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UNIFICATION WITH ALBANIA – THE NEXT STOP FOR KOSOVO?
Blerina Rexha
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of
Master of Philosophy
University of Sydney
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I declare that the research presented here is my own original work and has not been submitted to any other institution for the award of a degree.
Signed:……… Date:………
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Abstract
Very few studies have been conducted on the topic of unification between Kosovo and Albania. This is an important issue in the Balkans as such unification could spark yet another conflict, which Kosovo and Albania’s neighbours believe is imminent. The formation of a ‘Greater Albania’ between Kosovo and Albania not only poses a threat to Serbia, but it could also potentially threaten Kosovo’s future within the European Union.
Whilst Kosovo’s declaration of independence has been a major positive step for the Albanian majority of the nation, it has nevertheless resurfaced some of the deep-rooted historical issues which have been prevalent in the territory of centuries. A survey conducted by the Gallup institute in 2010 showed that 64% of inhabitant in Albania and 81% of Kosovo Albanians support a union of the two countries. The survey results however, contradict the official governments of both Kosovo and Albania, who do not openly support unification and unification is not a goal on their official political agendas.
This thesis considers the available discourse on the issue of unification between Albanian and Kosovo and discusses the degree to which there is support for a ‘Greater Albania’ amongst Kosovo Albanians. The unification issue is a highly politically controversial concept both internally within Kosovo and outside it, which scholars only recently beginning to take the issue more seriously. Whether or not there is a strong desire by the Kosovo Albanians to merge their newly independent country with the Albanian state would not only have a profound effect on the minorities currently living
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in Kosovo, but the entire Balkans and Europe. This study aims to shed light on the potential for the emergence of a united Albania in order to learn whether there will be a repeat of the turbulent history that the Balkans has witnessed.
Not on terminology:
The proper Kosovo Albanian spelling for Kosovo is ‘Kosova’, however the world ‘Kosovo’ will be used throughout this study as it is more commonly used in English-speaking countries.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction ... 7
1.1 Historical background of Kosovo within Serbia ... 13
1.2 Purpose and Research Questions ... 20
1.3 The history of ‘Greater Albania’ ... 23
1.4 The birth of ‘Ethnic Albania’ ... 31
1.5 The Origins of ‘Greater Serbia’ ... 32
1.6 The Ahtisaari Plan – A roadblock to ‘Greater Albania’? ... 35
Chapter 2: Unification with Kosovo: The Albanian view-point historically and at present ... 40
2.1 Introduction to chapter ... 40
2.2 Albania’s stand-point on unification with Kosovo ... 41
2.3 Analysis of the history of unification with Kosovo in Albania ... 46
2.4 Communist Albania’s stance on unification with Kosovo ... 49
2.5 Post-Communism – The Albanian political establishment’s view on the issue of unification with Kosovo ... 53
Chapter 3: The demand in Kosovo for unification with Albania: 1878 to 1981 .... 64
3.1 Introduction to chapter ... 64
3.2 Chapter purpose/research question ... 65
3.3 The fall of the Ottoman Empire – a call for Albanian unification begins ... 66
3.4 The League of Peja – The Kosovo Albanians awaken ... 76
3.5 The Young Turk Programme – Kosovo Albanian division intensifies ... 78
3.6 The Kaçak movement and the Kosovo Committee – Kosovo Albanians resistance to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1913-1918 ... 83
3.7 The Xhemijet/Bashkimi of 1919 ... 86
3.8 Kosovo and Albania united during World War II ... 87
Chapter 4: The present situation in Kosovo regarding unification with Albania ... 93
4.1 Introduction to chapter ... 93
4.2 Background to Contemporary Debates about Kosovo’s Unification with Albania: Kosovar Albanian Perspectives on Unification in the Lead up to War93 4.3 Kosovo Albanian Perspectives on Unification in the Aftermath of War .... 102
4.4 Serbian views on unification during the declaration of independence ... 105
4.5 Scholarly and ‘Official’ Views on Unification After the War ... 106
4.6 Signs of Support and Non-Support for Unification: Flags ... 111
6 4.8 Vetevëndosje’s Party Leadership: Interview with Albin Kurti ... 120 4.9 Other Parties: The Movement for Unification (Levizja per Bashkim, LB) . 123 Chapter 5: Conclusion ... 126 References... 130 Appendix ... 143
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Chapter 1: Introduction
‘…an understanding of the past provides a key to an understanding of the present and the future, and there is certainly nothing in Europe more decisively incomprehensible than the contemporary Balkans.’ - (Elsie 2003, p. 9)
Since there are very few studies that have explored the topic of unification between Kosovo and Albania, this thesis aims to shed light on the prospects of Kosovo seeking unification with Albania in the near future. Therefore, although the Kosovo government avoids the topic of Albanian unification, there are movements within the country who advocate a union between Kosovo and Albania. The formation of a ‘Greater Albania’ between Kosovo and Albania threatens not only stability in the Balkans, but it could also potentially threaten Kosovo’s future within the European Union.
The Republic of Kosovo is Europe’s youngest nation, declaring independence from Serbia on the 17th of February 2008. Landlocked between Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, Kosovo today consists of an 88% Albanian majority population, 7% Serbian minority, as well as a 5% minority of Turks, Bosnians, Romas and Goranis (UNMIK 2005, p. 9). The Albanians of Kosovo are only one part of the wider ethnic Albanian population of the Balkans, apart from in Albania itself, there are ethnic Albanian inhabitants in the regions of western Macedonia, southern Serbia, Montenegro, and northern Greece. For almost five centuries, the Albanians of these regions lived under Ottoman domination, during which they were denied an Albanian nation or identity. The Ottomans feared that a national awakening of the Albanians
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would result in the weakening of their Empire as the Albanians were considered to be the main pillars of the Ottoman policy in the Balkans.
Following the Ottoman defeat in the Russian-Ottoman war in 1878, The Treaty of San Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin assigned Albanian inhabited lands to neighbouring states, leaving almost half of the Albanians of the Balkans outside the newly formed Albanian state. What have resulted are Albanian populations living in Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and predominantly Kosovo. Presently, Albanians throughout the Balkans share linguistic, cultural and religious similarities, and for many Albanians the unification of these predominantly Albanian inhabitant regions is considered a reality. As a result of the Albanians being left outside the border of Albanian proper, there have been movements since 1912 for the unification of Albanian lands in the aim of forming a greater Albanian state. The aim of this thesis is to explore the potential of unification between Albania and Kosovo. However, in order to understand the unification issue at present, the historical background of the issue must first be presented. Kosovo has a complex history and a discussion of the country’s past can attempt to facilitate in understanding the current issues at hand in the country. The problems currently faced in Kosovo come from the time of Ottoman rule; symptoms of which were also evident during the time Kosovo was under Yugoslav rule. This chapter will provide a discussion of the historical issues that have contributed to why some Kosovar Albanians today are seeking unification with Albania.
