Yugoslav colonization of Kosovo

The cult of Kosovo within Serbian nationalism was used as a justification for Serbian claims to the territory. However, it was not a central theme until the 1860s. == Before WWII ==

First phase: Balkan Wars and First World War (Montenegro and Serbia) Kosovo was part of the Ottoman Empire and following the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), the western area was included in Montenegro and the rest within Serbia. Beginning from 1912, Montenegro initiated its attempts at colonisation and enacted a law on the process during 1914 that aimed at expropriating 55,000 hectares of Albanian land and transferring it to 5,000 Montenegrin settlers. Serbia undertook measures for colonisation by enacting a decree aimed at colonists within "newly liberated areas" that offered 9 hectares of land to families. A new decree issued in 1919 and later in 1920 restarted the colonization process in places where Albanians lived in Kosovo and Vardar, Macedonia. Kosovo Kosovo was strategically important for the state, its elite and security with the Albanian population deemed as "unreliable" and concerns existed over possible future rebellions by locals that did not approve of its governance. Vasa Šaletić, the head of the governing body for the colonisation process described the process of displacing Albanians and purchasing their property as "a logical sequel to the liberation war", in which four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire. Aiming to achieve a favourable political outcome, the state pursued various measures through violence and administrative avenues such as expulsions and replacing Albanians with another population. During 1919–1928 some 13,000 to 15,914 Serbian families came to live in Kosovo as stipulated in the conditions of the decrees. The process involved the construction of 106 colonies and 245 new settlements in Kosovo and due to serbianisation efforts some were named Lazarevo, Obilić, Miloševo after heroes from Serbian epic poetry. According to Vladan Jovanovic, Yugoslav authorities opened Turkish schools and not Albanian. Around 60% of Albanians were left without an income as a consequence of Yugoslav policy. Public services were closed to them and religious offices were politicised. Yugoslav authorities also intended to replace Albanians in the region with Chetniks, war veterans and police men, as well as border police, refugees and party activists. In 1930, there existed no Albanian schools in Kosovo. Kachak movement Parts of the Albanian population that resisted Serbian rule in Kosovo began military maneuvers and formed the Kachak movement. Under the political leadership of Hasan Prishtina and Bajram Curri, the movement based itself in Shkodër and was led by the Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo organization. Among their demands were the re-opening of Albanian language schools, recognition of Albanian as a co-official language and autonomy, The Kachaks engaged in uprisings, targeting Serbian army and administrative formations but forbade its members from targeting unarmed Serbs and churches. The Serbian authorities regarded them as mere bandits and in response to their rebellion, retaliated by conducting operations against them as well as the civilian population. Between 1913 and 1920, Serb colonists were given special privileges by the authorities to settle in areas, previously inhabited by Albanians, who had been vanished or killed numbering 60 000. == Atrocities against Albanians during the Interwar Period ==

Despite that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes kingdoms had signed the international acts of the time, which defined the rights of national minorities, according to the Treaty of Saint Germain, also unified by the League of Nations, terror against the Albanian population continued between 1912 and 1915. Kosovo In June 1919, the Serbian Chetniks led by Colonel Katanic, Babic and Stanko assaulted the village of Llapusha, allegedly in pursuit of Kachaks who were residing in the mountains of Gurabardhi. The inhabitants were massacred. The Serbian detachment had just arrived after the massacre in Zatriq where 27 Albanians were bayonetted and one of the village elders was beaten to death and another had his eyes gouged out. In 1924, Yugoslav forces entered the village of the Albanian Konjuhi family and massacred the entire family. In 1924 two villages were destroyed and 300 families killed. Between 1919 and 1921, around 1,330 Albanians were killed in Mitrovica. According to an Albanian newspaper, in the province of Pristina, the Serbian troops had killed 4,600 people between 1918 and 1921, imprisoned 3,659 people, beat 353 people, destroyed 1,346 houses and looted 2,190 houses. Under the orders of commander Petrovic and Prefect Likic, the village of Dubnica was surrounded and burned on 10 February 1924. The Yugoslav authorities massacred 25 people: ten women, eight children under eight-years, and six men. In 1919, Yugoslav forces committed many atrocities in Rugova. From 25 December 1918 to early March 1919 around 842 Albanians were killed including women, elderly, children, and infants. In January 1921, atrocities were reported against Albanian civilians in Keqekollë and Prapashticë. In 1921, there was a massacre carried out by Serbo-Montenegrin military and paramilitary Chetniks against the Albanian population in the village of Jabllanica in the region of Dushkajë. The perpetrators were Kosta Pećanac, Milić Krstić, Spire Dobrosavlević, Arseni Qirković, Gal Milenko, Nikodim Grujici and Novë Gilici. 63 civilians were killed during the day. In Peja 1,563 Albanians were massacred and 714 homes were destroyed from 1919 and 1921. On 7 December 2019, a memorial was held for the victims by relatives of the Hoti in the USA. On 25 March 1919, the Kosovo Committee sent a report in French to the British Foreign office reporting that between 17–23 February 1919, Serbo-Montenegrin troops massacred the population of Plav and Gusinje. The Yugoslav authorities massacred 333 women, children, and elderly men by March of 1919. Reports and casualties The Swiss paper La Jeune République published an article on 25 September 1921, by Louis Rochard, mentioning the Yugoslav atrocities on the Albanian population. In June 1919, the Italian Commander Piacentini sent a telegram reporting that the Serbian troops "burned villages and massacred women and children". According to the Albanian newspaper "Dajti" from 7 November 1924, and data retrieved from the Archives of the National Defense Committee of Kosovo, between 1918 and 1921, multiple massacres have occurred against the Albanian population. The United States Department of State reported widespread massacres in Montenegro in May of 1919. Information was obtained by Albanian refugees in Shkodër, collected by Lieutenant Colonel Sherman Miles. The massacred had ended and Montenegro was "entirely cleared" of Albanians two months prior to his visit to the province. According to Albanian refugees, around 30,000 Albanians were killed in Montenegro by May 1919. The British Mission in Shkodër, however, placed this figure at 18,000–25,000. On 18 April 1919, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote to British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Balfour that "Gusinje, Plav, Peja, Gjakova, Podjur and Roshji, have been scenes of terrorism and murder by Serbian troops and Serbian agents, whose policy appears to be extermination of the Albanian inhabitants of the region". In July 1919 the French consul in Skopje reported 9 massacres with 30,000–40,000 victims and that the Albanian primary schools had been closed down again and replaced by Serbian schools. Around 35,000 Albanians fled to Shkodër as a result of the atrocities. According to Sabrina P. Ramet, approximately 12,000 Albanians were killed in Kosovo between 1918 and 1921, which coincides with the Albanian claim that 12,346 people were killed. More than 6,000 Albanians were killed by Yugoslav forces in January and February in 1919. Around 2,000 'Albanian patriots' were killed in Kosovo between 1919 and 1924. This number rose to 3,000 between 1924 and 1927. According to Kosovo Albanian politician Haki Demolli, 80,000 Albanians were "exterminated" in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by 1940. == Demographics ==

