Trading with the enemy in Mitrovica, Kosovo. - RUhosting

“Because of such dissatisfactions, the local Serb peasants were often openly hostile to the colonists: one
official in charge of the colonization programme in Kosovo noted in 1928 that they tended to form a 'united
front with the Albanians against the settlers'”. -Malcolm, 2002
While Kosovo may not have been a rose garden for Serbian colonists, for the local Albanian population the
situation also worsened.
“From 1935 onwards, a wave of confiscations of land from Albanians built up, on the basis of a new rule
that all land should be treated as state property unless the farmer had a Yugoslav document to prove his
ownership – something that had hardly ever been issued to Albanians. In just one example of this process,
the entire Albanian population of twenty-three villages in upper Drenica (6,064 people) was dispossessed in
1938. The official policy was to allow such people only 0.4 hectares per family member. As a Serbian policy
document of the previous year noted: 'This is below the minimum for subsistence. But that is and has been
our aim: to make their life impossible, and in that way to force them to emigrate.'” -Malcolm, 2002
Several policy measures were taken to force or at least motivate Albanians to emigrate out of Kosovo, apart
from not recognising Ottoman land deeds. Police harassment increased severely, and mosques and
graveyards were destroyed or transformed into something else such as stables. These policies were partly
successful as estimates places the total number of Albanians emigrating out of Kosovo in the period between
the two world wars between 90.000 and 150.000 (Malcolm, 2002).
This colonisation programme and other policy measures to adjust the balance between the Albanian and
Serbian population in Kosovo ended when the second world war arrived in Kosovo. Yugoslavia
unconditionally surrendered to the German forces on the 17 th of April 1941 and Kosovo's territory was
partitioned between Italy and Germany. Albania was already ruled by Italy and now most of Kosovo's
territory was simply added to this. The Germans decided only to keep the northern part of Kosovo –
Mitrovica and up – where the valuable Trepça mine was located. Parts of south-eastern Serbia, most of
Macedonia and a small eastern strip of Kosovo were annexed by Bulgaria. Kosovo was added to Albania in
the hope of its occupiers that this would keep the Albanians quiet. All inhabitants of Italian-occupied
Kosovo, including Slavs, became Albanian citizens by 1942. Also, the Italians invested in introducing
education in the Albanian language, opening many new schools. This strategy seemed to work, because both
resistance movements that existed in Yugoslavia, the Četniks and the communists, were particularly weak in
Kosovo. The biggest reason for this was however that they were seen by most Albanians as almost
exclusively Slav-based organisations. There was not really a clear stand on the occupying powers, sometimes
there would be collaboration, sometimes opposition. Relations between Albanians and Serbs played a large
role in this:
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