ALBANIA BECAME INDEPENDENT in 1912 when the Great Powers of Europe
decided that its formation would enhance the balance of power on the
continent. Small, weak, and isolated, Albania faced persistent threats
of domination, dismemberment, or partition by more powerful neighbors,
but struggled to maintain its independence and territorial integrity
through successive alliances with Italy, Yugoslavia
(see Glossary), the Soviet Union, and China. The Albanian Communist
Party (ACP--from 1948 the Albanian Party of Labor) used the perception
of a country under siege to mobilize the population, establish political
legitimacy, and justify domestic repression. Yet it claimed success in
that, under its rule, Albania's allies guaranteed its defense against
external threats and were increasingly less able to dominate it or
interfere in its internal affairs. After a period of isolation between
1978 and 1985, however, Albania looked to improved relations with its
neighbors to enhance its security.
The modern armed forces grew out of the partisan bands of World War
II, which fought the Italians and Germans as well as their rivals within
the resistance. By the time the Germans withdrew their forces from
Albania in November 1944, the communist-led National Liberation Front
(NLF) held the dominant position among the partisan groups and was able
to assume control of the country without fighting any major battles. The
armed forces in 1992 were under the control of the Ministry of Defense,
and all branches were included within the People's Army. Total
active-duty personnel strength was about 48,000 men in 1991. Most troops
were conscripted and approximately one-half of the eligible recruits
were drafted, usually at age nineteen. The tanks, aircraft, and other
weapons and equipment in the inventory of the armed forces were of
Soviet or Chinese design and manufacture. The People's Army, consisting
of professional officers, conscripted soldiers, mobilized reserves, and
citizens with paramilitary training, was organized to mount a limited
territorial defense and extended guerrilla warfare against a foreign
aggressor and occupation army. However, it remained the weakest army in
Europe in early 1992.
Albania lacked the industrial or economic base to maintain its army
independently and required external assistance to support its modest
armed forces. After World War II, it relied on Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union, in turn, for military assistance. When Albania split from the
Soviet Union in 1961, China became its main ally and supplier of
military equipment. Chinese assistance was sufficient to maintain
equipment previously furnished by the Soviet Union and to replace some
of the older weapons as they became obsolete. However, this aid was
curtailed in 1978, and Albania lacked a major external patron after that
time.
After becoming first secretary of the Albanian Party of Labor and
president of Albania when longtime leader Enver Hoxha died in 1985,
Ramiz Alia gradually relaxed the Stalinist system of political terror
and coercion established and maintained by his predecessor. The impact
of changes in the Soviet Union and the subsequent collapse of communism
in Eastern Europe, particularly in Romania, combined to increase
pressure for internal liberalization in Albania during the late 1980s
and early 1990s.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs controlled the police and security
forces until it was abolished and replaced by the Ministry of Public
Order in April 1991. Although details of the organization of the
Ministry of Public Order were not generally known, some observers
believed it had the same basic components as its predecessor. They were
the National Information Service (successor to the hated Sigurimi, more
formally Drejtoria e Sigurimit te Shtetit or Directorate of State
Security), the Frontier Guards, and the People's Police.
The security forces traditionally exerted even more rigid controls
over the population than those exercised by similar forces in other East
European states. However, under Alia they did not enforce the communist
order as they had when Hoxha ruled Albania. Alia curtailed some of their
more repressive practices, and they ultimately failed to protect the
regime when the communist party's monopoly on power was threatened in
1990 and ended in 1991. In large part, that threat came from a crippled
economy, shortages of food and medicine, manifestations of new political
freedoms (including strikes and massive public demonstrations that
occurred with impunity), and calls by the new democratic movement for
eliminating repression by the security forces, releasing political
prisoners, and establishing respect for human rights.
Albania - DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMED FORCES
Albania's military heritage antedating World War II is highlighted by
the exploits of its fifteenth-century national hero known as Skanderbeg,
who gained a brief period of independence for the country during his
opposition to the Ottoman
Empire (see Glossary). In the seventeenth century, many ethnic
Albanians, most notably members of the K�pr�l� family, served with
great distinction in the Ottoman army and administration. National feelings, aroused late in the
nineteenth century, became more intense during the early twentieth
century, and fairly sizable armed groups of Albanians rebelled against
their Ottoman rulers. However, Albania achieved national independence in
1912 as a result of agreement among the Great Powers of Europe rather
than through a major military victory or armed struggle.
Hardy Albanian mountaineers have had a reputation as excellent
fighters for nearly 2,000 years. Nevertheless, they rarely fought in an
organized manner for an objective beyond the defense of tribal areas
against incursions by marauding neighbors. Occasions were few when
Albanians rose up against occupying foreign powers. Conquerors generally
left the people alone in their isolated mountain homelands, and, because
a feudal tribal society persisted, little, if any, sense of national
unity or loyalty to an Albanian nation developed.
The Romans recruited some of their best soldiers from the regions
that later became Albania. The territory of modern Albania was part of
the Byzantine Empire, and the Bulgars, Venetians, and Serbs took turns
contesting their control of Albania between the tenth and the fourteenth
centuries. As the power of the Byzantine Empire waned, the forerunners
of modern Albania joined forces with the Serbs and other Balkan peoples
to prevent the encroachment of the Ottoman Empire into southeastern
Europe. The Ottoman victory over their combined forces at Kosovo Polje
in 1389, however, ushered in an era of Ottoman control over the Balkans.
The Albanian hero Skanderbeg, born Gjergj Kastrioti and renamed
Skanderbeg after Alexander the Great, was one of the janissaries
(see Glossary) who became famous fighting for the Ottoman Turks in
Serbia and Hungary. He was almost exclusively responsible for the one
period of Albanian independence before 1912. Although it endured for
twenty-four years, this brief period of independence ended about a
decade after his death in 1468. In 1443 Skanderbeg rebelled against his
erstwhile masters and established Albania's independence with the
assistance of the Italian city-state of Venice. He repulsed several
Ottoman attempts to reconquer Albania until his death. The Ottoman Turks
soon recaptured most of Albania, seized the Venetian coastal ports in
Albania, and even crossed the Italian Alps and raided Venice. The
Ottomans retook the last Venetian garrison in Albania at Shkod�r in
1479, but the Venetians continued to dispute Ottoman control of Albania
and its contiguous waters for at least the next four centuries. Albanian
soldiers continued to serve in the military forces of the Ottoman Empire
around the Mediterranean into the nineteenth century.
