The Bus from Bajram Curri to Tirana

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Kosovo entry stamp

Kosovo entry stamp

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The Bus from Bajram Curri to Tirana

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How to officially enter a country without setting foot in it.

One of the joys of travelling is the unexpected. Well, I suppose, many people have come across a form of the unexpected they would rather not have experienced but those unpleasant situations can happen in your own country. The unexpected that I’m talking about is the experience when something happens, something changes, something develops in a manner that was totally unforeseen at the beginning, but all ends up well.

This was the case when I wanted to get from Bajram Curri, in the very north of Albania, back to the capital Tirana – more or less in the centre of the country.

I had arrived in the area via the Komani ferry and had spent some time (unsuccessfully) attempting to get to Thethi via Valbona. It was my fault (for a number of reasons) that I didn’t achieve my original goal but that wasn’t the first – and I’m sure it won’t be the last – time that such has happened.

But at some time I had to get back south and so decided on the bus route from Bajram Curri. I didn’t start out with no information, it’s just that the information wasn’t exactly accurate. This is where the adventure starts in a place/country where there is little accurate and up to date information. The only British guide-book I had at the time had so many flaws it was bordering on worse than useless. It might be argued that things are changing in Albania rapidly, and that’s true, but I came across errors that didn’t reflect changes that were made long before the particular edition was published. I don’t want to labour that point, just to say ‘beware of guide books’. Take into account the most important word in the phrase and use the information provided as an indication and not to consider it as gospel.

My guide-book gave the indication that the bus to Tirana would take a tortuous, uncomfortable and very slow route through the mountains. That wasn’t a problem. I wasn’t in any real hurry and it wouldn’t be the first time (or, again, the last) I had travelled on such bad roads. Getting older the pains last a little longer but a day or two of rest and a not insignificant amount of alcohol has always dissolved the aches and pains in the past. And, anyway, it was the chance to see another part of the country.

I was starting fairly early in the morning. The guide books seem to indicate that much of the transport in Albania tails off considerably after midday. That’s true in some places but my experience over my three trips to the country is that people in generally are wanting to travel later in the day and the buses or furgons (minibuses) are starting to fill the gap, one of the ‘glories’ of the free market. However, if you don’t have exact information it pays to start early, just in case.

I should have realised that something was not what I was expecting when I was asked by the driver, once I had discovered the next Tirana bound bus, to hand over my passport. Now, I don’t have a problem of not having my passport, especially when I’m out of the country. The worst that can happen is that I won’t be able to get home. When the request is unexpected it’s a little disconcerting but when I saw that he was asking for everyone’s passport (I was the only obvious tourist on the bus) I relaxed a little.

We left on time and I was trying to work out how long it would be before we made a turn off to the right. From the map the route would be, more or less, north-east for a few kilometres and then south-east along the rough road towards the town of Kukës. But we kept on going NE and climbing and coming down from the hills. A very attractive route as we were passing by the mountains and hills in the very north-east corner of the country. Everyone else was relaxed so I assume there was no attempt at a mass kidnapping.

Then we arrived at a border crossing, so now I understood why I had been asked for my passport. A big pile of passports was passed to the immigration but no one made any attempt to see if the passports bore any relationship to the passengers. I was now in Kosova.

At this point I still wasn’t sure of my eventual destination. I was sure that there wasn’t another major destination in the area that sounded like Tirana but not planning/expecting to enter Kosova I hadn’t done any research before leaving home. I few people got off at some of the towns we then passed through but the majority stayed on. I thought my best plan was to stay on to the bitter end and just play it by ear.

The bus picked up a better, faster and wider road and then I started to see signs for Prizren. That didn’t sound like Tirana and anyway we didn’t enter the town, skirting around it towards the south. The bus then took a major road, now moving quite quickly, in a south-westerly direction. Slow witted I might have been but I started to work out what was happening.

