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America’s Eisenhower Inspires Albania’s First Woman General
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/arti...llenges-11-21-
"Manushaqe Shehu, the first woman in the Balkans to become a General, says she owes her success to her family’s support - while also leaning on a motto of America’s wartime hero."
"Manushaqe Shehu was made a General of the Albanian armed forces on November 16.
This was a landmark in both Albanian and Balkan history. At 51, the former colonel is the first woman to reach these heights in 104 years of Albania’s existence as an independent state.
Albania has meanwhile gained the distinction of becoming the first country in the Balkans to promote a woman to the rank of General.
She joined the Albanian army 32 years ago, when she was 19, following in the footsteps of other family members, she told BIRN in an interview.
“I come from a military family. My father, uncle and my two brothers were part of the army,” she said.
General Shehu told BIRN that she survived the harshness of life as a woman in a military garrison with a strong will and with the pride that she took from taking part in important military activities.
However, she says that during her long army career she faced difficult moments when not only strong physical but mental reserves were needed.
“There have been many difficult moments in my work. I remember one time when I had to march for 24 hours in the rain with 40kg of equipment,” she recalled.
“One of the most critical situations was in the village Pjece in 1988. We deployed there in tents but owing to a snow storm we got stuck there for a month,” she added.
Albania became a member of the NATO alliance in 2009 and since then the Albanian military have continuously supported alliance missions with troops and other services.
In line with NATO standards, the country no longer has a huge conscript army but a professional military of 8,500 personnel, around 14 per cent of whom are women.
A mother of two, Shehu says the support of her own family has been crucial for the success of her career.
“My two children and my husband have been an inspiration for me to do more in my career. Without their help, I would never have got to where I am,” she said.
However, sometimes hectic army life comes at a price. General Shehu admits that she has not been around her children every time they needed her as a result of her work commitments.
“As a mother, the difficult moments have been many, generally those when my children needed me and I was not able to be near them,” Shehu said.
She also admits that she wanted to become a general from the moment she became an officer.
However, she only started to believe that this dream was possible in 2010, when she was promoted to the rank of Colonel, following completion of her Masters studies in national security.
She believes that her chances of ascending further up the ladder to a General’s grade improved again when Albania made Mimi Kodheli its first female Defence Minister in 2013.
“I had a big chance from the moment that Mimi Kodheli was appointed a minister, although after becoming a colonel I already started to really believe that I could move forward in the military career,” she said.
In life and in work, she remains guided by the words of another, more famous general, America’s World War II hero and subsequent president, Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, whose maxim was: “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”"
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Originally Posted by Taizhou
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