14 ms·

What Albania can teach us about trust

60 points by hwayern 10y ago

f_allwein 10y ago
Doesn't open for UK readers: "We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service" yadda yadda. Pity.
- witty_username 10y ago
  Why does BBC do that?
  - to3m 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_BBC_television_channels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_BBC_television_c... - "The BBC is forbidden under its charter to directly undertake any commercial operations on-air within the United Kingdom; however, no such restriction applies to operations in other countries"... perhaps "on-air" applies to the internet as well?
    - celticninja 10y ago
      Pretty much, they cannot show UK residents any advertising so they block based on IP address. In all circumstances the content is available on the BBC just not via that page. It would be nice to see them redirect to the content for UK readers but I expect that is a lot of work for little benefit.
      - f_allwein 10y ago
        so in order not to show us any ads, they prefer to show us nothing? How weird/ wonderful.
- pmontra 10y ago
  Hopefully this works http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ItGP5Hl34sJ:http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160909-what-can-albania-teach-us-about-trust%2BWhat+can+Albania+teach+us+about+trust?&gbv=1&hl=it&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ItGP5H...
  - f_allwein 10y ago
    works indeed - thanks.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
jkot 10y ago
> Hundreds of Iranian refugees are currently residing within the country It is not very good example. Greece took 600K refugees, Hungary similar numbers, etc... Problem is that those countries do not offer any social benefits. Refugee needs at least 600 euro/month to feel welcomed. Albania is actually very unfriendly towards refugees.
- tpllaha 10y ago
  I think the article is more about the culture than the ability of the country to provide. When people host refugees in their home and try to offer them a life as good as their own, I think they're being very welcoming and friendly, regardless of how much they can offer in absolute terms.
- thr0waway1239 10y ago
  > Refugee needs at least 600 euro/month to feel welcomed. OK, I really hope you are being sarcastic. As a refugee, you make a choice to escape brutal violence, get a roof over your head, some (minimal) food and clothing, and you actually need some money also "to feel welcomed"?
  - ng12 10y ago
    Where's the line between refugee and economic migrant?
    - goodJobWalrus 10y ago
      I would say there isn't. If your economic situation is so bad, that you are willing to throw yourself into the sea on a rubber dinghy, you are a refugee from severe poverty and life so horrible that you are willing to risk dying just to escape it. If it was up to me, I would expand charter of human rights to include this.
      - venomsnake 10y ago
        Only if the host country has the right to demand for them to leave their culture, religion and customs at the door. Otherwise it could be a very bad deal for the welcoming country. You are not entitled to a better life somewhere else, other than the country you are citizen of.
SRSposter 10y ago
There is a pretty big difference between taking in the people of the same kin and people from another culture far far away. How many Serbian Kosovars did the Albanians give hospitality?
- sologoub 10y ago
  This! Kosovo (and all of Balkan conflicts) are an ongoing tragedy, drawn around ethnic and religious lines. The article doesn't appear to clearly state that the refugees were largely ethnic Albanians and of mostly Muslim faith, same as the host population. That's very different from taking in large numbers of culturally dissimilar refugees and successfully integrating them into your society.
  - tpllaha 10y ago
    Religion is one of those things that doesn't really play a role in Albania. Granted, the majority of the population are officially muslim. However very few are religious. This is probably the result of one of the toughest communist regimes in Europe, which fought religion very aggressively, but also because Albanians have been forced to change their religion by the Ottoman empire, eventually reducing the extent to which people identified themselves with a religious group and giving birth to the phrase "albanians' religion is albanianism". While it is true that most refugees that were hosted during the Kosovo war were ethnic albanians, and that nationalism is still present (expressed mostly as a disliking of neighbouring countries), the article does mention the case of jewish immigrants during WW2, who came from a quite different culture and religion. Hospitality in Albania is one of those few older values that is still obviously present. As I already mentioned, nationalism still exists, but that is a whole different discussion.
    - sologoub 10y ago
      But did they equally take in Serbs with the same hospitality? I'm sure a handful of examples can be found, but I doubt it's quite as open as the article makes it sound. As for religion, whether we want it or not, religion of our ancestors has a strong influence on our secular customs and norms. In this case, while being a practicing Muslim was not a requirement, shared identity and religious past definitely helped. Regarding shielding Jewish refugees in WW2, most countries have examples of heroism, as well as atrocities by the local polulations.
cossatot 10y ago
Does anyone know how much 'besa' is related to (or derived from) the Islamic tradition of warm hospitality towards travelers?
- gkya 10y ago
  That's cultural rather than religious. Probably the religion's tradition derives from the customs of the near east and eastern mediterranian.
  - acdha 10y ago
    “That's cultural rather than religious” is a rather sweeping claim to simply assert without support. The interplay between religions and culture is incredibly complex and deserves more than a facile dismissal.
    - gkya 10y ago
      I've made no dismissal, just a comment. The interplay between religions and culture is that the religions don't come from gods, but they are formed in the cultures within which they emerge. They are not a collection of some madman's dreams and aphorisms, but a fruit of their communities, they are doctrinizations of the customs and beliefs that form their culture. Christianity and islam are the only examples of truly international and intercultural religions, up until christianity every people had their religion. But even then, christianity and islam are not monolithic things, every culture they touched formed their own subreligions. The islam of an aegean anatolian is different from the islam of a yemenite arab, the christianity of an armenian is dissimilar to that of an irlandese. Culture forms religion, and if albanians weren't already inclined to be welcoming and guest-loving, their religion (i.e. their version of islam) would reflect that. We look at islam and christianity as if they were big monolithic things, but every people live them their way.
