The Balli Kombëtar's Struggle for Kosova: Resisting Yugoslavia and Communism
- Valton Vuciterna
- Mar 24
- 12 min read
This is the third installment in a three-part chronological series on crucial episodes in Kosova’s history written by Valton Vuçitërna.
Throughout history, those in power have used their means to vilify both individuals and organizations that stood in their path. Whether through misinformation, selective storytelling, or outright fabrications, both political and military groups have been painted as the enemy in order to rewrite history in the victors’ favor. Historical revision contorts the life and memory of any nation, and this is no different with the stigma surrounding Balli Kombëtar.
Balli Kombëtar (literally, National Front, and most often referred to simply as Balli) was a nationalist organization established to fend off a new set of invaders threatening 20th century Albania: the Marxist ideology that swept the European continent as well as the Axis powers that sought to colonize the small state.
Rilindas Roots
The creation of Balli was influenced by the Rilindas (National Renaissance) period, a time of national and cultural enlightenment during the 19th and 20th centuries in the Albanian-inhabited territories. There is no doubt that the organization found its foundational roots in preceding movements, especially those which rose to prominence in what is today Kosova and North Macedonia. These movements included the Committee for the National Defense of Kosova, formed in 1918 with the aim of liberating Kosova from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Several influential figures in Albanian history were key leaders of the Committee, including the likes of Bedri Pejani and Hasan Prishtina alongside the legendary resistance fighter Azem Galica. The Committee would break apart in the mid-1920s mainly due to deadly conflicts with the regime of Ahmet Zogu, the self-proclaimed King of Albania. Zogu developed a strong anti-Kosovar policy after the Yugoslav state aided his return to power in 1924 and his interests conflicted with those of the Committee.
The Zogist regime successfully eliminated key figures within the Committee, most notably Bajram Curri, and held fast onto power after overturning the June 1924 democratic revolution led by Fan Noli, a well-spoken diplomat and founder of the Albanian Orthodox Church. These new power dynamics raised the stakes in the already tense region.
Under the Shadow of WWII
Zogu remained in power until April 7th, 1939, which would prove to be a fateful date. After refusing an ultimatum from Benito Mussolini’s Italy, which was looking to establish colonies in order to match the expansionist pace of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, the Fascists would invade and depose the self-proclaimed king.
On April 12th, the Albanian parliament voted to unite the country with Italy. With Zogu removed from the throne, the Albanian crown was handed to the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III. Albania's military was absorbed into Italy’s and a fascist government was established in the country. In order to win over the population, Italian leaders such as Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, who was also Mussolini’s son-in-law and heir apparent, encouraged irredentism and the traditional wish to unite Kosova and Çameria with Albania.
Disenchanted by the current state of the nation, statesmen Mit’hat Frashëri and Ali Këlcyra officially formed Balli Kombëtar in the autumn of 1942. Mit’hat was the son of Abdyl Frashëri, one of the most significant figures of the Rilindas movement. He would become a leading thinker in his own right, chairing the Congress of Manastir committee which developed the modern alphabet. His various works, spanning four decades, led to his recognition as the father of a new wave of Albanian nationalism. Këlcyra was a member of the parliament who organized the resistance against the Italians in the Vlora War of 1920 and had become deeply invested in the national cause.
Balli’s formation came in the midst of the second World War. Their motto stated:“Shqipëria e Shqiptarëve, vdekje tradhtarëve” (“Albania for the Albanians, death to the traitors.”) These two men, among others, would develop and bring Balli into the public light as the nationalist counter to the National Liberation Anti-Fascist Movement (LANÇ), a Communist-dominated resistance organization led by future dictator Enver Hoxha, and to fight off Italy’s control over Albania.
Balli was not an ideological monolith, as its members held a variety of political beliefs. It was certainly not founded as a fascist organization, as the Communist regime would later claim. Most of what its members shared ideologically came in the form of traditional Albanian nationalism. The agrarian wing, looking to achieve greater economic equality for Albanian farmers working in a largely feudal economy, was notably popular. It was headed by figures like Abas Ermenj, who had previously been sent into internment by the Italians for anti-fascist activities.
