I | INTRODUCTION |
Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia (Macedonian Republika Makedonija), country
in southeastern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. A former constituent republic
of Yugoslavia, it declared its independence in November 1991. After
independence, the country, whose government calls it the Republic of Macedonia,
became involved in a dispute with Greece over its name and other issues. In
April 1993 the United Nations (UN) admitted the republic under the temporary
name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) until a settlement
with Greece could be reached. Skopje is the capital and largest city.
II | LAND AND RESOURCES |
The FYROM has an area of 25,713 sq km (9,928
sq mi). It is bounded on the north by Serbia, on the east by Bulgaria, on the
south by Greece, and on the west by Albania. It is completely landlocked. The
FYROM’s terrain is punctuated by deep valleys and rugged mountains and hills.
Many of the mountain ranges rise to heights of 2,100 to 2,700 m (7,000 to 9,000
ft). The Rhodope Mountains dominate the republic’s eastern half. Mount Korab, on
the Albanian border, is the highest point in the republic at 2,764 m (9,068 ft).
The Babuna Mountains are in the center of the country. They separate the fertile
Bitola Plain in the south from the Skopje Plain in the north and the fertile
steppe (treeless grassy plain) of the southeast.
The republic’s three largest lakes are Lakes
Ohrid, Prespa, and Doiran. Lakes Ohrid and Prespa are in the southwestern corner
of the country, straddling the borders with Albania and Greece. Lake Doiran is
in the southeast, on the border with Greece. The longest river in the FYROM is
the Vardar River, which bisects the republic as it travels from its origin in
the northwest. The Vardar flows into Greece, where it is called the Axiós, and
drains into the Aegean Sea. Not one of the rivers is navigable, and many are
torrents that dry up during the summer dry season. A hydroelectric power system
in the Mavrovo Valley along the upper course of the Radika River in the west
provides electricity to Greece and the FYROM.
The steppeland of the republic has a modified
Aegean climate, with hot summers and short, cold winters. The mountainous
regions are characterized by hot, dry summers and autumns and cold winters with
heavy snowfall. The valleys and basins record milder temperatures throughout the
year. Skopje receives a large amount of rain. The average annual precipitation
for the region around Skopje is about 700 mm (28 in), with much heavier
precipitation at the higher elevations. At Skopje the mean January temperature
is -1°C (30°F), and the mean July temperature is 23°C (74°F).
Forests of beech, pine, and oak, located
primarily along the country’s western side, cover 35 percent of the territory.
The FYROM possesses a variety of natural resources, including zinc, lead,
manganese, nickel, chromium, copper, iron ore, and tungsten. Mineral and thermal
springs are also common.
The FYROM is located in an area of high
seismic activity. Skopje suffered a devastating earthquake in 1963.
The FYROM has environmental problems typical
of the region, including air and water pollution—especially around Skopje—and
disappearing forests. Of particular concern is air pollution from metallurgical
plants.
III | PEOPLE |
The FYROM had an estimated population of
2,061,315 in 2008, with an average population density of 83 persons per sq km
(215 per sq mi). Some 60 percent of the population lives in urban areas, mainly
in the five largest cities: the capital Skopje, Bitola, Prilep, Kumanovo, and
Tetovo.
The FYROM has one of the most complex ethnic
populations in Europe. In a census taken under international control in 1994,
Macedonian Slavs made up 67 percent of the population. These Macedonian Slavs
are traditionally Orthodox Christians and speak a South Slavic language called
Macedonian. This language is closely related to Bulgarian. Neighboring Bulgaria
does not recognize Macedonian as a separate language. The Orthodox Christians
who are Macedonian Slavs belong to the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
The census taken in 1994 showed that 23
percent of the population of the FYROM consisted of ethnic Albanians, the same
stock as the ethnic Albanians of neighboring Albania and the Kosovo province of
Serbia. Macedonian Albanians speak Albanian and are overwhelmingly Muslim. They
claim that they make up even more than the 23 percent of the population shown in
the 1994 census. The ethnic Albanian population is concentrated in western
FYROM, bordering Kosovo and Albania. Three-fourths of the population in Tetovo
was ethnic Albanian. Tensions between the ethnic Albanian and the majority
Macedonian Slav population have increased since the FYROM gained independence in
1991. Other minority groups include Turks (4 percent), Roma or Gypsies (2
percent), and Serbs (2 percent).