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The main topic of this study is determining whether or not Albania and Kosovo aim to form a unified country. Kosovo has the highest number of Albanians (almost 2 million) living outside the Albanian state and because Kosovo’s independence was granted on the condition that unification with Albania would not be sought in the future. The discussion of some of the historical and political issues that are relevant to questions of Kosovar and Albanian statehood will help in understanding the unification issue at present. While some Albanians of Kosovo seek unification with Albania, others have moved on from this notion and are in the process of forming their own national identity separate from that of Albania. A ‘Greater Albania’ is on the agenda of Kosovar politicians now that Kosovo is an independent nation. This would affect Kosovo due to the serious implications that could arise, considering that Kosovo’s independence was granted on the grounds that their present borders would not be changed. My study on this issue in Kosovo would set out to shed light on the potential for the emergence of a united Albania in order to learn whether there will be a repeat of the turbulent history that the Balkans has witnessed. This study aims to establish a clearer picture of the aspirations of Kosovo’s possible unification of Kosovo with Albania, by exploring the historical and political issues that might be of hindrance to the processes of the development of the Kosovar nation and its statehood.
In addition, Kosovo is a newly independent nation-state with aspirations to join the European Union, so a union between Kosovo and Albania poses a great risk to the stability of Kosovo’s future within Europe. In particular, Kosovo’s Serb minority
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population would be affected, adding to the centuries-old tensions between the Serbs and Albanians of Kosovo, posing another risk to the future stability of the Balkans.
Kosovo has a turbulent past and the region has been the battleground of numerous wars, with Albanians and Serbs both having strong territorial claims to Kosovo. The Serbs consider Kosovo to be a part of their national identity and the cradle of their nation, mainly due to their loss against the advancing Ottomans during the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, an event which the Serbs and the coalition army composed of various ethnic groups, including Albanians, took part in. The Battle of Kosovo had a deep and lasting impact greater than any other event in the Serbian history, and has greatly contributed to the Serbian national identity and the Serb-Albanian relations in Kosovo. Meanwhile for the Albanians of Kosovo, the region is considered their original homeland inhabited by their ancestors, the Illyrians, and the birthplace of the Albanian national movement which took place in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren in 1878.
Despite an Albanian national renaissance taking form towards the end of the 19th Century, the disunity amongst the Albanians of the different regions prevented the Albanians from achieving their own state. As a result, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the First World War, more than 500,000 Albanians residing in the Kosovo region were forcefully and against their will included within the borders of the newly-created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later called Yugoslavia). Since then, relations between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo gradually deteriorated,
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escalating to the expulsion of half of the Albanian population from Kosovo in 1998.
Kosovo is the last of the former Yugoslav territories to declare independence since the disintegration of Yugoslavia began in 1991. The new political map that replaced the former Yugoslavia left many of the region’s inhabitants dissatisfied and none more so than the Albanian population of Kosovo. Upon the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the fall of communism in Albania in 1991, the state of the Albanian nation became a predominant question in the Balkans. For many Albanians of the Former Yugoslavia, the unification of Albanians into a single state is inevitable, an event which could potentially have explosive consequences for the other ethnically-mixed regions of south-eastern Europe. In order for a united Albania to occur, the Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins and possibly the Greeks needed to re-negotiate their borders with Albania, which could be a catastrophic step for the Balkans.
Kosovo’s declaration of independence is seen by the Serbian government as the first step towards the unification of Kosovo with neighbouring Albania, to form a ‘Greater Albania’. For the Serbs ‘Greater Albania’ is a significant threat to their nation as they consider Kosovo to be part of their religious and national identity. Indeed since Kosovo’s independence, there are minor parties who are calling for the unification of Kosovo with Albania.
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The formation of a ‘Greater Albania’ between Kosovo and Albania not only poses a threat to Serbia, but it could also potentially threaten Kosovo’s future within the European Union, as their independence was conditionally granted so that there would be no changes of the current borders of the nation and unification with any neighbouring countries is also prohibited. Whilst Kosovo’s declaration of independence has been a major positive step for the Albanian majority of the nation, it has nevertheless brought to the surface some of the deep-rooted historical issues which have been prevalent in the territory for centuries. The formation of a ‘Greater Albania’ could be a hindrance to the formation of the Kosovo national identity, and the new nation-state’s future within the European Union, so exploring Kosovo’s desire to unite with Albania is currently a very crucial issue.
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1.1 Historical background of Kosovo within Serbia
Formerly part of the Ottoman Empire since the late 14th Century, Kosovo’s complex history within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began after the region was incorporated into Serbia by the Treaty of London after the first Balkan war in 1912. Ethnic tensions between the Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo began to appear more prominent at this time as the Serbian government saw the 75% Albanian majority population as a threat to the stability of the state (Schabnel et al. et al 2001, p. 20). During the period from 1912 to 1942, the Serbian government undertook a large-scale re-colonisation program for the settlement of new Serbs in the territory, with the aim of changing the ethnic composition of Kosovo. Albanians and other Muslims of Kosovo were forcefully expelled through emigration, or were violently driven off their properties through the land reforms which involved Albanian-owned lands being assigned to the arriving Serbs (Daskalovski 2001, p. 13).
The discrimination against the Albanian population in Kosovo continued in other forms, as during this period Kosovo Albanians were denied Albanian language education, as Yugoslavia only recognised the Slavic Croat, Serb, and Slovene nations as constituent nations of Yugoslavia, and deemed non-Slav nations as minorities (Schabnel et al., 2001, p. 20). The plan to further reduce the Albanian composition of Yugoslavia came in 1935 and 1938, when Yugoslavia and Turkey signed two agreements for the expatriation of 240,000 Albanians to Turkey (Čubrilović 1937, p. 5). In a memorandum presented in Belgrade in 1937, Vaso Čubrilović, a professor at the Faculty of Arts in Belgrade as well
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as a leading member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art, called for an ethnic-cleansing of the ‘Albanian wedge’ which had been created by the ‘Albanian migrants from Albania’ and stated that ‘the only possible way for our mass colonisation of those regions is to take the land from the Albanians’ (Čubrilović 1937, p. 3). Furthermore, Čubrilović justifies the expulsion of Albanians to Turkey by adding:
‘At a time when Germany can expel tens of thousands of Jews and Russia can shift millions of people from one part of the continent to another, the shifting of a few hundred thousand Albanians will not lead to the outbreak of a world war’ (Čubrilović 1937, p. 6).
However, due to the outbreak of World War II, this plan was never completed (Ramet 2002, p. 30). Čubrilović nonetheless held several ministerial portfolios in Yugoslavia following the Second World War and was among the Serbian intellectual community at the time who documented their ideology of ethnic cleansing (Elsie 2002, p. 172).
