by Akademic & prof.dr.PHD. Flori Bruqi. Translation Petrit Latifi
Abstract:
This text examines the political, demographic, and socio-economic dynamics of Serbian and Montenegrin colonization of Albanian lands between 1912 and 1941. It outlines the settlement of 60,000–65,000 Serb and Montenegrin colonists following the Balkan Wars, the agrarian reforms that enabled land confiscation from Albanian owners, and the establishment of hundreds of new settlements across Kosovo. The text emphasizes how colonization policies sought to reshape the region’s demographic structure, strengthen state control, and promote the spread of Serbian chauvinist-nationalist elements in strategically important areas.
The analysis describes how colonization, land redistribution, military presence, and administrative measures contributed to heightened tensions between local Albanian populations and incoming settlers, influencing long-term Serbian–Albanian relations.
The text further addresses the reversal of colonization during World War II, the post-1945 restrictions preventing many settlers from returning, and the continuation of demographic engineering efforts in later periods, including the 1990s conflict. It documents the escalation of repression, forced displacement, and mass expulsions of Albanians during 1998–1999, situating these events within a longer history of state policies aimed at altering Kosovo’s population composition. By combining demographic data, historical accounts, legal analysis, and narrative sources, the text highlights the complex interplay between nationalism, state power, and population policies in Kosovo from the early twentieth century to the late 1990s.
Background
Between 1912 and 1941, between 60,000 and 65,000 Serbo-Montenegrin settlers from the Kingdom of Serbia and Montenegro settled in Kosovo during the First Balkan War
The colonization of Kosovo with non-Albanian inhabitants, mainly Serbs, was a process carried out by the Serbian government in the period between the two world wars.
– Colonization began immediately after the Kosovo Plain became part of the Kingdom of Serbia and parts of the Dukagjini Plain became part of the Kingdom of Montenegro during the First Balkan War.
– Between 1912 and 1941, between 60,000 and 65,000 settlers settled in Kosovo.
– More than 90% of the total number of settlers were Serbs from various countries of Yugoslavia (including Montenegrins).
– Montenegro at the end of 1912 began to settle its citizens in the territories of Western Kosovo.
– Between 1919 and 1927, 245 Serbian settlements were established in Kosovo.
– 11,273 houses were built for the colonizers in Kosovo by the end of 1935.
– By 1939, about 54,000 colonizers had settled, of whom 49,000 were Serbs (including Montenegrins), about 4,500 Croats and about 150 Slovenes.
In the history of the peoples of Europe, it is difficult to find any people who have been the object of national oppression as the Albanian people, who live in their native lands in Kosovo and elsewhere. The most drastic means, besides oppression, terror, violence, physical liquidation, etc., was the ethnic cleansing of Albanian lands and colonization with the Serbo-Montenegrin element.
Thus, Kosovo, although ethnic Albanian territory, was constantly confronted with the claims of the Serbian government for colonization and thus forcibly changing the population structure, which would then lead to the gradual Slavization and fusion of the autochthonous Albanian people. Throughout history, Serbia used all models of colonization of Albanian lands, and in particular Kosovo, which is also the subject of this paper.
The colonization of lands in Kosovo is a process, the main goal of which was the Slavization of Kosovo, in all periods of time, and the main goal of all Serbian and then Yugoslav politics and military machinery. Meanwhile, throughout history, oscillations have also been observed, sometimes slowing down and sometimes accelerating the colonization process, which depended on the political, economic and social circumstances that were present.
However, as a process, it has never stopped.
In order to achieve the Slavization of the Albanian territories, various political, military-police, and economic and social measures were taken against our people. The measures were as inhuman as they were fascist and savage. They ranged from constant harassment and police control to beatings, murders and mass disappearances of the locals.
The Illyrian-Arbanian territories of Kosovo, after Roman, respectively Byzantine, and then for a time Bulgarian rule, passed under the rule of the state of Raša led by Stefan Nemanja (1165-1195), which also partially conquered Kosovo. The complete conquest of Kosovo took place in 1216. The annexation of the Kosovo Plain and the Dukagjin Plain to the state administration of Raša marks the beginning of the existence of the Serbian ethnicity in these areas.
