Kosovo, drugs and the West

The Albanians of Kosovo are not new arrivals on the international scene. 
As long ago as 1985, the Wall Street Journal was reporting on the 
activities of the "Kosovo-Albania Drug Mafia" in New York City (Sept 9, 
1985).

That same year The New York Times reported that Kosovo-Albanian drug 
dealers had offered almost half-a-million dollars to murder two US federal 
attorneys and drug enforcement agents. The targets were given round-the-
clock protection by US Government agencies.

Today, according to some estimates, 25-40 per cent of all heroin in the US 
is being supplied by the Kosovo Cartel. Kosovo-Albanian dealers are in 
jails in Switzerland, Italy and Germany as well as the US.

It was German Intelligence which was the first to form an  alliance with 
the Kosovo Albanian drug cartel to further the Balkan aims of the then Kohl 
Government.

Kohl's administration was deeply involved in promoting the break-up of 
Yugoslavia, initially with the secession of Croatia which the German 
Foreign Minister virtually orchestrated.

Heroin trade "businessmen" can be very reliable allies in covert operations 
— they are tough, ruthless and brutal. The heroin industry is quite 
capable of forming an alternate government, a pseudo-state with its own 
income and armies. (Colombia is one example of this.)

Germany's ambitions in the Balkans do not appear to have changed with the 
advent of the Social Democrat/Greens Coalition Government. They sit 
uneasily with those of the US in the same region.

In the fighting in Bosnia, Germany backed Croatia and the US covertly aided 
the Muslims against the Bosnian Serbs, who were treated as invaders in 
their own country.

During the Bosnian war, the country's "porous borders" combined with the 
Western powers' willingness to deal with drug merchants and even to deal 
in heroin produced what the Washington Post called (on 
November 14, 1993) "an epidemic of heroin smuggling and arms sales".

After Bosnia, Western attention switched to the Yugoslav republic of 
Serbia, and the province of Kosovo, where the effects of the US-imposed 
economic blockade of Yugoslavia had aggravated separatist tendencies among 
the province's Albanian population.

The Yugoslav Government's response failed to resolve the situation in the 
face of rising agitation by separatist forces.

Albanian unrest was covertly aided by the West amidst a developing US 
campaign around "human rights abuses" (in between bombing Iraq and helping 
Turkey crush the Kurds). A "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) was formed with 
money from "sympathisers" in the US.

"Volunteers" for the KLA poured into Kosovo from Germany, ultimately making 
up more than half the KLA forces.

German Intelligence provided the Albanian seperatists with the latest 
German anti-tank grenades, combat jackets, electronic monitoring devices 
and intelligence training, according to the German TV program 
Monitor (September 24, 1998).

This aid was not entirely altruistic. Romania Libera headlined a 
story on July 30, 1998: "Albanian Terrorists of KLA Pay for Weapons in 
Heroin".

When the US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia started on March 24,  Western 
media coverage went into overdrive to justify the aggression.

The destabilising role played by the KLA has been ignored. One is given the 
impression that Serb forces are fighting innocent civilians.

The Yugoslav army and police are accused of all manner of atrocities, but 
the atrocities perpetrated by the KLA go unreported in the mainstream 
media.

Only days before the supposed "peace" talks in France, the KLA exploded 
several bombs targeting civilians. "The bomb in Mitrovica, north-west of 
Pristina, went off in the town's market place, killing four people, 
including two women and a young girl, and wounding 30 others", reported 
Morning Star.

"Three people were also killed and 28 wounded by two KLA bombs that went 
off within 15 minutes of each other in Podujevo, around 20 miles north of 
the Kosovan capital Pristina."

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Kosovo  
Verification Mission condemned the bombings.

"These devices, containing considerable amounts of explosives, were 
targeted at crowded public places at the busiest time of day, with the 
clear aim of causing the maximum amount of civilian injuries and deaths", 
it said.

These criminal acts of the KLA, inside Kosovo itself, were largely ignored 
by the capitalist media. Once again they followed the line favoured by US 
"spin doctors". 

Once the bombing of Kosovo itself began in earnest, the well orchestrated 
flight of refugees became the main story, serving as a smoke-screen to hide 
the momentous shift in world politics away from international law and the 
United Nations as the responsible body to resolve international conflicts, 
to the empowerment of the US and NATO to enforce their own "law".

NATO will be marking its 50th anniversary in late April and is hell-bent to 
show the world that no country and no government can stand in the way of 
its masters' economic and political aims.

It's not as though the international community does not know about the KLA 
atrocities. In 1998 Serbian police discovered a cremation oven in a lime 
factory in the village of Klecka (about 45km southwest of Pristina) used to 
dispose of murdered Serbian  civilians.

Klecka had a KLA base including a training camp and a munition  depot. A 
large amount of weaponry and ammunition was recovered by  the police, 
including anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades and  humanitarian aid packets 
provided by the United States.

At the time, US Special Envoy to Yugoslavia, Christopher Hill, no doubt 
reflecting the US' dubious view of the German-backed KLA, said: "I condemn 
the horrible massacre of Serb civilians committed by Albanian terrorists.

"The United States is shocked by the brutalities in the village of Klecka. 
Whoever did this must be punished. The United States does not support the 
armed attacks of the KLA and condemns every kind of aggression, as well as 
the kidnapping of civilians."

A year ago the United States did not openly support the KLA. Even today, 
the US aim is for a NATO protectorate in Kosovo, similar to that in Bosnia.

Even before the failed Munich-style conference in Rambouillet, the West 
made it known that they would launch air strikes unless Belgrade dropped 
its understandable opposition to a 28,000-strong NATO occupation force 
(KFOR) in Kosovo. KFOR was already massed and training on the Yugoslav 
border in Macedonia.

Immediately after the Yugoslav Government rejected this blatant attempt to 
partition their country further, NATO began bombing and public opinion is 
being carefully manipulated to accept what has been planned all along — 
establishing a NATO protectorate in  Kosovo.

NATO is bombing Yugoslav cities to protect a coalition of Greater Albania 
ultra-nationalists and a drug cartel —  as well as trying to further 
impoverish Yugoslavia and establish NATO bases for future operations 
against a resurgent Russia.