BY NATASHA TERLEXIS AND BOBBIS MISAILIDES
VLORE, Albania - "These are the city limits of Vlore," said Artur Xhafaj as we entered this port city in southern Albania on the bumpy road from Fier in late September. "Berisha's men never made it past this point," he stated, since the start of the working-class rebellion that shook this country in the first half of this year. The openly pro- imperialist Sali Berisha, Albania's former president, is no longer in office as a result of the revolt. The roadblock working people erected to guard the city is currently manned by uniformed police.

Now, seven months later, the city of Vlore gives the appearance of returning to normalcy. The central paved streets are full of people since early morning. Students pack the city buses on the way to school. Women are at work sweeping the central streets and piles of garbage are being burned here and there. The open air markets are stocked with basic necessities brought by truck from Greece and by boat from Italy at steep prices. It is hard to walk very far without seeing a construction sight or repairs being made. Scores of unemployed men spend their day in the cafes that line the main avenue. Cars cruise the streets until after dark and there is generally no sound of Kalashnikovs.

"This peace is deceptive," said Edmond Tahiraj, a leader of the Committee for the Salvation of Vlore, in an interview here. The committee is one of the popular citizens councils that emerged during the armed rebellion, which was centered in Vlore, and took over control of many cities in the south.

The revolt began in January when fraudulent investment funds promoted by Berisha's regime, called "pyramids," collapsed and hundreds of thousands of working people lost their life savings. Workers, farmers, students, and others took to the streets to demand compensation from the state and to protest the already heavy burden of the government's "market reforms," as well as the police repression unleashed by Berisha. The government lost control of one-third of the country, Albania's army and police were effectively dissolved for a time, and jails were thrown open. Residents of many towns, especially in the south, attacked agents of the hated secret police, the SHIK, and burned down police stations.

A coalition government of the Socialist Party (SP) and Berisha's Democratic Party (DP) was cobbled together, and called elections in June and July that were held in the midst of an occupation by Italian, Greek, and other imperialist troops. The SP, which won the elections, played a central role -in collaboration with Berisha - in inviting the imperialist powers to intervene and help authorities quell the rebellion.

Working people are still armed
Since coming to power, Prime Minister Fatos Nano's regime has set out to "restore order and stability," a precondition imperialist powers in Europe and North America have set before extending new loans and other credits to Tirana.

The Nano government set a deadline of September 30 for the population of Albania to return the weapons - taken from the army's stores during the rebellion - under threat of heavy penalties. Most of the heavy arms, such as tanks and antiaircraft guns, are now back under government control. Kalashnikov rifles and small arms are an entirely different matter.

"The most serious problem we face is the collection of arms," stated Platon Arapi, the prefect of the region of Fier. Speaking to Militant reporters September 24, he said that throughout Albania approximately 600,000 arms were taken, and only "10 - 12 percent have been retrieved" by the state. Albania's interior minister Neritan Ceka stated recently that 1,200 of the country's 1,500 army depots were destroyed during the revolt. He also said that 1,311 people were killed, including 52 policemen, and 1,450 were wounded. Arapi stated that road blocks would continue to be used to look for concealed arms, but that there were no plans to search people's homes or take other measures of that type. "We are trying to convince people to hand them over. People have to feel that they are secure." The police have to be strengthened, he said.

Prefecture secretary Vladimir Shehu pointed to the village of Leven, outside Fier, where during the insurrection 17 people, "including 13 members of the worst criminal gang in the region," were killed in a shoot-out. Some of the rebels have now been hired onto the police force, in an effort to increase people's confidence in it.

Crisis of ruling caste
The revolt threw the rule of the bureaucratic caste in Albania - the privileged social layer that has held sway in that country since the degeneration of the socialist revolution half a century ago - into deep crisis. During the revolution of the 1940s, workers and farmers overthrew capitalist property relations and nationalized basic industry, the banks, and the land; gave land to the peasants; charted a course towards industrial development; and founded an Albania free from imperialist domination for the first time - establishing a workers state. The privileged social layer that early on usurped political power out of the hands of the toiling majority was represented until the early 1990s by the Stalinist Albanian Workers Party, or Communist Party, headed by Enver Hoxha. The SP and the DP both hail from the Communist Party and represent competing sections of that same social layer. The Democratic Party calls for a rapid restoration of capitalism, while the SP leaders describe themselves as social democrats.

