open Democracy News Analysis - Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity , Robert Elsie - Comments

Not logged in on "Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity "

Not logged in — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:41:51 +0000

nope name siptar are people who lived in Kosova ,he has it right in article.

Brian Day on "Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity "

Brian Day — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:12:18 +0000

Isa Blumi views pre-conflict Kosovo as an ‘amalgamation of autonomous communities’ consisting of hundreds of multi-ethnic villages and towns, which were largely politically marginalized by elite based in Pristina. Rural Kosovo had resisted the Serbian state’s territorial expansion and domination since 1920 through to the 1990s because Belgrade wanted to divide the people along racial lines through exaggerating racial difference. Blumi refers to Ger Duijzings’ ethnographic case studies to illustrate the fact that rural populations (mainly consisting of Albanians) traded with Serbs, Bosniaks, Gorans and Roma, and often lived in the same village and prayed at the same holy site. (See Blumi, I. (2003) ‘Ethnic Borders to a Democratic Society in Kosova: The UN’s Identity Card’, in Bieber, F. and Daskalovski, Z., eds. (2003) Understanding the War in Kosovo, Frank Cass, London and Portland, Oregon, USA, pp. 217-236.)

Duijzings conducted a series of ethnographic case studies in Kosovo during the 1980s up to the beginning of the conflict in 1999. He describes the region as a ‘poor, peripheral and conflict-ridden society, where the central authority of the state has been nominal for much of its modern history’. Kosovo consists of a majority rural population whereby the extended family acts as an economic safety net, and provides group solidarity in a harsh and highly competitive environment. (See Duijzings, G. (2000) Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo, Hurst & Company, London, pp. 6-7.) Duijzings’ analysis supports Blumi’s assertion that there was not a single ‘Albanian’ community or a ‘Serb’ community in pre-conflict Kosovo.

Violence in March 2004 appears to have been coordinated by Albanian extremists, resulting in the forced expulsion of every single Serb, Roma and Ashkali in dozens of locations across Kosovo after their homes were burned, from the capital city to small towns and villages. After two days of rioting on March 17 and 18, at least 550 homes, 19 people had been killed, 954 wounded, 27 Orthodox churches and monasteries had been burned, and approximately 4,100 Serbs, Roma, Ashkali, and other non-Albanian minorities displaced. There were at least thirty-three major riots across Kosovo, involving about 51,000 participants. There are hardly any Serbs living in the capital, Pristina, except for a few isolated families. Ethnic Albanian protests in Pristina on March 17 appear to have been well-organized. (See Human Rights Watch, http://hrw.org/reports/2004/kosovo0704/7.htm#_Toc77665988.

Analysis of the Albanian violence against Roma could lead the reader to conclude that Albanian nationalists and/or extremists intended to destroy the Roma cultural identity and remove all trace of their existence from the national consciousness, even if they are unable to physically expel all Roma. However, there is no evidence that any political party associated with the Albanian community is responsible for the organizing of violence against non-Albanian minorities.

Heartfield on "Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity "

Heartfield — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:19:22 +0000

Robert Elsie meanders around the central point that the Kosovars do not want to be a part of Albania - a rational calculation on their part - but a part of the EuroEmpire. Independence is the one political programme that makes no sense to them, so they prefer to be assimilated into the EU Protectorate.

ermir on "Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity "

ermir — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:50:39 +0000

Dear Dionisos, I thought that Dionis was the god of Vine and not the god of Drunk, please stop drinking and writting noicence"

DIONYSOS on "Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity "

DIONYSOS — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:40:02 +0000

All about ethics which are living in Valkan don't depends any Use force on its grand's. The mothers here haw cries for a lot of son war' s lost all the cencuries behind. We hope all Europe to be more independent from USE, bombing capital companies, and death level civilalisation of their.
Kosovo needs jobs, electricite and food not street of narcotics, casino, and turkey mafia business.
http://e-epiloges-dionysos.blogspot.com

ianniscarras on "Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity "

ianniscarras — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:17:33 +0000

The article limits the range and importance of Albanian activities in my country, Greece, large areas of which were Albanian speaking until rather recently.

