October 21st 2009 01:45:42 PM
America’s Tangled Kosovo Web
Posted by Julia Gorin
Re-reading a 2007 Der Spiegel article recently, I came across some information
about the brother of indicted war criminal and U.S. buddy Ramush Haradinaj.
Daut Haradinaj was speaking at an event honoring a dead Albanian
poet-nationalist after serving a prison sentence for manslaughter.
According to the article, many saw his appearance at the ceremony “as a sign of
his willingness to fill the breach if his brother Ramush is sentenced at his
upcoming trial in The Hague.”
As we know, some heavy U.S. and UN pressure (and evidence-tampering) later —
and a few dead witnesses later — Ramush Haradinaj was acquitted because of
“insufficient evidence.”
Haradinaj picked up his political career where he left off, with the blessing
of the U.S. and UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo), and so Daut didn’t need to step
in, but at least we know our pal Ramush has an equally competent and murderous
brother who would have been encouraged to pursue politics had things turned out
differently. Indeed, according to the article, the Haradinaj clan has more than
just two such winners:
According to the indictment, Ramush Haradinaj, a.k.a. “Smajl”, was accused
of 37 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, kidnapping and
torture, during the Kosovo war in 1998.
The indictment also stated that his brothers, Daut, Frasher and Shkelzen,
were among the members of the “criminal organization” headed by Haradinaj, and
that the family home in Glodjane was periodically used as a command center to
plan and commit the crimes. Thirty-two corpses of Serbs, gypsies and Albanians,
some severely mutilated, were found near the farm. So far Haradinaj has denied
all accusations.
Sören Jessen-Petersen, the former UN administrator, long viewed the
presumed war criminal as a “close partner and friend” who “sacrificed and
contributed so much to a better future for Kosovo.”
By 2005, that Haradinaj homestead lined with mutilated bodies served as “a
banquet hall where [high-ranking UN and NATO representatives] could meet with
Haradinaj to discuss bringing peace to the region.”
I’ll get back to Daut Haradinaj in a moment, but just to complete the picture
about this great friend of the U.S., Ramush Haradinaj:
A report by the UN police force in Kosovo has linked Haradinaj to the
cocaine trade. And according to a 2005 analysis by Germany’s foreign
intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Haradinaj and his
associates play a key role in “a broad spectrum of criminal, political and
military activities that significantly affect the security situation throughout
Kosovo. The group, which counts about 100 members, is involved in drug and
weapons smuggling, as well as illegal trading in dutiable items.”
If the BND analysis is correct, Haradinaj has apparently made himself a
major player in one of Kosovo’s key industries. According to experts, the €700
million budget of this province, 90 percent of which is populated by ethnic
Albanians, pales in comparison to the revenues earned in the drug trade in
Kosovo.
As if this weren’t messy enough as regards Ramush, who is welcomed to our
shores by our leaders with open arms, let’s go back to that ceremony at which
Daut spoke:
When the event ends [Daut] Haradinaj jumps into a waiting car in front of
the center and is taken to a secret restaurant. At the restaurant, Besiana-F,
he meets Ali Ahmeti, the leader of the 2001 Albanian uprising in Macedonia.
Ahmeti and his equally famous uncle, Fazli Veliu — both of whom are on a US
terrorism watch list and have been banned from entering the United States since
May 2003 — have crossed the border into Kosovo to join in the day’s
celebration. [There is no longer any effective border between Kosovo and
Macedonia.]
Upon leaving the restaurant Ahmeti and Haradinaj embrace briefly. Then they
climb into SUVs with darkened windows.
So what we have is our good friends the Haradinaj Family naturally being in
close ties with folks who are on our terrorism watch list. While Ahmeti and
Veliu aren’t doing anything in Macedonia that the Haradinaj clan didn’t do in
Kosovo — indeed, Ahmeti is the leader of a governing political party in
Macedonia — the former two randomly ended up as “terrorists” just as Haradinaj
randomly ended up as a “peace partner.”
