Who is the so-called KLA?:
And what role does it play for NATO?

by Walter Grobe, Neue Einheit, Dortmund, Germany (abridged)

The public is being deliberately deceived by the media if they talk about a 
"KLA" which, as they put it, represents the just interests of the Albanian 
population of Kosovo.

Firstly, there is no real KLA-organisation — as some European newspapers 
and politicians are themselves complaining — but a number of armed groups 
which needed pressure from their Western guardians to demonstrate anything 
like unity at the Rambouillet conference. A Kosovo under the reign of these 
rival gangs would not at all be a political whole.

What they have in common is the ideology of "Greater Albania". By this they 
understand the separation not only of Kosovo from Serbia but also the 
dismemberment of Montenegro and Macedonia, and the union of their Albanian-
dominated regions with the present state of Albania.

Their "Declaration #42, February 27, 1998" said: "Welcoming the increased 
interest, in particular by American and Franco-German diplomacy, we declare 
that the solution of the Albanian question cannot be defined solely within 
Kosova's present borders, but has to be solved as a whole, by integration 
of the Albanians and their regions occupied by `Macedonia' and Montenegro."

Which social concept does the KLA have for the separated Kosovo, or for 
"Greater Albania"? In Political Declaration #22 of December 31, 
1998, we read: "... again, the acceptable and respected ideology of the 
Liberation Army of Kosova is ALBANIANNESS, solely to it we bow, solely to 
it we sacrifice ourselves.

"Everything for freedom, fatherland and ALBANIANNESS, also life. This is 
the motto and the oath of the KLA's soldiers."

A movement which seriously puts forward "Albanianness" as its political 
ideology is no better than one which puts forward for example "Germanness". 
Almost everybody would immediately sense in the latter the musty odour of 
primitive national self-interest and hostility towards other nations.

"Albanianness" in Kosovo, if we look at it from a historical viewpoint, 
unfortunately also means a centuries-old movement by a Muslim-Albanian 
population to oust the Serbs from their old core region, Kosovo.

For a long time this process was furthered by the region's Turkish rulers 
for whom the Islamised Albanians were very important suppressor troops. The 
Serbs on the other hand put up fierce resistance against the oppressive 
Ottoman regime.

In our century, this aspect of the Albanian movement achieved further 
deplorable peaks of aggression against Kosovo's Serbs between 1941 and 1944 
under the fascist rule of Italy and Germany.

According to the US paper the San Jose Mercury of March 28, 1999, a 
paper which incidentally supports both NATO and the KLA, the KLA's "goals 
include not only independence but the expulsion of Serbs from the 
province". NATO's propaganda that it wants to give room to a "national 
liberation movement" is merely a lie to cover itself. If the goal had 
really been the improvement of the situation of the population in Kosovo, 
there were plenty of opportunities for the NATO countries, and probably 
also the support of different political forces in Kosovo.

NATO wants to push through a war agenda, the creation of a public climate 
favourable for completely high-handed actions which are based only on 
superior military terror and finally on nuclear weapons, actions which it 
envisages in all regions of the world.

It perhaps also wants, as the increasing propaganda for ground troops 
shows, a permanent stationing amidst the southern Balkans, and certainly 
also Kosovo's enormous mineral resources.

Today the population of Kosovo is massively suffering from the KLA's and 
NATO's policy, and the media tears are sheer hypocrisy. It is impossible 
for NATO to assert that it could not foresee the tough counter-measures in 
Kosovo taken by the Yugoslav Government against the separation of the 
province desired by the KLA and NATO.

The flight of refugees today is caused by NATO itself, and the Western 
media campaign which is constructing, out of these refugees, an ex post 
justification for its aggression and its escalation, had long ago been 
prepared as a part of this whole aggression.

The war against Iraq showed what deliberate lies the Western media are able 
to fabricate.