By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Oct 26 2006 (IPS)

The crisis over the future of ethnic Albanians has come to the fore again in the face of a referendum on a new constitution in Serbia this weekend.

Serbia has claimed in the new constitution that the southern province of Kosovo will remain “an integral part of Serbia”, in the face of demands of independence among the overwhelming population of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Regardless of the fact that the two million population of Kosovo is almost 95 percent ethnic Albanian, and the province has been run by the United Nations (UN) administration for seven years now, Serbian politicians have been busy for weeks persuading people to accept the new constitution.

“Each and every Serb is born with Kosovo in his heart and that is why we have to say ‘yes’ to the new constitution,” Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica declared.

Local media have been describing Kosovo as the cradle of the Serbian nation, as the place where the Serb kingdom was founded in the 13th century “when the province was 100 percent Serb.”

It is rarely mentioned that 1.8 million ethnic Albanians will boycott the referendum. They have taken no part in Serbian elections since 1990. It is never mentioned either that over the centuries the ethnic face of Kosovo became Albanian, after Serbs left in several waves of migration.

While millions of Serbs will say ‘yes’ to the new constitution, experts warn that Kosovo is no more Serb, and that old stereotypes about Albanians persist.

“The stereotypes of a closely knit, conservative and somehow aggressive people still prevail, and it is not hard to exploit such myths whenever modern politics needs it,” international law professor Vojin Dimitrijevic told IPS.

About 3.4 million Albanians live in Albania proper, a state created almost a hundred years ago. Like most of the Balkans, it was a part of the Ottoman Empire, that finally collapsed by the end of World War I. It gave way to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. When its successor modern Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s, ethnic Albanians found themselves scattered across several states.

Some 1. 8 million ethnic Albanians live in Kosovo now, another 500,000 in Macedonia, up to 200,000 in Greece, 70,000 in southern Serbian regions bordering Kosovo, 47,000 in Montenegro and at least 30,000 in Croatia. Most Albanians are Muslims, with about 5 percent among them Catholics.

Ethnic Albanians traditionally own most of the small bakeries or pastry shops all over Serbia and Croatia, and chains of jewellery shops in most countries they live in.

“However, regardless of where they live (outside Albanian populated areas), most of those people are often viewed with suspicion and fear, accused of being crime-related and frequently viewed as second rate citizens,” Dusan Janjic from the Belgrade non-governmental organisation Forum for Inter-Ethnic Relations told IPS.

Regional media follow the labelling approach. Local papers are flooded with stories of Kosovo or Albania being “kingdoms of crime”, or hubs for drugs smuggling and trafficking of people.

Several reports do cite official figures. According to Interpol, ethnic Albanian gangs have a 40 percent share in organised crime all over Europe.

A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) study among Kosovo Albanians indicated that 70 percent of them believe there is a medium or high level of crime in their society. Most said they do not like the situation, but can do little to change it.

“But besides this, little is known and little is said about real life in Kosovo, or Albania for that matter,” says Andrej Nosov from another Belgrade NGO, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights.

“A whole new generation of young ethnic Albanians prevails in Kosovo now. They are not burdened with prejudice against Serbs or Serbia or anybody else, and do not look at Albania as a role model in any manner. Their aim is not the so-called ‘Greater Albania’ of all Albanians in one state, as it is often said here in Belgrade. Their aim is all Albanians closer to Europe.”

Serbia’s problems with its Kosovo Albanian population began when the regime of former leader Slobodan Milosevic abolished their broad autonomy introduced in 1974, and replaced it with direct rule from Belgrade in 1990.

“This was repression by Belgrade, with the Serb minority ruling over the Albanian majority,” Momcilo Pavlovic from the Belgrade Institute for Modern History wrote in his study on inter-ethnic relations in Kosovo published last year.

The repression led to armed uprising in 1998, dubbed as “terrorism” by Milosevic.

Brutal response from Milosevic’s police and army and the expulsion of 800,000 people from Kosovo led to the 11 weeks of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of Serbia in 1999. When it ended, the UN took over Kosovo province. More than half of some 200,000 Kosovo Serbs fled to Serbia proper.

This led in turn to armed uprising among 70,000 ethnic Albanians in south Serbia who live outside Kosovo but wanted to join their next of kin. Following international intervention in 2001, amnesty was proclaimed and limited autonomy was given to three municipalities in the area.

Macedonian Albanians also revolted about the same time. That too ended in 2001, with agreements to provide substantial participation of the ethnic Albanian community in government, and education in Albanian language.

“The approach to Kosovo or the ethnic Albanian problem deserves a new design,” Janjic says. “It’s time to put the past behind and see where Albanians are with the rest of Europe, what is the prospect of regional development and regional cooperation. But things change slowly here.”

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