/AKTUELNO/REGION/KOSOVO I METOHIJA/JUZNA SRPSKA ZEMLJA/

Kosovo - Pitanje Apetita albanskog nacionalizma

KOSOVO CASE STUDY

Why is considered that Albanian nationalism in Kosovo context possesses highly explosive potentials for regional security?

by Borislav Zdralic

The recent history of Kosovo cogently raises questions regarding the obligations of other countries to take action when ethnic conflict and serious and prolonged abuses of human rights take place within country's borders.

Essay intends to discuss questions of theoretical roots of Albanian nationalism that is in Europe considered in some of its aspects as closest to the fascism according to Mr Veton Surroi publisher and political editor of the Pristina daily newspapers “Koha Ditore”, that in his article “Kosovo Fascism, Albanian's Shame” published in 1999 made this claim.

Intention is to explain the high level of radicalism that was developed in context of ethnic conflict involving response to Serbian nationalistic hegemony with emphasis on limitations of national sovereignty concept in former Yugoslavia, and even more to the long term isolation and absence of theoretical development in Albanian context that finally contributed to the existing model of Albanian nationalism.

In my opinion until now there were no academic analysis that tried or intended to explain those problems that are core of Albanian question. Most of research and academic studies related to Kosovo problem were related to concerns for area and international security as well as realizations of the political and military solutions that never took into account the limitations of this in reality inherited problem. In attempt to respond to the essay question, research essay will be divided into the five main segments that will examine the initial roots of Albanian nationalism, historical background of those developments with emphasis on political and theoretical consequences that on the later stage were developed in specific context of growing conflict followed by results of phases that lead to the conflict and with specific form of conclusion that will outline the possible outcomes and solutions to the problem.

At the beginning the overall remark can be defined as the statement that Kosovo problem presents the inherited problems since the end of 19th century. Reason behind this argument is more than obvious. Ethnic, cultural, historical and social context of still tribalist social concept was closed into the borders that were part of national sovereignty concept in former Yugoslavia, and which was undermined by its historical context. Albanian national identity was never able since the end of Ottoman Empire to achieve normal theoretical development as for example idea of national identity. Influenced by outcome of the First World wear, later by Yugoslav Kingdom, occupied by Italy, and later constantly undermined by Albanian communist dictatorship. The end of Cold war, gave opportunity for achieving freedom for Albanian population that more than hundred years was under constant pressure. In those conditions the level of radicalism was always closed in regional concept gradually building the high explosive potential that in its final form started to spill over regional borders and becoming one of the main security issues of South East Europe. 

To paraphrase Stark Draper the main point of argument, in his paper “The conceptualization of an Albanian nation”, published in January 1997 in Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 20, Number (1 January 1997), the communist era of the mid-twentieth century was a pivotal period for the coalescence of many nationalistic movements. Often communism provided the first modern, stable, state governments and infrastructures upon which overarching ideas of identity, such as nationalism, could readily grow. In Albanian context it is more than obvious that the communist era was certainly a crucial one for Albanian nationalistic ideology and thus it is important to reevaluate Albanian nationalism in light of the communist hegemony in Eastern Europe. Placing the past and current issues confronting Albanian ideas of self in perspective by tracing their historical background, we find that the situation of Albanian-identifying communities, divided among three or more states and caught between Eastern and Western influences, is forcing upon Albanian ideas of self an extreme change from a decidedly introverted to an extroverted ideal. Such forces are counterpoised by prior ideology regarding Albanian nationalism and the history of the Albanian people, as well as by the perennial Albanian insecurity over issues of religion due to the fact that Albania has long been seen as a xenophobic, hard-line, and unimportant communist state.

Because of that at the beginning, before discussing these influences, one last remark must be made. During the research, it has become obvious that any attempt of approaching to the issue of Albanian nationalism, and the history it has painted for itself, two reasons can be identified in this context.

Firstly, the underpinnings of Albanian nationalistic ideology were molded by the communists and, in light of the recent end of this political force, a reexamination is necessary.

Secondly, scholarship on Albania often conceptualizes the Albanian nation as an everlasting, unchanging entity. This method of conceiving of nations is no longer unquestioned on a scholarly level; it is worthwhile to approach topics of Albanian nationalistic ideology in light of thinking that conceives of national identities as dynamic and ever-changing force.

Keeping these two motivations in mind, this paper will retrace the development of the Albanian national identity, and will analyze the trends within that self-conception, before addressing the current issues facing the Albanian ethnicity.

The theoretical approach most appropriate to analysis of Albanian national identity is rooted in the modernist school where nationalism and the idea of a ‘people,’ are seen as recent political constructs intricately related to the importance of the individual in politics and to questions of state legitimacy. This point of view is in marked contrast to, much historical scholarship, where nations are treated as timeless and unchanging formations. The fundamental shift in the modernist view is in the conception of national identities as dynamic and developing ideas, rather than as static and permanent entities. Bu the main question that must be answered in this part can be defined as the issue does the case of Albanian nationalism can be defined as dynamic and developing process?

During this paper it will become obvious that answer to this question is unfortunately – NO! The main reason for this is fact that long lasting communist isolation, did not give opportunity for any sort of development that in combination with historical isolation created the specific form of hegemonic nationalistic thought format that demand a specific approach, due to the fact that nationalism from a modernist perspective as often at the popular level. In the case of Albania such stages are especially apparent as it was only in the communist era that a concerted and successful effort was made to popularize the idea of an Albanian nationality among the citizens of that state. Moreover, if nations are not timeless, and thus at the beginning of the ‘Age of Nationalism’ were not simply waiting around comatose to be ‘awakened,’ there must be some driving force behind nationalist movements, there must be some need which will be answered by identification as a national community.

In the case of Albanian nationalism, the distinction between the Catholics and Muslims of Kosovo and today’s northern Albania with the surrounding Orthodox and  Slavic communities motivated such identifications. Until the time when it became clear that the Ottoman Empire was in retreat before the European powers and their Balkan clients, there was little reason for the Muslims of the area to identify on national bases; they were the favored people of the Empire with many of their best and brightest serving in the Ottoman administration. When the Ottoman Empire started to contract, and the Muslim and Catholic intellectual and religious leaders of Kosovo began to fear domination by the Orthodox Slavs, a community into which they could not assimilate because of their religion did nationalist conceptions begin to hold real interest for these leaders.

