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March 10, 2004
by Sasha Uzunov

One of the favourite hobbies of the Balkans is conspiracy theories. So far, the usual suspects have been trotted out as the culprits for the death of Macedonia's President, Boris Trajkovski, in a plane crash in Bosnia last week.
The CIA, NATO, SFOR, EU, UK, France, the USA, the Vatican, Free Masons, Islamic fundamentalists, disillusioned Macedonian nationalists, Albanian separatists, the mafia, neighbouring Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria, etc etc etc. have all been blamed!
But what adds fuel to the fire of speculation is nearly ten years ago, Trajkovski's predecessor, Kiro Gligorov, survived a car bombing in Skopje, the capital. To this day no one knows who was behind the assassination attempt. Could the Trajkovski plane crash have just been an accident?
However, the issue here is what is Macedonia's long-term future? Will this fledgling mini state survive intact?
Macedonia is a tiny nation consisting of 2 million people, of which 66 percent are ethnic Macedonians, and about 22 percent are ethnic Albanian.* The country declared its independence from the crumbling Yugoslavia in September 1991.
Opinion within Australia' s large Macedonian community has been divided over Trajkovski's achievements. Some have failed him as a peacemaker, as a moderate who brought an end to the war with ethnic Albanian separatists in 2001. Others see him as selling out to the west, and signing away a third of Macedonian territory to the Albanian insurgents.
Certainly, controversy surrounds his election in 1999 when there where claims by the opposition Social Democrats (SDSM) of his party the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE buying over 250,000 ethnic Albanian votes in western Macedonia. VMRO-DPMNE was in coalition with the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA). Both of these parties are nationalist orientated and have opposing agendas but joined forces to come to power in 1998 after seven years of SDSM rule. But this is the Balkans, where enemies become allies and vice-versa.
Then Trajkovski broke ties with VMRO-DPMNE in 2002 when the SDSM won government. SDSM coalition partner is DUI, the ethnic Albanian party led by ex-rebel Ali Ahmeti, who commanded the guerrillas fighting Macedonian security forces in the 2001 war!
To top that off, the now deceased President pardoned Dosta Dimovska, a former VMRO-DPMNE Minister who was involved in a phone tapping scandal that rivalled Nixon's Watergate.
During the 2001 war he, as Commander in Chief, ordered the Macedonian Security forces to halt an attack on the village of Aracinovo near Skopje, where Albanian insurgents were trapped. Later, he issued an amnesty to the rebels, who the government of the day, labelled as terrorists. Some in the west regarded this as a very brave move to end the cycle of violence.
In 1993 I was working in Western Europe and the Balkans, and reported for Australian radio that war would break out in Macedonia. At the time, some accused me of being crazy. But unfortunately my prediction turned out to be true eight years later. I had been given a taste of what was to come by high-ranking officials in Brussels, Belgium, the nerve centre of the European Union.
During my tour of Macedonia in 2002-03, I came to the conclusion that what is in store for Macedonia is de-facto federalisation. Western Macedonia will become an ethnic Albanian enclave, and the rump left for the Macedonians.
This accommodation is being pushed by the west in order to appease the Albanians but deny them at the same time a greater Albania, incorporating Kosovo and the Northern western Greek province of Epirus.
But in the end this solution will not please anyone. Albanian nationalists will be angered at being doubled crossed by the west and the Macedonians will feel betrayed because their country has been partitioned.
A number of EU officials and police experts will tell you off the record that they want to contain the spread of the ethnic Albanian criminal mafia, which preys upon fellow Albanians as well. But won't say it publicly for fear of being labelled racist. Belgian Members of the European Parliament are very touchy about the subject as pressure mounts from the country's extreme right wing that unfairly links increasing crime and terrorism with Islamic migrants from North Africa, Bosnia and Kosovo.
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Sasha Uzunov is a Melbourne-based freelance journalist specialising in the Balkans and defence issues. He is an ex-Australian soldier who completed two tours of peacekeeping duty in East Timor.