Chapter 29 - The Republic of Macedonia

Chapter 29 - The Republic of Macedonia

In 1991 the part of Macedonia that was originally occupied by Serbia during the 1912, 1913 Balkan Wars, by referendum, declared its independence from the Yugoslav federation and became a free and sovereign state called the Republic of Macedonia. Although still restricted from speaking their language and practicing their culture, ethnic Macedonians living in Greece and Bulgaria as a result, began to assert their rights as people first by speaking Macedonian in public and then by singing Macedonian songs at weddings and festivals. Initially, from fear of persecution, they only sang and played melodies without lyrics but in time and as the numbers grew they began to add lyrics and even record songs in Macedonian. With the imminent breakup of Yugoslavia looming over the horizon, Macedonians worldwide began to see the possibility of at last having their own State. Even the oppressed Macedonians in Greece began to feel the fervor and started to form their own movements. According to Pavle Voskopoulos, a Macedonian activist in Greece, “Vinozhito and the Macedonian activists in Greece have come a long way in the last twenty years or so since their first appearance in 1982. It was in 1982 that, for the first time since the 1940s, Macedonian songs and dances began to be openly and publicly expressed. No one would have believed that ten years later the Macedonians would have been able to organize ‘Vinozhito’, a political party. Even after Vinozhito became a political party in Greece, no one would have believed that in the next ten years it would hold its first successful congress in Solun, the heartland of Greek chauvinism. This was only possible through the hard work and perseverance of Vinozhito’s membership and with the assistance of Vinozhito’s European partners.” In their fight for human rights as national minorities in Greece, Bulgaria and Albania organizations such as Vinozhito, OMO Ilinden, OMO Ilinden-Pirin, Bratstvo, MIR, Prespa, MED and others began to form. To help their compatriots in the occupied Macedonian territories, human rights and other organizations began to form in the Diaspora. These organizations became the voice of the Macedonian people in the occupied territories. Initially the most active were the

Detsa Begaltsi (Refugee children from the Greek Civil War) who organized worldwide and brought world attention to their plight, unfortunately without much success. Greece refused to hear their pleas and would not budge on their issues. As federal Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in the late 1980’s the Macedonians in the Peoples’ Republic of Macedonia sought their chance to finally create their own state. On September 8, 1991, in a referendum, 95% of eligible voters approved of a sovereign and independent Republic of Macedonia with Kiro Gligorov as its President. The will of the people was confirmed on September 18, 1991 at the Macedonian Parliament with the declaration for acceptance of the results from the referendum. The next important step in strengthening the state was the adoption of the Constitution on November 17, 1991, which was supplemented after the 2001 conflict and signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement The internationally legal subjectivity of the state was recognized on April 8, 1993 with an acclamation of the UN General Assembly. Macedonia was admitted as the 181st full-fledged member. Fearing that it might lose its Macedonian occupied territories, Greece was first to object to the Republic of Macedonia’s independence. Although the European Community acknowledged that Macedonia had fulfilled the requirements for official recognition, due to the opposition of Greece which was already a member of the community, the EC decided to postpone the recognition. Greece, afraid that Macedonia might put forward a historical, cultural and linguistic claim over Aegean Macedonia, insisted that the new nation had no right to use the name "Macedonia" and use the emblem of ancient Macedonia on its flag. In July 1992 there were massive demonstrations by Macedonians in the capital Skopje over the failure to receive recognition. But despite Greek objections, Macedonia in 1993 was admitted to the United Nations under the temporary reference (not an official name) "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". Full diplomatic relations with a number of EC nations followed, while Russia, China, Turkey, Bulgaria and most nations ignored Greece's objections and recognized Macedonia under its constitutional name "Republic of Macedonia". Greece, dissatisfied with the results, in February 1994 imposed a trade embargo on Macedonia in an attempt to force President Gligorov to make changes to his country’s name, nation and language and amend the Constitution to remove Article 47 which stipulated that “the Republic of Macedonia cares for the statue and rights of those persons belonging to the Macedonian people in neighboring countries, as well as Macedonian ex-parties, assists their cultural development and promotes links with them.” Ironically, Greece also has a similar article in its own Constitution, as is normal for any country in the world to care for its minorities in other countries.

