Macedonia and Kosovo After the Military Operations

 

by Antonina Zhelyazkova Translated from Bulgarian by Violeta Angelova  

I. Approaches to the research and methodology

II. Social specifications of the respondents
1. Albanian refugees in the camps and in the private houses in Tetovo
2. Albanians in Macedonia and Albanians in Albania. Their social relations with the Kosovars
3. The Macedonians

III. Psychological portraits of different ethnic and social levels
1. Albanian refugees in the camps and in the houses of Tetovo
2. Macedonians and Macedonian society as a whole

Conclusion


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II. Social specifications of the respondents

2. Albanians in Macedonia and Albanians in Albania. Their social relations with the Kosovars
The Albanians in Macedonia are definitely more conservative and less educated than the Kosovars and the Albanians from Albania. Along with this, according to the groups’ own evaluation, the Macedonian Albanians are richer than the Kosovars, who, on their part, are much richer than the population in Albania. The town of Tetovo makes an impression of a Muslim town from central or southeastern Anatolia. The restaurants and cafés are full of men only, and the women in the streets are covered with kerchiefs on their heads and ankle-length topcoats. When visiting their houses men sit down to table and women remain isolated in another room. It is not the custom for women to get higher education but only elementary or primary. The fashionably dressed women and those whom we met at the restaurants were refugees from Kosovo. They go out for a walk with their husbands and take the liberty of having a drink or a cigarette. They are smartly dressed and they feel embarrassed with the strict orders among the Albanians in Macedonia. For example, in the Bojane camp, supported by Turkey, which is in the close proximity of the village of Bojane, a strict Muslim atmosphere reigns, i.e. alcohol is nowhere to be bought, beer included.

The Albanian intellectuals in Macedonia are euphorically eager to see the establishment of independent Kosovo where some of them could move to live and work. Many of them have graduated from the University of Prishtina, they worked there during the times of autonomy and they thought of Kosovo as the modern European center for all Albanians.  Macedonia is not an alternative for the Kosovars because there exists a significant difference in the level of modernization, the level of religiousness (demonstrative and real), in the culture and mentality.

Albania is not an alternative for the Kosovars either though they are closer as regards the level of erudition, of modernization and indifference towards religion. In fact, the Kosovars are much more open to the world and they are better acquainted with the European achievements. The Kosovars have a more pragmatic and constructive approach to the personal and social perspective while the real Albanians have passed through the deformation to build such senseless appurtenances as the pill-boxes and to maintain them after that for years regardless of their obvious inapplicability for whatever it might be. This, to a great degree, has destroyed the constructive feeling with the Albanians and has created an attitude to predestination as regards the chaos. The social differentiation and the crashing level of poverty in Albania divide and confront the Kosovars and the Albanians. In the years after the fall of the communist regime in Albania, the rich Kosovars came there with handsome sums to make business, to buy land and estates for nominal prices, to use hired labor for miserable remuneration both in legal and illegal transactions. All this haughty and offhand attitude of their rich brothers from Kosovo has hurt Albanian feelings. A respondent from Albania mentioned that if some refugees decided to stay in Albania, they would be hated and boycotted by the local population being insulted by their social superiority.

The following attitude for the future of the three Albanian communities was outlined as a conclusion to the complex research analysis (the sociological inquiries included); the respondents are fully aware that they are one people, that part of the fisses have their own clans in the neighboring territories but they do not envisage a unification in a common state nor do they strive for that. It is maybe only on a political and ideological level where the idea for a united Great Albania is not strange, this referring mainly to the elite circles of Albania. The educated people from Kosovo and Macedonia rather count on facilitating the borders in the far future, and in the near future they hope for joint activities in independent Kosovo. It is definite that Kosovo is assumed as a future center of primary importance for all the Albanians in the world (I would call it the Mecca of the Albanians).

5^th July, 1999
Sofia
 

Обратно към "Балкаски лабиринт"