Kosovo(stan) and a Greater Albania (I)

Kosovo(stan)

Fifteen years ago, on February 17th, 2008, a NATO-sponsored breakaway province of Kosovo unilaterally self-proclaimed its (quasi)independence from Serbia. During the first decade of its NATO-protected and controlled „independence“, Kosovo became the first European legalized narco-state, a leading South-East European zone of human trafficking, a fundamental Balkan, together with Bosnia-Herzegovina, recruiting center of the Jihad Islamic fundamentalists for the ISIS at the Middle East and, above all, the cradle of the destruction of the Christianity in Europe to such extent that the Republic of Kosovo(stan) is, basically, today transformed into the first European Islamic Republic in which the biggest portion of non-Albanians are expelled or murdered, who are primarily the Christian Serbs.

However, the (quasi) independence of Kosovo(stan) is only a phase of the 1878 project of the creation of Islamic Greater Albania advocated by the First (pan-Islamic) Prizren League and for the first time realized during WWII when B. Mussolini established a Greater Albania with its capital in Tirana including Kosovo as well, without its northern part which was predominantly populated only by the Serbs. From the time of NATO’s brutal occupation of southern Serbia’s province of Kosovo (officially, Kosovo-Metochia) in June 1999, the systematic destruction of Christian shrines and monuments became an everyday duty of the local Muslim Albanians followed by the organized Islamization of the province by building a huge number of the mosques on every corner in Kosovo(stan).

Nevertheless, the secession of Islamic Kosovo from Christian Serbia is only a step toward the ultimate political and national goal of Muslim Albanians from the region (85% of all Balkan Albanians) to re-create a Greater Albania from WWII. The political situation in neighboring North Macedonia (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) is also going to favor the inclusion of the western portion of North Macedonia, populated by ethnic Albanians, into a Greater (Islamic) Albania.  Henceforth, the crucial aim of this text is to analyze the historical and conceptual roots of a Great Albania project with the hope to explain the current events concerning the „Albanian Question“ in the Balkans. This text seeks, to contribute to a better understanding of the foundations of the national project for Great Albania from 1878 onward.

The political program of a Greater Albania

At the first, it has to be stressed that the concept of a greater ethnic Albanian state, different from the other Balkan nations, did not appear originally as an authentic expression of the Albanian national movement itself. In the other words, until the beginning of the Great Eastern Crisis (1875-1878, i.e. Serbian uprising in Bosnia and Hercegovina against the Ottoman yoke followed by Serbia‘s, Montenegro‘s, and Russia‘s war against the Ottoman Empire), Albanians, unlike Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Romanians did not attempt to create an independent national state for the reason that a regional and religious identity was dominant among the Albanians for whom basically the Ottoman Empire was national (in the sense of confessional) state. In order to preserve predominance of the Islamic values in the everyday life and social relations, Muslim Albanians opposed by different forms of disobedience to the central authority in Istanbul the sultan‘s reforms which the Ottoman Empire tried to implement during the 19^th c., under pressure from the great European powers. Bosnian and Albanian Muslim feudal lords became the strongest defenders, within the European part of the Ottoman Empire, of Islamic theocratic society resisting any attempt from Ottoman central power to introduce some kind of administrative order into the functioning of the state taking into example West and Central European states.

The main power of the expansionist Albanian movement came from Muslim Albanians. With the exception of isolated examples of cultural efforts among the Albanians, mostly those in the Diaspora (Istanbul, Egypt, South Italy), Albanian Muslims have been the most important nation in the Ottoman Empire in its efforts to suppress the Christian movement at the Balkans. With their patriarchal-oriental society of Asian type, they constituted the main obstacle to Europeanization of this part of Europe in the 19^th and 20^th cc. Exceptions to this were an insignificant catholic minority in the north of Albania, mainly in the region of Skadar, and the more numerous orthodox community in the south of Albania, which was strongly influenced by the Greek cultural orbit.

The first pan-Albanian political organization was founded in 1878 in the Kosovo town of Prizren (at that time with the majority of Serbian population) under the name „First Albanian League“. Today, after studying Ottoman historical sources from Istanbul, it is clear that the birth of this league, together with its political program, was not an expression of Albanian original liberation efforts as the league was, in fact, the only Turkish instrument for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire. According to the reports from Krijevski, a French consul in Thessaloniki, Turkish powers gave weapons to the Albanian leaders. However, very soon the league was abolished by the central Ottoman authorities as it started claiming greater autonomy from Istanbul for the lands inhabited by Albanians. According to Albanian demands, an autonomous province of (united) Albania within the Ottoman Empire had to be twice bigger in comparison with present-day Albania (Albania proper, Kosovo, East Montenegro, parts of Central and Southeast Serbia, West Macedonia, and Northeast Greece).

Obviously, for very practical political reasons the formation of the First Albanian League in Prizren coincided with the preparations for the International Berlin Congress dealing with the so-called Eastern Question or remapping South East Europe after the regional crisis in 1875−1878.