Faced with an economic collapse and left without any support from the international community, Macedonia had no choice but to change its flag and constitution, after which Greece lifted the embargo. In 1995 Human Rights Watch - Helsinki condemned Greece for the oppression of its ethnic Macedonian minority, which Greece denies exists. Both Amnesty International and the European Parliament urged Greece to recognize the Macedonian language and to stop oppressing ethnic Macedonians living within its borders. Still reeling from the Greek embargo, from the internationally imposed embargo on Serbia, its traditional trading partner, and from unresolved issues with Greece, the Republic of Macedonia was faced with a new set of problems, a war at home. Due to the conflict north of Macedonia and as a result of the NATO bombing of Serbia, an influx of war refugees numbering in the three hundred thousand entered Macedonia. This created economic as well as political strain on impoverished Macedonia which on one hand, had to cope with a 15% overnight population increase and on another with criticisms from various human rights groups for the ways it handled the refugees. No sooner was that crisis over when armed bands of Albanian fighters spilled over from the Serbian conflict began to infiltrate and stir up trouble in Macedonia. In 2001 these illegal bands, first branded by the international community as terrorists and later as “freedom fighters” began to occupy camps and later villages in western Macedonia. Initially these bands were seen as benign but as they started to assert themselves by restricting travel, kidnappings, torturing civilians and cutting off electricity and water supplies to various communities, the Macedonian police and military began to pursue them. There was an immediate backlash from the western media which, in spite of their violent acts, the Albanian band were viewed as human right fighters and the Macedonian government and its people as aggressors. As the war raged on in western Macedonia, rumors were flying, some substantiated, that certain elements in the Macedonian government were involved in sparking the conflict in order to partition the Republic of Macedonia perhaps between Albania and Serbia, Greece or Bulgaria. “In 1992 I came across a high-ranking NATO source in Brussels, Belgium. He revealed to me the secret plan to partition Macedonia along ethnic lines after a short war: the west would be incorporated into a Greater Albania and the left over parts would be incorporated either by Serbia or Bulgaria. I found the plan to be far-fetched when I first heard it. I thought this person was pulling my leg. But later events showed that it wasn't far-fetched. The NATO source invited me out for drinks a number of times. He was a big vodka drinker. He must have had 5 or six when he let rip with the revelation that Macedonia's days as an independent nation were numbered. I laughed and said, ‘I agree with you unless the problem of corruption and the economy are fixed.’

‘No it's not just a matter of money,’ he said. ‘There are greater outside forces at work that you don't know about.’ He would not elaborate. He had another 5 vodkas and left. This cat and mouse game kept going for a month or two, until he let it all hang out. He revealed in great detail how war would start in Macedonia; he named names; told me how weapons were being smuggled by ethnic Albanian insurgents into Macedonia through Kosovo and from Albania. He said a favourite supply route was through the western town of Debar, which sits on the Macedonian-Albanian border. He mentioned there were a number of mountain caves near Debar being used to hide weapons. Donkeys were being used to ferry ammunition. But he would not tell me who was pushing for war in Macedonia. By 1993 UN peacekeepers from the UNPROFOR mission were deployed to protect Macedonia's borders. This mission later became UNPREDEP. Years later, for some crazy reason the Macedonian government recognized Taiwan and China in retaliation used its seat in the UN Security Council to stop the mission. With UN peacekeepers out of the way, the 2001 war in Macedonia began as a spill over from the Kosovo conflict of 1999. The whole thing was mind-boggling. I remember talking to Mira, an elderly Serbian woman who was teaching the Macedonian language to Belgian children. She asked me what I was interested in writing about Macedonia. I said to her I would like to investigate the claims made by the NATO source and look into past Yugoslav communist crimes in Macedonia such as the infamous Chento show trial of 1946. Her response was ‘You don't need to dig up the past nor worry about the future.’ I found her lack of curiosity surprising considering her ex-husband was famous Macedonian writer Meto Jovanovski, and both her children are journalists. Son Borjan Jovanovski was a former Presidential media spokesman whilst daughter Svetlana Jovanovska is the Brussels correspondent for major newspaper Dnevnik. One day walked into our Brussels office a fit looking man in his late 30s or early 40s. He had very short blonde hair and had a military bearing. He introduced himself as Andreas Renatus Hartmann, a Member of the European Parliament for the German political party, The Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Mr. Hartmann invited Dr. Naumovski and myself to dinner at a swanky Moroccan restaurant. The dinner went well. We talked about a wide variety of subjects but the attention inevitably turned to the Balkans. I was enjoying eating the couscous and almost choked when Mr. Hartmann said matter of fact that German Intelligence was about to open its first ‘station’ in Tirana, Albania since World War II, and the British were pissed off at being beaten to the punch. I though to myself why is this guy telling me this? He dropped more bombshells when he said that Europe, in particular Germany and France did not want an Islamic state in the Balkans namely Bosnia-Hercegovina or a Greater Albania. The German and French right wing parties wanted to strengthen

