Posted on 06/26/2009 5:26:21 AM PDT by Ravnagora
A spectacular 61km section of highway through mountainous northern Albania opens on Thursday, creating a strategic link with fellow ethnic Albanians in landlocked Kosovo. For Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia last year, the modern four-lane route is a vital commercial link through a friendly country.
At more than €600m (£510m, $840m) the new stretch of road will cut the eight-hour journey between Tirana and Pristina by at least two hours, according to Ernest Noka, Albania’s deputy transport minister.
It was the toughest construction challenge on a corridor linking Albania’s Adriatic port of Durres with the Balkan interior and pan-European motor routes.
Shpend Ahmeti, director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, an economic think-tank in Pristina, said Durres could become a serious rival to Greece’s Thessaloniki, bringing down shipping costs for all the Balkans once other road sections had been upgraded.
“This is the highway of hope, of trust, of work and development for [ethnic] Albanians,” said Hashim Thaci, Kosovo prime minister. Albania hopes the road will also bring tourists to the relatively underdeveloped Adriatic coastline. Albania attracted about 1m tourists last year, mostly from its landlocked neighbours Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia.
“The opening comes right at the start of the tourist season. We expect about 6m people will travel this route from now to the end of the year,” Mr Noka said.
The new section of highway – financed by the Albanian government after multilateral institutions said traffic levels would be too low – includes twin tunnels, each 5.6km long, and two bridges over rocky gorges. It is quite an achievement in a country notorious for poor infrastructure. But other sections of the 170km route between Tirana and the Kosovo border still have to be upgraded and Albania’s right-of-centre government of Sali Berisha, prime minister, faces criticism on spending overruns.
The highway is set to cost Albania’s taxpayers more than €1.1bn, double the budgeted €550m and contribute to a projected deficit this year and next.
Kosovo lacks funds for its promised four-lane artery extending north to Serbia, estimated at €650m or more. The government hopes to attract private investors, but the timing is bad in the global crisis. The priority would be the southern 15km up to Prizren to avoid bottlenecks at the end of Mr Berisha’s road.
He also hopes the opening of the new section – built by a joint venture between Bechtel of the US and Turkey’s Enka group – will boost his chances in a general election on Sunday.
_____________________
Guess we're getting a deal after all. So next time I'm sitting behind a gravel truck in a work zone I'll give them all a thumbs up instead of 'the bird'. /s
(yeah I know its through mountains)
Mussolini and King Zog would really have been so proud!
Perhaps this does mark some sort of turning point for Europe's answer to the Chiricahua Apache Tribe. They actually built something instead of stealing it, or annexing a region that already had it.
Perhaps now, instead of transhipping stolen cars, they will actually be able to drive them around Albania until they break down. They can still sell the parts. I also look for a drop in heroin prices due to lower transportation costs. Traffic in whores should also be more efficient.
Hurrah for Albania ... our quaint and colorful ally in the jihad against Western Christian Civilization!
built by a joint venture between Bechtel of the US and Turkey’s Enka group
What a load! Joint venture? Not likely. Try 3 way venture funded by US taxpayers paying through the nose to the islamo fascist parastate of Turkey and their harem buddies the narco Albanians.
No matter— a couple well placed bunker busters should do the trick.
Just another example of infidel anti-Albanian, anti-Muslim remarks! So unfair! Just FYI, no more than a mere 60% of Albania's foreign exchange is due to narco-traffic, with approximately 20% coming from stolen cars and car parts, and 20% from human traffic.
Extortion and kidnapping have fallen to practically negligible levels as Albania foreign currency earners, although street beggary in Italy shows great income potential. Why can't you people out there in the Greater Albania just give our sensitive, quaint, and colorful ally in the Great Jihad against Western Christian Civilization some credit?
LOL - liar liar pants on fire
Even the stupid Shiptars from Kosovo go to Montenegro to swim.
Like their fellow jihadi muslims in the mid east Shiptars dump their garbage in the sea - if the water at the beach doesn’t kill you the drinking water will.
LIke I said malaka a couple bunker busters and caput.
What is preventing so many Albanians from devoting their considerable energy to making it their home?
This hellish “highway” is really a Turkish mafia highway which has featured a whole series of incidents and investigations.
The Bechtel partnerswhip with the Turk criminals along wht the Shipatar crooks in the govt. is called Enka (Full name: Enka Insaat ve Sanayi AS) and whose aim to capture most of the contracts in the Balkans.
It has always been about who does the most business - money above morals.
In the world-wide diaspora of Albanians, they are in many countries, from Europe to South America, a small, but problem people, with a dense blood-feud tribal culture, combined with their own brand of Islam (although I realize that many Albanians are Orthodox or other Catholics) that seems to make them most un-amenable to western concepts of law and order. Britain, Italy, Belgium, Scandinavia ... all have Albanian organized crime setups that make life extremely difficult and often hazardous for their neighbors.
The tribal networks and an absolutely impenetrable language in two dialects lend themselves to criminal enterprises that have proven impenetrable by western police agencies from the FBI to Interpol. The Sicilian Mafia, The Black Hand, etc, seem like kindergarten compared to this Albanian set up, rivaled in ferocity only by the Colombians and Mexicans.
I am sure that most ordinary Albanians are OK folks, except for the blood feuds, etc. However, how can you tout a government that is so fundamentally corrupt that it's foreign exchange is largely from illegal sources, namely heroin and stolen vehicles?
I wish Albania the best of luck trying to "modernize" a clan and tribal culture. Throw in the effect of Enver Hoxha, his left-over henchmen, and the CHICOM influence, and I think your estimate of 2-3 years to a viable infrastructure is wildly optimistic.
The other aspect of the present governmental structure which leads to distrust is its friendliness to terrorists who use Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia as R&R facilities. This, while Albania sends police training units to Afghanistan?
"Property Disputes" are of course common in ex-communist paradises. When they are over, who is going to own what?
In the 500 years under the Turks, no subject people were ever more enthusiastic about joining the conquerors than the Bosnians and the Albanians. The Bosnians becoming the brains of the outfit and the Albanians, the hitmen and "street muscle" the Turks and Bosnians used as enforcers against those Balkan peoples to collect taxes, or who refused to convert to Islam...as did many Christian Albanians who escaped to Italy in the 15th C, where they were set up in Albanian towns that exist to this day.
Expecting the Serbs, who are no angels themselves, to forget this inglorious period is unrealistic. Equally unrealistic is the absurd notion of a "Greater Albania," based on God knows what, and claiming, in its most deranged form, vast swaths of Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, and probably Toledo, Ohio
then he goes to the filthy beach
Absolutely correct. Although an unkind fellow might say that is because most of the bad Balkan boys are now in the EU.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.