The False Apocalypse

by Lubonja, Fatos; Hodgson, John; Hodgson, John

  ***

  Vranitzky did not know for sure if this opposition represented the opinion of the majority, especially in the South. For him it was more important to know if he could dictate the course of events with these protagonists, or if he should summon others onto the stage. He seemed satisfied with the cast of characters he had. Why complicate the scene unnecessarily? But he did not exclude the possibility of others appearing in a later act. When asked what he thought should be done if Berisha agreed to extend the ceasefire another forty-eight hours, but the south still did not hand in its weapons, he opened the prospect of a different solution: ‘When we make a proposal,’ he replied, ‘we believe that it will be an effective one, and, if it is not effective, that means that we are dealing with a different situation that will require another proposal.’

  Nobody, least of all Vranitzky, could imagine what kind of situation might be created if, while Tirana insisted on the surrender of weapons, the South still refused to hand them in.

  Chapter XXXVI

  The Agreement of 9th March

  On the morning of 9th March, Qorri set off early for the Forum’s office. He found nobody there. No meeting was set for that day. The rays of the sun, already warm in those March days, drew him to the French windows opening onto the terrace. Whenever he stepped out onto this terrace he liked to imagine himself on the left-hand wing of a soaring bird. Surely the architect had been inspired by the vision of a bird with outstretched wings. Qorri identified this bird with the Forum, whose offices occupied its head. But that day he did not think of the bird, but of the Forum’s empty office on the floor below. There was nobody in Gjinushi’s office in the right wing either. After half an hour the phone rang. When he lifted the receiver, he heard Ceka’s voice.

  ‘We’re meeting here at my house,’ he said. ‘Come round, we’ve got something important.’

  Ceka’s serious tone made him think that relations with Berisha must have deteriorated still further since his repudiation of the declaration of 6th March.

  So why don’t these people come to the Forum, he wondered as he unlocked his bicycle and set off.

  The roads of Tirana were not as deserted as in the evening, but still there was plenty of room for cyclists. In less than ten minutes Qorri arrived at the stairwell of Ceka’s apartment block. He locked his bicycle at the foot of the stairs and climbed up.

  Ceka lived in a typical apartment from the time of the dictatorship with two or three small rooms and a kitchen. When Qorri entered he noticed in passing the furniture of the sixties manufactured by the Misto Mame Combine, so often found in intellectual households. In the living room, he found Zogaj and Perikli Teta, both leading figures in the Alliance, and also Gjinushi. The atmosphere was conspiratorial.

  He had no time appraise Ceka’s furniture in detail or look at the pictures on the walls, because Zogaj started explaining why they were there.

  ‘Berisha has set another meeting for us. This morning, in about an hour’s time.’

  Qorri did not speak, but Zogaj saw his spasm of surprise, and began to explain what had happened that day. The situation had taken a turn for the worse. They had made several attempts to reach Berisha before in the end finding suitable go-betweens.

  ‘He absolutely refuses to meet us as a Forum,’ he added, as if reading Qorri’s mind.

  The others did not speak.

  Qorri realized why he had been summoned there. They were going to meet Berisha again, but this time they wanted to avoid what had happened two days before, when they had come up against the Forum’s opposition. The fact that it was Zogaj who was explaining what they had done reinforced Qorri’s suspicion that he was the principal mediator.

  He felt powerless to remind them that only two days before they had declared they would act only as a Forum. He could not identify the precise source of this helplessness. Was it because he had no authority over these people? Because he was merely an individual with no party to back him up? Because he was not sure that he should stand in their way? Because the international pressure for dialogue also gave them the right to act outside the Forum in the interests of everybody? Or was he afraid he might appear slighted at not being invited himself?

  ‘At least let Kalakulla go, as the chairman of a party,’ he said.

  ‘There are certain people Berisha refuses to meet,’ Ceka interrupted. Then he seemed to think again and turned to Zogaj, ‘Phone the Presidency again, and mention Kalakulla.’

  Ceka had regained his confidence in making decisions without considering others. This annoyed Qorri.

  Zogaj phoned. The secretary answered. Zogaj asked him to convey to the President the request for Kalakulla also to attend the meeting.

  ‘... of the Right-Wing Democratic Party,’ Zogaj added.

  After a while, the secretary returned with a brief reply. Zogaj laid down the receiver.

  ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘He won’t meet Kalakulla.’

  Qorri saw that they were going to this meeting whatever happened. They were even looking at their watches, worried at being late. They were meeting up with the representatives of the Socialists, to set off together.

  ‘Ask for representatives of the South to come to the talks,’ Qorri said as they made ready to leave. ‘That’s what we decided. Say that without them there’s no way we can make decisions. He won’t accept them ever, but there can’t be any agreement without them. He should be clear about that. With the situation as it is, in a few days he’ll have to flee anyway.’

  They set off, expressing the view that, in the end, these talks were necessary to reduce tension, and for the sake of the internationals, but without it occurring to them that they might repeat their first mistake of signing an agreement on behalf of people they didn’t represent.

