There are catholic Albanians - like Mother Theresa - and Muslim
Albanians - Like Hashim Thaci. There are Tosks - southern Albanians who
speak a (nasal) dialect of Albanian and there are Gegs - northern
Albanians (and Kosovars) who speak another dialect, which has little in
common with Tosk (at least to my ears). Tosks don't like Gegs and Gegs
detest Tosks. In a region where tribal and village loyalties
predominate these are pertinent and important facts.
The Kosovars are considered by their Albanian "brethren" (especially by
the Tosks, but also by Albanian Gegs) to be cold, unpleasant, filthy
rich cheats. Albanians - Tosks and Gegs alike - are considered by the
Kosovars to be primitive, ill-mannered bandits. There is no love lost
between all these groups. When the crisis brought on by Operation
Allied Force started, the local Albanian population charged the
refugees amidst them with exorbitant (not to say extortionate) prices
for such necessities as a roof over their head, food and cigarettes.
When the UN mandate (read: the KLA mandate) was established, the
Albanians rushed to export their brand of crime and banditry to Kosovo
and to prey on its local population. No Macedonian - however radical -
will dare say about the Albanians what my Kosovar contacts say. They
nonchalantly and matter of factly attribute to them the most heinous
crimes and uncivilized behaviour. Kosovars had - and are still having -
an excruciating experience in Albania during this crisis. The lesson
(being learned by Kosovars since Albania opened up to them in 1990)
will not be easily forgotten or forgiven. Albanians reciprocate by
portraying the Kosovars as cynical, inhuman, money making terminators,
emotionless wealthy predators.
This is not to say that Albanians on both sides of the border do not
share the same national dreams and aspirations. Kosovar intellectuals
were watching Albanian TV and reading Albanian papers even throughout
the Stalinist period of Enver Hoxha, the long time Albanian dictator.
Albanian nationalists never ceased regarding Kosovo as an integral part
of an Albanian motherland. But as the decades passed by, as the
dialects metamorphesized, as the divide grew wider, as the political
systems diverged and as the political and cultural agendas became more
distinct - Kosovars became more and more Kosovars and less and less
mainland Albanians.
This historical, 80 year-old rift was exacerbated by the abyss between
the Enver Hoxha regime and its Tito counterpart. The former -
impoverished, paranoiac, xenophobic, hermetically isolated, violent.
The latter - relatively enlightened, economically sprightly, open to
the world and dynamic. As a result, Kosovar houses are three times as
big as Albanian ones and Kosovars used to be (up to the Kosovo
conflict) three times richer (in terms of GDP per capita). Kosovars
crossing into Albania during the Hoxha regime were often jailed and
tortured by its fearsome secret police. A Kosovar - Xhaferr Deva -
served as Minister of the Interior in the hated WW2 government in
Albania, which collaborated wholeheartedly with the Nazis. Albanians,
in general, were much more reserved and suspicious towards the Germans
(who occupied Albania from 1943, after the Italian change of heart).
Only Kosovars welcomed them as liberators from Serb serfdom (as did
Albanians in Macedonia to a lesser extent). This aforementioned Deva
was responsible for the most unspeakable atrocities against the
Albanian population in Albania proper. It did not render the Kosovars
more popular. In Albania proper, three anti-fascist resistance
movements - the Albanian Communist Party, Balli Kombetar (the National
Front) and Legaliteti (Legality, a pro-Zug faction) fought against the
occupiers since 1941. The Communists seized control of the country at
the end of 1944.
Thus, the forced re-union was a culture shock to both. The Kosovars
were stunned by the living conditions, misery and lawlessness of
Albania proper. The Albanians were envious and resentful of their
guests and regarded them as legitimate objects for self-enrichment.
There were, needless to say, selfless exceptions to the egotistic rule.
But I cannot think of any right now.
Historically, there was never a "Great Albania" to hark back to.
Albania was created in 1912 (its borders finally settled in 1913) in
response to Austro-Hungarian demands. It never encouraged Kosovo to
secede. The Albanian King Zog suppressed the activities of Kosovar
irredentist movements in his country in between the two world wars.
