2nd part
Aside from fighting over the loot, the KLA split was also caused by candid assessments of what path would most satisfy common interests. But by early 2003, when the so-called Albanian National Army (ANA, or AKSH in Albanian) started up a high-profile series of bombings, the camps were defined.
The nationalists were split between diehard ANA supporters and those less keen on the "Greater Albania" project. Both sides were fearful of upsetting their relationship with the United States, and they sought to distance themselves from the Islamists, whom they correctly regarded as being unhelpful in respect to winning their ultimate goal of an independent Kosovo. The Islamists, however, were motivated by religion and supported by foreign governments and their NGOs – chiefly those of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Iran. Many of these charities were shut down in the aftermath of 9/11, though others hung on. The goal of these governments throughout has been to proliferate their own brands of Islam in Kosovo, under the guise of humanitarian relief and with the tangible result of mosque-building.
Both groups had a lot in common with the third, the armed common criminals; in fact, this bunch was spawned by and predated both (along with those recruits drawn by money and not ideologies). Now, the overlap is almost total. The powerful Albanian Mafia has long had a large share of the European heroin market and also trades in women, weapons, and stolen antiquities, among other goods. By necessity, maintaining such an operation in the global age involves "cooperation" with diverse and far-flung groups. Foreign Islamists make up merely one.
Three Necessities
Contrary to what spirited defenders of the Serbs argue, it does not seem that Islamic ideology has played the key role in drawing most Albanians to fight. So why would the Albanians – nationalists, criminals, or otherwise – need the Islamists?
For the answer to this question, we must keep in mind three things: global trafficking routes; sustaining the rule of lawlessness; and unique services provided by foreign Islamic factions.
One of America's enduring achievements in Afghanistan has been the renaissance of poppy cultivation there. Britain's Sunday Telegraph revealed two weeks ago that while Britain has been tasked to lead the eradication of Afghanistan's drug trade, instead, "after 18 months, the level of opium cultivation in Afghanistan has reached an all-time high of nearly half a million acres."
The route of heroin trafficking continues strongly from that country through Central Asia and Turkey. Indeed, as a Turkish professor once described the country's huge foreign debt to his students, "50 billion dollars worth of foreign debt is nothing – it is two lorry loads of heroin."
However, once the drugs cross into the Balkans, there is lawless Kosovo – one of the epicenters of European heroin distribution and processing, with spillover operations in border areas of neighboring states.
Take Macedonia's Albanian-populated village of Aracinovo, tucked into the hills of the Skopska Crna Gora mountain range just over the border with Kosovo. A former Macedonian special policeman involved in the botched raid on Aracinovo during the 2001 war says that he was amazed but what he saw: "there were heroin labs, a series of well-constructed tunnels, and better Western medical equipment than even we have in the State Clinic! To this day, I can't believe what I saw there."
The battle of Aracinovo descended into farce when NATO evacuated armed Albanian militants, who clambered aboard the "fun bus" along with foreign mujahedin and 17 American MPRI military advisors. While the U.S. denies this covert involvement, a Dutch intelligence report from 2002 affirmed it, claiming that the EU was furious. This damning 2001 report quotes another soldier involved, who provides details regarding not only American involvement but that of mujahedin on the Albanian side.
The second factor is that of lawlessness. Keeping Kosovo outside the rule of law is key for both the Mafia and the Islamists. As long as it remains a gray zone with indefinite borders, legislation, and competencies, not to mention an international administration too timid to exert much authority, organized crime can flourish. And, in the villages especially, the vendetta-based rule of the clans trumps any so-called "Western" style of governance.
Third is the issue of services rendered. One example, certainly not the biggest, is "selling" money – old Kuwaiti dinars, stolen after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and returned to Yugoslavia by emigrant workers – to Arabs. As one Arab with long experience of Kosovo told me, "to try and sell that kind of money directly, you need to have connections with high bank officials or others in the Arab world … otherwise they will be very suspicious and ask where it came from."
