[ALBSA-Info] The Gangsters? Paradise ? NEWSWEEK

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

The Gangsters? Paradise

The motherland is a nest of drug traffickers, weapons dealers and people smugglers. No wonder nobody talks any more about a Greater Albania

By Joshua Hammer
NEWSWEEK 

Nestled on Albania?s southern coast just 45 miles across the Adriatic from Italy, the crumbling port of Vlore is a smuggler?s paradise. Countless sandy coves hidden along the rugged shoreline provide ideal loading bases for high-powered speedboats laden with heroin, hashish, guns or human cargo. An underequipped, underpaid police force is nearly powerless to catch them. "We seized three boats last month," boasts Police Chief Gjovalin Lohja, guiding his van along a decrepit road cut into the cliffs. Minutes later he pulls up to the police department?s only patrol boat, which cruises at 25 miles an hour?about half the speed of the smugglers? craft. The crew tries to start the waterlogged engine. After half an hour Lohja finally shrugs, "Maybe we?ll try again tomorrow."

WELCOME TO GROUND ZERO of the great Balkan breakdown. A decade after the collapse of Communism opened Albania to the world, this small, destitute state continues to spread trouble far beyond its borders. Many observers trace the whirlwind now roaring through the region to the collapse of Albania?s weak central government in 1997, when a million weapons passed into the hands of the country?s angry and desperate population. Tens of thousands of those arms wound up in the hands of the Kosovo Liberation Army, ratcheting up the Kosovo conflict and drawing NATO into the fight. In the four years since then, Albania has continued to play a destabilizing role. Albanian criminal gangs in league with the Italian and Kosovo mafias have helped to fuel a lucrative trade in drugs and arms throughout the Balkans. Two years ago, many Kosovar refugees were so dismayed by glimpses of their southern neighbor that they put aside dreams of a Greater Albania?and began focusing their efforts on their!
 ethnic confreres in Macedonia a
nd Serbia instead.

Ironically, as the flames of ethnic Albanian nationalism again threaten to engulf the Balkans, the poorest nation in Europe is struggling to reverse the meltdown that it set in motion. The Kosovo war woke its leaders up to the fact that they could be vital players in the region, and that by pushing Balkan stability Albania could reap massive doses of Western aid. Last week, in a clear signal of Albania?s new role on the regional stage, former KLA commanders Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku traveled to Tirana, where Albanian leaders urged them to pressure the guerrillas to seek a political settlement. While trying to play peace broker, Albania is also acting to erase its reputation for lawlessness: the government has moved to crack down on contraband, root out corruption and collaborate with Western drug agents. "The government is gradually taking control," says a Western official in Tirana. "The space of the bad guys to operate is getting smaller." But Albania remains poor and weak?!
and its credibility as a regiona
l force is consistently undermined by the huge number of criminals in its midst.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in Vlore, a sultry port of palm-lined boulevards, outdoor cafes and crumbling Italianate architecture three hours south of Tirana. The town?s descent into lawlessness began in 1992 when local gangs formed partnerships with Italian mafias to smuggle desperate Albanians by sea to Italy. After the 1997 implosion of a government-endorsed pyramid scheme (in which tens of thousands of investors lost their life savings), Vlore?s citizens rose in revolt. Police and soldiers fled their posts, throwing open the city?s armories. In the power vacuum, criminal gangs carved out a lucrative trade. The biggest business: people smuggling. Kurdish refugees from Turkey and Iraq pay as much as $1,000 to be brought by Albanian gangs across the Macedonian or Greek borders. The gang bosses have invested heavily in high-powered German and Italian-made boats that can skim across the Adriatic in 45 minutes, and hire local boatmen, known as skafisti , to pilot the craft!
s.

A ?COWBOY? FOR POLIECE CHIEF

The Albanian government has tried, fitfully, to regain control of Vlore. In 1998 the Interior minister made what seemed an inspired move: he appointed Sokol Kociu, 41, police chief. A burly career cop from northern Albania, "Kociu was a cowboy," says one colleage. Three months after arriving in Vlore, Kociu?s team swept down on a beachfront garage and captured six mafia speedboats. In revenge, gangsters kidnapped the chief and held him at gunpoint on an island until he agreed to release the boats. 

The kidnapping made Kociu a legend in a country starved for heroes. A few months later his longtime friend and colleague, Prosecutor General Arben Rakipi, hired him to be the country?s top judicial investigator, based in the capital, Tirana, where he would lead the government?s fight against corruption. His career flourished: Kociu broke up a scheme by airport officials to extort fees from Kurdish refugees to land in Albania. His family spent Sundays with Rakipi cavorting at a heavily guarded beach complex once used by top officials from the regime of Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha.

But like many Albanian officials, Kociu apparently succumbed to the same shadowy forces he had pledged to destroy. Early last year, say Italian investigators, he was enlisted in a scheme by two Albanian businessmen to ship Colombian cocaine to Albania?then smuggle it out to Western Europe and Russia. Kociu allegedly secured phony passports for the businessmen, met secretly with Colombian drug traffickers and made visits to Porto Palermo, an old naval base near Vlore, allegedly to secure a landing point for the cocaine. But Italian authorities discovered the plot and in late February Rakipi issued an arrest warrant for Kociu. The former hero fled his favorite Tirana coffee shop as the police moved in. For three weeks, he led his erstwhile colleagues on a cat-and-mouse game through Tirana, taunting them with mobile phone calls to the media from his hiding places. Last week police finally arrested him in a Tirana villa. Kociu has denied his guilt. "I feel betrayed," says Rakipi. !
"I need to forget this whole epi
sode."

That won?t be easy. Albania is full of men like Sokol Kociu, and the pervasive criminality that runs through society makes rot difficult to contain. In Vlore, meanwhile, the new police chief struggles to escape from Kociu?s tainted legacy. In the last year his force has made slow progress against traffickers. Backed by a unit of the Italian Guardia di Finanza, they seized 11 speedboats in the first two months of the year, along with 1.5 tons of marijuana and hundreds of Kurdish boat people. But the battle is frustrating. "The skafisti have all the advantages?cash, electronics and cell phones," says Lohja. "We don?t have anything." The cops say revelations about Kociu?s corruption have demoralized them, and prompted many to reassess the hero cop?s record in Vlore. "It wouldn?t surprise me if he staged his own kidnapping," says one longtime colleague. "He was always an adventurer." Exactly the kind of character whom Albania?s reformers will have to contend with as they try to br!
ing their country some respect.