Word: albanians
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...currently patting itself on the back for acting early, so as to prevent Macedonia becoming another Balkan bloodbath. It has sent in an advance team of 400 soldiers, soon to be accompanied by a further 3,100, on a 30-day mission to collect whatever weapons the ethnic-Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army deign to hand over. Of course many of those guerrillas, particularly the more militant factions based around Tetovo, are still actively using those weapons and it's hard to imagine they'll be ready to hand them over in the next couple of days...
...basis for believing that the guerrillas plan to disarm is a political agreement concluded last week in Skopje between the country's main parliamentary parties to greatly expand ethnic-Albanian cultural rights in Macedonia. But the guerrillas have no direct role in negotiating that agreement, and their compliance is based entirely on goodwill. It is also based, in other words, on accepting at face value the National Liberation Army's claim to have taken up weapons simply to pursue expanded cultural and civil rights within Macedonia's democracy, rather than to create a separate Albanian entity within the country...
...leaders were still denouncing the NLA as "terrorists" and "murderers in the hills"; now fresh-faced young British liaison officers come calling to politely inquire, over coffee, when the guerrillas might be ready to hand over their weapons. The Skopje agreement may have been signed with the mainstream ethnic-Albanian political parties, but all eyes are on the rebel commander Ali Ahmeti and what his next move may be. The Macedonians, of course are outraged, insisting that Ahmeti is still the same man once denounced as a terrorist by NATO - a man they'd like to put behind bars...
...NATO decide to turn Ahmeti from a "terrorist" into a respectable citizen? Essentially, because the alliance was never prepared to risk exposing its troops to danger in any confrontation with Albanian nationalists. Although it made limited attempts to seal the Kosovo border, across which all of the NLA's weapons, supplies and personnel initially passed, once the guerrillas had proved their ability to survive the clumsy counterinsurgency efforts of the Macedonian security forces, NATO changed its tack, turning the "terrorists" of three months ago into the key partner of today's peace deal...
...time, it's hard to imagine the rebels handing over all their weapons. Regardless of the political pronouncement of their NATO-sensitive non-combatant leaders, many rank-and-file fighters in the National Liberation Army make no bones about the fact that their objective has been to create an Albanian enclave joined to Kosovo as part of a "Greater Albania." NLA commanders may persuade their men of the wisdom of standing down right now, but the idea of handing over their entire arsenal is unlikely to have much appeal to the fighters - particularly since NATO will presumably act more forcefully...