Aćif Hadžiahmetović


Aćif Hadžiahmetović, known as Aćif Bljuta, was an Albanian politician in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar region of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the interwar period and during World War II. In the interwar period he was mayor of Novi Pazar and a deputy of Džemijet following the 1923 elections. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he was appointed mayor of Novi Pazar under the German military government of the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia and in 1943–44 was a deputy of Mitrovica in the Albanian parliament. He was also a member of the central committee of the Second League of Prizren. Towards the end of the war, he was executed by the Yugoslav Partisans for his collaboration with the Axis for massive war crimes against Serbs and killings of Albanians who were against his rule.

Origin and early life

Aćif Hadžiahmetović Bljuta was born in 1887 in Novi Pazar, to father Emin-aga and mother Jalduza. He was ethnic Albanian, and his family hailed from the area of Gjakova. The patronymic Hadžiahmetović was adopted by him to honour his grandfather, Ahmet, who completed hajj. He kept his paternal surname Bluta, which he especially highlighted since the 1941 occupation, to define himself as Albanian towards the Nazi German rule. He spoke Turkish, Albanian, and Serbian.
He completed a lower gymnasium at Novi Pazar, after which he worked for a time as a municipality registrar in Vučitrn. He then completed the Military Academy in Bitola. He moved to Turkey in 1913. As an officer with the rank of captain, he fought in the Balkan Wars and received the German Iron Cross 2nd Class for courage.
Aćif and his wife Mahije had no children of their own but had adopted two orphans from Đakovica, Qamil and Mejreme.

Biography

A member of Džemijet since its foundation in 1919, he was elected mayor of Novi Pazar in 1920. In 1923 he was elected as a representative of the region in the parliament of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. A close collaborator of the party's leader Ferhat Draga, his speeches in the parliament focused on the agrarian reform, which he often attacked as a policy that targeted only Albanian farmers. After Ferhat Draga's imprisonment and the party's dissolution, many of its members faced attacks. Hadžiahmetović himself survived two assassination attempts.

During World War II

Hadžiahmetović organized ceremonial welcome and an official banquet in Novi Pazar for German occupying forces on 16 April 1941. In April 1941 German Nazi forces appointed Hadžiahmetović as mayor of Novi Pazar. He established a governing committee in Novi Pazar of 11 members, all Albanians, and also established a Muslim gendarmerie which was pro-Albanian and whose members wore Albanian symbols. He was one of the signatories of the Resolution of Sarajevo Muslims in 1941. During that year, his forces began to conduct war crimes against local Serb civilians and started killings of Albanians who were opposed of his rule. At the same time, with officers like Shaban Polluzha under his command, who was responsible for bloody killing of 150 Serbian civilians in Ibarski Kolašin in September 1941, he organized the defense of the region against attacks by Chetnik forces that targeted Albanian and Muslim civilians and by the Yugoslav Partisans who led the antifascist liberation movement. The principal goal of Albanian forces was the creation of a Greater Albania that would include Novi Pazar in it. As a consequence, efforts were made to Albanize the Bosniak population of Novi Pazar – one of the policies that created the greatest revolt among the local Bosniak population was the prohibition of wearing the Muslim hat, fez. During a public speech made when the first Albanian military forces penetrated into Novi Pazar in October 1941, Hadžiahmetović warned the public present that they are "Albanian, and not Bosniak", and stated: "Behind us stand three million Albanians, our Pazar is the centre of Albania, and we will create a Greater Albania.". At another public speech, Hadžiahmetović is recorded to have said that the population which occupies all lands spanning from Raška to the southernmost point of Albania is Albanian.
It was also during his rule, in 1942, that the entire Jewish population of Novi Pazar – 221 individuals, were imprisoned, sent to the concentration camp Staro Sajmište and killed.
In 1943 he joined the Second League of Prizren and was elected a member of its central committee. A few months later, after the incorporation of Mitrovica into Albania he became a representative of the region in the Albanian parliament along with Ferhat Abidi, Hysen Hysnija and Shaban Mustafa.
He was considered a collaborator with the Axis powers during World War II and was executed in 1945 by the Yugoslav government, after he was found guilty of the murder of nearly 7,000 Serbs.

Legacy

In the late 2000s the Bosniak National Council initiated the process of his historical rehabilitation in Serbia. Among others Muamer Zukorlić has praised him as a "hero of Bosniak people". The campaign culminated in the inauguration of a memorial dedicated to Hadžiahmetović on August 3, 2012 in Novi Pazar. This event was attended by Sulejman Ugljanin, Esad Džudžević and Ahmedin Škrijelj. The Ministry of Justice and State Administration of Serbia instructed the local administration to remove the memorial. There is also an initiative to name the City Stadium of Novi Pazar after him.
Opponents of the rehabilitation of Aćif Hadžiahmetović emphasize that he fought for Greater Albania project, that his aim was to Albanize the Bosniak population of Sandžak, that he collaborated with occupying forces of the Third Reich in the whole period of occupation during World War II, sent a number of communists from Novi Pazar into concentration camps, as well as allowed the elimination of Serbian, Jewish and Roma population of Novi Pazar. For his collaboration he was awarded with Iron Cross by Nazi Germany.