Albania - The Scoop

Albania is the country where most of the population would rather be living somewhere else. Fifteen percent of the 1991 population have left the country . . . mostly as illegal immigrants for the European Union. Blood feuds are now making a popular comeback, replacing a nonexistent judicial system. None of which should be any surprise, as Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe and has vacillated between communism, democracy and anarchy since it proclaimed independence on November 28, 1912, after a history of Roman, Byzantine and Turkish domination.

Order totally disintegrated in Albania in early March 1997, when rage over collapsing investment schemes-in which half the population lost their entire life savings-plunged Albania into anarchy. Albanians pillaged hundreds of thousands of weapons from government armories during the chaos. Some 500,000 of these weapons remain in the hands of private citizens. Since then Albania has calmed to a more normal state of affairs of daily robbery and smuggling. The mafia has taken the opportunity to get a bit more organized. Almost 70 percent of the drugs reaching Germany and Switzerland come via Albania. Busy bees, as ever, alliances have been forged with the Sicilian mafia in the form of the Sacra Corona Unita (United Holy Crown . . . un-holy surely?), to facilitate the smuggling of . . . well, pretty much anything, actually, to Italy.

To all intents and purposes Albania is now run by the international community. NATO is trying to train what passes for an army, the Italians are trying to teach Albanian customs officers the meaning of the word honest and police officers the meaning of the word law. And the UN is trying to help the burgeoning number of aid agencies operating in Albania.