The difference between them? Once the Albanians expanded their war into
Macedonia, we figured out what their game was, and while the Albanians knew
that Kosovo was just one leg of the war for Greater Albania, we had only signed
on for Kosovo. Realizing our mistake but unable to undo it, we’ve been keeping
up the charade and continuing to term the Kosovo-Albanian terrorists our
“allies,” while trying to figure out how to discourage their allies in
Macedonia.
Over time, we’ve been given a better “understanding” of our agenda in the
region, and therefore eventually started facilitating Albanian terror in
Macedonia. After all, if we want to keep the Haradinajs as “friends” in Kosovo,
eventually we’re going to have to make friends with their friends in Macedonia.
Otherwise, try navigating around this one: “Throughout the fighting,” Chris
Deliso writes in his book The Coming Balkan Caliphate, “jihadis were also
penetrating Macedonia from the other, western front in Tetovo and reportedly
had connections with Kosovo Albanian officials such as Daut Haradinaj, chief of
general staff of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)…according to other
Macedonian military sources.”
Turns out, our pal Ramush’s own brother is on our blacklist as well. He
reportedly met in August 2001 — just two months after we rescued 400 Albanian
terrorists from Macedonian security forces — with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother
Muhammad. According to the Serbian daily Blic, a “number of intelligence
services know about this. There is proof that Daut Haradinaj took part in the
clashes with Macedonian security services, because of which he was put on the
U.S. terrorist blacklist and thrown out of the Kosovo Protection Corps.”
This reminds us that Albanians walk their own tightrope, in their equally
contradictory dealings with us. They are constantly torn between — and always
playing — their two key allies, which are each other’s mortal enemies:
Washington/London/Brussels vs. the Saudis and bin Laden himself (who helped
train and arm the KLA while we did the same).
How to serve and shower love on both, without offending the other? That is the
Albanian dilemma.
Of course, even if the Albanians paraded their al-Qaeda connections, would
anyone in the mainstream establishment — the same one that repeated their lies
and came up with their own to justify the “liberation” and “independence” —
actually call them on it? Somehow I doubt it.
To further illustrate the randomness of which Albanians we term “allies” and
which ones “terrorists,” let’s take the last name Thaci. If it’s Thaci of
Kosovo, it gets a warm welcome in the U.S., since it’s probably our friend,
“prime minister” Hashim Thaci. However, if it’s Thaci from Macedonia, it’s
probably Mendux (or Menduh) Thaci, the leader of the main opposition Albanian
party but for some reason on the U.S. blacklist.
Yet our friend Ramush Haradinaj just had a lovely meeting last month with our
blacklisted Thaci, in Tetovo, Macedonia.
Thaci’s name also came up recently because he went on TV in Albania, on a
station appropriately titled “Klan,” expecting to be coddled in the country
that was the genesis of the Greater Albania plan. Instead, he found that
Albania’s Albanians had wised up about…Albanians.
DPA Leader shocked in Tirana (Oct. 9):
Albanian intellectuals attacked the leader of Macedonia’s DPA party in last
night’s political debate on Tirana’s popular TV channel Klan.
While speaking about the Encyclopedia, Thaci unexpectedly received a major
slap for the behavior of Albanians and ethnic Albanian parties in Macedonia.
This is referring to the first Macedonian encyclopedia, which just came out but
is already being revised, with the entire board of editors already fired,
because it accurately depicts the 2001 Albanian insurgency against the state.
It also says that Albanians came to Macedonia in the 16th century, when
everyone knows that Albanians were always everywhere before anyone else was.
(Uncannily similar to Muslim claims all over the world.)
“Hatred towards their own country, extreme Islamism, extremely low
culture”. These were the quali[ties] which several Albanian intellectuals used
in attacking Thaci, who had come to expect certain political benefits by the
Albanian media during his visit.
Thaci’s assessment that the Encyclopedia was a political provocation by the
Macedonian Government was met with dismay by the participants in the debate,
who sharply attacked Thaci and the Albanians in Macedonia as “ungrateful
towards the state in which they live”.
