Albania’s post World War II communist regime has proved to be with its own citizens as ruthless as Hitler’s Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) campaign in Poland on September 1^st, 1939.

Enver Hoxha’s alliance of seven years with Yugoslavia’s dictator Josip Broz Tito (1941 – 1948), was a reflection of communist Albania’s geopolitical oscillations and Tirana’s reluctance to embrace the territories of ethnic Albanians encompassing Kosova today.  Tito’s paternalistic role unto Albania was highly successful even though Shqipëria – as it is named by the locals – was the only country in Europe that did not have a communist party in 1940.  This observation was accurately made by Lea Ypi, a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics, who grew up in Albania during the last period of Tirana’s communist regime.

However, Yugoslavia’s regime was training Albania’s communist elite and making sure that the sons of eagles would not approach western democracies as a guiding source for shaping government reforms and post war nation building principles that embody democratic government and freedom of expression.

According to Raymond Zickel and Walter R. Iwaskiw of the U. S. Library of Congress: “In October 1941, the leader of Communist Party of the Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, dispatched agents to Albania to forge the country’s disparate, impotent communist factions into a monolithic party organization. Within a month, they had established a Yugoslav – dominated Albanian Communist Party of 130 members under the leadership of Hoxha and an eleven-member Central Committee.”

In his acclaimed book of realpolitik, “The Nation – Free Recipe (How the Triple Entente served Comintern)”, Saimir A. Lolja, Ph. D. has disclosed some of the principal matters in Albanian history during the second half of the twentieth century leading up to the inception stages of Tirana’s turbulent post-communist period in which a cascade of blunders caused a major destruction of national economy, defense industry and obliterated the country’s national security mechanisms.

In his book Prof. Lolja writes: “On 15 December 1947, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of CPA [Communist Party of Albania] received the Yugoslav Communist messenger Sava Zllatiç.  In that meeting, the puppet Enver Hoxha ordered to speed up Albania’s unification process with Yugoslavia in all fields.  He justified (the right of self) that Albania could not be an independent state and install Slavic Communism without fusion with Yugoslavia.  The justification was plagiarism to what the British Foreign Office had designed for “Albania 1913” as part of a Balkan Communist Federation.  In the prescribed letter that Enver Hoxha sent to Josip Broz Tito in March 1948, he asked him not to delay the remaining steps for the dissolution of Albania into Slavic Communist Balkan Federation, namely into Yugoslavia (Greater Serbia) Nr. 3.”

Hoxha’s strategic cooperation with Tito cemented an iron grip on his country and he continued with eliminating possible political opposition groups in Tirana; on March of 1945, a special trial against war criminals was opened in the “Kosova” cinema hall in Tirana; 19 out of the 60 defendants were sentenced to death. The death sentences were carried out for 17 of them; the other ‘dissidents’ received heavy punishments. This special trial was only the first in a long series of such trials. The special court’s judicial panel was headed by the Minister of Interior Affairs Koçi Xoxe, and it generally consisted of incompetent persons who visibly issued politically biased sentences.  On May 20^th, 1947, Minister of Interior Koçi Xoxe, leader of a pro-Yugoslav faction of the CPA, ordered the arrest of nine anti-Yugoslav members of the Constituent Assembly.

In July 1948, the Albanian government cut off diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia and Koçi Xoxe was removed from the government and the CPA purged the pro-Yugoslav faction during a Congress of the CPA, that was renamed as Albanian Party of Labor – APL.

With Tirana establishing close ties with Moscow, the aspirations of Tito to create a Balkan confederation with Albania and Bulgaria were abandoned and such an economic platform would resurface again in Edi Rama’s playbook on July 29, 2021, when Albania, North Macedonia, and Serbia established The Open Balkan Initiative.  An alliance that would varnish Serbia’s imperialistic pivot in the Balkans and weaken Kosova as an independent Republic.

The terrorist attack of over 90 Serbian well trained military personnel inside the sovereign territory of Kosova, in the village of Banjska on September 24, 2023; openly demonstrates Belgrade’s growing appetite to create a new hot bed of armed conflict in Southeast Europe and threatening regional security.  According to Reuters; Kosova’s police stated that one officer was killed and “three of about 30 attackers died in shootouts around the village of Banjska. Monks and pilgrims were locked in the Serbian Orthodox monastery’s temple as the siege raged for hours.”

About this terrorist attack committed by Belgrade and continuously ignored by the European Commission officials, Prime Minister Albin Kurti stated: “The attackers are professionals wearing masks and heavily armed; the shooting was a terrorist attack” he blamed neighboring Serbia for seeking to destabilize his country […] “Organized crime, which is politically, financially and logistically supported from Belgrade, is attacking our state,” Prime Minister Kurti stated.

Although Moscow loyalists in the Illyrian Peninsula showed their true face, the Albanian PM EDI RAMA, just like Enver Hoxha immediately after World War II, has failed to grasp and draw an accurate analysis on what is Belgrade’s geopolitical posture, true intentions, towards its neighboring countries.   The 2023-armed clashes in Banjska were too serious to ignore; the loss of police officer Afrim Bunjaku was tragic; however, his heroism marked the end of the Open Balkan Initiative; a so-called regional economic alliance that was merely Serbia’s tool to expand its chauvinistic policies towards non-Serbian ethnic communities inside its territory and apply its malignant, coercive measures, secretive operations across the Balkan Peninsula.

In his volume Professor Lolja writes: “…However, it lasted until the newly emerged US leadership on world affairs had other strategic plans.  On insistence from USA, Yugoslavia Nr. 3 separated from the USSR -led communist camp on 28 June 1948.  Thus, the USA again saved Albania; that time, from its dissolution into Yugoslavia Nr. 3.”

The deeply analytical volume of Lolja, provides a breakthrough in the International Relations of Albania during the last eighty years; reflected remarkably by a highly competent author who has conducted significant research on Tirana’s communist dictatorship and its difficult journey of democracy in transition.

References:

• https://jacobin.com/2022/07/albania-history-communism-postcommunism-hoxha-liberalism
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Socialist_Republic_of_Albania
• https://euronews.al/en/did-pm-edi-rama-unilaterally-decide-to-end-open-balkan-initiative/
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Balkan-confederation
• https://www.ankasam.org/the-implications-of-the-open-balkan-initiative-summit-in-serbia/?lang=en
  https://www.politico.eu/article/kosovo-serbia-police-attack-albin-kurti-banjska-vjosa-osmani/
• https://apnews.com/article/kosovo-serbia-policeman-killed-tension-kurti-vucic-51a29a3159646ec020851b3b5a24836f