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Origins
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| 24 August 2001 |
The origins of the current conflict stretch back to the secession of Macedonia from the old Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991. While Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were ravaged by war during the first half of the 1990s, Macedonia managed to gain its independence and remain largely peaceful, even though relations between the country’s 600,000-strong ethnic Albanian population and the 1.4 million ethnic Macedonian majority were tense.
The event that changed everything was the revolt by ethnic Albanians in the Serbia-controlled province of Kosovo in 1998. This set in train sequence of events that threaten to overwhelm Macedonia’s precarious peace. The radicalisation of the Albanian population of Kosovo during the mid-1990s led to the growth of Albanian nationalism throughout the former Yugoslavia – in Kosovo, Macedonia, southern Serbia and Montenegro. Under the banner of the Popular Movement for Kosova (LPK), ethnic Albanians spread around the Yugoslav successor republics began demanding their own state or, as it became known, Greater Albania.
Exiled ethnic Albanians living in Western Europe and North America rallied to the cause, setting up the Homeland Calling fund to finance the revolt of the LPK’s armed wing, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), or Ushtria Clirimitore e Kosovoes (UCK). Many Albanians from Macedonia also joined the fight against the Serbs, rising to senior positions in the LPK and KLA. At the height of the war in early 1999 some 40,000 men were estimated to fighting with the KLA either inside Kosovo or along the Albanian border. The force officially disbanded in September 1999 under pressure from NATO and was reborn as the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), or Trupat Mbroysat Kosoves (TMK), with a disaster relief role.
The Albanian nationalist cause underwent a resurgence in the autumn of 2000 for two main reasons. The demise of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia led to fears that the international community would do a deal with the new government in Belgrade to deny Kosovo its independence. At the same time, the poor showing of former LPK and KLA leaders, such as Ramush Hajredinaj, in the October 2000 Kosovo administrative elections meant many of them were looking for ways to re-invigorate the nationalist cause. This, they believed, had been betrayed by Pristina-based figures such as Hashim Thaci, who are now closely identified with the international community.
The Ushtria Clirimitore e Presevo, Medvedja, Bujanovic (UCPMB), or Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja, Bujanovic, stepped up its insurgency in southern Serbia. Meanwhile, plans were laid to mount a major uprising in Macedonia. The NATO decision in February 2001 to hand back the Ground Security Zone (GSZ), or buffer zone, along Kosovo’s boundary with Serbia to Yugoslav control further confirmed Albanian suspicions that the international community was set to betray Kosovo to Belgrade.
Who are the NLA?
NLA aims
Leadership and structure
Control of territory
The NLA arsenal
Conclusion