Balkanalysis.com

Introduction The year began with now-perennial worries over a “spring offensive” from Albanian paramilitaries. While this did not in fact occur, numerous low-intensity attacks and terrorist bombings did go on throughout the year. As most of these were Kosovo-related, it seemed that, yet again, the unresolved situation there was the biggest threat to Macedonia’s security. [...]

While 2003 was not the banner year hoped for by the government, it still offered some signs for cautious optimism, especially in terms of foreign investment and a burnished international image owing to the general lack of violence. Painful privatization processes reached their final stages, amidst worker protests. Communications shortcomings, and to a lesser extent [...]

Introduction As the year began, the three-month-old SDSM-DUI government was still being given the benefit of the doubt. Sure, they had produced nothing substantial, but the people were willing to see what would happen. The fact that nothing has happened (i.e., no war), something so irrelevant in most countries, is nevertheless considered a victory here. [...]

Last year at this time we recapped the year 2002, and looked forward to the new year ahead. This text (reprinted yesterday), offered the following final prediction: “…2003 will be a far more interesting year than the lackluster, ambivalent 2002. We can only hope that it will be characterized by interestingly peaceful developments, rather than [...]

This text from one year ago, recapping the year 2002, is a fitting introduction to this week’s special series recapping 2003- and finishing with our predictions for 2004 on January 1st. While not as exciting a year as many had hoped, 2002 in Macedonia was in the end not so boring, either. Some saw it [...]

There’s a new policy livening things up over at the Pentagon. Israeli-trained US Special Forces are planning to set up a “hit squad” of former Baathist Iraqi intelligence officers, men who could get the dirt on resistance leaders and ideally, kill them. That such a remarkable plan is even being considered indicates the desperation gripping [...]

A sign of the times in Kosovo? According to official internal sources, there have been two near-death experiences for UN staff in Pristina in the past 4 days. While these did not result in any out-of-body experiences, they could have except for luck and watchfulness. On 20 December at 9:05 AM, an UNMIK vehicle in [...]

Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. By Larry Wolff Reviewed by Martin D. Brown Occasionally a book comes along which forces you to re-calibrate your perceptions and to re-adjust your mental horizons on a particular issue. If you are really lucky such a book will also enlighten you [...]

Idajet Beqiri, the self-proclaimed spokesman for the FBKSH- political wing of the Albanian National Army (ANA, or AKSH) has been arrested on the German-Swiss border. Beqiri “…was taken into custody Saturday after he attempted to cross by foot into Switzerland near the southern German city of Constance, said German border police spokesman Helmut Mutter.”Beqiri made [...]

General Wesley Clark’s testimony at the Hague Tribunal’s trial of Slobodan Milosevic offered, as Antiwar.com’s Nebosja Malic accurately predicted, nothing of substance. Even before he had testified Clark was already on the offensive, using the game plan of slander and character assassination to whet the appetite of a media audience which already knew what it [...]