MACEDONIA: In the second of two reports on Balkan states, Bridget Hourican looks at how a poll on municipal reorganisation is creating paranoia among Macedonians
In the scrupulously clean headquarters of the mufti of Tetovo, Bashkin Aliu hands me leaflets about his organisation, Islamic Youth Forum. Its aims are to "present the true Islam to the youth; to increase the religious consciousness of the youth, and to tackle all negative practices such as alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, gambling etc."
Tetovo is in Macedonia, close to Kosovo, and is the unofficial capital of the Macedonian Albanians who are Muslim and make up 25 per cent of the population.
I look out the window. Boys drinking beer whistle at passing girls whose tank-tops expose their bellies. Very Balkan, and not what you think of as very Islamic. Is Bashkin having much luck? "Twenty per cent of Muslims here are practising - this figure is going up since the breakdown of Yugoslavia. Religion is an important part of the identity of Albanian Macedonians."
"Identity" and "self- determination" are buzzwords here. Tensions between ethnic Macedonians and Albanians, which in 2001 boiled over into conflict and narrowly averted civil war, are simmering again.
I arrived in the capital, Skopje, to find it gearing up for a referendum. There are no posters yet but political parties are positioning themselves: the Prime Minister, Hari Kostov, says he'll resign if the referendum passes.
On November 7th Macedonians will vote on a law to reduce the number of municipalities from 123 to 80, but increase the percentage where the Albanian language will have official status. Three of the new "Albanian municipalities" will be in Skopje, meaning it will have bilingual street names and law courts.
The proposed changes are reawakening Macedonian fears of partition - that ethnic Albanians will secede to join Kosovan Albanians in a Greater Kosovo. This would mean a new Balkan state of about three million Muslims. Macedonian Albanians deny emphatically that this is what they're seeking.
Says Bashkin Aliu: "We definitely don't want to continue the process of balkanisation!" To "balkanise" here means to get smaller. The international community - NATO, the EU, the UN - which keeps such a heavy hand on Macedonia, would certainly want no further "balkanisation", but Macedonians are paranoid.
At just under 25,000 sq km, Macedonia is tiny and needs all the land it can get; "balkanisation" in 1913 saw 42,000 sq km which it considered its own fall to Bulgaria and Greece. Then, when it finally achieved independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and declared itself the Republic of Macedonia, the Greeks reacted hysterically to the proposed name, saying it was a claim on Greek Macedonia. Athens had its way: in the UN the new country was forced to adopt the wordy and uninspiring title of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - FYROM, or, as no one can resist saying, FYIM, "For Your Information" Macedonia.
These acronyms have everyone I speak to in a rage. A government-issued guide book writes with icy dignity of the "ludicrous and insupportable provisional reference". Mr Valentin Nesovski, from the deputy prime minister's office, says: "There's not even a Yugoslavia any more. So, what - we're supposed to be the former republic of a disappeared state?"
So if Macedonians are paranoid it isn't surprising. Things briefly looked good for them during the 1990s: while the rest of the west Balkans descended into chaos, Macedonia kept its head down and stole a march. In 2001 it was rewarded with a Stabilisation and Association Pact from the EU. For those who don't know (i.e., most people, though it's quite the buzzword out here), this is regarded as the first milestone on the road to membership and, as everyone still tells me with immense pride, three years on, "Macedonia was the first in the region to get one."
I wonder if this was in the nature of a Compensation and Guilt Pact: during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia took in more than 330,000 Kosovan Albanian refugees (one-sixth of Macedonia's population of two million). The international community promised assistance, but, according to Mr Jane Sevdenski, a lawyer with the International Crisis Group (ICG), they ended up only giving "a quarter of the $200 million promised". Of the Stabilisation and Association Pact, Mr Sevdenski, says: "For the first time ever, I had hope for Macedonia, but then..." Then, almost simultaneously, conflict broke out.
Mr Nesovski doesn't like referring to it as a conflict: "Summer skirmishes", he says, waving his hands. Albanians calling themselves the NLA (National Liberation Army) and allied to the KLA (Kosovan Liberation Army) carried out a series of the attacks.
Says Bashkin Aliu: "The EU supported the demands of the Albanian people." Says Nesovski: "Lord Robertson [NATO secretary general] gave us the green light to take arms against the insurgents." In this region, the EU is all things to all people.
In any case the "skirmishes" were wound up fast; NATO moved with uncharacteristic speed and by August 13th, 2001, the Ohrid agreement was signed. This is a model document of minority rights. It is also the kind of agreement that in Northern Ireland would have taken at least a year of negotiation and the intervention of an American president. It seems that in their zeal to end the skirmishes and get back on EU track, the Macedonian government may have gone too far, too fast.
So now when it comes to implementing the most important of the Ohrid tenets - municipal reorganisation - the government is facing this referendum, forced on it by the World Macedonian Congress, a nationalist movement which in a few weeks over the summer collected 180,000 supporting votes.
Mr Sevdenski says the "turnout won't even be high enough for the vote to count". But rioting during the summer in the south-west city of Struga (which stands to become Albanian-dominated) saw 17 people injured.
In the centre of Skopje is an enormous battered bronze statue of Mother Theresa, and a few streets away a large plaque marks her birthplace.
The Macedonian claim to Mother Theresa is enraging Albania, which last year sent a letter to the mayor of Rome complaining about the mention of Macedonia on Rome's own monument to Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa).
Instead of causing divisions, Mother Theresa, as a (probable) Albanian born in Macedonia and soon-to-be saint, should be a symbol of the enduring presence of Albanians in Macedonia. Of course she was Catholic, the Macedonians are Orthodox and the Albanian Macedonians are Muslim, but this is the Balkans. Diversity rules (or used to).
Ethnic/religious divisions aren't necessarily clear cut: 5 per cent of ethnic Macedonians are Muslim but they side with their fellow Slavs, not their co-religionists. Organisations like Bashkin's Islamic Youth Forum may yet radicalise them, but haven't so far.
Series concluded