In place of going along a very rough, very slow mountain track that would have taken hours, we had kept to the best roads to make the most speed. The only way to do that was to leave the Albania and use the roads that had been paid for by the World bank, IMF and the EEC after they had successfully dismembered the old federation of Yugoslavia following a long, bitter and hugely expensive war, both in terms of resources and human lives.

On arriving at another border post my realisation was confirmed. Immediately after moving off at the border the passports were passed from the front of the bus to the back, mine arriving quickly as it was the only one where they didn’t have to check the photo to know who it belonged to. About 15 to 20 minutes later, overlooking the town of Kukës, we stopped for a break at a road side café, back in Albania with the known brand names for the beer and the like.

On moving off from there we travelled on an amazing motorway. Amazing for the effort needed in its construction and for the fact that there was so little traffic passing along it, in either direction. Again a road funded by foreign money but I couldn’t really see how it benefited the Albanians. Thousands travel every day along the coastal highways, from Shkodër in the north to Saranda in the south. Parts of that road are atrocious and work, in places, had been stalled for as long as I’ve been going there, presumably due to lack of resources.

Why this motorway in the isolated mountain area of eastern Albania was a priority has nothing to do with the Albanian people or their economy, but more for any future foreign interests. Mainly military, I would have thought, to get to the heart of the country and its capital Tirana, in the quickest possible time, in the event of anything developing that might have an adverse effect on foreign control of the country that has been an aim since the end of the 19th century. That’s my theory but would welcome any other ideas.

So I eventually got to Tirana, my original goal, and probably much quicker than my expected route. I wasn’t kidnapped and held to ransom. It was just the quickest way. The next time I’m in that area I will attempt the rough route and keep hold of my passport.

But now I have a stamp (only one – I didn’t get one for leaving Kosova) in my passport for entering a country in which I, literally, have never set foot.

More on Albania …..

Breathe In (2013) – Drake Doremus (dir.)

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Breathe In - happy family

Breathe In – happy family

Spoiler alert. DON’T read this review if you plan to see this film!

This is a stereotypical film, with stereotypical characters, a stereotypical plot and a stereotypical end.

Four main characters:

The husband. Reaching the dangerous age and the mid age crisis. A musician, but not as good as he would like and in the old adage, those who can’t do, teach. He plays occasionally in a local orchestra and is going for a better job, but he has lost the confidence of youth and doubts if he will get it. At the same time he seems to be doing quite well. After all how many homes do you know that have a baby grand piano in the entrance hall?

The wife. Dutiful, has worked ‘hard’ to provide her husband with a good and secure home, with all the trimmings. Has successfully brought up their daughter. Her biggest aim in life is to amass the biggest collection of ceramic biscuit barrels – a quite unique challenge. Supportive of her husband but with a bit of an acid tongue which means she doesn’t always go the whole way in carrying out her traditional marital role in being a dutiful wife. An organizer, but mainly of domestic trivia.

The daughter. Thinks she’s an adult but really immature, perhaps the result of being brought up in a biscuit barrel collecting household. Not an intellectual or a musician but an athlete. Considers she can take a relationship break-up but inside she is hurting. Reaches the age of 18 during the course of the film and does a little girl dance when presented with a new car on her birthday. That dance could have been seen as a bit of a joke if it wasn’t for what else happens in her life, she is really still a little girl. A poor little rich girl – if not millionaire status.

The outsider (and home-wrecker). She is literally an outsider. She British on a sabbatical in a north American town. She is truly a genius as a musician – which she shows when the husband (for some inexplicable reason) tries to humiliate her on her first day in the piano class he teaches. Why she would be attracted to him after that episode is a wonder. She’s mature for her age, in that way the opposite to the daughter, and is told so by the husband when they have an innocent few beers after a swimming gala gets washed out. But she comes with her own baggage. Father dies at an early age, lived with her uncle, to whom she was very close, and he has died just before she leaves for America. That death has meant that she has rejected the piano as it brings back too many bad memories – the uncle was a brilliant pianist as well.

