One morning in July last year, the Iranian Mujahedeen of the MEK organization, settled in a secluded area not far from Tirana, woke up surrounded by Albanian special police forces. What followed was a violent clash that left one person dead and several injured. Just some time before, Edi Rama’s government had accepted dozens of Sorosians from Afghanistan in the name of trust, while now the Iranian opposition was being brutalized. In terms of 'trust,' there is nothing more unholy in the ancient tradition of Albanians than the mistreatment of a guest. The police seized dozens of computers, claiming that the operation had been ordered by the prosecutor's office as part of a criminal investigation. The prosecutor's office never conducted such an investigation, and the argument was false. The sole reason for that operation was to sabotage the annual MEK congress, which was to be held the next day. The American embassy, which at the time commented on everything, did not find it necessary to speak out. This year, their annual congress was not held either.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani had all been high-profile visitors to the MEK organization in Albania, not to mention dozens upon dozens of American senators and congressmen, mostly Republicans. In fact, from 2016 until last year, more American lawmakers had visited Albania than all of Europe combined. The MEK residence in the town of Manza had become a pilgrimage site for international supporters of the Iranian opposition. Since the police operation, there have been no activities, events, or news.

In 2012, Prime Minister Berisha’s administration offered President Obama’s administration to house around 200 members of the MEK organization, continuing the assistance his government had given various American administrations, including hosting 11 former Guantanamo prisoners. Among them were five Uyghurs, whom no other government had accepted due to fear of China. The Chinese government protested, but took no further action once it understood that Albania had placed itself entirely under American influence and control. After all, it was Sali Berisha who had brought Albania into NATO.

In the spring of 2015, Edi Rama found himself frozen out in Washington after misleading President Obama’s administration regarding the offer to use Albania’s territory for the destruction of Syrian chemical substances. The conservative opposition was not in a better position, as Rama’s refusal came after massive civil society protests, which they had joined. Through a brilliant move by Prime Minister Rama and the shortsightedness of Obama’s administration, the opposition was forced to participate in a protest many in Washington viewed as anti-American. In fact, the most anti-American act had been the mockery that Rama made of the American administration. When Prime Minister Rama, with the suggestion of George Soros, volunteered to accept all members of the Iranian opposition in Albania, President Obama and his administration were in the final stages of negotiating the JCPA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran, alongside the P5+1. Edi Rama’s government welcomed all members of the MEK organization who came from Iraq, including their political leadership, who relocated from France and other countries.

But what did Edi Rama get in return? Everything. Not for Albania, but for his own power.

Immediately after signing the agreement, Rama was received at the White House by President Obama and Vice President Biden. It’s unclear why, but Rama chose to be accompanied by Sajmir Tahiri, the Interior Minister, whom various American agencies had full information on, concerning his involvement in one of the largest drug trafficking operations in Europe.

That same year, former Prosecutor General Adriatik Llalla publicly declared that he had been pressured by the former American ambassador to arrest Ilir Meta, then Speaker of Parliament and Rama’s perpetual challenger for leadership of the left. The former prosecutor is now a convicted person in absentia, who has gained political asylum in a European country, claiming that all his legal troubles stemmed from refusing the American request.

In the same year, at Rama’s request and with American and European financial support, Albania undertook the so-called Justice Reform. The reform was carried out by the Soros Foundation. The opposition, which initially supported it by voting for constitutional changes, now claims that this reform was conducted to place the judiciary under Prime Minister Rama’s control. Looking at the balance after eight years of justice reform, the results are terrifying. The reform removed from the system prosecutors and judges who had arrested and convicted the heads of organized crime in Albania and dismantled over 115 international criminal organizations. The new members of the judiciary system are distinguished by their personal and family ties to the ruling Socialist Party. The High Court, Constitutional Court, Special Prosecutor’s Office, and Special Court are entirely controlled by Edi Rama. The legal initiative for the justice reform was undertaken in September 2015 by a group of socialist deputies. The greatest irony is that three of these socialist deputies soon lost their mandates as MPs after being found guilty in European countries for murder, prostitution, and drug trafficking. Beyond political support, total control over the judiciary seems to have been America’s compensation for the help provided by accepting MEK Mujahedeen.

In April 2021, Edi Rama won another mandate. Despite a discrepancy of 200,000 votes between the number of participants and the total number of ballots, Secretary of State Blinken rushed to congratulate Rama even before all the voting centers had closed. Almost a month later, in May of that year, Secretary Blinken declared Sali Berisha, a simple MP who had been in opposition for eight years and had resigned as leader of the conservative party, persona non grata. A year before leaving office, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had declared, alongside Berisha in the Albanian parliament, that she called on the world to visit Albania if they wanted to see a democracy in action.

