 |
An Uneasy Anniversary
by
Biljana
Stavrova and Robert
Alagjozovski
25 August 2005
Not all Macedonians are celebrating four years of peace
under the Ohrid Agreement.
SKOPJE, Macedonia | The fourth anniversary of the Ohrid
Framework Agreement on 13 August also marked the completion of
the formal implementation phase of the peace deal, which put
an end to fighting between ethnic-Albanian insurgents and the
government.
Over those four years, the Macedonian
parliament adopted 15 constitutional amendments and 70 new or
revised laws as required by the agreement. In many ways, the
Ohrid Agreement is the founding document of contemporary
Macedonia.
But a cocktail party in celebration of the
anniversary vividly illustrated the attitude of most
Macedonian politicians towards the agreement: while the U.S.
ambassador attended the event to convey his government’s
wishes, neither President Branko Crvenkovski nor Prime
Minister Vlado Buckovki showed up – they were on summer
holidays.
Their reluctance to make an effort to attend
the celebration may be understandable given that it was
organized by the Democratic Union of Integration (BDI), which
has its roots in the former Albanian rebel movement. But it is
also telling that the BDI was the only political force
interested in marking the anniversary in the first place.
The only sigNATOry of the agreement who attended was
Imer Imeri, the former president of the Party for Democratic
Prosperity (PDP), who is no longer in active politics.
Ali Ahmeti, the president of the BDI and an ex-rebel
leader, was the master of ceremonies. He hailed the agreement
as “historic” and underlined the importance of the right for
minorities to use their national symbols and the elevation of
Albanian to official language.
“These values would
make our society more tolerant and richer,” Ahmeti said, while
a small group of local residents protested against the
event.
In earlier statements, President Crvenkovski and
Prime Minister Buckovski also praised the historic character
of the agreement.
“This is the biggest achievement
which brought us closer to Europe,” Buckovski said.
“I
am as convinced as I was then that we made the right choice by
opting for a political agreement instead of a military
solution to the 2001 crisis,” Crvenkovski said. “The fact that
present-day Macedonia is a stable country with no serious
threats to its territorial integrity, sovereignty, and unitary
nature… is the best confirmation that we chose the right
path.”
“Today the Framework Agreement is no longer the
Republic of Macedonia's objective and assignment, but a
reality,” he added.
TO END A WAR
The Framework
Agreement was signed by the leaders of four major Macedonian
and ethnic-Albanian parties in Ohrid on 13 August 2001 after
eight months of armed clashes between government forces and
armed groups of ethnic Albanians, organized in the National
Liberation Army (UCK).
The peace process was pushed by
an international community determined not to let yet another
Balkan crisis – after Bosnia and Kosovo – spiral out of
control.
The EU’s foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana,
and NATO secretary-general, George Robertson, frequently
traveled to Skopje to put pressure on both sides.
But
the four-party consensus broke down a few minutes after the
Ohrid signing ceremony when Arben Xhaferi, leader of the
Democratic Party of the Albanians (PDSh), decided to address
the public in Albanian. Then-Prime Minister Ljubco
Georgievski, who headed the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity
(VMRO-DPMNE), took this as a provocation and stormed out of
the press conference.
Ten days later, Georgievski told
parliament that to approve the Framework Agreement would send
the message that terrorism pays.
After they were
defeated in the September 2002 parliamentary elections, both
the VMRO-DPMNE and the PDSh, which had governed in coalition,
turned increasingly nationalistic.
In an April 2003
newspaper column, Georgievski suggested partitioning Macedonia
along ethnic lines as the only solution to the conflict, even
suggesting erecting a concrete wall to separate the two
communities. A day later, Xhaferi announced his resignation
from the PDSh for lack of hope for a multiethnic Macedonia
while his vice-president, Menduh Thaci, called the Framework
Agreement “a dead document.”
Feeling that a political
life outside the formal institutions would be a better avenue
for their hard-line political messages, Georgievski resigned
from his post as party leader while the PDSh boycotted
parliament.
In an effort to regain voters’ confidence
and the support of the international community, which was now
a key factor in Macedonia’s politics, Georgievski’s successor
in the party leadership, Nikola Gruevski, took a more
conciliatory stance. But even he left no opportunity unused to
blame the government for extending the minority rights, as
foreseen in the peace deal.
SLOW IMPLEMENTATION
While experts
– including Vlado Popovski, one of the drafters of the Ohrid
Agreement – believe that implementation has been proceeding at
the right pace, the general feeling is that the adoption of
new legislation has been too slow. International pressure was
repeatedly needed to push particular laws through the
assembly, and numerous deadlines were missed.
