http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/eur....stmMacedonian Albanians' grievances


BBC News Online's regional expert Paulin Kola outlines the root causes of the ethnic Albanian grievances.
Most Macedonian Albanians say that all they want is to be equal to ethnic Macedonians. They say they want:


To be recognised as equal by the Macedonian Constitution
Albanian to be an official language
A state-funded university.
But most Macedonians argue that what their Albanian countrymen really want is the destruction of Macedonia and the creation of a "Greater Albania".

Official figures put the overall number of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia at about 23%. Albanians say they make up more than 40% of the population.

Yet less than 10% of the workforce is made up of Albanians, according to a government report released in May 2000.

In the police force and the military ethnic Albanians make up only 3.1% of the employees.


Rebels have found support

A similar situation exists in other sectors of public life, including the judiciary and the health system.

Economically, Macedonia's Albanians are generally self-reliant, with many being self-employed.

But they say that when they have a grievance, they face an administration that is so disproportionately Macedonian that they are made to feel "alien".

Dismissing charges of discrimination, the government argues that this is in part due to the fact that education levels among Macedonia's Albanians are generally lower than amongst ethnic Macedonians.

Education

This brings to the fore the Albanians' second major grievance - education in their mother tongue.

For the past decade, Albanians in Macedonia have been unanimous in demanding the creation of a university with Albanian as the primary language.

Since 1994, they have consistently clashed with the authorities after establishing such an institution just outside the mainly ethnic Albanian city of Tetovo, which the government deemed "illegal" and took steps to close down.

A compromise brokered by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe - that a private university be set up in lieu of a publicly-funded institution - appears to have satisfied only part of the ethnic Albanian elite.

The authorities fear that an Albanian language university would set the country on a path towards separatism.

More generally, however, they argue the Albanians enjoy every single right a national minority is entitled to.

Constitutional position

This infuriates the Albanians further for they do not accept being a national minority.

They fiercely oppose Macedonia's fundamental law which defines the republic as a state of Macedonians, and other minorities.

They want the constitution to define Macedonia as a state of its citizens, regardless of ethnicity, or alternatively to become a binational entity.

But Macedonians fear that the creation of a binational entity would encourage the Albanians to secede.

Ethnic Albanians allege that the constitution reduces them to second-class citizens and must be amended.

Albanians say the authorities consistently deny them the right to "feel Albanian" and to display national symbols. They want to have the right of veto over parliamentary decisions centring on Albanian issues.


'Greater Albania'

With the failure of a political resolution to their problems, there is now growing support for the rebels, even among Albanian politicians.


The rebels argue that only through the use of force will Macedonian authorities be forced to satisfy their well-publicised demands - which are identical to those of the Albanian politicians in Skopje.

However, there are suspicions, not confined to the Macedonians alone, that the rebels' real aim is to carve up a slice of western and northern Macedonia and attach it to Kosovo.

Although its spokesmen insist this is a home-grown grouping, the rebels are said to be an offshoot of an old rebellious movement which gave birth to the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army.

This parent group - the Popular Movement for Kosovo (LPK) - is long known to have favoured an armed struggle to bring about Kosovo's independence and the unification of Albanians, particularly those of former Yugoslavia.

The rebels vehemently deny plans to carve up Macedonia. But, curiously, they have invited Nato to oversee their demilitarisation in the event of a peace deal. Many analysts agree that, were Nato to be deployed between the two communities, this would inevitably lead to a de facto separation.

Although most of Macedonia's Albanians say they have reconciled themselves to life within a Macedonian state, increased support for the rebels may shift public opinion back towards an "Albanian togetherness" as existed in Communist Yugoslavia.

Is this what Albo here calls 'albanosphere'? Sounds familiar?

