Police pledge ‘fight to the end’ for Macedonia

Slavic offcers defending Macedonia’s second-largest city from ethnic Albanian rebel assaults say they will fight to the end to defend the country and its borders.

‘‘This ground you are standing on will remain Macedonia we have no other home and no one is going to take it from us,’’ said Marjance, a member of the elite anti-terrorist police squad positioned on the outskirts of Albanian-majority Tetovo.

Like his comrades in arms, Marjance refused yesterday to give his second name, distrustful of Western press perceived as sympathetic to the insurgents.

For the 30-year-old policeman, his loyalties are clear-cut: He is here to defend Macedonia’s decade-long democracy and fragile ethnic balance, which functioned ‘‘just fine until gangs from Kosovo’’ came to disrupt all.

The government has relied primarily on police and anti-terrorist units like Marjance’s to fight the rebels, who are battling for greater rights and recognition and an end to what they claim is second-class status.

The army’s limited role has led to speculation both about the fighting abilities of the conscript force and the loyalties of ethnic Albanian soldiers.

Ethnic Albanians account for at least a quarter of Macedonia’s 2 million people, and although ethnic relations in Slav-dominated Macedonia have been relatively trouble free, substantial numbers of the minority feel they are being treated as second-class citizens.

The rebels have called on all ethnic Albanians in Macedonia of fighting age to join their ranks, adding to government nervousness.

The rebels insist their battle is not being instigated by former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas from Kosovo, the ethnic Albanian-majority province of Serbia now under the control of the United Nations and Nato-led peacekeepers.

But the latest uprising shares the aspirations of Kosovar Albanians for ethnic Albanian self-determination, if not outright independence, potentially in a ‘‘greater’’ Kosovo expanded with ethnic Albanian parts of Macedonia and southern Serbia.