The
reform agenda included better representation of ethnic
minorities in the civil service and the police and the use of
minority languages across the public sector. The government
pledged to develop a stronger and more efficient local
government provided well enough funded to exercise its new
authorities and responsibilities. These laws reinforced
minority language rights and gave local communities greater
control over local policing. Other laws directly affected
culture and education and the use of the symbols of
Macedonia’s ethnic communities.
One Ohrid obligation
that remains unfulfilled is the return of displaced persons to
their homes. Both the opposition and Prime Minister Buckovski
acknowledge that the issue needs to be resolved as soon as
possible. Around 1,000 people, mainly from the village of
Aracinovo near Skopje, live in very poor conditions in a
collective center in Skopje and they used the fourth
anniversary to point to their plight.
The slowness is
partly because the implementation plans were agreed by the
parties "without constructive dialogue,” according to analyst
Ibrahim Mehmeti. Compromises by political elites that
initially adopt extremist bargaining positions confuse their
constituencies, Mehmeti thinks, and create the impression of
winners and losers. He sees evidence of ethnic animosity and
fear in everyday life.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
That
dynamic is best illustrated by the protest against the BDI
celebration by ethnic Macedonians. Protestors said that a law
that gave most posts in their municipality, Struga, to ethnic
Albanians amounted to political violence.
In an
interview for the daily Dnevnik, Professor Ljubomir
Frckovski, one of the drafters of the Ohrid Agreement,
explains the dissatisfaction of many Macedonians with the fact
on the government’s failure to stop the conflict earlier.
Another expert, Mirjana Malevska, makes a similar point by
saying, "ethnic Macedonians experienced the abandoning of the
concept of the nation state as a shameful
humiliation."
For their part, many ethnic Albanians
still feel very suspicious of the Macedonian state. Columnist
Mahi Nesimi finds deeper motives for the dissatisfaction of
ethnic Albanians, whom many Macedonians consider the prime
winners of Ohrid. For Nesimi, "the armed conflict was a
reflection of decades of accumulated discontent with their
general position on the part of the Albanians."
But
analyst Denko Maleski thinks these are the normal birthing
pains of a truly multiethnic society. "The sooner we realize
this, the faster we will escape the massive apathy that has
engulfed ethnic Macedonians," he told TOL.
The other
major problem that persisted throughout the implementation
process was the threat by armed groups of ethnic Albanians
dissatisfied with their reintegration into society or with
specific provisions of the peace deal.
The day after
the agreement was signed, the UCK signed a disarmament
agreement with NATO Ambassador Peter Feith. This agreement
allowed NATO troops to collect UCK weapons and was tied to an
amnesty for all UCK members except those who had committed
crimes that fell under the jurisdiction of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). But the
NATO operation harvested just 3,000 arms, a rather symbolic
number.
In 2002, the Albanian National Army (ANA)
emerged as a breakaway faction of the UCK opposed to the Ohrid
deal and to UCK leader Ali Ahmeti, whom the ANA regarded as a
traitor. The ANA aimed to unify all ethnic-Albanian
territories in the Balkans, and its latest statements indicate
that it still operates in Macedonia today, notably in the
village of Kondovo just outside Skopje.
The various
demands by former UCK commanders and the government’s slow
reaction to them increase the insecurity felt by many
Macedonians. The former UCK fighter Agim Krasniqi from Kondovo
has been active in the village for over a year without being
seriously challenged by the authorities.
And whenever
they are challenged, armed elements retreat into neighboring
Kosovo.
A final reason for discontent is that "the
framework of the agreement is constantly widening," Frckovski
argues – in other words, that the Albanians keep adding
demands. One such demand is for the creation of the position
of vice-president and for the use of Albanian in the army and
police recently voiced by a BDI leader.
Indeed,
Abdualdi Vejseli, the current leader of the PDP, says that the
struggle for more rights for the Albanians does not end with
the Ohrid Agreement. "The constitution is not a holy scripture
and it must be constantly changed in order to meet reality,"
Vejseli told TOL.
The BDI’s demands provoked heated
debate despite a prompt rebuttal by Prime Minister Buckovski
that the creation of a vice-president was out of the
question.
From the very beginning, the international
community has been clear that the full implementation of the
Ohrid Agreement is a precondition for Macedonian membership in
the EU and NATO.
Now that the government has formally
implemented the agreement, it expects the opening of accession
talks with the EU and a more precise date for its NATO
membership. Not achieving either of these objectives would be
a major blow to the government and help the nationalist
opposition. |
|