Macedonia to act as a buffer state against possible Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. I found this at odds with the NATO source's revelations. Was Macedonia caught in the cross-fire of a power play between competing European nations? What could it possibly all mean? And why was I told this? I could only speculate and say maybe they saw me as a young and enthusiastic journalist wanting to make a name for myself who would float the information in my articles. But what they didn't count on was unbelieving newspaper editors!” (Sasha Uzunov) A month later it was confirmed, when a force of 400 KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) fighters was surrounded in the Village Arachinovo near the capital, Skopje. As Macedonian security forces moved in, they were halted on NATO orders. U.S. army buses from Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo arrived to remove all the heavily armed terrorists to a safer area of Macedonia. The fighting in western Macedonia began as isolated attacks in the early spring of 2001 by armed and uniform wearing Albanian insurgents who claimed that their quarrel was with the government and its forces in Macedonia. They also claimed that their goal was to achieve more equal rights for the Albanian minority population of Macedonia. However, in July of 2001 after achieving a sufficient mobilization of the local Albanian population, they began the conquest of territory where the Albanian population formed the majority. Western journalists have continued to portray this insurgency as some kind of armed civil rights movement, but the reality on the ground is quite different. The insurgents, in fact, achieved a semi-permanent occupation of territory through an on-going campaign of ethnic cleansing. It is now clear that in July of 2001 there was a sudden shift in the focus of their movement from conflict with police and army units to systematic terrorization of the civilian ethnic Macedonian minority in the occupied territories. One of the first documented cases of such terrorization in occupied western Macedonia occurred on July 8, 2001 in the village of Neproshteno, about 7 miles north of the city of Tetovo. Thirty year old Darko Boshkovski was alone, unarmed and in civilian clothes when he was abducted from his car at a road block near his home that day. He reported that it was about 6:30 in the evening when a group of about 150 men in Albanian National Liberation Army NLA uniforms stopped his car and forced him at gun point to accompany them first to the nearby village of Poroj, and then to Drenovec 2, and finally to the village of Gjermo. There, he was locked in a horse stall with two horses. He was blindfolded and questioned about his father, a retired policeman who had worked on drug-related crimes, and his possible family connection to Interior Minister Ljube Boshkovski. Then his arms were stretched and bound behind him with a rope that also bent his back to the point where breathing was made difficult. He was then repeatedly beaten over the course of the evening by a series of men, some with fists, others with clubs or shovels. He was also tied to a horse and dragged around the barn and later force fed horse urine and dung.

