Word: kosovo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...leave Macedonia. After launching a heavy artillery bombardment of guerrilla positions in the hills around Tetovo, Tuesday, government forces declared a unilateral cease-fire to allow the rebels to respond to their ultimatum. But there was no indication that the separatist fighters, many of whom are veterans of Kosovo?s KLA, have any intention of backing down...
...town of Tetovo to stop the rebels swarming down and claiming it as the capital of the Albanian political entity they're trying to create in Macedonia, government forces are more likely now to settle in for siege, surrounding, harassing and containing the guerrillas while NATO forces along the Kosovo border stem the flow of men and weapons to the insurgents...
...standoff around Tetovo may prove to be a crucial test for the rebels. The Macedonian government, backed by NATO, has denounced the insurgency as an export from Kosovo rather than a primarily indigenous affair. Still, observers have been shocked at the extent of support the insurgents appear to have garnered from ordinary ethnic-Albanians in Macedonia, and both the minority Albanian and majority Slavic Macedonian communities appear to have been radicalized by the events of the past week. But unless the rebels can make good on their promise to open new fronts of battle elsewhere in Macedonia, the combination...
...some of the political parties that have represented them in Skopje, however, have lately been calling for the creation of a separate Albanian political entity within a Macedonian federation - an option the government rejects as the first step towards annexing part of Macedonia into a "Greater Albania" along with Kosovo...
...ordinary Albanians in Macedonia to extend their insurgency beyond Tetovo and its surrounds, civil war will have become a reality. And that would inevitably force NATO, against all its instincts and inclinations, to escalate its own involvement. The reason is not only because of the insurgency's roots in Kosovo - the policing of which, is, after all, NATO's responsibility - but also because Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and the Kosovar Albanians, among others, all maintain an active interest in the fate of the fragile Macedonian state. A full-scale war over Macedonia's borders is very unlikely to be confined...