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by frereubu 516 days ago
Rightly or wrongly, in the UK Albians have a terrible reputation for organised crime, particularly drugs.[0] How is that perceived in Albania, and is organised crime a big issue in Albania? You make it sound like everybody is very trusting there.

My only direct interactions with Albanians here was a restaurant I used to go to regularly in London which was run by Albanians, who were all lovely and recommended books by Ismail Kadare, particularly The General of the Dead Army, which I thought was wonderful.

[0] Rather like the philosophical game "All crows are black, but not all black birds are crows" I have a feeling this may be due to a majority of illegal drug networks being run by Albanians, even though a large majority of Albians in the UK have no involvement in it.
1 comments
quotz 516 days ago
Most of the leading crime gangs in europe and worldwide are Albanian [0]. They are a global operation thats present in almost every country thats relevant to the drug trade, and thats as a result of their massive diaspora (something like 30%-40% of their whole population has fled albania since the 80s). VICE declared Albania as the first and only european narco-state.[1] I actually have a friend who worked for the UN researching the narco economy in Albania, and the conclusion was that the GDP of the drug trade was half the GDP of the whole country [2]. In 2014 there was an incident where Dutch tourists that were hiking the mountains there accidentally discovered endless cannabis plantations and posted it on YouTube after leaving the country. This prompted wide outrage everywhere in Europe, and hence the Albanian government had to do something to save face, and they burned all the crops there in the region.[3] The thing is, the government and the narcos are all the same. Albania is still the major exporter of cannabis across Europe, and Albania is still the reigning king of drug transport. The Italian mafia is closely associated and probably dwarfed by the Albanian mafia.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_mafia

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-inside-story-of-europes-...

[2] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/europe/albania-dr...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Lazarat_drug_raid

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