The Impact of Dictatorship

As I was waiting for the elevator in the morning to come down to breakfast, another hotel guest came up and said good morning. When he heard my American accent, he demanded to know where I was from and what I was doing here. This is an awkward question as I often run into competitors looking at the same project, so I gave a vague answer and demanded of him the same. From his answer I realized that he actually wasn’t at all interested in what I do, but just wanted to tell me what he was here for. It turns out that he works for the Washington Group and he is here for chemical weapons. That was all he said as he exited the elevator, but I know that in 2005 they discovered a large stockpile of chemical weapons from Hoxha’s time somewhere in Tirana. Not exactly the most pleasant thing to be reminded of while here.

Hoxha was probably one of the most brutal dictators, and it is fascinating to see how that still impacts the country today. Building farmer associations is almost impossible because of the lack of trust among farmers. In Hoxha’s day, neighbours could turn each other in for the slightest infraction in the strict rules with dire consequences, so trust was dangerous. When freedom finally came, people were so angry at the former regime that they destroyed everything associated with the regime, including all pictures and statues of Hoxha, but more costly was the destruction of all productive machinery owned and operated by the former regime across the country. They destroyed all agricultural processing centers and I believe the absence of large agribusinesses in the country is one of the major disadvantages of Albanian agriculture. The neighboring countries, which were all part of Yugoslavia, have big factories that have been privatized and now drive the agricultural sector. In Albania people refer to “when thing started” or “in the new economy” and it was only 15 years ago that this rebirth took place. Under the circumstance its amazing that the situation here is not even worse.