Following the Second World War, Kosovo became a province of Serbia within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, relations between the Yugoslav government and the Kosovar Albanians deteriorated considerably, especially due to the political and ideological concerns in regards to Kosovo Albanians’ relations with neighbouring Albania (The Kosovo Report 2000, p. 35). The Yugoslav government feared that Kosovo Albanians sympathised with the Stalinist regime of Albania’s communist leader Enver Hoxha. In 1956, the Yugoslav government convicted multiple Kosovar Albanian Communists of being infiltrators from Albania and
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assigned the high-ranking Serbian communist official Aleksander Rankovic to the region in order to secure the position of Serbs in Kosovo and give them dominance over Kosovo’s nomenklatura (Bokovoy et al 1997, p. 295).
Throughout the 1950s, Islam, the religion of the majority of Albanians in Kosovo, was not freely practiced, and the Muslim Albanians and Slavs were encouraged by the Yugoslav government to declare themselves as Turks and immigrate to Turkey (Kosovo Report 2000, p. 35). At the same time, Serbs and Montenegrins were dominant in the government, security forces and industrial employment throughout Kosovo, further agitating the Albanian population, who by the late 1960s, had begun to organise large protests requesting that Kosovo be made a republic within the Yugoslav federation. These tactics employed by the Albanians were successful, as following the ouster of Rankovic in 1966, the pro-decentralisation reformers in Yugoslavia, in particular from Slovenia and Croatia, paved the way for Kosovo to attain substantial decentralisation of powers (Bokovoy et al 1997, p. 295). The reforms resulted in the overhaul of Kosovo’s nomenklatura and police, which shifted from being Serb-dominated to ethnic Albanian-dominated, involving the firing of Serbs on a large scale. Further concessions were made, including the formation of the University of Prishtina as an Albanian language institution in 1969 (Bokovoy et al 1997, p. 295).
However the concessions that were made to the Albanians in Kosovo during the 1960s resulted in widespread fear amongst Serbs of being made second-class citizens. There
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were complaints by Serbs that Albanian ‘nationalism and irredentism’ were being openly promoted in Kosovo, and that the Serbs were suffering discrimination in employment policies in the province as a result (Vickers 1998, p. 166). The Serbs’ fear of the Albanians increased concessions was further heightened in 1974 when the Constitution of Yugoslavia granted Kosovo major autonomy. The decision allowed Kosovo to have its own administration, assembly, and judiciary; as well as membership in the collective presidency and the Yugoslav parliament, in which it held veto power (The Kosovo report 2000, p. 35). Throughout Kosovo’s history within Yugoslavia, this period is remembered by Kosovo Albanians as the ‘golden age’, as it was a time when Albanians were in control of Kosovo (Judah 2008, p. 57).
Although much progress was made for the Kosovo Albanians during the late 1960s, the Albanians still considered that their status of ‘minority’ as an autonomous region under Yugoslavia made them ‘second-class’ citizens, compared to the ‘nations’ who were already republics within Yugoslavia. The Albanians in Kosovo demanded the transformation of their region into the seventh Yugoslav republic in which the Albanians, as the local majority, would be politically dominant. The Kosovar Albanians witnessed the new 1968 constitutional amendments made in the Yugoslav republics that involved legislative and judiciary authority being passed on to the Provinces, which were given direct representation in parliament. Following the 1974 constitution, Kosovar Albanians demanded that Kosovo become a constituent republic. In 1981, Albanians took to protests that resulted in Yugoslav territorial defense units being
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brought into Kosovo and a state of emergency being declared, resulting in violent ends to the protests. As a result, the Communist Party rescinded the rights that had been granted to Albanians, including the end of provisions of Albanian professors and Albanian language textbooks in the education system. Throughout the 1980s Kosovo Albanians protested against their suppressed right for independence, for which they were brutally halted by the Yugoslav police and army, with many protesters being arrested and imprisoned for sentences that lasted decades (Elsie 2002, p. 32).
The year 1989 marked a turning point for Kosovo as Milosevic drastically reduced Kosovo’s special autonomous status within Serbia and started the cultural oppression of the ethnic Albanian population (Carole 2003, p. 170). The Kosovo Albanians’ response was a non-violent separatist movement, which involved widespread civil disobedience, the creation of parallel structures in education, medical care, and taxation, with the ultimate objective of achieving independence of Kosovo (Clarke 2000, p. 17).
On July 2, 1990, the self-declared Kosovo parliament declared Kosovo a republic in Yugoslavia and on 22 September 1991 declared Kosovo an independent country, the Republic of Kosova. In May 1992, Ibrahim Rugova was elected president. Ibrahim Rugova would serve as Kosovo’s president throughout the 1990s. Also during the 1990s, under the regime of Serbia’s former hard-line nationalist president Slobodan Milosevic, the Albanian population of Kosovo was subjected to deteriorating living conditions which include the closing down of Albanian schools, the expulsion of Albanian students
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from the University of Prishtina and the laying off of almost the entire Albanian public sector employees. What resulted were intensified long-term ethnic tensions between the Albanian and Serbian populations of Kosovo, often causing inter-ethnic violence. Furthermore, due to the poor economic conditions of the Albanians, a large number of them emigrated to the West. This period of Kosovo history is known as the decade of passive resistance, championed by Ibrahim Rugova, who advocated a peaceful resistance to Yugoslav rule (Clarke 2000, p. 12). Rugova’s aim was for the international community to recognise the need for an independent Kosovo by intervening in the region before the outburst of a devastating war, as experienced in Bosnia.
During the 1990s particular Kosovars who had become frustrated with the passive resistant approach, particularly those in the diaspora of Switzerland and the US, and they secretly formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1991. The KLA only became active in 1996, and began a campaign against Serbian security forces in 1999. During this period of fighting, almost 50% or 800,000 Albanians were either expelled by Serb paramilitary forces or fled the region. However, the majority of the Albanians who had left Kosovo did return after the war when NATO forces entered Kosovo on the 12th of June, 1999. It is estimated that 11,000 Kosovar Albanians were killed during this period, with an additional 3000 still missing, including 2500 Albanians, 400 Kosovar Serbs and 100 Roma (Clarke 2000, p. 34).
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Following the end of the war and the withdrawal of Serbian paramilitary forces from Kosovo, the region was governed by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, which placed Kosovo under transitional UN administration (UNMIK). Under Resolution 1244, Kosovo would have autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, affirming territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, which has been succeeded by the Republic of Serbia. During this time, it is estimated that around 250,000 of the minority Serbs left Kosovo, fearing retaliation from Kosovo Albanians, whom the Serbs considered to be victors of the war (Montgomery 2009, p. 19).
On the 17th of February 2008, the Parliament of Kosovo declared independence. To date, the new nation-state has been recognised by 110 UN member states, and although Serbia refuses to recognize Kosovo as a state, it nevertheless signed the Brussels agreement in 2013 accepting the legitimacy of Kosovo’s institutions and its special status within Serbia. Under such an agreement, the public institutions of Kosovo are operated by the Prishtina government, rather than by Belgrade.
