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SIT REP 2-4; Thursday, February 4, 1999

In This Issue: NATO and Kosovo - Worse than a Crime

• Joseph Fouché, Duke of Otrante; Memoirs; I;

Worse than A Crime: Sovereignty for a Mafia?

Summary: The Clinton Administration is hell-bent on liberating the Albanian majority of Kosovo from their tedious civic duties to their "nation-state" and from their obligations to their non-Muslim/non-Albanian neighbors. This will turn out to be a crime against constitutionalism and international order. Further it will be a blunder, as the US-crafted plan leads to independence and Kosovo will find itself controlled by the gunmen of an international drug-dealing Mafia masquerading as an idealistic liberation army. (An extensive file is available in MSWord97 on request to Benworks@AOL.COM.)

At the core of this dispute there are no widespread, systematic abuses of individual rights of the Albanian Geg majoritarians coming from government policy. Rather, non-Albanian-Muslim minorities have been systematically intimidated and coerced by both pacifist-followers of the Rugova political movement, and particularly violently by gunmen of the outlaw Kosovo Liberation Army KLA. In Belgrade's policy, there are only efforts to prevent the majority from intimidating or "cleansing" their local minorities and, a refusal to recognize collective rights of any ethnically or religious-defined group. This is the crime; the UN-Clintonian attempt to redefine the UN's Universal Declaration of Human rights as a charter for empowering ethno-religious factions is a perverse advance of "affirmative action" logic and Wilsonian naivete. This is a blunder; a heroin-running sovereign republic may well emerge when the dust settles.

But though it is widely alleged that Belgrade has been brutal --even criminal by the enlightened standards of group-rights interpreters of Human Rights conventions, the (KLA) has been far more brutal than the police. Following this particular point, at this late stage, is almost gratuitous but, in order to assure the integrity of the rule of law, it is wise for Yugoslavia to continue to allow OSCE diplomats and observers --whom Serb citizens recognize as overt spies-- to assure that security police forces stick to the rulebook.

Note to SIRIUS Readers: My thanks to all those who, in recent days, have contributed so much to helping me build more detailed and documentable information on Kosovo, Bosnia, etc.

To my American readers; a Mr. G.S. of Greenwich, CT, has asked me: "Ben, why don't you write `The Balkans for Dummies?'" I shall do my best to build an objective strategic overview for our readers, with further references, as soon as humanly possible, but expect it will be difficult to keep under 10-20 pages, with footnotes and bibliography.

An Interesting and Telling Detail: Yesterday, the BBC and others reported that security police in Kosovo seized an arms cache hidden in the false-floor of an 18-wheeler's trailer abandoned on a roadside in northern Kosovo. In that cache were 100 rifles, "thousands of rounds" of AK-47 ammunition, plus uniforms for a hundred KLA fighters. The shipment's point of origin was Croatia, so that nominally-Catholic-Western government continues its own barely disguised alliances against Yugoslavia. The Nazi allies of World War II, nominally Catholic and Muslim, continue to attack their neighbor, a US ally in both World Wars and the one people who both suffered genocide along with Europe's Jews, while its guerrillas and civilians saved 700 downed American pilots from the tender mercies of the Ustashe camps and Georing's Stalags.

Diplomatic Analysis: Sovereignty for a Mafia?

If the Clinton Administration has its way, representatives of the Serbian State government, the government of Yugoslavia, the political movement of Ibrahim Rugova, and the KLA are to meet in Rambouillet, France beginning Saturday, February 6. Signals indicate the principals will attend, though not in "good faith," as they are jockeying for positions.

Extending the demonic metaphor; "the Devil is in the details" of this plan. Nominally, the US-authored plan adheres to the OSCE's convention that borders may not be changed through violence and, therefore, recognizes that Kosovo may not be stripped away from Serbia without its consent. But in effect, the plan assures that in a few years, independence will be a matter of inevitability. Who but a lunatic would remain in such an asylum? Who but a Muslim Geg would willingly remain in Kosovo?