The attempt by Russia to solve the Eastern Question by securing its interests by creating a Greater Bulgaria (as a Slavic Orthodox state), at the peace negotiations in San Stefano (1878) between Russia and Ottoman Empire was finally met with fervent opposition from all other (western) major European powers. Although the project of Greater Bulgaria encompassed a significant part of territory inhabited largely by Serbian and Greek population, the central Ottoman authorities, with crucial support from British diplomacy (as historically the main opponent of Russian foreign policy in the East), convinced all other powers that the Albanians are the best defenders against the Russian and Orthodox “threat” to Western Europe. It is the fact that from that time (1878) until the present day the Albanians have been presenting themselves to the public of Western Europe as major defenders against an alleged expansion of Russian Orthodox pan-Slavism into Southeastern Europe. In fact, the western-made and supported „Greater Albania“ megalomaniac project in the hands of Turkish and other powers was to designed to counteract another equal megalomaniac project (of „Greater Bulgaria“) originating from Russia. It was a clear sign that neither Russia nor Western European great powers cared about a justifiable solution to the Easter Question but in essence only about their strategic interests in the Balkans.

The Greater Albanian political concept from 1878 was imbued with the spirit of pan-Islamism and radical political Islam. Only from time to time did the Albanian political elite try to hide the distinctive Islamic feature of the foundations of their ideology, usually prompted by a desire to secure the support of some western power. A militant form of Islam prevailed in Kosovo and Metohija and in Western Macedonia, brought by the Albanian population from the mountainous parts of North Albania who forcefully descended into the gentle and fertile parts of these Balkan provinces. According to German Albanologist Georg Stadtmuller, the regions of Middle Albania constitute the original centers of the Albanian population. Albanian religious heterogeneity and a distinctive tribal identity have historically always been a permanent source of internal conflicts. This “unstable” condition of the Albanian state (established in 1912/1913) threatens primarily non-Albanian people in Albania itself, but also in the neighborhood. In the territory of Albania, large Slavic and Greek settlements have existed for centuries and Slavic and Greek toponyms have been largely preserved up to the present day. However, from the creation of the first Albanian state in 1912/1913, and especially during the rule of the Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha, a large part of non-Albanians, particularly the Slavic population, were assimilated by the means of state repression.

The Ottoman conquest of South East Europe and its consequences

It has to be admitted that the Great Albania project is directly connected with the consequences of the Turkish (Ottoman) conquests in South Eastern Europe, and especially with the wars of European Christian powers against the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the 17^th c. It has remained, in a sense, as a long-reaching hand of the Ottoman spirit in Europe, as a vehicle of Oriental kind of life, customs, and mentalities which were characteristic of the territory of South Eastern Europe at the time of Ottoman rule. The Christian population of European Turkey, primarily the Serbs, joined the struggle of the European powers during the Great Vienna War from 1683 to 1699 to expel the Turks from Europe. After the defeat of the Austrian army in 1690 as a reprisal the Serbs have been subjected to massive atrocities and to the first major ethnic cleansing in the region. The Ottoman destructive military campaigns allowed the overflow of Albanian people from their original regions into the countries of their neighbors, both Slavs and Greeks. It was not before the 18^th c. that masses of Albanian stock breeders from the hilly regions of North Albania started descending into the fertile lands of Kosovo and Metohija populated by Orthodox Serbs in overwhelming majority, as well as into the regions of Western Macedonia.

Together with massive and regular atrocities which characterized this conquest of Old Serbia, there were also numerous other ways in which the compact Serbian ethnic body was broken followed by forced Islamization, different forms of robbery, plunder, destruction of religious sites, and many other forms of terror. All of such forms of atrocities are documentary testified by many foreign travel writers but in the first place by Roman Catholic missionaries and visitors (for instance in the report by Roman Catholic archbishop of Skoplje Matija Masarek in 1764). A similar process went on in the Albanian-Greek boundary regions. Albanian migration under the Turks went towards Greek lands, particularly Epirus. With the strengthening of the Greek liberation movement, Turkey used Muslim Albanians to secure rule over the largest possible parts of Epirus and Thessalia. That Kosovo and Metohija, of which Albanian authors often speak as “Albanian land” were irrefutably the central regions of Serbian settlement, is testified to by the fact that the most important monuments of Serbian architecture and Serbian spirituality were erected there. In Kosovo and Metohija alone 1,400 monasteries, churches, and other Serbian monuments were built. The most famous among them are: the Patriarchy church in Peć, monasteries Banjska, Gračanica, Dečani, St. Archangel near Prizren, Bogorodica Ljeviška in Prizren, etc. A logical question is: why would Serbs erect their central church, the Patriarchy in Peć, in the region where they were not in majority and which was not the central point of their national homeland?

End of the first part.

To be continued.

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

Ex-University Professor

Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies

Belgrade, Serbia

www.geostrategy.rs

vsotirovic@yahoo.com

© Vladislav B. Sotirovic 2023