The ‘Greater Albania’, a safe shelter for international jihadism

The ‘Greater Albania’, a safe shelter for international jihadism

06/03/2019

By Margherita Furlan

Jan.23, 2019

The Albanian government has expelled two Iranian diplomats, Ambassador Gholamhossein Mohammadnia and Mohammed Roodaki, an official at the embassy in Tirana, accused of being undercover members of Iranian intelligence. According to The Independent, the two were part of a cell whose task was to organize “a plot to strike the Iranian opposition in Albania”. The move would be implemented following talks with “interested” countries, including Israel and United States. It is no coincidence that the administration of Washington immediately congratulated the Albanian executive for the action taken.

The news released by The Independent has raised the focus on a scenario so far little studied and remained however out of the range of international attention. Scenario in which United States has entrusted Albania with a central role, and whose goal (one of the ends) appears to increase destabilization of the entire Balkan area.

The protagonist of the whole operation is the so-called Islamic organization of Mujaheddin e-Khalq (MEK) which now has a large base in the Albanian territory. The arrival in Albania of the MEK command is preceded by a very long and tortuous history that deserves to be told in detail.

The Vlachs in Albania -- Part II

Part I

The Vlachs in Albania

Albania’s Vlach community is living in the southern part of the country, which has its historical name – North Epirus.[1] They are dispersed from the city of Gjirokastër in the south to the city of Elbasan in Central Albania. However, the largest Vlach concentration is in the areas of the cities of Gjirokastër, Korçë, and Përmet in the southernmost part of Albania where they live together with the Orthodox Greeks, Albanians and Macedonians.[2] The number of Albanian Vlachs is estimated from 35,000 to 100,000, but some researchers raise this figure to almost 200,000 (that is around 1–2,5% of the total Albania’s population).[3] However, the real figure of any minority in Albania is quite difficult to realize for the matter of unreliable census records and a very little information on the ethnic minorities in this country. Additional difficulty in this matter is produced by the Greek officials who claimed that all Albania’s Orthodox Christians (approximately 400,000) are ethnic Greeks (this number includes all of those who identify themselves as Albanians, Macedonians, Vlachs, Greeks, etc., but they are of the Christian Orthodox religion).[4]

The territory of Albania, from the geographical point of view, was extremely proper for economic activities of the Vlachs in historical perspective and accurate for preservation of their culture, language and identity. As the pastoral people, who traditionally have been dealing exclusively with the cattle-breeding, the Vlachs from the early Middle Ages found the land of Albania, which is the totally mountainous, as one of the most profitable in the Balkans for their professional prosperity. Furthermore, the political and economic isolation of Albania from the rest of the world, which started in 1961 (with Albania’s breaking off relations with the Soviet Union) and ended in 1985 (with the death of Enver Hoxha), also greatly participated in protecting of the Vlach ethnolinguistic and cultural identity.

A map showing the Albania municipalities with higher percentages of Aromanians/Vlachs in the 2011