CHAPTER SIX
Illegitimate Democracy
Macedonia’s Transition in the 1990s
Elated by their good business cooperation, [ethnic Albanian leader] Xhaferi and [Prime Minister] Georgievski thought that finally Albanians and Macedonians also became brothers. They forgot that cooperation between politicians doesn’t necessarily mean cooperation among ordinary citizens who have [gained] nothing from luxury, privileges, and corruption of power. . . . That is why today Albanians don’t even believe their own political parties.
KIM MEHMETI, MACEDONIAN ALBANIAN WRITER, POET,
JOURNALIST, AND TRANSLATOR, ON THE 1998–2001
VMRO-PDA COALITION GOVERNMENT.
Difficult Initial Conditions
Macedonia’s transition in the 1990s was deeply troubled, characterized by political instability and deep divisions among its people. The main hindrance to establishing a liberal post-communist regime in Macedonia was its lack of economic viability as an independent state and the reproduction of poverty in the 1990s and beyond. Poor economic conditions characterized the starting point of Macedonia’s post-communist transition: few competitive modern industries with little to no export potential, a high degree of dependence on Yugoslav markets and federal aid disbursements, a large agricultural sector, and no service sector to speak of. Pettifer notes that Macedonia was “at the bottom of the federal heap in every way, in terms of wage or output levels, literacy, social and educational provision, or any other measure” (2001: 20). Economic malaise was deepened by a number of negative externalities in the 1990s—an economic embargo against Macedonia imposed by neighboring Greece, international sanctions against the FRY and a large influx of refugees as a result of the war in Kosovo. Poor economic conditions translated into intense competition over very scarce resources, which intensified conflict between Macedonia’s ethnic Slav and Albanian populations. A deteriorating economic situation in the 1990s had the net effect of further reducing employment and diminishing other economic advancement opportunities, which raised the general level of resentment in the ethnic Albanian community. Ethnic divisions were reflected in the open hostility of many ethnic Albanians toward Macedonian sovereignty, rendering the state itself illegitimate in the eyes of a large portion of its population. Moreover, ethnic divisions were especially acute in light of a comparatively young, and thus insecure, Macedonian national identity.1 The economics of extreme scarcity were also at the root of rampant corruption on the part of all governments in the 1990s, which led to a deep public mistrust of state institutions. Ethnic divisions and corruption, in turn, severely weakened the Macedonian state and its institutions.
Macedonia’s lack of economic viability was partially and temporarily overcome by extensive Western involvement, which acted as a guarantor of economic survival and macro-political stability in the short term. The West prevented ethnic divisions from turning into divisive politics and violence and also forced the political elite, acutely conscious of the need for international support in order to ensure their state’s—and, by extension, their own—political survival, to fall in line with the basic tenets of procedural democracy. However, the elites saw little incentive to pursue anything but a thin facade of democracy. Instead, nominal cooperation with the Western project in the form of multiethnic coalitions became a convenient cover for complicity in organized crime and corruption, which some have blamed for the 2001 outbreak of a “mini war” between ethnic Albanian rebels and the Macedonian army.2 The convenience of this arrangement went beyond such motives, though: Macedonian elites could point to the presence of ethnic Albanians in government structures to show that adequate rights were being afforded the country’s Albanian community and remain in the West’s good favor, while Albanian elites could claim to be fighting for the rights of their constituency. Elites, then, largely benefited from this arrangement, while the public grew cynical and detached. The West, for its part, consistently praised Macedonia’s relative stability and peace, and yet at the same time it did little in the way of offering a credible promise of membership in Western organizations. In fact, Western involvement may have provided a false sense of security. According to Macedonian scholar Mirjana Maleska, one troubling and unexpected result of Western sponsorship in the 1990s was that Macedonian elites, in denial about the looming conflict, actually began to believe that Macedonia was comfortably stable.3
The Macedonian case is one of procedural democracy “simulated” by elites to gain and maintain some threshold of Western support but mostly lacking in substantive liberalism, much more so than Croatia. The low liberal content in post-communist Macedonia was reflected in low levels of democratic legitimacy, deep ethnic cleavages, division over basic issues about the state, and the large presence of illiberal groups and parties on the political scene. The Macedonian case is also a powerful, and tragic, illustration of the limits of illegitimate democracy in the long term, especially when the commitment, reach, and public acceptance of liberalism is shallow.
Formal Democracy: The Record
Many accounts were quite optimistic about Macedonia’s democratic institutions and procedures in the 1990s, singling out the seemingly successful efforts at interethnic cooperation in government for praise.4 To the extent that democratic institutions functioned, albeit imperfectly, the positive view of these accounts was not unwarranted. In spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, Macedonia did have for most of the 1990s a somewhat procedurally correct democratic order that included regular elections, a parliamentary system, and progress in a number of key areas such as media freedom and minority rights.5 Part of the optimism on the part of observers reflected Macedonia’s relative success: compared to the authoritarian politics of FRY and Croatia and the bloodshed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia appeared to be an oasis of relative peace and stability.
Although formal democratic institutions were in place, their day-to-day functioning was highly flawed. Democratic rules were often not enforced. While there was little evidence of outright rigging of elections, there was ample evidence of irregularities that produced illegitimate results. For instance, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that the 1994 elections, the second round of which was boycotted by an important party and its supporters, were marred by irregularities (Karatnycky et al. 1999:389). In general, all elections in the 1990s were characterized by chaos and the threat of instability.
The judiciary was barely reformed in the 1990s. It was slow and inefficient, and in 1997 research found that eighteen of thirty courts were not performing their duties. Moreover, surveys revealed that 50 percent of the population had no trust at all in the judicial system (Karatnycky et al. 1999: 397), a number that would only grow. According to the 1997 report of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, “The quality of trials and verdicts is also very low, a fact being confirmed by the great number of annulments.” The report also stated that “judges, instead of seeing their role in the protection of civil rights and freedoms and of legality and fairness of the proceeding, see themselves as active partners of the prosecution” (Karatnycky et al. 1999: 397). It also cited political interference in the work and selection of judges and criticized the limited rights of defendants, who were often not afforded public defenders.
There were a number of media outlets, although until the end of the 1990s most were under government ownership and thus subject to political control. For instance, during the University of Tetovo crisis in 1995, Macedonian-language papers were uniformly critical of ethnic Albanian demands. It was quite ironic that Albanian-language papers, also under government subsidy, were often so inflammatory in their ethno-nationalist rhetoric. Perhaps the small percentage of Slavic Macedonians who understand Albanian explained this. Independent print media outlets did begin to appear in the second half of the 1990s with well-known titles such as Nova Makedonija, Utrinski Vesnik, and Dnevnik. There were few television outlets, mostly under government control, but they nonetheless proved to be generally reliable sources of information (Karatnycky et al. 1999: 377).
The Macedonian constitution was somewhat contradictory on the point of minority rights. On one hand, it guaranteed equal rights to all groups, and yet at the same time it defined Macedonia as the “national state of the Macedonian nation.” In practice, despite the presence of Albanian politicians in all of the governments constituted in the 1990s, little progress was made in the 1990s on language and educational rights for ethnic Albanians, which caused repeated incidents of instability, rioting, and violence. Ethnic Macedonian elites continually promised change. Ethnic Albanian politicians at times genuinely fought for these rights, while at other times, they “pretended” to fight for them but in reality engaged in political maneuvers to protect their positions and influence. Discrimination against Albanians was commonplace, especially in employment and in abuses by the police.