Albania, mired in the twin crises of economy and identity - had little
mind or heart for Kosovo.
But this was the culmination of a much longer, convoluted and
fascinating history.
From Illyrium to Skanderberg
There is very little dispute among serious (that is, non-Greek,
non-Macedonian and non-Serb) scholars that the Albanians are an ancient
people, the descendants of the Illyrians or (as a small minority
insists) the Thracians. The Albanian language is a rather newer
development (less than 1500 years-old) - but it is also traced back
either to Thracian or to Illyrian. In a region obsessed with history,
real and (especially) invented, these 4000 year-old facts are of
enormous and practical import.
Ironically, the Illyrians were an ethnic mishmash that inhabited all of
the former Yugoslavia and parts of Greece (Epirus). There were also
major differences between the Illyrians of the highlands (the current
Albania) - isolated and backward - and those of the lowland, the
worldly and civilized. But these distinctions pale in comparison to the
praise heaped on the Illyrians by their contemporaries. They were
considered to be brave warriors and generous hosts. They mined their
rich land for iron, copper, gold and silver and, despite being pagan,
they buried their dead because they believed in the afterlife and its
rewards or punishments. In their liburnae - slim lined, very fast
galleys - they sailed and developed marine trade. The Romans adopted
the design of their vessels and even kept the name Liburnian.
Durres and Vlore were really established by the Greeks 2500 years ago.
The former was called Epidamnus, the latter (actually, a settlement a
few kilometres away) Apollonia. It was part of a Greek colonization
drive that effected lands as far away as Asia Minor in today's Turkey.
As was the usual case, the Greeks traded their superior civilization
and culture for the superior administrative and economic skills of the
natives. It was no coincidence that Illyrian political organization was
concurrent with the Greek presence. It started as defence alliances and
ended as kingdoms (the Enkalayes, the Taulantes, the Epirotes, the
Ardianes). And the enemy - even then - were the Macedonians under
Philip the Second and his son Alexander the Great.
But the Macedonian empire was short lived and was superseded by the far
superior and self-conscious Romans. In 229, the Illyrians (commanded by
a woman, Queen Teuta) were almost wiped out by Roman armies advancing
to the Adriatic. It was the beginning of the damaging involvement of
the superpowers in the area. Exactly 60 years later, Illyrium was no
more. Rome prevailed and ruled the land now known as Illyricum.
Those were a good 600 years. Rome - as opposed to Ottoman Empire - was
a benign, enlightened, laissez faire type of loose assemblage of
taxpayers and tax collectors. Art and culture and philosophy and even
the Illyrian tongue and Illyrian civilization flourished. It was a
rich, materially endowed period in which citizens found sufficient
leisure to indulge in all manner of Eastern cults, such as Christianity
or the cult of Mithra (the Persian god of light). Christianity competed
head on with the Illyrian pagan divinities and by 58 AD it was so
strong that it was able to establish its own bishopric in Dyrrhachium
(formerly Apollonia). This was followed by a few Episcopal seats. It
was also followed by intolerance, bigotry, hypocrisy and persecution,
as all institutional religions go. The Roman and Greek heritage of live
and let live, of art, of the aesthetics of the human body, of nature -
in short: Hellenism - was strangled by the ever more obscure and
dogmatic brand of Christianity that pervaded Byzantium until the
Iconoclastic Controversy of 732. The emperor Leo III actually did the
Albanian Church a great favour by detaching it from under the authority
of the Roman Pope and placing it under the more humane patriarch of
Constantinople. Still, the dividing line between north and south in
Albania was as much religious as economic. The south maintained its
allegiance to Constantinople while the north looked south, to Rome for
spiritual guidance. When the church split in 1054 (to East and West) -
these affiliations remained intact.
