By Jan Oberg

TFF PressInfo 59 – March 18, 1999

Originally published here.

“NATO’s build-up in Macedonia is incredible, and goes virtually unnoticed – except in that country. The Macedonian Parliament has not even discussed the deployment of more than 12.000 heavily armed troops and NATO bars journalists from investigating what is going on. NATO is now stronger than the country’s own defence. It took the international community, read OSCE, 5 months to get 1500 civilian monitors into Kosovo, but it took only a few weeks to get the military build-up underway in Macedonia.

When does some one investigate how this happened or who pays for this and the NATO build-up around Yugoslavia? Or ask what Macedonian Prime Minister Ljupco Geogievski was promised by U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, when the had breakfast recently in Washington?” – says Jan Oberg, TFF’s director and co-founder who has just visited the country.

“Here is another reasonably relevant question: Since Christopher Hill, the main author of the Kosovo Agreement on the table in Paris and the diplomat who prepared the ground for those talks, is also the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, did he calculate with this involvement of Macedonia and, if so, did he prepare Macedonian decision-makers in advance – or is this build-up something that has just unfolded as the things progressed? Is there any reasons for circumventing normal politeness and democratic decision-making by host-nation?

Why is NATO all over Macedonia, that already troubled and quite fragile state? For two reasons, namely a) to “extract” OSCE verifiers from Kosovo who can’t sit there if NATO decides to bomb Yugoslavia, and b) serve as a base for and reinforcement of the NATO forces stipulated in the Paris Kosovo document. Yugoslavia considers the extraction force a potential aggressor. It was NOT mentioned in the October 1998 agreement between Yugoslav President Milosevic and U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke – or so we assume since that agreement has not been made public.

The Yugoslav military and political leadership now perceive Macedonia as hosting forces aimed at aggression on Yugoslav territory – friends of your enemies being your enemies too. German forces are strongly represented and bring heavy equipment, and it is the first time they may get into regular warfare and not peacekeeping. Not surprisingly, Yugoslavs conscious of history will be reminded of last time Germany came to that region (1941).

Should NATO bomb Yugoslavia it can not be excluded that the Yugoslavs will retaliate against NATO troops where they are nearest, namely in Macedonia, e.g. in Kumanovo where, they are co-located with UN Blue Helmets. Thus, paradoxically, countries participating in bombing raids, such as Norway and Denmark, indirectly jeopardize the safety of their own UN peacekeepers in the region – unless they are “extracted” too. Do politicians in these countries not see the connection? [Read more…]