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Albania
INTRODUCTION
Figure 1. Administrative
Divisions of Albania, 1992
ALBANIA, PROCLAIMED A "PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC" in 1946, was for more
than forty years one of the most obscure and reclusive countries
in the world. A totalitarian communist regime, led by party founder
and first secretary Enver Hoxha from 1944 until his death in 1985,
maintained strict control over every facet of the country's internal
affairs, while implementing a staunchly idiosyncratic foreign
policy. After World War II, Hoxha and his proteges imposed a Stalinist
economic system, and turned alternately to Yugoslavia, the Soviet
Union, and China for assistance, before denouncing each of these
communist countries as "bourgeois" or "revisionist" and embarking
on a course of economic self-reliance. Notwithstanding some notable
accomplishments in education, health care, and other areas, Hoxha's
policies of centralization, isolation, and repression stifled
and demoralized the population, hindered economic development,
and relegated Albania to a position of technological backwardness
unparalleled in Europe.
Ramiz Alia, Hoxha's handpicked successor, introduced a modicum
of pragmatism to policy making, but his ambiguous stance toward
reform did little to ameliorate a growing social and economic
crisis. Like President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's policy of perestroika
in the Soviet Union, Alia's efforts at reform were prompted, and
tempered, by a commitment to preserving the system that had facilitated
his accession to power. In both countries, however, the departure
from traditional hard-line policies sufficed merely to unshackle
the forces that would accelerate the collapse of the old system.
In December 1990, swayed by large-scale student demonstrations,
strikes, and the exodus of thousands of Albanians to Italy and
Greece, and fearing the prospect of a violent overthrow, Alia
yielded to the popular demand for political pluralism and a multiparty
system. The newly created Albanian Democratic Party (ADP), the
country's first opposition party since World War II, quickly became
a major political force, capturing nearly one-third of the seats
in the People's Assembly in the spring 1991 multiparty election.
And several months later, as the economy continued to deteriorate,
the ADP participated in a "government of national salvation" with
the communist Albanian Party of Labor (APL), subsequently renamed
the Socialist Party of Albania (SPA). The fragile coalition government
led by Prime Minister Ylli Bufi fell apart when the ADP decided
to pull out in December. An interim government of nonparty members
and specialists headed by Vilson Ahmeti struggled on until the
ADP scored a decisive election victory on March 22, 1992, amidst
economic free-fall and social chaos, receiving about 62 percent
of the vote to the SPA's 26 percent. Alia resigned as president
shortly afterward, paving the way for the ADP to take over the
government. On April 9, Sali Berisha, a cardiologist by training
and a dynamic ADP leader who had figured prominently in the struggle
for political pluralism, became Albania's first democratically
elected president in seventy years. The first noncommunist government,
headed by ADP founding member Aleksander Meksi, was appointed
four days later. This "cabinet of hope," as it was popularly dubbed,
consisted mainly of young ADP activists, intellectuals without
prior government experience. Unlike their communist predecessors,
most of whom were of southern Albanian origin, the ministers hailed
from various parts of the country. The new government made remarkable
progress in restoring law and order, reforming the economy, and
raising the population's standard of living. It privatized small
businesses, closed down unprofitable industrial facilities, distributed
about 90 percent of the land previously held by collective farms
to private farmers, began to privatize housing, improved the supply
of food and basic consumer goods, reduced the rate of inflation,
stabilized the lek (Albania's currency unit), cut the budget deficit,
and increased the volume of exports. However, more than one year
after the Democrats came to power, Albania's economic plight was
far from over. Its 400,000 newly registered private farmers had
yet to assume full ownership rights over their land, there was
insufficient investment in private agriculture, and shortages
of tractors and other farming equipment continued to impede agricultural
production. Approximately forty percent of the nonagricultural
labor force was unemployed, corruption pervaded the state bureaucracy,
and the country remained dependent on foreign food aid. In addition,
partly because of the general political instability in the Balkans,
particularly in the former Yugoslavia
(see Glossary), direct investment from abroad was not forthcoming.
Although President Berisha's "shock therapy" received the imprimatur
of the International Monetary Fund (IMF--
see Glossary), it drew sharp criticism from the SPA, which had
been resuscitated by significant gains in the July 1992 local
elections. The SPA argued that the reforms should have been implemented
gradually, that many more jobs had been eliminated than created,
and that at least some of the old state-run factories should have
been kept open.
