Serbs Were Not Oppressing Kosovo Albanians
Antimulticulture
http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/talk.htm
November 13, 2005
Part III.
What Cohen left out
During World War II, the Albanians of Kosovo allied themselves with the
Nazis as part of a 'Greater Albania' Nazi puppet state that carried out
genocidal massacres against the Serbs, Jews, and Roma living there. More
well-known are the genocidal atrocities suffered by the Serbs at the hands
of the Croatian Ustashe, whose policies of extermination "appalled even the
Nazis" (Nyrop 1982:68).
To get a sense of the scale of these crimes, consider that only Poland
suffered a higher percentage loss of its population than Yugoslavia in the
second war. Both the Albanian and Croat Nazi collaborators, and also the
Bosnian Muslim Nazi collaborators (these last organized by the Palestinian
Arab Hajj Amin al Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and founder of the
Palestinian movement), were enthusiastic murderers who adopted wholesale the
Nazi ideology of ethnic purity through genocidal violence.
Marshall Tito's communist Partisans won the civil war in Yugoslavia. Serbs
on balance fought against the Nazis, whether as Partisans or Chetniks. The
Chetniks were politically and morally ambiguous; they were guilty of
gruesome atrocities in reprisal to those committed by the Ustashe, and
though never truly allied with the Nazis they did not consistently oppose
them either, which eventually caused the Allied powers to switch their
support to the Partisans who, though having the handicap (in the eyes of the
Allies) of being communists, were nevertheless attractive for being
staunchly and actively anti-Nazi. The Partisans were also multi-ethnic and
had a dogmatically explicit ideology of ethnic tolerance. Finally, even up
to the end of the war, they were also mostly Serbs.
The Serbs made a very important contribution to the Allied victory from the
beginning because they held Hitler so long in the Balkans that Operation
Barbarrossa (for the invasion of Soviet Russia) was delayed by several
weeks, so that he could not complete his invasion before the winter overtook
him.
Initial quisling behavior by the rulers of Serbia seeking an accommodation
with the Nazis immediately led to a revolt and coup d'Etat by the people of
Serbia, and that is when Hitler decided to invade Yugoslavia. Very high
numbers of Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovo Albanians, on the other hand,
chose to ally themselves enthusiastically with the invading Nazi forces
(this behavior echoed similar choices made by the leaders of those areas at
the outbreak of WWI, which contrasted-then too-with the choices made by
Serbs, who fought to maintain their independence against two empires, and
who allied themselves with the western democracies).
World War II ended everywhere in 1945, and in Yugoslavia this was thanks to
the Partisan victory, which allowed for the re-creation of the country with
its capital in Belgrade. And yet, in Kosovo, the fighting continued until
1951! Despite this, it was only a few years after the fighting finally ended
that the province was treated to an extremely generous policy, as detailed
above.
One cannot paraphrase a genocide. To give a list of crimes is not to convey
the genocide either, but at least it provides a context and a historical
understanding that a paraphrase would obliterate.
Below I give a partial list of crimes committed in Kosovo, during World War
II by the Shqiptars (this is what Albanians call themselves) in Kosovo
against the Serbs, Montenegrin, Jewish, and Roma (Gypsy) residents of the
province. It comes from Smilja Avramov's Genocide in Yugoslavia (1995).
Avramov's sources are unimpeachable: for the most part, she relies on
reports that the Axis authorities, on the ground in Kosovo, were relaying
back to their superiors. In other words, these are accounts of Albanian (or
Shqiptar) atrocities, told by the very allies of those same Albanians. Here,
then, is Avramov's account of what happened in 'Greater Albania,' and
especially in Kosovo, during World War II.
