Communism’s Fall Leaves Anarchy, Chaos in Albania : Europe: The old order failed, but nothing took its place. Hunger spawns violence that police can’t stop.

An unshaven youth in dirty blue jeans spits on the floor as he shuffles along a darkened corridor where scabs of paint and plaster have fallen from the wall.

He joins sullen, hollow-eyed women and ragged children herding toward a cart in the hallway. Each has brought an empty jar to catch a ladle of milk and a chunk of bread.

Nearby, sprawled on a foam-rubber mattress that is gouged with cigarette burns, Xhelal Mema draws horrified gasps as he displays his bandaged chest wound and recounts a near-fatal stabbing suffered while asleep in his bed.

Such scenes of destitution are not limited to Tirana’s ubiquitous tenements. Mema, the slovenly youth, the women who seem to be sleepwalking, are patients at Hospital No. 2, the best medical facility in Albania, where Tirana University trains the nation’s doctors.

The medicine lockers are empty but for a few used syringes. Windows are broken and there is little heat. Electricity goes off for hours, even days, with no generator to provide backup power.

As it does throughout the city, water flows from the rusted taps only an hour or two each day, usually late at night when people are sleeping.

Sewage leaks from a communal toilet, filling the chilly, litter-strewn hallway with an acrid stench. Disinfectant cleaners, like food and medicine, are virtually nonexistent in Albania.

A young intern, better able to salve fears than infections, wheels a muddy bicycle into the wards with him to prevent its theft while checking on patients.

The wards of Hospital No. 2 and other treatment facilities in Tirana are filled with men mangled by assaults and accidents, women defiled by rapists, babies born prematurely from malnourished mothers.

They are the victims of a society that has tumbled from poverty into anarchy, where communism collapsed but nothing took its place. Hunger has spawned desperation and violence, exposing the weakness of police and gripping citizens in terror.

“There is a lot of crime, more than you can imagine. There’s no stability, no police,” said Mema, 36, recounting the attack on him by bandits who broke into his village home to steal livestock. “There are laws, but no one obeys them. Everyone is afraid for his life.”

Emergency-room physician Roland Xhaxho said nearly all of his patients have been done in by disorder.

“There are a lot of car accidents because people are able to drive for the first time, but they don’t know how. We didn’t have private cars in Albania until recently,” said Xhaxho, motioning to a comatose youth with two broken legs and a head injury.

“People are killing each other with guns and knives. There are epidemics of infectious disease, hepatitis B and typhus,” the doctor continued. “All are connected to the bad living standards.”

Twelve-day-old Rovena Hoxha lay swaddled in a rough wool blanket inside a broken incubator, wheezing as her mother, Naze, blamed herself for the baby’s underdeveloped lungs.

“My other two children were born normally, but I was sick the whole time with this one,” she said. “I didn’t eat right. I could never find fruits or vegetables.”

At the city’s maternity hospital, intensive care doctor Murveta Tomani attributed a rash of premature births to malnutrition. Authorities say infant mortality has skyrocketed beyond Third World standards, with estimates as high as 25% of live births.

“We have so few diapers that we can change the babies only once every 15 hours,” said a despondent nurse, Julieta Xhafka, explaining that was how long it took to air-dry the few they have after washing them by hand in cold water.

For months, Albania has been surviving almost exclusively on foreign aid, but the supplies of food, fuel, clothing and medicine fall far short of the nation’s aching needs.

The 1990 collapse of hard-line Communist rule in this predominantly agricultural country of 3.2 million paralyzed the economy and set off a wave of looting that has bled every state institution dry.

Schools in the countryside have had to close because thieves have stolen glass from the windows and brick from the walls.

Railroad service was suspended in mid-February because overhead communication wires were stolen, frustrating switching operations and posing a risk of head-on collisions. Railway seats, lights and windows had been pilfered earlier.

There will be little planting this spring because last year’s seed grains were fed to cattle after fodder from the poor 1991 harvest ran out. Breeding stock have been slaughtered, undermining future sources of meat.

Dependence on foreign aid has driven many to desperation, since the supplies do not go around.

Armed attacks on relief convoys are so rampant that the Italian army has to accompany its aid shipments, and the International Committee of the Red Cross is threatening to abandon its mission unless authorities find a way to restore order.

“I’m optimistic we can continue here,” said Michel Schroeder, head of the Red Cross team in Tirana. “But we’re trying to get out the message, ‘Please let us work! If not, we will have to stop our assistance.’ ”

The decline of law and order has been especially visible among Albanian youths, according to sociologist Fatos Tarifa.

