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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

2015

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:………………………

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

3 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.

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 4.7 Case Study on Party Politics ...... 118

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

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

7 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.

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

9 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,

10 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.

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.

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

13 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

14 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

15 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

16 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

17 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).

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.

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

20 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

21 historical and political issues that might be of hindrance to the processes of the development of the Kosovar nation and its statehood.

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).

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’

24 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 control as well as increase the influence of the Islam religion amongst the population

(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

26 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

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

28 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

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).

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

31 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

32 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

33 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.

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

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

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

37 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 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/648630.stm. Accessed 14 August, 2014.

38 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.

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

40 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).

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 Ibid.

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.

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

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 http://pod2.stat.gov.rs/overakorisnika/ok.aspx?knjigaId=45&jezik=en-us. Accessed: 14 August, 2014.

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).

The decision of the London Conference to cede Albanian-inhabited lands to neighbouring states prompted a group of Kosovo Albanians in political exile to form the Committee for the Defense of Kosovo in 1918 (Vickers & Pettifer 1997, p. 181). This committee campaigned against the borders that had been established at the London Conference as well as advocate Kosovo’s liberation, and for the first time in Albanian history, they advocated a state that would unify all Albanians inhabited lands. This committee was significantly different from the earlier League of Prizren, which had only sought to achieve a unified autonomous region of Albanians under the Ottoman Empire (ICG 2004, p. 3). However, the

Committee for the Defense of Kosovo had very little effect in reaching their ultimate goal of Albanian unification as they were quashed in 1924 (ICG 2004, p.

3-4). The reconfiguration of the European map of this period is considered to be the cause of considerable turmoil which sprung up decades later among the

Albanians of the Balkans, and the new borders were considered to have left

Albania; ‘by all odds the most backward state of Europe’ (Stavrianos 1958, p.

731).

Greater Albania existed for four years during the Italian and German occupation of the region during the Second World War, between 1939 and 1945. Italian troops occupied parts of Kosovo and the Albanian-inhabited regions of Western

Macedonia, Eastern Montenegro and Albania to form a Greater Albania

(Schwartz 2000, p. 82-83). Kosovo, the districts of Prishtina, Peja and Prizren were

47 ruled by the Italian occupation, whilst the German troops occupied Mitrovica,

Vucitern, Gjilan and Podujevo, together with Serbian towns. Yet, when Serbia expelled German troops in 1914, Kosovo again became a part of Yugoslavia. This prompted the Albanians to form the Balli Kombëtar, a nationalistic organization which advocated the liberation of ‘ethnic’ Albania (Ramet 1995, p. 198).

The weak state of Albania during the interwar years did not allow the country to consider the situation of Albanians living outside the country (Judah 2001, p. 8).

Yugoslavia’s communist leader, Josip Tito, had aspirations to encompass both

Albania and Bulgaria in Yugoslavia, so in 1924, and with Tito’s help, Ahmed Zogu

(later self-acclaiming himself as King Zog), became leader of Albania. As a gesture of gratitude to Yugoslavia for helping him become leader of Albania, Zog ceded the Shën Naum monastery along Lake Ohrid, in present-day Macedonia, to

Yugoslavia (Pearson 2004, p. 248). In addition, as a further gesture of appreciation to Yugoslavia, Zog suppressed anti-Serb guerrillas operating in

Albania (Judah 2001, p. 8). During Zog’s reign, the pro-Kosovo lobby in the country was weakened, and Zog become ‘a sworn enemy of the Kosovo rebels and irredentists’ (Malcolm 1998, p. 277).

Any hope that the Albanians of Kosovo still had for their inclusion within the borders of Albania were extinguished at the 1943 Bujan conference, which was organised by the Albanian and Yugoslav communists. At the conference, the

Kosovo Albanians were successfully convinced by the Albanian and Yugoslav communists to join the fight against communism. The Yugoslav communists considered that promising the Kosovo Albanians unification with Albania was the only way for the Kosovo Albanians to support the fight against fascism. At the

Prizren conference in 1945 however, the Yugoslavs revealed their true intentions and the group representing the Communist Party of Kosovo decided that the province would not become a part of Albania, but would join Serbia instead

(Mullen 1997. p. 90).

2.4 Communist Albania’s stance on unification with Kosovo

Yugoslavia’s influence on the Albanians proved to be immense from Albania’s independence onwards, so under such a strong influence, the prospect of unification between Albania and Kosovo would always be obstructed. Even following the Second World War, Yugoslavia would continue to influence

Albanian politics, helping Enver Hoxha become the communist leader of Albania in 1944-1945 (Mullen 1997, p. 90). The positive relationship between Albania and

Yugoslavia however, came to an end when relations between Tito and the Soviet

Union’s leader Joseph Stalin came to an end. In this case, Hoxha sided with Stalin, and as a result, the border between Albania and Yugoslavia would become a dividing factor for the Albanians in Kosovo and Albania (ICG 2004, p. 4).

The extremely repressive and isolationist regime of Enver Hoxha caused a decline in Albanian nationalism and the question of Kosovo and Albanian unification. At the time, the agenda of Albanians living in Albania changed from a nationalistic stance to one of survival and escape from the threat of political persecution of the Hoxha regime (Olsen 2000, p. 6). Ismail Kadare, Albania’s most successful author considers that Enver Hoxha betrayed Kosovo, and according to Kadare,

‘the roots of the modern Kosovo problem were to be found in the history of the partisan networks in the last years of the war (Morgan 2010, p. 222). Kadare further states that the Albanian and Yugoslav communist governments used

Kosovo to achieve their domestic political goals. Kadare states that:

‘It was a third of a century since that gloomy day of 8 November 1941, when the two dictatorships, the Serb and the Albanian, flirted with each other on the back of Kosovo. Kosovo was their crime in common, the chain which linked them to each other, [...] The more the Kosovar Albanians were crushed by the Serb communities, the easier it was for the Albanian communists to deflect attention away from the terror which reigned in Albania. And vice versa. The savagery of the Albanian dictatorship could be used for the same ends by the Serbs. The two dictatorships reinforced their common barbarism.’ (Kadare 1991, p. 415).

Kosovo was subjugated to both the Albanian and Yugoslav communist regimes

(Morgan 2010, p. 222). Hoxha’s ignorant stance on the question of Kosovo has been attributed to numerous reasons. Kadare suspects that Hoxha’s homosexuality was one of the major reasons for Hoxha betraying Kosovo.

According to Kadare, Hoxha turned a blind eye to the Kosovo issue, as he was afraid that the Yugoslavs possessed material on his homosexuality which could be

50 used against him (Morgan 2010, p. 223).

Another reason for Hoxha’s silence on Kosovo, according to Peter Prifti, was the suppression of the Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia’s political liberalisation of its domination by the Soviet Union (Prifti 1999, p. 32-33). Hoxha, fearing such an event occurring in his own country, ‘failed either to confront the Yugoslav government over the denial of national rights to the Albanian minority in

Yugoslavia or to work towards Albanian unification’ (ICG 1998, p. 3).

Furthermore, Tirana even lend diplomatic support to Belgrade, who also feared attack by the Soviet Union, should an uprising such as the Prague Spring occur in

Yugoslavia, issuing a public statement that ‘Albania would come to her

[Yugoslavia’s] aid’ (ICG 1998, p. 3). For Hoxha, the interests and stability of his own dictatorial regime had higher precedence than the question of national unity between Albania and Kosovo. Furthermore, Hoxha was aware of the complications and potential problems that could be caused by the unification of

Albanian communities of Albania and Kosovo.

From 1945 to 1992, the long separation of the Albanian communities had caused social and psychological differences between the isolated Albanians of Albania proper and the more cosmopolitan Albanians of Kosovo. Tirana’s political elite of the communist years were determined to keep Albanian foreign policy ‘insular, sceptical and conservative’ regarding its attitude towards the Kosovo Albanians

(ICG 1998, p. 3). For economic and security reasons, during the 1980s the Hoxha regime also placed a high emphasis on Albania’s relations with the Yugoslav government, even establishing better relations with Belgrade than with Prishtina.

The Albanian government’s lack of interference in the internal politics of Kosovo during the Yugoslav regime is also attributed to the fact that Yugoslavia was

Albania’s major trading partner, and between the two, there was increased integration of their mineral and electricity industries (ICG 1998, p. 3).

Furthermore, Hoxha’s government never presented the cause of the Kosovo

Albanians to any international forums, yet, they did plead the cause of the Chams at the European Court of Human Rights.

The notion of a ‘Greater Albania’ revived in Albania following the end of the Cold

War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the changes that had gone through Central and Eastern Europe. Throughout the continent, ethnic groups devised historic maps for which they used to claim the historic and ethnic basis for their territorial aspirations. Such maps were also amongst Albanians, namely ‘Greater Albania’ or

‘Ethnic Albania’ maps showing Albania unified with Kosovo, western Macedonia, south eastern Montenegro, and Epirus (Chameria) of Greece (ICG 2004, p. 4-5).

However, the Albanians were not alone in the Balkans to aspire to a greater nationalist agenda. In fact, the Albanians are considered to have been amongst the least vigorous group of the Balkans states aspiring to the territorial expansionist ideas. The ‘Nacertanie’ program for the ‘Greater Serbia’ plan was

52 included in the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and became the political platform for Slobodan Milošević (ICG 2004, p. 5).

2.5 Post-Communism – The Albanian political establishment’s view on the issue of unification with Kosovo

Following the fall of the communist regime in 1991, Albania’s politicians have in general avoided even the slightest impression of officially advocating unification with Kosovo. With the fall of communism and the arrival of multiparty politics, the country’s status as the poorest European country, as well as the internal political conflicts which exist, have presided over any aspirations of expanding the nation’s borders. However, in their 1998 ‘Platform for the Solution of the

National Albanian Question’, the Albanian Academy of Sciences argued that ‘the rightful aspiration of all Albanians is the unification of all ethnic Albanian lands in a single nation state’ (ASHSH 1998, p. 3). As a means of regaining the prominence that it had lost since the fall of communism, the Academy was using nationalism to try and raise its prestige amongst Albanians (ICG 2004, p. 11). Whilst the

Academy has renounced the platform, the document caused controversy in the neighbouring states and the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts at the time issued a condemnation, stating that fighting in Western Macedonia in 2001 which was occurring between the ethnic Albanians and Macedonians, was a representation of the implementation of the Albanian platform (ICG 2004, p. 11).

The Albanian platform is also considered to have aroused suspicion amongst

53 neighbouring states, which continues to remain to this day.

There have been numerous controversies surrounding declarations made by

Albanian politicians on the issue of Albanian unification, whether in regards to unification with Kosovo or a unification of all Albanian inhabited territories of the

Balkans. Sali Berisha, a prominent Albanian politician, caused alarm in March

1992 when he became president of Albania and declared that one of his main aims was Albanian unification (Judah 2007, p. 20). However Berisha subsequently appears to have regretted the declaration, and by the end of 1992, he publicly stated that ‘the concept of a greater Albania is not considered in serious Albanian political circles’ (Judah 2007, p. 21). Ever since, Berisha, who served as Albania’s

Prime Minister until 2013, has been reluctant to discuss the unification debate.

This reaction by Berisha caused outspoken Kosovo academic Rexhep Qosja to state in an open letter that:

‘Albania has never accepted its existing borders and has always tried to remind international circles that these borders are unjust, dividing the Albanian land in two. They are borders that go through the very heart of the Albanian people.’ (Illyria 1993, p. 5)

This debate between Berisha and Qosja typified the kind of debates which occurred in Albanian during the 1990s, between die-hard nationalists, mainly from Kosovo or the Kosovo-originated diaspora, and the more moderate politicians and academics in Albania. Indeed, the idea that many Albanians have of Albania proper being their ‘motherland’, and that Albania would advocate any

agenda that Albanians outside Albania may have for Albanian unification is

supported in a report on the issue by the International Crisis Group. The ICG

conclude that ‘historically and culturally, Albania is a focus for Albanians living

elsewhere to remain engaged with their history and reaffirm their national

consciousness’ (ICG 2004, p. 12).

Following the 1999 war in Kosovo, ‘Albania has promoted itself as the logical

point of reference for ethnic Albanians in neighouring countries’ (ICG 2004, p.

11). The concern for the politicians of Albania has been to advocate closer

political, economic and cultural ties among ethnic Albanians throughout the

region, whilst resisting a temptation for a call to changing borders. Nevertheless,

the Albanian governments have aimed at ensuring that the current borders do

not obstruct connections between ethnic Albanians as a whole. This has been

demonstrated by the building of a five kilometer-long highway, the first ever to

connect Albania with Kosovo. The ‘patriotic highway’, as referred to by Albanians,

is Albania’s largest highway costing over one billion Euros, and with this highway,

Albania seeks to boost cultural and economic ties with Kosovo.8 For many

Albanians, this gesture by the Albanian government was considered a significant

effort in connecting the Albanians of the Balkans with Albania. Furthermore, the

Albanian government took more small, yet significant steps in promoting cross-

border ties, such as building an ‘information office’ in Prishtina immediately

8 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/albania-kosovo-highway-costs-soar-to-2-billion-euro. Accessed: 14 August, 2014

following the end of the war in 1999. The improvements of security in Albania

following the end of the conflict in Kosovo have brought about a larger influx of

tourists each year to the country’s coastline. Kosovo Albanians and its Diaspora

holiday in Albania’s south-western coastal strip, as well as visit Albania’s national

shrines, most popularly the Skanderbeg museum in Kruja and the Independence

Square in Vlore.9

Another example of a prominent Albanian official hinting at unification was Arben

Imami, chairman of the moderate Democratic Alliance, which was a part of the

government coalition and consisted of Albania’s most sophisticated intellectuals.

During the lead-up to the 2001 election in Albania, Imami announced that the

unification of Albania with Kosovo was one of the goals of the party (ICG 2004, p.

7). However, Imami’s declaration was heavily criticised by his own party and the

broader political establishment of Albania, all of whom dismissed his comments

as pre-election posture. Days later, the Democratic Alliance’s general assembly

announced their rejection of their leader’s statement. They toned down the

wording of the electoral program, calling for a ‘rapprochement’ between the two

countries rather than an official union of Albania and Kosovo.

However, there have been other Albanian political leaders who called for closer

political and economic ties among Albanians living in the Balkans. Fatos Nano,

9 http://www.albania.al/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014

56 who in July 2002 became Albania’s Prime Minister for the third time, stated that

Albania’s borders should not be shifted, and that the best way to deflect nationalist calls for a greater Albania is to enable the freedom of movement throughout the region (ICG 2004, p. 11). Nano stated that:

“The emphasis should be on promoting free movement between peoples of Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo, which would help to avert pressure from ideas associated with greater Albania. It is all about creating new ways of co-existence, firstly amongst Albanians, so that we are seen as emancipated and democratic and a factor for stability in the Balkans” (ICG 2004, p. 12).

Indeed, Nano’s programme did occur through economic development, which was enabled in the region through the post-Milosevic Yugoslavia free market conditions (ICG 2004, p. 11).

In an attempt to increase the country’s nationalist credentials, the Albanian government worked to build a joint forum of Albanian political parties from

Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. In 1999, Fatos Nano drafted a common political agenda between Tirana, Prishtina and Tetovo, and Hashim

Thaçi, the former KLA leader who is now Prime Minister of Kosovo. Arben Xhaferi, the leader of the Macedonian Albanian Democratic Party was also enlisted, and the three political leaders aimed at developing a pan-national strategy that would serve to integrate all Albanians. As Nano stated: “It will not be a movement in support of a greater Albania but will serve the great European Albanians” (ICG

2004, p. 8).

