Il terrorismo "buono" / 5
1. Happy Days, Here Again
(New York Press, Volume 15, Issue 6, February 2002)
2. Taliban heroin profits arming Balkan rebels
(The Daily Telegraph, February 19, 2002)
=== 1 ===
The Bush Administration supports Terrorists in Kosovo, Macedonia and
Chechnya
Happy Days, Here Again
by George Szamuely
New York Press, Volume 15, Issue 6, February 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 14
February 2002
Forget the war on terrorism. The United States is once again supporting
the drug dealers, gangsters and warlord fundamentalists. The other day
a State Dept. official met Chechnya’s self-declared foreign
minister, Ilyas Akhmadov. The Russians were dismayed. Having thrown
their lot in with the supposed common struggle against terrorism, they
find the Americans giving support to terrorists. Last month, after
a post-Sept. 11 lull, the U.S. stepped up its criticism of human rights
abuses in Chechnya. The Russians professed to be "amazed" that the
United States, as Agence France Presse reported, would meet with
Chechens, "whose direct links with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are
being proven with constantly emerging, irrefutable evidence…"
Chechnya has always been seen here as a rerun of Kosovo, which itself
was a rerun of Afghanistan. All the ingredients are there: a spurious
"national liberation" struggle financed by organized crime, drug
trafficking and the global Islamic network; support from Western
governments and human rights groups; Islamic fundamentalism as a
substitute for genuine nationhood; violently enforced clan loyalty;
political legitimacy based on appeals to Islam; and terrorists in
power. Consider Kosovo: The U.S. is currently brokering a deal on the
distribution of power. Leaders of the three leading Kosovo Albanian
parties recently met the head of the U.S. office in Pristina, John
Menzies, and it was proposed that the job of prime minister should
go to Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo (DPK). Thaci is the
leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Its links to Islamic
terrorism and bin Laden have been amply documented. The KLA
allegedly disbanded after the NATO takeover and reconstituted itself as
a "civil defense force," the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). Its wages
were paid by the UN.
Last summer, the Bush administration discovered that the KPC was a
terrorist organization after all and that it was fueling a terrorist
insurgency in neighboring Macedonia. The President signed two
decrees depriving "Albanian extremists who were threatening the
stability of Macedonia" of all financial or material support. The
decrees also barred them from entering the United States. This
followed the embarrassing revelation that the U.S. military had
facilitated the escape of NLA terrorists holed up in Arcinovo from the
Macedonian army. According to Hamburger Abendblatt, "Among the
rebels that were withdrawing were 17 ‘instructors’–former US officers
that provided military training for the rebels. Not only that: the
Macedonian security forces claim that 70 percent of the equipment
that the guerrilla fighters took with them are of US production." The
"instructors" were almost certainly members of an outfit called
Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI). It is filled with
former senior U.S. Army personnel and works on contract for the U.S.
government. It had trained and directed the Croatian army during
Operation Storm, in which something like 300,000 Serbs were driven out
of their homes in Krajina. One of the commanders of Operation Storm was
an Albanian, Agim Ceku, who also happens to be the chief of the
Kosovo Protection Corps.
The people Bush banned from entering the United States included Gezim
Ostremi, the KPC’s chief-of-staff; his replacement, Daut Haradinaj; the
commander and deputy commander of the KPC’s elite force, the Rapid
Reaction Corps, plus the leaders of two of its six regional divisions,
Sami Lushtaku and Mustafa Rrustem. The UN expressed shock and surprise
and demanded proof that people on its payroll were terrorists. This
was an odd request. The UN had itself reported a year earlier that the
KPC was a bunch of gangsters.
The U.S. decrees were more rhetoric than reality. As an Irish Times
report put it sarcastically: "Commander Rrustem…earned fame during the
Kosovo war as one of the most successful guerrilla commanders. He
has since become a favourite with NATO commanders, whose glowing
commendations line the walls of his office. Certainly if the Americans
have reservations about him they have yet to show it: on Tuesday
two separate US army teams came to his base to train his men."
There we have it: The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded by U.S. military
aid, the UN peacekeeping budget, Al Qaeda and by drug trafficking and
prostitution. If everything goes according to plan, their leader is
about to be appointed prime minister thanks to U.S. efforts. O what a
lovely war! Now on to Central Asia.
Washington now has 13 bases in nine countries ringing Afghanistan and
in the Gulf. Agreements are in place to use airfields in Tajikistan. An
air base is being built in Kyrgyzstan to hold 3000 troops. Gen.
Tommy Franks vows to crush the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones promises $160 million in
aid. Some 1500 U.S. servicemen are already stationed there; 3000
American troops are in Kyrgyzstan. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz says the bases will serve to facilitate cooperation and
training with the local military. In other words, the U.S. will, as
in the Balkans, play the Islamists and anti-Islamists off against each
other and reduce the countries to abject dependence. If the fates of
Kosovo and Macedonia are anything to go by, the Soviet Union era
will soon seem like a glorious one.
