On a bare hillside in the north of Albania, there is a portal to Albania's communist past. Buried in the heart of the mountain, hidden behind massive steel doors is an airbase.
In those 600 meters of mountain tunnels, everything was once bustling with military life, but now the Gjader air base is a warehouse for dozens of outdated MiGs that gather dust in the dark.
Three decades after the fall of communism, Albanian authorities are trying to sell ancient Soviet and Chinese-made aircraft. "We are harmonizing our weapons with NATO standards," says Chief of Staff Bardil Kollcak. "And as for the MiGs... apart from nostalgia, which is why we will keep a few of them in our museums, we offer the rest for sale," he added. Albanian MiGs 17, 19, and 21 have long since been written off.
Museums, schools and collectors expressed their intention to give these aerial relics a new home. When Albania first announced the possibility of selling the aircraft, the government received requests from an aviation museum in France and a flight school in Germany. Sales have not been realized to date due to bureaucratic reasons and paperwork, writes Hina.
There are also individuals, enthusiasts and airplane lovers on the waiting list, including the French entrepreneur Julien Roche, who would place a MiG in his garden. "It is not easy to get such an airplane because most of them were destroyed and not preserved like in Albania," he said. He applied for one of the oldest models, the Chinese-made MiG-15. Its starting price is barely 10.000 euros.
Like the 7.000 Benton bunkers dotted across the country, the Gjader Air Base with its tangle of tunnels was part of dictator Enver Hoxha's plan to fortify the country in fear of foreign invasion. Although it has not been used for a long time, the base is still closed to the public.
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