Here is the link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1224776.stm

Okay, first thought: there is not going to be a “Greater Albania” in the political sense.
The Albanians of Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia are evolving away from political union, not towards it. Kosovo’s new Constitution has “no union with any other state” as Article One, and that’s not just wallpaper for the internationals; the Kosovar Albanians, having finally gained their independence, have no interest in being ruled from distant Tirana. Meanwhile the Albanians of Albania are discovering the Kosovars are… well… poor. They’re happy to greet them as cousins, but aren’t interested in adding a large, poor, backwards and densely populated northern province. Macedonia is the only place you can still find enthusiasm for “Greater Albania” , and even there it’s increasingly marginal — the two large Albanian parties both are seeking their advantage within Macedonia, not outside it.
So why the post? Well, because even though there won’t be a “Greater Albania”, the Balkans are seeing a completely new phenomenon: the emergence of Albanians as an important political force.
Twenty years ago, Albania was a Communist hermit kingdom. The large Albanian minority in Yugoslavia was part of Yugoslav politics — dominant in Kosovo, negligible elsewhere. Albanians were not a significant political, social or economic force anywhere outside of Kosovo and Albania itself.
Today, Albanians have two countries of their own and a big chunk of a third. They’re a key minority in Montenegro. And in Greece, they’re set to be a huge minority in a country that doesn’t deal well with minorities. So the 21st century history of the Balkans is going to be, to a great extent, the history of the Albanian Question.
I think this will be a two-post series. In the second post, I’ll look at individual countries. In this one, I want to look at just one question: why do the Albanians suddenly matter?
There are two answers to this.
1) The fall of Communism. It’s a gross oversimplification to say that Communism “froze history”. But there’s a grain of truth to it. And in the case of Albanians, it’s particularly relevant. The Albanian Question first emerged in the wake of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, when Europe suddenly realized that the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in Europe had left behind a large, distinct ethnic group without a country of its own. Albania was cobbled together quickly (in large part to deny Serbia access to the sea,), but its boundaries bore little relation to where Albanians actually lived.
In the interwar period, the Albanian kingdom fell more and more under the dominance of Mussolini’s Italy, until the Duce outright colonized it on the eve of WWII. Greece and Yugoslavia, meanwhile, “solved” the problem of their Albanian minorities by a combination of treating them badly and ignoring them. and Unsurprisingly, at the end of WWII they suffered accordingly, especially in Greece, where the Greeks seized the opportunity to ethnically cleanse their “Cham” Albanian minority out of existence.
Still a broad belt of Albanian settlement remained, stretching across the penninsula through Kosovo to Macedonia. Most of it was now in Communist Yugoslavia, which solved the ethnic problem about as well as Communist Yugoslavia solved any of its other ethnic problems. So when Communism collapsed and Yugoslavia disintegrated, there the Albanians still were.
That’s half the answer. The other half is,
2) Albanians have kids.
Lots of them.
Oh, they’re slowing down. A generation back, the typical Albanian family had six or eight kids. Today they’re down to two or three, and falling. Basically they’re following the same track as their Balkan neighbors, just a generation or two behind.
But that generation makes a huge difference. Here’s a list of TFRs (Total Fertility Rate, expected number of children per woman) for the Albanians and their neighbors:


Kosovo - 3.8
Albania — 2.37
Montenegro — 1.83
Macedonia — 1.56
Greece — 1.56
Bulgaria — 1.39
Serbia - .5
The difference is actually bigger than these numbers suggest, because of the phenomenon of “demographic inertia”: Albanian communities have younger populations, with more young women in their peak child-bearing years.
So, while all of Albania’s neighbors have aging and declining populations, the number of Albanians continues to grow. The growth is slowing, and will probably flatten out to zero in another fifteen or twenty years. But in the meantime, the relative number of Albanians will continue to grow.
(Let me pre-empt a stupid comment here. No, it’s not because the Albanians are The Muslim Menace, determined to overwhelm decadent Europe with their savage fertility. Over a quarter of Albanians are Christians, and the three-quarters that are nominally Muslim are notoriously irreligious (religious statistics are according to 1928 data). Their fertility rates are high because they’re poor and socially conservative. Note that they were even higher back in the days when Albania was the world’s only official atheist state, with religious practice strictly forbidden.)
The impact of Albanian growth was most obvious in Kosovo, where Albanians went from about 68% to 82% in two generations — mostly because of all those children. It’s also a factor in Macedonia, where the Albanian minority has grown from just under a quarter of the population back at the time of independence to more like 30% today. But 20 years from now, it’s going to be a particular concern in a country that’s currently not much worried about it: Greece.
But that’s a story for another post. Meanwhile, key point: while the Albanian communities of the Balkans are not interested in political union, they are intensely interested in each other. “Greater Albania”, as I’ve said, is a silly idea; these days it’s mostly a scare image, a bogeyman for Serbian and Greek nationalists. But there is what we might call an Albanosphere.
Albanians travel freely across the various borders; they listen to the same music, read the same articles republished in various newspapers and magazines, and are quick to each others’ defense. Albanians in Albania follow Macedonian politics with interest, arguing over which party better represents ethnic Albanian interests there, while Albanians in Montenegro can speak for hours on the difference between (current Albanian PM) Sali Berisha and (former Albanian PM) Fatos Nano. Albanians in Kosovo — I can say from firsthand experience — have an intimate knowledge of slurs and bad treatment directed at Albanians in Greece. Albanians everywhere vote for the Albanian Eurovision entry, cheer the Albanian football team, and stayed out all night celebrating the independence of Kosovo. And they all eat burek, drink rakija, and can bore you senseless with stories about Skanderbeg.
The Albanosphere: it’s here, and the rest of us will have to get used to it. Because it’s going to shape Balkan politics and society for a long, long time to come.

