The roots of Kosovo fascism

The roots of Kosovo fascism by George Thompson (2-19-00)

                www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]

                THAT WAS THEN...

      "The Serbian population in Kosovo should be removed
      as soon as possible. Serbian settlers should be killed."
      (Albanian fascist leader Mustafa Kroja, June 1942.)

               ...AND THIS IS NOW

      "He, like many KLA officers, says openly that he
      dreams of a Kosovo without Serbs." (Description of
      KLA death squad commander "the Teacher", Agence
      France Presse, August 19, 1999)

      "As Germany overtook Yugoslavia in 1941, the
      Kosovar people were liberated by the Germans. All
      Albanian territories of this state, such as Kosova,
      western Macedonia and border regions under
      Montenegro, were re-united into Albania proper.
      Albanian schools, governmental administration, press
      and radio were re-established." (From www.klpm.org , a
      Kosovo Liberation Army-affiliated affiliated website)

 Mussolini's Italy occupied Albania proper in April, 1939, and
 established a collaborationist regime with the apparent enthusiasm
 of most Albanians.(1) After Hitler invaded and occupied Yugoslavia
 in spring 1941, the bulk of current Kosovo-Metohija was placed
 under Italian-Albanian collaborationist control and annexed to
 Albania.(2)

 When Italian forces moved into Kosovo they were
 accompanied by Albanians from Albania. Albanians living in Kosovo
 joined the invasion force as it made its way North and West, and
 also ambushed Yugoslav Army units moving to meet the invaders.
 These Albanians, natives of both Albania and Kosovo, instituted a
 campaign of murder and expulsion of Serbs. Initially, the mayhem
 was carried out by disorganized "kachak" (irregular) units. These
 were Albanian brigands from both sides of the border who had
 fought Yugoslavia throughout the 1920s and 1930s.(3) However,
 soon a native Kosovo militia was formed. This militia, called the
 Vulnetari, and various gendarme units, began more systematic
 persecution.(4)

    ITALIAN FASCISTS TAKEN ABACK

 Italian authorities in Kosovo seemed a bit distressed by the
 terror against Serbs and occasionally intervened to prevent
 Albanian attacks, at least in urban areas. Thus a Serbian historian
 wrote: "Italian troops were stationed in the towns of Kosovo and
 acted as a restraining force ..."(5) And Carlo Umilta, a civilian aide
 to the Commander of the Italian occupation forces, described
 several instances where Italian forces fired on Albanians to halt
 massacres of Serbs.6)

 Because of manpower limitations and the de facto alliance
 between Albanians and the Axis powers, these efforts at restraint
 were limited. Nevertheless, the Italian occupiers reported their
 disgust at Albanians’ actions to the authorities in Rome. The Italian
 army reported that Albanians were "hunting down Serbs", and that
 the "Serbian minority are living in conditions that are truly
 disgraceful, constantly harassed by the brutality of the Albanians,
 who are whipping up racial hatred."(7) Carlo Umilta described some
 of the atrocities in his memoirs and observed that "the Albanians
 are out to exterminate the Slavs."(8) His words were echoed by
 those of German diplomat Hermann Neubacher, the Third Reich’s
 representative for southeastern Europe: "Shiptars (i.e., Kosovo
 Albanians) were in a hurry to expel as many Serbs as possible from
 the country."(9)

 The atrocities were deliberate, part of a plan to create a
 Serb-free "Greater Albania". In June 1942 the fascist puppet
 president of Albania, Mustafa Kroja, declared his goals candidly
 before his followers in Kosovo:

      "The Serbian population of Kosovo should be removed
      as soon as possible . . . All indigenous Serbs should be
      qualified as colonists and as such, via the Albanian and
      Italian governments, be sent to concentration camps in
      Albania. Serbian settlers should be killed." (10)

 Similar sentiments were expressed by a Kosovo Albanian leader,
 Ferat-bey Draga:

      "time has come to exterminate the Serbs . . . there will
      be no Serbs under the Kosovo sun."(11)

 The anti-Serb pogroms intensified after Italy's collapse in
 September 1943. The German Nazi's assumed control of Albania,
 including Kosovo. Italian military units pulled out and were replaced
 by three divisions of the German XXI Mountain Corps. The
 German presence freed the Albanians of restraint.