That southern Orthodox communities were also included in early nationalists’ definitions of the Albanian nation is often taken as proof of a pre-existing national consciousness. But rather, it points to one of the defining characteristics of Albanian nationalism, the lack of the use of religion as a mark of identity. Indeed, there were concrete political reasons behind the inclusion of the Orthodox communities. First was the intermingling of Muslim and Orthodox communities in the south, geographically, and through marriage, a result of the very gradual conversion to Islam. Any division that would separate Muslims and Orthodox Christians would cause havoc, as in Bosnia today. Second was the realization between cooperating Catholic and Muslim leaders that since they could not choose a single religion as a defining characteristic of the Albanian, Orthodox communities could be Albanian as well. Third was the existence of a common, though dialectic, language. If religion was not to be a determining factor for inclusion within an Albanian nation, but language was, Albanian speaking Orthodox communities of the south had also to be included within the definition.

While religion continues to play a very minor constructive role in defining Albanian national ideals rooted deeply in nationalistic context, the fear of certain religious communities was the main catalyzing force behind early Albanian national movements. However, many changes were needed in the society and government of the Albanian state, which was founded in 1912, before national conceptions could finally become one of the primary loyalties and forms of identification of the state’s subjects, a time when an Albanian nation could truly be said to exist.

States often play central roles in fostering national conceptions, and thus the formation of an independent Albanian state in 1912 could have been a pivotal moment in the coalescence of an Albanian ideal among the citizens of the new state. However, as we will see, it would not be until the end of the Second World War, when the communist state was founded, that this coalescence would really begin. States foster national identities by creating a modern infrastructure through which people can develop a sense of an overarching community beyond local, personal ones. Without such an infrastructure, people have little shared experience upon which to formulate such beliefs.

This is what Benedict Anderson (1983:231) meant by phrase “imagined communities”. In his book “Imagined Communities” he is of the view that communities that have grown beyond personal reach and thus rely on some non-personal means of connection. That is, the crucial aspect of a mass media system that gives people a sense of common identity is not necessarily what is broadcast but rather the simple knowledge of having such a point in common with so many others. In many cases there was little need for these overarching conceptions until the advent of industrialized, centralized states, and thus one must be cautious when speaking of ‘national forms of identity’ or of a ‘people’ in earlier periods. In the case of Albania it would not be until the communist period that such an infrastructure was realized or even existed. But still in Albanian context, idea of national cohesion have grown far beyond that personal reach due to the fact that the relationship between nationalist conceptions and political legitimacy was evident in the term of the national self-determination a connection that points a crucial underlying aspect of nationalist thought: the potential political power of the individual.

In my opinion, the main reason for this is hidden behind the widespread transformation of European thought and society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as the increasing reliance of states on the decision-making capabilities of their subjects, and the people’s gradual enfranchisement and metamorphosis from subjects into citizens, all point to the increasing involvement and valuation of the individual in the European political system.

In Albanian case, this was more that obvious. Subjects who had never before been motivated to identify as a community now, as citizens, were being pushed to do so in order to support their state. However, the enfranchising states of nineteenth century Europe did not always conceive of their appeals in nationalist terms. That is, just because the potential power of the citizen was recognized, nationalism was not necessarily fostered by the state. In fact, most often nationalist movements developed among peoples whose languages or cultures were not fostered by their state’s centralizing tendencies. The core of the matter is that while upsetting one type of divine political legitimacy, states created another, the will of the people. Nationalist ideology hijacked this seemingly eternal source of legitimacy and donned a mantle of eternity itself.

Since nationalism is suppose to be, at its base level, a popular form of self-identification, it is useful to investigate what kind of prerequisites there are before an individual can view themselves as truly belonging to a national community. First there must be a need that identification in a national manner can potentially address. After the creation of a political movement stressing national themes, people must share both a culture and a belief that they belong to the same overarching national community before the movement can be emotionally appealing for the individual. Culture necessitates the existence of an infrastructure, upon which a community can exist, and belief in community, a mental attitude binding a person to others they have never met. We will look for these characteristics of need, commonalties, and belief when investigating Albanian nationalism. A frequent criticism of the modernist analysis is that nationalist movements have emerged in non-industrial, non-western societies. This is a legitimate criticism that cannot be answered simply by citing the global spread of western culture and ideas through commerce, colonialism and western-educated elites, and thus seeing non-western national movements as movements only by imitation. However, the central idea of the modernists, that nationalisms are dynamic and ever-changing movements can be applied without regard to geography, as can the search for the motivating characteristics of nationalism as enumerated above.

Almost the same characterization related to the case of the development of Albanian nationalism can be traced in works of many authors that agreed with this line of argument. Firstly, RG.D. Laffam C.F. (1989:248) in his book The Serbs – The Guardiansof the Gate, identified this problem as the main cause that on later stage, due to the fact that in Albania nationalism was not fostered by the state but instead developed among peoples on the basis of language, culture that give the significant political legitimacy to the concept of nationalist ideology.

Some other authors such as Miranda Vickers and James Pettifer, considered that the case of the formation of an Albanian national identity is especially elucidating, as the proto-nationalist bases for such an identity were both unclear, and claimed by multiple groups. In their book “From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity (1997:34), post-communist period underlined the fact that anarchy played in Albanian history cohesion factor for nationalist ideas. From past to present, religious differentiation was not important in comparison with for example linguistic or cultural identification. In past, the important groups were the Orthodox Christian community in what became Albania.

Moreover, both Greek and Albanian nationalists claimed this community as part of their nation. The dispute began after the founding of an independent Albanian state in 1912 and took place mostly at a great-powers level. The arguments of each side were strong enough to balance one another in the eyes of the international conferences that addressed these issues, and the commissions sent to the area were unable to resolve the dispute according to strictly ‘national’ criteria. The nature of the dispute therefore leads to some major insights regarding the prevalence of national consciousness, or lack thereof, in this area of the Balkans in the first decade of Albanian independence.

The historical context is even more interesting. For example, the commissions of 1913 and 1921 were formed by the London and Paris Peace Conferences. The first commission was sent to delineate on an ethnographic basis, and according to the language spoken in the home, which areas were Greek and Albanian. The commission soon ran into problems as Albanian was often the language of the older generation, and Greek of the younger, as well as of industrial, intellectual and religious life. The commission then fell back upon economic, strategic and geographical arguments for the delimitation of borders. The London Conference eventually proposed a line to the commission (rather than the other way round)which the commission accepted, leaving most of the disputed area of ‘Southern Albania’ or ‘Northern Epirus,’ depending on ones political aspirations to Albania. This decision catalyzed an uprising among the Greek-identifying population of the region that was settled by the Corfu Agreement guaranteeing religious and linguistic equality. However, before this agreement could be tested, the First World War began according to, Edith Pierpont Stickney (1926:35-50).

