Zeqirja Ibrahimi asks Ali Ahmeti: If you prevented partition, why was the 2001 war waged?

The debate in recent days over the existence of a document on the partition of Macedonia during the 2001 war, initiated by Ali Ahmeti, has also drawn a response from former MP and former leader of Alternativa, Zeqirja Ibrahimi, InfoShqip reports.

In his full response, Ibrahimi says that the revival of claims that the possibility of partitioning Macedonia was discussed in 2001 raises an issue that, in his view, should be debated.

He proposes accepting as fact the claim that the NLA’s political representative at the time had rejected the partition of North Macedonia. According to Ibrahimi, if this is true, as he himself has stated, then it follows that the initial position in favor of partitioning Macedonia, presented in the NLA’s first communiqués, was abandoned, either willingly or under some pressure. The other possibility, he continues, is that those statements were used merely as bait to launch the war and later establish a political position.

Ibrahimi also raises the question of whether the entire war, together with its victims and human and material losses, was worthwhile if it ultimately meant moving from the status of an “ethnic minority,” as Albanians were classified in 1991, to that of an “ethnic community” in 2001, and from “minority language” to the wording “the language spoken by 20% of the population and which is not the same as Macedonian.” According to him, such a major reduction in objectives must be explained.

In conclusion, he raises what he describes as the most important question: if neither partition, nor federalization, nor cantonization, nor even a form of internal organization of Albanian municipalities, such as the one sought by the Serbs in Kosovo, was on the agenda, then what was the vision for Macedonia of the person who waged the war?