[4] While recent data places the Sigurimi's official foundation on 10 December 1944 as the OZNA ('Department for Protection of the People'),[5] historian Robert Elsie has argued that its organisational roots go as far back as 19 March 1943.

[citation needed] The People's Defense Division, formed in 1945 from Haxhi Lleshi's most reliable resistance fighters, was the precursor to the Sigurimi's 5,000-strong uniformed internal security force.

In 1989 the division was organized into five regiments of mechanized infantry that could be ordered to quell any domestic disturbances posing a threat to the Party of Labour of Albania leadership.

Although groups of Albanian émigrés sought Western support for their efforts to overthrow the Communist government in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they quickly ceased to be a credible threat because of the effectiveness of the Sigurimi.

[citation needed] Sigurimi personnel were generally career volunteers, recommended by loyal party members and subjected to careful political and psychological screening before they were selected to join the service.

It was responsible for purging the party, government, military, and its own apparatus of individuals closely associated with Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, or China after Albania broke from successive alliances with each of those countries.