Albanians about their brothers from Kosovo and Macedonia 
In the Albanians’ consciousness Kosovo is a province which has greater opportunities for economic development and prosperity. In the beginning and the middle of the 90s, even in the beginning of the Kosovo conflict, the following opinion spread in Albania: ”What do the Kosovars need, they live well, much better than the Albanians themselves, why should they bring ruin upon themselves?” Respondents from Albania explained in details about the vast prospects that the Albanians had in former Yugoslavia /Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro/. They stressed on the great number of family representatives who worked in Western Europe, which made them not only richer but more different as well. To the question, “How did it happen that the Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia grew even richer than the Serbs and the Macedonians”, they gave the following answer: “The local ethnoses and the authorities kept them aside of all state institutions and jobs, they dismissed the Albanians from any state positions, they were not given access to the administration, the army and the police. The only way to survive and keep the family living was to work to the utmost in the private sector, i.e. trade, crafts, agriculture, and as hired workers abroad. One should not miss the illegal traffic, of course. That’s how they grew richer”. “The Serbian and Macedonian authorities forcibly directed the Albanians where they could profit better and now they need not be angry that they are poorer. Because, it seems that here, in the Balkans, all are clever but all are naïve too”. They are sure to add, “Kosovars are very industrious. They are the most industrious of all Albanians, of us and the Macedonians.” Jokes have spread in Albania about the proverbial laziness of the local Albanians. When the NATO officers saw the wretched state of the roads they allotted funds to patch up the holes. The Kosovar refugees asked straight away to take up the roads patching, because they felt finished when they had nothing to do. The local respondents told us that in Albania one could often see the following picture: The NATO soldiers and the Kosovars are working and a big group of local Albanians-idlers stand round them for hours commenting, laughing and smoking. When the others felt quite exhausted, the all around idlers shouted “go ahead, go ahead”, but they did not even move to help them. “That’s how it was during the Great War,” some of the adults remembered, “the Italian soldiers built up many things and we were watching them”. This is a self-evaluation, which they make good-naturedly and with sense of humor.  

According to the opinion of the interviewed people, who had communicated all the time with the Kosovar refugees, they are colder and more inhospitable. Drivers who provided the camps with foodstuffs and after the end of the war drove the refugees to their native places, after which they conveyed goods to Kosovo, spoke with outrage: ”In spite of our hospitality that we showed to them here, they refused to be our hosts in Kosovo. We spent a month in Pristina, in Ðakovica, in Pec, but they did not invite us to take a coffee with them, they pretended they did not know us. And we worked non-stop for them, as for brothers. They even stopped our truck, which conveyed goods and they sacked it. They mocked at us saying that if this misfortune had befallen us /the Albanians from Albania/, we /the Kosovars/ would not have accepted you.”  Quite surprising for most respondents, was the fact that one of the most important and traditional value of the Albanian ethnos was neglected, i.e. the hospitality and the gratitude towards those who had helped them at hard moments. They made the following comparison: “Even the Macedonian Albanians who are more backward and more uneducated than the Kosovars are more hospitable people and they observe the tradition as it is according to the ancient rules”. “Kosovars are arrogant and they like nobody but themselves, they think that their wealth gives them the right for that. Our Macedonian brothers, however, are no less rich, but they are not haughty to us – they feel for out poverty and they respect our erudition and intelligence”. 

Albanians worry that the events in Kosovo and the future statute of the province could have influence, to some extent, on the reactions of the Albanian population in Macedonia. The dominating attitude among the Albanian society is that the Albanians in Macedonia should not have separate pretensions. “Macedonia is a wonderful country and our brothers live there freely. They need not separate and destroy Macedonia. What is important for us is that the Albanians had their own place in policy there, as it is now”. 

Albanians as whole – a look from outside and historical-psychological comments 
During the past 10-15 years Albanians from the three communities were passing through a period of national identification, self-discovery and national maturity. At present, the Albanians are determined to win recognition as a nation, succeeding in overcoming the centrifugal forces of the clan and territorial division. As a Macedonian politologist said, “the Albanian society is experiencing now what the Macedonians experienced 50 years ago, and the Bulgarians, the Serbs and the Greeks during the Nineteenth Century”. Albanians can be called with the conventional for our team term - “the teenagers” in the Balkans, all complicatations having been encoded in the term during the complex transition to maturity. “If Macedonians have no other option except Europe’, the same politologist says, ‘Albanians do have, i.e. their reunification, winning recognition as a nation and then integrating with Europe. They have an intermediate phase, which they would like probably to achieve before joining Europe.”  

These all-Albanian strivings are complicated by the differences among the three communities. An Albanian intellectual summarized, “Albanians from Albania have already got an idea about the Kosovars as for scoundrels, liars and Mafiosi who are haughty and inhospitable, but still, these are some rich Albanians. Kosovars, on their hand, perceive the Albanians from Albania as wild and uncontrollable bandits, being reduced to beggary”. Both communities accept the Macedonian Albanians as fanatically religious, illiterate and conservative. The inconsistency in the lack of xenophobia among the Albanians in Albania, the Kosovars’ fierce xenophobia and the complete ethno-capsulation of the Albanians in Macedonia was really surprising.  Three different directions and three different levels of relations with the “others”. 

Blood vengeance has been revived and it is working among the Albanians in Albania. When we put questions to the respondents, we made great efforts to get an answer. One of the respondents, an educated person, scolded our translator-mediator and said, “You should not translate everything, each home has its own secrets and you have to keep the secrets of our home”. The explanation of most respondents is that the Kanun and the blood vengeance as a part of the common law have revived as inevitability, due to the fact that the state is weak and the institutions do not function. What worries the educated respondents is that the Kanun revives distorted in Albania.  

Enver Hoxha solved the problem with the common law in a drastic way, similarly to the entire banning of the religion. He killed or removed the clan Elders who knew the principles and applied the Kanun. Fifty years later there really exist blanks in the historical memory of the Albanians. They try to restore the customary traditions but they do that by changing or supplementing the Code due to lack of succession. Old people-respondents said horrified that there were gross violations in the present applying of the Kanun, especially in the blood vengeance part. 

In Kosovo the blood vengeance has been revived by the extreme political conjuncture and it is applied in the everyday practice without any hesitation or attempts to restore the requirements of the tradition. For example, according to the veritable tradition women cannot be killed, or if a woman covers up with her body a man or a male child they should be reprieved. Now this has been forgotten. 

In Macedonia the blood vengeance is not executed, but this issue requires some additional research. For the time being, the team’s conclusion is that the conservative and close community has its leaders who usually settle the disputes and impose punishments. 

For the researcher, who observes the revival and applying of the Kanun from outside, this is an obvious tendency to some primitive form of an alternative state and of doubling social and legal institutions.  

How could they carry out the national formation and the national unification with these significant differences and the feeling of mutual mistrust and sense of superiority? This simply cannot happen unless it is a common decision and a platform of the political elites of the three communities, imposed aggressively and, of course, supported by external factors. Consequences are unforeseen.