
Albanian Civil War - apsec112
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War
======
ardit33
Albanian here, and it wasn't a civil war.... more of general unrest against
the government, which was forced to resign and be replaced by a transitory
one...

A civil war requires several factions, while this was more of a un
-coordinated massive unrest....

Most of the deaths happened during the unrests between bands, people settling
scores, etc...

This is similar to the June unrests and looting in the US, but squared, with
weapons and more... (from army depots, as most of the army refused to try to
squash the demonstrations, and just went home)

Also, the money problem was just the spark, as there was some major
unhappiness with the government then, that started with election frauds in
1996 committed by the government.

The whole thing lasted about a month or so in March, and it honestly felt
something like the movie "The Purge". The government failed, there was no
police in the streets, the army went home, people had weapons, looting and
robbing were common, by 'masked people', it was not a good month...

Eventually things calmed down. Italy sent some monitoring troops, to help with
the transition of the new Goverment... All the weapons that got out of the
army depots, ended up furnishing the Kosovo Liberation Army, and eventually
the Kosova war in 1998-99, that ended up with Kosova's independence...
(Kosovo, is 90% Albanian, and they were trying to get independence peacefully,
after to the Yugoslavian break-up to no avail. The Albanian unrest and some US
help helped them out in the end).

So, I guess there was one good thing that came out of the whole mess.

Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was
planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could
'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it). It would not have ended up well.
Albania at that time had so many weapons left from the Communnist era, and it
wouldn't had gone well for them.

~~~
atmosx
> Ps. We just learned this year, from released documents, that Greece was
> planing at some point to send a invading force to the South, so it could
> 'pacify' the place (and potentially anex it). It would not have ended up
> well. Albania at that time had so many weapons left from the Communnist era,
> and it wouldn't had gone well for them.

Heh, the old lieutenant I had in the GR army was always complaining about
Greece losing an opportunity to annex Albania at the time. I've always thought
he was full of crap because old military ppl dream about war day and night, no
one really pays attention to them. Of course they always come out on top, in
their stories/fantasies! Apparently he wasn't full of crap, that was put under
serious consideration.

Broadly speaking, Greece had expansionary policies until the Greco-Turkish was
in 1919-1922, an extension of the first world war. After a victory who ended
up in a disaster without the Greek army even putting up a fight, the focus has
been to keep the borders as they were[1].

Hopefully, this part of the world won't see more warfare... It's always the
layperson who get screwed.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lausanne)

------
pyuser583
“Eat The Rich” by P.J. O’Rourke has an excellent chapter on the early 1990s
Albanian economy. He described it as a “pyramid scheme based economy.”

He described the primary means of law enforcement as blood feuds, which were
“pyramid schemes of death.”

The chapter’s title is “Bad Capitalism.”

~~~
ardit33
It was not even true capitalism, but more of a anarchy/libertarian place,
where anything goes... and in almost naively way people invested in things
that didn't make sense...

I have 'libertarian' friends that just never lived in a true libertarian
society. Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of
Communism, the government was too inept to apply the laws... and it ended up
becoming a 'anything goes' type of society.

Want to build in a place without a permit? Sure.. go ahead... roads,
infrasturcutre be damned... want to open a TV station, go ahead. That other
guy is using the samme frequenncy? Just by a bigger transmitter to drown out
the competitionl.. Pirated moves on TV, all the time. Cinemas just couldn't
functionn. Why pay for a movie, while the local TV is just showing it right
now....

Things settled by 'strong men', where the biggest gangster usually wins....
for while, until the competition settles scores and he ends up killed.

The country is still suffering with the urban mess that period left... where
things were built with no regard of urban development whatsoever.

Libertarism... just like Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't
work. They always end up with few people gaining power over everybody else
(either the communist elite, or oligarcic rich)

~~~
zozbot234
_> Albania was a libertarian/anarchic place, because coming out of Communism,
the government was too inept to apply the laws. Libertarism... just like
Communnism, are naive ideas that ultimately don't work._

Libertarianism is not the same thing as anarchism or the total lack of
government. It means a government that's restricted to enforcing natural
rights and fairly resolving disputes via courts.