The Plot. There’s not a great one. Intimate, guilty eye contact between the Outsider and the Husband from the beginning. She understands him. She may not intend to do so but she effectively seduces him after finding the local boys immature and after only one thing. They make a very amateurish and last minute plan to run away together. But before they get any further than a few miles down the road a message is received that the daughter, now aware that there is something going on between her father and the outsider, gets stupidly drunk and crashes her new car.

The mad rush to the hospital. The unity between mother and father over what they have in common, i.e., their daughter, this after the mother had also realised through the empty wardrobes that the two had run away together and as a consequence, in her anger, had broken some of her ceramic biscuit barrels – an indication that the family equilibrium had been disturbed.

The last time we see the Outsider she is sitting alone, beside the baby grand, when the parents come home from the hospital. The daughter is not seriously hurt. Her pretty features are undamgaed and all she sports is a plaster over one of her eyes.

The next (and last) scene is a repeat of the one that opened the film. The three of them are in the garden of the house having their photos taken by a professional photographer, this is obviously an annual ‘family tradition’. They all smile. Any transgressions have been forgiven.

The fourth person is absent.

Family values have won the day.

We steal secrets – the story of Wikileaks

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We steal secrets - the story of Wikileaks

We steal secrets – the story of Wikileaks

‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

The director, Alex Gibney, has stated that his ideas changed when making this film. At the beginning he thought it was about the ‘machine’ but what it’s actually about is ‘wildly complex, interesting and extraordinary people’. And his depictions of these people, particularly the two who are in the forefront of the controversy following the massive disclosure of secret US files in October 2010, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, says a lot about those who bask in the limelight of others but disappear back under their stones when the going gets tough.

Once the Obama administration became aware of the imminent disclosure of their illegal, vicious, murderous and reckless activity, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, they declared all out war on their perceived enemies. Their principal targets were a successful Australian hacker and a young US soldier working in intelligence analysis in a quiet Army base outside of Baghdad.

The hatred that the American establishment has for these two individuals is palpable and comes out clearly in the documentary. State officials, including the supposed liberal (and at one time possible first woman US President, Hilary Clinton) as well as ‘shock-jock’ TV presenters and head-banger right wingers predicted the end of the world as we know it and some of these crazies even called for ‘contracts’ to be taken out on Assange – they don’t need to do that for Manning as he’s already in their clutches.

This approach is contrasted with the ‘reasoned’ and quiet declarations of the avuncular Michael Hayden, at one time head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), filmed at the bottom of a dark wood panelled staircase, a location oozing wealth and power. Being head of the CIA, one of the biggest criminal organisations in the world with a history of destabilization of legitimate governments and their substitution with neo-Fascist regimes, such as in the Congo in 1961 and Chile in 1973 (to mention only two) he would have an insiders knowledge of the secrets the US doesn’t want the world to know about.

But for all his soft-spoken words he revealed ‘secrets’ of his own and the title of the documentary comes from his admission that ‘we (the US) steal secrets’. Now that’s no real revelation and only those who are extremely naive would be surprised by such an admission. But by admitting the truth of what the western intelligence agencies are doing, and have done for decades, he merely exposes the imperialist countries for the hypocrites they are.

For 45 years, during what was known as the Cold War, western propagandists tried to make people believe that it was only the evil communists who were gaining information about their own populations. What this approach lacked was any historical context and background. In the same way that individuals can be accused of paranoia the socialist countries were very much aware of the activities of foreign imperialists in trying to destabilise their societies. For example; the British and American attempts to foment unrest in Albania; the support given to Greek Fascists in their fight against progressive, anti-Fascist forces: and the open support provided by the west in fomenting disorder in Hungary in 1956.

In the film Hayden tries to give the impression, without actually saying so, that the stealing of secrets was from the enemies of the United States’ much vaunted (but rarely experienced by the vast majority of the population) ‘freedom and democracy’. This interview would have taken place long before the most recent disclosure to show up western imperialist hypocrisy by Edward Snowden. The PRISM programme showed that the US will spy on anyone and when caught out the reply from the administration was that it’s data collection would protect the American people from ‘terrorism’, the cover all for anything since the attack on the tower blocks in New York in 2001.

