Albin Kurti, Vjosa Osmani, Glauk Konjufca, and their associates often speak about the “genocide” of Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija by Serbia. According to them, a team of experts has been carefully preparing a genocide lawsuit that the so-called “Kosovo” will file against Serbia.
All this is happening while in Kosovo and Metohija, after mass killings, looting, and the displacement of 240,000 people, the remnants of the Serbian population live in ghettos. Even there, they are not safe—arrests, beatings, injuries, property seizures, endangerment and desecration of holy sites, falsification of history, and theft of cultural heritage are everyday occurrences.
These announcements from the leaders of the Albanian secessionists, as absurd as they may sound, should not be underestimated. In this, as before, they can count on the support of Western media, historians, lawyers, and judicial tribunals. As Edward S. Herman, David Peterson, and the foreword writer Noam Chomsky have shown in the book The Politics of Genocide, accusations of genocide are today a favorite propaganda tool of NATO countries and their local allies. These authors note that the methods of accusing and subsequently subjugating peoples through genocide accusations have been tried precisely on the Serbs, reminding that among NATO countries are those, like the USA, whose history began with genocide. The indigenous peoples of the American continent had to be accused first of all the world’s evils and vices. Today, one of the most common propaganda models is accusing those nations and countries of genocide over whom NATO countries and their local allies actually committed genocide.
Therefore, let us try to clarify the concepts and examine the basic facts about the genocide in Kosovo and Metohija.
Albin Kurti claims that the history of Serbian genocide against Albanians began in 1878, when Serbia occupied the districts of Niš, Vranje, Toplica, and Pirot. Indeed, historiography acknowledges that at the end of the Serbian-Turkish wars of 1876-1878, there were forced expulsions of Albanians, but it also recognizes that before that, Albanians, Turks, and Circassians systematically expelled Serbs. Furthermore, during the process of liberation of the Balkan countries from Ottoman rule, Balkan Muslims, including Albanians, were also relocating because they refused to live without their old privileges under the rule of “infidels,” their former serfs. Often, they were forced to do so by retreating Ottoman army generals.
“Serbia came to Kosovo through genocide and left through genocide,” Kurti asserts in the same place (Al Jazeera, July 19, 2021). One must ask—what does the word “genocide” mean to this Albanian politician? Kurti will explain this on another occasion, in a post on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2023, when, insisting on the similarity between the “genocide” against Albanians and the Holocaust against Jews, he emphasized that the concept of genocide was “conceptualized” in 1944 (Kossev, January 27, 2023)
Albin Kurti was, most likely, referring here to Rafael Lemkin’s book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in 1944. This author, in fact, writes that he coined the new word “genocide” to denote not only “the direct destruction and mass killing,” but also “a deliberate plan of various actions aimed at destroying the essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the intent of removing them. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of political and social institutions, culture, language, national sentiment, religion, the economic livelihood of national groups, as well as the destruction of personal security, freedom, health, pride, and even the lives of individuals who belong to such national groups. Genocide is directed at national groups as entities, and the action it entails is not aimed at individuals as such, but at them as members of a national group.”
Such actions, Rafael Lemkin continues, also include the expropriation of property when it is done because of the owner’s national origin. Genocide, Lemkin writes, has two phases. In the first, the persecuted national group, or the remnants of it, are forced to abandon their national characteristics; in the second, they adopt the national characteristics of the group carrying out these measures (Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Washington 1944, p. 79).
Today, it is politically correct to refer to Lemkin’s book and to his, as seen, very broad definition of genocide. Albin Kurti has done so as well, although it is obvious he has not read it. For Lemkin does not mention any Serbian genocide against Albanians, while on the other hand, he quite thoroughly describes the Albanian genocide, as he explicitly says, against Serbs in Kosovo and parts of western Macedonia that were incorporated into fascist Greater Albania during World War II (Ibid., pp. 260-261).
Indeed, does Lemkin’s definition of genocide, which Kurti refers to, better fit the situation of Albanians during brief periods under Serbian rule, or that of Serbs under Albanian rule and their protectors from the late Middle Ages to the present day?
