Hoxha days. Burdened by the malaise it contracted from the Ottoman
Empire, it was plagued by poverty, banditry, illiteracy, blood feuds,
disease and the slavery of women and of peasants. At first, the
communist tried to tackle all these ills simultaneously. They drafted a
grand plan of modernization. They vowed to liberate Albania
economically and socially, now that it has been liberated politically
(their reference point was, strangely enough, the bourgeoisie war of
1912). Peasants were handed tiny plots of land taken from the broken
estates of the former beys in an ambitious agrarian reform. Industry,
banks and all foreign property were nationalized. Agriculture was
collectivised in the best Stalinist traditions, though far less swiftly
(it was completed only in 1967). Hoxha subjugated the wild highlands
and strove to eliminate blood feuds and other feudal habits, taking on
the hitherto invincible bajraktars in the process. Women were granted
legal equality with men and were encouraged to participate actively in
their society.
Albania was promiscuous in its foreign affairs, changing partners often
and seemingly whimsically. It paired with Yugoslavia under Tito until
1948, then with the Soviet Union during the days of Stalin and
Khrushchev (until 1961) and then with Maoist China (until 1978). It
expected to receive monetary and military aid - and it did. It received
enormous infusions of credits relative to its economy and it was
virtually invaded by regiments of technical experts who provided
assistance with the various aspects of running a modern state.
Gradually, agriculture was mechanized, industry was modernized and
standards of living increased. It was a golden age and many were happy.
But Hoxha was unhappy. He accused each ally of Albania in its turn of
betraying unadulterated Marxism-Leninism in favour of the wiles of the
capitalistic West. His allies were as disenchanted with his growing
paranoia and geopolitical sado-masochism. Isolated, paranoiac,
obsessive and phobic - Hoxha promulgated an ideology of
self-sufficiency, go-it-alone and the world-is-against-us. Thus, while
Albania made impressive leaps of technology in draining swamps, while
it unified its dialects into a uniform literary language, while it
industrialized and mechanized and reformed and transformed - and it has
- it did so in splendid isolation, often re-inventing the wheel. And it
had a nightmare called Sigurimi.
The Sigurimi was the shadowy, quasi-criminal state security apparatus.
It was a snake raised in the warm bosom of the party. It was
omnipotent. Real or imaginary rivals of the party (really of Hoxha)
were publicly humiliated, dismissed from job, imprisoned in a system of
hideous Gulags, or summarily executed. These bulimic purges were
coupled with growing schizoid tendencies. Travel abroad was prohibited
except on official business, religion (a backward, unprogressive,
disuniting force) was banned.
When Hoxha died in 1985, he was succeeded by a crony, Ramiz Alia, an
Albanian Gorbachev who introduced local versions of Perestroika and
Glasnost even before the Soviet leader did. He legalized foreign
investments and established diplomatic relations with the hitherto
reviled West. But, despite his courage and relative openness, he shared
the fate of other reformers, falling victim to the very forces he
unleashed. In 1989, the workers, the intellectuals and the Albanian
youth were all against the regime. In a spasmodic act of
self-preservation, Alia granted Albanian citizens the right to travel
abroad, limited the reach and powers of the Sigurimi, restored
religious freedom, freedom of political association and adopted free
market reforms. Nothing much was left of Hoxha's heritage. Several
governments later, the Democratic Party, an anti-communist hodgepodge
alliance of interests won the elections (1992). Berisha succeeded Alia.
The communist rule was no more.
It was the beginning of a new Albania. Facing west, it hoped, as it
always has, to modernize, to reform, to belong.
But it was not meant to be.
(Article published October 18-29 - November 1-8
in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issues 17-20)
Return
The Bad Blood of Kosovo
The old Montenegrins, tall as their mountains, their rocky faces
ravaged by an unforgiving weather define "osveta" thus:
"Osveta, that means... a kind of spiritual fulfilment. You have killed
my son, so I killed yours; I have taken revenge for that, so I now sit
peacefully in my chair."
Milovan Djilas, who helped Tito become Tito and then was imprisoned for
trying to be Djilas, wrote in his book "Land Without Justice"
(Harcourt, Brace 1958):
"Vengeance - this a breath of life one shares from the cradle with
one's fellow clansmen, in both good fortune and bad, vengeance from
eternity. Vengeance was the debt we paid for the love and sacrifice our
forebears and fellow clansmen bore for us. It was the defence of our
honour and good name, and the guarantee of our maidens. I t was our
pride before others; our blood was not water that anyone could spill.
