WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 243, May 3, 2001NLA VIOLENCE SABOTAGES TALKS
NLA undermine political efforts to resolve the Macedonian crisis as the army prepares for a fresh offensive. Saso Ordanoski comments from SkopjeALBANIAN FIGHTERS ON THE WARPATH
Albanians fighters are again preparing for battle after apparently running out of patience with the Macedonian government. IWPR staff reports from London and MacedoniaGREATER ALBANIA - A FADING DREAM
Many Albanians, it seems, are not motivated by the idea of a Greater Albania. Tim Judah comments from LondonSERBIAN RADICALS ELICIT CHURCH SYMPATHY
An extreme right-wing Serbian group has won the sympathy of many in the Orthodox Church. Suzana Sudar reports from Belgrade************ VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: <http://www.iwpr.net>******************
part of IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 243, May 3, 2001NLA VIOLENCE SABOTAGES TALKS
NLA undermine political efforts to resolve the Macedonian crisis as the army prepares for a fresh offensive.
By Saso Ordanoski in Skopje
Over the past few days, the Macedonian crisis has deepened, with an escalation in the fighing inevitable.
With Albanian radicals seemingly determined to derail on-going political talks, Macedonian forces are preparing to launch a major operation against them, set - according to official sources - for May 4.
At the weekend, eight soldiers and policemen were killed, and several others severely wounded, after a convoy of four military vehicles was ambushed by the National Liberation Army, NLA.
Four of those who died in the attack were buried in the southern town of Bitola on Monday. After the funerals, hundreds of hooligans attacked - and in a number of cases demolished - shops, pubs and restaurants belonging to local Muslims and Albanians. Thirty rioters were arrested. It took police nearly six hours to bring the situation under control.
On Tuesday, May 1, there were similar incidents in Bitola. In Skopje, meanwhile, three masked men, armed with machine guns and baseball bats, attacked the Lozana café, a well-known gathering place of the Albanian opposition. Three people were injured - one of them died on the way to hospital. During the night, a masked man shot at the guard-house outside the Albanian embassy.
This was followed on May 3 by a further ambush in which, according to Macedonian official sources, two soldiers were killed. According to unconfirmed reports from government intelligence services, Albanian fighters kidnapped 20 people from the village of Matejce, and proclaimed a "free territory" in an area near the Lipkovo lake.
A day after the weekend killing of the soldiers and policemen, an unnamed commander of the NLA, in an interview for Deutche Welle, took responsibility for their deaths, accusing the security forces of "getting too close" to Albanian positions.
Local and foreign analysts are asking whose interests are served by these attempts to destabilise the country. To Macedonians, this grave incident is seen as proof that the NLA seeks to undermine the process of inter-ethnic dialogue begun by President Boris Trajkovski after the security crisis in the Tetovo region a month ago.
Macedonians feel the NLA does not really care about improvements in the status of Albanians and their language or in the decentralisation of the state. There is also a belief that they are not truly concerned about possible constitutional reforms. Is it credible, Macedonians wonder, that they would fight an armed insurrection over a few words on a piece of paper that many Albanians may anyway never have read?
While some Albanian leaders in Macedonia have flirted with the NLA, and some younger members of their community have joined rebel forces in Kosovo and the Sara Mountain, others are afraid of them, and few Macedonian Albanians seriously want war.
The NLA has a distinct nationalistic agenda, with strong links to Kosovo, and as events of this week show, Albanian leaders in Macedonia have no real influence over it. The recent killings will only increase suspicion that the radicals' real motivations are either criminal or secessionist.
In any case, the NLA's latest action was well-timed, with Trajkovski travelling to Washington on the invitation of President Bush to discuss special security arrangements.
US support for Macedonia, confirmed by Secretary of State Colin Powell during his visit to Skopje earlier last month, is of great concern to Albanian extremists. They may have hoped that the violence would increase concern for the security of US troops in Kosovo and perhaps compel the administration to look towards further talks with Albanians.
But any such strategy backfired. At a briefing May 1, State Department deputy spokesman Philip Reeker referred to the weekend's "tragic, barbaric terrorist attack" and emphasised that "we will not allow terrorists to derail the political dialogue . . . to have those people sit at a table is unacceptable".
