verise serbe me Essat pashe Toptanit
gjate viteve 1914-1915, Gjurmime Albanologjike, VI (1976), pp. 125-127; D.
T. Batakovic, Esad-pasa Toptani i Srbija 1915. godine, p. 307.
7 AS, MID, Str. pov. 1914, No. 438
8 D. T. Batakovic, Esad-pasa Toptani i Srbija 1915. godine, p. 307.
9 M. Ekmecic, op. cit., p. 387. The insurgents in northern Albania
declared holy war against Serbia. Public Record Office London (later in text
PRO, FO), vol. 438/4, No. 1071
10 G. B. Leon, op. cit., 78-80; M. Ekmecic, op. cit., 385-386. Cf P.
Pastorelli, Albania nella politico estera italiana 1914-1920, Napoli 1970,
pp. 19-32; James H. Burgwyn, Sonnino e la diplomazia italiana del tempo doi
guerra nei Balcani nel 1915, Storia Contemporanea, XVI, 1 (1985), pp.
116-118.
11 G. B. Leon, op. cit., p. 79
12 AS, MID. Str. pov., 1914, No 863, tel. M. Spalajkovic to MID, St.
Peterburg 25. 12. 1914 / 7. 01. 1915. Cf. B. Hrabak, Albanija od julske
krize do proleca 1916. godine na osnovu ruske diplomatske gradje, I,
Obelezja 5 (1973), pp. 71-75.
13 AS, MID, Str. Pov., 1914, No. 810, 877; B. Hrabak, Elaborat srpskog
ministarstva inostranih dela o pripremama srpske okupacije severne Albanije
1915. godine, Godisnjak Arhiva Kosova, II-III (1966-1967), pp. 7-35
14 Arhiv Jugoslavije, Beograd, 80-2-604. Tel. M. Spalajkovic from St.
Petersburg, 23. 04/6. 05. 1915, No 704; PRO FO, vol. 438/3, No. 100, 118.
15 The most vicious raid into Serbian territory was lead at the about
200 persons to stir up the tribes around Prizren, but his host was crushed
near the village of Zur. The Serbian government informed the allies that
around 1,000 armed ethnic Albanians had crossed the border (PRO, FO, 438/5,
No. 53; A. ®,195
16 Essad Pasha complained about the conduct of the Serbian military
authorities who pursued their own policy in Mati and other regions and
attempted to agitate among individual Albanian chiefs for acknowledging as
ruler of Albania a Serbian prince. (D. T. Batakovic, Secanja generala
Dragutina Milutinovica na komandovanje albanskim trupama 1915. godine,
Mesovita grada, XIV (1985), pp. 128, idem, Ahmed-beg Zogu i Srbija, in:
Srbija 1916. godine, Zb. radova Istorijskog instituta, 5, Beograd 1987, pp.,
165-177). Cf. M. Ekmecic, op. cit., pp. 394-395.
17 Pro, Fo, vol. 371, Nos. 184, 187, 200, 624,; vol. 438/5, No. 75;
vol, 438/6, No 1444; M. Ekmecic, op. cit., pp. 392-394; A. Mitrovic, op.
cit., pp. 230-232,
18 Sh. Rahimi, op. cit., pp. 137-140; D. T. Batakovic, Esad-pasa
Toptani i Srbija 1915. godine, pp. 309-310.
19 Ibid, pp. 313-314.
IV
The retreat of the Serbian army into Albania in late 1915 and early
1916 put the alliance of Essad Pasha to a serious test. In regions whereto
his authority did not extend, particularly Catholic tribes in the northern
parts of the country, the Serbian troops were forced to shoot their way
through to the Adriatic ports where allied ships were waiting for them.
Essad Pasha's gendarmery aided the Serbian army, secured safe passageways,
accommodation and food, and engaged in skirmishes with Albanian regiments
that attacked Serbian units and pillaged unarmed refugees. Essad Pasha
issued a special proclamation calling Albanians to help the Serbian army,
and informed military commanders about the advancement of enemy forces, the
emergence of rebellious regiments and the mood of individual
tribes.1
The "Albanian Golgotha" was the greatest war trial of the Serbian
people. Of the 220,000 soldiers which broke through Albania towards Corfu
and Bizerta, only 150,000 reached the destination; of about 200,000 refugees
spread along Albanian crags and marshes by the coast barely a third (60,000
people) escaped death.2 Serbia's losses would have been much
heavier were it not for Essad Pasha and his followers during the retreat and
embarkation.