Other less formal meetings were organised by Nano between Albanian political leaders from the different parts of the Balkans, who reaffirmed in a press release,

“the cooperation of all Albanians in the process of European integration and agreed on strengthening the engagement by Albanian political parties with those in other countries to strengthen the democratic institutions” (ICG interviews

2003). Through such initiatives, the Albanian government aimed at alleviating the

West’s fears of a ‘Greater Albania’ occurring amongst the Albanians of the

Balkans.

As reported by the ICG in 2004, there is also little support for ethnic Albanian separatist movements in Southern Serbia or Macedonia (ICG 2004, p. 12). The

ICG report states that: ‘while some public support exists for Kosovo’s independence, this is based more on general sympathy for the situation of

Kosovo Albanians rather than any aspirations for unification with Kosovo or

Macedonia (ICG 2004, p. 12). There also seems to be little interest from Tirana for the political unification of Albanian with Kosovo, with many Albanian politicians fearing that any such union would shift power from Tirana to Albania (ICG 2004, p. 12). The main fear being that in an expanded Albania, power would shift to the

Ghegs of Kosovo and Northern Albania, and the Tosks would be outnumbered by

58 the Ghegs.

Prior to Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, the Albanians generally sensed that Kosovo’s future would be determined by the ‘Greater Power’ politics of the West, which Albania itself has never influenced. Albania’s governments were more concerned with improving trade links with Kosovo following the 1999 conflict, with the country’s Socialist Party’s ruling platform stating that:

‘The future goal of all Albanians is to create an Albanian zone comprising all Albanian- inhabited regions of south-eastern Europe being integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures’ (Milo 2001, p. 13).

Furthermore, Paskal Milo, Albania’s former foreign minister, states in his book

‘Greater Albania – Between Fiction and Reality’, that Albania’s goal is not unification with Kosovo but with Europe. He states:

‘In the official policy of the Government of Albania there is not, nor has there been, any reference to or any aim at the creation of a ‘Greater Albania’. To the contrary, there have been clear and unequivocal statements that such an idea is counter-productive and contrary to the objectives of Albania to be integrated into a United Europe’ (Milo 2001, p. 45).

The Albanian government believed that their future prosperity would most improve if it pursued integration with the rest of Europe and Kosovo. Whilst the

Albanian population supported Kosovo’s independence and favoured unification, judging by the election results, the Albanian people had other priorities, so only a small minority would support a campaign of violence in order to achieve

59 unification with Kosovo (ICG 2004, p. 13).

The potential for Albania to seek unification with Kosovo, or any other Albanian inhabited region of the Balkans is deemed highly improbable (ICG 2004, p. 11).

The numerous challenges faced by the Albanian government, including its poverty and aspirations to join the European Union, seem to take higher relevance to the re-drawing of its current borders and potentially causing further conflict in the Balkans. Furthermore, the country’s commitment to regional stability and its opposition towards militant supporters of ‘pan-Albanianism’, as was demonstrated in the year 2001 when the Albanian National Army arose. The

‘Albanian National Army’ (ANA) which openly advocated a ‘Greater Albania’ agenda, did not gain credibility with the majority of the population. It seems that violence in the name of a greater Albania or a change of the current borders is neither politically popular nor morally justified (ICG 1994, p. 1).

The only political Party in Albania which supports a goal of the unification of

Albanian inhabited lands is the Party for National Unity, now part of the Albanian

National Union Front. This party however, has never been popular and support for it is considered ‘minuscule’ (ICG 2004, p. 11). Support for unification with

Kosovo exists mainly in the northern border regions of Albania, and this is mainly due to their belief that by eradicating borders, there will be an immediate rise in economic and social benefits for those Albania regions. Such positive changes

60 have already become apparent in northern Albania, with the opening of new border crossings, and in particular the ‘patriotic highway’ which links Kosovo to

Albania. In contrary, lack of support for Kosovo Albania unification exists in the southern parts of Albania, where the Tosk population feel that they have less in common with Kosovo Albanians either socially, culturally and historically.

Kosovo’s independence premised on the prohibition of any alterations to the nation-state’s current borders has put to rest the fears of those who do not want unification between Albania and Kosovo. Through the process of European integration, and the borders of Albania and its northern countries open, and economic and educational opportunities increase across the region, the Kosovar

Albanians see no reason as to why a unification of Kosovo and Albania should occur.

The current situation, in which there is only moderate popular support for change, and in which the Ahtisaari stipulations expressly forbid such change, suggest that unification of Kosovo and Albania is unlikely to occur in the near future. The historical support in Albania has never been strong, and the country’s poverty and internal political conflict has always predominated over any efforts towards expanding the country’s boundaries. Furthermore Albania’s interests in developing cultural and economic ties with Kosovo, yet maintaining their separate statehood have consistently been reinforced by the Albanian

61 governments (ICG 2004, p. 1). For Albania, the notion of a ‘Greater Albania’ remains an idea that is unpractical for most Albanians who realise that the aspiration of not consistent to the reality of contemporary geopolitics (ICG 2004, p. 2). Paskal Milo, who served as Albania’s foreign minister from 1997 to 2001, even published a booklet in which he refuted the idea that there is a desire for a

Greater Albania amongst mainstream political circles in Albania, Kosovo or

Macedonia (ICG 2004, p. 2). The booklet came as a result of numerous foreigners asking questions pertaining to the issue of Greater Albania.

The little interest shown by Albania for a potential unification with Kosovo is shown by the unpopularity of the ‘Party for National Unity’, a political party under the Albanian National Union Front led by Idajet Beqiri, which is the only party that supports the Albanian unification goal (ICG 2004, p. 11). Furthermore,

Albania has shown a strong stance towards regional stability by strongly opposing militant supporters of pan-Albanianism (ICG 2004, p. 11).

For the international community, the highest risk of an insurgence of the ‘Greater

Albania’ plan, or a potential unification between Albania and Kosovo, was posed by the Kosovo Albanians, especially between the period following the Kosovo war in 1999 and their declaration of independence in February 2008. Kosovo’s independence however, which was the desire of the majority of Kosovo

Albanians, presided over any quest for unification with Albania. Furthermore,

Kosovo’s independence, rather than a ‘Greater Albania’ plan, was always

supported by the majority of Albanians throughout the Balkans. Sali Berisha

demonstrated Albania’s support for Kosovo’s independence at the UN General

Assembly in September 2007, when he stated:

“There should be no fears. Both Albanians in Albania and those in Kosovo are against the idea of a Greater Albania...The independence of Kosovo is a more certain way to put the idea of a Greater Albania into the archives”10.

In addition to this statement made by Berisha, in 2009 Bamir Topi, Albania’s

president, stated that a Greater Albania would never occur, and that “the

unification will happen in Brussels, in the European family” (Balkan Insight 2009).

More recently, Berisha has elaborated on Topi’s statement:

“The best interest of the Albanians is to preserve the existing borders. We are a nation divided unfairly. The partitioning of the Albanians was one of the most unjust acts to have ever happened to the Albanians, which was fortunately corrected with the liberation of Kosovo. Albania and Kosovo will unite in the European Union, and we cannot risk the loss of territories”11.

10 http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=93758 Accessed: 14 August, 2014 11http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/blogreview/2011/04/08/blog -02 Accessed: 14 August, 2014

Chapter 3: The demand in Kosovo for unification with Albania: 1878 to 1981

3.1 Introduction to chapter

Since Albania was created as an independent state in 1912, the issue of re-unification between Kosovo and Albania proper is considered to be an unfulfilled dream for many

Kosovo Albanians. At various points over the past century, Kosovo Albanians have made outright demands for unification of Kosovo with Albania, and while most at present do not favour any form of political unification, given the upheavals that this would bring about, the issue has a history and a currency among some Kosovars and Albanians.

This chapter will discuss in detail the beginnings of the Kosovo Albanian desire to unite with Albania, which first occurred in 1878, and the other significant movements of

Albanian unification which occurred up until the 1980s. The demand for unification of

Albanian-inhabited regions of present-day Kosovo with Albania proper was evident in

1918 during the inclusion of the Kosovo territory within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia’s borders, when Kosovo Albanians rebelled against the new regime and demanded to become a part of Albania proper. The next occurrence would be in 1945, following the loss of Albanian-inhabited territories by the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. Indeed for four years after the first Balkan war ended in 1913, the Axis powers had united

Albania, as parts of Kosovo and the Albanian-inhabited areas of Western Macedonia were united under Italian rule, whilst the remaining parts of Kosovo were under German

64 control. With the end of the Second World War and the fall of the axis powers, Tito’s

Serbia once again claimed Kosovo, much to the dismay of Kosovo Albanians living there.

The final call for unification with Albania by the Kosovo Albanians to be discussed in this chapter is the period of 1981, when some Kosovo Albanians demanded the creation of a republic within the Yugoslav federation, whilst others wanted union with Albania. More recently in 1998, during their fight to gain independence from Serbia, one of the Kosovo

Liberation Army’s objectives was to unite Albanian territories to the ‘mother land’ of

Albania.

3.2 Chapter purpose/research question

As discussed in the previous chapters, no recent study has been made of the issue of

Albanian unification in the Balkans by either Albanian or Western scholars. The main reason as to why this topic is not popular and is considered taboo by Kosovo’s government because Kosovo’s independence of 2008 was granted by the United

Nations on the basis that unification with Albania would not be a future consideration.

Furthermore, the majority of Kosovo Albanians believe their country should work towards defining its own national identity and their aspirations are for Kosovo to be included in the European Union, as opposed to the old idea of unification with Albania.

As the purpose of this thesis is to document the history of the idea of unification between Albania and Kosovo, this chapter will show the historical struggle of Kosovar

Albanians to be included in the Albanian state, and how this past struggle continues to

65 be used by some pan-Albanian advocates in pursuit of this ideal. This chapter serves to highlight the most significant phases in Kosovo’s history during which the Kosovo

Albanians demanded to be a part of the Albanian state. Furthermore, this historical discussion adds to the thesis, because while the official government of Kosovo does not advocate unification with Albanian, it is a notion which is very much present among the

Albanians of Kosovo due to the fact that their national identity is based on these past struggles for unification.

3.3 The fall of the Ottoman Empire – a call for Albanian unification begins

The beginnings of the idea of unification between the Albanians of Kosovo and Albania proper date to 1878, the period following the Russian defeat of the Ottoman Empire, when Albanian-inhabited lands were partitioned amongst the neighbouring states of

Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Macedonia (Vickers 1998, p. 43). For the Albanians, this meant that they could no longer rely on the Ottoman Empire to protect them, and as Kohl and Libal put it, this ‘galvanized the Albanians into action, who feared that their country would fall prey to the Slavic kingdoms under the protection of Russia that were expanding at Turkey’s expense’ (1994, p. 21).

Although the League of Prizren is considered to be the root of the Albanian unification movements, it was nevertheless an initiative of the Albanians living outside Albania, and not the Kosovo Albanians, who primarily sought to unify Albanian lands. At the time, a unified Albanian nation-state was not the objective of Kosovo Albanians because the

Albanians felt that remaining within the Ottoman Empire, albeit united, would ensure that their national safety and local interests would not be jeopardised (Vickers 1998, p.

18). Furthermore, not all Albanians were against the Ottoman Empire, as numerous scholars (Malcolm 1998, p. 217, Bartl 1968, p. 7) have shown, and this was particularly evident prior to 1878, as there were three sorts of political demands or projects by the

Albanian people, although none demanded a united, independent Albanian nation

(Malcolm 1998, p. 217). The group of three political projects amongst the Albanians consisted of the Malësors, the people of the Malësi (present-day Montenegro), the

Catholic mountain clans of the Mirdita region (in present-day northern Albania) and the various Albanian émigré communities abroad.

The Malësi people were politically conservative and sought to defend and extend their traditional rights of self-government during the Ottoman reform programme, the

Tanzimat reforms. During the 1880s, the Malësors demanded to the Ottoman authorities that the Malësi region continue to use local chiefs without introducing officials from the outside; that instead of forced recruitment in times of war, the

Malësors could keep their old custom of supplying their own troops, and that no new taxes would be imposed on the Malësor inhabitants (Ippen 1892, p. 2). For the

Malësors, the objective was not the union of the Albanians; instead they wished to remain living by their traditions and did not want their region to be affected by the

Tanzimat reforms.

The Catholic mountain clans on the other hand, especially those of the Mirdita region, pursued a more risky political project which sought to create an autonomous or fully independent Catholic Albanian principality (Malcolm 1998, p. 218). Like the Malësors, the Mirdita’s ideal was based on religion and not ethnicity and their plan did not encompass other parts of Albanian-inhabited lands but only the Catholic clans of the

Mirdita region. The Mirdita and the Malësi projects both appealed to traditions of quasi- autonomy and customary law, the main difference between the two projects being that the Mirdita project appealed exclusively to the Catholic-inhabited Albanian regions, which at the time were not great in number. Whilst the Mirdita project only appealed to the Catholic Albanians, the Malësi projects promoted a return to the old Albanian customary ways prior to Ottoman occupation, which at the time could generally be extended to all Albanian-inhabited territories (Malcolm 1998, p. 219). In the hope of achieving their objective, in June 1878 the leader of the Mirdita region, Prenk Bib Doda, gathered the leaders of several neighbouring Catholic clans and sent a joint petition to the Congress of Berlin appealing for the creation of an autonomous Mirdita principality, which nonetheless was not granted, but if such a principality had ever existed, it would have been governed by the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin (Malcolm 1998, p. 219). Although these two projects did not achieve any significant outcomes for their people, they nevertheless exemplified that religion was a significant dividing factor amongst the

Albanians, which would continue to prevail the people for years to come.

One of the earlier and evidently more significant political projects for a fully independent Albanian state existed even before 1878 among the members of the intellectual circles in the various Albanian émigré communities. The Arbëresh of Italy, the catholic Albanian descendants of those who had fled Albania after the fall of Gjergj

Kastrioti Skenderbeg to the Ottomans in the 15th Century, were the most radical of the

Albanian émigré communities, even setting up the ‘Italian-Albanian Committee for the

Liberation of the Albanians in the East’ in 1876 (Kohl and Libal 1997, p. 20). Although the intellectual development of the Albanians did depend for a long time on these émigré communities outside of Albania and Kosovo, in particular the circles of Romania,

Bulgaria and Egypt, it was the Albanian émigré community in Istanbul that would be the most significant group in the fight for Albanian unity and independence. The Istanbul

émigré community is considered to have been ‘the one most constantly and directly in contact with the Albanian lands, whose social and political elite would conduct much of their business there’ (Malcolm 1998, p. 219). This community would prove to be highly influential to the Albanian unification cause, as it would be the Albanian émigré of

Istanbul that would form the League of Prizren.

