Battleship Reason

Albanians, Cut Off, Get Set to Vote

So, Albania is set to go into an important election this Sunday. The reason for that is that the country has recently joined NATO, and is currently seeking membership with the EU. Thus, whichever party ascends to power will have some heavy international burdens to bear.

I’ve had the privilege of travelling through Albania briefly when I was younger, and have spoken to many Albanians living in Macedonia during my many trips there. The impression all of this has left me with is that Albanians themselves consider their biggest problem to be a rather antiquated view of the world and of themselves. Younger generations of Albanians seem keen to embrace western social ideas and in turn shed most of their traditional values. They welcome freedom of expression, universal suffrage and free access to information. Naturally, there is also a sub-set that welcomes western consumerism for the apparent glitz and glamour that it brings, but that was to be expected in a nation that has only recently discovered the concept of elite and luxury. In essence then, young Albanians are prepared to invite the west into Albania in order to improve their individual lives. Yet, are they ready for such an endeavour? Albania’s history is rich and long, but its last fifty years can best be described as radical and isolationist.

Under Enver Hoxha (although nominally a Stalinist, I would rather call him a Maoist), the country suffered greatly, and with the fall of communism, did not adapt well to changing circumstances. As a result, throughout most of the 1990s, Albania was isolationist at best, to the point of coming close to a civil war in 1997. Without the necessary knowledge of international protocols, it is now finding itself in a world that is perhaps moving too fast for Albania’s liking. A brief survey in Albania might show that most people consider globalisation to be an uncomfortable skin disease (yet, there is no evidence to suggest that this might not also happen in western nations). Albania also stands out as the only truly Muslim nation in the Balkans. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a significant Muslim percentage, but they are certainly a great deal more liberal than their Albanian counterparts. In Albania, hijab is a rule, not a suggestion. Certainly, changes have been made since the fall of communism, but true emancipation is still well beyond the political horizon. Sadly, this means that Albania’s relations with its immediate neighbors are strained as well, particularly due to religious intolerance that plagued the Balkans in the 1990s and continues to do so in certain areas. In essence, Albania is an overseas investor’s nightmare – politically unstable, economically unsound, and with deep societal divides, both within the country and with its immediate neighbors.

So the question is – can Albania overcome its inherent problems and become a successful European nation? The answer – as always – is that time will tell. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? In many ways, Albania does not have the luxury of time – in this fast-paced, always moving world, it must be able to vault over all its internal problems, land with its international political feet on the ground, and run through capitalism and liberal democracy to catch up to its neighbours and the rest of Europe. Even in the Balkans, home to countries with severe setbacks because of decades of political bickering, economic mismanagement and social unrest, Albania still stands out as perhaps the worst-off in many regards.

So perhaps the answer would be a time machine? Go back in history and change Albania’s course? This is not a complicated project as it appears to people. The best time machine known to man is that of a history book in elementary education. A political assassination does not always need to take shape of a bullet. Russia’s destruction of the cult of Stalin went a long way to changing Russians’ perspectives of their own nation and of themselves. Rewrite your books, and you have changed the history of your people, if not history itself. Sad, but true.