Xhafer Deva

Xhafer Ibrahim Deva
33rd Minister of Internal Affairs of Albania
In office 5 November 1943 – 16 June 1944
President	Regency Council
Prime Minister	Rexhep Mitrovica
Preceded by	Kol Bib Mirakaj
Succeeded by	Fiqri Dine
Head of the local administration in Mitrovica
In office 1941 – 5 November 1943
Personal details
Born	(1904-02-21)21 February 1904 Mitrovica, Kosovo Vilayet, Ottoman Empire
Died	25 May 1978(1978-05-25) (aged 74) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Party	Second League of Prizren (1943-1945) Third League of Prizren (1966-1978)
Occupation	Merchant Entrepreneur Politician
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	Albanian Kingdom (1943–44) Second League of Prizren CIA Third League of Prizren
Battles/wars	World War II in Albania Operation Valuable

Xhafer Deva (21 February 1904 – 25 May 1978) was a nationalist Kosovo Albanian collaborationist politician during World War II. A notable local politician in Kosovo and in Axis-occupied Albania, he took charge of German-occupied Mitrovica and worked with the Germans to establish a pro-German Albanian government in Kosovo. Following the capitulation of Italy from the war, he helped form a provisional government under German occupation and set up the Second League of Prizren alongside other Albanian nationalists.

In November 1943, he was appointed Minister of the Interior and was effectively given direct command of the forces of the newly formed Albanian government. On 4 February 1944, police units subordinate to him massacred 86 residents of Tirana suspected of being anti-fascists. Deva was later involved in recruiting Kosovo Albanians to join the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian). He lost his position as Minister of the Interior with the dissolution of the Albanian government on 16 June, and subsequently became leader of the Second League of Prizren and led anti-Partisan operations around Prizren in September. Soon after, he fled to Croatia and then to Austria with the help of the Germans, where he joined other anti-Communist Albanians.

After the war, he moved via Italy to Damascus, where he helped publish an exile newspaper entitled Bashkimi i Kombit (Albanian: Unity of the Nation). In 1956, he immigrated to the United States and briefly lived in New York and Boston before moving to Calaveras County, California in 1960. He worked as an assistant supervisor at the mailing department of Stanford University in Palo Alto until his retirement in 1972. During this time, he led the Third League of Prizren and played an active role in organizing anti-Communist resistance until his death on 25 May 1978. Files released after his death showed that he had been recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while living in the United States.

Early life

Xhafer Ibrahim Deva was born in Mitrovica, Kosovo Vilayet, Ottoman Empire on 21 February 1904. He was the seventh son of Ibrahim Deva, a wood merchant from Gjakova. Prior to the Balkan Wars, he attended a German-language school in Salonika. Afterwards, he studied commerce at Robert College, an American private boarding school in Istanbul's Arnavutköy neighborhood. He graduated in 1922 and traveled to Egypt, where he briefly worked for a bank in Alexandria. Suffering from rheumatism, he left Egypt and sought treatment in Austria. He studied forestry in Vienna before returning to Mitrovica in 1933 and setting up a lumber business that lasted until 1941.

World War II

The Kingdom of Italy invaded the Albanian Kingdom on 7 April 1939, and deposed its monarch, King Zog I. Afterwards, they re-established the Albanian state as a protectorate of the Kingdom of Italy,

By 1941, Deva was the first Kosovo Albanian political leader to declare himself ready to collaborate with the Germans in the event of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. Having been in contact with the Abwehr (the German military intelligence) for some time, he met Hermann Neubacher, the German special representative for southeastern Europe, in Belgrade prior to the invasion and had given the latter his support.

The Axis powers invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Afterwards, the country was dismantled and the Wehrmacht established the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia under a military government of occupation. The territory included most of Serbia proper, with the addition of the northern portion of Kosovo and the Banat. Italian Albania was expanded to include adjacent parts of Yugoslavia incorporated mainly from the Yugoslav banovinas (regional subdivisions) of Vardar and Morava. Most of Kosovo was annexed to Albania and in the beginning Albanians living there enthusiastically welcomed the Italian occupation. Although officially under Italian rule, the Albanians controlled the region and were encouraged to open Albanian language schools, which had been banned by the Yugoslav government. The Italians also gave the inhabitants Albanian citizenship and allowed them to fly the Albanian flag.