Thus it is well known that two of the three islands that contributed their merchant ships to the Greek war of independence were entirely Albanian speaking (Spetses and Hydra, the Greek speaking island being Psara). In the 18th century the area of Athens was Albanian speaking in its majority. And the Greek regiment of the Russian army in Crimea, was more usually called the Albanian regiment. Even through the 19th century commands in the Greek navy were frequently issued in Albanian.

The close interaction between Greek and Albanian speakers, not to mention the speakers of other Balkan tongues had characterised the region for much of its history. The movement of populations that we have witnessed in this last decade, Albanians for example settling in Greece and Italy, provides reason for hope that Greek, Albanian and other identities in the region will continue to merge and diverge in a multitude of creative, and unpredictable, ways.

Iannis Carras, Athens, Greece.

Edli on "Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity "

Edli — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:45:15 +0000

Good article. One thing I don't agree though. The name Shqiptar is how we albanians call ourself. (Shqipe=Hawk) and our country Shqiperia. Albania is alien name to us. Is the name the world uses for us. So Siptari is obviosly not derogatory. The Serbs can't pronounce Sh and Q so they say Siptari.

Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity , Robert Elsie

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:53:09 +0000

The issue of national identity always has the capacity to provoke argument and debate, especially perhaps among peoples who share many similarities yet who are divided by political boundaries. The Albanians of Kosova (the territory is spelled thus in its Albanian form) are one of those groups who were and are understandably obsessed with issues relating to their ethnic and national identity. For many years, they knew what there were not. They never liked to be called Yugoslavs, though for decades they had Yugoslav passports and benefited from freedoms which people in Albania itself could only have dreamed of. And they were certainly not Serbs, though much of the world regarded their country simply as a province of Serbia, indeed some still do.

Robert Elsie is a scholar and translator of Albanian literature. He runs a website on the subject: www.elsie.de

But what and who then are the Kosovars, citizens now of the independent state declared on 17 February 2008? Are they simply Albanians, i.e. the same people as the inhabitants of the Republic of Albania, or are they Kosovar Albanians, a special breed? Confusion over this matter gave rise before and during the Kosova war of 1998-99 to the rather denigrating term "ethnic Albanian". I say "denigrating" because the term was imposed upon the Kosovar Albanians from outside and was used almost universally during and after the war, whereas the equivalent term "ethnic Serb" for the Serb inhabitants of Kosova never really took hold - thus implicitly suggesting that the country was, indeed, simply part of Serbia.

Also in openDemocracy on Kosovo and the region:

Peter Lippman, "Kosovo: approaching independence or chaos?" (30 October 2006)

TK Vogel, "Kosovo: a break in the ice" (2 February 2007)

Marko Attila Hoare, "Kosovo: the Balkans' last independent state" (12 February 2007)

Vicken Cheterian, "Serbia after Kosovo" (18 April 2007)

Eric Gordy, "Serbia's Kosovo claim: much ado about..." (2 October 2007)

Paul Hockenos, "Kosovo's contested future" (16 November 2007)

Juan Garrigues, "Kosovo's troubled victory" (7 December 2007)

Ginanne Brownell, "Kosovo's Serbs in suspension" (10 December 2007)

Mary Kaldor, "The Balkans-Caucasus tangle: states and citizens" (9 January 2008)

John O'Brennan, "Kosovo: the hour of Europe" (14 January 2008)

Timothy William Waters, "Kosovo: the day after" (18 February 2008)

In the years of struggle on the part of the Kosovar Albanians for the right to be Albanian, talk of a specific Kosovar identity was very much taboo. In the political context of the period, it was seen as tantamount to driving a wedge between the Albanians in Kosova and those in Albania, thus dividing and weakening the Albanian nation to the benefit of an expansive Serbia.

