In Albania, World War II began with its invasion by Italy in April 1939. Fascist Italy set up Albania as its protectorate or puppet state. The resistance was largely carried out by Communist groups against the Italian and then German occupation in Albania. At first independent, the Communist groups united in the beginning of 1942, which ultimately led to the successful liberation of the country in 1944.
The Balli Kombëtar was an Albanian nationalist, collaborationist, and anti-communist resistance movement during the Second World War. It was led by Ali Këlcyra and by Midhat Frashëri. The movement was formed by members from the landowning elite, liberal nationalists opposed to communism, and other sectors of society in Albania.
Kolašin is a town in northern Montenegro. It has a population of 2,989. Kolašin is the centre of Kolašin Municipality and an unofficial centre of Morača region, named after Morača River.
The Albanians of Kosovo, also commonly called Kosovo Albanians, Kosovan Albanians or Kosovars, constitute the largest ethnic group in Kosovo.
Albanians in Montenegro are an ethnic group in Montenegro of Albanian descent, which constitute 4.91% of Montenegro's total population. They are the largest non-Slavic ethnic group in Montenegro.
Drenica, also known as the Drenica Valley, is a hilly region in central Kosovo, covering roughly around 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) of Kosovo's total area (6%). It consists of two municipalities, Drenas and Skenderaj, and several villages in Klina, Zubin Potok, Mitrovica and Vushtrri. It is located west of the capital, Pristina.
The Italian governorate of Montenegro existed from October 1941 to September 1943 as an occupied territory under military government of Fascist Italy during World War II. Although the Italians had intended to establish a quasi-independent Montenegrin kingdom, these plans were permanently shelved after a popular uprising in July 1941. Following the Italian surrender in September 1943, the territory of Montenegro was occupied by German forces which withdrew in December 1944.
The German occupation of Albania occurred between 1943 and 1944 during World War II. Before the armistice between Italy and the Allied armed forces on 8 September 1943, Albania had been in a de jure personal union with and was de facto under the control of the Kingdom of Italy. After the armistice and the Italian exit from the Axis, German military forces entered Albania and it came under German occupation, creating the client-state, the Albanian Kingdom.
The Battle of Junik was fought during the Kosovo War between the ethnic Albanian paramilitary organization known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the security forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over the town of Junik in western Kosovo.
Anti-Albanian sentiment or Albanophobia is discrimination and prejudice towards Albanians as an ethnic group, described primarily in countries with a large Albanian population as immigrants, seen throughout Europe.
The massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were perpetrated on several occasions by the Serbian and Montenegrin armies and paramilitaries during the conflicts that occurred in the region between 1912 and 1913. During the 1912–13 First Balkan War, Serbia and Montenegro committed a number of war crimes against the Albanian population after expelling Ottoman Empire forces from present-day Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, which were reported by the European, American and Serbian opposition press. Most of the crimes occurred between October 1912 and the summer of 1913. The goal of the forced expulsions and massacres was statistical manipulation before the London Ambassadors Conference to determine the new Balkan borders. According to contemporary accounts, around 20,000 to 25,000 Albanians were killed in the Kosovo Vilayet during the first two to four months, before the violence climaxed. The total number of Albanians that were killed in Kosovo and Macedonia or in all Serbian occupied regions during the Balkan Wars is estimated to be at least 120,000. Most of the victims were children, women and the elderly. In addition to the massacres, some civilians had their lips and noses severed. Multiple historians, scholars, and contemporary accounts refer to or characterize the massacres as a genocide of Albanians or the Muslim population in the Balkans as a whole. Further massacres against Albanians occurred during the First World War and continued during the interwar period.
Numerous war crimes were committed by all sides during the Kosovo War, which lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. According to Human Rights Watch, the vast majority of abuses were attributable to the government of Slobodan Milošević, mainly perpetrated by the Serbian police, the Yugoslav army, and Serb paramilitary units. During the war, regime forces killed between 7,000–9,000 Kosovar Albanians, engaged in countless acts of rape, destroyed entire villages, and displaced nearly one million people. The Kosovo Liberation Army has also been implicated in atrocities, such as kidnappings and summary executions of civilians. Moreover, the NATO bombing campaign has been harshly criticized by human rights organizations and the Serbian government for causing roughly 500 civilian casualties.