During the retreat Essad Pasha maintained contact with the Serbian
government. He rejected Pasic's proposals to proclaim his treaty with the
Serbian government and admit Serbian officials in his administration,
explaining that his enemies were already calling him Essadovic because of
his alliance with Serbia. He wanted the allies to guarantee that Italy would
not occupy entire Albania after the retreat of the Serbian army. Realizing
that Austro-Hungarian troops would soon take Durazzo, Essad Pasha proposed
to Pasic that he be conveyed to Corfu with his government and gendarmes, so
as to be able, when the allied offensive was launched, to take up positions
on the left flank of the Serbian army and operate towards Albania. At the
demand of the Italian diplomacy, Essad Pasha and several hundred gendarmes
crossed at the end of February 1916 to Brindisi escorted by Serbia's charge
d'affaires. Prior to his departure, he declared war on the Central powers,
thus taking upon himself full responsibility for his cooperation with Serbia
and the Entente powers.3
Despite promises that he would be recognized as the Albanian prince,
and faced with open endeavors by the Italian government to exert complete
influence over him, Essad Pasha continued on to France to seek backing from
the allied diplomacy. Political circles in Paris admitted him as the prime
minister of a legitimate government. Military experts evaluated that Albania
was a reservoir of good soldiers which could be winged over for the allied
cause by Essad Pasha only. In late August, Essad Pasha reached Salonika in a
French vessel. Through the mediation of the Serbian and Greek diplomacies,
his government acquired the status of an exiled alliance cabinet. Essad
Pasha's camp was set up at the Salonika battlefield from 1,000 gendarmes and
followers under the command of Albanian officers. Deployed to positions
towards Albania, he operated within the composition of the French eastern
army. According to Pasic's intentions, his camp was to operate mixed with
Serbian troops towards Kosovo and northern Albania.4
During work in Salonika, Essad Pasha continuously strove to obtain firm
promises from France and Great Britain that when the war was over rule over
Albania would not be given to Italy, and that he would be allowed to
reinstate his administration in the country. At the end of 1916, Korea was
proclaimed an autonomous republic under the protection of French military
authorities, and power was given to the local liberals. Essad Pasha
complained to Pasic about the actions of the French military command, and
warned of Italy's web of intrigues, emphasizing that he had tied his fate to
Serbia. He feared that the Italian troops in Argirokastro were preparing an
assassination. Instead, General Giazzinto Ferrero proclaimed the state of
Albania, in early June, 1917, under the Italian protectorat.5
The Serbian government followed with anxiety the consolidation of
Italian positions in Albania. Immediately after the protectorate was
proclaimed, the Serbian government protested to the allied powers calling on
the decisions of the Ambassadorial Conference in London, to which Italy was
a signatory, and warned that the one-sided proclamation of Albanian
independence violated the "Balkans to the Balkan peoples" principle. The
news that the Italian military authorities were promising the Albanians
considerably wider state borders than those established in London in 1913
aroused particular concern. Pasic therefore made it especially clear that
the Italian protectorat resembled a similar attempt by Austria-Hungary to
"secure for itself a protectorat over Albania, and indirectly over the other
Balkan peoples by creating a new Great Albania to the detriment of other
Balkan peoples".6
Essad Pasha also protested to the Italian government. Dissatisfied with
the development of the situation, he resolved to set off for Switzerland,
the center of various Albanian committees, and through the French government
to secure backing from the British diplomacy which supported Italy's policy
in Albania. He obtained no guarantees in Paris, and failed to secure backing
from the Geneva committees, tied firmly to Austria-Hungry which financed
them.7
Increasingly insecure about winning support from the allies and
concerned over implications that his special obligations towards Serbia were
no longer a secret, Essad Pasha demanded of Pasic that the government
provide more money and secure after the war his administration in Albania
within the borders drawn by the Conference of Ambassadors in London. On his
