While Europe in the year 1921 was either exhausted or belligerent, or
both, she had a vague knowledge that hostilities were being carried on
between the Serbs and the Albanians. Telegrams from Rome, Tirana and
elsewhere appeared in the papers, saying that the Serbs continued to
advance. Occasionally a Serbian statesman would declare that his
Government desired the independence of Albania. Then some Albanian
delegate in Geneva would make a protest and ask the League of Nations,
of which Albania was now a member, to take this matter in hand. A
Serbian delegate would also address the League. Again you would hear of
the Serbian army pushing forward, that a good many soldiers had fallen.
And no one seemed to know why the Serbs would want to shed their blood
in order to add to their miscellaneous problems this very grave one of
administering such a region inhabited by such a people. Why did they not
content themselves with the frontier which the Powers temporarily
assigned to them in 1918 and which, from the junction of the Black and
White Drin, runs south along the rocky right bank of the river and then,
crossing to the other side, passes along the top of a range of
mountains? What more could they wish to have, presuming that it was not
their intention to annex what lay between them and the Adriatic?
Well, it appears that never once did they go beyond the aforementioned
line to which they were legally entitled, except when for a short time
they were in pursuit, towards Ljuria, of certain invaders. Not only were
they legally entitled to take up their position on the mountains to the
west of the Black Drin, but the Moslem tribes, the Malizi and the Ljuri,
who dwell in that uninviting district, were most anxious that the Serbs
should come and should remain. For this the tribes had two principal
reasons: in the first place, they recognized that their compatriots in
Djakovica and Prizren were immeasurably better off than before they came
under Serbian rule; and secondly, they did not wish to be separated from
these towns which are their markets. In fact, they had become so anxious
to throw in their lot with the Slavs that they formed six battalions,
which operated on both banks of the river, under the command of Bairam
Ramadan, Mahmoud Rejeb and others. In opposition to these battalions
were the troops of the so-called National Government, that of Tirana.
This Government is repudiated by a great many Albanians on account of
its reactionary methods, its subservience to the Italians, and its
failure to do anything for the people. The battalions, then, were
engaged in 1921, not against their immediate neighbours to the west, the
Catholic Mirditi, of whom we shall speak anon, but against the more
distant Government of Tirana. Thus the League of Nations beheld that the
administration which they were about to confirm as the legitimate
Government of Albania was violently opposed by compact masses of
Catholics and Moslems. Perhaps some of the members of the League began
to doubt whether they should have accepted the assurance of the
Anglo-Albanian Society that the Tirana Government (containing Moslem,
Catholic and Orthodox members) was really a national affair; perhaps
they began to suspect that the two Christian elements were only there to
throw a little dust in the eyes of Europe; and perhaps Lord Robert Cecil
began to feel doubtful whether, at the urgent request of his friend Mr.
Aubrey Herbert, President of the Anglo-Albanian Society, he had been
well advised to bring about the admission into the League of a country
which had two simultaneous Governments before it had a frontier. Perhaps
one was beginning to recognize that there are Albanians but no Albania.
The emissaries of Tirana might depict as of no importance the
hostilities that were being waged against them by those Moslem tribes,
they might tell the League of Nations that the Mirdite revolution was
not worth considering. It is a fact that the Mirditi are not very
numerous, but in close connection with their 18,000 people are the Shala
with 500 houses and the Shoshi with 300. Tradition has it that they are
descended from three brothers who set out from the arid village of
Shiroka on Lake Scutari to seek their fortune. The most ancient, the
most noble and important family of northern Albania is that of
Gjomarkaj, whose seat is at Oroshi, the capital of the Mirditi. Despite
enormous difficulties they succeeded in maintaining their own position
and the prestige of the Mirditi. They refused to recognize the Turkish
Government and clung so tenaciously to their own usages and laws, and
were so famous for their courage that the Sultans were eager to grant
them privileges and concessions. Thereafter they promised to assist the
Sultan against external aggression, and always did so with great
success. It was due to the Mirditi that the Albanian mountaineers
preserved their nationality, their religion and their customs, for they
were ever the leaders of the other Albanian tribes. The most prominent
of the Mirditi in our time have been Prenk Bib Doda, who, after long
years of exile, was assassinated in Albania; Mark Djoni, now the
President of the Mirdite Republic; and, above all, the great Abbot
Monsignor Primo Doci, a man of vast culture, who returned to his own
country after serving the Vatican as a diplomat in various parts of the
world. It is not surprising that the educational standard of his native
land filled him with the determination to build schools and that, owing
to his efforts, the Roman Catholic establishment of thirty native
priests and of bishops who were nearly all foreigners has developed into
a body of almost three hundred native priests with no foreign bishops. A
poet himself, he founded the literary society, _Bashkimi l'unione_, in
which all capable patriots were invited to collaborate. He constructed
more than twenty strongholds in and around Oroshi, and when he died in
February 1917 it was largely owing to the persecution which he suffered
at the hands of the Austrians. What has latterly aroused his faithful
people is the persecution levelled at them by the Moslem-Italian
Government of Tirana.
