Articles; UÇK－Drugs－Mafia?

The Wall Street Journal,
Monday, September 9, 1985, pp.1,18
By Anthony M. DeStefano

NEW YORK - The informant who visited the office of U.S. Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani [current Mayor of New York City] last December had a chilling story to tell:

A defendant in a drug racketeering case that Mr. Giuliani was prosecuting was offering $400.000 to anyone who would kill a certain assistant U.S. attorney and a federal drug enforcement agent.

For 45 minutes Mr. Giuliani and his chief assistant, William Tendy, listened to and evaluated the tale. Five other informants later corroborated it. The threatened lawmen-assistant prosecutor Alan M. Cohen and narcotics agent Jack Delmore-were given 24-hour-a-day protection by federal marshals.

For years police and court officials in Italy have had to deal with Maffia attempts on their lives, some of which have succeeded. American gangsters have rarely dared such crimes. But certain criminal groups in the U.S. now seem less restrained. Mr. Giuliani says he has recently heard of more threats against law-enforcement officers and judges around the country than at any other time in his 15 years as a prosecutor. A number of his colleagues share that perception. Mr. Giuliani says that he himself has heen threatened.

The "Balkan Connection"

The drug case that brought forth the threats Mr. Giuliani is concerned about involved the disruption of the so-called "Balkan connectlon" heroin trade conducted by among others a loosely orginised group of ethnic Albanians, centered in New York. A federal probe into this drug traffic and other posslble crimes, including the alleged plot to kill officials, is in progress. The drug investigation and the criminal activities of a group of Albanian-Americans have attracted little publicity.

Many Albanians came to the U.S. after World War II via Yugoslavia. Others before the war, came directly from Albania. A small, mountainous Balkan country, communist Albania is bordered on the west by the Adriatic Sea and on its other boundries by Yugoslavia and Greece...

Albanians who take to crime have created new and unique problems for some law-enforcement officers around the country. Language and a code of silence have protected the Albanian-American crime factions from outside penetration. "They are real secretive" says a detective in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit suburb where many Albanians live. He says police have tried but failed to infiltrate Albanian gangs here.

Various Crimes

Albanian-Americans criminals, police say, are involved in everything from gun-running to counterfeiting. In New York City, a police intelligence analyst says, some ethnic Albanians living in the Bronx are involved in extortion and robbery. Federal officials believe that Albanians run gambling in certain New York ethnic clubs.

Violence within the Albanian community can be particularly brutal, whether related to orginized crime or not. In Hamtramck, an Albanian, reportedly enraged by the belief that his wife had contracted a veneral diseace, shot three people at a clinic and then killed himself. In some attacks, women have been slashed with knives: crowded restaurants and bars have been raked with gunfire. "They're a wild bunch of people," says Capt. Glen McAlpine of the Shelby Township, Mich., police. During an investigation of Albanian crime in Shelby, a bomb exploded next to the police station. A police officer also was threatened, Capt. McAlpine says.

But it is drug trafficking that has gained Albanian organized crime the most notoriety. Some Albanians, according to federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials, are key traders in the "Balkan connection," the Istanbul-to-Belgrade heroin route. While less well known than the so-called Sicilian and French connections, the Balkan route in some years may move 25% to 40% of the U.S. heroin supply, official say.

Ties to Turks

Once serving only as couriers, some ethnic Albanians and Yugoslavs now are taking over more command of the traffic, says Andrew Fenrich, a DEA spokesman in New York. Federal agents say that Balkan crime groups are well suited for trafficking because of close historical and religious ties with the Turks, some of whom are sources of heroin.

DEA agents say the heroin flows from Turkey through Bulgaria and Greece into Yugoslavia. From there it can wind up in Rome, Brussels, The Haggue and the U.S.. Once in America, the Balkan heroin is believed by officials to be distributted by some ethnic Albanians and Turks. (Albania itself, long cut off from the most of the world by its recently deceased leader Enver Hoxha, isn't believed by the U.S. to be involved in the drug trade - [which leaves Kosovo as the only source].)

On the surface, at least, Skender Fici seemed to be a law-abiding businessman. He ran a Staten Island travel agency, Theresa Worldwide, which made a specialty of booking trips to Yugoslavia, where many Albanlans live.

He became a speciailst in handling immigration paper work, and he sponsored a local ethnic Albanian soccer team.

According to federal prosecutors and a sentencing memorandum they filed in Manhattan's Federal District Cortt, Mr. Fici's travel agency made a perfect vehicle for arranging quick trips for drug dealers and couriers working the Balkan connection. One of Mr. Fici's first shipments arrived in New York in February 1979, according to the prosecutors' memo. A kilogram of heroin was distributed in New York partly through the efforts of Xhevedet Lika [an Albanian], known as Joey Lik, who made his base on New York City's polyglot Lower East Side.

There, according to the sentencing memorandum, Mr. Lika sold the drug to other dealers from a social club located in the midst of Judaica shops and Chinese clothing stores.

By 1980, according to federal court testimony and the sentencing report, Mr. Lika was importing heroin as well as distrtbuting it, traveling to Turkey and Yugoslavia to arrange shipments. He also allegedly dealt in cocaine with Xhevedet Mustafa [an Albanbanian], who disappeared in 1982. Mr. Mustafa had been a supporter, of the late, deposed Albanian monarch King Zog, who died in 1961.

Mr. Mustafa skipped out before his own federal trial on drug charges could take place in 1982. In September 1982, be reportedly led an unsuccesslul invasion of Albania aimed at restoring the monarchy. Mr. Hoxha said the invaders all were "liquidated" but Mr. Mustafa still is listed as a fugitive in federal court records.

Mr. Lika, meanwhile, was expanding his heroin business In New York with other associates, according to federal prosecutors. He had fallen out with one of his old partners, Dujo Saljanin, who in 1991 had agreed to import several kilos of heroin for Mr. Llka and others but short-weighted the delivery by a kilo. To resolve the descrepancy, a January 1981 meeting was held at a Park Avenue South restaurant Mr. Saljanin operated. Joey Lika and two other men, Mehmet Bici and Vuksan Vulaj, were present. Mr. Bici later testified in federal court that Mr. Vulaj pulled a gun and shot Mr. Saljanin.

"Mr. Lika had a gun, and he shot him, too," Mr. Bici testified. "I was there, too, and I shot him too. And then we just left, crossed the street," he testified.

Even with 13 bullet wounds, Mr. Saljanin lived a short while, long enough to talk. Mr. Vulaj was later shotgunned to death. Hampered by lack of cooperation in the Albanian community, as well as by difficultles with the Albanlan language that made electronic surveillance useless, police and federal agents worked about three years belore they broke the case in 1984.

Federal officials estimate that the group had imported more than 110 pounds of heroin with a retall or "street" value of $125 million through the Balkan connection before the ring was broken up. Federal agents believe the drugs had been sold in New York, California, Texas and Illinois.

The trail that Mr. Delmore, the DEA agent, followed led to Mr. Bici, who was then serving a sentence in a New York state prison for attempted manslaughter of his wife. Questioned by Mr. Delmore, Mr. Bici at first denied having any knowledge of drug dealing or the Saljanin murder but ultimately decided to cooperate. He was indicted along wlth Joey Llka, Mr. Llka's brother Luan, Mr. Fici and others on federal charges of drug dealing and racketeering. Luan Lika was never arrested and remains a fugitive. Mr. Bici pleaded guilty to transporting heroin and to racketeering. He was sentenced to eight years and is serving time under guard in the "prisoner witness" protection program. The atmosphere at the trial, which began late last year, was highly charged. Early in the proceeding, Mr, Cohen, the prosecutor, mentioned that a witness claimed to have been threatened with death by Mr. Lika's father.

