The Albanian Question

Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008 - and the overt manipulation of this precedent by Russia in its war with Georgia and South Ossetia shortly afterwards - has focused the world's attention once again on the Balkans. But Albania's role within the region remains little known and less understood. In this revised edition of a major work of contemporary history, two well-known and internationally-respected authorities elucidate Albania's place in the Balkans, from the explosion of violence in the 1990s, which brought the country to the brink of civil war, to the present day. Since 1997, the Albanian region has been forced simultaneously to come to terms with the realities of a post-Communist world and the threat of Slobodan Milosevic's 'Greater Serbia' project. Its people, the authors, argue are involved in the process of national self-emancipation: the re-establishment of free markets and ending of Communist border controls have renewed long dormant cultural and economic links between the Albanian people and the wider region. The future of the Albanians in the Balkans is the most pressing issue in the region today, a fact which the West must pay close heed to if this long neglected nation is to become a European partner. Indeed, the authors argue, in this rapidly evolving political climate, failure to come to terms with the importance of the Albanian question could return the region as a whole to armed conflict.

It was by no means evident in the early years of the twentieth century that Albania in southeastern Europe would become an independent country and would join the family of European nations. After five centuries as a part of the Ottoman Empire, the country was hardly noticed by the other peoples of Europe. This was to change at the time of the Balkans Wars (1912-1913) and the London Conference, at which Albania played a central role and where its fate was decided. The present volume brings together British Foreign Office documents focusing on Albania from 1912 to 1914. Among them are the dispatches and private correspondence of the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, who chaired the London Conference and endeavoured to keep peace in Europe at an age when the Great Powers were unwaveringly gravitating towards war and conflagration.

Is there an 'Albanian question'? If so, what is it? Is it a traditional 'national question', centred on the dream of a 'Greater Albania' that would gather in all the Albanian communities in the Balkans? Many outside observers, in particular among the Albanians' neighbours in the Balkans, see it that way and fear its destabilising consequences, but none of the contributors to this Chaillot Paper finds this scenario convincing. The core of the Albanian national question today is Kosovo, an issue that has the power to unite Albanians in the Balkans and in the sizeable diaspora communities spread across the globe. While the answer - for Albanians - is independence for Kosovo, beyond that, views diverge. It seems that only a minority of Albanians remain committed to the project of Pan-Albanian political unification. Most Albanians are fully aware of the diversity of interests of the various Albanian communities in the Balkans, who have lived in different states over the past century. The end of communism made it much easier for Albanians to keep in contact with each other, but this did not lead to greater national cohesion. The dramatic 'high politics' of the Kosovo issue tends to obscure the fact that for most Albanians, the most urgent questions today are not 'national' ones at all, but questions of economic underdevelopment, unemployment, the quality of democratic governance, political corruption and criminality, and the emigration of large numbers of the brightest and best of the younger generation. None of these challenges is unique to the Albanians, but they possess a particular asset in their young diaspora in the West, closely linked via the internet with young democracy activists in the Albanians' Balkans homelands. This new generation of Albanians aims to leap out of the isolation and introversion of traditional village and clan-based politics to form a new 'post-modern' transnational political community, committed to building democracy within their states and across them.