After the First World War, problem was not solved. The 1921 commission, appointed by the Paris Peace conference to re-examine Albania’s borders, was similarly at a loss to draw the borders according to a national basis, and ended up leaving them as they had been settled in London. The report of this commission highlights how muddled the national situation was in southern Albania. For example, according to the Report of Commission of Inquiry (1922:.2) in Korca there is a complete absence of Greek nationals. Nevertheless, a less than one-third of the population is, for various reasons, opposed to the present regime. The Grecophile element, which included a great number of fervent adherents to Greek culture, fears the creation of an Albanian autocephalous Orthodox Church, which is desired by the Albanian nationalists, may cause an open rupture with the Patriarch of Constantinople. The commission did not specify how they would have identified ‘Greek nationals,’ had there been any, but it seems that there were both religious and intellectual motivations on the part of a significant proportion of the population to avoid one of the primary objectives of the Albanian nationalists, the formation of an autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church. This report, along with the failure of the international commissions even to attempt to set the border according to national criteria, indicates that rather than having highly intermingled, but distinct, sets of nationals, the inhabitants of the region had never before needed to identify as such. It was unclear to all to what community they belonged, and even if they did belong to a national community at that time.

Both Greek and Albanian representatives to the Paris Conference contended that the area should be included within their respective states according to the principle of national self-determination; a principal that each side believed favoured it. The set of characteristics to which the two delegations looked to demonstrate the population’s Greek or Albanian nationality were mutually exclusive. The Greeks asked whether the area should be assigned according to race and language, or culture and religion, thinking that the latter two criteria favoured them according to Stickney (1926: 87). The Albanian representatives disputed these bases for national identification and held that although Greek was the Ottomans had banned the language of commerce, education, and religion, Albanian language schools and now that the Ottomans had left, there would be an Albanian renaissance. They also identified a separate Albanian race as a major differentiation.

We will see that Albanian national ideology, as formulated by the communists, holds the importance of social continuity dating back centuries to be a basic tenant. In outlining the debates at the Paris Peace Conference we see that such continuity cannot be taken for granted. Continuity implies an unbroken cultural progression, but the dispute between the Greeks and Albanians contradicts this. It seems as though the Greek and Albanian representatives in Paris were not so much arguing that the notions the other side championed were invalid, but rather that those were not the crucial points to national identity. The simple fact that these national representatives could hold an argument of such a flavour indicates that they had a far different view of a nation from that held today. They understood that these future Greek and Albanian citizens had multiple, and conflicting, influences and that the representatives, were themselves making overtly conscious choices in helping to define the nation and who belonged to it, rather than rejuvenating a dormant entity. To argue that a cohesive, unitary community existed for all time is specious; to argue that in a certain area there were many similar cultures, dialects and methods of identification is not. The transformation began when people took such pro-nationalist similarities and emphasized some to the exclusion of others, eventually formulating a nationalist ideal that in retrospect appears defining. In some great respect it was the ground for development of possible radicalisation of nationalist idea. This pattern also was for example recognised, even during the opening statement of the first post-war democratic parliament of Albania in 1992. The Democratic Party Deputy Pjeter Arbnori stated that: “The Albanian nation has not survived for centuries in vain…” and encouraged: “Let us prove to the world that we are a nation deserving support after a long paralysis!” (FBIS, 1992:2). Rather than this statement implies imprisoning the Albanian nation as, the victory of the communist partisans in 1944 heralded the coming of a much-solidified Albanian identity.

But what Party Deputy Pjeter Arbnori did not stated was the fact that the pre-war monarchy of Ahmed Zogu had been founded upon the support of the northern tribes, and so had generally left the social fabric of the country intact even though at the end of the Second World War, Albanian nationalism was still troubled by the questions raised in Paris over twenty years before. Two main problems we must raise in this context.

The first the general structure of Albanian society that in cultural context, tribe structure presented the core of nation statehood mechanism same as in past during the Ottoman Empire rule. The second that the great break with the past that was the partisan victory meant that the societies of the Albanian kingdom could be reshaped by the communist government to such an extent that new forms of identity, such as nationalism, would emerge triumphant. Unfortunately, even though the general line of  the direction in which the communists intended to lead Albanian society was based in the partisans’ war-time experience. As a matter of fact, during the Second World War  the partisans had appealed to the populace by arguing for land and social reforms and for an equal society. They also led by example, drawing members from all classes and religions, forcing a strict moral code on those members, and actively fighting the Germans. Since their base of support was in the south, the communists were able to return northern Kosovo annexed to Albania by Mussolini or to the brotherly Yugoslavs after the war. This was accomplished without causing much disgruntlement among the partisan soldiers.

However, the Muslim and Catholic Kosovar communities, communities that had been at the forefront of the emerging political program of Albanian nationalism in the late nineteenth century, did not look upon this transaction with ambivalence. Indeed, the Muslim and Catholic Kosovars’ displeasure is evident in the difficulty that Tito had recruiting in these communities. This issue demonstrates the lack of identification between northern and southern communities at the time. The partisan struggle also did much to further peoples’ thinking along national lines by exposing remote parts of the country to communist ideas and to the partisans themselves, patriots fighting a foreign aggressor as Peter Prifti stated  (1978:12-20) in his book “Socialist Albania since 1944, Domestic and Foreign Developments”. He discovered also that for example, other resistance groups based upon traditional tribal structured power structures of the country were unable to counter the radical program of the communists, and thus the communists positioned themselves to undertake a monumental restructuring of Albanian society once they had come to power.

