 | This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
NPOV edit
The original meme broke NPOv being based mostly around the single memoire of an officer integrally involved in the force. As his report says, the mission they were tasked with was "extremely generic", that being the nature of political instructions at that level: his comment simply betrays his inexperience. I must at the same time declare that I was myself a senior WEU staffer integrally involved in both the MAPE mission which followed Operation Alba and married to the chief staff coordinator of the diplomatic structures inside Europe.
The UN mission statement fell into into two halves, establishing a temporary and limited multinational protection force to facilitate the safe and prompt delivery of humanitarian assistance, and helping create a secure environment for the missions of Internastional Organisations. Some mission creep then appears in the Italian implimentation of this, extending the second to "the development of the International Organisations' actvities for the Albanian social and economic reconstruction", which extends massively here, being interpeted as actually doing the job, which they did NOT. Alba was on the ground from April to mid August 1997, and was joined from early May by WEU MAPE, which built up and was operational by the end of the month. Alba's main work was setting up a secure environment for the election of a new Government in June 1997, following which it wound down, becoming non-operational on 12th August 1997, handing over to MAPE, who actually ran the judicial restructuring which extended to the economic roots of the problem, as well as retraining the Police. Viewed from another angle, a stable Albanian government capable of legislating had barely formed by the time Alba wound down, President Berisha having only resigned on 24th July: if I remember correctly the legislation took well over a year to be drafted and passed. So it is impossible for Alba to claim what is often claimed.
In many respects Col Marchhio's report reflects the Italian official line, which openly blamed the International Organisations for not taking a firmer hand in stopping the wave of Albanian refugees which inundated Italy, affecting the internal political balance of the Nation. If one Nation alone has a position, it should be reflected as such: it is, however, hard to accept as a long-term charge when WEU reacted with staff on the ground within 6 hours of being given the job, far faster than Italy managed - I know because I paid for it. This was further complicated by the conflation of the two Operations by the Italian Office of Public Information, putting MAPE's training function to Alba's credit. The simple fact is that you cannot train police correctly in the four months Alba was operational, let alone train them in a legislative structure which does not yet exist!
Alba was only ever conceived as as a stop-gap until a heavyweight International Organisation could be chosen: they may perhaps justifiably have criticised the UN for foot-dragging, but WEU did not, and spent four years doing the real job. More could have been done, but was not because the EU had other fish to fry: if the thing came unstuck since, I think that is where the blame lies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.10.226.177 (talk) 15:02, 9 March 2015 (UTC)