While the overall population growth rate of
the FYROM is relatively low (0.3 percent in 2008), the ethnic Albanians have a
growth rate substantially higher than that of the Macedonian Slavs. In the 1990s
this difference produced an increase in the ethnic Albanian population relative
to that of the Macedonian Slavs.
Education is free and compulsory from age 7
through 14. The literacy rate is almost 90 percent. In 2002–2003, virtually all
eligible children were enrolled in elementary schools. However, only 52 percent
of eligible young men and 48 percent of eligible young women were enrolled in
secondary schools. There are presently three officially accredited universities,
beginning with the University of Skopje (founded in 1949), and followed by the
University of Bitola (1979). Ethnic Albanian authorities in Tetovo proclaimed
the founding of an Albanian-language university there in 1995, but the
university was refused recognition by the government due to objections over the
use of Albanian as a language of instruction in higher learning. Following a
decade of controversy and compromise, Tetovo University finally received
official status as a state institution in 2004.
A | Way of Life |
Since 1945 what is today the FYROM has
undergone a transition from an overwhelmingly agricultural society, with more
than 90 percent of the people living in rural areas, to a mixed
industrial-agricultural society, with only 40 percent of the population living
in rural areas. While traditional families were large, the new urban families
are small, especially among the population that is not ethnic Albanian. The
society is traditionally patriarchal, with Orthodox Christianity exerting a
strong influence among the non-Muslim population. Traditional clothing is
colorful, with rich embroidery, but folk costumes are no longer worn by many
people, who dress instead like other southern Europeans. Traditional foods have
much in common with those elsewhere in the Balkans, favoring breads and roasted
meats. The republic produces excellent fruits and vegetables and is famous for
its peppers. The wines are very good and are being increasingly produced for
export.
B | Cultural Life |
As might be expected in a country with
such a diverse population, the cultural life of the FYROM is rich. Folk music
draws on Byzantine traditions as well as those associated with the Muslim
cultures of the Middle East. Current popular music groups have drawn on this
mixed heritage to produce strikingly original music. Many of the Orthodox
Christian monasteries and churches are decorated with beautiful frescoes and
other works of art. In 1995 a FYROM film, Before the Rain, gained
recognition in the United States and was a finalist for an Academy Award in the
best foreign-language film category. An internationally renowned gathering of
poets is held every year in Struga, on the shores of Lake Ohrid.
IV | ECONOMY |
Of the six republics of the former
Yugoslavia, Macedonia was one of the least developed economically. In 1991 its
gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was about one-third that of Slovenia,
the richest of the republics. GDP, which measures the value of goods and
services produced in a country, fell by more than 30 percent from 1991 to 1995.
The independent republic saw its first economic growth in 1996. Unemployment has
been a dominant problem, with the unemployment rate topping 33 percent in 1995
and rising to 40 percent in 1998. In 1998 continued growth and a government
program to create jobs began to reduce the number of unemployed workers. In 2006
the GDP was $6.2 billion.
When the FYROM was part of post-World War II
Yugoslavia, its economy was controlled by the state, which effectively owned
most enterprises. These enterprises did not have to be profitable and often were
managed inefficiently. After independence the country had to make the transition
from a modified socialist economy to a free-market economy under particularly
unfavorable circumstances. In the first half of the 1990s the economy suffered
from a trade embargo imposed by Greece. International economic sanctions placed
on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now the separate countries of Serbia and
Montenegro) by the United Nations (UN) beginning in 1992 took away an important
market, especially for the republic’s agricultural products. In 1994 and 1995
Greece imposed a blockade on the FYROM, deepening the country’s economic slump.
An underground gray economy, which comprises businesses that operate outside the
tax and social security systems and that disregard government regulations, grew
in the FYROM during that period. At the end of the 1990s the gray economy
remained large. It was estimated that in 1998 the gray economy accounted for
fully one-half of the republic’s GDP.
