MACEDONIA: WARLORDS AND REBELS IN THE BALKANS
By John Phillips
Yale University Press, $30, 230 pages
REVIEWED BY ROGER FONTAINE
“Everything had gone well at the government-sponsored initiative which was timed to coincide with the World Cup. Dozens of fans of the country’s six main teams had gathered at a lakeside hotel in Ohrid for a grand finale dinner. Organizers of the event, called Stop Violence, were about to declare it had been a resounding success. The next thing anyone knew, fists were flying and gunshots rang out. Fortunately nobody was seriously injured. The fight apparently broke out over which team had the better players.”
Welcome to the Balkans. On a good day. Well, not all the Balkans, in this case just Macedonia; but the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) — still, if clumsily, its formal name — is trouble enough. British journalist John Phillips of the London Times reported on Macedonia in its formative years and has come up with “Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans,” an imperfectly told story, but one worth heeding on a number of fronts.
Macedonia, one of Josip Broz Tito’s autonomous republics, left a rump Yugoslavia in 1992. Although many had predicted another powder keg similar to Bosnia and Kosovo, the worst — so far — has not happened.
To be sure, Macedonia has its share of problems, which the author describes in episodic fashion. Macedonia could easily be yet another European cockpit for the simple reason that it has been before. It became the object of partition in the second Balkan War, which left Bulgaria at dagger’s point with its former allies Greece and Serbia. Even today, most Bulgarians insist that Macedonia is simply Western Bulgaria.
Greeks are outraged that Macedonians use the name associated with Alexander the Great and their history. Aside from historical pride, Greeks are worried that Macedonia may revive a claim to Salonika — which, in turn, would threaten the shape of modern Greece, not to mention their possession of a key Aegean port. Even the Greek (and Bulgarian) Orthodox churches have little good to say about the Macedonian Orthodox counterpart — and they have a point, since according to the author, the Macedonia church was another Tito invention created either in 1958 or 1967.
Flash forward: The modern FYROM has its own special problems, primarily internal. It is a polyglot nation whose principal peoples are a majority of Macedonian Slavs and a large and concentrated minority of Albanians.
Macedonian Slavs fear that the Albanian minority wants to secede and form a Greater Albania or, at a minimum, unite with their brothers in Kosovo. Albanians in Macedonia want language rights and more representation in government, especially in the police. Outsiders, Americans in particular, viewed it as human rights struggle on the part of Albanian victims, while Macedonian Slavs hate NATO and the United States for taking sides.
The author takes no sides. Having encountered the shortcomings of each community, he wisely documents their failings. Macedonia’s neighbors, Greece especially, don’t get high marks either. But he does give a glowing account of British, German, and American peace-keeping efforts. They helped bring about an interval of peace in Macedonia. But can it last?
The author isn’t sure, and for good reason. That’s why at best this is an interim report. Macedonia may not have experienced the level of turmoil of Bosnia or even of Kosovo, but it remains a deeply divided country with an uncertain future. What is certain is that without a small but determined (and armed) international presence, communal violence is all but inevitable in the FYROM. Passions are still high, injustices palpable, the government too fragile and divided between peace-makers and revenge-seekers.
Mr. Phillips, rightly, spares the reader none of this. Still, this is not a perfect book, although the reportage and judgments are sound enough. It is at times awkwardly written with transitions that are hardly smooth — surely bewildering to a reader whose knowledge of this part of the Balkans may be scanty or non-existent. Even the leading characters in this drama are barely sketched, leaving the same reader wondering exactly who Ljubco Georgievski is.
Yet the message is clear. Ethnic tensions remain high. Although the Albanian National Liberation Army has been disbanded, something else could take its place if the Macedonian Slav-dominated government in Skopje decided to reverse course on granting what Macedonia’s Albanians want most: security and respect for the language, culture, and religion.
Then again, Macedonia remains in the Balkans, where revenge trumps reconciliation nearly every time.
Roger Fontaine was a member of the National Security Council staff during the first Reagan administration.
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