In March 1993, SPA chairman Fatos Nano called on the entire cabinet
to resign, accusing it of incompetence. On April 6, President
Berisha, citing a need to "correct weaknesses and shortcomings"
in the government's reform efforts, replaced the ministers of
agriculture, internal affairs, education, and tourism (although
ADP chairman Eduard Selami denied that these changes had been
made in response to the opposition's demands). The new appointees
included individuals with greater professional expertise and two
political independents. The outgoing ministers of agriculture
and internal affairs assumed other government posts. Despite the
Socialist challenge, opposition from right- wing extremists, and
some manifestations of discord within the ADP, there appeared
to be no imminent domestic threat to the Democratic government
remained in a strong position in late 1993.
In foreign policy, the unresolved question of the status of Kosovo,
a formerly autonomous province of Serbia, predominated. Although
in September 1991 Kosovo's underground parliament proclaimed this
enclave with its large majority of ethnic Albanians a "sovereign
and independent state," Albania was the only country that had
officially recognized Kosovo's independence from Serbia. The Serbian
government carried out a policy of systematic segregation and
repression in Kosovo that some Western observers have compared
with South Africa's apartheid system. Concerned that Serbia's
ethnic cleansing campaigns would spread from Bosnia and Hercegovina
to Kosovo and that Albania could be dragged into the ensuing confrontation
(potentially a general Balkan war), President Berisha forged closer
relations with other Islamic countries, particularly Turkey. In
December 1992, Albania joined the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC), a move denounced by the SPA as a detriment to
the country's reintegration with Europe. But Berisha also sought
ties to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and urged
repeatedly that NATO forces be deployed in Kosovo. In March 1993,
NATO secretary general Manfred Wörner visited Tiranë, and later
that month Albanian defense minister Safet Zhulali participated
in a meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in Brussels.
Wörner offered various forms of technical assistance to the Albanian
armed forces, though membership in NATO itself was withheld.
In April 1993, Albania granted recognition to the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia. Important factors in relations between
the two countries were the human rights of the Albanian minority
in Macedonia, estimated to amount to between a fifth and a third
of the population, and possible Albanian irredentism. Relations
benefited from the inclusion of ethnic Albanians in the Macedonian
government. Good relations were maintained with Slovenia, Croatia,
Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania as well, and steps were taken to
improve relations with the neighboring Republic of Montenegro,
also home to a large minority Albanian community. In September,
Montenegro's president, Momir Bulatovic, met with President Berisha
in Tiranë for the highest level talks between the two countries
in a half-century. Attempts to expand cooperation and exchanges
with Montenegro, however, were hampered by a UN embargo against
the rump Yugoslavia.
Relations with Greece, Albania's ancient southern neighbor (which,
for religious and historical reasons, was expected to side with
Serbia in the event of war in Kosovo), deteriorated rapidly in
the early 1990s. The tension stemmed primarily from two issues:
the influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, mostly
economic immigrants, from Albania to Greece, and the treatment
of ethnic Greeks in Albania. Greco-Albanian relations worsened
markedly when the Albanian parliament voted in February 1992 to
prevent OMONIA (Unity), the political party representing Greek
Albanians, from fielding candidates in the March 1992 election.
A compromise was reached, permitting OMONIA's members to register
under the name of the Union for Human Rights and to have their
representatives included among the candidates, but mutual recriminations
persisted.
Another major setback occured in June 1993 when Albania expelled
a Greek Orthodox priest for allegedly fomenting unrest among ethnic
Greeks in southern Albania, and Greece retaliated by deporting
25,000 Albanian illegal immigrants. Several weeks later Greece's
prime minister, Constantinos Mitsotakis, demanded "the same rights
for the Greek community living in Albania as those that the Albanian
government demands for the Albanian communities in the former
Yugoslavia." A potential problem was posed also by the status
of "Northern Epirus," the Greek-populated region in southern Albania
on which Greece had made territorial claims in the past. The regional
instability created by such ethnic tensions, combined with continued
economic deprivation, threatened Albania's transition to democracy.
October 4, 1993
Walter R. Iwaskiw
Data as of April 1992
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