 Kosovo Albanian nationalist militias called the "Balli Kombëtar"
 (or "Ballistas") carried out a campaign of deportation and murder
 of Serbs in 1943 and 1944. Then, on Hitler’s express order, the
 Germans formed the 21st "Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS" - the
 Skanderbeg Division. With German leaders and Kosovo Albanian
 officers and troops, Hitler’s hoped that using the Skanderbergs
 Germany could "achieve its well-known political objective" of
 creating a viable (i.e., pure) "Greater Albania" including
 Kosovo.(12)

 In general, German policy was to organize volunteer military units
 among Nazi sympathizers in occupied countries. Of all the occupied
 nations only the Serbs, Greeks and Poles refused to form Nazi
 volunteer units. Rather than joining the Nazis, as the Albanians in
 Kosovo did, the Serbs organized the largest anti-Nazi resistance in
 Europe. Both the Communist Partisans and thee Royalist Chetniks
 were mainly Serbs and both groups fought the Germans and their
 local allies throughout Yugoslavia.

 The Germans recruited the 9,000 man Skanderbeg division to fight
 these resistance groups But the Skanderberg's Albanians had little
 interest in going up against soldiers; they mainly wanted to terrorize
 local Serbs, "Gypsies" and Jews. Many of these Kosovo Albanians
 had seen prior service in the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian SS
 divisions which were notorious for slaughtering civilians.

 What explained this passionate hatred for non-Albanians? A big
 factor was militant Islam. The Fundamentalist "Second League of
 Prizren" was created in September 1943 by Xhafer Deva, a Kosovo
 Albanian, to work with the German authorities. The League
 proclaimed a jihad (holy war) against Slavs. They were backed by
 the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, El Haj Emin Huseini, who was
 pro-Nazi and had called for getting rid of all Jews in what was at that

 time British-occupied Palestine. Albanian religious intolerance was
 shown by their targeting Serbian Orthodox churches and
 monasteries for destruction.(13)

 No one is certain of human destruction suffered in this Fascist
 Albanian Holocaust. Estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 Serbs
 murdered. At least 100,000 were driven from Kosovo and replaced
 with "immigrants" from Albania proper.(14)

 In justifying current Kosovo Albanian demands to secede from
 Serbia, the media has repeated, like a mantra: 90% of the
 population is Albanian. While this figure is most likely exaggerated
 (nobody knows for sure because Kosovo Albanians boycotted the
 census for years!) - the province has been largely Albanian. But a
 major cause of the current demographic imbalance: was the
 Albanians' success as Hitler's willing executioners during World
 War II.(15)

 And their attention was not limited to Serbs. Unknown numbers of
 Roma ("Gypsies") were liquidated. And Kosovo Albanians, acting
 alone as well as under German direction, eliminated many of
 Kosovo's Jews.

 The definitive work on Hitler's "Final Solution" in Yugoslavia (16)
 estimates that 550 Jews lived in Kosovo Hitler took over
 Yugoslavia. 210 of them, or 38 percent, were murdered in Kosovo,
 mainly by Albanians. In fact, the Skanderbeg division's first
 operation was to act as an "einsatzgruppen" against the Jews, and
 its second was a similar extermination foray against the Serb village
 of Velika where more than 400 Serbians were murdered.(17)

 Ceda Prlincevic, head of the Jewish community in Pristina and an
 executive of the provincial archives, has explained to
 Emperors-Clothes that the Jews who were not murdered outright
 were sent by the Skanderbeg division to the German death camps
 Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen. One train, on its way to the latter
 camp, took the wrong track and was intercepted by advancing
 Russian soldiers. According to Mr. Prlincevic, were it not for that
 fortunate detour, the entire Jewish population of Kosovo would have
 been eliminated.

 Although KLA supporters now claim that no Jews were killed in
 Kosovo and that Jews were sheltered by the Kosovo Albanians,
 such claims are false and should be treated the same way we would
 treat other Holocaust denials.

        ALBANIAN FASCISTS GO ON
                      FIGHTING

 The Germans surrendered in 1945, but the remnants of the Kosovo
 Albanian Nazi and fascist groups continued fighting the Yugoslav
 government for six years, with a major rebellion from 1945 to 1948
 in the Drenica region. (Drenica was the hotbed for KLA recruiting
 in 1998-99). That rebellion was under the command of Shabhan
 Paluzha; it is called the Shabhan Paluzha rebellion. Sporadic
 violence continued until 1951. It is literally true to say that the
last
 shots of World War II were fired in Kosovo

         PARTING THOUGHT

 This past summer, as Germans entered Prizren in Kosovo for the
 first time since World War II, an NBC correspondent reported:

      "I was at dinner with a kind Kosovo Muslim family the other
      night when talk turned to the German NATO troops that
      rolled into town to make the city the headquarters of its
      peacekeeping district. The patriarch of the family, a man old
      enough to remember the last time German troops rolled into
      Prizren, said they all felt safe now. 'The German soldiers are
      excellent,' he said. Then he added, 'I should know, I used to
      be one.' Then he raised his arm in a Nazi salute and said,
      'Heil,' and laughed merrily. (NBC, June 18, 1999)

 FOOTNOTES

 (1) Professor Nikalaos A. Stavrou, KFOR: Repeating History, The
 Washington Times (August 11, 1999).

