Serbian-Albanian conflict

The Serbian-Albanian conflict is a struggle between the Serbs and Albanians that lasted through the 20th century. The conflict has been characterised by repeated episodes of fighting (most notably during the First World War, the Second World War and the Kosovo War) and ethnic discrimination by whichever side happened to be dominant at the time.

History of the conflict

Middle ages

Sinan Pasha, an Albanian born Ottoman military commander ordered, in 1595, that the relics of Saint Sava, the founder of the independent Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian state in the 12th century, be taken from their depository and burned as a revenge for Serbs siding with the Habsburgs in the preceding border skirmishes. Only the saint's right hand which was kept elsewhere remains.

1913 to 1946

The border between Albania and its neighbours was delineated in 1912-1913 following the dissolution of most of the Ottoman Empire's territories in the Balkans. The borders chosen for the new state did not correspond to the ethnic composition of the region, leaving hundreds of thousands of Albanians outside Albania. This population was largely divided between Montenegro and Serbia (which then included what is now the Republic of Macedonia). A substantial number of Albanians thus found themselves under Serbian rule.

The initial sparks of the first Balkan War in 1912 were ignited by the Albanian uprising between 1908-10 which were directed at opposing the Young Turk policies of consolidation of the Ottoman Empire. Following the eventual weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria declared war and sought to aggrandize their respective boundaries on the remaining territories of the Empire. Albania was thus invaded by Serbia in the North and Greece in the south, restricting the country to only a patch of land around the southern costal city of Vlora. In 1912 Albania, still under foreign occupation declared its independence and with the aid of Austria-Hungary, the Great Powers drew its present borders leaving more than half of the Albanian population outside the new country.

In 1914, Serbia was invaded by Austria-Hungary. During the autumn of 1915 its army, accompanied by a host of civilian refugees, was forced into retreat in the face of the Austrian invasion. It embarked on a two-month forced march across Kosovo, Montenegro and Albania to the Albanian port of Durrës, from where it was evacuated by the Allies. Along the way it was repeatedly attacked by local Albanians; many more Serbian soldiers and civilians died of starvation, with 150,000 fatalities by the time the host had reached the sea. (See Serbian Campaign (World War I) for more information on this campaign.)

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was established following the war. As the kingdom's original name - the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes - indicated, the Albanians of Yugoslavia were not regarded as a constitutive nation of the new state but rather a mere ethnic minority. Official discrimination and efforts to dilute the numbers of the Albanian population led to the formation of anti-Serbian groups, the so-called "Kacac".

In the Second World War, Kosovo Albanians rebelled against Axis-occupied Serbia and threw in their lot with Italian-controlled Albania. Kosovo and parts of what is now Macedonia were annexed to a "Greater Albania". Other Albanians joined the Partisans of Josip Broz Tito, seeking to obtain equal status for Kosovo in a future federation. During this period, Serbs resident in Kosovo were subjected to active discrimination by the Italian/Albanian authorities and many were expelled from the territory.

1946 to 1999

From 1946, when the constitution of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia (later the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) was established, the Albanians of Yugoslavia were split between two new entities: the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo and the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. The Albanians were again established as "national minorities" rather than "nations". The Yugoslav government imposed a strongly repressive policy, carried out by the UDBA secret police under the direction of Aleksandar Ranković. Tito, and his reight hand man, the Slovene Edvard Kardelj, recognized that Kosovo would be a thorn in the Yugoslavian side, and therefore it should be given back to Albania.Fact|date=October 2007 Nevertheless, this promise (to the Albanian communist leader, Enver Hoxha was never materialized, because, according to Tito, the "Serbian element would not be able to accept it."

After Ranković fell from power in 1966, the position of the Yugoslav Albanians improved somewhat. Mass demonstrations by Albanian students in 1974 led to the province obtaining greater autonomy under the rule of the local (Albanian-dominated) Communist Party. However, this led to discrimination of local Serbs. This, combined with Kosovo's enduring poverty, prompted thousands of Serbs to move out and led to the province becoming even more predominantly Albanian-populated. This led in turn to a revival of Serbian nationalism and the genocide or ethnic cleansing that was being perpetrated against Serbs.