The Reality Macedonia report above claims this practice occurred on a large scale, and even involved Western banks, as far back as 1997. After 9/11, it's getting harder to pull off. Yet to this day, Albanians (and other former Yugoslavs) are still trying to trade in their old Kuwaiti assets – and this is where the foreign Islamists come in. So far they have met with mixed results, as establishing a level of trust (not to mention a favorable exchange rate) has proven difficult. Nevertheless, the UN police have made at least one arrest, of a Syrian, in conjunction with this trade.
Operational Failings
Nevertheless, UNMIK, KFOR, and other international security organizations have fallen short repeatedly in their quest to stifle extremism in Kosovo. In some cases, they have shut down charities that were probably benign; in other cases, they have neglected potentially dangerous ones, despite the objections of security officers such as Tom Gambill, who lists some by name.
A failure to cultivate good ties with Serbian intelligence has also been a problem. Usually Serbian warnings of Islamic terrorist activities are met with suspicion by a cynical West. However, they incontestably have the experience, the knowledge, and the intelligence to make a contribution to the fight against terror – if the West really is sincere about that particular campaign.
A second major restriction on good policing efforts in the province is the poor quality and limited mandates of security personnel in Kosovo. Most U.S. personnel in the UNMIK police come on six-month to one-year contracts, hired through domestic security contractors, with the previous experience of being small-town, doughnut-shop cops. There are few Jean-Claude Van Dammes to be found amongst the UNMIK ranks. And, given the high turnover rate since 1999 (very few officials from that time still remain), there is also little chance for continuity or coordination of information-gathering, either in terms of technique or of content.
Says Gambill, "they [the UN] didn't really understood what was going on – and they didn't want to know. There was no continuity of mission, or pass-on intel." According to him, despite repeated efforts to educate the American authorities about the presence of al-Qaeda-related groups and their connections with organized crime, "they weren't interested." However, before returning to America, where he has established a trucking firm, Gambill made sure to take his four-gigabyte collection of police reports, photos, and other incriminating evidence about the presence of Islamic terrorist factions in Kosovo. He is looking for a publisher for the book he is writing about his experiences there.
A third restriction is a quite obvious one, and it in part explains the timidity of most UN officials in Kosovo: that is, securing their own lives. All internationals in Kosovo are sitting ducks; they live in the apartments, frequent the restaurants, stay in the hotels, and shop in the stores owned by locals. At any given moment, any of them, from the lowliest secretary to the highest UN representative, can be killed. So where's the incentive for these officials, waiting out their lavishly overpaid term before heading for yet another peacekeeping mission somewhere else, to take on the Albanian Mafia or the Islamic fundamentalists?
In one of those bizarre cases of blowback-in-waiting, celebrated illegal alien/KLA weapons smuggler Florin Krasniqi recently vowed from New York that if the UN does not vacate Kosovo and give it independence, "we will throw the United Nations out … we have a team of snipers here in the U.S. ready to be dispatched on very short notice."
Note that this is the same man who donates heavily to the Democrats and who said, "with money, you can do amazing things in this country. ... Senators and congressmen are looking for donations, and if you raise the money they need for their campaigns, they pay you back."
Euro Interest Revealed; New Tensions in Macedonia and Beyond
Despite the seeming novelty of the latest Euro disclosures cited above by the IHT, the possibility of the conjunction of Islamic terrorism, organized crime, and other less-than-religious ruffians throughout Europe – part of an evolving global phenomenon – has long been accepted by European experts, though they've been somewhat reticent about discussing this in terms of the Balkans, where it's still politically correct to laud the Muslims of Bosnia through kitschy commemorations, and thus get off the hook of having to be overly nice to Muslims back home. This we can see clearly enough; the real question that emerges, however, is whether or not European and American interests harmonize in this area.
With mosques now attracting an increasingly younger crowd, the outcome of the present power struggle between traditionalists and Wahhabists will be crucial for the future of Islam in Macedonia.
