[Nettime-bold] briefing 31.03.2001

[ebalkan@soros.org.mk]

            "EURO-BALKAN" INSTITUTE ON MACEDONIAN CRISIS
                             31-03-2001
                             CONTENTS:

- Daily briefing from Macedonian press about 
Macedonian crisis
- Daily briefing from international press about 
Macedonian crisis
- Supplement 1: MACEDONIAN JOURNALIST'S VIEWS ON 
SOME ASPECTS WESTERN EUROPEAN JOURNALISTS' 
REPORTING ABOUT MACEDONIAN CRISIS 
- Supplement 2: HOW DOES AN ALBANIAN THAT 
‘ENJOYS ALL THE RIGHTS’ LOOKS LIKE?-AN EDITORIAL 
BY EMIN AZEMI, THE OWNER OF DAILY “FAKTI”

a) DAILY BRIEFING FROM MACEDONIAN PRESS ABOUT 
MACEDONIAN CRISIS
THE MACEDONIAN SECURITY FORCES ENTERED SHIPKOVICA
The Macedonian security forces continue the 
action sweep and search to clear the terrain 
from the presence of the Albanian terrorists and 
their hideouts on Shara Mountain, and 
yesterday’s activities, including the monitoring 
teams of OSCE, were conducted in the region of 
the Shipkovica mosque, towards the village 
Shipkovica, as well on the stretch from the 
village Germo to the village Poroj. We are 
informed by the Tetovo police that the region in 
the vicinity of the village Vejce is also being 
controlled, and the action is conducted after 
the request of a parent who received an 
anonymous phone call that his son, forcefully 
enrolled by the extremists, is killed in the 
neighborhood of this village. The team of the 
newspaper “Nova Makedonija” headed yesterday 
towards the village Shipkovica, and the convoy 
included OSCE representatives. As informed by 
the State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal 
Affairs, Ljube Boshkovski, OSCE is involved in 
these activities, with the intention to stop all 
speculations circling consistently these days, 
according to which the police, during these 
search and sweep operations, molests the 
villages’ inhabitants. This is an opportunity 
for OSCE to be convinced in the real situation 
on the terrain, adds Boshkovski. All around the 
village, there were trenches, hideouts, and 
about a dozen machine gun nests in which the 
police discovered left behind weapons. Because 
of the danger of hidden mine traps, the anti-
terrorist teams still hadn’t entered the houses 
by the late morning hours. Considering that the 
village Shipkovica was one of the strategic 
positions of the Albanian extremists, there are 
assumptions that a much larger quantity of 
weapons, ammunition and sanitary supplies will 
be found there. The inhabitants who didn’t leave 
Shipkovica, and who we met on the village paths 
assured us that the terrorists have not entered 
the village, i.e. that they conducted their 
actions from the surrounding hillsides. (“NOVA 
MAKEDONIJA”)
HANS HAEKKERUP VISITS THE MACEDONIAN STATE 
OFFICIALS
The Head of UN Interim Administration Mission in 
Kosovo, Hans Haekkerup, made a short visit to 
our country yesterday during which he met with 
the President, Boris Trajkovski, the Prime 
Minister, Ljubcho Georgievski, and the Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, Srdjan Kerim. In the 
dialogue with the Macedonian State Officials, 
evaluated as a very concrete and useful one, it 
was decided that there are undoubtedly clear 
links between Kosovo and the extremists 
operating in Macedonia. UNMIK and K-For will 
make extreme endeavors to protect the Northern 
Macedonian border, and to prevent all kinds of 
extremist activities from Kosovo directed at our 
country, said Haekkerup. The Special Envoy of 
the United Nations High Representative for 
Kosovo announced that the border crossing, Blace 
would be entirely opened. Staring from today, 
all ramps will be opened for the vehicles of 
UNMIK. The measures taken by Macedonia for 
closing the border are not directed against the 
Kosovo inhabitants, nor against UNMIK, but are 
taken in order to prevent any possibility for 
abuse of the border crossings by the terrorists, 
pointed out the Minister, Srdjan Kerim. (“NOVA 
MAKEDONIJA”)
THE MACEDONIAN GOVERNMENT STARTED AN 
INVESTIGATION TO REVEAL THE ORIGIN OF THE 
