The most blatant and flagrant eyesore in this ludicrous operation, ostensibly to collect weapons from the Albanian terrorists, is precisely the calculation of the numbers of weapons which the Albanians are supposed to hand over. For a start, not all the Albanians are going to collaborate, for while the UCK have stated that they are willing to hand over their weapons, an obscure splinter faction has stated that it will not cooperate.
Secondly, the NATO officials have stated that figures supplied by the Albanian terrorists, namely that there are 3,000 weapons to be handed over, are “credible”, according to a senior NATO spokesperson. The same spokesperson, who asked to remain anonymous, claimed that NATO knew it could not hope to collect most of the weapons, and that the disarmament was “symbolic”.
The terrorists claim that they have 3,000 weapons but negotiations in the past with these born liars have proven fruitless. The Macedonian Interior Ministry claims that they have 85,000 weapons. Since NATO is evidently prepared to take the Albanians’ side blindly and unconditionally (since it armed them in the first place), it would be good to look at an estimate from an independent expert, Jane’s Defence Weekly.
This internationally respected Defence publication states that the Albanian terrorists in Macedonia are extremely well armed but that accurate estimates are impossible because of the large numbers of guns circulating in the Balkans (“the Balkans gun culture”) and the “loose organisational structure” in the Albanians’ chain of command, which reflects the chaos which tends to follow these people in whatever walk of life they choose to inflict themselves upon.
Jane’s Defence Weekly also claims that there are 2,000 – 2,500 full-time guerrillas and the same number in supportive operational activity, such as reconnaissance, telecommunications and logistics. Given that all of these are armed, and well armed, there are at least 5,000 weapons, almost double the estimates which NATO so readily agrees to before we even start to consider the arms caches of the disbanded KLA from Kosovo.
On top of that, the guerrillas and their support staff have more than one weapon each. Jane’s Defence Weekly calculates that the Albanian terrorists have 5,000 to 8,000 modern rifles, 15,000 to 30,000 old issue rifles and between 45,000 and 55,000 handguns, 100 – 200 mortars, 200 to 350 anti-tank rocket launchers, 100 to 200 sniping rifles, over 5,000 landlines and thousands of grenades. Far more than the paltry 3,000 weapons claimed by NATO.
Jane’s Defence Weekly claims that “The process of voluntary hand-over will almost exclusively depend on the goodwill of local commanders”. Quite how much goodwill NATO expects to encounter from that cut-throat band of murderers, rapists, traffickers and thieves is open to question. Only yesterday, 52 Albanian terrorists were arrested by Kfor troops as they crossed the frontier, armed, from Kosovo into Macedonia, all of them having UCK papers. Maybe they were going to Macedonia to hand over their weapons to NATO.
Jane’s estimates range between 65,400 and 93,750 weapons, the Macedonian Interior Ministry’s estimates somewhere in the middle of these figures, and NATO’s estimates way down the road at 3.000 weapons to be handed over, a figure which earned the epitaph of “risible” from Ljubco Georgievski, the Prime Minister of Macedonia.
NATO’s Danish General Gunnar Lange, however, disagrees : “These numbers (3,000) are credible now and are nearer to our own assessment”. NATO’s assessment seems to change by the day, since the original force of 3,500 troops has been bolstered to 5,000. To collect 3,000 weapons?
As the Albanian terrorists continue to launch attacks on Macedonian interests daily, provocations to which the Macedonian armed forces do not respond, the 67,000 refugees caused by the seven months of conflict remain homeless. It is obvious, meanwhile, that NATO’s Essential Harvest will do nothing whatsoever to bring peace to the region and it becomes clearer by the day that NATO does not, and never did, know what it is doing in the Balkans. President Clinton stated that US forces would remain in Kosovo for a few weeks. That was two years ago and they are there for a generation. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd stated that British troops would enter Bosnia for three months, eight years ago. They are still there.
President Vladimir Putin called Essential Harvest “a pseudo-operation” and declared that “This conflict cannot be solved by simple declarations or pseudo-operations” and NATO’s involvement in this already unstable region could spark off more violence, he warned. “If we want to really solve the problem, we need to think in terms of blocking the supply of weapons in that region...Collecting the (terrorists’) weapons is not an essential task. The essential task has to be to create the conditions for peace to be established in the region”, and this passes by listening to the opinions of all the peoples involved, not just the “terrorists” who “pretend to be preoccupied with humanitarian, religious or linguistic issues”, President Putin declared.
NATO would do well to listen to President Putin, since he seems to be the only world leader who talks any sense these days.
Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/08/28/13506.html
LISBON PORTUGAL
www.antic.org
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