Shadowy figures move on the far ridge line. Crouched behind a barrier of sandbags, Staff Sergeant Mario Barber, a Kosovo Peace Implementation Force (Kfor) peacekeeper patrolling Kosovo's border with Macedonia, can see them, but he can't do much about it. "The terrain is rough, and we would need an enormous number of soldiers to cover it all," the American muses with a shrug. Since early March, Kfor patrols have watched from across the border as Macedonian security forces struggle to extinguish an ethnic-Albanian insurgency. Many of the rebels snuck across the border from Kosovo, and Barber and his friends have had little success in stopping them.
But Nikola Gruevski is counting on them anyway. Gruevski, in the Macedonian capital of Skopje, looks like he could be a college student. But he's the 30-year-old Finance Minister, and he has worked too hard to watch his country's delicate economic success be blown apart by a few hundred insurgents sporting faded Kosovo Liberation Army insignia and cheap Chinese machine guns. "It is the responsibility of Kfor to hold their side of the border," he grumbles.
This may be the beginning of the third Balkan war in 10 years. That's particularly tragic, because until a few weeks ago, Macedonia was a minor miracle in an otherwise gloomy region. The tiny country of 25,000 square kilometers and 2 million people holds the distinction of being the only republic of the former Yugoslavia to achieve independence--in 1991--without a shot being fired. In its early years, it took an economic beating, with annual inflation hitting more than 2,000%, gross domestic product sliding, and industries closing down en masse.
In 1998, Gruevski became Europe's youngest government minister when Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski asked him to leave his job at a small bank to head the new Trade Ministry. Gruevski quickly negotiated accords that won Macedonia access to consumers across the Balkans, plus Turkey and Ukraine. The next year, he was made Finance Minister. He passed more banking-reform laws in one year than his predecessors had in 10. He instituted a value-added tax, created Macedonia's first budget surplus, and pushed through major privatizations that boosted foreign direct investment to $140 million in 2000, up from $30 million the year before. As a result, 2000 was the most successful year for the economy since independence, with GDP growth more than 5%, up from 2.7% the year before, and inflation controlled at less than 6%.
WORKING HARD. Unfortunately, that success may become one of the first casualties of war. The problem is that Macedonia has a 30% Albanian minority and neighbors who claim the country shouldn't exist. Despite the efforts of Premier Georgievski in 1998 to give Albanian parties six Cabinet posts, the minority wants more--an Albanian-language university, Albanian flags, and then maybe a greater Albania.
Now, Macedonia, which put most of its resources into economic reforms, a stable social net, and repayment of foreign debts, has to borrow Bulgarian tanks to hold off rebel assaults. Gruevski's carefully laid plans are starting to crumble. "This young minister has some great ideas, and he's working very hard," says Eric Grasser, who runs BAM Consulting in Skopje. "But it was already difficult to convince companies that Macedonia is stable. Now, all I can tell them is that playing in the Balkans is like poker."
During the Kosovo crisis in 1999, Western leaders promised Macedonia hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and fast-track negotiations for NATO and European Union membership. In return, Macedonia supported the bombing of Yugoslavia, which cost it major trade losses, and took in a quarter million ethnic-Albanian refugees.
Only about 20% of the aid ever arrived, and NATO hasn't thrown the country a backward glance. The alliance put the peacekeeping base it promised Skopje in Greece instead. The European Union has behaved little better. While it took Romania, a ruined economy, into the fold as a formal accession partner, it relegated Macedonia to a level with pariah Yugoslavia and anarchic Albania. One reason is that EU member Greece, which has a Macedonia province, is still angry at the nation's use of the name. One can only hope that, if the West finally upholds its commitments, it won't be too late.
By Arie Farnam in Skopje
Edited by Harry Maurer
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