Nevertheless, the FYROM’s economic transition
was successful in some ways. Inflation, which was 1,691 percent in 1992, had
dropped to 1.3 percent in mid-1998. Many firms were transferred from government
control to private control. Transferring firms to private ownership so that they
could operate on the basis of supply and demand was an important step in
creating a free-market economy in the FYROM. The pace of such structural change
was slow until the late 1990s because the process was dominated by insider
privatization; that is, many firms were sold to their former managers. However,
laws passed in the late 1990s to discourage insider privatization helped speed
structural change. A major increase in foreign investment in FYROM firms in 1998
reinforced the trend.
Industry, including manufacturing, mining,
and construction, was the largest sector of the economy as the Yugoslav period
came to an end. Industry employed 40 percent of the republic’s labor force in
1990 and generated 36 percent of the GDP in 1992. During the early 1990s the
contribution of industry to the GDP fell while the contribution of services
increased. It seemed, at first sight, as if the FYROM were already making a
transition to a successful post-industrial society. However, in reality, the
structural changes in the economy reflected the collapse of industry rather than
any major growth in services. The economic recovery of 1998 was based largely on
recovery in the industries that had been developed by the post-World War II
Yugoslav regime: iron, steel, and other metals; chemicals; tobacco; textiles;
and machinery. In 2006 industry accounted for 29 percent of GDP. Agriculture,
forestry, and fishing accounted for 13 percent, and services accounted for 58
percent.
Important agricultural products in the FYROM
include wheat; corn, or maize; barley; tobacco; and fruits and vegetables. Dairy
farming is also important. Coal is mined and various metals are mined or
processed in the FYROM. These include chromium, lead, zinc, and alloys of iron
and nickel. Major manufactured goods are food products, textiles and clothing,
machinery, chemicals, iron and steel, and tobacco products.
In 1992 the FYROM established a national bank
and introduced its own currency, the denar (48.8 denars equal U.S.$1;
2006 average). The banking system that existed just before independence included
several commercial banks that operated like those in Western countries. However,
many of these banks were insolvent because the government had forced them to
loan money to enterprises that could not repay the loans. After independence the
national bank launched a program to strengthen the commercial banks. The program
yielded good results, dramatically decreasing the share of bad loans from 1992
to 1998. The national bank successfully tamed inflation in the late 1990s.
In 2004 the value of the FYROM’s imports was
$2.9 billion, compared to exports worth $1.7 billion. The main exports are basic
manufactures (especially iron and steel), machinery and transportation
equipment, food and beverages, and tobacco. The chief imports are fuels,
chemicals, and machinery and equipment. Principal purchasers of the country’s
exports are Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Russia; chief
suppliers of imports are Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, and Austria.
Coal is the republic’s main source of energy,
with power plants that burn fossil fuels producing 84 percent of the country’s
electricity in 2003. Most was generated by a coal-fired power plant at
Bitola.
The FYROM’s transportation network is not
well developed. At the end of the 1990s international investment was helping to
pay for the construction of modern road and rail networks. The chief airports
are at Skopje and Ohrid.
The communications system is small. In 2005
there were 262 telephone mainlines for every 1,000 people. For the same number
of people there were 206 radios and 280 televisions. The government owns all
broadcasting stations. The republic has 10 daily newspapers. The broadcast media
and the press are generally free.
V | GOVERNMENT |
The constitution of the FYROM was adopted in
November 1991 and amended the next month. The amendments state explicitly that
the republic has no territorial claims against neighboring states and that it
will not interfere in the affairs of other states. These clarifications were
made to address concerns raised by the government of Greece, the neighboring
region of which is also called Macedonia. The constitution heavily emphasizes
formal guarantees of fundamental rights and freedoms. Every citizen 18 years of
age or older has the right to vote.
The president of the republic is the head of
state. The president is elected by direct popular vote to a term of five years.
No person may serve more than two terms as president. The president appoints the
prime minister, subject to approval by the parliament. The prime minister and a
cabinet of ministers chosen by the prime minister make up the government, which
handles day-to-day government operations.
The parliament, or Sobranje, is a
single-chamber legislature with 120 members. The members are elected by direct
popular vote for terms of four years. The parliament creates laws and develops
policy.
The Supreme Court is the highest court. A
hierarchy of regular courts exists, at the trial and appeals levels, to handle
legal cases. Judges for all these courts are appointed for life by a
seven-member Judicial Council, which is appointed by the parliament. The
Constitutional Court decides constitutional questions and may annul laws that
are inconsistent with the constitution. The Constitutional Court consists of
nine judges, elected by the parliament, but the president may nominate two
members. Judges of the Constitutional Court serve nine-year terms and may not be
reappointed.