PROJECTILE WITH WHICH THE PRODUCER OF THE 
AMERICAN AGENCY APTN WAS KILLED
Monitoring units of the Macedonian Army noticed, 
in the region of the Kosovo village Krivenik, 
about 30 armed individuals wearing military 
uniforms with the sign of the Macedonian Army, 
just a while before the incident in which Kerem 
Lawton, a television news producer from 
Associated Press, lost his life. The spokesman 
of the Ministry of Defense, Gjorgji Trendafilov, 
says that this armed group was also noticed by 
the soldiers of K-For who immediately contacted 
the Macedonian Army. The spokesman, Trendafilov, 
explained the impossibility the producer of APTN 
was killed by a grenade fired by the Macedonian 
Army, because the weapons of the Macedonian Army 
in the region of the watchtower, Chaska, hasn’t 
got that fire range. As the army representative 
informed, the soldiers of the Macedonian Army 
acted from positions 4 km from the border on 
Macedonian territory and fired at the so called 
“elevation peak 802” occupied by Albanian 
terrorists. The Kosovo village, Krivenik, is 
about 2 km on the other side of the border. The 
fire range of the Macedonian Army stationed in 
that region was 4.000 meters. The spokesman, 
Trendafilov, says that the Macedonian Army is 
waiting for the investigation results to prove 
the type of weapon from which the grenade that 
hit the APTN vehicle, was fired. (“DNEVNIK”)
THE BIGGEST OPPOSITION PARTY IN OFFENSIVE 
AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT
Appearing on yesterday’s press conference, the 
leader of the SDSM (Macedonian Socialist 
Democratic Union), renounced the party’s role as 
constructive opposition and the collaboration 
with the Government structures because of the 
current crisis, promoting the frames of its 
platform for its resolving. “We are left no 
other alternative in this situation when Xhaferi 
says that the terrorists are under his control 
and presents himself as the Lord of peace or war 
in Macedonia, and Georgievski fingers military 
operations”, stated Crvenkovski. The main frames 
of the platform prepared by the SDSM, which 
leaves room for further development, according 
to Crvenkovski, don’t include the possibilities 
of change of the Macedonian Constitution, i.e. 
erasing of the preamble, they include only the 
improvement of the rights of the ethnic 
Albanians in education, culture and healthcare. 
“The erasing of the preamble of the Constitution 
will do no good to no one, especially now when 
the people of Macedonia are faced with the 
denying of their existence as a people”, said 
Crvenkovski. In his opinion, it is true that 
there is a disproportion in the participation of 
the minorities in administration, so this is one 
of the issues that can be discussed, but all 
decisions brought “overnight for the change of 
the state structure – are unwelcome”. (“NOVA 
MAKEDONIJA”)
PRESS CONFERENCE OF THE LEADERS OF THE DS (THE 
DEMOCRATIC UNION) AND VMRO-VMRO
“The current situation and the terrorist actions 
in the state are part of a previously planned 
strategy by the Albanian extremism aimed at the 
change of the borders in the Balkans with 
violence and realization of the idea of ‘Greater 
Albania’. The conflicts with the Albanian 
terrorists will continue for a long time and 
that is why the competent state authorities and 
the population must prepare for a serious battle 
for Macedonia”, stated, on the common press 
conference, the leaders of the DS and VRMO – 
True, Pavle Trajanov and Boris Stojmenov. These 
two parties have information that the actions of 
the Liberation National Army in Macedonia are 
supported by the entire Albanian factor in the 
region, as well as by certain Western 
Intelligence Services. VMRO-True and DS are at 
the opinion that the “well-intentional” 
proposals of the numerous mediators shouldn’t be 
adopted, least of all those made by Javier 
Solana for the change of the Constitution 
because such changes are contrary to the 
national and state interests of the Macedonian 
people and the nationalities. (“VEST”)

