|
Albania
Deteriorating Relations with the West
Albania's relations with the West soured after the communist
regime's refusal to allow free elections in December 1945. Albania
restricted the movements of United States and British personnel
in the country, charging that they had instigated anticommunist
uprisings in the northern mountains. Britain announced in April
that it would not send a diplomatic mission to Tiranë; the United
States withdrew its mission in November; and both the United States
and Britain opposed admitting Albania to the United Nations (UN).
The Albanian regime feared that the United States and Britain,
which were supporting anticommunist forces in the civil war in
Greece, would back Greek demands for territory in southern Albania;
and anxieties grew in July when a United States Senate resolution
backed the Greek demands.
A major incident between Albania and Britain erupted in 1946
after Tiranë claimed jurisdiction over the channel between the
Albanian mainland and the Greek island of Corfu. Britain challenged
Albania by sailing four destroyers into the channel. Two of the
ships struck mines on October 22, 1946, and forty-four crew members
died. Britain complained to the UN and the International Court
of Justice which, in its first case ever, ruled against Tiranë.
After 1946 the United States and Britain began implementing an
elaborate covert plan to overthrow Albania's communist regime
by backing anticommunist and royalist forces within the country.
By 1949 the United States and British intelligence organizations
were working with King Zog and the fanatic mountainmen of his
personal guard. They recruited Albanian refugees and émigrés from
Egypt, Italy, and Greece; trained them in Cyprus, Malta, and the
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany); and infiltrated them
into Albania. Guerrilla units entered Albania in 1950 and 1952,
but Albanian security forces killed or captured all of them. Kim
Philby, a Soviet double agent working as a liaison officer between
the British intelligence service and the United States Central
Intelligence Agency, had leaked details of the infiltration plan
to Moscow, and the security breach claimed the lives of about
300 infiltrators.
A wave of subversive activity, including the failed infiltration
and the March 1951 bombing of the Soviet embassy in Tiranë, encouraged
the Albanian regime to implement harsh internal security measures.
In September 1952, the assembly enacted a penal code that required
the death penalty for anyone over eleven years old found guilty
of conspiring against the state, damaging state property, or committing
economic sabotage.
Data as of April 1992
|