The table shows the total number of registered settlers in each Kosovo county: The government associated colonisation with improving the agricultural sector and implemented policies such as the Agrarian Reform. Between 1918 and 1923, as a result of state policies 30,000 and 40,000 mainly Muslim Albanians migrated to the Turkish regions of İzmir and Anatolia. Apart from the conflict between the Kosovar Albanian Kachak resistance movement and Yugoslav authorities, other motivations for Albanian migration to Turkey were over land confiscations and their redistribution to Serb colonists. Yugoslav authorities viewed Albanians as a hostile population and preferred to reduce their presence in Yugoslavia, whereas Turkey wanted to repopulate areas of Anatolia that had been emptied of its previous Orthodox Greek speaking and Turkish speaking Christians during the population exchange of 1923. The Albanian population was encouraged to leave the region, as they were perceived to be immigrants in need of repatriation to either Turkey, Albania or expected to assimilate within Yugoslavia. An arrangement between Turkey and Albania allowed Albanians arriving from Yugoslavia to Turkey the option of migrating to Albania. The intent of the colonisation policy attempted to achieve specific political and national aims. He described colonisation as a success within the Kosovo and Skopje regions and less so in other areas due to "incompetence", poor leadership, lack of trained personnel, ad hoc and speedy measures, legal issues and so on. Krstić wrote that in the early years of colonisation, settlers did not receive support from the state and instead it was the American Mission and English Society of Friends of Serbia that funded homes for the colonists and procured equipment. In 1933, the Turkish foreign minister Tevfik Rüştü Aras made several visits to the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry in Belgrade and discussed the deportation of Muslims from the area of Yugoslavia that had been designated as South Serbia to Anatolia. The agreement referred to the proposed relocation of 40,000 families during 1939–1944 in accordance with regulations and requirements such as being fluent in Turkish, exclusion of Romani and targeting municipalities in Kosovo and western Vardar Macedonia for the migration process. Rural communities were the main targets of the measures and properties of deported people were to be liquidated in Yugoslavia. Proposed measures included the purchase of Albanian property, assisting Albanians to the Yugoslav border or to Thessaloniki, pressuring them through financial means, placename changes, a public employment ban, forced labour and compulsory military enrollment. Aftermath: World War Two During World War II, a large area of Kosovo was attached to Italian controlled Albania. Campaigns aimed toward Serbs followed and included the destruction of property, killings, murders and deportations. The majority of Montenegrin and Serb settlers consisting of bureaucrats and dobrovoljac fled from Kosovo to Axis occupied Serbia and Montenegro. Historiography Serbian historiography and Serb elites have expressed similar sentiments that colonisation was a failure due to state mismanagement and use of ineffective Western methods in Kosovo and that different solutions were needed toward addressing "this problem". According to some Serbian historiography, the colonisation was an attempt to correct "the historical injustice", given the belief that the ethnic structure of Kosovo was constantly being changed in favor of Albanians, since the end of the seventeenth century. The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts commented that "in the ethnic plan only partially was the structure corrected" and that disruptions of the process disadvantaged Serbs. In Yugoslavia, the Albanian intelligentsia of the communist period stated that a policy for the recolonisation of Kosovo and its repopulation with Montenegrins and Serbs was undertaken by the "Greater Serbian bourgeoisie". Based in Ankara, the data gathered for 1919–1940 by the Yugoslav Legation shows 215,412 Albanians migrated to Turkey, whereas data collected by the Yugoslav army shows that until 1939, 4,046 Albanian families went to live in Albania. For 1918 to 1921, Sabrina Ramet cites the estimate that the expulsions of Albanians reduced their numbers from around 800,000 – 1,000,000 within Kosovo down to some 439,500. Between 1923 and 1939, some 115,000 Yugoslav citizens migrated to Turkey and both Yugoslavian and Turkish sources state that Albanians composed most of that population group. Albanian scholars from Albania and Kosovo place the number of Albanian refugees from 300,000 upward into the hundreds of thousands and state that they left Yugoslavia due to duress. To date, access is unavailable to the Turkish Foreign Ministry archive regarding this issue and as such the total numbers of Albanians arriving to Turkey during the interwar period are difficult to determine. == After WWII ==