b) DAILY BRIEFING FROM INTERNATIONAL PRESS ABOUT 
MACEDONIAN CRISIS

MACEDONIA SAYS OFFENSIVE IS OVER, REBEL MAKE 
TACTICAL WITHDRAW 
Government officials declared on Friday that a 
government offensive against ethnic Albanian 
insurgents was over, saying Macedonian forces 
have regained key border areas with Kosovo. 
Spokesman Antonio Milososki did not indicate 
whether the end of the offensive was simply a 
pause in fighting on the government side. But he 
suggested negotiations with ethnic Albanian 
factions were ahead in the struggle to keep the 
country together. “The political battle is still 
to come,” he told reporters. “We must preserve 
Macedonia as our common country.” (Excerpts from 
AP)"In 12 days on the hills the Albanian cause 
was advanced at least 10 years," said Besnik 
Jakupi, an unemployed teacher. "Now people are 
listening to us, they know about our problems 
and perhaps the government will do something 
about it." If it doesn't, the guerrillas will be 
back, another resident warned. "We haven't lost 
the battle, we are just giving them a chance to 
negotiate," said one man. "But if they fail we 
are ready. The fighters are ready, in the hills, 
in this town, around this table." "If they want 
peace they need to do something quickly," said 
Jusuf Mustafai. "Macedonia is surrounded by 
Albanians on all sides. Next time the war will 
not just be in Tetovo." (Excerpts from Reuters)

TWO WAYS TO LOOK AT WAR
Macedonia, the single most peaceful ex-Yugoslav 
republic, is now in an incipient civil war. From 
NATO-liberated Kosovo, guerrillas have attacked 
Macedonia, ostensibly in the name of civil 
rights but clearly in the hope of detaching its 
Albanian-populated region to Kosovo and a 
Greater Albania. The pity is that this was all 
utterly predictable. “An independent Albanian 
Kosovo will surely seek to incorporate the 
neighboring Albanian minorities--mostly in 
Macedonia,” wrote Henry Kissinger in February 
1999. Other realists, such as National Interest 
editor Owen Harries, expressed similar 
objections. I wrote (Feb. 26, 1999) that “NATO 
intervention ... would sever Kosovo from Serbian 
control and lead inevitably to an irredentist 
Kosovar state, unstable and unviable and forced 
to either join or take over pieces of 
neighbouring countries.” The Albanians did not 
wait for their Kosovar state. They have already 
struck. And peaceful Macedonia, some of whose 
soldiers went into battle this week in sneakers, 
is a poor candidate to fight a deadly 
counterinsurgency. (Excerpts from Washington 
Post)

BALKAN–WIDE ALBANIAN-NATIONALIST 
Paul Beaver, a defence analyst, recently caused 
a stir among Balkan-watchers by asserting that 
the violence in Macedonia and the Presevo 
valley, in addition to anti-Serb riots in the 
town of Mitrovica in Kosovo, form part of an 
orchestrated, Balkans-wide Albanian-nationalist 
campaign. (Excerpts from The Economist)

ETHNIC CONFLICT IN MACEDONIA: ITS LURKING DANGERS
The ethnic Albanian Muslims’ insurgency in 
Macedonia may engulf the volatile Balkan region 
and beyond. It is a region where Europe meets 
Asia and three monotheistic religious 
practitioners – Catholics, Orthodox Christians 
and Muslims live side by side. The ethnic mix of 
Macedonia has been always a potent political 
problem as is in other countries in the Balkans, 
in particular in Bosnia and Kosovo. If the 
insurgency is not handled with sensitivity, 
other countries may get involved. If the 
Albanian Muslim refugees continue to pour into 
Turkey, it may not be able to keep silent for 
long. Even Afghanistan and the Islamic militants 
from Central Asia could become sympathetic to 
the rebels and join them to fight against the 
Slav dominated Macedonia. Furthermore, Bulgaria 
has an eye on eastern areas of Macedonia and it 
may be tempted to annex the area if Macedonia is 
plunged into civil war. Albania may also annex 
its adjacent areas of Macedonia. Some Balkan 
specialists argue that Macedonia as an 
independent country may cease to exist as a 
result of a civil war, looming large in the 
horizon. (Excerpts from Independent Bangladesh)

