Hi Vladimir,

>
>Did America/EU pay for Iraqi damage (I don't know - I'm asking)? I think
>not.
>

Not yet but we're still bombing them. We did rebuild Kuwait.

Jay Schneider wrote:

>
>To establish (i.e. impose) the 'rule of law' on a global scale? That is
>exactly what Third Reich tried to do - to establish their kind of law to
>others, not bothering to ask whether those others need it. And they used
>precisely the same methods - bombs. That is called fascism.
>

My take is that this guy (Deputy Sec. Gen from the U.N.) isn't proposing
forced law over national policy but for a strong law between nations. It's
hard to argue against a strong U.N. - A strong U.N. would have prevented the
war in Serbia, at least through stalemate in the security council. I'm
surprised the Sec. General and the General Asembly haven't been more vocal.

>. And if BBC reporter had enough common sense to predict what will
>happen, I'm sure that people in Pentagon knew it for sure. But they paid
>no attention, as refugees and humanitarian catastrophy are of little
>concern to them - they have other goals. That's my point from the very
>beginning.

I still suspect stupidity over animosity. It doesn't make sense from the
Pentagons standpoint. If they knew the probable (read current) outcomes,
then they also would know they don't want to be there. If someone has an
ulterior motive it would have to be in the U.S. executive branch. I suspect
general incompetence at fault there, you'd be hard pressed to convince
anyone that gross stupidity and incompetence doesn't run rampant in the U.S.
Executive Branch.

I got some feedback from a friend of mine who read the letters page. I
thought you'd be interested.

-Jay

(P.S. I'd bet that NATO decides to go with a ground intervention - two
weeks is my time guess. I know your feelings on the matter this is just my
take on the situation.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Bradley J. Rhodes <rhodes@media.mit.edu>
To: j@photobooks.com <j@photobooks.com>
Date: Wednesday, April 21, 1999 1:04 PM
Subject: [pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu: [RRE]Kosovo]


>
>Thanks for the pointer to the correspondence. I wish I had a better idea
>of what the hell we should do in this war. Agre's initial summary pretty
>much speaks for me too -- is this WW-II or Vietnam we're fighting here?
>
>BTW, you might want to send your pointer to Phil -- most of what he send to
>RRE is pointed to by his readers. RRE's a good list to be on too. High
>traffic of interesting stuff (with a liberal bent), but you can always skim
>it (or file it for the RA to use, which is what I do :).
> -- Brad
>
>------- Start of forwarded message -------
>Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 11:44:16 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Phil Agre <pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu>
>To: "Red Rock Eater News Service" <rre@lists.gseis.ucla.edu>
>Subject: [RRE]Kosovo
>Sender: <rre@lists.gseis.ucla.edu>
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>List-Software: LetterRip Pro 3.0.4 by Fog City Software, Inc.
>List-Subscribe: <mailto:rre-on@lists.gseis.ucla.edu>
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>X-UIDL: 5148a5b5c61a0b29e99189059e80bf61
>
>[Back in depths of the impeachment fiasco, we had a talk with the
>devil. We don't remember it now, but we said: "I'm sick of these
>managers and their phony apocalypse -- give me anything else besides
>this". The devil said, "ANYthiiiing?". And we said, "ANYthing!!".
>So the senators voted 50-50, and we woke up. To this. This is how
>the millennium is going down. On one side we have a small-to-medium
>Hitler with electric guitars whose people, are persuaded that they are
>reliving both the heroic resistance to the Germans and the invasion
>of the Ottoman Turks. A whole country of Branch Davidians. On the
>other side we have a sexually compulsive survivor of an alcoholic
>family whose people don't know enough history to tell whether they
>are looking at World War II or Vietnam. On one side we have a guy
>who thinks that he is the embodiment of Western Civilization. On
>the other side we have a guy who knows that he is not. And we have
>a million missing people. A million. Gone. Where are they? Are you
>gonna say, "it's far away", and "no American oil or banana companies
>are suffering", and "it's just a million people", and "we need an exit
>strategy"? I know that we're supposed to learn something from this.
>But what? What it really means to be civilized? You are free. Choose.
>
> Legal Guide to the Kosovo Conflict
> http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/kosovo.htm
>
> Nonviolent Activist
> http://www.nonviolence.org/wrl/nva0199-2.htm
>
> Destroying Kosovo
> http://www.thenation.com/issue/990419/0419editors.shtml
>
> Z Magazine
> http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/kosovo.htm
>
> International Action Center
> http://www.iacenter.org/endrse65.htm
>
> Kosovo Highlights Journalism's Failings
> http://www.ojr.org/
>
> Institute for Public Accuracy
> http://www.accuracy.org/press.htm
>
> Depleted uranium use in Kosovo
> http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/diss.html#DUKOSOVO
>
> NY Times on Kosovo
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/kosovo-index.html
>
> A Conversation with the University of Belgrade Law Faculty
> http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/converse.htm
>
> Science for Peace
> http://www.math.yorku.ca/sfp/
>
> Yahoo Kosovo links
> http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/World/Kosovo/
>
> John Albee's directory of links on the Balkans
> http://home.revealed.net/albee/pages/Balkans.html
>
>I have taken the liberty of reformatting the enclosed messages. I do
>not necessarily agree with them; I'm circulating them on the principle
>of covering all sides, particularly the sides you don't hear from in
>the mainstream media.]
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE).
>Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below.
>You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use
>the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions
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>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>From: Radoje Lausevic <rlausevi@EUnet.yu>
>To: dlakusic@EUnet.yu
>Subject: Ecological catastrophe
>
>Dear colleagues,
>
>We are faced with ecological catastrophe:
>
>1. NATO was not only using banned cluster bombs, but also depleted
>uranium bullets. These bullets caused an immediate increase in
>leukemia, cancers, and birth defects in the Gulf War, as well as
>the so-called Gulf War sickness, whose symptoms are identical with
>radiation sickness. Depleted uranium (DU) is used primarily because
>it is effective against tanks. The uranium oxide from these bullets
>when inhaled donates "hot" particles of around 0.5 microns to the
>chest, equivalent to 20 chest X-rays per hour. Nearly all the Cruise
>missiles used so far contain DU warheads. The UK Sunday Times says
>120 of these have been fired so far, but other reports say much more
>have been fired. DU is classed as a weapon of mass destruction and
>therefore illegal according to the Geneva Convention. They could
>have teratogenic effects for generations afterwards on combatants and
>targets alike. Certainly they will damage US or NATO troops as well
>as all others in Kosovo in any ground war, to judge from what happened
>after their use in the Gulf War and in Bosnia.
>
>2. Our stretch of the Danube is no longer navigable, and will not be
>navigable for a long time to come. namely, two bridges in Novi Sad
>(second Yugoslav city by population size, northern from Belgrade)
>were crushed down, the third and last one is heavily damaged. This
>holly river and European natural treasure has suffered the biggest
>ecological catastrophe of the all time, and countries along its banks
>will sustain great economic damage for a long time. Today it is the
>obstructed river, tomorrow it will be the spill and release of toxic
>chemicals caused by bombing of chemical plants and fuel depots.