 (2) Hugo Wolf, Kosovo Origins (1996) chapter 10. Portions of
 northern Kosovo, from Mitrovica to the provincial border with
 Serbia, were administered by Germany from the outset, primarily to
 exploit the mines in the area. An eastern sliver of Kosovo was
 ceded to Bulgaria.

 (3) Dr. Smilja Avramov, Genocide in Yugoslavia, Part 2, Chapter 5,
 "Genocide in Kosovo and Metohija" (1995): "The crimes were
 begun by the ‘kachak’ guerrilla detachments which had been sent
 into Kosovo from Albania, but members of the Shqiptar minority
 quickly joined in. Judging from Italian reports, at first the situation

 resembled more the marauding of bandits than a deliberate policy."

 (4) Dr. Dusan Batakovic, The Kosovo Chronicles (1992); Avramov,
 supra.

 (5) Dr. Smilja Avramov, supra.

 (6) Carlo Umilta, Jugoslavia e Albania, Memoire di un diplomatico
 (1947), in Avramov, supra, note 141.

 (7) Dr. Smilja Avramov, supra, note 117.

 (8) Carlo Umilta, Jugoslavia e Albania, Memoire di un diplomatico
 (1947), in Avramov, supra, note 137.

 (9) Hermann Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Sudost (1953), quoted in
 Dr. Slavenko Terzic, Old Serbia and Albanians.

 (10) Dr. Slavenko Terzic, Kosovo, Serbian Issue and the Greater
 Albania Project.

 (11) Batakovic, supra, citing H. Bajrami, Izvestaj Konstantina
 Plavsica Tasi Dinicu, ministru unutrasnjih poslova u Nedicevoj
 vladi oktobra 1943, o kosovsko-mitrovackanm srezu, Godisnjak
 arhiva Kosova XIV-XV (1978-1979) at 313.

 (12) Avramov, supra, note 151.

 (13) Avramov, supra, note 148, citing Bishop Atanisije Jevtic, From
 Kosovo to Jadovno.

 (14) Batakovic gives a conservative estimate of 10,000 dead while
 Dr. Slavenko Terzic cites a contemporary American intelligence
 report that 10,000 died in the first year of occupation alone. Terzic,
 supra, citing Serge Krizman, Maps of Yugoslavia at War (1943).
 Carl Kosta Savitch, in Genocide in Kosovo: Skanderbeg Division,
 quotes a wartime account that 30,000 to 40,000 Serbs were killed by
 Albanians. In addition, an unknown number of Serbs dies in the
 German-operated work camps of Pristina and Mitrovica, or were
 killed by the Germans as reprisals against resistance activity.

 The reported number of expelled Serbs also varies depending on
 the source. Dragnich and Todorovich cited the figure of
 70,000-100,000, based on a review of wartime refugee records.
 Dmitri Bogdanovich estimates 100,000, but acknowledges that the
 exact number has never been determined. Dmitri Bogdanovich, The
 Kosovo Question: Past and Present (1985). Dr. Avramov notes that
 wartime records showing 70,000 refugees from Kosovo counted only
 those persons in need of government assistance who registered with
 the Commissariat for Refugees in Belgrade. Records of those who
 did not register, or who fled to Montenegro, apparently do not exist.
 Avramov, supra.

 (15) Before world war 2 Serbs constituted a slight majority of the
 Kosovo population. Avramov, supra. In addition to the murder and
 expulsion of Serbs, the relative ethnic population balance was
 further skewed by the entrance of hundreds of thousands of ethnic
 Albanians from Albania proper during the war. Relying on Italian
 records from the time, Dr. Avramov estimates that 150,000 to
 200,000 Albanians moved into Kosovo between 1941 and 1943.

 (16) The Crimes of Fascist Occupants and Their Collaborators
 Against the Jews of Yugoslavia (1952, revised 1957) (published by
 The Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia).

 (17) Avramov, supra.


--
Mine Aysen Doyran
Ph.D Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222



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