The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

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The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 07, 2008 9:26 pm

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com ... -deep.html


The End of the Affair? The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State


When three officers of Germany's foreign intelligence service the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), were arrested in Pristina November 19, it exposed that country's extensive covert operations in the heart of the Balkans.

On November 14, a bomb planted at the office of the European Union Special Representative was detonated in downtown Pristina. While damage was light and there were no injuries, U.N. "peacekeepers" detained one of the BND officers hours after the blast when he was observed taking photos of the damaged building. Two of his colleagues waited in a car and acted as lookouts. The officer named these two colleagues as witnesses that he was in his office at the time of the attack.

That office, identified by the press as the "private security firm" Logistics-Coordination & Assessment Service or LCAS, in reality was a front company for BND operations. Its premises were searched three days later and the trio were subsequently arrested and accused by Kosovan authorities of responsibility for bombing the EU building. As a result of the arrests, the BND was forced to admit the real identities of their agents and the true nature of LCAS.

A scandal erupted leading to a diplomatic row between Berlin and Pristina. The German government labeled the accusations "absurd" and threatened a cut-off of funds to the Kosovo government. A circus atmosphere prevailed as photos of the trio were shown on Kosovan TV and splashed across the front pages of the press. Rumors and dark tales abounded, based on leaks believed by observers to have emanated from the office of Kosovo's Prime Minister, the "former" warlord Hashim Thaci, nominal leader of the statelet's organized crime-tainted government.

When seized by authorities one of the BND officers, Andreas J., demonstrated very poor tradecraft indeed. Among the items recovered by police, the operative's passport along with a notebook containing confidential and highly incriminating information on the situation in Kosovo were examined. According to media reports, the notebook contained the names of well-placed BND informants in the Prime Minister's entourage. According to this reading, the arrests were an act of revenge by Thaci meant to embarrass the German government.

But things aren't always as they seem.

On November 29, the trio--Robert Z., Andreas J. and Andreas D.--departed Kosovo on a special flight bound for Berlin where they "will face a committee of German parliamentarians who have taken an interest in their case," according to an account in Spiegel Online.

More curious than a violent attack on the streets of Pristina, a city wracked by gangland killings, car hijackings, kidnappings and assaults is the provenance of the bomb itself. In other words, why would German intelligence agents attack their own? But before attempting to answer this question, a grim backstory to the affair rears its ugly head.

An Agency Mired in Scandal

This latest scandal comes as yet another blow to the BND considering August's revelations by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks that Germany's external intelligence agency had extensively spied on journalists. Like their counterparts at the CIA, the BND is forbidden by law from carrying out domestic operations.

According to Wikileaks documents, journalists working for Focus Magazine and Der Spiegel were collaborators in a scheme by the agency to learn their sources as well as obtaining information on left-wing politicians, including Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) leaders Gregor Gysi and Andreas Lederer.

Indeed Focus Magazine journalist Josef Hufelschulte, code name 'Jerez, wrote articles based on reports provided by the BND "intended to produce favorable coverage." Wikileaks correspondent Daniel Schmitt and investigations editor Julian Assange comment that, "The document in general shows the extent to which the collaboration of journalists with intelligence agencies has become common and to what dimensions consent is manufactured in the interests of those involved."

In November, Wikileaks published a subsequent document obtained from the telecommunications giant T-Systems. In addition to revealing two dozen secret IP addresses used by the BND for surveillance operations, the document provides "Evidence of a secret out of control BND robot scanning selected web-sites. In 2006 system administrators had to ban the "BVOE" IP addresses to prevent servers from being destroyed." Additionally, Wikileaks revealed the "activity on a Berlin prostitution service website--evidence that intelligence seductions, the famed cold-war 'honeytrap', is alive and well?"

While the document does not spell out who was running the sex-for-hire website, one can't help but wonder whether Balkan-linked organized crime syndicates, including Kosovan and Albanian sex traffickers are working in tandem with the BND in return for that agency turning a blind eye to the sordid trade in kidnapped women.

Kosovo: A European Narco State

When Kosovo proclaimed its "independence" in February, the Western media hailed the provocative dismemberment of Serbia, a move that completed the destruction of Yugoslavia by the United States, the European Union and NATO, as an exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region.

If by "peace" one means impunity for rampaging crime syndicates or by "stability," the freedom of action with no questions asked by U.S. and NATO military and intelligence agencies, not to mention economic looting on a grand scale by freewheeling multinational corporations, then Kosovo has it all!

From its inception, the breakaway Serb province has served as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on spreading their tentacles East, encircling Russia and penetrating the former spheres of influence of the ex-Soviet Union. As a template for contemporary CIA destabilization operations in Georgia and Ukraine, prospective EU members and NATO "partners," Kosovo should serve as a warning for those foolish enough to believe American clichés about "freedom" or the dubious benefits of "globalization."

Camp Bondsteel, located on rolling hills and farmland near the city of Ferizaj/Urosevac, is the largest U.S. military installation on the European continent. Visible from space, in addition to serving as an NSA listening post pointed at Russia and as the CIA's operational hub in the Balkans and beyond, some observers believe that Andreas J.'s notebook may have contained information that Camp Bondsteel continues to serve as a CIA "black site." One motive for rolling up the BND intelligence operation may have been U.S. fears that this toxic information would become public, putting paid U.S. claims that it no longer kidnaps and tortures suspected "terrorists."

When NATO partners Germany and the U.S. decided to drive a stake through Yugoslavia's heart in the early 1990s during the heady days of post-Cold War triumphalism, their geopolitical strategy could not have achieved "success" without the connivance, indeed active partnership amongst Yugoslavia's nationalist rivals. As investigative journalist Misha Glenny documented,

Most shocking of all, however, is how the gangsters and politicians fueling war between their peoples were in private cooperating as friends and close business partners. The Croat, Bosnian, Albanian, Macedonian, and Serb moneymen and mobsters were truly thick as thieves. They bought, sold, and exchanged all manner of commodities, knowing that the high levels of personal trust between them were much stronger than the transitory bonds of hysterical nationalism. They fomented this ideology among ordinary folk in essence to mask their own venality. As one commentator described it, the new republics were ruled by "a parastate Cartel which had emerged from political institutions, the ruling Communist Party and its satellites, the military, a variety of police forces, the Mafia, court intellectuals and with the president of the Republic at the center of the spider web...Tribal nationalism was indispensable for the cartel as a means to pacify its subordinates and as a cover for the uninterrupted privatization of the state apparatus. (McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, p. 27)

Glenny's description of the 1990s convergence of political, economic and security elites with organized crime syndicates in Western intelligence operations is the quintessential definition of the capitalist deep state.

In Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott describes how the deep state can be characterized by "the symbiosis between governments (and in particular their intelligence agencies) and criminal associations, particularly drug traffickers, in the stabilization of right-wing terror in Vietnam, Italy, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and other parts of the world." Indeed, "revelations in the 1970s and 1980s about the 'strategy of tension,' whereby government intelligence agencies, working in international conjunction, strengthened the case for their survival by actually fomenting violence, recurringly in alliance with drug-trafficking elements."

Scott's analysis is perhaps even more relevant today as "failed states" such as Kosovo, characterized by economic looting on an industrial scale, the absence of the rule of law, reliance on far-right terrorists (of both the "religious" and "secular" varieties) to achieve policy goals, organized crime syndicates, as both assets and executors of Western policy, and comprador elites are Washington's preferred international partners.

For the ruling elites of the former Yugoslavia and their Western allies, Kosovo is a veritable goldmine. Situated in the heart of the Balkans, Kosovo's government is deeply tied to organized crime structures: narcotrafficking, arms smuggling, car theft rings and human trafficking that feeds the sex slave "industry." These operations are intimately linked to American destabilization campaigns and their cosy ties to on-again, off-again intelligence assets that include al-Qaeda and other far-right terror gangs. As investigative journalist Peter Klebnikov documented in 2000,

The Kosovar traffickers ship heroin exclusively from Asia's Golden Crescent. It's an apparently inexhaustible source. At one end of the crescent lies Afghanistan, which in 1999 surpassed Burma as the world's largest producer of opium poppies. From there, the heroin base passes through Iran to Turkey, where it is refined, and then into the hands of the 15 Families, which operate out of the lawless border towns linking Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia. Not surprisingly, the KLA has also flourished there. According to the State Department, four to six tons of heroin move through Turkey every month. "Not very much is stopped," says one official. "We get just a fraction of the total." ("Heroin Heroes," Mother Jones, January-February 2000)

Not much has changed since then. Indeed, the CIA's intelligence model for covert destabilization operations is a continuing formula for "success." Beginning in the 1940s, when the Corsican Mafia was pegged by the Agency to smash the French Communist Party, down to today's bloody headlines coming out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, global drug lords and intelligence operators go hand in hand. It is hardly surprising then, that according to a report by the Berlin Institute for European Policy, organized crime is the only profitable sector of the Kosovan economy. Nearly a quarter of the country's economic output, some €550 million, is derived from criminal activities.

Though the role of the United States and their NATO partners are central to the drama unfolding today, the BND affair also reveals that beneath the carefully-constructed façade of Western "unity" in "Freedom Land," deep inter-imperialist rivalries simmer. As the socialist journalist Peter Schwarz reports,

Speculation has since been rife about the background to the case, but it is doubtful whether it will ever be clarified. Kosovo is a jungle of rival secret services. In this regard, it resembles Berlin before the fall of the Wall. The US, Germany, Britain, Italy and France all have considerable intelligence operations in the country, which work both with and against one another. Moreover, in this country of just 2.1 million inhabitants, some 15,000 NATO soldiers and 1,500 UN police officers are stationed, as well as 400 judges, police officers and security officers belonging to the UN's EULEX mission. (Peter Schwarz, "Kosovo's Dirty Secret: The Background to Germany's Secret Service Affair," World Socialist Web Site, December 1, 2008)

Into this jungle of conflicting loyalties and interests, international crime syndicates in close proximity--and fleeting alliance--with this or that security service rule the roost. It is all the more ironic that the Thaci government has targeted the BND considering, as Balkan analyst Christopher Deliso revealed:

In 1996, Germany's BND established a major station in Tirana...and another in Rome to select and train future KLA fighters. According to Le Monde Diplomatique, "special forces in Berlin provided the operational training and supplied arms and transmission equipment from ex-East German Stasi stocks as well as Black uniforms." The Italian headquarters recruited Albanian immigrants passing through ports such as Brindisi and Trieste, while German military intelligence, the Militaramschirmdienst, and the Kommando Spezialkräfte Special Forces (KSK), offered military training and provisions to the KLA in the remote Mirdita Mountains of northern Albania controlled by the deposed president, Sali Berisha. (The Coming Balkan Caliphate, Westport: Praeger Security International, 2007, p. 37)

But as Schwarz observed, why would the Thaci government risk alienating the German state, given the fact that after the U.S., Germany "is the second largest financial backer of Kosovo and ranks among the most important advocates of its independence." Why indeed?

According to Balkan Analysis, the International Crisis Group (ICG) funded by billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI) and closely aligned with "liberal interventionists" in the United States, were instrumental in arguing that the United States and Germany, should guarantee "future stability," by building up the Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK), the KLA's successor organization, into a well-equipped army. Towards this end, the U.S. and Germany, in addition to arming the organized crime-linked statelet, have provided funds and equipment for a sophisticated military communications center in the capital.

Speculation is rife and conflicting accounts proliferate like mushrooms after a warm rain. One theory has it that senior Kosovan politicians were angered by BND criticisms linking KLA functionaries, including personal associates of Thaci and the Prime Minister himself, with organized crime. Tellingly, Schwarz reports, this "is contrary to the position taken by the CIA."

Is the affair then, merely a falling-out among thieves on how the spoils will be divided?

The CIA: Drugs & Thugs International

As noted above, U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely on far-flung networks of far-right provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to facilitate the dirty work for U.S. policy elites and American multinational corporations. Throughout its Balkan adventure the CIA made liberal use of these preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and provide them with targets. In their public pronouncements and analyses however, nary a harsh word is spoken.

According to the CIA, by any standard Kosovo's economy is a disaster, but that doesn't prevent the Agency from seeing "significant progress"!

Over the past few years Kosovo's economy has shown significant progress in transitioning to a market-based system, but it is still highly dependent on the international community and the diaspora for financial and technical assistance. Remittances from the diaspora--located mainly in Germany and Switzerland--account for about 30% of GDP. Kosovo's citizens are the poorest in Europe with an average annual per capita income of only $1800--about one-third the level of neighboring Albania. Unemployment--at more than 40% of the population--is a severe problem that encourages outward migration. (Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, November 20, 2008)

Needless to say, one unmentionable "fact" disappeared from the CIA's country profile is the statelet's overwhelming dependence on the black economy. I suppose this is what the Agency means when it lauds Kosovo's transition to a "market-based system"! But as former DEA investigator and whistleblower Michael Levine, author of The Big White Lie, told B92, one of the wings of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was "linked with every known narco-cartel in the Middle East and the Far East", and that almost every European intelligence service and police has files on "connections between ethnic Albanian rebels and drug trafficking". And dare I say by extension, the CIA itself.