The colonization of Kosovo was a programme begun by the kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia in the early twentieth century and later implemented by their successor state Yugoslavia at certain periods of time from the interwar era (1918–1941) until 1999. 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 Montenegrins and Serbs. Albanians formed the ethnic majority in the region when it became part of Yugoslavia in early twentieth century.
The Bela Crkva massacre was the mass-killing of Kosovo Albanian villagers from Bellacërkë, Kosovo by Yugoslav armed forces on 24–25 March 1999. Twelve hours after NATO had started bombing strategic Yugoslav targets, Yugoslav armed forces came to the area around Bela Crkva, fired artillery, and set fire to the village.
The Staro Gracko massacre was the mass killing of 14 Kosovo Serb farmers in the village of Staro Gracko in the Kosovo municipality of Lipjan on 23 July 1999. The killings occurred after Yugoslav troops withdrew from the region in the aftermath of the Kosovo War. The massacre is the worst single crime in Kosovo since the conflict ended in June 1999. As of 2019 the perpetrators of the killings have never been found and held accountable.
The Meja massacre was the mass execution of at least 377 Kosovo Albanian civilians during the Kosovo War, which took place on 27 April 1999. Of the victims, 36 were under 18 years old. It was committed by Serbian police and Yugoslav Army forces in the Reka Operation which began after the killing of six Serbian policemen by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The executions occurred in the village of Meja near the town of Gjakova. The victims were pulled from refugee convoys at a checkpoint in Meja and their families were ordered to proceed to Albania. Men and boys were separated and then executed by the road. It is one of the largest massacres in the Kosovo War. Many of the bodies of the victims were found in the Batajnica mass graves. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has convicted several Serbian army and police officers for their involvement.
On December 14, 1998, the Yugoslav Army (VJ) ambushed a group of 140 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militants attempting to smuggle weapons and supplies from their base in Albania into the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A five-hour battle ensued, ending with the deaths of 36 militants and the capture of a further nine. Dozens more fled back to Albania, abandoning large quantities of weapons and supplies, which the Yugoslav authorities subsequently seized. The ambush was the most serious war-related incident in Kosovo since a U.S.-negotiated truce took effect two months before. It came on the heels of increasing tensions in the province, where inter-ethnic violence had been escalating steadily since early 1995.
On the morning of April 23, 1998, a band of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters was ambushed by a much smaller group of Yugoslav Army (VJ) border guards near the Košare outpost, just west of Dečani. The fighters had been trying to smuggle weapons and supplies into Kosovo via northern Albania. Nineteen were killed in the ensuing attack, and a further two were captured. The VJ did not sustain any casualties. Some of the militants retreated back to Albania, while others managed to break through the ambush and make it past the Yugoslav border, into Kosovo. Following the clash, the VJ confiscated a large quantity of arms that the militants had been transporting.
The Šahovići massacre was a massacre of the Muslim population of the Yugoslav village of Šahovići and neighbouring villages in the region of the Lower Kolašin. It was committed on 9 and 10 November 1924 by a mob of 2,000 Orthodox Christian men from Kolašin and Bijelo Polje that sought revenge for the earlier murder of Boško Bošković, governor of the area, it was also committed by Montenegrin Greens. The massacre was fueled by rumors which targeted local Muslims, anti-Yugoslav leader Jusuf Mehonjić as the perpetrator. In time, it became known that Bošković was killed by members of a rival clan, the Rovčani. In the aftermath of the massacre many Muslims fled from the region.
The Cetinje massacre was a massacre of 28 citizens of Cetinje in the German occupied territory of Montenegro committed by the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans on 13 and 14 November 1944. Since June 1941 hard-line elements of the Communist Party in Montenegro perceived the uprising against the Axis occupiers as the first stage of a communist revolution, struggling against their perceived class enemies. The communist terror had turned a substantial part of population in Montenegro against the Communist-led forces.
