In Macedonia, Many Civilians Brace for War

Although all-out civil war has not come to Macedonia, many civilians on both sides of the nation’s ethnic conflict fear that it may be inevitable. And some in the combat zones are arming themselves.

In this hamlet less than eight miles from Skopje, the capital, a truck carrying government troops hit a land mine Friday morning, leaving seven soldiers dead and nine wounded. It was the first time that violence erupted in this hilly rural area north of the city.

The road, which was unpaved, has the kind of surface where it is easy to conceal a mine.

Soon after the deadly incident, a large army truck blocked access to the site. At one roadblock, a soldier invited passing civilian Macedonians to take up arms. “Go back, unless you want uniforms and guns. We have them if you want them,” he said casually to four people in an approaching vehicle.

The Interior Ministry has said that in several towns it is giving arms to ethnic Macedonian civilians if there is no other way to protect them from ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

In Tetovo, the nation’s largest majority ethnic Albanian city, some ethnic Macedonian civilians are armed with sniper rifles, according to Western officials. Many of the city’s young Albanian men in turn are joining the rebels.

Throughout Friday morning, military helicopters could be heard in Skopje heading toward Tetovo, which was at the center of fighting early in the day. The military also flew recently purchased Ukrainian fighter jets to the Tetovo area for the first time.

There were reports of at least 10 civilian casualties in Tetovo and two in the nearby town of Gostivar.

The violence is threatening hopes that a peace deal initialed this week by the nation’s four leading parties--two ethnic Macedonian and two ethnic Albanian--will be formally signed Monday, as Western mediators had promised. Even if the pact is signed, many wonder whether it will bring an end to the fighting.

“This is a critical phase for peace,” said Hans Joerg Eiff, the senior civilian representative in Macedonia for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “The situation is serious, and our options are limited.”

The guerrillas launched their rebellion in February, saying they are seeking greater rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up at least 25% of Macedonia’s 2 million people. The government says they are seeking to divide the nation along ethnic lines.

NATO officials have agreed to deploy at least 3,000 peacekeepers in Macedonia and disarm the guerrillas. But the alliance will act only after a peace agreement is signed, a cease-fire is in place and the rebels have agreed upon a plan to demilitarize their forces.

Because none of these conditions has been met, NATO officials have been reluctant to predict when their forces will enter the country.

In a move that encouraged Western diplomats, Macedonian officials did not back away Friday from the scheduled signing of the peace agreement.

“It’s very important that it not slide,” said a senior Western official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. “If it’s put off one day, it’s easy to put it off for another and another.”

Talk of war was part of many conversations Friday as people in both ethnic communities heard bits of news about events in the conflict zones.

Many ethnic Macedonians sounded reluctant to embrace a military solution, even though some of their political leaders have suggested that it is necessary. It may come to that, they said, but there is still a chance that if a peace deal is signed, the fighting will die down.

Goran Mihajlovski, editor of Vest, the country’s second-largest Macedonian language daily newspaper, said he thinks that people want to avoid a war. But as more people die, he said, the conflict touches many more ordinary Macedonians, making it difficult for them to eschew an armed solution.

“Almost everybody knows somebody who is in the army, either as a reservist or a soldier,” Mihajlovski said. “So as the days pass with every new victim, the desire for revenge enters the people.”

The death toll among the security forces is now about 60. Several dozen others are believed to have been killed, among them rebels and civilians on both sides of the ethnic divide.

In Prilep, a small city in southern Macedonia that was home to many of the 10 soldiers killed Wednesday in a guerrilla ambush, the entire town is in mourning, Mihajlovski said.

Other Macedonians seemed almost fatalistic in their acceptance of the inevitability of a civil war.

“I don’t see any solution here. Even if they sign the peace agreement, I don’t expect any peace,” said Tahir Fidovski, a lawyer in Skopje who, like most ethnic Albanians but few of his fellow ethnic Macedonians, is a Muslim.

Ismail Abazi, an ethnic Albanian dentist, said he thought that there was deep support for the guerrillas in the ethnic Albanian community.

“All of our population is UCK,” he said, using the Albanian acronym for the National Liberation Army, the main rebel group. “If somebody demanded that people join [the guerrillas], everyone would join. No one is for the war option, but to kill people because they ask for equal rights is genocide.”

The rebels may be pressing young ethnic Albanians to join them. According to Macedonian state television reports, forced conscription was occurring in villages north and west of Skopje.

“I don’t believe there will be a civil war,” said Emil Perkovski, a 27-year-old ethnic Albanian who was washing the sidewalk outside his brother’s store. “But if [the violence] continues a few more days, if you are playing with that kind of chaos, it could erupt.”