With the NLA facing such strong international pressure, Albanian political forces have adopted a unified stand in multi-party talks on resolving the crisis. They appeared to accept in principle the idea that the ruling coalition should be broadened - to bring in the main Macedonian and Albanian parties currently in opposition - as the authorities, shaken by corruption scandals and party intrigues, are unable to deal with the current political crisis.
According to leaks from a session of an urgently convened meeting of the president's security council last Sunday - attended by key ministers and opposition party leaders - it seems that Macedonian and Albanian parties are warming to the idea of a new government.
Only the Albanian opposition Party for Democratic Prosperity, PDP, is still hesitant over the move. The party is deeply split as a result of its weak leadership, which has been unable to maintain a consistent position on unfolding events.
At the beginning of the crisis, the PDP sympathised with the terrorists - but this gained them nothing, as other Albanian politicians in Macedonia as well as Kosovo, condemned the violence. Now the international community has pressed them to adopt a more constructive political role. But they remain for the moment effectively trapped between their political radicalism on the one hand and their desire to join the government on the other.
Clearly, political extremists in and around Macedonia are anxious to exploit the current instability to further their goals. They fear their time will soon be over, and that they must seize this chance. As a result, they are becoming more aggressive by the day. With nerves jangling on both sides of the ethnic divide, the real question is whether moderate forces will prevail and stop the crisis spinning out of control.
They will have to act fast. According to IWPR sources close to the government, Macedonian security forces are preparing to launch a major operation against the NLA in the west of the country, close to the Kosovo border. The action is expected to start as soon as Trajkovski returns from the US, on May 4. It is possible Washington has already been informed of the plan and that the Macedonian government has requested logistical support.Saso Ordanoski, editor of Forum magazine, is IWPR project editor in Macedonia.
part of IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 243, May 3, 2001ALBANIAN FIGHTERS ON THE WARPATH
Albanians fighters are again preparing for battle after apparently running out of patience with the Macedonian government
By IWPR staff in London and Macedonia
After several weeks of lying low in their villages, there are increasing signs that Albanian fighters are ready to take up arms again.
Frustrated by the slow pace of cross-party talks on improving their community's civil rights, the National Liberation Army, NLA, it seems, is preparing for a further round of conflict.
Tensions between the NLA and the authorities have been escalating over the past week, culminating with Albanian fighters in the Kumanovo area proclaiming an autonomous territory.
At the weekend, Albanian fighters killed eight Macedonian troops close to the border with Kosovo, in the worst outbreak of violence since the battles around Tetovo in March.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine, published Monday, a senior NLA representative, Commander Sokoli, said the group is organising three brigades, comprising around 18,000 men, in readiness for a new campaign against the security forces. The brigades, he said, would be based in different parts of the country and could be operational within 24 hours.
This comes more than a week after Hysni Shairi, a member of the Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, who defected to the NLA, told the weekly Lobi that Albanians should take up arms and "settle their problems with a rifle".
"Our army is deployed in all Albanian-populated areas and is ready at any moment to respond to the Macedonian military and police forces, " he said.
In a move likely to boost the NLA' s morale, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, Xhavit Hasani, widely regarded as a war hero by his ethnic kin, is reported to have joined Albanian fighters in Macedonia.
These developments are clearly worrying the Macedonian authorities who had claimed last month that security force operations had effectively broken the back of the NLA.
Prior to the weekend clash on the Kosovo border, some Skopje officials had been warning that the Albanian fighters appeared to be regrouping in the border areas but insisted that the security situation was under control.
The NLA says its renewed activity is linked to their frustration with the slow pace of talks on improvements of Albanian rights. The government has so far rejected the community's demands for their status in the constitution to be elevated from minority to nation.
They claim to have been further angered by evidence that the police force has allegedly been harassing innocent Albanians, in operations against NLA targets.
"These provocations cannot be endured and I don't know how long the calm will last if they continue, " said the NLA's political leader Ali Ahmeti.
Tensions were further fuelled Tuesday, after Macedonian civilians attacked Albanian property in Bitola following the funeral of four policemen killed in the weekend border clash.
