An Iron Fist Puts Albania at Risk

Six weeks of escalating protests and increasingly heavy-handed responses from a regime that has shown little respect for civil liberties have brought Albania close to civil war. The United States and Albania’s nearest neighbors are watching events with rising anxiety. Albania is Europe’s poorest country, and its impoverishment deepened still further after scores of thousands of Albanians lost their life savings in pyramid investment schemes. Many blame President Sali Berisha’s government for not protecting them against their own gullibility. Rumors that some in or close to the regime profited from the pyramid schemes have further damaged Berisha’s popularity.

Berisha was nonetheless reelected president this week by a parliament whose own election last year was tainted by fraud. The timing could not have been worse, and followed failed efforts by U.S. Ambassador Marisa Lino to get the government and the opposition to work together. Re-empowered, Berisha has moved to impose press censorship and a dusk to dawn curfew. Armed opposition nonetheless persists. Next-door Greece and Italy worry that masses of Albanians could plead political persecution and seek asylum.

About one-third of Albania’s budget comes from Western foreign aid. The political leverage implicit in that vital resource should be used now to forestall a new Balkans crisis. Berisha’s rightist government is trending toward the same authoritarianism of the previous communist regime. The first need is to restore the rule of law that Berisha has been so quick to cast aside.