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Subject: DER SPIEGEL: Double Game of Americans (Full Translation) "Our government has sold us, the west also," scolds Macedonian Ljubco, 45." -------------------------------------------------------------------- [Full English translation of an article first posted to KDN 07/31/01. This translation is courtesy of the OSINT Group (www.osintgroup.com). The URL of the original article in German is http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,147569,00.html/] ===================== DER SPIEGEL (Hamburg) July 30, 2001 MACEDONIA: THE DOUBLE GAME OF THE AMERICANS by Renate Flottau, Olaf Ihlau, Susanne Koelbl and Alexander Szandar European irritation is growing over Washington's shady operations in the Balkans: As godfather of the UÇK the USA is responsible for the growing conflict between Albanians and Macedonians. "Our government has sold us, the west also," scolds Macedonian Ljubco, 45. At night he sleeps with his family in the big Park of the Macedonian capital Skopje, during daytime he sits with hundreds of expelled under the glowing sun in front of the the parliament. "You betrayed us," stands on a transparent. Until two weeks ago when nine grenades smashed his house, Ljubcos family lived in a suburb of Tetovo, the Albanian stronghold of the two million inhabitants mini-republic. Five months the shootings endured, almost each night out of the mountains. There, above, shock troops of the Albanian liberation army [UÇK] dug in. "Often we have asked ourselves: Do they come now and kills us"?, says Ljubco, in this five months the trust to his Albanian neighbors was lost, "because they showed solidarity for the UÇK for a long time and want western Macedonia ethnically clean." Then the grenades, the panic and escape. As Ljubco left until middle past week several thousand Macedonians frightened did the same. Only with a few of their things they left their villages around Tetovo. Many, who had no relatives to give them shelter, stranded in Skopje. Protests took place, nationalistic violence and anti-western demonstrations, vehicles of international organizations were set on fire, the embassies of Germany, UK and the USA were attacked with stones. Distressed Europe looks into his southeast backyard. Anew glows there the line for an ethnic explosion. After a decade of Yugoslavian succession wars, which virtually took the lives of 300,000, a new open civil war threats to lead to another bloodbath in the Balkans, which might lead the whole region into chaos. Macedonia is balancing "on the knifes edge," warned NATO SG George Robertson. Together with a guard of EU negotiators he attempted last week one more political agreement between the Macedonians and Albanians. Because only with most extreme international pressure it seems to be possible to prevent another conflict in Europe's historic powder keg, but this one is approaching with frightening dynamics. A strong political agreement as well as a lasting cease-fire were NATO's preconditions to send in a a peacekeeping force of 3000 men - amongst them some 500 Germans soldiers - tasked to collect weapons and equipment of the Albanians. However a peace agreement on the Balkans, that teaches the historic experience, is brittle. Three grenades, shot by a single extremist, can sabotage it at any time. "The self understanding of the people is for many more important than everything else," says the German NATO ambassador to Skopje Hans-Jörg Eiff, a recognized Balkan specialist, and he means by saying this: Symbolic questions are here more important than a couple of thousand killed human beings. About not as the obvious villain to stand there, UÇK evacuated their bridgeheads around Tetovo and withdraw to the mountains around just before the next round of negotiations. Out of their lines in the mountains fresh aggressions won't be much of a problem. And this is what the separatist Albanians will do if they don't get out of negotiations what they really want: first of all through amendment guaranteed same position as an ethnic group, then the de facto division of Macedonia and finally a greater Albanian Fatherland. The yelp of Skopjes head of government Ljubco Georgievski, a hard-line Slawo-nationalist, over the alleged siding of the West has his reasons. In this game about the future tarnishes Macedonia are the UÇK the main villain, and the American play the shady part. The fighters of the UÇK once were trained by American and British instructors in Albanian camps for the fight against Milosevic's soldiers in the Kosovo. No one knows the main players, the commanding structure of the UÇK as well as financiers and arms suppliers that well like the CIA does, as they instrumented Albanian intelligence as a branch. As UÇK partisans out of the Kosovo provoked first skirmishes last February KFOR peacekeepers did nothing at all. Furious Premier Georgievski accused Washington - and Berlin as well - not to forward essential information over terrorist actions. At least 300 rebels have been known to the US-government. Before confidantes German Minister of Defense Rudolf Scharping scolded, the "international community" - especially the Americans - has itself "not consistent restrained." We carry therefore responsibility for the Macedonian crisis. Actually German soldiers in Macedonia already stand now between the fronts. Last week they evacuated a warehouse in Tetovo, as the barracks came into the cross-fire of UÇK and macedonian army. The big failure of the alliance: Under Washington's influence the UÇK was treated like allies during the air strikes against the Serbs. Leading officers of German Bundeswehr mourn internally since 1999 an unbroken brotherhood. Example Kosovo: It would have been avoidable that the UÇK was hiding thousands of guns, pistols and other equipment after the invasion of KFOR. German soldiers, which proceeded rigorous against UÇK carrying despite prohibition arms, became from above back-whistles. That doesn't correspond to the NATO policy, their commanders let them know. The earlier UÇK-commander-in-chief Hashim Thaçi, a protégé of the former US-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, brought some thousand of his fighters