Albania - From Independence to World War II
Organized military action had a negligible effect in attaining
national independence. Some revolutionary activity occurred during the
rise of Albanian nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Albanian insurgents and Ottoman forces clashed as early as
1884, but although Albanians resisted Ottoman oppression against
themselves, they supported the Ottoman Turks in their hostilities with
the Greeks and Slavs. By 1901 about 8,000 armed Albanians were assembled
in Shkod�r, but a situation resembling anarchy more than revolution
prevailed in the country during the early 1900s. There were incidents of
banditry and pillage, arrests, and many futile Ottoman efforts to
restore order. Guerrilla activity increased after 1906, and there were
several incidents that produced martyrs but were not marked by great
numbers of casualties. Although it was disorganized and never assumed
the proportions of a serious struggle, the resistance was, nevertheless,
instrumental in maintaining the pressure that brought international
attention to the aspirations of Albanian nationalists who proclaimed
Albania's independence on November 28, 1912.
Albanian forces played a minor role in the First Balkan War of
1912-13, in which Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece attempted to eliminate
the last vestiges of Ottoman control over the Balkans. At the end of
1912, however, the Ottoman Turks held only the Shkod�r garrison, which
they did not surrender until April 1913. After the Second Balkan War,
when the Great Powers prevailed upon the Montenegrins who had laid siege
to Shkod�r to withdraw, independent Albania was recognized. However,
less than 50 percent of the ethnic Albanians living in the Balkans were
included within the boundaries of the new state. Large numbers of
Albanians were left in Montenegro, Macedonia, and especially Kosovo
(see Glossary), sowing the seeds for potential ethnic conflict in the
future.
World War I began before Albania could establish a viable government,
much less form, train, and equip a military establishment. It was
essentially a noncombatant nation that served as a battleground for the
belligerents. However, during the war, it was occupied alternately by
countries of each alliance. In 1916 it was the scene of fighting between
AustroHungarian forces and Italian, French, and Greek forces. In 1918
the Austro-Hungarians were finally driven out of Albania by the Italians
and the French. Albania emerged from the war with its territorial
integrity intact, although Serbia, Montenegro, Italy, and Greece had
sought to partition it. Italy, in particular, had entered the war on the
side of the Triple Entente with the aim of acquiring parts of northern
Albania.
Ahmed Zogu created the first armed national forces of any
consequence. He served as minister of the internal affairs and minister
of war until 1922 and prime minister thereafter, except for a brief
period of exile in 1924. Before 1925 these forces consisted of about
5,000 men, who were selected from Zogu's home district to ensure their
loyalty to him. In 1925 Albania began drafting men according to a policy
of universal conscription that was carried out with Italian assistance
and allowed a considerable degree of Italian control. The initial drafts
yielded about 5,000 to 6,000 troops per year from the approximately
10,000 men who annually reached the eligible age. The Italians equipped
and provided most of the training and tactical guidance to Albanian
forces and therefore exercised virtual command over them.
Under pressure from a more proximate Yugoslav threat to its
territorial integrity, Albania placed its security in Italian hands in
November 1927 when it signed the Second Treaty of Tiran�. The original
treaty, signed one year earlier, pledged the parties to mutual respect
for the territorial status quo between them. The successor document
established a twenty-year alliance and a program of military cooperation
between them. Thus, Albania became a virtual protectorate of Italy, with
the latter receiving oil rights, permission to build an industrial and
military infrastructure, and a high-profile role in Albania's military
leadership and domestic political affairs.
At about the same time, the Gendarmerie was formed with British
assistance. Although its director was Albanian, a British general served
as its inspector general and other British officers filled its staff. It
became an effective internal security and police organization. The
Gendarmerie had a commandant in each of Albania's ten prefectures, a
headquarters in each subprefecture (up to eight in one prefecture), and
an office in each of nearly 150 local communities. For many years, it
had the most complete telephone system in the country. The Italians
objected strenuously, but King Zog, as Zogu became in 1928, relied on
the Gendarmerie as a personal safeguard against the pervasive Italian
influence within his regular armed forces. He kept the force under his
direct control and retained its British advisers until 1938. Zog also
retained a sizable armed group from his home region as an additional
precaution.
Albania - World War II
King Zog's effort to reduce Italian control over his armed forces was
insufficient to save them from quick humiliation when the Italians
attacked on April 7, 1939. Although annual conscription had generated a
trained reserve of at least 50,000 men, the Albanian government lacked
the time to mobilize it in defense of the country. The weak Albanian
resistance, consisting of 14,000 men against the Italian force of
40,000, was overcome within one week, and Italy occupied and annexed the
country. Later in 1939, the Italians subsumed some Albanian forces into
their units. They gained little, however, from Albanian soldiers, who
were unwilling to fight for the occupying power, even against their
traditional Greek enemies. They deserted in large numbers.
Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist premier, and his Axis partners
viewed Albania as a strategic path through the Balkans from which to
challenge British forces in Egypt and throughout North Africa. Albania
served as the bridgehead for Mussolini's invasion of Greece in October
1940, and Italy committed eight of its ten divisions occupying the
country.
The Albanian Communist Party and its armed resistance forces were
organized by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1941 and subsequently
supported and dominated by it. Resistance to the Italian occupation
gathered strength slowly around the partycontrolled National Liberation
Movement (NLM, predecessor of the NLF) and the liberal National Front.
Beginning in September 1942, small armed units of the NLF initiated a
guerrilla war against superior Italian forces, using the mountainous
terrain to their advantage. The National Front, by contrast, avoided
combat, having concluded that the Great Powers, not armed struggle,
would decide Albania's fate after the war.
