The west's Kosovo campaign has set a dangerous regional precedent, says Mark Mazower - Mar 16 2001
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A century ago, Macedonia was plagued by bombs, assassinations and armed bands. In those days it was part of the Ottoman empire and the moustachioed revolutionaries fighting Sultan Abdul Hamid were mostly Macedonian Slavs. They blew up banks, sank ships and even triggered a peasant uprising - all in the hope of dragging the Great Powers into the region.
Ottoman troops burned their villages in revenge and the peasants suffered, as so often before, for a dream of independence most of them did not share. The powers sent inspectors to make sure the Turks ruled Macedonia properly but did not support the insurgents' cause - and the guerrilla bands of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation never prevailed against the Ottoman army. After 1912, when the empire lost its last European territories, the lands they claimed went to Serbia and Greece. Their troops, not bands of bandoliered irregulars, decided thefate of the region.
Today, the Macedonian state, formed in the aftermath of the collapse of Yugoslavia, is having to cope in its turn with insurgency. The armed Albanians infiltrating from Kosovo are in many ways mirroring IMRO's tactics. They have already gone one better than IMRO in Kosovo itself: two years ago, in the classic style of Balkan revolutionary activity, the irregulars of the Kosovo Liberation Army managed to gain victory, not by defeating the Serbian army, but rather by provoking the Serbs and then manoeuvring the Great Powers to intervene on their behalf. Having the powers fight their wars for them in this way was exactly how Greece and Bulgaria won independence in the 19th century. Now, however, some armed Albanian units have moved into southern Serbia proper and also across the border into Macedonia, a fragile polity with a large Albanian minority. There seems a strong possibility of further clashes between these bands and Macedonia's fledgling army this spring. Will the bordersof Macedonia remain unchanged?
Europe tore itself apart fighting over borders through much of the 20th century. In 1975 a meeting in Finland tried to change all that: the Helsinki Final Act declared that henceforth the boundaries of European states would not be changed by force. But the death-throes of Yugoslavia have tested this principle to the limit. Not so much in Bosnia, where international intervention was supposed to protect Bosnia from external aggression. But in Kosovo, matters were different.
Because Kosovo was technically part of Serbia, Nato's campaign against the Serbs involved it in that republic's internal affairs. At the time, the west's spokesmen argued that preventing "ethnic cleansing" and human catastrophe trumped such considerations. The outcome was to tear Kosovo from Belgrade's control. At present, Nato insists that the province will remain part of Yugoslavia. But until the interests of Kosovo and rump Serbia converge more closely, it is hard to take this very seriously. Autonomy and eventually independence for the province seem far more likely. This means that international borders will have been changed by force through events initiated by armed ethnic Albanian separatists. In which case, some KLA activists argue, if Kosovo, why not Macedonia too, where large numbers of Albanians live as well? And so the west is forced to confront these unpredictable consequences of its Kosovo campaign. If the international community makes it clear that it will not countenance any change in Macedonia's borders, some of the steam may go out of the National Liberation Army, the KLA offshoot. The Americans, in particular, need to listen to their European partners, to stop demonising the Serbs and to take the threat of Albanian separatism seriously. More concrete measures should be taken, too. Guerrillas and brigands have traditionally flourished in the Balkans and exploited its mountains. Theyhave flourished, however, only when permitted - by weakness or indifference - to do so.
Brigandage died out quickly in the early 20th century, when states organised professional police forces. Guerrillas were never a match for regular troops and when borders were closed, and supply and escape routes were shut off, their activity fell away sharply. Tito's closure of his border with Greece crippled the insurgent Democratic Army of Greece during the civil war in the late 1940s and brought it swiftly to an end. Macedonia's borders with Kosovo should be properly patrolled, not half-heartedly as the Americans have been doing until recently. Nato should also recognise the regional nature of this problem. The possibility of conflict in Macedonia has alarmed all her neighbours. Serbia may have been the enemy in Kosovo but, without Serbian assistance, especially in policing the no-man's-land on the Serbia-Kosovo border,things are going to get a lot worse.
Greece takes the threat of instability and further refugee flows so seriously that George Papandreou, its foreign minister, rushed recently toreassure the Macedonians of his government's support. As for the Bulgarians, who may now provide military aid to Skopje, their country was torn apart in the first half of the last century by Macedonian activists; they know the importance of preserving tranquillity. Many Albanians, too, are far from sharing the ideals of the NLA. Albania itself, Europe's poorest and most youthful state, has the continent's worst brain-drain: a large number of its intellectuals have left the country; a majority of students see no future at home.
Political stability, the restructuring of public institutions and economic growth are what Albania requires, not more fighting and more land. Inside Macedonia itself the maximalists are still a fringe group. So far the Macedonian government, for all its many problems - refugees from Kosovo, poor economic performance, internal political scandals - has shown sensitivity about the question of ethnic relations. Ljubco Georgievski's administration includes an Albanian party and has supported a new, private Albanian-language university. Such policies may allow a new relationship between majority and minority to emerge throughout society, not only the elite.
Even if things do not proceed down this benign path, it is difficult to see how the diehards of the KLA can win. A Greater Albania, like some well known expansionist adventures of the past, would be more likely to end up harming its intended beneficiaries, as well as everyone else. Let us hope they, and we, do not have to find out the hard way.
The writer is professor of history at Birkbeck College London