Between Albania and Macedonia: Patriarchal loves

On the bus from Tirana to Skopje there are many young women with children. They have just visited their relatives, in Northern Albania, and are now going back to their houses in Macedonia. In this report, a story of migration and arranged marriages

The bus departs from the center of Tirana. It is old and shabby and has probably arrived in Albania after covering thousands of kilometers somewhere else. It is bound for Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, to be reached through Central Albania, driving along the Ohrid Lake and meandering in mountain roads. The bus leaves in the evening and travels throughout the night. Elderly couples bound for Struga get on, for an affordable modest vacation on the Macedonian bank of the Ohrid, families who have spent their vacation on the beaches of Durres, sleepy children with reddish tans and reddish light eyes, a few young alternative Macedonians who chose to come to the Albanian Adriatic, now going home. And women, many young Albanian women, with their small children. They take up half the bus and they all have Northern Albanian accents.
Indeed, hundreds of young Albanian women marry Macedonian men of Slavic ethnicity. They are all catholic and come from forgotten villages in the Northern part of the country. They move to Macedonia to live with their husbands and then go back to Albania in the summer, with their children, to visit parents and relatives. This phenomenon has caught the attention of the Albanian and foreign media, leading to flows of responses in the Albanian-speaking and Macedonian blogosphere. Many are the prejudiced titles and comments: “The Balkanians make peace in the name of love”, “Albanian women selling themselves to the Slavs” , “The Albanian invasion of Macedonia by genetic ways”. Many verbally stone these women, who in Albania are considered traitors of their mother-country or women of loose morals.
There are now actual dating agencies in Northern Albania, who connect future husbands and young Albanian women. Girls are introduced to the husbands against payment, and the rest goes as in any arranged love story. Business seems to be booming and mixed marriages are growing.
Twenty-five years old, light shining eyes and Germanic traits, Elvira tries to socialize with the people next to her. She says she does it because she needs to speak Albanian, she terribly misses her mother-tongue. She comes from a village near Lezha, North-Western Albania, and has married a Macedonian man from Kumanovo. She has been living there for four years. She is self-ironic, straightforward, and has no scruples in telling her story.
“Don’t get married”, she says in her way of playing down heavy situations. She met her husband through a friend of hers, also married in Kumanovo. He is 20 years older than her. When asked why she married him, she answers that in her little mountain town there was no guy who could marry her. “They’ve all emigrated abroad, or moved to the cities, they’ve changed their way of living and I couldn’t find anybody”. The only solution was to get married in Macedonia, like many of her friends. Nationality, language and religion were barriers that she could overcome, driven by the urgency of material necessities. This notwithstanding the very conservative culture of the catholic community in Northern Albania. “My Father agreed immediately – she explains – I had no other choice, and it is true that Macedonians are Orthodox, but they’re Christian anyway”.
Sitting next to her is another young woman with two children, a very shy 4-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl who cannot articulate her words clearly, yet. Their Mother speaks to them in Macedonian. She speaks it badly and with her mother-tongue accent. Seeing my astonishment, Elvira right away says: “Our children are Macedonian, they’re not Albanian anymore. It’s useless to speak Albanian to them”.
The woman’s name is Zamira. She is also from a village in the mountains, near Lezha. She married in Kicevo/Kerçov. “Never had I imagined that one day I would end up in Macedonia – she confesses with the expression of someone who is answering a routine question – I had imagined moving to Italy, but never to Macedonia. But a neighbor came one day, and introduced me to my future husband”. She keeps speaking loudly and people around her turn and give her looks of reproach. “I rarely speak Albanian”, she apologizes looking around her and keeps talking of this and that with Elvira and other girls that, like them, married Macedonian men.