In particular, the three Frashëri brothers, sons of the distinguished family of southern

Albania, would play a critical role in the Albanian political and cultural history, in particular, the demand for unification of Albanian inhabited territories. After setting up a secret ‘Albanian committee’ in 1877, the eldest Frashëri son, Abdyl, later sent the

Ottoman government a memorandum that contained the entire autonomist programme

69 calling for the uniting of the Albanian provinces into a single vilayet (Ottoman administrative district). Also among this programme’s demands were the employment of Albanian officials in the unified Albanian vilayets, the establishment of Albanian language schools, and limiting military service to the territory within the Albanian vilayet

(Skendi 1968, p. 88). When it became known in early 1878 of the Treaty of San Stefano’s territorial proposals, which entailed Albanian inhabited lands being partitioned among neighbouring states, Frashëri set up another committee in Istanbul, formally known as the ‘Central Committee for the Defense of the Rights of the Albanian Nations’. Later it would become to be known as ‘The League of Prizren’, after its first meeting was convened in Prizren, a city in southern Kosovo. This committee was a more holistic approach than the ‘Albanian committee’ as it was the first committee which comprised of Albanian intellectuals and politicians of all the Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic faiths.

It would be the first initiative in Albanian history to comprise people from all the

Albanian faiths, which worked together in trying to prevent dividing Albanian inhabited lands. In doing so, the committee sent appeals to Western statesmen to help in the prevention of losing further Albanian territories, by issuing a proclamation to ‘all

Albanian patriots’ to oppose any annexations of their lands and encouraged local committees to organise their own protests and send their own petitions (Pollo & Pulaha

1978, p. 12-32).

Nevertheless, the San Stefano Treaty which followed the Turko-Russian war assigned the Kosovo Albanian-inhabited regions to neighbouring states, including the

70 predominantly Albanian-inhabited region of Peje, Ulqin, Plava, Gusi and Podgorica which were given to Montenegro (Vickers 1998, p. 43). In addition, Serbia’s border extended southward to include Mitrovica and a large part of Prishtina, as well as the north- eastern part of Kosovo, namely from the region of Toplicë and Nishë (Vickers 1998, p.

43). As a result of these border changes, it is estimated that 30,000 Albanians fled these regions (Vickers 1998, p. 43). Although the League of Prizren is considered to have laid the foundations of the Albanian Rilindje Kombëtare, or the ‘national rebirth’, or ‘national renaissance’, initially it was not a movement that advocated a unified Albanian state

(Malcolm 1998, p. 217). The League of Prizren was formed after the Albanians of Kosovo realised that they needed to take action in the prevention of anymore predominantly

Albanian-inhabited regions being assigned to neighbouring countries, and it was the first step taken by the Albanians of the Balkans towards forming a united Albanian nation and freeing themselves from Ottoman rule (Malcolm 1998, p. 217, Kohl & Libal 1997, p.

22). The League, made up of over 300 delegates, the majority of whom were from

Kosovo, did not initially demand to unite the Albanians in an independent state; rather, it demanded that Albanians unite within the Ottoman Empire. As Vickers has stated, the primary purpose of the League was to ‘organize political and military opposition to the dismemberment of Albanian-inhabited territory, and to petition the Sultan to unite the four [Albanian] vilayets [Ottoman administrative units]’ (1998, p. 44).

The reason why a call for a unified and independent Albania was not made at this point in time was because the Albanians felt that remaining within the Ottoman Empire, albeit

71 united, would ensure their local interests and national safety (Vickers 1998, p. 45).

Although some Albanians of Kosovo are presently perceived as being proponents of unification with Albania, the Kosovo Albanians’ determination to unite with Albania was very weak prior to Albania’s independence in 1912, when Kosovo was not included within Albania’s borders after Albania declared its independence. This was as a result of the different interest groups in Kosovo during the Ottoman Empire, particularly the conservative Kosovo Albanians who did not wish to wane their allegiance to the Sultan and who distrusted Abdyl Frashëri’s modern and progressive ideals. In addition, the wealthy land-owning Kosovo Albanians working under the Ottoman administration did not want to revolt against the Ottoman Porte and risk losing the privileged status they enjoyed under the Ottomans. Indeed this loyalty and faithfulness towards the Ottoman

Empire was one of the main causes of the delay in the Albanian national awakening and the subsequent dispersal of Albanian-inhabited territories to neighbouring countries following the fall of the Ottoman Empire (Kohl & Libal 1997, p. 20). Malcolm reiterates this point by referring to the lack of mutual agreement and cooperation in both the demands and the actions of the Albanians in regards to Ottoman rule, which was also the main factor that caused the stagnation of the Albanian renaissance, as opposed to other nations in the Balkans who had achieved their national enlightenment much earlier (Malcolm 1998, p. 217).

Nonetheless, the League of Prizren brought about an ideological shift between the

Muslim traditionalists of Kosovo and the intellectuals, autonomists and reformists of

Southern Albania, such as Abdyl Frashëri. At the committee’s historical meeting in

Prizren on the 10th of June 1878, the other attendees, most notably the more religiously conservative Kosovo Albanians who dominated the League in Kosovo at the time, did not share Abdyl Frashëri’s view in regards to the Ottoman Empire. As a result, Frashëri’s goals of reforms, Albanian education, autonomy or unification of the Albanian lands in one vilayet were not mentioned (Malcolm 1998, p. 221). Instead, the meeting’s only outcome was to announce the formation of a military defensive organisation known as the ‘League’, whose aim would be to prevent anymore Albanian-inhabited territories from being occupied by foreign troops. Other outcomes of the meeting were agreements upon the ‘League’s’ loyalty to the Sultan, and in accordance with the şeriat

(Islamic law), it was agreed that the ‘League’ would defend the life, property and honour of all the Sultan’s loyal subjects, including non-Muslims (Pollo and Pulaha 1978, p. 43-

48). According to Skendi, the reason why there was very little admiration for Frashëri’s ideas in Kosovo at this early stage of the ‘League of Prizren’ was because the Kosovo

Albanians viewed this League as a Muslim religious movement that had a veneration of the Caliph-Sultan (Skendi 1968, p. 38-39). Nonetheless, Frashëri continued to promote the idea of unification and unity of Albanian-inhabited territories, especially following the Congress of Berlin, when it was decided that the Albanian north-Western corner of the ‘Gusinje’ district be given to Montenegro (Malcolm 1998, p. 223). Even after all cooperation between the League of Prizren and the Ottoman Porte ended, Frashëri continued to gain the attention of Western governments and newspapers to the

Albanian cause. He ceased the opportunity to convey his message of unity and Albanian

73 independence in an article he published in his brother’s influential Istanbul newspaper, even listing the demands of the Albanian league in the article (Malcolm 1998, p. 223).

Yet despite Frashëri’s efforts to bring the cause of Albanian unification to the attention of foreign governments, the Kosovo Albanians were still unconvinced that full autonomy from the Ottoman Empire was the best option for them, even though by October 1879, the League in Prizren had agreed during a meeting to accept Abdyl Frashëri’s autonomist program. The majority of the Kosovo Albanian league memebers didn’t want ‘anything more than a degree of self-administration within the Empire; their main aim… was to have their own courts in which only the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin would be applied.” (Malcolm 1998, p. 224). Even at a time when the Albanian question was beginning to take form internationally, the Kosovo Albanians in the League of Prizren were not yet ready for complete autonomy from the Ottoman Empire, and only with the developments of the Congress of Berlin did their trust in the Empire to protect them begin to wane. The sentiments of the Kosovo Albanians towards the Ottoman Empire became apparent via Ali Draga, the leader of the League in Kosovo, who claimed that even though the Kosovo Leaguers were faithful to the Sultan, the situation following the

Congress of Berlin proved that their situation had become fragile. The Kosovo Leaguers were stronger proponents for their own vilayet at this stage, with an Albanian army and

Albanian officers (Rexha 1978, p. 12). However, their allegiance to the Sultan did not completely wane, and by 1880 the Kosovo Albanian League member agreed that they would nonetheless remain at the service of the Ottoman Governments, to the extent

74 that they were willing to fight for the Empire against any of its enemies (Malcolm 1998, p. 224). During the same year, in April 1880 in Shkodra, the northern town of Albania, a joint Muslim-Catholic meeting made a strong declaration for an autonomous principality.

The Kosovo League’s aims continued to be conservative rather than radical, even following increased pressure by the Albanians on the Ottoman government and an increase in international diplomacy (particularly by the British) on the Albanian question

(Malcolm 1998, p. 100). From the 30th of May 1880, the Ottoman Council Ministers agreed to grant Albanians their wish of a unified Vilayet, although this would be short lived as the Ottoman Porte feared that the Albanians would move towards full autonomy. During the same time, Abdyl Frashëri’s resolve for independence from the

Ottomans as a unified Albania did not wane, and at a large meeting in Prizren in mid-

February 1881, Frashëri stated:

“The Porte will do nothing for Albania…The Porte will probably give up a part of Albania under European pressure… Let us think and work for ourselves. Let there be no difference between Toskas and Ghegas. Let us be Albanians and make one Albania” (Malcolm 1998, p 226).

However, Frashëri’s declaration to the Kosovo Albanians was followed by a crushing of the League of Prizren by the Ottoman authorities, and most of the campaigning for autonomy and independence was done by the Albanian émigré communities abroad,

75 especially those in Bulgaria and Albania (Logoreci 1977, p. 21).

3.4 The League of Peja – The Kosovo Albanians awaken

Only after 1899, when a congress of Macedonians and Bulgarians in Geneva demanded the creation of an autonomous Macedonia, which would include the vilayets of

Monastir and Kosovo, did a group of Kosovo notables start campaigning more actively for the old idea of unity of the four Albanian vilayets (Kosovo, Monastir, Ioannina and

Shkodra) with Albanian populations into a single Albanian province (Prifti, 1984, pp. 149-

150). However, there was evidently a rift between members of some of the Kosovo members of the influential Kosovo Albanian landowners, whose interest it was not to see the Ottoman Empire wane. The leaders of the new Kosovo movement had been members of the League of Prizren, such as the notable Haxhi Zeka, a devout Muslim cleric, and Bajram Curri, an ex-officer of the Ottoman army (Malcolm 1998, p. 232).

However, even this new Kosovo movement was not without internal tensions, as Zeka desired a large degree of autonomy in order to insulate the Albanians from Istanbul’s

Westernizing reforms, whereas Riza Bey Kryeziu, an influential landowner from Western

Kosovo, wanted the movement’s efforts to be directed at the Sultan’s enemies, thus protecting the Ottoman Empire and continuing to serve the Sultan (Malcolm 1998, p.

232).

In 1897, after meeting with Ottoman officials in Istanbul, Riza Bey returned to Kosovo and reiterated his promise to defend the Sultan’s interests by stating that “All the

Albanians, without exception, are and remain devout to the Sultan” (Malcolm 1998 pg.

232). However, despite the different ideas of the Kosovo members of the League, they agreed at a gathering in the western Kosovo city of Peja in January 1899 that this new

League, which would be formally known as ‘The League of Peja’ would function in the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets, which would primarily impose a general Besë (truce, suspension of blood feuds) on the Kosovo Albanians. Although the leaders of the League of Peja did not agree on the issue of the Ottoman Empire ruling their territories, they did however agree that the League would not want a rapid procession with the social reforms and innovation which had been threatened upon them by the Ottoman Empire.

The only progressive measure which the League of Peja agreed upon was the establishment of Albanian language schools and the right for their courts to be judged by the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin. For the Albanians, the main outcome of the League of

Peja were the decisions to focus on territorial defense and the request for the four

Albanian vilayets to be treated as an overall Albanian unit. The twelve points which the members did agree upon however, did not include autonomy, rather the focus was more on remaining committed to the Sultan, with the first point stating loyalty to the

Sultan, and a general Besë (oath) being sworn on the Koran (Malcolm 1998, p. 233). Also included in the list was the request to set up local Muslim committees for the purpose of guarding public order and enforcing the şeriat and the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin

(Malcolm 1998, p. 233).

Evidently then, for the Leaguers of Kosovo, it was more important to be a part of a large

Albanian union, as a means of protecting their lands from their neighbouring countries whilst still under the Ottoman Empire, than for autonomy and independence. As

Malcolm states, the main aim of the League of Peja was ‘to unite everyone in a general

Besë (oath) in order to be able to stand up to the Bulgarians, Serbs and Montenegrins, and reject all other sorts of reforms’ by the Ottoman Empire with which the Albanians felt threatened to be imposed with (1998, p. 233). The outcomes of the League of Peja showed that the Kosovo Albanians were not ready to fight for unification with Albania, nor that they agreed with Abdyl Frashëri’s ideals of Albanian unification and independence from the Ottoman Empire.

3.5 The Young Turk Programme – Kosovo Albanian division intensifies

For the Albanians of Kosovo who were determined not to see their lands subjected to reforms, a new movement was taking shape in Turkey, which would increase tensions among the already divided Albanians of the Balkans. In 1908 the Young Turk movement, a newly established secularist Turkish nationalist reform party who had campaigned for a radical overhaul of the Ottoman system, anted to unify the Ottoman Empire and its subjects to a ‘crash programme of modernisation and reform’ (Balakian 2003, p. 143).

The Young Turks’ aims were in contrast to the wishes of the Albanians, who as discussed above, were opposed to most varieties of Westernizing or modernizing reforms

(Malcolm 1998, p. 236). However, in order for the Young Turks to obtain the support of the Albanians in their plight against the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks promised the

Albanians that they would respect the traditional rights of the Sultan, implement the

şeriat and allow the Albanians their old privileges, including their tradition right to bear arms.

Although positive changes came about for Albanians under the Young Turk regime, very few of these changes actually took place in Kosovo itself as none of the new Albanian newspapers and journals were produced in Kosovo (Malcolm 1998, p. 239). At a pan-

Albanian conference held in Monastir, it was agreed that a modified Latin alphabet would be used for the Albanian language (Skendi 1968, p. 344-57) which would become another divisive factor for the Albanians. The Albanian language schools that opened in

Kosovo offended many of the Muslim clergy there, who wanted only the Arabic script to be used (Malcolm 1998, p. 239). Yet again, the Albanians of Kosovo and Albania were divided on another issue, and the Muftis (Islamic scholars) in Prishtina proclaimed against the alphabet, and they were supported by the Young Turks in Istanbul who also wanted to retain the Arabic script as a unifying factor for the whole Ottoman Empire

(Bartl 1968, p. 168). Nevertheless, the Kosovo Albanian allegiance towards the Young

Turks came to an end as a result of not only the limited positive changes which they made for the Kosovo Albanians during their regime, but also the infliction of an even more strictly enforced military conscription on the Kosovo Albanians (Malcolm 1998, p.

239).

The treatment of the Albanians by the Young Turks would help generate a large pan-

Albanian uprising, leading to the declaration of Albanian independence in 1912. It was during the large-scale tax revolts in Kosovo in 1910 against the Young Turk regime which brought to prominence the Albanian chiefs and clan leaders, such as Isa Boletin and Idriz

Seferi, who had organized Kosovo-wide resistance against the Young Turks’ reforms

(Malcolm 1998, p. 241). In 1911, Muslim and Christian Albanian rebels were supported by the Mirdita region to create and announce a provincial government, under the slogan

‘Albania for the Albanians’ (Rahimi 1978, p. 176). During this time there were various committees of Albanian activists who issued declarations, one of which was the publication of the ‘red book’ by Ismail Qemail, in Montenegro (Malcolm 1998, p. 244).