(Judge Vincent Broderick kept Lika family spectators seated near the back of the courtroom.)

Another witness reported that a man outside the Manhattan courthouse had threatened her. Gjon Barisha, a prospective witness, fled before the trial, after claiming that he had been fired at. He evaded federal agents for months before being arrested on a material witness warrant last month. Others who were to be called as witnesses hid out or refused to testify, prosecutor Cohen says, because they feared, as one of them put it, "a bullet in the head." Prosecutors allege that some witnesses perjured themselves at the trial.

Judge Broderick remarked during the trial that the case involved the most reckless disregard for human life that he had ever seen. The message wasn't lost on federal officials, who took the threats against them seriously.

Since World War II, there have been more than 800 revenge killings by Albanians in Yugoslavia and several in New York, according to Dushan Kosovich, a scholar who has studied Albanlan mores. Mr. Giuliani says of the threat against Mr. Cohen: "This was the most serious threat I have seen yet to an assistant U.S. attorney."

For three months from late 1984 into early 1985, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Delmore and their wives shared their homes with federal marshals acting as bodyguards. "You can't believe what it is like" says Mr. Cohen, who was guarded in court-even when he went to the men's room.

A Jury this year convicted Joey Lika and Mr. Fici on charges of racketeering conspiracy. Mr. Lika was also convicted of the more serious charge of running a criminal enterprise. To emphasize to the defendants that their opponent was the government, and not just Mr. Cohen, U S. Attorney Giuliani himself appeared in court for the sentencing in March. Mr, Lika denied in court as sentence was about to be rendered that he wanted anyone killed... Mr. Lika was sentenced to life in prison, Mr. Fici to 80 years. They are appealing their convictions.

Mr. Giuliani refuses to discuss detalls, but he says he has learned recently that there had been an effort to fulflll an assassination contract against him and Messrs. Cohen and Delmore. "After you have been convicted," he says, "there is no rational reason to klll a prosecutor, except revenge."

While Mr. Giuliani says he now considers the threat against himself "minor," DEA agent Delmore and his famlly have moved-away from New York. Prosecutor Cohen is still investigating other drug dealers in New York but he, too, has a new residence.

Federal officials aren't sure how much lasting damage they have done to the Balkan connection. Mr. Cohen says the Lika case and others, prosecuted by local authorities, have resulted in the conviction of more than 10 Albanian-American drug traffickers, and that has got to have some impact.

Mr. Fenrich, the DEA spokesman, says that the Lika case made it clear that vendettas against law enforcers won's be tolerated.

As for Joey Llka, prison may be the safest place for him. Because he testified about his part in the Saljanin killing, federal agents say he now is "in the blood" - that is, the object of a vendetta - with relatives of Mr. Saljanin.

Reasons for the Deafening Silence

It is legitimate to ask why trafficking on such a wide scale, fully known at local levels, has not been picked up by the international media. The silence can probably be explained by favorable attitudes toward a "Greater Albania"-the trafficking is basically being judged on its geostrategic implications. Everyone pretends not to see that a large part of international humanitarian aid shipped to Albania is sent directly to Kosovo despite Albania's own poverty. Officially, Tirana is calling for extensive autonomy for Kosovo, but the Albanians are fully aware that Serbian intransigence will make this solution unworkable. So everyone is ready for a new conflict. The US State Department is arguing that the Balkan conflict is an embryonic war that potentially involves far vaster regions, notably the republics of the former Soviet Union populated by muslim majorities. A crushing defeat of fellow Muslims in the Balkans could push these republics into Iranian-style fundamentalism. This theory, which holds that a strong Muslim axis on the Adriatic would weaken Europe, is used to justify unilateral US action in the area. The only US expeditionary corps in the region is stationed in in the region is stationed in Macedonia where it dupplicates the role of the United Nations' Scandinavian troops, all the while remaining under US command. Marines and intelligence agents, almost all veterans of the "Special Corps" in Lebanon, initially numbered only 300 men (and were regularly relieved in order "to allow the greatest number of soldiers to become familiar with the country," according to one officer), but now number over 2000. The US government, which has witnessed the European Union's ineffectiveness in the Balkans, is not ruling out the possibility of supporting a "Greater Albania" that would put a brake on Serbian expansion. Furthermore, the increased autonomy or even independence of Kosovo would be based on a population that is overwhelmingly homogeneous, and could therefore be easily sold to international opinion, not least of which is obviously the Macedonian government, which has the most to lose from a redrawing of local borders. It has been hit hard by Greece's economic and political embargo, and has to deal with increasingly dangerous opposition from the ultra-nationalistic Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). In order to cling to its majority, the government has had to make concessions to the Albanian minority, which means that it has increasingly aligned itself with Tirana's policies (despite certain divergences). In Kosovo, drug and weapons trafficking is fueling geopolitical hopes and fears. The inhabitants are being held hostage not only by the Serbs, but also by local godfathers who "protect" them in the finest mafia tradition. As a FORPRONU officer declared to the OGD's special envoy, "weapons, heroin and dirty money are transforming this part of the world into a new drug hub." In the face of this perfectly obvious situation, US priorities in Macedonia dictate turning a blind eye to a drug trade that finances the arming of Kosovo Albanians liable to loosen the Serbian yoke, indeed to prepare an uprising. A blindness made all the easier since the heroin in question is destined for Europe rather than North America (special OGD envoy to the Caucasus and Balkans).

© La Dépêche Internationale des Drogues n° 32, June 1994

The International Herald Tribune
Paris, June 6, 1994,
By Barry James

Albanian groups in Macedonia and Kosovo province in Serbia are trading heroin for large quantities of weapons for use in a brewing conflict in Kosovo, according to a report to be published monday by a Paris-based narcotics-monitoring group.
In recent months, significant quantities of heroin have been seized in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Greece from traffickers based in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, as well as the Macedonian capital, Skopje, and the northern Albanian town of Skodra, the report said.
Italian policemen recently dismantled a major Italian-Macedonian connection, seizing 40 kilograms of heroin shipped via the Balkans, it said.
It said Albanian traffickers were supplied with heroin and weapons by Mafia-like groups in Georgia and Armenia. The Albanians then pay for the supplies by reselling the heroin in the west. The report said the Albanian dealers also traded directly with Russian soldiers for weapons in exchange for heroin.
The report was drawn up by the "Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues", which said it conducted an investigation lasting nearly a year. The organization carries out research on behalf of the European Commission in Brussels, as well as publishing and an annual survey of the narcotics trade.
Albanian Muslims from a restive minority in independent Macedonia but make up the bulk of the population in Kosovo...
Kosovo, on the southern frontier of Serbia, is a potential flash point because of conflicting Serbian and Albanian nationalism and religion. Although in the minority, the Serbs consider the province part of Serbia. The drug report said that a large influx of weapons "is fueling geopolitical hopes and fears," and adding to the power of Albanian Mafia Godfathers. Albanian leaders, it added, "are inherently in favour of an uprising in Kosovo."
In Macedonia, about 2,000 U.S. troops are stationed under United Nations mandate.
In western Europe, particularly in Germany, the Albanian traffickers compete with Turkish criminals, the report said. They are not so well known to the police and have forged close links with Georgians and Armenians, who distrust the Turks.
Abkhazi separatists in northern Georgia have set up yet another connection for arms and narcotics traffic toward the Balkans, according to the monitoring organization.
The report said Albanian mafiosi, who wear expensive suits and who travel ostentatiously in mercedes cars accompanied by bodyguards, have taken over a floor of one of Skopje's best hotels. It said a suspected heroin refinery was in operation near the town of Kumanovo in Macedonia.