The problems of Kosovo's Serbs were instrumental in the rise of Slobodan Milošević in the late 1980s, who used the issue as a stepping-stone to the Presidency of Serbia. In 1989 he greatly reduced the autonomy of Kosovo and imposed a harshly repressive regime that was widely criticised by foreign governments and international human rights groups. The province remained quiet during the early phase of the Yugoslav Wars, but by 1996 Albanian radicals had established the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to fight for an independent Kosovo. Attacks against the Serbian security forces and civilian targets followed, and by 1998 the province was in a state of widespread low-level war. The Kosovo War of 1999 resulted in NATO forces expelling Serbian and Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo.

1999-present

Since June 1999, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations. Approximately half the Serbian population of Kosovo, or up to 200,000 people, fled or was expelled at the end of the war, with many of the remainder confined to enclaves surrounded by majority ethnic-Albanian territory. There have been repeated outbreaks of ethnic violence, notably the 2004 unrest in Kosovo. Kosovo's Serbs are widely reported to have been subjected to acts of violence and discrimination, and their future remains uncertain.

Open conflict between Albanians and Serbs broke out again between 1999 and 2001 in the demilitarized Preševo area of Serbia proper. Albanian radicals, aided by former members of the KLA, established the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac (UCPMB) with the aim of forcing the annexation of the area to Kosovo. The conflict was, however, on a much smaller scale and intensity than in Kosovo, taking the form of gun and bomb attacks against mainly civilian targets; the worst such incident was the Gracanica bus bombing in February 2001. The conflict was ended when the area was re-militarized, with the consent of NATO, and the UCPMB rebels were allowed to disarm and disband under a NATO-run amnesty.

Attitudes

It is not surprising, given the history of conflict between the two peoples, that relations between them have been and still are extremely troubled. Observers have noted a frequent tendency on the Serbian side to refer to Albanians as "Shiptars", a term regarded by Albanians as derogatory (although being a direct transliteration of the Albanian word, shqiptari), and on the Albanian side to refer to Serbians as "Shkije", a term regarded by Serbians as derogatory as it translates to "sub-human". [Louis Sell, "Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia", p. 41 (Duke University Press, 2003)]

Even before the Kosovo War, the two communities led largely separate lives with little intermarriage or social contact. Opinion polls carried out in the late 1980s and 1990s found that Albanians were seen by Serbs in an extremely negative light. A 1994 survey found that only 33% of Serbs would agree to socialize with Albanians; 52% accepted Albanians living in the same country as them, 48% accepted them as co-workers, 40% as friends, 22% as leaders and 22% as a relative. A 1997 survey conducted in Kosovo found that Serbs regarded Albanians as united (62%), xenophobic (55%), sly (46%), backward (37%) and rough-mannered (20%). Fewer than 10% judged Albanians to be cultured, civilized, clean or friendly towards other peoples. The same survey found that Albanians were equally distrustful of Serbs, describing them as xenophobic (81%), sly (52%), pushy (39%), selfish (27%) and rough-mannered (26%). [Lazar Nikolić, "Ethnic Prejudices and Discrimination: The Case of Kosovo", in "Understanding the War in Kosovo", ed. Florian Bieber, Zidas Daskalovski, pp. 55-56. (Routledge, 2003)] It is safe to assume that the experience of the Kosovo War has resulted in opinions hardening on both sides.

Additional Info

The ethnic conflict between the Serbs and Albanians stems back to ancient times. It corresponds to the arrival of the slavic populations in the Balkan penisula around 600 A.C. Being the Albanians a different ethnic group the albanian language, customs, uses and religious approach was totally different regarding the uses and culture of the slavic populations. Albanians used to have strong ties with the Roman Catholic Church, ties that even now days are identified in a significant Albanian Catholic community in Albania. During the Ottoman dominion the Albanians faced the risk of being assimilated by the slavic populations, thus became muslims to avoid identifing themselves as slavic and certanly won by such a move a privileged position inside the Ottoman administrate. Of course later on the conflict was depicted as a religious dispute between Muslims (modern day Albanians) and the Orthodox Christians (modern day Serbians). Even in the modern times it is easy to notice that the conflict grew up on "ethnic differences", land disputes, political control, and the acquisition of wealth. This ethnic dispute eventually led to asymmetrical-like warfare on the part of the Serbs, who were able to gain political control in Kosovo, despite being the minority. In order to combat this asymmetrical-like warfare and discrimination on the part of the Serbs, the Albanians formed guerilla groups to fight for their rights and protection. The conflict became so severe that the UN Security forces intervened in 1999 in order to bring stability to the region. The UN intervention, along with U.S. assistance, brought greater awareness of the situation around the world and for the first time in history, the Serbian Albanian conflict became an issued seriously discussed in today’s popular culture. The future of the conflict is is definitely uncertain. Tension between the two groups today remains high, and the possibility of true peace or even co-existence appears to be improbable.

