Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 12:45:55 -0500
Subject: M-G: Latest news from Tirana (cont.)


SITUATION IN KORCA OUT OF CONTROL

                    Korca, March 14, 1997

                    The situation in Korca is totally out of
                    control. Groups of people have looted all
                    arms depots and even children are armed.
                    Arms force did not stop throughout the day
                    and night. 

                    Two tanks, plundered by people, have moved
                    in the city yesterday. Groups of people
                    have looted military vehicles and even
                    ambulance vans. Also looted are the flour
                    warehouses, and the state reserve
                    storehouses in Mborje. According to the
                    inspector of agriculture of the prefecture,
                    Agim Panariti, the warehouse had a total of
                    1 500 tons of wheat. Also some various
institutions have been looted, among them the army
division, the military hospital, a supermarket in the city
center, the district educational department, etc. 

Some of the leaders in the municipality gathered today
asking that this institution must be protected. A part of
the city had electric failure during the past 24 hours and
the market is closed today.

EFFORTS TO NORMALIZE SITUATION IN KORCA

                    Korca, March 15, 1997

                    On Friday, in the town of Korca, with the
                    initiative of several intellectuals and
                    participation of political parties, was
                    established the committee of salvation of
                    the district. This committee issued an
                    appeal for the people, demanding to
                    surrender the weapons, to stop violence and
                    destruction and return to normal life and
                    work. 

                    The committee called on police forces,
                    officers, honest intellectuals to turn back
                    to work and help in restoring order. 

                    In the Korca town, some depots were stormed
several days ago, and almost all the people were armed, the
children as well. Four people were killed and more than 10
others were injured due to the uncontrolled use of weapons.
Groups of people have moved across the streets during these
days with vehicles without plate numbers, and have looted
the warehouses of the state reserve, with some 1200 ton
wheat. 

Today, from the measures taken, are noticed the first signs
of improvement in the city.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

CIVIL DEFENSE STAFF ESTABLISHED IN SHKODRA

                    Shkodra, March 15, 1997

                    The civil defense staff, with the wide
                    participation of all the people, was
                    established in Shkodra on Friday. 

                    The situation in the town during the night
                    was calm. The gun shots were very rare. But
                    at 23.00, a rumor was spread that the
                    aqueduct of the city was poisoned and panic
                    swept the town. 

                    Right after this, the civil defense forces
                    calmed down the citizens through megaphones
                    that it was only a lie.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

COMMITTEE TO PROTECT THE CITY ESTABLISHED
                                         IN DURRES 

                    Durres, March 15, 1997

                    The committee to protect the town was
                    established in Durres. The fifteen members
                    of the committee, leaders and
                    representatives of all political parties,
                    are led by the mayor Arqile Goreja. 

                    The committee has defined the duties to
                    restore order, to disarm the people, to
                    supply them will main food articles, as
                    well as to restart the work in the
                    bake-houses.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

 

                    Foreigners flee vision of Dante
                             in shattered capital 

                    March 15, 1997

                    AS IT closed its doors to the world,
                    ungovernable Albania yesterday melted into
                    a frenzy of shooting, looting and
                    inexplicable motorcades. 

                    Most Westerners had already had their fill,
                    and chose to board what amounted to a
                    military shuttle helicopter service between
                    Tirana and USS Nassau, a United States
                    warship, in the Adriatic. 

                    Italians and Americans left in twin-rotor
                    Chinook helicopters from the national
stadium behind a presidential palace that might or might
not have contained a President. The British and Greeks took
their nationals out by road and boat, running the gauntlet
of roadblocks and edgy policemen with an alarming habit of
simultaneously gesticulating and shooting. 

As more than 120 non-essential American Embassy staff took
to the skies, Marisa Lino, the US Ambassador, assured
Albanians on state television that they were not being
abandoned. 

Durres, the port of departure for those fleeing Albania's
social catastrophe, was a vision from Dante. A people not
noted for their industry descended on the quayside
government warehouses en masse, and picked them bare.
Lorries, donkeys, horses, bicycles, mopeds, wheelbarrows:
no mode of transport was ignored in a frenzy of looting. 

The kings of the rampage were the lorry gangs, comprising
Kalashnikov-toting youths in bandanas and balaclavas,
letting off warning volleys as they marked out their
territories for pillage. The pitted road alongside the
derricks and smashed security fences was clogged with the
young and the old, men, women and children alike. 

They carted, cycled and humped away iron rods, sacks of
cement, furniture, books, lamps, tools, batteries, webbing
­ anything not anchored to the ground or walls went amid
the rising dust and din of gunfire. 