Copyright New York Press 2002. Reprinted for fair use only.
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SZA202A.html
=== 2 ===
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20020219/
98481.html&qs=jennings
February 19, 2002
Taliban heroin profits arming Balkan rebels
Albanian extremists: Weapons order could equip force
of up to 2,000
Christian Jennings
The Daily Telegraph
SKOPJE, Macedonia - Heroin from huge stockpiles in
Afghanistan is beginning to pour into European
capitals, with much of the profit being used to buy
arms for Albanian rebels seeking to start a new round
of conflict in the southern Balkans.
Senior drug trade analysts from the United Nations
Drug Control Program in Vienna and Western police
officials say much of the heroin being sold in
countries such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland is
coming from stocks in Afghanistan, much of it
controlled by al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
European drug squad officers say Albanian and Kosovo
Albanian dealers are ruthlessly trying to seize
control of the European heroin market, worth up to
$27-billion a year, and have taken over the trade in
at least six European countries.
Western intelligence officials in Kosovo, Macedonia
and Switzerland say Albanian gangs have used
$7-million of their heroin profits since last October
to re-equip rebels in Macedonia who gave up their
weapons to NATO troops.
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim leader, hopes to
replace opium growing in Afghanistan, which provides
90% of the heroin in Europe, with cultivation of
agricultural staples.
But Thomas Pietschmann, a senior researcher with the
UN's drug control program, said bumper crops in
Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 meant there were
stockpiles of heroin and opium worth $68-billion to
$114-billion.
"This is enough to keep every addict in Europe
supplied for three years, even if another poppy is not
grown in Afghanistan, and leave some over for the
increasing market in Russia,'' Dr. Pietschmann said.
Police chiefs are particularly worried about the
arrival of a new brand of heroin from Afghanistan and
Pakistan. It is 80% pure and known as Heroin No. 4 or
white heroin.
Recently, there have been large seizures of white
heroin along the eastern boundary of the European
Union, which stretches from Poland, Germany and
Finland southward to Turkey. It has all come from
Afghanistan and Pakistan via Central Asia.
Police say Albanian criminal gangs have taken over the
heroin trade along this border, muscling in on
gangland turf formerly controlled by Russians,
Ukrainians, Czechs and Turks.
"The rebels in Macedonia, former [Kosovo Liberation
Army] freedom fighters in Kosovo and extremist
Albanians in southern Serbia are all part of the
network of Albanian and Kosovo Albanian families who
control criminal networks in Switzerland, Austria,
Germany and elsewhere,'' said a Western intelligence
official in the province.
"Albanians account for up to 90% of our problems with
drugs and drug dealings,'' said Thomas Koeppel, a
senior Swiss police official involved in the drug war.
Norwegian police made their country's largest heroin
haul last month, arresting three former KLA
guerrillas.
This month, the Drugs Investigative Committee in
Bavaria announced seven Albanians at the centre of a
drug ring that spanned Europe had been arrested in a
multinational operation. The haul included 55
kilograms en route to Scandinavia, via Italy, Austria
and Switzerland.
The smugglers had already moved at least 90 kilograms
to other suppliers.
Albanian extremists from Macedonia and Kosovo have
used part of the profits to buy new weapons since last
October. They have used arms dealers in Belgrade,
Bulgaria, Macedonia and Bosnia, and sometimes also
Swiss and Serb middle men.
Western defence intelligence officials say many of the
weapons have been smuggled into northern Macedonia and
Albania.
Arms trade experts say the deals include at least 20
SA-18 and SA-7 shoulder-held anti-aircraft missile
systems.
The missiles could tip the balance of the dormant
conflict in Macedonia by giving rebels the ability to
shoot down the Macedonian army's Mi-24 Hind helicopter
gunships and Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack jets
The rest of the weapons on the Albanians' shopping
list include Chinese and Yugoslav 120mm and 82mm
mortars, Yugoslav RBR M79 anti-tank rockets,
large-calibre machine guns, grenade launchers, up to
1,500 assault rifles, high-calibre M93 sniper rifles
and millions of rounds of ammunition.
Military experts believe this is enough to arm a force
of up to 2,000.
Thousands of Albanian rebels from the National
Liberation Army (NLA) in Macedonia handed their
weapons over to NATO troops last fall after seven
months of fighting with Macedonian government forces.
The disarmament program was part of an internationally
sponsored peace deal designed to head off the prospect
of a fifth Balkan war.
Although rebel leaders from the former NLA have
renounced violence, a hardline breakaway element
calling itself the Albanian National Army has
threatened more trouble this spring.
1. Happy Days, Here Again
(New York Press, Volume 15, Issue 6, February 2002)
2. Taliban heroin profits arming Balkan rebels
(The Daily Telegraph, February 19, 2002)
=== 1 ===
The Bush Administration supports Terrorists in Kosovo, Macedonia and
Chechnya
Happy Days, Here Again
by George Szamuely
New York Press, Volume 15, Issue 6, February 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 14
February 2002
Forget the war on terrorism. The United States is once again supporting
the drug dealers, gangsters and warlord fundamentalists. The other day
a State Dept. official met Chechnya’s self-declared foreign
minister, Ilyas Akhmadov. The Russians were dismayed. Having thrown
their lot in with the supposed common struggle against terrorism, they
find the Americans giving support to terrorists. Last month, after
a post-Sept. 11 lull, the U.S. stepped up its criticism of human rights
abuses in Chechnya. The Russians professed to be "amazed" that the
United States, as Agence France Presse reported, would meet with
Chechens, "whose direct links with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are
being proven with constantly emerging, irrefutable evidence…"
Chechnya has always been seen here as a rerun of Kosovo, which itself
was a rerun of Afghanistan. All the ingredients are there: a spurious
"national liberation" struggle financed by organized crime, drug
trafficking and the global Islamic network; support from Western
governments and human rights groups; Islamic fundamentalism as a
substitute for genuine nationhood; violently enforced clan loyalty;
political legitimacy based on appeals to Islam; and terrorists in
power. Consider Kosovo: The U.S. is currently brokering a deal on the
distribution of power. Leaders of the three leading Kosovo Albanian
parties recently met the head of the U.S. office in Pristina, John
Menzies, and it was proposed that the job of prime minister should
go to Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo (DPK). Thaci is the
leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Its links to Islamic
terrorism and bin Laden have been amply documented. The KLA
allegedly disbanded after the NATO takeover and reconstituted itself as
a "civil defense force," the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). Its wages
were paid by the UN.
Last summer, the Bush administration discovered that the KPC was a
terrorist organization after all and that it was fueling a terrorist
insurgency in neighboring Macedonia. The President signed two
decrees depriving "Albanian extremists who were threatening the
stability of Macedonia" of all financial or material support. The
decrees also barred them from entering the United States. This
followed the embarrassing revelation that the U.S. military had
facilitated the escape of NLA terrorists holed up in Arcinovo from the
Macedonian army. According to Hamburger Abendblatt, "Among the
rebels that were withdrawing were 17 ‘instructors’–former US officers
that provided military training for the rebels. Not only that: the
Macedonian security forces claim that 70 percent of the equipment
that the guerrilla fighters took with them are of US production." The
"instructors" were almost certainly members of an outfit called
Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI). It is filled with
former senior U.S. Army personnel and works on contract for the U.S.
government. It had trained and directed the Croatian army during
Operation Storm, in which something like 300,000 Serbs were driven out
of their homes in Krajina. One of the commanders of Operation Storm was
an Albanian, Agim Ceku, who also happens to be the chief of the
Kosovo Protection Corps.
The people Bush banned from entering the United States included Gezim
Ostremi, the KPC’s chief-of-staff; his replacement, Daut Haradinaj; the
commander and deputy commander of the KPC’s elite force, the Rapid
Reaction Corps, plus the leaders of two of its six regional divisions,
Sami Lushtaku and Mustafa Rrustem. The UN expressed shock and surprise
and demanded proof that people on its payroll were terrorists. This
was an odd request. The UN had itself reported a year earlier that the
KPC was a bunch of gangsters.
The U.S. decrees were more rhetoric than reality. As an Irish Times
report put it sarcastically: "Commander Rrustem…earned fame during the
Kosovo war as one of the most successful guerrilla commanders. He
has since become a favourite with NATO commanders, whose glowing
commendations line the walls of his office. Certainly if the Americans
have reservations about him they have yet to show it: on Tuesday
two separate US army teams came to his base to train his men."
There we have it: The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded by U.S. military
aid, the UN peacekeeping budget, Al Qaeda and by drug trafficking and
prostitution. If everything goes according to plan, their leader is
about to be appointed prime minister thanks to U.S. efforts. O what a
lovely war! Now on to Central Asia.
Washington now has 13 bases in nine countries ringing Afghanistan and
in the Gulf. Agreements are in place to use airfields in Tajikistan. An
air base is being built in Kyrgyzstan to hold 3000 troops. Gen.
Tommy Franks vows to crush the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones promises $160 million in
aid. Some 1500 U.S. servicemen are already stationed there; 3000
American troops are in Kyrgyzstan. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz says the bases will serve to facilitate cooperation and
training with the local military. In other words, the U.S. will, as
in the Balkans, play the Islamists and anti-Islamists off against each
other and reduce the countries to abject dependence. If the fates of
Kosovo and Macedonia are anything to go by, the Soviet Union era
will soon seem like a glorious one.
Copyright New York Press 2002. Reprinted for fair use only.
The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SZA202A.html
=== 2 ===
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20020219/
98481.html&qs=jennings
February 19, 2002
Taliban heroin profits arming Balkan rebels
Albanian extremists: Weapons order could equip force
of up to 2,000
Christian Jennings
The Daily Telegraph
SKOPJE, Macedonia - Heroin from huge stockpiles in
Afghanistan is beginning to pour into European
capitals, with much of the profit being used to buy
arms for Albanian rebels seeking to start a new round
of conflict in the southern Balkans.
Senior drug trade analysts from the United Nations
Drug Control Program in Vienna and Western police
officials say much of the heroin being sold in
countries such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland is
coming from stocks in Afghanistan, much of it
controlled by al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
European drug squad officers say Albanian and Kosovo
Albanian dealers are ruthlessly trying to seize
control of the European heroin market, worth up to
$27-billion a year, and have taken over the trade in
at least six European countries.
Western intelligence officials in Kosovo, Macedonia
and Switzerland say Albanian gangs have used
$7-million of their heroin profits since last October
to re-equip rebels in Macedonia who gave up their
weapons to NATO troops.
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim leader, hopes to
replace opium growing in Afghanistan, which provides
90% of the heroin in Europe, with cultivation of
agricultural staples.
But Thomas Pietschmann, a senior researcher with the
UN's drug control program, said bumper crops in
Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 meant there were
stockpiles of heroin and opium worth $68-billion to
$114-billion.
"This is enough to keep every addict in Europe
supplied for three years, even if another poppy is not
grown in Afghanistan, and leave some over for the
increasing market in Russia,'' Dr. Pietschmann said.
Police chiefs are particularly worried about the
arrival of a new brand of heroin from Afghanistan and
Pakistan. It is 80% pure and known as Heroin No. 4 or
white heroin.
Recently, there have been large seizures of white
heroin along the eastern boundary of the European
Union, which stretches from Poland, Germany and
Finland southward to Turkey. It has all come from
Afghanistan and Pakistan via Central Asia.
Police say Albanian criminal gangs have taken over the
heroin trade along this border, muscling in on
gangland turf formerly controlled by Russians,
Ukrainians, Czechs and Turks.
"The rebels in Macedonia, former [Kosovo Liberation
Army] freedom fighters in Kosovo and extremist
Albanians in southern Serbia are all part of the
network of Albanian and Kosovo Albanian families who
control criminal networks in Switzerland, Austria,
Germany and elsewhere,'' said a Western intelligence
official in the province.
"Albanians account for up to 90% of our problems with
drugs and drug dealings,'' said Thomas Koeppel, a
senior Swiss police official involved in the drug war.
Norwegian police made their country's largest heroin
haul last month, arresting three former KLA
guerrillas.
This month, the Drugs Investigative Committee in
Bavaria announced seven Albanians at the centre of a
drug ring that spanned Europe had been arrested in a
multinational operation. The haul included 55
kilograms en route to Scandinavia, via Italy, Austria
and Switzerland.
The smugglers had already moved at least 90 kilograms
to other suppliers.
Albanian extremists from Macedonia and Kosovo have
used part of the profits to buy new weapons since last
October. They have used arms dealers in Belgrade,
Bulgaria, Macedonia and Bosnia, and sometimes also
Swiss and Serb middle men.
Western defence intelligence officials say many of the
weapons have been smuggled into northern Macedonia and
Albania.
Arms trade experts say the deals include at least 20
SA-18 and SA-7 shoulder-held anti-aircraft missile
systems.
The missiles could tip the balance of the dormant
conflict in Macedonia by giving rebels the ability to
shoot down the Macedonian army's Mi-24 Hind helicopter
gunships and Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack jets
The rest of the weapons on the Albanians' shopping
list include Chinese and Yugoslav 120mm and 82mm
mortars, Yugoslav RBR M79 anti-tank rockets,
large-calibre machine guns, grenade launchers, up to
1,500 assault rifles, high-calibre M93 sniper rifles
and millions of rounds of ammunition.
Military experts believe this is enough to arm a force
of up to 2,000.
Thousands of Albanian rebels from the National
Liberation Army (NLA) in Macedonia handed their
weapons over to NATO troops last fall after seven
months of fighting with Macedonian government forces.
The disarmament program was part of an internationally
sponsored peace deal designed to head off the prospect
of a fifth Balkan war.
Although rebel leaders from the former NLA have
renounced violence, a hardline breakaway element
calling itself the Albanian National Army has
threatened more trouble this spring.