~~~
germinalphrase
How are “natural rights” defined in this context?

------
eruci
It wasn't civil war, it was anarchy. I was there.

People lost the money they thought they had 'invested' for irrational high
returns (sometimes over 20% a month). Then they started protesting when the
schemes collapsed.

Certain groups first attacked the police. Police melted away. Anarchy ensued.

~~~
sushshshsh
Police melted away and in fact the government fled. And also, it was the 90s,
in a "third world" or at least "second world" country-- 20% a month was
natural considering US mortgages were like 14% a year at that time.

~~~
asah
At no point in the 1990s was the US mortgage rate above 11%, and mostly it was
7-8%:
[http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html](http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html)

~~~
sushshshsh
"What is regression to the mean"

"Everyone surely paid the same average rate of 11%"

------
pas
Some editorialized vlog thing, probably not for everyone:

[https://youtu.be/lMUtU0tOmNE](https://youtu.be/lMUtU0tOmNE) \- a YouTube
channel called Rare Earth has a few videos shot in Albania, the linked one
focuses on the pyramid scheme and the collapse

------
oblio
There was a gallows humor type joke in Romania, I don't know if it's actually
of Albanian origin.

The mayor of Tirana (the capital) calls the police chief.

Mayor: I heard something about some protesters in the city center, how many
are they?

Police chief: Not many, only about 4 magazines worth.

------
ronyfadel
Interestingly, Lebanon today could fall into similar anarchy.

People's money is currently locked up in banks after years of exorbitant
returns (15%+ interest) from what the central bank had called "financial
engineering".

~~~
runawaybottle
Shouldn’t the devastation from the Beirut blast already have incited this by
now? What other dominoes need to fall?

~~~
ronyfadel
People are currently tired, devastated and numb. Most people I know have
applied to emigrate to Europe/North America.

That’s a good question.. I don’t think it’s about a trigger (another domino
falling), but possibly about no dominoes falling (big events) for a while, but
daily struggles bottling up until it explodes in the street.

------
aazaa
An article linked by the Wikipedia article puts the scale of the Ponzi schemes
into perspective:

> ... At their peak, the nominal value of the pyramid schemes' liabilities
> amounted to almost half of the country's GDP. ...

[https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/albania.ht...](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/albania.htm)

What neither the Wikipedia article nor the Global Security piece quite explain
is the economic recovery after Operation Alba (which ended the violence).
Conventional wisdom says that an economy seeing such a massive deflationary
shock will need extensive external aid in the form of bailouts, loans, and
debt forgiveness.

This piece from the IMF in 2000 makes no mention of a specific international
aid package:

[https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/pdf/jarvi...](https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/pdf/jarvis.pdf)

If anything, it sounds like the country picked itself up off the mat:

> The long-term effects of the pyramid scheme phenome- non are likely to be
> limited, reflecting not only the resilience of the Albanian economy but
> also—and, perhaps, most important—the government’s adjustment efforts and
> its refusal to bail out depositors. Prices and wages are extremely flexible
> in Albania; as a result, the government was able to cut real public sector
> wages substantially in 1997 (by leaving nominal wages unchanged), and the
> economy suffered no loss of competitiveness when the lek appreciated. The
> new government’s willingness to tackle the budget deficit and undertake
> long-overdue structural reforms was also crucial. However, the social
> effects were profound. In addition to the loss of life, thousands of people
> were impoverished either by their unwise investments in the pyramid schemes
> or by the destruction of their property in the ensuing violence. Less
> tangible, but also significant, are the effects on confidence in Albania.
> The resilience of the Albanian people is consider- able and has been more
> severely tested in the past. But the pyramid scheme phenomenon was a
> sobering setback.

------
tyingq
Less serious, but a question I've had for a while, and I assume Albanians are
in the thread.

There's quite a lot of pizza and "Italian" joints in the US that use Italian
jargon and decor, but when you ask, the ownership is strongly Albanian.

Is there a backstory to this sort of "hidden" Albanian domination of US pizza
and Italian restaurants?

I do get the obvious "across the Adriatic" connection, but other countries
border Italy as well, and don't have the same strong correlation in restaurant
ownership.