UN KOSOVO CHIEF PRESSES MACEDONIA TO REOPEN 
BORDER
Kosovo's UN administrator Hans Haekkerup asked 
Macedonia Friday to reopen its border with the 
UN-run Yugoslav province, saying that other 
measures were needed to ensure frontier 
security. "It is also very important to address 
the problem politically, so the extremists will 
have no chance to win." Macedonian decision to 
close the border had had "negative effects." UN 
officials have said the border closure has 
threatened fuel supplies to emergency services, 
driven up prices in the impoverished province, 
and caused shortages of oxygen and other 
essentials in hospitals. "I am considering 
issuing some regulations on crossing the border 
outside the border points," he said. (Excerpts 
from AFP) 

LIGHTLY ARMED FIGHTERS CHALLENGE THE WORLD
It might seem extraordinary that a couple of 
thousand lightly-armed fighters should pose an 
insuperable and apparently growing challenge to 
Kosovo's supposed protectors: a 44,000-strong 
force led by NATO, 4,000-plus foreign and local 
policemen, two dozen intelligence agencies and a 
team of well-paid bureaucrats seconded from the 
UN and the European Union. (The Economist) “KFOR 
- sure, they help us a little,” said one of the 
flak-jacketed Macedonian policemen, but not a 
lot.” “The UCK-they're out there,” he said. “Is 
KFOR going to go and find them for us? No.” 
(Excerpts from The Associated Press)

MACEDONIA BLAMED FOR SHELL ATTACK 
Apparently ignoring NATO Secretary General 
George Robertson's call for a joint inquiry in 
to Thursday's shelling of the Kosovo village of 
Krivenik, defense ministry spokesman Georgi 
Trendafilov said: "Our commission has finished 
its work and confirmed what was already said.
"We rule out any possibility that the cause of 
the death of the foreign journalist was fire 
from Macedonian forces...we even rule out the 
possibility it was done by mistake," he said. 
(Excerpts from Reuters) Kosovo's main political 
parties have blamed the Macedonia Government for 
the shelling of a Kosovo village in which three 
people died. U.S. army investigators are 
analyzing craters to try to determine where the 
shells came from. A statement from Kosovo's 
largest political party, the Democratic League 
of Kosovo, read: "Despite all the warnings of 
the international community that Macedonia needs 
to act towards stopping the conflict and 
starting a dialogue with Albanians in Macedonia, 
they have continued their offensives and they 
have spread them into Kosovo territory as well." 
(Excerpts from Kosovapress)“We have asked for 
explanations, although it is obvious that shells 
came from FYROM, bit it must be specified who 
was the target,” NATO Spokesperson, Mark Laity, 
was quoted as saying. (Excerpts from Z¨RI)

KFOR CAUGHT LORRY ATTEMPTING TO TRANSPORT 
WEAPONS 
"A German patrol of the European Organization 
for Demining (EOD) have found and confiscated a 
cache of weapons on the Macedonian border, while 
last night at around 22.00 hours, a KFOR 
military patrol stopped a lorry and found some 
weapons and military ammunition," said KFOR 
spokesman Tomas Lobering. He said individuals 
arrested on suspicion of participating in armed 
Albanian (Excerpts from KosovaLive) German 
soldiers in K-For peacekeeping force have 
detained 44 suspected Albanian guerrillas for 
illegally crossing into southern Kosovo from 
Macedonia and possessing arms, and handed them 
over to the UN police in the province. (Excerpts 
from Reuters)

BULGARIA OFFERS MORE ARMS TO MACEDONIA 
Bulgaria announced it would send more arms to 
Macedonia to deal with unrest by ethnic Albanian 
rebels, its second such shipment since the 
recent upsurge in violence began. But at the 
same time Prime Minister Ivan Kostov appealed to 
Bulgaria's strife-torn neighbour to begin talks 
rapidly with all sides, warning of the risks of 
delay and the dangers of using force. At the 
time Defense Minister Boiko Noev said the first 
shipment involved "hundreds of tones" of 
material, but did not include tanks. (Excerpts 
from AFP) Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov 
said the world had initially underestimated the 
crisis in Macedonia. Stoyanov said his initial 
suggestion that Bulgaria could consider sending 
troops to help the Macedonian government was 
motivated by his realization of the seriousness 
of the crisis. (Excerpts from Reuters)