>
>3. Several burned chemical factories in different parts of Yugoslavia,
>especially in Kosovo, released dark and toxic smoke, which is
>spreading all around. We do not have any possibilities to keep those
>polluted clouds within our borders.
>
>4. Several national parks are targeted by cruise missiles and bombs:
>Fruska Gora (northern Serbia), Kopaonik (central Serbia), Tara
>(western Serbia), Sara (southern Serbia)... Forests are burned and
>devastated, big and small game are killed, birds are dispersed. High
>Yugoslav biodiversity, one of the highest in Europe, is seriously
>endangered.
>
>Stop the bombing of Yugoslavia before it will be to late!
>
> --
>Serbian Ecological Society
>Univ. Belgrade, Fac. Biol.
>Inst. Bot. & Bot. Garden "Jevremovac"
>Takovska 43, 11000 Belgrade, Yugoslavia
>Tel: +381 11 767-988
>Fax: +381 11 769-903
>
>Dmitar Lakusic, President
>dlakusic@EUnet.yu
>
>Radoje Lausevic, Secretary
>rlausevi@EUnet.yu
>
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
>[I enclose this so that all of those people who rarely encounter
>any actual liberal opinions in the media can remember what liberal
>opinions sound like.]
>
>
>THE NATION April 19, 1999
>http://www.thenation.com
>
>
>The Case Against Intervention in Kosovo
>
>by BENJAMIN SCHWARZ and CHRISTOPHER LAYNE
>
>See below for background and related information.
>
>E-mail this story to a friend.
>
>President Clinton's address attempting to justify -- after the fact --
>the US-led NATO bombing of Serbia should set off alarms. After all,
>the ideas and concerns Clinton invoked -- the notion of instability
>spreading from country to country (much like falling dominoes), the
>perception that world politics is a bipolar ideological confrontation
>between democracy and dictatorship, the obsession with reaffirming
>US leadership and resolve, the anxiety about the vitality of alliance
>commitments and the conviction that US security is tied to peace in an
>area of little inherent strategic importance -- were all factors that
>led to the catastrophe of American involvement in Vietnam.
>
>To be sure, presidential addresses are intended to persuade, but
>the American people have a right to expect their chief executive --
>even one with Bill Clinton's track record -- to avoid distortions
>and half-truths. Clinton's statement to the nation fell well short
>of the mark. It also failed the test of logic. In trying to rally
>public support, Clinton apparently hoped that, although taken in
>isolation his points were suspect, if he somehow packaged them using
>an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach, the factual and
>logical flaws would be lost in the crowd.
>
>Clinton's explanation of the Kosovo conflict's background was, to put
>it charitably, misleading. He glossed over the fact that the province
>of Kosovo (the cradle of Serbia's cultural and national identity) is
>an integral part of Serbia's sovereign territory. Far from being a
>case of one state committing aggression against another, this conflict
>is, of course, a civil war, the root of which is the province's
>ethnic Albanians' armed struggle to break free of Serbia and establish
>an independent state. Thus, as in numerous ethnic conflicts in
>the Balkans and elsewhere, the opposing sides' objectives cannot be
>reconciled.
>
>Clinton was also misleading in placing sole blame for the breakdown
>of the recent NATO-brokered Rambouillet peace talks on the Serbs.
>The ethnic Albanians also refused at first to sign the NATO peace
>deal, because it failed to guarantee their eventual independence
>from Serbia. The United States finally induced them to sign by
>threatening to cut off the Kosovo Liberation Army's access to arms and
>by reminding the KLA that without its assent to the agreement, NATO
>could not conduct airstrikes against Serbia. When KLA intransigence
>initially stalled the talks, US officials -- especially Secretary
>of State Madeleine Albright -- were palpably frustrated because they
>feared that their plans to bomb Serbia would be derailed.
>
>The President's description of the peace process also left out some
>important details. Essentially, the Serbs, who were given the choice
>of signing or being bombed, were "negotiating" with a gun at their
>heads. They saw the Rambouillet deal as one-sided because, although
>the plan provided that Kosovo would nominally remain a part of Serbia
>for three years, it also would have reduced the Serbian government's
>actual control over the province to a nullity. Of course, the plan
>ostensibly would have disarmed the KLA in Kosovo, but because that
>group can operate out of neighboring Albania, it could have stockpiled
>weapons there. In fact, the KLA made its intentions quite clear:
>After the three-year transitional period, either Kosovo would become
>independent, or the KLA would resume the war. Furthermore, Serbia
>resented the provisions of the peace plan that would have required
>Belgrade to accept the presence of NATO forces in Kosovo.
>
>An analogy to America's own bitter war of secession can illustrate
>what NATO is trying to compel Serbia to do. It is as if the
>nineteenth-century concert of Europe had forced President Lincoln to
>accept Southern independence and European troops on American soil to
>police the agreement, and had threatened to intervene militarily in
>support of the Confederate Army if Lincoln refused. After all, the
>unprecedentedly murderous American Civil War appalled Europeans just
>as much as the Kosovo conflict does US leaders today. And just as
>Europeans believed that North American "stability" (and access to
>Southern cotton) was vital to their prosperity, so US policy-makers
>today are convinced that European stability is essential to the United
>States' economic well-being. (Of course, the social systems defended
>in Kosovo and the American South aren't parallel.)
>
>Clinton justified the NATO action as a "moral imperative" to end
>the killing of ethnic-Albanian civilians. Indeed, other US officials
>have gone even further, describing the Serbian campaign in Kosovo
>as "genocide." Although this characterization is demonstrably false
>(and trivializes truly genocidal campaigns, like Hitler's attempt
>to exterminate European Jewry), the President certainly is correct
>to observe that innocent civilians are dying in Kosovo (before NATO's
>intervention, about 2,000 civilians, mainly ethnic Albanians killed
>by the Serbs but also Kosovar Serbs killed by the KLA, had perished
>there) and that the war is a humanitarian tragedy, with hundreds
>of thousands of refugees fleeing Kosovo and Serbian killings of
>civilians. But this is only part of the truth.
>
>Civil wars are notoriously brutal, and guerrilla wars are particularly
>hellish; the unconscionable acts that Clinton condemned are inherent
>to these conflicts. In the kind of guerrilla campaign waged by
>the KLA, civilians are inescapably targets of violence, because
>the insurgents draw their manpower, material sustenance and political
>support from the friendly population in whose name they fight.
>In a guerrilla war -- any guerrilla war -- the line differentiating
>fighters from noncombatants inevitably evaporates. The Serbs should
>be castigated for their brutal tactics in Kosovo, but the United
>States has no moral ground to stand on in such matters. For example,
>the United States designated wide areas of South Vietnam thought to
>be under Vietcong control as "free-fire zones." Rules of engagement
>were not restricted in those areas, because anyone found there was
>considered a Vietcong fighter or supporter.
>
>Even on its own terms, the argument that we must intervene in Kosovo
>to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe is unconvincing. Although
>the Serbs have obviously committed atrocities, in the Balkan wars of
>this decade all the combatants have been guilty of acts of savagery.
