A
peacekeeping operation launched by
NATO on August 27, 2001 and was concluded on September 26, 2001. The primary goal was to peacefully collect and destroy
weapons from ethnic
Albanian rebels in
Macedonia and establish stability in the country. Approximately 3,500
British lead
NATO troops were sent to this the southernmost
former-Yugoslav Republic including some 600 Americans. The
mission concentrated around the cities of Kumanovo and Tetovo, the areas of highest
guerrilla activity in the north of the country.
The
NATO troops were invited by the Macedonian government to ensure that the ethnic
Albanian rebels fulfilled their part of a peace deal.
NATO agreed to send
troops under the sole condition that the political dialogue between the various parties in the
former-Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had a successful outcome and that a
cease-fire was respected. In exchange for disarming, the government has agreed to ratify
amendments to the
constitution giving the country's ethnic Albanians more rights.
It was not expected that the rebel army, the so-called “
National Liberation Army”(
NLA), would hand over most or the best of their
weapons, but it is hoped to serve as a confidence-building measure during the fragile post-agreement period. It is hoped that Operation Essential Harvest would lead to a de-escalation of ethnic and religious strife in
Macedonia, which was on the verge of
civil war earlier in 2001. The situation in Macedonia has indeed cooled off and Essential Harvest was deemed a success with NATO collecting more than the intial goal of 3,300 weapons.
Despite all the progress being made towards ending this conflict, there are still some troubles simmering under the surface. The majority ethnic Macedonians are strongly against giving the ethnic Albanians more rights. There is also no guarantee that the
NLA will
disarm appreciably or that they will continue in their cooperation in peace talks. A manifestation of this tenuous situation was the killing of a British solider on August 27th. Ian Collins, 20, was one of Britain’s Parachute Squadron Royal
Engineers and died after being hit by a block of concrete in the capital,
Skopje. The block was thrown from an overpass onto the
armored vehicle he was driving.
Macedonia is a
volatile country that doesn’t get much attention among
Americans or the American
press. With the
terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001 and the resulting shift of the United State’s attention toward a war on
terrorists world wide, many
Muslims in the
Balkans fear that they will fall off the edge of the west’s attention even further. With the west diverted, it is feared that their
enemies will gain the upper hand.