[Quote from "Genocide in Yugoslavia" starts here]
The mass terror was first visited upon the district of Dakovica, where in
the course of April and May 1941, more than 200 Serbs and Montenegrins were
killed. Those inhabitants who managed to escape from Dakovica set off in the
direction of Montenegro. Passing through the Albanian village of Crnobreg,
they met a tragic fate: Shqiptars from this village opened fire on the women
and children. The village of Bardonici, not far from Decani, and inhabited
by Serbs, was burned down by Shqiptars from a neighboring village. The same
fate in the first days of the occupation befell many other villages in
Metohija: Dubrava, Suvi Lukavac, Belic, Osojane, Beric, Dobrusa, and many
others. In the month of June the massacres took on a more organized
character when Shqiptar volunteer companies (the so-called Vulnetari) were
formed and armed. A company headed by Ram Alia and another group under Tsola
Bajraktar perpetrated large-scale atrocities throughout September and
October, 1941, leaving in their wakes piles of corpses and the smouldering
ruins of houses. One favorite method was to murder the head of the household
when he was out working in his fields and then pillage his property, evict
his family from the farm, and move into his house.The murders were often
accompanied by sadistic bestialities: little girls would be raped before the
eyes of their mothers or corpses horribly mutilated. In the village of
Toplicani, near Suva Reka, the unfortunate Arsenije Ilic was murdered; his
assailants then cut off his head, impaled it on a stake, and carried it
through the village in order to intimidate the villagers and force the Serbs
to move away. The Dajic brothers from the village of Grbole were first cut
up alive in the presence of their family by the Vulnetari, and Jagos Milic
from the same village was hacked to pieces with axes. The Italian diplomat
Carlo Umilta, who had been appointed civilian commissioner to General Pilzio
Biroli, commander of all the forces of occupation of Albania as well as of
the divisions of Prizren and Debar, was in Kosovo during these days. In his
memoirs he describes the suffering of the Serbian people, particularly "in
villages where the Italian forces had not yet established control." He was
shocked by the hatred displayed in this region. "The Albanians are out to
exterminate the Slavs," he wrote, adding that "people are waiting on the
streets for the lorries and vehicles of our army to pass, begging them for a
lift to Old Serbia and Montenegro, where they hoped to find safety." But
"there were not enough Italian vehicles" to transport the thousands and
thousands who were threatened. After visiting Pristina, Umilta went on to
Dakovica and Pec, everywhere witnessing horrors. When he passed through
villages he noted that "not a single house has a roof; everything has been
burned down.there are headless bodies of men and women strewn on the ground,
while the living frantically seek refuge." The Shqiptar terror also reached
parts of Kosovo under German occupation. "In the area of Old Kolasin, near
Kosovska Mitrovica, 31 out of the 51 Serbian villages have been put to the
torch. Of the 10,000 Serbs inhabiting this region, 5,000 have been murdered
or driven out." Reports sent by the command of the occupied region described
the "horrible crimes" committed by Shqiptar volunteers, who were causing
disruptions in the operations of nearby mines, so that even the Germans
started taking steps to 'pacify' the situation. The Shqiptar volunteers and
police forces sometimes penetrated as far as Serbia, committing numerous
crimes there as well. The Kosovo gendarmerie, headed by Bayazit Boletini,
occasionally also took part in punitive expeditions to Serbia.
(.)
The robbing and murder of Serbs and Montenegrins were carried out under the
cover of darkness, and villages became transformed into the scene of a
pitched battle and the villagers into living torches. In his memoirs, Carlo
Umilta wrote: "At Pec I was present at one such repellent scene." In the
night between June 8th and 9th, a clash occurred in which armed Italian
units became involved trying to prevent further bloodshed. The fighting
became so intense, states this Italian diplomat, that in the end it was
impossible to tell who was attacking, the Slavs or the Albanians. The
Italian police arrested a group of Shqiptars. On Christmas night, 1942, also
in Pristina, the Shqiptars , according to Umilta, murdered "dozens and
dozens of Slavs, wounded a large number, and it was only thanks to the swift
intervention of our carabinieri and troops in Pec that further violence was
prevented.But there was no peace."
(.)