- wbeckler 10y ago
  Albania is 60% muslim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania
Twirrim 10y ago
I spent some time in Albania back maybe 15 years ago. It's an amazingly beautiful country, especially as you get away from Tirana. The people were open and welcoming, even in areas that are poor and desperate, whether that had anything to do with being seen as a rich westerner or not, I've no idea. We were warned about besa before we went there, from the perspective of "You have to be very careful what you say", for example if you're a guest and you compliment the rug, there's a good chance they'll offer it to you and you'll have to take it or cause offense. I really dislike coffee, but offering "Albanian coffee" to guests (not too dissimilar to Turkish coffee) was a staple part of the culture. So I dutifully practised schooling my expression and drinking coffee, so that if the situation came up I could drink it without grimacing and even be appropriately positive.
- contingencies 10y ago
  A classic in those situations is "My doctor said I'm not able to ..." and then drink water.
ardit33 10y ago
Albanian here. What the article omits, or misses is that most refugees during the Kosovo war were Albanians as well. Same language, same culture. We had a large house and my parents hosted 7 people (two families), during that time. One of the families were actually long/distant cousins. Now, this is not the same as hosting Syrians refugees. I think very few Albanian families are willing to host them in their own homes. Albania itself is a very tolerant country (religious wise, as most people are not religious themselves or are atheists), and we think of having a large amount of people coming from arab countries as a regress in the freedom and quality of life. They are a lot more conservative, and coming from a completely different culture which will not be compatible with a tolerant one like Albania's. I think few Albanians would want to put up with that. Very limited numbers yes, massive 100k+ numbers, no way.
- macns 10y ago
  Albania itself is a very tolerant country (religious wise ... we think of having a large amount of people coming from arab countries as a regress in the freedom and quality of life. ... which will not be compatible with a tolerant one like Albania's. An atheist or otherwise "religion tolerant" mentality implies compatibility with anyone. It looks like you're "tolerant" only with atheists or somewhat less religious people. More importantly those people ran away from war risking their lives, religion and culture is of no importance to them when looking for shelter and food.
  - reinhardt 10y ago
    > It looks like you're "tolerant" only with atheists or somewhat less religious people. Which totally makes sense given the paradox of tolerance: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
    - macns 10y ago
aleyan 10y ago
> Hundreds of Iranian refugees are currently residing within the country, having been displaced from their war-torn homes. I find this sentence weird for 2 reasons. Firstly "hundreds" is multiple orders of magnitude fewer than the number of refugees in Europe now or the number of ethnic and religious kin taken in by Albania in the 90s. Secondly, what Iranians are being displaced from their "war-torn homes"? There is no war in Iran. For me this calls the rest of the article into question. What can BBC teach us about trust?
- smnrchrds 10y ago
  Yeah. The last war in Iran was with Saddam and ended in 1988. Although Iran has a military presence in Syria and an uneasy relationship with many of the countries in the region, there has not been any fights within Iranian borders since the Iran-Iraq war ended [1]. Maybe the author was thinking about Iraq. [1] Well, there is the war on drugs and some separatist movements, but nothing enough to warrant calling any region war-torn.
- eternalban 10y ago
  > What can BBC teach us about trust? Verify, verify, verify! :)
bobthechef 10y ago
Either the author of this article is extraordinarily mendacious or horrifically uneducated (neither would surprise me given the shape of journalism and the media, nor are these two mutually exclusive). First of all, Kosovars are Albanians. Many people in Albania have/had family in Kosovo. The comparison with the migrant crisis is completely off base. Furthermore, the majority of Albanians are Muslims. This would make them culturally closer to migrants. However, as we know, most migrants aren't interested in settling in poor countries. Second, many migrants (per statistics) are not refugees from Syria. Many are merely taking advantage of the cluster fuck that is EU policy and exploiting the Syrian refugee crises to get into Europe. The Kosovars were exclusively refugees. Third, Jews were also killed by Albanian collaborationist forces, but the Jewish population was negligible in Albania before the war (between 24-300). In other words, they were largely unfamiliar with Jews, making antisemitism difficult. After the war, when communist leader Hoxha came to power, religious oppression caused many Jews to leave and move to Israel. Worth noting is that Kosovar Albanians were not as kind to Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies as Albanians in Albania, declaring jihad against them. All in all, somewhere around 600 Jews were killed in "Greater Albania". Give credit where credit is due, but let's not exaggerate. (Look at Poland for comparison: largest population of Jews in the world before WWII, no collaboration with Germans in general populace and certainly not at the official or state level, largest number of recognitions among Righteous among Nations, only country occupying Germans made harboring or aiding Jews punishable by death for entire household, etc, etc). So perhaps the author shouldn't use Albania as some kind of fabled Shangri-La for shaming everyone else. The false comparisons and false characterizations are really in poor taste. If the author is so hospitable and open, then why doesn't he open his house to some migrants? This isn't a joke. Perhaps a posturing member of the white upper middle class divorced from the consequences of his politics has the luxury of moralizing irresponsibly, but for anyone with a clue, this migrant crisis was a complex and disastrous failure in EU policy and governance. Warm feelings about some simplistic straw man refugee won't fly.

