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Albania
EVOLUTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
Like any country, Albania's national security was largely determined
by its geography and neighbors. It shares a 282- kilometer border
with Greece to the south and southeast. It has a 287-kilometer
border with the Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro to
the north and a 151-kilometer border with the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia to the east. Albania's other closest neighbor
and one-time invader, Italy, is located less than 100 kilometers
across the Adriatic Sea to the west. Albania had longstanding
and potentially dangerous territorial and ethnic disputes with
Greece and Yugoslavia. It traditionally feared an accommodation
between them in which they would agree to divide Albania. Greece
had historical ties with a region of southern Albania that was
called Northern Epirus by the Greeks and inhabited by ethnic Greeks,
with estimates of their number ranging from less than 60,000 to
400,000. Moreover, there was serious potential for conflict with
Yugoslavia, or specifically the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia, over
Kosovo. Nevertheless, for many years, Albania perceived a seaborne
attack by a superpower from the Adriatic Sea as a greater threat
than a large-scale ground assault across the rugged terrain of
eastern Albania. Any attack on Albania would have proved difficult
because more than three-quarters of its territory is hilly or
mountainous. The country's small size, however, provided little
strategic depth for conventional defensive operations.
In the early years, Albania's national security policy emphasized
the internal security of the new communist regime and only secondarily
external threats. Evaluated against this priority, Albania's national
security policy was largely successful until 1990. Because its
military forces, however, were incapable of deterring or repulsing
external threats, Albania sought to obtain political or military
guarantees from its allies or the international community.
Initially, Albania's national security policy focused on extending
the authority of the Tosk-dominated communist party from Tiranė
and southern Albania into Geg-inhabited northern regions where
neither the party nor the NLA enjoyed strong support from the
population (see Ethnicity, ch. 2). In some places, the party and
NLA faced armed opposition. The government emphasized political
indoctrination within the military in an attempt to make the armed
forces a pillar of support for the communist system and a unifying
force for the people of Albania. In general, however, there were
few serious internal or external threats to communist control.
In the early years of communist rule, the communist party relied
on its close alliance with Yugoslavia for its external security.
This alliance was an unnatural one, however, given the history
of mutual suspicion and tension between the two neighbors and
Yugoslavia's effort to include Albania in an alliance of Balkan
states under its control. In 1948, Yugoslavia's expulsion from
the Soviet-led communist world ended the alliance.
The Soviet Union assumed the role of Albania's principal benefactor
from late 1948. Albania was a founder member of the Warsaw Pact
in 1955, and its security was guaranteed against Yugoslav encroachment
by its participation in the Soviet-led collective security system
until 1961. However, the Soviet Union suspended its military cooperation
and security guarantees when Albania supported China in the Sino-Soviet
split (see Albania and China, Ch. 1).
Albania's military weakness and general ideological compatibility
with China led it to accept Chinese sponsorship and military assistance.
It did not, however, formally withdraw from the Warsaw Pact until
September 13, 1968, after the Soviet Union- led Warsaw Pact invasion
of Czechoslovakia. After the invasion, Albania drew closer to
China, seeking protection against a possible attempt by the Soviet
Union to retrieve Albania into the East European fold. China subsequently
increased its military assistance to Albania. Despite Chinese
guarantees of support, Albania apparently doubted the efficacy
of a deterrent provided by a distant and relatively weak China
against a proximate Soviet threat. Some knowledgeable Western
observers believed that, at Chinese insistence, Albania had signed
a mutual assistance agreement with Yugoslavia and Romania to be
implemented in the event of a Soviet attack on any one of them.
Following China's lead, Albania accused both the United States
and the Soviet Union of tacitly collaborating to divide the world
into spheres of influence, becoming a vociferous international
opponent of the use of military force abroad and the establishment
of foreign military bases, particularly by the United States or
the Soviet Union. In particular, Albania persistently called for
a reduction of United States and Soviet naval forces in the Mediterranean
Sea.
During the 1970s, Albania viewed improved relations between the
United States and China as detrimental to its interests. This
perception increased after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. In
1978 China ceased its military and economic assistance to Albania
as the Asian superpower adopted a less radical stance on the international
scene and turned more attention to its domestic affairs. According
to some analysts, however, China continued to supply Albania with
spare parts for its Chinese-made weapons and equipment during
the 1980s.
In the decade between Mao's death and Hoxha's death in 1985 Albania
practiced self-reliance and international isolation. After succeeding
Hoxha, President Ramiz Alia moved in a new direction, seeking
improved relations with Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey and even
participating in the Balkan Foreign Ministers Conference in 1988.
He attempted to moderate the impact of the Kosovo issue on relations
with Yugoslavia, and Greece downplayed its historical claims to
the disputed territory of Northern Epirus during the 1980s, when
the two countries improved their bilateral relations. Alia also
encouraged Greece and Turkey to withdraw from the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) and Bulgaria and Romania to withdraw
from the Warsaw Pact. In addition, Alia improved relations with
Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), which
may have resulted in some military sales to Albania, including
missile and military communications systems.