One bone of contention which could have led Thaci and his henchmen to seek revenge against his erstwhile German allies was a 67-page BND analysis about organized crime in Kosovo. As Schwarz noted the dossier, produced in February 2005 and subsequently leaked to the press, "accuses Ramush Haradinaj (head of government from December 2004 to March 2005), Hashim Thaci (prime minister since January 2008) and Xhavit Haliti, who sits in the parliament presidium, of being deeply implicated in the drugs trade."

According to the BND report, "Regarding the key players (e.g., Haliti, Thaci, Haradinaj), there exists the closest ties between politics, business and internationally operating OC [organized crime] structures in Kosovo. The criminal networks behind this are encouraging political instability. They have no interest in building a functioning state, which could impair their flourishing trade." (WSWS, op. cit.)

Haradinaj, an American protégé, became Prime Minister in 2004. However, he was forced to resign his post in March 2005 when the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted him for crimes against humanity. Among other things, Haradinaj was accused of abducting civilians, unlawful detention, torture, murder and rape. Schwarz notes he was acquitted in April 2008 "for lack of evidence, after nine out of ten prosecution witnesses died violently and the tenth withdrew his statement after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt." Talk about friends in high places!

Mirroring evidence uncovered by journalists and investigators regarding the control of the drugs trade by 15 Albanian crime families, the Berlin Institute for European Policy laid similar charges against Thaci, stating that real power in Kosovo is wielded by 15 to 20 family clans who control "almost all substantial key social positions" and are "closely linked to prominent political decision makers."

According to Spiegel, when the BND operation was run to ground with the possible connivance of the CIA, its secret network of informants, instrumental to gaining insight into the interconnections amongst state actors and organized crime were compromised. The BND's Department Five, responsible for organized crime wrote a confidential report linking Thaci as "a key figure in a Kosovar-Albanian mafia network."

Department Two, according to Spiegel, was responsible for telecommunications surveillance. In 1999, the BND launched operation "Mofa99," a wiretap intercept program that targeted high-ranking members of the KLA--and exposed their links to dodgy criminal syndicates and Islamist allies, al-Qaeda. The program was so successful according to Spiegel that since then, "the BND has maintained an extensive network of informants among high-ranking functionaries of the KLA and the Kosovar administration."

Functionaries in possession of many dangerous secrets and inconvenient truths!

As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky wrote back in 2001, among the "inconvenient truths" unexplored by Western media is the close proximity of far-right Islamist terror gangs and planetary U.S. destabilization operations.

Since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin ("holy warriors") to fight covert wars on Washington's behest has become an integral part of US foreign policy. A report of the US Congress has revealed how the US administration--under advice from the National Security Council headed by Anthony Lake--had "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base" leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic Network," of thousands of Mujahedin from the Muslim world.

The "Bosnian pattern" has since been replicated in Kosovo, Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting with the KLA-NLA are Mujahedin from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union as well as "soldiers of fortune" from several NATO countries including Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army.
(Michel Chossudovsky, "Washington Behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia," Global Research, September 10, 2001)

Fast forward seven years and one can hypothesize that the BND, stepping on the CIA's toes and that agency's cosy intelligence "understanding" with Mafia-linked KLA fighters and al-Qaeda assets, would have every reason to sabotage the BND's organized crime operations--not that the German military intelligence service's hands are any cleaner!

While we may never know all the facts surrounding this curious affair, one thing is certain: the role played by powerful Mafia gangs as a source for black funds, intelligence assets and CIA "agents of influence" will continue. Administrations come and go, but like motherhood and apple pie the shadowy workings of America's deep state is an eternal verity you can count on!
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Postby 8bitagent » Sun Dec 07, 2008 9:40 pm

Western forces are still orchestrating false flag attacks in the Balkans? Damn.

In the 1990's and through even 2002, the globalists(through CIA, BND and Pentagon liasons and proxies) used bin Laden's al Qaeda network to do all their dirty work in the former Yugoslavia(literally every nook and cranny of al Qaeda was devoted to the Bosnian jihad cause)

Makes me wonder who was ordering Slobodan and company to orchestrate the Muslim ethnic cleansing...probably all part of the NWO hegelian dialectic.
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Postby Gouda » Mon Dec 08, 2008 5:14 am

Good update.

An earlier thread with some more background.
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Postby jingofever » Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:49 am

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Postby StarmanSkye » Tue Dec 23, 2008 11:35 am

It's sort of distressingly gratifying to read this crisp distillation of the deep state background and reality to Kosova and the whole Made in the USA (with strategic western EU and NATO support) the engineered takedown of Yugoslavia with the blowback aftereffects, much as has been shaped in my own mind over the past 8 or so years I've been reading about it. Milosevic was never the extreme tyrant the west had to make him out to be, the myth continuuing now long after he was allowed and even encouraged to die in the International Criminal system --- while the west's equally-if-not-moreso culpable murderers and criminal-regime terroristas have been protected and rewarded.

Thanks for this review. With implications for other western econ-political targets of dissolution and reinvention. Wonder how far along the deep state is in establishing itself in S. America?
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Postby American Dream » Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:17 pm

Remembering the 1999 NATO led War on Yugoslavia: Kosovo "Freedom Fighters" Financed by Organized Crime
By Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 24, 2009


Ten years ago, March 24th 1999, marks the commencement of NATO aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia. The bombings which lasted for almost three months, were followed by the military invasion (under a bogus UN mandate) and illegal occupation of the province of Kosovo.

The following article was written and published in April 1999.

Michel Chossudovsky, March 19, 2009



Heralded by the global media as a humanitarian peace-keeping mission, NATO's ruthless bombing of Belgrade and Pristina goes far beyond the breach of international law. While Slobodan Milosevic is demonised, portrayed as a remorseless dictator, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is upheld as a self-respecting nationalist movement struggling for the rights of ethnic Albanians. The truth of the matter is that the KLA is sustained by organised crime with the tacit approval of the United States and its allies.

Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multibillion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in "financing the conflict" in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged by numerous studies, the links of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the mid-1990s.

"...The financing of the Kosovo guerilla war poses critical questions and it sorely test claims of an "ethical" foreign policy. Should the West back a guerilla army that appears to partly financed by organised crime." 1

While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was "preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs."2 In the meantime, the rebel army has been skilfully heralded by the global media (in the months preceding the NATO bombings) as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

With KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year "freedom fighter") appointed as chief negotiator at Rambouillet, the KLA has become the de facto helmsman of the peace process on behalf of the ethnic Albanian majority and this despite its links to the drug trade. The West was relying on its KLA puppets to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under Western Administration.