>Indeed, several days before the NATO airstrikes began, the drama
>in Kosovo overshadowed the report by the international war crimes
>tribunal in The Hague of the atrocities -- massive ethnic cleansing,
>summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations
>-- the Croatian Army committed with the tacit blessing of the United
>States during its summer 1995 offensive against the Croatian Serbs.
>For its part, the KLA -- whose goals include not only independence but
>the expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo -- has kidnapped and executed Serb
>civilians and burned their villages.
>
>And while Clinton has depicted Serbian actions in the most horrific
>light possible, he remains silent about the human rights atrocities
>perpetrated by America's NATO ally Turkey, which has been waging
>a decades-long military campaign of repression against its Kurdish
>ethnic minority. Like Serbia, Turkey has questionable democratic
>credentials. Like the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Kurds waging
>a guerrilla war demand independence. Turkey has responded to the
>Kurdish insurgency with the same tactics that Clinton has imputed
>to the Serbs: terror, "genocide" and suppression of human rights.
>
>Yet the Clinton Administration does not propose bombing Ankara, which,
>of course, provokes the obvious question: Why intervene in Kosovo
>and not in Turkey -- or Sudan, Rwanda, Congo or Sierra Leone, for
>that matter, where humanitarian intervention is at least as justified?
>The moral argument for intervention in Kosovo is cast in terms of
>universally applicable principles. But Washington picks and chooses
>its humanitarian interventions, inserting itself in some conflicts
>and ignoring others in which the reasons to act are at least as
>compelling. This leaves US policy-makers open to the charge that
>they are using humanitarian concerns as a pretext to mobilize public
>support for military interventions undertaken for other reasons.
>
>The President asserted that America's vital interests are at stake in
>Kosovo. As he put it, the United States and the alliance must "defuse
>a powder keg at the heart of Europe that has exploded twice before in
>this century with catastrophic results." Here, Clinton's understanding
>of European history is particularly misguided. In arguing for
>intervention to prevent a wider war, he said that "Sarajevo,
>the capital of neighboring Bosnia, is where World War I began."
>But comparisons to the First World War actually point to a policy
>antithetical to the one he is pursuing. The fuse of that war was lit
>in Sarajevo not because ethnic conflict existed in the Balkans but
>because great powers meddled in those conflicts. (The Balkans do not
>have even so tenuous a connection to the origins of World War II.)
>
>Clinton has also stressed the need to act to preserve NATO's
>credibility. The President argues that to let Serbian aggression go
>unpunished will encourage leaders in other troubled areas to pursue
>dangerous policies. But halting Serbian aggression is no more likely
>to deter future aggressors than US action in the Persian Gulf --
>which, after all, was defended as part of a new world order that would
>punish aggressors -- deterred Serbia. In the world of statecraft,
>most crises are discrete, not tightly linked. The outcome of events
>in other potential hot spots will be decided by local conditions,
>not by what the United States does or does not do in the Balkans.
>Put another way, just as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was not
>deterred by US action against Iraq; Saddam Hussein was not deterred
>by US action in Panama; Manuel Antonio Noriega was not deterred by US
>action in Grenada, Lebanon and Vietnam; Ho Chi Minh was not deterred
>by US action against North Korea; and Kim Il Sung and Joseph Stalin
>were not deterred by US action against Adolf Hitler. America's
>misplaced obsession with credibility will doom the United States to a
>string of military interventions in strategically peripheral regions.
>
>Paradoxically, unless Serbia quickly knuckles under to NATO bombing,
>the effect of Kosovo intervention may be to rupture fatally the
>very alliance the airstrikes were intended to solidify. If the
>Serbs refuse to capitulate, the alliance's fragile unity will
>likely dissolve. Indeed, a bare forty-eight hours after the bombing
>commenced, Greece and Italy already were expressing unease with the
>air campaign.
>
>The President's argument that, absent US intervention in Kosovo, the
>war will engulf the entire Balkan region, pit Greece against Turkey
>and "destabilize" all of Europe is nothing more than a recycled
>version of the long-discredited domino theory. But, aside from the
>theory's general flaws, Clinton's specific application of it to Kosovo
>is problematic.
>
>After all, the Administration's grand strategy of "Engagement and
>Enlargement" is based explicitly on the convictions that democracies
>do not fight other democracies and that international institutions
>foster peace among their members. Washington considers both Greece
>and Turkey democracies, and both are members of the same institution
>-- NATO. So, in essence, the Clinton Administration is waging war in
>Kosovo to forestall a Greco-Turkish conflict that, according to the
>Administration's own core foreign policy assumptions, cannot occur.
>Also, to the extent that the Kosovo conflict does "spill over" into
>neighboring Macedonia and Albania, NATO's attacks are likely to be
>the proximate cause. Rather than dampening Serbian military attacks
>against Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, NATO's airstrikes have intensified
>Serbian aggression, which in turn has caused more Albanians to
>flee Kosovo. Meanwhile, the likelihood of cross-border clashes
>has increased, because the KLA will undoubtedly use refugee
>camps in Albania as bases of operations. The violent anti-US/NATO
>demonstrations in Macedonia in reaction to the bombing clearly
>illustrate how NATO intervention is contributing to regional
>destabilization, but even if war spreads to neighboring Albania and
>Macedonia, instability in those states poses no greater intrinsic
>threat to US interests than does the conflict in Kosovo.
>
>President Clinton says that if the United States allows a fire to burn
>in the Balkans, "the flames will spread," but one way to fight forest
>fires is let the fire burn itself out. Wars end when both sides are
>exhausted, or when one side realizes it has been defeated and abandons
>the struggle. In the other Balkan conflict, in Bosnia, the war
>might have ended with fewer dead if the Bosnian Muslims had tried
>to negotiate an accommodation with the Serbs much earlier in the
>conflict. One of the reasons they didn't do so is that they believed
>NATO would eventually rescue them. But they did not simply rely on
>the natural course of events to bring NATO into the conflict. Rather,
>to create sympathy in the West for their cause, they manipulated the
>situation and engaged in clever propaganda. A decisive moment in the
>Bosnian conflict occurred in early 1994, when a mortar shell exploded
>in a crowded Sarajevo marketplace, killing and maiming scores of
>civilians. The Serbs were immediately blamed for this atrocity, and
>NATO's intervention followed shortly thereafter. The evidence that
>the Bosnian Serbs were responsible is, at best, highly inconclusive.
>In fact, as former British foreign secretary David Owen reports in
>his account of his tenure as the European Union's Balkan peace envoy,
>there is strong evidence that the Bosnian Muslims fired the offending
>mortar shell themselves to fabricate an incident that would spur NATO
>intervention to relieve the siege of Sarajevo. In Kosovo, as US and
>NATO officials have acknowledged off the record, the United States
>has been subject to similar provocations, as the KLA has maneuvered to
>bring NATO into the war as its de facto air force.
>
>Clinton has also been unable to think through the short- and medium-
>term implications of NATO intervention. US and NATO officials say
>that air power will compel Serbia to abide by the alliance's wishes.
