When Mero Baze accused America of destroying the Albanian army...

2025-04-12 11:31:00, Opinione CNA

In the bad year of '97, the Albanian army was destroyed in three days, foreshadowing the disaster to come. The Minister of Defense, Safet Zhulali, suddenly and unknowingly fled, leaving his compatriots to the mercy of fate in the hands of bandits with Kalashnikovs stolen from army warehouses.

Mero Baze has written a book about those difficult days. He thinks that the destruction of that army was mainly due to the Americans. I don't think so. I think it was due to Sali Berisha and his government. But where would Mero let Berisha touch…

Here's how he takes the piss out of Americans below in an excerpt from his book "The American Danger to Albania" published with the euphemistic title "Albanian-American Realities".

*******

Now, recently, when the Albanian army seems to have collapsed within three days like a cardboard box, and when the Minister of Defense shamefully fled to Italy, many are returning in detail to every detail of the American presence in the Albanian army, from the proximity and spectacular reception they gave Zhulal in the US to the latest comments that American official circles want to convey in the American press to blame the bankruptcy of the army on the Albanian government.

It is indisputable that the Albanian government will remain indebted to the history of Albania for the army it had prepared, but, personally, this responsibility can be concentrated on the Minister of Defense and the army generals.

As it turned out, the Minister of Defense was the closest friend of American officials, while the Albanian army was more open to American military advisors, the anecdotes about which are endless in the diplomatic salons of Tirana. He left Albania with an unprecedented history of desertion and only a month later told the Albanians that he left because his life was in danger, while three million Albanians are still in danger from his flight and the desertion of the army.

Especially for this reason, the United States of America cannot hide its responsibility in the destruction of the Albanian army. Its logistical and professional assistance, as well as the restructuring reforms that it itself led, seem to have completely failed.

The “Warsaw Pact” officers defeated for three days the officers and soldiers armed according to the NATO model prepared by American experts. It must now be admitted whether this was American inability to restructure the Albanian army, or Albanian inability to understand where some experts and military attaches, who found in Albania perhaps the most hospitable country in Europe, were taking the Albanian army.

Now that the war has broken out and the army almost no longer exists and Albanians walk the streets with "Kalashnikovs" on their shoulders, no one can escape responsibility. / Taken from Ermal Mulosmani's social networks