About 1:30 in the morning NLA commander Avzi came and told him that they were releasing him. They then took him by car to the city of Tetovo and delivered him to his waiting family, his wife and parents, who had paid a ransom for his release. He was warned not to reveal what had happened to him under the threat of further violence. He was later treated for numerous wounds, including serious internal injuries, at the local hospital and later at a sanatorium in Serbia. When his family was finally able to return to their home in the village months later they discovered that their house, shop and outbuildings had all been looted and burned. Darko’s automobile, a tractor and all of the goods from their building supply business had been stolen. A year later the family remained homeless and destitute. All that they had slowly built up or acquired over the years was gone. And visits to the village or nearby town are made all the more painful by the open presence, after the public amnesty of the rebels, of those who tortured him and destroyed his family’s home and livelihood in western Macedonia. It wasn’t just the Macedonian authorities and press who were reporting such incidents either. According to a report issued on July 26 by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, their mission human rights specialists found evidence of numerous human rights violations by the rebel NLA forces. Their report on their meeting with three young Macedonian men who were being treated for injuries at the hospital in Tetovo on Friday, July 20, 2001 is typical of what they found during their investigation. Although the young men refused to participate in a formal interview, the Mission report states that they were able to learn the following: “These persons appeared extremely fearful of Mission’s presence, but ultimately consented to showing their injuries to the investigator. There were chafing marks on their wrists that appeared consistent with their hands being bound. By observing the pattern of the bruises and abrasions, it appeared they had been beaten whilst their hands were bound behind their backs. From the appearance of their injuries, it appeared they had been struck with rifle butts and wooden or metal rods, objects typically associated with the kinds of deep bruising observed on the subjects. One person stated briefly that a particular pattern of injuries had been caused by being struck with a wooden broom handle and a police baton. All had been beaten on the soles of their feet as well as on the back of the legs. One had reduced kidney function upon admission, but was improving. These impressions were later confirmed in conversations with the attending doctor. It was also discovered that the three young men had attended an engagement party and were standing outside the house of one of them when a car with three armed NLA members drove up and accosted them. They were roughed up, blindfolded, and driven to a location where the beating was administered.” These two incidents were among the first of what soon proved to be a series of abductions and beatings of unarmed individuals or small groups of Macedonian civilians in the western part of the country. By July 23, the OSCE Mission had received credible information that at least 25 people had been abducted at gun point in the Tetovo region.

The ethnic cultural basis for these attacks can be seen in the case of Macedonian Orthodox Christian priest Perica Bojkovski. He was first threatened by an Albanian armed group on July 14, 2001. At that time he was pulled out of his car by an armed group that blocked the road at the village of Odri. At that time men dressed in the black uniforms and wearing the insignia of the Albanian NLA beat the priest and told him not to come back to his parish. Three weeks later on August 9 Father Bojkovski was stopped again during a visit to one of the mountain villages that were his responsibility. At the time he was riding in a car with Pero Marchevski on the way to the village of Dobroshte. They were both dragged from the car by armed men wearing NLA uniforms. They were taken by car to the village of Djepchishte, where they were put in a barn. There they were questioned about the names of reserve policemen and the location of army and police units in the villages they visited. When their interrogators didn’t receive the answers they sought, they began to beat the two men with guns and fists. They also put a gun barrel in the priest’s mouth during the interrogation. Their captors then drove them to another location in the village where about fifteen young men in civilian clothes locked them in a cellar. This new group continued the beating, which included demands that the priest sing Albanian nationalist songs and the call of the Moslems to worship. Eventually the priest lost consciousness and was revived with cold water. When it was discovered that he was coughing up blood, he and his companion were driven back to the village of Dobroshte, where they were again beaten and then released at their car. Father Bojkovski was later treated at the Military Hospital in Skopje, where doctors found injuries over the entire length of the priest’s body. This maltreatment of a cleric who carried no weapons and traveled openly in his religious dress on his priestly duties was clearly intended to intimidate the Christian Macedonians in that parish. It was meant to teach the lesson that no one from their ethnic religious cultural community was safe there any longer. Ethnic cleansing in western Macedonia by organized Albanian armed groups took on a truly mass character on the July 23rd, 2001. At that time the NLA launched a series of attacks on the mixed Macedonian-Albanian villages of Tearce and Neproshteno and the all-Macedonian village of Leshok in direct violation of a cease fire that their leadership had signed on to the preceding week. Poorly armed policemen and a few local reservists tried to defend the villages, but they were overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of hundreds of heavily armed NLA fighters. The NLA soldiers went door to door in the middle of the night dragging people from their homes, from the smallest child to the oldest grandmother. Several thousand people were driven out with little or no time to gather any possessions and with little hope that there would be anything to return to later. Long lines of people, many hundreds, were forced to make their way on foot to the nearby Macedonian hamlets of Ratae and Zhilche. Some did resist. Men who had invested years of their lives in the creation of a home, and those who could