It was, moreover, our pastures and springs - more beautiful than anyone
else's - our family feasts and births. It was the glow in our eyes, the
flame in our cheeks, the pounding in our temples, the word that turned
to stone in our throats on our hearing that our blood had been shed. It
was the sacred task transmitted in the hour of death to those who had
just been conceived in our blood. It was centuries of manly pride and
heroism, survival, a mother's milk and a sister's vow, bereaved parents
and children in black, joy and songs turned into silence and wailing.
It was all, all."
And this is what Margaret Durham had to say in her celebrated
ethnography of Albania, a long time ago ("Some Tribal Origins of Laws
and Customs of the Balkans" - Allan and Unwin, 1928):
"A certain family had long been notorious for evil-doing - robbing,
shooting, and being a pest to the tribe. A gathering of all the heads
condemned all the males of the family to death. Men were appointed to
lay in wait for them on a certain day and pick them off; and on that
day the whole seventeen of them were shot. One was but five and another
but twelve years old. I protested against thus killing children who
must be innocent and was told: 'It was bad blood and must not be
further propagated.' Such was the belief in heredity that it was
proposed to kill an unfortunate woman who was pregnant, lest she should
bear a male and so renew the evil."
In the second century BC, Kosovo was populated by people with
picturesque names: the Iliyrians, Thracians, the Celts. The whole area
was under Roman rule and was subjected to the industriousness and
meticulousness of Empire. Roads were paved, cities built, populations
moved and commerce flourished. This lasted two hundreds years. Slav
tribes descended from the Carpathian Mountains and ended it in orgies
of blood and fire. Until this very day, serious Greek politicians
invoke this primordial invasion in their effort to convince an
incredulous world that the (current) Macedonians are not the (True)
Macedonians. "They are the off spring of invading Slavs" - they claim,
passionately, as is the habit in the Balkans. It took another two
centuries and a Byzantine brief occupation to force the reluctant Slavs
to settle along the Sava River and to form the poor semblance of a
civilization in the making. Roving "saints" of fervent disposition
taught them a new alphabet. Cyril and Methodius were succeeded by
disciples all over Central and Eastern Europe - from the period of
Kliment Ohridski in today's territories of Macedonia and Bulgaria to
Amos Comenius, the 17th century educator, considered in the Balkans to
be their spiritual descendant in the Czech Lands.
This ability to cast their myths in paper in the vernacular, to hand
the national memory down the generations, the newfound Christian
religion - all coagulated into an emergently distinct culture. Come the
12th century, Kosovo was entirely Slav.
Or, to be more precise: entirely Serb. The Slavs fractured into three
groups. The Croats and Slovenes, baptized by Rome, became ardent Roman
Catholics. The Serbs - introduced to the faith by Byzantium - remained
Eastern Orthodox. This division was to last a thousand years as the
Croats and the Slovenes came under the influence and rule of the
Catholic Habsburgs while the Serbs were subjected to the crumbling
Ottoman chaos. Geography mirrored a tormented topography of
mentalities, religious persuasions and political affiliations. The
Serbs occupied today's Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia Herzegovina. The
Croats and Slovenes occupied the rest of latter day Yugoslavia. The
Tito generated unity of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was but a brief and
false note. It could not have lasted - and, indeed, it hasn't.
The Serbs established a principality in Kosovo - the nucleus of what
later came to be known as the Serbian Golden Age. It was situated in
the rustic but magnificent valley of Ibar and controlled most of the
Sandzak. Gradually, the whole of hitherto empty Kosovo became theirs
and they felt sufficiently at home to form a Serbian Orthodox Church
with its seat in Raska, just north of Kosovo. It took 19 years
(1200-1219) to complete this feat of independence and all this time
Kosovo was fought over by Serbs, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romans and
Byzantines. Hundreds of years of strife, veiled conspiracies, invasions
and rotting corpses in sun drenched battlefields.
