Ardit Sadiraj

Flag of Albania (1928-1939)

Flag of the National Liberation Movement (1942-1945)

National Liberation Movement (1942-1944)

"Free Albania" National Committee (1949-1955)

- Epirus and Albania 1940

- Resistance against Italy 1939-1943

- Resistance against Germany 1943-1944

Albanian Subversion

- Albania 1947-1949

- Albania 1949-1950

Golden Medal of the Eagle

Military Services Medal

Arvena Ardit Sadiraj

**Ardit Luftar Sadiraj** (December 5, 1918 - August 19, 2003) was an Albanian soldier and royalist partisan who fought the Axis occupation in World War II and later took part in the resistance against the Communist government during the Cold War.

## Early life and family

Sadiraj was born in 1918 in the town of Krastë in the Principality of Albania. His father, Luftar Koço (1881-1946) was the third son of a Bey, a wealthy landowner. Following the Albanian declaration of independence in 1912, Luftar ingratiated himself with the new government, as well as with the government of President Zogu, later to become King Zog I of Albania. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Luftar worked as a diplomate in the Albanian consulate in Rome, securing aid from Italy for Zog's sweeping reform of the country's military and civilian infrastructure.

Ardit Sadiraj, at this time, went to school in Rome, where he learned Italian and decided to become an army officer. At the age of 17, he went to study at the Military Academy of Modena for two years and immediately after returned to Albania to join the army.

## Military service and resistance

### World War II

In 1937, Sadiraj was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Albanian Army, serving in the Royal Albanian Guard based in Tirana. During this time, he helped integrate Italian military aid into Albania's army, which was armed with Italian weapons and trained by Italian advisors. However, Sadiraj grew increasingly distrustful of the Italians, as Fascist Italy began to behave more and more aggressively towards Albania.

In March 1939, Italy threatened Albania with invasion if they did not consent to occupation. Albania refused, and so on April 7, 1939, Italy invaded Albania. Lieutenant Sadiraj, then stationed at Durrës on the Adriatic Coast, was one of the first to meet the invasion, when they held against an Italian landing force in the Battle of Durrës. Sadiraj and his men fought back the Italians, resisting from the town's harbor buildings, but Italian military and naval superiority began to tell, and the Albanians retreated, having held as long as they could. Sadiraj and his men attempted to fall back on Tirana and hold the capital, but the city surrendered before serious resistance could be mounted. Sadiraj fought on for several days until he was captured by the Italians, only surrendering after heavy casualties and minimal supplies made further resistance impossible. King Zog was deposed and Albania was brought into a personal union with Italy.

Sadiraj was paroled in August, due in large part due to his father's connections and a hefty bribe. He was offered a high ranking position in the new Albanian Army under Italian control, which he reluctantly accepted due to Italian promises of a "Greater Albania". He was promoted to captain and given command of a company in an auxiliary battalion which was placed under the command of the Italian 23rd Infantry Division Ferrara. Captain Sadiraj and his men spent the better part of 1940 in the southern part of the country preparing for an invasion into northern Greece.

In October 1940, the Greco-Italian War began, and the 23rd Division with its Albanian contingent crossed into Epirus. The Italian attack on the Kalpaki front began in November with the Battle of Elaia-Kalamas. Captain Sadiraj led his men in an attack which successfully pushed the Greeks off the Grabala Heights, but it was not long before a Greek counterattack forced them to retreat. Sadiraj and his men continued to fight the Greeks but to little effect. As the front turned to stalemate, the Greek forces prepared a counteroffensive. The Italian and Albanians gradually retreated into Albanian territory, until Sadiraj and his unit were occupying one of the last lines defending the city of Korçë. Captain Sadiraj attempted to hold his ground against the Greeks in the Battle of Morava-Ivan, but the Albanian high command ordered all Albanian troops to retreat from the battle zone and abandon the Italians. Korçë was captured just barely after Sadiraj left. The army disintegrated, and most of the soldiers, who had become disillusioned with the war effort, returned home.

Immediately after the leaving the Italians in the field, Sadiraj considered arming and leading a resistance movement to fight the Italians, as he would no longer support them or the collaborationist government. He took part in passive resistance and tried to galvanize support for a Zogist uprising with Greek support against the Fascist occupiers, which did not see much success. Eventually, after the fall of Greece and Yugoslavia to Germany and Italy, foreign support did not seem likely. Sadiraj, who new at this point that he would have to collaborate with those whom he disagreed with for the sake of the nation, contacted individuals and groups interested in resistance, including Islamists, Communists, and anti-monarchy right-wing nationalists. He eventually fell in with the Unity Front, a big-tent resistance organization, in which he was a member of the Legality Movement, a Zog loyalist partisan group. The front did not organize much active resistance in the early years of the war, but slowly began to gain members.

From early 1941 on, Captain Sadiraj organized a small group of royalist ex-army personnel within the Legality Movement, or Legaliteti, and with them engaged in acts of sabotage against the occupiers' infrastructure and carried out small local attacks on Italian troops or Albanian collaborators. Though initially reluctantly, Sadiraj's partisans coordinated their operations with the Communists and the Balli Kombëtar (nationalist republicans). As the Legaliteti grew in size, Sadiraj and his partisans stepped up their attacks on the Italians. Though the Communists were the largest of the resistance groups, the Legalists had the benefit of recieving the most aid from the Allies, including the British and Americans. The Legaliteti were headquartered in Mat District, the bastion of Royalist resistance, but Sadiraj and his men often travelled to other parts of Albania to take part in resistance activities with other groups.

In September 1942, the Conference of Pezë occurred, in which leaders from all major resistance formations convened. Captain Sadiraj attended as part of the Legaliteti delegation. At the conference, Sadiraj and his men agreed to join a unit under nominal Communist control in return for support and general autonomy, becoming part of the 1st Shock Brigade, 1st Storm Division of the new Albanian National Liberation Army, the military arm of the National Liberation Movement. From November on, Sadiraj and his men joined other forces in the resistance coalition in the southern part of the country, concentrating in the areas around Gjorm, Vranisht, Dukat, Tragjas and Tërbaç. Sadiraj and the royalists, acting in concert with nationalist and Communist forces as well as local volunteers, launched attacks on the local Italian garrison, local affairs at first, but increasing in frequency and intensity. On New Years Day, January 1943, the Albanian partisans launched a major attack in the Battle of Gjorm, with Sadiraj and his men driving the Italians from the field and securing a major victory.

Captain Sadiraj left his unit and travelled to central Albania in August 1943 for the Mukje Conference, where nationalists and Communists met again to discuss the course of the war and its objectives. However, the conference was very tense and did not resolve much. Sadiraj, very much a royalist but under Communist command, witnessed the disintegration of the resistance movement into factionalism, but did not argue as he disliked both Communism and the Balli Kombëtar's brand of nationalism.

By the time the Fascist government in Italy collapsed in September 1943, the Italian troops in Albania had been supplanted by Germans. Sadiraj and his men, from their base in the south, continued attacking the German forces, but the Balli Kombëtar gradually changed sides, preferring to ally with the Nazis to fight against the Communists. Captain Sadiraj and his men took part in a major attack in the Battle of Drashovica on the Shushicë River, driving back the Germans in a bloody, three-week long campaign. By the end of the fighting in October, Sadiraj's men were in possession of the German barracks of Drashovicë and Mavrovë and the local prison. At this point, the Legalists were finished as a recognizable body and Balli Kombëtar was fighting with the Nazis, so Sadiraj had no choice but to continue the war alongside the Communists, who promised to spare the lives Sadiraj and his men if they fought with the National Liberation Movement until the end of the war. Sadiraj wished to prosecute the war and drive the Germans out of Albania, but he did not trust the Communists to keep their word.

In the winter of 1943 to 1944, the partisans had to contend with a major German offensive. Captain Sadiraj and the 1st Storm Division, from their base in southern Albania, had to make a fighting retreat to hold back the Germans, counterattacking wherever possible. The NLM was dangerously close to being destroyed during the winter months, but ventually, the enemy offensive petered out and it was time for the NLM to make their move. Throughout the rest of the year, Captain Sadiraj and his men continued to liberate southern Albania, driving the Germans out of towns and whole districts until the NLM was in possession of the whole of the region by April 1944. With this accomplished, the partisans looked north. The 1st Division attacked towards the capital, fighting off attacks from both the Germans and those nationalists who had allied with them. Captain Sadiraj and his men were among the most capable regulars in the partisan army, which was why the Communists did not have them executed outright as they had done before with other non-Communist resistance members.

By October, the partisan forces had surrounded the capital, and in November 1944, they commenced their main attack. The Liberation of Tirana took nearly three weeks, and Captian Sadiraj was involved in intense urban combat against the Germans, driving them from key buildings such as the theater, the Bank, the City Hall, and the London Hotel, after which the city was declared liberated. The partisans then attacked the retreating Germans on the Tirana-Vora-Laç road, destroying the remnants of German forces in the central region of the country. Captain Sadiraj and his men hurried north, helping to liberate Shkodra by the end of the month.

Though Albania had been liberated by Axis occupation by the end of 1944, Sadiraj knew it would not be long until the Communists began cleaning house. He and a small party of men deserted and fled north into the mountains, where they were able to contact representatives from the Western Allies. Upon explaining their situation, British diplomats allowed Sadiraj and a small group of his supporters safe passage to Rome.

By the end of World War II, the Communists under Enver Hoxha had consolidated their hold over the country, and established the People's Socialist Republic of Albania behind the Iron Curtain.

### Albanian Subversion

In Rome, Sadiraj had little to do except follow the development of the Communist government in Albania. His father died of purportedly natural causes while under house arrest in 1946, but Sadiraj suspected that he had been executed. He also took part in early attempts to organize the Albanian émigré community, but such attempts proved fruitless due to factionalism.

In 1947, Sadiraj was approached by members of the British Secret Intelligence Service, who asked if he would take part in a covert operation in Albania to sabotage the Communist infrastructure and provoke a revolt, called Operation Valuable. After training, he parachuted into the Mat region with a small contingent of men, and they set about sabotaging whatever they could, including the Kucova oilfields and the Rubik copper mines, but the attempt to instigate a royalist uprising failed, and Sadiraj and his men were extricated by the Britsh in early 1949.

After a brief stay in Paris, where Sadiraj attended the opening of the "Free Albania" National Committee in July, Sadiraj agreed to take part in another clandestine operation. Among other recruits, he was transported to Malta, where he undertook specialist training at Fort Binġemma. Landing on the coast of Albania in October, Sadiraj attempted to undertake his planned operations, but the landing had been compromised, and after a botched firefight against Communist regulars, he was forced to flee south through Greece where he was picked up again by the British.

In the early 1950s, Sadiraj left British service and joined the American project under Operation Fiend. He became a part of Company 4000, an émigré unit which was to be used for subsequent operations. However, due to compromised intelligence, none of the planned infiltrations were actually carried out, and Sadiraj and the company were used to guard a US military base near Munich, duties which Sadiraj was greatly unsatisfied with. In 1955, he left the service of Company 4000 and would not participate in further Cold War infiltrations.

## Later life

After his brief stint as a spy and saboteur, Ardit Sadiraj settled in New York City in the United States, where he continued to be active in the Free Albania Committee, and maintained that he would always lend his services if they were needed again.

In 1958, he married Fjolla Troshani, the daughter of one of the most prominent members on the committee. They had three children: Ismet, Abaz, and Arvena.

In 1992, following the end of Communism and the beginning of democracy in Albania, Ardit Sadiraj and his family returned to their home country, though Abaz and Arvena chose to stay in the United States. Ardit and Fjolla lived in the Allias neighborhood of Tirana until his death in 2003.

### Views

Sadiraj was a dedicated monarchist, firmly believing King Zog to be the rightful ruler of Albania. However, he had to compromise his royalist beliefs at times for the good of the nation, such as during World War II and the Cold War. Despite working with both groups at different times, he strongly disliked both the Communists and Balli Kombëtar.

Sadiraj was also a lifelong believer in the concept of Greter Albania, believing that Albania had rightful ownership over parts of Greece, Montenegro, and especially Kosovo. In the 1990s, he was vocally supportive of the Kosovo Liberation Army and their fight against the Yugoslav government.

Sadiraj was a Bektashi Muslim, an Islamic order most active in rural Albania. He always tried to stress the Islamic nature of the cause of Albanian liberation during World War II and the Cold War.

## Equipment

In the Royal Italian Army, Sadiraj used the Carcano M1891 bolt-action rifle, the Glisenti M1910 semi-automatic pistol, and the Breda Mod .35 fragmentation grenade, all Italian weapons supplied to Albania in the interwar years. As a partisan fighter, Sadiraj used a number of captured weapons, but carried primarily a Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III bolt-action rifle, given by a British agent during the war.

As a Cold War-era operative, Sadiraj carried a Colt M1911A1 pistol as a sidearm, intending on using captured Communist weapons for the uprising that never occurred.