Pluralism was weakened between 1994 and 1998, when several major parties were left out of the Sobranie (Macedonia’s legislature) and the political process, allowing the ruling parties, mostly former communists, to entrench themselves in state institutions and benefit from insider financial deals (Cabada 2001: 100). Aside from admonitions by the highly interventionist international community and harsh extra-parliamentary criticism by opposition parties, the ruling Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (Socijalde-mokratski Sojuz Makedonije, SDSM) had few checks on their power.
The rule of law was extremely weak, with corruption and graft pervasive at all levels of government and business, leading to widespread distrust of state institutions. In 1999, the Berlin-based Transparency International ranked Macedonia 66th out of 99 possible positions. It shared this ranking with Egypt and Ghana. Political parties were a main site of corruption and used patronage and quasi-privatization to enrich their members (Hislope 2002: 35). A weak indigenous civil society did not have the resources to counter such trends, and as such action was only taken when high-ranking officials were exposed and shamed by the media, their political opponents, or foreign NGOs.
In sum, in the 1990s Macedonia’s post-communist regime only superficially adhered to the democratic procedures stipulated in its constitution. Much of the procedural correctness that existed was thanks to extensive foreign involvement.
The First Elections
Macedonia was the last of the Yugoslav republics to hold free elections. There was little to no impetus for such elections among the republican political elite and public, and they were held largely because everyone else in the region was holding free elections at the time. Nor was there a strong impetus for independence in a republic whose livelihood depended on political and financial support from the rest of the SFRJ. When the republic did finally opt for independence, it was less by design than by default (Janos 2000: 391). Macedonia prepared for its first elections as central Yugoslav controls weakened and the communist stranglehold gave way to nationalist and autonomist forces on the political scene. One group in particular—the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization–Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija–Demokratska Partija za Makedonsko Nacionalno Edinstvo, VMRO-DPMNE) gained popularity quite quickly with its appeals to Macedonian nationalism, historical symbols, and lost territories. VMRO’s leader was the young and fiery nationalist writer Ljupco Georgievski. Although it renounced the terrorist tradition of its prewar predecessor of the same name, VMRO pledged to continue its nationalist political traditions. The other major contenders in the elections were the reformed League of Communists of Macedonia (Sojuz na Komunistite na Makedonija, SKM), now pledging support for democracy and market reform and led by the young Branko Crvenkovski; the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity (Partija za Demokratski Prosperitet, PDP; Albanian: Partia për Prosperitet Demokratik, PPD); and the Markovi
Exit polls suggested that voting was entirely along ethnic lines (Perry 1997: 233). This was true not only of the two largest ethnic groups (Macedonians and Albanians): Serbs voted as a bloc for ethnic Serb parties, Roma for Roma parties, Turks for Turkish parties, and so on. In circumstances of uncertainty and economic scarcity, ethnic groupings offered the most security for Macedonia’s diverse peoples. Reform programs, if proposed at all, were vague. Besides ethnicity, parties were split over the communist past and the Yugoslav period as well as Macedonia’s future sovereignty, with the SKM still promoting a confederation of Yugoslav states and the VMRO pushing for outright independence (Bugajski 2002: 725).
After three rounds of balloting, there was still no clear majority, and a precarious balance was achieved among reform communists and Macedonian and Albanian nationalists. Although VMRO had performed poorly in the initial rounds, it successfully used nationalist issues to surge in the runoffs. The assembly later elected former communist and Tito ally Kiro Gligorov as president. It was Gligorov who had been the impetus behind the formation of a “government of experts” as a solution to the parliamentary deadlock. This was important, as it sidelined the nationalists at a critical moment and established a precedent in which Gligorov overshadowed the Sobranie in key decisions. Gligorov’s legitimacy derived from his patriarch-like status and support among all of Macedonia’s ethnic groups.
With VMRO unable to form a government, an expert government took shape with Skopje University professor Nikola Kljusev at its head. Only two of fifteen ministers had any party affiliation. As the new administration seemed determined to avoid any escalation of ethnic tensions, one deputy premier and two government ministers were ethnic Albanians (Bugajski 2002: 726). The Albanian PDP also obtained chairmanships in key parliamentary committees as well as representation in judicial bodies, including the Supreme Court. Although the government was officially nonpartisan, the former communists, closely allied with Gligorov, took the lead in parliamentary affairs.
Conscious of its perils, President Gligorov was hardly a supporter of Macedonian independence. But as Slovenia and Croatia departed the federation and it became clear that Miloševic was bent on war, independence became imminent. Fortunately, in part due to a personal relationship between Serbian and Macedonian JNA commanders as well as JNA troop requirements in Croatia and Bosnia, Gligorov was able to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal of federal troops and equipment from Macedonian territory.6
A referendum was held on 8 September 1991, and nearly 70 percent of eligible voters opted for independence. However, most ethnic Albanians, organized by their parties, refused to participate in the referendum, citing non-acceptance of the constitution. Symbolically, this mass boycott by over 20 percent of the population also meant non-acceptance of the state, a fact that injected a large dose of illegitimacy into the post-communist Macedonian nation-building project. Nonetheless, independence was declared in December, and a slow and difficult process of international recognition ensued.
The government of experts under Nikola Kljusev oversaw the initial phases of transition. It established a stable government, introduced a sound anti-inflation program that included the introduction of a new currency, the denar, and presided over the creation of a new military. It resigned in July 1992 after a no-confidence vote promoted by the SDSM (this was the new name of the SKM), Liberals (Liberalna Partija na Makedonija, LP), and Socialists (Socialisticka Partija na Makedonija, SPM), who sought a political government. VMRO, with the most deputies in the Sobranie, tried to form a new government but again failed to garner the necessary support, overshadowed by Gligorov and the extensive organizational apparatus of the former communists. Instead, a new government headed by thirty-year-old Branko Crvenkovski and made up of a four-party coalition including the PDP and its more radical ethnic Albanian ally, the People’s Democratic Party (Narodna Demokratska Partija, NDP), the SDSM, and the Liberals was brought in and made stability and prosperity its chief goals. Although a number volatile issues arose, the government worked closely with the United States, the EU, President Gligorov, and ethnic Albanian leaders to resolve differences peacefully. Yet the constitutional status of ethnic Albanians remained unresolved, and the economic situation kept getting worse. The dilemma for the government was to give serious consideration to Albanian expectations without antagonizing influential nationalists (Szajkowski 2000: 256). VMRO, meanwhile, continued to play a disruptive role in interethnic relations with its radical populist rhetoric and actions, like the creation of ethnic Macedonian self-defense committees in Albanian-populated areas. Moreover, being just as fiercely anti-communist and anti-Western as it was nationalist, it criticized the government for its communist roots and tendency to give in to Western demands.7
Subsequent Elections and Party Politics
The 1994 and 1998 Elections
The next elections were held in the fall of 1994. With its power firmly entrenched and backed by the popular President Gligorov, the grand coalition led by the SDSM did very well. The 1994 election was crucial in terms of its importance for the future direction of the fledgling state. Despite the ruling coalition’s advantages, VMRO had significant support among ethnic Macedonians most hurt by the harsh economic transition and those living in areas heavily populated by ethnic Albanians.8 Round one led to a victory for the Alliance for Macedonia, a three-party coalition led by President Gligorov and made up of the SDSM, the LP, and the SPM. The two main opposition parties, the Democratic Party (Demokratska Partija, DP) of Petar Gosev and VMRO, blasted the outcome as fraudulent and demanded new elections (Perry 1997: 235). They called for a boycott of the second round of voting. As a result, only 57.5 percent of the eligible constituency cast votes in the second round. The opposition parties began a massive campaign to discredit the elections, organizing protests and marches throughout the country and claiming that the elections had been rigged. International election monitoring organizations found irregularities in the elections but declared them to be valid. Nevertheless, allegations of ballot rigging, fraud, and destruction of ballots lingered, and two election commissioners resigned their posts (Perry 1997: 235).
