Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were perpetrated on several occasions by the Serbian and Montenegrin armies and paramilitaries 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.Leo Freundlich: Albania's Golgotha 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.
Some scholars and contemporary sources offer the view that either elements of the atrocities, like the Luma Operations, or the entire campaign constituted genocide or an effort to systematically exterminate the Albanian population in various regions. Further massacres against Albanians occurred during the First World War and continued during the interwar period.
According to Philip J. Cohen, the Serbian Army generated so much fear that some Albanian women killed their children rather than let them fall into the hands of Serbian soldiers. The Carnegie Commission, an international fact-finding mission, concluded that the Serbian and Montenegrin armies perpetrated large-scale violence for "the entire transformation of the ethnic character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians". Cohen, examining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report, said that Serbian soldiers cut off the ears, noses and tongues of Albanian civilians and gouged out their eyes.Philip J. Cohen, Islamic Studies Vol. 36, No. 2/3, Special Issue: Islam in the Balkans (1997), p. 4. Cohen also cited Durham as saying that Serbian soldiers helped bury people alive in Kosovo.
According to an Albanian imam organization, there were around 21,000 simple graves in Kosovo where Albanians were massacred by the Serbian armies. In August and September 1913, Serbian forces destroyed 140 villages and forced 40,000 Albanians to flee. According to documents from the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 239,807 Albanians were expelled from Old Serbia between 1912 and early 1914 (not counting children under the age of six); by late 1914, this number increased to 281,747. These figures, however, are controversial and scholarly estimates can be as low as 60,000. American relief commissioner Willard Howard said in a 1914 Daily Mirror interview that General Carlos Popovitch would shout, "Don't run away, we are brothers and friends. We don't mean to do any harm." Peasants who trusted Popovitch were shot or burned to death, and elderly women unable to leave their homes were also burned. Howard said that the atrocities were committed after the war ended.
According to Leo Freundlich's 1912 report, Popovitch was responsible for many of the Albanian massacres and became captain of the Serb troops in Durrës. Serbian Generals Datidas Arkan and Bozo Jankovic were authorized to kill anyone who blocked Serbian control of Kosovo. Yugoslavia from a Historical Perspective, a 2017 study published in Belgrade by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, said that villages were burned to ashes and Albanian Muslims forced to flee when Serbo-Montenegrin forces invaded Kosovo in 1912. Some chronicles cited decapitation as well as mutilation. Leon Trotsky and Leo Freundlich estimated that about 25,000 Albanians died in the Kosovo Vilayet by early 1913. Serbian journalist Kosta Novaković, who was a Serbian soldier during the Balkan wars, reported that over 120,000 Albanians were killed in Kosovo and Macedonia, and at least 50,000 were expelled to the Ottoman Empire and Albania. A 2000 report examining Freundlich's collection of international news stories about the atrocities estimated that about 50,000 were victims within present-day borders of Kosovo.
Background The Albanian-Serbian conflict has its roots in the expulsion of the Albanians in 1877-1878 from areas which were incorporated into the Principality of Serbia. As a result, some Albanian refugees who fled to Kosovo attacked the local Serb population. "In 1878, following a series of Christian uprisings against the Ottoman Empire, the Russo-Turkish War, and the Berlin Congress, Serbia gained complete independence, as well as new territories in the Toplica and Kosanica regions adjacent to Kosovo. These two regions had a sizable Albanian population which the Serbian government decided to deport."; p.470. "The ‘cleansing’ of Toplica and Kosanica would have long-term negative effects on Serbian-Albanian relations. The Albanians expelled from these regions moved over the new border to Kosovo, where the Ottoman authorities forced the Serb population out of the border region and settled the refugees there. Janjićije Popović, a Kosovo Serb community leader in the period prior to the Balkan Wars, noted that after the 1876–8 wars, the hatred of the Turks and Albanians towards the Serbs ‘tripled’. A number of Albanian refugees from Toplica region, radicalized by their experience, engaged in retaliatory violence against the Serbian minority in Kosovo... The 1878 cleansing was a turning point because it was the first gross and large-scale injustice committed by Serbian forces against the Albanians. From that point onward, both ethnic groups had recent experiences of massive victimization that could be used to justify ‘revenge’ attacks. Furthermore, Muslim Albanians had every reason to resist the incorporation into the Serbian state." In May 1901, Albanians pillaged and partially burned the cities of Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Pristina, and massacred Serbs in the area of North Kosovo. Before the outbreak of the First Balkan War, the Albanians were fighting for a nation state. A mid-1912 Albanian revolt resulted in Ottoman recognition of the "14 Points", a list of demands which included the establishment of an Albanian Vilayet. The push for Albanian autonomy and Ottoman weakness were seen by contemporary regional Christian Balkan powers as threatening their Christian population with extermination.Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars. p. 47. According to Albanian scholarship, the realisation of Albanian aspirations was received negatively by Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. The Balkan League (Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria) attacked the Ottoman Empire and, during the next few months, partitioned all Ottoman territory inhabited by Albanians. The kingdoms of Serbia and Greece occupied most of present-day Albania and other Albanian-inhabited lands on the Adriatic coast. Montenegro occupied a portion of present-day northern Albania, around Shkodër. According to Dimitrije Tucović, Serbia doubled its territory. Most Albanian historians say that Montenegro, Greece and Serbia did not recognise Albanian autonomy, and the Balkan Wars were fought to stop it on Ottoman lands they claimed.
