Word: macedonians
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...There was a major protest over the weekend by Macedonian Slavs from Tetovo, calling for civilians to be armed. On the Albanian side in Macedonia, the political leadership seems to be playing a double game. On the one hand they're making conciliatory statements to the Macedonian audience. On the other hand, when they're talking to foreign journalist they're calling for things Macedonia will never accept, such as creating a federation. The government won't accept this solution, because they see it as an inevitable step toward the disintegration of Macedonia and the creation of a Greater Kosovo...
...Macedonians certainly see this problem as exported from Kosovo, and deny that the guerrillas have indigenous roots. So there's some hope among Slavs that there are still moderate Albanians in Macedonia who would be willing to work toward some kind of political solution. But even the Albanian leaders here who have been working in the Macedonian political system have been calling for constitutional changes, such as a federation, which the government won't do. In theory there should be some room for further talks, further conciliation. But the presence of these rebels in the hills, and the fact that...
...When military men use the adjective "final" to describe an offensive not yet launched, their intention is usually simply to raise morale. And the Macedonian military's operations around Tetovo - moving reinforcements and a handful of archaic tanks into city and pounding the surrounding hillsides - appear to be aimed primarily at reassuring Macedonia's Slav majority that the separatist rebellion would not be tolerated. The Macedonian army is neither trained nor equipped for the counterinsurgency operation required to dislodge the guerrillas from the high ground, and might suffer heavy casualties if they tried to charge up the hillsides into...
...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...
...open new fronts, of course, the rebels would require the active support of Macedonia's ethnic-Albanian community, which while feeling a collective sense of discrimination and grievance, has until now pursued its interests within the body politic of Macedonian democracy. Even 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...