According to political and media circles in Albania, the leader of the conservative party, Lulzim Basha, was blackmailed by the American embassy with a lobbying dossier (for which he had been criminally investigated and the case closed by procedure) to remove Sali Berisha from the most pro-American party in Eastern Europe, which he had founded in December 1991 and led until 2013. Berisha then began a political movement called “Foltorja” to remove Basha from the party's leadership. The political battle turned into a legal one, where Sali Berisha personally accused the American ambassador of contacting the judge handling the case and pressuring her to rule against him. The ambassador responded by admitting the meeting but claimed it was for “good intentions.” She stated that she had encouraged the court not to fall prey to political pressure.

In August 2023, Rama appointed Taulant Balla as Minister of Interior, a person known for his multiple connections with the criminal world. Balla was also the person who filed a criminal complaint against Sali Berisha and his son-in-law for document forgery related to a property. Two months after Balla’s appointment as Minister of Interior, the prosecutor’s office and the court ordered the arrest of Berisha and his son-in-law while the investigations were still in the preliminary stage, and no formal charges had been filed. The judge presiding over the Special Court who ordered the arrest of the opposition leader was found to be a person convicted in Greece for document forgery. Although this was proven in the media with documents, she remains in office. Only a year later, while awaiting his arrest for involvement with criminal organizations, ordered killings, and drug trafficking, Balla was dismissed as Minister of Interior. His mission to blackmail the court and oversee the Berisha case had been accomplished.

In 2015, Albanian police conducted an arrest operation on behalf of German federal police in the village of Xibraka, Elbasan. The nephew of former communist dictator Hoxha was arrested, along with several other figures linked to international drug trafficking and the ruling Socialist Party. The prosecutor’s office separated the investigation concerning an unidentified person. Nine years later, a member of the opposition party proved with documents from the prosecutor’s file that the unidentified person was Prime Minister Edi Rama’s brother, Olsi Rama, who holds American citizenship. What worsens the situation is that out of the three prosecutors involved in the case, one resigned to preserve his integrity, while the other two – one was appointed by parliament, upon the proposal and votes of the Socialist Party, as Chief Prosecutor of the Republic, and the other as deputy director of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, a product of the justice reform. The case was reopened due to public pressure, though no one believes the Prime Minister’s brother will be indicted. The opposition and media have spoken about the disappearance of documents from that file, particularly data showing that the Prime Minister's brother made several trips with the arrested traffickers outside Albania.

Border crossing control is conducted through the TIMS system, a gift from the US government worth over $24 million. The opposition leader, under house arrest, has provided evidence from TIMS data, which were removed from the prosecutor’s file, proving that the Prime Minister's brother made dozens of trips with the aforementioned traffickers. Last summer, it became public that the IT director had been caught cloning the data from this system. Despite this criminal act, he remained in office for several months until, due to pressure from the opposition, a parliamentary investigative committee was formed on the matter. Although ICITAP project officials are believed to have shown interest in this case with law enforcement agencies, they have never publicly commented. There is reason to believe that if this scandal had occurred under a government other than Edi Rama's, the gates of hell would have opened. What forces the embassy to remain silent is known only to them. We can only speculate.

A few months ago, an investigative program on Italy’s RAI-3 directly accused Prime Minister Rama and his brother of ties to international drug trafficking. Among other things, the program mentioned Engjëll Agaçi, the Secretary General of the Council of Ministers, who is also the highest-ranking official in the Albanian civil service, as the liaison between Prime Minister Rama and the Italian mafia. The program also mentioned another individual, Ergys Agasi, the former anti-corruption director at the Prime Minister's Office, a very close associate of the Prime Minister, as the coordinator of the latter with drug trafficking groups in central Albania. According to the Italian journalists, he is also the cohabitant of the Secret Service Director. Recently, media reports have revealed that her family members in Kosovo, brothers and first cousins, are involved in international drug trafficking, with some even convicted in Munich for these crimes.

Recently, the Romanian media reported that the former head of the Romanian secret service, Florian Coldea, was a significant part of the Sinaloa cartel's network in Europe. The Albanian conservative opposition presented evidence that Coldea was appointed in September 2023 as Prime Minister Rama's National Security Advisor. The opposition also learned that Coldea, at the Prime Minister’s orders and in cooperation with Director Vlora Hyseni, not only had full access to the Secret Service but also drafted the new structure of the institution, which was later approved by the Prime Minister. SHISH is both an internal and external service. It covers not only relations and cooperation with partner services but is also Albania’s official interlocutor with NATO in the field of intelligence.