The plan provides for local self-rule, by a "president" (not "governor") and legislature, and certain checks and balances have been sculpted to try to maintain the principle of minority group and individual rights. But the intrinsic flaw --the Devil's hand-- within this "constitutional" design is that the whole package is built on the post-Modern Liberal-Left faith in group rights & benefits, as opposed to individual rights.

The core of anti-Belgrade liberationist resistance now comes from the armed "fighters" of the KLA. Though it appears that they only draw firm support from about 15% of the Albanian majority, they are the ones with the guns; the ones even the urban Albanian intellectuals around Mr. Rugova's movement fear. The fact is the liberators with the guns always take over and the KLA is no exception in intending to run the show in Kosovo;

There is also a modern Haitian proverb; "laws are made of paper, bayonets are made of steel."

This is why intervention will be worse than a crime, worse even than a mistake; it is a blunder. Two factors make this devolution back to an Albanian-controlled tyranny of the majority hazardous to everybody's health: one is the heroin factor (articles from The Telegraph and Corriere della Sera-Milan are posted in the website edition), the other is the Geg practice of vendetta murder in accord with the infamous 15^th Century "Kanun" of `Lek Dukagjini (an article from The Guardian, Sept. 30, 1998 is appended at the website).

Thus, in my view, all the Human Rights community and Clinton-Blair diplomatists will have achieved in this exercise in "feel-good" intervention is to set the stage for Mafia-state with all the immunities, privileges and instrumentalities of a sovereign republic, including UN membership. It is bad enough that we have to deal with the drug-riddled states of Burma, Colombia, Mexico and Pakistan, but to empower the drug dealers as sovereigns, all but puts heroin packages in the diplomatic pouches.

Worse, extending naïve Wilsonian ideals in diplomacy, this intervention will have set durable precedents for further ethnic-group rights demands and will have made irredentism pay off again by dismantling the multi-nation nation-state of Yugoslavia, a nation founded on the US model of equal individual rights for all its citizens, no matter what ethnic and religious group they identified with.

But then; the United States has had a problem of occasional promiscuous diplomacy in prior eras, as the great Oklahoma cowboy-humorist observed about 1930:

Clearly, some in power in Europe and in the US understand this factor and if NATO is to occupy Kosovo, it is to prevent the KLA from overtly taking over the Albanian government; but money talks, and Kalashnikovs are even more persuasive. The US and NATO cannot police Kosovo for more than a few years, and Mme. Albright's minions have packaged this deal as a three-year interim period.

That three-year time frame is just long enough for Mr. Clinton to leave office with another peace-maker's "laurel" for his "legacy," leaving this mess for the next administration to clean up or to continue to baby-sit. By the three-year date, virtually all non-Geg populations will have been squeezed out of their homes and displaced by the KLA's ethnic cleansing. The heroin running will continue anyway. NATO will be protecting the criminals and preventing self-defense for others. "There will be the Devil to pay," in this foolish diplomatic scheme.

One final point for today; Louise Arbour of the International War Crimes tribunal at The Hague, has tried to assert her investigative authority over the January 15 "massacre" in Racak. She had previously tried to assert this authority over alleged KLA war crimes, as well and I have appended an article from the Toronto Globe and Mail to the website edition.

© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin C. Works --SIRIUS

Articles:

The Guardian, Sept 30, 1998

Thousands of Albanian children in hiding to escape blood feuds.

Vengeance of the most direct kind is making a comeback in the wild north of Albania, Owen Bowcott in Shkoder reports

GJIN Mekshi is a school teacher and a man of "good reputation". His flat is decorated with icons of the Virgin Mary. His calling involves reconciling vendettas and bloodfeuds.

In a cramped fifth floor flat looking out on Albania's semi-lawless northern mountains, he deplores the spread of violence and the lack of respect for traditional codes of behaviour.

As a leading member of the Shkoder-based Committee for Blood Reconciliation, he works within a moral framework devised by a tribal chieftain excommunicated for his "most un-Christian code".

The 15th century kanun (code) of Lek Dukagjini which regulates revenge killings to preserve the honour of the clan, or fis has been revived in northern Albania since the demise of communism. Up to 6,000 children are said to be in hiding from blood feuds.

