[ALBSA-Info] Boston Globe

[Agron Alibali]

The Boston Globe 


March 22, 2001, Thursday ,THIRD EDITION 

NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A26 

AS PREDICTED, OLD DIVISIONS COME TO FORE OVER ALBANIA 

By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff 


A striking aspect of the bloody drama that has
consumed the Balkans over the past decade is that
diplomats and scholars thought from the beginning that
they knew how the play would end - and they were
right. 

The struggle for a Greater Serbia foundered in the
eastern reaches of Croatia, stalemated in Bosnia, and
went down to crushing defeat in Kosovo. Now, just as
was feared and predicted a decade ago, the struggle
for a Greater Albania has begun. 

   All the previous conflicts - Serb versus Slovene,
Serb versus Croat, Serb versus Bosnian - involved a
numerically and historically dominant group, Slavic
Serbia, bending much smaller groups of Slavs and
others to its will. 

In contrast, Slav versus Albanian is a matchup of the
true heavyweights of the Balkan peninsula, both in
terms of numbers and historical competitions. While
the Serbs and other Slavs trace their roots in the
region to the 7th Century, Albanians arose from the
ancient Illyrian people who inhabited the Balkans in
classical Greco-Roman times. 

By the 14th century, much of the homeland of the
ethnic Albanians - present-day Kosovo, Albania, and
western Macedonia - were part of the Serbian Empire,
which was then at its height. Serbia declined after
its defeat by the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of
Kosovo, in 1389. Both peoples then were subjugated by
the Ottoman Turks, who governed the region through
vassal regimes for the next 500 years. 

It was in this period that Albanians and Serbs took
radically different courses that still resonate today.
The Serbs clung to Orthodox Christianity, while most
of the previously Christian Albanians converted to the
Islamic faith. 

"The Ottomans were not into converting people
forcibly," says Igor Lukes, a specialist in central
European history at Boston University. "If you chose
to be an infidel dog, so be it. But if you wanted to
advance, to progress, it was very much in your
interest to convert." 

Advance and progress the Albanians did, to the point,
according to Dimitris Keridis, director of the Central
and Eastern Europe program at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government, that they rose to
positions of power and wealth throughout the Ottoman
Empire. 

A prominent example was Mehmet Ali, who, as Ottoman
viceroy of Egypt in the 19th century, was the first
modernizer in the Middle East and founded a dynasty
that endured until after World War II. Had the British
Navy not intervened, Ali might well have taken
Istanbul in the late 1830s. 

The difference in status of Albanians and Slavs had
consequences when the Ottomans went into their final
decline. National movements in all the Christian
societies pushed for full independence; Albanian
nationalists sought only autonomy. 

Independence was virtually foisted on the Albanians in
1912, after the first Balkan war, by Austria and
Italy, which saw Albania as a block to Serbian and
Greek expansionism. Kosovo, which was about half Serb
and half Albanian, was awarded to Serbia, and the
Serbs began dispossessing the Albanians, who had
become the dominant landowners during the Ottoman
period. 

A few years later, the Albanians struck back,
harassing Serb armies retreating after their epic
yearlong stand against Austria at the beginning of the
First World War. 

The rival perspectives grew farther and farther apart,
until, on the eve of World War II, "if you asked a
Serb, he'd say Albania was an insignificant appendage
of a great Serbia, whereas if you asked an Albanian
he'd say it was all part of Albania and the Serbs were
sort of their stable boys," Lukes said. 

After the war, both the nation of Albania and the new
Yugoslav state that took in Kosovo and Serbia were
communist. However, since Albania sided with the
Chinese and the Yugoslavs with the Soviet Union when
Moscow and Beijing fell out, Kosovar and Macedonian
Albanians were cut off completely from the Albanian
state. 

This division and earlier religious and social schisms
are profoundly important today, as Albanians in
Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania proper have wide
differences in their levels of economic and political
development, and are unable to reach consensus on what
Keridis calls "the ultimate, most virulent nationalist
question in the Balkans." 

Charles A. Radin can be reached by e-mail at
radin at globe.com 


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