return to Salonika at the beginning of 1918, Essad Pasha in talks with
Regent Aleksandar linked the distrust of the French diplomacy with the
Tirana Treaty and Italy's endeavors to compromise France. In talks with
other Serbian diplomatic officials, Essad Pasha complained that the
provisions in the Tirana Treaty impeded him in political work. Finally, he
made a demand to the Serbian government to procure permission from the
French military authorities for introducing his administration in the Korea
Republic, where Italians were freely agitating against him. The French
command, however, dissolved the Korea republic in February 1918, and took
over command of Essad Pasha's units, which held the front between Podgradec
and Shkumbi River, due to low combat morale.8
The Serbian government strove to aid Essad Pasha as appreciably as
possible within its means. Its policy towards Albania was, in principle, to
any thwart plans on foreign protectorates and reinstate the regime that
existed prior to the withdrawal of the Serbian army. The Serbian government
protested several times against the consolidation of Italian positions in
Albania, striving to give as much prominence as possible to Essad Pasha and
prepare the conditions for his return to power. Essad Pasha realized himself
that Serbia was his last outpost and that without its support he had no
chance with the allies to win back his return to the country. Thus in a
message to US President Woodraw Wilson in the summer of 1918, he said that
only a future Yugoslav state could guarantee for the integrity and
independence of his country.9
In the event that Pasha's return to power was not possible, Pasic was
preparing to leave open the question of the border with Albania. (The
Entente had prior to the breakthrough of the Salonika front signed an
agreement in Paris on the division of spheres of interest whereby Albania
was ceded to Italy.) In early November 1918, Pasic sent the following
message: "Our policy in Albania is to establish, if possible, the situation
as it was prior to the evacuation, when Essad Pasha was the Albanian prime
minister, and occupy territories from the Mati river beyond and in agreement
with the tribal chiefs, reestablish local administration which will act on
the instructions of our authorities."10
He called Essad Pasha - at the time in France seeking backing - to
return to Salonika and at the same time demanded that territories taken in
Albania be occupied by mixed allied forces: he proposed also that the
Albanian camp be used, mixed with Serbian officers. The French command,
however, disbanded Essad Pasha's troops on October 12. By a decision of the
interallied Supreme War Council, Albania was to be controlled by the Italian
army up to the Maca river.11
Still, the Serbian prime minister did not rule out the possibility that
the situation would develop enabling the return of Essad Pasha to Albania,
to the region north of the Mati river which Serbia considered its sphere of
interest. Italy persecuted Pasha's followers in the occupied parts of the
country, and at one particular time made a demand to France for his
internment. It all ended with the withdrawal of the French representative to
his government.12
1 Ibid, pp. 315-317.
2 Veliki rat Srbije za oslobodjenje i ujedinjenje Srba, Hrvata i
Slovenaca, vol. XIII-XIV; Kroz Albaniju 1915-1916, Beograd 1968; M. M.
Zivanovic, O evakuaciji srpske vojske iz Albanije i njenoj reorganizaciji na
Krfu (1915-1916) prema francuskim dokumentima, Istorijski Casopis (XIV-XV),
pp. 231-307.
3 D. T Batakovic, Esad-pasa Toptani i Srbija 1915. godine, pp. 321-324.
4 D. T. Batakovic, Esad-pasa Toptani, Srbija i albansko pitanje
(1916-1918), pp. 348-349.
5 AS, MID, Str. pov., 1917, No. 232 Memoire: Proglas protektorata
Italije nad Albanijom i uopste rad Italije 1917 Krf, D. T. Batakovic,
Esad-pasa Toptani, Srbija i albansko pitanje (1916-1918), pp. 350-351; P.
Pastorelli, op. cit., pp. 36-41; I documenti diplomatici italiani, Quinta
serie, vol. VI, Roma MCMLXXXVIII, NOs, 119, 390, 394, 427, 438, 445, 448,
831.
6 AS, MID, Str. pov., 1917, No. 182. Pasic's note dated 30. 05/13.
06.1917.
7 D. T. Batakovic, Esad-pasa Toptani, Srbija i albansko pitanje
(1916-1918), pp.
8 Ibid, pp. 353-358.
9 Ibid, pp. 359.
10 Ibid, pp. 360.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid, pp. 361-362; B. Hrabak, Reokupacija oblasti srpske i
crnogorske drzave s arbanaskom vecinom stanovnistva u jesen 1918. godine i
drzanje Arbanasa prema uspostavljenoj vlasti. Gjurmime albanologjike, 1
(1969), pp. 262-265, 285-286.