It should be noted that in the 6th-7th centuries, when the Slavs invaded the Balkans, many Slavs flocked to Illyricum and caused indescribable disasters. After spending a long time with plunder, they filled the roads with bodies, captured many people, and plundered everything. In the Illyrian lands, they kidnapped and killed thousands of people, penetrating even the most hidden places of those parts, so the inhabitants of these places were forced to take the mountains and hide in the forests.
Thus, leaving them free to inherit all the cultural and spiritual achievements that they had achieved on their own over the centuries. Wherever the Slavs passed, they plundered, massacred, hanged, burned settlements, etc. Thus, with fire and iron, they managed to significantly shrink the area inhabited by the indigenous inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula.
The Serbian population came to the Albanian lands, namely to Kosovo as invaders. Here they found the autochthonous Illyrian-Albanian population, which lived many centuries ago uninterruptedly in these lands. The territory of Kosovo has been inhabited since ancient times. The Albanians are descendants of the Illyrian tribe, the Dardanians. The Dardanians were one of the great Illyrian tribes that lived in the central part of the Balkans. The heart of the Dardanian lands was present-day Kosovo.
Archaeological, historical, linguistic, folklore data, etc., clearly testify to the Albanian autochthonousness, to the Illyrian-Albanian continuity. The presence of Albanians in these lands is later proven and confirmed in the chrysobulls and diplomas of medieval Serbian rulers, while during the period of Ottoman rule there are detailed and abundant documents on the population and settlements of Kosovo.
The Albanian people are among the oldest peoples of Europe, upon which storms of There are many and rarely can there be any people in the world that has had such savage invasions and conquerors, as these lands inhabited by Illyrian-Albanians have known. In the Illyrian lands, and later the Arbër of the ancestors of the Albanians, a multitude of conquerors rushed in with the aim of devouring as many parts as possible from the Illyrian trunk.
Those conquerors will exercise their arsenal with massacres, murders, burnings, theft of spiritual and material culture. The first in these campaigns were the Greeks and Romans, who will not only enslave the local inhabitants, Hellenizing and Romanizing them, but will plunder everything from them, eradicating the Illyrian being. Later, all this will enable the Slavic tribes that had just descended from the Carpathians, to more easily subjugate and assimilate them.
The colonization of Kosovo with non-Albanian inhabitants, mainly Serbs, was a process carried out in a planned manner by the Serbian government in the period between the two world wars.
Colonization began immediately after the Kosovo Plain became part of the Kingdom of Serbia and parts of the Dukagjini Plain became part of the Kingdom of Montenegro in the First Balkan War of 1912 and continued during the period of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, from 1918 to 1941. The colonization of Kosovo had a pronounced national character, and according to this nationalism, the “non-national element” (Albanians) had to be replaced by the “healthy national element” (Serbs and Montenegrins).
Between 1912 and 1941, between 60,000 and 65,000 settlers were settled in Kosovo.
More than 90% of the total number of settlers were Serbs from various parts of Yugoslavia (including Montenegrins). Alongside the Serbian colonization of Kosovo, the process of expelling Albanians from Kosovo and the agrarian reform continued.
The aim of the agrarian reform was to liquidate feudal ties and create conditions for the development of capitalism, while colonization aimed to change the demographic map of Kosovo in favor of the Serbs. This agrarian reform also had an ethno-religious aspect, as the properties of former Albanian owners mainly passed into the hands of Montenegrins and Orthodox Serbs.
The colonization of Kosovo is mainly treated as a failed project, as it did not satisfy either the state, the settlers, or the locals. The results of the new ethnic map were invalidated during World War II, when Kosovo was annexed by Albania, and most of the settlers were expelled back to Serbia and Montenegro.
After the war, some settlers were forbidden to return to Kosovo.
Events related to the colonization of Kosovo greatly increased the Serbo-Albanian conflict and Albanophobia in Serbia. Chronology During the Balkan Wars, Kosovo was annexed by Serbia and Montenegro. Despite the mass forcible expulsion of Kosovo Albanians (281,747 people were expelled from 1912-1914), they still made up the majority of the population in Kosovo.
Montenegro and Serbia continued with colonization measures that affected the changing demographic map of Kosovo. Montenegro at the end of 1912 began to settle its citizens in the territories of Western Kosovo.
