-Caveat Lector- From http://www.serbianna.com/news/08_15/17.shtml }}>Begin ANALYSIS-Pitfalls loom for NATO mission in Macedonia By Mark Heinrich SKOPJE, Aug 15 (Reuters) - Renegade armed bands, weapons hidden in remote highlands, clashing expectations of peace terms and a local culture of vendetta loom as pitfalls in NATO's mission to disarm Albanian guerrillas in Macedonia. There are two sobering precedents for NATO strategists. When NATO combat troops swept into Bosnia in 1996 and Kosovo in 1999 to enforce accords ending two Balkan wars, they failed to prevent rampant murder, arson and mass flights of refugees from armed men bent on ethnic cleansing, profit or both. Peace has held in Bosnia and Kosovo, but it has been flawed and costly. It has entailed the indefinite presence of tens of thousands of NATO troops, de facto partition into mafia-ridden mono-ethnic entities, and drip-feed dependence on Western aid. Macedonia may have escaped a fifth Balkan war in a decade when the government signed a Western-mediated accord on Monday to end discrimination against minority Albanians, followed a day later by a guerrilla commitment to disarm. But NATO, wary of bogging down in another Balkan twilight zone of half- hearted peace, intends to have 3,500 soldiers amass guerrilla arms and ammunition within 30 days, then leave with their haul which is to be destroyed abroad. The NATO contingent will be equipped with only light arms to be used only in self-defence. Weapons are to be surrendered voluntarily -- the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA) guerrillas are not to be forcibly disarmed. As a result, "Operation Essential Harvest," as NATO's nascent mandate has been rousingly christened, may not reap much if NATO peacekeepers' experience in Kosovo is anything to go by. ARMS CACHES In 1999, the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army of Kosovo's majority Albanians handed in more than 10,000 weapons, 5.5 million rounds of ammunition and 27,000 grenades and formally disbanded by agreement with the NATO-led KFOR force. But many of the arms turned in were of inferior quality and KFOR has uncovered scores of higher-grade weapons caches ever since. There was little secret that further KLA firepower was hidden in the mountains of lawless northern Albania. Despite KFOR's search-and-seizure powers, radical ex-KLA guerrillas have staged hundreds of armed attacks on civilian Serbs in Kosovo, driving them into NATO-guarded ghettos. The great majority, about 150,000, fled to other parts of Yugoslavia. Last February, Albanian militants blew up a passing bus full of Serb civilians with a remote-controlled bomb, killing 10. In Bosnia, 60,000 combat-trained peacekeepers fulfilled an extra-territorial mandate to separate ethnic armies and impose security by controlling everything from roads to air space. But under the nose of the vaunted Implementation Force (IFOR), tens of thousands of Serbs fled or were stampeded out of Sarajevo's suburbs by armed Muslim avengers who looted, torched and occupied the abandoned property. In Bosnia and Kosovo, NATO was supposed to make it safe for refugees to go home in areas where they are now a minority. Few have dared to return for fear of attack, leaving history's most potent security bloc the custodian of ethnically cleansed fiefs. In Macedonia, sceptics led by the government believe the NLA will be free to bury prized weapons in the mountain wilderness of the north and across the border in Kosovo because NATO, as in the KLA's case, does not know how big the guerrilla arsenal is. SMUGGLING Rampant smuggling from Kosovo and Albania could swell it even after formal disarmament, as KFOR lacks the manpower or willingness to risk casualties to seal every last supply path. The underlying premise of NATO's mission, which is coupled with an amnesty for rebels and constitutional amendments to improve Albanian minority rights, is to help prevent a return to fighting and a possible fifth Balkan war. But that requires reconciliation, Western analysts say. The real concern, a British defence official said, is that the parties in Maceonida have different expectations from the NATO force. Although the NLA signed an accord with NATO to disarm and disband with its men to "be reintegrated in society," many guerrillas seek Albanian autonomy in the long term and would prefer NATO to act as a buffer force for terrain they hold. The largely pro-government media's expectations of the NATO mission contain no niceties like "reintegration" of rebels. "By the end of October, the army and police will enter the occupied regions," blared Utrinski Vesnik in a headline on Wednesday after the NLA's disarmament accord. NATO troops coming to Macedonia may also be at risk from deep-seated anti-Western bitterness among the majority Slavs who are convinced the major powers are pro-Albanian. Macedonians recall how their poor state of just two million people bowed to Western pleas to take in 230,000 Albanian war refugees from Kosovo in 1999, when it was praised as a rare model of communal calm in the Balkans, only to be stunned by Albanian rebels with Kosovo supply lines two years later. Now many Macedonians feel they have been forced to rewrite their constitution and sell out their sovereignty "at gunpoint." 12:10 08-15-01 End<{{ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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