Back in December 2004, we heard detailed comments from Claude Moniquet, a counterterrorism expert with the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center in Brussels. At that time, he disclosed that "between 10 and 100 [presumably foreign] people who are dangerous and linked to terrorist organizations currently reside in Macedonia." When asked about the "financial link between local criminal gangs and al-Qaeda," Moniquet responded:
"Yes, absolutely. It's something that we can observe in the last 2-3 years everywhere in the world. The link between jihadis, the Islamist terrorists, and the petty crime, even organized crime is quite important. The terrorists use some criminal organizations to get false papers, arms, ammunition, and explosives. They used them to travel, to infiltrate people in some countries."
According to Moniquet, this phenomenon occurs in Macedonia. He mentioned the case of Kondovo, the Albanian village near the border with Kosovo that was taken over by militants last winter. The purported local leader, Agim Krasniqi, threatened to bombard Skopje. Recently Krasniqi renewed these threats, though since he is all of 25 years-old, this is probably just politically-motivated sleigh-of-hand masterminded by the opposition DPA party.
Nevertheless, Kondovo has a huge, foreign-funded madrassa that caters to local and foreign Islamic students. According to Moniquet, "they have enormous financial means provided by the Saudis" and should be watched closely because "this kind of school is always which attracts the people with problems, and people who think they can change the society, even through violence" – in other words, secular criminals and militants whose malleable minds can be guided towards other ends.
Indeed, one worrying sign in Macedonia is that foreign-supported Islamic fundamentalism has for the first time entered strongly into the religious debate within the country's Islamic community – something unthinkable only a few years ago. Skopje daily Vreme, which recently reported on this struggle, discussed it as part of a larger plan of the Wahhabists to unify "the Islamic religious communities of Macedonia, Kosovo, Sandzak [in Serbia], and Montenegro under the umbrella of the Sarajevo-based B-H Islamic Community, as they used to function before the SFRY's [Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia] disintegration."
This recent statement just confirms what I reported over a year ago about foreign extremists on Skopje's streets, exhorting Albanians to jihad through promotional videotapes. In going into details and naming another extremist imam, the Vreme piece also confirms what I disclosed back in October 2003 about the Sandjak border region of Serbia and Montenegro:
"[W]e may see a paradigm shift in how this part of the Balkans is perceived, away from the east-west axis and towards a north-south one that would provide the missing link between Islamic activity in Bosnia and Kosovo- the two places now of most concern to Western governments. If the Sandzak suspicions turn out to be justified, the Western view on Montenegrin independence may shift, because any weakening of security services from Belgrade can only expedite the potential for Islamic terrorism from Bosnia and Kosovo- through a severed Sandzak. That is something for the Western policymakers to think about."
Unfortunately, it looks like they have: the ICG, in its role of imperial first infantry, released a little-publicized report a few months ago entitled, "Serbia's Sandzak: Still Forgotten."
Considering the ICG's Midas touch for stirring up conflict, this new interest means that another international showdown can't be too far away. But while the arrogant international power-brokers always think they know best, continuing this course of chopping up Serbia will only make things worse for the EU, as a direct and undisturbed corridor for criminals and terrorists is established from Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo straight through to Bosnia, and from there into the West.
A Macedonian Smoking Gun, and (Alleged) Euro-Disinterest
Still, most admissions of Euro-investigative interest in Islamic terrorism in the Balkans – perhaps with the exception of Bosnia – go unreported. Or, as the experience of Tom Gambill shows, important trends are sometimes hushed up so that the boat is not rocked unduly. So we have to seek them out.
This led me earlier this summer to an interesting exchange (a rather one-sided one, as it turned out) with the watered-down EU peacekeeping mission in Macedonia. The successor to NATO's peacekeeping mission, the EU's PROXIMA police force describes itself as being dedicated to police training, confidence-building, and other "I'm okay, you're okay" activities of this sort.