60 points by hwayern 10y ago

Doesn't open for UK readers: "We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service" yadda yadda. Pity.

witty_username 10y ago
Why does BBC do that?
- to3m 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_BBC_television_channels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_BBC_television_c... - "The BBC is forbidden under its charter to directly undertake any commercial operations on-air within the United Kingdom; however, no such restriction applies to operations in other countries"... perhaps "on-air" applies to the internet as well?
  - celticninja 10y ago
    Pretty much, they cannot show UK residents any advertising so they block based on IP address. In all circumstances the content is available on the BBC just not via that page. It would be nice to see them redirect to the content for UK readers but I expect that is a lot of work for little benefit.
    - f_allwein 10y ago
      so in order not to show us any ads, they prefer to show us nothing? How weird/ wonderful.
pmontra 10y ago
Hopefully this works http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ItGP5Hl34sJ:http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20160909-what-can-albania-teach-us-about-trust%2BWhat+can+Albania+teach+us+about+trust?&gbv=1&hl=it&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ItGP5H...
- f_allwein 10y ago
  works indeed - thanks.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

jkot 10y ago

> Hundreds of Iranian refugees are currently residing within the country It is not very good example. Greece took 600K refugees, Hungary similar numbers, etc... Problem is that those countries do not offer any social benefits. Refugee needs at least 600 euro/month to feel welcomed. Albania is actually very unfriendly towards refugees.

tpllaha 10y ago
I think the article is more about the culture than the ability of the country to provide. When people host refugees in their home and try to offer them a life as good as their own, I think they're being very welcoming and friendly, regardless of how much they can offer in absolute terms.
thr0waway1239 10y ago
> Refugee needs at least 600 euro/month to feel welcomed. OK, I really hope you are being sarcastic. As a refugee, you make a choice to escape brutal violence, get a roof over your head, some (minimal) food and clothing, and you actually need some money also "to feel welcomed"?
- ng12 10y ago
  Where's the line between refugee and economic migrant?
  - goodJobWalrus 10y ago
    I would say there isn't. If your economic situation is so bad, that you are willing to throw yourself into the sea on a rubber dinghy, you are a refugee from severe poverty and life so horrible that you are willing to risk dying just to escape it. If it was up to me, I would expand charter of human rights to include this.
    - venomsnake 10y ago
      Only if the host country has the right to demand for them to leave their culture, religion and customs at the door. Otherwise it could be a very bad deal for the welcoming country. You are not entitled to a better life somewhere else, other than the country you are citizen of.

