-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 27, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Behind the upheaval in Albania
People's councils lead insurrection against capitalist misrule
By Deirdre Griswold
For the first time since the wave of counter-revolutions began in Eastern Europe in 1991, the masses have risen up in a general insurrection and fought, arms in hand, against one of the new capitalist governments.
In Albania today, most of the country is heeding the authority of resistance councils. Before the heat of popular anger, the forces of the right-wing state have melted away.
That alone has forced the Western imperialists to rethink all their plans for reducing Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics to mere grab bags of cheap resources and labor.
The working people of Albania have revived their reputation for fierce resistance in the face of brutal repression, and for stubborn rejection of compromisers who would give away at the negotiating table what the masses have won in the streets.
Leadership of popular councils
While the capitalist media speak of "lawlessness" and "anarchy," the spread ing rebellion is not leaderless. Its goals have been made clear.
The rebels have formed councils-some led by communist military heroes from the days of the anti-fascist Partisan resistance-that have coordinated distributing arms and food and freeing political prisoners.
These councils are demanding that right-wing President Sali Berisha resign, and that hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from the people in collapsed pyramid schemes be repaid.
According to the French press agency, council leader Xhevat Kociu, representing towns in southern Albania, issued an ultimatum to Berisha to resign by March 20.
Thus, the popular committees representing the people in arms are far to the left of the official opposition parties, including the Socialist Party. While the SP has called on Berisha to "step aside," it has joined his Democratic Party in a coalition government. The U.S. in particular forced Berisha to bring the Socialists into the government after his armed forces and police completely collapsed.
'Our man in Tirana'
Berisha's fall from imperialist grace has been abrupt.
On March 6, the Washington Post was still calling him "Our Man in Tirana." Today, the corporate media are eager to show disapproval of Berisha. He is now "unpopular," "beleaguered," even "hated."
Berisha's government has been outrageous-beating pensioners who protested obvious election fraud last May, encouraging thousands to put their life's savings into pyramid funds that enriched his party and collapsed a few months ago. All this while ripping off state property and promising widespread prosperity under capitalism.
But is Berisha so different from "our man in Moscow," Boris Yeltsin? Washington was able to rescue him.
So Berisha probably thought he could always fall back on imperialist intervention. But with the people armed and organized, that isn't so easy.
"It's going to be very hard to get this genie back in the bottle," says U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York. He is one of the many outsiders from the imperialist countries now trying to contain this mass uprising.
Washington and the Western European imperialist governments haven't confined their intervention to mere negotiating, however.
Imperialist troops clash with civilians
There have been several intense clashes between Albanian civilians and outside military forces.
The Pentagon says two of its Cobra helicopter gunships came under fire on March 14. The gunships were covering transports evacuating U.S. citizens from Tirana. One of them "returned the fire," said the Pentagon.
It was not reported whether the civilians who had the courage to challenge these death-dealing machines suffered casualties. Cobras can fire thousands of rounds a minute.
Then, on March 17, Reuters reported from Tirana that "U.S. Marines struck desperate Albanians with rifle butts on Sunday to keep them away from helicopters taking out Americans, Turks and Italians."
Italy sent in helicopters and the amphibious assault ship San Giusto on March 14. And German troops also fired on Albanians during an evacuation.
This led to an almost jubilant reaction in the Western press. Reuters reported that "Germany glowed with pride this weekend" after German troops "opened fire under hostile conditions," overcoming the "taboo" that has restrained them from military action since World War II. Imperialist Germany has joined the club of open invaders, alongside the U.S., France and Britain.
To the Albanians who fought German and Italian fascists over 50 years ago, it was deja vu.
The European Union has sent an aristocrat-Count Jan d'Assembourg of the Dutch foreign ministry-to Tirana to pave the way for "military advisers" whose mission will be to disarm Albanian civilians. But the fiercely anti-feudal Albanian masses kicked out their own counts many decades ago.
Titles don't impress them.
Centuries of resistance to oppression
Albanians have a rich revolutionary history.
For four centuries they resisted Ottoman rule. In 1939, fascist Italy thought it could absorb this small, mountainous country. When Italian fascism collapsed in 1943, Nazi Germany took over and set up its own puppet regime.
But the capitulation of Albania's landlords and small capitalists to foreign occupation only convinced those fighting for liberation to take the communist road. By the end of World War II, Partisan guerrillas had liberated Albania from both the foreign armies and the exploiters at home.
The revolutionary government, led by Partisan hero Enver Hoxha, nationalized the land and all key industries. It was the most egalitarian of the Eastern European socialist countries.
Rank was abolished in the armed forces-to be restored only in 1991 after the fall of the last socialist government.
Capitalism spells disaster
The effort to impose capitalism on Albania has been a disaster.
