Ibrahimi to Ahmeti: Was Opposed to Division Out of Love for a Unitary Macedonia or Cheap Bargaining?

Former Alternativa president Zeqirija Ibrahimi, now part of Vredi, publicly asked DUI leader Ali Ahmeti why in 2001, as commander of the NLA, he renounced the initial position for dividing Macedonia.

Ibrahimi opened the topic after, on the anniversary of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, Ahmeti said that he had rejected an offer from the Macedonian side to divide the country and that he had advocated for a unitary Macedonia. He now demands clarification whether Ahmeti did so out of "love for a unitary Macedonia" or because of "cheap deal-making."

According to Ibrahimi, if Ahmeti really did not accept the division, then it is clear that he abandoned — voluntarily or under some pressure — the initial position for division, expressed in the first communiqués of the NLA. He points out that those initial calls for division could have been a "decoy" to start the war and later to establish oneself in politics, and that it should be explained whether the sacrifices and material damages were worth the result: from an "ethnic minority" (as we were in 1991) to become an "ethnic community" (in 2001) and from a "minority language" to become a "language spoken by 20% of the population."

In a social media post Ibrahimi also posed the question what Ahmeti's vision for Macedonia was if division, federalization or cantonization were not on the table: "…what was the vision for Macedonia of the one who led the war?"

At the panel discussion on the anniversary Ahmeti emphasized that he loves Macedonia and said: "I love Macedonia, Mr. Buchkovski, as much as you do. This is my country, my grandfather, great-grandfather, grandmother and great-grandmother are here. I love it as much as Branko Crvenkovski loves it, as much as Hristijan Mickoski loves it," Ahmeti said.

He also claims that during the crisis he personally received a draft plan for division that had been approved by the highest authorities, but that he did not accept it because, in his words, "Albanians from Skopje would not have been with me. I would have been in Albania, but Skopje, Kumanovo, Struga, Kichevo, Prilep, Veles — all of them would have been outside the borders of Albania," Ahmeti said.

We were unable to obtain a stance from DUI on the accusations and doubts that Ibrahimi raised to Ahmeti.

There was also a reaction from other politicians. Vlado Buchkovski, who in 2001 was defense minister, assessed that the conflict at the beginning was not only about the rights of Albanians and that there was a tendency to seize territory and attempt a division: "At the beginning the open military conflict was not only about the rights of Albanians. It smoldered, probably — which is why we spoke with Mr. Ahmeti — the tendency that territory should be seized and an attempt made to divide Macedonia," Buchkovski said.

DPA president Menduh Thaçi reacted sharply to Ahmeti's claim that a document for division existed and announced a lawsuit if Ahmeti continued making such claims: "There was no document for the division of Macedonia. That was the idea of several pseudo-academics, instructed by Serbia's UDBA. It was not an idea of the Academy of Sciences, and Arben Xhaferi did not have a document either, because such does not exist. At that time UDBA told Ali Ahmeti: this is the path by which you can overturn the political organization of the Albanians. And he speaks incoherently, that allegedly a document existed," Thaçi said.

Photo: press material from the event