As a result of the boycott, 95 percent of the seats were captured by members of the Alliance for Macedonia—the SDSM got 58 seats, the LP took 29, and the Socialists took 8 seats. Of the remaining mandates, 10 went to the PDP, 4 to the NDP; the remainder went to an assortment of small parties and 7 independents (Perry 1997: 236).
In 1994 the PDP, the main Albanian party, underwent an internal split when a radical faction led by Arben Xhaferi left the party, criticizing its gradualist program for the integration of ethnic Albanians and its willingness to cooperate unconditionally with ethnic Macedonian parties. In time, local PDP offices throughout western Macedonia began to fall to Xhaferi’s splinter group, the Party of Democratic Prosperity-Albanians (Partija za Demokratski Prosperitet na Albancite, PDP-A; Albanian: Partia për Prosperitet Demokratik–Shqiptarët, PPD-Sh), later renamed the Democratic Party of Albanians, (Demokratska Partija na Albancite, DPA, or, in Albanian, Partia Demokratike Shqiptare, PDSh). The more moderate faction of the PDP joined the governing coalition.
Buoyed by the lack of an intra-parliamentary opposition and the support of the West, the government enjoyed an easy ride until February 1996, when the coalition broke down after the Liberals, led by Stojan Andov, withdrew from the government, objecting, among other things, to the disproportionate representation of Albanians in the Crvenskovski cabinet at the expense of other coalition partners. Pressured by the West, whose support it desperately needed, the SDSM had indeed made efforts to include ethnic Albanians in governing structures and in important state organs like the judiciary and diplomatic missions. The newly formed Xhaferiled Albanian opposition claimed that these were just superficial moves aimed to quell Albanian opposition and criticized the ethnic Albanian cabinet members for doing little to support the plight of Macedonian Albanians. Gligorov tried to keep the coalition together, but to no avail. Crvenkovski ultimately was forced to reconstitute the government, which now excluded LP members, while the overall representation of ethnic Albanians rose from four to six. Meanwhile, public opinion polls reflected deep cynicism and distrust among the public toward the government: only 10 percent said the government was functioning well, while 69 percent believed change was necessary (Perry 1997: 235).
The VMRO was a highly vocal extra-parliamentary opposition, and a radical nationalist one at that. It criticized the government constantly for its accommodation of ethnic Albanians and its cozy relationship with the West. In 1996, it organized a nationwide petition drive for early elections and organized parallel, illegal elections when this strategy failed. However, with the firm support of the West behind it, the extensive organizational advantages and resources it had inherited from its communist predecessor, and the aversion of many Macedonians to potential conflict, the ruling coalition prevailed. At times the SDSM used the threat of instability to garner support for its agenda.9 In general, the SDSM seldom showed a commitment to real pluralism, but, as former foreign minister Denko Maleski explained to me, “A low level of democracy at that time may have saved us from war.”10
Over the next two years the SDSM became increasingly arrogant in the eyes of the public. For average Macedonians the economic situation had deteriorated even further so that most of the population was dependent on the informal economy and remittances from relatives in the West to survive. Unemployment had risen to socially dangerous levels and was especially prevalent among new entrants to the labor force. Corruption scandals began to engulf the Crvenkovski government, and by the time of the 1998 elections, it was seen as deeply illegitimate. Even its Western supporters could not rescue it now, but to the extent that they did try to save a political configuration that was perceived as corrupt and ineffective in the eyes of the public, it delegitimized the West and the external project of liberalism itself. So it was no surprise when in the 1998 elections, over 45 percent of the vote went to a coalition of VMRO and a newly formed party, the Democratic Alternative (Demo-kratska Alternativa, DA).
Surprising, however, was the announcement that Xhaferi’s DPA would participate in the coalition, which effectively meant an alliance of Albanian and Macedonian extreme nationalists. However, both Xhaferi and Ljubco Georgievski campaigned with greatly moderated rhetoric, in no small part because they understood the risks of alienating the West.11 The improbable coalition was also a result of political forces within the Albanian bloc: sharp disagreements between the PDP (associated with the ousted SDSM coalition) and DPA leadership gave Xhaferi a golden opportunity to secure cabinet positions for himself and his DPA colleagues. Xhaferi nonetheless issued a warning to his VMRO partners: “The DPA has acquired its reputation among Albanians with the fight for realization of the basic social, educational, and cultural rights and de-blocking of some relations which cause irregularities in the election process. If it turns out that our hopes for resolving these key problems were in vain, we will step out of the government” (quoted in Szaj-kowski 2000: 260). The VMRO’s rhetoric and policy proposals were also moderated because of its alliance with the DA, a nominally liberal party led by Vasil Tupurkovski, a highly popular politician who understood the imperatives of working with the Western presence in Macedonia. Despite concerns about VMRO, Tupurkovski and the multiethnic coalition that claimed to support Macedonia’s membership in the EU and NATO briefly appeased the West. The newly formed government also promised to work toward interethnic harmony and economic recovery. Nonetheless, it was not nearly as solid a partner of the West as its predecessor. Efforts to fix the economy and lessen ethnic divisions largely failed, in part owing to the escalation of the war in neighboring Kosovo. In the end corruption and organized crime became virtually synonymous with the VMRO coalition.
The Role of Kiro Gligorov
It would be impossible to discuss the post-communist Macedonian political scene without mentioning the key role of President Kiro Gligorov, who was returned to office in 1994, but by an extremely slim margin, barely edging out Ljubco Georgievski of VMRO. Gligorov, who remained in the post of president until 1999, was a member of the last Titoist generation of post-Yugoslav leaders. During World War II, he had been a Partisan sympathizer, and in the SFRJ, he held top economics posts in Belgrade as well as posts in the presidency of the SFRJ and the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. He was among the creators of a 1965 marketization program that never worked. When he ascended to the presidency of Macedonia, he soon assumed the role of a “father of the nation.” Though he was clearly not a great democrat, Gligorov was also not a “father” in the authoritarian mold of Croatia’s Franjo Turepeatedly that Macedonia had no territorial aspirations against its neighbors and negotiated the peaceful withdrawal of the JNA from Macedonian soil, assuring its sovereignty. In so doing, he worked closely with and was strongly supported by the West, which exposed him to criticism by nationalists. He worked with the West because he had an acute understanding of Macedonia’s internal and external vulnerability, and he knew that Western support would not be forthcoming if Macedonia became an authoritarian state. In light of nationalist pressure, cooperation with the West often meant privately giving in to Western demands while publicly rejecting them. He remained highly popular (a kind of successor to Tito in a country in which Tito’s portrait still hangs from many walls); indeed, a 1995 poll gave him a 95 percent approval rating (Perry 1997: 246–47). More important, both ethnic Macedonians and Albanians viewed him in a positive light. In the mid 1990s, 76 percent of Al banians and 93 percent of ethnic Macedonians considered President Gligorov to have “considerable beneficial influence in inter-ethnic relations” (Najcev ska et al. 1996: 93). He was the only politician, in fact, to transcend the divisive ethnic boundary. He understood that material conditions had a lot to do with the progress of ethnic relations and Macedonian state legitimacy among Albanians, saying: “The most important thing for us would be for Macedonia to be developed economically. And if we live better in Macedonia than in Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, and Albania, then Albanians will remain here” (quoted in Liotta 2001: 249).