But the code's harsh justice is no longer being respected. "The kanun is a good way for resolving arguments, but not in the way most people interpret it as always ending in killings,'! Mr Mekshi explains. "The code doesn't allow women to be killed, but there have been cases in Tropoje [on the Kosovo border] this year where women have been forced into hiding by death threats.

"In some families there are no men left. So far no women have been killed."

Modern reproductions of the kanun are on sale in the Tirana's kiosks. Its author is thought to be Lek Dukagjin, Lord of Dagmo and Zadrima, who fought the Turks until 1472, then fled to Italy. His intention was to limit the cycles of bloodletting among the mountain tribps which sometimes destroyed entire communities by enabling a council of tribal elders to arrange a besa, or truce once honour had been obtained.

Enver Hoxha's regime suppressed it. But the privatisation of land, which reopened ancient disputes, and the breakdown of law and order last year, when Albania's armouries were looted, have encouraged direct retribution.

"Since the committee was set up in 1991 we have resolved 365 cases in Albania and 38 feuds abroad," Mr Mekshi records. "One feud has been running for more than 80 years.

"Sometimes the vendettas start through killings or land disputes but they also begin with a fight over a drink or a car accident. Usually it's a killing for a killing, a beating for a beating. The kanun doesn't specify how killings should be carried out, but if you mutilate a victim's face, attack him from behind or kill him after you gave your word not to, the bad blood comes back to you.

"Within the first 24 hours you may kill anyone from the clan to which the person who carried out the initial killing belonged-but not a woman. After that you can kill a member of the family. After a year, it must be only the murderer or whoever lives in his house."

The Committee of Blood Reconciliation has 3,000 members in Albania and is pressing the government to accept its arbitrations as part of the legal process.

"I have a good reputation and my father was a man of good reputation, too," says Mr Mekshi. "I am approached to arrange truces by those who are in hiding and dare not go out during the day. When we agree a deal, we sanctify the arrangement with a procession led by the local priest."

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THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 13th January 1999, page 13

Crisis talks as Milan is hit by wave of killings

Italy's Prime Minister, Massimo D'Alema held crisis talks with police and local officials in Milan yesterday to try to restore order to a city that has seen nine murders so far this year.

The government has deployed an extra 800 police and 90 patrol cars to Milan as a stopgap measure to ease the "crime emergency".

Diego Masi, an Interior Ministry under-secretary, blamed the Albanian mafia, which has entered the city on a tide of illegal immigrants. An official report puts the Albanians top among foreign crime organizations. It says they concentrate on drugs and prostitution. Their lack of Western moral values allows them to settle scores with appalling coldness, often murdering people in crowded streets and bars.

Bruce Johnston, Rome........"

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Translated from Italian. Corriere della Sera (Milan) 15 October 1998

Albanian Mafia, This Is How It Helps The Kosovo Guerrilla Fighters

Report by Roberto Ruscica

Drugs traffickers in Italy, in Germany, in Spain, in France, and in Norway: Kosovo Albanians. The men from the Special Operations Section [ROS] of the carabinieri, under the leadership of General Mario Mori, have succeeded in neutralizing a fully fledged network of Albanian drugs traffickers. The leader of this network is a certain Gashi Agim, aged 33, originally from Pristina, the capital of the small region that is being torn apart by the struggle between on the one hand the local population, 90 percent of whom are of Albanian ethnic origin and who are calling for independence from Serbia, and [Yugoslav government] on the other... Married to an Italian girl, Gashi Agim was living in a luxurious villa just outside Milan. The owner of a chain of beauty parlors and of perfume shops in London, Gashi was arrested early this summer along with 124 drug traffickers.

"Milan at this juncture has become a crossroads of interests for many fighting groups," a detective with the ROS explained. "These groups include also the Albanians from Kosovo who are among the most dangerous traffickers in drugs and in arms. They are determined men, violent and prepared to go to any lengths. They are capable of coming up with men and arms in a matter of hours. They have deep roots in civil society. They love luxury, fashionable clubs, and restaurants. They have an astonishing amount of ready cash at their disposal. Every night, to keep in practice, they burgle apartments and businesses, moving from one city in Lombardy to the next."