For purposes of local government, the country
is divided into 34 communes. Each commune has a directly elected assembly.
The main political parties include the former
Communist party, now called the Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia (SDAM),
and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party of
Macedonian National Unity (IMRO-DPMNU). Formerly a strongly nationalist party,
the IMRO-DPMNU deemphasized its nationalist rhetoric in 1998 and adopted a more
conciliatory position toward ethnic Albanians. The largest ethnic Albanian party
is the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), formed in 2002 by former members
of the ethnic Albanian insurgent group the National Liberation Army (NLA). Other
significant ethnic Albanian parties are the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA)
and the Party of Democratic Prosperity (PDP). The Democratic Alternative (DA) is
a multiethnic liberal party.
Males are conscripted for nine months of
military service. The FYROM military is very small, with 10,890 active-duty
troops in 2004, mainly in the army. The republic has a very small air force and
some air defense units. There are also about 7,500 special police officers.
The FYROM is a member of the Partnership for
Peace program of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The FYROM is
also a member of the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe, and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
VI | HISTORY |
The history of the territory and people of
the FYROM was part of the history of the larger region of Macedonia until the
Balkan Wars (1912-1913), when the region was divided among Greece, Serbia, and
Bulgaria. Macedonia had been a province of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 500
years, but by the early 20th century the declining empire was losing its grip on
the region. In the 19th century the empire lost one after another of its Balkan
possessions, and by the end of that century only Macedonia, Albania, and Thrace
remained under Ottoman control. After the Congress of Berlin (1878) had created
a virtually independent Bulgaria, which became completely independent in 1908,
and enlarged Greece and Serbia to the borders of Ottoman Macedonia, these three
states began competing for the allegiance of the Macedonian population by
supporting rival schools, national churches, and armed bands. The people of
Macedonia increasingly identified themselves as Greeks or Bulgarians, or as
members of a separate (Slavic) Macedonian nation. An armed terrorist group,
founded in 1893 and best known as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organization (IMRO), provoked local uprisings. The IMRO hoped that Ottoman
reprisals would provoke the great powers of Europe to intervene and liberate
Macedonia. The IMRO was itself split into factions, some seeking autonomy as a
step toward union with Bulgaria and others seeking an independent
Macedonia.
In 1912 Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia agreed
to partition Macedonia and, together with Montenegro, attacked and defeated the
Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War. Then the victors quarreled over their
shares of Macedonia, prompting the Second Balkan War (1913). In that conflict,
Serbia and Greece, joined by Romania and the Ottoman Empire, quickly defeated
Bulgaria. Greece acquired southern or Aegean Macedonia, and Serbia took northern
or Vardar Macedonia. Bulgaria was left with a small piece of eastern Macedonia,
known as Pirin Macedonia, and an enduring grudge nurtured by the conviction that
all Macedonian Slavs were actually or potentially Bulgarians. Serbs called their
share of Macedonia South Serbia and tried to force the population to accept a
Serbian identity. In 1915, during World War I (1914-1918), Bulgarians returned
as initially welcome, but later resented, occupiers. At the end of the war, with
Bulgaria among the defeated Central Powers, Vardar Macedonia, slightly enlarged
at Bulgaria’s expense, was again South Serbia and part of the new Serb-dominated
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia. Serbs were
sent as colonists. Efforts to give the native population a Serbian identity
resumed as did the IMRO’s terrorist activities, which included the assassination
of King Aleksandar I of Yugoslavia in 1934.
A | World War II |
Germany and its Axis allies, including
Bulgaria, invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia in April 1941, during World War II.
Vardar Macedonia was again under initially welcome Bulgarian occupation.
However, a growing number of Vardar Macedonians began to perceive Bulgarians,
like Serbs, as oppressors more than liberators. Many Vardar Macedonians seem to
have concluded that they were a separate people, neither Bulgarian nor Serb. By
1944 these people, as well as Communists previously drawn to the Bulgarian
rather than Yugoslav party, were increasingly ready to join the Communist-led
Partisans, a Yugoslav resistance movement organized and headed by Josip Broz
Tito. Tito proclaimed in November 1943 that Macedonians made up a nation and
therefore were entitled to an autonomous republic of their own in a postwar
Yugoslavia.
