The Times: How Albania turned into a state of cannabis

While preparing a large shipment of cannabis for the Sicilian mafia, one of Albania's smugglers made clear Cossa Nostra's contemptuous view. We'll get some Kalashnikov,” Moses Habilaj into a wiretap. “They'll slaughter each other, who gives a shit is what they want.” Habilaj and his gangs were arrested in the fall by Italian police after receiving weapons and more than 3.5 tonnes of cannabis in Sicily, a business worth 20m euros a year. “We may have caught, but one of the drug flows from Albania across the Adriatic has not stopped,” an Italian investigator said.

Albanian smugglers have been imprisoned in August with 41 others after importing 60 million pounds of drugs, echoing a recent British police report claiming Albanian gangs have considerable control over the entire drug market in Britain.

With direct links to Colombian suppliers, Albanian gangs are growing after their country's chaotic exit from communist rule. Prime Minister Edi Rama has proposed an agreement for European leaders to break up gangs to help his EU membership bid. Albanian gangsters, wrote in a letter in November Rama, reside and flourish in your countries, profiting from drugs, trafficking of human beings and other illegal activities. He added: “We want your help and offer ours in exchange for capture and bringing to justice”. Co-operation with the British police is under way. Last year, a joint effort halted a scheme to dismantle the Kalashnikovs in three parts and place them in different countries to send Tirana to some Albanians in Britain.

Rama said he refuses to take the blame for the increasing role of Albanians in global crime. “This is a major debate,” he said, the Albanian “criminalists are not Albania's problem and they are active in other countries,” he said. Because they have family connections here. The prime minister blamed the Italian mafia for providing “education” of Albanians in Britain. It is difficult to find Albanian chief criminal who did not travel to Italy first, he said. “Albania is an expansion of southern Italy in many respects. The Italians are Albanians dressed in Versace. “

After migration to Europe and America in the 1990s, Albanians received the reputation for extreme violence and were said to have been taken as killers by the Gambino mafia family in New York. When Habilaj lost a shipment in an Italian police raid, he responded by saying: “If I had Calashnikov I would have killed everyone bang, bang, bang. ”

They have built a reputation for credibility, distributing in time and keeping a low profile, as they did by building a large cannabis plantation in Lazarat, southern Albania. After taking office in 2013, Mr. Rama sent police who seized 71 tonnes of drugs from the village and more than 400 automatic weapons, an anti-plane machine gun, grenade launcher, mortars and anti-tank weapons. In response, traffickers hired an army of farmers to spread farming throughout the country. Italian police increased surveillance flights, destroying more than two million plants in 2016. The government said only 58 plantations were observed last year, out of more than 2,000 years ago. However, there has been little conviction for drug bosses who have turned their attention to Albania and Europe from Afghanistan through Turkey. Their luxury cars are still a common sight on the streets of Tirana. “We are making arrests, but the next day they release”, Rama said, adding that he was strengthening property controls for the alleged judges on the mafia salary list.

At his table, Fatmir Xhafaj, the interior minister, has a list of about 50 top criminals, 20 of whom said they operate abroad. “We are checking taxes, property and businesses,” he said. We'll catch them, following the money”.

Drug factories created by dictator's relics

Under a mud road in the suburbs of Tirana lies a collapsed concrete bunker, one of thousands built by Enver Hoxha, the communist dictator, to defend against the invasion. The bunker, the size of two tennis fields, was forgotten and covered with wheat until last year, when a gang took it as a shelter to dry the marijuana that planted near the structure, despite the presence of a military base. Business may have flourished five years ago, but police took action to crack drugs in Albania. Eight gangs were arrested in October with 180kg of cannabis.

In a warehouse in the middle of the field, farther from Tirana, near a castle of the Ottoman hill, authorities are amassing sacks of seized drugs to be used as evidence in evidence. As a police drill opened the metal door, a wind reeks of 20 tons of dried marijuana and resin stored inside plastic bags.

We have to keep it aired, or guards get drunk from the wind,” said Joseph Standard, a police officer, while colleagues left the depot. The brick building is one of the five storage centres around Tirana, which together carry 100 tonnes of drugs, testimony to the mass cultivation of marijuana in Albania that began after the fall of the communist regime.

The government aims to eliminate planting this year, but police fear that reduced supply will increase prices, prompting farmers to plant.

“People have a lot of imagination”, said Julian Hodaj, deputy interior minister. “Not to be caught they can go underground, so we're checking the sale of lamps and monitoring strange increases in the use of electricity from” factories./ Prepared by The Times © Lawrence.al