* KOSOVO CRISIS 

Zeljko Kruselj, ‘Etnicko Ciscenje Kosova sesti je val zlocina Srba nad Albancima u stotinu godina’

Vecernji list, April 27, 1999, p. 17. 

ETHNIC CLEANSING OF KOSOVO IS SIXTH WAVE OF CRIME AGAINST ALBANIANS IN 100 YEARS

ZAGREB - As much as people do not like to hear it, the worst victims of NATO attacks against FRY are the Kosovo Albanians. The reason for this is that Milosevic is taking advantage of a state of war to finish the plan of ethnically cleansing Kosovo of Albanians, as was planned by ‘Greater Serbian’ ideologists a long time ago. Close to 600 thousand Albanians have already fled Kosovo over the last month, while tens of thousands are still hiding in the mountains of Kosovo in search of safer routes toward the southern border. 

Though the Belgrade regime probably realises it will, in the end, lose the war and that it will have to unconditionally agree to the return of refugees, as well as a probable international protectorate in Kosovo, it still has the goal of preventing at least some of the Albanians from returning to Kosovo. 

That is how the Kosovo myth about the region being the ‘birthplace of Serbism’ - although it stopped being just that after the failed uprising against the Turks at the end of the 17th century - continues to be a source of inspiration in the present day. 

Generations of Serbian politicians and intellectuals have created plans for the final solution to this problem, not hiding their hegemonism and aggressive chauvinism based on religious, cultural and even racist prejudices. Experts who deal with the history of Kosovo have no doubts that the genocidal policies toward Kosovo Albanians have been obvious since 1878, when Serbia and Montenegro were internationally formally recognised, in spite of their defeat from the Turks and thanks to Russian diplomacy and the Berlin Conference. 

‘DENSE ALBANIAN VILLAGES’ CONQUERED ONE BY ONE 

Seeing as the Albanians used to live in present day southern Serbia, the direct consequence of that fact was their brutal expulsion from the wider vicinities of Nis, Pirot, Palanka, Leskovac and Vranje. Serbian historians attempted to portray that exodus as voluntary moving, to spite some other later writers who wrote of the authorities after 1878 secretly torching villages and Albanian quarters in cities. It is difficult to talk about any precise numbers, primarily due to the fact the Serbian authorities back failed to conduct a census, but it is presumed that no less than 30,000 Albanians were expelled from Serbia. Some of them moved to Kosovo, which was not under Serbian rule at the time, while others settled in Asia Minor and other areas of the Ottoman Empire. What was actually happening at that time can be seen through a text by Vasa Cubrilovic - a participant in the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Franjo Ferdinand, in Sarajevo - who later became an ideologist of genocide against the Albanians. Here is a quote from Cubrilovic from Ljubica Stefan’s book ‘Serbs and Albanians’ (three volumes), which had to be published in Ljubljana without an author’s name, due to the political psychosis in 1989. 

"The moment the first Serbian units began their penetration toward Kursumlija, Prokuplje and Leskovac, they came across densely grouped Albanian villages that refused to surrender. They will be the central point of Serbian battles. Village by village had to be taken. The Albanians retreated toward the south, hiding in refugee camps and continued to fight. When the Serbian Army would approach refugee camps, they would retreat toward the South Morava Valleys, Veternica, Medvedje, Pusta Reka and Laba, then further on to Kosovo… After 1878, Serbia had to colonise the regions abandoned by the Albanians and Turks. The border with Kosovo had to be settled with nationally loyal residents in order for the border with the Albanians to be secure." 

RESPONSIBILITY FOR ‘SERBIAN MISFORTUNE’ 

A new wave of crimes against the Albanians, this time in Kosovo and in western regions of Macedonia, began in the first of the Balkan wars, when the Serbs and Montenegrins - assisted by the Bulgarians and Greeks - expelled Turkey from the Balkans. In an analysis of the Serbian press of the period, Ljubica Stefan noticed the leader of the murders and expulsions of Albanians was the Serbian Orthodox Church, that sent Serbian soldiers to battle with the slogan "avenge Kosovo!" That is how Albanians ended up bearing the burden of blame for the "Serbian misfortune" on religious grounds, though they were also rebelling against the Sultan for their own independence. Serbs and Montenegrins at the time were not too interested in Kosovo, rather in the northern part of Albania, especially the regions surrounding Skadar and Drac. Belgrade and Cetinja reached their goal, but had to leave those regions due to the pressure of the world powers of the time. At the 1913 London Conference an independent Albania was created with borders almost identical to the ones existing today. 

The total figures for Serbian and Montenegrin army crimes, who’s countries divided Kosovo between themselves, were never published. Judging by individual reports from the field, which was often written by the leader of the Serbian Social Democratic Party, Dimitrije Tucovic, tens of thousands of Albanians were massacred, in addition to masses of displaced persons. 

"WHOEVER SURVIVES TO NIGHTFALL…" 

A Tucovic text, with an indicative title - ‘Blood Revenge for Wild Soldiers’ - includes descriptions such as the following: 

"The ghost of death hung over the heads of Pec, Djakovica and Prizren Albanians day and night. Whoever survived to nightfall was not sure to see the next sunrise… With the fall of Kumanovo, the entire Albanian population, which was being pushed by the Serbian Army coming in from the north, flocked to Skopje in hope of finding sanctuary. Most found death instead." 