Investigations have shown that Italy is the most important base for these organizations and it is precisely in Milan that negotiations between the Kosovar bosses and those of the Tirana- based Albanian gangs take place. And Milan, again, is the theater in which exchanges with our own domestic crime bosses take place. According to detectives, the 'Ndrangheta receives and parcels out some 50 kilograms of heroin every day. And it is precisely by following this drug trail that the detectives have succeeded in discovering a fully fledged organization with ramifications throughout Europe: Groups have been identified that operate in France, in Switzerland, in Spain, in Germany, and in Norway. But the real brains behind this network are reportedly located in Italy.

The ROS officer, who is unable to reveal his identity, told me: "In Bratislava and in Budapest we have pinpointed storehouses capable of containing thousands of kilograms of heroin. Also, we recently seized a huge quantity of very pure cocaine. That means that the Albanian traffickers may well have refineries avilable to them and that therefore the drugs do not arrive ready prepared from Latin America. In certain East European countries the drugs traffickers can act undisturbed, and in some cases they actually enjoy the protection of the authorities and of the police forces. It is precisely for that reason," the detective concluded, "that a number of our missions have ended in real failure."

But many names, links, and operative methods have, on the other hand, been discovered. The transportation of the drugs, for example, is habitually entrusted to German organizations: cars with tanks capable of containing 20 kilograms of drugs, or long-haul trucks with "cover" loads that cross the Austrian border to reach Milan.

The war in Kosovo has partly slowed down the criminals' business because many Albanians have been forced to take care of their families. Some of them are activists in the armed movement of the KLA fighters and have gone home to fight. They feel Albanian. They are fighting to achieve annexation to Albania. And it is precisely there that at least a part of the sea of money that the Albanian drugs traffickers have amassed is reported to have ended up, to support the families and to fund both certain political personalities and the anti-Serb movement. In spring, a number of Albanian drugs traffickers actually went as far as to take part in the organization of a rally in favor of independence for Kosovo.

And quite a number of people wanted for ordinary offenses marched past the US Embassy in Rome waving their banners and handing out leaflets.

Drugs, arms, and the Koran: Could this be the murderous crime mix of the next few years? "That is the picture that one can draw on the basis of our investigations," the ROS agents maintain. "A few years ago the Milan drugs market was run by the Turks. They were unscrupulous traffickers who would go to any lengths to satisfy the 'Ndrangheta bosses. Then, in 1996, the torch passed to the Albanians without any bloodshed." They share the Islamic religion with their Turkish confreres. An unmistakable sign is the month of Ramadan: In those weeks the traffickers close down the drug market.

"That is exactly right. But the Albanians have a particularly aggressive attitude. On the basis of phone calls that we have intercepted, we have discovered that the drugs are not only a source of wealth but also a tool in the struggle to weaken Christendom."

General Mori's men got to the Albanian drugs traffickers by following the 'Ndrangheta. And they maintain that the headquarters of the criminal operations is located in Calabria. Milan is apparently only an important business center. But it is seemingly the bosses in Africo, in Plati, and in Bovalino who order the purchase of drugs and of arms. And organized crime's arsenal is said to be located in the Aspromonte region of Calabria: bazookas rifles with telescopic sights, submachine-guns, hand grenades. "The 'Ndrangheta is different from other Mafia-style organizations," the ROS agents maintain. "It has only one objective: business. And in order to make the biggest profit it is prepared to forge alliances with anybody: with the Moroccans, with the Egyptians, with the Turks. The Calabrian bosses are not interested in controlling the Milanese territory. And sure enough the Albanian gangs are free to run the prostitution racket without any interference."

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Corriere della Sera (Milan) Janury 19, 1999

CRIMES COMMITTED IN ITALY PROVIDE FUNDS FOR KOSOVO GUERRILLAS --By C. B.

Milan -- As long as he was able, until the Milan district Anti-Mafia Directorate and the Carabinieri ROS [Special Operations Group] locked him in a solitary isolation cell, Agim Gashi -- the 35-year-old criminal boss from Pristina, king of the Milan drugs market -- supplied his brothers in Kosovo with Kalashnikov rifles, bazookas, and hand grenades. He controlled the heroin market, and at least part of the billions of lire he made from it was used to buy weapons for the "resistance" movement of the Albanian Kosovo community.