Charles McGonigal is a former senior FBI official in New York. In the US, he is known as the person who, in July 2016, opened an investigation into Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump for his alleged ties to Russia, based on the famous “Steele dossier.” The investigation continued even after Trump was elected president. These investigations also led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives and the subsequent investigation by the Special Prosecutor. What the American public does not know is that during the time McGonigal was investigating President Trump, he made several visits to Albania as a personal friend of Prime Minister Rama. The conservative opposition leader, Sali Berisha, has accused him of preparing the dossier on which Secretary Blinken declared Berisha persona non grata at Rama's request. The socialist mayor of Tropoja – Berisha’s birthplace – named McGonigal an honorary citizen on Edi Rama’s orders. It is evident that McGonigal’s contribution to Tropoja, according to Rama, was declaring Berisha persona non grata. McGonigal was arrested by the FBI for two cases, one of which was related to his corruption by close associates of Prime Minister Rama. He was found guilty and sentenced by a Washington court this spring. On the day the court sentenced McGonigal for his corruption by Rama's associates, Secretary Blinken visited Tirana and, standing beside the Albanian Prime Minister, declared that Rama was the leader Albania needed.

Edi Rama is known for his symbolism. A few years ago, he obtained a government aircraft, which only he used. He named the plane 'Ismail' after Ismail Qemali, who declared Albania’s independence and is considered the father of the Albanian state. A few months ago, Sali Berisha, from his place of confinement, directly accused Rama of using the government aircraft for drug trafficking and called on Italian authorities to investigate the case. Given his profile, Berisha says far less than he knows. It’s more than a coincidence that Rama gave up the government plane immediately after his political rival’s accusations.

Exactly a year ago, Belgian and French law enforcement authorities provided tens of thousands of pages of transcripts from encrypted communication platforms, SKY and ENCRO CHAT, which were widely used by Albanian organized crime groups. The new Albanian prosecutor's office, at its current pace of investigation, will need about a decade to unravel the Franco-Belgian investigative treasure. Investigative journalists close to the prosecutor's office speak of several hundred high-ranking Albanian state officials who have used these communication platforms. Among them are ministers, senior police officials, judges, prosecutors, and businessmen connected to the government. When asked whether the Albanian Prime Minister was also a user of these platforms, the journalists responded affirmatively. In a report published years ago, the Albanian secret service identified at least 134 senior state police officials directly involved in the cultivation and international transport of drugs.

A few days ago, international media, including Bloomberg, reported on two ships with over 100 containers, which left from the port of Durrës at the beginning of July, bound for Thailand. According to reports, it is suspected that these containers contain toxic materials. The Albanian government has chosen to remain silent, but many questions arise. What is the origin of the toxic materials? Are they really toxic, or something else? What if they are radioactive materials? How could these two ships escape port control when it is known that several institutions are present there, including border police, the customs directorate, and the secret service? The director of the Port of Durrës at the time of the ships’ departure was Pirro Vëngu, who was promoted a few days later as Minister of Defense. Was his promotion a reward or a way to silence him? Who is the force commanding all these institutions? How secure is the Port of Durrës for NATO? Can Minister Vëngu be a partner for NATO? We will never get answers to these questions from the Albanian authorities. What NATO and other partners will do remains unknown. The question that the partners should ask the Albanian government is this: If over 500 containers with dangerous industrial waste can be smuggled through Durrës, what guarantees are there for other containers with drugs or weapons?

The American administration’s support for Rama is unlimited. No one in Albania has been able to explain why. Corruption, lobbying, and the geopolitical situation in Europe are parts of the answer. The conservative opposition party is more pro-American than the ruling Socialist Party. Sali Berisha is the politician who led the movement to overthrow communism, brought the US to Albania, integrated the country into NATO, and supported every US initiative in the UN and NATO. Therefore, even the argument of the opposition’s anti-Americanism falls apart. At the time when Edi Rama offered to accept the Syrian chemical materials and later accepted over 4,000 Iranian Mujahedeen from the opposition, I had the feeling that relations between Albania and the US would be significantly influenced by the dynamics of US-Iran relations. Furthermore, Tirana's mayor, Erion Veliaj, Rama’s right-hand man and a creation of Soros, has been rumored several times for secret visits to Tehran.

In August 1985, the Reagan administration faced the Iran-Contra scandal. Between 1981 and 1986, high-ranking officials of his administration facilitated the secret sale of arms to Iran, which was under embargo. The proceeds from the arms sales were used to fund the Contras, a group of rebels against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The affair involved violations of US law, embargo breaches, arms sales, and drug trafficking. FBI investigations led to the conviction of 11 individuals, including Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense; Robert McFarlane, National Security Advisor to the President; Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State; and Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council.

The probability that Donald Trump will return to the White House is high. Equally likely is the possibility that Republicans will take control of Congress and the Senate. In such a scenario, US policy towards Iran and the MEK opposition will change 180 degrees. Senators, congressmen, and American officials will resume visits to the MEK camp in Albania. The Albanian conservative opposition must prepare a complete and detailed dossier on what has happened in these years, not only for Congress but also for the Inspectors General of several departments and agencies. The interest in restoring relations between the two countries on the right track is greater than the momentary interest of some politicians and lobbyists in Washington and Tirana.