Ironically Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, had described the KLA last year as "terrorists". Christopher Hill, America's chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement "has also been a strong critic of the KLA for its alleged dealings in drugs."3 Moreover, barely a few two months before Rambouillet, the US State Department had acknowledged (based on reports from the US Observer Mission) the role of the KLA in terrorising and uprooting ethnic Albanians:

"...the KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police, ... KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA [a process which has continued since the NATO bombings]... [T]he KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in the Stimlje region are "ready to flee." 4

While backing a "freedom movement" with links to the drug trade, the West seems also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who has called for an end to the bombings and expressed his desire to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Yugoslav authorities.5 It is worth recalling that a few days before his March 31st Press Conference, Rugova had been reported by the KLA (alongside three other leaders including Fehmi Agani) to have been killed by the Serbs.

Covert Financing of "Freedom Fighters"

Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where "freedom fighters" were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.

According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington's military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.6

The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. "The rising curve of cocaine imports to the US", wrote journalist John Dinges "followed almost exactly the flow of US arms and military advisers to Central America".7

The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. "Dirty money" recycled through the banking system--often through an anonymous shell company-- became "covert money," used to finance various rebel groups and guerilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991 Time Magazine report:

"Because the US wanted to supply the mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan', said a US intelligence officer.8

America and Germany join Hands

Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established as a joint endeavour between the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) (which previously played a key role in installing a right wing nationalist government under Franjo Tudjman in Croatia).9 The task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: "They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money".10 According to Whitley, the CIA was, subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania.11

The covert activities of Germany's BND were consistent with Bonn's intent to expand its "Lebensraum" into the Balkans. Prior to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it had "forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the US favoured (although not officially) the formation of a "Greater Albania" encompassing Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.12 According to Sean Gervasi, Germany was seeking a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa."13

Islamic Fundamentalism in Support of the KLA

Bonn and Washington's "hidden agenda" consisted in triggering nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the ultimate purpose of destabilising Yugoslavia. The latter objective was also carried out "by turning a blind eye" to the influx of mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist organisations.14

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Koweit had been fighting in Bosnia.15 And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.16

According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede.17 "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations."18

The supply route for arming KLA "freedom fighters" are the rugged mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies Western Europe with grade four heroin. 75% of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe."19 A recent intelligence report by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: "Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries."20

The Laundering of Dirty Money

In order to thrive, the criminal syndicates involved in the Balkans narcotics trade need friends in high places. Smuggling rings with alleged links to the Turkish State are said to control the trafficking of heroin through the Balkans "cooperating closely with other groups with which they have political or religious ties" including criminal groups in Albanian and Kosovo.21 In this new global financial environment, powerful undercover political lobbies connected to organized crime cultivate links to prominent political figures and officials of the military and intelligence establishment.

The narcotics trade nonetheless uses respectable banks to launder large amounts of dirty money. While comfortably removed from the smuggling operations per se, powerful banking interests in Turkey but mainly those in financial centres in Western Europe discretely collect fat commissions in a multibillion dollar money laundering operation. These interests have high stakes in ensuring a safe passage of drug shipments into Western European markets.

The Albanian Connection

Arms smuggling from Albania into Kosovo and Macedonia started at the beginning of 1992, when the Democratic Party came to power, headed by President Sali Berisha. An expansive underground economy and cross border trade had unfolded. A triangular trade in oil, arms and narcotics had developed largely as a result of the embargo imposed by the international community on Serbia and Montenegro and the blockade enforced by Greece against Macedonia.

Industry and agriculture in Kosovo were spearheaded into bankruptcy following the IMF's lethal "economic medicine" imposed on Belgrade in 1990. The embargo was imposed on Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs were driven into abysmal poverty. Economic collapse created an environment which fostered the progress of illicit trade. In Kosovo, the rate of unemployment increased to a staggering 70 percent (according to Western sources).

Poverty and economic collapse served to exacerbate simmering ethnic tensions. Thousands of unemployed youths "barely out of their Teens" from an impoverished population, were drafted into the ranks of the KLA...22

In neighbouring Albania, the free market reforms adopted since 1992 had created conditions which favoured the criminalisation of State institutions. Drug money was also laundered in the Albanian pyramids (ponzi schemes) which mushroomed during the government of former President Sali Berisha (1992-1997).23 These shady investment funds were an integral part of the economic reforms inflicted by Western creditors on Albania.

Drug barons in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia (with links to the Italian mafia) had become the new economic elites, often associated with Western business interests. In turn the financial proceeds of the trade in drugs and arms were recycled towards other illicit activities (and vice versa) including a vast prostitution racket between Albania and Italy. Albanian criminal groups operating in Milan, "have become so powerful running prostitution rackets that they have even taken over the Calabrians in strength and influence."24

The application of "strong economic medicine" under the guidance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions had contributed to wrecking Albania's banking system and precipitating the collapse of the Albanian economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several Western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes rivetted on Albania's abundant and unexplored oil-deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum... The Adenauer Foundation had been lobbying in the background on behalf of German mining interests. 25

Berisha's Minister of Defence Safet Zoulali (alleged to have been involved in the illegal oil and narcotics trade) was the architect of the agreement with Germany's Preussag (handing over control over Albania's chrome mines) against the competing bid of the US led consortium of Macalloy Inc. in association with Rio Tinto Zimbabwe (RTZ).26

Large amounts of narco-dollars had also been recycled into the privatisation programmes leading to the acquisition of State assets by the mafias. In Albania, the privatisation programme had led virtually overnight to the development of a property owning class firmly committed to the "free market". In Northern Albania, this class was associated with the Guegue "families" linked to the Democratic Party.

Controlled by the Democratic Party under the presidency of Sali Berisha (1992-97), Albania's largest financial "pyramid" VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue "families" of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests. VEFA was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money.27

According to one press report (based on intelligence sources), senior members of the Albanian government during the Presidency of Sali Berisha including cabinet members and members of the secret police SHIK were alleged to be involved in drugs trafficking and illegal arms trading into Kosovo:

(...) The allegations are very serious. Drugs, arms, contraband cigarettes all are believed to have been handled by a company run openly by Albania's ruling Democratic Party, Shqiponja (...). In the course of 1996 Defence Minister, Safet Zhulali [was alleged] to had used his office to facilitate the transport of arms, oil and contraband cigarettes. (...) Drugs barons from Kosovo (...) operate in Albania with impunity, and much of the transportation of heroin and other drugs across Albania, from Macedonia and Greece en route to Italy, is believed to be organised by Shik, the state security police (...). Intelligence agents are convinced the chain of command in the rackets goes all the way to the top and have had no hesitation in naming ministers in their reports.28

The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter): "Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek embargo [in 1993-4] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of kalachnikov rifles to Albanian `brothers' in Kosovo".29

The Northern tribal clans or "fares" had also developed links with Italy's crime syndicates.30 In turn, the latter played a key role in smuggling arms across the Adriatic into the Albanian ports of Dures and Valona. At the outset in 1992, the weapons channelled into Kosovo were largely small arms including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPK and PPK machine-guns, 12.7 calibre heavy machine-guns, etc.

