[ALBSA-Info] In the Thick of It ? NEWSWEEK

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

In the Thick of It

A reporter?s firsthand account of being shelled in the Tetovo hills as violence between Macedonian Slavs and Albanians escalates

By Joshua Hammer
NEWSWEEK

The attack came with little warning. We had just arrived in Selce, an idyllic cluster of red-tile-roofed houses packed tightly on the steep eastern slopes of a river gorge. For the past week this strategically located hamlet high above the Macedonian town of Tetovo had been occupied by ethnic Albanian rebels of the National Liberation Army, and, with two other correspondents, I had set out early that morning on a five-hour trek through the mountains to meet the rebel command.  


THE STREETS were nearly deserted when we pulled into town, except for a few clusters of civilians who were worriedly discussing the day?s deployment of tanks and artillery pieces around Tetovo. Moments later a camouflage-painted Lada screeched to a halt, and four black-bereted insurgents spilled out, retreating without a word into their adjacent headquarters. Suddenly the air seemed to grow deathly still. A handful of villagers, somehow sensing danger, dashed toward a flatbed truck parked beside a wall and squeezed under it. Sandwiched with them inside the narrow crawl space, we had only a few seconds to wonder what the panic was about. Then came the first explosion.

With a deafening crash, the 120-mm tank shell slammed into the ground about 100 meters away from us, shattering windows and rocking the earth. Boys and men hugged one another as they wedged their bodies further beneath the truck, bracing themselves for the next blast. Seconds later we heard a high-pitched whine, and then came the second explosion, this one even closer than the last. Two more shells landed in the space of a minute, each preceded by the same terrifying drone. I wormed myself beneath the truck chassis, just inches from two large fuel tanks. During the next 40 minutes, a dozen more shells slammed into Selce, apparently fired from Macedonian Army positions in Tetovo. Although I?m not a believer, I found myself praying?and cursing the Albanians for not having cellars. The bombardment tailed off as darkness descended, leaving one civilian injured, several houses partially destroyed?and our nerves shattered.

Last week?s shelling of Selce and other rebel-held villages provided a frightening glimpse of where Macedonia?s war against Albanian rebels may be heading. The government declared a 24-hour ceasefire after the attack and issued an ultimatum to the insurgents to lay down their arms or face a full-scale assault. Intense diplomatic pressure on ethnic Albanian leaders in the region initially raised hopes that the rebels would give up?but those hopes collapsed within a day. On Friday the Macedonians said they had fired on rebel positions across the country?s northern border with Kosovo?placing NATO, which occupies the Serb province, even closer to the fighting. Sandbagged police checkpoints and armored personnel carriers now line the highway between Skopje and Tetovo. And as the Army resumed its bombardment of the hills above Tetovo, government spokesman Antonio Milososki vowed: "We will destroy the heart of terrorism."

MURKY DEMANDS

As a two-day journey into the heart of rebel territory confirmed, the National Liberation Army is spreading rapidly through ethnic Albanian parts of Macedonia. The rebels? demands remain murky. Some want improved opportunities for ethnic Albanians in a united Macedonia, while others seek to merge with Kosovo. Still others want Albanian autonomy within Macedonia. 

But their call to arms has attracted hundreds of poor and jobless young men. And the government?s tactics, including cutting electricity, sealing villages and lobbing tank shells indiscriminately into rebel-held communities, are strengthening civilian solidarity with the NLA and radicalizing the population. Moments after the bombardment in Selce, we took refuge in a nearby coffee shop where village men gathered and shouted imprecations against their attackers. "You know the Slavs," an old man named Azem told me. "They?re trying to destroy us." 

Selce has borne the brunt of the Macedonian siege. Since the fighters took up arms here last week, the village has been largely cut off from the world, and pro-rebel sentiment is growing throughout the area. Getting into Selce requires a dangerous hike up trails that wind through forest and pastures, some in direct range of Macedonian guns; along the way we passed men and boys on horseback, bringing in food and blankets for the fighters, who are firing back at the Macedonians from a nearby former Turkish fort known as Qale.