After March 1943, the NLM formed its first and second regular
battalions, which subsequently became brigades, to operate along with
existing smaller and irregular units. Resistance to the occupation grew
rapidly as signs of Italian weakness became apparent. At the end of
1942, guerrilla forces numbered no more than 8,000 to 10,000. By the
summer of 1943, when the Italian effort collapsed, almost all of the
mountainous interior was controlled by resistance units.
The NLM formally established the National Liberation Army (NLA) in
July 1943 with Spiro Moisiu as its military chief and Enver Hoxha as its
political officer. It had 20,000 regular soldiers and guerrillas in the
field by that time. However, the NLA's military activities in 1943 were
directed as much against the party's domestic political opponents,
including prewar liberal, nationalist, and monarchist parties, as
against the occupation forces.
Mussolini was overthrown in July 1943, and Italy formally withdrew
from Albania in September. Seven German divisions took over the
occupation from their Italian allies, however. Four of the divisions,
totalling over 40,000 troops, began a winter offensive in November 1943
against the NLA in southern Albania, where most of the armed resistance
to the Wehrmacht and support for the communist party was concentrated.
They inflicted devastating losses on NLA forces in southern Albania in
January 1944. The resistance, however, regrouped and grew as final
defeat for the Axis partners appeared certain. By the end of 1944, the
NLA probably totaled about 70,000 men organized into several divisions.
It fought in major battles for Tiran� and Shkod�r and pursued German
forces into Kosovo at the end of the war. By its own account, the NLA
killed, wounded, or captured 80,000 Italian and German soldiers while
suffering about 28,000 casualties.
The communist-controlled NLF and NLA had solidified their hold over
the country by the end of October 1944. Some units, including one whose
political officer, Ramiz Alia, would eventually succeed Enver Hoxha as
leader of Albania, went on to fight the Germans in Albanian-populated
regions of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. Hoxha had risen rapidly from
his post as political officer of the NLA to leadership of the communist
party, and he headed the communist government that controlled the
country at the end of World War II. Albania became the only East
European state in which the communists gained power without the support
of the Soviet Union's Red Army. They relied instead on advice and
substantial assistance from Yugoslav communists and Allied forces in
occupied Italy.
Albania - Postwar Development
Initially, Albania's postwar military forces were equipped and
trained according to Yugoslavia's model. Between 1945 and 1948,
Yugoslavia's control over the Albanian armed forces was tighter than
Italy's had been. In addition to having military advisers and
instructors in regular units, Yugoslav political officers established
party control over the Albanian military to ensure its reliability and
loyalty.
Albania was involved in several skirmishes early in the Cold War. In
1946 its coastal artillery batteries fired on British and Greek ships in
the Corfu Channel. Later that year, two British destroyers were damaged
by Albanian mines in the channel. Together with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia,
Albania aided communist forces in the civil war in Greece between 1946
and 1948 and allowed them to establish operational bases on its
territory.
Yugoslavia used its close alliance with Albania to establish a strong
pro-Yugoslav faction within the Albanian Communist Party. Led by Koci
Xoxe, the group served Yugoslav interests on the issue of ethnic
Albanians in Yugoslavia. It also cultivated pro-Yugoslav elements within
the military and security forces to enhance its influence. It sought a
close alliance, a virtual union, of communist states in the Balkans,
including Albania, under its leadership. However, when Yugoslavia
embarked on its separate road to socialism in 1948 and was subsequently
expelled from the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform--see
Glossary), Albania used the opportunity to escape the overwhelming
Yugoslav influence. The nation completely severed its ties with
Yugoslavia and aligned itself directly with the Soviet Union.
The shift to Soviet patronage did not substantially change Albania's
military organization or equipment because Yugoslav forces had followed
the Soviet pattern until 1948. Albania joined the Soviet-led Warsaw
Treaty Organization (see Glossary), popularly known as the Warsaw
Pact, on May 14, 1955, but did not participate in joint Warsaw Pact
military exercises because of its distance from other members of the
alliance. Soviet aid to Albania included advisory personnel, a
considerable supply of conventional weapons, surplus naval vessels from
World War II, and aircraft. Albania provided the Soviet Union with a
strategically located base for a submarine flotilla at Sazan Island,
near Vlor�, which gave it access to the Mediterranean Sea. Albania also served as a pressure point for Stalin's campaign
against Yugoslavia's independent stance within the communist camp.
Albania preferred the Soviet Union to Yugoslavia as an ally because its
distance and lack of a common border appeared to limit the extent to
which it could interfere in Albania's internal affairs.
Albania's relations with the Soviet Union were strained in 1956 when
Nikita Khrushchev improved Soviet relations with Yugoslavia. Hoxha
feared that, as part of the rapprochement with Yugoslavia, Khrushchev
would allow Tito to reestablish Yugoslavia's earlier influence in
Albania. Albanian-Soviet ties deteriorated rapidly in 1961, when Albania
joined China in opposing the Soviet de-Stalinization campaign in the
communist world. De-Stalinization was a threat to the
political survival of an unreconstructed Stalinist like Hoxha. The
Soviet Union cancelled its military aid program to Albania, withdrew its
military advisers, and forced Albanian officers studying in Soviet
military schools to return home in April 1961. Albania in turn revoked
Soviet access to Sazan Island, and Soviet submarines returned home in
June 1961. Albania broke diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union on
December 19, 1961; it became an inactive member of the Warsaw Pact but
did not formally withdraw from the alliance until 1968.
As tensions grew between Albania and the Soviet Union, Albania had
sought Chinese patronage. In the 1960s, China succeeded the Soviet Union
as Albania's sole patron. Albania provided China with little practical
support, but its value as an international political ally was sufficient
for the Chinese to continue military assistance. China provided aid in
quantities required to maintain the armed forces at about the same
levels of personnel and equipment that they had achieved when they were
supported by the Soviet Union. The shift to Chinese training and
equipment, however, probably caused some deterioration in the tactical
and technical proficiency of Albanian military personnel.
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 Tiran� and
southern Albania into Geg-inhabited northern regions where neither the
party nor the NLA enjoyed strong support from the population. 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.
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.
