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During the conflict in Kosovo earlier this year nearly half a million Kosovar Albanians found refuge in Albania, Europe's poorest country. Now, six months on, virtually all the refugees have left. But the impact of the conflict on Albania and on Albania's relations with its neighbours looks more enduring. The BBC's South-east Europe analyst, Gabriel Partos, reports on Albania in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict.

( KOSOVAR REFUGEES)
Kosovar children playing in a camp in Albania during the spring when the country was overwhelmed by an influx of refugees. There were those who feared Albania simply wouldn't be able to cope with the arrival of so many people - the equivalent of, say, Britain or France taking in eight or nine million people within just two months. In the event, Albania rose to the challenge: politicians put aside their differences while thousands of Albanian families offered hospitality to the refugees. But with the national emergency gone, the sense of unity has also come under renewed pressure. Politicians are once again bickering - though the threat to Albania's stability is not as great as it was a year or two ago, as President Rexhep Meidani explains:

( MEIDANI:) During the conflict there was Albanian solidarity that was manifested quite clearly and the contribution of the Albanian families was quite great.Now we have some rivalries, we have some problems in political life; political life is again full of tension. But I believe that the most part of leaders now have understood that they have to work within institutions so the right way to discuss regarding the different problems is to be done within the institutions and this political rivalry will be less important.

President Meidani's reference to institutions is an acknowledgment that things have, indeed, improved since 1997 and 1998 when violence helped topple first the administration led by President Sali Berisha's Democratic Party and then the Socialist government of Prime Minister Fatos Nano.

( XMAS MUSIC)
The streets may no longer be the place for settling political arguments, but the seasonal spirit of goodwill - as spread by this Father Christmas in the streets of Tirana - is distinctly lacking in political circles. Indeed, since the Kosovo crisis, the struggle for power has, in some ways, been extended, moving beyond the usual conflicts between left and right. Over the past couple of months the Socialist Prime Minister, Pandeli Majko, has been forced to resign when he lost the contest for the party leadership; and the opposition Democratic Party has badly split when Mr Berisha's former deputy and others turned against him. British Balkan affairs analyst, Miranda Vickers:

(VICKERS:) We can see now how fragile and empty were the words of reconciliation that occurred from both sides in the beginning of the Kosovo conflict. And we know now that both the political factions in Albania were drawn together purely because of the crisis and not as part of any long plan to unify a broad political force. The forces of confrontation are as great as ever and I think this bickering within the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party is undermining the image of Albania that Westerners had gathered from the way the Albanians handled very well the crisis.

But the former international secretary of the Democratic Party, Leonard Demi, who's now opposed to Mr Berisha, plays down the importance of the party splits:

(DEMI:) During the crisis we had one stand, one nation. But, however, the unity is still in Albania and in Kosova. The developments within different parties - I think this is a natural process. However, it doesn't affect the unity of Albanians. But for me the most important thing right now is the economic situation. People would like to improve the situation in Albania, in Kosovo, throughout the Balkans because with the economy it means security, order, development and integration.

The dire state of the economy - widespread poverty, mass unemployment and rampant corruption - is one reason why so many Albanians who can get work abroad, leave the country. Most of those who join the labour markets outside have badly-paid, menial jobs. But there's also a serious brain drain - so much so that majority of the thousands of Albanians educated in the West don't want to return home after they've completed their studies. It's a trend the Soros Foundation in Tirana is trying to reverse by supplementing the low incomes of those who are willing to go back to Albania. But as one of the Foundation's directors, Piro Misha, explains, Kosovo is continuing to play a role in the brain drain:

(MISHA:) Of course, there are economic reasons - being paid little - but now there come also psychological reasons, there come reasons of lack of belief in the future of this country, but also I would include in this the crisis in Kosovo or the situation of insecurity in the region. It's created a kind of very queer psychological mood in the people. It's also a fact that people don't see clearly what's going to be the future of Kosovo. That's why it cannot be presented as a factor of security - so far as nobody is really sure that the crisis is finished. Because nobody can see what's going to happen next with Kosovo.

But how did the Kosovo conflict affect Albania's economy? After recent reverses brought about by the dramatic collapse of fraudulent pyramid investment schemes three years ago, things are looking up once again. This year Albania is heading for very fast - 11 per cent - growth and for a perfectly acceptable inflation rate of just four per cent. Yet Gramoz Pashko, a prominent economist, is not entirely satisfied with the performance of the economy since the Kosovo crisis:

(PASHKO:) It's strange but economically speaking the country didn't suffer very much. That means the economic growth remained as we expected it to be, the inflation rate continued to be down according to the targets we had already established. This is not always a good sign because if the economy is to have sustained growth, you have to accept some inflation, you have to accept some higher demand, and partially our economy suffered from the fact that many, many of the institutions didn't use the moment to do the spending.