However, true to the Albanian form of servitude towards the Ottoman Sultan, the book began with a statement of loyalty to the Sultan and was followed by a list of thirteen autonomous demands, including Albanian-speaking officials, military service conducted locally only, tax revenues used for local purposes only, respect for the şeriat (Islamic law) and the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjin, official recognition of the Albanian nationhood and

Albanian-language schools, among others (Puto 1984, p. 365-70). The uprising of 1911 in northern Albania was unsuccessful, mainly due to weaknesses and division amongst the

Albanians, as well as the lack of coordination with any significant rising in either Kosovo or Southern Albania (Malcolm 1998, p. 244). This period in Kosovo saw the rise of Hasan

Prishtina, who like the Frashëri brothers, was a westernized intellectual and a former

Kosovo deputy in the Young Turks parliament.

Having denounced the brutalities which the Kosovo Albanians suffered from the

Ottoman army during the 1909 and 1911 uprisings, Prishtina abandoned the Young

Turks (Kaleshi 1968, pp. 485-6), and in 1909, he joined Ismail Qemail’s opposing group after becoming convinced of the Young Turks’ incompetent administration and believing that the Albanian people should seek towards autonomy from the Ottoman Empire and unity of Albanian lands (Malcolm 1998, p. 245).

However, like his predecessor Abdyl Frashëri, Prishtina was faced with the burden of having to adjust his demands and rhetoric to the concerns of the Kosovo traditionalists like Isa Boletin, who had a deep loyalty to the old Sultan and the idea of the Ottoman

Empire (Malcolm 1998, p. 245). Indeed, Prishtina’s desire for autonomy was even toned down, and a manifesto signed by him and the pro- Sultan Kosovo chieftains, Isa Boletini,

Riza Bey Kryeziu and Bajram Curri, declared that “The Albanians are, and always will be, firmly attached to the Caliphate and the Ottoman Fatherland with a fidelity which nothing can shake” (Malcolm 1998, p. 246). The Albanians of Kosovo rebelled against the Young Turks as they believed that their policies were destroying the Empire and would result in foreign invasion, yet in Albania the ideas of Hasan Prishtina were echoed by the leaders. By the end of the year however, the aims of the Albanians would not be met, resulting in Kosovo Albanian territory not being included within the borders of the independent Albania.

Nevertheless the Kosovo-wide rebellion during 1912 contributed to the independence of Albania, albeit without the territory of Kosovo included. On August 18, following months of rebellion against the Ottoman army throughout Kosovo, the Ottoman authorities agreed to grant the Albanians the fourteen demands which they requested, commonly known as the ‘fourteen points’ of Hasan Prishtina (Malcolm 1998, p. 248).

These fourteen points were the standard list of demands which went back to the ‘red book’ and some points were also from Abdyl Frashëri’s demands of 1878 and 1877

(Rexha 1978, p 14). The achievement of the Kosovo Albanians is considered to be the highest culminating point of all struggles for national recognition by the Albanians since their formal requests of 1878, with a framework for an Albanian quasi-state within the

Ottoman Empire being agreed on (Malcolm 1998, p. 248). However this framework would never be put into place, as within two months, the Ottomans were driven out of all European countries which they’d previously possessed and: ‘if autonomy had been freely granted to the Albanians [over the previous 34 years] it might eventually have paved the way to independence; but that path would have been a long one, and in the meantime the Albanians of Kosovo would have a formed a strong bastion against any further encroachments of the Empire’ (Malcolm 1998, p. 249).

3.6 The Kaçak movement and the Kosovo Committee – Kosovo Albanians resistance to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1913-1918

The region of Kosovo would not be incorporated into the newly proclaimed independent

Albania in 1912, mainly as a result of the outcomes of the conference of London of

December 1912. There it was decided by the Greater Powers (Austria-Hungary, Britain,

France, Germany, Italy and Russia) that Kosovo territory would be incorporated into the newly proclaimed ‘Kingdom of Serbians, Croats and Slovenes’. This resulted in a new form of resistance throughout Kosovo from the summer of 1913 onwards, mainly in the form of Kaçaks (Turkish for ‘rebels’ or ‘bandits’), which was an outlaw movement led by

Azem Bejta-Galica, and would receive considerable support from Albanians in Albania

(Kola 2003, p. 18). The Kaçak movement also received support within Kosovo itself as a result of the further deteriorating conditions of Albanians in Kosovo after the arrival of the Serbian army between 1913 and 1915; which resulted in an estimated 120,000

Albanians fleeing Kosovo (Bajrami 1982, p. 243). Although the newly created Kingdom of

Serbs, Croats and Slovenes of 1918 would be the most heterogeneous state in Europe, the Albanians of Kosovo, who numbered around half a million inhabitants, were not recognised as a minority by the 39% Serbian majority (Mertus 1999, p. 285, no. 2).

Initially, Albania proper supported the Kaçak movement in Kosovo, particularly after

1920 when three prominent Kosovo Albanians became senior officials in Albania’s government. Hasan Prishtina was elected member of the Albanian parliament, Hoxhë

Kadriu was made Minister of Justice, and Bajram Curri was appointed Minister of War

(Kola 2003, p. 18-20). However, the Serbian government in Belgrade became irritated with the Albanian government’s support of the Kaçaks, and realised that in order to suppress the revolt in Kosovo, the situation in Albania would need to be controlled first

(Malcolm 1998, p. 276). While the Kaçaks were active, a group of war-time political leaders led by Hasan Prishtina formed ‘The Committee for the national Defense of

Kosovo’ or more commonly known as ‘The Kosovo Committee’ in Shkodra in November

1918 (Malcolm 1998, p. 273). Prishtina actively lobbied the committee’s demands to the

American government for the inclusion of Kosovo in the new Albanian state and in

February 1919 the committee sent a protest letter to the Paris Peace Conference complaining about the killings by Serbian troops in Kosovo, which had reached to 6040 murdered Albanians (Malcolm 1998, p. 273). However, the Albanian interests at the

Paris Peace Conference were largely ignored, and so the Kosovo Committee then devoted most of its energies to supporting the Kaçak movement inside Kosovo

(Malcolm 1998, p. 274).

The Kaçak movement began to suffer due to internal Albanian politics, as the Kosovo leaders fell out with Ahmet Zogu, Albania’s Minister of Interior at the time. Hasan

Prishtina, who had become Prime Minister of Albania in December 1921, had attempted to dismiss Zogu, yet himself resigned when Zogu’s troops took over the city of Shkodra

(Koha 2003, p. 18-20). Thus Hasan Prishtina’s attempt to overthrow Zogu prompted

Zogu to become a sworn enemy of all Kosovo rebels and irredentists (Malcolm 1998, p.

277).

Apart from seriously obstructing the colonization programme which was designed by the Serbian government to offer Albanian-inhabited lands to migrating Serbs, the general armed resistance of the Kaçaks is considered to have achieved very little for the

Kosovo Albanians, as none of Azem Bejta’s eight demands were ever met (Malcolm

1998, p. 278). The most significant achievement of the Kaçaks was making a symbolic demonstration that the Albanians of Kosovo didn’t accept the Serbian or Yugoslavian rule (Malcolm 1998, p. 278).The Kaçaks were punished by the Belgrade government by having their property confiscated and given to migrating Serbs, and the 1931 law stated that all those who had participated in the Kaçaks rebellions would have their land seized and colonized and this also served as a strong incentive for Kosovo Albanians to migrate

(Verli 1992, p. 24).

Indeed Zogu would prove to be a detrimental figure for the Kosovo Albanian struggle.

He worked against their incorporation into The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,

85 sentenced to death Azem Bejta, a prominent Kaçak leader, and Zog also sent his army to

Kosovo to drive out all the Kaçaks and set up joint Albanian-Yugoslav patrols to stop

Kaçaks from Kosovo from entering into Albania (Malcolm 1998, p. 277). Furthermore, in late 1923 Zogu would intensify the persecution of the Kaçaks, and all Kaçaks in Albania were hunted down and killed, including the prominent Bajram Curri (Malcolm 1998, p.

278). Zogu’s allegiance to Belgrade went so far as to promising the Belgrade government to suppress the Kosovo Committee and assassinate Hasan Prishtina, which he succeeded in doing in 1933 (Malcolm 1998, p. 287).

3.7 The Xhemijet/Bashkimi of 1919

Another group to call for the unification of Albanian territories was the Xhemijet

(Turkish for ‘association’) or Bashkimi (Albanian for ‘association’ or ‘unity’). This group differed from the Kaçaks as it was a legal party and it represented the interests of not only the Albanians in Kosovo but the Albanians in Macedonia as well. Having been created in Skopje in December 1919 at a conference that was attended by Muslims of

Kosovo, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the attendees agreed upon full religious autonomy within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the continuation of the şeriat courts for civil matters, the presentation of the vakifs, (foundations, trust-funds), freedom to use the official mother-tongue in schools, and the protection of the beys’

(Albanian land-owners) estates from the new agrarian reforms (which involved taking land from Albanians and others, and giving them to newly arriving Serb migrants from

Serbia and Montenegro).

Initially, the Xhemijet were less concerned with unification of Albanian-inhabited lands or advocating freedom of minority rights in Kosovo, and many of the demands made by the Xhemijet deputies in Belgrade were for the protection of the large estates of ex-

Ottoman landowners (Malcolm 1998, p. 270). The Kosovo deputies also campaigned and protested about the general conditions of life in Kosovo (Malcolm 1998, p. 270). The religious divide between the Albanians also brought the Xhemijet to an end, as the party collapsed due to an internal split and Serb attacks on its Kosovar leader, Ferat Draga, who was sentenced to death on the eve of the elections in Kosovo (Malcolm 1998, p.

271). Furthermore, with the arrest of other prominent members of the party, as well as the assassination of its most prominent Kosovo Albanian intellectual, Nazim Gafurri, the party would never again revive (Malcolm 1998, p. 271).

3.8 Kosovo and Albania united during World War II

In 1941 the German allies invaded Yugoslavia and the axis powers divided Kosovo in three ways, with Bulgaria taking most of Macedonia and part of south-eastern Serbia and a thin strip of land in the eastern Kosovo region of Kacanik (Djilas 1980, p. 13). The remaining majority of Kosovo however, was given to Albania and formed a ‘Greater

Albania’, which was the separate kingdom ruled by the King of Italy (Malcolm 1998, p.

291). The majority of Kosovo, including the districts of Lab, Vucitrn and Dezevo (Novi

Pazar), together with the northern-western strip of Albanian-inhabited Macedonian

87 towns of Debar, Tetovo, Gostivar and Struga, which covered 11,780 square kilometres and had a population of 820,000, were attached to the Italian-occupied Albania in May

1941 (Vickers 1998, p. 121). In April 1941, German and Italian foreign ministers agreed that ‘the largest part of this Albanian-inhabited territory should be put under Italian control and joined to Albania, in order to prevent Albanian ethnic irredentism from becoming the driving force of an anti-German resistance movement’ (Malcolm 1998, p.

291). In the meantime however, the pre-war Kosovo committee reactivated and returned from exile with the aim of playing an important role in collaboration with occupying forces, and as Vickers states, they ‘were able to portray themselves as liberators of the Albanians and the creators of the unified state’ (Vickers 1998, p. 122).

At the same time, the Italians and German capitalised on the Albanians’ desire for national unification, as the occupying Italian forces encouraged the establishment of at least 173 Albanian elementary schools and Albanian media outlets, and gave the

Albanians the right to bear arms and fly the Albanian flag (Malcolm 1998, Mertus 1999,

Vickers 199).

It was also during this period that a number of collaborationist organisations began to appear in Kosovo, including the irredentist programme Lidhja Kombëtare Shqiptare

(National Allegiance of Albanians). This new political organisation was founded by the leaders of the pre-war Muslim Xhemijet Party (Vickers 1998, p. 122). The majority of

Albanians in Kosovo considered the Axis occupiers as liberators, although collaboration with them was not from a ‘ideological sympathy with fascism or Marxism’, rather the

Albanians seized the opportunity to use the collapse of Yugoslavia so they could ‘gain more power over their own territory and reverse the colonizing and Slavicizing policies of the previous two decades’ (Malcolm 1998, p. 296).

The Communist programme of Yugoslavia was ideally designed to attract the Albanians of Kosovo (Malcolm 1998, p. 300), and the party stated at its Fourth Congress in 1928 that they’d assist ‘the general struggle of the oppressed and fragmented Albanian people for an independent and united Albania’ (Lukac 1971, p. 274). The small minority of Albanians in the Yugoslav Communist party, notably Fadil Hoxha and Emin Duraku, were considered by the Albanians of Kosovo as ‘having sold themselves to the Serbs’

(Malcolm p. 302). Furthermore, at the Fifth National Conference in 1940, the

Communist party had reduced their stand on the Albanians to ‘the formation of a present republic of Kosovo through the revolutionary overthrow of the imperialist and fascist Greater Serbia regime’ (Lukac 1981, p. 367). Considering this, all efforts to recruit

Albanians into the Yugoslav Communist party failed and the Kosovo Albanians rejected the Communist party as an ‘alien Pan-Slavic’ organisation, which had no intentions of fulfilling their national aspirations (Vickers 1998, p. 123). The only way that the CPY could influence the Kosovo Albanians would be via the Albanian Communist party, and this occurred during late 1940 and early 1941, when the CPY became aware of communication with the communist cells which were operating in Albania (Vickers

1998, p. 123). With the aid of Tito, who acted under a Comintern directive to send two delegates to Albania to help draft the programme and the first resolution of the

Albanian party, the unified Albanian Communist Party (CPA) was formed, headed by

Enver Hoxha (Vickers 1998, p. 124). Thus Yugoslavia’s control over the political developments of Albania would serve as a means of gaining strength within Kosovo, as

Malcolm states:

‘The Albanian communist party didn’t step into Kosovo and supply the Albanians with the Communist propaganda adapted to their national tastes…because the Albanian Communist party was more or less a puppet of Tito, who jealously guarded his own Yugoslav Party’s rights to be the sole operator on Yugoslav soil’ (Malcolm, 1998, p. 302).

At a founding meeting of the Albanian Communist party in November 1941, the question of Kosovo was not even mentioned, and the issue was not discussed at the first national conference of the party, held in March 1943 (Malcolm 1998, p. 302).

Yugoslavia’s control over Kosovo was initially achieved through the encouragement of division among the different Albanian politics and aspirations towards national unification by putting class and party allegiance first (Vickers 1998, p. 124). In 1946,

Enver Hoxha even stated at a party meeting:

“Is it in our interest to seek Kosovo? This is not progressive…We must do everything possible so that Kosovars develop brotherly relations with the Yugoslavs. We have the duty to fight those who do not realise this.”12

The only resistance shown by the Albanians between the wars and claims to Albanian unification was through the anti-communist resistance movement set up in Albania called the Balli Kombëtar (The National Front) (Malcolm 1998, p. 303). This movement,

12 http://gazetaexpress.com/?cid=1,22,111000. Accessed: 14 August, 2014

90 founded in 1942 as a republican, anti-feudal and left-of-centre party which was based on the old opposition to King Zog, which reflected the views of the supporters of Fan

Noli (who had been driven out of Albanian by King Zog in 1924) (Malcolm 1998, p. 303).

