Greater Albania

Greater Albania, officially the Republic of Albania, is an irrendentist state in Europe based in Albania. Greater Albania consists of:
* Albania
* Kosovo
* Regions in the west of North Macedonia with signifcant ethic-Albanians
* Preševo Valley in Serbia
* Minor border regions of Montenegro
== History Before 1997 ==
=== Prehistory ===
The first records of civilization in Albania were in the Middle Paleolthic and Upper Paleolthic eras, found around the village of Xarrë. It is suspected that very minor tribes existed in Albania during the iron and bronze ages.
=== Antiquity ===
During early anicent times, the territory of Albania was inhabited by the Indo-Europeans, Thracians, and Illryian tribes. The Ancient Greeks eventually conquered some of it, most notably North Epirus. Albania was later conquered by the Macedonian Empire and later the Roman Empire.
=== Middle Ages ===
In 395 CE, the Roman Empire split into the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), partially due to "barbarian" invasions. Throughout the 6th and 7th centuries, Slavs migrated across the Danube into the Byzantine Empire. The Slavs soon took cultural control of most of the European part of the empire, conquering the Illyrian and Thracian peoples in the empire.
In the 11th century, the Great Schism was formalized, officially splitting the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church. This caused a divide in Albania as the north was Catholic and the south was Orthodox. Eventually, the northern catholics founded the Principality of Arbanon. It retained an autonomous status in the Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantine Empire slowly began to decline, and near the end of the 12th (and beginning of the 13th) century, Serbs and Ventians settled lands in the Byzantine Empire. The Serbs created the Serbian Empire, the Venetians claimed land for the Ventian Empire. In this time period, the Principality of Arbanon collapsed.\
As the Byzantines began to decline, the new Turkic state known as the Ottoman Empire began to rise. The Ottomans conquered Constatinople and took over Albania by the first half of the 15th century.
==== Ottoman Empire ====
After conquering Albania, the Ottoman Empire would go about heavily taxing the christians of Albania, viewing them as infieor to muslims. In hopes of lower taxes, most Albanians converted to Islam, this was known as the Islamisation of Albania.
A hardline christian who was tired of taxes named Skanderbeg would go about starting a rebellion against the Ottomans. He gained the support of local christians who hadn't converted to Islam. He managed to take a few Albanian towns before the Ottoman military showed up and crushed his rebellion.
Albania soon became a strategic military location for the Ottomans, who kept a high military presence there.
=== Rilindja ===
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Albanian resistance movements began to grow as other places in the balkans rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. This was partially caused by the rise of nationalism that had been caused in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars that had begun driving identies together as identies. This "nationalism" had united some areas (like Germany and Italy who were divided into city states prior), but drove massive multi-ethnic empires (like the Ottoman Empire, Austrian Empire, and Russian Empire) into chaos.
Following a series of Ottoman defeats to Russia in the Russo-Turkish Wars, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania all became independent from the Ottoman Empire. The final straw for Albanian independence came in 1912, with the First Balkan War.
The First Balkan War ended in a victory of the Balkan League, which made Albania independent.
=== First Republic ===
Albania became a republic shortly after World War I ended. It was a very unitary and conservative republic and had several internal issues, such as North Epirus which had a sizeable Greek population.
In 1939, Italy annexed Albania, just in time for World War II. Albania, being an Italian protectorate, didn't do very much, but was liberated by the Red Army and Yugoslav Partisans near the end of the war.
=== Communism ===
In the aftermath of World War II, Albania became a communist state since the Red Army had liberated it. Albania soon cooperated with the fellow communist nations of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria in an attempt to form the Balkan Federation between them. The idea was shut down by the Joseph Stalin who soon cut ties with Yugoslavia. Albania did join the Warsaw Pact, but later left in hopes of relations with Yugoslavia. Communism in Albania fell in 1989.
== History After 1997 ==
=== Civil War ===
After several piramid schemes were discovered in Albania, the country fell into a civil war. For six long months, the Albanian government fought with a rebel coalition. Rebel groups did well until the United Nations intervened and the rebel groups were violently suppressed.
=== 2004 ===
==== Historical ====
In 2004, major political unrest brewed in the Serbian-claimed region of Kosovo. Kosovo Serbs and Kosovo Albanians clashed in combat. On March 15, 2004, an 18-year-old Serb in Kosovo was shot and wounded in a drive-by-shooting, causing tensions to escalate. The following day, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began to march in several cities in Kosovo, angering Serbs in the region. The same day, angry Serbs drowned three Albanians, they attempted to drown a fourth but he survived. 
The following two days, a wave of riots swept across Kosovo, triggered by the three incidents. 
Thousands of Albanians gathered on the south side of a bridge outside Kosovska Mitrovica, which had divided Albanian and Serb citizens in the town. A large crowd of Serbs gathered on the north side to prevents the Albanians from crossing. Forces from NATO came to the bridge and used tear gas (among other things) to keep the two mobs apart. However, people on both sides owning guns fired, killing 8 people.
==== Alternate ====
Disgusted by the violence, 10,000 Albanian troops entered Kosovo and began to seize towns along the border. This triggered tge Serbian government to declare war on Albania.
=== Serbo-Albanian War ===
Serbia sent a million troops to Kosovo to quell the Albanian rebellions and stop the Albanian military. The Serbians and Albanians met at a bridge over a lake... and opened fire at each other. ~20,000 people were killed in the battle, and the Serbians soon retreated.
In May, 2004, 100,000 Albanian forces launched an offensive known as Operation Albska. The Albanians quickly outflanked a group of 30,000 Serbian soldiers and met them at Peć. The Albanians started by throwing grenades into the city to demoralize the Serbian army in it. The Serbians responded by firing from windows in buildings within the city. In response, the Albanians launched a blitzkrieg into the city, sending 463 tanks into the city and blew a bunch of stuff up.
After losing the battle, Serbia surrendered. In the peace agreements, Albania annexed Kosovo and the Preševo Valley.
=== Montenegrin Borderlands Purchase ===
Shortly after, Albanian bought Montenegrin borderlands with large Albanian populations for the equalvilent of 10,000 USD.
=== North Macedonian Revolution ===
In 2010, a communist revolution occured in North Macedonia. This triggered Albania, Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria to invade North Macedonia and partition it. Albania annexed the ethnic-Albanian lands afterwards.
=== Contemporary ===
Albania began to align with the west after all this, joining the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Albania wasn't even hit that hard by Covid-19 with only 2,452 deaths.
== Politics ==
The Republic of Albania is a unity parliamentary constitutional republic. This means the president is head of state and the prime minister is the chief executive. Albania has a multi-party system. Legislative power belongs to the Parliament of Albania (Kuvendi)
=== Political Parties ===
Major Political Parties in Albania
Name 	Abbriviation	Founded 	MPs
Socialist Party of Albania 	PS 	June 13, 1991 	75 / 140
Socialist Movement for Integration 	LSI 	September 6, 2004 	18 / 140
Social Democratic Party of Albania 	PSD 	March, 1991 	1 / 140
Party for Justice, Integration and Unity	PDIU 	March 1, 2011 	3 / 140
Democratic Party of Albania 	PD 	December 12, 1990	25 / 140
Category:World of Irrendentism