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1.2 Purpose and Research Questions
The Republic of Kosovo has many problems which have been evident throughout the territory’s history and which continue to further threaten the peace and stability of Kosovo, its neighbours and the Balkans. Whilst the declaration of Kosovo’s independence of 2008 has been accepted by many of the countries of the European Union and all of Kosovo’s neighbours, Serbia refuses to recognise Kosovo as a nation-state on its own. The Serbs consider Kosovo to be a UN-governed entity within its sovereign territory, to which they have a strong historical, cultural and religious attachment. For the Serbs, Kosovo is the cradle of their nation’s identity, with many Kosovo Serbs refusing to acknowledge Kosovo as an independent state, especially those who reside in Kosovo.
The purpose of this study is to explore the historical context of unification between Kosovo and Albania, and to determine whether Kosovo aspires to achieve this objective in the near future. Amongst Kosovo Albanians themselves, Kosovo’s independence is by no means clear or uncontested. The most important political parties in post-war Kosovo are focused on developing an independent and internationally recognised nation, while some minor parties are pushing for union of those regions inhabited by Albanians, namely Kosovo, parts of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and north-Western Greece. This idea is referred to by Albanians as ‘Ethnic Albania, ‘Old Albania’, or ‘Antique Albania’. However, western scholars widely refer to the unification of Albanian inhabited lands with Albania as the ‘Greater Albania’ plan, a term which Albanians
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believe to be a Serbian fabrication to deter attention from their ‘Greater Serbia’ plan of expanding their territory at their neighbours’ expense and which took place during the formation of Yugoslavia.
A ‘Greater Albania’ plan amongst Albanians in Kosovo is more prevalent than in other Albanian-inhabited states due to Kosovo’s large Albanian majority, which some Kosovo Albanians see as the final solution for the key to peace in the Balkans. However, the idea of Kosovo unifying with Albania could have serious implications for Kosovo’s Serbs and other minorities, who would lose their national territory in the already fragile Balkan region, which may regress into instability should the Albanians of Kosovo wish to dissolve their present borders in the pursuit of a ‘Greater Albania’.
While some Albanians of Kosovo seek unification with Albania, others have moved on from this notion and are in the process of forming their own national identity separate from that of Albania. A ‘Greater Albania’ is on the agenda of Kosovar politicians now that Kosovo is an independent nation. This would affect Kosovo due to the serious implications that could arise, considering that Kosovo’s independence was granted on the grounds that their present borders would not be changed. My study on this issue in Kosovo would set out to shed light on the potential for the emergence of a united Albania in order to learn whether there will be a repeat of the turbulent history that the Balkans has been a witnessed. This study aims to establish a clearer picture of the aspirations of Kosovo’s possible unification of Kosovo with Albania, by exploring the
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historical and political issues that might be of hindrance to the processes of the development of the Kosovar nation and its statehood.
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1.3 The history of ‘Greater Albania’
The origin of the Albanians and Slavs has produced a number of highly politicised debates, although the most recent Western school of thought is that the ancestors of the modern day Albanians were the Illyrians, known to have inhabited the Balkans from 1000 BC (Wilkes 1992, p. 39). The strongest support to this claim is onomastic investigations, where studies of present-day Albanian names have been traced to attest the Illyrian origins of the Albanian language (Katicic 1993, p. 29). Furthermore for some historians, the wide geographical distribution of Albanians, not only within the province of Kosovo but also beyond its borders in the other regions with a Serb population, demonstrate that Albanians are indigenous to the territories they inhabit (Pulaha 1993, p. 35).
Even after the arrival of the Slavs to the Kosovo region during the 6th century AD, Albanians and Serbs lived in relative harmony alongside one another until the 1389 battle of Kosovo, where the invading Ottoman forces crushed the alliance of Albanians, Serbs, Montenegrins and Bulgarians, and occupied the region for the next 500 years (Schwartz 2003, p. 13). It is during this time that the tensions between Serbs and Albanians began. The Albanians and Serbs did nevertheless share strong social similarities expressed in numerous customs and traditions, their shared struggles against the Ottoman authorities, as well as their Christian faith (Vickers 1998, p. 12).
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The Ottoman Empire’s ruling system absorbed and adapted the existing Albanian, Byzantine and Serbian ruling systems already in place in Kosovo, and brought peace and stability to the region in a steady expansion of urban centres throughout. The Ottoman Empire’s main concern was to source sufficient troops to fight wars and to secure the funds to pay for them, due to the Empire’s essential dynamic of military expansion. As a result, the people of the Balkans were divided into two categories of those who fought in its wars and those who paid for them (Malcolm 1998, p. 95). The Sultan’s military class was referred to as the askeri, whilst the tax-paying class was called the raya, with
Christian villages of the Balkans being toured every seven years for the systematic recruitment of the devşirme, or the forcible recruitment of teenage boys to fight in
Ottoman wars for the Sultan (Malcolm 1998, p. 100).
In comparison to other European states of the time, during the early periods of rule the Ottoman Empire was tolerant of Christianity and Judaism, setting up the millet system, a
socio-cultural communal entity, which was based on religious adherence rather than ethnic identity (Vickers 1998, p. 19). For the Serbs, this was an advantage as they could preserve their language, religion and ethnic individuality, as religion, not nationality, was the fundamental factor in the Ottoman concept of governance (Karpat 1982, pg. 27). Forced conversions to Islam were rare during the earlier periods of the Ottoman rule and during the 16th century the large majority of Albanians were still Christians, with ten times more Catholics than Muslims as late as 1610 (Vickers 1998, p. 22). However, for the Albanian Catholic population this was to cause problems due to the Catholics’
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allegiance to foreign powers – the Vatican, Venice and Austria; enemies of the Ottomans. Furthermore, the Albanians’ Catholic faith was a cause of concern for the Ottoman Empire especially after the Ottoman-Venetian war of 1645 when the Albanian Catholics, encouraged by the high clergy, sided with Venice (Vickers 1998, p. 24). It was only after this event that severe measures were taken to force the conversion of Catholic Albanians to Islam (Vickers 1998, p. 24).
Under the Ottoman Empire the Albanians were disadvantaged as they lacked unifying factors of a shared religion, and the Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Catholic religions could not fit the role of a single institution taking the lead in fostering a national identity comparable to the Serbian National Church (Pulaha 1993, p. 35). The late formation of Albanian identity can be attributed to the denial by the Ottoman Porte of Albanian language schools, the publication of Albanian texts and the use of the Albanian language for official purposes. Whilst there were Albanians who reached high ranks in the Ottoman Empire, mainly due to devşirme who had risen to the highest offices of state to become Grand Viziers in the 15th century, namely Gedik Ahmet Pasha and Davut Pasha, they represented the Ottoman culture more than the Albanian culture (Morgan 2010, p. 11).