The village of Pomazetin near Pristina was burnt to the ground in 1942, and
its Serb inhabittants were either killed or expelled. Massacres were carried
out in Obilic, Gracanica, Novo Selo, Bresnica, Lipljan and Batus. According
to Italian sources, the crimes were committed by next-door neighbors and
Shqiptars from nearby villages. In the middle of the street in Pristina,
shots were fired on Dr. Nikola Radojevic, a surgeon, and in the hospital
where his body was taken it was bestially butchered. The Shqiptar
authorities in Pristina announced that this was the work of "Serbian
communists." The terror against the Serbian and Montenegrin population
reached its culmination in 1943, after Italy's surrender. Pec was again a
target; in mid-September a systematic extermination of Serbs and
Montenegrins began. Before the German troops entered the town, the streets
were littered with massacred and disfigured bodies. The mother of Vukadin
Mikelic, one of the victims, could only identify her mutilated son by his
shoes. A report from the CPY Regional Committee for Kosovo and Metohija
dated September 3, 1943, states: "The occupational forces are systematically
carrying out a reign of terror against the Serbian population through
plunder, imprisonment and murder, with the assistance of the Shqiptar army,
the Vulnetar volunteers, and the police." A letter written by the secretary
of the CPY District Committee for Metohija on October 15, 1943, states: "In
Pec.the situation is deteriorating." Because of the disappearance of one
German and fourteen Russians, "51 Serbs were shot by the Germans. Four days
ago, in the village of Brestovik, 25 people were shot in the night; 19 were
murdered and six were wounded by the Shqiptar fifth-columnists. Almost every
night Serbs are murdered and robbed."
[Quote from "Genocide in Yugoslavia" ends here]
Avramov explains that Shqiptar resistance to the occupation was so weak in
these parts that here, unlike in Croatia, no pretenses were kept or excuses
given by the authorities. The local Shqiptar authorities in Kosovo branded
all Serbs 'Cetniks' and then 'communists' in order to mobilize the occupying
German and Italian forces into punitive expeditions and collective terror
which had the effect of facilitating the objective of the Shqiptar
authorities which was "the total extermination of the Slav population in
this area." In 1943 German troops entered Kosovo and Metohija and under
their patronage a coalition of all local nationalistic organizations was
created under the name Second League of Prizren (the first had been created
in 1878 by Austria-Hungary "so as to turn the resistance of Albania against
Serbia and Montenegro"). The Second "made its primary goal the 'defence of
all territories where Shqiptars live,' and to this end there was to be a
military draft of all Shqiptars up to the age of 60." On March 5th, 1944,
Hitler sent a telegram to Tirana ordering that in Kosovo, in addition to the
gendarmerie regiment, a "volunteer SS division" should also be created so
that the Albanian government could "achieve its well-known political
objectives."
[Quote from "Genocide in Yugoslavia" starts here]
"Prior to this time the Shqiptars had been members of armed SS formations,
and they formed part of thirteen SS divisions which perpetrated unspeakable
crimes against Serbs in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The German mission in Tirana
informed Berlin on April 3 1944, that the League, headed by Xhaver Deva and
vice president Muse Shehu, was "prepared to devote all its energies and
means to the struggle against Serbia and Montenegro, particularly to fight
against the Slav element.The Skenderbeg SS Division was formed, and its
first "successful" operation was to arrest and hunt down Jews, who under the
Italian occupation had until then managed to survive. Next came a witch hunt
against the Serbs in Pristina and the vicinity, in Pec and in other
localities. On August 28, 1944, the division slaughtered 428 Serbian
children and old people who happened to be at home in the village of Velika,
not far from Cakor. And while the Germans were retreating, the Shqiptar
units grew ever bolder in their reign of terror and indulged in unimaginable
acts of sadism: they gouged out the eyes of the living, cut off parts of
their bodies, and so forth. One wonders what made the Shqiptar masse bloody
their hands to such an extent at a time when the system on which they had
relied was obviously collapsing. The secretary of the [CPY] District
Committee for Gnjilane mentioned an interesting fact in his report to the
Regional Committee for Kosovo, dated March 31, 1944: "I hear that in
Gnjilane a consultation was held of leading Shqiptars at which they
discussed the status of Serbs in the town and district. There seem to be two
schools of thought. Some say that they went too far in the terror against
the Serbs and that they are sorry, while others say that the terror had gone
so far that they now had no choice but to carry on to the bitter end, come
what may." . In his book, Sinan Hasani writes that in addition to the
Skenderbeg SS division, which numbered 11000 Shqiptars, the Ballists [Balli
Kombetar], about 5000 of them, also carried out a reign of terror against
the Serbs. With virtually the same degree of sadism they settled scores with
those few Shqiptars who had joined the Partisan or Cetnik movements or those
who had given refuge to a surviving Serb in their homes.
(.)
