Bilal Xhaferri

The Albanian Kosovo

The time has come for the Serbian hegemonies to face once and for all the plain truth that Kosovo is an Albanian land, inhabited by the Albanians ever since the dawn of European civilization, preceding all other people in Europe, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, continually to the present.

We understand the Serbian national sentiment concern in Kosovo which they still call "Stare Serbia" (Old Serbia), but from an historical viewpoint there arises here an important question: Just how old is this "Old Serbia?"

Only in the twelfth century after Christ did the Serbian tribes finally establish a kingdom, (which disappeared as soon as it was created) in Kosovo-in our land, which has had flourishing Albanian (Illyrian) kingdoms and prince polities since long before the 12th century B.C. Comparatively, Old Serbia doesn't seem to be very old.

It is about time that those who are dreaming of "Greater Serbia" understood history. More importantly, they must understand the realities. Their assimilations policies have failed in Kosovo, and the days of Serbian colonial rule are over in our land. We Albanians don't make good slaves.

Ethnically, we Albanians in Kosovo are not Yugoslavs and don't belong to the Yugoslav Federation. We are not a Slavic people to begin with. The issue of our national identity is so clear, so obvious that it would be sheer idiocy to consider us a nationality in Kosovo, for we are Nation -.we are part of the Albanian Nation. Our land is a natural extension of Albania and our history is part of the history of the Albanian people. There is no force on earth that can separate us from Albania.

Sometimes, it seems, we tend to mention least the things we mean the most. But the Kosovo Spring uprising forcibly brought it into the open for the world to see what the Albanian people mean the most in Kosovo.

Our ultimate goal in Kosovo is the unification of the province with the Albanian fatherland. There are no tricks played here, and we shouldn't go beating around the bush but say it straight, in plan language. By seeking an elevation in autonomous province's present status to that of an independent republic within the Yugoslav federation, we are not trying to outsmart Belgrade but only want to make the transition period of the unification as smooth and peaceful as possible.

This is the work of a whole nation, not only of "the Albanian Nationalists", "the Albanian separatists", and "the Albanian irredentists". But the Yugoslav leaders don't want to understand it. They don't want to understand the Albanian national rights, the Albanian national sentiment the history of the Albania people and the destiny of the Albanian nation. By trying to keep Kosovo chained by force to their communist empire, they are undermining the very principles the claim the Yugoslav state was founded on-as a federal republic made up with voluntary United Nations-the principles of democracy, national equal rights, freedom, and brotherhood.