A general view showing the village of Pustec on the bank of Lake Prespa, southeastern Albania. — AFP
A CENSUS in Albania has opened up a new front in the long-running row between Balkan neighbours Bulgaria and North Macedonia.
Both claim Albania’s dwindling Macedonian minority as their own.
The tug-of-war over identity is something of an unequal fight, say locals, with those who opt to become Bulgarian getting a prized EU passport.
Sofia and Skopje have been at loggerheads for decades over language, identity and history.
Bulgaria has blocked North Macedonia’s path to EU membership while at the same time giving passports to some 90,000 Macedonians – around one in 20 of the population – since it joined the bloc.
The latest row centres on a group of dying Macedonian-speaking villages in one of the most beautiful corners of southeastern Albania on the shores of Lake Prespa, hard by the border with Greece and North Macedonia.
On Pustec’s mostly empty streets, signs are written both in Albanian and Macedonian.
A man walking past the church in the centre in the village of Pustec. — AFP
But many homes and buildings are derelict, with cracked walls, peeling paint and broken windows.
Like much of rural Albania, the young have left to seek a better life, with locals saying the population has plummeted from 3,300 in 2011 to just 1,200.
“It’s like a desert here, there are no young people... the villages are empty,” said Eftim Mitrovski, 65, who works at a local Macedonian language newspaper. “Only the old and the sick remain.”
Ahead of Albania’s census late last year, some of its tiny Macedonian community said they came under increasing pressure to identify as Bulgarians – an accusation firmly rejected by Sofia.
“The possibility to get an European passport has strongly affected the Macedonian community,” said Vasil Sterjovski, of the Macedonian Alliance for European Integration party, which represents many of Albania’s Macedonians.
With the census results due in the next few months, Pustec’s primary school director Trajan Vangjelovski lamented that “it has become a battlefield for inter-ethnic conflicts between Bulgaria and North Macedonia”.
Like much of the Balkans, the area’s history is complex. From 1912 to 1945, Albania considered its inhabitants Bulgarians.
But after the end of World War II and the birth of the Macedonian republic within Yugoslavia, Albania classified them as Macedonians, according to Tirana-based international relations expert Ardi Bido.
However, things changed in 2017 when Albania began recognising an ethnic Bulgarian minority.
For decades Skopje “denied the existence of a Bulgarian community not only in North Macedonia, but also in Albania,” the Bulgarian embassy in Albania said in a statment.
“In the past they (Albanian Bulgarians) did not have this opportunity and for many it was a logical choice to declare themselves as Macedonians, given the common cultural and historical background,” the statement added.
Their decision must be respected, the embassy argued.
“I am a citizen of Albania but my origins are Bulgarian,” said Haxhi Pirushi, who works for a Tirana-based non-profit which supports the Bulgarian minority.
“We speak Bulgarian... We sing in Bulgarian. We cry in Bulgarian,” he added, saying that “for the first time we have the right to declare openly our origins.”
Pirushi denied there was coercion from Bulgaria and instead slammed “pressure from North Macedonia”.
“Beyond the ambiguity of identity, there is also a second factor – false declarations,” said the analyst Bido.
Some people may identify as Macedonian but officially declare themselves as Bulgarians to obtain a EU passport, he said.
In the past four years, nearly 4,000 Albanian citizens have received Bulgarian travel documents, according to Bulgaria’s justice ministry.
Back in Pustec, the issue continues to sow discord.
“People are worried, confused and disoriented,” said the school administrator Vangjelovski.
“They no longer know whether they should feel like Bulgarians or Macedonians.” — AFP
