Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 17, 1993 TAG: 9301170220
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ANDREW ALEXANDER COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: TIRANA, ALBANIA LENGTH: Long
ALBANIA COMES CLOSE TO HELL ON EARTH
Among the Communist failures on the European continent, Albania goes beyond the pathetic to the bizarre.It has so many concrete bunkers that its entire population could squeeze inside at the same time.
It is just now allowing its private citizens to drive cars. One result is "tire-napping" by thieves who steal the wheels, then offer to return them for a ransom.
The country's top-rated "luxury" hotel has no heat in the dead of winter.
"It's a strange place," says Leopoldo Principe, an International Red Cross official stationed here. "Nothing works. The people are fed up. If you ask any Albanian, their goal in life is to emigrate."
During the post-World War II era, Albania was arguably the most isolated nation on Earth. Its despotic leader, Enver Hoxha (pronounced Hodja), used fear and torture to keep his Maryland-sized country sequestered for more than four decades until his death in 1985.
Albanians were forbidden to travel abroad and most Westerners were banned from entering. Watching television broadcasts from Italy, just 50 miles across the Adriatic Sea, was officially discouraged. Religion was banned.
Family members spied on each other with the encouragement of the government, which kept files on all citizens (they remain sealed).
When Communist governments in Europe began to fall in 1989, Albanians vented their pent-up anger by destroying virtually every symbol of their repressive government. Schools were leveled. Trains were derailed. Factories were wrecked.
Although Albania got its first taste of democracy with elections last year, signs of the rage that ravaged the economy are everywhere.
Tirana's wide boulevards and spacious Skanderbeg Square are worn and filthy. The most distinctive modern structure, the white marble Palace of Culture, is used mainly by kids who ascend its 45-degree sides and gleefully slide down on their rumps.
The city has just two traffic lights. Only one is working. Traffic control wasn't a problem when only the government owned cars.
Now, however, thousands of aging clunkers have made their way into Albania and are being recklessly driven by daredevils whose only previous driving experience was on a donkey cart. Since pedestrians are used to walking in the middle of carless streets, the mixture of cars, people and horse-drawn carts sometimes produces sad consequences.
Nearly everything about Albania is shabby, beginning with its dilapidated airport about 20 miles from the capital. Where authorities once scrutinized visitors with xenophobic zeal, the customs desk now has all the dominion of a children's Kool-Aid stand.
Since the currency exchange desk is typically unstaffed, visitors must barter with taxi drivers. A few U.S. dollars and a pack of American cigarettes are usually sufficient.
Outside the city, Albania's pastoral fields are filled with families tilling the land with primitive hoes. Few tractors exist. Even fewer are usable. Fuel is costly when it can be found.
The narrow roads, clogged with horse-drawn wagons, were once lined for miles with beautiful towering trees whose leafy boughs created seemingly endless green tunnels. Today they are disappearing - cut down for firewood because the country's government-run coal mines are barely operating.
Along the 25-mile-long road from Tirana to the coastal city of Durres, there are only scattered clumps of trees left.
One thing Albania has plenty of is bunkers. Roughly 700,000. Most can accommodate two soldiers. Some are larger.
The concrete igloos are everywhere - on the Adriatic shores, high in the coastal mountains, spread throughout crop fields. They were ordered by Hoxha to bolster his constant claim that Albania was about to be invaded by a hypothetical enemy.
Today, nobody knows what to do with them. "Some people in the government think they should be used to grow mushrooms," says Sokol Dervishi, the son of a Hoxha-era diplomat. "They're serious."
The suffering among Albania's 3.3 million people is acute.
Unemployment is at 80 percent, by some estimates. In Tirana, thousands of able-bodied men spend their days gabbing in smoke-filled cafes or milling on street corners. There's little incentive to work because the government still pays the jobless a wage not far below what they made while employed.
Inflation is romping along at an annual rate of 500 percent.
The United Nations estimates annual per capita income has fallen to less than $400 - fourth lowest in the world and by far the lowest in Europe.
"Sad to say, but I think things have not bottomed out yet," says, Alizera Mahallati, UNICEF's special representative in Albania.
Because a market economy has yet to take hold, farmers grow only enough for themselves. The resulting food shortage has prompted a rise in child malnutrition. Basic staples - rice, flour and sugar - are now rationed.
"There just isn't enough to eat," says Mel Brumbelow, who runs a Tirana orphanage for Orlando-based Hope for the World, a Christian relief program. "We're starting to see kids begging."
Tirana's 1930s-era Dajti Hotel, the best in town, often lacks necessities. Like heat. Or hot water. It does, however, have an abundance of cockroaches in the warmer months.
Its majestic restaurant is heaven for carbohydrate-loaders, offering barely dissimilar variations of spaghetti - but little else. It also offers Albanian wine, which is barely on a par with any produced in Ohio.
With all its shortcomings, the Dajti is always booked and is a bargain at $100 a night - given the alternatives.
Crime is out of control, and foreigners have been warned to remain off the streets after dark.
Other than the nearby high-rise Hotel Tirane - the city's second best - accommodations are on a par with Beirut on a bad day. "All other hotels," said an interpreter, "are not safe."