The beginnings of an Albanian national movement came after the 1830 massacre of Albanian beys, or local landowners, by the Ottomans in an attempt to tighten their
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(Vickers 1995, p. 25). However, the defeat by the Russians at the end of the 1877-1878 Russo-Ottoman war imposed the Treaty of San Stefano on the Ottomans and resulted in Albanian inhabited lands being dispersed among Serbia, Montenegro and the Bulgarian provinces (Kola 2003, p. 17). This led the European powers to call for a revision of the treaty and instead imposed the Treaty of Berlin, which in turn greatly reduced the Ottoman territories in the Balkan Peninsula, leaving them with Macedonian and Albanian territories, most of Epirus, and Thrace (Jelavich 1983, p. 79).
The Albanian movement was divided into three very different and distinct interest groups: the Tosk-speaking feudal landowners in Albania’s south; an Istanbul-educated intellectual elite; and the Gheg-speaking northern Albanian clansmen and ruling families in Kosovo. This disunity amongst the Albanians of the Balkans was recognised by the Albanian diaspora in Italy, so in 1876 the national movement or Rilindja Kombëtare
(National Renaissance) was convened, with the first ‘Italian Albanian Committee for the Liberation of the Albanians in the East’, being formed shortly after the first Albanian propaganda literatures was produced (Jacques 1908, p. 299).
Observing the continuing Serbian, Bulgarian, Montenegrin and Greek competition over what remained of the weak Ottoman Empire in Europe, the Albanian leaders recognised that their lands were in danger of partition and in the summer of 1877 a conference of Albanian nationalists was held with headquarters established in Prizren, Kosovo. Abdyl Frashëri, an Istanbul-educated writer originating from southern Albania set up the
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secret ‘Albanian Committee’ in Ioannina, present-day Greece. The first national memorandum was sent to the Ottoman Government calling for the creation of a single vilayet uniting all the Albanian populated provinces to be administered by Albanians and with the military service limited to the defense and control of the Albanian territory.
At the historic meeting on the 10th of June 1878, Abdyl Frashëri along with 300 delegates from all the Albanian regions agreed that the Albanian interests would be best served by obtaining a degree of autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, and to avoid any more Albanian-inhabited lands being taken by the neighbouring states. The request of establishing an independent state however, was not made at the time (Jelavich 1983, p. 84). Specifically, the League requested that all Albanian provinces join into a single
vilayet; employees serving in the Albanian provinces of the Porte be familiar with the
Albanian language; Albanian education be spread throughout the Albanian regions and taught at schools; revenues generated from the vilayet be used specifically for the
development of education and public building in the Albanian provinces (Rexha 1978, p. 46).
The League emphasised the cultural and linguistic unity, rather than religious divisions in calling for the creation of an Albanian state, composed of four Albanian dominated
vilayets of Janina, Kosovo, Bitola and Shkoder. Even though there were prior attempts
by the Albanians in promoting an autonomous state, namely by Gjergj Kastrioti Scanderbeg in the 15th century (Sherer and Snenchal 1997, p. 13), and Ali Pasha
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Tepelena in 1882 (Pollo and Puto 1981, p. 105), it was the agreements made at the Congress of Berlin which served as the main catalyst for the Albanians to unite and form the League of Prizren (Morgan 2010, p. 10).
Initially, the League of Prizren lacked consensus among the Albanian nationalists for its purpose, and the Ottoman Porte supported this initiative, as some of its influential representatives were identifying themselves as Ottomans and Muslims, rather than Albanians (Morgan 2010, p. 11). As the League did not push for an independent state, it received broad support from the Porte, and the League ‘oscillated between hard-line nationalists seeking Albanian unification and autonomy and the use of Albanian language in education and government, and those willing to accept limited autonomy from central government’ (Morgan 2010, p. 11).
In the spring of 1881 however, the Ottoman authorities decided that the League posed a separatist threat and started to act by imprisoning Abdyl Frashëri with 4000 others, with death sentences passed onto the more outspoken members. Within a few months, the League was crushed and the situation in Kosovo remained unstable with the occasional local revolt, riot and uprisings gripping different parts of the territory. Nevertheless, although the League was crushed, the Albanian national awareness had begun; albeit making the Albanians the last people in the Balkans to develop a national identity (Vickers 1998, p. 34). Indeed the League was a decisive step to Albania’s future, as the development of an Albanian standard language, press, literature, education and culture
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had gained momentum as a result (Detrez 1999, p. 39).
After the destruction of the League of Prizren, the Albanians were left without a recognised national leadership and the great unifying element was the spoken language, which nevertheless lacked a standard literary form or even a generally accepted alphabet due to the difference in dialects between the Tosk-speaking Southern Albanians and the Gheg Northern regions. Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic represented different directions in political orientation so the choice to be made in this question would have great implications for the region’s future (Jelavich 1983, p. 85).
During the Young Turks’ coup against the Sultan in 1908, Kosovar Albanians played an important role in fighting for the Turks against their Balkan neighbours, with the promise of measures of autonomy, which however, the Young Turks did not honour (Morgan 2010, p. 11). Throughout 1909 the Kosovo Muslim clansmen, led by Isa Boletini, were in rebellion against the Young Turks for threatening to withdraw them the privileges that Sultan Abdul Hamid had granted them prior to the fall of the empire (Vickers 2008, p. 69).
After the Balkan armies occupied Albanian territory and the Ottoman army collapsed, leadership in defending the Albanian position was taken by Ismail Qemail, an Istanbul-educated Albanian who served as a civil servant in the Ottoman Empire (Jelavich 1983, p. 100). On the 28th of November 1912, an assembly opened in Vlore, composed of 83
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Muslim and Christian delegates who came from all the Albanian regions. Their main concern was that the great powers would make the final decisions about their status and the borders of any future state, and that Greece and Serbia would partition the country at the Shkumbin River. Eventually, most of the decisions on Albanians were
made by a conference of ambassadors held in London in December 1912, where Austria, Hungary and Italy were strong supporters of an Albanian state with ethnic boundaries, and Russia stood behind the demands of Serbia and Montenegro who wished to extend their territories as far as possible at the Albanian expense (Jelavich 1983, p. 101).
With Albania’s declaration of independence in 1912 and the threat of another war in the region due to the expansion of the Serbian army to Albania, in July 1913 the London conference finally came to the conclusion that independence for Albania was necessary, and Albania would be a neutral state under a great-power guarantee with a constitutional monarchy. The Albanian national movement had achieved important successes and the powers had made the decision to establish the State, although most of its major territories had been partitioned among the neighbouring states (Jelavich 1983, p. 103). With this decision, more than half of the Albanian people were left out of the new Albanian state and the final settlement deprived Albania of areas with large Albanian majorities (Pettifer and Vickers 1997, p. 181). The most significant was the Kosovo region, with Pristina at its centre, which had been a major national focal point with the most Albanian inhabitants outside of Kosovo (Jelavich 1983, p. 101).