The Times 06.05.99
John Laughland

'In spontaneously opening our hearts to these Kosovan refugees,
we are opening our country to organised criminality'
The announcement yesterday that Britain will receive 1,000 Kosovan refugees every week is excellent news - for heroin addicts, that is. The arrivals from Kosovo are the final link in a chain which connects European users with Central Asian producers. And the conflict in Kosovo is the latest in a series of wars in the former communist bloc fought to seize control of drugs trafficking routes. This war is criminal in every sense.
Just as previous wars were fought to control trade routes, whether for oil or other commodities, so this conflict is drug-fuelled. The "ethnic" uprisings which convulse formerly communist states invariably occur at strategically important points on the Eurasian drug route. It runs from the heroin fields of Afghanistan, through the former Soviet Central Asian states, the Caucasus, Turkish Kurdistan and into the Balkans. Eighty per cent of the heroin on sale in Europe now passes along this route.
Unlike normal trade, the drugs trade requires paramilitary control to be exercised over territory. Private armies are needed to control land supply routes to Europe.
Conflicts in formerly communist countries have an unerring tendency to take place over the mountain passes and ports vital to the drugs trade. The Chechen war in Southern Russia and the Ossetian conflict were battles for control of the main road through the Caucasus Mountains. The Abhkhaz uprising in Georgia in 1992-93, and the Albanian rebellion in 1997, were conflicts over the control of ports.
The war in Kosovo is only the latest, most horrific, of these turf battles. The KLA, whose activities are at the heart of the conflict, is an outgrowth of the Kosovo Albanian mafia. These Kosovan criminals operate the most powerful drug-running network in Europe.
The Albanian mafia's growth, and involvement in the Kosovo conflict, is the horrific coda to a series of errors. First, the war in Yugoslavia between 1991-1995 disrupted the normal drugs route into Europe. Albanian criminals profited from this disruption.
Secondly, the ranks of the criminals have been swollen by former communist thugs deprived of a living by changes in Albania. When Sali Berisha was elected head of Albania's democratic government in 1992 he sacked two-thirds of the secret police force, the Sigurimi. They rapidly decanted themselves into organised Albanian crime networks, just as East German Stasi agents became active in the Russian mafia. Because Albania was now governed by a democrat, these communist criminals concentrated their illegal activities north of the border, in Yugoslav Kosovo.
Thirdly, in 1997, when President Berisha impounded 100 speedboats running drugs, illegal immigrants and prostitutes across the Adriatic to Italy, the mafia and the old Communist Party conspired to overthrow him. After the coup, Jane's Intelligence Review wrote that Albania had become "the crime capital of Europe". The mafia-communist seizure of power in Tirana in mid-1997 allowed the KLA to concentrate on expanding its influence further north, and the uprising within Yugoslavia began in earnest in January 1998.
Finally, a separate development in the mid 1990s made the need to control the new drugs hub of Kosovo even more urgent than before. In March 1995, the Schengen agreement abolished border controls throughout continental Europe. Schengen conveniently created an entire frontier-free zone on the KLA's doorstep, ripe for exploitation.
Albanians now control some 70 per cent of the heroin market in Germany and Switzerland. The KLA's two main offices abroad are, unsurprisingly, in those countries. There are now 2,000 Kosovan Albanians in Swiss prisons serving sentences for drugs smuggling. The new implantation of Kosovan refugees in Britain will give the KLA a new, and unexpected, base for its trafficking here.
Not all the refugees, of course, will be drug-runners. But they will be vulnerable to control by them. Cherie Blair, who cried at the refugees' fate, may not have realised that they are also victims of the KLA, which controls the camps. Reports from Macedonia and Albania confirm that KLA "minders" ensure that all refugees peddle the same line when speaking to Western journalists. KLA gangsters rob them of any remaining cash. And KLA pimps driving Mercedes kidnap refugee girls for prostitution in Italy.
In spontaneously opening our hearts to these refugees, we are opening our country to organised criminality.

The author is an academic and writer on European affairs

Kosovo is Mafia's 'heroin gateway to West'

by Eve-Ann Prentice in Belgrade
July 24 1999

The Kosovo conflict has turned the province into a magnet for many of the world's notorious drug barons, according to a director of the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers' Association.

More than 40 per cent of the heroin reaching Western Europe comes through the Serb province because of a lack of border controls, says Marko Nicovic.

"Kosovo is now the Colombia of Europe. There is no border between Kosovo and Albania or between Macedonia and Kosovo," he said yesterday. "For the Turkish, Russian, Italian and Albanian mafias," Kosovo really had become a paradise.

Mr Nicovic is a former Belgrade police chief and drug squad detective who worked for years in co-operation with police in Britain and the US. He says he began to notice Albanian gangs dealing in drugs in the mid-1980s.

Heroin trafficking increased, he says, after Yugoslavia lost its membership of Interpol with the imposition of international sanctions in 1993. "Our police had great expertise and experience with this," Mr Nicovic says. The Kosovo conflict has left the province without police or customs controls and "Kfor soldiers are not criminal investigators".

Mr Nicovic said drugs were being brought into Kosovo from Asia and Turkey, then taken on to Western Europe by road and sea by drug barons from Italy and Albania.

Mr Nicovic says many Kosovo Albanians have bought harbourside sites in Albania in the past few years. Much of the heroin shipped from there to small ports in southeastern Italy are run by Italian Mafiosi. Other favourite routes are by road, north through Serbia to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany, he says.

The former Yugoslav drugs squad chief says the Albanian drugs and arms mafia is particularly hard to penetrate. Albanians have strong family ties and it is hard to find informers. "They have a brotherhood which gives them a far greater ability to form a mafia than even the Sicilians."

Mr Nicovic says hundreds of pounds of heroin are being stored in the village of Veliki Trnovac, near Gnjiliane, in the southeast of Kosovo, and Djakovica in the west. "The criminals have found the one country between Asia and Europe which is not a member of Interpol," he says.

"This is a cancer area for Europe as Western Europe will very soon discover. As each day passes the Albanian mafia becomes richer and more powerful."

The SERBIAN UNITY CONGRESS is a non-profit international organization representing Serbs and friends of Serbs in the diaspora committed to ensuring the continuation of the Serbian heritage. It was incorporated in 1990 in response to the historic changes occurring in Yugoslavia. Its long term goal is to contribute to democratization and reconstruction of the Serbian territories.

http://www.suc.org/kosovo_crisis/Jul_24/0.html

Erich SCHMIDT-EENBOOM vom Weilheimer Institut für Friedenspolitik zur UCK

ARD-Morgenmagazin, 24.6.99, 8:09-13; das Interview führte Peter SCHREIBER

[Anmoderation] Bereits Anfang der Woche hat sich die UCK, die Kosovo-Befreiungsarmee, schriftlich gegenüber der NATO verpflichtet, ihre Waffen niederzulegen. Ob sie das wirklich tun wird, über die Rolle der UCK sprach ich heute morgen mit Erich Schmidt-Eenbom vom Institut für Friedenspolitik, und ich fragte ihn: Was ist eigentlich dran an den Gerüchten, daß die UCK einen Teil ihrer Waffen mit Drogengeldern bezahlt habe?

Das sind keine Gerüchte, sondern sehr viele Sicherheitsbehörden, die Bundespolizeien in Dänemark, Schweden, in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, in der Schweiz und in Italien, haben Nachweise dafür, daß Gelder der organisierten Kriminalität zur Bewaffnung der UCK aufgewandt wurden, insbesondere aus dem Heroin-Handel in Nord- und Mitteleuropa.

Wir haben vorhin in der Tagesschau gesehen: da wurde James Rubin zitiert, der Sprecher des Auswärtigen Amtes in Washington, und der sagte, der CIA, der amerikanische Geheimdienst, habe keine Beweise dafür.