At the time there were also a lot of forceful baptisms of Muslim Albanians to the Serbian Orthodox faith and the Catholic priest from Djakovica warned his bishop that the Montenegrin authorities are forcing both Albanians and Catholics to embrace the Orthodox religion. When the world powers demanded the Belgrade authorities recognise basic civil and religious rights for Albanians, Nikola Pasic angrily replied, "Serbia cannot agree to that demand because it is in opposition to the right to state sovereignty." It is interesting that the Milosevic regime today is using the same arguments to camouflage their crimes. 

After the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS) was created, the Albanian position did not get any better and that was the time when the actual colonisation of Kosovo began. The first cycle of colonisation of Serbian ‘Salonikans’ and Montenegrins was staged between 1922 and 1929, and the other was between 1933 and 1938. Belgrade sources admit the arrival of 12 thousand colonial families to Kosovo, which could mean some 60 thousand people. It is presumed that some of those people shared their land or there was no official record of any other new arrivals because in the end there were "34,528 agricultural units with land." They received land confiscated through the agricultural reforms, as well as the majority of municipal land and private property that was owned primarily by expelled Albanians. The confiscation of parts or all Albanian land, according to post-war revisions of the communist authorities, 6,342 Albanian families suffered damages. 

The methods implemented in the colonisation in the field between the two world wars, is best testified by one Serbian colonist from the Prizren area: 

"There were many cases where Serbs were given land, orchards or fields, owned by Albanians, outside of a limited complex, from the authorities. The Albanians received no compensation in money or land. Every Serb with less than 10 hectares could receive an additional 10 hectares from the authorities. All that had to be done was to go to the authorities and say: "I want you to give me this or that orchard that belongs to this or that Albanian because I have less than 10 hectares," and the authorities would give it to the Serb requesting it." 

OTHER METHODS: FINES, ARRESTS, TAXES… 

It has been estimated that only up to 1921 some 40 thousand Kosovo Albanians fled to Albania because of state terror. However, in the period between the wars, the population in Kosovo was still 66 percent in favour of Albanians, as opposed to Serbs and Montenegrin who could only ‘muster up’ 22 percent. 

Not even the drastic methods of political and economic pressures did not satisfy Belgrade political and intellectual circles. The Serbian Cultural Circle, the brain of ‘Greater Serbianism’ of that time, organised on March 7, 1937, a debate on the Kosovo question. The officer in charge was the respected historian Vasa Cubrilovic and the topic of the debate was ‘Eviction of Albanians’. The point of his deliberation was to motivate a complete cleansing of Albanians from Kosovo, using all possible methods ranging from the agreement with the Turks on accepting emigrants to the most brutal methods of terrorism and crime: 

"The other method would be pressure on the state authorities. They should use the laws to their limits in order to make the survival of Albanians in our land very bitter: fines, arrests, merciless implementation of all police regulations… merciless tax collection and all public and private debts, confiscation of state grazing pastures… The Albanians are the most sensitive concerning religion, hence they should be touched where they hurt the most. This can be achieved by harassing their clergy, clearing cemeteries, forbidding polygamy… The displacement of villages has to be a priority, as well as in the cities. The villages are more stable, hence are more dangerous. After that, we should not make the mistake of only expelling the poor." 

The development of Cubrilovic’s theories was entrusted to Ivo Andric in 1939, who was the Yugoslav deputy foreign minister at that time. He put the displacement of Albanians in an international context, which was to be used in further talks with Turkey, while the most important Yugoslav goal was to divide Albania with Mussolini, in order for the Kosovo Albanians to be assimilated more easily. 

Cubrilovic joined the communist authorities in 1944 as a minister, but did not relinquish his theories, which he reiterated, but this time in the form of fear that the Albanian element, "which was opposed to the old Yugoslavia, will also be opposed to the new one." That document was kept under lock and key for decades in the Belgrade military archive. 

In the final battles to liberate Yugoslavia, tens of thousands of young Albanians were forcefully drafted for military service and used as cannon fodder on the Srijem (Sirmium) Front. An example was recorded and was mentioned by Aleksandar Rankovic in 1945, when an Albanian killed his superior (Serbian) officer. 300 novice soldiers (Albanians) were immediately massacred. 

In the mid-sixties, just before the fall of Rankovic, every third employee in Kosovo was a Montenegrin, every fourth was a Serb and every seventeenth was an Albanian. When Milosevic cancelled Kosovo autonomy in 1989, in a very short period some 150,000 Albanians were dismissed from work. Only "honest Albanians" - i.e. Serb obedient Albanians - were able to keep their public and national company jobs. 

In the post war period, the pressures to evict Albanians continued, especially through economic measures, as well as political and legal persecution, in principle, against the "Albanian irredenta." In the eighties, 3,340 Albanians were jailed for alleged political crimes, while another 10,000 were prosecuted and convicted of criminal acts. The former were sentenced to over seven years, or a total of 23,400 years imprisonment in total for all of those sentenced. The latter, mostly younger people, were sentenced to a total of 25,000 years imprisonment. According to those figures, the former Yugoslav federation was the record holder in Europe. Furthermore, up to the beginning of the open conflict in Kosovo, 223 Albanians were killed during police operations.