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UNITED NATIONS — So now our current history lesson takes us to Macedonia, yet another Balkan backwater which is on the verge of exploding in the predictable pattern of ethnic strife, threatening regional spillover, and yet again calling on the international community to play the role of the Cavalry. NATO plans to send at least 5,000 troops — Americans included — for a mission of hopefully short duration
The ethnic lines are drawn with the Slavic majority and the Albanian minority drifting to civil war in this less than quaint canton of former Yugoslavia. Officially known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), this Balkan boulibaise now threatens to entangle yet another NATO mission, with the U.S as part of the show. The mission is viewed as stabilizing the situation — not siding with either ethnic faction nor revamping the less than effective Macedonian military.
NATO officials stress that the alliance is not going into Macedonia to make peace, but rather to support a political settlement which would presumably keep the peace. The question becomes that when NATO units do enter Macedonia, will they become entwined in a maze of political contradictions, extending their presence well beyond the intended "mission of short duration?"
Though NATO forces wisely brokered a cease-fire with Albanian rebels, there's need to press for a fundamental and fair political solution which would allow the Albanian minority a proper place at the governing table. Restarting stalled settlement talks becomes the political mission of Francois Leotard, a former French Defense Minister. Naturally many Macedonians say that the EU's peace plans favor the rebels. Significantly the country's President Boris Trajkovski has been committed to genuine ethnic reforms while the hard-line Premier Ljubco Georgievski has played to the masses against the Albanians.
While there's no doubt that Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) units often have more to do with smuggling than fighting for sovereignty, the rank stupidity of the Skopje government in using its mailed fist to hit at mobile partisan units has successfully radicalized ever growing numbers of Albanian villages, thus turning more people against the central government. Using heavy artillery and to pound hillsides besides being largely ineffective, evokes the Soviet tactics in Afghanistan and stokes hatred among helpless civilians.
During the Kosovo crisis in 1999, Macedonians did not exactly distinguish itself in receiving masses of Kosovar Albanian refugees fleeing Serb ethnic cleansing. Though the Macedonians had every right to control their borders, the fact is that the treatment of the fleeing Kosovars was shabby at best.
Already according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees more than 100,000 people have fled the fighting and gone to neighboring Kosovo! Volte face of 1999!
Given the Euro-force nonsense inside the European Union, the Bush Administration has no viable choice but to send American troops as to show both our solidarity with NATO peacekeeping and more importantly the American commitment to genuine and comprehensive Balkan stability. While European Union governments know that the U.S. has not gone isolationist, there's a cheap and easy criticism made in some European capitals that Washington has washed its hands of the Balkans.
France, the prime mover behind the Euro-force, by sending a respected former defense Minister to Skopje signals both a continuing commitment to Balkan peace. Though Paris has been playing a large role for over a decade--but as significantly, has a more than a passing interest in wedging Washington out of the wider game.
Presently there are 40,000 NATO-led forces in Kosovo since 1999 and another 20,000 in Bosnia for the past five years. The Macedonia mission putting 5,000 troops into the field would presumably draw units from these existing operations.
Contrary to Bill Clinton's penchant to unhesitatingly meddle in a myriad of fuzzy military missions, the Bush Administration now faces its first foreign troop commitment. Though the risks of military involvement in the Balkans remains real, inaction and passivity pose even a wider danger, not only for beleaguered Macedonia, but for the NATO Alliance itself.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