>But as World War II, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War demonstrated,
>air power alone does not win wars. To prevail over an opponent,
>one must prevail on the ground. The Clinton Administration, however,
>has created its own mythology about air power's efficacy, contending
>that the NATO bombing of the Bosnian Serbs in the summer of 1995
>forced them to negotiate at Dayton. In fact, the decisive event that
>ended the Bosnian war was the successful summer 1995 ground offensive
>against the Bosnian Serbs launched by the Croatian Army.
>
>So air power is highly unlikely to break Serbia's will. The US
>Strategic Bombing Survey found that the Allied bombing of German
>cities during World War II actually stiffened German civilians'
>will to resist. In the Vietnam War, the United States again tried
>unsuccessfully to use bombing to crack the North's will to prosecute
>the war. The airstrikes against Serbia are no more likely to succeed
>in their objective than did those in Southeast Asia. In World War
>II, of course, even the awesome military power of Nazi Germany could
>not subdue the (mostly Serb) Yugoslav resistance. And throughout the
>cold war, the Serb-led Yugoslav Army prepared to resist a possible
>Soviet invasion with the same tactics, and tenacity, it had employed
>successfully against the Nazis.
>
>American policy-makers notoriously misread the psychology, the
>history and the nationalism of other nations. For all Clinton's talk
>about vital interests, the struggle in Kosovo is only of the remotest
>geopolitical consequence to the United States. For Serbia, however,
>it involves the highest stakes for which a nation can fight: the
>defense of its sovereign territory. In conflicts like those in
>Vietnam or Kosovo, the interests of US adversaries clearly outweigh
>US interests -- which means that an opponent's resolve is likely to
>outlast America's. Indeed, far from turning against the popularly
>elected Serbian president, Serbs of all political stripes have
>united against NATO. And should US troops ever be deployed in
>Kosovo as peacekeepers, they would almost certainly be targets of
>revenge-seeking Serb terrorists (US troops in neighboring Bosnia will
>similarly be at risk).
>
>Clinton's policy is likely to have other, even more important and
>unfortunate, strategic consequences. Intended or not, US actions --
>including NATO expansion, and now the intervention in Kosovo -- have
>gravely offended and alarmed Russia. American policy-makers suggest
>that NATO's military intervention troubles only "extremist" Russians.
>But Washington should have no illusions: Opposition to NATO's attacks
>and its expansion is probably the one major foreign policy issue on
>which virtually the entire Russian political class is united. NATO,
>after all, was supposedly designed as a defensive alliance to repel a
>military attack on its member states, but in Kosovo it has radically
>extended its writ by intervening in a state unconnected to it.
>Furthermore, from Moscow's perspective, the United States, by bringing
>its powerful military alliance to Russia's borders, has reneged on a
>bargain it struck with Russia at the end of the cold war.
>
>At that time Moscow agreed to quit Eastern Europe and to allow German
>unification. Moreover, Russia acceded to the continued existence
>of an alliance that had been hostile to it and even agreed to the
>inclusion of newly unified Germany in that alliance. In return,
>Moscow received assurances from the United States and its allies
>that they would not take advantage of this situation to tip the
>geopolitical balance in a way that would potentially threaten Russia's
>security.
>
>Russians have good reasons to worry about NATO expansion, which,
>as Clinton has acknowledged, is a means to consolidate and extend
>America's military and political leadership in Europe. Great powers
>have always been more concerned about competitors' capabilities
>than about their intentions -- because intentions can change quickly.
>In the post-cold war era, NATO remains the most powerful military
>alliance the world has ever seen. Even those Russians who are not
>closet aggressors are anxious about having such an impressive military
>association poised on their frontier. NATO's expansion, coupled with
>its intervention in cases in which the alliance's security is not
>threatened, could lead to a nationalist backlash.
>
>Russia may be down now, but because its history as a great power
>is cyclical, there is every reason to assume that it will recover.
>American actions make it more likely that a resurgent Russia will
>harbor deep and justifiable resentment toward the United States. A
>hostile Russia not only could create trouble in Europe but could also
>undermine the US strategic position globally by aligning with China.
>At a time when many American strategists are concerned about a future
>great-power threat from China, a wise long-term US strategy would aim
>to insure Russian partnership with Washington. It is the height of
>folly to follow a policy in the Balkans that can only have the effect
>of pushing Russia more closely into Beijing's embrace.
>
>In his address to the nation Clinton also briefly invoked another,
>particularly disturbing argument for intervention. In a speech
>the previous day, he had discussed this rationale at greater length,
>declaring that "if we're going to have a strong economic relationship
>that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got
>to be a key.... That's what this Kosovo thing is all about." He thus
>seems to argue that the United States is fighting a war in Kosovo to
>make the world safe for capitalism. In fact, the President and other
>policy-makers have long been making similar arguments. In explaining
>its global strategy, for instance, the Pentagon declared in 1993
>that "a prosperous, largely democratic, market-oriented zone of peace
>and prosperity that encompasses more than two-thirds of the world's
>economy" requires the "stability" that only American "leadership"
>can provide. In the debate over US intervention in Bosnia, leading
>foreign policy figures, including the former head of the National
>Security Agency and Senator Richard Lugar, asserted that, left
>unchecked, the war there could lead to "national parochialism" in
>Europe, threatening global economic interdependence and US prosperity.
>
>The air war against Serbia is just the latest installment in what
>appears to be Washington's quest to make the world safe for America's
>investors and exporters. Last year, speaking to the Boston Chamber
>of Commerce, Defense Secretary William Cohen justified NATO expansion
>as a way of "spreading the kind of security and stability that Western
>Europe has enjoyed since after World War II to Central and Eastern
>Europe." And, in an observation certain to resonate with his audience,
>he noted: "And with that spread of stability, there is a prospect to
>attract investment." No doubt the Administration is moved by the human
>tragedy of Kosovo. Clearly, however, its perception that US economic
>interests are indirectly at stake is at least as important. As Cohen
>has said, the Administration's strategy seeks to "discourage violence
>and instability -- instability which destroys lives and markets."
>Clinton recently exhorted Americans to accept the "inevitable logic"
>of globalism and free trade. But the Administration's Balkan policy
>shows that globalization is not inevitable -- it depends on America's
>overseas military commitments and its willingness to wage war if
>necessary.
>
>What is most frightening about this economic rationale (which amounts
>to an imperialist argument) is its open-endedness. According to US
>policy-makers, the logic of global economic interdependence leads
>inevitably to a proliferation of US security commitments: Instability
>and aggression, virtually wherever they occur, are regarded as a
>threat to America, because they would disrupt the global stability
>upon which the United States purportedly depends for its prosperity.
>This thinking is, again, similar to the domino theory: Instability
>in even economically unimportant areas (like Kosovo) could "spill
>over" and infect other areas regarded as essential to global economic
>interdependence.
>
>The US action in Kosovo should give Americans considerable pause as
>they contemplate their nation's role in international politics. It
>is one thing to oppose, as the United States did in the Persian Gulf,
>an aggressive attack by one state against another. It is something
>else entirely to proclaim, as Washington has, that the United States
>now reserves the right to use military force to alter another state's
>internal political arrangements when Washington finds that these
>offend its ever-shifting political sensibilities. It indeed is quite
>fantastic to find the United States taking military action against a
>sovereign state in Europe that poses no threat to America's security
>or to its interests. If the United States is not the aggressor that
>Russia says it is, at the least it is displaying the arrogance of
>power common to imperial states.