During the First World War, those colonizers withdrew to Montenegro, so that after the war they would return to the conquered lands. After the First World War and the creation of the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (SKS), the administration of the SKS Government began a comprehensive program of colonization of Kosovo, giving priority to former soldiers or members of the Serbian Chetnik detachment.
The goal was to establish national elements that were worthy and “proven”, as well as war volunteers, Chetniks, gendarmes, border guards, displaced persons, refugees and party activists. The colonizers were regularly equipped with weapons through the federal agrarian cooperatives of the Union of Agrarian Cooperatives. In the Albanian hilly areas, Montenegrins were initially colonized, since they were the most similar in cultural terms.
In addition, they were settled without any fear in the confiscated houses of the Kachaks “not worrying about possible reprisals, nor about the land titles”. The colonizers initially massively acquired land, which was taken from the owners by means of registration documents. A large number of colonizers settled in the homes of Albanians who had been forcibly removed.
The seizure of Albanian land led to the uprising of entire villages, and even military intervention. During the entire colonization, the Belgrade government had to fight with weapons against the resistance of Albanian Kachaks, who fought against the establishment of Serbian power.
Between 1919 and 1927, 245 Serbian settlements were established in Kosovo.
In the autumn of 1931 alone, 1,400 families from Montenegro were settled on the Dukagjin side: typical houses were built and they were allocated more than 20,000 hectares of land between the Prizren–Gjakovë–Peć road and the Drin River.
11,273 houses were built for the colonizers in Kosovo and at the end of 1935.
From 1936, a new wave of land grabbing by Albanians in the border areas began, where they were allowed only 0.4 hectares per family, while the colonizing families had an average of 8 hectares of land. In this way, the government tried to destroy the basis of Albanian existence and forced them to emigrate, which further increased the anti-government mood of the Albanians.
The Serbization of Kosovo continued until 1941, and in this way many Serbian enclaves were formed in Kosovo, including: Fushë Kosovën, Obiliq, Hercegova, Orlovići, Devet Jugoviçi, Lazarevo, Gornji Svračak, Donji Svračak, Jezero, Lug, Novo Rujce, Staro Gracko, etc. The new colonies were established mainly near the main road, which runs from the south to the north of Kosovo.
There was a plan to place combat volunteers at strategically important points, mainly in the Dukagjin area, Drenica, the Dojran and Maleshka districts. By 1939, about 54,000 colonists had been settled, of whom 49,000 were Serbs (including Montenegrins), about 4,500 Croats and about 150 Slovenes. The total number of colonists, according to the agrarian commission to which they were represented.
Agrarian Commission
Number of colonists Ferizaj 15,381 Gjakova 15,824 Prizren 3,084 Peja 13,376 Mitrovica 429 Vushtrri 10,169 Total 58,263. The gradual long-term colonization did not meet the expectations of the Serbian side. The Serb Vasa Šalletić, leader of the agrarian cooperatives, considered that the Albanians should immediately emigrate to Turkey and that “placing Serbs among half a million Albanians was a mistake”.
Criticizing the half-hearted results achieved so far in the colonization of Kosovo, the Serbian academic and politician Vasa Ćubrilović proposes ways to solve the “Albanian problem” by ethnically cleansing Kosovo of Albanians.
Vaso Ćubrilović’s project for the expulsion of Albanians
Vaso Ćubrilović in 1937 worked on the project for the expulsion of Albanians for the Stojadinović government, which was supposed to lead the state bodies:
“It is impossible to break the Albanians only through gradual colonization. The only way and the only means for this is the brute force of an organized state power, in which we are always above them.”
With the aim of suppressing the Albanians, the Serbian government formed paramilitary formations called Chetniks, led by Kosta Pečanac, Milić Kristić, Jovan Babunski, Vasilije T ‰rbić and others, which organized punitive expeditions by committing violence, terror and organized looting.
In the international period (1918-1941), which lasted 23 years, military regime was imposed in Kosovo for almost eighteen years.
During a very difficult period for Albanians under the administration of the monarchy ‰, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia acted in Kosovo, advocating for the autonomy and equality of the ‰ fraternal peoples of Kosovo, and against the emigration of Albanians to Turkey, the confiscation of their land and their terror against them. Colonization of the north of Kosovo The colonization of the territory of Kosovo, mainly the north, continues today after independence in 2016 during the presidential mandate of Hashim Thaçi.
