Lazarat And The State

It is by now common knowledge that Albania’s agricultural sector has been the big loser of Albania’s transition to a market economy. Farmers all over the country can barely manage to make ends meet, while the economic gap between cities and villages continues to widen. And yet, amidst this bleak landscape, there exists one village, which thanks to the entrepreneurial and fighting spirit of its inhabitants – or an inclination to banditry, as others claim – and owing in no small measure to the continued unconditional political support of the Democratic Party has witnessed an unparalleled economic development, that has made it the envy of most Albanian villages and urban centres. The village is question is none other than Lazarat, the weed growing capital of Albania and perhaps of the Balkans, and it must be said that the differences between Lazarat and the rest of Albania are by no means confined to the economy.
Naturally, the choice of crop on the part of Lazarat’s ‘farmers’ goes a long way towards explaining their success story. This is not the place to explain in any detail the advantages offered by the cultivation of marihuana vis-ஶis the cultivation of maize, tomatoes or beans, whether in terms of price or cost of cultivation. But for all its advantages, alas, the cultivation of this plant does pose one serious problem when compared to all the other crops cultivated nowadays by Albanian farmers: it is illegal under Albania’s legislation, and those responsible for planting, selling or trafficking it must go to jail. Surprisingly, at a time when elsewhere in Albania the police continues to arrest old women for planting a few plants of marihuana in their backyards – as it should – no one is ever arrested in Lazarat, even though one can safely claim that this village has a near monopoly on the production and trafficking of hashish in Albania and the production has reached new peaks year after year. Suffice it to mention that according to a statement by the police in 2007 nearly half of all the hashish seized in Albania, roughly 3,500 kilos, originated from Lazarat. Or one can mention the figures provided by Minister of Interior Bujar Nishani, when commenting on a half-hearted action undertaken by the police in Lazarat a few weeks ago: 8,000 plants were destroyed in one single neighbourhood of Lazarat. To bring things into perspective 8,000 plants equals 10% of the marihuana plants destroyed in all of Albania in the first 7 months of 2008. And that in one single neighbourhood of a village that lies barely one kilometre from the main highway to Greece!
It does not take much to see that something stinks. The key to Lazarat’s success, which has by all accounts turned into a proper narco-state, is naturally not to be found in the unheard of agricultural skills of Lazarat’s farmers. Instead one must assign a big part of its success to the state and the politicians that allow Lazarat to go about its business unperturbed. Or if one were to be more specific, the main reason why Lazarat today exists as a state within the state is the Democratic Party of Albania. This is in no way an alibi for the irresponsible behaviour of the Socialist governments that never dared to impose the will of the state and the rule of law on this village. Of course not! But as everyone in Albania knows owing to the political support of the Democratic Party “Lazarat cannot be touched!” Lazarat could not be touched when its inhabitants repeatedly blocked the highway robbing trucks and buses and Lazarat cannot be touched when it decides to shoot at surveillance helicopters or at the neighbouring villages and neighbouring Gjirokastra. The latest incident happened only two days ago, when persons from Lazarat fired on a neighbouring village in order to force it not to allow the police to get to Lazarat through their village. (They were in other words asked to act as a buffer zone!) In the aftermath of all these serious, criminal incidents it was always the Democratic Party that protected Lazarat by accusing the Socialist government that its attacks on Lazarat – a bastion of the DP – had a political motivation; by calling the flight of the Italian Interforce helicopter over ‘Lazarat’s air space’ a provocation; or by simply remaining silent on these incidents now that the DP is in power. Naturally, there is no reason to think that this village would be encouraged to modify it relations to the state, now that its former protectors are in power. Thus, in Lazarat there continues to reign a strange situation and the village continues to enjoy many of the prerogatives of an autonomous region (or an oasis of criminality, reminiscent of the American Wild West where everyone can bear arms, grow marihuana and traffic in hashish and where wanted people, accused of serious crimes, ranging from drug trafficking, to kidnap and murder, go about their lives in peace.) And all the time the Albanian police has to think long and hard before it even contemplates entering the village. Actually in many cases the police’s ‘courageous’ raids aimed at destroying a plant or two, border on the ridiculous. They do not so much resemble legitimate police actions, but old Communist movies with partisans and Germans and one can clearly picture the poor policemen sneaking for hours on thorny, goat trails and steep cliffs, just so that they can avoid passing through the forbidden village. And of course, the whole action is duly accompanied by shots and burst of machine gun fire from the brave men of Lazarat who think nothing of taking up arms against the state, when it comes to protecting their ‘produce’. They do not think much of burning police stations in the centre of Gjirokastra either, in order to make a point. But even in this case, though the main perpetrators of this brazen attack – classified as a terrorist act under Albania’s Penal Code – are identified, no one has ever been arrested. Instead the state was ‘forced’ to negotiate in order to calm the situation!
But there is more. For instance the head of the Lazarat commune, who according to a law passed by none other than the Democratic Party, should be in prison because his village cultivates marihuana, is not just out and about, but he finds the courage to make strange and defiant declarations, such as “the incidents in Lazarat have taken place because the police entered the village without a clear mission”. Or “I love Berisha, but I love Lazarat even more”. Or, even weirder, he claims to have been successful in his negotiations with the families or relatives of persons sentenced in absentia for all sorts of serious crimes, and who had found shelter in Lazarat. He proudly stated that many had agreed to hand themselves in to the authorities in exchange of a “new and fair trail”. In short, if you want to be a successful criminal on the run, you got to be from Lazarat! To put it bluntly, such a situation when a village sees nothing wrong with taking up arms in order to dictate its terms to the state is unacceptable. It is just as unacceptable for the state to simply give up and surrender in the face of such criminal blackmail. So if the Democratic Party government lacks the will or the desire to extend the rule of law to Lazarat, it should do the honest thing, and grant this village de jure, what it has long enjoyed de facto: autonomy.