Help the madman of Europe

YOU DON'T need to make a phone call to the Foreign Office, the Quai D'Orsay or the State Department to know exactly what their Albania watchers have been thinking this week: "Here we go again." In their more polite moments they may talk about the sick man of Europe, but you know what they are really thinking - that Albania is in fact the madman of Europe.

A real madman can be locked up though. Lurching from one violent crisis to the next, Albania cannot be locked up - or ignored. Whatever happens, the rest of Europe has no choice: it has to persist in helping this wounded country - even it means doing so for a generation. If Albania is isolated and forgotten, we will all feel the consequences.

It is hard to know where to start in trying to explain the roots of the political culture that have led Albania into disaster. The tragedy is that ever since its liberation from the Turks in 1912, Albania has continued to live by politics of the pashas. As one Albanian put it to me: "Either you're in power - or in jail." And it is this relentless and destructive tradition that Albania has not yet had the chance to break.

Following the corrupt despotism of the Ottomans came the inter-war dictatorship of King Zog, then the Italian fascist occupation, followed by the Nazis followed in short order by Titoism and Stalinism with a short break for a spot of Maoism. Still groggy, then, it is hardly surprising that Albanians have had problems finding their balance in modern Europe.

At first, after the fall of communism in 1991, it was easy to explain away the madness that then gripped the country. It was anger against the Communists which led to an orgy of destruction, to the burning down of factories and the wholesale pillage of anything state-owned.

And then it seemed as if things were going to be all right. Sali Berisha, a sophisticated former cardiologist, came to power in 1992 and began to set things to rights. He had the full support of the west and money began to pour into the country from the hundreds of thousands who had fled to Greece, Italy and elsewhere looking for jobs and money.

Although Albania was starting from a very low base, its economy began to grow. Foreigners, especially Greeks and Italians, were interested in investing and no one paid much attention when a man called Fatos Nano, the leader of the Socialist Party - the ex-Communists - was slung in jail, allegedly for pilfering Italian aid.

For a glorious moment then it looked as though Albania was going to make it. It has some of the most unspoiled coastline in the whole of Europe, and though small, the signs were encouraging. For example, it was common to meet men who had worked in Greece, saved up some money, bought some machinery and come home to set up some sort of workshop or another.

But something insidious was happening. Pyramid investment schemes began to operate. This was perhaps to be expected because they were simultaneously springing up in Russia, Romania, Serbia and elsewhere. The difference was that Albanians, dazzled by the phenomenal rates of interest they were paying out, invested almost all their savings in them. When, at the beginning of last year, the schemes came tumbling down, the rest of Europe thought the Albanians were idiots. How could they have been so gullible?

The answers they gave were instructive. "We're not as stupid as you think," explained one man. "We thought our money must be safe since these pyramids were laundering criminal money and paying the government and socialists at the same time. Obviously we thought they would have a vested interest in keeping them going."

Last March the country was up in arms, it rose in a general uprising against Berisha. Berisha tried to cling to power but eventually resigned last August after his Democratic Party was crushed in the general elections. The rest of Europe seemed happy. Fatos Nano, out of gaol now, was Prime Minister and so Albania could begin rebuilding - again.

What the rest of Europe had not counted on was the politics of revenge. Nano had been in jail for four years and Berisha was an angry man. Ministries were purged of Berisha supporters and in came Nano's men. It was Albanian buggin's turn - and with increasing frustration, people began to realise that the new lot were as corrupt as the old. Political tension rose and fell. In September Azem Hajdari, one of Berisha's closest allies, was shot and wounded in parliament by a Socialist deputy.

While most of the country returned to some form of normality though, the new government, made up mostly of southerners, never managed to reassert its control over large areas of the north, including Tropoja, the region from where Berisha comes from. The beginning of the conflict in Kosovo now meant that he also had another stick with which to beat the Socialists.

Tensions began to mount once more and, at the same time, security situation began to deteriorate again. Trucks on the main road south began to be held up by gangsters from a village known as a Democratic Party stronghold. Gangsters, politicians and men from the Kosovo Liberation Army began squabbling over the lucrative arms trade to the north. Then, at the end of last month, out of the blue, the government arrested six former Berisha ministers and government officials charging them with crimes against humanity.

Berisha leapt at his chance, claiming that democracy was under threat and that it should be defended even "by force". When, last Sunday, Azem Hajdari was assassinated in front of the Democratic Party headquarters, his supporters claimed that the government had killed him. In fact, since he was alleged to have been a kingpin gun runner, he may have fallen foul of a something far less sinister. Berisha supporters began a violent rampage through Tirana, forcing Nano to flee his office at gunpoint.

Now Nano wants Berisha in jail - to pay back Berisha in kind. But, if violence cannot be curbed, then the Balkans and indeed the rest of Europe is facing a minor catastrophe. A lawless Albania is one in which mafia gangs with tentacles that reach to Milan, Stuttgart and even London can flourish. It is also one that sends out hundreds of thousands of impoverished people in search of work - or crime - anything with which to raise enough cash to live with.

Over the last four years, some 30,000 Albanians have asked for political asylum in Britain alone and every single one has claimed to be from Kosovo. In fact two thirds of them are from Albania. Italy has a major problem with the Albanian mafia - and so does the Italian mafia, who have found the Albanians muscling in on their home turf. In Germany, too, impoverished Albanians have become a major headache for the police and the drugs squads.

Albania is trapped in a vicious circle. Because it is run by politicians who believe that compromise is humiliation, who believe in revenge and in making as much money as possible before being overthrown, no one wants to invest there. In this climate, Albanian businessmen, plagued by protection rackets, cannot rebuild their country either and so no jobs can be created.

What Albania needs is a completely new set of politicians. Since we cannot create them ourselves the only thing to do is to persist. Scholarships, aid, training and any other useful forms of help have to continue because it is in our interests to help as much as it is in theirs. We should support the calls of Germany and Italy who are recommending an international police force for the country and increased EU aid.

An unstable Albania threatens the rest of the region. For example, the uprising in Kosovo was only possible after last year's uprising released a million Kalashnikovs from the armouries for anyone to loot, or in the case of Kosovars, to buy.

Macedonia, with its large Albanian minority, remains a fragile state and if unrest spreads from Kosovo and Albania, the long-predicted "doomsday scenario" of war across the southern Balkans could easily follow.

So, we must persist. Like the vast majority of decent Albanians, we must wait until they find their new leaders. Gloomily Julia Goga-Cooke, the editor of the BBC Albanian Service, says: "I don't think that will happen in my lifetime." But we have no other choice.