ART_Friedman - Wild in the Country - NYTimes 1998
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Search All NYTimes.com Adv ertise on NYT imes.com Foreign Affairs; Wild in the Country By THOMAS L. FR IEDMA N Published: June 16, 1998 TIRANA, Albania— When future archeologists dig up Albania, they will surely wonder what earthquake occurred here in the 1990's that produced the bizarre layer cake that is Albania today. They will find Communist-era concrete bunkers now decorated with ''I love Leonardo DiCaprio'' graffiti. They will fin d a building in Tirana still bearing the washed-out slogans of Albania's former Stalinist regime -- slogans like ''Organization is the bedrock on which the party sits'' -- overlooking a parking lot full of stolen Mercedeses. (It is said that 80 percent of the cars in Albania today were stolen from somewhere in Europe and then resold here.) They will find a country where the term ''highway robbery'' is not a metaphor but a daily event -- largely because Albania has still barely recovered from the anarchy of March 1997, when the economy, which was then dominated by pyramid schemes, collapsed, wiping out many people's savings and the Government as well. They will find a country where tax cheating is so rampant that Albania's 35th-h ighest taxpayer is an American-Albanian pizza parlor in the heart of Tirana. They will find a country where Coopers & Lybrand accountants are auditing the work of Deloitte & Touche accountants who have been hired to liquidate the pyramid schemes. Meanwhile, in the streets outside these Western accounting firms, there are regular shootouts between rival gangs that are unfamiliar with the standards of Coopers and Deloitte and who think ''liquidation'' is something you do to your enemies. What the archeologists will surmise is that Albania mus t have been a very poor, fragile place, where the veneer of civilization and legality was wafer-thin. And they will be right. This is critical to keep in mind when thinking about Kosovo -- the neighboring Serbian province populated largely by ethnic Albanians, thousands of whom have been driven into Albania by Serbia in recent months. Any attempt by Serbia to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Albanians must be stopped, not only because of the humanitarian disaster it represents but because it could destabilize all of Albania. Albania's economy cannot afford thousands of refugees, and its politics cannot afford to be dragged into a Greater Albania campaign -- a campaign that Albania's nasty former President Sali Berisha, who runs a private fief in the gangster-ridden north, is now trying to stoke up as his vehicle for riding back to power in Tirana. ''Albania today is divided between two political trends,'' says the Albanian writer Fatos Lubonja. ''One is a sort of romantic Albanian nationalism that talks about helping our brothers in Kosovo. The other is a [realism] that the Government here is weak and people are fed up with the country and many of them dream only of escaping. If the fighting in Kosovo isn't stopped, there are people here who will manipulate this nationalistic trend in order to destabilize the new Government, and that will lead to an explosion.'' Indeed, as one of America's top Balkan experts, Herb Okun, points out, ''Bosnia implodes, Log In With Facebook Is Music the Key to Success? The Soaring Cost of a Simple Breath MOST E-MAILED MOST VIEWED Log in to see what your friends are sharing on nytimes.com. Privacy Policy | What’s This? What’s Popular Now Get the Opinion Today E-Mail 1. OPINION Is Music the Key to Success? 2. CORNER OFFICE Four Executives on Succeeding in Business as a Woman 3. OPINION London’s Great Exodus 4. Online Application Woes Make Students Anxious and Put Colleges Behin d Schedule 5. PAYING TILL IT HURTS The Soaring Cost of a Simple Breath 6. OP-ART | BEN SCHOTT Schottenfreude Opinion HOM E PAGE TODA Y'S PAPER VI DEO MOST POPULA R WORLD U.S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH SPORTS OPINION ARTS STYLE TRAVEL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ E-MAIL SHARE PRINT REPRINTS Try a Digital Subscription Log In Registe r Now Help U.S. Edition Foreign Affai rs - Wild i n t he Country - NYTimes.c om htt p://ww w.nyt imes.com/1998/06/16/opi nion /foreign-af fairs-wild-in-the... 1 of 2 10/14/2013 3:58 PM
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Foreign Affairs; Wild in the Country By THOMAS L. FR IEDMAN
Published: June 16, 1998
TIRANA, Albania— When future archeologists dig up Albania,
they will surely wonder what earthquake occurred here in the 1990's
that produced the bizarre layer cake that is Albania today. They will
find Communist-era concrete bunkers now decorated with ''I love
Leonardo DiCaprio'' graffiti. They will find a building in Tirana still
bearing the washed-out slogans of Albania's former Stalinist regime
-- slogans like ''Organization is the bedrock on which the party sits'' --overlooking a parking lot full of stolen Mercedeses. (It is said that 80
percent of the cars in Albania today were stolen from somewhere in
Europe and then resold here.)