Albania - DEFENSE ORGANIZATION
As chief of both party and state, Enver Hoxha was commander in chief
and had direct authority over the People's Army until his death in 1985.
His successor, Ramiz Alia, also had a strong connection to the People's
Army through his military career, having reached the rank of lieutenant
colonel and political officer in the Fifth Division of the NLA at the
age of nineteen. According to the constitution adopted in 1976, the
People's Assembly, a unicameral legislative body, had authority to
declare mobilization, a state of emergency, or war. This authority
devolved to the president when the People's Assembly was not in session,
which was more often than not under communist rule, or was unable to
meet because of the exigencies of a surprise attack on Albania.
Albania's interim constitutional law, published in December 1990 and
enacted in April 1991, made the president commander in chief of the
People's Army and chairman of the relatively small Defense Council,
composed of key party leaders and government officials whose ministries
would be critical to directing military operations, production, and
communications in wartime.
The People's Army encompassed ground, air and air defense, and naval
forces. It reported to the minister of people's defense, who was a
member of the Council of Ministers and was, by law, selected by the
People's Assembly. The minister of defense had traditionally been a
deputy prime minister and member of the Political Bureau (Politburo) of
the party. He exercised day-to- day administrative control and, through
the chief of the general staff, operational control over all elements of
the military establishment. The chief of the general staff was second in
command of the defense establishment. He had traditionally been a
candidate member of the Politburo. Each commander of a service branch
was also a deputy minister of defense and advised the minister of
people's defense on issues relative to his service and coordinated its
activities within the ministry. Each represented his service in national
defense planning.
The major administrative divisions of the People's Army served all
three services. These divisions included the political, personnel,
intelligence, and counterintelligence directorates; the military
prosecutor's office; and the rear and medical services. The intelligence
directorate collected and reported information on foreign armies,
especially those of neighboring Yugoslavia and Greece. The military
prosecutor's office was responsible for military justice. It organized
military courts composed of a chairman, vice chairman, and several
assistant judges. The courts heard a variety of cases covered by the
military section of the penal code. Military crimes included breaches of
military discipline, regulations, and orders as well as political crimes
against the state and the socialist order. Military personnel, reserves,
security forces, and local police were subject to the jurisdiction of
military courts. The medical service had departments within each of the
military branches providing hospital and pharmaceutical services. At the
national level, it cooperated closely with the Ministry of Health, using
military personnel, facilities, and equipment to improve sanitary and
medical conditions throughout the country and to provide emergency
medical assistance during natural disasters.
Albania - Political Control
The Albanian Party of Labor (APL) had an active and dominant
organization within the armed forces until it lost its monopoly on
political power in 1991. The postcommunist political complexion of the
military was only beginning to evolve in early 1992. The great majority
of officers in the armed services were still party members in early 1992
(the party was renamed in June 1991 as the Socialist Party of Albania).
The communist-dominated coalition government, which emerged from the
spring 1991 elections, promised a sweeping military reform that included
the depoliticization of the armed forces. The Political Directorate of
the People's Army, however, continued to exist as part of the Ministry
of Defense. The Political Directorate controlled political officers
within all services and units of the armed forces. The communist
leadership considered the directorate essential to ensure that the armed
forces conformed with ideology as interpreted by the party.
The reliability of senior military leaders was assured by their
membership in the party. All students over eighteen years of age in
military schools were also party members. Younger students were members
of the Union of Albanian Working Youth and were organized into the
party's youth committee in the army. Political officers indoctrinated
conscripts with communist ideology and the party line. Reinforcing the
actions of officers and military courts, they helped ensure discipline
in military units. They had authority to take action against soldiers
whose attitudes or conduct was considered contrary to the efficiency or
good order of the armed forces. Probably only a very few of the
conscripts were party members, but nearly all were members of the youth
organization.
In 1966 Hoxha abolished rank designations and uniforms, condemning
them as unhealthy bourgeois class distinctions, in keeping with a
similar Chinese move. This measure was intended to make the military
more egalitarian by bringing officers closer to the soldiers under their
command. It also reinforced party control over the military by reducing
the prestige and independence of its leadership as well as its potential
to become a political power center rivaling the party. Military
professionalism became a secondary consideration to political
reliability in determining promotions.
Since World War II, the abrupt shifts in Albanian foreign policy
resulted in purges of the officer corps. Those officers trained in or
closely linked with Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, or China were purged
from the ranks and even executed as traitors when alliances with these
countries came to an end.
Fearing a decline in his authority and party control over the
People's Army, Hoxha also conducted a major purge of its senior officers
during 1974. He dismissed and later executed his longtime ally and
minister of defense Beqir Balluku as well as the chief of staff and
chief of the political directorate. He replaced Balluku with Mehmet
Shehu, who was prime minister, another close associate of many years who
had established the military and security forces in the late 1940s.
Shehu was a founder of the guerrilla movement during World War II who
attained the rank of lieutenant general. He was its most capable
military leader, but he apparently committed suicide after he and party
officials tied closely to him were purged in 1981. Prokop Murra, a
relatively junior candidate member of the Politburo, succeeded Shehu as
minister of defense and became a full member of the Politburo in 1986.
Kico Mustaqi became chief of the general staff and first deputy minister
of defense, as well as a candidate member of the Politburo, in 1986.
Military influence in politics was restored to its earlier level when
Mustaqi became minister of defense and a full member of the Politburo in
1990. This closer integration of the military into the political
leadership may have been an effort to ensure its loyalty at a time of
social unrest at home and communist disintegration in Eastern Europe. In
early 1991, however, President Alia replaced Mustaqi with Muhamet
Karakaci, a young former officer and deputy chief of the general staff.
Alia reportedly feared that Mustaqi was planning a military coup d'�tat.
In November 1991, the communist-dominated coalition government
reintroduced military ranks and Western-style uniforms in place of plain
Chinese fatigues. It pledged to emphasize military professionalism,
training, and discipline and to eliminate political indoctrination from
the military. The Albanian Democratic Party called for reforms in the
armed forces to include reductions in military spending, military units,
and conscription and the reorganization of unit structures. It proposed
and initiated an effort to establish contacts and cooperation with
Western military establishments, particularly Turkey's, and to send
Albanian officers to study and train in foreign military academies. The
chief of staff of the People's Army attended the East-West Seminar on
Military Doctrines in Vienna for the first time in 1991.