  ***

  About an hour after he left Ceka’s house he saw at the entrance to a bar an unusual gathering of people, grouped round a television screen. He went up out of curiosity. He could not believe his eyes. This crowd was watching Berisha’s meeting with representatives of the opposition. How could this be broadcast live? This meant that there would be no laying down of conditions at this meeting, he thought. This was a fait accompli. There had been no mention of any such thing at Ceka’s house.

  Even the television presentation showed that Berisha totally dominated the occasion. He was at the head of a long table. On one side were representatives of the opposition parties, including Meidani, Majko, Gjinushi, Ceka, and Zogaj. On the other side were Godo of the Republicans, the chairman of the National Front, the fraction of the Social Democratic Party, and the chairman on the Legality monarchists.

  Everybody was listening in silence to Berisha’s speech:

  ‘From this room, we state together that what Albania needs most today is a platform for national reconciliation.’

  How could he dare speak of national reconciliation after all that had happened? Why were these people sitting there listening like schoolchildren?

  ‘In the last few days, many different solutions have occurred to me, but I ultimately reached the conclusion that an act of national reconciliation is the most imperative need and the most honourable settlement. In this reconciliation, there are no losers. Nothing lost in national reconciliation deserves to be kept.

  ‘An immediate end to acts of violence demands that we should all rise above party pressures and interests. This is a noble and civilized cause.

  Berisha spoke with the assurance of someone who had the last word. Clearly, nobody round that table intended to raise objections.

  ‘I think that to achieve this step, the parliament must declare an amnesty for all servicemen and civilians who were involved in the revolts of the pyramids.

  ‘Sunday will be declared a day of national mourning and prayer for all those who lost their lives in this period.

  ‘Let us agree to have a Government of National Reconciliation including all the political parties.

  ‘Let parliamentary elections be held within two months.


  ‘I invite the Socialists to come to the parliament.

  ‘Citizens are to hand in their weapons within one week.

  ‘The Government of National Reconciliation that will also prepare for the elections must make serious efforts alongside international institutions and friendly countries to assist the areas of the country that have suffered the most damage.

  ‘These were some of my ideas...’

  Qorri left the bar and set off for the headquarters of the Socialist Party in the hope of finding somebody he could work with to stop anybody signing a document of the kind Berisha envisaged. How could he elevate himself above all parties, when he himself was a party and the worst of all parties? He was deeply discredited, morally and politically, and yet he was now claiming the privileged high ground. He was asking for an amnesty and a day of mourning without considering that the dead called for justice. Ceka and his friends were responsible for this too. It was enough to drive you out of your mind.

  In the Socialist Party office, he found only a few secretaries, also watching the television with disgust.

  He left and headed for the Rogner.

  Chapter XXXVII

  From Fatos Qorri’s Diary

  10th March 1997

  It’s all over. I’ve fallen out with them. Yesterday afternoon Paskal Milo came to me at the Rogner and gave me a copy of the statement. I read it and asked him:

  ‘And you signed this?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  I gave it back to him and said to everybody round about, ‘These people have always been rubbish, and always will be.’ And I stalked out.

  I can’t even begin to understand this feebleness. After the dictatorship, we all have weakened backbones, but these people seem totally spineless. Yes, it was a frightening moment, but this was not the time to disgrace ourselves and abandon all those people who were looking to us for their salvation.

  The chess game was almost over. A few more moves, and checkmate would have been inevitable. Then these people sat down and put their signature to a stalemate. Did they do this out of fear or self-interest? The two are hard to distinguish. People with little courage also have petty interests.

  The only person in the Socialist Party worth talking to is Meidani. I went to meet him in the party chairman’s office. I told him we had been on the threshold of a historic breakthrough when the Albanians would at last do something to give them faith in the future, after they had succeeded in clearing a poison from their system by their own efforts. But in the event, we were more like abortionists strangling a healthy infant ready to be born.

  He listened to me carefully.

  ‘I’m not for a revolution,’ he said. ‘If this is a revolution, I’m going home.’

  ‘There’s no question of a revolution,’ I said. I think he wanted to shame me, because this word has become a synonym for communism.

  I don’t know myself exactly what I wanted from them. Perhaps a bit more resilience, keeping the promise they had made two days before. A little more respect for the people in the South who had sacrificed so much, who had been attacked, and were now threatened with reprisals.

  I am for elections too, but does Berisha deserve to be considered a legitimate candidate in these elections? After all that he has done, is he not a threat to them? If not even Berisha is convicted for what has happened, then nobody can be brought to justice ever again in this country, and this will be worse than the failure to punish the crimes of communism. In such a semi-democracy, the state will be able to commit any kind of crime.

  I left Meidani, casting an eye at the enormous table where the chairman held his presidium meetings. I recalled that on one occasion when I had entered that office Majko had shown me with special pride the head of the table, with the chair of the imprisoned chairman Fatos Nano. ‘None of us sits in that chair,’ he said to me.

  How can you expect people who don’t dare to sit in an empty chair to unseat Berisha?

  Chapter XXXVIII

  After the Agreement

  ‘We want guns!’