Before we answer that question, let us also cite the most cited definition of genocide from the UN Genocide Convention adopted in 1948, at the initiative of Raphael Lemkin. Here, regarding the question of whether Serbs suffered genocide in World War I, I have already written about that document (“On the genocide against Serbs in World War I,” Iskra, April 18, 2023). To repeat, the Convention states: “… genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The history of genocide in Kosovo and Metohija has one important context that is often forgotten. That is the decisive role of the Great Powers that have ruled these lands, for longer or shorter periods: the Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungary, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the USA, and the EU, i.e., NATO countries.
Without fear of exaggeration, it can be said that Albanians, for the most part, were and remain on the side of the conquering Great Powers, while the Serbs opposed and fought against them. Every rule, of course, has its exceptions, but here we are talking about the main currents, the core of political ideals and actions. For example, it is noticeable that Albanians and Serbs, compared to other Balkan peoples, were the most likely to convert to Islam and side with the Ottoman Empire. However, the Serbs, alongside this process, also offered the fiercest resistance to the Ottomans. Those who adopted the Muslim faith gradually severed ties with the Serbian people (and this rule, of course, had its exceptions). This separation from the homeland was not stopped by the two Yugoslav experiments, the civil and the communist. During the time of Skanderbeg (partly of Serbian origin) and before the creation of Albania in 1912, Albanians also resisted the Turks, but the overwhelming majority who converted to Islam decisively influenced the national character of this people. The cooperation of parts of the Serbian people with the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Italian powers, and today with NATO occupiers, did not change the main course of Serbian history and tradition. However, this still cannot be compared to the general cooperation of Albanians with the conquerors.
Some of these Great Powers openly preached the destruction of the Serbs (Nazi Germany), while others worked on it more or less covertly, but still within the framework of Lemkin’s definition of genocide (Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungary, Fascist Italy, USA, and EU). The Albanian political elites carried out their plans.
The history of the destruction of Serbs in Albania is a special topic. It requires much more serious attention from Serbian historiography than it has received so far. When it comes to Kosovo and Metohija and Old Serbia as a broader concept—which includes the Raška region, Metohija, Kosovo, and parts of present-day North Macedonia—the mass settlement of Albanians in these areas, as well as in regions extending to Leskovac, Niš, and Toplica, began only after 1690. Until then, in these lands, including Kosovo and Metohija, either there were no Albanians or their numbers were statistically insignificant. However, after the uprisings and migrations led by Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević, and later under Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanović Šakabenta, the Serbs were declared outlaws in the Ottoman Empire as rebels and “imperial traitors.” After the pogroms, their status as "zimiya" (non-believers under the Sultan’s protection), which provided certain legal guarantees, was restored, but each new rebellion contributed to their already established reputation as outlaws against law and justice. Being of "wrong faith" and close to the Russians, they remained politically suspicious until the end. On the other hand, Albanians who rapidly converted to Islam acquired a privileged status. This was often used to seize Serbian lands and spread the “true faith.” The privilege of Muslim Albanians and the subordination of Orthodox Serbs remained the key fact in relations between the two peoples until the liberation of Old Serbia in 1912.
Albanians played an important role in suppressing Serbian uprisings. The system of deliberate Turkish-Albanian destruction of unreliable and suspicious Serbian civilian populations was already formed in the second half of the 18th century. It already involved killings, looting, abduction of girls and women, confiscation and destruction of property, desecration and destruction of churches, humiliation and rape, expulsion, and subsequent Albanization—all that which is encompassed by the definitions of Raphael Lemkin and the United Nations. There is no doubt about the conscious and long-term intent to destroy a national group, which is central to these actions. Perhaps without explicit reference to the definitions, but with broad knowledge of European and Serbian history, Radovan Samardžić called the Turkish-Albanian terror over the Serbs in the 18th and 19th centuries genocide (Foreword in: The Book on Kosovo, Belgrade 1990, 334).
