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By JID Editor Alex Standish Taken at face value, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and its current conflict with militant ethnic Albanian separatists, can easily seem like a minor issue in international affairs. After all, there is an ongoing crisis in the Middle East; Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is openly challenging the West and there are numerous intractable local wars being fought from Sri Lanka to Colombia, via various parts of Africa. Why does Macedonia really matter? The simple answer is that all the wars fought in Former Yugoslavia since 1991 started out as "local ethnic conflicts" before escalating into major humanitarian disasters. The worst massacres in Europe since the end of the Second World War have all taken place in the Balkans. While the scale of the blood letting has, in relative terms, been a fraction of the atrocities in, say, Rwanda or Cambodia, the Balkan conflicts are - literally - in the European Union's backyard. Haunted by the ghosts of the Second World War and the failure of international diplomacy to prevent "ethnic cleansing" in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the credibility of both the EU and, perhaps to a slightly lesser degree, the NATO alliance, hangs in the balance over Macedonia. JID has long argued that the current military adventure in Kosovo is doomed to failure. The reason is very simply that KFOR was deployed without a workable strategy. The objectives of the peace keeping mandate - substantial autonomy for the ethnic Albanian majority within Federal Yugoslavia - is not acceptable to the very people KFOR is supposed to be protecting: neither Serb or Albanian. The significance of this for Macedonia is that the ethnic Albanian guerrillas who made up the now supposedly disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) never trusted the deal brokered under United Nations auspices (Resolution 1244). Anticipating that they would never be granted full independence - or eventual union with their ethnic Albanian kin in Macedonia - the KLA stockpiled the bulk of its weaponry across the border in the Albanian-speaking regions of western Macedonia, waiting for an opportunity to destabilise the only former Yugoslav republic to have ceded from Tito's federation without bloodshed. Since the continued existence of a multi-ethnic Macedonia has become one of the key objectives for the international community (it was the one country in the world where UN peacekeepers were deployed before a conflict took place), the ethnic Albanian separatists have seized their chance to pressurise the government in Skopje into granting the substantial Albanian population (estimated at around 35% of the republic's two million inhabitants) the status of a nation, rather than remaining a national minority within a Slav ruled state. This conflict is the disaster which Europe and the US feared most. For the Macedonian authorities, the political stakes are very high. Macedonia has nothing in common with Milosevic-ruled Kosovo. The ethnic Albanians do have substantial local influence, while the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) - one of two main ethnic Albanian parties - is currently a junior partner in Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's coalition government. However, despite this apparent unity at the highest levels of the state, the ethnic Albanian minority has become increasingly dissatisfied with the strategy of DPA leader Arben Xhaferi, which has been to achieve progress via parliament. Macedonia's economy remains depressed and there is significant unemployment, particularly amongst ethnic Albanians. Here there are certain parallels with Kosovo where the radical KLA gained at least temporary popularity at the expense of pacifist leader Ibrahim Rugova in 1998. Like Rugova, Xhaferi has been widely praised for his moderate influence, while his support on the ground is steadily falling. In recent weeks the DPA itself has split, with a new group, the National Democratic Party (NDP), being formed. The NDP is led by Kastriot Haxhirexha, a former DPA deputy and appears set to become the political wing of the National Liberation Army (NLA), which shares the same Albanian initials - and many of the objectives - of the old KLA. Prime Minister Georgievski has decided to gamble on being able to crush the NLA guerrillas, who are dug in above the town of Tetovo, militarily. In this respect he will fail. The NLA guerrillas have gained substantial local support. Old grievances have been resurrected to justify the conflict and short of taking the war into the urban areas of Tetovo and other Albanian towns, the Macedonian army has little chance of stamping out the political radicalism which is driving the rebels. The end result of the current campaign will be rising popular enthusiasm for the NLA amongst the ethnic Albanians. Xhaferi's DPA will find it increasingly difficult to justify its participation in the coalition government and the ethnic divide will become polarised. The critical issue is how the international community will react. There is no UN mandate for KFOR to fight the NLA in Macedonia. In any case, such a move would encourage yet more violence against the peace keepers in Kosovo. Lax border controls between Kosovo and Macedonia have greatly assisted the guerrillas (now telling described as "terrorists" by Western leaders), but trying to cut off NLA supply routes will be both logistically difficult and dangerous for KFOR. As we warned in our issue of 2 February, the NLA's aim has been to provoke the Macedonian government. It has now succeeded. Our prediction of yet another Balkan disaster (based on hard intelligence, rather than simple pessimism) is being fully justified. KFOR's troops are in a more dangerous position than ever, while Macedonia faces a war for survival. MJAS.
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