  ‘We want guns!’

  ‘We want guns!’

  A wave of shouting crested and broke, and the human flood surged forward to engulf the largest arsenal in Berat.

  People plundered what they could, Kalashnikovs, heavy machine guns, bullets, mines, bombs, grenades. They came out ecstatic. Some, with Kalashnikovs over their shoulders, jumped into trucks that set off with a roar to the nearest town, Poliçan. When they reached the main square they fired volley after volley into the air, as if to show they were masters of the town. After this invasion, they set off towards Skrapar.

  But the agreement of 9th March did not persuade the South to surrender its weapons, but sparked a chain reaction of attacks on arms depots and occupations of towns by armed men.

  In Skrapar, the insurgents from Berat joined a section of armed inhabitants of the town. Someone pointed them to the police station, claiming that police units would be deployed to unblock a road for the passage of troops from Tirana. The insurgents attacked the police station and set fire to it.

  Gunfire of the same kind could be heard all over Fier, Lushnja, and Levan.

  The next day the entire South apart from the city of Korça went out of all control, with attacks on arms depots, the looting of food reserves and the destruction of public buildings. At least ten people were killed and twenty wounded.

  Did this so-called uprising have leaders? Who would dare to direct it, now that Tirana had issued an act of reconciliation? Or was it spontaneous? Berisha’s people argued that it was not, and produced conspiracy theories that sometimes contradicted one other. On the ‘map of the rebellion’ they pointed their fingers at important strategic centres like Berat, which had also been the air base from which the two MIGs had taken off to seek refuge in Italy. This must be a military plan, they said, devised by foreign intelligence services, the Greeks above all, even the CIA itself, which was under the influence of the Greek lobby. These fictions were conveyed to Western journalists, some of whom processed them into interesting news for the Western public. ‘The Nightmare of Northern Epirus: Albania in Danger’ was the headline of an article in Corriere della Sera on 12th March, in which the writer claimed that a well-known Greek lawyer, one of the best-known leaders of the Epirus movement in Greece whose aim was to attach the southern part of Albania to Greece, was trying to co-ordinate the efforts of the Albanian insurgents in the south. He was travelling unhindered from Saranda to Gjirokastra, Delvina, and Tepelena, and meeting with rebel leaders. The article concluded, ‘The international community must ensure that Albania’s borders are guarded and secured from the infiltration of destructive elements. The Albanian people must be vigilant and not fall for trickery.’

  This scenario had been concocted by Berisha’s people during the last few days, after they had seen that the opposition in Tirana had sat down with Berisha, while the South continued with its own business. But in Berisha’s propaganda, the old narrative of communist reaction still prevailed. According to this script, former Sigurimi agents and officers of the old regime who did not obey Tirana had organized this uprising in an attempt to turn back the clock and restore communism. Had not the communists repeated for fifty years that they had come to power with bloodshed, and would only let it go with bloodshed? Now it was time for blood to flow.

  Some Western journalists swallowed this scenario, blaming their own countries’ diplomats for not reacting properly to the terrorism of the former communists at the beginning of February, when the arsenals at Vlora were opened. The name of Kiço Mustaqi appeared in the Western press. This senior officer, once Enver Hoxha’s defence minister, and convicted of genocide, had taken refuge in Greece, and was allegedly the mastermind controlling the rebellion in the South.

  These conspiracy theories made Qorri furious. He knew how they operated, and this annoyed him more than their absurdity. Berisha’s people served up these explanations to Westerners, who were inclined to believe th
em because of their limited knowledge and their reliance on stereotypes. And so these interpretations, invested with the style and authority of the supposedly impartial and reputable Western press, were recycled on State television, to convince the Albanians themselves of their truth.

  The reality of the chain reaction that ran through the South after 9th March was complicated and quite different.

  After all that had happened, the people of the South could not trust the agreement of 9th March. Berisha had tried everything against them. After police violence failed, he had tried the State of Emergency, sending the army and even aircraft to bombard them. After even this failed, he had suddenly announced, ‘Let’s sit down and talk about peace and reconciliation.’ Who could swallow this? The opposition in Tirana had stretched out a hand to him at what should have been his moment of capitulation. Worse, it had reached a deal by selling out the South. According to the agreement, the people in the South had to hand in their weapons within a week without any guarantee of what would happen next. Of course they were scared of Tirana. The instinct of self-preservation told them to defend themselves.

  This dismay of the South was compounded by the fact that the agreement of 9th March weakened still further the authority of institutions. Nobody knew any more who was responsible for the State. The criminal world came to the fore, in all its power, and filled this vacuum. The prisons had been thrown open and their liberated inmates were exploiting the turmoil to steal and pillage.

  The people had to defend themselves from an army that might disarm and imprison them. They had to secure food and protect themselves from criminals. So most of them thought they would be safer with a gun.

  No leader was coordinating these actions in the South. Precisely because they were weak and leaderless, people fired into the air, to feel strong and protected, and to scare anyone who dared approach: in fact, to scare away their own fear. People also headed for the arms depots in the hope of looting something worth selling.