BY NATASHA TERLEXIS
GJIROKASTER, Albania - From the beginning of the armed uprising against the dictatorial, pro-capitalist regime of President Sali Berisha here, the government of neighboring Greece has sought a special role in any imperialist intervention in this country. The main card of Greek imperialism has been its claim that it is the "protector" of the Greek-speaking minority in southern Albania.

Numerous news reports in the Greek and other international media, based on interviews with rebels holding Kalashnikovs and speaking Greek, have been held up by the state media controlled by Berisha as evidence that the rebellion is not home grown. Former head of Albania's secret police (SHIK) Bashkim Gazidede declared in a report to the Albanian parliament March 26 that the rebellion was the product of a conspiracy by Greek organizations based in Greece and the United States to "liberate Northern Epirus" and annex it to Greece. Northern Epirus is the term used by rightist organizations in Greece to describe the part of southern Albania these groups claim belongs to Greece. Epirus is the Greek province bordering Albania. These statements by the pro-Berisha forces are part of an effort to divide the insurgents and isolate them from the toilers in northern Albania.

In most mountainous villages, small towns, larger cities, and the ports of the south, one has no problem communicating in the Greek language. For an outsider, it's not easy to tell who is ethnic Greek and who has learned the language from stints of working in Greece as an immigrant. In visits to Gjirokaster, Sarande, Himara, and several villages in this region March 18-28, Militant reporters found that for the most part working people whose first language is Greek have been a part of the rebellion just like other Albanians.

"In the Dropolis valley between the Greek border and Gjirokaster you see Greek villages," said Spyros Niko, an elderly farmer at the entrance of the village of Frashtane. Then looking across the narrow valley he pointed out some Albanian villages. Peasants have abandoned cultivation of grains in these fields, which have been turned into pasture lands since the "market reforms" of Berisha virtually eliminated state subsidies for fertilizer, seeds, and use of farm machinery. Niko herds the 100 or so sheep that belong to the few families left in his village. "Half the inhabitants have left and gone to work in Greece," he said in an interview.

For the past century at least, Greek speakers and other Albanians have been living in this region, for the most part in separate villages, as well as in integrated communities like the larger southern towns of Sarande and Gjirokaster. According to figures widely reported in the Greek press, the Greek-speaking minority in Albania numbers 250,000, or 8 percent of the country's 3.2 million people. The Albanian government puts the figure at 80,000.

Since 1991, when travel became possible after four decades of virtual isolation from the rest of the world, ethnic Greeks and other Albanians have emigrated massively. Up to half a million have gone to Greece and Italy in search of jobs and better living conditions.

Greeks involved in rebellion from start
These immigrants are the bulk of those who poured their remittances to relatives back home and other savings into the "pyramid schemes." The collapse of these fraudulent investment funds in January devastated the toilers in this region, who joined the anti-Berisha revolt.

When presented with the fact that Athens maintains that ethnic Greeks here have been bystanders, or even victims of the revolt, Niko responded, "Why? We were the ones who lost the most money. Of course we protested." Both Niko and Spyros Kotsis, a retired farmer from Dervitsani, a nearby village, said that "everyone here" went up to Gjirokaster and joined the protests to demand state compensation from the pyramids' collapse.

Everyone Militant reporters interviewed in the exclusively Greek-speaking villages of Frashtane and Dervitsani said in a very matter-of-fact way that each family is now armed.

"We have to protect ourselves from Berisha's men and from looters," said Niko, explaining that guards were posted at night at the blockaded entrance of the village. "We also try to look after the houses of people who are gone to Greece." These have been a favorite target of looters, he stated.

"No, we have not been a special target, us Greeks," Niko stated, referring to daily stories on TV networks in Greece, accessible to everyone in this region of Albania, that ethnic Greeks have been especially targeted by armed gangs that have increasingly been carrying out robberies and assassinations in the last month. "When there is a robbery, it's against everybody."

"We are fighting against Berisha, for democracy and to get our money back, all of us here, Greeks and Albanians. If he goes, it will be a victory for all of us," said Christakis from the Dropoli area, who did not give his last name.

Several ethnic Greeks are members of the defense councils in Sarande, Gjirokaster, and Himara, as well. These citizens' committees, born out of the revolt, have formed the National Front for the Salvation of the People, which held its first meeting in Gjirokaster March 12.

