Forsaken Albania

By Artan Lame
Shkodra, April 1913. This photograph is of a postcard produced and distributed in Montenegro, to promote the moment of the symbolic handing over of the City. The caption it has is in Serbo-Croatian and French. “ESAT PASHA COMMANDER OF SHKODRA, HANDS OVER THE KEYS OF THE FORTRESS TO HIS MAJESTY THE CROWN PRINCE OF MONTENEGRO.” The postcard shows, in the foreground, Esat Pasha Toptani (Commander of the Turkish Garrison of Shkodra), shaking hands with the Montenegrin Crown Prince (also Commander of the Montenegrin Forces of the encirclement). From his stance, Esat seems to be slightly more humble however, he showed he was capable of benefiting from such a humiliation, even declaiming this as a kind of success!
In November 1912, the Montenegrins encircled Shkodra that was defended by a Turkish garrison under the command of Hasan Riza from Bagdad, Esat Pasha Toptani was Vice Commander of the Garrison and Commander of the Reservist Troops. Shkodra defended itself for months on end from the vicious attacks of the Montenegrin forces, who, after they occupied the city, tried to make it the capital of their state, instead of Cetinja, away up in the mountains. Esat Pasha realized that in the meantime the Albanian scene was becoming particularly interesting, the whole of the Balkans was changing, new vistas were opening everywhere, the new state created boundless opportunities, but in the meantime he was rotting in a battle that had absolutely no hope of bringing any benefits in this northern corner of the Balkans theatre. He decided to march South with his troops, straight towards that theatre of actions and intrigues of author and actor, a part of which he had been for a long time now. He organizes the murder of Hasan Riza Pasha, opens negotiations with the Montenegrins, and hands over the city to them on the condition that he is allowed to withdraw with his garrison and armaments. Brilliant plan, perfect intrigue, but after everything is completed something goes wrong. The Albanians no longer applaud his abilities; they begin to turn their backs on him. What had happened?
Esat Pasha is one of the most interesting of figures of the end and beginning of the 19th -20th Centuries, branded for life as a traitor and this is probably why an analysis has never been made of this historical figure. The offspring of a family of the Nobility connected to the top of the Imperial Administration, he spent all his life swimming upstream against the currents of Ottoman-Byzantine politics of the tri-continental Empire, always keeping his head above water. This kind of politics called for individuals without principles, ideals, and scruples, persons who had a very keen sense of cunningness, egocentric and cosmopolitan. These were precisely the qualities, some inherited and others worked to perfection over many years that dominated the brain of this man, which subsequently lifted him to the summits of power.
He would join one side, then he would be swearing allegiance to the Sultan, then he joined the Turks to overthrow Abdyl-Haimiti. Today he was deep into an intrigue with the Italians, while, on the morrow, he would be sending word to the Austrians to raise market value; he defended Shkodra, but had its Commander murdered; accepted a ministerial portfolio from Ismail Qemali and later on from Prince Vid, but also worked behind his back to bring him down; he negotiated an agreement with Haxhi Qamili in Shijak and recruited gendarmes for France in Thessalonica. A brilliant player of “real politics”, first of all on the enormous stage of the immeasurable Turkish Empire and later on in he smaller theatres of all the continental European powers; he was the embodiment if the new Albanian generation of fortune-hunter, who were springing up everywhere, on all different sides, in compliance with the very complicated and intricate strings of power. And during almost three decades of this adventure-seeking policy, every act he had undertaken had been hailed as a rare quality, songs had been composed in honour of his astuteness and everyone wondered at and admired his special gift.
Suddenly, during the second decade of the Century something overturned. The Empire fell, and in this corner of the Balkans a new State was formed which they called Shqiperia, and together with it new terminologies and sentiments began to be created that had never existed before. Betrayal and patriotism were born, the oath to the Homeland and national belonging, a new morale was born and began to be moulded, at the foundations of which lay, “Ambition that runs counter to the interests of the Homeland, is called treason.” Up to his neck in intrigues and snares, Pasha Toptani never understood this. He continued to do what he had always done, to operate as he had always done, but now these acts no longer secured him admirers and worshippers, but enemies and scorn. “What is your problem,” I can imagine him saying, “am I not the same man? Am I not doing what I have always done? Am I pulling the wool over your eyes? Am I not doing you all in for the sake of ambition? Yes, of course I am. But there is a difference. Now, Albania had been born. Now there is morality. And together with them, there is now treason.” Up until the day he died, Esat continued playing the games he had always played, without being capable of grasping the new reality. And precisely, in the midst of all these Machiavellian games, he was hit by the bullets fired from the gun of the 20 year old Avni Rustemi, who was formed in the new Albania that was in the process of being born.
Esat departed from this world, without understanding the change of times, and I believe he probably regrets this fact now, up there wherever he is, stamping his feet indignantly, that for the fault of this failure to understand, not only did he not go down as a real gem in the Great Volume of History, as many others had done before him, but on the contrary he went down and has been fixed in the history of the Albanians as a nugget of coal which blackens you no matter where you touch it.