~~~
fishtacos
There are a few reasons I can think of:

There has been a historical connection to Italy for centuries, with tens of
thousands (estimates up to ~100,000) that settled there during the Middle Ages
through roughly the 1800s, due to the Ottoman invasion (known as Arberesh).
Related to this, there was a military alliance between more than one Italian
monarch and Albania (technically not a cohesive Albania, but the de-facto
leader of the time, and incidentally, national hero, Skanderbeg) due to the
Ottoman threat in the 1400s.

During the post-WWII communist regime, Italy was our closest neighbor from the
west. Culturally closed off to the rest of the world, their TV and radio
signals provided a glimpse of it in a country where there was 1 TV and 1 radio
station, both regime-controlled. Conjecture, but it makes sense to me that
there would be a gradual identification/comfort level with that culture.

The actual reason though: simply immigration. After the regime fell, beginning
with the exodus of 1991, by the mid 90s, there were about a half million
Albanians living in Italy, and by the end of the 90s, close to a million. You
bet the majority worked blue collar/black market jobs wherever they could find
them. That experience translates into a similar field in the US (where they
primarily immigrated to, although I'm sure equally applicable to other
nations)

I could've just written "immigration" but I thought you might appreciate a
more thorough perspective. This topic has come up a ton with friends and
colleagues before - you're not the first.

EDIT: Also perhaps because... Italian food is cheap, easy to make and very
popular, thus profitable ;)

~~~
tyingq
Appreciate the detailed answer. I wasn't aware of the scale (1M) of the post
1990 immigration. That's pretty impressive given that Albania's current
population is 2.8M.

------
optimalsolver
I'm reminded of XKCD's purple links comic:

[https://xkcd.com/1051/](https://xkcd.com/1051/)

------
rshnotsecure
Civilians across Eastern Europe protested and helped bring about the fall of
communism based on their belief that the West would bring a superior way of
life, government, and economy to their countries.

For whatever reason, it all failed. Assuming slightly higher oil prices than
we have now, life under the USSR would likely be better.

Some particularly egregious things the West / Wall Street did:

1\. No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and
military members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same
mistake made in Iraq in 2003.

2\. Giving Russia garbage loans they were in no position to pay back and had
to be repaid in dollars only. An absolute disaster that Goldman Sachs was
mostly responsible for.

3\. EU was completely unprepared, for what has now become, the greatest
migration in human history. The best and brightest left Eastern Europe in
droves, causing massive brain drain that helped usher in the collapse of
regime after regime.

4\. Sending a CIA team to Moscow in 1996 to directly override the wishes of
the Russian people. In defense, the USA was worried in a reasonable way that
the communist party would win in a landslide at the polls. But regardless that
should have been their choice.

5\. Not focusing on Afghanistan after leaving in the late 1980's, letting
jihadism further spread to Chechyna and the devastating war from 1994-1996
their. Causes terrorism on a 9/11 scale in Moscow, hundreds of Russian tanks
destroyed, just insanity.

[2] - [https://quillandquire.com/review/sale-of-the-century-
russia-...](https://quillandquire.com/review/sale-of-the-century-russia-s-
wild-ride-from-communism-to-capitalism/)

[4] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-
isnt...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-
only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html)

[5] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War)

~~~
pessimizer
> No plan to absorb the massive amount of laid off secret police and military
> members. These ppl would turn to organized crime very quickly. Same mistake
> made in Iraq in 2003.