MACEDONIA WILL NOT CONCEDE TO 'CRIMINALS'
Boris Trajkovski, the Macedonian President, 
declared that he would not make any concessions 
to armed rebels and gave warning that a long-
term solution to the crisis in his country was 
still distant. In his first interview with a 
British newspaper since fighting erupted in his 
country, Mr Trajkovski called the NLA fighters 
"terrorists" and said: "They have interrupted a 
dialogue that has been going on for years to 
improve the situation of Albanians in Macedonia. 
They are no more than 300 thugs and criminals 
and I am sure that most of Macedonia's Albanians 
do not support them." He was determined to 
continue discussions to defuse the passions that 
have brought Macedonia close to another Balkan 
war. "To look for a quick solution would be very 
dangerous. I want a grand discussion involving 
ordinary people, political leaders and the 
clergy." But he rejected calls by an ethnic 
Albanian political party, which is part of the 
Macedonian coalition government, for the 
European Union to mediate between the two 
communities. "We must tackle this on our own," 
he said. He said: "I will not allow any division 
of this country along ethnic lines. If we do 
that, it will be disastrous." He said that if 
Albanians received special treatment that could 
tempt Macedonia's many other minorities such as 
Serbs, Greeks, Romas and Vlachs to hold the 
country hostage to their demands. (Excerpts from 
Daily Telegraph)

FORMER MACEDONIAN PRESIDENT STRONGLY OPPOSES 
CONFERENCE ON CONFLICT 
An international conference on the conflict in 
Macedonia would only open the door to 
nationalist demands from ethnic Albanian 
separatists across the region, former Macedonian 
president Kiro Gligorov warned. "They are 
demanding other rights and claiming they are not 
a minority, they demand that the state be 
proclaimed as Albanian and Macedonian, a two-
nation state," he said, as Macedonian forces 
pressed on with the struggle against armed 
Albanian rebels. "We are hearing demands, which 
we do not know if we should take seriously, for 
a sort of international conference to be held on 
Macedonia. That must not be done," he said.  He 
pointed out that his own state was cobbled 
together from territory that had once belonged 
to Greece and Serbia with smaller parts of 
Bulgaria and Albania thrown in. (Excerpts from 
AFP) 

FROWICK: MACEDONIA FACES MOMENT OF TRUTH 
Robert Frowick, the U.S. diplomat, who was 
appointed the Organization for Security and 
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)'s special envoy to 
Macedonia amid the upsurge in violence this 
month, said he expects to spend months working 
on the process. "The situation is very volatile 
still, smoke is still in the air," he told 
reporters after a special session of the OSCE's 
permanent council in Vienna devoted to the 
crisis in Macedonia. "Passions are still very 
high. I think everybody knows it is a moment of 
truth for Macedonia," he added. But speaking 
after a week of talks in Skopje, he said he was 
encouraged by the willingness of all political 
leaders to pursue dialogue rather than to join 
the armed struggle. (Excerpts from Agence France 
Presse)


           c) SUPPLEMENT 1: MACEDONIAN JOURNALIST'S VIEWS 
           ON SOME ASPECTS WESTERN EUROPEAN JOURNALISTS' 
                 REPORTING ABOUT MACEDONIAN CRISIS