When the Serbo-Montenegrin forces invaded the Vilayet of Kosovo in 1912, much of the Albanian population fled due to the feared (and actual) violence they experienced at the hands of the invading armies. The Serb military effort to conquer Kosovo had overtones of extermination due to Serb retaliation against Albanians affecting children and women, including the killing of women and men and the destruction of homes. During this period, 235 villages were burned down: 133 by Serb forces and 102 by the Montenegrins. Steven Schwarts writes that during the capture of Durrës, Shkodër and Shengjin, Serbian soldiers massacred and pillaged poor Albanians. According to the Albanian Armend Bekaj, the Serbian invasion of Kosovo was illegal. Anna Di Lellio writes that the Serbian expansion campaign forced Albanians to accept a Serb nationalist ideology which made them feel like a minority in their homeland.
According to a telegram sent from the Serbian consul in Prishtina, dated 22 September 1912, the Albanians were scared of the potential Serbian invasion. Nikola Pašić then ordered that Milan Rakić and Jovan M. Jovanović write a proclamation declaring that "the Serbian army would not act against Albanians but Turkey, and that the army would free the Serbs. The Albanians would not be harmed, and schools and places of worship would be left alone, and that there would be freedom of language." Belgrade had promised Isa Boletini to act friendly towards the Albanian uprising against the Turks and that the Albanians and Serbs would live in peace. Although the Kingdom of Serbia signed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, it did not follow the 1907 treaty; Muslim civilians in Kosovo were ill-treated and subject to excessive violence.
Vilayet of Scutari
A number of reports surfaced about violent Montenegrin persecutions of Catholic Albanians. In Montenegrin-controlled districts, Catholic and Muslim Albanians were subject to forced mass conversions to Orthodox Christianity. When Serbo-Montenegrin soldiers invaded Shkodër, about 10,000 Montenegrins soldiers died. Equating Albanians with Turks, Serbian army enacted a revenge on the population for the way they had been treated centuries prior by Turks. The city was looted, and civilians (including the sick and wounded and women and children, many of whom were Christian) were massacred. In late 1913, international pressure resulted in the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Shkodër; according to the city's Austro-Hungarian consul, Serb troops killed about 600 Albanians.
In 1912, Serbian troops entered the village of Zalla in Krujë and one soldier broke into a house and assaulted a woman. The husband shot the soldier, and when the Serbian troops arrived they massacred everyone, including women and children and razed the village. In 1913, Serbian troops raided the village of Patok, Lezhë, burning many houses and capturing a number of residents. After the Battle of Brdica, Serbian soldiers retreated into the village of Barbullush and, despite the residents' pleas for mercy, massacred men, women, children, and elderly.
A British captain who was aiding a general spoke with incoming Albanian refugees and reported, "The Serbs are also in the region of Krasniqe, and they massacred all those who stayed behind. Refugees tell of wild and pitiful scenes".
In Tirana, many Albanians were beaten to death by local Serbian troops. After aiding Albanian volunteers, residents of Kaza Tirana had their houses burnt down and 17 people burned to death and an additional 12 were executed. According to Jovan Hadži Vasiljević, in his book “Arnauti naše krvi-Arnautaši", published in Belgrade in 1939, in the village of Brut, near the Drin river, Serbian troops had ordered the local Albanian villagers to bring them food. After the villagers delivered the food, they were murdered, and their heads were cut off and placed at the feet of dead Serbian troopers. In 1913, Serbian troops entered Albanian inhabited villages and bayonetted 27 unarmed men from the village of Gjuzaj when they resisted the occupation. Serbian troops also committed several atrocities in the village of Kadiaj in Fier.
Vilayet of Kosovo