"It is a bad situation," admitted Dash Jarvet, 53, a school
director, his bicycle burdened with five carrier bags full
of books. "But the Government stole from the people and now
the people are stealing back." In his hand he clutched
Vilet e Zemerimit ­ the Albanian translation of The Grapes
of Wrath. "We have taken those that we think are good," he
explained. "My school needs all these things." Others
preferred to stay indoors, well away from the Balkan macho
displays of firepower. 

"It is terrible, they are shooting all night and all day,"
said Doriana Nikolla, 20. "We don't have anything to eat ­
all the shops are closed and the ones that open are
immediately looted by armed men." Her cousin, Genti Robja,
a physics teacher from Elbasan, pleaded with visiting
journalists to stay. "Please do not go, foreigners are like
gods to us here. If only Nato would intervene for two days
everything would be under control and the people would give
the guns back." 

Silhouetted against the horizon, too far away to be of much
comfort, were the warships of the Italian Navy, where
Albania's future was being discussed by members of a new
Government impotent to end the chaos onshore. Despite the
heat, many Albanians in Durres wore jackets and coats,
insisting they would jump aboard any ship that came into
port. 

The road from the port, past the summer palace of King Zog,
was littered with spilt merchandise, broken lorries and
dead donkeys and dogs. The looting epidemic was less
frenzied in the capital, but a half-built private housing
estate on the edge of Tirana provided rich pickings. A
billboard described it as "The Prime Neighbourhood with
Comfort," but by the end of the afternoon there was little
left. 

Most of Tirana's shops were hastily emptied of their
contents by worried owners and the shutters brought down. 

"We want to save our heads and what we own," said Alfred
Maloska as he loaded handbags into a trailer behind his
Mercedes. Further clouding the confused issue of authority
in the capital, a motorcade of armoured personnel carriers,
Mercedes and Romanian Jeeps crawled around the city centre
in the late afternoon. 

Plainclothes thugs popped out of turrets and sunroofs,
firing deafening rounds of automatic fire over the
international hotels and the television station. 

Hospitals in the capital reported at least 16 dead in the
past 24 hours and some 140 wounded, nearly all in shooting
accidents. "I shot my best friend in the head," sobbed one
man outside a casualty unit. 

Various theories began to take shape over who is organising
the distribution of weapons, with reports coming in from
several areas of the city suggesting that ruling Democratic
Party activists are recruiting armed militia units to
defend the President. 

Along more conventional lines of reasserting order, state
television appealed to the police and army to put their
uniforms on again and return to the streets, promising
their salaries would be trebled. 

Foreigners having trouble identifying who is who in the
Albanian security services could take solace in the
presence of 150 American Marines "in theatre". 

There were also rumours of an SAS unit in the basement of
the British Embassy.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

 

                    SITUATION OUT OF CONTROL THROUGHOUT ALBANIA

                    Tirana, March 14, 1997

                    - Extremely tense situation in Shkodra - 

                    Shkodra, March 14, 1997 

                    A rather tense situation prevailed last
                    night in Shkoder, Northern Albania. Armed
                    people have set to fire two state banks,
                    the SHIK offices and have stolen and looted
                    the prefecture headquarters and
                    Radio-Shkodra.

                    - Situation in Lezha not yet under control
                    - 

                    Lezha, March 14, 1997 

After the arms looted from military units of Lac, Lezha,
Rreshen, in the North, of the naval unit in Shengjin, port
in Northwestern Albania and in some other points in Kruja
district, the situation in these zones is rather tense and
people are experiencing the anguish caused by the arms
bullets. 

Various sources say that two people were killed and some
others are wounded in city of Rreshen.

Two state banks were exploded and about 450 ordinary
prisoners fled from the Shen Koll prison on Thursday. 

- Chaotic situation in Durres - 

Durres, March 14, 1997 

Chaos is also prevailing in Erseka town, southern Albania.
For three days now, the arms depots of the military unit in
that town have been stormed and about 6 000 arms have been
looted. The people have rioted shops and various
institutions. 

Everything in the town is out of control.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

 

                      SITUATION IN TIRANA CONTINUES TO BE GRAVE

                    Tirana, March 14, 1997

                    Today the situation in Tirana continues to
                    be grave. Bullets from all kinds of arms
                    are heard. The number of the killed is four
                    so far, two of whom are children, one four
                    and one ten years old. So far 78 wounded by
                    fire arms are in the Tirana military
                    hospital for medical aid. 

