The Balkans boil over
Pfaff, William
WILLIAM PFAFF THE BALMAHS TOIL ®WEH The U.S. ftes NATO's hands One can debate the merits of interventionist versus noninterventionist foreign policy, but the worst policy of all is one...
...The Albanians are entitled to whatever future they can peacefully negotiate...
...NATO is there, with overwhelming force and enormous resources...
...Albanian guerrilla forces have taken advantage of NATO's occupation of Kosovo to launch themselves into Serbia and Macedonia...
...Washington says that it wishes to preserve its "credibility" with the Albanians...
...But it is plausible...
...It was easy for them to move clandestinely from there into the adjoining Albanian-populated part of Macedonia, whose territorial integrity the United States has formally guaranteed...
...It is a reckless scenario, dangerous for all concerned, and possibly fatal to NATO...
...The Kosovo Albanians practiced nonviolence under heavy Serbian repression, demanding only to be treated as equal citizens, which they mostly had been until Slobodan Milosevic took power...
...Doing so, they profited from a short-term decision by Washington to sponsor attacks into Serbia as a way of undermining Slobodan Milosevic...
...2002, Los Angeles Times Syndicate International 9...
...None of these Albanians seem eager to become part of backward, impoverished, mafia-ridden Albania itself...
...No one blocked them, even though there was a sharp dispute between the United States and London over Britain's call for aggressive NATO patrols inside the buffer zone to check the guerrillas...
...They aimed to support liberal, nonethnic government, or at least to defend a liberal society in the place where it still existed in the early 1990s, in Sarajevo...
...The European Union offers future membership, in which the narcissistic particularisms of the former Yugoslavia might become increasingly irrelevant...
...A factor in the situation is that the guerrillas are blackmailing Washington...
...The new Serbian government proposes serious compromises to reconcile the Kosovars to autonomy within the federation...
...After NATO's occupation of Kosovo, the United States encouraged KLA militants to set up in the so-called buffer zone in southern Serbia, largely Albanian-populated, where Serbian army forces were prohibited...
...The NATO allies were not so sure about this, but Washington prevailed...
...An Albanian party is currently part of a coalition government and holds five cabinet posts, including the ministry of justice...
...They were meant to observe a limited Serbian army movement back into the buffer zone, authorized to block access to Montenegro...
...The United States even vetoed NATO protection for thirty European Union monitors...
...Now that Milosevic has been overturned by conservative and constitutionalist leaders in Serbia, the Albanian guerrillas—unchecked and emboldened by Washington's noninterventionism— have become instigators of war in Macedonia, as well as obstacles to political reconstruction in Serbia...
...The Kosovars consider Kosovo the natural center of any ethnic Albanian narion.The situation is not hopeless...
...The Western powers went into the Balkans to stop ethnic cleansing, not to sponsor guerrillas set upon creating new ethnic states...
...Army's role to peacekeeping inside Kosovo...
...The main thing is that NATO insists that violence is unacceptable...
...The guerrillas attacked Serbian police and demanded the region's reunification with Kosovo (from which it was separated only in the 1950s...
...NATO's intervention in the Balkans makes no sense if it cannot prevent more ethnic violence...
...Exactly this, on the part of Washington, underlies the serious crisis of interethnic fighting in Macedonia...
...The Pentagon has formally limited the U.S...
...They can have plenty of support from the international community in negotiating their problems with their neighbors...
...but the civil service, education, and official treatment of the Albanians remain heavily weighed against them...
...They have not, until now, been warmakers...
...In fact, it is appeasing Albanian extremists...
...The Albanians were the people left out...
...The resulting popular resentment fuels the crisis that has now been provoked by the guerrillas...
...ftes NATO's hands One can debate the merits of interventionist versus noninterventionist foreign policy, but the worst policy of all is one that makes promises it fails to keep, backing off when things become difficult...
...There is no guarantee the Serbs are going to behave," an American official explained, as if assurance of good behavior were not the point of such an exercise...
...It can stop the violence...
...The Albanians in Macedonia have 8 wanted a binational state that would also grant them equality with the Slav population...
...The scenario would involve killing enough U.S...
...Their desire for autonomy and unity is widely understood...
...No one would have objected to Yugoslavia's breakup if it could have been accomplished without war...
...For an ethnic community to want to live inside its own national borders is a legitimate choice, so long as this is not at the expense of others...
...As matters stand, it is failing its responsibility...
...They, or extremists among them, know that if the United States turns against them, they can provoke a major crisis between Americans and NATO allies, and profit from what follows...
...There was war, and the Yugoslav people (who have nothing but history to set them apart) have individually and belligerently segregated themselves...
...soldiers to provoke the Bush government and Congress into pulling American troops out of the Balkans...
...Three years ago, for the action-minded in Washington, backing the Kosovo Liberation Army seemed a good idea...
...The United States holds the key to what NATO does...
Vol. 128 • April 2001 • No. 7