It was President Gligorov who requested that a UN peacekeeping force monitor Macedonia’s post-communist transition. His role was so critical in the 1990s that when on 3 October 1995 twenty kilograms of explosives detonated in a car next to Gligorov’s and nearly killed him, the government was seriously destabilized. LP leader and President of the Sobranie Stojan Andov became interim president. Gligorov survived but lost an eye and was left with shrapnel fragments in his head. Those responsible for the assassination attempt were never identified.
The Main Parties and Their Orientations
At one point in the 1990s there were as many as sixty parties registered in Macedonia, which was quite extraordinary for a country of two million peo-ple.12 However, only a few really mattered. It was difficult to speak of a truly liberal democratic party in post-communist Macedonian politics, especially since nearly all parties were mono-ethnic. It was possible to identify parties who spoke to democracy and the free market more than others, and it was also possible to categorize parties by the degree to which they expressed willingness to work with the West and toward integration into its institutions. The three most liberal parties were the DP and LP and Tupurkovski’s DA. All supported a free market, an inclusive democracy, and Macedonia’s integration into NATO and the EU. They maintained extensive contacts with Western organizations and states. Yet, at times, they exhibited nationalist tendencies and opposed extending full rights to ethnic Albanians (Perry 1997: 243), as evidenced by Andov’s abrupt departure from the ruling coalition for what he perceived to be overrepresentation of Albanians in government. The LP’s roots were in Markovi
While composed of some members with genuine democratic inclinations, for the most part the SDSM spoke the language of liberalism in order to please Macedonia’s Western sponsors and therefore ensure their continued support. Beyond this facade, however, it often acted undemocratically and jealously guarded its power and influence. It was a highly undemocratic organization internally. While it spoke to greater inclusion for ethnic Albanians and included them in governing coalitions, they were given insignificant portfolios and relegated to second-class status. And the SDSM took a decidedly hard-line stance toward calls for expanded Albanian language and educational rights, as demonstrated in the University of Tetovo conflict described later in this chapter. Its young leadership, and Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski in particular, learned to speak in the language of democracy, human rights, and the free market, thus showing a consistently democratic face to the West. Many Macedonians, aware of the SDSM’s flaws, nevertheless supported the party because it was perceived as the better of two evils and was, after all, the party of the popular president Gligorov.13
VMRO started the decade as a virulently nationalist party and ended it as a corrupt political machine that simulated a commitment to democracy.14 It showed itself to be interested in power above all else, and since power could not be achieved without the West’s blessing, like the SDSM it fell in line with the basic tenets of formal democracy. VMRO’s leader, Ljupco Georgievski, was an avowed anti-communist nationalist and an advocate of Macedonian independence since the 1980s and maintained close contact with the Macedonian diaspora, among whom there was no shortage of radicals. Throughout the 1990s, VMRO claimed a membership of 150,000, by most estimates greatly inflated.
By choosing the VMRO name, it sought to connect with most important icon of Macedonia’s history but openly denounced violence. Until 1998, its program had decidedly illiberal connotations that antagonized not only Macedonian Albanians but also Macedonia’s neighbors. It sought to unite Macedonians and Macedonia in a single state and advocated the return of property confiscated by neighboring sates. In so doing, it implicitly challenged state borders, which inflamed passions in Greece. VMRO was openly anti-Albanian, explicitly opposing more rights for the Albanian minority, claiming fear of a Greater Albania. During the 1990 and 1994 campaigns, VMRO argued that multiculturalism was a threat to Macedonian unity and would lead to federalization and ultimately to war. According to Georgievski, there was no future for a multiethnic state in the Balkans. With the campaign slogan “Macedonia is for Macedonians,” VMRO made it clear that ethnic Albanians would be kept in their place should the nationalists take power (Williams 2000: 113). It was no surprise, then, that among its most ardent supporters were ethnic Macedonians living in regions populated by ethnic Albanians, where ethnic tensions were highest, though it also enjoyed strong support among unemployed industrial workers, farmers, rural residents, and uneducated people, in other words, those most adversely affected by the shocks of the 1980s crisis and post-communist economic transition.15 As economic conditions got worse and competition for resources increased, VMRO’s simple and radical populist message resonated with the disaffected segments of society. Besides promoting inter-ethnic divisions, the VMRO also played to divisive fears among ethnic Macedonians.16
Although decidedly focused on narrow ethno-national concerns, among the ethnic Albanian parties the PDP was the most liberal, interested in compromise, and committed to working within the framework of an independent Macedonian state. It consistently focused on pragmatic concerns, such as promoting employment and educational opportunities for Albanians. But it gradually lost influence and its leader, Nevzat Halili, lost credibility as a declining economy and the efforts officertain political entrepreneurs radicalized rural Albanians.17 One such entrepreneur was Arben Xhaferi, who, like his VMRO counterpart Georgievski, espoused openly nationalist views. As described earlier, he broke of from the PDP, forming the PDP-A (later the DPA) and called for radical, rather than incremental, change in extending rights to Albanians. This caused a rift within the “rump” PDP: Halili was ousted as leader, and Abdurahman Aliti emerged as the head of the officially recognized faction. Aliti continued to cooperate with the Crvenskovski administration, though at a cost to government stability.
Xhaferi took a decidedly hard line and attracted poorer and less educated segments of the ethnic Albanian electorate. Some of his statements in the early 1990s suggested that ethnic Albanians were ready to secede from Macedonia if not afforded adequate rights, which greatly increased tensions in the mixed ethnic areas of western Macedonia. He also cautioned that violence between nationalities would be a likely outcome if the government did not enact major reforms. The PDP-A’s vice president, Menduh Thaçi, a former dental student, was even more radical, arguing that if “Macedonians go on refusing Albanians’ demands, there will be bloodshed here . . . only Albanians hold the key to stability in this country.” Such talk, however, frightened and alienated not only ethnic Macedonians but many Albanians as well (Perry 1997: 240).
In the end, however, very much like Georgievski, Xhaferi showed himself to be more of a pragmatist than a fundamentalist when he decided to sign on to the VMRO-DPA coalition. His reward was a tangible eight ministerial posts and tacit Western support, which he very well knew he would need in order to achieve any kind of real influence in post-communist Macedonia. In other words, his interests in political power and its spoils ultimately superseded any ideological commitment. Yet, the radical program that the PDP-A had been promoting in Albanian-populated areas could not be abandoned overnight, and certain elements in the party continued to espouse extremist positions in their localities even as the top leadership showed a conciliatory face to the West.
Parties representing Macedonia’s other ethnic groups (Slavic Muslims, called Torbeši; Turks; Roma) were also present on the political scene but exercised limited influence and generally had very moderate programs.18 There was one notable exception: the Democratic Party of Serbs in Macedonia (Demokratska Partija na Srbite vo Makedonija, DPS, Serbian: Demokratska Partija Srba u Makedoniji). Though it clearly did not represent the views of all of Macedonia’s forty thousand ethnic Serbs, the DPS was involved in a number of anti-Macedonian activities and maintained ties with ultranationalist leaders željko “Arkan” Ražnajtovic and Vojislav Šešelj in Serbia proper as well as with the Serbian Orthodox Church. For good measure, the DPS was anti-American, anti-NATO, and anti-EU.