Conversations monitored by ROS, on file with so-called "Operation Africa," contain recollections of his established reign. Gashi spoke in Serbo-Croat with his men and with the Turkish-route heroin suppliers. That is, the language of the Serbian "enemy," of the hated Orthodox religion. The one against which he rallied his Muslim brothers. He is known to have made a telephone call to encourage Turkish heroin suppliers during Ramadan -- a violation of religious rules for the sake of a more important cause: "to submerge Christian infidels in drugs."

With Gashi's arrest, the ethnic Albanian Kosovar clans' rule in Milan has apparently not come to an end. The old 'Ndrangheta families, the Mafia "dozens" ["decine" -- traditional groupings], and the old Egyptian "lords" depend on the new masters of the drug market, acknowledging their authority. In any case, the route is secure. From Turkey, via Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, it reaches Germany, and from there, Italy. On board trucks or regular cars, it supplies heroin from East to West. On the return trip it has to ensure the invisibility of profits totaling billions of lire. These are needed to buy weapons in Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania for the Kosovo resistance.

http://www.rcs.it/corriere

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UNREPENTANT KLA DISMISSES ACCUSATIONS

Kosovo rebels unlikely to co-operate with probe by Canadian war-crimes prosecutor

Tom Walker

Special to The [Toronto] Globe and Mail

Pristina, Yugoslavia --The Kosovo Liberation Army does not consider itself guilty of war crimes, and is unlikely to co-operate with the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, sources in the rebel group say.

The issue of bringing to justice those responsible for the hundreds of deaths in the fractious Serbian province this year stalled last week when Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade barred the tribunalâs chief prosecutor, Canadaâs Louise Arbour, from visiting Kosovo. The KLA warned over the weekend that it, too, is equally unlikely to help Ms. Arbour and her investigators.

Sources in the rebel group, who asked not to be identified, have admitted that many of the KLAâs victims ö both Serb and ethnic Albanians deemed loyal to Belgrade ö endured brutal deaths. One fighter said that two Serb police officers captured in the western village of Glogane were executed by being dragged behind cars, and that bodies of Yugoslav army soldiers were gratuitously mutilated.

Although the ethnic Albanians generally encourage international involvement in the Kosovo crisis, the KLA sources said there was little point in trying to bring the often ill-disciplined local command structure of the KLA to heel. "In a way I think what we did was helpful ö it made the Serbs think again before repeating their massacres," said one man, who described how the police officersâ bodies were decapitated as they were dragged behind cars driven by young rebels "in some sort of show" organized by a village rebel chief.

"Itâs not something the KLA favours and not something that is usually done," he said. "But you must understand that these policemen had a long history of physically mistreating local people. People involved in conflicts like this know the risks they run."

Belgrade has argued that Kosovo is an internal crisis, not a war, so there is no reason for Ms. Arbour and her investigators to become involved. Observers suspect that behind the refusal to let the Hague team in (and one of the reasons international sanctions against Yugoslavia remain) is a fear that senior police and army personnel could face indictments, and that even Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic might be vulnerable.

U.S. war-crimes envoy David Scheffer criticized the visa decision, which also bars the tribunalâs president, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, from travelling to Kosovo. "In the UN Security Council, there is unanimous consent of all its members that investigators have full authority to do their job in Kosovo," Mr. Scheffer noted Saturday.

So far, Belgrade has only allowed a team of Finnish forensic experts to examine grave sites in Kosovo. One of Serbiaâs senior forensic pathologists, however, has publicly advocated that international teams be allowed to investigate all deaths in Kosovo, and the evidence they gather be sent to The Hague.

"Iâll continue to ask for experts to come," said Zoran Stankovic, senior pathologist at Belgradeâs military hospital and Yugoslaviaâs only UN-accredited forensic scientist.

Mr. Stankovic accused the Serbian media of grossly distorting some incidents where Serbs have been killed, but also said authorities had failed to bring home the brutality of the KLA and its methods to the foreign press.

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