When Bill Clinton stopped in Detroit on April 17th on a fundraising visit,
he met with a small group of Albanian-Americans at the Roseville Recreation
Center. According to the Detroit News, a banner at the Roseville speech bore
the logo of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Two days earlier, during an address to the American Society of Newspaper
Editors, Mr. Clinton offered an oblique reference to the KLA when he insisted
that Serbian ruler Slobodan Milosevic had "not destroyed the armed opposition
among Kosovars; indeed, [its] numbers and determination are growing." NATO
spokesman Jamie Shea, offering a more poetic take on the establishment line,
reported that the KLA is "rising like a phoenix from the ashes."
Part of the reason why the KLA's ranks are growing, reported the Chicago
Tribune on April 1st, is forced conscription: Shortly after NATO began its
bombing campaign, the KLA ordered all Albanian men of fighting age "to join
its ranks within one month or face unspecified consequence."
Many male refugees, who had been driven from their homes at gunpoint, "made
it to the Albanian border only to encounter checkpoints of the KLA," reported
the Tribune.
"Travelers who slipped through said they saw men being pulled from buses by
armed guerillas and sent to KLA training camps in the rugged hills nearby."
There the conscripts are given one month of crude training before being thrust
into battle.
Showcase Volunteers
Although the KLA has had to rely on press gangs to draft Kosovo Albanians
into its ranks, it has attracted thousands of ethnic Albanian volunteers from
Europe and the United States. Throughout émigré communities worldwide,
reported the April 20th Washington Times, the call to enlist in the KLA
"is considered obligatory for all men ages 18 to 55. Only those who are sick
or who can contribute financially to the KLA are considered exempt." Albanian
émigrés from Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Chicago, and other U.S. cities
have repaired to the KLA banner, joining thousands more from Germany,
Switzerland, Italy, and other European nations.
The KLA's recruit army has little military value; the shopkeepers, waiters,
teenagers, and middle-age professionals who have volunteered will not turn the
tide of battle against Milosevic's well-equipped paramilitary squads.
As with the Communist-organized "Abraham Lincoln Brigade" in the Spanish
Civil War, the KLA's émigré army is a propaganda exercise intended to confer
an air of romantic idealism to a movement dominated by corrupt terrorists.
The KLA's founders, reported Balkans correspondent Chris Hedges in the
March 28th New York Times, were "diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were
bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania)
as well as descendants of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World
War II."
Hedges fleshes out his portrait of the KLA in an essay published in the
May-June 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs. "The KLA fighters are the
province's new power brokers," Hedges writes. "Whatever political leadership
emerges in Kosovo will come from the rebel ranks, and it will be militant,
nationalist, uncompromising, and deeply suspicious of all outsiders."
The KLA's leadership cadres, according to Hedges, are "given to secrecy,
paranoia, and appalling mendacity when they feel it serves their interests,
which is most of the time."
The KLA's ideology displays "hints of fascism on one side and whiffs of
communism on the other," continues Hedges, and its leadership includes the
heirs and descendants of "the Skanderbeg volunteer SS division raised by the
Nazis [who] took part in the shameful roundup and deportation of [Kosovo's]
few hundred Jews during the Holocaust."
Such is the character of the group that, in Hedges' view, "represents the
aspirations of most Kosovar Albanians," which is to create "an independent
Kosovo now and a Greater Albania later." A map circulated among KLA
supporters, including the Albanian-American Civic League (AACL), depicts a
"Greater Albania" that includes not only Kosovo, but a slice taken from Serbia
proper, in addition to portions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece.
Despite repeated assertions from NATO that the war against Yugoslavia is
intended to contain ethnic conflict, the alliance with the KLA effectively
guarantees that the conflict will spread throughout the Balkans and beyond.
Were Milosevic to relent and allow international "peacekeepers" to occupy
Kosovo, the occupation force would be required to disarm the KLA, as specified
by the Rambouillet framework.
The KLA has made it clear that it has no intention of relinquishing its
arms or renouncing its irredentist aims. Indeed, the terrorist group has
already expanded its campaign in Macedonia, which has been overrun by Albanian
refugees. On April 22nd, Interior Minister Pavle Trajanov reported that KLA
arms caches totaling 4.5 tons of firearms, grenades, and ammo have been
discovered in several Macedonian locations.
