Albanian Subversion
Encyclopedia
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
n Subversion is one of the earliest and most notable failures of the Western covert
Covert operation
A covert operation is a military, intelligence or law enforcement operation that is carried clandestinely and, often, outside of official channels. Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation...
paramilitary operations behind the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
. Based on wrong assessments about Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
, and thinking that the country was ready to shake off its Stalinist regime, the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
SIS
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
and the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
launched a joint subversive operation, using as agents Albanian expatriates. Other noncommunist Albanians and many nationalists worked as agents for Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Yugoslav
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
intelligence services, some supported by the UK and U.S. secret services. A Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
mole
Mole (espionage)
A mole is a spy who works for an enemy nation, but whose loyalty ostensibly lies with his own nation's government. In some usage, a mole differs from a defector in that a mole is a spy before gaining access to classified information, while a defector becomes a spy only after gaining access...
, and later other spies tipped off the missions to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, which in turn relayed the information to Albania. Consequently, many of the agents were caught, put on a show-trial, and either shot or condemned to long prison terms at hard labor
Penal labour
Penal labour is a form of unfree labour in which prisoners perform work, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence which involve penal labour include penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour...
.
The Albanian subversion cost the lives of at least 300 men and for a long time was one of the most carefully concealed secrets of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. In 2006, some 2,300 pages of documents laying out major parts of the Albania Project under its two major cryptonyms, BGFIEND and OBOPUS, were declassified by a U.S. Government interagency working group acting under the terms of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. Those documents are available at the National Archives in College Park, MD, within Record Group 263. A significantly important user's guide is available to assist researchers in locating the documents.
Background
The reason behind the operation in Albania was a relatively simple one: it was separated from the Soviet Bloc by YugoslaviaYugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, which had split with Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Soviet Union in June, 1948. Albania was also the poorest Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an nation, and was home to about one million people, many still divided along semi-feudal lines. There were three major religious groups and two distinct classes: those people who owned land and claimed feudal privileges and those who did not. The landowners, only about 1% of the population, held 95% of the cultivated land as well as the principal ruling posts in the country's central and southern regions. Refusing to reform during the regime of King Zog many of them were steeped in the same Oriental conservatism that finally destroyed the once mighty Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the Albanian society was split into several amorphous groups: nationalists, communists, royalists
Balli Kombëtar
Balli Kombëtar was an Albanian nationalist, anti-communist and anti-monarchy organization established in October 1939. It was led by Ali Këlcyra and Mit’hat Frashëri...
, traditionalists - the latter both tribal and feudal in nature. It was the Communist National Liberation Front that emerged victorious, mainly due to the ideological discipline instilled in their troops, but also because they were the only force which had consistently fought the Italians and Germans. Many nationalists and the royalists could not deny some collaboration with Italian and/or German occupiers.
However, Albania was in an unenviable position after World War II. Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
hungered for Albanian lands it claimed, while Yugoslavia wanted Albania merged into a Balkan confederation. The Allies
Allies
In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...
recognized neither King Zog nor a republican government-in-exile, nor did they ever raise the question of Albania or its borders at major wartime conferences. No reliable statistics on Albania's wartime losses exist, but the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was an international relief agency, largely dominated by the United States but representing 44 nations. Founded in 1943, it became part of the United Nations in 1945, was especially active in 1945 and 1946, and largely shut down...
reported about 30,000 Albanian dead from the war, 200 destroyed villages, 18,000 destroyed houses, and about 100,000 people made homeless. A number whose significance is further compounded by the relatively small population of Albania: approximately 1,500,000 in 1938. Albanian official statistics claim somewhat higher losses.
Operational plans
In this post-war chaos that was Albania the allies decided to launch their operation. The plan called for parachute drops of royalists into the MatiMat District
The District of Mat is one of the thirty-six districts of Albania, part of Dibër County. It is named after the Mat River, that flows through the district. It has a population of 48,803 , and an area of 1,029 km². Its capital is Burrel...
region in Central Albania. The region was traditionally known as a bastion of Albanian traditionalism and moreover praised for their loyalty to King Zog, himself an offspring of one of the regional clans. The original plan was that, if Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
could parachute enough well-trained agents, they could organize a massive popular revolt, which then the allies would supply by air drops. In time, this revolt would spill out a civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
. The trouble that this would cause the Soviet politics was worth the risk, and if it did succeed, then it could be the starting point of a chain reaction of popular revolutions throughout the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
. The project appeared so appealing that the Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
(SIS) had no hesitation in putting in into operation. It was run in detail by an agent who had come into SIS and Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
(SOE). The chief of SIS, Stewart Menzies
Stewart Menzies
Major General Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, KCB, KCMG, DSO, MC was Chief of MI6 , British Secret Intelligence Service, during and after World War II.-Early life, family:...
