Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans
Author: John Phillips
Publisher: I.B.Tauris, 2004
230 pages
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The former Yugoslav republic's smooth transition to independence contrasted impressively with the violent succession of Slovenia, Croatia and bosnia. A decade ago, the preoccupation of western journalists' with Bosnia and Croatia meant that events in Macedonia received scant mention.
When the author returned to the Balkans to report on the demise of Slobodan Milosevic in September 2000, it was expected that any further fighting that broke out in the former Yugoslavia would most likely take place in Montenegro. The ousting of Milosevic in a bloodless uprising curtailed the tension between Beograd and Milo Djukanovic, the Montenegrin Leader, but as fighting flared with between ethnic Albanians and Yugoslav soldiers in southern Serbia it became clear not only that NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia had not resolved the status of Kosovo but also that Albanian nationalism was now potentially as much a major destabilising force in the region as Serbian nationalism had been hitherto.
This book attempts to explain how and why armed conflict broke out in Macedonia, threatening to plunge the Balkans into a fifth war a decade after Skopje seceded peacefully from Yugoslavia.
