Albanian here, and it wasn't a civil war.... more of general unrest against the government, which was forced to resign and be replaced by a transitory one...
A civil war requires several factions, while this was more of a un -coordinated massive unrest....
Most of the deaths happened during the unrests between bands, people settling scores, etc...
This is similar to the June unrests and looting in the US, but squared, with weapons and more... (from army depots, as most of the army refused to try to squash the demonstrations, and just went home)
Also, the money problem was just the spark, as there was some major unhappiness with the government then, that started with election frauds in 1996 committed by the government.
The whole thing lasted about a month or so in March, and it honestly felt something like the movie "The Purge". The government failed, there was no police in the streets, the army went home, people had weapons, looting and robbing were common, by 'masked people', it was not a good month...
Eventually things calmed down. Italy sent some monitoring troops, to help with the transition of the new Goverment...
All the weapons that got out of the army depots, ended up furnishing the Kosovo Liberation Army, and eventually the Kosova war in 1998-99, that ended up with Kosova's independence... (Kosovo, is 90% Albanian, and they were trying to get independence peacefully, after to the Yugoslavian break-up to no avail. The Albanian unrest and some US help helped them out in the end).
So, I guess there was one good thing that came out of the whole mess.
Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could 'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it). It would not have ended up well. Albania at that time had so many weapons left from the Communnist era, and it wouldn't had gone well for them.
> Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could 'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it). It would not have ended up well. Albania at that time had so many weapons left from the Communnist era, and it wouldn't had gone well for them.
Heh, the old lieutenant I had in the GR army was always complaining about Greece losing an opportunity to annex Albania at the time. I've always thought he was full of crap because old military ppl dream about war day and night, no one really pays attention to them. Of course they always come out on top, in their stories/fantasies! Apparently he wasn't full of crap, that was put under serious consideration.
Broadly speaking, Greece had expansionary policies until the Greco-Turkish was in 1919-1922, an extension of the first world war. After a victory who ended up in a disaster without the Greek army even putting up a fight, the focus has been to keep the borders as they were[1].
Hopefully, this part of the world won't see more warfare... It's always the layperson who get screwed.
That Greece, an EU member, would invade Albania in a similar manner to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus defies belief. This must be one of the most implausible conspiracy theories I've ever heard.
What does being an EU member have to do with this. If you look at the history behind most EU member nations it would only make them seem more prone to invading others.
> Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was planing at some point to send a invading force to the South
FUD. That is implausible considering that Greece has enough at its hands with Turkey. An offensive war would void all defence treaties. If there were any "plans" it would have been as part of a UN/NATO peace mission.
> We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could 'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it).
Any source for that? The closest i could find was some speculations by Turkey. In practice there is no way this would have gone well with anyone in Greece, it would be political suicide.
It's conspiracy theory. How on earth would Greece, a NATO and EU member, annex a piece of another sovereign country, especially in the middle of ongoing NATO military operations in a highly unstable region.
About 3k un-natural deaths in total for the year, in a country of 3mill. Which is a lot, but considering the country has about 30 mini-regions/towns, it is about 100 deaths per region. (in contrast, Oakland, CA has about 60-110 murders a year, (depending on the year).
Currently the whole country has about 50-60 murders per year, which is close to the E.U. average,
When I saw the movie 'The Purge', I was like: that's like Albania in 97....
>>Currently the whole country has about 50-60 murders per year, which is close to the E.U. average,
Yes, but stats are misleading. Almost all these murders are targeted ones, criminals executing each other or people settling scores from previous years. Random killings in Albania virtually don't exist.
I don't see anything misleading about the discussion as a whole though, what you are saying reinforces the point:
Everyone is just silently waiting to disregarding the judicial system for any transgression that rubbed them the wrong way. They want to kill with your death being lost in the fray.
Misleading is a negative word that may suggest that the person intended to mislead, I agree. But "stats in this case don't tell the entire story."
Mafiosi don't like to call the cops on each other, same story everywhere. For other killings, the killer bribed his way out of trouble, so the traditional justice system failed.
True, but in a civil war you have organized groups against each other. The biggest criminal group /gang in Albania probably had 30-50 members, and mostly were cousins and locals. State fell apart, why would the local cop risk his and his family's life for peanuts when his own chief would let the drug dealers pass the drugs for a fee? Or let the murderers go away, also for money.
The corrupt and non-existent state is also responsible for revenge attacks, the state doesn't jail your son's killer so you must administer justice. Sounds medieval and it is, but also the killer walking past your door, when your son has rotted in the grave is not right either.
Not just organised groups, but groups organised in a particular manner. "Party To A Conflict" is a technical term[1], and normally a civil war requires at least two Parties.