The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti-aircraft and antiarmor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA "funnelled through a so-called "Government of Kosovo" based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn--notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government".31

The KLA has also acquired electronic surveillance equipment which enables it to receive NATO satellite information concerning the movement of the Yugoslav Army. The KLA training camp in Albania is said to "concentrate on heavy weapons training - rocket propelled grenades, medium caliber cannons, tanks and transporter use, as well as on communications, and command and control". (According to Yugoslav government sources.32

These extensive deliveries of weapons to the Kosovo rebel army were consistent with Western geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, there has been a "deafening silence" of the international media regarding the Kosovo arms-drugs trade. In the words of a 1994 Report of the Geopolitical Drug Watch: "the trafficking [of drugs and arms] is basically being judged on its geostrategic implications (...) In Kosovo, drugs and weapons trafficking is fuelling geopolitical hopes and fears"...33

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, the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to "finance the Kosovo conflict" with the ultimate objective of destabilising the Belgrade government and fully recolonising the Balkans. The destruction of an entire country is the outcome. Western governments which participated in the NATO operation bear a heavy burden of responsibility in the deaths of civilians, the impoverishment of both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and the plight of those who were brutally uprooted from towns and villages in Kosovo as a result of the bombings.

NOTES

1. Roger Boyes and Eske Wright, Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels The Times, London, Monday, March 24, 1999.

2. Ibid.

3. Philip Smucker and Tim Butcher, "Shifting stance over KLA has betrayed' Albanians", Daily Telegraph, London, 6 April 1999

4. KDOM Daily Report, released by the Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, Office of South Central European Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, December 21, 1998; Compiled by EUR/SCE (202-647-4850) from daily reports of the U.S. element of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, December 21, 1998.

5. "Rugova, sous protection serbe appelle a l'arret des raides", Le Devoir, Montreal, 1 April 1999.

6. See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Harper and Row, New York, 1972.

7. See John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega, Times Books, New York, 1991.

8. "The Dirtiest Bank of All," Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22.

9. Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999; see also Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997.

10. Quoted in Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999).

11. Ibid.

12. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4

13. Sean Gervasi, "Germany, US and the Yugoslav Crisis", Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93).

14. See Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1993.

15. For further details see Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997, p. 288.

16. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, 2 April 1999.

17. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 13, 1998.

18. Ibid.

19. Daily News, Ankara, 5 March 1997.

20. Quoted in Boyes and Wright, op cit.

21. ANA, Athens, 28 January 1997, see also Turkish Daily News, 29 January 1997.

22. Brian Murphy, KLA Volunteers Lack Experience, The Associated Press, 5 April 1999.

23. See Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3, see also Barry James, In Balkans, Arms for Drugs, The International Herald Tribune Paris, June 6, 1994.

24. The Guardian, 25 March 1997.

25. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, La crisi albanese, Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Torino, 1998.

26. Ibid.

27. Andrew Gumbel, The Gangster Regime We Fund, The Independent, February 14, 1997, p. 15.

28. Ibid.

29. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3.

30. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 66, p. 4.

31. Quoted in Workers' World, May 7, 1998.

32. See Government of Yugoslavia at http://www.gov.yu/terrorism/terroristcamps.html.

33. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4.


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Postby smiths » Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:34 am

Death squad leader ‘was top CIA agent’
SERBIA: Gabriel Ronay

THE LATE President Milosevic's secret police chief and organiser of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the United States' top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92.

The claim that from 1992 until the end of the decade, Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia's murderous DB Secret Police, was regularly informing his CIA handlers of the thinking in Milosevic's inner circle has shocked the region.

Stanisic is said to have loyally served his two masters for eight years. He is facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
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In the terrifying years of Yugoslavia's internecine wars, he acted as the willing "muscle" behind Milosevic's genocidal campaigns in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, including Sebrenica.

According to the charges he faces, Stanisic was "part of a joint criminal enterprise that included former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian politicians".

Dermot Groome, The Hague's chief prosecutor, has specifically accused him of sending in the Serb Scorpion and Red Beret death squads into the states seeking independence from Belgrade. Stanisic has pleaded not guilty.

Like in a Cold War spy thriller, Serbia's secret police chief met his CIA handlers in safe houses, parks and boats on the river Sava to betray his master's action plans. He provided, it is claimed, information on the whereabouts of Nato hostages, aided CIA operatives in their search for Muslim mass graves and helped the US set up secret bases in Bosnia to monitor the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace accord.

This has raised awkward questions for Washington. With Stanisic providing chapter and verse of the genocidal slaughter of Croats, Bosnians and Albanians from the early 1990s, should President Clinton have cut a deal with Milosevic at Dayton, Ohio, ending the Bosnian war on such equitable terms for the Serbs? Or, using Stanisic's evidence, should the Americans not have unmasked Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, the then head of Republika Srpska, as genocidal war criminals and demanded their surrender?

From his prison cell at The Hague, Stanisic countered the charges facing him with an aide memoir portraying himself as "a person who had sought to moderate Milosevic and had done a great deal to moderate the crisis".

In an unusual move, the CIA has submitted classified documents to the court that confirm Stanisic's "undercover operative role in helping to bring peace to the region and aiding the agency's work. He helped defuse some of the most explosive actions of the Bosnian war."

...


http://www.sundayherald.com/internation ... _agent.php



This is a remarkable article. On the one hand, it contain a shocking revelation - that Slobodan Milosevic's intelligence chief was also a CIA spy. (Actually, the revelation itself is some weeks old, and it is now alleged that he also worked for Russian intelligence, which is not mentioned in the Herald article). This is not the first time that the CIA has been found to have high-level involvement in the former Yugoslavia. Their involvement in training KLA militias in 1998-99, while working as OSCE officers, was revealed in 2000. Still, the implications of this are obviously sweeping. It would suggest that the US government not only had some unseen leverage in the war on the Serbian side, but that it had insight that enabled it to decisively influence negotiations at key points with a reasonable expectation as to the outcome. So, if Zimmerman told Izetbegovic to scuttle the Lisbon agreement, he probably had reason to know that it would lead to years of war. It means that when the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs was supporting militias such as Arkan's Tigers or the Red Berets, the US government knew before anyone else did. What did it do with this information? On the other hand, the article is so full of inaccuracies and absurdities that it is hard to take it seriously.