, was not enthusiastic about the paramilitary operation but saw it as a way to appease the former SOE “stinks and bangs people.”
In addition, the British wanted the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to finance the operation and to provide bases. Senior British intelligence officer William Hayter
William Goodenough Hayter
Sir William Goodenough Hayter, 1st Baronet PC, QC was a British barrister and Whig politician. He is best remembered for his two tenures as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury between 1850 and 1852 and 1853 and 1858.- Background and education:Born at Winterbourne Stoke, Wiltshire, Hayter was...
, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC
Joint Intelligence Center
A Joint Intelligence Center is a focal point for military intelligence gathered by different intelligence agencies and administered by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The intelligence center of the joint force headquarters...
), came to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
in March with a group of Secret Intelligence Service members and Foreign Office staff that included Gladwyn Jebb, Earl Jellicoe
Earl Jellicoe
Earl Jellicoe is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created, along with the subsidiary title Viscount Brocas, of Southampton in the County of Southampton, on 29 June 1925 for Admiral of the Fleet John Jellicoe, 1st Viscount Jellicoe, on his return from being Governor-General of...
, and Peter Dwyer
Peter Dwyer
Dr. Peter Dwyer is a member of the School of Anthropology, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is credited as first documenting the New Zealand Greater Short-tailed Bat.-External links:*...
of SIS and a Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
specialist. Joined by SIS Washington liaison Harold Adrian 'Kim' Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
, they met with Robert Joyce of the US State Department’s Policy and Planning Staff (PPS) and Frank Wisner
Frank Wisner
Frank Gardiner Wisner was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s....
, who was the head of the Office of Policy Coordination
Office of Policy Coordination
The Office of Policy Coordination was a United States covert psychological operations and paramilitary action organization. Created as an independent office in 1948, it was merged with the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951....
(OPC), and other U.S. intelligence officials such as James McCargar and Frank Lindsay
Frank Lindsay
Franklin A. Lindsay is a former spy and business executive. Lindsay graduated from Stanford University in 1938 and ended up working for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. During the war he parachuted to the Slovene Partisans in 1944 and worked with them to blow up the rail lines...
. McCargar was assigned to liaise with Philby on joint operational matters. Unbeknownst to the SIS and CIA, though, Philby was a communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, and spy
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
for Soviet foreign intelligence
Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
There was a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The first secret police after the Russian Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka"...
.
There was no scarcity of anti-communist Albanians and the recruiters promptly found them the Displaced Persons camps in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. The manpower recruitment for what the British codenamed VALUABLE Project, the Americans FIEND, consisted of 40% from the Balli Kombetar
Balli Kombëtar
Balli Kombëtar was an Albanian nationalist, anti-communist and anti-monarchy organization established in October 1939. It was led by Ali Këlcyra and Mit’hat Frashëri...
(BK) National Front, an organization formed during World War II on a nationalist program committed to creating a Greater Albania; 40% from the monarchist movement, known as Legaliteti; and the rest from other Albanian factions.
Valuable Project/Fiend
A dozen Albanian emigréÉmigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s were recruited and taken to Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
to train for a pilot project that would become known as Operation Valuable (It is not clear exactly when MI6 assigned the VALUABLE cryptonym to the Albanian effort). The SIS, with U.S. Army Col. 'Ace' Miller as a liaison, trained these men in the use of weapons, codes and radio, the techniques of subversion and sabotage. They were dropped into the mountains of Mati
Mat District
The District of Mat is one of the thirty-six districts of Albania, part of Dibër County. It is named after the Mat River, that flows through the district. It has a population of 48,803 , and an area of 1,029 km². Its capital is Burrel...
throughout 1947, but failed to impress the inhabitants of the region into a larger revolt. The operation dragged on until 1949. There were sabotage attempts on the Kucova
Kuçova
Kuçova is the name of different places:* Kuçovë, Albanian city* Kuçova oil field, Albanian oil field...
oilfields and the copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
mines in Rubik
Rubik, Albania
Rubik is a municipality located in the central-north of Albania in the mountainous Mirditë District along national roadway SH30 which links Tirana/Lezhë County with Rrëshen/Kukes and the new Durrës-Kosovo auto-strata...