__________________
Jesus beat the devil with two sticks. Colossian 2:13,15

Proud American!

Communism/Socialism is similar to legalizing burglary and murder!

Maybe you guys should come to the United States in huge numbers, like Mexicans, and form a small independent state here in US in the future? That is what seems to me like you are doing everywhere else?
And why do you think all of these Albanians are migrating to other countries? Simple, because they are poor, and the whole economy is based on drug trafficking. I am not going to post any links this time but all you have to do is google "kosovo drugs" and you will see what I am talking about.

Again you keep insulting

.i am not going to post any links either..just google serbia drugs, serbia mafia and serbian terrorism..and you shall find tons of articles....

you are brainwashed, that's why....you need to read some unbiased sources to understand the current issues....

One thing: Republic of Kosovo is an independent country and its economy is booming...read the this thread:

Kosovo: Economy is beginning to boom

__________________
Jesus beat the devil with two sticks. Colossian 2:13,15

Proud American!

Communism/Socialism is similar to legalizing burglary and murder!

I am brainwashed? Do you call everyone that disagrees with you brainwashed? I could not be more neutral on this issue!

Every country has gangsters, mafia and people that do things for their own selfless reasons. Difference between Kosovo and Serbia is that Kosovo is FULLY dependent on drug money. KLA, government, foreign politicians are financed with that money.

Now if you want me to read some offical, neutral sources please post a LINK!

yea...but, you are emulating the Milosevic's speeches. Unfortunately, you do seem to miss my point.

Republic of Kosovo, a sovreign country in the continent of Europe is the key to the stability of the Balkans. The independence has established a long waiting peace in this corner of the world.
Republic of Kosovo wants to build normal relationship with its neighboring countries: Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia,Bulgaria and Greece.

Moreover, Republic of Kosovo has a constitution that guarantees the human rights of every individual. Article 1.

Kosovar citizens regardless of their ethnicity have an opportunity to build a bright future for themselves. Republic of Kosovo is the guarantor of this future.

The problem is the Republic of Kosovo cares about its citizens, Serbs, particularly. While Serbia is blackmailing and terrorizing Serbian community if they integrate into Kosovar society.

So question for you: Who do you care about?

Serbs, Serbia or Minerals?

__________________
Jesus beat the devil with two sticks. Colossian 2:13,15

Proud American!

Communism/Socialism is similar to legalizing burglary and murder!

Actually I finally did google Kosovo and drugs. However what I found were articles talking about KLA actions. And the articles only went up to about the war. The KLA did a lot of bad stuff. And yes I know some of their people are still in politics, but the group as such is disbanded.

Is there any indication the drug problem is that prevalent today?

At any rate, as an American, I do wish Albanians would work to integrate more. You have a right to fight for equal rights, and it sounds like the Macedonian constituation may have some serious racial issues. But things like demanding a university in your native language is a bit harsh.

What are Albanians in America like? Specifically how long are you Albanians first before Americans before melting in? (Usually it takes 1 or 2 generations).

According to NATO!
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/r...?ArtNum=220333


This is just some insight on how deep this is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/mar/13/balkans
http://glasgowcrew.tripod.com/albanian.html

Hasim Taci. If you are going to talk about Milosevic or anyone else please first take care of your own!!!!!

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2743/1.html


II stumbled onto this one. Interesting article. I would suggest reading!
http://antipasministries.com/html/file0000080.htm