>
>We should know, of course, the trouble in which this arrogance
>of power can mire us. It is too early to tell if the Clinton
>Administration's policy will ultimately lead to the use of US ground
>troops in the Kosovo conflict. But there is ample reason to fear that
>this could happen.
>
>Vietnam showed that once the decision to use military force has been
>made, policy-makers are under almost irresistible pressure to escalate
>to win -- or to avoid failure. Anyone familiar with the history of
>the Kennedy and Johnson administrations' step-by-step descent into
>the Vietnam quagmire must have been chilled in recent days by the
>statements of many members of Congress and foreign policy analysts.
>Even many of those, like Senator John McCain and Henry Kissinger,
>who were initially skeptical of intervention now contend that, once
>committed, the United States has no choice but to do whatever is
>necessary -- including using ground forces -- to prevail.
>
>If any clear lesson emerges from Vietnam, it is that it makes no sense
>to compound a mistake by digging oneself more deeply into a strategic
>morass. The questions that policy-makers must ask now are: What
>does "victory" in Kosovo mean, and can victory be attained without
>incurring costs disproportionate to the US interests at stake?
>Astonishingly, an Administration led and staffed by opponents of the
>Vietnam War is now compelled by the same concerns that drove, and
>blind to the same obstacles that confounded, the architects of that
>conflict.
>
>Representing one foreign policy tradition, John Quincy Adams
>admonished America to "go not abroad in search of monsters to
>destroy." The US intervention in Kosovo should prompt Americans
>to heed his warning. During the 1992 election campaign, Clinton
>said the United States should play a lofty global role; it would
>be "intolerable" for the United States to act as if it were
>"simply...another great power." But rather than have the United States
>pursue grandiose visions pleasing to its self-image, followers of
>Adams's tradition -- like Charles Beard and William Appleman Williams
>on the left, as well as such thoughtful conservatives as George Kennan
>and Walter Lippmann -- accept that there are not and need not be
>US solutions to the world's myriad problems. They understand that
>balancing costs and benefits, resources and commitments, is a moral as
>well as strategic imperative. States that fail to do so run the risk
>of political and economic ruin.
>
>Instead of crediting Clinton's notions of the intolerable, post-cold
>war America should attend to Lippmann's sobering injunction: "A
>mature great power...will eschew the theory of a global and universal
>duty which not only commits it to unending wars of intervention but
>intoxicates its thinking with the illusion that it is a crusader for
>righteousness.... I am in favor of learning to behave like a great
>power, of getting rid of the globalism which would not only entangle
>us everywhere but is based on the totally vain notion that if we do
>not set the world in order, no matter what the price, we cannot live
>in the world safely.... We shall have to learn to live as a great
>power which defends itself and makes its way among other great powers.
>
>E-mail this story to a friend.
>______________________________________________________________
>
>Benjamin Schwarz is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and former
>executive editor of The World Policy Journal. Christopher Layne is a
>MacArthur Fellow in Peace and International Security Studies. For more
>information, go to www.thenation.com.
>______________________________________________________________
>
>Background and Related Information
>
>Institution for War and Peace Reporting
>
>This is one of the few places to find dispatches, translated into
>English, from dissident journalists within Serbia and Kosovo, along
>with other good commentary. http://www.iwpr.net
>
>ZNet
>
>A page of up-to-the-minute articles regarding the current bombings.
>The lead piece by Noam Chomsky puts the entire situation into context,
>and other pieces posted include Andre Gunder Frank, Dave McReynolds,
>Diane Johnstone, Stephen Zunes and Michael Albert.
>http://www.zmag.org
>
>Common Dreams News Center
>
>Provides breaking news and views for progressive-thinking Americans,
>with ample information on the crisis in Kosovo, including maps and
>breaking updates from various news services.
>
>http://www.commondreams.org/kosovo/kosovo.htm
>
>Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
>
>FAIR's coverage of the war in Yugoslavia includes "Rescued from the
>Memory Hole: Background of Serb/Albanian Conflict."
>http://www.fair.org
>
>Help B92
>
>As the situation in Yugoslavia worsens and many are questioning the
>effectiveness of the NATO air strikes, this group has been founded to
>try to insure the distribution of relevant information. This group is
>called Help B92, in honor of one of Yugoslavia's most important media
>entities, Radio B92, the backbone of the independent news service in
>Yugoslavia. Without immediate financial support, this last source of
>independent news for the inhabitants of this region is endangered. A
>fundraising campaign is underway, with the objective of sending money
>and equipment to B92 and other independent radio stations in Serbia
>and Kosovo. For further information check out the site or email:
>helpb92@xs4all.nl. http://helpB92.xs4all.nl
>
>Help B92 in Amsterdam
>
>The Help B92 team in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, have begun to compile
>an archive of news stories in text and in audio to provide accurate
>and up-to-date information.
>http://b92.klari.net/b92/journal/default.asp?rubriek=4
>
>Radio B92
>
>Although banned, Radio B92 is still live on the web, with breaking
>news in English. http://www.b92.net
>
>Out There News
>
>Reports from Kosovo's frontlines, interviews with Kosovar pacifist
>leaders, photos of the destruction and historical background.
>http://www.megastories.com/kosovo/index.htm
>
>BBC News Online
>
>The BBC offers live audio coverage and many articles on Kosovo, as
>well as "Kosovo Conflict on the Web," with BBC News Online's guide to
>how the conflict is being represented on the Web.
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1998/kosovo
>
>North Atlantic Treaty Organization
>
>NATO's site was unavailable for a while this week, apparently because
>of a daily barrage by thousands of e-mails from hackers in Belgrade,
>which made their system crash. http://www.nato.int
>
>Against the NATO attacks/For the Support of Yugoslavia
>
>This Serb site provides someone's immediate responses to various
>Serbian and international news reports, a timetable of the day's air
>raids, photos of the destruction in Kosovo and a child's plea for
>peace. http://www.beograd.com/nato
>
>Send your letter to the editor to letters@thenation.com.
>
>Copyright )1999 The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved.
>
>If you liked what you just read, you can subscribe to The Nation
>by calling 1-800-333-8536 or by following this link. The Nation
>encourages activists and friends of the magazine to share our articles
>with others. However, it is mandatory that academic institutions,
>publications and for-profit institutions seeking to reprint material
>for redistribution contact us for complete guidelines.
>
>Please attach this notice in its entirety when copying or
>redistributing material from The Nation. For further information
>regarding reprinting and syndication, please call The Nation at (212)
>209-5426 or e-mail dveith@thenation.com.
>______________________________________________________________
>
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
>[I have no idea whether anything in this next message is true.