Albania - People's Army
The ground forces had about 35,000 men, or about threequarters of all
armed forces personnel. Because the strength of the ground forces was
sufficient to man only about two divisions, brigades of approximately
3,000 soldiers became the largest army formation. In 1991 four infantry
brigades constituted the bulk of combat units in the ground forces.
During the 1980s, Albania had reduced the number of infantry brigades
from eight to four. It had shifted to fully manned units from its prior
reliance on the mobilization of reserve soldiers to flesh out a larger
number of units manned at a lower level. Each brigade had three infantry
battalions and one lightly equipped artillery battalion. Armored forces
consisted of one tank brigade. Artillery forces were increased from one
to three regiments during the 1980s, and six battalions of coastal
artillery were maintained at strategic points along the Adriatic Sea
littoral.
Most equipment used by the ground forces was old, and its
effectiveness was questionable. In addition, shortages of spare parts
for Soviet and Chinese equipment reduced combat readiness. The infantry
brigades lacked mechanization, operating only about 130 armored
personnel carriers. They included Soviet BTR-40, BTR50 , BTR-152, and
BRDM-1 vehicles produced in the 1950s and Chinese Type-531 armored
vehicles. Armored forces were equipped with 200 Soviet-made T-34 and
T-54 tanks. The T-34 was a World War II model, and the more recent T-54
was introduced during the late 1950s. Soviet and Chinese artillery in
the ground forces inventory was towed rather than self-propelled. It
included Soviet M-1937 and D-1 howitzers and Chinese Type-66 152mm guns,
Chinese Type-59 130mm guns, Soviet M-1931/37 and M-1938 guns of 122mm,
and Chinese Type-60 guns of 122mm. The ground forces also operated
Chinese Type-63 107mm multiple rocket launchers and a large number of
Soviet and Chinese mortars, recoilless rifles, and antitank guns.
Organic air defense equipment for protecting ground forces units
consisted of several types of Soviet towed antiaircraft guns, including
the 23mm ZU-23-2, 37mm M-1939, 57mm S-60, and 85mm KS-12.
The lack of modern equipment was a major deficiency in the ground
forces. The infantry lacked mobility and antitank guided missiles.
Moreover, without mobile surface-to-air missiles or radar-controlled
antiaircraft guns, army units would be vulnerable to attack by modern
fighter-bombers or ground-attack aircraft. Yet the obsolescent weapons
of the ground forces were suited to the relatively low technical skill
of the country's soldiers as well as its rugged terrain. The tactical skill of the officers might make it possible to
deploy this older equipment successfully for a short period in a static
defensive posture. A defensive operation that prevented an enemy from
rapidly neutralizing Albanian opposition would enable Albania to seek
international diplomatic or military assistance against an aggressor.
Alternatively, it would gain time and retain the military equipment
needed to establish a long-term guerrilla force capable of resisting a
better armed conventional occupation army. The logistical support
required to resupply and maintain such a defense, however, was either
lacking or nearly impossible to achieve over much of the terrain.
Albania - Air and Air Defense Forces
Traditionally most armed forces conscripts served for two years.
Conscripts in the air and air defense and naval forces as well as
noncommissioned officers and technical specialists in certain units
served three years. In 1991, however, the freely elected,
communist-controlled coalition government reduced the basic two-year
term of service to eighteen months. This shorter term of service for
conscripts and the small size of the People's Army would force Albania
to rely on large-scale mobilization to mount a credible defense of the
country. Given the small population and economy of Albania, full
mobilization would seriously disrupt the civilian production and
logistics necessary to sustain military operations. The military reserve
training needed to support mobilization plans also imposed a burden on
the country's economic activity. The population was relatively young,
with fully 60 percent under the age of thirty. There were just under
500,000 males between the ages of fifteen and fifty. Of this total
number, approximately 75 percent, or nearly 375,000, were physically
suited to carry out military duties. More than half of them had had
prior military service and participated in reserve military activities
on an annual basis. Women were also trained in the reserves and
available for mobilization, although in unknown numbers.
In the early 1990s plans for expanding the existing military
establishment during mobilization were unclear to Western observers.
Prior to the 1980s, the ground forces maintained a peacetime structure
with low personnel strength and low combat readiness. Divisions would be
brought to full strength and readiness through the mobilization of
reserves, but the smaller brigade structure introduced in the 1980s made
it unlikely that newly mobilized soldiers could be integrated into
existing units in the regular ground forces in wartime. Mobilized troops
were more likely to be employed as light infantry, special forces, or
guerrillas rather than in more technically oriented tank, artillery, air
and air defense, or naval units. However, the possibility of mobilizing
a substantial segment of the population for guerrilla warfare against an
aggressor was evident in the large paramilitary training program. The
emphasis on paramilitary training increased after the Soviet-led Warsaw
Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 demonstrated potential
weaknesses in Albania's plans to meet an attack by a large, well-trained
aggressor force.
In the late 1980s, even communist-controlled Albanian sources
referred to serious problems with the attitudes of young people who were
conscripted into the People's Army. They described social malaise, a
growth in religious belief, increasing crime, and unwillingness to
accept assignments to remote areas of the country. Moreover, the system
of social discipline that enforced obligatory military service under
communist rule had completely disappeared by January 1992. Poor food,
changing living and working conditions, and low pay led to increasing
dereliction of duty, absence without leave, and desertion. More than 500
soldiers were among the thousands of Albanians who fled to Italy and
Greece in 1991. The reduction in conscript service to eighteen months in
1991 exacerbated the serious and growing problem of unemployment among
the male draft-age population. In early 1992, the problems of manning
the People's Army continued to mount.
Albania - Conscript Training
Enver Hoxha was one of the last Stalinist leaders in Eastern Europe
and continued to employ Stalinist techniques for controlling the
population long after most other East European countries had shifted
from outright terror and repression to more subtle
bureaucratic-authoritarian methods. Western observers believed that no
other communist country had as extensive a police and security
organization relative to its size as the one that operated in Albania.