However, all things considered, one might also assume that such a presence could serve as an attractive cover for intelligence-gathering efforts. When I mentioned to a PROXIMA spokesperson that I would like to ask some questions about PROXIMA investigations of organized crime and terrorism in Macedonia, I was told that these were "sensitive" areas, but that my questions would be redirected to someone who might be able to help – in other words, that these kind of investigations were being performed, but maybe they were not at liberty to discuss some of them. However, after sending my questions, I received the following Bizarro World e-mail reply:
"
am sorry to inform you that due to our mandate that covers no activities in the field of such kind of intelligence gathering, for whomever, PROXIMA is not able to answer your questions."
Now this would all be well and good, had I not already had private discussions with PROXIMA officers who apparently hadn't been sufficiently briefed on the limits of their mandate. In fact, one officer who spoke with me a few months ago, on condition of anonymity, mentioned a detailed investigation that corroborated Moniquet's general assertions. Further, his testimony specifically confirmed information I had received independently from a Serbian source in April 2004; that is, of the presence of a foreign Islamist "sleeper cell" in the wilds of southwestern Macedonia.
According to the PROXIMA officer, the cell contained approximately 100 foreigners (Arabs, Pakistanis, etc.) and was taking refuge in forested areas west of the Macedonian Muslim villages of Oktisi and Labunista, for a unique reason: "since the latter are Muslims, the [Orthodox] Macedonians don't want them; and since they are Macedonian, the [Muslim] Albanians don't want them either. Thus they accept the support of foreigners."
This area, located near the Jablanica mountain range that forms the border with Albania, was also pointed out to me by the informed Kosovo Serbian source as a staging post for Islamists operating on both sides of the border. According to him, the small group had some relation to the Abu Bekir Sidik Brigade, an Islamic terrorist group with a long history, based throughout key Muslim Balkan cities but chiefly in South Mitrovica, Kosovo. This city was mentioned specifically in the recent Vreme report mentioned above as being the headquarters of a suspicious pro-Wahhabi charity, Kosovo Islamic Relief, "run by a certain Ekrem Avdiu." While the newspaper failed to make the connection, this Kosovo Albanian has long been identified with Abu Bekir Sidik, and was once even arrested by Serb authorities when coming across the Albanian border with jihad paraphernalia.
According to the Serbian source, the Macedonia-Albania border cell was "laying low, because the area was quiet and allowed them to regroup before transiting through Albania to Bosnia and, eventually, the West, which is the real target." That the West is the target and the Balkans merely a "springboard" was reiterated by analyst Zoran Dragisic in the IPS article cited above. The Athens Olympics, then only a few months away, was another possible target, said the Serb.
However, the Olympics came and went without incident, perhaps because Greeks tend to be friendly to the Palestinian cause and also because they rejected the Iraq war. The group, or parts of it, remained, however, and the former PROXIMA officer turned in the results of a year-long investigation – including photos and copies of passports – to his home intelligence agencies as 2005 dawned. So the EU police force in Macedonia obviously does not engage in intelligence activities; and experts such as Moniquet are obviously pulling info out of their asses.
A few months after the March 2004 anti-Serb pogroms in Kosovo, I learned of a heated argument within the Macedonian intelligence services, which were debating whether to try and "infiltrate" the Jablanica cell by inserting a presumed "friendly" Muslim into their midst. However, the plan was presumed "too dangerous" and was shelved. As one military intelligence officer reminded me:
"Because of the Ohrid Agreement, but even we had this problem before, the order to hire more Albanians has compromised our service. … I might find important information, but if I pass it up the chain of command, my superior, or my superior's superior, might be an Albanian, and he can easily ruin the investigation … and I'm sure they feel the same way about us [Macedonians], because they of course have their own interests to protect.
"The point is that while some of us are trying – and I do have some good and honest Albanian colleagues – the service as a whole is being compromised. When NATO and the U.S. ask us to cooperate, we do our best, but if you can't even trust your own colleagues, what can we do?"
Given this poisonous atmosphere, it's no surprise that the sensitive counterterrorism operation was canceled. To my knowledge, it never even reached ministerial level, and it was not considered again.
Macedonia's Ambiguous War on Terror
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FULL ARTICLE
Europe's New Terror Profile and the State of Play in the Balkans - by Christopher Deliso
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