The Shqiptar masses were seized with fear. Ismet Shaqiri-Stopi reported on
this fact to the Provincial Committee for Kosmet: "Our masses are waiting as
though in a daze for what is going to happen, some in trepidation of revenge
by the Serbs and Montenegrins, because they know what they did to them." The
secretary of the CPY District Committee for Urosevac, Tankosava Simic,.in
her report of September 28, 1944, to the Regional Committee for Kosmet,
pointed out that "the fear of the Shqiptar masses of what tomorrow will
bring cannot be described. Whereas some of the Shqiptar murderers feel sorry
for not having finished the job of slaughtering all the Serbs so they should
have nothing to worry about now, quite a large section of those Shqiptars
who had remained passive regret having allowed these 'monsters' to
perpetrate such terrible crimes that all Shqiptars are being held to
blame.But a small section believes that Turkey will save them from all this
chaos by mediating on their behalf with the Allies." Some hoped that England
would save them, because "it is a great nation and will not do us any harm."
However, no outside intervention was necessary to save the Shqiptars; they
were saved by the remnants of that very nation which had been the victim of
their genocide, the Serbian people against whom they were soon to begin a
new round of genocide.
[Quote from "Genocide in Yugoslavia" ends here]
Avramov is not exaggerating. There were no reprisals against the Shqiptar
population of Kosovo. There was certainly continued fighting and police
activity against Shqiptar terrorists who refused to put down their arms
until 1951. But civilians were not subjected to reprisals. In fact, the
policies Tito instituted for Kosovo after the war discriminated against the
Serbs in favor of the Shqiptars. During the war, as Avramov states, "The
mass exodus of Serbian population made way for a flood of [what Tito's
government called] 'refugees' from Albania, who moved into their [the Serbs
'] vacated homes." In other words, the mass of ethnic Albanians that had
been sent from Albania to Kosovo to occupy the homes of the cleansed and
slaughtered Serbs was allowed to stay. As if that were not enough, a law was
passed prohibiting the expelled Serbs from returning to their lands. "As a
result of the adoption of this law, 1,683 Serbian and Montenegrin families
were left homeless." And once the province of Kosovo was pacified, as we
have seen, it was treated with unprecedented tolerance and granted every
conceivable exercise of autonomy.
This historical context means three things:
1) It was perfectly legitimate for the state of Yugoslavia to resist any
separatist demands by the majority Albanians in the province of Kosovo given
that very recently there had been a genocide against the non-Albanian
populations of the province.
2) No former enemy has ever been treated with a generosity greater than that
which the victorious Serbs bestowed on the defeated Kosovo Albanians, who
had been Nazi allies.
3) Even though point 2 holds all by itself, it is worth adding this: The
Kosovo Albanians were not just any enemy: they had carried out a genocide
against those who were now in a position to take revenge and didn't.
Cohen does not even try to convey this. For him to suggest that the
disturbances in Kosovo resulted from an awakened nationalism arising from
the supposed domination, bullying, or oppression of the Kosovo Albanians at
the hands of the Serbs, when it was the Albanians who had oppressed the
Serbs, and also the Albanians who had been treated with the utmost
magnanimity by the Serbs, is simply incredible. This is a bit like having
Japan attack Pearl Harbor once again and hear a social scientist explain it
as a result of resentment by the Japanese at the oppression they had been
suffering at the hands of the Americans for the last half-century-and never
once mention the fact that Japan was an erstwhile aggressor magnanimously
rescued by the American Marshall Plan, or for that matter the intervening
years of military alliance and economic trade. I am not saying this sort of
explanation is in principle utterly impossible, but merely that it would
bear the burden of dealing with these apparently embarrassing facts. Cohen
has a similar burden. The problem is not that he does not succeed, but that
he does not even try. Why?
A reader of Cohen's not familiar with Yugoslavia (practically everybody),
will simply nod to himself and think: "Of course, they give the Kosovo
Albanians a raw deal, and sooner or later there are problems. Doesn't this
happen everywhere?" Cohen of course should anticipate that. That is the
first point. The second is that Cohen is certainly not in ignorant bliss
about the details I have given here. He knows better. Thus, I cannot escape
the conclusion: Cohen is not being remiss, he is being dishonest.