A certain amount of mystery envelopes the death of Bib Doda; an opinion
widely held is that Italians were responsible, but Mr. H. E. Goad
rebukes me in the _Fortnightly Review_ for not knowing that the Italians
laid aside the crude methods of political murder centuries ago. Perhaps
he doesn't regard the massacre of the helpless French soldiers at Rieka
in 1919 as political murder, since they were only privates; perhaps he
doesn't count that famous expedition of the five lieutenants to
assassinate Zanella, because it was unsuccessful; but he may be right
concerning Bib Doda. That personage had been to Durazzo to confer with
the Italians; he had refused to accept an Italian protectorate in
Albania, and on his return he was killed in his carriage before he could
reach Scutari. The chief assailant was a Catholic of Klementi, believed
to be an adherent of Essad Pasha and also an Italian "agent
d'occasion." Yet as several Italian soldiers who accompanied Bib Doda
were wounded it would seem that those, myself included, who believed
that this affair had been arranged by the Italians were wrong.
As for Bib Doda's fortune, Mr. Goad asserts that by Albanian law he did
not have to leave it to his nearest kinsman, Marko Djoni. That is, I beg
to say, precisely what he had to do according to the custom of their
ancient family. Mr. Goad says that the cash went to the poor; I say that
a good deal of it went into the pocket of a lady who was much younger
than the dead man and was on excellent terms with an Italian major. If
Mr. Goad had visited Albania at that time and had been interested in
other things besides what he tells us of--the moonlight of Klisura and
the splendid plane trees over the Vouissa and the sunrise reflected on
the gleaming mountain-wall of the Nemorica--I would not have to tell him
all this about Bib Doda's money. He says that Marko Djoni is a
discredited, disgruntled person who became a tool of the Serbs and fled
to Serbia. But he forgets that Bib Doda was killed in March 1919, and
that until May 1921 Marko Djoni remained in Albania, enjoying the
friendship of Italy rather than that of Serbia. In fact it was not easy
for him to abandon this friendship, owing to various deals in connection
with the Mirdite forests. No doubt he resented the loss of his heritage;
but why in the name of goodness should not he and his followers fight
for their liberty, and why should the Serbs not help them at a time when
the frontiers of Albania had not been fixed nor the Government
officially recognized? The Serbs were helping him to make war, says Mr.
Goad, against his legitimate rulers. Yet we must be lenient with our Mr.
Goad, for he himself admits that "few can write of Balkan politics
without revealing symptoms of that partisan disease." He has made up his
mind that the Serbs are the villains of the piece, and there, for him,
is the end of it.
A delegation from the Mirditi, consisting of the Rev. Professor Anthony
Achikou and Captain Dod Lleche, came to Geneva in October 1921, and
requested the League not to issue a confirmation of the Tirana
Government. They showed that this Government had no other aim than to
turn Albania into a small Turkey. No doubt the Moslems, as the most
numerous element, had a right to have a majority in the Cabinet, but
there was no justification in their appointment of pure Turks. (The
Tirana Government proposed in the autumn of 1921 that any Albanian
coming from Turkey, who has held a public office there, shall be refused
admittance into the Albanian Administration until two years after his
return. This is a proposal but not yet, I believe, an effective law.)