V
After the war, Italy became the main rival of the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes in Albania. Rome strove to use the disintegration of the
Dual Monarchy to step up its positions in the Balkans and turn the Adriatic
Sea into an Italian lake. Albania was in its schemes the country wherefrom
Italian influence would be wielded onto the neighboring regions. The Italian
troops occupied the largest part of Albania and, by meeting the demands of
various committees (particularly the Kosovo Committee) in annexing to
Albania Metohia, Kosovo and western Macedonia, they presented themselves as
the protector of the interests of all the Albanian people. An interim
government of Turhan Pasha Permeti was set up in Durazzo under the wing of
Italy at the end of December 1918, which was ready to recognize as its ruler
a prince from the House of Savoy. At the Peace Conference in Paris, Italy
strove to secure the possession of Valona and hinterland and obtain a
mandate over the other parts of Albania.1 The envoys of the
pro-Italian Durazzo government demanded at the Peace Conference a revision
of the 1913 borders - they wanted Prizren, Djakovica, Pec, Pristina,
Mitrovica, Skoplje, Tetovo and Debar to be included in the composition of
the Albanian state.2
The policy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes towards Albania
did not deviate much from that of Pasic's government. Belgrade evaluated
that the consolidation of Italian positions in Albania would be a source of
continual threat to Kosovo, Metohia and the neighboring regions. Head of the
delegation to the Conference, Nikola Pasic, also shaped the policy of the
new state as regards Albania. In order to repress Italian influence in the
Balkans, he demanded the restoration of Albania within the 1913 borders, as
an independent state with autonomous and national rule. If the Great Powers
should nevertheless decide to divide the Albanian territories among the
neighboring states, the delegation demanded that the Yugoslav state be given
northern Albania from the Veliki Drim to Scutari.3
Under the aegis of the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes, Essad
Pasha brought his delegation to The Peace Conference in Paris. Having
submitted a memorandum to the Conference at the end of April, he called on
the legitimacy of his government, its allied status in Salonika and the
declaration of war on the Central powers. Seeking the restoration of
independent Albania within the 1913 borders, Essad Pasha demanded to be
recognized as the only legal representative of his people.4
The Peace Conference, however, did not officially discuss the fate of
Albania as it was formally considered a neutral state during the war. The
question of its future was being resolved at the Ambassadorial Conference of
the Great Powers. The diplomatic circles of the Western allies assessed that
Albania was insufficiently nationally constituted and that its development
had to be under the control of a big power. As time passed, the
representatives of the Great Powers saw the solution to the Albanian
question in granting a mandate to Italy - its troops controlled the largest
part of the Albanian territory and its diplomats persisted on the allies
meeting the provisions taken over by the 1915 London Treaty.5
Pasic evaluated that the Albanian question was to be resolved soon. He
strove to set it apart from its natural linkage with the Adriatic question,
which was considered an object of compensation. Even though France and Great
Britain paid heed to the interests of the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and
Slovenes, Pasic believed that the key role in resolving the Albanian
question would be assumed by United States President Woodraw Wilson and
Italy. He persistently maintained the stand that the Delegation of the
Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes demanded the restoration of Albania
within the 1913 borders, and that border alteration towards Serbia and
Montenegro be resolved in agreement with the tribes that lived there. If the
stand prevailed that the provisions of the London Treaty should be met,
Pasic demanded - as a Great Power was coming to the Balkans and in the
immediate vicinity of the Yugoslav state - stronger strategic borders as
compensation, "The Glavni (Veliki) Drim from the sea to the confluence of
the Crni Drim, then the Crni Drim up to a point beneath Debar, to the
confluence of the Zota river left of the Crni Drim, encompassing entire
Ohrid Lake with the watershed to remain on our side."6
Since Valona and the hinterland was being ceded to Italy under the 1915
London Treaty, as well as protectorat over central Albania, while Northern
Albania was intended for Serbia and Montenegro, Pasic proposed that the
northern Albanian tribes be given the right to self-determination, "to say
themselves if they wish to join the central Muslim Albania under the Italian
protectorat, or to form a separate small state - some sort of small 'buffer
state', or if they desire to join our state as a small autonomous
state".7 Thus from the beginning of 1919, petitions of individual
Catholic tribes demanding to be annexed to Serbia were collected at the
border belt, with backing from the military and civil authorities of the
Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes.8 This way Pasic wanted to
parry the pro-Italian delegation to the Peace Conference and deputies of the
American Albanian society "Fire", which demanded the forming of a Great
Albania inclusive of considerable regions of the former Serbian and
Montenegrin state. Thus he supported those groups of Albanian delegates in
Paris that maintained it would be the most benefitial for Albania if it came
to terms with the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes, and accepted a
border alteration to its advantage, in keeping with the wish of the local
population. Pasic set out they believed that their independence "would best
be ensured if they entered into an alliance with us, especially to set up a
customs union. The group comprises Essad Pasha's followers and those
opposing the Italian protectorat".9
On the ground, particularly those areas in Albania under occupation (by
agreement with the French army, after the Austro-Hungarian troops were
driven out) - Pishkopeja, Gornji and Donji Debar and Golo Brdo - the Serbian
military authorities, and subsequently those of the Kingdom of Serbs Croats
and Slovenes, tried to help organize Essad Pasha's followers. A committee in
Debar was entrusted with the task of setting up rule in the border areas and
preparing the conditions for Pasha's return to the country. His
commissioners exerted the strongest influence in regions between Golo Brdo
and Gornji Debar, in Podgradec and Starova while deep into the country, in
the central parts, Italian troops gradually and successfully checked Essad
Pasha's followers. Despite continuous dissipation, Essad Pasha still enjoyed
considerable support especially among the old Muslim beys, who viewed with
distrust the consolidation of Italian positions in central
Albania.10
Beside the Conference, Italy and Greece signed in late July 1919 a
secret treaty - the so-called Tittoni-Veniselos Treaty - on the division of
the Albanian territory. At the beginning of December the allied powers
recognized Italy's sovereignty over Valona and the hinterland, and offered
it a mandate to set up administration in the remaining part of Albania under
the control of the League of Nations. The same memorandum envisaged and
defined territorial compensations to the advantage of Greece. Pasic again
set out that in that case the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had to
stand by their demand for more favorable borders towards Albania. He
proposed that the region of the entire length of the Mace river to the Crni
Drim be demanded as the maximum, and the stretch along the Crni and Veliki
Drim rivers to their confluence as the minimum.11
Cooperation with Essad Pasha never ceased for a moment. The delegation
of the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes backed his demands that he be
paid war reparations as an ally to the Entante Powers and thus indirectly
acquire an allied status. Pasha's followers in the country dissipated and
gathered again, depending on current circumstances, and were unsparingly
helped in actions against those supported by the Italians. He sent messages
several times to his followers that he was returning to the country and
advised them to act in cooperation with Serbia and to decisively oppose the
Italian occupation.12
While a bitter diplomatic battle over Albania's destiny was being waged
at the Conference, a movement rose against the Italian occupation in the
country. The government in Durazzo was condemned and replaced at a national
congress of Albanian chiefs in Ljusnje in early 1920, and strong protests
were lodged with the Peace Conference and Italian parliament. The delegates
demanded the creation of a Great Albania; command over the army was
entrusted to Bairam Cur.13 Essad Pasha's followers who convened
at the People's Assembly in March made strong demands that the Italian
troops be routed. Ahmed Zogu, the interior minister in the government of
Suleyman Delvina, strove to neutralize Essad Pasha, sending to that end
special emissaries to Paris at the end of May. The delegation offered Essad
Pasha the post of prime minister, on the condition that he abandon
aspirations to rule Albania.14 At the time Bairam Cur lead a
decisive battle against the detachments of Pasha's followers. Finally, on
June 13, 1920, an Albanian student, Avni Rustemi, by order of Lushnje
government, killed Essad Pasha in front of the Continental Hotel in Paris,
believing that as an ally to Serbia and then to the Kingdom of Serbs Croats
and Slovenes, he had betrayed the interests of the Albanian people. Essad
Pasha was buried with the last honors in the Serbian army cemetery in Paris.
1 P. Pastorelli, op. cit., pp. 63-86; V. Vinaver, Italijanska akcija
protiv Jugoslavija na albansko-jugoslovenskoj granici 1919-1920. god.,
Istorijski zapisi, XXIII, 3 (1966), pp. 477-515; Z. Avramovski, Albanija
izmedju Jugoslavije i Italije, Vojnoistorijski glasnik, 3 (1984), pp.
164-166.
2 Arhiv Jugoslavije, Delegacija Kraljevine Srba Hrvata i Slovenaca na
Konferenciji mira u Parizu (later in text: AJ, Delegacija), f-27, No 296; D.
Todorovic, Jugoslavija i balkanske drzave 1918-1923, Beograd 1979, p. 50.
3 The Question of Scutari, Paris 1919; A. Mitrovic, Jugoslavija na
Konferenciji 1919-1920, Beograd 1969, pp. 169-176; Documentation in: B.