“There is no authority in the country. Young people have no guidance. This is the main reason gangs are forming,” said Tarifa, telling of incidents in which high school and university teachers were attacked in their classrooms.

“Schools are not working in many areas of the country. They have no books, no paper, nothing to write with,” the sociologist said. “Many schools are simply gone. People had the attitude that schools were built by the state, and now that the state was gone, they didn’t belong to anyone. So they took the glass and the bricks and the roof tiles. Whole schools and hospitals have simply disappeared.”

Most disturbing for Albanian women, long repressed by a tradition-bound society, is a soaring increase in sex crimes, said Tarifa.

“There have been many rapes, even gang rapes. It’s all part of this total breakdown in public order. Albania is just chaos and anarchy,” he said. “People could get by without enough food. It is difficult with so many shortages, but people would survive. What they cannot take is the insecurity, not feeling safe on the streets or even at home in their beds.”

Nearly all of the foreign embassies in Tirana report that their diplomats have been the victims of armed robbery. Aid workers and the few other foreigners in the city seldom venture out after dark except in large groups.

It is considered dangerous to use a flashlight at night, even though Tirana streets are unlit because of short electricity. A flashlight marks the carrier as a good prospect for robbery.

“I always keep my camera hidden inside my jacket,” said Armando Babani, a free-lance photographer. “If people knew I worked for American agencies, that I am sometimes paid in dollars, it would be very dangerous for my family.”

Stolen goods are openly traded at the tree-shaded black market at the southern end of central Skanderbeg Square. Everything is available, from half-filled grocery bags ripped from the hands of shoppers to an American passport offered by a shadowy trader for $30,000.

Albanians’ average monthly earnings are less than $15.

The crime wave has chased people indoors and dealt a death blow to one of the country’s most cherished customs, the corso, a sunset stroll that was the social highlight of the day.

Tirana streets are now abandoned long before dark, as early as 4 p.m. in winter.

“The breakdown stems from isolation. You can’t compare Albania to a resource-poor country in Africa or South America,” a Western diplomat commented. “Albania has incredible resources--chrome, oil, copper, fertile farmland. There’s a lot of potential here, and investors are slowly realizing it. The problems stem mainly from mismanagement. The Communists cut off this country from the rest of the world and squandered its potential.”

As Albania slides deeper into economic chaos, political turmoil has also sharpened in the run-up to a March 22 election made necessary by the fall of a Communist government elected last spring.

Communist leaders, who last year renamed themselves the Socialist Party, contend that cooperation of all political forces is necessary to arrest further decline. But the opposition Democratic Party has rejected coalition government, noting that such an arrangement last year delayed genuine reform.

“Most of the economy is paralyzed because of the anarchy and chaos in the country,” said Genc Rulli, an economist and Democratic Party candidate. “We have to create stable conditions so that foreign investors will come here.”

At least half of the Albanian work force is idle because farms and factories lack the materials with which to work. Growing unemployment and despair inspire attempts to flee abroad. The exodus that saw more than 100,000 leave since mid-1990 has been staunched only by Western countries’ refusal to grant Albanians visas or refuge.

While the country staggers toward its date with the ballot box that may produce no clear choice between communism and democracy, some agencies have suspended assistance.

“The Democrats are being accused of using aid for political purposes. We’ve had to halt deliveries to those places where warehouses have been attacked,” said Duncan Kinnaird of the Feed the Children agency.

“The Communists are so upset that these agencies are helping the people that they are organizing attacks against them,” said John McGough, an Australian physician selling medical equipment to relief agencies. “(The Communists) hope there will be chaos out there so they can come back and say, ‘See, we didn’t have all these problems when we ran the country.’ ”

McGough, who has donated $100,000 of his own money to aid hospitals, estimates that infant mortality is about 25% of live births, or more than 200 times the rate of developed Western countries.

“I know that about 400 infants die in this hospital alone each year,” McGough said of Hospital No. 2. “I’ve seen as many as six babies packed into a single incubator. Then you get problems with cross infection, and with no antibiotics available, the babies die.”

Recalling a recent delivery of supplies to Llura, in the poorest part of the country, McGough said that troops escorting him had to shoot into the air to drive away villagers trying to grab food and clothes.

“It was bitter cold, with snow in the mountains, yet these children had only ragged clothing and no shoes,” the doctor said. “The world has to help these people. They didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

Williams, Times bureau chief in Vienna, was recently on assignment in Albania.