We are doing the enemy’s work ourselves

A Serbia-oriented observer is following the Albanian army. The purchase that was supposed to close this window for him has ended up in a criminal file that started leaking from day one. SPAK has every right to investigate; Albania’s allies have every reason to ask whether the country is investigating itself until it remains forever exposed.

By Drizan Shala

On 2 October, Dunav Intel, an account on X that stamps its photographs with Serbian Cyrillic, published images of the Albanian Armed Forces in the field, in Bizë, and called them exclusive. Rows of tents, columns of tactical vehicles and the old barracks can be seen. The photographs were taken from a point that overlooks the training ground from above, while the troops were there. The account itself says it has been following Bizë for more than two years. It records the flights of the Albanian Bayraktar drones from the NATO air base in Kuçovë one by one, according to transponder code.

A senior defence official told Tirana Examiner that this is a continuing problem and that Albania has no anti-drone capacities, neither to counter this kind of espionage, nor for other threats. The gap is also found in public documents. The Military Strategy ranks anti-drone defence among the modernisation priorities, while the defence budget for 2026 was presented as the budget that would finance anti-drone systems.

My assessment is this: this account is a visible part of a broader effort to observe the Albanian Armed Forces, hostile in character and in Serbia’s interest. President Vučić calls Albania’s defence partnership with Croatia and Kosovo “directed against Serbia”. Serbia has the largest defence budget in the region. Three weeks ago it held an exercise in Pešter with an offensive-operation scenario, with the leaders of Republika Srpska in the stands. When a state defines a partnership as a threat, gathering information about its members is routine work.

Albania is exposed, it knows this and is trying to fill the gap. After decades in which defence was neglected, it is building everything at once: the first domestically produced tactical vehicles, an ammunition line, the reserve force, anti-drone and air defence, as well as a partnership with two neighbours. Most of these capacities begin with procurement. And that is precisely where a capacity can be killed most easily.

There are two ways to keep a military facility exposed. One is to defeat the system that protects it. The other is to make sure that system never arrives. The second one Albania is doing itself, extraordinarily cheaply.

One television show was enough.

On 7 September, Arben Ahmetaj, a former deputy prime minister accused by SPAK of corruption and money laundering and internationally wanted since 2023, broadcast from Switzerland on Syri TV cut fragments of a secret recording. A middleman could be heard boasting. But there was no delivery, no payment, no state order. Within three weeks, a defence industry that Albania had been building for two years was giving account for arms trafficking. The fugitive still has the recording. As far as is publicly known, he has not handed it to any prosecution office. He releases only a few minutes each time, according to his own calendar.

Foreign partners requested additional compliance verifications and at least one signature has been postponed, as this publication has reported. An Albanian ammunition line does not enter an empty market. Every postponed signature is a contract that a competitor in the region can take.

Then came the prosecution, and rightly so. This newsroom itself requested the investigation. That is precisely what makes the mechanism so effective. When an accusation of this weight enters circulation, SPAK cannot pretend it has not heard it. The investigation becomes the next news item and the very fact that there is an investigation is sold as proof that there was something behind the accusation. The accusation opens a file. The file puts its stamp on the accusation. The leaks from the file bring the next accusation. The partners keep waiting.

On Friday, investigators took documents from the Ministry of Defence. By mid-afternoon, portals had the file number, the court’s approval for a personal search and the type of documents taken, referring to sources. By Saturday, one outlet also had the criminal offences said to have been registered, the seizure of a senior official’s telephone and the first witness summonses. It attributed part of this data to investigators of the National Bureau of Investigation. The prosecution had said nothing. The file spoke for itself.

Tirana Examiner reported on Saturday that prosecutors are examining whether a purchase in the defence sector should have been subject to a tender. According to our information, which does not come from the investigation file, it is about an anti-drone system: the equipment that detects and brings down enemy drones over training grounds like Biza, over bases like Kuçova and over the NATO summit that Albania is expected to host. The procurement that was supposed to fill the gap is being investigated by a process that itself is failing to preserve confidentiality. If the documents taken from the ministry are those our information describes, they show what Albania lacks and what it is buying to fill that lack. Judging from the first day, no one can guarantee they will stay where they are.

The camera on the hill gives a hostile service the external picture of Albanian defence. The scandal machinery gives it what the camera cannot see: which procurement is being investigated, which officials are under the magnifying glass and whether the state manages to keep its own file closed. There was no need for anyone to coordinate a Serbia-oriented account, a fugitive in Switzerland, a television show and a leaking file. And I do not claim that anyone has done so. Coordination is unnecessary when the result is the same. For a hostile observer, there could hardly have been a more favourable arrangement of events.

Let the courts decide on intent. The effect is in the field: the measure that should fill the gap is under suspicion, partners are hesitating and the camp continues to be photographed. The light infantry battalion group, certified last month in Bizë according to NATO standards, trained under that camera. The reservists who are returning to service for the first time after three decades will train under the same open sky. The scandal has its calendar. The observer has his too. Only one of them benefits from the delay.

A country rebuilding its defence cannot defend itself if it is enough for an accusation for the purchase of a capacity to be declared proof of corruption before the facts are known. Oversight is an obligation. SPAK should take every page it needs, examine it under investigative secrecy, with officers who have security certificates and with as few people involved as possible, and decide quickly. If Friday’s leaks came from an official who had been entrusted with the file, Article 295/a of the Criminal Code is clear for the prosecutor and for the judicial police officer. The source of the leaks must be uncovered with the same energy with which the purchase itself is being investigated.

We are doing the enemy’s work ourselves. He does not need to recruit the fugitive, instruct the studio or place his man in the prosecution. He needs only that in Tirana there are enough people who keep turning the effort to fix the defence into a scandal. 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.

Drizan Shala is a security researcher and a doctoral candidate at the University of Sarajevo. He writes on defence, private security and the security architecture in the Western Balkans.

Published in English by Tirana Examiner