The organization set forth what became known as the “Ten-Point Programme” or the “Decalogue”, a list of objectives for all of its members to adhere to. One such objective encapsulates the essence of what Frashëri and Këlcyra wished to convey: “We are fighting for a democratic, ethnic and free Albania with a modern society.”
Balli’s ranks grew quickly in Kosova and today’s North Macedonia, which were left outside of Albania’s borders in 1913. The Albanians in these territories were not foremost concerned with the expulsion of the invading Italians as they were with the encroaching Yugoslavs, who had now formed a socialist partisan army and sought to continue the hegemonic wishes of the preceding kingdom vis-à-vis the Albanians. Under Italian rule, Albanians would see unprecedented cultural development and connectedness with Albanian state institutions.
The majority of Kosova’s territory, along with the Albanian-inhabited portions of Montenegro and Macedonia were brought into the occupation government. The historian Sabrina Ramet, in her book The Three Yugoslavias, describes how Albanian language schools, previously banned by the Yugoslavs, were opened. Albanian citizenship was also granted to inhabitants of the annexed regions. In the autumn of 1943, however, Italy would capitulate, and her holdings in the Balkans would be overtaken by Nazi Germany.
The Dark Nuances of Collaboration
This set the stage for the dark chapter that has long hung as a shadow over Balli. The reasoning behind open collaboration with the Germans mainly lies in the failure of the Conference of Mukje agreement between the Ballists and members of the Albanian LANÇ partisans. While there was some collaboration with the Axis prior to this event, the aftermath of Mukje pushed Balli to openly work with the powers.
In early August 1943, delegates from both sides met in the village of Mukje near Kruja at the encouragement of British military officials. The agenda of the day centered on forming a new committee to coordinate the resistance movement and shape the future of an independent Albania.
Yet disagreements quickly emerged, with the Albanian communists disputing the status of Kosova and rejecting its integration into Albania proper, due to LANÇ’s significant ties to the Yugoslav partisans of Josip Broz Tito. Their leader Enver Hoxha, for one, had well-known ties to Miladin Popović, the leading Yugoslav representative to the Albanians. While Balli sought to maintain Kosova within Albania’s borders after the war, Hoxha’s delegates refused any compromise and continued to fight alongside the Yugoslavs after declaring war on the Ballists, whom they far outnumbered, on September 2nd. The rest of the war would see a Communist-led civil war against Balli, alongside its anti-Nazi resistance
Captain David Smiley of British special forces recounts the telling episode when Mehmet Shehu, Hoxha's brutally effective longtime second-in-command, refused to attack a German column: "At that time, we attributed this fiasco to rank cowardice ... In fairness to Shehu, however, he was a brave man, and to the partisans themselves, we did not then know that Shehu had received a directive ordering him not to fight the Germans and Italians, but to preserve his brigade in readiness for fights with their political opponents that lay ahead.”
Many local politicians in Kosova would become notable in Balli’s structures, most notably the leaders of the Second League of Prizren: Xhafer Deva of Mitrovica and Bedri Thaçi-Pejani of Peja. The latter was an established figure in Albanian politics, having been one of the founders of the Committee for the National Defense of Kosova and an opponent of the former king Zogu.
Owen Pearson, in his Albania in the Twentieth Century, A History: Albania in Occupation and War, 1939–45, describes how on November 5th, 1943, Deva would be appointed Minister of Internal Affairs under the government of Rexhep Mitrovica, a Balli political member from Kosova who was made Prime Minister by the Germans. Deva would collaborate with the Germans in fighting Marxist forces in the north of Kosova, which allowed him undeviating authority over the soldiers of the state.
It is important to note, however, that collaboration did not equate to acquiescence with the murderous antisemitism the Germans wrought throughout Europe. To the contrary, Albania was the only occupied European country whose Jewish population increased throughout the war, from about 200 to 1,600. This has long been associated with the ancient honor code of Besa, which mandates Albanians to provide refuge to guests even at risk to their own lives. The historian Monika Stafa, however, highlights the importance of the collaborationist government’s refusal to hand over lists of Jews to the Germans, noting that such policies showed about a 10% increase in survival rates across Europe.
