Albania, Trying to Quell Chaos, Arms Volunteers

Outside Police Station No. 2 here Saturday morning, men from northern villages jostled in line for their brand-new Kalashnikov rifles, courtesy of a government struggling to quash violent chaos that has left the country in shreds.

“We are volunteers. We are coming here to restore order,” proclaimed Perparium Lamaj, who manages a pizzeria and supports embattled President Sali Berisha. Lamaj, 26, wore a newly acquired gun across his back.

Lamaj was among hundreds of men, and a few women, who responded to a televised appeal by the government calling on retired, fired and active-duty police officers and soldiers to sign up for a new police force. “Honest citizens” were also invited.

The decision to arm volunteers worried independent Albanian observers unsettled by the prospect of inept vigilantes adding to the terror that has gripped Albania. A casualty of that violence, 17-year-old Blear Lako, was buried Saturday. He was shot to death the day before, along with two other civilians, as he waited in line to buy bread and was caught in the cross-fire of a gun battle between secret police manning a checkpoint and a van that did not stop.

But the government, pointing Saturday to a reduced level of gunplay and looting here in the capital, said the vigilantes will help disarm people who looted weapons from government armories.

The government, nominally in the hands of a 34-year-old former provincial mayor who was named prime minister last week, took great pains Saturday to project an image that it was reasserting control. State television broadcast pictures of Albanian citizens handing in weapons they had stolen, with children saying they wanted to go outside to play again and adults speaking about restored calm in the capital.

“The country is going through a very difficult situation,” Prime Minister Bashkim Fino said on television. “We have to give a message of cooperation and peace.”

Reality was a little different. The port of Durres, for example, was torn again by widespread pillaging. There, hundreds of Albanians lined up forlornly at dockside in desperate hopes of jumping aboard a ship and fleeing.

Many Albanians were successful, mounting a ramshackle flotilla of commandeered speedboats, dinghies and ferries bound for Italy. The total number of Albanians who had made it across reached 3,500, officials there said Saturday.

But early this morning, an Albanian military vessel carrying about 500 refugees ran aground off the Italian port of Brindisi.

Italian authorities who sent out rescue boats said that several people were injured and that two people who attempted to swim the mile to shore were missing.

Foreign nationals also continued their exodus. U.S. Marines airlifted an additional 331 Americans and people of other nationalities Saturday, bringing the total for their two-day operation to more than 700, U.S. officials said. On Friday, officials had suspended the airlift after a U.S. Marine helicopter came under machine-gun fire. The aircraft was not hit.

In a written statement Saturday, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said in Washington that all Americans who had sought evacuation and were able to reach the U.S. Embassy in Tirana had been airlifted out of the country.

In Tirana, the distribution of weapons was accompanied by a government offer to triple police pay. It was not clear how the bankrupt government, its budget months overdue and financial resources depleted, would pay for the salary increases.

At Police Station No. 2, men in civilian clothes armed with AK-47s seemed to be on guard, deciding which of the “volunteers” would gain entry and receive a gun. Lamaj said the showing of a passport and a signature were all that was needed to be supplied with a weapon.

As Lamaj spoke to a couple of reporters, another man similarly armed began to shout. “Why are you giving so many explanations?” he yelled at Lamaj. “It’s the journalists’ fault for all our troubles. We are restoring peace ourselves because Europe won’t help us.”

More than 50 men loitered on the sidewalk outside the station’s gates, waiting their turn, while 20 more men milled about inside. One curly-haired youth, his boots unlaced and a walkie-talkie in one hand, fiddled with his new gun, apparently trying to figure out how to hold it--and in the process pointing it at the crowd.

Around the corner, the newly armed were already in action. Six men wearing disheveled civilian clothes and holding Kalashnikovs mounted a roadblock and were stopping and searching cars.

It was not clear Saturday who was taking best advantage of the weapons handout--supporters of the right-wing Berisha, supporters of the pro-left faction of the government or simply those who wanted a gun.

The gun giveaway further confused a murky and volatile situation, in which Berisha and his Democratic Party of Albania are pitted against his own Cabinet, a “national reconciliation” government formed last week with members of the opposition Socialist Party as a concession to armed insurgents who have control of the south.

“All structures of state are failed,” Justice Minister Spartak Ngjela said. “At this moment, we are in one natural state, if you know Hobbes.” The allusion was to 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who wrote that people are motivated by selfish desire for power and fear of one another.

The European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, meanwhile, were debating an Albanian request for military intervention. The issue has driven a wedge among the Europeans, and Albanian officials themselves seemed split on the idea.

The U.S. said Saturday that it was not ready to join any stabilization force in Albania, but it appeared to leave the door open for that option.

In his statement, Burns said: “We are prepared to study any specific proposal; however, we have not agreed to participate in a stabilization force at this time. We are continuing to consult closely with our European partners on a response to the Albanian crisis.”

Amid a flurry of rumors that Berisha’s days in office might be numbered, a statement read on his behalf on state television reiterated his willingness to step down only if his party loses elections that he has promised to hold in June, three years ahead of schedule, as part of a deal to end the crisis.