However, that tribal structure, presented the bastion of self-preserved national identity deeply rooted in conservative understanding of social organization. In some strange game of self-preservation the specific form of Albanian national identity was developed, form that on later stage played even more important role in current trend related to the issues of Albanian nationalism. As one of aspects of the restructuring was the fostering of an Albanian national identity, the communists looked to national ideology for justification of their right to direct Albanian life, a justification that grew in importance as Albania’s political isolation increased. As is often the case with nationalist ideologies, the communists first tried to establish a link between their movement and the past. In this case the connection was to the fifteenth century warrior George Kastriote, or as he is better known, Skanderbeg. Kastriote was born into the family of a Christian Illyrian1 nobleman in what is today Albania. As a child he was taken as a hostage to the Sublime Porte, the seat of Ottoman government, in order to guarantee the loyalty of his family. There he was raised as a Muslim, given the name ‘Skanderbeg,’ and fought as a general for the Sultan. In 1443 Skanderbeg returned to his Adriatic homeland, renounced Islam, joined the various lords of the area together in the League of Llesh (1444) and, receiving rather intermittent aid from the Vatican and Venice, held of the Ottoman armies until his death in 1468 as Pollo and Puto recorded (1981: 68-85).

Casting back to Skanderbeg’s wars against the Ottomans, the communists hoped to mould the story of the Albanian nation to lead naturally to a contemporary and conceptualised view of the Communist Party as heir to Skanderbeg’s struggle. This interpretation, if accepted, would augment the right of the Party to direct Albanian life. Initially, to make the historical figure of Skanderbeg relevant for Albanians, the communists accented the continuity and distinctiveness of an Albanian people throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule. Then they recast the partisan struggle against the Axis powers in the light of Skanderbeg’s struggle against the Sultan, placing great weight on the self-reliance and isolation of the two movements, further proof of the continuity of an Albanian character. However, even more interesting than the connections the communists choose to accent is the way they customized Skanderbeg’s story to make it useful in their attempts to solidify the idea of an Albanian nation. That was, one of the defining aspects of Skanderbeg’s resistance—its markedly anti-Muslim character was seen as so potentially divisive that it is rarely acknowledged in the communist retelling.

Indeed, the strange game in which even though, religion is often seen as the determining characteristic of nationality in the Balkans. But it cannot serve as such in Albania because of the multi-religious composition of the state. The major characteristic of religion within Albanian nationalism, its social absence, and the very relaxed attitude most Albanians take towards it, is well encapsulated in the saying, “Ky eshte shpata eshte feja!” (“Where the sword is, there lies religion!”; (Skendi, 1967:20).



Selo Belo Polje - Rezultati Etnickog ciscenja uzrokovanog Albanskim zlocinima

 The communists taught that religion had never been a divisive issue among the Albanians, and that it never will be. The true feelings of the communist leadership were in sharp contrast to these teachings.

On later stage, when the communists came to power following the Second World War they were in a strong position to help solidify the sense of an Albanian nation among Albanian citizens. And, as foreign relations with former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1989) soured and internationalist ideals tarnished, the communists increasingly subscribed to national slogans. No longer was the socialist badge of the Albanian Communist Party enough, nationalism was also needed to augment the right of the communists to lead. Indeed, this change meshed well with the war where the ancient name of the lands encompassing the present borders of Albania.

In the same strange moment as Albania had been seen liberated by her own partisans with little outside help; and in the telling of the story of war-time resistance this self-reliance was increasingly accented the truth character of situation held the old set of problems. The partisans could truly claim to be a popular national movement that derived its legitimacy from the Albanian nation, rather than from internationalist ideals and associations. But in reality, it was in this era that Albania created the infrastructure necessary to sustain a national creed. The communist reforms focused on roads, land, the media, and education. Prior to the war people had remained relatively isolated in their mountain clans or as sharecroppers on farms in the lowlands. The agrarian reforms of 1946 broke up the large estates and distributed land among the people, resulting in a tremendous increase in the interactions of citizens with the state and with each other (Sjoberg, 1991:84). Mass literacy campaigns, and corresponding explosions in sources of news and literature, also increased the sense of an Albanian community. Seven year schooling followed the war and became mandatory in 1952 (Sjoberg, 1991:65). In the following years a bureaucracy educated exclusively in these new schools began to emerge, and with them an underlying vision of the Albanian nation as an overarching, all-encompassing entity. In the same time, as a product of the new curriculum, and a foundational material for it, Albanian social realist literature was one of the best places to locate the social ideology of Albanian nationalism. The literature presented the medium through which the myth of  Skanderbeg was distributed on to the popular level. It was here that the connection between Skanderbeg and the partisan struggle was fully developed. Now the five hundred years between Skanderbeg and the League of Llesh (1444), and Enver Hoxha and the liberation of Tirana (1944), was seen as the story of an oppressed, freedom-loving people, who were continually fighting to throw of the ‘yoke’ of foreign oppression (Pipa, 1978:170), a struggle that culminated successfully only with the partisan victory in 1944. Whether this interpretation of the area’s history had anything to do with the situation of the mainly Muslim local populace in the Ottoman Empire is not really relevant. What is relevant is that the partisan resistance fit in perfectly with this romantic image, and nationalism seemed to be a priceless tool for the Communist Party.

Ironically, this interpretation of history led Albanian writers to portray the archetypal Albanian as an isolated northern Gheg mountaineer, rather than as a Tosk southerner who fell under the sway of the Ottoman governor. But, it was the Tosk southerner, and not the Gheg northerner, who formed the power base of the ACP. The idea of the archetypal Albanian is further reflected in the character of the bandit. This character first emerged in the literature of the Arbresh Albanians of Italy whose forefathers emigrated from Ilyria after Skanderbeg’s death. Many of these soldiers were too proud to work the land and supported themselves as mercenaries or bandits. The image of the noble bandit later became prominent in their descendant’s literature and was afterwards co-opted by the communists (Pipa, 1978:110). The communists further used such images to draw Albanians in the light of a rogue people, unable to be subservient to any foreign authority, a concept that they used to justify their successive breaks with each of Albania’s patron states. Albania broke first with Yugoslavia in 1948, then with the Soviet Union in 1960, and finally with China in 1978.