First of all, Jovica Stanisic is not facing charges at the International Criminal Court, but at the ICTY. There is a huge difference in terms of the standing and legitimacy of each court. Secondly, even the ICTY does not charge that genocide took place in Croatia, or Kosovo, or anywhere outside Srebrenica, and even then it doesn't say that it was driven by Slobodan Milosevic. Yet, the reporter just keeps repeating 'genocide' as if this is supposed to have a hypnotic effect on the reader. What the indictment [pdf] actually alleges is an ethnic cleansing campaign in Krajina, and BiH. And at this point the key word remains 'alleges'. I don't doubt that substantial portions of the indictment are accurate, by the way, or that they would be shown to be such even in a court that wasn't as ridiculously biased as the ICTY. But that is hardly the point. The point of these falsehoods is to convey yet again that the fall of Yugoslavia is essentially a narrative of Greater Serbian expansionism checked only by exiguous 'peacekeeping' constraints, and that the current judicial process has more legitimacy than it actually possesses.

The story also asks us to believe that the CIA's influence was entirely benign, that it sought only to attenuate the causes of war, and that it used Stanisic to do so. This is because the CIA has taken the step of submitting classified documents to the ICTY to, er, 'clear up' their role in this affair. Obviously, we are not going to be told the truth either by the CIA, or by Stanisic in the context of a plea-bargain. But is a sign of the CIA's successful management of the news agenda that the revelation has produced not radical questioning but a further regurgitation of the propaganda memes of the 1990s, in a way that pro-actively whitewashes the CIA. The only question that the reporters asks is whether the US let the world down by being so 'equitable' to the Serbs at Dayton, as if that was the major problem with that lousy settlement. Should the US not have "unmasked" Karadzic and Milosevic and "demanded their surrender"? This would, of course, have entailed an invasion, and potentially quite a bloody one - but implicitly it would only have added to America's righteousness.


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re: Kosovo, et al

Postby hanshan » Wed Mar 25, 2009 7:24 pm

...

excellent

tx AD


...
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Re: The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby American Dream » Thu Apr 07, 2011 11:14 am

http://counterpunch.org/derens04062011.html

April 6, 2011

Serbs and Dissident Albanians Kidnapped and Murdered

Kosovo's Dirty Secrets

By JEAN-ARNAULT DÉRENS


On October 27, 1999 Budimir Baljosevic, a teacher aged 50, and four friends tried to escape from the ghetto to which the Serbs of the Kosovan town of Orahovac/Rahovec had been confined. Kosovo had been placed under interim United Nations administration in June that year, and a Nato-led peacekeeping force, KFOR, had moved in.

A Roma resident of the town, Agron N, had offered to guide them to Rozaje in Montenegro, for a fee of $840 each. His credentials justified the high price: he worked with the TMK (Kosovo Protection Corps), an organization supervised by Nato; its mission was the social reintegration of former guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA); he had already completed four successful “exfiltrations” of Serbs from Orahovac; a bricklayer by trade, he was involved in the construction of a new TMK base in the neighbouring town of Djakovica/Gjakove – where the five Serbs were last seen.

Agron N explained: “I stopped to look for my brother-in-law, who was supposed to come with us, driving in convoy. I left the Serbs in the car. When I came out of my brother-in-law’s house, someone shouted to me to hide and strangers took the Serbs. No one’s heard from them since.” He decided it was better for his own safety to spend a few months in Novi Pazar, in Serbia. Baljosevic’s brother tried many times to get news of the five Serbs, without success: “Some Italian soldiers from KFOR came to see me, and the UN police, too, but I never heard anything.”

Their fate is commonplace. Negovan Mavric keeps a small café at Velika Hoca, a Serb enclave a few kilometers from Orahovac/Rahovec, and runs the local branch of the Association of Families of Kidnapped and Missing Persons in Kosovo and Metohija. He showed me a list of the village’s dead and missing: the remains of 19 Serbs kidnapped in 1998 and 1999 have been found, but 55 Serbs and nine Roma are still missing. The first murder of a Serb civilian was recorded on May 12, 1998, when the Serbian police and the KLA began to fight for control of the district, where many Serbs then lived. The last kidnapping was on July 28, 2000, more than a year after the UN protectorate was established.

The hills around Velika Hoca are covered with vineyards; the mountains high above them mark the border between Kosovo and Albania. In the past, Albanians and Serbs coexisted peacefully in the Orahovac/Rahovec district. Since June 1999 the Serb population has fallen from nearly 10,000 to 700 in Velika Hoca, and 300 in the upper part of the town of Orahovac. The Serbs have been driven out of mixed villages such as Zociste, Opterusa and Retimlije.

The majority of the missing Serbs were kidnapped as early as July 1998, when the KLA briefly besieged Orahovac. Then a large number of Serb civilians from Retimlije were taken to a KLA base in the nearby village of Semetiste. The women were freed four days later, after the Red Cross intervened; none of the men (one just 16 years old) were seen alive again. In April 2005 some were identified among the remains of 21 people buried in a mass grave some distance away, in the village of Volujak/Valljake, near Klina.

Held on suspicion

Olgica Bozanic, a Serb from Orahovac who has taken refuge in Belgrade, is a member of the Association of Families of Kidnapped and Missing Persons. She may have lost as many as 10 relatives, including her two brothers, uncles and cousins. She heard news of one from Albanian former neighbors, who were held for several months by the guerrillas on suspicion of collaboration with the Serbian regime. They said that some Serbs from the Orahovac area were initially held near the main KLA base in the area, in the village of Drenovac/Drenovce. After the fighting stopped, they were transferred to Deva, a village in the Has mountains, near the Albanian border. It seems the KLA had occupied a base abandoned by the Yugoslav army when it withdrew in June 1999, and converted it into a detention centre. The Orahovac Serbs were then taken to Kukes, in Albania, and later to Durres, on the Albanian coast, where Bozanic’s former neighbours claimed to have seen them alive, in a KLA prison, in 2001.

Most Serbs kidnapped before the end of the war were probably killed inside Kosovo. The idea that those kidnapped after KFOR drove in were taken to Albania was put forward some time ago, but there has been no trace of them. In autumn 1999 Sefko Alomerovic, president of the district of Novi Pazar’s Helsinki Committee (a local organization, independent of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia), conducted a long inquiry, but the report has been lost and Alomerovic died in 2003. In interviews in 2000, he claimed to have visited five detention centers in Kosovo. These were small facilities – often converted garages or industrial buildings on the outskirts of towns – housing 10-50 detainees. The centers were under the authority of a Commandant “Mala” (real name Alush Agushi), a close associate of Ramush Haradinaj. Some families had tried to ransom detainees, but although large sums of money had been paid to intermediaries, none had ever been freed.

