Word: macedonia
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...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 to the timetable for the surrender of weapons is disputed...
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...
...that's as many as it plans to hand over to NATO troops. Moreover, the NLA insists it will do so only after the Macedonian government has implemented the constitutional and political changes agreed to with ethnic-Albanian political parties, whereas the government expects immediate disarmament. And with Macedonia's parliament due to ratify the political agreement within the next 30 days, the whole peace deal could collapse if there are no signs of disarmament in the next two or three weeks...
...Slobodan Milosevic, the West has soured on any further redrawing of Balkan borders, and NATO's initial response to the Macedonian insurgency was to denounce the NLA as "murderers" and "terrorists." The guerrillas insisted, however, that they were fighting not to carve out a separate Albanian enclave in Macedonia, but to achieve greater civil rights alongside Macedonians. NATO's deployment, in support of a political deal according those rights, is, in one sense, a calling of the NLA's bluff. Then again, the risk-averse Western alliance showed little vigor in carrying out its mandate to disarm Albanian nationalist guerrillas...
...course, Macedonia and Kosovo are hardly unconnected. The Macedonian insurgency originated inside Kosovo, where NATO is supposed to be in charge of security. But the alliance has shown little inclination to effectively police the activities of Albanian nationalist guerrillas there, and it appears to have woken up rather late to the fact that those guerrillas were exporting an insurgency into Macedonia under NATO's very noses. Although it then moved very quickly to press the authorities to address the political grievances on which the insurgency was feeding, it did little to create disincentives for ethnic-Albanian nationalists to choose...