Lost in Shuffle, Serbian Town Sees a Future in Macedonia

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the NYTimes, April 25, 2006

Lost in Shuffle, Serbian Town Sees a Future in Macedonia
By NICHOLAS WOOD

TRGOVISTE, Serbia, April 20 This could be a hard year for Serbia, which
risks seeing both the province of Kosovo and the state of Montenegro break
away. And then there is Trgoviste. About 20 miles up a dead-end road next
to Serbia's border with Macedonia, Trgoviste is a backwater, a place that
few people other than its 1,600 residents have reason to visit. It was all
but unknown in Serbia. Until January, that is, when local officials began
talking of severing their ties to Belgrade. That was a surprise,
considering that Trgoviste is 98 percent Serb. It has only three non-Serb
families, who are Macedonian, according to Jovica Mihajlovic, the mayor's
chief adviser and manager.

It is a placid town surrounded by unruliness. Southern Serbia's rich mix
of ethnic groups makes the region a fertile ground for separatists. Ethnic
Albanians in the nearby Presevo valley who were trying to unite with
Kosovo fought Serbian security forces in 2000 and 2001. Neighboring
Bosilegrad, part of Bulgaria until 1919 and whose population is still
mainly Bulgarian, has had frequent run-ins with the central government.
But Trgoviste has remained quiet, and therein lies the problem. While the
Serbian government has paid attention to more troublesome areas, this town
has been forgotten, Mr. Mihajlovic said. So now, he is organizing a
referendum on breaking ties with Serbia and backing an alliance with
Macedonia.

Local officials say the government has long failed to reverse a decision
made almost 15 years ago that doomed their town. Until 1992, Trgoviste lay
on one of the main roads crossing the Balkans and connecting Europe and
Turkey. The town was a commercial center for villages in nearby Macedonia,
then still part of Yugoslavia. But Yugoslavia was imploding, and Macedonia
voted to break way. As a result, the main road to Macedonia was closed,
and Trgoviste lost its purpose overnight, said Radovan Stojanovic, who is
the mayor and the town doctor. "This was all Yugoslavia, and you just
drove into Macedonia; there wasn't a border," Mr. Stojanovic said. After
the separation, he said, Serbia created two border crossings elsewhere and
then closed the main road, about five miles beyond Trgoviste.

"After that, the deterioration of Trgoviste started," he added. The closed
road accelerated a decline that was already being felt across Serbia, as
it pursued wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Now Serbia is experiencing modest
economic growth, but there is little sign of any benefits reaching
Trgoviste. Once hundreds of trucks passed through this town on any day.
Now, dogs lie in the street undisturbed. As businesses failed, people
moved elsewhere to find work and the population of the town and its
surrounding villages slumped to just 6,500 from 22,000, Mr. Stojanovic
said. On a tour of the town, he explained that it was $300,000 in debt and
had not paid its employees since September. The struggle to keep basic
services running seems to have taken a toll on the mayor himself, a
nervous man with thinning hair and fraying black tennis shoes.

"We are a poor municipality and we are trying to do as much as we can, but
we can't do much more," he said. The bid to join Macedonia, officials here
admit, may be more a cry for help than a serious attempt to break from
Serbia. Macedonia seems far from enthusiastic about being joined by a poor
Serbian town. "It's a matter of international borders," said Sasa
Colakovski, a spokesman for the Macedonian government. "It cannot be
settled by a referendum." Mr. Mihajlovic said the town would like the same
status as the Presevo region, whose government financing has increased
since the conflict there ended.

The Serbian government, weary of an ever-diminishing state, has finally
taken notice of Trgoviste. Most of the country's major newspapers have
sent reporters to the town since it announced its plans for the
referendum. On April 7, President Boris Tadic visited. Mr. Tadic promised
he would study the possibility of reopening the road to Macedonia, but he
admonished the mayor's adviser for proposing the referendum. "He said such
statements should not have been made with out consulting the relevant
officials in the Serbian government," Mr. Stojanovic said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/world/europe/25serbia.html