Die Amerikaner unterstützen die UCK seit dem Februar diesen Jahres, haben sie vorher selbst als terroristische Vereinigung eingeschätzt, aber seit sie sie zum Waffengefährten der NATO gemacht haben, in Rambouillet politisch salonfähig, hört man aus den Vereinigten Staaten all das nicht mehr, was Erkenntnis auch der amerikanischen Sicherheitsbehörden im vergangenen Jahr noch war. Es gibt sehr viele Festnahmen in Mittel- und Osteuropa, in Nordeuropa deutliche Beweise dafür, daß die UCK aus dem organisierten Verbrechen bezahlt wird, und es war traditionell bekannt, daß Albanien und das Kosovo auch immer Rückzugsraum der italienischen Mafia war.

Wie würden Sie die UCK ideologisch einordnen? Wo sind ihre Wurzeln?

Die UCK hat totalitäre Ideologien - im Schwerpunkt Nationalkommunisten aus dem alten Albanien eines Envar HODSCHA, und bei dem, was aus dem amerikanischen Exil dazugekommen ist, gab es auch faschistische Wurzeln, die sich gründen bis in die SS-Division Skandarbeg, die in den späten vierziger Jahren [sic] in deutschen Diensten furchtbare Greuel im Kosovo und Albanien verübt hat *).

Sie schließen aus, daß sich aus dieser Miliz, aus dieser Befreiungsarmee eine ganz normale - ich sage sogar in Anführungsstrichen 'demokratische Partei' - entwickeln könnte?

Ich schließe es aus, und der israelische Außenminister SCHARON wie der Mossad [der israel. Geheimdienst, W.N.] haben sehr deutlich davor gewarnt, daß die Erfüllung der politischen Zielvorstellungen der UCK, nämlich selbständiges Kosovo und Anschluß an ein Groß-Albanien, zu einem Hort des Terrorismus für Europa führen würden. Ich stehe mit meiner Meinung nicht allein, daß wir eine sehr bedrohliche Situation bekommen. Es gibt zwar eine politische Spitze der UCK, aber der wird es nicht gelingen, die Freischärler, die Rebellen dauerhaft unter Kontrolle zu halten, wenn man ihnen das politische Ziel einer staatlichen Autonomie nicht zubilligt; kommt aber diese staatliche Autonomie, dann wird durch diese Ideologie des Groß-Albanien mit Ansprüchen auf Makedonien, auf Griechenland die Situation auf dem Balkan nochmal sehr viel kritischer, dann droht ein vierter oder fünfter Balkan-Krieg - um Makedonien.

Nun hat man erst vor ein paar Tagen, am Montag, ein Abkommen unterzeichnet zwischen UCK und Nato: die UCK will ihre Waffen abgeben - wenn sie sich weigern sollte, so sagte dann SOLANA, werde man das mit Gewalt tun; was, würden Sie sagen, könnte das für Folgen haben?

Also zunächst mal wird die UCK nur optisch entwaffnet werden können, d.h. diejenigen, die ihre Waffen offen tragen, werden sie abgeben müssen. Ich gehe davon aus, daß ein Großteil des schweren Geräts in Nordalbanien untergebracht wird und daß die Kalaschnikow, also die Hauptwaffe der UCK, in großen Mengen in den Bergen gebunkert wird für den Fall, daß die NATO das, was die USA Herrn THACI zur Hälfte versprochen haben, nämlich selbständiges Kosovo, nicht erfüllt - dann wird die UCK in 1, 2 Jahren ihre Waffen wieder hervorkramen und wird neue Terrorakte begehen, um ihr politisches Ziel durchzusetzen. Für die Implementierungstruppen entsteht dann das Problem, daß sie von den UCK-Freischärlern quasi als Besatzungsregime empfunden und entsprechend bekämpft werden.

Transkription: Dr. Wolfgang NÄSER 24.6.99 am
-----------------------------------------
Schmidt-Eenboom führt anderswo hierzu aus:
""Skanderbeg" heißt der Albanerclub in Ludwigshafen und der Name dieses im 15. Jahrhundert gegen das Osmanische Reich kämpfenden Freiheitshelden war auch der Ehrenname der im April 1944 von Heinrich Himmler aufgestellten, in weiten Teilen mit Kosovaren aufgefüllten 21. Division der Waffen-SS, die bei ihren "Einsätzen im örtlichen Partisanenkampf" zahlreiche Kriegsverbrechen an Juden und Serben beging. Der Lagebericht des Ic dieser Division vom 7. Juli 1994 hielt fest: "Die Festsetzung und Abschiebung der Juden zur Arbeitsleistung in das Reich, sowie ihre Enteignung und die Aufdeckung der gut organisierten kommunistischen Organisation sowie die Sicherheitsverwahrung der Kommunisten und Bandenhelfer in einem KZ in Pristina hat in dieser Richtung die Lage geklärt und im alteingessenen Volk Kosovos Genugtuung erzeugt". Italien hatte 1941 den Kosovo weitgehend aus Jugoslawien gelöst und Albanien zugeschlagen und damit das Tor zum Völkermord an den Serben im Kosovo aufgestoßen."

Guest Column: The Crime Syndicate Behind the KLA

The organized crime syndicate behind the KLA illustrates the insatiable nationalism of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

by Ken Layne
April 8, 1999

The news photos show tens of thousands of villagers -- cold, tired, hungry, and beaten -- crowding the borders of Macedonia and Albania. Their homes have been burned, their shops looted, their young men executed by Serb thugs. The sight of those dirty green Eastern European trains bursting with refugees brings to mind the death trains of Nazi Germany. As I type these words, half of Kosovo's population has been forced out. Only a delusional nationalist in Belgrade could look at these images and feel anything but sorrow and sympathy.

But very little has been done to examine exactly who are these Kosovo rebel fighters that the U.S. and NATO are backing with the collective firepower of the West. They are, according to those who began paying attention to such things years ago, not the huddled masses on the bleak Kosovar borders, but rather a small, yet well-funded army, of thugs bent on widespread civil war and fueled by exactly the same kind of virulent nationalism of which the West is so quick to accuse the Serbs.

The architects of this war are themselves ethnic Albanians -- the extremist leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army are the same ethnic Albanians who made fortunes by smuggling weapons, heroin, and illegal immigrants in the chaotic years following the collapse of Yugoslavia's and Albania's communist regimes. On this, even the generally hawkish Republican Party seems to agree.

This little-discussed fact has nonetheless been well documented; the Federation of American Scientists -- successor to the Manhattan Project's Foundation of Atomic Scientists -- has assembled a huge archive of media and law-enforcement reports, along with internal documents from secret meetings of the KLA's support group in Switzerland, the Kosovo National Group.

Since the early 1990s, you could see them in the resort towns of Montenegro and southern Albania, or poolside at four-star hotels in Zurich, or driving luxurious Land Rovers to hilltop villas in Tetovo, surrounded by satellite dishes and young toughs brandishing Kalishnikov machine guns, wearing nylon jackets advertising non-existent U.S. sports teams like the San Diego Pitchers and the Indiana Hawks. The patriarchs were always big men with big Rolex watches and they always paid for the drinks. They were Muslim the way I'm Christian -- meaning they would not be considered devout. And there were always plenty of young girls around while the wives stayed at home.