The strong national credentials of the Balli Kombëtar included the traditional Albanian national claims to the entire Albanian ethnic territory, which at the time also coincided with the ‘Greater Albania’ which was created by Mussolini. At the Mukje meeting with the Albanian Communists, Balli Kombëtar did not agree on the question of ‘ethnic

Albania’ and the inclusion of Kosovo within the Albanian borders, resulting in a rejection of the Mukje agreement by the Communists and a declaration of war against the Balli

Kombëtar (Malcolm 1998, p. 303). Subsequently, Balli Kombëtar would be pushed into a collaborationist position, and the only other form of movement or campaign for ethnic unification of Albanians would be made after the Italian capitulation, by a group of leading Albanian officials from Kosovo (Malcolm 1998, p. 305). Calling themselves ‘The

Second League of Prizren’, their main aim was to make sure that Kosovo and Albania would remain united together with the areas that had been added to Albania since

1941, which included Diber, as well as the aim of transferring the northern tip of Kosovo to the unified Albanian state (Malcolm 1998, p. 305). They even set up an executive committee and drafted statutes that aimed at ‘the defense of the liberated areas (from

Yugoslavia) and of other areas of the former Yugoslavia’ (Zaimi 1964, p. 5).

Balli Kombëtar achieved a membership of between 12,000 to 15,000, with the movement primarily appealing to the Albanians as the Communists were seen, rightly so, as aiming the restoration of Yugoslav rule (Malcolm 1998, p. 306).

Through the analysis of the Kosovo Albanians’ standpoint from a historical perspective, it is understood that the lack of unity amongst the Albanians in the region greatly contributed to the lack of a strong front in attaining unification with Albania. In addition, the Communist regime of Albania also contributed to the isolation of the Kosovo

Albanians, who were subjected to the Yugoslav regime from the second world war and onwards.

The Kosovo war of 1999 and the more recent increase in the re-unification desire in

Kosovo will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, which covers the contemporary re-unification stance held by the Kosovo Albanians.

Chapter 4: The present situation in Kosovo regarding unification with Albania

4.1 Introduction to chapter

The purpose of this section is to discuss the existing consensus in Kosovo on the issue of unification with Albania. Primarily, I will present the background debates about Kosovo’s unification with Albania and the lead-up to the Kosovo conflict in 1998. Following this, I will present the different forms of indictors in the new nation state which show the peoples’ desire for unification. Lastly, I will discuss the different political parties in

Kosovo which advocate unification with Albania, and how influential these parties are in the country.

4.2 Background to Contemporary Debates about Kosovo’s Unification with Albania:

Kosovar Albanian Perspectives on Unification in the Lead up to War

As discussed in the previous chapter, Kosovo had witnessed numerous resistance movements throughout the 20th century. After its annexation to Serbia in 1912/13, a series of armed resistance movements were sparked in Kosovo, with several armed undertakings by the Albanians in the lead of the World War II. The first of these movements was the armed struggles of Azem Bejta (Galica) and Shote Bejta (Galica) from the region of Drenica (Bekaj 2010, p. 9). At the same time, Hasan Prishtina, one of the most prominent Albanian politicians of the time, formed the Kosovo Committee, with the objective of lobbying with the United States and other western governments for the inclusion of Kosovo within the newly formed Albanian state (Bekaj 2010, p. 9). At

93 the same time however, other armed resistance movements which had been formed by

Isa Boletini, Bajram Curri and Idriz Seferi, were eventually quashed by the Belgrade regime or were interrupted as a result of the upcoming Second World War (Bekaj 2010, p. 9).

Following these failed uprisings, the Kosovo Albanians would be subjected to the colonization program, which involved the settling of thousands Serb families to Kosovo as a result of the mass exodus of Kosovo Albanians during the 1920s and throughout the

1930s. As discussed in the previous chapters, in 1938 Yugoslavia and Turkey signed an agreement whereby they agreed that 40,000 Muslim Albanian families would migrate from Kosovo to Turkey. This plan however, stalled as it was a process which would take six years to complete, and the outbreak of World War II interrupted its accomplishment.

Nonetheless, between 1918 and 1941, it is estimated that up 150,000 Albanians and other Muslims departed Kosovo as a result of this plan (Malcolm 1998, p. 37).

Before the end of the Second World War, between December 31 1943 and January 2

1944, the Albanians of Kosovo expressed their aspirations for a united Albania at the

‘First Conference of the National Liberation Council of Kosovo and Dukagjin Plateau’ was held in Bujan, in northern Albania. The declaration of this conference saw Kosovo’s unification with Albania after the end of World War II, in accordance with the will of the people (Weller 1999, p. 50) and was endorsed by ‘the representatives of all parts of

Kosova and the Dukagjin Plateau, Albanian, Serbian and Montenegrin: nationalists,

94 communists, anti-fascist youth, communist youth, anti-fascist women, representatives of the National Liberation Army and others inspired by the lofty ideal of the unification of various political trends, for the development and union of the peoples of Kosovo and the Dukagjin Plateau’ (Weller 1999, p. 50). Despite the successful coming together of the various groups in Kosovo on the issue of unification, the plan would not be fulfilled after

World War II ended.

Following the Second World War, the people of Kosovo began a ‘period of cohabitation’ with the other republics and provinces of Tito’s SFRY. According to the prominent

Kosovo Albanian author, Mehmet Kraja, this period was ‘a phase of flirtation with the socialist ideology, promoted by slogans of Brotherhood and Unity (Kraja in Bekaj 2010, p. 10). Indeed this would be the first generation of home-grown communist elites who were seemed to be ‘a zealous advocate for successful integration into the Yugoslav model-state’ (Bekaj 2010, p. 10). It would be these communists’ involvement in the public and political life in Kosovo which would serve as proof that prosperous cohabitation existed, although the reality for the Albanians of Kosovo was quite the opposite of the official political propaganda which was propagated by the Yugoslav authorities. Although the objective of the Bujan conference would not be fulfilled, it nevertheless would in the middle of 1945 serve to inspire the will of around 5000

Albanians to rise up against the Yugoslav partisans. Under the leadership of Shaban

Polluzha, who is today considered a national hero of Kosovo, the uprising was to be crushed. The implications of this uprising for the Kosovo Albanians would be harsh for

95 the decades to come. Following the war, thousands of Albanians were either killed or forced to leave their homes, and the 1950s in Kosovo were marked by the consistent campaign of ‘arms collections’. This involved the ‘the crackdown on persons suspected of possessing arms,’ and ‘brought indiscriminate misery upon many Albanian families, particularly rural areas’ (Bekaj 2010, p. 10). Adding to the subjugation of terror by

Serbian authorities towards the Albanians were the 1956 trials in Prizren, which were considered to be rigged and where hundreds of Albanians were given harsh prison terms for allegedly collaborating with the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania (Banac

2006, p. 37).

As a consequence, there would be a period of random political resistance movements in

Kosovo following the Second World War, with the disadvantageous socio-political position of Albanians in Kosovo and wider Yugoslavia being the common reason behind the establishment of these movements (Bekaj 2010, p. 11). Although the aspiration would continue to be the unification with Albania, even though they were brutally punished and persecuted by law. The discontent of Albanians would be shown by the formation of fragmented organized groups, predominantly youth or student groups.

However, these clandestine movements began to gain the support of the critical mass, and by the late 1960s, these series of movements had begun to be commonly known as

‘Llegalja’ (Illegality) (Bekaj 2010, p. 11). Indeed it would be at one of these demonstrations in Prishtina on November 27, 1968 that the first chants were heard of

‘down with colonial policy in Kosovo’, ‘we want a university’ and ‘long live Albania,’ chanted by protesting students (Malcolm 1998, p. 34)

These organizations, considered illegal by the Yugoslav authorities of the time, were actually set up by Kosovar Albanians living in Western Europe. They promoted the unification of Kosovo with Albania (Kudo 2010, p. 6). Between 1945 and 1952, the

National-Democratic Albanian Movement (Lëvizja Nacionale Demokratike Shqiptare) was formed, though it was brutally quashed by Serbian authorities of the Yugoslav regime (Kudo 2010, p. 6). Later, during the period 1958-1968, two notable organizations were established which called for national unification; the Revolutionary Party for the

Unification of Albanian Lands (Partia Revolucionare për Bashkimin e Tokave Shqiptare me Shtetin Amë) and the Revolutionary Movement for the Unification of the Albanians

(Lëvizja Revolucionare për Bashkimin e Shqiptarëve), founded by Adem Demaçi (Kudo

2010, p. 6). According to Çeku (Bekaj 2010, p. 17) these two parties would later play a pivotal role in the formation of subsequent illegal parties, as ‘they established the basis of a national programme for the Albanians and because they contributed to the escalation of student demonstrations in 1968’. For Jusuf Buxhovi, Kosovo’s most prominent historian, the Revolutionary Movement for the Unification of the Albanians inspired resistance against the Serbian ‘occupation’, but also fed simultaneously to the faded hope for national unification; even though the revolutionary methods for liberation under the circumstances of the time were only a romantic illusion (Buxhovi,

2012, p. 447). As with other parties promoting national unification, these two parties

97 were also brutally crushed by Serbian authorities and did not directly lead to the formation of armed resistance in Kosovo. The main reason for a lack of influence by these organisations was that Adem Demaçi, the founder of the Revolutionary

Movement for the Unification of the Albanians, was arrested by the Serbian authorities and was sentenced to 29 years in jail, making him inactive from Kosovo politics throughout the 1980s, when illegal organizations were being founded in the West by

Kosovo Albanians (Perritt 2008, p. 34).

Other open promoters of Albanian unification were also given such harsh treatment, thus disabling the momentum of any Kosovar party that called for Albanian unification.

However, Demaçi would later in 1998 become the spokesman for the UÇK (Kosovo

Liberation Army), and as Perritt (2008, p. 34) states, he ‘lent enormous respect to the organization because he was the uncompromising symbol of Kosovar Albanian militancy’. It would only be the student demonstrations of 1968 and the Yugoslav state’s aggressive repression of these demonstrations, which would bring about an emergence of Albanian radicals in Kosovo who would later on establish the UÇK. The result of these demonstrations was many Kosovo Albanians being imprisoned, laid off from work or banned from studying. These people left Kosovo and sought refuge abroad, mainly in

Western Europe, where they would subsequently form major illegal organisations (Kudo

2010, p. 7).

Although Yugoslavia’s new constitution of 1974 enabled Kosovo to have greater autonomy within Yugoslavia, ‘the dissatisfaction of the Kosovar Albanian population within their status in Yugoslavia was still present’, and the main reason for this that the

Albanians remained to be a subordinate entity within Yugoslavia (Bekaj 2010, p. 11). As

Bekaj puts it: ‘They were not elevated to the constitutional status of a nation, but were acknowledged as a nationality, which meant that as such they remained relegated to being a province of Serbia.’ (Bekaj 2010, p. 11).

In addition to the abovementioned organisations, Mertus identifies at least three other prominent Kosovo Albanian underground groups which were purportedly active in calling for a unification of Kosovo with Albania during the 1980s (1999, p. 34). One such organisation was the Red Popular Front (Fronti I Kuq Popullor), which was established in

1978 in Germany by Ibrahim Kelmendi, who due to his involvement in a small demonstration, was exiled from Kosovo in 1976 (Kudo 2010, p. 7). Shortly after in 1979, another more popular movement, the National-Liberation Movement of Kosovo and

Albanian Lands in Yugoslavia (Lëvizja Nacionale-Çlirimtare e Kosovës dhe të Viseve tjera

Shqiptare në Jugosllavi, LNÇKVShJ) was also founded in Germany, by the two exiled brothers Jusuf and Bardhosh Gërvalla. Also in 1979, in neighbouring Switzerland, a

Kosovo Albanian refugee named Kadri Zeka assumed responsibility for the Organization of Marxist-Leninists in Kosovo (Organizatë e Marksistë-Leninistëve të Kosovës, OMLK).

The failed demonstrations of 1981 lead these groups to unite and form a single organisation, which by 1982 had a single political platform (Kudo 2010, p. 7).

Nonetheless, the failure of the demonstrations also laid in the internal divisions between these organisations, as the aspirations of its founders living in the diaspora opposed the aspirations of the Albanians in Kosovo. Mertus argues that although these groups claimed left-wing, Marxist-Leninist ideology, ‘their ideology was based more on

Albanian nationalism, and their goal was republic status for Kosovo and/or unification with Albania’ (Mertus 1999, p. 43). Furthermore, Mertus’ research concludes that in

1981, there were very few Albanians in Kosovo who supported unification with Albania, as although the Kosovo Albanians had adopted the standardised literary language

(Toskë dialect) used in Albania, they nevertheless were content in reading books that were published in their own Gegë dialect (Mertus 1999, p. 38).

The unification process for this organisation was not without drawbacks as both Zeka and the Gërvalla brothers were assassinated in Germany in 1982, of which the Yugoslav secret service of the time is thought to have been responsible.13 Nevertheless later on in

1982, the three groups managed to merge to form the Popular Movement for the

Republic of Kosovo in Yugoslavia (Lëvizja Popullore për Republikën e Kosovës në

Jugosllavi) (Kudo 2010, p. 7). Yet, the assassinations of Zeka and the Gërvalla had occurred as a result of their involvement in underground organisations, and according to

Kudo, detection by the Yugoslav secret agents was a significant reason as to why

Albanian immigrants in the West were reluctant to support these organisations (Kudo

13 http://www.gazetatema.net/web/2014/01/15/donika-gervalla-ne-dosjen-e-vrasjes-se-babait-ka-edhe- emra-te-qeverise-aktuale/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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2010, p. 9). Eventually in 1991 the organisation changed its name to the Popular

Movement for Kosovo (Lëvizja Popullore për Kosovën, LPK), whose leading figures, including Ali Ahmeti, would be responsible for the establishment of the Kosovo

Liberation Army (Kudo 2010, p. 7).

The KLA plays an important role, although it experienced a relatively short existence in

Kosovo’s history, as it is widely considered to have contributed to the escalation of the

1998 conflict, which in turn caused the Yugoslav authorities to wage a war against them and in turn also use the opportunity to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Kosovo of Albanians (Mertus

1999, p. 280). As a result of this ethnic cleansing, during which one million Kosovo

Albanians were forced to flee from their homes, NATO and the international community became involved in the conflict. By doing so, the Yugoslav regime withdrew from the

Kosovo territory, and the UN assumed responsibility for Kosovo.

The KLA emerged as a result of the climax of a long series of resistance movements, both peaceful and armed, which began early in the 20th century. Although the KLA was formed by people in the illegal underground organisations advocating national unification, the KLA’s goals changed to that of liberation from Yugoslavia. According to

Hedges, the KLA had failed in creating neither a political organisation nor a platform

(Hedges 1999, p. 6). Furthermore, the KLA’s spokesperson, Jakup Krasniqi, told a

Kosovar daily newspaper: “I do not think we have an ideology…and in fact we do not have time for such things even if we were interested in them, because we have our main

101 job to do, which is the task of liberation” (Hedges 1999, p. 6). Indeed a number of scholars purport to the KLA’s lack of ideological stance. Vickers writes that ‘it is striking that as the KLA gathered support in Kosovo and among the diaspora, its political goal shifted to independence for Kosovo’ (ICG 2004, p. 15). Pouye also wrote in 2005 that the ‘the pan-Albanian ethnic nationalism promoted in Kosovo by the ex-UÇK is now supported by only a fraction of the population’ (Pouye 2005, p. 54).