The Serbian government has begun construction of 300 houses exactly in the place called “Sun Valley”, for the return of 1500 Serbian refugees, who are from all countries of the former Yugoslavia, and who have never been residents of Kosovo. Legal regulations and abuse The Kingdom of Serbia adopted the Regulation for the Population of the Newly Liberated Areas from 20 February 1914, but its implementation is quickly hampered by the outbreak of World War I, but in July of the same year.
Between 1918 and 1920, Kosovo was populated haphazardly. The colonization of new areas is regulated by the Regulation for the Population of the Southern Regions, from 24 September 1920. Through this regulation, private properties can be taken Private properties can be confiscated to create complexes for colonizers, but the Government must return the same credit rating of the country in the vicinity of the confiscated lands.
In practice, this has largely not been respected. By taking the lands from Albanians, the agrarian authorities have not recognized/accepted their property rights. In the case of the construction of the colonizing complex, the interests of Albanian villagers have largely not been taken into account: in some cases, the entire area around the house has been taken away, so that to enter the house one has to pass through the colonizers’ properties.
Such cases have brought about an unfavorable position for Albanians and colonizers. The regulation of the population of the southern regions, in 1931, was transformed into the Law on Agrarian Reform and Colonization, which underwent certain changes in June 1933. The implementation of colonization and agrarian reform rare, which are directly related to each other, the first years were the responsibility of the Ministry of Agrarian Reform.
Since 1929, when the ministry ceased to exist, but until the outbreak of World War II, in 1941, colonization was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture. Colonization and agrarian reform also had a social dimension as the land was taken from the former agats and beys and distributed to poor peasants.
The so-called “big rich” alienation was the implementation of the decision of the head of the district of the mayor of the large commune, after which the state determined the purchase price of the “surplus” of land to be confiscated for the purpose of agrarian reform.
Previous owners; Former owners were often not paid properly and the issue of paying former owners was considered a burden on the state budget, especially during the years of the World Economic Crisis. muhajirs and land taken from the kaçaks.
– Almost a quarter of the country consisted of the so-called “Ownerless Property.”
-. In the territorial agrarian commission in Peja alone from 1919 to 1939 there were 9,674 hectares of land permanently abandoned (of the Kaçaks).
– Between 1918 and 1928, 23 ministers of agrarian reform were changed, of whom only four visited the southern regions.
-After the establishment of the sixth dictatorship, in 1929, colonels such as Čemerikić, Dimitrijević, Branovacki dominated among the agrarian commissioners almost exclusively.
– After the end of the war in 1945, the government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia forbade all colonists from returning to Kosovo.
Almost a quarter of the country consisted of the so-called “Ownerless Property”, since Muslims had abandoned them forever. In the territorial agrarian commission in Peja alone from 1919 to 1939 there were 9,674 hectares of land that had been abandoned forever (by the Kačaks). Between 1918 and 1928, 23 ministers of agrarian reform were replaced, of whom only four visited the southern regions.
After the establishment of the sixth dictatorship, in 1929, colonels such as Čemerikić, Dimitrijević, and Branovački dominated almost exclusively among the agrarian commissioners. The work of the Supreme Agrarian Committee was marked by corruption. Although the law ordered that the land be divided chronologically, that is, in order of application, in practice, however, high-quality plots were divided faster for those who paid.
The Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Southern Serbia was a rather controversial institution. Its long-term leader Vasa Shalletic in 1936 proposed the expulsion of Albanians by the Union, which at the same time was responsible for the redemption of their property. In addition to being politically maltreated, the Union quickly became a symbol of corruption.
The various abuses and confiscations of Albanian peasants’ private property for the settlement of colonizers had negative consequences on the relations between the locals and the colonizers; who had acquired the confiscated land in that way. Various documents show that the agrarian authorities illegally restricted and deprived the land of Albanian peasants, often without replacement or compensation.
The Albanians in the border areas of Albania were in the worst position, where the government continued to settle as many colonizers as possible, considering that this would ensure the security of the border. This took the confiscated property of Albanian peasants regardless of whether their families survived on the little land they had left.
As a result of the long-term expulsion of Albanians and the settlement of Serbs and Montenegrins, there have been significant changes in the ethnic structure of the inhabitants. Also, after being subjected to violent measures, relations between ethnic groups have become very tense, especially between the local Albanian and Serbian colonizers, which had consequences in the deepening of the Serbian-Albanian conflict.