Some Serbs had been kept with a view to exchanging them for Albanian prisoners in Serbia, whose numbers were estimated at around 800 in 2000. There is no evidence that any exchanges ever took place. Some sources claim that many Serb detainees were executed in 2001, when Serbia passed an amnesty law and freed Albanians suspected of having belonged to the KLA. Some detention centers in Kosovo were used as staging camps for both Serb and Albanian prisoners awaiting transfer to Albania. Alomerovic was the first to mention human organ trafficking, suspecting that international criminal networks were buying organs supplied by members of the KLA.

Wall of silence

His revelations were not followed up and were in fact rejected by international organizations in Kosovo, including the UN interim administration mission, then led by Bernard Kouchner. Alomerovic, well known as a human rights militant and a long-term opponent of the Milosevic regime, talked of a “wall of silence”; KFOR denied the existence of any detention centers in Kosovo, in spite of evidence. Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, has also described this wall of silence, which she encountered when attempting to investigate the disappearance of Serb civilians and rumours of human organ trafficking.

As Dick Marty has emphasised in many interviews since the publication of his report to the Council of Europe “everybody in Kosovo” knew of the disappearance of Serb civilians, and of the detention during the war of many Albanians suspected of collaborating with the Serbian regime. Since 1999 the Pristina daily Bota Sot has never stopped denouncing the elimination of sympathizers of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK, founded by the late Ibrahim Rugova), during and since the war. The paper’s editor Bajrush Morina summed it up: “Three thousand people have been murdered in Kosovo since 1999, and only 600 of those murders have been solved. There’s been a lot of talk of revenge killings by families, but most are political murders.” Two of the paper’s reporters have been killed and Morina had to hire private bodyguards for a time. Yet the stories Bota Sot publishes have always been regarded with suspicion, given its relationship with the LDK.

Bota Sot has regularly reported the existence of detention centers in Kosovo and Albania, where Albanians accused of collaboration were held. In February this year the trial of former KLA commanders Sabit Geci and Riza Alijaj began in Mitrovica. They are accused of committing serious crimes against detainees in a camp at Cahan, in the mountains of northern As from the Kosovo border.
During the war, the secluded village of Cahan was used by the KLA as a logistics centre and a rear base for volunteers going to fight in Kosovo. Local strongman Bedri Cahani admitted that the inhabitants of Cahan smuggled cigarettes into Kosovo and that he was recruited by the KLA in autumn 1997, mainly to smuggle fighters over the mountains at night. The KLA was using an Albanian army barracks, abandoned in 1992, which still stands at the entrance to the village: this also housed a detention centre, mentioned by Marty. Cahan is a secluded spot, nearly 10km by rough mountain tracks from the town of Kruma.

ZZ spent two and a half months in “hell” at Cahan, and will be a key protected witness at the trial of Geci and Alijaj. He remembers systematic abuse and serious torture. Some detainees were forced to have sexual relations with each other; others were subjected to simulated executions. But, he told me, “I was probably the longest-serving prisoner at Cahan, and I only saw Albanians.” He had also seen some of the KLA’s most important commanders in Cahan, especially Hashim Thaci, Kosovo’s current prime minister.

All the detainees there in 1999 were, like ZZ, senior figures in the LDK. Most were arrested in the towns of Kukes and Kruma, which were full of refugees driven out of Kosovo by the Serbian forces. Some were members of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo (Fark), a guerrilla movement rival to the KLA, started, without much success on the ground, by supporters of Ibrahim Rugova.

The Drenica Group

Marty’s report singles out as responsible an internal faction of the KLA, which it refers to as the “Drenica Group”, listing as members Hashim Thaci, Azem Syla, Xhavit Haliti, Kadri Veseli, Fatmir Limaj, Sabit Geci and Riza Alijaj. These former guerrilla commanders are all from the Drenica area; they were also members of the Popular Movement of Kosovo (LPK), a secret Marxist-Leninist organization favorable to the Albanian Stalinist regime of Enver Hoxha. The movement emerged among the Albanian diaspora in Switzerland, and had an extensive network of clandestine militants in Kosovo. It was the LPK that created the KLA in 1996, bringing together a number of groups of independent militants already operating in Kosovo, mainly in the Drenica area. The best known, Adem Jashari, a great hero who is virtually worshipped in Kosovo, was killed by the Serbian police on March 6, 1998. His cousin, Gani Geci, survived and narrowly escaped an attempt on his life in 2001. Geci has never joined the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), the direct successor to the LPK. He is from the family of the bajraktar (hereditary village chieftain) of the village of Llausha, in the Drenica area. He remained a member of the LDK and later of a small splinter group, whom he represented during the last Kosovo parliament.
Geci told me: “We were faithful to Ibrahim Rugova, and we had never heard of the LPK, nor of Fark: as far as we were concerned, the KLA badge united all the fighters. When the LPK people arrived from Switzerland, we made them welcome. They had money and promised us weapons, but we quickly realized they were only interested in power. In any case, they never fought the Serbs. They relied on Nato to do that. They only fought other Albanians, to gain absolute power, and, since the end of the war they have systematically bled Kosovo dry.”

His claims are largely confirmed by a recently declassified Nato report from 2003, which identifies Haliti as the “godfather” of Kosovo, controlling most illegal activities, including smuggling, drug trafficking and prostitution. As well as being a senior figure in the LPK, Haliti was notorious as an agent of the Sigurimi, the secret service of Stalinist Albania. He is a top leader of the Drenica Group, which is synonymous with the leadership of the LPK and today’s PDK.

The PDK had a powerful tool in the Sherbimi Informativ i Kosoves (Shik), an intelligence service headed by Veseli and Syla. In 2009 Kosovo was shaken by the revelations of a former Shik agent, Nazim Bllaca, who admitted having murdered an Albanian who had collaborated with the Serbian police. Under house arrest while awaiting trial, Bllaca is once more free to speak to the press. In an interview in Koha Ditore this January, he claimed that Shik had killed “600 people in the first few months after the establishment of the UN protectorate and 1,000 over 12 months”.

People are beginning to talk in Kosovo about the violence by the KLA against Albanians accused of collaboration, or those whose political persuasion differed from the guerrillas. However, nobody yet wants to talk about the fate of the missing Serbs. ZZ explained that, at the end of the war, he was transferred from the camp at Cahan to the town of Prizren, in Kosovo: “For several days, they kept me in the cellar of a house, with seven elderly Serbs and one Roma. There were two of us Albanian prisoners from the camp at Cahan, and our gaolers forced us to hit the old Serbs. In the end, some German soldiers from KFOR freed me, but the Serbs had already been taken away, I don’t know where.”

I was unable to find any evidence that, after the war was over, the camp at Cahan had also housed Serbs intended to supply the trade in human organs. However, when Cahan housed a torture centre for “dissident” members of the KLA, in spring 1999, it was visited regularly by members of US special forces.