The Kosovars are particularly sensitive to the subject, not least because of intrigues by the one-time communist authorities in Belgrade. In order to maintain its rule over a region which was not primarily Serb-inhabited, Belgrade after 1945 fostered two different terms in the Serbian language to refer to the Albanians: the Albanci (denoting the inhabitants of the Republic of Albania) and the Šiptari (the Albanian-speaking inhabitants of Kosova and the rest of former Yugoslavia, and a word not without negative connotations). Official circles in Belgrade had deftly divided one ethnic group into two, as part of an attempt to stifle any latent desire for their reunification.

One world, two worlds

The western world only really discovered the Albanians in the 1990s as a result of the Yugoslav wars and ethnic conflicts, and of the 1997 uprising in Albania. Newspapers and television reports at the time presented the Albanians in two varieties - not Ghegs and Tosks (that is, northern Albanians and southern Albanians, as dialectologists and ethnographers are wont to divide them) but actual Albanians and in Kosovar or "ethnic" Albanians.

Such issues of identity, and national identity in particular, are complex, here as elsewhere; definitive judgment is rarely possible, and certainly not in a short article. A basic question illustrates the point: are the Kosovars the same people as the inhabitants of the Republic of Albania?

On the surface it seems clear: yes, of course, they are. They are fundamentally of the same ethnicity; they speak the same language, despite substantial dialect differences; and they hold a certain community of values. They thus share most of the basic attributes of what constitutes a nation. Anthony D Smith defined this as follows: "A human group sharing (usually by birth) an historical territory, common myths and historical memories, often a common language, a mass public common culture, a perception of threat and common legal rights and duties for all members."

So far, so good. Yet, if we are to seek a fuller answer to this question, it must be what the Germans would call jein: that is, yes and no.

Paulin Kola, the BBC analyst, indicates the character of the issue at stake when he writes: "having been at the receiving end of repeated invasions by countries more powerful than themselves, the Albanians remained fragmented and unable to establish a unifying central authority that would command their collective allegiance" (see The Search for Greater Albania, C Hurst, 2003).

Albania, in the ethnic sense of territory in southeastern Europe inhabited primarily by the Albanians, was united for about five centuries as part of the Ottoman empire. With the final collapse of the moribund empire in the first Balkan war of 1912-13, Kosova (which had an Albanian majority population at the time) was invaded and conquered by the Serb Third Army under King Petar I Karadjordjevic. Albania itself, in the current political sense, had rather chaotically declared its independence in November 1912 and managed to gain international recognition at the London conference in summer 1913. Since that time, the Albanians have been living in two different states; though it would be more accurate to say six different states, because there are also substantial Albanian communities in Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Greece (to say nothing of old and new communities in Italy). But their core settlement was in the two entities where the Albanians were the absolute majority in 1913 and have remained so to the present day.

Behind the moon

In 1918-39, the end of one world war to the start of another, Albanian culture evolved in two different worlds. In this period, and in particular during the reign of King Zog (1928-39), the Albanians of the motherland managed, somewhat sluggishly, to develop a solid national culture, primitive though it may have been by European standards. For their part, the Kosovar Albanians were in this period subjected to an unprecedented level of ethnic discrimination as unwanted guests in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and were unable to advance politically or culturally. Public use of the Albanian language in Kosova (Albanian-language school education) was just as forbidden in the "first Yugoslavia" as it had been in the Ottoman empire.

The brief reunification of Albania and Kosova under the auspices of fascist Italy during the second world war did bring some relief. An ephemeral Albanian-language administration was created, elementary and secondary schools were opened and a number of young Kosovars received scholarships to study abroad. If many Kosovars welcomed Italian and Nazi German occupation, it was certainly not because of any innate love of fascism. It was simply because, for most people, Italian and German occupation was infinitely preferable to Serb occupation; a fact which reflects the nature of their experience under the latter.

But Kosova was returned to Serb rule after 1945 and was encompassed, against the will of the majority of its population, into socialist Yugoslavia, where it remained until the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. There was, however, a short period in 1946-47 (after the communist victory in Tirana) when a modicum of contact between Albania and Kosova existed. Indeed, plans were underway at the time for a political merger not only of Albania and Kosova, but of Albania and Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav dinar was introduced as the national currency of Albania, and the Serbo-Croatian language was made compulsory in all Albanian schools.

