Operation Valuable
The Anglo-American intervention in Communist Albania, codenamed Operation Valuable, was a significant Cold War military conflict conducted by the United Kingdom and the United States, in collaboration with Western allies. This covert operation aimed to overthrow the government led by Enver Hoxha. The intervention sought to counter Communist influence and reinstate a leadership aligned with the Western powers. The operation involved strategic military actions, incorporating air, naval, and ground assets in pursuit of its objectives.[14]
MI6 and the CIA launched a joint subversive operation, using Albanian expatriates as agents. Other anti-communist Albanians and many nationalists worked as agents for Greek and Italian intelligence services, some supported by the Anglo-American secret services. Many of the agents were caught, put on trial, and either shot or condemned to long prison terms at penal labour.
Background
Albania was in an unenviable position after World War II.[15] Greece claimed Albanian lands.[15] The Western Allies recognized neither King Zog nor a republican government-in-exile, nor did they ever raise the question of Albania or its borders at major wartime conferences.[15] No reliable statistics on Albania's wartime losses exist, but the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration reported about 30,000 Albanian dead from the war, 200 destroyed villages, 18,000 destroyed houses, and about 100,000 people made homeless.[15] Albanian official statistics claim higher losses.[15]
British plans for the overthrow of Hoxha and the Communist regime in Albania had existed since 1946.[16] The Russia Committee, established in 1946 by the British Foreign Office, was created to oppose the extension of Soviet control by promoting civil strife in Russia's Western border nations.[17]