Over the course of the twentieth century, Kosovo experienced four major colonisation campaigns that aimed at altering the ethnic population balance in the region, to decrease the Albanian population and replace them with Serbs and Montenegrins. The colonisation programme began in the early twentieth century between the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro during the Balkan Wars and was later implemented by their successor state Yugoslavia at certain periods from the interwar era until 1999. Albanians formed the ethnic majority in the region when it became part of Yugoslavia in the early twentieth century.
Fears over Albanian separatism and the need to secure Kosovo, a strategic territory for the country drove the state to pursue colonisation as a solution. The Serbian political elite held the view that Kosovo was a former late medieval Serb territory that following the Ottoman conquest was settled by Albanians. As such, the colonisation process along with the displacement of Albanians and purchase of their property was understood as "a logical sequel to the liberation war", in which the four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire.
The first brief attempts at colonisation were made by Montenegro and Serbia during the Balkan Wars and First World War. Following the end of the wars and the creation of Yugoslavia, the interwar period experienced the most colonisation activity. Between 60,000 and 65,000 colonists, of whom over 90% were Serbs, settled on the territory of the former Kosovo Vilayet captured from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. In addition to them, numbers of state bureaucrats and their families also settled in Kosovo. Along with Serb colonisation, a policy of forced migration of ethnic Albanians was implemented, enlisting the participation of Turkey to resettle them in its territory. During the interwar period as a whole, 90,000-150,000 Albanians and other Muslims emigrated from Kosovo, where 200,000 hectares of agricultural land (over a third of the total amount of agricultural land) were confiscated from the original owners, of which half was distributed to colonists.
During the Interwar period, tens of thousands of Albanians were killed in Kosovo, the Vardar province (modern-day North Macedonia), and Montenegro. Albanian armed resistance to Kosovo's incorporation into Yugoslavia following WWI emerged in the Kachak Movement, triggering a conflict that lasted until 1921 when the movement was suppressed. As a result, more than 12,000 Albanians were killed in Kosovo from 1918 to 1921. In 1919, U.S. Army colonel Sherman Miles reported that between 18,000 and 25,000 Albanians had been killed in Montenegro, according to the British Mission in Shkodër and as many as 30,000 according to Albanian estimates. In July 1919, the French consulate in Skopje (North Macedonia) reported nine massacres of 30,000-40,000 victims. According to Haki Demolli, 80,000 Albanians were killed in Yugoslavia by 1940.
During the Second World War, Kosovo was attached to Italian controlled Albania and the colonist population fled to neighbouring Axis occupied Serbia and Montenegro. At the end of the war, the government of Yugoslavia prohibited the return of colonists and stopped the colonization programme.:sh:Datoteka:Zabrana povratka kolonistima.jpg Forced migration of Albanians to Turkey resumed and Serb settlers were installed in Kosovo until the ouster of Ranković in 1966. In the 1990s, the government of President Slobodan Milošević attempted the colonisation of Kosovo using various financial and employment incentives to encourage Serb settlement and later through forceful resettlement of Serb refugees from the Yugoslav Wars.
The colonisation of Kosovo is generally considered an unsuccessful project because it satisfied neither the state nor the settlers, nor the home population. The politics related to the colonisation process and its effects upon various population groups of Kosovo remains a topic of interest and discussion in scholarship.
Rationale The cult of Kosovo within Serbian nationalism was used as a justification for Serbian claims to the territory. However, it was not a central theme until the 1860s.Anna Di Lellio – The Case for Kosova, p. 55
Before WWII First phase: Balkan Wars and First World War (Montenegro and Serbia) Kosovo was part of the Ottoman Empire and following the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), the western area was included in Montenegro and the rest within Serbia. Beginning from 1912, Montenegro initiated its attempts at colonisation and enacted a law on the process during 1914 that aimed at expropriating 55,000 hectares of Albanian land and transferring it to 5,000 Montenegrin settlers. Some Serb colonisation of Kosovo took place during the Balkan Wars. Serbia undertook measures for colonisation by enacting a decree aimed at colonists within "newly liberated areas" that offered 9 hectares of land to families.
