Expulsion of Cham Albanians

The expulsion of Cham Albanians from Greece was the forced migration of thousands of Cham Albanians from parts of the region of western Epirus after the Second World War to Albania, at the hands of elements of the Resistance National Republican Greek League (EDES) (1944) and EDES veteran resistance fighters (1945).

In the late Ottoman period, tensions between the Muslim Chams and the local Greek Orthodox population emerged through communal conflicts that continued during the Balkan Wars, when part of the historic region of Epirus under Ottoman rule became part of Greece. During the First Balkan War, a majority of Cham Albanians, though at first reluctant, sided with the Ottoman forces against the Greek forces and formed irregular armed units and burned Christian Orthodox-inhabited settlements, with only few Albanian beys willing to accept Greek rule in the region. As a response to this activity Greek guerilla units were organized in the region. After the Balkan wars and during the interwar period, the Muslim Chams were not integrated into the Greek state, which adopted policies that aimed to drive them out of their territory, partly through their inclusion in the Greek-Turkish population exchange, although this was not realized because of objections by Italy's fascist regime. Furthermore, the attempted settlement of Greek refugees from Asia Minor within the area and bouts of open state repression in the 1920s and 1930s, in particular by the authoritarian Metaxas regime, led to tensions between the Cham minority and the Greek state. Meanwhile, Fascist Italian propaganda initiated in 1939 an aggressive campaign for the creation of a Greater Albanian state. As such with the onset of the Second World War, a majority of the Muslim Cham population collaborated with the Axis troops, either by providing them with indirect support (guides, local connections, informants etc.) or by being recruited as Axis troops and armed irregulars. The latter cases were responsible for atrocities against the local Greek populace. Overall, the Muslim Chams were sympathetic to Axis forces during the war and benefited from the Axis occupation. Armed Cham collaborator units actively participated in Nazi operations that resulted in the murder of more than 1,200 Greek villagers between July and September 1943, and, in January 1944, in the murder of 600 people on the Albanian side of the border. There were also moderate elements within the Muslim Cham community who opposed hatred of their Greek neighbors. A limited number of Muslim Chams enlisted in Albanian and Greek resistance units in the last stages of World War II.

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