On April 26 Deva organized a meeting between Albanian representatives from Kosovo and south Sandžak with German general Friedrich-Georg Eberhardt about organization of 'new order'. Eberhardt demanded that new municipal governments have to be formed and claim that Adolf Hitler will probably allow cleansing of Serbs from these areas, but any radical actions shouldn't be rushed. Later that year, Deva worked with the Balli Kombëtar and the Germans to establish a pro-German Albanian government in Kosovo linked to the Albanian nation.. However, this relationship was highly fractured as while Deva used certain Ballist units, a later memorandum from the group claimed that their members were actually "severely persecuted," beaten and imprisoned in Kosovo under Deva's direct orders due to the faction's underlying pro-British sentiments.. As the most capable Kosovo Albanian politician of the war, he was then appointed head of the local administration in German-occupied Mitrovica. After the capitulation of Italy, Deva and Bedri Pejani, assisted by the German emissary Franz von Schweiger, set up the Second League of Prizren on 16 September 1943. The league, whose aim was to defend the borders of Greater Albania, (an appeal driven primarily by Albanian nationalism and intense anti-Communism to prevent the restoration of Yugoslav rule, rather than genuine pro-German sentiment) declared jihad (holy war) against Slavs, Gypsies and Jews and sought to create an ethnically cleansed Greater Albania. Between 4 and 7 December 1943, 400 soldiers of Kosovo Regiment commanded by Deva surrounded Peja and committed mass murder of local Serbs and Montenegrins, killing at least 300 people. Deva subsequently placed the newly established units of Balli Kombëtar under the command of the Germans.

Together with Pejani and Ibrahim Biçakçiu, a landowner from Elbasan, he later helped create a national committee of twenty-two Albanian and Kosovo Albanian leaders which declared Albania independent and which elected an executive committee under Biçakçiu to form a provisional government. On 5 November, Deva was appointed Minister of the Interior in the Tirana Government of Rexhep Mitrovica and collaborated with the Germans to oppose the spread of Communist forces in the north, effectively giving him direct command over the forces of the new government.

Xhafer Deva's house in Mitrovica after renovation

On 4 February 1944, police units under his authority massacred 86 residents of Tirana suspected of being anti-fascists. Later, Deva began recruiting Kosovo Albanians to join the SS Skanderbeg. Previously, in 1943 in Novi Pazar, after invitation from mayor Aćif Hadžiahmetović, he popularized recruition in SS Handschar. In May, he visited Germany with Ago Agaj, the Albanian Minister of National Economy. On 16 June, Mitrovica's government was dissolved and Deva lost his position as Minister of the Interior. He was then appointed leader of the Second League of Prizren, and took charge of anti-Partisan operations around the town in September.

With the Allied victory in the Balkans imminent despite Deva's official administrative control, strong pro-Allied undercurrents existed within the local leadership. During his missions to Kosovo in late 1943 and early 1944, British officer Peter Kemp received secret assurances of assistance from the Chief of Police at Peja, the Mayor of Gjakova and local army commanders in the event of an Allied invasion, Deva was also involved in a last-ditch attempt to set up an anti-Communist government in Kosovo, and received large caches of weapons and ammunition from SS General Josef Fitzthum and Neubacher's special representative, Karl Gstottenbauer. For similar reasons Deva and other Albanian collaborators agreed to an alliance with Chetniks of Draža Mihailović in mid-1944, when he met with Tihomir Šarković, representative of Mihailović. He and his men also engaged in collecting food and radio equipment from withdrawing German soldiers and attempted to purchase further weapons from them in order to organize a "final solution" of the Slavic population of Kosovo. Nothing came of this as the powerful Yugoslav Partisans prevented any large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs from occurring. According to German reports from November 1944, Deva had a force of about 20,000 armed men at his disposal. Historian Jozo Tomasevich writes that this number is likely exaggerated, but concedes that large groups of Kosovo Albanians were active in the region at the time..

