Chris Burns: The latest from Macedonia

Chris Burns

March 22, 2001
Web posted at: 4:00 p.m. EST (2100 GMT)

Q: What can you tell us about the incident in which two civilians were killed in Macedonia today?

BURNS: This was at a police checkpoint on the edge of Tetovo where there is a machine gun nest and armored personnel carrier stationed there. They had been firing for the past week on rebel positions in the mountainside. The police there stopped this car and were intending to search it when one of the men threw some kind of explosive device at the police, whereupon the police shot and killed both of them.

RESOURCE NATO troop presence in the Balkans    VIDEO CNN's Patricia Kelly reports on the EU diplomatic effort to restore peace in Macedonia (March 20) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media) Fears grow of a wider Macedonian conflict Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     AUDIO CNN's Chris Burns: Rebels may be pulling back 297 KB/27 secs. AIFF or WAV sound Ron Redman of UNHCR: Thousands are on the move 433 KB/36 secs. AIFF or WAV sound     ALSO Q&A: Macedonia President Boris Trajkovski Two killed in Macedonia clash     QUICKVOTE What do you think of NATO's decision to send more troops to Macedonia's border with Kosovo? An appropriate move to help stop violence in the region Too little, too late View Results    IN-DEPTH Macedonia: Hurdles to peace   •  Balkan hotspots   •  Interactive map   •  Macedonia's military   •  News search   •  Audio/video archive   •  In-Depth: Yugoslavia   •  In-Depth: Kosovo

Q: Reports say that the ethnic Albanian rebels prefer dialog to war. Are efforts underway toward negotiations of any kind?

BURNS: The government flat out refuses any kind of negotiation with the rebels themselves. However they have expressed themselves open to dialog with established political parties. That was part of their plan that they announced last night. The first step was to neutralize the rebels as quickly as possible and then intensify dialog with political parties including the Albanians who are demanding more rights.

Q: How aligned are the rebels with the general ethnic Albanian population?

BURNS: The rebels are not outwardly endorsed by the major ethnic Albanian parties. Some ethnic Albanians in Macedonia support the rebels as a way to bolster their demands for more reform. However there’s little evidence of a popular uprising joining the rebels in their action.

Q: What do the rebels say they hope to achieve?

BURNS: There have been all kinds of declarations by various rebel commanders in different interviews where some have called for a separate ethnic Albanian state, a break- away state that is in what is now western Macedonia, which is very heavily ethnic Albanian. There are rebels who do express the desire for a greater Albania, unifying western Macedonia with Albania with Kosovo with parts of southern Serbia that are very heavily ethnic Albanian and where the rebels are active as well. So it is difficult to determine exactly what the rebels want. Some also are not talking at all about a breakaway state or a greater Albania. They have called for reform within Macedonia itself, demanding more rights, changing the constitution to guarantee rights for Albanians in terms of language and opportunity, and education. So there is not one voice that has been speaking. There have been different voices.

Q: What is daily life like in Macedonia? Which parts of the country are most affected by this violence?

BURNS: There have been reports of scattered violence in different towns but not establishing a pattern of violence where one could say that all of Macedonia is involved in this. For the most part it is in the Tetovo area. The daily life in Tetovo in the city itself is that people try to live as normally as they can. Usually in the morning hours {there is} shopping, sitting in cafes; and the fighting over the past seven days would begin in the afternoon.

There's a lot of fear, but people are waiting and watching to see if this goes any wider, and up until now the fighting has remained in the mountain villages above Tetovo. But up to now Tetovo has not been directly involved in the fighting itself. You do not see Albanians or Macedonians walking around with weapons in the street. It remains at this point still separate from what is going on in the hills. The biggest nightmare scenario the government has obviously is if it spreads to the city--if it becomes an urban conflict and thus a civil conflict. Up until now it has remained isolated in the mountains and that’s how the government wants to keep it.

Q: Are there other concerns regarding conflict in this region?

BURNS: There is the wider concern over rebels-- former fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and those who fought with the KLA who came from Macedonia or southern Serbia or Albania. These are people who Albanians joined in the fight against the Yugoslavs two years ago--and now there is concern that some of those former fighters have become involved in various local campaigns in Macedonia and in southern Serbia at this moment, in this buffer zone that exists that K-FOR established after the Kosovo war and now has become a haven for the rebels. So there’s concern about this activity, and it is involving K-FOR, Macedonia and Yugoslavia to try to keep it under control.

There's also the question of: where do these kids, these rebels come from? Quite a few of them are young people who have no jobs and nowhere to go, and they see this as a way to fulfill their lives at the moment. And that is where it comes also down to economic opportunity and sustained development--that in these lands where there was war, they have to offer opportunity; otherwise, some of these former rebels could be tempted to pick up their weapons again.

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Macedonian government
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Kosovo Information
NATO
United Nations

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