(Washington Post) Rebels Demand Rights - Minority Albanians SayFight in Macedonia Is for Equity

[Paola Lucchesi <paola.lucchesi@mail.inet.it>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15604-2001Mar16?language=printer

Rebels Demand Rights
Minority Albanians Say Fight in Macedonia Is for Equity

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 17, 2001; Page A01

TETOVO, Macedonia, March 16 -- A group of ethnic Albanian guerrillas
battling for control of a hillside overlooking this frightened
provincial city said today their sole aim is to win more economic and
political rights alongside Macedonia's Slavic majority.
    The Albanian rebels, who spoke while bullets whizzed nearby and
mortar concussions shook the hillside where they were entrenched,
specifically said they wanted the Macedonian government to provide
adequate schools staffed with Albanian-speaking instructors. This is a
long-standing demand from Macedonia's 35 percent ethnic Albanian
minority, a demand the government has yet to address.
    The guerrillas, who wore camouflage uniforms, were armed with rifles
and carried the modern rebel's communications device -- a cell phone. In
interviews, they said their armed violence was sparked by a decade of
discrimination at the hands of the Macedonian Slavs who make up nearly
two-thirds of the country's 2 million inhabitants, alongside tiny
communities of Gypsies, Turks and Serbs.
    "We will never give up," a guerrilla said.
    Their statements seemed designed to counter charges from Macedonian
and Yugoslav officials that the uprising here had been helped along by
ethnic Albanians in the neighboring Serbian province of Kosovo, southern
Serbia and Albania itself, united behind the goal of a greater Albanian
super-state. This prospect has rattled Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria and
Italy, all of which have demanded more Western action to guarantee
Macedonia's unity.
    But the rebellion here, which has been condemned by governments
around the world, looked today like it could spread. Weapons fire was
reported in a handful of other Macedonian towns and cities in addition
to Tetovo, according to diplomatic and local sources. And a German
member of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Kosovo was fired at by an
unknown gunman while passing through Tetovo en route to the Kosovo
border, according to the government.
    Ethnic Albanians in several villages near this western Macedonian
city -- the nation's fourth largest -- said they had begun forming armed
self-defense groups to keep Macedonian police from passing through their
towns to encircle the rebels and cut off their supplies. Ethnic
Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo, Macedonia's northern
neighbor, formed similar groups in 1998 on the way to a popular revolt
against Serb rule that eventually led to a brutal Yugoslav crackdown and
the Kosovo war waged by the United States and its NATO allies in 1999.
    Although the leaders of Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian political
party have criticized the violence here, many ethnic Albanian villagers
and Tetovo residents said in interviews that they support the
guerrillas.
    The fighting has thrown Macedonia's ethnically mixed government into
crisis. The parliament held an all-day closed session today to debate
ratification of a state of emergency plan that would give the police new
powers. Ethnic Albanian politicians threatened to boycott the government
if the proposal was accepted, and no decision was reached.
    "The security situation is worsening," members of Macedonia's
Security Council said in a statement.
    The violence in Tetovo was not only more intense than in two
previous days of clashes, but also seemed more indiscriminate. Sniper
fire from the hillside rained on several residential neighborhoods, and
several mortar rounds detonated on the central square. Three civilians
were wounded, all in Tetovo, the government said; it also reported that
400 families had fled the city.
    "There is panic in the town," said Samit Kadrije, 56, an ethnic
Albanian who fled Tetovo for the nearby village of Poroj. "Fear is
growing."
    A group calling itself the General Headquarters of the National
Liberation Army issued a communique urging all ethnic Albanians to
enlist in the battle and claimed to have killed 11 government fighters.
Depicting themselves as acting solely in self-defense, the guerrillas
said they had no direct casualties and blamed government forces for
killing one civilian and wounding two others.
    Among Macedonian cities, Tetovo is home to the most ethnic Albanians
after the capital, Skopje. Some residents said they suspected the
guerrillas' aim was to come down from the hill and take over the town,
which some experts said could bring this nation to the brink of civil
war.
    Police, consisting mostly of Macedonian Slavs, brought in heavier
weaponry and rained steady fire against presumed guerrilla positions on
the mountain. Twenty-millimeter cannons mounted on armored personnel
carriers were used in their assault for the first time, along with
large-caliber machine guns.
    As police fired on the hill from three positions -- inside a soccer
stadium, on a street adjacent to an Orthodox church and near a reservoir
-- some Macedonian Slav civilians who remained in the town offered their
help. They braved sniper fire to ferry cannon shells, providing a sign
that the population here is being radicalized by the confrontation.
    "Watch me as I shoot," a policeman boasted to a civilian friend.
"This is how it's done."
    NATO Secretary General George Robertson said in Athens that "we are
determined that . . . stability is not going to be threatened by a small
number of extremists" in Macedonia. But the alliance announced no
concrete actions to deal with the guerrillas. And nothing about the
several dozen rebels encountered today indicated they were ready to lay
down their arms and fade into the woods any time soon.
    Although the men would not say where they were from, their accents
were local, giving credence to the theory that the guerrillas had
recruited members from the predominantly ethnic Albanian towns
surrounding Tetovo. Several clots of young men in civilian clothes
served as sentries for the group and two armed men wearing face masks
manned a checkpoint along a back road to their encampment.
    Members of the group debated whether to answer reporters' questions
before several spoke up to say they had no desire to "change the
borders" of Macedonia.
    But little agreement exists in Macedonia about one of the
guerrillas' key demands, new schools staffed by Albanian-speaking
teachers. At present, only elementary schools offer instruction in that
language. While ethnic Albanians see the school issue as a matter of
human rights and economic opportunity, many Macedonian Slavs consider
the creation of more Albanian-language schools a recipe for enhanced
Albanian nationalist and separatist sentiments.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company