Will the dominoes fall?

The nightmare for the balkans is that the fighting in Bosnia will spread. One candidate if other Balkan dominoes start to fall is Macedonia. The former Yugoslav republic is struggling to establish itself as an independent state. So far, the skirmishes have been diplomatic. Greece is furious with Macedonia, accusing it of stealing a Greek name and Greek national symbols and of having designs on the neighbouring Greek province of Macedonia.

Western analysts fear the diplomacy might be put aside and a more serious dispute break out. We have to go back 80 years for the source of the concerns. Early this century, Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria were allies in a war against the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. That war forced the Turks to give up their control of Macedonia. But, the allies squabbled over how to divide it. A second war ended with each country getting part of Macedonia. Today, Serbs see Macedonia as southern Serbia; to the Greeks it's northern Greece; to the Bulgarians it's western Bulgaria; and, within the country itself, there is a restive Albanian minority.