The term ‘Great Albania’ was coined by modern Serb politicians. In Serbian political discussion, the entire Albanian national movement – from its beginnings with the League of Prizren in 1878 – is seen as a movement for the formation of ‘Great Albania’.This because in order to have a ‘Great Serbia’, any size Albania is too big.
In their quest for a Great Serbia, after having annexed the Albanian territories that are now known as “Kosovo”, Serbs tried to invade and annex even more of the northern Albanian lands, which, of course, had been part of “Stara Srbija” (Old Serbian Kingdom). This is what the Serb ambassador to Berlin, Nobel price winner Ivo Andric, wrote in 1939:
The presence of northern Albania within the framework of Yugoslavia would facilitate the existence of new communications links between northern and southern Serbia and the Adriatic. After the partition of Albania, Kosovo would lose its attraction as a centre for the Albanian minority which, under the new situation, could be more easily assimilated. We would eventually gain 200,000 to 300,000 Albanians, but these are mostly Catholics whose relations with the Moslem Albanians have never been good. The deportation of Moslem Albanians to Turkey could then be carried out since, under the new circumstances, there would be no major impediment to such a move.
In the already annexed Albanian territories, attempts to remove native Albanians continued. Vaso Cubrilovic, another distinguished Serb, wrote in 1944:
After examining why the cleansing of minorities is necessary, let us now see what options are available for carrying out the task. In actual fact, conditions for implementation are quite favourable…. The first thing I would like to mention in this connection is that wars are most suitable for solving such problems. Like storms, they blow through countries, uprooting and blotting out peoples. What takes decades and centuries to accomplish in peaceful times, can be accomplished within a matter of months and years in a war. Let us not delude ourselves. If we wish to solve this problem, we will only be able to do so during the war…. We have wasted billions of dinars on settling volunteers and other colonists throughout the Vojvodina, Kosovo and Metohija. In the Vojvodina over a twenty year period, we managed to change the ethnic balance in our favour by a few percentage points, but the German and Hungarian minorities still remain in Backa. From 1918 to 1938, the Albanians increased their numbers in Kosovo and Metohija more by natural growth than we were able to do by bringing in settlers. Driving our colonists out of Backa, Kosovo and Metohija, the Hungarians and Albanians were thus able to cancel out the few results we obtained. In order to prevent this from happening again, the army must be brought in, even during the war, to cleanse the regions we wish to settle with our own people, doing so in a well-planned but ruthless manner….
Cubrilovic became a government minister and a leader of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his youth, he had belonged to the Serbian terrorist group that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 and thus started World War I.
In contrast, ‘Great Albania’ has never been a project of any Albanian governments. Serbia, which indeed became ‘Great Serbia’ in 1912, conveniently invented ‘Great Albania’ and used this term to justify the inhumane treatment of millions of Albanians inside the territories that it had annexed. More recently, Serbs have found yet another use for ‘Great Albania’: they use the term as an argument against the independence of Kosovo. However, Kosovo’s independence is not part of a ‘Great Albania’ project; it is instead one last step in dismantling ‘Great Serbia’. Kosovo’s independence is the result of the many failed colonization attempts by Serbia. Independence also is a guarantee that “territorial integrity” and “sovereignty” will not again be used as an excuse for Serbia to murder Albanians.
Unlike Serbs, Albanians have never had any conquest projects. Albanians do not wish to rule Serbs or other neighbors. Albanians only wish to live in peace. Yes, it is true that Albanians resent the unnatural borders and the check-points that Serbs have imposed on them. This is understandable however, even more so if you keep in mind that since 1912 Albanians have faced continuous racism, have been continuously harassed, murdered, shipped away to Anatolian plains, and have generally been treated as a ‘problem to be solved’. (The latest Hitler-style attempts of Serbia to solve the ‘Albanian problem’ were stopped by Americans, God bless them!)