It is very little known but the Illyrians actually ruled the Roman
Empire in its last decades. There were a few Illyrian emperors (Gaius
Decius, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, even
Constantine the Great). And most of the officers of the by now fabled
though dilapidated Roman army were Illyrians. In 395, in the
cataclysmic split of the dying empire to East (later, Byzantium) and
West, Albania became finally and firmly a part of the East. The
Illyrians continued to exercise great influence of the amputated East,
some of them becoming influential and historically significant emperors
(Anastasius I, Justin I, Justinian I). As a result, Illyria was the
favourite target of all manner of barbarian tribes: the Visigoths, the
Huns, the Ostrogoths. When the Slavs appeared on the heels of these
invasions, the Illyrians regarded them as just another barbarian tribe.
The interaction between the Illyrians and the Slavs was a love-hate
relationship and has remained so ever since. Some Illyrian groups
assimilated, intermarried and assumed the culture of the invaders. In
300 years, between the 6th and the 8th centuries AD, all the Illyrians
in today's former Yugoslav republics vanished only to re-appear as
Slavs. But the Illyrians of the south (Albania, Western Macedonia)
resisted this process of dilution bitterly and preserved their identity
and culture fiercely. To distinguish themselves from the "assimilated"
- they invented Albania. The name itself is much older. Ptolemy of
Alexandria mentioned it 600 years before the Illyrians began to apply
it to their dwindling polity. And another 300 years were needed - well
into the 11th century AD - before the Illyrians were fully accepted
their reinvention as Albanians - the successors to the Albanoi tribe,
which used to occupy today's central Albania (formerly called Arberi).
Five centuries later, the Albanians themselves renamed their territory
and began to call it Shqiperia. No one really knows why, not even
Albanian scholars, though they like to attribute it (on flimsy
etymological grounds) to Shqipe, the Albanian word for Eagle. Thus,
Albania was transformed to the Land of the Eagle.
It is an irony of history that the Middle (or Dark) Ages were the best
period ever in Albania's history. Powerful cities proliferated,
inhabited by a class of burghers who engaged in trading. Albanian
merchant houses established outposts and branches all over the
Mediterranean, from Venice to Thessalonica. Albanians were the epitome
of education and cultivated the arts. They conversed only in Greek and
Latin, letting the auld language die. The Byzantine Empire was divided
to military provinces (themes). One thing led to another and military
commanders transformed feudal lords administered serfdom to the
population. Feudalism co-existed and then supplanted urbanism and the
big estates became so autonomous that they ignored the Byzantine court
altogether.
But Albania was never peaceful. It was conquered by Bulgarians,
Normans, Italians, Venetians and Serbs in 1347. Many Albanians
immigrated when the Serbs took over, led by Stefan Dusan. They went to
Greece and the Aegean Islands. It was not until 1388 that Albania was
invaded by the Turks. By 1430 it was Turkish. By 1443 it was Albanian.
To this incredible turn of events, the Albanian had Skanderberg to
thank. A military genius (real name Gjergj Kastrioti), he drove the
rising superpower of the Balkans out in a series of humiliating defeats
administered by a coalition of Albanian princes. From his mountainous
hideout in Kruje, he frustrated the Turkish efforts to regain Albania
(they were planning to use it as staging ground for the invasion of
Italy and, thereafter, Western Europe). The Italians (even the Pope,
then the long arm of various shady Italian principates) supported
Skanderberg monetarily and militarily - but he did by far the lion's
share of the work.
But it was a personality-dependent achievement. Like all great leaders,
Skanderberg's fault is that he refused to admit his own mortality and
to nurture the right successor. Following his death, the Turks
recaptured Albania in 1506. But Skanderberg's heroic fight had two
important consequences. One outcome was a considerable weakening of the
Turkish drive towards the heart of Europe and its West. They will never
regain the momentum again and the war was lost. The second momentous
consequence was that his struggle moulded an Albanian NATION where
there was none before.
From the Ottomans to the Americans
The Ottoman occupation was an unmitigated misfortune. Albania -
culturally, a veritable part of Italy in the past - was cut off from it
and from the Renaissance it spawned. The Turks brought with them their
venal type of devastation, not only economic, not only physical, not
only in human lives - but also cultural. A gangrenous paralysis ensued.
