Albania comes in from the cold – Sunday Business Post
March 16th, 2008
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2008/03/16/story31233.asp
Simon Roughneen in Tirana - ’Euro-Atlantic integration’ was the buzzword among officials from Albania’s Prime Minister’s Office and Ministries for Defence and Foreign Affairs, speaking to this reporter during last week.
Statue of Skanderbeg, Tirana (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Albania is a country split four ways confessionally – between Sunni Muslims, Sufi Muslim Bektashis, Catholics and Greek Orthodox – and two ways tribally, with northern Ghegs and southern Tosks. But all now seem to be pulling one way politically.
“It has been a long time coming, but Albania is ready to rejoin the West. In truth and in spirit, it never left”. So said Tirana’s Catholic Archbishop, Rrok Krol Mirdita, interviewed Tuesday last.
Albania expects an official invitation to join NATO at the upcoming Bucharest summit, and has started the EU accession process. Last week Tirana pledged another 160 troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, backing pro-western rhetoric with boots on the ground. In July 2007, President Bush visited Albania to rapturous acclaim – a pro-Americanism that locals date to Woodrow Wilson’s vetoing Albania’s partition during Versailles treaty negotiations.
Sali Berisha is Prime Minister and leader of the centre-right Democratic Party of Albania. He regained office in 2005, after a controversial 1997 ouster when a national pyramid scheme collapsed costing Albanian citizens unknown billions of lek in hard-earned savings. UN-mandated Italian peacekeepers quelled the anarchy, only after looted arms were spirited across the border to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Berisha vowed to curb corruption and crime, banning speedboat use to help stop drug and human trafficking to Greece and Italy. Despite arresting notorious crime bosses, much remains to do on that score, with Albanian mob crime a transnational blight. The lure of EU and NATO membership seems to be pulling the country along the reform path, rewarded last week by Brussels opening the visa liberalisation scheme for Albanians
Image problems persist, however. During Enver Hoxha’s Communist rule, only North Korea rivalled his Stalinist outpost for bizarre autarky. Larne man Andrew Henning manages the Tirana Sheraton – Albania’s sole 5-star hotel. He told this newspaper, “Albania has great mountains, scenery, and beaches to rival any. But it remains perhaps Europe’s last unknown.”
With over 2000 Greco-Roman cultural artifacts the country is a playground for archaeologists and culture-vultures. A more quixotic tourist draw could be thousands of inverted-mushroom military bunkers dotting the countryside. Albania plans a major tourism investment drive. Just as well, as despite the attractions listed, infrastructure remains poor – be that roads, hotels or public transport.
Corporate tax has been cut to 10% and the economy has opened up: all banks are in private hands. The payoff is 5-6% per annum growth rates since 2001. However one million Albanians emigrated after 1990, and remittances constitute around 13% of GNP.
Other state-sponsored gambits include “Albania for one euro” – pawning-off Communist white elephants to woo far-sighted white knights. However electricity supply remains intermittent, stymying foreign investment. Albania’s economic challenge is partly regional: over 70% of trade is with Italy, Greece and Germany, with few links with Balkan neighbours.
Local religious apathy is another Communist legacy. The Ottoman-built Ethem Bey mosque in downtown Tirana stands overshadowed by an adjacent statue of Skanderbeg. This national warrior-hero fought the invading Turks – who eventually brought Islam to Albania – for 25 years during the 1400s, given title by the Pope for his efforts, before being immortalised in Byron’s epic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A replica statue stands in Pristina, and bronze Mother Teresa’s are prominent in both cities.
Statistically Albania could be the first Muslim EU member-state, but as 19th-century writer Vaso Pashko argued, “The religion of Albanians is Albanianism”. To such ends, a Kosovar delegation visited to discuss forming a common market between the two Albanian states. Despite Kosovo’s supervised independence precluding unification with Albania, the latter”s Minister for Economy and Energy, Genc Ruli, stated that a free Kosovo “paved the way for a common market [...] and coordination of economic policies with Albania.”
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