In 1986 the first deputy minister of people's defense and chief
of the general staff summarized Albania's approach to national
security when he stated that Albania's security depended on a
careful study of the international situation and taking corresponding
action. Better ties with its neighbors promised to give Albania
time to generate support in the international arena and bring
international opprobrium to bear on any potential aggressor while
its forces mounted a conventional defense and, then, guerrilla
warfare against enemy occupation forces.
In early 1992, the outlook for Albanian national security was
mixed. There were important positive developments but also some
negative trends. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe--usually
referred to as the Conventional Forces in Europe, or CFE, Treaty--was
signed in 1990 and promised reductions in the ground and air forces
of nearby NATO members Greece and Italy and former Warsaw Pact
member Bulgaria. It therefore placed predictable limits on the
future size of the military threat to Albania from most of its
neighbors. But the CFE Treaty did not affect nonaligned states
such as Yugoslavia, and Albania remained militarily, economically,
and technologically weak.
In June 1990, seeking to develop closer ties to the rest of Europe,
Albania began to participate in the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE--see Glossary) as an observer state.
It received full membership one year later. Until joining, Albania
had been the only state in Europe that was not a member of CSCE.
Membership afforded Albania a degree of protection against external
aggression that it probably had not enjoyed previously. It also
committed Albania to respect existing international boundaries
in Europe and basic human rights and political freedoms at home.
In the early 1990s, Albania sought a broader range of diplomatic
relations, reestablishing official ties with the Soviet Union
in 1990 and the United States in 1991. It also sought to join
the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, a NATO- associated organization
in which other former Warsaw Pact countries were already participating.
On the negative side of Albania's national security balance sheet,
the improved European security environment undermined the communist
regime's ability to mobilize the population by propagandizing
external threats. In the early 1990s, the military press cited
problems in convincing Albania's youth of the importance of military
service and training, given the fact that the Soviet Union was
withdrawing its forces from Eastern Europe, the CFE Treaty promised
major reductions in conventional forces, and most conceivable
threats seemed to be receding. The accounts cited instances of
"individual and group excesses," unexcused absences, and the failure
to perform assigned duties. These problems were ascribed to political
liberalization and democratization in the People's Army, which
supposedly weakened military order and discipline, led to breaches
of regulations, and interfered with military training and readiness.
Albania's most sensitive security problem centered on ethnic
Albanians living outside the country's borders, including the
nearly 2 million living in Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia's
Serbian Republic. The area recognized as Albania by the Great
powers in 1913 was such that more ethnic Albanians were left outside
the new state than included within it. Tension in Kosovo between
ethnic Albanians, who made up 90 percent of its approximately
2 million residents, and the dwindling number of Serbians living
there was a constant source of potential conflict between Albania
and Serbia.
Yugoslavia's Serbian Republic ruled Kosovo harshly until the
1970s when it became an autonomous province, theoretically with
almost the same rights as the Serbian Republic itself. In 1981,
however, one-quarter of the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) was deployed
in Kosovo in response to unrest, which began with riots in Pristina.
Yugoslavia asserted more direct control over Kosovo in the late
1980s in response to alleged Albanian separatism, which aimed
to push Serbians out of an area they considered to be their ancestral
home. In 1989, relying on scarcely veiled threats and actual demonstrations
of force, Serbia forced Kosovo to accept legislation that substantially
reduced its autonomy and then suspended Kosovo's parliament and
government in 1990. Sporadic skirmishes erupted between armed
Albanian and Serbian civilians, who were backed by the Serb-dominated
YPA. Meanwhile, the Serbs accused Albania of interference in Kosovo
and of inciting its Albanian population against Yugoslavian rule.
For their part, Kosovars claimed that they were the victims of
Serbian nationalism, repression, and discrimination. In 1991 they
voted in a referendum to become an independent republic of Yugoslavia,
and Albania immediately recognized Kosovo as such. Although President
Alia criticized Yugoslav policy in Kosovo, he carefully avoided
making claims on its territory. Nevertheless, Serbs believed the
vote for republic status was a precursor to demands for complete
independence from Yugoslavia and eventual unification with Albania.
As Yugoslavia collapsed into a civil war that pitted intensely
nationalist Serbia against other ethnic groups of the formerly
multinational state, Albania remained circumspect in its pronouncements
on and relations with Kosovo in order to avoid a conflict. However,
a series of border incidents, involving Serbian forces killing
ten Albanians along the Albanian-Yugoslav border, occurred in
late 1991 and early 1992. Albanians and Europeans were seriously
concerned that Serbian forces would direct military operations
against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and spark an international
conflict with Albania. Albania's armed forces were poorly prepared
to fight the larger, better equipped, and combat-experienced Serbian
forces.
Data as of April 1992
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