CIAO DATE: 09/04

Armed Forces in Albania and Civil Society

Abstract

Like the rest of the East-European countries, Albania has been going through the communist dictatorship for quite a long time, but it should be noted its communist regime differed from that of the other countries. Undeniably, Albania was the most isolated and totalitarian regime in the East. The armed forces went through one of the darkest periods of their history.

The developments at home or abroad were making direct impact on the armed forces. Albania was the first country to step out of the Warsaw Treaty but the armed forces inherited a most undemocratic system and quite a different form of a military doctrine, far different from the modern ones. Having quitted the Warsaw Treaty, the Albanian communist leaders seemed to have thought more of how to keep the country in deep isolation, which was especially obvious after the overall “bunkerization” of the country. The bunkers are still present around, about 700 thousand, but the military system definitively fell down and thus shared the fate of the political system it served.

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