Moreover, Albanian social-realist literature also tended to focus on the stories of the peasantry. It should be noted, however, that while the importance of  Yugoslav help to the Albanian Partisans has been de-emphasized since Albania’s split with Yugoslavia in 1948, Yugoslav assistance was crucial in the formation of the Albanian Communist Party and in the organization of the partisan resistance. But generally speaking, Albanians are divided into two rough ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups: northern Ghegs and southern Tosks rather than those of the townsfolk. By championing the peasant the communists hoped to inspire agricultural workers to achieve self-sufficiency, and to reinforce the idea of the continuity and purity of the isolated Albanian people. During the centuries of Ottoman administration the town areas were greatly influenced by the cultures of the Empire. Isolated rural mountain villages provided a much better environment for the preservation of what could be said to be typically Albanian. Therefore romantic writers focused on them. Thus, Albanian social-realist literature was used to spread the ideals of the Albanian nation to its increasingly literate and politically conscious people. But for the most part this literature avoided the complexities of Albanian society that the ACP was trying to homogenize. Ismail Kadare, who rebelled against the idea of literature as a ‘weapon in the hands of the Party’ (Pipa, 1991: 33), revealed the struggle between old and new, between Albanians of the communist era and the remnants of pre-war societies, in his book, “Kronik ne Gur” (“Chronicle in Stone”) Kadare, 1987:108. In the course of the story the young narrator experiences Italian, German, Balli Kombetar, and partisan rule and must, for the first time, confront the concept of Albania, and tried to formulate his indentity:

“I listened carefully, raking my brain trying to understand exactly what was this Albania they were so worried about. Was it everything I saw around me: courtyards, breads, clouds, words, Xhexho’s voice, people’s eyes, boredom, or only a part of all that?” (Kadare, 1987:108).

It was a tough problem, figuring out what was Albania. The tensions between town and country, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, the recurring blood feuds, all were obstacles impeding the creation of a single Albanian national identity. When the older generation thought about being Albanian they considered all these things and said: “It’s a complicated business, all right... Albania.” (Kadare, 1987:108) But when the youth of the country thought about being Albanian, they saw these complexities as only remnants of old that would be done away with in the new society promised by the communists. Although traditional forces were substantially weakened by the victory of the partisans, they did leave marks on Albania. Urban-rural differences, north-south divisions, and multiple religious affiliations were all impediments to the new order and needed to be dealt with by the communist program.

However, Such influences become especially apparent in investigating how well the reality of the communist era corresponded to communist ideology. At Paris in 1921 a number of defining characteristics of a nation had been proposed. The communists managed to adopt almost all these criteria in their attempts to define what it meant to be Albanian. They established a comprehensive state schooling system; normalized the disparate local and non-written cultures of the country into a single high culture; isolated the Albanians from other peoples; and, succeeded in standardizing the Albanian language. However, one characteristic remained problematic for the Albanians—religion. While in their social teachings they professed otherwise, the communists believed religion to be such a potentially divisive issue that in 1967 Albania became the first, and only, socially atheist state in the world.

Whether religion was as divisive an issue among the Albanian people as the communists believed it to be is unclear, but it is apparent that today the reintegration of religion into Albanian national conceptions is one of Albania’s greatest challenges. Apart from religion, urban-rural differences were a great impediment to the establishment of a unified society. The communists continually strove to equalize the standard of living throughout the country, but rural areas consistently lagged behind. Following the war there was an initial migration from urban to rural areas, but this trend was markedly reversed after the first five-year plan was inaugurated in 1950. In accordance with its attempts to attain agricultural self-sufficiency, the Party worked hard to get people to stay on the land. Tax incentives, assignment of technical graduates to rural tours, and barriers to migration all helped stabilize the urban-rural ratio at 1:2 by the late 1960s (Sjoberg, 1991:52). Although lowland farms were collectivized in the mid-50s, the push to collectivize in mountain regions did not even begin until over a decade later, evidence that even under the communists highland society took a long time to come into line with that of the lowlands (Sjoberg, 1991: 86:95:6).

North-south divisions were still more blatantly divisive than urban-rural ones. In 1947 a peasant rebellion in the northern city of Shkoder was crushed by the communists, but established the north as staunchly anti-communist, and communism as a Tosk phenomenon. The suppression of this rebellion was followed by the persecution of the northern Catholic priesthood, one of the most energetic sources of pre-war Albanian nationalism (Sinishta, 1976). North-south discrimination continued throughout the communist years. It is most evident in the creation and adoption of Unified Literary Albanian which is based upon a Tosk grammatical structure, relegating Gheg to rounding out the dictionary (Pipa, 1989:224). This standardization is especially important when considering Albanian identity because Albanian nationalists have always looked to language as the central differentiating characteristic of Albanians. The adoption of Tosk as the basis for standardized Albanian implies that Tosks are more truly Albanian than are Ghegs, no matter what the literature says, an assertion perhaps borne out by the relative lack of important communist leaders from the north. The great irony of the communist period is that communist ideology is avowedly internationalist and therefore anti-national, but by providing much of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with its first modernized infrastructure, communism set the foundation for the coalescence of many national identifications and, as had happened elsewhere, for many nationalisms besides those officially endorsed. Communism’s central planning system provided a most fertile ground for national developments, as dissent was not allowed. Therefore, as the conception of an Albanian nation was crystallizing, it was not so hampered by competing influences, as it had been earlier in the century. While initially an advantage, this later led to tension because the officially formulated national ideology was very static and resisted evolution. The Albanian Communist Party used nationalism as a tool to legitimize its control of the government, to unify the disparate elements of Albanian society, and to give the citizens of the state a sense of dedication to an encompassing whole the nation dedication that the communists then tried to convert into belief in the Party. There were some major aspects of life in communist Albania that did not mesh with the view of the Albanian nation championed by the communists. The ways in which the Communist Party dealt with these issues were defining tests for the Party and for the evolving Albanian nation. Today, with the end of communism, competing aspects of Albanian national identity are becoming more apparent and the communist triumph of a single national ideal is beginning to fade.

However, the historical context obviously presented the trigger of the emerging problems of present. In many ways what is going on today is a debate over what the Albanian nation should be in the future. The debate is analogous to parliament where some fondly recall communist security, while others laud the opportunities of democratic capitalism; some look solely to the West for inspiration, while others accent Albania’s position at the meeting point of Christian and Islamic civilizations and the wider cultural influences and potential benefits of such a situation; some believe that Albania should take a strong stance regarding Albanian communities in the surrounding states, while still others believe that moderation is the more productive strategy.