“We only come back once a year, in the summer, almost always alone”, she says, “obligations and family do not allow us to come back more often”. They do not want to go into detail on why these visits are so rare, despite the geographical proximity and the fact that connections between Albania and Macedonia are now everything but an obstacle. “When you marry, you’re not free anymore”, another girl says, to explain to me the conditions they all seem to suffer. Her hair is extremely fair, she is 20 and carrying a few-months-old baby girl in her arms. Her name is Esmeralda, she comes from a very small town in the mountains in the Laç area. Her husband is traveling with her: he is over 50, good looking, but is austere and not very sociable.
“Like me, he couldn’t find anyone – she explains – strangely enough, in Macedonia it is the women who emigrate, and men are left alone. Instead, in Albania you can find no men”. She seems satisfied with her situation. She tells she comes from a very poor family and that she met her husband through a friend of her Father’s. Her Father and her husband – she adds – are the same age. She, too, speaks Macedonian to her daughter. “It’s my language, now, and I want to speak it to my other children too – she states with conviction – because they’re going to be Macedonian, not Albanian. Whom are they going to speak Albanian to, anyway? Noone”.
What about the Albanians of Macedonia? Even though the majority of mixed couples lives in areas where also local Albanians live, the latter do not mix with the newly-arrived women from Albania. “They keep to themselves, they’re difficult, and they speak an archaic language, it’s hard to understand each other”, Esmeralda says in a low voice, under the look of a family of Albanians from Macedonia who is paying close attention to the women’s conversation. Not even a smile when their eyes meet, no words of courtesy. They look annoyed when listening to them speak Macedonian, but do not react. “Muslims are like that – Zamira says lowly – they’re terribly nationalistic, they’re not like us”.
Regardless, almost all of them say they get along. “Macedonians are like us”, they say between sentences while describing their day. “I stay with my children, I take care of the land, the animals. Women stuff”.
The conversation is interrupted by a middle-aged woman with a Tirana accent, blond and brown highlights and clothes that are definitely not appropriate for the long bus ride. She tells the women to stop talking and to show respect for “citizens” like her. She really speaks her mind and to her there is nothing wrong in defining them as mountain women. For the developing Albania, the urban Albania of the Western plains from Tirana downwards, these girls and the dwellers of the same region are backward, medieval mountain people, scapegoats for everything that goes wrong in the country.
These women on the bus from Tirana to Skopje come from extremely traditional and rural families, where women still belong to their husbands and have no say in the lives of their children, who will have to perpetuate the so-called male line, while the “milk line”, as they usually say around this area, counts for nothing. It is like this in the areas where they come from and it seems to be like this in the Macedonian villages they move to. The appearance and the attitude of the husbands sitting next to them confirm this: they are devoted to their children and not very caring about their wives. These seem to accept with resignation and almost naturalness what “is supposed to be like this”. Some of them, very young like Elvira, protest in self-irony, but without forgetting submission.
This story tells about people who, forced by the trend of internal migrations and towards foreign countries, in both countries, are ready to overcome cultural and linguistic barriers. The husbands of the young mountain women are their Fathers’ age. They are often strongly marked by the years and by the hard life of someone living in a rural environment. Had it not been for these young Albanian women, forced to flee the poverty and being marginal in the places they were born, these men would have probably grown old in loneliness.
The bus passes the border. Red, maroon and blue passports circulate from hand to hand among the passengers, Albanian names inspired by the particularly creative fashions from the 70s and 80s are pronounced next to Macedonian surnames. And then there are the stops. Struga, Ohrid, Gostivar, Kumanovo: the girls get off one at a time, they give a warm goodbye and take to the sidewalks of the stations side by side with their husbands.

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso

Georgia's military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq war

Almost 1,000 Georgian soldiers are taking part in international operations in Afghanistan and the first Georgian soldier death was registered in September. A look behind the scenes of a decade-long international engagement - one that Georgia's current government sees as a sort of life insurance

It has been almost 10 years since 2,000 Georgian soldiers – most of the Georgian army – took part in the Pentagon-sponsored “Training and Modernisation Program” between 2001 and 2002.

Kosovo had been the first precedent for Georgian participation in international peacekeeping operations, but in those years, the number of soldiers sent to world's geopolitical hot spots was not overly significant.  For example, less than 100 Georgian soldiers were deployed to Kosovo, and they served among the ranks of the German contingent.
With the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Georgia's role became more active but during the Shevardnadze administration, Georgian soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq numbered no more than between 100 and 150. With Saakashvili's rise to power, the situation changed radically. Georgian troops, both in Iraq and, later, in Afghanistan, reached the considerable number of 1,000.
International involvement and Tbilisi's realpolitik 
Georgia would not seem to have any reason to go and fight in faraway Afghanistan, let alone Iraq. But politics makes the difference in this case.
The first reason for Georgia's active participation in someone else's wars is the country's desire to show Western partners that it can give something back. Over the last two decades, Tbilisi constantly needed the West's support; in Afghanistan and Iraq Georgia can prove to be a useful and willing ally. Until recently, Georgian politicians  explained that Georgia's presence in Iraq and Afghanistan would hasten the country's entry into NATO, but this argument does not hold water any longer. Joining the Alliance has become a merely theoretical possibility for Georgia.
The second explanation is, again, political. An active military presence, first in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, significantly increases the ruling elites' rating in Western eyes, and especially in the eyes of the US. US President Barack Obama has repeatedly expressed his gratitude for Georgia's support in Afghanistan, as did State Secretary Hillary Clinton on more than one occasion during her visit  to Tbilisi. Such statements are obviously directed at the country as a  whole rather than just at the  current government, but Georgia may well keep only 100 soldiers in Afghanistan if it wasn't for Saakashvili's and his team's active support.
The public opinion is not especially enthusiastic about 1,000 Georgian soldiers fighting who-knows-where and for who-knows-why, but since they do it on a voluntary basis, nobody expresses too much concern. In addition, the participation in international military operations is not funded by Tbilisi but by the U.S.
Last 13 September, president Saakashvili tried to explain why Georgian troops needed to stay in Afghanistan saying “Georgia is not Norway, Denmark, or Australia. Look at our position, at our situation, at our challenges, at our threats: how can we give up on army or military training? The participation in operations in Afghanistan is an opportunity for integrating with the world elite, getting acquainted with the most advanced military technology and finally learning something our officials and soldiers will be able to use, in the long term, for creating our own military tradition.”
What about the opposition?
Most opposition parties are not especially enthusiastic about Georgia's participation in international military operations but do not protest too much for realpolitik's sake. Their only concern is the possibility of Western allies forgiving the Georgian government's violations of democratic rules in exchange for Georgian participation in the Afghanistan war.
Namely, Republican party leader Davit Usupashvili expressed support for the mission, but specified that “it is crucial for us that Georgian authorities do not exploit the situation for blackmailing the West. The US and their allies must not close their eyes on the violations of democracy in Georgia just for our soldiers' participation in their war”.
Iraq
Between 2007 and 2008, over 2,000 Georgian soldiers were fighting in Iraq, making Tbilisi's contingent one of the most important, in numerical terms, in the whole coalition. They left urgently on 9 August, 2008 when Georgia fought Russia, but they arrived home too late to  play  any role in the conflict. After that, the troops were not sent back to Iraq, since by then it was already clear that Barack Obama would win the US presidential elections and that his new administration would aim at downsizing the military presence in Iraq.
Afghanistan
During the time the Georgian army was most active in Iraq, less than 100 soldiers were fighting in Afghanistan. In 2009 when the US defined their priorities, the Tbilisi government announced intentions to increase its contingent by up to 900 units. Currently, 925 soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan.
The Georgian contingent is the second largest after the US in size considering its population and the first in relation to national GDP. The first Georgian death was registered in Afghanistan's Helmand province on 5 September when a soldier was killed and two were wounded, one losing both legs.
Perspectives
Judging from the attitude of both the government and the main opposition forces, Georgians not preparing to downsize its military presence in Afghanistan.The reason is, by now, clear: the country's participation in international operations is the only context in which the country feels on equal footage with its Western counterparts. But another question remains unanswered: when and how may Georgia use the military experience it gained in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Statistics: chartsbin / Isaf 


Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso

Albania, a çarshija

An Ottoman-style market, a çarshija, right in the heart of Tirana, of which today only faint memories remain. Architecture, social relations and memory in an interview with the anthropologist Armanda Kodra

Armanda Kodra in an Albanian anthropologist who principally studies comparative cultural anthropology in the Balkans. She has mainly focused on the subject of the çarshijas, policies on national and religious identities, collective memory and oral history. She is currently working as an anthropologist at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology of Tirana and teaches Balkan Anthropology at the Tirana public university. She collaborates with various academic and cultural journals in Albania and abroad, including Fatos Lubonja’s “Perpjekja”.
In which part of Tirana was the çarshija?
It was more or less in the center of the city where the Palace of Culture now stands, and in the garden behind it. It had been there since the founding of Tirana. It was probably the construction of the çarshija that made Tirana a city. Once upon a time, the Sulejman Pasha Mosque was near there. It was torn down to build public restrooms, intentionally… The Mosque was heavily damaged by the bombings, and the communists left it to there, abandoned.
Today the foundation stone of the Mosque is regarded as the foundation stone of the city. It is said, as  a matter of fact, that Tirana was founded in 1614. Evlija Celebija, an Ottoman traveler that must have visited the city around 30 years after its founding, describes the çarshija as a very big space. Even though he was known for his tendency to magnify what he observed, we are led to think that that space had acquired great importance for the city.
Today, though, practically nothing remains of Tirana’s çarshija…
The çarshijas of the large Albanian cities were torn down by Hoxha’s regime. Practically nothing remains of the çarshijas of Berat, Kavaja, and Elbasan, to name a few. It was not always a deliberate destruction, though. It started out by discouraging private property and initiative. Then in the 50s, public craft enterprises were established, and almost each of the main cities had one. Their main objective was that of producing handicrafts mainly considered as souvenirs. This led the çarshijas to lose their importance. The demolition and re-definition of the cities’ architecture came at a later time.
Why were these historical neighborhoods of the city demolished?
It was claimed that socialist cities were no place for such Ottoman buildings. The city was to be freed from signs of the past. In some cases, though, çarshijas lost their importance in a more natural way. Because of this anti-Ottoman orientation, the regime did nothing to preserve them, even though they were places of cultural and historical interest of the city. In Scutari, for example, there was a gradual shifting towards the Northern part of the city center. The çarshija was underneath the fortress, an area which became more and more marginal.  It became more and more inconvenient to reach. In that case, it was natural for the çarshija to die, because it was no longer functional.
If we wanted to know what the Tirana çarshija was like, how would you describe it?
Çarshijas are usually not different from each other from the architectural point of view. The shape depends on the relief of the city where they are built. In the early days they were built in wood and thus highly exposed to fires. They were rebuilt but unfortunately always in wood. Only later in time were they built with more stable structures.
Çarshijas are nets of streets and alleys where you can find stores and various craftsmen’s shops. It is an exclusively business district, people do not live there but they only go there to buy, work and socialize. You can find all sorts of craftsmen.
The large enough squares, formed by the joining of various alleys, were the places where peasants sold their own produce. It was usually the female peasants who harvested the produce of all the women in a village and sold them in the çarshija. The important aspect, though, is that the çarshijas were centers where people actually socialized. They were meeting points not only for the citizens but also for the people from minor villages around the city.
People met in the çarshija to close business deals, to make friends and arrange marriages. It was a typical public place. It is right from there that comes the culture of cafés, still very much alive today in the Balkans and in the formerly Ottoman area in general. Cafés are still very important for Balkans as places of leisure, as they often appear to foreigners: they are actually key public places for people’s social life, they are meeting places and places for confrontation. One can easily say that all life flows in the cafés.
Were they self-sufficient places of commerce?
No, they were not. They of course had great relations with port cities, so they were able to keep relations alive, with Venice in particular. In the çarshija there were wholesalers who supplied goods from Venice.
Among the merchants of the çarshija there was someone who had a ship and used it for trans-Adriatic trades. Until the birth of the nation-state, so until the 19th century, the concept of border did not exist in the Balkans. As a consequence there was continuous trade within the region. The çarshija was a meeting point also for the various ethnicities and languages.
It was the multi-ethnic place par excellence. But that did not impede communication and mutual understanding at all: often, the çarshija’s merchants or craftsmen even invented secret languages so outsiders could not understand them. They were a mixture of Balkan languages that followed well defined criteria, such as Albanian lexicon and Serbo-Croatian grammar, combined in such a way that no mother-tongue of any of the languages could understand. It is an extremely interesting phenomenon that overcomes ethnic and linguistic barriers.
How did you collect material on a part of the city that no longer exists?
There is still living memory of this place, even though it is fading from year to year. It is very difficult to collect material, since the only way is by doing interviews, talking to people. Only those who are older than 60 years of age today can vaguely remember. What keeps recurring most in the interviews is minor details of everyday life. Many boast that their families had stores in the çarshija, mainly to let you know that they belong to families native of Tirana and do not come from the suburbs, drawing on stereotypes that make old and new inhabitants of the capital, coming from  everywhere especially in the past few years, grow more and more apart.
One difficulty I always encounter, moreover, is the reserved nature of Albanians in general. If you try and ask for details on something, people shut themselves off, they stop talking, they grow distrustful. To me it is the usual Sigurimi syndrome [editor’s note: Sigurimi, secret services at the time of the regime] that still affects Albanians. They think that I am really doing this for some census and that they are then going to be called to account for who knows what political wickedness.

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso