8.4.2008 by CrniLabudovi.

July 04, 2007

Ending the Balkan Quagmire at American Thinker

By Julia Gorin

For the past eight years, I’ve been in a lonely place politically. I don’t mean the kind of lonely that conservatives generally find themselves in. I’m talking about utter desolation, for there are just as few conservatives as liberals where I’ve been. One of the only non-Serbian Americans to do so, I watched with steady interest for the better part of a decade the clockwork predictability of the fallout from our forgotten Kosovo intervention, a bombing campaign against an emerging post-Communist democracy rooted in Judeo-Christian values–on behalf of tribalistic, blood-code-following nominal Muslims claiming oppression and no less than genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Watching the Albanians predictably move on to terrorize Macedonia within a few months of our intervention that would “contain” the conflict, and then watching Albanians turn their weapons on NATO peacekeepers within 18 months, I wondered what it would take to get a national discussion going about that huge, self-destructive debacle. What would it take to have the debate that, it must be said despite my hobby of mocking Europeans, the German public had in 2001 when it put its politicians’ feet to the fire after learning the hoax that their country had been party to, thanks to a German documentary unapologetically titled “It Began with a Lie.”
In sharp contrast to every other cynically reported war, this time not only were our peacenik presses on board, but conspicuously they didn’t try to ingratiate us to the enemy perspective by letting us hear incessantly from the other side, as they’re otherwise fond of doing. Something was off. Even the evolving “alternative media”-self-tasked with policing the mainstream press and usually very wary of “facts” coming from the mainstream media and of cause celebres–were either silent on this or on precisely the same page as the New York Times, with its Sontag yentas for the first time explaining the concept of “just war”. I found that, aside from Serbian-Americans (and Serbian-Canadians), who would later describe 1999 as a surreality they observed as if outside themselves, the only other people who as a group understood that our action meant something awful for the free world were the Russian-Jewish community that I myself had come from-a cartoonishly patriotic and capitalistic immigrant group with less than zero feeling for “Mother Russia” (if we’re talking about the 70s and 80s wave).
Every now and again, a glimmer of hope that the fraud would be revealed surfaced, first in March, 2000 with a Washington Post article titled “Was it a Mistake? We were Suckers for the KLA” and then in April, 2001, with a Toronto Sun article titled “The Hoax that Started a War“. Now, I thought, the story of the century-a fabricated genocide and PR campaign starting a war-would finally “break.”
But the silence persisted, and none of the rare newspapers giving the occasional op-ed space to the dissenting perspective was interested in actually investigating. Nothing changed in this regard after the attacks of September 11^th. Not even after a Washington Times article titled “Hijackers connected to Albanian terrorist cell” came out a week after 9/11, reading:

Albania is one of several places U.S. intelligence agencies are focusing their resources…Islamic radicals, including supporters of bin Laden, have been supporting Albanian rebels fighting in the region, including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army…KLA members have been trained at bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan…As of last year, the group operated a residence in Tirana, and the CIA has been pressing Albania’s government to expel all associates of the Islamic terrorists.

Meanwhile, every one of my own articles attempting to expose the hoax-relegated to a small segment of the alternative media because of a near blackout on the subject everywhere else-dropped with a thud. As did an article coming out two months after 9/11, titled “Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links“(which appeared only in the European edition of the Wall St. Journal). Same thing with a March 2002 National Post article titled “U.S. Supported al-Qaeda Cells during Balkan Wars, Fought Serbian Troops“:

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO…In the years immediately before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the al-Qaeda militants moved into Kosovo…to help ethnic Albanian extremists of the KLA mount their terrorist campaign against Serb targets in the region.

Even after another National Post article in 2004 by Canadian former UN General Lewis MacKenzie, titled “We Bombed the Wrong Side?”, came out, Kosovo remained off the media’s and public’s radar-something that vested politicians were counting on.
But then came March 2004, when rumors, proved false, that Serbs drowned three Albanian boys, were used as a spark for the orchestrated pogroms of March 2004, leading to the deaths of 19 people, the displacement of 4,000 Serbs, the destruction of dozens of churches and medieval monuments plus hundreds of homes. Surely people would demand to know what on earth was going on over there, I thought, and what are these people whom we “rescued”. All the questions that weren’t asked in 1999 would finally be asked, I thought.
They weren’t. And the silence grew louder. The questions still weren’t asked even when the 9/11 Commission found that Bosnia, with our help, had been the breakout event that transformed al Qaeda into a truly global network; they weren’t asked even when the Commission found that two of the 9/11 hijackers had fought alongside Bosnian and international forces against the Serbs, and that five of the hijackers had been trained in Bosnia, and that Australian David Hicks trained in a KLA camp. But the national dialogue that the issue demanded remained absent, and the media maintained its blackout, one door after another slamming in my face every time I proposed a piece on the repercussions of our Balkans intervention.

…………..

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO…In the years immediately before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the al-Qaeda militants moved into Kosovo…to help ethnic Albanian extremists of the KLA mount their terrorist campaign against Serb targets in the region.

Even after another National Post article in 2004 by Canadian former UN General Lewis MacKenzie, titled “We Bombed the Wrong Side?”, came out, Kosovo remained off the media’s and public’s radar-something that vested politicians were counting on.
But then came March 2004, when rumors, proved false, that Serbs drowned three Albanian boys, were used as a spark for the orchestrated pogroms of March 2004, leading to the deaths of 19 people, the displacement of 4,000 Serbs, the destruction of dozens of churches and medieval monuments plus hundreds of homes. Surely people would demand to know what on earth was going on over there, I thought, and what are these people whom we “rescued”. All the questions that weren’t asked in 1999 would finally be asked, I thought.
They weren’t. And the silence grew louder. The questions still weren’t asked even when the 9/11 Commission found that Bosnia, with our help, had been the breakout event that transformed al Qaeda into a truly global network; they weren’t asked even when the Commission found that two of the 9/11 hijackers had fought alongside Bosnian and international forces against the Serbs, and that five of the hijackers had been trained in Bosnia, and that Australian David Hicks trained in a KLA camp. But the national dialogue that the issue demanded remained absent, and the media maintained its blackout, one door after another slamming in my face every time I proposed a piece on the repercussions of our Balkans intervention.

…………..

At the same time, a Washington Post article Poole cited demonstrates that Albanians are grateful for the foreign money:

Many Albanians interviewed here said they are grateful for the money and manpower from foreign religious groups. Not only has the largess built new churches and mosques, it has funded job training, food, roads, irrigation, schools and other projects…The frantic pace of mosque construction has continued at a break-neck pace, as dozens of new Wahhabi-financed mosques have opened in every major city, staffed by foreign-trained Wahhabi imams.

If anyone has any illusions about the budding militancy of Kosovo, here is a small sampling of headlines to dispel them:
Albanian Gunmen Hijack Bus in Italy
Kosovo Link to [U.S.] Embassy Strike
Al Qaeda in Kosovo
Montenegro accuses ethnic Albanians of plotting insurgency
Ethnic Albanians protest outside U.S. Embassy, demand release of terrorist suspects
Ethnic Albanian Terror Suspects Appear in Court in Montenegro (Four of them live in the U.S., including three citizens from Michigan and one Tom Lantos contributor.)
Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections
We Buy Bag of Semtex from Terrorists [in Kosovo] (”a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links.”) Video here.
Bin Laden’s Camps Teach Curriculum of Carnage (KLA fighter’s application found at al Qaeda offices in Afghanistan, boasting experience fighting Serbian and American troops in Kosovo and recommending suicide operations against Disneyland)
Serbian Church Condemns Calls for Destruction of Churches
Albanian Sought by Italy Captured in New Jersey
Albanians in Southern Serbia Press for Greater Autonomy
Police Attacked in South Serbia
Albanians in Greece Form Paramilitary Formation
Ignore at Peril: the Growing Cauldron of Kosovo and Bosnia
Kosovo Albanian Drug Boss Admits Friendship with Al Qaeda Leader
US Tackles Islamic Militancy in Kosovo
Kosovo Seen as New Islamic Bastion
Bin Laden Operated Terrorist Network Based in Albania
Bin Laden Opens European Terror Base in Albania
Iranians Move In
And once again we are hearing from former al Qaeda operative Ali Hamad, who is still trying to warn the West about Bosnia and Kosovo:

Former Al-Qa’idah officer Ali Hamad [as transcribed] has said that the Bosnia-Hercegovina state still protects members of Al-Qa’idah, adding that members of this terrorist organization are also to be found in Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohija] where they are supported by ethnic Albanians.

………

American Thinker

Albania moves against terrorists’ assets

24/10/2005
After a ten month delay, Albanian authorities have seized property in downtown Tirana that was being used to launder financial activities of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

By Erlis Selimaj for Southeast European Times in Tirana – 24/10/05

Albania Takes Action Against Terrorist Suspect

28/01/2002

The Albanian government has taken control of a construction project co-owned by a Saudi businessman suspected of funding the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Tirana has frozen Yassin Kadi’s accounts and charged him with money laundering.

(Radio Free Europe - 25/01/02; UPI, Radio Free Europe - 23/01/02; BBC Monitoring - 22/01/02

Setimes

Adul Latif Salef Ausweisung und Beschlagnahme

EU-Bundebank

September 19, 2005
js-2727

Treasury Designates Bin Laden, Qadi Associate

The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated Dr. Abdul Latif Saleh pursuant to Executive Order 13224 for providing support to Usama bin Laden and al Qaida.

