the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt fourteen)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

At the same time, the government maintained its pro-Western stance as a moderating force in the Balkans and, since 9/11, an enthusiastic contributor to the “war on terror.” A few hundred Albanian soldiers were already deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. In May 2004, before the elections, and again in October 2005, under Berisha, Albania helped the CIA with the agency’s network of illegal secret prisons for terrorism suspects—the so-called “black sites.” In 2006 Albania began accepting for resettlement some prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay.

In September 2006, Berisha hired former U.S. secretary of homeland security Tom Ridge as a consultant for $480,000 per year. The main goal, Berisha and Ridge announced, was to win Albania full membership in NATO. In violation of U.S. law, Ridge failed to register his contract with the U.S. government for twenty-one months, and he did so only after a Justice Department investigation. One month after signing up Ridge, Albania sealed a $535 million no-bid contract with the U.S. construction firm Bechtel and its Turkish partner Enka to build a thirty-seven-kilometer highway through the rugged northern mountains as part of an ambitious project to link the port of Durres with Kosovo. The Albanian minister who signed the deal, Lulzim Basha, was later indicted for fraud, but the case was dismissed on technical grounds after what the U.S. embassy called “shaky rulings” by the court.

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt thirteen)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

After blocking KLA supplies since November 1998, Prime Minister Majko opened the gates. Albania accepted thousands of young Kosovar men from abroad who wanted to fight. They came by plane and boat, leaving lives as students and workers in Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, and the United States. “I’m here to defend my people,” one young man told me as we rode the ferry from Italy to Durres, just before he vomited into the sea.

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt twelve)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

February 20 is an important date in Albania’s history, and Vlora’s citizens were keenly aware. Seven years before in Tirana, crowds had toppled Enver Hoxha’s monument in Skanderbeg Square, marking the symbolic end of the dictatorship. To commemorate the event in 1997, Vlora demonstrators raised three fingers in the air on February 17—two fingers and the thumb—as a sign that Berisha had three days left. The three-fingered salute, an evolution of the Democratic Party’s two-fingered victory sign for freedom and democracy, quickly spread through Albania as a symbol of anti-government rage.

For ethnic Albanians in Kosovo watching the revolt on television, the three fingers were a confusing and offensive shock. Kosovars knew the sign as a Serbian nationalist salute that police waved aggressively in their faces every day. “Is this Albania or Angola?” a stunned friend in Kosovo asked as we watched the Vlora protests on television. “Don’t they know what that means?”

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt eleven)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

By late 1995, the Bosnian war was coming to a close. The presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia signed the Dayton peace accords in December and the United Nations lifted sanctions on Yugoslavia. Overnight, Albania lost its lucrative oil market to the north. Albania had always maintained that its fuel imports only met domestic need, but with the sanctions busting gone, oil imports dropped.

One month later, the pyramid schemes began to shake. Without a steady income from smuggling, the schemes were forced to recruit an ever-growing number of investors. To attract new principal, they raised their monthly rates, setting in motion a downward spiral that ended in their dramatic crash.

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt ten)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

The business began with Albanian companies importing oil and fuel from Italy and Greece to the ports at Vlora and Durres, former Albanian government officials and financial police told me. Albania’s domestic fuel use had jumped with the legalization of private cars in 1991, but imports soon far exceeded what Albania consumed. By one count, in 1994 Albania imported double the amount of oil that it used. Once in Albania, the importers sold the fuel to smugglers who transported it north. Tankers deposited the fuel in one of the many gas stations that had sprung up near the border. Day and night, trucks brought fuel from the stations to Lake Shkoder, where smugglers loaded it onto boats for transport to Montenegro on the other side.

At first men loaded barrels onto dinghies. Soon they pumped gasoline and diesel through rubber hoses onto small barges. Eventually smugglers installed underground pipes. Because the Yugoslavs purchased oil and fuel with German marks, a correlation developed between Albania’s oil imports and the Albanian lek’s exchange rate with the mark: as imports increased, the lek climbed.

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt nine)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

The collapse of the Stability Government thrust Albania into a downward spiral of lawlessness that some have called the “time of dark forces.” The outgoing prime minister, Ylli Bufi, strangely announced that Albania had only one week of reserves for bread, causing frantic mobs to storm bakeries, warehouses, and shops. An estimated forty-five people died between December 1991 and February 1992 from riots and street violence. The all-powerful communist state had collapsed and nothing had taken its place.

Some villages organized the systematic dismantling of community centers and cooperatives, distributing the windows, roof tiles, wooden beams, and electric wires. But in many cases, thieves yanked up railway track, uprooted water pipes, and stole manhole covers. They ripped bars from Albania’s prisons. They felled the stately poplars that lined national roads and burned them for heat. “The trees are nice,” one man told a journalist. “But if we don’t cut them, the bandits from the next village will do it first.”

the last book I ever read (Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe, excerpt eight)

from Modern Albania: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Europe by Fred C. Abrahams:

The police action was a physical manifestation of Alia’s political strategy since 1989. Albanians’ desire for change had swelled like a wave, and no wall could withstand that force. Rather than build a useless defense, Alia channeled the flow into areas that could be managed and controlled.

Security forces waited in the square. Thousands of protesters milled about, some throwing rocks, thinking of Tiananmen Square, while looking at the thirty-foot-high bronze statue of Enver Hoxha, taller still atop his granite pedestal, standing like a lightning rod in a storm.

A crowd surged, was repelled by the police, and surged again, gaining confidence as its numbers grew. Proud and determined, Hoxha looked out over the square wearing a suit and long coat, with his left hand behind his back and right hand at his side. The crowd pushed. A boy climbed Hoxha’s coat and hooked a metal cable around the dictator’s thumb. Men pulled from the left, while others pushed from the right, and the Leader’s body began to tilt from side to side. Just after 2: 00 p.m., it separated from its base and came crashing down, predictably, to Hoxha’s left.