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While Berisha tries to remove the "non grata" with millions of dollars in lobbying, the American president's daughter promotes books that document the gloom of his regime and the attempts to seize power by force...
Ivanka Trump, the daughter of US President Donald Trump and the wife of Jared Kushner, one of the investors interested in Albania through tourist projects on the island of Sazan, has shared with her followers on Instagram a photo showing three books on the history of Albania. Among them is the well-known work of British historians Miranda Vickers and James Pettifer, "Albania: From Anarchy to Balkan Identity", as well as another book by the same author, "The Albanians: A Modern History", along with Ismail Kadare's classic novel "The General of the Dead Army".
This seemingly innocent detail comes at a crucial political moment for Albania. Sali Berisha, the most controversial figure in the Albanian transition, is in a tough battle to lift the "non grata" designation given to him by the US State Department. He is accused of major corruption, state capture and involvement in affairs that have undermined the foundations of the country's democratic institutions. While he is lobbying with millions to clean up his image, the books that Ivanka Trump has placed on her desk are putting him back at the center of international criticism and the dark history of the 1990s in Albania.
In the book “ Albania: From Anarchy to Balkan Identity ”, the British authors recount with verified facts and sources Berisha’s efforts to maintain power through violent structures. It explicitly mentions the way in which the leader of the Democratic Party ordered massive dismissals in the army in 1996, on the eve of the collapse of the state, to eliminate any element that did not blindly obey him. Among those dismissed was the American colonel Dennison Lane, a military advisor in Albania, who had reported to the Pentagon about the preparations for a possible civil conflict instigated by the Berisha government. For this reporting, he was declared “non grata” by the Albanian government itself and expelled from the country.
In the same book, Vickers and Pettifer describe Berisha as the key figure who encouraged pyramid schemes to collect money from citizens in order to finance his campaign in the May 1996 elections. According to them, he used Gazidede and the SHIK structures to suppress protests, intimidate opponents, and build a state mechanism that functioned as a mini-dictatorship. Entire chapters in the book are devoted to the destabilization of the country in 1997, a period described as the most dramatic since the fall of communism, for which political and moral responsibility is directly charged to Berisha.
In another carefully documented piece, the two historians recount that Berisha had begun the creation of a parallel army in Shkodra, with support from shadowy external segments, to strike at the Nano government in 1998. This scenario mentions plans to take Tirana through armed groups from the North, while Lazarat is described as the DP’s bastion of defense in the South. It states that the Lazarat community acted as a state within a state, armed and outside the control of institutions, used as political leverage to avoid any resistance to Berisha’s plans.
Another shocking detail mentioned in the book is the intervention of countries such as Greece, Austria and Italy to prevent Berisha’s arrest after the failed coup in 1998. While the Albanian Parliament was considering lifting his immunity for organizing an armed uprising, a phone call from Athens and international pressure prevented his arrest. According to the authors, an arrest at that moment would have fully exposed the scheme to destabilize the country, but the fear of another wave of violence led the international community to intervene to protect a man who had just attempted to overthrow the state.
So, as Berisha is pouring millions into influencing Trump, his closest confidant, there will be a dark outlook for the former prime minister. /Pamphlet
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