One crucial point to these discussions is how much of a sense of a single overarching nationality exists among the Albanians. Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia respectively contain 3.2 million, 1.7 million, and 375,000 people who identify as Albanian (Ministia e Ekonimise, 1991: 370; Poulton 1993:57:76). The initial relaxation of Albanian border controls in the early 1990s allowed people to travel, families to reunite, commerce to increase, and generally heightened feelings of similarity between the various communities (OAEEDB, 1993:2). Such increased interaction was soon augmented by Yugoslav Albanian investments in the liberalizing Albanian economy, investments that provided Albania with its first examples of capitalist enterprise and personal initiative. However, with increased interaction, cultural differences between these communities also became apparent. While Albania was ruled by a very oppressive and isolationist communist party, the Yugoslav Albanians lived under one of the most politically and economically liberal of the East European governments. This divergence in experience has led to disenchantment among many Albanians as they view much Kosovar and Macedonian Albanian investment as being overly profit-motivated and exploitational. While heightened mobility and interaction between Albanian communities are giving them a greater perspective on one another, external factors that motivate integration are also appearing. As during the emergence of the first Albanian nationalist movements over a century ago, again the greatest motivation the Kosovar and Macedonian Albanians have to identify with Albania is their differentiation from the surrounding Slavic communities and the political power they might be able to exercise if the three communities work in concert.

In Kosovo the 1980s was a period of growing mistrust and antagonism between Serb and Albanian. These feelings came to a head in the spring of 1987 when the current Presidentof Serbian, Slobodan Milosevic, delivered a speech in Kosovo centered on the historic importance of Kosovo to the Serbian nation. This speech portrayed the Albanian Kosovars as Muslim invaders who had no right to Orthodox Kosovo, and marked the beginning of Milosevic’s own rise to power. Since that time Kosovar Albanians have felt themselves to be more and more removed from the decision making process of their country. In the case of Macedonia, although the Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity has been a crucial part of the Macedonian governing coalition, and as Turkey’s urging Albania was one of the first states to recognize Macedonian independence (Macedonian Tribune, 1993:1). Still interviews conducted in Tirana, Durres, and Korce. July-August 1993. the precarious position of the Macedonian state has led to increasing friction between Albanian and Slavic communities. Thus, both communities are strongly attracted to the idea of increasing their political influence through an alliance with Tirana. Indeed, early in his tenure President Sali Berisha pursued an aggressive policy with respect to Albanian minorities abroad, though more recently and under western pressure he has grown increasingly clear in his support for the moderates in each community and for the sanctity of regional borders. ‘I expressed my view that the Albanians are not seeking a change of borders by force,’ he said in the spring of 1994, ‘but on the other hand Albanians will react as a single nation towards every massacre or practice of ethnic cleansing that anyone may undertake against them.’ (FBIS, 1994:1) Such a shift in position reflects a realization of the weak pull that irredentism has for most Albanians who are much more concerned with feeding their families than with nationalist agendas and who, in addition, watch CNN reports on the events in Bosnia each night on the roughly 250,000 (EIU, 1994:63) satellite- dish-equipped televisions in the country. Realizing the weakness of their position, most Albanians would shy away from irritating their neighbors—Serb, Macedonian, and especially Greek as there are hundreds of thousands of Albanians working illegally in Greece who support their families back home.

While often the prime objective of nationalist politicians is ‘reunification,’ Berisha manages to voice the single community ideology of nationalism while at the same time undercutting that objective. He can do so, to speak of having a unity of purpose with the Kosovar Albanians while reaffirming borders, because Albania is so plainly unable to carry on any military action that his words do not alarm Serbia as irredentism disguised. What is more interesting, however, is not that Berisha doesn’t have to fear Serbian retribution, but that he doesn’t really have to be too concerned with Yugoslav Albanian interest in reunification either; though this might change if the situation of the Kosovar Albanians continues to decline.

That is, Berisha’s statement implies that Albanians are unified in purpose and organization, but such organization suggests coordination and, just as the Albanians feel that Yugoslav Albanians are taking advantage of them in business, Prishtina and Tirana have such different agendas that large-scale cooperation would not be an easy matter. The problems of any ‘Greater Albania’ would parallel those of 1930s Yugoslavia where the divergent experiences of the Croats and Serbs made the idea of an overarching ‘Yugoslav’ nation untenable. Thus Berisha can advocate this pseudo-nationalist agenda without worrying over the prospect of sharing power with Prishtina. Indeed, the idea of the Albanian communities acting in concert, as if belonging to one nation, is perhaps all the more workable if the Albanians never do have an opportunity for unification.

What this reveals about nationalist conceptions in general, and Albanian ones in particular, is that there are many tiers of national identity? Just as Serbian citizens could identify as Serbs and Montenegrians on one level, Albanians can today identify as Albanian on one level and as Albanians from Albania proper or from Kosovo on another. The common conception of being ‘Albanian’ which extends across sections of Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo and even Montenegro, could be termed a ‘lowest-common-denominator’ national identity. This lowest-common- denominator nationality seems to serve more to differentiate the Albanians from surrounding communities than to unite them. Although this national feeling is differentiating, since its unifying aspect is so weak it betokens a more extroverted view of the world than most nationalisms. Such a view is forced upon the Albanians because even if they wish to ‘react as a single nation,’ since they cannot be unified (in geography or purpose), each community must individually seek to deal with its own problems. In doing so, being forced to look outward for options rather than inward for strength, Albanian communities have often elected to follow a moderate, conciliatory path in regional politics. Such forced openness and moderation hints at the role that the Albanians might play in Balkan affairs. However, the present is more that disturbing. Long term isolation, one party communist regime, strange mixture of produced myth artificial reality, social structure based in conservative form of patriarchal tribal social structure, economic problems, absence of sufficient economic, financial, legal, and production infrastructure, in combination with absence of democratic willingness for change, crated the problem more explosive than ever one possibly could imagine. All those problems were not recognized in the first period after the NATO lead intervention in Kosovo. On later stage, when everyone realized that Pandora box is opened, the ‘devil advocate syndrome prevailed’. According to BBC European Service report published on Sunday, 1 July, 2001 by Balkans analyst Misha Glenny under the title Balkans challenges for the West: The Balkans: Ethnic tensions and powerful mafia, the Balkans can boast more than its fair share of drama over the last decade. According to this report the European Union expressed the position of worries about the growing strength of Albanian nationalism. They claim that while Albania proper has been adamant in its refusal to support the separatist Albanian guerrillas, the insurgency movement in Macedonia (the NLA) has received massive support from Albanians in Kosovo. Fear of Albanian nationalism, which does not appear to strike such strident alarm bells in the United States, is born of two considerations. One is the issue of principle - if the West stopped the Serbs from creating a Greater Serbia, surely it should apply the same standards to the Albanians. The second is the question of Kosovo. According to European Union position, the Kosovo Albanians have been disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm shown by the West and the UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) for their goal of independence. Moreover, relations between the Albanians and UNMIK and the Nato-led peacekeeping force K-For have never been so strained. According to those reports, it seams that, unless the Kosovo Albanians feel after general elections in November that some attempt to meet their political aspirations is being made, they are likely to feel increasingly frustrated with their erstwhile international allies.

