DRUG SCARE OR THE COLUMBIAN DANGER
AIM Tirana, January 15, 1998
Since 1992 Albania, the last country in the world to fall victim to the drug scare, is running the risk of becoming a Columbia of sorts as it is the major supplier of the European drug network. According to the official sources in the Ministry of the Interior of Albania, during the 1992-1996 period alone about 80 tons of unprocessed narcotics were transported to Greece and Italy. "Owing to the inability of the impoverished Albanian state to subsidise, finance or ensure a market for the agricultural products state authorities turned a blind eye to the fact that hundreds of acres of arable land were sown with Cannabis Sativa instead of wheat", says a former official of the Ministry of the Interior, who wished to remain anonymous. In his opinion at that time it did not cross anybody's mind that this phenomenon would acquire such proportions.
How did Marijuana Replace Wheat?
The communist state of Enver Hoxha took great pride in the fact that it was able to provide bread for the whole country. The country was covered with wheat fields. These yellow fields disappeared together with the collapse of the communist regime in 1991. With the beginning of the mass exodus in 1991-1992, the first emigrants which crossed the Greek border discovered the golden seed of Cannabis Sativa and thus Albania entered a drug era.
Documents of the Ministry of the Interior show that between 1992-1993 in some Southern parts of the country bordering Greece there were 15 lots under narcotic crops, with some 1,200 marijuana shoots each. Emigrants who at that time have already secured market in Greece, were amazed by the amount of profits realized. "A small-scale trader, whose truck we used to deliver chicken in the villages of Northern Greece, told me about hashish. I decided to return to my village Kota, near Vlore, and grow it", says a 36-year old Hasan. He says that he managed to cross the Albanian-Greek border with a carrying a sack with six kilos of Cannabis without much problem.
A year later, lots under marijuana spread on the country's drug map. According to the Albanian officials it is estimated that Albania has joined the drug trafficking business in Western European countries with full force. In 1993 the Albanian police discovered other centers at which narcotics were cultivated, which will later number hundreds. In less than 12 months some 50 centers in Albania were transformed into major bases for the cultivation and production of marijuana. Profits expressed in liras and drahmas reached amazing amounts. "One kilo of hashish could get as much as USD 3,000 during holidays in Athens", said a Greek dealer in light drugs.
In 1994 it was impossible to count the shoots of Cannabis Sativa grown in Albania. The police only managed to determine: "Each house in the South of Albania has sown at least 100 Cannabis plants".
TV stations carried stories about fantastic development and cultivation of Cannabis in Albania. In late 1996, a Greek station "Mega Channel" broadcast a research report of its reporter who had discovered and filmed a zone guarded by armed men who were not members of the Albanian Army. According to journalist Costas Baksevanis, that was a station for the production and processing of drugs in Fier, some 130 km from Tirana, property of Rrapush Xhaferi, one of the authors of the idea on pyramidal saving scheme, which have later crashed. Other media too, as well as unconfirmed allegations of the Albanian police, mention a mobile drug-producing laboratory on the territory of the Republic of Albania, which has 3.5 million inhabitants.
"The state was informed but did not intervene until 1995, when the international community learned of this and decided that an extensive police anti-drug action should be launched", says a former official of the Ministry of the Interior. Peasants from the province of Korce, some kilometers from the Vlore port, remember the police raid with dogs and choppers. "They have entered the village in cars with sirens and the sky was covered with helicopters. They cut with axes the plants we tended for nine months. The village has planted so much that we feared it would decrease the price", says a 65-year old man whose son has emigrated to Greece. He told us how the police loaded the hashish on trucks and and claims that many policemen later on sold it.
However, official figures speak about the incineration of at least 500 tons of Cannabis. Before this largest police raid in 1995, owing to a tacit pact between farmers and the former President Sali Berisha, the Albanian emigrants managed to become major drug dealers in Greece, Italy, Holland, Switzerland. Every European country registered the names of Albanian towns: Fier, Vlore, Tirana, Saranda, Kaster i Vogel which even common people in Greece and Italy were often familiar with.
In September 1997, at a session of the Italian Parliament Giorgio Napolitano, Italian Minister of the Interior, said that it was scandalous that 1.2 tons of narcotics came to Italy from Albania, while the sources in Tirana admitted to the smuggling of 35 tons of narcotics from Albania. About 25 tons of Cannabis Sativa got to Greece. Still, Greece was the state in which the Albanian dealers found it easier to trade, while Italy lured them with higher prices despite the danger that the sea, separating them, represented. Like dark shadows, numerous small ships appeared along the Adriatic and Ionian coasts carrying to Brindisi tons of marijuana, in addition to illegal emigrants and prostitutes. But, soon the increased growth and undisturbed production of drugs brought with it an accelerated fall of prices. However, for the time being only poorer farmers' families are the losers.
Accusations Against the Police and Courts
Apart from accusations of non-observance of the embargo imposed against Yugoslavia during the war in Bosnia, when oil tanks passed through Albania on their way to Montenegro, the British paper "The Guardian" pointed an accusing finger at Agron Musaraj, the then Minister of the Interior, as being directly responsible for drug traffic through Albania. But, despite changes that have occurred in the Albanian police in the meantime, the latest events of January 7, when the famous Albanian actor Victor Zhusti was arrested in Athens with 11 kilos of heroin, will again implicate the Albanian officials. Zhusti carried the drugs in his luxurious car over the Kapshtice border-crossing in the south-east of Albania without being stopped by either the Albanian or the Greek customs officers.
10 Thousand Drug Addicts and not a Single Drug Clinic
According to the official data, there are about 10 thousand drug addicts in Albania today, out of which in the capital city alone, eight thousand. Anti-Drug Association claims that at least 200 drug addicts are children of high society families. At the moment there are 87 persons in the Toxicology and Emergency Ward in the Military Hospital in Tirana. However, there is not a single rehabilitation center for drug addicts in Albania, apart from a tiny room in the Psychiatric Hospital, which is not working anyway.
"We asked the Ministry of the Interior and Defence to give us facilities on the Dajti mountain so that we could organize a rehabilitation clinic, but we never got a reply", says Gjin Lleshi, a doctor and president of the Anti-Drug Association, who had until now treated dozens of young addicts. He explains that drug addicts in Albania are divided into three categories. The first are returnees from Italy, Greece and Switzerland and who were the first ones to start using drugs and brought them into the country. The second group are children of wealthy and middle-class families, which is also the most numerous one. The third group is rather limited and composed of high officials, politicians and journalists. Until now seven persons have died in Albania of overdose.
The drug threat is acquiring frightening proportions in the Albanian society. The dangers of the Columbian syndrome are present. After they lost money in the pyramidal saving schemes, some Albanians are trying to make some selling "white death".
AIM Tirana
Ilir PACO