Albania was not communist at the time, and Italy mostly wanted to help as it had already a lot of Albanian immigrants at the time, and Italian - Albanian relations are excellent. (we forgave them for the multiple times they tried to invade us between 1919 and 1943. They actually built a lot of stuff, and the current Tirana's center and architecture was built by Italians in the 1939-1942 period), and Italy is currently a good ally.
The conspiracy theory is the army depot were destroyed open by agents paid by the Greek government, which wanted an excuse to invade the south of Albania.... (which it had tempted back in 1920).
Those theories were not that far off, they were seriously planning to send some kind of invasion. One reason that many Albanians don't like Greeks in general. They have historically been a bad neighbor.
Having lived just on the other side of the border let me shed some light on the "bad neighbour" comments. Greece was on the other side of the iron curtain compared to Albania, there was a -declared- state of war between the two countries until the mid eighties (1986 I think) and there is a significant Greek minority in the Albanian South. The three combined created a particularly bad climate between the countries. That has changed drastically - at least south of the border. In 2019 Greece indeed sent troups to Albania after an earthquake and an invitation, but it was not for war - they tried to help and set up their field kitchens to provide food for some time. I cannot account for the feelings of the Albanians but I can certainly say that most Greeks harbor no ill feelings for them :)
How's so? With almost half a million Albanians living and working in Greece, you would expect relations to be normalized. There was the recent turmoil with Albanian government revealing its plans to annex the homes of ethnic Greeks of Albania [1], but it was canceled due to diplomatic efforts of the Greek government.
"Eat the Rich" has always struck me as an odd slogan to use given that it was literally true in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge had a thing for murdering people and eating their livers.
It was not even true capitalism, but more of a anarchy/libertarian place, where anything goes... and in almost naively way people invested in things that didn't make sense...
I have 'libertarian' friends that just never lived in a true libertarian society. Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of Communism, the government was too inept to apply the laws... and it ended up becoming a 'anything goes' type of society.
Want to build in a place without a permit? Sure.. go ahead... roads, infrasturcutre be damned... want to open a TV station, go ahead. That other guy is using the samme frequenncy? Just by a bigger transmitter to drown out the competitionl..
Pirated moves on TV, all the time. Cinemas just couldn't functionn. Why pay for a movie, while the local TV is just showing it right now....
Things settled by 'strong men', where the biggest gangster usually wins.... for while, until the competition settles scores and he ends up killed.
The country is still suffering with the urban mess that period left... where things were built with no regard of urban development whatsoever.
Libertarism... just like Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't work. They always end up with few people gaining power over everybody else (either the communist elite, or oligarcic rich)
I used to think it was primarily Objectivism that was giving libertarianism a bad name, but the older I get the less hope I have that a libertarian government can succeed at the core mission: protecting its people.
> Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of Communism, the government was too inept to apply the laws. Libertarism... just like Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't work.
Libertarianism is not the same thing as anarchism or the total lack of government. It means a government that's restricted to enforcing natural rights and fairly resolving disputes via courts.
People lost the money they thought they had 'invested' for irrational high returns (sometimes over 20% a month). Then they started protesting when the schemes collapsed.
Certain groups first attacked the police. Police melted away. Anarchy ensued.
Police melted away and in fact the government fled. And also, it was the 90s, in a "third world" or at least "second world" country-- 20% a month was natural considering US mortgages were like 14% a year at that time.
Some editorialized vlog thing, probably not for everyone:
https://youtu.be/lMUtU0tOmNE - a YouTube channel called Rare Earth has a few videos shot in Albania, the linked one focuses on the pyramid scheme and the collapse
Interestingly, Lebanon today could fall into similar anarchy.
People's money is currently locked up in banks after years of exorbitant returns (15%+ interest) from what the central bank had called "financial engineering".
People are currently tired, devastated and numb.
Most people I know have applied to emigrate to Europe/North America.
That’s a good question.. I don’t think it’s about a trigger (another domino falling), but possibly about no dominoes falling (big events) for a while, but daily struggles bottling up until it explodes in the street.
What neither the Wikipedia article nor the Global Security piece quite explain is the economic recovery after Operation Alba (which ended the violence). Conventional wisdom says that an economy seeing such a massive deflationary shock will need extensive external aid in the form of bailouts, loans, and debt forgiveness.
