Macedonia is not an island

I’ve been out all day getting to Ohrid and back to Pristina, so haven’t posted or tweeted.  The best I can do after eight hours of road travel is to offer a few summary tics of what I had to say at the conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Ohrid agreement, which ended the fighting in Macedonia in 2001 and ushered in a new era of stronger Albanian participation in the Macedonian state.

• Macedonia is not an island.  The Ohrid agreement is mainly about internal governing arrangements:  decentralization, representation of Albanians and others in the state institutions, police reform, use of languages.  While the agreement unquestionably saved the state, it has also meant that Macedonians and Albanians in Macedonia have spent 10 years focused mainly on their own internal arrangements.  There is a tendency to forget that what happens in Macedonia affects the region, and what happens in the region affects Macedonia.  It is time for Macedonia to play a stronger role regionally, in particular by helping to make sure Kosovo and Bosnia are not partitioned.
• Changing the status of a boundary is not the same as moving a border to accommodate ethnic differences.  Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia all gained independence within well-recognized and accepted borders, some of which had previously been boundaries internal to former Yugoslavia.  But none of these borders was moved from their previous positions.  Belgrade today would like to move Kosovo’s border to hive off the Serb-populated portion of the north, with the explicit purpose of accommodating ethnic differences.  That is fundamentally different from changing the status of a boundary.  If we start down that road, we will never finish, or maybe we’ll finish but not peacefully.
• The era of separations in the Balkans is over, the era of reintegration has begun.  In any event, the many after-shocks of the dissolution of former Yugoslavia are now clearly fading in magnitude and significance.  There will be no more new states in the Balkans.  What people need to focus on now is ensuring equality before the law for all their citizens, which is what makes me comfortable with being a minority in the United States:  I’ve got precisely the same rights as the rich, white, male slave-holder Thomas Jefferson.  That’s a good deal, if it can be implemented fully.  The ultimate paean to the Ohrid agreement will be sung when people tell me its provisions are no longer required to ensure proper treatment of anyone.

This new era of reintegration is going to require vision and leadership that is sometimes lacking.  Macedonia is facing a difficult choice.  Greece is blocking its path to integration in NATO and the EU by refusing to allow it to enter until it adds a geographical qualifier to its constitutional name, since Greece claims “Macedonia” as its own.  Prime Minister Gruevski, who notably did not attend the Ohrid conference and takes a negative view of the agreement, has remained adamant against this change, a position that gains him votes and avoids his having to call a referendum on a new constitution that he might lose.

The Albanian leadership in Macedonia is keen on NATO and EU membership.  The former they regard as a guarantee of Macedonia’s internal security; the latter they see as eventually opening up Macedonia’s borders to Albanians in Kosovo and Albania.  So refusal to compromise on the “name” issue gives the Albanians of Macedonia real heartburn.

None of this is insoluble.  In fact, we’ve gone from doubts about the very existence and viability of the Macedonian state to doubts about what to call it, though I hasten to add that my own preference is to call it what its citizens want it  to be called, which for now is “Macedonia.”

PS:  I gratefully acknowledge Ylber Hysa, one of Kosovo’s finest, for suggesting the “Macedonia is not an island” theme.