16 - 22 August 2001
Issue No.547
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 August 2001 Issue No.547 |
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Only on paper
Warring ethnic Albanians and Macedonians recently rushed to sign a peace deal. Their haste was understandable. They couldn't wait to get back to the fighting. Gamal Nkrumah reports
Violence is shaking the Balkans again. Fierce fighting erupted in the outskirts of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, barely hours before the signing of a peace deal between the Macedonian government and ethnic Albanian opposition forces. Violence continued even while the ink dried: ample proof, indeed, of how fast any quiet in the Balkans is broken. The peace deal itself was a cynical recipe for future inaction and it was signed reluctantly by combatants who have no intention of beating swords into plough-shares.
This is no real surprise. Ethnic Albanians feel left behind by current initiatives. They complain that local Macedonian policemen side with anti-Albanian rioters, a charge corroborated by Human Rights Watch. Mosques and Muslim graves are systematically vandalised. Albanians in Bitola, Macedonia's third largest city, have been targeted for retribution. And Macedonian hard-liners want the Albanians who make up 15 per cent of the city's population to be forcibly removed.
Ethnic Albanians who make up an estimated 30 per cent of Macedonia's population, but who are geographically concentrated in the northeastern third of the country, say that they are not fighting to secede, but rather to assert their full civil and cultural rights in Macedonia. In particular, the Albanians want greater representation in Macedonia's police force and more language rights. The Albanians want to see the non- Slavic Albanian language, which uses the Latin script, declared a co-official national language in Macedonia alongside Slavic Macedonian which uses the Cyrillic script.
The Macedonians are unhappy too, believing they are being short-changed by Western powers. The Macedonians argue that the Albanians were never going to hand over their weapons. After all, the peace deal was being signed between the Macedonian authorities and representatives of moderate Albanian political parties. But it's not the Albanian moderates that worry the Macedonians. Their real anxiety is the heavily- armed and battle-hardened militias of the ethnic Albanians' National Liberation Army (NLA).
Meanwhile, the UN is clinging to its position as honest-broker by its fingertips. The Macedonian government bitterly complains that what it terms Albanian "terrorists" have infiltrated Macedonia: from bases in NATO and UN-administered Kosovo. The United Nations and NATO deny the charge, but the feeling of good intentions gone sour is palpable. According to Human Rights Watch, the ethnic Albanian NLA has intensified violence against Macedonian civilians, right under the noses of NATO forces. "Abductions and illegal detentions by the NLA are rapidly rising. The NLA has failed to account for Macedonians abducted from Tetovo during fighting in late July," Elisabeth Anderson, the Europe and Central Asia executive director of Human Rights Watch, warned recently.
Yet too much political currency has been invested in separating the Balkan belligerents for the international community to give up just yet. "NATO and its member states have invested heavily in the Balkans, but they have failed to insist on accountabilities and respect for human rights, bringing us to the brink of yet another Balkan conflict. This time it is Macedonia," concluded a recently-released Human Rights Watch report.
Tragically, it's almost becoming monotonous. It is a predictable recipe that faces every Balkan country. While civilian casualties are at nowhere near the level seen in neighbouring Kosovo a couple of years ago, or in Bosnia in the mid-1990s, the Macedonian government declared last Saturday a day of national mourning. The same poisonous stew: another round of fighting, another failure to reach agreement, and the political institutions of a Balkan nation once more on the verge of collapse.
United States Chief Envoy James Pardew, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson and European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana were among the Western dignitaries who presided over the signing of the deal on Monday. "The [US- EU-NATO-mediated] peace document is the best hope for peace in Macedonia," said Pardew after the signing ceremony in Skopje. "Clearly there has to be a sustainable cease-fire and clear indications from the [Albanian] insurgents that they mean business in terms of disarming completely and handing over their weapons and ammunition to the NATO troops when they arrive." "So much has to be done to make the cease- fire durable," a less optimistic Lord Robertson cautioned.
There's another hoary element in this latest incarnation of the Balkan formula: a reluctance to provide enough manpower to uphold the peace. NATO has pledged to send 3,500 troops to disarm the Albanians and keep the opponents apart. But the Macedonian authorities fear that such a tiny contingency will be simply incapable of restoring law and order. It seems that NATO cannot muster the political will it exerted in Kosovo two years ago to bring the fighting to an end.
In any case, opposition to more of a NATO presence is strong. Those pleased with Western intervention are few. Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, a devout born-again Christian, is one. But he goes against the grain. Popularly, Macedonians despise NATO's presence. It was NATO that encouraged Albanians in their upstart ambitions to start with -- first in Kosovo and now in Macedonia -- they argue.
Events elsewhere in the Balkans have made hopes of accord even more fugitive. The example of Kosovo Albanians driving out the breakaway Yugoslav territory's Serbs is not lost on Macedonia's Albanians. To avoid a similar fate, the Macedonians lashed out at the Albanians' insurrection. Taking their cue from the Serbs before them, Macedonian forces began an all-out assault on ethnic Albanian militias on 22 May.
Behind the politics and posturing, behind the cynicism and sectarianism, comes the human cost. Some 15,000 civilians are trapped in rugged NLA-controlled terrain and the danger of appalling casualties is high. Human rights organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say they have evidence that ethnic Albanians have been tortured at police stations. The Macedonian army appears to have attacked civilians in the village of Ruinica, and other Albanian strongholds. And as NATO dithers, and waffles about democracy while failing to supply the troops needed to guard human rights, such incidents will tragically increase.
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