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UNDERNEWS SPECIAL Fun Facts About Our New Allies Sam Smith June 22, 1999 The Progressive Review 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 Fax: 202-234-6222 E-MAIL: news@prorev.com INDEX: http://prorev.com ==================================================== FUN FACTS ABOUT OUR NEW ALLIES Hashim Thaqi, now mildly referred to in media like the Washington Post as the leader of the provisional Kosovo government, is a 29-year-old precocious KLA warlord known in the field as "Snake." Putting him in charge of the reconstruction of Kosovo is a bit like having let General Patton run the Marshall Plan or having a Contra leader coordinate post-hurricane aid to Central America. Thaqi, a radical university student who helped to organize the KLA, rose to the top in early March by liquidating the more democratic and moderate government-in-exile of the moderate reconciliationist, Ibrahim Rugova. Rugova had been elected shadow president during a 1992 rump election but received little support from the US or NATO and was not recognized by Yugoslavia. While there is no evidence of direct American involvement in Thaqi's elevation, Madeline Albright quickly hailed him with a State Department announcement declaring KLA's support of the Rambouillet surrender terms "a welcome development and an important step forward in the negotiating process, one that furthers prospects for a peaceful resolution to the Kosovo conflict." Thaqi had been a regional commander in the rebel army and was convicted in absentia by Yugoslav courts and sentenced to 22 years in prison. He has vowed to fight for Kosovo's independence although he is quite close to Albania. According to one regional news report this spring, Albania spokesman Sokol Quoka said that "Tirana had established contacts with the [KLA] long ago and that the organization was steering its activities to the political sphere. Quoka went on to say that Tirana had already given its support to Hasim Thaqi, the head of the Kosovo negotiating team in Paris, Adem Demaqi, Blerim Shala and Yakup Krasniqi." GARY WILSON, INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER: The origins of the KLA are murky at best. Some say it was founded in 1993. Others put the organizationÂs beginnings in 1996, when a letter was sent to the media announcing its formation. The letter took credit for a February 1996 massacre of Serbian refugees from the Krajina region of Croatia who had fled to Kosovo for safety. Throughout 1996 and 1997, most of the KLA attacks were on Albanians who it called "collaborators." These were Albanian opponents of the separatist movement in Kosovo. The KLA was never an organization like the liberation armies well known around the world. It never had a recognized leadership. It never even had a spokesperson until last year. It never issued any documents or statements of purpose. It doesnÂt even have a newspaper or magazine. The grouping that called itself the KLA at first was actually an odd assortment of various opponents of the Yugoslav government who joined together with gangsters, mercenaries and other opportunists. Those who called themselves KLA ranged from people claiming to be followers of AlbaniaÂs former Marxist leader, Enver Hoxha, to those who claimed roots in the fascist, nationalist Greater Albanian organizations of the 1940s. It was a combination of convenience, with no central agreement on anything but their hatred of the Yugoslav government. .... In late 1997 and early 1998, there was a sudden shift. The KLA went through a "rapid and startling growth," according to a report in the April 25, 1998, New York Times. Foreign mercenaries, money and arms started to pour in to the KLA. The erstwhile KLA bands were quickly overwhelmed by an influx of mercenaries coming from Germany and the United States, who quickly took over command. It took a year before a representative from Kosovo could be produced to represent the KLA publicly. The new KLA began serious military operationsnot only killing isolated Albanian and Serbian individuals but attacking government buildings and police stations. This open warfare could only be stopped by strong police measures. But when the government forces responded, the U.S. and NATO powers accused them of repression. This became the excuse for their war on Yugoslavia. CHRIS HEDGES, FOREIGN AFFAIRS: [The KLA inside Kosovo is] "led by the sons and grandsons of rightist Albanian fighters [from the]Skanderbeg volunteer SS division raised by the Nazis, or the descendants of the rightist Albanian kacak rebels who rose up against the Serbs 80 years ago. Although never much of a fighting force, the Skanderbeg division took part in the shameful roundup and deportation of the provinceÂs few hundred Jews during the Holocaust. The divisionÂs remnants fought TitoÂs Partisans at the end of the war, leaving thousands of ethnic Albanians dead. The decision by KLA commanders to dress their police in black fatigues and order their fighters to salute with a clenched fist to the forehead has led many to worry about these fascist antecedents." FRANK VIVIANO, MOTHER JONES: The Kosovo Albanians ~~ are part of an immense tidal wave of desperation that will fuel organized crime recruiting long into the next century. Put simply, the world's stateless nations Kosovan Albanians, Kurds from Turkey and Iraq, Tamils from Sri Lanka, Chechens from Russia, Ibos and Ogoni from Nigeria, and hundreds of other tribes and ethnic groups whose names are not yet in the headlines are the army-in-waiting of the new criminal super state. Or the army already in the field, altering its composition at a rate that befuddles law enforcement authorities. SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL: I don't think we have to do a background check [on the KLA] any more than we did on the Contras. Raymond Bonner of New York Times has written that Albania has become a major hub for the movement of heroin and cocaine into Western Europe. As for the KLA's politics, one European diplomat