The instability of the colonizers’ wealth and the regular distribution of land have led to a general dispossession of wealth. Many colonizers have sold the illegally acquired land and returned to their homeland, or have leased it to Muslim owners, which has “nullified one of the main objectives of land reform and colonization”. On the other hand, some colonizers, mainly Montenegrins, have regularly caused conflicts with the autochthonous.
During the Second World War, Kosovo was annexed to the Albanian Kingdom, which was an Italian protectorate. Most of the Serbian and Montenegrin colonists established during the 1920s and 1930s were expelled back to Montenegro and Serbia, and many were killed. At the end of the war, some of the Serbian and Montenegrin colonists expelled from Kosovo participated in the massacre of Albanians in Tivat.
Prohibition
After the end of the war in 1945, the government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia banned all colonists from returning to Kosovo. , because they are considered to be exponents of the pre-war Serbian policy, from which the new regime distanced itself. In March 1945, the new federal government issued the so-called Decision No. 153, which temporarily prohibited all colonizers from returning to their former place of residence.
The new government, as early as the beginning of August 1945, adopted the Law on the Revision of Colonization Relations, which provided for certain compensation for the colonizers in Vojvodina, from where the Germans under the Danube were expelled en masse. In September of the same year, about 3,352 “former colonizers” gained the right to return to Kosovo, while 306 colonizers, who had lost the right to return, were diverted to Vojvodina.
The anti-Albanian platform of the Serbian rulers for the annihilation of Albanians found its implementation in all areas of social life over time. It has had its peaks sometimes in the economic field, sometimes in the political, sometimes in the religious or military, but constantly intertwined. Against the Albanian population and settlements, the Serbian police, army and paramilitaries on a large scale, starting in March 1998 and until the spring of 1999, undertook offensives to kill the Albanian population and destroy their settlements.
This oppression reached its peak in the months of March – June 1999. At the end of this century, when the world is preparing to enter the third millennium with human and civic achievements, the Albanians of Kosovo suffered a real tragedy: they were faced with macabre atrocities and reprisals as well as a savage ethnic cleansing carried out by the police and military forces like never before.
Milosevic and his associates, in the implementation of plans prepared in secret, threw against the Kosovo Albanians the 45-thousand-strong army of Serbian police, soldiers and paramilitaries. Its units in uniforms and without uniforms forcibly removed Albanians from their apartments and houses within minutes, some of which they set on fire, while the people headed towards the Albanian and Macedonian borders.
Milosevic had decided to settle accounts forever with the Albanians of Kosovo, to ethnically cleanse the land of these indigenous inhabitants as soon as possible. Thus, he planned to “celebrate” the 610th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in Gazimestan without Albanians in Kosovo. Despite the murders, massacres and expulsions of Albanians, the Serbian government, with the aim of colonizing Kosovo, carried out propaganda and continued to build housing for the Serbian population.
Thus, as the Pristina newspaper “Jedinstvo” reported on March 11, 1999, on March 10, 1999, the construction of 236 apartments began in the “Bazhdarhane” neighborhood in Prizren for the needs of the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the necessary personnel for the Prizren economy. The wave of institutionalized Serbian state terror, murders, massacres, and executions of Albanians swept across Kosovo.
The paramilitaries and police, but also the enraged Serbian soldiers could and did kill whoever they wanted and whenever they wanted – without feeling any responsibility, neither moral, nor human nor legal. They could and did kill young and old men, old women, old women and men, sparing neither children nor infants. They killed – with or without motive.
Just because they were Albanians. Just because they wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth, to wipe them out of Kosovo, so that those who could escape their bullets or knives would flee, would be forced to leave Kosovo, if by chance they could escape their arrest or forced deportation.
The most monstrous barbaric murders and massacres that the government committed against the Albanian people in Kosovo, with the completely clear aim of the total extermination of the entire Albanian population of Kosovo, completely exposed the policy and genocidal character of the Serbian government and state.
The Serbian military, police and paramilitary phalanxes and death cordons did not spare not only unarmed Albanian civilians, but also their women, children, infants and elderly people. Showing their brutality and trying to erase the traces of their macabre violence, Serbian forces burned the victims of their terror, or even exhumed them and sent their bodies to unknown destinations, which are now being discovered in numerous cemeteries throughout Serbia.
