Balkanalysis.com

07/02/2006: Recent Macedonian Intelligence Agency Leadership Vacuum Enabled Albanian Militancy

07/02/2006: Recent Macedonian Intelligence Agency Leadership Vacuum Enabled Albanian Militancy

(Balkanalysis.com Security and Intelligence Brief 4) The tensions that boiled over into outright violence between Albanian parties DUI and DPA in mid-June have developed into matters of concern for the very structure and sustainability of Macedonia’s security services.

Skopje’s Vecer reported on July 1 that the appointment of Assistant Professor of Economy Kire Naumov as interim Intelligence Agency chief was made to stop the “chaos� that was developing due to the exploitation of a temporarily leaderless agency. Lazar Kitanovski, the previous intelligence chief, was obliged to resign on 16 June due to his becoming a candidate in the July 5 parliamentary elections.

According to the newspaper, in the two weeks from Kitanovski’s departure to the 35 year-old Naumov’s arrival, AI Vice-Director Muhamed Ismaili (an Albanian and closely affiliated with the DUI party of Ali Ahmeti) began giving illegal firearms licenses to “his people.� The paper states that Ismaili is very close with Gzim Ostreni, a former militant leader from DUI. The party’s Vice-President, Rafiz Aliti, recently warned that “if they [rival DPA] want violence, we’ll give them violence.� The threat came after several days of attacks against DUI members, which climaxed with the shooting of Aliti’s son.

Naumov is a former advisor of the president, Branko Crvenkovski. According to law, the AI is subordinate to the president. Macedonia’s other security agencies, the DBK and Military Intelligence, are controlled by the interior and defense ministries respectively.

The Albanian opposition led by DPA has consistently maintained that DUI-friendly DBK members have been responsible for attacks carried out against them. DUI of course denies the charges. Yet should the allegations be true, the question regarding the election might not be whether the incumbents or the opposition will survive, but whether the security structure itself will.