A LARGE pyramid scheme has collapsed; demonstrations are taking place daily in the capital; tensions divide one-third of the country from the remainder; the government may be about to collapse; the military has been placed an increased state of alert.
Are we talking about Albania, two weeks ago? We are not. It is worse. We arc talking Macedonia. It is possible that the total anarchy which has now gripped Albania by the throat will loosen its grip in the next week. It is possible, but it is difficult to imagine how.
If it does not calm down then, Europe faces exceptional danger. Firstly, the anarchic movements in the south and the north of the country may coalesce into two or more huge armies of popular banditry.
Albanians all speak the same tongue but are divided into two main branches, the Gegs in the north and the Tosks in the south. Seventy per cent of Albanians are Muslim, 20 per cent are Greek Orthodox, and 10 per cent are Catholic, the three faiths which played so devastating a role in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
More recently, the country has been polarised by supporters of the now-discredited President Berisha, a Geg from the north, and followers of the Socialist Party, whose main base is among the Tosks in the south.
Historically, when the call to arms is made in Albania, people take it very seriously. Throughout four centuries of domination by the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, the Albanians were the favoured irregular soldiers of the Sultan in Istanbul. They had a reputation of being both fearless and nasty.
Among the mountain Gegs in the north, the traditions of giak marrje, or blood revenge, still flourishes. When a vendetta begins, it can last for decades. Indeed, it was Albanians emigrating to southern Italy in the late medieval period who fertilised the peasantry of Sicily and southern Italy with their traditions to spawn the Italian "men of honour" or mafiosi.
So if the current mayhem degenerates into warfare between regions, it will be the bloodiest of fights. The breakdown of law and order has one irresistible consequence which encourages an upward spiral of violence: food stocks are getting low.
During the insurgency of the past two weeks, rebels have immediately looted weapons and food depots. In some areas, people are already running out of food. And when that happens, they either kill for more, or they seek their sustenance elsewhere as refugees. And if the large wave of refugees which now threatens begins to move across borders, the southern Balkans is most probably doomed.
Albania's misery and terror will be but a mild dose of foreplay compared to the horror which will be unleashed on the region if the violence spills over into neighbouring Macedonia. The infection would be transmitted across the border by refugees.
The last great nationalist conflict in the Balkans which has yet to be resolved by war and vast population exchange pits Albanian against Slav. To the north of Albania lies Kosovo, the southern Serbian province with a large majority of Albanians and a small minority of Serbs. Kosovo is an unexploded bomb.
For years, the full force of the Serbian police has maintained order there at the expense of Albanian human rights. Paradoxically, the Albanian crisis is unlikely to detonate the bomb. Serbia is a strong state with a long track record of being thoroughly unpleasant to Albanians. Even a starving Albanian would think very hard about fleeing to Kosovo.
But Macedonia is a very weak state. It is landlocked and poor. The Slav Macedonians number only about 1.5 million. And they have big problems with their neighbours. The Serbs to the north have controlled Macedonia for most of the 20th century and did not take kindly to the Macedonians declaring independence when Yugoslavia broke up.
The Bulgarians to the east think quite simply that Macedonians are Bulgarians who belong back in the fold. And the Greeks to the south refuse to recognise their existence, maintaining that the copyright to the name "Macedonia" is exclusively Hellenic.
But the Macedonians' worst nightmare is the Albanians, who make up about a quarter of the population of the country. The Macedonian Albanians live along the border with Albania and in large numbers in the capital Skopje. Ever since independence was declared in 1992, Albanians and Macedonians have lived together uneasily.
The Albanians say they are treated like second-class citizens and denied their human rights. The Macedonians warn that if any political concessions are made to Albanians, they will use this to secede from the country.
In the past two months, relations between the two communities have been deteriorating. Macedonian students have been demonstrating every day against a government decision to allow Albanians to take university classes in their own language.
Old revolutionary slogans, like "Freedom or Death", from the 19th-century Macedonian movement have appeared again as graffiti in Skopje. The Albanians have warned that unless their language demands are met, they will begin a campaign of total civil disobedience.
If western Macedonia were now to be swamped with refugees from Albania proper, then the delicate balance between the two ethnic groups would collapse. Apart from the Kalashnikov war which it is feared would break out in the event of a political collapse, UN observers are worried that both Bulgaria and Serbia may move into Macedonia militarily to fill the political vacuum this would create
In contrast to Albania, Macedonia is of vital strategic importance in the southern Balkans. It is the only territory where one can pass through the Balkan mountains both north to south and east to west.
This is why the Macedonian army, such as it is, has been placed on full alert along the Albanian border. They cannot allow a single refugee into the country. Earlier this week, seven armed Albanians attempted to shoot their way across the border but were successfully repelled by the Macedonian border guards.
To underline the urgency, the Macedonian Foreign Minister, Mr Ljubomir Frckovski, has appealed to the UN Secretary-General Mr Kofi Annan, not to permit the early withdrawal of the 1,000 peacekeepers stationed in the country.
And as if all this wasn't bad enough, Macedonia now has its own pyramid scheme collapse, the very event which sparked the Albanian chaos three weeks ago. Based in the country's second city, Bitola, it is estimated to affect about 50,000 people, mostly Macedonians, so that at least it does not approach the devastating scale of the Albanian collapse.
However, the government, rocked by other scandals as well, has come under fierce attack in an emergency session of parliament called this week. Western diplomats in Skopje are now warning that the government may resign next week.
So far it is nothing short of a miracle that Macedonia has remained peaceful. Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania have been rocked by the most severe political and economic crises in the past three months.
The European Union has sat alongside with its mouth gaping wide open unable to formulate a coherent policy to deal with this. But Brussels has to do better than, this because Europe cannot afford, either financially or politically, another war on the scale of the Bosnian conflict.
If the Albanian situation calms down, then the EU must act to speed up a political solution to the problems of Kosovo and Macedonia. Senior American diplomats have now unveiled a plan called the South-Eastern Europe Cooperation Initiative.
This is a programme designed to stabilise the region's drastically fluctuating economies. It is not calling for a lot of money to be thrown down a black hole. Rather it hopes to strengthen regional economic co-operation. It is a measure of the EU's inability to deal with problems in its own back yard that the Americans are promoting a policy which should have been implemented by the Europeans five years ago.
In 1878, the Great Powers of Europe all came together at the Congress of Berlin to sort out the Balkans. The British historian A.J.P. Taylor observed that Macedonia and Bosnia, the two great achievements of the Congress, both contained the seeds of future disaster. The Macedonian question haunted European diplomacy for a generation and then caused the Balkan War of 1912. Bosnia first provoked the crisis of 1908 and then exploded the World War, in 1914.
The ghastly mistakes of the Berlin Congress came back to haunt the world in 1992 with the Bosnian war. Europe has failed Bosnia again, but it can still save Macedonia. Given the EU's policy record in the Balkans, though, I would tighten our seat belts - it could be a very rough ride.