Word: sigurimi
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Alia's modest reforms seem to have split the 53-member Central Committee of the ruling party. Many Western diplomats believe a strong conservative faction has grown up around Hoxha's widow Nexhmije, supported by the Sigurimi, Albania's much feared secret police force. Anxious to slow if not halt the reforms, the conservatives may even have sought to oust Alia...
...defiance of the rest of the world is rooted in a long history of foreign domination. After Communist partisans led by Hoxha defeated German occupiers and internal opponents in 1944 and grabbed power, Hoxha imposed a centrally planned economy and established total control through the feared secret police, the Sigurimi. In the years that followed, he distanced Albania from other Communist countries. Enraged by Nikita Khrushchev's de- Stalinization campaign, Hoxha broke with Moscow in 1961. When the Chinese began to experiment with reform in the late '70s, he denounced them as "revisionists," and effectively cut off economic ties...
...teamed with Behr, was regularly saluted by Albanians, who took him for a Chinese. Outnumbering the man from Albtourist, the two newsmen occasionally split up and deliberately got lost to enjoy a few minutes on their own. These escapes never lasted long, thanks to the ubiquitous secret police, the Sigurimi, and other troops (onefourth of the nation's adult manpower is in uniform). Furthermore, officials cautioned the visitors that if they did not behave themselves, they might not get an exit visa to leave the country−and that in Albania is a pretty effective threat...
...occasional tourist, the Sigurimi appear more comic than lethal. Whole platoons of gumshoes peel off two by two to shadow individual visitors. Any attempt to talk to an Albanian results in his being shouldered out of earshot by an agent. One tourist on the beach at Durres succeeded in evading his shadow by swimming out beyond the breakers to accost an Albanian girl in a bikini. The girl, treading water, said: "I would like to have a long talk with you, but you must know that in this country it is impossible...
Visitors seldom detect any Albanian tendency to criticize the government or the country's backwardness-and the Sigurimi are not the only reason. Traditionally proud, suspicious of foreigners, filled with a clannish loyalty, Albanians reply to complaints about their country with fierce anger. "That's the way it is," the average Albanian will splutter. "You just have to understand...