This piece from the IMF in 2000 makes no mention of a specific international aid package:
If anything, it sounds like the country picked itself up off the mat:
> The long-term effects of the pyramid scheme phenome- non are likely to be limited, reflecting not only the resilience of the Albanian economy but also—and, perhaps, most important—the government’s adjustment efforts and its refusal to bail out depositors. Prices and wages are extremely flexible in Albania; as a result, the government was able to cut real public sector wages substantially in 1997 (by leaving nominal wages unchanged), and the economy suffered no loss of competitiveness when the lek appreciated. The new government’s willingness to tackle the budget deficit and undertake long-overdue structural reforms was also crucial. However, the social effects were profound. In addition to the loss of life, thousands of people were impoverished either by their unwise investments in the pyramid schemes or by the destruction of their property in the ensuing violence. Less tangible, but also significant, are the effects on confidence in Albania. The resilience of the Albanian people is consider- able and has been more severely tested in the past. But the pyramid scheme phenomenon was a sobering setback.
Less serious, but a question I've had for a while, and I assume Albanians are in the thread.
There's quite a lot of pizza and "Italian" joints in the US that use Italian jargon and decor, but when you ask, the ownership is strongly Albanian.
Is there a backstory to this sort of "hidden" Albanian domination of US pizza and Italian restaurants?
I do get the obvious "across the Adriatic" connection, but other countries border Italy as well, and don't have the same strong correlation in restaurant ownership.
Interesting. It was a running joke among colleagues in Berlin that every Italian place was actually Albanian, and anecdotally this was indeed the case. Not every place, of course, but a crazy amount.
There has been a historical connection to Italy for centuries, with tens of thousands (estimates up to ~100,000) that settled there during the Middle Ages through roughly the 1800s, due to the Ottoman invasion (known as Arberesh). Related to this, there was a military alliance between more than one Italian monarch and Albania (technically not a cohesive Albania, but the de-facto leader of the time, and incidentally, national hero, Skanderbeg) due to the Ottoman threat in the 1400s.
During the post-WWII communist regime, Italy was our closest neighbor from the west. Culturally closed off to the rest of the world, their TV and radio signals provided a glimpse of it in a country where there was 1 TV and 1 radio station, both regime-controlled. Conjecture, but it makes sense to me that there would be a gradual identification/comfort level with that culture.
The actual reason though: simply immigration. After the regime fell, beginning with the exodus of 1991, by the mid 90s, there were about a half million Albanians living in Italy, and by the end of the 90s, close to a million. You bet the majority worked blue collar/black market jobs wherever they could find them. That experience translates into a similar field in the US (where they primarily immigrated to, although I'm sure equally applicable to other nations)
I could've just written "immigration" but I thought you might appreciate a more thorough perspective. This topic has come up a ton with friends and colleagues before - you're not the first.
EDIT: Also perhaps because... Italian food is cheap, easy to make and very popular, thus profitable ;)
Appreciate the detailed answer. I wasn't aware of the scale (1M) of the post 1990 immigration. That's pretty impressive given that Albania's current population is 2.8M.
Civilians across Eastern Europe protested and helped bring about the fall of communism based on their belief that the West would bring a superior way of life, government, and economy to their countries.
For whatever reason, it all failed. Assuming slightly higher oil prices than we have now, life under the USSR would likely be better.
Some particularly egregious things the West / Wall Street did:
1. No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and military members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same mistake made in Iraq in 2003.
2. Giving Russia garbage loans they were in no position to pay back and had to be repaid in dollars only. An absolute disaster that Goldman Sachs was mostly responsible for.
3. EU was completely unprepared, for what has now become, the greatest migration in human history. The best and brightest left Eastern Europe in droves, causing massive brain drain that helped usher in the collapse of regime after regime.
4. Sending a CIA team to Moscow in 1996 to directly override the wishes of the Russian people. In defense, the USA was worried in a reasonable way that the communist party would win in a landslide at the polls. But regardless that should have been their choice.
5. Not focusing on Afghanistan after leaving in the late 1980's, letting jihadism further spread to Chechyna and the devastating war from 1994-1996 their. Causes terrorism on a 9/11 scale in Moscow, hundreds of Russian tanks destroyed, just insanity.
Creating and implementing a plan to hire millions of people would have required much more intervention in Russia's internal affairs than just trying to push an election one way or the other.
I think it did not for the simple fact that now you have more freedom that in the communist era.
Now if want to talk about economy and equality that's a diffetent story. The results of a new democratic system like in any project depend by execution.
> No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and military members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same mistake made in Iraq in 2003.
We'd get the same thing if we actually defunded police and shrank the military in the US. We're one weak but aggressive left-wing elected government away from an American ISIL.
> We'd get the same thing if we actually defunded police and shrank the military in the US.