WHO PLANTS POTATOES IN FEBRUARY?
by Aleksandar Damovski

Planting potatoes in the middle of 
February, “TV recordings” of Macedonian women 
loading magazines for the Macedonian Army or 
devious and clever Albanians, and military and 
with lack of sense of humor Macedonians, are 
just part of the sentences that the 
international public was exposed to, watched or 
read from their “highly professional” reporters 
who, these days, are reporting on the happenings 
in Macedonia.
Surprisingly easy and with lack of 
responsibility, part of the reporter stars of 
the large media houses, took over the Kosovian 
scheme on the good guys and the bad guys from 
the crisis in 1999. Everything, since then, has 
been flowing with ease, and continues to flow in 
that manner. Simply, they copied the Kosovo 
scheme in their reports on the latest 
occurrences in Macedonia. The model is here, 
except that now, everything is transferred a bit 
more South, but the actors are pretty much the 
same ones: the orthodox, always in the mood for 
combat Slavs, and the poor, discriminated and 
deprived of their rights, Albanians.
So, in the renown British newspaper 
“Independent” from the ink of its reporter 
Justin Huggler we read: “The Macedonian 
onslaught began at 4.00pm just hours after the 
rebels offered peace talks. The guerrillas had 
warned that their attacks would continue if the 
Macedonian government did not respond to their 
offer. The government's response was the huge 
flames leaping from the crown of Baltepe hill 
and the shattering explosions that rebounded off 
the rooftops of Tetovo.”
Without bothering to check if his 
information was correct, the reporter sends his 
clear message - it is obvious who should be 
declared the proponents of peace in this case! 
The rebels, of course. They offered peace but 
the Macedonian State did not accept it and 
started shooting indiscriminately, is the 
obvious message. However, the facts are somehow 
different: several hours after the end of the 
ultimatum period proposed by the Macedonian 
State calling upon the rebels to lay down their 
arms, two mortars were shot from Tetovo fortress 
injuring 5 civilians. The Tetovo fortress was at 
that point the stronghold of the rebels.
We read the following outburst of 
sentimentalism by the same author: "In the town 
below, cars raced along the streets as some of 
the few remaining residents fled. From the 
deserted children's playground a row of soldiers 
fired mortars up into the hills as the blue and 
white swings swayed in the breeze beside them. 
Petrified conscript soldiers patrolled the city 
streets, presumably in case any of the rebels 
made it down into the town. There has so far 
been no sign of civil unrest in the town." It 
should not be a problem for a publisher of such 
high reputation to try to observe the golden 
rule of journalism, namely "representing both 
sides". Had this golden rule been observed, I 
suppose, we would have been reading something in 
the sense of: "Rebels claim they are fighting 
for the improvement of the rights of ethnic 
Albanians, being less than a quarter of 
country's population. Although there are no 
signs of illegal persecutions, there is great 
dissatisfaction among the Albanians, as a result 
to, as they claim, the general discrimination 
against them in Macedonia."
Huggler's fellow reporter, from the same 
newspaper, Mr. John Sweeney, in obviously 
complete accordance with his house's editing 
policy, goes: "Tetovo, this week, is a town 
fizzling with fear. Heads turn too fast at the 
slamming of a car door, people stare transfixed 
at the spiral of dirty gray smoke rising against 
a blue sky from a burning Albanian home." Now, 
how does the author know that the "burning home" 
was Albanian? On the hill near Tetovo fortress 
there are many cottages almost all of them 
belonging to ethnic-Macedonians. What scares me 
most, in the case of this reporter as in the 
case of many others too, is the simplicity with 
which they report forgetting to mention the most 
important issue at stake. Namely, that some 
armed persons have enterd a country and attacked 
it.  
Then the celebrated BBC reporter, Paul 
Wood, began his first Tanusevci story with the 
death of the 22 years old boy, brutally killed 
in the field while planting potatoes. Have you 
ever heard of a spot on this globe where, at 
1500 m up in the mountains, covered by snow, in 
the middle of February, one plants potatoes?
And again the reporter Sweeney, who knows 
everything, but merely supposes that the first 
victim under the Tetovo fortress received a 
bullet of the Macedonian Army: Until today, 
reports Sweeney, one ethnic-Albanian civilian 
was killed, shot in his head, most probably by 
the Macedonian Army. Also, an Albanian-policeman 
was killed in a battle with UCK. These are two 
dead Albanians. Well, this report was published 
to without any effort by the author to check who 
really killed the first Albanian. The Chief of 
Tetovo police, of ethnic-Albanian origin 
himself, in his statement given to Newsweek, 
claims that he was killed by a sniper from the 
direction of Tetovo fortress, unquestionably at 
that time a strong-hold of the rebels.
Again falsity in facts: "Under this hills 
is Tetovo, inhabited by 80% of ethnic Albanians, 
but under the rule of the Macedonians, in many 
aspects similar to their orthodox friends, the 
Serbs. Under the hills is the Macedonian Army, 
better armed, but less motivated than the 
rebels." Nevertheless, the local government of 
Tetovo is under a complete rule by the purely 
ethnic-Albanian party DPA. The second part of 
the sentence, however, insinuates that the 
rebels have a fairly strong motive to fight, 
namely justice. The others, on the other hand - 
do not!!!
The other day our paper received an 
invitation, precisely by BBC, to a seminar about 
war reporting. I, on the other hand, suggest 
that we, the Macedonian journalists, finance the 
seminar and have it held in Tanusevci, with 
Western European journalists as its 
participants. Maybe in May, the right season for 
planting potatoes.
(The author is editor of the Macedonian 
daily, "Dnevnik")