Historical review of Deva's role in World War II has become more complicated as, while his atrocities and collaboration with the Axis continue to be acknowledged and condemned, his role in saving Jews within Albania proper has also come to light. In the spring of 1944, the German occupiers again asked for a list of Jews, which had earlier been refused by Albanian collaborationist authorities; upon hearing the grave situation, two of the local Jewish leaders sought the council of Mehdi Frasheri, a government official, for help; Frasheri referred them to Xhafer Deva, who apparently on the one hand had a "good reputation for protecting Jews" yet on the other "had become known for the terror he exercised across the streets of Tirana along with his hordes". Xhafer Deva, then the interior minister of the Albanian quisling government, reportedly told two Jewish delegates that he had the list, and agreed that he would protest the matter with the Germans. He refused to hand the list over to the Germans and rejected their requests to gather Jews in one place, purportedly because of the Albanian besa custom of hospitality. To the Germans, Deva argued that he would not hand over the list as he would not accept "interference in Albanian affairs". Deva informed the leaders of the Jewish community that he had successfully refused the German request afterward. In June 1944, the German authorities asked for the list of Jews again, and the Albanian collaborationist government refused yet again.

Exile and death

As the war in Albania drew to a close, Deva fled to Croatia and then to Austria in December, where he was resettled with the help of the Reich Foreign Ministry as the Germans evacuated Albania and Kosovo. There, he joined other anti-Communist Albanians in exile and took care of the ailing Rexhep Mitrovica. From late 1945 until early 1947, he lived in western Austria, at a safe distance from Soviet forces. In 1947, Deva moved via Italy to Damascus in Syria, where he helped publish an exile newspaper entitled Bashkimi i Kombit (Albanian: Unity of the Nation). After Midhat Frashëri died (in 1949), Deva was compelled by King Zog to take over as the political leader of the Albanian diaspora. He directed the Prizren League in exile, advocating for the creation of a "Greater Albania."

He participated in the military training of Albanian refugees and personally parachuted back into Albania in 1951 as part of the covert anti-communist "Valuable" operation. By 1954, he gained employment at a Polish refugee office where, alongside his associate Roger, he actively supplied Washington with intelligence dossiers detailing political and military developments inside communist Yugoslavia and Kosovo. Just prior to his departure from Europe, Deva successfully convinced an American intelligence service to relocate Tahir Zajmi from Izmir, Turkey, to Rome to formally induct Zajmi into their clandestine network. From August and September 1953 Deva remained a significant target of surveillance by communist security forces during his exile. Albanian refugee groups moving through Macedonia to Istanbul noted that departing individuals were subjected to political briefings by security elements. The travelers were explicitly warned to avoid contact with anti-communist exiles labeled "enemies of the people," with directives specifically banning any contact or meetings with Deva.

The associated intelligence operations, which used operational materials translated from Rome, relied on courier networks passing through Belgrade and Istanbul. Due to strict security and physical checks at the Yugoslav border, couriers were instructed to transmit directives verbally to local contacts operating inside Deva's home city of Mitrovica, while secondary logistical handovers of funds and written documentation were scheduled to take place at the Belgrade railway station. The network used local agents, including an operative designated as "K.Z." who was financed with initial funds to establish a footprint, but the operation faced severe counter-intelligence pressure. Plans to establish a permanent intelligence transmission hub in Skopje were abandoned after being deemed impossible due to intense, organized surveillance by the Yugoslav State Security Administration (UDBA).

Logistical complications and security compromises in Istanbul additionally forced the temporary closure of supporting courier routes through Austria, shifting the network's reliance entirely toward specialized couriers deployed directly from Turkey. Gathered intelligence was designed to be smuggled back to Istanbul using specialized concealment luggage before being forwarded to Rome via secure diplomatic channels. To protect the cell the transmission base in Turkey was strictly hidden from local Turkish authorities. However, the network struggled significantly with internal betrayal and penetration by the UDBA. The documentation specifically highlights the actions of a regional UDBA asset, Sheh Hasani, who compromised hiding anti-communist fugitives, such as the wounded insurgent Nexhip Musa by delivering them to communist security forces.

Deva personally orchestrated these operationals, coordinating logistics and financing with the American intelligence office in Rome. Deva's personal financial logs detailed specific expenditures for field operations, including an advance payment to an informant designated as "K." and funding for clandestine meetings with individuals crossing over from Yugoslavia. Alongside his operational bookkeeping, Deva provided political intelligence reports to Western agencies detailing the geopolitical climate in the Balkans, he specifically warned of a coordinated, state-sanctioned campaign by Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade and Skopje to legally and systematically displace the Albanian Muslim population from the Macedonian region through enforced migration agreements with Turkey.