In some ways the Albanian economy actually benefited from the Kosovo conflict. Most importantly, a substantial part of the massive international aid that was sent to Albania to feed the Kosovar refugees remained in the country when the Kosovars returned home unexpectedly quickly - in a matter of weeks - during the summer. The relief supplies were then sold off to Albanians, pushing down food prices and boosting the state revenues. And there was also an additional benefit which came from the greater international scrutiny that surrounded the aid deliveries. Sandra Bloemenkamp is part of the World Bank team that's been helping to tackle corruption in Albania:

(BLOEMENKAMP:) Obviously, the entire donor community was sensitive to the issue that suddenly a very large amount of money would be going in the direction of Albania and that there's obviously an issue of accountability and making sure that this money is being used in the right way. So we have discussed this - as did other donors - very much in detail with the government and they were very much open actually to introduce a number of additional transparency measures so that the entire community could follow how the funds were spent. We have been particularly working with those funds that went through the Albanian budget and I think we have been very happy with the co-operation.

Whether it's to do with corruption or the state of the economy in general, people down at street level tend to adopt a more pessimistic note. Traders at Tirana's main central market remember the hardships of the time of the Kosovo conflict but they also recall the economic benefits which have since largely evaporated:

(Woman:) It was, of course, a difficult situation. And in my family, she is saying we hosted 23 Kosovar people and we kept them in the house for three months.
(Man:) It was better because people were buying more and more goods from my stand.
(Rep:) So why is it that business is now worse? (Man:) He's saying that Albanians are poor. When the Kosovars were here they had more money than Albanians, and they were going round and buying more stuff - food and other things in the market.

But if Albania has lost the Kosovar refugees as customers, hasn't it gained the whole of Kosovo as a potential market? Now that Serbia's control over Kosovo has been replaced by a United Nations administration, the obstacles in the way of trade and travel have also been removed - so much so that concern is already being expressed about cross-border smuggling. So is there a prospect for a big expansion in trade between Albania and Kosovo? Gramoz Pashko doesn't think so - certainly not in the short term:

(PASHKO:) As a matter of fact, there isn't much going on because there's a lack of infrastructure to do that. Secondly, Macedonia and Montenegro are in a better position they have a free trade agreement - Montenegro is part of the same federation - so they can sell and buy amongst each other without tax and excise dues and so on. Albania is not part of that mechanism so, if for instance, an Albanian trader is supposed to sell to Kosovo, he's supposed to pay dues that are 20-30 per cent higher than if somebody sells the same goods from Macedonia or from Montenegro.

Trade often leads the way in political developments; but in this case politics may be running ahead of commercial links. There's been no shortage of delegations going to Kosovo to forge fresh contacts. But Albania's new Prime Minister, Ilir Meta, says his country is doing its best to improve relations with all its neighbours, not just with fellow-Albanians in Kosovo:

(META:) This very strong will of the Albanian government to leave behind the old stories of this region, to underestimate the borders and to give priority to co-operation without considering the borders. This is the best contribution that Albania gives to everybody in the region. And this is a very good message also for the Albanians in Kosovo by making clear to them that for us - for the Albanians - that were ignored for centuries even by the Western part of Europe, now it's our time. Not in the sense of revenge, but to show to everybody that we are doing our best to build a common peace, a common future and a common tolerance with everybody in this region and out of this region.

Albania's mainstream politicians have come to speak the language of cross-border co-operation rather than old-fashioned nationalism and territorial expansion. It's a vocabulary that appeals to Western leaders who are concerned about possible further conflicts in the Balkans. President Meidani, who's been maintaining close links with Kosovo since he taught at Pristina university in the 1970s, is among those who foster the new spirit of increased integration; but he's also expecting the further disintegration of Yugoslavia:

(MEIDANI:) I believe that with time in the process of integration into the European Union, not only of Kosovo but also other countries of South-eastern Europe, in this process two new units could be created - like Montenegro and Kosovo - but integrated directly into the European Union through this concept of interdependence, not the old classic concept of independence. And I believe that in this process also borders would be only geographic symbols where the movement of capital, of people would be free. Any other concept of a greater Albania, greater Serbia or greater Balkans would not be useful.

But if politicians are discarding the idea of a greater Albania as something out-of-date, how is it seen across Albania? Fatos Lubonja is a prominent Albanian political analyst:

(LUBONJA:) Before it was a dream, somehow, and when you think of a dream, it's something unrealizable. But it's a dream. Now maybe you can say it's become an ideal. An ideal is something that you can reach, somehow - if we can make that difference between a dream and an ideal. Now with what happened this idea is more concrete but of course with very many perplexities. First of all, the Albanians are aware that the West doesn't like that, they are aware of the troubles that it might cause so, for the moment on the Albanian side they have found a way to speak of an integration as a part of European integration, with the idea of a soft unification somehow, that being integrated into Europe the borders will have no more importance and so all the Albanians will be together. I think it's an illusion this cannot happen as fast as they think but this is the way to speak about the dream of unification.

Dreams have been the stuff of Albanian history, and grandiose projects of the nationalist or communist kind have promised much while delivering little. Now Albanians share a new dream with the rest of the Balkans - the dream of joining Europe. But the path to its realisation remains long and arduous in a country where tradition and modernity clash at many points - where you literally have to shake the mud off your shoes after walking along one of Tirana's unpaved streets before you enter a fashionable cyber-cafe. The end of the conflict in Kosovo has been greeted with a huge sigh of relief; but it offers no instant solutions to Albania's many problems. And in some crucial ways, the prospects for Albania and the rest of the region remain as daunting as ever. (end)

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