                    During the past five years, Albania has
                    conduced reforms according to all
                    instructions of the IMF, the World Bank,
                    the Council of Europe and the OSCE and has
                    observed all the human rights conventions.
                    It has observed all the recommendations
                    from the international organizations for a
government with the participation of all political forces
and to hold earlier elections after three months. 

The Albanian Army itself has been reformed according to
instructions by NATO and the NATO and U.S. military
advisers. 

So far, there are over 100 people killed and hundreds of
others wounded by arms fire throughout the country. None of
them has been killed by police or army forces. After all
this, Albania may be considered a "model" country for the
observation of the human rights in accord with the concepts
of some international institution.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

    An Independent View - F.Münzel

                    F.Münzel, Germany. -
                    Muenzel-AT-MPIPriv-hh.mpg.de 

                    The success of the Albanian pyramid schemes
                    is usually blamed on the stupidity and/or
                    corruption or downright madness of the
                    Albanians in general and of their
                    government in particular. In other words,
                    these people have only themselves to blame.
                    Really? 

                    In 1992, the Albanian parliament passed a
                    banking law, drafted probably by a team of
                    IMF (International Monetary Fund) experts
                    at the Albanian central bank, the Banka e
                    Shqipërisë (BS). Under this law, the BS was
                    the supervisor of the commercial banks
("banks" including all enterprises engaged in banking,
regardless of whether they called themselves a "bank" or
something else, e.g. a "foundation".) Art. 28 of the law
provided that the BS could impose certain duties on
commercial banks in consideration of their "environment",
such as their rates of interest and other duties, in
particular, the BS could ask a bank to establish a reserve
fund at the BS to guarantee that the bank could satisfy its
creditors. In plain English, when a bank paid dangerously
high rates of interest, the BS, as supervisor of the
commercial banks, was supposed to ask the bank to pay into
a fund at the BS to safeguard the depositors.

At the end of 1994, a draft law on bankruptcy was discussed
in parliament. It included a special article on banks
(again meaning all enterprises engaged in banking,
regardless of what they called themselves) which provided
that banks would have to establish deposit insurance funds
supervised by the BS. The IMF team at the BS asked that
this clause be scrapped because it was "at this time
inconsistent with Fund staff advice". (No other reason was
given.) Also, the IMF experts advised, normal bankruptcy
procedure should not be applied to banks because that would
have meant that the creditors of an insolvent bank could
ask that bank to stop operations. This was inadvisable, an
IMF expert claimed, because "in Albania, which has so few
banks, this is perhaps a matter solely for the bank
regulatory authorities" - and that meant the BS.

The foreign expert who had drafted the insolvency law
protested. The protection of depositors should be the core
of a banking system in Albania, he said, and he warned - in
June, 1995 -, that insufficient protection of depositors
might result in "small creditors' rallies in front of
closed banks, waving red flags and posters accusing
National Bank officials of conspiracy with Western capital,
or the Mafia, to exploit and destroy the people".

The IMF experts did not listen. On their advice, the
deposit insurance scheme and the full application of
insolvency law to banks were scrapped. Supervision by the
BS remained the only safeguard of depositors against
dishonest banks. And soon, something was done about this,
too.

In February, 1996, the Albanian parliament passed a new
banking law. It was written in an Albanian so awful that
the poor deputies can hardly have understood it; that may
have been the reason why they passed it, certainly very
much impressed by its arcane technicality. It evidently was
a verbatim translation from an English original, so one may
safely assume that this, again, was the work of those IMF
experts at the BS everybody believed in - just as, at that
same time, nearly everybody believed in those pyramids.
under this new law, the BS remained the supervisor of the
commercial banks (and "foundations", etc.etc.) - but the
old rules about the reserves the BS would impose on banks
with dangerously high interest rates were scrapped. 

In short: 

The IMF team at the Albanian Central Bank thwarted pending
legislation for the safety of depositors. Moreover, it
advised to abolish existing legislation for the safety of
depositors - in February, 1996, at a time when the danger
represented by fraudulent banking enterprises should have
been evident to everybody with some banking experience
anywhere, let alone in Eastern Europe. It also seems
evident that the IMF team at the Albanian Central Bank did
not use its influence to make the Central Bank carry out
its supervisory duties and stop the pyramids in time -
perhaps because the IMF experts believed that Albania
needed all the banks it could get, honest or fraudulent.
Only in the fall of 1996, when the pyramids had been
operating for 2-3 years, the IMF asked President Berisha to
act. At that time it was far too late, any sort of soft
landing was impossible.

If the inexperienced Albanians were mad to believe in
pyramid schemes, how are we to describe the mental state of
those IMF experts? Who is to blame for the damage, and who
should pay for it?


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