“The Serbs are spying on the Albanian army”

Well-known security analyst Drizan Shala has published evidence that the Albanian army has long been watched by a Serbian account. In an analysis published in Tirana Examiner, Shala says that on 2 October the Dunav Intel account on the X network, which stamps its photographs with Serbian Cyrillic, released images of the Armed Forces at the Bizë training ground and called them exclusive.

The photographs show rows of tents, columns of tactical vehicles and the old barracks. They were taken from a point above the training ground, at a time when the troops were there.
According to Shala, the account itself says it has been following Bizë for more than two years. It also records the flights of Albania’s Bayraktar drones from the NATO air base in Kuçovë, one by one, by transponder code.

“This account is a visible part of a broader effort to watch the Albanian Armed Forces, of a hostile character and in Serbia’s interest,” Shala writes.

He recalls that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has called the defence partnership between Albania, Croatia and Kosovo “directed against Serbia”. Serbia has the largest defence budget in the region and three weeks ago held an exercise with an offensive scenario at Pešter.

A senior defence official has told Tirana Examiner that the problem is ongoing and that Albania has no anti-drone capacity, neither against this espionage nor against other threats.

The analysis links this to SPAK’s investigation at the Ministry of Defence. According to Tirana Examiner, the procurement under investigation is precisely an anti-drone system, the equipment that would detect and bring down the drones over Bizë and Kuçovë. The publication stresses that this information does not come from the investigation file.

Shala writes that SPAK is right to investigate, but notes that the data appeared on portals on the very first day: the file number, the personal search, the type of documents taken. He demands that the documents be examined under investigative secrecy, by officers with a security certificate, and that the source of the leaks be clarified with the same energy as the procurement itself.

The analyst does not claim that the Serbian account, the media scandal and the leaks from the file are coordinated. But his conclusion is harsh: “We are doing the enemy’s work ourselves.”

“Once the question was who is watching the Albanian army. Now it is why so many people inside Albania are making it harder for the army to stop those who watch it,” he writes.

Published in English by Tirana Examiner