To the Serbs it was a Golden Age. Under the Nemanje dynasty, luck
struck thrice in the figures of kings Stephen (1169-89), Milutin
(1281-1321) and Dusan (1331-55). Workers were brought in from
Transylvania to mine the wealth of the land. Ever more prosperous,
Kosovo became the throbbing heart of Serbland. The splendid royal
court, ravishing in gold and red, radiated power north of Kosovo and
unto today's Slovenia, up to the Adriatic Sea, making Pec the new seat
of the Serbian Orthodox church. When Dusan died, history held its
breath, the nation poised precariously on a precipice of internecine
conflict. But the stability was fake. The question of inheritance,
translated into the currency of power plays, tore the land apart. The
Turks were there to pick up the pieces in the masochistically
celebrated battle of Kosovo Polje in June 28th 1389. But not for
another 70 years did they exert real control over this newly gained
territory - so powerful and ferocious were their Serb adversaries even
in their decline. Besieged by Mongols from the east, the Turks, already
the sick man, retreated and left the Serbs to their own
self-destructive devices.
All this time, there are no Albanians in the historiography of this
cursed land. It is, therefore, almost startling to find them there,
sufficiently armed and organized t oppose the... Turks!
Having dealt the Mongols some mortal blows, the Turkish beast shifted
its attention to another bruise in its by now writhing body, to Kosovo.
The Turkish armies conquered Prizren, driving before them the
dilapidated and depleted Serb forces. It was an Albanian king,
Skanderberg, who rebelled against them there. Albanians then were
Catholics (as many of them are to this very day), their war against
their future allies, a holy war. This was in 1459 and only 250 years
later did the Turks embark upon a policy of actively encouraging the
(by now Muslim) Albanians to emigrate to Kosovo - not before the Serbs
were expelled following an unsuccessful rebellion in 1690.
This Turkish propensity was nothing extraordinary. Empires throughout
history settled "loyal" populations where they displaced restive ones.
But in Kosovo a confluence of fault lines led to especially bitter
sediments, which went on to poison the waters of co-existence for
centuries to come. Converted Moslem Albanians versus Christian Serbs;
Albanian collaborators and traitors (as perceived by the Serbs) versus
Serb mythical heroes (again as perceived by the Serbs); a nation of the
ascendance versus a nation dispersed and the last European defence line
against Islam traitorously compromised by fellow Christians and
Christian kingdoms. Serbs fleeing from Kosovo, from Serbia itself, from
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia - moved due north, to refugee
camps set up by the Habsburg empire. Serbs settled in Vojvodina and
Krajina, thus sowing the seeds of 20th century conflicts with Croatia
and Hungary. And all this time they carried with them a baggage of
hatred and revenge, a lethal, bloodied promise to be back and to exact
the price of betrayal from the Albanians. In 1737 they established a
Serbian homeland in Vojvodina. In 1738 they rebelled, again to be
defeated in the scene of their national trauma, in Kosovo Polje.
Another wave of immigrants followed and another wave of Albanians took
over their abandoned property in Metohia. The Turks abolished the seat
of the Serb church in Pec in 1766. It seemed that the Serb nation has
been all but eradicated.
But this was not to be. In one of the more magnificent sleights of hand
that history is so famous for - the Russians forced the beaten Ottoman
Empire to grant the Serbs autonomy. It was nothing like the hallowed
past sovereignty and glory of the Dusan court but it was a step that
rekindled nationalistic sentiments in the most humble and humbled Serb
throughout the land. This flame has since never been extinguished and
it is at the blazing heart of the Milosevic Yugoslav Wars of
Inheritance. That - and the belief that history is cyclical and that
there is always hope.
Kosovo was by now entirely "Alabanized". Pristina was the hub of
transport and the seat of the administration. Names of places, which
resounded both in the 14th century and at the close of the 20th, recur.
In Prizren in 1878 the Albanians established their first national
movement. There they came of age. The infancy of Serbhood and the
adulthood of Albanianism clashed in the same region, the prelude to the
tragedy of 1999.
