The Macedonian Revolution to Come

From a distance, it looks deceptively like summer camping season in this country’s capital. Men play cards and drink beer by their colorful tents across the street from Parliament. A larger, younger crowd encamped in front of the government building listens to lively music.

In reality, this is the last thing Europe needs: a new Balkan crisis with proven potential for deadly conflict.

The campers by Parliament are stalwarts of VMRO, the main governing party since 2006, summoned to support controversial Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Those before the government center are from the opposition, especially its largest faction, the Social Democratic Party. They are demanding Gruevski’s resignation.

It is not yet a Macedonian Maidan. Johannes Hahn, the EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations, left Skopje on June 2 with the outline of a deal to defuse the immediate confrontation, a four-party agreement to bring elections forward three years, to next April. But already the pact may be fraying.

The composition of the government that will run the country until then was to be decided Wednesday during negotiations in Brussels, but talks broke up late Wednesday evening after 12 hours. No agreement was reached, and there is no provision as yet for a follow-on session.

EU Commissioner Hahn tweeted Wednesday night that he was “very disappointed about lack of leadership and responsibility” and added that “citizens deserve better: democracy, the rule of law and a European future. We won’t give up!”

The Social Democrat party and its leader, Zoran Zaev, as well as ethnic Albanian politicians, say they want a stronger U.S. role in resolving the crisis. The protesters’ minimum demand is that Gruevski must go. Zaev has said that without a settlement by mid-June the opposition will increase the pressure on his government, perhaps by releasing more of the thousands of secret recordings the opposition appears to have obtained from disaffected intelligence service operatives.

The recordings that have already been released reveal high-level corruption and political skulduggery. It is believed some of those Zaev is holding onto relate to a 2012 murder of five persons — four of them teenagers — for which seven people are serving life sentences. All of the accused are members of the ethnic Albanian community that makes up one quarter of Macedonia’s population of two million. If the tapes show that Gruevski’s right-wing, primarily Macedonian Slav nationalist government knew it was railroading innocents, as many protestors believe, latent Albanian frustrations with the ruling order might explode.

All this is rekindling fears of a Balkans-style ethnic conflict in Macedonia, which narrowly escaped from the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Macedonia calmed an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001, when NATO brokered a domestic pact known as the Ohrid Agreement, which promised equal rights and governance reforms.

Since then, Macedonia has often been called a success. Its main obstacle to EU and NATO accession appeared to be Greece’s eccentric argument over which nation had more right to claim Alexander the Great.

But its politicians, including those from the opposition Social Democrats and from the two main Albanian parties, have poor records when it comes to balancing integrity and power. Gruevski’s nearly decade-long tenure has become increasingly authoritarian, asserting control over the media and profitable parts of the economy. The opposition has boycotted parliament since 2014 due to its belief that Gruevski’s party rigged elections that year.

The Albanian problem could be the straw that breaks the Ohrid Agreement’s back. A deadly police raid last month in the ethnically mixed town Kumanovo, which left eight officers and 14 ethnic Albanians (some from across the border in Kosovo) dead, showed how dangerous it could be.

Nothing about that operation is certain. The government said the raid averted a “terrorist” attack. The opposition charges that Gruevski used it to divert attention from the political standoff in Skopje. Sources in Macedonia and Kosovo told me the dead ethnic Albanians were more likely involved in smuggling than either terrorism or pursuing the old greater-Albania dream.

If the EU produces an agreement for a transitional government to get to elections, that government will be fragile. Many in the opposition are likely to reject the deal if Gruevski stays. If he goes, his successor will need to make credible efforts to discover the truth about Kumanovo. The Ohrid Agreement has held — no official on either side of the border with Kosovo wants another ethnic conflict — but that consensus could fray if there are more incidents.

Indications of disagreement over opposition tactics, including mobilizing larger, more insistent demonstrations, are already apparent. That debate will intensify if EU mediation fails.

Many whose opinion Crisis Group sampled at the opposition campsite said the next team in the government building, even from their own party, would have no honeymoon.

The Gruevski government might then be tempted to raise tempers by jailing Zaev. (It has indicted but not arrested him for what amounts to treason over the tape releases.) And there is the more dangerous temptation to appeal to ethnic Macedonian, anti-Albanian nationalism.

My own organization, International Crisis Group, was born in the Balkans 20 years ago to help end wars by offering field analysis and political solutions, and to sound the alarm to stop wars breaking out. Just two years ago it appeared that deadly conflict in Macedonia was no longer a serious risk. Recent events have revived that threat, and history cautions against not paying close attention to distant troubles in a small Balkan nation.

Jon Greenwald is vice president for research and publications of International Crisis Group, the independent conflict-prevention organization.

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