B | Tito’s Yugoslavia |
By May 1945 the Axis had been defeated,
and the Partisans had won a parallel civil war against domestic Axis
collaborators, the Croatian Ustaše, and a rival resistance movement, the Serb
royalist Četniks, as well as others opposed to Communist Partisan rule. Tito
reestablished Yugoslavia as a federal state of six republics, including Yugoslav
Macedonia, to serve as semiautonomous homelands for Yugoslavia’s officially
recognized nations. Tito planned to reunify historic Macedonia by adding
Bulgarian and Greek Macedonia to the Yugoslav republic, and Bulgaria’s new
Communist government and most Greek Communist Party leaders initially accepted
Tito’s plan. However, that plan was doomed when Yugoslavia was estranged in 1948
from the Communist bloc of Eastern European countries led by the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) and when the Greek Communists lost the civil war in
Greece in 1949.
From 1945 to 1991 the People’s (later
Socialist) Republic of Macedonia was a part of Tito’s Yugoslavia. At first a
faithful copy of the rigid Communist dictatorship in the USSR, Yugoslavia
changed after Tito’s break with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1948. In the
1950s there was a gradual process of decentralization in which more and more
power was transferred to the six republics and their own Communist leaderships.
During this time there was also an easing of repression and abandonment of
collectivized agriculture. The government introduced experiments in economic
liberalization such as market socialism and workers’ self-management. In the
1960s prominent Macedonian Slav politicians Kiro Gligorov and Krste Crvenkovski
joined leading Croatian and Slovene Communists who successfully pushed for
reforms that liberalized Yugoslavia’s economic and political systems. Tito
halted the liberalization process in 1971 and 1972.
Tito’s death in 1980 coincided with the
onset of an enduring economic crisis that, by 1985, had lowered production and
living standards to 1965 levels. Yugoslav Macedonia, the second poorest republic
after Bosnia and Herzegovina, was among the hardest hit. Tito’s successors,
leaders of republics with conflicting economic interests and national
aspirations, could not agree on effective remedies. Acceptance of the
institutions and eventually even the structure of Tito’s Yugoslavia declined
everywhere, especially in Slovenia and Croatia. Of the six republics, Yugoslav
Macedonia was the slowest to embrace the idea of changing the way Yugoslavia was
constituted. Like the Slovenes and Croats, the Macedonian Slavs were resistant
in the late 1980s when Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević asserted Serbian
nationalism and attempted to reassert centralized party and state control over
Yugoslavia under Serb domination. However, while Slovenia and Croatia considered
secession, most Macedonian Slavs feared having to establish an independent but
weak republic surrounded by states with historic claims to all or some of its
territory.
In 1990 all of Yugoslavia’s republics,
catching the tide away from Communist dictatorship sweeping Eastern Europe, held
competitive multiparty parliamentary elections that were won by nationalist
parties. In Yugoslav Macedonia’s prolonged and inconclusive elections in
November and December 1990 a militantly nationalist party with an old name, the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party of Macedonian
National Unity (IMRO-DPMNU), won a plurality of seats (37 of 120) in the
Sobranje, or parliament. Both the reorganized Communist party and the republic’s
major ethnic Albanian party won significant numbers of seats. In January 1991
the Sobranje elected the veteran “reform-Communist” Kiro Gligorov as president.
In March, after prolonged negotiations, the Sobranje finally approved a prime
minister and cabinet consisting mostly of individuals who belonged to no
party.
C | Independent Republic |
In June 1991 Slovenia and Croatia declared
independence. Unwilling to remain in a Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia,
Macedonian Slavs voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum in
September 1991. (The Albanian and Serb minorities boycotted the referendum.) In
November 1991 the republic joined Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in
applying to the European Community (now the European Union [EU]) for recognition
as independent states. In the spring of 1992 Gligorov negotiated the peaceful
withdrawal of the Yugoslav army, and Yugoslav Macedonia became the only Yugoslav
republic to achieve independence without war (see Yugoslav Succession,
Wars of). In April 1992 Serbia and Montenegro formed the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia (FRY), which they claimed was the successor state to Yugoslavia.
