advanced search

Non-Subscriber Extract

The Albanian connection

The Albanian connection

An examination of the extent of organised crime in Albania and some possible solutions to it.

Dr Mark Galeotti reports

In the past 10 years, the once-reclusive country of Albania has experienced two inter-connected problems: a steady and often explosive process of state collapse and the rise of increasingly organised crime.

With the death of the neo-Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha in 1985, the Albanian Communist Party found its rule under increasing challenge. In 1991-92, it collapsed amid an explosion of violence, looting and economic chaos. Inflation had reached 100 per cent, unemployment 50 per cent and many public services had all but broken down.

The north-east and south of the country are only nominally under government control, while towns such as Fier, Sarande, Vlorë, Gjirokastër and Shkoder have become virtual strongholds of organised crime.

In part, Albania's problems are by-products of the collapse of Yugoslavia. The ensuing civil war disrupted existing

Balkan drug routes, through which Turkish narcotics clans brought some 90 per cent of the heroin reaching Europe. The Turks were looking for new routes, and the Albanian gangs were happy to oblige in concert with their cousins, the ethnic Albanians, of Serbian Kosovo and western Macedonia. The Albanians provide the Turks with both couriers and distributors, with the ethnic Turkish minority in western Macedonia providing ideal intermediaries.

Albanian trucks and drivers transport narcotics through Korçe and Elbasan or Gjirokastër to the Albanian ports of Vlorë, Durrës and Sarande. They are then taken by small boat either to Italy or north, up the Dalmatian coast.

There are also reportedly two Albanian-run heroin processing facilities in Macedonia. Ethnic Albanian communities in Europe provide street-level distribution networks. This is especially important in Belgium (with a concentration in Brussels), Germany, Switzerland and Greece (which has absorbed an estimated 300,000 illegal Albanian immigrants since 1991). Some 70 per cent of the heroin reaching Germany and Switzerland is now reckoned to have been transported through Albania and/or by Albanian groups, and the figure for Greece may be closer to 85 per cent.

The collapse of Yugoslavia also offered Albanian gangs a further opportunity both to make a profit and win some degree of popular legitimacy. Ethnic Albanian 'Kosovars' represent a 90 per cent majority in the Serbian-controlled Kosovo region and are engaged in a guerrilla war for independence. Albanian gangs have established a lucrative trade smuggling guns to the Kosovo Liberation Army. There are an estimated million guns illegally circulating in this country of three and a quarter million people. With an Albanian-built Kalashnikov selling in Tirana's black market at $60-100, and the Kosovars prepared to pay up to $500, there is margin for profit. Kosovo is not the only market, and that same rifle will fetch around $1,000 in Western Europe.

The links between Albanian gangs and their Italian counterparts are strong. Albanian émigrés have been working with the Mafia in the United States since the late 1980s, and Italian gangs ­ especially La Rosa (The Rose) and the Sacra Corona Unita (United Holy Crown) combines of Apulia ­ moved quickly to take advantage of the collapse of Albania.

Albanian and Italian gangs together run a series of lucrative back-and-forth smuggling runs across the hard-to-police Adriatic Sea. Drugs, guns, contraband cigarettes and illegal immigrants are brought into Italy, while stolen goods go back to the Balkans.

Access to the 'tradecraft' of established Italian and Turkish gangs and the resources provided by these new opportunities has begun to revolutionise Albanian organised crime, in three main ways:

• Organisation. Traditionally, Albanian criminal organisations were little more than bandit gangs, built around the fis (an extended family unit) and steeped in a culture of patriarchy, machismo and family loyalty. Increasingly, Albanian gangs are developing more sophisticated organisations, in some cases resembling businesses, in others based around terrorist-style cells or 'crews'. This last feature reflects the rise within the gangs of fugitive members of Sigurimi, the Hoxha regime's brutal secret police

• Internationalisation. The most advanced Albanian gangs are building networks across Europe, largely through expatriate communities. They have formed circles dealing drugs and running prostitutes. More than 14,000 Albanian women are currently working as prostitutes across Europe: perhaps 8,000 in Italy and 5,000 in Germany. An estimated 14 per cent of them are under-age

• Diversification. Albanian organised crime is moving into new fields, from money laundering and fraudulent pyramid investment schemes to the illegal acquisition of privatised assets and forgery. The Albanians are also beginning to produce cannabis and, according to some reports, even coca.

The Albanian authorities have had some successes against the gangs, with the launch of an anti-crime pact initiative in January. They are, however, hamstrung by lack of resources and deep internal divisions.

The World Bank rates Albania as the most corrupt country in Europe and this also applies to some within the police. In March, President Rexhep Meidani announced an official war on corruption but numerous arrests within the police have led to mutinies and internal conflicts. In January, allegations of corruption led to a firefight within the Shkoder police, which special forces had to quell.

The international community is anxious to prevent the consolidation of transnational Albanian organised crime. It represents a new ethnic criminal threat and acts as a 'force multiplier' to existing organisations. The Italian police, for example, are concerned by the weapons and money-laundering services the Albanians can provide to the Apulian gangs.

Some look to the success of deployments of foreign forces, notably Operation Alba (see box) and advocate a direct approach, possibly even a multinational force, to interdict smuggling routes. The alternative is for enhanced police-to-police contact and the provision of know-how and material aid. Along with others, the Italians have provided equipment to the Albanian police.

Albania's new organised crime investigation team, established in January, is based on the Italian Direzione Anti-Mafia. Albanian officers are also being trained in Italy and there is increasing direct co-operation. In February Albanian and Italian coastguards arrested a gang escaping from Albania by boat with $350,000 stolen from a bank in Shkoder.

But already, some opposition politicians have complained that government co-operation in international law-enforcement is little more than 'hidden colonialism'. If it begins to look as if the international community is interfering in Albania's domestic affairs, this will alienate local public opinion. An unstable state and a police force still seen widely as corrupt and ineffective will need popular legitimacy if they are to have any successes in curbing this most recent member of the European underworld.

Unstable state: Protesters take to the streets in Sarande, a virtual stronghold of organised crime

Street checks: Guerilla groups are taking over the roles of law enforcement officers on the streets of some areas

Guardia di Finanza: Italian officials searching for illegally imported drugs in Salerno

End of non-subscriber extract