Rebel Albanians Increase Hold on Inflamed South

Rebels angrily wave assault rifles and badger occupants of cars that navigate helter-skelter through the main boulevard of this southern city, past barricades of broken concrete and metal bars. Few women dare venture outside. Gunfire and explosions cut the air and reverberate over the Adriatic Sea.

In this historic seat of armed resistance to enemies of Albania, rebel forces Saturday were refusing to heed a government call to surrender weapons and instead braced for what most expect to be a bloody confrontation with the army of President Sali Berisha.

With the fall Saturday of another city, southern Albania now appears to be solidly in the control of determined but dangerously disorganized insurgents demanding Berisha’s resignation and the return of hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in collapsed pyramid schemes.

A 48-hour cease-fire--declared by the government Friday and clearly ignored by both sides--was to end this morning. Army troops and tanks could be seen heading south into the region Saturday, and firefights were heard in the hills east of Vlore.

“Everyone has promised, to the death, not to give up,” said Ferdinand Llandi, who runs Vlore’s only radio station.

The rapidly escalating conflict in Albania has inflamed another hot spot in the Balkans, still reeling from the debacle of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and triggered a refugee exodus. Three missions of Western mediators were locked in negotiations with Berisha over the weekend, reporting more “flexibility” from the autocratic right-wing president but no firm agreement on demands for quick elections and a new government.

Berisha’s hint of compromise followed reports of the loss of the last government stronghold in the south, the city of Gjirokaster.

Gjirokaster, southeast of Vlore, was reported to have fallen to rebels Saturday afternoon. Government helicopters tried to land soldiers there, but the men were immediately surrounded, disarmed and chased away by rebelling residents, according to witnesses and diplomats. Rebels then ransacked Gjirokaster’s army garrison, making off with rocket launchers and other materiel, and effectively cut off the southern tip of the country and two of Albania’s three principal roads to the Greek border.

Vlore, the largest city in rebel hands and just 55 miles across the Adriatic from Italy, has prospered in recent years as a port and a center for all kinds of illegal smuggling--from people to guns. Demonstrations last month over the pyramid-scheme losses quickly escalated into riots and, finally, full-scale revolt. The army fled the city about three weeks ago, the government followed, and a deadly battle between residents and the dreaded secret police Feb. 28, in which six police officers were killed, left the city under rebel control.

“Control,” however, may be too strong a word. After army arsenals were looted, machine guns, grenades and land mines were distributed far and wide. Armed young thugs dressed in sweats who cover their faces with hoods take charge of the streets at night and even, as on Saturday, during the day--when the threat of army attack is strong. Every male, it seems, has a gun--from children to hospital patients.

At least 25 people have been killed in the last week, according to hospital officials, many from accidental gunfire by a population new to owning weapons.

At the same time, however, rebel leaders are trying to organize, impose a form of law and order, and prepare to defend themselves against the expected government offensive.

On Saturday, they announced the formation of a military defense council and urged those with weapons to take care not to shoot one another but to save their ammunition for use against the government forces.

An ad hoc Committee for the Protection of Vlore elected a leader who is running daily demonstrations in the town square. The leader, Albert Shyti, is a slight man in his 20s with sideburns and coiffed black hair who looks more like a Vegas act than a revolutionary comandante.

Like so many of those protesting in Albania, Shyti said he lost a huge amount of money in one of the pyramid schemes that fleeced Albanians of their life savings. Shyti said he worked in Greece for four years to earn the money, then returned to Vlore in January when he heard that the schemes were collapsing.

“We are not going to lay down our weapons until our demands are met,” Shyti, wearing a red polyester shirt, black leather jacket and baseball cap, told a hasty news conference at an abandoned movie house Friday.

Many in Vlore want to declare southern Albania an independent state, a free zone liberated from the northern half of the country and the corrupt government’s sway. Other key towns, including Sarande, Delvine and, now, Gjirokaster, are forming rebel citizens committees and could eventually link forces, say anti-government demonstrators.

Hatred for Berisha and his regime unites the people of southern Albania, a historically spirited lot whose relative prosperity in Europe’s poorest country has given them impetus for defending what is theirs. Politically, much of the south has maintained loyalty to the Communist Party, while Berisha’s right-wing Democratic Party of Albania draws its support from his homeland, Albania’s north.

Berisha, until recently praised by Washington and Europe as an anti-Communist reformer, lost much of his credibility in elections last year that gave him a mandate to rule but were considered fraudulent. Anger over that deception, coupled with what Albanians perceive to be the government’s complicity in allowing the pyramid schemes to flourish, provides ammunition to the rebellion in the south.

“Berisha cannot be defeated with words. He can only be defeated if we defend ourselves,” said Luftar Petroshati, 62. A onetime fighter for the anti-Nazi partisans and retired officer in the Communist army of the late dictator Enver Hoxha, Petroshati has emerged as a leader of the protest movement.

At a demonstration here Saturday, protesters were eager to share their views with foreign reporters, many of whom had to sneak past government checkpoints to reach the sealed-off south.

One young man, a pistol stuck in his waistband, complained that he too had lost thousands of dollars in a failed pyramid scheme, which he blamed on Berisha and the absurd system around him.

“He’s crazy,” said the youth. “The people are crazy. Parliament is crazy. Everything is crazy.”

Vlore regains a superficial sense of normalcy in the morning, when men and some women scurry past palm trees and looted government buildings to find food in the market or line up for milk. Prices for some staples, like bread, have jumped by about 40% since Vlore was cut off by the rebellion, and sporadic shortages of fuel and medical supplies have been reported.

By late afternoon, however, the thugs are on the tense streets.

“You don’t know who has a gun in his hand,” said a frightened teacher who would give only his first name, Lefter. “You don’t know who is in control. There are honest people who don’t have guns, and they are threatened by those who do. There are people who don’t want to get involved.”

Tension only increased as this morning’s cease-fire deadline approached.

But Berisha was under intensifying international pressure to resolve the crisis and avoid all-out war, following visits from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other European delegations. He indicated that he looked “with favor” at holding new elections, a key opposition demand, and at creating a caretaker government, diplomats said.

But the vagueness of the statements coming out of meetings in Tirana, the capital, left his true intentions unclear.

“The reality is he does have an uncontrollable situation down south that forces him to do something,” a Western diplomat said.

Meanwhile, the refugee crisis that much of Europe feared has started. Desperate families in Vlore have begun to take tugboats or smugglers’ speedboats to Italy, and long queues headed south were reported at Albania’s border with Greece.