THE ALBANIAN CHALLENGE

AIM Tirana, 21 March, 1998

The film "Wag the Dog" was recently a box-office success in the USA. The film is about an American president faced with a sexual scandal he wishes to conceal by all means because the electionsare coming. As a way out, his secretary suggests a declaration of war. "But against whom?", the president asks. "Albania", says she. "But, they have done us no harm". "They have done us no good either".

That is how, by manipulating the media, an impression is created in the USA of a state of war with Albania (a few crazy Albanian terrorists stole a few nuclear heads threatening the USA, etc.), the Americans forget the sex scandal and the president is re-elected.

In England, a known comedian has opened a column of sayings and slogans with no sense which provoke laughter and which he calls "Albanian wise sayings". In Italy, Indro Montanelli and a group of intellectuals launched through the press the idea that Albania was an artificial creation of Italy and Austria in the beginning of the century and that this was a mistake, since this nation is uncapable of ruling its own state.

This image of Albania in which the Albanians are presented as absurdly irrational was created after the last year's developments. Symbol of an Albanian in 1997 is a man with a Kalashnykov machine-gun shooting in the air for no reason and at nobody. If Bosnia is understandable for the West, what happened in Albania remained much more vague and irrational. Tanks were used to wage war in Bosnia, to attack the enemy. And in Albania, stollen tanks were used as a taxi safe against robbers and sometimes even as children's toys.

This grotesque vision, the culmination of Balkan irrationality, has its own logic after all. In comparison with other Balkan states, Albania has its particularities but also a lot in common with them. The particularity of post-communist Albania in comparison with other Balkan states is in the fact that it has experienced total collapse not only of communism, but also of nationalism and religion.

Nationalism could not be successful in Albania like in Serbia or Croatia for two reasons: because the Albanians have not a strong historical memory and because national communist regime of Enver Hoxha, in the name of independence and national pride turned Albania into a prison for the Albanians. This regime has also eliminated religious institutions in the sixties. This was possible, of course, because the Albanians are not characterised by deep religious feelings.

Fifty years of communism imposed on the Albanians a community in which connections with the "others" often turned into torture. It was a sort of an extreme compromise between a society in a steel shirt of ideology and a totalitarian system. The fall of communism in an uncontrollable explosion wrecked and demolished the Albanian society like it happened nowhere else. The only thing that remained intact in the organization of the Albanian society was the most primitive institution, the institution of family or blood kinship, although it has also experienced its crisis. Apart from the obligations to the family and blood relations, for the Albanians there are only the "others" who they feel no obligations to whatsoever. In a society which has remained in this phase, crime against the "others" is quite possible and almost acceptable.

This explains the reasons why the Albanians have started in great numbers to flee the country with their families, why the power-holders are contemplating only how to stuff their pockets with money, why those who had created pyramidal systems robbed the whole nation without any feeling of social responsibility.

This also explains extreme lack of responsibility which was manifested during last-year's crisis in two forms, one more dramatic than the other: on the one hand, lack of responsibility of the politicians, their readiness to destroy the country for the sake of preserving power and on the other, lack of responsibility of the people to joint values, their incapability to organize themselves in defence of schools, banks, hospitals, bridges, museums, all those things which make a crowd of individuals or families a community. In just three months about two thousand persons were killed in Albania, and almost for none of them can it be said that they were killed for a social cause.

After they passed through the anarchic crisis in the first half of 1997, the Albanians are still in the great chasm created by that explosion, considerably unorganised and disoriented. The way out of the chasm for majority of them still means fleeing with the entire family from Albania and integration in organised structure of western societies.

Faced with this situation, politics is still helpless. The new politicians in power are with no doubt much more responsible and much more rational, they do not make life in the chasm even more difficult for the Albanians. However, the present Albanian politics lacks inspiration or motivation to get themselves out of the chasm, it lacks conception which would bring faith in people back to life, faith in their own future and the future of their country, more energy, more love and responsibility both for the others and the job they do. This policy refers to how to increase sensibility to the country, sensibility to those Albanians who are addicted to narcotics, who remain uneducated, who are drowned in the sea in their attempt to cross the Otranto, sensibility for the beautiful Albanian landscape which is becoming uglier every day, for historical values which are robbed and crumbling down? For the Albanians this essentially refers to the need for revival of their destroyed identity and dignity.

On the other hand, Albanian politics does not radiate such inspiration. The language the politicians use is too technocratic and too abstract to incite such inspiration in the people. Nevertheless, when demands are made for an inspiring policy, two questions should be kept in mind: first, what the Albanians could be inspired by at this time when the spirit of organisation and sensibility cannot be constructed around some ideology, some faith or a single individual, when it is known that historically these inspirations came on the basis of ideologies, regardless of whether they were religious, nationalistic or communist and which inevitably led to authoritarian regimes?

It should be stressed that we are living at a time when even the West lacks motive for inspiration.

As concerning its recent past, Albania has a lot in common with majority of the Balkan countries - collapse of communism, and as concerning the future - the dream of building a civil society. However, while in other Balkan states, the post-communist challenge refers to how to transit from one society which relied on nationalistic collectivism into a civil society, the Albanian challenge is quite different: it refers to the question how to transit from blood kinship into a civil society wwithout stopping on some collective form of organization based on nationalism or integralism.

Whether something like that is possible or the fact that the Albanian society has not passed through the period of nationalism will force it to unconditionally pass through that stage or go bankrupt without succeeding to bring the era of democracy, pluralism and multiculturality to life? This is a big question which is nowadays put to politicians, intellectuals, clergy and the new Albanian economic elite.

AIM Tirana

Fatos LUBONJA