One year ago, Albania’s ruling Socialist Party voted against a parliamentary initiative concerning the recognition of Serbian genocide in Kosovo. Today, after four former KLA leaders were sentenced in The Hague to a combined 81 years in prison, that vote has returned to the center of the debate over Albania’s relationship with Kosovo.
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It concerns a concrete vote in the Albanian Parliament and a war in which international judicial proceedings documented mass expulsions, killings and persecution of Kosovo Albanians.
On October 16, 2025, Albania’s Parliament rejected a request for a parliamentary motion and resolution concerning the recognition of Serbian genocide in Kosovo. The following day, October 17, demonstrations were held in Tirana in support of the former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army who were on trial in The Hague.
The contrast was striking.
While political figures in Albania were publicly calling for support for the former KLA leaders, the Socialist parliamentary majority had rejected an initiative seeking an institutional position on the crimes committed against Kosovo Albanians during the war.
For critics of the Socialist Party, this was not merely another parliamentary disagreement.
They described it as an act of national betrayal.
The Kosovo War and the Serbian campaign against civilians
The historical record of the Kosovo War does not depend solely on political statements.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted senior Yugoslav and Serbian officials over crimes committed in Kosovo, including deportation, forcible transfer, persecution and murder.
The scale of the displacement was enormous.
According to ICTY findings, approximately 800,000 Kosovo Albanians were forced to leave Kosovo during the period covered by the relevant proceedings. The tribunal also documented the systematic expulsion of the civilian population from areas under Serbian control.
Albania became one of the principal destinations for those expelled from Kosovo.
According to ICTY documentation, approximately 444,600 Kosovo Albanians arrived in Albania between March 24 and June 10, 1999.
These were not simply numbers in a historical report. They represented families driven from their homes, villages emptied and communities separated by war.
For Albania, the Kosovo War was therefore not a distant conflict taking place across a border.
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians crossed into Albania seeking safety.
And then came the vote in Tirana
Against this historical background, the October 2025 vote by Albania's Socialist majority acquired a particularly sensitive meaning.
The initiative sought a parliamentary resolution concerning the recognition of Serbian genocide in Kosovo.
The Socialist Party voted against it.
Critics argued that Albania, as the country that had received hundreds of thousands of displaced Kosovo Albanians, had a particular historical responsibility to preserve the memory of what happened during the war.
The criticism became even sharper because the same political environment in Albania was simultaneously witnessing calls for support for the former KLA leadership facing trial in The Hague.
For those critics, the contradiction was impossible to ignore.
How can Albania demand justice and solidarity for Kosovo while refusing to give parliamentary recognition to the crimes suffered by Kosovo Albanians?
That question has remained unanswered to the satisfaction of those who describe the vote as a national betrayal.
The Hague judgment against four former KLA leaders
The issue has gained renewed attention following the judgment against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague sentenced the four former KLA leaders to a combined 81 years in prison.
Thaçi received 25 years, Veseli 18 years, Selimi 13 years and Krasniqi 25 years.
The Trial Panel found them guilty of several war crimes, including unlawful or arbitrary arrest and detention, cruel treatment, torture and murder. The court did not convict them on the charges of crimes against humanity.
The judgment concerns the individual criminal responsibility of the four defendants. It does not constitute a judgment on the Kosovo War as a whole or on the legitimacy of the KLA as an organization.
That distinction matters.
The existence of crimes committed by individual KLA members does not erase the crimes committed by Serbian forces against Kosovo Albanians.
Nor does the documentation of Serbian crimes provide immunity to anyone accused of crimes committed during the war.
The two issues can — and must — be examined separately.
The moral question behind the political controversy
This is where the controversy surrounding the Socialist Party's 2025 vote becomes particularly significant.
The question is not whether crimes committed by members of the KLA should be investigated and prosecuted.
They should.
The question is whether the pursuit of justice for individual crimes can somehow be allowed to overshadow the broader historical record of the Kosovo War.
The international record shows that Serbian and Yugoslav officials were convicted for crimes committed against Kosovo Albanians. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people is extensively documented.
At the same time, four former senior KLA figures have now been convicted by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers for specific crimes for which the Trial Panel held them individually responsible.
These facts do not cancel each other out.
Yet in Albania, the political debate has increasingly been framed as though supporting justice for the former KLA leaders and defending the historical memory of Kosovo must be mutually exclusive.
They are not.
Why the Socialist Party vote still matters
For its critics, the Socialist Party's rejection of the Kosovo resolution represents something deeper than an ordinary parliamentary vote.
They see it as a departure from Albania's traditional political and historical solidarity with Kosovo.
They point to the contradiction between supporting Kosovo rhetorically while rejecting a parliamentary initiative focused on the crimes committed against its population.
And they argue that Albania cannot ask the world to understand Kosovo's history while remaining hesitant to confront the crimes that produced one of Europe's largest forced displacements since the Second World War.
This is why the word “betrayal” has entered the debate.
For those critics, voting against recognition of the crimes committed against Kosovo while demanding attention to the fate of former KLA leaders represents a profound failure of historical responsibility — and, in their words, a national betrayal of Kosovo.
Justice cannot have two memories
The judgment in The Hague will continue to generate debate in Kosovo, Albania and among Albanians across the diaspora.
The convictions of Thaçi, Veseli, Selimi and Krasniqi will be examined through legal appeals and through the wider political debate over the legacy of the Kosovo War.
But whatever happens next in The Hague, one historical fact remains unchanged:
The crimes committed against Kosovo Albanians during the war cannot be erased by the conviction of former KLA leaders.
And the conviction of former KLA leaders cannot be used to erase the crimes for which Serbian officials were previously convicted.
For Albania, the real test is whether it can acknowledge both realities without sacrificing one for the other.
For those who consider the Socialist Party's October 2025 vote a national betrayal, the answer is already clear.
They believe Albania had a duty to stand unequivocally with the historical record of Kosovo — with the victims, the displaced families and the communities that survived the war — regardless of the political consequences.
The debate is no longer simply about one parliamentary vote. It is about what Albania chooses to remember, what it chooses to defend, and whether justice for Kosovo will be treated as indivisible or selectively remembered.