into the so called Kosovo protection corps (KPC) - a type technical disaster relief unit. Vainly the German KFOR commander General Klaus Reinhardt warned of the underground-UÇK. The Americans held to their line of supporting them. Politicians, diplomats and the NATO commander-in-chief for Europe, General Wes Clark, so Reinhardt complained later, wiped his alarming messages out of the KFOR-headquarters in Pristina regularly aside. Already beginning of December of 1999, KFOR was still no half a year in, KFOR spotted in the Presovo valley suspicious young Kosovars. The area belongs to the so called Ground Safety Zone GSZ, a demilitarized buffer-zone between the Serbia and the Kosovo. At the main transport routes Americans controlled that inefficiently, that the area swiftly became a main place for illegal arm smuggling, drug and human trafficking - controlled by the UÇK and the mafia. Promptly a "Liberation Army of Presovo, Medvedja and Bujanovac" (UÇPMB) occupied villages, expelled Serbian dwellers and demanded connection to Kosovo. Unsuccessful KFOR CO Reinhardt asked US-officers to intervene. NATO commander-in-chief Clark receipted the warnings before the incendiaries into the Presovo-valley always only with questions to the old war-adversary: "And where stand there the Serbs?" As Serbian security forces with approval of the NATO last March entered into the Presovo valley many UÇK fighters went over the green border to Macedonia or back into the Kosovo. Wary asked Scharping his NATO colleagues, how to prevent that the UÇK at checkpoints into the American Kosovo sector delivered their arms, but "two kilometer further new arms are picked up and they proceed to Macedonia?". The answer was delivered by news agencies: Newly armed UÇK fighters declared in Macedonia new "liberated zones". While NATO planed to interfere including disarmament of the UÇK, a US special unit evacuated end of June some 400 UÇK fighters out of the grip of Macedonian forces at the guerrilla stronghold Aracinovo, close to Skopje. Not only UÇK fighters found refuge in US APC's and busses with KFOR marking, but also 17 American civilians. They were declared as "observers". However instead of discouraging the UÇK they served them as instructors. Thanks to US assistance, in Aracinovo the command-headquarters of the UÇK was installed - including a direct satellite link to the Pentagon. "We have confiscated arms," gets annoyed a police representative in Skopje, "and the serial numbers clearly lead to NATO sources." Furthermore video-tapes of Macedonian military positions, in his opinion taken out of KFOR helicopters and given to the UÇK by the Americans. A questionable maneuver: In the NATO the USA urged the allies to interfere in Macedonia, but at the same time Americans train the UÇK - and in addition the Macedonian army receives help from Washington. Once more are the Germans and the remaining allies are irritated over the double strategy of the main NATO member. Reports "over American ex-officers as trainers of the Macedonian UÇK," judges to the Greens Party Member of Parliament Winfried Nachtwei, "pokes anew doubts at the US-politics in the region." And the Christian Democratic Party-deputy Willy Wimmer said, the USA supported obviously out of strategic reasons in the Balkans a "greater-Albania close to the US." The suspicion has substance. Out of intelligence reports Berlin knows that in Macedonia again the same suspects stimulate the war, which the USA was petting: The boss of the ostensible civilian Kosovo Protection Corps, Agim Çeku, collects since May UÇK-reservists, to train them in Albanian camps for the new war. The former Çeku-replacement Ramush Haradinaj holds the military command of the Macedonian UÇK. Responsible for collecting money is a man, at the negotiations in Rambouillet, beside Thaçi, who enjoyed the trust of the Americans: Xhavit Haliti already collected before the Kosovo-war donations for the UÇK; in the last weeks, says intelligence, he drove out of the Albanians in Germany and the Switzerland again some 43 million Deutsche Marks for the war. The trio Haliti, Thaçi and Haradinaj fund their politics of the Kalaschnikow not only from donations: "The unrest in Macedonia and therefore the instability in the whole region," says an intelligence dossier, is "absolute precondition for their criminal businesses" - dirty deals with drugs, arms and girls. Based on such facts, the pressure Europe puts on the USA apparently showed some effect. At the end June President George W. Bush forbade 21 UÇK leaders to enter the USA and prohibited to US-citizens business with the extremists. On the Bush list can be found also leaders the Kosovo Protection Corps. Only after they have been listed they were fired from the KPC. How taunting appeared meanwhile to Scharping and his officers the pathetic praise, Bush paid last week at a short visit to the Kosovo for the American border patrols. That had prevented, so Bush at his appearance in Camp Bondsteel trying to be serious, "that arms fell into rebel hands" - wherefore now a "hope on peace" in Macedonia establishes. Bush admonished however also the UÇK, to remain silent in neighboring Macedonia: "The Kosovars should concentrate on Kosovo." Now the Berliner government has something to think about: Has Bush managed a turnaround, or do the US once again only try to lull the warring NATO partners? They shall finally collect in Macedonia the broken pieces of the questionable US-policy. The Americans don't want to send in their own troops to disarm the UÇK. The dicey muck-work shall be done by soldiers of the European NATO partners alone. Unfortunately nobody knows better than the Americans, what the UÇK partisans plan. US forces on the Balkans have access to their own low flying satellite system, enabling them to use a encrypted mobile communication system. Neither west European intelligence agencies nor the Russians succeeded to dig in. However the UÇK is sharing the exclusive communication net of the Americans. Washington's professional eavesdroppers are consequently always getting first hand information, when the Albanian partisans plan to attack or to withdraw. ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