>I'm forwarding it as an example of stuff that is circulating among
>at least some US military people. -- PA]
>
>
>Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 12:40:20 EDT
>From: CEM1775@aol.com
>Subject: c4i-pro FYI -- INTERESTING
>
>CEM1775@aol.com
>Serbia: The lesson of Army Group E
>
>Before we engage the Serbs in a limited guerilla war over Kosovo, it
>would be wise to review the experiences of the 22 German divisions
>that were committed to stamping out Serb resistance between 1941 and
>1945.
>
>Though the Germans also had the help of 200,000 Croatian, Slovenian
>and Bosnian Moslem volunteer auxiliaries, they still could not do the
>job- and with a combined army of over 700,000 men willing to commit
>atrocities that the US and her allies would never contemplate in this
>"civilized" day and age. In the end, and without direct Allied help,
>the Serbs succeeded- through extreme human sacrifice and one of the
>bloodiest partisan wars ever fought in history-in recapturing over
>half their country by the time the war had ended on all the other
>fronts. Army Group E surrendered to the Serbs and was subsequently
>force- marched the length and width of Serbia without food until
>every German soldier had dropped dead by the wayside. The fate of the
>Croatian Slovenians and Moslems who had helped the Germans was mass
>urder; all prisoners were taken shot and clubbed or tortured to death
>and dumped in mass graves.
>
>Over a million soldiers and their families were thus exterminated by
>the Serbs-over 1 million murdered if one counts the victims of the
>German Army Group E.
>
>After the war the Serbs under Marshal Tito were determined that no
>outside aggressor would ever enjoy an advantage in occupying any part
>of Serbia ever again. Thereafter, for the next 40 years, a massive
>system of underground defenses were constructed deep under the
>mountains- atomic bombproof and capable of maintaining a million-man
>army underground for several years while guerrilla warfare would rage
>against any future aggressors. These underground facilities contain
>massive quantities of munitions, field hospitals, food-stocks, fuel
>and consist of thousands of miles of tunnels which can enable a
>guerilla force to strike and vanish to safety during bombings and
>artillery strikes.
>
>Believe me, if the Germans who utilized the most brutal tactics could
>not subdue the Serbs in five years then they did not possess such
>a defensive infrastructure, how much harder is it going to be now
>that they have spent 50 years preparing for the next invaders? What
>Clinton is doing is totally insane; a limited war against Serbia
>cannot be won, period-any more than one could effectively subdue the
>Viet Cong with 10 years of bombing and 50,000 American dead. So long
>as we did not invade the northern Vietnamese sanctuary, we ultimately
>failed.
>
>Likewise, so long as we think we can dislodge the Serbs from their
>ancestral homeland and the sites of their most sacred shrines and
>monuments and merely contain them outside the confines of Kosovo,
>we shall fail again. The lives of Americans will have been lost in
>vain ...again. The Serb is a patriot and will fight endlessly and
>as fiercely as would any American whose land was threatened. And of
>course there is much more to this historical analogy. Actually, there
>were Italians helping the Germans, too. After his own invasion got
>bogged down in the face of Serb resistance, Hitler went in to save
>Mussolini's skin, and lost his own in the end. Mussolini's army was
>never worth anything to begin with. It cost him the war. You could
>say it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than
>for anyone to take out Serbia. There are not enough cruise missiles
>to get them all. They can't even get Eric Rudolph-the abortion bomber
>hiding in the woods in North Carolina-with half the FBI. And so it's
>just expensive fireworks for now. Eventually some poor blokes will
>have to walk in there on the ground if they think they really want to
>own it. Then we'll be equal. The land will belong to the man in the
>forest with the sniper scope.
>
>Ultimately, this is not about democracy vs. totalitarianism. It's
>about attacking the root soul of a people.
>
>Joel Ruth, MA in history
>
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
>[I received this on reasonably good authority, but I don't know for a
>fact that it is authentic.]
>
>
>Sender: owner-tca-announce@venus.co.uk
>
>TCA OnLine Week 12-18 April
>
>TCA Director Paddy Moindrot received this request for help last
>week - if you think you can help in any way please contact Paddy
>(paddy@cymru.net)
>
>.....First I wish to beg your pardon for the courage taken in
>disturbing you, but I hope I will have your comprehension. As you
>already may know, Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe.
>In addition, we are passing now a very difficult period due to the
>Kosovo crisis. But, just in the most difficult situation, we feel
>not alone because we have support from all civilized peoples in the
>world. This is a new feeling for us, taking into consideration our
>"traditional" isolation, lasting five decades. This feeling make us
>not considering humiliated asking support. Now we have big problems
>with refugees coming from Kosovo. To host these peoples, big camping
>are under construction. And there is no infrastructure at all in most
>of places where the campings are situated. Most of the peoples living
>in the campings are separated from their families. They are looking
>for each other. They need phone conversations, they need to send
>messages, and they need to have their address to be found. We think
>that to lighten the sufferance of these people, something must be done
>to help them. In this case the Telecentre experience may help a lot.
>So I invite you to think together what we can do to create some (3 or
>4) small telecentres equipped with 2-3 phone boxes, and some computers
>and other equipment to help registering of refugees (their passports
>and other documents are destroyed by Serbs) and sending messages
>(e-mail) for their parents dispersed all over the world. It is
>decided that for Kosovo children the summer schools will be open,
>beginning from June. In this case Internet access can help in
>recreating people and educating them. Beside humanitarian mission, I
>think this is a good opportunity to introduce telecentres in Albania.
>If I am not asking too much, you are kindly requested to give some
>ideas, advice or at least some addresses of possible donators and the
>procedures to establish contacts with them. An urgent answer will be
>highly appreciated. Hoping to have the opportunity to meet you again
>here in Tirana, I send you my best regards.
>
>Pirro Koci Braco
>Head of Telecommunications sector General Directorate of Post and
>Telecommunications
>Ministry of Public Economy and Privatization
>
>Address :Place 'Skenderbej"Nr.2, Tirana ALBANIA
>
>Phone +355 42 32320 Fax: + 355 42 33772 PKoci@mepp.tirana.al
>
>
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>
> * * *
>
> By Michel Chossudovsky
> Department of Economics, University of Ottawa
> Ottawa, K1N6N5
> Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415
> Fax: 1-514-425-6224
> E-Mail: chossudovsky@sprint.ca
> - Wednesday, 7 April 1999 -
>
> -----
>
> Heralded by the global media as a humanitarian peace-keeping
>mission, NATO's ruthless bombing of Belgrade and Pristina goes far
>beyond the breach of international law. While Slobodan Milosevic is
>demonised, portrayed as a remorseless dictator, the Kosovo Liberation
>Army (KLA) is upheld as a self-respecting nationalist movement
>struggling for the rights of ethnic Albanians. The truth of the
>matter is that the KLA is sustained by organised crime with the tacit
>approval of the United States and its allies.
>
> Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion
>has been carefully misled. The multibillion dollar Balkans narcotics
>trade has played a crucial role in "financing the conflict" in
>Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military
>objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged
>by numerous studies, the links of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
>to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have
>been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the
>mid-1990s.