Under the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, Serbia became de jure an
independent country. Its anguished delegation, eager and paranoid, gave
up Kosovo in dealings behind the gilded scenes. It was a tactical move,
which the Serbs reversed in the First Balkan War (1912) - when they
regained Kosovo - and in the Second Balkan War (1913) when they
regained Macedonia. In these bloody rehearsals of the World Wars, the
Serbs succeeded to redefine the borders - but also to give birth to
Albania. It is an irony of history that Serb bellicosity and
nationalistic dreams gave rise to the modern Albanian state. But then
this IS the nature of the Balkans - a hazy nightmare in which enemies
give birth to one another. An intricate commerce of Christian death and
resurrection, the gifts of death and life exchanged among Gregorian
chants and the prayer cries of Muezzins. In 1926 the Serbs and the
Albanians drew the borderline between their sovereign states. It was a
bad invention, this line of demarcation. It separated close to 600,000
Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia from Albania proper. The disgruntled
populace did not engage in acts of terror or in gestures of
nationalistic indignation. Instead, they emigrated to Albania and to
Turkey - tens of thousands of Albanians, perhaps as many as three
hundred thousand, or half the population. And the Serbs came in their
stead. The wheel has been reversed, or so it seemed.
Nothing in the Balkans is what it seems to be. Every surface is teeming
underneath with hidden meanings, obscure interpretations and exegetic
excesses. They who are up go down, bringing in their wake, through the
sheer force of their own fall - the rise of their adversaries. Delicate
laws of conservation preserve all grudges balanced, all the accounts
settled and all agony equally distributed. It is an entropy of history
itself, slowly decaying into chaotic repetition.
And thus when Italy conquered Kosovo (it, with Ethiopia being the only
thing it ever conquered) - it gave it to Albania. Germany, which
dominated Yugoslavia, consented. For a brief four years, the Albanian
nation was completely united, territorially, at least.
But this did not last long. After the war, Yugoslavia re-acquired
Kosovo and the communist regime embarked on a Turkish-like brutal
suppression of the Albanian population. For twenty-one years, secret
units of the police hunted, executed and mutilated free spirited
Albanians all over Kosovo. In more ways than one, Albanians were the
first true dissidents in the entire communist bloc. How ironic, if one
recalls the Albanian Enver Hoxa, the leader of next-door Albania and
the fiercest of all communist leaders. In 1968 Albanian students joined
their colleagues the world over and demonstrated against Serb
repression. These particular outbursts were easily squashed but in 1974
Kosovo was made an autonomous province of Yugoslavia by constitutional
reforms. School instruction in Albanian was legalized. During all this
period, Serbs - especially battle hardened war veterans - were
economically encouraged to migrate to Kosovo. Albanians were encouraged
to go the other way and many did. About 200,000 Albanians left between
the years 1954-7 alone!!!
By now, these human waves and military trampling left Kosovo
dilapidated to the core, a backwater both economically and culturally.
People left Kosovo in this period because it offered no present work
and no future prospects. One hundred thousand Serbs left between
1961-87. Much later many would claim that they were harassed by the
Albanian majority but this sounds fake, a re-writing of history.
Albanians left as well. Everyone who had a choice chose to leave
impoverished Kosovo.
Then Tito died and nothing was the same. The 1981 riots in Kosovo led
to the imposition of martial law. As students from Pristina University
rampaged in the streets, the government sealed Kosovo off, sent in the
militia to restore order (which it did with vehement cruelty and
bestiality) and closed down educational institutions. Pristina
University was always a hotbed of nationalism - witness its
Maoist-Marxist graduate, the head of the KLA and the self-appointed
Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci. But that particular spring was
exceptional. Public disorder was coupled with grave acts of economic
sabotage. The students demanded an end to discrimination and certain
freedoms but really they demanded jobs commensurate with their
training, jobs, which they believed went to the Serbs.
Five years later, a hitherto obscure communist leader (he was just
elected Serbia's party secretary) visited Kosovo. In a chance encounter
with angry Serb mobs in the streets of Pristina he accused the
Albanians of genocide. "No one should do this to you" - he said, grim
faced, visibly shaken, cunningly calculating.
His name was Milosevic.
(Article published August 16, 1999 in "Central Europe Review"
volume 1, issue 8)
Return
The Plight of the Kosovar
Rumour has it that from now on, citizens of the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia will need a hard-to-obtain visa to enter the
Czech Republic. This already is the case with Bosnians, for instance.
Officials in Macedonia believe that this is intended to stem a flow of
future Kosovar immigrants. If so, the Czech government holds a grim
view of the prospects of peace there and rightly so. Discounting the
Second World War and numerous other skirmishes, the developing war in
Kosovo is the Fourth Balkan War. The Czech Republic already hosts a
great number of "Former Yugoslavs" and of Albanians, for measure.
