ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical basis of this national minority, its status and political behavior during the communist period, and the current factors contributing to ethnic tension in post-communist Albania. The Greek minority formed the Omonia organization in February 1990. In fact, most of the new leaders of the Greek minority in the south had at one time been part of the old political establishment, with the important con sequence that the duration of Omonids initial organizational disarray was relatively short. Achievement of national statehood had been impeded in large by the Ottoman authorities’ strategy of dividing the Albanians among some imperial provinces and blocking the establishment of an Albanian-language educational system, with no common written alphabet until 1908. Thus, inter-ethnic relations have been affected not merely by political developments at the national level, but also by the local-level politics of resource scarcity.