This is a strikingly rare and honest statement coming from an Albanian, whose
intellectuals don’t often distinguish themselves from the mob mentality of
pan-Albanianism that governs the Albanian outlook. It is also the first
recognition I’ve heard by an Albanian of Albanian ingratitude, to put mildly
the quality of a people who demand pensions for the insurgencies they wage
against their host states. What we also have here is an Albanian pointing to
what our own leaders, along with most Albanians, continue to deny and dismiss:
rising Islamism among Albanians.
“Macedonia is the only state in the Balkans where there is internal denial.
Albanians always deny the state, even [fight] against it. You made war in the
middle of Europe and took up arms against your own country. To this day you
ambush Macedonian policemen,” said Maks Velo, Albanian writer-critic.
Actually, Macedonia is not the only state in which Albanians deny its
legitimacy. Serbia was such a state, and the Albanians in Kosovo — with the
help of Albanians in Albania — also “made war in the middle of Europe and took
up arms against your own country. To this day, you ambush [Serbian] policemen.”
According to Mr Velo, there is a frightening, extreme Islamism among the
Albanian parties in Macedonia and it is not a coincidence that DPA’s leader
Mendux Thaci is on the U.S. blacklist for years.
“The mosques in the villages in Macedonia seem like Iranian missiles. If
the Albanians there can not climb to a higher cultural level of social life,
not to discriminate against women, to build civil society, you will never be
able to go up against the Macedonians in any way, especially not
intellectually. With minarets you are not going in Europe. We must achieve
greater cultural and economic level,” said Velo to Thaci who clearly wished he
wasn’t there.
Fatos Lubonja, [another] critic…[said,] “When will we learn our lesson that
divisions do not lead anywhere, but only to war and discontent?…So I think it
is good for you to identify yoursellf as Macedonian. To live in Yugoslavia and
then in Macedonia and to speak and work against the state in which you live, it
is a cultural disadvantage, it is wrong.
…
DPA’s leader Thaci appeared flabbergasted wearing a sour smile on his face.
He had hoped to gain political points by visiting Tirana. On his last visit to
the Albanian capital, Mr. Thaci had lobbied Albanian politicians to be against
Macedonia’s admission to NATO.
What we have, finally, are Albanians weighing what is right and what is wrong,
as opposed to just what is Albanian. Imagine how wrong things had to go in
order for the wrongness to become manifest even to Albanians. It is a wrongness
that’s gotten as far as it has thanks to the indulgence of Albanian wrongness
by U.S.-led Western powers. Recall this from Chris Deliso:
Macedonia took in over 400,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees. However, when the
country was no longer needed for Clinton’s military adventures, it was
forgotten, and the long-term consequences of Kosovo — an emboldened
pan-Albanian Balkan insurgency — were ignored…[America] began secretly
supporting the NLA [(Albanian) National Liberation Army] from its Kosovo base,
Camp Bondsteel, through logistical and communications support as well as secret
arms airdrops to Albanian-held mountain villages in northwestern Macedonia.
…
For Macedonians, the nadir was reached in June [2001, post-Clinton], during
a three-day battle at the Skopje-area village of Aracinovo, where NATO ordered
the Macedonian Army to stop its operations and then spirited the heavily armed
Albanian fighters off to freedom…[T]he public was shocked when it was reported
that Islamic fighters and 17 American military contractors from the
Virginia-based Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) had been
found amongst the NLA’s ranks…From that moment, the humiliated and disappointed
Macedonian public’s worst suspicions seemed to have been confirmed: America and
NATO were in full favor of the Albanian guerrillas.
In other words, the U.S. and NATO have managed to out-Albanize the Albanians.
Indeed, rather than teaching Albanians the ways of the civilized world and
multi-ethnicity — as is our “mission” in Kosovo — we’ve been coming around to
their way of looking at things. Just check out this job advisory at Camp
Bondsteel:
camp bondsteel jobs
JOBS JOBS JOBS.INFO
Just visit Camp Bondsteel and ask someone. But you should know that for
most jobs available to locals you will need to be fluent in English. You should
also be aware that they don’t offer as many jobs to people of Serbian
nationality because of the risk of infiltration, so basically this means that
if you are Albanian you have a better chance of getting a job.
