[ALBSA-Info] CSMONITOR:Life and crimes of a smuggler

[Kreshnik Bejko]

WORLD
PEOPLE SMUGGLERS: PART 2 OF THREE PARTS
The life and crimes of a smuggler
By Mario Kaiser
Special to The Christian Science Monitor

VLORE, ALBANIA

His name is Dushan, and if you ask him what he smuggles, he will smile and 
tell you, "Whatever yields the highest profit."


Previously in this series
•Part one: On Europe's 70 m.p.h. smuggling route

•Part two: The life and crimes of a smuggler



Dushan, who would only give his first name, was 16 when he was expelled from 
school for bad behavior. He started dealing cannabis. At 19, he bought his 
first speedboat and began smuggling guns, drugs, and people across the 
Adriatic, a business so profitable that it allowed him to support his nine 
siblings. It is the typical résumé of a skafist, as Albanians call 
smugglers.

On this morning, Dushan is driving along the coast from Vlorë to Radhima, 
where many of the smugglers hide and repair their speedboats during the day. 
"My father is a poor blacksmith," he says, "he cannot support our family." 
In Vlorë, a city so poor that even manhole covers are stolen and resold, 
Dushan saw smuggling as the only career to provide him with a substantial 
income. "There is no other way to make a living here," he says.

By most measures, Albania is the poorest nation in Europe. One in 5 
Albanians scrapes by on $20 a month. One in 7 has simply left the country. 
Out of the economic ruins left behind by Enver Hoxha, the Communist dictator 
who ruled Albania for four decades, organized crime has flourished.

Initially, Durshan lined his pockets by smuggling cannabis, but when the 
market saturated and prices dropped, Dushan changed his strategy. He started 
smuggling people. He teamed up with another smuggler and together they 
bought a speedboat for $90,000.


REACHING ITALY: Some 1,200 Kurdish refugees were brought ashore last week 
when their ship, bound from Albania, was caught in bad weather and was towed 
to Otranto, Italy, by the Italian Navy.
MARIO LAPORTA/REUTERS



In the beginning, night after night, Dushan steered the boat across the 
Adriatic. But then a close friend was killed during a collision with an 
Italian police boat. Another smuggler friend disappeared during a crossing 
from Vlorë to Otranto, Italy. His boat was never found. Dushan says the 
incidents left him so shaken that he couldn't steer his own boat anymore and 
had to hire a skipper. "I was 19," Dushan says, "my life was too precious." 
Asked about the lives of those who board his speedboat every night, he only 
says, "It is much more dangerous for the skipper. As long as we had 
passengers on board, the Italians never tried to hit us."

There came a time, not long after that, when Dushan wanted to get out of the 
business. He yearned for a quiet life and wanted to get married. How does a 
young skafist find a woman to settle down with? Durshan went to Macedonia 
and bought himself a young Moldovian woman for $5,000. She was 19, and he 
liked the way she looked.

The two went to Bari, Italy, hoping to start all over again. He began 
learning Italian; she started selling her body. It was supposed to be only 
for a while. But the girl started using cocaine, and it worried Dushan. It 
concerned him even more that she never made more than $125 a night. He took 
her back to Macedonia and returned to Vlorë, alone.

At 22, Dushan's face still looks like that of a boy, too young for the many 
turns his life has already taken. He has sparse facial hair, as if he has 
not yet shaved, and his voice is high-pitched like a child's. The Marlboro 
Lights cigarette between his fingers seems like an awkward attempt to look 
manly in the company of men. And when he tells his story, it sounds more 
like someone else's story, perhaps that of an elder brother (which it is, in 
a way, as his brother is currently on trial in Italy for smuggling illegal 
immigrants).



JOAN RAPAPORT - STAFF



But Dushan says he knows what he is doing and claims that he is only 
offering a service. "I am not a criminal," he insists, "this is just my way 
of living." The real crooks, he says, are shooting each other in the streets 
of Vlorë.

Indeed, the Vlorë smugglers are on edge, and not because of the police. At 
lunch time, they sit next to Italian police officers on the sun-drenched 
terrace of the Hotel Bologna, the toniest address in town. The smugglers, 
wearing gold-rimmed sunglasses and open white shirts revealing their chest 
hair, come for the pasta at the hotel restaurant. The police officers, 
stationed in Vlorë to restore order, also like to watch the smugglers' 
girlfriends. From the hotel terrace they have a beautiful view of the sea 
and the ostentatious villas the smugglers have built along the promenade, in 
colors matching the bikinis of their girlfriends. Not all of them, however, 
get to finish building their dream homes. The villa of a famous smuggler 
known as Tozo stands on the sea front like a monument to the short-lived 
business, half-built and deserted. Tozo was assassinated.

And tension in the city has been palpable ever since a recent shooting in 
front of the club "Chateau." Vlorë's boss of bosses lost his best man in the 
shooting and took a bullet himself. The man - known as Zani and worshiped by 
his cronies as "the sultan" - survived the assassination attempt by a rival 
gang, but a few days later his brother's body was found in the woods outside 
the city.

He was executed in such gruesome fashion that even the people of Vlorë, who 
have seen more than their share of cruelty, shuddered. According to the 
coroner's report, the killers shot Zani's brother 18 times in the chest. 
Then they put a rope around his neck, tied it to a car and dragged him 
through the forest. Then they mutilated his body. Now the city is bracing 
for Zani's revenge.


REPARING TO MAKE A RUN: Smugglers gather offshore each afternoon to repair 
their boats, tune their engines, and refuel for the eveningÕs voyage to 
Italy. An estimated 150 boats operate out of Vlorë, Albania.
JOHN GIANNINI/FILE



"It is frightening," says Eric Filipink, who monitors the situation in Vlorë 
for the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 
"Criminals have become mythical figures in this town. And people admire 
them. They envy them for their golden necklaces, their cars, their drugs, 
their women." The smugglers have created a shadow economy of businesses that 
depend on them: guest houses where their customers stay, cafes and bars 
where the smugglers arrange deals, skippers who navigate their speedboats, 
drivers who deliver gasoline for the boats. "They claim that all they do is 
take people to the country of their dreams," says Filipink. "I say they are 
parasites who suck the blood out of desperate people."

Police estimate there are about 150 speedboats, worth up to $100,000 each, 
in and around Vlorë. The fleet, they say, is one of the biggest private 
investments in Albania. Last January, the new Vlorë police chief, vowing to 
crack down on immigrant smugglers, confiscated nine of the boats. In turn, 
the smugglers confiscated the police chief, held a gun to his head, and 
asked him if he would care to live a little longer. He nodded and returned 
the boats as soon as he was released. He left the city a few days later and 
hasn't returned.

Such is the spasmodic nature of the enforcement effort. In late July, after 
two Italian policemen died when their boat was rammed by an Albanian 
smuggler, the prime ministers of both countries met in Tirana to bolster 
antismuggling efforts. Afterward, Albania's Prime Minister Ilir Meta cited 
the 170 smugglers captured to date this year and promised to pass new 
legislation to tighten regulations on the boats used for smuggling. Italian 
Prime Minster Giuliano Amato noted that the number of refugees has dropped 
significantly from last year (thanks largely to the end of a "bubble" of 
Kosovars fleeing Serb "ethnic cleansing" in 1998). He vowed that Italy would 
continue its logistical support to the Albanians and to maintain the joint 
Albanian-Italian crews on its police boats. But Italian police say more 
needs to be done, and want to change the rules of engagement so they can 
fire on the smugglers.

Often when immigrant smugglers from Eastern Europe talk about their 
countries, they mourn the loss of law and order upheld by the iron-fisted 
rulers of the past. Dushan says he still admires Enver Hoxha. The Communist 
dictator died in 1985, but during his rule he kept Albania in virtual 
solitary confinement. Dushan still remembers the heroic songs they had to 
sing back then. "We were even poorer than today," he says, "but at least 
there was order. No crime, no prostitution, no drugs." A case in point, 
Dushan says, is the day he was arrested for drug dealing by the security 
police of Mr. Hoxha's successor, Sali Berisha. The agents beat him badly, 
and that was expected. But what happened next, he says, would have been 
unimaginable under Hoxha. "We bribed the judge, and he let me go."

Dushan slows down the car and turns into a narrow gravel road. Passing rows 
of cedars and orange groves, he drives halfway up a hill. He has bought a 
piece of land here, with a beautiful view of the turquoise sea. He says he 
would like to build a hotel here someday, when tourists will dare to travel 
to Albania. As the car reaches the end of the road, it becomes obvious that 
a flock of particularly reclusive guests is already staying here. A fleet of 
speedboats, eight altogether, is parked on trailers behind the cedars. 
Shirtless men, tanned from days of working in the Albanian sun, are bent 
over the boats, repairing damaged hulls, servicing engines. A Kalashnikov 
rifle leans against a trailer tire.

The sun has begun to set, and the skafisti, sleep-deprived, are yawning. 
Their bodies have adapted to the rhythm of the smuggler's life; they are 
creatures of the night. A tall, red-haired man with a protruding belly and a 
cigarette dangling from his lips slouches toward Dushan. They kiss each 
other on both cheeks and then take a walk between the boats, touching hulls 
and engines along the way. They are talking about Kokthi, the smuggler 
killed in a collision with a police boat. "We'll make them bleed for it," 
says the red-haired giant, referring to the Italian police. Kokthi's death 
must be avenged, he says and suggests sending poisoned heroin to Italy. He 
tells Dushan that a comrade of Kokthi's was badly injured during the 
collision and is said to be in critical condition in an Italian hospital.


•Meet Shaqir, 'travel agent' to illegal immigrants


For a moment, there is a distant look in the giant's eyes. He pulls on his 
cigarette. He will go out on the sea again tonight. Getting killed is part 
of the game, he says, but so far it has always been somebody else's turn to 
lose. He shrugs. Then he drops the cigarette in the dust and extinguishes it 
with his bare foot. "The sea gives," he says, "and the sea takes."

The next day in Vlorë, the city seems frozen in prayer, staring in silence 
as a black hearse slowly rolls through the dusty streets. Behind the 
windows, in a sea of fresh flowers, Kokthi is lying in his open coffin. A 
motorcade of various Mercedes models and several buses filled with mourners 
follows the hearse. People on the sidewalks crane their necks, trying to 
catch a glimpse of the dead. As the motorcade approaches the outskirts of 
the city, it moves up a steep hill toward the cemetery. The hearse passes 
through the gate of the cemetery and comes to a halt. A group of young men 
wearing dark suits and sunglasses lift the coffin, now closed, and rest it 
on their shoulders. As they carry Kokthi to his grave, they pass a row of 89 
tombstones decorated with white flowers. They are the graves of refugees who 
drowned two years ago when their overloaded ship capsized off the Italian 
coast. In death, Kokthi the ferryman returns to the victims of his trade.

The skafisti have brought a wreath for their fallen comrade. "Shokut te 
paharuar" read the words on the red ribbon, "for our unforgettable friend." 
Kokthi's mother, kneeling before the coffin, is holding on to it, not 
wanting to let go. Then the coffin is lowered into the earth. Fresh flowers 
rain onto it. The skafisti put on their sunglasses and return to their cars. 
One by one they speed back to the city. Down by the sea, tonight's 
passengers are waiting.




Tomorrow: Ride of the refugees.
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