Macedonia, Not Kosovo, is the Source

This is how Democratic Party of Albanians leader Arben Xhaferi described the crisis in Macedonia, provoking much discontent among Macedonians. Other ethnic Albanians also disagreed; Xhaferi was criticized by the third most important Kosovo political leader, Ramush Haradinaj. The dissatisfaction with the DPA resulted in the forming of a new ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia, more radical than the others. It remains to be seen what impact it will have on events in Macedonia.

AIM Skopje, March 12, 2001

The border between Macedonia and Kosovo, in the region of the village of Tanusevci, was peaceful during the weekend that began on March 10. There were no clashes between the Macedonian army and police and the "ethnic Albanian terrorists," the term used to denote fighters of the so far unidentified group besieging Tanusevci. This was confirmed by spokesmen for the Ministries of Defense and the Interior at a joint press conference.

Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski said in an interview in The New York Times that the group was routed and that it split into several smaller groups of guerrillas.

On the other hand, commanders of the new Kosovo Liberation Army appeared for the first time in public, introducing themselves as "Commander Sokoli" and "Commander Hoxha." The Associated Press carried a report quoting their statements and a snapshot of Hoxha, together with a series of photographs of fighters of the National Liberation Army, which are otherwise easily accessible on the Internet. The Skopje Albanian-language daily papers published an interview with with Commander Sokoli in which he claimed that his group controls the villages of Malino, Breza, Gosince and Lukare, and that the KLA in Macedonia numbers 4,000 fighters.

It appears, however, that Tanusevci was cleared in a coordinated operation by KFOR on the Kosovo side of the border and the Macedonian army on the Macedonian side. The group was defeated and a part of it crossed into Kosovo, where several militants were apprehended by KFOR. Another group, according to a Macedonian Interior Ministry spokesman, barricaded itself in Malino, Macedonia, where they still control the center of the village. Macedonian police are deployed at the entrance to Malino and around it.

All this shows how quickly the situation on the Macedonian-Kosovo border in the region of Tanusevci is changing and how volatile it is.

On March 10, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine arrived for an official visit to Macedonia and said: "We will not allow several small terrorist groups to jeopardize the country's stability. In the evening on the same day, Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo and his Macedonian counterpart Srdjan Kerim met in Peshkopi, Albania. After the meeting Kerim said: "Albania has given its full support to the Macedonian government in taking measures in Tanusevci and other places where extremists in Macedonia provoked incidents. The message is that nothing will undermine relations between Albania and Macedonia, not even extremists." During the weekend, Kerim met with Macedonian journalists to explain, among other things, why a Macedonian proposal that a buffer zone be created on the Kosovo side of the Macedonian-Albanian border was not accepted. According to him, the proposal was rejected "because it will be more effective to have KFOR troops directly on the border." Responding to a question about the dissonant position of Democratic Party of Albanians leader Arben Xhaferi (in regard to official stances), Kerim said that the three parties comprising the ruling coalition are unified in their stands. Xhaferi told the Albanian ATA news agency that the idea that Kosovo was the source of the crisis in Macedonia was incorrect, because "Macedonia is dealing with problems inherited from the past."

This statement was criticized by the Macedonian-language news media. The Skopje newspaper Dnevnik said in an editorial entitled Xhaferi vs. Xhaferi: "Now that terrorism from Kosovo has spilled over into Tanusevci, Xhaferi changed his tune and said Tanusevci was the problem of Albanians in the Balkans, only to later change it once more, trying to convince us that the extremism in northern Macedonia has nothing to do with Kosovo, that it was not imported, but was a product of unresolved political questions in Macedonia." The paper went on to ask the following questions: "Why has Xhaferi now made such a shift and why is he protecting Kosovo's militant groups? Why is he jeopardizing the fragile peace based on the philosophy of multi-ethnicity and multi-culturality? Why is he ascribing other goals to classical terrorism?"

