The Albanian question - the problem of a divided people

    The proposals which have been made up to now for a solution to the Albanian question and, within this framework, for an international solution to the Kosovo problem, show that not all the historical, political, social, economic, geopolitical and humanitarian factors involved have been understood, or at least not clearly and properly understood. The basic argument in support of this assertion is that it is essentially wrong to treat the Albanian question as the question of an ethnic minority.
    Although it is commonly used by political and government organizations, the term 'ethnic minority' is one of those terms whose meaning should depend on a specific definition and not simply on the vagaries of common usage. According to common usage, the term 'ethnic minority' has come to mean the members of an ethnic group living in an ethnically identical territory outside the country they belong to ethnically. As the word 'minority' is an integral part of the term 'ethnic minority', the ethnic group in question must consequently be a real minority, firstly in comparison with the nation it is related to, even though these people live in another country, and secondly, in comparison with the other people and peoples with whom it shares territory.
    The Albanians were not an ethnic minority in former Yugoslavia, i.e. communist Yugoslavia, nor are they an ethnic minority in the countries created or being created out of former Yugoslavia.
    How can this be true?
    The Albanians were not an ethnic minority in former Yugoslavia because they were about eight times as numerous as the Montenegrins, who had their own republic within the Yugoslav federation. They were also about two and a half times as numerous as the Macedonians, who had their own republic, too. They were more numerous than the Slovenes, who had their own republic, and more numerous than the Moslems, who also had their own republic within the framework of the former Yugoslav federation. Thus, they were not a minority in communist Yugoslavia for the simple reason that they were a majority in comparison with a good number of the 'state-forming' peoples of the federation.
    The Albanians are not an ethnic minority in rump Yugoslavia, the present state of Yugoslavia as it is called by the Serbs and Montenegrins alone, because they are still more numerous than the Montenegrins who have their own republic within this Yugoslavia. Nor are the Albanians a minority within Serbia, because you cannot call one-third of the population of a multinational state such as Serbia an ethnic minority.
    The Albanians are not an ethnic minority in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, now an independent and internationally recognized country, because they account for over one-third of the total population of this multinational republic, too.
    And even if they were an ethnic minority in rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) or in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, there is one other reason why the Albanians in former Yugoslavia can no longer be regarded as an ethnic minority - they constitute half the population of the Albanian nation. Living on their own ethnic and historical territory along the border that separates Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro from Albania, a territory which is ethnically and geographically continuous with Albania, these Albanians are just as numerous as the inhabitants of the Republic of Albania itself, i.e. about three million individuals. Half of a nation cannot be called an ethnic minority of any country, irrespective of the number of inhabitants that country may have. The half of the nation living under foreign jurisdiction should not enjoy any fewer privileges than the other 'state-forming peoples' there or than the other half living under its own jurisdiction.
    What conclusions can be drawn from the above?
    If there are just as many Albanians in former Yugoslavia as in Albania itself, people living on their own ethnic and historical territory which forms a geographical continuity with the Republic of Albania, it is then logical that these Albanians in former Yugoslavia, i.e. in contemporary Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, cannot be considered an 'ethnic minority' but rather as part of a divided nation. Consequently, the Albanian question must not be seen or dealt with in terms of a minority problem, but rather as the question of a divided nation.
    The Albanian question has not evolved from the problem of an ethnic minority to the problem of a divided nation simply because the Albanian population in former Yugoslavia has grown. It was a question of a divided nation from the very start. During the Conference of Ambassadors in London, at a time when there were about 748,000 Albanians in Albania itself, there were also about 1,200,000 Albanians abroad, in lands occupied by Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. Albania cannot really be called a national state in the broadest sense of the term since half of the Albanian nation lives beyond the country's national borders. The Republic of Albania is the homeland of only half of the Albanian people, the national state of a divided Albanian nation.
    There are other nations in Europe with a good portion of their population living in foreign countries. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed in 1918, for instance, it left countless Hungarians outside the borders of Hungary. There are still about three million of them at the present time. When the Soviet empire broke apart in 1991, about twenty million Russians found themselves outside the borders of Russia. But neither the Hungarians nor the Russians consider themselves divided nations. The three million Hungarians living in countries outside the borders of Hungary constitute less than one-third of the Hungarian nation, and the twenty million Russians living in countries outside the borders of Russia constitute less than one-seventh of the Russian nation. In other words, neither the Hungarians nor the Russians, although many of their people live in other countries, are divided nations. There is only one divided nation in Europe, and that is Albania.