Albania's pain

When I was a curly-haired (and more ig­no­rant) twelve year old in the Cold War years of the early 1980s, one day our His­tory teacher asked the class a gen­eral knowl­edge ques­tion: “Who is the world's longest-serv­ing cur­rent dic­ta­tor?”

No­body had the cor­rect an­swer, though Chair­man Mao was one of the few re­sponses from the stu­dents. Mr Lamb (yes, that was his name) gave us some help­ful clues. “Come on now! He's been in power since 1944 and he's not from Asia.” But still, there was no idea run­ning through the de­vel­op­ing minds of those in the group. “It's the Com­mu­nist leader, Hoxha. Enver Hoxha in Al­ba­nia,” he told us and wrote this strange sound­ing name on the board.

A decade and a half later (after French-ed­u­cated Hoxha had been dead for al­most ten years) I started to de­velop a mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion with this coun­try - a place the wider world knew lit­tle about. I read Paul Th­er­oux's har­row­ing ac­count of a few weeks he spent trav­el­ling there and from a ferry leav­ing Greece I saw part of its coast: rough, dry and bar­ren of build­ings. I dis­cov­ered that both Al­ba­nia's past, equally as much as its pre­sent, beg­gars be­lief and this pulled me into its orbit.

By the time Hoxha had been claimed by di­a­betes at the age of sev­enty six, his regime had mod­ernised the econ­omy in a clas­si­cally Com­mu­nist way: at a huge cost to the lives of its cit­i­zens. All across Al­ba­nia, vi­cious his­tor­i­cal blood feuds be­tween fam­i­lies raged on and on unchecked and Hoxha's se­cret po­lice, the “sigourmi,” used net­works of or­di­nary peo­ple as in­form­ers on their work­mates and neigh­bours. Tens of thou­sands were jailed or dis­ap­peared (often in the kind of night­mar­ish cir­cum­stances that could come straight out of a Kafka story) and it's es­ti­mated that up to twenty per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion were killed or died in forced labour.

When Hoxha's sup­posed “worker's par­adise” came to an end there was a long, wide­spread orgy of gen­eral de­struc­tion of pub­lic prop­erty in­clud­ing fac­to­ries. Com­bined with mass un­em­ploy­ment, se­vere short­ages of food and fuel meant that the win­ter cold froze many peo­ple to death and thou­sands. Badly-needed pro­fes­sion­als and work­ing age men and women are still es­cap­ing to try to find work in neigh­bour­ing Greece or tak­ing the short ferry to an often equally poverty-stricken ex­is­tence in Italy. Some are going fur­ther away, in­clud­ing to Britain.

But even the years be­fore Hoxha were no less bizarre. Al­ba­nia's King Zog, who sur­vived five as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempts, mar­ried an aris­to­cratic half-Amer­i­can woman (hav­ing seen her in a photo.) The Al­ban­ian par­lia­ment in­sisted on see­ing the bloody night­gown from her wed­ding night, as proof of her vir­gin­ity. Their giant-sized only son Prince Leka moved to Spain, where he trained ex­iles for a planned guerilla war against Hoxha. Leka's com­bat prac­tice be­came too much even for Franco's gov­ern­ment and the prince's for­mer royal play­mate Juan Car­los was re­quested to ask Leka and his tribe to leave the coun­try in the mid 1970s. He then took up res­i­dence in South Africa and hung around with the King of Zu­l­u­land after mar­ry­ing an Aus­tralian cit­i­zen and for­mer teacher named Susan.

Mean­while Al­ba­nia was falling apart slowly. To see the coun­try today is to wit­ness cor­rup­tion on a scale that makes Greece, Italy or Spain look like am­a­teur­ish. Be­cause of threats to their lives, the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­eral Adri­atik Llalla was re­cently forced to send his preg­nant wife and two chil­dren to live in an­other Eu­ro­pean coun­try. On top of this, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist groups say they fear Al­ba­nia will be­come Eu­rope's dump­ing site now that the na­tional gov­ern­ment has agreed to take other coun­tries re­cy­cling waste.

Al­ba­nia has some of our con­ti­nent's most spec­tac­u­lar scenery and quiet beaches. It has been pre­dicted to be­come the next big thing in tourism often in the last few years but some­how it is still largely ne­glected.