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100 years ago, in a region in southern Romania, bands of Bulgarian rebels were waging a full-scale war against the Romanian authorities. The region in question was Dobrogea and the rebels were generically called comitages. After the annexation of the Quadrilateral by Romania in 1913, an armed resistance movement took place in the region by a part of the Bulgarian population against what they perceived as the Romanian occupation. This phenomenon gained momentum and spread to the entire region of Dobrogea after the First World War when the Bulgarian army withdrew but left behind a lot of weapons and liaison men, the comitages' movement being permanently supported by Bulgaria. In 1925, a group converted to communism emerged from the original organization of the Bulgarian comitagies, the Dobrogean Revolutionary Organization of the Interior, which changed its political objective, no longer fighting for Greater Bulgaria but for an independent Dobrogea that could eventually join a future Balkan communist federation or even the USSR. From this Bolshevised branch of the Bulgarian comitagies, promising cadres of the Romanian Communist Party (at that time illegal) were elected, such as Petre Borilă (real name Iordan Dragan Rusev, later becoming Ceaușescu's vassal), Boris Ștefanov (who for a period even became the general secretary of the PCdR) and others. The origins of the Bulgarian comitagies were in the Balkan outlaw gangs of the 19th century who had fought alongside the Tsarist army (and the Romanian one) to liberate Bulgaria from the Ottoman yoke. These paramilitary organizations disbanded at the end of World War II with the change of regimes, mentalities and borders. In the case of Dobrogea, the comitagies ceased their activity after 1940 when Romania receded the Quadrilateral to Bulgaria and a population exchange took place between the two countries, so that the Bulgarian rebels lost not only their hosts and logistical bases in the Bulgarian villages of Northern Dobrogea but also the support of Bulgaria and the object of their militancy. From 1940 until today, Romania and Bulgaria have been part of the same political and military alliance blocks and the old territorial conflict in southern Dobrogea seems dead and buried forever.