Kosovo Liberation Army and Albanian Sponsors
Have Well Documented Roots in The Heroin Trade

By Michael C. Ruppert

The Drug Trade Is Entrenched in NATO Politics

An exceptional record of respected media sources from the U.S. and Europe have documented that the Kosovo Liberation Army and their Albanian sponsors are heroin financed organized crime groups struggling to dominate the flow of middle eastern heroin into Europe and even the Eastern United States.

The Christian Science Monitor reported on Oct. 20, 1994: "Disrupted by the Yugoslav conflict, drug trafficking across the Balkans is making a comeback as Albanian mafia barons carve out a new smuggling route to Western Europe, bypassing the peninsula's war zones, according to United Nations and other narcotics experts." To document the increase in traffic through the Albanian Kosovar region The Monitor continued, "For example, just 14 pounds of hard drugs were seized by Hungarian police in 1990, but by August this year [1994] the figure had risen to 1,304 pounds."

In describing the then evolving trade, which was coming to be dominated by Kosovar Albanians The Monitor added, "But European police chiefs fear the conduit will strengthen Kosovo Albanian drug syndicates - some of the most powerful on the continent - whose tentacles have stretched as far as the East coast of the United StatesÉ

"From their base in Velki Trnovac in southern Serbia, dubbed the 'Medellin of the Balkans,' Albanian mafia chiefs oversee their European drug operation and are suspected of masterminding the new Balkan route."

Colombia in the Balkans

The highly respected Jane's Intelligence Review from Great Britain went much deeper in predicting the coming crisis

in a February 1, 1995 article entitled The Balkan Medellin. Three paragraphs from that article are so compelling we reprint them here in their entirety.

"The Albanian-dominated region of western Macedonia accounts for a disproportionate share of Macedonia's (FYROM) shrinking GDP. This situation has strengthened Albanophobic sentiments among the ethnic Macedonian majority, especially as a great deal of revenue is thought to derive from Albanian narco-terrorism as well as associated gun-running and cross-border smuggling to and from Albania, Bulgaria and the Kosovo province of Serbia. Although its extent and forms remain in dispute, this rising Albanian economic power is helping to turn the Balkans into a hub of criminality.

"Previously transported to Western Europe through former Yugoslavia, heroin from Turkey, the Transcaucus and points further east is now being increasingly routed to Italy via the Black Sea, Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia. This is a development that has strengthened the Albanian mafia which is now thought to control 70% of the illegal heroin market in Germany and Switzerland. Closely allied to the powerful Sicilian mafia, the Albanian associates have also greatly benefited from the presence of large numbers of mainly Kosovar Albanians in a number of western European countries; Switzerland alone now has over 100,000 ethnic Albanian residents. As well as providing a perfect cover for Albanian criminals, this diaspora is also a useful source of income for racketeersÉ

"If left unchecked, this growing Albanian narco-terrorism could lead to a Colombian syndrome in the Southern Balkans, or the emergence of a situation in which the Albanian mafia becomes powerful enough to control one or more states in the region. In practical terms, this will involve either Albania or Macedonia, or both. Politically, this is now being done by channeling growing foreign exchange (forex) profits from narco-terrorism into local governments and political parties. In Albania, the ruling Democratic Party (DP) led by President Sali Berisha is now widely suspected of tacitly tolerating and even directly profiting from drug-trafficking for wider politico-economic reasons, namely the financing of secessionist political parties and other groupings in Kosovo and Macedonia."

These four-year-old evaluations, along with an abundance of other evidence of Albanian-Kosovar mafia expansion paint a whole new picture of what is really happening in Kosovo. Clearly Serbia is legitimately defending itself from an organized crime syndicate taking control of one of its provinces.

How powerful is the Albanian mafia? Well, as far back as 1985 it was powerful enough to frighten New York U.S. attorney Rudy Giulliani who, according to a Wall Street Journal story dated September 9, was receiving special personal protection after prosecuting a heroin case in New York City connected to a ring of powerful Albanian traffickers.

The Journal wrote, "But it is drug trafficking that has gained Albanian organized crime the most notoriety. Some Albanians, according to federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials, are key traders in the 'Balkan connection' the Istanbul-to-Belgrade heroin route. While less well known than the so-called Sicilian and French connections, the Balkan route in some years may move 24% to 40% of the U.S. heroin supply, officials say."

If the Albanians were moving 24 to 40% fourteen years ago then, given their growing control over the traffic through the region, their access to Western Europe and mobility throughout

the world, they may well control more than half of the heroin now entering the United States and law enforcement sources indicate that they control 75% of the heroin entering Western Europe.

A Brilliant Voice From Canada

Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa has written an absolutely brilliant article on the Kosovo war which decimates, in its entirety, the U.S. government's stated version of events and lays bare a plan to re-colonize the region on behalf of Germany and the United States. The meticulously footnoted article sums up the entire Kosovo nightmare in one sentence by saying, "The west was relying on its KLA puppets to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under Western administration."

After describing in detail the heroin-financed, organized crime, political power structure of the region, and noting carefully that there are other organized political entities not involved in the drug trade speaking on behalf of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Chossudovsky documents the military and intelligence alliance between Bonn (now Berlin) and Washington to create the KLA.

"Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established between the CIA and Germany's [BND]ÉThe task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: "They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money. According to Whitley, the CIA was subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania."

Giving the overall economic perspective, Chossudovsky notes the effect of often brutal economic sanctions imposed by the IMF and other banking institutions which so often presage a region's descent into apparent anarchy before its rescue by the "benevolent" industrial powers.

"The application of strong 'economic' medicine' under the guidance of the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions had contributed to wrecking Albania's banking system and precipitating the collapse of Albania's economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several western oil companies [some represented by Richard Armitage] including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes riveted on Albania's abundant and unexplored oil deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania's extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold nickel and platinumÉ"

Given these undeniable facts, and a well documented history which the Internet and publications like this will not forget, the current propaganda and very real war being fought in Kosovo takes on a new and unforgivable light. Ronald Reagan's comparison of the Contras in Central America to America's Founding Fathers is today as comical as it is offensive in light of what we know about the Contra war and how the Contras were financed. The Mujahedeen Freedom Fighters of Afghanistan and Pakistan who we financed with heroin from the same fields which now supply the KLA have

become terrorists who attack embassies and target American citizens. The forgotten Meo tribesman of Laos, who Ted Shackley created with heroin from the Golden Triangle are now basically forgotten - those who survived having been resettled in the U.S. and elsewhere. But the warlords remain in Washington, Berlin, London, the Golden Triangle, the Golden Crescent, Albania and Kosovo.

This writer has said many times and in many places that these wars, destabilizations and "economic cleansings" are planned and orchestrated years, even decades in advance. It was a bittersweet affirmation for me to read Chossudovsky's own analysis:

"The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome 'marriage of convenience' with the mafia. "Freedom Fighters were put in place, the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to "finance the Kosovo conflict" with the ultimate objective of destabilizing the Belgrade government and fully recolonizing the Balkans."

What remains to be seen is whether or not a badly misled American public will be willing to sacrifice the blood of her sons in this utterly dishonest conflict. I read somewhere once that the historical memory of a nation lasts only about one generation. Funny, Vietnam doesn't seem that long ago.

Suggested Reading: KOSOVO FREEDOM FIGHTERS FINANCED BY ORGANIZED CRIME by Michel Chossudovsky, Department of Economics, University of Ottawa. Voice Box 1-613-562-5800 ext 1415, e-mail chossudovsky@sprint.ca