Krizman - B. Hrabak, Zapisnici sa sednice delegacije Kraljevine SHS na
mirovnoj konferenciji u Parizu 1919-1920, Beograd 1960, pp. 321-324, 365-366
4 Memoir pr sente la Conference de la Paix Paris par son Excellence
le general Essad Toptani pr sident du gouvernement d'Albanie, Paris 16 Avril
1919. (Essad Pasha's correspondence with the Serbian government and his
letter addressed to the Conference in: A3, Delegacija, f-27. The same file
contains the memoirs of Leon Krajewski dated January 2, 1919, focusing
mainly on Essad Pasha's relations with France)
5 AJ, Delegacija, f-27, No 7289; P. Pastorelli, op. cit., pp. 189-225;
D. Todorovic, op. cit, pp. 53-64. Cf P. Milo, L'attitude du Royame
serbo-croato-slovene a I'egard de I'Albanie la Conference de la paw. a
Paris (1919-1920), Studia Albanica, 1 (1989), pp. 37-57.
6 AJ, Delegacija, f-28, Pasic to Prime Minister; A. Mitrovic,
Jugoslavija na Konferenciji mira, pp.
7 Ibid
8 D. Todorovic, op. cit., pp. 49. The originals of a number of
petitions (submitted to the Peace Conference) on the annexation of the
northern Albanian tribes to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes are
kept in: AJ, Delegacija, f-28.
9 Same as footnote 49.
10 AJ, Delegacija, f-27, Nos. 5504, 5376, 6275, 6451, 6589.
11 Z. Avramovski, op. cit., p. 167.
12 AJ, Delegacija, f-27, Nos. 5504, 5376, 6275, 6451, 6589.
13 Ibid, Nos. 5484 - 5489; i. Avramovski, op. cit., pp. 169-170.
14 AJ, Delegacija, f-28, Nos. 6724, 6725.
VI
The cooperation of the Serbian government and subsequently the
government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with Essad Pasha is
an important chapter in the history of Serbo-Albanian relations. It was the
first joint effort to resolve issues of dispute between two peoples in the
Balkans to the Balkan peoples principle, in a manner that was, with certain
territorial concessions to Serbia, and subsequently to the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes, to wipe out old hotbeds of mutual conflict. The
strategic aspirations of the Serbian government to curb the influence of
Great Powers in Albania did not emanate solely from old aspirations to
permanently master northern Albania, but from actual political estimates
that under the influence and protectorat of a Great Power, the Albanian
state would pursue the course of maximalist and national claims to
territories that were inhabited, aside to the Serbian people, by Albanians
-- Kosovo, Metohia and western Macedonia.
PART THREE: RELIGION AND CIVILISATION
KOSOVO AND METOHIA: CLASH OF NATIONS OR CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
Kosovo and Metohia is the native and ancestral land of the Serbs. The
Serbian Jerusalem, which spread over an area of 10,800 km2, is covered with
a dense of about 200 medieval monasteries, churches and fortresses. Kosovo
was the scene of the famous battle held on St. Vitus Day (June 28) in 1389,
when Serbian Prince Lazar and the Turkish emir Murad both lost their lives.
The Ottoman's breakthrough into the heart of Southeast Europe also marked
the beginning of the five centuries long clash of two civilisations:
European (Christian) and Near Eastern (Islamic). The conflict, alive to this
day, is generated in the visible layer also in the clash of the two nations:
the Serbs, mainly Orthodox Christians, and the ethnic Albanians, mainly
Muslims.
The oath of Prince Lazar, derived from the New Testament tradition of
martyrdom that it was better to obtain freedom in the celestial empire than
to live humiliated in the oppression of the earthly kingdom, became during
the centuries of Turkish rule, the key of Serbian national ideology. The
Kosovo oath, woven into the national epos, became the basis upon which the
Serbs built the cult of resisting and not accepting injustice. The Kosovo
pledge was like a flag raising rebellions against the Ottomans and heading
towards its final aim: the restoration of the Serbian national state. Many a
generation of Serbs received its first notions of itself and the world by
listening to folk poems describing the Kosovo sufferings: the apocalyptical
fall of Serbian Empire, the tormentous death of Prince Lazar, the betrayal
of Vuk Brankovic, the heroism of Milos Obilic who, consciously sacrifying
himself, reached the tent of the emir and cut him down with his sword.