but no real success in raising a revolt. Then, the US government weighing up the political situation, decided to lend a hand. In September 1949, British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin was a British trade union leader and Labour politician. He served as general secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1945, as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government, and as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour Government.-Early...
went to Washington, D.C. to discuss Operation Valuable with US government officials. The CIA released a report that concluded that “a purely internal Albanian uprising at this time is not indicated, and, if undertaken, would have little chance of success.” The CIA asserted that the Hoxha regime had a 65,000 man regular army and a security force of 15,000. There were intelligence reports that there were 1,500 Soviet “advisers” and 4,000 “technicians” in Albania helping to train the Albanian army.
British and U.S. naval officials were concerned that the USSR was building a submarine base
Submarine base
A submarine base is a military base that shelters submarines and their personnel.Examples of present-day submarine bases include HMNB Clyde, Île Longue , Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Naval Submarine Base New London, and Rybachiy Nuclear Submarine Base .The Israeli navy bases its growing submarine...
at the Karaburun Peninsula
Karaburun Peninsula, Albania
Karaburun Peninsula, Albania is the largest peninsula of Albania, located in the District of Vlorë, southwestern Albania, at the eastern side of the Strait of Otranto, where the Adriatic Sea meets the Ionian Sea. It has an area of and has no population. It is long with a width that varies from...
near the port of Vlora. On September 6, 1949, when NATO met for the first time in Washington, Bevin proposed that “a counter-revolution” be launched in Albania. US Secretary of State Dean Acheson
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War...
was in agreement. Part of an erroneous myth that has developed around these Albanian adventures was that NATO, established as a defensive military alliance for Western Europe and North America, was now committed to launching offensive covert operations against a sovereign nation in the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
. The U.S. and UK, joining with their weak allies, Italy and Greece, agreed to support the overthrow of the Hoxha regime in Albania and to eliminate Soviet influence in the Mediterranean region. Bevin wanted to place King Zog on the throne as the leader of Albania once Enver Hoxha
Enver Hoxha
Enver Halil Hoxha was a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary andthe leader of Albania from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania...
was overthrown.
This time a better class of commando
Commando
In English, the term commando means a specific kind of individual soldier or military unit. In contemporary usage, commando usually means elite light infantry and/or special operations forces units, specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting, rappelling and similar techniques, to conduct and...
was sought so an approach was made to King Zog in exile in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
to recommend men for the job. But British negotiator Neil 'Billy' McLean and American representatives Robert Miner and Robert Low were unable to bring Zog in because no one would name him head of a provisional government in exile. In August, 1949, an announcement was made in Paris that Albanian political exiles had formed a multiparty committee to foment anticommunist rebellion in the homeland; actually the National Committee for a Free Albania was created by American diplomatic and intelligence officials for political cover to a covert paramilitary project, with British concurrence. The British made the first organizational move, hiring on as chief trainer Maj. David Smiley, deputy commander of a cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...
(tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
) regiment stationed in Germany. Already agreed with McLean and his cohort, Julian Amery, to supply 30 Albanian emigres as recruits for the operation to penetrate Albania were leaders of the Balli Kombetar, an exile political group whose key policy was to replace the Albanian Communist regime with a non-royalist government.
In July 1949, the first group of 30 Albanian recruits, some veterans of World War II guerrilla and civil wars, were recruited by Balli Kombetar leaders and transported by British special operations personnel to an old fortress, Bin Jema, on the British island colony of Malta. Labeled as "The Pixies" by the SIS
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
, the Pixies spent two months training as radio operators, intelligence gatherers, and more sophisticated guerrillas than they had been as members of cetas (guerrilla bands) during World War II. On Sept. 26, 1949, nine Pixies boarded a British Navy trawler which sailed north; three days later, a Greek style fishing boat, known as a caique and named "Stormie Seas', sailed from Malta.
With a stop at an Italian port, the two vessels sailed Oct. 3, rendezvoused at a point in the Adriatic Sea, and transferred the Albanians to the caique. Hours later that same night, the Pixies landed on the Albanian coast, some south of Vlora, which was the former territory of the Balli Kombetar, others further north. This was the start of Operation Valuable. Albanian government security forces soon interdicted one of the two groups the commandos, had split into. The Communists killed three members of the first group, and a fourth man with the second group. The first three deaths and disappearance of a fourth man to join his family wiped out one group, while the surviving four from the first 1949 covert landing exfiltrated south to Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
.
