Rebel Hell

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When the shelling began one sunny afternoon last week in the tiny mountainside village of Sipkovica, Fekrige Muharemi figured that the best place to protect her family would be on the ground floor of her home, a recently built, two-story whitewashed house with thick concrete-block walls. She even invited two other families--15 children and 10 adults--to shelter with her. The illusion did not last long. The 36-year-old mother of two was pouring Turkish coffee in small china cups for her guests when the shell hit. It tore into the upstairs bedroom, blasting a 10-ft.-wide hole in the outer wall and shattering an interior wall, blowing out all the windows and hurling shrapnel into a jumble of mattresses where the family normally sleeps. Instantly, the house filled with smoke. "Oh my! Oh my!" exclaimed Muharemi, tugging anxiously at her blue wool head scarf amid the rubble. "The children were screaming, and I couldn't see my sons." Groping for the front door, she was seized with panic. "We thought the house was falling." Somehow it did not, and the families escaped, taking cover in a nearby ditch.

The shell was part of an attempt by the Macedonian government to strike at rebel targets above the town of Tetovo, site of the Balkans' newest insurgency. While it succeeded in panicking Albanian civilians, it left the rebels themselves more or less unfazed. Subsequent government reports that the insurgents were laying down their weapons and fleeing toward the Kosovo border proved groundless. By week's end they were back, striking at police positions in Tetovo and drawing a furious response from army tanks and artillery. "The fighters will remain in their positions," Fazli Veliu, a spokesman for the rebels, told TIME from his home in Geneva, Switzerland. "They will not withdraw until their demands are met."

Exactly who "they" are and what ultimately they hope to achieve remain a mystery. What is clear is that their actions are threatening to destabilize a precarious government and ignite Macedonia's potentially explosive mix of Slavs and Albanians. A month after a group calling itself the National Liberation Army suddenly appeared, attacking a police station along the border, its numbers, strength and leadership are still the topic of heated speculation. Two days' walking in the mountains behind rebel lines revealed a disheveled band of recruits and local volunteers--some in fatigues, some in sneakers and track suits, lightly armed and using mules for transport. And despite several perfunctory communiques through Albanian expatriates like Veliu that their aim is "equal rights" for the ethnic-Albanian minority in Macedonia, it is still unclear exactly what they are fighting for. "Nothing is going on here that warrants taking to the hills," says a senior Western diplomat.

In Sipkovica a former bricklayer and political dissident shifts his rifle uncomfortably as he tries to explain his grievance. Like several local N.L.A. commanders, he was imprisoned by the old Yugoslav regime in the 1980s for trying to start an Albanian political party. Now 63, he considers the new government no improvement. "The Slavs say we are the problem, but they are the ones trying to destroy our nation," he says, referring to the ethnic-Macedonian majority. "We are just trying to defend ourselves."

While the rank and file of the N.L.A. may be a ragtag group, its leadership probably is not. It is widely assumed by diplomats and local Albanian leaders that the top commanders--operating under names like "Cobra" and "The Beard"--include men who battled Serb units in 1998 and 1999 with the Kosovo Liberation Army. Significantly, ex-K.L.A. commanders in Kosovo have declined to condemn the insurgency, and a radical Kosovo leader last week claimed solidarity with the new group. Moreover, the hit-and-run attacks on police outposts closely resemble K.L.A. tactics during the Kosovo conflict. The guerrillas could be eager to foment a rebellion in order to fuel extremism across the region, or they could simply be hoping to force the government into political concessions.

That strategy could backfire. Arben Xhaferi, who is Macedonia's top Albanian politician and best hope for peaceful reform, is already growing snappish. He hasn't spoken to his Slav colleagues in weeks. And if any Albanian civilians are killed, he told TIME, he will leave the government entirely. That means Macedonian forces face the near impossible task of holding collateral damage to zero.