told Bonner, "We really don't know what they are. There is an Islamic component, a left-wing component and there are those who are just guerillas." Said another diplomat, "They are not a people we would feel comfortable getting too close to. It is not like they are the military wing of a democratic resistance movement." While the CIA's role in the Balkan disaster is not clear, it appears certain that NATO's chief military ally in the war against Yugoslavia, the KLA, is deeply involved in the heroin trade. And as late as last year, the KLA was still listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization. Jerry Seper has reported in the Washington Times that some members of the KLA, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans. Seper wrote: "Recently obtained intelligence documents show that drug agents in five countries, including the United States, believe the KLA has aligned itself with an extensive organized crime network centered in Albania that smuggles heroin and some cocaine to buyers throughout Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States.... "The Greek representative of Interpol reported in 1998 that Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were 'the primary sources of supply for cocaine and heroin in that country.' .... France's Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs said that the KLA was a key player in the rapidly expanding drugs-for-arms business and helped transport $2 billion worth of drugs annually into Western Europe. German drug agents have estimated that $1.5 billion in drug profits is laundered annually by Kosovo smugglers, through as many as 200 private banks or currency-exchange offices." In July 1998, PBS Newshour reported that U.S. Vietnam War veterans were training KLA mercenaries in Albania. Jane's Defense Weekly reported April 20: "Special forces involvement confirmed." The report also said that that special units from Britain, the United States, France "and other NATO groups'' were working undercover in Kosovo. The April 18 London Sunday Telegraph reported that SAS, a unit of the British special forces, was running two KLA training camps near Tirana, the Albanian capital. The same report said that the KLA also has contact with the Virginia-based MPRI, a corporate supplier of mercenaries set up by top US military officers. MPRI also trained the Croatian Army that carried out a vicious campaign against Serbs in 1995. For more on this see the July 28,1997, Nation magazine. On April 8 the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany, an opponent of the war, issued a report describing an alleged CIA covert operation named "Operation Roots" aimed at sowing ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia to encourage its breakup. The report claimed that this operation has been going on "since the beginning of Clinton's presidency." It was supposedly a joint operation with the German secret service, which also sought to destabilize Yugoslavia. The final objective "is the separation of Kosovo, with the aim of it becoming part of Albania; the separation of Montenegro, as the last means of access to the Mediterranean; and the separation of the Vojvodina, which produces most of the food for Yugoslavia. This would lead to the total collapse of Yugoslavia as a viable independent state." The report also asserts that the KLA was founded by the CIA with funding was funneled through drug-smuggling operations in Europe. GARY WILSON, INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER: The top commander of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army is Agim Ceku, a brigadier general who took a leave from the Croatian Army in February .... In August 1995 Ceku presided over "Operation Storm," the massive bombing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Serb farmers from the part of Croatia known as the Krajina .... CekuÂs military career began in the Yugoslav Army. But after Croatia became a separate state under the reactionary leadership of Franjo Tudjman, he defected to the Croatian Army. Ceku, an ethnic Albanian, was then trained by the United States. He is closely tied to Military Professional Resources, Inc .... JaneÂs Defense Weekly describes Ceku as "one of the key planners of the successful ÂOperation Storm.Â" Many reports have shown in detail that MPRI planned and directed this operation in the Krajina. "Operation Storm" was, until the current U.S. bombing, the bloodiest and most brutal military campaign in the Balkans since the Nazi invasion during World War II .... This March 21, the New York Times carried a front-page story about a report from the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague that characterized this attack as probably the most brutal event in the Balkans in the last decade. But no commentators picked up on this. The report was quickly forgotten. INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER http://www.iacenter.org COMMITTEE AGAINST US INTERVENTION http://www.antiwar.com COUNTERPUNCH http://www.counterpunch.org NONVIOLENCE WEB http://www.nonviolence.org OUR BALKAN ARCHIVES: http://prorev.com/balkan.htm STRATFOR INTELLIGENCE SERVICE http://www.stratfor.com/crisis/kosovo/Default.htm THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1739 Connecticut Ave NW Washington DC 20009 202-232-5544 202-234-6222 Fax ssmith@igc.org Editor: Sam Smith INDEX : http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS : http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINES: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm ALTERNATIVE NEWS SOURCES: http://prorev.com/hot.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.htm For a free trial subscription to both our bi-monthly hard copy edition and our regular e-mail updates send e-mail and terrestrial address to ssmith@igc.org To order "Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual" (WW Norton) direct from Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393316270/progressiverevieA/
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