Macedonia - "Peace Oasis" No More

The Year of Growing Up

In the past 365 days someone has dispersed the beautiful illusion of the Macedonians that they are living in a "peace oasis" and that the crisis in the neighbourhood is not their concern.

AIM Skopje, March 24, 2000

Exactly a year ago, an average Macedonian was sure that NATO soldiers were ready to die for the independence of his country. Operation against Milosevic was under preparation in which Macedonia was assigned a special place (at least that was what Skoplje believed) of a territory which the soldiers of the Alliance would have to cross on their onslaught on Kosovo. In those March days last year the air space was sealed off, as well as most of land routes, so that the small country in the South of the Balkans found itself in a "sandwich": on the one side, there were tens, and later on hundreds of thousands of Kosovo refugees, and on the other the incoming army of today's most powerful military alliance was arriving from the port of Thessaloniki. In Macedonia some 350 thousand Kosovo Albanians found shelter in the homes of the local Albanians and provisional reception camps which turned into veritable small refugee towns.

The official politics groaned under the unbearable burden, but only once dared cry that it was enough and that someone must help it. It is commonly believed that only one sharp statement given to the Swedish TV crew at the Press Conference for foreign journalists, in which he advised them to send planes and take the refugees to their country, was sufficient for the then Assistant Foreign Minister, Boris Trajkovski, to climb up to the position of the head of state.

Probably no one in the state leadership was quite sure during those three ominous months whether the land invasion would be launched from the Macedonian territory: NATO officials claimed that there would be no intervention, while suspicious citizens shook their heads praying to God that Milosevic would be reasonable not to start a conflict with the Alliance. Just as everything started suddenly it ended suddenly too. As in a good movie, after the Kumanovo Agreement in early June, long columns of the Alliance members progressed towards Kosovo. Refugees came after them. Finally, Macedonia could breathe more easily; or at least it seemed so. Alas, only for a short while.

State leadership has lost, probably for ever, the unreserved popular support for its commitment to have the country become a full NATO member at some future date, irrespective of the price of that membership. NATO, as well as national official politics were surprised by the intensity of reactions expressed during demonstrations in front of western embassies organised on the first day of NATO air strikes against targets in FR Yugoslavia last March. Several anti-NATO terrorist attacks showed that allied forces were less safe in Macedonia than the government people made them believe.

However, Skoplje on the other hand concluded that the promise of high officials of the NATO administration guaranteeing Macedonia secure borders in case of attack or retaliatory measures by FR Yugoslavia, was given through "clenched teeth". The end of the "honeymoon" definitely came in September when a careless member of the Norwegian contingent killed a Macedonian minister and his family in a car accident. Both sides still feel uneasy about it.

All of a sudden everyone became aware of the fifth neighbour they have acquired "overnight" - Kosovo. It was in such atmosphere that presidential elections were held at which, thanks to the Albanian votes, Boris Trajkovski was elected new chief of state and the Democratic Party of the Albanians, whose leader Arben Xhaferi maintains close contacts with "new Albanians" in Kosovo, gained in importance. That is why the majority of Macedonians believe that the Albanian leaders on both sides of the border have the country over a barrel and at their mercy.

Laze Kitanovski, a delegate of the Social-Democratic Alliance and Defence Minister in Branko Crvenkovski's cabinet, thinks that despite efforts the international community is exerting in Kosovo, certain local structures are getting out of hand which he interprets as a threat to Macedonia. Kitanovski warns that "criminal structures are dominant in Kosovo. If something should be done, then it is the elimination of such criminal structures so that moderate Kosovo leaders would get their chance".

He reminds that there are radicals among the Albanians who have some ideas about the conflagration of the Kosovo conflicts to the "east" Kosovo, i.e. South Serbia, including parts of Macedonia. With these assessments the former Defence Minister introduced the Macedonian media to the findings of the International Crisis Group (ICG) from Brussels, which received much publicity. This report of renown international crisis experts (naturally, if correct) confirmed speculations, that could be read in the local opposition papers even before, about the activities of the Kosovo Protection Corps (the successor of the Kosovo Liberation Army) on the Macedonian territory. But, such journalistic hypotheses lost their credibility the moment the Belgrade regime papers embraced them wholeheartedly.

Concerning allegations of the International Crisis Group, leader of the Democratic Party of the Albanians (DPA), Arben Xhaferi, first said that they came from "international officials and people with vivid imagination" just to retreat some time later, and say that it all depended on who was gathering the necessary data. In his statement for the BBC, the DPA leader rejected all doubts that after the arrival of NATO troops to Kosovo the danger that Macedonia could be divided has increased and said that "such fears are artificially produced by some media". Xhaferi attributed the authorship of such fears and claims to Slobodan Milosevic. Xhaferi was of the opinion that it was in Macedonia's strategic interest to develop interaction relationship with Europe as it would guarantee Macedonia's stability. On the day of the first anniversary of the beginning of NATO's military operations, the Skoplje daily "Dnevnik" appeared with a self-explanatory comment: "Today NATO marks the first anniversary of its military campaign against FR Yugoslavia. Macedonia is also "celebrating" that anniversary - with 8,000 registered and additional two to three thousand unregistered Kosovo refugees living in Macedonia and probably feeling festive today. On the reverse side of this jubilee there are daily incidents in Kosovo and South Serbia and the danger of many small doors which are left ajar towards Macedonia for arms smuggling, crime and grand ideas".

Spring is coming slowly. It is just another spring of uncertainty in the last decade. Nothing has been resolved. Perhaps more than ever before, the citizens of Macedonia are aware that they are a part of a dramatic war movie - either as actors or extras - they will soon find out. It is still only 90 kms from Skoplje to Pristina. There is even less from Skoplje to Bujanovac. And once again sabres are rattling and there is a smell of powder in the air...

AIM Skopje

ZELJKO BAJIC