Word: kosovo
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...changes and greater civil rights for Albanians in Macedonia is, frankly, preposterous. This was no mass civil-rights movement that bumped into an unyielding state and then took the fateful decision to respond to violence with violence. This began with small bands of armed men dispatched from NATO-controlled Kosovo by the advocates of a Greater Albania (comprising Albania, Kosovo and those pieces of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and even northern Greece populated by Albanian majorities), and has ripened into a situation dangerously close to civil...
...National Liberation Army, launched attacks on government forces, hoping to provoke a ham-fisted response that would drive Macedonia's Albanians - who have plenty of political, economic and social grievances - into the movement's arms. They also hoped to repeat the success of their de facto parent organization, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which managed to provoke such extreme brutality from the Serb authorities that NATO eventually intervened on the Albanian side...
...throughout the past decade. But the fact that such an eventuality now appears to be upon us is in no small part a product of NATO's failure, out of concern for the safety of its own personnel, to do two things: Tackle the Albanian extremism incubated in its Kosovo protectorate, and lend a firm hand to Macedonia's efforts to stop it from taking root...
...essentially elevating the status of the NLA to that of a legitimate protagonist in Macedonia's future, NATO and the European Union may have already effectively conceded the carving up of Macedonia on ethnic lines. And that's another great victory for the hard men in Kosovo dedicated to the pursuit of a Greater Albania through guerrilla warfare. By looking more to the safety of its troops than the accomplishment of its mission, NATO has made sure it will remain reluctantly engaged in the Balkans for the next decade - with the real victims the region's long-suffering people...
...agreement. But if the fighting continues, presumably they'd have to move to a Plan B - a more robust engagement. NATO has a stake in Macedonia's security. The airport in Skopje is still the main supply and transit route for troops bound for the KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, and Macedonia remains an important logistical center of that mission. So although they haven't made it public, NATO is already planning a response if the security situation in Macedonia collapses altogether...