My suspicion is, after talking to the Albanian consul, that the authorities in Tirana were hoping that the presence of the international protection force might help the regime. The relief agencies can't understand why the six thousand foreign troops are necessary. According to the Red Cross and the World Food Program, there are few hungry people and no one is starving. We have a real problem for some people who were very poor before the chaos and who now need some help in the short term. Readers of recent issues of Freedom will not be surprised to know that the Albanians think the foreign troops are there because the Italian and Greek governments want to stop the overflow of refugees into their countries.
Food is available, if the relief agencies are to be believed.
It may be, as Lucy claimed in my interview in Saranda, that prices are rising. Despite the difficulties, the economy in the south is functioning without a central government. There is banditry, there is crime, just as crime exists in societies with a standing police force and army. In the realm of hospital treatment and medicine there is a bad problem. For several days last month I had to watch ambulances ferrying the wounded and sick to hospitals in Greece over the Kakavia bridge.