For two years after this landing, small groups of British-trained Albanians left every so often from training camps in Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
and Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Most of the entire series of operations was a disaster, with Albanian security forces interdicting many of the insurgents. Occasionally, the Albanian authorities would report on “large but unsuccessful infiltrations of enemies of the people” in several regions of the country. It must also be pointed out that some brave British, Italian, and Greek agents infiltrated Albania two, three and four times each, a pattern that followed Albanian exiles who worked as intelligence gatherers for the Italian Navy. Some American agents, originally trained by Italian or Greek officials, also infiltrated by air, sea, or afoot on more than two occasions, to gather intelligence rather than take part in political or paramilitary operations.
The last infiltration took place a few weeks before Easter
Easter
Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...
1952. In a desperate effort to discover what was going on Captain Shehu himself were guided with Captain Branica and radio operator Tahir Prenci by veteran gendarme and guerrilla fighter Hamit Matjani and three armed guards to the Mati region northeast of Tirana, the region once home to Albania's ex-King Zog. Albanian security forces militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
were waiting for them at their rendezvous point, a house owned by Shehu’s cousin, a known supporter of Zog. The militia forced Shehu’s operator to transmit an all clear signal to his base in Cyprus. The operator had been schooled to deal with such situations by using a fail-safe drill which involved broadcasting in a way that warned it was being sent under duress and therefore should be disregarded. But the militia seemed to know the drill. The all clear signal went out and, nearly a year later, four more top agents, including Matjani himself, parachuted into an ambush at Shen Gjergj (Saint George), near the town of Elbasan
Elbasan
Elbasan is a city in central Albania. It is located on the Shkumbin River in the District of Elbasan and the County of Elbasan, at...
. The Albanian army was waiting in a big circle, guns cocked, and the guerrillas
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
landed in the middle of it. No one surrendered. Those not killed were tried in April, 1954.
In the 2009 RTE (Irish) television programme "Who Do You Think You Are?" British Colonel Charles Davison's wife Maeve Davison ( née de Burgh - mother of Chris de Burgh
Chris de Burgh
Chris de Burgh is a British/Irish singer-songwriter. He is most famous for his 1986 love song "The Lady in Red".-Early life:...
) reveals that Davison was posted to Malta in the early 1950s. When asked what the posting involved, Maeve replies "He was offered a posting in Malta. It was officially Army work but in fact it was intelligence work. He was training agents to be put into Albania. And he was teaching them how to... blow things up and generally cause lots of destruction."
Mrs. Davison wrote a letter on 21 May 1952 telling the Army that Col Davison was no longer interested in a job he had been inquiring about because he had already left for another posting. The letter is contained in Davison's official war records and was shown on the programme. The location of the posting is not stated in the letter but when questioned about where it was, Maeve Davison confirms it was Malta. Maeve Davison says she joined her husband in Malta and acted as a cypher clerk - encoding and decoding messages about the operations and forwarding them to London. Her letter and comments on the programme indicate the British operation did not cease but continued on Malta in 1952 and later under Colonel Charles Davison.
Aftermath
Shehu, Sufa, Matjani and others were put on a show trial, which found all guilty as charged. Shehu, Sula and the royal guards were to be shot, Matjani to be hanged. Many of the local inhabitants who were suspected of having helped the guerrillas, were jailed or forcibly located elsewhere in Albania. Whatever remained of the anticommunist resistance was virtually erased.Those guerrillas who survived had no doubt they were betrayed: “Police were always waiting when a boat came ashore. How could they know where the boats would come unless a traitor would have told them? Also, people who had been our friends when we left Albania were often no longer our friends when we went back.”
Up to 300 agents and civilians who helped them were likely killed during the operation. Abaz Ermenji, co-founder of Balli Kombetar (BK) stated: “Our ‘allies’ wanted to make use of Albania as a guinea-pig, without caring about the human losses, for an absurd enterprise that was condemned to failure.” Halil Nerguti stated: “We were used as an experiment. We were a small part of a big game, pawns that could be sacrificed.” There is no question that the CIA and MI6 used the operation as a small-scale exercise in regime change. The stakes were small. Failure would not be noticed. John H. Richardson, Director of the CIA's South-East Division, terminated Operation Fiend. By 1954, Company 4000's 120 members focused on guarding a United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
chemical weapons dump south of Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
; CIA training facilities outside Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
shut down, as did a CIA base on a Greek island. Over time, the remaining Albanians were resettled in the US, UK, and the Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
countries.