The KLA has also reportedly recruited more than 1,000 "volunteers" from
that country's refugee population.
Unless the Clinton Administration decides to support the KLA's drive for a
"Greater Albania," a NATO "victory" over Milosevic would almost certainly
presage another conflict with the KLA, which - as the success of its
international fundraising and recruiting efforts illustrates - has a
disciplined and tightly organized international network at its disposal. The
KLA would be well positioned to bring its war home to America in the form of
terrorism.
Narco-Revolution
As previously reported in these pages (see "Diving into the Kosovo
Quagmire" in our March 15th issue [included here immediately following this
article -Ed.]), the KLA is allied with Osama bin-Laden's international
terrorist network and funded, in large measure, by Albanian organized crime -
particularly heroin trafficking.
In 1994, when the insurrectionary KLA was still in its larval stage,
France's Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues, a counter-narcotics
bureau attached to the European Commission, reported 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 for the brewing war in Kosovo."
A 1995 report from Kosovo published in the left-wing journal Mother
Jones described how Kosovo Albanians committed to insurrection would work
as "camels": "By the hundreds, they cross the mountains, lakes, and seas that
comprise affluent Europe's outer frontiers - usually in the dead of night -
carrying the mob's narcotics in one direction and its laundered money in the
other."
"Here and in a half-dozen other Western countries," declared Pascal
Auchlin, a criminologist with Switzerland's National Center for Scientific
Research, "there is now an ant's trail of individual drug traffickers that
leads right to Kosovo." In 1995, nearly 500 Kosovo Albanians were in Swiss
prisons on drug-related charges, and more than 1,000 others were under
indictment.
Many other "camels" were not so fortunate, noted Mother Jones: "Empty boats
wash up, after howling Mediterranean storms, on the Spanish and Sicilian
coasts. Decomposed bodies are discovered each spring in the Alps, when the
seasonal thaw opens snowbound passes."
In the United States, wrote criminologist Gus Xhudo in the Spring 1996
issue of Transnational Organized Crime, Albanian mobsters have been
involved in "drug and refugee smuggling, arms trafficking, contract killing,
kidnaping, false visa forgery, and burglary."
Between 1985 and 1995, wrote Xhudo, "authorities estimated that 10 million
U.S. dollars in cash and merchandise had been stolen from some 300
supermarkets, ATM machines, jewelry stores, and restaurants" by Albanian
gangsters, a healthy cut of which was sent to fund "Greater Albanian"
ambitions.
In Albanian gangs, reported Xhudo, "the basic command structure, reliant
upon their politico-cultural experiences with communist rule, is one rooted in
community party apparatus." A Leadership Council (whose membership, according
to law enforcement officials, includes several leading Albanian politicians)
directs the syndicate's international efforts through a decentralized chain of
command.
Recruits into Albanian gangs "swear an oath of allegiance and secrecy, an
omerta or besa (literally, promise or word of honor in
Albanian)," Xhudo explained. The executive committee of each Albanian
bajrak (or crime "family") provides "the requisite tactics and training
necessary for conducting arms and drug smuggling, as well as sophisticated
burglaries."
The hands-on work of the crime syndicates is performed by "crews" made up
of four to ten members: "A-team" units trained in the use of sophisticated
tools and communications gear, and "B-teams" who, "while lacking in
sophistication make up for it in brutality and cunning."
In the mid-1990s, law enforcement officials in New York and New Jersey
noticed that Albanian gangsters had dramatically improved their surveillance
and counter-surveillance skills. This led some officials to suspect that
former agents of the Sigurimi, the Communist Albanian secret police,
had begun to train "crews" in this country.
Even without the Sigurimi's help, however, the Albanian mob had
established itself as a force to be reckoned with in the world of narcotics
smuggling. Xhudo wrote that "by the mid-1980s, Albanians were already gaining
notoriety for their drug trafficking," playing a predominant role in the
"Balkan Connection" through which passed up to 40 percent of the heroin sold
on U.S. streets.