Greek nationalist agitation
Since the crumbling of the former Stalinist regime, headed by Enver Hoxha until 1985, and with direct encouragement from Greece, nationalist agitation has been on the rise. Presenting itself as a champion of the Greek minority, an organization called Omonia was formed in the early 1990s. It has participated in nationwide ballots as part of the electoral front called the Union for Human Rights. In the eyes of many people we interviewed, Omonia has been discredited through its support for the Berisha regime. "Omonia? they are in the business of making money off of visas to Greece," said Koutsis, "they don't do anything for us." One-year visas to Greece, very hard to get through regular channels, reportedly cost as much as 300,000 Greek drachmas (US$1,140) through payoffs to intermediaries.

Several people said Omonia politicians pocket aid from Greece through their relations with Athens. "With all the aid coming in from Greece, these roads should be paved, but instead the money lines people's pockets," said taxi driver Skender Arapi, voicing a common complaint.

The Greek Orthodox church has been funding the building and repair of churches throughout the south. Religion was banned and churches were closed under Hoxha's reign. "The Orthodox church makes it difficult now for Christians and Muslims to intermarry - it didn't used to be like that before," said Arapi.

Ultrarightist organizations based in Greece have also stepped up activity in this region. The weekly newspaper Stohos, published in Athens and espousing fascist views, describes the uprising as an opportunity to put annexation of southern Albania on the agenda. According to its correspondent Giorgos Yfantis, based in Sarande, the paper hails the uprising and presents annexation as the solution to the economic devastation of these regions. The group claims to have sent volunteers to fight for that goal.

During a visit to Gjirokaster on March 28, the Greek consulate there was closed after an attack by an armed group the day before, when a dozen people drove a tank to the consulate and entered the premises with AK-47's demanding visas for 10 passports. Not knowing that the consulate was shut down on March 28, hundreds of people from nearby villages kept arriving all morning to apply for visas. The consulate is the only authority of any foreign government functioning in the area. With its hand on the spigot of visas to Greece, its influence is enormous. The consul, whose residence on a hill overlooking Gjirokaster is known simply as "the Villa," frequently travels through the villages making arrangements for visa allotments and the dispensation of Greek aid funds. Money from Athens is often used to repair sewage, roads, and other infrastructure in order to widen the influence of Greek imperialism.

The weapon of immigration
Ethnic Greeks - those with their national origin noted in their Albanian identity card, or those who have papers from "minority" associations recognized by the Greek government - have a relatively privileged status when it comes to getting visas to Greece. This does not mean, however, that they receive residence and work permits once in Greece.

"They may call us Greek while we are over here," said Andon Dhiamanti, a young worker from Vlore, "but we are all the same when we are in Greece." The 300,000 Albanian immigrants in Greece work under abysmal conditions of exploitation. They work the hardest jobs in construction, agriculture, and industry and they often get paid subminimum wages, equivalent to a third of what Greek-born workers make for the same jobs. They are also perpetually subject to deportation, following the twists and turns of Greek foreign policy. According to SKY radio, the Greek Ministry of Public Order announced 30,000 deportations of Albanians in February and March of this year.

"There is no question of ethnic discrimination against Greeks in Albania," was the emphatic opinion of Thanasis Dinou, a Greek-speaking journalist in Gjirokaster for Zori Popoli, the daily newspaper of the Socialist Party.

"There were no problems between us and the Albanians under the Hoxha regime," stated Niko. "We had very little and life was hard. But we had what everybody else had." This was echoed by most ethnic Greeks interviewed by Militant reporters. In the areas where Greek speakers live, said shepherd Panayiotis Argiris from Frashtane, there are Greek elementary schools - both under Hoxha and now. In the secondary schools lessons in Albanian are introduced.

"Now we face similar conditions as the rest of the people," said Christakis. "Those who had more money from working in Greece lost more in the pyramids."

Legacy of Albanian revolution
"When we won our freedom [from the Germans in 1945] we won it for everybody, all fighting together - Greeks or Albanians, it didn't matter," said Koutsis, a veteran of the partisan struggle of the 1940s. The partisans, led by the Albanian Communist Party that was founded in 1941 with help from the Yugoslav partisans, defeated the occupation of Hitler's armies through a bloody struggle. Through a 19- day battle, Albanian partisan brigades routed 20,000 German troops and liberated the capital, Tirana, in 1944. They then led a socialist revolution that abolished capitalism and established a workers state within two years.

Did ethnic Greeks participate in that struggle? "Of course, we were among the first!" said Niko, proudly.

"We started to organize our own resistance groups of Greeks here - although there were some Albanians who fought with us," he recalled. "Guerrillas came from the units of [Greek partisan Leader Aris] Velouchiotis and roused us up, got us organized."