4.3 Kosovo Albanian Perspectives on Unification in the Aftermath of War

The Albanians of Kosovo and the diaspora expected that independence would be a stabilizing factor in the Balkans, as it would neutralize those extremist ethnic Albanian insurgent groups and the diaspora (ICG 2004, p. 14). The vision for Balkans was for the two Albanian states to ‘concentrate on building potential and civic institutions to prepare for eventual integration into European structures’ (ICG 2004, p. 14), with the relations between Albania and Kosovo not causing any threat to their neighbouring states. Nevertheless, Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 seems to have spurred the dreams of some in Kosovo for unification with Albania.14

In the aftermath of the 1998/1999 conflict in Kosovo, the major political parties did not encourage unification with Albania rhetoric and placed their focus on rebuilding Kosovar institutions. The main reason behind a lack of interest in uniting with Albania, according to a report by the ICG, was the fear of antagonising the international community, ‘upon

14(http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=E315DEE8C3DB2AED04EF23 2E8845331B?newsId=308587&columnistId=0) Accessed: 14 August, 2014

102 which Kosovo continues to heavily rely on for support’ (ICG 2004, p. 14). Another important reason was the political insignificance which would prevail for the Kosovar political parties, if they joined Albania. Therefore, independence for Kosovo, and not unification with Albania, was the only way forward, according to major political parties of Kosovo (ICG 2004, p. 14).

Although by the summer and autumn of 2003, it was considered that the idea of a

‘Greater Albania’ lacked serious backing by Kosovo’s political establishment, there nevertheless were several small radical groups in Kosovo which were open in their promotion of unification between Kosovo and Albania (ICG 2004, p. 15). The People’s

Movement of Kosovo (LPK), the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo (LKCK), the Republican Party of Kosovo (PRK), and the Albanian National Democratic Party

(PNDSH) openly promoted national unification following the 98/99 conflict in Kosovo

(Milo 2001, p. 52). The smaller LPK party had launched a petition for unification with

Albania, and they collected signatures in front of the Grand Hotel, in the centre of

Prishtina. Furthermore, Paulin Kola’s presentation of his new book, ‘The Search for

Greater Albania’ in October 2003, brought hundreds of people into Prishtina’s national library auditorium (ICG 2004, p. 15).

Of the smaller political parties which emerged after the Kosovo war, the LPK and the

LKCK continued to demand an independent Kosovo and eventual unification with

Albania (ICG 2004, p. 15). Two other national movements, Balli Kombëtar (The National

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Front), based in both Kosovo and Albania, as well as the Second League of Prizren, with its headquarters in Prishtina and New York, also pushed for unification with Albania (ICG

2004, p. 15). However, the support for these parties proved to be very low during the

2002 municipal elections in Kosovo, when LPK won just four seats, Balli Kombetar two seats and the LKCK won no seats out of a possible 920 seats on the 31 municipal councils (ICG 2004, p. 15).

The foremost important party which is controversial in its campaign for Kosovar self- determination and unification is the Vetevëndosje party. This political party was formed in opposition to the foreign involvement in the affairs of Kosovo following the 1998 war whilst also campaigning for sovereignty exercised by the Kosovar people as part of the right of self-determination. Although in Kosovo, Vetevëndosje has gradually gained popularity, with 13.59% of the votes in the 2014 national elections. The party manifesto calls for a referendum on union with Albania and rejects the Ahtisaari plan implemented in Kosovo as a condition of its independence. The other political party in Kosovo that openly campaigns for unification with Albania is Levizja per Bashkim (The Movement for

Unification), although it is considered to be the ally movement of Vetevëndosje, it is not as popular, with only three seats in the Kosovar parliament. The Movement for

Unification deems the Ahtisaari plan as not sufficiently resolving the Albanian issue and aims to merger the Albanian people into a single Albanian state.

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4.4 Serbian views on unification during the declaration of independence

Following the 1999 war in Kosovo, questions began to arise about the fate of the former

Yugoslav province. In particular, Serbian media were enthusiastic to portray the perception that a union between Kosovo and Albania was “inevitable”. The Serbian government website ‘Politika’ published an article titled “Greater Albania Instrument of

Great Forces’ Interests” (Apostolovski 1999, p. 3). Following Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008, the Serbian government published a feature article titled: “The CIA and Greater Albania […]” which questioned the United States’ involvement in the war and attributed it to creating a Greater Albania in Kosovo (Savich

2008, p. 18). Alongside such a perception portrayed by the Serbian national government, Serbian media was also prolific in producing articles which heightened the

Serbians’ fear of a Greater Albania, with articles such as: “Definitive Proof: The KLA’s

Objective is Greater Albania”, and “Kosovo: Key Dates in the Century Long Goal to

Create Greater Albania”, with the latter article being published on the day of Kosovo’s independence.15,16 Serbian scholars even wrote about their fears of the Albanians determination to establish a Greater Albanian state at any cost and how the aspiration

“jeopardizes stability in the whole of Southeast Europe” and potentially causes a “new third Balkan war.” (Terzic 1997, p. 13)

15 http://www.slobodanmilosevic.org/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014 16 http://www.serbianna.com/news/2008/01360.shtml Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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4.5 Scholarly and ‘Official’ Views on Unification After the War

The uncertainty surrounding the status of Kosovo also brought about new interest in the

Balkan region by not only Albanian writers, but also western writers who began to delve into Albanian history in order to determine what might happen next. In 2001, Tim Judah published an article with the title ‘Greater Albania?’ The title of the article itself suggests that this was an important issue which needs attention. Judah claims that ‘now that the

Serb threat has gone, there has never been a better time to try to realise a Greater

Albania’ though he immediately quashes the notion by stating that ‘no mainstream

Albanian political party, whether in Kosovo, Albania or Macedonia, publicly espouses the idea’ (Judah 2001, p. 3). Judah considers that the reason behind a lack of interest by the

Kosovar Albanians in uniting with Albania was that for the last 90 years, the Yugoslav

Albanians had experienced a completely different history from that of the Albanian

Albanians (Judah 2001, p. 3). As Albania was essentially isolated during Hoxha’s strict communist regime, and Kosovar Albanians were not allowed to enter the country, they had come to idealize their imagined ‘motherland’ Albania. It was only during the

Kosovar war in 1999 when the Kosovar refugees in Albania were confronted and

‘shocked by the poverty and corruption of Albania and, as many were also robbed there, they were more than happy after the war to leave’ (Judah 2001, p. 4). As Judah puts it, the political effects of the Kosovar Albanians’ experiences in Albania was the crystallisation ‘in the minds of many Kosovar Albanians the idea that the future of the

Albanians as a whole lay not in their unification into one country, but rather in cross- border solidarity and good-neighborliness’ (Judah 2001, p. 4). As discussed in chapter 2

106 of this thesis, such a feeling was mutually felt in Albania also, where the majority of

Albanians were more interested in achieving a higher standard of living than territorial expansion (Judah 2001, p. 4). Similar sentiment was iterated by Albania’s Media

Institute director, Remzi Lani:

“If I said there were no people who dreamed of a Greater Albania I would be wrong but it is not a popular idea. If the Security Council or an international conference offered us a Greater Albania we would not refuse it, but on the other hand we are not going to fight for it either” (Judah 2001, p. 4).

Also in 2001, the Wilson Centre for research published an article titled: ‘Balkan

Dilemma: Grappling with “Greater Albania”’.17 This article however, mostly discussed the threat of instability in the Balkans following the ethnic Albanian rebel resistance against Macedonian security forces in the region near the Kosovo border (Betts 2001, p.

1). In conclusion, Betts writes that: “…ethnic Albanians may demand that the region they dominate in Macedonia, constituting about 17 percent of the country’s territory, be carved out and united with either Kosovo or Albania to form a “Greater” entity”

(Betts 2001, p. 1). Although this conflict in Macedonia was supported by the KLA in

Kosovo, Vickers writes that it nevertheless was responsible for leading a large number of international observers to conclude that “Kosovo was bent on exploring radicalism and extremism” (ICG 2004, p. 16). However, realizing that this international perception had damaged the credibility of Kosovo as a good and peaceful neighbor following its independence, the more political savvy politicians of Kosovo showed no visible support

17 http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/balkan-dilemma-grappling-greater-albania

107 for the Albanian National Army which was responsible for the conflict in Macedonia (ICG

2004, p. 16).

As a means of answering the question of whether or not Kosovo would seek unification with Albania, in 2004, the International Crisis Group (ICG) published a 47-page report on such a threat, ‘Pan-Albanianism: How big a threat to Balkan stability?’ The article states that: ‘Although all Albanians are now familiar with the terms ‘pan-Albanianism’, ‘Greater

Kosovo’ and ‘Greater Albania’, it is rare to hear them use such terms themselves and very few advocate the redrawing or abolition of borders’ (ICG 2004). The ICG report of

2004 is the only major research conducted by a western author on the question of unification between Kosovo and Albania. The report concludes by stating: “There is widespread misunderstanding of Albanian national aspirations. Albanians have got used to the idea of separate Albanian entities in the Balkans” (ICG 2004, p. 31). The author also cites the cultural and ideological differences between the Albanians in the Balkans as dividing factors between them, and that the Albanians will be content in preserving their ‘separate political entities as long as business, cultural and travel restrictions are removed” (ICG 2004, p. 31). However, the report cites that the only way a threat of unification would occur is if the status of Kosovo remained unresolved. The resolving of

Kosovo’s status would avoid further conflict in the southern Balkans, and so that independence of Kosovo was at the core of the Albanian question (ICG 2004, p. 31).

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Another study conducted on the question of ‘Greater Albania’, encompassing unification between Kosovo and Albania, was by the Albanian author Paulin Kola. In 2003 he published ‘The Search for Greater Albania’, in which he concludes: “I have not found a

Greater Albania project anywhere – not in history, nor in modern times” (ICG 2004, p.

15). To further emphasise this point in the book, Kola changed the title of United States edition of his book to: ‘The Myth of Greater Albania’ (ICG 2004, p. 15).

Continuing with the same theme yet focusing specifically on the issue of unification between Kosovo and Albania, in 2006 Kola wrote an essay titled: ‘Is Greater Albania a

Threat?’, which was published in Anna De Lilio’s ‘The Case for Kosova’; a collection of essays exploring themes about Kosovo. According to Kola, the threat of unification between Kosovo and Albania would not occur because the ‘Albanians are the least nationalistic people in the Balkan peninsula’ and that they ‘remained fragmented and unable to establish a unifying central authority that would command their collective allegiance’ (Kola 2006, p. 187). Kola lays blame on Enver Hoxha and the Albanian communist governments, who quashed any feelings of nationalism amongst the

Albanian people by ‘successfully inculcating in the people that sense of alienation from the rest of the nation through, among other things, progressive impoverishment, purging of text-books, and an information blackout on news surrounding Albanians beyond the borders of the country’ (Kola 2006, p. 192). Kola’s essay explores the question of Kosovo and Albanian unification by stating that ‘the creation of a ‘Greater

Albania’ is not in the plans of Kosova’ because throughout history, Albania has not been

109 interested in such a unification (Kola 2006, p. 1920). As was discussed in chapter 2 of this thesis, Albania’s stand-point on unification with Kosovo, the Albanian government has indeed not shown an interest in any form of unification with Kosovo.

Another major study which has explored the issue of Kosovo and Albanian unification is by Miranda Vickers and James Petiffer in 2009; both writers who have extensively covered the Albanians in their past works. Their book titled: ‘The Albanian Question:

Reshaping the Balkans’ is an historical exploration of the ‘Albanian question’ in the

Balkans, although this work mainly refers to the Albanians who do not live in the

Albanian state. The authors state that although poor, disadvantaged and dissatisfied, many Albanians in this situation consider national affiliation as a means of ‘solidarity and strength’, who desire ‘closer ties between Albanian-populated territories for reasons of economy and security’ rather than for ‘national patriotism against other population groups’ (Pettifer and Vickers 2009, p. 3).

Pettifer and Vickers argue that the Kosovo war of 1998 was not fought with the objective of territorial unification of Albanians, but rather for Kosovo’s independence

(Pettifer and Vickers 2009, p. 234). Although Kosovo’s leaders had made statements that

Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers (KLA) had sworn their oath to the liberation and the unification of Albanian lands, according to Pettifer and Vickers, “unification is not, and is not likely to be desired among Albanians” (Pettifer and Vickers 2009, p. 4).

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4.6 Signs of Support and Non-Support for Unification: Flags

Kosovo’s independence in 2008 sparked fears, particularly among Serbs, that the new nation-state’s majority Albanian population would fulfil their nationalist dream and join

Albania.18 In contemporary post-independence Kosovo, accompanying most holiday celebrations is the Albanian flag – the black two-headed eagle on the red background – which is frequently displayed by Albanians in Kosovo. This poses a problem for Kosovo, as the new nation-state’s government has since its declaration of independence in 2008, introduced the new Kosovo flag, as a means to forge a new national identity. The

Kosovar flag has a blue background and a map of Kosovo in gold and with six stars over it representing the six major ethnic groups of Kosovo: Albanians, Serbs, Turks, Gorani,

Romani and Bosniaks. This flag however, is seen as an artificial flag by some Kosovars, imposed by the United Nations, which does not represent their identity. Thus they refuse to accept this flag and instead they use the Albanian one. This poses a problem for the new nation state, because as Kolsto states, the flag and emblems which are contested by various ethnic and political groups within a state can divide the nation, rather than unite it (Kolsto 2006, p. 1). This is particularly relevant in Kosovo as the new flag was designed with the aim of incorporating Kosovo’s different ethnicities, which the six stars on the flag represent. Thus, flying the Albanian flag instead of the Kosovo flag in post-independent Kosovo, not only symbolizes a desire to unite with Albania, but also serves as a political statement to the non-Albanian minorities in Kosovo, that Kosovo is

Albanian and minorities are not welcome. It can be said that the use of both the

18 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/dacic-calls-for-kosovo-to-be-devided-between-albania-and- serbia) Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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Albanian and Kosovo flags in Kosovo is a nationalist dilemma, “as the attempt to forge a unitary national identity is constantly destabilized” (Rempel 2006, p. 13) by the

Albanians who choose to fly the Albanian flag for the mental orientation of its flag bearers and refuse to acknowledge the new Kosovar flag. Many Kosovo Albanians continue to use the Albanian national flag at weddings, funerals, and religious holidays or during a general protest.

In particular, there are three different groups of people affiliated with certain use of flags in Kosovo. One group displays only the Albanian flag and neglects the new Kosovo flag which was introduced by the government following the declaration of independence in 2008. The second group is the most common of the three as it displays both the Albanian flag and the new Kosovo flag, and then third group has embraced the new Kosovar flag while neglecting the Albanian flag altogether.19,20 The government and government institutions fall into this third group, as post-independence, the Albanian flag is no longer used by the Kosovar government, besides for the celebration of

Albania’s independence anniversary on the 28th of November. Although during the

19 http://todayszaman.com/news-308587-greater-albania-a-romantic-willingness-by-hajrudin-somun- .html Accessed: 14 August, 2014 http://www.gazetatema.net/web/2012/02/16/veriu-prish-festen-e-pavaresise/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014 http://www.forumishqiptar.com/threads/105572-Foto-e-jav%C3%ABs-Dy-nx%C3%ABn%C3%ABse-duke- festuar-Dit%C3%ABn-e-Pavar%C3%ABsis%C3%AB-n%C3%AB-kryeqytetin-e-Kosov%C3%ABs Accessed: 14 August, 2014 20http://www.trtalbanian.com/trtworld/al/newsdetail.aspx/al/newsDetail.aspx?HaberKodu=46a14fe4- c221-4b10-9d65-1726cd03c18e Accessed: 14 August, 2014 http://www.botasot.info/kosova/273921/jahjaga-e-pakthyeshme-pavaresia-e-kosoves/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014 http://www.botasot.info/kosova/246186/jahjaga-e-thaci-urojn-besimtaret-myslimane-per-festen-e- bajramit/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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Kosovo independence anniversary celebrations in Prishtina in 2014, the local government, whose newly elected mayor is a member of the Vetevëndosje party, adorned the capital city with both the Kosovo and Albanian flags.21

The prominent use of the Albanian national flag following Kosovo’s independence in

2008 and Albania’s centenary of independence in November 2011 reveals how the notion of unifying Kosovo with Albania is an ambition taken up enthusiastically by a significant number of Kosovars and that there is a prominent desire internally for

Kosovo Albanians to unite with Albania. Indeed, the Gallup Balkan Monitor opinion poll of 2010 attests to this, as 81% of the Kosovo Albanians surveyed stated that they were in favour of unification (Gallup Balkan Monitor 2010, p. 1).

