Albanians in the Balkans raise their voices again (Feature)

By Ksenija Prodanovic Aug 27, 2009, 10:52 GMT

There have been signs this summer of increasing restiveness among many Albanians in Kosovo and southern Serbia, with calls for unification with Albania and violent protests causing unease in the region.

For many years, the situation has been relatively calm. But dissatisfaction among some Albanians with the international community, especially in southern Serbia and Kosovo, has flared up recently.

The unhappiness has been fuelled by the difficult economic situation in the region and what is seen as outside meddling in domestic affairs.

Two incidents this week drew attention to Albanian aspirations and discontent with the status quo: the vandalization of vehicles belonging to the European Union's law-enforcement mission (EULEX) in Pristina, and clashes between Albanians and Serbs in Mitrovica.

About 6 million Albanians live in five Balkan countries - Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. Treaties brokered in the early 2000s brought peace to the region and provided benefits to Albanians living in Macedonia and southern Serbia.

Additionally, last year, the Albanian majority in Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, and the province won recognition from more than 60 countries.

On Tuesday, 28 vehicles belonging to EULEX were destroyed in Kosovo's capital by members of the extremist Albanian movement Vetevendosja (Self-Determination), which seeks an end to what it sees as international interference in Kosovo.

Vetevendosja, which has a large number of followers among young unemployed people, has staged several demonstrations in the past against the international community, which the group perceives as working against Kosovo Albanians.

'Kosovo institutions will be responsible for what happens next' if they keep silent and allow EULEX to cooperate with Serbia, Glauk Konjufca, a leader of Vetevendosja, told German Press Agency dpa.

'What we did was sending a message to EULEX, now it is the turn for our government (Kosovo). The government should question its cooperation with EULEX. If they do not, that will mean that the independence was meaningless,' he added.

The Beta News Agency quoted an analyst from Pristina, Behlul Beqaj, as saying that Vetevendosja's protest was a sign to the international community 'that things are not so great in Kosovo.'

'The international community and Kosovo government are like Siamese twins living in symbiosis and mutual servility, and that is the problem,' he was quoted as saying.

Also this past Tuesday, there were clashes in Mitrovica, a city in northern Kosovo that has been divided into a Serb-majority north and an Albanian-majority south since 1999.

Serbs and Albanians clashed over the rebuilding of Albanian houses in the Serbian part of the city. Several people were injured, and the rebuilding of the houses has been stopped for now.

Serbs complain that Albanians want to build houses in their part of Mitrovica but will not allow Serbs to build them in the Albanian part of the town.

'If we let (Albanians) in, we will never be able to get rid of them,' one Kosovo Serb was quoted as saying.

In neighbouring southern Serbia, where Albanians make up a majority of the population and tensions are often high, Serbian police earlier in August discovered a large stash of illegal weapons in an underground oil tank in Bujanovac municipality.

Bujanovac was the stronghold of the so-called Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac - a group of armed ethnic Albanians that fought against Serbia's security forces in the area in late 2000 and early 2001.

Ever since the insurgency, Albanian leaders in Serbia have demanded greater autonomy. They have accused Belgrade of treating them as 'second class' citizens and of not investing enough in southern Serbia, the country's poorest region.

The discovery of weapons occurred in the same region where bomb attacks on Serb security forces injured several people, including one child, in late July.

Adding fuel to the fire, Albanian President Sali Berisha recently said that 'the national unity of Albanians should be a key idea in the policies of Albania and Kosovo.'

His comments caused an uproar in Serbia, where many are already unhappy about Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence.

Serbian officials called Berisha's comments a provocation that would further damage traditionally bad relations between Albanians and Serbs.

'The international community will not support pan-national projects, and Berisha's comments go in that direction,' said Dusan Janjic, the head of the Forum for Ethnic Relations. 'With this comment Sali Berisha made political errors and possibly political suicide.'