not bring themselves to abandon homesteads and communities with over a thousand years of family history in them. Some defended their homes with guns. Many resisted the invaders until it was clear that they could not win, and then they retreated along with their families. Others resisted until they were wounded or killed by the NLA. About a dozen men of Leshok and Neproshteno were wounded that day and one, Gjoko Lazarevski, died from his wounds. He was 30 years old. He had just completed construction of a new home, and he was soon to be married. The NLA aggression and ethnic cleansing of Leshok, Gjoko Lazarevski’s home village, was among the most indefensible acts of the recent conflict. The aggression took place in direct violation of a cease-fire agreement signed by the NLA with NATO mediation. It involved the occupation of a village that had never had a single Albanian inhabitant in its several thousand year history. It resulted in the criminal looting and destruction of the lifelong personal possessions and property of all of the residents. The NLA would later, completely outside the military conflict, set explosive charges under the foundation of a Macedonian and world cultural monument in Leshok, a beautiful Orthodox church, first built in the 14th century and expanded into a grand cathedral in the 20th century, reducing the Church of St. Atanasij to a pile of rubble. One young man who tried to resist this ethnic cleansing was made the ultimate example of what resistance would bring, when he paid with his life. The campaign of ethnic cleansing that day also included one of the worst crimes of terror imaginable, the abduction that ends in disappearance of individuals from a community. It was on that day, July 23, 2001, that the terrible crime had occurred. It was on that day that NLA gunmen abducted 52 year old Cvetko Mihajlovski from a field near his home in the village of Neproshteno. At the same time they took his 37 year old son Vasko, whose wedding had taken place the night before, and an elderly neighbor, 69 year old Krsto Gogovski, from their homes in the same village. They were led at gunpoint in some unknown direction and have never been reliably heard from since. That same day 62 year old Dimo Dimoski, who was visiting his wheat field in the neighboring settlement of Djepchishte, was also taken by NLA gunmen. And the next day 60 year old Sime Jakimovski was literally taken off the street of a suburb of Tetovo called Drenovec One. The day after that, July 26, 2001, in that same northern suburb of Tetovo, where some of the most heated fighting between NLA and government troops would occur, 47 year old Gjoko Sinadinovski and 28 year old Bobi Jeftimovski were taken. Elsewhere on that same day the NLA apparently also took 48 year old Ilko Trajchevski and his 25 year old son Vasko Trajchevski. Two weeks later, also in the vicinity of Drenovec, two brothers, 59 year old Slavko and 42 year old Boshko Dimitrievski were taken by the NLA. The families and friends of these 12 men have endured a number of years now of agony-filled uncertainty concerning the fate of their loved ones. NLA commanders claim no knowledge of these men.

Swedish Ambassador to Macedonia Lars Wahlund recently headed an international commission to determine the facts of some 20 cases of unsolved abductions during the time of the conflict last year. His commission concluded that NLA commanders probably know the fate of the Macedonians abducted, and Macedonian officials may know the fate of several missing Albanians and a Bulgarian, but no one will reveal what they know. Angelina Mihajlovska waited for over a year for news of her husband Vasko. The day after their wedding she and her husband and most of the guests at their wedding were kidnapped by the NLA. She and some others were released after three days. But there is a rumor that she received her husband’s ear and a hand later from local NLA commander Leka. This was said to be in retaliation for Vasko having pulled a gun on Leka when he and his men appeared at their wedding. The commission concluded that it was likely that Leka, in particular, does know the fate of eight of the Macedonian men seized in his district of operations in July of 2001. Several bodies exhumed from a site near Neproshteno, according to the commission report, may yet prove to be some of the missing. But people like Angelina Mihajlovska have no choice but to continue a campaign of public protest before the public, the government and the international community in Macedonia until the fate of her loved ones is resolved. And to this day they must occasionally pass amnestied NLA leaders such as commander Leka on the streets, men who probably know of their missing men even if they are not directly responsible for their fate. During the six month’s of the open conflict 15 civilians from the Tetovo region are known to have been killed and many others injured. The dead included Natsa and Petar Petrovski, a mother and son whose car hit a land mine set by Albanian rebels on the road between Leshok and Zhilche in mid July of 2001. It also included the particularly gruesome murder of two night custodians at the Hotel Brioni in the village of Chelopek. One night late in August Albanian gunmen appeared at this Macedonian-owned business. They took the two hotel employees present at the time prisoner, named Svetislav Trpkovski and Bogoslav Ilievski. They then mined the premises with explosive charges and blew up the hotel, at the same time killing the two workmen, who they had tied up and left inside the building to die. Other grisly crimes committed against Macedonian civilians by armed Albanian groups during this period included the abduction and torture on August 8, 2001 of four construction workers from a site on the Tetovo-Skopje highway. These four men, who were later released, reported to authorities that in addition to beatings, they were subjected to sexual abuse by their Albanian captors, and in a final act of barbarism before letting them go, they carved the initials of the rebel group into the living flesh of the backs of their captives with knives. Abductions, robberies and brutal beatings of unarmed civilians in the Tetovo region have continued since the open conflict ended in the fall of 2001. On the 3rd of November 2001, for example, 32 year old Cane Trpevski was returning to his home in the village of Ratae from Tetovo, where he had gone to pick up his