This criminal upper crust runs an efficient continental network based entirely on the Balkans' black economy. Mother Jones correspondent Frank Viviano extensively reported on the Balkan heroin route and its increasing reliance on Kosovars back in 1995, and The Geopolitical Drug Dispatch, in "Guns and Ammo for a Greater Albania," illustrated the connection between ethnic Albanian nationalism and the global drug trade as early as 1994:

"Heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia, and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined not only for the current conflict in Bosnia but also for the brewing war in Kosovo.... Hence on 18 May, as part of a ten-month-old operation code-named 'Macedonia,' Italian police dismantled a major Italian-Macedonian network and seized 40 kilograms of heroin produced in Turkey and shipped to Italy via the Balkans. In recent months, significant quantities of heroin have been seized in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Greece, from traffickers who usually hail from Pristina (the capital of Kosovo), Skopje (capital of Macedonia), or Skorda (a large town in northern Albania).

At Skopje's Grand Hotel, an entire floor is reserved for new mafia kingpins who travel ostentatiously in Mercedes, wear Armani clothes, and are accompanied by discreet bodyguards toting assault rifles and hand guns. The Macedonian government officially describes these young Albanians (whose flashy wealth is all the more provocative at a time of unprecedented economic crisis aggravated by the Greek embargo) as 'traders' who are obliged to defend themselves in hard times. The war in Bosnia guarantees the Albanian mafia an 'understanding attitude' on the part of local Macedonian authorities, since the struggle is now viewed by Macedonia's Muslim Albanian population as a veritable holy war."

But somehow the fact that the KLA is funded by organized crime bosses slips through the cracks of most U.S. reporting on the latest Balkan war. (An exception, as usual, is the New York Times' Chris Hedges, who has regularly filed detailed dispatches on the dirty laundry of both Serbs and Albanians.)

Heroin travels easily from Turkey -- through Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania -- to Western Europe. Three years ago, a Swiss narcotics agent told me that Switzerland's jails were bulging with more than 2,000 Kosovar smugglers. The Bosnian Muslims got many of their weapons from the Kosovars, who bought them cheap from the corrupt armies of the former Eastern Bloc. In Macedonia, heroin was cheaper than beer and a frighteningly large percentage of the city's smart kids were hooked. And in Skopje, the local Albanian soccer team has a fan club called The Smugglers.

These flashy, vulgar crime-lords are also family men, dedicated to their people, and if a Kosovar family had any money it was because a cousin or uncle or village bigshot sent Western currency home. These smugglers believed in Greater Albania -- a faith not limited to the criminal rich. The way to get it? Organize the Western European and American diaspora of ethnic Albanians, fund the Kosovo Liberation Army, publicize the grim living conditions and savage human-rights abuses in Kosovo, dramatically disobey Milosevic's hateful racist policies, start a war of terrorism on the Serb cops, and demand NATO intervention.

Knowing the Serbian nostalgia for Kosovo and the Milosevic-led aggression that started the wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, these Kosovar patriarchs knew Belgrade wouldn't back down. The West would eventually come in, as it did when Sarajevo turned into a Bosch painting of endless horror. Milosevic would be crushed and Kosovo would become independent -- or join again with the Motherland of Albania -- and the ethnic-Albanian third of Macedonia would follow.

The nationalism which has wrought the KLA and the current war over Kosovo isn't exclusive to the criminal elite among ethnic Albanians in the Balkans. The gruesome atrocities in Kosovo today are, to most ethnic Albanians with ties to the land, seen as a necessary evil. Even those suffering most, huddled against foreign borders and grieving for the relatives they've lost to Serb gunmen, speak strongly of someday going home. When the Serbs are gone forever.

Meanwhile, the sleazy Kosovar mafia kings are left united in their dream of an expanded Albanian nation, but God only knows what sort of twisted internal chaos would erupt should Greater Albania become a reality -- the violent 1996-97 collapse of Albania proper provides a dark hint of what the future may hold.

Ken Layne, a former freelance journalist in Yugoslavia, is now the editor of Tabloid.net, a tabloid-style, muckraking online magazine. He wrote the MoJo Wire feature "No Easy Answer" when the NATO bombings began.

The MoJo Wire is the online cousin of Mother Jones magazine, the first general-interest magazine on the Web. It, like its print cohort, is published by the Foundation for National Progress.

http://www.mojones.com/total_coverage/kosovo/layne2.html

Editorial: Kosovo Liberation Army: Not Nice Guys

Ken Layne
(April 18, 1999)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Page E-1

The news photos show tens of thousands of villagers - cold, tired, hungry and beaten - crowding the borders of Macedonia and Albania. Their homes have been burned, their shops looted, their young men executed by Serb thugs. The sight of those dirty green Eastern European trains bursting with refugees brings to mind the death trains of Nazi Germany. As I type these words, half of Kosovo's population has been forced out. Only a delusional nationalist in Belgrade could look at these images and feel anything but sorrow and sympathy.

But very little has been done to examine exactly who are these Kosovo rebel fighters that the United States and NATO are backing with the collective firepower of the West. They are, according to those who began paying attention to such things years ago, not the huddled masses on the bleak Kosovar borders, but rather a small, yet well-funded, army of thugs bent on wide spread civil war and fueled by exactly the same kind of virulent nationalism of which the West is so quick to accuse the Serbs.

The architects of this war are themselves ethnic Albanians - the extremist leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army are the same ethnic Albanians who made fortunes by smuggling weapons, heroin and illegal immigrants in the chaotic years following the collapse of Yugoslavia's and Albania's Communist regimes. On this, even the generally hawkish Republican Party seems to agree.

This little-discussed fact has nonetheless been well documented; the Federation of American Scientists - successor to the Manhattan Project's Foundation of Atomic Scientists - has assembled a huge archive of media and law-enforcement reports, along with internal documents from secret meetings of the KLA's support group in Switzerland, the Kosovo National Group.

Since the early 1990s, you could see them in the resort towns of Montenegro and southern Albania, or poolside at four-star hotels in Zurich, or driving luxurious Land Rovers to hilltop villas in Tetovo, surrounded by satellite dishes and young toughs brandishing Kalishnikov machine guns, wearing nylon jackets advertising nonexistent U.S. sports teams like the San Diego Pitchers and the Indiana Hawks. The patriarchs were always big men with big Rolex watches and they always paid for the drinks. They were Muslim the way I'm Christian - meaning they would not be considered devout.

This criminal upper crust runs an efficient continental network based entirely on the Balkans' black economy. Mother Jones correspondent Frank Viviano extensively reported on the Balkan heroin route and its increasing reliance on Kosovars back in 1995, and The Geopolitical Drug Dispatch, in "Guns and Ammo for a Greater Albania," illustrated the connection between ethnic Albanian nationalism and the global drug trade as early as 1994:

"Heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined not only for the current conflict in Bosnia but also for the brewing war in Kosovo. . . . Hence on May 18, as part of a 10-month- old operation code-named ` Macedonia,' Italian police dismantled a major Italian-Macedonian network and seized 40 kilograms of heroin produced in Turkey and shipped to Italy via the Balkans. In recent months, significant quantities of heroin have been seized in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Greece, from traffickers who usually hail from Pristina (the capital of Kosovo), Skopje (capital of Macedonia), or Skorda (a large town in northern Albania)."

"At Skopje's Grand Hotel, an entire floor is reserved for new mafia kingpins who travel ostentatiously in Mercedes, wear Armani clothes and are accompanied by discreet bodyguards toting assault rifles and hand guns. The Macedonian government officially describes these young Albanians (whose flashy wealth is all the more provocative at a time of unprecedented economic crisis aggravated by the Greek embargo) as ` traders' who are obliged to defend themselves in hard times. The war in Bosnia guarantees the Albanian mafia an ` understanding attitude' on the part of local Macedonian authorities, since the struggle is now viewed by Macedonia's Muslim Albanian population as a veritable holy war."

