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1. The Albanian Aromanians' Awakening: Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania

Author:
Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
Today, many thousands of Aromanians (also known as "Vlachs") live quite compactly in Northern Greece, Macedonia (FYROM) and southern Albania; and there are still traces of Vlach-Aromanian and Aromanian populations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Romania. In Albania, they were recently estimated at about 200,000 by the English scholar Tom Winnifrith. In Albanian communist times, Aromanians were not recognised as a separate minority group, officially considered to be almost completely assimilated. However, in the early post-communist transition period, a vivid Aromanian ethnic movement emerged in Albania and it became part of a recent global Balkan Aromanian initiative. The Albanian Aromanians' new emphasis of their ethnicity can be seen as a pragmatic strategy of adjustment to successes and failures in the Albanian political transition and to globalisation. It is exactly the re-vitalisation of the conflict between followers of a pro-Greek and a pro-Romanian Aromanian identification that serves to broaden the scope of options for potential exploitation.
Topic:
Development, Ethnic Conflict, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Albania

2. Conflict in Kosovo: Failure of Prevention? An Analytical Documentation, 1992-1998.

Author:
Stefan Troebst
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues
Abstract:
Not too much of inside knowledge of the Balkans was needed to realise that the winter of 1997/98 turned the formerly autonomous Yugoslav province of Kosovo inhabited predominantly by Albanians into one of the most violent-prone crisis zones in Europe. In September 1997, a massive protest movement of Albanian students gained momentum; from November 1997 on, an underground "Liberation Army of Kosovo" (UÇK)) with an estimated strength of several hundred fighters increased the number of attacks on and assassinations of Serbian officials and police officers; and the regime retaliated first by police violence, show trials, long-term sentences, and nationalist tirades, then by bringing more and more security forces into the central part of Kosovo. In January 1998, The Economist depicted Kosovo as "Europe's roughest neighbourhood”.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Ethnic Conflict, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, Balkans, and Albania