World War I and New Tutelage for Albania







 







 



Kosovo 



by William Dorich 








 



 



 



 





 





 



 













Alex Dragnich and Slavko Todorovich



World War I and New Tutelage for Albania













As the end
of World War I approached, and Serbia inched ever nearer to the
fulfillment of its war aim - the unification of all South Slavs in one
independent state - relations with Albanians took a new turn. The
mighty Albanian protector, and the main instigator of anti-Serbian
attitudes in the area, Austria-Hungary, was about to leave the
historical scene. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was
about to be replaced by Italy, which during the war had settled
Albanians in Serbian areas, certainly not a friendly act. Moreover,
Italy had the support of the West, which Vienna did not. The Entente
had made numerous promises to Italy in the Secret Treaty of London
(1915), and Italy wasted no time in seeking to achieve its objectives.
But Italian and Serbian (Yugoslav) claims to former
Austro-Hungarian territories overlapped. Serbia wanted Skadar, as a
natural part of Montenegro, the real hinterland of the city. In vain,
Montenegrins had spilled so much blood for it in the recent past. The
new government in Belgrade wanted a degree of influence in Albania,
especially in the northern part, and a few frontier "corrections." In
general, Belgrade could live with the borderline drawn by the 1913
London Conference. Also, as it turned out, Yugoslavia was among the few
voices among the allies, pleading for an independent Albania, free of
any Great Power patronage.
The Serbian (Yugoslav) position was markedly different from the
Italian. The disparity was not only with respect to territorial demands
and ambitions, but mainly in the conceptual aspect of the demands.
Italy, which had begun with an interest in the Albanian littoral, now
wanted half of Albania and was pushing the Great Albania concept, which
meant the incorporation of Serbian lands, such as Kosovo, into the new
Albanian state. There was no way that such a proposal would be
acceptable to a nation that had just come out of the war a winner.
Belgrade's position on Kosovo was not negotiable and had not
changed one iota since the discussions at the London Conference of
Ambassadors (January 1913). Serbia could not allow the Kosovo area to
be a "malignant tumor" that would affect Serbia's state power. And,
Serbia never considered Kosovo as "small change" or a "bargaining chip"
to be used by diplomats at the negotiating table. Finally, the Serbs
could have used the right of conquest argument, since the Turks had
conquered it from them, but chose not to do so. Rather, they stressed
Serbia's historic, cultural, and moral rights.
The historic, cultural, and moral reasons which guided Belgrade
in opposing foreign pretensions to Kosovo were fully presented to the
London meeting in 1913, and did not change in 1919 in the Royal
Yugoslav format, and are just as valid today, some 70 years later,
although in a diametrically different ideological context. The
memorandum submitted by Serbia's delegates to the 1913 conference, read
in part:
"Today the majority in those areas are Arnauts [Albanians], but
from the middle of the 14th century until the end of the 17th century
that land was so pure Serbian ... that the Serbs established their
Patriarchate in Pec ... and near Pec is the Serbian monastery, Decani,
the most famous monument of Serbian architecture and piety from the
14th century. It is impossible to imagine that [these] would have been
built in a region in which the Serbian people was not in a majority.
The region in which are found Pec, Djakovica, and Decani, is the most
holy among all Serbian lands. It is impossible to imagine any
Montenegrin or Serbian government which would be in a position to yield
that land to Arnauts or to any- one else ... On that question the
Serbian people cannot and will not yield, nor enter into any agreements
or compromises, and therefore the Serbian government is not in a
position to do so ... "
One cannot overemphasize the moral impact that the liberation
of Kosovo (cradle of the nation) had as a fulfillment of Serbia's
historic mission. Rational Western diplomats had difficulty
understanding this. Operating in societies where traditional values
are, if necessary, also negotiable, they viewed Serbia's history in
terms of "progress" made in a brief span of time. They could not
understand the uncompromising position of the Serbs when it came to
losing a few cities here and there compared to the overall national
advantage gained in only a few years. The "some you lose, some you win"
philosophy could not be applied to Kosovo. Serbia just could not accept
the Entente's concept of giving certain Serbian lands to Serbia in
