16 March 2001
U.S. Troops Patrol Macedonia Border


By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writer

MIJAK, Yugoslavia (AP) - It's hard to find the U.S. soldiers patrolling the border between Kosovo and Macedonia - but it's not because they're not there.

It's because the terrain seems to swallow them up. This is unforgiving territory, a morass of steep hills and switchback trails where American peacekeepers patrol on foot and in helicopters to try to stop the flow of guerrillas and weapons to Macedonia.

Peacekeepers are trying to keep ethnic Albanians in Kosovo from helping their ethnic kin, who are fighting a guerrilla battle in Macedonia for causes that range from more rights to independence, depending on whom you ask.

The volatile situation has sparked fear of a new Balkan war. But Lt. Jeff Wilbur, 23, of Annapolis, Md., doesn't get into the details when explaining the mission to soldiers under his command.

``There's an international incident. There are potentially people breaking the rules,'' he said. ``We're trying to do what we can to make it peaceful.''

So close they can hear the boom of mortar and watch the movements of Macedonian soldiers from Yugoslavia, the Americans - of C Company, 1st Battalion ofthe 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment - stand at the edge of a vaguely defined border. And their task is increasingly coming under scrutiny as the fighting escalates in Macedonia.

The rebels in Macedonia, known as the National Liberation Army, started fighting a month ago in villages along the Kosovo border. They appear determined to expand their struggle from the sparsely inhabited border to Macedonia's principal cities to the south.

Besides the mountains, one of the few obstacles in the way of rebel supply lines in and out of Kosovo are people like Spc. Rafael Lovell, 20, of Rocky Mount, N.C. He stood in the rear of a recent patrol while his comrades checked out a road swinging around the side of a minefield.

To Lovell, schlepping 50 pounds of gear and hiking the steep hillsides of Kosovo was all about ``keeping these guys from doing bad things to each other.''

``God wants me to be here,'' he said. ``That's why he put me here.''

Despite the concern over plugging the supply routes, there's only so much the estimated 5,600 U.S. soldiers stationed in the American sector of Kosovo can do. Even before there were clashes in Macedonia, there was plenty todo in Kosovo itself - peacekeeping, mediating between hostile ethnic campsand staying out of harm's way.

Then there's Kosovo's eastern boundary, where an ethnic Albanian insurgent group is fighting Serb security forces. This group, the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, wants the primarily ethnic Albanian villages in this part of southern Serbia to throw off Serb domination, like theirethnic kin did in Kosovo.

The Serb province of Kosovo has been run by the United Nations (news - web sites) and NATO (news - web sites) since the alliance's 1999 airstrikes forced then-President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) to end his crackdown on ethnic Albanian insurgents. Now the emergence of the two rebel groupshas prompted international alarm.

U.S. peacekeepers have stepped up their patrols and proved they can respond in force if they need too. Last week, during an operation to seize a guerrilla supply outpost in the tiny border village of Mijak, about 250 soldiers poured into the area with humvees, helicopters and surveillance planes.

Now nearly half have pulled out, and although violence is building just a few miles across the border in Macedonia, things have calmed down here. The Americans moved into a building once used by the rebels. There's a guardpost, concertina wire - all the comforts of a remote military outpost.

The troops have come to know the area well. Second Lt. Arthur McGrue , 31, of San Lorenzo, Calif., describes its landmarks with familiarity, such as ``the little white farmhouse with the woodpile.''

He also believes in vigilance, especially since soldiers under his command were involved in a shooting incident with rebels last week as they searched for weapons.

If pressed, he makes it clear that his soldiers, ``have the right to defend ourselves.''

``I don't worry,'' he said.



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