Narcotics Network
Asked by The New American about accusations that the KLA is implicated in
drug smuggling and terrorism, Shirley Cloyes, the Balkan affairs adviser for
the Albanian American Civic League (AACL), dismissed the charges as
"absolutely preposterous" products of "Serb propaganda."
"These reports are quite baffling, and it is very, very disturbing that
such propaganda has been given wide currency in the press," Cloyes declared.
"As the atrocities of Milosevic's regime have been exposed to the public, the
Serb propaganda machine has stepped up its rhetoric about the supposed
connections between the KLA and drug traffickers and Islamic fundamentalists.
There is simply no merit to any of these charges."
Former counter-narcotics agent Michael Levine, author of the exposés
Deep Cover and The Big White Lie, begs to differ with Cloyes'
assessment. "Backing the KLA is simply insane," Levine protests. Levine, a
highly decorated former undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), told The New American, "My contacts within the DEA are
quite frankly terrified, but there's not much they can say without risking
their jobs.
These guys [the KLA] have a network that's active on the streets of this
country. The Albanian mob is a scary operation. In fact, the Mafia relied on
Albanian hitmen to carry out a lot of their contracts. They're the worst
elements of society that you can imagine, and now, according to my sources in
drug enforcement, they're politically protected."
"It's the same old story," Levine notes. "Ten years ago we were arming and
equipping the worst elements of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan - drug
traffickers, arms smugglers, anti-American terrorists.
We later paid the price when the World Trade Center was bombed, and we
learned that some of those responsible had been trained by us. Now we're doing
the same thing with the KLA, which is tied in with every known middle and far
eastern drug cartel.
Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and
counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to
the KLA, and right to Albanian gangs in this country."
In early April, the FBI announced that an anonymous fax had been sent to
Serbian Orthodox churches across the country urging Serbian-Americans to carry
out terrorist acts against members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Although the FBI
subsequently dismissed the message as a "rant" rather than a terrorist threat,
the incident still served to misdirect public attention, according to Levine.
"It's possible that a Serb might commit an act of terrorism, but the KLA's
got a whole network up and running in this country, and they're in bed with
Osama bin-Laden, who's shown that he intends to kill Americans and has the
means to do it," Levine declares.
Robert Gelbard, the Clinton Administration's former special envoy for
Kosovo, told Agence France Presse in February 1998 that the KLA "is,
without any questions, a terrorist group." After this remark provoked
criticism from the KLA's American partisans that it amounted to a "green
light" for Milosevic to carry out repression against Kosovo's Albanian
population, Gelbard clarified his point by telling the House Committee on
International Relations that while the KLA had committed terrorist acts, it
had never "been classified legally by the U.S. government as a terrorist
organization."
In light of the fact that the KLA has been embraced by Osama bin-Laden, who
has been identified by the Administration as the kingpin of global terrorism,
this omission is a curious one indeed.
On August 24th of last year, shortly after U.S. cruise missiles struck
supposed assets of bin-Laden's network in Sudan and Afghanistan, the Saudi
terror chieftain's World Islamic Front (WIF) issued a communiqué urging its
followers to "direct your attacks to the American army and her allies, the
infidels."
Kosovo was listed among the locales in which the communiqué claimed the WIF
had "achieved great victories" in recent years. In a November 30th dispatch
from Pristina, Kosovo, The Scotsman reported that bin-Laden's
operatives were active in Albania.
In addition, intelligence officials reported that "Mujahadeen units from at
least a half dozen Middle East countries [are] streaming across the border
into Kosovo from safe bases in Albania."
Complement to Bloodshed
As preparations for NATO's war in Kosovo proceeded, according to The
Scotsman, the Clinton Administration asked the KLA "to distance themselves
from so-called Mujahadeen fundamentalists." In exchange, the Administration
held out the promise of political and military support.
According to the February 24th New York Times, Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright promised the KLA leadership that in exchange for its
signatures on the Rambouillet peace accord, "Officers in the Kosovo Liberation
Army would be sent to the United States for training in transforming
themselves from a guerilla group into a police force or a political entity,
much like the African National Congress did in South Africa."
"We want to develop a good relationship with them as they transform
themselves into a politically oriented organization," declared deputy State
Department spokesman James Foley. "We want to develop closer and better ties
with this organization."