After the fighting in March, many NLA fighters cast off their combat fatigues, buried their weapons in arms dumps, and headed back to their villages. In interviews with IWPR, some of them now say they are ready to take up arms again because, they say, their patience with the authorities is rapidly running out.
"If there is no solution to our problems then we will wear uniforms again," said one fighter. "I have visited many countries, I know what freedom means - here I've been faced with injustice at every stage of my life.
"We had thought that once Macedonia shook off Serbian rule, the life of Albanians here would improve. That didn't happen. So we were forced to take another road. When your dignity is violated, there is no other choice but to fight."
Another young combatant denied claims that the security forces' offensive in March had inflicted a serious blow on the NLA. "The NLA withdrew only temporarily, not because of the Macedonian offensive but as a result of international criticism. We don't like to upset international opinion.
"The army's offensive showed that it was powerless in the face of guerrilla resistance. We could have destroyed army and police units - but it seems our command didn't want that. We waited for the order but it never came."
Another NLA fighter claimed the international community was not putting enough pressure on the authorities to reach a settlement with his community's representatives.
And he warned that there won't be very much progress if European diplomats continue to insist that Albanians in Macedonia are better off than their brothers were under Milosevic.
"The diplomats do not want war in Europe, " he said. "That is good. However, it's a mistake to tell us that because we are enjoying more freedom than those who were enslaved, we have therefore nothing to complain about."
The fighters say that if the peace talks break down, they will have no reservations about returning to their armed struggle. "I went to war convinced I would die," said one. " First I defeated the greatest enemy of all - fear. We are sworn to fight whenever asked to do so."
part of IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 243, May 3, 2001GREATER ALBANIA - A FADING DREAM
Many Albanians, it seems, are not motivated by the idea of a Greater Albania.
By Tim Judah in London
I went to hunt for Greater Albania. While I searched, I talked to soldiers from three Albanian armies - guerrilla groups fighting in Serbia's Presevo valley and Macedonia and the Red and Black Army from Kosovo.
Not many foreigners have heard of the Red and Black Army, but arguably they are Kosovo's best advert for freedom - a happy army without guns. On 28 March, their faces daubed in traditional war paint, its flag-waving forces marched down Tirana's Zog Boulevard just like a real conquering army.
Ironic in a sense, as it was King Zog who, after being helped to power by the Yugoslav government in 1924, turned on Kosovar guerrillas in Albania and suppressed them.
So, was I witnessing Kosovo's revenge? Were the Kosovars conquering Albania? No, of course not. All I was seeing was a glimpse of Albanians leading a normal life. The Red and Black Army are football fans from Pristina. They had come to Tirana to watch England play Albania.
Of course Albanians have had a bad press these last two years. And, at least for some of them, not without good reason. Continuing murders of Kosovo Serbs, the activities of the UCPMB guerrillas in the Presevo valley and the NLA in Macedonia, have given those who oppose Kosovo's independence all the ammunition they could possibly want.
Last month, the editorial pages of western papers were full of doom-laden predictions about the new challenge facing the West - that is to say the challenge of an aggressive and emerging Greater Albania.
So, who better to quiz on the subject than the Red and Black Army? As we talked missiles flew overhead. We sheltered in their coach while Tirana's youths pelted England fans who were fleeing for the safety of their hotels. "We came because we don't have a team to support because we are not independent," explained Ilir. "FIFA (football's governing body) won't recognise our team from Kosova."
The point, according to Ilir, was that while Albania's Albanians were "brothers", he'd rather be supporting Kosovo, the real home team, since "Kosova is our country". In other words, Albania was not.
This may seem self-evident to many Albanians - the exception being those who genuinely do believe in a Greater Albania. However, the fact of the matter is that creating a Greater Albania, comprising Albania itself, Kosovo, the Presevo valley, western Macedonia and parts of Montenegro, is simply not an idea that motivates a great many Albanians.
Remzi Lani, the director of the Albanian Media Institute, told me, "If I said there were no people who dreamed of a Greater Albania I would be wrong. But it is not a popular idea. If the Security Council or an international conference offered us a Greater Albania we would not refuse it, but on the other hand we would not fight for it either."
This is a sentiment widely echoed in Albania and indeed amongst Albanians, with of course a few notable exceptions such Arben Imami, Albania's Justice Minister. (See IWPR Crisis Report No 239, 20 April 2000.)