C1 | The Struggle for Recognition |
What soon became known as the FYROM
struggled to gain recognition by the EU and most other states, and it found
membership in the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations
repeatedly delayed by Greece’s objections to its name. Greece asserted that
“Macedonia” was historically and exclusively a Greek name and that its use by
Greece’s northern neighbor implied a territorial claim to the Greek region of
Macedonia. As a result of international pressure, the Sobranje amended the
constitution in December 1991 to state that it had no territorial aspirations in
Greece or any other country. But Greece, which also objected to the republic’s
use of Alexander the Great’s 16-pointed Star of Vergina on its flag, was not
satisfied. In April 1993 the country was admitted to the United Nations under
the temporary name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Other
international bodies and countries also adopted this approach, but the dispute
with Greece continued. In February 1994 Greece imposed an economic blockade,
severely crippling the FYROM’s fragile economy. In the first half of 1993 the UN
sent 1,000 peacekeeping troops (including about 500 U.S. soldiers) to the
republic in order to prevent the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from spreading
there.
Economic problems and the struggle for
international recognition contributed to the fall of the nonparty government in
the summer of 1992. A four-party coalition formed the new government, with
Branko Crvenkovski, the leader of the Communist party now renamed the Social
Democratic Alliance of Macedonia (SDAM), as the new prime minister.
Parliamentary elections in the fall of 1994 gave a three-party Alliance for
Macedonia, led by the SDAM, 95 of the 120 seats in the Sobranje. The
Liberal Party and the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP) were
the other parties in the coalition. The IMRO-DPMNU and the Democratic Party
boycotted the second round of elections after a poor showing in the first round
and were therefore not represented in the new Sobranje. Crvenkovski was again
named prime minister. At the same time, Gligorov won reelection as president, by
popular vote, with a 52-percent majority.
The Greek blockade was not lifted until
September 1995, when the foreign ministers of Greece and the FYROM signed an
interim accord on mutual relations. The two countries confirmed their border and
agreed to establish diplomatic relations. Greece pledged to lift its embargo and
to consent to the FYROM’s entrance into a number of international organizations.
For its part, the FYROM agreed to remove the controversial Star of Vergina from
its flag and to repeal articles of its constitution that Greece found
objectionable. Negotiations were to continue regarding the issue of the
republic’s name.
On October 3, 1995, Gligorov suffered
grave head and other injuries in a car-bomb attack in Skopje, but he recovered
sufficiently to return to office in January 1996. (The attackers and motive have
not been identified.) A brief power struggle between the leaders of the SDAM and
the Liberal Party led to the collapse of the coalition government, and in
February the Sobranje endorsed a new government. The new government
included no members of the Liberal Party and reasserted the dominance of the
SDAM in the FYROM’s ruling coalition. The Socialist Party of Macedonia replaced
the Liberal Party in the new coalition. In 1996 the FYROM and the FRY officially
recognized each other.
C2 | Internal Tensions |
Relations between the FYROM government
and the country’s large Albanian minority have been a persistent internal
problem. Concentrated on the FYROM’s borders with Albania and the Serbian
province of Kosovo (administered by UN), where 90 percent of the population is
ethnic Albanian, the FYROM’s Albanians resent and resist what they regard as
inferior status and discrimination. A law enacted in 1992 requires 15 years of
residency for citizenship, disqualifying many ethnic Albanians who moved between
Kosovo (administered by UN) and the FYROM, and the government has tried to
suppress an Albanian-language university in Tetovo. However, the ethnic Albanian
parties have had a high profile in the Sobranje, and at least one of
these parties has participated in most of the governments formed since the
FYROM’s independence, moderating unrest in the Albanian community.
Before parliamentary elections in
November 1998 the IMRO-DPMNU and its leader, Ljubco Georgievski, deemphasized
their previous nationalist stance and presented themselves as conciliatory
moderates who stood for good relations with ethnic Albanians. The IMRO-DPMNU
made an electoral alliance with the Democratic Alternative (DA), a multiethnic
liberal party headed by Vasil Tupurkovski, who had been Macedonia’s
representative in Yugoslavia’s collective presidency from 1989 to 1991. The new
alliance won 59 of the 120 seats in the Sobranje, and Georgievski was appointed
prime minister in November. The Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) was then
invited to join the government, giving the ruling coalition an absolute majority
of 69 seats.
