Conflict Studies Research Centre Contents Report 1 End Of Week One: An Assessment Report 2 Meetings With Minister of Defence & Chief of Staff Report 3 Conversations With Minister Zhulali 1 June 95 Report 5 Further Conversations with Minister Zhulali Report 6 Visits Report 7 Post-Brussels Meeting With Minister Zhulali Report 8 Post Brussels Meeting With Minister Zhulali (Round 2) Report 10 17 June Visit To 3rd Division Burreli Report 12 21 June Meeting With President Berisha & Other Atmospherics Report 13 21 June Meeting With Minister Zhulali Report 18 Meetings With MinDef, Under-Minister Moisiu & BG Selami Report 21 Where To From Here? - End of Month Two And A Half Report 23 10 August Meeting With MinDef Report 25 15 August Meeting With MinDef Report 26 Biography - Alfred Moisiu Report 28 Consolidation Report 34 Visit To 2nd Division - Kukes Report 44 Ministerial Atmospherics Report 45 Letter To Minister Zhulali Report 49 Meeting With Chief of Staff Kosovo & Atmospherics Report 50 28 November Meeting With Minister Zhulali Report 52 Albanian Army - A History Report 55 Priorities Report 60 12 January Visit To Military Clothing Factory in Tirana Report 65 Visit To 1st Division - Skodra Report 72 Tirana Explosion Report 73 News Report: US Establishes Base In Albania Report 75 Tirana Explosion II Report 77 Conversations At The NCO Academy Report 84 US Special Forces & More From The NCO Academy Report 89 Conversations In Tirana & Change Report 90 Visit To Sazan Island Report 91 The German Military Connection Report 93 Conversations With Officers Report 95 The NCO Academy - After Action Report Report 97 Election Atmospherics Report 99 Downed WWII Aircraft In Albania Report 100 Opening A Dialogue With NATO Report 101 Biza Impressions Report 102 The Elections - First Impressions Report 103 The Elections - OSCE Statement Report 104 The Elections - Post-Election Atmospherics Report 105 Assignments Report 108 3 June Letter To Minister Zhulali Report 109 West Point Visit To The Defence Academies Report 110 Possible Resignation Of Defence Minister Report 116 Resignation Of MG Perlat Sula Report 119 13 July Meeting With MinDef Report 122 Possible US Crash Site (Circa 43/44) At Vermosh Report 123 Week's Activities For Week Ending 26 July 1996 Report 127 Biography - Minister of Defence Safet Zhulali Report 128 Biography - Minister Zhulali, (Addendum) Report 129 7 August Meetings With Ministers Moisiu & Zhulali Report 135 Miscellany & Atmospherics Report 139 Crash Site/Conversations At Vermosh Report 143 20 September Meeting With MinDef Report 148 Thoughts On The "New" Army Report 150 Conversations In Belgrade Report 151 Impressions Of The South Report 152 The Week That Was Report 154 The 26 February '96 Vefa Explosion Revisited Report 155 Ponderings Report 156 MEICO Problems Highlighted Report 157 Conversations Report 158 MEICO Continued Report 159 22 October Meeting With MinDef Report 164 More Conversations Report 165 The Shape Of the Army - A German View Report 167 Albania & The "True Believer" Report 168 The Balkans & Their Impact On Stability Report 169 The "New" Albanian Army - Continued Report 170 Albanian Version Of The Swiss Army For The Nineties Report 171 The Final Days - I Report 172 The Final Days - II Report 173 The Final Days - III Report 175 Planning Of A Realistic Defence Report 176 The Defence Advisor - Some Thoughts G114 Once Upon An Army The Crisis in the Albanian Army, 1995-1996 C Dennison Lane Introduction For an extraordinary period of 20 months from May 1995 until December 1996, I was the Military Advisor to the Albanian Minister of Defence. My task was broadly to "reform" the Albanian Army. Several things need to be made clear at the outset vis-à-vis my title and my chain of command. I was not the American Military Advisor to the Albanian Minister of Defence, but simply the Military Advisor to the Albanian Minister of Defence. This meant that in meetings with the American or NATO Defence establishments I sat on the Albanian side of the table. At the same time I was directly answerable to the United States Army Europe (USAREUR) based in Stuttgart, and to a lesser degree to the United States Embassy in Tirana. The basis of this book are the 178 Reports that I wrote from Tirana. This text is a selection to illustrate the main characteristics of military infrastructure and development, made with my colleague James Pettifer. The final four reports were written after having been expelled on 17 December 1996. The experience of being declared "persona non grata" by the President of a former totalitarian country when one is there on a tourist visa and one's Embassy is intent on sending only notes of "spiritual encouragement" is a rather heady experience. Being PNG-ed can be exhilarating but it helps to be alone and have diplomatic immunity. I was neither alone nor did I