Hoxha regarded the security police as an elite group, and it
underpinned the power of the ACP and then the APL during the period they
dominated Albania's one-party political system. The secret police was
instrumental in enabling Hoxha and the communist party to consolidate
power after 1944 by conducting a campaign of intimidation and terror
against prewar politicians and rival groups. Persecution of these
opponents in show trials on charges of treason, conspiracy, subversion,
espionage, or anti-Albanian agitation and propaganda became common. From
1948 until the early 1960s, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was
involved in the search for real or alleged Yugoslav agents or Titoists
in Albania, and the ministry itself was an initial battleground in the
purge of Yugoslav influence. Yugoslav control of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs ran deep in the years immediately following World War
II. Its chief, Koci Xoxe, was part of the pro-Yugoslav faction of the
party and a rival to Hoxha. In 1949, however, he was arrested, convicted
in a secret trial, and executed.
Hoxha maintained a Stalinist political system even after the
communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China had long since moderated
their totalitarian or radical excesses. In the last years of Hoxha's
life, the Directorate of State Security (Drejtorija e Sigurimit te
Shtetit--Sigurimi), increased its political power, perhaps to the extent
of supplanting party control. After Hoxha's death, the security forces
viewed his successor, Ramiz Alia, and his modest reforms with suspicion.
In the late 1980s, they reportedly supported a group of conservatives
centered around Hoxha's widow, in opposition to Alia.
Under Hoxha the communist regime essentially ignored internationally
recognized standards of human rights. According to a landmark Amnesty
International report published in 1984, Albania's human rights record
was dismal under Hoxha. The regime denied its citizens freedom of
expression, religion, movement, and association although the
constitution of 1976 ostensibly guaranteed each of these rights. In
fact, the constitution effectively circumscribed the exercise of
political liberties that the regime interpreted as contrary to the
established socialist order. In addition, the regime tried to deny the
population access to information other than that disseminated by the
government-controlled media. The secret police routinely violated the
privacy of persons, homes, and communications and made arbitrary
arrests. The courts ensured that verdicts were rendered from the party's
political perspective rather than affording due process to the accused,
who were occasionally sentenced without even the formality of a trial.
After Hoxha's death, Alia was apparently unable or unwilling to
maintain the totalitarian system of terror, coercion, and repression
that Hoxha had employed to maintain his grip on the party and the
country. Alia relaxed the most overt Stalinist controls over the
population and instructed the internal security structure to use more
subtle, bureaucratic-authoritarian mechanisms characteristic of the
post-Stalin Soviet Union and East European regimes. He allowed greater
contact with the outside world, including eased travel restrictions for
Albanians, although the Sigurimi demanded bribes equivalent to six
months' salary for the average Albanian to obtain the documents needed
for a passport. More foreigners were allowed to visit Albania, and they
reported a generally more relaxed atmosphere among the population as
well as a less repressive political and antireligious climate. Official
sources admitted that social discipline, especially among young
Albanians, was breaking down in the late 1980s. The country's youth
increasingly refused to accept and even openly rejected the values
advanced under the official communist ideology. Moreover, small-scale
rebellions were reported more frequently after Hoxha's death. Yet these
developments did not alter the regime's exclusive hold on political
power after the 1980s.
The dramatic collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe in 1989
apparently had a devastating effect on the internal social and political
situation in Albania despite Alia's efforts to contain it. Massive
demonstrations against communist rule followed by liberalization and
democratization in Eastern Europe began to affect Albania in 1990. The
power of the security police was successfully challenged by massive
numbers of largely unorganized demonstrators demanding reforms and
democratic elections. Unrest began with demonstrations in Shkod�r in
January 1990 that forced authorities to declare a state of emergency to
quell the protests. Berat workers staged strikes protesting low wages in
May. During July 1990, approximately 5,000 Albanians sought refuge on
the grounds of foreign embassies in an effort to flee Albania. The
security forces reportedly killed hundreds of asylum seekers either in
the streets outside foreign compounds or after they were detained, but
even such extreme measures did not staunch the unrest.
In September 1990, Alia acceded to the requirements of the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe, committing Albania to respect the
human rights and political freedoms embodied in the 1975 Helsinki
Accords. When students organized demonstrations in December 1990, their
demands for political pluralism received widespread support. Attempts by riot police to break up the
demonstrations failed, and the party's Central Committee, in an
extraordinary meeting called by Alia to discuss the growing unrest,
decided not to use further force. The following year, the security
forces were not in evidence at large political demonstrations and were
unable to stop thousands of refugees from boarding ships bound for Italy
or from crossing the border into Greece. However, the security forces
attempted to maintain control by forcing the authorities to give the
People's Army control over the ports of Vlor�, Durr�s, Shengjin, and
Sarand�. The army was ordered to clear the ports of potential refugees
and to establish a blockade around them.
Albania - Penal Code
The communist regime maintained an extensive system of prisons and
labor camps, including six institutions for political prisoners, nine
for nonpolitical prisoners, and fourteen where political prisoners
served their sentences together with regular criminals. Inmates provided
the state's vital mining industry with an inexpensive source of labor.
In 1985 there were an estimated 32,000 prisoners in the country.
Conditions in the prisons and labor camps were abysmal. Maltreatment
as well as physical and mental torture of political prisoners and other
prisoners of conscience were common. Sporadic strikes and rebellions in
the labor camps, to which the Sigurimi often responded with military
force, resulted in the death of more than 1,000 prisoners as well as the
execution of many survivors after they were suppressed.
Many political prisoners were purged party officials and their
relatives. Reflecting Hoxha's paranoia, some of them were resentenced
without trial for allegedly participating in political conspiracies
while in prison. Former inmates reported that they managed to survive
their incarceration only through the assistance of relatives who brought
them food and money.
