Bandits Cut Into Western Relief Deliveries to Albania : Europe: Marauders attack convoys to get food and medicine.

A rising tide of lawlessness and chaos in Albania has severely hampered Western relief efforts and threatened future aid deliveries on which many Albanians have pinned their hopes for escape from hunger and poverty.

Albanians armed with knives and metal bars have attacked foreign aid convoys in desperate attempts to get their hands on food and medicine.

About 300 people attacked a truck delivering emergency aid to Tirana’s Children’s Hospital last Monday, making off with $100,000 worth of goods and destroying cases of medicine in the clamor, according to Jeff Alderson, who heads the British branch of the U.S.-based Feed the Children organization.

Deliveries Tuesday to the northern city of Shkoder, a hotbed of anti-government unrest, were made possible only when local trade union leaders stepped in to escort the convoy after police refused to protect it from marauders.

Even so, local authorities speculated that the supplies would not be safe for long at the grim, lice-infested children’s clinic that was the intended beneficiary.

Three successive years of drought on top of 45 years of Communist misguidance have left Albania in a state of famine with little hope of Western rescue until its ravaged economy is reformed.

Industrial production has ground to a halt after a three-week general strike, and agricultural work has also stopped because of recurring struggles between supporters of communism and democratic reform.

A modicum of humanitarian aid has been offered by international relief agencies responding to reports of shortages so great that many families go for months with nothing to eat but bread and brackish water. Milk, rationed and restricted to babies, has also disappeared.

Because Albania’s beleaguered Health Ministry has been unable to ensure delivery of the largest Western relief shipment since the imposition of communism 45 years ago, future assistance to Europe’s poorest country is endangered.

A second relief mission planned for August could be called into question if working conditions in Albania do not improve, Alderson said.

“Clearly, the Albanian government is responsible to restore a semblance of law and order to guarantee that more aid will come,” he said. “This will not mean the end of aid, but we have to have reliable guarantees that future deliveries will be secure.”

A senior Health Ministry official said that Western governments and private groups planning to send aid and technical assistance are being warned of the risk of possible attacks on vehicles by small bands now roaming the devastated countryside.

Albania could press the United Nations for assistance if problems persist, the official said.

“To bring supplies to Albania, as it is today, one has to be either very naive or extremely brave,” the official said.

Although there have been no massive outbreaks of unrest in Albania since four people died in post-election violence in Shkoder in early April, robberies, shootings and attacks that were once unknown in this agrarian backwater have become daily occurrences.

A steady flow of Albanian refugees fleeing their impoverished homeland continues to arrive in the West despite warnings that many who remain in transit camps eventually will be forced to return.

Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis visited Tirana on Thursday and promised $50 million in aid to the beleaguered country, as well as support for Albanian membership in the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Foreign ministers of the CSCE will meet in Berlin on Wednesday.

Italy’s leading role in trying to assist Albania is spurred by the fact that 25,000 Albanian refugees have landed on its shores this year, overwhelming Italian social service agencies.

With Albania’s once-dreaded security forces on the run in towns where opposition and independent trade union forces hold sway, residents tasting the first fruits of freedom but little else often take the law into their own hands.

Mysterious gunfire breaks the late-night calm in the capital, although there have been no reports of deaths or injuries.