On the edge

A vote on municipal boundaries threatens to reopen old conflicts

COULD Macedonia go back to war? Watching Skopje's people sunning themselves as they wander around the market, it seems hard to believe. Harder still, when the casus belli turns out to be a referendum called for November 7th by opponents of a plan to redraw municipal boundaries. Yet the vote could upset the fragile peace deal signed in Ohrid that ended Macedonia's brief conflict in 2001.

Foreign dignitaries, fearful of once again being late to head off a new Balkan war, are issuing dire warnings. Two weeks ago Romano Prodi, the outgoing president of the European Commission, visited to present some 3,000 questions on Macedonia's bid for EU membership, and made his displeasure over the referendum clear. Michael Sahlin, an EU special envoy, calls the poll “a step away from EU membership”. Marc Grossman, an American under-secretary of State, has warned the Macedonians that, if it succeeds, the referendum will threaten their hopes of joining NATO in 2007. This week Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, called by to sing from the same song-sheet.

Saso Ordanoski, a local analyst, chortles that, with all this high-profile foreign pressure, “our nationalists are out of work.” The polls suggest that, with less than a month to go, a majority will indeed reject the government's municipal-boundaries plan. If this happens, Hari Kostov, the prime minister, says that the government will resign. That will mean total chaos, says Mr Ordanoski. But war? “No”, promises Ermira Mehmeti, spokeswoman of the government's leading ethnic-Albanian party. Her boss, an ex-guerrilla leader, Ali Ahmeti, also says that he does not expect to have to pick up a gun again. But he adds menacingly that he could not remain “indifferent” if the referendum put the Ohrid peace deal in question.

Macedonia, with its stagnant economy and high unemployment, sometimes feels like the bits left over after the other Yugoslavs went their own way. It has barely 2m citizens, 62% of them Macedonians and a quarter ethnic Albanians. The two peoples hate each other rather less than Albanians and Serbs do in neighbouring Kosovo, but they don't much like each other either. In Albanian villages, you never see a Macedonian flag, only Albanian ones.

Part of the Ohrid deal to end the conflict between Mr Ahmeti's guerrillas and the Macedonian state was a promise to decentralise the country and cut the vast number (123) of municipalities, many of them too small to function effectively. The problem, say critics, is that the deal on new boundaries was a gerrymandered one done behind closed doors between the two main ruling parties, the Macedonian Social Democrats and Mr Ahmeti's party. Biljana Vankovska, a political scientist, says this created the perception that Macedonian and ethnic-Albanian leaders are bargaining over the fates of towns and peoples “like feudal lords”. Macedonian anger at the Albanians, who seem to them always to get their way, combined with economic frustration to trigger successful demands for the November 7th referendum.

Dark rumours are circulating that new paramilitaries are forming, though there is no proof of this. Many Macedonians fear that the new boundaries will prepare the way for an ethnic partition of the country. This is not obvious from the map. But such places as Struga, which now has a slight Macedonian majority, would acquire an Albanian one. If the referendum fails to stop this, threatens Struga's mayor, the city will declare independence “like San Marino or Monaco”. Macedonians are leaving areas inhabited by Albanians, and vice versa. Those who can are emigrating, with New Zealand the destination of choice. Macedonia may not go back to war after the referendum, but if the country plunges into political turmoil, it will set back hopes of its becoming more prosperous.

A vote on municipal boundaries threatens to reopen old conflicts.