Under Alia, several amnesties resulted in the release of nearly 20
percent of the large prison and labor-camp population, although most of
those released were prisoners over the age of sixty who had already
served long terms. In 1991, for example, the APL attempted to improve
its popularity by pushing a sweeping amnesty law for political prisoners
through the communistdominated People's Assembly, and all such prisoners
were freed by the middle of the year. The amnesty law provided for the
rehabilitation of those incarcerated for political crimes, but not
persons convicted of terrorist acts that resulted in deaths or other
serious consequences. Specifically, it applied to persons sentenced for
agitation and propaganda against the state; participation in illegal
political organizations, meetings, or demonstrations; failure to report
crimes against the state; slandering or insulting the state; and absence
without leave or desertion from military service. It provided for
material compensation, including lost wages or pensions, for time spent
in prison; for preferential access to housing, education, and
employment; and gave compensatory damages to the families of political
prisoners who were executed or who died in detention without trial.
Finally, it established a commission that included members of the new,
independent Association of Former Political Prisoners to investigate
atrocities carried out by the state.
Albania - Security Forces
Until April 1991, all security and police forces were responsible to
the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which also exercised authority over
the judicial system and the implementation and enforcement of the
country's laws. In January 1991, the minister of internal affairs, Simon
Stefani, held both high communist party and government posts as a member
of the Politburo and as one of three deputy prime ministers.
Each security or police organization--the Sigurimi, the Frontier
Guards, and the People's Police--constituted a separate directorate
within the ministry; each had a larger proportion of personnel who were
party members than the armed forces because of the need for political
reliability. In the Sigurimi, for example, nearly all serving personnel
were believed to be party members. In the Frontier Guards and People's
Police, all officers and many other personnel were party members.
The Sigurimi were the security police forces. Organized to protect
the party and government system, these forces were responsible for
suppressing deviation from communist ideology and for investigating
serious crimes on a national scale. Frontier Guards, as their name
implied, maintained the security of state borders. The People's Police
were the local or municipal police.
In April 1991, shortly after the country's first free elections, the
communist-dominated People's Assembly abolished the Ministry of Internal
Affairs. It was replaced by a new Ministry of Public Order with
authority over the People's Police. In addition, the chairman of a new
National Security Committee within the Council of Ministers was given
control over the Sigurimi. Both organizations, however, were headed by
the same officials who had directed them within the old Ministry of
Internal Affairs.
In July 1991, the communist-dominated legislature abolished the
Sigurimi and established a new National Information Service (NIS) in its
place. It was unclear to Western observers to what extent the new
organization would be different from its muchhated predecessor because
at least some of its personnel probably had served in the Sigurimi. Only
former Sigurimi leaders were excluded from the new NIS. Opponents of the
Sigurimi argued that former officers should not be rehired but replaced
with new, untainted government employees. The officers, however, argued
that the new organization needed experienced investigators who had not
violated existing laws or abused their power as Sigurimi officers.
The NIS's stated mission was to enforce the constitution and laws of
Albania and the civil rights of its citizens. It was forbidden to
conduct unauthorized investigations, and it was required to respect the
rights of citizens in every case except instances in which the
constitution itself had been violated. Political activities within the
NIS were banned.
In 1991 the rate of reported homicides doubled and robberies tripled
over the similar period in 1990. Instances of illegal possession and use
of firearms were reported. The increase in violent crime was viewed so
seriously that some citizens believed that social anarchy was
overwhelming the state's ability to handle it. The end of the party's
monopoly on political power and the curbing of the coercive power of the
state's law enforcement mechanism gave many common criminals courage to
act. The minister of public order cited a general breakdown in law
enforcement and public safety in Albania in 1991. He reported that many
crimes were being committed by unemployed individuals, common criminals
inadvertently released from prison under political amnesties, and
citizens taking revenge on officials of the former communist regime. He
blamed many problems of the police on their former cooperation with the
Sigurimi in its role of protecting the party and state against the
citizens. According to the minister, the police would be depoliticized,
and patriotic, legal, and professional training would replace their
former political indoctrination.
When the People's Assembly established the Ministry of Public Order,
it placed the Frontier Guards and the Directorate of Prison
Administration, both of which had been in the Ministry of Internal
Affairs, in the Ministry of People's Defense and the Ministry Justice,
respectively. Shortly thereafter, in an effort to stem the flow of
Albanian refugees and growing problems with drug trafficking through
Albanian territory, Italy signed a cooperation agreement with Albania
under which it would help train and equip the demoralized police and
Frontier Guards. Albania sought similar assistance from Finland and
Romania and applied to join the International Police Organization
(Interpol). The head of the Directorate of Prison Administration pledged
to improve physical conditions in Albania's prisons, to terminate
routine detention of minors with adults, and to introduce corrective,
educational, and recreational programs.
The Directorate of Law and Order, the Directorate of Criminal Police,
and the Directorate of Forces for the Restoration of Order--the latter
presumably being special riot control units-- remained under the control
of the Ministry of Public Order. In defense of his decision not to
reorganize, the minister of public order cited difficulties in
attempting to restructure the police force when crime was increasing
rapidly. He also noted that planned cutbacks would reduce police
personnel by 30 percent. Many Albanians, however, blamed years of
communist dictatorship and poverty for allowing economic conditions to
deteriorate to the point where the system collapsed in a crime wave and
local disorder. Some citizens believed that they needed the right to
carry arms as protection against increasing violent crime and social
anarchy.
Albania - Directorate of State Security
The Directorate of State Security, or Sigurimi, which was abolished
in July 1991 and replaced by the NIS, celebrated March 20, 1943, as its
founding day. Hoxha typically credited the Sigurimi as having been
instrumental in his faction's gaining power in Albania over other
partisan groups. The People's Defense Division, formed in 1945 from
Hoxha's most reliable resistance fighters, was the precursor to the
Sigurimi's 5,000 uniformed internal security force. In 1989 the division
was organized into five regiments of mechanized infantry that could be
ordered to quell domestic disturbances posing a threat to the party
leadership. The Sigurimi had an estimated 10,000 officers, approximately
2,500 of whom were assigned to the People's Army. It was organized with
both a national headquarters and district headquarters in each of
Albania's twenty-six districts.
