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BY KIÇO BLUSHI I do not believe there is a living Albanian who does not ask this dramatic question—not only when laying their head on the pillow, forced by the darkness, but also when trying to “make a living” through politics at rallies or press conferences instead of earning their daily bread. Who, then, who brought this upon Albania, who turned it into a gigantic sunlit graveyard, with graves at every kilometer, who killed hope, who turned an emerging democracy into chaos and anarchy, who forces Albanian girls into prostitution, who frightens children from playing in the streets, who made this blessed country undesirable (not to say frightening) to live in, work in and share life in? Who, then, who, who, who?! For many people traumatized by poverty, the murder of their loved ones, children leaving, and psychological, physical and spiritual confinement, this question is not a simple dramatic dilemma requiring an answer, a name and a solution; it is a hopeless cry of grief. Who, then, is plunging Albania into darkness, terror and uncontrollable tension? A friend of mine told me this painful story: He had gone to the hospital to see his neighbor’s child, who had been in an accident. As they were taking him in for surgery, the six-year-old boy said to the doctor: “Uncle Doctor, don’t cut off my leg.” “No,” the doctor said, “there’s no reason for me to cut off your leg.” “Uncle Doctor,” the little one insisted, “we are poor.” “Come on,” the doctor said with a laugh, “why do you think I would cut off your leg?” “Because Daddy doesn’t have money to pay you…” This story, for anyone who knows how to understand, says a great deal, but of course it cannot answer the question we are asking: Who, then, is to blame? I am quite sure that for some time yet this question will cloud the eyes of many Albanians, left blinded by party militancy. Some will answer immediately: Berisha is to blame!

…Berisha is to blame! Berisha’s people will say: Fatos is to blame! Some “independents” put the blame on the people, who supposedly “lack a sufficient democratic culture,” and so on and so forth. And yet the answer remains in the dark, even though solving the problem does not depend on a lack of resources in the northeastern region. Albania is becoming an island, closed not only to foreign investors but also to domestic ones. Who, then, who is calling for anarchy and chaos in our battered Albania? The external enemy? The internal enemies? Or both sides together? “But what do they have against us, for heaven’s sake, and why do they want to destroy us even further?” the naïve may ask—and there are plenty of them. I believe these ten years of pluralism have been enough for us to understand that confrontations with “internal enemies” and “external enemies” are fabricated, as long as we fail to find within ourselves the enemy that is our own worst enemy. This enemy is mostly in our sick minds, rather than in our troubled souls. To understand this, it is not enough to make the standard appeals that sound like religious sermons: Let us make Albania like Europe. Let us love one another despite our party, religious or regional differences. We need only look at what has happened to the capital of democracy—Shkodra—not to mention how badly the “ticket” of democracy, Tropoja, has suffered, the birthplace of the former president, to understand what a calamity has sprung from absurd hatred in Albania, and especially in these two regions: Shkodra and Malësia, with people and children confined to their homes, and Bajram Curri and Tropoja, with people killed every day. In reality, they have become “burned-out” zones, frightening places, deserted places covered in blood that, seemingly, will never stop being shed by the madness of certain leaders who give speeches in Tirana, surrounded by bodyguards and people blinded by fanaticism… And so, Tropoja—and the soul of every Albanian—now resembles that little one who says to the doctor: “Doctor, don’t cut off my leg, because we are poor and have no money to pay you!”

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Most opposition parties, as well as two or three Socialist Party MPs, are calling for the overthrow of the Meta government

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