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1.4 The birth of ‘Ethnic Albania’
The term ‘Ethnic Albania’ originates in 1878 from the League of Prizren’s demands to the Ottoman Porte for the unification of the four Albanian vilayets into one Albanian
state, or an ‘Ethnic Albania’ (Waller et. al 2001, p. 173). Following the independence of Albania in 1912, after which Albanian inhabited territories were divided amongst the neighbouring states, ‘Ethnic Albania’ was referred to as the idea of the unification of all the former Albanian-inhabited lands which had been placed within the border of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Judah 2008, p. 47). However, the Albanians themselves are not unified in the use of the term, and different scholars refer to the unification of Albanian lands with ‘Ethnic Albania’, ‘Ancient Albania’ or ‘Old Albania’. According to Rexhep Qosja, ‘Ethnic Albania’ corresponds to the regions where Albanians are the majority of the population (Qosja 1995, p. 2) whilst Western writers claim that ‘Greater Albania’ designates the lands that at various times were peopled by Albanians or the Illyrians, which the Albanians claim to be direct descendants of (Derens and Geslin 2006, p. 1).
The wider use of the term ‘Greater Albania’ by Western scholars is seen by some Albanian scholars as propaganda concocted by Serbian nationalists who fear a united Albania in the Balkans which would curtail Serbia’s expansionist and militarist ends in the Balkans or their quest for a ‘Greater Serbia’, which they achieved with the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. According to Mehdi Hyseni, the idea of the expansion of Albania into a ‘Greater Albania’ is a fictitious claim developed to fulfil Serbian needs and
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political developments in the region and beyond it. Hyseni sees the use of ‘Greater Albania’ as a ‘modern weapon’ to oppose and even deny the historical truths of the ethnic, territorial and state existence of the Albanians in the Balkans (Hyseni 2012, p. 1). Furthermore, Albanian scholars argue that the promoters of ‘Greater Serbia’ had tried to create the belief in the public opinion of the region as well as abroad that its ‘Greater Serbia’ policy to occupy territories inhabited by the Albanians had its own historical reasons (Pulaha 1993, p. 33).
1.5 The Origins of ‘Greater Serbia’
Albanian historiansand scholars argue that ‘Ethnic Albania’ as an idea only began in the late 19th century, and has never been a realistic threat to the stability of the Balkans, in comparison to the ‘Greater Serbia’ plan, which, the Albanians claim, was fulfilled with the formation of Yugoslavia. The term ‘Greater Serbia’ refers to the Serbian nationalist and irredentist ideology that supports the creation of a Serbian land that would incorporate all regions of traditional significance to the Serbian nation, and regions outside of Serbia that are mainly populated by Serbs (Cohen 1996, p. 12). ‘Greater Serbia’ as a term first appeared in 1844, in a document titled Nacertanije written by
Serbian minister Ilija Garasanin (Anzulovic 2001, p. 46). In the document, Garasanin states that ‘a plan must be constructed which does not limit Serbia to her present borders, but endeavors to absorb all the Serbian people around her’ (Cohen 1996, p. 12). From the 1850s onwards, the concept had a profound influence on Serbian politics and the project remained secret. This document is widely considered to be a plan for
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the Serbian national unification with the aim of strengthening Serbia’s position by inculcating Serbian and pro-Serbian national ideology in all the surrounding peoples that are considered to be lacking national consciousness (Cohen 1996, p. 22).
Unlike the idea of ‘Ethnic Albania,’ the plan to realize ‘Greater Serbia’ has been put into action several times during the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly during the Balkan wars when Serbia gained significant territorial expansion and almost doubled its territory with areas populated mostly by non-Serbs, including Albanians, Bulgarians and Turks, amongst others (Carnegie 1914, p. 1). During 1914 the ‘Greater Serbia’ concept was replaced by the Yugoslav Pan-Slavic movement, with Serbian and Yugoslav nationalists claiming that the people had few differences and were only separated by religious divide imposed by occupiers. And especially during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, the concept of ‘Greater Serbia’ was widely seen outside of Serbia as the motivating force for the military campaigns undertaken to form and sustain Serbian states on the territories of the breakaway Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and finally, Kosovo (Little and Silber 1995, p. 360).
‘Greater Serbia’ became a reality during World War I when the Serbian army successfully pushed the central powers out of Kosovo in 1918, transforming the former Serbian monarchy into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians. From 1912 the Albanian population in Kosovo was subjected to assimilation and forced emigration through the Serb re-colonisation program, encouraging Serbs to migrate to Kosovo by
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offering them free land and other financial incentives to live there (Daskalovski 2003, p. 17).
With Albania’s formation of the communist dictatorship government under Enver Hoxha in 1944 (Morgan 2010, p. 14), Kosovo would be completely left in the hands of Yugoslavia. As Paulin Kola writes: ‘Albania’s communist leaders never claimed Kosovo, or even raised the issue at the UN or any other international forum until the final days of Communism’ (Kola 2006, p. 189). Nevertheless in 1991 after the fall of communism, the Albanian government pledged to unite the nation and helped to make the international community more aware of the issue after they extended diplomatic recognition to the self-proclaimed 1990 Republic of Kosova. Although at the time this was a difficult task because Kosovo was under the control of the Nationalist Serbian regime of former Yugoslavia’s President Slobodan Milosevic, the Albanian nation’s recognition of the Republic of Kosovo nevertheless showed that Albania was perhaps finally becoming more sensitive to the situation of the Albanians in Kosovo.
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1.6 The Ahtisaari Plan – A roadblock to ‘Greater Albania’?
In Kosovo, the open discussion of the potential union between Kosovo and Albania is explicitly forbidden by the Ahtisaari plan of conditional independence that was put in place in Kosovo by the United Nations in 2007. Officially the Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement (CSP), the plan was later better known after the Finnish UN Special Envoy to Kosovo, and it provides a comprehensive solution for most political and social issues regarding the development of Kosovo as a new independent country. Specifically, the Ahtisaari plan includes provisions covering Kosovo’s constitutional provisions, rights of communities and their members, the decentralization of local government, the justice system, religious and cultural heritage, international debt, property and archives, the Kosovo security sector, international military presence and legislative agenda. Furthermore, the plan includes the formation of the International Civilian Office and the European Security and Defense Policy. While not mentioning the word ‘independence’, the draft Settlement included several provisions that were widely interpreted as implying statehood for Kosovo. Among all the other conditions, the report states that ‘Kosovo will have no territorial claims against and will not seek union with another State or part of any State’ (Ahtisaari 2007, p. 1).
