The Economist, July 26th-August 1st 1997,
page 28,29
RISING GHOSTS
When Macedonia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991, it was lucky to escape the ethnic bloodletting suffered by Bosnia and Croatia. Its luck could be running out, despite the efforts of President Kiro Gligorov,now 8o,a wily veteran of five decades of Yugoslav politics who has managed to keep his country's Slav majority and its ethnic Albanian minority from tearing each other-and their country-apart.
The immediate cause of the latest bout of surliness was the insistence by the newly elected mayors of Gostivar and Tetovo, both Albanian nationalists, that Albanian flags should flutter above their town halls. The issue is a symbol of a long discontent. Ethnic Albanians, who predominate on the western side of Macedonia, say they get a rotten deal in jobs, housing and education: in particular, they cannot-with one small exception-study in the Albanian language beyond secondary school.
Three months ago, Macedonia's constitutional court ruled that flying the flags was unlawful. More recently, Mr Gligorov's leftish coalition government, which includes five ethnic Albanians, sought a compromise: the flags could, it was suggested, be flown on Macedonian national holidays. But the two mayors refused to back down, so American-trained anti-terrorist forces moved in before dawn on July 9th to snatch the offending bits of cloth.
The operation went smoothly enough in Tetovo but not in Gostivar, where several thousand demonstrators confronted hundreds of riot police. Three young Albanians were killed and several hundred injured, mostly at police hands. The interior minister said 312 miscreants had been arrested, most of whom were then freed. The Albanians say nearly twice as many were rounded up, and held in two disused factories.
One of those held was Gostivar's mayor, Rufi Osmani, who has been charged with inciting racial hatred and defying the constitutional court's ruling. He could be jailed for eight years. Macedonian officials accuse him of plotting a "Greater Albania" to embrace western Macedonia and the southern Serbian province of Kosovo as well as present-day Albania. Although Tetovo's mayor, Alajdin Demiri, denies that his new Democratic Party of Albanians seeks an expanded Albania, he too was charged.
An increase in Albanian nationalism, coupled with a revival of Isiam (most Albanians are Muslims), has helped to create an opposing nationalism among Macedonia's Slav majority, some of whom now call for a "Greater Macedonia" including the Macedonian minorities in Greece, Albania and Bulgaria. In March, a group of students chanted "Albanians to the gas chambers" during a demonstration in Skopje, the capital. Mr. Gligorov has vainly denounced "the rising ghosts of nationalism".
Divided after the 1913 Balkan war between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, Macedonia is still surrounded by predatory neighbours. This time, they seem unlikely to intervene. Albania's new Socialist government is struggling to assert its authority after a scrappy election in which it beat the right-wing party of Sali Berisha, who stepped down this week as president. Bulgaria is preoccupied with its dire economy. Mindful of its NATO and EU membership, Greece is loth to get embroiled. Still, Mr Gligorov's government was understandably twitchy when Abdul Rahman Ariti, leader of Macedonia's middle-of-the-road ethnic-Albanian party, which is part of the ruling coalition, recently accompanied Arben Dzaferi, the head of the country's much fierier Albanian nationalist party, on a trip to Albania's capital, Tirana.
Things could rapidly boil over if Mr. Gligorov, whose weak coalition has been hit by scandal over collapsing pyramid investment schemes (like those that did for Mr. Berisha in Albania), has to call an election. Right-wing Slavs now in opposition think their time may be coming-if they keep playing a nationalist card.Well-meaning Mr. Gligorov is increasingly frail. And it is still not known who blew his car up in 1995, nearly killing him.