With the beginning of the armed conflict in Kosovo (March 1998), ethnic cleansing and genocide took the form of a barbaric activity that challenged the entire international community on the eve of the 21st century. The NATO bombings that began on March 24, 1999 aimed to stop and interrupt the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo with murders, massacres and executions, with looting, demolition and burning of entire settlements and with the massive deportation of the Albanian population from their ethnic lands, which was being exercised by the Serbian military-police power over the Albanian population.
Serbian plans, also proposed by Dobrica Qosiq and other Serbian academics, even from circles of official Belgrade politics, have planned the emptying of Kosovo of Albanians. To achieve this goal, a complete genocide was carried out on an entire population in Kosovo.
The entire civilian population was massacred, humiliated to such a barbaric extent and deported in three directions: Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. This expulsion was the exodus, or the most massive displacement in Europe since the Second World War.
Expulsion – the forcible removal of people from their homes
Expulsion – the forcible removal of people from their homes and apartments, where in front of the barrels of machine guns they were ordered to continue towards the train station or motorized, and even fled on foot towards Albania, the border with Macedonia, but also towards areas with a predominantly Albanian and Bosnian population in Montenegro.
From all four corners of Kosovo, columns of people on foot, in tractors, in cars and by train had taken the path of exile, pursued and persecuted by Serbian forces. Among them were the sick, the elderly and the disabled, pregnant women and children and newborn babies. These people traveled or walked for kilometers and kilometers in difficult weather conditions and with shocking experiences and memories of people killed and unburied, corpses thrown on the side of the road, their bodies and their homes burned.
The statements of the criminal Seselj were put into practice, who constantly emphasized that Albanians should be pursued beyond the Bjeshkët e Nemura Mountains, dead or alive… Meanwhile, the Serbian government had made plans for all refugees from Croatia and Bosnia to be brought to Kosovo, as well as a number of the Serbian population from the so-called “Srpska Republika”, e.g. part of the population of Banja Luka in Pristina and so on.
For the deportees in Macedonia, Bllaca was a place of hell, where people faced death. The elderly, the sick, the children, tired and exhausted, exhausted and hungry, were hidden, but they could not find anyone alive. Bllaca was a human catastrophe of antihuman politics against a defenseless people. Bllaca, as such, was condemned by the democratic and humanitarian world opinion. After that chaos of the invasion of the police and paramilitaries, the Albanian houses remained open. Even the stoves were lit, the bread on the stove, the dishes prepared on it, the table laid.
During the deportation, their money, valuables, and cars were looted.
Those who did not have any belongings were beaten or even killed. Their personal documents were taken away and immediately torn up, so that they would not have any proof of legitimacy. They were convinced that the Albanians would never return. Even during the expulsion, the Serbian paramilitaries told them:
They will never see Kosovo again, and if they do, they will see it on television! You asked for this yourself, go to Albania, it is yours, this is Serbia! This is NATO, you asked for it yourself, etc. Before the withdrawal, the Serbian paramilitaries executed Albanians in the country, while during the withdrawal they separated the men from the women, from the family members and executed them, or they disappeared, while there were cases when they raped the women and girls.
Regarding the expulsion of the Albanian population from Kosovo, Kadare wrote: “The deportation of the Albanians of Kosovo is the third tragedy, the wildest, the most unprecedented and the most cruel. But it contains within it, along with the mourning, the light of the future. It is the first time that the Albanians will return to where they were uprooted. A change has occurred in our destiny, from what is called divine.
Albania, after all its anxieties, is finally ending up in that part of the world that its brightest people dreamed of, from Gjergj Kastrioti to the Renaissance: in the European area, where it has been and where it had its place. Let the others, its wild neighbors, go wherever they want. That Kosovo, which they left as an evil, the Albanians will fill again with their presence, with beautiful boys and girls, with the wrinkles of the elderly, with an invincible army of babies and children, who will let everything be renewed, as life was renewed after the mortar left.
Life restored after a season is valued more, and so is the land and the house, the lullabies and the books, and everything else that constitutes what is called the fatherland, the Homeland. Parting from a black night of terror, Albanians must not forget in their lifetime what happened to them. Not to fall into the trap of barren hatred, but to value and better protect their lives…”
Article
Balkan Academia 