Albania's 'French Curse'

Alfred Lela

Today, several events took place that are connected to yesterday, but above all to Albania's past and present. The French Embassy issued a public statement in which it “strongly” condemned the violence, as it saw it, against a building under the care of a French foundation. For those who do not know, this concerns the former villa of the dictator Hoxha, now turned into a sort of art residence, nicknamed “Art Explora.”

Also today, Edi Rama, the son of Kristaq—a sculptor linked to Hoxha’s regime, a member of the Central Committee—appeared in the courtyard of this villa to sing a hymn of lament over the ashes and imaginary soot allegedly caused by the “enemies of the class,” the political opponents in the opposition. A crow seeking carcasses is no news. But whom did the self-proclaimed Francophile, the chairman of the Socialist Party, have by his side? The granddaughter of Hysni Kapo, a comrade of Comrade Enver, a member of the Central Committee, a leader who passed away in a Parisian hospital bed. On the same day, a Socialist deputy, bearing a name à la française, circulated on social media the statement of “his” Embassy, adding a comment in which he linked the main opposition party to dictatorship.

His effort to draw this parallel is worn-out. For three decades, the left has tried to burden the right with a complex, telling it that it is half of the Communist Party. Paradoxically so—revealing that they themselves do not feel entirely comfortable in their own red skin.

The real paradox lies elsewhere. The same deputy, six months after being elected, saw his brother arrested as a member of the Durrës gangs. In the wiretaps of SPAK, the deputy’s name also appeared, along with the implication that he was in Parliament as a “request” of the gangs to the Socialist Party. The latter did not distance itself, and the deputy did not surrender his mandate.

What would have happened in France?

We do not know. On such matters, the French Embassy does not speak. Because those things are at the expense of Albanians. When something happens at their expense, however, they leap—like the rooster atop their national emblem. And they have the right to. But they cannot deny us the right to be astonished and ironic.

The French reaction is a deranged and unnecessary elitism. If not, a political bias based on the reports that the granddaughter of the dictator’s comrade-in-arms has sent them, and which the Embassy has chosen to defend the Francophiles on the left of Albania’s political spectrum.

Yet they should know that we here remember and see how, for example, the yellow vests burned and destroyed far more than the damage caused by ten torches at the dictator’s villa in Tirana. For a few cents in the price of fuel, not for several hundred million stolen by the “Frenchmen” of Tirana. That is simply to establish a definition of what violence is and what is not.

But we also know that part of the EU funds given to Albania through IPARD includes euros from French taxpayers. In that case, citizens of both countries lost out: the French, who gave the money, which did not go where it should have, and the deserving Albanians (the farmers), who did not receive it. The Embassy has said not a word about this, nor about other abuses. In this sense, their statement—at least on the level of public relations—is a la calamité.

But there is a deeper root that binds the French threads in these events, and it is tied to nearly a century of history. France, with its ideas, with the revolutions of 1830 and 1968, with communism and internationalism, inspired and supplied in Albania an entire array of politicians and activists, the most important of whom became Enver Hoxha. This requires a longer treatment, but the French school in politics triumphed by putting an end to the Deutsch culture based on the German-Austrian school, which faded after the Second World War. The Francophile legacy continued after the communist victory under Hoxha and is represented and personified today by the progressive socialist, Edi Rama. As an expression of this school should also be seen in his pairing with Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia, France’s preferred country in southeastern Europe.

As a continuation of this dominance must also be understood the attempts—and the impotence—of other schools, for example, the Anglo-American one, to occupy a central place in Tirana’s politics after the fall of communism.

The intertwining of all these events within a few days may be a coincidence. But it may also be the demonstration of a long-standing alignment whose roots continue to produce fleur du mal for Albania. The “French curse” continues with Edi Rama—and perhaps with him, the reign of the Francophiles in Tirana will also come to an end.

Which would be good news for Albania.