Thousands fear as blood feuds sweep Albania
By Bojan Pancevski and Nita Hoxha in Tirana, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:39am BST 03/06/2007
Stuck in their cottage outside the northern Albanian village of Mnela, 14-year-old Flori Bardoku and his younger sisters watch suspiciously whenever anybody makes the hour-long journey up the path to their home.
The reason for their caution is understandable: while most of their trickle of visitors are villagers bearing food and gifts, they know that one day someone may come to kill them.
The four siblings and their mother have lived in fear of their lives ever since their father, Martin, killed his cousin's wife in Mnela after discovering her in bed with another man. He is serving 10 years in jail for her death, but in conservative rural Albania, justice is seldom served by courts alone. In accordance with ancient clan tradition, the murdered woman's brothers have declared a "blood feud" against Bardoku's family - which means any of his nearest and dearest can be killed in exchange.
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Bardoku's family is believed to be one of more than 20,000 in the country who live under an ever-present death sentence because of such blood feuds. After his arrest, his children had to stop going to school and can never leave their homestead, a ramshackle place with no electricity and only a half a roof. It is, in many ways, just as much a prison as their father's.
"We would like to be able to go outside to play with our friends, but we can't" said Flori. "Here we have no books or magazines to read. I want to go back to school."
By rights, medieval customs such as blood feuds should be a thing of the past. While Albania remains a clan-based society, today's younger generation are generally much more reluctant than their ancestors were to spill blood in defence of family honour. Yet recently, the problem has got much worse - after clan chiefs, in a bizarre adaptation to 21st century ways, ruled that families could "outsource" blood feuds to professional contract killers.
The ruling, last year, has seen blood feuds being pursued with far more ruthless efficiency than before, resulting in an explosion in the number of the killings. The government is desperately trying to curb the problem by setting up a database of families affected by blood feuds in an attempt to provide monitoring and protection.
"Times have changed," said Edmond Dragoti, a sociologist based in the capital, Tirana, who has studied the history of blood feuds. "We no longer see men saying proudly 'I am the avenger'; on the contrary, the executors are anonymous, hired killers."
The blood feuds are regulated by a set of harsh tribal laws called the Kanun - The Code - drafted by Lek Dukagjini, a feudal lord who fought against the Ottoman invaders in the 15th century. It served as the country's constitution for centuries and was upheld by the council of elders, a tribal legislative body consisting of the oldest males from prominent families of each village or region.
The Kanun was banned during the totalitarian rule of the Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, whose hard-line communist regime held an iron grip on the country until 1991. But during the chaos that followed the fall of communism, it was reinstated as a way of dealing with disputes. The councils of elders were re-established and now exist parallel to state institutions. In some conservative rural areas, where distrust of the police lingers, the councils' pronouncements effectively outweigh those of government.
Since the decision was made in mid-2006, the number of feud-related killings has doubled, confirming the government's suspicions that people find it far easier to hire a hit man than to commit a murder themselves.
According to the National Reconciliation Committee (NRC), a government body that deals with blood feuds, a total of 78 people died as a result of them in 2006. The real figure may be much higher, as many murders are not reported as blood feud killings, or not reported at all.
The new freedom to hire contract killers has spread to all Albanian-populated areas, including the western part of neighbouring Macedonia, Kosovo and southern Serbia, where the number of killings has also risen.
Many families facing potential retribution hide their children away. Adults in fear of assassination often carry weapons as they go about their daily business.
Gjin Marku, the chairman of the NRC, claims that today's contracted-out vendettas have little in common with the spirit of the Kanun.
"Some of these new brutal forms of revenge include the execution of the victim and his entire family, the killing of children younger than 18, as well as planting explosives," he said. In the past, he added, only single women or lone mothers were allowed to use contract killers, when there were no male members of the family left.
Blood feud retaliations are severely penalised by Albanian law, but prosecutors often face a lack of co-operation from traditional communities that prefer to adhere to the ancient code.
As an alternative, the government's new proposals recommend establishing a structure based on close collaboration between local leaders and police.
Mr Dragoti said the situation was made worse by the abundance of unlicensed weapons among the population, dating back to the 1997 meltdown after the crash of a big pyramid-type savings scheme. In a week-long riot, army barracks were looted by angry mobs, and thousands of Kalashnikovs and other weapons have since been circulating in the country.
Yet, despite languishing in prison with his children fearing for their lives, Bardoku accepts the blood debt as part of traditional Albanian life. In a recent interview with officials from the NRC, he remarked: "Life reserves such grave fates for us. Now things have happened, they can not be undone."
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Best part is:
The new freedom to hire contract killers has spread to all Albanian-populated areas, including the western part of neighbouring Macedonia, Kosovo and southern Serbia, where the number of killings has also risen.
Woah, NATO sure saved Kosovo for civilization didn't it?
That is best left without comment. Fucking Medieval.
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