Uprising in Albania
by Lynn Walsh
Postscript
Berisha is still holding out in the presidential palace (14 April 1997), but with very limited real power in the country. Incredibly, Berisha blames the crisis on a conspiracy between the ex-Stalinist Socialist opposition and the Mafia to exploit discontent over the collapsed pyramid schemes in order to grab power for themselves. "We tolerated more than was necessary," he conceded to the right-wing Wall Street Journal (4 April), but insisted that "the main responsibility lies with those who invested money in the schemes. This is crucial for our society to realise. If we blame others for our mistakes, we will have no future. Capitalism is like that. Tomorrow there will be a stock exchange in Tirana: there will be winners and losers. We must learn about these things."
"The silent majority supports us," Berisha claims. But the reality is that governmental power, such as it is, has largely passed to the coalition headed by Bashkim Fino. On 1 April Fino made his first visit since the uprising to Gjirokaster to meet the Italian prime minister, Prodi, and "legal representatives of local power and public order". His most important discussions, however, were with the rebel leaders of the Committees of Public Salvation, which have dominated the South since early March.
According to the Wall Street Journal (4 April), the Socialist Party "publicly formalised its alliance (which it had hitherto denied existed) with these rebels... when it and other opposition parties drew up and published a formal agreement between themselves and the rebel gangs. It echoed the key rebel demands for the resignation of the president and the dissolution of the elected parliament." No government could survive, however, without promising new elections which open up the possibility of removing Berisha.
Fino also announced the disbanding of the Shik secret police. Reuters news agency reported that Fino told rebel leaders that Berisha had accepted the resignations of the Shik chief, Bashkim Gazidede, and his deputy, Bujar Rama, and that the agency’s funding had been stopped. "Since yesterday, there is no more Shik in Albania. We are going to build a new intelligence service, and from now, anyone who identifies himself as a Shik officer is a liar." (The Guardian, 2 April).
The policy of the Socialist Party leaders is to allow Berisha to retain office until new elections, when they no doubt hope to win a majority and form a Socialist Party-dominated coalition. There is no indication whatsoever that they offer any political alternative to the capitalist policies of Berisha. "I am the premier of a government of national reconciliation which belongs to all the parties and all the people of Albania," Fino announced (25 March).
When the Socialist Party leader, Fatos Nano, was released from prison on 17 March, he took a similar position. "I think Berisha should step aside, not down," Nano told a press conference. "I am inclined to shake hands with him as an Albanian citizen rather than as a president." (Financial Times, 18 March) Incidentally, The Guardian (18 March) reported that when the prisoners were released from the Tirana prison by the crowd, the law-abiding Nano waited for the prison director to release him officially. Later, Nano and fifty other inmates were formally pardoned.
The Socialist Party’s tactics appear to coincide with the current policy of the western powers. Loathe to accept the removal of the president by a popular uprising, the western powers are aiming at the legal, parliamentary replacement of Berisha through new elections. According to Andrew Gumbel, writing in The Independent (17 April), Berisha has "largely been kept out of the diplomatic loop". Instead "Mr Fino is the international community’s point of contact, and Mr Fino’s government is the institution it is working to support. The Rome government’s private calculation is that the president will become more and more irrelevant, to the point where he will quietly disappear after the election." Gumbel adds, however, "Given Mr Berisha’s past behaviour, that may be an optimistic outlook."
Fino’s own power is strictly limited, as a recent episode demonstrated. On 5 April a group of heavily armed men barred Fino and other ministers from visiting Shkoder, the main town in the North. Gunmen intercepted Fino’s party at Bushat, about 60km north of Tirana, detonating grenades and forcing them to turn back to Tirana. "Miraculously, no one was hurt," reported The Independent (7 April). "But the trip to Shkoda had to be called off, and the bitter conclusion drawn that even the top representatives of the government of National Unity, supposedly supported by everyone, are not free to move around the country at will. The fact that the gunmen were reported to have acted on behalf of Sali Berisha, the man who appointed Mr Fino under considerable duress three weeks ago, only added to the sense of a country in the grip of festering chaos." Any idea that the social and political forces released by the uprising can be smoothly diverted back through parliamentary channels is likely to prove illusory. The key factor is that the majority of the population are now armed.