monthly wages, when he was captured by an armed Albanian group. They robbed him and then held him for two days. During that time they beat him over the entire length of his body, while keeping his hands tied and with a feed sack placed over his head. He reported that the worst part of his ordeal had been the fact that during that entire time they had refused to give him a single drop of water to drink. Reserve policeman Dushko Simoski received similar treatment on April 14, 2002, when he was taken prisoner by an armed Albanian group in the village of Shemshevo. They also held him bound and blindfolded in a livestock stall, while brutally beating him for over two days, before he was finally released. Of course, active policemen and soldiers of the Macedonian army have suffered their share as well at the hands of Albanian armed groups, but at least their suffering came in the course of their sworn service, for which they are honored today for their sacrifices. The continued campaign of terror, death and destruction included the looting and burning of over thirty churches in the Tetovo region since hostilities began in the spring of 2001 and many hundreds of houses. The looting and destruction of Macedonian homes continued in outlying villages such as Otunje or Varvara, and even certain Tetovo neighborhoods continue to lose residents who find life unbearable there. Tearce, small shops, restaurants and gas stations in Tetovo, and the infamous destruction of the Brioni Hotel in the village of Chelopek. Of course, many thousands of people were denied their livelihood simply because they did not dare to go to work for extended periods. Farmers couldn’t reach their fields and other workers couldn’t drive the roads to various workplaces. And the Popova Shapka major ski center on the picturesque mountain above Tetovo had no tourist season. Macedonia was forced to concede defeat and obliged to accept all the terrorist demands. When the peace treaty was signed, Lord Robertson proclaimed, "This day marks the entry of Macedonia into modern, mainstream Europe ... a very proud day for their country." (James Bisset). This war placed great strains on Macedonia’s economy and created a long lasting divide between the Macedonian and Albanian communities in Macedonia, communities that coexisted peacefully for centuries. American and French negotiators helped craft the Ohrid Accord of 2001 that ended the military conflict by granting Albanians in Macedonia rights and privileges that no minority in the Balkans has ever enjoyed to this day. It also altered the Macedonian Constitution so that it no longer refers to the Republic as the state of the Macedonian people, but as the state of all citizens of the Macedonian Republic, making it the first and only Balkan state to “denationalize” itself. The Accord was a source of terrible humiliation to the Macedonian people, but it put an end to the violent struggle that was tearing the country apart at a time when “only” hundreds had died in the fighting rather than the thousands who have been killed in the other wars that have accompanied the break up of Yugoslavia.

