With the untimely death of Macedonia’s President Boris Trajkovski in a plane crash, not only the Macedonians will be wondering what happens next. Trajkovski, who became president in 1999, was a Macedonian nationalist. But he was not interested in involving his country in other Balkan conflicts. He always knew that violence cannot settle the Balkans’ ethnic conflicts.
Macedonia managed to avoid joining Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo as victims of Serbian aggression. However in late 2000, the flight of 300,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo into Macedonia threatened to destabilize a country whose two million population includes Albanians. For a few dangerous weeks, well-armed ethnic Albanian fighters confronted the Macedonian police and army in what threatened to be a rerun of the brutal ethnic fighting that had disfigured so much of the former Yugoslavia.
It was however Trajkovski’s insistence that only a nonviolent multiethnic solution would bring real peace which short-circuited the standoff. Despite strong opposition in his own administration, Trajkovski pushed through an EU peace deal which saw the supervised disarmament of Albanian fighters in return for far-reaching changes in the Macedonian constitution, recognizing the rights of the Albanian minority. Despite widespread predictions to the contrary, the deal worked. Most of the refugees from Kosovo returned home after NATO’s expulsion of the Serbs. Meanwhile Macedonians of all ethnic backgrounds settled down to make the new Macedonia work. After elections in September 2002, the main Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), won the third largest share of parliamentary seats and joined a coalition government led by premier Branko Crvenkovski. The DUI provides a deputy premier as well as four ministers.
Macedonia faces many challenges. Nevertheless progress was made under this moderate and reformist president. The irony is that on the day that Trajkovski perished when his plane crashed in the mountains, Macedonia was due to present its formal application to join the European Union.
It is clear from reports that the shock and sadness at the president’s death has been felt throughout Macedonia, regardless of ethnic background. The debt of gratitude that all Macedonians owe their thoughtful head of state perhaps only became clear to them with his untimely passing. That debt can be repaid now if Premier Crvenkovski and his people stick to the path of moderation which Trajkovski mapped out for them. He insisted that Macedonia was for all Macedonians. If that moderation can be maintained, it would be the finest memorial Trajkovski could have asked for.