>
> ...The financing of the Kosovo guerilla war poses critical
> questions and it sorely test claims of an "ethical" foreign
> policy. Should the West back a guerrilla army that appears
> to partly financed by organised crime.[1]
>
> While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State
>Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police
>Organization based in the Hague) was "preparing a report for European
>interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and
>Albanian drug gangs."[2] In the meantime, the rebel army has been
>skilfully heralded by the global media (in the months preceding the
>NATO bombings) as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic
>Albanians in Kosovo.
>
> With KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year "freedom fighter")
>appointed as chief negotiator at Rambouillet, the KLA has become
>the de facto helmsman of the peace process on behalf of the ethnic
>Albanian majority and this despite its links to the drug trade. 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.
>
> Ironically Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia,
>had described the KLA last year as "terrorists". Christopher Hill,
>America's chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement
>"has also been a strong critic of the KLA for its alleged dealings
>in drugs."[3] Moreover, barely a few two months before Rambouillet,
>the US State Department had acknowledged (based on reports from the
>US Observer Mission) the role of the KLA in terrorising and uprooting
>ethnic Albanians:
>
> ...the KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police,
> ... KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and
> burn their homes if they did not join the KLA [a process
> which has continued since the NATO bombings]... [T]he KLA
> harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six
> villages in the Stimlje region are "ready to flee.[4]w
>
> While backing a "freedom movement" with links to the drug trade,
>the West seems also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic
>League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who has called for an end to the
>bombings and expressed his desire to negotiate a peaceful settlement
>with the Yugoslav authorities.[5] It is worth recalling that a few
>days before his March 31st Press Conference, Rugova had been reported
>by the KLA (alongside three other leaders including Fehmi Agani) to
>have been killed by the Serbs.
>
>COVERT FINANCING OF `FREEDOM FIGHTERS'
>
> Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo
>is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti
>and Afghanistan where "freedom fighters" were financed through
>the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War,
>Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to
>the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered
>in the international banking system has financed covert operations.
>
> According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing
>was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army
>in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington's
>military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist
>government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.[6]
>
> The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been
>replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. "The rising curve
>of cocaine imports to the US", wrote journalist John Dinges "followed
>almost exactly the flow of US arms and military advisers to Central
>America."[7]
>
> The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided
>covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics
>into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank
>of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong
>evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering
>of drug money. "Dirty money" recycled through the banking system
>-- often through an anonymous shell company -- became "covert money,"
>used to finance various rebel groups and guerilla movements including
>the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991
>Time Magazine report:
>
> Because the US wanted to supply the mujehadeen rebels in
> Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military
> hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the
> mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the
> largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is
> such an embarrassment to the US that forthright
> investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with
> the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in
> Pakistan', said a US intelligence officer.[8]
>
>AMERICA AND GERMANY JOIN HANDS
>
> 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 as a joint endeavour between the CIA and
>Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) (which previously played
>a key role in installing a right wing nationalist government under
>Franjo Tudjman in Croatia).[9] The 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."[10]
>According to Whitley, the CIA was, subsequently instrumental in
>training and equipping the KLA in Albania.[11]
>
> The covert activities of Germany's BND were consistent with
>Bonn's intent to expand its "Lebensraum" into the Balkans. Prior
>to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign
>Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it
>had "forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its
>Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the
>Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the US favoured (although
>not officially) the formation of a "Greater Albania" encompassing
>Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.[12] According to Sean Gervasi,
>Germany was seeking a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic
>dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa."[13]
>
>ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM IN SUPPORT OF THE KLA
>
> Bonn and Washington's "hidden agenda" consisted in triggering
>nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the
>ultimate purpose of destabilising Yugoslavia. The latter objective
>was also carried out "by turning a blind eye" to the influx of
>mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist
>organisations.[14]
>
> Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting
>in Bosnia.[15] And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo:
>Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to
>be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan
>instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerilla and
>diversion tactics.[16]
>
> According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support
>from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the
>former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS),
>Bashkim Gazidede.[17] "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who
>fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998]
>being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist
>organizations."[18]
>
> The supply route for arming KLA "freedom fighters" are the rugged
>mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is
>also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies
>Western Europe with grade four heroin. 75% of the heroin entering
>Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments
>originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to
>the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "it is estimated that
>4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through
>the Balkans] as destination Western Europe."[19] A recent intelligence
>report by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: "Ethnic
>Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of
>heroin in Western consumer countries."[20]
>
>THE LAUNDERING OF DIRTY MONEY
>
> In order to thrive, the criminal syndicates involved in the
>Balkans narcotics trade need friends in high places. Smuggling
>rings with alleged links to the Turkish State are said to control
>the trafficking of heroin through the Balkans "cooperating closely
>with other groups with which they have political or religious ties"
>including criminal groups in Albanian and Kosovo.[21] In this new
>global financial environment, powerful undercover political lobbies
>connected to organized crime cultivate links to prominent political
>figures and officials of the military and intelligence establishment.
>
> The narcotics trade nonetheless uses respectable banks to launder
>large amounts of dirty money. While comfortably removed from the
>smuggling operations per se, powerful banking interests in Turkey but
>mainly those in financial centres in Western Europe discretely collect
>fat commissions in a multibillion dollar money laundering operation.
>These interests have high stakes in ensuring a safe passage of drug
>shipments into Western European markets.
>
>THE ALBANIAN CONNECTION
>
> Arms smuggling from Albania into Kosovo and Macedonia started at
>the beginning of 1992, when the Democratic Party came to power, headed
>by President Sali Berisha. An expansive underground economy and
>cross border trade had unfolded. A triangular trade in oil, arms and
>narcotics had developed largely as a result of the embargo imposed by
>the international community on Serbia and Montenegro and the blockade
>enforced by Greece against Macedonia.
>
> Industry and agriculture in Kosovo were spearheaded into
>bankruptcy following the IMF's lethal "economic medicine" imposed
>on Belgrade in 1990. The embargo was imposed on Yugoslavia. Ethnic
>Albanians and Serbs were driven into abysmal poverty. Economic
>collapse created an environment which fostered the progress of illicit
>trade. In Kosovo, the rate of unemployment increased to a staggering
>70 percent (according to Western sources).
>
> Poverty and economic collapse served to exacerbate simmering
>ethnic tensions. Thousands of unemployed youths "barely out of their
>Teens" from an impoverished population, were drafted into the ranks of
>the KLA.[22]
>
> In neighbouring Albania, the free market reforms adopted since
>1992 had created conditions which favoured the criminalisation of
>State institutions. Drug money was also laundered in the Albanian
>pyramids (ponzi schemes) which mushroomed during the government of
>former President Sali Berisha (1992-1997).[23] These shady investment
>funds were an integral part of the economic reforms inflicted by
>Western creditors on Albania.
>
> Drug barons in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia (with links to the
>Italian mafia) had become the new economic elites, often associated
>with Western business interests. In turn the financial proceeds
>of the trade in drugs and arms were recycled towards other illicit
>activities (and vice versa) including a vast prostitution racket
>between Albania and Italy. Albanian criminal groups operating in
>Milan, "have become so powerful running prostitution rackets that they
>have even taken over the Calabrians in strength and influence."[24]
>
> 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 the Albanian economy. The resulting chaos enabled American
>and European transnationals to carefully position themselves.
