During the depths of Albania's isolationist paranoia in the 1960s and '70s, former Communist dictator Enver Hoxha built some 750,000 mushroom-shaped bunkers to guard against invasion from the outside world. Today, the crumbling structures are strewn around the landscape like overgrown toadstools. Few face the same direction. Few are connected.
None are big enough for more than one soldier with a rifle.
They were militarily useless and utterly ridiculous even when new. They had to cost a fortune. In the morning, Joe and I meet and drive out to the Tirana airport, where the U.S. Air Force is building a base from which to stage relief efforts for the Kosovo refugees. It's a warm, pleasant morning and we wander out to the tarmac to talk with Ramiro Lopes da Silda, head of logistics in Albania for the U.N.'s World Food Program. As we chat, Lopes da Silda says he has just learned that 14,000 refugees from Kosovo have been dumped by Macedonian officials at the Albania border with no food, water or shelter.