The terror at that time also included Roman Catholic Albanians, who in uprisings and migrations allied themselves with the Serbs. However, in the 19th century, during the era of modern nationalism, Roman Catholic Albanians, together with Muslims, turned against the Serbs.
Muslim Albanians made up an important part of the dahija rebels under whose terror the Serbs lived until 1804. They were the strike force of the armies that fought against Karađorđe’s and Miloš’s Serbia and brutally crushed the First Serbian Uprising in 1813. These events confirmed the status of “imperial traitors” held by the Serbs who remained in the Ottoman Empire. Albanians were the ones who persecuted and punished them on behalf of the Ottoman rulers. Particularly dangerous for the Serbs was the accusation that they were instruments of Russian politics. For this reason, persecutions of Kosovo and Metohija Serbs became much more systematic from the time of the Crimean War onward.
During the Serbian wars for liberation and unification from 1876 to 1878, the temporary Serbian entry into Kosovo, and the creation of the Albanian League, killings, expulsions, physical violence, plunder, and the kidnapping of girls and women became more widespread than ever before. Dimitrije Bogdanović, author of the classic Book on Kosovo, calls the Albanian terror against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija from 1878 to 1912 a genocide (Belgrade 1990, pp. 183-194). The Ottoman Empire did not want to have disloyal, pro-Russian populations in Kosovo and Metohija or other border regions. Albanian atrocities against Serbs were so severe that Constantinople occasionally lost control over the situation in Kosovo and Metohija. This situation lasted until the liberation of Old Serbia in 1912. At that time, Serbs in Old Serbia and Macedonia were probably the most disenfranchised inhabitants of Europe. Around 150,000 Serbs left Kosovo and Metohija during this period, while about 400,000 fled from Old Serbia to Serbia. In the period from 1878 to 1912, under conditions of genocide, Albanians finally surpassed 50% of the population in Kosovo and Metohija. A significant number of Serbs converted to Islam over time, becoming Albanians (whom the Serbs called “Arnauts”) to avoid suffering. The Russian consul in Prizren, Ivan Jastrebov, and Jovan Hadži-Vasiljević wrote about the Serbian origin of some Kosovo-Metohija Albanians.
The war in which Old Serbia and Macedonia were liberated in 1912 was, at the same time, a struggle for Serbia to gain access to the sea in northern Albania. Albanian attacks on the Serbian army ended with reprisals against civilians, especially in Ljuma and the area around Debar. Although there can be no justification for war crimes, it must be noted that they were, among other things, consequences of the genocide the Serbian people had endured up to that point.
In World War I, during which the Serbs were subjected to genocidal destruction by Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian occupiers, the Albanian political elites once again sided with the conquerors. Albanians, with the exception of the Serbian ally Esad Pasha and his men, on the encouragement of Austro-Hungary, but also with the intent to avenge the Serbian army’s campaigns through northern Albania in 1912–1913, killed and looted Serbian soldiers and civilians retreating through the Albanian wilderness in 1915–1916. These were Roman Catholics from northern Albania, long close to Austro-Hungarian policy in the Balkans; Esad Pasha mainly gathered Muslims. Dissatisfied with the subsequent Bulgarian occupation, Albanians still massively joined the Bulgarian punitive units that suppressed the Toplica Uprising in 1917. More than 30,000 Serbian civilians were killed then.
The Albanian “kača” bands and violence against Serbs continued after 1918. However, Albanian national narratives remember the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (SHS) and Yugoslavia as eras of land seizure, forced expulsion of Albanians, and colonization of Kosovo and Metohija by Serbs. All this, to some extent, corresponds to historical facts, but it is not the genocide claimed by Kurti. It was an agrarian reform that covered the entire Yugoslavia and meant the final abolition of feudalism, liberation of (mostly Serbian) serfs, and introduction of civil equality. The expulsions were carried out at Turkey’s initiative, which led to an international agreement in 1938. In practice, however, coercion also occurred. It is estimated that up to 60,000 Serbs were settled at that time, and about 45,000 Albanians were expelled.
