Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 11:40:37 -0500
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
Subject: M-G: Latest news from Tirana


Civil war spreads in Tirana 

                    March 15, 1997

                    THE last supporters of the regime of
                    Albania's President Sali Berisha were
                    fighting to maintain order in central
                    Tirana yesterday, a day after the city's
                    outskirts succumbed to anarchy. 

                    Heavily armed police stopped all cars and
                    lorries at the edge of the city centre to
                    check for weapons. Armoured cars raced to
                    and from the presidency, where officials
                    said the president was still working at his
                    desk. 

                    During the hours of darkness over Thursday
                    night, four tanks were deployed to protect
the main thoroughfare, Bulevard Deshmoret e Kombit, which
runs from the main hub of the city's Skanderbeg Square to
the presidency. They drove up and down the deserted streets
in an attempt to deter an attack. 

Agents from the State Security Agency, Shik, huddled
together on street corners, guarding a few key
intersections. They shot dead one man, reported to be a
soldier, outside one of the few international hotels after
he failed to drop his gun when ordered. 

Despite the desperate measures aimed at preventing the last
few square miles of government-controlled territory in
Albania from being sucked into the chaos that has swept the
rest of the country, the rattle of automatic fire around
the presidency intensified yesterday. It was far from clear
who was shooting and why. 

Compounding the confusion, groups of plain clothes gunmen
roved the streets and a column of police armoured personnel
carriers manned by armed civilians drove up and down the
main boulevard. Some said the men were secret service
agents, others that they were pro-Berisha volunteers. 

Outside the sanitised centre of Tirana, the rule of the gun
was near total. Small groups of armed men attacked
factories, shops, private flats and even construction
sites, looting anything of value. The few cars on Albania's
only stretch of motorway, near the airport, drove fast and
furiously as automatic fire echoed around them. By last
night at least 11 people had died and about 150 were
reported injured. 

For those with property outside the inner sanctum
controlled by the government looters were the biggest
problem. At a Coca Cola plant on the road to the airport,
Qemal Locka, the owner of the site, was preparing to defend
it. He had summoned his cousins to set up machine-gun nests
and used the plant's public address system to organise the
workers in its defence. "Some men came this morning in
Mercedes cars without licence plates and tried to loot the
factory," he said. "We saw them off but they said they
would be back." 

Further down the road, what appeared to be a nautical
office was being ransacked. Six small children huffed and
puffed under the weight of a large cupboard they were
carrying away. Three of them wore bright orange lifejackets
they had pilfered. One said: "We got these coats from the
cupboard from that building. We are taking the cupboard
away to burn." 

All the shops had pulled down their shutters and bread was
already in short supply. One of the main flour depots had
been looted the day before. We stopped for a coffee at one
cafe that had remained open, but within minutes the owner
asked everyone to leave when a gun-fight broke out in the
next street. 

Some of the groups of armed men have taken up guns against
President Berisha, angered by the collapse of several
financial pyramid schemes. Others, especially migrants from
the north, have sworn to defend the regime against what
they term the Communists from the south. 

These migrant communities, who live mostly in a slum
district to the north of the capital known as Bathore, and
are nicknamed "the Chechens" by cosmopolitan Tiranians for
their wild ways, have threatened to march on the south of
Albania to restore order. 

For many newly-armed Albanians, however, a political agenda
is the last thing on their minds. Kalashnikovs are trading
for as little as $2. One young Albanian said: "We have
always envied the Bosnians and Serbs and secretly dreamed
of the day when we too would take up arms. Now we have
them."


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