Uprising in Albania
by Lynn Walsh
The role of imperialism
US imperialism and the major European capitalist powers will be eager to sponsor a new party of order in Albania. What terrifies the powers is not so much the eruption of mass protest movements and social chaos, which has occurred in other former Stalinist states, but the fact that the majority of the Albanian population are now armed. Their main priorities will be to end the insurgency, prevent a new flood of Albanians to the West, and prevent the fuelling of an armed conflict around Albania’s borders. Socialists totally oppose any Western military intervention, even if it is disguised as a humanitarian operation. The imperialist powers will intervene only to safeguard their own interests. They will seek an alliance with those capitalist politicians and business elements estimated to be their most effective and reliable clients. But the US and European governments will have rapidly to send in massive food supplies and medical assistance to prevent a human disaster on a terrible scale.
At the moment, the Western powers are extremely cautious. Their policy of supporting Berisha and turning a blind eye to his corrupt, dictatorial methods, has blown up in their faces. They are hesitant to commit military forces, which could become bogged down in a bloody quagmire. Their diplomats and military advisers are no doubt sounding out various forces in the country. As yet, the US and the EU governments do not appear to have worked out or agreed on a unified approach.
Their preferred option would probably be to bring together a new coalition government, involving the leaders of the main opposition parties and possibly including some of the military representatives of the rebellion in the South. Now that the former Stalinist apparatus and state-owned industry has been smashed, the Western powers may be prepared to turn to Socialist party leaders, particularly Fatos Nano, in order to make use of whatever authority they have left among layers of the workers and peasants. Nano accepts the transition to the market, and when he was released from jail, he called on the masses to hand in their weapons and await new elections. If a reconstructed capitalist regime could be legitimised through new elections, that would be all the better for them. But such a strategy will be extremely difficult for imperialism to carry through in the coming months. Whatever its strategy, imperialism will have to provide substantial economic resources in order to try to stabilise the country. They are going to face a huge bill as a result of investing in Berisha’s political pyramid scheme.
The different forces who have established power on the ground will not easily give it up. It will be impossible, to start with, to gather in all the arms that have been seized. One opposition commentator suggested that a new government will have to buy them back. If adopted, such a policy might recover some of the arms, but much of the seized weaponry will find its way to ethnic groups or gangsters in the neighbouring states or will be sold on the international black market. Even when things in Albania quieten down, many people will simply bury their arms for future eventualities.
Some of the strategists of imperialism are warning that Albania may go the same way as Somalia, with powerful regional warlords battling it out with their heavily-armed militias, preying on the population for money and food and raining terrible destruction on the population. In Somalia, even the might of US imperialism was powerless to end the conflict. The US forces were reduced to playing off one warlord against another, and in the end were forced to pull out without securing a stable influence in the country.
But it is too early for firm predictions even about Albania’s immediate future, let alone to draw conclusions about the future course of events. We have to follow events as they unfold. But one thing is clear: the advent of the capitalist market economy and the facade of parliamentary ‘democracy’ has been a disaster for the people of Albania. Socialists everywhere will salute the heroic, armed resistance of workers and young people to gangster-exploitation and military repression. We look forward to the development of organised, class-conscious proletarian forces in Albania, as in all the former Stalinist states, which will fight for genuine socialist economies and workers’ democracy.