The situation in Kosova was somewhat different from the territories within Albania’s 1912 borders. While the Kosovar Xhafer Deva had played a leading role in the collaborationist government’s refusal to give over Jewish lists to the German occupiers, the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg he helped recruit for raided Kosova Jews’ homes in May 1944. Around 281 Jews, native and foreign, were handed over to the Germans.
These crimes were committed by the Waffen-SS division under German direction. To Balli, collaboration meant joining forces against powerful joint Yugoslav-Albanian Communist attacks.
Fighting in Kosova
Many of Balli’s forces were focused on Kosova, mainly on the Karadak-Gollak front in the East. These two regions would face immense attacks on the civilian population by Bulgarian military forces and ethnic Serb chetnik detachments. This included the pillaging and raping of many Albanian villages, such as in Remnik near Vitia, where up to twenty-four Albanian men were tortured and executed in a mosque under the guise of being searched for weapons. These atrocities, alongside the threat of Yugoslav aggression from the northeast, would prompt many Albanians in the region to join Balli.
Heavy fighting ensued in Gollak, with the Yugoslav partisans concentrating their attacks within the surroundings of the city of Gjilan. One such attack included sending several divisions to Mt. Kika, near Velegllavë, in order to eliminate the Balli resistance in the region. In a June 28th, 1944 battle, the Yugoslavs lost 200 men while 131 others were captured as prisoners of war, whilst the Ballists lost only seventeen. A month later, the Yugoslavs would again attack the mountain, only to lose 143 more men. The Ballists, once more suffered significantly fewer casualties, with only thirty-four men killed. The battles of Mt. Kika were cemented as victories for the Albanian nationalists.
Balli would have to supply another front against Bulgaria. Soldiers under the command of former journalist Liman Staneci would fight near the latter’s hometown of Presheva. With Bulgaria’s capitulation and turn to the Allied effort on September 9th, 1944, the Ballist forces would annex territories in Karadak formerly under Bulgarian control.
Balli immediately took action and organized groups in order to defend against another incursion by the Yugoslav partisans. The 10th of September would see fighting intensify between the two sides in Bujanoc. Reinforcements for the Ballists were provided by Fuad Dibra, another former member of the Committee for the National Defense of Kosova. After three days, the Yugoslavs would withdraw due to a hardline Ballist defence. On September 12th, Sylë Hotla, alongside the famed commanders Xhemë Gostivari and Mefail Shehu, fighters who collaborated in Western Macedonia, would score a significant victory by taking the city of Shkup for Balli.
This series of victories would begin to be reversed as the Yugoslav partisans began their aggressive onslaught through Gollak and Karadak. The Yugoslavs would massacre the Albanian populations of many villages throughout the region, such as in Sopot, near Kumanova, where 68 civilians, aged from 11 to 95, were killed. On November 15th, the partisans would take Gjilan, and push the Ballists back into the mountains of Karadak.
On November 26th, Ballist leaders would convene in Presheva in order to plan a recapture of Gjilan. However, this was preempted by a large-scale Yugoslav offensive on November 30th that defeated the Ballists and forced them to retreat into the mountains, thus stalling the retaking of Gjilan.
In December of that year, the Ballists would try yet again to reclaim Gjilan, marching into the city after defeating the Yugoslavs on its outskirts. However, partisan forces under major general Vladimir Popović, drew in reinforcements from Ferizaj and Prishtina. Recognizing just how powerful this force was, the Ballists were forced to retreat to Kamenica. This defeat effectively ended the Karadak-Gollak front, and the Yugoslavs would continue terrorizing the locals, enforcing curfews on the Albanian population and mercilessly slaughtering their way through villages in Karadak. A diary from a Yugoslav partisan soldier reveals that in just the six days between December 23rd and 29th, approximately 3,000 Albanians were killed in and around Gjilan.
The beginning of the end for Balli came with the fall of Tirana to Enver Hoxha’s Communists on November 17th, 1944, following a twenty-day battle. The Albanian communists would supply Tito’s Yugoslavia with soldiers in order to take Kosova, as well as portions of Montenegro and Bosnia. The loss of the Karadak-Gollak front to the Yugoslavs would only exacerbate Balli's eventual fall.
The Yugoslavs would also crucially refuse to honor the Conference of Bujan, an initial agreement between Yugoslav and Albanian communists that promised the unification of Kosova with the Albanian state, and instead absorbed it into the Socialist Republic of Serbia.