Translated by Charles Goulden

Jean-Arnault Dérens
is editor of Le Courrier des Balkan (balkans.courriers.info); his latest book, co-authored with Laurent Geslin, is Voyage au pays des Gorani: Balkans, début du XXIe siècle (Journey to the Land of the Gorani: the Balkans at the Start of the 21st Century), Cartouche, Paris, 2010.

This article appears in the Apriledition of the excellent monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com.
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Re: The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby American Dream » Tue Jul 12, 2011 10:18 am

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-ar ... v_id=75379

Tanjug News Agency
July 11, 2011

"Big powers against UN-mandate organ trafficking probe"


Image

BELGRADE: The U.S., Britain and France are hindering Serbia's request for the investigation into human organ trafficking in Kosovo to be conducted under the UN mandate.

This is according to Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić.

"Our request for the investigators to work with a mandate on the case of organ trafficking in Kosovo and Albania, and submit their reports to the UN Security Council, has unfortunately been hindered by those who have the institutional capacity to do that," Jeremić told Belgrade-based daily Blic in an interview.

He identified those countries as the United States, Britain and France.

When asked about whether this "ruins the last chance to carry out an independent investigation under the mandate of the UN Security Council", Jeremic said that "talks continued".

"I would like to believe that, in the weeks to come, we will manage to overcome the obstacle and achieve progress. If that does not happen, it will be extremely difficult to resist the impression that there is something in the case of human organ trafficking in Kosovo that, for some reason, should by no means see the light of day."

The Marty report published in late 2010 named members of the ethnic Albanian KLA as perpetrators of the body part trafficking atrocities, and kidnapped Serb and other civilians as their victims.
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Re: The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby wordspeak2 » Wed Jul 13, 2011 1:11 pm

Thanks for the articles, AD.

I don't know, Smiths, I never heard that one, but could be true. I have no doubt that the CIA did their best to infiltrate Milosevic's regime. However...
The fact is, accusations of "genocide" against Milosevic and the Serbs were made up by the western media. Yugoslavia was a quasi-socialist state that the west needed to destroy in that it was a threat to global capitalism. The Serbs were the population that were most left-wing and supportive of the Yugoslav state. Milosevic wasn't an iconic people's leader like a Chavez, but he refused to privatize much of the Yugoslav economy; he was the victim of a western media smear campaign and died in prison (killed?) before he could tell his story to the ICC. Here's an excellent video exposing the lie of the Serbian "death camps": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xox7TR11 ... re=related It shows outright photo fabrication by the media.

And here's a good Michael Parenti article that's a great intro on the situation for anyone who bought the capitalist media fairytale- pretty much everyone outside the region: http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html
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Re: The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Jul 13, 2011 3:41 pm

Well then all the countless women who talked of surviving brutal rape camps, all the footage and survivor accounts of death camps, massacres, ethnic cleansing...fake, done by someone else?

I know MPRI(Pentagon) and BND bin Laden proxies were used from 1992 to almost 2002 in the entire Balkan conflict, from Albania and Macedonia to Kosovo and Bosnia. And Im sure some massacres attributed to Serbs could have been done by them, but I always felt uneasy with the position that much of the horror by Serb armies was a hoax.
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Re: The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby wordspeak2 » Wed Jul 13, 2011 3:55 pm

"all the footage and survivor accounts of death camps, massacres, ethnic cleansing...fake, done by someone else?"

Um. Did you watch the video? There's violence committed on every side of a war; it's war. But the real criminal party was NATO. "Death camps"? No. And this notion of "ethnic cleansing" by Serbs is backwards and pushed to us by the capitalist press. I find that there's no issue where progressives are more ignorant than this one; it's almost mind-blowing. The web site The Emperor's New Clothes has done very thorough work on it: http://tenc.net/yugo.htmcle
Check out in particular articles about the alleged Srebrenica massacre: http://tenc.net/yugo.htm#8
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Re: The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby Stephen Morgan » Wed Jul 13, 2011 5:07 pm

8bitagent wrote:I know MPRI(Pentagon) and BND bin Laden proxies were used from 1992 to almost 2002 in the entire Balkan conflict, from Albania and Macedonia to Kosovo and Bosnia. And Im sure some massacres attributed to Serbs could have been done by them, but I always felt uneasy with the position that much of the horror by Serb armies was a hoax.


Feel uncomfortable if you want, but it's an uncomfortable truth. During the later Kosovo business, for example, three times as many Serbs as Kosovar Albanians had been forced from their homes, until the bombs started falling. Fictitious claims to support the narcoterrorist KLA. Similar in earlier conflicts, the NATO support for the Nazi (literally, as former Ustashi members) Croat government, the al-Qaeda backed Bosnians and so on.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State

Postby StarmanSkye » Fri Jul 15, 2011 5:15 pm

^^^^
Wordspeak 2 wrote:
"But the real criminal party was NATO. "Death camps"? No. And this notion of "ethnic cleansing" by Serbs is backwards and pushed to us by the capitalist press. I find that there's no issue where progressives are more ignorant than this one; it's almost mind-blowing."

Absolutely. I have found NOTHING that doesn't completely shatter or unravel on deeper investigation that even REMOTELY begins to subtantiate the massive western-media BS press about the 'terrible' ruthless dictator Milosevic and the notorious rape-camps, death-camps, mass-graves and wholesale genocide. I am really BAFFLED by how the US public has so totally bought-into the fable of coordinated, large-scale 'ethnic cleansing' in the absence of hard-fact truth. It goes to show that even among 'left' progressives who KNOW the media is a fixed-game propoganda racket they nevertheless assume Milosevic was as bad and the Serbian-state killings as ubiquitous as the pols, media and talking-heads said it was. Milosevic's 'trial' was SUCH a lame cock-up, with state's witness-after=-witness recanting under direct examination by an ailing Milosevic, cofessing to enormous intimidation and threats by prosecution to go-along with damning Milosevic or THEY'D face the hot-seat. Out-and-out witnerss-tampering and suborning perjury, THIS by the so-called Criminal Court that recounted days and weeks of the most arcane, insipid trivia with enormous effort spent to put as sinister a face on it as they could, instead of the VOLUMES of hard-facts their claims of hundred-thousand murdered would lead an objective observer to think they had. NATO under US command must have directly killed FAR nore fighters and victims of ALL ethnic backgrounds than the Serb state, which ewas mostly trying to put-down internal rebellion by terrorists that were primarily bankrolled, encouraged, trained and supplied by the US, Canada, Germany and Italy.

Yugoslavia was a planned psyop takedown by the US and EU MIC and allied globalist elites that they began prepping for almost immediately after they installed their hand-picked President-puppet/proxy Reagan under the close supervision of spook/Americano Nostra insider Bush Inc. senior.
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