The most Swiftian part of this is the “risk of infiltration” by Serbs. No
worries about infiltration by Islamists or KLA elements, since that is
precisely whom Bondsteel serves.
Notice that while rational Albanians like Velo and Lubonja found the Albanian
reaction to, and pressure on, the Macedonian encyclopedia shameful, America
speaks in one voice with the irrational Albanians:
US and ethnic Albanian officials condemned Macedonia’s first encyclopedia
yesterday over its description of an inter-ethnic conflict in 2001 and the
history of the country’s Albanian presence.
[Keep in mind that this conflict which, believe it or not, blindsided us —
had us threatening armed conflict that year against the over-reaching
Albanians. But again, we eventually came around to their way of looking at
things, lent some weapons and manpower, and now are offended at Macedonia’s
accurate description of that conflict.]
Macedonia was on the brink of a civil war in 2001 when the ethnic Albanian
rebel movement, the National Liberation Army (NLA), fought Macedonian security
forces for seven months.
The encyclopedia, published by the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts,
says the NLA was an “armed formation trained in camps in Albania and Kosovo by
American and British officers and paratroopers.” An official at the US Embassy
in Skopje, who asked not to be named, dismissed the claims as ridiculous.
“Allegations that American officers trained the former NLA soldiers are
baseless and outrageous,” the official said. “We are disappointed that this
institution would put its name on such a ridiculous claim,” the official added.
[…]
Albanians in Kosovo, meanwhile, burned the Macedonian flag, and the prime
minister in neighboring Albania, Sali Berisha, called the encyclopedia
unacceptable and urged Macedonian officials to change it.
Indeed, developments such as the following should have rational Albanians like
Velo and Lubonja very worried, since it’s probable that rather than a Greater
Albania, what Albania and Macedonia are becoming part of will have all the
lawlessness and irrationality of a Greater Kosovo:
Albanians “one nation” across borders, Albanian PM Berisha says
Pristina - Albanians in Albania and Kosovo are a single nation, Prime
Minister Sali Berisha asserted Tuesday at the start of a two-day visit aimed at
forging closer ties with the former Serbian province.
‘The nation is one and inseparable in spirit and identity,’ Berisha told
reporters after arriving in Kosovo….Berisha, who started his second term in the
office last month, is due to sign a series of protocols in Pristina to further
ease the flow of people and goods across the border…
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said ‘it is not a secret’ that Albanians
in Kosovo and Albania have ‘brotherly relations,’ adding that they were
reflected in the effort to enable free movement across borders.
…
Also, most among the ethnic Albanians who make up the majority in parts of
southern Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo aspire to join their compatriots in a
single country, which is another source of tension.
Balkans: Kosovo and Albania intensify cooperation
Pristina, 6 October (AKI) - Visiting Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha
and his Kosovo host Hasim Taci on Tuesday signed several bilateral agreements
which will facilitate movement of people and goods between the two countries
and promote customs and border police cooperation.
…
On his second visit to Kosovo since the country gained independence from
Serbia last year, Berisha said “There are no two Albanian nations and a
national ideal of Albanians must be a European ideal”. [He has just put all of
Europe on notice that it has no alternative but to accept the eventual reality
of a single Albania, consisting of land stolen from Macedonia, Serbia,
Montenegro, and parts of Greece. This was of course after denying, as Thaci and
Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu have been doing for years, that anything like a
unification plan is afoot.]
Berisha and Taci also signed agreements in regard to the legalisation of
status of the people which have illegally settled in the two countries.
After the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo in 1999, the province
was put under United Nations control and many Albanian citizens have since
illegally settled in Kosovo. […]
As they were doing for a century prior to the war.
Meanwhile, Washington continues to deny that anything like a Greater Albania is
in the works. Like I said, out-Albanizing the Albanians.
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2211
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