© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved.

Macedonia in Double Jeopardy

By Eran FRAENKEL*
March 30, 1999
 
SKOPJE, Macedonia -- The West has long known and feared that a conflict in Kosovo could easily spill over into this fragile country. One of NATO's rationales for the current air strikes was to inoculate Macedonia from such a fate, as well as prevent a wider and bloodier conflict.
 
The bombing was supposed to compel Yugoslavia to accept a peace agreement with the Kosovo Albanians. This would eliminate the possibility of cross-border violence, an influx of refugees and the further escalation of tensions between the majority Macedonians and the large minority Albanian community here.
 
Instead, just the reverse has happened.
 
Since the country's independence in 1991, Macedonians and Albanians alike have grappled with the wide-ranging consequences of the collapse of former Yugoslavia. A key issue for those trying to prevent ethnic conflict between the two groups has been de-linking Albanian issues in Macedonia from Albanian issues in Kosovo. The NATO air strikes have effectively undermined these efforts and put Macedonia in double jeopardy.
 
The attacks have provided the Yugoslav government with whatever pretext it have might needed to pursue its objectives in Kosovo. Macedonia is receiving the long-dreaded stream of Albanian refugees.
 
While the international community may eventually help defray the humanitarian costs, it cannot mitigate the fear felt by ethnic Macedonians that this wave of refugees may well realign the Macedonian-Albanian population ratio. They view this as a potential demographic catastrophe.
 
Before the bombings, Kosovar refugees had been admitted into Macedonia with grave reservations, mostly as "guests" coming to stay with relatives. This obviated the need for the government to reach into state coffers, and, until recently, also mitigated the expected negative responses from ethnic Macedonians. No longer.
 
Ethnic Macedonians feel betrayed by the government they elected last November. They are angered by their government's participation in Western support for the Kosovo Albanians. Some even rationalize a possible counter strike by Yugoslavia against NATO troops in Macedonia.
 
Most ethnic Macedonians over the age of 25 still consider Yugoslavia as "theirs," even if they do not support the Milosevic regime. Macedonia's seven-year existence as an independent state has in no way diminished the intimately personal ties many Macedonians have with Serbia. For such people, it is anathema to imagine sacrificing their country's identity as an ethnically Macedonian state for the sake of Kosovar Albanian human rights, or for any other Albanian cause.
 
There has been a conspicuous absence of sympathy in Macedonia for the savagery being inflicted on Kosovo's Albanian civilians. Ethnic Macedonians point to Albanians as the root source of this conflict. No Macedonian media or public figure has issued a statement of concern or compassion for the thousands who have been slaughtered or evicted.
 
Ethnic Macedonians are feeling victimized, frightened, and angry at the West for putting their country in a no-win situation. Even if NATO is "successful," Kosovo will be so badly damaged that the long-term presence of a large number of Albanian refugees in Macedonia seems inevitable. And if the campaign fails, Yugoslavia will be in a position to exact its revenge on Macedonia for its role, deliberate or not, in the current assault.
 
For Macedonia's Albanians, Kosovo represents the premiere expression of collective Albanian political and cultural identity. For 50 years, Albanians from throughout Yugoslavia, including Macedonia, were educated and employed in Pristina, and intermarried with Kosovo families. The drawing of an international border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia in no way erased the intimately personal ties Macedonian Albanians have with Kosovo. For them, this identification is both natural and undeniable.
 
During the first few days of the bombing, Macedonian Albanians may have been shocked at the price the Kosovars were paying due to the NATO campaign. Still they support the bombing without reservation. In this community, there is no question that defeating the Yugoslav military machine is the only way to salvage anything of Albanian life in Kosovo.
 
But despite all the indications that the Yugoslav government was preparing for this onslaught even as the Paris negotiations were in progress, Albanians are still being accused for bringing this tragedy upon themselves.
 
Albanians here are trying to fathom how the entire population of Pec could have been expelled; how large parts of Dzakovica could have been razed. And all this without comment by their Macedonian neighbors. They wonder how anyone can rationalize the summary execution of men and boys, often before their wives, mothers and sisters. "Even the dead are being blamed," said one.
 
Although Albanians here do not blame Macedonians for events in Kosovo, they wonder if they will be able to endure living among them in future. They are asking themselves how it will be possible for this country's interethnic relations to survive the war if no representative of the Macedonian majority community is willing to condemn the ethnic cleansing occurring only twenty kilometers away.
 
Perhaps NATO's military force can win this war. But it cannot heal the wounds that brought about the war in the first place, nor the wounds that the war in bound to inflict, not just on Kosovo but Macedonia too.
 
*Eran Fraenkel is Executive Director of Search for Common Ground in Macedonia, a conflict management organization based in Skopje, Macedonia.

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© 1999 Global Beat Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/.

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