But somehow the fact that the KLA is funded by organized crime bosses slips through the cracks of most U.S. reporting on the latest Balkan war. (An exception, as usual, is the New York Times' Chris Hedges, who has regularly filed detailed dispatches on the dirty laundry of both Serbs and Albanians.)

Heroin travels easily from Turkey - through Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania - to Western Europe. Three years ago, a Swiss narcotics agent told me that Switzerland's jails were bulging with more than 2,000 Kosovar smugglers. The Bosnian Muslims got many of their weapons from the Kosovars, who bought them cheap from the corrupt armies of the former Eastern Bloc. In Macedonia, heroin was cheaper than beer and a frighteningly large percentage of the city's smart kids were hooked. And in Skopje, the local Albanian soccer team has a fan club called The Smugglers.

The way to get it? Organize the Western European and American diaspora of ethnic Albanians, fund the Kosovo Liberation Army, publicize the grim living condi tions and savage human-rights abuses in Kosovo, dramatically disobey Milosevic's hateful racist policies, start a war of terrorism on the Serb cops and demand NATO intervention.

Knowing the Serbian nostalgia for Kosovo and the Milosevic-led aggression that started the wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, these Kosovar patriarchs knew Belgrade wouldn't back down. The West would eventually come in, as it did when Sarajevo turned into a Bosch painting of endless horror. Milosevic would be crushed and Kosovo would become independent - or join again with the Motherland of Albania - and the ethnic-Albanian third of Macedonia would follow.

* * *

Meanwhile, the sleazy Kosovar mafia kings are left united in their dream of an expanded Albanian nation, but God only knows what sort of twisted internal chaos would erupt should Greater Albania become a reality - the violent 1996-97 collapse of Albania proper provides a dark hint of what the future may hold.

http://www.kenlayne.com/1999/0418_kla.html

HOLGER JENSEN: Should we arm the KLA?

(April 21, 1999 4:00 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - One of the questions raised early in NATO's air war against Yugoslavia was: Should we be arming the Kosovo Liberation Army?

Some members of Congress, uneasy about President Clinton's reliance on air power alone, wanted to "level the playing field" and give the outgunned Albanian guerrillas at least a fighting chance against the vastly superior firepower of the Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitary police.

The idea was quickly shot down. The White House said it wanted to demilitarize Kosovo, not make it a permanent war zone by pumping in more arms.

The intent then was to force the withdrawal of 40,000 Serbian troops, have the KLA give up its weapons and accept the protection of NATO peacekeepers.

But a month of bombing has changed all that. Conceding that airstrikes have not brought Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to his knees nor prevented the forcible expulsion of Kosovo's Albanian populace the Clinton administration is leaning toward a more active alliance with the KLA.

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Defense Secretary William Cohen and Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both said one of the goals of NATO bombing was to help a "resurgent and radicalized" KLA regain the initiative in Kosovo.

Asked his definition of victory, Shelton replied: "I think that when we have degraded Milosevic's forces to the point that he either seeks a political settlement or until the balance of power shifts in favor of the KLA is the way I would define it right now."

This would appear to contradict the administration's original peace plan, which sought to give Kosovo autonomy but keep the province under Serbian sovereignty. U.S. officials know full well that the KLA has no intention of settling for autonomy and wants full independence.

Of course, President Clinton has reversed himself on other fronts.

After first ruling out the use of ground troops he now says they remain an option if the air war fails. But he wants to give the bombing a chance, even if it takes all summer, despite Cohen's warnings that the probability of American casualties will increase and there will be more "regrettable but inevitable accidents," such as last week's strike on a civilian refugee convoy.

It would take a long time to reduce Milosevic's military capabilities to those of a lightly armed guerrilla force. It would take less time if the United States - either alone or in concert with its NATO allies - provided the KLA with enough sophisticated weapons to take on even a "degraded" Yugoslav army.

But that's what Washington may have to do if it really wants the guerrillas to challenge the Serbian stranglehold on their province.

The London Telegraph reports that the Clinton administration has already started sounding out Britain and other trusted NATO partners about arming the KLA with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and wire-guided missiles to take out some of the Serbian armor.

Cohen denies this, saying: "If we start arming the KLA, it would then invite others to start rearming the Serbs and intensify the conflict there rather than demilitarizing it."

But he concedes that the KLA is getting arms "from a variety of sources," some of them quite troubling to Washington.

This brings up the second question: Should the United States, and NATO, be doing business with the KLA?

Albanian separatists have existed in Kosovo, under one name or another, since Yugoslavia was still a communist federation under Josip Broz Tito. Those who served in the Yugoslav army in the 1980s remember "Albanian terrorists" killing Serb soldiers for their guns and ammunition. But there were never very many of them until Tito died, and his successor, Milosevic, revoked Kosovo's autonomy and outlawed the Albanian language in 1989.

The KLA, as such, is an outgrowth of the Popular Movement for Kosovo, which was radicalized by the assassination of three of its leaders in 1993. It didn't have much impact, manpower or financing in its early years so it hooked up with the so-called "Albanian Mafia," which had long been the main pipeline for Turkish heroin traffic into Europe.

Just as drug money financed some of the arms bought by Bosnian Muslims in their war against Serbs and Croats, so too did drug money finance some of the KLA's early arms purchases.

A 1994 report compiled by France's Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues, which carries out counter-narcotics investigations on behalf of the European Union, found that "heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia and the Kosovo province of Serbia in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined not only for the current conflict in Bosnia but also for the brewing war in Kosovo."

The French report identified the Kosovo headquarters of this Albanian drug network as Tropaja, a village on the Serbian-Albanian border that has now emerged as one of the KLA's strongholds. But the whole of northern Albania is quite lawless. Everyone goes around armed, bandit clans command more authority than the government and smuggling is a way of life.

Even so, the KLA remained too small and poorly armed to be taken seriously until it received a huge influx of weapons looted from Albanian army arsenals during a period of anarchy in that country in 1997. That is when it stepped up its ambushes and attacks on Serbian policemen, Milosevic responded by sending in troops, and matters escalated into a full-scale war.

Like other guerrilla movements, the KLA has often crossed the line from "freedom fighters" to "terrorists."

Last December, its masked gunmen shot up a Serb-frequented bar in the town of Pec, killing six civilians including five teens.

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, then trying to negotiate a cease-fire with Milosevic in Belgrade, called the killings "appalling beyond words."

The KLA also is not the first guerrilla movement to be involved in drug trafficking. During the Vietnam War, the CIA and U.S. Special Forces worked closely with a mercenary army of Laotian hill tribes whose chief source of income was opium. Again in Afghanistan, our government armed and trained groups heavily involved in the opium and heroin trade.

In Nicaragua's war, the U.S.-supplied Contras supplemented their American assistance with cocaine trafficking. And in Bosnia's war, our Muslim allies received arms and funding from sources as varied as the KLA and sometimes as questionable.

That did not stop the Clinton administration from arming and training both Muslims and the Croats, who eventually joined forces to reverse the territorial gains of Bosnian Serbs. All three sides engaged in "ethnic cleansing," but there was very little outcry when Serbs were the victims.

One of the biggest expulsions of a civilian population in the Bosnian war - accompanied by numerous massacres - occurred when American-supplied Croatian forces drove some 400,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia. The survivors are still refugees in Serbia, now being bombed by NATO.

Holger Jensen is international editor of the Rocky Mountain News He can be reached at hjens@aol.com.

http://www.nando.net/Kosovo/story/general/0%2C2773%2C40405-65192-473420-0-nao%2C00.html

The KLA's Hidden Agenda
Heroin and The Third Way

In order to better understand the present purpose behind the Kosovo Liberation Army, The Hidden Origins of the KLA reveals their foundational beginnings and organizational background.