"Then we joined up with Albanian brigades to create mixed columns and one large army. This is how we won our freedom. The partisans didn't discriminate," Niko stated. The partisans were the first organization that united toilers of different religions and speaking different languages. Since independence from the Ottoman empire in 1920, the various imperialist powers attempting to grab a piece of Albanian territory and local capitalists and landlords, were successful in fomenting national and religious divisions. These differences were largely overcome through the Albanian revolution.

"We did operations everywhere," Niko said, "from Ioannina [in northern Greece] to Serbia. We worked together with the other partisan movements [Greek and Yugoslav], freely crossing the borders to fight the enemy. We were fighting to free all the Balkans - but then the borders closed and we got separated."

In 1949, after the Hoxha regime broke relations with Yugoslavia and aligned itself with Moscow, Tirana, under orders by Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, stabbed the Greek partisans in the back. Under the Yalta agreements, Stalin pledged to London and Washington that Greece would be in the "west's" sphere of influence. The Greek Communist Party went along with Stalin's dictums, but sizable units of the Greek partisans continued the struggle to topple the capitalist regime. Chased by the Greek and British armies to the Albanian border after disastrous defeats by the end of the 1940s, the Greek partisans were told they could only cross without their arms.

"Many thousands were trapped here when the border closed," recounted Koutsis. "They were taken to Fier and then sent to Russia. They were considered suspect because they didn't obey Moscow."

In repelling an incursion by Mussolini's armies in 1940, the Greek army pushed into southern Albania and held a quarter of the country for six months. This was done with the aim of annexing "our brothers in bondage," as the Greek dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas put it at the time. In reality, the occupied areas were not majority Greek speaking. It was the third and last time the Greek army occupied parts of Albania, the previous two being in 1916 and 1923.

Nevertheless, many ethnic Greeks supported the invasion. "Everyone in the village was waiting for the army to come," said Koutsis. "We went up to the church and rang the bells to welcome them. We pulled out the Greek flags we had hidden."

"Those young men that came here to free us have left their bones up on that hill" Niko said. "We wanted to join [the Greek Army] but they wouldn't let us."

Initial support for the Greek government forces, however, later switched to backing for the partisans who led the anti-fascist struggle.

It was people like Koutis and Niko who built the united partisan columns. "We won our freedom and we got title to our land," said Niko, referring to the victory of the Albanian partisans. "Most Christians in the area did not hold title going back to the Ottoman empire. They told us we would all be one. We wanted that."

Prejudices, though, do exist today. They built up over decades as the revolution degenerated under Hoxha's Stalinist leadership. "For the most part we live together as one people," said Arapi, referring to recent years. "But there are also those who look down on the Greeks. This is justified because Greek villages supported the Greek army when they invaded in 1916 and 1940, and also because ethnic Albanians had been chased out of Greece," from the time of the Balkan wars to World War II. "For example," he continued, "although I am not Greek, people in Tirana would call me `shit Greek' because I come from [the southern town of] Sarande."

Most working people interviewed by the Militant were adamantly opposed to imperialist intervention now, including from Greece. This was also true among the Greek minority. "Send the army to fight whom?" asked Christakis. "You don't have two sides here - Christian and Muslim. Everybody is together fighting Berisha."

Investors from Greece have been frightened by the revolt. On March 28, about 100 such businessmen held a meeting in Athens to demand state help to cover their losses from investments in Albania. Active in Albania are one major tobacco company, several apparel and shoe manufacturers, and construction contractors. In the shops that are open, in restaurants, and in the many cafes, the Greek drachma is used interchangeably with the Albanian lek. Most products in local shops, as well as what little advertising there is in the south, are Greek. While many Albanians see international investments as desirable, illusions are fading. As Christakis put it, "Nobody comes here to invest for his mother's soul - they all want to get something from us."

Opposition to intervention was far from unanimous, however. "Why don't they move the border to right here, north of this village and solve the problem?" said Kostas Maloukis, 83, in the central square of Dervitsani "We're tired of being a minority." "There has been more looting of us, with hatred," said the owner of the Mini Market in the same village, who asked that his name not be used. "They steal from us Greeks because we have more." When Greek deputy foreign minister Yiannos Kranidiotis visited this village March 18, he was greeted by a crowd of hundreds with cheers.

Natasha Terlexis is an airline worker in Athens, Greece, and member of the Federation of Foreign Airlines Workers. Bobbis Misailides, also a member of the same union in Athens, and Militant staff writer Argiris Malapanis contributed to this article reporting from Sarande, Gjirokaster, Himara, and other towns in southern Albania.  
 
 
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