The dimensions of a conflict: The case of Macedonia

Abstract

The region of Balkan is still considered as fragile with nations that have not finished the state-formation and with conflicts that are still alive and actual. The central problematic of the Balkan of the last twenty years was the former republic of Yugoslavia, after the dissolution of which these conflicts were fomented even more, while Bosnia at the beginning of the nineties witnessed the hardest war of all the other Yugoslavian countries, Macedonia escaped from this war and witnessed only a short-period interethnic conflict in 2001. The armed conflict between the Macedonian and Albanian forces reinforced the relationship and cooperation with EU and put an end to the Ohrid Framework Agreement in 2001. Macedonia still functions as a mono-ethnic state, even though the spirit of the Ohrid Framework Agreement was the construction of the civilian state and the two main principles were to respect the cultural identity and the equal rights of all citizens. In this context, the aim of this study is to analyze the dimension of the ethnic conflicts in Macedonia during two periods, before year 2001 and after this year, based on the three theoretical perspectives: the conflict management theory, the conflict resolution theory and the conflict transformation theory. According to many researchers of this issue the Ohrid Framework Agreement was an compromise to resolve the conflict where international actors were attempting to resolve the tensions between the Albanian and Macedonian ethnic communities and according to some other researchers the Ohrid Framework Agreement put an end to the conflict, but it did not put an end to the sources of this conflict.