This can be readily established from the fact that one can find an admission
in Cohen's book - made in passing - that shows he was perfectly aware (as
any scholar of Yugoslavia should be) that the Kosovo Albanians were in
control. This admission appears in a passage where Cohen demonstrates a
great tolerance for incoherence, for he defends the idea that it was the
liberalizing of politics that fueled Kosovo Albanian nationalism - in other
words, Albanians in Kosovo became bitter nationalists because they had so
many freedoms and were so exquisitely enfranchised.
"Throughout Yugoslav communist history, interethnic rivalry was viewed by
some party leaders more as an opportunity than a danger. In the late 1960s
and early 1970s, for example, several leaders of Croatia's League of
Communists tapped the nationalism that was sweeping the republic to build a
base of popular support. A similar development occurred in the province of
Kosovo between 1968 and 1981, when the regime's unprecedented tolerance for
ethnoregional autonomy in that area allowed local Albanian communist leaders
to politically mobilize the long suppressed aspirations of their ethnic
group."-Cohen (1993:51; my emphasis)
But in order to make this argument, notice, Cohen has to concede that
Albanian discontent had nothing to do with Serbian oppression. Even so,
Cohen refers to the "long suppressed aspirations" of the Albanians. This
couches his admission of the "unprecedented tolerance for ethnoregional
autonomy in [Kosovo]" in a way that partially reinforces the earlier
Serbophobic slant. It is almost as if Cohen cannot help but inject whispers
of legitimacy to the behavior of the Kosovo Albanian rioters in 1981, which
legitimacy in his analysis appears to be a self-evident and foregone
conclusion in need of no historical documentation (the Kosovo Albanians had
legitimate grievances; the Earth is round; the sky is blue; the Pope is
Catholic). Even as written, one has to be an ignorant reader, and one who
reads fast, not to notice that Cohen's admission of unprecedented tolerance
towards Kosovo at the very least suggests that any Albanian perceptions of
Serbian domination of Kosovo in 1981 would be utterly bizarre.
Contrary to what Cohen says, the aspirations of Albanians had not been "long
suppressed," and they certainly were not being suppressed at the time of the
riots. But most readers probably are ignorant and read quickly. Everybody
cannot be expected to be an expert on Yugoslavia. So most readers will get
the impression that the Kosovo Albanians had somehow been sat upon. After
all, Cohen has been implying or saying this all along so the admission we
see above is just a blip in his narrative.
It is worth noting also that nowhere in Cohen's 1993 book do we find any
mention of the WWII slaughters carried out by the Shqiptar authorities in
Kosovo with the enthusiastic participation of the Shiqptar population
(whether under Italian, or more violently, under German occupation). Again,
this is a crucial historical context, especially since the government in
Belgrade has always contended that unreconstructed terrorists were to blame
for the unrest in Kosovo. It is not just bizarre for Cohen to omit what was,
still in 1981, a very recent history (the fighting in Kosovo had ended,
after all, in 1951, a mere 30 years earlier)-it is also a little too
convenient.
In 2001 the same Lenard Cohen published a book called Serpent in the Bosom
where he seeks to explain the alleged evils of Slobodan Milosevic. In that
book, concerning the history of Kosovo, Cohen does better. Instead of
omitting utterly everything that happened in Kosovo during WWII from his
account, he now devotes one paragraph. He writes:
[Quote from "Serpent in the Bosom" starts here]
For most of Kosovo's Albanians, "liberation" from nearly three decades of
Serbian 'domination,' and the opportunity to be reunited in a single
territorial unit with Albanians outside Kosovo, initially offset the reality
of subordination to Fascist control. Offering the inhabitants of the newly
co-opted territory the vision of a "greater" and "ethnically pure" Albania
allied to the Axis, the Fascist authorities found many enthusiastic
collaborators among the Albanians of Kosovo. Shkelzen Maliqi, a leading
present-day Kosovar analyst, has pointed out, for example, that: "Albanians
chose to look upon the Italians and Germans as liberators and protectors
from the Serbs, which explains the weakness of the resistance movement
again[st] Fascist occupation in Kosovo." Reverting to the situation before
1912 and during a good part of World War I, the Serb and Montenegrin
inhabitants of the region once again became second-class citizens, while
Albanians assumed a position not without similarities to the status they had
enjoyed under Ottoman rule. Indeed, some members of the former Turkish and
Albanian economic elite were even allowed to reassert their earlier feudal
control over agricultural production. The small Albanian intelligentsia was
also recruited to work in the bureaucratic apparatus of the occupation
authorities, and an Albania gendarmerie was established to police each local
district. The new regime also provided Albanians with schools, media
facilities, and other outlets for ethnic expression in their own language,
opportunities that had been prohibited under the interwar Yugoslav regime.