Electricity and phone service have been cut off for a week, food supplies are running low, and the presence of the rebel command makes the town an inviting military target. Yet Hassan Zelili, Selce?s deputy mayor, who owns a grocery store in Tetovo, insisted that nobody in the village was contemplating leaving. "I?ll stay here with my people, with my family. I don?t want to flee to Kosovo," he told us over a supper of bread, goat cheese and chicken soup prepared by candlelight. "Everyone?s morale is high."

Locals are rallying behind the rebels out of fear and frustration. Relations between the two ethnic groups have long been hair-trigger tense, much like the tensions between the Serbs and Kosovar Albanians. The Albanian minority has been denied basic rights, including use of their own language in schools and other institutions. In 1998, Arben Xhaferi?s Democratic Party of Albanians joined Macedonia?s ruling coalition, and the party won key minority rights. Albanian police chiefs now serve in many towns, and dozens of schools teach an Albanian-language curriculum. Even so, inequities remain: Macedonia?s special police units and the Army top brass are almost exclusively Slavic. Cyrillic remains the country?s official alphabet, and Albanians lack a state-funded university. Albanians also claim that their unemployment rate is 80 percent, and that jobs for them are almost nonexistent in the public sector. "Macedonia is a false democracy," Zelili told me. "We?re not equal citizens."

DRUGS AND GUNS

The slow pace of reform played into the hands of Albanian hard-liners. The fighting first broke out in Tanusevci, a remote mountain village near the Kosovo border. For decades the hamlet has been an important point on the Balkan contraband route, through which millions of dollars worth of weapons and narcotics pass annually. Embarrassed by a TV report drawing attention to the lack of government control there, Macedonian police entered Tanusevci in mid-February to seal the frontier. Three were killed in a confrontation with ethnic Albanian gunmen. The incident apparently provided a pretext for a wider war of Albanian "liberation." Militant leaders swiftly mobilized hundreds of young men in mountain villages around Tetovo, who had fought with the Kosovo Liberation Army against the Serbs two years before. Their wartime experiences, observers say, heightened their Albanian nationalism. Jobless, bored, armed and trained for a fight against their Slavic enemy, many of these Young Tu!
rks were eager to pick up their 
weapons again. Now the fighters seem determined to continue the struggle. Meanwhile, NATO and European officials debate how best to shore up the Macedonian government?and stay out of another Balkans war. Visiting Skopje last week, Javier Solana, the European Union?s high representative for common foreign and security policy, said that "it would be a mistake to negotiate with terrorists." There is room for discussions with political parties, but not with extremists, EU officials explained. And in a show of European solidarity, later this month Macedonia will become the first Balkan country to sign a stabilization and association agreement with the EU, which will further isolate the rebels. NATO has asked member states for another 1,000 to 1,200 troops for the 40,000-strong Kosovo contingent, but only to tighten up border controls to Kosovo?not to fight in Macedonia.

They?ll have to contend with a rapidly growing rebel force. The morning after the bombardment of Selce, we were escorted by two boys evacuating a wounded 21-year-old fighter named Azem on horseback to his family?s home in the village of Sipkovica. He had taken shrapnel in his calf while firing on Macedonian police from the Turkish fort. After a two-hour climb down the valley and back up the other side, we dropped him off at his house on Sipkovica?s outskirts, where his sobbing mother rushed outside to embrace him. Just down the road, a black-bereted guerrilla opened the back door of a van and passed out a dozen weapons?including belted heavy-caliber machine guns?to a cluster of eager recruits.

Still, the wartime fervor has not infected everyone. In front of a home half-destroyed by a Macedonian shell fired the day before from Tetovo, I met Nejazi Kadrija, a fluent English and German speaker who had returned to Sipkovica last week from a job in London to rescue his young son. Now he found himself trapped in the village, hemmed in by Macedonian sharpshooters perched in the Sar Mountains by the Kosovo border, and by police snipers down in Tetovo. "These rebel fighters in the hills are jobless, angry," he said. "The European countries are full, there is no work for them, so the only solution they found was guns." Kadrija said that many people in Sipkovica had been educated or worked overseas, and frowned upon the path taken by the armed men in their midst. "We don?t support the NLA, and we don?t support the Macedonian Army," he said. "We are angry at everybody. We are just hoping that we can survive the nightmare." For one day, I did.