[ALBSA-Info] A Diplomatic Race Against Disaster – NEWSWEEK

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

A Diplomatic Race Against Disaster
Europe is trying to heed the lessons of Balkans wars past. But will it be 
enough to save Macedonia?

By Rod Nordland and Juliette Terzieff
NEWSWEEK 

The western diplomats who stalk the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 
these days are mostly veteran Balkans hands. On their watch, in other parts 
of the region, one republic after another dissolved into ethnic violence and 
war. Many of them believe that forceful, early international intervention 
might have averted the last decade’s bloodletting. This time they’re 
determined to try to get it right. At first European officials cautiously 
suggested speeding up Macedonia’s integration into the European Union, or its 
membership in NATO’s Partnership for Peace. “That was a 10-year plan,” 
scoffed an American diplomat.
         
“WE NEEDED A 10-DAY PLAN.” Meeting almost daily for the past six weeks, 
American and European diplomats in Skopje put together a scheme to avert 
civil war, and persuaded Macedonia to adopt it. “If you consider that the 
fighting only started March 25, it hasn’t taken much time at all,” said 
Robert H. Frowick, special envoy for the Organization for Security and 
Cooperation in Europe. By comparison, when Frowick headed the OSCE’s mission 
to Bosnia, it took a year just for the Western countries to agree on how to 
implement the Dayton peace accords.
 
Former NATO secretary-general Javier Solana was back on the scene as the 
West’s point man, this time as the EU’s special envoy. After a marathon 
10-hour meeting with all the country’s political leaders last Monday, he sold 
them on the diplomats’ plan for a government of national unity—which they 
agreed to Friday. The government divided ministries among all four major 
parties, two Albanian and two Macedonian, and committed itself to a program 
of accelerated reforms that had long been demanded by the Albanian minority. 
“It gives everybody cover,” said one diplomat. And it isolates Albanian 
guerrillas who are running an insurgency that is gaining momentum.  

Conflict Guide – Profile and facts:
Country: Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic bordering on Greece, Albania, 
Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, is a once-peaceful mosaic of Balkan ethnic groups, 
including Serbs, Albanians and Turks.

Population: The ethnic groups that make up the population of just over 2 
million people are Macedonian, 66.6 percent; Albanian, 22.7 percent; Turkish, 
4 percent; Roma, 2.2 percent; Serb, 2.1 percent; other, 2.4 percent.

Religions: Macedonian Orthodox, 67 percent; Muslim, 30 percent; other, 3 
percent

Languages: Macedonian, 70 percent; Albanian, 21 percent; Turkish, 3 percent; 
Serbo-Croatian, 3 percent; other, 3 percent 

Prime Minister: Ljubco Georgievski, elected in 1998, is an advocate for an 
autonomous and independent Republic of Macedonia where Macedonians and 
Albanians would continue to live together. He has stepped up government 
efforts to crack down on the ethnic Albanian rebels' fight for independence 
and greater rights and has criticized NATO for not doing enough to stop the 
conflict. 

The National Liberation Army: Spurred by sentiment that a substantial number 
of the ethnic Albanian minority feel they are being treated as second-class 
citizens in Macedonia, the NLA aspires for self-determination if not outright 
independence from the Slav-led government to form a Greater Kosovo. Reports 
claim that the NLA may have as many as 2,000 troops. 

NATO: The alliance has no mandate to intervene militarily in Macedonia. 
However, U.S. and German troops from the Kosovo peacekeeping force have 
stepped up patrols along the border between Macedonia and Kosovo to stop 
supplies flowing into the region. The Bush administration and European allies 
have indicated that the problem was one for Macedonia's government to resolve 
with diplomatic and monetary aid. 
 
If the plan fails, it may well be because of what happens in the basements of 
a village called Slupcane. Hot in pursuit of Albanian fighters from the 
National Liberation Army, the Macedonian Army ordered the evacuation May 4 of 
10 villages in a 20-mile-long swath of mountainous countryside near the 
Kosovo border. But in Slupcane and Vasince, nearly the entire population 
refused to leave, taking refuge in basements. Macedonia said the remaining 
civilians were being held by the NLA as “human shields”; the NLA insisted it 
was protecting them from heavy-handed Macedonian forces.

There was plenty of evidence for both positions. Either way, one well-placed 
shell would greatly ratchet up the stakes in a conflict that so far has had 
low casualties. “This is a catastrophe,” said Buram Sadiku, a 38-year-old 
whose family was among 43 people sharing three underground rooms. Babies 
wailed, and the only light was from a single candle. “We can’t stay and we 
won’t go.”

On the other side, Macedonian authorities fear that if they ease the attack 
in Slupcane, the NLA guerrillas will once again slip back over the border 
into Kosovo—where lax policing from NATO forces has given them wide 
latitude—and emerge to attack somewhere else. “The moment we stop fighting,” 
says Nikola Dimitrov, national-security adviser to President Boris 
Trajkovski, “we cede the territory to them. This is our last historical 
chance to save the state.”

That may sound apocalyptic, but it’s a judgment widely shared in the 
diplomatic community. Worried that the NLA was rapidly gaining followers, 
especially among young men in the villages, Western diplomats moved quickly. 
In the past month and a half an almost daily succession of dignitaries, from 
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to NATO Secretary-General Lord Robinson, 
interceded to quiet the drums of war. President George W. Bush invited 
Macedonian President Trajkovski to the White House. NATO sent a high-ranking 
general to consult with the Macedonian Defense Ministry.

Macedonia: Seeking Solutions
For once, rather than just reacting to a Balkans crisis, the international 
community had a plan. But then, so did the NLA. Striking in a remote 
mountainous area near Vejce, the group ambushed and killed eight soldiers and 
policemen on April 28. That sparked anti-Albanian rioting, with scores of 
shops looted in numerous towns including some in the capital, Skopje. “I 
really thought that was the end of it; here we go, another ethnic war,” said 
one Western diplomat. Added Frowick: “It’s a political miracle they’ve lasted 
this long. But they always seem to pull back from the brink.”

Now that all the elected parties are at the table together, they’ll have to 
show real progress on reforming Macedonia’s political system if there’s any 
chance for the unity government to survive. Albanians want greater autonomy, 
increased use of their language, better representation in the police and 
military—goals, ironically, shared by both the Albanian parties and the 
guerrillas. With the NLA feeling decidedly on the outside, its leaders insist 
they will fight on. “We’ve been waiting for the international community to do 
something, and all they do is push for war,” said Commander Sokoli, the nom 
de guerre of one of the NLA’s leaders, at his bunker near Slupcane. 

Albanian leader Arben Xhaferi worries that time is on the side of the guys 
with the guns. “They are a force in this country now; their actions are 
driving the situation,” he said. Xhaferi, widely admired on both sides of the 
ethnic divide in Macedonia, calls himself a “hopeful pessimist.” That’s 
better than nothing, says a Western diplomat, a veteran of several failed 
international efforts in the region. “In the Balkans, hopeful pessimism 
sounds pretty good.”