“Saleh has multiple ties to al Qaida, ranging from the Al Haramain Foundation to Yasin Qadi to Usama bin Laden,” said Stuart Levey, the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). “This designation identifies him as a terrorist facilitator and ensures that he will no longer be able to operate unencumbered.”

Saleh is closely associated with Usama bin Laden and was expelled from Albania on suspicion of membership in a “radical Islamic Jihad group.” Bin Laden provided Saleh with $600,000 to encourage the establishment of extremist groups in Albania. In addition, Saleh is closely associated with a number of non-governmental organizations in Albania with links to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization tied to al Qaida.

Saleh founded and organized an Albanian jihadist organization that has been financed by the Al Haramain Foundation, a non-governmental organization linked to al Qaida. The mission of the Albanian jihadist group has been to destabilize the internal situation in Albania by fomenting conflict among the different religious groups in the country. Al­ Haramain recruited members from this organization, which Saleh directly assisted in vetting.

Saleh is also associated with Yasin Qadi, who was named a specially designated global terrorist by the Treasury Department in October 2001. Qadi was known to be an active supporter of, and fundraiser for, Saleh’s jihadist group.

……………

http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/js2727.htm

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8.4.2008 by admin.

Kosovo: Revenge of CNN and politics of emotion

What started a decade ago as a policy of emotions based on CNN’s lachrymose images has boomeranged into a smoldering fire in Southeastern Europe, Michael Radu writes for FPRI.

By Michael Radu for FPRI (08/04/08

To paraphrase Talleyrand, the invention and recognition of a “state” called Kosovo by the United States and Brussels in February was worse than gross ignorance, it was a mistake.

Every Western political delusion since the end of the Cold War was at the root of the disaster, and, to make matters worse, those delusions have been shared by otherwise unlikely partners: the Clinton administration and George Bush, the usually anti-American Europeans, the “human rights” establishment and “progressive” media here and in Europe.

A brief analysis makes it clear that there is and should not be a state named “Kosovo.”

The initial motivation for NATO’s (read America’s) 1999 intervention in Kosovo, stopping “genocide,” was based on false premises and images, largely created by CNN and similar media outlets, and vocally supported by the “human rights” chorus led by Amnesty International and the like.

There was no genocide in any serious definition. There was a massive, disproportionate Serbian military response to the sporadic and often indiscriminate attacks against authorities and civilians by a ragtag combination of Leninists, Maoists, thugs, drug runners and misguided members of the Albanian diaspora, going under the grand name of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

It took a combination of overexcited CNN sympathizers of the Albanian secessionist cause, a mass exodus of scared Albanians, and a skilled Albanian lobby in Washington to convince a human rights-obsessed Clinton administration that a new Auschwitz was in the making.

Most Europeans at the time, even more influenced by their human rights lobbies and put off by the Serbs’ old-fashioned use of religious and historic arguments for their claim on Kosovo, supported the military intervention - mostly by holding our coat.

Kosovo, a bit larger than Delaware but, with 2.4 million people (in 2001), three times the population, has proclaimed its statehood, the newest and so far the latest “country” created on the ruins of the former Yugoslavia. Other than the stubborn support of the majority Albanians, it has none of the basic necessary qualifications of statehood - functioning institutions, human or natural resources, ethnic and historic arguments.

Nonetheless, Washington and most European countries are prepared to take the bet that somehow Kosovo will be something else - say, a Luxembourg or Monaco. Is this serious? And if not, as common sense and experience suggest, why the pressure to take the bet, indeed why the decade-long encouragement of such development?

To begin with, as far as Washington is concerned, the blame is clearly bipartisan, with Democrats like Richard Holbrooke being and remaining staunchly and indiscriminately pro-Albanian for more than a decade, and the Bush administration mysteriously following the same misguided path. True enough, some Republican veterans of foreign affairs, such as former secretary of state and former ambassador to Belgrade Lawrence Eagleburger, do know better and have made their opposition clear, but they remain a minority.

It is very hard, if not impossible, to have much sympathy for the Serbs, now claiming the role of victims in Kosovo after years of overreacting to excessive Albanian demands there; it is even harder to do so now, after an opportunistic Russia decided to support Belgrade’s position and to suddenly become a stalwart defender of “national integrity.”

That, after more than a decade of supporting illegal, indeed Mafioso-type secessionist regions of Transnistria in Moldova, South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. It is clear that Russia supports Serbia’s hopeless claim to Kosovo out of sheer hypocrisy - and a more general policy of showing the West that Moscow is to be taken seriously again, after its internationally weak presence since the end of the Soviet Union.

Simply put, Moscow is right on Kosovo for all the wrong and dishonest reasons - but correct nonetheless. As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day………….

http://www.isn.ethz.ch

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