Withdrawing in front of the Turks towards west and the north, the only
political tradition of the Serbs was the Kosovo pledge. Through the Pec
Patriarchate, the historical traditions of the Serbs crystalized into a epic
tradition of an exceptionally national character. Even before the creation
of modern nations, the Serbs found in the Kosovo covenant firm basis for a
future national integration.
When the firsts national revolution in the Balkans broke out in Serbia
in 1804, during the Napoleonic wars, its leaders dreamed of a new battle of
Kosovo with which they would reestablish the lost empire. The historicism of
the romantic epoch only blended harmoniously with the already clearly formed
picture the Serbs had of their past and the tasks that were assigned to them
as a nation. The influence of the Kosovo covenant, functioning towards the
creation of national conscience, continued throughout the entire 19 century.
It the two Serbian states, Serbia and Montenegro, independent since 1878,
the Kosovo ideology (called also the covenant Serbian thought") was
institutionalized, conformed the needs of state nationalism: their national
program had as its final revenge of Kosovo and the restoration of the large
Serbian state in the center of the Balkans. The centuries-dreamed-of fight
with the Turks occurred in the fall of 1912. The Serbian army liberated
Kosovo in a few week, while the forces of Montenegro marched triumphantly
into Metohia. Negotiations on the final unification of the two Serbian
states were interrupted by World War I. Serbian students from Bosnia and
Herzegovina (occupied by Austria-Hungary 1878), inspired by the Kosovo idea,
like new Obilic heroes, assassinated the heir to the Habsburg throne on St.
Vitus Day in 1914, in Sarajevo.
The Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes, later named Yugoslavia, was
created on the remnants of Austria-Hungary after the Great War ended. A
union of South Slav peoples was created instead of unified Serbian national
state. The Serbs, almost all of them, found themselves within the framework
of one state for the first time in history. It should have been the
guarantee of their civil and national rights. Having underestimated the
influences of thousand-year-long civilisational differences, the Serbs,
although representing the relative majority, found themselves faced with
unsolvable problems regarding differences in religion, historical
traditions, political mentality and national aims. The case of ethnic
Albanian minority in Kosovo and Metohia is a paradigmatic example of the
impossibility of overcoming civilisational gaps caused by the erosive force
of history.
The Kosovo and Metohia were, in the moment of liberation in 1912, a
backward agricultural community with mixed Serbian and ethnic Albanian
population, devastated by the raging of tribal anarchy. Serbs, however, even
then made almost half of the entire population in spite of the huge waves of
emigration in the previous period (about 150,000 from the region Kosovo,
Metohia and the neighboring Raska and northern Macedonia). The Pan-Islamic
policy of Abdulhamid II (1878-1909) made Kosovo and Metohia, beside Armenia,
"the most unfortunate land in the world", as witnessed contemporaries from
Victor Berard and George Gaulis to H. N. Brailsford to Frederick Moore. The
Kurds were crushing the Armenians in Asia Minor, and ethnic Albanians in the
European provinces were dealing in the same way with the unreliable
Christian subjects of Sultan: Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians. The three
centuries long domination of Islamized ethnic Albanians in the Balkans,
culminated at the beginning of the 20th century. Living for centuries with
the gun in hand, the tribes of ethnic Albanians discovered in the plains of
Kosovo and Metohia the space for their further biological expansion. Islam
granted them the right to persecute Christians, lower grade citizens, and
stay unpunished. In time, a strange conviction settled itself among the
ethnic Albanians' tribes that Islam was the religion of free peoples and
Christianity that of slaves. In the Kingdom of Serbia, constitutional
monarchy with multiparty system and democratic institutions, the ethnic
Albanians mostly minded the fact that their yesterday serfs now became not
only their equals, but the ruling class in the state as well.
Islam marked strongly the national emancipation of ethnic Albanians and
defined their civilisational image. Although not fanatical believers, ethnic
Albanians have also built their national identity on the basis of Islamic
traditions, in fierce opposition to the neighboring Christian states. The
national elite from Catholic and Orthodox tribes in the north and south of
today's Albania did not succeed in imposing Europe-shaped solutions in the
fight for a national state: the Muslim majority dominated in all phases of
the development of the Albanian state. The rule of the founder of Communist
Albania, Enver Hoxha, in spite of the decree banning all religions in the
country, showed that it owed most to solutions represented in the past by
national leaders with Islamic background. His regime, created by mixing
oriental feudalism and Stalinist type of communism, was the ideological
framework accepted without hesitation as a political model for national
movement by ethnic Albanians in communist Yugoslavia.