exchange for giving other equally historic Serbian lands to someone
else.
European diplomatic big guns like Lloyd George (who in 1919
said, "I've got to polish off Pashic") or Izvolski (who once called
Pashic, "this old conspirator"), as well as British public opinion
molders such as Wickham Steed and R. W. Seton-Watson, were plainly
annoyed with Serbia's stubbornness. The latter twosome envisioned the
new state of the South Slavs in terms of a Central Europe
constellation. They feared Serbian "hegemonism" and fell for Italian
scare tactics, portraying the Slav monster as "stretching from
Vladivostok to the Adriatic." To them, the fact that Tsar Dusan
(1331-1354) had 1 of his palaces adjacent to Skadar, that that city was
the capital of the Montenegrin ruling family of Crnojevic (1465-1490),
that the widow of Serbia's King Uros (1242-1276) built her monastery
there and lived there as a nun, that Skadar had a Serbian school as
late as 1850, and that the city was ecclesiastically part of the
Prizren Orthodox diocese until 1913 - all this meant nothing, or very
little.
Once again, the Serbs had an image problem in Western Europe.
Again, the British Foreign Office had suspicions regarding Serbian
motives. Serbian historian Milorad Ekmecic writes: "The Serbian
Government could not get rid of the burden which history has placed
upon her shoulders - the prejudice in Western Europe about the historic
mission of Serbia, which is to open the door to the Russians in the
south of Europe ... Britain viewed Serbia exclusively from that
perspective." (Ratni ciljevi Srbije 1914 [War Aims of Serbia],
Belgrade, 1973, p. 437).
The Albanian authors, Stefanaq Pollo and Arben Puto (The
History of Albania, London, 1981, p. 182), assert that there were other
considerations. In explaining the admission of Albania to the League of
Nations in 1920, they write:
"The unexpected interest in the Albanian cause on the part of
London was not unconnected with the petroleum wealth to be found in the
Albanian subsoil .... The Foreign Office told the Tirane Government
that it could count on Britain's firm support if it allowed the
Anglo-Persian Company exclusive rights to prospect and exploit the
petroleum resources in Albania. The Government accepted [the offer] and
so, on December 17, the British representative, H. A. L. Fisher,
declared to the General Assembly that his delegation had undertaken 'a
new and thorough study of the Albanian situation' which has convinced
it that Albania should be admitted immediately. "
The validity of this contention is beyond the scope of this
study, but suffice it to say that Britain did on different occasions
support Albanian positions against Belgrade. Moreover in 1921, Britain
was influential in the Conference of Ambassadors (this time in Paris),
which, in addition to deciding on the borders of the new state,
resolved that the territorial integrity of the Albanian state to be a
matter of "international interest." Consequently, it was agreed that
Italy was to be endowed with the "protection" of Albania within the
League of Nations system. This meant giving Italy a hand in Albanian
internal affairs, which seemed to put Belgrade on notice of Italian
intentions in the Balkans.
Serbian Premier Nikola Pashic had something to say about United
States attitudes toward Serbia in those days. He had nothing against
Wilson's 14 points or his steadfast defense of the right of
self-determination. But he felt that there was a flaw in Wilson's
personal insistence on Albania's "independent" status. In the view of
the seasoned Serbian politician, an "independent Albania" under an
Italian "protectorate" was a contradiction in terms. Pashic believed
that it would have been more logical to have the 2 states, Serbia
(Yugoslavia) and Albania, cooperate in defending the Balkan area
against intrusions of foreign influences of all kinds. In one report to
the National Assembly Pashic declared that on the one hand Wilson
"protects Albania from us, and on the other hand, he brings Italy into
Albania, the most dangerous enemy not only of the Albanian people, but
of the whole Balkan peninsula as well."
In this "exit Austria - enter Italy" scenario Pashic saw the
opposite of freedom from foreign intervention in Balkan affairs. In the
multinational environment of the Balkans ethnic tensions and national
conflicts were not to be dreaded as much - he thought - as the
exploitation of those tensions and rivalries by a foreign power. Even
if one attempted to understand the concern of the Entente (and the
United States) about maintenance of peace in the Balkans, to appoint
Italy to be the protector of Albania and, indirectly, the guardian of
the peace in the area was equal to assigning a fox as caretaker of the
chicken coop, as events in the 1930s were to demonstrate.