Reuters
l5-APR-99

BAJRAM CURRI, Albania (Reuters) - In town after town along Albania's northern border, young men swagger through the streets with handguns in their waist bands and Kalashnikov assault rifles slung on their shoulders.

This is the heart of the Albanian badlands, a remote, lawless place where foreign officials say violent criminal gangs known as clans are exploiting the Kosovo crisis as just another money-making opportunity.

These bandits won't pass up a chance to prey on the unprotected," said Leo Dobbs, a border monitor in Bajram Curri for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Some refugees forced from their homes in the war-torn Yugoslav province have complained of being victimized by local gangsters, who have stolen their cars and tractors and sold them back at exorbitant prices, officials said.

International border monitors and foreign journalists have been robbed at gunpoint of money, equipment and vehicles. The situation has become so bad that foreign relief organizations have pulled their staff out of Bajram Curri, the largest town in this impoverished mountain region.

Foreign television crews that have poured into the area in recent days to cover the shelling of Albanian border villages by Serb forces have had to hire armed bodyguards.

Those who have ventured out unprotected have sometimes paid the price. A British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) crew was stopped Wednesday by two masked men who fired over their car and then stole their cameras and money.

Even NATO officers dispatched to reconnoiter the area for possible troop deployment have had to be escorted by truckloads of Albanian soldiers.

Law enforcement is all but nonexistent in the northern reaches of Albania where the clans -- which live by the ancient code of vendetta -- reign supreme. When rival clans fight over turf, they often leave bodies riddled with bullets.

They are mostly involved in smuggling, car theft, weapons trade and extortion, but also run legitimate businesses.

Adding to the feel of an armed camp are the squads of Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas clad in new combat fatigues who frequently come to town from their base camps in nearby mountains. People have always walked around armed in this part of Albania. But firepower in the hands of ordinary citizens has multiplied since 1997, when a wave of violence swept the country after fraudulent investment schemes collapsed, costing hundreds of thousands of people their life savings.

The Albanian army virtually disintegrated, and looters stripped their weapons depots bare. Many of those guns made their way to the north, considered one of the poorest, most lawless regions in Europe. In Bajram Curri, there are so many guns in private hands that few law-abiding citizens dare stray on to the streets after nightfall, when gunfire becomes the soundtrack of life.