Xhaferi was not criticized solely by the Macedonian media. The same newspaper carried in the same issue on March 12 a report from its Brussels correspondent quoting a statement made by Ramush Haradinaj, the leader of the Kosovo Alliance for the Future. Haradinaj was reported to have said that Xhaferi was losing the support of ethnic Albanian voters in Macedonia. "Arben Xhaferi supported the government and promised much to his community. Now he is losing power, because the government failed to support him. There are other parties being created now and their views differ from those of Xhaferi," Haradinaj was quoted as saying.

Haradinaj probably had in mind the new ethnic Albanian party whose constituent assembly was held on March 11. The National Democratic Party, whose leader is an MP, Kastriot Hadjiredja, and whose core is composed of people from an association of former political prisoners, advocates in its platform a federalization of the country: "The creation of two territorial units will make Macedonia a more stable country, and no one will then be able to say that ethnic Albanians don't have any rights," Hadjiredja said.

Although the questions were directed at Xhaferi, they basically stem from the manner in which the "occupation" of Tanusevci was portrayed. Initially, Macedonian official sources left no doubt that Tanusevci was controlled by Kossovars who infiltrated the region, and who had their logistic bases in nearby Kosovo villages, primarily in Debalde. The Macedonian side accused KFOR of "an indolent attitude," of "protecting themselves by not controlling the ground," as Macedonian Prime Minister put it. This was followed by an open dispute between Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, the U.N. secretary general's special representative for Kosovo, Hans Hakkaerup, and KFOR commander Carlo Cabigiosu. After their meeting akkaerup told the press: "We have no decisive proof that what is happening on the border was caused by or is coming from the Kosovo side." Not even after a coordinated assault by KFOR and the Macedonian army was any logistic base discovered in the Kosovo village of Debalde. KFOR arrested several suspects, and the Macedonian side is now mentioning a group of about a dozen terrorists who have fortified themselves in the village of Morane, in Macedonia. No one is mentioning hundreds or thousands of terrorists any more as was the case at the beginning of the crisis. And only after the Tanusevci case ended, Macedonian official sources said it was possible that among the extremists there was an undetermined number of local ethnic Albanians. Is this to say that "ethnic Albanian terrorists" have become a native Macedonian problem?

Meanwhile, the National Liberation Army, which took responsibility for the attack on Tanusevci sent its sixth press release to the Albanian section of Radio Deutsche Welle. This formation, whose existence and activities the Macedonian Security Service had described as unsubstantiated, demanded that Macedonia be declared a "country of two constituent peoples, ethnic Albanians and Macedonians, thereby preventing discrimination against ethnic Albanians in political life." The Italian La Reppublica newspaper carried a report by its Skopje correspondent quoting Fazliu Veliu, the alleged leader of the National Liberation Army. Veliu is otherwise the main protagonist of a story that has been going on for over a year. He was declared the ideological leader of the "Kicevo bombers," a group of young men who were tried for bombing attacks on several police stations in 1999, of whom some are being retried. An international warrant for his arrest has been issued. Last spring he was apprehended in Germany, kept in pre-trial detention for three months, and after Macedon ia failed to sent documents to back its request for his extradition, he was released. After this was learned, a big scandal erupted in which current Macedonian Justice Minister Nasufi was involved, because he withdrew all documentation on Veliu. When asked about Veliu, Commander Sokoli, in an interview to the Albanian-language Fakti newspaper, declined to say anything specific about his status because of security reasons. This is why it is unclear whether the fighter on the ground and the commander from the newspaper are together in one and the same armed formation.

In the aforementioned interview with The New York Times, President Trajkovski also said: "We had problems in the past," but thanks to Arben Xhaferi, the leader of the largest ethnic Albanian party, "I believe we will manage to come out of this and will confront together these criminals who are trying to hurt us." If the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia abandon him, this will mean that Xhaferi is paying the price of participating in government. If the void left after his leaving is filled with radical militants, Macedonia's troubles are likely to increase. On the other hand, the very fact that the new, more radical ethnic Albanian party wishes to be active inside the institutions of the system, and not cooperate with the fighters from Tanusevci of the new KLA, shows that all is not lost for Macedonia.

Iso Rusi

(AIM)