Is it true that most Imperials are too afraid to enforce law in Albania and refer to that province of the empire as "the badlands?"
In parts of the USA where there is less censorship, tales of the Albanian Annexation War (AAW) are pretty legendary. As you know, the Communists were prepared to fight back with with chemical weapons and bunkers all over the country. Returning Imperial soldiers, affected by such weapons, became the subjects of many horror films/expressionist nightmare art. Even though the Imperials won a technical victory, decapitating the government and sending Hoxha into exile in the DPRK, while ultimately dismantling Albanian Communism, word is that the New Albanian government basically finds the country ungovernable. Aside from Somalia and parts of upper New York, Albania is the closest thing to the wild west in the modern world.
The AAW is considered a strategic victory by the Communist bloc. After seeing the cost of trying to take over a fanatical Communist state, the NATO dictatorships eased off a bit (and of course, the rise of the third way Ingsoc regime and the collapse of the USA as a unified, competent federation didn't exactly help their strategic position). Today, the Warsaw Pact refers to Albania "as the poison red apple" and fully expects the New Roman Empire to collapse much like the Ottomans. As we know, the Libyan Arabs are largely unhappy with their present situation and rumor has it that the Soviets and the Yugoslavs still have extensive "red" assets inside of Greece.