The Nature of Political Cleavages
The post-communist Macedonian political scene, then, reflected deep divisions in Macedonian society that painted a bleak picture in terms of the liberal content of the polity. The most significant division was ethnic, between the country’s Slav Macedonian and ethnic Albanian populations. Macedonia’s people voted entirely along ethnic lines throughout the 1990s and lived in parallel societies. This ethnic division was simultaneously a rift between ethnic Albanians and the independent Macedonian state, which many ethnic Albanians did not see as legitimate.
Yet, deep divisions were present among ethnic Macedonians as well, especially in terms of their acceptance of Western liberalism. Though nationalism in Macedonia did not have the wide support it did in Croatia and Serbia due to various insecurities and uncertainties about Macedonian national identity itself, anti-Western sentiment was mobilized at numerous points in the 1990s. Macedonian elites felt that they had no choice but to submit to Western influence—but this did not mean that it had wide acceptance on the ground. Indeed, to some degree it had the opposite effect, delegitimizing both the government and the Western project, especially when the public perceived that the West was supporting corrupt and inept politicians.
The widespread perception of corruption and ineffectiveness, in fact, characterized the deepest division of all in Macedonia by the end of the 1990s: that between the people and their government and its institutions. Public opinion polls conducted throughout the 1990s revealed a profound distrust of the state and all of its institutions (Perry 1997). Reports of corruption and abuse of by persons at the highest levels of power abounded. Macedonians were deeply distrustful of political parties, the Sobranie, the police, the judiciary, and virtually every other key state institution. In their place, they relied on traditional and informal networks to acquire goods and services, to mediate disputes, and to conduct everyday life, all of which deepened intra-ethnic solidarity. There was the collapse of a pyramid scheme in 1997 promoted by a Bitola-based savings institution, which bilked 30,000 customers of $90 million (Karatnycky et al. 1999: 399). There were stories of corruption in the Interior Ministry, with companies owned by friends or relatives of ministry officials given lucrative contracts. Macedonians, furthermore, were exposed to corruption in everyday life and transactions. Routine state services, such as power or trash removal, functioned irregularly.19 It is no wonder that Macedonians came to see their government as deeply illegitimate and the state itself as a rent-seeking, unaccountable, indifferent entity. If this is how Slav Macedonians felt, asked Hislope, “How can Albanians be asked to sign on to the regime” (2002: 36)?
Indeed, ethnic Albanians, besides being disconnected from the idea of a Macedonian state, also did not perceive that their own leaders were working in their interests, leading to a rift between ordinary Albanians and their political elite, which left a void in legitimacy that was easily filled by radicalism. So interethnic cooperation at the top was not an indication of a positive move toward a multiethnic society but rather a vestige of facade democracy, window dressing that kept elites in the good favor of the West and their pockets lined with money earned through illegal transactions involving Western financial aid.20 Slav Macedonian parties pretended to cooperate with ethnic Albanian ones, and ethnic Albanian parties often pretended to represent their ostensible constituency’s interests. This certainly guaranteed a certain degree of stability and a preservation of parliamentary government, but it did little to ensure stability and legitimacy in the long run.
The Ethnic Albanian Minority, the Politics of Inequality, and State Legitimacy
The “Albanian factor” has dominated post-communist Macedonian politics.21 There was rarely any relief from the pressure of politicized ethnicity. As Pettifer observes, ethnic Albanians were seen as “having a practical veto over the future of the state” (2001: 138).
The very question of just how many Albanians there are in Macedonia is a deeply politicized one, with ethnic Albanians accusing the Macedonian government of deliberately undercounting them and ethnic Macedonians accusing ethnic Albanians of inflating population figures to make more demands on the state. It is clear that both sides have engaged in manipulation to suit political ends. The most credible census conducted in the 1990s under the auspices of the EU counted 443,914 Albanians, or 22.9 percent of the total population, and 1,288,330 Macedonians, or 66.6 percent of the total population. Even these figures, however, have been disputed by Albanian groups. Not in dispute was the fact that Macedonia’s Albanians were the fastest growing population group in Europe in the 1990s (Hislope 2003: 131).
Albanians claim to be descendants of extinct Illyrians, who lived in the Balkans well before the days of Alexander the Great. In Macedonia, they live in a crescent-shaped region that begins in Kumanovo to the northeast, stretches through Skopje to Tetovo in the northwest, and then reaches south along the Albanian border to Debar, Gostivar, and Struga. As Muslims, during the duration of the Ottoman Empire, they were treated better than their Orthodox counterparts. They did not fare so well under Titoist communism compared to other groups for a number of historical reasons. A combination of political repression and economic exclusion pushed them to the sidelines of society, making them the primary participants in an informal economy. Traditional, clan-based, conservative patterns of rural life reinforced this role (Hislope 2003).
They are separated from Slav Macedonians by both religion and ethnicity. The two groups live side by side and yet function in complete segregation in virtually all spheres of life. Social networks are intra-ethnic, as are places of employment. Unlike Bosnia, intermarriage is virtually nonexistent, and a large majority of both groups said that they would never consider marrying someone from the other (Najcevska et al. 1995: 78). Mutual stereotypes reinforce suspicions. Casual racism against ethnic Albanians pervades Macedonian life. Ethnic Albanians are commonly referred to with the pejorative “šiptari,” and even educated Macedonians advance a view that sees Albanians as inferior. Such stereotypes are reinforced by the fact that large numbers of ethnic Albanians, who never benefited from SFRJ-era urbanization and modernization, live in poorer rural conditions in extended families in which women are afforded inferior status. Albanians, in turn, scoff at the construed nature of ethnic Macedonian identity and are irritated by Macedonians’ obsession with history.22
The fear of a greater Albania has fueled ethnic Macedonian nationalism and attitudes toward Albanians to a large degree. This fear arises first and foremost from the fact the fact that Albanian populations in the region are geographically contiguous. Given the international community’s clear opposition to such a project, Albania’s rejection of such a possibility, and the very weak desire of most Macedonian Albanians to join Albania proper due to even worse economic prospects there, such fears were largely unfounded, yet they were driven by both nationalist ethnic Macedonian politicians and ethnic Albanian extremists. Slav Macedonian insecurity was also based on demographic trends in the Albanian community.23
Interethnic relations and the position of the Albanian minority were shaped first and foremost by the politics of inequality. Inequality between Slav Macedonians and Albanians was largely a holdover from communist-era socioeconomic structures and was intensified by poor economic prospects following independence. By every possible measure, ethnic Albanians were worse off than their Macedonian counterparts. In the area of education, schools where Albanians is taught were generally inferior, and there was no officially recognized university teaching in Albanian in the 1990s. As a result, Albanian children regularly dropped out after eight years of compulsory education (Perry 1997: 259). Of the 27,000 students enrolled in higher education in the mid-1990s, only 1.5 percent were ethnically Albanian. Eighty percent of prisoners were ethnic Albanians. A high percentage of Albanian youth were unemployed, faced poor economic prospects, and regarded violence as an acceptable form of political expression. They were seriously underrepresented in state institutions, a major source of employment in the absence of viable private sector. Among Albanians, unemployment stood at 60 percent, while it was only 30 percent for Slav Macedonians (Hislope 2003: 2008).