For their part, a large number of Serbian and Montenegrin colonists [were]
subjected to an official policy of discrimination, violent harassment,
confiscation of their properties, and sometimes deportation, were forced to
flee from Kosovo. Interethnic animosity reached a high pitch as the
population chose up sides in an emerging civil war and resistance struggle.
[Quote from "Serpent in the Bosom" ends here]
There would seem to be a few things missing from Cohen's account. Organized
slaughters of Serbs, Montenegrins, Jews, and Roma by the Shqiptar
authorities, which involved unspeakable atrocities with genocidal goals, and
which were far worse than mere mass murder, have become "discrimination,
violent harassment, confiscation of their properties, and sometimes
deportation." This would be like describing a violent rape followed by the
murder of the victim as "an untoward remark, and possibly even sexual
harassment." Instead of telling us about the organized atrocities in which
poor peasant Serbs were the victims of the occupation authorities and the
puppet Albanian regime, Cohen explains that "interethnic animosity reached a
high pitch as the population chose up sides."
What side would Cohen have the Serbs, Jews, Montenegrins, and Roma 'choose'?
In his opinion, was it a wise 'choice'? In their place, I certainly would
not 'chose' to be slaughtered in my home.
Cohen's statement that Albanians were excited at the prospect of being
"reunited in a single territorial unit with Albanians outside Kosovo" is a
bare-faced lie. One cannot reunite with something that one has never been in
union with in the first place. Kosovo had never been part of Albania, and
this includes the times when the Turkish empire had administered both
regions.[12] This blatant dishonesty of Cohen's is obviously designed to
legitimize the idea of 'Greater Albania.'
What is Cohen relying on? On the fact that you know nothing about Kosovo.
And the WWII Kosovo genocides omitted from Cohen's lonely paragraph on the
subject are omitted from the rest of the book as well. This is the cleansing
of ethnic cleansing, made more palatable to the reader by describing the
Kosovo Serbs as 'colonists'.
But that characterization, too, cannot be allowed to stand. Although it has
been popular to portray the Serbs in the media as stuck in the middle ages,
and to represent their attachment to Kosovo as an outdated vestige of a
bygone era completely at odds with modern realities (and in fact symptomatic
of their supposedly virulent nationalism), there is no substance to the
picture.
Serbs are certainly emotionally attached to Kosovo, but there is nothing
outdated about that. Kosovo may be the medieval cradle of Serbian culture
and a vast repository of Serbian medieval architecture, but it has also been
continuously inhabited by majority Serbs since the Middle Ages until the
1880s, when there was still a 4 to 1 Serb majority in Kosovo.[12]
However fast the rate of growth of the Shqiptar population-and it is fast-it
cannot even begin to account for how a Serb 4 to 1 majority became a
Shqiptar 4 to 1 majority in the space of a mere century, because barely
three or four generations go by in that space of time. The numbers alone are
evidence of genocide-and genocide can certainly explain the reversal. A full
explanation of the population shift would include all of the following.
First, beginning with atrocities committed by Shqiptars against Serbs and
Montenegrins in Kosovo during WWI, which caused a mass exodus at the time.
Second, the genocides carried out during WWII. Third, massive illegal
settlement from Albania when 'Greater Albania' was a Nazi puppet state,
which settlement the Tito regime chose to normalize at the end of the war
rather than expel these Albanians back into their country. Fourth, the
prohibition imposed by the Tito regime on Serbs expelled from Kosovo to
return to their homes.
And we must add one final chapter: in the years after WWII, Serbs in Kosovo
were subjected to a campaign of violent harassment by terrorist elements in
the province such that some were fleeing the province, while at the same
time many Albanians were crossing the international border illegally and
settling in Kosovo. Amazingly, there is a weak and passing admission-but an
admission nonetheless-of these latter facts in Cohen's (2001:32) second
book:
".the porous border with socialist Albania also stimulated Albanians in that
country to illegally enter Kosovo in order to escape political
authoritarianism and economic impoverishment. At the same time, Serbs
continued to leave Kosovo due to harassment, anxiety, and a perception of
poor long-term prospects for their ethnic community."
