Is Macedonia next? The chaos moves south.

As the conflagration of civil strife spreads inexorably southward through former Yugoslavia, the tinder box looks set to be lit in its southernmost republic, Macedonia.

A nagging bone of contention in Balkan politics since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire over a century ago, Macedonia lies athwart the Vardar valley, the only major feasible route between Central Europe and the Aegean. From 1878 onward, various political settlements led to its division among Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria. All three denied that Macedonians were a separate nationality, and all tried to assimilate them, originally through schools opened by their respective national churches. Macedonia contained a variety of nationalities coexisting in an atmosphere of religious and ethnic tolerance, hence the culinary word "macedoine." Today, the Slav majority, 1.3 million out of a total population of 2.2 million, is Orthodox and speaks a tongue more akin to Bulgarian than to any other Slav language. Its Vlachs, originally from Romania, are also Orthodox. Muslim Albanians, Turks, and Slav converts testify to Macedonia's five centuries as part of the Ottoman Empire. Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition found refuge there, and Gypsies are ubiquitous in the Balkans.

Strife over Macedonia is hardly news. In the late nineteenth century, the Ottomans lost control of the area, with Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria each laying claim to it. At one point, Greece gained what had been the entire Macedonian seaboard, but with the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878 - which ended the Russo-Turkish War - the great powers awarded most of Macedonia to Bulgaria. Later that same year, however, they reneged and the Ottoman Empire was again awarded major control. Ever since, Bulgaria has resented having the smallest portion. Three times it briefly regained control, twice with German help. Following the Second Balkan War (1913), Macedonia was divided roughly along its present-day lines among Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria. For years Yugoslavia (formed in 1918), claimed that Bulgaria was fostering terrorism in Yugoslav Macedonia through the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, IMRO, founded in the 1890s. In 1946, Communist Yugoslavia constituted Macedonia as an autonomous federal republic. Ironically, only since the advent of communism in Yugoslavia were Macedonians actively encouraged to develop their own language, literature, culture, institutions, and even, controversially, an autocephalous (self-governing) church independent of the Serbian Orthodox. Yugoslav dictator Tito (d. 1980) established Macedonia as a separate republic to counterbalance no only Serb-Croat dominance within the Yugoslav federation but Greek and Bulgarian claims from outside. Its existence challenged Greek and Bulgarian policies toward their own smaller Macedonian minorities.

Proud of its recent transition from communism and its peaceful handling of its minorities, today Macedonia's first democratically elected government - led by the able moderate President Kiro Gligorov - desperately needs European Economic Community recognition as an independent republic. Despite satisfying the EEC's stipulations, it has failed to receive recognition because Greece, Serbia's ally, has vetoed it, alleging that Macedonia is a threat to Balkan security.

Greece claims proprietory rights over the name "Macedonia." Twenty-three hundred years ago the Macedonian kings Philip and Alexander the Great welded Greece's splintered city states into an empire extending to Egypt and India, and spread Greek culture throughout the East. Since the Slavs did not arrive in Macedonia until the seventh century, Greeks regard them as mere interlopers who ave no right to usurp the name Macedonia, though they concede that an alternative like "Skopie" (its capital) would be acceptable. Meanwhile, with foreign investment in Macedonia at a standstill as the result of its unresolved status, Greece has compounded Macedonia's dire economic problems by joining Serbia in a blockade.

Serbia's current attitude is ambiguous. Although the mainly Serb Yugoslav Federal Army was pulled out in March and the new rump Yugoslavia of Serbia-Montenegro renounced further territorial expansion in its April 27 constitution, Macedonians do not feel safe. They have no reason to trust Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Seven months ago he proposed to Greek Premier Constantine Misotakis that Serbia and Greece participation Macedonia between them. Misotakis declined and reported the proposition to the EEC. But Greece's continued blockade could help lead to Macedonia's collapse.

In contrast to the attitudes of Greece and Serbia (and to their credit), the other Balkan powers most concerned in Macedonia's fate - Bulgaria, Albania, and Turkey - are fully aware of the dire implications of Macedonian instability. Each of these has given it formal recognition, and all three are concerned about national minorities within Macedonia, particularly Albania. (After its 1.3 million Slavs, there are about 700,000 Muslim Albanians in Macedonia, 40 percent of the population, and 100,000 Turks.)

The Albanian problem is quite complex. Many Macedonian Albanians feel little kinship with other Macedonians, and are unpopular even with Macedonia's Muslim Turks and Slavs. After 1987 they suffered considerable discrimination from the Communist government, including political trials, restrictions on their business activities, the sacking of teachers who taught Albanian, and the demolition of 6,000 house walls, violating their privacy. Though they would now admit that their lot is infinitely better than that of Serbia's brutally oppressed Albanians in adjacent Kosovo province [see Commonweal, July 16], they object to the new government's definition of Macedonian nationality and to the superior status accorded to the Macedonian language and Cyrillic script. Seventy-four percent voted for autonomy in a referendum they organized in January, despite warnings that it was invalid. They are volatile and potentially disruptive. Strong along the Albanian and Kosovo borders, their leaders counsel caution lest unrest bring down the wrath of the Serbs in Kosovo and another bloodbath which could spill over to Albanian and Macedonia.

The Greek veto has led to increasing polarization and instability. Antagonistic nationalist groupings are emerging, with terrorist fringes, like the Albanian Unikom. IMRO, one of whose goals is the creation of "a spiritual, economic, and ethnic union of the divided Macedonian people," and whose influence is reflected in the new constitution, is increasingly influential. "United Macedonia" T shirts are selling well.

The EEC refusal to recognize Macedonia led on July 7 to the fall of the moderate government, and President Gligorov felt compelled to ask IMRO's popular young leader, Ljupco Georgievski, to form a new government. EEC ineptitude could plunge the whole Eastern Adriatic into another war.