Word: albania
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...bases in a village. Then armored infantry rolls in to take over the town. Finally foot soldiers arrive, looting and burning, to strike terror among ethnic-Albanian villagers. Despite the first snows in the mountains, hundreds of thousands flee their homes. Some find shelter with relatives, others in neighboring Albania or Montenegro, but tens of thousands are still in the remote hills and forests of the embattled province, where they huddle in rough outdoor camps. During the past three months, 26,000 Yugoslav soldiers and security police, heavy guns roaring and combat helicopters whizzing overhead, have systematically pillaged more than...
...less has been done to put out the ravaging political fires and deal with the root causes of the Balkan mess. The Kosovo catastrophe has been unfolding for months, the Western strategy for unifying Bosnia stumbled from the start three years ago, and the next-door nation of Albania has been cracking for more than a year in vicious political polarization. Yet the West has been largely looking the other way while the crises fester at high geopolitical and humanitarian cost. Nothing much will get done without the leadership of the globe's sole superpower, but the scandal in Washington...
...ambitions of a former president have plunged Albania's capital into chaos, and Western leaders are understandably nervous. Three people have been killed and 14 wounded since Sunday in gun battles between government troops and supporters of ex-president Sali Berisha. Berisha, who was voted out in 1997 after the collapse of a moneymaking pyramid scheme plunged the country into anarchy, claims the current government assassinated one of his key aides. "Berisha's been trying to get back into power ever since his ouster," says TIME Central Europe bureau chief Massimo Calabresi. "The death of Adem Hajdari is his latest...
...outbreak of violence is already having repercussions outside Albania's borders. Italy and Greece fear the turmoil will create a new influx of refugees, while NATO is concerned over the effect on its efforts to stabilize the conflict between ethnic Albanians and the Serb authorities in neighboring Kosovo. "The last thing the West needs now is for Albania to slip further into chaos, just as [the West's] hard-hearted policy in Kosovo appears to be containing that situation," says Calabresi. But there's little cause for optimism when opposition politics is conducted with machine guns and tanks...
...leaders to seize bin Laden assets found in their countries. Friendly foreign-intelligence services, acting on CIA tips, have begun rounding up bin Laden operatives in different parts of the world to harass his network. The agency has succeeded in breaking up a bin Laden terror cell operating in Albania. The Pentagon is readying more strikes on bin Laden operatives before they attack. "We're going to take you down before you take your gun out," a planning officer on the Pentagon's Joint Staff vowed...