Following the government collapse and the ensuing chaos of 1997, most Albanian Albanians are simply keen that the country's current seven per cent annual rate of growth be kept up. They know that any attempt to seek territorial aggrandisement would simply condemn them to a future of endless conflict and poverty.
By contrast, some Albanians, believing that Kosovo will soon be independent and that sooner or later the Albanian birthrate in Macedonia will make them the biggest single nationality, think there is no reason to do anything and that somehow a Greater Albania will emerge, whatever happens.
In fact, it is far from clear that this is the case. Most likely Kosovo will be independent but there seems little prospect that this will happen in the foreseeable future. Besides, an independent Kosovo may well find that, even if it wanted to, it could not join with Albania because the price of independence was, amongst other things, a treaty forbidding any such thing. There are precedents for this. On regaining their independence, the Austrians undertook in the Austrian State Treaty of May 1955 not to enter into any future union with Germany.
The fact is, however, that just as the idea of a Greater Albania is not popular in Albania, it is not popular in Kosovo either. During the Kosovo war, 445,000 Kosovo Albanians took refuge in Albania, a country that many had once idealised as the motherland. They were sorely disappointed, horrified by its poverty, corruption and crime.
For this reason, many Kosovo Albanians, a large number of whom have worked in countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Austria, foresee the future relationship of the various parts of the Albanian nation in similar terms to those of the two German-speaking countries plus the German- speaking part of Switzerland.
It is noticeable that not a single mainstream party, either in Kosovo, Albania or Macedonia is publicly in favour of a Greater Albania, or for that matter even a Greater Kosovo.
So, if this is the case, what are the guerrillas of the UCPMB and the NLA fighting for? In the case of the former, Pleurat Sejdiu, Kosovo's co-minister of health says, "It is an open secret that they are fighting for the land to be part of Kosovo in the future."
But Sejdiu, the former KLA spokesman in London, also suggests that as they launched the campaign in the Presevo valley, the guerrillas also had in mind an eventual trade off with the Serbs. That is to say an exchange of land involving Albanian areas in southern Serbia for solidly ethnic Serbian areas in northern Kosovo.
The NLA story appears to be different. Men like Sejdiu belonged to the Popular Movement for Kosovo, LPK, a tiny party which was instrumental in setting up the KLA. Many LPK people, including Fazli Veliu, its former leader were, however, not Kosovars but Macedonian Albanians.
With the end of the Kosovo war, some of the Macedonian Albanians opted to follow a political career in Kosovo. Some did not. They include Ali Ahmeti, the political leader of the NLA who is also Fazli Veliu's nephew.
This group found themselves amongst the losers of Kosovo politics and unable to return home. For a long time they agitated to begin a conflict in Macedonia but were restrained by their Kosovar colleagues who believed that any attempt to open a Macedonian front would be disastrous.
The Kosovars were right. The Macedonian Albanians whose political roots lay with the LPK did start a conflict and the result has been a severe blow to Kosovo's hopes for early independence.
The NLA also discovered that, unlike the KLA, they were not so popular amongst Macedonian Albanians, who, while sympathising with their stated aim of equality within Macedonia, were far from euphoric about their emergence.
Of course, while it is true that Greater Albania is not an idea which inspires the majority of Albanians, a resurgence of conflict in Macedonia could arguably radicalise an already battered people.
However, as there is no will in the international community to change borders, or even give Kosovo its independence for that matter, there is obviously no prospect for a real Greater Albania. Still, pessimists argue that what we could see is the emergence of a Greater Albanian "anti-state", that is to say a chaotic area controlled by mafiosi and armed men of one sort or another in all the regions where Albanians live.
This is a legitimate fear, and for that reason the international community must continue to work to help the Balkan countries help themselves and become integrated into the rest of Europe. That is of course a cliché, but I for one cannot see any alternative.Tim Judah is the author of Kosovo: War and Revenge published by Yale University Press.
part of IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 243, May 3, 2001SERBIAN RADICALS ELICIT CHURCH SYMPATHY
An extreme right-wing Serbian group has won the sympathy of many in the Orthodox Church
By Suzana Sudar in BelgradeSerbs traditionally associate the word 'obraz' or 'cheek' with honour, but an eponymously named right-wing group, claiming to champion Orthodox values, is being dismissed by its detractors as little more than a bunch of fascists.
