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Pan-Balkanian Fire Will Break Out in Macedonia, Strategic Culture Foundation

The illegal acknowledgement by the West of independence of Serbia’s province of Kosovo has set off the mechanism of disintegration of the entire Balkans region. With the advent of June 1 elections in Macedonia the scenario that Pristina’s Albanian leaders. With things going their way, the country may find itself devoid of both the internationally acknowledged name (as Greece continues to stand against the term “Republic of Macedonia”) and a sizeable part of its territory.

The political spectacle that would cover up the dismembering of Macedonia is performed by two leading parties of Macedonian Albanians: the Democratic Party of Albania (DPA), one of the forces of the ruling coalition, and the opposition Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) that is striving to get the power. As for the military support of Albanian separatist, there are the authorities of the neighbouring province of Kosovo, the way they acted in 2000-2001, when Macedonia’s parts with the preponderant Albanian population of northern and western parts of Macedonia became the site of anti-government riots orchestrated by someone in Kosovo.

At the time DPA’s Menduh Ali and DSI’s Ali Ahmeti were members of the military and political leadership of what was known as The National Liberation Army (NLA).It waged its fight under sincere Great Albanian slogans. According to Macedonia’special service the crux of that association was formed by the KLA militants, whose operations were planned in Pristina. The chieftains of KLA never declined they were in connection with Kosovo, saying that the part of the Serbian province that at the time was already controlled by the UN and NATO was their paradise on earth. This way the KLA fully thanked its junior Macedonian partners. In 1998-1999 there were the supply bases and centres of Kosovo militants.

At present Menduh Taci and Ali Ahmeti are hurriedly sharing the money al the Albanian drug mafia, trying at the same time to resolve the problem of the uninhibited control of the movement for the detachment from Macedonia of about one-third of its territory. First shots have already been shot. At night on May 12 in Tetovo predominantly populated by Albanians (the centre of the Albanian riot of 7 years ago) the car of the DSI leader Ali Ahmeti was shot at. The leader of the DSI’s election campaign Izet Mezhiti immediately accused Menduh Taci and Macedonian special services, allegedly in conspiracy and of an attempt in order “to terrify the electorate to prevent them from voting.” The DSI leaders called for Macedonian Albanians to begin staging mass manifestations and other protest actions. In turn, Ferzhi Seliami, a representative of the DAP assessed such action as a call to Albanians to begin murdering one another, threatening with counter action.

Ali Ahmeti is a figure that is worth focusing on. His “battle tracks “ resemble biographies of the current Albanian leaders in Kosovo. Born in 1959 in Zaias, a small Macedonian village, as a student in Pristina in 1981-1983 he was an activist of extremist outbreaks of youth there, later becoming one of the leaders of the underground Albanian “people’s movement Kosovo. In 1986 Ahmeti was given the status of a political refugee in Switzerland, from where he controlled activities of different underground Albanian groups, at first in the united SFRYu, and then - of Serbia and Macedonia. In 1988 he became one of the members of the leadership of Kosovo’s Nationalist movement, and five years later he was re-elected for the post and was given control of the military sector of the movement.

In 1996 Ahmeti became one of the founders of the ALA, and in 1988, when Albanian extremists launched their terrorist activities in Kosovo, was elected a member of the ALA General Headquarters.

When his colleagues in the Kosovo leadership came to power, Ahmeti returned from Switzerland to Macedonia, becoming Commander-in-Chief of the NLA. That same year Washington declared the NLA a terrorist organisation and Ali Ahmeti was blacklisted to deny him an entry into the United States on grounds of their terrorist activities. He was also declared a non grata person in Switzerland and a number of other European countries. Nevertheless that did not prevent him from becoming one of the most active participants of the settlement of the Macedonian conflict with the support of the U.S. and EU.

In August of 2001 it was exactly him who signed the Ohrid peace agreement with Macedonian authorities, according to which the local Albanians were given significant privileges in the localities they lived, including the right of setting up their own police bodies and judicial system.

After that he became the leader of the All-Albanian Coordination Council that aimed to unite all Macedonia’s Albanian political parties under the wings of the NLA structures. The latter was formally disbanded under the pressure from the EU, however, it retained its organisation and even arms arsenals.

Menduh Taci who was born in Tetovo in 1965, and who also studied in Pristina does not feature as rich a political biography. However, the only fact that he is a cousin of Hasim Taci, the KLA ex-chieftain who is currently Kosovo’s prime-minister, himself the owner of extensive real estate in Pristina and a major financier of his party is enough to think his chances to lead Macedonia’s Albanian separatists no weaker than Ali Ahmeti’s. At the same time no other than the DPA earlier this year initiated a government’s crisis, temporarily withdrawing from the ruling coalition as a sign of protest against the refusal of authorities to acknowledge Kosovo’s independence, granting government’s preferences to the participants in the 2000-2001 anti-government mutiny. Macedonia noted that shortly before his demarche he had visited the US Ambassador in Skopje.

And we are now approaching the biggest event that spells a soon-to-be formation in Kosovo and Macedonia of a single Great Albanian front. On May 17 in Pristina, the movement named “Unification Movement” was formed at the hall of a local movie theatre that sets the goal of “unification of Albanian territories.” No other than the notorious Avni Klinaku headed the organisation that is to become pivotal in the fight for the creation in the Balkans of “Great Albania”. No other than him created “National Kosovo Liberation Movement” about two decades ago, that later turned into the terrorist “Kosovo Liberation Army.” And in 1986 no other than Ali Ahmeti was elected a member of the General Council of this movement, whose special assignment was to ensure international political, financial and military support of Albanian separatists.

Currently Avni Klinaku, Ali Ahmeti, Menduh Taci and their long-years Albanian cronies decided that the favourable moment for a reprise of the Kosovo scenario at the pan-Balkanian level is close at hand. Given the official number of Albanians residents amounting to one-fourth to a half of Macedonia’s two million residents (according to assessments of Albanians themselves as well as a number of international organisations), a new conflict could flood both this former Yugoslav republic and all of the Balkans in blood. Are the United States, NATO and EU, granting Kosovo independence so happily, deciding that they succeeded in turning over a new leaf in the Balkan drama, prepared for this?
___________________Pyotr Akhmedovich ISKENDEROV, Cand. of Sciences (History), Senior Fellow, Institute of Slavonic Studies of Russia’s Academy of Sciences.