SRSposter 10y ago

There is a pretty big difference between taking in the people of the same kin and people from another culture far far away. How many Serbian Kosovars did the Albanians give hospitality?

sologoub 10y ago
This! Kosovo (and all of Balkan conflicts) are an ongoing tragedy, drawn around ethnic and religious lines. The article doesn't appear to clearly state that the refugees were largely ethnic Albanians and of mostly Muslim faith, same as the host population. That's very different from taking in large numbers of culturally dissimilar refugees and successfully integrating them into your society.
- tpllaha 10y ago
  Religion is one of those things that doesn't really play a role in Albania. Granted, the majority of the population are officially muslim. However very few are religious. This is probably the result of one of the toughest communist regimes in Europe, which fought religion very aggressively, but also because Albanians have been forced to change their religion by the Ottoman empire, eventually reducing the extent to which people identified themselves with a religious group and giving birth to the phrase "albanians' religion is albanianism". While it is true that most refugees that were hosted during the Kosovo war were ethnic albanians, and that nationalism is still present (expressed mostly as a disliking of neighbouring countries), the article does mention the case of jewish immigrants during WW2, who came from a quite different culture and religion. Hospitality in Albania is one of those few older values that is still obviously present. As I already mentioned, nationalism still exists, but that is a whole different discussion.
  - sologoub 10y ago
    But did they equally take in Serbs with the same hospitality? I'm sure a handful of examples can be found, but I doubt it's quite as open as the article makes it sound. As for religion, whether we want it or not, religion of our ancestors has a strong influence on our secular customs and norms. In this case, while being a practicing Muslim was not a requirement, shared identity and religious past definitely helped. Regarding shielding Jewish refugees in WW2, most countries have examples of heroism, as well as atrocities by the local polulations.

cossatot 10y ago

Does anyone know how much 'besa' is related to (or derived from) the Islamic tradition of warm hospitality towards travelers?

gkya 10y ago
That's cultural rather than religious. Probably the religion's tradition derives from the customs of the near east and eastern mediterranian.
- acdha 10y ago
  “That's cultural rather than religious” is a rather sweeping claim to simply assert without support. The interplay between religions and culture is incredibly complex and deserves more than a facile dismissal.
  - gkya 10y ago
    I've made no dismissal, just a comment. The interplay between religions and culture is that the religions don't come from gods, but they are formed in the cultures within which they emerge. They are not a collection of some madman's dreams and aphorisms, but a fruit of their communities, they are doctrinizations of the customs and beliefs that form their culture. Christianity and islam are the only examples of truly international and intercultural religions, up until christianity every people had their religion. But even then, christianity and islam are not monolithic things, every culture they touched formed their own subreligions. The islam of an aegean anatolian is different from the islam of a yemenite arab, the christianity of an armenian is dissimilar to that of an irlandese. Culture forms religion, and if albanians weren't already inclined to be welcoming and guest-loving, their religion (i.e. their version of islam) would reflect that. We look at islam and christianity as if they were big monolithic things, but every people live them their way.
wbeckler 10y ago
Albania is 60% muslim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Albania

Twirrim 10y ago

I spent some time in Albania back maybe 15 years ago. It's an amazingly beautiful country, especially as you get away from Tirana. The people were open and welcoming, even in areas that are poor and desperate, whether that had anything to do with being seen as a rich westerner or not, I've no idea. We were warned about besa before we went there, from the perspective of "You have to be very careful what you say", for example if you're a guest and you compliment the rug, there's a good chance they'll offer it to you and you'll have to take it or cause offense. I really dislike coffee, but offering "Albanian coffee" to guests (not too dissimilar to Turkish coffee) was a staple part of the culture. So I dutifully practised schooling my expression and drinking coffee, so that if the situation came up I could drink it without grimacing and even be appropriately positive.

contingencies 10y ago
A classic in those situations is "My doctor said I'm not able to ..." and then drink water.