have diplomatic status. My then 14-year old son Peter, who had been attending the Tirana International School, was still there. And there was the realisation that the authorities knew that I knew a great deal more than they might necessarily want me to know. Accordingly the final four reports were written from outside Albania. In retrospect there was probably nothing to have been concerned about, but at the time the affair was unsettling. It has been suggested that this text might be useful to some other individuals who are tasked with the formulation of an "army". I believe very strongly that an army reflects the identity of the people that compose it. There was a desire in many circles to simply "clone" the Albanian Army into a NATO-type organisation. Not only could Albania not afford in financial terms such an undertaking, NATO and the United States were philosophically unable to envisage anything that did not look familiar to them. The requirement for PfP that a national army be compatible to a NATO-like structure does not mean that it had to look like NATO but that it must be able to communicate and be interoperable. And at the same time, as the Defence Advisor I was never able to convince the leadership, both Albanian and American, that there were better models to follow that that of the US First Infantry Division. 1 Once Upon An Army - The Crisis in the Albanian Army, 1995-1996 Conflict Studies Research Centre ISBN 1-904423-03-5 September 2002 G114 C Dennison Lane I retired from the United States Army as a Colonel in February 1993 after an interesting career. Those who may be inclined to check the records will discover that I was a Special Forces Colonel. This needs a little clarification. Indeed I was a Special Forces Colonel but only because several years earlier the then Chief of Military Intelligence, the branch of service to which I belonged at the time, deemed that I was a "prima donna" and suggested that I should look elsewhere if I intended to continue my career. I had in fact served three tours with Special Forces. Unlike many of my peers, I had very quickly come to the conclusion that jumping out of airplanes, while exhilarating, was not intellectually very rewarding. In other words I was terrified of jumping. I don't suppose that I have ever been what the reader might have in mind when he conjures up the image of the Special Forces Officer. Fortuitously at the time that the Chief of Intelligence and I were at odds, Special Forces Branch had just been designated as a branch. Previously Special Forces Officers and Infantry Officers were all lumped together and had their respective careers managed by Infantry Branch. Special Forces were at the time finding it difficult to find enough senior officers to fill the Branch. My records were made available to them. The upshot was that I became a Special Forces Officer once again. It was originally my intention to maintain a running diary of events. Ultimately the Reports from Tirana became the diary. At the outset in Albania I found a group of well-read, thoughtful officers who were clearly seeking a new direction, but who at the same time had selectively retained some tactical and philosophical components from their earlier experiences with their Russian and Chinese advisors. I have found on various desks in various command posts Albanian translations of "Clausewitz On War", Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", "Caesar and Pompey", and a book by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery of El Alamein. I have had a lively discussion with Brigadier-General Sula about the pros and cons of Napoleon and surprisingly found myself fielding questions on the Thai army's counterinsurgency operations. In this light it is interesting to note that the numerous book stores dotted about Tirana, distinct from many of their counterparts in Croatia and Macedonia whose main trade is in pornography, were selling everything from Anais Nin (pornographic but at least literature), to Marshal Zhukov. The Albanians seem to have thrown themselves into reading anything that they could find. This was an army with its back to the wall. There were virtually no spare parts and the Army had an annual budget of less than $50 million. They had, however, the best maintained Chinese tanks that I have ever seen (batteries were a problem but the Turks are keeping the battery factory running). The Military Liaison Team (MLT), after an artillery live fire exercise, reported that the artillery had rounds on target quicker than their American counterparts. At Durres naval base, a scene out of a WWII movie, we visited a torpedo boat section. While there was evidently a shortage of paint, as far as their weapons systems and engines were concerned, they were clearly capable of making life difficult for any likely adversary.