The lucky quarter of the population escaped to Italy. The others were
left to fight it out through civil disobedience (refusal to pay taxes,
to serve in the army, to surrender their weapons) and in open
rebellion, time and again, indefatigably and resourcefully, often in
the name of the Christian faith. To put an end to the nuisance, the
Turks islamised the lot (at any rate, two thirds of the lot) during the
16th and 17th centuries. To ensure conversion, the Turks tortured,
killed, raped and taxed the Christians. It worked and people crossed to
the other side in droves. Now there were Catholic Albanians and Muslim
Albanians. It was a replay of the old, 11th century, religious
fragmentation. Albanian political leaders in the 19th century - aware
of the potential of these fractures to denationalise - insisted on
"Albanianism" - a substitute, unifying political "religion". The
rallying cry was: "The religion of Albanians is Albanianism."
Nothing much changed in Albania since the time of feudalism. The Turks
awarded local warlords with land estates to administer (timars). These
warlords - the centres of real power both political and military -
subverted the authority and dominion of the empire. The more the latter
tried to appease them with endowments - the more potent and ambitious
they became. The Bushati family, the eccentric Ali Pasa Tepelene (who
also ruled Northern Greece) and others. In convulsive feats of
reassertion of authority, some sultans deposed of these pashas - but
this did not anything to diminish the autonomy of their estates. In
1831, Turkey abolished the timar system altogether. This bold reform
backfired as the old estates fragmented even further and power devolved
to even lower levels of communal organizations run by beys (in the
north) and bajraktars (everywhere) - bloodthirsty, rigidly patriarchal
and primitive mini rulers. Paradoxically, Albanians who emigrated
(mainly to Turkey itself) rose to prominence. Turkey had 27 (!) grand
viziers (=prime ministers) of Albanian extract.
It was in Kosovo that discontent, unrest and revolt coagulated into the
League of Prizren in 1878. Originally, a narrow local interest northern
group, it fast adopted an expansive agenda, seeking to unify the four
parts of Albania in the four vilayets (Kosovo, Shkoder, Monastir,
Janina) into one political unit. But it wrong to attribute to it the
birth of the delirium of a Great Albania. The League sought an
administrative solution - not a political one. All they wanted was to
create an Albanian zone - but WITHIN the Ottoman Empire. They were more
focussed on benign, less threatening things like culture, art,
literature and education. In short, it was a cultural movement with
administrative aspirations - not the beast of untethered expansionism
it was made out to be by latter day (and rather interested) historians.
It was in Monastir (today's Bitola in Macedonia) that a national,
Latin, alphabet was adopted in 1908. More convenient than Greek or
Arabic - used until then - it triumphed.
History moves in quirkily agonizing twists and turns. It was the
League's involvement with the Albanian language and the strong
opposition by the Turks to its use (the League's activities in this
respect were banned in 1881) that transformed the League from a rather
local affair to a modern national movement along the Italian or German
lines. The Albanian language was indeed suffused by nationalism,
immersed in dreams and aspirations unfulfilled. Its reawakening
signalled the reawakening of Albanianism. When the last great hope,
sealed by Young Turk (broken) promises of autonomy and democracy, was
lost - the Albanians rebelled and forced the Sick Man of Europe to
swallow yet another dose of medicine. In 1912 Turkey granted the
Albanians their wishes only to face the Greek, Serb and Montenegrin
armies, which conquered Albania and divided it among them.
This trauma of division is a recurring trauma in the Albanian psyche.
How ironic that the only people who can empathize with them are the
Macedonians who share the same fear of being quartered. Faced with the
annihilation of Albania so soon after its birth, Albanian leaders met
in Vlore, led by Ismail Kemal, a former high-ranking Ottoman official
of Albanian origin. With nothing much to lose, they decelerated
independence (the Vlore Proclamation) on November 28, 1912.
In December 1912, the Great Powers (the forerunners of NATO) - Britain,
Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary, Italy and France - met in London to
divide the unexpected spoils. The conference handed an independent
Albanian state to Austro-Hungary and Italy. But the price was a great
diminishment in its geographical scope. Kosovo was given to Serbia,
Cameria to Greece, the most luscious and productive lands and more than
half of all Albanians were left out of the new independent homeland.
