Brothers and arms

Relations between the Slavs and the Albanians in Macedonia have deteriorated further. Vaiju Naravane on the arms decommissioning issue.

BARELY A week after it began, Operation Essential Harvest, NATO's 30-day mission to collect 3,300 arms from rebel Albanians in the tiny Balkan republic of Macedonia, has started to appear shaky.

The NATO General-Secretary, Lord Robertson's brief visit to the capital Skopje and the troubled area around the Albanian- dominated town of Tetovo in northwestern Macedonia was marred by terrorist attacks and shooting incidents involving the Albanian and Macedonian communities as well as NATO troops.

According to the respected defence weekly, Jane's, Albanian rebels possess around 8,000 arms including assault rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortar and rocket launchers and an estimated 50 Stinger missiles (that wreaked havoc on Soviet troops in Afghanistan).

The NATO's estimate of 3,300 weapons is hotly disputed by the Macedonian Government which claims the rebels have anywhere between 60,000 and 100,000 weapons.

The Macedonian Prime Minister, Mr. Ljubco Georgievski, described Operation Essential Harvest as ``laughable and humiliating for Macedonia'', while the Government spokesman, Mr. Antonio Milososki, said ``Museum Harvest'' would be a more appropriate name for the mission which, he alleged, had succeeded in collecting less than 500 weapons mostly obsolete, rusty and unusable, dating back to World War II.

The Albanians, he said, were making fools of both NATO and the Macedonian Government and should not be allowed to get away with it.

The generally nationalistic Macedonian press has fiercely attacked the NATO mission, which it has labelled biased and pro- Albanian, inevitably fanning nationalistic sentiment. Dvevnik, a popular daily, described the weapons collected by NATO troops as ``museum pieces, mostly of Russian or Chinese origin'', while another daily, Utrinski Vesnik, said two M-48 rifles handed over date back to World War II.

However, the NATO spokesman, Major Barry Johnson, said the arms collected were of the same quality and calibre as those used by the Macedonian army. NATO also pointed out that over 200 Kosovo Albanians who had gone to Macedonia to help the guerrillas had been detained by Kfor soldiers while crossing back into the Albanian-dominated Yugoslav province. They were unarmed. ``This confirms our belief that the National Liberation Army in Macedonia is beginning to disband,'' Major Johnson said.

The Albanian guerrilla leader, Mr. Ali Ahmeti, told TheHindu that as far as his fighters were concerned ``the war is over. With the Ohrid agreement, there is no longer any reason to make war. We will hand in all our weapons and we have no reason to hide the number of weapons we possess.

``The Macedonian Government's claims that we have over 60,000 arms are false. The target of 3,300 weapons fixed by NATO was arrived at not by us but by a committee of experts. We waited for this peace for over ten years. Now, hopefully, we have it.''

The Macedonian press has slammed the peace agreement, as a ``sell out to minority Albanian interests''. Several editorials continue to insist that Albanians want to split the country in order to form a Greater Albania or at least a Greater Kosovo. Mr. Ali Ahmeti and other Albanian leaders, including the chiefs of political parties, deny this allegation, saying they intend to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. Most Macedonian Slavs, however, do not appear to be convinced that this is the case.

Indeed relations between the two communities have further deteriorated and Macedonian nationalists are now openly calling upon Slavs to ``protect their interests''. There are increasing reports that sympathisers of the hardline nationalistic Interior Minister, Mr. Lubje Boskovski's centre-right party, VMRO, have acquired guns and have begun maltreating Albanian civilians.

``We live in daily terror here,'' Mr. Bashkim Aliu, a 28-year-old unemployed youth from Skopje, told TheHindu. ``The Interior Minister Lubje Boskovski is really whipping up anti-Albanian sentiment in the capital and most Albanians have now moved to the old Turkish quarter in the city. Just the other day there was a bomb blast at an Albanian primary school. On paper, we have obtained what is a just solution. But will the nationalist Macedonian Slavs allow this to become reality? I do not think so. In any case, I have sent my family to Kosovo where they are safe for the time being. But our lives have been totally disrupted.''

In such difficult circumstances, it is now doubtful if the Macedonian Parliament will ratify the peace agreement signed with the Albanian leadership on August 13 following protracted talks in the lakeside town of Orhid. Under the deal, the country's Constitution will be changed to remove references to the ethnic origins of Macedonia's citizens and the Albanian language will be given official status in certain areas.

An extra 1,000 policemen of Albanian origin will be recruited and more public sector posts will be offered to the Albanians who make up a third of the population. NLA rebels have also been granted amnesty under the peace deal.

Over the past week, there has been a tremendous upsurge of anti- NATO feelings amidst the Macedonian Slav population. A British soldier was killed by anti-NATO demonstrators who dropped a slab of concrete on his car from an overbridge. The political situation has been further exacerbated by the fact that an election is due by the end of January, 2002.

The Prime Minister and the Interior Minister are both undeclared candidates locked in a fight for the leadership of VMRO against the moderate President, Mr. Boris Trajkovski, and have decided to raise the ante to capture the nationalistic vote.

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