Analysis
The Albanian episode illustrated how out of touch with the Albanian reality the Western politics were. First of all, Albania was a country divided amongst itself and the democratic principles for which these agents might claim to have fought and died for were totally alien to a semi-illiterate population. Secondly, these men represented the "Old Guard" of a bygone era, bent on the preservation of century-old privileges. Third, the communist forces were an organized, and ideologically indoctrinated force, competent and forged into countless battles against the Italians and the Nazis.The communists also undertook economic measures to expand their power. In December 1944, the provisional government adopted laws allowing the state to regulate foreign and domestic trade, commercial enterprises, and the few industries the country possessed. The laws sanctioned confiscation of property belonging to political exiles and "enemies of the people." The state also expropriated all German- and Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
-owned property, nationalized transportation enterprises, and canceled all concessions granted by previous Albanian governments to foreign companies. In August 1945, the provisional government adopted the first sweeping agricultural reforms in Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
's history. The country's 100 largest landowners, who controlled close to a third of Albania's arable land, had frustrated all agricultural reform proposals before the war. The communists' reforms were aimed at squeezing large landowners out of business, winning peasant support, and increasing farm output to avert famine.
The government annulled outstanding agricultural debts, granted peasants access to inexpensive water for irrigation, and nationalized forest and pastureland. Under the Agrarian Reform Law, which redistributed about half of Albania's arable land, the government confiscated property belonging to absentee landlords and people not dependent on agriculture for a living. The few peasants with agricultural machinery were permitted to keep up to forty hectares of land; the landholdings of religious institutions and peasants without agricultural machinery were limited to twenty hectares; and landless peasants and peasants with tiny landholdings were given up to five hectares, although they had to pay nominal compensation.
Thus tiny farmsteads replaced large private estates across Albania. By mid-1946 Albanian peasants were cultivating more land and producing higher corn and wheat yields than ever before. As such the power base had gradually shifted from the old elite to the newer one. Also the communists had the support of some nationalists on account of thwarting Yugoslav
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
plans for a Balkan Federation, which would have invalidated Albanian independence
Independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
and made the country a Yugoslav
Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs is a national designation used by a minority of South Slavs across the countries of the former Yugoslavia and in the diaspora...
republic
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...
. Even if Kim Philby had not done what he did, it is highly likely that penetration of the Albanian émigré groups by both foreigners and Albanian Communist agents would have destroyed the Albanian subversion.
Sources
- John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 2006
- Colonel David SmileyDavid SmileyColonel David de Crespigny Smiley, LVO, OBE, MC & Bar was a British special forces and intelligence officer. He fought in the Second World War in Palestine, Iraq, Persia, Syria, Western Desert and with Special Operations Executive in Albania and Thailand.- Background :Smiley was the 4th and...
LVO, OBE, MC, "Irregular Regular", Michael Russell, Norwich, 1994 (ISBN 0-85955-202-0). The Mémoirs of a Royal Horse Guards officer, SOE agent in Albania and Thailand, and later MI6 agent in Poland, Malta, Oman and Yemen. He trained the Pixies in Malta in 1949. Translated in French by Thierry Le Breton, Au cœur de l’action clandestine. Des Commandos au MI6, L’Esprit du Livre Editions, France, 2008 (ISBN 978-2-915960-27-3). With numerous photographs. - "CIA and British MI6 in Albania"
- "World War II and the rise of communism, 1941-44"
- Irish television programme "Who Do You Think You Are? Episode: Rosanna Davison" Broadcast on RTÉ One, 28 September 2009. Contains the revelation that Rosanna Davison's grandfather Charles Davison took up a secret posting in Malta in 1952, training agents to infiltrate Albania.
- Moore, Lucy and Niamh Walsh. “Chris de Burgh's mum was a superspy: Singer's daughter Rosanna learns her granny partied with Mountbatten and worked for traitor Kim Philby”, The Daily Mail, January 2, 2011. Accessed January 3, 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343385/Chris-Burghs-spy-mum-partied-Mountbatten-worked-Kim-Philby.html
- Noble, Andrew. “Bullets and Broadcasting: Methods of Subversion and Subterfuge in the CIA War against the Iron Curtain.” MA thes. University of Nevada, 2009