Now we can explain the population shift.
The reference to the porous border with Albania makes the following point:
certainly many were moving across this border; certainly all kinds of
subversives and terrorists could have been among them. This again points to
the plausibility of the 'outside forces' hypothesis for the disturbances in
Kosovo in 1981.
What is harder to explain is why Cohen in the earlier quote above, like so
many others, has chosen to refer to the Serbs who settled in Kosovo in the
inter-war years as 'colonists.' Some of these people were returning to their
land after having been chased out during WWI, and others were choosing to
move there from other parts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In what sense were
they 'colonists'? When I moved from California to Philadelphia nobody called
me a 'colonist.' The word is an epithet meant to smooth acceptance or
exculpate atrocities committed against these Serbs by making it seem as
though they were going to lord it over in a foreign country! This, again, is
evidence of Cohen's dishonesty.
Finally, on the question of who lords it over whom, it is worth remarking
that it is only in the period after 1912 and before 1941-a mere 29
years-that the Shqiptars in Kosovo had not been in a dominant political
position there in recent memory, a fact that Cohen himself alludes to when
he says that ethnic Albanians had resumed, during the Nazi occupation, the
status of Kosovo Albanian feudal overlords which they had enjoyed until
1912, and also when he says that they wanted "'liberation' from nearly three
decades of Serbian 'domination.'" This context makes Cohen's reference to
the supposedly "long suppressed aspirations" of the Albanians entirely
dishonest.
It is true that things were tough for some years in Kosovo immediately after
the second war. The years immediately after the war were full of
difficulties and uncertainties because the country was still crawling with
Nazis and many of these Nazis were still fighting. There was considerable
repression from the state to prevent these forces from destabilizing the
country. In Kosovo, there was fighting against organized and irredentist
former Nazi-collaborators until 1951. Even under such circumstances,
Aleksandar Rankovic, a Serb, and the head of the security service and secret
police at the time, made admissions in the same year of 1951 of the sort
that one simply does not see in a truly repressive or totalitarian state,
and certainly not one with the pressures Yugoslavia's leadership
understandably felt to use state power in order to maintain order against
violent and subversive outlaws. Here they are:
".in 1951 Alexsandar Rankovic, in charge of the security service and secret
police, admitted that in 1949 (a rather mild year compared to the 1945-48
period) 41 percent of the arrests had been unjustified and 23 percent had
been for crimes of "minor importance." He further admitted that the courts
had "converted ordinary crimes into political offenses" and that many
defendants had been deprived wrongly of their liberty."-Nyrop (1982:37-38)
If during this period up to 1951, and then for some years after, Kosovo
suffered disproportionately from the repressive actions of the state, that
is also because Kosovo had been the location of particularly spectacular
atrocities, because it had more Nazis and terrorists than other regions of
the country, and because these Nazis and terrorists were the very last to
lay down their arms. When peace finally did come to Kosovo in 1951, however,
it took only 17 years, with the triumph of the Yugoslav liberals in the
1960s, for the province to be granted what even Cohen admits was
"unprecedented tolerance for ethnoregional autonomy in that area," as well
as grossly disproportionate economic assistance from Belgrade.
The aspirations of the Kosovo Albanians were only temporarily suppressed, as
we have seen, and then much less than they probably would have been in any
other part of the world given the crimes against humanity of the Albanian
Nazi collaborators in WWII, and given also the ferocity of their
stubbornness in continuing to fight years after the World War had officially
ended.
One can expect Serbs to be painfully conscious of the means used to reduce
them to a minority in Kosovo. One can also expect Serbs to be understandably
and justifiably worried about the Serb minority in Kosovo when irredentist
Albanian movements there advance the demand for secession and union with
Albania. What one might not expect-given the history-is a policy of
unprecedented tolerance towards Kosovo. But that is what Tito gave Kosovo,
and this would have been impossible without the forbearance of the Serbs,
who formed from the beginning the core of the victorious Partisan movement,
and who were till the end the overwhelming majority of its members.
--
Jim
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Western_Nationalist
Union Against Multiculty
"Abolish Multiculty and String Up The Traitors!"