Ethnic relations were, however, changed once again during World War II, following the Italian-German occupation of Kosovo and Metohija, in the context of a new Albanian genocide and the expulsion of about 100,000 Serbs—first settlers and then indigenous inhabitants—accompanied by killings, injuries, property confiscations, and crimes committed even outside Kosovo and Metohija (for example, the genocide against the inhabitants of the village of Velika, carried out by the Albanian SS division “Skanderbeg” and the German SS division “Prinz Eugen”). Albanian support for the occupiers was almost universal, as was the resentment over the “liberation” in 1945.
The Communist Party, which came to power in Yugoslavia in 1945, saw Serbian nationalism and “hegemony” as its main enemy. To incorporate Albania into the Yugoslav federation, Tito and his associates were willing to promise Kosovo and Metohija to Albania. This was one of the reasons why pre-war Serbian colonists were forbidden to return to Kosovo and Metohija, while the borders were opened for mass immigration from Albania. The uprising that the Albanians raised at the end of 1944, centered in Drenica, was nevertheless brutally suppressed. After that, the process of disenfranchising Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija and introducing Kosovo’s autonomy began. It accelerated from 1966, along with the onset of a new period of terror, which involved old methods: murders, various forms of violence, endangering women, holy sites, property, expulsions. Constitutional changes from 1971 to 1974 reduced Serbia’s authority over Kosovo and Metohija to a minimum. Through mass emigration of Serbs, their number in Kosovo decreased from 27.4% in 1961 to 14.9% in 1981. The peak of the terror was considered the arson attack on the Peć Patriarchate residence (1981) and the humiliating, perverse shooting of Đorđe Martinović from Gnjilane (1985). Many authors recognized a plan and system in all this. For that reason, Dimitrije Bogdanović called what happened during this period a genocide against the Serbian people (Book on Kosovo, 340, 395, 427).
The period of Slobodan Milošević’s rule (1987–2000) can be, along with the era of the Kingdom of Serbia (1912–1915), the Kingdom of SHS, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941), called the only period of Serbian governance in Kosovo and Metohija. Milošević’s rise to power was a direct consequence of the terror against Serbs and their displacement from these regions. Marginalized, partly by their own choice due to the boycott of Serbian institutions, the Albanians during that time fully relied on the previously gained support of the USA and EU countries, which used their movement as a tool to break up Yugoslavia and Serbia. These Great Powers supported the terrorist activities of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), while ignoring crimes against Serbian civilians, which led to the 1999 war, Serbian reprisals against Albanians, and the largest pogrom against Serbs in the history of Kosovo and Metohija. This continued with the March Pogrom in 2004. The crimes against Serbs from 1999 to 2004 were not only massive but also unusually brutal; one of the most horrific is the well-documented suspicion of organ trafficking of captured Serbs. The destruction of the Serbs had, as in the past, only one goal — the Albanization of Kosovo and Metohija and their annexation to Greater Albania. There is no better word to describe these events than — genocide.
Today in Kosovo and Metohija, under the rule of Albin Kurti, Vjosa Osmani, Glauk Konjufca—open advocates for the annexation of Kosovo and Metohija to Greater Albania—there is genuine terror against Serbs in northern Kosovo and a constant threat to their security, which occasionally escalates into open violence against Serbs confined to ghettos south of the Ibar River.
There is no doubt that an Albanian genocide against Serbs has been committed in Kosovo and Metohija, which, with almost the same goals and methods, has been ongoing for centuries and continues to this day. What has been done to Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija fully corresponds to the definitions of the UN and Raphael Lemkin. War crimes, reprisals, and persecutions of Albanians in three brief historical periods cannot be compared in any way to this.
Any silence regarding the genocide against the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija means complicity in it. Ultimately, any legal acceptance of the current situation in Kosovo and Metohija would represent the legalization of the consequences of genocide.
Dr. Miloš Ković
Source: