Dealing with Bad Guys

Nordland, Rod, Cirjakovic, Zoran, Terzieff, Juliette, Newsweek International

If the NATO mission in Macedonia goes down in flames, it might well be due to two men on opposing sides of the ethnic divide. The Albanian, Xhavit Hasani, 50, is a woodcutter from the hills with an elementary- school education, a rude way of speaking and a chip on his shoulder as big as a log. "The Macedonians are even afraid to dream of me," he boasts. Ljube Boskovski, 40, the Macedonian, is a lawyer by education, whose overblown manner sometimes causes even sympathetic listeners to laugh. He no longer sleeps, he likes to say, because he's up all night defending his country.

Both are hard-core ethnic nationalists--and evangelists for their cause. For the past two years Hasani has been recruiting young men for the Albanian rebels, walking the highland villages along the border of Kosovo where he's considered a war hero, though he never apparently fired a shot at the Serbs. A convicted peacetime cop-shooter and reputed smuggler, Hasani is a founding father of the National Liberation Army (NLA). Now he's accused …

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Publication information: Article title: Dealing with Bad Guys. Contributors: Nordland, Rod - Author, Cirjakovic, Zoran - Author, Terzieff, Juliette - Author. Magazine title: Newsweek International. Publication date: September 3, 2001. Page number: 24. © 2009 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Any reuse, distribution or alteration without express written permission of Newsweek is prohibited. For permission: www.newsweek.com. COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group.

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