Soldiers Desert; Civilians Get Powerful Arms Hordes Of Gun-Toting Albanian Youths Make Chances Of Restoring Order Slim
The chances of restoring order to Albania without the intervention of an international military force are growing slim.
In the face of mounting civil unrest, Albania’s military continues to disintegrate by the hour. Soldiers who are paid little more than $2 a month are deserting in droves.
Even more alarming, they are abandoning their weapons to the civilian population. The most unstable country in the Balkans is awash in a sea of uncontrolled weaponry - everything from Kalashnikov assault rifles to MiG-21 jet fighters.
With the Albanian military unlikely to step in and restore order, NATO members Greece and Italy are the most frequently mentioned candidates as outside military powers who may be called upon to impose calm.
At Kucove, the military’s main air base in the south, 19 MiG fighters - about 20 percent of Albania’s combat aircraft - are in the hands of youths brandishing looted Kalashnikovs.
The pilots turned the base over to the armed rioters Sunday after refusing orders to take the planes up and “frighten” the local population.
“How can you fight against your own people?” one of the pilots who remained on the base told journalists. “We are not rebels. We are the people,” he said.
Like most of the people in Albania, the pilots admitted that they, too, had lost money in the pyramid investment schemes that triggered the anti-government revolt after the financial scams began collapsing late last year.
At the air base Tuesday, young toughs armed to the teeth supervised the systematic looting of weapons stores, while smaller boys strutted around in oversized uniforms festooned with gold braid.
Peasants from surrounding villages converged on the base and carried off whatever they could strap onto the backs of their mules or load into their horse-drawn wagons.
In the town of Kucove, rioters drove through the streets firing Kalashnikovs out car windows. One teenager stood on a corner in the town’s center and patiently shot out all the street lights as other residents went about their routines as if such gunplay were perfectly normal.
Similar scenes of mayhem and confusion are being played out across southern Albania as rioters in control of most of the area’s key towns demanded the ouster of President Sali Berisha.
Berisha has promised early elections and is negotiating with opposition parties over a government of “national reconciliation.”
On Tuesday he approved a new prime minister from the opposition Socialist Party, Bashkim Fino, an economist from the southern town of Gjirokastra, now in rebel hands.
Even if the president and the opposition leaders reach an agreement on a new government, there seems little likelihood the army or the police would be able to restore order.
“If things come to the point where a political solution is found, then the Albanian government would have to ask for international help in disarming the rebels,” said one Western diplomat.
xxxx Rebels with MiGs 19 MiG fighters - about 20 percent of Albania’s combat aircraft - are in the hands of youths brandishing looted Kalashnikovs.