In the inter-war period, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, by colonizing the
rich but uncultivated spaces of Kosovo and Metohia, tried not only to return
the Serbian character to these areas, but also to establish modern European
institutions, as it did in other provinces of the Yugoslav state. The ethnic
Albanian population on Kosovo found it most difficult to adjust to the civil
order in the Europe-organized state where, instead of status of absolute
privilege during the Ottoman rule, they received only civil and political
equality and with the former rayah at that-people whom they had only
recently treated as serfs.
World War II showed that the national breach developed from the
religious one: after driving the colonists out and burning down their homes,
the ethnic Albanians, mostly Muslims, set fires to and robbed many Orthodox
churches, and Orthodox cemeteries were constantly desecrated.
The development of political circumstances in communist Yugoslavia
suited the further ethnic Albanians' national emancipation. Biologically
exhausted (1,200,000 in World War I in Serbia only, and at least that many
in World War II, now coming mostly from Vojna Krajina in Croatia,
Montenegro, Herzegovina and Bosnia), and, after the brutal destruction of
the civil class, politically decapitated, the Serbs became pawns in the
hands of the new regime. Accepting Yugoslavia again as an inevitable
solution to their national question, the Serbs did not realize for a long
time that a national integration of other nations was going on in the
communist Yugoslavia and almost entirely to their disadvantage. The Kingdom
of Yugoslavia was organized as a centralist state of French type. The
communists on the other hand thought that centralism in that "Versailles
creation" was the most typical expression of the "Greater Serbian hegemony".
Tearing apart the political domination of Serbs in Yugoslavia, the
communist created several federal units dividing Serbian lands after the
World War II. The communist authorities in 1945 forbade with a special
decree all forcibly moved out colonists to return to Kosovo, Metohia and
Macedonia and their estates were mostly confiscated and afterwards granted
to emigrants from Albania. The ethnic Albanians, however, in the divided
Serbian state, have been given not only schools and cultural institutions
but full political power. The communists were making amends for the sins of
the "Greater Serbian hegemony" in the inter-war period.
During the World War II, the majority of ethnic Albanians from
Yugoslavia accepted, under the wing of fascist Italy, the creation of the
satellite "Greater Albania" and thus cooperated in large numbers with the
fascist and Nazi military authorities, unmistakably showing that they were
in favor of the unification with Albania; notwithstanding this, their
secessionist tendencies were completely revitalized after the war. A plan
existed to form a Balkan federation (Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania under
the leadership of Tito), and that is why Tito supported the large
colonization of Albanians from Albania and promised Kosovo to Enver Hoxha if
he entered the joint federal state. After the split with USSR and Cominform
in 1948, Albania, turned into Yugoslavia's toughest enemy. The relations
were normalized as Yugoslavia's insistence only in 1971, when an unusually
lively and wide exchange of ideas and functionaries began between Kosovo and
Albania. Under auspices of Albanian regime a 19th century type of national
romanticism mixed with Albanian version of Marxism-Leninism, religious
intolerance and almost racial prejudice towards Slavs became the essence of
the ethnic Albanian's national movement in Kosovo and Metohia. Ideological
and theocratic monism along with the strong tribal traditions as heritage of
Ottoman empire fit well into a ideological monism of totalitarian ideology
of communist Albania.
Kosovo and Metohia has already then been an autonomous province on its
way towards acquiring the attributes of a state within Yugoslav federation.
The confederalization of communist Yugoslavia, finalized with the 1974
Constitution, excluded both provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina) from Serbian
authority, turning them into state entities with almost independent
governments. In order to legalize formally the Albanization of the Province,
the ethnic Albanian communist leadership threw out of its name the word
Metohia (of Greek origin meaning church-owned land). It turned out that the
hundreds of attacks the ethnic Albanians made upon Orthodox believers,
priests monks and nuns, churches and monasteries, and the annexation of
monastery property in the post-war period, were manifestations of centuries
deep religious and national intolerance.
The restoration of religious life of the Muslims in Kosovo and Metohia
was conducted parallely with the Albanization. New mosque sprang up (about
700 mosques were built in Yugoslavia under communist rule, more than during
the several centuries long Ottoman dominion; at the same time, about 500
Catholic and 300 Orthodox churches were erected); the Muslim clergy's
primary demand from the believers was for them to have as many children as
possible. The highest birth-rate in Europe derived also from religious
traditions of ethnic Alb