However, the great split between Tito and Stalin - and the choice of Albania's leader Enver Hoxha to ally his country firmly with Moscow against Belgrade - radically changed the political situation. From summer 1948 to the 1990s, the border between Albania and Kosova was hermetically sealed; the Berlin wall was, by comparison, a sieve. Kosova Albanians were still being imprisoned for visiting Albania without a Serb "exit visa" as late as 1998.

The obvious result of this imposed division and long period of separation between Albania and Kosova was a cultural dichotomy: the creation of two different Albanian cultures, and, one might almost postulate, two different Albanian nations. The isolationist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania, faithful for almost half a century to the primitive and inhumane system of Stalin and his successors, wiped out the middle class in the late 1940s and achieved nothing over the following decades but economic and cultural stagnation. The population lived in ignorance, fear and misery. In material terms, they were deprived of all but the bare essentials needed to stay alive. Indeed one can do little but marvel at how they managed to survive as a people at all.

Most aspects of traditional Albanian culture were destroyed, in particular in the 1960s. Decades of communist revolution, purges and terror demolished virtually everything Albania had once been. Even today, Albania is still largely a victim of the decades of social and cultural isolation it suffered from the rest of the world. In such circumstances, the population of Albania had no time or energy to give a thought to Kosova. For most of those with no close family ties, Kosova was somewhere behind the moon.

The mountain bridge

Kosova for its part, while always the poorhouse of Yugoslavia, made some economic progress and by the 1970s had attained a certain degree of prosperity - in modest Albanian terms. However, with the exception of the 1974-81 period, Kosovar society was under constant and mostly destructive pressure from Serbia, politically and culturally; as a result, it withdrew into itself, remaining hermetic and traditional.

The Kosovar Albanians knew little about what was going on in Stalinist Albania. It was the country of their dreams, their hopes and their aspirations, and there was no place in these dreams for reality. They naively regarded their lot as worse than that of the motherland and were devastated in the late 1990s when they were forced to accept the fact that they had fared much better under Serbia than their brethren had under Enver Hoxha.

In the early 1990s, during and after the slow implosion of the communist regime in Tirana, the first contacts between the two halves of the Albanian nation after decades of separation were coloured by much prejudice. Some of the first Kosovars to arrive in Tirana were carpetbaggers from the diaspora in western Europe, there to make a quick buck. They helped introduce a free- market economy, but with it corruption and crime. The local Albanians reacted with shock and hostility at the new capitalist practices, and viewed the incomers as foreigners. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that in the first half of the 1990s, Kosovar Albanians were much more welcome in Belgrade than they were in Tirana. Even the substantial communities of Albanian emigrants that then arose in western Europe remained staunchly divided. Albanians from Albania and Albanians from Kosova did not mix publicly or privately, and encountered one another most often with latent or open hostility. In the 1990s, there was certainly not one Albanian identity, but two.

The turning-point came after the beginning of the war in March-June 1999 between Nato and the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic for control of Kosova, when about half a million of the approximately 800,000 Kosovars expelled (in many cases from their burning homes) by Serb militias sought refuge in neighbouring Albania. Though Albania was still very poor and backward, and the people were not overly predisposed to receiving "asylum-seekers", they took the Kosovars in as best they could. It was thus in these three months of 1999 that the Albanians finally got to know one another and, despite major misunderstandings - both linguistic and cultural - began to realise that they were one nation. Since that time, with the open border, Albanians have been growing together. Contacts - cultural, political, economic and individual - have flourished as never before in the history of the Albanian nation.

The tortuous course of Albanian history cemented two distinct identities, and they will no doubt continue to exist for some time. But they will grow together whether they want to or not. Kosova's political independence will now offer Albanians there an opportunity to achieve their own self-definition in light of the history they have lived through.

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