ardit33 10y ago

Albanian here. What the article omits, or misses is that most refugees during the Kosovo war were Albanians as well. Same language, same culture. We had a large house and my parents hosted 7 people (two families), during that time. One of the families were actually long/distant cousins. Now, this is not the same as hosting Syrians refugees. I think very few Albanian families are willing to host them in their own homes. Albania itself is a very tolerant country (religious wise, as most people are not religious themselves or are atheists), and we think of having a large amount of people coming from arab countries as a regress in the freedom and quality of life. They are a lot more conservative, and coming from a completely different culture which will not be compatible with a tolerant one like Albania's. I think few Albanians would want to put up with that. Very limited numbers yes, massive 100k+ numbers, no way.

macns 10y ago
Albania itself is a very tolerant country (religious wise ... we think of having a large amount of people coming from arab countries as a regress in the freedom and quality of life. ... which will not be compatible with a tolerant one like Albania's. An atheist or otherwise "religion tolerant" mentality implies compatibility with anyone. It looks like you're "tolerant" only with atheists or somewhat less religious people. More importantly those people ran away from war risking their lives, religion and culture is of no importance to them when looking for shelter and food.
- reinhardt 10y ago
  > It looks like you're "tolerant" only with atheists or somewhat less religious people. Which totally makes sense given the paradox of tolerance: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - macns 10y ago

aleyan 10y ago

> Hundreds of Iranian refugees are currently residing within the country, having been displaced from their war-torn homes. I find this sentence weird for 2 reasons. Firstly "hundreds" is multiple orders of magnitude fewer than the number of refugees in Europe now or the number of ethnic and religious kin taken in by Albania in the 90s. Secondly, what Iranians are being displaced from their "war-torn homes"? There is no war in Iran. For me this calls the rest of the article into question. What can BBC teach us about trust?

smnrchrds 10y ago
Yeah. The last war in Iran was with Saddam and ended in 1988. Although Iran has a military presence in Syria and an uneasy relationship with many of the countries in the region, there has not been any fights within Iranian borders since the Iran-Iraq war ended [1]. Maybe the author was thinking about Iraq. [1] Well, there is the war on drugs and some separatist movements, but nothing enough to warrant calling any region war-torn.
eternalban 10y ago
> What can BBC teach us about trust? Verify, verify, verify! :)

bobthechef 10y ago

Either the author of this article is extraordinarily mendacious or horrifically uneducated (neither would surprise me given the shape of journalism and the media, nor are these two mutually exclusive). First of all, Kosovars are Albanians. Many people in Albania have/had family in Kosovo. The comparison with the migrant crisis is completely off base. Furthermore, the majority of Albanians are Muslims. This would make them culturally closer to migrants. However, as we know, most migrants aren't interested in settling in poor countries. Second, many migrants (per statistics) are not refugees from Syria. Many are merely taking advantage of the cluster fuck that is EU policy and exploiting the Syrian refugee crises to get into Europe. The Kosovars were exclusively refugees. Third, Jews were also killed by Albanian collaborationist forces, but the Jewish population was negligible in Albania before the war (between 24-300). In other words, they were largely unfamiliar with Jews, making antisemitism difficult. After the war, when communist leader Hoxha came to power, religious oppression caused many Jews to leave and move to Israel. Worth noting is that Kosovar Albanians were not as kind to Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies as Albanians in Albania, declaring jihad against them. All in all, somewhere around 600 Jews were killed in "Greater Albania". Give credit where credit is due, but let's not exaggerate. (Look at Poland for comparison: largest population of Jews in the world before WWII, no collaboration with Germans in general populace and certainly not at the official or state level, largest number of recognitions among Righteous among Nations, only country occupying Germans made harboring or aiding Jews punishable by death for entire household, etc, etc). So perhaps the author shouldn't use Albania as some kind of fabled Shangri-La for shaming everyone else. The false comparisons and false characterizations are really in poor taste. If the author is so hospitable and open, then why doesn't he open his house to some migrants? This isn't a joke. Perhaps a posturing member of the white upper middle class divorced from the consequences of his politics has the luxury of moralizing irresponsibly, but for anyone with a clue, this migrant crisis was a complex and disastrous failure in EU policy and governance. Warm feelings about some simplistic straw man refugee won't fly.