Word: harvests
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...Lake muskie, according to one fishing writer, are "aggressive and fearless." Trolling there is a Catch-22: 1) The muskie keeps mostly to the weeds; therefore 2) you must fish in the weeds to catch him, but 3) as soon as you enter the weeds, your hooks gather a harvest of vegetables; your lure stops dancing, stops appealing to a muskie as an item to gobble, and resembles, instead, something like a mysteriously skindiving head of romaine lettuce. Thereupon, you reel in, clear the weeds from the hooks, and then let the lure slip out again to take its chances...
...call "Operation Essential Harvest" a gamble would be an understatement. Much of the peace process of which it is part has been fudged in order to create momentum. Indeed, the NLA has not actually been party to Western-brokered talks between the government and ethnic-Albanian political parties over constitutional changes that expand the cultural rights of Macedonia's ethnic-Albanian minority. The guerrillas, though, claim to have been fighting for the same things, and have promised, in principle, to hand over their weapons in light of the politicians' agreement. Still, everything from the size of the guerrillas' armory...
Think of it as the "If-you-build-it-they-will-come" approach to peacekeeping. NATO troops continued to pour into Macedonia Wednesday for "Operation Essential Harvest," ostensibly a 30-day mission in which 3,500 alliance soldiers are to destroy weapons voluntarily handed over by ethnic-Albanian guerrillas. But while the NATO force has become the focus of efforts to end the insurgency that brought the country to the brink of civil war, it has no peacekeeping mandate and the disarmament process is an entirely voluntary affair not covered by any peace deal. Indeed, NATO's official position...
...most dangerous Balkan mission yet. But the danger facing the Western alliance in Macedonia is less physical than political. Some 400 British troops are due to be deployed in the former Yugoslav nation in advance of an eventual 3,500-troop contingent whose mission, innocuously dubbed "Operation Essential Harvest," involves collecting and destroying weapons voluntarily tendered by ethnic-Albanian guerrillas. They're not there to disarm anyone, NATO spokesmen insist, and they'll stay only 30 days. If the guerrillas choose to hang onto their weapons and the fighting starts up again, the Western troops will simply pack...
...early deployment may also be a message to the NLA that NATO won't tolerate a continuation of the insurgency, now that the political grievances that ostensibly fueled it have been addressed. Even if the "Essential Harvest" mission is withdrawn, there are plenty of NATO troops in the region, and they've capable of giving the Macedonian government a lot more robust support than they have been up to now. What remains to be seen, then, is whether the NLA, or any faction among them, will choose to test NATO's will - and how the alliance will respond...