[ALBSA-Info] Balo te hengerte Tenja....

[Sorkadh Mustafa]

Dear members, 

Allow me to list a few quotes that Noel Malcolm makes in his book
Kosovo, A Short History.  

During the 1989 when the miners in Kosova went in hunger strikes, one of
the miners, I remember saying, "Balo te Hengerte tenja, se e ke te keqen
brenda" which translated in English means "Balo (common name for a dog) I
hope Tenja(disease common to dogs) takes you, because the disease is
inside you.(I apolegize for the bad translation)  

Noel shatters many myths about history, as it has been distorted by many
regimes in the Balkans.  Before we ask or rather can ask that the Serbs 
accept the whole truth and not an interpretation offered by opportunist
leaders, we must shatter the myths that have been given to us about our
past. 

You can bring questions about the subjects below to the panels on Friday
and Satturday by Noel Malcolm at Harvard University and Boston University
respectively.


Kosovo.  Occupied Kosovo in the Seond World War:1941-1945

pp 300
 [S]ince the Communist Party in Kosovo was in act just a small offshoot
of an overwhelmingly Slav organization, it was regarded there mainly as a
Slav entity.  By the summer of 1940 there were just 239 Parti members in
Kosovo, and of those only twenty-five were Albanians; by the outbreak of
war in the following year the total had risen to 270, but the number of
Albanians had dropped to twenty...........................


pp 302
....As one despairing Communist reprt put it in August 1943, 'The movement
in Kosovo is very weak, almost dead.  It is completely cot off from the
Albanian masses ...  Among the Albanian masses, the Communists are
regarded as having sold themselves to the Serbs.'


As late as 1941  there was no real Communist Party in Albania, merely a
scattering of Marxist cells; these were gathered into a party in the late
autumn of that year under the tutelage of two Yugoslav Communist
emissaries, Dusan Mugosa and Miladin Popovic.  The degree to which all
early decision making in the Albanian Party was controlled by these two
Yugoslavs is only now beginning to emerge, with the publication of
hitherto secret documents from the Party archives.  As Enver Hoxha, the
Party leader, admitted in an internal discusssion in 1944, 'When the Party
was formed our reliance on those two comrades, Miladin and Dusan, was
great, because I was without experience and without clear views on
organization or policy.  At the founding meeting of the the Albanian
Communist Party in November 1941 the question of Kosovo was simply not
mentioned, and complete silence also descended on the issue at the first
national conference of the party in March 1943. 

pp 303

[I}n earl August 1943 a meeting was held between the National Liberation
Movement and Balli Kombetar in the village of Mukje, north of Tirana, at
which a common programme was agreed.  As the chief Communist
representative at the meeting, Ymer Dishnica, wrote in his report to Enver
Hoxha, the question of creating an 'ethnic Albania' (i.e. one including
Kosovo) was one of the two main stumbling blocks, the other being the call
for Albanian independence, on which the Ballists refused to compromise.
(Communist policy at this stage favoured the idea of setting up a Balkan
Federation.)  In the end Dishnica reported 'We got over the obstacle of
"ethnic Albania" with a neutral formula.'  The wording they chose was as
follows: 'Struggle for an independent Albania and, through the application
of the principle - which is universally known and guaranteed by the
Atlantic Charter - of the self-determination of peoples, for an ethnic
Albania.'  This was too much for Miladin Popovic, who condemned the
proclamation issued by the Mukje conference; and Enver Hoxha wrote a
furious letter to Dishnica in which he insisted: 'You must proclaim war
against fascism, not independence.'  It was their rejection for the Mukje
agreement that marked, in effect, the declaration of war by the Communist
leadership against Balli Kombetar...

pp 303
Balli Kombetar.... [F]ounded in late 1942, (was) a movement based on the
old opposition to King Zog; Communist historians depict it as a
reactionary landowners' party, but in fact its political programme was
republican, anti-feudal and generally left-of-centre, reflecting the views
of the supporters of Fan Noli who had been driven out by Zog in 1924.
Balli Kombetar also had strong nationalist credentials: its leader was the
elderly Midhat Frasheri (son of Abdyl, the intellectual driving force of
the League of Prizren) and its programme included the traditional Albanian
national claims to the whole Albanian 'ethnic territory', which now
roughly coincided with the Greater Albania created by Mussolini.  

pp 308 
....Enver Hoxha, who, as one modern study puts it, 'must already have
resolved that it would be better from their point of view if there was no
resistance in Kosove rather than a successful movement led by Gani Kryeziu
with Brithis support'.  In August and September Hoxha ordered his forces
to attack Kryeziu's men and to kill Kryeziu humself (who was in the end
captured by Yugoslav partisans and put in a gaol); he likewise ordered the
destruction of another popular leader in the Luma region, Muharem
Bajraktar, who had actively resisted the Italians and the Germans but had
refused to become member of the 'National Liberation Movement'.

pp 312
......More alarming for the Communists, perhaps, was the fact that some of
their own Albanian soldiers turned against them.  One Albanian Partisan
commander, Shaban Polluzha, rejected an order to take his men to the front
in Srem, saying that he wanted to stay and defend his home region of
Drenica against attacks on Albanians by Cetnik bands.  His force, composed
of roughly 8000 men, was then attacked by other Partisan
units......................Kosovo resistance to the Communists would
continue until the 1950s.  Lingering resistance was a phenomenon
encountered in many parts of Yugoslavia.  Nowhere, however, did it last as
long as in Kosovo.