These events were disrupted on January 22th, 1945, with the Uprising of Drenica. This revolt against the partisans commenced quickly, as the population of this Albanian nationalist stronghold faced brutal treatment by the Yugoslavs. Ymer Berisha, a Kosovar Albanian anti-communist leader, stated in his memorandum that 75 well-known individuals had their heads brutally bludgeoned, and their corpses thrown into ditches. After these events, a prominent local Ballist leader, Shaban Polluzha, would mobilize a force of over 6,000 to resist the Yugoslav onslaught.
Polluzha would recruit many Albanians in the regions of Drenica and Llap. His forces fought against both chetnik and partisan violence alongside those of Adem Voca, a nationalist resistance leader in the region of Shala e Bajgorës. Noel Malcom, in his book Kosovo: A Short History, details how Polluzha’s forces, now numbering around 8,000, would be attacked by the Yugoslavs in late January. On 22 February, Polluzha was killed in the village of Çikatovë by the partisans, which caused a collapse in this last-ditch revolt by what remained of Balli’s forces in Kosova. After quelling the resistance in Drenica, the Yugoslavs would go on a “cleansing-spree” by eliminating thousands of Albanians who were suspected of aiding the anti-Yugoslav uprising.
The Legacy of Communist Revisionism
After the fall of the Axis powers, Yugoslavia would assume complete control over the entirety of Kosova and the new socialist state of Albania would return to her pre-war borders. Many leaders of the nationalist resistance would take the road of exile to escape the brutal reprisals handed out to those accused of collaboration in both Albania and Yugoslavia. Xhafer Deva and even Mit’hat Frashëri himself found themselves taking this path.
Most other leaders were not as fortunate. Xhemë Gostivari, for example, was assassinated on April 2nd, 1945, supposedly by members of OZNA, the Yugoslav security agency. Gostivari was decapitated, with his head sent to his namesake city of Gostivar, where it was kept in full public view for two days. Revolted by this post-mortem humiliation, surviving members of Balli managed to recover it and later bury him in his home village of Simnicë.
Balli would be slandered and resented by the Albanian communists for decades to come, being dubbed “enemies of the revolution.” Propagandistic films led the charge, depicting Ballists as nothing but low life criminals who committed atrocities and stole peasants’ chickens and other possessions for their own consumption. This vilification and revisionism also spanned periods far preceding Balli’s formation. Most flagrantly, the regime removed Mit’hat Frashëri’s signature from the 1912 Declaration of Independence.
Frashëri would continue his actions against Hoxha’s regime abroad as head of the Western-supported National Committee for a Free Albania. He would recognize the close link between the Albanian and Yugoslav communists, nothing this in his December 1st, 1946 letter from exile: “...all the goods, medicines, medical and surgical tools, everything that was found in Albania's drugstores and warehouses, was sent to uncle Tito.”
The Albanians in Kosova were left hopeless – fated to suffer at the hands of Vaso Čubrilović’s plan to expel them from the region as well as the cruel scrutiny of Aleksandar Ranković, the Yugoslav Minister of the Interior and chief of the infamous UDB military intelligence agency. These struggles would continue until Kosova’s eventual unshackling by the Kosova Liberation Army in the summer of 1999.
Balli’s idealism was simple: in their eyes, the Albanians yearned for and deserved one united ethnic state. In close parallel to other parts of Europe in the throes of World War II such as the occupied Baltics, these goals met against the hard realities of conflict. Their efforts to resist communist attacks drove some of their forces towards the unacceptable path of collaboration with the Axis, which Enver Hoxha’s regime would equate with their entire historical significance. However, like all historical choices, we must follow the context that led up to them. To truly understand the forces that have shaped Albanian history, this chaotic era must be coldly and meticulously analyzed to grasp the intricate political and wartime webs that determined its path.
Valton Vuçitërna is a first-year student studying Finance at Michigan State University's Eli Broad College of Business. Valton was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan to parents from Kosova and is the founder of The Anadrini Project, a database designed to record the histories and genetics of families in the region of Anadrini. He is interested in European history and the cultural heritage of the Albanian people.
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