As of this writing, it's now estimated that more than 40% of all the heroin reaching Western Europe, including 70% of the illegal heroin being supplied to Germany, Switzerland and Austria, is trafficked directly through Kosovo. "Kosovo is now the Colombia of Europe. There is no border between Kosovo and Albania or between Macedonia and Kosovo. For the Turkish, Russian, Italian and Albanian mafias, Kosovo really has become a paradise", according to Marko Nicovic, the former Belgrade Police and Narcotics Chief . Nicovic has been following the Albanian drug gangs since late 1995, when the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was emerging. "Heroin trafficking increased after Yugoslavia lost its membership in Interpol. Our police had great expertise and experience with this", Mr. Nicovic said. "The Kosovo conflict has left the province without police or customs controls, and KFOR soldiers are not criminal investigators."

Nicovic had obtained proof that drugs have been brought into Kosovo from Asia and Turkey (the Muslim Golden Crescent) since the mid-1980's, then transported to Western Europe by highway and sea routes. Many Kosovo Muslims have bought ocean-front land in Albania over the past few years. Heroin shipped from there to small ports in southeastern Italy are run by Italian Mafias. Other favorite routes are by roads heading north through Serbia into Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Germany.

Nicovic told the London Times on July 24, 1999 that "hundreds of pounds of heroin are being stored in the village of Veliki Trnovac, near Gnjiliane", which just happens (a coincidence?) to be the headquarters for the U.S. occupied sector in Kosovo. Are the U.S. aligned KFOR troops guarding this heroin knowingly? "There are also some heroin stashes in Djakovica. This is a cancer area for Europe, as Western Europe will very soon discover", Nicovic said. "As each day passes, the Albanian Mafia becomes richer and more powerful."

The highly respected Jane's Intelligence Review from Great Britain had predicted the current drug smuggling crisis in a February 1, 1995 article entitled The Balkan Medellin:

"... a great deal of revenue is thought to derive from Albanian narco-terrorism as well as associated gun-running and cross-border smuggling to and from Albania, Bulgaria and the Kosovo province of Serbia. Although its extent and forms remain in dispute, this rising Albanian economic power is helping to turn the Balkans into a hub of criminality.

"Previously transported to Western Europe through former Yugoslavia, heroin from Turkey, the Transcaucus and points further east is now being increasingly routed to Italy via the Black Sea, Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia. This is a development that has strengthened the Albanian mafia which is now thought to control 70% of the illegal heroin market in Germany and Switzerland. Closely allied to the powerful Sicilian mafia, the Albanian associates have also greatly benefited from the presence of large numbers of mainly Kosovar Albanians in a number of western European countries; Switzerland alone now has over 100,000 ethnic Albanian residents. As well as providing a perfect cover for Albanian criminals, this diaspora is also a useful source of income for racketeers..."

"If left unchecked, this growing Albanian narco-terrorism could lead to a Colombian syndrome in the Southern Balkans, or the emergence of a situation in which the Albanian mafia becomes powerful enough to control one or more states in the region. In practical terms, this will involve either Albania or Macedonia, or both. Politically, this is now being done by channeling growing foreign exchange (forex) profits from narco-terrorism into local governments and political parties."

Mind you, these evaluations were made four and one-half years ago, yet they have become a reality today. Along with an abundance of both recent and past evidence of the Albanian-Kosovar mafia expansion, we can now clearly see what is really happening in Kosovo. Until NATO openly aligned itself with the KLA and Albania, Serbia was legitimately and lawfully defending itself from a well organized and well backed crime syndicate which was taking control of the Kosovo province.

The Kosovo Liberation Army is nothing more than a terrorist army specifically trained by NATO Allies since 1996 to protect the interests of organized drug cartels. Fourteen years ago, a Wall Street Journal article on September 9, 1985 said:

"... it is drug trafficking that has gained Albanian organized crime the most notoriety. Some Albanians, according to federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials, are key traders in the 'Balkan connection', the Istanbul-to-Belgrade heroin route. While less well known than the so-called Sicilian and French connections, the Balkan route in some years may move 24% to 40% of the U.S. heroin supply, officials say."

Don't be misled to think that the Kosovar-Albanian drug cartel only affects Europe. It takes only a little common sense to realize that if they had already been supplying 24 to 40 percent of the illegal heroin into the U.S. fourteen years ago, they most likely control at least 50 to 70 percent of the heroin now entering the United States. Adding this percentage to the 70% they now supply to Western Europe, and it's not difficult to see that this is the world's largest drug cartel. Moreso, such illicit activities as this do not happen without powerful support. It is those behind the Kosovar-Albanian drug cartel that must be exposed.

Since 1996, Bonn and Washington have joined in establishing their goals in the Balkans. Covert and frequently open support behind the Kosovo Liberation Army was established between the CIA and Germany's equivalent, the BND. Germany basically created and financed the KLA. They were supplied with German military uniforms and former East German police and military weapons. The CIA also trained and equipped the KLA in Albania (see The Hidden Origins of the KLA).

History and current events seem to repeatedly confirm that the real warlords of this world are in Washington, Berlin, London, the Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia), the Golden Crescent, and Albania-Kosovo. "The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome 'marriage of convenience' with the mafia. 'Freedom Fighters' were put in place, and the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to finance the Kosovo conflict with the ultimate objective of destabilizing the Belgrade government and fully recolonizing the Balkans." -from an article written by Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa.

Much has been written about the New World Order (NWO) and those who may or may not be behind its alleged or real plans for a one-world rule. But as for this day and age, and as we enter the third millennium, what is now being revealed is an international ruling government cartel, The Third Way. This international cartel appears to be the conclusionary chapter to what former President George Bush, Sr. had openly spoken of during the Gulf War; the New World Order.

"Now, as we move into a new era and a new millennium, these ideas, as all of you well know, have spread around the world. They've helped center-left parties to take power in Great Britain and France and Germany and Italy and Brazil. They have sparked the kinds of debates and discussions that you have been having in virtually every country in the world where people take politics seriously. The Third Way has become the way of the future." -spoken by U.S. President Clinton at the Third Annual DLC Conversation, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. on July 14, 1999.

An unholy alliance has been made between the Western powers. If 'the Third Way has become the way of the future', then the world should understand that The Third Way has already revealed it's existance in Kosovo. Looking back to the beginning of this article, we see the same governments who comprise The Third Way are smack in the middle of the world's "grade 4" heroin distribution through Kosovo. A more descriptive name for this alliance would be The Third Way Drug Cartel.

There is no doubt that Washington City is following the same general plans as used before, beginning in Laos in the 1960's. How quickly we have also forgotten about Oliver North and the Contras. The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where so-called "freedom fighters” were financed through the laundering of drug money. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed these and similar covert operations. Have we also forgotten the reasons behind BCCI banking collapse? Drug money laundering.

Now, rearing it's ugly head, The Third Way openly joins together NATO, KFOR, the KLA, the Kosovar-Albanian Drug Cartel, and the Islamic Golden Triangle of heroin production. Since The Third Way has trained, armed, financed and backed the Kosovan-Albanian Drug Cartel and their KLA military army with massive force, how can anyone not see that they are one and the same? Surely, no sane person could say that they are enemies.

The new millennium will be much more than a global challenge. The multi-billion dollar Balkans narcotics trade is playing a crucial role in Kosovo. This is aligned, initiated and supported in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Well documented by European police reports and acknowledged by published studies, the links of the KLA to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known and supported by Western governments (The Third Way) since the mid-1990s.

What the world faces now is a pattern of economic and political dominance that defies, and is at enmity to, individual sovereignty of the people in all nations. What we are seeing unfold in Kosovo will be a regular pattern in the years to come throughout the world. The stability of this world is on the brink of total disaster, and the first of many chapters has been written in the Balkans.

