As a frequent visitor to Albania, I find this article appalling. The author goes out of her way to make Albania seem a weird, Borat-like country. Sadly, while it is common for Western journalists to visit Albania in order to write an article about blood feuds as an easy sale to magazines, they rarely put blood feuds in context – they are limited to a distinct region of the country, their real heyday was the 1990s, and the absolute number of people affected is very small even by the standards of Albania’s population. Furthermore, the country has made enormous strides in development, and much of Albania is now little different from any other Eastern European country. Writing an article about Albania and pointing to road quality is mainly an anachronism, and complaining about the difficulty of finding a ferry just makes her look like a bellend incapable of doing normal things that travelers do in most countries on earth.
And then the complaint about the Albanian language is ridiculous. The orthography is pretty straightforward and Albanian phonology heavily overlaps with English (one reason that Albanians can often have good accents in English even if the don’t actually know the language as well as it would seem). And when she writes this:
> Ukuˆgaan iˆxamnakuˆx or “Nice to see you.”
I speak fairly good Albanian now, but I have no clue what this is supposed to be. It is not Albanian, at least not in any standard orthography.
I don't blame you for defending a nation that, in my experience, is the victim of a lot of ugly stereotypes in the United States (and probably much of western Europe) in the face of an unflattering article. But I think you're being a little harsh--to me the author seemed to be going out of her way to make clear she was describing only a limited part of the country.
For example, the article makes crystal clear that, that, as you say, the feuds are limited to a small portion of Albania:
> The killing is concentrated in northern Albania—in the rural, often unreachable villages of the Accursed Mountains, and in the modern city of Shkodër, one of the oldest municipalities in southeastern Europe.
Similarly, the author's comments about the road, etc., are specifically about "northern Albania." I'm in no position to determine whether or not this addresses the substance of your comment but, at the very least, it is clear that this description is not about the country as a whole.
And finally, about the language: I'm again in no position to judge (though it does seem likely that written Albanian would be challenging for an English speaker simply due to the much larger number alphabet), but I'll just note that the quote you reproduce is, I suspect, intended to be written phonetically, not using standard Albanian orthography.
> to me the author seemed to be going out of her way to make clear she was describing only a limited part of the country.
No, her presentation is very jumbled. Talking about ISIS on the basis of an “ex-Army friend”? Northern Albania is overwhelmingly Catholic, and that mention of Islamism results from suddenly trying to bring Kosovo and Macedonia into the article (and even then, her “ex-Army friend” is exaggerating).
>>“What I can tell you in broad strokes is that Jihadi sympathy is rising in the area. With any luck you might just spot the ISIS flag being flown in the open,”
Like you said, that area is virtually 100% Catholic, but in all areas, police are MERCILESS with such things. Free speech takes a backseat.
>>“As far as advice goes, when you touch down get a decent knife and keep it on you.”)
Yeah, a woman with a knife. Anything can happen, and crimes of opportunity do happen, but she'll probably be 10 times safer than walking at night in average dangerous US city. For one, anyone touching a tourist--and they have--will be hunted down. He'll end up with bruises for resisting arrest :)
We can agree that her army friend sounds like a nut, and it was probably poor judgment to include those inflammatory quotes from him. ("When you touch down get a decent knife and keep it on you," for example, sounds like poor advice at best.) And we can probably agree that the short passage you highlighted is not great as a whole. If I were her editor, I might have taken it out. But I'm not sure what this has to do with the point under discussion, which was whether the author made clear that the feuds are limited to a small portion of Albania, and are far from a nationwide phenomenon.
Moreover, for the record, the potential for radicalization of Albanian Muslims is by no means an issue of this author's own invention. It's easy to find numerous other examples of reports to this effect. So it seems indisputably true that "there are still worried mumblings" that Albania could become a recruiting ground for ISIS. One can easily find these worried mumblings with a cursory Google search. (Of course, the truth of the underlying proposition may be a different matter. I don't know.) I also have serious doubts about your statistics. Albania as a whole is majority Muslim [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...], and Albanian Kosovars are overwhelmingly Muslim [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/europe/how-the-saud...]. So it would stand to reason that northern Albania has at least a sizable Muslim population.
> So it would stand to reason that northern Albania has at least a sizable Muslim population.
No, there is no sizable Muslim population in Northern Albania. While in the far south Orthodox Christianity and Islam are very mixed, in the far north the population is almost 100% Catholic.
I'm really not that interested in belaboring this point, but you're painting with such a broad brush (and by merely repeating the same assertions), that I couldn't resist digging in a little further. And it turns out that, indeed, there is a sizable Muslim population in Northern Albania--unless you're using some special definition of "northern Albania." (I suppose this is possible. But, if so, it does not appear to coincide with the region being discussed in the article--Shkodër and the Accursed Mountains--which both appear to be areas with significant numbers of Muslims). There are portions of the north that are overwhelmingly Catholic (not actually inconsistent with there also being a sizable Muslim population, but never mind), but also many other areas of the north that are majority Muslim.
Shkodër and that portion of the Accursed Mountains where gjakmarrja saw a revival in the 1990s, are within that portion of your map that designates an overwhelmingly Catholic area. To the northeast is an area with a larger Muslim population, but within the context of Albanian culture that area (Kukës, Peshkopi) tends to be designated "Northeastern Albania" to set it apart from Northern Albania that is centered around Shkodër.
North and Northeastern Albania were separated by considerable natural barriers until recent times, and while the Ottomans made inroads in the latter and Islam spread, in the former the Ottomans never established a firm grip and the area was a fortress of Roman Catholicism.
I have zero connection to Albania and completely agree. The whole tone of the article is of exploring some backwards nation.
> Though it’s almost impossible to substantiate the statistics, aid organizations estimate that at least 12,000 Albanians have been murdered for blood in the last twenty-five years.
This is approximately the annual number of gun deaths in the USA.
Newspaper gives different stats http://www.tiranaobserver.al/statistikat-ja-sa-vrasje-kane-n...
and in the later years apparently it rarely crossed 100 deaths (3 mil people). In 1997-98-1999 law and order totally broke down so there were a lot of deaths.
Not to mention that all land became state property about 60 years ago and in early 1990's was distributed to others. Needless to say original owners were not happy.
Today Albania is much safer than NYC, deaths are in most cases targeted (crime groups that go back and forth)
I think there are lots of people in the US that consider gun deaths a huge problem. But the fair description of our collective sentiment in the US is that gun deaths are just part of the price of freedom.
US number is annual and doesn't include deaths from other reasons. Albania number is sum of the last 25 years.
So we could ignore other homicide weapons and say yes, this is equivalent to 48000 Americans a year.
Considering that US gun violence has fallen by about 50% since the 90s [1], I'd say this is equivalent to about 3-4x the US rate over the same period. It's a lot but not some murderous wasteland.
And then the complaint about the Albanian language is ridiculous. The orthography is pretty straightforward and Albanian phonology heavily overlaps with English (one reason that Albanians can often have good accents in English even if the don’t actually know the language as well as it would seem). And when she writes this:
> Ukuˆgaan iˆxamnakuˆx or “Nice to see you.”
I speak fairly good Albanian now, but I have no clue what this is supposed to be. It is not Albanian, at least not in any standard orthography.