Third phase: Communist Yugoslavia Following the Second World War and establishment of communist rule in Yugoslavia, the colonisation programme was discontinued, as President Tito wanted to avoid sectarian and ethnic conflicts. Two weeks later Tito issued another decree and followed it with a law in August 1945 that permitted a conditional return for a minority of the colonists. In total, cases of return numbered 11,168, with 4,829 cases confirmed, 5,744 cases partially confirmed alongside 595 cases being denied. After the Second World War and the Yugoslavia-Albania split, Yugoslav authorities attempted to downplay links between Albanians of Albania and Kosovo and to implement a policy of "Turkification" that encouraged Turkish language education and emigration to Turkey among Albanians. At the same time, a new phase of colonisation occurred in the region as Montenegrin and Serb families were installed in Kosovo. During the late communist period of Yugoslavia, the colonisation and demographic change attempts and other measures undertaken in times of Serb control was highlighted by Albanians. Fourth phase: The Milošević government In the 1980s the Kosovo question was a topic among some Serb writers. The autonomy of Kosovo was scaled down in 1989 and in 1990, Serbia gained control of the local police and abolished the province's parliament and government. In 1990 President Slobodan Milošević had a plan to colonise Kosovo with 100,000 Serbs, though the plan did not get fulfilled. Milošević thought that the re-colonisation of Kosovo would start Serbia's economic growth. By 1992, the situation in Kosovo deteriorated and politicians from both sides were at an impasse toward solutions for the future of the region. Laws were passed by the parliament of Serbia that sought to change the power balance in Kosovo relating to the economy, demography and politics. At the time, for Serb nationalists the process of Serbianisation entailed the resettlement of Serbs to Kosovo and limiting the favorable demographic position Albanians held. The interwar period works of nationalist writer Vaso Čubrilović became popular in Serbia during the 1990s and their content called for the dislocation of Albanians through mass resettlement. The Serbian Association of Professors and Scientists held a conference in Pristina (1995) that discussed concerns about the high Kosovo Albanian birthrate. Serb academic Veselin Đuretić opposed family planning measures and suggested the deportation of Albanians to Albania and the resettlement of empty houses in Kosovo with Serbs. Following similar themes the parliament of Serbia on 11 January 1995 passed the Decree for Colonisation of Kosovo of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Few Serbs took up the offer due to the worsening situation in Kosovo at the time. Around 10,000 Serb refugees from Krajina in Croatia and over 2000 from Bosnia were resettled in Kosovo, due to the Yugoslav Wars. Some of the Serb refugees opposed going to Kosovo. In 1996, official government statistics placed the number of refugees in Kosovo at 19,000. Most of the Serb refugees left thereafter and a few remained that increased tensions in the area. As the conflict intensified Serb refugees from Krajina competed with Kosovo Albanian internally displaced persons for limited resources and living space in Pristina. In early 1997, the number of resettled Serb refugees in Kosovo was 4,000 Serbs selling property to Albanians was made illegal by the government and fines existed for Albanians that did not undertake their military service in Bosnia and Croatia. Serbianisation of the Kosovo economy also occurred with areas inhabited by Serbs receiving investment, new infrastructure and employment opportunities. As the sociopolitical situation deteriorated, Kosovo Albanians numbering some 300,000 fled during this period for Western Europe. By 1997–1998, the failure of Kosovo Albanian political resistance and negotiations for a solution between both sides gave way to an armed conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serb forces. During the Kosovo war (March–June 1999), Serb forces expelled between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Albanians from Kosovo employing tactics such as confiscating personal documents to make it difficult or prevent any future return. Kosovo Albanians later returned following NATO intervention and the end of the war. Post-war, less than one hundred of the Serb refugees from Croatia remained in Kosovo, as they along with over half of the Serb and other non-Albanian population were expelled from the region. == See also ==