Peace at a Terrible Price

Wagers on Balkan peace are paid in blood. Negotiators in Macedonia were willing to risk an outbreak of ethnic savagery for the slight hope that compromise, and 3,500 NATO troops, could halt the five-month-old struggle between government forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents. But it was a sucker’s bet. On Aug. 8, hours after the European Union’s envoy, Franois Léotard, announced that the two sides had agreed to sign a peace deal, gunmen in the village of Rastani killed an 11-year-old Albanian boy. Guerrillas in Tetovo murdered a Macedonian police officer. Mobs of Macedonian Slavs looted Muslim shops and burned mosques. Hundreds emptied onto the streets of Skopje to protest — against the government, against the rebels, against peace. Said Jovan Angelovski, an unemployed Skopje resident: “Macedonians won’t give up without a war.”

As it often does, the approaching prospect of peace made militants on both sides only more belligerent. Even as representatives from the major Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties declared that they intended to ink a deal brokered by the U.S. and the E.U., the country witnessed its most brutal fighting to date. On Aug. 7, masked police executed five suspected terrorists in a Skopje house. Albanian paramilitaries retaliated by ambushing a convoy of government soldiers and killing 10 of them; two days later seven more troops died when an army truck tripped landmines in a Skopje suburb. In response the army renewed an offensive aimed at liquidating guerrillas from the National Liberation Army. More casualties were reported in combat zones such as Tetovo, the scene of fierce house-to-house battles. “It is obvious,” said spokesman Antonio Milososki, “that while we’re invested in a peace agreement, we also have a war agreement with the N.L.A.”

It is a war long dreaded by NATO, which has spent close to a decade trying to prevent conflict from spilling into Macedonia’s restive ethnic mix. NATO commanders said that an advance team of Operation Essential Harvest, charged with disarming the N.L.A. once a peace deal is in place, was days away from deployment. “If we don’t have an enduring cease-fire and a political agreement, conditions for a deployment will not be right,” a senior British military official told Time. “If we do, then we move.” But as the rebels and the increasingly hard-line army skirmished with mounting fervor, NATO signaled it is in no rush to join the fray. Even if the rivals formally sign a deal, a peacekeeping force isn’t likely to enter for weeks.

The question is whether, by then, there will be any peace left to keep. On many issues, the negotiators huddled in Ohrid made remarkable progress toward a settlement. Early in the week, the Macedonian government agreed to two major demands: the designation of Albanian as an official government language in areas with at least a 20% ethnic Albanian population, and a fivefold increase in the number of Albanians on the Skopje police force. The deal nearly collapsed when the government said it wanted to wait until the rebels disarmed before agreeing to anything. But by Aug. 8 the Macedonians dropped the demand, and the deadly rebel ambush that afternoon ratcheted up the stakes. That night the two sides struck a deal, and Léotard promised a signing ceremony the following Monday.

But normalcy remains a long way off. The government’s concessions to the Albanians must be ratified by parliament before they take effect, and the secrecy of the Ohrid discussions infuriated some Macedonian politicians, who may now push to reject the deal. The government has not yet resolved the issue of amnesty for the rebels but has ruled out offering amnesty to N.L.A. leaders and suspected war criminals. Into this caldron, NATO troops could soon venture: the advance unit will try to exact assurances from rebels that they will dump their guns; after that, troops will fan out to enforce the disarmament — but, says a British military official, “we are not going in to fight or point guns at the N.L.A.” NATO wants the job finished within 30 days. Says an official in Skopje: “Neither side wants this to deteriorate into civil war. We’re taking a leap of faith that they’re being sincere, but what are our options?”

Here’s one: another protracted intervention in which nato soldiers are forced to stand between ethnic enemies with firepower and grudges to burn. In the Balkans, leaps of faith are still a lot better than the alternative.