The DP suffered various splits even before the June elections. Recently another central DP leader, Pjeter Arbnori, has organized a public faction in the party against Berisha. Arbnori has denounced the corruption of Berisha's previous regime. The DP has been boycotting parliament and organizing daily protests since September 19, demanding Nano's resignation. The DP and SP fiercely blame each other for the crisis ushered by the rebellion. Calling the Nano government "a gang of bandits, thieves, traffickers, and killers," Berisha said that "we shall wipe them away from the surface of the earth by democratic means."

The president of the parliament, Skender Gjinousi, left open "the possibility of Berisha standing trial for the crimes committed by his regime," in a statement to the Albanian daily Koha Jone. Such a step would be a breach of the accords between the two parties that formed the basis for the earlier coalition government. Nano was jailed for four years by the Berisha regime on alleged corruption charges. The call for Berisha to stand trial for the hundreds of people his police forces killed during the rebellion in February and March was a central demand of the rebel councils.

Conflicts between the SP and DP further deepened during a recent discussion in parliament on increasing the Value Added Tax (VAT), which will hit working people the most. During the parliamentary debate on September 16, SP member Gafur Mazrehu shot and seriously wounded Azem Hajdari of the DP. The following day the offices of the SP in the northern city of Shkoder, where Berisha's party has a large base of support, were largely destroyed by a bomb.

The new tax package passed by the SP-dominated parliament is one of the measures pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a condition for loans. The law, which will raise VAT to 20 percent from 12.5 percent, was introduced by Finance Minister Arben Malaj as "the shortest and quickest route" to cut the budget deficit and hold down inflation, currently running at an annual rate of nearly 33 percent.

`Market reforms' bring devastation
Albania, still largely an agricultural country, is the poorest country of Europe, with a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $340 a year. The capitalist "market reforms" of the previous regimes by the SP and DP, which qualitatively deepened the economic and social problems created by the anti-working-class methods of planning and management by Hoxha's Stalinist regime, have devastated Albania's economy.

As of 1993, some 92 percent of the land cultivated by collectives under Hoxha's reign and 62 percent of the state- owned farms were turned over to individuals. Ownership of the land by foreign capitalist investors is still prohibited by law. The small parcels of land the farmers received amounted to an average 3.7 acres. Without any credit, fertilizers, or access to machinery, cultivation of the land came to a standstill in large areas of the country. An exporter of agricultural products in the 1980s, Albania now imports about half of its needed goods.

Measures to denationalize state-owned industries also had devastating consequences for working people. Most of the country's factories shut down production, throwing hundreds of thousands of workers in the streets. Unemployment benefits are $15 a month for the 300,000 people who do not have jobs. The average monthly wage of Albania's 550,000 workers, out of a population of 3.2 million, is between $60 -$80, while social security for retirees was $30 in the cities and $7 in the countryside in 1995. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Albanians emigrated to neighboring countries in the 1990s in search of jobs.

Despite the ambitious privatization plans of Berisha's government, large-scale industries such as mining, oil refining, electric power, and others remain state owned. With Berisha discredited, the imperialists of Greece, Italy, and other governments rushed to give support to Nano's government. Although most of the 7,000 imperialist troops that occupied the country between April and August have left Albania, the Italian, Greek, and Turkish governments are maintaining hundreds of soldiers and "advisers" to help Nano's government reorganize its army and police forces. Athens also promised to extend a $20-million loan.

Albanians debate outcome of revolt
Working people and youth are discussing the evolution of their revolt, weighing what they gained and the next steps to take in the struggle to regain the money they lost in the pyramids. "This was not a revolt. It was two or three gangs of thieves killing each other. Only criminals and politicians were out on the streets of Vlore for three months," declared Sezai Bazaj, the rector of the University of Vlore.

A group students waiting for their exam results in the lobby of the university had different opinions. Aida Malasi, a fourth-year nursing student, participated in the events leading up to the armed insurrection. She was one of the dozens of students who began a hunger strike in February. "We did it for our three demands," she explained. "That Berisha resign, that we get back the money taken by the pyramid firms, and transparency in government." Only one of the demands was won, she said, Berisha is out. "The fight we began was taken out of our hands by the politicians."