The ideal of a greater Albania is also expressed widely on social media platforms, such as

Facebook. The Facebook group Shoqëria Bashkimi Kombëtar (The Society for National

Unification) has over 29,000 active members on their page.22 Founded by ‘students, entrepreneurs, and Albanians working towards the progression of Albanian unity’, the group calls for the support and cooperation of all progressive forums which support their agenda of Albanian unification. The active group, which at least once a day posts historical or current information regarding Albanian unification, show a map of the

Albania which they aspire to; including Kosovo and the Albanian inhabited territories of

21 http://www.ekonomia-ks.com/?page=1,20,363084 Accessed: 14 August, 2014 22 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shoq%C3%ABria-Bashkimi-Shqiptar/108658209180909?fref=ts Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece.23 Another such group on Facebook, titled

Bashkimi Kombëtar (National Unification), has over 8000 active members, and like the

Society for National Unification page, it also regularly shares stories which promote

Albanian national unification. These two abovementioned groups have the largest number of members on Facebook, although there are at least 25 other Facebook groups which advocate Albanian national unification.

Since Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, numerous online forums have also called for Albanian unification. One such forum is called Bashkimi Kombëtar: Gjithcka për kombin Shqiptar (National Unification: Everything for the Albanian nation).24 This forum’s homepage welcomes its visitors with the following statement, titled ‘History of

Albanian People’ which aims to provide justification for the forum and for the fight of a united Albanian nation.

The forum provides an introductory statement advocating unification of Albanian- inhabited lands:

‘What unites the Albanians more than any other nation are the strands of each community's history. It is that history that dates back to the Albanian language, cultural beginnings; beginnings of which its existence created our identity, character and aspirations of the people. Albanians do not have a history filled with triumphs and the defeat of nations, and are certainly not considered a historical superpower, however. However, the Albanians have a history among the crops of our region. Traces of our forefathers were seen not only on the fields of ancient Greece, but also amongst many European medieval kingdoms, which our former symbols are now a part of their identity. Maybe fate didn’t want us to not have a written Albanian language to advance

23 https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=174280572587467&id=108658209180909 Accessed: 14 August, 2014 24 http://kosovare.forumotion.com/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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our history; however we have made our mark through the centuries. We were here, we still are ... this is the story of my people.’25

The final sentence of the statement encourages readers to spread the message of

Albanian unification by stating: ‘offer all Albanians wherever they are this complete description of the History of Albania, prepared by the Albanian Academy of Sciences’.26

Apart from these independently initiated social media groups and internet forums, the

Kosovar government has made some steps towards a greater degree of collaboration with the Albanian government; although at present the government does not officially advocate unification with Albania. One of the several examples of this collaboration is the signing of a status of forces agreement between Kosovo and Albania, which took place on the first of July 2013. This agreement enables Kosovo and Albania ‘the entry and exit procedures of military equipment and personnel into each state, and the temporary deployment of civilian personnel’.27 Whilst neither Kosovo nor Albania have in the past sent equipment or personnel to each other, apart from the Albanian officers who served in the KFOR mission, the agreement nevertheless creates the legal framework which enables such movement between the two countries to occur. Both

Prishtina and Tirana stated that the agreement would not pose a threat to any neighboring nation, stating that the agreement would pave the way for such agreements with other nations and would allow an overall co-operation between the states of the region, that contribute to the strengthening of peace and overall

25 Ibid 26 http://kosovare.forumotion.com/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014 27http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2013/07/11/featur e-01 Accessed: 14 August, 2014

115 security’.28 Nevertheless, Serbia sees the agreement as a ‘serious problem’, with

Milovan Drecun, the chairman of the Serbian parliament Committee on Kosovo, stating:

“This agreement between Kosovo and Albania indicates large Albanian claims and may threaten the safety of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohia”.29 According to the

Serbs, the agreement between Kosovo and Albania to collaborate their two armies poses a threat to not only Serbia, but the entire Balkan region.

Nevertheless, the collaboration between Kosovo and Albania has continued to grow, as on the 14th of February, 2014, a protocol of cooperation was signed between the

Ministry of Culture of Albania and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of Kosovo, with the goal of ‘establishing a common cultural calendar and annual coordination of cultural activities between the two countries’.30 Furthermore, since the introduction of a joint cultural program, the two nations have also formed a unified Albanian and Kosovar education system. Since June 2014, students in Albania and Kosovo have been learning from the same books and the same curriculum.31 Albania’s Minister of education, Lindita

Nikolla, stressed that the agreement was a new era for Albanian education, and placed the emphasis of the agreement on the ability for students to be mobile and that “a student of Kosovo can come and be a student of a school in Albania and vice versa, but also in the EU, because the curriculum that we unified is the official curriculum of the EU

28 Ibid 29 Ibid 30 http://www.balkanweb.com/m/shqiperi/shqiperi-kosove-nenshkruhet-marreveshje-bashkepunimi-ne- fushen-e-kultures-172661.html Accessed: 14 August, 2014 31 http://sofiaglobe.com/2014/06/04/albania-and-kosovo-unify-their-education-systems/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014

116 member countries”.32 Kosovo’s education Minister, Rame Buja, also stated that the agreement signified a historical step for Kosovo, as it meant that the two countries would be ‘joined in knowledge’.33 However, Edi Rama, Albania’s Prime Minister, was quick to add that the unification of the education systems of Albania and Kosovo would not lead toward a ‘mechanic unification’, but that the agreement would be “a common journey toward what we want for the next generation of Albanians”. 34,35

32 Ibid 33 Ibid 34 Ibid 35 Ibid

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4.7 Case Study on Party Politics i. Vetevëndosje

A significant indicator of the new nation-state’s inclination towards nationalism is the rise of Vetevëndosje, the radical nationalist political movement (Delafrouz 2009, p. 11,

Lewis 2010, p. 14) that is against foreign involvement in Kosovo’s internal affairs and which campaigns for sovereignty to be exercised by the people instead, as part of the right of self-determination (Vetevëndosje.org 2010). Vetevëndosje is the foremost party campaigning for Kosovar self-determination and unification. This party was formed in opposition to the foreign involvement in the affairs of Kosovo following the 1998 war, and campaigned for Kosovar popular sovereignty as part of the right of self- determination. The party manifesto calls for a referendum on union with Albania and rejects the Ahtisaari plan implemented in Kosovo as a condition of its independence.

The Movement for Unification deems the Ahtisaari plan as not sufficiently resolving the

Albanian issue and aims to merger the Albanian people into a single Albanian state.

Vetevëndosje has become the third-greatest force in the Kosovar parliament and they have, unsuccessfully, requested that Kosovo’s leaders reject any compromise in negotiations with the Serbian government. The party symbolises its objective of unification with Albania by flying the Albanian flag at all their protests, and rejecting the

Kosovar flag, even in the Kosovo parliament.36

36http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=E315DEE8C3DB2AED04EF23 2E8845331B?newsId=308587&columnistId=0 Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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Vetevëndosje began as a student network movement, headed by Albin Kurti, a former student political activist during the Yugoslav regime and political prisoner during the

Kosovo war. Since the Kosovo war of 1998, the movement has placed its focus on

‘fighting against international pressure on Kosovo and for Kosovo’s sovereignty’ often staging demonstrations against the UN’s presence in Kosovo.37 As a result, the party has won a questionable reputation amongst the international community and the Kosovo people. More recently however, since December 2005, the party began to show signs of advocating unification with Albania in their published manifesto. McKinna (2012) has stated that Vetevëndosje at this time ‘shunned the focus on ethnicity in post-war

Kosovo’ by stating in their manifesto that: ‘only freedom makes it possible for us to transform a community characterised by ethnicity into a political one’ (Vetevëndosje

2005). 38

However, in their updated manifesto of 2010, Vetevëndosje make explicit reference to

Kosovo returning to their original identity:

‘‘Self-determination, because freedom of the people should not be constrained; every nation has a right to be free from colonization, to absolutely determine its own manner of development. Every nation should control its own economic and natural resources, and should be able to determine freely its identity and its authentic cultural spirit.’ (VV 2010, p. 3).

37 http://www.balkanalysis.com/kosovo/2012/02/22/the-Vetevëndosje-movement-in-kosovo-an- increasing-focus-on-nationalism/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014 38 http://www.balkanalysis.com/kosovo/2012/02/22/the-Vetevëndosje-movement-in-kosovo-an- increasing-focus-on-nationalism/ Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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The manifesto makes reference to the Ahtisaari plan, which prohibits Kosovo from seeking unification with Albania, or changing its current borders. Furthermore, the plan states that Kosovo must remain under the protection of the international community, such as Eulex.

4.8 Vetevëndosje’s Party Leadership: Interview with Albin Kurti

In order to further understand Vetevëndosje’s aspirations for Kosovo to unite with

Albania, while I was in Kosovo, I conducted an interview with the party’s leader, Albin

Kurti. The information in this chapter draws from the interview and the entire interview is available in the appendix of this thesis.

Vetevëndosje’s Albin Kurti considers the steps towards European integration by Kosovo as steps towards ultimate unification between Kosovo and Albania. According to Kurti, the Kosovo government, which is closely monitored by the international community present in Kosovo, is hoping that the steps which they are taking in collaborating more closely with Albania, in terms of a joint curriculum and shared cultural calendar, are steps which they hope will replace national unification. For Kurti, national unification and Kosovo’s inclusion in the EU is not mutually exclusive; as the international presence in Kosovo has lead the people there to believe that national unification would disqualify

Kosovo from EU integration.

120

Indeed, according to Vetevëndosje, the majority of Kosovo Albanians consider Kosovo’s independence as a step towards national unification, and not as a final objective. Indeed it is Kurti’s aspirations of unification with all Albanian-inhabited regions which makes the

Vetevëndosje party seem undesirable to Serbia, the international community, as well as some Kosovar Albanians. In interview, Kurti goes as far as to say that the unification between Kosovo and Albania would be an important initiative which would create the conditions for all the other Albanian-inhabited regions to join as well.

In spite of the research that has shown that Albanians are not inclined towards unification with Kosovo (see chapter 2), Kurti remains adamant that most Albanians in the Balkans would favour national unity. None more so that the Kosovar Albanians, who according to Kurti, have been subjected to the political indoctrination of an imposed

‘fake’ new state, which is aiming to diminish the Kosovars of their Albanian identity.

Kurti states:

“There has been an attempt by the government to remove our Albanian identity, with the Kosovar state symbols like the flag and other official state symbols, and some politicians have gone as far as saying that the Kosovar language should be unique from the Albanian language”.39

Kurti considers that any attempt to impose a Kosovar identity and eradicate the

Albanian identity of the Kosovar Albanians will only bring about an increase in nationalism, which has indeed occurred since the declaration of Kosovo’s independence

39 Personal interview with Albin Kurti, January 2013, conducted in Albanian.

121 in 2008. And for this reason, Vetevëndosje argues that the people should have the right to a referendum, so that they can choose if they would rather be ‘Kosovars’ or if they would rather join Albania and remain ‘Albanian’. Although such a referendum is not allowed to occur in Kosovo, as it goes against the Ahtisaari plan and Kosovo’s constitution, Kurti nonetheless does not believe that the Kosovars are being held back from their national aspirations of unification by the international community. Rather, the Kosovar government, which is more interested in retaining political power than hearing the people, does not see unification with Albania as advantageous. Kurti believes that the Kosovar Albanians are hesitant in initiating a move towards unification because they have always been told by not only the international community, but also their government, that unification in an unattainable dream.

Regardless of the billions in funding that has poured into Kosovo since the end of the

1998 conflict, for Kurti, the weak state risks being a failed state. The lack of economic development, the high unemployment rate and lack of territorial integrity could potentially cause the state to disappear. The current government’s stance on unification cause Kurti to believe that unification will never occur, with unification only being used towards the politicians’ advantage so they can play with the stability of the Balkans, whenever it best suits them.

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4.9 Other Parties: The Movement for Unification (Levizja per Bashkim, LB)

The ally party of Vetevëndosje, is the Movement for Unification, and is considered more radical, with its main goal being the unity of Kosovo and all other former Yugoslavian territories populated by Albanians to Albania. LB’s goal is different to Vetevëndosje’s goal of unification with Albania as the Movement for Unification aspires to unite all formerly Albanian-inhabited lands; potentially causing further unrest in the Balkans, particularly Macedonia. This political party was formed by Avni Klinaku, who was also a co-founder of the former National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo (LKÇK), a nationalist organisation of the 1980s which promoted the active resistance and separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia.

123

Indeed, it was these divergences, including the Kosovo parliament’s rejection of LB’s promotion of replacing Kosovo’s telephone codes with Albanian codes, that caused the

Movement for Unification party to split from the coalition they had formed with

Vetevëndosje during the 2010 elections in Kosovo.40,41 Following this split, in May 2011, the Movement for Integration and Unification (Levizja per Integrim dhe Bashkim, LBI), a smaller and newly formed political party in Kosovo which also sought unification with

Albania, joined the Movement for Unification.42 LB’s objectives of Kosovo uniting with

Albania are rather more explicit than Vetevëndosje’s. In their political platform, the party states that ‘the Albanian people against have against their will been divided into several states, and as a consequence, the Albanian issue remains unresolved’ and that

‘throughout the history of the Albanian people, their real goal has been and continues to be the merger into a single state – Albania’ (LB 2012). Like Vetevëndosje however, LB rejects the Ahtisaari package, stating ‘that the Albanian people in Kosovo do not exercise sovereignty on its territory and do not recognize the right of nations of self- determination, therefore, after Kosovo’s declaration of independence under the

Ahtisaari Package, the Albanian issue remains unresolved’ (LB 2012).

40 http://www.gazetaexpress.com/index.php?cid=1,13,111952. Accessed: 14 August, 2014 41 http://www.koha.net/index.php/repository/docs/08atijaha.pdf?page=1,13,149415 Accessed: 14 August, 2014 42 http://time.ikub.al/8545bc0298/2047510c6929361ce9a21613f50adbbe/Lajm_Bashkohet-LB-me- LIB.aspx Accessed: 14 August, 2014

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Focusing on the Albanian issue, LB’s manifesto also states that: ‘the Albanian people who live in Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro are denied the right of self- determination and national unity’ and that only as a ‘just as a single and unified state can Albanian people make full use of all its economic, political and cultural potentials’

(LB 2012). Furthermore, the party explicitly states that it seeks to ‘unify the Albanian people into a single, sovereign, free and democratic state’ and believes ‘the process of national and unstoppable development and integration of the Albanian nation facilitates efforts for the successful realization of national unity’ (LB 2012).