Only if we did it stupidly. We've done a fairly good job of it in foreign occupations prior to the Iraq debacle (notably, post-WWII, the model that experts warned should be followed for Iraq but which was not), we could certainly manage to not screw it up at home as long as the political leadership paid attention to pragmatics as well as (not even “instrad of”) ideology.
> We're one weak but aggressive left-wing elected government away from an American ISIL.
We already have an American ISIL (a militant, fundamentalist, theocratic politico-religious group), and their allies in the formal political system already run the federal executive branch, dominate the federal judiciary, and control one of two houses of the federal legislature.
Insofar as a failed political demobilization relates to them, it was the demobilization after the Civil War (which the battle flag of the losing side of that conflict remains one of their key symbols.)
Only if we did it with a weak government. We have an extremely right-wing military (except at the absolute top) and a completely right-wing police force. Without a mass movement, a weak left government is defenseless.
> We already have an American ISIL (a militant, fundamentalist, theocratic politico-religious group), and their allies in the formal political system already run the federal executive branch, dominate the federal judiciary, and control one of two houses of the federal legislature.
Call me when after they start beheading people in the street and taking over neighborhoods with armed street militias. We honestly have to make sure that our rhetoric resembles reality at least vaguely. Pretending like a Republican party that is doing the same thing it did under Nixon or Reagan is basically ISIL just makes people stop listening.
We're watching armed rightist incursions into cities right now, ones that are officially becoming armed skirmishes with the police openly suppporting the invaders (and it's mutual.) Imagine what would happen if we laid off half the police force? It doesn't matter whether it's right or not; of course it's right. What matters is that a bunch of unemployed angry right-wingers with no productive skills and murder training will see the government and the people who voted for it as enemies.
Like what woke liberals are literally doing right now, but without the middle-class liberal arts education and heavily armed. Having the Warren Court during a critical period of civil rights struggle has given liberals a tendency to magical thinking - like Q-followers, we're always waiting for the wise executive to move society forward by fiat. When we're at the point where we're expecting the CIA and FBI to take its place and reign in the elected president, we have to accept this strategy is not effective. We have to build power through having specific values and policies, like the right. You can't just tell an armed bully to stop being a bully because you've been elected the representative of the people he bullies. He doesn't have to do what you say.
edit:
> Insofar as a failed political demobilization relates to them, it was the demobilization after the Civil War (which the battle flag of the losing side of that conflict remains one of their key symbols.)
And to celebrate the victory, statues of Confederate soldiers were erected all over the country. During that time a single-issue antislavery party that had defended the Union in a civil war over slavery (the Republicans) decided to virtually merge with the Democrats on racist policy. Those battle flags flew throughout the lands of a supposedly defeated enemy for at least the next century and a half.
No, it was sparked by phenomenally bad policy made as the country shifted away from communist economic principles. IMF guidance was to allow banks and other financial entities to operate with little or no effective supervision. Shockingly, 100% deposit interest rates and scams emerged and essentially took over the country’s financial system.
It think it’s reasonable to say that someone like Lenin sparked a revolution against a long standing problematic regime like the Tsar that was living in the Napoleonic era in 1917. This situation was nothing like that.
Lenin didn't spark a revolution against the tsar. The tsar had already been deposed for months (in the wake of the February Revolution) by the time Lenin returned from exile and led the October Revolution against the post-tsar government then leading Russia.
And HN censors yet another title into meaninglessness. The original title, which explained that the war was caused by nationwide pyramid schemes that went tits up all at the same time, sparking mass riots, was entirely accurate and descriptive.
A civil war requires several factions, while this was more of a un -coordinated massive unrest....
Most of the deaths happened during the unrests between bands, people settling scores, etc...
This is similar to the June unrests and looting in the US, but squared, with weapons and more... (from army depots, as most of the army refused to try to squash the demonstrations, and just went home)
Also, the money problem was just the spark, as there was some major unhappiness with the government then, that started with election frauds in 1996 committed by the government.
The whole thing lasted about a month or so in March, and it honestly felt something like the movie "The Purge". The government failed, there was no police in the streets, the army went home, people had weapons, looting and robbing were common, by 'masked people', it was not a good month...
Eventually things calmed down. Italy sent some monitoring troops, to help with the transition of the new Goverment... All the weapons that got out of the army depots, ended up furnishing the Kosovo Liberation Army, and eventually the Kosova war in 1998-99, that ended up with Kosova's independence... (Kosovo, is 90% Albanian, and they were trying to get independence peacefully, after to the Yugoslavian break-up to no avail. The Albanian unrest and some US help helped them out in the end).
So, I guess there was one good thing that came out of the whole mess.
Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could 'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it). It would not have ended up well. Albania at that time had so many weapons left from the Communnist era, and it wouldn't had gone well for them.