Therefore, with the elimination of a potential unification with Albania in the future, the plan fails to address several key historical processes that have a significant impact on the aspirations of current Kosovo inhabitants and which may become a major hurdle to the implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan and for the Kosovo statehood itself. While the
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Ahtisaari Plan provides the most rational solution for most of Kosovo’s inhabitants, it does not satisfy those Kosovar Albanian nationalists who strive for unification with Albania or the Kosovar Serb nationalists who try to keep links with Serbia, whilst ignoring the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo. Under the Ahtisaari plan Kosovo is in the process of forming a new nation, yet the basis for the Kosovar nationalists is the inclusion of all inhabitants regardless of their ethnicity. This issue takes high relevance in Kosovo today as Kosovo must keep its current borders (Ahtisaari 2007, p. 1), thus ruling out any potential unification of Kosovo with Albania, or any other Albanian inhabited lands. Nevertheless, the issue of unification with Albania continues to be alluded to in the speeches of politicians in Kosovo, and continues to be present as a theme in articles, books and public debates.
Those very few studies that have been conducted on the issue of unification between Kosovo and Albania in the two countries in question are not only few and far between, but they provide contradictory evidence on the currency of the issue in the two countries. A poll conducted by the United Nations Development Program in Kosovo in 2005 reported in the Early Monitor Report that that only 9.1% of the respondents supported union with Albania, whilst 90.2% were against it (UNDP 2005, p. 8). In contrast to this report however is a more recent report of 2010, which shows a higher inclination towards the unification of Kosovo with Albania, with 63% of respondents in Albania and 81% of the respondents in Kosovo supporting a Greater Albania (Gallup
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2010, p. 6).
The division in Kosovo today between those in favour of a Greater Albania and those who strive for a Kosovar national identity is mostly evident among the political leaders and the intelligentsia of Kosovo. Even among them, there is debate about the issue and whether or not Kosovo should seek unification with Albania. Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare, who is a well- respected figure in Kosovo and Albania, as well as internationally renowned, is cautious when discussing the issue, and in a recent interview about the topic, he said that the Kosovo-Albania union is not a political objective for the two countries, rather a nostalgic one due to the history shared by the two countries (Euronews 2009, p. 1). Kadare’s stance is evidently supportive of the two countries entering the European Union, rather than full support of a Greater Albania, a stance which is perhaps supported by many Albanians, especially in Kosovo, who seek to create an identity of their own. However, he refers to Kosovo as ‘external Albania’ in his most recent essay titled ‘The European Identity of Albanians’ (Kadare 2006, p. 10); further adding to confusion as to which stance he takes on the issue.
The clause in the Ahtisaari plan that prohibits Kosovo from changing its current borders is approved by the Serb and Western communities, who have in the past warned of the threat of a Greater Albania taking place in Kosovo. The main opposition to Greater Albania has been voiced by the Serbian government, which claimed that Kosovo’s independence would be the first step towards the realisation of a Greater Albania, or
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the beginning of action for the unification of all territories in the Balkan region where Albanians live (Kola 2006, p. 1). Even the Serb communities living in the US called on US senators, namely Senator Joe Biden, and (at the time Secretary of State) Colin Powell to make sure that ‘The Albanians must be unequivocally told that continuing the quest for a ‘Greater Albania’ would permanently destabilize the region’ (Djordjevich 2002, p. 10). Such opposition towards a Greater Albania was also shared by the Western community, as following the 1999 war in Kosovo, the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was quick to warn Kosovo against seeking unification with Albania.1 Similarly in 1999, the American Ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill stated: “We spent the 1990’s worrying about a Greater Serbia. That’s finished. We are going to spend time well into the next century worrying about a Greater Albania” (Cohen 1996, p. 9).
More recently there have been intense discussions on the emergence of a Greater Albania taking place in Kosovo by the most influential force championing the idea, Albin Kurti, leader of the Vetëvendosje (Self-determination) Political Party. The founder of the
Vetëvendosje Movement and its political supporters promote the earlier concept of
nationhood by defending the rights of the Albanian majority, and defending their own nation’s rights to be unified with Albania. The Vetëvendosje Movement, which managed
to attain 16 seats, or 13.59% of votes in the 2014 elections, remaining the third strongest political force in the Kosovo assembly, does not accept the concept of Kosovar identity, nor does it recognize the Kosovo nation. In fact, supporters of the citizenship
1
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concept of Kosovar national identity are concerned that the rise in the popularity of
Vetëvendosje could be a serious obstacle to the development of a Kosovo national
identity apart from that of the Albanian identity.
This following chapter of this thesis will explore some of the historical and political issues that are relevant to questions of Kosovar and Albanian statehood will help in understanding the unification issue at present. My study on this issue in Kosovo would set out to shed light on the potential for the emergence of a united Albania in order to learn whether there will be a repeat of the turbulent history that the Balkans has been a witness of. This study aims to establish a clearer picture of the aspirations of Kosovo’s possible unification of Kosovo with Albania, by exploring the historical and political issues that might be of hindrance to the processes of the development of the Kosovar nation and its statehood.
Chapter 2 discusses the Albanian nation’s stand-point on unification with Kosovo, both historically and at present. In chapter 3, I will discuss the demand in Kosovo for unification between Kosovo and Albania, between the years 1878 and 1981. Chapter 4 discusses the present situation in Kosovo regarding unification with Albania.
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Chapter 2: Unification with Kosovo: The Albanian view-point historically and at present
2.1 Introduction to chapter
Very few studies have been conducted in Albania on the issue of unification with Kosovo. Although unification with Albania has been an on-going issue in Kosovo since 1912 (when Albania became an independent state), in Albania itself the topic is not considered seriously and has received very little research or scholarly attention. This chapter explores the reasons behind Albania’s lack of interest in forming a joint state with Kosovo and the present government’s stance on the issue. By looking at Albania’s historical attitude on unification with Kosovo, it is clear that the reasons behind Albania’s lack of interest in unification with Kosovo were a result of the strict communist regime of Enver Hoxha, whose interest it was to keep stability in his own country and remain the leader. Indeed, the communist regimes of Albania and Yugoslavia were strongly opposed to the idea of unification between Albania and Kosovo, and Albanians consider this phase as dividing Albanians not only politically, but also culturally. At present, the official Albanian government generally avoids the impression of officially advocating unification with Kosovo; although some politicians continue to conjure nationalist nostalgia by advocating the issue during their political campaign speeches. Considering the lack of literature on the topic, particularly by Albanians themselves, I will be referring to western scholars’ works which have dealt with this issue more broadly, as well as news articles. Furthermore, in addition to the
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entire thesis, this chapter will also contribute new knowledge to this under-researched area of inquiry and aims to quell the fears of many regarding unification between Kosovo and Albania and the instability which such unification could bring to the Balkans.