Since 1991 all governments in the Macedonian parliament have been coalition governments comprised of allied ethnic Macedonian and Albanian parties. In fact, Albanian militants who only a few years before had led armed paramilitary units now sit in parliament as elected representatives of their people. Obviously, this is not a country where citizens are denied their democratic right to free association. This, however, cannot be said for their neighbors, Greece and Bulgaria and to some extent, Albania. Macedonians who merely demand the right to self-identity as Macedonians and free association in organizations of their minority group are routinely harassed and intimidated by governmental authorities there. Both the Macedonian minority organizations OMO Ilinden in Bulgaria and Vinozhito in Greece have well-documented cases of violations of their rights. Human rights groups worldwide have come to their defense and issued reports on many of these violations. Human rights courts have also ruled in their favor in suits. The western media vilified Macedonia quickly forgetting that Macedonia was the only republic to peacefully break away from Yugoslavia. “The West has always insisted on the just principle that violence, terror, and ethnic cleansing should not pay. This principle was enforced - sometimes militarily - in Bosnia and Croatia. Yet, for tactical and political reasons, the West has made two exceptions: Kosovo, and Macedonia. In Kosovo, it rewarded a crime organization turned liberation movement (the KLA or UCK). It armed it, trained it, and transformed it into a respectable political player and partner in shaping the future and nature of Kosovo. In Macedonia, it has leaned on the democratically elected government of a sovereign country to accommodate the demands of armed terrorists, even as these terrorists continued to intimidate, murder, occupy land, and ethnically cleanse its Macedonian inhabitants. Thus, Macedonia is made to pay for the mistakes of the West in creating a monster (the KLA) that is now well out of their control (in the form of the NLA and ANA) and threatens to transform KFOR into 50,000 hostages in Kosovo.” (Sam Vaknin) The war lasted approximately six months and officially ended with the signing of the Ohrid agreement on August 13, 2001. “According to the Ohrid Peace Agreement, the international community was invited to support the challenging road of Macedonia from the brink of civil war in August 2001 to peace, stability and integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. In response to a request for NATO assistance made by the Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski on June 20, 2001, this military organization drew up the operational plan that was dedicated to the peace and stability of the Republic of Macedonia. However, NATO had imposed three conditions for its help in resolving the crisis: conclusion of political agreement between the various parties in the Republic of Macedonia, armistice linked with amnesty for the members of the NLA and finally pledge of full demilitarization from the NLA. Once the Macedonian political parties signed the Ohrid Peace Agreement, the way was opened for NATO’s first mission in the Republic of Macedonia. The

NATO military support to the Republic of Macedonia effectively commenced on August 27, 2001, with Operation Essential Harvest / Task Force Harvest (TFH). This UK-lead mission involved the rapid deployment of 4,600 Allied troops that were initiated to fulfill NATO’s promise to assist the Macedonian people by collecting and destroying arms and ammunition on a voluntary basis from ethnic-Albanian extremists. By September 14, 2001, the successful disarmament of the armed Albanians was achieved and in so doing, established the conditions for the peaceful resolution of the crisis that could well have engulfed this country. Essential Harvest succeeded in collecting and destroying 3,875 weapons over 30 days. Included were four tanks and armored personnel carriers that the NLA have captured from the Macedonian security forces, 17 Strela-2M (NATO: SA-7b Grail) man-portable low-altitude air defense weapons systems, 161 anti-tank systems, 483 machine guns, 3,210 assault rifles and nearly 400,000 mines, explosives and ammunition. Because the armed insurgency was a manifestation of “discontent” among the ethnic Albanian community in the Republic of Macedonia, in accordance with the Ohrid Peace Agreement, constitutional changes have been made that are granting more rights to the ethnic Albanian minority that is 22.7 percent of the countries population of just over 2 million. In order to prevent a rise in ethnic conflicts after the termination of the NATO Operation Essential Harvest, the Macedonian government, the EU, and the OSCE agreed that international observers should supervise the orderly return of Macedonian security forces to the areas formerly held by ethnic Albanian extremists. In order to provide additional security to the international observers, while authorities of the Republic of Macedonia had primary responsibility for their security, on September 26, 2001, NATO began restructuring Task Force Harvest (TFH) and the next day Operation Essential Harvest was replaced by Operation Amber Fox / Task Force Fox (TFF). Further democratization and improvement in human rights through the process of dialogue and reconciliation progressed significantly and Operation Amber Fox was extended for a period of three months in March 2002 and again in July 2002. As a result of the greatly improved security in the country, authorities of the Republic of Macedonia and NATO finally decided to bring the mission to an end on December 15, 2002. The Operation Amber Fox was of great importance for Germany because for the first time in this country’s history the German Federal Armed Forces assumed leadership and logistics of a NATO military operation that was consisting of some 700 German and other NATO nations troops.” (http://www.airserbia.com/magazin/bozinovski/eu-nato/eu-nato_in_macedonia.htm). In regards to developments with the Macedonians in Greece, on September 8, 1995, members of the ethnic Macedonian political party in Greece, the RAINBOW PARTY, also known as the “VINOZHITO PARTY” in Macedonian, opened an office in Lerin. On January 19, 1997 a Second Conference of the "RAINBOW" party was held in Lerin and was attended by 76 delegates of all local units. A Political

