By Nicos Yannopoulos
The Albanian insurrection is on the defensive. Since March 10, the insurrection has been waiting. Unfortunately, this is probably not a "war of position", but a significant decline in the movement. This is partly due to fatigue, and the inability of the movement to propose a credible plan for continuing the confrontation. Another factor is the absence of structures and organisations which can unite the insurgents and boost their morale.
Thousands of people refuse to surrender their weapons until President Sali Berisha goes. But while a few lose their tempers or revolt against some decision of the interim government under Bashko Fino, the general climate is not one of deepening social polarisation or a sharpening political confrontation.
There are people, including among the insurgents, who say that the restoration of order is the top priority, or at least a major concern. Meanwhile, the demand that Berisha depart is slowly fading from the front of the insurgents' minds, and is increasingly seen as a "parliamentary" question.
Significantly, no-one has dared denounce the repressive nature of the "multinational force".
On April 7, the Popular Committees demanded that the force's commanders not meet with President Berisha. But they were careful not to make any comment about the deployment of the foreign troops.
Popular Committees
The Popular Committees are extremely democratic bodies which organise and administer the insurgent zones. They are not really a form of direct democracy, since delegates are neither directly elected nor replaceable.
Nevertheless, they clearly represent the "average view", and the feelings of the majority of the insurgent population. They are certainly not part of a project to reconstitute the state apparatus. But they are contradictory collectives, which on the one hand maintain the instability, and express the demands of the insurgents, and on the other hand legitimise, though collaboration, the political parties of the Government of National Reconciliation, and the Tirana-recognised prefects and regional authorities.
Most committees are attempting to rebuild the police force, rather than develop popular militias or local social self-defence committees.
Committee members are mainly people with military or administrative experience, and who played an important role when the insurrection began. Most are older men, from more conservative sectors of the population. They are less "enlightened" and less "disinterested" than most of the insurgents they represent.
The military men in the committees play a very contradictory role. Everybody recognises their essential role in helping the insurgents confront and defeat the repressive forces of the regime. But these men are hardly likely to encourage the development of self-defence structures within the insurrection.
As a group, the insurrectionaries are confused, ideologically speaking. This confusion fixes the limits and the contradictions of the insurrection.
This is a mass armed insurrection. But once the Tirana elite formed its "Government of National Reconciliation", the insurrectionaries found themselves without a political project for extending their confrontation with President Berisha, and for extending their own power base.
As a result, the insurrection seems to be unable to impose its own solutions, or to make a dramatic change in the social and political balance of forces.
Violence
The European media stress the violence of Albania today. Most of the time these media fail to separate the violence of the insurrection (execution of secret police agents), the political violence of the regime (its retaliations and its "anonymous" terrorism) and the common violence which accompanies every insurrection, revolution or riot.
Every insurrection is accompanied by an increase of political and social violence. Wherever a power structure is collapsing, a number of individuals attempt to appropriate the roles and the property which they consider to be theirs by right.
Until an insurrection of the oppressed can transform its natural "just cause" into a new legal framework, based on liberty, equality and solidarity, there is bound to be a generalisation of low-level transgressions of the previously existing legal code. In all previous revolutions and insurrections, this has eventually been used as a pretext for the reimposition of authoritarian, hierarchical regulatory systems.
Generalised transgression is certainly a major problem for the Albanian insurrection. Among other things, it disorients large sectors of the movement and makes many people more conservative.
This generalised transgression is not provoked by the insurrection. The true cause of the transgression is the same set of social conditions that led to the insurrection: the material privation and feeling of being abandoned by those in power which affect most Albanians.
A large part of the population, particularly in the rebel-held south, already had a very marginal relationship to legality. The Berisha regime tolerated, even encouraged, this behaviour, since there were few other viable strategies for survival for many people.
People were also strongly influenced by the incredible corruption of the regime, down to the lowest officials.
The Popular Committees have not been able to control even the most antisocial and reprehensible elements of this generalised transgression. Where they have tried to do so, they have usually failed. And, in trying to prevent such behaviour, they have used "old-style" methods.
Because they do not fully trust the Berisha regime's police force, they appoint former policemen from the previous, Stalinist, regime to "keep an eye on them". As in the old days, public meetings have been organised to exhort the population to trust and support the police.
What has not been done is to develop the self-managed structures of the insurrection, creating and generalising a system of local self-defence units and popular tribunals.
Berisha's terrorism
To re-establish his role, the president seems to be operating a "strategy of tension". For this and other obvious reasons, it is important to make a distinction between socially motivated and small-scale transgression, and the criminal behaviour of Mafia groups and the criminal-terrorist action of Berisha's agents.
Unless the insurgents can do something about it, the omnipresent, small scale transgression will become structured and organised and, one way or another, exploited by the regime to weaken the insurrection.
It is also important to expose the "white terror" which Berisha's general staff is coordinating in the rebel areas, and even in Tirana. This terror is a key tool in Berisha's diplomatic negotiations. He is presenting himself to the foreign powers as the only man who can re-establish order in the "chaos".
Inside Albania, Berisha uses violence in two directions: to discredit and weaken the insurrection, and to maintain his confrontation with the Socialist (ex-Communist) Party of Bashko Fino. The Socialists, who represent the only real parliamentary alternative, dominate the Government of National Reconciliation. Berisha hopes that his "strategy of tension" will push the Socialist Party towards more conservative positions and boost the morale of his own dissipated supporters.
There is a growing trend of assassination of Berisha's political opponents. There are clear acts of sabotage, like the burning of Socialist Party offices. And there are "blind" terrorist attacks, the aim of which is to weaken the insurrection and increase demands for a return to a "strong state".
Foreign powers
Despite their differences, the foreign powers all agree on a short term strategy in Albania. The insurrection must be bypassed and "stability" reimposed.
The Albanian insurrection is a threat to the stability of the Balkans. The phenomenon of popular insurrection following financial collapse certainly could be repeated in those countries, in Bulgaria, or in some parts of the former USSR.
This is about the challenge, by some Albanians, to the cohesion and credibility of the "new world order." This is why 79,000 tonnes of military hardware have been sent to protect a few dozen tonnes of rice and milk powder.
The Albanian insurrection is not an echo of the past. On the contrary, the revolt of the Albanian people comes from the future. It is a first sign of the resistance of the "fourth world" to the new capitalist barbarism which is spreading across the planet.
This is not the dawn of global socialist revolution. But it is a nightmare for the forces of reaction and counter-revolution. It is subversion of the existing order in the "new Europe". It suggests that bourgeois hegemony is not the only possibility.
There is a need for international resistance to the international plans to repress this insurrection.
[Nicos Yannopoulos organises the Greek "Network for the defence of political and social rights." In March he spent 10 days in southern Albania, where he held long discussions with the leaders of the National Committee of Public Salvation, and the leaders of the Popular Committees in a number of towns, including Saranda, Vlore, Tepelene and Gjirocastre. Translated and edited by Georges Mitralias and Mark Johnson. Abridged from International Viewpoint.]