The New Statue of Alexander the Great, in Skopje

The New Statue of Alexander the Great, in Skopje FYROM’s twisted understanding of its history and language is funny. “If the name is the condition of our survival, which it seems to be, we are very far from reaching our strategic aims: NATO and the EU,” says former Macedonian Foreign Minister Denko Maleski. “The new way of thinking about history is keeping tensions alive. We are a new nation, liberal and international, suddenly veering into the 19th century.” Last summer, the government flew in members of Pakistan’s Hunza tribe, considered lost descendants of Alexander, to tour the country. Startled and pleased Hunza were greeted at Alexander airport with flowers and treated like long lost cousins as they disported across the nation, cameras in tow. “The entire nationalism hysteria, which only few question as most media get huge sums of money through government advertising, serves not only as a distraction from serious problems … but has created an atmosphere that makes compromise difficult. It reminds me a bit of the madness of Serbia in the ’90s, though not on the same scale, when Serbs spoke of themselves as ‘the heavenly people,’ ” says Ana Petruseva, managing editor of Balkan Insight, in Skopje. Even “God” has gotten involved. A nine-minute TV ad starts with a petition from Macedonia to the heavens: “Our neighbors distributed thousands of books across the world, containing false history and portraying a wrong picture about Macedonia. … Only you know our pain …