Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 16:58:25 -0500
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
Subject: M-G: ALBANIA: FIRST SIGNS OF REACTION


Armed 'vigilante police' bring
                                  reign of terror

                    March 17, 1997

                    THE driver of the car in front had
                    committed no crime but the young man in
                    jeans and leather jacket pushed his
                    Kalashnikov through the open window and
                    smashed the muzzle into his face. Once,
                    twice. Then he hit him with his fist. 

                    Exasperated uniformed police officers fired
                    into the air to try to stop the attack but
                    could do nothing. The man was one of a band
                    of new vigilantes recruited by the Albanian
                    government not 24 hours before and invested
                    with police powers. 

Over the weekend, the government recruited thousands of men
in the capital and the towns and villages to the north in a
desperate attempt to try to maintain law and order in the
areas it still controls. Instead, they have instigated a
reign of terror. "Yesterday, these men were killers. Today,
they are killers with a licence," one uniformed policeman
said to us yesterday. 

These new sheriffs, who wear neither uniform nor badge,
receive £180 a month, an automatic gun with as much
ammunition as they can use and the power to do as they
wish. They need present no documents, testimonials or even
their names. 

At checkpoints up and down the main road from Tirana to the
north yesterday we saw the results of the new policy. Men
of violence who obviously enjoy the new life-and-death
powers brutally stop cars and search passengers in much the
same way as the rebel foot soldiers who control the south
of Albania. To intimidate the locals, they also fire random
bursts of automatic fire above their heads. 

In Fushe Kruje, a town north of Tirana, Edmond Xhixha, 20,
stood nervously fingering the trigger of his automatic
weapon as his colleague flagged down cars. Edmond has been
a policeman since Saturday. He said: "All my friends are
joining up, too. Being a policeman in peacetime might be a
difficult job, but for now we are just here to impose
order." 

Asllan Shiti, police commander of Fushe Kruje, had created
50 new policemen in the previous 24 hours, doubling the
size of the normal force. 

The brutal tactics are creating revulsion against the
police in areas of the country that have so far remained
loyal to the government. In Lezha, 50 miles north of
Tirana, Dede Froku, a mechanic, said: "What we have now is
a new dictatorship. Police can imprison or beat you for
crimes that command only fines. They are fascists." 

Government officials say the recruitment of new special
police is a case of tough medicine for hard times. But the
danger is that by handing out guns with abandon to men who
evidently intend to use them, they are setting the scene
for even greater bloodshed.


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