Such was the nature of territorial comprises at that time that it
created more problems than it solved. Two news ones were born that day
and hour: a Yugoslav-Albanian flaring animosity and a Greek-Albanian
mutual denial. The unfortunate and tragicomic German who was appointed
to administer Albania (Wilhelm zu Wied) departed soon thereafter with
the outbreak of the First World War.
This first European bloodbath provoked all of Albania's neighbours into
an uncontrolled binge of invasions. Austro-Hungary, France, Italy,
Greece, Montenegro, Serbia - they all marched in with no plan in mind
but to occupy and plunder. The country turned chaotic and it took a
Woodrow Wilson in the Paris Peace Conference to avert an abolition of
the Albanian independent state. It was not the first time Albania
descended into chaos - nor was this to be the last time the Americans
would come to the help of the Albanians. Britain, France and Italy
planned to partition it, Wilson vetoed it and that was the end of the
plan and the beginning of Albania.
In Lushnje, in 1920, the Albanians convened a national congress and
established a government. That year, Albania was admitted to the League
of Nation, sponsored by the very Britain that sought its partition only
the year before. Secure in its sovereignty and international
recognition, Albania inverted its attention. Society was polarized
between land-owning fat cats, the beys and militant archconservative
bajraktars led by Ahmed Bey Zogu from Mat in the north. These
reactionaries were opposed by an uncomfortable coalition of merchants,
intellectuals, progressive politicians and assorted democrats led by an
improbable American-educated bishop of the Orthodox(!) church, one Fan
S. Noli, middle initial and all. The conflict ended 4 years later when,
in 1924 Zogu fled to Yugoslavia. But the entrenched power of the land
gentry was not to be discounted so easily. Noli, now a prime minister,
ruled over the Albanian equivalent of the Republic of Weimar. Radical
land reform, modernization, westernisation. But he was personally
unstable, he won no international recognition (he was considered a
revolutionary leftist) and he had no money to buy his way with. Zogu
came back, this time with a Yugoslav-backed army. He won.
From King Zog to a Brave, New World
Zog commenced his 14 years long reign first as president and then as
king (Zog the first, needless to add). He ruled over a time bomb. The
forces he suppressed with his foreign backed army were rather alive and
well, though in an underground sort of way. In dire need of funds,
after the self-inflicted destruction of his country, Zog resorted to
mortgaging it to foreign powers such as Italy. Italy collected on its
loans in 1939, when it invaded Albania on the way to its Balkan
treasure hunt. King Zog rule of beys and bajraktars aided by a ruthless
police, a Byzantine bureaucracy (a major employer) and Italian money
did stabilize the country, including to the bandit and brigand-ridden
highlands. Many schools were established during his reign. He even
turned a blind eye to western fashions. But this stability was brittle
and fake. Underneath the ornamental surface, the populace was seething.
Peasants aggrieved by the absence of land reform. Democrats opposed to
a dictatorship, however benign. Liberals opposed to the police state.
Nationalists opposed to the undue influence of foreign powers. Albania
imported grain to feed its impoverished population - and exported
people in search of a better life. Periodic revolts interspersed with
labour unrest led directly to the formation of the communist party, the
standard bearer of the educated classes.
In October 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania only to be folded
back to whence they came. Nazi Germany had to complete the job as it
swept through Yugoslavia and Greece. In 1941, Albania was rewarded for
its collaboration with the annexation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and
Cameria from Greece. Having been nearly eliminated by the Allies
(Britain and France) at least twice - and having been rewarded by the
Axis (Austro-Hungary, Germany and Italy) numerous times throughout
their history, the Albanian's loyalty was not in doubt. Though never
the great ideologues - they were althesame instrumental in facilitating
the wartime hegemony of Germany and Italy over the Balkans. The
resistance movement was not uniform, nor was it very effective (though
Albanians like to portray it differently). Finally, in 1944, the
communists took over and their secretary general, Enver Hoxha, became
the leader of a new People's Republic of Albania, later adding the word
"Socialist" to its name (1976).