By Richard Hodges
They say every country gets the government it deserves. Do Albanians deserve the Taliban?
Well, driving from the forest of empty, half built hotels at Saranda, down the new road towards Butrint, my American friends asked me why I liked doing archaeology in Albania. I did not have time to answer; we had reached Ksamili. Here hundreds of houses are slovenly blasted, half destroyed to remain as bitter memorials to a moment of government madness. Illegal buildings they might be, but blasting them at the height of the summer tourist season during a world economic crisis tells you all you need to know about the current direction of the country.
One of my American companions simply said: “It [Ksamili] looks like Kandahar.” Enough said. The sublime beauty of this place has now become a subject of international ridicule. A tragic joke. A place managed by the Taliban, recalling the vandalism of the great Buddhist statues in Afganistan?
The unforgiving road that now rapes the olive groves of the Butrint National Park simply compounds the horror. It is difficult to describe the aboriginal mentality in the Ministry of Culture that permitted this destruction. All involved with have a certain place in Albania’s long hall of infamy.
My friends liked the oasis of Butrint, protected as yet from the worst folly, but had no ambition to return, let alone recommend it to their friends.
2010: so begins the tourist decline of Butrint. Inside Butrint I did a check list:
נThe expensive conservation of the Triconch Palace is not being kept up
נThe theatre stage has been removed and the water has not been cleaned
נThe expensive, state of the art information signs provided by the Butrint Foundation are fading
נThe Museum lights no longer function (the bulbs are dead) and the smell of rats remind one of the management issues
נThe acropolis caf顴ables are covered in broken glass. The caf顩s closed, of course.
Meanwhile the Butrint Foundation maintains a programme of conservation and essential woodland management in Butrint. A team of local craftsmen pursue their work with diligence, protecting this fragile archaeological site beneath its woodland canopy.
“At least, the foreigners care,” my companions said. I squirmed, knowing that the locals care too.
Worse, on the Straits of Corfu at Ali Pasha’s castle guarding the mouth of the Vivari channel- a fortress surveyed (and published last year in the international journal Antiquity) by a team from the University of Granada, Spain, is about to lose one of its four bastions. A great crack has appeared in the construction, magnified dangerously by the wash from the speed boats that now roar by. This bulwark intended by the great pasha to prevent the British sailing up to Butrint is one of the gems of the Unesco World Heritage Site. Where are the park authorities to do something about this conservation nightmare? What have the Ministry of Culture done? Can’t you guess? How is it that the Albanian government cares so little about the castle, Butrint or even Unesco?
Now Butrint had more than 50,000 tourists last year, or 75,000 tourists if you believe the Butrint Foundation calculation. Multiply by 5 euros per person entry fee and the park income amounts to either 250,000 euros or 375,000 euros per year. With staff costs around 25,000 euros, where does the rest go? Not on Butrint. It goes on supporting the Albanian government that has permitted the new road through the park, and the anarchic dynamiting of buildings. No doubt it is paying the road-builders so that Butrint can be surrounded by villas belonging to friends of the government.
My American companions sighed with relief on reaching Greece, and continued to refer to Butrint as Kandahar as we travelled onto Turkey and thence to Georgia and Armenia.
Once in Taliban Albania, they said, was enough.