C3 | Crisis in Kosovo |
Meanwhile, in March 1998 violence broke
out between Serbian police and ethnic Albanian separatists in the neighboring
Serbian province of Kosovo. In the wake of the violence, Gligorov appealed to
extend the mission of the UN troops posted along the FYROM’s border with Serbia
beyond the scheduled end date of September. In July the UN voted to add about
300 troops and extend the mission to February 1999. The UN withdrew the troops
in March 1999. China, a member of the UN Security Council, had vetoed another
extension of the mission after the FYROM extended diplomatic recognition to
Taiwan earlier that year.
In March 1999 the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) began a campaign of air strikes against the FRY after the
Yugoslav government refused to accept an international peace plan for Kosovo.
Serbian police and Yugoslav army forces intensified assaults on ethnic Albanian
villages in Kosovo, forcing many Albanians to flee to Albania, Montenegro, and
the FYROM. By early June, when the Yugoslav government finally accepted an
international peace plan for Kosovo, the FYROM had received about 245,000
refugees from the troubled province, according to UN estimates. Under the terms
of the plan, an international peacekeeping force occupied Kosovo to help ensure
the refugees’ safe return and allow the UN to establish an international
protectorate over the province.
Gligorov did not stand for reelection as
president in November 1999. He was succeeded by Boris Trajkovsky, a member of
the IMRO-DPMNU.
C4 | Interethnic Conflict |
In February 2001 a group of ethnic
Albanian insurgents operating from Kosovo attacked FYROM police and army units
near Tetovo, in the northeast. Many observers feared that the attacks might
spark a new interethnic war in the Balkans. The Albanian group, which called
itself the National Liberation Army (NLA), was soon bombarding Tetovo with
mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. In late March, President Trajkovksy, with
the political backing of NATO and the European Union (EU), ordered an attack on
NLA strongholds along the Kosovo border. As the FYROM forces pushed the NLA back
into Kosovo, NATO troops occupying Kosovo attempted to seal the border to
prevent infiltration and arms smuggling by the NLA. The NLA resisted efforts to
rout them from FYROM territory, and the fighting continued.
In the spring and summer of 2001
representatives of NATO and the EU made several attempts to stem the escalating
violence. By late summer the NLA controlled a large swath of territory in the
northern and western FYROM. In August the rebels disbanded after political
leaders representing Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanians signed a
Western-backed peace agreement that granted ethnic Albanians greater political
and cultural rights. The agreement, signed at the lakeside resort of Ohrid,
authorized the deployment of a NATO task force in the FYROM to collect weapons
surrendered by the Albanian insurgents. Following a general amnesty granted in
early 2002, some of the former NLA rebels moved into mainstream politics by
forming a new ethnic Albanian political party, the Democratic Union for
Integration (DUI).
C5 | Recent Developments |
In the September 2002 parliamentary
elections, voters swept aside the ruling IMRO-DPMNU-led coalition in a contest
seen as a crucial test of the Western-backed peace agreement. The IMRO-DPMNU
took just 30 seats in the 120-seat Sobranje after running a campaign of
nationalist rhetoric directed against ethnic Albanians. The election was carried
convincingly by the center-left Together for Macedonia coalition, a group of
parties led by the Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia (SDAM). The
coalition, which drew its support largely from members of the Macedonian Slav
majority, claimed 59 seats in the Sobranje. Among the ethnic Albanian community,
the newly formed DUI claimed 16 seats, at the expense of the other ethnic
Albanian parties. The vote, deemed fair and mostly peaceful by international
observers, won praise from Western governments as a step toward peace and
stability in the region.
Following the elections, the Together
for Macedonia coalition invited the DUI to enter negotiations to form a new
government, despite vigorous objections from the IMRO-DPMNU and the Democratic
Alternative (DA) that the coalition was caving in to ethnic Albanian
“terrorists.” However, both sets of victors remained deeply suspicious of each
other and the negotiations proceeded slowly. By mid-October 2002 the parties had
agreed on the formation of a new government, with SDAM leader Branko Crvenkovski
serving as the prime minister. The DUI claimed several ministries in the cabinet
of the new government, but Ali Ahmeti, former head of the disbanded NLA and
leader of the DUI, remained outside the government in an effort to avoid
antagonizing Macedonian Slavs.
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