Additional problem presents the organised crime that in context of Albania and Kosovo obviously find a very well developed structure based in tribal social structure. For example, over the past decade, the Balkans has become the single greatest source of criminal activity in Europe. Moreover, according to this report, immensely powerful mafia structures play a pivotal role in smuggling illegal immigrants into the EU, the trafficking of prostitutes and the establishment of brothels in the EU, the infiltration of untaxed tobacco products into the EU, the transit of drugs bound for the EU, the sale and export of weapons which have been found in the possession of illegal organizations as far apart as northern Ireland and Angola. As a result, the persistence of these criminal regimes has been greatly assisted by the international community's evident failure to establish coherent administrative structures in both Bosnia and Kosovo. Moreover, political and state structures run by and for the local inhabitants are extremely weak which opens up the space for the mafia structures to wield decisive influence of the local economy and politics. At the same time, the reality is that the gangsters are rubbing their hands at the prospect of war in Macedonia. It offers them yet more opportunities for the expansion of their business, and will further undermine the EU-sponsored efforts to assist recovery and reconstruction in south- Eastern Europe. There is a growing sense among international politicians and diplomats that if there is a new deployment in Macedonia, that they must redouble their efforts especially in Bosnia and Kosovo to create coherent administrations, staffed by properly paid and trained civil servants from the region.

Moreover, according to Joseph Fitchett This failure to establish civil institutions is the root cause of both instability and political apathy in the region. In his article ‘New Concern Over a Surge in Nationalism: The Silent Issue: Greater Albania ‘April 7, 1999, published in issue of the International Herald Tribune the West may feel pleased with itself for bringing Mr Milosevic to the Hague, but complacency is the last thing its Balkan policy needs now. Moreover, issue of Albanian nationalism is also important when Albanians question where they place themselves mentally and emotionally in the world community. Albania's weakness is actually just one part of the fragility of the southern Balkans. The combination of poverty and galloping birth-rates among Albanians could produce a diaspore of refugees festering on Kosovo's borders, breeding insecurity in the way that Palestinian refugees undermined stability in Israel and the surrounding Arab states. In addition it is obvious that the unspoken proportions of the Albanian issue help to explain some often-baffling features of the Kosovo war, including the apparently Serbian ferocity in emptying Kosovo and Western insistence on preserving Kosovo as the homeland for its ethnic Albanians. At the same if unsolved tensions around the Albanian question can be seen as a argument in favour of the changes in Western attitudes toward Kosovo's independence, U.S. officials said. Until now, conventional wisdom has held that recognizing Kosovo would alarm governments in the region as a step toward Greater Albania. Superficially, this scenario sounds similar to the ''domino theory'' used, and discredited, during the Vietnam War.

But probably the strongest criticism of Albanian nationalism came from Albanians who consider that anything good could came from recent development most of all to the Albanian course and secondly to the regional stability, if this problems start to split over the external borders. In this particular case, Mr. Veton Surroi publisher of the Pristina daily Koha Ditore, and political editor in his article that initially appeared. In Pristina daily newspapers Koha Ditore on October 7, 1999 under the title Kosovo Fascism, Albanian's Shame, is of view that the systematic intimidation of Kosovo's Serbs brings shame on the province's Albanians and will have far-reaching and long-term consequences.

Bijelo Polje 1999 - Da li Suroi misli na ovakve rezulalte fasiticke ideologije i prakse

It is important step towards clear and better understanding of all problems related to the Kosovo issue and only because of that I will include the complete article. Surroi wrote:

“ An old woman killed after being beaten in her bathroom; a two-year-old child wounded when her mother was killed by a bullet; two young people killed in a mortar attack; a woman who dares not speak her name for fear that those who attempted to rape her will come back to her door. These things happened to Serbs during the past couple of weeks.

There are the silent residents also, locked up in their homes, scared to death by an atmosphere in which every sound seems threatening and every vehicle that stops might carry people with enough hatred inside them to put an end to their lives. The old couple, left to starve because they fear going to the market, unable to speak Albanian, while their Albanian neighbours cannot give them food since they have been warned not to feed Serbs.

I know how these Serbs feel because I, along with nearly two million other Albanians, was in the same situation. Not to mention the Roma, who are persecuted here on an openly racist basis.

I know these sounds: every vehicle that stopped at our doorstep carried potential risk, every sound was a threat of death that was certain to come, and little or nothing could be expected from my Serb neighbours in the way of help. I heard from the Serbian media how the regime gave its forces the automatic right to kill whoever they pleased, including women and children.

I am ashamed to hear, for the first time in Kosovo history, that Kosovo’s Albanians themselves are capable of such monstrous acts. I cannot stop myself from stating my concern that our moral code, according to which women, children, and the elderly should be left unharmed, has been violated. I know everyone can automatically excuse this by the fact that we have just been through a barbaric war, where Serbs were responsible for the most barbaric crimes, and that the intensity of the violence has left much desire for vengeance in a large part of the Albanian population. This, however, is not an excuse.

We saw how those Serbs who had cooperated with the regime fled, how those who had participated in the violence against Albanians left. We saw how Serbs who feared the emotional revenge of returning Albanian refugees—who were to discover family members in mass graves—also fled.

Now, two months after NATO troops arrived, we are dealing with more than just an emotional reaction. We are dealing with a most vicious, organized system of violence against Serbs. And we are also dealing with a conviction that lurks behind such violence, that every Serb should be condemned for what happened in Kosova. This system, based on such a conviction, is called fascism. It is exactly the same conviction-based system that the people of Kosova stood up against in their ten-year struggle with Slobodan Milosevic. It was this system that led to the inevitable creation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, to show that the Kosovo Albanians were prepared to fight with guns in their hands.

Today's Serb victims, their lives measured out in collective danger and fear, represent not just the shame of a minority. The shame must be shared collectively; we are all responsible, all those who filled so many television screens with scenes of our own pain. The shame must also be shared by the victims, the hundreds of women, children, and elderly who were massacred simply for being Albanian.

The Europeans and Americans will not blame us for not maintaining a multiethnic Kosovo.  Kosovo was as multiethnic as Slovenia—no one mentions a multiethnic Slovenia now. But they will point their fingers at the Albanians and accuse the victims of the greatest persecution at the end of the century for turning to persecute others in Kosovo, for allowing fascism to be repeated.

