  Presencia-Opinión / Balcáns
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| Macedonia after the Ohrid Agreement Por Inma Pérez Rocha (Canal Mundo, 23/12/2003) |
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Two year after the signature of the Ohrid Framework Agreement several questions discussed in that document remain unsolved; the most complex at the domestic level is how to improve inter-ethnic relations within a state, that declares itself multiethnic according to the constitutional amendments after the Ohrid agreement. The other big problem –now the main concern for the international community- is how to contribute to the disarmament of a country that, together with the neighbouring Kosova have proved a ready home for the biggest arms trade, as a result of the civil war in 2001, the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia, but also of hundreds of thousands of guns looted from state armories in Albania when its government collapsed in chaos and violence in 1997. There is such a concern that the United Nations Development Programme has sponsored a lottery, which consists in that all the players have to surrender a gun in return for a ticket and therefore, a chance at the prizes – the variety goes from a car to cell phones. The game, launched the first of November represents the most recent attempt to reduce the amount of weapons in the Balkans and Macedonian government wants to collect and destroy then in the country by the end of 2003, when an amnesty on turning in unlawful arms expires. Yet, what are the precedents of this macabre game that the UNDP and the Macedonian government have launched and that, after all gives prizes to people, who probably may have killed someone with the same gun they hand over? Since its independence ten years ago, Macedonia has never been so close to the edge of the abyss caused by a lack of faith and fear that paralyses everyone’s mind than in August 2001, when the conflict between Macedonians and Albanians started. Common people, as they left Tetovo, all its residents – Macedonians and Albanians- said they wanted to return and had no difficulty continuing to live with their neighbours. But, the voices were disrupted by the sound of armaments and politicians making speeches. In the present time, inter-ethnic relations are the great challenge in Macedonia and they represented a source of conflict that broke up in spring 2001 in Tetovo by the Albanian community, which mainly claimed a better economic situation and the third level of education in the Albanian language. Six months later the Framework Agreement was signed in the city of Ohrid and ratified by Parliament in November 2001. Firstly, the agreement expresses the establishment of closer relations between Macedonia and the Euro-Atlantic community and secondly, the promotion of the respect of ethnic identity for all Macedonian citizens. This could be a point of discussion if we realise that English is the only official language of this document, there is no an original copy in Macedonian or Albanian, which leads to the question of the ownership of the agreement. The pertinence of this question is supported by the fact that ethnic Macedonians felt the Ohrid Agreement as an imposition by the international community in favour of ethnic Albanians and, at the same time the other ethnic communities considered themselves excluded from the document. Yet, the fear to ethnic Albanians is also a consequence of the disarmament process; the day after the Ohrid Agreement was signed, the National Liberation Army, NLA signed the disarmament agreement in the village of Sipkovica with the NATO Ambassador Peter Feith, the signing of which permitted NATO troops to move in the country. The process of implementation would be done only after the international force had collected and destroyed the entire NLA arsenal. Two days after the signature of the agreement a presidential decree confirmed the amnesty of NLA members with the exception of those who had committed crimes under the jurisdiction of the Hague Tribunal. Days after the signing of the Ohrid Agreement were very difficult and the main preoccupation was how many NLA weapons NATO should be expecting to collect. In the end, the symbolic amount of 3, 000 pieces seemed ridiculous and humiliating for the Macedonian State, because Macedonian security services considered that it had to be at least 30, 000. Ethnic Macedonians saw NATO intervention as an establishment of a virtual protectorate and the atmosphere remained tense until now. The completion of the disarmament ended in September 2001 with a result of 3, 875 pieces handed over. The amount is insignificant if we take into consideration the huge number of weapons existing in the Balkan area and the enormous relevance of the process, because since the beginning the disarmament process was linked to the process of constitutional changes. One of the essential changes after the Framework Agreement affected the Preamble of the Constitution; according to the new formulation the reference to the Macedonian People had to be eliminated from the Constitution. After extensive consultations it was proposed that the term “Macedonian People” should be reincorporated into the text, but adding the Albanian, Turkish, Serbian and Vlach community who live there, namely, it was affirmed the multiethnic character of the Macedonian state. But, the fact that only two communities participated in the negotiations – Macedonian and Albanians- together with the unfulfilment of the treaty regarding the task of collecting weapons leads to the idea that there was since the beginning a clear intention of the establishment of a binational state by the Albanians and the international community and a resigned acceptation of this fact by the Macedonians. To wrap up, whereas some opinions sustain that the Ohrid Agreement was the best possible solution to the conflict situation, in the opinion of many people, the Framework Agreement failed first in the task of disarmament, secondly, because the negotiations and discussions were intensive between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians and left apart the other ethnicity’s mentioned in the Preamble of the Constitution, and thirdly because it is seen as imposed by the international community to calm down the violence of Albanian paramilitaries. Is in the aim of this appraisal to manifest that the task the UNDP and the Macedonian government have proposed should have been done already since the very beginning of the peace process, as it was accorded in Ohrid and perhaps, the best answer one could give to the UNDP’s imaginative proposal is that the future of a State cannot be drawn to lots. |
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Inma Pérez Rocha. |
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ÚLTIMA REVISIÓN: 24/12/2003 |
