[ALBSA-Info] ANALYSIS-Albanians say insurgency rooted in discrimination

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

ANALYSIS-Albanians say insurgency rooted in discrimination

By Benet Koleka

  
TETOVO, Macedonia, March 26 (Reuters) - Macedonia, as an oasis of peace in 
the war-torn Balkans, seemed to be a success story for inter-ethnic 
coexistence thanks to cooperation between the majority Macedonian Slavs and 
ethnic Albanians. 

Now the country has been pushed suddenly to the brink of civil war, 
apparently over long-simmering grievances that were obscured by the more 
violent dramas in Bosnia and Kosovo. 

On Sunday, the Macedonian Army launched the first combat offensive in the 
10-year history of the landlocked republic's independence, aiming to dislodge 
ethnic Albanian guerrillas from the hills above the city of Tetovo. 

Albanians want more rights, and they want them now, say the rebels and many 
radical political voices. 

The further you go into the countryside from Tetovo -- the unofficial 
Albanian capital in Macedonia's northwest -- the stronger their voice becomes 
and the closer they feel to the people of Albania proper. 

"We are discriminated against in education, employment and politics," said 
Nail Shabani, a middle-aged ethnic Albanian. 

"No Albanian can get a job in the government administration." 

NOT OUT OF THE BLUE 

Road signs may be written in both languages, but the armed guerrillas of the 
National Liberation Army (NLA) say their friends are languishing in jail for 
demanding university education in Albanian. 

Since independence from old socialist Yugoslavia in 1991, Albanians have 
cooperated with the main Macedonian Slav parties and the Democratic Party of 
Albanians led by Arben Xhaferi tips the balance of power in favour of 
President Boris Trajkovski's coalition government. 

Xhaferi is credited with gaining more rights for minority Albanians -- but 
even he admits it does not go far enough. 

Thanks to the participation of Xhaferi's party in government, the Albanians 
hold five of the 15 cabinet posts and 25 seats in the 120-member parliament. 
Albanians are entitled to primary and high school education in their own 
language and have their own papers and media. 

"When you compare the human rights and life conditions in this region, you 
can reach a conclusion that an ethnic Albania would rather choose to live in 
Macedonia than in Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo or even Albania," government 
spokesman Antonio Milososki wrote in a letter to the media. 

This month's violence, say some Albanians, did not come out of the blue. 
Macedonian Slavs suspect the real agenda is separatist, and reject any bid to 
claim legitimacy for the pursuit of constitutional reform with Kalashnikov 
rifles. 

WAR FOR DIPLOMA RECOGNITION? 

Even Xhaferi says Albanians still face discrimination and rejects the 
government line that the current insurgency by ethnic Albanian guerrilllas 
was fomented by extremists in neighbouring Albanian-dominated Kosovo. 

"The sources of discontent are domestic, we have 10 years of dissatisfaction 
with this state, we are completely marginalised," he told CNN television at 
the weekend. 

Thousands of ethnic Albanian Macedonian citizens who went to study in 
Albania's University of Tirana returned home only to find that Macedonia did 
not recognise their diplomas. 

"Our movement started spontaneously -- ever since the protests in 1995 for 
the creation of an Albanian university," said a NLA regional commander, Sadri 
Ahmeti. 

Eventually, after years of hard lobbying by Albanian Prime Minister Ilir 
Meta, degrees were recognised a few months ago. 

But ethnic Albanians, who say they account for more than 40 percent of 
Macedonia's two million people although official figures say they are just 23 
percent, say there is still some way to go. 

REMITTANCE ECONOMY 

"Albanians here suffer a repression that is not clear to a visitor on the 
surface," said NLA commander "Kusha." 

The Macedonian government points to the fact that Tetovo's police chief is an 
Albanian, proof, it says, of its policy of non-discrimination. 

But locals are not impressed. 

"He may be Albanian but he takes all his orders from Skopje," said Shabani. 

Albanians complain they are still excluded from jobs in the state sector and 
unemployment among their number is high, forcing them to go abroad to seek 
work. 

"Our houses look nice but they have been built with money sent from our 
people who roam the roads of Europe with a sack on their backs," Shabani 
said. 

"We build our houses here with money sent from every country in the world. 
Now they want to destroy them," said a businessman called Shaqir. 

Veton Surroi, the highly respected Kosovo newspaper publisher, doesn't buy 
this emotional line of argument. 

"It's madness, it ought to be stopped now by a negotiated effort ," he said 
in a BBC interview on Monday. There was no way in which Macedonia could be 
compared to Kosovo under the harshly repressive regime of ex-Yugoslav 
President Slobodan Milosevic.