Bitterness against the main political parties that have alternated in power since the opening of the 1990s runs deep.

"They have promised many things - all lies," stated Edmond Tahiraj. "I am a member of the Socialist Party, but nevertheless I believe they are setting up a new dictatorship." Looking back at the experience and the two members of his family who were killed in the events, he concluded, "If we knew things would turn out this way, we would never have supported the political parties.... Vlore has sworn not to surrender the arms before the money is returned. This is a matter of life and death, and the government should think it through carefully."

"The revolt was beautiful!" said Andi, a 15-year-old high school student who gave only his first name. "But then the politicians manipulated the protests to their own advantage. Both the SP and DP are the same."

Some are willing to give the new government a longer honeymoon. "We had the guns because Berisha did not understand words," said Albert Shyti, a leader of the Committee for the Salvation of Vlore. "Now we don't need guns to talk.

"We asked them to finish what we started," said Shyti, "now we have to see if they respect us or if they made a deal with Berisha." Shyti said the new government "will do whatever the United States and European Union tell them. Money will be given then by other countries to build roads, factories, hotels, and life can begin to function." But, he added, "if that money ends up in the pockets of those in the government, we are here and we are watching what they do."

Although the committee has not met since June, its members continue to be in contact with each other and with members of rebel councils in other towns.

Working people do not readily identify the pyramid holding companies and their functioning with capitalism, and many hold illusions that foreign investment can offer a way out from the economic catastrophe. On the other hand, their experience as super-exploited immigrant workers in Greece, Italy, and elsewhere means that they have gained first-hand knowledge of the exploitation of living and working for a boss. "I know these people exploit," said one worker boarding the bus leaving Vlore for Athens, along with his family. "I know how things work in Greece. But if they came here and invested in a factory, then at least there would be some jobs and people could stay in their homes and work."

People are again taking the path of immigration in massive numbers. "You can't cry about it forever," said one high school teacher who lost her house in the pyramid collapse. "I have to work to get a new house for my family while I am still young. This time I've decided to go abroad." At the same time there is a growing combativity among these immigrants. This June, for example, a strike took place involving agricultural workers from Albania, India, and Pakistan in a village near Thebes, Greece. The undocumented workers demonstrated in the village square demanding better pay.

Clashing class outlooks
Over the past half decade, while most working people have sunk into poverty, those in the ruling caste, such as company managers and government or army bureaucrats, as well as professionals and other petty-bourgeois layers, have enriched themselves by working in partnership with Greek and some Italian entrepreneurs seeking access to the Albanian market and to cheap labor. Freddy, for example, who identified himself only with his first name, graduated from the university as a civil engineer but was forced to work as a construction worker in Thessaloníki, northern Greece, for a few years. He was later able to strike a deal with a Greek merchant there to import machines into Albania. He now employs a half dozen people, including family members, in a small factory in Fier assembling window frames out of Greek aluminum and is doing well financially.

The director of the state-owned TEC power plant in Fier is also the one who got a five-year lease under Berisha to operate the town's state-owned hotel. Most among these layers, whose loyalties alternate between the SP and the DP, are deeply convinced that capitalism is the necessary and inevitable future for Albania, and they get a hearing among workers and farmers.

But the desires of these would-be capitalists are running up against the active opposition by many working people for whom further "market reforms" spell nothing but disaster.

The TEC power plant outside Fier is on the long list to be sold off to private investors. It is a plant of 650 workers - 30 percent of whom are women - who make an average of $20 a month. The facility produces one-third of Albania's electricity. "So far the privatization has unfortunately remained on paper only," complained Muharrem Stojku, the factory director.

One woman operator voiced an opinion held by most workers interviewed by the Militant, saying categorically "no" to the idea of selling to foreign investors what she described as "our" plant. "It would mean losing our jobs, that's what we have heard from other countries." The workers of this plant, along with some management, defended it against attack and vandalism from Berisha's forces and criminal gangs throughout the insurrection. Many workers there had investments in the pyramid schemes. "All this time we never stopped producing electricity for the people," said operator Koci Anastasiadi.  
 
 
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