International Military and Police Missions to the Republic of Macedonia and Their Role in Stabilizing Macedonian‑Albanian Relations

Abstract

After the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the outbreak of conflicts related to that process the international diplomacy decided to introduce military missions, of various nature, in Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina, that is former Yugoslavian republics, where a war was waged in the first half of the 1990s. The Republic of Macedonia declared independence already in 1991, but it became independent peacefully; it did not mean, however, that the country was free from internal problems, for instance of ethnic nature, which escalated before the end of the twentieth century putting the Macedonian state on the brink of civil war on the eve of the new century. The escalation necessitated the invitation by the state authorities of international military missions to assist in stabilising the country’s internal situation.

Keywords

• Macedonia
• national minorities in Macedonia
• military operations
• international police operations
• the Ohrid agreement
• Macedonian‑Albanian conflict