SHISH and national security

By Ekrem Spahiu, former Deputy Minister of Defence

The State Intelligence Service, one of the country’s key institutions and the body that provides the national security system with an understanding of the strategic environment on which decision-making is based, has deteriorated, revealing a criminalized situation. Both personally and institutionally.

This situation emerged immediately and in parallel with the head’s detention under house arrest. So this must have been the case for who knows how long! Without prejudging the matter, this development and its logic suggest that the situation within this service must be even worse.

And where? In the State Intelligence Service, which is particularly important for relatively small countries such as ours. It is of special importance because it is perhaps the main service capable of compensating for our modest capabilities in the economy, the military, and elsewhere.

For a small state, information alone can serve as a force multiplier. The intelligence service is the link that connects information with state power. What distinguishes an intelligence service as effective or ineffective is timely warning. But what happened with the head of SHISH showed that this institution is absolutely behind events, rather than ahead of them, since its own head apparently placed herself at the service of crime. And, of course, in such circumstances, it is the entire country that will find itself not only behind risks and threats, but also struck by them.

Yet even this would have been the lesser evil when we hear that the head of this service supposedly has the authority and powers to blind the entire national security system, given that she apparently had the ability to “switch off the state’s radars”; in other words, to give and receive information in the service of organized crime, block the state’s access to information and awareness needed to detect and track threats to control the territory, land, sea and air spaces, as well as the corridors and entry and exit points from the country; to detect and assess criminal activities; and to identify and control the flow of goods crossing the border through customs, while simultaneously threatening economic interests, market security and national security.

Moreover, the situation revealed within the State Intelligence Service showed an even more serious dimension: criminal activity carried out through a network between the State Intelligence Service and the leadership of the State Police! It could hardly have been otherwise when virtually the same situation has appeared repeatedly within the State Police, where corruption and cooperation with organized crime risk being systemic even within this important national security institution.

In this context, we learn that the National Security Council convened over this serious situation in the national security system. I hope this meeting was not the first held by this body on major issues concerning SHISH’s effectiveness in the service of national security.

Meetings can be held, but the serious situation within the State Intelligence Service has also led to a loss of confidence in the institutional capacity of the Albanian state to act as a partner to the services of allied countries. It will be difficult for partner services to trust the State Intelligence Service when they see that its secret documents and activities are being shared with criminalized groups or individuals!

In fact, it should be borne in mind that the deterioration within this service begins with the procedure for selecting and appointing the head of the institution, given that a person dismissed in the sister state of Kosovo, moreover for leaking information, was appointed to a higher position in Albania!

As is well known, the capabilities of intelligence services take time to develop and consolidate. If the situation within the State Intelligence Service is not urgently put right, it is unlikely that the Albanian state will be trusted to host the upcoming NATO Summit in Albania. Allied countries that maintain security standards cannot accept such major forums being held in an environment of insecurity.

Failure to restore SHISH from this situation could also jeopardize the holding of the NATO Summit in Albania, and that would be a major moral and reputational loss for our country.