d) SUPPLEMENT 2: HOW DOES AN ALBANIAN THAT 
‘ENJOYS ALL THE RIGHTS’ LOOKS LIKE? 
AN EDITORIAL BY EMIN AZEMI, THE OWNER OF DAILY 
“FAKTI”
  
“Albanians enjoy all the rights”. This is the 
refrain that foreign 
journalists most often hear from the mouths of 
ethnic Macedonians. 
“OK, fine. Then, why the ethnic Albanians are 
fighting in the hills,” the foreign journalists 
would ask, just to face an avalanche of answers 
“They are fighting for Great Albania.” 
And when the same foreign journalist comes to 
visit you, a first thing he does is to take a 
good look at you, from head to toes. And he 
looks at you again. And again. And then he tries 
to look at you face, trying to find a glimpse, 
at least one small, the smallest piece of “the 
Great Albania” tittering on your face. And he 
keeps looking, staring at you. He still looks at 
you. And while looking at your face, he tries to 
behave nicely by looking straight into your 
eyes, but always on the edge of popping ‘the 
question
’: 
“Eh, and what about Great Albania… I mean, where do you stand on that …
” And even after you say that 80% of the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia are 
unemployed, and even when you say that you can count on one hand the number of 
Albanian doctors and nurses in Skopje hospitals, and when you say that you can
’t find any Albanian working in local banks (not even as cleaning ladies), and 
even when you say that the share-holders in the biggest companies are almost 
exclusively Macedonians (and few naturalized Vlachs), and when you say that 
there are not more than 3% of Albanians in police forces, and that 99% of Army 
officers are ethnic Macedonians, and when you say that 150.000 Albanians from 
Macedonia are working abroad in western countries, and when you explain that 
Albanian pupils are still reading in own books the names of towns written on 
Macedonian, and even when you say that 112.000 ethnic Albanians are without 
citizenship status, the foreign journalist will still ask you 
“And what about Great Albania …
” But one cannot blame on the foreign journalists why they persist in their 
attempt to fine the glimpse of Great Albania in the background of Albanian 
grievances. The red-cart known as 
‘Great Albania
’ that is constantly waved in the face of Albanians, whenever they ask for more 
policeman, more doctors, army officers, bank clerks etc., actually represents 
the essence of the conflict in Macedonia. So, what we witness these days in the 
hills is not the conflict. The real conflict is in the heads of some 
Macedonians that are deeply convinced that Albanians really enjoy all the 
rights. The concept of 
“all the rights
”, according to ethnic Macedonians, means that Albanians must me cured only by 
an ethnic Macedonian doctors, that the Albanian must be tortured exclusively by 
an ethnic Macedonian policeman and that the Albanian soldier in ARM must be 
only commanded by an ethnic Macedonian army officer. 
“Macedonian healthcare, Macedonian torture and Macedonian command,
” this is the vulgar concept of preventing the creation of a 
‘Great Albania’. 
“We gave all the rights to Albanians,” this is 
how Macedonians like to say whenever someone 
from abroad would ask them about the Albanians. 
As long as they consider and present themselves 
as exclusive owners of human rights and 
especially as owners that have rented such right 
by labelling the Albanians with a continuous 
guilt for destroying the state, one cannot speak 
about any ethnic or citizen harmony in this 
country. 




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