Cauldron of the Balkans will be key test for EU

"I am afraid that the tension between the two ethnic groups will increase. Every time one side acts, the other reacts".

This observation by the mayor of Tetovo yesterday captures exactly why the escalation of violence this week in that region of Macedonia is so worrying.

Its use by the National Liberation Army (a branch of the Kosovo Liberation Army) was designed to provoke such a reaction. Such a polarisation could destroy Macedonia's sensitive balance between Albanians - about one-third of the two million population - and the majority Slavs. Since gaining independence from Yugoslavia a coalition of parties representing both groups has made substantial progress in developing the country and reversing discrimination against the Albanian minority.

Violence tests the integrity of that fragile relationship by exposing partisan actions and reactions. Thus the moderate Albanian parties have been complaining they have not been consulted about the government's military response. Every casualty provokes a debate. It is precisely this polarisation that turns to the advantage of the N/KLA, which up to now has been rebuffed by most Albanian parties and voters.

Its support of a greater Albania is regarded by informed observers as quite unrealistic, not least because few Kosovan or Macedonian Albanians want to unite with Albania proper, a much less developed country. But its plan for an independent Kosovo, to include Macedonian Albanians, remains much more active, despite its isolation politically in Kosovo and the greater difficulty in putting the plan forward following the anti-Milosevic revolution in Yugoslavia.

That has led European governments to re-emphasise support for the principle of territorial integrity for Yugoslavia/Kosovo and for Macedonia. But the legacy of the Kosovo war hangs over this latest Balkan crisis in Macedonia. The KLA was created, after all, by the NATO coalition that ran the war. There remain disagreements between the US government - more tolerant of independence for Kosovo - and the Europeans, who reject it.

The Bush administration has not clarified its policy on the matter; it is unwilling to commit extra troops - and probably wants to reduce it - or to endanger the existing US complement in Kfor by policing the boundary zone between Kosovo and Macedonia more robustly.

As a result, movement of fighters has been made easier. So has the drug smuggling and human trafficking for which the area has become notorious. Such interests have more to gain from conflict than relative peace.

One way or another it falls to the European Union to manage this crisis politically. Its message to the Macedonian government and Kosovan leaders in recent days has been that politics must accompany military responses to the KLA provocations. Hence the initiatives to include the moderate Albanian parties in Macedonia's national security committee and EU pressure to open a political dialogue capable of delivering reforms for the Albanian minority.

In Kosovo this week an EU delegation made it clear to political leaders that continued development aid depends on renouncing violence and deepening political dialogue. As the Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, put it: "Violence in Macedonia will wreck any effort to rebuild the economy in Kosovo."

The same message came from the EU summit it Stockholm yesterday, where the Macedonian President, Mr Boris Trajkowski, met its leaders. The tone was set earlier in the week by the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Shroder, who said the Macedonian government would have to be more careful with Albanian rights. The German weekly, Die Zeit, went further, calling for the south Balkans to be declared an EU protectorate.

German experts are pessimistic that the EU's long-term development strategy is capable of withstanding the strain of these events. Such comment is eerily reminiscent of warnings over the last decade about the importance of avoiding conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina and then Kosovo, because of the complexity of their histories, politics and multicultural societies.

On that benchmark Macedonia is the real cauldron of the south Balkans. In his fine history of the region Misha Glenny points out that it "was and is the crossroads of the Balkan peninsula". It "was Europe's most enduring and complex multi cultural region". When the process of fragmentation in the Balkans began, "the potential for violence in this region was greater than anywhere else".*

He was writing about the 1880s-1900s, which culminated in the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 involving Greek, Serb, Bulgarians and Montenegrins against the retreating Ottoman empire. Some 200,000 combatants (excluding civilians) were killed in a ghastly prefiguration of the first World War, egged on by the imperial powers which funded and armed those involved, with the greatest devastation inflicted on Macedonia.

The 20th century's successive waves of violence to some extent simplified Macedonia's complex multiculturalism; but the grave destabilising potential for its neighbours, were it to unravel, is so historically determined that it would be very difficult to contain.

Speaking in Dublin earlier this month Mr Patten said the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy "is about projecting stability" and that "a key test is its ability to prevent conflict".

That makes this crisis its first real challenge, since it was supplemented last with a more elaborate political-military apparatus.

A common, rather than a single foreign policy, he said, is well-fitted for the post-imperial task of incorporating the Balkan region into Europe through stabilisation and accession agreements, with the long-term perspective of joining the EU. Those carrots and sticks are put powerfully to the test in Macedonia.

*Misha Glenny, The Balkans 1814-1999, Nationalsim, War and the Great Powers, London, 1999.

pgillespie@irish-times.ie