The peace deal signed on Monday in Skopje between leaders of the four main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties is going to need the best efforts of NATO to make it work. Ostensibly, it ought to end the six-month rebellion by Albanians seeking better civic rights. With Albanian given second-language status in parts of the country, plus more jobs for Albanians in the Macedonian-dominated police force and better access to education, it meets the demands of the two main Albanian parties. But the suspicion has to be that, despite the concessions wrought from the Macedonian government by NATO negotiators and despite the desire of probably the overwhelming bulk of Macedonians and Albanians to make it work, the deal will not last.
For a start, there is too much suspicion between the two communities. But more importantly, there are extremists on both sides who do not want the deal to work: extremist Albanians who remain determined on separatism; extremist Macedonians who want no concessions to the Albanians, who want them instead either terrorized into submission or expelled.
Unless both these groups are either sidetracked or crushed, they will set the agenda by taking actions that will polarize public opinion within the two communities and set the country full steam ahead for civil war. With 19 members of the local security forces killed last week, Macedonian passions are already running high; any further breaches of the cease-fire by the Albanians will destroy the present fragile cease- and delay — if not derail altogether — the Macedonian Parliament’s necessary endorsement of the deal. As it is, Macedonian nationalists have the ear of a prime minister anxious not to appear weak and lose votes in elections which have to be held in the next six months. But if both sets of extremists are to be sidelined, it will require the urgent and long-term presence of NATO troops. This is still in the discussion stage; but it less than encouraging to hear reports from NATO headquarters that it is proposed that its forces should remain in Macedonian for no more than 30 days. It is a totally unrealistic assessment of the situation.
There are other untied threads that undermine the deal. The most incomprehensible is the question of disarmament. NATO has told the Macedonian president that the Albanian National Liberation Army will start to disarm with 45 days’ time, by when Parliament is supposed to ratify the deal. But the NLA has not agreed to disarm, although they plan to discuss the matter in a fortnight. One thing is certain, if the NLA were prepared to disarm, NATO would have secured this concession already.. It is quite clear that NATO has glossed over the issue, leaving such awkward details till later in the hope that they will be resolved. That is a major error, as events in Northern Ireland have shown. There, the lack of clarity at the outset on the disarmament issue has persistently bedeviled the peace process. George Robertson, the British secretary-general of NATO who has put considerable effort into securing the Macedonian deal, must be well aware that it is on this rock that the deal will flounder.
What we see is a worrying triumph of NATO hope over wisdom. The experience of all those earlier ethnic enmities in the Balkans gives little cause for optimism.