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Chapter 5: Conclusion

Unification with Albania or the formation of a ‘Greater Albania’ is a highly controversial concept both internally within Kosovo and outside it. A Greater Albania would not only have a profound effect on the status of the new Kosovo as an independent state, it would also affect the Albanian and non-Albanian minorities currently living in Kosovo, as well as more broadly in the Balkans and Europe.

This thesis has explored the question of whether Albanians in Kosovo aim to unify the country with Albania. A better understanding of the issue of unification in Kosovo was achieved through the presentation of the historical background of movements for unification between Kosovo and Albania. In chapter 1, the historical background of

Kosovo and Albania was presented, as well as the origins of ‘Greater Albania’, ‘Ethnic

Albania’ and ‘Greater Serbia’. In this chapter, it was discussed how Ahtisaari Plan hinders Kosovo’s government from seeking unification with Albania, since Kosovo’s independence was conditionally granted so that there would be no changes of the current borders of the nation and unification with any neighbouring countries.

In chapter 2, the Albanian nation’s stance on unification was explored, both historically and at present, and it was conclusively determined that unification between Kosovo and

Albania is not an objective of the current Albanian government. While there were small movements by the Albanian people for unification, in the past, Albania’s government did not officially advocate unification between Albania and Kosovo.

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Chapter 3 discussed the different significant movements for unification in Kosovo between 1878 and 1981. It was during this period after the fall of the Ottoman Empire that the call for Albanian unification began in Kosovo, with the official formation of the

League of Peja, a movement which aimed at unifying Albanian-inhabited lands.

In chapter 4, the present situation in Kosovo regarding unification with Albania was explored, beginning with a background to contemporary debates about Kosovo’s unification with Albania. This chapter discussed the rise in popular support for unification, and considered the different signs of support for unification in the country.

My research has shown that 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 not 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 sheds 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 has established a clearer picture of the aspirations of Kosovo’s possible unification with Albania, by

127 exploring the historical and political issues that might be of hindrance to the processes of the development of the Kosovar nation and its statehood.

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 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

128

As has been presented in this thesis, historically and at present, the people of Albania have not shown a serious interest in political unification with the Albanians of Kosovo.

Furthermore, the decades of the communist regime of Albania caused a deep cultural and social divide between the Albanians of Kosovo and those of Albania proper, which during the 1990s, resulted in the Kosovo Albanians focusing on achieving independence for Kosovo, rather than seeking unification with Albania.

Kosovo’s self-declared independence in 2008 has incited fears among the Serbs, as well as the international community, that the region is one step closer to the realisation of uniting with Albania to form a larger Albanian state. This issue has both internal and international implications. Internally, the issue of unifying all Albanians hinders the perspective for the development of a new Kosovar nation, consisting of an Albanian-

Kosovar majority and other minorities, among which the Serbs provide the most formidable barriers. Internationally, this issue implies the formation of new borders in the Balkans, which would not only threaten the existence of an independent Kosovo, but would potentially foment unrest in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as in Greece, and Montenegro, as other minorities to strive for unification with their ethnic states.

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Interview:

Albin Kurti – 12 Jaunuary 2013. Leader of the Vetëvendosje political party.

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Appendix

Interview with Alban Kurti, Leader of the Vetëvendosje party in Kosovo. January 12,

2013.

BR: Given that you're the strongest proponent in Kosovo of this idea, I'm interested to shed light on this issue. This topic has attracted much attention from the international media. What are the factors that promote or hinder integration processes throughout

Albania?

AK: “We see the integration as a step towards unification. There are politicians that see integration as a replacement for unification. Joint media are examples of such integration in order to avoid national unification. But they are not the real thing because unification is seen as something unattainable and idealistic and utopican instead of realistic and achievable. We don’t see national unification and inclusion integration in the EU as being mutually exclusive. It’s not right if Albanians are told that if they unite, then they can’t join the EU. We’ve seen how Germany united and they are together in the EU. We think that unification and integration in the EU are not contradictory and at the same time, we don’t believe that integration in the EU is a replacement of national unification.

The other thing is that Kosovo’s independence is seen by the majority of Kosovar

Albanians as a step towards national unification, not as a final objective. Unification is not a new nation, but a new state. Albanians are united as a nation, so the unification

143 between Kosovo and Albanian would mean that Kosovo joins Albania as an important initiative which would create the conditions for all the other Albanian-inhabited regions to join as well. This is our initiative and this is in our economic and security interest. I believe that Serbia, seeing us divided from Albania is encouraged to increase their hegemonic appetite. Now the main barriers to this goal are the political elite which would rather be a big fish in a small pond than small fish in the sea. Unification would mean that they lose their power (19 ministries, 38 deputy ministries, 6 deputy pms).

This is one of the main factors which block unification. Another main reason is the

Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo, which in clause 1.3 does not allow unification with Albania and this constitution has taken Austria as its model, which in clause 4 is not allowed union with Germany. However, we don’t have the same history as them. It wasn’t the Albanians who had Hitler. Serbia had Milosevic, so why should we be denied unification with Albania if we never had problems with each other? We are not the force that caused four wars in the Balkans; it was Serbia. Another important reason is because national unification should not be based on the glorious past, but should be outside of political and economic memory. There are some politicians who see the past as national unification and the future as European integration. We insist that unification should focus on the future and security and economy instead of the cultural past.”

BL: Is a union with Albania the best solution for Kosovo? Why not develop a Kosovar identity?

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AK: “First of all, I believe that there is a Kosovar identity, but it is more of a geographical identity; this identity is less important than the Albanian identity. It’s more important whether you are from Gjakova or Drenica, rather than Kosova. It’s not considered an important identity. I believe this is the belief of Kosovars. I don’t think you can create a new nation this way. It is criminal to create a new nation in this aspect. This is a form of social engineering that is unbearable. A new state can be a form of project”.

BR: This year, Kosovo and Albania began to use the same primary school books. In

Kosovo, there are three public universities and 20 private colleges. At the time of Tito, professors from Albania came and gave lectures at the University of Prishtina, although under the Hoxha regime. Now, there are no political barriers stopping us from collaboration. Why is there no collaboration between Kosovo Albanians and Albania?

AK: “Now that the border is open, this is up to individual initiative and not the state initiative. This is not right. There needs to be institutional initiatives. When borders were closed, it was considered that the government had to organise such things. When something is unattainable, it’s more desirable. I think this is also a result of neoliberalism. I am completely against neoliberalism and I don’t think this is for the good of national unification. It’s more important to be individual and not Albanian, according to them. This is problematic that neoliberalism reigns in both KS and Albanian and prioritises the individual and not the Albanian nation”.

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B.R: Ismail Kadare, great supporter of Kosovo during all periods, has said that national unity is only a romantic idea and not practical. Considering that Kadare is aware of the obstacles in this path, it is a conviction that the ordinary citizen has many obstacles, yet no one has identified all the obstacles in the way of a union.

A.K: “Gallup International states that Albanians are in favour of unification. They are generally for unification. When I was in Albania I asked the bus driver if he is for unification, he was hesitant at first but admitted that he is. Our political circles present this idea as a romantic notion. If that is the case, we all believe in romance, so why not believe in a collective romanticism? It is possible. We live in a post-modern cynical society where being romantic is considered naivety. I would choose romanticism before cynicism any day”.

BR: Is there evidence that the Kosovo Albanians have lost their Albanian identity, as a result of the imposition of identity Kosovo since Kosovo's independence?

A.K: “There has been an attempt by the government with the Kosovar state symbols, like the flag and symbols, and now there are some politicians who say that the Kosovar language should be unique from the Albanian language because there was wrongdoing at the congress of Ulcin In 1972. However I don’t think that they represent even a minority, and any attempt to impose a Kosovar identity and eradicate the Albanian identity on the Albanians in Kosovo will only bring about an increase in nationalism and I

146 don’t think they are successful. The objective is Kosovo to be a multi-ethnic,

Albanian/Serbian country, with which ‘Kosovarisation’ is to diminish the Albanian identity and makes it more acceptable for Kosovo to be, the aim is to make Kosovo acceptable to both and to decrease the Albanian identity of Kosovo. All these elements, the symbols etc.: there was no referendum for them. They were proposed by politicians.

The people would not have voted for this. This project of Kosovarisation has aimed to decrease the Albanian identity of Albanians in Kosovo; however I don’t think this has been successful. I also want to add that it’s important all the elements, symbols, flag, these Kosovar expressions, didn’t go to a referendum, therefore they did not have the people’s backing. They were as a result of some politicians who were prepared to accept them but there was no referendum and if there was, Ahtisaari’s plan of a flag wouldn’t be accepted. So in a way these were imposed on us from above and they were never initiated by the people. The fact that we got a new flag didn’t unite Mitrovica. We made all these concessions, but these didn’t translate to economy development. We’ve always been told to back away from national aspirations because you’ll be better off, but in the end, those who do that take away national aspirations and there wasn’t economic development, besides businessmen politicians”.

BR: The issue of the Kosovar identity is mixed. On the one hand, the government has worked on the identity of the state, with the aim of encompassing all ethnicities of

Kosovo, as well as the smaller communities of Kosovo. Is it better that the Albanians of

Kosovo isolate the Serbians as a minority in Kosovo, being winded, even temporarily,

147 within the Kosovar identity, or should the issue remain open Albanian identities Kosovo against all other communities? Why not base the Switzerland model on Kosovo?

A.K: “Kosovo should have the right to a referendum so that the people can choose whether or not they would like to join Albania. If they vote against it, then we’ll accept to live in Kosovo, as we do now. If the people don’t want it, there is nothing we can do but accept their choice. But I believe people are pro unification, in the case where we would not have these problems. Every nation has a dominating ethnicity. Even in

Kosovo, when it has the characteristics of a nation, rather than what it is now under the

Ahtisaari plan, and when it unites Albania, there will be minorities, like Greeks and

Serbs. There is no reason why it will be different for Kosovo. Every country has a majority and minorities. There is the nation on one side, and on the other side national groups”.

BR: Lately, there have been some developments in both Kosovo and Albania that not only don’t lead to a union, but have also exacerbated relations between the two countries. Every time Kosovo has a large surplus of export products, for example potatoes or grapes, Albania increases their reference prices, which in turn increases the price of the Kosovo products. On the other hand, Kosovo last year introduced reference prices on cement coming from Albania. Why not take political action on these concrete issues, such as the citizenship and passport issues, for example. (Sali Berisha).

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AK: “These are issues that further evidence that we need to have an economic strategy national to be complement of each other and not competition. Geography and nature in a way helps us in this aspect. Albania has the sea and water and forests, we have fields, mineral resources. We can be complementary. There are few places in the world where mandarins and quinces are grown within 150 km. In Albania there are mandarins at the sea side and you take the high way and reach Peja and have quinces. We can be complementary to each other if we had a political economic strategy and don’t compete with each other”.

BR: Economists fear that in general, the Balkan economy will remain in the metropolitan areas of a country. Kosovo Albanians have invested roughly 30 million euros in Albania, but there has been very little investment by Albania in Kosovo. Will Kosovo become a province if national unity occurs, as is the case with other cities of Kosovo, compared to the capital Prishtina?

A.K: “It all depends on what the governments do. Prishtina could be left behind or

Shkodra could be left behind? Pogradec even? I don’t think we can foresee who will be left aside. The governments should have a program for the distribution of development because even in Kosovo we have left Mitrovica behind and Dardana as well as border regions. In Scandinavia people are paid to live in the North. There should be government projects”.

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BR: How do you plan to join the north of Kosovo with Albania? Does Albania have the economic, political and military power to solve the problems with northern Mitrovica at this stage? I have the impression that the international community is aware of this problem which they have entrusted the European Union with. The EU has the economic power to put pressure on Serbia to be reasonable in relation to Kosovo. How will a union with Albania overshadow this pressure?

AK: “Albania should help us with uniting Mitrovica. I don’t think unifucation will lead us to lose northern Mitrovica. We would lose the Lake of Imam if we lose northern

Mitrovica as all our electricity depends on that water. So it is a strategic interest as they are incompensatable resources”.

BR: Let’s assume that Vetëvendosje wins the next elections, and has the power in parliament resolutions, what steps would you take to unite Kosovo with Albania? How do you think Kosovo can join Albania without having international support?

AK: “We don’t think that the international community is in front of us but they are above us. If we don’t move, they won’t move. The international community said that

Yugoslavia won’t break up: it broke up. We were told Kosovo couldn’t achieve autonomy and that Serb forces won’t leave; that there wouldn’t be independence. The local factor begins something and if there is sincerity and seriousness, then the

150 internationals will follow. But they can’t begin something. In the beginning international friends are against everything but if they see that we are determined, they’ll help. They want stability. In the beginning they called KLA terrorists then a few months later they became allies. I don‘t think that the international community is hesitant, I think we’re a little hesitant. Let’s not forget that the international community are not united. They have different interests. There is France, Germany, the UK, US…they’re divided in their visions for KS. You have to see who your ally in this job is”.

BR: How do you see the future of Kosovo, if it does not join Albania?

AK: “I see it as a weak state which risks being a failed state. There is no economic development, high unemployment and no territorial integrity. It is essential that we become stronger otherwise we will fail, because nations are always there, but states come and go, you can even lose your state. I believe that in Kosovo, democracy, which is also missing, is over-rated, it’s over-rated. We don’t have economic development or even have our own army which guarantees our sovereignty and protects our borders, protects our territorial integrity, we don’t have economic development based on production which would employ our youth, all the time we are told of democracy, but we don’t even have that. For me, democracy is the roof of a house, and the economy and army are the foundations. I’ve been counter argued in parliament once by a deputy who said that in the US economy and army are not so important in the US but democracy…I’m not against democracy, but without the economy and the army, we can’t be our own nation”.

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BR: If there is a union between Kosovo and Albania, will there be division between the politicians of the two countries? Division between northern Democratic Sali Berisha and

Socialist South, Nano, Rama, Majko. There was an evident reluctance from the South during the process of integration with Kosovo, as a union between Kosovo and Albania would strengthen northern Albania. But now it seems that even the north of Albania has hesitations in joining Kosovo because of the potential loss of the power that they have, as is the case for the Red and Black Alliance. What kind of repositioning of political powers can unification create?

AK: “Since we are not united, we argue. I believe that once you are divided, as Kosovo and Albania is, then you begin the divisions where you are: like the divisions in Kosovo between Llap, Drenice, Dukagjin. These divisions that exist are sub-cultural and personal they are not political or ideological. If we unite, these divisions are not so defined. We are currently on Feudalism, business, bajraktaris, and divisions. Not to nation, production and production. These divisions will become smaller when we unite.

In the head of VV, there are 15 people and two of them are from Albania. The general council has139 people, 12 are from Albania, 11 from the South of Albania. Tepelene,

Gjirokaster, Berat. We don’t have just Shkoder, Kukes here. No Albanian in Albania has ever said to me that they are either Gegë or Toskë. This is a division that is emphasised by Western authors. We don’t see ourselves this way, but they do”.

BR: Mr. Albin Kurti, I thank you very much for this interview.

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