority is seeking, it drastically misjudges the mood of the 
West. 

Discussions with NATO sources have made clear there is no longer any appetite 
for military intervention in another troubled ex-Yugoslav republic. It has 
been worn away by frustration, replaced by an increasingly angry impatience 
with ethnic hatred and resort to the gun. 

The real aim of the past week's bullet-spraying guerrilla spectacular on the 
slopes overlooking Macedonia's unofficial ethnic Albanian "capital" may be 
less reckless and more subtle than it looks. 

RADICAL POLITICS 

Politically, local analysts say, the rebels are already altering the 
landscape, radicalising those ethnic Albanians who chafe at what they see as 
a decade of skin-deep power-sharing with the Slav majority by co-opted 
leaders. 

On Sunday Ali Ahmeti, a Kosovo radical politician, was named as the political 
leader of the clandestine National Liberation Army, heralding a move for 
talks to demand Macedonia's "federalisation." 

A new ethnic Albanian political grouping, the National Democratic Party of 
Kastriot Hajireja, has already been created in Macedonia, espousing aims 
close to those stated by the guerrillas, though not links to them. 

The mainsteam Democratic Party of Albanians, with five seats in the cabinet, 
is accused of mildly enduring second-class status for its people and may risk 
marginalisation. 

The state, however reluctantly, must accept it faces an internal insurgency 
-- even if those behind it come from a variety of areas where the 10-year-old 
Kosovo-Macedonia border is meaningless but Albanian ethnicity is everything. 

"It won't go away. They must address it," said a Western diplomatic source, 
adding that no solely military solution was on offer in the long term. 

MEANINGLESS BORDERS 

Macedonian forces may soon succeed in pushing the rebels off their Tetovo 
hilltop and planting the republic's yellow-and-red sunburst flag there. 

But from rear bases in Kosovo well stocked with arms, the rebels can return 
again and again until their demands are heard. 

There is evidently little NATO peacekeeping forces in Kosovo can do to stop 
the guerrillas infiltrating in small groups over the lost miles of the 
recently established border, where a welcome, and perhaps even loose family 
links, may await in villages forgotten by the state. 

Sealing the border entirely is impossible. More to the point, there is 
nothing NATO troops can do to cut off political, moral and financial support 
for the insurgents. 

The rebel military aim in Tetovo was unclear from the start. Any bid to 
capture the city or to take territory on the plain below would surely meet 
with everything the security forces could throw at it. 

Though light by Western standards, government forces have bigger weapons, 
armour, better equipment and greater potential numbers to deploy. 

They have no combat aircraft or helicopter gunships to back an all-out 
assault, even if the ethnically mixed government agreed to such a politically 
high-risk strategy. 

But they have friends offering military help in Bulgaria, Greece, perhaps 
Yugoslavia itself. 

That, however, could trigger civil war or worse. 

GOVERNMENT MUST MAKE CONCESSIONS 

The NATO powers, while quietly urging the Macedonian government to address 
ethnic Albanian grievances, make it very clear they will not tolerate 
dismemberment of a state they long held up as an example of Balkan 
co-existence. 

An estimated one-third of Macedonia's two million people are ethnic 
Albanians. The next census is likely to find they number much more than the 
official 23 percent. 

Western diplomatic sources said the Skopje government must now use its 
Albanian coalition partners to seek accommodation, responding quickly to 
legitimate demands, such as official recognition of the Albanian language and 
real representation at all levels of authority. 

"This would enhance the credibility of the moderates and undercut what latent 
popular support there is for the gunmen," said one well-informed Western 
source. 

But the risks of polarisation are rising steadily. 

On Saturday, demonstrators outside the Skopje parliament demanded arms to 
defend the country. 

On Sunday, angry protesters insisted that the government take tough action or 
resign.