The Minister of Justice has been old Hodja Kadri, and the Minister of
War one Salah el Din Bey, an officer of Kemal Pasha, and neither of
these was acquainted with the Albanian language. When the Mirditi
started to show their dislike of this Government, the War Minister
commanded his troops to slay without mercy anyone who dared to raise his
voice. Thus it came about that the villages of Oroshi, Laci, Gomsice and
Naraci were destroyed, while those of the inhabitants who could escape
fled across the frontier to Serbia. As for particular cases of iniquity
we may instance that of the Moslem officer, Chakir Nizami, who, as a
manifestation of his hatred for the Christians, had violated at Scutari
a girl of fourteen whose name was Chakya Hil Paloks. He was sentenced by
the French military authorities and was liberated by the Minister of
Justice as soon as the French had quitted Scutari. On the other hand,
Kol Achikou, a brother of the delegate, had killed a Moslem in
self-defence and been acquitted by the French court martial; after their
departure he was taken to Tirana and sentenced to death. But apart from
all such misdeeds the Mirditi complained that the Tirana Government,
which could not openly wage war with Serbia, had organized the "Kossovo"
Committee, whose object it was to foment trouble in Serbia and to send
armed bands of marauders on to Serbian territory. At the very moment
when the delegation was at Geneva, one of these bands (in the night
between October 12 and 13) raided the village of Moji[vs]te, near
Gostivar. Furnished with Italian machine guns and bombs they came over
the mountains, set fire to the village and killed many of the people as
they fled. They are accustomed on such expeditions to steal the children
and hold them to ransom--a lucrative operation which d'Annunzio's
arditi[91] may have copied from their Albanian colleagues. It would
seem, then, according to the statement of the Mirditi, that in the
conflict on the Black Drin, of which Europe had vaguely heard, the
Tirana Government and not that of Serbia was the aggressor. Mr. Aubrey
Herbert may write pathetic letters to the Press, Miss Durham may write
letters of indignation, but how could their proteges of Tirana be said
to be valiantly defending themselves against the wicked Serbs when the
very villages which, said Mr. Herbert, were destroyed--Aras and Dardha
and so forth--were situated in the district to which the Serbs were
legally entitled?
The Mirditi delegates had an interview in Geneva with Lord Robert Cecil.
An attempt was made by the Tirana delegates to discredit Professor
Achikou, by publishing a telegram from Monsignor Sereggi, the Archbishop
of Scutari (but which the Professor accused the rival delegate, the
bearded, bustling Father Fan Noli, of having composed himself),[92] and
in that message it was stated that Achikou was expelled from Albania.
This he did not deny; he was, he said, one of 4000 who had been driven
out by an arbitrary Government and he hoped that they would soon be able
to return. The message called Achikou a traitor; but that is a matter of
opinion. It said that he was in the service of a foreign Power; he
replied that the Mirditi had never concealed their wish to live in
friendship with their neighbours, and the proof that they envisaged
nothing more than friendship was that they were petitioning the League
to recognize the Mirdite Republic. Among the other charges against
Achikou was one which said that he was sailing under false colours. This
was an absurd accusation, and one which enabled the reverend Father to
mention that his opponent Monsignor, who was then being called Bishop,
Fan Noli, was neither a bishop nor an Albanian, but a simple priest, a
Greek from Adrianople, whose real name was Theophanus.[93] This clever
man, who had decided to form an Orthodox Albanian Church and had
apparently become its bishop without the formality of consecration, had
enjoyed some success at Geneva owing to his knowledge of languages. He
circulated a telegram from Tirana which purported to be a disavowal of
the Mirditi delegation by a number of Mirditi notables; but a reply was
sent by Mark Djoni, the President of the Mirdite Republic, an elderly
man of great sagacity and experience, for in Turkish times he had been
chief magistrate of the Mirditi. He pointed out that all the notables
and all the tribal chieftains had gone, like himself, into exile, and
that the names were those of insignificant persons who had acted under
fear of death. Djoni did not in this telegram allude to the position of
those Catholic priests and others in northern Albania who support the
Tirana Government and its Italian paymasters; some of them may believe
that they are acting in the interest of their country--to act otherwise
would be perilous, and everyone seems to know the precise number of
napoleons a month--ranging from the 150 of an ecclesiastical magnate
down to 71/2 (the pay of a simple gendarme)--which they are alleged to
receive. Do they ever think of the starving Italian peasants?
On October 7 another telegram was sent from Oroshi (the capital of the
Mirditi) to the Tirana Delegation which "protested energetically against
the activities of a certain Anthony Achikou." Yet, on October 9, an
individual called Notz Pistuli, who had travelled specially from
Scutari, presented himself at the Mirdite delegates' hotel, and in the
name of the Scutari National Council asked whether a reconciliation
could not be made between the Mirditi and the Tirana Government.[94]
Being told that the Mirditi would have nothing to do with the Turkish
Government of Tirana, he held out hopes that another Government more
representative of Albania would soon be constituted. It was remarkable
that Tirana should have dispatched this envoy after giving out that the
Mirditi were traitors and that their delegates represented nobody.
Lord Robert Cecil did not at first seem to think that their desire for a
republic independent of Tirana could be gratified, but on being
initiated into the facts of the case and told that definitely to reject
them would look as if he were a foe to Christianity, Lord Robert said
that such was far from being the case. He would do whatever he could to
help them. And on the next day it was decided that, in accordance with
the Mirdite request, a Commission should proceed to Albania.