The symbol Obraz - a six-pointed cross - can now be found on walls and shop windows around the capital. The group has rapidly gathered momentum over the past two years - garnering the support of disaffected youths, intellectuals and professionals.
Ten years of the Milosevic regime, a crushed economy and a roster of lost wars has left Serbia weak, defensive and a breeding ground for extremists.
Obraz was founded four years ago, with a supporter base of around 200. Some now estimate that its ranks have swelled to around 30,000, with chapters in Serbia, Montenegro and Republika Srpska.
Members have inherited the former regime's paranoid-nationalist stance. They claim Serbs are the only Europeans without their own national state and that their enemies are out to destroy them. Foes include the usual suspects: Zionists, Croats, Albanians, Bosniaks, democrats, bogus peace-brokers, religious sects, homosexuals, drug addicts and criminals etc.
Their website makes no bones about the movement's hatred of Croats and Bosniaks, accusing the former of stealing their culture and language as well as being responsible for "killing, expelling and forcibly assimilating three million Serbs" in the last two hundred years alone. The latter are charged with being spiritually "even more worthless than the Croats".
Albanians are maligned and warned that they will endure "the justifiable ire of the Serbian people".
This sort of vitriol has, not unsurprisingly, attracted the attention of the Humanitarian Law Fund, FHP. Headed by Natasa Kandic, it has asked the state authorities to use legislation which bars incitement to ethnic and religious hatred.
Yet, one of Obraz's leading figures Nebojsa Krstic claims that they are in no way an extreme organization - and are actually the victim of libel propagated by the ruling coalition and anti-Serbian NGOs.
Krstic, a sociologist by training, first appeared as a writer and critic in the early nineties, launching the slick Obraz magazine in 1993. He was one of the most vocal critics of the NATO bombing, which he claimed was targeting "pregnant women, babies, children and the infirm who are guilty only because they are alive, more precisely, only because they are Serbs".
But, even at that time, the group had limited support. That was not the case one year later, when on the feast-day of the movement's patron saint King Milutin, it was next to impossible to get to the Obraz offices on account of the crowd of burly, crop-headed youths outside.
These people were not entirely representative of the organization according to Krstic. He says it also counts among its supporters university professors, doctors, lawyers and engineers. But, it seems, well-known members are keen to guard their anonymity.
"I think that Obraz is the only genuine, authentic Serbian organisation that has a sincere Serbian orientation," said Milan, a Belgrade university student who recently signed up. "I believe that it is most important for us Serbs to return to ourselves and God."
With stock messages pushing "Orthodox nationalism instead of godless internationalism" and "faithful statesmen instead of godless traitors", Obraz has won over the sympathy of many in the Orthodox Church.
" This is an honourable and honest movement whose goal is to turn the Serbs who have been in the spiritual and moral dump for a long time into the people to be admired by the entire Europe and the world," said senior Church figure Dragan Terzic.
Liberals beg to differ, asserting that the movement is merely a slicker version of radical elements who once supported extremist figures like Vojislav Seselj. Their purpose, say observers, is to divert attention away from Serbia's fundamental economic problems by looking for foreign scapegoats for the country's very real woes.
Branislav Jelic of the Civic Alliance of Serbia sees the group as a hangover from the former regime which fomented religious and ethnic divisions, hatred and xenophobia.
The FHP has so far refrained from bringing charges against Obraz for inciting ethnic and religious hatred, preferring to wait to see if the public prosecutor moves against the group.
FHP lawyer Igor Olujic insists, however, that Obraz is not the only extremist group in Serbia. Radicals not necessarily connected to the organisation have desecrated Jewish graves and daubed anti-Roma graffiti - featuring slogans such as "Out with Roma, Serbia for the Serbs" - on the walls of a Belgrade theatre and cinema.
For Olujic, Obraz is symptomatic of a growing tide of extremist right-wing sympathisers. He is urging the issue be brought to the fore and debated openly before the movements attract even more support.Suzana Sudar is a journalist for Belgrade weekly Oko
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