Deva's reports detailed the methodology of the operation of this migration, noting that Yugoslav local councils expedited property forfeiture certificates while the Turkish consulate in Skopje seamlessly issued entry visas to residents declaring a Turkish identity. According to Deva's reports the Yugoslav regime pursued twin strategic objectives, first to systematically alter the demographics of sensitive border regions including Tetovo, Gostivar, Kičevo, Struga and Ohrid by displacing an estimated 200,000 Albanians to neutralize territorial claims and ensure a Slavic ethnic hegemony. Second, to advance a broader Pan-Slavic political alignment favored by the Kremlin. He concluded that these expedited emigration protocols were a deliberate mechanism to pressure the local population into fleeing regional communist governance.

In his intelligence reports tracking the political climate of Kosovo under Yugoslav rule, Deva highlighted his hometown of Mitrovica as a primary example of Slavic administrative dominance. He reported that the region's political and administrative leadership was overwhelmingly controlled by Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosniaks, estimating that ethnic Albanians comprised a mere 3-5% of the governing personnel, all of whom he identified as trusted operatives of the UDBA. Deva's intelligence dossiers from this period also documented his high-level clandestine discussions with Turkish military and political figures, including the colonel Timur Bej and diplomat Celal Koral. On August 28, 1953, Deva held an extensive meeting in Istanbul with Turkish Colonel Timur Bej, who was acting as a deputy for diplomat Celal Koral while Koral sought medical treatment in Germany. During the meeting Deva pushed for the establishment of a "Peiler" (radio direction-finding) intelligence station in Istanbul to support operations. While Timur Bej agreed the installation would mutually benefit both parties, he noted that regional geopolitical shifts, including the Balkan Pact and heightened tensions between Italy and Yugoslavia made a definitive commitment difficult. Furthermore, the two discussed American opposition to the project, with Timur Bej confirming that the United States resisted the establishment of such an intelligence representative office in Turkey.

During the same meeting, Deva warned Turkish authorities about expanding Yugoslav technical and economic operations in Turkey, asserting that state-backed projects from Belgrade were undercutting Western firms to win contracts for strategic infrastructure, including ports, bridges, roads, and telecommunication networks. Deva cautioned that these projects served as a cover for a "double game" orchestrated by Tito's regime over a five-year period. Timur Bej expressed mutual scepticism regarding the influx of Yugoslav "engineers" and "specialists" entering the country, acknowledging Deva's arguments as incontestable. Beyond intelligence gathering, Deva leveraged his extensive network of personal contacts within the Turkish government to persistently lobby against the state-sanctioned mass migration of Albanians and Bosniaks from Kosovo and Macedonia into Turkey, aggressively protesting what he characterized as a systematic campaign to empty those regions of their native Muslim populations.

In a formal memorandum delivered to the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs on September 20, 1953, Deva bluntly warned Turkish diplomats that allowing this migration was severely damaging Turkey’s long-term geopolitical strategy in Europe. He argued that Muslim populations, specifically Albanians, Bosniaks and regional Turks were the only elements securing Turkey's political foothold in the Balkans and serving as a vital bulwark against Pan-Slavism. Between 1953 and 1954, Deva shifted focus toward reorganizing the "Free Albania" Committee (Komiteti "Shqipëria e Lirë"), persistently lobbying to integrate the geopolitical plight of Kosovo into the committee's core agenda. During this period, he faced a fierce political rivalry from a nationalist faction of the Agrarian Democrat Balli Kombëtar, led by Abaz Ermenji, which actively sought to discredit him. This faction successfully targeted Deva on April 27, 1953, during a broadcast on the BBC Albanian Service delivered by broadcaster Tajar Zavalani under the pseudonym "Iliri." The commemorative broadcast explicitly denounced Deva as a "quisling" and a "notorious favorite of the Gestapo", accusing him of using death squads to kill hundreds of nationalists, specifically naming Skënder Muço and deporting thousands of innocent citizens to Nazi extermination camps during his tenure as wartime Minister of Internal Affairs. In response, Deva sent a formal letter of protest to F. Leon Shepley, the Head of the BBC's South-European Service. Dismissing the accusations as politically motivated fabrications, Deva challenged the broadcaster to produce verifiable evidence so the allegations could be formally adjudicated before a British court. In Rome on May 17, 1953 Deva's ultimatum demanded to know if the BBC officially endorsed the broadcast or accepted legal liability for its contents. 11 days later Shepley responded by expressing formal regret for the insult caused by the network, indicating that Zavalani had aired the segment without the authorization of his superiors. This administrative concession effectively halted further broadcasts targeting Deva from the BBC's Albanian service.