Intervention by the western powers
One of the key objectives of the European intervention force will undoubtedly be to facilitate the disarming of the people. Their immediate aim will no doubt be to ensure the safe arrival and distribution of essential food and medical supplies. They will attempt to secure ports, roads, the Tirana airport, etc, to allow the economy to start moving again. This is essential to stem the tide of refugees, which is Italy’s prime concern. In order to secure a more stable capitalist government, however, the western powers will be forced to try to recover at least some of the arms seized from the government arsenals.
Intervention is fraught with difficulty for imperialism. While the Western powers were virtually unanimous in their support for Berisha’s regime, they have mostly been very hesitant to commit themselves to intervention. The British and German governments have ruled out sending their forces. At the height of the uprising in mid-March Western governments officially ruled out sending a ‘peace keeping mission’. "It would be sending troops into a vacuum," said one NATO official, who asked not to be named. (Wall Street Journal, 17 March) As the movement subsided, however, the European powers and the US put increasing pressure on the Italian government to take the lead in sending an intervention force. Early in April it was resolved that an Italian-led Multinational Protection Force of between 5,000 and 6,000 troops would go into Albania in mid-April, consisting of about 2,500 from Italy, 1,000 from France, with smaller contingents from Spain, Greece, Turkey, and Romania.
This is an unusual operation. Though it has the formal or tacit approval of the United Nations, Nato, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the OCSE, etc, this intervention is a coalition of countries acting outside the umbrella of any international organisation. In reality, the Italian state is bearing the main responsibility for the intervention, and this has already provoked a political crisis in Italy.
Prodi’s parliamentary crisis
The Olive Tree ‘centre-left’ coalition, which Prodi heads, failed to secure a majority from its parliamentary supporters for the enabling legislation for the intervention force. The left-wing Rifondazione Comunista (PCR - Party of Communist Refoundation), on which the Prodi government’s majority depends, made it clear that it would not vote for the legislation. Prodi could only get the intervention Bill through parliament by accepting the support from the right-wing Freedom Alliance led by Berlusconi. Albania aside, this raises the possibility of Prodi reaching agreement in the next period with the Freedom Alliance in order to pass through budget cuts so far rejected because of opposition from the RC.
While the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), the former Communist Party, supported Prodi’s intervention bill, the RC rightly opposed it on the grounds that the intervention was a dangerous extension of Italy’s neo-colonial role in Albania. Rifondazione argued that the intervention force would keep president Berisha in power.
Italian capitalism’s neo-colonial ambitions were confirmed by an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (8 April). "There is much to admire in Mr Prodi’s determination not to see a leaderless Europe as inept before the Albanian crisis as it was in the Bosnian one. He has long wanted to carve out a larger international role for Italy and sees Albania, a country with which Italy has had long, and often turbulent, relations, as an important test for Italy’s preparedness to play a leading role." This long, turbulent role includes two occupations of Albania, during the First World War and again during the Second World War, when Mussolini pacified the country in preparation for its occupation by Hitler’s Nazi forces. The PRC is right to warn of the dangers of attacks on troops sent by the Italian government. There is obviously deep-rooted, historic resentment among Albanians at Italy’s past imperialist occupations of the country.
There is also anger at the recent treatment of Albanian refugees in Italy, and especially at the death of more than 80 people who drowned in the Adriatic on 28 March. In that incident, a heavily over-loaded motor boat (probably stolen by profiteers to ferry refugees at exorbitant rates) was rammed by an Italian warship - in the view of most Albanians, quite deliberately. Most of those who drowned were women and young children. Grief and anger in Albania was intensified by the vicious, chauvinistic comments of Irene Pivetti, the former speaker of the Italian parliament’s lower house. Refugees coming across the Adriatic, she proclaimed, "should be thrown back in the sea". Pivetti claimed she wanted to defend the vulnerable women and children who were being used as a cover by criminals to smuggle economic migrants and drugs into Italy. Give them soup, she generously advocated, but only in Albania. If they came to Italy, they should all be sent back.
