On a barren hillside in northern Albania lies a portal to the country’s communist past: A massive steel door creaks open to reveal a hidden former air base burrowed into the heart of the mountain.
Made up of 600m of tunnels that once teemed with military life, the secret Gjader air base is now a depot for dozens of communist-era MiG jets collecting dust in the darkness.
Three decades after shedding communism, Albanian authorities are still trying to sell off the Soviet and Chinese-made aircraft, of which there are dozens more in another nearby air base.
Photo: AFP
“Aligning our equipment and our weapons to the NATO standards” is part of Albania’s “new chapter” with the alliance, which it joined in 2009, Albanian Chief of Defense Bardhyl Kollcaku said.
As for the MiGs, “apart from nostalgia, [for which] we will keep some of them in our museum ... the rest will be treated according to the domestic legislation for sale or other usage,” he said.
The communist-era jets, which include MiG-19, MiG-17 and MiG-21 models among others, have been out of commission for more than a decade, but museums, collectors and other aviation aficionados have already expressed interest in giving the relics a new home.
Photo: AFP
When Albania first discussed selling the MiGs in 2016, requests came in from the Air and Space Museum in France, as well as a flight school in Germany. Yet no sales have been completed to date, with legal paperwork holding up the process.
Individuals are also on the waiting list, including Albania-based French businessman Julien Roche, who plans to install the plane in his garden.
“It’s not so easy to get this kind of aircraft now, because all of them have been mainly destroyed, not stored like they are in Albania,” he said, from a house brimming with eccentric items.
He has put his name down for one of the oldest models, a Chinese-made MiG-15 with a price tag of about 10,000 euros (US$11,000), which was used by North Koreans before being gifted to Albania.
Like the 7,000 concrete security bunkers that dot the countryside, the clandestine Gjader base was part of former communist dictator Enver Hoxha’s plan to fortify his hermit state against feared foreign invasions that never materialized.
More than 600 military personnel used to work inside the maze of tunnels that were shuttered in 2000 and remain off limits to the public. Jets flown after 2000 used a different military base, until the last of the planes were taken out of service following an accident in 2004.
After opening up the dark and damp tunnels to reporters, the base’s commander, Fatmir Danaj, admits the old planes evoke an unexpected nostalgia.
“The pleasure of flying and of working in this base was unimaginable,” 52-year-old Danaj said, as he shone his torch on a row of silver jets, which, as a young pilot, he used to land on the runway that feeds into the mountain.
Today, the scores of rooms inside — including a cafeteria, dorms and array of other offices — are empty except for a scattering of debris and the faded signs on their doors announcing their function.
In one empty office, a reminder still hangs on the wall: “Attention! Put documents in their files and submit them to the secret administrative office before leaving the workplace.”
During his nearly 40 years of rule, Hoxha turned Albania into the most militarized country in the Balkans.
That backfired spectacularly in 1997, seven years after the fall of communism when the country was swept up by an armed rebellion that saw citizens raid armories and military bases for weapons.
Gjader was also breached, with people looting weapons and selling parts of some MiGs as scrap metal. Today the Albanian air force has only a small fleet of helicopters and its air space is protected by NATO.
In a sign of the changing times, the first NATO base in the Balkan region is to be built in Albania’s Kucova, once known as “Stalin City” as a symbol of friendship at that time between Albania and the Soviet Union.
However, Danaj still dreams of seeing Gjader returned to its former glory.
“The base could serve as a museum, but with its modern infrastructure, its tunnel system, it can be functional again and serve NATO,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not