Ordinary Czechs believe them to be responsible - together with Russians
and Ukrainians - to the uncontrollable and intimidating wave of street
crime. This intuition, it seems, is based less on statistics than on
plain old xenophobia.
The situation is shrouded in myths and misconceptions. The Albanians in
Albania are not related to the Albanians in Macedonia (known as
"Shiptars"). The former are mostly Christians - the latter Moslems
(like their brethren in Kosovo). Even the Albanians in Albania are not
a cohesive lot - they are divided to Northerners and Southerners with
bitter mutual enmity the only thing connecting them. Witness the recent
near disintegration of the Albanian state over regional politics
(disguised as a financial scandal). The risk of a spillover of the
conflict into Albanian territory is small. Not so with Macedonia. This
is why NATO is flexing its muscles on Macedonian territory. The message
is ostensibly intended for Yugoslav ears. Really, NATO hopes that it
will echo far north, in the Kremlin. The Balkans is a strategic area -
says NATO - and we will bomb to pieces anyone who wishes to meddle in
it. Cold war rhetoric and not from Russian lips, this time.
The Slav Macedonians loathe and fear the Albanians. The latter do not
hide their desire to tear Macedonia apart and establish a Greater
Albania, comprising Macedonia's Western parts. Radical new leaders -
such as the now imprisoned Rufi Osmani, mayor of Gostivar - hoisted
Albanian flags on municipal buildings. This led to bloody riots. Slav
students counter-rioted when Albanians demanded bilingual education.
Things are explosive even without Kosovo.
But this is part of a larger picture. The Macedonian political elite
never really wanted to separate itself from the Yugoslav Federation. In
the first years of the embargo on Yugoslavia, Macedonia was the main
route of smuggling into the beleaguered country (from Greece, through
the Vardar river). Macedonia is torn between supporting Serbia and the
Slav cause (championed by Russia) - and complying with Western
pressures. The West finances the gigantic trade and current account
deficits of Macedonia, without which the economy and the currency would
have long crashed even beyond their incredibly depressed levels. Other
factions still dream about a Greater Bulgaria. The opposition,
IMRO-DPMNE is accused of being the creation of the Bulgarian secret
service, or the Bulgarian mob, depending on the speaker. Persistent
rumours have it that Milosevic signed a secret pact with the Macedonian
ruling (former socialist) party, the SDSM, using the mediation of
Arkan, a particularly ferocious militia commander in the good old days.
Serbia undertook to heat the border with Macedonia just before the
October elections and thus to allow the government either to postpone
them or to declare a state of emergency. The SDSM stands to lose big in
the elections following economic mismanagement and colossal corruption
charges. The main beneficiary is a repatriated politician (whose vote,
by the way, was crucial in dismantling the Yugoslav Federation), Vasil
Tupurkovski. He is perceived as "Mr. Clean Hands", though backed, from
the shadows, by Big Business. He is also pro-American (he lived in the
States many years and his family is still there). Russian hands don't
like this, probably.
Gradually, anti-Western feelings are emerging in Macedonia. The USA is
perceived as automatically anti-Serbian (read: anti-Slav) and
pro-Albanian. Emotions run high against Germany and the United Kingdom,
as well. Russia benefits from all this. If it plays its cards wisely,
it could achieve two goals: (a) Destabilize the Southern flank of NATO
and (b) transform Macedonia into its agent. If the conflict escalates,
Greece and Turkey could be easily drawn in. Both are NATO members. They
will not be fighting on the same side, though. And maybe they will
carry the fighting into Cyprus. Though far fetched, this is the first
opportunity in a decade to seriously dent the NATO facade. Russia is
not likely to miss it. Milosevic, in many respects, is a pain. In other
respects, though, he is a strategic gift from heaven.
The Kosovo situation is a blessing, not in disguise, for Macedonia. It
is through this - and other Serb-induced crises - that Macedonia
attained geopolitical importance. The West pampers Macedonia and
finances its fiscal and trade excesses precisely because of its
strategic location and because of its Albanians. The potential for
inter-ethnic tension is deemed to be sizeable by the West. To avert it,
the West is willing to bribe all parties involved into tense calm and
strained civility.