Area Handbook for Albania Part 23

Decorations

Recognition for high standards of conduct, exceptional effort, or noteworthy accomplishment is bestowed lavishly. Highly prized decorations include the Partisan Star, Order of the Albanian Flag, Order of the National Hero, and Order of Skanderbeg. Other decorations that are worn by a few of the highest military and Party officials include the Memorial Medal, the Order of Liberty (or Order of Freedom), the Liberation Medal, Order of the People's Hero (or Hero of the People), and Order of Valor. Some of the decorations, including the Partisan Star and Order of Skanderbeg, are awarded in three cla.s.ses. This group of decorations is usually awarded individually, but on rare occasions some can be presented to a group.

The Order of Labor (or Hero of Socialist Labor) and the Red Flag Order (or Red Banner) may be presented to individuals, usually civilians, but are most frequently reported when awarded to a group or an enterprise.

Typical recipients would be a factory for overfulfilling its quotas, a ship after completing an unusual voyage, or a military unit that had performed well in some civic project or in an emergency relief situation.

Paramilitary Training

In November 1944, when partisan resistance forces were at their peak strength of about 70,000, about 6,000 of them were women and 1,000 were boys under fifteen years of age. Formal paramilitary training was undertaken in 1945, shortly after the Hoxha regime gained control, and was made obligatory for all young people in 1953. Training has been developed to the point that fifteen- to nineteen-year-old youths can be organized into their own auxiliary units in emergencies.

Major revisions to the secondary school and university military training programs were announced in 1969 in preparation for implementation during the ensuing school year. The extent of training, what it would include, and aims of the new program were given wide publicity throughout 1969 in order to ease the transition. The purpose of the programs is to provide the armed forces with conscripts who are in good physical condition and who have sufficient basic military training to permit them to step directly into a military unit and perform usefully with a minimum of adjustment and little additional training.

Beginning in 1970 the secondary school year was to consist of 6- months of academic work, 2- months of physical work in agriculture or industry, 1 month of military training, and 2 months of relaxation.

According to official guidance, however, the youths are encouraged to use their relaxation period for "ideological and physical steeling." The university year would consist of 7 months of academic work, 2 months of military training, 1 month of physical work, and 2 months of ideological and physical steeling.

Physical training of the type that contributes most to future military service is encouraged. Specific goals to be derived from it are basic physical improvement in speed, agility, strength, and resistance and the moral attributes of bravery, strong will, and personal discipline. Light sports, such as volleyball, are discouraged. Track, wrestling, and body contact sports are advised. Swimming and skiing are also considered to have military applications. It is recommended that calisthenics and physical culture activities be carried on in large groups.

Military instruction includes close order drill, crawling and obstacle penetration, storming techniques, and hand-to-hand combat. Academic courses in the military area train in the care and use of various types of weapons, the theories of military art, and the techniques of conventional and guerrilla warfare. Schools organize marches and excursions that are combined with tactical military exercises to give them a wholly military character. Most of these are designed to teach guerrilla warfare tactics. Overnight stalking exercises feature searches for intruder groups, a simulated target demolition, or some such objective. Girls as well as boys are required to partic.i.p.ate. Tirana press photographs have shown some groups of girls engaged in mortar training, others in target shooting. In the 1969 Tirana May Day parade girls, in ranks of fifteen abreast, carried submachineguns.

When the programs have been completely implemented, students in the first and second years of secondary schooling will receive all of their physical and military training at their schools. It will be supervised by teachers and military officers a.s.signed to the schools. Third- and fourth-year students will have part of the training at their schools, but with entire day or week periods devoted to the program. They will also spend a part of the allocated month in military units to which the school is attached for the purpose.

Facilities are not adequate in many schools, and in many areas military units are not immediately available to a.s.sist in training. It will be several years before the complete revised programs can be implemented.

The first year's effort, however, involves about 10,000 university students and about 170,000 other people. The latter figure includes schoolteachers, military personnel who cooperate in the training, and others who provide miscellaneous voluntary or part-time a.s.sistance, in addition to those who receive the training. Students in the program have been compared with those in the Communist Chinese Red Guard, but the organization of the Albanian program is designed to keep it closely aligned with the school curriculum and with active military units to prevent large-scale independent action by youth groups.

Paramilitary programs of Party-sponsored youth organizations are similar in many ways to those in the school system. Pioneers take children, both boys and girls, between the ages of seven and fourteen. A group of these young Pioneers carried rifles and submachineguns in the 1968 Tirana May Day parade. From ages fifteen to twenty-five they may belong to the Union of Albanian Working Youth, frequently called the Communist Youth Movement. The Union of Albanian Working Youth had 210,000 members in 1967. Nearly all personnel drafted into the armed forces fall within the youth movement's age brackets, and its units within the services are active. Political and ideological indoctrination is intensive in these organizations and prepares the youth for possible membership in the Party in later years (see ch. 6, Government Structure and Political System).

Military Justice

There is no distinction between the civil judicial order in general and the military order in particular, but military crimes are treated in a separate chapter of the penal code. That chapter treats those acts, committed by persons under the jurisdiction of military courts, that are directed against military discipline, military orders, and the like.

They include a broad variety of violations against persons, property, or the state.

A military crime, in the Albanian system, has two characteristics distinguishing it from nonmilitary crimes. The crime is committed against regulations established for the performance of military service, and the defendant is a member of the armed forces. For criminal justice the security forces under the Ministry of the Interior and all local police are considered armed forces and are subject to military law and to trial in military courts, as are reservists or persons called to military or police duty for short periods. Also, military violations are believed to include a variety of crimes against the state that might not be cla.s.sed as military in Western countries, including some in the so-called socially dangerous category. As is the case in the Soviet Union, persons who fail to report on others committing crimes are themselves liable.

Military courts are selected by the People's a.s.sembly or by its Presidium when it is not in session. Members are military personnel and ordinarily serve on a court for three years. Each court has a chairman, vice chairman, and a number of members called a.s.sistant judges. The chairman and at least one of the a.s.sistant judges must be military superiors of the defendant.

In exceptional circ.u.mstances the People's a.s.sembly may appoint a special court for a particular case or a group of cases. A special court may be all or only partially military. Such a court was appointed, for example, when Vice Admiral Teme Seyko, commander of the naval forces, was accused in 1961 of "having been in league with the imperialist Americans, Greek monarcho-fascists and Yugoslav revisionists." The admiral was executed.

When crimes are committed during military operations, sentences are heavier than when the same offenses are committed under conditions where duress is not a factor. During combat or wartime circ.u.mstances, legislative acts call for the most severe penalties.

THE MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT AND THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

According to official government p.r.o.nouncements relating to the state budget, 471 million leks (5 leks equal US$1) were appropriated for defense expenditures in 1970. That amount is 9.2 percent of the total planned expenditures of 5,110 million leks, or about 225 leks per inhabitant during the year. Whether or not all expenses that would fall within the defense category in Western countries are included in these figures is not known. It is the practice in some Communist governments to distribute peripheral defense costs among other agency appropriations (see ch. 8, Economic System).

The defense budget was increased drastically in 1969 and 1970 over the levels of earlier years, apparently in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The midyear calculated expenditures for 1969 represented an increase of about 38 percent over those of 1968, and 1970 projections showed another 12.2 percent antic.i.p.ated increase over 1969.

The burden represented by 225 leks per person can be ill.u.s.trated by relating it to income and costs of living. In 1967, for example, a typical head of family worker earned about 7,200 leks per year. The average family group consisted of between five and six persons, and about 90 percent of its earnings was required for food and housing. In the preponderant majority of situations where there was only one wage earner per family, therefore, per capita defense costs exceeded everything that the family had available for all uses except food and shelter.

The 50,000 men in the regular and security forces represent about 2.4 percent of the population, but each annual draft takes a number that is equal to roughly one-half of the young men that become nineteen years old during the year. There is no reliable information as to how willingly the average citizen performs his military service or whether or not his contribution is appreciated by the remainder of the people.

The controlled-communications media do everything possible to promote good morale among those in the service and to show that the public supports them.

FOREIGN MILITARY RELATIONS

Small, underdeveloped, and suffering continually from an unfavorable balance of trade, Albania has always needed a.s.sistance to maintain even a small military force. Accepting aid from Italy before World War II resulted in a severe curtailment of national initiative in the employment of the forces and probably contributed to their immobility at the time of the Italian invasion in 1939.

Between 1945 and 1948 Yugoslavia's control over Albania's forces was tighter than Italy's had been. In addition to technical advisers and instructors in regular service units, the Communist Party organization provided an effective vehicle for controlling the reliability of personnel, particularly the military leadership.

Because the Soviet Union, like Italy, was physically separated from the country it was a more desirable ally than neighboring Yugoslavia had been. It was nonetheless able to maintain tighter controls over Albanian forces than either Yugoslavia or Italy had achieved. General Petrit Dume, who was commander of the People's Army during its dependence on the Soviet Union and still was in 1970, had said in November of 1952 that his force was an integral part of the Soviet Army.

