Global Research

THEN IN THE HEYDAY OF THE KOSOVO WAR, 1999


Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with Former
KLA leader Hashim Thaci, 1999

AND NOW, A “MAFIA STATE” JOINS THE “INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY”


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with former leader
of the KLA and “Prime Minister” of Kosovo

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with former leader
of the KLA and “Prime Minister” of Kosovo

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a meeting in Washington with former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Commander and “Prime Minister” of Kosovo Hashim Thaci made a firm commitment to assist the Kosovo government in becoming a full member of the European Union and NATO:

“I believe strongly in Kosovo’s independence and territorial integrity and in its aspiration to become a full partner in the international community and a member of the European Union, and eventually, NATO,”

“The United States will continue to support Kosovo and work with the European Union to resolve the outstanding issues that exist between Kosovo and Serbia,”

“Thaci’s visit to the United States “comes amid increased tensions between Pristina and Belgrade over Serbia’s intention to hold municipal elections in the breakaway region on May 6. Clinton said she was “encouraged” with Kosovo’s progress in European integration and economic development.”

“The prime minister told me Kosovo has grown five percent this year. That’s a very strong signal of the kind of progress that Kosovo is making, and we want to help fully integrate, particularly the young people of Kosovo, into Europe and the international community,” she said.

About 90 states, including the United States and most of the EU countries, have recognized Kosovo since it declared its independence from Serbia in 2008. Belgrade and Moscow have refused to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty.” (Russian Information Agency Novosti, April 4, 2012)

The former KLA leader Hashim Thaci, before becoming “Prime Minister” of Kosovo was on the Interpol and FBI lists. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was known for its links to organized crime and the drug trade.

Supported by the United Nations, the US State Department’s project under Madeleine Albright was to spearhead a terrorist organization linked to Albanian and Italian crime syndicates, into the realm of civilian politics. The KLA was chosen by “the international community” to form a government integrated by known criminals. The Democratic Party of Kosovo (Partia Demokratike e Kosovës) headed by former KLA leader Hashim Thaci, also known as “The Snake”, is essentially an outgrowth of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).  

According to a Washington Times, May 1999 report:

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army [headed by the current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci] , which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden — who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.

The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO’s 41-day bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports.

The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists — members of the Mujahideen –as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight. ….

The intelligence reports document what is described as a “link” between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi millionaire, and the KLA –including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports said bin Laden’s organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA. (Washington Times, May 4, 1999, see complete article below)

The Christian Science Monitor in an August 14, 2000 report describes the criminal network controlled by Thaci:

UN police suspect that much of the violence and intimidation has come from former KLA members, especially those allied with Hashim Thaci, the former KLA leader and head of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, one of the KLA’s political offshoots.

In one recent incident, the shop of an LDK activist in Mr. Thaci’s home village was sprayed with automatic gunfire – the second such attack since November.

Thaci’s party potentially has much to lose in the elections, which are for municipal offices only. After Serb forces withdrew last year, the KLA occupied town halls and public institutions across Kosovo and set up its own provincial government.

Although the UN has gradually asserted its own authority and placed representatives of other political groups in local governments, in places like Srbica ex-KLA members affiliated with Thaci’s party still exercise virtual complete control.

“These guys are not going to give up power that easily,” says Dardan Gashi, a political analyst with the International Crisis Group, a US-based research organization with an office in Pristina.

UN police also suspect organized crime is involved in some of the violence. They say that criminal groups engaged in racketeering, smuggling, and prostitution rely on close links to some people in power. The prospect of losing these connections – and the income they generate – may make them ill-disposed toward the LDK.

Officials say the problem is the worst in the Drenica region of Kosovo, the KLA’s heartland and a stronghold of Thaci’s party. Srbica, where Koci is the local LDK president, is one of the main towns in Drenica. (emphasis added)

The Heritage Foundation in a May 1999 report acknowledges that the KLA is a criminal organization, while calling for its support by the Clinton administration:

Should the U.S. harness the KLA’s military potential against Milosevic’s brutal regime, despite the KLA’s unusual ideological roots and apparent ties to organized crime? … The KLA does not represent every group seeking an end to Milosevic’s brutal campaign and is known to have committed some atrocities of its own, it is the most significant force resisting Yugoslav aggression within Kosovo. Moreover, the scale and scope of its crimes have been dwarfed by the systematic campaign of terror unleashed by Yugoslav military, paramilitary, and police forces inside Kosovo. which Washington has done consistently since the 1999 war. (Heritage Foundation Report, 13 May 1999)

Shunning the KLA now will deprive the United States of the benefits of cooperating with a resistance force that is capable of ratcheting up the pressure on Milosevic to negotiate a settlement (Ibid)

MAN TO MAN HUG

US Vice-President Jo Biden and former KLA leader and “Prime Minister” of Kosovo

While the above reports on KLA links to organized crime (published in the heyday of the 1999 “Kosovo War”) should not intervene in Hillary Clinton’s current “Love Affair” with former KLA leader Hashim Thaci, it is worth noting, that recent media reports reconfirm that Kosovo to this date remains a bona fide “Mafia State” and that the protégé of Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton is a known criminal.   

In December, 12 2010, following the “Assembly of Kosovo” elections in which Hashim Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo gained 32% of the vote, the London Guardian “published excerpts from a Council of Europe report, claiming that Thaci and his “Kosovo Liberation Army” are a “mafia-like” organization involved in narcotics and arms trafficking and human organ trade. The report, published by Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), was a result of a two-year investigation into allegations first mentioned in the memoirs of former ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.” (See  Nebojsa Malic, Kosovo “Prime Minister” a Mobster Trafficking in Drugs, Body Parts, Global Research, December 27, 2010).