To state the obvious, military/political occupations and international oversight of a country are never welcome to the people who are being occupied and/or overseen. For a while, they grin and bear it, sometimes recognizing the necessity of the loss of sovereignty that they are enduring. But their tolerance inevitably fades - and fast.

In Bucharest recently, I was discussing the oversight role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in my country, Albania, with an expert from that body. He was surprised to learn that the number of OSCE employees in Albania is equal to that of the entire staff of the OSCE's Vienna headquarters.

The sheer scale of the OSCE's operations in Albania is not what troubles me. What is troubling is the seeming permanence of its mission. Indeed, who is to decide when the OSCE's mission in Albania is over?

The question is, of course, broader than that of the OSCE in Albania. With UN administrators still holding sway in Kosovo and Bosnia years after their savage wars ended, and with talk of a UN mission to replace the US occupation administration in Iraq, when should an international administration be terminated and oversight of a country returned to its citizens?

Let there be no mistake: the OSCE played a positive role in stabilizing Albania. Its presence throughout the country in 1997 helped keep Albania united at a time of near civil war.

But 1997 is a long time ago, and Albania has changed dramatically. Its democracy is secure; its economy improving. Yet, despite these far-reaching changes, the dynamics of the OSCE's presence have scarcely budged. Indeed, the OSCE still sticks its nose and fingers into pretty much every aspect of Albanian political life.

The problem with such intrusive oversight is that political issues that incite the strongest passions -- such as determining electoral lists -- are suppressed when an international body offers and imposes its own solutions. But suppression won't make these issues go away; it only lets them fester. Albanian problems now demand homemade Albanian compromises.

For most issues, I suspect that Kosovo and Bosnia are experiencing similar side effects due to their occupations. A stultifying form of international oversight that offers only fiat or imposed conciliation paralyzes their domestic political development. Even more than in Albania, opportunities to develop the habits of compromise that make democratic politics workable are denied to the people.

In Albania, instead of developing and strengthening our infant democratic institutions, the OSCE, in its desire to see its policies implemented, often seeks to bypass or override them. This retards the country's political stabilization and democratic consolidation. Indeed, on some issues, shades of the old imperial strategy of "divide and rule" can be seen, with the OSCE pitting one Albanian institution or political party against another.

Of course, the OSCE's presence in Albania does have political backing from large portions of the country's electorate. Until 2000, the government tended more to rely on the advice of the OSCE, but even since 2001, it has tried to buttress its position by claiming that it gets along better than ever with the OSCE and its mission. When an Albanian minister tried last year to raise the question of the duration of the OSCE's mission, the opposition leapt to the OSCE's defense.

Nonetheless, there is a creeping perception that the OSCE is becoming too deeply engaged in picking winners and losers in Albanian politics - a perception underpinned by wider questions of sovereignty. Is the OSCE's presence retarding the country's independence and economic vitality by creating an image of a protectorate, a country unable to forge international agreements or join powerful international bodies on its own volition? Is it the OSCE's presence, and not Albania's government, that is now keeping the country what it has long been, a hermit kingdom?

I do not attribute any malign or sinister purposes to the OSCE presence in Albania, unless one considers inertia malign. But saying that a body means well and saying that it is actually doing any good are two different things. Worst of all, the OSCE's bureaucratic nature means that it will never have an incentive to leave because the first duty of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself.

Of course, an effective OSCE mission, confined to Tirana and comprised of experts that the country still needs, would be useful. But Albania no longer needs the OSCE's staff to be scattered throughout the country to monitor every aspect of its political life. The reality is that the OSCE has achieved its goals. It is time for it to take a bow and go home to Vienna. That's a lesson other occupying international agencies should keep in mind.