Second phase: Interwar Yugoslavia In the aftermath of the First World War, Serbia and Montenegro became part of Yugoslavia. Serbian control over Kosovo was restored and the state attempting to counteract Albanian separatism pursued a policy to alter the national and religious demographics of Kosovo and to Serbianise the area through colonization. Yugoslavia had signed the Protection for Minorities treaty, yet Albanians were not extended the rights of recognition as a minority or to Albanian language education. Kosovo, along with northern region of Vojvodina were areas where Serbs were not a majority population and the state sought demographic change in those areas through land reform and a colonization policy. A new decree issued in 1919 and later in 1920 restarted the colonization process in places where Albanians lived in Kosovo and Vardar, Macedonia. Between 1918 and 1945, over 100,000 Albanians left Kosovo.. Political parties of Eastern Europe: a guide to politics in the post-Communist era p. 448-449Anna Di Lellio The Case for Kosova p, 61
Kosovo Kosovo was strategically important for the state, its elite and security with the Albanian population deemed as "unreliable" and concerns existed over possible future rebellions by locals that did not approve of its governance. The stance of Serbian political elite held that Kosovo was an late medieval Serb territory that after the Ottoman conquest had been settled by Albanians. Vasa Šaletić, the head of the governing body for the colonisation process described the process of displacing Albanians and purchasing their property as "a logical sequel to the liberation war", in which four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire. Aiming to achieve a favourable political outcome, the state pursued various measures through violence and administrative avenues such as expulsions and replacing Albanians with another population. At the time in the Yugoslav census of 1921, Albanians formed the majority population of Kosovo at around 64 percent with some 72 percent belonging to the Muslim faith. Government sponsored colonisation of Kosovo and Vardar Macedonia was initiated in 1920 when on 24 September the Assembly of the Yugoslav Kingdom passed the Decree on the Colonisation of the Southern Provinces of Yugoslavia.
Both the decrees of 24 September 1920 and 11 July 1931 outlined the types of land that could be colonised and it included state land deemed not in use, communal land that went beyond the requirements of a community, land belonging to outlaws, land classified as abandoned, and large estate properties that could be subdivided through agricultural reform. Land that was considered abandoned and land expropriated from Albanians amounted to some 228,000 hectares of mainly farmable land. The decrees were intended as a reward to former soldiers and Chetniks for their service during the Balkan Wars and World War One, with incentives offered to settle in Kosovo that allowed them to claim between 5 and 10 hectares of land. The military veterans that settled in Kosovo were known as dobrovoljac (volunteers) and were a politically reliable group for the state. The colonisation process also entailed the arrival of Serbian bureaucrats to Kosovo along with their families. During 1919–1928 some 13,000 to 15,914 Serbian families came to live in Kosovo as stipulated in the conditions of the decrees. The process involved the construction of 106 colonies and 245 new settlements in Kosovo and due to serbianisation efforts some were named Lazarevo, Obilić, Miloševo after heroes from Serbian epic poetry. Other places such as Ferizović (Alb: Ferizaj) had their name changed to Uroševac.
Closing of schools and colonisation After 1918, all Albanian schools in Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo were closed and around 400,000 ethnic Albanians were denationalised."History Today" 1 December 1991; Hall 1994. p.201. The Financial Times 29 June 1989 According to Vladan Jovanovic, Yugoslav authorities opened Turkish schools and not Albanian. Around 60% of Albanians were left without an income as a consequence of Yugoslav policy. Public services were closed to them and religious offices were politicised. Yugoslav authorities also intended to replace Albanians in the region with Chetniks, war veterans and police men, as well as border police, refugees and party activists. In 1930, there existed no Albanian schools in Kosovo.
Kachak movement
Parts of the Albanian population that resisted Serbian rule in Kosovo began military maneuvers and formed the Kachak movement. Under the political leadership of Hasan Prishtina and Bajram Curri, the movement based itself in Shkodër and was led by the Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo organization. Among their demands were the re-opening of Albanian language schools, recognition of Albanian as a co-official language and autonomy, with the goal of uniting Kosovo with Albania. The Kachaks engaged in uprisings, targeting Serbian army and administrative formations but forbade its members from targeting unarmed Serbs and churches. The Serbian authorities regarded them as mere bandits and in response to their rebellion, retaliated by conducting operations against them as well as the civilian population. In 1919, a large-scale revolt in Drenica involving 10,000 people instigated by Azem Galica was quelled by the Yugoslav army. By 1924, military confrontations between Albanians and Serbs ended as the Kachak movement was effectively suppressed.
Consequences As the Yugoslav forces pushed through the Albanian inhabited villages there were series of expulsions and massacres being carried out. According to Albanian sources, between 1913 and 1939, flying detachment of Serbian forces acted and punished the civil population. Between 1918 and 1921, Serbian forces killed 12,346 civilians, burned 320 villages, looted 50,000 houses, imprisoned 22,16 and burned roughly 6000 houses. Between 1913 and 1920, Serb colonists were given special privileges by the authorities to settle in areas, previously inhabited by Albanians, who had been vanished or killed numbering 60 000.
Atrocities against Albanians during the Interwar Period
Despite that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes kingdoms had signed the international acts of the time, which defined the rights of national minorities, according to the Treaty of Saint Germain, also unified by the League of Nations, terror against the Albanian population continued between 1912 and 1915. According to a statistics published later in Italy, Serbian troops alone killed 6,040 in January and February 1919, destroying 3,873 homes.
Kosovo