An investigation in Britain into the legality of what GCHQ (the British government’s spy centre) did in relation to PRISM, and also in the bugging of ‘friendly’ countries diplomatic representatives during conferences in the UK, came to the conclusion that it was all legal – surprise, surprise. And no doubt these activities are legitimate in the US as well. But this legitimacy is merely based upon the will of 535 people in the US and 650 in the UK – the numbers on the respective parliamentary legislatures. Due to a parliamentary fetishism that exists within those two countries these decisions do not get challenged, they may be legal but are they what society in general wants?

Wikileaks seeks to ask that question by releasing documents that are normally kept from the general population even though they are the ones who have provided the resources that allow governments to carry out their activities on the national and international stage. Even though here is a mad rush to privatise everything in sight in most countries throughout the world it’s still the public who pay billions of pounds to prop up the military/industrial complex that is such an important player in the field of espionage. So the people involved are ‘public servants’ but how often are the accountable to, and do they really serve, the public?

But this issue, this principle, seems to get forgotten in the second half of the film. Those who are in support of Assange at the beginning find reasons to distance themselves from him at the end.

The reasons?

‘His paranoia means that he thinks everyone is out to get him’. Paranoic he might be, but there seems to be a lot of reasons for that.

‘He considers the cases brought against him by the two women in Sweden are part of a ‘honey-trap”. This gets complicated. But the sequence of events is strange. The call for his extradition only comes after the US is upset about the leak. Part of this argument is that the US would never put pressure upon another sovereign government for its own aims. In the same way that none of the governments that refused air space to the flight of the Bolivian President when it was thought that the latest whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, might have been on board, would ever had done so at the behest of the US Government. Also, without going into the details of the case, the issue with the women seems to revolve around a HIV test rather than actual forced rape, I assume an anomaly between Swedish and British law in this matter, but something that hasn’t been made clear in reporting in this country.

‘He considers that if an Afghan civilian is exposed as helping the invading forces he should accept the consequences of his actions.’ Now in all these wars of imperialist aggression the assumption is made that ‘we’ ( and I don’t include myself in that ‘we’) are the ‘good guys’ and all the rest are murdering blood-thirsty, indiscriminate terrorists. It’s not terrorism to kill innocent people (for fun) from a helicopter gun-ship half a mile up in the sky but it is terrorism to plant a bomb by the side of the road in an ambush of invading forces’ troops.

The good guys invaded Iraq with spurious and – we later learnt – totally erroneous intelligence and was hence an illegal war in the first place. But anyone, Iraqi or other, who considers that this invasion should be resisted is automatically condemned as a terrorist. This is surely the same stance taken by the invading Nazis in WWII towards resistance fighters in the occupied countries.

There was also a point that I found strange. Wikileaks promises total anonymity and untraceability, on their website, to anyone who wants to send information. But whistle-blowers can feel isolated and worry that they might be exposed. Now Bradley Manning was not exposed by anything published by Wikileaks but by a pathetic one time hacker who saw more fame and fortune by whistle-blowing on the whistle-blower and we are treated to his crocodile tears towards the end of the film. Due to that betrayal Manning is now undergoing a show trial in a military base in the US. But for some reason some of the erstwhile friends of Assange consider that there should have been some structure that could support whistle-blowers in the future. What world are they living on?

The whole persecution of both Assange and Manning is being made front page news in order to deter future whistle-blowers. Yes, the US administration (and other western governments) are angry at these two individuals but the reason for the high-profile trials, the potential punishments up to and including the death penalty and the extremist statements are all geared to prevent others from doing something similar in the future.

The attitude of the New York Times (which was characteristically pusillanimous and sycophantic), the self righteous British journalists and Gibney in this film in finding ways to not be seen to be associated with Assange (although with the argument that they are doing so to protect their own ‘integrity’) will only make the goal of the secretive states to act with impunity in the future all that much easier.