[Alb-Educ] Ihsan Toptani (1908-2001)

[Mithat Gashi]

An interesting article about a wellknwon member of Albanian diaspora in
the 
UK, taken from Albanian UK, send by "Besim Gerguri" 
<besim at gerguri.freeserve.co.uk>

Imer Brisha

_________________________

>Ihsan Bey Toptani
>01 June 2001
>       Ihsan Toptani, journalist and political activist: born Tirana 25 
>August 1908; died London 28 May 2001.
>Ihsan Bey Toptani was the last direct male descendant of the great
Toptani 
>family who dominated the Albanian capital for 150 years, and the last 
>living man to hold the rank of Ottoman bey to reside in Britain. But 
>despite these extraordinary and archaic origins, and after a prominent
role 
>in the Second World War, he lived a modest life in south London in the
last 
>40 years, a victim of the post-war Communist victory in Albania, and was 
>well known as a leader of the Albanian émigré world in London.
>
>The Toptani family were in many ways the founders of contemporary Tirana, 
>and played a crucial role in the political intrigues surrounding the 
>foundation of modem Albania in 1913. His most notorious ancestor was Esad 
>Pasha Toptani, the mentally disturbed traitor who plotted with the venal 
>Serbs and Greeks against the fledgling state.
>
>The family's great period was the early and mid-19th century when the 
>decline in the Ottoman system allowed considerable freedom of action to
the 
>beys, who lived more or less as feudal princelings on their estates. The 
>Toptanis owned much of central Tirana, including the land on which the 
>modern parliament stands, and had farms and forests in the wild lands 
>beyond the Dalti mountains to the east of the capital. His father, Abdi
Bey 
>Toptani, was active in the late-19th-century renaissance of Albanian 
>literature and nationalism, and then became a cabinet minister after the 
>independence declaration at Vlora in 1913.
>
>At that time, little Ihsan was a boy of five years of age, and after 
>elementary schooling in Tirana he was sent away to Austria, Albania's 
>traditional friend among the European powers, for his later education. He 
>impressed his teachers with his intellectual ability, and had science, 
>politics and philosophy as his main interests. He was also a skilled 
>photographer, and good at languages, and was awarded a doctorate in 
>political sciences at Graz University.
>
>Returning to Tirana, he found the country being drawn increasingly into
the 
>maw of the Italian Fascists, and the old dominance that the Toptanis had 
>enjoyed in Tirana society was being eroded by the brash new men who had 
>allied themselves with the Italians. He was involved in a short, unhappy 
>marriage arranged by his family. King Zog was never very keen on the 
>Toptanis, and Ihsan lacked a political party to advance his interests.
>
>On the outbreak of the Second World War, as Albania was used as a base
for 
>invasion of Greece, Toptani joined the resistance as an independent 
>nationalist, and was in contact with the British Special Operations 
>Executive (SOE), who were beginning operations to help the anti-Axis
forces 
>in Albania. This was not a simple relationship, however, and he also had 
>contact with the Axis occupiers, and later wrote quite sympathetically of 
>those Albanians who had been active collaborators and who had seen the
best 
>interests of their country as resting with a German victory in the war.
>
>In the complex intrigues within the Resistance, his finest moment was at 
>the Toptani estate hill village of Mukje in August 1943, when he presided 
>at talks held between the Communist-dominated National Liberation
Council, 
>led by Enver Hoxha and the rightist Balli Kombetar. Both sides agreed to 
>fight for an independent Albania, including Kosovo, but within days of
its 
>being signed it was rejected by the Communists as a result of policy 
>differences over Kosovo. Toptani always believed that Enver Hoxha had
been 
>a traitor to the national cause and had worked with Tito's envoy,
Svetozar 
>Vukmanovic (General Tempo), after this key meeting to destroy the
agreement 
>and betray the Kosovars into Yugoslav servitude.
>
>A period of activity in the resistance followed and he spent a good deal
of 
>time working with Julian (later Lord) Amery and other SOE agents who had 
>been dropped into Albania by SOE HQ in Cairo, and were ultimately 
>unsuccessful in uniting the northern feudal lords and Zogist sympathisers 
>against Enver Hoxha and the Partisans. This period is described in
Amery's 
>controversial book Sons of the Eagle (1948).
>
>Toptani was evacuated to Italy after the Communist victory, and began 
>working with the Americans, obtaining a staff job as a journalist on 
>Newsweek. When the CIA and MI6 began to try to organise the overthrow of 
>Enver Hoxha's regime, Toptani set up the liberation committee in Greece, 
>and was responsible for recruiting émigrés into the force that was
trained 
>by David Smiley and others in MI6 on Malta to confront the Communists. It 
>is generally believed that the Soviet spy Kim Philby, then a senior 
>official in the Secret Intelligence Service, played an important part in 
>betraying this operation to Hoxha.
>
>After the collapse of this operation, Toptani returned to Britain, and 
>found work in the BBC Monitoring Service at Caversham. In 1958 he became
a 
>British citizen, and worked in the Anglo-Albanian Association for the 
>freedom of his country. His fellow ex-intelligence officer Harry 
>Hodgkinson, the biographer of Scanderbeg, was a close friend and 
>Hodgkinson's death in 1994 affected him. Topkani was very happy to see
the 
>end of Communism, and returned to Albania after a 47-year interval to see 
>the return of most of the family lands.
>
>He saw the end of Communism as opening the doors to the reunification of 
>the Albanian lands, and, although in his late eighties, he learnt to use
a 
>computer, and soon all his friends began to receive his e-mails with 
>material calling for the liberation of Kosovo from Serbian oppression.
>
>Ihsan Toptani was a man of strong views, but he had great charm and 
>kindness and tolerated differences of opinion over historical 
>interpretation. A visit to his Streatham flat was a happy event. He 
>suffered from leukaemia for many years but although of a slight frame had
a 
>typical Albanian physical resilience that enabled him to carry on the 
>struggle against Serbia until near the end of his life.
>
>James Pettifer
>