The Italian delegate, Marquis Imperiali, submitted that there was no
need to hurry this Commission and Monsieur Djoni explained in a
telegram[95] that if the Commission went forthwith it would discover in
Albania cannons, rifles and other war material from Italy, that it would
find numerous Turkish officers of the Kemalist army who had been brought
from Asia Minor in Italian ships, and that it would perceive that the
cannons, the Turkish Government of Tirana, the rifles, the Turkish
officers, certain Catholic ecclesiastics--in a word, the whole of
Albania such as it is to-day is nothing else, said he, but a masked
Italian instrument of war against Serbia--while all the bloody
consequences of this perpetual struggle have to be endured by the border
population.... One afternoon, at the beginning of November, 650 Tirana
soldiers, pursued by the Mirditi, gave themselves up to the Serbian
authorities on the Black Drin. They had with them a dozen officers of
whom two were Italians, and these accounted for themselves by saying
that they had come out to organize and to lead the Albanian army.
* * * * *
Now, would this be the best solution of the Albanian problem, that the
Mirdite Republic and that of Tirana should both be recognized, since it
is quite clear that it would be immoral--and very useless--for Europe to
try to persuade the Mirditi to place themselves under the Tirana regime?
But there appears to be no doubt that the Moslems of northern
Albania--however much they may now sympathize with the Mirditi in their
attitude towards Tirana--would just as strenuously resist their own
incorporation in a Christian Republic.... Down at the bottom of their
hearts all the Albanian delegates who came to Geneva must know that if
an Albanian State is larger than one tribe it will go to pieces.
Whatever good qualities may be latent in the Albanian, he is as
yet--with rare exceptions--in that stage of culture which has no idea of
duty on the part of the State or of duty towards the State. As an
example of his views on the exercise of authority we may instance the
case of the 82 Albanians, led by Islam Aga Batusha (of the village of
Voksha), who stopped Pouni[vs]a Ra[vc]i['c] and his companions in the
summer of 1921 while they were riding one day from Djakovica to Pe['c].
Pouni[vs]a enjoys the fullest confidence of the border tribes because he
has never been known to break his word; they are very conscious that
even their vaunted "besa" is not nowadays observed as it was, say fifty
years ago, for the Austrian and Italian propaganda schools have had an
unfortunate effect. Well, as the 82 sat round Pouni[vs]a and his friends
in the courtyard of a mosque, where they spent the whole day
confabulating, they said they hoped that he, a just and wise man, would
help them; and their principal grievance was that the Serbian police no
longer allowed them to kill each other. Why should the police interfere
in their private affairs? Recently the police had arrested a man whom
one of these protesters wanted to kill, and therefore he thought he
would have to kill one of the police. Even those who have spent their
lives in Serbia are too often at this stage of development--a few years
ago, in the village of Prokuplje, an Albanian assassinated his neighbour
and was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude. The judge asked the
dead man's brother if he was satisfied. "No, I am not," he answered,
"because now I shall have to wait twenty years to kill him." Their
ancient custom of blood-vengeance continues to flourish, though in
Serbia the police and public opinion are against it; thus, at Luka, in
the department of Pe['c], one Alil Mahmoud was murdered by a Berisha to
avenge his uncle, so that now the sons of this Mahmoud propose to kill a
Berisha--not the murderer, but one equal in rank to their late father,
and in consequence Ahmed Beg, son of Murtezza Pasha, of Djakovica, is
afraid to leave his house, which the Serbian police, at his request, is
guarding.
How much the Albanian conceives that he owes a duty to the State may be
instanced by the application of a smuggler that he be granted a permit
to go to Zagreb in order to dispose of 6000 oka[96] of tobacco which he
had brought over the frontier. He was talking to a Serb who has the
confidence of the Albanians because he does not treat them as if they
were Serbs; and when this father confessor advised him to get rid of the
tobacco locally (which he succeeded in doing) the Albanian objected that
the excise officers gave him constant anxiety, they were thieves who
insisted on payment being made to them if they came across his
merchandise. And if it be said that this is too humble a case, we may
mention that of Ali Riza, one of the chief officers of the Tirana army
which was last year operating against the Serbs. So indifferent is he as
to the uniform he bears that the year before last, in Vienna, he begged
an influential Serb to recommend him for a lieutenancy in the Serbian
army. (His request was not granted because it was ascertained that,
besides being unable to read and write, his work as an Austrian gendarme
had been more zealous than creditable.)