Balkanalysis.com

By mid-January in Macedonia, the pundits were smirking. The lingering doubts regarding the oft-delayed donor conference were starting to seem justified. Yet after being rescheduled not once, not twice, but four times, the international donor conference for Macedonia looks like it will take place after all.

On March 12, representatives of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union and other bodies will sit down at the table and hammer out yet another package of loans and grants for the beleaguered Balkan state.

The donor conference is widely regarded as being a golden carrot dangled in front of the Macedonian leadership, as a reward for capitulating to the demands of ethnic Albanian rebels.

Under last summer’s Treaty of Ohrid, which was meant to end months of bitter fighting between the two sides, Macedonia was forced to appease its restive Albanian minority in several ways. These included changing the preamble to the Constitution, allowing practical self-rule in Albanian-majority areas, granting a blanket amnesty to Albanian fighters, and forcibly increasing the number of Albanians in government. These changes were widely resented by Macedonians, who saw them as excessively generous rewards for Albanian “terrorism,” and as being mandated and dictated by the West.

Now, with the arrival of the donor conference, the very same international community is trying to win over the Macedonians. They are bargaining that a cash infusion will ameliorate the situation: ethnic scapegoating, they believe, will all but disappear with the arrival of a healthy and stable economy. The West is also hoping that the economic boost provided by the donor’s conference will silence vociferous Macedonian leaders such as Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, who has been withering in his criticism of the international community.

On the other hand, the continual postponement of the donor conference can equally be seen as Western punishment for the harsh words of “hard-line nationalist” Georgievski and his peers. The fact that the conference is finally going ahead, therefore, suggests that the West is optimistic that Macedonian attitudes have changed. This seems to be have been confirmed by the optimistic comments of Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, who turned up recently at the World Economic Forum and the White House, to push the case for investing in Macedonia.

Some experts fear, however, that the conference may do more harm than good. The reliance on foreign handouts, it is suspected, may merely prolong the stagnant situation that brought Macedonia to the brink of civil war. Sam Vaknin, a former economic adviser to the Macedonian government and occasional economics correspondent for United Press International, is one of these critics.

Rather than improving the country’s macroenomic stability, Vaknin argues, the conference “will only prolong the Macedonian addiction to aid.” Whereas the country should utilize the aid to institute structural and institutional reforms and embrace the private sector, Macedonia has tended in the past to have more sordid uses for such “charity.”

In its 10 years of independence, the country has had several such donor conferences ˆšÂ¢Â¬Ã„” with basically the same results. “Macedonia,” according to Vaknin, “is more adept at lobbying foreign politicians for handouts than at developing its economy. It uses the enormous infusions of money it gets to line the pockets of its politicians, or to indulge in the consumption of imported goods made attractive by an unrealistic exchange rate.”

One wonders why the West would be so quick to squander its riches on a profligate son. For the cynics, the Western enthusiasm for buying influence in the Balkans continues because it has remained predictable: in other words, the unending venality and greed of ruling politicians assures the desired result will be obtained. For the starry-eyed interventionists, on the other hand, the international community has no other motive than to help renew Macedonia’s war-ravaged economy. Even if the bulk of the aid never gets where it should, they argue, the balance will help in some way.

What is agreed by all is that last year’s crisis was disastrous for the Macedonian economy. Ironically, what had been forecast as Macedonia’s best economic year ever ended with a loss of $500 million ˆšÂ¢Â¬Ã„” 15 percent of its gross domestic product. Funds meant for social services were redirected to the military and new business development shrank as foreign investors were scared off. In the hard-hit west of the country, thousands lost their jobs when several factories and a hotel were bombed by the Albanian National Liberation Army.

Closely linked with this militant group was the powerful Albanian mafia, which took advantage of the chaos to increase its smuggling of guns, drugs and women. Islamic mujahedin were allegedly seen fighting for the NLA.

Unsurprisingly, tourism plummeted in Macedonia during 2001. It has yet to make a return.

If the war was bad for Macedonia’s economy, however, it still benefited certain politicians and industries (such as defense). Some even believe that the crisis of 2001 was previously planned by the government and the Albanians; the former would profit from the anticipated Western bailout, while the latter would occupy the mountainous territories on the Kosovo border, where the people are mostly Albanian and where the smuggling routes are plentiful and well-hidden.

With the arrival of the donor conference, and the current devolution of power to regional autonomy, it looks as if both have come to pass. Yet ultimately, neither side has any real control over the situation. As long as the “international community” holds tight to the purse-strings, Macedonia remains obliged to take orders from Washington.

Next month’s donor conference will only continue this trend. Sovereignty for Macedonia remains a pitiful illusion; as Vaknin admits, “the West has created another dependency in the Balkans ˆšÂ¢Â¬Ã„” the Third Protectorate after Kosovo and Bosnia.”

This article was originally published on 13 February 2002 by UPI.