What civil war are you going on about? There has never been a civil war in Albania. There has been a civil unrest in 1997 but that is very different from a civil war. There were no parties to any war. As someone that took part from the peaceful student protest, to the hunger strike, to the first wave of taking over military bases I can tell you first hand there were no parties fighting. It was just mass confusion. Please name one single battle, one strategic victory, one single exchange of fire between the conflicting parties. The only exception was the Zall Her military installation that had strategic importance and the army decided to stand its ground. It was not a battle, there was no exchange of fire, just soldiers firing in the air for effect. These “thousands” you speak of lack evidence. These are not combatants killing each other. They were random people playing cowboys and shooting themselves and the people around them.

There was no war, there was not even a conflict. It was all orchestrated so that these weapons could end up in Kosovo a year later and arm the KLA. Anyone that took part in the demonstration and entered the army depots would tell you they were almost empty. I was one of the first people to enter the depot in my city. The rapid reaction brigade depot, by protocol, must have its weapons ready for service 25/7. That depot was empty. The main warehouse where you would expect to find a good number (thousands) of AK variants had only a few AKs and had either Katarabina Simonova variants or old WWII weapons (all useles in modern ware fare). Similarly all the ammunition had been cleaned up, there might have been a third of what you would expect. The warehouses were empty bud, long before we made it there (and I was one of the first few to enter). My story is not unique, you can ask anyone that took part, you will hear the same. Magically a year later KLA was fully armed, including heavy weapons ( anti aircraft and small artillery), who on earth looted these from the depots and how did they manage to transport these heavy items that require specialized transport is a mystery. Also a mystery is the claim that eventually all these weapons were collected and destroyed but we have yet to find out exactly how many?

There was no war, there was no one fighting, there were no armies or conflicting parties, there were no battles , and most importantly there was no diplomatic efforts to end the conflict (as is done in all conflicts) because there were no conflicting parties to negotiate with. It was all planned, if it were not the pyramid schemes, it would have been the political corruption, or the “students living conditions”. Pick something. As one of the students in the protest, I can honestly say students are the easiest tool to start shit up. They are naive, angry and idealistic. You can use them to destroy any system at any time. While in hunger strike we had 6 different political parties come to “show support”, 3 foreign diplomatic representatives come to show support, even though it was not a political protest. Yet somehow they all managed to interject their goals into “our protest”. It was a crock of shit, we were all tools in someone else’s big game. Thankfully overall it worked in our benefit, but for me it is an eye opener how nothing is what it seems and we all are just tools.