The pendulum swing
In the spring of 1999, following the repression of the Yugoslav authorities over the Kosovar Albanians and the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, approximately a quarter of a million Kosovars sought refuge in the Republic of Macedonia. The refugees were predominantly south Kosovar civilians who were forced to leave their homes by the state police and paramilitary groups.[1] On the ground at the northern Macedonian border, there was a set of aid agencies stationed in anticipation of the refugee influx. The state authorities, however, were a bit more reluctant to the influx as they feared that it could disturb the delicate interethnic balance in the state.[2] The newly formed government stood for better border control against the demands of the international community and the local Albanian politicians to keep the borders open; a move which is to allow for a swift return of the Kosovar Albanians in Kosovo.
Just a few months before these events, in late February 1999, UNPREDEP – which stands for the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force – ended its four-year-long mandate after China vetoed its renewal following the Macedonian recognition of Taiwan. Already in December 1992, the first forces of the UN peace troops for Yugoslavia, UNPROFOR, or the United Nations Protection Force, arrived in Macedonia to monitor its weakly protected state borders. As of 1995 and the formal end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UN peace mission in Macedonia was restructured as UNPREDEP. The end of the UNPREDEP mandate hence left the Albanian, Kosovar, and Macedonian borders more prone to illegal crossings and shook the security of the Macedonian citizens.
The working philosophy of the UNPREDEP was somewhat more holistic than previously and as in the other Yugoslav republics, and even pioneering for the UN standards as per its head Henryk J. Sokalski, as it consisted of a set “catalytic activities” aimed at enhancing the social trust, developing the civil society network and the general institutional capacities for the new democratic era; that is a better understanding and implementation of human rights, including minority rights.[3] The strong presence of the international community in the state, as well as the successful avoidance of armed operations at the beginning of the decade, painted the image of Macedonia as a “peace oasis” in the region of former Yugoslavia.
The episode of the Kosovar refugees’ influx in the then Republic of Macedonia appeared to be among the major arguments for the “spillover thesis” about the Macedonian conflict in 2001, which is a thesis that looks at the casus belli beyond the state borders of Macedonia.
There were other such arguments, however. Pettifer and Vickers, for instance, trace the backdrop of the Macedonian conflict down to the early 2000s rumors of a “Kosovar Dayton” that would allegedly leave the Kosovar Albanians short of independence. These stories were backed by the “deteriorating relationships” between Kosovars and NATO forces after the formation of the George W. Bush administration.[4] In this very context, the Macedonian situation of minority rights stalemate, nationalist government, and weak border controls all of a sudden provided fertile ground for the Albanian radical voices opting for a military campaign in Macedonia as a tool for pushing back an eventual non-independence solution for Kosovo.
In Macedonia, on the other hand, those claims were frequently linked to the 1998 Kosovo Liberation Army’s statement that its ultimate goal was liberating all the Albanian territories in the Balkans, including parts of Macedonia. The KLA was not subjected to disarmament in the aftermath of the Kosovo War (1998-1999), which allowed for its provision of “arms, logistical support, and strategy” to the radicals in Macedonia, who saw the Albanian political elites as unable to improve the conditions of the Albanians in the state.[5]
The conflict in Macedonia started on 22 January 2001 with the guerrilla attack on the police station near Tetovo. The self-ascribed National Liberation Army [al. Ushtria Ҫlirimtare Kombëtare, NLA], a group with the same Albanian acronym as the KLA, immediately claimed responsibility for the two assaults. The events struck the Macedonian society and political elites by surprise, and even the two largest Albanian parties in the state rebuked the activities of the NLA in early 2001.[6] The attacks came shortly after the border demarcation deal between Macedonia and Serbia in early 2001, condemned by Kosovar politicians, and the formal end of hostilities in the Preševo district of South Serbia in November 2000.
The series of events in 1999 – starting from the end of the mandate of UNPREDEP to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Kosovar refugees in Macedonia, and the end of the war in Kosovo – therefore hint at that this year was critical for the “pendulum swing” of the internal social and political dynamics in Macedonia: from a frontrunner of a strategic peaceful integration to a state at the brink of a civil war.[7]
Naum Trajanovski,
Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw
[1] Michael Brewin, A Survey of Kosovar Refugees in Macedonia, May-June 1999, in The Geopolitics of Hunger 2000-2001 (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001).
[2] Daniel Krcmaric, Refugee Flows, Ethnic Power Relations, and the Spread of Conflict, Security Studies vol. 23, no. 1 (2014): 182-216.
[3] Henryk J. Sokalski, An Ounce of Prevention: Macedonia and the UN Experience in Preventive Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003).
[4] James Pettifer and Miranda Vickers, The Albanian Question: Reshaping the Balkans (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 249.
[5] Robert Hislope, “Between a bad peace and a good war: insights and lessons from the almost-war in Macedonia,” Ethnic and Racial Studies vol. 26, no. 1 (2003): 129-151.
[6] See, for instance, the first-hand accounts provided to a foreign journalist in: Ryszard Bliski, Łuni nad Tetovem (Warszawa: Towarzystwo Polsko-Macedońske, 2002), 24-25.
[7] Lidija Georgieva, Od ideja kon kultura za prevencija na konflikti, Godišen zbornik na Filozofskiot fakultet vol. 54 (2004): 473-484.