Military cooperation between the KLA and NATO is already a reality in
Kosovo. The Times of London reported on April 20th that KLA guerillas,
using satellite communications systems, have been target-spotting for NATO
bombing runs over the province.
"The intelligence is passed to Western `handlers' who relay the targets to
the alliance, enabling NATO to claim that it has no `formal links' with the
rebels," continued the Times. Some of those "handlers" are commandos
from the British SAS Special Forces; others reportedly are from the U.S. Delta
Force.
One British report suggested that Military Professional Resources
Incorporated (MPRI), the Virginia-based private military training firm, had
been retained by the Albanian government to train and equip the KLA. MPRI
spokesman Ed Soyster told The New American that while the firm has ongoing
programs in Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, "we've not been contacted by the
Albanian government, and we're not going to get in the middle of that thing in
Kosovo." Alluding to the KLA's background in drug smuggling and terrorism,
Soyster said that "this group is something that we simply don't want to
associate with" - an interesting assessment, given the firm's willingness to
contract with unsavory elements in both Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Some KLA partisans in the U.S. are urging the Administration to dispense
with "handlers" and arm the KLA directly. On April 21st, Senators Mitch
McConnell (R-KY) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) introduced the "Kosova
Self-Defense Act," which would (in McConnell's words) "provide $25 million to
arm and train members of the KLA" and "equip 10,000 men or 10 battalions with
small arms and anti-tank weapons for up to 18 months."
McConnell told his colleagues, "Given Administration reluctance to deploy
U.S. troops, there is only one option - the KLA must be given the means to
defend their homeland." Congressman James Traficant (D-OH) has introduced a
complementary measure in the House.
Not surprisingly, the AACL supports the proposal to arm the KLA - but only
in combination with the deployment of U.S. troops, rather than as a substitute
for such a deployment.
"Mr. President, how many Albanians must die before we do the right thing -
namely arm the KLA, as we did the Croats in Bosnia - and committing NATO
ground troops to stop the genocide and finish the job we started?" pleaded
AACL director Joseph DioGuardi in a letter to Bill Clinton. Asked by The New
American why American troops are necessary if the KLA can recruit Albanians
from the diaspora to fight on the ground, the AACL's Shirley Cloyes replied,
"Our position has always been that we should start with arming the KLA before
we send in ground troops."
This is to say that the AACL - which is essentially the KLA's public
relations organ - does not see arming the KLA as an alternative to shedding
American blood on the ground in Kosovo, but as a complement to a ground
campaign: The KLA gets U.S. arms to continue its irredentist campaign, and
U.S. servicemen get the dubious privilege of dying on behalf of "Greater
Albania" and, of course, the new world order.
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KLA Map of "Greater Albania" |
A "Greater Albania"
When the conversation turned to the question of the KLA's larger designs,
Cloyes stuck close to her scripted talking points. "I have no time for talk
about `Greater Albania,'" Cloyes emphatically told The New American. "The only
quest for hegemony in the Balkans is Milosevic's quest for a `Greater Serbia.'
You have only one land grab, and that's Serbia's grab of Kosovo." When asked
if it is the KLA's intention to change existing borders in the Balkans, as the
map distributed by the group suggests, Cloyes once again parried the inquiry
by condemning "Serb aggression": "There are no borders to change. The only
borders that have been changed were changed by Serbia." It will be interesting
to see how this line of reasoning plays with those residents of Montenegro,
Serbia, Macedonia, and Greece who live within the KLA-defined boundaries of
"Greater Albania."
"In the end, it will come to this: Led by the KLA, Kosovo will separate
from Serbia, whether by negotiations or by violence," concluded Christopher
Hedges in his Foreign Affairs essay. "The grim reality is that we had
better get to know the KLA - because it is not going away." It must be
remembered that Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign
Relations, serves to define policy alternatives for America's foreign policy
elite. Thus, Hedges' essay could be taken as a summary of the official
Establishment line.
"Why quit our own to stand on foreign ground?" asked George Washington in
his Farewell Address. "Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part
of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European
ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?" The wisdom of Washington's
warning to eschew damaging entanglements is underscored by the utterly
demented determination of our ruling Establishment to knit our destiny with
that of the KLA.