Manifesto and Organizational Principles were adopted and a Central Council comprised of 19 members was elected. The Central Council held its first session in Voden on January 26, 1997, and elected a five-member Political Secretariat, an Economic Commission, an Editors' Council, etc. In its Political Manifesto "RAINBOW" has aired its wish to cooperate with all democratic and anti-nationalist forces in the country in its struggle for peace and European integration. The RAINBOW PARTY is a member of the European Free Alliance which has been standing up for the rights of stateless nations, peoples and regions for decades. Other development with regards to the Macedonians in Greece includes the opening of the Greek branch of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages (EBLUL), an organization dedicated to the preservation of lesser used languages in Europe. Across the European Union, no fewer than forty million people speak languages in their everyday lives, which are different from the official language of the state in which they are living. At present this figure represents 10% of the total European population, but shortly, with the expansion of the Union, the number of people speaking a different language from the official language of their state will be much, much greater. Greece, too, is no exception; however vigorously the state may deny it, the facts tell their own story. A by no means negligible section of the Greek population is bilingual. It is not possible to provide precise figures, since none of the censuses carried out to date has included a question on language. The one exception was the census of 1920, yet the figures it yielded for the northern regions of the country were never published. Moreover, the long-standing policy of marginalization and suppression has succeeded, naturally enough, in reducing the actual number of those speaking the non-official languages. This hostile treatment of heteroglossy in Greece had its beginnings in the early days of the modern Greek state, 170 years ago. In those areas of the country where Arvanitika was prevalent, every effort was made to discourage its use. There was perhaps some justification for this in the desperate efforts being made to unite the regional populations into a single Greek state, using as a means to this end a policy of homogenization of the various populations. Macedonians, such as Nase Parisis who is currently President of the Greek branch of EBLUL, are striving to introduce the Macedonian languages into the Greek educational system. In regards to development with the Macedonians in Bulgaria OMO Ilinden PIRIN was a political party of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. It was registered as a political party in 1999 and participated in municipal elections in October 1999, where it elected five local officials. However, on February 29, 2000, the Constitutional Court in Bulgaria declared OMO "Ilinden" - PIRIN

unconstitutional. This was in direct violation of the right to freedom of association and the right to freedom from discrimination. The Bulgarian government refuses to acknowledge the existence of the large Macedonian minority in Pirin Macedonia and continues to violate its basic human rights. Members and supporters of OMO Ilinden PIRIN (political party and human rights organization) and OMO Ilinden (human and minority rights organization) have been videotaped, harassed, beaten, fined, and even imprisoned simply for asserting their ethnic Macedonian identity. In regards to current developments with the Macedonians in Albania, at the local elections held on February 18, 2007, a Macedonian from the party Macedonian Alliance for European Integration (MAEI) was, for the first time, elected as mayor. Edmond Temelko, a 36-year-old veterinarian turned politician won the mayoral position in Prespa municipality, making him the first Macedonian elected in Albania. Macedonians in Albania are still unable to fully exercise their basic human rights such as obtain schooling in their mother tongue, using Macedonian national symbols and participation in state institutions. Macedonians fought hard to register their political party, the Macedonian Alliance for European Integration with success which is a major accomplishment for Macedonians, because they demonstrated maturity and voted for themselves. By doing so they showed the Albanian society that they are part of it and will take an active role in dealing with issues in the country. The Prespa municipality has nine towns, inhabited mostly by ethnic Macedonians who speak their own language and foster their own cultural heritage. The Macedonian language will become the second official language and all Macedonian landmarks will be given their original names which were changed during Enver Hodza’s regime.