Working people around the world have the obligation to speak out in defense of our brothers and sisters in Albania, and demand an immediate end to the occupation of that country. The imperialist bayonets there are not only aimed against the Albanian toilers who've taken up arms, but at the working class world wide.

Albania remains a workers state - one of the countries where workers threw off the yoke of capitalist exploitation and opened the door to constructing a new society. Like the other workers states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Albania was dominated for decades by a bureaucratic caste who lived as parasites off the working class. This counterrevolutionary layer are wannabe capitalists today, both in the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party of Albania. But neither they nor their imperialist sponsors have been able to reverse the key conquests of the 1944-46 revolution. Every attempt to reimpose capitalist rule - including firings, layoffs, dismantling subsidized prices and social benefits - is met with resistance, even if dispersed, politically confused, and without clear class- conscious leadership. The rebellion that swept southern Albania at the start of this year, demanding the ouster of the swindler president Sali Berisha, is once again confirmation.

It's that resistance that the imperialist invaders want to break. If they were to succeed in crushing the working class and its ability to fight back, not just in Albania but throughout the workers states, particularly in Russia, they could open the door to a new wave of capitalist expansion on the blood-soaked soil they have retaken.

Using the bogus pretext of facilitating food distribution - which even Red Cross officials say is not needed - Rome, Athens, Paris and other imperialists launched their military intervention to try to take a stab at this ultimate goal. Washington, for tactical reasons, has decided not to deploy troops in Albania for now, while stepping up preparations to directly assault the workers state in Russia. With soldiers occupying Yugoslavia and pushing to expand the NATO war machine in Eastern Europe, the Clinton administration is trying to position itself for future intervention in Albania if the military operation there backfires in the face of the regimes of its NATO allies and rivals.

The U.S. government had propped up the Berisha regime with military and economic aid for five years. Now the White House is pondering a scenario for Albania similar to the role it played around Yugoslavia: encouraging a slaughter, while presenting itself as a "peacekeeper" in order to organize a subsequent occupation force.

While allied in their desire to overturn the workers states, the increasing tensions among the different imperialist powers - from Washington and Paris to Rome and Athens - are another piece of the explosive situation. The squabbles between the rulers of Italy and Greece over who gets to send troops where in Albania are just a glimpse of the rivalries and conflicts to come. And these conflicts will now play out in the middle of Europe, where the last world imperialist war began.

The imperialist war drive will intensify the class struggle as workers battle the bosses attempt to squeeze more profits off our backs. Air traffic controllers, electrical and others workers who have organized recent strikes in Italy, Greece, France, and in other capitalist countries are aid to the fighters in Albania.

Class-conscious fighters, youth, and other opponents of imperialist war around the world should celebrate the resistance in Albania, and join in protesting the military occupation. All imperialist troops out of Albania now!  
 
 
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