Well, it appears that never once did they go beyond the aforementioned
line to which they were legally entitled, except when for a short time
they were in pursuit, towards Ljuria, of certain invaders. Not only were
they legally entitled to take up their position on the mountains to the
west of the Black Drin, but the Moslem tribes, the Malizi and the Ljuri,
who dwell in that uninviting district, were most anxious that the Serbs
should come and should remain. For this the tribes had two principal
reasons: in the first place, they recognized that their compatriots in
Djakovica and Prizren were immeasurably better off than before they came
under Serbian rule; and secondly, they did not wish to be separated from
these towns which are their markets. In fact, they had become so anxious
to throw in their lot with the Slavs that they formed six battalions,
which operated on both banks of the river, under the command of Bairam
Ramadan, Mahmoud Rejeb and others. In opposition to these battalions
were the troops of the so-called National Government, that of Tirana.
This Government is repudiated by a great many Albanians on account of
its reactionary methods, its subservience to the Italians, and its
failure to do anything for the people. The battalions, then, were
engaged in 1921, not against their immediate neighbours to the west, the
Catholic Mirditi, of whom we shall speak anon, but against the more
distant Government of Tirana. Thus the League of Nations beheld that the
administration which they were about to confirm as the legitimate
Government of Albania was violently opposed by compact masses of
Catholics and Moslems. Perhaps some of the members of the League began
to doubt whether they should have accepted the assurance of the
Anglo-Albanian Society that the Tirana Government (containing Moslem,
Catholic and Orthodox members) was really a national affair; perhaps
they began to suspect that the two Christian elements were only there to
throw a little dust in the eyes of Europe; and perhaps Lord Robert Cecil
began to feel doubtful whether, at the urgent request of his friend Mr.
Aubrey Herbert, President of the Anglo-Albanian Society, he had been
well advised to bring about the admission into the League of a country
which had two simultaneous Governments before it had a frontier. Perhaps
one was beginning to recognize that there are Albanians but no Albania.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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