Not all Albanians were poor. Many were beneficiaries of the flourishing secondary economy, with major advantages in the market environment.24 This also fueled the perception among Slav Macedonians that most ethnic Albanians are thieves and criminals. Ethnic Albanians were also overrepresented among guest workers in Western Europe, which translated into remittances for many ethnic Albanian families. In the 1990s, Macedonian Albanians may have been doing better than their ethnic kin in Kosovo or Albania proper, but as Hislope (2003) notes, they did not see these places as a benchmark. This fact notwithstanding, they were in an inferior material position as a whole and in times of economic scarcity, when many Slav Macedonians were struggling, demands for greater equality were likely to lead to conflict. In post-communist Macedonia, there were few resources to go around, and Slav Macedonians claimed them because they perceived themselves to be the “owners” of the new state. It was no wonder that when the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army framed its struggle in 2001 as a fight for greater equality, it struck a resonant chord. This overlap of ethnic, religious, and economic differences meant that there were few cross-cutting cleavages of the type emphasized by scholars as critical to political compromise and stability. An editorial in the Albanian-language daily Flaka a Vëllazërimit captured the issue of inequality when it asked rhetorically, “How can a state succeed when one part of its population is educated, while the other is semi-literate? Does Macedonia have a greater interest in having [ethnic] Albanian children selling cigarettes on the streets than in working with computers?” (quoted in Hislope 2003: 59).
This inequality, and the discrimination perceived to cause it, lay behind low levels of ethnic Albanian support for a Macedonian state and its institutions. While among Slav Macedonians there was a very low level of trust in state institutions, ethnic Albanians simply did not recognize these institutions and relied on alternative ones in daily life.25 In the 1990s, this was seen in everything from such non-state-affirming activities as a refusal to recognize the constitution and a boycott of the referendum for independence to the flying of Albanian national flags in localities where ethnic Albanians predominate and a practice that especially irritated Slav Macedonians, cheering for the Albanian soccer team in international matches and singing the Albanian national anthem. Furthermore, taxes were rarely collected in some Albanian-populated areas, where even the police did not dare to enter.26
It was in this context that several destabilizing interethnic conflicts occurred in the 1990s in which large-scale violence was averted largely by the intervention of the international community:
- Throughout the 1990s, there was conflict over the wording of the constitution and its exclusion of ethnic Albanians.
- In 1992, police and ethnic Albanians clashed in the Skopje neighborhood of Bit Pazar. Four persons were killed and thirty-six injured. Extremists were ready to fight, but PDP leaders called for calm.
- In 1993 authorities announced the discovery of a plot by an unknown group, the All-Albanian Army, to overthrow the government. High-ranking ethnic Albanian officials, including two cabinet ministers, were named in the plot. The Albanian community labeled the news as a hoax that could subsequently be used as an excuse to repress Albanians. Nevertheless, the news struck fears of extremism in most Macedonians and made ethnic relations deteriorate. This incident led to the PDP shakeup described earlier.
- In 1995, there were skirmishes and violent protests over the Albanian-language University of Tetovo. The Macedonian government initially closed the institution in 1995, leading to a riot and one death. Ethnic Macedonians interpreted the university as a challenge to state authority; Albanians saw it as a challenge to the status quo and a chance to increase their educational opportunities and their chances to participate in state administration. Attempts to close down the university were halted under Western pressure, but the regime refused to recognize the institution. President Gligorov came under severe pressure from the nationalists not to recognize it and claimed that it was the work of Albanian separatists. The incident greatly strengthened the PDP-A and Albanian radicals.
- In 1997, mayors of Albanian-populated localities raised the Albanian flag over city halls, which led to violent exchanges with the Macedonian police and army.
Due to Western ambivalence, government inaction, and the failures of Albanian politicians themselves, many of these issues remained unresolved at the end of the 1990s. Resentment among ethnic Albanians grew, as did the interethnic divide. The average Slav Macedonian, meanwhile, was convinced that ethnic Albanians were already being given too many rights. The influx of massive amounts of Albanian refugees from Kosovo in 1999 only exacerbated tensions. When I first visited Macedonia in 2000, the situation was clearly at the breaking point.
The Role of External Forces in Macedonia’s Transition
In post-communist Macedonia, Yugoslav paternalism was replaced with Western paternalism, which kept the state viable and the transition peaceful and asked only for a functioning democracy in return. Throughout the 1990s, “the success of [Macedonia’s] democratic transition was tied to the influence of external actors as much as the internal development of the political system” (Cabada 2001: 101). An array of actors were involved in Macedonia’s early post-communist transition: international organizations like the UN and the EU, individual states, and international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, which were all but creating the state budget throughout the 1990s. The OSCE mission was especially involved in the political sphere, helping to broker agreements among political parties (Stoilovski 1999: 85–95). Various international NGOs were active in monitoring Macedonia’s transition: their reports were enough to cause political firestorms, change policies, and even determine elections, which caused great resentment among Macedonian politicians of all stripes.27 They became, in many ways, Macedonia’s de facto civil society and were often staffed by young, educated Macedonians who saw their presence as a beneficial employment opportunity. In day-today political life, foreign influence over the government remained very strong, “with a small committee of EU and American ambassadors acting in a highly interventionist way over many policy and practical issues” (Pettifer 2001: 128).
In general, the Western project in Macedonia went through two phases. In the first, external actors were interested in maintaining stability at any cost, while in the second, they began to shape the content of state policy under the general theme of liberalism. Macedonian elites, for their part, became adept at simulating democracy, which often meant saying one thing to international officials while doing another. The public was deeply ambivalent and at times distrustful of Western motives; when, as one Macedonian politician described to me, “Americans began imposing their ideas of ethnic quotas on us,” the Western project lost support among many ordinary Slav Macedonians.28 Throughout the 1990s, while supporting Macedonian sovereignty, the West sent very ambiguous and, at times, contradictory messages about the prospect of Macedonian membership in Western organizations. By the end of the 1990s, Macedonians had no clear idea of when and if they would be admitted to NATO or the EU. Part of the problem was that pro-Western attitudes existed in Macedonia out of a profound sense of weakness rather than a genuine desire to pursue liberal reform.
The West, however, did not address itself to the serious interethnic problem until it was too late, perhaps mistakenly believing that the interethnic coalitions it had encouraged reflected actual relations. The elites in these coalitions, for their part, were happy to play the part and derive the benefits that come with political power. In the Sobranie, ethnic Albanian elites consistently denied support for a greater Albania but at the same time did not sign on to state institutions and used inflammatory rhetoric in their home constituencies, giving more radical members of the Albanian community room to pursue separatistism. In the same manner, Slav Macedonian elites spoke the language of multiculturalism and human rights in front of international officials but did little to implement the kind of policies that would increase the rights of ethnic Albanians.
Relations with Greece
The most difficult relationship turned out to be with Greece, which refused to recognize Macedonian independence because of objections to the use of the name “Macedonia,” the flag, and accusations of irredentist claims on Greek territory in the Macedonian constitution. Greece blocked Macedonian cooperation with the EU and its membership in a number of international organizations. When other countries went ahead and recognized Macedonian sovereignty, Greece imposed a crippling trade embargo on the country, which by some estimates cost the Macedonian economy $40 to $50 million (Williams 2000: 26). Eventually the United States helped broker an agreement in which Macedonia was recognized under the cumbersome name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (FYROM; Shea 1997: 304). President Gligorov faced significant nationalist backlash at home for approving this deal, but it allowed Macedonia to be admitted to the OSCE, Council of Europe, and NATO’s PFP. In the long run, economic relations with Greece grew, and it became the largest foreign investor in Macedonia. But the Greek embargo also helped stimulate the extensive smuggling that became a staple of Macedonia’s underground economy.
UNPREDEP
The most concrete manifestation of Western involvement in Macedonia was the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) that played a major role in maintaining stability in Macedonia from 1993 to 1999. On 11 November 1992, during a meeting in New York with UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, President Gligorov requested that the UN deploy “observers” in Macedonia “in view of his concern about the possible impact on it of fighting elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia” (Williams 2000: 43). The following day, Gligorov also discussed the deployment of UN troops with Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, co-chairmen of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia. They later wrote to the secretary-general supporting such a deployment. For the first time in history, the UN’s peacekeepers would be deployed before potential outbreak of conflict, rather than after hostilities had erupted.29 At the time, Gligorov claimed that the need for the deployment was due only to external, not internal, threats. The UN, for its part, clearly perceived an internal threat, a disagreement that would persist throughout the UNPREDEP’s mandate in Macedonia. The United States would play a significant role in this force, and in fact Macedonia became the first place in the former Yugoslavia where the United States deployed ground troops. The presence of U.S. troops greatly enhanced the deterrence capability of the UNPREDEP forces. As Williams writes, the message was simple: “hands off Macedonia.” Williams also notes that Gligorov’s request was “a tribute to his foresight and a reflection of his keen understanding of the volatile Balkan region” (2000: 36).
The UNPREDEP forces were deployed in 1993 with the following mandate: (1) to monitor the border areas and report to the secretary-general, through the force commander, any developments that could pose a threat to Macedonia; and (2) to deter threats from any source, as well as to prevent clashes which could occur between external elements and Macedonian forces, thus helping to strengthen security and confidence in Macedonia (Williams 2000: 45). Over the course of its presence in Macedonia, however, the mandate of UNPREDEP was expanded to include three “pillars” of responsibility: political, military, and socioeconomic. The political pillar included reconciliation and mediation between the Slav Macedonian and Albanian communities, the military pillar rested on the deployment of international troops at the northern and western borders, and the socioeconomic pillar was intended to assist local communities with financial aid (Vayrynen 2003: 51). This expanded mandate included the creation of “good offices” designed to deal with civilian affairs and a special police monitoring force, CIVPOL. The UN insisted on CIVPOL’s presence, “a signal that there was a link between the country’s interethnic relations and its stability and that this matter was of legitimate concern to the world body” (Williams 2000: 49). This new civilian intervention eventually came to cooperate quite closely with the OSCE in brokering deals among political parties and mediating in interethnic disputes. One former Macedonian cabinet member described to me how he received numerous phone calls from the UNPREDEP political officer during the dispute, informing him that “it would not be in his interest” to back harsh measures against the renegade institution.30 Henryk Sokalski, who led the UNPREDEP mission for much of the 1990s, writes:
Dialogue, discretion, and quiet diplomacy were the basic tools of action. The mission developed and maintained active contacts with political forces and ethnic groups in the country as a means of promoting domestic stability. Constant efforts were made to reduce the level of mistrust among the country’s political and ethnic actors and set in place a dialogue on questions regarding the rights of ethnic communities and national minorities. UNPREDEP was recognized as a significant instrument for facilitating dialogue, restraint, and practical compromise between the different segments of Macedonian society. (2003: 108)
By 1996, the UN secretary-general was openly suggesting that the most likely source of instability in Macedonia was an internal threat, which gave the UN license to expand its “advising” capabilities in political and other civilian affairs:
The original purpose of deploying a preventive United Nations mission in FYROM was to prevent conflicts from spilling over or threatening that country. Recent developments in the region, and the enhanced international standing of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, have made such a scenario more remote. Moreover . . . it has become increasingly evident that the primary threat to the country’s stability may come from internal political tensions. UNPREDEP has accordingly devoted considerable attention to strengthening dialogue between the political forces and has assisted in monitoring human rights and interethnic relations. (quoted in Williams 2000: 134)
As for the troops themselves, they were a small (at most fifteen hundred peacekeepers) but very effective entity. Besides keeping any potential external threats at bay, they succeeded in demarcating Macedonia’s border with Serbia and prevented numerous incidents from erupting into large-scale conflicts.31 The importance of the security guarantee they provided, internal or external, cannot be underestimated for a small and weak state like Macedonia, which had no army to speak of. The internal political ramifications were multifold.32 It kept radicalism at bay and provided much-needed international legitimacy to the government.
The Macedonian political elite was deeply divided over the UNPREDEP presence, while public opinion remained quite ambivalent. The mission received the strongest support from the ruling SDSM, while VMRO opposed it, and especially its “good offices” function, which it saw as a way to undermine Macedonian sovereignty and impose foreign values on the Macedonian citizenry.33 Ethnic Albanians were initially also ambivalent, even turning hostile when it became obvious that UNPREDEP was unwilling to raise the uncomfortable ethnic question for fear of disrupting stability.
UNPREDEP was not without its critics, however. In the late 1990s Human Rights Watch accused the UN and the OSCE of supporting the Gligorov regime unconditionally and of tolerating human rights violations in Macedonia to maintain stability: “In the name of stability, however, both the UN and OSCE tend to defend the status quo in Macedonia and downplay human rights violations within the country. Only gentle criticism is directed against a friendly government that is seen as a stabilizing force” (quoted in Williams 2000: 133). The U.S. role was also criticized in this regard since it extended uncritical support to Gligorov and Crvenkovski and largely neglected ties with VMRO. To some, this sent the message that the lack of democracy and corruption would be tolerated in the name of short-term stability. The United States was also criticized for not doing enough to address the ethnic problem:
In fact, the Americans are in Macedonia for the wrong reasons, and are destined to accomplish nothing whatsoever. The main threat to Macedonia is internal disintegration, not invasion from outside. Despite efforts to integrate its substantial Albanian minority, the Macedonian government is facing a steadily rising Albanian opposition and, when it comes to keeping them down, Macedonia remains Serbia’s potential ally. . . . The chances are that once the Albanian question erupts Washington will conclude that it should have stationed its troops in the near-by Greek island of Corfu; at least the weather is more welcoming there. (Eyal 1995)
The United States was clearly uncomfortable with VMRO’s victory in the 1998 election, a fact captured by one Macedonian newspaper when it published a top-ten list of election “losers” that included then American Ambassador to Macedonia Christopher R. Hill (Szajkowski 2000: 266).
The UNPREDEP mission was renewed by the Security Council several times but finally ended in 1999 due to the misled foreign policy of the VMRO government, which decided to recognize Taiwan in exchange for $2 billion in Taiwanese aid and investment. China promptly vetoed an extension of UNPREDEP’s mandate, which in a skewed way actually served VMRO’s nationalist goals. The move, according to Vayrynen, was a “politically shortsighted exchange of Macedonia’s security and stability” which “helped to line the pockets of a few individuals in Skopje” (2003: 62). The end of the UNPREDEP mission combined with the outbreak of war in neighboring Kosovo was the beginning of the end for Macedonia’s tenuous stability. The accumulated dissatisfaction with illegitimate “democratic” government was bound to take its toll.
The Economics of Extreme Scarcity
Macedonia analyst Sam Vaknin has written that in the 1990s Macedonia had become a bit like a drug addict, entirely dependent on external handouts, which in turn allowed donors to demand anything of the government.34 Indeed, “without substantial and continual serious international financial aid through the World Bank and the IMF, and specific programs to stabilize the value of the currency against a German Mark benchmark, the economy would have collapsed” (Pettifer 2001: xxxvii). At first external aid was negligible, but by 1992 it was on the increase. Although aggregate aid levels never reached those received by Bosnia, Macedonia was nonetheless a top recipient of aid, as shown in table 6.1. In exchange for aid, international financial institutions were directly involved in economic policy-making.35
This outside assistance notwithstanding, the Macedonian economy could not withstand the shocks of independence, and the macroeconomic effects were disastrous. The economy shrunk every year from 1990 to 1995. Industrial production declined by 43 percent in the first five years of transition, the rate of inflation soared to high of 1,691 percent in 1992, and unemployment reached 36 percent in 1993. Foreign exchange reserves were negligible. Between 1990 and 1995, GDP per capita fell from $2,200 to $700. There were no industries that could be relied on to reverse the economic decline. Though industrialization had taken place under the SFRJ, most of this industry was outmoded and had been operating in the red since at least the 1980s, if not earlier. Remittances from abroad, a burgeoning shadow economy, and the availability of cheap food were the only factors that kept many from falling into dire poverty.
Table 6.1 External Assistance to Macedonia in Comparative Perspective, 1990–1998
Under the direction of international financial institutions, a number of macroeconomic stabilization measures introduced in 1993 did begin to reduce inflation. Tight monetary policy was maintained in cooperation with the IMF, and the large budget deficit began to decline. The denar was stabilized and strengthened. These macroeconomic successes, however, contributed to a rise in unemployment and a decline in production, and the downward trends continued long after they had been reversed in other transition economies. The poverty rate, meanwhile, rose steadily. According to the World Bank, poverty increased from 4 percent of the population in 1991 to over 20 percent in 1996 (Jeffries 2002: 301). To help counter the enormous social costs of marketization, the World Bank in 1998 provided Macedonia with additional credits worth $200 million (Lampe 2000: 388).
International financial institutions put considerable pressure on the Crvenkovski government to pursue privatization, and the government complied in spite of its leftist credentials. However, Macedonian privatization policy turned out to be a fiasco, with most firms “sold” to SDSM insiders at “preferential” rates. The politically connected managers who acquired the larger firms and banks could also rely on their insider status to secure bad loans from the unprivatized and government-controlled banks. This kind of privatization, besides doing little for state revenue and firm restructuring, also led to a public outcry that helped to bring the SDSM government down in 1998. Nor did ethnic Albanians, largely outsiders to state-owned enterprises, benefit at all from privatization. On the positive side, a small but observable private retail sector was appearing with European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) assistance.36
In 1996 things began to look more positive as the first positive growth rates were recorded, sanctions against FRY were lifted, and Greece removed its trade embargo against Macedonia. The macroeconomic situation was now stabilized, the state budget was under control, and liberalization was proceeding. Agreements were reached to settle the foreign debt, which at $844 million was almost 28 percent of total GDP. Foreign investment began to trickle in from Greece, though at $100 million in the late 1990s it was still negligible compared to the FDI levels of other transition economies, such as the Czech Republic, where total FDI stood at $4.5 billion in the same period. It was difficult to lure investors to a country that the World Bank ranked 107th in terms of risk, behind the likes of Pakistan and Romania. Complicated rules, low visibility, a weak banking sector, and political instability continued to keep investors away (Jeffries 2002: 301).
However, any improvements recorded in aggregate indicators were hardly felt by the bulk of ordinary people. Unemployment remained high (see figure 6.1). Many of the unemployed were newcomers to the labor market and were relatively educated, making the problem even more explosive. A strict visa regime all but eliminated a safety valve for unemployment.
It is difficult to ascertain precisely how much the various negative externalities hurt the Macedonian economy. Yet, the effects were not as bad as one might have expected.37 Sanctions- and embargo-busting fueled a thriving secondary economy that made some people rich and provided vital goods and services to others. Illicit economic activities arguably kept the rural Albanian population from erupting into revolt. There is no doubt, however, that the negative effects of the thriving underground economy were the criminality and corruption that they produced, seriously hurting the rule of law. The negative effects of the 1999 Kosovo War, which disrupted trade with FRY again and produced a mass influx of refugees, were somewhat offset by the investments provided by UNMIK and KFOR. As a prominent economist poignantly told me, post-communist Macedonia changed to a democratic political regime and changed to market rules, but it could not change its economic structure.38
Figure 6.1. Macedonia, Unemployment Rate, 1990–1999 (end of year)
The purpose of this chapter was to illustrate the nexus of economic scarcity, inequality, ethnic conflict, and state and regime illegitimacy in 1990s post-communist Macedonia. To this we must also add external sponsorship, which helped to sustain all of the above. The departure of UNPREDEP and the outbreak of war in Kosovo were the two contingent factors that brought internal contradictions to a head, and two years later the fragile balance tipped toward violent conflict and, nearly, a collapse of the state.
One of the main contradictions of 1990s Macedonia was the unwillingness of ethnic Macedonian elites to extend more rights to the ethnic Albanian community. They failed to realize that preserving the state would mean recognizing its multinational character, instead seeing multiculturalism (or multikulti, as my Macedonian friends say, with gentle irony) as a foreign, imposed concept. The ambiguity over Albanian rights could not continue forever: as long as the ethnic conception of the state prevailed, wrote the International Commission on the Balkans in 1998, “the state is unlikely to be accepted as legitimate by the minority (even without explicit encouragement from their ‘mother nation’)” (quoted in Williams 2000: 32). Ordinary Macedonians continued to believe that ethnic Albanians had too many rights. But by the end of the 1990s, tensions were so high that it would have been political suicide for any Macedonian politician to propose such an extension of rights. Indeed, it would take the West to force this on the Macedonian government in the Ohrid Agreement two years down the road. But at the time the West was too busy in neighboring Kosovo, and UNPREDEP was gone, leaving a few foreign NGOs and Western ambassadors in Skopje to keep the transition on course. It remained unclear how firm the West’s security, political, and economic commitments to Macedonia were, and the harsh criticisms of Macedonia’s refugee policy without a parallel effort to provide assistance during the Kosovo crisis provoked bitterness among Macedonians.39 Sašo Ordanoski, a political commentator, remarked that Macedonia was forced to pay the bill for Serbia’s injustice against Kosovo’s Albanians (quoted in Liotta 2001: 305).
In contrast to FRY, concessions to the West worked in Macedonia because the state was too weak and too poor to offer resistance. Compliance with Western demands out of a sense of vulnerability was problematic because it did not reflect broad pro-Western sentiment in Macedonian society, and what was perceived as blind cooperation with the West delegitimized both Macedonian elites and their Western sponsors in the eyes of much of the public. The submission of elites to the West was not only a function of weakness and aversion to risk, for they had a real interest in maintaining power and lining their pockets with foreign largesse. This was true for both ethnic Albanian and ethnic Macedonian politicians. Both saw an incentive structure in which democratic simulation would be sufficient to reap the benefits of power.
Yet, we cannot be too cynical about the motivations behind the interethnic coalitions of the 1990s. Slavs and Albanians, after all, depended on each other for Macedonia’s internal stability. And there was no question that the participation of Albanians in democratic institutions made conflict prevention more likely. The problem, again, lay in the legitimacy of these coalitions, whose members became adept at speaking the language of democracy and human rights with an eye toward the Western audience. Their behavior, however, departed from this ideal and over time it seemed that the public was more conscious of this than the West itself. The presence of ethnic Albanians in government also had the effect of raising expectations among their constituents. When ethnic Albanians saw that their leaders were not delivering, they stopped trusting them. This and the pressures of a failing economy contributed to facade democracy and regime illegitimacy.
Thus, a decade-long “oasis of peace” veiled an “oasis of corruption and crime” in 1990s Macedonia (Hislope 2002: 33). Some Western analysts, practitioners, scholars, and observers, however, failed to realize this in time, instead publishing glowing reports of Macedonian stability and incipient democracy. The lessons to them, and to the study of democratization more generally, are that Western sponsorship has limits in the face of poor economic conditions and deep societal divisions and that the illegitimate, facade democracy that the combination of the three can at best produce is unsustainable.
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