>Several Western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British
>Petroleum had their eyes rivetted on Albania's abundant and unexplored
>oil-deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania's extensive
>reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum... The Adenauer
>Foundation had been lobbying in the background on behalf of German
>mining interests.[25]
>
> Berisha's Minister of Defence Safet Zoulali (alleged to have been
>involved in the illegal oil and narcotics trade) was the architect
>of the agreement with Germany's Preussag (handing over control over
>Albania's chrome mines) against the competing bid of the US led
>consortium of Macalloy Inc. in association with Rio Tinto Zimbabwe
>(RTZ).[26]
>
> Large amounts of narco-dollars had also been recycled into the
>privatisation programmes leading to the acquisition of State assets by
>the mafias. In Albania, the privatisation programme had led virtually
>overnight to the development of a property owning class firmly
>committed to the "free marke." In Northern Albania, this class was
>associated with the Guegue "families" linked to the Democratic Party.
>
> Controlled by the Democratic Party under the presidency of Sali
>Berisha (1992-97), Albania's largest financial "pyramid" VEFA Holdings
>had been set up by the Guegue "families" of Northern Albania with the
>support of Western banking interests. VEFA was under investigation in
>Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to
>launder large amounts of dirty money.[27]
>
> According to one press report (based on intelligence sources),
>senior members of the Albanian government during the Presidency of
>Sali Berisha including cabinet members and members of the secret
>police SHIK were alleged to be involved in drugs trafficking and
>illegal arms trading into Kosovo:
>
> (...) The allegations are very serious. Drugs, arms,
> contraband cigarettes all are believed to have been handled
> by a company run openly by Albania's ruling Democratic
> Party, Shqiponja (...). In the course of 1996 Defence
> Minister, Safet Zhulali [was alleged] to had used his office
> to facilitate the transport of arms, oil and contraband
> cigarettes. (...) Drugs barons from Kosovo (...) operate in
> Albania with impunity, and much of the transportation of
> heroin and other drugs across Albania, from Macedonia and
> Greece en route to Italy, is believed to be organised by
> Shik, the state security police (...). Intelligence agents
> are convinced the chain of command in the rackets goes all
> the way to the top and have had no hesitation in naming
> ministers in their reports.[28]
>
> The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite
>the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at
>the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo.
>The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics
>were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of
>direct barter): "Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek
>embargo [in 1993-4] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of
>kalachnikov rifles to Albanian `brothers' in Kosovo".[29]
>
> The Northern tribal clans or "fares" had also developed links
>with Italy's crime syndicates.[30] In turn, the latter played a key
>role in smuggling arms across the Adriatic into the Albanian ports of
>Dures and Valona. At the outset in 1992, the weapons channelled into
>Kosovo were largely small arms including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPK
>and PPK machine-guns, 12.7 calibre heavy machine-guns, etc.
>
> The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to
>rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA
>has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti- aircraft and
>anti-armor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have
>come directly from the CIA "funnelled through a so-called "Government
>of Kosovo" based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office
>employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn -- notorious for its
>slanders of the Belgrade government".[31]
>
> The KLA has also acquired electronic surveillance equipment
>which enables it to receive NATO satellite information concerning
>the movement of the Yugoslav Army. The KLA training camp in Albania
>is said to "concentrate on heavy weapons training - rocket propelled
>grenades, medium caliber cannons, tanks and transporter use, as well
>as on communications, and command and control." (According to Yugoslav
>government sources).[32]
>
> These extensive deliveries of weapons to the Kosovo rebel
>army were consistent with Western geopolitical objectives.
>Not surprisingly, there has been a "deafening silence" of the
>international media regarding the Kosovo arms-drugs trade. In
>the words of a 1994 Report of the Geopolitical Drug Watch: "the
>trafficking [of drugs and arms] is basically being judged on
>its geostrategic implications (...) In Kosovo, drugs and weapons
>trafficking is fuelling geopolitical hopes and fears"...[33]
>
> 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 destabilising the Belgrade government and fully recolonising
>the Balkans. The destruction of an entire country is the outcome.
>Western governments which participated in the NATO operation bear
>a heavy burden of responsibility in the deaths of civilians, the
>impoverishment of both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and
>the plight of those who were brutally uprooted from towns and villages
>in Kosovo as a result of the bombings.
>
>NOTES
>
> 1. Roger Boyes and Eske Wright, Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo
>Rebels The Times, London, Monday, March 24, 1999.
> 2. Ibid.
> 3. Philip Smucker and Tim Butcher, "Shifting stance over KLA has
>betrayed' Albanians", Daily Telegraph, London, 6 April 1999.
> 4. KDOM Daily Report, released by the Bureau of European and Canadian
>Affairs, Office of South Central European Affairs, U.S. Department of
>State, Washington, DC, December 21, 1998; Compiled by EUR/SCE
>(202-647-4850) from daily reports of the U.S. element of the Kosovo
>Diplomatic Observer Mission, December 21, 1998.
> 5. "Rugova, sous protection serbe appelle a l'arret des raides", Le
>Devoir, Montreal, 1 April 1999.
> 6. See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
>Harper and Row, New York, 1972.
> 7. See John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, The Shrewd Rise and Brutal
>Fall of Manuel Noriega, Times Books, New York, 1991.
> 8. "The Dirtiest Bank of All," Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22.
> 9. Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999; see also Michel Collon,
>Poker Menteur, editions EPO, Brussels, 1997.
> 10. Quoted in Truth in Media, Phoenix, 2 April, 1999).
> 11. Ibid.
> 12. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4.
> 13. Sean Gervasi, "Germany, US and the Yugoslav Crisis", Covert
>Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93).
> 14. See Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1993.
> 15. For further details see Michel Collon, Poker Menteur, editions
>EPO, Brussels, 1997, p. 288.
> 16. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, 2 April 1999.
> 17. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 13, 1998.
> 18. Ibid.
> 19. Daily News, Ankara, 5 March 1997.
> 20. Quoted in Boyes and Wright, op cit.
> 21. ANA, Athens, 28 January 1997, see also Turkish Daily News, 29
>January 1997.
> 22. Brian Murphy, KLA Volunteers Lack Experience, The Associated
>Press, 5 April 1999.
> 23. See Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3, see also Barry
>James, In Balkans, Arms for Drugs, The International Herald Tribune
>Paris, June 6, 1994.
> 24. The Guardian, 25 March 1997.
> 25. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, La crisi albanese,
>Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Torino, 1998.
> 26. Ibid.
> 27. Andrew Gumbel, The Gangster Regime We Fund, The Independent,
>February 14, 1997, p. 15.
> 28. Ibid.
> 29. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No. 35, 1994, p. 3.
> 30. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 66, p. 4.
> 31. Quoted in Workers' World, May 7, 1998.
> 32. See Government of Yugoslavia at
>http://www.gov.yu/terrorism/terroristcamps.html
> 33. Geopolitical Drug Watch, No 32, June 1994, p. 4.
>
> * * *
>
> Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, 1999.
> Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial
> internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the
> copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed
> and/or other forms contact the author at
> chossudovsky@sprint.ca
>
>
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