Forsaken Albania

By Artan lame
Vlora, January 1914. Albania had only been independent for two years, a status, internationally recognised for only one year, still without a legitimate government, still without defined boundaries and in between neighbouring states that were trying to grab as much as they could before the dust settled and things became clearer. In these conditions, the Government of Ismail Qemali, initiates secret negotiations with the leaders of the Young Turks Party, with the intention of installing on the Throne of Albania, a member of the Ottoman Imperial Family, and perhaps even the return of the country under the Turkish Empire. All this, in the context of a broader Turkish-Bulgarian-Albanian alliance, because, apart from Albania, Turkey itself was feeling desperate in the situation created where it had lost possession of the Balkans, whilst Bulgaria regarded any possibility of its expansion thwarted, due to Britain’s preferences for Greece and Russia’s for Serbia. In exchange for a role of its own, Albania was promised that it would be permitted to expand in the direction of its own ethnic teritories of Kosovo, Macedonia and, to the South, towards Ionnina. If we were to imagine this moment of crisis, despair and confusion, then this entire effort may seem correct and only normal in the circumstances, but the Greater Powers, that were barely managing to keep the situation under control in the Balkans, could no longer afford any local initiatives which, potentially, could only generate new crises.
To realise the project, in the first days of January 1914, the first group of conspirers arrive in Vlora under the directioin of Major Beqir Grebeneja, a former Albanian Officer in the Turkish Armed Forces, together with a group of officers and about 150 fighters, all disgusied as civilian. Beqir Grebeneja also met with Ismail Qemali, but meanwhile, the gossip that began to circulate in Vlora, and on the other hand, the information received from the Powers, incited a very vicious counter-reply. On 7 January, Major Grebeneja and his followers were arrested by the forces of the International Supervisory Commission, and, with the greatest urgency a special martial court was set up, which sentenced Beqir Grebeneja to death, and about ten of his most faithful followers to about fifteen years imprisonment. The Court also discovered the involvement of the Provisional Government in this conspiracy, compromising the position of Ismail Qemali, who resigned at the end of January. And so ended this conspiracy, which remained the first in the history of the Albanian State. None of the Court rulings were executed. On his arrival in Albania, Prince Vid granted clemency to everyone, including Beqir Grebeneja and he permitted him to leave the country.
In the photograph, seated in the middle is Major Grebeneja, surrounded by his own staff. Although all of them are in civillian dress, they fail to inspire any faith that they have good intentions. When you look at these faces, heavily bearded, unkempt and unshaven for years, perhaps you can get the idea that, long-term, it would we difficult to imagine that Albania could benefit anything positive or “of a western spirit” from such characters, who look as though they have just crawled out of some cave of the Middle Ages.