The "Amber Fox" now Speaks Dutch

In the past decade of Balkan crises, the international community often waited too long before it intervened militarily, deciding to do so only after many lives and livelihoods had been lost.

But there's one Balkan region where early NATO intervention successfully helped avert war: Macedonia. Last August, an international NATO force managed to end an insurgency of ethnic Albanian rebel forces in the former Yugoslav republic. The conflict ended with a Western-brokered peace accord granting the large ethnic Albanian minority greater civil rights. In return, NATO monitored rebel disarmament.

Since then, some 700 soldiers from eleven countries have been working on "Operation Amber Fox". Its mission is to oversee the peace process. In addition, the NATO force protects international monitors who keep an eye on the return of Macedonian refugees to areas that were held by ethnic Albanian rebels last year.

A fragile peace

The peace in Macedonia is still extremely fragile. It would not hold if NATO pulled out any time soon. Research conducted by the U.S. Department of State revealed that 87 percent of the people in Macedonia have little confidence in the peace accord. "It's obvious that the accord hasn't satisfied the Albanians and that they have more ambitious plans when they think of Macedonia," the regional Dnevnik newspaper commented, echoing a common sentiment.

There's concern among NATO peacekeepers in Macedonia that extremists will rekindle hatred among the Slavic and Albanian Macedonians during the upcoming election campaign. Macedonians will go to the polls on September 15 – and the campaign is already dominated by nationalist overtones.

After taking over command of "Amber Fox" this week, Dutch General Jan Harm de Jonge said he expects increased tension ahead of the elections. "It is part of politics," de Jonge said.

Macedonia important for the Dutch

When the Netherlands took charge of NATO's peacekeeping force in Macedonia this week, the new command became the country's highest-profile military operation since the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Dutch General de Jonge is under extreme pressure: if he does well in Macedonia, he could help heal the wounds Holland suffered in that conflict.

In 1995, Dutch peacekeepers were unable to prevent a massacre in the Srebrenica enclave. Bosnian Serbs slaughtered up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys and all the Dutch peacekeepers could do was look the other way because they did not have a mandate to engage in combat.

To this day, feelings of guilt over Srebrenica weigh heavily on the Dutch. Earlier this year, the Dutch government resigned after historians published a damning report about the massacre. The report condemned politicians and the military for sending the Dutch troops to the enclave on what it said was an impossible mission.

When the Netherlands took charge of NATO's peacekeeping force in Macedonia this week, the new command became its highest-profile military operation since Srebrenica. At the handover ceremony for operation "Amber Fox", Dutch General de Jonge was asked if taking on new responsibility in Macedonia was an attempt to rehabilitate the Dutch military's reputation. But de Jonge was reluctant to get deeper into the issue. "I have nothing to do with that," the general said. "I'm here to perform a mission ... and that's what I have been trained to do."

The Dutch may be the last nation to command the NATO mission in Macedonia. In October, the European Union plans to take over from NATO. It would be the first time in history that the EU launches a peacekeeping mission – and a test case for the block's common approach to foreign policy.