The Balli Kombëtar, meaning the National Front, was an Albanian nationalist, pro-fascist, and anti-communist resistance movement that was active from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. The group was founded by Ali Kelcyra and Midhat Frasheri as an anti-Italian resistance movement, and it was backed by the landowning elite, liberal nationalists opposed to communism, and other sectors of society in Albania. The Balli Kombëtar failed to attract the communist partisans of the National Liberation Movement (LANC) to the nationalist cause, while it condemned that group's cooperation with the Yugoslav Partisans. In 1943, the Balli Kombëtar allied with the LANC as Italy neared the brink of defeat, but its cooperation with the LANC and the Allies quickly evaporated due to the Allies' refusal to grant Chameria and Kosovo to Albania after the war. As the Ballists regarded the Yugoslavs and Greeks as their real enemies, the Ballists allied with Albania's new German occupiers in the autumn of 1943, creating a "neutral government" in Tirana and fighting against the LANC and the Yugoslav Partisans. The Ballists destroyed the Northern Epirus Liberation Front with German help, but the Ballists ran short on supplies as the Germans began to lost the war. The Ballists were also pushed back from Macedonia by the Yugoslav Partisans. In December 1944, after Josip Broz Tito ordered the collection of weapons in Kosovo and the arrest of prominent Albanians, an Albanian anti-communist rebellion broke out, and the 9,000-strong Balli Kombëtar led the rebellion until its suppression in July 1945.
During the war, the Balli Kombëtar enacted campaigns of terror against Serb civilians in Kosovo and Montenegro, joining the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg in massacring thousands of Serbs and expelling 100,00 Serbs from Kosovo. In October 1943, the Balli Kombëtar and German troops burned several Greek villages in southern Albania. While the Balli Kombëtar was crushed in 1945, it was briefly revived by Abas Ermeji during the 1990s, winning 5% of the popular vote in 1996 before declining and later joining the Democratic Party of Albania-led Union for Victory Coalition.