We'd get the same thing if we actually defunded police and shrank the military
in the US. We're one weak but aggressive left-wing elected government away
from an American ISIL.

~~~
dragonwriter
> We'd get the same thing if we actually defunded police and shrank the
> military in the US.

Only if we did it stupidly. We've done a fairly good job of it in foreign
occupations prior to the Iraq debacle (notably, post-WWII, the model that
experts warned should be followed for Iraq but which was not), we could
certainly manage to not screw it up at home as long as the political
leadership paid attention to pragmatics as well as (not even “instrad of”)
ideology.

> We're one weak but aggressive left-wing elected government away from an
> American ISIL.

We already have an American ISIL (a militant, fundamentalist, theocratic
politico-religious group), and their allies in the formal political system
already run the federal executive branch, dominate the federal judiciary, and
control one of two houses of the federal legislature.

Insofar as a failed political demobilization relates to them, it was the
demobilization after the _Civil_ War (which the battle flag of the losing side
of that conflict remains one of their key symbols.)

~~~
pessimizer
> Only if we did it stupidly.

Only if we did it with a weak government. We have an extremely right-wing
military (except at the absolute top) and a completely right-wing police
force. Without a mass movement, a weak left government is defenseless.

> We already have an American ISIL (a militant, fundamentalist, theocratic
> politico-religious group), and their allies in the formal political system
> already run the federal executive branch, dominate the federal judiciary,
> and control one of two houses of the federal legislature.

Call me when after they start beheading people in the street and taking over
neighborhoods with armed street militias. We honestly have to make sure that
our rhetoric resembles reality at least vaguely. Pretending like a Republican
party that is doing the same thing it did under Nixon or Reagan is basically
ISIL just makes people stop listening.

We're watching armed rightist incursions into cities right now, ones that are
officially becoming armed skirmishes with the police openly suppporting the
invaders (and it's mutual.) Imagine what would happen if we laid off half the
police force? It doesn't matter whether it's right or not; of course it's
right. What matters is that a bunch of unemployed angry right-wingers with no
productive skills and murder training will see the government and the people
who voted for it as enemies.

Like what woke liberals are literally doing right now, but without the middle-
class liberal arts education and heavily armed. Having the Warren Court during
a critical period of civil rights struggle has given liberals a tendency to
magical thinking - like Q-followers, we're always waiting for the wise
executive to move society forward by fiat. When we're at the point where we're
expecting the CIA and FBI to take its place and reign in the elected
president, we have to accept this strategy is not effective. We have to build
power through having specific values and policies, like the right. You can't
just tell an armed bully to stop being a bully because you've been elected the
representative of the people he bullies. He doesn't have to do what you say.

edit:

> Insofar as a failed political demobilization relates to them, it was the
> demobilization after the Civil War (which the battle flag of the losing side
> of that conflict remains one of their key symbols.)

This is what happened after the civil war
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_United_States#Post%E2%80%93Civil_War_and_Reconstruction_period:_1865%E2%80%931877)

American ISIL.

And to celebrate the victory, statues of Confederate soldiers were erected all
over the country. During that time a single-issue antislavery party that had
defended the Union in a civil war over slavery (the Republicans) decided to
virtually merge with the Democrats on racist policy. Those battle flags flew
throughout the lands of a supposedly defeated enemy _for at least the next
century and a half._

------
Spooky23
No, it was sparked by phenomenally bad policy made as the country shifted away
from communist economic principles. IMF guidance was to allow banks and other
financial entities to operate with little or no effective supervision.
Shockingly, 100% deposit interest rates and scams emerged and essentially took
over the country’s financial system.

It think it’s reasonable to say that someone like Lenin sparked a revolution
against a long standing problematic regime like the Tsar that was living in
the Napoleonic era in 1917. This situation was nothing like that.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Lenin didn't spark a revolution against the tsar. The tsar had already been
deposed for months (in the wake of the February Revolution) by the time Lenin
returned from exile and led the October Revolution against the post-tsar
government then leading Russia.

------
sushshshsh
And HN censors yet another title into meaninglessness. The original title,
which explained that the war was caused by nationwide pyramid schemes that
went tits up all at the same time, sparking mass riots, was entirely accurate
and descriptive.