The mission of the Sigurimi and presumably its successor was to
prevent revolution and to suppress opposition to the regime. Although
groups of Albanian �migr�s sought Western support for their efforts to
overthrow the communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they quickly
ceased to be a credible threat to the communist regime because of the
effectiveness of the Sigurimi.
The activities of the Sigurimi were directed more toward political
and ideological opposition than crimes against persons or property,
unless the latter were sufficiently serious and widespread to threaten
the regime. Its activities permeated Albanian society to the extent that
every third citizen had either served time in labor camps or been
interrogated by Sigurimi officers. Sigurimi personnel were generally
career volunteers, recommended by loyal party members and subjected to
careful political and psychological screening before they were selected
to join the service. They had an elite status and enjoyed many
privileges designed to maintain their reliability and dedication to the
party.
The Sigurimi was organized into sections covering political control,
censorship, public records, prison camps, internal security troops,
physical security, counterespionage, and foreign intelligence. The
political control section's primary function was monitoring the
ideological correctness of party members and other citizens. It was
responsible for purging the party, government, military, and its own
apparatus of individuals closely associated with Yugoslavia, the Soviet
Union, or China after Albania broke from successive alliances with each
of those counties. One estimate indicated that at least 170 communist
party Politburo or Central Committee members were executed as a result
of the Sigurimi's investigations. The political control section was also
involved in an extensive program of monitoring private telephone
conversations. The censorship section operated within the press, radio,
newspapers, and other communications media as well as within cultural
societies, schools, and other organizations. The public records section
administered government documents and statistics, primarily social and
economic statistics that were handled as state secrets. The prison camps
section was charged with the political reeducation of inmates and the
evaluation of the degree to which they posed a danger to society. Local
police supplied guards for fourteen prison camps throughout the country.
The physical security section provided guards for important party and
government officials and installations. The counterespionage section was
responsible for neutralizing foreign intelligence operations in Albania
as well as domestic movements and parties opposed to the party. Finally,
the foreign intelligence section maintained personnel abroad and at home
to obtain intelligence about foreign capabilities and intentions that
affected Albania's national security. Its officers occupied cover
positions in Albania's foreign diplomatic missions, trade offices, and
cultural centers.
In early 1992, information on the organization, responsibilities, and
functions of the NIS was not available in Western publications. Some
Western observers believed, however, that many of the officers and
leaders of the NIS had served in the Sigurimi and that the basic
structures of the two organizations were similar.
Albania - Frontier Guards
In 1989, the People's Police had five branches: the Police for
Economic Objectives, Communications Police, Fire Police, Detention
Police, and General Police. The Police for Economic Objectives served as
a guard force for state buildings, factories, construction projects, and
similar enterprises. The Communications Police guarded Albania's lines
of communication including bridges, railroads, and the telephone and
telegraph network. Firefighting was also considered a police function
and was carried out by the Fire Police. The Detention Police served as
prison and labor camp guards. Finally, the General Police corresponded
to the local or municipal police in other countries and attended to
traffic regulation and criminal investigations.
Although the functions of the General Police overlapped with those of
the security police to some extent, the General Police operated at the
local rather than the national level. However, the headquarters of the
General Police in larger towns had internal security sections that
coordinated their activities with those of the security police. They
maintained records on political dissidents, Albanians outside their home
districts, and foreign visitors and resident aliens. They also monitored
the identification cards that Albanian citizens were required to carry.
These cards, which contained family and employment information and were
required for travel between cities and villages, constituted an
effective control over the movement of the population.
Service in the People's Police was usually a three-year obligation,
and individuals who had previously served in the armed services were
preferred. After 1989, however, detailed information on the operations,
staffing, and training of the People's Police was generally not known
outside of Albania.
Albania - Auxiliary Police
All able-bodied men were required by a 1948 law to spend two months
assisting the local police. They served with the People's Police in
their localities, wearing police uniforms that were distinguished by a
red armband. The Auxiliary Police provided additional manpower for the
regular police and also gave a large segment of the population
familiarity with, and presumably a more sympathetic understanding of,
police activities and problems.
In early 1992, the police and internal security forces were losing
the tight control they once held over the population. They, and the
regime they supported, were beginning to yield to the impact of the
popular, revolutionary forces had that toppled the other communist
regimes in Eastern Europe in late 1989 and 1990. Although poorer, more
isolated, and more repressed than the peoples of the other East European
communist countries, Albanians were beginning to assert their civil and
human rights.
* * *
Up-to-date English-language sources on Albania's armed forces and its
internal security apparatus are scarce because until 1991 Albania was
the most isolated and secretive state in Eastern Europe and in-depth
research on these subjects was inhibited. Albania's print and broadcast
media provided little information on the country's defense capabilities
or policies and even less on its internal security forces. The History
of Albania, from its Origins to the Present Day, by Stefanaq Pollo and
Arben Puto, and The Encyclopedia of Military History, by R. Ernest Dupuy
and Trevor Dupuy, present historical perspectives on Albania's national
security evolution. Klaus Lange's "Albanian Security Policies:
Concepts, Meaning, and Realisation," is the best, and perhaps only,
scholarly article exclusively dedicated to Albania's national security.
F. Stephen Larrabee and Daniel Nelson address Albania's historical and
strategic relationships with its neighbors in the Balkans, and
Yugoslavia in particular. Elez Biberaj's Albania: A Socialist Maverick
provides a valuable description of the political fortunes of party
officials in the national security apparatus and the impact of the
party's changing foreign policies on national security.
The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) translations of
broadcasts from the official Albanian news agency as well as
translations of Yugoslav and Greek broadcasts have been good sources on
internal security developments, especially since 1990. FBIS translations
of Yugoslav publications on the military and domestic unrest in Albania
are worthwhile and probably generally accurate despite Yugoslavia's
interest in portraying Albania in an unfavorable light. Louis Zanga, who
writes on Albania in Report on Eastern Europe for Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, occasionally discusses internal security matters.
The Military Balance, published annually by the International Institute
for Strategic Studies, also provides information on the changing
organizational structure, size, and equipment of the armed forces over
time.