They will find a country where the term ''highway robbery'' is not a
metaphor but a daily event -- largely because Albania has still barely
recovered from the anarchy of March 1997, when the economy, which was then dominated
by pyramid schemes, collapsed, wiping out many people's savings and the Government as
well. They will find a country where tax cheating is so rampant that Albania's 35th-highest
taxpayer is an American-Albanian pizza parlor in the heart of Tirana.
They will find a country where Coopers & Lybrand accountants are auditing the work of
Deloitte & Touche accountants who have been hired to liquidate the pyramid schemes.Meanwhile, in the streets outside these Western accounting firms, there are regular
shootouts between rival gangs that are unfamiliar with the standards of Coopers and
Deloitte and who think ''liquidation'' is something you do to your enemies.
What the archeologists will surmise is that Albania must have been a very poor, fragile
place, where the veneer of civilization and legality was wafer-thin. And they will be right.
This is critical to keep in mind when thinking about Kosovo -- the neighboring Serbian
province populated largely by ethnic Albanians, thousands of whom have been driven into
Albania by Serbia in recent months. Any attempt by Serbia to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of
Albanians must be stopped, not only because of the humanitarian disaster it represents
but because it could destabilize all of Albania. Albania's economy cannot afford thousands
of refugees, and its politics cannot afford to be dragged into a Greater Albania campaign --
a campaign that Albania's nasty former President Sali Berisha, who runs a private fief in
the gangster-ridden north, is now trying to stoke up as his vehicle for riding back to power
in Tirana.
''Albania today is divided between two political trends,'' says the Albanian writer Fatos
Lubonja. ''One is a sort of romantic Albanian nationalism that talks about helping our
brothers in Kosovo. The other is a [realism] that the Government here is weak and people
are fed up with the country and many of them dream only of escaping. If the fighting in
Kosovo isn't stopped, there are people here who will manipulate this nationalistic trend in
order to destabilize the new Government, and that will lead to an explosion.''
Indeed, as one of America's top Balkan experts, Herb Okun, points out, ''Bosnia implodes,
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Albania explodes.'' Bosnia was surrounded by two larger powers -- Serbia and Croatia --
both of which wanted to squeeze it between them so they could each bite off chunks.
Albania has no such hard walls around it. Significant numbers of Albanians are now
spread out between Albania proper and neighboring Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and
Greece. A war in Kosovo that triggers ethnic Albanian separatism and instability in
Albania could easily spread to these other unstable countries. That's why Kosovo is the
fuse, but Albania is the bomb.
So what to do? NATO's air show over Serbia yesterday was a good start. Because
ultimately, this neighborhood cannot solve Kosovo -- peacefully -- on its own. The only
conceivable diplomatic solution requires international monitors permanently stationed
inside Kosovo to insure that the Serbs restore and maintain the cultural and political
autonomy of Kosovo's Albanians, along with monitors on the Albania-Kosovo border, to
insure that Kosovo separatists cannot smuggle in guns to force a military solution of their
own.
This is a neighborhood of many fantasies -- Greater Serbia, Greater Macedonia, Greater
Albania, Greater Croatia, Greater Islam. If left to themselves they will produce a Greater
Explosion.
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