-Caveat Lector-
> -FYI
>
> http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/sunley1.html
>
> Macedonia: the Final Domino?
> by Johnathan Sunley
>
> The scenario is a familiar one. Having captured a few villages and
> terrorized (or expelled) their inhabitants, rebels demanding greater
> ethnic – or some other form of – equality close in on the country’s
> capital seeking a showdown with the government. The latter tries to
> meet force with force but is restrained from doing so by Western
> mediators who fly in and out insisting on the need for ‘dialogue’. All of
> a sudden, yesterday’s ‘terrorists’ are today’s partners in a ‘peace-
> process’.
>
> Talks prevail, military front-lines are frozen and under the eye of the
> international community fresh elections or a referendum on the rebels’
> grievances are held. A semblance of normality returns and CNN
> gradually loses interest in the story. But by now the poor place has
> become ungovernable (which was always the rebels’ main aim) and
> responsibility for its internal affairs passes to some permutation of the
> following: Nato, the OSCE, EU, UN, World Bank, etc.
>
> Today it is Macedonia which is in danger of becoming another sad little
> protectorate in the Balkans. But this is a fate which few countries
> in the region – especially those that were once republics in the
> former Yugoslavia – have been able to escape over the last ten years.
> Indeed, it was exactly a decade ago that that the first such domino
> fell, when the legally-elected authorities in Zagreb found themselves
> prevented by international pressure from re-establishing control
> over parts of Croatia seized by Serbian forces.
>
> The irony is that throughout this turbulent period Macedonia has been
> praised for its handling of inter-ethnic relations – which is always
> (albeit often inaccurately) said to be the primary cause of conflict
> in this area. Its Albanian minority, whether constituting 23% or
> 40% of the population (as the Albanians themselves claim), has since
> the country became independent in 1992 enjoyed rights and a general
> sense of respect other minority communities in the Balkans can only
> dream about. Almost all governments formed in Skopje over the last
> decade have had Albanian participation in them and there were few
> protests when during the war in Kosovo in 1999 refugee camps were
> set up for no less than 400,000 Albanians fleeing the fighting there.
>
> But whatever else the current crisis is about, it is not human rights
> or democracy. In the autumn of 1999, elections were held in Macedonia
> to choose a new president. Though these were harshly condemned by
> Western observers on account of their blatant irregularities (which
> were especially bad in places with a high concentration of Albanians),
> this was seen at the time as the price worth paying in order for
> the least known of the candidates, Boris Trajkovski, to win on a
> ticket of inter-ethnic reconciliation and harmony. The outcome was
> the opposite, as Slav Macedonians – enraged by the way in which
> Albanian votes appeared to count for more than theirs, and the Albanian
> minority – encouraged to believe they could cheat their way to power,
> drifted further and further apart.
>
> It is unlikely they would have come to blows, however, but for events
> in Kosovo in the aftermath of the war there. Despite the presence
> of some 45,000 Nato troops and in Camp Bondsteel one of the largest
> US overseas military facilities anywhere in the world, it has apparently
> proven impossible to control – let alone disarm – the Kosovo Liberation
> Army (KLA), which goes about its business of drug-smuggling, people-
> trafficking and gun-running virtually unhindered.
>
> It was only a matter of time before the KLA would seek to extend its
> criminal empire into neighbouring Macedonia. No doubt they were
> puzzled when the very same representatives of the international
> community who had championed their cause in Kosovo (often with
> grotesque zeal: remember US secretary of state Madeline Albright
> greedily kissing KLA leader Hasim Thaci?), denounced them in
> Macedonia as ‘a bunch of murderous thugs’. But today (just a couple of
> months on) Nato secretary-general Lord Robertson is far more cautious
> in his choice of words and – in a classic shift of position – has begun
> saying that it is the government in Skopje which must take measures
> to end the escalating conflict.
>
> Such measures, however, exclude the use of robust force. Not only
> that, the Macedonian authorities are meant to stand by as the
> international community lends a helping hand to the other side – as
> happened a couple of weeks ago when US troops escorted bus-loads of
> armed insurgents away from a battle-zone just 10 km outside Skopje.
>
> Enraged by this incident, Slav Macedonians have conjectured that
> KFOR’s intervention was essential in order to guarantee the safety of a
> small contingent of ‘advisors’ sent in by the US to monitor and
> instruct the KLA’s Macedonian wing. To outsiders this may sound
> like a typical Balkan conspiracy theory. But nowadays Nato member-
> states vie with one another to take credit for having trained and equipped
> the KLA in Kosovo at a time when they were still officially
> condemned as terrorists.
>
> The difference between the two, of course, is that while Nato’s
> intervention in Kosovo was largely designed in order to bring down
> Slobodan Milosevic, in Macedonia there can be no such motivation for
> their involvement. So what is it then? Why does the international
> community seem so anxious first to undermine and then to bring into its
> fold yet another failed Balkan state alongside Albania, Bosnia-
> Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia? (By its recent decision
> to bow to Western pressure to send yet more indicted Croats to the
> International War Crimes Tibunal in the Hague, the government in
> Zagreb has effectively surrendered the country’s sovereignty and put
> Croatia on this list too.)
>
> Macedonians have another conspiracy theory to explain this. In a word:
> money. They point to plans to build a pipeline from Burgas (Bulgaria)
> on the Black Sea to Vlore (Albania) on the Mediterranean, the aim of
> which is to transport oil and gas extracted from the Caspian region
> and Central Asia. They point to the investments in this pipeline
> and accompanying road – both of which would cross Macedonia – made
> by leading Western energy companies, and to positions held in these
> same companies by several of the statesmen regularly sent in by
> the West as Balkans troubleshooters.
>
> The current B-team of diplomatic retreads charged with finding a way
> out of the impasse is for public consumption only. The real deal
> was cut in May by Robert Frowick, a ‘special envoy’ whose presence
> in the Balkans always heralds disaster for the country concerned.
> By bringing the KLA’s offshoot, the National Liberation Army, in
> out of the cold he reminded Macedonians of Mao’s famous dictum:
> power grows out of the barrel of a gun. From the self-proclaimed
> cornerstone of the New World Order, this ancient nation – now
> condemned to a fate of probable partition and re-colonization – had the
> right to expect more.
> July 12, 2001
> Johnathan Sunley has written about the Balkans for National Review
> and The National Interest.
>
> --
> Best wishes
>
> In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct
> to side with the citizen. I am against bureaucrats, policemen, wowsers,
> snouters, smellers, uplifters, lawyers, bishops and all other sworn
> enemies of the free man. I am against all efforts to make men virtuous
> by law. I believe that the government, practically considered, is simply
> a camorra of incompetent and mainly dishonest men, transiently licensed
> to live by the labor of the rest of us. I am thus in favor of limiting
> its powers as much as possible, even at the cost of considerable
> inconvenience, and of giving every citizen, wise or foolish, right or
> wrong, the right to criticize it freely, and to advocate changes in
> its constitution and personnel...the very commonest of common men has
> certain inalienable rights.
> -H.L. Mencken, Autopsy, American Mercury, September 1927
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