The Case for Re-Joining Kosovo to Albania

By Prof. C. Max Kortepeter

The Albanians, known to both the Greeks and the Romans of antiquity as Illyrians, are among the oldest inhabitants of the Balkans.

The Illyrians predated by a millennium the Slavic peoples, who only began entering the Balkans in the 6th century A.D.

Both Albanians and Bosnians fought on the same side as the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, which they lost to the Turks. Subsequently, however, these peoples were so badly treated by the Serbs that many became converts to Islam.

When the Albanians became a part of the Ottoman Empire in the 1460s after the death of their leader, Skanderbeg, they contributed formidable military and administrative skills to that Empire down to its dissolution in 1918. In the history of the Ottoman Empire, as many as 30 Grand Vezirs, similar to prime ministers, were Albanian.

In November 1912, Ottoman Turkey ratified the formation of the State of Albania, carved from its northwestern Albanian provinces of Scutari, Janina, Monastir and Kosovo. However, in the first Balkan war, 1912-13, when a coalition of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece fought the Turks, Serbia occupied the province of Kosovo.

During World War I, Kosovo was occupied by Austrians and Bulgarians, but after the new Yugoslav state was proclaimed on Dec. 1, 1918, the Versailles peacemakers left Kosovo within the confines of Serbia in spite of President Woodrow Wilson’s peace plan of “self-determination” for ethnic groups. Immediately Serbia attempted to alter the ethnic composition of Kosovo by outlawing the Albanian language, closing Albanian schools, confiscating Albanian farms and sponsoring Serb colonization. Albanian Catholic and Muslim families were often forced to accept Serbian Orthodoxy.

Only the occupation by Italy and Germany in World War II (1939-45) saved the Kosovo Albanians from having all their lands confiscated and being forcibly deported to Turkey under an agreement worked out in 1938 between Yugoslavia and the Ataturk government. Meanwhile, in neighboring Axis-occupied Albania, the Communist partisans, under Enver Hoxha, received aid from Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, and the British dropped the bulk of their arms and food supplies to the Communists. This aid ensured that, after the war, Hoxha and the Communist Party would take control of Albania until 1991.

Under the Communist regime of Marshal Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, 1945-1980, the Albanians of Kosovo received some measure of autonomy within Serbia. At least Tito halted the colonization program and the suppression of the Albanian language. But in many respects the Tito measures proved inadequate because the Serbs and Montenegrins dominated the Communist Party and State Security organs, which forced the Kosovar Albanians to remain subject to Serb control.

The Serbian objective is to absorb Kosovo as a Slav province.

Tito’s death and the collapse of the Yugoslav economy in the 1980s gave the chance for Slobodan Milosevic, a former Communist functionary who converted himself into an extreme Serbian nationalist, to gain power. Milosevic ended Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989 and manipulated Serbian nationalism against Kosovo Albanians. He later used the same tactics to incite Serbs within Yugoslavia against non-Serbian Slavs such as the Bosnians, the Croatians, the Slovenians and the Macedonians.

We are familiar with the Serbian rapine, murder and dispossession perpetrated in Bosnia-Herzegovina to rid the land of the Muslim Bosnians and the Catholic Croatians. We have yet to hear any Serbs expressing regret for “ethnic cleansing.”

Most recently we have seen the same activities by the Serbian “police” and army in Kosovo. The objective in Kosovo is similar: to change the demography so that a province whose population is 90 percent Albanian can be “cleansed” of Albanians. That would enable the Serbs to absorb Kosovo as a Slav province, providing new lands and spoils for Milosevic’s followers and “Greater Serbia.”

The guerrilla movement of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) grew out of the loss of autonomy and ever-increasing Serbian police and army actions against unarmed civilians. The NATO air strikes only began in late March 1999, a year after the Serbs started using the same tactics against Kosovars that they had against Bosnians, rendering a population homeless, dispersed or murdered.

Worthy of Rule at All?

The NATO allies need not quibble about whether or not they should take Kosovo away from Serbia. Rather, they might ask themselves: Are President Milosevic and his army commanders worthy of ruling over any people, including the Serbs?

The answer lies in the Serb atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo. The facts would indicate that Kosovo, or most of it, should be re-joined to Albania as it always was before the Serb occupation in 1913. The NATO countries will not accomplish this end unless ground troops are introduced into the current conflict. Only in this manner will the more than one-half million Kosovar Albanians be able to return to their homes and not become a permanent, displaced and embattled refugee population like the 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes in 1948, whose numbers now exceed four million.

Meanwhile, one must ask, why does NATO refuse to provide arms and supplies to the KLA? The Albanians are able and willing to fight for their own freedom. Only in this manner will the more than one million Kosovar Albanians be able to return to their damaged homes and rebuild their towns, preferably under the sovereignty of Albania. Meanwhile one must ask why does NATO refuse to drop arms and food to the KLA (drug-running is no excuse, cf., the CIA), to sink vessels delivering oil and gasoline to Montenegro, and to permit Serbian troops to lay mines in the paths of the refugees? The Albanians are renowned for their fighting ability and are quite capable, if properly trained and equipped, to secure their own freedom.

Prof. C. Max Kortepeter retired after 29 years as a professor of Middle East History at New York University.