These and other comments from reactionary politicians and newspapers outraged Albanians. "I warn Italian soldiers not to come to Vlore, otherwise they will be killed," said a young woman attending a rally of about 7,000 mourning the dead. (The Guardian, 31 March)
In response to the PRC’s objection that the Italian intervention force would prop up Berisha, Prodi’s deputy foreign minister, Piero Fassino, privately assured PRC deputies that: "It’s very clear that Berisha has to go. At least to us... The problem is how to move beyond Berisha, but if we said this... Albania’s government of National Unity would collapse." (Wall Street Journal, 9 April) Most probably, this is the real policy of the Italian government. Press reports of Fassino’s remarks, however, provoked an angry reaction from Berisha, and Prodi (and Fassino himself) were compelled to repudiate any intention of toppling Berisha.
"We are not going into Albania to interfere in that country’s internal affairs or get involved in promoting or protecting partisan interests," said Prodi. "We are going to distribute aid and help the Albanians to rebuild a normal life for themselves." (The Independent, 3 April) Such statements, as always in such circumstances, are entirely disingenuous. Capitalist states always launch such interventions primarily in order to protect their own interests and to further their economic and strategic aims. ‘Humanitarian’ assistance - food, medicine, restoration of communications, etc - is obviously a necessity in order to stop the flood of refugees to the West. But the real aims of the so-called Multinational Protection Force go far beyond this.
Fassino also said that the objectives of the intervention would include providing "assistance to the Albanian government to regain control of flashpoints on its territory and to get state institutions working again". What Albanian government? In reality, this means working to install a government considered by the Western powers to be reliable and capable of securing a semblance of stability. "Regain control of flashpoints"? This clearly implies undermining the power of the rebel forces - and attempting to disarm the people.
The Protection Force may well try to barter food and medicine for weapons, which would probably reclaim some weaponry from the poorer, most defenceless sections of the population. This policy is favoured by some of the Albanian liberal bourgeois parties, which are already attempting to swap "Bread for Bullets". But such a policy is not likely to recover many armaments from warlords and gangsters. Inevitably, there is a high potential for conflict between the Protection Force and various armed sections of the Albanian population.
Even supervision of new elections by the Protection Force can hardly be considered neutral. Just as the West European powers backed Berisha until recently, they will now back their chosen political agents. Currently, they appear to have little option but to rely on the Socialist Party leaders, who are now willing instruments on Western capitalist influence, in collaboration with the smaller parliamentary cliques of liberal bourgeois politicians.
For these reasons, socialists should totally oppose military intervention by Italy, France and other capitalist powers. Despite its claimed ‘humanitarian’ aims, the Protection Force is intended to protect the interests of imperialism, not safeguard the interests of the Albanian people. The western capitalist states should certainly provide food, medicine and economic resources to help build Albania. Through their policy of ruthlessly exploiting the primitive market which opened up in the country after 1990 and through their unstinting support for Berisha, the capitalist powers bear a heavy responsibility for the suffering of the Albanian people. But aid must be handed over to the Albanians, especially to the impoverished workers and peasants, who must be allowed to resolve their own problems. Western leaders argue that if aid is simply despatched to Albania it will be plundered by criminals and black marketeers. During previous UN or EU-sponsored aid operations, however, such as Bosnia or Somalia, the presence of multinational military forces did not prevent the siphoning-off of a lion’s share of the aid by corrupt government officials and gangsters (often indistinguishable groups). The only outside organisations which could really help the majority of Albanians on a big scale would be workers’ organisations in the West, especially the trade unions. Unfortunately, there is little or no prospect of the Labour leaders, who overwhelmingly accept the economic and foreign policies of the capitalists, of organising such international assistance.