Word: macedonians
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...Macedonian government has agreed to a cease-fire with the ethnic-Albanian rebels of the National Liberation army, to begin at midnight local time tonight. Despite that welcome development, there's still a significant possibility of a broader conflict to come, because the guerrillas' insurgency appears to have triggered the beginnings of that by-now familiar Balkan ritual of "ethnic cleansing." The rebels reportedly expelled some 600 non-Albanians from the villages they captured on Sunday, while elsewhere in Macedonia ethnic-Albanian business owners have shut up shop and fled following threats by a shadowy Macedonian militia group...
...palpable failure involved in legitimizing the rebels. Far from stabilizing the region's ethnic conflicts, it actually sends the message that nothing succeeds quite as well as resorting to arms - and that creates an incentive for nationalist extremists to keep on fighting to redraw Balkan borders. The Macedonian insurgency began with small groups of men infiltrated from NATO-controlled Kosovo, who then launched attacks on security force personnel. And despite some verbal wrist-slapping from NATO, the reward for that strategy may turn out to be a place at the negotiating table to determine Macedonia's future. The failure...
...send some 3,000 troops to Macedonia to help with disarmament of ethnic Albanian rebels if a political settlement could be reached and rebels persuaded to lay down their arms. But conditions for the deployment seemed remote. Talks in Skopje between parties representing the country's ethnic Albanian and Macedonian Slav ethnic groups foundered on differences over constitutional changes. Government forces then broke an 11-day-old cease-fire by launching an offensive on three villages in the hills just outside Skopje...
...rebels score more successes against the security forces, protests in Skopje will intensify. And the concern is that if those spill across the river - if Macedonian Slavs in their frustration with the uprising begin attacking ethnic-Albanian communities, that will be the beginning of a civil...
...communal violence, then we'd have passed the point of no return. What is worrying, though, is that the situation is being taken out of the hands of the politicians. Already, the two communities are extremely divided and deeply mistrustful. There's a real, dangerous and palpable frustration among Macedonian Slavs on the ground with the uprising, and the ongoing refusal of Albanian politicians to distance themselves entirely from the National Liberation Army...