Tetovo's residents watch, wait for war

MARTIN E-mail: Click here Archive

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2001

TETOVO, Macedonia -- As dusk falls, hastened along by dirty gray clouds roiling over the mountain tops, you wait for the lights to flick on in this city of about 55,000 people.

Most windows stay dark.

There are few signs of life outside, despite the mild spring air. The sidewalk cafes are deserted, the town center silent and empty but for a dog barking, a cat slinking past.

Wednesday, March 21. Thousands of Tetovo's residents already have left. The others hide, waiting for midnight -- the deadline Macedonia's government set for the guerillas camped in the snowy forests high above the city.

Put down your weapons and negotiate, the government demanded, or we will blast you out once and for all. The insurgents instead announce a unilateral cease-fire, which the government spurns.

Moments before the deadline, President Boris Trajkovski issues a brief statement saying: "It is necessary to neutralize and eliminate the extremists."

Some think that is an idle threat, for the army in this nation of 2-million is small and ill-equipped. It has only a few helicopters and a few tanks, and some of those are so newly arrived from neighboring Bulgaria that the Macedonian troops don't even know how to operate them.

But given the terrible history of this part of the world, nobody is eager to bet that restraint will prevail.

Will there be civil war in Macedonia? Will the one country that emerged peacefully from the breakup of the old Yugoslavia finally succumb to the bloody curse of the Balkans?

"Taka-taka," says Kire Hristovski, using the Macedonian phrase for "We'll see." Then he glances skyward: "Only the one up there knows for certain."

It is barely 6 p.m., but the tanks have assembled just down the highway so Hristovski is closing for the night. At 27, he is manager of Tetovo's newest and largest supermarket. Although he is a Christian of Slavic descent, many of his staff and customers are Muslims of Albanian heritage, like the guerrilla fighters in the mountains.

Still, despite the violence that began several days ago, all of the store's Albanian employees have continued to come to work. That shows, Hristovski says, that the country's two main ethnic groups should be able to resolve their differences without a war.

"We don't have a problem with nationalities or religions," he says, "but with terrorists."

To Hristovski and others in Macedonia's Slavic majority, the ethnic Albanians would seem to have little to complain about. They are represented in the government -- as deputy ministers of defense and the interior -- and hold six of the country's ambassadorships, including plum assignments to Switzerland and the Vatican. Two of the 10 generals in the Macedonian army are Albanian, as are about 25 percent of the rank-and-file.

As many observers have noted, little Macedonia is a model of ethnic diversity compared with Bosnia and other former Yugoslav republics. Macedonia's Albanians have never experienced the kind of brutal repression that just two years ago sent almost a million of their kin fleeing across the mountains from Serb forces in Kosovo.

But it is a reflection of the underlying tensions here that it is generally just the Slavs who call themselves "Macedonians." Many of the country's Albanians feel they have more in common with Muslims in Kosovo to the north and Albania to the west.

The Macedonian government "doesn't fulfill the needs of Albanians, maybe just 20 percent of them," complains Veron Bajrami, who owns a cafeteria near Tetovo's center.

Bajrami, 24, is one of the very few people walking the cobblestoned streets as darkness falls. He is not afraid of snipers. Some of the guerrillas up in the hills are his friends, he says, and "my friends will not shoot me."

As Bajrami talks to a reporter, other figures emerge from the shadows, eager to confirm his account of the perceived injustices against ethnic Albanians.

Yes, they concede, Tetovo's mayor is Albanian, but most of the people working under him are Macedonian. "He doesn't control anything, he can't get anything done," one man says.

There are so few jobs for Albanians, another man says, that most have to leave the country to find work. "I was in Switzerland

for six months,' he says.

"I went to Turkey.

"I went to Germany."

Although as many as a third of Macedonia's people are Albanian, the government does not officially recognize their language. Nor does it recognize the Albanian university in Tetovo where, Bajrami says, many of the guerrillas have studied.

"People say they are terrorists from the outside, but 80 percent of them are from Macedonia," Bajrami insists.

The Macedonian government has sharply criticized NATO for not doing a better job of sealing the border with Kosovo, from where most of the estimated 300 or rebels are thought to have come.

The guerrilla's ultimate goal, the Macedonians and other nations fear, is to unite the primarily Albanian areas of the country with Kosovo and Albania, forming "a greater Albania."

Bajrami, though, says he and others want equal rights, not a change in the region's borders. And they don't want to become part of Albania, Europe's poorest country and a hotbed of organized crime and decaying infrastructure.

"Here is much better than Albania. It's not logical to be part of Albania because they are poorer than us. Maybe in 20 or 30 years when that country has stabilized, but not now."

Bajrami doesn't think the Macedonian army will attack. The deadline was set only to buy time, he speculates, until the government can find some way out of the current crisis.

Bajrami and the others say they will take up weapons if the attack comes. "If they start shooting," he says, "there will be bloodshed and then Macedonia will not exist.

"No one wants that to happen. But, how you say, the genie is out of the bottle and everyone believes it is going to happen."

The midnight deadline passes. There's no immediate sign of attack.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright