"The Story of the Borders of the Presevo Valley" Beyond the Clichés of History

The book “A Narrative of the Borders of the Presheva Valley (1843-2018)”, by Skënder Latifi – KOHA Publications, Prishtina, 2025 – appears as an exhaustive review of the historiographical subject through the cold geopolitical scanner. This scientific research projects a new code of critical thought, where the severity of the archival document unmasks Belgrade’s retrograde processes towards our eastern lands. Through the rich source architecture, the author follows the pulse of history from the Balkan Wars to the modern diplomacy of the Trump era. After reading this work, the great historical loneliness in which these ethnic spaces were left, including the current wound of the passivation of addresses, is imprinted in the memory. The book avoids any emotional and romantic rhetoric, becoming a reference point for political platforms in defense of our geoethnic interests. This extensive historiographical research provides a broad documentary base that encourages deep reflection on national memory.

The geography of Albanian pain has always had a dramatic tendency to shrink across maps and expand across memory. This constant effort at territorial alienation reminds us of the thinker Edward Said's brilliant thesis on imaginary geographies and the way hegemonic powers draw artificial borders to strip a people of their historical and geoethnic identity.

When I picked up the latest book by scholar Skënder Latifi, with the very significant title “A Narrative of the Borders of the Presheva Valley (1843 -2018)”, a historiographical landscape appeared before me that I believed I knew well. As a publicist and attentive observer of the harsh currents of Balkan politics, I was familiar with this problematic that the author addresses, even at detailed levels of political developments. However, now after reading this book I am leaving with the strong impression that I have read an entire library of documents and analyses and faced with an avalanche of sources that completely overturn the clichés so far.

Borders as hotbeds of wild geopolitical experiment

In this new horizon of our consciousness, Latifi's work functions as an analysis of what Michel Foucault called structures of administrative control and spaces of exclusion, where the state uses its legal and cadastral apparatus to exercise a silent but systematic violence on the autochthonous population. Through the documents reflected, Skënder Latifi strips these eastern borders of the simple garment of geographical lines, illuminating them as the foci of a wild geopolitical experiment aimed at the systematic narrowing of Albanian ethnic geography. This book sets an insurmountable boundary stone in contemporary historiography, forcing us to read the fate of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medvedja through a rigorous scientific analysis and not through the ready-made dogmas of daily politics.

In the following chapters of the book, Skënder Latifi shifts the focus of his research to the complex period of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and its long-term consequences for the Albanian population. This era marks the beginning of a silent assimilation, orchestrated through agrarian reforms and colonization laws, where Albanian property was alienated by royal decrees and transferred to the Slavic population brought from other regions. The author accurately documents how official Belgrade used the state administration as a weapon to change the geo-ethnic structure, denying Albanians elementary cultural and linguistic rights.

In this cold analysis of the mechanisms of agrarian colonization, Latifi's research finds a strong point of contact with the theses of the distinguished Swiss historian Oliver Jens Schmitt, who in his studies on the history of Kosovo and the surrounding areas has illuminated the Serbian strategy of the period between the two world wars for the dissolution of Albanian territorial compactness. Schmitt argues that the agrarian reforms of that time were not of an economic nature, but were pure instruments of ethnic geopolitics, a finding that Latifi confirms with specific cadastral documents for Preševo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, showing how the most fertile plots of Albanian land were turned into Slavic colonies.

Strategic position as a geographical curse

The author also thoroughly analyzes the strategic position of this region, which has often been seen as a geographical curse due to the vital importance of the Morava and Vardar Corridor for Balkan hegemonic interests. This analytical approach fully aligns with the observations of the American political scientist and historian Sabrina Ramet, who in her analyses of the construction of the Yugoslav state has pointed out how Belgrade saw the border areas with Albanian populations as foci of permanent geopolitical danger, applying a continuous military and police regime over them. Latifi shows how communist Yugoslavia after World War II continued the same line of soft cleansing, using constant economic pressure, selective taxes and deliberate infrastructural isolation to force the silent migration of Albanians towards Turkey or other urban centers.

This process of administrative genocide is further illuminated by the documentary archives left by researcher Robert Elsie, who has brought to light infamous Belgrade memoranda and projects such as those of Čubrilović or Ranković on the displacement of Albanians. Skënder Latifi manages to prove with argumentative precision how these fascist ideas did not simply remain on paper but were meticulously implemented in this part of Albanian lands, where the period of the weapons collection action and the state terror of the fifties and sixties struck at the core of national resistance, reducing the ethno-social physiognomy to a terrifying degree of our collective survival.

In the hotbed of recent history

The chronological flow of this historiography gradually abandons the dust of past centuries to enter directly into the hot terrain of our recent history, where the dynamics and intensity of events reach their peak with the outbreak of the war of the Liberation Army for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UÇPMB). Skënder Latifi treats this epic through a cold documentary analysis, stripping it of its folkloric spirit or momentary glorifications and illuminating it as an inevitable and legitimate reaction to the savage Serbian state violence that followed the end of the war in Kosovo.

Through operational documents and testimonies of the time, Latifi unravels how the best boys of this province were forced to take up arms to defend their doorstep and internationalize an issue that Belgrade tried to keep locked away in the drawers of the secret police.

At this point, the author's argumentative sense also finds strong support in the analyses of prominent British scholars such as James Pettifer, who in his studies on Albanian armed formations has pointed out how the violent closure of political spaces inevitably produces military uprisings as a last resort for collective self-defense. Latifi proves that the conflict in these three municipalities was not an isolated incident or an export of violence, but a direct consequence of Belgrade's failure to integrate and respect the national rights of the Albanians remaining under its administrative administration.

What elevates this part of the book to the highest levels of geopolitical analysis is the discovery of international diplomatic behind-the-scenes, where the author's treatment of the so-called El Salvador model stands out. Latifi brings to light how foreign strategists and international mediators tried to apply to this region formulas of mediation and demilitarization that had been previously tested in Latin American conflicts, where the integration of former guerrillas into multiethnic police structures was seen as a key to stability. This bold and documented comparison shows how the fate of the Albanians of these municipalities often depended on large global equations, where the Konçul talks and the creation of the Ground Security Zone are analyzed as moments of a major turning point, but also as evidence of a painful compromise that left many issues hanging in the air.

This analytical approach fully aligns with the observations of the renowned British journalist and scholar, Tim Judah, who in his geopolitical analyses of the Balkans has emphasized that the peace model implemented in these parts often suffered from the lack of long-term international guarantees, leaving the local population at the mercy of Belgrade's unilateral interpretations. Skender Latifi also uses important reports from the International Crisis Group of that period, demonstrating how Western diplomacy rushed to put out the fires without fundamentally resolving the Gordian knot of the political and legal status of Albanians in Serbia.

The ghostly return of the idea of ​​territory exchange

This reflection on recent history finds its current culmination in the treatment of modern geopolitics and the very specific period of the Trump Administration, a time when the idea of ​​exchanging territories between Kosovo and Serbia returned like a ghost to the tables of high diplomacy. Skënder Latifi analyzes this moment with an admirable scientific coolness, exposing the existential dangers that threatened the geo-ethnic integrity of the region from the projects of linear divisions or new fragmentations. At this point, his sharp critical sense finds a full meeting point with the warnings of the renowned American researcher and professor Daniel Serwer, who in his analyses of that period argued forcefully that such games with ethnic borders could open Pandora's box in the Balkans, initially destabilizing the Presevo Valley itself and creating domino effects throughout the region. Latifi expands this argumentative basis by demonstrating how any such movement without a stable historical basis and without a guarantee of collective rights risked turning this space into a new hotbed of permanent crisis. This approach also partially coincides with the geostrategic observations of the British scholar Timothy Less about the dangers posed by the failure of geoethnic integration of border communities, which pushes the author to project his book beyond a cold historical instrument, transforming it into a living geopolitical guide and alarm for the challenges that await us on the horizon of future diplomacy.

A new horizon for the authority of contemporary historiography

The transition from the simple plane of documentary collection to the field of analytical interpretation requires a high level of mastery of scientific discourse, and Skënder Latifi demonstrates a special mastery in mastering this balance. The language used in this work is notable for a narrative fluidity that keeps the reader glued to the text, successfully avoiding that sterile coldness that often characterizes pure academic writing.

This stylistic finding of the author perfectly matches the theory of the great thinker and structuralist Roland Barthes, who in his famous essay on science and literature emphasized that language is not a cold or neutral means of transmitting data, but a living structure where scientific writing itself gains authority and density when it accepts the legacy of the narrative form.

In this spirit, Skënder Latifi places the precision of scientific terminology within a high-level journalistic discourse, which is characterized by powerful argumentative expressions and phrases that give the text extraordinary analytical weight.

The scientific value of this study is revealed in the dimensions of a new horizon for the authority of contemporary historiography, becoming an important point of reference for the formation of new generations and for the construction of national and political platforms that strategically orient our decision-making in defense of our geo-ethnic interests.

For students of political science and history, this work serves as an excellent model of how to research and unravel a complex geopolitical knot. For historians, the book offers a new field of data that reviews and fills in many of the shortcomings of the Albanian historiography to date on our eastern lands. Meanwhile, for diplomats and foreign policy strategists, Latif's study constitutes an extraordinary referential file, a genuine geopolitical manual that should be kept at every table where the fate and collective rights of Albanians in the region are discussed. The author's critical sense is manifested in the ability to see beyond the facade of official agreements, analyzing with rare intellectual courage the failures, painful compromises and the lack of a long-term strategy on the part of the pan-Albanian political factor.

The anatomy of a silent administrative purge

After reading this book, our memory will be imprinted with a shocking force that great historical loneliness in which our lands were left under the whip of Belgrade's retrograde processes, where beyond the cold statistics of displacements the image of a population appears, although to the last atom, it defended its ethnic and territorial compactness through a titanic resistance. This ordeal has not ended with the past eras, but continues today in its most perfidious form through the passivation and systematic erasure of Albanian addresses, a process that aims at their definitive deletion from the legal and administrative registers of their own land.

This modern form of silent expulsion is in perfect harmony with the warnings of the renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman about the nature of bureaucratic annihilation, where physical violence is replaced by the coldness of the pen of the state official, which transforms the indigenous citizen into an invisible being without legal existence. Confronting this silent state strategy encourages a necessary process of collective reflection, where Skënder Latif’s research takes on the value of an important turning point in contemporary historiography through its categorical rejection of ready-made or half-baked versions of the politics of the day.

To research foreign and often closed archives, to confront the wild Serbian historiography and to dare to address topics that touch on today's equations of modern geopolitics, requires a dedication that goes beyond the limits of a simple academic work. This colossal project of the author takes on the value of a high patriotic and scientific act, because it documents for the first time at this level of detail the anatomy of a silent administrative purge.

A historiographical book is only as good as its documentary foundations, and Skënder Latifi has refused to build his castle on the sands of second-hand evidence. This study is the product of several years of research that required the patience of a monk and the precision of a surgeon, where the author dug through the cellars of history, bringing to light documents from the period between 1966 and 2001. These findings reveal the invisible threads of Yugoslav and Serbian decision-making towards Albanians remaining outside the borders of administrative Kosovo. The wealth of facsimiles from the period between 1880 and 1968, as well as statistical data spanning the period between 1912 and 2002, offer a documentary scan of the silent genocide, where the figures speak with the cold language of ethnic cleansing and violent population displacement.

The complicated scientific operation

The monumental value of this work takes substantial weight precisely from Skënder Latifi's high scientific and intellectual sense of not remaining hostage to a rigid cadastral history. The author has made a capillary search through Balkan and European archives and libraries, integrating into his project an extraordinary corpus of newspapers and periodicals, which proves his brilliant ability to follow the media coverage in real time of crises, wars and political agreements. This complex scientific operation saves the book from the trap of being a cold inventory of archives, offering us a lively research that captures the media, political and social pulse of each geopolitical era.

In the concluding part of the published articles, Skënder Latifi demonstrates a rare scientific meticulousness by confronting the official Serbian historiography with the realities of the field through the quotation of authors who are considered authorities in this field. He brings to attention the studies of the well-known researcher of the Vranje region, Momčilo Zlatanović, published in the yearbook “Leskovački zbornik”, where the work on the Chetnik and committee movements between 1904 and 1912 in Kazan, Preševo ​​and Vranje sheds light on the violent operations of the Serbs before the Balkan Wars, while the article on the period of Husejin Pasha sheds light on the history of feudal lords and local chiefs. The author’s critical sense is evident in the analysis of the works of Serbian historian Nikola Žučić, who deals with the complex religious relations between Serbian Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism in the so-called “Southern Serbia” between the two world wars, as well as in the use of Mihailo Vojvodić’s analyses of Belgrade’s covert diplomatic policies for the Ottoman reforms, published in “Vardarski zbornik”. This thorough analysis is supplemented by three specific works by PT Vukanič, published in “Vranjski glasnik”, which shed light on the Albanian uprising of 1826–1832 and offer local monographs on Bujanovac and Preševo.

This documentary mosaic is completed and breathes life through a wide section of the press and periodical sources, where Skënder Latifi has skillfully used the main Albanian, Serbian, Croatian and international newspapers to document the events of the last century and modern crises. In terms of the Albanian press, the research relies on the authority of the newspaper “Bujku” between 1994 and 1997, as the only daily newspaper in Kosovo during the difficult years of occupation, on the newspaper “Fakti” of Skopje in 2001, which proves vital for the coverage of the UÇPMB conflict, on the local magazine “Jehona” of Ternopil for the coverage of the 1992 Referendum, as well as on the newspapers “Koha Ditore” and “Bota Sot” for the detailed coverage of the Konçul talks and the demilitarization zone.

In order to maintain high scientific objectivity, Latifi courageously researches the Serbian press, such as the newspapers "Blic" and "Danas" to see the attitudes of post-Milošević Belgrade and the Trump Administration era towards the Preševo ​​Valley, not forgetting media outlets such as "Borba", "Naša Borba", "Dnevnik", "Naša reč" and the magazine "NIN". This source balance takes on indisputable value with the inclusion of the Croatian newspaper "Jutarnji list" from 1912, which brings impartial news about the march of the Serbian army towards the Preševo ​​Valley and Kosovo during the First Balkan War, as well as the famous French magazine "L'Illustration" from 1912, whose reports and illustrations document the horrific images and humanitarian crisis in the region.

In this methodological journey, Skënder Latifi's book finds common ground with the works of prominent foreign scholars such as Noel Malcolm or the documentary historiography of Robert Elsie, because similar to them, he does not settle for superficial findings, but follows the living traces of history through a source architecture that gives the book the authority of a referential text for international diplomacy.

This serious attempt by Skender Latifi to build a documentary architecture finds support in the well-known thesis of the historian and thinker Marc Bloch on the nature of historical evidence, according to which archives remain mute as long as the researcher does not possess the intellectual acuity to examine them with a clear analytical purpose. Skender Latifi does not content himself with the mechanical collection of facsimiles or statistics, but precisely applies this principle of Bloch by transforming cold official sources into living witnesses of a long and uninterrupted process of administrative cleansing. Through this approach, his book gains the weight of an indisputable scientific platform, where every document dug up in the archives is confronted with strategies of silence, proving that historiographic truth is not built on assumptions, but on the unwavering authority of the written record.