Berisha, elected in 1992 with lots of U.S. money behind him, has followed the advice of Western privatizers. He has tried to tear apart the fabric of state-owned industry and land that put food on the table for the people of this spartan country.
Tirana, the capital, was crowded with experts from the International Monetary Fund, various branches of the U.S. government, and the European Union. They advised Berisha on how to speed up privatizing industry and how to build up a state to defend the newly rich.
It turns out their expert advice wasn't worth much. "The economies [in southeastern Europe] are in ruins," admits Peter Svoboda, an Eastern Europe analyst at Invetmentbank Austria. And the state trained by U.S. and European police experts is in tatters.
Part of Berisha's task was to invent a class of Albanian capitalists. The pyramid scheme was a crude way to expropriate the masses of their life's savings and concentrate it in the hands of a few.
The government had divided up what was once communal land. Berisha's party, the so-called Democrats, then encouraged the people to sell their tiny plots of land to the new entrepreneurs. This was where much of the money invested in the pyramid schemes came from.
The pyramids, which had been promising interest rates of up to 100 percent a month, collapsed at the end of 1996. That left tens of thousands penniless and landless.
Berisha's government has so far protected the few who got out with all the money. Frustrated by this wholesale theft, the masses have vented their anger by ransacking the luxury summer homes of the new rich and breaking into the banks.
Police wither before mass demonstrations
The mass demonstrations began late in January. By the end of February, huge crowds of workers in several southern cities, starting with Vlora and Gjirokaster, had routed the police and taken their weapons.
The uprising spread. Soldiers, sailors and even pilots deserted rather than be used against the people.
Jailers turned over their keys and shed their uniforms. Then on March 13, armed crowds in Tirana liberated hundreds of prisoners, including leftist leaders jailed by Berisha.
Berisha had tried to shore up his rule by having the discredited parliament re-elect him on March 3. With that authority, he planned to crack down. Some reports say he intended to deploy 30,000 troops to the south to crush the rebellion.
It was too late. Nobody was listening to the parliament, which was boycotted by even the mild opposition parties. The troops melted away.
Berisha fired his defense minister, Safet Zhulali, who then grabbed a ship to Italy. Members of Berisha's family, threatened by angry mobs, also decided a cruise would be good for their health.
The next to go was the army chief of staff, who reportedly wouldn't order the remaining soldiers to fire on civilians.
The armed popular committees grew bolder. They opened warehouses and distributed food to the people.
They took over banks and plants that once belonged to the state but had been privatized.
The rebellion spread north-first along the coast, then right into Tirana, the capital.
When Tirana's central jail was liberated on March 13, Berisha tried to counter by arming right-wing bands. And he called on the imperialists to send in troops. Just like his political predecessors-the collaborators who welcomed the fascists in 1939.
But at this point his imperialist backers were afraid Berisha's ruthless rigidity could cost them everything. They yanked his chain and looked for a compromise with the only party in the political opposition that could talk to the masses: the Socialist Party.
Berisha, finally heeding his foreign advisers, brought the SP into a coalition government.
Socialist Party's role
The capitalist media here describe the Socialist Party as the former party of Albania's communists. This is only partly accurate. It is the compromising wing of that party.
Last August, it officially renounced Marxism, denounced the 45-year rule of communist leader Enver Hoxha and his successor Ramiz Alia, and established itself as a social democratic organization.
There is also a Communist Party of Albania. The CP has existed underground since the right took power. It opposes a coalition with Berisha.
Berisha had jailed leaders from both these parties.
Now the masses have freed Alia, the last president of socialist Albania, as well as Fatos Nano, leader of the Socialist Party, from prison.
As of this writing, Berisha is still president but is keeping a low profile.
The European and U.S. imperialists are bringing enormous pressure to bear on the Socialist Party. On March 14 the new Albanian prime minister, Socialist Bashkim Fino, went aboard an Italian warship off Albania's coast for talks with former Austrian chancellor Franz Vranitzky. Vranitzky had been sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to warn Fino that unless the SP could put a stop to "anarchy," they would intervene.
The SP has tried to maneuver with the imperialists, saying that while it opposes a United Nations or NATO force, it will accept military and police advisers.
The people's councils have rejected this. A situation of dual power is emerging.
At a weekend meeting March 15-16 in the Netherlands, Europe's foreign ministers ruled out Berisha's call for intervention. In fact, neither Europe nor the United States is eager to send troops into a quagmire. They're afraid of "another Somalia," or worsewith good reason.
But that doesn't stop the imperialists from threatening to intervene, and even taking the plunge if things don't go their way.
For now, however, the genie is definitely out of the bottle. From Moscow to Washington, speculation has begun about whether the Albanian example could spread.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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