They will be right. And those who think these since fled the country. You have to clear your fields from mines, rebuild your house, find something to eat. Where would you find the time to hunt down and kill e.g. an elderly, ill Serbian woman who personally has not hurt you in any way?

actions will end once the last Serbs have left Kosovo will be wrong. It will be the Albanians' turn once more, only this time at the hands of other Albanians. We fought for this?”

 (Surroi, Pristina daily Koha Ditore, October 7,1999)

So what Surroi suggested is that, Albanian nationalism, in its essence, un-nationalist without religious prerogative, international in its core, is much more closer to the idea of racial purity and domination and very similar to idea of fascism than just simply to the identification of nationalism.

Almost identical data coming from the other independent sources. For example, according to Prof. dr. Frank Muenzel, from Max-Plank-Institut fur Auslandishes und Internationales Privatrecht, Hamburg, Germany, the reports are even worse that it firstly appears. Article published on August 17, 1999, also available at (http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/simop.htm#Postcript) claims that:

"This was not an "isolated incident". All over the country, members of the minorities - Serbs, Roma, Slav Muslims, and Albanian Catholics – are threatened, attacked, even killed. Serb and Roma houses are burned down house-by-house and street-by-street. Serb churches are being destroyed; a Serbian nunnery has been attacked, a young nun violated. Old Serbs who are told to leave but have nowhere to go have been shot dead through the doors of their flats. Serbs have been denied medical care, and Albanian doctors cooperating with Serbian doctors have been threatened.

Though witnesses often say that the perpetrators of these crimes wore KLA uniforms, such acts usually are blamed on people who want to revenge themselves. Of course, when your wife, your children, your neighbours have been killed, your house has been burnt down and you have been hounded out of the country by Serbian paramilitaries, you won't feel very friendly towards Serbs. But the Serbian criminals have long

Moreover, these crimes occur on a scale, which shows that these are notindividual acts of revenge but an organized historically unstable territories disputed by the ethnic groups that coexist in and around each country. However, long a latent problem, the threat of Albanian nationalism burst into the open as a campaign.

Not only the minorities are threatened. From its very beginning, this "military police" also attacked those Albanians who did not agree with them; it made its first appearance (as "secret military police") in 1998,when it "arrested" some Albanian party politicians, while the speaker of their KLA wing, Jakup Krasniqi, declared that this was not a time for political parties. Even murders of Albanian opponents started long ago (though no KLA leader openly accepted responsibility for them) and included that of the Minister of Defence of the Republic, that of several KLA commanders and that of critical Albanian journalists, starting perhaps with the murder of Enver Maloku, the founder of the Kosova Information Center.By now, everybody is afraid. The many critics of the new order dare speak out, if at all, only abroad. Even Veton Surroi, an able journalist deservedly famous for his courage under Serb occupation now only notes mildly that he "does not like nor want to defend the injustices of outside" (towards the Serbs; nobody deigns to mention the Roma).”

(Frank Muenzel, Max-Plank-Institut fur Auslandishes und Internationales Privatrecht, Hamburg, Germany, August 17, 1999, available at (http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/simop.htm#Postcript))

In response to those reports some authors immediately started to claim that results could be even worse. For example Christophe Chiclet on November 1997 in Le Monde diplomatique published article later translated by Barry Smerin ‘ BANKRUPT SERBIAN NATIONALISM IS STILL VIRULENT: Renewed conflict in Kosovo, where he claims that:

“The present stalemate is working to the advantage of opponents of Mr Rugova’s pacifist line who have founded a Kosovo Liberation Army and want to fight it out. If the region explodes, the neighbouring Republic of Macedonia, already struggling to contain the irrendentism of an Albanian minority backed directly by Albania, is likely to break up. “

(Article translated by Smerin, November 1997, Le Monde Diplomatique)

 

Almost simultaneously, the reports from ground from inside Kosovo, brought the completely same opinions. For example, The Guardian on March 12, 2001 published article ‘West struggles to contain monster of its own making:

Underestimated ethnic Albanian nationalism raises fears of new war’ written by Rory Carroll  Pristina corespondent where she clearly stated that:

“Many agree that the west fundamentally misunderstood the threat of Albanian nationalism. A series of errors, tactical and strategic, are blamed for allowing a small minority of Kosovars to seize the agenda. A recent press conference descended into slapstick when the UN spokesman, Sunil Narula, staggered from one contradiction to another trying to explain who was doing what to contain the insurgencies.

K-For intelligence officers say they face a Frankenstein-like movement, composed of different parts; it is powerful but not very bright. “

(Rory Carroll, 12, March, 2001, Pristina)

This facile image proved faulty when Marxist ideology proved less powerful than individual countries' differing national identities. But in the Balkans, many borders are recent and often demarcate destabilizing pressure at the former Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, Greece, Romania as well as Bulgaria.

 Consequently, the final outcome must be defined in a form of alternative thesis that could be formulated as:

Clear theoretical roots of national identity that in this phase of Kosovo conflict seams completely impossible due to the fact that we do not have time for structural changes of human conscience about themselves in context of nationality. However, Kosovo offers a warning that ethnic disharmony and strife exist or can be stirred up in many places. The evidence that in case of Albanian nationalism, political leaders exploited ethnic issues for their own gain in this particular case the complete isolation of social structure that incorporated only those elements of national identity who served only purpose of justification of actual political agenda.

Isolation in this particular case lead into the indoctrination on a mass scale that contributed to the development of specific form of nationalism that has all prerogatives of racial identification. On later stage, it was more than useful mechanism for development of hegemonic driven thesis of national superiority connected with territorial pretensions towards historically developed problems can lead into the ethnic conflict.

The proof that, even though initial issues raised and developed from security dilemma point of view individuals possess enormous level of insecurity due to the fact that short tern military intervention cannot resolve long existing historical, cultural and most of all ideologically developed problems.

In conclusion, it is clear that in context of Albanian nationalism that split over the external Albanian borders was developed in context of ethnic conflict involving response to Serbian nationalistic hegemony during the fail of Ottoman Empire and the long term isolation and absence of theoretical development in Albanian context that finally contributed to the existence of current model of Albanian nationalism. It is also clear that without taking into account the complete picture academic analysis is not able to provide us with explanation of problems that present the core of in reality historically, culturally, and most of all politically and ideologically inherited issue of Albanian question. 

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