In 1956, he immigrated to the United States and briefly lived in New York and Boston. In 1960, he moved to Calaveras County, California, where he worked as an assistant supervisor at the mailing department along with giving lectures at Stanford University in Palo Alto until his retirement in 1972. In his years in exile, Deva led the Third League of Prizren and played an active role in organizing anti-Communist resistance. He died on 25 May 1978, aged 74.

Legacy

Files released after his death showed that Deva was one of 743 suspected fascist war criminals recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War.

In February 2022, it was announced that the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union would help finance the restoration of Deva's former home in Mitrovica. The decision was condemned by Serbian Culture Minister Maja Gojković, Germany's ambassador to Kosovo, Joern Rohde, as well as Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In response to the criticism, the UNDP and EU decided to withdraw funding for the project.

References

Books

• Berger, Joseph (18 November 2013). "Casting Light on Little-Known Story of Albania Rescuing Jews From Nazis". The New York Times.
• Bideleux, Robert; Jeffries, Ian (2007). The Balkans: A Post-Communist History. London, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-96911-3.
• Breitman, Richard; Goda, Norman J.W.; Naftali, Timothy; Wolfe, Robert (2005). U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61794-9.
• Elsie, Robert (2012). A Biographical Dictionary of Albanian History. London: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78076-431-3.
• Filipović, Gordana (1989). Kosovo–Past and present. Review of International Affairs.
• Fischer, Bernd Jürgen (1999). Albania at War, 1939–1945. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-141-4.
• Frank, Chaim (2010). "Antisemitism in Yugoslavia". In Petersen, Hans-Christian; Salzborn, Samuel (eds.). Antisemitism in Eastern Europe: History and Present in Comparison. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. pp. 67–112. ISBN 978-3-631-59828-3.
• Gaon, Aleksandar (2005). We Survived: Yugoslav Jews on the Holocaust. Vol. 1. Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro: Jewish Historical Museum. ISBN 978-8-69037-519-6.
• Judah, Tim (2002). Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09725-2.
• Meier, Viktor (1999). Yugoslavia: A History of Its Demise. New York City: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-18595-5.
• Pearson, Owen (2006). Albania in the Twentieth Century, A History: Albania in Occupation and War, 1939–45. Vol. 2. London: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-104-5.
• Lemkin, Raphael (2008). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Clark, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange. ISBN 978-1-58477-901-8.
• Ramet, Sabrina P. (2006). The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34656-8.
• Stafa, Monika (June 2017). "Attitude of Collaborative Governments in Defense of the Jews during the War". Anglisticum Journal. 6 (6).
• Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
• Yeomans, Rory (2006). Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul (eds.). World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-940-9.
• Živković, Milutin D. (2017). Санџак 1941–1943 [Sandžak 1941–1943] (Doctoral) (in Serbo-Croatian). Belgrade: University of Belgrade. OCLC 1242119546.
• Lamaj, Idriz (2022). Xhafer Deva në dritën e letrave të veta dhe zbulesa të tjera të mërgatës (in Albanian). Dija. ISBN 9789951782708.
• Roszkowski, Wojciech; Kofman, Jan (2016). Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Taylor & Francis.

Journals

• Hehn, Paul N. (1971). "Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941–1945: Civil War and Revolution in the Balkans". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 13 (4). University of Alberta: 344–373. doi:10.1080/00085006.1971.11091249. JSTOR 40866373.

News reports

• Bislimi, Bekim; Hysenaj, Shkelqim; Heil, Andy (11 February 2022). "A 'Nazi Collaborator's' Former Home Raises Uncomfortable Questions In Kosovo". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
• Liphshiz, Cnaan (12 February 2022). "EU and UN halt funding for Kosovo honoring Albanian Nazi collaborator". The Jerusalem Post. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved 12 February 2022.

External links

• Media related to Xhafer Deva at Wikimedia Commons