Albania became one of the original Warsaw Treaty Organization members in 1955. Separated from the other signatories, its forces were unable to partic.i.p.ate in the pact's field exercises and after 1961, because of its rift with the Soviet Union, was not invited to attend the organization's meetings. In 1968, protesting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Albania formally withdrew from the pact.

Communist China was Albania's only military ally in 1970. In 1970 the Chinese were believed to be enabling Albania to maintain its forces at approximately the same levels that had been reached by 1960 with Soviet a.s.sistance (see ch. 6, Government Structure and Political System).

SECURITY FORCES

Albanian sources publish little concerning the security police except for some articles expressing grat.i.tude for their services and a smattering of information relative to their responsibilities. Few of the observers who have visited the country since 1945 have been in positions to see, or have been qualified to judge, their actual performance. It is undoubtedly true that the Albanian leadership emulated many of Joseph Stalin's techniques for controlling the population, that it modified its att.i.tudes and practices less than did the other East European Communist countries after Stalin's death, and that it has maintained a high degree of Stalinism since its break with the Soviet Union and alignment with Communist China (see ch. 6, Government Structure and Political System).

There is probably credibility in reports stating that no other Communist country has as extensive a police and security organization relative to its size as that which operates in Albania. Hoxha has regarded the security police as an elite group, and they have been the mainstay of his power. By 1961, although arrests had tapered off from earlier levels, fourteen concentration or labor camps were still in use. Foreign visitors in Tirana have reported that it is impossible to move around the city without escorts and that conversations with ordinary citizens are discouraged. Local police, servicemen, and security police are in evidence everywhere.

All security and police forces were responsible in the governmental structure to the Ministry of the Interior. The minister in 1970 was Kadri Hasbiu. Each organization--the Directorate of State Security, the People's Police, and the Frontier Guards--const.i.tuted a separate directorate of the ministry. The total regular uniformed security personnel numbered approximately 12,500. This figure did not include the plainclothes security police, informers, or the citizens who were performing their two months of mandatory auxiliary duty attached to local police units.

A larger proportion of personnel in the security forces are Party members than is the case in the regular military forces. In the state security organization, nearly all of those who serve in important positions are believed to be Party members. In the Frontier Guards the officers and many of the men are Party members.

The Directorate of State Security

The Directorate of State Security (Drejtorija e Sigurimit te Shtet.i.t--commonly abbreviated to Sigurimi) is organized into four battalions and has more plainclothes personnel than uniformed. It celebrates March 20, 1943, as its founding day and is credited by Hoxha and others of the Party leadership as having been instrumental in the victory of his faction of the partisan effort. Actually the People's Defense Division, from which the Sigurimi evolved, was formed in 1945.

Composed at that time of some 5,000 of the most reliable of the resistance fighters, it was headed initially by Koci Xoxe, who was executed as a t.i.toist four years later. Mihalaq Zicishti was its chief in 1970.

The stated missions of the security police are to prevent counterrevolution and to eliminate opposition to the Party and government. Its interests are directed toward political and ideological opposition rather than crimes against persons or property unless such crimes appear to have national implications.

In the late 1950s the Sigurimi had seven sections: political, censorship, public records, prison camp, two sections for counterespionage, and a foreign service. The political section's primary function was the penetration of opposition political factions. One of the counterespionage sections was specialized and had only a responsibility for eliminating underground organizations. The censorship section operated not only with the press, radio, publications, and other communications media but with cultural societies, schools, and schoolteachers. The public records section was also charged with ideological supervision of economic agencies.

Sigurimi personnel at labor camps attended to the political reeducation of the inmates and evaluated the degree to which they remained socially dangerous; camp guards were local police. The foreign service section placed its personnel as widely as possible in order to maintain contact with aliens or foreigners in the country and in diplomatic and visiting groups.

Sigurimi personnel may be conscripts called during the annual draft or may be career volunteers. Personnel are screened, and the conditions of service are made sufficiently attractive to secure as reliable and dedicated men as possible.

Frontier Guards

The Frontier Guards are organized into five battalions. Individual units are manned with fewer personnel than Sigurimi battalions, however, and the total strength of the force is lower. Although the force is organized strictly along military lines, it is under the Ministry of the Interior and is more closely a.s.sociated with the security police than with the regular armed forces.

The stated mission of the Frontier Guards is to protect the State's borders and to take action against spies, criminals, smugglers, and infiltrators along the boundaries. In the process they also prevent Albanians from leaving the country.