The purpose behind the KLA is no different than the purpose behind any purported "freedom fighters" in South America, Afghanistan, Central America, Haiti, or Bosnia since the end of World War II. The Third Way operates under many factions (such as KFOR, KLA, BND, CIA, ad nauseam), but the governments comprising it are the same.

As this new world political cartel reveals more than it's disfigured head in the next few years, we may soon see the destruction of true freedom, liberty, and the organized Christian church. This is no mere regional or national conflict of interests; this is a Holy War declared by The Third Way against Christianity. The Balkans have proven that. The KLA, Albania, and the heroin entering the U.S. and Europe are all of Islamic origin. Ancient Christian buildings and Churches have been burned to the ground in the Kosovo province for the first time in over 650 years. One can easily see that the KFOR troops, Kosovo's alleged "peace keepers", stand mute, blind, and deaf while the KLA operates with immunity. Common sense dictates that this could only happen if all of them were aligned to the same cause; heroin and The Third Way.

The hidden origins of the KLA
The Neo-Racist World Disorder

Behind the scenes, German civil and military intelligence services have been secretly training and equipping the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebels since 1996. Germany is also the principal destination for most refugees from the Balkans, and the influx of these political asylum immigrants has become a political and financial controversy among the German people. Unknown to most Americans is that the purported government of the "Kosovo Republic" is based in Germany, where approximately half a million Kosovars now live.

As the Kosovar refugee exodus continues, initiated by the failed KLA guerilla offensive in 1998, substantial evidence is surfacing that German covert 'diplomacy' has supported, if not initiated and organized, the KLA since its inception in February 1996. The government of Helmut Kohl, former German chancellor, had officially and publicly supported the pro-NATO western alliance in their demands that Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslavian president, end his incursion into Kosovo and 'persuade' him to enter negotiations with the rebellious Albanians in the province.

The birth of the KLA in 1996 began with the appointment of Hasjorg Geiger as the new head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German Federal Intelligence Service. [The BND was founded in 1956 through the reformation of the semi-official Gehlen Organization. It answers directly to the German Chancellor and has a staff of nearly 7,000 people]. One of his first operations was to establish one of the largest BND regional stations in Tirana, the Albanian capital. BND agents have worked hand-in-hand with the leaders of the SHiK, the Albanian secret service. The SHiK was the successor to the Sigurimi, the feared communist-era security service, many of whose agents are still active. The BND agents were in charge of selecting recruits for the KLA command structure from the estimated 500,000 Kosovars in Albania.

At the same time, the BND bureau in Rome was asked to provide political intelligence back-up, including working among refugees in Trieste and Bari, two of the principal entry points for Albanian refugees. The German Militaramschirmdienst (MAD), the military intelligence division, and special German commandos, including the Kommandos Spezialkrafte (KSK), are also involved in training the KLA as well as providing communications equipment for them. European reporters covering the Kosovo conflict in early 1998, when Milosevic sent police and special forces into the province to disband the KLA, were surprised to find that some of the KLA fighters wore Bundeswehr (German Army) combat jackets with identifiable German insignia still attached, even in front of television cameras. None of those pictures ever surfaced on CNN.

The MAD also provided the Albanians with phone-tapping and communication systems used by the Stasi, the former East German communist secret police. Much of the information gathered was filtered through to Albanian trained Kosovar guerrillas of the KLA. Weapons from former East Germany have been smuggled into Albania by these various German services for use by the KLA rebels, according to Dr Erick Schmidt-Enboom, a Munich based intelligence specialist.

According to French intelligence sources, the black uniformed KSK, who had previously served an active role in Bosnia in their pursuit of alleged Serbian war criminals, have been training rebel KLA commandos in northern Albania which is still controlled by supporters of Sali Berisha, the former Albanian president.

Tomislav Kersovic, a member of the Belgrade-based "Institute for Geo-Political Studies", has publicly produced documents showing that finances to subsidise the KLA were provided through an Albanian foundation known as "The Fatherland's Call", with active offices in Dusseldorf, Bonn, Stockholm, Bern and other European capitals. Pierre-Marie Gallois, a retired French general and a specialist in geopolitics, believes that there is a definite desire by German political decision-makers to destabilize the Serbs and supply the KLA with arms and training. Germany has traditionally and openly been anti-Serbian. Germany was also the first western nation to recognize an independent Croatia before the Bosnian war. It is now attempting to define a new role in the Balkan region, which it regards as vital to its interests.

Why are the Balkans, especially Kosovo, so important to Germany? The New York Times, in an article by Chris Hedges on July 8, 1998, described the real wealth of Kosovo, the Stari Trg mining complex. Hedges described the glittering veins of lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver in Stari Trg. According to Hedges, "The sprawling state-owned Trepca mining complex, the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, is worth at least $5 billion." Trepca Trg's director, Novak Bjelic, stated "The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. In addition to all this, Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves." Perhaps now we know why Germany is so interested in destroying Yugoslavia. After all, in 1941, Nazi Germany took control of the same mining complex, an essential supply for German U-boat batteries. Batteries are still made there today along side the gold and silver production.

In World War II, the Bosnians and Croatians allied with the racist Nazis against the Serbs, who the Nazis regarded as "untermenschen" (subhumans). After Germany reunified in 1989, it began to take a more expansionist attitude toward Eastern Europe, and Yugoslavia in particular. In 1990, Germany urged the Bush administration to help it dismantle Yugoslavia. As history now proves, George Bush (with his New World Order agenda) was happy to comply, since the US had long standing plans to overthrow Yugoslavia's government since the days of Tito's regime.

The Germans encouraged and supported Croatia in it's desire to secede from Yugoslavia, and Bosnia soon followed. Germany immediately recognized the new nations, forcing the hand of the European Community, which had wanted to take a more cautious and diplomatic approach. The new Croatian state even adopted the flag and anthem of its former 1941 Nazi puppet regime. This is called Neo-Racism.

Despite an official UN arms embargo against Croatia and Bosnia, Western powers immediately began covertly arming them, which would have been impossible without the knowledge and cooperation of the BND. In 1994, even the CIA opened a new base in Albania to monitor troop movements and "potential targets."

American contacts with the KLA and the support of other NATO members besides Germany, namely Great Britain, are a matter of record. It appears that when Milosevic's police and army units began to retaliate in force against rebel KLA guerilla attacks on Serbian police stations in early 1998, Germany sounded an alarm for open and official support from NATO and the US. Continuing Helmut Kohl's previous support for the KLA and the unofficial Kosovo Republic, the US entered a more active role of 'forced' diplomacy. Earlier this year in France, when Serbia rejected the US written alleged "peace plan" over the proposed occupation of NATO military troops in Kosovo, the threat of US-NATO bombings was made. We all know the outcome.

Germany has supported the illegal KLA and the unrecognized Kosovo Republic with arms, ammunition, supplies, covert operations and military training since 1996. Germany is the European leader of NATO. Now, NATO and the US are bombing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a lawful sovereign nation recognized by the UN and international treaties. Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture? According to international law and United Nations recognized treaties, NATO and German leaders should be tried for illegal military aggression and war crimes. Instead, NATO wants to bring Milosevic and his leaders before the international court for the same thing.

This is not another Viet Nam for the US. It's much worse than that. What we are witnessing is the official birth of a "New World Disorder" and, if it is not stopped very shortly, the beginning of a New World War. China and Russia, who have formed diplomatic and military alliances over the past few years, and are now demanding that NATO cease all bombings of Serbia.

Germany has repeated her traditional history of European aggression once again in this century, but this time the US and Britain are her allies. When will we ever learn?

Compiled and written by Anthony Wayne for the Christian Common Law Institute and Lawgiver.Org

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