History of Conflict: With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the borders in the Balkan region were delineated in such a way that many Albanians found themselves under the political control of the Serbs. These border divisions at the beginning of the 20th Century would set the stage for the present day Serbian-Albanian conflict. After World War II, the government of Yugoslavia (controlled by the Serbs) instituted “official discrimination” against the Albanians who were considered “national minorities”. Under the direction of Yugoslavian leader, Aleksander Rankovic, the UDBA (state security directorate) was formed as a type of secret police. The official purpose of the UDBA was to gather intelligence for Yugoslavia (similar to the CIA), and its unofficial purpose was to strongly repress Albanians in the region. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it appeared as if the Albanians would obtain autonomy and form an independent nation in Kosovo; however, this hope was short lived when Slobodan Milosevic became the President of Serbia. President Milosevic was considered by many in the international community as leading a harshly repressive regime. Milosevic’s harsh discrimination against the Albanians in Serbia led to the formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1996 by Albanian radicals. The KLA carried out guerilla like warfare against Serbian Security forces and Serbian civilians. The conflict escalated to such an extent that the UN Security Council was forced to intervene in 1999. The UN/U.S. intervention in Kosovo led to greater knowledge of the Serbian-Albanian conflict among the international community.

The Conflict in Popular Culture: As CNN, and other news networks, aired footage of the violence taking place in Serbia/Kosovo awareness of this ethnic conflict quickly became a topic of debate and study. For the first time in history the Serbian-Albanian conflict received major international attention. This led scholars and authors from the U.S. and around the world to study the causes of the conflict. These studies led many to conclude that the main source of the conflict was a result of the strong promotion of nationalism by the Serbian government, and a neo-fascist view of the Albanians as a scapegoat for Serbia’s economic problems. Author and editor, James Mattil, states in his article that, “Extreme Serbian nationalism has been promoted to unify a Serbian-controlled, Yugoslav state, suffering severe economic and political decline, while casting ethnic-Albanians in Kosovo as scapegoats” (flashpoints.info). The conflict in Kosovo has also received attention in an unlikely area of modern day popular culture, children’s books. In her book written for adolescents, “Girl of Kosovo”, author Alice Mead gives a detailed account of an eleven year old girl’s experience during the Kosovo conflict in 1999. It is a graphic depiction of the horrors of the conflict, and is successful in informing young people of international ethnic conflicts.

The Future of the Conflict: The UN’s intervention has seemed to be moderately successful in removing Serbian forces from predominately Albanian areas of Kosovo; however, the ethnic diversity and potential for violence still remains. There appears to be little to no chance for real peace or even co-existence between the two groups. In a scholarly article, “The Balkan Reconstruction Report”, author Denisa Kostovicova describes life after the 1999 intervention in Kosovo, and interviews various prominent political actors from both sides.Kostovicova asserts that while the violence has subsided somewhat, tensions between the two still remain high. She attributes these tensions to the silence between the two groups. It appears as if leaders from both groups vehemently refuse to discuss peace. She claims this silence substantially hinders the UN’s efforts for co-existence, “Until that silence is broken, multiculturalism will remain stripped of its true meaning in the United Nations-administered province.”Her article goes on to describe interviews from both sides. On the Serbian side, a political figure who did not wish to be named states, “…all political and state structures in Serbia will fight with all means to regain control over Kosovo.” And an Albanian representative, who also wished to remain anonymous said, “…simply, they hate us, co-existence is impossible.”In summation, the Serbian-Albanian conflict is one that stems from decades and perhaps even centuries of ethnic intolerance, and culminated at the end of the 20th Century, requiring international intervention. This international intervention has led to greater awareness and understanding of the conflict around the world. While the UN, and other outside parties, push for peace, reconciliation, and co-existence it appears as if both Albanians and Serbs refuse to even discuss the matter. Until both parties can come to some type of agreement, the probability of future violence between the two will remain prevalent.

References

Further reading

*cite journal
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author = Nebojša Vladisavljević
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year = 2002
month = July
title = Nationalism, Social Movement Theory and the Grass Roots Movement of Kosovo Serbs, 1985-1988
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pages = 771–790
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doi = 10.180/09668130220147047
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