2.2 Albania’s stand-point on unification with Kosovo
Whilst a poll conducted by the United Nations Development Program in Kosovo in 2005 stated that that only 9.1% of the respondents supported union with Albania, and 90.2% were against it, such a poll was never conducted in Albania proper (UNDP 2005, p. 8). After Kosovo declared independence in 2008, the issue of unification between Albania and Kosovo gained higher prominence in the foreign press, due to the increased fear by neighbouring countries that Albania and Kosovo would form a ‘Greater Albania’. Even prior to Kosovo’s independence, western academics were already discussing the threat of unification between Albania and Kosovo. Gordon Bardos, in a paper titled: ‘Containing Kosovo’, writes:
“Clearly, then, regardless of the point in which the decision to move toward final status for Kosovo is made, we cannot ignore the spill-over effects of such a move: granting Kosovo independence will inevitably have repercussions throughout the southern Balkans. A second question that needs to be addressed at this point is whether the move to establish an independent Kosovo will fulfil Albanian national aspirations in the Balkans, or whether this will only be the next stage in a drive to create a ‘Greater Albania’” (2005, p. 32).
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Following Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008, in March of the same year ‘Russia Today’ published an article titled: ‘Kosovo spurs more Greater Albania Dreams’.2 The article states that ‘What many Albanians want is a greater Albania that incorporates the country Albania, Kosovo, big parts of Macedonia and parts of Epirus, which is in Greece’.3 Such strong reactions on Kosovo’s independence brought the issue of a potential unification between Albania and Kosovo to prominence, with numerous articles being written by Serbian and Western journalists on the topic, further heightening the fear of the Albanians’ already suspicious neighbours.
In a report published by the ICG in 2004, reference is made to this national program as being ‘more mythical than practical for most Albanians who recognise that such an aspiration is utterly inconsistent with the reality of contemporary geopolitics’ (ICG 2004, p. 2). Furthermore, Albanian intellectual Fatos Lubonja has noted that ‘The Albanians’ dream of being united one day has been a part of their collective consciousness without becoming a political programme because Albanians have always been very weak” (Judah 2001, p. 12). Therefore, it is considered that “pan-Albanian” cultural or economic initiatives are not a step towards a greater Albania, or greater Kosovo, “but as a part of the “growing European trend toward encouraging integration across national borders” (ICG
2
http://rt.com/news/kosovo-spurs-more-greater-albania-dreams/. Accessed 14 August, 2014. 3
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2004, p. 2).
Albanian nationalism is considered to be different from other Balkan ideals of expansionism, because the ideology of unification has never been on the agenda, initiated or being driven from the capital of the Albanian state. Furthermore, whilst Serbs and Western authors use the terms “pan-Albanianism”, “Greater Albania” and “Greater Kosovo”, the Albanians themselves do not use these terms. Rather, the Albanians “see their political agenda as a collective effort to strengthen the Albanian position in the southern Balkans by freeing themselves of Slav oppression” (ICG 2004, p. 2). For the Albanians, the territories in which they were divided in 1913 and 1921 are not considered separate rather they see all of them as Albania, albeit divided into different political units (ICG 2004, p. 2).
The only organisation to conduct a poll in Albania and Kosovo on the peoples’ desire for a unification of the two countries was the Gallup Institute. In 2010, a Gallup Institute poll showed a high inclination for unification by both countries, with 63% of respondents in Albania and 81% of the respondents in Kosovo supporting unification (Gallup 2010, p. 6). Apart from this poll though, a large gap remains in the literature on the unification issue in Albania. Whilst unification with Kosovo is a discussed topic in Albania, the Tirana government generally avoids suggesting that union with Kosovo is on their agenda.
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Under the isolationist communist regime of Enver Hoxha, the issue of Kosovo was not raised, even in the early 1980s, when ethnic unrest occurred between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs. Today’s Albanian politicians “advocate closer political, economic and cultural ties amongst ethnic Albanians throughout the region” whilst never explicitly stating a desire to the current borders of Kosovo and Albania (ICG 2004, p. 11). If Albania does not express any interest in consolidating its borders with Kosovo, unification between the two countries will not occur. Therefore, for Kosovo to unite with Albania, the two countries must share the same goal, and as this chapter will discuss, a desire for unification with Kosovo does not exist in Albania.
After the 1999 Kosovo war, the international community and Kosovo’s neighbours, namely Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, feared that the Albanians living in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, would take advantage of Serbia’s departure from Kosovo and cause another stir in the Balkans by seeking to unify their respective inhabited territories and form a ‘Greater Albania’. Indeed, their concern regarding a possible ‘Greater Albania’ seemed legitimate, considering the large number of Albanians living outside the Albanian state. In order to understand those who fear ‘Greater Albania’, one needs only look at the European demographics of the Albanian population. Besides the three and a half million Albanian inhabitants in Albania proper, 90% of Kosovo’s two million people are ethnic Albanians (ICG 2004, p. 1). In
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Macedonia, Albanians make up a quarter of the country’s 2.1 million people.4 The 500,000 Albanians of Macedonia are predominantly concentrated in the western valleys bordering Albania and Kosovo, as well as in the capital of Macedonia, Skopje.5 Montenegro’s Albanian population is 60,000 people, whilst there are 62,000 Albanians living in three municipalities of southern Serbia, namely Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovc.67 In addition, there are also Albanian communities in other parts of Europe, yet these groups are generally not considered to be a threat in regards to aspirations of a ‘Greater Albania’ scheme. Due to the Albanian migrations of the early 20th century, and before, either under the Ottoman Empire or the Yugoslav regime, Albanian minorities can also be found in Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Turkey. The more recent migrations of Albanians during the 20th century have also led to concentrations of Albanians throughout Western Europe, predominantly in Germany, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries (ICG 2004, p. 1).
4
http://www.stat.gov.mk/PrikaziPoslednaPublikacija_en.aspx?id=54. Accessed: 14 August, 2014. 5 http://www.stat.gov.mk/OblastOpsto_en.aspx?id=31. Accessed: 14 August, 2014.
6
http://www.monstat.org/eng/page.php?id=57&pageid=57. Accessed: 14 August, 2014. 7
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2.3 Analysis of the history of unification with Kosovo in Albania
In order to understand Albania’s current stance on unification with Kosovo, an analysis of ideas of unification from a historical perspective is necessary. In Albania, the notion of a ‘Greater Albania’ is deemed a sensitive issue (Raxhimi & Zogjani 2001 19), for which there is very little support in the country (Judah 2001, 27). Unlike Belgrade’s objective, which was the continual increase of territorial grasp within the Balkans between the early nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth, a ‘Greater Albania’ has never been the objective of any Albanian governments (ICG 2004, p. 11). Following Albania’s declaration of independence in 1912, the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin had agreed to grant Albania independence, yet they had not yet decided on the country’s borders. During this time, Serbia had organised the elimination of Albanians from Kosovo, as a means of reducing their presence in the region so that Albania’s borders would not encompass the Kosovo region, an act which has repercussions to this day (Clarke 2000, p. 26). The Albanians of Kosovo were dealt with a catastrophic blow, as Kosovo was included within the borders of Serbia, and other Albanian inhabited territories in Macedonia, southern Serbia, eastern Montenegro, and northern Greece (Chameria) were not included within Albania’s borders. With this decision, more than half of the Albanians were left outside the newly formed state, of which almost 500,000 were in Kosovo alone (ICG 2004, p. 4).
