In bunkers around his village, and 10 others like it in the area, ethnic Albanian rebel commanders also use their cell phones to communicate with their soldiers about troop movements, offensives, and orders. Across the front lines, their Macedonian counterparts are doing the same.
And in the capital of Skopje, some 20 miles away, diplomats and local government officials are using mobile-phone technology as part of their battle to prevent the ongoing violence in the northeast from engulfing the entire Balkan nation.
Although no one has yet been able to find a formula to end the hostilities and address the grievances driving the nation’s three-month-old crisis, the players do agree on one thing: they couldn’t do without their cell phones.
“I haven’t turned my mobile off once in three weeks,” says one Macedonian official.
The phones have many uses. One Western ambassador, working with others here to mediate the crisis, credits cell phones with allowing the international community to work faster. “There is a lot more talking going on, [and] more often … everyone is in touch directly,” says the diplomat. Many Western embassies, he adds, now routinely issue cell phones to both nationals and local staff.
“It’s mobile diplomacy,” notes another Skopje-based diplomat in praise of the trend. “Nowadays you don’t have to break off a meeting for further consultations and more meetings, you can just step out into the hallway and push the speed dial.”
Both diplomats are old hands in this troubled region; both lament the absence of widespread cell phone availability in earlier conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia.
Of course, military commanders and political leaders have long had sophisticated communications networks at their disposal. But it is the easy availability-and sheer ubiquity-of cell phones that has made such a difference in the current Balkans conflict.
When tensions erupted in Kosovo in 1998, the effectiveness of wireless phones was limited because coverage only included the province’s major cities. That’s not so in Macedonia, where the only places without service are spots in the northern rural mountain regions.
For those inside what Macedonian officials have coined “the conflict zone,” the cell phone is not simply a convenient way to expedite diplomacy or a channel to communicate with journalists-it’s a lifeline.
“The situation is catastrophic, we have no food, people are sick, we need help and we need it fast!” Besnik was shouting into his cell phone one recent Thursday morning. Besnik is one of an estimated 10,000 villagers hiding in the rebel-controlled areas, most claiming they are too terrified to flee. His call came as Macedonian forces launched a large-scale offensive aimed at dislodging the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA) from Vaksince and 10 other nearby villages. The booms of falling tank shells were audible as he spoke.
The villagers have lived in their basements for more than three weeks, struggling to survive on dwindling food supplies and without water, electricity or conventional phones since Macedonian authorities cut these services after battles erupted with the NLA in the villages near the city of Kumanovo on May 3. “This is the only contact we have with the outside, and without it I think we would all go insane,” says Besnik.
Whenever there is a lull in the fighting, Besnik dashes outside, along with a mix of civilians and NLA fighters, to recharge their phones from car batteries or cigarette-lighter sockets.
For the combatants, cell phones have security advantages, too. Fighters who used more traditional communication tools like radios and walkie-talkies during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo, and more recently during a failed rebellion in Serbia’s Presevo Valley, found they were all using the same frequencies-and security forces were able to hear their exchanges.
“Sometimes we would sing songs to them. Other times, depending on who was talking, we would insult them,” admits one police officer. “Mobile phones change maneuvering capabilities for all sides.”
Cell phones can be tapped too, but, again, the scale of usage makes a difference. Macedonia’s government-run mobile phone provider, Mobimak, kicked off in 1996 and now boasts more than 140,000 subscribers ranging from executives to high-school students. Thanks to a debit card system introduced last year, anyone presenting a passport can purchase a phone and a phone card with $25 worth of credit for about $150-a price affordable to many.
Given that it would be a mammoth task for the government to tap every phone, only the numbers of people under specific suspicion are monitored, says the police officer.
Out in the rebel-held villages, the NLA commander known as Sokoli routinely carries around three fully-charged batteries for his phones. “With the mobiles, we are able to stay in constant contact with other areas which may be geographically cut off from us by fighting or military checkpoints,” says Sokoli. This also saves lives, he adds, as in the case when NLA personnel were able to warn their colleagues that Macedonian forces geared up for an attack on the village of Slupcane. “We had enough time to tell all civilians to get inside before the fighting started,” says the commander.
The phones may not be enough to stop the war. But they do-in theory at least-make it easier for all sides to keep their lines of communication open.
