THE worries of the Italian and Greek governments about the dangers of mass migration from Albania are genuine and serious but they pale by comparison to what could happen elsewhere should the conflict in Europe's poorest country deteriorate into total anarchy.
To the north lies the former Yugoslavia and, most ominously, the tinder box province of Kosovo with its 90 per cent Albanian population. It is here that the real disaster may be waiting to take place.
Two political leaders, two presidents, have been marked out as important in the West's efforts to hold the peace in the region. President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia is a key figure in the Dayton accords which secured the current cessation of hostilities in Bosnia President Sali Berisha of Albania has been regarded as the man who can stop the right wing activists of the Shkoder United League (SUL) from fomenting revolution among their fellow Albanians in Kosovo.
Both men are now under pressure. Mr Milosevic's authority has been undermined by months of mass demonstrations against his authoritarian regime. Mr Berisha's position is even more precarious.
To complicate matters further, a spilling over of unrest to Kosovo could help Mr Milosevic regain his power and popularity in what remains of Yugoslavia. Despite its large ethnic Albanian majority, Kosovo is a sacred land to the Serbs. It was here that their nation was founded, here that their greatest historic battle against the Turks, at Kosovo Polje, took place and here too that the Serbian Orthodox church came into being.
Any threat that Kosovo might become part of Albania would ring alarm bells for a currently dormant but easily awakened Serb nationalism. Any loss of authority for Mr Berisha would enhance the strength of the SUL in the north and those in the south who are already involved in an armed uprising against his government.
SUL is intent on creating a greater Albania and now appears to have virtually gained control in the north. The anti Serb Kosovo Liberation Army may, it is believed in some quarters, have bases in Albania proper. Attacks on ethnic Albanians who have worked with the Serbian authorities continue in Kosovo and a number of Serbian administrators have also been killed in terrorist attacks in the province.
Mr Berisha's increasing powerlessness could provide an opportunity for SUL to involve Kosovo in an Albanian conflict this in turn could provide Mr Milosevic with an opportunity to rehabilitate himself as the saviour of the Serbian nation. The consequences in terms of bloodshed and loss of life are too horrible to imagine.
Ethnic differences also complicate the situation in the south of Albania where the current conflict is at its height. Here the Greek minority, particularly in the seaport town of Vlore, is very much involved in the increasingly violent demonstrations against Mr Berisha's government. Confiscated arms are also believed to have fallen into the hands of boys in their early teens in this region, making the situation even more volatile.
For a backward and uneducated population, Mr Berisha represented the hope of an end to an intolerable life imposed from above by the country's Stalinist dictator, Enver Hoxha, but his commitment to democracy has proved to be as phoney as the title of his right wing "Democratic Party".
The old secret police, the SHIK, remains as a state within a state and yesterday its chairman, Gen Bashkim Gazidede, was appointed as chief of the armed forces. This has been taken as a sign that Mr Berisha is ready to put down the armed resistance ruthlessly. Interior Ministry forces and SHIK units have also been merged in an attempt to restore order.
Attempts to control the local media also indicate that the iron fist is about to be used. The offices of the daily Koha Jone newspaper were ransacked in the early hours of yesterday morning the Voice of America's local broadcasts were cut off, leaving it to rely on shortwave the European Broadcasting Union had its TV facilities cut off for a period yesterday and it is understood that reception of the BBC's Albanian language broadcasts has deteriorated to the extent that jamming is suspected.
It is now clear that the demonstrations which began as protests against the loss of people's life savings in crooked pyramid investment schemes have taken on a much more political hue. Many regard the schemes as having funded Mr Berisha's election campaign. His sacking of the prime minister, Mr Aleksander Meksi, who has been accused of profiteering from the Bosnian war and funding some of the schemes, is now seen as offering "too little too late".
Such schemes have been a feature of the transition from command to market economies in eastern and central Europe, the best known having been the MMM pyramid organised in Russia by Mr Sergei Mavrodi. This and other Russian schemes not only cost people their savings but turned many away from the concept of democracy with which they associated the frauds.
Such a consequence has been disappointing enough the outcome in Albania could be far worse.
